Editorial: Dockers Betrayed. (1912)

Editorial from the August 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

For ten weeks the London Transport Workers have been out on strike ; not for fresh demands, but merely to retain what they had “won” last August. Sir Albert K. Rollit, the Lord Chief Justice, and Sir Edward Clarke have “awarded” them various increases, but the employers have simply ignored them.

Last August the Dockers had a splendid opportunity. The Carmen, Railwaymen, and the Provincial, as well as the London, Dockers were out. Yet immediately Sir G. Askwith, Burns, Masterman, and Buxton had signed “terms of settlement” they were ordered back to work.

The leaders babbled of a glorious victory, and gloated over the fact that not a penny of strike pay was distributed ; but not one of the “advances” ever saw the light.

The Transport Workers, like most workers, are ignorant of science. They merely wanted the agreement “honoured” and looked no further afield. Their ignorance is reflected in their choice of “leaders.” Did they understand their real interests the Tilletts, Goslings and Wilsons would long since have been unemployed. The Strike Committee ordered a national strike, but when the unions affiliated to the Federation (who had never been consulted) refused to comply, the worth of the democracy and leadership of the Federation was seen.

During the ten weeks the Government were not idle. They drafted thousands of armed as well as mounted police into the strike area, sent gunboats into the Thames, and mobilised reserve men all over the country. Hundreds of soldiers were sent to places like Grays and Tilbury. Mr. McKenna boasted that they had supplied more police protection for blacklegs than any Government before. The result was that ships were loaded and unloaded despite the strike.

The Shipping Federation raked up blacklegs from all parts. They swore they would never give in. They organised a system of pooling liabilities, and laughed at the men because they had the Government behind them. They knew they could flout the men while the police and soldiers were at their command.

The Dockers hoped great things from the nationalising of the organisation of the Docks. When the Port of London Authority was established they thought casual labour had gone for ever. Instead it has increased. A leading member of the Government went from the Board of Trade to the Chair of the Authority, and has shown himself as callous as any Tory, not even excepting the late tyrant of Penrhyn.

Liberals and Tories alike have engaged in the calculated starvation of the men and their families. Meanwhile Labour Members stood cheek by jowl with Lord Devonport, watching the Fleet from the deck of the “Armadale Castle.” And while starvation grew apace on the banks of the Thames, Asquith and Redmond talked of Home Rule on the banks of the Liffey. They played he game of the masters. Every suggestion, therefore, met with the firm refusal of the employers. They had evolved their scheme and it did not include surrender.

The fearful sufferings of the toilers could not be surpassed in any age or clime. Radical “Reynolds’s” (July 14) says: “Little children of the East End dying like flies. Mothers starving.” It goes on to quote Father Ring, a local clergyman, thus:

“Bad as the conditions were a fortnight ago they are unfortunately worse now. Landlords are fixing eviction orders on the houses, and this is driving the poor people almost mad. Not only is the East End racked with hunger, not only has every stick of furniture been pledged in many instances, but a new horror is at hand. The matron of a local lying-in home told me that seven babies born in the institution during the strike period had died, in her opinion entirely through the pressure of the strike. Having parted with every stick of furniture, mothers have been unable to provide themselves with the nourishment necessary for the preservation of their own health and the lives of their infants.”

The strike leaders played the game in the usual style. They told the men funny stories, prayed to God, boasted, foamed and bounced. Right up to last Saturday afternoon they told the men to stand firm and assured them they were winning. But when the union funds were gone, when the leaders had led their dupes into a cul-de-sac, they scuttled.

The leaders met at the “Royal Hotel,” Mile End, and announced the strike over. They issued a manifesto calling upon the men to return to work. The manifesto reads like the usual betrayal. The men were ordered back to work unconditionally, but they were never consulted about it. The Strike Committee declare that all agreements must be maintained in their entirety. This in spite of the fact that the employers have definitely refused to carry out their side. It means the men are ordered to do all the giving and the masters are to do all the taking. The former are to go back to work at the complete mercy of the Shipping Federation. Being without funds in their union, the masters know they can’t resist. So for a start they have told the men that they must sign on as casual workers, not as permanent men.

No wonder 30,000 strikers in Southwark Park voted unanimously against return. Will Thorne, Ben Tillett, Harry Gosling, and Jack Jones were told to their faces by the strikers that they were traitors and turncoats, and that they had sold the men. The men in their rage tore down the notices declaring the strike at an end, and demanded a ballot; but heedless of the men’s anger the Strike Committee met again and reaffirmed their unanimous decision declaring the strike off and ordering the men back to work.

Though many of the latter may still stand out, the official order to go back will no doubt, have the effect of smashing the strike, so that the leaders who have done the masters the good service of depleting the unions’ treasuries, at the end of the chapter of tragedy have done them another excellent turn in the capacity of strikesmashers.

Slowly but surely, by twos and threes and at odd times, the men will present themselves to be humiliated by the masters.

Yet the leaders have not yet exhausted their effrontery, for with an almost cynical touch they wind up their manifesto with the statement that the Transport Workers’ Federation is “the workers’ only hope.” Could deception be more glaring ?

The men must drive these misleaders from their present position. They must learn the lesson of the class struggle ; they must insist upon democracy. The small power of strikes and the mighty political power of the masters must be realised ere victory can be won. The fight must be waged, not around agreements and recognition, but upon the question of whether slavery shall continue.

The workers then will have no use for Compulsory Arbitration and Emigration advocates like Ben Tillett, and Bottomley’s friend, Liberal candidates like Harry Gosling, and Tory gold candidates like Jack Jones of Camborne will again have to flit by the back door.

Editorial: The Printing Dispute (1959)

Editorial from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the ordinary trade union point of view of a struggle to enforce more pay and shorter hours, the printers' strike seems to have been well conceived and executed and well timed.

The claim was for a 10 per cent. increase of pay and a reduction of 3½ hours, from 43½ to 40. After lengthy negotiations the employers offered 2½ per cent. and 1 hour, but tied up the offer with a long list of demands for the reorganisation of the industry to increase production. The Unions rejected this offer and rejected also the employers manoeuvre of trying to get them to take the claim to arbitration. Having taken a ballot of their members the printing unions came out on strike on June 17th, over 100,000 men and women being involved. The dispute affected the Newspaper Society and the British Federation of Master Printers, but not the Newspaper Proprietors' Association or the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society, so while the Provincial newspapers, the magazines and periodicals and general printers were brought to a standstill the national and Sunday papers and London evening papers carried on, as did a certain number of firms which accepted the Unions' demands. A second dispute affecting printing ink threatened to stop the other papers, but this was avoided.

The timing was favourable for the workers because trade was recovering from the depression, unemployment was falling and the imminence of a general election made the employers, the Government and the big political parties worried lest a long-drawn out strike should hold up the very big volume of literature of various kinds needed for the election.

In the third week of the strike, discussions started under the chairmanship of Lord Birkett. Towards the end of July, at our time of going to press, the employers made an improved offer, of 3½ per cent. increase of pay, and a reduction of 1½ hours. The unions rejected this. They considered that the substantial concessions they were prepared to make to make to increase productivity justified more than 3½ per cent. on pay and at least an undertaking of a further reduction of hours at a later date. Settlement was then Expected at 4½ per cent. proposed by Lord Birkett.

The Sanctimonious “Guardian”

The dispute produced several surprising, diverting and instructive incidents. As was to be expected the Manchester Guardian led the Press in its sanctimonious comment of June 13th, laying down the usual employers' line that everyone believes in the right of the workers to strike so long as they never exercise the right:

The right to strike is a fundamental human freedom, but its exercise ought to be justified by some great cause. There is no great cause in the printing dispute—it is a piece of market bargaining over money.

Can anyone remember the Manchester Guardian ever supporting a strike (except a strike of foreign workers)? The Guardian editor’s further remark was equally hypocritical.

In the nineteenth century, when Britain had few industrial rivals, and when the main domestic industries had well-hedged fields to themselves, a strike or lock-out did not matter much, except in terms of personal suffering.

If some diligent student were to study the Guardian’s attitude to strikes in the nineteenth century, we do not doubt that he would find that the Guardian always managed to find overwhelming reasons for condemning those strikers too.

Lord Sourgrapes

It might have been expected that the newspapers that continued to be published would have solidly defended the employers, though Labour Party supporters doubtless hoped that their two mouthpieces, the official Daily Herald and the unofficial Daily Mirror, would line up with the workers against the employers. It turned out otherwise and some of the liveliest abuse during the strike was to be found in a fierce battle between the Daily Express and the other two. Beaverbrook’s Daily Express roundly accused the big magazine combines of having precipitated an unnecessary strike by their "tough and unaccommodating attitude," and said (4th July) that the provincial newspapers were the “victims of the tycoons of the magazine trade. They are paying a heavy price for their association with these richer more powerful and more belligerent allies." The biggest printing union, NATSOPA, promptly endorsed the charge. The Mirror and. Odhams (the latter owns the People and the Herald) are the “magazine tycoons" referred to, and they angrily denied the accusation. The Mirror of July 6th, in a slashing leader headed “ Lord Sourgrapes—and the drop of poison," explained that Beaverbrook has no magazines except “a couple of inconspicuous comics," called it a “smear campaign,” and passed the buck to the smaller printing firms and smaller newspapers who feared that the Unions' demands would put them out of business. The People (July 5th) blamed the Unions for not having let the claim go to arbitration in the first place. The Herald itself tried to ride both horses. It held that the men have a good case for their original demands, but that the employers “think they have a good case for insisting on increased productivity as a condition of any wage rise" (June 19th). It tried to escape its dilemma by blaming the Government for not immediately setting up a court of inquiry, which, of course, the Unions did not want, anyway.

The “Principle” of Shorter Hours

A weakness of the trade union position (to be found in many other industries as well) is the ambiguous attitude to shorter hours. Mr. Willis, one of the Union leaders and Chairman of the T.U.C., declared at the conference of the Miners' Union that the printers were striking “in support of the principle for which every trade unionist would fight, the shorter week." (News Chronicle, July 8th.) But what are the facts? Though the standard hours are now about four less than in 1938 the actual hours worked in industry are no lower than they were then. The claims for shorter hours have turned into claims for more overtime pay. In 1946 printing hours were reduced by 1½ to 43½, but within a few years the actual average hours of male workers in the paper and printing trade were higher than they were before, and in 1957 were 47 a week.

Confusion about Arbitration and Impartiality

The trade unions are in a muddle about arbitration. The printing unions consistently opposed it on the ground that it would not be “impartial,” but later in the dispute they were asking that Lord Monckton be invited—though he declined the invitation—to preside over the negotiations “to advise, guide and control” the discussions, but not to have power to be final arbiter. Lord Monckton was for four years Tory Minister of Labour (described by the General Secretary of the railwaymen in 1955 as “a very able friend of the N.U.R.! ”) and is now chairman of the Midland Bank, which refuse; to recognise the union of bank employees! Arbitration is established by the Government to settle industrial disputes and it cannot be impartial in the sense of deciding the merits of a case on some abstract principle of humanity. No such principles are laid down for the present court or the one abolished last year. The job of the arbitrators is to find a basis on which the workers can be persuaded to carry on working and the employers can keep in business—with, as an inescapable background, the continuation of Capitalism.

To illustrate the general confusion in the trade union movement it has only to be recalled that last year the T.U.C. and many trade union leaders were deriding the Government for abolishing the arbitration tribunal, which other unions declare they will not have anyway. The Daily Herald then (October 24h, 1958) called it a move to help the employers by abolishing the “referee to see fair play.”

And in the present dispute Mr. Willis, in the matter of strike pickets, was calling on the Government to observe “strict impartiality” (Times, June 26th), as if a government committed to keeping Capitalism going (as all governments must be that take on the administration of Capitalism) could “impartially” stand aside and not defend the property rights of the propertied class.

The International Aspect

The fact is that the trade union movement still broadly accepts Capitalism though prepared to strike against the Capitalists. This was clearly shown by the attitude of the printing unions. They belong to the printing workers Trade Union International, the International Graphical Federation, and some at least of the continental unions acceded to the request that they should advise their members not to do “black” work sent abroad during the strike. But in the middle of the strike NATSOPA released a plan it had drawn up suggesting a deal between the British unions and the British employers. If the latter would concede the demands on hours and wages, in return the unions would cooperate on a joint productivity council: “ The essence of the plan is that the prosperous big groups with stable and profitable home markets will help the small and medium printers, and particularly the printing concerns working on export printing. The plan should make British printers highly competitive in markets abroad.” (News Chronicle, June 23rd, 1959.)

So the unions, while fighting the employers, are quite prepared to collaborate with them to capture foreign markets—where, of course, they will clash with foreign printers who. again with the collaboration of the workers, will be resisting the invasion and trying to counter attack. This, of course, makes nonsense of the object of the printers' trade union international: “To safeguard the economic, occupational and general interests of graphical workers in all countries and to promote their solidarity.” (Our italics.)

In the nineteenth century Socialist critics of the trade union movement used to ridicule the illogicality of workers fighting the employers in the industrial field and electing the same people to Parliament and supporting them nationally. The present outlook of the trade unions shows that they have still a long way to go before they realise that the workers’ interest demands real international working class solidarity against the employers—and for Socialism.

50 Years Ago: The Coal Strike (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

A million miners are out on strike. From the ferment around us one might think they were asking for the mines. Every foul epithet and calumny is being hurled at them by the hireling Press. It is they who are unpatriotic; it is they who are ruining the trade of the country; it is they who are bringing the people to starvation. No one suggests that the mine-owners, who cling so tightly to the last atom of profit which they can screw out of those who go down into the pits, are culpable.

Of course not. Is it not only fair and just that capital should have its reward? And who can say that the mine-owners are any too well recompensed for his risk and his labour? Not the capitalist papers, certainly.

These drew many fancy pictures of the fabulous wages and astonishing luxury of the miners, and marvelled that there was anything left for the owners at all. Yet within a week of the men ceasing work the Press rang with the cries of the miners' starving wives and children, and Mr. Chiozza Money, M.P. showed from the Income Tax returns that in the last nine years the owners had made over 200 million pounds out of the unpaid labour of the workers!

It is said that the granting of the minimum wage would only cost £50,000 a year, which is less than 1 per cent of the profit the masters take, and a very minute fraction of their capital. It is a pregnant demonstration of what the meaning of the word “Patriotism" is on the masters' lips when they plunge the country into such misery for the sake of so insignificant a morsel of dividend.

From the Socialist Standard, April 1913.

The Post Office strike (1971)

From the April 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

   A participant looks at the recent strike from a Socialist viewpoint

"Even strikes,” Engels wrote in 1892, "were now found out to be occasionally very useful, especially when provoked by the masters themselves, at their own time”. (Preface to the Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844). We are not of course suggesting that the Post Office so bungled its labour relations as to deliberately provoke 200,000 of its employees organised in the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) to strike for seven weeks but, as we shall see, the Post Office did gain something. Postmen, counter clerks, telephone and telegraph operators are not noted for their industrial militancy. Until October 1969 when the Post Office changed from a government department to a public corporation (or nationalised industry) its employees enjoyed civil service status. Their unions had no strike funds and civil service procedures (Whitley Councils) largely governed the scope of their trade union activity. But it was not this change in the status of the Post Office alone which produced a fighting spirit in its workers. Rather was this due to changes that had taken place generally which also necessitated a new set-up at the Post Office. On the one hand, once effective civil service procedures seem to have become too cumbersome for the task of transforming the Post Office to meet the future needs of capitalism. On the other hand, the fringe benefits going to petty civil servants had become largely irrelevant in times of relatively full employment and inflation. A secure job loses its attraction when there is plenty of better-paid work around. A pension is not worth much whilst inflation reduces its purchasing power. The only advantage, and a dubious one at that, is that for some there is plenty of overtime. The new Post Office set-up threatens the old security of employment with nothing to compensate for its loss.

The operative grades in the Post Office officially have only two unions to represent their interests, the UPW and POEU (Post Office Engineering Union). This contrasts with the motor industry where twenty or so unions are operating. Nevertheless, in the case of the UPW, the only thing that unites counter-clerks, postmen, cleaners, telephone and telegraph operators and various other grades is that they are members of the one union. The divisions among "colleagues” are well illustrated by the case of the telephone operators in the overseas exchanges in London. There are men and women, international and continental, English and French speaking operators. These differences may be permutated to produce numerous conflicts and no unity in the face of the one employer. The dayshift is operated by women and the nightshift by men. Some men felt this necessitated a separate organisation to look after their interests. For 40 years the National Guild of Telephonists (NGT) competed with the UPW for the loyalties of male telephone operators in Britain. Attempts were made to merge the two unions following the change of Post Office status. A substantial number of NGT members refused to follow the recommendation of their executive. The Post Office withdrew recognition from the NGT in September, and 10,000 or so bitter opponents of the UPW sought to keep their organisation alive with a new executive and new national officers. That the Post Office Board Member for Industrial Relations, Sir Richard Hayward, was a former UPW man and that the UPW made little effort to conceal the ambition to do away with its rival, gave NGT members some reason to suspect that, as they might put it, a deal had been cooked up between the two to the detriment of the male telephonist. In their view, the UPW exists to serve the interests of postmen alone; the UPW would thus sell out the telephonists who are only a minority in that union in exchange for agreements favourable to the postmen.

The NGT also argue that the Post Office could economise on the telephone service by having it operated by women only. There is some truth in this. Although theoretically there is equal pay for men and women, there are differential pay scales according to age and experience that make it cheaper in practice to employ women. A girl of 16 must wait until she has worked at the Post Office 12 years before earning the full rate as a telephone operator. Male operators, as night workers, must be 21 or over. A man or woman of 21 has seven years to wait before getting the full rate. Anyone starting at the age of 25 or over has three years to wait. The tendency has been for men to become telephonists late in their working lives (though this may be changing) whilst women take it up in their teens. NGT members’ worst fears were confirmed when last September they took strike action in an attempt to regain recognition. Women volunteers worked through the night with no UPW intervention by either male or female representatives to prevent this blatant strike breaking. This incidentally, is one reason why the NGT helped to break the recent UPW strike.

Another union was formed among overseas telegraph operators dissatisfied with the UPW. This was the TWU (Telecommunications Workers Union). Its founders aimed to set up one union to cover both technicians and operators in telecommunications, not only in the Post Office but outside as well. They reasoned that, as automation increased, more and more of the work done by Post Office operators would be handled by operators on the private switchboards of industrial and commercial concerns. At the same time the maintenance technicians would become more vital to the whole system. Hence all these workers should organise into one Union catering for their interests. This grand scheme came to an end during the recent strike.

On October 30, the UPW put in its pay-claim. Their journal The Post described it:

  The claim is in three parts. First, a 15 per cent increase. Secondly, a minimum increase of £3 for all our members who are at their maximum and, thirdly, substantial reductions in the incremental scale. (November 7)

and went on:

Our claim is just and fair and ought to be satisfied in negotiation during these next two months.

Two months went by and The Post of January 16 had these headlines: 7 per cent or 8 per cent — nowhere near enough. So much for fair and just claims.

On Wednesday January 20 the strike started. It ended on Monday March 8 with no advance on the 8 per cent, but a public enquiry into the working and finances of the Post Office.

This was a clear victory for the employer. If the whole business had been executed according to carefully laid down plans by the Post Office, it could not have gone better for them. The timing was right; the Christmas rush was over. The strike proved pretty lucrative to the Post Office in that the right people scabbed. For although the postmen were almost all on strike, this was not so with the telephonists. About half of the male and female operators continued working. The Times under the heading Postal Strike leads to large gains for Telephone and Telex wrote:

  The number of daytime calls being handled by the telephone services since the start of the postal strike has risen by up to 30 per cent, with a 50 per cent increase in the volume of traffic during the cheap rate period . . . International subscriber dialing to Europe was up by 20 per cent since the start of the strike and traffic to the United States had increased by 40 per cent . . . Telex, both nationally and internationally has been under very heavy pressure and with traffic increase running at 20 per cent . . . (10 February)

Later on, the benefit to the Post Office was to be confirmed by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications. Loss on post was £500,000 rising to £700,000 per week. As for telephones, the following exchange took place in the House of Commons on February 15:

  Mr. Barnes — What is the additional level of dialed telephone calls as a result of the strike? What extra revenue was produced?
  Mr. Chataway (The Minister) — The Post Office has made clear that there has been a substantial increase and there will have been a consequent increase of revenue . . . But with that there will have been increased costs, but there is no doubt on balance the Post Office has benefited.

No doubt cost-conscious executives must have got more ideas on streamlining the telephone service from the strike than they ever got from the enquiry made by outside efficiency experts. The telecomunications side has a bright, that is profitable, future. Not so the postal side. A postal strike is just the thing to show off the superiority of telephones and telex. It must be a Post Office accountant’s dream to see postal losses being turned into telecommunication profits. Lastly, it turned out well for the Post Office that the UPW ran into financial difficulties and ended the strike early enough to save the Giro system from an aggravation of its serious difficulties.

The strike altered nothing insofar as the employer/ employee relationship goes. The employer always has the upper hand, even if the workers gain their full demands. It is not enough to be loyal to a union; both the UPW and the NGT lost and the employer won. It is not enough to have grand schemes for organising workers as the TWU had; some of them struck and others scabbed and their schemes evaporated when put to the test. POEU members continued to work and the sub post offices stayed open. Whilst it is true that the employer divides and rules; the workers seem all too ready to be divided. What is now lacking is the knowledge amongst all trade unionists that as workers they have a common interest that overrides all their petty differences. The factor that now hinders the workers’ industrial struggles is also the major obstacle to their engaging in useful political activity. The day cannot come too soon when all workers see beyond the limitations of trade unionism and move on to engage in the political struggle for Socialism.

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