Industrial Democracy. Sidney Webb

Industrial Democracy - Sidney Webb


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any proposals for new ones.^ Other societies which, in more recent years, have had Irish branches appear to have found them equally un- profitable, and a source of constant trouble. The records of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors are full of references to the extravagance and financial mismanagement of its Irish branches. During the year 1892 no less than four of the principal Irish branches of the society were rebuked by the Executive Council upon this account. One of these had sub- sequently to be closed, the Executive stating that its " report is altogether wrong, and does not balande. The contributions! do not average lod. per member, and the rent of the club- room is more than the whole income from the branch. If a . satisfactory explanation is not sent at once the branch must be closed."" Finally, in 1896, the Executive of the Associated

      1 Half -Yearly Report »f the Provincial Typographical Association, 31st December 1850.

       Quarterly Report of the Amalgamated Society' of Tailors, April 1892.

      Report on the Ennis branch. In this connection the following extract from the proceedings of the High Court of the Ancient Order of Foresters in 1894 will be interesting. The executive had found it necessary to hold a special investiga- tion into the afifairs of the Dublin District ; and they recommended the grant of certain advantages upon condition of reform. This proposal led to a lively debate. "Were they going," said one prominent Forester, "to encourage extravagant, reckless, and fraudulent mismanagement? The report presented to them showed distinctly that there had been extravagant, reckless, and fraudulent mismanagement. … Not less than ;^997 had been voted by previous High Courts towards the relief of Dublin Courts. … The Order's

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      Shipwrights' Society reported that it had been compelled " to close the Dublin branch, notwithstanding that the E. C. had instructed both the general secretary and the Humber Delegate to visit them. We have not been able to receive any correct reports from them for some time, and the only word we could get from them was that there was no work and no money, yet when your representatives visited them the officers were so busy working they had not time to convene a meeting of members. … Your E. C, offered to have all the idle men sent to ports where em- ployment could be found them, but we are informed where this has been done some of these men, notwithstanding all that has been done for them, refused to pay up their arrears, and rather than pay left their employment and went home. … When the branch books were examined it was found they were paying both sick and unemployed benefit to members who were not entitled to it, and, the branch officers were receiving salary for work they failed or refused to do. Seeing the Dublin branch entirely ignored the registered rules, your E. C. had no other option but to close the branch. The different branches must deal with these men should they come to their ports." ^

      /So strong, however, is the dominant impulse towards the complete union of a trade from one end of the United Kingdom to the other, that it seems, during the last few years, to be slowly overcoming the reluctance of both English and Irish organisations. From 1889 onward, we find such, great national unions as the Carpenters, Railway Servants, Engineers, Tailors, and Shipwrights freely opening branches in Irish towns and absorbing the surviving trade clubs of

      Chief Official Valuer said ' the members have never done their duty.' That officer thereupon interposed with the remark, ' It was believed that in connection with sickness there was a good deal of malingering.' Another prominent Forester said he would attach the (Dublin) Courts to the Glasgow District. … There was only one element of danger, and it was of putting too many Irishmen together."—Foresters' Miscellany (September 1894), p. 180.

      1 The Fifty-eighth Quarterly Report, July to September 1896, of the Assod ated Society of Shipwrights, p. 8.

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      local artisansjj The Provincial Typographical Association, now become the Typographical Association, has, since 1878, opened sixteen branches in Ireland, and now employs a salaried organiser for that island, whose efforts have brought in many recruits. This tendency has been greatly assisted, especially in the engineering and shipbuilding trades, by -the remarkable industrial development of Belfast. Since i860 a constant stream of skilled artisans from England and Scotland have settled in that town, with the result that it ftow possesses strong branches of all the national unions of both countries. With the shifting of the effective centre of Irish Trade Unionism from Dublin to Belfast has come an almost irresistible tendency to accept an English or Scottish government |Dn the other hand, attempts to unite the separate local societies of Irish towns in national Trade Unions for Ireland have almost invariably failed, the Irish clubs displaying far more willingness to become branches of British unions than to amalgamate among themselvesij

      iPast experience of British Trade Unionism seems, there- fore, to point to the whole extent of each trade within the British Isles as forming the proper unit of government for any combination pf the wage-earners >in that trade. Any unit of smaller area produces an organisation of unstable, equilibrium, either tending constantly to expansion, or liable to supersession by the growth of a rival society. But there is a marked contrast between the union of" Scotland with England, and that effected between either of them and Ireland. The English and Scottish Trade Unions federate or combine with each other on equal- termj. - If complete amalgamation is decided on, it is frequently the Scotchman, bringing with him Scotch procedure and Scotch traditions,

      ' The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants now (1897) possesses no fewer than 56 Irish branches, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners 56, the Amalgamated Society of Tailors 35, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers 19, and the Associated Shipwrights' Society 9.

       Almost the only Irish national trade society is the Operative Bakers of

      Ireland National Federal Union, formed in November 1889. An Irish Trade Union Congress has been held annually since 1894.

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      who is chosen to reign in England, the centre of government being shifted almost automatically to the main centre of the industry. Union with Ireland invariably means the simple absorption of the Irish branch, and the unconditional accept- ance of the English or Scottish rules and organisation. This is usually brought about by the English or Scottish immi- grants into Ireland, aided by sections of Irish members who desire to escape from the weakness of internal dissensions, and to secure the benefits of efficient administration, with the -support of a comparatively wealthy and powerful organisation^ Passing now from the boundaries of the autonomous state to the relation between central and local authorities within it, we watch the Trade Unionists breaking away from the traditions of British Denipcra^^ In the political expansion of the Anglo-Saxon rac^'tne development- 'ot ' local institutions has at least kept pace with the extension of empire. In the other great organisations of the British working class, which have, equally with Trade Unionism, grown from small local beginnings' to powerful corporations^ of national, or even international extent, the workmen have , successfully maintained the complete independence of eachj local unit. The Co-operative Movement includes within the British Isles a nominal membership as great as that of Trade Unionism, with financial transactions many times larger in amount The 1700 separate Co-operative Societies have united in the colossal business federations of the English and Scottish Wholesale Societies, and in the educational and political federation called the Co-operative Union. But though the Co-operative Movement has gone through many developments since its re-birth in 1844, and has built up a " State within the State, " the great federal bodies ha ve

      1 It may not be improper to observe, for English political readers, that the authors are divided in opinion as to the policy of granting Home Rule to Ireland, and are therefore protected against bias in drawing political inferences from Trade Union experience in this respect. If it is thought that the tacts adduced in this chapter tell against Irish self-government, the considerations brought forward in the next chapter may be regarded as making against the policy of complete union with Great Britain,

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      temained in all cases nothing but the agents an d servant s of the local societies / And if we turn to a movement still more closely analoggus to Trade Unionism, we may watch in the marvellous expansion of the " Affiliated


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