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.
[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.
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