We see, therefore, that the work which Allan and Applegarth had done towards consolidating the Trade Union Movement had not been fruitless. But along with increasing consolidation and definiteness of purpose had come an increasing differentiation of policy and interest. Each trade was working out its own industrial problems in its way. Whilst the miners and the cotton operatives, for instance, were elaborating their own codes of legislative regulation of the conditions of labour, the engineering and building trades were becoming pledged to the legislative laissez-faire of their leaders. Under the influence of the able spokesmen of the northern counties the coal-miners and ironworkers were accepting the principle that wages must follow prices; whilst the cotton operatives, and to some extent the boilermakers,[503] were making a notable stand for the contrary view that the Standard Rate of Wages should be a first charge on industry. And while the miners and cotton operatives regarded their organisations primarily as societies for trade protection, there was growing up among the successors of the Junta in the iron and building trades a fixed belief that the really “Scientific Trade Unionism” consisted in elaborate friendly benefits and judiciously invested superannuation funds. So long as trade was expanding, and each policy was pursued with success, no antagonism arose between the different sections. The cotton operatives cordially approved the Nine Hours Movement of the engineers, whilst these, in their turn, supported the Factory Bill desired by the Lancashire spinners. The miners applauded the gallant stand made by the cotton operatives against the reductions of 1877-79, whilst the cotton operatives saw no objection to the acquiescence of the miners in the dependence of wages on prices. And though all Trade Unions regarded with respect the high contributions and accumulated funds of the Amalgamated Engineers, they were equally respectful of the success with which the Northumberland coal-miners, through bad times and good, had for half a generation maintained a strong Union with exclusively trade objects. Thus the divergences of policy, which were destined from 1885 onward to form the battle-ground between what has been once more termed the “Old” Unionism and the “New,” did not at first prevent cordial co-operation in the common purposes of the Trade Union Movement. It was in the dark days after 1878-79, when every Union suffered reverses, that internal discontent as to Trade Union policy became acute, and a new spirit of criticism arose. Not until the purely trade society, on the one hand, had been found lacking in stability, and the trade friendly society, on the other, had been convicted of apathy in trade matters; not until the Lancashire and Yorkshire coalminers had been driven to protest against the constant reductions brought about by the sliding scales, and some of the leaders of the Lancashire cotton operatives hesitated in their advocacy of the legal day; finally, not until a powerful section of the miners opposed any further extension of the Mines Regulation Acts, and a section of the engineers and building operatives began to advocate the legal fixing of their own labour day—do we find it declared that “the two systems cannot co-exist; they are contradictory and opposed.” [504]
In more than one direction, therefore, the depression of trade was bringing into prominence wide divergences of opinion upon Trade Union policy. But the adverse industrial circumstances of the time were revealing, in certain industries, a more invidious cleavage. As manufacturing processes develop and change with the progress of invention and the substitution of one material for another—iron for wood in shipbuilding, for instance—the skilled members of one trade find themselves superseded for certain work by the members of another. A modern Atlantic liner, practically a luxuriously-fitted, electric-lighted floating hotel, built of rolled steel plates, would obviously not fall within the work of a shipwright like Peter the Great. But the old-fashioned shipwright naturally refused to relinquish without a struggle the right to build ships of every kind. The depression of 1879 was severely felt in the shipbuilding and engineering trades, every one of which had a large percentage of its members unemployed. The societies found, as we have seen, the out-of-work donation a serious drain on their funds, and were inclined to look more narrowly into cases of “encroachment” upon the work which each regarded as the legitimate sphere of its own members. Disputes between Union and Union as to overlap and apportionment of work become, in these years, of frequent occurrence; and to the standing conflict with the employers was added embittered internecine warfare between the men of one branch of trade and those of another. The Engineers complained of the monopoly which the Boilermakers maintained of all work connected with angle-iron. The Patternmakers protested vigorously against the Carpenters presuming to make any engineering patterns. At Glasgow the Brassfounders objected to the Ironmoulders continuing to make the large brass castings which the workers in brass had at first been unable to undertake. The line of demarcation in iron shipbuilding between the work of a shipwright and that of a boilermaker was a constant source of friction. The disregard of the ordinary classification of trades by the authorities of the Royal Dockyards created great discontent among the Engineers, who saw shipwrights put to do fitters’ work, and Broadhurst brought the matter in 1882 before the House of Commons.[505] Nor were the disputes confined to the puzzling question of the lines of demarcation between particular trades. In 1877 the recently formed Union of “Platers’ Helpers” complained bitterly to the Trades Union Congress that the whole force of the Boilermakers’ Society had been used to destroy their organisation. The Platers’ Helpers, it may be explained, constitute a large class of labourers in shipbuilding yards, who are usually employed and paid, not by the owners of the yards, but by members of the Boilermakers’ Society. In the building trades numerous cases of friction were occurring between bricklayers and masons on the one hand, and the builders’ labourers on the other. The introduction of terra cotta led to a whole series of disputes between the bricklayers and the plasterers as to the trade to which the new work properly belonged. Disputes of this kind were, of course, no new thing. What gave the matter its new importance was the dominance of the great trade friendly societies in the skilled occupations. The loss of employment by individual members became in bad times a serious financial drain on Unions giving out-of-work pay. In place of the bickerings of individual workmen we have the conflicts of powerful societies, each supporting the claim of its own members to do the work in dispute. “When men are not organised in a Trade Union,” says the general secretary of a large society, “these little things are not taken much notice of, but the moment the two trades become well organised, each trade is looking after its own particular members’ interests....” [506]
We have in our Industrial Democracy analysed the history, character, and extent of this rivalry among competing branches of the same trade. Here we need do no more than record its result in weakening the bond of union between powerful sections of the Trade Union world. The local Trades Councils, which might have attained a position of political influence, were always being disintegrated by the disputes of competing trades. The powerful Shipping Trades Council of Liverpool, for instance, which played an important part in Samuel Plimsoll’s agitation for a new Merchant Shipping Act, was broken up in 1880 by the quarrel between the separate societies of Shipwrights, Ship-joiners, and House Carpenters over ship work. The minutes of every Trades Council, especially those in seaports, relate innumerable well-intentioned attempts to settle similar disputes, almost invariably ending in the secession of one or other of the contending Unions. These quarrels prevented, moreover, the formation of any effective general federation. An attempt was made in 1875 by the officers of the Amalgamated Engineers’, Boilermakers’, Ironfounders’, and Steam-Engine Makers’ Societies to establish a federation for mutual defence against attacks upon the Nine Hours System. After a few months, the disputes between the Engineers and Boilermakers on the one hand, and between the members of the Amalgamated Society and the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society on the other, led to the abandonment of the attempt.[507] A similar movement initiated by the Boilermakers in 1881 equally failed to get established. [508]
Wider federations met with no better success than those confined to the engineering and shipbuilding trades. The Trades Union Congress repeatedly declared itself in favour of universal brotherhood among Trade Unionists, and the formation of a federal bond between the different societies. But the inherent differences between trade and trade, the numerous distinct types into which societies were divided, the wide divergences as to Trade Union policy which we have been describing, and, above all, the rivalry for members and employment between competing societies in the same industry, rendered any universal federation impossible. After the Sheffield Congress in 1874, representatives of the leading Unions in the iron and building trades set on foot a “Federation of Organised Trade Societies,” which all Unions were invited to join for mutual defence. But the Cotton-spinners, with their preference for legislative regulation, refused to have anything to do with a federation which contemplated nothing but strike benefits. The whole scheme was, indeed, more a project of certain Trade Union officials than a manifestation of any general feeling in favour of common action. Each trade was, as we have said, working out its own policy, and attending almost exclusively to its own interests. Under such circumstances any attempt at effective federation must necessarily have been still-born. Nevertheless the Edinburgh Congress of 1879 called for a renewed attempt; and the Parliamentary Committee circulated to every Trade Union in the kingdom their proposed rules for another “Federation of Organised Trade Societies,” To this invitation not half a dozen replies were received.[509] At the Congress of 1882, when the resolution in favour of a universal federation was again proposed, it found little support. The representatives of the local Trades Councils urged that these bodies furnished all that was practicable in the way of federation. Thomas Ashton, the outspoken representative of the cotton-spinners, was more emphatic. “For years,” he said, “the Parliamentary Committee and others had been trying to bring about such an organisation as that mentioned in the resolution, but it had been found utterly impossible.... It was all nonsense to pass such a resolution. It was impossible for the trades of the country to amalgamate, their interests were so varied and they were so jealous with regard to each other’s disputes.” [510]
The foregoing examination of the internal relations of the Trade Union world between 1875 and 1879, though incomplete, demonstrates the extent to which the movement during these years was dominated by a somewhat narrow “particularism.” From 1880 to 1885 the various societies were absorbed in building up again their membership and balances, which had so seriously suffered during the continued depression. The annual Trades Union Congress, the Parliamentary Committee, and the political proceedings of these years constitute practically the only common bond between the isolated and often hostile sections. In all industrial matters the Trade Union world was broken up into struggling groups, destitute of any common purpose, each, indeed, mainly preoccupied with its separate concerns, and frequently running counter to the policy or aims of the rest. The cleavages of interest and opinion among working men proved to be deeper and more numerous than any one suspected. In the following chapter we shall see how an imperfect appreciation of each other’s position led to that conflict between the “Old Unionists” and the “New” which for some years bade fair to disintegrate the whole Labour Movement.
FOOTNOTES:
[442]Address of Alexander Macdonald to the Leeds Conference, 1873. Alexander Macdonald, the son of a sailor, who became a miner in Lanarkshire, was born at Airdrie in 1821, and went to work in the pit at the age of eight. Having an ardent desire for education he prepared himself as best he could for Glasgow University, which he entered in 1846, supporting himself from his savings, and from his work as a miner in the summer. Whilst still at the University he became known as a leader of the miners all over Scotland. In 1850 he became a mine manager, and in 1851 he opened a school at Airdrie, an occupation which he abandoned in 1855 to devote his whole time to agitation on behalf of the miners. On the formation, in 1863, of the National Union of Miners, he was elected president, a position which he retained until his death. Meanwhile he was, by a series of successful commercial speculations, acquiring a modest fortune, which enabled him to devote his whole energies to the promotion of the Parliamentary programme which he had impressed upon the miners. He gave important evidence before the Select Committee of 1865 on the Master and Servant Law. In 1868 he offered himself as a candidate for the Kilmarnock Burghs, but retired to avoid a split. At the General Election of 1874 he was more successful, being returned for Stafford, and thus becoming (with Thomas Burt) the first “Labour Member.” He was shortly afterwards appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Labour Laws, and eventually presented a minority report of his own on the subject. He died in 1881. A history of the coal-miners which he projected was apparently never written, and, with the exception of numerous presidential addresses and other speeches, and a pamphlet entitled Notes and Annotations on the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1872(Glasgow, 1872, 50 pp.), we have found nothing from his pen. A eulogistic notice of his life by Lloyd Jones appeared in the Newcastle Chronicle, November 17, 1883, most of which is reprinted in Dr. Baernreither’s English Associations of Working Men, p. 408.
[443]Address to the Miners’ National Conference at Leeds, 1873.
[444]The Conference appointed a sub-committee to compile and publish its proceedings, “a thing,” as the preface explains, “altogether unparalleled in the records of labour.” And indeed the elaborate volume, regularly published by the eminent firm of Longmans in 1864, entitled Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863, with its 174 pages, its frontispiece representing the pit-brow women, and its motto on the title-page extracted from the writings of W. E. Gladstone, formed a creditable and impressive appeal to the reading public.
[445]For this militant Chartist (1805-79), see Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, by G. J. Holyoake, 1881.