2013 marks the 100th anniversary of two memorable and important events in the labour movement's history, the New Zealand workers' first "general" strike and the Dublin Lock-out.
The Red Feds
In the booming years just before the First World War, Wellington’s port was the busiest in the country. Sixteen hundred watersiders laboured to load export butter, wool, meat and flax by hand into heavy rope slings, which were then hoisted aboard ship by hydraulic crane. It was dirty and dangerous work, and accidents were not only frequent, they occurred in full view of the public, since the port, which has always been the city’s central feature, was open to anyone who wished to walk that way.
The New Zealand of 1913 was populated by a working class made up of several different layers. There were minority sections of radical union militants seeking a better life, through united direct action. There were layers of white collar workers, rural farm labourers and some blue collar workers supporting the government, and many uncommitted toilers in the middle. The working class was divided in other ways: most unionists were men; even by 1921 only around 2% of the female workforce belonged to unions. The 1913 dispute began over two incidents: Wellington shipwrights claiming a travel allowance, and union resistance to the sacking of miners in Huntly. Sympathy actions took place in other regions. In 1909 trade unionists had formed the New Zealand Federation of Labour (the "Red Feds") an organisation opposed to the Liberal government's Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Employers soon developed a tactic to deal with the unions that ignored the arbitration system. They encouraged non-union employees to form a new ‘arbitrationist’ union and register it under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. This happened in the gold-mining town of Waihī and the result was a long and bitter strike, the only New Zealand strike where someone was killed. On 12 November 1912 strike-breakers attacked the union hall, and striker Fred Evans was beaten to death. They then rampaged around Waihī, forcing the other strikers and their families to leave town.
With the forming of the Red Feds, affiliated unions withdrew from the IC&A Act. By November 1913 various workers' grievances melded into a struggle of 16,000 watersiders, miners, labourers, drivers and others on strike, mostly in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. Machine gun posts set up in the main centres and naval ships sent to guard the wharves. The state recruited volunteers to help control the strikers and reopen the wharves. Thousands of strike-breakers were recruited, enrolled as special constables, and armed with wooden batons. Some also used their own firearms and horsewhips. Many were farmers who rode into town on horseback to be dubbed "Massey’s Cossacks" by the strikers. Other volunteers were office workers from city businesses, patrolling contentious areas on foot. Workers' defiance was unabated and for several weeks New Zealand seemed almost at the point of revolution. Much of New Zealand was brought to the eight-week standstill which became known as the 'Great Strike' in Wellington and the 'General Strike' in Auckland." The workers possessed valour, but insufficient resources or unified political purpose to beat the capitalist state. Leaders of the 1913 strike like Peter Fraser, Harry Holland and Michael Joseph Savage learned the hard lesson that the labour movement could not achieve its goals through industrial action alone. Harry Holland declared in his maiden speech to Parliament:
"We come proclaiming boldly and fearlessly the Socialist objective of the Labour movement throughout New Zealand; and we make no secret of the fact that we seek to rebuild society on a basis in which work and not wealth will be the measure of a man's worth. We do not seek to make a class war. You cannot make that which is already in existence. We recognise that the antagonisms which divide society into classes are economically foundationed, and we are going, if we can, to change those economic foundations, to end the class war by ending the causes of class warfare."
However the route he and the others took was not the socialist one. The "heroes" of the labour movement went on to "achieve goals" in direct contradiction to the aims of the 1913 strikers. Harry Holland campaigned in 1922 against the Miners Union taking strike action in defence of their pay and conditions. As war time Prime minister, Peter Fraser championed censorship, wage controls and conscription. One time Chairman of the Red Feds, Michael Joseph Savage initially opposed the formation of the Labour party from the left. In 1911 he stood for the Socialists against Labour in Auckland Central. In due time he swapped socialist principle for the comfort of a career as a capitalist minister.
Some historians have suggested that employers engineered the conflict, for example Michael King wrote that “employers fearing a continuation of “revolutionary” union tactics, engineered a lockout on the Wellington wharves.” and Richard Hill wrote “the federationists were the victims of a government determined to destroy its class enemies... Leading employers decided to strike at the heart of the union movement before the united federation had a chance to consolidate... with the government assisting in various ways ... the government was more interested in crushing the watersiders than getting the wharves going.”
The Maoriland Worker edited by Harry Holland had a readership in the tens of thousands. Edward Bellamy's utopian socialist novel Looking Backward sold out. Across the country a small but significant number of radically minded ordinary workers studied Marxist and other revolutionary literature, such as Industrial Workers of the World and syndicalist literature. The aims of the syndicalists were to replace the capitalist system with a form of unionised worker control. Much syndicalist thinking was romantic idealism, but there is no doubting its uncompromising class attitude. The New Zealand Socialist Party, had been founded in 1900 (or 1901) and although it did not claim to be, a Marxist party, there were Marxist elements in it. It distributed works of Marx, Engels and Kautsky, as well as literature from socialist parties in Britain and North America such as the writings of Daniel De Leon and Karl Liebknecht. The Western Clarion, journal of the Socialist Party of Canada, the International Socialist Review and even the Socialist Standard found a readership in New Zealand. One socialist writer to the Petone Chronicle advised socialists to write the word “Socialism” across their voting papers; and another stated that nationalisation was not socialism. On October 21, 1912, “a number of Marxian students” formed the Petone Marxian Club. Optimistically. At its fifth meeting, it was moved: “That this club adopt the object and principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.” The resolution was adopted without dissent. Although the Petone Marxian Club had a limited existence (it held a total of 61 meetings), it did sow the seeds for further socialist organisation in New Zealand.
Today, there is little socialist presence in New Zealand's working class. The small World Socialist Party of New Zealand continues in existence and engages in activities to the best of its abilities. However, union membership continues to decline. The few isolated union actions are almost all rearguard struggles attempting to hold the line against further cutbacks. Some lockouts have enjoyed degrees of financial support from other unionists, but solidarity strikes remain illegal and a memory. Workers' expectations have been driven almost into the ground. Exactly as in 1913, workers are exploited at the point of production. Casualisation, generational unemployment and economic inequality continue to grow, casting a growing shadow of social dislocation. Last century's general strike is a reminder that the working class and the capitalists have nothing in common and that workers can only win liberation by their own unified revolutionary struggle.
In 1951 the New Zealand wharf workers union was locked out of ports across the nation after what started as a strike for a pay rise. The government used the armed forces to load and unload cargo while police held picket lines of miners at bay. Waikato miners and hydro workers went out in sympathy strikes. During the lockout police closed union halls and harassed the speakers at public meetings. Police raided union members houses. To feed the locked out workers the entire community pitched in to supply food to families. After 151 days the strike was called off and workers returned to the wharves having been defeated.
As we said at the time the "lesson to be learned from this working-class struggle in New Zealand is that working conditions bitterly fought for and won through struggle on the industrial battlefield over the years can be wiped out, comparatively speaking, in a few minutes by those who control the political machinery. The political weapon is the dominant one and whilst it remains in the hands of the capitalist class no amount of struggle will free the workers from the yoke of capital. The same determined and heroic effort as our New Zealand fellow workers have recently waged, if directed towards gaining control of the political machine with a view to ending the wages system would solve all their economic problems. If only they would raise the cry, "Abolish the wages system" instead of making a modest demand for a tiny wage increase, then they would be heading towards a system free from lock-outs, strikes, poverty, atomic wars, ill housing, dictatorship, over-work and the host of other evils which beset them."
Locked-out in Dublin
The poverty of Dublin's workers was appalling. The death rate in Dublin, 27.6 per 1000, was as high as Calcutta's. The slums were the worst of any city in Europe. 20,108 families were recorded as living in single rooms. Dublin workers and their trade unions developed new means of protest and stood up to demand better working conditions.
In July 1913 Jim Larkin, leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union tried to organise the Dublin tramway workers, with Jams Connolly also playing a prominent role. The Irish Citizen Army, originally a self-defence body, was formed by the ITWU shortly after the lock-out began to protect its members from police brutality. William Murphy, chairman of the company, owner of the local press, an Irish Party MP and supported by the Catholic Church responded by sacking members of the union. Murphy used his newspapers to claim all manner of lies and slanders against Larkin and the strikers. The union then got its other members to black the Dublin tram company. It also organised a big protest demonstration in the centre of Dublin on 31 August, which the government banned and which turned into a police riot in which many passers-by were beaten up – yet another Bloody Sunday. Murphy's next move was to get the Dublin employers to agree to require their workers to sign a form stating that they would have nothing to do with the ITGWU; those who refused were sacked, in effect locked out. Murphy told the tramway men that the company's shareholders "will have three meals a day', whether the strike succeeded or not. I don't know if the men who go out can count on this"
Once the lock-out was general in Dublin the two sides' strength could be clearly seen. On one side was the vast majority of the Dublin working class, on the other not only the employers of the city but the whole of the British ruling class and its state machinery. Arthur Griffith, the leader of Sinn Fein, refused assistance because his movement was "national not sectional". He went on the describe the food ships sent by British trade unionists as an "insult". Within the city most nationalists opposed the lockout, not least because the powerful lobby shop-keepers was outraged at the flood of free goods from Britain. The Irish Republican Brotherhood also refused to involve itself in a "sectional" dispute. The Catholic church enjoyed a lot of influence and from the beginning it had opposed trade unionism. It was obvious that the strikers' children were suffering from Murphy's "starvation policy ", so much so that families in Britain offered to take children into their homes until the situation improved. Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, despite assurances that the children's religion would be safeguarded, attacked the plan. He also stated that it was unacceptable because sending children to comfortable homes with three appetising meals a day would make them discontented with their slum homes when they returned. A campaign of slander claimed that the children were being taken away so that they could be made into Protestants. Gangs of thugs were organised to try and prevent their departure and these were marshalled by priests and officers of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The supply of children to be housed rapidly dried up when the Murphy press began publishing the names and addresses of parents. The tremendous effort put into preventing the children leaving Dublin was not paralleled by similar efforts to look after them at home.
Larkin was what was called at the time a "syndicalist", which meant someone who believed that the way forward for workers was combined industrial action on the basis of "an injury to one is an injury to all". In practice it meant that other workers – ideally, all other workers – should take action in support of any group of workers on strike by blacking goods produced by or supplied to their employers – the "sympathetic strike". The ITGWU launched appeals for solidarity action. Larkin spoke at meetings all over Britain. railway workers in Liverpool began to black all traffic to Dublin, soon some 13,000 were locked out or on strike as far afield as Birmingham, Sheffield, Crewe and Derby. This action was totally unofficial, organised by rank and file committees who aimed towards a national stoppage in support of Dublin. Sadly the railway union leaders, in particular J.H. Thomas, managed to prevent the strike spreading, isolate the militants and secure a return to work. In South Wales two train drivers were sacked for refusing to carry Dublin traffic. 30,000 of their fellow workers on the railways struck in support of them. Once again Thomas used all his schemes and pleadings to get the strikers back to work he ended up describing the two sacked train drivers as "a disgrace" to trade unionism! Union officials reported great difficulty in keeping their members on the Liverpool and London docks from coming out in sympathy.
The lockout began in October 1913 and was all over by January 1914. The resistance to the lockout ended in failure in face of the intransigence of the employers and after the TUC had decided it could no longer afford to continue sending food and money. Larkin blamed the British TUC for not having called a general sympathetic strike of transport workers in Britain but in their defnce it has to be pointed out that if Larkin could not close Dublin port with around 50 per cent of workers unionised there was little hope of British unions achieving better results with 15 per cent unionisation. In the January 1914 municipal elections of the Larkinite candidates in Dublin put forward only one of ten candidates was elected and, although they came close to winning in several other constituencies, the result was all the more devastating because of the high hopes with which they entered the contest. Isolated by the TUC in Britain, rejected by the electorate in Dublin and facing starvation because the food ships had stopped, Dublin workers had to accept the inevitable and return to work. But once again the ultimate reason for the failure was that the "syndicalist" tactic wasn't as effective as its advocates imagined. Socialists lay the foundations for the struggles of tomorrow, the struggles we hope will take us into a world that can offer a real future to us all.
The Red Feds
In the booming years just before the First World War, Wellington’s port was the busiest in the country. Sixteen hundred watersiders laboured to load export butter, wool, meat and flax by hand into heavy rope slings, which were then hoisted aboard ship by hydraulic crane. It was dirty and dangerous work, and accidents were not only frequent, they occurred in full view of the public, since the port, which has always been the city’s central feature, was open to anyone who wished to walk that way.
The New Zealand of 1913 was populated by a working class made up of several different layers. There were minority sections of radical union militants seeking a better life, through united direct action. There were layers of white collar workers, rural farm labourers and some blue collar workers supporting the government, and many uncommitted toilers in the middle. The working class was divided in other ways: most unionists were men; even by 1921 only around 2% of the female workforce belonged to unions. The 1913 dispute began over two incidents: Wellington shipwrights claiming a travel allowance, and union resistance to the sacking of miners in Huntly. Sympathy actions took place in other regions. In 1909 trade unionists had formed the New Zealand Federation of Labour (the "Red Feds") an organisation opposed to the Liberal government's Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Employers soon developed a tactic to deal with the unions that ignored the arbitration system. They encouraged non-union employees to form a new ‘arbitrationist’ union and register it under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. This happened in the gold-mining town of Waihī and the result was a long and bitter strike, the only New Zealand strike where someone was killed. On 12 November 1912 strike-breakers attacked the union hall, and striker Fred Evans was beaten to death. They then rampaged around Waihī, forcing the other strikers and their families to leave town.
With the forming of the Red Feds, affiliated unions withdrew from the IC&A Act. By November 1913 various workers' grievances melded into a struggle of 16,000 watersiders, miners, labourers, drivers and others on strike, mostly in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. Machine gun posts set up in the main centres and naval ships sent to guard the wharves. The state recruited volunteers to help control the strikers and reopen the wharves. Thousands of strike-breakers were recruited, enrolled as special constables, and armed with wooden batons. Some also used their own firearms and horsewhips. Many were farmers who rode into town on horseback to be dubbed "Massey’s Cossacks" by the strikers. Other volunteers were office workers from city businesses, patrolling contentious areas on foot. Workers' defiance was unabated and for several weeks New Zealand seemed almost at the point of revolution. Much of New Zealand was brought to the eight-week standstill which became known as the 'Great Strike' in Wellington and the 'General Strike' in Auckland." The workers possessed valour, but insufficient resources or unified political purpose to beat the capitalist state. Leaders of the 1913 strike like Peter Fraser, Harry Holland and Michael Joseph Savage learned the hard lesson that the labour movement could not achieve its goals through industrial action alone. Harry Holland declared in his maiden speech to Parliament:
"We come proclaiming boldly and fearlessly the Socialist objective of the Labour movement throughout New Zealand; and we make no secret of the fact that we seek to rebuild society on a basis in which work and not wealth will be the measure of a man's worth. We do not seek to make a class war. You cannot make that which is already in existence. We recognise that the antagonisms which divide society into classes are economically foundationed, and we are going, if we can, to change those economic foundations, to end the class war by ending the causes of class warfare."
However the route he and the others took was not the socialist one. The "heroes" of the labour movement went on to "achieve goals" in direct contradiction to the aims of the 1913 strikers. Harry Holland campaigned in 1922 against the Miners Union taking strike action in defence of their pay and conditions. As war time Prime minister, Peter Fraser championed censorship, wage controls and conscription. One time Chairman of the Red Feds, Michael Joseph Savage initially opposed the formation of the Labour party from the left. In 1911 he stood for the Socialists against Labour in Auckland Central. In due time he swapped socialist principle for the comfort of a career as a capitalist minister.
Some historians have suggested that employers engineered the conflict, for example Michael King wrote that “employers fearing a continuation of “revolutionary” union tactics, engineered a lockout on the Wellington wharves.” and Richard Hill wrote “the federationists were the victims of a government determined to destroy its class enemies... Leading employers decided to strike at the heart of the union movement before the united federation had a chance to consolidate... with the government assisting in various ways ... the government was more interested in crushing the watersiders than getting the wharves going.”
The Maoriland Worker edited by Harry Holland had a readership in the tens of thousands. Edward Bellamy's utopian socialist novel Looking Backward sold out. Across the country a small but significant number of radically minded ordinary workers studied Marxist and other revolutionary literature, such as Industrial Workers of the World and syndicalist literature. The aims of the syndicalists were to replace the capitalist system with a form of unionised worker control. Much syndicalist thinking was romantic idealism, but there is no doubting its uncompromising class attitude. The New Zealand Socialist Party, had been founded in 1900 (or 1901) and although it did not claim to be, a Marxist party, there were Marxist elements in it. It distributed works of Marx, Engels and Kautsky, as well as literature from socialist parties in Britain and North America such as the writings of Daniel De Leon and Karl Liebknecht. The Western Clarion, journal of the Socialist Party of Canada, the International Socialist Review and even the Socialist Standard found a readership in New Zealand. One socialist writer to the Petone Chronicle advised socialists to write the word “Socialism” across their voting papers; and another stated that nationalisation was not socialism. On October 21, 1912, “a number of Marxian students” formed the Petone Marxian Club. Optimistically. At its fifth meeting, it was moved: “That this club adopt the object and principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.” The resolution was adopted without dissent. Although the Petone Marxian Club had a limited existence (it held a total of 61 meetings), it did sow the seeds for further socialist organisation in New Zealand.
Today, there is little socialist presence in New Zealand's working class. The small World Socialist Party of New Zealand continues in existence and engages in activities to the best of its abilities. However, union membership continues to decline. The few isolated union actions are almost all rearguard struggles attempting to hold the line against further cutbacks. Some lockouts have enjoyed degrees of financial support from other unionists, but solidarity strikes remain illegal and a memory. Workers' expectations have been driven almost into the ground. Exactly as in 1913, workers are exploited at the point of production. Casualisation, generational unemployment and economic inequality continue to grow, casting a growing shadow of social dislocation. Last century's general strike is a reminder that the working class and the capitalists have nothing in common and that workers can only win liberation by their own unified revolutionary struggle.
In 1951 the New Zealand wharf workers union was locked out of ports across the nation after what started as a strike for a pay rise. The government used the armed forces to load and unload cargo while police held picket lines of miners at bay. Waikato miners and hydro workers went out in sympathy strikes. During the lockout police closed union halls and harassed the speakers at public meetings. Police raided union members houses. To feed the locked out workers the entire community pitched in to supply food to families. After 151 days the strike was called off and workers returned to the wharves having been defeated.
As we said at the time the "lesson to be learned from this working-class struggle in New Zealand is that working conditions bitterly fought for and won through struggle on the industrial battlefield over the years can be wiped out, comparatively speaking, in a few minutes by those who control the political machinery. The political weapon is the dominant one and whilst it remains in the hands of the capitalist class no amount of struggle will free the workers from the yoke of capital. The same determined and heroic effort as our New Zealand fellow workers have recently waged, if directed towards gaining control of the political machine with a view to ending the wages system would solve all their economic problems. If only they would raise the cry, "Abolish the wages system" instead of making a modest demand for a tiny wage increase, then they would be heading towards a system free from lock-outs, strikes, poverty, atomic wars, ill housing, dictatorship, over-work and the host of other evils which beset them."
Locked-out in Dublin
The poverty of Dublin's workers was appalling. The death rate in Dublin, 27.6 per 1000, was as high as Calcutta's. The slums were the worst of any city in Europe. 20,108 families were recorded as living in single rooms. Dublin workers and their trade unions developed new means of protest and stood up to demand better working conditions.
In July 1913 Jim Larkin, leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union tried to organise the Dublin tramway workers, with Jams Connolly also playing a prominent role. The Irish Citizen Army, originally a self-defence body, was formed by the ITWU shortly after the lock-out began to protect its members from police brutality. William Murphy, chairman of the company, owner of the local press, an Irish Party MP and supported by the Catholic Church responded by sacking members of the union. Murphy used his newspapers to claim all manner of lies and slanders against Larkin and the strikers. The union then got its other members to black the Dublin tram company. It also organised a big protest demonstration in the centre of Dublin on 31 August, which the government banned and which turned into a police riot in which many passers-by were beaten up – yet another Bloody Sunday. Murphy's next move was to get the Dublin employers to agree to require their workers to sign a form stating that they would have nothing to do with the ITGWU; those who refused were sacked, in effect locked out. Murphy told the tramway men that the company's shareholders "will have three meals a day', whether the strike succeeded or not. I don't know if the men who go out can count on this"
Once the lock-out was general in Dublin the two sides' strength could be clearly seen. On one side was the vast majority of the Dublin working class, on the other not only the employers of the city but the whole of the British ruling class and its state machinery. Arthur Griffith, the leader of Sinn Fein, refused assistance because his movement was "national not sectional". He went on the describe the food ships sent by British trade unionists as an "insult". Within the city most nationalists opposed the lockout, not least because the powerful lobby shop-keepers was outraged at the flood of free goods from Britain. The Irish Republican Brotherhood also refused to involve itself in a "sectional" dispute. The Catholic church enjoyed a lot of influence and from the beginning it had opposed trade unionism. It was obvious that the strikers' children were suffering from Murphy's "starvation policy ", so much so that families in Britain offered to take children into their homes until the situation improved. Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, despite assurances that the children's religion would be safeguarded, attacked the plan. He also stated that it was unacceptable because sending children to comfortable homes with three appetising meals a day would make them discontented with their slum homes when they returned. A campaign of slander claimed that the children were being taken away so that they could be made into Protestants. Gangs of thugs were organised to try and prevent their departure and these were marshalled by priests and officers of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The supply of children to be housed rapidly dried up when the Murphy press began publishing the names and addresses of parents. The tremendous effort put into preventing the children leaving Dublin was not paralleled by similar efforts to look after them at home.
Larkin was what was called at the time a "syndicalist", which meant someone who believed that the way forward for workers was combined industrial action on the basis of "an injury to one is an injury to all". In practice it meant that other workers – ideally, all other workers – should take action in support of any group of workers on strike by blacking goods produced by or supplied to their employers – the "sympathetic strike". The ITGWU launched appeals for solidarity action. Larkin spoke at meetings all over Britain. railway workers in Liverpool began to black all traffic to Dublin, soon some 13,000 were locked out or on strike as far afield as Birmingham, Sheffield, Crewe and Derby. This action was totally unofficial, organised by rank and file committees who aimed towards a national stoppage in support of Dublin. Sadly the railway union leaders, in particular J.H. Thomas, managed to prevent the strike spreading, isolate the militants and secure a return to work. In South Wales two train drivers were sacked for refusing to carry Dublin traffic. 30,000 of their fellow workers on the railways struck in support of them. Once again Thomas used all his schemes and pleadings to get the strikers back to work he ended up describing the two sacked train drivers as "a disgrace" to trade unionism! Union officials reported great difficulty in keeping their members on the Liverpool and London docks from coming out in sympathy.
The lockout began in October 1913 and was all over by January 1914. The resistance to the lockout ended in failure in face of the intransigence of the employers and after the TUC had decided it could no longer afford to continue sending food and money. Larkin blamed the British TUC for not having called a general sympathetic strike of transport workers in Britain but in their defnce it has to be pointed out that if Larkin could not close Dublin port with around 50 per cent of workers unionised there was little hope of British unions achieving better results with 15 per cent unionisation. In the January 1914 municipal elections of the Larkinite candidates in Dublin put forward only one of ten candidates was elected and, although they came close to winning in several other constituencies, the result was all the more devastating because of the high hopes with which they entered the contest. Isolated by the TUC in Britain, rejected by the electorate in Dublin and facing starvation because the food ships had stopped, Dublin workers had to accept the inevitable and return to work. But once again the ultimate reason for the failure was that the "syndicalist" tactic wasn't as effective as its advocates imagined. Socialists lay the foundations for the struggles of tomorrow, the struggles we hope will take us into a world that can offer a real future to us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment