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Title: British Syndicalism
Author: Tom Brown
Date: 1994
Language: en
Topics: syndicalism, United Kingdom, Kate Sharpley Library
Source: Retrieved on 4th October 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/n8pktr
Notes: ISBN 9781873605707

Tom Brown

British Syndicalism

Syndicalism and Workers’ Committees

Published in the Jan/Feb 1962 issue of World Labour News

In case the critics of revolutionary industrial unionism — Syndicalism —

wish to know what it is about, let us recapitulate the main idea. What

the historians of labour call the “Syndicalist Tendency” in the

English-speaking world must include the IWW, the Industrial Workers of

the World and, in Britain, we cannot ignore the work of the old

Socialist Labour Party in popularising the ideas of industrial unionism,

particularly in Scotland.

At the end of the 19^(th) Century, the socially-conscious workers were

faced by a host of unions which organised disunity in the industrial

struggle. Even by 1939 there were 40 unions in engineering and most of

them might be in one factory. Worse, most of the time, most of the

unions were craft unions, such as still exist, organised not only

against the employer, but, too often, against other workers, men of

rival unions, rival crafts, and unskilled workers, who might encroach on

the preserves of the craft organisation.

At that critical time, according to the historians, Syndicalism was able

to arouse to revolt the latent discontent of the unskilled and, in an

elementary, but potent way organise struggles which gained great

advances and inspired the forgotten men and women of industry with

self-confidence.

But Syndicalists were few and only the elementary lessons of class

struggle were learned by the workers, so the unskilled became organised

in mass unions, which resembled crowds rather than organisations. Most

of these unions became amalgamated into the Transport and General

Workers’ Union and the National Union of General and Municipal Workers,

embracing between them the gas workers, the tramwaymen, the dockers,

engineering workers, roadmen, and hosts of others.

So we saw the workers divided into more than a thousand unions, skilled

against semi-skilled and unskilled, craft against craft — even between

men in one trade, but separate unions in rivalry. Iron moulders on

strike, while the machine shop worked; boilermakers locked out, while

their mates in another union worked on.

Against this disunity, Syndicalism has posed the idea of scientific

organisation, revolutionary industrial unionism. Starting where the

class struggle starts, in the factory, or other place of work, all

workers, of whatever craft, so-called semi-skilled or unskilled, male or

female, draughtsmen, clerks or storemen are organised in a branch of one

union, based on the commodity made or the service rendered.

The affairs particular to that factory would be tackled by the workers

there, in mass meetings making major decisions and electing their

delegates and committee, always with the right of recall. But there must

arise problems which also concern other workshops in the same district

and the factory branch must be federated to its kindred in the same

district, so we might have federations of, say, the South Wales miners,

shipyard workers of the Clyde, cotton workers of Lancashire, or

newspaper workers of London.

Further, there are matters which are not peculiar only to the district

of the industry, but concern all throughout the area, temporarily

historically speaking, enclosed by national boundaries. Thus the Miners’

Industrial Union, the Port Workers’ Industrial Union and so on, thirty

or so unions would cover most of the jobs.

Further, each industrial union is dependent on the others, as a man is

dependent on his fellows, and each union would be federated to a

National Confederation of Labour, which would deal with the general

labour questions and render aid to weaker unions, or those on strike.

Of course, within this framework there is room for other federations as

and when necessary, such as federations of dockers and seamen and, in

London, a traffic federation of railmen, busmen, and underground

workers. The greatest strength of this form of organisation is its

flexibility; one weakness of trade unionism is its rigidity.

Let the man whose reasoning power is too weak to see the obvious

superiority of such a system, read labour history, let him look about

and see the obvious advantages of this potent idea, even when limited in

application.

Revolutionary syndicates are the means, once we brush the cobwebs of

prejudice from our minds, to wage struggles with much less hurt to our

people and with much greater chance of victory. But wage demands are not

enough. The day will come when the workers must decide not to ask for

another loaf, but to take over the bakery; to take, hold, own, and

control the means of production, not by walking out, but by staying in

and locking out the capitalist class. The ultimate aim of Syndicalism is

common ownership of the means of production and distribution, abolition

of the wages system, and a true democracy, the industrial democracy of

Workers’ Control.

Our critics include Labourites, Trotskyites, Stalinists, and other sorts

of Bolsheviks and almost as many varieties of Socialists as there are

permutations on the Treble Chance, as well as open supporters of

capitalism. But they have so much in common that we can deal with the

main objections, without breaking every butterfly on the wheel. It is

well to note that most, though not all, the alleged Labour and Socialist

critics, are supporters of trade unionism of the present sort, craft and

general unions.

“Syndicalism is old fashioned, it sounds like Something out of the

19^(th) Century.” The speaker is often a person who supports a union

founded about 100 years ago, or a craft union based on a mediaeval guild

and an industrial process which vanished with the Industrial Revolution.

Sometimes the statement is accompanied by a chunk of the “Communist

Manifesto” of 1848, or some other contemporary work (contemporary with

the first Duke of Wellington) hot off the press.

The point is not whether Syndicalism is old or new fashioned, but

whether it is likely to be efficacious in solving our present problems,

which, after all, are as old as class society. Fashion we can leave to

the House of Dior. The question of efficacy is rarely, if ever, tackled

by our opponents.

We tum now to a body of criticism which is quite different, stemming

from the belief that all that is necessary are “workers’ or factory

committees”, without the continuous and thought-out organisation forms

of industrial unionism. Just workers’ committees, that is all.

But if we rule out Syndicalism and agree to committees only, then surely

the committees must have some form and some relationship to one another.

Are the councils just formed, say, in factories, or parts of factories,

to live a tiny, corporative life without forming part of a natural or

deliberate pattern? If, however, these primary bosses are to be cohesive

parts of a greater public whole, has that whole a form and pattern and

aims? Or is it amorphous?

If the committees are to have social form and pattern, then it seems to

us that they cannot attain these attributes unless they adopt the

principles of Syndicalism. The Syndicalist pattern, here outlined

briefly, and its further and more intricate forms, are splendidly

suitable for adoption by a workers’ council movement, and if our aims be

the same, there is really no conflict of means.

Syndicalists have never said that everyone must first hold a ticket in

his appropriate industrial union before anything can be done, but

advocate continuous organisation for propaganda, for learning, teaching,

demonstrating, and handing on the torch. Techniques cannot exist without

field and workshop practice and social techniques do not come from

intellectual test tubes. Truly we learn in struggle.

But always we remember that the working class are greater than the union

membership, who are the vanguard. The influence of the Syndicalists has

always been immensely greater than their numbers. The IWW moved millions

of workers in the USA, whatever its state of membership.

Syndicalism and Shop Stewards

Published in the Sept/Oct 1962 issue of World Labour News

Syndicalists are often accused of wanting to form new industrial unions

out of turn, and even of wishing to wait until that event occurs before

taking any action. A reading of British labour history during the past

70 years, by almost any author, will prove how false is this charge. We

claim, certainly, that Syndicalist industrial unions offer a form of

organisation superior to trades unionism and, when trade union branches

are addressed on the subject, approval is almost unanimous. But when the

workers, through lack of propaganda, do not understand or desire

Syndicalism, it would serve them ill to form small, weak breakaway

unions, where the existing unions or their members comprise the only

defence of the working class, however inadequate that defence might be.

Our watchword has always been Solidarity.

In fact, the only organisation ever to adopt a policy of forming

micro-unions by artificial insemination is the Communist Party. During

the late twenties and thirties this policy was forced on the C.P. in

Britain by Moscow, despite the doubts of Pollitt and others. In 1929,

the United Garment Workers’ Union was formed as a breakaway from the

Tailors’ and Garment Workers’ Union. The new union soon faded out.

Among seamen, the Minority Movement (a Communist front organisation) was

making some progress, led by Fred Thompson, ex-dockers; organiser of the

T.& GWU. In this case something could be said for a new union, as the

Seamen’s Union, under Havelock Wilson’s rule, was little more than a

company union. But the C.P. took control from the M.M. and on Tyneside,

where the feeling against Wilson was most promising, declared a strike

among Arab seamen in the most confused and clownish fashion, causing a

riot between Whites and Asiatics and ensuring the stillbirth of the

well-planned Red Seamen’s Union.

Mining in Scotland held out the best chance for the C.P. to form a red

union, and a breakaway from the Lanark and Fife Miners’ Unions was

started under the title of the United Mineworkers’ of Scotland (all

breakaways are called “United”). Within a few years the total income of

the red union was insufficient to pay the wages of the officials, as

Willie Gallagher (later Communist MP for the district) wrote, and the

union quietly died. Nothing but ill came from these attempts of the

politicians to form unions of their own. When new unions are needed, it

must be the workers of the industry concerned who themselves form them.

Syndicalism however, has had a great influence on the development of

trade unionism. It is well, before going further, to point out that what

historians call “the Syndicalist tendency”, as distinct from the formal

Syndicalist organisation, should include the old Socialist Labour Party,

especially in Scotland, who preached a revolutionary industrial unionism

which I have never been able to distinguish from Syndicalism, also the

I.W.W. in Britain.

Men inspired by Syndicalist thought were constantly calling for one

union for each industry, instead of the thousand-odd which existed 40

years ago. It is generally agreed that it was this propaganda which made

possible most of the amalgamations on industrial lines for the greater

cooperation of men of different unions in one factory or industry. This

may seem natural and commonplace now, but 50 years ago it seemed

impossible in the face of sectional prejudice.

The strike methods peculiar to Syndicalism, many originated by the

once-Syndicalist C.G.T., have been used by trade unionists, as well as

Syndicalists, in this country, usually with great success. When writing

the pamphlet “Trade Unionism or Syndicalism?” in 1941, I included a

short list of Syndicalist strike weapons, none of which had been used in

this country, except by Syndicalists. Now, many are commonplace. The

E.T.U. has tried them with success; busmen and railmen have since the

war used the work-to-rule strike, previously used in Britain only by

Syndicalist railmen in the North-East 40 years ago.

The practice of sympathetic industrial action, too, originated in

Syndicalist propaganda. All this and much more is testified by writers

of labour history of many shades of thought — capitalist, Socialist, and

even communist. But perhaps the greatest fruit of this revolutionary

tendency has been the shop steward and works committee movement.

The shop steward movement, as we know it, did not exist until shortly

before the 1914 war. Shop stewards existed before that, but they were

little more than card inspectors. It was the men of the syndicalist

tendency who changed that. Something to span the scores of unions in the

engineering industry was needed and the new conception of a shop

steward, and the works committee which soon followed, did just that,

being a primary form of syndicate, embracing all sections, formed at the

point of production and ready to combat the employing class on the spot.

With the outbreak of war the movement developed rapidly. Cloaked by

patriotism the cost of living soared, wages were pegged, hours ranged

from 60 to 80 a week. Soon unofficial strikes broke out in the big

industrial centres, principally the Clyde and the Tyne.

Alarmed, the Government called the union leaders to a conference in

February, 1915, where all parties, except the miners, agreed to the

abolition of the right to strike, to the dilution of skilled labour, to

State fixing of wages and to “leaving certificates.” Generally, in fact,

to what the Webbs termed “virtually industrial conscription.” With

military conscription from 18 to 21 years, the effect was “the

individual workman realised that the penalty for failure of implied

obedience to the foreman might be instant relegation to the trenches”

(Webb, History of Trade Unionism). Said the Herald (later the Daily

Herald) of July 17, 1915: “The trade union lamb has laid down with the

capitalist lion.”

To this State slavery there could be but one defence — rapid extension

of the shop steward and shop committee movement, for the trade unions

were completely on the employers’ side. Strikes and the threat of

strikes followed, winning wage increases, especially piece work rates,

and controlling workshop conditions. The Government, faced by threats,

introduced food control and, forced by the Clyde factory committees,

controlled house rents, which were soaring.

After the war the movement was there to stay, but was confused and

bedevilled by the development of the Russian Revolution, the formation

of the Communist Party and the vast funds it obtained from abroad. The

union bureaucrats, too, saw that the shop steward was not going to

vanish, so they tried to control him. They are still trying. The

employers, after a long resistance in some cases, accepted his presence

in the factory and, in very many cases, tried to corrupt him.

Neither of these, however, were worse than the activity of the

Communists, concerned not with the winning of a straightforward class

battle of the worker, but with the interest solely of “The Party” and

with carrying out the latest twist or tum of the Comintern.

Granting the premise that a class workshop organisation is necessary for

the protection and extension of the workers’ livelihood, it follows that

a party concerned only with the welfare of “The Party” and its conquest

of power can only do harm to the workers’ cause. Its measure of success

is its measure of mischief.

The record of the C.P. since its entry into industry is proof enough of

this thesis — its thirst for power, its splitting of the workers’ ranks,

its slander of honest militants, the eagerness of its members to become

foremen with the necessary double-dealing that goes with that ambition,

the calling of “political prestige strikes” and the calling of them off,

the twists and turns of Holy Mother Russia’s policy now “down with the

boss and strike everywhere” and next day “collaborate, form joint

production committees, the striker is a traitor.” All this had driven

into apathy tens of thousands of good militants and confused and

disillusioned millions.

It is true that there have been many Communist shop stewards who tried

to be honest stewards and good party members at the same time, but these

men are usually sorry creatures, trying to be two opposites at once and

unhappy with both. A practising bigamist leads a simpler life. To add to

their split personality agonies, “The Party” is likely to court martial

them or expel them. The men at Comintern headquarters had a proverb

about the C.P.G.B.: “The good Communists are bad trade unionists and the

good trade unionists are bad Communists.”

A good, honest-to-goodness shop steward is worth his weight in gold to

the workers’ movement — literally if we were still paid in sovereigns —

but his is just about the most difficult of all jobs, even without the

extra snags thrown in his path by the bosses, the union officials, and

the politicians.

Yet the stewards suffer from one more difficulty. The present movement

lacks the revolutionary thought, doctrine, and training of the first

wave. The present-day shop steward, when he tries to be consistent,

feels very much alone. Ideas are social products, movements are social

movements, and men will seek to identify themselves with people of like

tendency. Now where can our sincere steward look? Leaving out the

movement of which I have written, there is nothing for him. Little

wonder, then, that so many are fooled by the politicians, grow tired,

or, in the case of the weaker brethren, are tempted by the boss.

The originals had the benefit of a revolutionary idea and fire, they had

training to hand, speaking, industrial history, and the study of such

works as Mary Marcy’s “Shop Talks on Economics.” This training made them

superior to most of their opponents on the other side of the boss’s

desk.

They had a social aim, too, making them a movement in their own right,

not an appendage of another movement. The Clyde Workers’ Committee, the

strongest union force in the country at that time, proclaimed this among

its objects:

[...] to obtain an ever-increasing control over workshop conditions, to

regulate the terms upon which workers shall be employed, and to organise

the workers upon a class basis and to maintain the class struggle until

the overthrow of the wages system, the freedom of the workers and the

establishment of industrial democracy have been attained.

In the wilder parts of the Lone Star State, Texans used to tell me that

when they said “a man” they meant a man and his horse, for a man without

a horse was only half a man. A shop steward without a social philosophy

in tune with his workshop is only half a steward.

That brings me to what Allan Flanders of Oxford University terms “the

popular Syndicalist slogan ‘Workers’ Control’.” The desire to alter the

Labour Party’s “Clause 4” was based on an estimate of the discontent

with nationalisation. The rebound which put it back is a sign that

social ownership is looked on as a solution of the social problem. But

socialisation cannot be reconciled to State control. If the sincere rank

and file of the Labour Party and trade unions would look back to the

early shop stewards movement, then look forward, their honesty and

idealism would find a practical mechanism in workers’ control, for the

realisation of the social ownership and democratic control of the means

of production. They would see, too, that the fashioning of the mechanism

begins now, at the coalface, the bench, and the lathe.

Engineering Workers Fought Back

Published in the July/Aug 1961 issue of World Labour News

The general post-war slump hit most of British industry about

two-and-a-half years after the 1918 Armistice, but shipbuilding was in

depression almost at once, for the Coalition government’s policy of

“Make Germany Pay” took from her a great deal of merchant shipping and

set the German yards making ships for “reparation”. Naturally, this

threw out of work British boilermakers and fitters.

General wage reduction in all trades, beginning with the lock-out of the

miners, took place during 1921 and 1922. After several wage cuts, the

shipyards and engineering workers were locked out in 1922 and defeated.

The unions, particularly the Amalgamated Engineering Union, lost many

members. Pessimism and defeatism prevailed. Southampton marine

engineering workers were badly hit. The wage of fully skilled men was

£2. 7s. a week of 47 hours — that is, 1s. an hour. Compare this with

£2.16s for the Tyne and Clyde, £3. 0s.11d. for London, 1s. 6d. an hour

for the provincial dockers, 1s. 2d. for building labourers. (1s = 5p in

today’s currency.)

“Semi-skilled”, many of them highly skilled machinists, received less,

labourers less again. Holidays were unpaid, work often temporary. In

ship repairing, men stood each day in the dockyard, hoping to be picked

up for a few days’ work after being looked over by a few men in bowler

hats, in the manner of a slave market.

In 1924, opportunity to redress the balance a little came with the “lay

up” of Atlantic shipping for annual repairs. But few expected the long

upward fight back of the engineering workers to begin in Southampton.

Union membership as low, Scots and Northern workers did not have much

regard for the port as fighting unit. Southampton’s two M.P.s were

Tories, each enjoying a big majority. But fight the Southampton workers

did. Led by the local AEU, the unions demanded an advance in wages. The

employers refused and referred to the employer-union agreements,

particularly the “procedure for avoiding disputes”, the “machinery”

which creaked for six months to a year over every case and reached no

decision. The union executives stood by this agreement and refused to

back the men.

The Mauretania, “Blue Riband” of the Atlantic, had her turbines

dismantled, the rotors slung in the engine room. Despite the threats of

the AEU and other executives, the ship repair engineering workers voted

a strike. A scratch organization had to be created at once and a strike

committee of experienced trade unionists, with necessary sub-committees

was formed.

When considering the work of this committee, one should remember that

trade union members were a minority of the workers concerned. The

strikers had to fight the employers, backed by the State and the trade

unions. No strike money was paid by the unions.

Fitter Handled the Finance

Money, then, was one of the early problems to be tackled. Local trade

union branches and AEU branches throughout the country were

circularised. Well-organised local events helped to raise cash and

strike money was paid out of this “unofficial” fund. The financial

business of the strike was handled splendidly, though the middle-aged

fitter who was treasurer was told by the professional auditor that he,

the fitter, must know nothing about finance or he would not have carried

an odd halfpenny down through the books — and that

was the only fault he could find.

But what of the non-unionist strikers? They, too, received strike pay

with the union members — penny for penny, pound for pound. First,

however, the “nons” had to be got out on strike, and meetings were held

at all factory and dock gates. All, irrespective of union or non-union,

were promised a fair share of all money raised, and protection against

victimisation, “one back, all back; one out, all out,” a promise that

was honorably kept. Many of the “nons” had dropped their previous

membership because of the high rate of union dues, 2s. a week in the

case of the AEU, and some were still trade unionists at heart — but not

all.

There were those, too, who refused to join the strike. They had to be

encouraged by additional measures. Picket lines, good, solid, militant

picket lines were formed each morning to draw out the waverers.

Whatever, in those days, may have been the law about the “right to

peaceful picketing,” in fact the Law usually acted as though all

picketing was illegal. As an extra, a flying picket organised, squads of

loyal stalwarts, some on cycles, who met outlying blacklegs on their way

to work, often in the country lanes which were then close to Southampton

docks on the Woolston side of the Itchen.

I remember, in particular, two red-headed brothers of about 23 who took

alternate days on the flying picket. The efforts of police and assaulted

scabs to bring a prosecution against one or the other and the

defendants’ alibis made a delightful comedy of errors.

Frequent meetings were held, so that all were kept informed and

encouraged to join in strike activities. Amusements, sports, and

concerts were organized, for boredom and personal isolation are inimical

to strike success. We had a good supply of singers, musicians, and

comedians. I doubt if such an array of talent could be mustered at

scratch today, for there was then no telly and more people developed

their own talents.

There was propaganda too. A panel of speakers was active every day,

visiting union branch meetings and anywhere else they could get a

hearing. But printed and duplicated means of presenting the strikers’

case were insufficient. There was no national organisation directly

sympathetic to the strike cause and trade union officials were active in

the districts of trade unions to curtail support.

Tough times were ahead. The Engineering Employers’ Federation threatened

to lock out all members of the AEU and other unions concerned in the

strike — a complete lockout on a full national scale. The employer got

permission from the Government to move the Mauretania, with her engines

suspended, to be taken to Cherbourg by tug to have her overhaul

completed.

The full victory which had been just possible escaped the strikers, but

they did get a two-stage advance of 7s. a week, the first win for the

engineers since the big defeat of all trades in 1921–22.

Aircraft Men Reap the Harvest

Aircraft workers in Southampton had wanted to join the strike, but this

would not have helped the marine engineers, who were fighting other

employers — Harland & Wolff and J.1. Thomeycroft. The aircraft men

worked for A.V.Roe, Faireys, and Supermarine. Then, too, the slender

strike fund would have been more heavily drawn on. The aircraft men

pressed their claim in the climate created by the strike, and got an

advance of 15s. 8d. a week, a direct fruit of the marine workers’

action.

Engineering workers in other parts of the country were encouraged by the

Southampton example, initiating small actions, usually in one factory at

a time, to regain a little lost ground and dispel the spirit of defeat.

One weakness of the strike was the failure to persuade the French

workers to declare black the Mauretania; lack of communication, of

international organisation and contact, were largely responsible for

this. That is one lesson. Another comes from consideration of the sort

of men who took part in the strike. Southampton was a Tory stronghold

and, as any strike to be successful must have at least 90 percent

support, many strikers must have been Tories, some Liberals, and many

non-voters. On the strike committee there was no faction which could be

defined as “left-wing” much less a majority, though some were more

radical than others, of course. Most were just good solid, perhaps

rather old-fashioned trade unionists, but they were quick to learn the

changing facts of life.

On the strike committee there was unity of purpose and respect of

others, from right wing to rebel. The Communist Party tried to muscle

in, sending down Pollitt and the rest of its top brass and a cohort of

full-time officials with Moscow-made slogans, “Defend the Soviet Union”,

“Vote Labour”, and the rest of the ragbag, but the strikers had their

own slogans — the aims of the strike. After the strike the C.P. tried to

persuade the strike committee to become the district committee of their

newly-formed Minority Movement. The offer was rejected with scorn.

This unity, mutual respect, and tolerance, a major factor of success,

was never understood by the C.P. but the militants understood the

importance of recognising, as the Prayer Book says, that there are “all

sorts and conditions of men.”

Common sense in organisation and absolute honesty in the collection,

care of, and distribution of money were also ingredients of success. All

this contrasts, as light to murky darkness, with the Communist

sponsoring of strikes in the following years, with their confusion,

sectarianism, and lack of financial frankness, the double-dealing of

their trade union bureaucrats, and the leadership’s eagerness to get

them back to work after about the tenth day.

For the will to win is the greatest single factor in winning a strike.

Fighting for the Nine-hour Day

Published in the May/June 1961 issue of World Labour News

When I last visited my native city of Newcastle, I saw the sports shop

of Stan Seymour, one-time footballer and director of a Cup-winning

Newcastle United. I looked up at the heavy stone walls and recalled that

the shop was a converted dwelling house, the house where my father was

born, the home of my grandfather John Brown, Radical and trade unionist.

Here and in a nearby dwelling he had been visited by Garibaldi. Best of

all, I recalled his part in the famous Nine-Hours Strike.

Journeying along the riverside amid the clanging shipyards, I remembered

the change of working hours which took place at the beginning of 1919,

one stage in a long fight. Before that there had been a nine-and-a-half

hour day and a 53-hour week, but unpaid meal breaks made a working day

of 11 hours. Then we won the 47-hour week, after World War II the

44-hour week, then 42, but even the 53-hour, five-and-a-half day week

had been a great triumph, a stage in the long climb from the depths of

the Industrial Revolution. One of the best chapters of this saga is that

of the “Nine Hours Strike”.

During a great part of the 19^(th) Century, the trade union movement

tried to shorten the intolerably long working day by influencing

politicians to introduce “Short Hours Bills” in Parliament, as well as

by some strike action. There was some limited success through

Parliament, for it was sometimes possible to gain the support of

Conservative politicians against the Liberals. Traditionally the Tories

were “land-owning aristocrats”, the Liberals coal, ship, and factory

owners, believers in “Liberty”, the liberty to work men, women, and

little children to death without State interference.

The limits of this method of obtaining a shorter working day were

clearly seen by 1870 and even before. Philanthropists and politicians

would never agree with workmen on how far the day should be shortened.

Many of the former, including Lord Shaftesbury, were opposed to trade

unionism; the Bills, such as the 10-hours Bill, were obtained on the

plea of the effects of the long hours on women and children — the reason

why mining and textiles figure so largely in the discussions — and

workers were beginning to resent gaining a shorter working day for men

by pleading the case for women. As a union paper declared, “Now the veil

must be lifted and the agitation carried on under its true colours.

Women and children must no longer be made the pretext for securing a

reduction of working hours for men.”[1]

In 1874 the Tory Government introduced, against Liberal opposition, its

shorter hours bill, entitled, “Factories (Health of Women, etc.) Bill”,

relating chiefly to the cotton mills of Lancashire, the women securing a

56-and-a-half hour week. It should be remembered that there was no

half-holiday on Saturday until the latter part of the 19^(th) Century.

Increasingly workers were losing hope in political action and turning

with stronger faith to direct action, especially to reduce the working

day and week. During 1859-60-61, there had been strikes to this end in

the London building trade, to be followed by action in many provincial

towns, gaining for many building workers a shorter working day, without,

of course, any reduction of the weekly wage. The building workers

continued to enjoy a working week shorter than that of factory workers

until recent post-war years, 50 against 53 before 1919, then 44 against

47 until 1947.

In 1866 the engineers of Tyneside debated a district strike for the

nine-hour day, but a slump ended the discussion. In 1870 the demand was

again put forward, but the Central District Committee of the Amalgamated

Society of Engineers, now the AEU [Amalgamated Engineering Union],

cautiously decided against it.

Then, early in 1871, the engineers and shipyard men of nearby Sunderland

took up the issue, decided, prepared, and acted with remarkable speed

and decisiveness. All out on April 1 and no fooling. The employers, who

had been very confident and had the support of the Durham County

authorities, with military force to back them, soon found themselves on

the losing end. After four weeks, a short strike for those days, the

workers were victorious and gained the nine-hour day.

Alarmed at the emulation that must follow such inspiring action, the

engineering employers of North East England met in Newcastle on April 8

to prepare a counter-attack. Headed by Sir W.G. Armstrong, of the

Armstrong Whitworth Company, they obtained the support of engineering

employers throughout the British Isles, who levied themselves a shilling

a head for all men employed by them.

The engineers of Newcastle and Gateshead were for strike action, but

trade strength was low. There were many unions, craft unions, but even

one craft might have several unions in one shop. And even these divided

ranks did not contain all, or even a majority of the workers in the

factories. The Webbs, with access to the well-documented records of the

strike stated that “two out of three of the men in the engineering trade

belonged to no Union whatsoever.”

There was the problem... a strong and wealthy foe, our side poor,

divided by a multitude of unions, and two-thirds of the men

non-unionists. A new, even if temporary, single-purpose organisation

must be created, above the exclusiveness of trade-union brotherhood, a

movement founded on a class, in class conflict.

A Rank and File Movement was formed and named the Nine Hours League. The

League included all crafts and unions and all men, unionist or

non-unionist. It took over, temporarily, the functions of the unions,

without destroying them. Its president was John Burnett, an Alnwick man,

member of the ASE district committee.

The men of Newcastle and Gateshead struck, it was a hard strike, as my

grandmother often told me, for I loved to listen to her stories over a

winter’s fire, with the wind howling down from the Cheviots, or across

the angry North Sea when she later lived near the Scottish Border. I

have since checked the details of these stories with the records and

works of historians. It is remarkable that the tales of actual events

experienced by such old people always seem to stand the test.

The national executives of the unions were lukewarm, but the local men

were full of fight. “The five-month strike... was, in more than one

respect, a notable event in Trade Union annals” wrote the Webbs in their

dry manner. “One of the most memorable strikes on record,” said G.D.H.

Cole. The strikers were mostly non-unionists and unused to organisation.

“Upwards of 8,000 men had struck, whereas only 500 of them belonged to

our society and very few to any other,” said the ASE Abstract Report of

Council Proceedings.[2]

But the League organised them — meetings, processions through the city

streets and to neighbouring towns, demonstrations on the Town Moor,

factory pickets, organisation of relief, everyone seemed busy. Agents of

the League went to distant towns and villages, sometimes walking many

miles, sometimes going to Hull, Leith, and London by coasters for a few

shillings, for the strike funds were guarded with miserly care, “Every

possible penny must go for food.”

Although the majority of workmen could not then read or write, the need

of printed propaganda was understood. There was a minority who had

received a rudimentary education at Church and at “Penny” schools, or

who had taught themselves to read and write. From them came a team of

writers, men who learned to read the hard way and loved their diet of

the “classic novels”, Shakespeare, Tales of the Border, and poetry. This

reading, combined with a notorious Northumberland love of narrative, now

served them well.

John Brown was deputed to seek the aid of the Radical Joseph Cowan,

owner of an excellent local press, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, to the

weekly edition (the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle) of which Kropotkin was a

regular contributor (Kropotkin often stayed with Dr. Spence Watson at

Gateshead). Gripping John Brown’s hand, Cowan promised to open the pages

of his papers to the strikers.

But the Chronicle had little more than a local circulation. The workers’

correspondents aimed further afield, too. The Webbs, usually lofty

towards anything short of a university education, wrote: “The tactical

skill and literary force with which the men’s case was presented

achieved the unprecedented result of securing for their demands the

support of The Times and Spectator.”[3]

Armstrong (Lord) wrote a howling protest to the Times: “We were

amazed... we really felt that, if the League themselves had possessed

the power of inspiring that article, they could scarcely have used words

more calculated to serve their purpose than those in which it is

expressed. The concurrent appearance in the Spectator of an article

exhibiting the same bias adds to our surprise.”[4]

The poor man could never believe that some of the articles were written

by some of his fitters.

The strike lasted for five months, during the first three of which money

came in slowly, afterwards in a flood. The flood of donations from so

many parts of the country heartened the men and dismayed the employers.

Writers then and historians since have attributed the financial success

to the skill and eloquence of the now unknown writers.

Blacklegs were brought in from the extremes of the British Isles, then

hundreds were recruited from Europe. To stop the latter source of

labour, the assistance of the International Workingmen’s Association was

called, with some success. Then the IWMA’s Danish secretary in London,

Kohn, was sent to Europe to complete the job. European members of the

IWMA came to Tyneside and persuaded many blacklegs to return to their

home countries.

Five months gone, the League was growing stronger, the employers

capitulated and granted the nine-hour day, 54-hour week, without

reduction of the weekly wage. Afterwards, instead of six days of nine

hours each, it was agreed to have five of nine-and-a-half hours and one

of six-and-a-half hours, finishing at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

A later struggle knocked off one hour, blowing the factory whistle at 12

o’clock for the week-end.

The victory caused the Tynesiders’ struggle to be emulated throughout

England and in Scotland and Ireland, in other trades, especially

building, too. On the Clyde, shipbuilding workers were offered, instead

of a 60 hour week, 54 hours and a rise in wages. The rise they refused

and forced from the employers a 51 hour week at the old weekly wage,

though in a later depression they were forced to accept a 53 hour week.

From then on not political action but direct action was the method used

by the workers to secure a shorter working day and week — a fight that

is not yet over. The strike ended, the leaders of the struggle went back

to the lathe, the bench, and the shipyard — with one exception. Burnett

became General Secretary of the ASE. The names of the others are unknown

to history. I have the word of one old lady that is how they wanted it

to be.

Trafalgar Square and the Free Speech Fight

Published in the Sept/Oct 1962 issue of World Labour News

“But you have free speech in England. Look how the Government allows you

to use Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park for meetings.” How often we hear

such statements, usually accompanied by a rebukeful suggestion that we

ought to be grateful. The truth is we were never granted such rights.

The means of holding meetings in the streets and public places of

Britain was fought for and torn from the ruling class. Let us take first

the popular and ever-topical case of Trafalgar Square.

The year of 1886 was one of depression and on February 8, Black Monday,

a great crowd of unemployed met to hold a meeting in Trafalgar Square.

The police dispersed them and the men re-formed to march to Hyde Park to

hold their meeting. At their head walked John Burns, later a Socialist

M.P. and Liberal Cabinet minister, until he resigned in protest against

the 1914 war. Burns carried a red flag.

The orderly, quiet procession marched along Pall Mall, but on passing

the Tory Carlton Club they saw the windows crowded with well-fed,

well-drunk, wealthy Tories, who, not content with laughing at the

unfortunate unemployed, shouted sneers and insults at their ragged

clothes, their broken boots, and hungry looks.

The road was being repaired and the crowd seized the opportunity,

pelting the club’s windows with large stones. The Tories’ laughter

vanished with their courage. Yelling for police protection they

retreated to the back of the premises. As police reinforcements dashed

to the spot, and a general struggle began, shop windows in nearby St.

James’ Street and Piccadilly were broken.

Burns and three others arrested were charged with seditious conspiracy,

but the jury refused to convict. The Lord Mayor’s Fund for the relief of

the unemployed, which had slowly crept up to £3,000 and looked like

stopping there, suddenly leapt to £70,000.

The following year, 1887, brought Bloody Sunday on November 13, when

another demonstration was planned in Trafalgar Square. Using the powers

given them by the Trafalgar Square Act of 1844, the Government

prohibited the meeting and procession. As in the earlier revolutionary

struggles of Paris and later St. Petersburg, the State garrisoned the

river bridges with police and infantry, preventing by merciless use of

batons, the South London workers from reaching the Square, many being

injured.

North of the river the processions were to be halted in streets leading

to Trafalgar Square, but some groups got through and one contingent, the

North London, reached the Square in procession and were met by police

and cavalry, the Life Guards. Among the wounded were John Burns and

Cunningham Grahame, a Radical M.P. Both were arrested and suffered six

weeks’ imprisonment.

G.B.Shaw opposed this fight for free speech, but Annie Besant entered

the struggle wholeheartedly. Three months later a free speech

demonstration was batoned by the police and a young worker, Alfred

Linnel, beaten to death. A great procession followed Linnel’s coffin to

the grave, where William Morris gave the funeral oration. Then the vast

crowd stood bareheaded while the Death Chant, written by Morris, was

sung:

They will not learn; they have no ears to harken,

They turn their faces from the eye of fate,

Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken,

But lo! this dead man knocking at the gate.

And the refrain, often repeated in the years that followed:

Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,

But one and all if they would dusk the day.

The fight went on, the Square was won for free speech, but in more

recent times permission has had to be obtained from the Ministry of

Works and only one meeting at a time is allowed.

Hyde Park

The Reform League, a continuation of Chartism demanding democratic

reform of the electoral laws, had planned a mass procession and

demonstration in Hyde Park for the evening of July 23, 1866. On the

afternoon of that day Sir Richard Mayne had notices posted throughout

London, declaring the Park closed from 5 p.m. The organisers decided to

go on to the Park and attempt a meeting there. When the great

procession, with many bands, banners, and wagons arrived at Marble Arch,

the three principal speakers, Edmund Beales, Colonel Dickinson, and

George Brooke, descended from their wagon and asked permission to enter

the Park, the gates of which were guarded by a large force of police.

After a little polite conversation and an adamant refusal, the leaders

turned away and called on the demonstrators to follow them to Trafalgar

Square. The procession — well, some of it — went along Oxford Street and

on to the Square where, after a few brief speeches and thanks to Mr.

Gladstone and others, the meeting ended.

But at the Park — oh boy! This was a Bank Holiday to remember.

In a movement which includes a large middle class, as well as a large

working class following, critical events usually find the middle class

turning to constitutional compromise after many brave words, while there

has often been a large section of the working class which has wanted to

use Direct Action. So it was on that glorious Monday.

As the procession wended its musical way along Oxford Street, the tens

of thousands who had remained, struck at the garrisoned Park in two

places. In Bayswater Road a throng hurled themselves at the massive iron

rails, which were thrown down; at the same time workers in Park Lane

tore down the park railings and the two sections joined forces in a

fight with the police.

The fight died down as the Foot Guards marched in. The workers, seeking

to fraternise, checked the troops, who halted near the gates. Then the

Horse Guards cantered in — and again the crowd cheered. Soon the cavalry

trotted off to another part of the Park and the police were again

attacked.

Now more Foot Guards marched in under orders to shoot “if necessary”.

Then more cavalry, the Life Guards. Many were wounded that day, but the

workers triumphed. Let us turn to a newspaper,[5] at that time Radical

and Republican, for an on-the-spot account.

The people have triumphed, in so far as they have vindicated their right

to speak, resolve, and exhort in Hyde-park. True, the gates were closed

against them, and lo! in twenty minutes after the Park all around was

one vast, gaping gate. The ordinary gates were the only closed part of

the fencing.

A long pull, a strong pull, and a push all together, down went the iron

railings and the stones on which they were fixed in hundreds of yards,

so that in less time than it takes to tell the story, the iron barriers

which excluded the people from Hyde-park were levelled to the ground, or

inclined against trees, for miles.

Then the people poured in hundreds of thousands into the park and then,

under the nose of Sir Richard Mayne, and before the masses of the

bludgeon-brigade and through the scarlet lines of Foot Guards and Life

Guards, with bayonets fixed and sabres drawn, were flanking police and

ready to charge, a meeting was held, a chairman appointed, speeches

made, and resolutions proposed, seconded, and carried.

The Streets

Even more important than these two famous London spots were the market

places and street corners of Britain, where a struggle for free speech

went on for more than 100 years, until about the mid 1920s. Every city

had its meeting place, which was also a big open-air club — the Mound,

Edinburgh; the Bigg Market, Newcastle; the City Hall Square, Leeds, and

a hundred others.

Not content with such places, the radical movement and also some

religious movements, such as the Salvation Army and the Methodists,

struggled for the right to hold public meetings at any street corner

they thought suitable. At the end of last century and the beginning of

this, the free speech fights seemed to come in waves, and seasons, or at

times, city by city. Sometimes a lone agitator or preacher would

champion the cause, often successfully.

When the authorities made a general attack on public meetings, an

impromptu united front would often form and Socialists, Anarchists,

Syndicalists, and Radicals would queue up to be hauled off by the

police. I recall one such incident, told me by our late comrade, George

Cores. Brighton was having a free speech fight and, running out of

speakers, sent a call to London. George went down to Brighton, began a

street meeting and was in a police cell before he had time to sniff the

ozone. With him was a Salvation Army captain, also arrested for speaking

in the streets. After a few hours both were called to the station desk

and told they must appear in court on the following Monday, it then

being Saturday. The Salvationist would be let out on bail, but George

held in custody.

Then came a surprise. “This is unjust,” cried the Salvationist, “if I go

this man should go too.” “It’s none of your business,” said the

inspector, “Get out.” “Not until you let this man go,” was the gallant

reply, “if he stays, so do I.” As accused persons were not provided with

chairs, the captain sat on the floor — surely the grandfather of the

Committee of 100. Dragged to the door he returned. Pleading, threats

were useless and after an hour of rather bewildered and highly emotional

contest, the preacher and the revolutionary left arm in arm — free until

Monday morning.

Free speech came the hard way. It could go the easy way.

[1] Reynolds, July 29, 1866.

[2] June 1, 1870 to December 31, 1872, page 184.

[3] History of Trade Unionism.

[4] Times, 14.9.71.

[5] Reynolds, July 29, 1866.