The History Of Trade Unionism - free ebook by Beatrice Webb

THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM

THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM: BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB (REVISED EDITION, EXTENDED TO 1920). LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE &amp; 30TH STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1920...

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INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1920

The thirty years that have elapsed since 1890, down to which date we brought the first edition of this book, have been momentous in the history of British Trade Unionism. The Trade Union Movement, which then included scarcely 20 per cent of the adult male manual-working wage-earners, now includes over 60 per cent. Its legal and constitutional status, which was then indefinite and precarious, has now been explicitly defined and embodied in precise and absolutely expressed statutes. Its internal o

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The Cotton Operatives

The most notable of these changes is the decline in relative influence of the cotton operatives. It is not that the Unions of Spinners, Weavers and Card-room Operatives have decreased in membership or in accumulated funds. On the contrary, they have in the aggregate during the past thirty years more than doubled their membership; and the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners, with three-quarters of a million pounds belonging to its 25,000 members (exclusive of 26,000 piecers), is,

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The Building Trades

The Building Trades have lost their relative position in the Trade Union world to nearly as great an extent as the cotton operatives. Thirty years ago their representatives stood for 10 per cent of the Trades Union Congress, whereas to-day they probably do not represent 3 per cent of its membership. They have, for a whole generation, supplied no influential leader. The only large society in this section, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, Cabinetmakers, and Joiners (133,000 members), has mor

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Engineering and the Metal Trades

The large and steadily increasing army of operatives in the various processes connected with metals (who are combined in Germany in a single gigantic Metal Workers’ Union) can be noticed here only in its three principal sections, the engineering industry, boilermaking and ship-building, and the production of iron and steel from the ore. Trade Unionism in the engineering industry, though it has, during the past thirty years, greatly increased in aggregate membership, notably among the unskilled a

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The Compositors

The printing trades have remained, during the past thirty years, curiously stationary so far as Trade Unionism, is concerned, the London Society of Compositors, the Typographical Association, the Scottish Typographical Association, and the Dublin Typographical Society having, in the aggregate, increased their membership by three-fifths and steadily increased their rates of pay and strategic strength against their own employers, but commanding little influence in the Trade Union Movement as a who

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Boot and Shoemaking

Among the other constituents of the Trade Union world in which a relative decline in influence is to be noted, is that of the boot and shoemakers. Thirty years ago the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives had achieved a position of great influence in the trade. It had joined with the Employers’ Associations in building up, as described in our Industrial Democracy , an elaborate system of Local Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, united in a National Conference of dignity and influence,

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Women Workers

In no section of the industrial community has the advance of Trade Unionism during the last thirty years been more marked than among the women workers. For the first half of this period, indeed—though the aggregate women membership of Trade Unions approximately doubled—this meant only a rise from about 100,000 in 1890 to about 200,000 in 1907, mostly in the textile industries; and the number of women Trade Unionists outside those industries was in the latter year still under 30,000. But the long

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The General Workers

In 1888 the leaders of the skilled craftsmen and better-paid workmen were inclined to believe that effective or durable Trade Unionism among the general labourers and unskilled or nondescript workmen was as impracticable as it had hitherto proved to be among the mass of women wage-earners. The outburst of Trade Unionism among the dockers and gasworkers in 1888-89 was commonly expected to be as transient as analogous movements had been in 1834 and 1871. In 1920 we find the organisations of this d

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The “Black-Coated Proletariat”

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 i

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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.

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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

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Amalgamations and Federations

Whilst the numerical strength and industrial and political influence of the several Trade Unions have thus steadily increased during the past thirty years, it is less easy to characterise the changes in the relations of Trade Unions with each other. The multiplicity of separate organisations in which the six or seven million Trade Unionists are grouped, and the complication and diversity of the relations among the various societies, continue to-day, as they did thirty years ago, to baffle classi

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The General Federation of Trade Unions

In 1899, arising out of the losses caused by the costly engineering dispute of 1897-98, the Trades Union Congress established a General Federation of Trade Unions, largely at the instance of Robert Knight, the able secretary of the Boilermakers, designed exclusively as a mutual reinsurance agency against the heavy financial burden to which, in the form of Strike Pay, or Dispute or Contingent Benefit, labour disputes subject every active trade society. [633] By means of a small contribution from

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Trades Councils

Of another form of loose federation of the branches of all the Trade Unions within a given area we have already described the origin and the development in the local Trades Councils. These have gone on increasing in number, much more than in strength, until in 1920 we estimate that more than 500 are in existence, with an aggregate affiliated membership running into several millions of Trade Unionists. The character of their active membership, their functions, and their proceedings have remained

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The Trades Union Congress

But the most extensive federation of the Trade Union world is to-day, as it has always been, the Trades Union Congress, which could count in September 1919 an affiliated membership of more than five and a quarter millions, a number never paralleled in this or any other country. We have described in previous chapters the origin and development of this federal body, its uses in drawing together the scattered Trade Union forces, and its failure either to help in the solution of the problems of indu

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The Officers of the Trade Union Movement

If we survey the growth of the British Trade Union Movement during the past thirty years, what is conspicuous is that, whilst the Movement has marvellously increased in mass and momentum, it has been marked on the whole by inadequacy of leadership alike within each Union and in the Movement itself, and by a lack of that unity and persistency of purpose which wise leadership alone can give. Hence, in our opinion, the organised workers, whilst steadily advancing, have not secured anything like the

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Actions for Damages

The attempt to suppress Trade Unionism by the criminal law was practically abandoned. [653] But officers of Trade Unions found themselves involved in civil actions, in which the employers sued them for damages caused by Trade Union activity which the judges held to be, although not criminal, nevertheless wrongful. What could no longer be punished by imprisonment with hard labour might at any rate be penalised by heavy damages and costs, for which the Trade Unionist’s home could be sold up. The T

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The Taff Vale Case

All this development of the Law of Conspiracy and the Law of Torts, though it went far to render nugatory the intention of the Legislature in 1871-76 to make lawful a deliberately concerted strike, left unchallenged the position of the Trade Union itself as immune from legal proceedings against its corporate funds, an anomalous position which everybody understood to have been conceded by the Acts of 1871-76. In 1901, after thirty years of unquestioned immunity, the judges decided, to the almost

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The Trade Disputes Act

The first claim of the Labour Party was for the statutory reversal of the Taff Vale judgement, which every one now admitted to be necessary. The question was what should be done. There were, substantially, only two alternatives. One was that, in view of the difficulty of effectually maintaining it against legal ingenuity, the Trade Unions should forgo their position of being outside the law, and should claim, instead, full rights, not only of citizenship, but actually of being duly authorised co

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The Osborne Judgement

This time the legal assault on Trade Unionism took a new form. The result of the dramatic victory of the Trade Disputes Act, and of the activity of the Labour members in the House of Commons, was considerably to increase the influence of the Labour Party in the country, where preparations were made for contesting any number of constituencies irrespective of the convenience of the Liberal and Conservative parties. The railway companies, in particular, found the presence in Parliament of the secre

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The Development of English Law

What was the explanation of the view of the Trade Union constitution that the judges took? The English Courts of Justice, it must be remembered, have peculiar rules of their own for the construction of statutes. When the plain man wants to know what a document means, he seeks every available explanation of the intention of the author. When the historian inquires the purpose and intention of an Act of Parliament, he considers all the contemporary evidence as to the minds of those concerned. The C

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The Miscarriage of Justice

We come now to the second cardinal feature of the decision of the Six Judges in 1909, in which they showed both prejudice and ignorance. Having found that the Trade Unions were, in fact, corporate entities, and that they had been, in various clumsy ways, dealt with by Parliament very much as if they were legally corporate entities—though Parliament had advisedly abstained from incorporating them, and had, indeed, always referred to them as being what in fact they were, namely already existing an

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The Trade Union Act of 1913

It is an instance of the failure of both the governing class and the party politicians to appreciate the workman’s standpoint, or to understand the temper of the Trade Union world, that this crippling judgement remained for nearly four years unreversed. The Liberal and Conservative Parties were, during 1910 and 1911, quarrelling about the Budget and the exact powers to be exercised by the House of Lords; and two successive General Elections were fought without bringing the Trade Unions any redre

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The Rise in Status of Trade Unionism

So far we have described only the changes in the legal status of the Trade Unions and the consequent increase in their freedom of action and in their influence, alike in the industrial and political sphere. This advance in legal status has been accompanied by a still more revolutionary transformation of the social and political standing of the official representatives of the Trade Union world—a transformation which has been immensely accelerated by the Great War. We may, in fact, not unfairly sa

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British Trade Unionism and the War

Though theoretically internationalist in sympathy, and predominantly opposed to “militarism” at home as well as abroad, British Trade Unionism, when war was declared, took a decided line. [678] From first to last the whole strength of the Movement—in spite of the pacifist faith of a relatively small minority, which included the most fervent and eloquent of the Labour members and was supported by the energetic propaganda of the fraction of the Trade Unionists who were also members of the Socialis

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The Revolution in Thought

The new ideas which are to-day taking root in the Trade Union world centre round the aspiration of the organisations of manual workers to take part—some would urge the predominant part, a few might say the sole part—in the control and direction of the industries in which they gain their livelihood. Such a claim was made, as we have described in the third chapter of this work, in its most extreme form, by the revolutionary Trade Unionism of 1830-34; and it lingered on in the minds of the Chartist

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The Increased Reliance on Direct Action

The acceptance, during the last decade, by Parliament, by the Executive Government, and by public opinion, of the Trade Union organisation as part of the machinery of government in all matters concerning the life and labour of the manual working class, has been coincident, some would say paradoxically coincident, with an increased reliance on the strike, commonly known as the method of Direct Action, and with an enlargement of the purposes for which this method is used by Trade Unionists. There

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The Demand for the Elimination of the Capitalist Profit-maker

It is interesting to note that this widening enlargement of the aspirations and purposes of Trade Unionism has been accompanied, not by any decline, but by an actual renewal of the faith in Communal Socialism, towards which we described the Trade Union Movement as tending in 1889-94. For the Trade Unionist objects, more strongly than ever, to any financial partnership with the capitalist employers, or with the shareholders, in any industry or service, on the sufficient ground that any such shari

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APPENDIX I

ON THE ASSUMED CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TRADE UNIONS AND THE GILDS IN DUBLIN In Dublin the Trade Union descent from the Gilds is embodied in the printed documents of the Unions themselves, and is commonly assumed to be confirmed by their possession of the Gild charters. The Trade Union banners not only, in many cases, bear the same arms as the old Gilds, but often also the date of their incorporation. Thus, the old society of “regular” carpenters (now a branch of the Amalgamated) claims to date fr

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APPENDIX II

RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE GRAND NATIONAL CONSOLIDATED TRADES UNION OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, INSTITUTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE MORE EFFECTUALLY ENABLING THE WORKING CLASSES TO SECURE, PROTECT, AND ESTABLISH THE RIGHTS OF INDUSTRY (1834). (Goldsmiths’ Library, University of London.) I. Each Trade in this Consolidated Union shall have its Grand Lodge in that town or city most eligible for it; such Grand Lodge to be governed internally by a Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, and Grand Secret

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APPENDIX III

SLIDING SCALES The Sliding Scale, an arrangement by which it is agreed in advance that wages shall vary in a definite relation to changes in the market price of the product, appears to have been familiar to the iron trade for a couple of generations. “About fifty years ago Mr. G. B. Thorneycroft, of Wolverhampton, head of a well-known firm of iron-masters, suggested to certain other houses that wages should fluctuate with the price of ‘marked bars’—these words indicating a quality of iron that t

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APPENDIX IV

THE SUMMONS TO THE FIRST TRADE UNION CONGRESS No copy of the invitation to the first Trade Union Congress has been preserved, either in the archives of the Congress, the Manchester Trades Council, or any other organisation known to us. Fortunately, it was printed in the Ironworkers’ Journal for May 1868. But of this only one file now exists, and as the summons is of some historical interest we reprint it for convenience of reference. “ Manchester , April 16, 1868 . “ Sir —You are requested to la

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APPENDIX V

DISTRIBUTION OF TRADE UNIONISTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM We endeavoured in 1893-94 to analyse the membership of all the Trade Unions of which we could obtain particulars, in such a way as to show the number and percentage to population in each part of the United Kingdom. The following table gives the local distribution of 1,507,026 Trade Unionists in 1892. The distribution was, in most cases, made by branches, special estimates being prepared for us in a few instances by the officers of the Unions

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APPENDIX VI

THE STATISTICAL PROGRESS OF TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP It is unfortunately impossible to present any complete statistics of Trade Union membership at different periods. Until the appointment, in 1886, of John Burnett as Labour Correspondent to the Board of Trade, no attempt was made to collect any statistics of the movement; and the old Unions seldom possess a complete series of their own archives. The Friendly Society of Ironfounders, it is true, has exact figures since its establishment in 1809. N

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APPENDIX VII

PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO TRADE UNIONS In the first edition of this book we gave a list, 45 pages long, of books, pamphlets, reports, and other documents bearing on the workmen’s combinations. In Industrial Democracy , 1897, we gave a supplementary list, 23 pages long. We do not reproduce these lists, to which the student can always refer; nor have we attempted to bring them down to date. The really useful material for Trade Union study is to be found in the publications of the Trade Unions thems

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APPENDIX VIII

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TRADE UNIONISM TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDUSTRY In our work on Industrial Democracy , published in 1897, we formulated the following tentative conclusions with regard to the participation of the workmen’s organisations in industrial management, and the relation of Trade Unionism to political Democracy: “This survey of the changes required in Trade Union policy leads us straight to a conclusion as to the part which Trade Unionism will be expected to play in the management of the

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THE END

Printed in Great Britain by R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited , Edinburgh . Those who read the History of Trade Unionism will want to know how far the Trade Union, as an industrial device, is an economic success—how its operations affect the National Being—whether it is a cause of loss to the employers—what effect it has on prices. These questions, and many more, are explicitly answered in...

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INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

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PROBLEMS OF MODERN INDUSTRY.

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THE WORKS MANAGER TO-DAY.

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THE PUBLIC ORGANISATION OF THE LABOUR MARKET.

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THE BREAK-UP OF THE POOR LAW.

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THE PREVENTION OF DESTITUTION.

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THE PARISH AND THE COUNTY.

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THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH.

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THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN.

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SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND.

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HOW TO PAY FOR THE WAR.

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TOWARD SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?

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MEN’S AND WOMEN’S WAGES: SHOULD THEY BE EQUAL?

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GREAT BRITAIN AFTER THE WAR.

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THE RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS.

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