History of trade unions in the United Kingdom
Trade unions were legalised in 1824, when growing numbers of factory workers joined these associations in their efforts to achieve better wages and working conditions.
Workplace militancy had also manifested itself as Luddism and had been prominent in struggles such as the 1820 Rising in Scotland, in which 60,000 workers went on a general strike, which was soon crushed.
Gradually the protest spread to nearby industrial towns and villages and by the end of May the whole area was in rebellion, and for the first time in the world the red flag of revolution was flown – which has since been adopted internationally by the trades union movement and socialist groups generally.
[1] It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement,[2] with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and the South Wales Valleys.
[4][5] The strategy employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage.
Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, though there were some who became involved in insurrectionary activities, notably in the Newport Rising in November 1839.
Its success can be explained by the dwindling supply of rural labour, which in turn increased the bargaining power of unskilled workers.
[20] Some members of the trades union movement became interested in moving into the political field, and after further extensions of the voting franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates.
In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, with the intention of linking the movement to political policies.
[22] The working classes were beginning to protest politically for a greater voice in government, especially after 1908, reaching a crescendo known as the Great Unrest in 1910-1914.
The period of unrest was labelled "great" not because of its scale, but due to the level of violence employed by both the state and labourers; including deaths of strikers at the hands of police and sabotage on the part of the workers.
The long-term result was seen in the strength of waterfront organisation on the Clyde River, marked as it was by the emergence of independent locally based unions among both dockers and seamen.
[28] Trade unions gave strong support to the war effort, cutting back on strikes and restrictive practices.
It set up a system of controlling war industries, and established munitions tribunals that were special courts to enforce good working practices.
Most historians treat it as a singular event with few long-term consequences, but Martin Pugh says it accelerated the movement of working-class voters to the Labour Party, which led to future gains.
[37][38] The 1927 Act made general strikes illegal and ended the automatic payment of union members to the Labour Party.
Support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39 was widespread on the left, attendees included conservatives and liberals as well.
[45] While involvement in foreign policy went poorly, British trade unions grew dramatically in membership and power during the Second World War.
Churchill named Labour Party leader Clement Attlee as his chief deputy with primary responsibility for home affairs.
[47] According to historian Margaret Gowing, the mobilization of Britain's workforce to meet enormous wartime demands in munitions production came in three distinct phases.
In the initial phase leading up to May 1940, efforts to mobilize manpower were largely ineffective and fell short of meeting the nation's escalating labour demands.
The second phase (spring 1940 - mid-1943) witnessed a remarkably efficient organization and deployment of both men and women into essential roles across key industries and vital government services.
[48] With victory in sight, from mid-1943 onward, Britain's capacity to sustain its war effort became increasingly constrained by the shortage of additional manpower reserves to draw upon.
Overall, the government grappled with the immense challenge of effectively marshaling its human resources to meet the unprecedented labour requirements imposed by a total war.
[52] The unexpected landslide of the Labour Party in 1945 gave it a strong voice in national affairs, especially with Ernest Bevin as Foreign Minister.
[59] Major strike action by British unions during the 1978–1979 Winter of Discontent contributed to the downfall of the Labour government of James Callaghan.
Callaghan, himself a trade-unionist, had previously appealed for unions to exercise pay restraint, as part of the British Government's policies at the time to try to curb rampant inflation.
His attempt to try to limit unions to a 5% pay rise led to widespread official and unofficial strikes across the country during the winter of that year.
Scargill defied public opinion, a trait Prime Minister Thatcher exploited when she used the Ridley Plan, drafted in 1977, to defeat the strike.
[65] Blair's government also refused to repeal many of Thatcher's anti-union laws, despite the trade unions having provided most of the funding for his election campaign.
