TIMEMACHINEPLUS

Chartist Ancestors

2008-03-28T09:21:00.000Z

Chartist Ancestors

2008-03-13T12:40:00.001Z

The Chartist Ancestors website now has a chartists.net news blog. Have a look.

Farewell Timemachine, hello Tribune History

2007-07-13T09:40:00.000+01:00

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on the launch of a Tribune History blog. Run in association with Tribune Magazine and the Tribune Cartoons blog, it features a range of regular features including:

Strike of the month – a look back at an important, curious or off-beat dispute, starting with the hairdressers’ strike of 1918; and
Old statesmen/women – short biographies of individuals who, for better or worse, played their part in the developing labour movement, including Mary Macarthur and Robert Applegarth.

The Tribune History blog effectively takes over from Timemachineplus (and this will be the last post here) – so please visit soon and bookmark the new blog.

Aslef treasurer's warning puts Edwardian mansion under threat

2007-07-03T12:20:00.000+01:00

Bad news from the train drivers’ union Aslef, which appears to be rapidly running out of money. Over the past four years, spending has outstripped income by a total of nearly £3.7 million, and the union is down to its last £1 million in stocks and shares.

The main drains on the union’s resources over the past few years have included rail inquiries, staff pensions and a legal battle with the former general secretary. But finance officer Tony Yates-Watson told Aslef’s recent annual conference that things could not go on like this.

Alarmingly, according to a thorough report in the union’s journal, he added: “One could argue that if the current deficit trend continues, we have thirty months left before we have to consider selling 9 Arkwright Road.”

Union cash-flow problems are not new, of course, and not really the stuff of this blog. But Arkwright Road, the union’s Hampstead headquarters for more than 80 years, is of historical interest in its own right. I was there recently, and was taken aback by its time-capsule appearance, with wood-panelled walls, brass fittings and fine oak staircase rising to a stained-glass skylight.

If it came to it, I cannot imagine who might buy the building and maintain it as such a shrine to high Edwardian design.

The extract below (and the picture) come from Norman McKillop’s 1949 history of Aslef, titled The Lighted Flame. No doubt there is now the odd computer in some offices and I can’t vouch for the live-in caretaker, but hardly a thing appears to have changed since he wrote it.

“And now, imagine that you and I are walking down Arkwright Road to see our
headquarters for the first time. It is a long road, but carries the minimum
number of buildings – all of them late Edwardian mansions. Number 9, our Head
Office, is not one, but two of these great mansions joined together. It was
built by the late Sir Joseph Beecham in 1903, at a cost of something like
£40,000, and the ASLE&F secured it for £10,000 in 1921.

It stands on a high part of Hampstead Heath, the haunt of the infamous
Dick Turpin, and from its flat roof can be seen a splendid view of London,
stretching from the Tower Bridge to Park Royal, with many of the north-western
suburbs in addition.

Some indication of the size of our headquarters may be gathered from
the fact that it possesses 106 exterior windows and 36 rooms. It stands in its
own grounds, with a lawn and conservatory at the rear. I would hazard that at
present-day values our £10,000 investment in 1921 is now worth 6 or 7 times that
amount [Editor’s note in 2007: The Guardian now puts it at £2 million].
We turn in at the gate of No 9, and after climbing a short flight of steps we pass
through a finely carved door leading to the large entrance hall, panelled from
floor to ceiling in oak, with a great oak staircase leading to the upper floors.

On our right, as we enter, is the room occupied by the Head Office
manager. Straight in front of us is the ‘Movements’ Department, while at a
slight left incline is the room occupied by the General Secretary. All of these
rooms are beautifully panelled in mahogany, and have large windows and bookcases
and all the business adjuncts to make for efficient management.

On the extreme left of the entrance hall is the door to the great
Conference Hall, which is capable of seating over 100 delegates at desk-tables
during the Annual Conference. There is a movable platform at one end of this
truly magnificent room, within whose well proportioned walls fashionable society
in the days of Edward VII was entertained with music. On several of these
occasions, I am told, King Edward was himself present in this room.

The carvings above the handsome doors leading to our Conference Hall
are worthy of mention. They are beautiful examples of the formal decoration of
the period, and were valued some years ago at something like £2,000. All the
panelling in this part of our Head Office is of superb mahogany. Apart from the
constructive ornamentation, however, there is little or no attempt to make a
show place of our Conference Hall. It is a place for business, and as such the
only decoration permitted takes the shape of one or two historical pictures and
photogravures of prominent officers of the ASLE&F, including one of Charles
Perry, our founder.

The broad staircase leading to the first floor sub-divides midway to
lead you to different parts of this floor, on which are situated the Assistant
General Secretary’s room, the Secretarial, Cashier and Typists’ Departments,
along with the auditors’ and committee rooms. By mounting a further stairway to
the second floor you come to the Legal, Compensation, Returns and Voluntary Sick
Departments.

The former billiard room is now utilised as the Executive Committee
room, and this, with the caretaker’s living quarters, is situated in what is
loosely described as the ‘basement’. The term creates a wrong impression, as
these rooms are not below ground level. The windows look out on the lawn at the
rear of the premises.

This, then, is our HQ – the nerve centre from which all our efforts are
controlled and directed. It will be realised that to conduct such wide-flung
activities, we must employ a fair-sized permanent staff. The ASLE&F employs
no less than 32 members of the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union, each
department being under the management of a man with a long-service record in the
work of our Society.”

Information about some of those staff, members of Aslef's early executive committees and a short history of Aslef can be found on the Trade Union Ancestors website.

CATU - a potter through the archives would be nice

2007-06-26T10:55:00.000+01:00

It took many decades to establish enduring trade unions in the Staffordshire potteries. But the slow pace of progress was not for any want of effort on the part of pottery workers.

There are records of pottery workers in the area combining in pursuit of better pay as far back as the 1790s, and the first official strike is recorded in the 1820s, within a year or two of the repeal of the Combination Acts. But a series of crushing defeats at the hands of the factory owners during the 1820s and 1830s made it hard for trade unionism to flourish.

Towards the end of the 19th century, pottery workers had become heavily unionised, but they were divided between many small and local unions, most of which lasted only a few years at a time. It was not until the early years of the 20th century that mergers and amalgamations created a single focus of organisation in what would later become the Ceramic and Allied Trades Union.

I recently posted a CATU family tree and a short history of the union on my Trade Union Ancestors website.Incidentally, CATU has now been renamed Unity, not to be confused with Unite, the product of this year’s TGWU/Amicus merger.

What I don’t know is the fate of the unions’ historical records. Although I emailed the union some weeks back, I haven’t had a reply and can find no trace of an archive in the likely places. The union’s website talks about its “long and proud history” but has very little to say about it and makes no mention of archives. Any ideas?

History and policy making - it's what Bevan would have wanted...

2007-06-21T12:57:00.000+01:00

Despite the presence of a number of ministers trained in history (step forward Gordon Brown and John Reid), the present government’s approach to policy-making has often showed all the historical perspective of a forgetful goldfish. Policies are adopted and implemented, abandoned and readopted as the next bright shiny new solution to age-old problems within the space of a few short years.

And when politicians do look to historical precedent, their range of “folk memories” is limited and selective. Nye Bevan’s stewardship of the new National Health Service from 1948 being a particular favourite, his name invoked as someone who “were he alive today” would have supported the most unlikely health policies. Meanwhile, all that happened before 1948 has been forgotten.

Writing in The Guardian yesterday, and on the History & Policy website, Professor Virginia Berridge called for a “rethink of the politics-history boundary”. She argues that history is currently being used in policy making in an ad hoc way, usually without the involvement of historians themselves, and wants a more consistent and coherent approach.

To summarise her findings (with grateful thanks to whoever wrote her press release):

1. The use of history in health policymaking is currently dependent on political expediency, personal networks, timing and particular policy situations.

2. Politicians make limited use of the history and historical interpretation available to them, relying instead on ‘folk histories’ that revolve around familiar individuals, epoques and interpretations;

3. In particular, the founding of the NHS in 1948 has a powerful hold over the current government, with ministers invoking the same narrow history - dominated by Nye Bevan - to lend credence to current policies;

4. Historians are rarely invited into the policy arena, while social scientists, economists and historically-trained politicians act as ‘history brokers’;

5. Those historians who are ‘invited in’ are selected on the basis of their public profile or entertainment value, rather than the relevance of their historical expertise;

6. Policymakers remain ignorant of and fail to learn from important precedents to some key policy issues, such as the long history of public opposition to vaccination;

7. Historians are recognised as providing a perspective that no other discipline can offer, being more enlightening and less prescriptive than political scientists, but their ‘message’ can be difficult to discern; and

8. Historians need to do more to identify and communicate the policy relevance of their research and to explain differing historical interpretations.

This is a fascinating piece of research that should be read by all those involved in policy-making, particularly but not exclusively in the health sphere. The full report, titled History Matters? History’s Role in Health Policy-Making is available on the History & Policy website.

Recognition for the Bevin Boys 60 years after demob

2007-06-20T15:20:00.000+01:00

Sixty years ago, the last of the Bevin Boys was demobbed. Called up to work in the country’s coal mines during the second world war, one in ten young men aged 18 to 25 was sent to the coalfields rather than to the front.

The scheme only became necessary because the war-time government had failed to understand the important role that coal miners played in keeping the country’s war effort going, and badly needed to replace those sent off on active military service.

The work was hard and dangerous, and came as a terrible shock to many of those sent deep underground, some of whom might otherwise have expected a commission in the armed forces.

Those who served as Bevin Boys have often felt neglected, and even in war-time their role was misunderstood. Because they were not in uniform, they were often stopped by the police or branded as cowards by the ignorant.

So it is good to see that the Department of Trade and Industry is finally recognising the efforts of the 48,000 men who were conscripted (about 43% of them) or volunteered (57%) for this work by introducing a badge (shown here) that will be available to the surviving Bevin Boys.

Speaking at Question Time today prime minister Tony Blair said: "This special badge will give recognition to the tremendous work done and the sense of gratitude the country owes to the Bevin Boys."

Energy minister Lord Truscott added: "These men played a key role in keeping a vital industry going during World War Two and it is with honour and gratitude that we recognise their important contribution with this lapel badge.

"We have worked closely with the Bevin Boys Association to ensure that the design of the Badge suitably reflects the work they carried out. It is important that we never forget the sacrifices that were made both at home and abroad during the war, and this badge is a fitting way to remember the Bevin Boys' work to keep the coalfields going."

Warwick Taylor, vice president of the Bevin Boys Association said:

"I am extremely pleased to see the introduction of this badge, which recognises a sometimes forgotten group of men who were either selected or volunteered to serve their country by not fighting in the war to ensure that those at home and on the front line were able to keep the war effort going. I look forward to seeing the first badge next year."

Famous Bevin Boys included Brian Rix, the late Eric Morecambe and Jimmy Savile, who later recalled, “I went down as a boy and came up as a man."

According to the Department of Trade and Industry, based on the uptake for the MoD HM Armed Forces Veteran's Badge in the region of 6,000-11,000 applicants are expected for the new badge.

The Bevin Boys badge is a survivors badge and can be worn in public to visibly raise awareness of the important role they played during World War Two and in the post-war reconstruction of the UK. Widows and estates will not be eligible.

The application process for the Badge will be launched towards the end of the year and will be co-ordinated by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA) with a view to the first badge being awarded to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the demobilisation of the final Bevin Boys in March 2008.

Tory plan for museum charges shouted down

2007-06-18T14:05:00.000+01:00

In the five years since the government introduced a right of free entry to national museums, visitor numbers have risen by a massive 83%. It is undoubtedly one of the most successful cultural political initiatives of the decade.

Among the museums that have increased visitor numbers quite spectacularly are:

the Victoria and Albert Museum – up 138%
National Museums Liverpool - also up 138%
the Natural History Museum – up 112%
the Science Museum – up 87% and
the National Railway Museum in York – up 63%

By comparison, visitor numbers at the British Museum, National Gallery and the Tate, which have always been free, rose by 8% over the same period.

So when Tory frontbencher Hugo Swire floated plans to reintroduce museum charges at the weekend, there was uproar, and within hours the policy had been dumped. Even the pro-Conservative press appeared outraged.

The Daily Mail reported that Conservative Central Office had intervened to distance the party from the proposal, forcing Swire into an embarrassing u-turn.

The Daily Telegraph reported that leading Tories were bewildered by the plan put forward by a close friend and ally of the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, and called it an embarrassing climbdown.

It is easy to dismiss Swire’s proposals as the product of ignorance. After all, an Old Etonian and former Sotheby’s director might be expected to be a little out of touch.

But there really is no excuse. Having been head of development at the National Gallery before his election to Parliament, Hugo Swire is well connected in the museum world and would surely not have been merely thinking the unthinkable out loud.

This must have been a toe-in-the-water attempt to test opinion on this sort of issue.

If the Tories think they can get away with this sort of thing, they undoubtedly underestimate the massive growth of popular interest there has been in history in recent years.

Any similar proposals in future should be met with loud and vigorous opposition.

Chartist history on a plate

2007-06-17T12:41:00.001+01:00

Memorabilia from the anti-corn law campaign of the 1840s is relatively common. Plates, coins and other bits and pieces come up for sale fairly frequently. Chartist memorabilia of the same period is much rarer; the largely working class Chartists lacked the money to buy such luxuries.

So a couple of weeks back, I was quite excited to see this Chartist plate on eBay. I bid for it, but was not prepared to pay as much as someone else out there and eventually it went to them for £36. Such is life.
Looking at it now, though, I realise that the plate – interesting though it is – cannot possibly have been made until at least half a century after Chartism had disappeared. I’m not suggesting that the seller misled me or anyone else; far from it. Their description of the plate made no claim that it was contemporary. But I thought it was worth pointing out here the dangers of leaping to conclusions as I did initially.

There are two reasons why the plate is much later. The first is that the Chartist “coat of arms” in the middle of the plate is taken from a National Charter Association membership card. I know of only three such membership cards and each has a different design, so they probably changed every year. And every instance of this design that I have come across can be traced back to an obscure but important book called Landmarks of Local Liberalism, which appeared in 1913. I have reproduced that image here for comparison (incidentally, if you click on the pictures, you will be able to see larger versions).

The second and apparently incontrovertible proof is that the portrait of William Henry Chadwick (top left on the plate) shows him as an old man. Chadwick was born in 1829, so was a young man in the 1840s when Chartism was at its height (and still a young man when the National Charter Association was dissolved in 1858). I have seen the portrait on which this picture of him is based, though. It appears in a short book published in 1910, two years after his death, called Pages From a Life of Strife. The book says the portrait was drawn in 1905 by W L Tyte. I have reproduced that sketch here for comparison also.

All in all, it appears most likely that the plate would have been made around 1913 rather than as a contemporary souvenir of the Chartist movement. It would not surprise me to learn that the plate was made for the Oldham Liberal Bazaar of 1913, for which Landmarks of Local Liberalism was published.

If that’s the case, then it probably says all sorts of interesting things about how the Liberal Party was attempting to co-opt the Chartist experience into its own history at a time when it faced an increasingly politically independent Labour movement.

I hope the buyer is very happy with their plate. I would be if I had won the auction – even knowing that it was manufactured at a later date.

New look for history website

2007-06-17T12:39:00.000+01:00

If you have visited this blog before you may have noticed that it has a new look. This is because I was becoming fed up with the original layout, which confined the main body text to a very narrow column. Since many people no longer peer at the web through a screen the size of a letter box, I have adopted a template that allows the text to resize depending on the size of your browser window.

Seaside fun and games for union delegates

2007-06-14T18:03:00.000+01:00

With Unison's annual conference due to begin next week, this seemed like an opportune moment to publish some cartoons from the NALGO Beano annual for 1939.

The National Association of Local Government Officers, initially a trade union purely for local authority white collar workers, was founded back in 1905, as this history of NALGO shows. It eventually merged with the National Union of Public Employees and the Confederation of Health Service Employees back in 1993, and this Unison trade union family tree shows how the various public sector organisations came together.

The NALGO Beano, a 76-page magazine full of the most excruciating jokes (most of them with little relationship to NALGO members and their work) and a rather better targeted mix of cartoons, was published as a fund-raiser for the NALGO Benevolent and Orphan Fund. If you click on the pictures, you should get bigger versions.

Does anyone know whether this was a one-off or a regular conference publication?

Captions. Above top: “Let’s put Arsenal this week, Mr Mayor.”
Above: “No, this is just a sample to see if the council like the style.”

Below: “And, gentlemen, we will not rest in our efforts to make the air of this city pure and fit to breathe.”

King cotton and the Lancashire workers

2007-06-13T19:50:00.000+01:00

Cotton was the first global industry. For more than a century it was Britain’s biggest export, and much of the industrial strength and wealth of Lancashire was built on it. It was also one of the few industries in an era of coal and steelmaking in which women worked in vast numbers.
If you missed Radio Four’s Spinning Yarns programme this morning, it is well worth having a listen on the BBC’s website. The programme, presented by Newsnight business correspondent Paul Mason, was the first of a four-parter examining the political, social and economic changes wrought by the industry.
The opening programme reflects on the early years and Mason used it to look at the birth of the factory system, the Luddites and child labour. He also described the impact of cotton on his home town of Leigh. Next week he moves on to look at how the cotton trade changed the face of 19th-century British politics.
As the publicity blurb puts it: “From the Peterloo massacre to the American Civil War, he tells the story of cotton's role in winning the vote for the masses.”

Working in industry: 100 years of statistics

2007-06-12T08:44:00.000+01:00

One hundred years ago, 837,000 people were employed in deep coal mining, and their numbers were increasing. Government statisticians collected figures on employment in the production of incandescent mantles for gas lamps, jute for sacking, and whale oil.
Figures from the first Census of Production in 1907 included workers in the infant motor vehicle industry as a sub-category of those employed in the manufacture of carriages, carts and wagons. Their numbers peaked at 44,500 in 1954, but have now fallen back to a mere couple of thousand. The picture here, from the 1951 Festival of Britain guidebook, is an advert published by Ford to celebrate the conversion of "a lonely riverside marsh with tall reeds shifted by the winds" into a"mighty factory" employing 16,000 people at Dagenham.

Deep coal mining, meanwhile, grew to employ 1.2 million people by 1924. Numbers had plunged to just 8,000 by 2002, accounting for less than 1% of total production employment.
The Office for National Statistics and its predecessors have tracked huge changes in industry over the past century, and its centenary has given them a chance to roll out some figures from that first Census of Production – the start of the process of collecting data on business.
There is also a detailed article on 100 years of the Census of Production.
The changes are, of course, marked. There were more than 7 million people working in production industries in 1907, more than twice the 3 million working there today. Britain’s biggest industries were iron and steel making, engineering and shipbuilding, closely followed by the textile trades.
But there are also some, perhaps surprising, similarities. One in four production jobs were done by women – 25% compared with 23% today. Reflecting the fact that many left paid work on getting married, 25% of female wage earners were under 18, compared with 12% of male wage earners.
There were also concerns about absenteeism – just as there are among managers today. The 1907 Census of Production found that the number of people at work on Mondays was only 94.8% of the figure for Wednesdays. The under-16s were most likely to be absent.
According to the ONS, the way information is compiled and published has also changed greatly over the years.
Although no-one is sure what machinery was available in 1907 to help with the task, by 1924 punch cards and a Burroughs tabulator were in use. A fully computerised system was introduced in 1963, optical character recognition in 1993 and electronic publication in 1994.

Chartism: a new history

2007-06-06T11:23:00.000+01:00

Chartism has been subject to a great deal of academic scrutiny in recent years – albeit by a relatively small, dedicated group of historians. One result has been the publication of a fascinating series of books dealing with specific aspects of the Chartist movement.
One of the more interesting books, at least from my point of view, was Papers for the People: A Study of the Chartist Press, edited by Joan Allen and Owen Ashton. But I also enjoyed Keith Flett’s Chartism After 1848, which proved extraordinarily hard to get hold of (even for ready cash) but was a fascinating account of late Chartism’s involvement in the politics of radical education.
What has been lacking, however, is a reliable overview of Chartism. Later this month, Malcolm Chase, Reader in Labour History at the University of Leeds, will fill that gap with the publication of Chartism: A New History.
The book runs from 1838 to 1858, when the National Charter Association was finally wound up. This is particularly important as so many general histories tend to treat Chartism as dead after the third petition of 1848. In fact, although it was never again a mass movement after that date, the ideas developed by the later Chartist movement and the schooling it gave to a younger generation of working class radicals were crucial to the later development of trade unions, the ultimately successful campaign to extend the franchise, and even the emergence of the socialist organisations which would form the basis of the modern Labour Party.
Although the book is not published until 30 June, I am writing about it now because Malcolm Chase has kindly allowed me to run an index of nearly 500 names from Chartism: A New History on my Chartist Ancestors website. The site is widely used by people researching their family history who believe that they have some Chartist connections, and will undoubtedly be much appreciated by them. In fact, the index appearing on the site is somewhat longer than that which will appear in the book, as space constraints are more pressing in print than online.
In addition to his academic post at the University of Leeds, Malcolm Chase chairs the Society for the Study of Labour History and has published extensively on Chartism and Labour history. I’m in no doubt at all that his latest book will become a standard text for the study of Chartism – as well as a must-read account for those with a less academic interest in the subject.

The day job

2007-06-05T11:38:00.000+01:00

This is just a short post to acknowledge the launch of the XpertHR blog. I write for this and for the main XpertHR employment website as part of the day job.

Industrial history needs a better deal

2007-06-01T09:35:00.000+01:00

It was hard to see the romance in Britain’s dying heavy industries. Steelworkers, boilermakers and shipbuilders did hard, dirty and dangerous jobs, and the things they produced were the remnants of a bygone age, lacking the glamour of new technologies that were increasingly located overseas.
Only with hindsight is it possible to recapture some of the excitement that those industries and the things they made possible evoked when they were new and offered hope of a better life.
When Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s fantastic steam ship the Great Britain was launched in 1843, Barclay Fox described it as “the greatest experiment since the Creation”. Built with iron from the foundries at Coalbrookdale, birthplace of the industrial revolution, and fuelled by the South Wales and North Somerset coalfields, it was by far the largest iron ship ever built. And its 1,000 horsepower steam engines (pictured here) turned a propeller, then a cutting edge technology. The ship was so large, that the lock gates of Bristol’s enormous floating harbour had to be dismantled so it could pass through into the Bristol Channel and the Atlantic beyond.
Although launched as a luxury ocean liner, the Great Britain lasted only three years in this role before disastrously running aground. Refloated and sold on, she became an emigrant ship, taking thousands to a new life in Australia, a troop ship carrying soldiers to that most futile of conflicts the Crimean War, and eventually a cargo ship.
Amazingly, the ship was still working until the 1930s, when it was finally run aground in the Falkland Islands and left to rot. Rescued and returned to her home port of Bristol in 1970, the Great Britain was by then a sorry site. I remember seeing it a couple of years later when it was a rusting and blackened hulk, lacking its masts and timbers.
Today, fully restored and magnificent once again, the Great Britain is a great visitor attraction for the city of Bristol. Like so much of our industrial history, its restoration and care is paid for by a trust, and there is no central or local government cash to help fund it. The Great Britain is not alone. A letter in the current edition of the English Heritage members’ magazine points out that centres such as the Black Country Living Museum and Blists Hill in Coalbrookdale are similarly lacking in central support.
English Heritage does put some money towards, among others, Saltaire and Richard Arkwright’s famous mill at Cromford. But the sums are small by comparison with the amount spent by the heritage bodies on stately homes and castles. We need to do more to safeguard our industrial history. More of us, after all, have roots in the factories, shipyards and coal mines than in palaces.

Andrew Marr's Modern History is time well spent

2007-05-22T09:58:00.000+01:00

The first part of Andrew Marr’s new History of Modern Britain on BBC2 tonight promises to be well worth watching. The book accompanying it is a great read (or, at least, it has proved to be so for the hour and a half since the postman delivered it this morning) – interesting, thoughtful and eclectic in its choice of subjects and stories.
Marr is a great choice for this project. With his insider knowledge as former BBC political editor and a “real life” outside the Westminster village, he brings insight and intelligence to it. And what could have been in other hands either tediously hard work or something more resembling a greatest hits of the twentieth century chart show is in fact a nice piece of popular public service history.
Book and television series begin in 1945 and bring history astonishingly up to date, dealing with the Iraq war and Tony Blair’s “final years”, 7/7, ASBOs and the National Minimum Wage. In a Guardian review at the weekend, David Hare rightly pointed out that there are a few oddities contained within it – not least the call for Edward Heath’s dismal record as prime minister to be reassessed.
But all authors – all historians – have their unique and sometimes unusual points of view, and it is well worth the occasional diversion and peculiarity when the overall standard is so high. Although the BBC is inevitably slightly hamstrung by its Charter in the way it handles current political controversy (something of a problem in writing modern history), if the television series is half as good as the book, it’s well worth a few hours of anyone’s time.

Sea, wind and fire: the Cutty Sark ablaze

2007-05-21T09:15:00.000+01:00

Woke up this morning to news that there had been a bad fire on the Cutty Sark. It’s hardly the end of the world considering the rest of the news, but having visited on a number of occasions and been impressed by the elegance and beauty of the ship, I do feel a sense of loss.
The BBC reports that the fire is being treated as suspicious (see also this video report), but that, on the plus side, with renovation work (see video below) currently taking place as much as 50% of the ship’s fabric had already been removed and was not on the site at the time of the blaze.
The Cutty Sark is in dry dock at Greenwich and is a great example of a tea clipper. Built in 1869, it was one of the ships that made the India to Britain run carrying tea.
Speed was of the essence as the first ship to bring in a cargo from the new year’s crop could make a fortune.
After the opening of the Suez Canal, steam ships were able to make the trip faster, and ships like the Cutty Sark were no longer needed. Moved to the wool trade the ship was able to make the Australia to Britain voyage in just 67 days.
Not bad for wind power.

A 1983 moment for the Labour left

2007-05-16T19:55:00.000+01:00

It now seems fairly clear that John McDonnell's name will not be on the ballot paper when nominations close for the post of Labour Party Leader (and, by default, prime minister) tomorrow lunchtime.
This surely marks an historic low for the Labour left. Much as they were later accused of betrayals, it is important to remember that the likes of Harold Wilson and Neil Kinnock were elected as leader not just with the support of the left, but as the left-wing candidate.
In truth, McDonnell's campaign has never seemed one tht had much hope of getting anywhere very fast. It is at least possible to conceive of McDonnell holding some sort of post in government; he has ability, experience and is an engaging figure. But can you imagine a Cabinet dominated by some of the Campaign Group.
It all brings back memories of John Redwood's risible campaign to become leader of the Tory Party, backed by a dreadful bunch of political gargoyles and human misfits.
The left has argued, rightly, that the Labour Party needs to re-connect with ordinary voters to win again. So much more must the Labour left.
I had hoped in this posting to draw some political parallels with events in the Labour Party's history. This is after all supposed to be a history blog. But, quite honestly, I can see no parallels. For all that it will one day fall, Labour is in government and the left is so marginalised that it hardly matters. If there has to be an historical parallel, then this is the Labour left's 1983 moment.

Tribune proves itself image conscious

2007-05-11T09:37:00.000+01:00

I have a special affection for Tribune, having worked there some time back in the dark ages. In those days, trade union barons weren’t trade union barons because Tory governments didn’t give peerages to lefties, and strange to recall there were still more coal miners than branches of Starbucks.

Now in its 70^th year, the paper launched by Nye Bevan and once edited by Michael Foot has truly entered the digital age. Alongside its own website, a group of sympathetic cartoonists has launched a digital and political news cartoon diary, featuring Britain’s first regular animated political cartoon.

The animated cartoon is drawn (is that the word?) by Matt Buck, who works under the name of Hack. It’s a long overdue development. For all their enthusiasm for the web, the national dailies still think in terms of static images when it comes to things like cartoons.

It’s good to see an institution with such a long Labour movement history making the running. Oh, and by the way, the cartoons are really good, too!

Trade union family trees: getting back to your roots

2007-05-08T15:16:00.000+01:00

It is astonishing how many trade unions have disappeared over the past century. One aim of the trade union family trees I compile for my Trade Union Ancestors website is to provide a sense of the astonishingly varied roots of some of today’s surviving labour movement organisations – and of the sometimes surprisingly great age of trade unionism in some industries.
In putting together a fairly (though by no means completely) comprehensive family tree for Amicus, which disappeared last week into the new Unite, I was surprised to discover that the Electrical Trades Union was founded as far back as 1889. Most of its members worked on that booming Victorian internet-style technology, the telegraph. But that aside there cannot have been a great deal to electrify.
Over the years, Amicus and its predecessors gobbled up unions for goldsmiths and silversmiths, bookbinders, plumbers, metal mechanics, foundry workers, steam-engine builders, bank clerks, draughtsmen, factory foremen, doctors and tobacco workers. But it is not alone to have clawed its way up the trade union pecking order in this way.
Other family trees on the website show a similar history for the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union, civil service and teaching unions, shopworkers’ and postal workers’ unions. Mergers and amalgamations in the labour movement are not a response to decline – they have been a constant fact of life for over a century, in good times and bad.
The problem is that with the big general unions now claiming first organisation rights over any new industry to emerge, we now no longer have the same number of fresh, grassroots organisations coming through. I, for one, doubt that initiatives launched by big unions like Unite to attract non-unionised workers will succeed.
In the past, it was possible for groups of workers with shared interests to get together and seek support from the wider movement. Jewish bakers, women chocolate makers, and many more, did just that – and in due course their independent unions came into the mainstream and joined forces with the bigger organisations, swelling their ranks. But where are today’s new unions for Indian restaurant workers, computer-game designers or IT helpdesk staff?

A final word on the art of politics

2007-05-04T09:09:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update on the sale of the late Tony Banks’ collection of political art, which happened yesterday and raised nearly £300,000. According to the sale report from auctioneers Bonhams, the highest sale price was £96,000 for a portrait by Joshua Reynolds of the 18th century politician Henry Fox. More modern items also drew high prices – including a Dave Brown cartoon of Margaret Thatcher’s statute being placed in the lobby of the House of Commons (seen here), which brought in £8,400. From the Labour wing of the auction, sale items included portraits of Keir Hardy and Nye Bevan, and a bust of Karl Marx. The pre-sale press release can still be seen on the Bonhams site.

Rebadging the unions

2007-05-03T11:47:00.000+01:00

This week saw the launch of the UK’s newest and biggest trade union. Unite brings together the former Amicus and Transport and General Workers Union (both themselves the product of numerous mergers and amalgamations) into one organisation of 2 million members.

Although there is a transition period lasting until June 2008 before the new union operates with a single structure and leadership, they do at least have a new logo (pictured here).

According to a report in Design Week, Fishburn Hedges Design, which came up with the logo, thinks it adds a “dramatic contemporary twist” to traditional union imagery. Personally, I think it looks like something rejected by the Bulgarian Communist Party in the 1970s, but you can’t please everyone.

The trade union movement has always been pretty good at imagery and symbols. There are quite a lot on view at Trade Union Ancestors, But Trevor Pritchard has come up with a really great pictorial history of Amicus in badges on the Amicus website. Many older union badges featured some of the tools of the trade, and it’s a shame that these have largely disappeared along with trade unions representing specific groups of workers.

Since Amicus is, officially, no more, there must be a danger that this section of its site will disappear when Unite gets its own online presence sorted out. Let’s hope they see the value of it and maybe even incorporate a new section dealing with the history of their partner union.

Teachers' unions: in a class of their own

2007-05-01T08:54:00.000+01:00

Teachers were among the first white-collar workers to see advantages in trade union organisation. The National Union of Elementary Teachers was founded as far back as 1870, and survives today as the National Union of Teachers – having lost the “elementary” in 1889.
Still further back, there was a Metropolitan Church Schoolmasters Association formed in the late 1830s. It disappeared after exhausting its funds in an unsuccessful 1861 campaign against plans to allow school managers to appoint and dismiss teachers. And there was a Pupil-Teachers Mutual Improvement Society, formed in the late 1850s, whose grievances were as much against the schoolmasters themselves as against their employers. They particularly resented being forced to sweep and clean schoolrooms and being disciplined in public by their senior teacher colleagues.
But despite numerous mergers, takeovers and amalgamations, teachers have never managed to unite in a single trade union. Indeed, today’s National Union of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers emerged from an early 20th century secession from the National Union of Teachers and old staff-room rivalries persist.
My Union Ancestors website tries to make sense of the tangled history of trade union organisations through a series of “family trees”. Having worked my way through Amicus (which today joins forces with the TGWU to create Unite), the Communication Workers Unions and others, I have now produced a series of teachers’ union family trees.
Because of their often difficult histories, it is difficult to know how to show some of the manoeuvres that led to the emergence of the modern unions. Should a union which dissolves itself and urges its members to join another organisation be counted as a “parent union” or even be shown at all? I have done the best I can with the information I have. If anyone has additional information or thinks the organisational relationships are misleading, I would like to know.

Come in number 18, your time is up

2007-04-27T14:15:00.000+01:00

Reports in today’s Daily Telegraph that Tony Blair is set to stand down as prime minister ahead of the local and Scottish elections have been swiftly denied. Even so, after 10 years as PM and 13 as party leader, the end is nigh. If not next week, then the week after or the week after that.
Here for the record, is a list of Blair’s predecessors as party leader that gives the manner of their departure from office.
Tony Blair – will resign 2007 following three successive terms as Labour prime minister. Most electorally successful party leader of all time, but lost sympathy and support of party over Iraq war.
Margaret Beckett – caretaker leader following death of John Smith. Failed to win election as leader in July 1994.
John Smith – died unexpectedly in opposition, July 1994.
Neil Kinnock – resigned after Labour’s unexpected defeat in 1992 general election. Credited with defeat of Militant and far left in the Labour Party.
Michael Foot – resigned 1983 after disastrous general election defeat. Remains widely loved within and outside the party.
James Callaghan – resigned September 1980, having served as prime minister from 1976 until Labour’s general election defeat in 1979. Resignation as leader shortly after special Labour conference voted for new electoral college ensured that his successor would be selected by MPs alone rather than wider party membership.
Harold Wilson – resigned unexpectedly in 1976 while serving second term as prime minister. Though stories of secret service plots abound, Wilson’s swift descent into Alzheimers disease is considered a more likely explanation.
George Brown – caretaker leader following Hugh Gaitskell’s death, but failed to win election when right-wing vote split between Brown and James Callaghan.
Hugh Gaitskell – died 1963 while leader of the Opposition; never served as prime minister.
Clement Attlee – resigned on becoming a peer in 1955; reputation intact as prime minister of great reforming government from 1945-51.
George Lansbury – resigned in 1935 having been attacked by heavyweight colleagues including Ernest Bevin (of the Transport and General Workers Union) and heavily defeated at Labour Party conference over foreign policy. Personally loved but not considered a good leader.
Arthur Henderson – resigned in 1931 having lost his parliamentary seat. Little reputation as leader having served for a very short time.
Ramsay MacDonald – Labour’s first prime minister (twice) and most reviled former leader; although elected as Labour prime minister, formed a National Government heavily reliant on Conservative support when the Cabinet would not support drastic cuts in public spending.
John Robert Clynes – defeated 1918 in parliamentary party election for leader and chairman of the party, but went on to be leader of the Commons and Home Secretary, siding with the Cabinet majority against MacDonald in 1931, when he lost his parliamentary seat.
William Adamson – resigned 1917, but went on to be Secretary of State for Scotland under MacDonald. Sided with the Cabinet majority against MacDonald in 1931, when he lost his seat.
Arthur Henderson – resigned in 1917 as leader of the Labour Party and as a member of the War Cabinet after supporting abortive attempt to organise a peace conference.
George Nicoll Barnes – resigned 1911; later expelled from the Labour Party after refusing to resign office in Lloyd George’s government at the end of the first world war.
Arthur Henderson – resigned 1910.
James Keir Hardy – resigned 1908 after serving for two years. First leader of the Labour Party and an iconic figure in the party’s history. His picture appears at the head of this item.