O ye rich men hear and tremble; for with words the sound is rife,
Once for you and death we laboured; changed henceforward is strife,
We are men and we shall battle for the world of men and life
And our host is marching on …– William Morris, The Song of the Workers
The decade of the 1880s proved to be a further watershed in the history of British trade unionism. As explained, the new situation in which the working class found itself arose from the changed international position of British capitalism. From having a monopoly on the world market, due to her early industrialisation and maritime supremacy, she now faced intense competition from Germany and the USA, which were now industrialising their economies at an unprecedented rate. Taking the example of steel production, a key index of industrial power, German steel output rose from about 300,000 tons a year in the early 1870s to over six million tons in 1900. On the other hand, Britain’s output of steel at the turn of the century was less than five million tons. With the close of the Victorian Age, the “British Century” of unbridled power was unceremoniously coming to an end.
Britain, nevertheless, still retained an important global position. It still possessed its Empire, which by 1900 consisted of some 370 million people, covering an area of over 13 million square miles. In Africa, one territory after another had been annexed or placed under British “protection”. The British colonialists described their mission patronisingly as, to use Kipling’s expression, “the white man’s burden”. Cynically, they marched into Africa with the Christian Bible under their arms, and marched away with the land and its resources. In 1875 less than one tenth of Africa had been turned into European colonies; by 1895, only one tenth remained unappropriated. In the decade between 1883 and 1893, Britain’s foreign and colonial investments increased at an annual rate of 74 per cent. By the turn of the century, British capitalists had around £1.7 billion invested overseas, which drew an annual tribute of at least £100 million, a colossal figure at the time. This world supremacy had granted the British capitalists tremendous advantages. It was able to soften social tensions at home by granting timely concessions where necessary and fostered an “aristocracy” of labour upon which to lean.
This was regarded as the British “genius for compromise”, on which the ruling class and right-wing trade union leaders prided themselves as an exclusive Anglo-Saxon invention. However, this situation was now becoming increasingly untenable. The periodic crises of capitalism, with its accompanying mass unemployment and wage cuts, plunged the majority of the working class into terrible insecurity and destitution.
“The crash of 1866 was, indeed, followed by a slight and short revival about 1873; but that did not last”, noted Engels in 1885. “We did not, indeed, pass through the full crisis at the time it was due, in 1877 or 1878; but we have had, ever since 1876, a chronic state of stagnation in all dominant branches of industry. Neither will the full crash come; nor will the period of longed-for prosperity to which we used to be entitled before and after it. A dull depression, a chronic glut of all markets for all trades, that is what we have been living in for nearly ten years.”
Although real wages grew throughout the century after 1815, according to some estimates, by 1880 real wages were only on a par with the fifteenth century![1] In the face of economic crisis and the prolonged stagnation of the “Great Depression”, the old amalgamated unions had become, in the words of the Webbs, “nothing more than a somewhat stagnant department of the Friendly Society movement.” Reason had become unreason. The old unions had become increasingly incompatible with the new situation. It was time for a fundamental change in the shape and form of trade unionism.
The dominant trade union leaders – the “Old Gang” as they came to be known – abdicated all the responsibilities of leadership they once had. Applegarth and Co. had been replaced by similar types of men, such as Henry Broadhurst (secretary of the TUC), John Burnett (Engineers), J.D. Prior (Carpenters), and George Shipton (London Trades Council). Their whole policy could be summed up as “contemptuous inactivity”, again to quote the Webbs.
However, the 1880s, which heralded an epoch of social upheaval, experienced a new revival of socialist ideas not seen in Britain since Chartist times. Although the franchise was partially extended under pressure in 1867, the smattering of “Labour” or working class candidates were always tied to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party. By 1886, following Gladstone’s Reform Acts, which ensured a majority of urban and rural workers the right to vote, there were ten trade unionists elected to the House of Commons, none of whom had the slightest idea of class politics. Far from it! Henry Broadhurst, secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the TUC marched at their head. He was feted by Gladstone, made Under-Secretary of State, was invited by Royalty to stay at the Palace, and even boasted once that the Prince of Wales poked his bedroom fire! Broadhurst epitomised the political ambitions of the “Junta”, whose aspirations didn’t quite stretch to the emancipation of the working class as a whole – only themselves.
In June 1881, a new party was formed called the Democratic Federation led by a certain Henry M. Hyndman. Three years later it changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation, and proclaimed itself a Marxist party. Hyndman knew Marx personally, and based his party on the ideas of class struggle and scientific socialism. It was the first openly socialist political party to exist in Britain and was closely modelled on the German social democracy. In the same year, as a counter to Hyndman’s Marxism, the Fabian Society was set up by middle-class intellectuals to promote the ideas of gradual social reform and enlightenment. Ironically, they both had something in common: neither of them was interested in the trade unions. The SDF concentrated on abstract socialist propaganda and work amongst the unemployed, whilst the Fabians moved in rarefied petty bourgeois circles.
“The Fabians here in London are a band of careerists who have understanding enough to realise the inevitability of the social revolution,” noted Engels, “but who could not possibly entrust this gigantic task to the raw proletariat alone and are therefore kind enough to settle themselves at the head. Fear of the revolution is their fundamental principle. They are the ‘eddicated’ par excellence… Hence, their fanatical hatred of Marx and all of us – because of the class struggle. “[2]
Despite the sectarian and aloof stance of the SDF, it was from the ranks of the socialists, and primarily this organisation, that individuals emerged that sought to challenge the “Old Gang” and came out for a new form of militant trade unionism.
Even within the ranks of the SDF there was a marked difference of opinion and approach to the unions. Hyndman took a very sectarian and haughty approach to the unions (”… in fact, the trade unions… stand in the way of a genuine organisation of the proletariat”, he announced), which predictably antagonised and alienated ordinary trade unionists. This narrow barren sectarianism led Engels to break off political relations with Hyndman and the SDF. Lenin subsequently explained how a prevailing opportunism produces its polar opposite – sectarianism, dogmatism and adventurism. The movement often pays for the opportunism of its leaders by the emergence of ultra-left tendencies, which are head and tail of the same coin. In contrast, the SDF trade unionists took an entirely different approach, recognising the need to transform the unions and win the workers to their ideas. These were people like Tom Mann, John Burns and Will Thorne, who all subsequently left the SDF and launched into a campaign for “New Unionism”. As there was no question of setting up a rival trade union movement, the only practical alternative was to reform the old one. If the workers were expected to transform society, then surely they would be able to transform their existing organisations. It was simply common sense to fight from within.
“To Trade Unionists, I desire to make a special appeal”, wrote Tom Mann in a pamphlet called What a Compulsory Eight-Hour Working Day Means to the Workers (1886). “How long, how long will you be content with the present half-hearted policy of your unions? Readily grant that good work has been done in the past by the unions, but, in heaven’s name, what good purpose are they serving now?” This appeal found a ready audience in the rank and file.
The following year, the conflict between the militants and the “Old Guard” burst onto the floor of the TUC conference, when a young miners’ delegate from Ayrshire, Keir Hardie, launched an all-out attack on Broadhurst and the rest of the leadership. As expected, in response, he countenanced the full wrath of the trade union hierarchy. Broadhurst ripped into Hardie: “those who spread dissension in the unions and seek to destroy unionism by vehemently attacking its prominent representatives… Their emissaries enter our camp in the guise of friends; in order that they may the better sow the seeds of disruption. Let the workers beware of them!” and concluded with the comradely refrain, “hound these creatures from our midst.”
Engels from his days in the First International had kept in touch with a number of prominent trade union activists. His move from Manchester to London, to work alongside Marx, placed him far more in the centre of developments. He was now able to observe the leaders of the movement at close quarters and participate in events more fully. These valuable links gave Engels the opportunity and platform later to put forward his views when the London Trades Council launched a newspaper in early 1881, called the Labour Standard. Engels was asked to write a series of articles for the paper. These brilliant articles, which should be read by all activists today, represent a penetrating analysis of the economic situation of the time, the problems of trade unionism and the need for independent working class political organisation.
“The fact cannot be any longer shirked that England’s industrial monopoly is fast on the wane”, he wrote in June 1881, “… It will do one great thing; it will break the last link which binds the English working class to the English middle class… That monopoly once destroyed, the British working class will be compelled to take in hand its own interests, its own salvation, and to make an end of the wages system.”
And again another article published in the Labour Standard:
More than this, there are plenty of symptoms that the working class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has for some time been moving in the wrong groove; that the present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusively, keep it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that it is not the lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil, but the wage system itself. This knowledge once generally spread amongst the working class, the position of trades unions must change considerably. They will no longer enjoy the privilege of being the only organisations of the working class. At the side of, or above, the unions of special trades there must spring up a general union, a political organisation of the working class as a whole.
Thus there are two points which the organised trade union would do well to consider, firstly, that the time is rapidly approaching when the working class of this country will claim, with a voice not to be mistaken, its full share of representation in Parliament. Secondly, that the time also is rapidly approaching when the working class will have understood that the struggle for high wages and short hours, and the whole action of trades unions as now carried on, is not an end in itself, but a means, a very necessary and effective means, but only one of several means towards a higher end: the abolition of the wages system altogether.[3]
By the end of the decade, the working class had begun to break out of its “groove” and new militant young forces were stirring in the East End of London. In July 1888, after the exposure in the socialist press of the harsh conditions endured by women workers employed at the large Bryant & May match factory at Poplar, a strike broke out led by two socialists, Annie Besant and Herbert Burrows. After less than a fortnight, the girls won a number of concessions, including the abolition of fines and deductions from wages, a wage rise and a certain job security. The historic victory of these seven hundred women, who formed a union out of the strike, the Matchmakers’ Union, was a harbinger of what was to come. It was the largest union composed entirely of women and girls in England. It “turned a new leaf in trade union annals”, commented the Webbs.