The History of Trade Unionism / (Revised edition, extended to 1920)

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

[510]Report of Manchester Congress, 1882; see also History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.

CHAPTER VII

THE OLD UNIONISM AND THE NEW
[1875-1890]

Since 1875 the Trades Union Congress has loomed before the general public with ever-increasing impressiveness as the representative Parliament of the Trade Union world. To the historical student, on the other hand, it has, during the last fifty years, been wanting in significance as an index to the real factors of the Trade Union Movement. Between 1871 and 1875, the period of the struggle for complete legalisation, the Congress concentrated the efforts of the different sections upon the common object they had all at heart. On the accomplishment of that object it became for ten years little more than an annual gathering of Trade Union officials, in which they delivered, with placid unanimity, their views on labour legislation and labour politics. [511] From 1885 to 1890 we shall watch the Congress losing its decorous calm, and gradually becoming the battle-field of contending principles and rival leaders. But throughout its whole career it has, to speak strictly, been representative less of the development of Trade Unionism as such, than of the social and political aspirations of its leading members.

The reader of the Congress proceedings between 1875 and 1885 would, for instance, fail to recognise our description of the characteristics of the movement in these years. The predominant feature of the Trade Union world between 1875 and 1885 was, as we have seen, an extreme and complicated sectionalism. It might therefore have been expected that the annual meeting of delegates from different trades would have been made the debating ground for all the moot points and vexed questions of Trade Unionism, not to say the battle-field of opposing interests. But though the Trades Union Congress, like all popular assemblies, had its stormy scenes and hot discussions, from 1875 to 1885 these episodes arose only on personal questions, such as the conduct of individual members of the committee or the bona fides of particular delegates. On all questions of policy or principle before the Congress the delegates were generally unanimous. This was brought about by the deliberate exclusion of all Trade Union problems from the agenda. The relative merits of collective bargaining and legislative regulation were, during these years, never so much as discussed. The alternative types of benefit club and trade society were not compared. The difficulties of overlap and apportionment of work were not even referred to. No mention was made of Sliding Scales, Wage-Boards, Piecework Lists, or other expedients for avoiding disputes. Piecework itself, when introduced by a delegate in 1876, was dropped as a dangerous topic. The disputes between Union and Union were regarded by the Committee as outside the proper scope of Congress.[512] In short, the knotty problems of Trade Union organisation, the divergent views as to Trade Union policy, the effect on Trade Unionism of different methods of remuneration—all the critical issues of industrial strife were expressly excluded from the agenda of the Congress.

For the narrow limits thus set to the functions of the Congress there was an historical reason. Arising as it did between 1868 and 1871, when the one absorbing topic was the relation of Trade Unionism to the law, it had retained the character then impressed upon it of an exclusively political body. For many years its chief use was to give weight to the Parliamentary action of the standing committee, whose influence in the lobby of the House of Commons was directly proportionate to the numbers they were believed to represent. Publicity and advertisement, the first requisites of a successful Congress, were worse than useless without unanimity of opinion. The deliberate refusal of the Trade Union leaders to discuss internal problems in public Congress under such circumstances was not surprising. Most men in their position would have hesitated to let the world know that the apparent solidarity of Trade Unionism covered jealous disputes on technical questions, and fundamental differences as to policy. They easily persuaded themselves that a yearly meeting of shifting delegates was fitted neither to debate technical questions nor to serve as a tribunal of appeal. But these difficulties could have been overcome. The quinquennial delegate meeting of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers secures absolute frankness of discussion by the exclusion of reporters; and the frequent national conferences of miners achieve the same end by supplying the press with their own abstract of the proceedings. The Miners’ Conference of 1863, which we have already described, had shown, too, how successfully a large conference of workmen could resolve itself, for special questions, into private committees, the reports being laid before the whole conference at its public sittings—a device not yet adopted by the Trades Union Congress. And the London Society of Compositors, which is governed practically by mass meetings, had, for over half a century, known how to combine detailed investigation of complicated questions with Democratic decisions on principles of policy, by appointing special committees to report to the next subsequent members’ meeting. The fact that no such expedients were suggested shows that in these years the jealousy of most workmen of outside interference and their apathy about questions unconnected with their immediate trade interests, made their leaders unwilling to trust them with real opportunities for full Democratic discussion.

We shall therefore not attempt to reconstruct the Trade Union Movement from the proceedings of its annual congresses. The following brief analysis of their programmes and the achievements of the Parliamentary Committee is meant to show, not the facts as to Trade Union organisation throughout the country, with which we have already dealt, but the political and social ideals that filled the minds of the more thoughtful and better educated working men, and the rapid transformation of these ideals in the course of the last decade. [513]

The mantle of the Junta of 1867-71 had, by 1875, fallen upon a group of able organisers who, for many years, occupied the foremost place in the Trade Union world. Between 1872 and 1875 Allan and Applegarth were replaced by Henry Broadhurst, John Burnett, J. D. Prior, and George Shipton.[514] These leaders had moulded their methods and policy upon those of the able men who preceded them. It was they, indeed, aided by Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, who had actually carried through the final achievement of 1875. Like Allan, Applegarth, and Guile, they belonged either to the iron or the building trades, and were permanent officials of Trade Union organisations. A comparison of the private minutes of the Parliamentary Committee between 1875 and 1885 with those of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades of 1867-71 reveals how exactly the new “Front Bench” carried on the traditions of the Junta. We see the same shrewd caution and practical opportunism. We notice the same assiduous lobbying in the House of Commons, and the same recurring deputations to evasive Ministers. For the first few years, at least, we watch the Committee in frequent consultation with the same devoted legal experts and Parliamentary friends.[515] Through the skilful guidance and indefatigable activity of Henry Broadhurst the political machinery of the Trade Union Movement was maintained and even increased in efficiency. If during these years the occupants of the “Front Bench” failed to give so decisive a lead to the Labour Movement as their predecessors had done, the fault lay, not in the men or in the machinery, but rather in the programme which they set themselves to carry out.

This programme, laid before all candidates for the House of Commons at the General Election of 1874, was based, as John Prior subsequently declared, on the principle “that all exceptional legislation affecting working men should be swept away, and that they should be placed on precisely the same footing as other classes of the community.”[516] Its main items were the repeal of the hated Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871, and the further legalisation of Trade Unionism. The sweeping triumphs of 1875, and the acceptance by the Conservative Government of the proposals of the Junta, denuded the programme for subsequent years of its most striking proposals. There remained over in this department certain minor amendments of law and procedure which occupied the attention of the Committee for the next few years, and were gradually, by their exertions, carried into effect. [517]

But one great disability still lay upon working men as such. By the common law of England a person is liable for the results, not only of his own negligence, but also for that of his servant, if acting within the scope of his employment. The one exception is that, whereas to a stranger the master is liable for the negligence of any person whom he employs, to his servant he is not liable for the negligence of a fellow-servant in common employment. By this legal refinement, which dates only from 1837, and which successive judicial decisions have engrafted upon the common law, a workman who suffered injury through the negligence of some other person in the same employment was precluded from recovering that compensation from the common employer which a stranger, to whom the same accident had happened, could claim and enforce.[518] If by the error of a signalman a railway train met with an accident, all the injured passengers could obtain compensation from the railway company; but the engine-driver and guard were expressly excluded from any remedy. What the workman demanded was the abolition of the doctrine of “common employment,” and the placing of the employee upon exactly the same footing for compensation as any member of the public.