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Sunday 26 January 2020

The 1872 Gas Workers’ Strike


The 1872 Gas Workers’ Strike

One of the issues George had taken up as Assistant Manager to his father was Sunday working. This needs to be seen not only in the context of his religious views but also in relation to the increasing industrial unrest in the gas industry. Workers were agitating on a number of issues of which Sunday working was one.  While the Company set about improving conditions for the workforce - either though direct benevolence or by means of incentives designed to 'improve' - the workers themselves had set up their own organisations to deal with problems of the workplace.

The phrase 'wholly unorganized'[1] has been used of gas workers before the agitation in 1889. But clearly this cannot refer to the many small disputes organised around details of work and often unreported nationally. Many of these may be reported in local papers, company minute books or discovered by inference elsewhere. In fact Labour disputes in the gas industry had been taking place ever since the invention of gas and gas works. An early dispute in Westminster took place in 1816 and was resolved by giving extra beer to the stokers[2] - other disputes followed and sometimes in cases in which the existence of a 'union' is mentioned.

In these disputes as elsewhere it was the stokers who were the activists - and indeed as later 'stokers' is often meant as 'retort.-house worker'.  Other groups of workers in the gas industry were without the basic industrial muscle of being indispensible to the process. There were however some disputes among specialist groups. - For example a lamplighters action in Liverpool [3]in 1853. It is likely that unions existed among the many skilled and specialist tradesmen employed in gas works - men who would have served an apprenticeship in their trade and have an affiliation to that rather than to the gas industry itself. As Livesey himself argued, disputes were less likely to occur in small works where master and men were personally known to each other[4] – and most London works in the years before 1850 would have been of this size.

As time went on and works became bigger so industrial action became more likely. In 1867 a dispute in the Chartered Company which involved stokers called “for an eight-hour day and time-and-a-half on Sundays. [5] In 1872 an organisation had been built which covered, at least, all of London. The subsequent strike covered all London, except South Met.  In the year previously stokers had asked for and received wage rises - these rises were circulated as information to other gas companies in London. South Met. was remarkable for its ability to avoid confrontation.

In August 1872 what appears to be a formal trade union approached the Board of the North London based Gas Light and Coke Company - The Chartered – and that called for a complete abolition of Sunday working. Because of this q committee made up the Chairmen of the various London Gas Companies was set up to plan joint action again union activity.[6]

Most of the London Gas companies had already tried to forestall these events by awarding large pay increase the workforce over the previous six months. In June the South Met. Board had also recommended the workers should be given double pay with their annual week’s holiday and included the telling phrase ‘in order to attack them further to the Company’. [7] in October they raised wages to those enjoyed by workers at the North London based Imperial Company’s works ‘ the men in this company’s employ have made no complaint nor have they asked for any additional pay but seeing as this company’s practice has always been to act liberally towards its workmen ‘. This pay deal included another clause which would very much foreshadow the future and some of the ideas which Livesey was to put forward. Stokers - the men who actually made the gas – were to get an extra 6d. A week if the amount of gas exceeded a certain level.[8]

It appears that at this stage that some of the South Metropolitan shareholders were not happy with George Livesey and the work he was doing in running the company.  At the October Company meeting questions were asked as to why he was being paid for doing two jobs - that of Company Secretary as well as engineer. Happily for George he seems to have had friends at the meeting who were prepared to not only stand up and praise his work but to suggest a rise in salary - which was duly granted. [9]

South Met was later asked to participate in the Conference of London gas managements but declined and thus stood alone and isolated throughout the subsequent battle between managements and union.  They said they would not attend with what could be seen as a degree of smugness and replied ‘they see no necessity to attend the conference more especially as their own men have taken no part in the agitation.[10]

Throughout the other London Gas Companies the agitation continued. Among the demands from the union the abolition Sunday working was a major item and there were a number of meetings on this specific issue. The united gas company managements continued to make preparations – to sack ringleaders and, more importantly, to join up the gas mains so that a strike in one company could be easily broken by receiving gas from another company. 
South Met appeared to stay out of this – or did they?  Livesey told the Company Board two months before the Conference that they had supplied gas to the Surrey Consumers Company ‘but because of the men’s discontent it was stopped’.  [11] This is rather at odds with a statement he made to Journal of Gas Lighting when they asked him if it was true that he disconnected the gas pipes because of pressure from the men.  He denied that such a request had been made saying ‘if such a demand had made upon mime my duty would my duty would have been perfectly clear’.[12] Which is as ambiguous a statement as you can get?  The

A major strike then began throughout the London gasworks – except, of course, in the Old Kent Road.  Livesey told the Board that he ‘”believed the men employed here would remain loyal to the company”.[13]  Throughout the rest of London the lights were dimmed to general public alarm - a situation picked up and exploited by the press, not least by the cartoonists.  The story was covered in lurid detail but reports have no mention of the South metropolitan Company which is strangely missing. 

Within a week the gas companies had identified those they saw as instigators and prosecuted them for conspiracy and the strike collapsed. 

At the next South Met Board meeting Livesey  reported that the strike had been “much more general and had caused much greater nuisance  ... than had at first sight appeared ...  at all stations of the Gas Light and Coke Company ...those of the Imperial, the Commercial and Surrey Consumers,  at the Greenwich station of Phoenix ... at Bankside  it was only partial “.  however at the Old Kent Road the men “notwithstanding great efforts on behalf of the union and the men on strike ... behaved thoroughly well and in consequence of this the Company was able to maintain a full supply and pressure too during this trying week” [14]

As the strike ended the South Met Board received lists of strikers’ names from the other companies together with a letter of thanks from the Surrey Consumers - which in the light of Liveseys comments on connection of their pipes is odd!

The gas companies continue to pursue the strikers relentlessly and many hitherto respectable workers were jailed.  The detailed story of the 1872 gas strike is little known even to gas historians but the behaviour of the gas companies and the fate of their dissident staff caused shock waves ways well beyond the trade union movement and London itself.

Henceforth it became illegal to strike in a gasworks. Soon after the strike a Royal Commission into the Labour Laws was set up and evidence given to it on the effect of gas industry disputes.  In 1875 the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act was passed with support from some elements in the trade union movement since it safeguarded the right to picket. However it effectively prevented strikes in gas works and from then on notices were posted up in gasworks to remind workers o the illegality of strike action.  The Act has never been repealed

Exactly what George Livesey's true actions and believes in this episode were will never be known.  Did he support a reduction of Sunday working as a way of keeping the workforce on his side?  Of l was his belief genuine?  Was he on the side of the other gas managers or more with his own workforce?  Ultimately, as we will see this is a question which stayed with him throughout his life and doubtless he would have argued that it was South Met's workforce which was more important.  As time went on his relationship with some of the other gas companies only appeared to worsen.

In 1875 the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act was passed which effectively prevented gas workers from taking strike action. Preceding the Act a Royal Commission on the Labour Laws was held in which the gas industry disputes were cited as evidence. It was the late 1880s before unions in the gas industry remerged.

A realistic reason why unionisation in the gas industry died for seventeen years we must remember that in those seventeen years a generation of activists had passed. In that generation memories of the trials and sentences of hard labour could be forgotten. What gas workers could not forget was that legislation actually prevented them from striking without the almost certain event of those recriminations being reinforced with the full weight of the law. To have come out without good reason would have been personally disastrous. There are always those in the workforce - probably always a majority - who will take high wages and a quiet life and put up with the conditions.

Within those seventeen years minor disputes did take place. - No doubt most of them unrecorded.  For example In 1889 William Mathieson, one of the 'loyal' men in 1889 told George Livesey; 'I am a great advocate for combination. I have always stick up for it but never for strikes since 1874 when I went out with the result I lost £3'.[15]  This was apparently an unrecorded strike at Vauxhall works on the issue on the eight hour day. Another example comes from 1878 when Phoenix Company Directors minuted a strike on the coal wharf among fillers against reductions in pay. [16]  

Livesey made much of the fact that no form of union or strike action had ever occurred in South Met. - apart from one incident in the early 1830s when it was claimed the workforce struck in support of the management.[17]   The workers, who approached Livesey in 1872 on the supply of gas to other companies, if they were not 'the union', were acting in a way which very much resembled one.

Gas Companies sometimes attempted to cut costs with wage cuts - Phoenix Directors minuted several attempts to cut workers wages.[18] Each time management said that this was inadvisable. Gas workers did not need to take action and their wages were not cut.

Mechanisation was another issue and it is said that unionisation forced management to install machinery where they had once been slow to adopt it.[19] Gas managers were happy to say why they installed machinery in the works - and blamed the unions for it. In 1899 George Livesey explained to a Select Committee[20] how mechanisation in the industry had been slow since the 1870s and he was reluctant to introduce mechanical working because he thought men should not lose their jobs through machinery. However, the new East Greenwich works contained many innovative machines and methods and, he said, unions meant that machines were not used to their fullest extent.

In 1889 workers were beginning to see traditional-work patterns changing. Technical change had moved onto the diversification of by-products. Technologists worked on ways to use by-products commercially and in the Great War switched production to chemicals for warfare.[21] Changes also took place in the way gas was sold with deices like slot meters aimed at working class customers,  the result was that more people were working outside the retort houses. Company amalgamations must also have been a factor in perception of changing roles. Small companies suddenly became part of big ones.  The change in South Met, took place in only five years while a new type of workforce was being recruited - showroom workers, meter readers, etc. it is not surprising that retort house workers should see their positions threatened

What became known as ‘The Gas Workers Union’ led by Will Thorne and the subject of much academic writing on the ‘new unions’ was founded in 1889.  The earliest entries in their minute books record that an earlier organisation had been started two years previously but had collapsed. This organisation had lasted for only two months and some of its activitists were involved in setting up its more successful sucessor. The same minute book records their activities.

The Union has been described as one of the 'new' unions founded in 1889. These unions enshrined principles seen as distinct from those in the more traditional organisations. As Pelling[22] says they were 'catering very largely for unskilled and poorly paid workers the - new unions tended to have a low entrance fee and subscriptions and depended not on benefits but on aggressive strike tactics to win concessions .. they were willing to recruit workers without distinction of type of employment'.   

These unions have been seen as more likely to use political action to gain their ends. The Union has been described as having socialist connections and much made of Will Thorne's apparent friendship with Eleanor Marx[23]. The union was initially based around works in the East End of London and particular the Gas Light and Coke Company's works at Beckton. The the first Executive have addresses in East London and Essex. Will Thorne is not included in this list but the foundation of the Union is described in some detail in his biography, published many years later and closely following their minute books.

The first records of the Union illustrate its activities in London and in the immediate surrounding suburbs - delegate meetings were held from works in this area. Activity quickly spread to other parts of the country and major disputes took place in several provincial cities and smaller disputes elsewhere. This activity has been widely documented and was reported at the time in both the trade and national press.

The organisation was based mainly round the call for the eight hour shift system - although local disputes covered many variations on this. Journal of Gas Lighting said that many gas managements were taken by surprise and that the eight hour day was unknown to than.[24]  This is  hard to believe that they did not know about this subject which had been widely discussed in the trade for many years.

Managements all over Britain conceded the eight hour system to their workers, for whatever reasons. The union had grown extremely quickly and workers in many gas plants throughout the country had been recruited and organised. Strike action continued throughout the summer and autumn of 1889 in several provincial works.  Once the eight hour day had been established in most works the Union began to organise around the equally old and tangled question of Sunday working. Requests for double pay for this began to be put to managements. The Union leadership then began to ask for the right to organise and recruit in works and also for the right to restrict entry to the trade by means of refusing to work with those who were not union members.

The issue of public control in the gas industry was a very real one. Managements were aware that muncipalisation was something which was being put forward by local authorities throughout the country. In London the newly elected London County Council had already commissioned reports on the public ownership of gas and water. Such moves were supported by politicians who often had the generalised support of union  leaders - and, presumably, the membership. It was not unknown for local politicians to speak on the platforms of striking gas workers.

 George Livesey was concerned with 'partnership' and had already related ownership to this through the sales of shares to people identified as 'consumers' and he generally put forward the view that control of the industry should be by those involved in it. Livesey described the Union as an 'outside' body which wanted to get illegitimate control of the industry. In wanting control over workplace practice the Union was exercising a demand for a right which he thoughy it should not have had. He saw the union subverting his workforce, not as a legitimate grouping of South Met. workers seeking to control their own working conditions. , Nevertheless it was Livesey who forced this argument on control while union activists merely referred in speeches to control through the London County Council; he asked what the reasons were behind specific demands of the union.


[1] Hobsbawn, Labouring Men
[2] Everard. History of the Gas Light and Coke Co.
[3] Harris. Development of the gas supply on North Merseyside
[4][4] Livesey. Profit Sharing. A vindication.
[5] Everard
[6] See Matthews Thesis. Which covers the whole strike in a great deal of detail.
[7] SMDM 17TH June 1872
[8]SMDM 30TH October 1872
[9] SMDM 8TH October 1872
[10] SMDM 9TH December 1872
[11] SMDM 12TH October 1872
[12] JGL 17th December 1872
[13] SMDM 2nd December 1872
[14] SMDM 9th December 1872
[15] Interview document
[16]Phoenix Director’s Minutes 13th July 1878
[17] This was an episode where staff were said to strike in support of George Holworthy Palmer, the Engineer and Manager, who had been sacked following a dispute with the board.  Exactly what happened is far from clear, beer seems to have been involved.
[18] Phoenix Directors Minutes  13th July 1978
[19] Hobsbawn
[20]  Select Committee on the Metropolitan Gas Companies
[21] Co-partnership- Journal =.Supplement 1921
[22] Pelling. History of British Trade Unions
[23] Thorne. My Life’s Battles
[24] Quoted by Hobsbawm: British Gas Workers

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