POPLAR: THE BOROUGH THAT FOUGHT BACK AND WON

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: february 2022 :: RMTnews 26 The two biggest employers in the east London borough of Poplar one hundred years were the railways and the docks. Our forerunner unions had plenty of members there. Their jobs involved long hours and low pay, but they were unionised, so they were fighting for, and winning, improvements. Like the rest of Poplar’s residents, they lived in overcrowded housing, breathed polluted air and died of poverty-related illnesses such tuberculosis (TB). But they were fighting back in their community too. The unions were heavily involved in the local Labour Party, which in turn supported the unions and their struggles – including the pre-war dock strike and the post-war national railways strike. In 1919, Labour won a majority on Poplar Borough Council for the first time. Previously, most working-class people – and all women – did not have the right to vote, so a privileged minority had elected Tories, Liberals, employers and clerics to run the borough; they feathered their own nests and allowed the working-class people of Poplar to continue living in destitution. The newly-elected Labour Council included several transport workers and union activists, including Albert Baker, Joe Banks, Joseph Hammond and James Jones of the Poplar no.1 branch of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR). It included socialist women such as Minnie Lansbury and Julia Scurr. The Council immediately began improving the lot of the people who had elected it. It built new housing, expanded maternity services, improved libraries and swimming baths, brought the charity-run TB clinic into municipal ownership, increased council workers’ wages, and did much more besides. But in 1920, economic recession struck. Export trade collapsed, so dockers were thrown out of work, and the knock-on effects saw thousands of other jobs lost too. Local people needed their council services more than ever, but Poplar Council did not have the money to fund them. Councils had to raise all their money by taxing local residents. There were no significant central government grants or pooling of costs across London. From the meagre amount that Poplar’s working-class residents could afford, its council had to fund all the services they needed, including maintenance for those who were unemployed or impoverished (what we would now call welfare benefits). Poplar Council faced a choice: abandon the improvements by cutting services or raising rates or defy the law. It chose defiance. In early 1921, a conference POPLAR: THE BOROUGH THAT FOUGHT BACK AND WON Janine Booth explains why the Poplar rates revolt a hundred years ago matters today ARREST: Councillor Minnie Lansbury on her way to be taken into custody at Poplar Town Hall