It was around this time that national trade unions first appeared. Early attempts, like the Journeymen Steam Engine Makers and the Friendly Society of Carpenters and Joiners of Great Britain were unsuccessful, mostly due to the unemployment caused by the economic recession, but in 1829 the Grand General Union of All the Operative Spinners of the United Kingdom was formed under the leadership of John Doherty, and met with immediate and great success.
Workers were now alse turning their attention to the formation of big industry-wide unions, with a definite programme of demands not only for higher wages and better conditions, but also for syndicalist aims of eventually taking over the ownership and running of production on cooperative lines. The Operative Builders' Union, the first national industrial union, played the leading role in this.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs In 1833 the "utopian socialist" Robert Owen formed the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, which was a federation of many industiral unions. Within weeks the GNCTU enrolled a million members, but it never really worked, however, for the individual unions refused to give up their autonomy and did not send in any funds. Thus it was easily destroyed-effectively within six months of its formation. In March 1834 the agricultural labourers of Tolpuddle in views, in politics probably a Gladstonian Liberal, with a distrust of revolutionary methods and a dislike even of the strike weapon to which he only resorted when all the resources of peaceful negotiation had been exhausted. British trade unionism entered on the most pacific stage of its history.
The first and most important of these unions was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, formed in 1851, which was an amalgamation of several smaller craft unions. In its first 40 years of existence, the ASE expended £2,987, 993 on the various friendly benefits, but only £86,664 on strikes.
It was no accident that the so-called aristocracy of labour should consolidate itself over and above the mass of the working class in this period; the "new model" unions reflected the process whereby British capitalism, now confirmed in its position as the workshop of the world, conferred privileges which amounted to bribes upon an "upper stratum" of the working class, mainly from among the textile factory workers and the skilled artisans in the metal. working and building trades, upon whom this prosperity especially depended. In a letter dated August 11th 1881, Engels was to speak of "the worst type of British trade unions, which allow themselves to be led by men who have been bought by the capitalists, or at least are in their pay."
Despite some defeats in their early days, the amalgamated craft unions quickly gained massive strength. Meanwhile the workers of various towns were coming together to create trades bination to do a legal act by illegal means was a criminal conspiracy. In other words, a strike was lawful, but anything done in pursuance of a strike was criminal."
The trade union movement did not accept this situatiop without a determined response, and in 1875 their newly acquired political influence was used to force the Conservative Government to repeal the second 1871 Act. It was replaced by the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, which legalised picketing and declared that no action by a trade union was a criminal offence if such action could be done legally by an individual person. Henceforth trade union activity could be carried on without the constant threat of the law courts (at least, that is, until the Taff Vale Judgement in 1901but that is the story of the founding of the Labour Party).
Today the trade union movement is under a threat similar to that of exactly a hundred years ago. Gains that have been won by unionists in a century or more of struggle against the bosses and their governments are in danger of being removed at a stroke by the Industrial Relations Bill. A repeat performance of 1875 by the Conservative Party is out of the question today when the very survival of capitalism depends or à quiescent trade union movement. Furt the Labour Party has shown itself to be i alternative if trade union rights are to be defended and advanced, after having atte to carry out its own attacks on the unior Clearly the threat of the Bill will rema long as the Tory Government does, so th present TUC strategy of Sunday demons evening meetings in the Albert Hall, lunc "protest" meetings, and so on, is totally quate to defend the trade union moveme one-day token strikes we have had up to should be regarded as but dress rehearsal all-out General Strike to bring down the Government once and for all, and replac with a workers' government based upon cratised trade unions.
Nigel Brown For a further discussion of the bureaucra of the trade unions, and the questions ar from this, read The Fight for Contro/ by Jordan (price 5p, inc. post); and for a de analysis of the Tories' 1971 anti-union pi sals, read The Industrial Relations Bill: A laration of War by Peter Hampton (price inc. post). Both are International Marxist pamphlets, available from IMG Publicatic 182 Pentonville Road, London N. 1.