Chapter IX: Thirty Years’ Growth (2)

If Trade Unionism has, in the past thirty years, successfully progressed downward to the women and the unskilled labourers, its advance, in a sense upwards, among the various sections of the “black-coated proletariat,” has been no less remarkable. In 1892 there were only the smallest signs of Trade Union organisation among the clerks and shop assistants, the various sections of Post Office and other Government employees, the municipal officers, and the life assurance agents. Among wage-earners in these various occupations, numbering in the United Kingdom possibly several millions--badly paid, working under unsatisfactory conditions, and sometimes subject to actual tyranny--there were, thirty years ago, a few dozen small and struggling Trade Unions, with only a few tens of thousands of aggregate membership. In 1920 these have developed into powerful amalgamations in most of the several sections, nearly all fully recognised by their employers, whether private or public, with whom they enter into collective agreements; and enrolling a total membership falling not far short of three-quarters of a million.

We may note first the army of shop assistants, warehousemen, and other employees in the distributive trades, wholesale and retail.[611] The National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks, established in 1891, made at first slow progress, and counted in 1912, after a couple of decades of growth, fewer than 65,000 members. Partly as a result of the National Insurance Act, which practically compelled all employees under £160 to join some organisation, the Union went ahead by leaps and bounds, multiplying its branches and swelling its numbers, until it counts now over 100,000 members. Meanwhile the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees (also established in 1891)--in 1918 adding to its title also “Commercial Employees and Allied Workers”--has benefited by a similar expansion, counting, in 1920, also about 100,000 members. This society started on the basis of enrolling all employees of the Co-operative Societies, whatever their crafts, and no other persons, a constitution now disapproved of by the Trades Union Congress. It is, however, not now confined to persons employed by co-operative societies; and whilst it includes a number of carmen, tailors, bakers, bootmakers, and others in co-operative employment who should more appropriately belong to other Unions, the negotiations that have been for some time in progress for the merging of both organisations in a single great Union of persons employed in the distributive trades, and the transfer of those belonging to specific crafts to their own societies, may probably presently be successful.

Of clerks, the most effective organisation is that of the clerical service of the railway companies, the Railway Clerks’ Association, which takes in also stationmasters, inspectors, and ticket-collectors (who are all eligible also for the National Union of Railwaymen, which some of them have joined). Established in 1897, it continued for a decade insignificant in magnitude, and had not by 1910 enrolled as many as 10,000 members. After the railway strike of 1911 it began to forge ahead, passing from 30,000 in 1914 to 42,000 in 1915--a total doubled by 1920, and with increasing strength it obtained gradually increasing recognition from the railway companies, successfully maintaining its right to enrol, not only clerks in the General Managers’ offices, but also inspectors and stationmasters. As its membership grew, it was able successfully to contest the elections for representatives on the committees of the various superannuation funds instituted by the companies, and thereby to demonstrate its right to speak for the whole body of railway clerks. Whilst acting in friendly association with the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Clerks’ Association has latterly drawn to itself an ever-increasing proportion of the inspectors and stationmasters; and in 1920, when it can count on a membership of nearly 90,000, it is claiming to speak for all grades of the Railway Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Staff. Since 1913, at least, it has been asserting a claim, as soon as the railways are nationalised, to some participation in their management; and at the end of 1919, it is understood, some promise was made by the Minister of Transport that, in any Railway Board or National Advisory Committee that may be constituted, the Railway Clerks’ Association would, with the National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, be accorded its due share of representation.

The great army of clerks in commercial offices has made less progress in organisation than the shop assistants and the railway clerks. For years, indeed, it seemed as if commercial clerks would not form a Trade Union; and the National Union of Clerks (established 1890) made little headway. In 1912 it had still under 9000 members. In the past seven years it has bounded up to 55,000 members.[612] There is also a small Irish Clerical Workers’ Union, principally in Dublin, resulting from a secession from the National Union. Most remarkable of all has been the formation, during the war, of a Bank Officers’ Guild and an Irish Bank Officials’ Association, having definitely Trade Union objects (though not yet seeking to join the Trades Union Congress), both of them being independent of the Bankers’ Institute, which retains the character of a scientific and educational society. There is now even a Guild of Law Court Officials, having definitely Trade Union objects.

The great body of teachers of all kinds and grades, numbering altogether about 300,000 men and women in the United Kingdom, have, during the past thirty years, become strongly and very elaborately organised in many different societies.[613] What is significant is the extent to which many of these professional associations have latterly adopted the purposes, and even the characteristic methods, of Trade Unionism. The largest of these bodies, the National Union of Teachers, established in 1890, has now over 102,000 members, and exercises great influence upon the conditions of employment of the teachers in elementary schools. During the past few years it has supported various district or county strikes for better salary-scales. The teachers in secondary schools are organised in four societies, for headmasters, headmistresses, assistant masters, and assistant mistresses respectively, united in a Federal Council of Secondary School Associations, which, though it has not yet fomented or supported a strike, has of late organised effective pressure to obtain greater security of tenure for assistants, better salary-scales, and a universal superannuation scheme.

Equally significant is the recent development of organisation among the industrial technicians, whether engineers, electricians, chemists, or merely foremen and managers; among the workers in scientific laboratories, whether for research, medical, teaching, or administrative purposes; and among the junior lecturers and assistants at University institutions. These organisations overlap in their spheres, if not also in their memberships, and are not yet stabilised, but most of them are united in the National Federation of Professional Workers of even wider scope. What is important is the growing divergence between what are essentially Trade Unions of the brain-working professionals and the purely “scientific societies” to which such persons have, until recent years, restricted their tendency to professional association. Some of the new bodies (such as the Society of Technical Engineers) have actually registered themselves as Trade Unions, a step taken also by the Medico-Political Union, a vigorous association of medical practitioners; whilst the newly formed Actors’ Association, like the National Union of Journalists, has applied for affiliation to the Trades Union Congress.

The life assurance agents--principally those employed in “industrial” insurance--number 100,000, and they have become organised in a score of societies, restricted to the staffs of particular companies. These organisations vary in their nature and in their degree of independence, from mere “welfare societies,” dominated by the management, up to aggressive Trade Unions--the strongest being the National Association of Prudential Assurance Agents. They are mostly united in two different federations. Another, and perhaps wholesomer, basis of organisation is adopted by the National Union of Life Assurance Agents, which has now some thousands of members.

But the greatest development of Trade Unionism among the “black-coated proletariat” has been among the employees of the National and Local Government. This has been entirely a growth of the past thirty years. Beginning among the manual working staff of the Postmaster-General, and among the artisans and labourers of the Government dockyards, arsenals, and other manufacturing departments, there are now a hundred and seventy separate Trade Unions of State employees, from the crews of the Customs launches and the boy clerks, up to the Admiralty Constructive Engineers and the Superintendents of Mercantile Marine Offices. Of recent years, organisation has spread to the higher grades of the Civil Service, even to the “Class I.” clerks; and practically no one below the rank of an Under-Secretary of State is held to be outside the scope of the Society of Civil Servants. All the various societies are grouped in federations, from the “Waterguard Federation” and the Prison Officers’ Federation of the United Kingdom; through the United Government Workers’ Federation and the Federal Council of Government Employees, combining the various kinds of manual working operatives; up to the Customs and Excise Federation, the Civil Service Federation, the Civil Service Alliance, and even the “National Federation of Professional Workers,” which includes also teachers. The strongest of all these bodies is probably that of the various employees of the Postmaster-General, whose fight to secure “recognition” and the opportunity for “Collective Bargaining” has extended over a couple of decades. There are about fifty separate Unions of Post Office employees, mostly small and sectional bodies; but the three principal societies (the Postal and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, the Postmen’s Federation, and the Fawcett Association) were amalgamated in 1919 into one powerful Union of Post Office Workers, with 90,000 members with eleven salaried officers, and affiliated both to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which can now meet the managing officials of the Post Office on something like equal terms.

The employees of the Local Authorities--thirty years ago entirely without organisation--are still not so well combined as those of the National Government. A score of different societies, from such grades as school-keepers, police and prison officers and asylum attendants, up to municipal clerks, share the work with the National Union of Corporation Workers and the Municipal Employees’ Association. A large proportion of the wage-earners employed by Local Authorities are to be found in the Unions of General Workers. The National Association of Local Government Officers and Clerks is a large and powerful body, composed mainly of the clerical and supervisory grades.

Trade Unionism in the public service received a great fillip after 1906, when Mr. Herbert Samuel at the Post Office, together with some other Ministers, “recognised” the Unions of their employees, considered their corporate representations, and agreed to meet their officials. It was still further promoted when, in 1912, the Government consented to the establishment of an independent Arbitration Tribunal for determining the terms of employment in the Civil Service for all grades and sections under £500 a year. Before this tribunal, whose awards were definitively authoritative, the representatives of any association could appear as plaintiffs, those of the Treasury appearing always as defendants. Finally, after the promulgation in 1917 of the “Whitley Report,” which the Government, in impressing on other employers, found itself constrained to adopt in its own establishments, there was established during 1919 an elaborate series of joint councils (including even the civil departments of the War Office and the Admiralty) for particular branches of establishments; for whole departments, and for whole grades of the service throughout all departments, in which equal numbers of persons nominated by the employees’ associations, and of superior officers chosen by the Government, representing the management, meet periodically to discuss on equal terms questions of office organisation, professional training, conditions of service, methods of promotion, and what not.[614]

THE MINERS

The outstanding feature of the Trade Union world between 1890 and 1920 has been the growing predominance, in its counsels and in its collective activity, of the organised forces of the coal-miners. Right down to 1888, as we have seen, the coal-miners of England, Scotland, and Wales, though sporadically forming local associations and now and again engaging in fierce conflicts with their employers, first in this coalfield and then in that, had failed to maintain any organisation of national scope. Though their representatives participated from time to time in the general activities of the Trade Union Movement, and sat in the Trades Union Congress; though with the guidance of W. P. Roberts in the ’forties, and under the successive leadership of Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt in the ’sixties and ’seventies, they exercised intermittently a considerable influence on its Parliamentary action--the miners, for the most part, kept to themselves, framed their own policy, and fought their own battles, in which, owing to an apparently incurable “localism,” their success was not commensurate with their strength. The change came with the growing dissatisfaction with the policy of the Sliding Scale. This device for making the rate of wages vary in proportion to the selling price of coal, the adoption of which between 1874 and 1880--against the wish of Alexander Macdonald, and contrary to the advice of such friends as Professor Beesly and Lloyd Jones--we have already described, produced in the ’eighties an ever-increasing discontent. In 1881 the miners of Yorkshire merged their two Unions of South and West Yorkshire into the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, which began its successful career by terminating the local Sliding Scale agreement, and resolutely refused all future attempts to make wages depend on selling prices. The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation, a less well-organised body, presently followed its example. In 1885 a Midland Federation was formed by a number of smaller local associations for the purpose both of abolishing the Sliding Scale and of promoting the movement for an Eight Hours Day by legislative enactment. Three years later, at a conference at Manchester, the associations of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, the Midlands, and Fifeshire, with a nascent local organisation in South Wales, established the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain.[615] The aggregate membership of all these bodies was amazingly small--at the start only 36,000--but the new Federation had, from the first, a definite policy and great driving force. Outside it there remained the solid and numerically strong Durham Miners’ Association and the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association, which (together with a surviving remnant of the Amalgamated Association in South Staffordshire, and the purely nominal Sliding Scale Associations which then characterised most of the South Wales coalfield) still clung together as the National Union. It was the National Union which played the leading part in securing reforms in the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887, which firmly established the checkweigher in practically every colliery of any importance. But this was its last constructive effort. Its subsequent history is little more than the long-drawn-out resistance of the able and respected leaders of the Northumberland and Durham miners to the new ideas of Labour policy which were, as we have described, becoming dominant in the Trades Union Congress, and which were from the first adopted, if not by all the leaders, at least by the successive delegate conferences of the Miners’ Federation.

The establishment of the Federation coincided with a period of rapid expansion in the coal-mining industry. The number of persons employed rose considerably year after year, and Trade Unionism spread rapidly among them. An effective local organisation was built up in district after district, everywhere based on the autonomy in local concerns of the “lodge” or branch, consisting of the workers at a given colliery, and governed by mass meetings of the members, who elect a committee, which usually meets at least weekly. But although the National Union declined steadily in influence, it took twenty years to bring all the district associations into the Miners’ Federation, the aggregate membership of which did not reach 200,000 until 1893, and seven years later was still only 363,000. Even so, the miners were, as we described them in 1892, in some ways the most effectively organised of the industrial groups into which we divided the Trade Union world of that date. With the adhesion of Northumberland and Durham in 1908, when the National Union came finally to an end, the membership of the Federation rose to nearly 600,000, whilst the next twelve years’ growth of the industry, and the inclusion of a large proportion of the sectional unions among different grades of mine-workers,[616] have brought it in 1920 to nearly 900,000.

Meanwhile issue was joined by the mine-owners, who insisted everywhere in 1893 on considerable reductions in the wage-rates, on the plea that selling prices had fallen. The great strike that followed involved 400,000 men, and lasted from July to November. In the end the men had to submit to reductions, though they gained the important point of the practical though not explicit recognition of a minimum below which there was to be no fall. The next great achievement of the Federation was the carrying into law of the Eight Hours Bill, which, mainly owing to the opposition of the leaders of the Northumberland and Durham Miners, was not accomplished until 1908; and their influence in improving the Mines Regulation Act of 1911. Their third success, the outcome of a decade of successful organisation and intellectual leadership by Mr. Robert Smillie, who since 1912 has been annually elected to the presidency, was attained only at the cost of the greatest industrial struggle that Great Britain had yet experienced.

The national strike of miners in 1912, when practically every mine was stopped, and nearly a million miners suspended work for more than a month, arose out of the failure of the colliery companies to make adequate provision for repeated cases of individual hardship and injustice. The piecework rates of the hewers or getters of coal might be satisfactorily adjusted to the agreed day-wage standard of the district, though the arrangements for this adjustment vary from district to district, and even from mine to mine, and are very far from complete or satisfactory. But what was to happen when, from circumstances beyond his own control, the miner found himself unable to get enough coal to produce a subsistence wage? If he is assigned an “abnormal place”--where the seam is thin or crushed into small coal (for which, in South Wales, the hewer is not paid at all); or where exceptional timbering is required to prevent dangerous falls; or where there is much “stone” or water: or if, in “normal places,” the colliery management does not keep him regularly supplied with “trams” or “tubs” into which to load the coal; or with a sufficient provision of timber for props and sleepers; or of rails--no amount of skill, strength, or assiduity will prevent his earnings from falling away, it may be to next to nothing. What had long been customary was, in some coalfields, the casting of lots for “places,” and thus a periodical exchange of opportunities; and in others the granting of an allowance, or “consideration,” to hewers who complained of insufficient earnings. These allowances were granted irregularly, without the protection of Collective Bargaining, with insufficient provision for ensuring the avoidance of injustice; and it is not now denied that, in some collieries, particularly in South Wales, the owners resorted to the simple expedient of restricting the manager to a fixed maximum sum each “measuring-up day,” irrespective of the number and extent of the men’s reasonable claims. These sums, moreover, were much reduced in times of bad trade, when profits were at a minimum, especially in collieries which were actually working at a loss. The agitation for securing a prescribed minimum of daily earnings for all the piece-workers continued for a whole decade without much result, producing not a few local stoppages, especially in South Wales. These flared up, in the latter part of 1910, in the Aberdare and Rhondda valleys, into an almost continuous series of disputes. The Miners’ Federation found itself compelled in July 1911 to take the matter up as a national question; and a ballot of its whole membership decided for a national strike if the universal adoption of the principle of a prescribed daily minimum, not merely for hewers but for all grades, was not conceded. The owners quibbled and eventually refused; and after a further ballot a national strike was decided on, which the Government negotiations failed to avert, and which, after long and repeated notice, began at the end of February 1912, and rapidly extended to practically every colliery in the kingdom. As neither the employers nor the workmen would give way, the Government then announced its intention of introducing a Bill to provide for the payment, to all underground workers in the mine, not of the prescribed minimum rates which the several districts had formulated, nor yet of the overriding national minima of 5s. for a man and 2s. for a boy which were being demanded, but of district minima, to be prescribed in each coalfield by a Joint Board of employers and workmen, presided over by an impartial chairman. These provisions were bitterly opposed, not only by the coal-owners, who objected to any legal minimum, but also by the workmen’s representatives in the House of Commons, who demanded a prescribed national minimum; but they were carried into law by substantial majorities. The Federation Executive was perplexed as to the line to take, as half the membership wanted to carry on the struggle; but it was eventually decided to give the Act and the Joint Boards a chance, and the strike was declared at an end. The district minima and the rules applicable thereto had, in most cases, to be decided by the impartial chairmen; and they varied considerably from district to district, being usually a little less than the workmen had claimed. But when the working of the system was understood, and it was got smoothly into operation, it was recognised that the Miners’ Federation had achieved a very substantial victory. The miners had brought to their aid, in enforcing the payment of a periodically prescribed Minimum Day Wage to all underground workers, the strong arm of the law--not, it is true, as under the Mines Regulation Acts and the Factory and Workshop Acts, the criminal law, enforced by Government inspectors and prosecutions, but the civil law of contract, which they could themselves enforce by actions in the County Court. What the Federation extorted from the Government and the Legislature was “an extraordinary piece of hastily prepared legislation rushed through Parliament in the shadow of an unprecedented national calamity.”[617] It has been found by experience that this Act, which is nominally only temporary, does secure to the hewers a substantial minimum of day wages, however unremunerative their conditions of work; and the fixing of rates by the Joint Boards has, on the whole, considerably increased the wages of the various grades of the less skilled workers. But more important than these immediate results was the demonstration and the consolidation of the national strength of the Miners’ Federation itself; and the respect which its great power henceforth secured for it, alike in the Trade Union Movement, with the employers, and at the hands of the Government and the House of Commons.

The miners’ organisations were fully occupied for a year or two in putting into operation the Act of 1912, and in enforcing the determinations of the Joint Boards. But in 1913 the delegate conference made a new move in authorising the Executive Committee to enter into relations with other Trade Unions with a view to joint action for mutual assistance. A formal alliance had been made between the Miners’ Federation, the National Union of Railwaymen, and the Transport Workers’ Federation--commonly referred to as the Triple Alliance--when everything was suddenly changed by the breaking out of the Great War. The 1500 colliery companies and individual colliery owners, most of whom are united in the Mining Association of Great Britain, as well as in district associations, have, throughout, steadfastly refused to meet the Miners’ Federation for the negotiation of any national agreement, or the concession of national advances; although there has long been elaborate machinery for negotiation in each district.

During the four and a quarter years that the world conflict lasted (1914-18), the miners, like the rest of the British working class, patriotically subordinated their interests to those of the nation as a whole. They volunteered for military service in such numbers that they had to be forbidden to leave the mines, and numbers of them were sent back from the armies in order to maintain the output of coal. Where, as in Durham, they had agreements securing them advances of wages in proportion to the rise in the selling price, they forewent these advances; and they contented themselves everywhere with less substantial percentages of rise in rates, and with the two successive war bonuses of eighteen pence a day each--much below the rise in the cost of living--which the Government accorded to them in 1917 and 1918. With the cessation of hostilities at the end of 1918, as the cost of living continued to advance, the Miners’ Federation (which had elected for its new secretary a young South Wales miner, Mr. Frank Hodges, who had educated himself at Labour Colleges; and had also converted its presidency into a full-time salaried post, and for the first time acquired an office in London) again took up the forward movement which it had been concerting five years before; and in February 1919, after balloting its whole membership, and giving elaborate notice, it demanded from the employers a general advance of wages of 30 per cent, the reduction of the hours of labour by an average of one-fourth (the nominal Eight Hours Day to be made a nominal Six Hours Day), and--most momentous of all--the elimination of the profit-making capitalist from the industry by the Nationalisation of the Mines, for which the Trades Union Congress had been vainly asking for over twenty years. As the railwaymen and the transport workers were at the same time in negotiation for improvements in their condition, there seemed, in March 1919, every prospect of the outbreak of a general strike on a scale even greater than that of 1912, the “Triple Alliance” uniting a membership of more than a million and a half, and wielding in combination the adult male labour of something like one-sixth of the whole nation. The Government, which was still, under war powers, directing both the mines and the railways, responded by the offer of a Statutory Commission, under a Judge of the High Court, with practically unlimited powers of investigation and recommendation; at the same time giving the Federation publicly to understand that, whilst a strike would be suppressed with all the powers of the State, the recommendations of the Commission would be accepted by the Cabinet. The conference of the Miners’ Federation spent many hours in deliberation. A large section of the delegates was for an immediate strike. The men had, indeed, an extraordinarily advantageous strategic position. The nation’s stocks of coal were at a minimum, London having only three days’ supply in hand. Ultimately the advice of the leaders prevailed; and it was decided to postpone the withdrawal of labour for three weeks, and to take part in the Statutory Commission, on the express condition that this body presented an Interim Report within that time; and--most revolutionary of all--that the Federation should be allowed to nominate to the Commission, not only three of its own members to balance the three coal-owners who had been informally designated by the Mining Association of Great Britain, but also three out of the six professedly disinterested members, so as to balance the three capitalists whom the Government had already chosen as representing the principal industries dependent on the supply of coal at a moderate price. To these terms the Prime Minister acceded. The Miners’ Federation, setting a new precedent of far-reaching effect, thereupon nominated, along with its President, Vice-president, and Secretary, not three other workmen, but three economists and statisticians belonging to the Fabian Society, known to them by their lectures and writings.

The proceedings of this Commission, which sat daily in public in the King’s Robing-Room at the House of Lords, created an immense sensation. Instead of the Trade Union, it was the management of the industry that was put upon its trial. The large profits of the industry under war conditions were revealed, and especially the enormous gains of the most advantageous mines; and although the Government itself had benefited through the Excess Profits’ Duty by 50, 60, and eventually 80 per cent of these gains, it became apparent to every one that, but for this abstraction, the price of coal might have been reduced and the miners’ conditions improved to an extent never before suspected. It was seen, too, that it was the separate ownership of the mines which stood in the way of the national sharing of the advantages of the best among them. The chaotic state of the industry, with 1500 separately working joint-stock companies operating at very different costs--with no co-ordination of production, and with extremely wasteful arrangements for transport and retail distribution--was vividly presented. At the same time the unsatisfactory conditions under which the miners lived were impressively demonstrated, the scandalously bad housing of the mining community in Lanarkshire and elsewhere making a national sensation. Prompt to the appointed day the Commission presented three Reports. The three mine-owners proposed no improvement in the organisation of the industry, and offered an advance of eighteen pence a day and a reduction of hours by one per day, being only half what was demanded. The six representatives of the miners presented a long and reasoned justification of the men’s case; arguing that, with a unification of the industry in national ownership, with the adoption in all the mines of the mechanical improvements already in use in the best-managed among them, with a more carefully concerted transport system, and with a municipal organisation of retail distribution, it was practicable to concede the men’s full claim of 30 per cent advance and a two hours’ shortening of the working day without any increase in the price of coal to the consumer. The Chairman of the Commission presented a third report, intermediate in its tenour, in which he was joined by the three disinterested capitalist members, proposing an immediate advance of two shillings per day, or 20 per cent, and an immediate reduction of one hour per day, with a promise of a further reduction by an hour in 1920, if the condition of the industry warranted it. With regard to nationalisation, this Report declared that, as there had not been sufficient time to investigate the proposal, the Commission would continue its sittings, and promptly present a further report; but that it was plain, even on the evidence so far submitted, that the present system stood condemned, and that some other system must, by national purchase of the mines, be substituted for it--either State administration, or some plan by which the mines could be placed under a joint control in which the miners would share. This impressive declaration by the judicial Chairman, supported by the three capitalist members who were not mine-owners, made a great public sensation. The Cabinet immediately accepted the Chairman’s Report, pledging itself to carry it out “in the letter and in the spirit.” The Miners’ Federation hesitated, but ultimately, in consideration of the offer of an immediate further examination of nationalisation, in the light of Mr. Justice Sankey’s significant findings, decided to ballot its members, who, to the great relief of the public, by large majorities agreed to accept the Government proposal.

The Coal Industry Commission accordingly continued its sittings, now concentrating upon the issue of Nationalisation and the participation of the miners in control. The dramatic feature of the inquiry was the summoning of a succession of peers and other magnates owning mining royalties to the witness-chair, there to explain to the Commission and the public, under the sharp cross-examination of the Miners’ Federation officials, how they or their ancestors had become possessed of these property rights, how much they yielded in each case, and what social service the recipients performed for their huge incomes. Much evidence was taken for and against State administration. Within a couple of months of almost incessant daily sittings this indefatigable Commission presented its further Report, again hopelessly divided. On the question of ownership of minerals, indeed, the whole thirteen Commissioners were unanimous--a momentous decision--in recommending that the royalty owners should be at once expropriated in favour of the State. All thirteen Commissioners were unanimous, too, in recommending the admission of the workmen to some degree of participation in the management by Pit and District Committees. But there the Commissioners’ agreement ended. What was significant was that not the miners’ representatives only, but eight out of the thirteen (including the Chairman) reported in favour of expropriating all the existing colliery companies and other coal-owners. The Chairman, supported (in general terms and subject to additional suggestion) by the six miners’ representatives, proposed an elaborate scheme of Nationalisation, with administration under a Minister of Mines by joint District Councils and Pit Committees, in which the men would be largely represented. The other expropriating Commissioner preferred to vest the mines in a series of District Coal Corporations of capitalist shareholders, limited as to dividend, and working under public control, with a restricted participation of the men in the administration. Five Commissioners, including all three coal-owners, whilst agreeing to the Nationalisation of Minerals, refused to contemplate any substantial change in the working of the mines, least of all any effective sharing of the workmen in the administration; though even this capitalist minority gave lip-homage to the principle by recommending the formation of purely Advisory Pit and District Committees.

The Government, which had continued in administrative and financial control of all the collieries of the United Kingdom, whilst agreeing to adopt, in the spirit and in the letter, the terms of Mr. Justice Sankey’s first Report, took no steps to bring it into effect, and left the local mine-owners and miners’ Unions to adjust for themselves the hours and new rates of pay which it involved. Suddenly, a few weeks before the new arrangements were to come into force, the Coal Controller issued an order that no increase of rates was to exceed 10 per cent--a patent blunder, as it was the average reduction of output that Mr. Justice Sankey had estimated at 10 per cent, and it was the actual reduction in each district that had to be compensated for. The Yorkshire Miners’ Association had almost completed its arrangements with the Yorkshire mine-owners for a higher percentage of increase when the Government prohibition was received. The result was an angry strike which stopped the whole Yorkshire coalfield for several weeks, and spread to Nottinghamshire. In the end the Government had to withdraw its mistaken prohibition; and the increase of rates, in Yorkshire as elsewhere, was, as the miners had asked, made as nearly as possible proportionate to the expected local reduction in output caused by the reduction of hours. The hasty action on both sides and the misunderstandings due to imperfect knowledge, or imperfect expression, lost the nation some four million tons of coal, and cost the Yorkshire Miners’ Association about £356,000.

In October 1919 Mr. Lloyd George announced that whilst the Government would propose the nationalisation of mining royalties, and some-undefined “trustification” of the mines by districts, there would be no adoption of Mr. Justice Sankey’s Report. The Miners’ Federation refused to accept anything in the nature of capitalist “trustification,” and called in vain on the Government to fulfil its pledge to carry out the Report. In December 1919 the Federation, in conjunction with the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, and the Co-operative Union, began a campaign of propaganda in favour of the Nationalisation of the Coal Supply, the effect of which, industrially and politically, has yet to become manifest. We have to break off the story in the middle of a critical period.

THE RAILWAYMEN

Another great industry, that of the operating staff of the railway system--scarcely mentioned in the first edition of our _History_--has come forcibly to the front. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century, indeed, the railway guards and signalmen, engine-drivers and firemen, shunters and porters, mechanics and labourers--though they numbered something like 5 per cent of all the male manual-working wage-earners--played hardly any part in the Trade Union Movement. Scattered in small numbers all over the country, and divided among themselves by differences of grade, conditions, and pay, they long seemed incapable of organisation as a vocation. For a whole generation after the establishment of railways no one appears to have thought Trade Unionism any more permissible among their employees than among the soldiers or the police. In 1865 an attempt to establish “The Railway Working Men’s Provident Benefit Society”--which soon became virtually a Trade Union--by Charles Bassett Vincent, a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, was ruthlessly crushed by summary dismissals. In the same year an Association of Engine-drivers and Firemen on the North-Eastern Railway actually started a strike, but perished of the attempt. Not until the end of 1871 was a lasting Trade Union established, and then only by the assistance of Michael Bass, M.P., a large railway shareholder, by whose long-continued and entirely disinterested financial and other help the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants struggled into being, with Frederick Evans as its first effective secretary. Other societies followed, of local or sectional character; but even in 1892, after twenty years of organisation, and various abortive strikes, there were fewer than 50,000 railwaymen in any sort of Trade Union, or less than one in seven of the persons employed.[618]

The objects of such railwaymen’s societies as existed were for many years confined to the protection of members from “victimisation” or other tyranny; to the provision of friendly benefits; and to spasmodic attempts to get accidents prevented or compensated for, and hours of labour reduced. Wages questions took up little of the attention of the railway Unions of these years; but strikes on particular railways--sometimes of particular grades or at particular centres only of a single railway--now and then occurred; usually in resentment of some act of tyranny, or against some specially oppressive hours of labour, and often without the prior approval of the Executive Committee. In 1890 the Amalgamated Society for the first time launched an aggressive policy, mainly as regards the hours of labour, which were indeed scandalous.[619] A prolonged strike for a shorter working day on the Scottish lines at Christmas 1890 ended in failure, and the merging of the remnant of the Scottish Society of Railway Servants in the larger Union. But it aroused public attention and led to an effective exposure by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1891-92. As a result the Board of Trade was given certain statutory powers in 1893 to remedy this tyranny--powers of which, unfortunately, little use was made. Not for nine years afterwards did the Board of Trade even call upon the railway companies for a return showing in how many cases men were kept on duty in excess of twelve hours at a stretch. Four-fifths of the railwaymen were still outside the ranks of Trade Unionism and could therefore be both oppressed by their employers and flouted by the Government Department. Their very right to combine was denied. Sir George Findlay, the General Manager of the London and North-Western Railway, voiced the common opinion of the Companies when he declared that “you might as well have a Trade Union or an ‘Amalgamated Society’ in the Army, where discipline has to be kept at a very high standard, as have it on railways.”

In December 1896, indeed, a determined attempt was made to root out Trade Unionism in Sir George Findlay’s own railway company by the dismissal of men discovered to be Trade Unionists. Through the activity of the Society these victims found influential friends, who by public and private pressure compelled their reinstatement. The excitement caused by this incident had some share in swelling the membership of the Amalgamated Society, which doubled its numbers during the year 1897; and made its first big stride in the “All Grades Movement” in that year. Previous movements had been local and sectional, and nearly always in the interests of particular grades. For the first time all the railway companies were approached simultaneously, with a request for improvements in all grades from one end of the service to the other--a reduction of the time of duty, so as to bring the working day down to ten, and for some grades eight hours; extra payments for overtime, and a uniform advance of 2s. per week for all grades except those for whom an eight hours day was sought. The Companies refused even to consider this very moderate request, and nearly a decade was to pass--a decade of slow building up of the organisation, first under Mr. Richard Bell and Mr J. E. Williams, and then under Mr. J. H. Thomas--before the Trade Unions of railwaymen were able to compel a hearing for their case.[620]

Meanwhile the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and with it the whole Trade Union Movement, suffered in the law courts a temporary set-back. An impulsive strike on the Taff Vale Railway in South Wales, accompanied by extensive and successful picketing, was not countenanced by the Executive, but was eventually endorsed by its decision to take up the men’s case; and the Railway Company sued the Society for the loss occasioned by what were alleged to be the unlawful acts of its officers. To the surprise of the lawyers, as well as of the public, the judges held that--in spite of what had seemed the explicit provisions of the Trade Union Acts of 1871-76--a Trade Union could be made answerable in damages for all the acts of its officials, central or local, as if it were a corporate body, whilst still being denied the privileges of a corporate body. The strike and legal proceedings cost the Society from first to last nearly £50,000, whilst the danger to the corporate funds of all Trade Unions that the decision revealed put a damper on even the best justified strikes until, under persistent Trade Union pressure, strengthened by the entry into the House of Commons of a reinforced Labour Party, the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 restored the law to its state prior to the judicial decisions of 1902.

The railwaymen could then renew their “All Grades Movement” which the Companies in January 1907 again declined to consider, steadfastly refusing any recognition of the men’s Trade Unions, and callously denying their grievances.[621] Ballots of the membership of the Amalgamated Society and the General Union decided on a strike by 80,026 to 1857 votes, and in November 1907 a national stoppage was at hand when Mr. Lloyd George intervened as President of the Board of Trade, compelled the Companies to listen to reason, and persuaded both parties to accept an elaborate scheme of Local and Central Conciliation Boards, composed of equal numbers representing management and men, with an impartial chairman and authority to decide on wages and hours. These Conciliation Boards, unsatisfactory as they proved, represented a real triumph. For the first time the autocracy of the railway management was broken. There was, it is true, still no express recognition of the Trade Unions, but the men’s representatives were to be freely elected on each railway by all the employees grouped according to their grades; and these elected representatives met the management on professedly equal terms. The elections showed how thoroughly justified was the claim of the Railwaymen’s Trade Unions that they were voicing the wishes of practically the whole body of railwaymen. In spite of strenuous efforts by the management on most of the lines, and of the unfortunate jealousies among the different societies, in nearly all cases the nominees of one or other of the Unions were elected, often by large majorities. For the next few years the Amalgamated Society and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen were busy in fighting the cases of the various grades through the Conciliation Boards, and in securing thereby many small increases of wages and reductions of hours. But matters did not go smoothly. The Companies, for the most part, pursued a policy of obstruction and postponement, delaying the awards, quibbling about their application, and in some cases deliberately evading their terms, notably by inventing new grades to which men could be appointed at lower rates of pay than those prescribed. The “impartial” chairmen, moreover, differed among themselves in the assumptions on which they proceeded, and some of the awards caused great resentment. Meanwhile the cost of living was steadily rising, and railwaymen as a whole were falling further behind other organised workers. Progress was delayed in 1909-10 by a new set-back which the Amalgamated Society suffered in the law courts, in the prolonged litigation carried by one of its members, with capitalist assistance, right up to the House of Lords, by which the participation of any Trade Union in political activity was declared invalid--a piece of “judge-made law” to which we shall recur, and for which the Government and Parliament at first refused all redress. Suddenly, in August 1911, the pot boiled over. There was a spirit of revolt in the Labour world. In June and July the seamen and the dockers had struck, and stopped the port of London. There was an outburst of “unauthorised” railway strikes at Manchester, Liverpool, and some other big towns, and a general demand for a national strike. The Executives of the four principal railwaymen’s Unions, for once acting closely in concert, gave the Companies twenty-four hours to decide whether they would consent to meet the men’s representatives, or face a national stoppage. Once more the Government intervened, Mr. Asquith offering a Royal Commission of indefinite duration and issue, merely to propose amendments in the scheme of Conciliation Boards, and at the same time definitely informing the men--a fact which they judiciously refrained from publishing--that the Government would not hesitate to use the troops to prevent the commerce of the country from being interfered with.[622] The Unions refused the illusory offer, and a national strike began, which, although far from universal, was sufficient to disorganise the whole railway service--as many as 200,000 men stopping work--and was rapidly bringing industry to a standstill. At the instance of Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, an overpowering display was made with the troops, which were sent to Manchester and other places, without requisition by the civil authorities, at the mere request of the Companies. In fact, a policy of repression had been decided on, and bloodshed was near at hand. In vain did the Union leaders ask Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister, to take steps to obtain a meeting between the Companies’ managers and the Union representatives. Wiser counsels seem to have prevailed in the Cabinet, which peremptorily instructed the Companies to let their General Managers meet the men’s representatives face to face at the Board of Trade. For just upon twelve hours these managers, thus coerced, negotiated with four representatives of the Unions, together with Mr. Henderson and Mr. J. R. MacDonald of the Parliamentary Labour Party. At last an agreement was made--the first ever concluded between the Railway Companies as a whole and the Trade Unions of their employees--for an ending of the strike, on terms of complete reinstatement of the strikers; an immediate consideration by the Conciliation Boards of all grievances; and a prompt investigation by a bipartite Royal Commission of the dissatisfaction with these Boards, and the best way of amending the scheme.[623] When the Commission reported--it was ultimately termed a Special Committee of Inquiry--the Railwaymen’s Union once more asked the Companies to meet them for negotiation, which the Companies again refused to do. On the Unions resolving to ballot their members as to a national strike, the House of Commons set a new precedent by passing, at the instance of the Government, a resolution formally recommending a joint meeting, whereupon the Companies gave way. At the meeting that ensued a new scheme of Conciliation Boards was jointly agreed to, amending the 1907 scheme generally on the line of the Special Committee’s report, but introducing most of the other modifications that the Unions thought necessary. The machinery was made more rapid in action, and the scope of the Boards was extended. Most important of all, the men’s side of each Board was allowed to choose as secretary a person not in the employ of the Company; and it accordingly became possible for a Trade Union official to take up this work, and that not only for a single grade but, by acting for several Boards, simultaneously for all grades. This was not “recognition” in form, but at any rate the Trade Union official was let in. During the next two years, in spite of incredible obstructions, quibblings, and evasions by the Companies, a number of small improvements in the terms of service were obtained from the Boards for all the grades on practically all the lines. A result of this joint working of even greater importance was the merging, in 1913, after prolonged negotiations, of three out of the four principal societies of manual railway workers[624]--the Amalgamated, the General Union, and the United Pointsmen and Signalmen--into a new Trade Union upon a carefully revised basis, under the title of the National Union of Railwaymen.

The “New Model” for Trade Union structure thus deliberately adopted merits attention. In contrast with what we have called the “New Model,” in 1851 of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, that of 1913 represents an attempt to include, in a single “amalgamated” Union, all the various “crafts” and grades of workers engaged in a single industry throughout the whole kingdom. The declared object of the National Union of Railwaymen is “to secure the complete organisation of all workers employed on or in connection with any railway in the United Kingdom.” It thus definitely negatives both “sectionalism” and “localism” in favour of “Industrial Unionism.” Indeed, it may be suggested that the new constitution passes, by definition, even beyond the “Industrial Unionism,” to which the most advanced section of Trade Unionists were aspiring, into what has been termed “Employmental Unionism,” in that it seeks to enrol in one Union, not merely all sections of railway workers, but actually all who are employed by any railway undertaking--thus including, not only the engineering and wood-working mechanics in the railway engineering workshops,[625] but also the cooks, waiters, and housemaids at the fifty-five railway hotels; the sailors and firemen on board the railway companies’ fleets of steamers, and (though no trouble has actually arisen about them) the compositors, lithographers, and bookbinders whom the railway printing works employ in the production of tickets, time-tables, office stationery, and advertisement posters; even the men whom one, at least, of the largest companies keeps in constant employment at the manufacture of crutches and wooden legs for the disabled members of its staff. This all-inclusiveness has, since 1913, brought the National Union of Railwaymen into conflict with many other Trade Unions; and the question of the proper lines of demarcation has so far remained unsettled. The principal new feature in constitutional structure was the establishment of a distinct legislature--the Annual General Meeting--consisting, in addition to the President and General Secretary, of sixty representatives elected by the membership in geographical constituencies of approximately equal size. Subordinate to the Annual General Meeting (which can be summoned specially when required) is the Executive Committee of the President, General Secretary, and twenty-four other members, the latter being severally elected by the device of the Single Transferable Vote by each of four prescribed departments of members in each of six gigantic geographical constituencies; one-third of such representatives retiring annually, and after each triennial term of service, becoming ineligible for three years, whilst the Branches to which they belong also become unable to nominate representatives for a like term. The Executive Committee, which, like the Annual General Meeting, consists of working railwaymen, paid only for their days of service, meets quarterly and appoints four sectional sub-committees, which must also meet at least quarterly. Noteworthy, too, is the District Council, which--constitutionally only a voluntary federation of geographically adjacent Branches for propagandist and purely consultative purposes--has, with an unofficial National Federation of District Councils, developed into an active “caucus” of the more energetic members for discussing and promoting “forward movements” in the Annual General Meeting, and “organising” the elections to the Executive Committee.

With such a constitution, and the administration of extensive friendly benefits in a society now approaching half a million members, it is inevitable that the Executive Committee should wield extensive powers. It initiates and conducts all trade movements, and can therefore call a national strike, even without a ballot vote; and whilst it may take a ballot vote at any time on any question, the rules expressly provide that it is not to be bound by the members’ decision. Originally the Executive Committee had power also “to settle” any dispute; but this was withdrawn by resolutions of the Annual General Meetings of 1915 and 1916, which required all settlements to be reported to itself for ratification. In practice very large powers, both of office management and of negotiation, are necessarily exercised by the six salaried officers, the President, the General Secretary, and the four Assistant Secretaries, each of whom is responsible for a separate branch of the Union’s work. They have, however, not been able to prevent a series of “unauthorised” strikes, local or sectional in character.