In September 1931,
the sailors of the Atlantic Fleet of the British Royal Navy organised an
insurrection against the government in response to pay cuts and conditions of
employment. Known as the Invergordon Mutiny, it is one of the historical
examples of the power of class-based action in response to attacks on living
standards.
The story of
the mutiny is also important in that it gives historical testimony to the
particular character of the armed forces as part of the state. The concessions
prised from the government by the actions of the sailors are illustrative of
the significant role that ‘armed bodies of men’ play as guarantors of the
prevailing system. In consequence, the government rushed to placate the sailors
and grant their demands in order to prevent this insurrectionary outburst
spreading to the country as a whole.
Capitalist Crisis
The context of
the Invergordon Mutiny was the crisis of world capitalism, which struck in 1929
and was signalled by the famous Wall Street Crash. In Britain, the
1929 General Election had put the Labour Party in government, under the
leadership of Ramsay MacDonald. In contrast to today’s Blair’s and Brown’s of
New Labour, he actually went around talking about socialism; though in
substance, MacDonald, and other Labour leaders such as Phillip Snowden, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the General Secretary of the National Union of
Railwaymen, Jimmy Thomas, were not prepared to lead the fight for socialism. Their
philosophy of reform within the system inevitably led to counter-reform when
faced with the demands of capital to reduce the standard of living of working
people, as the crisis threatened profits.
Bowing to this
pressure, the leaders in the Labour Party proposed wide-ranging cuts in the
summer of 1931. This included reducing unemployment benefit, the introduction
of a means test, and the cutting of between ten and twenty per cent of the wages
of all those employed by the State. The problem for MacDonald was that many
Labour Party MPs, including a few in the Cabinet, were not prepared to stomach
such an open attack on the working class. In response to this, MacDonald
undertook secret negotiations with the leader of the Conservative Party,
Stanley Baldwin. The purpose of this was to plot the formation of a government
of collaboration between the right wing of the Labour Party, the Conservatives
and Liberals. The ‘national’ government was formed in August 1931 and the cuts
were to go ahead.
The response of
the state to any resistance by the working class to these cuts was to implement
a policy of repression. Earlier in the same month that the mutiny broke out,
the police had already brutally attacked a peaceful demonstration of the
unemployed in Parliament Square.
The press, ignoring the unprovoked actions of the police, spun a media campaign
highlighting the arrest of protestors as ‘riotous demonstrators’. In truth, the
working class were resisting and responding; the months of July through to September
had seen a series of demonstrations and meetings, but no riots. Working people
were becoming more conscious, and were questioning the logic of a system that
had thrown millions onto the dole queues.
The North Atlantic Fleet
It was in this
context of a raised consciousness of the working class, that the sailors of the
North Atlantic Fleet were themselves faced with the massive pay cuts demanded
by the government.
During early
September the fleet had been out on sea manoeuvres, and as part of this
activity the main battleships and cruisers temporarily docked at Invergordon, a
small deep-water port off the north west coast
of Scotland.
The government cuts had been announced whilst the ships had been away. The
sailors were to lose one quarter of their basic pay.
The immediate
response of the sailors was to organise meetings, which started at sea, and
began the process where eventually leaders of the mutiny emerged. However, it
was the docking at Invergordon and the chance of the crews to go ashore
together that facilitated their ability to meet and discuss in larger numbers.
Following the naval
tradition where half the crew of a ship went ‘off duty’, divided between the
port and starboard watches, rumours soon spread amongst the starboard watch
sailors about a meeting being held at a local football playing field. This
first meeting demonstrated all the signs of working people developing a
consciousness of their position. There were arguments to ‘wait and see what
happens’; others raised the issue of unity and disunity, because some naval
ratings were likely to receive less cuts than the others were; above all, they
were debating what type of action could be taken.
Aware that
they, as the starboard watch, only represented half the crew, it was resolved
to have a general meeting the next day, where the other half of the crew, the
port watch, could participate. It was arranged that key people from the
starboard watch would also be present. In the meantime the government, through
broadcasts by the BBC, announced that the cuts that would take place, stating
it would be a shilling a day for each sailor. However, the Admiralty and
Officers did not confirm the cuts. This created a situation of uncertainty and
demonstrated a dithering by the Admiralty, which in turn accentuated the
antagonism felt by the sailors. Not for the first time in the course of class
struggle the crisis of the system also affected the behaviour of the ruling
elite, which in turn became part of the dialectic of the unfolding struggle.
Mutiny and Rebellion
The key meeting
took place on the Sunday afternoon, with some of the leaders of the mutiny
emerging. One of these, Len Wincott, made key points in his speech: the pay cut
would drastically affect not only the sailors, but also wives and families who
depended on their wages. He argued that the sailors were being made to pay for
the crisis, while at the same time the government was quite happy to spend tens
of thousands of pounds burning oil in North Atlantic sea manoeuvres. He also
reminded the sailors that the officer class was living well at the taxpayers’ expense,
with thousands of pounds spent on luxuries such as captains’ personal cars,
wine and booze parties. His suggestion was to cut these out: not attack sailors
and their families. The solution, Wincott argued, was to fight the cuts by
‘refusing duties’, or what we call a strike.
The meeting
resolved to set up a committee, involving representatives from each of the
ships, with each ship having its own meeting to agree to the action to be
taken.
The sailors’
committee met for the first time on Monday September 14th. But
before the meeting could start, an armed patrol attempted to break it up. The
officer in charge proved powerless, as the committee and other sailors united
together to push them out of the meeting and guard it against further
intimidation. At this meeting the sailors resolved to determine whether to
strike or not. The method chosen, as so often happens in class struggle,
emerged by the men drawing on their own traditions of struggle and organisation,
sometimes long forgotten in the shadow of history. They decided to hold a
meeting in each ship; if that ship agreed to join the rebellion, they would assemble
on the ship’s focsles (the open forward deck) at breakfast, and, as way of a
signal, begin cheering. This method directly mirrored and was consciously drawn
from the action taken by the sailors of the Spithead Mutiny at the Nore in
1797. (See The Naval Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore)
The mood was
now militant and growing by the hour, as an awareness of their own strength and
determination grew. As the men came off shore and headed back to the ships, a
few started began to sing a chorus of the ‘Red Flag’; they were soon joined by
the hundreds of sailors who filled the returning boats. The officer class were
cowed.
As the next
morning came, only one ship failed to join in, the battleship Repulse, who that
morning had steamed out to sea. However, across the harbour the ringing sound
of cheering could be heard from the other ships: the mutiny had begun.
Ruling Class Tactics
The initial
reaction of the Admiral in charge of the fleet was to offer words of sympathy
regarding the pay cuts. He sent his officers around to try to weaken the
resolve of the men, arguing that he would look at individual cases of hardship.
The sailors, however, rejected this attempt at divide and rule.
By the end of
the next day, the committee of sailors had drafted a series of demands. The men
demanded a reversal of the pay cut and said that they would continue to refuse
to serve under the new rates of pay. These were circulated to the men, to the
Daily Herald (then a labour movement oriented paper), and also sent to London via one of the
officers.
Concerned with
the developing situation, the Cabinet held an emergency meeting. They issued their public response through the
Admiralty, ordering that the ships move away from Invergordon back to their
home ports. They also promised to investigate hardships and that there would be
no victimisation. At the same time, should the sailors refuse, they threatened to
wield the big stick of the Naval Discipline Act.
This order was
designed to disperse the fleet and weaken the resolve of the men, dividing the
fleet and putting them once again under the command of officers as they sailed.
If the men were to win, it was necessary to resist this demand and continue the
united action. This was a crucial time in the struggle, as a series of other tactics,
in combination with the Admiralty statements, were used to break the men’s
resolve. Officers made it known that they had ordered the Marines to load
ammunition into their rifles; other officers and non-commissioned officers were
used to break the strike and ‘get up steam’, preparing the ships to sail. At
the same time, senior officers toured the ships, urging the men back to work and
spreading stories that the other ships were returning to normal working. Under
these conditions, those men who were less militant and who were wavering argued
that the promise of a return to home ports
and no victimisation was a success of the action they had taken and that the
fleet had ‘shown our resolve’. It was a compromise and an argument that
succeeded.
Aftermath and Victimisation
But once the
ships were back in their home ports, the Admiralty (as in the case of Spithead in the past) broke its promises of no
victimisation. They singled out over thirty of the leading militants, ordering
them off ship and sending them to be interrogated in barracks. Following the
election of the National government in November, these militants, along with
some hundred other sailors, were summarily discharged from the Navy.
The split in
the Labour Party, headed by MacDonald (who formed the National government in
alliance with the Tories) and the lack of a viable alternative leadership
prepared to fight on clear class policies, left the labour movement momentarily
rudderless. In the face of mass unemployment, it would be several years before
the working class began to reassert itself.
The militants,
radicalised by their experience, went on to join the Communist Party, which for
many workers stood as the symbol of resistance against capitalism. However,
this too was a false dawn, as the British Communist Party, along with others
internationally, was in the firm grip of Stalinist policies, which through a
succession of policy twists and turns would lead to the rise of Nazis in Germany and the
defeat of the Spanish Revolution. And eventually to World War.
The sailors of
the Royal Navy, along with other members of the working class, suffered
hardships throughout the 1930s: a consequence of the continuation of capitalism
and the need for successful militant struggle.
