The History of Trade Unionism: (Revised edition, extended to 1920)Webb, Sidney
History
The History of Trade Unionism: (Revised edition, extended to 1920)
Webb, Sidney
Labor unions -- Great Britain -- History
case of the miners of Great Britain, who were in very ill repute for
riotous proceedings from 1837-44. The provocation they received may
be judged from a manifesto issued by Lord Londonderry in his dual
capacity as mine-owner and Lord-Lieutenant of Durham County during
the great strike of the miners in 1844 for fairer terms of hiring.
He not only superintends, as Lord-Lieutenant, the wholesale eviction
of the strikers from their homes, and their supersession by Irishmen
specially imported from his Irish estates, but he peremptorily orders
the resident traders in “his town of Seaham,” on pain of forfeiting his
custom and protection, to refuse to supply provisions to the workmen
engaged in what he deems “an unjust and senseless warfare _against
their proprietors and masters_.”[290] The same intolerance marks
the magazines and journals of the dominant classes of the period. It
seems to have been habitually taken for granted that the workman had
not merely to fulfil his contract of service, but to yield implicit
obedience in the details of his working life to the will of his
master. Combinations and strikes on the part of the “lower orders”
were regarded as futile and disorderly attempts to escape from their
natural position of social subservience. In short, the majority of
employers, even in this time of negro emancipation, seem to have been
unconsciously acting upon the dictum subsequently attributed to J. C.
Calhoun, the defender of American slavery, that “the true solution of
the contest of all time between labour and capital is that capital
should own the labourer whether white or black.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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