The only union to oppose the war was the newly established Building Workers Industrial Union, but its voice was quickly stifled. Disenchanted militants who led a breakaway from existing unions had set up the union. This splitting tactic, which was tragically repeated in future years by impatient sections, simply played into the hands of the right-wing trade union leaders.
“It had by its foundation”, Cole and Postgate correctly explained, “merely drained off out of every union the rebel members, leaving the reactionary officials in complete control… The tactic of dual unionism, of founding a rival true-red union, had led to utter disaster, and the lesson was remembered in later years.”[5]
When a pacifist told Lenin, who was in exile in Switzerland, that war was “terrible”, he replied, “Yes, terribly profitable.” The British Daily Telegraph agreed: “This war provides our businessmen with such an opportunity as has never come their way before…”[6] Lord Buckmaster noted that the war had produced “the most amazing profits that this country has ever witnessed.” He estimated that they were making more than £4 billion in profits compared to the pre-war period. As expected, unscrupulous capitalists took advantage of the war restrictions on labour to boost their excessive profits. A “munitions levy” imposed in 1916 to check excess profits was abolished within a year.
As the battlefields were marked out and the blood of young soldiers soaked the soil, an incredible scene took place on the morning of Christmas Day 1914. The fighting stopped and the singing of carols could be heard on both sides of the divide. As far as the eye could see, soldiers left their trenches and entered “no man’s land”; they then greeted one another, exchanging tobacco and addresses. One young soldier relates in the television documentary series, The Great War, how they began to call each other “comrade” and discuss the war. He was soon astonished to find that the German soldiers, as well as they, were fighting for “freedom” with God at their side. The whole episode had a profound impact on him and the tens of thousands of soldiers who fraternised with one another.
As the war wore on, opposition to it grew amongst the British troops. In particular, there was a growing resentment against the general staff and their increasing incompetence. Songs were composed by anonymous soldiers that served to capture the popular anti-war imagination:
I want ter go home,
I want ter go home,
I won’t go back ter the trenches no more,
Where the Jack Johnson Browns an’ the cannons they roar,
Take us over the sea,
Where Gerry he can’t get at me,
Oh, Ma, I’m too young ter die,
I want ter go home.
On the home front, those bosses involved on war contracts pressed the unions hard for the relaxation of trade practices and restrictions. The government pushed for big increases in production in the engineering and shipbuilding industries, supplying armaments and munitions. In March 1915, the “Shells and Fuses Agreement” was made between employers and unions that allowed “dilution” of labour, the replacement of skilled labour by unskilled labour. In the words of the Daily Herald, “the trade union lamb has lain down with the capitalist lion”. Unfortunately, the lion does not lie down with the lamb, but consumes it. Whereas the union leaders signed away these rights “in the national interest” without a second thought, the workers on the shop floor increasingly took a different view in defence of their class interests.
Wartime conditions brought in their wake substantial increases in the cost of living and a steep jump in unemployment. In February 1915, rising discontent produced an explosion in the class struggle on Clydeside. Some 10,000 engineering workers, against the instructions of the union officialdom, struck for a pay rise to compensate for rising food prices and increased rents. The leadership of the Clyde strike fell to the Central Labour Withholding Committee, later renamed the Clyde Workers’ Committee (CWC), under the leadership of Willie Gallacher. Despite opposition from government and employers, the strikers secured their demands. The Daily Herald, which had swung against the war, reported on 20 March: “Despite insults and threats, despite official pressure, the Clyde men have kept the flag of revolutionary trade unionism flying and that in itself is something.” In parallel, a rent strike led by women in Glasgow also ended in a victory and a reduction in rents.
The determined fight against the war, together with his repeated imprisonment, made John MacLean a world-renowned figure for the first time. Along with James Connolly, MacLean was the finest Marxist propagandist ever produced by the British workers’ movement. He sacrificed everything for the Cause, including his health. Leon Trotsky, in the Russian journal Nashe slovo wrote “in Scotland itself coalminers are rallying round the red banner raised by John MacLean and his comrades.”
Lenin wrote often about MacLean, always linking his name with Karl Liebknecht. His most important assessment was made just prior to the October Revolution:
The world working-class revolution was first begun with engagements by isolated combatants representing with unequalled courage all the honest elements of official ‘socialism’ – a socialism rotten to the core, which is in reality nothing but social chauvinism. Liebknecht in Germany, Adler in Austria, MacLean in England; such are the best known of these isolated heroes who assumed the heavy task of precursors of the revolution.
After the Revolution, MacLean was appointed Bolshevik Consul in Britain. His heroic role was in marked contrast to that of the Labour and trade union leaders.
In an article written just before his death, entitled Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, Trotsky wrote that in the period of capitalist decline there is an organic tendency for the trade union apparatus to fuse with the state machine. This tendency would periodically break down under the pressure of the masses, but it was always present. However, in the First World War, with the working class disorientated and bewildered, this phenomenon reached new heights. Trade union leaders and officials not only supported the war but also sat on innumerable government and joint industrial councils to promote the war effort. Ernest Bevin, the dockers’ leader, was a member of dozens of such government committees. The trade union apparatus became totally embroiled in the social machinery of the state. The Clydeside strike revealed this collusion in practice when the strikers were faced with the combined opposition of employers, government and the union bureaucracy. All the unions, except for the mineworkers, signed a new agreement – the Treasury Agreement – that effectively introduced for the first time industrial conscription into Britain.
By May 1915, Asquith established a Coalition government, which drew into office the Labour leader Arthur Henderson and two other Labour MPs. This was important in fostering the idea of national unity. New draconian laws were then introduced, granting enormous powers to the government over the munitions industry, authorising compulsory arbitration of disputes and the suspension of trade practices. Munitions workers were not allowed to leave their jobs without a “Leaving Certificate”. Such measures introduced the virtual militarisation of labour, allowing the complete subordination of the working class to the war machine.
However, whilst the tops of the Labour movement were prepared to carry out the dictates of the ruling class, it proved another matter altogether for the workers on the shop floor. Within a few days of the introduction of the Munitions Act, miners in South Wales rejected the wage offer made by the government’s arbitration committee. In response, Lloyd George on behalf of the government declared that all strikes were now illegal. Within two days of this announcement, 200,000 miners had struck work, forcing the government to beat a hasty retreat and to concede to most of their demands.
In December 1915, further industrial turmoil on Clydeside forced the fox-like Lloyd George and the ever-pliable Arthur Henderson to intervene personally and meet the shop stewards of the Clyde Workers’ Committee (CWC). However, their presence served simply to antagonise the workers and, to their astonishment, they were repeatedly shouted down at meetings. As sweet-talk proved ineffective, the government turned to more repressive measures against the workers. In early 1916, the CWC newspaper was banned, and a number of unofficial strike leaders arrested and imprisoned. Six leading shop stewards were later arrested and deported from Glasgow, on pain of imprisonment if they returned. Among those detained by the authorities was John MacLean, who was subsequently sentenced to three years imprisonment for sedition. As a result of this repression, the industrial storm centre shifted from the Clyde to the engineering factories of Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Astonishingly, by July 1916, over 1,000 workers nationally had been placed under arrest for illegal strike activities under the Munitions Act. Even all the government’s war measures could not suppress the class struggle.