Chapter VII: The Old Unionism and the New (2)

But the miners elsewhere did not long rest content with the new policy of Durham and Northumberland. In December 1881 the amalgamated South and West Yorkshire Miners’ Associations formally terminated the then existing Sliding Scale, and passed a resolution in favour of the policy of restricting the output. During the following years the Yorkshire employers several times proposed the re-establishment of a scale, but the men insisted on its being accompanied by an agreement for a minimum below which wages should in no event fall--a condition to which the coal-owners uniformly refused their assent. The lead given by the Yorkshire miners was quickly followed by other districts, notably by Lancashire. In this county Trade Unionism among the miners had, as we have seen, gone to pieces in the bad years. Reorganisation in local Unions, came in 1881; and a Lancashire Miners’ Federation was successfully established in the following year. At their Conference of 1883 the delegates of the Lancashire miners resolved, “That the time has come when the working miners shall regulate the production of coal; that no collier or other underground worker shall work more than five days or shifts per week; and that the hours from bank to bank be eight per shift.” Finding it impossible to secure their object by strikes, the Lancashire men turned to that policy of legislative regulation which had marked the proceedings of the Conference of 1863.

With the improvement in trade which began in 1885, the membership and influence of the Lancashire and Yorkshire organisations rapidly increased, and new federations were started throughout the Midlands. The Scotch miners, too, had in 1886-87 a short outburst of organisation, when a national federation was formed with a membership of 23,000. All these Associations adopted the policy of regulating the output, and the Scotch miners, in particular, conducted, in 1887, a vigorous agitation in support of the clause limiting the day’s work to eight hours, which two Scottish members endeavoured to insert in the Mines Regulation Act of 1887.[550] But the Executive of the National Union had, since Macdonald’s death in 1881, fallen entirely into the hands of the Northumberland and Durham leaders. Under their influence it maintained its adherence to the principle of the Sliding Scale and its hostility to the Eight Hours Bill, thereby alienating, not only the new federations, but also the old-established and powerful Yorkshire Miners’ Association. From 1885 to 1888 the battle between the contending doctrines ranged at every miners’ conference.[551] During the latter year the combatants withdrew to separate camps. In September 1888 a conference of the representatives of non-sliding scale districts was called together in Manchester, when arrangements were made for the establishment of a new federation, into which no district governed by a sliding scale was to be allowed to enter. From this time forth the old National Union on the one hand, and the new Miners’ Federation on the other, became rivals for the allegiance of the various district associations, and somewhat unsympathetic critics of each other’s policy and actions. The issue was not long doubtful. The National Union gradually shrank up to Northumberland and Durham, whilst the Miners’ Federation, with its aggressive policy and its semi-Socialistic principles of a minimum wage and a legal day, grew apace. From 36,000 members in 1888, it rose to 96,000 in 1889, 147,000 in 1891, and over 200,000 in 1893, overshadowing in its growth all existing Trade Union organisations. The Socialist advocates of the legal limitation of the hours of labour accordingly enjoyed from 1888 onward, both in the Trade Union Congress and at the polling-booths, the support of a rapidly growing contingent of organised miners, whose solid adhesion has done more than anything else to promote the general movement in favour of an Eight Hours Bill.

It is easy at this distance to recognise, in the altered tone of the rank and file of Congress delegates, a reflection of the wider change of opinion outside. But to the Trade Union Front Bench, as, in fact, to most of the politicians of the time, it was incredible that the new ideas should gain any real footing among the skilled artisans. The Parliamentary Committee regarded the innovations with much the same feeling as that with which they had met the proposals of a little gang which had, in 1882, vainly attempted to foist the principles of fiscal protection upon the Congress.[552] When Congress insisted on passing a resolution with which the Parliamentary Committee found themselves in disagreement, this expression of opinion was sometimes ignored as being nothing more than the fad of particular delegates. It was in vain that the Congress of 1888, after ten years’ deliberation, definitely decided in favour of the principles of Land Nationalisation instead of Peasant Proprietorship. The Parliamentary Committee contented itself with promising that “a well-considered measure” would be put forward by the Committee. The Eight Hours question could not be treated so cavalierly. Direct resolutions in favour of legislative action were therefore staved off by proposals for inquiry. When a vote of the Trade Union world was decided upon, the Parliamentary Committee, in conjunction with many of the General Secretaries, were able practically to baulk the investigation. The voting paper was loaded with warnings and arguments against legislative action. No attempt was made to ensure a genuine vote of the rank and file. In some cases the Executive Committees were allowed to take upon themselves the responsibility of declaring the opinions held by the members of their societies, the total membership of which was then reckoned in the voting. In other instances the Executives were permitted without remonstrance simply to burke the question. The inquiry failed to elicit any trustworthy census of the opinion of the Trade Union world.

An equal lack of sympathy was shown in connection with the growing feeling of the Congress in favour of the participation of British Trade Unionists in International Congresses. At the express command of Congress, the Parliamentary Committee sent delegates to the International gatherings of 1883 and 1886. But though these instructions were complied with, the Parliamentary Committee made it clear, in their annual reports, that far from favouring International action, “the position they assumed was that they were so well organised, so far ahead of foreign workmen, that little could be done until these were more on a level” with the skilled workers of England.[553] The Congress of 1886 nevertheless instructed the Parliamentary Committee to summon an International Conference in London in the following year. Instead of complying with this instruction, the Committee published, in May 1887, a lengthy pamphlet explaining that, owing to the indisposition of foreign workmen to make any pecuniary sacrifices for their Trade Unions, and the consequent lack of any stable working-class organisations, they had decided to refer the whole question again to the forthcoming Trade Union Congress. When the Congress met at Swansea in September 1887, it soon became evident that the Parliamentary Committee, on this question as on others, was quite out of touch with its constituents. In spite of the influence of the Front Bench, a resolution in favour of an International Congress was adopted; and the Committee succeeded only in inducing Congress to impose restrictions which were intended to exclude the delegates of the German Social-Democratic party. The International Congress was held in London in November 1888. Notwithstanding every precaution, a majority of the representatives proved to be of Socialist views, Mrs. Besant, John Burns, Tom Mann, and Keir Hardie appearing among the British delegates. The stiff and unsympathetic attitude of the Parliamentary Committee led to heated and, at times, unseemly controversies; and the resolutions passed were treated by the Committee as of no account whatsoever.

The net result of these proceedings was the loss by the Parliamentary Committee of all intellectual leadership of the Trade Union world. They failed either to resist the new ideas or to guide them into practicable channels. The official Trade Union programme from 1885 to 1889 became steadily more colourless, in striking contrast with the rapid march of politics in the country, which was sweeping the Liberal party forward year by year until in 1891 it adopted the so-called “Newcastle Programme.” This programme formulated, though very inadequately, the national side of that semi-collectivist policy which under the name of Progressivism had superseded Liberalism in the London County Council. All that the Parliamentary Committee did was to abandon, one by one, the proposals for the democratisation of the civil and judicial administration which the Front Bench had so much at heart, without replacing them by the more robust resolutions which the Congress in these years was passing. The Land Question, on which a vigorous advocacy of the creation of small freeholders had been formerly maintained, dwindled to a meaningless demand for undefined reform of the land laws, and finally disappeared altogether on the adoption by the Congress of the principle of nationalisation. The maintenance of the Nine Hours Day, and the further reduction of the hours of labour by means of voluntary combination (a frequent item in the official agenda from 1875 to 1879) gradually dropped out altogether as the new demand for legal regulation gathered strength. In short, the Parliamentary Committee had perforce to give up those items in their programme which were contrary to the new ideas of Congress, whilst they silently abstained from incorporating the new resolutions with which they were personally not in agreement.

It would, however, be unfair to assume that the stock of official Trade Unionism was, during these years, absolutely barren of new developments. To Mr. C. J. Drummond,[554] then Secretary to the London Society of Compositors, and a friend of the Parliamentary Committee, belongs the credit of having taken the first step towards the enforcement, through the Government, of a standard minimum wage. On the revision of the Government printing contract in 1884, Mr. Drummond secured the support of the Parliamentary Committee in an attempt to induce the Stationery Office to adopt, as the basis for the contract, the Trade Union rates of the London compositors. This attempt was, in the main, successful; but the new contract was nevertheless given to a “closed” house, in which no member of the Union could work. The compositors did not let the matter rest. When the President of the Local Government Board (Joseph Chamberlain) issued a circular in January 1886, as to the effects of the depression in trade, Mr. Drummond replied by explicitly demanding the Government’s recognition of the Standard Wage in all their dealings. The idea spread with great rapidity. A general demand was started that public authorities should present a good example as employers of labour by themselves paying Trade Union rates, and insisting on their contractors doing the same. Candidates for Parliament at the General Election of 1886 found themselves, at the instance of the London Society of Compositors,[555] for the first time “heckled” as to their willingness to insist on “Fair Wages”; and it began slowly to dawn upon election agents that it might be prejudicial for their election literature to bear the imprint of “rat houses.” In October 1886 the action of the London School Board in giving its printing contract to an “unfair” house was bitterly resented by the London compositors, who induced the London Trades Council to go on a vain deputation of protest. When, in November 1888, the London School Board election came round, A. G. Cook, a member of the London Society of Compositors, secured election for Finsbury, avowedly as a champion of Trade Union wages; and two members of the Fabian Society, Mrs. Annie Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam, won seats as Socialists. By their eloquence and tactical skill these members induced the Board, early in 1889, to declare that it would henceforth insist on the payment of “Fair Wages” by all its contractors, a policy in which the Board was promptly followed by the newly established London County Council.[556] This new departure by the leading public bodies in the Metropolis did much to bring about a common understanding between the official Trade Unionists and the new movement. It is needless to describe in this place how, since that date, the principle of “Fair Wages” has developed. By 1894 a hundred and fifty local authorities had adopted some kind of “Fair Wages” resolution. In 1890, and more explicitly still in 1893, successive Governments found it necessary to repudiate the old principle of buying in the cheapest market, in favour of the now widespread feeling that public authorities as large employers of labour, instead of ignoring the condition of their employees, should use their influence to maintain the Standard Rate of Wages and Standard Hours of Labour recognised and in practice obtained by the Trade Unions concerned.

Though the Front Bench as a whole maintained during these years its policy of contemptuous inactivity, there were, as we have seen, some signs of the permeation of the new ideas. It was under these circumstances a grave misfortune that the inevitable criticism on the Parliamentary Committee began by a scurrilous attack upon the personal character and conduct of its leaders.[557] During the years 1887-89 the conscientious adhesion to the Liberal party of most of the Parliamentary Committee was made the occasion for gross charges of personal corruption. The General Secretaries of the great Unions, men who had for a lifetime diligently served their constituents, found their influence undermined, their character attacked, and themselves denounced, by the circulation all over the country of insidious accusations of treachery to the working classes. These charges found a too ready acceptance among, and were repeated by, those young and impatient recruits of the new movement who knew nothing of the history and services of the men they were attacking. In the year 1889 the friction reached its climax. During the summer the attacks upon the personal character of the Front Bench were redoubled. As the date of the Trade Union Congress approached, it became known that a determined attempt would be made by the Socialist delegates to oust the Parliamentary Committee from office. The Congress met at Dundee, and plunged straight into an angry conflict in which the Socialists were completely routed. The regular attenders of the Congress had, as we have seen, been gradually absorbing many of the new ideas, and were not altogether satisfied with the way their resolutions had been ignored by the Parliamentary Committee. But all discontent or criticism was swept away by the anger which the character of the attack had excited. A great majority of the delegates came expressly pledged to support Broadhurst and his colleagues, and when the division was taken only 11 out of a meeting of 188 delegates were found to vote against him. The Cotton Operatives who had at all times supported factory legislation, the Miners who were demanding an Eight Hours Bill, the Londoners who came from the centre of the Socialist agitation--all rallied to defend the Parliamentary Committee. The little knot of assailants were thoroughly discredited; and the triumph of the “old gang” was complete.[558]

The victory of the Parliamentary Committee was hailed with satisfaction by all who were alarmed at the progress of the new ideas. For a moment it looked as if the organised Trade Unions of skilled workers had definitely separated themselves from the new labour movement growing up around them. Such a separation would, in our opinion, have been an almost irreparable disaster. The Trade Union Congress could claim to represent less than 10 per cent of the wage-earners of the country. Many of the old societies were already shrinking up into insignificant minorities of superior workmen, intent mainly on securing their sick and superannuation benefits. Any definite exclusion of wider ideals might easily have reduced the whole Trade Union organisation to nothing more than a somewhat stagnant department of the Friendly Society movement. This danger was averted by a series of dramatic events which brought the new movement once more inside the Trade Union ranks. At the moment that Henry Broadhurst was triumphing over his enemies at Dundee, the London dock-labourers were marching to that brilliant victory over their employers which changed the whole face of the Trade Union world.

The great dock strike of 1889 was the culmination of an attempt to organise the unskilled workers which had begun in London two or three years before. The privations suffered by the unemployed labourers during the years of depression of trade, and the new spirit of hopefulness due to the Socialist propaganda, had led to efforts being made to bring the vast hordes of unskilled workmen in the Metropolis into some kind of organisation. At first this movement made very little progress. In July 1888, however, the harsh treatment suffered by the women employed in making lucifer matches roused the burning indignation of Mrs. Besant, then editing _The Link_, a little weekly newspaper which had arisen out of the struggle for Trafalgar Square. A fiery leading article had the unexpected result of causing the match-girls to revolt; and 672 of them came out on strike. Without funds, without organisation, the struggle seemed hopeless. But by the indefatigable energy of Mrs. Besant and Herbert Burrows public opinion was aroused in a manner never before witnessed; £400 was subscribed by hundreds of sympathisers in all classes; and after a fortnight’s obstinacy the employers were compelled, by sheer pressure of public feeling, to make some concessions to their workers.

The match-girls’ victory turned a new leaf in Trade Union annals. Hitherto success had been in almost exact proportion to the workers’ strength. It was a new experience for the weak to succeed because of their very weakness, by means of the intervention of the public. The lesson was not lost on other classes of workers. The London gas-stokers were being organised by Burns, Mann, and Tillett, aided by William Thorne, himself a gas-worker and a man of sterling integrity and capacity. The Gas-workers and General Labourers’ Union, established in May 1889, quickly enrolled many thousands of members, who in the first days of August simultaneously demanded a reduction of their hours of labour from twelve to eight per day. After an interval of acute suspense, during which the directors of the three great London gas companies measured their forces, peaceful counsels prevailed, and the Eight Hours Day, to the general surprise of the men no less than that of the public, was conceded without a struggle, and was even accompanied by a slight increase of the week’s wages.[559]

The success of such unorganised and unskilled workers as the Match-makers and the Gas-stokers led to renewed efforts to bring the great army of Dock-labourers into the ranks of Trade Unionism. For two years past the prominent London Socialists had journeyed to the dock gates in the early hours of the morning to preach organised revolt to the crowds of casuals struggling for work. Meanwhile Benjamin Tillett, then working as a labourer in the tea warehouses, was spending his strength in the apparently hopeless task of constituting the Tea-workers and General Labourers’ Union. The membership of this society fluctuated between 300 and 2500 members; it had practically no funds; and its very existence seemed precarious. Suddenly the organisation received a new impulse. An insignificant dispute on the 12th of August 1889 as to the amount of “plus” (or bonus earned over and above the five-pence per hour) on a certain cargo, brought on an impulsive strike of the labourers at the South-West India Dock. The men demanded sixpence an hour, the abolition of sub-contract and piecework, extra pay for overtime, and a minimum engagement of four hours. Tillett called to his aid his friends Tom Mann and John Burns, and appealed to the whole body of dock labourers to take up the fight. The strike spread rapidly to all the docks north of the Thames. Within three days ten thousand labourers had, with one accord, left the precarious and ill-paid work to get which they had, morning after morning, fought at the dock gates. The two powerful Unions of Stevedores (the better-paid, trained workmen who load ships for export) cast in their lot with the dockers, and in the course of the next week practically all the river-side labour had joined the strike. Under the magnetic influence of John Burns, who suddenly became famous as a labour leader on both sides of the globe, the traffic of the world’s greatest port was, for over four weeks, completely paralysed. An electric spark of sympathy with the poor dockers fired the enthusiasm of all classes of the community. Public disapproval hindered the dock companies from obtaining, even for their unskilled labour, sufficient blacklegs to take the strikers’ place. A public subscription of £48,736 allowed Burns to organise an elaborate system of strike-pay, which not only maintained the honest docker, but also bribed every East End loafer to withhold his labour; and finally the concentrated pressure of editors, clergymen, shareholders, ship-owners, and merchants enabled Cardinal Manning and Sydney (afterwards Lord) Buxton, as self-appointed mediators, to compel the Dock Directors to concede practically the whole of the men’s demands, a delay of six weeks being granted to allow the new arrangements to be made. As in the case of the match-girls in the previous year, the most remarkable feature of the dockers’ strike was the almost universal sympathy with the workers’ demands. A practical manifestation of that sympathy was given by the workmen of Australia. The Australian newspapers published telegraphic accounts of the conflict, with descriptions of the dockers’ wrongs, which produced an unparalleled and unexpected result. Public subscriptions in aid of the London dockers were opened in all the principal towns on the Australian continent; and money poured in from all sides. Over £30,000 was remitted to London by telegraph--an absolutely unique contribution towards the strike subsidy which went far to win the victory ultimately achieved.[560]

The immediate result of the dockers’ success was the formation of a large number of Trade Unions among the unskilled labourers. Branches of the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers’ Union (into which Tillett’s little society was now transformed) were established at all the principal ports. A rival society of dockers, established at Liverpool, enrolled thousands of members at Glasgow and Belfast. The unskilled labourers in Newcastle joined the Tyneside and National Labour Union, which soon extended to all the neighbouring towns. The Gas-workers’ Union enrolled tens of thousands of labourers of all kinds in the provincial cities. Organisation began again among the farm labourers. The National Union of Agricultural Labourers, which had sunk to a few thousand scattered members, suddenly rose in 1890 to over 14,000. New societies arose, which took in general as well as farm labourers; such as the Eastern Counties Labour Federation, which, by 1892, had 17,000 members; and the smaller societies centring respectively on Norwich, Devizes, Reading, Hitchin, Ipswich, and Kingsland in Herefordshire.[561] The General Railway Workers’ Union, originally established in 1889 as a rival to the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, took in great numbers of general labourers. The National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen’s Union,[562] established in 1887, expanded during 1889 to a membership of 65,000. Within a year after the dockers’ victory probably over 200,000 workers had been added to the Trade Union ranks, recruited from sections of the labour world formerly abandoned as incapable of organisation. All these societies were marked by low contributions and comprehensive membership. They were, at the outset, essentially, if not exclusively, devoted to trade protection, and were largely political in their aims. Their characteristic spirit is aptly expressed by the resolution of the Congress of the General Railway Workers’ Union on the 19th of November 1890: “That the Union shall remain a fighting one, and shall not be encumbered with any sick or accident fund.” “We have at present,” reports the General Secretary of the National Union of Gas-workers and General Labourers in November 1889, “one of the strongest labour Unions in England. It is true we have only one benefit attached, and that is strike pay. I do not believe in having sick pay, out-of-work pay, and a number of other pays.... The whole aim and intention of this Union is to reduce the hours of labour and reduce Sunday work.”[563]

A wave of Trade Unionism, comparable in extent with those of 1833-34 and 1873-74, was now spreading into every corner of British industry. Already in 1888 the revival of trade has led to a marked increase in Trade Union membership. This normal growth now received a great impulse from the sensational events of the Dock strike. Even the oldest and most aristocratic Unions were affected by the revivalist fervour of the new leaders. The eleven principal societies in the shipbuilding and metal trades, which had been, since 1885, on the decline, increased from 115,000 at the end of 1888 to 130,000 in 1889, 145,000 in 1890, and 155,000 in 1891. The ten largest Unions in the building trades, which between 1885 and 1888 had, in the aggregate, likewise declined in numbers, rose from 57,000 in 1888 to 63,000 in 1889, 80,000 in 1890, and 94,000 in 1891. In certain individual societies the increase in membership during these years was unparalleled in their history. We have already referred to the rapid rise between 1888 and 1891 of that modern Colossus of Unions, the Miners’ Federation. The Operative Society of Bricklayers, established in 1848, grew from a fairly stationary 7000 in 1888, to over 17,000 in 1891. The National Society of Boot and Shoe Operatives, established in 1874, went from 11,000 in 1888 to 30,000 in 1891. And, to turn to quite a different industry, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a trade friendly society of the old type, established in 1872, rose from 12,000 in 1888 to 30,000 in 1891. Nor was the expansion confined to a mere increase in membership. New Trades Councils sprang up in all directions, whilst those already existing were rejoined by the trades which had left them. Federations of the Unions in kindred trades were set on foot, and competing societies in the same trade sank their rivalry in the formation of local joint committees.

The victory of the London Dockers and the impetus it gave to Trade Unionism throughout the country at last opened the eyes of the Trade Union world to the significance of the new movement. It was no longer possible for the Parliamentary Committee to denounce the Socialists as a set of outside intriguers, when Burns and Mann, now become the representative working-men Socialists, stood at the head of a body of 200,000 hitherto unorganised workmen. The general secretaries of the older Unions, forming a compact official party behind the Front Bench, were veering around towards the advanced party. Their constituencies were becoming permeated with Socialism. In many instances the older members now supported the new faith. In other cases they found themselves submerged by the large accessions to their membership which, as we have already seen, resulted from the general expansion. The process of conversion was facilitated by the genuine admiration felt by the whole Trade Union world for the great organising power and generalship shown by the leaders of the new movement, and by the cessation of the personal abuse and recrimination which had hitherto marred the controversy. At the Dundee Congress of 1889, as we have seen, Henry Broadhurst, and his colleagues on the Parliamentary Committee, had triumphed all along the line. Within a year the situation had entirely changed. The Stonemasons, Broadhurst’s own society, had decided, by a vote of the members, to support an Eight Hours Bill, and Broadhurst, under these circumstances, had perforce to refuse to act as their representative. The Executive Council of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers chose Burns and Mann as two out of their five delegates, impressing upon them all a recommendation to vote for the legal limitation of the hours of labour. Both the old-established societies of Carpenters gave a similar mandate. The Miners’ Federation this time led the attack on the old Front Bench, and the resolution in favour of a general Eight Hours Bill was carried, after a heated debate, by 193 to 155. Broadhurst resigned his position as Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee on the ground of ill-health. George Shipton, the secretary of the London Trades Council, publicly declared his conversion to the legal regulation of the hours of labour. The Liverpool Congress was as decisive a victory for the Socialists as that of Dundee had been for the Parliamentary Committee. The delegates passed in all sixty resolutions. “Out of these sixty resolutions,” said John Burns, “forty-five were nothing more or less than direct appeals to the State and Municipalities of this country to do for the workman what Trade Unionism, ‘Old’ and ‘New,’ has proved itself incapable of doing. Forty-five out of the sixty resolutions were asking for State or Municipal interference on behalf of the weak against the strong. ‘Old’ Trade Unionists, from Lancashire, Northumberland, and Birmingham, asked for as many of these resolutions as the delegates from London; but it is a remarkable and significant fact that 19 out of 20 delegates were in favour of the ‘New’ Trades Union ideas of State interferences in all things except reduction of hours, and even on this we secured a majority that certainly entitles us Socialists to be jubilant at our success.”[564]

But whilst the new faith was being adopted by the rank and file of Trade Unionists the character of the Socialist propaganda had been undergoing an equal transformation. The foremost representative of the Collectivist views had hitherto been the Social-Democratic Federation, of which Burns and Mann were active members. Under the dominant influence of Mr. H. M. Hyndman, this association adopted the economic basis and political organisation of State Socialism. Yet we find, along with these modern views, a distinct recrudescence of the characteristic projects of the revolutionary Owenism of 1833-34. The student of the volumes of _Justice_ between 1884 and 1889 will be struck by the unconscious resemblance of many of the ideas and much of the phraseology of its contributors, to those of the _Poor Man’s Guardian_ and the _Pioneer_ of 1834. We do not here allude to the revival, in 1885, of the old demand for an Eight Hours Bill, a measure regarded on both occasions as a “mere palliative.” Nor need we refer to the constant assumption, made alike by Robert Owen and the Social-Democratic lecturers, that the acceptance of the Labour-value theory would enable the difficulty of the “unemployed” to be solved by organising the mutual exchange of their unmarketable products. But both in _Justice_ and the _Pioneer_ we see the same disbelief in separate action by particular Trade Unions, in contrast to an organisation including “every trade, skilled and unskilled, of every nationality under the sun.”[565] “The real emancipation of labour,” says the official manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation to the Trade Unions of Great Britain in September 1884, “can only be effected by the solemn banding together of millions of human beings in a federation as wide as the civilised world.”[566] “The day has gone by,” we read in 1887, “for the efforts of isolated trades.... Nothing is to be gained for the workers as a class without the complete organisation of labourers of all grades, skilled and unskilled.... We appeal therefore earnestly to the skilled artisans of all trades, Unionists and non-Unionists alike, to make common cause with their unskilled brethren, and with us Social-Democrats, so that the workers may themselves take hold of the means of production, and organise a Co-operative Commonwealth for themselves and their children.”[567] And if the “scientific Socialists” of 1885 were logically pledged to the administration of industry by the officials of the community at large, none the less do we see constantly cropping up, especially among the working-class members, Owen’s diametrically opposite proposal that the workers must “own their own factories and decide by vote who their managers and foremen shall be.”[568] Above all we see the same faith in the near and inevitable advent of a sudden revolution, when “it will only need a compact minority to take advantage of some opportune accident that will surely come, to overthrow the present system, and once and for all lift the toilers from the present social degradation.”[569] “Noble Robert Owen,” says Mr. Hyndman in 1885, “seventy years ago perceived ‘the utter impossibility of succeeding in permanently improving the condition of our population by any half-measures.’ We see the same truth if possible yet more clearly now. But the revolution which in his day was unprepared is now ripe and ready.... Nothing short of a revolution which shall place the producers of wealth in control of their own country can possibly change matters for the better.... Will it be peaceful? We hope it may. That does not depend upon us. But, peaceful or violent, the great social revolution of the nineteenth century is at hand, and if fighting should be necessary the workers may at least remember the profound historical truth that ‘Force is the midwife of progress delivering the old society pregnant with the new,’ and reflect that they are striving for the final overthrow of a tyranny more degrading than the worst chattel slavery of ancient times.”[570] “Let our mission be,” he writes in 1887, “to help to band together the workers of the world for the great class struggle against their exploiters. No better date could be chosen for the establishment of such international action on a sound basis than the year 1889, which the classes look forward to with trembling and the masses with hope. I advocate no hasty outbreak, no premature and violent attempt on the part of the people to realise the full Social-Democratic programme. But I do say that from this time onwards we, as the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Great Britain, should make every effort to bear our part in the celebration by the international proletariat of the First Centenary of the great French Revolution, and thus to prepare for a complete International Social Revolution before the end of the century.”[571]

The year 1889, instead of ushering in a “complete International Social Revolution” by a universal compact of the workers, turned the current of Socialist propaganda from revolutionary to constitutional channels. The advent of political Democracy had put out of date the project of “a combined assault by workers of every trade and grade against the murderous monopoly of the minority.”[572] For a moment, at the very crisis of the dockers’ struggle, the idea of a “General Strike” flickers up, only to be quickly abandoned as impracticable. When the problems of administration had actually to be faced by the new leaders the specially Owenite characteristics of the Socialist propaganda were quietly dropped. In January 1889 John Burns was elected a member of the London County Council, and quickly found himself organising the beginnings of a bureaucratic municipal Collectivism, as far removed from Owen’s “national companies” as from the conceptions of the Manchester School. Tom Mann, as president of the Dockers’ Union, could not help discovering how impracticable it was to set to work his unemployed members, accustomed only to general labour, in the production for mutual exchange of the bread and clothing of which they were in need. And whether working in municipal committees, or at the head office of a great Union, both Burns and Mann had perforce to realise the impossibility of bringing about any sudden or simultaneous change in the social or industrial organisation of the whole community, or even of one town or trade.

Under these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Burns and Mann left the Social Democratic Federation, and found themselves hotly denounced by their old comrades.[573] With the defection of the New Unionists, revolutionary Socialism ceased to grow; and the rival propaganda of constitutional action became the characteristic feature of the British Socialist Movement. Far from abusing or deprecating Trade Unionism or Co-operation, the constitutional Collectivists urged it as a primary duty upon every working-class Socialist to become a member of his Trade Union, to belong to the local Co-operative Society, and generally to take as active a part as possible in all organisations. Instead of denouncing partial reforms as mischievous attempts to defeat “the Social Revolution,” the New Unionist leaders appealed to their followers to put their own representatives on Town Councils, and generally to use their electoral influence to bring about, in a regular and constitutional manner, the particular changes they had at heart. Instead of circulating calumnies against the personal character of Trade Union leaders, they flooded the Trade Union world with Socialist literature, dealing not so much in rhetorical appeals or Utopian aspirations as in economic expositions of the actual grievances of industrial life. The vague resolutions of the Trades Union Congresses were worked out in practical detail, or even embodied in draft bills which the local member of Parliament might be invited to introduce, or driven to support.

The new policy, adopted as it was by such prominent Socialists as Burns, Mann, and Tillett, and Mrs. Besant, appeared, from 1889 onward, increasingly justified by its success. The Collectivist victories on the London School Board and County Council, the steady growth of municipal activity, and the increasing influence exercised by working-men members of representative bodies, went far to persuade both Socialists and Trade Unionists that the only practicable means of securing for the community the ownership and control of the means of production lay in a wide extension of that national and municipal organisation of public services towards which Parliament and the Town Councils had already taken the first steps. In those industries in which neither national nor municipal administration was yet possible, the Socialists demanded such a regulation of the conditions of employment as would ensure to every worker a minimum Standard of Life. The extension of the Factory Acts and the more thorough administration of the Sanitary Law accordingly received a new impulse. In another direction the drastic taxation of Rent and Interest, pressed for by Land Nationalisers and Socialists alike, was justified as leading eventually to the collective absorption of all unearned incomes. In short, from 1889 onward, the chief efforts of the British Socialist Movement have been directed, not to bringing about any sudden, complete, or simultaneous revolution, but to impregnating all the existing forces of society with Collectivist ideals and Collectivist principles.[574]

With the advent of the “New Unionism” of 1889-90 we close this chapter. We shall see, in subsequent chapters to what extent, and in what way, the Trade Union Movement was permanently affected by the new movement. But we append at this point a brief account of what seem to us, first, the ephemeral features and, secondly, the more durable results of an impulse which did not wholly spend its force for a whole decade.

If we were to believe some of the more enthusiastic apostles of the “New Unionism,” we should imagine that the aggressive trade society of unskilled labourers, unencumbered with friendly benefits, was an unprecedented departure in the history of labour organisation. Those who have followed our history thus far will know better than to entertain such an illusion, itself an old characteristic of Trade Unionist revivals. The purely trade society is as old as Trade Unionism itself. Throughout the whole history of the movement we find two types of societies co-existing. At special crises in the annals of Trade Unionism we see one or other of these types taking the lead, and becoming the “New Unionism” of that particular period. Both trade society and friendly society with trade objects were common in the eighteenth century. Legal persecution of trade combination brought to the front the Union cloaked in the guise of a benefit club; and it was mainly for organisations of this type that Place and Hume won the emancipation of 1824-1825. In 1833-34 we find Place deploring as a mischievous innovation the growth of the new “Trades Unions” without friendly benefits. Twenty years later we see the leadership reverting to the “new model” of an elaborate trade friendly society which, for a whole generation, was vehemently denounced by employers as a fraud on the provident workman. The “New Unionism” of 1852, described by so friendly a critic as Professor Beesly as a novel departure, became, in its turn, the “Old Unionism” of 1889, when the more progressive spirits again plumed themselves on eliminating from their brand-new organisations the enervating influences of friendly benefits.

A closer examination of the facts shows that this almost rhythmical alternation of type has been only apparent. The impartial student will notice that whilst the purely trade society has been persistently adhered to by certain important industries, such as the Coal-miners and the Cotton-spinners, other trades, like the Engineers and the Ironfounders, have remained equally constant to the trade friendly society; whilst others, again, such as the Compositors and the Carpenters, have passed backwards and forwards from one model to the other. But besides this adaptation of type to the circumstances of particular industries, we see also a preference for the purely trade society on no higher ground than its cheapness. The high contributions and levies paid by the Cotton-spinners to their essentially trade society are as far beyond the means of the Agricultural Labourer or the Docker as the weekly premiums for superannuation, sick, and other benefits charged to the Amalgamated Engineer. When, as in 1833-34, 1872, and 1889, a wave of enthusiasm sweeps the unskilled labourers into the Trade Union ranks, it is obviously necessary to form, at any rate in the first instance, organisations which make no greater tax upon their miserable earnings than a penny or twopence per week. The apparent rhythm of alternations between the two types of organisation is due, therefore, not to any general abandonment of one for the other, but to the accidental prominence, in certain crises of Trade Union history, of the Unions belonging to particular trades or classes of wage-earners. When, for instance, the cotton-spinners, the builders, and the unskilled labourers of 1834 loomed large to Francis Place as a revolutionary force, the purely trade society appeared to him to be the source of all that was evil in Trade Unionism. When, in 1848-52, the iron trades were conspiring against piecework and overtime, it was especially the illicit combination of trade and friendly society which attracted the attention of the public, and called forth the denunciations of the capitalist class. And when in 1889 the dockers were stopping the trade of London, and the coal-miners and cotton-spinners were pressing upon both political parties their demands for legislative interference, we see George Howell voicing the opposition to exclusively trade societies as dangerously militant bodies.[575]

If the purely trade society is no new thing, still less is the extension of Trade Unionism to the unskilled labourer an unprecedented innovation. The enthusiasm which, in 1872, enrolled a hundred thousand agricultural labourers in a few months, produced also numerous small societies of town labourers, some of which survived for years before absorption into larger organisations. The London and Counties Labour League, established as the Kent and Sussex Agricultural and General Labourers’ Union in 1872, has maintained its existence down to the present day. The expansion of 1852 led to the formation in Glasgow of a Labourers’ Society, which is reputed to have enrolled thousands of members. But it is with the enthusiasm of 1833-34 that the movement of 1889-90 has in this respect the greatest analogy. The almost instantaneous conversion to Trade Unionism after the dock strike of tens of thousands of the unskilled labourers of the towns recalls, indeed, nothing so much as the rapid enrolment of recruits among the poorest wage-earners by the emissaries of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.

But however strongly the outward features of the wave of 1889-90 may remind the student of those of 1833-34, the characteristics peculiar to the new movement significantly measure the extent of the advance, both in social theory and social methods, made by the wage-earners in the two intervening generations. Time and experience alone will show how far the empirical Socialism of the Trade Unionist of 1889, with its eclectic opportunism, its preference for municipal collectivism, its cautious adaptation of existing social structure, and its modest aspirations to a gradually increasing participation of the workmen in control, may safely be pronounced superior in practicability to the revolutionary and universal Communism of Robert Owen. In truth, the radical distinction between 1833-34 and 1889-90 is not a matter of the particular social theories which inspired the outbursts. To the great majority of the Trade Unionists the theories of the leaders at either date did but embody a vague aspiration after a more equitable social order. The practical difference--the difference reflected in the character and temper of the men attracted to the two movements, and of the attitude of the public towards them--is the difference of method and immediate action. Robert Owen, as we have seen, despised and rejected political action, and strove to form a new voluntary organisation which should supersede, almost instantaneously and in some unexplained way, the whole industrial, political, and social administration of the country. In this disdain of all existing organisations, and the suddenness of the complete “social revolution” which it contemplated, the Owenism of 1833-34 found, as we have seen, an echo in much of the Socialist propaganda of 1884-89. The leaders of the New Unionists, on the contrary, sought to bring into the ranks of existing organisations--the Trade Union, the Municipality, or the State--great masses of unorganised workers who had hitherto been either absolutely outside the pale, or inert elements within it. They aimed, not at superseding existing social structures, but at capturing them all in the interests of the wage-earners. Above all, they sought to teach the great masses of undisciplined workers how to apply their newly acquired political power so as to obtain, in a perfectly constitutional manner, whatever changes in legislation or administration they desired.

The difference in method between the “New Unionism” of 1833-34 and that of 1889-90 may, we think, be ascribed in the main to the difference between the circumstances under which the movements arose. To Robert Owen, whose path was blocked on the political line by the disfranchisement of five out of six of the adult male population, open voting under intimidation, corrupt close corporations in the towns and a Whig oligarchy at the centre, the idea of relying on the constitutional instrument of the polling-booth must have appeared no less chimerical than his own programme appears to-day. The New Unionists of 1889-90, on the other hand, found ready for their use an extensive and all-embracing Democratic social structure, which it was impossible to destroy, and would have been foolish to attempt to ignore. The efforts of two generations of Radical Individualists and “Old Trade Unionists” had placed the legislative power and civil administration of the country in the hands of a hierarchy of popularly elected representative bodies. The great engine of taxation was, for instance, now under the control of the wage-earning voters instead of that of the land-owning class. The Home Secretary and the factory inspector, the relieving-officer and the borough surveyor, could be employed to carry out the behests of the workers instead of those of the capitalists. And thus it came about that the methods advocated by the New Unionists of 1889-94 resemble, not those of the Owenites of 1833-34, but much more the practical arts of political warfare so successfully pursued by the Junta of 1867-75.

We shall see the change which had come over the English working-class movement in the course of sixty years if we compare the leaders of the two movements which we have been contrasting. To Owen himself we may allow the privilege of his genius, which did not prevent him from being an extravagantly bad captain for a working-class movement. But in his leading disciples ignorance of industrial conditions, contemptuous indifference to facts and figures, and incapacity to measure, even in the smallest actions, the relation between the means and the end, stand in as marked contrast to the sober judgment of men like John Burns as they did to the cautious shrewdness of Allan and Applegarth. It would indeed be easy to find many traits of personal likeness between Burns and Mann on the one hand, and Allan and Applegarth on the other. High personal character, scrupulous integrity, dignity or charm of manner, marked all four alike, and the resemblance of character is heightened by a noticeable resemblance in the nature of their activity. The day’s work of Tom Mann at the head office of the Dockers’ Union from 1889 to 1892, and that of John Burns in the London County Council and the lobby of the House of Commons from 1892 to 1906, were close reproductions of Allan’s activity at the general office of his Engineers, and Applegarth’s assiduous attendance to Parliamentary Committees and Royal Commissions. In short, the ways and means of the leaders of the “New Unionism” remind the student, not of the mystic rites and skeleton mummery of the Owenite movement, but rather of the restless energy and political ingenuity of the Junta or the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee in those early days when the old Trade Unionists were fighting for legislative reforms with a faith which was as wise as it was fervent and sincere.

Some of the secondary characteristics of the New Unionism of 1889 promptly faded away. The revulsion of feeling against the combination of friendly benefits with Trade Union purposes quickly disappeared, though the difficulty of levying high contributions upon ill-paid workers prevented the complete adoption of the contrary policy.[576] The expansion of trade which began in 1889 proved to be but of brief duration, and with the returning contraction of 1892 many of the advantages gained by the wage-earners were lost. Under the influence of this check the unskilled labourers once more largely fell away from the Trade Union ranks. But just as 1873-74 left behind it a far more permanent structure than 1833-34, so 1889-90 added even more than 1873-74. The older Unions retained a large part, at any rate, of the two hundred thousand members added to their ranks between 1887 and 1891. But this numerical accession was of less importance than what may, without exaggeration, be termed the spiritual rebirth of organisations which were showing signs of decrepitude. The selfish spirit of exclusiveness which often marked the relatively well-paid engineer, carpenter, or boilermaker of 1880-85, gave place to a more generous recognition of the essential solidarity of the wage-earning class. For example, the whole constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers was, in 1892, revised for the express purpose of opening the ranks of this most aristocratic of Unions to practically all the mechanics in the innumerable branches of the engineering trade. Special facilities, moreover, were offered by this and the other great societies to old men and artisans earning wages insufficient to pay for costly friendly benefits. Nor was this all. The plumber vied with the engineer, the carpenter with the shipwright, in helping to form Unions among the labourers who work with or under them. And the struggling Unions of women workers, which had originally some difficulty in gaining admittance to Trades Councils and the Trade Union Congress, gratefully acknowledged a complete change in the attitude of their male fellow-workers. Not only was every assistance now given to the formation of special Unions among women workers, but women were, in some cases, even welcomed as members by Unions of skilled artisans. A similar widening of sympathies and strengthening of bonds of fellowship was shown in the very general establishment of local joint committees of rival societies in the same trade, as well as of larger federations. Robert Knight’s failures to form a federal council representing the different Unions concerned in shipbuilding were retrieved in 1891 by his successful establishment of the Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, which maintained a permanent existence. The increased sense of solidarity among all sections of wage-earners, moreover, led to a greatly increased cordiality in international relations. The Coal-miners, the Glass Bottle Makers, and the Textile Operatives established more or less formal federations with their fellow-workers on the Continent of Europe. At the frequent international Congresses of these trades, as well as at the Socialist Congress of the workers of all countries, the representatives of the British Trade Unions largely laid aside that insular conceit which led the Parliamentary Committee of 1884 to declare that, owing to his superiority, the British Trade Unionist derived no benefit from international relations. All this indicates a widening of the mental horizon, a genuine elevation of the Trade Union Movement.

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