Labour and the War Emergency: the Workers’ National Committee during the First World War

Abstract

Discussions of the British Left and the First World War have often focused on strikes, conscientious objection and the anti-war movement. Yet this focus on opposition to the conflict obscures the important actions taken by the labour movement to protect the most vulnerable from the worst effects of the war. Central to the Left’s actions during the war was the War Emergency: Workers’ National Committee (WNC). This body – incorporating the broad spectrum of the labour movement – campaigned against the erosion of living conditions, represented ordinary Britons at the very highest levels of power, acted as a conduit for information from the localities to the centre, and ensured labour cohesion across the draining years of the war. On issues from food prices to rent controls, military pensions to wage levels, the WNC campaigned on behalf of the ordinary men and women of the home front. It is argued in this essay that the Committee made a vital and undervalued contribution to the actions of the labour movement during the war, ensured that the Left remained cohesive and relevant throughout the conflict, and contributed to Labour’s emergence in 1918 as more a united and purposeful party than it had been in 1914.