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Extract from “A Life in Public Service” by George Ranken Askwith, Baron Askwith of St

Extract from “A Life in Public Service” by George Ranken Askwith, Baron Askwith of St Ives, London 1928.

The year 1911 did not begin well. The Welsh miner's strike dragged on, with some 300,000 men involved. Over the year the country was harassed by numerous 'wildcat' strikes, none of any great duration, but cumulatively amounting to thousands of days lost production. It seemed that the Trades Union leadership was becoming more and more out of touch with the mood of the men they represented. I spent much of the year travelling from one dispute to another, mediating as much between the men and their leaders as between the leaders and their employers.

The fault appeared to be not with the men, but with their leaders who to a man were ineffectual and weak. Not surprisingly, when a leader emerged who was strong and forceful they stood out. Unfortunately those effective leaders were also radical socialists, who used their success in securing improvements in working conditions to promulgate their pernicious philosophy. The most prominent of these was probably Tom Mann. Highly intelligent, with a vigorous manner, he refused to be seduced by the blandishments of office and remained 'one of the men.' His ability and his wide ranging influence in many industries made him in my mind a great threat, not just to industrial peace, but to the security of the country. I was particularly fearful of an eruption of violence such as had occurred in Tonypandy the previous year and which had continued sporadically ever since. Mann had never publicly advocated such violence, but his subversion of the established structures of the Trades Unions in favour of direct action by the men made it obvious to me that serious civil unrest was a real possibility. I used every opportunity available to ensure that the threat he posed was made clear, not just to the President [of the Board of Trade], but also to the Home Secretary, in whose hands lay matters of domestic security.

Through such contacts and my own sources, I became aware too of dangerous links appearing between the likes of Mann and certain elements of Irish Nationalism. I had already seen similar tactics as were being used by Mann in both Belfast and Dublin and was concerned to see these formerly separate movements had begun to make contact.

January 1911 also saw a major strike of ship repair workers and others in Liverpool that lasted over three months, largely to the intervention of Mann and one of his associates Ben Tillet. Eventually however, I was able to secure a reconciliation between the men and their leaders and therefore an end to the dispute. Mann and Tillet however made inroads elsewhere, leading to the creation in Liverpool of the so-called 'Reform Committee' with the express intent of undermining the official Trades Union leadership and subverting government authority.