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The progress of industry led
to the formation of associations or combinations of workmen for the
protection of their interests. Hence the rise of Trade Unions, which became
so characteristic a feature of the industrial life of the nineteenth
century. The movement dates from the previous century and was thus contemporaneous
with the rise of the capitalist manufacturing class and the factory system,
which conjointly tended to transform the small craftsman in many industries,
who previously worked on his own account, into a wage-earner pure and
simple. "In all cases," remark Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb in their History of
Trade Unionism, "in which Trade Unions arose, the great bulk of the workers
had ceased to be independent producers, themselves controlling the processes
and owning the material and the product of their labour, and had passed into
the condition of lifelong wage-earners, possessing neither the instruments
of production nor the commodity in its finished state." Under the old
economic system laws had been made in the reigns of Elizabeth of England and
James VI. of Scotland empowering the magistrates to fix the wages of all
craftsmen and regulate the number of apprentices in each craft. Under the
new system, by which the control of industry was more and more passing into
the hands of the capitalist manufacturer and the workman was more and more
becoming a pure wage-earner, the employers strove in their own interest to
get rid of the old regulation of wages and labour and vindicate their claim
to fix wages and employ labour irrespective of such statutory restrictions.
They found in the teaching of Adam Smith a theoretic vindication of the
principle of industrial liberty and were not slow to appeal to it in support
of the policy of unrestricted wages and free labour. The effect of this
policy was to cheapen labour, and it accordingly gave rise to a long series
of industrial disputes and disturbances. The workmen naturally sought a
remedy in combination to secure by means of the intervention of Parliament,
or the Court of Session, or of strikes, better conditions of labour.
Already, in 1782, the Scottish cotton weavers had combined in a union for
this object. Cotton weaving and spinning required no lengthy training or
particular skill on the part of the worker, and higher wages in this
industry attracted a large number of agricultural labourers. The
manufacturers combined to take advantage of the influx to reduce the
"prices" or wage paid to the weavers for certain kinds of piece-work. The
weavers in self defence combined to draw up a counter scale, and
negotiations with the masters having failed, refused to work for the more
obnoxious of them. They thus adopted the expedient of tine strike in order
to enforce the acceptance of their terms and compelled those, who ultimately
agreed to resume work at the masters' rates, to return or burn the cotton.
Demonstrations in the streets of Glasgow led to a riot and a collision with
the soldiers called out to maintain order, and several of the workmen were
killed. A number of prosecutions ensued and the movement collapsed.
The growth of Trade Unionism among the textile
workers of Yorkshire and Lancashire led to the passing of the Acts of 1799 &
1800, prohibiting combinations of both workmen and employers, and, in
particular, rendering workmen who resorted to this expedient liable to three
months' hard labour. These Acts did not, however, deprive the workmen of the
right to use legal means for the protection of their interests. It was still
open to them to combine for the purpose of presenting a case to the proper
authority, which was empowered, in virtue of the old laws, to fix the scale
of wages in industrial disputes. The Edinburgh compositors, for instance,
are found adopting this expedient in 1804, when they presented a memorial to
the Court of Session for an increase of wages in consequence of the rise of
prices, and secured an "interlocutor" in 1805 fixing a scale for the
printing trade of Edinburgh. Of this expedient the weavers made use some
years later in the course of another dispute with the employers. In 1809
they joined those of Lancashire in an application to Parliament to limit the
number of apprentices and fix a minimum wage. After investigation the
Commons declined to interfere and a second application (this time by the
Scottish weavers alone) was equally unsuccessful, the Select Committee
adopting the manufacturers' view of the question of free agreement and
declaring Parliamentary interference in such matters to be pernicious to the
general interest. With wages at the scale of 8s. 6d. a week and the peck of
meal at 3s., the weavers had, however, a strong case for such interference,
and acting on the reminder of Lord President Hope that the magistrates
possessed statutory powers to fix wages, they next appealed to the Provost
and magistrates of the city. The municipal authorities also declined to
interfere on the ground of an opinion of counsel that they had no such
authority. Fortified by a counter opinion in favour of their contention, the
weavers next appealed to the Justices of the Peace for Lanarkshire, who
required the employers to ! take into consideration a scheme of wages
submitted by the workmen, The employers in turn appealed to the Court of
Session, which upheld the action of the Justices, and ultimately in
November, 1812, after an exhaustive examination of witnesses, the Court
decided to recommend a scale varying from £1 to 8s. per week. But, with a
few exceptions, the employers, who had withdrawn from the case, paid no heed
to a decision which it had cost the weavers a large sum to obtain.
Thereupon the weavers decided
on a general strike, which ere I long involved 40,000 men all over the
country. A strike was, I however, a risky expedient in view of the
Combination Acts, and the Lord Advocate now intervened on the side of the
employers i by arresting the leaders, in spite of the fact that the strikers
in I this case refrained from violence. This rather biassed intervention led
to the collapse of the strike after a couple of months, and the leaders were
in March, 1813, convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. A
month later Parliament repealed the "pernicious" law empowering Justices to
fix wages, and in the following year the statute empowering them to limit
the number of apprentices (Statute of Apprentices), thus placing the workmen
at the mercy of the employers. There was doubtless force in the contention
that these laws were no longer , in harmony with the principle of freedom of
trade and labour which the manufacturers and their champions adduced in
support of their abolition. But the impartial recognition of this principle
would also have involved the recognition of the right of the workmen to
combine to secure a reasonable remuneration for their labour out of the
profits, to which labour as well as capital contributed. They were only too
well justified in view of the poverty and privation induced by the long war
with France, which hampered industry and raised prices, in demanding better
conditions of labour. Unfortunately, the anti-democratic spirit of the
governing classes throughout, and subsequent to the French Revolutionary
period, was not disposed to give a fair consideration to the popular
demands. Political prejudice, as well as class interest, rendered it
difficult for the working class to obtain a sympathetic hearing in a
Parliament in which it had no representation, or even in the Courts of
Justice, which were by no means free from the dominant political and class
influences. Neither Parliament, nor law court, whilst ready enough to
repress popular combination, took any steps to put down combinations of
masters against their employees. Lawlessness was apparently deemed a
monopoly of the working class, and a bitter sense of grievance was the
result.
This embittered spirit
inevitably found expression in acts of violence. In this spirit the Glasgow
cotton spinners carried on the agitation which the weavers had failed to
render effective by legitimate methods. The spinners had combined in a union
in 1806, and from 1816 onwards they sought to gain their ends by terroristic
methods. They not only made lavish use of threatening letters to obnoxious
masters; they did not shrink from attempts at assassination and incendiarism,
and bound their members on oath to make such attempts in the common
interest. Between the years 1816 and 1824 several objectionable masters and
workmen (the latter being known as "nobs") were shot at. One woman was
murdered and several persons were dreadfully injured by the vitriol thrown
on them. The repressive policy which produced such outrages, the numerous
prosecutions to which the combination laws gave rise, led Francis Place, a
disciple of Bentham and James Mill, to begin an agitation for their repeal.
He was joined by Joseph Hume and McCulloch, the editor of The-Scotsman, and
at length in 1824 they secured the support of Peel and Huskisson in carrying
a repeal bill through Parliament. The employers were taken by surprise by
the clever parliamentary tactics of the promoters of the bill and made an
attempt to undo it in the following year. The attempt was only partially
successful, for the Government, whilst repealing the Act of the previous
year and prohibiting all combination for the purpose of coercing masters or
workmen, explicitly excepted from prosecution associations for the purpose
of regulating wages or hours of labour. In spite of this limitation the Act
of 1825 constituted a real advance in the industrial emancipation of the
working class. "The right of collective bargaining, involving the power to
withhold labour from the market by concerted action," remark the Messrs
Webb, "was for the first time expressly established. And although many
struggles remained to be fought before the legal freedom of Trade Unionism
was fully secured, no overt attempt has since been made to render illegal
this first condition of Trade Union action."
This legislation gave a great
impulse to the spread of unionism among the various trades, which organised
themselves in unions. According to the Glasgow Argiis towards the end of
1833, "scarcely a branch of trade exists in the West of Scotland that is not
now in a state of union." Attempts were even made to organise all the trades
of the United Kingdom in one vast association, and the organisation started
by Robert Owen in 1834 was on a Socialist basis. These attempts proved
abortive, and the activity of extremists like Owen tended to discredit the
movement. It suffered a distinct set back in Scotland at least through the
strike of the Glasgow spinners in 1837, which once more provoked the
intervention of the authorities and led to the severe punishment of its
leaders. The spinners had at intervals resorted to the violent tactics which
had characterised their action before the repeal of the combination laws,
and on this occasion they indulged in riotous excesses in protest against
the resolution of the masters to reduce their wages. They attempted to set
fire to mills and attacked workmen who agreed to work at the masters' rates.
One man was shot with fatal effect. The crime was followed by the discovery
and the arrest of the members of the Strike Committee and five of them were
ultimately convicted on rather dubious evidence and sentenced to seven
years' transportation.
For some years the movement
for better conditions of labour took a political turn. The Reform Bill of
1832, which had done so much for the political emancipation of the middle
class, had done nothing for that of the people in the larger sense. A dozen
years before the passing of the Bill the workmen of Glasgow, Paisley, and
the western district had not only combined and struck work for this purpose,
but attempted in small bands to enforce the demand for universal suffrage.
The result was a collision with the military at Bonnymuir, in which many of
the insurgents were wounded and a number taken prisoner, three of whom—among
them Andrew Hardie, a forbear of J. Iveir Hardie, —suffered the death
penalty (August, 1820). The Reform Bill gave an impulse to the movement for
the extension of the franchise to the people in order to enable them to
remedy their grievances by legislative means. Popular reformers insisted
with no little force that the improvement of the condition of the working
class depended on the possession of political power and embodied their views
in the People's Charter, which demanded manhood suffrage, vote by ballot,
annual Parliaments, etc. These demands were far in advance of the time, and
the resort to violence in support of them, in addition to their visionary
character, deprived the movement of any practical effect. Though the Charter
did not receive the official recognition of the Trade Unions, it aroused
much enthusiasm among the people. A great demonstration in its support was
held at Glasgow in May, 1838, and other Scottish towns testified in its
favour, whilst refraining from the popular disturbances which it excited at
Birmingham and other English centres. In December, 1839, a conference of
Scottish Chartists, held at Edinburgh, emphatically expressed its preference
for constitutional methods and denounced the resort to physical force. The
Trade Unions also preferred the saner method of agitating on constitutional,
not revolutionary, lines for the redress of their grievances. "Laying aside
all projects of social revolution," remark Mr and Mrs Webb, " they set
themselves resolutely to resist the worst of the legal and industrial
oppressions from which they suffered, and slowly built up for this purpose
organisations which have become integral parts of the structure of a modern
industrial state. This success we attribute mainly to the spread of
education among the rank and file, and the more practical counsels which
began, after 1842, to influence the Trade Union world."
The growing sense of the
importance of intelligent, informed action in the decision of industrial
questions is apparent in the establishment of classes for mutual improvement
and of trade journals for the diffusion of technical knowledge. Such a class
was, for instance, started by the Glasgow Branch of the Scottish United
Operative Masons in 1845. Whilst the organised strike appears as the oft
recurring expedient for securing the increase or resisting the reduction of
wages, or bringing about a diminution of the hours of labour—especially
during years of trade depression—there is also discernible a tendency to
make trial of conciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes. In the
case of the lock-out of the Clyde shipwrights, for instance, who demanded an
increase of wages in April, 1877, and agreed to submit to the arbitration of
Lord Moncrieff, who decided in favour of the employers. As a rule, however,
the employers showed little disposition to encourage this pacific policy.
They usually met proposals of this kind by resolute resistance to any
interference with the right to regulate the hours and terms of labour and
make their own agreements with their employees. The expedient of the strike
was, therefore, not always the fruit of the unreasonable discontent of the
workers in times of depression. Nor had the employers always the best of the
dispute. In 1871-72 the English engineering operatives of the north-eastern
district struck for a nine hours' day, and after a long struggle compelled
this concession. The workers in the Clyde shipbuilding yards went one
better, and without a strike secured a 51 hours' working week, though the
hours were again raised during the disastrous years 1878-79, when the
failure of the City of Glasgow Bank intensified the prevailing depression
and ruined all but half-a-dozen of the Scottish Unions.
The two men who from about
the middle of the century did most to organise Scottish labour were
Alexander Campbell and Alexander MacDonald. Campbell had been a disciple of
Robert Owen and secretary of the Glasgow Carpenters' Union in the days of
the Owenite agitation. He became editor of the Glasgow Sentinel and one of
the leaders of the movement to give the local unions a corporate existence
in the form of Trades Councils, which resulted in the formation of these
Councils in the large industrial centres of the United Kingdom between 1858
and 1867. These were a sort of workmen's Parliaments for the discussion and
advocacy of matters bearing on the industrial and social interests of the
organised workers. Those of Glasgow and Edinburgh were among the first to be
established. Campbell's friend and fellow organiser, Alexander MacDonald,
who was born in 1821, began to work in a Lanarkshire pit at the age of 8. In
184G he became a student at Glasgow University and maintained himself during
the winter sessions by working as a miner in the summer. In 1850 he became a
teacher and seven years later devoted himself wholly to agitation in the
miners' interest. He unsuccessfully stood for Kilmarnock Burghs in 1868, but
was elected for an English constituency in 1874. He was chosen president of
the Miners' National Union, whose foundation in 1863 was largely due to his
exertions, and retained this post till his death in 1881.
These Councils lent a
powerful support to the policy of seeking to secure, by means of
Parliamentary action, the social and industrial improvement of the working
class, which the leaders of Trade Unions adopted from about 1860 onwards.
Under Campbell's leadership the Glasgow Councils, along with those of other
towns, took an active part in helping to carry the Reform Bill of 1867-68,
which enfranchised the artisan in the towns. Glasgow was again in the
forefront of the agitation for the reform of the Master and Servant Act,
which favoured the master at the expense of the servant, breach of contract
on the part of the latter being, under this Act, a crime punishable by
imprisonment, whilst the former could only be sued for damages for the same
offence. Moreover, the law allowed the master, but not the servant, to bear
witness on his own behalf. Campbell and MacDonald brought the question
before the Glasgow Council, and as the result of the combined action of
those of Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, and the English provincial towns,
seconded by the Trade Unions throughout the United Kingdom, the law was
amended in 1867. This amendment constituted " the first positive success of
the Trade Unions in the legislative field." They also co-operated
effectively in the passing of the Act of 1871 entitling Trade Unions to
register as legal associations and thus securing legal protection for their
funds. The keen resentment over the failure to prevent the passing of
another Act restricting strike action on their part intensified the
determination to secure direct labour representation in the House of
Commons. MacDonald had in 1868 become a candidate for the Kilmarnock Burghs,
but had retired before the election. At the General
Election of 1874 he and
Thomas Burt, another leading official of the Miners' National Union, were
returned for Stafford and Morpeth respectively—the first two Labour members
to enter Parliament. The result was the repeal of the Act restricting strike
action and the substitution for the Master and Servant Act of the Employers
and Workmen Act, which put employers and employees on an equal footing
before the law and fully recognised the right of collective bargaining after
fifty years of organised effort. There was ample reason in this legislation
for the enthusiasm with which Mr G. Howell, at the Trade Union Congress at
Glasgow in 1875, eulogised Mr Cross, the Conservative Home Secretary, who
had been the sympathetic instrument of placing on the Statute Book "the
greatest boon ever given to the sons of toil."
So far Trade Unionism had
been confined to the skilled workman. Towards the end of the "eighties" a
movement was begun by John Burns, Tom Mann, Keir Hardie, and others, to
organise the unskilled workers. Connected with this movement was the
recrudescence of Socialist theories, which aimed at eliminating capitalism
and private profit from industry and nationalising production for the
benefit of the workers and the community. The continuance of trade
depression, the recurring unemployment, poverty, and misery of large
sections of the working class as the result of alternating over-production
and commercial stagnation, social evils like bad housing and sweating gave
an impulse to the propaganda of the Social Democratic Federation. Trade
Unionism had effected much for the industrial and political emancipation of
the artisan class. But it had failed to assure it a steady and adequate
livelihood, and the Socialist reformers sought the remedy in a complete
transformation of the industrial system. To these reformers Unionism was at
best but a partial remedy for the evils of this system. Whilst professing
the new Socialist doctrine, men like Burns and Mann were content to agitate
for reform on Unionist lines, such as an eight hours' day as a cure for
unemployment, pending the transformation to be attained by the
nationalisation of industry. By their energy and their enthusiasm they
succeeded in infusing a more aggressive spirit into the Trade Union
movement, which gained a large accession of members as the result not only
of the organisation of unskilled labour, but of the swelling of the ranks of
the old Unions. A more doctrinaire section, led by Hyndman, was, however,
not content to infuse a new spirit into the old methods. This section
dreamed of an international social revolution by the concerted action of the
workers on behalf of the new teaching. They contemplated nothing less than
the overthrow of the dominant industrial system and Hyndman looked to the
centenary year of the French Revolution in 1889 to inaugurate it. For such
day dreams the mass of English and Scottish workers had no taste. Burns and
Mann left the Social Democratic Federation, and though the Socialist
propaganda continued to make progress in the next quarter of a century, the
revolutionary method failed to secure the adhesion of responsible English
and Scottish Socialist leaders, and formed no part of practical Trade Union
politics.
The Unions preferred instead
to concentrate their energy on the policy of extending Labour representation
in Parliament and organising a Labour party to further the interests of the
working class independently of the Liberal party, though they continued to
co-operate with this party in supporting Liberal measures to this end. The
first practical step in the organisation of an Independent Labour Party was
made by a group of Scottish Socialists, including Keir Hardie, Cunninghame
Graham, and Robert Smillie, shortly after Hardie's unsuccessful attempt to
contest Mid-Lanark in the Labour interest in opposition to both Liberals and
Conservatives in 1888. It adopted an extensive reform programme and issued a
manifesto emphasising the necessity for the working class to organise itself
in order to secure by its voting power the realisation of these reforms. The
Scottish movement was extended to England, and resulted four years later in
the formation of the Independent Labour Party at a meeting at Bradford in
1892. Besides Keir Hardie, two other Scotsmen, Ramsay MacDonald and Bruce
Glasier, became prominent among its leaders. Its programme was Socialist,
but it has co-operated with the Trade Unions, which form the Labour Party in
the more general sense, in supporting legislation in the interest of the
working class. Under the leadership of men like Hardie, Bruce Glasier,
Ramsay MacDonnald, J. P. Clynes, Arthur Henderson, it has opposed reform by
way of revolution. Trade Unionism has to a certain extent been penetrated by
Socialist principles and tendencies, as in the case of the Miners'
Federation, which now champions, for instance, the nationalisation of the
mines. But in its advocacy of reforms such as the eight hours and later the
six hours' day for miners, and shorter hours for all classes of workmen, the
Workmen's Compensation Act, the Workmen's Insurance Act, Old Age Pensions,
etc., it has remained steadfast to the policy of constitutional action, in
spite of extremist clamour for direct action to secure political and social
reform. The growth of the Labour Party in and outside Parliament has placed
at its disposal the means of promoting such legislation without recourse to
the revolutionary methods which, favoured by the great war, have produced
such startling effects in some Continental countries.
The growth of the Trade Union
movement during the last quarter of a century in the United Kingdom has been
phenomenal. In 1892 the number of Trade Unionists in the United Kingdom was
estimated at over millions, of whom about 150,000 were credited to Scotland.
Of the Scottish trades represented, by far the larger number belonged to the
engineering and metal industries with over 45,000 members. The building
trades came next with about 25,000, the miners next with over 21,000, the
labourers and transport workers next with about the same total, by far the
larger proportion being confined to the great industrial centre between the
Clyde and the Forth. Twenty-five years later the membership of the various
unions in the United Kingdom had swelled to between five and six millions,
and the movement had spread to the remoter area previously untouched by it.
It has, moreover, brought within its range classes of workers, such as
teachers, chemists, clerks, farm servants, nurses, who had previously stood
outside or been little affected by it. Another feature is the endeavour to
obliterate the distinction between skilled and unskilled workers in the same
industry and to organise all workmen in one industry in a single union. Some
of the Scottish Unions, such as the miners and railwaymen, are amalgamated
with those of England; but in a large number of cases they have a separate
national organisation and have not even agreements with kindred English
Societies.
In spite of much criticism
and opposition, the movement has been of great service to the workers. It
was the inevitable outcome of the evils incident to the accentuated
individualist commercial and industrial system of the nineteenth century.
During a large part of this century the working class in Scotland suffered
from periodic trade depression, and the consequent fall in wages and
unemployment. In the intervals of trade revival employment and wages,
indeed, improved, and destitution was correspondingly reduced. But it was
always there, more or less, and terrible enough, in the annals of the
century, was the misery accruing from it, in spite of the all too meagre
attempts at relief by way of charity or the artificial provision of
employment. Fluctuations of trade, over which employers had no control,
doubtless operated in producing this state of things. But it can hardly be
doubted that the industrial and commercial system was itself largely
responsible. This system proceeded too much on the policy of increasing
profits as much as possible as the first essential of business, without an
adequate and general realisation of the obligation to care for the interest
of the workers equally with those of the employer or the shareholders.
Otherwise the conditions of labour in factories, workshops, and mines would
not have been suffered to remain so long so deplorably lacking as was the
case till far into the century. What can only be described as sweated labour
was far too general in many industries, in which large incomes and dividends
were made at the expense of the well-being of the workers. |
