But a general strike was something the government as a whole wished to avoid. Fearing that the strikes would spread and coalesce into such a strike, the Liberal government was forced to change tack and urged the employers to enter into negotiations. Eventually, after a further threat of strike action, both sides agreed to a compromise and a reform of the Conciliation Boards with joint trade union management representation. This move consolidated union recognition on the railways, and, more importantly, gave an impetus to trade union amalgamation in the industry. By 1913, a number of small rail unions, including the ASRS, took the bold step in forming the National Union of Railwaymen. Unfortunately, the craft union ASLEF remained aloof from the amalgamation, resulting in a bitter inter-union feud, played on by the employers, that was to last until recent times.
As the rail strike came to an end, strikes again flared up in the coal industry over the minimum wage. The bitter strikes of the Cambrian miners continued into 1911 and served to highlight the guaranteed wages issue. This formed the background to a delegate conference of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain called to decide on action. The delegates sanctioned a strike ballot, requiring a two-thirds majority, based on a resolution declaring “a general stoppage” throughout the Federation “for the purpose of securing for all colliery workmen a definite guaranteed wage.”[6] The miners voted to strike on 1 March 1912 by a majority of four to one, a clear indication of the militancy sweeping the coalfields. It was to constitute the first genuine national miners’ strike involving almost one million workers. As Lenin graphically remarked at the time,
If the railway strike of 1911 displayed the ‘new spirit’ of the British workers, the miners’ strike certainly marks a new epoch… In Britain a change has taken place in the relation of social forces, a change which cannot be expressed in figures, but which everyone feels.[7]
The ruling class was certainly not blind to the processes unfolding, and this time the central government had learned its lesson. To deflect the crisis, it immediately proposed a National Minimum Wage Bill for the coal industry, which it proceeded to rush onto the statute books. Although it did not fully concede everything the Miners’ Federation had demanded, it did establish the machinery for determining district minimums. But, to the consternation of the government, the majority of miners rejected the deal in a national ballot and continued their action.
“The most outstanding event in the past year has been the miners’ strike…”, wrote Lenin. “Those who know the British labour movement, however, declare that since the strike the British proletariat is no longer the same. The workers have learned to fight. They have discovered the path that will lead them to victory. They have become aware of their power.”[8]
Within a year, the membership of the Miners Federation had leapt by almost 160,000 to over 900,000, at this time the biggest and potentially the most powerful union in the entire world.
Throughout this period, the capitalists waged a constant rear-guard struggle against the unions. In May 1912, they managed to turn the tide when a new battle flared up on the docks over the attempted use of non-union labour. The Transport Workers’ Federation threatened a general strike on the docks over the twin issues of recognition and the fulfilment of the 1911 agreements. 80,000 London dockers answered the call, but the response from provincial ports was not as solid, mainly due to the gains of the previous strike. There was no common set of grievances that could bind the men together, and was regarded by many as dominated by sectional issues. There were insufficient preparations for national action, which proved a disastrous failing. The employers, led by Lord Devonport, sensing weakness, chose to dig in their heels. On Tower Hill, Ben Tillett led his workers in solemn prayer: “God strike Lord Devonport dead.” But Devonport remained alive and kicking, and continued to use blackleg labour to break the strike. The men were forced to return to work empty handed. As was to be expected, the employers used their temporary victory to victimise the main trade union activists and reassert their control over the industry.
Almost a year after the defeat of the dockers, in the summer of 1913, an industrial storm broke out in Dublin. The Irish Transport and General Workers Union led by the two great revolutionary giants, James Connolly and Jim Larkin, took on the might of the Dublin employers. Connolly was the greatest Marxist ever produced by these Isles, and provided a complementary figure to the fiery James Larkin. The Employers’ Federation had thrown down the gauntlet when workers on the Irish Independent were told to leave the union or face the sack. “The issue involved in the Dublin strike is a serious one,” argued the secretary of the engineering bosses. “A victory for the syndicalist leaders there would be disastrous for the employers not only in Dublin, but throughout the United Kingdom.” For the ruling class, Larkinism had become synonymous with militancy in the same way as Scargillism would become some 70 years later.
The printers chose to back the union and were therefore locked-out. This signalled a general employers’ offensive that led to a massive 25,000 workers being locked-out by September. The employers had no qualms about using the full might of the state to crush the Dublin workers; meetings were banned and workers arrested, including Larkin and Connolly.
“In Dublin, the capital of Ireland – a city of a not highly industrial type, with a population of half a million – the class struggle, which permeates the whole life of capitalist society everywhere, has become accentuated to the point of class war”, wrote Lenin in Severnaya Pravda. “The police have positively gone wild; drunken policemen assault peaceful workers, break into houses, torment the aged, women and children. Hundreds of workers (over 400) have been injured and two killed – such are the casualties of this war. All prominent workers’ leaders have been arrested. People are thrown into prison for making the most peaceful speeches. The city is like an armed camp.”[9]
From the ranks of the transport union’s pickets was organised a workers’ defence organisation, the Irish Citizen Army. This force sought to counter the terror of police violence that had resulted in the murder of two workers and the wounding of 400 in the course of the lockout. The Citizen Army was open to all militant workers, determined to defend the strikers and their organisations. In reality, this body constituted the world’s first Red Army, and conducted its military operations under the flag of the “Plough and the Stars”. Connolly had set up a rifle club to which his men contributed sixpence a week, from which guns were bought illegally from British soldiers in Dublin. Women helped to stitch and sew the Army’s dark green uniforms, and ex-regular army NCOs and reservists assisted in shaping the Citizen Army into an efficient fighting force.
“An armed organisation of the Irish working class is a phenomenon of Ireland”, stated Connolly. “Hitherto the workers of Ireland have fought as part of the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army officered, trained and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve their own future.”[10]
The Citizen Army grew out of, and was organically linked to, the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. Its headquarters were in the union’s Liberty Hall. It was in reality a weapon of the trade union movement fashioned to defend workers from the violence of both employers and state. It was an extension of the picket line. The workers are not pacifists. They will fight with arms in hand if necessary to protect their rights and organisations. In a similar fashion in Britain during the 1926 General Strike, Councils of Actions established Defence Corps in certain areas to defend strikers. Such a development was in no way regarded as foreign or alien to our traditions, as can be seen from the history of Chartism, but grew out of the needs of the situation. Likewise, Connolly and the other leaders of the Transport Union were not prepared to stand aside in face of violence from the employers and their state. They had a duty to fight back and defend themselves in an organised fashion, and that is precisely what they did.
The effects of the Dublin lockout shook the British Labour movement.
“If revolution is going to be forced onto my people”, stated Robert Smillie, president of the Miners’ Federation, “by such action as has been taken in Dublin and elsewhere, I say it is our duty, legal or illegal, to train our people to defend themselves… It is the duty of the greater trade union movement, when a question of this gravity arises to discuss seriously a strike of all the workers.”
The Co-operative movement, which had grown into a large-scale trading company, sent shiploads of food to Dublin to feed the strikers and their families. The TUC voted a £5,000 donation to the Irish TGWU. Sympathy strikes, involving some 7,000 British railworkers, were the tip of an iceberg. The mood of workers across Britain was disposed to fight alongside their Irish brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, the TUC failed to translate this widespread sympathy into the blacking and boycott of Irish trade, as many of its leaders were opposed to Larkinism. A special TUC in December overwhelmingly rejected James Larkin’s call for sympathetic strike action. Nevertheless, mass meetings were called to hear Larkin in Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow and elsewhere.
“A great many of the trade union leaders seemed to think they existed to apologise for capitalism, to try and stop strikes and smooth difficulties over, to put a healing salve in the wounds and bandages with a salve”, stated Larkin. “It is a root remedy that you must apply. The poison is the employers’ power over labour. The power to exploit your flesh and bone and brain.”
The failure of the TUC to widen the dispute led to the undermining of the strikers’ resolve. The struggle was to last until February 1914, when the workers were eventually starved back to work. The Irish Transport and General Workers Union, however, remained intact. Soon afterwards, the Irish Trade Union Congress, reflecting the class struggles in Dublin, adopted the view that “labour unrest can only be ended by the abolition of the capitalist system.”
The spirit of the times was heartily captured in the slogan of the Daily Herald, “Strike and strike hard.” After a short run as a strike sheet in 1911, the Herald appeared as a daily in April 1912 devoted to the revolutionary cause of labour.
The depth of the strike movement at this time can be gauged from the strike figures:
1908 – averaged 30 disputes a month
1911 – averaged 75 disputes a month
1913-14 – averaged 150 disputes a month
Yet even these figures do not do justice to the real conflict between capital and labour. The explosive struggle was on an even higher level than in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It had a higher degree of aggressive militancy, sometimes violent and often unofficial in character. The fears of the ruling class were expressed openly in the capitalist press: “Perhaps the most salient feature of this turmoil at the moment is the general spirit of revolt, not only against employers of all kinds, but also against leaders and majorities, and Parliamentary or any kind of constitutional and orderly action.”[11] This refers not only to the growth of militancy, but a new creed within the ranks of the unions, namely syndicalism.
The philosophy of syndicalism had a powerful influence in these years. From 1900 to 1912, the social conditions produced by the impasse of British capitalism had pushed a whole layer of workers towards direct action and industrial unionism. The positive side of syndicalism was in its rejection of class collaboration and the crass opportunism emanating from the Labour and trade union leaders. “The most charitable thing that can be said about political action is that it is slow, so slow that it breaks men’s hearts”, said a member of the ASE. Syndicalism showed absolute disdain for the antics of the Labour group in the Commons, which became a mere adjunct of the Liberal Party. This disgust with Lib-Labism, viewed as embodying the worst kind of reformism, led to a rejection of party politics, and a concentration on industrial unionism and rank-and-file movements.
Another key plank of syndicalism was the rejection of “official” leadership. This was most ably articulated in The Miners’ Next Step (1911), platform of the Unofficial Reform Committee in the South Wales Miners Federation. This platform, originally drafted by Noah Ablett, a Maerdy checkweighter, was born out of the miners’ bitter struggles of 1910-11. “Leadership implies power held by the leader”, stated The Next Step.
Without power the leader is inept. The possession of power inevitably leads to corruption. All leaders become corrupt, in spite of their own good intentions. No man was ever good enough, brave enough or strong enough to have such power at his disposal as real leadership implies.[12]
This view arose out of the experience in particular of the South Wales Miners’ Federation, led by right-wingers like Mabon (president), William Brace (vice-president), and Tom Richards (general secretary), all of whom were MPs. These leaders had signed a five-year wage agreement with no real provision for abnormal places or small coal and gave in to the demands of the owners for changes in working practices.
The aim of the Unofficial Reform Committee as a “no-leader movement”, laid heavy stress upon the need for unofficial action apart from the official movement. The proposals contained in The Miners’ Next Step created a furore in the South Wales coalfield, which soon spread to other areas. The old officials of the SWMF held up their hands in holy horror at these suggestions! Labour leaders of all shades attacked it. No such pamphlet had ever caused such a stir throughout the British trade unions as this. Despite its political weaknesses, the Next Step did serve to place industrial democracy at the centre of British working-class politics.
While the syndicalist school pointed to the need for unofficial action, it tended to regard such action as a principle, rather than as an alternative when the official movement acts as a barrier to struggle. The syndicalists tended to bend the stick too far in one direction as a reaction to the conservative role of the trade union bureaucracy. These ideas nevertheless found fertile soil amongst militant trade unionists, particularly the young fighters, and in such bodies as the Socialist Labour Party, the Syndicalist Education League and the Plebs League.
British syndicalism tended to be a mix of French anarcho-syndicalism and the ideas of industrial unionism promoted by the American socialist, Daniel De Leon. In Britain, the supporters of De Leon founded the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), which was a split-off from the old SDF. The syndicalists embraced militant struggle and direct action as the way forward for the class struggle. For them, militant trade unionism should strive towards a general strike of all workers, leading to the overthrow of capitalism and the reorganisation of society on the lines of industrial unionism.
As James Connolly, who worked as an organiser for the syndicalist IWW in America, and was also a member of the SLP, explained:
The light of this principle of Industrial Unionism, every fresh shop or factory organised under its banner, is a fort wrenched from the capitalist class and manned with the soldiers of the revolution to be held by them for the workers. On the day that the political and economic forces of labour finally break with capitalist society and proclaim the Workers’ Republic these shops and factories so manned by Industrial Unionists will be taken charge of by the workers there employed and force and effectiveness given to that proclamation …[13]
This was a revolutionary outlook that correctly stressed the essential role of the class struggle in the transformation of society and the need for the working class to take direct control of the factories. If there is a weakness in syndicalism, it is in its lack of clear understanding of the essential role played by leadership and the party in the overthrow of capitalism. In their eyes, the role of the party was reduced to that of an educator and propagandist, rather than a leader of the working class. But the struggle for power is the most difficult and irreconcilable struggle in history. The old ruling class will do all in its power to sabotage and stymie the will of the majority. It will not give up its privileged position without a fight. “You can peel an onion leaf by leaf”, stated RH Tawney, “but you can’t skin a live tiger claw by claw.” And the capitalist class resembles a live tiger. Given the difficulties in the path of the working class, a dedicated and theoretically-tested leadership and party is required to draw all the threads together and channel the energies of the masses towards the conquest of political power. The working class is not completely homogeneous and is made up of different layers, which, having varying experiences, draws different conclusions at different times. The role of the party is to overcome these divisions and consciously draw together the different struggles of the working class. Essentially, its task is to make conscious the unconscious will of the workers to transform society. While Connolly, Luxemburg, and Trotsky were brilliant Marxists, it was Lenin, above all else, who grasped the importance of the party in these years. It was this understanding that allowed the Bolsheviks to lead the Russian Revolution to success in October 1917.
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Quoted in Edwards, History of the South Wales Miners’ Federation, p.54, London 1938
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Lenin, op. cit, pp.151-2
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Ibid, p. 151 and 154
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Lenin, Collected Works, vol.19, p.332, Progress Publishers 1975
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Quoted in James Connolly Selected Writings, p.23, London 1973
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Quoted by Alan Hutt in British Trade Unionism, London 1941
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The Miners’ Next Step, p.19, London 1973
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Connolly, ‘Socialism Made Easy’