100 YEARS OF INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: february 2013 :: RMTnews 16 One hundred years ago this month, railworkers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales gathered in Holborn Town Hall, at the intersection of Gray’s Inn Road and Theobald’s Road – near RMT’s head office today in London’s Kings Cross. From 10-14 February 1913 the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) held a ‘Fusion Congress’ with the General Railway Workers’ Union (GRWU) and the United Signalmen’s and Pointsmen’s Society (USPS) and voted to found Britain’s first industrial union, the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR). RMT’s objectives today to organise all workers employed in connection with rail, sea, transport ancillary undertakings and offshore energy springs directly from the decisions taken by delegates at that 1913 Fusion Congress. However, in 1913 the inspiring decision to found a union that welcomed ‘all workers employed on or in connection with any railway’ was a tough battle. Powerful voices in trade unions, the Labour party and employers saw industrial unionism as dangerously revolutionary. And they were right. Appalling and reactionary class snobbery permeated British society in 1913 and private railway companies encouraged pernicious grade snobbery to divide uniformed staff from casual labourers, skilled from semi-skilled and white-collar staff from manual workers. Industrial unionists were out to sweep sectarian divisions away. The same anachronistic divisions encouraged by employers today were a formidable barrier to railworkers uniting to challenge low wages, long working hours and lack of union recognition in 1913. J.E. Williams, ASRS general secretary told representatives of railway workshops labourers in December 1911, ‘A fitter has no more to do with the working of the railway than a shoeblack in the street.’ Such disparaging views were a hangover of 19th century Victorian attitudes encouraged by railway companies to divide workers. Emphasising grades differences weakened solidarity, meant railway wages lagged behind pay rates in manufacturing and engineering and allowed a ‘hire and fire’ bullying culture to flourish under the guise of ‘railway discipline’. Yet, conservatism and desire for respectability by union officials who advocated partnership between workers and employers, meant they opposed one union for all railworkers following the national rail strike of August 1911. ASRS assistant secretary, J.H. Thomas MP for Derby, said on the eve of the 1913 Congress, ‘I hope it never will be intended, for this or any other Union to take into its ranks those who properly belong to other organisations such as skilled trades.’ Thomas believed railworkers should know their place as ‘loyal company servants’. The battle to overthrow such entrenched conservatism was joined on the opening day of the Fusion Congress. Tom Lowth, general secretary of GRWU the workshops labourers’ union, called on ASRS delegates to repudiate Thomas’ comments. Charles Watkins, a young signalman from Clay Cross in Derbyshire took up the challenge telling delegates ‘we insist that any worker employed on or in connection with a railway shall be eligible to join this new organisation. It is time for us now to include all men, skilled and unskilled, clerks or manual workers employed on or in connection with the railways of the country.’ Congress voted 45-11 for Watkins’ resolution and the way was open for full merger of ASRS, GRWU and USPS and the first industrial trade union to be born. Six weeks later on Sunday, 30 March NUR members celebrated the new union with a 50,000–strong rally in Hyde 100 YEARS OF INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM Alex Gordon marks the centenary of the founding of the National Union of Railwaymen, Britain’s first industrial trade union, on Valentine’s Day 1913 UNITY: Members of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the General Railway Workers’ Union and the United Pointsmen and Signalmen’s Society sign the agreement to create the National Union of Railwaymen at 5pm on February 14 1913.