However, Labour may not have been in the pocket of the Liberal Party as some historians suggest. After the 1906 general elections the defeated Conservative leader, Arthur Balfour, described the new Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, as ‘a mere cork dancing in a current which he could not control,’ referring to the Labour Party. Though this is likely to have been simply a bitter, scathing remark by Balfour, he was right to recognise the significance of the growing Labour Party. The 1906 election had allowed Labour to gain political independence from the Liberals and 29 seats was a marked rise from the 2 seats they had in 1900. Many historians agree that the 1901 Taff Vale Judgement, a judgement which meant businesses could demand compensation for lost profits during strike action from trade unions, aided Labour’s success in this election because it led to key unions like the Miners Federation switching to Labour from supporting the Liberals so within two years of the judgement the affiliated membership of the LRC had doubled from 455,450 to 861,200. After the 1906 election, Labour put significant pressure on the Liberal government to reverse this judgement and accomplished this with the Trades Dispute Act.
Labour’s results in the general elections from 1906 to 1918 (1918 being the year that held a general election nearest to 1914) were constantly on the ascendant, where as the Liberals, after their landslide victory in 1906, were forever in decline, having only 4.8% more percent of the total vote than Labour by 1918, and this figure was divided between the split Coalition Liberals led by Lloyd George and the Official Asquithian Liberals.
The Constitutional Crisis of 1910 first saw Labour stealing Liberal seats when in January 1910 the Liberals had 274 seats and Labour had 40 but in that December the Liberals had slipped to 272 seats and Labour had risen to 42. This drop meant that the only way the Liberal government could prove it represented the whole nation was by relying on Labour and other small groups to support them. Byrne (1995) claims this reliance “exposed [the Liberals] to the demands of the Irish Nationalists,” and, therefore, also the Labour Party.
Laybourn (97) also insists socialist ideas did play an important role in the party’s development. But due to the fact the LRC, as the Labour Party began, was an umbrella corporation for lots of different bodies with different views it settled on half-way policies that they all could agree on. Laybourn also says Labour’s main aim was to attract the support of trade unions that already backed the Liberals and therefore had to appear moderate. This may also explain Labour MPs adoption of Liberal ideas in 1906 as a way of winning over trade unions. Conversely, the Liberal radical wing’s desire to introduce laws that benefited the working class may, on some level, indicate that some Liberal politicians feared the consequences of the conditions the working class were living in and the potential revolt that could brake out, as George Barnes wrote in 1917 of the ‘psychological conditions’ that caused unrest:
the feeling that there has been inequality of sacrifice, that the government has broken solemn pledges, that the trade union officials are no longer to be relied upon, and that there is a woeful uncertainty as to the industrial future.
These were all present in the early 20th Century, though the belief that ‘the trade union officials are no longer to be relied upon’ did not develop until 1910 when working class militancy broke out and syndicalism was on the rise.
Leon Trotsky said syndicalists were people ‘who not only wish to fight against the bourgeoisie, but who, unlike… [the reformists]… really want to tear its head off,’ that is to say syndicalism was a greater threat to the establishment than the Labour Party, who were reformists that intended to gain power through the political process rather than seize for themselves. Syndicalism on the other hand, involved using general strikes as a weapon to topple governments and seize power for the proletariat and, it was believed, if it failed at least it would unite the working class. Syndicalism developed as a philosophy mainly in France but also in America. Syndicalism arrived in Britain in 1910 when Tom Mann returned from Australia, after a brief visit to France to learn of this new philosophy. Mann was heavily involved in implementing syndicalism in Britain, setting up the pamphlet journal Industrial Syndicalist and consolidating sectional industry trade unions to form vast singular unions through what he called ‘Amalgamation Committees,’ for example, the National Transport Workers Federation, which included dockers and seamen, and was created by Man with the aid of Ben Tillet, who had last worked alongside Mann during the London Dock Strike of 1889, and Havelock Wilson, Secretary of the National Sailors’ and Fireman’s Union. However, Mann was not wholly responsible for the militancy of this period as there were several other factors that historian’s have decided played a role that were beyond Mann’s control. Mann just provided a process for this militancy to use.
One important factor for the militancy that arose amongst the working class in 1910-14 was that workers were better erudite than they had ever been before, with many schools and colleges set up to further educate workers at this time. Hunt (2003) points out that most men could read by the beginning of the 20th Century and H.G. Wells made the link between better education and the industrial unrest at the time:
Intelligence not merely increased but greatly stimulated… [Young workers]… the old workman might and did quarrel very vigorously with his specific employer, but he never set out to arraign all employers… The young workman, on the other hand, has put the whole social system upon its trial and seems quite disposed to give an adverse verdict.
It is important to be aware that many of the schools developed to teach workers were in fact socialist, such as the Labour College in London in 1910, which taught Marxist politics and economics. The Labour College was also connected with the Plebs League, which took its name from a leaflet by American Marxist Daniel De Leon, who helped shape syndicalism in the USA. The Plebs League contained many members of the South Wales Miners Federation and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants who willingly converted to Mann’s beliefs and were according to Pelling (63) ‘largely responsible for the aggravated tactics of their respective unions in 1911-12’.
Many young workers, who were not necessarily members of the Plebs League, had grown disillusioned with the slowness of the established socialist society, for example the Labour Party, which may suggest that the political party wasn’t as threatening as some claimed, and instead decided to look for a more hands own method of introducing social change, namely militancy. Webb, who was interestingly a Fabian and therefore a socialist who believed in influencing the already established power structure with socialist ideas, wrote ‘the TUC is a highly academic body – a debating society rather than a legislative assembly… The existence of such an ill-defined body is a source of weakness to the Labour Movement and the Parliamentary Committee must hand over its works and powers to other bodies more fitted to the task,’ Tom Mann set up the Industrial Syndicalist Education League in 1910 to propagate syndicalist ideas to young workers such as these who wanted to find these ‘other bodies’ and there was also the Transport Workers Federation and the Triple Alliance.
Another cause for militancy asserted by Hunt (2003) is that workers perceived the law courts as a threat, for introducing the Taff Vale and Osborne Judgements, which enforced limitations on the working class. This is likely to have breed resentment against the establishment and a desire to change it, which would have inspired militancy.
An important factor agreed by most historians, including Pelling (63) and Hunt (2003), which also relates to Dangerfield’s thesis of the Liberal government’s demise, is that there was a general atmosphere of violence in Britain between 1910-14. There were violent protests by the suffragettes, conflict between Unionists and Nationalists in Ireland and, Pelling (63) suggests, the friction between the Liberals and the Lords during the Constitutional Crisis. As Hunt (2003) put it ‘striking action may in some way have been contagious,’ and spread amongst workers influenced by the violence of other groups around them.
Despite H.G. Wells’ suggestion that workers at this time wanted to ‘put the whole social system upon its trial,’ and were concerned with politics the strikes during 1910-1914 were all over working conditions, particularly over pay, and this was also considered one of the causes of militancy at this, it was simply a different method of achieving what they wanted because, as already noted, they were frustrated with the usual means of getting what they wanted.
Socialism’ Speech, 23rd April 1901.
Quoted from Henry Pelling, A History of Trade Unionism (1963); Chapter Eight, War and the General Strike 1914-26; p156.
France is where the word syndicalism derives from, syndic being French for ‘trade union’.
B. & S. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (1913); p468-72.
