Silvertown

The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement

John Tully

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781583674345
• eBook ISBN:
  9781583674352
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

In 1889, Samuel Winkworth Silver’s rubber and electrical factory
was the site of a massive worker revolt that upended the London
industrial district which bore his name: Silvertown. Once referred
to as the “Abyss” by Jack London, Silvertown was notorious for
oppressive working conditions and the relentless grind of production
suffered by its largely unorganized, unskilled workers. These
workers, fed-up with their lot and long ignored by traditional craft
unions, aligned themselves with the socialist-led “New Unionism”
movement. Their ensuing strike paralyzed Silvertown for three
months. The strike leaders— including Tom Mann, Ben Tillett,
Eleanor Marx, and Will Thorne—and many workers viewed the
trade union struggle as part of a bigger fight for a “co-operative
commonwealth.” With this goal in mind, they shut down Silvertown
and, in the process, helped to launch a more radical, modern
labor movement.






Historian and novelist John Tully, author of the monumental social
history of the rubber industry The Devil’s Milk, tells the story
of the Silvertown strike in vivid prose. He rescues the uprising—
overshadowed by other strikes during this period—from relative
obscurity and argues for its significance to both the labor and socialist
movements. And, perhaps most importantly, Tully presents
the Silvertown Strike as a source of inspiration for today’s workers,
in London and around the world, who continue to struggle for better
workplaces and the vision of a “co-operative commonwealth.”

Notes

1. Jack London, The People of the Abyss (London: Isbister, 1904), 288.

2. Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2007), 91.

3. Melanie McGrath, Silvertown: An East End Family Memoir (London: Fourth Estate, 2003) 140.

4. Penny Illustrated Paper, Saturday, 14 December 1889.

5. John Tully, “Silvertown 1889: The East End’s Great Forgotten Strike,” Labour History Review, forthcoming.

6. John Saville, “Trade Unions and Free Labour: The Background to the Taff Vale Decision,” in Essays in Labour History: In Memory of GDH Cole 25th September 1889—14th January 1959, ed. Asa Briggs and John Saville (London: Macmillan, 1960).

7. Calculated using Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, MeasuringWorth.com, http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/result.php?use[]=CPI&use[]=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1889&pound71=&shilling71=&pence71=6&amount=0.025&year_source=1889&year_result=2010.

8. Calculated using CoinMill.com–The Currency Converter http://coinmill.com/GBX_calculator.html#GBX=6.

9. See Stanley Lebergott, “Wage Trends, 1800-1900,” in The Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960). http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2486

10. John Tully, France on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002).

11. John Tully, The Devil’s Milk: A Social History of Rubber (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011).

12. William Clarence Smith, review of The Devil’s Milk in the International Journal of Social History 56/3 (December 2011): 542.

13. E. Belfort Bax, Address to the Trades Unions. The Socialist Platform No 1 (London: Socialist League, 1885), 7.

14. Cited in Eric Hobsbawm, “History and the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’,” Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 118.

15. London, The People of the Abyss, 39.

16. Isabella Beeton, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management: Comprising Information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and under house-maids, Lady’s-maid, Maid-of-all-work, Laundry-maid, Nurse and nurse-maid, Monthly, wet, and sick nurses, etc. etc. also, sanitary, medical, & legal memoranda; with a history of the origin, properties, and uses of all things connected with home life and comfort, chap. 42. http://www.Mr.sbeeton.com/42-chapter42.html. Double emphasis in the original.

17. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men, 106, 109.

18. Ibid., 106.

19. “Swing” or “Captain Swing” was a revolt of agricultural laborers early in early nineteenth-century England who smashed labor-saving machinery. See Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé, Captain Swing (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969).

20. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men, 118–19.

21. Ibid., 106.

22. Ibid,. 119.

23. “The Silvertown Strike,” Times, Tuesday, 10 December 1889.

24. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 3, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (London: Rex Library, 1973), 753.

25. H. V. Morton, The Heart of London (London: Methuen, 1925), 18.

26. Dr. Pagenstecher, History of East and West Ham (Stratford, Essex: Wilson & Whit-worth, 1908), 198.

27. “Silvertown: The Strike at Messrs. Silver’s Works,” Stratford Express, Wednesday, 2 October 1889.

28. “The Revolt of Labour. Tower Hill,” Labour Elector, Saturday, 7 September 1889.

29. “The Strike of London Dock Labourers,” Labour Elector, Saturday, 24 August 1889.

30. Engels to Laura Lafargue, 27 August 1889, in Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence, vol. 2: 1887–1890 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959), 304. Engels’s estimate of 40–50,000 dockers is an exaggeration, but many thousands of supporters and other waterfront workers swelled the numbers.

31. Tom Mann, Tom Mann’s Memoirs (London: Labour Publishing, 1923), 82. For numbers employed on the docks, see Michael Ball and David Sutherland, An Economic History of London, 1800–1914 (London: Routledge, 2001), 223–24.

32. John Lovell, Stevedores and Dockers: A Study of Trade Unionism in the Port of L...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by John Callow
• Introductory Comment by John Marriott
• Preface
• I. Prologue: Wednesday, 11 September 1889
• II. Introduction to a Forgotten Struggle
• III. Samuel Silver’s Palace of Industry
• IV. Great Sacrifice, Great Barbarism
• V. A Time of Hope
• VI. “They Want My Life’s Blood”
• VII. The Strike Gains Momentum
• VIII. The Workers Disunited: Skilled versus Unskilled at Silvertown
• IX. “There Is No Justice, Mercy or Compassion in the Plutocracy”
• X. November: Hunger and Cold
• XI. The Great Strike Collapses
• XII. Epilogue
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index