unionism movement, and one of the chief organisers of the 1889 London dockers’ strike for union recognition, the abolition of contract work, and a minimum wage of sixpence an hour (the ‘dockers’ tanner’).3 For me, the dockers’ strike and the Taff Vale Railway strike of 1900 were among the key moments in our history that gave the unions greater confidence to organise and fight.4 The dock strike involved thousands, and, as Terry McCarthy says in his short history of the British Labour movement, the strike leaders won over the public with their shrewd tactics.5 There were no slogans about overthrowing the state, and no violent protests; instead, the trade unions took the people with them, and won. Furthermore, for the first time, the new unionism focused on workplace issues beyond hours and conditions, including the huge deductions imposed on women clothing workers for things like the use of cooking facilities and, extraordinarily, the use of steam power, even if they were working from home.
The Taff Vale strike also ultimately convinced the trade unions of the need for a Labour Party to give workers a voice in Parliament. In the South Wales valleys, determined members of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS), a forerunner to today’s RMT, resisted their employers and unjust laws. Nevertheless, the bosses took the ASRS to court for lost earnings and won a staggering £42,000 in damages – the equivalent of well over £2 million today. It was this travesty, decided in the House of Lords, that persuaded the unions they needed representation in the House of Commons in order to pass legislation that would improve workers’ lives, rather than just challenge existing laws from the outside.
The results of this change in tactics were seen in the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, which reversed the whittling away of union rights granted by the 1871 Trade Union Act. The 1906 Act legalised peaceful picketing, and prevented employers from taking legal action against workers for ‘breach of contract’ if it was done in pursuit of a trade dispute. Back then, this had a far wider definition than it does now, including enabling workers to withdraw their labour in support of others not employed by the same employer. The Act also protected trade union funds, but the biggest victory was the clause that exempted trade unions from legal action. These were rights and protections all reversed by Thatcher’s laws.
This was the start of working people’s challenge to Toryism, with its class hierarchy and its determination to always put private property before freedom and democracy. It was also a challenge to liberalism, which will do anything for the poor so long as the poor never organise to do anything for themselves. Indeed, in the late nineteenth century, it was the refusal by the then Liberal Party to speak up for an increasingly organised working class that not only helped to drive the formation of trade unions, but also led to the foundation of the Labour Party.
By the early twentieth century, trade unions were becoming central to society, in spite of the hostility they faced. They began to be portrayed in popular culture, most notably with the 1914 publication of Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, one of the greatest books of all time. Anyone wanting to understand the world of work should read it. It is shameful that, in today’s zero-hour wastelands, and with so many people struggling to live on the minimum wage, nothing has changed since Tressell’s story of the efforts by the painter and decorator, Frank Owen, to make ends meet and convince his colleagues that capitalism was the cause of their troubles. Tressell’s depiction of the ‘great money trick’ is so simple, and yet millions of workers have been captured by it ever since.
The First World War was an opportunity for the unions to organise and to politicise workplaces, and there was a significant increase in union membership, not least among the women who kept the factories going while the men fought abroad. Nevertheless, at the same time there was a more concerted effort by the state to undermine the Labour Party, left-wing unions and their leaders, not by brute force but through an ideological campaign of vilification and smears, aided eagerly by the Tory press.
Unfortunately, the history of trade unions is littered with examples of rank-and-file trade unionists being let down by their leaders. In 1925, the agreement by the government to avert strikes by negotiating a subsidy for the coal industry to enable the employers to maintain wages and conditions was a short-lived victory. Soon the employers were again demanding wage cuts and a longer working week, and when the miners launched industrial action in 1926 under the slogan ‘not a penny off the pay or an hour on the day’, many workers walked out in solidarity. Although the TUC called a general strike, a combination of weak leadership and government determination to support the employers led to the strike’s defeat.
The Second World War underpinned the strength of trade unionism, which was significantly invigorated as the country prepared for conflict with the building of ships and the manufacture of munitions. Employment increased across the country, including among women, who were again called up to work in the factories and became increasingly active in the labour movement. This new confidence led to the growth of the shop stewards’ movement that organised the union rank and file across the country. The period also saw a growth in white-collar trade unionism.
When Clement Attlee’s Labour government came to power in 1945, repealing Tory anti-union laws, approving closed shops, nationalising key industries and establishing the NHS and the welfare state, the confidence and strength of the unions grew further. This was a government that worked hand in hand with the unions, and its major reforms were union-driven, including the extension of workers’ rights and the establishment of the Agricultural Wages Board. Sick-pay schemes were introduced, and the Dock Labour Scheme of 1947 set a guaranteed minimum fallback wage and created job security for registered dockers. It was abolished by Thatcher in 1989.
By the time Harold Wilson’s Labour government was elected in 1964, the then general secretary of T&G, Frank Cousins, was appointed minister of technology. This was the start of a new era of militancy, with Cousins leading the opposition to any dilution of the socialist principles of the Labour Party, and eventually resigning from the government in protest at its enforcement of an incomes policy that held back wages.
Jack Jones, Cousins’ successor at the top of the T&G, went on to cement a formidable left-wing alliance with Hugh Scanlon, leader of the engineering union, and together they halted Labour’s plans to place legal restrictions on industrial action and on the shop stewards’ movement. These were formulated in In Place of Strife, a 1969 White Paper drawn up by Barbara Castle, the secretary of state for employment and productivity, which proposed an Industrial Board to enforce settlements in industrial disputes. The Jones–Scanlon partnership, with a mass movement behind them, effectively killed off the cabinet vote in favour of the plans.
The pair then played a central role in the development of a militant rank-and-file movement against the incoming Conservative government’s anti-trade union laws. This was a movement that saw the London dockers challenge and defeat the government, mass solidarity with the miners, and a wave of over 200 workplace occupations that began to challenge the conventions of capitalist ownership.
I remember well the TUC march against the draconian 1971 Industrial Relations Act brought in by Ted Heath’s Conservative government. The Act included powers to sequestrate union assets and to prevent mass picketing and secondary action. It also sought to limit strikes through the establishment of a National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC), empowered to grant injunctions against unions and to settle disputes – not unlike the In Place of Strife plan – as well as enable no-strike clauses in individual contracts.
To go to prison in the cause of trade union freedom is not something many trade unionists in Britain have had to face, but five brave dockers did just that. The Pentonville Five, as they became known, were arrested for refusing to appear before the NIRC and were imprisoned in the summer of 1972, after an unofficial strike at the Chobham Farm container depot in Newham, London. They were released after six days when the Official Solicitor applied to the Court of Appeal to have the arrest warrants overturned. The subsequent protests of working people against this direct attack on their trade union organisations eventually forced the government to step back from the Act.
