[608]The Amalgamated Society of Steel and Ironworkers and the Tin and Sheet Millmen’s Association failed to secure their members’ ratification by vote, whilst the National Association of Blastfurnacemen withheld its adhesion. These may be expected to adhere in due course.
[609]The London dock labourers found themselves in 1911, with an increased cost of living and the virtual abandonment of attempts to improve their method of employment, little better off than in 1889. See Casual Labour at the Docks, by H. A. Mess, 1916; and, for the position at other ports, Le Travail casuel dans les ports anglais, by J. Malégue, 1913; The Liverpool Docks Problem, 1912, and The First Year’s Working of the Liverpool Dock Scheme, 1914, both by R. Williams (of the Labour Exchange); and “Towards the Solution of the Casual Labour Problem,” by F. Keeling, in Economic Journal, March 1913.
[610]History of the London Transport Workers’ Strike, by Ben Tillett, 1911; The Great Strike Movement of 1911 and its Lessons, by H. W. Lee, 1911; The Times for June-August 1911; Labour Gazette, 1911-12.
[611]The Working Life of Shop Assistants, by Joseph Hallsworth and R. J. Davis, 1913.
[612]A separate Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, long small in membership, has also risen to 4500 members.
[613]See English Teachers and their Professional Organisations, by Mrs. Sidney Webb, published as supplements to The New Statesman of September 25 and October 2, 1915.
[614]From 1913 onward a persistent attempt to establish a Trade Union was made by many of the Police and Prison Officers, which was resisted by the Home Secretary, as responsible for the Metropolitan Police, and by all the Local Authorities. In 1913 the Police and Prison Officers’ Union was formed by ex-Inspector Symes, and in 1917 it was reorganised, without securing either recognition or sanction. Cases of “victimisation” having occurred, there was a sudden strike on August 29, 1918, which was participated in by nearly the whole of the police in many London divisions. This took the world (and also the criminal population) by surprise; but through good-humoured handling by the Prime Minister (who received the Executive Committee of the Union and told them that “the Union could not be recognised during the war”), the Government persuaded the men promptly to resume their duties, with a cessation of “victimisation” for joining the Union and a substantial increase of pay. When hostilities ceased, the Union expected some measure of official sanction, but none was accorded, and grievances remained unredressed. On July 31, 1919, a second strike was suddenly called, which resulted in failure, only a couple of thousand men coming out in London, and a few hundred in Liverpool, Birkenhead, and elsewhere, together with a small number of prison warders. At Liverpool and Birkenhead there was serious looting of shops and public-houses by turbulent crowds. The authorities stood firm, the Home Secretary refusing all sanction for the establishment of a Trade Union in the police force and prison staff, and summarily dismissing all the strikers, at the same time announcing large concessions in the way of wages, promotion, and pensions, and conceding, not a Trade Union, but the establishment of an elective organisation of the police force, by grades, entitled to make formal representations and complaints. This concession was embodied in the Police Act, 1919, which explicitly prohibited to the police either membership of, or affiliation to, any Trade Union or political organisation. The dismissed policemen were not reinstated, but the Government informally assisted some of them to obtain other employment.
[615]For the history of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain and the contemporary District Unions, we have drawn on the voluminous printed minutes of proceedings and reports which are seldom seen outside the Miners’ Offices; the various publications of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade (now the Ministry of Labour) and the Home Office; The British Coal Trade, by H. Stanley Jevons (1915); The British Coal Industry, by Gilbert Stone (1919); Labour Strife in the South Wales Coalfield, 1910-11, by D. Evans (1911); The Adjustment of Wages, by Sir W. J. Ashley; Miners’ Wages and the Sliding Scale, by W. Smart (1894); Miners and the Eight Hours Movement, by M. Percy; History of the Durham Miners’ Association, by J. Wilson (1907); A Great Labour Leader[Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson (1908); Memoirs of a Miners’ Leader, by J. Wilson (1910); Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry, by George Harvey (1917); A Plan for the Democratic Control of the Mining Industry, by the Industrial Committee of the South Wales Socialist Society (1919); the Reports and evidence of the Coal Industry Commission, 1919, and the voluminous newspaper discussion to which it gave rise, together with Facts from the Coal Commission and Further Facts from the Coal Commission, both by R. Page Arnot (1919).
[616]The enginemen, boilermen and firemen, colliery mechanics, cokemen, under-managers, deputies, overmen and other officials, colliery clerks and various kinds of surface-workers about the mines have all their own Unions, which have greatly developed of recent years, and are in many districts not very willing to join the county miners’ associations, though they often act in conjunction with these. Their own federations are referred to on p. 550.
[617]The British Coal Trade(by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915), p. 599.