[618]The other railwaymen’s Unions are the Belfast and Dublin Locomotive Engine-drivers’ and Firemen’s Trade Union, founded in 1872, and still existing (1920) with a few hundred members; the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, founded in 1880, a powerful sectional society with 33,000 members, which long maintained a jealous rivalry with the Amalgamated; the Railway Clerks’ Association, founded in 1897, remaining very small for a whole decade, absorbing in 1911 the Railway Telegraph Clerks’ Association, founded 1897, with 85,000 members; the Irish Railway Workers’ Trade Union, founded in 1910, tiny and insignificant; the National Union of Railway Clerks, formed in 1913, a tiny local body, arising out of the suspension of the Sheffield Branch of the Railway Clerks’ Association, temporary only.
We may mention the Scottish Society of Railway Servants, founded in the eighteen-eighties, merged in the Amalgamated Society in 1892; the United Signalmen and Pointsmen, founded in 1880, merged in the N.U.R. in 1913; the General Railway Workers’ Union, founded in 1889, merged in the N.U.R., 1913.
For the development of Trade Unionism in the railway world, and the various controversies, we have drawn mainly on the numerous reports and other publications of the Unions themselves; the Railway Review and the Railway Clerk(the pleading for the Companies being found in the Railway News, subsequently incorporated in the Railway Gazette); Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot (1917); the Souvenir History, published by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (1910); Men and Rails, by Rowland Kenney (1913); Der Arbeitskampf der englischen Eisenbahner im Jahre 1911, by C. Leubuscher, 1913; the various publications on the legal proceedings, for which see the next chapter; the Reports of the Board of Trade on Railway Accidents, hours of labour, etc., of the Select Committee of 1892, and the Special Committee of Inquiry of 1911; An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole (1918); From Engine-cleaner to Privy Councillor[J. H. Thomas], by J. F. Moir Bussy (1917).
[619]Slavery on Scottish Railways(1888); The Scottish Railway Strike, by James Mavor (1891).
[620]The North Eastern Railway Company was so far an exception that, already in 1890, it was willing to receive representations from the Trade Union.
[621]A notable feature was a statistical census of the wages of the railwaymen, compiled by the Amalgamated Society through its membership, for the presentation of which Mr. Richard Bell, the Secretary, obtained the services of a Cambridge graduate, Mr. W. T. Layton. This “Green Book” revealed that 38 per cent received 20s. per week or under, and 49.8 per cent between 21s. and 30s.; with atrocious hours. Attempts to discredit these statistics were made by the Companies, it being in particular constantly suggested that nearly all the 100,000 paid under £1 per week were boys. It took the Board of Trade four years to compile and publish an official wage-census for October 1907, which eventually revealed that 96,000 adult railwaymen were receiving 19s. per week or less (Board of Trade Report, February 1912), an extraordinarily exact confirmation of the much-abused census taken by the Union. See Men and Rails, by Rowland Kenney, 1913.
[622]This intimation undoubtedly meant that the Government had decided, as the Times expressly said, to use the Royal Engineers to run trains—a decision to be compared with that at once announced in the national railway strike of 1919, that no use would be made of the troops actually to run trains, nor would the Post Office officials be asked to do railwaymen’s work, nor persons on State Unemployment Benefit be called upon to accept employment on the railways. The change in attitude of the Government in eight years is significant.
[623]The committee consisted, for the first time, of equal numbers of persons appointed as being representative of employers and workmen respectively—two on each side—none of them directly concerned with the industry, with an “impartial chairman,” all five being selected by the Government. For the Companies, Sir T. Ratcliffe Ellis and Mr. C. G. Beale; for the workmen, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., and Mr. John Burnett; the Chairman was Sir David Harrel, K.C.B., an official of the Irish Government.
[624]The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, having now 51,000 members, unfortunately stood aloof; and the annals of railway Trade Unionism were, down to 1918, largely made up of the wrangling between this society and the National Union of Railwaymen.
[625]The mechanics and labourers in the railway companies’ engineering and repairing shops, though many of them have always been members of the various engineering and other craft Unions, long remained relatively unorganised. Many of the less skilled were enrolled by the General Railway Workers’ Union in 1889-1913; and when this was merged in the National Union of Railwaymen, with its broadened constitution, many more of the mechanics and labourers in the railway workshops were recruited, and the N.U.R. sought to obtain for them the advances and other benefits for which it was pressing. The railway companies disputed the right of the N.U.R. to speak for the “shopmen,” and the claim provoked the resentment of the craft Unions, which were now paying increased attention to the organisation of men of their crafts in the railway workshops. Repeated attempts have been made to arrive at some “line of demarcation” or other compromise, by which this rivalry between Unions could be brought to an end; but hitherto without success. The quarrel is inflamed by a conflict of Trade Union doctrine. The engineers, boilermakers, carpenters, and other trades assert that organisation should be by craft, whatever may be the industry in which the craftsman is working. The advocates of the “New Model” of the N.U.R. assert the superiority of organisation by industry, including in each industry all the crafts actually concerned. See Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot, 1917.