John Lovell

British Trade Unions 1875–1933

THE early 1870s can be represented as something of a false dawn for trade unionism in the United Kingdom. The legal battles were fought and apparently won in 1871 and 1875, and during the economic boom of the period total trade union membership expanded at a rapid rate.

Employers and Craft Unionism: A Programme of Action for British Shipbuilding, 1902–5

The impact of trade union restrictions upon industrial performance has been a matter of controversy in Britain for the last hundred years. In the United States, during the opening years of this century, employers acted decisively to rid themselves of union restrictions, and it has been argued that in this same period British employers were presented with an opportunity to act in similar fashion. Taking the case of the British shipbuilding industry, this article examines the extent to which such an opportunity was in fact perceived by employers. To the extent that it was perceived, the article also investigates the reasons for inaction.

The Great Strike, 1889

The revival of mass waterside unionism in the summer of 1889 occurred in circumstances that were in some respects notably different from those that characterised the movement of 1872. Whereas the movement of the early seventies achieved little publicity, being unaccompanied by a port-wide strike (or indeed any prolonged stoppage), the opposite was true of 1889. The great dock strike that year attracted so much attention nationally that it became one of the most celebrated events in the annals of the British labour movement, and it was this strike which directly stimulated a revival of organisation throughout the port. Public interest in the 1889 strike stemmed from its somewhat sensational and dramatic quality. Small-scale stoppages of short duration were nothing rare on the waterfront, but this one embraced all port workers simultaneously, including the most despised and degraded quay labourers at the north-bank docks, and its length came to be measured by weeks rather than days. The fact that it occurred in the metropolis, and that the strike leaders daily conducted the men in great orderly processions which marched from dockland right into the heart of the City of London, served further to focus the attention of public opinion.

Industrial Peace and Industrial Unrest

THE opening years of the new century were ones of industrial peace. The years 1899–1907 were in fact the quietest in the whole period from 1891 (when adequate strike statistics start) to 1933, a year that ushered in another era of industrial calm [19:326]. As we have seen, Clegg et al. attribute this tranquillity largely to the development of collective bargaining procedures in the well-organised trades. For these authors in fact, ‘the development of collective bargaining was the outstanding feature’ of the period 1889–1910 [19:471].

False Dawn — Trade Unionism after 1875

THE early 1870s can be represented as something of a false dawn for trade unionism in the United Kingdom. The legal battles were fought and apparently won in 1871 and 1875, and during the economic boom of the period total trade union membership expanded at a rapid rate.

The General Strike of 1926, and the Turning-Point of 1932–3

THE General Strike of 1926 has often been regarded as a major turning-point in the history of trade unionism. Bullock sees it as such [13: ch. 13], and Pelling also treats it as a major landmark [54]. In one important sense it obviously was an important landmark: it was the first and last occasion on which massive industrial action was used in an industrial dispute in Britain.

The First World War

THE First World War did much to develop the pre-war system of collective bargaining. Hitherto employers’ organisations had played a major role in developing the system, but the initiative now passed to the state [20:127]. In 1915 the government introduced compulsory arbitration as a means of resolving disputes during wartime. We have seen how the weaker unions had long believed that such a system would work to their advantage, and so it now proved. Their ability to achieve results, and therefore attract members, was greatly enhanced. The arbitration system, and government control of certain industries, also encouraged the development of industry-wide pay settlements. National settlements for the railway industry began in 1915, coal followed in 1916, and engineering in 1917. ‘By the end of the war the practice of industry-wide pay adjustments had spread to other munitions industries, most sections of transport, and a number of other manufacturing and service industries’ [20: 204].

The 1912 Strike: Origins and Aftermath

The sources of future trouble in the port centred upon the two oldest organisations—the Stevedores and Lightermen. This was not an accident. When old organisations expand into new sectors of employment, they bring with them a whole series of problems. This is because they have fixed standards to maintain, and are consequently subject to considerable pressures both from within and without. Their older members will be fearful lest new recruits compromise hard-won gains, and employers will resist the intrusion into their domain of unions whose standards are high and conditions precise. So it was with the Stevedores and Lightermen, and the former organisation in particular suffered from its need to impose fixed standards.

The Labour Force

The growth of the port of London, as we saw in the previous chapter, was entirely without plan. In fact until the creation of the P.L.A. in 1908 the port did not even exist as a formal institution. It was merely an unregulated meeting-place for a vast number of diverse interests—shipowners, wharfingers, lighterage concerns, merchants, dock companies. After 1908 there was some regulation, but the meeting-place remained as crowded and as full of diversity as before. In this situation it would indeed have been surprising if the port’s labour force had formed a homogeneous body. In fact, of course, port workers were as lacking in cohesion as the industrial complex that gave them employment. They were subdivided into numerous occupational groupings, and in the early days these groupings were no more bound together by a sense of common interest than were the port employers.

The Earliest Unions, 1870–89

The characteristics of the port’s labour force, noted in the previous chapter, did not make for an easy growth of trade unionism. The localised character of the port industry might be thought to be a factor favouring organisation, as in the case of coal mining, but localisation does not in itself produce stable and cohesive communities conducive to union growth. A large sector of port employment, quay work mainly, was open to constant infiltration from outside, from the unemployed of other trades, so that the waterside population existed in a state of constant flux. It was furthermore, as we have seen, a population that had been inflated by the casual system to a size far beyond the real requirements of the port. Only in quite exceptional circumstances did labour shortages occur, so that normally employers had little difficulty in replacing troublesome employees. Nevertheless there are references to strikes on the London waterfront extending back at least as far as the eighteenth century.1 In the age of sail the work of the port was sometimes held up by long spells of adverse winds, and, in the feverish activity that followed, workers could exploit the situation by indulging in sudden stoppages. Times of trading prosperity, as in the early 1850s, also provided port workers with an opportunity to improve their position by industrial action.2