A Short History of the British Working Class Movement (1937) by G. D. H. Cole

Author:G. D. H. Cole [Cole, G. D. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Political Science, Labor & Industrial Relations
ISBN: 9781136447761
Google: nucJEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-11-25T01:40:02+00:00

BOOKS

W. P. Ryan. The Irish Labour Movement.

D. Ryan. James Connolly.

Wright. Disturbed Dublin.

Connolly. The Re-conquest of Ireland.

Board of Trade. Annual Report on Strikes and Lock-outs, 1913 Askwith. Industrial Negotiations and Disputes.

V THE INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL—THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE

THE story of the great strikes of the pre-war years has been told in some detail because in these eventful times each great movement had its own significance. In their cumulative effect, these strikes stood for a profound change not only in Trade Union policy, but still more in the whole mind and temper of the British working class. Whatever the immediate issues might be, there was a new spirit behind them—a kicking against the pricks of capitalism, an insistence on the human rights of the worker as a person who was set on “counting” as a person and refused to be “druv,” a capacity for spontaneous mass action which seemed, after the long-sustained orderliness of the Victorian era, something wholly new.

It was, above all, this aspect of the unrest that alarmed the employers, the Government, and, scarcely less, some of the older Trade Union leaders. Consequently, from its very beginning, there was a feverish search for cures for the preyailing industrial unrest—cures, of course, which would leave the capitalist system intact. Much was heard of the virtues of conciliation and arbitration, of the systems in force in Canada, Australasia, and other countries, of the need for more goodwill as the basis of satisfactory industrial relations. Even profit-sharing, as is usual at such times, enjoyed its little boom.

Again and again, as we have seen, the Government and its agents directly intervened in order to settle the recurrent industrial crises. But it was recognised by the Liberals that such direct intervention had its political dangers and inconveniences, and that it would be both nicer and safer if employers and workers could be induced to settle their differences peaceably among themselves. Out of these fears arose, in 1911, the Industrial Council—a joint consultative body of well-known employers and moderate Trade Union leaders, designed to act as a conciliatory influence. This body proved wholly impotent to settle disputes; but it conducted in 1912 an exhaustive enquiry into industrial agreements, in which much valuable material bearing on the prewar history of Labour is embedded. Its chairman was a Government official, Sir George Askwith (now Lord Askwith), who had been in constant request as a conciliator during the troubles.

The plan chiefly discussed, on Sir George Askwith’s initiative, before the Commission was some form of compulsory conciliation before a strike could take place. This plan was based on the Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1907, generally known as the “Lemieux Act.” Under this Act, which applied only to certain services, no stoppage of work could lawfully take place until the dispute had been considered by a special court of enquiry, and a report issued embodying recommendations. These recommendations had no binding force, and after the report had been issued both parties were free to take what action they chose. But it

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