Characteristics of Early Trade Unionism

Abstract

THE origins of trade unionism in the period 1800–75 are to be sought much deeper in history. The Webbs were well aware of this, tracing the growth of numerous local societies in handicraft trades before the Industrial Revolution. Modern critics of the Webbs, however, consider that ‘they inadequately accounted for the emergence of trade unionism’ in the eighteenth century, that they ignored the basic economic and social forces which created them, and that, being preoccupied with trade unions as ‘continuous formal organisations’, they neglected ‘ephemeral action’ [19]. Such criticism is not entirely fair, because the Webbs did appreciate the basic forces underlying the growth of trade unionism: they referred to the widening gulf between capital and labour, conflicting class interests, capitalist competition and exploitation, working-class grievances in regard to wages, apprenticeship, etc., and the breakdown of protective regulations, both of guild and state. They also emphasised that these conditions developed, and that trade societies consequently emerged, in traditional handicraft trades, in small workshops, before the growth of ‘dark Satanic mills’.