When the working class is on the defensive, there are always those on the left who write it off and argue that any potential the class might have had to overthrow capitalism has passed. The 1930s was no different from today in this regard. In 1937, Mary Hamilton was discussing with the Webbs whether or not they should publish a new edition of their History of Trade Unionism, bringing it “up to date and discussing the future of trade unions”. Sidney Webb told her: “we have decided that there is nothing to say; they have no future”.267
That same year, G D H Cole and Margaret Cole published their The Condition of Britain where they lamented the weakness of the trade union movement “in the face of modern mechanised capitalism… In the nature of things, the Trade Union loyalty of the machine-operator is less intense than that of an apprenticed craftsman. The Trade Union means less to the typical modern factory worker than it meant to the generations which built it up”. As evidence of this weakness, they noted that the “rising motor industry is largely unorganised”. What they feared was the British trade union movement developing along the same lines as the trade union movement in the United States where “it is quite possible for Trade Unionism to be strong and well-entrenched in one group of industries and to be practically without a foothold in others”.268
Their book was written in the course of 1936. The year that it was published, 1937, was to witness a massive explosion of working class unrest and trade union organising in the United States that saw the very industries they feared were undermining trade union consciousness becoming unionised. In the United States the unions won recognition by occupying the car factories!269 And, of course, this very same motor industry that occasioned their concern regarding the future of trade unionism in Britain was to become one of the bastions of organised labour post-1945.
While there was to be no great explosion of militancy in Britain in the late 1930s comparable to the great historic struggles that took place in the United States and in France, nevertheless there were struggles that pointed the way towards the revival of trade union militancy and shop floor class struggle. Some of these struggles ended in victory, others in defeat, but they all demonstrated that the fight went on.
In the mines the struggle against company unionism gathered pace. On 30 September 1935, 14,000 men at the Cory Brothers and Ocean Coal pits in South Wales went on strike against the employment of members of the scab South Wales Miners’ Industrial Union (SWMIU). The strike met with some success but more militant tactics were felt to be necessary.
On 12 October at the Nine Mile Point colliery, 78 miners voted to “stay down” until the scabs were withdrawn. Their unofficial action “sparked off a massive wave of pit occupations across the coal field”. Sixty men voted to “stay down” at Rock Vein pit, 300 at the Risca pit and the movement spread with “stay downs” at Nantymoel, Blaengarw, Treherbert, Ton Pentre, Treharris and Cwmparc”. Large crowds of supporters gathered at the pitheads and other miners came out in support. At Taff-Merthyr, a number of miners attempting a “stay down” were attacked by scabs, some badly hurt, and forced into the cage and out of the pit. When the scabs came off shift they were attacked by a large angry crowd. Sympathy strikes spread with some 40,000 men out and others joining the “stay down”. Although company unionism was not stamped out in South Wales, it was severely battered and never recovered. The victory was to be completed the following year, although the SWMIU did not finally disappear until 1938.270
1935 also saw important steps forward in the organisation of one of the new industries, the aircraft industry. On 7 March some 600 workers, members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), at the Hawker factory in Gloucester struck over the employment of a non-union man in a hangar that was 100 percent union. The union leadership called for a return to work, but the strike was bolstered when the Hawker factory at Kingston came out in sympathy. The non-unionist joined the union after three days, actually joining the strike which the shop stewards refused to call off until other grievances were dealt with. The strike ended on the 26 March. Not only had a victory been won in keeping the Gloucester plant hangar 100 percent union, but the management had been dealt a bloody nose and the display of militancy led to 300 workers at Gloucester and 150 at Kingston signing up. Both factories were now nearly 100 percent union throughout.
This success, achieved in the face of official hostility, led to the establishment of the rank and file aircraft shop stewards’ organisation which had its first preliminary meeting in Chiswick on 28 April with delegates from 11 factories. By the time the Aircraft Shop Stewards’ National Council (ASSNC) held its first national meeting on 12 July there were delegates from 16 factories and a rank and file paper, the New Propellor, edited by Peter Zinkin. CP members played a crucial role in these developments but there was a serious conflict between those like Zinkin with a rank and file perspective and the new Popular Front line which was to win official positions and work within the official machinery, even when it disadvantaged shop floor struggle. Zinkin always remained “a pure rank and filist at heart” and had an “abiding conviction that union officials were ‘essentially class traitors”. The movement went from strength to strength but the CP was very much concerned to curb its activities in case it compromised the party’s attempts to capture official positions and build the Popular Front. For the CP, rank and file party members were increasingly expected to see their role as supporting left and CP officials rather than organising independently of the union bureaucracy.271
The best example of rank and file organisation was on the London buses in response to the attempted imposition of a wage cut by the London General Omnibus Company with the connivance of TGWU officials in January 1932. Opposition to the cut spearheaded by the CP rank and file paper, Busman’s Punch, forced a company climb down. The following July the company announced the dismissal of 800 men and once again a campaign run through Busman’s Punch threatening strike action forced the company to back off. The union conceded the “speed-up”, however.
By now a fully-fledged rank and file organisation had been established with elected garage committees sending delegates to the central rank and file committee. Bert Papworth, a CP member, was elected the movement’s organiser; Frank Snelling was elected chair; Bill Payne treasurer; and Bill Jones, also a CP, member, secretary. The Busman’s Punch became the paper of the Rank and File Movement (RFM).
It was the RFM that led the opposition at garage level to the “speed-up” which culminated on 17 January 1933 in a strike at Forest Gate garage that quickly spread. Within days 26 garages were out involving nearly 13,000 men. Tramway workers at three depots came out in sympathy and tube workers were considering strike action. This action was all unofficial, in defiance of the union leadership. Once again the company backed down. The RFM won a majority (five out of six) on the union’s Central Bus Committee, but this was to actually inhibit it from unofficial action and embroil it in procedure rather than strengthen the rank and file.
The following year, there was an attempt to expand the movement into a trains, omnibuses and trams rank and file movement and to start campaigning for a seven-hour day, but this was not successful. By now the CP’s Popular Front policy was beginning to compromise rank and file organisation on the buses as the priority became capturing official positions. In 1935, Bert Papworth was elected onto the union executive and the party line was very much to work through the official machinery and avoid unofficial action. As for the union leadership, TGWU General Secretary Ernest Bevin was determined to root CP influence out of the union and to break rank and file organisation once and for all.
By now the company had been replaced by the London Passenger Transport Board, which had much the same management and still refused to negotiate in good faith. The union finally gave official notice of strike action towards the end of April 1937 with Bevin giving control of the strike over to the Central Bus Committee which remained dominated by the RFM. On 1 May 1937 London bus workers went on strike, the “Coronation Strike” (George vi was to be crowned on 12 May). Thousands of bus workers in uniform joined the massive May Day march through the city. At the same time thousands of provincial bus workers walked out on unofficial strike, but the union officials got them back to work after a few days.
In London, the union leadership tried to get a return to work so negotiations could take place but this proposal was overwhelmingly rejected not once but twice. While the buses were out, the trams, trolley-buses and the tube were all still working. To guarantee victory, the busmen needed solidarity action. Instead of trying to spread the strike by appealing to tram workers at the depots, the Central Bus Committee appealed through the official machinery for solidarity and was predictably turned down. It would have involved breaking agreements with the employers’ which would never be officially countenanced.
On 26 May Bevin intervened and took control of the strike. He proceeded to settle over the heads of the Central Bus Committee. He had comprehensively outmanoeuvred them, calling the strike off on 28 May. There was no increase in pay, and instead of the seven-hour day he accepted a half hour reduction to eight hours with four extra days’ holiday. Instead of defying the officials and fighting the sell-out, the Central Bus Committee collapsed. The RFM had become too much part of the official machinery and so had not prepared the bus workers for Bevin’s sell-out. If the CP had not embraced the Popular Front line and had instead been advocating a militant appeal to the rank and file on the trams and the tube, the outcome would have been different. Instead, the strike had been defeated as Bevin had always intended and in the process the RFM was destroyed.
Bevin followed up his success by decisively crushing the rank and file movement. Papworth, Payne and Jones were expelled from the union and other RFM leaders were barred from holding office. What was left of the rank and file movement broke up with some disillusioned militants establishing a breakaway union that went to war with the TGWU in a number of garages and at its greatest strength during the Second World War was to claim 14,000 members nationally. The last issue of Busman’s Punch appeared in September 1937. Papworth and Jones were both readmitted to the union in 1938 after promising good behaviour and no more of this rank and file nonsense. Bevin was also desperate for CP help in fighting the breakaway union. They accepted a four-year ban on holding office but in the fullness of time were both to become members of the TUC General Council. For London busmen defeat in the Coronation Strike and the destruction of the RFM meant a protracted deterioration in their pay and conditions that was to continue for many years. Solidarity would have won the strike.272
There was, as we have seen, no great explosion of working class militancy in Britain in the last years of the 1930s. Recovery had begun, however, and was to continue through the years of the Second World War into the post-war period. Indeed, by the 1960s and 1970s, the trade union movement in Britain was stronger than it had ever been. This strength was not founded on moderation and respectability, on the employers’ good will, on former union officials using their influence in the House of Lords or on the sympathy of Labour politicians. It was founded on workplace organisation, militancy and working class solidarity.
Today, these lessons have been too often forgotten. The defeats of the 1980s opened the way for many of the gains the working class had made to be rolled back. As part of this process the history of past struggles has been eradicated from the memory of the working class. Indeed, trade unionism itself has been effectively de-legitimised by the media and by politicians from both the Conservative and the Labour parties. Thatcher’s anti-union laws that criminalised working class solidarity were left untouched by Tony Blair, a politician every bit as hostile to trade unionism as his Conservative predecessors. All this helped prepare the way for “Austerity”. It was begun under Gordon Brown and continued under David Cameron.
The lessons of the past are clear: what is needed to turn the tide is strong workplace organisation, militancy and, most important of all, working class solidarity. A strong labour movement cannot be built without solidarity, without working class men and women being prepared to take action in support of those in struggle, whether it be respecting picket lines, reinforcing picket lines or striking in solidarity. Defeating “Austerity”, defeating the attempt to solve the crisis at the expense of the working class, demands a level of struggle that has not been seen in this country for many years.
This is what we have to work towards and hopefully this book will contribute in some small way to the coming fight back.