Strikes and the Government 1893–1981

255 Pages·1982·27.025 MB·English

by  Eric Wigham (auth.)

STRIKES AND THE GOVERNMENT
1893-1981
By the same author
TRADE UNIONS
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE UNIONS?
THE POWER TO MANAGE: A HISTORY OF THE ENGINEERING EMPLOYERS'
FEDERATION
FROM HUMBLE PETITION TO MILITANT ACTION: A HISTORY OF THE
CIVIL AND PUBLIC SERVICES ASSOCIATION 1903-1978
STRIKES AND THE
GOVERNMENT 1893- 1981
ERIC WIGHAM
The subject of industrial peace and the efforts made
to secure it is one which can be studied not only with
interest but with· profit.
Lord Amulree
©Eric Wigham 1976, 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1982 978-o-333-32302-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First edition (Strikes and the Government 1893-1974) 1976
Second edition (Strikes and the Government 189:]-1!}81) 1982
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-06159-4 ISBN 978-1-349-06157-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06157-0
Contents
Preface to the First Edition vii
Preface to the Second Edition viii
1 The Government Steps In 1893-1906 1
2 Unorganised Revolt 1907-1914 18
3 Industrial Tmce 1914-1918 34
4 Organised Revolt 1919-1926 47
5 The Challenge Abandoned 1926-1939 65
6 Strikes are Banned 1940-1951 83
7 Towards a Wages Policy 1951-1964 106
8 Harold Wilson Surrenders 1964-1970 133
9 Edward Heath is Vanquished 1970-1974 156
10 The 'Social Contract' 1974-1979 181
11 Back to Free Enterprise 1979-1981 208
12 The Political Zigzag 1970-1981 227
Appendix on Sources 238
Index 242
Preface to the First Edition
This volume is an attempt to trace the development of government
peace-making in industry from its first reluctant assumption of the
function by the non-interventionalist Liberals in 1893 until 2 Septem-
ber 1974, when, on trade union insistence, it was handed over to an
autonomous body. I have interpreted the subject widely to include
not only the settlement of disputes but also their prevention, the
provision of services, official and public discussion of possible ways
of improving things, even when they have come to nothing, and
indeed the whole field of government industrial relations policy.
Attention is centred on the department specifically made respon-
sible for dealing with these matters, the Labour Department of the
Board of Trade established in 1893 which became the Ministry of
Labour in 1917, the Ministry of Labour and National Service in
1939, the Ministry of Labour again in 1959, the Department of
Employment and Productivity in 1968 and the Department of Em-
ployment in 1970. But it has been necessary to look beyond the
department in periods of strife when Ministers and Prime Ministers,
Cabinets and Parliaments, even the national electorate have become
involved. This has been particularly true since the Second World
War, when successive governments have tried to restrain infla-
tionary wage claims, so that most major disputes have been more
between the government and the unions than between employers
and workers.
In threading my way through the trends of policy and the com-
plex relationships between individual politicians and civil servants,
employers and union leaders and workers, within the shifting
balances of power and against the background of a seldom predic-
table public opinion, I have been immensely helped from the
beginning by the shrewd guidance of Sir Harold Emmerson, who
read the whole of my manuscript. Sir Frederick Leggett, in his
ninetieth year, drew freely and patiently on memories going back
to 1904. Mr Rodney Lowe, in the midst of a thesis concerned with
the early years of the department, allowed me to read it as it went
along and gave me invaluable advice. I was much assisted by Dr
Brenda Swann and Miss Maureen Turnbull who, with support from
viii Preface to the First Edition
the Social Science Research Council, have made it possible, if not
yet exactly easy, to find one's way among the labour documents at
the Public Records Office.
My thanks are also due to many past and present Ministers and
officials of the department, to employers and union leaders and
conciliators, who have spoken to me of their experiences and in a
number of cases looked through and commented upon sections of
my manuscript. I am grateful for permission to use the departmenfs
library freely. My debt to other authors will appear in an appendix
on sources at the end of this book. No one is responsible for its
failings but myself.
E.W.
June 1975
Preface to the Second Edition
Continuing my story from 1974 into 1981, I have looked at the
development of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
which took over the responsibility of industrial peace-making from
the Government but have concentrated most attention on the influ-
ence of different economic policies on relations between govern-
ments and trade unions. The battle against inflation has been the
main cause of big strikes - and for two years the main cause of
comparative peace - during the period.
Labour's attempt to reach consensus through its 'social contract'
with the TUC and Conservative preoccupation with monetary
policy as a means to revive the nation's industrial energy make a
contrast that is fascinating, even though both leave only question
marks behind.
Once again I offer my thanks to all those, directly involved in the
events narrated, who have helped me to understand what has been
going on.
E.W.
May 1981
1 The Government Steps In
1893-1906
New kinds of Civil Servant - Lunch at the Foreign Office -
A Conciliation Act is passed - But the employers dig their heels
in - <Monstrous' immunities
The Labour Department of the Board of Trade was started in 1893
by a verbose Liberal statesman with a long hook nose and a Bowing
beard named Anthony John Mundella. Later the same year the
grand but failing old man of Victorian politics, William Ewart
Gladstone, became the first Prime Minister to intervene in an indus-
trial dispute. Thus in the field of industrial relations the Government
abandoned the doctrine of non-interference to try to avoid the
damage and distress caused by great strikes and lock-outs.
Mundella had already played a significant part in laying the
foundations of the British system of free collective bargaining. The
son of an Italian rebel against Austrian rule who had Bed to
England and married a Welsh girl, Mundella made his fortune as
a hosiery manufacturer in Nottingham, where he was deeply im-
pressed by the <famished and wretched condition of the people'.
When employers there were threatening a general lock-out in 1860,
in retaliation for a series of strikes, Mundella brought represen-
tatives of the two sides together in a local church hall and got them
to agree to the establishment of a Board of Conciliation and Arbitra-
tion. Nowadays we would probably just call it a joint negotiating
body, but for employers and workers' leaders to sit round a table
discussing their differences on equal terms was then a big step
forward. The board was so successful that it was used as a model
in other industries, some of which appointed independent chairmen,
umpires or referees who in the next thirty years developed the arts
of industrial conciliation and arbitration. These boards set the
pattern for British industrial relations.
Negotiators and arbitrators were handicapped, however, by the
lack of reliable and impartial information about the state of trade
2 Strikes and the Government 1893-1981
in the industry concerned, which was regarded as the main guide
in determining claims for changes in wage levels. In March 1886
the House of Commons carried a motion by Charles Bradlaugh,
controversial apostle of free-thinking and birth control, asking the
Government to collect and publish labour statistics. Mundella was
President of the Board of Trade at that time, too, and he welcomed
the motion and set up a bureau of labour statistics. He had been
impressed by the 'surprising accuracy and fulness' of trade union
reports on the state of trade, from branches in foreign countries as
well as in Britain, and he chose as the first Board of Trade labour
correspondent the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, John Burnett.
Burnett, a moderate craft union leader of the old school, had
made his name in 1871 by leading the largely unorganised engineer-
ing workers of the Tyne in a successful fight for the 54-hour week,
but he was a whole-hearted believer in conciliation and arbitration.
'The increasing severity of competition for the work of the world
makes absolute co-operation between capital and labour more and
more a national necessity,' he said. With limited funds at his disposal
he set up a network of correspondents in the country's industrial
centres.
He made it a practice to ask both sides after every dispute how
they thought stoppages could be avoided in the future and printed
the replies in his detailed annual reports on lock-outs and strikes.
Some answers from both sides were aggressive in tone. 'Persuade
the men in the union to drown all their leaders as they are the cause
of all disputes,' suggested one employer. Some wanted unions to be
banned, or picketing to be made illegal, or agreements to be made
binding. From the workers' side there was occasional evidence of
the recent spread of socialism. Some thought it would help if the
working man had equal control of industrial affairs with the masters,
or if government workshops were established to find work for
everybody, or if co-operation were made general, or if there were,
in the familiar phrase, 'nationalisation of the means of production,
distribution and exchange'. One or two on each side answered
simply, 'Fight it out'.
But such replies were uncommon. The great majority of both
employers and workers advocated the use of some form of concilia-
tion or arbitration machinery.
The pressure for conciliation was growing in spite of the fact, or
perhaps because of the fact, that strikes and lock-outs had been
increasing in number, bitterness and scale since the beginning of
the great depression in the middle 1870s. The established craft
unions were operating more freely since the trade union legislation