A Short History of Trade Unions - Part 6: 1915 – 1945
March 2020
This Part covers the period 1915 – 1945 and includes the General Strike, the Trade Disputes Act plus the first 2 Labour governments.
1915 – THE SHOP STEWARDS’ MOVEMENT brought together shop stewards from across the UK during the First World War. It originated with the Clyde Workers Committee. This was the first shop stewards committee in Britain and organised against the imprisonment of three of their members in 1915. Most of them were members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE). In November 1916 the Sheffield Workers Committee was formed when members of the ASE there went on strike against the conscription of a local engineer. The government brought the strike to an end by exempting craft union members such as ASE engineers from military service. However, this policy was reversed in May 1917 and was met by a strike involving 200,000 workers in 48 towns. The Shop Stewards’ Movement arose from organising this strike.
1918 - 57 LABOUR MPS ELECTED
1919 – 35 MILLION DAYS LOST TO STRIKES 1919 witnessed the broadest and most serious strike wave yet seen. Thirty five million working days were lost in strike action - six times as many as in the previous year. This included strikes by the police and the armed forces. Miners, transport workers and printers joined those who had been taking action throughout the war. Their mood was influenced by the news of the workers' rising in Germany and Hungary and their strong support for the fledgling Soviet Russia. At the forefront was the Clyde Workers' Committee which organised a mass strike in January 1919. In Belfast too a huge strike wave paralysed the city.
1920 – TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP 8.3 million. Women's membership of trade unions was at its peak reaching 1.3 million representing 25% of the total female workforce.
1921 – TUC GENERAL COUNCIL FORMED and was equipped with broad powers and an elaborate administrative structure. The aim was to develop industrial activities as opposed to legislative or political lobbying. In the same year, the TUC took over the functions of the Women's Trade Union League and two seats on the new General Council were reserved for women. The 1921 Congress also endorsed the formation of four joint departments with the Labour Party - research, legal advice, publicity and international affairs - and approved the creation of a National Joint Council with representatives from the TUC, Parliamentary Labour Party as well as the Party Executive.
1922 - 142 LABOUR MPS ELECTED
1923 – 191 LABOUR MPS ELECTED
1924 – FIRST MINORITY LABOUR GOVERNMENT The Liberals and Labour united in a vote of censure against the Tories and the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin resigned. On 24th January,1924, George V sent for Labour Leader Ramsay MacDonald to form the first Labour government. This was a minority government with 191 Labour MPs. The Liberals held 159 seats and the Tories 259. Labour held office, but relied on the Liberals to pass any legislation and so achieved very little. MacDonald acted as both Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. His friendly overtures to the Soviet Union – including diplomatic recognition – led to a vitriolic press campaign and ultimately Labour’s downfall within a year of taking office. When the Attorney-General withdrew sedition proceedings against the editor of a small Communist paper, the Establishment scented left-wing interference. Labour was defeated in The Commons and another election was held in October 1924. Public hysteria over the “Red Bogey” continued during the campaign with publication of the infamous Zinoviev letter. This was allegedly part of a Communist conspiracy to provoke an uprising in Britain. The letter was printed in the Daily Mail four days before the election and helped to defeat Labour at the polls where Labour won 151 seats to the Conservative’s 412. According to The Guardian in March 1999, “the Zinoviev letter - one of the greatest British political scandals of this century - was forged by a MI6 agent's source and almost certainly leaked by MI6 or MI5 officers to the Conservative Party”. The Press then as now (as seen in the 2020 general election) was hostile to Labour from the word go.
1926 – THE GENERAL STRIKE lasted nine days, from 3 May 1926 to 12 May 1926 before collapsing in failure. It had been called by the General Council of the TUC in support of the 1.2 million miners who faced wage cuts, worsening conditions and a lock-out. Some 1.7 million also workers went out on strike in support, especially in transport and heavy industry. The government was prepared and enlisted middle-class volunteers to maintain essential services. There was little violence and the TUC leadership gave up in defeat thinking it could not win out against the government.
On 12 May 1926, the TUC General Council visited 10 Downing Street. The General Council announced its decision to call off the strike on 2 conditions 1) if the proposals worked out by the Samuel Commission (set up by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to look into the mining industry in 1925) were respected and 2) if the government offered a guarantee there would be no victimization of strikers. The government stated that it had "no power to compel employers to take back every man who had been on strike". However, the TUC agreed to end the dispute without any such agreement. It was therefore a defeat imposed on the working class by the General Council of the TUC. As Henry Pelling wrote – the General Strike showed “the extraordinary strength and influence of the British trade unionism; the abject surrender of its leaders showed how fundamentally devoid of ulterior political purposes it was.” It was an example of how the separation of politics and trade unionism at the heart of Labour was, at crucial moments, to undermine the power of the working class. Rather than leading union militancy, the TUC seemed to want to control and restrict it.
Many books have been written on the General Strike and I cannot do it full justice here.
You can find more details at http://unionhistory.info/generalstrike/index.php and
https://spartacus-educational.com/TUgeneral.htm#section8
In addition, there are many books on the subject and I would recommend Peter Taaffe’s 1926 General Strike – workers taste power.
You can see Tony Benn and Duncan Hallas discuss the 1926 General Strike at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzASlo0mUdQ
1927 – TRADE DISPUTES ACT This Act was a kick in the teeth to trade unionists after the failure of the General Strike. It was described by one Labour MP as "a vindictive Act, and one of the most spiteful measures that was ever placed upon the Statute Book".
Under this Act secondary action was declared unlawful as was any strike whose purpose was to coerce the government of the day directly or indirectly. In addition, incitement to participate in an unlawful strike was made a criminal offence, punishable by imprisonment for up to two years. The attorney general was empowered to sequester the assets and funds of unions involved in any such strikes. Section 4 of the Act mandated trade union members to contract-in to any political levy which their union made on their behalf. This resulted in an 18% fall in the income of the Labour Party, which was heavily reliant upon union funding. Section 5 of the Act enjoined civil service unions from affiliation to the TUC and forbade them from having political objectives. The Act was eventually repealed by the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1946 by the post-war Labour Government.
1929 – 1939 THE GREAT DEPRESSION was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s and which began in the United States.
The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries, it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.
If you think that an economic disaster that started in the USA and spread across the world sounds familiar to the 2008 Financial Crisis then you would be right. Many economists have drawn parallels between the 2 global meltdowns.
1929 MINORITY LABOUR GOVERNMENT. In May 1929, Labour won 287 seats with the Conservatives taking 260 and the Liberals 59. Labour formed another minority government with Ramsay MacDonald as PM and Philip Snowden as Chancellor. The world financial crisis began to overwhelm Britain in 1931; investors across the world started withdrawing their gold from London at the rate of £2.5 million per day. Snowden determined to preserve the Gold Standard even though this depressed the British market, forced down wages and put 2 million people on the dole. This should have been anathema to a Labour government, but there was no revolt. The financial crisis caused a major political crisis in August 1931 when the Cabinet were asked to consider 10% cuts to unemployment benefits. The Cabinet refused to make the cuts and MacDonald could not continue. He collected everyone’s resignation and went off to see King George V. Next day MacDonald announced that he had agreed to head a National Government with the Tories and Liberals. The vast majority of Labour leaders denounced MacDonald as a traitor for leading the new government and he was expelled from the Labour Party.
Ramsay MacDonald
In the October 1931 election, the Labour Party was reduced to 52 seats, leaving MacDonald as Prime Minister for a largely Conservative coalition.
1933 – TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP 4.4 million.
1939 BRIDLINGTON AGREEMENT This was a set of principles agreed at the Bridlington meeting of the Trades Union Congress in 1939. It was agreed that TUC unions should not seek to actively recruit by either “poaching” members from other unions (principle two) or encroaching on an establishment where another union already had a majority of the workers organised (principle five).
1942 – AMALGAMATED ENGINEERING UNION (AEU) In 1933, the AEU had 168,000 members, and 390,900 by the end of the decade. Its largest membership growth came during the Second World War when its all-male membership voted to admit women for the first time. 100,000 women joined almost immediately with membership reaching 825,000 by 1943.
1945 TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP 8 million.
Part 7 will cover the election of the first majority Labour government in 1945 and its nationalisation programme plus the Incomes Policies of the Tory and Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s and their impacts on trade unionists.
Solidarity
Brian Madican
Jan 2020
