Chapter 4 Owen, The Tailors Union and Tolpuddle

Derby was the cause of the setting up, the central dispute and ultimately the dispute which led to the end of the GNCTU. This is a controversial statement but one which the evidence available strongly suggests. Three other main events in the history of the GNCTU have been identified and each has its adherents and its points of accuracy. The Webbs and Cole argued that the early 1830s was a revolutionary period of trade union history and that this was down to the involvement of Owen and his utopian socialist ideas. Parssinen and Prothero were part of a revisionist tendency in labour history during the 1960s and 1970s which took the line that early trade unionism including the GNCTU period was essentially a continuation of a tradition of trade union action from the Eighteenth Century and had similar economic goals. Rule repeats this position with some concessions to the political objectives apparent in his analysis. This leads both Rule and the Parssinen and Prothero to the conclusion that the GNCTU was set up by and on behalf of the London Tailors’ Union. The final and best-remembered event was the Tolpuddle Martyrs. The transportation of the Dorchester six has been elevated above the realm of labour history and entered popular English folk law. This elevation does not ‘of right’ make them more important but it does make the Dorset events worth investigating.

Some work on this period mistakenly sees the Owen inspired ‘Grand National Moral Union of the Productive Classes’ founded in October 1833 as the same thing as the GNCTU. They were not the same but were related by their aspirations to take control of all industry. The key difference - a difference which kept Owen out of GNCTU membership at first - was that the Consolidated was an exclusively working class organisation. Despite Owen’s non-membership, there can be no doubt, that the Trades Union was influenced by Owenite notions. Its plans to replace wage slavery with co-operative production and working class participation in decision making were parallel with Owen’s. Owen made this clear at his conference speech in October 1834 when he said:

he then went on to outline plans for the control of industry around "national companies" governed by "trades Association lodges". The idea has been mooted by Parssinen and Prothero that "while a few of the leaders saw the union as an agency of social transformation, the ordinary members saw it as a way to broaden their financial base and thus strengthen their position in individual strikes to improve wages and working conditions". The trouble with this argument lies in the actuality of the Derby dispute which had no wage claim or any other "trade dispute" linked to it and the activities of the London tailors who were as involved in co-operative production as they were in strike action.

Owen’s ideas were certainly heard and sought after by working people. The meeting held in Derby provides evidence of that. The question is were they of use to an emergent working class movement or a barrier? Oliver argues convincingly that where these ideas diverged from the Trades Union socialists such as Morrison and J. E. Smith was in the need for a working class victory. This was a fatal split of opinion as it tied the hands of the unionists when battling the class enemy. Owen saw rational persuasion as the route to the socialist utopia which led him to attempt to stop the "genuine radical and trade unionist" editor of The Pioneer, Morrison, from "irritating other classes". This led to a split in the leadership of the GNCTU and contributed to its demise with the subsequent closure of The Pioneer. With his original position as editor of the official journal of the GNCTU and his ideas which led Max Beer to describe him as "the originator of the syndicalist conception of class antagonism on the part of the working classes", it seem clear that it was Morrison rather than Owen who provided the practical ideological impetus to the GNCTU. In May 1834 a contemporary unionist observed that "Owen, although he has done an immense deal of good, is causing division by intermeddling with the Union, which would go on better without him". The ideological division between the two editors and Owen can be seen in the pages of The Pioneer, Owen accused them of preaching class hatred and Smith wrote of Owen that:

They did not "prevent his dictatorship" and Owen converted the GNCTU into an Owenite talking shop as the editors had feared.

The opposite position to the GNCTU being based in ideology is put by Parssinen and Prothero. They ground their argument in the involvement of the long established London Tailors’ Union of which they say "the tailors had the strongest of all the London based combinations, and it took the masters thirty years to break it down". It was the Tailors who called the first meeting of the GNCTU and it was the Tailors who called the first strike after the defeat of Derby. All this adds up to the GNCTU being just another trade support federation on the lines of the NAPL. This proposition is backed by arguments that the timing of all this "Trades Union" activity was not down to the failure of the Reform Act to deliver benefit to the working class or any other political causation. Rather it could be explained by: economic recovery; traditional joint action of trades; a traditional increase in feelings of solidarity in times of spectacular disputes such as Derby; and the copying of the federal structure of the NAPL. That a tradition of trade unionism was important in the foundation of the GNCTU is without doubt correct; what is wrong with this argument is that it is false to say that the GNCTU was, under a thin veneer of social revolutionary objectives, really just a traditional form of trade society. It most certainly was not, as the masters of Derby and of London realised. When, - as both did - they told the unionists to abandon their union or face dismissal it was the "Trades Union" with its proto-syndicalist aspirations which they were being coerced to abandon. This is clear in the Tailors’ strike as well, as previously illustrated, in Derby. The response of the Tailors to the presentation of the document in June was secession from the GNCTU, rather than their local combination and negotiations with the masters to return to work on the same conditions as previously.

Compared to the Derby Lock-out this was a straightforward and unremarkable strike. The Tailors had struck many times before and with similar demands. However, it was not exactly the same as previous strikes. The Tailors had transformed their trade club into the Grand Lodge of Operative Tailors of London in November 1833 along inclusive lines, and had co-operative aspirations. The objectives of the strike were not merely a short term raise in wages but as Parssinen and Prothero say "were really meant to bring about industrial reform".

It was the involvement of the Tailors in the foundation and collapse of the GNCTU which led Rule to the conclusion that they were the most important factor in its history. From the evidence available it seems that Derby could be more favourably put forward as a candidate for Rule’s "central conflict" . Not only was Derby the dispute which led the GNCTU to be formed, it could also be argued (as Oliver does), that the drain on funds engendered by Derby and the demoralisation of abject defeat led to the certain crushing of the Tailors’ strike. If the clear ideological basis of the Derby Lock-Out - as propounded so eloquently by the masters and Derby Trades Unionists in the pages of the local newspapers - is added to this it becomes undeniably the most significant dispute of the period.

The best known event of early Trade Union history must be the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. These six agricultural labourers who had formed a union for mutual protection were condemned as felons in March 1834, under the 1797 Mutiny Act for the administration of an illegal oath. Their transportation to Australia led to an outcry from trades unionists and anti-trades unionists alike. This was perhaps because of the severity of the sentence upon six men of good character, as Marlow says:

The press could also manageably portray their plight as illustrated by contemporary illustrations.

 fig 5

Complimenting the feelings of compassion for fellow humans was the concern of gentlemen belonging to "Orange Lodges, Oddfellows and sundry other societies". The result of this outcry was a wide based movement against the sentences, organised by the GNCTU and participated in by new Radical members such as Owen. This broadening of the ranks of those supporting the GNCTU’s new star cause was a mixed blessing. Especially the inclusion of Owen who the leaders of the GNCTU had respect for as a committed opponent of poverty. The result of this mixed blessing was not to "strengthen the Consolidated Union" but to weaken its working class solidarity and sense of purpose.

The continuing notoriety of Tolpuddle can best be put down to the appeal it had outside of trades union interest, as a case of simple injustice against six simple God fearing country men. Its main effect on the Consolidated was to involve Owen in its leadership, a man with no sympathy for its class war constitution. Tolpuddle is likely to have caused the leaders and members of the Union some concern for their safety. The practicalities of transporting thousands of Trades Unionists matter little if you are one of the unlucky few to be punished. It can certainly be argued - as Marlow does - that the

However, as she herself contends at the time it did little more than exacerbate an already desperate situation: with Derby defeated, the leadership divided and corrupt and the Tailors commencing a doomed strike, all was bleak for the general union of the working classes.

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