The tide of democracy by Alastair Reid

Author:Alastair Reid [Reid, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Social History
ISBN: 9781847797605
Google: qWW5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2013-07-19T03:35:28+00:00

War-time industrial unrest, 1914–16

In the first few weeks of the war the shipbuilding unions on the Clyde were enthusiastic about cooperating with the employers to shift labour onto priority warship contracts, permit more overtime than usual, and even relax some demarcation lines.13 However, as it became clear that the war would not be over in a couple of months and that the supply and organisation of labour would need to be thoroughly reviewed, cooperation gave way to the adversarial industrial relations which had been characteristic of the region before the war.14 There was growing suspicion on the part of union officials that management was using the war as an excuse to weaken their hard-won controls over the labour market and, in a national agreement on 3 November, they insisted that all of their members must be fully employed before there could be any relaxation of demarcation lines, and that any changes in practice would have to be negotiated in detail at the district level.15 In the subsequent talks on the Clyde, the District Delegates of the boilermakers’ society led the way in opposing the relaxation of demarcation lines on the grounds that the employers were exaggerating labour shortages, and in the yards themselves the men began to organise short strikes to protect their craft territory and increase their wages.16 As a result, when national negotiations were resumed on 9 December, the officials of both the boilermakers’ and the shipwrights’ societies refused to make any further concessions in the absence of firm guarantees of prior earnings for skilled men transferred to less well-paid work, and of proper travelling and lodging allowances for those moving more than three miles from home.17

Whatever the Clyde employers’ initial intentions, this mounting union defensiveness led some of them to see the war as a good opportunity to get to grips with a chronic nuisance. There were several incidents in December 1914 in which shipyard managers intimidated shop stewards and strikers by calling in the police or threatening to call in the Admiralty.18 Then the following month the CSA secretary, on behalf of the SEF as a whole, submitted formal proposals to the Chief Industrial Commissioner of the Board of Trade calling for legal sanctions against sectional wage strikes and the outright prohibition of alcohol, as he blamed excessive drinking for the boilermakers’ particularly bad timekeeping since the New Year holiday.19 Despite consistent lobbying throughout the first half of 1915 this tough management line was frustrated by the attitudes prevalent at the Board of Trade where those responsible for the increasing state intervention in war-time industrial relations were experienced arbitrators sensitive to the views of the unions. As Hubert Llewellyn Smith, later to become the General Secretary of the Ministry of Munitions, commented:

Our enquiries have shown that the ‘pitch’ has been badly ‘queered’ by injudicious action and fruitless conferences between employers and trade unions; and the men are full of suspicion as to the real motives of the employers and the ultimate result of any concessions they may make.

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