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Demarcation Disputes in British Shipbuilding Before 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Paul L. Robertson
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Matters of labour organisation and control are clearly related to the progress of mechanisation. Economic growth results from increases in productivity brought about by management's combination of trained men and “skillful” machines in productive work. In isolation neither management, labour, nor capital can in themselves achieve sustained growth in the output of goods and services; the efficient co-ordination of a trained and disciplined workforce with equipment designed to perform specific activities is always required. In a period of changing technology such as the nineteenth century, however, the proper co-ordination may be difficult to achieve because the introduction of workers with new talents or machines which can perform multiple functions is apt to disturb existing work routines, upset prevailing cost relationships, and force management to reorganise entire sections of the productive process. This is particularly true if the various functions performed by new types of machinery have hitherto been assigned to more than one man or group of men.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 220 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1975

References

page 220 note 1 Ames, Edward and Rosenberg, Nathan, “The Progressive Division and Specialization of Industries”, in: Journal of Development Studies, I (1964–1965), pp. 371–72.Google Scholar The more specialised a man, the fewer tasks or activities he can perform. Hence skilled workers, who perform many tasks, are relatively unspecialised, while machine operatives, who perform only one, are highly specialised. Similarly, the fewer tasks a machine can perform, the more highly specialised it is. Particularly in this century, increased division of labour has taken the form of introducing less specialised machines, which allow one specialised worker to perform as many tasks as several workers using more highly specialised equipment. Ibid., pp. 367–70.

page 221 note 1 Burgess, Keith, “Technological Change and the 1852 Lock-out in the British Engineering Industry”, in: International Review of Social History, XIV (1969), pp. 215–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 223 note 1 Brown, E. H. Phelps, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London, 1959), p. 236.Google Scholar As early as 1897, Sidney and Beatrice Webb chose shipbuilding as their primary example of inter-union warfare in their discussion of “The Right to a Trade”. Industrial Democracy (London, 1897), pp. 508–27.Google Scholar More recent treatments of demarcation disputes in shipbuilding include Roberts, Geoffrey, Demarcation Rules in Shipbuilding and Shiprepairing [University of Cambridge Department of Applied Economics, Occasional Paper No 14] (Cambridge, 1967), ch. 2;Google Scholar and Brown, R. K., Brannen, P., Cousins, J. M. and Samphier, M. L., “The Contours of Solidarity: Social Stratification and Industrial Relations in Shipbuilding”, in: British Journal of Industrial Relations, X (1972), pp. 12–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 224 note 1 Evidence before the Select Committee on Combination Laws, 1825, pp. 250–75;Google ScholarPollard, Sidney, “The Decline of Shipbuilding on the Thames”, in: Economic History Review, New Series, III (1950), pp. 74–75;Google ScholarWebb, , Industrial Democracy, pp. 73–74.Google Scholar

page 224 note 2 Evidence before the Select Committee on Combination Laws, 1825, pp. 192–94, 217, 222;Google Scholar evidence before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, 1867–68, qq. 16,591–608.

page 225 note 1 Evidence before the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, 1824, pp. 190, 192–93.Google Scholar

page 225 note 2 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, ibid., qq. 16,616–30, 16,711–12, 17,050–66, 17,076–95, 17,131, 17,193, 17,226, 17,335, 17,642; evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, 1892, Group A [Cd 6894] (1893–94), qq. 20,798–800; Pollard, S., “The Economic History of British Shipbuilding, 1870–1914” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1950), pp. 142–43.Google Scholar Pollard contends that the continuance of the contract system on the Thames was one of the primary reasons for the shift of the industry to the North-East coast of England and to Scotland. “The Decline of Shipbuilding on the Thames”, loc. cit., pp. 72–74. However, since 1945 a revised version of the contract system, under which the members of a trade, although employees of the builder, are paid a fixed price for all of the work on a ship, has been introduced. R. K. Brown et al., loc. cit., pp. 19–20.

page 226 note 1 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, ibid., qq. 20,448–56, 20,511–29, 20,561, 20,608–20, 20,632, 20,668–71, 20,775–800, 20,853, 20,995–99; Lynch, J., “Skilled and Unskilled Labour in the Shipbuilding Trade”, in: Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference (London, 1885), pp. 114–19;Google ScholarHobsbawm, E. J., “The Labour Aristocracy in Nineteenth Century Britain”, in Labouring Men (New York, 1964), table V, p. 288.Google Scholar

page 226 note 2 Pollard, “The Economic History of British Shipbuilding”, op. cit., pp. 141–42; SirAbell, Westcott, The Shipwright's Trade (Cambridge, 1948), p. 185;Google Scholar evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, ibid., qq. 21,400–01.

page 227 note 1 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, ibid., q. 17,165.

page 227 note 2 Clegg, H. A., Fox, Alan and Thompson, A. F., A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, I (Oxford, 1964), pp. 132, 443.Google Scholar

page 228 note 1 Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, The History of Trade Unionism (London, 1920), pp. 204–15.Google Scholar

page 228 note 2 Ibid.; evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, q. 22,655.

page 228 note 3 Cummings, D. C., History of the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Ship Builders (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1904), pp. 13, 111–12, 147;Google ScholarMortimer, J. E., History of the Boilermakers' Society, I (London, 1973), pp. 43, 109–10, 119, 134, 159;Google Scholar Clegg, Fox and Thompson, op. cit., p. 132; Pollard, , “The Economic History of British Shipbuilding”, pp. 162–63.Google Scholar

page 229 note 1 Ninth Report by the Chief Correspondent of the Board of Trade on Trade Unions, 1896 [Cd 8644] (1897), pp. 38–45;Google ScholarReport on Trade Unions in 1908–1910 [Cd 6109] (1912), pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

page 229 note 2 “Increasing Returns and Economic Progress”, in: Economic Journal, XXXVIII (1928), p. 531.Google Scholar

page 229 note 3 Transactions of the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, V (1888–1889), pp. 46–48.Google Scholar

page 229 note 4 As an indication, see the unique unpublished data on wages and earnings given in Robertson, Paul L., “The Management of Manpower in British Shipbuilding 1870–1914: A Study in the Organization of Human Resources under Conditions of Changing Technology” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1972), pp. 200–04.Google Scholar

page 229 note 5 Ibid., pp. 90–91.

page 230 note 1 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, qq. 17,167, 17,212, 17,363–64; Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 305, note 40; Pollard, , “The Economic History of British Shipbuilding”, pp. 140–41.Google Scholar

page 230 note 2 Roberts, op. cit., ch. 2; evidence before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, q. 16,852.

page 230 note 3 For example, see the fluctuations in employment at the large shipbuilding yard of William Denny and Brothers at Dumbarton, given in Robertson, op. cit., table XVII, pp. 193–94.

page 230 note 4 Phelps Brown, op. cit., p. 102.

page 230 note 5 The attention given to protecting job security is illustrated by the fact that witnesses before the Royal Commission on Labour in 1892 were more concerned with matters of apprenticeship, hours and demarcation than with wages.

page 231 note 1 Quoted in Webb, Industrial Democracy, p. 514.

page 231 note 2 A dispute between caulkers and shipwrights was reported in 1825, for instance. Evidence before the Select Committee on Combination Laws, 1825, p. 185.Google Scholar

page 231 note 3 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, ibid., qq. 20,448–57; 26,051–52, 26,284, 26,419–21; Clegg, Fox and Thompson, op. cit., p. 131; Cummings, op. cit., p. 111; Webb, Industrial Democracy, pp. 516–18.

page 232 note 1 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, q. 26,284; Fairplay, May 15, 1913, p. 768.

page 232 note 2 Webb, Industrial Democracy, pp. 509, 513.

page 232 note 3 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, qq. 21,434–37.

page 233 note 1 Evidence ibid., qq. 26,037, 26,056, 21,438–45; Webb, Industrial Democracy, pp. 510–12.

page 233 note 2 Evidence ibid., qq. 23,081–92, 23,140–48, 23,343–67.

page 234 note 1 Evidence ibid., q. 21,453.

page 234 note 2 Report on the Strikes and Lockouts of 1900 [Cd 689] (1901), p. liii; evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, qq. 26,132, 26,287–89; evidence before the Industrial Council Inquiry into Industrial Agreements [Cd 6953] (1913), qq. 2,819–21, 3,556; ibid., Appendix V, p. 589; Fairplay, November 16, 1911, p. 696. The rules of the following boards and committees all provided that no evidence from other areas could be admitted concerning work already performed in the ports: the Tyne Shipbuilding Demarcation Board; the Tees and Hartlepool Joint Committee and Board of Referees for the Demarcation of Work of Various Trades; the Shipwrigths', Joiners' and Employers' Board for Demarcation of Work in Connection with the Associated Yards at the Hartlepools, Stockton and Middlesbrough. Second Report on Rules on Voluntary Conciliation and Arbitration Boards and Joint Committees [Cd 5346] (1910), p. 196, 199, 202.Google Scholar

page 235 note 1 Aves, Ernest, “Labour Notes: The Dispute in the Engineering Trade, &c.”, in: Economic Journal, VII (1897), pp. 630.Google Scholar

page 235 note 2 Evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour, q. 26,284.