A man of mettle | Morning Star

THE period between 1906 and World War I (WWI) was increasingly volatile as new groups of workers asserted themselves as trade unionists. The “Great Unrest” also coincided with a constitutional crisis in 1910, agitation for home rule in Ireland, and the emergence of a suffragette movement.

Between June and August 1911, Tom Mann was involved in strikes that developed into a movement in north-west England. On June 9, a national seamen’s strike sparked The 1911 Liverpool Transport Workers’ strike. Mann chaired its central strike committee.

The strike lasted for 72 days, during which the press referred to him as the “Dictator of Merseyside,” as if it was he who had dispatched troops and a gunboat to quell citizens lawfully conducting their rights. Though indeed, not even the Royal Mail delivered unless the central strike committee, led by Mann, gave its authorisation.

In 1912, the first issue of The Syndicalist carried a feature reproducing a leaflet written by stonemason Fred Bower. This was to cause Mann no end of problems. He could immediately sense trouble when the printers and editor of The Syndicalist were arrested and jailed. Characteristically, once published, Mann refused to back down. The feature called soldiers not to shoot or raise their weapons if ordered to do so during action allied to a labour dispute.

Mann was arrested on March 19. Found guilty on a charge of incitement to mutiny, he was given six months, reduced due to local demonstrations and considerable public pressure. On his release in July 1912, he went straight to Tower Hill to speak at a mass meeting of striking lightermen.

The Dublin lockout

In August 1913, Dublin tram drivers donned their Irish Transport and General Workers Union badges and walked off the job. A quarter of the workforce had already been sacked for union membership, leaving barely a quarter of the workforce in a union. This was an existential struggle for the union, leaving 15,000 workers locked out.

Mann was brought in to lift spirits and extend the strike to all transport workers, as he had done on Merseyside. But this time, partly because of exhaustion, British dockers did not respond.

Mann is quoted as saying: “Trades unionism is syndicalism.” His object was “to combine all workers in each industry, … to take over control of the whole economic system.” In that way, the proletariat “could fix the number of working days, the abolition of employers, capitalists and government.”

Eventually, the Trades Union Congress cut funding off. The employers thought that they had the whip hand. Yet, within six months, the war had begun and shortages of labour gave the union renewed vigour and numbers.

The first world war

In 1909 Mann said: “The nations are on the eve of the most frightful war that has ever been known.” When war broke out, he could see that the situation would radically change for organised labour. In Britain, unions signed a compact with the government to police labour disputes in return for “no conscription.”

The Munitions of War Act passed in 1915 made strikes illegal and introduced compulsory arbitration. Writing in April 1915, Mann states that he was “not attempting anything in the way of agitation to stop the war, I am really of the opinion that it ought and must be fought out.”

At the same time, he began to write for the anarchist journal Mother Earth, which allowed him to rail against the Munitions Act.

In a 1915 article, Mann reflects on a year of the war. By now, class-conscious workers had begun to take serious industrial action again.

A threat of action by the South Wales coal miners led to the government threatening conscription. Some 200,000 struck despite the threat and the government could not apply its “special measures” on such a scale.

Mann believed that “if the workers can show solidarity, and be as firm about refusing to work except under their own conditions, they would control the economic situation, and the social revolution would be realised.”

Many of the organisations of which Mann was a leader had flipped to support the war, even the most militant syndicalists. This severely constrained his ability to mobilise. Marking the close of his syndicalist phase, he rejoined the British Socialist Party.

Leeds Convention

The Leeds Convention was held on June 3 1917. The Convention represented all anti-war opinions. The focus for some of the delegates was revolution as a means to secure peace, for others peace came first.

All united in defence of Russia, four months after the February Revolution. It was the first gathering of its kind in many years, breaking the united front of unions in favour of the war effort, and the first opportunity for rank-and-file leaders to exchange aims and strategies.

It passed four resolutions: congratulating Russia, on foreign policy, seeking the restoration of civil liberties and, finally, calling for the establishment of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils.
 
A major diversion came over the formation of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. The convention struggled to give shape to the councils or to map out how they might relate to existing centres of power. But the combativeness was evident.

William Anderson was cheered when he said that Britain should reach for a new form of international assembly where the Russians could be involved, and there should be a “full restitution of civil and industrial liberties.”

Another immediate impact was the agreement, in November 1917, to draw up a new constitution for the Labour Party.

At 63 years of age, he was elected as the general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.

Mann’s syndicalist dream of unified unions, covering entire industries, was edging closer. His general secretaryship of the AEU is significant as it represents historical continuity, the melding of the best elements of new unionism, the direct action of syndicalism, along with the strength and stability of a craft union.

It was now reinforced by shop steward organisation at workplace level, which surged in importance during the war.

■ Phil Katz’s book Yours for the Revolution is published by Manifesto Press Co-operative Ltd. Readers can buy the book by visiting the Morning Star shop shop.morning- staronline.co.uk/collections/books. This article was abridged for the Morning Star by Chloe Mansola and Jasmine Niblett.
■ Manifesto Press are embarking on their first summer speaking tour, WELL READ. WELL RED. Tickets can be reserved at linktr.ee/mani- festopresscoop.
■ Phil Katz is a designer and writer and has been a union organiser for 40 years. He contributes regularly to the Morning Star. Buy next weekend’s Morning Star to read part V in this serialisation.