Before the setting up of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, the TUC
had traditionally supported the Liberal Party, as the Party most likely to grant
concessions to the unions. The Liberal Party itself had undergone changes at the
end of the 19th century.
Traditionally it had been the party of free trade, representing the
industrial entrepreneur, opposed to the landed gentry and city bankers,
represented by the Tory Party. The Tory Party had supported protectionism in the
19th century. However the Liberal Government of the 1890s, led by Lord Roseberry
had set itself a social programme. This was due to the growth of the trade union
movement in the 1880s and also the extension of the suffrage to a section of the
working class in 1886. The British ruling class was in two minds over its policy
of laissez-faire and repression as a response to the challenge of labour. The
most farsighted abandoned laissez-faire in favour of intervention-social
reforms, some government regulation of industry and the containment of the trade
union movement through the integration of its leadership into the echelons of
the state.
Society
It was acknowledged that society existed and could be changed through social
engineering. It was considered necessary for the first time for the government
to collect statistics on the conditions that people were living in and the
Department of Labour was set up in 1893. These policies were not only due to the
challenge of the labour movement but also the power of Britain’s industrial
competitors, especially Germany. Bismarck had a social programme which, many
believed would ensure a healthier, and hence more productive and better educated
workforce. The establishment of the social sciences as an academic discipline
was institutionalised by the Webbs and the Fabians who originally planned to
pursue their polices through the Liberal Party but later saw the Labour Party as
a more effective body for changing society. Their form of socialism would be
achieved, not by the class struggle but by the actions of the most enlightened
section of society. However much of the impetus for this came from the class
struggle and the acknowledgement that something had to be done about the working
class. Not just strikes, but crime, violence and drunkenness were problems which
could be done away with if workers had secure employment and decent housing, and
their children were educated. This was a radical departure for the British
ruling class who had been wedded to Victorian values and were never fully
converted to corporatism and the welfare state. They have reverted frequently to
attempts to ‘smash the trade union movement’ as in the 1920s and later in
the 1980s. Even the concept of society has been challenged by prominent Tory
politicians, such as Thatcher, as a basis for scrapping the welfare state. The
Labour Representation Committee had been set up with the aim of getting working
class representatives into Parliament. It had been fought for by trade
unionists, like Tom Mann and Keir Hardie who had come to see that neither the
Liberals, nor the Tories could represent the interest of the working class.
Indeed the use of violence against strikers and the use of the courts against
trade unions had brought home to the politically active section of the working
class the message that it was necessary to have a political party of Labour as
well as trade unions. This was very well expressed in the Clarion newspaper, the
paper of the Independent Labour Party. It said to its readers-“Do you send
employers as delegates to your Trade Union Congress? You would laugh at the
suggestion. You know that the employer could not attend to your interests in the
trade union, which is formed as a defence against him. Do you think that the
employer is likely to be more useful, or more disinterested in Parliament or the
County Council than in the trade union? Whether he be in Parliament or in his
own office, he is an employer and puts his own interests first, and the interest
of Labour behind. Yet these men, whom as trade unionists you distrust you
actually send as politicians to make laws for you. A Labour Party is a kind of
political trade union and to defend trade unionism is to defend labour
representation.”
Pressure
However many of the leaders of the LRC saw it as a pressure group tied to the
coat-tails of the Liberal Party for the first years of its existence. The
Liberal Government of 1906 had Labour support-in fact some MPs were still known
as Lib-Labs. But far from being dependent upon the Liberal Party it was becoming
the case that Labour was giving the Liberals a new lease of life. By 1910 the
Liberals were losing out to Labour candidates. The Liberal Party was keen to
embrace Labour politicians – not only to stave off defeat for their party, but
also to do the important job for the British capitalist class as a whole of
integrating Labour leaders into the establishment and thus diverting the growing
labour movement from socialist aims.
Some trade union leaders such as Snowden and Macdonald had been Liberals from
the outset and forming a coalition with the Liberals was not a big deal for
them. Ramsay Macdonald had been a Liberal who had joined the Independent Labour
Party in 1895. Unlike trade union militants like Keir Hardie and Tom Mann who
had broken with Liberalism in those years, Macdonald still believed that there
was no difference between Liberalism and Socialism and he looked forward to
seeing ‘a united democratic party, appealing to people on behalf of a single
comprehensive belief in social reconstruction.’ He denied the existence of a
class struggle and claimed that for him socialism was a moral question, that it
was based on ‘community consciousness’ (where have you heard that one
before?) and would be carried out by the ‘will of democratic states.’
Socialism he believed would be the inevitable result of progress, as humanity
became more enlightened. Parliament would be used as the arena for this gradual
transition, and no struggle could be carried on beyond the confines of the
parliamentary system.
Believing that socialism was a moral question, which could be carried out in
the face of vigorous opposition and resistance from much of the ruling class,
and denying that there was anything other than a unity of interest between
capital and labour, Macdonald was easily absorbed into the Houses of Parliament
and into tacit coalitions with the Liberals. He achieved statesman like
qualities in the eyes of the ruling class, which impressed upon them that Labour
was fit for government. The LRC had adopted a policy of opposition to deals with
other parties in 1903. It was also policy that all Labour candidates had to be
members of an organisation affiliated to the LRC (this was before individual
membership of the Labour Party).
Nevertheless a secret deal was done with the Liberal Chief whip before the
election of 1906 whereby Liberals would not stand candidates against LRC members
who supported the ‘general objectives’ of the Liberal Party. In return for
this the LRC would support Liberal candidates (against the Tories).
In the election of 1906, out of 29 Labour MPs elected, only five had been
opposed by the Liberals. In 1910 there were two general elections. In January
the Labour Party fought 81 seats, in December this was down to 57. This was
partly due to finance but mainly due to fears of encroaching upon the Liberal
vote and damaging the coalition.
This policy obviously had a disastrous effect upon the Labour Party. It meant
fewer Labour MPs. It meant that moderate MPs tended to be elected rather than
socialists. It led to the situation where the Labour Party supported a Liberal
candidate against a locally sponsored independent Labour candidate, Victor
Grayson, a left-wing socialist, who stood for Colne Valley in 1907. Grayson
stood expressly to oppose the Lib-Lab pact and won.
For similar reasons an independent an independent labour candidate for Dundee
did not have the backing of the Labour Party in 1908. But the worse effect of
the election truce was that it tied the Parliamentary Labour Party to the
Liberal Party politically. At a time when the Labour Party was growing in
strength, having gained the affiliation of all the major trade unions, when the
membership of the trade unions doubled, when the militancy of workers against
declining real wages and the threat of unemployment was growing rapidly, none of
this was reflected in the Parliamentary Labour Party, where MPs were openly
working with the Liberals.
Threat
The Liberals saw the Labour Party as a threat to their Party and their class.
This was particularly true of the most radical and astute of the Liberals such
as Lloyd George who became president of the Board of Trade in the 1906 Liberal
Government. He warned his party that the success of the Labour Party would be
ensured by the failure of the Liberals to do anything about the social
conditions of the people. The Liberals put forward a social programme to steal
Labour’s thunder. This included the introduction of old age pensions. To
appease the trade unions they introduced the Trades Disputes Act which freed the
trade unions from being sued for financial losses during strikes. In order to
entice more Labour MPs into Parliament they introduced payment of MPs for the
first time of £400 per annum.
But even if Labour MPs felt that the Liberals’ social programme justified a
surrender of independence, the labour movement as a whole was not satisfied. The
National Insurance Act involved no redistribution of wealth – ‘the poor paid
for the poor.’ Many, especially women, were excluded from receiving pensions.
The Eight Hours Act for the coal mines was mutilated by the mine owners. Labour
introduced a ‘Work or full pay bill’ which was thrown in the Commons,
without Liberal support. But as the Liberal government tinkered with the system,
falling living standards and rising unemployment persisted, problems of the
capitalist system which the Liberals had no intention of doing anything about.
The result was reflected in the ranks of the labour movement. Between
1907-1912 the number of strike days per year in Britain rose from 1,878,6799 to
38,142,101. All the main sections of the working class were affected. Strikes
were often started unofficially and then received official support. Within the
Labour Party the Independent Labour Party, still a separate body began to
campaign to campaign against the Lib-Lab pact, saying that the Liberals were
demanding a price which Labour could no longer afford. Some of the Executive
Committee published a pamphlet entitled ‘Let us reform the Labour Party.’
There were two alternatives facing the movement they said – revolution or
revisionism – the movement desires the one, the leadership desires the other.
The mood of industrial militancy which swept Britain before 1914 was cut
across by the outbreak of World War One. Tragically the Socialist International
perished as one socialist party after another, beginning with the influential
German Social Democratic Party, voted to support their own governments in a
policy which was to lead to the futile slaughter of millions in the interests of
markets and profits.
However the war dealt a blow to laissez-faire capitalism on the home front
and strengthened the hands of politicians such as Lloyd George, who became prime
minister. Government regulation of industry increased with the government
controlling 90% of imports, railways, shipping and the munitions industry. To
secure the support of Labour, trade union officials were co-opted into
government departments, such as the Board of Trade.
Hard-line
Hard-line employers who would not make compromises to end disputes were ‘deprived
of their right to manage.’ The Labour Party joined a war-time coalition
government. This is not to say that the government was prepared to sit on the
fence and behave in a neutral fashion between employers and workers. They showed
their hand by sending troops to Glasgow in 1919 to crush the strike and uprising
in favour of the 40 hour week.
However, the consequences of this outright class collaboration of the
majority of labour leaders led to the establishment of a shop stewards movement,
which gained support, notably in the munitions industry on Clydeside. The Clyde
shop stewards opposed ‘dilution’ – the bringing into industry of women
workers at lower rates.
The labour movement emerged stronger after the war, due not only to events in
Britain but in Russia and Central Europe where revolution was toppling one
pre-war regime after another. A conference in Leeds called for the setting up of
soviets. In 1918 the Labour Party adopted Clause 4, Part 4, which committed it
to socialism.
The ruling class in Britain attempted to offset the threat of revolution,
setting up in 1917 Whitley Councils, in 1918 the Arbitration Department, and
other such institutions for the taming of the trade union movement. After 1918
Britain had a higher proportion of workers covered by national agreements than
in any other country in Europe. The working class has benefited from these
agreements, but it should be recognised that they were won from a ruling class
which was frightened and exhausted by war and which felt threatened by
revolution. Many employers were dragged kicking and screaming into these
agreements by a government which was more farsighted than them. The backlash
began when employers themselves found it necessary to set up their organisations
such as the Federation of British Industries, to assert the rights of employers
against the ‘corporatism’ of the war time government.
Government strategy strengthened the hand of reformism in the British labour
movement. Attempts by the Liberals to preserve themselves had failed and after
the war Labour had become the second largest party. By 1922 the Liberals had
lost 10% of their vote to Labour, and were down to less than 100 seats. The
Liberal Party was divided in the issues of free trade and protection. The
Lib-Lab pact had failed for the Liberals; it had served only to hold the labour
movement back for a period of time. But it had served to warn the labour
movement that it was necessary to have some control over MPs.
Conference
At the 1907 Labour Party conference it had been decided that conference had
the right to give binding instructions to their MPs. However conference
decisions were often open to interpretation. The Labour Party was then embarked
on the experience of losing its elected representatives, who once elected to
Parliament did what they like and succumbed to the pressures of the
establishment. The campaign for the right of recall of MPs and accountability
was present at the beginning of the movement. This was to become sharper as
inevitably over the next decade, Labour was to be called upon to govern.
