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Back to index of Nerve 17 - Winter 2010
It
was a long hot summer...
You had to stick together. Liverpool's 1911 population of 746,566 (so said the census) was crammed into a much smaller area than the city covers now. There was no television, radio, phones or national newspapers. There were local papers but not many could afford them. News travelled mainly by word of mouth, public meetings and 'manifesto' leaflets.
There was hardly any motor transport. Goods travelled across town by horse and cart and between towns by train. The only electricity was just one generator in Lister Drive that powered the trams and some street lighting.
Politically there was national ferment. Suffragettes were tired of the promises of jam tomorrow. Irish nationalists made Home Rule the price of propping up a Liberal government. Agitation against the House of Lords was in full swing and 1911 saw the pasage of a Parliament Act that made it possible for laws to be passed without the Lords' agreement. On the labour front, the working class led by the miners were on the march. Trade union membership rose dramatically in this period.
ON THE WATERFRONT
From early 1911 there were rumours of an international seamens strike. When it came, the seamens union leader Havelock Wilson asked Tom Mann to lead it in Liverpool. It seems Liverpool was chosen not for its militancy but as the Shipping Federation was weak there: the larger ocean-going companies like Cunard and White Star didn't belong.
Tom Mann came to Liverpool on 13 June. He was not a moment too soon as there was already unrest on the massive White Star liners: the Olympic was held up by coalmen in Southampton and the crew of the Baltic in Liverpool were refusing to sign on for the next voyage. Even as he declared the strike, a further 500 refused to sign on on other ships. Mass meetings confirmed his message: 'War declared: we strike for liberty'.
Almost mmediately the big shipping firms agreed to negotiate. Mann's strategy throughout the summer was to offer employers a velvet glove. His iron fist was strengthened when the cooks and stewards came out as well. With its regular mass meetings the Dock Road was described as 'a study in democratic development'. Dockers likewise refused to unload the Pointer from Glasgow until the striking crew were reinstated.
Then the dockers, who hadn't been part of the original dispute, weighed in on the 26th with their own demands for union recognition and rates of pay. The carters, not usually supportive, backed them. These new insurgents didn't like Tom Mann's 'white list' of co-operative employers and on the first weekend in July seamen and dockers were at odds. But the Strike Committee took up the dockers' cause. Co-operative employers now were dealing with a united front. Firms that did not concede faced total shutdown.
By the end of July the last shipping companies had agreed to negotiate. New and improved terms were set out in an overall 'White Book agreement', signed and effective on 3 August.
It is worth adding that through this period many other groups of workers saw their chance and struck for better wages and conditions. The actions of groups as various as Jewish cabinetmakers and women and girls in the Walton rubber-works were short, effective and invariably successful.
As one dispute ended so another began. The goods porters at the North Docks station came out on 5 August, citing a long list of grievances that the Lancs and Yorks railway would not address. Within two days all goods stations (of three different rail companies) were at a standstill. Passenger traffic was not affected but Lime Street and Central stations were picketed as the companies transported freight by passenger train. The struggle was no longer confined to the waterfront. Fresh food supplies from inland as well as from abroad rotted in the heatwave in station depots.
The rail unions did not support the strike so Tom Mann's strike committee assumed control. The entire freight network came out in support The Strike committee issued permits for transporting bread, milk, hospital supplies nnd other essentials (even the Post Office received permits).. Anything else needed an escort. By mid-August narly 5,000 troops were stationed in Liverpool and additional police had rrived from Leeds and Birmingham. Soldiers and mounted police escorting goods wagons - with a puppet magistrate to read the Riot Act if need be - became a daily sight. The docks were silent again and the shipping firms, enraged that their White Book meant nothing, threatened to lock out their workforce.
BLOODY SUNDAY
Sunday 13 August saw large feeder marches to a 'monster demonstration' of some 80,000 at St George's Plateau.There had been many such rallies in the last two months but this was the first since the rail strike began and there had been several clashes especially with the imported police. On Saturday 12th the police ordered several hundred wooden staves 'of unusual length' from a woodyard in Birkenhead.....
How did this rally turn into a bloodbath? The Head Constable told the Home Office that it was down to 'roughs' trying to overturn a cart behind the Empire theatre. Tom Mann was told it was aggressive officers hauling three youths off a window sill and drawing truncheons. Either way, a posse of police ended up rushing out of Lime Street and repeatedly atacking the crowd. Over 180 were taken to hospital. The rest fled to safer areas and the fighting continued. One councillor later accused the hated Birmingham police of behaving like 'bashi-bazouks' that day.
Some say this was the high point of the dispute but it wasn't. The community were not cowed. On the 15th a large crowd tried to rescue the detainees of five prison vans. Two men were killed when troops opened fire. Michael Prendergast and James Sutcliffe were Catholics in a sectarian city, yet many Protestants attended their funerals. Nor did a single striker go back to work. The shipowners carried out their threat and locked the dock gates. The Strike committee was still trying to build 'white lists' of employers who would negotiate, but the rail companies were unmoving. With goods traffic halted, the city ground to a halt. Factories closed for lack of coal and shops began to run out of supplies.
The tram workers opened up yet another front. They were employed by the City Council, so were a more obviously political issue. Their management had always been particularly vindictive. Over the last few weeks many had joined a new and more vigorous union. Now on 16 August the Strike Committee called them out.
The tram strike was not a complete success. Those who did eome out were spectacular on demonstrations in their uniforms and four-column formation. But many workers stayed in post and were supplmented by 'volunteers'. The 'tramwaymen' were a bone of real contention for months to come.
SETTLING THE STRIKES
The rail dispute had spread across England. Almost all British troops were engaged in strikebreaking in Manchester, Sheffield, London and elsewhere. The four national rail union executives met in Liverpool on 15 August and next day their general secretarie went to London to see the Board of Trade. On the 17th the full union executives joined them: they rejected the Prime Minister's offer of a Royal Commission and declared a national rail strike.
Did they then sell out? Tom Mann later wrote that 'if only they had attended to their own affairs on industrial lines, instead of bringing in the politicians, there is no doubt that their gains would have been far more substantial'. He may have been right, as the London talks involved Labour politicians Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson. But the rail unions had never been keen on the strike in the first place. Maybe they were influenced by press coverage that played down their successes. Maybe they were just so glad to get the employers to talk to them across the table for the first time.
Whatever the reason, the rail unions settled for a speedy Commission of Inquiry without any guarantee of union recognition. At least they insisted that they would only go back if the lockout of other workers was lifted. The rail strike ended late on 19 August.
In Liverpool it was all easier said than done. The trains were moving but no one would load or unload them until the tram workers were reinstated. At this crucial point we see how little the city rulers wanted to learn. In a 'lemming moment' local business leaders, including all the major shipping lines, actively petitioned the City Council not to reinstate the 250. Maybe they thought they could win: the trains were running, the troops were getting (some) food to the markets and over 4,000 local 'special constables' were running (some) trams and carrying (some) coal to factories.
But something had to give. Eight miles of unloaded shipping and several miles of unloaded trains were a national issue. Yet again the Board of Trade rode into town. After a massive row the Tramway committee voted against straight reinstatement but agreed to reinstate 'as and when required'. It was a promise that would not be kept but it was a climbdown. The Strike Committee declared victory and a return to work.
The workers had not won everything, but they had taken giant steps forward. For Britain's rulers the tub-thumping patriotism and mass slaughter of the Great War could not come soon enough.
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