What about the workers?

The Conservative Party and the organised working class in British politics

Andrew Taylor, Richard Hayton

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526103635
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Conservatorismo e liberalismo

The relationship between the Conservative Party and the organised working class is fundamental to the making of modern British politics. The organised working class, though always a minority, was perceived by Conservatives as a challenge and many union members dismissed the Conservatives as the bosses' party.Why, throughout its history, was the Conservative Party seemingly accommodating towards the organised working class that it ideology would seem to permit? And why, in the space of a relatively few years in the 1970s and 1980s, did it abandon this heritage? For much of its history party leaders calculated they had more to gain from inclusion but during the 1980s Conservative governments marginalised the organised working class to a degree that not so very long ago would have been thought inconceivable.

1

A strong taste for the despotism of numbers?

Introduction

Conservatives frequently differentiated between the working class, sometimes wayward and unpredictable but essentially sound, and the trade unions, at best undesirable and at worst a positive evil, although there was no easy way to divorce the latter from the former, which made it hard to criticise one without criticising the other. The party’s solution to this dilemma was to accept the unions’ existence and role whilst criticising their supposed negative attributes, notably the unions alleged vulnerability to control by politically motivated oligarchies who usurped the unions’ power and resources for their selfish political and industrial objectives, and who tyrannised a moderate, politically diverse membership. The party developed a narrative that claimed Disraeli as the midwife of modern trade unionism. An example is from Alfred Lyttleton (Con, St George’s), speaking in the Second Reading of the Trade Union Bill in 1912:

Speaking for myself, and I am sure for those who act with me, I may say we have no objection to trade unions – on the contrary, very much the reverse. For forty years or more … our party supported trade unions in all that is legitimate, and to Mr Disraeli and other prominent Members of our party trade unions owe very much of the charter of liberty that they have now. Nothing that we have done in the past, or shall do in the future, will in any way fetter the legitimate functions and liberties of trade unions. (Hansard, 6 August 1912, col. 3069)

This narrative reflects the Conservative Party’s reluctant acquiescence in the Victorian acceptance of the unions as a fact of life (Phelps Brown 1983, 19–40). It emphasises that trade unionism and Conservatism were compatible and the party’s purpose had been ‘directed to abolishing the ancient and harsh rules against the combination of labour on even terms with capital in industrial disputes’ (Hansard, 6 August 1912, col. 3070). This narrative was influenced by the party’s broader critique of democracy, which it held would culminate in socialism, and the unions were central to this transition, but the party’s dominant strategy, conventionally described as One Nation politics, denied the validity of class in favour of a cross-class integrative strategy involving piecemeal legislation to preserve the existing social and political order (Seawright 2010, 4–13).

Conservatism and trade unions

Walsh sees the relationship between the party and the working class in the North-West down to 1867 as a precursor of what happened nationally as industrial capitalism matured (2012, 1, 105–111. See also Hill 1929). Walsh’s discussion of ‘operative Conservatism’ does not, however, explicitly cover the growth of trade unionism, a growth that sustained a genuine concern about the possible political consequences of a working class organised by trade unions. The demise of Chartism in the 1840s and the minimal responsiveness of political institutions (for example, the Ten Hours Act of 1847) suggested the possibility of working-class improvement within the status quo that in turn pointed to the political integration of the organised working class. The acceptance of this possibility by the unions and the Conservative Party ‘was probably the fundamental break with political solutions. As the decades proceeded, people increasingly looked to parliamentary action simply to protect autonomous organisations’ (Thompson 1986, 334).

Combination ‘in restraint of trade’ was historically illegal at common law and by the end of the eighteenth century some forty Acts of Parliament forbad combination (‘the Combination Acts’). Their justification was, as an 1806 Parliamentary report proclaimed,

the protection of individual freedom and the right of everyone to employ the capital he inherits or has acquired, according to his own discretion, without molestation or obstruction, so long as he does not infringe on the right or property of others is one of those privileges which the free and happy Constitution of this country has long accustomed every Briton to consider his birthright. (Aspinall 1949, ix)

Until the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824 trade unions were effectively illegal, with no right to bargain collectively or strike, but whilst reducing the threat of conspiracy charges, repeal did not make unions fully legal or effective. Repeal did not render unions equal with employers and, as Lord Lansdowne noted in 1825, conceding equality would mean ‘no manufacture could be carried on if workmen could dictate to the masters who should be employed, and prevent men from exercising their right of labouring on what ever terms they might please’ (Aspinall 1949, xxx–xxxi). Repealing the Combination Acts meant, however, unions ‘were now protected from actions for criminal conspiracy so long as they limited themselves to the determination of wages and hours, and in particular so long as they and their members avoided certain specified offences, namely violence, threats, intimidation, molestation, and obstruction’ (Clegg et al. 1964, 44).

This repeal did not end the unions’ legal vulnerability and they were still perceived by many as an affront to the laws of political economy and threats to the political and industrial order, to be intimidatory and coercive, and potentially tyrannical. Many Conservatives frequently lamented that honest working men with legitimate grievances were led astray by demagogues who, in pursuing their industrial and political agendas, intimidated employers and workers, disrupted livelihoods, and undermined the country’s prosperity and social order. Conservatives, however, also accepted the unions had a positive role to play and were seeking to join the status quo, not overthrow it. This duality goes back to the origins of modern Conservatism, drawing on the paternalistic, anti-industrial and reformist Toryism of individuals such as Richard Cobbett, Richard Oastler and Lord Shaftesbury. This strain of Conservative thought emphasised working-class social deference, prescriptive rights and custom, together with hostility to the rapacious ‘Millocracy’, and which saw the State as an arbiter between social groups. A foundational exposition of these sentiments was Benjamin Disraeli’s novel, Sybil, or, The Two Nations (1845), which lies at the foundation of One Nation Conservatism. Historians have stressed the centrality of social integration in Conservative politics, coupled to the conviction that moderate, incremental reform was an essential component of a governing strategy intended to marginalise radicalism (see, for example, Gash 1976, 155–174; Hawkins 2015, 77; Walsh 2012, 20) – a strategy that became particularly significant after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which pushed Britain’s political economy irrevocably along the path of industrialism.

The maturation and consolidation of industrial capitalism by the 1860s also saw the stabilisation of trade unionism, exemplified by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) which was composed of skilled, aspirational workers often anxious, along with their leaders, to demonstrate their status, that focused on wages and conditions, and expressed a desire for mutually beneficial and cooperative relations with employers. This culture, however, did not protect the ASE and similar unions from attack. In 1851 the ASE found itself subject to a lockout and other major disputes included the builders’ lockout (1859–60), the Birmingham carpenters’ strike (1864), the Staffordshire ironworkers’ strike (1865) and the Sheffield Outrages, triggered by a wage claim, culminating in a lockout in 1864. The dispute was concerned with the introduction of file-making machinery that needed fewer skilled workers, lowered wages and produced conflict over job regulation. The dispute culminated in the blowing-up of a non-unionist’s house. The 1860s were also a decade of agitation for franchise reform. The working class was perceived by some Conservatives as becoming organised as a separate political power, and they claimed union leaders would be unable to resist the temptation to deploy their organisational resources for political purposes. Lord Derby, the joint leader of the party with Disraeli, noted in his diary that ‘something like a panic was spreading among the upper and middle classes. They believe that opinion among the masses is thoroughly revolutionary’ (6 May 1871 in Vincent 1994, 79). The 1867 Reform Act and Disraeli’s union legislation of the 1870s was part of the response and flowed from a desire to integrate these new political forces into the status quo (Cowling 1967, 25). No MP wanted manhood suffrage, but even a limited extension of the vote would give more trade unionists the vote. ‘What is vaguely feared’, Derby wrote, ‘is legislation … in the Socialist or Trade Union sense which does not suit a House essentially of the middle classes, and very wealthy’ (8 July 1871 in Vincent 1994, 84).

One of the most trenchant Conservative critics of trade unions in this period was Viscount Cranbourne, the future Lord Salisbury. For Salisbury politics was about the defence of property, social stability and the preservation of established institutions; unions posed a serious threat because they organised a single class. The fundamental political divide was between those who possessed and those who lacked property; thus unions were an epochal political development because they were class-conscious collectivities pursuing the redistribution of wealth, using their resources to subvert the laws of supply and demand and influence the contours and content of public policy (Thompson 1987, 252–289). Trade unions expressed perfectly the characteristics of their class (‘power of combination … ignorance of economical laws … strong taste for the despotism of numbers’) and their core ethic – class solidarity – made them especially dangerous:

Probably no class in this country or in any other, have exhibited such a perfect party discipline, or so well drilled a contempt for ruin and hunger incurred by obedience to their elected chiefs, and of what they can do and suffer, has not been lost upon the employers of labour. (Cranbourne 1866, 549)

The growing activism of trade unions in industry and politics would be directed by ‘the most reckless, worthless and noisy of their class’ and in politics:

The artisan force would be handled in the conduct of elections as they are now handled in the conduct of strikes, with as much promptitude of action and as much exactness of drill. The whole body of artisan voters would be turned over from one candidate to another at a given order. (Cranbourne 1866, 547)

Unions, Cranbourne insisted, were inherently tyrannical and redistributionist and, at heart, socialist. The intertwining of democracy with class and redistributionist politics in the form of trade unions produced ‘civil war with the gloves on’ (Salisbury 1883, 56).

Disraeli and the trade unions

The 1860s saw the first instance of a repeated pattern in which a judicial decision overthrew what had been hitherto understood to be the unions’ legal status, thus provoking union pressure for remedial legal action. Hornby v. Close (1867) found unions to be organisations in restraint of trade and so their funds enjoyed no legal protection. At the same time the political and economic debate over the unions was captured by two Royal Commissions (1869 and 1875). These were dominated by two interpretations: first, that unions were fundamentally tyrannical, threatening individual freedom, economic well-being and the community and so they required strict regulation. The second interpretation understood unions as the inevitable product of capitalism’s laws of supply and demand and the natural result of the asymmetry of power between employers and workers, and justice and freedom for workers could only be achieved by organisation and collective action. Advocates of this interpretation also argued effective organisation would promote order and peace in industrial relations – benefits that far outweighed any defects. The minority report of the 1867 Royal Commission was sympathetic to the unions and its recommendations were endorsed by the TUC and formed the basis of Gladstone’s trade union bill (Hansard, 14 February 1871, cols 257–273), that sought to restore a degree of protection to union funds, but the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1871) made picketing illegal, thus rendering many of the rights won in the Trade Union Act nugatory.

The sympathetic minority report of the 1875 Royal Commission informed the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act and the Employers and Workmen Act (both 1875) passed by Disraeli’s Conservative Government, which was elected in 1874. Disraeli’s legislation was perceived by many Conservatives (and Liberals) as radical interventions. The two Acts of 1875 were justified on four grounds: first, the legislation was not a radical departure but built on past precedent; second, the legislation was addressing injustices that were widely seen as such; third, legislation would benefit the community and not just a single class; and finally, the proposals represented a final settlement. The case for such seemingly un-Conservative acts of policy was made by Disraeli’s Home Secretary, R.A. Cross, who sat for a Lancashire constituency (see Mitchell 1991). In the Second Reading of a Factories Bill, for example, one Conservative backbencher described the bill under discussion as ‘wise, safe and well conceived, which will confer incalculable benefits on the operative class [and] will have the effect of settling this vexed question for a long time’ (Hansard, 11 June 1875, col. 1437). Cross described the bill as consensual, enjoying the support of employers, employees, trade unions, expert opinion and Members from both sides of the House of Commons; he denied the legislation had departed from the existing approach to public policy and sought to remedy obvious shortcomings and injustices thereby promoting social stability. Cross insisted that the Government’s wider social legislation rested on a well-established philosophy, denying that it was legislation for a specific class, but rather it sought to promote the common good. Second Reading debates on such legislation in this period often discussed the principles of liberal political economy and the legitimate (or otherwise) role of state intervention in interfering with these laws. Speakers tended to conclude that it was probably not good for the law to interfere in ‘private’ relationships such as that between the employers and employed, but then to concede that this principle had been breached many years before and on many occasions since. Nevertheless, despite growing unionisation, collective agreements remained voluntary and hard to achieve, and were unstable because of the employer–employee power asymmetry, so that only legislation could provide a guarantee of certainty and general applicability.

Gladstone’s legislation undoubtedly made effective trade union action risky. Union members, unlike employers, were liable to criminal sanctions under the Criminal Law Amendment Act which stipulated three months imprisonment with hard labour for any person convicted of attempting to coerce any other person during the course of an industrial dispute. Specifically forbidden were the making of threats, persistent following, hiding tools, watching and besetting an individual’s house, and two or more persons following an individual. The law did nothing to dissuade the Courts from potentially applying the full weight of criminal conspiracy to industrial disputes and effectively deeming strikes as coercive and therefore criminal. It was in response to this legal environment that Disraeli’s Government passed its trade union legislation that proved to be so significant for Conservatism’s narrative on relations with the organised working class. We must, however, be careful not to ascribe any substantial embryonic populist, reformist programmatic motivation behind what came to be described as One Nation politics; rather Disraeli’s union legislation was more concerned with promoting order and governability (Cowling 1967, 148). Moreover, the party was exposed to a major tension. Ramsden believes that the ‘flood of middle class voters who had come over to the Conservatives had done so in the expectation that they would put a brake on the legislative wheel of reform’, whereas working-class votes ‘had been conditional on a new programme of reforms’ and concludes the tension between the two constituted a ‘fundamental strategic issue’ that required speedy resolution (1998, 125). Cross believed this strategic issue could be resolved by appealing to the well-established Conservative concern with the preservation of social order by passing legislation intended to reduce tension between employers and the...