In November 1916 the Sheffield Workers Committee was formed when members of the ASE there went on strike against the conscription of a local engineer.
The government brought the strike to an end by exempting craft union members such as ASE engineers from military service.
[3] Two months after the formation of the committee, it merged with a movement for the amalgamation of engineering unions, which had been founded in 1915 but had achieved little during the war.
[4] Gallacher, Murphy, Ramsay and Jack Tanner represented the group at the Second Congress of the Comintern, later in the year, but affiliation was not permitted, on the grounds that the organisation was not a political party.
Instead, in September, a compromise was agreed: the movement would affiliate to the new Red International of Labour Unions, while individual members who also held membership of the new Communist Party of Great Britain would come under the discipline of that group.