S 22 ENGLISH RAILWAY STRIKE 



control of a board of directors appointed on behalf of the trade unions, the parliamentary 

 Labour party and the Independent Labour party. Heretofore the principal organ of 

 the movement and particularly its socialistic side had been the weekly Labour 

 Leader; but the direct financing and control of a regular daily, combining the supply 

 of general news with the attempt to forward Labour interests in particular, in com- 

 petition with existing dailies, was a much more ambitious experiment, the results of 

 which remained to be seen. 



The Railway Strike of 1911. For the first time in the history of English labour 

 troubles a " national " strike was precipitated in 1911, and private war was made on 

 the whole community by the members of the railway unions. In 1907 there had been 

 a violent agitation among members of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants 

 for better wages and shorter hours, and, towards this end, for " recognition " of their 

 Trade Union by the railway companies, which had been steadily refused by all except 

 the North Eastern Company (after an arbitration in 1897). This struggle had gone on 

 for many months, the companies insisting that their finances would not permit of any 

 concessions, till in October 1907 a ballot of the Union was taken and preparations were 

 made for a general railway strike. This was only averted on November 6th, as the 

 result of negotiations carried on by Mr. Lloyd George as President of the Board of Trade, 

 by an agreement between both sides to accept a scheme of conciliation and arbitration 

 proposed by him. Under this scheme 1 sectional boards were set up for each company, 

 composed of representatives of employers and employed, to deal with disputes about 

 hours and wages; a Central Conciliation Board, also representing both sides, was set 

 up to adjudicate on points on which the sectional boards did not agree: and a final appeal 

 was provided to a single arbitrator to be appointed by the Speaker and Master of the 

 Rolls or one of them. The agreement to abide by this scheme was to remain in force for 

 six years and then be terminable by either side on a year's notice. 



Mr. Lloyd George was thought to have been highly successful in bringing it about, 

 and it was hoped that a permanent remedy had been found for the unrest in the railway 

 world. The companies had gone a very long way to meet the demands of the Union 

 owing to the pressure put on them by the Government to accept the scheme. The 

 actual working of the Conciliation Boards however proved as time went on very dis- 

 appointing to the railway men; and the movement for shorter hours and better wages, 

 persistently pressed by the forward party in the Union and associated with the socialist, 

 propaganda throughout the Labour world, came to a head again in 1911. Strikes had 

 been going on in Liverpool, Manchester^ London and elsewhere, among various other 

 dasses of transport workers, seamen, dockers and carters. In London a violent dock 

 strike was only terminated early in August by an award of Sir Albert Rollit, increasing 

 wages; and a carmen's strike, which had been accompanied by serious disorder and had 

 driven the Government to order troops from Aldershot, was brought to an end with 

 considerable difficulty at the same time by the intervention of the Board of Trade, the 

 men securing concessions both as to hours and wages. At Liverpool a protracted dock 

 strike had driven the shipowners on August 3rd to agree to " recognise " the Dockers 

 Union and make other concessions; but a number of strikers refused to go back to 

 work; and the shipowners then announced a general lock-out to begin on August i.4th. 

 The answer of the Dockers Strike Committee, led by Mr. Tom Mann, was to call on 

 all transport workers to assist them by striking in sympathy, and wild scenes of rioting 

 resulted, requiring the assistance of troops to assist the Liverpool police. The general 

 unrest now spread in an active form to the railway men too. 



For some time past the discontent at the working of the Conciliation scheme had led 

 to talk of a general railway strike; the Trade Union agitators were spoiling for a fight 

 and the companies were preparing for emergencies. At Liverpool the goods porters 

 at the Lancashire and Yorkshire stations struck on August sth because of the delay in 

 dealing with their grievances, and at other stations the men came out in sympathy. On 

 August I5th, the joint executives of the four railwayraen's Unions, Amalgamated So- 



1 See generally E. B. ii, 331 et seq. 



