The workers, united, can never be defeated...
The violence that erupted across the North East after the killings on Newcastle Town Moor was at first indiscriminate and undirected. The sheer fury of it had stunned everyone. The major problem for the government in responding was that although it had begun with a rail strike, and indeed that strike was still going on, it seemed no longer to be a factor in the disturbances. Rioters made no demands, indeed there seemed on the face of things to be no group in a position to make demands.
In a meeting with employers in August, Askwith was pessimistic.
We are sitting on a powder keg. The army is sorely stretched and in Ireland we may yet see more trouble. If trouble on the scale we have seen should break out again, I am not convinced it could be contained.
Although he had not initiated the violence Tom Mann and other activists were now in hiding trying to avoid arrest under the Emergency Powers Act. Mann surfaced briefly from time to time to address meetings but always without advance warning and always with a strong guard. Wherever he did appear he was always given a rapturous reception.
In his speeches he was always careful to avoid explicit calls to violence, stressing instead the need for collective action by workers. He would frequently point however to the success of Unionists in Ulster in organising themselves for self-defence and repeatedly urged the creation of local self defence groups to protect communities against police and army attacks and to take over policing duties for themselves. In one speech in Leeds in September (later published in the form of a handbill and widely distributed) he said:
Is this government concerned for the working man? No - they treat us as less than human, like Mr Wells' Morlocks. We are not judged equally as human beings before God, let alone before the law.
Mr Carson raises a private army and how does the government respond? It does nothing!
I publish a leaflet reminding soldiers that they are also sons of workers and ask them not to shoot their brothers and sisters and how does the government respond? It locks me up and shoots down men and women attempting to defend themselves against the violence of the state. It locks up anyone who dissents.
Mr Carson says he would rather be ruled by the German Emperor than by other Irishmen and what does the government do? It does nothing?
I say to you we have no need of rulers, that no man should rule any life but his own and what does the government do? It locks up the publishers and breaks the presses and burns the leaflets.
Mr Churchill says it is the destiny of the British to rule over a glorious empire. I say to you there is no glory in Empire. It is not glorious to shoot down your fellow man in the name of Empire.
It is not glorious.
The work of government should be the work of free men, acting together of their own volition, not imposed in the name of Empire. We can accept our subservient past or we can make our own future. A future without masters, without oppression, where men and women live free lives. A future where working men are not tricked into violence against their own.
At the May-Day celebration in London last year, when it was estimated that no less than 40,000 were gathered together in Hyde Park, the capitalist press were disappointed in being able to report a single instance of drunkenness or disorderly conduct. The capitalists are more afraid of these silent, earnest multitudes than of the old-time rioters. For they suggest the possibility of organisation – and organisation is the one thing that the capitalist dreads, more even than the Ballot box.
His syndicalist perspective was not popular everywhere of course. The leaders of the Craft unions in particular could see their power base being eroded daily and proved happy to collaborate with employers and government officials in denouncing the local Defence Committees and worker takeovers of municipal water and gas works appearing across the North East.
Again however Mann had a blunt response, once more widely distributed through clandestine presses.
Sectional unionism is our curse. The ability to act trade by trade, occupation by occupation, each independent of the other, may have been of some service a couple of generations ago. But it is of no use now! I saw in Australia, mounted police carefully conveyed a distance of fourteen hundred miles by enginemen, guards, linesmen, etc., each of whom belonged to his particular trade union. The supplies for these policemen, with their horses and carbines, swords, revolvers and baggage were all handled by Union men. And here is the astounding paradox! These same Union men were subscribing given sums per week to help the Broken Hill miners to carry on the fight, While Actually Engaged in Entrenching and Supplying the Enemy.
We can now see this happening here, in our own country, everyday. We see blacklegs, police and soldiers with all their necessary food, liquor, bedding etc., etc., being shipped and conveyed over hundreds of miles by rail and road, as well as water, by Union men. It is these Union men, and not the capitalists who beat the other Unionists trying to resist reduction or obtain increases. And so it must continue until we can organise by Industry and not by Trade, until we can unify the Industrial Movement into one compact fighting force.
Comrades! We have come to a parting of the ways. It is no longer possible for us to continue as we have – that is to say as we were 80 years ago. We must not go out to meet the Maxim with a blunderbuss! The discontent which has been spreading during the past year or two seems at last likely to break out into rebellion. The spirit which provokes the rebellion needs encouraging and so does the intelligence to direct it.
Can we think that the Masters have sat still all these years while the membership of the Unions has been growing? We know that they have not. We know from the evidence of recent strikes that the complexities of modern industry have aided the organisation of the Masters to defeat us. We have fought, and some have died, for the acquisition of trifling concessions that have made precious little difference in our lives and no difference whatever in our complete subjugation to the Master class. And while we hesitate the Trust is growing about us. Today the small manufacturer is doomed. Every year the big men get fewer and bigger. Every year the organisation of the Masters is automatically simplified against us.
Slowly but surely it is coming to be realised in the Labour Movement that Sectional Unionism is played out; that economic organisation is more than merely helpful to the attainment of better conditions; that it is not only a means, but the chief means, whereby progress can be made.
Our French comrades have already learnt this hard lesson. They have eliminated the antagonisms and sectional craft interests, and they have proved by their behaviour that they dare fight and know how to fight. They are, for the most part, anti-patriotic and anti-militarist. They are “non” not “anti” Parliamentarians. They favour resorting, when advisable to the General Strike.
They declare themselves revolutionary. But while working for the Revolution they do not neglect to do all possible to secure general betterment. They declare that the workers have no country and are not prepared to fight in the interests of a bureaucracy but most distinctly are prepared to fight for the overthrow of Capitalism – in France and elsewhere.
Comrades – what should this movement that is now appearing in Britain be like?
It must be avowedly and clearly Revolutionary in aim and method.
Revolutionary in aim, because it will be out for the abolition of the wages system and for securing to the workers the full fruits of their labour, thereby seeking to change the system of society from Capitalist to Socialist.
Revolutionary in method, because it will refuse to enter into any long agreement with the masters, whether with legal or State backing or merely voluntary; and because it will seize every chance of fighting for the general betterment – gaining ground and never losing any.
The State is essentially a ruling class organisation and its functions are chiefly coercive. The State came into existence with the rise of private property and a privileged class; its main functions have always been the protection of upper class property and of the keeping of the masses in subjection.
There is now a movement abroad for the State ownership of the railways. The railwaymen do not appear inclined to grow wildly enthusiastic about the proposal. It is perhaps as well that they do not as it will save them from going through a process of disillusionment later on. As the conflict between capital and labour becomes keener, the workers are having impressed up on them the real character and functions of the existing State.
The State, which now sends British soldiers and police to protect blacklegs and to bludgeon British workers who are fighting for their bare rights to existence can hardly be expected to inspire the workers with much confidence as to its intentions as an employer of labour. The lesson of recent days where strikers have been forced to return to work or threatened with all the penalties of military law under the Emergency Powers Act has not been lost on the British railwayman.
It is of little use to have Board of Trade officials like Mr Askwith roaming around, ever anxious to secure peace, sweet peace, at any price to the workers. The Board of Trade is a Government Department. The Government is in essence, and in detail, the machine of the Plutocracy, through which and by which they keep the workers in subjection.No Board of Trade official dare do anything to advance the interests of the men.
A State owned Railway would be no more than a Government Department. For any man to imagine that a Government Department may be seeking to do anything that will facilitate the overthrow of the ruling class is to declare himself a fool; and the converse of this is that Government Departments are extending their sphere of influence even to the extent of obtaining a controlling power over the workmen's own organisations in the interest of the capitalist class. To 'tie the workers down,' that is their work. The worker cannot secure what good sense demands unless he can show fight. The wily employing class knows this, and to be able to say they will leave the matter in the hands of a public official, as though that were not the same thing as keeping it in their own hands, suits them exactly.
“Unite” was Marx's advice long ago, but we have never properly acted upon it. Now is the time to do it, and we will do it right here in Britain. We will lead them a devil of a dance and show that there is life and courage in the workers of the British Isles.
Those who are asleep had better wake up or they'll be kicked out of the way. Those who say it can't be done had better stand out of the way and look on while it is being done.