Graham Stevenson

"THE WORKERS’ MOVEMENT TAKES ITS OWN COURSE”

1) Out with the old - in with the new
a) Social Conditions - 1890 to 1914
b) The growth of industrial militancy 1911-1 914

2) i) “Our man in parliament”- Labour politics 1885 -1914
ii) Working class politics in Derbyshire
iii) Votes for women - now!
iv) The emergence of Labour as a national political force (1906-1914) and its impact on Derbyshire
v) The Co-operative movement
vi) The demise of Lib-Labism

3) Trades unionism in particular industries
i) Railways
ii) The building industry
iii) Mining
v) Textiles
v) Engineering
vi) Printing and associated trades
vii) The Gas and General Labourers’ Union
viii) The Workers Union
ix) Distributive workers
x) Corporation employees
xi) Stove and grate workers
xii) Coach building
xiii) Agriculture
xiv) Baking
xv) Pottery workers
xvi) Professional workers

4 Chapter 7 References

The Workers Movement takes its own course

‘Many a struggle of a sectional character will be necessary before the workers are able to resort to common action for the final overthrow of the wages system*; education of the economically class conscious variety receives its best stimulus by means of a strike for better conditions...

Those who determine simply to theorise and to argue interminably as to the most logical method get left high and dry by the workers movement which takes its own course.”

Tom Mann
“The Path to Power” in
“Solidarity” March 1914

* i.e. capitalism

1 (i) Out with the old - in with the new

For most of the last quarter of the 19th century, prices continually fell and the cost of living went down by nearly one third. unemployment, largely, kept extraordinarily low. However, from the slump of 1893, things began to alter drastically. Prices soared, reaching the level last attained in the 1870s. Whilst workers had won an actual increase in real earnings in the latter part of the century, the period from the 1893 slump to the outbreak of the First World War, was marked by a ferocious struggle to stand still. Food prices rose by as much as a quarter, while wages increased by 16%. The only recourse workers had was to the defence mechanism of trade unions and, as these were attacked for their role in helping workers in this vicious economic battle, they saw the need to protect themselves from the excesses of a political system utterly dominated by the capitalist class. [1]

In general, the end of the old century saw a new crisis for British capitalism. The threat of international competition, continued slumps and stronger workers’ movements all raised serious problems for the system. Conciliation in industrial relations was supplemented by state intervention, while the use of anti-union legislation to control trade union militancy shattered the illusions of many about the established political parties. A new style trades unionism emerged - New Unionism. The established craft unions favoured conciliation rather than conflict, benevolent benefits rather than strike pay. New Unionism dispensed with, or diminished, the importance of benevolence and prized a radical bargaining strategy, combined with efficiency of administration. While this new style was at first the prerogative of the newly formed unskilled workers unions, it soon was adopted by the older unions and the explosion in union membership affected all. Some existing unions doubled their membership in two or three years. While the total number of trade unionists increased from 0.75 million in 1888 to twice that figure four years later.

The old-style unionism was deeply conciliatory in attitude and collaborationist in tactics. John Burns, a New Unionist advocate, graphically illustrated the difference between the two styles. The old-style delegates at the 1890 TUC were “like respectable city gentlemen; wore very good coats, large watch chains and high hats - and in many cases were of such splendid build and proportion that they presented an aldermanic, not to say a magisterial form and dignity”. While among the `new’ delegates, not a single one wore a tall hat. They looked workmen. They were workmen.” [21 New Unionism harked back to the principled positions of the trade union pioneers, and yet forward to the freshly developing socialist movement. Organisations like the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the socialist base of the future Labour Party, and the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the main Marxist organisation, set the tone for a break with Liberalism amongst trades unionists.

In Derbyshire, total trade union membership in 1892 was only some 29,510 or 6.82% of the total population, perhaps half the density of the present day. This compared favourably to the 3.98% overall average - the highest proportion was 11.23% in Northumberland. [3] On a league table of 42 counties Derbyshire rated no less than sixth, although there were 23 counties with practically no union membership! The slump would seriously test the strength of New Unionism, but it would prove resilient. The full force of the mid-nineties crisis was first felt in Derbyshire in 1895, when Derby’s Mayor launched a relief fund for the unemployed, to which philanthropic rich and poor alike contributed. The workers at the Midland Railway Carriage and Wagon works donated £24 3s 7d (a vast sum in one collection) towards the £984 total. This enabled the “soup committee” to give away in one day, for example, one thousand gallons of soup and four tons of bread. Of course, the most obvious effect of periodic starvation was dire ill health. Historically, Derby’s average rate of mortality had been quite low compared to many towns. Everywhere showed the effects of the recession and Derby was no exception. The average mortality rate actually recorded increased drastically in 1895. Whereas only two years before the figure had been twelve per thousand, the rate for the whole of 1895 had climbed to 27.7 per thousand. [41]

True to the cyclical nature of capitalist crises, the state of trade in the county three years later was reported as being generally good. In engineering, trade unions with 2,470 members had 1.1% (27 actual members) unemployed in June 1898. Unions with 7,568 members in general trades reported only 0.9% (65) as unemployed. Only cycle workers at Long Eaton and Draycott, lace and hosiery workers in Heanor, Ilkeston and Long Eaton and calico printers in Dinting, Hayfield and New Mills were affected adversely by a generally slack trading situation. [5] The newly invigorated unions were able to take advantage of this situation and weathered the periodic slumps by riding from boom to boom.

By the turn of the century, mass trade unionism had once again been established in Britain, this time permanently. Trade union success in generally maintaining living standards was naturally to the detriment of the rate of profit, causing the most ferocious response from capitalism. During a railway dispute in 1901, the Taft Vale Railway Company in South Wales sued the ASRS for interfering with its business. The House of Lords held the union responsible and the huge sum of £35,000 was imposed as damages. Apart from the concept of registration, which had for a quarter of a century allowed the law to recognise the very existence of unions, there was no other legal basis for their protection. There was only immunity from paying commercial damages in a trade dispute - or so everyone thought, until the judges changed it all. Without this immunity, unions might as well be illegal. A very similar case to that of Taff Vale arose in 1903 in Denaby and Cadeby Main, in the Yorkshire coalfield. The Derbyshire miners granted £100 a week to the Yorkshire miners for relief purposes and, no doubt, such an experience nearby brought home even clearer to Derbyshire’s trade unionists the injustice of the law concerning their movement. The DMA leader, Harvey, voiced the almost hysterical fears of union leaders that their members might force them to break the law. “The Taff Vale decision had put a weighty and far-reaching responsibility on trade unions, and it meant in future the men must not do an illegal act - that was to say, they could not spasmodically stop a pit. Picketing must cease, in the case of a strike, and no one must be interfered with. This decision would never have been given but for the harum scarum action on the part of the ILP and socialistic men.” [6]

However, the election of a Liberal government in 1906, together with a solid block of Labour MPs, was decisive in ensuring new, favourable legislation. The Labour MPs had been elected, aided by trade union funding, primarily for this purpose. The Trades Disputes Act of that year restored trade union immunities and the right to peaceful picketing. The position of unions in law remained essentially unaltered from 1906, apart from the occasional judges’ decision. These were later all reversed by reforming legislation until 1983, when unions were laid open to half a million pounds damages for certain transgressions. This then was the general picture facing working people in the period around the turn of the century. But the Liberal government was not only obliged to respond to concerns affecting the legal position of the unions, demands for positive action in the field of social welfare reached into every aspect of life, and won support everywhere amongst workers. That a massive job existed to be tackled was undeniable. What then were the social conditions of the people?

ii) Social Conditions 1890 – 1914

B Seebohm Rowntree, a pioneer sociologist, published his findings in 1903. He concluded that between 25 and 30 per cent of the population lived either below the level of what was necessary for actually staying alive, or in a “state of poverty. A skilled worker earned only some 30/- a week to keep an average of four children. [7] One study of social conditions in Derby was that begun in December 1906 by Marion Phillips into the position of children and widows. The work was part of the Commission of Inquiry into the Poor Laws and Phillips was under the personal direction of Beatrice Webb. Inspired by these detailed studies, the Derby & District Housing Reform Association instigated a major study of the life of the poor in the town. The secretary of the association, Tom Taylor, prepared the report after visiting the homes of 203 labourers in sixty different streets in Derby. He found great difficulty in obtaining the information he sought, for the poor “do not care to disclose their poverty’. There was an average of 5.5 persons per house, 408 adults and 745 children in all. Total weekly income was an average of 19s 41/2d - appallingly low - of which is 3d was earned by the mother or the children. Rents varied from 2s 6d to 6s per week, averaging at 3s 4 1/2d for each house. Estimated expenditure on boots and clothing was a minimum of 2s 9d per week for each family. Spending on coal would be about is 1 01/2d each week for ‘two cwt’. (‘cwt’ is short for ‘hundredweight’, or eight stone - i.e. 50.8 kilograms) and insurance, sick and burial clubs about 101/2d. Household requirements were costed at 1s 2d a week and lighting at one penny a night. [8]

This left only 8s 9d for food a week for the entire family, four pence for an adult and two pence for a child each day. A sparse diet indeed could be expected from such an Income and no account was made of the need for tobacco or beer or any “innocent gaiety”, despite the obvious need for some diversion. All these figures were only applicable when “trade is good”, short time or unemployment obviously devastated family life. Yet this report assumed an average of 3.5 children per family, while the average number of children amongst labouring classes was actually more like four. Upper-class people could expect much fewer children, for a variety of social reasons:

Average Number of Children in 1911 according to occupation [9]

Upper or Middle Strata 2.77
Textile Workers 3.19
Agricultural Labourers 3.99
Miners 4.33

An index of wages [10] that took London as the standard (i.e. 100) in each trade proved Derby to be fairly well below the capital in rates of pay in 1908:

Skilled Building Workers 92
Labourers in Building 89
Labourers in Engineering 77
Skilled Engineering 85
Skilled Printing 85

Such a differential between the capital and the most provincial of provincial towns would be natural to expect. Yet the degree to which the skilled building worker in Derby nearly matched his counterpart in London is significant, especially when compared to the way in which the printing and engineering worker also proportionately lagged. Derby building rates for skilled men were only exceeded by ten out of seventy-two towns included in the survey. Whilst in engineering the rates were “rather below the average” for skilled men and engineering labourers’ wages were “exceeded in the majority of cases”. [11] Skilled print workers were also relatively badly paid. Local rates of pay for these sectors were:

Building
Bricklayers & Plasterers 42s 0d
Masons 39s 9d
Carpenters, Joiners & Plumbers 39s 8d
Painters 35s 0d
Labourers 22s 4d to 30s 4d
Engineering
Fitters 33s 0d
Turners 33s 0d
Smiths 34s 0d
Patternmakers 36s 0d
Angle Iron Smiths 37s 0d
Heavy Platers 36s 0d
Light Platers 33s 0d
Riveters 29s 0d
Labourers 18s 0d to 19s 0d
Printing compositors 33s 0d

The experience of spasmodic employment was common to most workers and the present-day role of labour exchanges was performed by the trade unions. However, in 1905 legislation was introduced, amidst mixed reactions, which was to change all this. Some workers in Derby received it positively. A mass meeting in the Market Place “in support of the unemployed Bill” was called by the Liberals, the Labour Representation Committee, the Socialist Society, the Free Church Council and the Democratic League. W R (Will) Raynes moved the main resolution, which was sharply critical of the experience of unemployment and generally supportive of the measures of the Act. Yet many trades unionists in the country viewed the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905 as a menace, since the concept of a Labour Exchange would attract those employers seeking cheap labour especially during trade disputes. Following the Act, state Labour Exchanges were not formally introduced until 1909. The distress committees also set up under the Act were considered inappropriate by some, because they would operate within the traditional framework of charity. Many of these fears were justified and the hopes that relief from poverty during unemployment would ensue came to nought.

In June 1907, Derby’s Trades Council called upon the Liberal Government to introduce a new “workable act” after practical experience of the operation of the 1905 legislation had revealed its inadequacy. [12] Most trades councils, regardless of the suspicion that many had of the Act, had participated in the setting up of local tri-partite committees for its administration. Chesterfield Trades and Labour Council had done so after calling a special meeting in 1905. Such experiences helped to allay fears about the involvement of the state in the affairs of workers and largely laid the basis for the ending of the traditional role of unions in supplying and notifying labour. [13]

This period was traumatic for the trade union movement, in that unemployment reached a new peak. The demand for the ‘right to work’ - a phrase first used by the French revolutionary, Louis Blanc, in 1848 - came to the fore. A march demanding just that went from Liverpool to London via Derby, amongst many other places, in January and February 1906. The TUC formulated a new “Right to Work” policy and Right to Work committees were formed everywhere, especially as 1908 and 1909 came, bringing appalling levels of deprivation with massive unemployment. Along with this undermining of the traditional role of the unions in controlling the supply of labour, went the demolition of the rapidly disappearing practice of tramping, in particular trade union houses of call. Workmen’s halls were set up by philanthropic liberals as a counter to both drinking and the influence of the clubhouses. At the annual Derby Trades Council dinner in 1897, Cllr Norman argued the need for a local trades and labour hail. While Norman’s dream was not entirely made true, the call was not unheeded. A joint project between Liberals and trade unionists to build workers’’ hall in Derby was launched. [14]

The Derby Friendly and Trade Societies Hall, to be known as “Unity Hall”, was finally in the course of erection in 1902 at the corner of Burton Rd and Normanton Rd. Memorial stones were laid in May by Sir T Roe MP, Richard Bell MP and Arnold Bemrose. The Mayor officiated, and was pleased to do so, for “hitherto (the trades and friendly societies) had met on licensed premises”. Bell said that, in the year of the coronation of Edward VII, it was a good way of celebrating the occasion by building a trades hall. Since Norman had first mooted the idea, the scheme had been in the offing. That year, fifty friendly societies (mostly trade unions) with a total membership of 11,000 had promised to support the project. A limited company had been set up with a committee on which the following trades unionists sat:
A J Blakemore UKSC (coachbuilders)
J Demston United Patternmakers Association
Wm Kirk ASRS (rail workers)
J Norman Amalgamated Society of Journeymen Tailors

The representatives of a number of the local lodges of Friendly Societies were also represented on the committee, including the Rechabites, Druids, Oddfellows and Forresters. [15]

By the time the foundations were laid, only £3,200 had been subscribed to build the hall, with as much again to raise. Starting the building was therefore somewhat of a gamble, perhaps rather fuelled by the excitement and imagination generated by the whole project. The hall would place many trades unionists very close to the influence of Liberals, for the ILP and SDF were positively barred from the hall. However, financial difficulties, related to the demise of Liberal-Labourism (Lib-Labism), were to ensure that the Trades Hall was sold in 1907 to the Oddfellows Friendly Society, which re-opened it as “Unity Hall”, a place destined to see many a union meeting over the next half a century and more. [16]

iii) The Growth of Industrial Militancy 1911 – 1914

Real wages of the working class as a whole had doubled over the last half of the 19th century, but now began to decline. It was this fact, which provided the impetus for the growth of industrial militancy, especially in the few years immediately before the outbreak of the First World War. Taking 1900 as a standard of 100, by 1910 real wages had declined to 92 points. [17] However, the industrial unrest of the subsequent years did something to redress the position, as workers sought to regain lost ground. Wages were raised in real terms by some 6% in this period, It was against this background, of an explosion of wages militancy, that the new unions set up in the 1890s now began really now to expand.

At a Derby Trades Council meeting in April 1910, the Workers Union proposed a recruitment campaign amongst unorganised workers. This was eventually held from September 5th to 10th and the centrepiece of activities was a meeting held at the Market Place in Derby, where Ryder of the ASE and Alderman R Morley of the Workers Union were the main speakers. Another meeting was held at the Vulcan ground, where the Municipal Employees Association and the Boilermakers provided speakers; whilst a third was held at Friargate. In all, twenty-four organising meetings were held in one week. [18] Reflecting the general advance in unionism thus created, the DTC could boast of twenty-four societies affiliated during 1910. Amongst new entrants were the bricklayers, braziers, plumbers and United Machine Workers. Old organisations, many of them, but they brought a new sense of confidence to the DTC. [19] In such an atmosphere, the unions discussed bolder initiatives. T F Richards, the President of the Boot and Shoe Operatives, addressed the DTC in 1912 on the idea that a “Trade Union stamp on manufactured articles” could help trade unionists recognise goods made by unionised labour and, naturally, buy only these. [20]

The four years before the outbreak of the world war were a period of exceptional industrial militancy. Many, who were active in the strike wave, which characterised this period, were happy to call themselves syndicalists. A fresh brand of revolutionism, with its roots in the French word for trade unions and in a new French philosophical analysis, syndicalism in Britain was imbued with a peculiarly British flavour. A key feature of syndicalism was a strong belief in trade union unity, the use of mass strike action as a major political weapon and an antipathy to parliamentary politics. A significant development was the launching by Tom Mann, following his arrival back in Britain after an eight-year absence, of a new journal called the Industrial Syndicalist. This came out in July 1910 and began immediately to strike a chord with many activists, particularly for its espousal of the concept of Industrial Unionism, whereby unions sought to organise within economic sectors, rather than across trade skills. The journal called for direct action and projected an educational dimension to its propaganda. A major national conference of two hundred delegates was held on November 26th 1910 in Manchester. Two delegates from Derby Trades Council were there, W Salisbury and “L Nozencroft” (this must be Wozencroft of the United Machine Workers). Salisbury’s statement from the rostrum, concerning the struggle against imposed piecework systems, was down to earth compared to many:

“W Salisbury (DERBY TRADES COUNCIL), A MEMBER OF THE BOILERMAKERS’ SOCIETY, declared that if any society needed Industrial Unionism to-day that society was the Boilermakers. (Hear, hear). He would make bold to state that if there had been some system of Industrial Syndicalism in England when the shipbuilding employers recently locked out the boilermakers the lockout would not have lasted five minutes. (Hear, hear.) The Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committee had taken a vote upon combined action with regard to the premium bonus system, and if combined action was necessary for the abolition of that system it was necessary for the abolition of every one of the evils from which the trade union movement was suffering today. (Hear, hear.) He would give an illustration from his own union. Suppose the Midland Company forced the premium bonus system on them, what was there to prevent the members of his (the speaker’s) union at Crewe repairing engines for the L.N.W.R., so that that company should lend engines to the Midland?” The statement straightforwardly proposes industrial solidarity in the form of secondary disputes, to use modern parlance, to resolve disputes.

Derby’s engineers in the ASE were represented at the conference by H Entwistle and G Oliver, whilst the United Machine Workers had sent R G Ansell. Entwistle opposed moves, and received Mann’s backing for doing so, to prohibit political party activity on the part of syndicalists. At first sight, a surprising stance, given the theoretical position of syndicalism vis-à-vis political activity. But this was a peculiarly British form, which largely represented the militant end of the trade union spectrum, moreover its main concern was the development of industrial, as opposed to craft, unionism: “H Entwistle (ENGINEERS, DERBY) thought the resolution would be much too far-reaching in barring all alliances direct or indirect. He thought that an alliance with a political party working along with the industrial unions would be very useful.”

Between November 1910 and March 1911 several conferences were organised to build up the Industrial Syndicalist Education League, “notably at Derby”, where the Trades Council convened a special conference. This adopted the resolution that had been passed at Manchester, “the sectionalism which characterises the Trade Union movement of to-day is utterly incapable of effectively fighting the capitalist class the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all workers on the basis of class - not trade or craft - and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist education league to propagate the principles of Syndicalism ... with a view to merging all existing Unions into one compact organisation for each industry, including all labourers of every industry in the same organisation as the skilled workers.” The DTC decided to act as the local committee for the syndicalists and held a public meeting in the Temperance Hall on 31st March. Derby had chosen for itself a unique role as a major voice for syndicalism.

James Bennett, secretary of the DTC wrote to Tom Mann: “Many thanks for your kind letter to hand. I am glad to hear that my Council is amongst the pioneers of the Industrial Unionist movement, and feel sure that your encouraging letter will greatly assist them to accomplish the object of educating the Trades Unionists of Derby in the principles of Syndicalism. Derby being a railway centre, it lends itself to the application of these principles and I may inform you that steps are already being taken by the Council to get the various Unions having members working in the Shops or on the Systems to take joint action with a view of securing the redress of the many grievances of railway workers. I will submit your letter to the Council and shall be glad of all the information and assistance you can give us in furthering the Industrial Syndicalist Movement. Best wishes & Kindest Regards.

Yours fraternally
James Bennett” [21]

All unions grew phenomenally, but the WU - Mann’s own creation and the very epitome of the united society for all workers - outshone them all. The union quadrupled its membership nationally in the two years from 1912 to the outbreak of war. Importantly, this development took place against the background of a society in which each class was intensely aware of its role relative to each other. Power and wealth, then as now, was concentrated in very few hands. However, perhaps the viciousness of the effects of poverty, in a period before major social welfare changes had taken place, served to underline the class barriers. For all the massive manufacturing growth and industrialisation, Derbyshire outside of the county town and perhaps Chesterfield, was as dominated by the squire-archy and, more significantly, vast landed estates of the aristocracy.

In 1873, there were about 632,611 acres in Derbyshire, including an estimated 11,655 acres of commons and wasteland. There were 19,866 owners of land in all, but 12,875 owned less than an acre. Another 6,992 owned an acre or more, although most of these were small-scale owners, but 76 of them owned more than a thousand acres each and 15 of these owned more than five thousand acres each. The six largest were:

i) The Duke of Devonshire (the Cavendish family) with 83,829 acres scattered throughout Derbyshire, and vast estates elsewhere, with his main seat at Chatsworth.
ii) The Duke of Rutland (the Manners family) with 26,973 acres concentrated around Ilkeston and Bakewell, with his main seat at Belvoir in Leicestershire and a dilapidated hall at Haddon in Derbyshire.

iii) Sir John Henry Crewe, Bt, with 12,923 acres strung along the Trent Valley and his seat at Calke.
iv) Lord Howard of Glossop with 9,108 acres in the High Peak and his seat at Glossop.
v) Lord Scarsdale (the Curzon family) with 9,166 acres concentrated around Crich and his seat at Kedleston.
vi) The Duke of Portland (Cavendish-Bentinck family) with 7,740 acres mainly in north east Derbyshire, his seat at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire and a ruined castle at Bolsover.

A total of 149,739 acres of Derbyshire, approximately a quarter of the entire land, was owned by six men out of the 85,155 families resident in the county. A handful of others had sizeable estates. Devonshire’s son and heir, the Marquis of Hartington, was the tenth largest landowner in the country and had 5,633 acres of settled estates in the county. Lord Waterpark, a Cavendish, had 8,550 acres. Other notables, such as the Marquis of Anglesey (the Pagets) held 1,539 acres in Findern, Earl Fitzwilliam had 308 acres, Earl Bathurst 3,343, Lord Chesterfield 5,209, Lord Harrington 4,529 and Lord Stanhope 5,193. To many people the prosperity of the bourgeoisie, men like Whitworth and the textile barons of Belper and Cromford, might be seen as to some extent justified by their industriousness, however much the product of their ingenuity relied upon the labour of others, at least they were industrious. However, the enormous flaunted wealth of the aristocracy certainly fanned the flames of discontent. Yet it was only but a fraction of the total assets of these families - the Duke of Devonshire, for example, owned land in fourteen different counties. [21]

The year 1913 saw the most acute conflict throughout the kingdom - its height seen in Dublin, where radical, nationalist undertones coloured the struggle around the long lock out of dockers and transport workers. Derby’s trade unionists gave tremendous support to the Irish workers - a collection was organised outside Derby Football Club, in October 1913, as supporters filed out of the ground. An offer of the Derby Town Band to lead a parade of solidarity with the Dubliners was agreed to, although the DTC shied away from a joint conference on the Irish dispute proposed by the radical syndicalist grouping the Industrial Workers of the World. The DTC organised demonstration was a great success though and the football crowd donated the very large amount of £7 14s 0d. On the initiative of Derby’s tin plate workers, the DTC pressed the TUC to send food ships to Dublin. Going further, Derby ASLEF endorsed the general position of the DTC, but also asked their own executive and the TUC to press for “a strike of all Transport Workers to end the Dublin strike”. The support for syndicalism and for international solidarity, which had become a feature of trades unionism in Derby, was reflected in increasingly more sophisticated positions. Derby ASLEF supported the idea of affiliation to the “Nationalisation of Railways Society” in September 1913.

Despite all this, it was still very much a dangerous business being a trade union activist. The DTC secretary had to report in January 1914 that “owing to the tyranny of the corporation Mr Turner (a member of the DTC) was giving up his situation as Green Keeper and was taking up a small business, and had appealed for the trade unions support on his behalf’. Many victimised because of their activities resorted to self-employment as the only safe alternative to starvation. [22] Henry Sharpe the DTC President revealed at the 1914 May Day rally that he had been dismissed by his employers, Bemrose’s, “because of his activities for trades unionism”. The company’s version of events was that his sacking was “simply a question of reduction of work”. The DTC had grown so much that it was able to contemplate the establishment of a full time organiser in 1914 and Sharpe was the obvious and favoured candidate. However, by June of that year it became clear that finances were insufficient to carry out the project. In the meantime, Belper trades unionists had resolved to set up their own Trades Council again and had done so by June 1914. [23] Worse still was the experience of Vale Rawlings who found himself imprisoned after a trade dispute in 1914. His case was raised in Parliament, and a major campaign waged to secure his release that came very quickly. On his release, in June 1914, a huge crowd gathered in the forecourt outside Derby Prison to cheer him.

2 “Our Man in Parliament” - Labour Politics 1885-1 914

As in the rest of the country, the mass of workers in Derbyshire still maintained strong illusions about the Liberals, who tended to represent capitalist manufacturing industry and had most support amongst ordinary workers, and the Tories, who had strong interests in high finance and the landed aristocracy. These two parties simply represented two distinct, but inter-linked, strands of the capitalist system. The Liberals were especially well supported by the miners, and the Tories sought to replicate their success even to the extent of organising specifically Conservative Miners Associations, as at Ilkeston in 1890. However, this body, and others like it, never came to much, the Ilkeston CMA never went beyond more than two hundred members, and was dissolved in 1901. A more typical attempt by miners to engage in the political process was the selection of official or unofficial Liberal candidates; what might be called Liberal Labourites or `Lib-Labers’. Derbyshire miners’ leader, Haslam, stood as such a candidate as early as 1885 in Chesterfield, polling 25.6% of the vote, although the seat was won by a Liberal Unionist the result was significant for Lib-Labism.

However, the most effective expression of independent working class political activity in Derbyshire began in the 1890s and it was strongly influenced by the DTC. Indeed, trades councils became the focus for such expressions on behalf of trade unions, which embarked upon political action as a way of extending and above all protecting their work-a-day interests. They wished only to parallel the manner of their masters in cornering areas of direct political representation. The ideas of socialism were limited to a tiny proportion of the population. Despite the residence in Britain of Marx and Engels, their influence was very limited, although Engels, who lived until 1893, became very involved in developing the rising socialist movement, hand-in-hand with the growth of New Unionism. The socialist sects were tiny and adopted policies almost calculated to maintain that position. The SDF claimed to be the true standard-bearer of Marxism in Britain but, in truth, it was a very sectarian organisation, often arguing that strikes and trade unionism were diversions from the struggle for socialism.

Engels himself thought that the SDF had “managed to reduce the Marxist theory of development to a rigid orthodoxy’. Although partially led by middle-class elements, the SDF did attract the support of a handful of nationally important working class activists and was an important educator of Marxist and socialist ideas - albeit sometimes a little dogmatically so. From a base of about one thousand members in 1890, the SDF grew to about ten thousand strong within five years, as interest in socialism mushroomed. A splinter force from the SDF was the Socialist League, which boasted William Morris’ support. Socialists from Derby, Chesterfield and Long Eaton joined with others to form an East Midlands Federation of the League in 1890. Another key socialist tendency was the Fabian Society, which saw itself as a power house of new ideas, and was principally a sect of middle-class intellectuals, concerned to ‘permeate’ the Liberal Party and influence it in a reforming direction. The name came from the Roman general whose favoured strategy was to avoid battle at all costs, running in retreat if necessary, always waiting only until he was absolutely ready to strike. In itself, the name was an object lesson. Although, in fact, Fabian himself never actually engaged in battle! The key success of the group was in its advocacy of municipalisation projects but, never having more than a few hundred adherents, it was an exclusive elite of academic-minded persons.

The socialist body which would eventually have more significance was the Independent Labour Party (ILP), founded in 1893, the first president of which was the celebrated Keir Hardie. The ILP had been set up specifically with working class representation on public bodies in mind, although it did have a rough-and-ready adherence to ideas of socialism even though the former definitely took precedence. Ramsay MacDonald, much later to become Labour’s first Prime Minister, began his political life as an ILP leader. He was well liked by most of Derbyshire’s ILP activists. Long Eaton Trades Council passed a sycophantic resolution of congratulations, on hearing that Margaret Gladstone had married him in November 1896, declaring that “this meeting of the working men of Long Eaton congratulated Mrs J R MacDonald in having won the esteem of Comrade J R MacDonald which in due time matured into love and it further resolves that she is one in a thousand”. A significant minority of the ILP’s membership were committed Marxists - albeit of variegated hues - a factor which would have considerable importance in future years.

Although it is important to note that, at this time, membership of one socialist body was not conditional upon exclusivity. It was possible to be a member of the SDF, the Fabians and the ILP all at once. Indeed most of the well-known leaders of the trade unions were members of one or some of these organisations at various times. An expression of this ‘catholic’ approach to socialism was the existence of a Derby Socialist Society, which dominated activity in the town for a long time until the non-Marxists generated a split, after a difference over the formal transformation of the society into a branch of the ILP. Echoes down the decades of this originating experience for Derby socialists can be observed in subsequent developments, especially of the markedly left-wing nature of the local ILP branch. [24]

These formal expressions of socialist conviction were backed up by even more popular versions. The best example of this was provided by Robert Blatchford. His paper, the Clarion, established massive support and stimulated the Clarion Cycling Clubs. Groups of young people would tour the remoter towns and villages on Sundays with their machines, spreading the word of socialism and enjoying themselves at the same time. Blatchford’s paper put across easily understood versions of socialistic principles in a genuinely popular vein. One of the foremost local converts to Blatchford’s style of socialism was the retired Derby solicitor, Henry Hutchinson, who financed Fabian travelling lecturers as his contribution to the struggle. About 60 lectures were given over five weeks in the summer of 1890, after Hutchinson gave £200 to the Fabian executive. A more permanent contribution was the fact that the London School of Economics - one of the foremost seats of political, social and economic learning in contemporary times - was founded with much of Hutchinson’s estate. This arose after the will had been read in 1894 when Hutchinson committed suicide to put an end to a long illness and left the Fabian Society more than half his estate, some £10,000. [25]

North Derbyshire was a popular area for the cycling socialists, so much so that 1,500 members of the Clarion Cycling Clubs held their 13th annual conference at Matlock in 1907. While at the following “National CCC Meet” in 1908, at Shrewsbury, the Derby CCC sent a contingent of 25, indicating a sound basis for the movement locally. [26] However, the clubs faded away - especially after Blatchford joined the jingoistic lobby in 1914. The Derby CCC was still in existence as a socialist body certainly in the 1920s, while there was still a Clarion Club in Loudon Street, Normanton at least until the 1980s – sadly by then simply a workingmen’s’ social club, a weak last testament to a once great and popular movement.

The intellectual publicist, propagandist and advocate for homosexuality, Edward Carpenter even had contacts with Derbyshire in this period. Leaving intellectual work, and after some experimentation with manual and rural work, Carpenter bought Millthorpe, a three field, seven acre farm in the hills south of Cordwell Valley. After inheriting £6,000, he retired there for good, having had a house built. He visited the Socialist League’s Sunday fellowship gatherings at an inn in Ambergate, which attracted members of the organisation’s East Midlands Federation. (27]

Of all these socialist tendencies, the most significant was the ILP, in political ambition if not in membership. Its aim of building a parliamentary party, in alliance with the trade unions on the platform of basic reform, was to be realised. However, while the ILP was formally committed to socialism, the bulk of the unions were not. It would take some thirty years to win them, at least constitutionally, to a more advanced position. Only in 1900, seven years after the founding of the ILP, did sufficient unions agree to come together with all of the socialist societies to form the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) with the aim of promoting the election of independent working class MPs. Although there was initially no other specific policy commitment, just independence from the two existing political parties.

Such an idea had emerged before; the Labour Electoral Association (LEA) had been spectacular in its lack of success in seeking working class representation in the five years of its main activity, up to 1891. The Liberals took very little notice of the organisation, despite the fact that it sought to achieve its aims under the auspices of the Liberal Party. As the ILP further developed, and the LEA declined, interest in the idea of something like the LRC grew. Thus, it had been possible to bring the disparate sectors of working class life together in 1900. Within six years, sufficient LRC MPs had been elected to provide enough confidence to rename this loose federal alliance of all working class organisations. As the Labour Party, it would have a profound influence on the future of this country.

ii) Working Class Politics in Derbyshire

The trades councils very much dominated the political involvement of the unions at this time. Up to about 1905, the councils actually conducted the main electoral work of the labour movement. They were able to directly affiliate to the LRC as the only local representative of the working class in a given area. After 1905, electoral bodies like the ILP and locally set up LRCs could affiliate to the national LRC, but only where there was no trades council in their area. [28] For example, in Chesterfield even up to 1914, while the local official bodies of the unions provided most of the finance for the local election contests, they considered the trades council as the only proper channel for nominations for candidature. This role, as local overseer to the movement, came to the trades councils following the example of the powerful London Trades Council, which first began to represent the movement on public bodies. However, prior to New Unionism, few towns had trades councils. The first to be formed in Derbyshire was the Long Eaton council in 1886 - very early on. Derby followed suit in 1891, at the time of general re-awakening and new expansion of trade unionism. A range of others followed in the 1890s and, even up to 1918, new Trades Councils were being formed in the county.

The Founding of Derbyshire’s Trades Councils
Trades Council year of founding
Long Eaton 1886
Derby 1891
Glossop 1892
Chesterfield 1893
Ilkeston 1895
Belper [1] 1898
Buxton [2] 1903
Heanor 1908
Swadlincote [3] 1908
Ripley 1914
Staveley 1918

[1] dissolved 1902 and reformed 1914; [2] dissolved 1922; [3] dissolved 1918

Ilkeston Trades Council held a rally at the local Victoria Grounds in July 1891, with Sir Charles Duke. B Gregory and G Frost were president and secretary and there was a speaker from the Framework Knitters Association. However, this formation failed and a more permanent council was formed in April 1895, with J Bramley, bricklayer, and a Mr Wimant as the leading lights. The Lacemakers, ASLEF, the G&GLU, the bricklayers labourers’, stone masons’, miners’, hosiery workers’, colliery enginemen’s, smiths’ and the carpenters’ trade unions all met at the Old Wine Vaults, East Street, Ilkeston. [29]

The first demonstration organised by Derby Trades Council was in September of 1891. An open-air meeting was attended by upwards of one thousand people at Chester Green. James Wheeldon, a stonemason, as the DTC’s first president, declared it to be a “red-letter” day for trade unionism in Derby, which had “been asleep” since 1832. A slight exaggeration perhaps, but then this was the first major, general demonstration in the town since that period. Things had improved though, according to Wheeldon. “By the help of the council some half dozen trades which had previously not been organised had today good organisation”, he told the crowd. Derby’s backwardness, in terms of wages compared to workers in other industrial towns, was attributed by him to “lack of organisation”, or a low level of unionisation. The railway workers’ speaker at the rally, Kelly, claimed that in his industry, boys worked for the low wage of seven to ten shillings a week. While apprentices, just out of their time were paid little more - only some nine or ten shillings a week. Haydn Sanders of the Stove and Grate Workers spoke of the magnificent support the Belper workers had received from the local movement in their recent battles. As a SDF councillor himself, in Walsall, he concluded his speech by arguing that the salvation of the working man lay in getting representation on local councils, the school boards and above all in “that other house of humbugs up in London”, that is to say - Parliament. After this marvellous jamboree of stirring speeches, the DTC banner and the London Road Brass Band led a procession of at least two thousand to the Temperance Hall for further celebrations. [30]

Such a response, such an event, could have only encouraged the DTC to be yet bolder in its ambitions. Within a fortnight it met at the Derwent Hotel to consider what steps might be taken to ensure some working men’s representation at the local elections in November of that year. The consensus was that it was too early yet to stand candidates for the town council, but that a contest for the School Board might be possible (the Boards of Governors of state schools were elected by popular vote at this time). A sub-committee of 16, two people for each of the eight wards in the town, was appointed to interview candidates and to prepare the work. [31] Preferring to maintain their enthusiasm for independent political activity, the DTC rejected an approach from the Liberals to run a joint slate of candidates.

The School Boards elections had been dominated by church groups from when they began in 1871 and every three years thereafter. The DTC injected an open political view of education when it nominated Thomas Mawbey, a compositor, and Joseph Norman, a tailor; Mawbey was, incidentally, to become the first working class magistrate in Derby. [32] No election had actually ever been held for most of the years of the board’s existence, since 1877 in fact. The DTC’s move caused the town’s dignitaries much consternation. The Mercury, in an editorial, bemoaned the idea of a contest as “everything has been alright up to now”. A rumour the Co-op was considering contesting a seat excited the paper even more, would politics enter education now, it worried on behalf of the established order? [33] Mawbey and Norman both won seats and their success meant that two long serving members lost their places, causing the conservative majority of the new board to coolly vote to increase the total membership of the board to thirteen so that the two could take their seats again! The whole experience was viewed by most unions in the town with great pleasure. A meeting of the district council of all railway unions in Derby, at the Coffee House in Station St, saw the election of the labour candidates as setting the stage for great things in the future and they were right.

This concept of trades councils contesting school board elections was very much a hallmark of the socialism of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who had influenced the London Trades Council in this regard. Some local socialists of differing hues were clearly involved in these initial developments. For example, Robert Blatchford spoke for the Fabian Society at Derby’s Corn Exchange on Monday 5th October 1891. (34] Another feature of the lesson provided by the London Trades Council was its role as a conciliator, a role trades councils enthusiastically took to. However, the notion that they could be central bodies, to which unions at a local level could turn to for intercession with employers with whom they had grievances, was one doomed to failure. Trades Councils, as now, then had little power other than a moral force. Moreover, they had no ability to discipline individual trade unionists, or to generate authority amongst ordinary workers. They had little funds and a poorly developed organisation. Employers were not worried by threats from the local trades council, the only retribution possible was a difficult to organise public boycott - even when that was appropriate, according to the nature of the industry involved. However, that was not how the trades councils saw themselves. Chesterfield’s council, set up in 1893, hoped that it would become the “boss of the show” in the town instead of the Town Council. (35] All of the local trades councils consciously tried to develop their conciliation activities. Derby’s joint Chamber of Commerce/Trades Council Board of Conciliation was set up in 1991 with six representatives from either side. Yet the board only met once in the following few years, during a dispute in the iron trade. The board consisted of: [36]

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE TRADES COUNCIL

Sir Alfred Haslam JP J Wheeldon
Alderman Bemrose JP W Ford
Col. Buchanan JP ? Hadley
George Holme J Norman
Alderman Sowter JP W Parker
W Woolley T Smith
L W Wilshire J Hudson

Derby’s Trades Council really only decided to contest the local municipal elections in 1892 as a way of directly influencing the adoption of a fair wages clause by the local authority. The House of Commons had passed a resolution the year before, that it would observe generally accepted levels of wages and conditions when placing contracts with outside employers. This introduced a legal under-pinning of union rates of pay and local activists sought to extend the same notion to the Town Council’s contracts, but it would need working class representatives on the council to put forward the idea.

Norman, already a school board member, stood as a labour candidate in Friargate ward. Addressing a meeting of supporters at the Langley Street Mission Hall, presided over by William Nadin and J Hudson (the DTC secretary), Norman said that “up to the present only the capitalist class had been represented on the Town Council ... the working men were vastly in the majority ... they had the means to overturn Governments”. [37] But Norman’s campaign concentrated on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues: “what benefit (would) it be to the town to construct a street from St Michael’s lamp to Silk Mill Lane? How about the widening of Tenant St, of Queen St and other such properties”. The widening of Tenant St, instead of Sadler Gate, and the construction of a new street between Kedleston Rd and Friargate came in for criticism. Norman didn’t think there was a need for a full-time stipendiary magistrate and finally, more importantly, believed something should be done about the “great question (of) the pollution of rivers” in the town. Norman’s opponent, James Smith a local businessman, was theoretically an independent and there had not been a contest in the ward for sixteen years. A Tory candidate in another ward thought it outrageous and that it was an “insult that he (Smith) should be opposed”. Some Liberals were reluctant to support Norman and the result was favourable to Smith, who effectively used the argument that “politics” should not be allowed to enter local government. It was, in any case not a strong area for the Liberals normally. The result was: J S Smith 849; J Norman 561.

There was more success in Beckett ward however; there, the Liberals agreed to allow Wheeldon to stand unimpeded in what was traditionally their ward, usually uncontested by the Tories. Their support was to ensure Wheeldon’s success in becoming councillor. The Liberals insisted that Wheeldon was one of their official candidates, because of this. But Hedley of the DTC disagreed, he believed that “Mr Wheeldon was the labour candidate and the labour candidate alone, If the Liberals liked to adopt Mr Wheeldon they might do so, but he must be returned solely and purely as the labour candidate.” Nonetheless, Wheeldon announced his candidature alongside the Liberal, Councillor Ann. Wheeldon gave his reasons in detail for standing; a Tory councillor, called Clemson, had been returned unopposed the previous year on promising to support a “standard rate of wage clause in the Corporation contracts”. Yet , as soon as he was declared elected, he “did his utmost to defeat it”. The DTC had therefore decided that the best way to win the fair wages clause was to have its own men in the council chamber to speak for it.

Wheeldon’s opponent, Walkden, was supposedly an independent, but as a company director for 20 years he had little difficulty in winning most of the local dignitaries of the town to supporting him. Their argument was that business experience was needed to run the town and, even if Wheeldon were elected, they would make sure he did not get on any of the committees of the council where the real work was done. While Walkden thought that “politics ought to have nothing whatever to do with municipal matters”, he was sufficiently concerned by the labour campaign to declare himself ready to vote for fair wages if elected. Wheeldon as a building worker for thirty years, much of that time on municipal contracts, was understandably greatly concerned with this question. He declared himself publicly proud to claim that “he had done his utmost to raise and better the conditions of working men. He took credit to himself for having been the means for obtaining for bricklayers last year (i.e. 1891) a rise in wages of 2 shillings a week.” Wheeldon thus became the first working class councillor in Derby, yet while it was technically an independent stand, it could not have been successful without Liberal support, in that sense Wheeldon was definitely a labour councillor, but equally definitely did not deserve the appellation with a capital letter! James Wheeldon was to die in September 1898, two years before the election to public bodies of the first Labour candidates, without Liberal support, none the less Wheeldon’s achievement was a vitally important milestone.

In 1893, the DTC proposed five candidates causing a major electoral contest in the town, to the anger and annoyance of the Tories. The DTC candidates were:

Candidate

Arboretum Blakemore
Derwent Wigley
Beckett Mawbey
King’s Head Kirk
Friar Gate Norman

Three out of the five DTC candidates won seats and only Mawbey and Kirk were unsuccessful in being elected. William White, the Derby branch secretary of the UKSC - the coachbuilders - proudly boasted in a letter to the union’s executive that the branch president Augustine John Blakemore “was returned by a large majority and was at the top of the poll for his district. We feel proud in having the honour to announce to you and our fellow members this signal success of our worthy representative, and of course it goes without saying that Mr John Blakemore is very highly esteemed.” [38] Contests had been “few and far between” in the past in Arboretum ward, and while the proposed intervention of Offiler, the brewer, in the Tory interests did not materialise, there was a contest. A well-known local Liberal stood as “the working man’s friend” and, along with Blakemore, ensured the defeat of the official Liberals, and the election of the Labour man in this two-member ward.

Blakemore (Ind Lab) 815
Wooding (Ind Lib) 788
Unsworth (Lib) 719
Cox (Lib) 624

A complex picture emerges, if the voting patters are analysed. At that time it was common for there to be two or more seats up for election in a single ward at one election, thus with two votes an elector could choose to be a little more fickle than has been the case for most of the 20th Century. Voting for only one candidate, where the elector had two votes at his disposal, was regarded as ‘plumping’ for a choice - hence the use of the word ‘plumpers’ to describe such votes. More exotic voting patterns - across party lines, or the complex alliances forged by the intervention of independent working class contests - were generally referred to as split voting, hence ‘splits’. Moreover, the full complexity of splits and plumpers was published in the newspapers, unlike today’s election counts, which only formally give the total result at the end. Straight single voting was strongly in favour of the radical candidates: Blakemore - 388; Wooding - 246; Unsworth - 11; Cox - 13. Adding the results of the split voting gave the seats to Blakemore and Wooding - as joint candidates - although of course there was no Tory opposition. The results where electors had used both votes made it clear that the radical and the labour men were strongly favoured and that voters split between those inclined to labour and those who were Liberal inclined:

Blakemore Blakemore Blakemore
& Wooding & Cox & Unsworth
377 23 27

Cox & Cox & Unsworth &
Unsworth Wooding Wooding
552 36 129

With such a success under his belt, Blakemore continued to play a significant role in the local labour movement. In 1895, he contested the election for the position of organising secretary for the UKSC, unsuccessfully this time. In a letter to the branches at the outset of the union election, he outlines his credentials. “I have been president of the Derby Branch for some four years, UKSC delegate to the Derby and District Council, and for the last two years secretary of same. During the greater part of my sitting on the Trades Council I have been one of the chief organisers for the various trades in Derby and the district. Two years ago I was returned at the head of the poll to the Derby Town Council as a direct labour representative from the Trades Council.” [39] Note Blakemore’s description of himself as a Trades Council candidate.

The second Labour councillor elected in 1893 was Thomas H Wigley in Derwent ward who, in the absence of a Liberal and faced with only one Tory and one independent, was able to squeeze into second place to take the second seat:
Lowe (Con) 396
Wigley (Ind Lab) 248
Basford (Ind) 213

Also taking a second seat for labour in a two-member contest was Norman, who had been defeated in Friar Gate ward in 1892. This time he did well, beating the reigning Tory candidate, Ward. Raymond Slater, a local building employer, was a new Tory candidate who did win. The result was however not that much of a surprise, given that the Liberals were not contesting. In the circumstances, it was “generally thought that it would be a pretty tight thing at the finish”.
Slater (Con) 896
Norman (Ind Lab) 586
Ward (Con) 567

With Ward only receiving 89 plumpers, or straight single votes when an elector might vote for two, he was clearly off to a bad start - Norman had 272 and Slater 572. While as far as the splits, or the pattern of double voting, was concerned, there were almost as many who voted Norman and Ward as voted Norman and Slater, thus contributing to the Labour candidate’s success.

Such an advance - three Labour candidates elected - naturally encouraged the DTC enormously and, in the following year of 1894, “great efforts” were made on the part of William Smith, the DTC candidate in Beckett ward. Even to the extent of providing the electorate with “a portrait of the labour candidate and a brief sketch of his career”. The committee rooms were in Gerard Street. The Mercury delighted in observing that Smith had no carriages at his disposal (naturally, only the very well to do had such things) and that, in consequence, he had “asked all his supporters to walk to the poll”. [40]

As the working class candidate, Smith did better than might have been expected, considering that his two successful opponents were supposedly independents:
John Pakeman (Ind) 1,760
John Smith (Ind) 1,277
William Smith (Lab) 719

In Arboretum ward, the Labour candidate did well, but the amount of tacit Liberal support was limited. In this fight for two seats the result was:
Duesbury (Lib) 1,172
Blount (Con) 1,068
Moore (Ind Lib) 716

The failure of the Labour candidate was noticeably due to a very limited number of split votes being accorded to him; 562 of Moore’s votes were straight plumpers, while the rest were fairly evenly divided splits of Duesbury and Moore, or Blount and Moore. In Babington ward the sitting councillor - Evans - had fought against the fair wages clause. Therefore, naturally, the labour movement felt the need to challenge him at the polls. Henry Wells, secretary of the Typographical Association and an individual member of the ILP, stood. However, to little effect for the result was decisive, his two non-labour opponents each polling three times as much as Wells’ 318 votes.

The first independent labour contest in Glossop occurred this year, when the trades council put forward three candidates. Two, both building workers, won seats - James Langley, a stonemason was elected councillor for All Saints ward with 33% of the vote, while Thomas Anderson, a carpenter, took St James’ with over 25%. The experience more than encouraged the formation of an ILP branch in the town in the following year. The success in Glossop in winning council seats quite independently was not, however, the general trend, nonetheless the results did confirm the correctness of the course so far followed. Yet this course was not always smooth and, in some unions, the political loyalties of members were not easily changed. In the July of that year, the Derby Builders’ Labourers resolved to “withdraw from the Derby and District Trades Council on account of the Labour Party independency until further notice”. [41] This before there was even such a thing as the Labour Representation Committee, let alone the Labour Party! Interestingly, this attitude contrasts sharply with the industrial militancy shown by the labourers only the previous year. Although the ABL must have quickly acclimatised themselves to the new ideas, for within a year or less they had re-affiliated to the DTC.

The General Election of July 13th 1895 marked a watershed in the transformation of earlier, rather idealistic electoral interventions and the emergence of a newer, sharper attitude. The experience of the 1892-5 Liberal Government had contributed to hardening attitudes towards the Liberal Party and in favour of independent working class contests in the electoral sphere. Contrary to the expectations of some, the Liberal Government’s period of office was marked by no major social reform projects. This, despite the fact that the Derby Liberal MP, Sir William Harcourt, famously remarked at this time, in deference to the emerging consensus that social injustice was the business of government, that “we are all Socialists now”! In the circumstances of much disillusionment, two Tories were elected as Derby’s MPs:
Bemrose (Con) 7,907
Drage (Con) 7,076
Harcourt (Lib) 6,785
Roe (Lib) 6,475

Derby’s ILP branch had decided to abstain, on the basis that none of the candidates were of any use to the working class. So had the DTC, voting 18 to 3 for such a position, with many delegates abstaining from voting at the meeting that discussed the issue. Such a radical position was in marked contrast to a very similar debate in 1892, when out of 53 delegates present, 38 had voted to support the Liberals - with only six voting against the proposition. While the trade union sponsored abstentionism, which had clearly contributed to the defeat of the Liberals, must have made that party think again on the question of working class representation, the general view amongst Liberals was that they had allowed the whole issue to go far too far. Wheeldon stood again in 1895, in the local elections in Beckett ward, but this time without any Liberal support at all. As the Mercury saw it, a change had come “over the spirit of the dream”. Wheeldon was standing in direct opposition to his old ally Councillor Ann. While not winning, the result was more than respectable - for an independent labour candidate: [42]
Ann (Lib) 1,591
Brown (Con) 1,156
Wheeldon (Ind Lab) 706
Parr (Temperance) 535

Established politicians were annoyed at the DTC’s nerve in setting out to challenge the settled political map of the town. There was a persistent rumour in 1895 that, in Litchurch ward, an arrangement that four Liberals and two Conservatives would always represent the ward had been made between the two parties. This would seem to be borne out by subsequent electoral manoeuvres. For example, in Friargate ward, W Smith the DTC vice-president was unsuccessful. It had been expected that Bottomley, the retiring candidate and his running mate, John Walker, a well-known builder, would be returned unopposed. The rather irritating tendency of Labour candidates to insist on contests during elections prevented this. In the event, the result gave them much satisfaction. Interestingly the Liberals did not stand, not because of any love for Smith, but surely only because of the unofficial carve-up between themselves and the Tories in the allocation of council seats. Smith, faced with clear opposition did poorly:
Bottomley (Con) 1,036
Walker (Con) 933
Smith (Ind Lab) 266

This involvement of the local trades councils in the electoral process and in coordinating the overall response of the movement to trade problems, had a generally radicalising effect. Indeed so much so that, ostensibly to avoid duplication of delegations, but much more likely to exclude the socialist influenced trades councils, the 1895 TUC decided to exclude the trades councils from direct representation at the annual congress. Socialist ideas began to take root in Derby - Tom Mann and Robert Blatchford spoke at an ILP meeting in the town in January 1896, at an event chaired by George Christie. Blatchford specially commented favourably on the considerable progress made by socialism in the five years since he had last been in Derby. Throughout this period, the ILP kept up regular propaganda activities in the Market Place. Emanuel Merchant, later to be the Derby Co-op Society general manager from 1902-1 924, was the ‘librarian’ - or the literature secretary - for the ILP. Blatchford’s Merrie England was the most popular work sold. [43]

In the complex political situation following the General Election, the next year’s local contests - in 1896 - saw a strange duality on the part of Liberals beginning to express itself. On the one hand, there was the need to satisfy the strong desire for working class representation, on the other hand, the more this was done the more it fuelled the wish for unreservedly independent representation. The fair wages issue remained an aspect of policy that the Liberals were prepared to advocate to retain working class support. A Fair Wages Clause was adopted by the Town Council in Derby in 1894, by a vote of 20 to 8; but the terms of the resolution were so vague that it proved all too easy for contractors to evade its intention. A later attempt to improve the original resolution enabled the local Tories to jettison the whole idea, for some had supported the 1894 vote. Their rationale was that the resolution simply was not working! Moreover, since it was the Trades Council that had proposed the terms of the 1894 resolution and it had won all that it sought, the argument was put that the notion was unworkable. Specific complaints about trade union rates not being adhered to, in 1897, were:- a) the Corporation used painters at the Little Eaton water works at only 12/- a week, well below the standard union rate; b) police clothing had been purchased by the Watch Committee from tailors who did not pay the union rate to their workers. [44]

This whole question of fair wages continued to dominate politics, at least from a working class point of view, for some years. It was to alter radically attitudes to Liberal industrialists - for the obvious conflicts of interest became clearer. What was the point of trades unionists agreeing rates of pay and conditions with their employer, if in his capacity as an MP or councillor he undermined the whole principle of unionism? Despite what seemed to be a clear intention of Parliament, its Fair Wages Resolution was successively undermined by case law precedents established by judges. So much so, that a trade union sponsored resolution to firm up the position was put before the Commons on May 14th 1902, to the effect that “legislation is necessary to prevent workmen being placed by Judge-made law in a position inferior to that intended by Parliament”. Unfortunately, this was lost by a vote of 203 to 174. Local MPs split fairly predictably; the Liberal Sir T Roe and the Lib-Laber Richard Bell were in its favour, while the Tories were either against or were absent from the debate. Jacoby and Bolton were against, Gretton and Cavendish were absent. [45] Meanwhile, in the 1896 local elections the Tories tried to make political capital out of the paper-thin Liberal support for independent labour candidates. In Arboretum ward, Blakemore was actually ousted from his seat by the Liberal intervention: [46]
J H Ottewell (Con) 1,106
J Johnson (Lib) 1,097
G Unsworth (Lib) 1,018
AJ Blakemore (Ind Lab) 857

In Derwent ward, Thomas Wigley, the labour man was the retiring candidate. Again, the Liberals put forward a strong candidate for the single vacant seat, while the Independent stood with Conservative support:
B A Yates (Lib) 551
Wm Lowe (Ind) 499
T H Wigley (Ind Lab) 448

Elsewhere in the county, in Chesterfield North ward, the miners’ leader Haslam -partly due to Liberal patronage - managed to get on the council that year on his second attempt. However, his colleague, Harvey, trailed in the poll in South ward. Yet within the next two years, Labour representatives made their mark in Chesterfield. This came only very slowly, for the town was to be dominated by Lib-Labism for a longer period than the county town of Derby. In 1898, now a councillor, Harvey moved that Chesterfield Town Council follow Derby’s lead in accepting a fair wages principle, however flawed that might be. However, the council split seven votes to seven on the issue and the casting vote of the Mayor caused the defeat of the proposition. Even Haslam’s attempt to get the vote recorded was defeated. The Mayor was openly hostile in casting his vote. He felt that trade unions were interfering bodies of the “worst tyranny that could possibly be”. [47] Eventually, the council did concede a fair wages clause and Chesterfield Trades Council was especially vigilant in taking up cases of failures to observe the policy, setting up a special sub-committee to over-look the matter.

The biggest success for independent representation was in the election of Richard Bell, the ASRS general secretary, as one of Derby’s MPs. In August 1899, at the monthly meeting of the trades council at the Bull’s Head in Queen Street, it was announced that the DTC would nominate Bell as a candidate for the two-member constituency. A prepared statement declared that it should “not come as a general surprise locally that he wanted to run along with Sir Thomas Roe (the official Liberal) but the ASRS would not allow Mr Bell to connect himself with any particular party”. There were clear signs that some wanted to arrange a deal with the Liberals, but as one ILP activist, Tom Taylor, recalled ASRS delegates were forcible in making “it plain that if it was not a straight fight for Labour, we should go against any man, as we had sufficient already of place hunters and time servers”. [48]

Bell was certainly a Lib-Laber, but was only by a technicality not an official Liberal. His own union, at least nationally, was firm that independent working class candidates should be “absolutely disconnected from the Liberal or Conservative parties”. However, the local ASRS thought otherwise, one branch putting forward a motion at the October 1899 ACM to rescind existing union policy, which “prevented the General Secretary coming forward as a candidate of either of the two political parties”. There was no possibility that this could be won, indeed the resolution was overwhelmingly rejected. [49] The DTC called a mass meeting at the Temperance Hall to publicise Bell’s candidature. There, Bell stated how much he thought the ASRS vote a great pity, pointing out that one of the Derby union branch secretaries was a Tory, the other a Liberal. Both supported Bell’s candidature and both believed firstly in increased working class representation, rather than party allegiance. While Sir Thomas Roe was there to reveal that the “attitude of the Derby Liberals towards Mr Bell and his supporters was quite friendly”. Bell’s political stance is graphically illustrated by his reply to a question about women’s suffrage. Apparently, he had not thought too much about it, but provided “the ladies would not treat the men badly he would support it (laughter)”.

That year’s TUC took the decisive step that would eventually lead to the creation of the Labour Party. Amongst others, W E Harvey of the Derbyshire miners unsuccessfully opposed the resolution at the 1899 TUC, which called for a conference of “Co-operative, Socialist, trade union and other working class organisations” to consider how to further advance independent representation. [50] Following this decision, in 1900 a national conference in London brought together most of these bodies to form the Labour Representation Committee. The SDF affiliated on 9,000 members, the ILP 13,000 and the Fabians nearly 900. Thus, the total socialist strength was some 23,000 - while the initial trade union strength was around a third of a million - mostly in two unions, but nonetheless clearly indicating where the balance of power would lie. The ASRS was alone amongst the large unions in its support of the LRC. Local LRCs began to be established and one was set up in Derby in the sawdust of a circus ring in Princes Street (later Exchange Street) on the “very spot where now stands the main buildings of the Derby Co-operative Society”. [51] The prospects of these newly formed LRCs were not very bright, at least at first.

The country was obsessed with the war against the Dutch settler Boers in South Africa, as the October 3rd 1900 general election approached. The Government maximised its support by appealing to the patriotic fervour of the electorate. The LRC had little time to prepare and, for that matter, had little experience of electoral work to call upon. What became known as the ‘khaki election’ was not a signal success for the new movement, which had produced a radical manifesto for the occasion. The LRC aimed for “maintenance for the Aged Poor, Public Provision for Better Houses, Work for the Unemployed, child maintenance, nationalisation of land and railways, independence for the Empire. Abolition of the Standing Army and the establishment of a citizen force, graduated income tax, No compulsory vaccination, control of the Liquor Traffic, central government grants to local rates ... the object of these measures is to enable the people ultimately to obtain the Socialisation of the Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange to be controlled by a Democratic State in the interests of the entire community and the Complete Emancipation of Labour from the Domination of Capitalism and Landlordism with the Establishment of Social and Economic Equality between the Sexes”. [52] Only two of the 15 LRC candidates were elected, Keir Hardie at Merthyr and Richard Bell at Derby. The two men had very different views of the role of independent working class representation. Hardie was also an out-and-out socialist, while Bell was more comfortable with the policy and philosophy of the Liberal Party. Keir Hardie was none too enamoured of Bell, describing him as “a genial ass” and the latter quickly revealed his true colours as a Liberal, soon leaving Hardie as the only real Labour MP. [53]

The result in the general election in Derby was however quite a close run thing. A remarkable 84.5% of the electorate turned out in the two-seat division:
actual vote % vote
Sir T Roe (Lib) 7,922 26.6
R Bell (LRC) 7,640 25.7
Sir H H Bemrose (Con) 7,397 24.9
G Drage (Con) 6,775 22.8

The LRC’s national budget for the general election was a mere £33. Bell, due to the beneficent Liberal and ASRS support, was able to spend the colossal sum of £900 in his campaign at Derby. [54] No doubt this was a key factor in assisting him to win in such a close contest.

Problems between Bell and his close supporters on the one hand, and the town’s socialists on the other, emerged immediately the election was over, especially due to the growing importance of the ILP. In August 1901, a joint committee was set up uniting the Trades Council and the ILP to campaign for an official governmental enquiry into the municipal status of Derby - an example of the new status of the ILP. [55] Membership of the committee was:

ILP DTC
Hudson Chambers
Purcell Ravensdale
Mellor Haywood

Bell was re-endorsed as LRC candidate by the Trades Council in May 1903, with only five voting against this. Mostly, Bell still had the general support of the movement locally, even the ILP. Although their Derby secretary felt obliged to write to the local press, making it clear that they “knew Bell was not a socialist” although he had been nominated, campaigned for and elected with ILP backing. After the 1903 TUC resolved by a majority of two to one no longer to work with Liberals and to completely go it alone, real problems set in for Bell. At the DTC’s last meeting at the Bull’s Head in September (it met in the new Friendly Societies and Trades Hall from October 1903) the 26 delegates present had resolved to continue working with the Liberals and the Liberal front organisation, the Democratic League. [56]

The TUC decision to go it alone caused considerable controversy in Derby’s labour movement. H Lindfield, of the UKSC, moved a resolution at the DTC on the work of the LRC, in the course of which he criticised some officers of the trades council for their views, It had been reported in the press that they were against the inclusion of groups like the Derby Socialist Society. They were disturbed that an independent and influential local body, somewhat influenced by Marxism, could be part of the LRC whilst the Liberals were excluded. The resolution criticising these outspoken views, which clearly leaned to Lib-Labism rather than socialism, was declared lost by the Chairman on a 14 to 13 vote. However, there was controversy about the accuracy of the result, causing another vote in which the left wing abstained. Allegations that the TUC’s decision on the LRC had caused the disaffiliation of some branches from the DTC were rebutted by the left delegates, who pointed to an actual increase in overall affiliation. [57]

A new LRC constitution was introduced nationally, which endorsed the TUC line on independence from the two main parties. However, Bell refused to sign in favour of this and, in 1904, the national LRC leadership very reluctantly had to formally decide to regard him as having lapsed from the LRC and he sat as a Liberal from then onwards. Before his defection, the small Labour group in Parliament had risen to five after a series of dramatic by-elections. The Bell affair dominated working class politics in Derby and its environs for five years afterwards, leaving an indelible mark on the character of the movement. The ASRS executive strongly condemned Bell’s attitude to the new LRC constitution and called into question his position as Derby’s MP, arguing that, as he had been elected as an LRC candidate, he owed it to the electorate to re-consider his position. A special meeting of the DTC was called in April 1904 to discuss the whole question. [58] Bell had written a letter to the trades council explaining his position. He told the delegates not to worry about finance, “I have no doubt that funds will be forthcoming from one source or another”, for future electoral contests on his behalf. Further, that he had appointed Mr A Flint of a prominent Full St solicitors’ practice to act as his election agent. “All that your committee need do”, he told the trades council, “is to get the machinery ready in the event of a general election being sprung upon us. A little conference between the trades council and the Democratic League ... will be all that is necessary.” This was the Liberal Party working men’s front organisation.

Contrary to Bell’s obvious expectations that the DTC would simply support him, the whole affair caused a major row at a council meeting. Henry Sharpe, the DTC president, “yielded to no man in his condemnation of Mr Bell in his attitude to the Labour movement”. However, S B Dickenson (of the ASRS and DTC secretary) queried whether Bell had done any wrong, whilst others wondered whether anyone had the right to object to what an MP said or did in the House of Commons. Some delegates strongly attacked Bell and his supporters but the majority feeling was for him. The meeting was wholly disordered, so much so that the President was interrupted several times when winding up the debate, and Dickenson demanded, amidst controversy, the right to reply. A resolution adopting Bell once more as candidate for a future general election and calling on the ASRS executive to reverse their attitude to him was passed in a show of eventual unity, with only two votes against.

Thus, the council was tied to Bell and implicitly to his variety of Lib-Labism. At the June 1904 meeting of the DTC, Dickenson gave a report of a meeting of Bell’s Parliamentary Representation Committee, in the main a Liberal, Democratic League dominated body. Henry Sharpe, the DTC president, was outraged, “his position there had been made very unpleasant by the secretary owing to his not being acquainted with the business of the council until a few minutes before” the DTC meeting. For his part, he could not work with the Democratic League, which sought to “capture the workers for the Liberal party”. Sharpe, who was a prominent leader of the Derby Socialist Society, resigned as DTC president there and then. Bell’s supporters gladly accepted this. J Wardle, an ASRS delegate, said that if Sharpe had not resigned, he had intended to move that he be asked to do so. Another delegate, Wells, argued that all those who could not support Bell ought to resign from the council - “the sooner they parted company the better”. The Socialist Society members were clearly Wells’ target, but he may have missed the mark. Some other delegates appeared to have taken his suggestion to vacate the council. In a conciliatory gesture, James Wheeldon moved at this meeting that “thanks be tendered to Messrs Unsworth and Lindfield for their valuable service to this Council”. [59]

The trades council formally left the LRC over the Bell affair and a split began to emerge within the ASRS locally about LRC affiliation. Worley of Derby No 1 ASRS branch, in September 1904, moved that the DTC re-affiliate to the LRC. While the DTC secretary, S B Dickenson, spoke strongly against this move, winning the vote by 20 votes to seven, thus leaving the local LRC free from outright socialist influence from the Derby Socialist Society’s members in the DTC. [60] With the trades council, the railwaymen and the Lib-Lab MP effectively out of independent working class politics for the short term, a new start had to be made. It was generally almost impossible to even try to hire a hall, although the ILP’s premises - “a large room approached by a dark passage in Full St” – could be used. The problem was that it was not always big enough though and “every public hail and school room was barred to the LRC as it now stood, shorn of respectability”. [61]

In 1903, the LRC ran three candidates in the local elections in Derby, but only one - J T Hextall - was elected, and he had stood as a Lib-Laber. Tom Taylor and Bill Raynes stood proudly independent, but unsuccessful on a campaign platform centred around the establishment of school clinics, amongst other issues. An LRC supporter asked Raynes’ opponent about his position on the matter and the conversation, as humorously related by Raynes, reveals the level of political sophistication amongst local politicians.

“Are you in favour of School Clinics?” says the LRC man “What’s that - say it again?” asks the candidate.
“Are you in favour of School Clinics?” repeats the questioner.
“It sounds alright - just tell me when it runs and I’ll have a Bob on it”, quips the puzzled politician, quite unaware as to what his constituent is talking about. (For those educated in post-decimalisation currency days, a ‘bob’ was a shilling, or five new pence. To hide his lack of knowledge, the puzzled ‘politician’ is of course joking that ‘school clinics’ is a horse which he will bet on!) [62]

The general election of 1906 was to prove decisive for the labour movement. There had been not only the experience of Taff Vale to stiffen the resolve of the working class movement; there had also been a serious depression. In Derby, an official borough committee was set up to provide for the unemployed. Not to be accused of pampering the lazy, the committee paid out £750 in “wages” that were well below union rates, to those who had done work in levelling the Rowditch Recreation Ground. [63] Such circumstances did little to harm the increasing interest in independent working class candidates. However, for Bell, the arguments of 1903 began to surface once again. At a Derby Democratic League meeting at the Trades Hall in May 1906, he argued against his detractors that he was “dependent upon the electors of Derby for his position in parliament, not upon the LRC”. [64] The Labour Candidature Association - Bell’s ‘broad front’ supporters’ group - met at the Temperance Hall to hear “Bell answer his critics” once more, for this issue simply would not go away. [65]

Despite the controversy in the movement, Bell retained the Trades Council’s support and sponsorship of the ASRS. More amazing was the fact that he was on the TUC’s official list for support in the 1906 election. While Derby Liberals gave him every support, the local LRC simply refused to back him. [66] In the circumstances, the result was predictable. Bell and Roe retained their seats with greatly increased majorities. That year saw resurgence in the general fortunes of the Liberal Party and a new growth for the fledgling LRC. The Derby result took place in an atmosphere of great public interest, reflected by the massive 88% turnout:
R Bell (Lib-Lab) 10,361
T Roe (Lib) 10,239
Capt Holford (Con) 6,421
Spencer-Churchill (Con) 6,409

In Chesterfield, the Liberals accepted James Haslam as a Lib-Lab candidate but mainly only because the sitting Liberal was unable to stand for the seat due to ill health. A split in the anti-Tory vote thus averted, Haslam was able to win a clear lead:

J Haslam (Lib-Lab) 7,254
G T Locker-Lampson (Con) 5,590

Nationally, the various Labour candidates did very well; a block of 29 seats were won in all. Although the real victors of the 1906 election were the Gladstonian Liberals, who took 377 seats, which gave them an overall majority of 84. Of the LRC’s 50 candidates, only 18 were opposed, many only technically so, by official Liberals. Clearly, with such a deluge of support, the Liberals could afford to be generous in giving concessions to organised labour.

Once the General Election was over, the experience stimulated new initiatives. At its quarterly meeting held on May 10th 1906, the Derby branch of the UKSC passed a resolution in favour of selecting one of its members as a candidate for Parliament. H Lindfield wrote to the union’s journal, saying that “the employers are well organised both in and out of Parliament, and are using political power, backed up by laws of their own making to crush the Trade Unions. To successfully defend ourselves we must meet them on their own ground ... If we had our man in Parliament he would be able to voice our claims, air our grievances, speak from practical experience [67] Lindfield, who had moved to Derby in July 1900, was a candidate in the 1906 local elections. Even more reflective of the changed situation created in the labour movement by the 1906 election, was the fact that Sharpe was able to get a resolution through the DTC that the trades council approach the Derby Socialist Society and the local LRC “with a view to action being taken to bring out Labour candidates at the November local elections”. [68] Unfortunately, this excellent idea failed to reach fruition and the only working class contest that year was in Abbey ward, where Hextall once again sought a council seat - on this occasion successfully:

J T Hextall (Ind Lab) 628
J North (Con) 377

The slow slog of building interest and support for, not just independent working class representation, but for full-bloodied socialism, continued apace. In 1907, George Titt, organiser for Derby ILP and the District ILP Federation, conducted a series of meetings over the period of one week in the Swadlincote area, as the movement sought to spread its influence. [69] A surge towards specifically socialist ideas was best exemplified by the spectacular socialist victory of Victor Grayson in Come Valley. This convinced Lloyd George of the absolute urgency, for the Liberal Party, in introducing a much needed reform programme to stem the tide of the rising Labour Party, which the LRC now took to calling itself. Alongside this problem for the Liberals, developed another - the desire for the extension of the franchise to women, which saw its highest expression in the campaign of the votes for women movement.

iii) Votes for Women - Now!

Women had of course always participated in the struggle for democracy; many were as active in the Chartist movement as the men. The first specifically women’s suffrage societies were founded in the late 1860s. As the vote was gradually extended to all men, the issue of women’s rights naturally came to the fore. In 1898, a national federation of women’s suffrage groups was formed with the assistance of the workers’ movement. However, frustration with the progress of the campaign saw the emergence of a new, more militant movement under the leadership of the Pankhursts.

Contrary to myth, the women’s suffrage movement was not the exclusive preserve of young women from rich families. Working class women, albeit often encouraged by more ‘well placed’ women, had an important contribution to make. The National Union of Women Workers set up a branch in Derby in the late 1890s, but the fact that it was initially dominated by the well-to-do inhibited its growth. Geoffrey Drage MP chaired one branch meeting in 1900, when Mrs Hogg of the National Council of NUWW delivered an address on ‘Wage Earning Children’. Amongst the dignitaries were a couple of clergymen and a doctor. In time, the NUWW became less of a philanthropic exercise and more of a trade union - eventually it became part of what would in time become the future GMB. Other women’s groups were more obviously class orientated. In 1906 a National Federation of Women Workers, requiring membership of a TUC affiliated union was formed. The predecessor of this experienced a rejection of its approach for support from the Derbyshire miners in 1904, because they thought it was for women’s suffrage. (The NFWW could trace its origins to 1871, when the Women’s Protective and Provident League had been set up. This was changed to the Women’s Provident League in 1889, and two years later to the Women’s Trade Union League, which was the body that was rejected by the DMA.)

There were mixed views within the working class movement, the 1907 ILP national conference held in Derby passed a motion of support for women’s suffrage, but it was by no means unanimous. Henry Sharpe, as chairman of the Derby Socialist Society, had welcomed the delegates to Derby at the Temperance Hall. He must have been pleased with the 181 to 60 vote to send a letter of congratulations to suffragettes recently released from prison. That a vote was taken at all is symptomatic of the attitude of some on the left to the issue. [70] Working women tended to be concentrated in particular trades, especially textiles. In the Derby silk trade, women outnumbered men by nine to one. More common employment for women was as domestic servants in the homes of the moderately well off. Female domestic servants formed 2.9% of the total population of Derby. Yet there were changes coming, even before the First World War put everything into turmoil. The Midland Railway Loco and Carriage and Wagon establishments employed some 10,000 workers at this time, 9.2% of them married women. While there were also around seven thousand women employed in Derby in engineering and machine making. [71]

Initial activity in the county amongst women’s campaigners was low key but sustained. Evidence that it reached even small towns is shown by the fact that a Mrs F T Swanwick spoke in 1908 at Wirksworth for the North of England Society for Women’s Suffrage. [72] Whilst the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, formed in 1897, represented a vast number of ‘non-militant’ women’s groups. The North of England Society, based in Manchester, was a component part of NUWSS. However, it would be the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) which would capture the headlines in the years to come. By 1909, women’s suffrage was news everywhere, because of the unique methods of campaigning undertaken by the WSPU. The WSPU first appeared in Derby in 1909, when on November 12th Christabel Pankhurst spoke at the Drill Hall. The meeting was violent and the platform was invaded by angry males. Christabel Pankhurst vowed to come back again and two further meetings were held before Christmas. Gradually, male outrage was contained, as the population became accustomed to WSPU meetings. So much so that in April 1910 the WSPU’s leader, Mrs Emily Pankhurst, was able to address a civil gathering, again at the Drill Hall.

That year, Lord Lytton - the brother of a key suffragette campaigner - set up, with a group of MPs, a Conciliation Committee which drafted a suffrage bill. However, the progress of this was delayed due to the calling of a general election in 1910. The main proposals of this bill were very much a compromise but, nonetheless, were the basis of the campaign of the women’s movement. Towards the end of the year, the local campaign bore fruit when the DTC passed a resolution calling on “the government to grant facilities at once for the immediate passage of the (Conciliation Committee’s) Women’s Suffrage Bill into Law”. [73] Throughout 1910 and 1911 the trades council fought a public campaign on the “sweated trades” issue, that is to say, those highly exploitative industries dominated by female employment. The campaign won general support for “Trades Boards”, or what would become known as Wages Councils, which were set up in a variety of industries in 1910. These in turn stimulated trades unionism in the sweated trades, although the essential weakness of the trade boards was that they tended to confirm the lowest wage as the average and to hold back negotiated improvements. Much more consciousness that trade unionism need not be a male preserve emerged. Reflecting this, the organiser of the Warehouse and Cutters Society, a print industry union, spoke at the DTC on organising in his industry. Following this, the council “approved the idea of the better organisation of women”. [74]

However, the women’s movement was not ready for a long patient campaign of gradual social equality; votes now were their aim. Moreover, the decision of the newly elected 1911 Liberal Government to finally extend manhood suffrage to its limits, to the exclusion of the Conciliation Bill, caused deep resentment amongst women. The effect of this was to encourage a new, but negative, tactical style to the suffragette campaign. Specifically, a wave of violent rioting and window breaking campaigns broke out. In Derbyshire, there was at least one window breaking attack on Morley Manor, while what was almost certainly an accidental fire was blamed on the suffragettes. The 900 year old Breadsall Church, near Derby, was devastated on the night of Thursday June 4th 1914. While the suffragettes were blamed by the newspapers and the authorities, the evidence to support this view was really quite flimsy. A hatpin was found near to a window supposedly used to enter the building, while the window itself could have only admitted a slight person. A cryptic and ambiguous note was sent to the Rector of Breadsall, the day after he had prophesied that the suffragettes would own up to the act. However, the established women’s movement refused to accept liability or responsibility for the incident. Madeline Onslow for the Derby branch of NUWSS positively denied the allegations. Most comments on the affair, in retrospect, now generally accept that the fire was in all probability an accident. The suffragettes were generally held in such fear by some in the establishment that they would go to great lengths to protect themselves against what was actually a paranoiac vision, much the creation of the media of the day. For example, the Squire of Shipley, Edward Mundy, had a high 300-yard wall added to his estate in 1911, simply to protect himself against an imagined suffragette terror.

The long-established NUWSS had its Derby branch meeting at the end of 1911 reported. [75] It was well based in Derbyshire and the north, having stronger links with the labour movement than the WSPU. The latter, moreover grew out of a specific critique of the LRC and ILP - a fact that did not always win it support. Whilst the WSPU engaged in a campaign of mild terrorism from 1909-1914, the NUWSS turned increasingly to the Labour Party from 1912. Its membership almost doubled and at least one paid organiser, possibly several, was active in the county. By 1913, even the TUC was won to support the enfranchisement of women through the endeavours of the NUWSS. The NUWSS organised a march from Newcastle to London that passed through the county. Several thousand people packed into Chesterfield’s Market Place on Monday 7th July 1913, to greet the marchers with tremendous cheers. Councillor H Cropper, president of the Chesterfield Trades and Labour Council, was at pains to distance the event from the WSPU. The main speaker was Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the key figure in the NUWSS, and she was accompanied by the socialist, Edward Carpenter, and the Derby NUWSS leader, Norma Smith. The arrangements had all been in the hands of the Chesterfield NUWSS secretary, Mrs E Pearson of Brockwell Terrace. Five meetings were held between Chesterfield and Pleasley as the march wound its way to Mansfield. “At all the villages the people have turned out to greet us, cheering women’s suffrage, giving us flowers”, was how one contemporary described the response in these very working class communities.

Keeping the campaign going did not prove hard, the Derby Trades Council once more resolved to support the idea of “a Bill for the women”, quite unequivocally in December 1913, if rather patronisingly so in retrospect. In contrast, the Derby Daily Express was vitriolic in putting the view of the establishment, when it urged the “shaving of the heads of every militant suffragette” and the use of the “cat o’ nine tails”. However, the First World War was to interrupt the suffrage campaign, especially as the Pankhursts (other than the honourable exception of Sylvia Pankhurst) exchanged their zeal for votes for women for patriotic fervour. This was based on a rationalisation that argued that support for the government would be returned on a good favour basis after the war by the introduction of a women’s enfranchisement bill. The experience of the campaign moulded the views of many a young radical woman. Very many years after these events Elsie Armstrong, who later achieved the distinction of the Mayoralty of Derby, remembered being actively involved in the women’s suffrage movement locally. In one procession, she walked with her baby daughter in one arm, in the other a sign: “I can have a child why not a vote?” [76]

iv) The emergence of Labour as a national political force (1906-1914)

After the successes of the 1906 general election and the growth of socialism in the subsequent years, many trade unions that had remained aloof from independent working class politics began to revise their attitudes. The Derby Builders’ Labourers’ union branch, which had briefly disaffiliated from the DTC over the issue, affiliated to the local LRC in September 1909. By the following year it had elected a young man, Charles Brown (who would later prominently feature in their society’s local history) to the position of delegate to what was now being called the Derby and District Labour Party. [77]

The transition from electoral pressure group to a fully-fledged political party had been rapid, the LRC calling itself the Labour Party now that it had established a solid block of MPs. However, it was still largely a parliamentary party with little effective, localised structures. Moreover, individual membership was still not a feature of the Labour Party. It was a federation of a working class groups and ideas, from nearly Liberal to fully Marxist. Yet, while the party was now a more generally accepted part of politics, it was by no means plain sailing. The movement had a real struggle to win the right to free speech. The police, backed up and encouraged by the magistrates, clamped down on any socialist who dared speak in public. Will Raynes, in his unpublished memoirs, relates a story dating from an experience in this period, when he had been invited to speak at a Methodist open-air meeting in aid of temperance and against alcohol. As he did just that, a policeman stopped him from speaking, saying that “he had instructions to stop all attempts at socialist meetings in the streets”. Raynes told him of the real nature of the meeting and, in the circumstances, the policeman withdrew. As Raynes himself put it, “the right of free speech had some peculiar limitations”. [78] A socialist could speak at a Methodist meeting, but a Methodist could not speak at a socialist meeting.

However, in Derbyshire, the socialist character of the movement was marginal. For all that the Labour Party now existed, the local electoral contests of this time were still hardly distinguishable from Lib-Labism. The Derbyshire miners had a welcome success when their general secretary, William Harvey, who had succeeded Haslam, was elected MP for North East Derbyshire in a by election in 1907 and the Liberals gave Harvey a clear field:
W Harvey (Lib-Lab) 6,644
J Court (Con) 5,915

Similarly, another by election in 1909 for Mid-Derbyshire (Alfreton and Belper) saw Hancock, the Nottinghamshire miners’ agent, contesting as a Liberal. However, the Miners Federation of Great Britain had just affiliated to the Labour Party. Hancock portrayed himself as a Labour candidate, standing with Liberal support and, amid much confusion, he was nonetheless decisively elected:
J Hancock (Lib-Lab) 6,735
A Peters (Con) 4,392

With one confusion begun, another ended. Richard Bell announced that he would not be standing for election again. He wrote to the secretary of the Derby Labour Party (DLP) giving the Osborne judgement, in which a railwayman sought to prevent his union using its funds for political purposes, as his reason for such a decision. [79] It was a strange excuse, perhaps the fact that a successor to himself, as the ASRS general secretary, was due had more to do with it.

The ASRS was successfully taken to court by W V Osborne, a member of that union, with the aim of preventing the collection of funds for the use of political purposes, the issue eventually coming to the House of Lords in 1909. The decision had great consequences for the rapidly developing Labour Party, which began to be starved of funds with which to support municipal and parliamentary candidates. The Labour Party launched a national fighting fund to combat the Osborne judgement, the news of which was stoutly welcomed by the Derby Trades Council. [80] But the danger of continued attacks on the political role of trade unions was seriously heightened following the judgement. A similar case was pursued in Derbyshire by a miner called Fisher, who took the Blackwell lodge of the DMA to court in 1910. The threat of further legal repercussions was averted when the union gave an undertaking that it would not discriminate against those who objected, nor would it prevent any member who wished to abstain from paying towards political funds from doing so. [81]

Later that year, well attended meetings of Derbyshire miners considered the establishment of a levy of one shilling a year from each consenting member to insure the union against potential problems arising out of the Osborne judgement. The Lib-Laber, Barnet Kenyon spoke to a crowded gathering of Horsley Woodhouse, men who were unanimous in their consent to the notion. [82] For workers had begun to realise that many of their problems in life either arose out of parliamentary decisions or were alleviated by Parliament. Only by the introduction of the 1913 Trade Union Act was the spending of union monies on political purposes from a special fund legalised. Strict rules governing the administration of the political fund were provided for, in particular in respect to the opportunity to opt out of paying the levy. This reform was only one of a series of positive developments, which a combination of industrial militancy and parliamentary strength was able to obtain for working people. A wide range of social and economic reforms was won. There was legislation concerning underground operations in the coal industry, the introduction of Trade Boards to fix minimum wages in the sweated industries and the beginnings of the welfare state. The Old Age Pensioners Act, which came into force on January 1st 1909, applied only to those over 70 years of age, whose income did not exceed slightly over 12/- a week. The amount of the pension varied from 5/- a week down to only 1/-, depending upon a scale of income, It was a welcome step but no more than tinkering with the problems of working class people. Bad housing, poor education and health facilities and a total lack of job security were fundamental problems hardly even tacked. Some workers began to scorn these limited reforms as doing no more than glossing over the depth of social problems.

What had been the Social Democratic Federation - the SDF - became the British Socialist Party (BSP). The established rigidity of the old SDF was now under challenge from within the organisation, which began to take a more realistic view of life. Yet, almost contrary to this trend, the BSP disaffiliated entirely of its own volition from the Labour Party in 1908. In view of the obsequiousness that most Labour MPs had shown to the Liberal Government - in return for what the BSP saw as palliatives - perhaps the decision to disaffiliate was not entirely without logic. However, the decision deprived the Labour Party at its most formative time of an organised expression of Marxist ideas. The Party was imbalanced towards Liberal ideas, the very thing the BSP detested. In Chesterfield, in particular, the strongest base of Lib-Labism in the county could be found. A fact that urged the local BSP organisation to denounce the tendency as “contrary to the best interests of the organised workers ... who have declared for independent political action”. [83]

The concern about the soul and direction of the Labour Party was not confined by any means to the BSP. The ILP had very firmly stayed in the new electoral alliance that constituted the Labour Party. However, the ILP was worried about the attitude of the Derbyshire miners. As one writer in the ILP’s paper, `Labour Leader’, put it later that year, if the DMA MPs “prefer the Liberals to the ILP well and good, but it must be made quite clear that they cannot have both”. [84] J Thornhill, an active ILPer in Derbyshire, wrote to Ramsay MacDonald, then ILP leader, in January 1911 about the Derbyshire miners MP, Harvey. “Talk about being loyal to the Labour Party, Harvey does just what he likes. Why not let him go to the Liberal Party, and finish deceiving innocent miners.” [85] But Thornhill was wasting his time. MacDonald aimed to keep such figures as Harvey in the new party - irrespective of ideology, reasoning that “the Labour Party is not Socialist”. [861 That was indeed so, but MacDonald’s approach was almost calculated to keep it that way.

v) The Co-operative Movement

If there was concern amongst some about the soul of the Labour Party, then similar fears existed about the Co-operatives. In November 1906, the Derby Trades Council was disconcerted to hear that the Derby Co-operative Society (DCS) was involved in sending “blacklegs over to Mansfield to break the strike” of what was probably Co-op workers there. [87] But the notion that such a thing could even occur was now generally accepted, even if it caused horror. The Co-ops had become big business, far exceeding the original ideas of the small groups of workers who had started co-operativism. This development had been aided by a process of concentration of the small, original societies. In 1896 the DCS had taken over the Little Eaton Co-op, and the Spondon Co-operative Society the following year. By 1908, the DCS had no less than 19,000 members, with 30 branch stores in the town itself.

With the success of the retail co-ops, interest in the application of co-operative principles to other aspects of economic life emerged. Organisations like the Labour Co-Partnership Association were set up in Derby as elsewhere. The idea was to spread the co-operation of the retailer-consumer trade to tenant-landlord relationships. The major slum districts of Derby at the turn of the century were Bridge Gate, Willow Row, Walker Lane, Bold Land and especially Cotton Lane. To replace areas like these, the DCS built its own houses in Walbrook Road, Violet Street and an estate of 44 cottages in Alvaston - all for rent or sale to its own members. £22,856 was spent by the DCS on cottage property, scattered all over the town. Even though they were thoroughly decent homes, a net profit in 1904 of some £500 or 2.5% return on capital invested - was attained. Despite this initial success, the notion did not take firm root and the Co-ops stayed predominantly retail outfits. There was another cooperative idea tried out at this time. Derby Builders Ltd. was set up on co-partnership lines - what we would call a worker co-op. Although shares of one pound each were issued, receiving 5% interest and one-tenth of all the disposable profits. [88] Similarly, but with the initiative coming from the print unions, a co-operative printers was established.

Relationships with the co-operative movement were not generally as good as the trade unions would have preferred. A very real fear existed that commercial pressures were isolating the Co-ops from the movement as a whole. Throughout the period up to the war, the unions in Derby were seeking to exert greater influence over the DCS. However, despite contesting every election for the Board of Directors, there was great disappointment at the failure of trades unionists to win seats. The DTC eventually decided against any further contests in July 1917, but the movement was later able to exert greater authority in the inter-war years. [89] A new concept, designed to ensure that trades unionists only bought goods from organised firms raised doubts about the co-ops’ commitment to unionism. The idea was that a “trade union stamp” - a mark affixed to the goods to prove that trade union labour had produced - it would help protect the trades unionists against under-cutting.

After the DTC had discussed the general notion in January 1912, pressure was put on the DCS to consider the system. Questions were asked at the DCS quarterly meeting in February as to why the co-op had decided to oppose the idea of placing a trade union stamp on boots and shoes. The Boot Committee considered that there were “certain people who traded with us who were opposed to it”. A self-satisfied reply calculated to enrage the trades council. Then the question was extended to bespoke and factory made clothing. An agreement existed between the DTC, the DCS and the Tailors Society, guaranteeing the individual conditions that every suit and garment were made under. However, the DCS positively resisted the introduction of a stamp or mark guaranteeing that this was so. There was a strong element of self-interest involved here, for the Co-op. Custom of anti-trades unionists might be lost by flaunting the name of the unions of the employees who had made the garments. Despite being put to a membership vote, the directors received a large majority endorsing their refusal and the whole issue of the trade union stamp began to fade.

Not that a general sense of exasperation with the role of the co-ops, when it came to trades unionism, receded in the least. The DTC officially took up with the DCS in October 1913 its failure to employ union-only labour. While, in early 1914, a stonemason called Drabble was dismissed by the DCS Building Department for reasons which are unclear, but which the DTC deprecated. Drabble was a DTC delegate and a trade union activist, so perhaps his dismissal had more to do with his union activities than ought to have been the case. Despite all this, the co-ops retained strong links with the trade union movement beyond their own employees. As in the 1912 coal strike, when 10 or 12 gallons of new milk were given away in the Cotton Lane area by the DCS. Soup made from goods supplied by the DCS was also distributed in Spondon.

Meanwhile, the co-ops were themselves seeking a greater political role. In January 1887, the Long Eaton Co-op Society had successfully contested a local election. Seven years later, when the Urban District council took over the functions of the local board, three Co-op candidates had won seats. However, this example was not followed up in Derby. Although a suggestion had been made in 1901 that the DCS put up municipal candidates for the November elections, this had never been carried out. In 1912, however, the DCS decided to form a committee to investigate the idea in more depth and this began its work in February, deciding to recommend that the Society seek representation on the local council. While this political outlook was strictly speaking separate from the Labour Party at this stage, it was generally appreciated that there would be no question of competition between working class candidates. [90]

vi) The demise of Lib-Labism

Following the MFGB decision in 1909 to join the Labour Party, about a dozen miners’ MP5 who had maintained allegiance to the Liberal Party switched their support towards the Parliamentary Labour Party. It was the beginning of the end of Lib-Labism. However, in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire the outlook held on tenaciously, with the assistance of some miners’ leaders. There were two general elections in 1910. At the first of these, in January, hardly anywhere did Labour score a reasonable result, let alone victory, without Liberal support. J G Hancock, W Harvey and J Haslam were all re-elected in both elections for their respective constituencies of Mid-Derbyshire, Chesterfield and N E Derbyshire, again with strong Liberal support.

Hancock won a decisive 63.9% in January and in December 60.5%. However, there was serious doubt that he was indeed truly a Labour candidate. The Alfreton ILP decided to take no part in his campaign, unless there was a clear undertaking that meetings would be called under the Labour colours. Harvey polled 57.6% in January and 56.3% in December, while Haslam had a convincing lead of 59% over his Tory opponent. In Derby, Roe stood in the two-member constituency again as the only official Liberal, leaving the field clear for Richard Bell’s successor. This was the new ASRS general secretary - J H (Jimmy) Thomas, a former engine driver, who now stood as the first official Labour Party candidate. Bell had retired as MP, amidst controversy, to a post as an official in the Labour Exchange section of the Board of Trade at a salary of £600 a year - half as much again as he received as ASRS secretary. In his resignation speech, he claimed he was a “victim of political prejudice”. The Derby Mercury called it “socialist tyranny”. Although, in his letter of resignation to A. R. Flint, the secretary of the “Derby Labour Association”, Bell had announced his “great reluctance” to stand again citing the limitations on trades unionists political activity after the Osborne case. Bell was indeed under attack and out of tune with current opinion in the labour movement, but it was arguably the plum job offered to him by Winston Churchill, which drew him away. [91] Whatever the cause of Bell’s defection, none of this made any real difference to the actual result.

Labour activists were already familiar with Jimmy Thomas, as he had campaigned for Bell with vigour in the 1906 election. Derby railwaymen asked him to forego his intended contest at Cardiff, as the 1910 election approached, arguing that the divisions had raised the possibility of the seat being lost and only he could save it. By agreeing to do so, “there was trouble with the union and he was ‘carpeted’ “. [92] Naturally, by winning the Derby seat he avoided too much difficulty after the event. His election began links with Derby that would last him a quarter of a century. Thomas polled 27.9% and the voting pattern was very similar to that of the 1906 election:
Roe (Lib) 9,515
Thomas (Lab) 9,144
Beck (Con) 8,160
B Fuller, one of Thomas’ friendly and semi-official biographers, wrote of his involvement in these early electoral contests in glowing terms: “the Labour leaders were in despair. His rivals did not have to find cheap lodgings and consider shillings spent on meals and travel”. [93] The tale must surely have come from Thomas himself and reveals a lifelong personal dread of poverty - a trait that led to his persistent and abiding flaw, an obsessive taste for luxury. “Money”, Fuller continues with no trace of irony, “was so scarce that it was necessary to collect funds at party meetings.” In a similar vein, another biographer wrote that these collections were “not a very dignified proceeding, but the exchequer had to be filled somehow.” [94] Thomas later recalled the support he had received from Sir T Roe (later Lord Roe) in very warm terms, as well as welcoming the advocacy of his election by the “Liberal organ the Derby Evening Telegraph”. In truth, Thomas and Bell were of exactly the same ilk. Immediately after his victory however, initial steps were taken to qualitatively change the situation. The setting up of a permanent local Labour Party, in the fullest sense of the word then possible, was actively sought after a conference at the Temperance Hall called by the unions, the DTC and the Socialist Society. A committee was established to draft a constitution. [95] By August, Thomas was able to address a General Council meeting of the Derby Labour Party (DLP), saying that “until now there had never been a real independent Labour Party in Derby, with an organisation of its own; and further to the fact that Derby was far from being well organised even from a trade union point of view”. [96]

Committed socialists were however not entirely convinced that the DLP was a good thing - there were far too many Liberals in it for their liking. Some socialists tried to get the trades council to support the setting up of a “Socialist Representation Committee”; to no avail, for the DTC easily passed a resolution of “loyal support’ for the DLP. [97] The foundation of the DLP was not marked by immediate electoral success. In the municipal elections of November 1910, only two wards were contested and the Mercury thought it a “Rebuff for Socialism”. [98] Both the Labour candidates, Frank Porter and James Bennett, lost by margins of roughly three and one hundred respectively. The DLP had established that it could get the vote out -even without the Liberals, if necessary. More importantly, the party had learned how to practically conduct an election, so that when the December General Election came it was able to put up a very professional performance. For the first time, the Labour agent - James Bennett - set up a campaign shop in Cheapside in Derby. The DLP began to set up a sophisticated structure of support. By 1911, 22 trade union branches with a total membership of 551 were affiliated to the new party, donating in excess of some £83. [99] Amongst later entrants were both the United Machine Workers and the ILP, both at first a little suspicious of the initiative.

In a spirit of unity, the trades council proposed that the DLP, the Socialist Society and itself should cooperate in a joint committee to organise for the May Day celebrations of 1911 and one of the most successful demonstrations ever of rising working class confidence was held in the town. Later that year, the future municipal giant of Derby, W R Raynes, was at last elected in his sixth attempt for Osmaston ward as a town councillor. It was at a by election, arising from a councillor’s death, and Raynes had tried once there before. This time there was a remarkable turnout, by today’s standards for a local by-election, of 74.79%: Raynes (Lab) 554 Wildsmith (Ind) 411 Markham (Lib) 97. [100]

In the official elections that followed one month afterwards, three seats were fought by the DLP out of the four being contested. A Waterson took Derwent ward by the narrow margin of six votes, J Norman narrowly missed winning Friargate and the agent, James Bennett, took Pear Tree ward easily. [101] At its November meeting, the DTC noted with pleasure that the “class solidarity of the workers” had secured 2,382 votes, “an indication of the coming strength of the workers”. As a practical example of this pleasure, Raynes was made an honorary member of the trades council. [102] One of the first moves of the newly elected Labour councillors in 1911 was to table a motion for the fixing of a minimum wage of 6d per hour for the corporation’s labourers. These were very poorly paid at 1s 1d for a 55 hour week, with no other benefits of any kind. However, the vote on Labour’s proposal was predictably lost, there being 62 abstentions or votes against, while only the Labour councillors voted for the motion. Despite an intensely reasoned case put by them, their opponents simply ignored their arguments - Raynes was furious. The DLP resolved to give assistance to the corporation employees in establishing trade union organisation and, within a single year, the same resolution was put to the council with success, simply because the authority was threatened that “if justice was not conceded the whole of the municipal work of the Borough would be at a standstill next day”. The council labourer won his “tanner” by industrial muscle rather than logical persuasion. [103]

At the end of 1911, 73 delegates attended the DLP quarterly meeting to review progress. Henry Sharpe