03.08.2011

The day of ragged processions is over

In 1921 the CPGB was instrumental in forming the National Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement

The boom following World War I was short-lived. In the 12 months from September 1920 unemployment in Britain rose from 250,000 to two million. Soon after its foundation, the Communist Party of Great Britain directed its members towards unemployed work and “where possible, [to] take the lead”.^[1] In October 1920 the party’s weekly paper carried an account of an important development in Coventry.

Coventry unemployed: a soviet formed

Comrade J Stewart, Communist Party organiser for the Midlands, is doing good work at Coventry. At the request of the Unemployed Workers’ Committee he has been addressing huge meetings of unemployed, and his suggestions have already led to practical action which is having a marked effect on the town authorities.

At the head of 2,000 men he marched to the Deasy works and demanded to be allowed to address the men still at work there.^[2]Opposition was useless and so, at the head of his army, Stewart marched into the works and held a joint meeting of employed and unemployed. The manager wished to speak first, but the meeting insisted on him waiting until Stewart had finished.

Stewart told them that unemployment could only be finally abolished by the abolition of the capitalist system, but suggested as an immediate step that the men already employed should reduce their hours of labour until all the unemployed were absorbed.

Tom Dingley^[3] also spoke, and then the manager said that the firm would do all in its power to do something for them. Stewart stated, both here and at other factories that were visited, that the men were coming back again and again until they could control the entire factories.

During the weekend more large meetings have been held at various works. Complete order is being maintained by a police force formed from the workers themselves, and the ordinary police are conspicuous by their absence. The mayor has called a town’s meeting to deal with the situation and “to consider the method whereby the growing volume of unemployment prevalent in this city may be overcome, and a full living wage be assured to all citizens willing to render service to the community.”

The men are in no mood to consider proposals of the usual charity dole order, and their demands are of a practical and far-reaching character, as embodied in the following resolutions: “Seeing that everyone willing to render useful service to the community has the right to enjoy all the benefits won by labour from nature, we demand that all workers shall have maintenance, whether working or not.

“We demand, as a practical solution to unemployment, that the civic authorities invite the Russian trade delegation to meet them in order to discover what commodities Russia is prepared to purchase from Coventry.

“We demand that a factory be taken in the interests of the community to produce such commodities, the workers to elect their own management.

“Further, we demand that the civic authority uses its power to prevent private interests hindering the work of the workers’ and soldiers’ council.”

Comrade Emery has been elected secretary of the local soviet, and comrade Stewart has been instructed to assist the Unemployed Workers’ Committee to the best of his ability.

The old features of pre-war unemployed demonstrations are entirely absent from these manifestations. Here is no cringing body of half-starved men begging for bread, or, on the other hand, a crowd of potential rioters out for loot.^[4] It is an ordered demonstration by intelligent, organised workers that will not starve at the behest of capitalism; but that if production cannot be carried on by the present owners of factories and plant without inflicting suffering on large masses of the community, the workers can and will.^[5] Other towns, please copy.

Let those workers still in employment resolutely refuse to work a single minute over the time necessary to ensure employment for all. Control production instead of being controlled by it. If a single man in any industry seeks employment and cannot obtain it, it is a reflection on all his fellow workers.

The workers can stop unemployment; it is clear the capitalists cannot. It is up to the workers to make the attempt.

The Communist October 7 1920

“Full maintenance at trade union rates of wages” was the central demand of the communists. This was taken up in the form of marches by the unemployed to local boards of guardians, who were responsible for providing Poor Law relief to the unemployed.^[6] Often the march would end with an occupation of the board office until extra money was forthcoming. The following report describes the actions of the London unemployed.

The London unemployed movement

The Islington Unemployed Relief Committee is to be given the credit of starting the direct action campaign of the unemployed, which has now assumed such large proportions in London and the neighbourhood.

The committee, when first formed, found itself faced with the difficulty of obtaining suitable accommodation for holding its meetings, or for storing and distributing the food presented by shopkeepers in the borough.

The South East Library in Essex Road, which during the war had been used by the food ministry for controlled purposes, was empty, and seemed an admirable place for the purpose. So the committee took possession and there the Islington unemployed still remain.

Apart from a summons for obstruction by taking a collection with a box, and another for chalking the pavement, there has been no trouble with the police.

The Islington unemployed are well organised. A demonstration recently to the guardian was lined up in military formation - that is, platoons of 20, with a sergeant in charge of each. These sergeants were elected from the men themselves, and are ex-servicemen.

In Edmonton, Tottenham, Walthamstow, Hackney, Southwark, Camberwell, Peckham and St Pancras similar movements are now organised. Town halls, public libraries and empty houses have been seized in all these places. A central committee, composed of delegates from the different localities in and around London, now meets at the library in Essex Road, Islington, daily.

All this is not to say that a revolution is in progress. Nevertheless, it is a very good sign that the unemployed have determined to make their discontent open and organised, instead of keeping it secret and shameful. Already local authorities have been compelled to take steps to remedy the existing distress far beyond what they would have taken, had the unemployed remained quiescent. They will be wise if they break through their present powers entirely and throw the whole blame on the government. They will be lucky if they escape being compelled to do so.

In all these movements the active spirits have been communists, themselves unemployed. They know how impossible it is to solve unemployment while the capitalist system remains, but they realise also the necessity for organised action in order to drive the lesson home, and to ensure that something, at any rate, is done to alleviate immediate distress. Communist branches everywhere should neglect no opportunity of giving support and guidance to the unemployed movement. In most localities they are already doing so.

The day of ragged processions is over. The demands now being made are put forward by men who are resolute to redress their wrongs because they have not lost their self-respect. They are learning by bitter experience the communist lesson that only in a new order of society will unemployment be finally abolished. They are learning, too, how futile capitalism is to touch even the fringe of the problem.

The Communist December 9 1920

In 1921 the Party was instrumental in forming the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee Movement,^[7] a genuinely mass organisation which successfully mobilised the unemployed to defend their interests between the wars, years characterised by permanent high levels of unemployment.

Notes

P Kingsford The hunger marches in Britain, 1920-1940 London 1982, p19.
The Deasy Motor Car Manufacturing Company was heavily involved in aero-engine production during WWI and in 1917 an aeroplane design office was opened.
For a description of Tom Dingley’s pre-CPGB trade union militancy, see J Haydu Between craft and class: skilled workers and factory politics in the United States and Britain, 1890–1922, chapter 6, ‘Coventry: workers’ control and industrial relations reform’: publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft9t1nb603&chunk.id=d0e2366&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2366&brand=ucpress
As unemployment soared, spontaneous organisations sprang up in some localities, mainly in the form of ex-servicemen’s groups. As Wal Hannington noted, these “had no clear working class policy and they appeared to be formed purely for charity-mongering purposes” (W Hannington Unemployed struggles, 1919-1936 London 1979, p13).
The change in the nature of these committees is explained by the conscious orientation of working class militants and communists towards them. Again, as Hannington explains, “[we] realised that these embryonic unemployed organisations - which, after all, had risen out of the discontent of the unemployed masses - could be developed on proper working class lines ... All they needed was proper guidance and leadership” (ibid p15). The raw material for that leadership came from sacked and redundant activists of the wartime National Shop Stewards and Workers Committee Movement and, in particular, the best of its militants, who had joined the CPGB at its formation in 1920.
The Poor Law commission was established in 1833 and its recommendation in the report of 1834 formed the basis of the Poor Law Amendment Act. This established the hated workhouses. These were finally abolished in 1930, but many were simply renamed ‘public assistance institutions’ - on the eve of the 1939 outbreak of war, for example, almost 100,000 people (including over 5,000 children) still languished in former workhouses. The remnants of the Poor Law were only cleared off the statute books with the post-World War II introduction of the welfare state.
The officially lauded Jarrow Crusade of 1936 was “framed as a direct alternative to the NUWM and its high-profile hunger marches. It was overtly ‘non political’ - with the exception that it took the overtly political decision to exclude members of the Communist Party and NUWM” (M Fischer, ‘Lessons of the NUWM and UWC’ Weekly Worker January 28 2010). The nature of the action was illustrated by the fact that “the divisional agents for both the Conservative and Labour parties were sent ahead to prepare the way and support came from the political right as well as the left. At Harrogate, the Territorial Army took care of the Jarrow crusaders; at Leeds a newspaper owner gave food and drink; at Sheffield the Conservative Party were the hosts, and in Chesterfield it gave meals and accommodation and again in Nottingham” (P Kingsford The hunger marchers in Britain 1920-1940 London 1982, p219). This is something that the Socialist Party in England and Wales may care to dwell on, as it proceeds with plans to rerun the cynical Jarrow stunt later this year. Is this really the tradition we should be reviving, comrades?