South Met. Gas the 1889 strike part 1

The Gas Workers Union was founded in 1889 - and their first minutes record that an earlier organisation started two years previously had collapsed. This attempt at union organisation in east London had lasted for only two months and some of its activitists were involved in setting up its more successful sucessor. The same minute book was used to record their activities.

The Gas Workers Union has been described as one of the 'new' unions of 1889 which enshrined principles distinct from those in more traditional organisations. Pelling says they 'catered very largely for unskilled and poorly paid workers - 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' . The Union has been described as having socialist connections and much made of Will Thorne's relationship with Eleanor Marx.

The union was initially based around works to the east of London and particular the Gas Light and Coke Company's works at Beckton. The addresses of the first Executive are in east London and Essex. Although Will Thorne is not in the list the foundation of the Union is described in his biography,  which was published many years later and closely follows the minute books.

The first records of the Union described activities in London and the immediate surrounding suburbs with delegates attending meetings from works in this area. Activity quickly spread to other parts of the country and major disputes took place in provincial cities. This has all been widely documented and was widely reported at the time in the national press. Organisation was based mainly round the call for the eight hour shift system - although locally there were variations.

Hobsbawm said that many gas managements were taken by surprise and that the eight hour day was unknown to than. It would indeed seem that gas managements were unprepared for industrial action although it is hard to believe that they did not know about the eight hour day - which had been widely discussed in the trade press for many years.

Managements all over Britain conceded the eight hour system to their workers. The union had grown extremely quickly and gas workers 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 the Union began to organise around the equally old and tangled question of Sunday working. Requests for double pay on Sundays began to be put to managements. Union leadership began to ask for the right to organise in works and for the right to restrict entry to the trade by 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 an idea 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. Local politicians sometimes spoke on the platforms of striking gas workers.

George Livesey was concerned with 'partnership' and had already linked ownership to this through the sales of shares to 'consumers' and he said that control of the industry should be by those involved in it.   He described the Union as an 'outside' body which wanted to get illegitimate control of the industry and that the Union was making a demand for a right which it should not have had. Livesey saw the union subverting his workforce, not as a legitimate grouping of South Met. workers seeking to control their own working conditions. In Livesey's eyes the legitimate workers organisation was one set up by management.

It was however Livesey who made the argument on control of the industry while union activists merely referred to control through the London County Council.

In June 1889 managers at individual London has works were approached on the subject of the eight hour day by Union representatives.  Delegates from the Old Kent Road and Rotherhithe works reported to Gas Workers Union delegate meetings on their approaches to South Met.  At Rotherhithe they had been received favourably by management but they were told that it was not thought eight hours would be possible at the moment - because 'men were scarce'. At Old Kent Road things were had been encouraging - they were received favourably and told they must act in a straightforward manner.  Delegates from other companies had sometimes done less well - at Poplar works they had been 'talked to like a lot of babies in long clothes'.

On 19th June the South Met. Board minuted that a deputation of men had attended the old offices to discuss petitions concerning the eight hour day and on 26th June a notice went up at the various works of the company announcing possible changes in the shift system and asking men at each works to decide among themselves which system - eight or twelve hours - would be preferred by a majority of men there. The Company said that working practices would be made as universal as possible throughout the company although this might mean lost privileges at some works (the company was still rationalising working practices between the three amalgamated companies). It was also made a condition that regular men would be required to give a month's notice.

The socialist paper Justice reported on this discussion at South Met. as 'crowned with success'- and noted that men working the eight hour day would also receive an unasked for pay rise.

Throughout the rest of the summer and early autumn of 1889 the union continued its programme of local meetings - including some within South Met.'s area. Attention was however focussed on the concurrent dock strike. In gas works the Union concentrated on recruitment - Livesey later reported to his Proprietors that during this time 'a determination was shown to persuade, and if that failed to compel, every man in the Company's service to join the Union;

On 5th September Livesey said that the Union had written to the Company saying that 'in effect' only Union members would be allowed to work.   Following this some stokers were sacked at Vauxhall and a mass meeting of retort house workers was held there and, before a meeting could be arranged ,Livesey said, strike notices were handed in at most of the works. However, - "Mr. Livesey stated his willingness to recognise the Union and apologised for some remarks made in a speech of his."

Labour Elector published an agreement signed by both management and Union at South Met. It stated that the Company would not interfere with Union men by consequence of their membership and that in the same way the Gas Workers Union would not interfere with non-Union men. This agreement was hailed as a victory but in its very next issue Labour Elector had to admit that 'in the excitement of the moment'  an important clause had been omitted from the agreement - this being the clause giving the Union rights of recruitment and rights to refuse to work with non-union labour. Without it the agreement was toothless and it is incredible that any negotiating body did not notice that they had signed an agreement which did not include it. 

Livesey had appeared to agree to recognise the Union but in future he would have no more dealings with them and made preparations to confront them. Despite this hollow victory Will Thorne hailed 'the re-instatement of the men at Vauxhall as a demonstration of the strength of the union. On 11 the September the Directors minuted that: 'the above named Union or its members cannot be recognised and that it will not be allowed to interfere with the conduct of the company's business also that non-union men will be preferred and will be protected against intimidation'. They then began to make preparations for a seige in anticipation of a future strike.

Livesey later reported to the Proprietors "at every station, buildings available for sleeping accommodation were inspected and arrangements were made to supplement any deficiency with Humphery's iron buildings and in addition six steamers were provisionally chartered - a contract was made with Messrs. McWhirter to provide bedsteads and bedding - advertisements were printed and the Chairman called upon the Chief Comissioner of Police". Labour Elector noted carpenters and joiners fitting up beds and a dining room, and agents being despatched to different parts of the country to procure men.

The Union continued to hold mass meetings and demonstrations. South London Press reported, among others, a meeting on Peckham Rye with banners from Rotherhithe and Bankside in support of the dock strike. Meetings in the South Met.'s area were mostly held on Peckham Rye or in Deptford Broadway - there is little about meetings in Greenwich or near the giant East Greenwich works. Some meetings were held in Woolwich but these were to attract workers from the gas works in the Government owned works in the Arsenal - the two private Woolwich gas works acquired by South Met. had long since been closed down.

In early October the Union began to press for double time on Sundays and on 4th November representatives of gas company managements from all over London met Union members for discussions at the Cannon Street Hotel. George Livesey did not attend but his brother Frank - who was Manager at the Old Kent Road works - went, but is not reported as having spoken. The meeting proceeded to some measure of agreement - both sides saw the need for recreation for the workforce and agreed that technical problems caused difficulties in maintaining a reduced workforce on a day when demand was peaking.  The Union representatives agreed to ask their membership to consider a compromise for some reduced hours and double pay in return for a shorter working day and the meeting broke up to re-convene a week later.

Meanwhile - and the exact date is a matter for discussion - Livesey introduced his profit sharing scheme.

He gave, in later years, various dramatic accounts of this. He had been in Eastbourne, with his wife, and thought to walk the last stretch back to the works through New Cross. Walking on Pepys Hill, and thinking what a fine public park it would make, he reached the works and was told that the union had given them until 4 p.m. for an answer.  'I had not thought out anything and I cannot explain how or why this thing came to be but in a quarter of an home on half a sheet of paper the scheme was set out in writing and when the Board met was submitted to them.

The first time the scheme is mentioned in the Company Minutes is on 6th November and Will Thorne knew all about it at the re-called Cannon Street Conference on 11th November. Three years later Livesey told the Royal Commission of Labour that it was introduced on 30th October - although a Board meeting that day did not minutes anything about it. This discrepancy over the date of the announcement of the scheme is crucial if we are to determine whether or not Livesey introduced his scheme with or without the Board's knowledge.

As we have seen Livesey had nourished such plans for many years and had always been thwarted by the Board.  Did he use the impending strike to get his pet scheme through in a time of crisis? If it is to be argued that the scheme was introduced only to strike break why should he have brought it in behind the backs of his Board?

R.A. Church puts forward the standard argument in Profit Sharing and Labour Relations in England in the Nineteenth Century . He claimed that the scheme was set up -to forestall a strike for higher wages. This theory is echoed by Perks in Real Profit Sharing.  Higher wages were not an issue in the strike so this is not an explaination. 

Outbidding the Union is a dangerous game and Livesey was a skilled negotiator who would be aware of the dangers of escalation - he wanted to be rid of the union, not to bargain with them.  It was already being said of him 'we only had to ask for gold watches and he would have given them'.

Clegg, Fox and Thompson are more explicit in a History of British Trade Unions since 1889 . They describe the strike in their chapter called "The Counter-Attack Begins". This is about employers who answered tough strike action with tough retaliation. The plans which Livesey made for strikebreaking are outlined and it is said "Livesey brushed aside attempts at mediation". Although they imply that the Company was determined to fight the Union whatever the circumstances or results. The profit sharing scheme is said to be a potential strike breaker - but not why this was.

Bristow's article on Profit Sharing, Socialism and Labour Unrest enlarges on this argument but again does not attempt to attempt to analyse the situation any further. He quotes Livesey's statement to the Royal Commission of Labour; 'it was to retain or to obtain the allegiance of the working man which was fast passing away ... under the influence of the Gas Workers Union" . Each historian puts forward a fairly simple view of the profit sharing scheme - they do not explain why Livesey should have wanted to introduce it - and the all important question - why this scheme now?

Joseph Melling wrote a very detailed account of South Met. and welfare benefits but without reference to Livesey's previous interest in profit sharing schemes. He thought that the strike was provoked deliberately by Livesey - "Livesey and his fellow directors intended to press the profit sharing scheme as only one of the whole range of carefully planned strategies ..... .......... the immediate effect of the proposals as the Board had foreseen, was to divide the workforce and isolate the solid body of activists '. He also makes another point; that strike breaking arrangements were well in hand before the scheme was announced. He says that once these were completed ''Livesey proposed to use the scheme to 'conciliate' the men'.  This puts both strike and scheme in a different perspective - the scheme used as a mechanism to divide the workers and against which some elements must react. "The Gas Workers Union would have no official status (on the Co-partnership Committee) and when the Company refused to withdraw the scheme the Union was forced to declare a strike".

This theory of carefully orchestrated plotting does at least try to answer the central question. However, it still ignores Livesey's many years of pushing profit sharing schemes. Would somebody who had spent the past twenty years in advocating a system use it in order to strike break?

The Board had always been against these ideas of Livesey's. Years later Co-partnership Journal reported on how he had put a scheme forward at some time in the past and been told by a Director 'that he had been in favour of the co-operative principle in his younger days but had altered his opinion'  and by another 'that it would make the Board the fifth wheel of the coach and this would not do".  However that the composition of the Board had changed since then - Livesey himself was a member. Gradually the older directors were being changed and replaced with Livesey's chosen supporters. 

What did Livesey hope would come out of the scheme? He could not have thought that it would immediately stop all strike action. He would have known that any such scheme would only be successful on the long term.  Only the agreements could have acted in the short term. These agreements had to be signed by those workers who were participating in the profit sharing scheme and men had to sign to say they would give a month's notice - preventing mass handings in of notices. Livesey himself said in later years that even this would not stop a determined body of men from going ahead and leaving work.

On 18th November a meeting was held with delegates from all South Met's works to explain the profit sharing scheme to those men who had already signed the agreements.   At it Livesey said 'to speak quite plainly the Company intends to have some protection out of it.' This statement is the most explicit one making it clear to the men that the signing of the agreements was built into the scheme in order to persuade men not to strike. The profit sharing bonus conditional on this.

'To quote Melling Livesey had switched the argument with 'brilliant strategy' from one about pay and hours to one about profit sharing and bonuses" . In fact the argument had switched to one about individual liberty, control in the workplace and ultimately about control of the industry. It was on these lines that the discussion continued on into the dispute and it was on these issues that the strike was called. Does this mean that Livesey deliberately provoked the strike?

Livesey told the 'loyal' workers at the 'interview' - 'the public will think that it is better for us to have to put up with some inconvemence or a short supply of gas for a few days than to have the price permanently raised'. So far as the Union had asked only for what the Company had been prepared to give - eight hours and Sunday overtime - but they were now trying to control recruitment in the workplace and this Livesey was not prepared to allow. By bringing up the old issue of price Livesey was also touching on the question of control.

A week after the scheme had been announced the union said that they would 'enforce Rule XVI' which concerned union recognition. The company replied that the Union could not be recognised and their 'own men' would be preferred. The press began to report increased protest meetings.

 

References

Gas Workers Union, Minutes 1889 - 1913

H.Pelling. A History of British Trade Unionism.
Will Thome. My Lifes Battles

E.J.Hobsbawm. Labouring Men.

South Met. Director's Minutes

Justice

South Met. Directors Report and Accounts December

Labour Elector

Star

South London Press

Gas Workers Union papers

Co-partnership Journal

R. Perks. Real Profit Sharing.

Hugh Clegg, Fox & Thompson. History of British Trade Unions Since 1889.

E. Bristow. Profit Sharing, Socialism and Labour Unrest

J. Melling. Industrial Strife and Business Welfare Philosophy.

Interview

Times

J. Saville. Trade Unions and Free Labour

Free Labour Gazette

Gas World

Daily News

Daily Chronicle

 

 

South Met - welfare before 1889

In South Met. Gas Co. a superannuation scheme had been set up before 1870 - not in 1890 as Perks suggests - together with a sick benefit scheme and some sort of holiday provision with pay. It is likely that they were instigated by Thomas Livesey - both he and members of the Board were strong Christians with a belief that men could be improved by being encouraged to manage provision for their own benefit and futures.

 

Gas Light and Coke Co. had had sick benefit schemes since the 1820s - this and other benefits are outlined by Everard in the history of that Company. South Met’s records of its earliest sick benefit scheme are scanty, but in 1856 the Director's minuted that a sum of £20 was to be given to the sick benefit fund. A memoir in Co-partnership Journal in 1905 mentions a scheme which was set up in 1842 - two years after Thomas Livesey had come to South Met.

The South Met. superannuation scheme set up in 1855 was on the initiative of Thomas Livesey whose 'exertions in the matter' Gas and Water Times 'rejoiced with'. Rule Number One of this scheme said that it was to 'provide a minimum pension in the event of incapacity in old age, not a competancy to retire on' and indeed Gas and Water Times reported that the directors hoped that their 'donations would be the foundation of a superstructure' That is the Company was giving a start to the scheme which they hoped the men would continue and manage for themselves. It was not to make them dependent.

In 1860 a Widows and Orphans Scheme was set up which provided money to educate orphans of dead employees and to provide a pension for widows. It must be stressed however that other companies had similar schemes which were organised with the same view to independence among the workforce. For instance in 1878 the Phoenix Company gave the Bankside Works Sick Fund £15 to help it cope with payments during an epidemic of flu, although in normal times such funds were thought to be self-supporting and not relying on donations.

In 1860 Journal of Gas Lighting published an article on 'Sick Funds for Workmen' They argued that the men should be encouraged to run their own funds 'to render themselves independent of eleemosynary in their seasonal affliations and countless troubles that flesh is heir to'. South Met. had a record of consulting its men before setting such schemes up. When the history of the superannuation scheme was written in Co-partnership Journal in 1905 it was recalled that George Livesey was at the meeting, held on the 1st December 1855. The workmen then had unanimously agreed with the scheme and once the shareholders' consent had been agreed at a Company Meeting the scheme proceeded. Officers did not however have such a scheme - the meeting held for them had turned the scheme down and it was many years before they agreed to participate. Such workers meetings were called by South Met. management on several occasions and are echoed in the 'Interview' called by George Livesey to explain the 1889 profit sharing scheme.

 

Where South Met. was most innovative, in all probability, was in the field of paid holidays for its workers. Although the spread of paid holidays cannot be quantified they were probably very rare in this period. Authors of works - like A View from the Peak - concerning working conditions at a later period than the 1870s assume that paid holidays for working people were unknown until the 1930s. Although there is no originating minute for the holiday scheme in 1872 the Directors minuted that regular workmen should get 38 two weeks pay with a weeks holiday when it was taken.

 

In 1881 following amalgamation with Surrey Consumers and Phoenix Companies, the Directors of the new Joint Board minuted an attempt to rationalise holiday provision throughout the three companies: 'both companies had had particular holidays which were given with double pay .. at Christmas .... and Easter. South Met.... gives in addition one week's holiday during the summer with double pay for workmen who have been 12 months in the regular service of the Company ... Vauxhall gives.. a day's holiday excursion, clothes and gratuities during the year'.

What is apparent is that Phoenix and Surrey Consumers had provided gifts in kind to workers whereas South Met. had given only holidays. The minute continues to abolish all gratuities and gifts and extends the South Met. practice of holidays with pay to all workmen with over a year's service. Abolished with the clothes and joints of meat at Christmas were all excursions and beanoes. This brings out an important strain in the South Met. ethic - tempeance. South Met’s welfare provision was austere and designed to make workers help themselves. Holidays with pay had the rider that the holiday must be taken at the seaside or in the country - and this was deliberately designed to keep the worker out of the Old Kent Road pubs and with his family. Gifts were charitable and therefore demoralising - beanoes by their nature involve drink.

South Met. was not the only gas company that sought to 'improve' its workers lives. In the late 1850s Phoenix laid on lectures for the men - but they only attended in ones and twos, even when the lectures weren't religious. But they did use the dining room. the washing facilities and the 'lobbies' equipped with papers and games materials.

It was practical help which gained a response rather than 'improvement'. Journal of Gas Lighting quoted increasing numbers of instances of this type of provision in the 1880s. In the South Met. Livesey's management style from the 1870s was aimed beyond practical applications to improve working conditions to methods of manipulation of the men to make them help themselves.

George Livesey had been a temperance advocate and activist since boyhood. He had 'signed the pledge' at the age of fifteen while involved in a temperance organisation which had been set  by workers at the Old Kent Road Works. This step which identified him with the cause of the temperance movement was at the level at which the ordinary workers of Peckham were also identified. He became a founder member of the London Band of Hope Union and its president in the year before his death. Throughout his life he was a Sunday School teacher and a worker and benefactor to whatever church he currently attended throughout various home moves.

 

Canon Ransford, his friend and sometime Vicar of St. Jude's, Herne Hill, said that Livesey gave a tenth of his income to the church. Outside of this he patronised and supported temperance organisations around South London - his will lists several such charities to which he left money. He was known as a local philanthropist - in the 1860s he had been involved in the setting up of a temperance working men's club in Peckham and in the late 1880s gave a public library to the Vestry of Camberwell to be free to the working people of the area

It was an extension of such who had 'great claims on it' philanthropy which led him, before his fathers death in the early 1870s, to be approached by the Lord's Day Observance Society, on the matter of Sunday working in the industry. Gas was a continuous process industry which naturally involved Sunday working.

 

John Gritton of the Lord's Day Observance Society approached the British Association of Gas Managers to tackle this problem and as result Livesey and a group of associates initiated a survey among gas companies to discover the extent of interest in abolishing Sunday working. The Committee reported, in due course, that the number of replies was not as great as they would have wished - there were  Fifty four of these said that they had turned their attention to the subject of Sunday labour and twenty four said that they had not been able to reduce it. Nevertheless seven had reduced it considerably and four slightly. The Committee recommended that a plan should be worked out to show how Sunday working could be reduced or abolished. This was to be done by means of technical innovation - to be worked out by Robert Morton, Livesey's friend who was at that time with Phoenix.

Along with benevolence in this matter were ideas of economy - no pay would be given to those who did not work on Sundays.  However little this survey demonstrated, the committee which undertook it included men who, although in the early 1870s were still in middle management, by the 1890s were Chairmen of Boards. In the intervening years they institued many reforms in their own companies. Both Livesey and Robert Morton set themselves to try and find a technical solution to the problems of gas manufacture and storage so that Sunday working could be abolished altogether. Livesey always attempted to build incentives into whatever provision was set by him and by 1889 a whole range of such measures had been  introduced. Incentive payments for good timekeeping, and forms of competition between gangs of workmen to produce high quantities of gas, are examples. Even Will Thorne, writing in his biography, remarks with pride how his gang at the Old Kent Road was always able to secure the bonus payment for high yield.

In instituting co-partnership Livesey said that the men's interest must be captured if they were to do a good job - men with no interest would be disaffected and the company would suffer. These payments were gauged to that interest and part of a package of deals calculated to persuade the workers of the mutual interest between Conpany and themselves. Joseph Melling described South Met. as paternalistic before 1889. He defined this paternalism in two ways - either as the concerns of the employer for the employee in a small industry where everybody is well known to everybody else or that found in large companies which are concerned to regularise welfare benefits for their employees. He does not say into which category he puts South Met. and it would seem that South Met. was different from both of these definitions. South Met. was a medium sized gas company. If we accept Livesey's statement of 'old friendly feelings', which existed then we must also put those in context of regularised benefit and a workforce of above a hundred.

In his account of Paternalism in Early Victorian England, D. Roberts has described it as 'authoritarian, hierarchic, organic and pluralistic' in its view of society. This is the world of the 'squire and his relations'. Early paternalism in South Met. was guided by a strong religious instinct in both management and board. Thomas Livesey was known in Peckham as a local churchman and a supporter of local charities and schools. His obituary in South London Press described him as a 'man without an enemy' and as a man determined to do good works he was able to interact with likeminded elements on the Board.

At Proprietors' meetings the view was put forward in the 1850s that it was the Christian duty of the Board to improve its workers lives by sharing with them the benefits brought about by more prosperous working by the Company. It was hoped that at the same time workers might be encouraged to become practising Christians. Management explained that they had tried to persuade the men to take Sunday as an, unpaid, holiday so that they could go to church; however workers had not gone, they had hung about the works. The Board considered this to be a moral problem - they could not force men to go to church but on the other hand a compulsory holiday might lead men into the pub rather than the church. A solution was found for a while by holding church services in the works - luckily the works was partly built on the site of a demolished church - and work was suspended so that men could go.

In 1858 a stoker writing to Journal of Gas Lighting pointed out that Phoenix gave one Sunday a month off with pay to 'these men of fire'. This correspondent too is concerned with the right to have  time off to go to church. George Livesey while concerned about religious duties, was also concerned to 'help' workers to 'better' themselves. In this he concurred with the Charity Organisation Society's ideas and in the 1890s contributed to a book formulated by them in which he tried to make the connection that industrial partnership was a means by which distress among working people could be allieviated by giving some of them a chance to save. He attacked those who he thought set up schemes of profit sharing and welfare work which were presented as more of a gift than a stimulus.

 

In 1901 Livesey wrote with reference to the Lever system of 'Prosperity Sharing' - 'the free gift of the employer given or withheld at his absolute discretion as a favour ... tends rather to degrade than to elevate the workman .. to undermine his independence, to keep him under tutelage and to lower his manhood ...is it not after all 'better to provide opportunities, facilities and encouragement for the improvement of the position of the workmen and then leave them  to work out their own. industrial salvation' This would seem to be a very clear and precise definition of what both Livesey and South Met. were about. It shows the brand of paternalism which they were promoting and separates them very consciously from undirected benevolence.

 

It will be shown in due course the: extent to which the South Met, profit sharing scheme was consciously designed to manipulate the workforce to a model. The roots of this model can be found in the religious aspirations of the Company in the 1850s "in their attempts to mould their workmen into true believers. If, as Livesey said, his view of paternalism was to encourage people to act for themselves, .then how is this concept to be defined? In Paternalism and Social Policy, Albert Weale is concerned with defining paternalism in terms of government policies, nevetheless his definition is very relevant to Livesey: 'a paternalistic policy is one in which the government renders a self-regarding action less eligible for a citizen with the intention of benefitting the citizen in question. '

 

Thus paternalism is defined in terms of what it prevents people from doing 'for their own good' rather than in what it gives. Its essence is that it prevents freedom of action. In this way, as we shall see with reference to the profit sharing scheme, Livesey was paternalistic in that he' directed his employees actions away from the union and into ways of saving money by means of which they had little choice - but were undoubtedly financially, and in Livesey's terms, morally, better off at the end of the process. Weale continues to ask if this action was ever justified and does so in terms of interference with the subject's 'Plan of life'. 'if possible the interference should be justified by reference to some element in the subject's oun life plan, so that in the absence of intervention the person would be behaving inconsistently uith some, at least, of his own freely chosen ends'. In this is embodied the hope of the paternalist that he has identified what his subject 'really wants'. In this way Livesey identified what he saw that the workers 'really wanted' in terms of material prosperity and self direction in their own lives.

 

Livesey had become identified with the sliding scale system of regularising gas company finances and at many times he had seen it as a solution to other ills. Throughout the 1870s - 85 - and 1880s he put it forward as something that could, be linked to wages. In other industries - coal, iron - in this period the sliding scale was a device to link wages to profit. In the gas industry it linked initially to prices but essentially there is no difference. As Robert Michels said:- 'they incline... in England to a theory in accordance uith which the workers and capitalists are to be united in a kind of league and to share, although still unequally the profits of a common enterprise .. . thus the wages of the labourers become based upon ... what is known as the sliding scale. '

 

In the early 1870s the professional gas institute heard a series of lectures from Thomas Travers, Manager of the Cork Works, on incentives through methods of pay to gas workers and linked to ideas connected with the sliding scale. Livesey spoke extensively at these meetings - he was President of the Institution in 1873.  The theme of many of Livesey's papers was a discussion of problems of labour relations and how workers could be made more aware of, and become involved in the problems of the industry. He was concerned with concepts of 'fairness' and that men should be treated well if they were to work well. For example, they should be paid well. He said that he had asked the South Met. Board to extend the sliding scale to the workforce and that he had been rebuffed. In 1877 he had even asked for his own salary to be linked to profits on a sliding scale, but the Board had refused the application.

 

Livesey 's Presidential speech to the gas managers makes several key points:- 'It is all very well to say that the price of labour like that of coal or iron is governed by the inexorable law of supply and demand ... you may by this rule purchase his time but not get his good and - willing service. ' and he was concerned to make a political point which foreshadowed much of his future work and arguments: 'the opposition will run so fiercely against them that independent companies will cease to exist'.  Only by recruiting the workers to their sides politically could the companies ensure their futures.

 

This speech was made in 1874 and in 1877 Livesey was writing to the professional press on a similar therme and promulgating the application of the sliding scale to the workforce as both a practical and moral step: 'this system to be of any use must be extended beyond .. the directors to the manager and those under him ... I say without fear of contradiction that the system of paying fixed salaries never gave any stimulus ... I maintain therefore that the only just system is one which gives a man a proportionate share of the wealth he creates because I believe it will give men an adequate motive for exceeding their routine sense of duty and giving themselves in their best in every way. '

 

In June 1882 Livesey was at the point of retiring from South Met. and was presented with the Birmingham medal by the Institution for his services to the gas industry. At the same meeting Travers gave another paper - this time he directly mentioned the profit sharing movement and gave a brief history, including the work done on industrial participation in France. He mentioned imhis address Livesey's ideas on involving the workforce and work on the sliding scale. Livesey was the first on his feet following the address to say how important these ideas were and explained how he had always tried to implement them in the South Met. but had been prevented by the Board until he had thought it best to drop the ideas. 'the men must have the motive of self-interest. This was the motive which he had had ... to a very great extent in endeavouring to do what he had done where he had been employed so long .... this was a nut to crack which perhaps some younger and more enterprising member of the Institute would give his attention'.

 

In the next few months Livesey retired from the Company .Within a month he was on the Board. Six months later he was Chairman. In 1884 South Met. moved a step nearer to profit sharing. A scheme was set up whereby officers would receive a bonus on salaries based on profits. A list of the officers concerned was produced and payments made. The Board however made it clear in its resolution that this was an experiment and was not to set any precedents. However in 1885 and 1886 the resolution was passed again.

 

During this period another scheme began to take shape, which was to give responsibility for their own safety to workers.  In 1888 the Director's passed a policy resolution concerning safety at work; pre-shadowing events which were to follow in the early 1890s. The Minute said that 'managers must consider themselves responsible ' and set up machinery for investigations into every accident. This scheme developed, in the early 1890s, into the Accident Jury system, whereby each accident was enquired into by both interested parties and by men chosen at random in the works. Figures for accidents at each works was published and weightings introduced on Accident Fund contributions in those works where the number of accidents was high. In these ways South Met. began to move towards the co-partnership scheme.

 References

South Met. Director s Minutes

Co-partnership Journal

Industrial Co-partnership. . 1911.

Gas World.

Livesey. Paper given at the Industrial Remuneration Conference. Newcastle. 1907.

Perks. Real Profit Sharing. Business History

Gas and Water Times.

Phoenix Company Minutes

Journal of Gas Lighting

Cole. The View from the Peak.

Band of Hope Chronicle

Roberts. Paternalism in Early Victorian England.

South London Press

Loch The Prevention and Relief of Distress. 1904

Livesey. Profit Sharing; a Vindication. Economic Review

Weale. Paternalism and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy

Michels. Political Parties.

South Met. Gas and gas work

Work in the gas industry has been described by a variety of authors and was hard, hot and unpleasant. Work in the retort house, the central process in the industry, involved the manipulation of burning coals and was thus inescapably so. Willl Thorne described vividly his work at Saltley Gas Works in Birmingham and his brief period of work at Old Kent Road followed by a move to Beckton ... 'the work was hard and hot ... -it was gruelling, agonising ... working for twelve hours a day in heat and steam'.

Thorne, of course, as an activist working to improve conditions had an interest in stressing the horrors: but outsiders were even more shocked. As illustrations of work in the early days of the gas industry we have Gustave Dore's prints of work in the Lambeth Gas Works - where wretches in rags slump exhausted near the smoking retorts. Flora Tristan's described the Horseferry Road works of the Chartered Company in the 1830s: 'the work demanded of them is more than human . strength can endure ... the heat was suffocating ....the air is horribly tainted ...at every instant you, are assailed by poisonous fumes ... the entire premises are very dirty ... this is even worse than the slave trade.

While Flora wrote of her impressions following a brief visit to view the retort houses; other writers described work on the basis of careful studies. They highlight particular problems - the system of alternating twelve hour shifts - which culminated in the union's fight for the eight hour system, the wage levels, Sunday working and the seasonal employment of extra men in the winter.

There is no doubt that Retort House work was hot and demanding. In 1863 Zerah Colburn described those works in some detail. He gives as his main impression that of the extreme heat and the consquent strain on the workforce: 'the work is tiring ... in the hottest of the works the men frequently strip to the waist and work, every article reeking of sweat'.

 

Retort House work consisted of putting dirty coal into a hot retort, waiting for it to burn out and then remove the hot and dirty coke at the end of the process. The coke would have to be 'quenched' with water and then removed and the process started again. The resulting gas theb went through a series of processes to remove impurities and was then held in a gas holder before being piped to the customer. Most of these process were noxious and dirty and resulted in sometimes dangerous by-products which themselves were processed for sale.

Doubtless early gas engineers put safety and pollution control low on their lists of priorities - workmen too were no doubt often careless of their own safety - for instance an explosion in Bermondsey which killed several members of the public was caused by workmen looking for leaks with a naked flame.

 

By the 1880s working conditions were probably rather better than those described by Flora Tristan - at the very least some smells and dirt had been controlled through public pressure. The open sheds which she described as rest places for the men were enclosed and often provided with washing facilities together with newspapers and other recreational means. Some works provided canteens. It should be noted that the complaints made by workers' in the 1880s did not focus on the physical unpleasantness of the work but on the length of shifts and the regulation of tasks. It must also be admitted that work as heavy, demanding and difficult as gas stoking could only be done by the exceptionally big and strong man. In 1889 the Times reporter watched the police marching replacement labour in to the South Met. works; his first thought was to assess them as potential gas workers in terms of brute strength: 'the natural thing to do was to study the physique of the new arrivals - the vast majority were capable labourers and many of them were obviously powerful men'. The physical conditions in which retort house staff worked should not be under-estimated in their physical unpleasantness - but those involved in it may also have had considerable pride in their own abilities to endure it.

Such hard work in great heat inevitably led to a lot of drinking and inevitably a proportion of what was drunk was beer ... 'the old men [men working before the 1889 strike] drank beer and were drunk at work but they were not drunkards ' said a witness to the Royal Commission of Labour.  Colburn says that the gas workers drank 'skilly' - water with oatmeal in it - and George Livesey tried to promote the consumption of this at the Old Kent Road Works.  The first resolution of the Gas Workers Union embodied the principle of no substitution of labour - men should not do the jobs of others - the only exception was to be when a labourer was 'drunk for the first time'.

 'Stokers' has become a synonym for 'gas worker' but it is important to remember that stokers were only one of several sorts of labourer working in the retort house and that retort house workers did not in any way comprise the majority of gas industry workers. Popplewell writing in 1911 says that retort house workers accounted for only about a third of the total workforce - the other two thirds being made up of general labourers, specialist craft workers and 'outside' men. Retort house workers were the key sector for without them gas could not be made, but in arguments about the eight hour day and Sunday working it must be remembered that for the majority of gas workers such conditions did not apply.  

Skilled craft workers may well have enjoyed the conditions general to those who practised their particular trade in other industries - blacksmiths, carpenters, and so on. 'Outside' men worked often unsupervised in the freedom of the streets - lamplighters, fitters working on domestic premises, collectors - as well as labourers who worked in the streets in gangs supervised by foremen. The industry employed its own specialists - men who made and repaired meters and other equipment. In the 1890s South Met. had workshops where domestic appliances were made. Some men were employed to watch process equipment - to stand by in order to act in case of emergency. Other men were labourers employed outside the retort houses but doing equally hard and heavy work - but not in conditions of great heat - whippers unloading coal from boats, men with considerable industrial muscle - in 1872 South Met. erected machinery to unload steamers 'because of difficulty and delay in discharging ... due to the action of the coal whippers'. Other specialist workers were seamen and lightermen employed directly by the Company, and in addition an army of semi-specialist workers in other processes concerning by-products.

South Met. was a large company in the 1880s and its workforce was large and specialised. This situation obviously did not apply throughout the industry, in Wandgas magazine, Joe Emmett, an old gas worker in the Wandsworth works, describes how work varied - they were 'one day or two stoking, changing over to helping in the yard and finishing up with a bit of piece work.

Even in the 1900s some gas works were very small.  The South Met.'s house journal Co-partnership Journal describes a works so small that it only had one employee ,whose wife, at Sunday lunchtimes put the baby's pram on top of the gas holder to increase the pressure! South Met. had never been as small as that but it had grown comparatively fast. A photograph of the 1870s shows the administrative staff as five people who had between them to carry out all the administration - purchase and sales procedures and at the same time supervise a continuous process industry. Many of the workforce would have had experience of many different tasks in the works.

It can however be generally assumed by the 1880s that tasks were regularised and followed an established pattern, and that this must remembered when discussing complaints on the pace of work - work had become less varied.

 

Gas compamies often recruited workers from the same families. Sons followed fathers and the house magazine of the Company gives numerous instances of family involvement through generations. In the 1970s South London SEGAS workers still maintained this tradition of gas families who worked for SEGAS and before that South Met. for generations - and a tradition of suspicion of 'outsiders' to the industry. A boy might start in the works in his early teens and graduate to retort house work when he was strong enough; in old age he would be given lighter work - house journals of the various companies give many examples of such progressions. Some boys would pass to skilled work or to an unskilled specialisation, the exceptionally bright boy might pass to clerical work and in the very rare case progress to management.

Gas managements of the 1880s were staffed by men who had risen from the 'boys' of the 1840s and 50s, some of them achieved directorships. George Livesey in his road from 'boy' to Managing Director had the advantage of being the manager's son and also coming from a family other members of which were involved in the industry. It should be noted, however, that without ability he may not have reached this level - as indeed his brother Frank did not, despite an expensive education denied to George.

Some full time retort house workers would be recruited from the pool of 'wintermen' many of who would hope for a full time job 'in the works' should a vacancy become available. It is, however, in the pool of 'wintermen' that one of the main problems of the industry arose. It is obvious that gas is more in demand in winter than in summer and works had to take on extra men in the winter to meet extra demand. Popplewell, in Seasonal Trades, is entirely concerned with the effects of seasonality in the industry and gives several sets of figures for seasonal workers in 1910. For example, a works which made 27,334,000 cubic feet of gas in June employed 5,461 workers to make it - in December that works would make 51,760,000 cubic feet and need 6,430 men. He says that managements would often save maintenance work for the summer so that retort house workers, not needed to make gas, would be employed on that. Those laid off for the summer would be given first refusal to come back next autumn and indeed might be included in welfare schemes in the works and treated in many ways like permanent workers. Workers in these circumstances might often have regular summer jobs to go to and both Colburn writing in 1863 and Popplewell in 1911 mention brickmaking in the Sittingbourne area as a traditional summer job for ‘wintermen' from London gas works. Note that Sittingbourne was an area from which South Met. hoped to recruit 'blacklegs' in the autumn of 1889.

 

Seasonality has been taken up by historians of the gas industry. E.J.Hobsbawm has argued in his article on British Gas workers that it was a major reason for the delayed success of unionisation in the gas industry until 1880. This point was taken up and extended by Joseph Melling.

Both of Hobsbawm and Mellint rest their cases upon the assumption that wintermen were drawn from a pool of casual labour. However at South Met. and other companies  – ‘wintermen' were employed casually but on a regular basis. South Met. treated them as employees, albeit irregular ones.

 

Evidence is inconclusive that seasonal men acted as strike breakers and retarded unionisation. Seasonality does not appear to have been a factor in either 1872 or in 1889 - in 1889 the strike breakers were men from outside the area, not regular winter men. Both strikes took place in mid-winter when wintermen would have been at work for the company,

 

Strikes were obviously better held in mid-winter because then demand was at its highest and the Company more quickly in difficulties, but at South Met in 1889 wintermen must have come out with the regular full time men - which implies that seasonality was not a factor in retarding unionisation.

 

A further point, of paramount importance in any discussion of gas workers conditions, concerns the level of wages. Wage levels among retort house workers were generally higher than for similar labouring work - Popplewell quotes for 1906 an average wage as between 30/- and 35/- and in London sometimes over 45/-.   Compared to the respectable workers described in Round About a Pound a Week in Lambeth in the same period - retort house workers in London were doing well. Throughout the 1889 strike the issue of wages was not raised by the Union.

 

In an discussion on gas workers conditions before 1889 theeight hour day is usually to the forefront. A system of twelve hour shifts was generally in use before that time and the industrial movement of 1889 was largely organised around calls for a change. Work in the retort houses was divided into two twelve hour shifts, one on and one off, for seven days a week. Once a month the shifts were changed over involving one set of men in a gruelling eighteen hour change over period. Gas was necessarily made in a twenty-four hour continuous process and with inadequate storage techniques the rate of make must be constant and roughly equivalent to demand. From the 1870s the problem of long shifts and lack of breaks - in particular the lack of a Sunday holiday - increasingly concerned both managements and workers.

In May 1871 South Met. Directors minuted an attempt to reduce labour in the retort houses on Sundays on religious ground.  In 1905 an old gas worker described the ending of the eighteen hour change over period in South Met. and how it was brought about in the 1870s by creating more storage space for gas through larger gas holders - thus more gas could be stored to cover Sundays and allow workers to go to church.  He cired Robert Morton, a management associate of Livesey in the Phoenix Company, as being instrumental in this changeover.

 

Although eight hour shifts were worked in some gas works for many years before 1889, twelve hours were still general in London. It is important to realise that eight hour shifts do not automatically mean less work. The system is a re-arrangement of tasks  so that less men do more work for a shorter time. The workforce is divided into three shifts instead of two and men perform more highly differentiated tasks. On the twelve hour system there were often long breaks with no work to do which made the pace easier and often more acceptable to the older men. George Livesey claimed that the workforce had been offered the eight hour system before 1889 by management - although this instance is not minuted. It had been rejected because the workforce wanted 'the big shilling' earned on a twelve hour shift.

In discussing the changeover to eight hours in 1889 the professional journals give no solid reasons for advantages to management yet in 1889 most managements seem to have given way to union demands with very little argument - indeed some, like Gas Light and Coke Co., said they welcomed the change: 'there has been no fight with this company on the question of the eight hour system - as a matter of fact the system was brought in some years ago and declined. As soon as it was suggested we did so'.

 

In 1889 and again in 1890 South Met. balloted its workers over which system should be run in individual works. The 1889 ballot produced a response for the eight hour system in all works but in 1890 Rotherhithe workers opted for twelve hours - and remained on this system for some years.

Works like Old Kent Road in the years before 1880 were small. Wives and children brought dinners in to men working on shift, children could play in the works, workers in the breaks of long shifts could swim in the - as yet - fairly unpolluted canal and put out lines to catch fish for breakfast. They might have allotments on site and grow vegetables and flowers. At Fulham works a woman carrying in her husband's dinner was shot by a poacher who mistook her for a duck.  George Livesey remembered that as a small child he climbed up and down scaffolding erected for the erection of a new gasholder.  But in the 1880s at East Greenwich workers' children were stopped from playing on site when a young boy was killed by locomotive he was chasing

It was after 1880 as the company expanded that this was changed - with increased public transport and the building of the Greenwich foot tunnel workers did not need to live locally and the loss of the sense of community is part of the new situation which co-partnership tried to meet.

 

In 1889 union men complained of a harder work load - was this really so? Hobsbawm's case is that an accumulation of small changes meant that by 1889 workers really did feel that they had reached the point at which the work load was becoming oppressive.

In the period from 1870 to 1880, company amalgamations proceeded apace. In London small companies became big ones with many works, divided by years of custom and practice, not united under one management. In this period the numbers of customers rose and output grew to match - along with this the numbers of workers grew - and the domestic atmosphere of small works went. Small works were being phased out and replaced in importance by large ones - Beckton .... East Greenwich.

 

George Livesey certainly thought that increasing depersonalisation in the industry was a major problem for management - 'We seem to be at the parting of the Days, if they have not parted already - the days of small industries and the old relationships of master and man are gone past recall and the Joint Stock Company on a large scale uith capital and labour holding diverse yg views, to put it mildly, is now a reality. The old 'friendly relationships' were gone in contrast to the aggravated and strained relationships of the late 1880s. This problem could be solved, said Livesey, by co-partnership.

References

Will Thorne. My Life's Battles 

Jean Hawkes. The London Journal of Flora Tristan.

Zerah Colburn. The Gasworks of London. London 1865.

Sterling Everard. The History of the Gas Light & Coke Co. 1949.

Gas World

The Times

Royal Commission of Labour. Group C.

Minutes of Gas Workers Union.

F. Popplewell. Seasonal Trades. 1912

South Met. Director's Minutes

Wandgas

Co-partnership Journal

E.J.Hobsbawm Labouring Men. 1964.

J. Melling. Industrial Strife and Business Welfare Philosophy

Maud Pember Reeves. Round About a Pound a Week.

Industrial Co-partnership. 1911

South Metropolitan Gas Company

The profit sharing scheme which South Met. inaugurated in 1889 was only one of a series of remarkable events in which the company had been involved since the early 1860s when George Livesey had first become sole manager. Before this time the company had pursued a line - unique in London - in which can be seen the roots of Livesey's policies. Under Livesey South Met.'s role was directly concerned with the gas industry's relationship with central and local government.

Even before George Livesey had become an employee of the Company, it was trying to answer criticism from 'consumers' and to do so by means of voluntary action. In the 1880s George Livesey was able to put forward ideas and policies which were the results of policy decisions taken in the 1840s as a way to meet public criticisms. However flamboyant George Livesey's approach might be, he can be seen in essence to be following policies laid down fifty years before by his father and the Board of the late 1840s and 1850s.

George Livesey's father, Thomas, went to work for South Met. as their clerk in 1839. The Company had had a fairly unstable history up to then. It had been founded to compete with the Phoenix Company in the late 1820s, and to supply cannel gas (gas made with a coalgiving a clearer light - but more expensive). The works was built at the very edge of South London, on the banks of the Surrey Canal between Peckham and Deptford. The early minute books, in so far as they exist, are filled with scandals and disputes - the first Managing Director described as 'a questionable character'.

In 1836 the works was partly destroyed by a major explosion in the course of a dispute on patent rights with the Engineer, George Holsworthy Palmer.

 

The Board was reconstituted in 1839 under the Chairmanship of Alderman Farncombe, a prominent City figure, wharfinger and future Lord Mayor. From that time the Board was dominated by a few families.

 

In the 1880s the major shareholder was Richard Foster, whose family had occupied Board positions since the start of the Company. Foster himself had held shares since the 1820s and although never he never took on Board membership he championed Livesey's his actions, however controversial, against Board decisions. The Company minute books abound in instances in which a Board decision against Livesey would be answered by a letter from Foster, backing Livesey's.

Another important element of Company policy involved a strong body of Christian belief among some members of the Board. At management level this was shared by Thomas Livesey and led the company from the early 1850s to promote a welfare policy for its workforce. The roots of co-partnership lie in maintaining the welfare of employees, and thus buying their co-operation, efficiency could be maintained, and price kept down.

 

By helping the workforce materially they could be morally influenced, which it was hoped would persuade them away from forces outside the Company. 'Loyalty - was at a premium - loyalty to the idea of the Company as a good and giving body.  If the industry's existence was to be threatened then the workforce must be enlisted as supporters lest they should ally with the Company's enemies and undermine it.

Public criticism was about keeping prices down. This policy had evolved between 1842 and 1871 and had been helped by keeping capital low. Bypaying low dividends on capital, profit could be reinvested in works and maintenance: as profit rose there was less capital to service through dividends and therefore more money to re-invest. A company with high profits and low capital could afford to lower prices and still maintain quality.

Thomas Livesey had come to South Met. from a clerkship with the Gas Light and Coke Co. He was not a technician but an administrator and the nephew of another Thomas Livesey who had been responsible for the formation of administration at Gas Light & Coke Co., in its earliest years. George's uncle William, was a Parliamentary agent working for gas companies and an expert in gas legislation. George thus had powerful influences and a background of great expertise in gas affairs on which to build.

Thomas Livesey and his family lived in a cottage alongside the works in the 1840s and he worked under the direction of the Board which never gave him the freedom that it was eventually obliged to give his son. Once he had established his position in office he was trusted by the Board who praised his work frequently. He was the only management level officer of the Company, and as George grew up he began to take over the technical management from his father.

So - in 1839 the Company had £80,000 invested in what was now a mainly useless works. Until 1849 a dividend of less than 2% was paid but in reality a profit of 10% had been made since 1842 and this balance was re-invested in equipment. In 1856 the then Chairman said that 'it is in the best interests of the concern to keep capital down and therefore to use it to extend the works' . In the 1880s George Livesey could boast that the building of the massive new works at East Greenwich ‘had been entirely financed from running profits. As consumer agitation grew in the 1840s and 50s the Board began to reduce prices to pre-empt local authority criticisms.

In 1860 the Chairman said that 'in order to satisfy the people we have reduced the price of our gas 4d. per 1,000 - we are not compelled to reduce the price.' The Company began to enjoy a remarkable reputation with the local authorities whose areas it served. It had been founded to compete with the Phoenix Company and the Surrey Consumers Company and its prices were lower than either. In 1850 the Camberwell Vestry could say that they were 'quite happy with the South Met. - they had never heard a single complaint' and in 1875 a petition from Camberwell to the Metropolitan Board of Works said in part; 'this parish is supplied with gas by the South Met. which by reason of its small capital and good management has been for many years enabled to supply to its customers 14 candle gas at 2/ld. per cubic foot ... your honourable board will take such steps as are necessary to maintain the privilege now derived from being supplied by the South Met.'

Such praise was not being given to other companies in London and in the 1880s Camberwell was to lead a deputation protesting to the Board of Trade that South Met, must not be contaminated by those other Companies whose prices were not all the local authorities desired.

It had been said of Thomas Livesey that his ambition was to 'take the lead'. This lead was defined by George Livesey in 1875 as: 'the lead of the London Gas Companies as to price - the lower the price the more secure the property and the investment'. This statement also shows Livesey's ambition that South Met., was to be the best company and show the way as to how gas companies should be run.

 

In 1839 South Met. was small and failing, it was the ambitions of the Liveseys, father and son, which, took it to pre-eminence in world terms by 1900.

'Consumer' agitation in Southwark in the 1850s was led by John Thwaites, later Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works. George Livesey in later years described how as a teenager he had attended meetings agitating for change: 'I remember quite as a youngster attending a public meeting and hearing Sir John Thwaites speak .... if the companies had been reasonable and reduced [the price of gas] it by 1s. to 5s. I think it would have stopped the agitation'.

So some of Livesey's earliest political impressions concerned these meetings which called for changes in gas company policy in the public interest. The meetings were lively ones and an early Journal of Gas Lighting published a letter, mysteriously, from 'Live and Let Live' which gives some of their flavour: the meeting was 'numerous and uproarious'; one was 'ejected by a policeman', and the conclusion that 'a little knowledge and much assertion (usually combined) are very dangerous things!. People had produced pamphlets - 'What's Up!' ... 'What a Lark!' ... 'What's the Price?' - all good stuff for a teenage boy to take to heart.

Following the agitation in South London the Surrey Consumers Company had been founded in Rotherhithe and soon after acquired the works of the old Deptford Company. The Boards of both South Met. and Phoenix Companies responded with lower prices and soon Surrey Consumers were finding their guaranteed low prices difficult to maintain. Livesey quoted John Thwaites 'I see competition is a failure' and soon districting agreements had been informally finalised in South London.

In 1848 George Livesey became an employee of the Company as 'the boy' and during this period the Company's policy on pricing was hardening. Price reductions were announced at this time

South Met. was not only proud of its pricing policy but of its 'efficiency' and technical innovation. Thomas Livesey built gasholders by direct labour, introduced canvassing for customers, and began to re-use fireclay retorts. George Livesey as his father's assistant acted as Engineer in the works and soon began to acquire a string of patents. Working with a local firm of chemists. Hills of Deptford, he began a long series of experiments to perfect a new method of purifying gas. This method ultimately failed but in the process he gave several technical papers to the professional institute and made his name as an engineer.

 

It was in the field of gasholder construction that George Livesey really made his name - and in this way showed a grasp of administrative application to technology which meant that it was used to its best advantage. South Met. began to build bigger and bigger gas holders culminating in the 1880s in the giant gasholders still to be seen at East Greenwich. Livesey explained that such holders are more economical because by storing gas in giant amounts in the air the amount of expensive land used was reduced. In the same way gasholders could be used to store gas over the weekend and thus cut down on Sunday working with all its difficulties.

Journal of Gas Lighting was rather cynical about Livesey's technical prowess: 'the paper contains several declarations of principle and a scarcity of theoretical knowledge'. but it was this ability to grasp the wider problems of manufacture which made South Met the premier company that it became under the Liveseys.

In evidence to various Commissions of Enquiry, and Select Committees, George Livesey was at pains to explain the financial reasons for many of his Company's actions. Always clear:, they are a vivid illustration of the administrative means and the thought that went into South Met.'s policies. Policies formulated in the 1850s were designed with an eye to the future. A vivid illustration of this is in districting policy. Thomas Livesey was reported as having fought street by street for as large a growing suburban area as possible. This was a big factor in making the Company so successful in the 1880s and 1890s.

The massive increase in housing in South London meant that sales of gas rose dramatically. At the same time the expensive investment in mains had already been made and new customers could be connected quickly and efficiently Profit could be quickly maximised. It was the foresight of Thomas Livesey and the South Met.'s Chairman which had laid the groundwork for this enormous expansion. The Chairman in the 1850s was yet another member of the Foster family.

In the 1850s the Board were not themselves local men - while some may have had country homes in South London they were mostly from the City and none of them had addresses in South East London - Peckham or Camberwell. The Livesey's did however become identified with the area which the works supplied. Thomas Livesey, once he had moved to South London, never moved out. From the cottage in Canal Grove near the works he moved to Consort Road in Peckham and from there to Dulwich. He served as a member of Camberwell Vestry; was a local churchwarden and a supporter of local schools.

George lived in Peckham and in Denmark Hill but, at his official retirement, moved to Reigate. He continued with his father's tradition of local involvement and good works - he supported local churches and temperance organisations and in 1889 gave a library to Camberwell vestry. Sited opposite the Old Kent Road works this was naturally well stocked with works on gas technology but it was as a point of principle to be a free library for the working classes of Camberwell, who, Livesey thought, had 'strong claims on a library'. The Livesey family claimed to know and understand South London and part of what George Livesey said when he put forward arguments in favour of co-partnership was that he knew and understood the men who worked for South Met; that he understood their culture and environment .

Thomas Livesey deferred to the Board and followed their instructions in every way. When he was offered a Directorship of the neighbouring Crystal Palace Company he turned it down on the Board's instructions. It. was said of George Livesey that this incident determined him not to be so directed by the Board. When his father was told not to become a Crystal Palace Company director, George Livesey immediately began to hope for. a directorship of that Company for himself - which in due course he was offered and accepted. In George Livesey’s early years as manager of South Met. at Old Kent Road he frequently quarrelled with the Board on policy matters and carried on the battle until he won.

Livesey's first public dispute with the Board concerned his evidence, against South Met.’s policy, to the Select committee of 1875 on the subject of the sliding scale. Livesey claimed that he had been forced to give this evidence by the Board of Trade. The incident also gives some indication of George Livesey’s standing at that time as the manager of a relatively small and obscure works in post for only four years. This demonstrates the way in which George Livesey had become the pacesetter in regard to his aging Board. He was pushing policies to their logical conclusions which had long been laid by the Board and was prepared to use the power of shareholders meetings to change Board policies, which he did not like.

The 1870s saw South Met.’s management expanding and innovating: company meetings often involved major confrontations between Livesey as Company Secretary and Board members. As Company Engineer he was an employee and could have been dismissed; as Company Secretary he was elected by the shareholders - and Livesey was sometimes accused from the platform of having packed meetings with employees.

 

The 1872 Gasworkers strike was a factor which helped to consolidate Livesey's position at South Met. Alone in London South Met. workers did not strike: Livesey claimed thereafter that the reason for this was that he 'understood' the workforce and that this had diverted strike action. This claim will be discussed later.

As South Met. expanded so Livesey began to push efficiency as the reason for this success. Throughout the period of the 1870s he gave numerous papers on various subjects to professional bodies in the gas industry. To start with these papers were on technical subjects but gradually they took on matters more related to administration and in due course to worker relations. In Livesey's year as Chairman of the Institute of Gas Engineers, 1876, he made several speeches of an overtly political nature. The message throughout these papers is cost effectiveness and efficiency - but in so far as worker relationships are concerned these must be tempered by allowing workers some rights, like that of worship on a Sunday and that this in turn will give the worker the commitment to the Company to work in a more positive way.

In the course of the amalgamations with Surrey Consumers, the Phoenix Company and the two Woolwich Companies, Livesey retired from his employment with the Company. Once the presentations to himself and his wife at the various 'works were over he took up a place on the Board. Within six months he was Chairman and from then on his career continued without the restraints imposed by being an employee - but nonetheless still in opposition to many on the existing Board. This Board was now greatly enlarged and augumented with members from the other constituent companies. In South Met.'s name he began to champion a number of political causes. One of these was the abolition of the coal taxes. At that time all coal which came into London was taxed and obviously for the gas companies whose main raw material it was these were a burden they did not want. Livesey argued that prices could fall if the tax was lifted and that this was the only sensible course. He argued that tax was collected by local authorities who then paid it back to him in the form of increased prices higher than they need be because of the tax. South Met. was however the only company pledged to lower its prices should coal taxes be abolished.

 
In 1889 this cause took him directly into the political arena when all candidates for the LCC were lobbied on this issue. The same battle was carried on against rates - rates in Livesey.s arguments were yet another local tax pushing up gas prices to the ratepayer. South Met. made a policy of opposing all rating assessments and Livesey appeared at hearings to argue that since South Met. was a partnership of consumers and company under the sliding scale that rates were then an unnecessary bureaucratic procedure. After the formation of the Metropolitan Boroughs in 1894 Livesey carried this campaign even further and it eventually led him to a personal involvement with the. Municipal Reform Society in the 1900s.

Increasingly throughout the 1880s and 1890s he turned his attacks towards the other major London gas company: Gas Light and Coke Co. Livesey began a major campaign of criticism against every aspect of their management and policy. As a shareholder he began to turn up to their Company meetings to make long and detailed speeches on most aspects of their work and would claim to demonstrate changes, which would lead to economies. This was augumented by letters to the press and by political lobbying.

By 1889 at the time of the Gas Workers strike this quarrel was at its height. A dispute had arisen between the two companies over the supply of gas to the Nine Elms Goods Yard. The Railway Company had taken advantage of South Met's lower prices to get their supply of gas from them but most of the premises lay in the area of Gas Light and Coke's agreed supply. The case eventually went to the House of Lords and despite previous judgements in favour of South Met. damages were awarded to Gas Light and Coke Co.

During the period of the 1889 strike South Met. were being pressed by Gas Light and Coke for payment of these damages and relations were very bad indeed. This incident is only important in that it illustrates how far Livesey was prepared to go in order to prove that the gas industry could supply gas in a way that was not against the public interest. To do so he had broken up any form of

 

Another source of friction in the London gas industry in 1889 was the situation which had given rise to the break up of the professional institute. A scandal had grown out of the 1883 Crystal Palace Gas Exhibition. Even before the exhibition had been held certain appliance manufacturers had accused him of partiality towards others . This became a major row led by an appliance manufacturer called George Bray. Bray attacked Livesey through the professional institute and also in the pages of the gas press - some issues of Gas World have four and five page articles against Livesey. An underlying cause of the attack seems to have been the suspicion by some provincial gas men that the Institute was being run by a small group of Londoners 'the London coterie' ' - in fact Livesey and his associates. An argument developed round the issue of whether appliance manufacturers should be allowed into the professional body. The eventual outcome followed High Court actions and accusations of masonic inspired deals – Livesey resigned along with the 'coterie' and a rival professional body was formed.

 

Linked to sales of gas through meters and the push in gas sales was the positive involvement of the workforce. It is here that policies of expansion and technogical advance interface with co-partnership. As sales of gas to the public increased, the Company needed more and more to have an acceptable public face. Large numbers of employees were used outside the works and directly involved with the public; these workers must be totally loyal to the company in order to promote a favourable Company image. Co-partnership was the means of buying this loyalty. Allied to this was a positive policy of encouragement to all workers to become gas salesmen among their friends and relations. Workers were offered a bonus for new customers and any appliances sold through them earned commissions.

George Livesey talked a lot about partnership in relation to the sliding scale. Perhaps the biggest move that South Met. made in this direction during the 1880s was in the policies of share sales to consumers. Legislation required gas companies to offer new stock for sale only through tender or by auction and South Met. varied this policy in that tender notices were deliberately excluded from the financial and business press and instead put into the local papers. Invitations to buy were sent out with gas bills and notices sent out by the Company. Figures for the amount of company stock sold in this way are not available but nevertheless it was a positive plank in Livesey' arguments that the public were partners in the company under the sliding scale and one in which he could easily extend to share sales to company employees.

References

Journal of Gas Lighting

Gas and Water Times

Gas Gazette

Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes

Select Committee into the Metropolitan Gas Companies 1899

Gas World

South London Press