Significantly, as the historian of the movement has pointed out, the tenor of the wartime shop stewards’ thinking was organisational and its innovations lay in the field of industrial tactics, not of political strategy as such. By and large, its leaders were practical figures whose thinking, so far as it rose above everyday matters, was more concerned with elaborating tactics than debating the long-term strategy or ultimate goals of the class struggle. Even Murphy, probably the most intellectually able of them, did not, at least during the war years, progress beyond tactical thinking, important and often original though that was. Nonetheless, the practice of the shop stewards’ movement and its theory of rank-and-file organisation as set out in Murphy's The Workers’ Committee and other writings did represent a decisive advance on the pre-war syndicalist tradition. Whilst it was only after the war that the full revolutionary implications of his wartime practice became clear and the transition from syndicalism to communism became complete, a full appreciation of Murphy's subsequent political development is impossible without first tracing his pioneering wartime attempt to advance revolutionary tactics on the shopfloor and within the unions.

ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE UNIONS

Initially, Murphy attempted to clarify the revolutionary attitude towards the unions. He argued that the growing level of class struggle and the dynamic changes of the war period meant trade unions were increasingly becoming a transitory form of labour organisation, which would tend to disappear as industrial processes became more social in character. In particular, he believed the structure of the unions had become an obstacle to the development of the natural unit of organisation in industry, which was the workshop or industrial group. But under the pressure of the ‘march of events’ or historical development of society, new organisations would emerge that would better fit the needs of the working class, namely Shop Stewards’ and Workers’ Committees, which would lead to an industrial form of union organisation.