May 2020
Newsletter In this difficult period when we cannot hold meetings, many members are continuing to beaver away at various research projects. The Committee thought it might be useful to let members know about some of the research that is going on and also give information about resources that are available. This is the first of our e-newsletters and we hope you enjoy reading it.
From Chartism to Incorporation There were dramatic changes to the politics and labour movement of Nottingham from 1840 to 1880: from conflict to conciliation and from armed revolt to arbitration boards. That formula is too pat and often reality parted company with rhetoric. The Lacemakers’ Union opposed strikes and wanted arbitration, and this could be seen as early as 1851 when 300 members of the Lace-makers union sat down to dinner in the Corn Exchange. The chair, H. Wilson, welcomed the numerous and “respectable” fellow workers. The first anniversary of the union was celebrated with a toast to the Queen. Wilson “after showing the benefit to be derived by uniting together to keep up the price of labour, … it was never the intention of the present union to set the men in antagonism against masters, but to prevent unprincipled masters lowering the price in the market… (he argued) the necessity of both master and man joining in one common bond of unity to protect the rights of each other and the respectability of the trade…great good had been done by arbitration in cases of threatened strikes.” This did not stop the Lace Union supporting and probably organising the beating up of scabs at the strike at Jerram’s lace factory in the following year. The occasional stocking frame was destroyed into the 1850s and a Basford master stockinger had his machinery destroyed by two vessels of gunpowder being exploded. This preceded by a decade the infamous Sheffield “outrages” where the union was involved in an attack by explosives leading to the legal status of unions nationally being put in jeopardy. These were merely bumps in the road as the union leaders, locally and nationally, later became caught up in the incorporating embrace of the two politically astute
Nottingham employers, A. J. Mundella and Samuel Morley. These two pushed arbitration boards and financially helped the emerging TUC. Another strand in the story is what happened to the Nottingham Chartist leadership. Those who had also been leaders of the stockingers, such as Barber and Sowter, often descended into abject poverty. The better off leaders such as Mott, Heath and Sweet were dragged into the orbit of the Liberal Party but often proved to be an irritant to their more orthodox colleagues. The route into the more conventional politics of the Nottingham Council came via “municipal Chartism” as Sweet and Mott were elected to the local Board of Highways. Even here some of the old ways reasserted themselves. The 1856 election was held in the St. Mary’s Vestry. A brawl developed but the Chartist ranks, led by the pugilist Charles Paulson, were triumphant and Sweet, Mott and their slate were elected but, sadly, when the actual poll was held, it was restricted to ratepayers and so the Tories took every place. This mutation in Nottingham politics was complex and had many contributory factors. I will enjoy trying to tease them out in the next year or so.
Julian Atkinson
Useful Information from The Working Class Movement Library While NDLHS talks are suspended, the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester has been able to continue with talks going online, through Zoom, then making them available on YouTube. The eight talks (and one exhibition of posters) currently available at https://wcml.org.uk/events/ include: •
•
•
•
The legacies of wartime strikes: interwar women trade union leaders in France and Britain, Alison Fell, who considers “the impact of industrial action during the First World War on French and British women workers … in particular on some case studies of working class women whose initiation into trade unionism during the war led to political careers in the 1920s and 1930s. ‘The right to our own time and energy’: 130 years of May Day. Kevin Morgan “this talk recalls the origins of May Day and some of the wonderful images of struggle and liberation which it generated.” Cathy Hunt’s talk on Mary Macarthur which you might have missed when she gave it at NDLHS, or maybe want to hear again.
Alan Tuckman
Rebellion and Reform in 1820 The Pentrich and South Wingfield Revolution Group was very disappointed to be unable to go to Scotland in April because of Covid-19. We had been invited to join the bicentenary commemoration of the 1820 “Radical War”, when working people in Glasgow and across Central Scotland rose up to demand the vote and annual parliaments. Instead we can now read an excellent account of these events in “The Fight
For Scottish Democracy: Rebellion and Reform in 1820” by Murray Armstrong (2020) published by Pluto Press.
Murray Armstrong’s account adds to the brilliant overview of that year of unrest following Peterloo, outlined in Malcolm Chase’s "1820: Disorder and stability in the United Kingdom" (2013) Manchester. It brings to life through a vivid account the struggle of working people across Central Scotland who responded to the call in April 1820 to take up arms to fight for justice and liberty through strikes, riots and an attempted rising. Armstrong puts the events in the context of the national struggle for representation, the spread of the Hampden Clubs, the Pentrich Rising, Peterloo, and the failure of the armed rising at Huddersfield on 31st March 1820. The account gives coherence to a complicated, and at times confused, landscape of unrest. The Pentrich group had been invited to share the story of the 1817 Rising which had so many parallels with the Scottish Rising. Both were struggles by working people demanding the vote, annual parliaments and social justice, both led to repression in communities with, in each case, three men executed as an example to others, hung and then decapitated on the scaffold, with
fourteen transported to Botany Bay. It was no coincidence that Lord Sidmouth was Home Secretary through both years. The main difference according to Armstrong is that there is no evidence of an agent provocateur like “Oliver” in the events. Armstrong’s book also opens up further areas requiring research in the East Midlands. The Scottish rebels expected risings in England and sent envoys to Yorkshire, Manchester and Nottingham. John Neil was the Paisley envoy who came to Nottingham at the end of March 1820 and took back a message for the Glasgow rebels not to initiate action but to wait for the signal of a rising by 150,000 radicals in England. Who did he see in Nottingham? Was a group involved in plans for a rising in the East Midlands? We do have the 1820 and 1821 depositions of John Stables of Horsley, Derbyshire (in Nottinghamshire Archives) which tell of the visit by John Brown, a participant in the Pentrich Rising from Ilkeston, who visited former activists in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire to win support for a planned rising during 1820. Maybe this needs more investigation. The Scottish commemoration event was cancelled this year but in the 1840s Chartists erected memorials to the three who were executed, James Wilson, Andrew Hardie and John Baird, their contributions to the struggle for democracy are commemorated. Now read the book!
Roger Tanner
Mary Carlin (1873-1939) Mary Carlin was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire and was one of the first national female trade union organisers, for the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers Union. When the union merged to form the Transport and General Workers Union in 1922, Carlin continued as their chief Women’s Organiser and from 1927, secretary of the TGWU women’s guild. Mary’s father George was a coal miner and her mother a haberdasher according to the 1881 census, the family was of Irish descent. In 1891, Mary was working as a dressmaker’s apprentice in the town. She later relocated to the Manchester area, becoming involved in trade union work and organising the women ‘creasers’, a reference to the work they undertook in the box making industry. During the First World War she was a member of the Women’s Advisory Committee set up by the Munitions Ministry and on the committee of enquiry into the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, (WAAC) in France in 1917. The former involved her in (her own words) all kinds of organising work of the women who were mobilised in the workshop, the factory and at the overseas Army depots for the War Office. The issue here was the use of diluted labour, the replacing of male jobs with a female workforce, pay and conditions of service. Carlin was particularly opposed to the use of the WAAC as a device to place women in uniform and then deploy them to do industrial work in their locality, at rates of pay which were lower than the rate that the union had obtained for them. When the war ended Carlin joined other women trade union organisers in seeking to defend gains secured for women workers. In 1919 she secured a notable victory in Scotland for a 47-hour working week and no loss of pay for women engaged in the engineering workshops, a considerable reduction to the standard of a 48- 54 hour working week. Carlin was known in Nottingham for her campaigning for improved pay rates for the transport workers belonging to the United Vehicle Workers Union and in 1922 organised a rally in Nottingham of TGWU members. She was also active in Lincolnshire, where she organised the women pea pickers to join a trade union and spoke at several meetings in Derby on the conditions of employment of women workers in the post war period. Throughout the 1930s Carlin was a frequent speaker in this area promoting the TGWU women’s league, which had been formed to keep wives and women relatives of members in contact with union affairs. For a small subscription of 2d per week local women’s guilds could be established and members entitled to sick benefit in respect of their husbands. Carlin became active in the No More War movement in the immediate postwar period and had been involved for many years in the Labour Party. Elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee in 1924, she was viewed as a moderate in respect of her politics, appearing frequently on political platforms with Clement Attlee. Carlin retained her seat until 1937 when Ellen Wilkinson took her place. In the 1930s when residing in London, Carlin stood unsuccessfully in Balham and Tooting at the 1928 London County Council Election and in 1930 she was selected as the Labour Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Westminster Abbey, though she did not stand. She also served on the Court of Referees as a trade union representative. Mary Carlin retired from the TGWU in 1937 and died suddenly in 1939.
The lives of the early women trade union organisers have not been well documented, and Mary Carlin is a case in point. The woman who worked alongside Ben Tillett and then Ernest Bevin to build one of the large general workers unions deserves greater recognition and I hope to continue my research over the coming months and publish a small pamphlet. New insights or local knowledge about her is very welcome.
Val Wood
Editor’s note:
Nottingham Playhouse is staging ‘Red Ellen’ a play about Ellen Wilkinson‘s life in October
Fighting the Colour Bar in Nottingham For years I have wanted to pull together an account of how racism and the colour bar were opposed in Nottingham between the mid-1940s and the 1970s. During the lockdown I have no further excuse to put it off. Although I do not have access to follow up questions with more visits to Archives, I have been given access by Jill Westby to George Powe’s fascinating personal archive material, and Dick Skyers has shared many of his memories as an activist through those years. From the 1940s some common features can be discerned. The 1958 Riots in St Anns’ were not the first time the black community had faced attacks. In 1948 the Nottingham Journal reported attacks by 300 white, mainly Polish and Irish, workers on 30 Jamaicans at the Castle Donington National Service Camp. The response then was to move the Jamaicans from the camp - not their attackers - and for the authorities to consider introducing quotas. In 1958 the response of local Tory M.P.s was similar, seeing the racist attacks as a “coloured problem” and to call for immigration control. In 1948, and during further attacks by white residents against Jamaicans in Birmingham at the Causeway Green hostel in 1949, Jamaicans fought back and 37 Jamaicans refused to move or be segregated. Among these was an electrician and former serviceman George Powe. He brought that experience of resistance to Nottingham in 1950 and was instrumental both in organising black activists, like Dick Skyers, in the Afro Asian West Indian Union (AAWIU) and working with the trade unions and Labour Party to oppose the colour bar and racism in the coming
decades. In 1954 Nottingham Trades Council took up the fight against the colour bar in Nottingham City Transport, which led to the dis-affiliation of four branches of the TGWU who opposed the employment of coloured workers on the buses. In 1958 the response of the AAWIU to the Riots was to press for international action against the colour bar at Raleigh. In 1967 AAWIU activists like George Powe and Dick Skyers joined with trade unionists and left wing activists to form the Anti-Colour Bar Campaign and fight against the colour bar in Nottingham pubs. Resistance by black and Asian workers came together in 1972 with the strike at Crepe Sizes in Lenton, when support was organised by the Solidarity Committee, uniting organisations like the Black Peoples Freedom Movement, of which George Powe was a leading figure, Indian Workers Association, Pakistani Friends League, together with trade unionists and left wing organisations. This is an experience of struggle that needs to be remembered and should be of interest to those still fighting racism today.
Roger Tanner
The Founding of Glossop Labour Club 1906, the year in which the ILP decided it would acquire premises in Glossop was one of immense activity for the Labour Movement in Glossopdale. In this period the Trades Council consisted of twenty-four delegates, representing seventeen societies and the secretary, Abel Harrop, and president, Billy Hollins, were to be among the fifteen original trustees of the Labour Club. All these original trustees were political activists, most of whose names appear in the Glossop Chronicle and North Derbyshire Advertiser. Almost every week there were letters to the editor, advertisements for public meetings and reports of every kind of activity. Most of the fifteen trustees were ILP members, but according to Richard Stone, in his book, “John Woolliscroft” there were also SDF members among the signatories. Reports of the political activities which took place during the year are too numerous to mention, but a few quotes from the local press will serve to give a flavour: In March: Report in the North Derbyshire Advertiser:
“On Sunday evening last, the Glossop section of the ILP opened a Labour Church at Cluskey’s rooms, Ellison Street. There was an attendance of about a hundred . . . Educational speeches on ethical and political subjects were delivered during the evening and hymns from the Labour church hymn book were sung. It was decided to continue the meetings at Cluskey’s rooms until the arrival of the summer weather, when open-air services will be held. Speakers have been engaged for every Sunday evening for the next three months.” In June:
Advertisement:
“Glossop and Hadfield ILP. Four Days SOCIALIST AND LABOUR MISSION”
Report in the Glossop Chronicle:
“Sunday’s Proceedings. Mr Frank Lawler spoke at Hadfield in the afternoon and in the evening addressed several hundreds of people in the Norfolk Square.” Report in the North Derbyshire Advertiser:
“Trade Unionists and Propaganda work . . . the [trades] council have decided that they will, to the best of their ability, do all they can to rescue Glossop from the slough of despond into which it has fallen. Attempts are to be made to get one or more Labour MPs down to address meetings, after which an effective house to house canvass will be carried out by the unions.” Advertisement: “Glossop and Hadfield ILP, Sunday next, 2.30 Hadfield and 7 pm
Norfolk Square. Speaker Adela Pankhurst the famous exponent of Women’s Suffrage.” And so on through the summer. This was the climate in which the Glossop Labour Club was founded on 20th September when the tenancy agreement was signed. On 21st September there appears an advertisement in the local press for “A Grand Social and Dance to be held at the new
ILP rooms in George Street.”
From then on, for the rest of the year, all sorts of activities take place in the new premises. There are public meetings, Sunday evening lectures, regular dances, a reading circle on Sunday afternoons (the ILP had its own library), a Grand Benefit Concert in aid of the widow and family of the late Mr Preston, a recitation of Dicken’s Christmas Carol, an organisation committee for High Peak ILP and in the evening a Fellowship Gathering for socialists from all parts of the division. Finally, in December: “M Carlson, a Russian peasant, will lecture on Russian Prisons and Prisoners as I Knew Them”, and, on Christmas Eve, A Grand Social and Dance. The committed socialists, trade unionists and suffragists who set up the Glossop Labour Club in 1906 would surely be pleased to know that in 2020 the Club continues to be a base for all kinds of political, cultural and social activity in the valley (though currently, all activities are temporarily having to take place online).
Gwyneth Francis
An episode in the power battles within the NUM during the late Twentieth Century There are several dimensions of power struggles within the National Union of Mineworkers. This episode illustrates some of the tensions between the National Executive Committee and Conferences. NUM Rule 23 gives to Conference of Delegates the authority and government of the Union. Rule 8 states that the National Executive Committee (NEC) must carry out the wishes of Conference, and at no time must it act against any resolution of Conference. However, these rules were not always adhered to, so the issue had divided the NUM for a long time. It was not just a bureaucratic wrangle, but a key battleground as left and right fought to turn the union’s policy and actions in different directions. The argument was not just about how policy should be determined, but about whether policies, once agreed, were put into practice by the NEC. The safety of miners, their wages and the quality of their lives: all were affected by what Conference decided, and what actions the NEC then took to carry out those decisions – or to subvert them. Vic Allen pointed out that there was a democratic problem in the NUM because of its structure: it was in fact a federation of county unions that were semi-autonomous, but were disguised as Areas of a national union. Each Area was a union in its own right, collecting dues from members, then sending a portion of that to the National Office, thus leaving Areas in control of considerable amounts of money. Each Area met and formulated its own policy. Although the resulting strength of the Areas may have worked to spread power within the union, so increasing democracy, that same structure could also have the opposite effect. Areas, by holding fast to their remaining historical identities, could prevent the building of a unified, centralised union through their votes on the NEC. This was because the formula for electing the NEC created a democratic deficit. Even the largest Area, Yorkshire, had only three representatives on the NEC, while every other Area, sometimes with only a tiny membership, had its own NEC member.1 This often gave an inbuilt majority to more “moderate” viewpoints. Historically miners had been paid on piecework, which meant that wages varied vastly, not only between Areas but between pits and even between different faces down the same pit. Because of geological conditions, extra effort often failed to bring higher wages. This system was abolished in 1966 by the introduction of the National Daywage Agreement. For the first time miners had a common interest in the level of wages, as all miners who did the same job were paid the same wage. Allen points out that this new-found commonality led to the 1972 and 1974 national strikes.2 Some miners in central coalfields, where geological conditions were often better, had lost their advantage in earnings once the National Day-wage Agreement, negotiated 1
V.L.Allen: The Militancy of British Miners, p283
2
V.L.Allen: The year-long miners’ strike, p27
between the Coal Board and the NUM, had been adopted. This Agreement forbade a return to piecework, although such schemes still seemed attractive to some Area leaderships where geological conditions were better. In 1974 a decisive majority of members had voted in a national ballot against a return to a system of national piecework. Motions to Conference arguing for national incentive schemes had twice been defeated, including at the July 1977 Conference. Joe Gormley, experienced at doing back-room deals, was trying to find a way to preserve the Labour Government’s pay policy while gaining something for some of his members. Despite the will of Conference, he moved quickly. By September that year, he had already discussed Incentive Schemes with the Coal Board, which had then presented proposals for such a scheme. The NEC announced a national ballot to decide the matter, expecting the vote would support such a national incentive scheme. Leftwing Area leaders were taken aback to find the NEC had made such progress over a mere two months in a direction contrary to Conference decision. They were, though, in disagreement about how to react. Some, like McGahey, were against the idea of resorting to court action, but left-led Kent Area, supported by Scargill, sought a court injunction to prevent the NEC holding such a ballot - and lost. Then they lost in the Appeal Court, with costs awarded against them. So the ballot went ahead. To everyone’s surprise, the vote went against the incentive scheme proposal. The result was announced at the NEC meeting in December 1977. At that same meeting, though, Gormley enabled the NEC to decide that Areas should be able to choose whether to make their own incentive agreements with the Coal Board. Following this decision, South Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire began to negotiate such agreements, killing off the National Day-wage Agreement and destroying the basis for solidarity over wages. Over a long period, then, right-wing NUM leaders had used their NEC majority to outmanoeuvre the left. As most Areas sent full-time elected officials, rather than lay representatives to NEC, Conference was considered by the left to be a more democratic body. Larger than the NEC, with many more lay members Conference could hear more voices directly from members who worked every day in dangerous jobs. Other battles were to follow. Bibliography: Allen, V.L.: The Militancy of British Miners, Shipley, 1981 Allen, V.L.: The year-long miners’ strike, March 1984 – March 1985: a memoir, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol.40, Issue 4, 2009
Hilary Cave
Pamphlets by Post Given that we are all in lockdown and you cannot buy pamphlets at our meetings, we have decided to offer them by post. We will not charge P & P during this difficult period. I would particularly point out that our most recent pamphlet on Chartism has not yet been available for sale at meetings so will be new to most of you. If you wish to buy one, please send the name or number of the pamphlet plus your name and postal address together with a cheque made out to NDLHS to: 2 Devonshire Promenade, Lenton, Nottingham. NG 7 2DS. Alternatively pay by BACS transfer to the NDLHS Santander Account No 29032134, sort code 09-01-29 with your surname as reference. If paying by BACS also email your order to: c.richardson@phonecoop.coop Pamphlets published by NDLHS 1. ‘Women in British Coal Mining’, Chris Wrigley, £2.00 2. ‘Who Dips in the Tin? The Butty System in Notts Coalfield’, Barry Johnson, £2.50 3. ‘Bravery and Deception: The Pentrich Revolt of 1817’, Julian Atkinson, £2.00 4. ‘Volunteers for Liberty: Notts and Derbys Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, £2.50 5. ‘Luddism in the East Midlands’, Julian Atkinson and Roger Tanner, £3.00 6. ‘Florence Paton M.P.’, Val Wood, £2.50 7. ‘Chartism in Nottingham’, Julian Atkinson and Roger Tanner, £5.00 If you wish to join/rejoin the NDLHS, please send a cheque for £10.00 payable to NDLHS to Chris Richardson at the above address. You may then also choose a free pamphlet.