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
This declaration of war on Trade Unionism gained for the men on strike
the support of the whole Trade Union world. The Central Committee
of the great society of Stonemasons, which had hitherto discouraged
the Metropolitan Nine Hours Movement as premature, took up the
struggle against the Document as one of vital importance. Meetings of
delegates from the organised Metropolitan trades were held in order
to rally the forces of Trade Unionism to the cause of the builders.
The subscriptions which poured in from all parts of the kingdom
demonstrated the possession, in the hands of trade societies, of heavy
and hitherto unsuspected reserves of financial strength. The London
Pianoforte Makers contributed £300. The Flint Glass Makers, who had
just emerged from a prolonged struggle on their own account, sent a
similar sum. “Trades Committees” were formed in all the industrial
centres, and remitted large amounts. Glasgow and Manchester sent over
£800 each, and Liverpool over £500. The newly formed Yorkshire Miners’
Association forwarded £230. The Boilermakers, Coopers, and Coachmakers’
Societies were especially liberal in their gifts. But the sensation of
the subscription list was the grant by the Amalgamated Engineers of
three successive weekly donations of £1000 each--an event long recalled
with emotion by the survivors of the struggle. Altogether some £23,000
were subscribed (exclusive of the payments by the societies directly
concerned), an amount far in excess of any previous strike subsidy.
Such abundant support enabled the men to defeat the employers’ aims,
though not to secure their own demands. The Central Association of
Master Builders clung desperately to the Document, but failed to
obtain an adequate number of men willing to subscribe to its terms.
In December 1859 a suggestion was made by Lord St. Leonards that
the Document be withdrawn, a lengthy statement of the law relating
to trade combinations being hung up in all the establishments as a
substitute. The employers’ obstinacy held out for two months longer,
but finally succumbed in February 1860, when the Platonic suggestion of
Lord St. Leonards was adopted, and the embittered dispute was brought
to an end.
This drawn battle between the forces of Capital and Labour ranks as a
leading event in Trade Union history, not only because it revived the
feeling of solidarity between different trades, but also on account
of the importance of two consolidating organisations to which it gave
birth. Out of the Building Trades Strike of 1859-60 arose the London
Trades Council (to be described in the following chapter) and the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, the most notable adoption by another
trade of the “New Model” introduced by Newton and Allan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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