been consistently canvassed by the
T.U.C. — such as the limitation of under-
ground work in coal mines, the establish-
ment of labour exchanges, the fixing of
legal minimum wages in sweated indus-
tries (which employed a very high pro-
portion of women workers) and old age
pensions.

But the fact that these Acts seldom
dealt really adequately with the
problems concerned caused many of the
more militant trade unionists to grow
increasingly cynical about the efficacy of
parliamentary action, and indeed, about
the usefulness of political parties. It was
thus that, in 1910, the syndacalist Tom
Mann, and visiting American emissaries
of the Industrial Workers of the World,
and British Guild Socialists were able to
obtain an eager, though limited, hearing
for their passionate views on industrial
unionism, or on National Guildes, of wor-
kers’ control — control first,-of industry,
and ultimately of the whole State machi-
nery of government.

‘Pure’ Syndicalism was the subject of
serious debate inside the trade union
Movement — and chiefly in the mining
and transport industries — for scarcely
more than three years. But the rise of the
shop stewards during the First World
War gave the general cause of industrial
unionism a considerable lift. The Webbs
have recorded ‘“‘the rapid adoption
between 1913 and 1920 by many of the
younger leaders of the movement ... |
and, subject to various modifications,
also by some of the most powerful Trade
Unions, of this new ideal of the develop-
ment of the existing Trade Unions into
self-organized, self-contained, self-
governing industrial democracies, as
supplying the future method of conduct-
ing industries and services. The schemes
put forward by the N.U.R., the Miners
Federation and the Union of Postal Wor-
kers differ widely from the revolutionary
Syndicalism of Mr. Tom Mann and the
large visions of the Industrial Workers of
the World. . . In fact, they limit the claim
of the manual workers merely to parti-
cipation in the management, fully con-
ceding that the final authority must be
vested in the community of citizens or
consumers.”

In fact, the syndicalists’ aspects of
industrial unionism were destined never
to become a dominant factor in the Bri-
tish movement.

The attitude adopted to this question by
the majority of trade unionists was
probably best expressed by Harry Gos-
ling of the Lightermen’s Union, in his
presidential address to the 1916 Con-
gress, in which he also forecast the need
for greatly increased responsibilities,
facilities and powers for the Parlia-
mentary Committee, or some equivalent
body, in order to match the growing
strength of the organized employers’
associations.

“‘We do not seek,’’ said Gosling, ‘‘to sit
on the board of directors, or to interfere
with the buying of materials, or with the
selling of the product. But in daily
management of the employment in which
we spend our working lives, in the atmos-
phere and under the conditions in which
we have to work, in the hours of begin-
ning and ending work, in the conditions of
remuneration, and even in the manner
and practices of the foreman with whom
we have to be in contact, in all these mat-
ters we feel that we, as workingmen,
have a right to a voice — even to an equal
voice — with the management itself.”’

In December, 1919, the Parliamentary
Committee of the T.U.C., having followed '

A food convoy guarded by troops in armoured cars moves
through the City of London during the 1926 General Strike

at the end of a period marked by bitter industrial unrest yet

not without several indications of better things to come.

For the first time the TUC was brought into close

consultation with the Government over several important
measures and a system of industrial relations based on national
negotiations for each industry was recommended by the Whitley Committee.

Part Ten

the men who brought it to birth

up the main refrain of Gosling’s speech,
reported to Congress the need “‘for the
development of more adequate machi-
nery for the co-ordination of Labour acti-
vities, both for the movement as a whole,
and especially for its industrial side ”

So, in 1920, thanks largely to the con- -
tinuing dedicated efforts of Harry Gos-
ling, who was warmly supported by
Ernest Bevin, the General Council of the
T.U.C. was brought to birth.

One of the first problems they faced

_ was falling trade union membership. The

massive wartime growth could not be
sustained in the face of mounting
unemployment — and given the conse-
quent popular feeling in favour of co-
ordination policies, the General Council
were able to encourage several impor-
tant amalgamations between different
unions within a single industry. In the
first half of the 1920s — before, during
and after the short-lived first Labour
Government — the T.U.C. improved its
headquarters organisation by setting up
a number of different departments; and
in 1925 it for the first time entered the
main educational area.

One fundamental issue in public educa-
tion policy between the two world wars
was the extension of secondary educa-
tion, towards which both governments
and local authorities tried fitfully to
move. Most politicians and public ser-
vants thought of education chiefly as an
area in which economies in public spend-
ing could, when desirable, be suitably
made.

The T.U.C. strenuously resisted what it
called ‘‘these false economies,’’ and kept
pressing for general education reform. In
1925, the T.U.C. for the first time gave
evidence to the Consultative Committee
of the Board of Education, about the
education of adolescents. Later, this
Committee, in its most distinguished
report — the first Hadow Report — en-
dorsed the T.U.C.’s view that all children
should have secondary education in pur-
pose-built secondary schools.

So the General Council’s responsi-
bilities and field of activities had become
very wide; but the powers which they
had been accorded by the unions in Con-
gress were still limited. Some of those
limitations were exposed in the course of
the ‘‘General,’’ or national, Strike of 1926,
in which the T.U.C.’s powers to ‘‘co-ordi-
nate industrial action,’’ including action
for the settlement of disputes, were
shown to be still incomplete.

At that time, when the miners them-
selves had failed to make any headway
towards the settlement of their claims, a
Conference of Trade Union Executives -
was called by the General Council, to
consider co-ordinated action in support of
the miners, and to give the T.U.C.
authority to handle the conduct of the dis-
pute. Mr. Herbert Smith, for the Miners,
said they understood the position was
that all negotiations would now be car-
ried on through the General Council but
that they, as the Miners’ Federation,
would be consulted. x

The General Council came within an
ace of negotiating a fair settlement; but
when printers at the Daily Mail refused
to print the paper because of a leading
article hostile to the strike, the Conserva-
tive Government — whose brutally
deflationist back-to-the-Gold-Standard
policy had led up to the situation — seized
the opportunity to break off negotiations
with the General Council.

The National Strike began; and, as it
proceeded, it became clear that the
question of who was entitled to agree a
settlement on behalf of the striking
unions had not been explicitly decided in
advance. The General Council and the
Miners’ Federation each claimed that
they themselves were the only people so
entitled.

Both sides stuck to their guns, which by
now were pointing in quite different
directions. And so, in this disastrously
unco-ordinated situation, the General
Council called off the General Strike, on
Wednesday May 12 and the miners were
left to go it alone.