Editorial: The True Meaning of the “Labour Unrest”
Across the deadly dull controversey dragging through the columns of the capitalist Press, as to whether “Free Trade” or “Tariff Reform” is best for the workers to starve under, have flashed two intense rays of light exposing the bed-rock position of the working class in modern society.
In two different places, under different external conditions, but in essentials remarkably alike, we have seen two sections of the working class facing the same alternatives of either accepting conditions imposed by the masters—their employers—or trying how long their slender resources and desperate fortitude can stand against the masters’ piled-up wealth.
At Cradley Heath the chainmakers described by a Liberal newspaper as forming “the classic sweated industry,” have been locked out because they declined to accept the conditions their employers put forward, i.e., to work for another three months at the old rate of wages. In other words the chainmakers are deliberately deprived of the means of living unless they accept the master’s terms.
It is sometimes urged that if the chainmakers were organised into a trade union they could effectively resist the employers’ attempt to starve them. But leaving out of consideration for the moment the fact that they are unable to pay any subscription, however small, to an ordinary trade union, the statement is fully refuted by the experience of the boilermakers.
Here is one of the strongest unions, containing a large proportion of the men working at the trade, yet faced with the same position as the chainmakers—starvation or submission to the masters’ terms.
When to these cases are added the signs of trouble in the Welsh coalfields and the Lancashire cotton towns, the fact continually insisted upon by the Socialist—that the means of life are owned by the master class-is brought into clear light.
Whether the workers are organised on the economic field or not ; whether belonging to the (so-called) skilled or unskilled division of labour ; whether the employer calls himself Liberal or Tory ; whether it is under Free Trade or Protection, in every case and in every circumstance the worker is the slave of the employer, and must remain so while capitalism exists. And it is just this slave position that it is all important for the worker to study, while it is, on the other hand, just the one the employers and their agents seek to hide.
The Daily Express shrieks about the sacredness of the employers’ “contracts” when the men go on strike against a lowering of wages, though this “sacredness” has a curious knack of disappearing when the masters tear the contracts to shreds, from one end of the country to the other, by locking the men out.
The Daily News wails for a “public” arbitrator, as though the “public” were something apart from employers and employed, and in nonchalant evasion of the fact that the chainmakers’ trouble flows out of a Board of Trade arbitration.
Explanations of the “unrest,” as it is termed, abound on all sides, each differing from the others, but all having the one common quality of revealing nothing beyond their writers’ ignorance of the facts, or their feverish anxiety to conceal them. The significant vote of the boilermakers points clearly to the proximate cause of the trouble in that trade. The Edinburgh agreement, that “triumph of arbitration,” has been found to act completely in the masters’ interests and against the men. The clause stating that under no conditions shall the men go on strike has been taken full advantage of by the masters, who have reduced actual wages, increased the “speeding up,” and generally worsened conditions all round. When the men have protested long-drawn-out conferences have enabled the masters, as the Daily News puts it, to “turn an awkward corner.”
A series of such arbitrations has at last convinced large numbers of the men that it is hopeless to expect any settlement of disputed points in their favour under such a scheme. Hence the taking of matters into their own hands, and the “sectional” strikes in the various works and yards.
More important still is the fact that, at present at any rate, the men are refusing to place the power of extending such an agreement in the hands of their officials and leaders, who are so ready to once again act on the employers’ behalf and against the men. The unity of the capitalist Press—Liberal and Tory alike—with the officials in condemning this action of the men is sufficient evidence of how well those officials consider the interests of the masters, and of the masters alone.
But, as if this were not sufficient, those leaders have gone out of their way, in another place, to give further proof of their duplicity in these matters. At the Trades Union Congress held in Sheffield a stranger to their little ways would have imagined that this fundamental question of the slavery of the working class would have formed the chief topic of discussion. So far, however, from this being the case, we find that the greatest attention was given to the question “How shall we save our salaries ?” Nay, more than this, one of the first questions discussed was whether the Congress should have its opening ceremony presided over by a large employer whose workpeople were at that very moment on strike against his conditions of employment. Certainly a protest was raised by a few delegates, but the fact that an employer was asked to preside at all shows how completely these “representatives” are the agents of the masters.
The surprising vote of the boilermakers however, warned them not to play the game too openly. So a little farce was arranged and Earl Fitzwilliam, the employer referred to, while not abating one jot from his position, agreed to the matter being placed before an arbitrator. After this “victory” the delegates sit down to listen meekly to the platitudes of this “representative” employer.
It fell to Mr. Shackleton to give the premier illustration of “how to do ’em down.” A delegate had asked the awkward question how it was that the Parliamentary Committee were opposed to the premium bonus system, while a member of the Committee took the chair at a meeting in favour of the system at which Mr. Balfour and Sir Christopher Furness spoke. The member referred to was Mr. Shackleton. The chairman, asked when this happened, but the delegate was unable to tell him, and then Mr. Shackleton brazenly denied having taken the chair in such circumstances.
Had the delegate who raised the point been able to carry his memory back to Dec. 1908 he might have refuted the lie with the following from the Daily Telegraph (2.12.1908).
“In the chair was Mr. Shackleton, M.P., one of the most conspicuous Labour members in the present House of Commons; the chief address was delivered by Mr. A. J. Balfour, in his capacity as president ; and the vote of thanks was presented by three gentlemen representative of widely apart walks of life, namely, Sir Christopher Furness, one of the great captains of industry . . Professor A. C. Pigou . . and Mr. Amos Mann.”
The occasion was a gathering of the so-called “Labour” Co-partnership Movement, whose fraudulent character was clearly shown in the SOCIALIST STANDARD of Feb. 1909.
As if to add further evidence to our case against the “Labour” M.P.s, Mr. Shackleton also stated that “they had done as much as was possible to keep in the front the fact that the payment of members and of returning officers’ expenses would not meet the case.” (Reynolds’ Newspaper, 18.9.10.)
But the cloven hoof was fully exposed when discussing the question of “bringing pressure to bear on the Government.” Shackleton’s hysterical defence of the Liberal Government could not have been surpassed by Lloyd George. And it is just at this point that the Socialist statement applies.
The master class are able to dictate life and death to the workers because, through their control of political power, they have control of the armed forces that are used to preserve the property of the master class against the workers. Hence the supreme importance to the master class of keeping the latter ignorant upon this matter. This accounts for the treachery of those who, posing as “leaders” of the working class, use all their influence to keep that political power in the masters’ hands, and fight against the Socialist propaganda, that shows to the workers the reasons they must capture that power.
The vote of the boilerrnakers, even if only a temporary phase with them, is a good sign as showing the decline of the “leaders’ “power to mislead. Let every working man and woman study Socialism and the way to their emancipation will be clear.