The History Of Trade Unionism, by Beatrice and Sidney Webb

“Further, in order to avoid overlapping in the activity of working-class organisations, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed to consult with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement, with a view to devising a scheme for the setting up of departments under joint control, responsible for effective national and international service in the following and any other necessary directions:

The Officers of the Trade Union Movement

If we survey the growth of the British Trade Union Movement during the past thirty years, what is conspicuous is that, whilst the Movement has marvellously increased in mass and momentum, it has been marked on the whole by inadequacy of leadership alike within each Union and in the Movement itself, and by a lack of that unity and persistency of purpose which wise leadership alone can give. Hence, in our opinion, the organised workers, whilst steadily advancing, have not secured anything like the results, either in the industrial or in the political field, that the individual sacrifices and efforts in their cause might have brought about. This deficiency in the brain-work of successful organisation is very marked in the various sections of the building trades, with their chaos of separate societies, and in the engineering industry, with its persistence of competing Unions formed on inconsistent bases, its lack of uniformity in Standard Rates, and its failure to devise any plan of safeguarding Collective Bargaining in the various systems of “Payment by Results.” But it has been equally apparent in the incapacity of the Trade Union Movement as a whole to establish any central authority to prevent overlapping organisations and demarcation disputes, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various sections of workers towards a higher standard of life and greater control over the conditions of their working lives. The British workmen, it must be said, have not become aware of the absolute need for what we may call Labour Statesmanship. They have not yet learnt how, either in their separate Trade Unions or in the Labour Movement as a whole, to attract and train, to select and retain in office, to accord freedom of initiative to and yet to control, a sufficient staff of qualified officials capable not merely of individual leadership, but also of well devised “team play” in the long-drawn-out struggle of the wage-earning class for its “place in the sun.” To this constant falling short of the reasonably expected achievements is, we think, due the perpetual see-saw in Trade Union policy: the Trade Unionists of one decade relying principally on political action, to the neglect of the industrial weapon, whilst those of a succeeding decade, temporarily disillusioned with political action, rush wildly into strikes and neglect the ballot-box. This change of feeling is due each time to the failure of the results to come up to expectation. We shall understand some of the reasons for this shortcoming if we examine how the Trade Union Movement is, in fact, officered.

The affairs, industrial and political, of the six million Trade Unionists, enrolled in possibly as many as fifty thousand local branches or lodges (including a thousand independent small local societies), are administered by perhaps 100,000 annually elected branch officials and shop stewards. These may be regarded as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement; and it is fundamentally on their sobriety and personal integrity, combined with an intimate knowledge of their several crafts and a steadiness of judgement, that the successful conduct of the branch business depends. They continue to work at their trades, and receive only a few pounds a year for all their onerous and sometimes dangerous work. It is these non-commissioned officers of the Trade Union army who keep the Trade Union organisation alive. But they have neither the training, nor the leisure, nor even the opportunity, so long as they remain non-commissioned officers, working at their trades, to formulate a detailed policy, or to supply the day-by-day executive leadership to the particular Trade Union, or to the Trade Union Movement. For the work of translating into action, industrial or political, the desires or convictions of the whole body of the members, the Trade Union world necessarily depends, in the main, on its salaried officers, who devote the whole of their time to the service of the Movement, in one or other capacity. Such a whole-time salaried staff was slow to be formed. In 1850 it did not exist at all. It probably did not in 1860 number as many as a hundred throughout the whole kingdom. In 1892, in the first edition of this book, we put it approximately at 600. In 1920, with a fourfold growth in membership, and (under the National Insurance Act) a vast increase in the office and financial business of the Trade Unions, we estimate the total number of the salaried officers of all the Trade Unions and their federations (not including mere shorthand typists and office-boys) at three or four thousand, of whom perhaps one-tenth, in or out of Parliament, are engaged exclusively on election and other political work. But even on the industrial side, Trade Union officials differ considerably in the work they have to do, and the differences in function result in marked varieties of type.

We have first the salaried officials of the skilled trades. They are broadly distinguished from the officers of the Labourers’ Unions by the fact that they are invariably men who have worked at the crafts they represent, and who have usually served their society as branch secretaries. We may distinguish among them two leading types, the Administrator of Friendly Benefits, and the Trade Official.

To the type of Administrator of Friendly Benefits, the school of William Allan, belong most of the General and Assistant Secretaries at the head offices of the great Trade Friendly Societies organisations in which the mass of routine, financial, and other office business has become so great that only the ablest men succeed in rising above it. Owing to the continued increase in membership of the principal Unions, to their tendency to amalgamate into larger and larger aggregations, to the constant extension of friendly benefits, and since 1911 to the enormous addition to the work made by the National Insurance Act, the administrative staffs of the Unions have had to be doubled and quadrupled. But the Trade Union official of this type, however great may be his nominal position, has, during the past thirty years, come to exercise less and less influence on the Trade Union world. Rigidly confined to his office, he becomes in most cases a painstaking clerk, and rises at the best to the level of the shrewd manager of an insurance company. He passes his life in investigating the claims of his members to the various benefits, and in upholding, at all hazard of unpopularity, a sound financial system of adequate contributions and moderate benefits. Questions of trade policy interest him principally so far as they tend to swell or diminish the number of his members in receipt of “Out of Work Pay.” He is therefore apt to be more intent on getting unemployed members off the books than on raising the Standard Rate of wages or decreasing the length of the Normal Day. For the same reason he proves a tenacious champion of his members’ rights in all quarrels about overlap and demarcation of work; and it may happen that he finds himself more often engaged in disputes with rival Unions than with employers. He represents the most conservative element in Trade Union life. On all occasions he sits tight, and votes solid for what he conceives to be the official or moderate party.

More influential in Trade Union politics is the salaried officer of the other type. The Trade Official, as we have called him, is largely the result of the prevalence, in certain industries, of a complicated system of “Payment by Results.” We have already described how the cotton lists on the one hand and the checkweigher clause on the other called into existence a specially trained class, which has since been augmented by the adoption of piecework lists in boot and shoemaking and other industries. The officers of this type are professionals in the art of Collective Bargaining. They spend their lives in intricate calculations on technical details, and in conducting delicate negotiations with the employers or their professional agents. It matters little whether they are the general secretaries of essentially trade societies, such as the federal Unions of Cotton-spinners and Cotton-weavers, or the exclusively trade delegates of societies with friendly benefits, such as the Steel-smelters, the Boilermakers, and the Boot and Shoe Operatives. In either case their attention is almost entirely devoted to the earnings of their members. Alert and open-minded, they are keen observers of market prices, employers’ profits, the course of international trade, and everything which may affect the gross product of their industry. They are more acutely conscious of incompetency, whether in employer or employed, than they can always express. Supporters of improved processes, new machinery, and “speeding up,” they would rather see an antiquated mill closed or an incompetent member discharged than reduce the Standard Rate. Nor do they confine themselves exclusively to the money wages of their clients. Among them are to be found the best advocates of legislative regulation of the conditions of employment, and whilst they have during the present century fallen somewhat into the background when wider political issues have come to the fore, the elaboration of the Labour Code during the past fifty years has been due, in the main, to their detailed knowledge and untiring pertinacity.

The Trade Official, however, has the defects of his qualities. The energetic workman, who at about thirty years of age leaves the factory, the forge, or the mine, to spend his days pitting his brains against those of shrewd employers and sharp-witted solicitors, has necessarily to concentrate all his energies upon the limited range of his new work. As a Branch Secretary, he may have taken a keen interest in the grievances and demands of other trades besides his own. Soon he finds his duties incompatible with any such wide outlook. The feeling of class solidarity, so vivid in the manual working wage-earner, tends gradually to be replaced by a narrow trade interest. The District Delegate of the Boilermakers finds it as much as he can do to master the innumerable and constantly changing details of every variety of iron-ship, boiler, and bridge building in every port, and even at every yard. The Investigator of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives is often hard put to it to estimate accurately the labour in each of the thousand changing styles of boots, whilst at the same time keeping pace with ever-increasing complexity both of machinery and division of labour. The Cotton Official, with his bewildering lists, throws his whole mind into coping with the infinite variety of calculations involved in new patterns, increased speed, and every alteration of count and draw and warp and weft. The Miners’ Agents can seldom travel beyond the analogous problems of their own industry. Such a Trade Official, if he has any leisure and energy left at the end of his exhausting day’s work, broods over larger problems, still special to his own industry. The Secretary of a Cotton Union finds it necessary to puzzle his head over the employers’ contention that Bimetallism, or a new Indian Factory Act, deserves the operatives’ support; or to think out some way of defeating the evasions of the law against over-steaming or of the “particulars clause.” The whole staff of the Boilermakers will be absorbed in considering the effect of the different systems of apprenticeship in the shipyards, or the proper method of meeting the ruinously violent fluctuations in shipbuilding. The Miners will be thinking only of the technical improvement of the conditions of safety of the mine, or of the way to protect the interests of the hewer in an “abnormal place.” And the modern Knight of St. Crispin racks his brains about none of these things, but is wholly concerned with the evil of home work, and whether the inspection of small workshops would be more rigidly carried out under the Home Office or under the Town Council. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Trade Officials are characterised by an intense and somewhat narrow sectionalism. The very knowledge of, and absorption in, the technical details of one particular trade, which makes them such expert specialists, prevents them developing the higher qualities necessary for the political leadership of the Trade Union world.

In another class stand the organisers and secretaries of what used to be called the Labourers’ Unions, and are now styled Unions of General Workers—a less stable class, numbering in 1892 about two hundred, and in 1920 possibly ten times as many. In contrast with the practice of the old-established societies these officers have at no time been always selected from the ranks of the workers whose affairs they administer.[646] In “revivalist” times the cause of the unskilled workers attracts, from the ranks of the non-commissioned officers of other industries, men of striking capacity and missionary fervour, such as John Burns and Tom Mann, who organised and led the dock labourers to victory in 1889. But these men regarded themselves and were regarded more as apostles to the unconverted than as salaried officers, and they ceded their posts as soon as competent successors among their constituents could be found. In the main the unskilled workmen have had to rely for officers on men drawn from their own ranks. In not a few cases a sturdy general labourer has proved himself a first-rate administrator of a great national Union. But it was a special drawback to these Unions in the early days of their development that the “failures,” who drift from other occupations into the ranks of general labour, frequently got elected, on account of their superior education, to posts in which personal self-control and persistent industry are all-important. Nor were the duties of an organiser of unskilled labourers in old days such as developed either regular habits or business capacity. The absence of any extensive system of friendly benefits reduced to a minimum the administrative functions and clerical labour of the head office. The members, for the most part engaged simply in general labour, and paid by the day or hour, had no occasion for elaborate piecework lists, even supposing that their Unions had won that full recognition by the employers which such arrangements imply. On the other hand, the branches of a Labourers’ Union in those days were, for one reason or another, always crumbling away; and the total membership was only maintained by perpetually breaking fresh ground. Hence the greater part of the organiser’s time was taken up in maintaining the enthusiasm of his members, and in sweeping in new converts. This involved constant travelling, and the whirl of excitement implied in an everlasting round of missions in non-Union districts. The typical organiser of a Labourers’ Union in 1889-94 approximated, therefore, more closely than any other figure in the Trade Union world, to the middle-class conception of a Trade Union official. He was, in fact, a professional agitator. He might be a saint or he might be an adventurer; but he was seldom a man of affairs. [647]

During the past quarter of a century these Unions of Labourers, which are now better styled Unions of General Workers, have changed in character, and are now often huge national organisations of financial stability, administered by men as competent as any in the Trade Union world. Their officers, who have greatly increased in number, have elaborated a technique of their own, combining an efficiency in recruiting with an effective representation of their members’ case in negotiations with the employers, and before arbitration tribunals, which, particularly in such influential bodies as the National Union of General Workers, the Dock, Wharf and Riverside Labourers’ Union, the Workers’ Union and the National Federation of Women Workers, brings them much nearer what we have described as the Trade Official than the typical labourers’ organiser of 1889. The exclusively women’s Unions, among which the National Federation of Women Workers is the only one of magnitude, have been exceptionally fortunate in attracting and retaining women of outstanding capacity—good organisers and skilled negotiators—who have not only obtained for their members a remarkable improvement in the conditions of employment, but have, by their statesmanship, won a position of outstanding influence in the Trade Union Movement. It is, indeed, important to note that the accomplished officials of the larger Unions of General Workers, and not those of women only, have become aware of a diversity of view between the skilled craftsman with a “vested interest” in his trade, and the unskilled or, as they prefer to call them, the semi-skilled or general workers, bent on being considered qualified for any work which the employer has to give. Hence these officials sometimes take a larger view of Labour questions than the trade officials of the skilled crafts. They tend to be in favour of the amalgamation of separate societies into “One Big Union”; of much more equality of remuneration among all manual workers; of the “open door” to capacity; of equal rates for men and women on the same job; and of a levelling up of the Standard of Life of the lowest section of the workers. This leads them instinctively to a co-ordinated use of the industrial and the political weapons.

Some of these officials, however, are paid in a manner which may exercise an adverse influence on their activity. A new method of remuneration of the officers of a Trade Union has been devised. In one case the very able General Secretary of a Union of skilled craftsmen, whose services have been in the past most valuable to the trade, is reputed to be paid so much per member per annum, and with the great increase in membership to be making an income four times as large as the salaries of the General Secretaries of great Trade Unions. In another very extensive Union of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, practically the whole staff is paid “by results,” the Branch Secretaries, for instance, by rule retaining for themselves “six per cent on the contributions, levies and fines received from the members of the Branch on behalf of, and remitted to, the Chief Office”; and being paid also “a procuration fee of 1s.” for “introducing new members” into the Approved Society; and for the extra work involved in disputes, a further “6d. when under 25 members are affected, and 1s. for the first 25 or over; 2s. for the first 50; 6d. per 50 or part thereof afterwards.” This method of remunerating Trade Union officials—analogous to that successfully employed by the Industrial Insurance Companies for their agents—has certain attractions. A fairly adequate remuneration for the position and work can thus be allotted to the officer, without its amount being specifically voted by the members or appearing in the accounts in such a way as to offend the rank and file by a contrast between their weekly wage for manual labour and the Standard Rate of what is essentially a different occupation. It is, however, rightly regarded as a pernicious system. The practice of “paying by results” is alleged to lead sometimes to reckless recruiting, to “in and out” Trade Unionism, and even to wholesale poaching among the membership of other Unions; and it produces in the Trade Union world a type of “business man” more concerned for numbers than for raising the Standard of Life of the members he has enrolled, or for co-operation with other Trade Unions for their common ends.

Quite another type, of more recent introduction, is the Political Officer of the Trade Union world. He may be merely the Registration Officer or Election Agent serving the local Labour Party and the Labour Candidate in a particular constituency; he may be simply a Labour M.P.; he may be the secretary or staff officer of a great Trade Union or powerful federation, or, indeed, of the Labour Party itself, devoting himself to political functions; he may combine with one or other of these posts, or some other Trade Union office, that of a Member of Parliament; but he is distinguished from the typical General Secretary, Trade Official or Labour Organiser—from one or other of which he has usually developed—by his absorption in the political work of the Movement, either inside the House of Commons or outside it, within one constituency or in a wider field. He may not always hold a political office. A marked feature of the past decade has been the frequency and the amount of the calls upon the time of the Trade Union leaders who are not in Parliament, for public service in which their own Unions have no special concern. The Trade Union official has to serve on innumerable public bodies, nearly always without pay of any kind, from local Pension or Food or Profiteering Act Committees, or the magisterial bench, up to National Arbitration Tribunals, official Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions. Such a man is perpetually devoting hours every day to the consideration and discussion, and sometimes to the joint decision, of issues of public character, in which it is his special function to represent, not the opinions and interests of the particular Trade Unionists by whom he is paid, but the opinions and interests of the whole wage-earning class. All this important work, a twentieth century addition to the functions of the Trade Union staff, and not alone the increasing calls of Parliament, is tending more and more to the development of what we have called the Political Officer of the movement.

These three or four thousand salaried officials of the Trade Union world, whatever their several types, and whatever the duties to which they are assigned, are, with insignificant exceptions, all selected in one way, namely by popular election by the whole body of members, either of their respective Unions, or of particular districts of those Unions. They are, in the skilled trades, required to be members of the Union making the appointment; and in order to gain the suffrages of their fellow-members they must necessarily have made themselves known to them in some way. They are, accordingly, selected almost invariably from among what we have described as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement, those who are serving or who have served as Branch Secretaries, or other local officers. They have thus all essentially the same training—a training which has no more reference to the work of an administrator of Friendly Benefits than to that of a Political Officer. What happens is that the popular workman is, by the votes of his fellow-workers, taken suddenly from the bench, the forge or the mine, at any age from 30 to 50, with no larger experience than that of a Branch Official, and put to do the highly specialised work of one or other of the types that we have described.[648] It is a further difficulty that such training and experience that an individual Trade Unionist may have had, and such capacity as he may have shown, whilst they may secure his election to a salaried office, or his promotion from one such office to another, will be held to have no bearing on the question of which office he will be chosen to fill. The popular Branch Secretary, who has led a successful strike, may be elected as General Secretary in a head office where his work will be mainly that of the manager of an insurance company. The successful Trade Official, expert at negotiating complicated changes in piecework lists, may find himself elected as the Union’s candidate for Parliament; and will, in due course, be sent to the House of Commons to deal on behalf of the whole wage-earning class, with political issues to which he has never given so much as a thought. The Trade Union secretary, whose daily work has trained him to the meticulous supervision of the friendly benefits, may find himself perpetually called away from his office to represent the interests of Labour as a member of Royal Commissions and Committees of Enquiry on every imaginable subject.

With such imperfect methods of selection for office, and with so complete a lack of systematic training for their onerous and important functions, it is, we think, a matter for surprise that Trade Union officials should have won a well-deserved reputation for knowledge and skill in negotiations with employers. But their haphazard selection and inadequate training are not the only difficulties that they have to overcome. Trade Union officials are nearly always overworked and expected to become specialist experts in half-a-dozen techniques; they are exposed to harassing and demoralising conditions of life, and they are habitually underpaid. The conditions of employment and the terms of service which the Trade Unions, out of ignorance, impose on those who serve them, far from being conducive to efficient administration and wise leadership, are often disgracefully poor. In November 1919 the National Union of Railwaymen set a notable example in raising the salaries of their two principal officers to £1000 a year each. But this is wholly exceptional. Even now, after the great rise in the cost of living, the salary of the staff officer of an important and wealthy Trade Union rarely exceeds £400 or £500 a year, without any provision for any other retiring allowance than the Union’s own Superannuation Benefit of ten or twelve shillings per week, if such a benefit exists at all. The average member forgets that what he has to compare the Secretary’s salary with is not the weekly wage of the manual working members of the Union, but—on the very doctrine of the Standard Rate in which they all believe—the remuneration given by “good employers” for the kind of work that the Secretary has to perform. When we remember that the modern Trade Union official has to be constantly travelling and consorting with employers and officials of much higher standards of expenditure than his own, and when we realise the magnitude and financial importance of the work that he performs, the smallness of the salary and the lack of courtesy and amenity accorded to the office is almost ludicrous. The result is that the able and ambitious young workman in a skilled trade is not much tempted by the career, even if he regards it as one of Trade Union leadership, unless he is (as so many are) an altruistic enthusiast; or unless his ambitions are ultimately political in character. The able young workman will both rise more rapidly and enjoy a pleasanter life by eschewing any ostensible service of his fellow-workmen, and taking advantage of the eagerness of intelligent employers to discover competent foremen and managers, nowadays not altogether uninfluenced by the sub-conscious desire to divert from Trade Unionism to Capitalism the most active-minded of the proletariat. Nor does the danger to the Trade Union world end with the refusal of some of its ablest young members to become Trade Union officials. The inferiority of position, alike in salary, in dignity and in amenity, to which a Trade Union condemns its officers, compared with that enjoyed by men of corresponding ability and function in other spheres, puts a perpetual strain on the loyalty of Trade Union officials. They are constantly being tempted away from the service of their fellows by offers of appointments in the business world, or by Employers’ Associations, or in Government Departments. And there are other evils of underpayment. A Trade Union official whose income is insufficient for his daily needs is tempted to make unduly liberal charges for his travelling expenses, and may well find it more remunerative to be perpetually multiplying deputations and committee meetings away from home than to be attending to his duties at the office. He may be driven to duplicate functions and posts in order to make a living wage. The darkest side of such a picture, the temptation to accept from employers or from the Government those hidden bribes that are decorously veiled as allowances for expenses or temporary salaries for special posts, is happily one which Trade Union loyalty and a sturdy sense of working-class honour have hitherto made it seldom necessary to explore. But such things have not been unknown; and their underlying cause—the unwise and mean underpayment of Trade Union officials—deserves the attention of the Trade Union world.

We have so far considered the officials of the Trade Union world merely as individual administrators. This, indeed, is almost the only way in which their work is regarded by their members. It is remarkable how slow the Trade Union world is to recognise the importance, to administrative or political efficiency, of the constitution of a hierarchy, a group or a team. Where a great society has a salaried staff of half-a-dozen to a score of officials—under such designations as General Secretary, Assistant Secretaries, President, Members of Executive Council or District Delegates, Organisers or Investigators—it is almost invariable to find them all separately elected by the whole body of members, or what is even more destructive of unity, by different district memberships. We only know of one example in the Trade Union world—that of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation—in which the responsible Executive Committee itself appoints the official staff upon which the performance of the work depends. All the salaried officers of a Trade Union, whatever their designations or functions, can usually claim to have the same, and therefore equal authority, namely, their direct election by the members. This results in the lack of any organic relation not only between the Executive Committee and the District Officers who ought to be its local agents, but even between the Executive Committee and the General Secretary and Assistant Secretaries. The Executive Committee can shunt to purely routine work a General Secretary whom it dislikes, and an unfriendly General Secretary can practically destroy the authority of the Executive Committee. In some cases the work of the office is in practice divided up amongst all the salaried staff, Executive Councillors, General Secretary, and Assistant Secretaries indiscriminately, each man doing his own job in the way he thinks best, and any consultation or corporate decision being reduced to a minimum. There is, in fact, no guarantee that there will be any unity of policy within an Executive Committee elected by a dozen different districts, or between an Executive Committee and its leading officials, who are elected at different times for different reasons. The members may choose a majority of reactionary Executive Councillors and simultaneously a revolutionary General Secretary. In nearly all Unions any suggestion as to the desirability of adopting the middle-class device of entrusting a responsible Executive Committee with the power of choosing its own officers has been resented as undemocratic.[649] In some Unions the indispensable amount of unity is secured, not without internal friction, by the presence of some dominant personality, who may be a secretary or president, or merely a member of the Executive Committee. The same drawback is seen in the constitutions of such wider federations as the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. The result is that the Trade Union Movement has not yet evolved anything in the nature of Cabinet Government, based on unity of policy among the chief administrators, nor do we see any approach to the Party System, which in our national politics alone makes Cabinet Government possible. It looks as if any Democracy on a vocational basis must inevitably be dominated by a diversity of sectional interests which does not coincide with any cleavage in intellectual opinions. From the standpoint of corporate efficiency the drawback is that the sectional divergencies are always interfering with the formulation and unhesitating execution of decisions on wider issues, on which it would be advantageous for the Movement as a whole, in the interests of all, to have an effective general will, even if it be only that of a numerical majority.

Finally, it is a great drawback to the Trade Union world that it possesses no capital city and no central headquarters even in London. Its salaried officials, on whom it depends for leadership and policy, are scattered all over the country. The General Secretaries of the great Trade Friendly Societies and of the Unions of General Workers are dispersed between London, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Liverpool, and Leicester. The officials of the Cotton Operatives are quartered in a dozen Lancashire towns, and those of the Miners in every coalfield. The District Delegates of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades and the organisers of the Dockers and the Seamen are stationed in all the principal ports. We have seen how little the Trades Union Congress, meeting once a year for less than a week, supplies any central organ of consultation or direction. The meeting in London, every few weeks, of the two or three dozen members of the Parliamentary Committee and the Executive Committee of the Labour Party is wholly inadequate for the constant consultation upon policy, the mutual communication of each other’s immediate projects, and the taking of decisions of common interest that the present stage of the Trade Union Movement requires. Probably no single thing would do so much to increase the efficiency of the Trade Union world as a whole as the provision of an adequate Central Institute and general office building in Westminster, at which could be concentrated all the meetings of national organisations, federations and committees; and which would make at any rate possible the constant personal communication of all the different headquarters. [650]

FOOTNOTES:

[599]It is doubtful whether, in any country in the world, even in Australia or Denmark, there is in 1920 so large a proportion of the adult male manual workers enrolled in Trade Unions as in the United Kingdom; and—Ireland being still relatively unorganised industrially—certainly not so large a proportion as in Great Britain alone.

The Trade Union Movement in Ireland has, apart from the Irish branches of British Unions, largely concentrated in the Belfast area, little connection with that in Great Britain, but its progress during the past thirty years has been scarcely less remarkable. The Irish railwaymen have abandoned their attempts at organisation in an Irish Union, and have lately swarmed into the National Union of Railwaymen to the number of over 20,000. The engineers in Ireland, whether at Belfast or elsewhere, are, to the number of 9000, in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and other British Unions. The other great Unions have nearly all their Irish branches. But the great transformation has been in the foundation and remarkable development of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, built up by James Connolly and James Larkin, which has survived both its tremendous Dublin strike of 1913 and the loss of both its leaders, and claims in 1920 over 100,000 members in 400 branches, being half the Trade Unionists in all Ireland. The only other Irish Trade Unions exceeding 5000 members are the Flax Roughers’ Union, included with other Unions in an Irish Textile Workers’ Federation, and the Clerical Workers’ Union, together with the Irish Teachers’ Society, which (unlike the National Union of Teachers in England and the Educational Institute of Scotland) is frankly affiliated with the (Irish) Labour Party. Scores of other Irish Trade Unions exist, practically all small, local, and sectional in character, and almost confined to the ten towns of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Dundalk, Derry, Clonmel, Sligo, and Kilkenny. The total Trade Union membership in Ireland, which thirty years ago was only put at 40,000, may now exceed 200,000, about one-fifth of which is in and about Belfast. The Irish Trades Union Congress, established in 1894, and the Irish Labour Party meet annually.

The Irish Trade Union Movement, emerging from handicraftsmen’s local clubs, some of them dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, and monopolist and sectional in policy, has, during the present century, become fired with nationalist spirit and almost revolutionary fervour. Its heroes are Michael Davitt, James Connolly, and James Larkin. The story of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, with its extraordinary extension to all grades of wage-earners all over Ireland, and its sensational strikes in Dublin in 1913-14, is an epic in itself. Some idea of this development may be gathered from The Irish Labour Movement, by W. P. Ryan, 1919; Labour in Irish History, by James Connolly; Socialism Made Easy, by the same (about 1905); the Annual Reports of the Irish Trades Union Congress since 1895; and those of the Irish Labour Party.

[600]Statistics of aggregate membership in the past are lacking. But we suggest that after the transient mass enrolments of 1833-34 had lapsed, the total membership in Great Britain of such Trade Unions as survived probably did not reach 100,000. It is doubtful whether, as late as 1860, there were half a million Trade Unionists. We give in an Appendix such past statistics as we have found.

[601]Industrial Democracy, pp. 38, 92, 103, 123, 258, etc.

[602]The Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives is (1920) not now a member. A further development of federal complexity is the formation of a Federation of Kindred Trades connected with the Export Shipping Industry of Manchester.

An invidious feature, in which the textile industry is unique, is the appearance during the present century, as the result of a quarrel as to “political action,” of half-a-dozen separate local Trade Unions of Roman Catholic weavers, which are united in what is termed the Lancashire Federation of Protection Societies. These, which are neither numerous nor of extensive membership, remain outside the Amalgamated Association of Weavers; and are watchful critics of any proposals, at the Trades Union Congress (to which they do not seek admission) or elsewhere, that offend the Roman Catholic Church (notably any suggestion of “Secular Education,” or educational changes deemed inimical to the Roman Catholic schools). There is a National Conference of Catholic Trade Unionists having similar objects.

There was, in 1919, also a Jewish National Labour Council of Great Britain; and from time to time Unions are formed, especially in the clothing trade (such as the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors, Machinists, and Pressers, established 1893), and in baking and cabinetmaking, aiming at enrolling Jewish workers. But this is not really a religious, or even primarily a racial, cleavage, but merely sectional organisation, usually transient, among particular branches of industry which happen to be principally carried on by Jews. At present most such societies in the clothing trade have been absorbed in the United Garment Workers’ Trade Union, which, with upwards of 100,000 members, is actively negotiating for a merger with the older Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses (established 1865) and the effective Scottish Operative Tailors’ and Tailoresses’ Association, with 5000 members, under the title of the United Tailors and Garment Workers.

[603]A recent case in which the Trade Union Assistant Secretary left the weavers for the employers, in the midst of a crisis, with the Union affairs in confusion, was stigmatised as desertion.

[604]The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive introduction of women and the successive transformations of the industry by machinery, have, during the past thirty years, developed extensive Trade Unions, which have steadily gained strength. In 1892 we could count only 18,000 Trade Unionists in the whole industry. In 1920, whilst the National Society of Woolcombers and Kindred Trades has 12,000 members and there are strong organisations of wool-sorters, warp-dressers, and over-lookers, the General Union of Textile Workers, established in 1881, now includes a membership, in the West of England as well as in Yorkshire, principally male and female weavers, numbering more than 100,000 (The Heavy Woollen District Textile Workers’ Union, by Ben Turner, 1917). During the war these Unions were accorded equal representation with the employers and with the Government on the Wool Control Board, by which the Government supplies of wool were “rationed” among the manufacturers, and the prices fixed.

In the dyeing and finishing branch of the textile industry the Amalgamated Society of Dyers, Bleachers, Finishers, and Kindred Trades (established 1878), with 30,000 members, has outstripped the older National Society of Dyers and Finishers (established 1851; 12,000 members), and has entered into remarkable agreements with the monopolist combination of employers. (The Amalgamated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, centred at Bolton, which has over 22,000 members, occupies a similar leading position as regards the dyeing of cotton goods.) A recently formed National Association of Unions in the Textile Trades seeks to co-ordinate the influence of all the woollen workers and dyers, and counts a membership of about 150,000, in 35 societies, which are grouped in four sections (“Raw Wool,” “Managers and Overlookers,” “Textile Workers,” and “Dyers’ Societies”).

[605]The history of the struggles in the engineering industry may be gathered from the monthly Journal of the A.S.E. and the Annual Reports of this and other engineering Trade Unions; from the references in Engineering and other employers’ periodicals. For the lock-out of 1897, see also the Times and Labour Gazette for that year, and also an anonymous volume, The Engineering Strike, 1897. See also for some of the points at issue, Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb, 1897; An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917, and The Works Manager To-day, by Sidney Webb, 1918.

[606]The Unions which, along with the A.S.E., ratified the agreement were the Steam Engine Makers’ Society, the United Machine Workers’ Association, the United Kingdom Society of Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers, the Associated Brassfounders and Coppersmiths’ Society, the North of England Brass Turners’ Society, and the London United Metal Turners, Fitters and Finishers, having an aggregate membership of 70,000.

The societies which failed to secure ratification on the members’ vote, in some cases merely by the failure to obtain a sufficiently large poll, were the Amalgamated Toolmakers’ Society, the Electrical Trades Union, the United Brass Founders and Finishers’ Association, the Amalgamated Instrument Makers’ Society, the United Pattern Makers’ Association, the Associated Smiths and Strikers, the National Brassworkers and Metal Mechanics, the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, and the Scale and Beam Makers’ Society, with something like 100,000 members in the aggregate. Probably some of these will take another vote in the near future.

The old-established Friendly Society of Ironfounders (35,000 members) continues quite apart, though joining freely in engineering trade movements. An unusually protracted national strike in 1919, which is likely to end in a compromise, may possibly lead to proposals for closer union.

[607]Trade Unionism: a New Model, by R. Page Arnot, 1919; and Is Trade Unionism played out? 1919, by the same. Some “extremist” thinkers among workmen have put their hopes of achieving the “Industrial Democracy” that they desire upon a development of the Shop Stewards’ Movement, which should become, together with a “Works Committee,” the instrument of transferring the management of each undertaking from its present capitalist owners and directors to the elected representatives of the persons employed. See The Workers’ Committee, an Outline of its Principles and Structures, by J. T. Murphy (1918), and Compromise or Independence, an Examination of the Whitley Report(1918), by the same, both published by the Sheffield Workers’ Committee.

[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.

[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.

[626]The Presidential Address at the Annual Conference of the Railway Clerks’ Association in 1913 had suggested that the representatives of the railway workers should constitute one-third of a National Railway Board—a proposal that did not content the larger Union.

[627]It was reported that in some cases the soldiers fraternised with the pickets and were promptly withdrawn to barracks; and the Cabinet was certainly warned, by high military authority, against attempting to use the troops.

[628]For an account of this Department see pp. 571-2.

[629]A notable feature was a revolt of the compositors and printers’ assistants, who threatened to strike and stop the newspapers altogether unless the railwaymen were allowed to present their case and unless abusive posters were abandoned.

[630]Railway Dispute, 1919: Report to the Labour Movement of Great Britain by the Committee appointed at the Caxton Hall Conference(National Transport Workers’ Federation).

[631]British Trade Unionism has often been contrasted, to its disadvantage, with the more scientifically classified German Trade Unionism before the Great War. It was, for instance, often pointed out that the three millions of German Trade Unionists were grouped in no more than 48 Unions. This, however, ignored the numerous competing Hirsch-Duncker and Christian Unions, which were far more destructive of unity than are the crowd of minor societies in Great Britain and Ireland. At present (1920) the 48 largest Trade Unions of this country concentrate a larger membership than the much-praised 48 Trade Unions of Germany did in 1914.

[632]See An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917.

[633]See the History of the British Trades Union Congress(by W. J. Davis), vol. ii. (1916), p. 156; and the successive Annual Reports of the General Federation of Trade Unions from 1900 onward.

[634]Such as those for Kent, Lancashire and Cheshire, North Wales, the South-Western Counties, and Yorkshire.

[635]At Nottingham, Leicester, Brighton, Hanley, Manchester, Worcester, and some other towns, the Trades Council has at times been allowed the use of a room in the Town Hall, or other municipal building. The Local Government Board in 1908 suggested to Local Authorities that this assistance should be generally afforded to them.

[636]One of the most active supporters of the Trades Council Movement is the National Union of Railwaymen, which has been largely responsible for the valuable help rendered by the Trades Councils in the organisation of agricultural labourers. The Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees, that of Operative Bakers of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Municipal Employees’ Association are also outstanding supporters of the Trades Councils, whilst the Oldham Operative Cotton-spinners, and the Operative Lace Makers of Nottingham make branch affiliation compulsory. In many of the principal Unions branch affiliation fees are contributed wholly, or in large proportion, from Central Funds.

[637]The Manchester Trades Council, and especially its Chairman, Mr. Purcell, of the Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association, successfully brought to a compromise the very serious strike of the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees against the Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operative Societies in 1919.

[638]The Gateshead Trades Council and Local Labour Party holds an “Information Bureau meeting” once a week, devoted to answering inquiries and affording information on Local Government affairs.

[639]The Trades Union Congress has, since 1873, published a long and detailed Annual Report; and the Parliamentary Committee has, for some years past, issued a Quarterly Circular to its constituent bodies. Besides these, there should be consulted the History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, of which two volumes have been issued (1910 and 1916); Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901.

[640]See the significant comments in History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp. 102-8.

[641]In the early period of its history the middle-class friends of Trade Unionism read papers and took part in debates. But for many years no one has been allowed to participate in its proceedings in any capacity except duly elected delegates who have worked at the trade they represent, or are actually salaried officials of affiliated Trade Unions. In 1892 and 1893 admission was further limited to those societies which contributed a specified amount per thousand members to the funds of the Congress. The Parliamentary Committee consists of seventeen members, elected by ballot of the whole of the delegates on the fifth day of the Congress. The successful candidates are usually the salaried officers of the great societies, the Standing Orders expressly providing that no trade shall have more than one representative except the miners, who may now have two. The Secretary receives, even in 1920, only £500 a year, and the post has nearly always been filled by an officer enjoying emoluments for other duties. For the last forty years the holder has almost constantly been a member of Parliament, with prior obligations to his constituents, which are not always consistent with the directions of his fellow Trade Unionists; and with onerous Parliamentary duties, which often hamper his secretarial work. For many years he had to provide whatever clerical assistance he required; but in 1896 a clerk, and in 1917 an Assistant Secretary, were added to the staff.

[642]Each Union casts votes in proportion to its affiliated membership, but can divide them as it pleases among the candidates. Between 1906 and 1915 the delegates were divided into ten groups of allied industries, and each group chose its own member. At the 1919 Congress a resolution was carried directing that the election should henceforth be by the transferable vote; and it remains to be seen whether this will upset the “dickering for votes.”

[643]The situation was for years further complicated by the fact that C. Fenwick, M.P., who in 1890 succeeded Henry Broadhurst in the office, was one of the Parliamentary representatives of the Durham miners, a majority of whom were not in accordance with the decision of the Congress on the crucial question of an Eight Hours’ Bill. It was in vain that Fenwick, with most engaging candour, explained to each successive Congress that his pledge to his constituents, no less than his own opinions, would compel him actively to oppose all regulation of the hours of adult male labour. The Congress nevertheless elected him for four successive years as Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee, replacing him only in 1894 by an officer who was prepared to support the policy of the Congress. This is only another example of the extraordinary constancy (referred to at p. 471) with which a working-class organisation adheres to a man who has once been elected an officer—a constancy due, as we think, partly to a generous objection to “do a man out of his job,” and partly to a deep-rooted belief that any given piece of work can be done as well by one man as another. Much the same situation has recurred frequently in the record of the Parliamentary Committee.

[644]One such case may be mentioned. In 1898 a small Trade Union of old standing (Co-operative Smiths’ Society, Gateshead) formally complained that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had allowed its members to take the places of men who had struck. The Parliamentary Committee, acting under Standing Order No. 20, appointed three of its members as arbitrators, who, after elaborate inquiry, found the charge proved, and requested the A.S.E. to withdraw its members from the place in dispute. The A.S.E. refused to accept the award, and withdrew from the Congress (Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1899; History of British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp. 161-62, 165-67).

Another case, in 1902, was adjudicated on in a similar way, where the United Kingdom Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers complained of the Associated Blacksmiths’ Society, which was found to blame (ibid. p. 208).

[645]In view of the failure of the Trades Union Congress to equip its Parliamentary Committee with any staff that would enable it to deal with these problems, the Fabian Society started in 1912 the Fabian Research Department, to investigate and supply information upon these and other questions. This organisation has now become the Labour Research Department, an independent federal combination of Trade Unions, Co-operative and Socialist societies, and other Labour bodies (including the Labour Party, the English, Scottish, and Irish Trades Union Congresses, the Co-operative Union, the Daily Herald, most of the big Trade Unions, and some hundreds of Trade Councils, Local Labour Parties, etc.), with individual students and investigators. It has its offices at 34 Eccleston Square, London, S.W.1, next door to those of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party; issues to its members a monthly bulletin of information, and has published many useful books, pamphlets, and monographs. It answers a stream of questions from Trade Unions all over the country on every conceivable point of theory or practice; it supplies particulars of rates of pay, hours of labour, and conditions of employment in other trades; and it is frequently employed in helping to prepare cases for submission to Joint Boards or Arbitration Tribunals. Its influential conduct of the “publicity” of the National Union of Railwaymen in the 1919 strike has already been described.

[646]For instance, Henry Taylor, the coadjutor of Joseph Arch in organising the agricultural labourers in 1872, was a carpenter; Tom Mann, for two years salaried President of the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers, has always been a member, and is now General Secretary, of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers; whilst Edward M’Hugh, for some time General Secretary of the National Union of Dock Labourers, is a compositor; Mr. Charles Duncan, President of the Workers’ Union, is an engineer; Mr. R. Walker, General Secretary of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union, was successively a shopkeeper and a railway clerk, and so on.

[647]The fervent energy of the typical official of the Labour Union of that day was well described in 1894 in the following sketch by Mrs. Bruce Glasier (Katherine Conway), a member of the “Independent Labour Party.” “He has his offices, but is generally conspicuous there from his absence. Walter Crane’s ‘Triumph of Labour’ hangs on the wall, and copies of The Fabian Essays, and the greater proportion of the tracts issued by the Manchester or Glasgow Labour Presses, lie scattered over the room. In England, Byron and Shelley, in Scotland, Byron and Burns, are the approved poets. Carlyle and a borrowed Ruskin or two are also in evidence, and a library edition of Thorold Rogers’ Work and Wages. John Stuart Mill’s Political Economy, side by side with a Student’s Marx, give proof of a laudable determination to go to the roots of the matter, and to base all arguments on close and careful study. But the call to action is never-ceasing, and train-travelling, if conducive to the enormous success of new journalism, affords but little opportunity for serious reading. ‘The daily newspapers are continually filled with lies, which one ought to know how to refute,’ and the situation all over the globe ‘may develop at any moment.’

“Yet, unlike the old Unionist leader, he is ever ready for the interviewer or the sympathetic inquirer, of whatever class or sex. Right racily he will describe the rapid growth of the movement since the great dock strike of 1889, and show the necessity in dealing with such mixed masses of men as fill the ranks of unskilled labour to-day, of continually striking while the iron is hot, and of substituting a policy of coup d’état for the deliberate preparation of the older Unions. ‘Lose here, win there,’ is our only motto, he says, resolutely determined to look at defeat from the point of view of a general-in-chief, and not from the narrower range of an officer in charge of a special division. At the moment of surrender he may have been white to the lips, but the next day will find him cheery and undaunted in another part of the country, carrying on his campaign and enrolling hundreds of recruits by the sheer energy of his confident eloquence.” (Weekly Sun, January 28, 1894.)

[648]It is, we think, only the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation that had laid down and acted on the principle of entrusting the appointment of salaried officials to the Executive Committee, on the express ground that popular election by ballot is not the right way to select administrative officers.

[649]It would clearly be an advantage if the distinction between those responsible for policy (whether designated Executive Councillors, President or otherwise) and those whose function should be executive only, were fully borne in mind. Whilst the former should certainly be elected by, and held responsible to, the membership, it is submitted that experience shows the advantage of purely executive officers—which may be what the secretaries and district delegates should become—being appointed by, and held responsible to, those who are elected.

At least, a separation should be made between persons elected to be responsible for policy, and officers employed for tasks requiring specialised training (such as the whole of the insurance work of the Union and of its Approved Society; its constantly increasing statistical requirements, and its legal business). Such officers should certainly be appointed, not elected; and should take no part in the decision of issues of policy, even as regards their own department. Speaking generally, much more specialisation of functions and officers should be aimed at in all Unions of magnitude.

[650]Such a building was decided on in 1918-19 by joint and separate conferences of the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, as a “Memorial of Freedom and Peace,” in memory of those who lost their lives in the Great War. It is, however, by no means certain that the necessary large cost will be subscribed.