In 1819, a giant working class rally assembled at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester. The crowds numbered between 50,000 and 60,000 strong, carrying huge banners inscribed with the slogans “Suffrage Universal”, “Annual Parliaments” and “Liberty and Fraternity”. The radical orator Henry Hunt addressed the excited throng. Fearing trouble, the authorities ordered the arrest of Hunt and a company of the 15th Hussars was sent into the crowd to take him. In the melée, the demonstrators were brutally attacked by sabre-wielding cavalry, resulting in the cold-blooded murder of eleven unarmed demonstrators and a further 400 being badly wounded. News of the massacre spread like wild fire across the country. The immediate reaction of the government to the “Peterloo Massacre” was to rush new repressive legislation onto the statute books. Six Acts were pushed through Parliament to strengthen the swathe of laws already in the hands of the government. But the events at Peterloo, which lived on in the minds of workers, served to fuel the growing revolutionary resentment within the working class. A popular toast of the time proclaimed: “May the Tree of Liberty be planted in Hell, and may the bloody Butchers of Manchester be the Fruit of it!”
The revolutionary poet, Percy Shelley wrote The Masque of Anarchy in protest against the massacre soon afterwards, although it was not published until 1832, some ten years after his death, for fear of government repression:
I met Murder on the way –
He had a mask like Castlereagh –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him:All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed them human hearts to chew,
Which from his wide cloak he drew.Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermine gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to millstones as they fell;And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.Clothed with the bible as with light,
And the shadow of the night,
Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy,
On a crocodile came by.
Between 1815 and 1820, given the violence and social unrest sweeping the country, many contemporaries believed that Britain was on the verge of a revolutionary explosion. Agent provocateurs were at work everywhere. In 1820 a conspiracy was hatched to murder ministers and overthrow the government. Betrayed by agent provocateurs that had infiltrated their ranks, the leading conspirators were arrested at Cato Street, off the Edgware Road in London. They were subsequently charged with treason and hanged for their part in the “Cato Street conspiracy”. Similarly, government spies and agents were used to urge Scottish miners in Bonnymuir to take up arms against the authorities, only to betray them. Once again their leaders were executed, including a certain Andrew Hardie, a relative of Keir Hardie, the future leader of the Labour Party.
Despite these bitter years of state repression, astonishing advances were made in the formation of national trade unions – the Calico-printers, the Ironfounders, the Steam Engine Makers and the Papermakers – as well as the drawing together of different local organisations. Against all the odds, trade union activists continued to organise clandestinely, recruiting workers in small groups to their cause. This was the only way they could hope to survive, let alone succeed. They risked everything, but as the Communist Manifesto later stated, they had nothing to lose but their chains, and much to gain. They began to realise that they held the future in their blistered hands. It was through this baptism of fire that untold numbers of nameless heroes established the deep roots of British trade unionism. We should never forget, and that applies more so to the leaders of the movement, that it is thanks to their sacrifices that we have the powerful organisations we have today.
This underground struggle ran parallel with widespread public agitation for the repeal of the anti-union laws, under the direction of the energetic John Gast (general secretary of the Shipwrights’ union). Combined with the work of radicals like William Cobbett, Francis Place, and George White, this mass agitation was to eventually culminate in the repeal of the hated Combination Acts in 1824. It was a tremendous victory for the working class. But the repeal was granted by the ruling class for varied reasons, not least the hope of destroying trade unionism!
Despite his hallowed place in Labour history, the pragmatic Francis Place, a London tailor, who manoeuvred the repeal through Parliament, was no friend of the trade unions. He believed the Combination Acts made relations between the classes even worse than if there were no such laws. For him, the Acts simply aggravated the ill feeling between labour and capital and encouraged the growth of trade unions. “If the cause were removed,” argued Place in front of the Parliamentary Committee,
“the effect would cease… Men have been kept together for long periods only by the oppression of these laws; these being repealed, combinations will lose the matter which cements them into masses, and they will fall to pieces. All will be as orderly as even a Quaker could desire.”[23]
The Committee accepted the reasoned arguments of Francis Place, and the Combination Acts were repealed. The ruling class was seemingly unaware of the powerful forces it was unwittingly about to unleash.
The repeal precipitated a flood of strikes, which terrified the employers. They immediately demanded action to stop this deluge. Consequently, new legislation was rushed onto the statute books that modified the previous Act. The Act of 1825 was born and placed severe restrictions on picketing and the activities of unions. “Molesting” or “obstructing” persons at work was outlawed, and the definition of “legal” trade union activities was limited strictly to questions concerning wages and hours. In spite of this, the law continued to uphold the rights of combination against common law prosecutions for conspiracy.
The trade unions were finally legal. That made all the difference. The ruling class had been at last forced to concede new rights to the working class. Despite the intentions of the likes of Place and his colleagues, the underground trade unions, rather than withering away, had burst out onto the scene. Hundreds of new unions and associations were formed and brand new sections of workers became organised. Others simply emerged overnight, like mushrooms, from their underground world, and even changed their forms. Nothing could stop them now. A stormy strike wave swept through the industrial areas of Britain as workers, with their newly found freedoms, began to flex their muscles and pursue their demands. A new chapter opened up for trade unionism, characterised by class battles on an unprecedented scale. The history of these times, wrote the Hammonds, “reads like a history of civil war.”[24]