GUILD SOCIALISM, the name of a school of Socialist thought which became prominent in Great Britain in the second decade of the 2oth century, and spread thence to other parts of the world, especially the English-speaking countries. Its govern ing idea is that of self-government in industry—the application of democratic principles to industrial as well as to political affairs —and the organization of the economic life of the community on a "functional" basis. As the name implies, Guild Socialism has, in the minds of its founders, a relation to the forms of industrial organization which existed throughout the mediaeval world, and is based on an attempt, in some measure, to apply mediaeval ideas to the solution of modern problems. This does not mean that Guild Socialists wish to restore the mediaeval guild system, or that Guild Socialism has any necessary connection with the attempt to revive handicraft in place of machine production. This element was indeed present in the early stages, but had dropped away before it acquired any wide influence.
The origin of the movement is to be found in the work of an architect, Arthur J. Penty, who published The Restoration of the Guild System in 1906, and of A. R. Orage, for many years editor of the New Age, in which journal the new doctrine gradually developed in the next few years. The fruit of this development was the book, National Guilds, written by S. G. Hobson and edited by A. R. Orage, first published in the New Age in 1912. In this work, Guild Socialism first assumed its distinctive form as an attempt to convert the trade unions to the idea of "workers' control" in industry, and to create with their aid self-governing functional organizations for the government of industry in con junction with the State.
So far the guild movement had not spread beyond a small circle of theoretical adherents. But in the years before 1914 a great wave of Labour unrest spread over Great Britain. There were many strikes, and a new spirit of economic revolt entered into the trade union movement. At the same time the doctrines of Industrial Unionism were imported from America, and those of Syndicalism from France ; and both these doctrines found numerous adherents among the younger trade unionists, and excited vigorous controversy. Guild Socialism was influenced by these movements, and was more and more presented as a reconcili ation of Syndicalist and Socialist doctrines. Like the Syndicalists, it denounced bureaucracy and State control. Unlike them, it repu diated Anarchism, and recognized the necessity of the State as an instrument of political organization and control. It was not, how ever, until a group of the younger men began, in 1913, regularly to advocate Guild Socialism in the newly founded Daily Herald that the movement attained to any widespread influence. And it was not until ' 915 that it assumed, with the foundation of the National Guilds League by G. D. H. Cole, W. Mellor, M. B. Reckitt and others, an organized form.
The industrial situation during the World War undoubtedly helped the growth of the new movement. For the War, by making necessary large and frequent changes in industrial organization, profoundly stirred the trade unions, and created in the minds of trade unionists a keen desire for control and self-government in industry. During the War the influence of Guild Socialism was widely felt in the shop stewards' movement (q.v.), and in the re drafting of many trade union programmes, so as to include the demand for "workers' control." Thus, the Miners' Federation, which before the War had demanded nationalisation and State administration of the mines, changed its programme in 1918 to a demand for national ownership and democratic control by the workers, and put forward its new Guild Socialist claim before the famous Sankey Commission of 1919. The Socialist bodies, such as the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party itself, also altered their programmes so as to include the demand for some measure of workers' control in industry.
Immediately after the War Guild Socialism spread still more rapidly, and entered on a new phase with the formation of actual working guilds, under trade union auspices, in the building and other industries. The National Building guild and its local centres executed, between 192o and 1922, a number of important housing contracts, and was generally agreed to have done excellent work. But it had no capital, and the abandonment of the Addison hous ing scheme in 1921 was fatal to it. Driven to depend on bank and commercial credits, it overtraded and got into financial difficulties, which in 1922 led to its collapse. Certain of its local centres, however, survived, and were still active in 1928, as were the suc cessful tailoring guilds in Glasgow and Leeds, the piano workers' guild in London, and certain others.
Industrial self-government is, for the Guild Socialists, the appli cation to economics of a general principle that is of far wider significance. They believe that democracy can be real only if it is "functional"—that is, if it is specifically related to each of the main activities of society. It is absurd, they hold, to speak of political democracy when industry is organised on autocratic lines; for the conditions of a man's daily work will inevitably affect his attitude and status as a citizen. Moreover, the existing economic system fails because it does not call out what is best in men. Instead of a co-operative fellowship of service we have contending groups of masters and men, alike wasted by "the sickness of an acquisitive society" (Tawney). It is necessary so to organise the economic and social system as to make each ser vice a responsible fellowship, whose members are "on their honour" to do their best in the interest of all.
As a distinct body of doctrine, Guild Socialism reached its highest point in the years immediately after the war. Thereafter, it gradually dissolved. The National Guilds League has been wound up and with its disappearance the formal existence of the movement has come to an end. But its influence survives, and many of its once hotly-contested doctrines are now generally accepted among Socialists in Great Britain. It has left an abiding mark on both trade union and Socialist policy, and is likely to contribute an important element to future Socialist schemes for the reorganization of industry. Its thesis that "economic power precedes political power" is, indeed, still rejected by Socialist politicians; but the guild Socialists' insistence that the power which goes with responsibility must be diffused to the widest possible extent among the whole mass of the people, and that this diffusion, on functional lines, is the necessary condition of demo cratic health in the body politic is now part of the common stock of Socialist doctrine.
(G. D. H. C.) GUILFORD, BARONS AND EARLS OF. FRANCIS NORTH, 1st Baron Guilford (163 7-8 5) , was the third son of the 4th Baron North (see NORTH, BARONS), and was created Baron Guilford in 1683, after becoming lord keeper in succession to Lord Nottingham. He had been an eminent lawyer, solicitor general (1671), attorney-general (1673), and chief-justice of the common pleas (1675), and in 1679 was made a member of the council of thirty and, on its dissolution, of the cabinet. He was a man of wide culture and a staunch royalist. In 1672 he married Lady Frances Pope, daughter and co-heiress of the earl of Downe, who inherited the Wroxton estate; and he was succeeded as end baron by his son Francis (1673-1729), whose eldest son Francis (I704-90), after inheriting first his father's title as 3rd baron, and then (in 1734) the barony of North from his kinsman the 6th Baron North, was in 1752 created 1st earl of Guilford. His first wife was a daughter of the earl of Halifax, and his son and successor Frederick was the English prime minister, commonly known as Lord North, his courtesy title while the 1st earl was alive.