Penalties for defying the Combination Acts not only included imprisonment and hard labour, but also public floggings and even deportation. The compositors on The Times newspaper for instance, were prosecuted for organising a trade union in 1810. In this case, they were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment, with terms varying from nine months to two years. Sir John Sylvester – “Bloody Black Jack” – in sentencing the compositors denounced them for “a most wicked conspiracy” to injure “the very employers who gave you bread”! No doubt, Rupert Murdoch, today’s owner of The Times, who sacked 6,000 trade unionists, would agree whole-heartedly with these early sentiments.
The employers boasted of the success of the Combination Acts in keeping the working class in submission. On 14 August 1818, Henry Hobhouse wrote a note to Major-General Sir John Byng:
…Matters have certainly been better managed at Stockport than at Manchester. The masters have been more firm, and the convictions under the Combination Act have done great service. The doctrine I have inculcated is that the first object is to show to the workmen that the law is strong enough, if it be but properly enforced, but this principle has not been acted upon in Manchester where the manufacturer seems to rely more on your sword than on any other weapon…[12]
This reign of state terror unleashed by the ruling class proved to be the midwife of revolutionary trade unionism. Driven underground, these trade unions became conspiratorial bodies that tightly bound their members together through secret oaths and initiation ceremonies. The Society of Ironfounders, established in 1810, met under the cover of darkness on the moors in the Midlands area. Iron discipline was enforced within the organisation in order to keep spies and agent provocateurs out of its ranks. The London tailors had all but a military system. “Their orders come from the Executive and are always obeyed,” stated a contemporary.
The Luddite unrest of 1811 and 1812 – named after the mythical “General Ned Ludd”, in whose name workers desperately turned to machine-breaking – arose from starvation wages and intolerable conditions. The Luddites are portrayed today by historians in the most unsympathetic light as “reactionary forces” desperate to turn back the tide of progress. But under conditions of rampant industrialisation, forcing the workers and their families deeper into destitution, the Luddite struggle was a heroic rearguard battle against those forces that threatened their very existence. The Luddites were fearless class fighters, prepared to risk the hangman’s rope, as they fought with their masters. They hit them where it hurt most – by destroying their machines and property. Their methods were simple and direct, and reflected the primitive stage of the class struggle. But they could not win, as it was not a question of the destruction of the means of production, but of their ownership and control. Today the working class does not seek to destroy machines or capital, but seeks to expropriate them in the interests of all. In fact, it is the capitalists who are the modern-day Luddites, as it is they who close down factories at the drop of a hat, throwing millions onto the scrap heap.
In Yorkshire, the Luddite “croppers” issued a bloodcurdling public appeal urging revolutionary action as on the Continent:
Generous countrymen. You are requested to come forward with arms and help the Redressers to redress their Wrongs and shake off the hateful Yoke of a Silly Old Man George III, and his Son more silly and their Rogueish Ministers, all Nobles and Tyrants must be brought down. Come let us follow the Noble Example of the brave Citizens of Paris who in sight of 30,000 Tyrant Redcoats brought a Tyrant to the Ground…[13]
Such language sent shivers down the spines of the ruling oligarchy. A frightened Parliament rushed through a law making frame-breaking (already punishable by fourteen years’ transportation) a capital offence. The inevitable result was a further spate of oath taking by workers determined to maintain their organisations in face of merciless repression. According to one Barnsley Luddite, Thomas Broughton, who turned traitor, their oaths included an undertaking:
I do swear that I will punish by death any traitor or traitors should there any arise up amongst us I will pursue with unceasing vengeance, should he fly to the verge of Statude. I will be just true sober and faithful in all my dealings with all my Brothers So help GOD to keep this my Oath Invoilated Amen.[14]
The harsh methods employed by union activists simply reflected the dangerous world in which they operated. In Cheshire, the Commission sentenced fourteen men to death for Luddism. In Yorkshire, six men were given seven years’ transportation for administering illegal oaths. On another occasion seventeen others were hanged and one of their number transported for life. In Lancashire, four persons (including a fifty-four year old woman) were sentenced to death for forcing dealers to lower their prices. Again, fifteen men and boys were sentenced to seven years transportation for accepting or administering oaths. Three men and a boy of sixteen were sentenced to death for burning a mill. The boy, Abraham Charlson, who appeared young for his age, when brought to the scaffold “called on his mother for help, thinking she had the power to save him.”[15] The list of these early heroes and martyrs is indeed a long one.
The consequences of being discovered by the state were so severe, that the early trade unionists were forced to resort to exceptional methods. Secrecy was essential, and in certain unions only the secretary or treasurer knew the names of its members. Thus, if one part of the organisation was discovered or betrayed, other parts remained intact. Oath taking was widespread in such circles. Their morality was a class morality based upon solidarity and self-defence. In Coventry, the Weavers’ Aggregate Committee punished those who broke rules or opposed the union by tying the offender to an ass, face to tail, and parading him publicly through the streets, so that they were “exposed to the ridicule and violence of the mob.” The coal miners of the North-East of England employed the method of “bothering”, which was “so named because the members of the union bound themselves by a most solemn oath to obey the orders of the brotherhood, under the penalty of being stabbed through the heart or of having their bowels ripped up.”[16]
In the early nineteenth century, with the spread of initiation ceremonies and secret oaths, “inside” and “outside” tylers, or doorkeepers, would stand guard at the entrance of illegal trade union meetings often held in inns, peering through a spy-hole, usually with a pistol at the ready. The Wool Combers’ Union described the function of tyler as the person “who keeps guard on the outside of the room”, with another tyler guarding the inside. Once the outside tyler knocks the door, he is asked, “Who comes here to disturb the peace and harmony of this our most worthy and honourable order?”[17] He then informs the union meeting and asks the President for permission to allow the admittance of the new member. The position of “tyler” still exists today in a number of unions and Labour organisations, a relic from their illegal past. Union branches were also known as Lodges, owing something to freemasonry and old guild traditions. Even today, branches of the National Union of Mineworkers are called lodges. In the case of printers and journalists, the local branch organisation is called a Chapel, with local officials known as the Father or Mother of the Chapel, again a relic of illegal organisation.
Colliers and building workers were seen entering inns where “they make a noise as if they were at a military drill, and … forty or fifty pistol shots are commonly fired off in one night. A pistol is fired over every man’s head immediately on his taking the oath…”[18]
-
Quoted by Hammonds, The Skilled Labourer, p.176, London 1995
-
British Working Class Movements, Selected Documents 1789-1875, ed. Cole and Filson, London 1967, p.103
-
Quoted by Morton & Tate, The British Labour Movement, London 1979, p.37
-
Quoted in Thompson, op. cit, p. 633
-
Cole & Postgate, op. cit, p.184, London 1938
-
Webbs, History of Trade Unionism, p. 90
-
Cole and Filson, op. cit, p.277