Lancashire Textile Strikes

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Lancashire Textile Strikes

Synopsis

In the late 1840s wages in the Lancashire cotton industry had been reduced by 10 percent. When prosperity improved, the workers were disappointed not to have their old rates reinstated. A two-month strike of spinners at Stockport in summer 1853 won back the 10 percent and was followed by other successes, but in Preston the Masters' Association announced a general lockout to begin in mid-October. It lasted 17 weeks, and when in theory the workers could have returned to work, most chose not to do so. An effective organization that raised funds, distributed relief payments, sustained morale, and influenced public opinion supported the locked-out "operatives." In February 1854 the mill owners began to bring in "blackleg" labor, which aroused resentment but resulted in few disturbances. In March 1854 prominent organizers and speakers were arrested on conspiracy charges, although the case was eventually dropped. The Preston strike ended on 1 May 1854, after a renewed depression of the industry had set in, without the owners conceding on the 10 percent wage increase. Although defeated, the struggle would survive in local collective memory and had made a forceful impression further afield.

Timeline

1831: Unsuccessful Polish revolt is waged against Russian rule.
1837: British inventor Isaac Pitman devises his shorthand system.
1842: Scientific and technological advances include the development of ether and artificial fertilizer; the identification of the Doppler effect (by Austrian physicist Christian Johann Doppler); the foundation of biochemistry as a discipline; and the coining of the word dinosaur.
1847: Patenting of the first successful rotary press, which replaces the old flatbed press, takes place in the United States.
1848: Scottish mathematician and physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, introduces the concept of absolute zero, or the temperature at which molecular motion ceases. This value, -273°C, becomes 0K on his Kelvin scale of absolute temperature.
1851: Britain's Amalgamated Society of Engineers applies innovative organizational concepts, including large contributions from, and benefits to, members, as well as vigorous use of direct action and collective bargaining.
1852: Emigration from Ireland to the United States reaches its peak.
1852: France's Second Republic ends when Louis Napoleon declares himself Napoleon III, initiating the Second Empire.
1852: American inventor Elisha Graves Otis introduces the "safety" elevator, which has a safety brake to keep it from falling even if the cable holding it is completely cut.
1854: "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson and Walden by Henry David Thoreau are published.
1858: British explorer John Hanning Speke locates Lake Victoria, which he correctly identifies as the source of the Nile.
1862: American Richard Gatling invents the first practical machine gun.

Event and Its Context

In the county of Lancashire in northwest England, the manufacture of cotton was overwhelmingly dominant by the nineteenth century, employing tens of thousands in expanding towns. Some, like Preston, contained dozens of mills. The struggle between capital and labor was often on display in these towns. Lancashire had been the scene of noteworthy strikes in 1818, 1836, and 1842, and was a center of Chartist and 10-hour workday agitation and of pioneering efforts to form trade unions.

How It Started

The textile industry was vulnerable to fluctuations in trade. In 1847 employers imposed a general 10 percent wage reduction, which workers thought was a temporary measure. Within a few years the economic situation had eased, but the "Masters" did not restore the 10 percent and denied having made any promise to do so. Local strikes occurred in Preston in 1849, and by spring 1853 there were demands for higher wages in almost every cotton town.

In Stockport weavers called for an "advance" in March. Their spokesman, George Cooper, claimed their wages were lower than in other towns. The strike lasted from 9 June to 1 August 1853. When the weavers rejected an offer of 5 percent to weavers, and 10 percent to spinners and cardroom hands, the employers granted the 10 percent to all. Workers in Blackburn, Accrington, and Burnley won similar victories. By the end of the summer there were weekly mass meetings in Preston. Spinners and cardroom hands were campaigning for the 10 percent, and weavers were collecting for Stockport. On 5 August officials had the collectors arrested, supposedly at the instigation of Thomas Miller, a prominent mill owner. A meeting in Stock-port on 14 August promised support from elsewhere if a strike should be needed at Preston. In September five youths were arrested and sentenced to prison for acting to enforce a levy for strike funds.

The cotton employers also had been organizing. In March, William Ainsworth took the lead in setting up the Preston Masters Association, which on 15 September announced a general lockout to begin in a month's time. At this stage only 8 or 10 firms in the town were in dispute, as the majority had conceded the 10 percent. Although processions were prohibited the same day, at an evening assembly the operatives declared themselves ready to take a stand. For both sides it was a crucial test: if Preston failed to get the 10 percent, the chances were wages would be rolled back elsewhere.

Organization and Survival

Before the lockout began on 15 October, the Preston operatives were mounting a campaign that built on methods tried out at Stockport. The workers engaged in local efforts to conduct the strike, raise and distribute relief funds, and promote public awareness and support. Committees for the different trades—weavers, spinners, and smaller numbers of cardroom hands and throstle-spinners—pooled their efforts. Open-air mass meetings publicized the mood of the rank-and-file and kept the strikers informed of developments. The two most prominent worker delegates, George Cowell and Mortimer Grimshaw, undertook a phenomenal program of adressing mass meetings, attending delegate meetings, and traveling on speaking tours.

Subscriptions came in from all over the country. The weavers were able to pay about half the normal working rate to over 7,000 people, with half as much to assistants and a comparable amount to spinners. Administrative expenses were scrupulously itemized and publicized in a weekly balance sheet. Levies on the few unaffected mills, collections in shops and public houses, and solidarity from other unions and trades all helped, as did public meetings, benefit concerts, and theatrical events in cities and towns from Scotland to London. Delegates visited Preston from within Lancashire, with Blackburn leading the support and contributing substantially to strike funds. The lockout ultimately affected 47,000 workers at 183 mills in the county by the end of October. A contemporary study by the Reverend John Clay gave the total number involved in the Preston lockout as 18,000: 11,800 women, over half adult and the rest teenaged; and 6,200 men, two-thirds adult and the rest aged 13 to 17. Women were present in meetings, crowds, clashes, and at least three as notable public speakers, but did not play a part proportionate to their numbers.

The operatives continued to seek negotiations and arbitration, but mill owners rejected peaceable overtures. A public notice on 1 November set the owners' terms for ending the lockout: abandon the 10 percent, accept lower pay at many mills, and put an end to the operatives' union. The next move was an offer to receive applications for employment and reopen if enough came forward; very few did.

Opposition and Defeat

The owners' position was strong nonetheless, amid signs that the cotton boom of the previous few years was over; the worsening economic situation meant that the closed mills would otherwise have been on short time, and stocks were plentiful. Food prices rose after a wet summer, which was followed by a severe winter. November brought setbacks: in Burnley spinners but not weavers got 10 percent and both were on a four-day week. The Preston weavers tried appealing to higher authority, sending a petition to Home Secretary Lord Palmer-ston on 21 November outlining the circumstances of the "unhappy dispute" and pleading for a reasonable solution. The eventual reply expressed sympathy and regret but indicated that there was no means of interposing to apply a remedy. The Board of Trade also refused to intervene.

In February 1854 the owners reopened the mills to try to force a return on their terms, so that the lockout became a strike. On the 23rd they decided to import labor from other parts of Britain and Ireland. The first contingent of "knobsticks" (i.e., blacklegs or scabs), a group of unemployed cotton hands, arrived at the end of the month. As a serious attempt to replace the strikers, the policy failed; by mid-March most mills were still closed. If, as the workers suspected, it was a move to provoke them, it had a measure of success. Pickets met and occasionally attacked the knobsticks. On 2 and 3 March a stone-throwing incident led to the reading of the Riot Act (warning gatherings to disperse), 100 police being brought from London, and the military being put on alert. The next day local officials prohibited all meetings in the borough. Generally, however, observers commended the operatives' restraint. There were perpetual complaints of police provocation steadfastly resisted.

Law and order was largely a matter for the local authorities, who could ban processions and meetings, and the masters were well represented on the town council. The system officially in place for relieving hardship was another opportunity to shape events, modified by the risk of precipitating disorder if conditions became intolerable, but the operatives largely avoided applying for relief. As union funds began to run out and deprivation took its toll, a few returned to work. Then, on 18 March the magistrates decided to charge strike leaders with conspiracy, and 11 were shortly arrested. Initially the public reaction was to fight on, but through April several groups seceded from the "10 percent and no surrender' position, until meetings on 30 April and 1 May proclaimed the end of the strike.

Significance

The Preston strike was remarkable not for the final outcome but for how long it lasted, what happened during it, and the notice it attracted at the time and afterwards. The struggle went beyond wages. The owners reaffirmed control of their property and reasserted authority in the mills; the workers not only developed valuable techniques for survival in struggle but excelled at winning hearts and minds. Theirs became a cause célèbre among labor movement luminaries such as Ernest Jones, who addressed a meeting at Preston and gave it extensive coverage in his People's Paper, and Karl Marx. Foremost among others who put in a good word for them was Charles Dickens, who had many positive things to say about the strikers and was exasperated by the owners' obstinacy. Preston provided the model for Coketown in Dickens' novel Hard Times, as it did for the mill town in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South. Thus, albeit in fictionalized form, the Preston strike helped to shape cultural perceptions of the northern English working class. In real life the legacy of the strike may be less obvious, but there are signs that, although not the first, last, most widespread, or most violent such episode in the area, it did not by any means vanish from collective memory.

Key Players

Ainsworth, William (1807-1862): Son of a Unitarian cotton manufacturer, Ainsworth studied law at Glasgow University before going into the family business, which employed about 800 workers. He had a reputation for reducing wages, provoking frequent strikes, and prosecuting militants. Secretary of the Preston Masters' Association, he was also a borough and county magistrate and served on Preston town council.

Cooper, George (1824-1895): A weaver born in Stockport, Cooper campaigned against the loom tax (1847) and for the 10-hour day, the unemployed, and a weavers' union. He led the 1853 Stockport strike. He participated in the American Civil War, then returned to Lancashire and the cause of Parliamentary reform.

Cowell, George (c. 1800-?): Born near Preston, Cowell was a weaver, Methodist, and teetotaler known for his integrity. He was involved with Chartism and the 10-hour workday movement among other radical causes. After the Preston strike he became a tea and coffee dealer and continued to be active in the labor movement and the Lancashire Reform Union.

Grimshaw, Mortimer: Grimshaw came from Great Harwood in Lancashire and was a weaver who was allegedly blacklisted by local firms. He was secretary of the Short-Time Committee (1852-1853) in the "Jacobin village" of Royton, where he edited an anti-Whig election broadsheet. The demagogue "Slackbridge" in Dickens's Hard Times is said to have been based on Grimshaw.

Miller, Thomas (1811-1865): Miller married into the Horrocks cotton firm as had his father and later took over as sole proprietor of Horrocks, Miller & Co., which employed about 2,000 workers. Notorious for paying very low wages and imposing harsh discipline, he chaired the Preston Masters' Association and was a borough and county magistrate and alderman in local government.

See also: Chartist Movement.

Bibliography

Books

Chapman, Stanley David. The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1972.

Dickens, Charles. "(On Strike) The Preston Spinners' Strike,1853-1854: Dickens as Strike Reporter." In Strikes: A Documentary History, by Ruth Frow, Edmund Frow, and Michael Katanka. London: Charles Knight & Co. Ltd., 1971. Original work published 1854.

Dutton, H. I., and J. E. King. Ten Percent and No Surrender: The Preston Strike, 1853-1854. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Neff, Wanda E. "The Textile Worker" In Victorian Working Women: An Industrial and Literary Study of Women in British Industries and Professions, 1832-1850. London: Frank Cass, 1966.