Trade Unions

During the pre-war years these ideas had not clearly emerged. The effects of State regulation during the war, however, power fully assisted in swinging active trade union opinion round to a sympathetic appreciation of the essential doctrines of Guild Socialism. Moreover, the new importance of the labour element in the community gave birth to new aspirations, and to the claim that the workers should enjoy increasing responsibility and power in the actual conduct of industry. One of the most powerful groups of influences which moulded the minds of organised la bour were those connected with the conditions of war-time em ployment. In the chief industries, the unions were parties to ar rangements for the increase of output and the avoidance of stoppages of work.

Shop committees sprang up in the munitions industries, and in the engineering trades particularly they became influential organisations. Shop stewards became the real leaders of the rank and file in matters affecting the day to day lives of the workers in industry. This new reorganisation within the industrial la bour movement—the creation of the circumstances in which the trade union executives were inevitably placed—proceeded swiftly and to a considerable extent effectively. It was unknown to the general public until it had established itself. It was spontaneous —an obvious method of satisfying the need for some rapid local machinery which could deal with grievances in the workshop.

It spent itself during the war. With the end of the war, it lost the passion which had sustained it but the value of shop com mittees and shop stewards (q.v.) was recognised ; first in the en gineering industry, and subsequently in others, the unions adopted this machinery and grafted it on to their organisations.

In the meantime, the policy of self-government in industry had become crystallized, and since the war, the T.U.C. has ac cepted the policy of public ownership combined with the associa tion of workers in the government and control of industry. The application of this policy may be seen in the bill prepared by the Railway Clerks' Association for the nationalisation of rail ways, and subsequently in the scheme for the future of the coal industry placed before the coal commission of 1925-26 by the Miners' Federation, with the full support of the T.U.C. general council and the Labour Party. In the discussions at the Swansea T.U.C. (1928) on the "Mond-Turner" conferences, it was strongly

urged by the secretary of the congress that it offered an avenue to "industrial control," and to the participation of organised labour in the direction of industrial policy.

Russia and Communism.

The Bolshevik revolution in Rus sia had its reaction upon the British trade union movement. Some of the leaders of the shop stewards' movement embraced Com munist doctrines, and when the Red International of Labour Unions was formed by the Moscow Communist International, attempts were made to secure the adhesion of trade union bodies to the R.I.L.U. Such British bodies as are affiliated, however, are not national unions, but sectional and local organisations. Under the inspiration of communist doctrines the "National Minority Movement" was organised, as what may be called the communist wing of the trade union movement. It consists of groups and sections of trade unions, and its spokesmen favour an advanced policy supporting also closer relationship between Britain and Russia. The general council of the congress has actively supported a policy of friendship between Britain and Russia and has used every effort to bring about an understanding between the International Federation of Trade Unions and the Russian trade unions. Its efforts met with no success and even the attempt to reach an understanding between Russian and British trade unionism failed, and in 1927 relations between the two were virtually broken off.

The National Unemployment Workers' Committee Movement established during the period of heavy post-war unemployment, is, like the minority movement, directed largely by people of com munist sympathies. From 1923 the T.U.C. co-operated with the N.U.W.C.M., but in 1928 the general council decided that "no useful purpose would be served by the continuance of the joint committee with the N.U.W.C.M.," and declared that it was not satisfied "as to the bona fides of the organisation." The con gress of 1928 accepted this statement, and moreover, adopted a resolution instructing the general council to institute "an in quiry into the proceedings and disruptive elements within the trade union movement . . . and to submit a report with recom mendations to the affiliated organisations." The debate on this motion made it clear that the resolution was directed against the National Minority Movement and the Communist Party.