Home : Britain and Ireland : Historical Analysis
By Barbara Humphries
January, 2000
In February 1900 129 delegates met in a hall in Farringdon Street, London. Theyrepresented 65 trade unions, and three socialist organisations - the Independent LabourParty, the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society. As they made their waythrough the crowded streets they were not noticed by City workers. They had come to foundthe Labour Party.
Fifty years on the Labour Party published a golden jubilee pamphlet entitled"Marching on". It reaffirmed the principles upon which the movement had beenfounded. It read;-"We reaffirm our belief that the earth's resources should beemployed in the service of the community and that this can be assured only if it is thecommunity which commands their employment. Only in this way can we avert the pitilessparadox of unused resources and unsatisfied needs; of unemployed millions living in needof the very things they themselves could produce; the unemployed coalminer in need ofcoal; the unemployed weaver in need of clothes; the hungry farmworker, the ill-shodshoemaker, the homeless builder. Where human needs exist and where the resources oflabour, raw materials and equipment required to satisfy those needs also exist, we believethat no intermediate interest, whether it be commercial profit or bureaucratic power,should stand between the two."
The "New Labour" leadership want to rewrite the history of the Labour Partybecause it is in conflict with the Blair project. Blair wants to change the Labour Partyinto a radical liberal party like the American Democratic Party. He regards the separationof Labour from the Liberal Party at the beginning of the century as a mistake. However thehistory of the Party clearly illustrates that Labour was set up as the party of theworking class in this country, with the trades union movement as a bedrock. From theadoption of Clause 4 in 1918 the Party had a socialist constitution which reflected theaspirations of the membership of the Party. It was its class roots and socialist visionwhich motivated the commitment of thousands of working people to build the Party, intowhat became the major vehicle for change in Britain in the 20th century. Within twentyyears of its foundation Labour had become the main opposition party, replacing theLiberals, and four years later had formed a minority government. The 1945 LabourGovernment led the reconstruction of Britain after the Second World War, with a programmeof selective nationalisation and the establishment of the welfare state.
The Labour Representation Committee, which was to become the LabourParty, was set up by the Trades Union Congress in 1900, as a means of securing tradesunion representation in Parliament. This was after two decades of class struggle in whichtrades unions had successfully organised unskilled workers, changing the face of the TUCfrom a body which represented respectable skilled working men, defending their relativelyprivileged status in the economy, to an organisation which was coming into conflict withthe capitalist class. Trades unions which had operated like friendly societies were beingoutnumbered by those which organised strikes and picket lines. At the same time there hadbeen a reawakening of socialist ideas, which had laid dormant in Europe since the 1840s.Political parties such as the Social Democratic Federation attracted thousands of members.Demonstrations and mass meetings not seen since the days of the Chartists took place inthe 1880s. In this situation the TUC General Council was coming under pressure to breakfrom their alliance with the Liberal Party. The franchise was gradually being extended toworking class people. so that the two main capitalist parties - the Liberals and Torieshad to appeal to working class voters for the first time. This had led to concessions suchas legislation upholding the right to picket peacefully in industrial disputes.
By the end of the 19th century the economic conditions for anindependent labour party had ripened in Britain. The economy was increasingly controlledby monopolies. This meant the beginning of a massive concentration of wealth in the handsof a few and increasing division and conflict between capitalists and workers. It wasrevealed that only two - fifths of the national cake was consumed by wage earners. Aquarter of the population lived in poverty. At the same time the heyday of Britishcapitalism was drawing to an end. British industry now competed with Germany, France andAmerican for markets and raw materials and investment abroad. Victorian expansion andunbridled prosperity for industry was over-the economy was faced with one crisis afteranother. From 1889 to 1913 real wages declined by 10%. This was the economic background tothe political upheavals.
Craft Unions
The ruling class had grown used to the craft unions of the mid 19thcentury economic boom. These unions of skilled respectable men had few quarrels with thebosses. They sought to better themselves by using their skills to restrict entry to theunion, in order to maintain wages and in setting up Friendly Societies. These men likeBroadhurst who was secretary of the TUC supported the Liberal Party.The political climatewas changed in 1886, when John Burns and Henry Hyndman, two leaders of the recently formedMarxist Social Democratic Federation, began organising the unemployed. They leddemonstrations of 75,000 people through the West End of London. to oppose factoryclosures. Attacks by police with batons on demonstators brought about rioting, in whichseveral people were killed. The ruling class horrified by broken windows in London's WestEnd, believed that a war had broken out between the haves and have-nots. The poor were nowregarded as a menace and a threat, no longer "the deserving poor" of VictorianEngland. The class struggle had begun in earnest.
Eight Hour League
John Burns, together with socialist trades unionist Tom Mann, organisedthe Eight Hour League with the aim of reducing unemployment. This campaign rapidly gainedsupport amongst the unskilled workers and was adopted by the London Trades Council, as ameans of reducing unemployment and giving the worker more time for his family. Sections ofworkers like the Ayrshire miners who had been committed to supporting the Liberal Partyand had the tactic of restricting the output of coal in times of recession, now took upthe campaign for the eight hour day. Increasingly employers were using the unemployed tobreak strikes and enforce wage cuts. The unskilled workers were particularly vulnerable as"they could be replaced by a hungry fellow from anywhere". Scottish miners werethreatened that union members would be replaced by the Glasgow unemployed. One miner whowas recruited to socialism was called Keir Hardie. From the "Eight Hour League",Mann and Burns went on to organise the unskilled workers, such as the dockers and thegasmen, the ones whom craft unions had left out in the cold. Deskilling was also to takeplace in industries such as engineering and shipbuilding and skilled workers had the taskof organising the unskilled and semiskilled in their industry. There was a basis now forindustrial or even general unions, rather than unions based on skills and crafts. Methodsof organisation had to be different. Membership was liable to fluctuation. During the1890s for instance, only 3% of dockers were unionised. Membership was difficult to sustainthrough slumps. The use of unemployed workers to break strikes inevitably brought thetrade unions into conflict with picketing and property laws.
During the 1880s the main unions of unskilled workers were formed. Thegasworkers led by Will Thorne won the eight hour day. Some women workers - the matchgirlsof Bryant and May - were organised whose atrocious working conditions became famour worldwide. Women in the East End were consistenly being disfigured by the use of phosphorous inthe match industry. As far as the ruling class were concerned these people were an"underclass" - at the fringes of humanity But the early socialists took up theircause and attempted to organise them into the trades union movement. Inroads were madeinto the organisation of agricultural workers, "railway servants" as they werethen called and textile workers. All this was overshadowed by the dock strike of 1889. Thedockers one of the most exploited sections of the working class went on strike for sixpence an hour - the dockers' tanner as it became known. Oppressed for years by the systemof casual labour, by which the employers hired and fired at will, the dockers came out anddemonstrated through the streets of London for their rights. They carried red flags, andstinking fish heads to show what they had to live on. Their victory was gained from thesupport they received from the labour movement in this country and internationally. It isin struggles like these that the Labour Party had its roots. There was nothing respectableor Blairite about it at all.
Unskilled Unions
The rise of the unskilled unions raised the need for a party of labour.Their tactics were completely different to the old craft unions. They could not restrictentry to the trade, they relied up on strikes and picketing. The use of scabs was backedup with police and sometimes army protection. This caused widespread violence inindustrial disputes, arrests and jail sentences for trades unionists. That is how thebattles of the new unions became political. There were conflicts with the law and thestate. Not since the days of the Chartists in the early part of the 19th century had theissue of political power been so sharply posed, or had society been so polarised alongclass lines. Increasingly socialists linked the trades union struggles with theirpolitical goals of changing society. The call for an independent party of labour wascampaigned for within the trades union movement. Engels wrote as follows to the LabourStandard in 1881 - "the time is rapidly approaching when the working class of thiscountry will claim... its full share of representation in Parliament... the working classwill have understood that the struggle for high wages, and short hours, and the wholeaction of the trades unions as carried on now, is not an end in itself but a means towardsthe end, the abolition of the wages system altogether"
The setting up of an independent party of labour was opposed by the oldguard of the TUC, those who like Broadhurst represented the craft workers, the labouraristocracy, who wanted to maintain links with the Liberals. They declared that the timewas not ripe! But the campaign was maintained. Some socialists from groups like the SocialDemocratic Federation were also reluctant to support a party of labour on the grounds thatit would limited to labour representation in Parliament and would not be socialist!Others, like Engels believed that a party based on the labour movement would inevitablymove towards the adoption of socialist policies as the parties of capitalism and what theystood for, became discredited. Finally in 1899 the Trades Union Congress voted to set upan independent Labour Representation Committee. After a decade of attacks upon the tradesunion movement and little support from the Liberal Party it was time to act independently.At the beginning this Labour Representation Committee did not gain the affiliation of thewhole trades union movement. But that was set to change at a later stage. Also middleclass reformers in the main did not give their wholehearted support to the LabourRepresentation Committee at this stage. They still had hopes that the Liberal Party wouldcarry out social reforms, modernising British society and overcoming the growing gulfbetween labour and capital, whilst leaving capitalism intact. It was only later that theyjumped on the bandwagon, when the Labour Party was clearly poised to replace the Liberalsas the opposition to the Tories in Britain, and the labour movement looked like a betterbet for carrying out social reforms. The same can be said of the "socialistthink-tank" - the Fabian Society, whose "socialism from the top downwardsapproach" had also led them to consider the possibility of influencing the LiberalParty before the founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee. Without thetrades union affiliation therefore, the Labour Party would not have existed.
So what of the socialist groups which had existed before the LabourParty? The aforementioned Social Democratic Federation had been in existence for overfifteen years. It is important to note that the term Social Democrat meant Marxist inthose days. The model Social Democratic organisation was the German Social DemocraticParty, which was soon to abandon its commitment to Marxism. Then socialists tended toabandon the term "social-democrat", in favour of "socialist" or"Marxist". The term was later to be used by a group of Labour MP’s who leftthe Labour Party, attempting to split it in the 1980s, and who did not have the courage toopenly call themselves Liberals or Conservatives!
Independent Labour Party
However the Marxism of the Social Democratic Federation was like that ofthe German Social Democratic Party. They believed that socialism was inevitable. Themovement would continue to grow and the majority of the population would see the light.Hyndman, a conservative who had converted to Marxism, did not see the connection betweenmilitant trades unionism and socialism, on one occasion condemning strikes as a waste oftime because they left the capitalist system intact. The activities of party membershowever drew them into practical politics - some into trades unionism, others into themunicipal socialism of school boards and health boards. But they did not see this activityas raising workers' consciousness. Tom Mann and William Morris eventually left the SDFbecause of its political sectarianism. William Morris went on to set up anotherorganisation called the Socialist League. Nevertheless the SDF gained a sizeable followingwith 43 branches in London alone. It popularised the spread of socialist ideas throughpropaganda and won recruits to Marxism who were later to play a role in the foundation ofthe Labour Party, but it failed to make the breakthrough of becoming a mass party andforming an alternative to the Liberals and Tories. A party was needed which had links withthe trades unions and which would challenge the Liberals and Tories in the parliamentaryarena. By the 1890s the SDF was declining in favour of the Independent Labour Party.
The Independent Labour Party had more success in the North of England.It was founded in Bradford in 1892 It had the backing of Bradford Trades Council and wasformed in the wake of the defeat of a strike at the Manningham mills which had involved5,000 people against the local mill owners. The trades union movement had suffereddeclining membership and attack during the 1890s. Unemployment in shipbuilding rose to 20%and in Hull in 1891 1,000 scabs recruited by the employers broke a shipping strike underthe protection of police, troops and gunboats. Of the towns magistrates, four wereshipowners, and nineteen others had shares in major shipping companies. This was howblatantly the forces of the state were arranged against labour. Many of these employerswere Liberals as well as Conservatives showing that the trades union movement could havelittle confidence in the representatives of these capitalist parties. Scab organisationslike the National Association of Free Labour were set up to recruit strikebreakers on anational scale. The trades unions were becoming more in need of political representation,which strengthened the case of those who argued for the Trades Union Congress to launch aparty of labour. As well as the ILP, the Scottish Labour Party added its voice to thiscampaign. This party had the backing of the Scottish miners recruited after a long strikein Ayrshire in 1886-87. The first independent Labour MP’s like Keir Hardie wereelected to Parliament. Advice given to the first ILP MP’s was as follows : "Aworking man in Parliament should go to the House of Commons in his workday clothes..heshould address the speaker on labour questions, and give his utterance to the samesentiments, in the same language and in the same manner that he is accustomed to utter hissentiments, and address the president of the local radical club. Above all he shouldremember that all conservative and liberals are joined together in the interest of capitalagainst labour" .
The first leaflet published by the Labour Representation Committee waswritten by Ramsay Macdonald who was later, as prime minister to betray the labourmovement. However in an article entitled "Why trade unionists should support theLabour Representation Committee" he said "Trade unions are being constantlythreatened by attempts made in Courts of Law to undermine their legal basis, and at anymoment the existence of organised labour may be put in jeopardy by the decision of a Benchof Judges". Trusts were combining against the interests of labour and war wouldensue. In Parliament politicians of both parties (Tories and Liberals) were active on theEmployers' Parliamentary Council. Labour had to combine politically to fight this.
The use of the law against the Society of Railway Servants in the TaffVale Judgement vindicated these founders of the movement and brought more affiliations oftrades unionists to the LRC, or the Labour Party as it became known in 1906. Electoralgains were made for Labour in the 1906 election. However in spite of the the class aims ofthe Labour Party deals were done between Labour MPs and the Liberal Government. Labour wasto replace the Liberal Party decisively as the main opposition only after 1918. Duringthese early years the British ruling class did everything in its power to destroy twominority Labour governments in 1924 and 1931. However the tide of history could not beheld back forever and Labour achieved a landslide victory in 1945.
Socialist lesson
After nearly a century the Labour Party is still in existence. It hasremained throughout that time a classic "united front" of socialists,social-democrats and trades unionists. It has helped to perpetutate the reality of classpolitics by maintaining, for most of this time, electoral opposition to the party ofBritish capitalism - the Conservatives. It has been capable of winning elections withoutalliances, and has achieved much in the way of carrying out reforms which have benefittedworking class people. The 1945 Labour Government was instrumental in implementing thewelfare state. For these reasons it would be wrong for the links between the trades unionmovement and the Labour Party to be broken and it would equally be wrong for socialistsnow to leave the Labour Party. Of course the Labour Party has not carried out thesocialist transformation of society. But socialists should soberly reflect on the factthat no other party in this country has done so either and that attempts to buildsocialist "sects" outside of the party have failed, whereas socialists withinthe Party have been successful in changing party policy and gaining support. That is thelesson of the past 100 years.