An invidious feature, in which the textile industry is unique, is the appearance during the present century, as the result of a quarrel as to “political action,” of half-a-dozen separate local Trade Unions of Roman Catholic weavers, which are united in what is termed the Lancashire Federation of Protection Societies. These, which are neither numerous nor of extensive membership, remain outside the Amalgamated Association of Weavers; and are watchful critics of any proposals, at the Trades Union Congress (to which they do not seek admission) or elsewhere, that offend the Roman Catholic Church (notably any suggestion of “Secular Education,” or educational changes deemed inimical to the Roman Catholic schools). There is a National Conference of Catholic Trade Unionists having similar objects.
There was, in 1919, also a Jewish National Labour Council of Great Britain; and from time to time Unions are formed, especially in the clothing trade (such as the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors, Machinists, and Pressers, established 1893), and in baking and cabinetmaking, aiming at enrolling Jewish workers. But this is not really a religious, or even primarily a racial, cleavage, but merely sectional organisation, usually transient, among particular branches of industry which happen to be principally carried on by Jews. At present most such societies in the clothing trade have been absorbed in the United Garment Workers’ Trade Union, which, with upwards of 100,000 members, is actively negotiating for a merger with the older Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses (established 1865) and the effective Scottish Operative Tailors’ and Tailoresses’ Association, with 5000 members, under the title of the United Tailors and Garment Workers.
[603]A recent case in which the Trade Union Assistant Secretary left the weavers for the employers, in the midst of a crisis, with the Union affairs in confusion, was stigmatised as desertion.
[604]The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive introduction of women and the successive transformations of the industry by machinery, have, during the past thirty years, developed extensive Trade Unions, which have steadily gained strength. In 1892 we could count only 18,000 Trade Unionists in the whole industry. In 1920, whilst the National Society of Woolcombers and Kindred Trades has 12,000 members and there are strong organisations of wool-sorters, warp-dressers, and over-lookers, the General Union of Textile Workers, established in 1881, now includes a membership, in the West of England as well as in Yorkshire, principally male and female weavers, numbering more than 100,000 (The Heavy Woollen District Textile Workers’ Union, by Ben Turner, 1917). During the war these Unions were accorded equal representation with the employers and with the Government on the Wool Control Board, by which the Government supplies of wool were “rationed” among the manufacturers, and the prices fixed.
In the dyeing and finishing branch of the textile industry the Amalgamated Society of Dyers, Bleachers, Finishers, and Kindred Trades (established 1878), with 30,000 members, has outstripped the older National Society of Dyers and Finishers (established 1851; 12,000 members), and has entered into remarkable agreements with the monopolist combination of employers. (The Amalgamated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, centred at Bolton, which has over 22,000 members, occupies a similar leading position as regards the dyeing of cotton goods.) A recently formed National Association of Unions in the Textile Trades seeks to co-ordinate the influence of all the woollen workers and dyers, and counts a membership of about 150,000, in 35 societies, which are grouped in four sections (“Raw Wool,” “Managers and Overlookers,” “Textile Workers,” and “Dyers’ Societies”).
[605]The history of the struggles in the engineering industry may be gathered from the monthly Journal of the A.S.E. and the Annual Reports of this and other engineering Trade Unions; from the references in Engineering and other employers’ periodicals. For the lock-out of 1897, see also the Times and Labour Gazette for that year, and also an anonymous volume, The Engineering Strike, 1897. See also for some of the points at issue, Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb, 1897; An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917, and The Works Manager To-day, by Sidney Webb, 1918.
[606]The Unions which, along with the A.S.E., ratified the agreement were the Steam Engine Makers’ Society, the United Machine Workers’ Association, the United Kingdom Society of Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers, the Associated Brassfounders and Coppersmiths’ Society, the North of England Brass Turners’ Society, and the London United Metal Turners, Fitters and Finishers, having an aggregate membership of 70,000.
The societies which failed to secure ratification on the members’ vote, in some cases merely by the failure to obtain a sufficiently large poll, were the Amalgamated Toolmakers’ Society, the Electrical Trades Union, the United Brass Founders and Finishers’ Association, the Amalgamated Instrument Makers’ Society, the United Pattern Makers’ Association, the Associated Smiths and Strikers, the National Brassworkers and Metal Mechanics, the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, and the Scale and Beam Makers’ Society, with something like 100,000 members in the aggregate. Probably some of these will take another vote in the near future.
The old-established Friendly Society of Ironfounders (35,000 members) continues quite apart, though joining freely in engineering trade movements. An unusually protracted national strike in 1919, which is likely to end in a compromise, may possibly lead to proposals for closer union.
[607]Trade Unionism: a New Model, by R. Page Arnot, 1919; and Is Trade Unionism played out? 1919, by the same. Some “extremist” thinkers among workmen have put their hopes of achieving the “Industrial Democracy” that they desire upon a development of the Shop Stewards’ Movement, which should become, together with a “Works Committee,” the instrument of transferring the management of each undertaking from its present capitalist owners and directors to the elected representatives of the persons employed. See The Workers’ Committee, an Outline of its Principles and Structures, by J. T. Murphy (1918), and Compromise or Independence, an Examination of the Whitley Report(1918), by the same, both published by the Sheffield Workers’ Committee.