Editorial: The Cotton Dispute. (1929)

Editorial from the September 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dispute in the cotton industry arose out of a decision by various employers’ associations to reduce wages by 12½ per cent. from July 29th. The operatives balloted on the question of accepting the reduction and decided by a large majority not to do so. Conferences arranged by the Ministry of Labour failed to secure agreement and a lock-out of nearly 500,000 operatives began on July 29th. The position of the locked-out workers was not improved by a recommendation of the Executive Council of one section, the Operative Spinners Amalgamation, in favour of accepting the principle of a reduction, the amount to be decided in course of negotiation. A delegate meeting, however, by a substantial majority refused to give its executive authority to enter into negotiations on this basis, and after 11 days the workers’ side was again united in its refusal.

On August 10th the Prime Minister intervened, and on August 15th it was announced that both sides had agreed to arbitration. Work was resumed at the old rates pending the award of the arbitrators, who were empowered to examine the merits of the employers’ demand for a reduction and determine “whether and, if so, to what extent, the employers’ claim to a reduction of wages is sustained.” (Manchester Guardian, August 16th.) Both sides pledged themselves to abide by the award. The arbitrators were five in number, including the Chairman. Two, Mr. C. T. Cramp and Mr. A. G. Walkden, were trade union officials.

The plea put forward by the masters was the usual one that trade is bad and a wage reduction would help the industry out of its depression.

Mr. Ogden, President of the Amalgamated Weavers, gives the answer. He tells how the same plea was made in 1920, and again in 1922.

“In 1920 wages were 215 on the list. I believed that a reduction of wages would help trade and give better employment. We accepted a reduction of 70 per cent. on list prices. The improvement did not materialise, but two years later the employers came to us again and asked for another 50 per cent cut. This, in all, meant a reduction of between 12s. and 15s. a week. . . .” (Daily Herald, August 1st.)

The pre-stoppage average pay of the men operatives was 47/- a week (according to the Ministry of Labour), and

“there are married men piecers in the spinning rooms who are paid as little as 25s. a week. Four-loom weavers on full time, with all their looms running, get only about £2 a week and to have full time at the mills and all looms fully working is very far indeed from the general experience in the cotton industry to-day.”—(Daily Herald, August 16th.)

Further reductions in pay will no more solve that ever-present problem of capitalism —over-production—than did the earlier ones. The Labour Party’s alternative solution is re-organisation and amalgamation with a view to increasing sales by means of cheaper and more efficient production. This means, in effect, making still more fierce the competition between Lancashire and its foreign rivals—a “remedy” which will but aggravate the disease.

There has been much mutual congratulation because arbitration was accepted and thus “reason” triumphed over “force.” It is necessary to point out, therefore, what is the real function and nature of arbitration. It is no more than a means of measuring up the strength of the opposing sides at a given moment and giving an award accordingly. Arbitration does not obviate the need for the workers to organise with a view to withholding their labour when conditions enable them, by so doing, to bring a certain pressure to bear. It does not bring peace into industry, nor supplant the struggle between those who own the machinery of production and those who operate it; nor does it materially affect the level of wages.

Professor Henry Clay, President of the Section of Economic Science of the British Association, dealt with this subject in a general way in his 1929 address. (See Times, 3rd August, 1929.) He summed up as follows :—

“Arbitration did not, because it could not, materially affect the economic factors that ultimately determine what wages can be paid; and the course of wages, as formulated by arbitration, was much the same as it would have been —with a time-lag and less uniformity —had there been no arbitration. In other words, the arbitration authorities interpreted—and interpreted with fair accuracy—forces which they could not in any case control.”

We would, in passing, commend to the operatives two things for them to ponder over. One is the fact that wage reductions are as much the order of the day when capitalism is administered by the Labour Party as at other times, and the Labour Government, like its predecessors, declines to side with the workers against the employing class.

The second is a gem from the Daily News. The Daily News wholeheartedly welcomed the setting-up of the Arbitration Board, a Board, be it remembered, whose terms of reference were to consider a reduction in wages. Four days later (20th August) its editorial contained a little sermon on revolution. It pointed out first that the British working man “is not impressed by talk of revolution.”

Then it added, with unconscious humour, “He prefers to listen to sensible talk about higher wages and better conditions.”

The award is for a reduction in pay of approximately 6¼ %, thus reducing the employer’s wages bill by £2,225,000 a year (see Daily Telegraph, 24th August). It was agreed to by all the members of the Board, including the two trade union officials.

The Board’s award will doubtless leave the British working man still preferring to listen to “sensible talk about higher wages.”