36.1 KT5 - Trades union militancy, 1915-27

The Enquiry Frame

The specification asks you to explain Trades union militancy, 1915-27 as one connected depth enquiry, not as three separate stories. The strongest answers keep four themes together:

Keep this chronology secure:

The four named men represent different kinds of labour leadership:

The big judgement is this: 1915-27 was not a simple rise and fall of militancy. It was a test of whether mass labour organisation could convert industrial disruption into durable political power. The answer was only partly yes.

Red Clydeside: Rent and Hours

Glasgow is essential because it shows that wartime militancy was not only about wages in factories. It was also about rent, housing, food, family survival and local political culture. During the First World War, Clydeside was vital to shipbuilding, engineering and munitions. Workers were drawn into the area, housing was overcrowded, and landlords tried to exploit high demand by raising rents.

The Glasgow rent strike of 1915 began from a simple grievance: many tenants believed landlords were profiting from wartime shortage while workers and families carried the burden of war. Women were central because they often managed household budgets, dealt with rent collectors and defended homes from eviction. Mary Barbour, Helen Crawfurd, Jean Ferguson and other activists in local housing groups organised resistance, especially in working-class districts such as Govan.

The methods were local, practical and highly visible:

The strike's significance was national. The government did not act because it suddenly became committed to tenants' rights. It acted because Glasgow was a war-production centre and because rent unrest could feed wider labour militancy. The result was the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restrictions) Act 1915, which restricted rent rises and gave tenants greater protection. This was a major example of protest achieving legislation during war.

Be careful with leadership. The rent strike was not simply a story of famous male labour leaders. Its operational strength came from women tenants and local housing activists. However, it belonged to the same Red Clydeside world as James Maxton and Manny Shinwell. Maxton, as an ILP socialist and anti-war agitator, helped give Clydeside labour politics its moral language: war sacrifice should not mean working-class submission. Shinwell, as a Glasgow trade unionist, belonged to the workplace side of the same militant culture.

The 40-hour strike of January 1919 had a different focus. It came after the Armistice, when workers feared unemployment as soldiers returned and war contracts ended. The demand for a 40-hour week was not just about leisure. It was a demand to spread available work and protect workers from post-war insecurity. Engineering and shipbuilding workers on Clydeside wanted shorter hours without allowing employers to solve demobilisation by cutting labour.

On 31 January 1919, thousands gathered in George Square to hear the response to workers' demands. Police tried to clear routes around the square, including tram routes, and the confrontation became violent. The episode became known as Bloody Friday or the Battle of George Square. Troops were deployed afterwards to help maintain order, though the common myth that tanks immediately confronted demonstrators in the square needs caution.

Manny Shinwell's role was central. He was chairman of Glasgow Trades Council and a prominent trade-union figure. After the George Square confrontation, he and others were arrested; Shinwell and William Gallacher were convicted and served short prison sentences. That gave Shinwell a reputation as a militant, but it also helped launch a longer parliamentary career. James Maxton's role was less about managing the 40-hour strike itself and more about sustaining the wider Clydeside socialist tradition. His 1916 imprisonment after calling for strike action in support of deported shop stewards had already made him a symbol of anti-war labour defiance.

The significance of Red Clydeside can be judged in two directions:

The strongest conclusion is that Clydeside militancy mattered because it widened the meaning of labour protest. It was not only a workplace strike culture; it connected housing, wartime sacrifice, socialist politics and demands for democratic control over working lives.

Union Revival and Organisation

Union revival after the First World War rested on a paradox. During the war, the government needed unions to help maintain production, prevent disorder and regulate labour. That gave union leaders access and legitimacy. At the same time, wartime controls, inflation, dilution of skilled labour and shop-floor grievances created rank-and-file anger.

The Treasury Agreement of 1915 is useful background. Union leaders accepted restrictions on strikes and agreed that unresolved disputes should go to arbitration, while some trade practices were suspended for war production. The government therefore treated union leaders as necessary partners. But many workers felt that officials had traded away hard-won protections, especially where dilution brought unskilled or female labour into work previously controlled by skilled men.

This helped the rise of shop stewards.

In engineering and shipbuilding, especially on Clydeside, stewards could react faster than full-time union officials. They handled grievances about dilution, pay, discipline and workshop control. This gave wartime militancy a local base that official union leadership could not always control.

Membership figures show the scale of revival. Trade union membership rose from about 4.1 million in 1914 to about 6.5 million in 1918, then to about 8.3 million in 1920. That growth mattered because it gave labour a new sense of numerical strength. It also created new problems: big memberships did not automatically mean unified strategy, strong funds or agreement between skilled, unskilled, transport, railway and mining workers.

The Triple Alliance brought together three powerful groups: the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, the National Union of Railwaymen and the transport workers. It had roots before the war, but its post-war importance lay in the threat of coordinated action. Miners could stop coal production; railway workers could halt movement; transport workers could prevent distribution. In theory, that combination could paralyse the economy.

J H Thomas mattered because he led the railway side of this world. As general secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, he had real industrial power. He was also a Labour politician and a moderate negotiator. That dual identity made him influential, but it also made him cautious. Thomas wanted gains for workers, but he feared reckless confrontation with the state.

Ernest Bevin represented another kind of power. He came from the transport world and was a formidable organiser. In 1920, dockers refused to load the Jolly George with arms intended for Polish forces fighting Soviet Russia; Bevin encouraged that stand. Soon afterwards, the labour movement created a Council of Action to organise strike action if Lloyd George's government escalated intervention. The government stepped back. This mattered because it suggested that organised labour could influence foreign policy, not just wages.

However, the Council of Action was also exceptional. It worked because the issue was specific, public and politically embarrassing. It did not prove that unions could repeatedly impose their will on government. It did show that post-war labour was willing to threaten political strike action when a moral issue and industrial leverage came together.

The formation of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) in 1920 and the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) in 1922 showed a different response to the post-war world: consolidation. The AEU grew from the older Amalgamated Society of Engineers and other engineering unions, adapting skilled craft organisation to a changing industrial economy. The TGWU was even more dramatic: fourteen transport and general workers' unions combined, with Ernest Bevin as general secretary. Bevin wanted a union large enough, disciplined enough and administratively strong enough to bargain nationally.

This organisational revival had both strengths and limits: