THE CLYDE WORKERS COMMITTEE.
THE SPARK, THE FORMING OF THE LWC.
In 1915 during a prolonged period of
considerable economic hardship for most industrial workers, Clydeside
engineering employers refused workers demands for a wage increase.
The insatiable demand for war munitions had lead to a rapid rise in
inflation and a savage attack on the living standards of the working
class. Workers were demanding wage increases to offset these
repressive conditions. At this time Weir’s of Cathcart was paying
workers brought over from their American plant 6/- shillings a week
more than workers in their Glasgow plant.
The dispute between workers and
management at Weir’s very rapidly escalated into strike action. The
strike was organised by a strike committee named the Labour
Withholding Committee (LWC). This committee comprised of rank and
file trade union members and shop stewards. It was they who remained
in control of the strike rather than the officials from the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE).
The strike started in February 1915
and lasted almost 3 weeks. At its peak 10,000 members of the ASE from
8 separate engineering works were on strike throughout Clydeside. The
officials from the ASE denounced the strike and backed the
government’s demands to resume work. It was this double pressure
from the government and their own trade union that drove the workers
from the various engineering works in Glasgow to form the LWC to give
the workers a voice and to organise the strike to their wishes.
Although the strikers demands were
not met, its importance is in the fact of it forming the LWC. A
committee formed from rank and file union members that determined
policy in the work place and refused to follow the directives from
union officials when those directives conflicted with the demands of
that rank and file.
THE MUNITIONS ACT.
The government alarmed by the
February 1915 strike, summoned trade union leaders to a special
conference. The result of this conference being the now notorious
Treasury Agreement. The outcome of which was that all independent
union rights and conditions including the right to strike, were
abandoned for the duration of the war. It also allowed the employers
to “dilute” labour. Meaning they could employ unskilled labour in
skilled jobs to compensate for the growing labour shortage, due to
the every increasing demand for munitions and the endless slaughter
of young men at the front. The Munitions Act also made strikes
illegal and restrictions of output a criminal offence. The Munitions
Act also allowed for the setting up of Munitions Tribunals to deal
with any transgressions of the act.
October 1915 saw one such tribunal,
the outcome of which was that 3 shipwrights from Fairfield Shipyard
on the Clyde, one of which was MacPherson, a Glasgow anarchist, were sentenced to one months imprisonment for their
refusal to pay a fine imposed because of their strike action in
support of two sacked workers. The imprisonment of the 3 shipwrights
prompted the official union representatives to call for a public
enquiry. However, the LWC, which had reformed after the February 1915
strike, were seeking immediate strike action. A rather shaky and
uneasy peace remained while official union leaders and the rank and
file LWC waited for the government’s response. With the lack of any
response from the government, the LWC decided, with the full backing
of the workers, to act on their own by issuing an ultimatum to the
government; If the shipwrights were not released within 3 days there
would be widespread industrial action throughout the Clydeside until
their release.
Three days after the LWC ultimatum
the shipwrights were released. It was later discovered the the
imprisoned men’s fines had been paid. The general feeling among the
LWC and others was that the fines had been paid by ASE officials in
an attempt to prevent widespread industrial action on Clydeside over
which they could exercise little or no control.
THE CLYDE WORKERS COMMITTEE.
This victory lead to the LWC
deciding to form a permanent committee to resist the Munitions act.
It was to be called the Clyde Workers Committee, (CWC) and organised
on the same democratic principles as the LWC. It would have 250-300
delegates elected directly from the work place, it would meet weekly.
This was a seismic sift in the
employee/ management working relationship on Clydeside. Up until then
shop stewards in the industry merely existed as card inspectors and
implementers of national and district committees policies. However,
after the forming of the CWC in 1915, increasingly it was the workers
through the CWC that controlled the policy on the shop floor and in
negotiations, much to the consternation of the official trade unions.
The CWC in 1915 stated; “We will support the officials just as long
as they represent the workers, but we will act independently
immediately they misrepresent them.”
As the CWC had no faith in the
official trade union to protect the workers interests, when the
government Dilution Commission, in January 1916, arrived in Glasgow
to attempt to implement “dilution” in the munitions factories it
was the CWC who sought to negotiate a more radical policy with the
commission in an attempt to secure greater workers control over the
process of “dilution”. Although by this time the CWC was
responsible for representing the workforce in 29 Clydeside
engineering works, the Dilution Commission refused to recognise its
authority and declined the CWC’s offer to meet and discuss
proposals for implementation.
ARREST AND DEPORTATION.
Between January and March 1916 the
Dilution Commission met little or no opposition from workers and
trade unions elsewhere on Clydeside. During this period it however
little or no progress was made in the Clydeside engineering industry.
A situation that the government felt that it could not tolerate much
longer.
A management decision at Beardmore’s
engineering works Parkhead Glasgow, to refuse shop stewards access to
new “dilutees” brought about strike action in March 1916. In the
following four days workers at three other munitions factories came
out in sympathy with the Beardmore strikers. These events on
Clydeside were creating a degree of nervousness in the government and
the Dilution committee who were afraid that the actions of the
syndicalist inspired CWC would impede munitions production and
possibly spread to other areas.
On order of the government on March
24 1916, the military authorities arrested and deported Kirkwood,
Haggerty, Shields, Wainright and Faulds, the Beardmore shop stewards.
On the same day they arrested and deported McManus and Messer two
shop stewards from Weir’s of Cathcart, one of the factories that
came out on strike in Sympathy with the Beardmore strikers. On March
29 the military authorities again swooped and arrested and deported
Glass, Bridges and Kennedy, 3 more shop stewards from Weir’s.
The shop stewards were sent to
Edinburgh where they had to report to the police three times daily.
These restrictions were kept in place until 14 June 1917. It was
obvious to all that the arrested shop stewards had been abandoned by
their official trade union, they were also refused any union benefit
during the deportation. These deportations broke the resistance to
the implementation of “dilution” in the Clydeside engineering
industry, it also realised the government’s aim in bring about the
demise of the CWC for the duration of the war.
Following the end of the war there
was a fear of mass unemployment due to the demobilisation of the
troops and the demise of the munitions factories. The common view
held by the majority of workers in shipbuilding, engineering and
mining was that a drastic cut in the number of hours in the working
week, with the same war time pay levels was the only solution.
On January 1919 the CWC held a
meeting of its shop stewards from shipbuilding and engineering, from
this meeting the “Forty Hour” movement was born, and the decision
was taken to go with the miners in their demand for a reduction to
the weekly hours to help absorb the increase to the workforce and the
reducing number of jobs.
More on Glasgow's workingclass history here STRUGGLEPEDIA.
Further information; GlasgowDigital library.
Posted by John Couzin.
