CENTENARY YEAR 1980 O'CALLAGHAN investigate. THE RIGHT to an eight-hour work day is at the heart of the train drivers' dispute. There is a firm determination that the clock won't be turned back over 60 years. But what happened in the 1919 strike? There are astonishing parallels and lessons to be learned. HAZEL MACPHERSON and . AILEAN JH Thomas, secretary of the NUR in 1919. He was one of the most notorious bureaucratic scabs in the whole history of the Labour movement. There are many similarities between him and Sid Weighell. War. days at least strike! Labour 19,000 Vale bosses, alone 'war activin strikes THE 1919 railway strike was the evitable collision of two fundamen ly opposed principles: the capita class was out to get maximum pro and the working class needed to fend a basic standard of living. rise of working class struggles in 1! was interrupted by the First Wo Then the trade un bureaucrats even signed formal tru with the bosses making that mi easier the drive to get workers i uniform, to kill German workers i die for capitalist profit.
Labour Party entered war-time coalition government, jo ing with capitalist parties to resist demands of the workers. Just th after the armistice popi pressure forced the Labour Party resign from the coalition.
Soon after, the unions ended th An astonishing mill working days were lost per year strikes between 1911 and 1913. this peak figure went up further to million in 1919. Every day that yo 100,000 workers were And there were other trou spots for the capitalists. In janu conscript soldiers mutinied as rum soread mal mey were to be sen Ireland or Russia, rather than go One year after the victory British imperialism in the war, its tire system was in crisis.
The war years were especially h for railworkers. Thomas, MP who became gen secretary of the NUR in 1916, was determined to get railworkers into services that 184,000 joined up, le ing fewer workers to deal massive increase in tonnage. Alm from the war.
Those that remained behind fa intolerable work conditions. The T Company, for example, train drivers on 20 hour shifts w only nine hours rest in beiween. A thanks to the truce between the the government and the union cadets, mere were no use basic rates. Yet the price of eggs v up 60 per cent in the first six mor During the war, while the railu were under state control a syster bonuses' was introduced partly compensate for inflation. nothing less than a series of unoffi and threatened natic : towards the end of the brought the bonuses even closer to rise in the cost of living.
Towards the end of 1917, fee the pressure of its base, the ASI leadership threatened immediate out action unless the governm agreed to the eight hour day and Demented it immediately atte war. The date finally agreed to w February 1919 - 15 years after it first been raised by the rail union At the beginning of 1919 the N membership pressed for the rea tion of its full National Program and forced the leadership to renew Triple Industrial Alliance WELl miners' federation and the trans workers' federation. This alliance been forged in the wave of symp: strikes surrounding the national s pages in docks railways between 1911 and 1913 was seen by most industrial wor as their chief weapon in the struggle.
The capitalists, fearing the rev tionary mood prevalent among workers, played for time while 1 sought to divide the unions. It t unofficial strike action by Lon tubeworkers and the threat of a tional stoppage by the NUR to cut strings the rail companies wante attach to the eight hour day. months of drawn out negotiat followed In March 1919 a special gen meeting of the NUR called on the ple Alliance to support them in st action. Anxious to avoid a gen class against class conflict, the Pr