Corporate Policing, Yellow Unionism, and Strikebreaking, 1890–1930
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Corporate Policing, Yellow Unionism, and Strikebreaking, 1890–1930 This book provides a comparative and transnational examination of the complex and multifaceted experiences of anti-labour mobilisation, from the bitter social conflicts of the pre-war period, through the epochal tremors of war and revolution, and the violent spasms of the 1920s and 1930s. It retraces the formation of an extensive market for corporate policing, privately contracted security and yellow unionism, as well as processes of professionalisation in strikebreaking activities, labour espionage and surveillance. It reconstructs the diverse spectrum of right-wing patriotic leagues and vigilante corps which, in support or in competition with law enforcement agencies, sought to counter the dual dangers of industrial militancy and revolutionary situations. Although considerable research has been done on the rise of socialist parties and trade unions the repressive policies of their opponents have been generally left unexamined. This book fills this gap by reconstructing the methods and strategies used by state authorities and employers to counter outbreaks of labour militancy on a global scale. It adopts a long-term chronology that sheds light on the shocks and strains that marked industrial societies during their turbulent transition into mass politics from the bitter social conflicts of the pre-war period, through the epochal tremors of war and revolution, and the violent spasms of the 1920s and 1930s. Offering a new angle of vision to examine the violent transition to mass politics in industrial societies, this is of great interest to scholars of policing, unionism and striking in the modern era. Matteo Millan is associate professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Padova, Italy. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Oxford and Dublin. In 2015 he obtained a major grant from the European Research Council. He has published extensively on Italian fascism and pre-1914 armed associations. Alessandro Saluppo is an ERC postdoctoral researcher at the University of Padua, Italy. His current research is devoted to private industrial policing, strikebreaking and anti-labour violence in the United Kingdom before the First World War. Routledge Studies in Modern History 69 The United Nations and Decolonization Edited by Nicole Eggers, Jessica Lynne Pearson and Aurora Almada e Santos 70 The Grand Strategies of Great Powers Tudor A. 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The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Millan, Matteo, editor. | Saluppo, Alessandro, editor. Title: Corporate policing, yellow unionism, and strikebreaking, 1890–1930: in defence of freedom / edited by Matteo Millan and Alessandro Saluppo. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in modern history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039951 (print) | LCCN 2020039952 (ebook) | Subjects: LCSH: Labor unions—History—20th century. | Labor movement—Political aspects—History—20th century. | Strikebreakers— History—20th century. | Police, Private—History—20th century. | Political violence—History—20th century. | Democracy—History—20th century. Classification: LCC HD6476 .C67 2021 (print) | LCC HD6476 (ebook) | DDC 331.89/409041—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039951 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039952 ISBN: 978-0-367-37412-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-35424-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents List of tables viii List of figures ix List of contributors x Acknowledgements xiv Foreword: Coercion at work, violence in politics: what changed between 1890 and 1930? xv GEOFF ELEY 1 Introduction: strikebreaking and industrial vigilantism as a historical problem 1 MATTEO MILLAN AND ALESSANDRO SALUPPO PART 1 Institutional responses 21 2 Policies and practices against labour movement in the late Russian Empire 23 VOLODYMYR KULIKOV AND IRINA SHILNIKOVA 3 Violence against strikers in the rural peripheries of the Iberian Peninsula, 1890–1915 44 ASSUMPTA CASTILLO CAÑIZ 4 The Swedish labour market c. 1870–1914: a labour market regime without repression? 62 ERIK BENGTSSON 5 State authorities, municipal forces and military intervention in the policing of strikes in Austria-Hungary, 1890–1914 79 CLAIRE MORELON vi Contents 6 Employers of the world, unite!: the transnational mobilisation of industrialists around World War I 97 PIERRE EICHENBERGER PART 2 Strikebreaking tactics and practices 115 7 Anti-labour repression in the in-between spaces of empire: the Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes and the steamship workers of the “China Line” (1900–20) 117 CHARLES BÉGUÉ FAWELL 8 In the name of constitutionalism and Islam: the murky world of labour politics in Calcutta’s docklands 134 PRERNA AGARWAL 9 Cairo, Athens, Salonica: strikebreaking and the anti-labour practices of employers and the state in the early twentieth-century cigarette industry 153 THANASIS BETAS 10 In reaction to revolution: anti-strike mentalities and practices in the Russian radical right, 1905–14 168 GEORGE GILBERT 11 “We can kill striking workers without being prosecuted”: armed bands of strikebreakers in late Imperial Germany 186 AMERIGO CARUSO PART 3 Civic and industrial vigilantism 203 12 The wild west of employer anti-unionism: the glorification of vigilantism and individualism in the early twentieth-century United States 205 VILJA HULDEN AND CHAD PEARSON 13 Vigilant citizens: the case of the Volunteer Police Force, 1911–14 222 ALESSANDRO SALUPPO Contents vii 14 From “state protection” to “private defence”: strikebreaking, civilian armed mobilisation and the rise of Italian fascism 242 MATTEO MILLAN 15 Conclusion: strikebreaking and the fault lines of mass society, 1880–1930 259 MARTIN CONWAY Index 268 Tables 2.1 Repressive practices against strikers in Russian industry in the period from 1895 to 1904 35 2.2 Share of the strikes resulting in total or partial satisfaction of the strikers’ demands, including those which were accompanied by some repressive practices 38 11.1 Workers killed by German strikebreakers, strikebreaking agents and armed employers between 1906 and 1914 192 Figures 2.1 Number of strikes in the Russian Empire from 1870 to 1894 25 2.2 What happens to workers after the strike 26 2.3 Number of strikes in the Russian Empire from 1895 to early 1917 27 Contributors Editors Matteo Millan is associate professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Padova, Italy. Before coming to Padova, he worked as a postdoc- toral researcher in Oxford and Dublin. In 2015, he obtained a major grant from the European Research Council to lead the broad comparative project “The Dark Side of the Belle Époque. Political Violence and Armed Associations in Europe before the First World War”. He has published extensively on the his- tory of fascism and pre-1914 armed associationism in Europe. Alessandro Saluppo is an ERC post-doctoral researcher at the University of Padova. His current research is devoted to private industrial policing, strike- breaking and anti-labour violence in Europe before the First World War. His works on armed groups, paramilitaries and militias, with respect to both the pre-war and interwar periods, have been published on peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. Contributors Prerna Agarwal was a postdoctoral fellow at the Economic History Department, London School of Economics (LSE) (2017–19). In July 2018, she received her