The memory of ‘the Home Front’ plays an important role in the mythology of the Second World War and actual events are forgotten in the mist of time . Unlike some Leftist claims, it was not a “people’s war.” Workers did not just step in line behind the government. It required a massive propaganda effort. The dominant understanding of the war continues to be that of a conflict between good and evil. This propaganda systematically distorted the reasons for the war, making it out to be a noble, self-sacrificing endeavour for the salvation of fascism’s victims. Moreover, it was the working class that bore the brunt of the sacrifice. The vast majority of soldiers were working class. Workers at home “gave up” their right to strike and in return had their wages frozen, even as business profits remained high. Equality of sacrifice was a lie, necessary for the purpose of maintaining civilian morale. The view of World War II as a war fought for altruistic principles of democracy and freedom continues to prevail and has to be challenged.
In November 1939, Regulation18b was introduced, giving the Home Secretary the power to intern at his discretion, without trial, any persons of 'hostile origins or associations' or anybody believed 'to have been recently concerned in acts prejudicial to the public safety or the defence of the realm or in the preparation or instigation of such acts'. In May 1940 the powers were broadened to allow for the internment of any members of organisations which might be used 'for purposes prejudicial to the public safety, the defence of the realm, the maintenance of public order, the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty may be engaged, or the maintenance of supplies or services essential to the life of the community'. Also in May 1940, the Emergency Powers Act (EPA) was extended to empower the Minister of Labour to direct workers and set wages, hours and conditions of work in 'key' establishments. Around the same time, the Conditions of Employment and National Arbitration Order (known as 'Order 1305') was introduced, which made strikes illegal unless a dispute had first exhausted, without reaching any settlement, a stipulated procedure of negotiation involving the Ministry of Labour and a National Arbitration Tribunal. The Essential Works Order (EWO), 1941, introduced further state control over labour power. Under this legislation a worker was obliged to give seven days' notice of resignation to his or her boss and to the National Service Officer, whose permission had to be obtained before the worker involved could leave his or her job. So rarely was this permission granted that virtually the only way workers could leave workplaces controlled by the EWO was through getting the sack. The EWO also legislated for the prosecution of workers for absenteeism and for failure to carry out any 'reasonable order' issued by the boss. In December 1941 measures were introduced allowing for the conscription of women aged 20-30: 'mobile' women (i.e. those without family ties or responsibilities) could be directed to any area of the country where there was a labour shortage, while immobile women were directed to employment nearer home. Women entered the labour force in increasing numbers from this point on, when the possibilities of increasing output through sheer 'weight of numbers' had begun to be exhausted, thus necessitating changes in the actual techniques and organisation of production (e.g. dilution of skilled work). Industrial conscription in the form of the EWO forced workers to stay in poorly paid monotonous jobs, which require them to work over-time to have a wage in keeping with the increasing cost of living. Labour is directed from 'non-essential' to 'essential' work, young women are transferred from factory to factory to suit the needs of capitalism.
Workers in Britain were not completely cowed by the onslaught of bourgeois coercion and propaganda. During the first few months of the war, there were over 900 strikes, almost all of them very short but illegal nonetheless. As the war progressed, the number of strikes sky-rocketed to reach a record 2,194 stoppages with 3,700,000 days lost in 1944. This led to a considerable embarrassment to Bevin and the imposition of Defence Regulation 1AA, supported by the TUC, allowing for sentences of five years penal servitude and/or a £500 fine to be imposed on 'any person who declared, instigated, made anyone take part in, or otherwise acted in furtherance of a strike amongst workers engaged in essential services'. Repression and the general 'shoulders to the wheel' approach to industrial production in support of the war effort did not stop strikes. Of course not all such strikes ended in victory - but neither do all strikes in peacetime. Most workers in Britain did support the war, in the belief that they were 'fighting fascism'. What many of them were not prepared to tolerate was the resort to 'fascist' methods 'at home' in order to prosecute the war. "We must pay attention to our own Hitlers and let the German workers deal with theirs. We must conduct the class struggle on the home front. We must watch the profiteers, the landlords and so on" John McGovern of the Independent Labour Party said.
Despite the provisions of Order 1305 there were very few prosecutions until 1941 since Bevin, anxious to avoid the labour unrest of the First World War, sought to promote conciliation rather than conflict. The number of strikes increased each year until 1944, almost half of them in support of wage demands and the remainder being defensive actions against deteriorations in workplace conditions. Coal and engineering were particularly affected.
Many thousands of women were recruited to wartime industry. In 1940, the engineering federation agreed that women would receive equal pay after 32 weeks in post. 20,000 women were employed at the Rolls Royce Hillington site in Glasgow. Rolls Royce evaded the 1940 equal pay formula and were challenged by the AEU in 1943. They settled. But 16,000 women (and some men) refused to accept the deal and walked out for over a week. They won a new agreement which specified every machine in the factory, the work done on it, and the rate for the job, regardless of who was operating the equipment.
In 1940 workers employed at Parnalls situated in Yate near Bristol walked out after hearing their shop steward, Higgins, either a member of the Communist Party or a sympathiser, had been sacked demanding his reinstatement. At this juncture of the war the CP's industrial policy was viewed by many in government circles as sabotage. Therefore, in face of government hostility to the Communist Party, the support given to Higgins by his work mates on his dismissal was significant.
The Communist Party's first instinct, in September 1939, had been to support the war as 'anti-fascist', but within a month, on orders from the Communist International in Russia, they had overturned this position and now opposed the war as 'imperialist'. In 1941, after Germany invaded Russia breaking the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression pact, the Communist Party, at the behest of the Comintern, made one of its frequent U-turns in policy. It changed its line from categorising the war as imperialist, and therefore could not be supported, to an anti-fascist war which demanded full support for Churchill's government based on the principle of a 'united national front'. This in turn brought about a change in the party's industrial policy from organising unofficial action to furthering the cause of the war by campaigning to increase output. Strikes were denounced by the CP leadership and strike-breakers praised. This somersault in policy by the CP may have discouraged strikes in workplaces where they had influence. Arguably the greatest impact the CP had on industrial relations was, however, its successful campaign to establish Joint Production Committees in engineering factories. The CP held the view that worker's empowerment through joint worker-employer regulation would boost war production and place workers' in a strong position to sustain this involvement in peacetime. However, on the whole the Engineering Employers' Federation managed to restrict workers' participation to operational tasks at the factory level thereby restricting the opportunity for increased industrial democracy either during or after the war. But the continued neuterisation of conflict helped prepare the way for the long post war collaboration between capitalists, labour leaders and the State.
A dispute took place in 1941 which involved engineering apprentices, first on Clydeside and then in Coventry, Lancashire and London. An Apprentices’ Charter, developed by the Clyde strike committee in 1937, called for higher pay, district-wide age-wage minimum pay scales, a right to part-time technical education on day release, a reasonable proportion of apprentices to journeymen, and a right to union representation. An Engineers’ Charter had been put forward by the AEU in 1929 in pursuit of improved terms and conditions in the industry. The unions had previously submitted a succession of claims to the Engineering Employers Federation without success. Now the apprentices marched from factory to factory bringing out their workmates. In Coventry they included women at the local munitions factory in the campaign. The strike wave finally destroyed the log-jam in national negotiations. In weeks, agreement was reached on higher age-wage scale rates.
On 9 January 1942 miners at Betteshanger Colliery in Kent struck over the level of allowances for working difficult seams prompted the first mass prosecutions under Order 1305. Three officials of the Betteshanger branch were imprisoned and over a thousand strikers were fined. The Ministry of Labour decided to prosecute 1,050 miners for contravening Order 1305. Three local union officials were imprisoned, the men working difficult seams were fined £3 each, and 1,000 other miners were fined £1 each. Betteshanger continued their strike and other pits came out in sympathy. On 28 January they won, and in February the Home Secretary dropped the prison sentences. By May, only 9 miners had paid their fines. Most fines were never paid.
On Tyneside at the beginning of 1943 workers at the Neptune ship repair yard came out for six weeks over the refusal of five men at their firm to join the Amalgamated Engineering Union. They received massive support from workers in other firms and trades, and forced their employers to concede a ‘closed shop’ agreement, setting a national precedent.
Workers at the former Chrysler factory in London converted to make Halifax bomber tail fins were subject to Essential Works Orders banning all industrial action. In 1943 they challenged management policy of locking the gates at 8:30 for the morning by threatening to turn up en masse at 8:31. Management threatened to use the Order, but then capitulated. The workforce went on to challenge management attempts to control union representation on the works committee, and after winning that forced an increase in the minimum wage for maintenance workers. Many of the women workers had partners in the Forces. One commented: “If I don’t fight for conditions and wages or let them get worse, my husband will kill me when he comes home”.
In 1943 there were two major stoppages by 12,000 bus drivers and conductors and another of dockers in Liverpool and Birkenhead.
The fact that so many strikes took place in the mining industry was due in the main to the fact that the designation of coal mining as essential war work entailed the direction of selected conscripts to work in the mines ('Bevin boys'). This was very unpopular among regular miners.
In 1944 underground miners were earning £5 per day and their wage tribunal refused to raise piece rates. When the Government announced that the national average industrial manual wage had reached £6 10s, miners came out on unofficial strike in South Wales, Kent, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, and Scotland - some 220,000 in South Wales and Yorkshire alone. With the invasion of France looming, the press attacked the miners. A South Wales miner of 30 years standing commented “... The argument that a strike would let our soldiers down was countered by men who had brothers and sons in the forces who, so they claimed, had urged them to fight and maintain their customs or privileges. They argued that they must retain something for those absent ones to come back to, while the suggestion that we should wait for further negotiations was swamped by the reply that we had already waited a long while...” In fact the Government was compelled to intervene, restored differentials, and the miners won the highest minimum wage in Britain. Their average earnings ranked 81st in 1938, but rose to 14th after the strikes.
Industrial Disputes
Year/No. of stoppages/No. of workers involved
1939 - 940 - 337,000
1940 - 922 - 299,000
1941 - 1251 - 360,000
1942 - 1303 - 456,000
1943 - 1785 - 557,000
1944 - 2194 - 821,000
1945 - 2293 - 531,000
"When it was said 'we must fight to the last man I will fight to the last MP, to the last banker, to the last landlord; I will fight to the last capitalist, the last war-mongering bishop, the last editor of the last capitalist newspaper; the last member of the House of Lords and the last member of the royal family. If only these were left on the battlefield the world would be a much better place for all time." John McGovern, Independent Labour Party and member of the No Conscription League, 1939
Sources
unionhistory
labournet
selfnegation
humanities
libcom
No comments:
Post a Comment