We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Public Order, Trade Unions and the Repeal of the Combination Acts of 1799–1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
The declaration of intent forming the title of this article – united to support but not combined to injure– succinctly illustrates a dilemma that confronted trade unions in Britain in the early nineteenth century, and that has since re-surfaced periodically. Successful trade unionism necessarily requires collective action, whether of an overt form, as during an industrial dispute, or implicitly, as in the enforcement of a closed shop. Not infrequently, though, the claims of solidarity and collective interest run counter to the rights of individuals: of employers, fellow workers and third parties. The intervention of the law provides an added twist to the potential conflict between the individual and the group. While the individual has traditionally enjoyed generous legal protection so that he can conduct his lawful business unhindered, the recognition of collective rights has been hesitant and qualified. The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875 and the Trades Disputes Act of 1906 effectively legalized peaceful picketing, but the relationship of criminal law and trade unions remained uneasy despite the rarity of prosecutions for offences such as conspiracy. Nevertheless, during the century and a half since 1825 there has been a progressive tendency – at least until the 1980's – for the contradiction between collective and individual interest to assume a relatively muted and non-violent form. The emergence of institutionalized industrial conflict was a logical consequence of British trade unions achieving a position of respectability in the established order.
1 Home Office Papers (hereafter HO) 40−18, Public Record Office, London. “United to support but not combined to injure” was the slogan adopted by trade unionists at Sunderland who in September 1825 sought to create a federated body– The Philanthropic Hercules – to represent craftsmen of different trades.
2 Brown, H. Ph., The Origins of Trade Union Power (1983), pp. 27–31;Google Scholar Coates, K. and Topham, T., Trade Unions in Britain (1980), pp. 264–65.Google Scholar
3 Section 3 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875 established the principle that persons involved in a trade dispute could not be charged with criminal conspiracy unless they committed an act which was indictable as a crime if committed by an individual. Recently, the 1875 act was used against the “Shrewsbury” building workers in 1972.
4 For a discussion of the institutionalization of industrial conflict see Hyman, R., Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unions (1971), p. 36;Google Scholar Dahrendorf, R., Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (1959), pp. 278–79.Google Scholar
5 The tendency of certain historians to portray the working classes in Britain as passive agents has been challenged in recent years. In particular see Thompson, F. M. L., “Social Control in Victorian Britain”, in: Economic History Review, Second Series, XXXIV (1981), p. 189; Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. by Storch, R.D. (1982), p. 12.Google Scholar
6 B. and J. Hammond and S. and B. Webb, and more recently G. D. H. Cole, were the principal figures responsible for propagating the picture of unmitigated repression. The Hammonds, for example, entitled one chapter in The Town Labourer as “The War on Trade Unions”. However, perhaps the most uncompromising denunciation of attacks upon workers came from Marx. In his customary jaundiced style Marx declared: “During the anti-Jacobin war, which was in fact a war waged by the British barons against the British working masses, capital celebrated its bacchanalia”. Marx, K. and Engels, F.. Selected Works (1968), p. 221.Google Scholar
7 George, M. D., “The Combination Laws Reconsidered”, in: Economic History (supplementlo The Economic Journal), No 2 (1927)Google Scholar; id., “The Combination Laws”, in: Economic History Review, VI (1936). The revised view of the Combination Acts has more recently been advanced by, amongst others, Musson, A. E., British Trade Unions 1800–1875 (1972);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Thomis, M. I., The Town Labourer and the Industrial Revolution (1974);Google Scholar and Hunt, E. H., British Labour History 1815–1914 (1981).Google Scholar
8 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 550-54. In “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century”, in: Past & Present, No 50 (1971), p. 129, Thompson argued that repression increased in England during the 1790's.Google Scholar
9 A variation of Thompson's theme of an onslaught against workers is provided by Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974), pp. 7, 21.Google Scholar
10 Hobsbawm, E. J., Labouring Men (1964);Google Scholar Rudé, G., The Crowd in History 1730–1848, revised ed. (1981).Google Scholar
11 Thompson has a fondness for using the euphemism “direct action” to describe violence perpetrated by workers; for example, see The Making of the English Working Class, op. cit., pp. 562−63. Another, though much later, episode of crowd violence in Britain provides an equally clear illustration of the dangers that can result from adopting a position at the opposite extreme to “mob rule”. Commenting on the riots in London in February 1886, Thompson ridicules the middle classes for over-reacting to a “brief rampage” by “unorganised unemployed demonstrators”, “Sir, Writing by Candlelight”. in: New Society, XVI (1970), p. 1135, reprinted in Writing by Candlelight (1980). pp. 39–40. Also, Pearson, G., The Deviant Imagination (1975), p. 159;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Stedman Jones, G., Outcast London (1971), p. 272. The theme of restrained popular action by the crowd in Britain also figures prominently in the various conference reports in the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No 49 (1984), in which violence is described as essentially “rough justice”, and largely ceremonial in nature.Google Scholar
12 For a discussion of such conflicts of interest during industrial disputes in the eighteenth century see Stevenson, J., Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1870 (1979), in particular pp. 131–32.Google Scholar
13 S. and Webb, B., History of Trade Unionism (1902), pp. 70–77. The Webbs made a clear distinction between craftsmen organized in the traditional trade clubs and workers employed in the new industrial trades. It was upon the latter that the weight of the Combination Acts fell. However, in a general sense any group of workers capable of forming a union can be held to have belonged to a “labour aristocracy”.Google Scholar
14 Nelson, R. R., The Home Office (1969), pp. 95–96;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Quinault, R., “The Warwickshire County Magistracy and Public Order, c. 1830–1870”, in: Popular Protest and Public Order, ed. by id. and Stevenson, J. (1974);Google Scholar Thomis, , The Town Labourer, op. cit., pp. 18–26.Google Scholar
15 Glen, R., Urban Workers in the Early Industrial Revolution (1983), p. 57;Google Scholar Foster, , Class Struggle, op. cit., pp. 65–66.Google Scholar
16 The Home Office Papers contain numerous instances of the mobilization of yeomanry troops for the purpose of keeping order in Britain during the 1820's. Also, it was not surprising if these bodies were concentrated in the Southern half of Britain, since their formation in 1794 had been prompted by fear of a French invasion of the Channel coastline.
17 A. J. Hayter, The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England (1978), especially ch. 3, provides a splendid discussion of the limitations of the eighteenth-century British army when dealing with civil disturbances. My own work on the French army at the beginning of the Revolution leads me to endorse Dr Hayter's conclusions concerning the difficulties encountered by the military when fulfilling a domestic role.
18 R. Challinor argues that the army would have been incapable of quelling an open insurrection at the time of the Chartist agitation in 1839, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No 45 (1982), pp. 41–42.
19 In 1819 the Duke of Wellington issued instructions that the troops were to be deployed in groups of at least 200 men. However, the reduction in the United Kingdom military strength from 64,000 officers and men in 1820 to fewer than 45,000 by 1825 could not but have exacerbated existing shortages and caused regiments to be scattered in small detachments. Spiers, E. M., The Army and Society 1815–1914 (1980), pp. 37, 74, 80–81.Google Scholar
20 Byng to Henry Hobhouse (Under Secretary of State), 9 April 1824, HO 40−18.
21 Hobhouse to the Mayor of Macclesfield, 7 May, HO 41−7.The first report of trouble at Macclesfield involving striking silkworkers had come from Major Eckersley, the military commander at Manchester, to Byng, 7−8 April, HO 40−18.
22 George Dawson (Under Secretary at the Home Office) to the Rev. W. Powell, 1 April 1822, HO 4 1–6. Dawson indicated that the original decision to refuse troops was reversed after Powell had sent an alarming report of the events in his County. Troops were sent from Gloucestershire.
23 Hobhouse to Powell, 10 June, HO 41−7. The arrival of military reinforcements at Plymouth enabled the government to keep detachments of the Fifteenth Regiment in Monmouthshire for a longer period than originally planned.
24 On 21 October 1816 J. Addington (Under Secretary to his brother, Lord Sidmouth) informed the High Sheriff of Breconshire, Edward Kendall, that reductions in army strength made it difficult to supply troops for quelling disturbances in Breconshire, Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, HO 41−1. Order was restored by a combination of regular troops, militia and yeomanry, from Cardiff and Swansea, Dowlais letter books 1816−3, Cardiff Record Office.
25 Glen, , Urban Workers, op. cit., pp. 73–74. Hobhouse commended the fortitude of Garside in correspondence with John Lloyd, clerk to the magistrates of Stockport, 21 and 25 July 1818, HO 41−4.Google Scholar
26 Henry Clive (Under Secretary at the Home Office, 1818−22) to James Norris JP, 8 September, HO 41−4: “Lord Sidmouth trusts, however, that there shas been and will be no concession or compromise on the part of the masters.”
27 Hobhouse to James Norris, 4 August, HO 79−3, extract inAspinall, A., The Early English Trade Unions (1949), p. 264: “You cannot be more fully impressed than Lord Sidmouth is, with the propriety of the magistrate forbearing to interfere in questions between master and servant so long as the peace is unbroken”. The same official had written in a similar vein to the constables of Manchester, 11 July, HO 41−4.Google Scholar
28 Hobhouse to the Mayor of Newcastle, 11 April 1820, HO 41−6. The keelmen had a firm ally in the Duke of Northumberland, who, in this period, wrote regularly on their behalf to the government. After returning to work in December 1822, following a long strike, the keelmen were praised by the Duke for their moderation, to Peel, 13 December, HO 40−17.
29 31 March 1821. HO 43−30.
30 The trouble at Nant-y-glo was reported by the Rev. Powell to the Home Office on 30 March 1822, HO 41−6. On 4 April Powell lamented that the strikers had returned to work only because their demands were conceded, HO 40−17, 41−7.
31 Powell to the Home Office, 18 May, HO 40−17.
32 Resolution taken by “magistrates, deputy lieutenants and other gentlemen of the county of Monmouth”, 26 April at Usk, HO 40−17. The failure to give due notice before withdrawing labour was an offence under the Masters and Servants Act of 1766.
33 Evans, E. W., The Miners of South Wales (1961), pp. 15–17;Google Scholar Jones, D. J. V., “The Scotch Cattle and their Black Domain”, in: Welsh History Review, V (1971), p. 233, also in Before Rebecca (1973). The Rev. Powell complained that men sentenced to one month imprisonment at Tredegar laughed at their sentence, to Peel, 29 May, HO 40−17.Google Scholar
34 Hobhouse, to Powell, , 20 05, HO 41–7: “Mr Peel without entering upon the question whether more or less wages ought to be paid (which is a matter of contract between the masters and their workmen) is only solicitous that the peace of the country should not be broken in consequence of disputes arising out of this question.”Google Scholar
35 Thompson, , The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 562–63.Google Scholar
36 For an account of industrial violence at the end of the nineteenth century see Neville, R. G., “The Yorkshire Miners and the 1893 Lockout”, in: International Review of Social History, XXI (1976).Google Scholar
37 British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 27,800−01 (Place Papers). The acid attacks took place on different dates in the period 1821 to 1824. In one attack, in November 1822, Neil McCallum – a dresser employed by the Dalmarnock company – lost the sight of both eyes. Another attack, on a man in Anderston, left the victim with extensive burns and blinded in one eye. In response to these and other excesses the Lord Provost of Glasgow requested chemists to take the name of any person buying vitriol in small quantities and wearing the clothes of an “operative” (26 September 1823). Among the copies of anonymous threats handed to the Select Committee was one signed “The Captain of the Vitriol forces – Captain Bloodthersty”. Anonymous threats were also made to the owners of spinning mills at Dundee in this period. Hobhouse to Anderson, the Provost of Dundee, 6 May 1823, HO 43−31.
38 Vitriol-throwing was not unknown in England. On 9 July 1824 Major Eckersley informed Byng that a constable at Barton-upon-Irwell had suffered an attack involving the use of boiling water and acid, HO 40−18.
39 Industrialists at Liverpool blamed the arson on marine sawyers, who had been on strike for several months, 21 March 1824, HO 43−32. The arson attacks at Sheffield were reported to the Select Committee, British Museum, Add. Mss 27,801.
40 Talbot, to Peel, , 4 05 1822, HO 40−17. Early-morning raids resulted in the arrest of the ringleaders, but violence continued to be used against working miners throughout May. Reports of the violence were published in the Staffordshire Advertiser. British Museum, Add. Mss 27, 799.Google Scholar
41 Jones, “The Scotch Cattle”, loc. cit., provides a sympathetic interpretation of the Scotch Cattle. Evans, The Miners of South Wales, op. cit., and Jones, E. J.. “Scotch Cattle and Early Trade Unionism in Wales”, in: Economic History, No 3(1928), offer a less favourable view of the phenomenon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 As late as 23 May, John Moggridge informed Peel of further attempts to destroy the road to Tredegar, HO 40−17. The worst violence, though, had taken place on 2 May, when only the timely arrival of a detachment of Scots Greys from Abergavenny saved the day, letters from Moggridge and W. Powell, 3−4 May. The Bristol Mercury carried a detailed report of the turbulent events of 6 May, British Museum, Add. Mss 27,799.
43 Powell, to Peel, , 15 06, HO 40–17. This clergyman reported that thirty of the “most respectable men” had returned to work at Tredegar, and that others would have followed but for the destruction of their tools. On the same day Hobhouse told Powell that regular troops were to remain in the County for as long as the magistrates wished, HO 41−7.Google Scholar
44 Hobhouse to the magistrates of Loughborough, 9 March 1821, HO 41−6. At Knaresborough, in July 1823, a dispute between manufacturers and weavers over wage reductions resulted in the strikers parading through the town and holding meetings every evening. However, no breach of the peace was reported. The Borough Bailiff to Hobhouse. 16 July, HO 40−18.
45 Rolleston, L. to Peel and the Duke of Grafton, 20 04 1822, HO 40−17.Google Scholar
46 George, to Peel, , 24 04 1824, HO 40–18. Further trouble was later reported in the vicinity of Hinckley in May 1825, but with a diminished level of violence, Dicey JP to Peel, 12 May, HO 52−4.Google Scholar
47 Rudé, , The Crowd in History, op. cit., p. 91;Google Scholar also Thompson, E. P., “English Trade Unionism and other Labour Movements before 1790”, in: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No 17 (1968).Google Scholar Thomis, , The Town Labourer, especially pp. 71–73Google Scholar, has persuasively demonstrated the contradictions inherent in the “collective bargaining by riot” thesis. Above all there is the problem of simultaneously viewing the perpetrators of violence as “primitive rebels” and “sophisticated upholders of working class traditions”. My argument is quite simply that the more popular violence is regarded as a rational form of behaviour, the harder it becomes to justify such action, not least because premeditated action lacks even the questionable justification of momentary impulse that might be accorded to blind, irrational conduct.
48 For a splendid example of opportunism at the height of the Luddism scare of 1811-12, when the calico printers of Stockport took advantage of the disturbed circumstances and adopted violence against their employers even though this group of workers had no links with Luddism, see Glen, , Urban Workers, pp. 189–90.Google Scholar
49 Of course the danger of such counter-productivity carries little weight with those for whom trade-union development is a means to an end. Trotsky, for example, used the exigencies of the “class struggle” to justify overt and covert violence: “if the workers had not organised strikes in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British bourgeoisie would not have legalised them in 1824. If one allows the application of force or violence in the form of strikes, one must accept all the consequences, among others the defence of the strikes from strike-breakers with the assistance of well-directed measures of counter force.” Trotsky, L., Where is Britain Going?, revised ed. (1926), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar
50 Kirby, R. G. and Musson, A. E., The Voice of the People (1975), pp. 32–42;Google Scholar Stevenson, , Popular Disturbances, op. cit., pp. 233–35;Google Scholar Coils, R., The Collier's Rant (1977), pp. 97–108.Google Scholar Public opinion in Britain was particularly incensed by the use of violence by strikers, as during the Glasgow cotton spinners' strike of 1837 (when a strikebreaker was killed), and at the time of the Sheffield “outrages” of 1866 (when gunpowder was used). The use of intimidation and oath-taking alienated even relatively sympathetic figures such as Charles, Dickens, Brantlinber, P., “The Case against Trade Unions in Early Victorian Fiction”s, in: Victorian Studies, XIII (1969);Google Scholar Webb, R. K., The British Working Class Reader 1790–1848: Literacy and Social Tension (1955), ch. VII. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published several tracts against strikes and violence in the 1830's, and Harriet Martineau wrote a number of works against machine-breaking and similar activities, beginning with The Rioters –sor a tale of Bad Times (1827).Google Scholar
51 5 George IV, c. 95. Later acts, from 1825 (6 George IV, c. 29), re-affirmed the emphasis on curbing intimidation and molestation during industrial disputes.
52 Hobhouse, to Byng, , 3 02 1825, HO 43–32: “The operation of the Act of last session for repealing the Combination Laws requires to be very attentively watched. Among the shipwrights of the Thames and the same class and the sailors in the Tyne, its effects are such as to raise very thorny complaints from the masters who are almost entirely in the hands of their workmen.”Google Scholar
53 Hobhouse, to Enfield, H. (the Town Clerk of Nottingham), 11 12 1824, HO 43–32.Google Scholar
54 HO 40−18. Amongst other groups of workers on strike in the summer of 1825 were framework knitters at Leicester and fustian cotton spinners at Manchester.
55 Hobhouse to the magistrates of Sunderland, 22 August 1825, and George Dawson to the same, 5 September, HO 41−7, indicating that Peel wished the ship-owners to conduct their own prosecutions against their employees who had undertaken industrial action.
56 While the revised bill on combinations was passing through Parliament, Peel received a request from a magistrate from Leicestershire, named Dicey, 12 May 1825, for the provisions on illegal assembling to be strengthened, HO 52−7. However, the Home Secretary rejected this request.
57 HO 40−18, printed handbills issued for the purpose of securing loans from other groups of workers. One handbill was dated 14 October 1825 and addressed to “operatives” at Liverpool. The committee of the woolcombers's union sent two delegates to Liverpool. At Newcastle a public meeting was called for 27 October under the aegis of the Committee of Trades, and a subscription for strike funds was opened.
58 British Museum, Add. Mss 27,803-Il. In 1826 John Tester, the secretary and “factotum” of the woolcombers' union published a history of the strike. From this source it appears that £15,826 was received in subscriptions during the strike, of which £14,091 was paid in strike pay to 2,900 men, 213 women and 2,923 children. The committee of the union was based at the Roebuck Inn, Bradford.
59 Kirby, and Musson, , The Voice of the People, op. cit., pp. 41–43;Google Scholar Cole, G. D. H., Attempts at General Union (1953), pp. 5, 12–13. Doherty and other leaders of the cotton spinners opposed the use of violence in 1826.Google Scholar
60 The first recorded attack on powerlooms took place at Manchester in 1792, Stevenson, , Popular Disturbances, p. 118.Google Scholar For the plight of the handloom weavers see Richards, P. “The State and Early Industrial Capitalism: The Case of the Handloom Weavers”, in: Past & Present, No 83 (1979).Google Scholar
61 Essays for the People (1834), British Museum, Add. Mss 27,834.
62 Observations on Mr. Huskisso's Speech on the Laws relating to Combinations of Workmen, British Museum, Add. Mss 27,805-II: “Combinations will occasionally exist, so long as the numbers of workmen are in excess; but they will be divested of their obnoxious character at no distant period, if they are left alone. […] Unequal and consequently unjust laws, such as these against combinations of workmen were the cause of the very evil they were ignorantly supposed to prevent. Men combined against them, from a sense of what was called “a proper pride”, from a persuasion that they were more oppressed than they really were; and men always desire to resist oppression.” Joseph Hume MP also condemned the use of violence by trade unionists. In a letter to shipwrights at Dundee, Hume repudiated violence and criticized attempts to interfere with the employment of apprentices. He argued that the repeal of the Combination Acts had occurred in order that both employers and workers could enjoy the maximum freedom in conducting their lawful affairs. Letter to Mr, John Allan, shipwright of Dundee, 26 03 1825, reprinted in Repeal of the Combination Acts (1972).Google Scholar
63 The need for unions to achieve respectability through rejecting violent tactics has been discussed recently by Stevenson, J., “Early Trade Unionism: Radicalism and Respectability 1750–1870”, in: Trade Unions in British Politics, ed. by Pimlott, B. and Ch., Cook (1982).Google Scholar
You have
Access
