Industrial Democracy. Sidney Webb
Day in the binding departments, whilst the printers continued to work for longer hours.
132 Trade Union Structure
United Pattern-makers' Association, "the sectional societies (on North-east Coast), indignant at the arbitrary manner in which the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had acted, federated together with the avowed object of resisting a repetition of any such behaviour in case of further wages movements, and asserting their right to be consulted before definite action was taken. … It is impossible," continues the report, "to dissociate the action of our contemporaries (the Amalgamated Society of Engineers) from their recent unsuccessful attempt at amalgamating the various sectional societies ; and it would seem that they, finding it impossible to absorb their weaker brethren by fair means, had resolved to shatter the confidence they have in their unions by showing them their impotence to influence, of themselves, their relations between their employers and members." ^ The "Federal Board," thus formed by the smaller engineering societies on Tyneside in antagonism to their more powerful rival, lasted for three years, but failed, it is needless to say, in securing industrial peace. A more important and more promising attempt has been marred by the persistent absten- tion of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Hn 1890, Mr. Robert Knight, the able general secretary of the United Society of Boilermakersjsucceeded, after repeated failures, in drawing together in a powerful national federation the great majority of the unions connected with the engineering and shipbuilding industries. This Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom "J includes such powerful organisations as the United Society of Boilermakers, 40,776 members; the Associated Shipwrights' Society, 14,235 members ; and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 48,631 members, who are content to meet on equal terms such smaller unions as the Steam-Engine Makers' Society, 7000 members ; the United Operative Plumbers' Society, 8758 members; the United Pattern-makers' Associa- tion, 3636 members; the National Amalgamated Society of Painters and Decorators, and half a dozen more minute 1 Monthly Report of the United Pattern-maker^ Society, January 1889.
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sectional societies. fThis federation has now lasted over seven years, and has fulfilled a useful function in settling disputes between the different unions. \ But as an instrument for<j Collective Bargaining with me employers, or for taking^ concerted action on behalf of the whole industry, it is useless ^ so long as 'the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, with itsj 87,455 members, holds resolutely aloof. And the Amal- ; gamated Society of Engineers, still wedded to the ideal of one undivided union, cannot bring itself to accept as per- manent colleagues, the sectional societies which it regards as illegitimate combinations undermining its own position.^
' The first numbers of the Amalgamated Engineer^ Monthly Journal—an official organ started on the accession of Mr. George Barnes to the general secretaryship—shows that thinking members of the Amalgariation are coming roimd to the idea of federal union with the sectional societies, and others con- nected with the engineering and shipbuilding industry. Thus Mr. Tom Mann, in the opening number (January 1897, pp. lo-ii), declares "that the bulk of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers' men are ashamed … of their present power- lesscess. … Whence comes the weakness ? Beyond any doubt it is primarily due to the feet that no concerted action is taken by the various unions. … That is, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has not yet learnt the necessity for forming part of a real federation of all trades connected with this particular profession. … What member can look back over the last few years and not blush with shame at what has taken place between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Plumbers, and the Boilermakers and Shipbuilders ; and who can derive satisfac- tion in reflecting upon the want of friendly relations between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers … and the Pattern-makers and Shipwrights, and Steam- Engine Makers, etc. ? A fighting force is wanted … and this can only be obtained by a genuine federation of societies connected with the trades referred to. … The textile workers (cotton) have federated the various societies, and are able to secure united action on a scale distinctly in advance of that of the engineering trades." And in the succeeding issue Mr. John Bums vigorously strikes the same note. " To really prevent this internecine and disintegrating strife, the first step for the Amalgamated Engineers this year is to join at once with all the other unions in [a] federation of engineering trades." Two months later (April 1897, pp. 12–14) comes a furious denunciation of the proposal, signed "Primitive," who invokes the "shades of Allan and eloquence of Newton " against this attempted undoing of their work. "Just because a few interested labor busybodies have got it into their heads that they can run a cheap-jack show for every department of our trade with the same effect as our great combina- tion, we are to drop our arms, pull down our socks, hide our tail under our nether parts, and shout 'peccavi.' … Sectional societies for militant purposes are useless, and therefore they only exist—where such is practised—as friendly societies. … Amalgamation is our title, our war-cry and our principle ; and once we admit that it is necessary to ' federate ' with sectional societies we give away the whole case to the enemy. … Federatibn with trades whose work- shop practice is keenly distinct from our own is a good means to a better end.
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hi now, looking back on the whole history of organisation in the engineering trade, we may be " wise after the event," we suggest that it would have been better if the local trade clubs had confined themselves each to a single section of engineering workmen, and if they had then developed into national societies of like scope.J^ Had this been the case, and could Newton and Allan have foreseen the enormous growth and increasing differentiation of their industry, they would have advocated, not a single comprehensive amalgamation, but a federation of sectional societies of national extentjfor such purposes as were common to the whole engineering trade. This federation would have, in the first instance, included a great national society of fitters, turners, and erectors on the one hand, and smaller national societies of smiths and pattern-makers respectively. And as organisa- tion proceeded among the brass-workers, coppersmiths, and machine-workers, and as new classes arose, like the electrical engineers, these could each have been endowed with a sufficient measure of Home Rule, and admitted as separate sections to the federal union. This federal union might then have combined in a wider and looser federation, for specified purposes, with the United Society of Boilermakers, the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, the Associated Shipwrights' Society, and the other organisations interested in the great industry of iron steamship building and equipping.M
One practical precept emerges from our consideration of all these forms of association. It is a fundamental condi- tion of stable and successful federal action that the degree of unionbe tween the constituent bodies should corresp ond ^trictly w ith the degree of their unity of interest. This will
-Federation with trades whose shop practice is similar, whose interests are identical, and who ought to be with us in every fight, is a maudlin means to a general fizzle." The question is now (August 1897) a subject of keen debate in the society.
1 The several national societies of Carpenters, Plumbers, Painters, Cabinet- makers, etc., would, in respect of their members working in shipbuilding yards, also join this Federation ; whilst they would, at the same time, continue to be in closer federal union with the Bricklayers, Stonemasons, and other societies o< building operatives.
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be most easily recognised on the financial side. We have already more than once adverted to the fact that a scale of contributions and benefits, which would suit the require- ments of one class, might be entirely out of the reach of other sections, whose co-operation was nevertheless indis- pensable for effective common action. But this is not all. We have to deal, not only with .{"classes differing in the> amount of their respective incomes, but also with wide > divergences between the ways in which the several classes need to lay out their incomes,^ vThe amount levied by the federal body for the common purse must therefore not on^y be strictly limited to the cost of the services in which all the constituent bodies have an identical interest, but must also not exceed, in any case, the amount which the poorest section finds it advantageous to expend on these serviceg,^
But our precept has a more subtle application to the aims and policy of the federal bodig^and to the manner ih which its decisions are arrived at. rThe permanence of the> federation will be