These upper echelons of the working class saw their interests reflected in the “new model unions”, to use the phrase of Sidney and Beatrice Webb. These unions were epitomised by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), an amalgamation of a number of local craft societies, established in January 1851. The ASE was founded by William Newton and William Allan, and became the prototype of new model unionism, setting a new standard of stability with its high contributions and benefits, centralisation of control, and class collaborationist policy. In effect, they adopted a combination of trade union and Friendly Society functions, mostly the latter, which marked a clear break from the earlier “schools of war”.
With this new-found stability and resources came a professional apparatus and functionaries. Their high union dues allowed them to pay for a firm centralised organisation run by full-time officials. While this constituted a colossal advance in terms of organisation, these officials tended to be of a very moderate disposition. Unlike the working-class giants, such as Owen, Penderyn or Docherty, a different type of individual rose to prominence in the union movement. They had a different character that reflected, and was more suited, to the changed times. A layer of conservative-minded officials and opportunist negotiators, concerned increasingly with day-to-day issues and piecemeal reforms, took charge of the new unions. In contrast to the all-embracing unions of the 1830s, their outlook and policies were fundamentally different, the forerunners of present-day “New Realism” and class collaboration.
“We believe”, stated William Allan to a Royal Commission, “all strikes are a complete waste of money, not only in relation to the workers, but also to the employers.” How little the right wing philosophy has changed! Such language could easily have come from the lips of Sir Ken Jackson or Eric Hammond. Ever keen to condemn militant action and industrial confrontation, these new model union leaders sought close co-operation with the employers. They were content to simply ask for no more than a “fair share” from the bosses’ expanding profits. As opposed to strikes and the class struggle, they favoured arbitration and consensus. They increasingly handled a series of “friendly benefits”, such as unemployment, sickness, accident and death allowances. On the trade union front, to protect their sectional membership, they attempted to restrict the supply of labour into the trades. Meanwhile, the mass of unskilled workers was simply left to the mercy of the employers, as they were regarded with typical craft snobbery as “beyond the pale” of trade unionism and organisation.
The respectable Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, eager to promote arbitration and conciliation, urged its members to “become respectful and respected.” The Flint Glass-Makers’ Magazine told its readers to “get intelligence instead of alcohol – it is sweeter and more lasting.” The virtues that the unions now extolled were prudence, temperance, enlightenment and respectability. Other publications put the same arguments, but more crudely. As a verse in Songs For English Workmen To Sing, published in 1867 illustrates:
Work, boys, work and be contented
So long as you’ve enough to buy a meal;
The man, you may rely,
Will be wealthy by and by
If he’ll only put his shoulders to the wheel.
The respectable leadership of these “model” unions was known as “the Junta”. These included a number of general secretaries such as William Allan (Engineers), Robert Applegarth (Carpenters and Joiners), Daniel Guile (Ironfounders), Edwin Coulson (Bricklayers) and George Odger (Ladies’ Shoemakers). They regarded themselves as administrators rather than trade union agitators, and, for the first time, took on the social character of a trade union bureaucracy. In this light, the employers used a different, subtler approach to ensnare them in a “common bond” between labour and capital. They were cultivated and groomed by the capitalist Establishment and made to feel very important and respectable. Of course, these trade union leaders were willing partners in this charade. “The chairmen and secretaries of trade unions and political workingmen’s societies, as well as other well-known labour spokesmen who might be expected to be influential in their class, had overnight become important people”, noted Engels. “They were visited by Members of Parliament, by Lords and other well-born rabble, and sympathetic enquiry was suddenly made into the wishes and needs of the working class.”[2]
Despite the efforts and intentions of their “moderate” leaders, the new model unions could not abolish the class struggle or prevent the growth of strikes. After all, strikes are caused not by agitators, but by social conditions. Within a year of the founding of the ASE, the union was faced by a series of lockouts in its chief strongholds of London and Lancashire over the introduction of shorter working hours (part of the Nine Hours Movement). The employers accused the Society of attempting to “interfere with management” by placing a ban on overtime and changing the forms of piecework prevalent in the engineering industry. However, union resistance to the lockout was defeated and the engineers were forced back to work. In the process, many had to sign the notorious “Document” renouncing trade union membership.
Although the employers succeeded in defeating the ASE in this struggle for shorter hours, the union was soon able to recover its strength. Under the impact of the employers’ attacks, membership had fallen from 11,000 to 9,000, and its funds had sunk to £5,000. Yet within three years, the ASE was able to turn the situation around and its membership emerged much stronger, growing to 12,500, while its funds grew to a considerable £35,000. The success of the union stemmed largely from greater resources and more permanent structure, which allowed it to sink deeper roots into sections of skilled workers. During the 1850s, the ASE won a number of recognition deals and developed a formidable national presence and organisation.
By far the biggest industrial struggle since the “Plug Riots” of 1842 was the Preston lockout. It affected both spinners and weavers and was part of a general struggle that extended over a considerable part of the cotton industry. The unions had been seeking a restoration in wages cut in the depression of 1847. The employers resorted to a general lockout, refusing to re-employ workers unless they agreed to sign the “Document”. They also used the full weight of the law against the union leaders, which, although subsequently dropped, did considerable damage in undermining and eventually breaking the strike.
By 1859-60, agitation for a shorter working week was becoming widespread. After a successful London building workers’ strike that won shorter hours, the struggle began to spread. The Nine Hours movement, as it was called, affected engineering works, cotton mills and coalmines, where the working week was sixty hours on a normal ten-and-a-half hour day. Despite their weak leadership, events were to demonstrate the organisational strength of these new model unions, bolstered by the financial muscle of a relatively stable affluent membership. Beginning in the North-East, a series of battles in engineering in the early 1870s, managed to secure a nine-hour day, which intensified the movement for shorter working hours elsewhere.
Working class confidence was on the rise. In the mid-Sixties, there was growing pressure for the extension of the electoral franchise. In scores of industrial towns huge demonstrations were held demanding the vote. In London there were massive gatherings at Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park. Working class pressure began to build up on the government from different quarters – from heightened Reform agitation and the revival of trade unionism to the spectre of the First International – all of which served to convince the Tories that they were on the verge of some revolutionary upheaval. It was to avoid such rebellious trouble that the Tory Prime Minister Disraeli pushed through the 1867 Reform Act, giving the vote to urban male workers who paid rates, thus doubling the size of the electorate. As a matter of course, women were excluded. Yet the property qualification still excluded the vast majority of the working class. These concessions, however, did not sit well with the bourgeoisie and aroused the gloomiest forebodings in sections of the ruling class. For instance, Walter Bagehot, the famous nineteenth century constitutionalist, argued that the “ignorant masses” did not understand politics and could never be relied upon to exercise the vote in the correct manner. “What I fear,” wrote Bagehot in his English Constitution, “is that both our political parties will bid for the support of the working man; that both of them will promise to do as he likes…” He predicted that this measure would all end in tears or far worse.
In 1867 Parliament had established a Royal Commission on trade unions, using some incidents of “rattening” (terrorising blacklegs) in Sheffield as a pretext for the inquiry. At this time, there was no legal protection for trade union funds and strikers could still be imprisoned under the law for “conspiracy” and “intimidation”. Eager to force through some concessions from the government, the “Junta” established a Conference of Amalgamated Trades to influence the Royal Commission. This pressure had some partial success as Whigs and Tories now began to vie for working class electoral support. After the publication of the Commission’s findings, new legislation was introduced that gave unions some minor concessions. However, even under these “enlightened” laws, a worker was still liable to imprisonment for “aggravated” breach of contract. In such cases, discretion was left to the courts, while the employers, if found guilty, only faced limited damages. Picketing was still subject to severe restrictions and if transgressed met with tough penalties. It was, as always, class legislation, completely biased towards the employing class.
In the spring of 1871, to the horror of the European ruling classes, revolution had broken out in Paris, this time under the leadership of the working class. The revolutionary masses of the French capital seized control and proclaimed “La Commune”, and what was to become the first workers’ state in history. The old French capitalist state apparatus had collapsed and a new revolutionary state founded in its place. This revolutionary democracy was based upon the election of all deputies, with the immediate right of recall, where the functions of executive and legislative were combined. In order to eliminate careerism and privilege, these deputies received only workers’ wages. Marx immediately rallied to the defence of the Commune, hailing the heroic Parisian masses who “stormed heaven” in search of their own emancipation. “History has no such example of a like greatness”, stated Marx.
The French ruling class, which fled Paris, immediately sought refuge and help from the German general staff, who were besieging the capital. There they established a common cause – French and German rulers – to drown the revolutionary Commune in cold blood. In the end, after the fall of Paris, the armies of counter-revolution murdered 20,000 Communards in the streets and a further 3,000 perished in the dungeons of Paris. The military tribunals lasted until January 1875, and had carried out 13,700 sentences, condemning men, women and children to prison and exile.
“The laws of war! They are mild and Christian compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which the Versailles troops have been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up prisoners, women, and children during the last six days”, stated the London Times on 29 May. “So far as we can recollect there has been nothing like it in history…”[3]
However, despite the savagery of defeat, these titanic events proved an inspiration to all workers who sought to keep the flames of revolution alive. “Working men’s Paris, with its Commune”, predicted Marx in his Civil War in France, “will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class.”
Following the Paris Commune, the astute Benjamin Disraeli granted reforms, despite divisions in the ruling class, to avoid any such social explosion in Britain. While Paris was ablaze, it was again a question of timely reforms from above to prevent revolution from below. With the extension of the franchise in 1867, further government concessions were made towards the trade unions in 1871, this time improving their financial status – an act that greatly impressed the upwardly mobile trade union leaders of the day. But as always, the concessions were limited and the legal restrictions on the right to strike were still retained. It took a further five years of intense working-class pressure to force the government to grudgingly eradicate these impositions.