Ye hardy sons of toil.
But will your King and Country need you
When they’re sharing out the spoil?”
When war was declared in 1914, union leaders more or less declared to their members “You must now cease fighting the class war and defend your country.” which had the result of some workers turning away from their union officials.
The Engineers had a pre-war demand for an increase in wages of 2d an hour based on the increase in the cost of living during the three year period of frozen wages and the outbreak of war gave the employers ample excuses for refusing to meet the demand. It was also clear that the employers had a valuable asset in the arbitrary powers of the Government, and that they intended to make full use of them. As a result, the trade union leaders were coerced into signing agreements which bound the men hand and foot, and made “official” action impossible. Alternative means were sought and the shop steward movement grew.
In February 1915, the Engineers union officials accepted a derisory 3/4 a penny rise in the hourly rate. Deserted by their own officials, the local shop stewards formed a strike committee which couldn’t be called such because strikes had already been declared illegal in the war for democracy so instead they was called themselves a “Labour Withholding Committee.”
The initial dispute overcame coercion and intimidation brought to bear against them, and despite an the equally desolatory compromise of 1d. per hour rise gained, they had demonstrated their discipline and capacity for organisation, returning to work in a body still united. There had been no strike pay or support from the national union, but the workers has been 100 per cent and went back unbroken after two weeks. It was decided to continue the strike as a go-slow and work-to-rule. They carried their grievances back to work with them, determined to acquire strength for the next round.
The shop stewards formed the Clyde Workers’ Committee to continue the fight. In a challenge to the trade union bureaucracy, it declared “The support given to the Munitions Act by the officials was an act of treachery to the working class. Those of us who refused to be sold have organised the above Committee, representative of all trades in the Clyde area” and it went on to define its purpose:
"We are out for unity and closer organisation of all trades in the industry, one Union being the ultimate aim. We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them. Being composed of delegates from every shop, and untrammelled by obsolete rule or law, we claim to represent the true feeling of the workers. We can act immediately according to the merits of the case and the desire of the rank and file.” (Willie Gallacher)
In 1915, the government with the “Munitions Act" introduced “dilution of labour” which meant hiring of new workers without regard to union standards of wages, hours and conditions. To protect union standards and another upsurge of militacy started. The issue was highlighted in The Worker:
“ Women in controlled establishments doing work hitherto done by skilled men are to receive a wage of £1 per week. Compared with the wage received by some of these women in other employment, that may mean an advance of from nine to twelve shillings a week. But compare it with the wage of the skilled man whose place she has taken and you find a difference of from 18,/- to £1 per week." It concluded that would mean an actual gain to the employers and a loss not only to the skilled man, but to the entire working class. It means, in fact, a lowering of the whole working class standard.
This movement then received another great impetus from the introduction by the government of a measure for extending the power of conscription, usually referred to as the “Man Power Bill.”
But to be sure, the union militancy was not as someties presented a preclude to Revolution. Glasgow was not St Petersburg. Willie Gallagher explained:
“Let it be clearly understood that we made no claim to power of any kind. Our policy was simply and purely defensive...If the workers are to win out when the war is over sectionalism must go. One organisation for the workers of an industry means strength, and strength means victory. The present multiplicity of Unions spells weakness and the ultimate aim of the Clyde Workers’ Committee is to weld these unions into one powerful organisation that will place the workers in complete control of the industry.”
James D. MacDougall in The Vanguard wrote: “ The only tactic now open to the workers to adopt is that of the political strike. They have no voice in the House of Commons. The “Labour” members are either too patriotic or too cowardly... the officials are discredited and count for little, the real leaders of the men are to be found in the workshops...the exceptional circumstances at present existing are producing something very like the beginnings of a real industrial union movement. The need for solidarity is breaking down the old craft jealousies, the spread of Socialism is showing to workers their essential unity as a class...the influence of revolutionary Socialism among the Clyde workers has reached a higher point than ever before.” Overly optimistic, granted but the sentiments were there.
J.T. Aitken, a ship-worker wrote in The Worker: “Yes; there is trouble on the Clyde. And how has it arisen? It is through a total absence of any sense of fair dealing between employer and employed. The harsh treatment meted out to some workers by unscrupulous firms, taking undue advantage of the Munitions Act has done its work. Hence the revolt.” He describes the aspiration of someone in the midst of war living in a slum were “The Socialist movement is not actuated by greed for money but is the outward expression of an inner yearning for a fuller and freer life. As Socialists we are out to destroy the present intolerable industrial system, and to substitute a better, wherein the city dwellers shall forget the endless meal of brick and stone, and shall have visions of trees and fields, musical with birds lending charm to the dream-like quiet of the country, where Nature has dealt so bountifully.”
Our own journal, the Socialist Standard, wrote at the time:
"The Clyde trouble of Christmas 1915 is perhaps the best specimen of these sectional and local revolts. The principle of the men was strong, but they were driven down by lies, hunger, victimisation, deportation of their leaders, and, what is more important still, because the strike was local. Instead of abandoning the political machine to ambitious wiseacres and unscrupulous plotters, and letting them, in the secrecy of Cabinet conclaves, everlastingly scheme to set the social changes on you, see to it that those who are now proven the enemies of your class are no longer sent to represent you. Fill their places with class-conscious men of your own ranks, controlled and guaranteed by the political organisation of your own class.Engineers! At an early date you will be confronted with other trouble. We want your demands to be more exacting, and more deep the principles you struggle for. Fight with your brothers of other industries for these bigger and nobler things as earnestly and solidly as you recently fought. Fight politically as well as industrially, then, with the principle of the class struggle to guide your fighting."
In Germany and Austria strikes began on the dire problem of securing of food, but nearly always accompanying this demand, and in some cases forming the sole object, was the call upon the governments to declare an armistice and enter into negotiations for peace. In this country a similar movement spread. A resolution moved at Glasgow at a meeting resolved:
“That having heard the case of the Government, as stated by Sir Auckland Geddes [the manpower Director of Recruiting], this meeting pledges itself to oppose to the very uttermost the Government in its call for more men. We insist and pledge ourselves to take action to enforce the declaration of an immediate armistice on all fronts; and that the expressed opinion of the workers of Glasgow is that from now on, and so far as this business is concerned our attitude all the time and every time is to do nothing in support of carrying on the war, but to bring the war to a conclusion.”
Better late than never the Clyde workers realised that they have nothing to gain but a good deal to lose by the continuance of the war. Lloyd George came to Glasgow to soft-soap the work-force. The first plant he addressed, the head shop steward introduced him to the meeting as “an enemy of the workers”. At the other plants, the stewards refused to gather until he negotiated with the Clyde Workers Committee. On Christmas Day, he tried to address a city-wide meeting of stewards placing the cause for the slaughter of soldiers at the front on the shoulders of the Clyde-workers. When he stopped through sheer exhaustion, Muir of the CWC got up on a seat, instantaneous silence fell, and the workers’ case was presented. Muir repudiated Lloyd George assertions by saying:
“It is an absolutely untrue and grossly unfair interpretation of our position. Most of us have relatives at the front as well as you, and we are as much interested in their welfare as anybody else can possibly be. What is more, ninety-five per cent. of these men come from our class. They are coming back to our class, and if things continue on the lines they are moving now they are coming back to much worse conditions than they left. We would be traitors to them if we permitted it. We are determined to prevent it if we can, and in doing so we are not fighting for our own hand alone, but also for these men and the workers of the future. The Government is responsible for the slaughter, and you must share the responsibility if you go back to London after having heard our case, and do nothing to further. You need not say it is impossible. The public man who would push it in the House of Commons strenuously would rally the workers of the country behind him. I suggest to you that the next time you have any occasion to refer to responsibility you be a little fairer, and remember our side of the case. We repudiate all responsibility.”
The government naturally retaliated. No less than four papers were suppressed – Forward, The Vanguard, The Socialist, and The Worker. Halls let for meetings were cancelled by the score, and where public meetings did get held, summonses against the speakers were issued and fines imposed. Government propaganda denounced the strikers for their self-interest.
"Even now your protest is not on behalf of the working class, but a claim that a small section – the members of the ASE. – should not be placed in the Army until the ‘dilutees’ have been taken. Surely if you did not complain when we smashed agreements and pledges given to the whole working class it is illogical to complain now when a section of that class is being similarly treated.”
This latter fact was indeed a fatally weak point in the engineers case, and was being used effectively by the capitalist press and spokesmen against them, keeping alive the jealousies and divisions that are so useful to them in their fights with the workers. A. G. Gardiner, of the Daily News was easily the cleverest of their agents at the game of deluding readers by using a style of seeming honesty and openness to cover up a substance of slimy deceit. A good example of this was his ‘Open Letter to the Clyde Workers’. His articles, while appearing to condemn the government, were strenuous attempts to defend the existence and maintenance of capitalism. Their purpose was to persuade the workers to leave in the hands of the bosses the direction of affairs. And there was a great danger that the workers, so long used to following this course, so long in the habit of following “leaders”, would succumb to this influence. Some of them not daring to trust themselves to manage their own affairs, believe it better to leave management to their "betters" If only half of the blunders and appalling crimes of this war had been brought into the light of day, these timid workers would have had a rude shock concerning the ability of those “experts.” The Socialist Standard argued that:
“The biggest danger that confronts them – the biggest mistake they can make – is to place power in the hands of “leaders” under any pretext whatever. It is at once putting those “leaders” in a position to bargain with the master class for the purpose of selling out the workers. It allows the master class to retain control of the political machinery which is the essential instrument for governing society. All the other blunders and mistakes the workers may make will be as dust in the balance compared with this one, and not until they realise this fact will they be on the road to socialism.”
The Fight Against Rent Increases
Class struggle activity also took place outside the workplace and on the streets in general. Many working class women were outraged that while their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers were away fighting and dying for King and Country, they and the children lived in worse conditions and with less money. The rent increases of 1915 proved massively unpopular. With Glasgow becoming a major centre of arms manuafacture during the war, it was necessary to bring in workers from outside the city, which only added to an already existing overcrowding problem and pushed up rents. With their men fighting at the front, the women left behind were seen as easy prey by landlords, and large increases in rents became the norm. Existing tenants who could no longer afford the rent were evicted, causing widespread alarm. But by October of that year, some 30,000 tenants were withholding rent and huge demonstrations were called whenever bailiffs dared to attempt an eviction. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, the women organised an effective opposition to the rent increases. When three engineers were arrested for non-payment of rent, some 10,000 workers in Govan downed tools and marched to the court to demonstrate. The initial failure of the government to restrict the raising of rents revealed that the interests of working people in Glasgow were not the real priority of the government. The main figure in the Rent Strike movement was Mary Barbour, later to be elected a Labour Party city councillor, and the protesters soon became known as "Mrs. Barbour's Army".The usual method of preventing eviction was to block the entrance to the tenement. Photographs of the time show hundreds of people participating. If the sheriff officers managed to get as far as the entrance, another tactic was to humiliate them - pulling down their trousers was a commonly used method. The mood of the placards carried by the protesters was that the landlords were unpatriotic. A common message was that while the men were fighting on the front line the landlords were in league with the enemy e.g. "While my father is a prisoner in Germany the landlord is attacking us at home".
In double-quick time the government swiftly introduced rents control to contain the discontent.
Other Events
When Winston Churchill came to Glasgow to speak at a pro-war mass meeting, the affair was organised almost as secretly and conspiratorially in order that only the “right” people might attend. When an attempt was made by reactionaries to organize a strong-arm organization to break up the workers’ meetings, the shop stewards formed defense guards on a factory basis and put a quick stop to it.
On that May Day of 1917 in Glasgow, 80,000 workers marched in the parade itself and its estimated a quarter million lined the street.
“The demonstration declares for the overthrow of the capitalist system of production for profit. It sends its fraternal greetings to the worker’s of all lands,” read the resolution that was passed by the throng massed around the platforms on Glasgow Green. Resolutions of solidarity with the revolutionary Soviets of Russia were cheered and adopted.
The whole of the story of the shop steward movement cannot be given on the blog and we have posted previously cautioning against looking at the political situation as a potentially revolutionary situation, but its romance lives on among workers, not only on the Clyde but elsewhere, too. There are times when the workers must establish their own legality. There are times when workers cannot accept the “law.” Workers’ organisations cannot always remain passively “law-abiding.” If workers had always been so respectful of legislation there would be no trades unions and wages would be far lower than now, while working hours would be much longer. Workers have made the gains they have now because they opposed the ruling class and fought every step of the way. Since nothing fundamental has changed in the relationship of the workers to the bosses, there is no reason for the workers to change from the procedure that has brought them their victories.
PUBLIC MEETING
'The Not So Great 1914-18 War'
8.00pm Wednesday 20th August 2014
Maryhill Community Central Halls,
304 Maryhill Road,
Glasgow G20 7YE
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