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SOLIDARITY
The British working class has a strong and highly developed sense of solidarity. But, contrary to the illusions of utopian leftwingers, who have little experience of the working class and no desire to reflect candidly about what they do know, this solidarity does not extend to the reflex of supporting every outbreak of the economic struggle with the forces of the whole class.
The impulse for all workers to join together in every encounter in the economic struggle is a natural one at the beginning of a national working class's emergence into history. The British working class displayed such inclinations in the 1820's and 1830's. However, as soon as the experience of fighting capitalist employers had had a chance to be absorbed by the class, it was clear that such a response was inappropriate and would not achieve the desired results.
The British trade union movement rejected in the 1860's the path which had been tried in the 1820's and 30's. The movement did not build One Big Union which would enter into mortal combat with the capitalist class as a whole. The capitalist employers were variegated, different in their policies, approaches and attitudes. To fight them, unions must needs develop the ability to fight individual battles and skirmishes. Unions divided into local and craft-based associations, which were then loosely centralised by the men with whom Marx consorted in the First International.
The members of these New Model Unions had just as strong a sense of belonging to one class as did those men of the previous generation who had tried for One Big Union. The difference was that the men of the 1860's had learned that workers in one town and trade had to be able to fight their own battles and win with their own force. Financial help, blacking work, and moral support were all, of course, important; but in the end, the workers concerned had to be strong enough themselves to win.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN TRADE UNIONISM
In the closing years of the 19th century, the increasing concentration of industry produced more centralised unions. As capitalists became bigger, so did the unions. However, the lesson which had been learnt by the 1860's continued to be understood. The trade unions came together in the 1890's, but not for the purpose of fighting the economic struggle. They came together, first to form the Parliamentary Committee of the infant TUC, to make representations to Parliament and made certain that legislation which was beneficial to the working class as a whole was enacted. Then they came together to form the Labour Party to help obtain the same goals.
The period just prior to the Great War was full of pitched class battles, of the miners, railwaymen and dockers. Though, not surprisingly, notions of the whole class uniting in One Battle Formation, again appeared, they were never translated into practice. The first attempts at a Triple Alliance aborted before 1914, and though the Russian Revolution revived the impulse towards such united action, the Triple Alliance of 1919-21 was equally barren. In a society as complicated and dense as Britain, any notion of all-out battle between the classes was unrealistic and supremely impractical.
In fact, the trade union movement went from strength to strength. The crucial place of munitions workers, miners, etc. in the war economy gave the unions the chance to win concessions for their members which had been thought impossible before 1914. Those gains were consolidated after the war, despite the unexpected and precipitate economic slump which occurred in 1920. The gains were kept because union leaders made it clear that they were willing to fight to keep them, and employers were unwilling to risk the consequences of such a conflict. In 1922, the Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) won a national lockout over the maintenance of managerial prerogative. But they declined to press their advantage home: the unions remained at the hub of the industry, and collective bargaining was underpinned by an elaborate agreement, the York Memorandum, which the EEF was pledged to enforce upon its members.
A SUCCESSFUL UNION STRATEGY
The advance of the trade union movement and the Labour Party was the result of the skilful use of the circumstances and opportunities of the Great War by union leaders. The formation of the TUC General Council to replace the old Parliamentary Committee showed that these men had reflected upon their experiences of the previous decade and learnt from them. The General Council, and the construction of a permanent staff of experts to service it, were signs that the working class intended to influence the formation of Government policy on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, the General Council was also intended to guide the conduct of the economic struggle, insofar as that was possible, given the normal dispersed and various patterns of that struggle which had returned with peace.
The union leaders could see little point in using force against the employers unnecessarily, when other forms of pressure would suffice. Thus, the General Council tried to counsel the various unions, and to exert pressure at the highest levels on their behalf. It tried to see that the economic struggle was fought on Clausewitzian principles—the ones that beat Napoleon that is—that objectives of class war should be from the outset clearly conceived and then fought for single-mindedly. In this way, force was not wasted and the minimum necessary was risked.
The success of this strategy in the inter-war period, and then during the 1939-45 war against Germany was impressive. Despite high levels of unemployment in the North of England, Scotland and Wales, union leaders deployed their forces so skilfully that real wages increased and the profound social advances of holidays with pay and a shorter working week were also achieved.
It is not surprising that after a run of such successes, most trade union leaders still view their job as being both to get the best possible deal for their members, as well as acting as the organising force for the working class as a whole inside the society. The sum of the working class advance over the last fifty years has been achieved as much by the shrewd politicking of the TUC, its loose generalship of the economic struggle and marshalling of political opinion, as by the actual conflict between the classes on the shopfloor.