STRIKE A Live History 1 8 8 7 - 1 9 7 1 R. A. LEESON LONDON. GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD Ruskin House Museum Street First published in 1973 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. © George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1973 ISBN 0 04 331053 2 Printed in Great Britain in 11 point Plantin type by Clarke, Doble & Brendon Ltd Plymouth CONTENTS Abbreviations page 11 Introduction 13 One 1887-1914: Early Starters 21 Two 1914-1925: Heroes and Brothers 51 Three 1926: General Strike and Miners’ Lockout 84 Four 1927-1945 112 Part I Rebellion and Breakaway 114 Part II The Miners Recover 141 Part III ‘There’s a War On’ 154 Five 1945-1960: Influence and Affluence 164 Six 1960-1971: Motivated Men 209 Index to contributors 245 ILLUSTRATIONS facing page 1 Will Dyson cartoon in the Daily Herald, 1911 48 2 Liverpool Dock strike, 1911; a docker argues with troops brought into the city 49 3 ‘The Cripple Alliance’; cartoon in The Communist 1921 52 4 Telegram sent out by Ernest Bevin on the eve of the General Strike, May 1,1926 64 5 Three blacklegs escorted by police at Garw, South Wales, in 1929 65 6 Lancashire cotton workers on strike leaving a mill in August 1932 65 7 Front page of the British Worker, the TUC’s official newspaper for the General Strike, May 5, 1926 84 8 A mass meeting of airmen at Drigh Road, RAF station February 1946 112 9 Jack Dash addresses a London dockers’ strike meeting, 1960 113 10 ‘The Striker’s Return’, Punch Cartoon, May 26, 1926 113 11 Seamen on strike demonstrate outside 10 Downing Street, summer 1966 128 12 Harry Hitchings, GKN shop steward, makes his tower-squatting protest, May 1971 129 13 Giles cartoon on the dock strike, Sunday Express cartoon, July 24, 1929 164 14 Eccles’ TUC Centenary cartoon, Morning Star, September 1968 211 Acknowlegements Publisher and author are grateful to the following for per­ mission to reproduce illustrations: (1) The Sun. (2) Ken Sprague Collection. (3) Communist Party of Great Britain. (4) Transport and General Workers’ Union. (5) The Western Mail. (6 & 7) Trades Union Congress. (8) Arthur Attwood. (9, 11, 12 & 14) The Morning Star. (10) Punch. (13) Sunday Express. ABBREVIATIONS AEU Amalgamated Engineering Union ASCJ Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners ASLEF Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen ASRS Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants ASW Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers AUEW Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers BWIU Building Workers^Industrial Union CSU Canadian Seamen’s Union ETU Electrical Trades Union GKN Guest, Keen and Nettlefold IWW International Workers of the World JIG Joint Industrial Committee MV Metro Vickers NATSOPA National Society of Operative Printers’ Assistants NJIC National Joint Industrial Council NUM National Union of Mineworkers NUR National Union of Railwaymen NUS National Union of Seamen RILU Red International of Labour Unions TGWU Transport and General Workers Union TUC Trades Union Congress UCS Upper Clyde Shipbuilders UCW United Clothing Workers (Union) UMS United Mineworkers of Scotland UPW Union of Post Office Workers INTRODUCTION Since the government started to keep count in the 1890s there have been 100,000 strikes in this country, involving millions of people and affecting millions more. Strikes are as much a talking point, a social phenomenon for analysis, as crime or disease; there is usually the same idea in mind, that they ought to be eliminated. Yet they continue, and last year (1971) saw more strikes than in any other year of the century. At the same time there has been a reluctance, both at the level of popular Press discussion and of academic analysis, to consider strikes as influencing the course of life in Britain. The average social history of the twentieth century admits only one strike (the General Strike of 1926) and that only to imply that it should not have happened and must not happen again. Both approaches, the analytical and the social historical, have this in common. They are from the outside. Hostile, sympathetic or neutral, they are from the outside. The ‘public’ view of life and society does not admit that strikes are the means of attempted social change most used by most people, apart from the ballot. In the eyes of many who use it, the strike is a good deal more effective than the ballot, and they use it with more conviction, though it involves them in far more trouble and sacrifice. Strikes are a force that runs, like an underground river, below the surface of public life, below the level at which governments claim credit for improved living standards and employers advertise higher wages (‘recently increased’ as the GPO once put it). Just what difference to Britain have those 100,000 strikes made in the past 80 years? Would Britain have been a better or worse place without them? What caused them? Was it bad conditions, agitators, determination or weakness, calculation or short­ sightedness? Were they caused by what people said caused them? Could they have been avoided? Why do young workers today, after generations of counter argument and education, strike so freely, even more freely than did their fathers and grandfathers before them? These questions and many more may be asked by writer, sociologist, industrial relations expert and historian with 13 INTRODUCTION varying degrees of skill and sympathy. But the crucial answers elude them, for the vital experience has not been theirs. Apart from J. Arnison’s recent book about the 1966 Roberts Arundel dispute, I do not know of any study written by someone who actually knows what it is to go on strike. This is a remarkable state of affairs, and unparalleled in publish­ ed work. It is true that civilians write about military tactics, to the fury of generals. But that does not stop generals’ accounts being published. Even criminals are not obliged to submit in print to unrelieved analysis by policemen and social workers. Indeed, a literate burglar will find himself pursued by publishers waving contracts. But strikers have not been so sought after. Yet it is not true to say that if writers don’t strike, strikers don’t write. Strikers do explain themselves and have done for decades in leaflets, pamphlets and booklets, most often to fellow trade unionists. But these works do not find their way into the ‘official record’. They remain part of that underground flow of information and belief, claim and affirmation which, if it seems not to reach Westminster or even Congress House, is what runs most strongly in the docks, shipyards and factories where social history may be made, if not written. This book is an attempt to tap that flow, not in a specialised way, but in a way that is as alive as the experience itself. It assembles the recollections of some 80 people of some 180 strikes in 20 different industries over the past 84 years. It reaches back to the time when the trade union movement numbered less than one million. Readers may be astonished to discover, as I was, that the Great Dock Strike of 1889 is still within living memory. But so it is. The whole development of the trade union movement as we know it today, 100,000 strikes and all, is still in living memory. The oldest man who spoke to me was born Just after the introduction of the ballot in Britain and the invention of the telephone. The youngest was born Just as the coal industry was nationalised, and the present Queen was married. I did not approach these people with a questionnaire; they are not that sort of people. I asked them to tell me the story of the strikes they had seen and pass their own judgement, which they did freely and frankly. They are people of the Left and of the Right, and of no political allegiance. There are people whose names will be familiar, who became Cabinet members, sat on State Boards 14 INTRODUCTION and entered Parliament. One man who led 15 unofficial strikes now sits in the House of Lords. There are many more whose names are unknown save to those with whom they work, and whose opinion is their chief concern. Like the Jewish shop steward who called together his Moslem workmates after the Middle East war and asked if they still wanted him to represent them. It is their account of this century I have tried to give, in their own words, not grouped by category or industry, but told in the times when these events happened, the times which influenced the strikers and were influenced by them. The reader will find, when accustomed to the somewhat unusual form of the book, that he is listening to a chronicle tale, with one speaker after another taking up the account, then drop­ ping out, perhaps to re-appear in a new situation, sometimes from a different standpoint. In this way I hope a picture of what has changed and what has not changed in 80 years will emerge. It may appear that I have given too much space to the miners. But as one of their leaders said ‘half the strikes in this country have been in mining’, and indeed, out of the 100,000 over 40,000 have been in the pits.