The Labour Movement must learn from the lessons provided by its own history. The trade unions were created out of class struggle. To establish themselves they had to fight the hostility of Parliament, the courts, the employers and the media.  Here we trace how the TUC arose from the need to secure a legal basis for the developing union movement in the 1860s. 

The working class is the product of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Industries such as iron-making, coal-mining, shipbuilding and textile manufacturing grew very rapidly. The latter in particular had many huge factories or mills which brought together large workforces of proletarians, that is workers who did not own the machines and equipment with which they laboured to produce profits for their employers. They were largely unskilled or semi-skilled and their economic relationship with the employer was simply that they sold their labour power to him in return for wages. Even as late as the mid-nineteenth century, much industrial production was still in small workshops or in the worker’s own home. Wherever they laboured, however, workers learned by hard experience that their interests were totally opposed to those of their employers and that the only way to defend and develop them was by combining in unions and utilising their collective strength. The militant organisations created in such struggles tended to fade away once the dispute was finished. 

Among some groups of skilled artisans there were ‘craft clubs’ which had a more permanent existence, the prime purpose of which was to act as friendly societies. On those occasions when they took action to secure improved wages and conditions, they might find themselves being prosecuted as ‘criminal conspiracies’. Readers will not be surprised that employers’ combinations, although also illegal in the eyes of the law, were rarely if ever prosecuted. 

From 1800 to 1830 the anger of working people manifested itself in bitterly-fought strikes and in machine-breaking, hayrick-burning and other forms of sabotage. The ruling class met such activities with brutal oppression. It was argued that the way to improve the wretched conditions in which most people lived and worked and also to ensure a legal status for the nascent unions lay with parliamentary reform. A huge movement for radical political change developed, largely with middle-class leaders and the pressure created was instrumental in the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. This act gave the vote to some middle class men and virtually ignored working men. In the fury that followed, the floodgates opened to the demand for more complete political change. Out of this developed the Chartists who were the first mass movement of the British working class. They intended to win control of a democratic reformed parliament which they believed could be used in the interests of working people. 

One of the tactics of the Chartists was the idea of the ‘Sacred Month’ or general strike whereby a united working class would bring the economy to a halt and force the government to meet the demands embraced in the Charter. Central to this idea was that of a national organisation bringing together and coordinating the strike activities of workers right across the country. The forerunner had been the National Association for the Protection of Labour founded in 1830, but in 1834 anger at the outcome of the Reform Act and a host of other grievances led to the establishment of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. This can fairly be described as the predecessor of the TUC. Its intention was to affiliate every existing union. These would keep their own rules and organisation but would unite to form District Councils and a Grand Council at national level. The GNCTU was intended to provide the national leadership in the event of the ‘Sacred Month’ but it also attracted many workers concerned that it should coordinate and lead the immediate struggles for a living wage, shorter working hours, against harsh workplace discipline and for the right of legal protection for unions and their activities.   

The Chartist movement faded out in the early 1850s at the end of the three or more decades of political turmoil and industrial strife. What followed was the consolidation of British capitalism with twenty to thirty years of almost continuous economic growth during which the class struggle by no means disappeared but was somewhat more muted. Many groups of skilled workers formed powerful trade unions through which they were able to obtain significant advances in wages and conditions and what appeared to be a secure legal basis for their activities. These unions were usually organized on a national basis, well-funded and highly centralised, employing substantial numbers of full-time officials. Dues were substantial and membership was restricted to those in each specific trade. They catered for such trades as bricklayers, carpenters, engineers and iron-founders. 

Significant gaps opened up between the pay of the union full-time officers and that of their members. This gave the full-timers access to lifestyle changes and subjected them to political pressure as they hobnobbed professionally and socially with people of the middle and upper classes. The latter wooed them cynically, knowing that in doing so they could draw their potential sting. Some of the more influential trade union leaders established an informal but powerful clique later known as the ‘Junta’ and this form of trade union organisation came to known as the ‘New Model’. Unfortunately many of them had an exclusive, even rather contemptuous, attitude towards the mass of semi and unskilled and largely non-unionised labour. They were concerned to maintain the relative privileges of their own members and some argued that it was neither possible nor even desirable for the trade union movement to widen its doors to the working masses. In the late 1850s and early 1860s trades councils were created especially in big cities such as London, Glasgow, Sheffield and Liverpool to coordinate local union activity but these largely replicated the practices of the Junta. 

A strong movement for further political reform developed in the mid-1860s and the Reform Act of 1867 gave the vote to substantial numbers of working class men from the skilled, relatively better-off workers who the New Model unions embraced. The Liberal Party leadership courted the Junta hoping to secure the voting support of their newly enfranchised union members. Some of the Junta in turn were only too happy to be identified with the left of the Liberal Party and to be known as ‘Lib-Labs’. The acceptance of capitalist ideas which this entailed meant that the leadership of most unions was in the hands of men who advocated class collaboration. They hoped that by toadying to the Liberal wing of the ruling class, they would be thrown the concession of a firm legal framework for their kind of trade union activity. Events were to confound this sycophantic attitude. 

In 1867 the union leaders were abruptly shocked out of their complacency when the court ruled in the case of Hornsby v. Close that there was no legal protection for unions when members or officials embezzled their funds. This was an enormous threat given that many unions, while avoiding strike action whenever possible, had carefully built up very substantial financial reserves. 

Worse followed. As the implications of this hostile judgement were ruefully digested, the leaders were shocked by the furore over the so-called ‘Sheffield Outrages’. Conditions were particularly appalling in the city’s metal industries. The unions had developed a tradition of direct action aimed at the most unpopular employers and also at blacklegs. In February 1867 the government announced the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the trade unions. In response, the Junta, the London Trades Council and other unions convened the Conference of Amalgamated Trades to present the unions’ evidence. 

Although the Commission’s report found little to criticise about the way the unions conducted themselves, the Trade Union Act of 1871 was passed apparently giving the unions a firm legal status and safeguarding their funds. However the Criminal Law Amendment Act placed a web of legal restrictions on how strikes were conducted. The employers used this act to launch a vendetta of prosecutions and imprisonments for peaceful strike activities. Two further acts were passed in 1875 which largely reversed the legislation of 1871. 

1868 is generally taken as the year in which the TUC was established. It was an amalgamation of the Junta, the London Trades Council, the National Miners’ Union, the more militant London Workingmen’s Association and a number of equally militant northern unions. After much manoeuvring, the Junta was able to gain control. Its lobbying was instrumental in the passing of the 1875 legislation. The union leaders appear to have felt that their main purpose had been achieved with a ‘secure’ legal status and influence with the Liberal Party, there now being two miners’ leaders in Parliament, actually sitting as Liberals. The leaders broke with the First International, strongly influenced by Karl Marx and opted for careers as well-paid bureaucrats. Their desire for the quiet life and obsession with ‘respectability’ ensured they made no attempt to mobilise the potential strength of the movement around socialist policies. They concentrated power centrally and set up undemocratic rules which reduced the influence of the rank-and-file and isolated militants. Their attitude to strikes was summed up by William Allen, leader of the Engineers who said: We believe that all strikes are a complete waste of money, not only in relation to the workers but also to the employers.        

Now in 2008, the trade union movement faces the possibility of the return of a reactionary Conservative government to office at a time of economic uncertainty. Such a government would attempt to make the working class pay for the problems of the capitalist system. The TUC must lead the fight against any Tory attempts to reduce the power of the unions and fully support the campaign for the return of a Labour Government committed to socialist policies.