Chapter X: The Place of Trade Unionism in the State (4)

[666] It should be recorded, as an instance of the prescience of Sir Charles Dilke, that he is reported to have declared at the time that “the trade union Acts were spoilt during their passage through the House by the insertion of obscure definition clauses” (_Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1890, p. 479).

[667] Whewell, _History of Scientific Ideas_, vol. ii. p. 120; J. S. Mill, _System of Logic_, vol. ii. p. 276.

[668] George Howell, in his _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, 1890, gives a list, three pages long, of Acts which, as he expressly testifies from personal knowledge, were promoted or supported by the Trade Unions; and in his _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders_, 1902, pp. 469-73, a still longer one.

[669] _Industrial Democracy_, pp. 124, 251, 258-60.

[670] _A Great Labour Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908.

[671] _Industrial Democracy_, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1897, pp. 838-40.

[672] For this reason the Trades Union Congress now refuses to entertain any motion on this subject.

[673] If the main object of a newspaper is political, any expenditure by a Trade Union upon it (including the purchase of shares) is itself political (Bennett _v._ National Amalgamated Society of Operative Painters (1915), 31 T.L.R. 203).

[674] 3 George V. c. 30.

[675] “The average weekly earnings of railway servants, as given by the Board of Trade, were lower in 1910 than in 1907” (_Trade Unionism on the Railways_, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot, 1917, pp. 21-22).

[676] _The Legal Position of Trade Unions_, by H. H. Slesser and W. Smith Clark, 2nd ed., 1914; _The Present Law of Trade Disputes and Trade Unions_, by Professor W. M. Geldart, 1914; _Entwicklung des Koalisationsrechts in England_, by G. Krojanker, 1914; _An Introduction to Trade Union Law_, by H. H. Slesser, 1919; _The Law of Trade Unions_, by H. H. Slesser and C. Baker (to be published in 1920).

[677] Henry Broadhurst (Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons) was Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (1885-86); and Thomas Burt (Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Society) Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (1892-95).

[678] For the facts as to Trade Unionism during the war, the most convenient source is the _Labour Year Book_ for 1916 and 1919; see also _Labour in War Time_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1915, and _Self-Government in Industry_, by the same, 1917; the large number of Government publications issued by the Local Government Board, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Labour, and especially the Ministry of Munitions, together with the awards of the Committee on Production, most of which are briefly noticed in the monthly _Labour Gazette_; the monthly Circular (since 1917) of the Labour Research Department; the unpublished monthly journal of the Ministry of Munitions; Reports of the Trades Union Congress, 1915-19, and of the Labour Party Conferences, 1914-19; publications of the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee; _The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions_, by Sidney Webb, 1916; _Women in the Engineering Trades_, by Barbara Drake, 1917.

[679] _Compulsory Military Service and Industrial Conscription: what they mean to the Workers_ (War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, 1915); _Memorandum on Industrial and Civil Liberties_ (Woolwich Joint Committee on Problems arising from the War).

[680] The Government seems to have hoodwinked the public into believing that 80 per cent of all the excess profits was the same thing as 100 per cent of the profits in excess of 20 per cent addition to the pre-war profits.

[681] _Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry_, Cmd. 135, 1919. The Minority Report by Mrs. Sidney Webb was republished by the Fabian Society, under the title of _Men’s and Women’s Wages: Should they be equal?_, 1919.

[682] Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, 1919 (9 and 10 George V. c. 42). During the first year after the cessation of hostilities the problem of restoration did not assume so acute a form as had been expected. A large part of the new automatic machinery which had been introduced in 1915-18 was found to have been greatly deteriorated by excessive working and had to be scrapped; there was an immediate demand for ordinary engineering work of the old type; and the British employers did not, in fact, set themselves at once to apply “mass production” to the making of steam engines and motor cars, agricultural implements and machinery generally, nor make any dramatic advances in its application to the production of sewing-machines, bicycles, and electrical apparatus. During 1919: the extensive readaptation of the machine-shops, and the great demand for new tools (especially machine-tools) facilitated the absorption, often in new situations, of all the skilled engineers. There was, accordingly, little difficulty in finding employment at good wages for practically all the skilled workmen, and (except for temporary dislocations arising in consequence of the disputes in coalmining, ironfounding, and other trades) the percentage of members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and other Unions of skilled craftsmen remained throughout the year at a minimum. The great bulk of the “dilutees,” including substantially all the women, received their discharge on the cessation of their jobs of “repetition work” on munitions of war, the employers preferring, in face of the immediate demand, to avoid trouble, to revert to the old methods and to get back their former staffs, rather than engage in the hazardous enterprise of reorganising their factory methods. Hence, taking the engineering industry as a whole, the men got back the work from the women; though not without some attempts at resistance by individual employers, which were not persisted in; and not without leaving the total number of women employed in 1920 in what might be deemed their own branches of the engineering industry apparently double that of 1913. Many of the male “dilutees” on discharge also reverted to other employment, but some proportion of them, who had acquired skill, and were members of various Unions admitting semi-skilled workers, found employment in engineering shops on particular machines or in particular jobs. There has apparently been a continuous increase in the proportion of machines demanding less than full skill (such as milling machines and small turret lathes), and therefore of “semi-skilled” men in employment, without (owing to the expansion of the industry as a whole) any reduction in the number of skilled men. In face of the great demand for output, and of the fact that hardly any members of the skilled Unions were unemployed, this fact did not evoke objection. The position as regards the Premium Bonus System or other form of “Payment by Results” was left unchanged. Few, if any, legal proceedings were actually taken against employers in the Munitions Courts under the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act. The employers and the Government were, during the first half of the year, in a state of alarm lest there should be a Labour uprising, which would seriously interfere with the resumption of business; and great care was exercised to avoid any disputes. Successive advances of wages were awarded to meet the rising cost of living, and all rates were “stabilised” by law, so as to prevent any employer from effecting a reduction, first until May 20, 1919, then until November 20, 1919, and finally until September 30, 1920; a new “Industrial Court” being set up by statute (Industrial Courts Act 1919) empowered to give non-obligatory decisions in any disputes that might be voluntarily referred to it--a measure from which the Parliamentary Labour Party succeeded in eliminating every implication of Compulsory Arbitration, Obligatory Awards, or the Abrogation of the Right to Strike. But the difficulties are not yet surmounted; and when there comes a slump in business, and skilled engineers find themselves unemployed, the Government pledge will be heard of again.

[683] See this noted in the report of the Parliamentary Committee in the _Annual Report of the Trades Union Congress_, 1917.

[684] The “Whitley Report,” published early in 1917, when possibilities of industrial and social “reconstruction” were much discussed, made a great stir, which was increased by the definite endorsement of its recommendations by the Government, and its energetic promotion of their adoption throughout British industry. Whilst significantly abstaining from any suggestion of “profit-sharing, co-partnership, or particular systems of wages,” the Report emphasised the importance of (_a_) “adequate organisation on the part of both employers and employed”; (_b_) the imperative need for a greater opportunity of participating in the discussion about and adjustment of “those parts of industry by which they are most affected” of the work-people in each occupation; (_c_) the subordination of any decisions to those of the Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations. Among the subjects to be dealt with by the hierarchy of National, District, and Works Councils or Committees were: (i.) “the better utilisation of the practical knowledge and experience of the work-people ... and for securing to them a greater share in and responsibility for the determination and observance of the conditions under which their work is carried on”; (ii.) “the settlement of the general principles governing the conditions of employment ... having regard to the need for securing to the work-people a share in the increased prosperity of the industry”; (iii.) the methods to be adopted for negotiations, adjusting wages, determining differences and “ensuring to the work-people the greatest possible security of earnings and employment”; (iv.) technical education, industrial research, utilisation of inventions, and improvement of processes; (v.) proposed legislation affecting the industry. After two years’ propagandist effort, it seems (1920) as if the principal industries, such as agriculture, transport, mining, cotton, engineering, or shipbuilding are unlikely to adopt the scheme; but two or three score trades have equipped themselves either with “Whitley Councils”--the District Councils and Works Committees are much more slow to form--or with “Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committees,” which may be regarded as provisional Councils, in such industries as pottery, house-building, woollen manufacture, hosiery, heavy chemicals, furniture-making, bread-baking, match-making, metallic bedstead manufacturing, saw-milling, and vehicle building. The Government found itself constrained, after an obstinate resistance by the heads of nearly all the departments, to institute the Councils throughout the public service. We venture on the prediction that some such scheme will commend itself in all nationalised or municipalised industries and services, including such as may be effectively “controlled” by the Government, though remaining nominally the property of the private capitalist--possibly also in the Co-operative Movement; but that it is not likely to find favour either in the well-organised industries (for which alone it was devised) or in those in which there are Trade Boards legally determining wages, etc.; or, indeed, permanently in any others conducted under the system of capitalist profit-making. See the series of “Whitley Reports,” Cd. 8606, 9001, 9002, 9085, 9099, and 9153; the Industrial Reports, Nos. 1 to 4, of the Ministry of Reconstruction; the able and well-informed article, “La politique de paix sociale en Angleterre,” by Élie Halévy, in _Revue d’Économie Politique_, No. 4 of 1919; _Recommendation on the Whitley Report put forward by the Federation of British Industries_, 1917; _National Guilds or Whitley Councils?_ (National Guilds League), 1918. For the “Builders’ Parliament,” in many ways the most interesting of these Councils, though as yet achieving only schemes in which the employers, as a whole, do not concur, see _A Memorandum on Industrial Self-Government_, by Malcolm Sparkes; _Masters and Men, a new Co-partnership_, by Thomas Foster; and _The Industrial Council for the Building Industry_, by the Garton Foundation, 1919.

[685] It must be remembered that the conditions of the manual worker’s life dealt with by the Trade Unions up to 1894 included a wide range of material circumstances and moral considerations. Besides the maintenance of standard rates and methods of remuneration, the reduction of the normal day, and payment for overtime, we find among the objects of Trade Unions, as reported to the Commission, the prevention of stoppages from wages; the maintenance of the apprenticeship system and the keeping out of the trade all who are not qualified; the abolition of the character note; the prevention of victimisation; the provision of legal assistance to members in respect of compensation for accidents; the establishment of an agency through which employers may obtain efficient men; watching over the proceedings of local boards and law courts; the enforcement of the Factory Acts and other protective legislative enactments; the improvement of dietary scales and house and shop accommodation where workers have to live in; the collection and circulation of information on trade matters; the establishment of benefit funds for unemployment, disputes, sickness, accidents and death; the assistance of members anxious to migrate or emigrate; the establishment of “that reciprocal confidence which is so essential between workmen and masters,” and the promotion of arbitration and conciliation; the regulation of output; the promotion of friendly intercourse with workers of other countries; the assistance of other trades in times of difficulty; and political action--the support of Parliamentary and Municipal Labour candidates, of Trades Councils, of the Trades Union Congress, and of Labour newspapers. Some Unions decide to promote co-operative enterprise, “to secure the legal recognition of the natural rights of labourers to the produce of their toil,” whilst others promote the “moral, social, intellectual and professional advancement” of the working class. “Trade Societies,” state the rules of the Associated Shipwrights, “must be maintained as the guard of workmen against capitalists until some higher effort of productive co-operation has been inaugurated which shall secure to workers a more equitable share of the product of labour.”

[686] _Minutes of Evidence, Royal Commission on Labour_: “Report of Evidence from Co-operative Societies and Public Officials,” 1893, C 7063-1 (Q 2098, 2117-8).

Mr. Tom Mann was also in favour of the Consumers’ Co-operative Movement, and had in those days a distinct bias for legal enactment over direct action in determining the conditions of employment. “I should have said,” he stated in the witness-chair, “that I, as a Trade Unionist, am of opinion that in my capacity of citizen I have just as full a right to use Parliament for the general betterment of the conditions of the workers, of whom I am one, as I have to use the Trade Union; and when I could use the institution of Parliament to do that constructive work that I sometimes use the Trade Union for, and could use Parliament more effectively than I could the Trade Union, then I should favour the use of Parliament, not necessarily in order to enforce men to do something which they might not wish to do, but because it was the more effective instrument to use to bring about changed conditions” (_Ibid._ Q 2531).

[687] An interesting sidelight is afforded by the reprobation by the German Social Democratic Party, in 1894, of Eduard Bernstein for translating our _History of Trade Unionism_, on the ground that Trade Unionism had no place in the Socialist State, and that it was needless to trouble about it!

[688] See, for convenient summaries, _Syndicalism in France_, by Louis Levine, 1911, and _What Syndicalism Means_, by S. and B. Webb, 1912; see also _American Syndicalism_, by J. Graham Brooks, 1913.

[689] _Socialism made Easy_, by James Connolly, 1905, pp. 13, 16-17.

[690] _The Miners’ Next Step_, 1912.

[691] _The Syndicalist_, January 1912. Column entitled, “What we Syndicalists are after” (by Tom Mann).

[692] _The Industrial Syndicalist_, March 1911. “The Weapon Shaping” (by Tom Mann; p. 5).

[693] _Ibid._, April 1911. “A Twofold Warning” (by Tom Mann). We are concerned, in this volume, only with the effect of these new movements of working-class thought upon British Trade Unionism, and this is not the occasion for any complete appreciation of Syndicalism or Industrial Unionism. The Syndicalist Movement in this country had died down prior to the war, but the Industrial Unionist Movement simmered on in the Clyde district and in South Wales. Its chief organisation is the Socialist Labour Party, which is not, and has never been, connected either with any other Socialist organisation in this country or with the Labour Party that is described in the next chapter. It was, we think, the moving spirits of the Socialist Labour Party who were, as Trade Unionist workmen, mainly responsible for the aggressive action of the Clyde Workers Committee between 1915 and 1918, and also for the rise of the Shop Stewards Movement, and for its spread from the Clyde to English engineering centres. At the present moment (1920) the Socialist Labour Party, owing to the personal qualities of its leading spirits, J. T. Murphy and A. MacManus, holds the leading position in this school of thought, which received a great impulse from the accession of Lenin to power in Russia. But it remains a ferment rather than a statistically important element in the Trade Union world.

[694] The revival of the Owenite proposal to develop existing Trade Unions into great Associations of Producers for the carrying on of each industry must be attributed perhaps to Mr. A. J. Penty (_The Restoration of the Gild System_, 1906), or to Mr. A. R. Orage, aided by Mr. S. G. Hobson, in a series of articles in _The New Age_, 1911 (afterwards published in a volume, _National Guilds_, 1913, edited by A. R. Orage). But _The New Age_ had a limited circulation in the Trade Union world, and the plan proposed was not worked out in detail. The idea was afterwards developed by Mr. G. D. H. Cole and his associates, and widely promulgated in the Trade Union world. An organisation for this propaganda, the National Guilds’ League, was started in 1915, and has now a membership of several hundred, amongst whom are included some of the younger leaders of the Trade Union Movement. It publishes a monthly, _The Guildsman_, edited by Mr. and Mrs. G. D. H. Cole. The various books by Mr. Cole--especially _The World of Labour_, _Self-Government in Industry_, and _Labour in the Commonwealth_--should also be consulted.

[695] _N.U.R. Agenda and Decisions of the Annual General Meeting_, June 1914, p. 7.

[696] The resolution runs as follows: “That in view of the success which, in spite of unparalleled difficulties, has attended the working of the railways under State control, this Congress urge the Parliamentary Congress to press the Government to arrange for the complete nationalisation of all the railways, and to place them under a Minister of Railways, who shall be responsible to Parliament, and _be assisted by national and local advisory committees, upon which the organised railway workers shall be adequately represented_” (_Trades Union Congress Annual Report_, 1917, p. 345).

[697] _Postal and Telegraph Record_, May 22, 1919, p. 237.

[698] _Ibid._

[699] _The Nationalisation of Mines Bill_ (Fabian Tract, No. 171, 1913).

[700] The Nationalisation of Mines and Minerals Bill, 1919, given in full in _Further Facts from the Coal Commission_, by R. Page Arnot, 1919. The Miners’ Federation Conference of 1918 had passed the following resolution: “That in the opinion of this Conference the time has arrived in the history of the coal-mining industry when it is clearly in the national interests to transfer the entire industry from private ownership and control to State ownership with joint control and administration by the workmen and the State. In pursuance of this opinion the National Executive be instructed to immediately reconsider the draft Bill for the Nationalisation of the Mines ... in the light of the newer phases of development in the industry, so as to make provision for the aforesaid joint control and administration when the measure becomes law; further, a Conference be called at an early date to receive a report from the Executive Committee upon the draft proposals and to determine the best means of co-operating with the National Labour Party to ensure the passage of a new Bill into law” (_Report of Annual Conference of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain_, July 9, 1918, p. 44).

[701] At the end of our chapter on the “Method of Collective Bargaining” we cursorily dealt with the strike as a necessary incident of collective bargaining: “It is impossible to deny that the perpetual liability to end in a strike or a lock-out is a grave drawback to the Method of Collective Bargaining. So long as the parties to a bargain are free to agree or not to agree, it is inevitable that, human nature being as it is, there should now and again come a deadlock, leading to that trial of strength and endurance which lies behind all bargaining. We know of no device for avoiding this trial of strength except a deliberate decision of the community expressed in legislative enactment” (_Industrial Democracy_, p. 221).

[702] See, for instance, _Trade Unionism New and Old_, by George Howell, 1891.

[703] Mr. G. H. Roberts (Typographical Society), then Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade; and Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Treasurer of the Labour Party.

[704] The Rt. Hon. Arthur Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders), and M. Camille Huysmans, Secretary of the International Socialist Congress.

[705] These extracts from a speech by Mr. Hodges are put together from the separate imperfect reports in the _Times_, _Daily News_, and _Daily Herald_ of October 27, 1919. A more explicit statement of Mr. Hodges’ views will be found in his speech at the Annual Conference of the Miners’ Federation in July 1918: “For the last two or three years a new movement has sprung up in the labour world which deals with the question of joint control of the industry by representatives from the side which represents, for the most part, the consumer, and representatives of the workmen, who are the producers. Nationalisation in the old sense is no longer attractive. As a matter of fact, you can have nationalisation, but still be in no better position than you are now under private ownership. That is the experience of institutions which have been State owned and State controlled for many years. The most remarkable scheme worked out during the last year is the theory worked out by the ... Postmen’s Federation. He has endeavoured to provide a scheme by which the postal workers should have a definite amount of control, a definite form of control, in the postal service, and in working it out he has demonstrated beyond all doubt how at every point he is up against the power of the bureaucrats, as exemplified by the State. Now, is it any good to have these mines nationalised unless we are going to exercise some form of control as producers? If not, the whole tendency will be towards the power of bureaucracy. We shall be given no status at all in the industry, except to be the mere producers, as we have been in the past years. Under State ownership the workmen should be desirous of having something more than the mere question of wages or the mere consideration of employment; the workmen should have some directive power in the industry in which they are engaged. Now, how are we going to have this directive power under State control? I think we must admit that the side representing the consumers (the State) should have some form of control on property which will be State property, and when a national industry becomes State controlled you must have permanent officials to look after the consumers’ interests, and from the purely producers’ point of view the Miners’ Federation must represent the producers in the central authority and in the decentralised authority, right down to the separate collieries. Are we ready to do this? Are we prepared for this, starting at the separate collieries, indicating how the industry is to be developed locally? Men must take their share in understanding all the relations embodied in the export side of the trade; they must take a share even in controlling the banking arrangements which govern the financial side of the industry, and with that comes a very great deal of responsibility. Now, are we prepared to assume that responsibility, a responsibility which is implied in the term workmen’s control? It is going to be a big task and a test of the educational attainments of the miners themselves if they assume control of the industry, and if it did not thrive under that control there is the possibility we should have to hark back to private ownership in order to make it successful.... I hold these views, and unless they are accompanied by an effective form of working-class control, I do not believe that nationalisation will do any good for anybody” (_Report of Annual Conference of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, July 9, 1918_, pp. 49-51).

[706] Report of the Committee on Combinations and Trusts, 1919.