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Trade Unions and the Engineering Industry Dispute at Barrow-in-Furness, 1897–98

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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The lock-out and strike in the British engineering industry, which took place between July 1897 and January 1898, was one of the most bitter and protracted labour disputes of the 1890s. As “the first major national strike or lock-out in British history”,1 a dispute set against the turbulent background of “new unionism” and socialist influences within the 91,500-strong Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and fought over the issues of working hours, the rights of employers in their own “shops” and the vexed question of the introduction of technical improvements into the industry, the conflict had great political and economic significance.2

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1975

References

page 33 note 1 Pelling, Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism (London, 1963), p. 112.Google Scholar

page 33 note 2 Unfortunately, the literature on the 1897–98 strike and lock-out is sparse and what little does exist is diffused throughout a wide variety of sources. For the best general survey see Clegg, H., Fox, A. and Thompson, A. F., A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889 (Oxford, 1964), I, pp. 138–43, 161–8,Google Scholar but see also Halévy, E., Imperialism and the Rise of Labour (London, 1961 ed.), pp. 250–2,Google Scholar for the contextual political flavour of the dispute. Henry Pelling, op. cit., pp. 112–3, gives a short summary of the affair. Contemporary trade union views of the dispute appear in the ASE Journal and Monthly Record for the period and in Barnes, George, The Amalgamated Society of Engineers Jubilee Souvenir 1901 (London, 1901), pp. 104–8.Google Scholar A fuller account, sympathetic to the unions, is provided by Jefferys, J. B., The Story of the Engineers (London, 1945), pp. 136–49.Google ScholarThe Webb's History of Trade Unionism (London, 1919 ed.), pp. 484–5,Google Scholar takes a critical look at the unions' tactics. Union leaders' biographies are not very useful sources, e.g., Tom Mann's Memoirs (London, 1967 ed.), pp. 8990,Google Scholar draws largely on the ASE Jubilee Souvenir 1901. The employers' impressions of the dispute, and the value of its outcome to the industry, appears in the Engineering and Allied Employers' Federation's pamphlet Looking at Industrial Relations (London, 1958).Google ScholarMarshall, A., Principles of Economics (London, 1920 ed.), p. 589,Google Scholar finds that the result of the dispute was of great economic benefit to the engineering industry, while Brown, E. H. Phelps, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London, 1959), pp. 90–8,Google Scholar offers a sympathetic study of craft workers' reactions to technical change. Kingsford, P. W., Engineers, Inventors and Workers (London, 1964),Google Scholar provides a stimulating background history of British engineering. In most of the works cited above there are useful footnotes which serve as guides to related literature. There is very little material on the history of the dispute in the local engineering centres, but see Pollard, Sidney, A History of Labour in Sheffield (Liverpool, 1959), pp. 232, 239 and 241.Google Scholar In Sheffield, about 1200 men were directly affected by the strike, and a further 600–800 labourers were rendered unemployed.

page 34 note 1 Scott, J. D., Vickers: A History (London, 1962), p. 44.Google Scholar

page 34 note 2 Mowat, Jack, “1871 and the forging of union solidarity”, in: Barrow Evening Mail, 4 11 1971, p. 8.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 Marshall, J. D., Furness and the Industrial Revolution (Barrow-in-Furness, 1958), p. 400.Google Scholar

page 35 note 2 Mowat, Jack and Power, Albert, Our Struggle for Socialism in Barrow: A short history of the Barrow Labour Party (Barrow-in-Furness, 1950), p. 14.Google Scholar

page 35 note 3 Barrow appears typical of the trends in general labour unionism noted by Hobsbawm, E. J., “General Labour Unions in Britain, 1889–1914”, in Labouring Men (London, 1968).Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 Clegg, Fox and Thompson, op. cit., I, pp. 138–9.

page 37 note 1 J. B. Jefferys, op. cit., p. 144.

page 38 note 1 Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Minutes of the Local District Committee, 28 July 1897.

page 38 note 2 J. D. Marshall, op. cit., p. 400.

page 39 note 1 Cited in the Barrow Herald, 10 July 1897, p. 8.

page 39 note 2 Ibid., 14 August 1897, p. 8.

page 39 note 3 Barrow News, 21 August 1897, p. 8.

page 40 note 1 Herald, 28 August 1897, p. 6.

page 40 note 2 News, 24 August 1897, p. 3.

page 40 note 3 Ibid., 11 September 1897, p. 8.

page 41 note 1 Ibid., 2 November 1897, p. 3.

page 42 note 1 Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Minutes of the Barrow Lock-Out Committee (hereafter ASE/LOC), 26 October 1897.

page 42 note 2 ASE/LOC, 8 November 1897.

page 42 note 3 See Saville, J., “Trade Unions and Free Labour”, in: Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (eds), Essays in Labour History (1960), p. 339,Google Scholar for an evaluation of the usefulness of the NFLA to the engineering employers.

page 43 note 1 ASE/LOC, 19 October 1897. The shipyard was still popularly known by its old title.

page 43 note 2 ASE, Minutes of the Local District Committee, 20 September 1897.

page 44 note 1 ASE/LOC, 8 October 1897.

page 44 note 2 Ibid., 14 October 1897.

page 44 note 3 Barrow Co-operative Society, Minutes of the Board of Management, 8 November 1897.

page 44 note 4 Ibid., 8 and 9 November 1897. Members of the ASE had been associated with the Barrow Co-operative Society since its establishment in 1860. The links between the two organisations had weakened over the intervening years, but the Society was still, to some extent, publicly identified with the ASE in 1897.

page 44 note 5 Ibid., Letter from the Barrow Co-operative Society to the CWS, 11 October 1897.

page 45 note 1 Ibid., 3 November 1897.

page 45 note 2 ASE/LOC, 6 December 1897.

page 45 note 3 Ibid., 8 December 1897.

page 46 note 1 Ibid., 17 January 1898.

page 46 note 2 There were some other developments. The General Federation of Trade Unions (founded 1899) was a product of the impetus given to the idea of forming a federation of trade unions for mutual financial support by the engineers' defeat. There is a hint in Ton Mann's Memoirs that he and Duncan, Charles, who was another ASE member and later became a Labour Member of Parliament for Barrow-in-Furness (19061918),Google Scholar formed the Workers' Union, in 1898, to overcome craft/labourer divisions by recruiting non-union engineering workers. Hyman, Richard, The Workers' Union (Oxford, 1971), pp. 111,Google Scholar substantiates the connection between the engineering dispute and the formation of the new union.