The Combination Acts reflected the English government’s fear of social and industrial democracy, protection of industry in a time of war, and an attempt to provide law and order in the new industrial society.
In the late eighteenth century, England was in the midst of its Industrial Revolution, testing the workability of laissez-faire economics and fighting periodically with France. Power was shifting from the old country squires to the new industrialists, and the working class was caught in the middle. English political parties ranged from conservative to reactionary. Tories saw no need to reform the system, Liberal Tories wanted reform but had no inclination to involve the working classes in politics and no use for democracy, and Wellingtonian Tories had no use for the working class at all. Whigs were willing to give the working class only the workhouse. Tories tended to be upper-class or aristocratic believers in the old system, while Whigs were the newly emerging industrialists and businessmen who believed in free trade, hands-off government, and low wages. Neither party had room for the masses.
English industrialization was ruthless and harsh on the workers. Unhappy with the dislocation and suffering industrialization caused by Whig businessmen busily maximizing profit and minimizing expense, English workers resisted, organized, and attempted to improve conditions. The country gentry, not yet aware that they were obsolete, hoped to control the situation as they had controlled society for so long. The Combination Acts were an attempt by a society shifting from agriculture to industry in the middle of a war to adjust to its new circumstance.
Prime Minister William Pitt wanted to control workers’ disruption of the industrial system and the war effort. He called for a series of Combination Acts, which together outlawed workers joining together to agitate for shorter hours or greater pay. The effect was to outlaw trade unions. But there was some provision for unemployment insurance and other workers’ benefits.
Guilds dated from the Middle Ages. The new unions were sometimes the old guilds, sometimes friendly societies, locally based in public houses and intended primarily to provide insurance and fellowship for members. They also set apprenticeship standards and negotiated wages. The French wars fueled inflation, and the societies demanded matching wage increases. The government read the demands as indicators of disaffection. English Common Law defined combination in restraint of trade as conspiracy, and employers associations also had convinced Parliament to enact additional laws against workers’ combinations.
When the London Master Millwrights asked the House of Commons in 1799 to prohibit combinations within their trade, William Wilberforce called combinations a “general disease in our society” and Pitt introduced the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800. The laws resembled the older acts in principle but provided a summary trial before a justice of the peace instead of a trial at Assize. The 1800 law allowed appeals. Maximum penalty was three months in prison, which was much less severe than earlier laws that provided for up to seven years’ transportation. The laws outlawed workers’ and employers’ combinations alike and required legally binding arbitration of wage disputes.
Although rarely used, the Combination Acts reflected government fear of social and industrial democracy, Pitt’s determination to protect industry in time of war, a snobbish feeling that the lower orders had forgotten their place, and an attempt by the gentry to provide law and order in the new industrial society, which they no longer understood.
The acts actually benefited unions because they were less used than older laws, employers and magistrates did not want to get involved with union disputes, and unions learned to use the postal services and the tools of secret societies such as the Freemasons as well as the Methodist skills in delegation, representation, and federation. And they learned the value of ceremony from the Hampden Clubs.
The benefit of the acts showed in the rise of the Philanthropic Society. Starting in 1792, the Stockport and Manchester Spinning Society fueled a rise of organization in textiles, which led to strikes in 1810 and 1818. The latter year saw an attempt to go beyond crafts unionism to a General Union of the Trades that would cross skill and geographic lines. The textile workers of Lancashire worked first with shipwrights in London and silk weavers at Spitalfields. Then they began working with craftsmen such as shoemakers, bricklayers, hatters, and coal miners. Their combination was the Philanthropic Society. The effort failed when the leaders were arrested.
By the early 1820s, the acts were virtually dead, and reformist “Enlightened Tories” such as Francis Place and Joseph Hume requested that William Huskisson, the chair of a parliamentary committee, investigate how the acts were working. Huskisson reported that the acts, by denying an outlet, merely caused irritation and unnecessary violence. Huskisson’s committee and manufacturers recommended repeal, which happened in 1824. Unfortunately the timing was bad, as 1824 and 1825 were years of expansion of both trade and unions and unionists struck violently for the closed shop (union only). The result was a strengthening of the conspiracy laws and a modification to the repeal that narrowed the purposes of combinations. Union members were subject to suit for breach of contract or restraint of trade, and they could not picket or otherwise obstruct. Union funds were vulnerable to legal collection, and owners took a stronger stance against collective bargaining after 1825.
The union leadership resisted efforts to repeal the Combination Acts. Francis Place, originally a union craftsman, supported radical politicians in the Commons by collecting data on reform causes. Between 1822 and 1824, he provided eight volumes of data supporting the repeal of the Combination Acts. He thought that the repeal would result in the demise of the union movement, so he was quite surprised when the repeal resulted in rapid union growth.
John Barnhill
See also: Industrial Revolution; Labor.
Bloy, Marjie. “The Peel Web; Trade Unions 1830–1851.” (http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/adw03/peel/tus.htm, accessed October 2002).
“Combination Acts.” July 6, 2002 (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lcombination.htm, accessed September 2002).
Fraser, W. Hamish. A History of British Trade Unionism, 1700– 1998. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.