The National Minority Movement was the largest movement of rank-and-file trade unionists ever to have existed in Britain. Set up by the Communist Party in 1924, it contained many of the most selfless men that British trade unionism has seen. The Minority Movement is important not merely for its size-at one time it had over 950,000 members-but also because most of the problems faced by its members-undemocratic unions, a separation of politics from industrial activity, the problem of political militants in the T.U.s, etc.—are still with us. For anyone struggling to achieve rank-and-file control of the unions, a study of the rise and ultimate defeat of the Minority Movement is of great value. The experience of the Minority Movement also shows clearly that the "moderate" trade unionists who attempted to compromise with capitalism caused poverty and humiliation for hundreds of thousands of working class families, and that the only "realists" in the situation were those who believed that it was necessary to overthrow capitalism by force.
The State of the Unions in the 1920s In the early 1920s British trade unionism was in a bad way. In 1921 there were over two million unemployed (15% of the working class) and on the famous "Black Friday" the miners had been forced to accept wage cuts of up to 40%. Union membership had fallen from over 6½ million in 1919-1920 to only just over 4 million in 1924.
Even worse was the loss of membership by some of the biggest unions; the Engineers Union had lost nearly half its members between 1920 and 1925 and the National Union of Railwaymen lost 130,000 members in the same period. The social conditions reflected in these figures were terrible. The British ruling class showed its gratitude for the hundreds of thousands of working-class men killed during the First World War by forcing tens of thousands of South Wales miners to emigrate, by calling in troops and police to break strikes, and by cutting unemployment pay and rigidly enforc ing the means test. Although to be in work was better than unemployment, nevertheless the employers certainly believed in extracting every ounce of sweat; Aneurin Bevan recalled, for example, that in the labouring gang he worked in in Wales during this period, the men had to work so hard that the blood from their hands ran down the handles of their picks and shovels.
What heightened this tragedy was that none of this suffering had been necessary. In Britain in the period after the end of the First World War a working-class revolution had been within reach. 70,000 troops had been involved in mutinies in South-East England, and demonstrations of 100,000 workers had taken place in Glasgow, while in the great Clyde Strike of 1919 pickets had consisted not of tens or hundreds of men, but of thousands. Even the police went on strike, and from Yorkshire it was reported to the Government that "a minority of very advanced workers" had inflamed "practically the whole body of skilled men, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers". The ruling class reacted to this situation with its customary viciousness, and in Glasgow, the centre of the unrest, tanks appeared in the streets, machine guns were mounted on the tops of buildings, and literally thousands of troops were sent to the city. Despite this fierce repression, the rebellion swelled until the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, admitted to the leaders of the main unions that the government could no longer control the working class and that if the working class acted against the state, they would overthrow it and set up a workers' government. If the leaders of the working class had acted decisively in this situation, a socialist revolution in Britain would have been possible. Following closely on the heels of the Russian revolution, this would have ignited a revolutionary wave throughout Europe. Not merely would such a revolution have prevented the terrible suffering of the British working class during the 1920s and 1930s, but an internationally successful socialist revolution would have prevented the emergence of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, and therefore the Second World War. In Russia it would have meant a victory of the revolutionary wing of Trotsky over the reactionary wing of Stalin. In fact it can be said that rarely has a more important decision been taken than that of the British union leaders in 1919 when they decided The Pad Male 1150a 1070 DO to submit to the government and not to carry out a revolution.
The disastrous effects of this decision followed almost at once; in 1920 the government passed an emergency powers act including vicious anti-strike laws, with three months in prison and fines of £100 for breaking the new reached 1½ million and the militant union structure which had been built up during the War was largely in ruins. When the government took these actions, the union leaders of course "protested" but by then.it was too late. They had had their chance to take power in 1919 and had not done so. Having seen that the unions would back down in a crisis, the government had no need to be worried about their strength.
The Moderate Leaders It is important to realise that those men who were responsible for causing the poverty of unemployment and the humiliation of the means test for hundreds of thousands of workthe Minority Movement. The most notable of these men was J. H. Thomas-a man much MOUNTED POLICE CHARGE STRIKERS NEAR THE ELEPHANT AND CASTLE praised by the press of his time for his "reasonableness".
J. H. Thomas was the head of the Railwaymen's Union, and had been one of those leaders defeat for the working class. to whom Lloyd George had declared that the government and the state would fall if the unions acted against it. The Les Cannon of his day. Thomas ruled the NUR as his own private kingdom. The union constitution put him in his political struggle is a fantasy." An attempt position for life, and using the power of his office, he stamped on any sign of democracy in the unions away from the men who had conthe union. There were no elections of any importance; the six full-time national officials were not subject to re-election and no lay member could be elected to the executive for more than three years in succession. Together with this lack of democracy at the top went a suppression of democracy at the District level.
District Councils could only be formed with the held in Farringdon Hall on 23rd-24th August permission of the National Executive, and even then they were to be consultative with "no governing or controlling power over any member, branch or official". Just to cap it all, local branches could be dissolved by the Natio nal Executive at any time if they were considered "unnecessary or undesirable or prejudicial to the interests of the union or its members". In practice, of course, this meant that any branch openly opposing the right-wing policies of the national executive and of J. H.
Thomas would be dissolved. With this type of union structure it was no accident that Thomas was the bitterest opponent of any movement in favour of trade union democracy and the widest peace and class collaboration and the delusion possible use of working class power for the achievement of socialism.
It was against this sombre background of working class defeat that the National Minority Movement was founded in 1924.
Formation of the Minority Movement The reason for the formation of the Movement was simply that the tremendous defeats of the British and world working class movements in the period after 1918 had shown clearly that it was impossible to separate trade unionism and politics. The only way of preventing an almost complete defeat of the trade unions in 1920 and 1921 and the consequent suffering of the regulations. By March 1921 unemployment had working class would have been for the working class to have seized power in 1919. However, such a decision would have been a political and not a trade union decision. The union leaders in 1919 had therefore been faced with the following problem: in order to defend even the most elementary rights to a job it was necessary to take state power, but to take power meant to break down the division between trade unionism and politics which they themselves had always insisted upon. In other words, in order to protect the trade unions it was necessary to act politically. But not to take power is, of course, also a political decision-one that leads to the defeat of the working class. In short, this crisis of 1919 had only two solutions: one was the defeat of the working class and the other was ing class families were also the main enemies of the seizure of power by the working class. The belief that there was some other possibility, which was not political but purely a trade union solution, was just a delusion. The attempt of the working class leaders to separate politics and trade unionism led to inevitable The lessons of this crisis were clearly drawn by the Communist Parties. As the President of the Communist International, Zinoviev, stated in 1921, "Neutrality of the trade unions in the therefore had to be made to wrest control of demned millions to unemployment by their actions in 1919. In order to try to do this, the RILU (Red International of Labour Unions) was set up. It was this organisation that gave the main impetus for the formation of the Minority Movement.
The first conference of the Movement was 1924. There were 270 delegates, representing approximately 200,000 workers. The main aim of the Movement was declared to be "...to 'organise the working masses of Great Britain for the overthrow of capitalism, the emancipation of the workers from oppressors and exploiters, and the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth": The methods for achieving this were to be "...wide agitation and propa ganda for the principles of the revolutionary class struggle and...to unite the workers in their everyday struggles against the exploiters..." with the most immediate aim being to fight against "...the present tendency towards social of the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, and...to maintain the closest relations with the RILU." The first programme adopted by the movement was an excellent one for the time, calling for a national minimum wage of £4, an all-round wage increase of £1, a 44-hour week, workers control of industry and a streng thened TUC Council.
Growth of the Movement With a good programme and aided by the economic recovery of 1924, the Minority Move ment made rapid progress. The number of conference delegates rose from 271 in 1924, to 547 in 1926, with the number of trade unionists represented rising from 200,000 in 1924 to 957,000 in March 1926. The main strength of the Movement was in mining, engineering and transport. By 1926 over 200 miners' Minority groups existed; there were 153 in the engineering industry and 126 in the NUR and the TGWU while five small unions affiliated en bloc. Inside the unions themselves, the Movement built up real strength. In the Mineworkers Union, for example, its stubborn resistance to the execu tive over the 1924 pay negotiations led to the South Wales, Scotland and Lancashire areas all voting against the executive decision to accept a wage deal which failed to make up the previous wage cuts. In the AEU, real support was gained for the £1-a-week rise of the Move ment's programme, which culminated in a narrow defeat for a call for a national strike on the AEU National Committee in March 1926. All in all, it can be said that by 1926 the Minori Minority Movement was a real power in the trade unions and the working class, and that it had in its ranks many of the leading trade unionists in the country. In relatively democratic unions such as the Mineworkers and the AEU, its influence was reflected right up to the national leadership level, while in totally undemocratic ones such as Thomas's NUR, it provided a militant rank-and-file movement for union democracy and working class policies. In fact, by 1926 the Minority Movement was developing into a movement which could have provided a real basis for a leadership not scared of taking political decisions and capable of preventing any repetition of the betrayal of the working class in 1919 The leaders of the movement enjoyed great prestige. President and "Elder Statesman" was Tom Mann. He had been a socialist writer and agitator since the 1880s and had been one of the leaders of the great 1889 Dock Strike. Since that time he had been President of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union, General Secretary of the Independent Labour Party and eventually head of the British section of the RILU. Although by the 1920s he could not. take part in day-to-day administration, nevertheless his prestige, heightened by the frequency with which he had suffered imprison ment in defence of his principles, was invaluable to the movement. The other major nationatleaders were Harry Pollitt and J. T. Murphy; and the leader of the key mineworkers' section was Arthur Horner, who joined the Communist Party in 1920, was co-opted on to the Political Bureau in 1923, played a leading role in launching the miners' Minority Movement in South Wales alongside Arthur Cook, Noah Ablett and S. O. Davies, and after a chequered career in the Party and the Minority Movement, in the 1920s, became President of the South Wales Miners' Federation in 1936 and General Secretary of the NUM in 1946.
With leaders of a high calibre and a large following in the working class, the Minority Movement presented a real threat to the union leaders and they of course lashed out against it viciously. The methods used by these union leaders show clearly that it is ridiculous to see them as "moderate" men fighting for union rights. In fact they were men whose policies had led to the defeat of the working class in 1919 who repeated this during the General Strike and. who were prepared to use any methods in order to defend the right-wing policies of their_ unions.
We may summarise at this point the position of the trade unions in the spring of 1926. The leadership of the main unions was still on the hands of the right-wing leaders who had been responsible for the defeat of the working class • in 1919. On the other hand the militant Minority Movement, grouped around the Com munist Party, had grown enormously and now included almost a quarter of all trade unionists. The Movement had good industrial policies and a leadership of great experience. The trial of strength between this revolutionary movement and the official union leadership should have come with the General Strike of 1926. What in fact happened and the reasons for the eventual collapse of the Minority Movement are dealt with in the next issue of the Mole.
A. Jones