We have seen the magnificent hopes of 1829-42 ending in bitter disillusionment: we shall now see the Trade Unionists of the next generation largely successful in reaching their more limited aims. Laying aside all projects of Social Revolution, they set themselves resolutely to resist the worst of the legal and industrial oppressions from which they suffered, and slowly built up for this purpose organisations which have become integral parts of the structure of a modern industrial state. This success we attribute mainly to the spread of education among the rank and file, and the more practical counsels which began, after 1842, to influence the Trade Union world. But we must not overlook the effect of economic changes. The period between 1825 and 1848 was remarkable for the frequency and acuteness of its commercial depressions. From 1850 industrial expansion was for many years both greater and steadier than in any previous period.[308] It is no mere coincidence that these years of prosperity saw the adoption by the Trade Union world of a “New Model” of organisation, under which Trade Unionism obtained a financial strength, a trained staff of salaried officers, and a permanence of membership hitherto unknown.
The predominance of Chartism over Trade Unionism was confined to the bad times of 1837-42. Under the influence of the rapid improvement and comparative prosperity which followed, the Chartist agitation dwindled away; and a marked revival in Trade Unionism took effect in the re-establishment, about 1843, of the Potters’ Union, and of an active Cotton-spinners’ Association, and, in 1845, by the amalgamation of the metropolitan and provincial societies of compositors into the National Typographical Society.[309] The powerful United Flint Glass Makers’ Society (reorganised in 1849 as the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society of Great Britain and Ireland) dates from the same year. Delegate meetings of other trades were held; and national societies of tailors and shoemakers were set on foot. A national conference of curriers in 1845 established a federal union of all the local clubs in the trade. But the most important of the new bodies was the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland, formed at Wakefield in 1841.[310] Up to this period the miners, held in virtual serfage by the truck system and the custom of yearly hirings, had not got beyond ephemeral strike organisations. Strong county Unions now grew up in Northumberland and Durham on the one hand, and Lancashire and Yorkshire on the other; and the new body was a federation of these. Under the leadership of Martin Jude, it developed an extraordinary propagandist activity, at one time paying no fewer than fifty-three missionary organisers, who visited every coalpit in the kingdom. The delegate meetings at Manchester and Glasgow in the year 1844 soon came to represent practically the whole of the mining districts of Great Britain; and the membership rose, it is said, to at least 100,000. [311]
A leading feature of this Trade Unionist revival was a dogged resistance to legal oppression. Although the more sensational prosecutions of Trade Union leaders had ceased with the abandonment of unlawful oaths, there was still going on, up and down the kingdom, an almost continuous persecution of the rank and file, by the magistrates’ interpretation of the law relating to masters and servants. The miners, in particular, were hampered by lengthy hirings, during which they were compelled to serve if required, but were not guaranteed employment. Unskilled in legal subtleties, and not yet served by an experienced class of Trade Union secretaries, they were made the victims of a thousand and one quibbles and technicalities. The Northumberland and Durham Miners’ Union grappled with the difficulty in a thoroughly practical spirit. They engaged W. P. Roberts,[312] an able and energetic solicitor, with strong labour sympathies, to light every case in the local courts. In 1844 the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland followed this excellent example by appointing Roberts their standing legal adviser at a salary of £1000 a year. When the Durham miners had to relinquish his services at the end of 1844, he was taken over by the newly formed Lancashire Miners’ Union. The “miners’ attorney-general,” as he was called, showed an indefatigable activity in the defence of his clients, and was soon retained in all Trade Union cases. The magistrates throughout the country found themselves for the first time confronted by a pertinacious legal expert, who, far more ingenious than the employers, was not less unscrupulous in taking advantage of every technicality of the law.
In a letter written to the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society in 1851, Roberts himself gives a vivid picture of the difficulties against which the Unions had to contend. After explaining the law, as he understood it, he proceeds as follows: “But it is exceedingly difficult to induce those of the class opposed to you to take this view of things. I do not say this sarcastically, but as a fact learnt by long and observant experience. There are indeed men on the bench who are honest enough, and desirous of doing their duty. But all their tendencies and circumstances are against you. They listen to your opponents, not only often, but cheerfully—so they know more fully the case against you than in your favour. To you they listen too—but in a sort of temper of ‘Prisoner at the Bar, you are entitled to make any statement you think fit, and the Court is bound to hear you; but mind, whatever you say,’ etc. In the one case you observe the hearty smile of goodwill; in the other the derisive sneer, though sometimes with a ghastly sort of kindliness in it. Then there is the knowledge of your overwhelming power when acting unitedly, and this begets naturally a corresponding desire to resist you at all hazards. And there are hundreds of other considerations all acting the same way—meetings, political councils, intermarriages, hopes from wills, etc. I do not say that all occupants of the bench are thus influenced, nor to the same extent; but it certainly is at the best an uphill game to contend in favour of a working man in a question which admits of any doubt against him. It never happened to me to meet a magistrate who considered that an agreement among masters not to employ any particular ‘troublesome fellow’ was an unlawful act; reverse the case, however, and it immediately becomes a formidable conspiracy, which must be put down by the strong arm of the law, etc.... When I was acting for the Colliers’ Union in the North we resisted every individual act of oppression, even in cases where we were sure of losing; and the result was that in a short time there was no oppression to resist. For it is to be observed that oppression like that we are speaking of—which after all is merely a more genteel and cowardly mode of thieving—shrinks at once from a determined and decided opposition. In the North we should have tried this case, first in the County Court, then at the Assizes, and then perhaps in the Queen’s Bench.” [313]
One result of Roberts’ successful advocacy is perhaps to be seen in the introduction, during the Parliamentary session of 1844, of a Bill “for enlarging the powers of justices in determining complaints between masters, servants, and artificers,” which the Government got referred to a committee, by which various extraordinary interpolations were made in what was at first a harmless measure.[314] Not only was any J.P. to be authorised to issue a warrant for the summary arrest of any workman complained of by his employer, but “any misbehaviour concerning such service or employment” was to be punished by two months’ imprisonment, at the discretion of a single justice. It is easy to see what a wide interpretation would have been given by many a justice of the peace to this vague phrase; and Roberts was not slow to point out the danger to his clients. Upon his incitement the delegate meeting of coal-miners at Sheffield set on foot a vigorous agitation against the Bill, which had already slipped through second reading and committee without a division. The Potters’ Union took the matter up with special vigour, and circulated draft petitions throughout the Midlands.[315] A friendly member, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, obstructed its further progress, and got it postponed until after the Easter recess. Meanwhile petitions poured in upon the astonished House, amounting, it was said, to a total of two hundred, and representing two millions of workmen. When the Bill came on again all the Radicals and the “Young England” Tories were marshalled against it. Sir James Graham in vain protested that the Government meant nothing more than a consolidation of the existing law, and led into the lobby all his colleagues who were present, including Mr. Gladstone. But the combination on the other side of Duncombe, Wakley, Hume, and Ferrand, with Tories like Lord John Manners, and a few enlightened Whigs such as C. P. Villiers, settled the fate of this attempt on the part of the employers to sharpen the blunted weapon of the law against the hated Trade Unions. [316]
The miners were less successful in their strikes than in their legal and political business. In 1844 their National Conference at Glasgow, representing 70,000 men, voted, by 28,042 to 23,357, in favour of striking against their grievances, and the Durham men, numbering some 30,000, engaged in that prolonged struggle with Lord Londonderry and their other employers for more equitable terms of hiring and payment, to which we have already alluded.[317] After many months’ embittered strife the strike failed disastrously; and the great Miners’ Association, whose proceedings form so important a feature of the Northern Star for 1844 and 1845, gradually disappears from its pages, and in the general collapse of the coal trade in 1847-8 it came completely to an end.
But the culminating point in this revival of Trade Union activity was the formation, at Easter, 1845, of the National Association of United Trades for the Protection of Labour, an organisation which resuscitated and combined some of the ideas both of Owen and of Doherty. This Association was explicitly based, as its rules inform us, “upon two great facts: first, that the industrious classes do not receive a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour; and, secondly, that for some years past their endeavours to obtain this have, with few exceptions, been unsuccessful. The main causes of this state of things are to be found in the isolation of the different sections of working men, and the absence of a generally recognised and admitted authority from the trades themselves.” But, unlike the Owenite movement of 1833-4, the National Association of United Trades was from the first distinguished by the moderation of its aims and the prudence of its administration—qualities to which we may attribute its comparatively lengthy survival for fifteen years. No attempt was made to supersede existing organisations of particular trades by a “General Trades Union.” “The peculiar local internal and technical circumstances of each trade,” say the rules, “render it necessary that for all purposes of efficient internal government its affairs should be administered by persons possessing a practical knowledge of them. For this reason it is not intended to interfere with the organisation of existing Trade Unions.” Moreover, the promoters evidently intended the Association to become more of a Parliamentary Committee than a federation for trade purposes. Its purpose and duty was declared to be “to protect the interests and promote the well-being of the associated trades” by mediation, arbitration, and legal proceedings, and by promoting “all measures, political and social and educational, which are intended to improve the condition of the labouring classes.” [318]
This new attempt to form a National Federation originated in a suggestion from the “United Trades” of Sheffield, embodied in an able letter written to Duncombe[319] by their secretary, John Drury. Duncombe had become widely known to the Trade Unionists, not only through his friendship with Fergus O’Connor, and his outspoken support of Chartism in the House of Commons, but also by his successful obstruction and defeat of the Masters and Servants Bill of the previous Session. He appears to have laid Drury’s proposals before the leading men in the London Unions, who agreed to form a committee to report on the scheme, and to summon a conference of Trade Union delegates from all parts of the country. At Easter, 1845, 110 delegates, representing not only the London trades, but also the Lancashire miners and textile operatives, the hosiery and woollen-workers of Yorkshire and the Midlands, and the “United Trades” of Manchester, Sheffield, Norwich, Hull, Bristol, Rochdale, and Yarmouth, met together in London.
The preliminary report made to the Conference by the London Committee of Trade Delegates is practically the first manifestation of that spirit of cautious if somewhat limited statesmanship which characterised the Trade Union leaders of the next thirty years.[320] The Committee, whilst recommending the immediate formation of a national organisation, “to vindicate the rights of labour,” and “to oppose the tyranny of any legislative enactments to coerce trade societies, or of a similar character to the Masters and Servants Bill of last session, were deeply impressed with the importance of, and beneficial tendency arising from, a good understanding between the employer and the employed; seeing that their interests are mutual, and that neither can injure the other without the wrong perpetrated recoiling upon the party who inflicts it. They would therefore suggest it to be one of the principal objects of this Conference to cultivate a good understanding with the employer, and thereby remove those prejudices which exist against trade combinations, by showing upon all occasions that they only seek by combination to place themselves upon equal terms as disposers of their labour with those who purchase it; to secure themselves from injury, but by no means to inflict it upon others. Although the Committee are anxious that this desirable and important organisation should be carried out to the fullest possible extent, they feel that great caution must be observed in the formation of its laws and regulations, in order that the evils which existed and eventually destroyed the Consolidated Union of 1833 shall be carefully avoided. The Committee conceive it necessary to call the attention of those trades who are comparatively disunited, and whose men are consequently working for different rates of wages, to the great necessity that exists, that those who are receiving the highest wages should use every effort within their power to secure to their fellow-workmen a fair remuneration for their labour; and that every inducement should be held out by the several trade societies to their separated brethren to join them, in order that they may be the better enabled to make common cause in cases of aggression, which would be the certain result if each trade were to form itself into one well-regulated society for their mutual interests.... And, finally, the Committee would earnestly recommend to this Conference, in order that these important points may be considered and dispassionately argued, that no proposition of a political nature, beyond what has been already alluded to, should be introduced, or occupy its attention; convinced as they are that the only way to carry out these desirable objects satisfactorily, and with a due consideration to the best interests of all those who are concerned, is to consider and dispose of but one question at a time: and, moreover, to keep trade matters and politics as separate and distinct as circumstances will justify.” [321]
The proceedings of this Conference show that the change of front on the part of the Trade Union leaders was reflected in the attitude of the rank and file. The surviving influence of Owenism is to be traced in the frequent recurrence of the idea of co-operative production, the desire to establish agricultural communities, and the proposal for a legislative shortening of the hours of labour. But of the aggressive policy and ambitious aims of 1830-34 scarcely a vestige remains. Strikes were deprecated, and the idea of a general cessation of work was entirely abandoned. The projects of co-operative production were on an altogether different plane from Owen’s grand schemes. The Trade Unionists of the National Conference of 1845 had apparently no vision of a general transfer of the instruments of production from the capitalists to the Trade Unions; co-operative production was regarded simply as an auxiliary to Trade Union action, the union workshop furnishing a cheap alternative to unproductive strike pay. Besides thus formally abandoning the methods and pretensions of 1834, the Conference declared its allegiance to a new method of Trade Union activity—the policy of conciliation and arbitration. In the demand for “local Boards of Trade,” a phrase borrowed apparently from the silk-weavers, we see the beginning of that system of authoritative mutual negotiation between the representatives of capital and labour which became a very distinctive feature of British Trade Unionism in the last half of the nineteenth century.