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USES OF WORKING CLASS POWER IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
12. In World War I the working class found itself for the first time in its experience with a guaranteed right to work and with the explicit aim of maximising production. It reacted by demanding the control of profits in return for its own abstention from taking advantage of the tight labour market to bid wages up to their full market price. However, it only made this reasoned demand after high political pressure from the Government as well as substantial wage increases agreed and enforced by the Government on employers. The class's first reflex had been to strike for higher wages, and from 1915-17 unofficial and illegal strikes were held on a large scale by miners, railwaymen, cotton spinners and engineers.
Dilution (the breaking down of production into a larger number of simpler processes for which less skill was required, i.e. a greater division of labour) was tried by engineering employers early in the war in order to meet the demand for labour created by the exodus to the army of skilled men and the demand for more production. Dilution substituted unskilled men and above all women for skilled engineers. The result was a demand from workers that there could be no dilution without consultation. The workers must agree to the change in production process, how much skill and training were needed for the new jobs and what the rate for the new job should be. The Trade Union leaders dared not oppose this demand and the Government accepted and proceeded to enforce it on often unwilling employers. To negotiate these changes, workers' representatives at every factory were needed since each factory made different changes and the Government did not propose to jeopardise the measure of agreement and co-operation by handing down regulations from above; this is the origin of the spread of shop stewards throughout the engineering industry in Britain. Prior to this time, shop stewards had often emerged out of the ever-increasing number of piece-rate negotiations in engineering, but they were isolated occurrences in scattered workshops and the unions had never had to pay much attention to those men who nevertheless were filling a gap in working class organisation.
World War I made the shop steward a necessity in every factory. Piece-rates can only be negotiated at the shopfloor level and they spread rapidly because a more mechanised production made piece-rates the more favourable way of reckoning wages to the working class, while at the same time enabling the employer to purchase greater output for an agreed price. Even though the trade union officials were hostile to this new workers' representative, they had no choice but to make shop stewards official trade union representatives after the war. Shop stewards would continue to be necessary and must therefore be recognised as such by the unions if they were to remain organisations of the working class.
A section of these shop stewards in World War I had called themselves syndicalists and been in favour of workers' control. However, they never declared against working class political parties or working class action in making demands of Parliament. They considered such parties and action irrelevant, but would not condemn them, mainly because they were indifferent to them. (A similar approach had been adopted in the first years of the 20th century by the British working class syndicalists - Tom Mann is the most famous.) These shop stewards organised into a national co-ordinating committee to lead the fight for workers' power. But no lead was ever given to the working class by the committee which continued to shrink after perhaps two years of vigorous existence. In 1919, members of this committee journeyed to Moscow at Lenin's invitation to attend the Second Congress of the Communist International. While there, all but one of their delegates was convinced by Lenin's arguments of the need for political action and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Besides negotiating piece rate increases, the shop stewards demanded and won for the working class a pledge by the employers to return to pre-war production methods and craft customs when the war was over. Most employers honoured this pledge which meant going back to less efficient and less capital intensive production. The post war slump forced the employers to introduce the more efficient war-time techniques.
THE WHITLEY COMMITTEE REPORT
On 28 June 1917, the Whitley Committee, a sub-committee of the Committee on Reconstruction, presented an interim report to Parliament:
"The report stated that the war almost reinforced some reconstruction of industry, and that in that reconstruction it was desirable to secure the largest possible measure of co-operation between employers and employed; therefore the subcommittee advocated the establishment, for each industry of a body representative of both employers and workpeople (Joint Industrial Councils) ... It was suggested that these Councils should meet at regular intervals, and should consider among other questions,
1. the settlement of general principles governing the conditions of employment, including the methods of fixing, paying and readjusting wages
2. means of securing to the workpeople security of earnings and employment
3. technical education, training, industrial research, and the improvement of processes, machinery and organisation, appropriate questions relating to management with special reference to co-operation in carrying new ideas into effect, and full consideration of the workpeople's point of view in relation to them.
It was advocated that in addition to the National Industrial Councils for each industry subordinate bodies should also be instituted consisting of (a) district councils and (b) works committees representative of the management and of the workers employed." (Annual Register 1917, p. 141)
The Government accepted the report but decided against prescriptive legislation and in favour of voluntary implementation. The trade unions for the most part refused to work for the report's implementation because they viewed their present arrangements for negotiation as quite satisfactory. In 1920 the postwar boom ended and the working class reflexes readjusted to the new conditions of the labour market by concentrating on the right to work and resisting new wage cuts. This situation was to last for 20 years and the Whitley Report was therefore practically forgotten by the working class and employers.