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Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism in Britain, 1850–1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

John Lovell
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In a well known study of the building industry written some years ago, Richard Price argued that the institutionalisation of trade unions and general formalisation of industrial relations that occurred during the latter half of the nineteenth century were influences that tended to restrict the capacity of work groups to regulate the conditions of their working lives. Whereas earlier labour historians, from the Webbs onwards, had emphasised the part played by formal organisations in the improvement of working conditions, Price stressed the capacity of informal groups to control the way work was conducted. Price's approach, and that of other writers adopting a similar perspective, has been extremely influential, not least because it accorded well with developments taking place in the modern industrial relations setting of the 1960s and 1970s, where interest was focussed upon autonomous work group activity. In the context of the mid-nineteenth century, however, Price certainly pushed his argument a long way. The capacity of craft workers, possessing a strong corporate tradition, to regulate autonomously conditions in their trade was one thing, but Price suggested that work group formation and activity extended to labourers, in building and other industries. Dock labourers, in particular, were held to have been capable of such regulative activity, “long before unionisation”. If this was indeed the case, then the argument regarding the negative contribution of formal union organisation and collective bargaining must presumably be held to apply even in those sectors of employment where the new unionism of the 1880s and 1890s made its appearance.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , December 1987 , pp. 230 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1987

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Anglo-Dutch Conference of Labour Historians in Maastricht, in April 1982.

References

1 Price, Richard, Masters, Unions and Men (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., pp. 59 and 295n.

3 Hobsbawm, E.J., “National Unions on the Waterside,” in Labouring Men (London, 1964).Google Scholar

4 See for example, Hill, Stephen, The Dockers, Class and Tradition in London (London, 1976), pp. 43–55 and 196–99. Hill was of course referring to conventional operations, as opposed to work on container berths.Google Scholar

5 Price, , Masters, Unions and Men, p. 59.Google Scholar See also Hyman, Richard, The Workers' Union (Oxford, 1971), p. 192Google Scholar and Turner, H.A., Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy (London, 1962), p. 86.Google Scholar

6 Hobsbawm, , “National Unions on the Waterside”, p. 206.Google Scholar

7 Taplin, E.L., Liverpool Dockers and Seamen (Hull, 1974), chapter 3.Google Scholar

8 Brown, Raymond, Waterfront Organisation in Hull 1870–1900 (Hull, 1972), chapter 2.Google Scholar

9 Webb Trade Union Collection, at the British Library of Political and Economic Science, Section A, volume XLII, 169.

10 Taplin, , Liverpool Dockers and Seamen, p. 17.Google Scholar

11 Atkinson, B.J., “The Bristol Labour Movement, 1868 to 1906”, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University 1969, pp. 172–83, 215–16 and 284–87.Google Scholar For a general survey of activity in the early 1870s see Norton, S.M., “The Growth and Development of Trade Unionism among Previously Unorganised Workers in the Early 1870s”, unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Kent 1976.Google Scholar

12 Taplin, , Dockers, Liverpool and Seamen, , p. 24.Google Scholar

13 Webb Trade Union Collection, Section A, volume XLI, 34.

14 Ibid., Section A, volume XLII, 266.

15 Bean, R., “The Liverpool Dock Strike of 1890,” International Review of Social History, XVIII (1973), p. 56.Google Scholar

16 Brown, Waterfront Organisation in Hull.

17 Lovell, John, Stevedores and Dockers (London, 1969), pp. 113–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Taplin, , Dockers, Liverpool and Seamen, , pp. 24–25 and 60–61. It was estimated that around 5,000 dockers were involved in the 1872 strike for union recognition.Google Scholar

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20 Webb Trade Union Collection, Section A, volume XLII, 169.

21 Turner, , Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, pp. 139–68.Google Scholar

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23 See for example, Phillips, Gordon and Whiteside, Noel, Casual Labour (Oxford, 1985),Google Scholar chapter 1 and Wilson, David F., Dockers (London, 1972), chapter 2.Google Scholar

24 Unlike most port workers handlers of bulk commodities were, however, to some extent exposed to the impact of mechanisation, as in the case of the introduction of elevators in the grain trade. See Lovell, , Stevedores, and Dockers, , p. 28.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 75.

26 Hobsbawm, , “National Unions on the Waterside”, pp. 205–11.Google Scholar

27 For London see Lovell, Stevedores and Dockers, chapter 2. For Liverpool see Rathbone, E.F., Labour at the Liverpool Docks (Liverpool, 1904), pp. 7–8;Google Scholar also Taplin, Eric, The Dockers' Union (Leicester, 1986), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar For New York and Hamburg see Barnes, C., The Longshoremen (New York, 1915), p. 31 and appendix E, p. 212.Google Scholar

28 Royal Commission on the Port of London (1902), Cd.1151, Report p. 25.

29 Webb Trade Union Collection, Section A, volume XLII, 170.

30 Ibid.

31 Barnes, , Longshoremen, pp. 96–99.Google Scholar

32 Taplin, , Liverpool Dockers and Seamen, pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

33 Lovell, , Stevedores, and Dockers, , pp. 26–29 and 38–40.Google Scholar In New York differences in working conditions as between the two sectors were seen as presenting a significantn obstacle to the development of unionism; see Barnes, , Longshoremen, p. 100.Google Scholar

34 Webb trade Union Collection, Section A, volume XLII, 170–71.

35 See account in Lovell, Stevedores and Dockers.

36 Bean, , “The Liverpool Dock Strike”, p. 57.Google Scholar

37 Bean, R., “Employers' Associations in the Port of Liverpool, 1890–1914”, International Review of Social History, XXI (1976), p. 373.Google Scholar

38 Webb Trade Union Collection, Section A, volume XLII, 213. Another secretary of the union, Tom McCarthy, observed that the men preferred working for master stevedores, as they were “weaker men to deal with in a dispute”. Ibid. 214.

39 Ibid. 172.

40 Bean, , “Employers' Associations in the Port of Liverpool”, pp. 373–74.Google Scholar

41 Lovell, , Stevedores, and Dockers, , p. 146. For more detail on this see Booth Collection at the British Library of Political and Economic Science, Group B, CXL 53–61, and CXLI 17, 37 and 76. The union's influence in this sector was, however, destroyed by the Shipping Federation following the 1900 strike, Daily Chronicle, 7–23 June 1900.Google Scholar

42 Bean, , “Employers' Associations in the Port of Liverpool”, pp. 370–71.Google Scholar

43 Ibid.

44 Taplin, , The Dockers' Union, pp. 68–70.Google Scholar

45 Report on Dock Labour in Relation to Poor Law Relief (1908), Cd. 4391, pp. 17–18.

46 Bain, G. S. and Elsheikh, F., “An Inter-Industry Analysis of Unionisation in Britain”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, XVII number 2 (1979), pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

47 Hobsbawm, , “National Unions on the Waterside”, p. 220.Google Scholar

48 The following account is drawn from Lovell, Stevedores and Dockers, chapters 3–7.

49 Royal Commission on Labour (1892), C.6708, Evidence Group B, volume 1, Q.6469.

50 Bean, , “Employers' Associations in the Port of Liverpool”, pp. 373 and 377.Google Scholar

51 Ibid. pp. 378–79. See also Taplin, The Dockers' Union, chapters 7 and 8; R. Williams, The Liverpool Docks Problem (Liverpool, 1912) and the same author's The First Year's Working of the Liverpool Docks Scheme (Liverpool, 1914). For an excellent general discussion of early decasualisation schemes see Phillips and Whiteside, Casual Labour, chapters 2 and 3.

52 In the context of the waterfront, the importance of custom as a means of job regulation has been emphasised by Bean. In Bean's account, however, it is the variation in customary practices that is stressed, and it is clear that in certain instances custom could work to the advantage of the employer rather than the work group. Bean, R., “Custom, Job Regulation and Dock Labour in Liverpool, 1911–39”, International Review of Social History, XXVII (1982).Google Scholar

53 For the shipping companies see Bean, , “Employers' Associations in the Port of Liverpool”, pp. 370–71, and Report on Dock Labour, pp. 17–18. For the London dock companies see Lovell, Stevedores and Dockers, pp. 135–37.Google Scholar

54 See Price's own comments on the Liverpool agreements of 1911–12: Masters, Unions and Men. pp. 201–02.

55 Phillips, and Whiteside, , Casual Labour, pp. 287–93.Google Scholar

56 For some valuable general comments on this question see Chamberlain, Neil W. and Kuhn, James W., Collective Bargaining (New York, 1965), pp. 159–60.Google Scholar

57 Lovell, , Stevedores, and Dockers, , pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., pp. 121–27.