MIA > Archive > J.T. Murphy
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 56 [34], 16 August 1923, pp. 605–606.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2022). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
It had been known for some time that a reduction of wages would be coming to the Dockers at an early date. On July 2nd the reduction arrived, and all the Dockers stopped work. There had been no preparation. The action was as spontaneous as anything could be. On Tuesday July 3rd the London Dockers saw the newspaper placards announcing the Dock Strike at Hull. They also had looked twice and thrice at the reduced wages received the day before. Word ran round the Docks and they simply stopped work. There were no leaders anywhere. Everybody was taken by surprise, officials, agitators, everybody.
True, there was an agreement which stated that with the fall of the official index figure relating to the cost of living to its present level the wages would be reduced from 11/– to 10/– per day. But the Docker is more or less a casual worker, and lucky nowadays if he gets three days a week at work. Out of his pay, insurance money must be deducted, and one cannot get far on 22/– or 33/– per week. To find this low level still further reduced was too much. They simply stopped work, agreement or no agreement.
Efforts were made to set up Strike Committees, and in a few days these were forthcoming. Meanwhile the Dockers of Bristol, Avonmouth, Cardiff, Barry, Birkenhead, Liverpool, and Manchester followed the Hull and London Dockers. It was a real bread strike. The London-Committee issued a number of demands which were readily seized upon and agreed to by all districts. The program they issued reads as follows:–
This program was drawn up on the initiative of the Communists, and has remained the program throughout all the changes in the personnel of the various committees which have had charge of the strikers.
Within a week 60,000 dockers were on strike, but it was evident that the official leaders, headed by Messrs. Bevin and Gosling M.P., were up against it. Basing themselves upon the sanctity of the agreement that had been made by them with the employers, they flatly refused to support the strikers. They immediately ordered them back to work and prepared to marshal all the Trade Union machinery to force a resumption of work.
The annual conference of the Transport workers was held at the beginning of the second week of the strike. The delegates had been elected many weeks before and represented many sections who were not dockers. Although two delegates came from the Strike Committee they had little effect on the conference. Bevin and Gosling held forth that they could not favor a strike that would not be a national strike. “To attempt to get such a strike,” they said, “in the face of the agreement, which the men were breaking, and the 300 other agreements to which the Union was bound, was a hopeless policy, and wrong. The men had now made an effective protest and they should go back to work”. By an overwhelming majority the conference supported the official leaders and urged the men to return.
This decision had its effect upon the officials who were widely known as supporters of 1he revolutionary movement, and they began to echo tne conference decision. The only people who seemed to be unaffected were the strikers. During the next few days the officials could not get a hearing. Anyone suggesting a return to work was lucky to get away from the meetings with a whole skin. But the officials were fighters. They had made up their minds to smash the strike. They appealed to the employers to keep their hands off and they would settle the strike for them on the basis of the agreement. Then began a press campaign in the daily papers in which they spent some hundreds of pounds in advertising the resolutions and manifestoes of official committee meetings. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress came out with a manifesto and supported the officials, and Mr. MacDonald, leader of the Labor Party, roundly denounced the unofficial revolt He says in the Socialist Review for August: “The Union provides a proper way for demanding what wages are required, and whoever encourages this kind of revolt are only mischief makers – even if hot weather enables them to score some success”.
A series of meetings and conferences were arranged in the provinces, and at the end of three weeks campaigning they had succeeded in getting the provincial dockers back to work at the reduced rate. At the beginning of the fifth week the London Dockers were left to fight on alone. At the beginning of the sixth week the forces are solid, and the London Docks are completely tied up.
The strike has been remarkable for rank and file solidarity and equally remarkable for confusion amongst the leaders. From the moment the officials began their campaign, the unofficial strike committees were under the suspicion of the men if they went near the officials. Union competition added to the confusion. When the Dockers led the way, the Strike Committees in London began to look for Tom Mann to take the lead after the officials had refused, just at the moment Mann was about to enter the fray, new forces came along and altered the composition of the Strike Committee. A rival union of the Transport and General Workers’ Union now went on strike in support of the Dockers, whilst some of the men who had been associated with Tom Mann in the R.I.L.U and the Communist Party had got into discredit by joining in the official chorus for sending the men back to work, with the enlargement of the strike and the change in the make-up of the Central Strike Committee, the leadership became completely reactionary so far as its political outlook was concerned and rejected the assistance of Tom Mann, the Communist Party and the R.I.L.U. Union squabbles were introduced into the situation and the delegates from the provinces were rebuffed. The London Committee wanted the strike to be a London strike, and have nothing to do with the provinces. It was this rebuff which weakened the provincial committees and enables the union officials to gain the upper hand and to drive the men back to work.
At the moment when Tom Mann was prepared to take the lead, 14,000 Dublin Dockers went on strike, on similar issues, and there were big possibilities of a Mann and Larkin combination. The spirit of the Dockers was splendid throughout, but they have been unfortunate in the committees that have been thrown up to lead them. During the first three weeks of the strike the London Committee issued a Strike Bulletin. With the extension of the strike to the Stevedores, Lightermen, etc., and the enlargement of the Strike Committee, they dropped the bulletin. The Communist Party tried to make good this mistake by issuing a Dockers’ Edition of the Workers’ Weekly. Four special editions have appeared, but at no moment has the hope of a new leadership in the hands of Tom Mann and Larkin again seemed possible.
It must not be thought that the Strike Committee in London has done nothing in the way of holding the forces together. They have done wonders in the London area with the men under their control, but always their narrow political vision and craft union prejudices prevented them from enlarging the struggle either amongst the Dockers or other workers. Parochial ideas ruled the situation. Everything had to be local to inspire them. For example, the following cable was received from New York on July 24th:
“Strike declared at New York by marine workers, seek to cooperate with British Transport Workers, letter following – signed General Strike Committee.”
This telegram received scant attention from the Committee. But when the crew of a German ship marched with the Bermondsey and Rotherhithe strikers and refused to blackleg the dockers, they got a wonderful reception from the strikers. Other manifestations of international solidarity enthused the workers. When blacklegs attempted to unload two Australian ships named the Hobson’s Bay and Esperanza Bay they were promptly asked their business. When the blacklegs attempted to explain, they were chased off the ships by the crews, when two Norwegian ships were berthed at the wharf near Tower Bridge where blacklegging was going on, the blacklegs got a surprise. The crews refused to allow them to approach. This spirit has had a splendid effect in inspiring mass marches and mass pickets but has not broken down the prejudices of the Committee.
One other important factor has strengthened the Unofficial Committee’s position both against the officials who wanted to get the men back to work and against the more revolutionary elements who wanted to extend the strike to other ports and to other sections of workers. When the strike began and the men could not draw strike pay the Communist Party and strike leaders urged the strikers and their families to claim outdoor relief from the Boards of Guard ans. They got outdoor relief, with the result that many families were better off with the men on strike than when at work. This cut both ways. It strengthened the strike on the spot but made the strikers indifferent to the proposals for an extension of the strike.
Six weeks have now passed. The strike holds fast in London. The men refused to go back on terms less than 11/– per day and a pledge to examine the index figures governing the cost of living. The Communist Party is campaigning for an extension of the strike as the only means of forcing the pace on behalf of the men. This strike is the first big spontaneous revolt against the union bureaucracy, indicating that the limits of passive endurance are rapidly being reached and that the social pacifist officials cannot look forward any longer to a period of quietly machining the workers into subjection by means of joint agreements with the boss.
Last updated on 2 September 2022