Is industrial unrest just a case of history repeating (From Craven Herald)

Is industrial unrest just a case of history repeating

7:01pm Thursday 8th December 2011 in Craven History

To raucous applause, Mr Snell of the Skipton and District Weavers’ Association, sat down after his speech during the workers’ meeting in Caroline Square. As the Herald reported on July 28 1911, “he had heard it said that Skipton weavers were ‘sloppy’ but if they went into Lancashire, and asked about the matter there, they would find that Skipton weavers were looked upon as quite as good as Lancashire weavers, and in many cases better.”

In 1911 more people than ever before had been involved in strikes, with some estimating that more than 900,000 people engaged in industrial action in that year alone. There was a developing class consciousness among working people who had recently formed the Labour Party to represent them in parliament.

Employees in industrial towns like Skipton had borne the brunt of the advances in industrial automation. Between 1900 and 1912 average rents had increased, but real wages had fallen by around ten per cent. During 1911, women involved in jam-making, and seafarers, dockers, weavers and railway workers all picketed against working conditions.

As the Herald noted on August 18, Labour MPs were taken by surprise at the militancy of their own supporters and the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants called a national railway strike. “War is declared, we are calling the men out,” he intoned as the national unrest reached Skipton station.

Following a telegram from union headquarters, the Skipton railwaymen threw down their tools, establishing a picket line at the Black Walk near the station. The Herald talked of “Strike Mania” gripping the country, and men were heard to shout “be a man” and “do thi duty” at drivers, stokers and guards on the incoming trains.

Some ugly moments ensued when a signalman refused to picket with his colleagues and stones were thrown at the signal box. The station master was reported by the Herald to be doing three jobs: as the ticket collector, station policeman and also to be calling out trains. In extraordinary scenes, the near staffless station was said to be “devoid of life”, as workers resolved to get a message to their counterparts in Hellifield urging them to join in the collective action.

Only a couple of porters were at work, and those passengers undertaking the commute to Leeds and Bradford did so with trepidation, as stones were thrown at trains along the line and threats were shouted at the drivers.

The Herald observed that the Liberal Government, a radical administration which introduced old-age pensions and laid the foundations for the welfare state, refused to recognise the strikers’ grievances, offering only a Royal Commission to examine working conditions.

The Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, declared that the union movement would risk losing public sympathy if it refused the offer of a commission, but was accused by union leaders of issuing “unwarrantable threats” after Asquith declared he would take the “necessary steps” to prevent paralysis of the railway system.

Meanwhile in the House of Commons, MPs were voting on legislation to award themselves a salary of £400 a year, the first time parliamentarians had been paid and a measure designed to encourage working people to stand for election.

On the Herald’s letters page, one reader observed how a Frenchman had offered to transport mail between two French towns by using a “flying machine” as proof of the reliability of air travel. He thought that in the future, when goods were transported by air, it would be far harder for strikers to disrupt services. With no fixed lines, there would be no point of attack for those seeking to disrupt transportation of goods, he wrote hopefully.

In Liverpool, thousands of police and troops were drafted into the city and there were reports of Royal Navy cruisers being sent to the port to intimidate the dockers and railwaymen.

“...the soldiers were not called in as early as they should have been, and so everything got out of hand in the matter of the disturbances in London, and the bad example has spread like wildfire throughout the country,” bellowed the Herald’s editorial leader disapprovingly, in comments eerily similar to those heard in the summer of 2011.

When the settlement did arrive on August 25, 1911, the Liberal Government, supported by Labour MPs, took credit for the reinstatement of law and order.

But 1911 was to sound the death knell for Liberal power, even though Asquith’s government won a significant victory against the House of Lords by passing the 1911 Parliament Act.

Usurped by socialism, there was to be a change away from men like Skipton Liberal MP William Clough, as the party was squeezed by the Conservatives and Labour. This social and political change, which included the women’s suffrage movement, was explored by George Dangerfield in his book The Strange Death of Liberal England.

For Skipton, the return to normality meant facing up to the consequences of the violence by repairing the damage, and the realisation that the action had not really achieved concessions from the government.

In the end, the railway workers’ unions settled for conciliation boards, while the railwaymen and other industrial workers like the weavers, continued to endure poor terms and conditions.

The 1911 National Insurance Act introduced sick pay and unemployment pay, but Germany had already introduced welfare schemes and its industrial workers had enjoyed a surge in wages to match the cost of living.

The British Army had found during the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 that two-thirds of volunteers were unfit for service. It wasn’t until the 1940s the lot of the average working man in Skipton improved.

As Mr J O’Grady, Labour MP for East Leeds, commented in the Herald in 1911, he had travelled the world fairly well and said that in no part of the world where he had been had he seen men work so hard and for such small wages as he had in this old country of ours.