Strikebreaking and Anti-Unionism on the Waterfront: The Shipping Federation,1890–1914

The Shipping Federation and the Challenge of New Unionism

In seeking to analyse the organization of the Shipping Federation and to explore the nature of its strikebreaking apparatus, including its large mobilizations of non-union workers, attention must be paid to the conditions of maritime labour, the key aspects of which contributed to the rise of militant radicalism and the transformation of the British waterfront into a test case of strikebreaking and industrial vigilantism.

Port employment was overwhelmingly casual in nature. The permanent oversupply of labour – sometimes aggravated by the seasonal or temporary relocation of workers from other industries – and the influence of cyclical fluctuations in the shipping trade enormously aggravated the levels of unemployment and underemployment. The impact of irregular work, uncertain and insufficient income and the dependence on hiring officials was reinforced by the distinctive concentration of large masses of workers in the districts and quarters adjacent to port sites. These conditions allowed employers to exercise a wide range of coercive measures, particularly the hiring or importing of replacement workers in cases of strikes or lockouts. Testifying before the Royal Commission of Labour, the managing owner of the Wilson-Hill Line, William Becket Hill, unequivocally declared that the most effective method of enforcing control over the men hinged on the perennial threat of the ‘competition of outside labour – free labour’. ¹²

Control over the labour market was at the core of the conflict between the dockers’ and seamen’s unions and maritime capital. It was the deep-seated ideological hostility of large port companies to any effort made by the unions to monopolize or regulate labour that gave industrial relations in the shipping industry its ‘peculiarly uncompromising atmosphere’. ¹³ The shipowners, who had responded to the depression of the mid-eighties with the concentration of capital ownership and unprecedented managerial control over the handling of cargoes, perceived a union monopoly as an intolerable violation of both proprietorial rights and managerial prerogatives. ¹⁴ Moreover, in the midst of growing apprehension over Britain’s industrial future and its international position, shipping owners considered that the interference of trade unions in the market system and the promotion of class conflict rather than productive cooperation in order to attain overall national goals were crippling the pursuit of greater industrial efficiency. ¹⁵

Soon after the Great London Dock Strike of 1889, the sheer scale and magnitude of which had important repercussions for the development of the ‘New Unionism’ among semi-skilled and unskilled labourers, the employers’ mounted a counter-attack. ¹⁶ This became immediately apparent following the formation of large associations of shipowners that were intended to guarantee mutual protection. The first to be founded, in the summer of 1889, was the Shipowners’ Association of Great Britain, which was limited to the ports on the north-eastern coast. ¹⁷ At the same time, the major London-based liner shipping companies, including P&O and the British India and Orient Line, initiated plans for a national federation of shipowners. On 2 September 1890, a meeting of shipowners was held under the chairmanship of the Orient Line’s director, Sir Thomas Lane Devitt, at the offices of the London Chamber of Shipping, at which resolutions were unanimously adopted to federate Britain’s shipping firms. ¹⁸ The most pressing incentives for the formation of this association were the establishment of the Union of the Shipmasters and Officers of Great Britain and Ireland with J. Havelock Wilson as manager, and the vigorous attempts of this union to enforce closed shop agreements at several ports. ¹⁹

The purpose of the newly-formed Shipping Federation was to counter the power of the waterside unions by curbing their ability to engage in effective collective action. This was explicitly set out in a circular to its constituent members and the details were then forwarded to the Royal Commission by its General Manager, George Alexander Laws. It stated that:

The Federation intends to secure to every man freedom to work at his own terms without interference … [it] will proceed against those who break the law, and will protect those who are threatened or supply substitutes. It will specifically protect masters and officers, and other members of a crew, who are threatened in any way in consequence of their not belonging to any Union, and will prosecute those who threaten. ²⁰

By the end of 1890, 25 firms, companies and associations were affiliated to or were cooperating with the Shipping Federation, representing about seven-eighths of the total tonnage of the United Kingdom. The Executive Council, which met twice a year in London, was invested with full authority with regards to matters of policy and action. Administration of the Shipping Federation’s affairs between general sessions was delegated to its committees, which included the General Purposes Committee, the Finance Committee, the Benefit Fund Committee and the Emergency Committee. ²¹

As its membership expanded, elaborate strikebreaking machinery was devised to ensure the prompt recruitment, transportation and protection of non-union labourers. Shipping registry offices were established in all the main ports of Britain, not infrequently through the amalgamation and streamlining of an existing network of bogus or free labour unions and working-class associations. In October 1890, for instance, the Executive Council of the Shipping Federation appointed the secretary of the fictitious Amalgamated British Seamen’s Protection Society, William Paterson Lind, as the General Registry Superintendent for the whole Thames District. His duties were to organize and coordinate a general registry scheme for seamen and ‘to bring with him the remaining members of a Seaman’s Union of which he was secretary’. ²²

Local registry offices, which were run by registrars and outdoor officers, enlisted seamen, kept the ‘local black list’ and issued permits, benefit schemes and parchment tickets. ²³ The latter entitled the holder to preferential employment with any shipmaster affiliated to the Shipping Federation in return for pledging to accept engagement alongside both union and non-union crews. ²⁴ By 1895, registries at various shipping centres had issued 172,376 tickets to seamen and firemen, while 14,166 masters and officers had been listed in the Federation’s benefit books. ²⁵

Alongside this ramified network of registry offices, the Shipping Federation appointed a General Labour Superintendent to supervise the administrative and operational aspects of labour replacement. Lieutenant R. H. Armit, Honorary Secretary of the National and Patriotic League for the Protection of British Industries, took up the role of the first Labour Master of the Shipping Federation. ²⁶ He was replaced by Thomas Robb at the end of 1890. The general duties of the Labour Superintendent included recruiting labour masters or foremen, in particular from among the men who had served the Shipping Federation during strikes, maintaining communication and liaising with free labour throughout the United Kingdom and coordinating their prompt dispatch in case of strike or dispute. In addition, he was tasked with making arrangements for the transport of strike-breakers by rail or water, supervising the paying of wages and allotment notes, overseeing the housing of the Shipping Federation’s strike materials and stores, keeping the central office stock book and periodically reporting to the General Manager on the situation of free labour and union labour in all districts. If required by the General Manager, he was assigned to accompany free labourers to the strike area. At a local level, the Labour Superintendent supervised the officials of the various Free Labour Offices. These officials were mostly hired from among ex-police officers and their tasks were to organize and recruit labour, ²⁷ at times using methods that were sinisterly reminiscent of the press gangs that forced seamen into service. ²⁸ The prospect of higher salaries and, perhaps, greater opportunities for promotion may have enticed these former policemen away from public policing into private security positions and strikebreaking services. It is fair to assume that this movement of personnel encouraged informal forms of public/private partnerships in undercover work (e.g. anti-union espionage). ²⁹

When it became difficult to import seafaring or dock labour due to intense picketing at the docks, Free Labour Officials coordinated the transportation of strike-breakers on depot ships. ³⁰ These vessels, which were moored outside the picketed docks, provided housing and messing accommodation for the replacement workers. If active intervention through the supply of strike-breakers was not undertaken, members of the Shipping Federation were indemnified under the rules for detention of their vessels. ³¹

The formation and expansion of the Shipping Federation precipitated a wave of dock strikes involving both seamen and dockers that spread across British ports. All the conflicts turned on the employment of non-union workers. The Labour Department responded by dispatching batches of free labourers. Where dock police forces proved inadequate to protect the safety of the strike-breakers, the big shipping magnates regularly secured the collaboration of local magistrates in deploying the police. Between September and November 1890, strikes in Leith, Bowness, Grangemouth, Garston and Barrow were broken by ample supplies of blackleg labour. ³² In London, the dock strike was sparked by the decision of the United Labour Council to circulate the Wade’s Arms Manifesto, which required port workers to boycott the vessels of Messrs. Shaw, Savill & Co., the New Zealand Shipping Company and the British India Steam Navigation Company until these shipping lines undertook ‘to sign none but members of the National Amalgamated Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union’. ³³ The boycotted companies applied to the Shipping Federation to obtain free labourers and as many as 1100 strike-breakers recruited from northern outports and the Kent countryside flooded into the London Docks and were housed in depot ships and sheds. ³⁴ During the strike, Free Labour Officials appeared to have armed some of the strike-breakers with revolvers. Clement Edwards, who was at the time an assistant in the Dockers’ Union, reported several cases of armed free labourers on the Albert Docks to the Royal Commission. ³⁵ Similarly, Stephen Sims, representative of the Amalgamated Stevedores, declared:

It is within my knowledge that they have done so [carried firearms] … it was a dispute in the dock, and it was a case of the federation men against our men. They were the aggressors, and they followed our men on board the vessel. ³⁶

While the London dock strike was in progress, the port of Cardiff was brought to a virtual standstill when the tippers’ refusal to load coal onto a vessel manned by non-union crews turned into a general strike against the Shipping Federation. Picketing was quickly established on the docks with the aim of preventing imported labourers being brought in. To get round this, a depot ship belonging to the Shipping Federation, the Speedwell, was used to accommodate outfits of strike-breakers comprising up to 200 men, mainly recruited by ‘crimps’ in the boarding houses of Liverpool and other ports and dispatched for ship work. After five weeks, the union was forced to call off the strike and work was resumed. ³⁸ On the Aberdeen docks, seamen also went on strike against the ‘Federation Ticket’. The arrival of strike-breakers led to an immediate expansion and aggravation of the conflict, with the dockers striking in sympathy and the shipowners responding by supplying blackleg dockers. There was ‘any amount of free labour to be had at any time, at any rate, and good labour, too’, George A. Laws declared. Three weeks later, the strike collapsed. ³⁹ At the same time, a strike broke out in Hull when dockers refused to unload the steamer Mary Anning, which had enlisted ‘an all-Federation crew’ instead of union workers. The Shipping Federation promptly dispatched non-union labour from Liverpool to unload the ship’s cargo onto lighters, but the lightermen refused to handle it. A number of strikes went on for about six months, with the Shipping Federation unable to make a decisive breakthrough at what was then the strongest and best organized union port in the country. ⁴⁰ On Humberside, however, the trial of strength between the Shipping Federation and the waterside unions was merely deferred.

In March 1893, the shipowners decided to establish a Free Labour Office in Hull, the British Labour Exchange, and assured preferential treatment for those who registered. The objective of the British Labour Exchange was to thwart union efforts to mount effective strikes by securing a reserve of free labourers who could be employed in case of stoppage or refusal to work. In spite of the conciliatory efforts of the dockers’ delegates, whose position had been weakened by the depression in the shipping trade and unemployment, negotiations between the parties proved fruitless and a strike was called in early April. About 8000 dockers came out on strike and sympathetic strikes by sailors, cranemen, lightermen, firemen and other classes of port workers followed. This brought work on the docks and wharves to a general standstill. The strike, which was the most extensive and severe that the Shipping Federation had yet had to cope with, lasted seven weeks. Over 7000 strike-breakers, including groups from Sweden and the Netherlands, were transported to Hull until the docks were fully manned. Local magistrates, who were mostly appointed from among the shipowners or the shareholders of shipping companies, applied for police reinforcements from neighbouring areas as well as military aid to protect the blackleg labour, and two gunboats were positioned in the Humber to defend the vessels. The massive importation of outside labour led to the rapid brutalization of conduct and widespread disorder. Stone throwing, police baton charges, street fights, shootings, arson and the destruction of property all became regular features of the dispute. Eventually, the strike collapsed with the complete acceptance on the part of the workers of the terms laid down by the shipowners, which included recognition of the Free Labour Exchange. ⁴¹ ‘The dockers’, George A. Law wrote years later,

have found their Waterloo in the strike of Hull and, undoubtedly, the coercive tactics of the ‘New Unionism’ generally have been moderated by the knowledge that, owing to the efficiency to which the Federation Free Labour System has been brought, from 500 to 5,000 men can be mustered, fully equipped with beds, bedding, cooking utensils, gear, &c., from the central stores in London, and dispatched to any district where their services may be required at a few hours’ notice. ⁴²

Subcontracting Strikebreaking

‘Bodies of organized strike-breakers multiplied by the dozen’, trade union leader Ben Tillett wrote in his memoirs, going on to say:

Hundreds of thousands of pounds were poured into them. Ships were commissioned as blacklegs depots. The poorest scum of the slums were enlisted and the offscourings of the gaols gathered in. The Shipping Federation was formed. Trade Union wrecking and strikebreaking became almost a science. ⁴³

On the waterfront, myriad organizations, such as the Amalgamated Seamen’s and Tradesmen’s Union, the International Federation of Stewards, the London Seamen’s Mutual Protection Society, the Vigilance Association and others, had played a role in strikebreaking since the early 1880s and apparently continued to operate until the early twentieth century. ⁴⁴ In 1891, the Executive Council of the Shipping Federation approved the formation of free labour associations in Southampton and other principal shipping districts, and was also prepared to consider benefit schemes for seamen, dockers and others connected with the already established registry offices. ⁴⁵ Two years later, the Shipping Federation sponsored the reorganization of the East End underworld of labour, recruiting agents into the National Free Labour Association (NFLA). In addition to legal vulnerabilities, the shipowners recognized that the main difficulties associated with countering the tactics of New Unionism lay in sympathetic strike action. Therefore, from 1891, the shipowners began to support the establishment of inter-sectorial partnerships with the aim of founding a national strikebreaking agency. ⁴⁶ The formation of the NFLA under the leadership of the self-styled ‘King of Scabs’, William Collison, was essentially the outcome of this initiative.

Constructed around the network of ‘free labour exchanges’, which were usually administered by retired police detective inspectors, the association would act as the main commercial conduit for supplying blackleg labour to British industries up until the First World War. ⁴⁷ When a strike broke out, the NFLA supplied and transported workers who had registered at its offices and signed the Free Labour pledge. Whenever picketing was anticipated or called for, a ‘guard of special emergency’ was employed to protect the replacement workers during their journey to the strike area and some limited medical assistance was also provided. A team of reporters, a photographer and a solicitor accompanied the imported labour in case legal action would be necessary at a later date. The employers had to guarantee housing, food and protection. ⁴⁸

While in the 1890s the NFLA was engaged for the most part on the waterfront, in the early years of the new century, its anti-labour services were hired by railway companies. Most of the disputes in which the agency supplied free labour were small, although in a number of cases they had far-reaching consequences. Certainly, Collison, who claimed that in 20 years the NFLA fought ‘no less than six hundred and eighty-two battles with aggressive Trade Unions’, ⁴⁹ recognized that violence was at the heart of the strikebreaking business:

In the North-East Coast Shipsmiths’ Strike, a certain Councillor named Summerbell, who afterwards became M.P. for Sunderland, gave notice to move in the Council, that police protection should be withdrawn from the Free Labourers, To this threat I at once replied that if the Council denied us protection in the exercise of our legal and moral right to work, I would send for our Emergency men, arm them, and meet organized violence with organized violence. ⁵⁰

By the end of the century, the shipowners, together with the Employers’ Federation of Engineering Associations, the London Association of Engineering Employers, the National Association of Master Builders and the South Metropolitan Gas Company, aware of the NFLA’s difficulties in coping with large-scale strikes, supported the formation of the Free Labour Protection Association (FLPA). The primary purpose of this organization was ‘to test systematically the efficiency, or otherwise, of the existing laws for the protection of Non-Unionists’. ⁵² Although the new body was not an out-and-out strikebreaking organization, it was said to have its own police for the protection of blackleg labour, who could be sent anywhere at only a few hours’ notice and sworn in as special constables. Former Metropolitan Police officers and army veterans formed the ranks of this force. ‘These men’, the Secretary of the FLPA, Fredrick Millar, stated before the Royal Commission in 1906, ‘happen to be big, strong, powerful fellows and their presence is quite sufficient to ensure the men getting about without discomfort’. ⁵³

In addition to the NFLA and the FLPA, other anti-labour organizations emerged during this period, including the Provincial Free Labour Association, the Lancashire, Yorkshire and Midlands Independent Labour Association, the Plymouth and District Free Labour Association, and the Association of Non-Unionists, the latter primarily serving the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. ⁵⁴ The rise of organizations for the protection and advancement of employers’ interests, whether by functioning as ‘yellow’ unions or as commercial suppliers of blackleg labour, testified to the increasing professionalization of strikebreaking services. This thrust towards the contracting out of anti-labour provisions played an important role in the employers’ manoeuvres to split labour markets, generate divisions among workers and safeguard the laissez-faire freedom of contract.

‘A State of Defensive Preparation’, 1906–1910 ⁵⁵

The Liberal landslide in the General Election of 1906, which attested to the increased parliamentary strength of Labour, produced a climate of industrial relations that was more favourable to trade unionism and attempts to improve the conditions of maritime labour by legislation. The shipowners’ response to the growing pressure of industrial democratization betrayed their outright authoritarian reflexes and they went to the extreme length of threatening a private solution to the ‘labour problem’.

From its early years, the strikebreaking machinery of the Shipping Federation had been bolstered by a series of judicial decisions that undermined statutory recognition of the trade unions, as embodied in the legislative acts of 1871 and 1875. With setbacks such as wide application of the principle of Lumley v Gye (1853) to trade disputes, the decision in J. Lyons & Sons v Wilkins (1899), which virtually outlawed any form of picketing, and the liability of unions established by the Taff Vale case (1901), trade union activity was severely impaired. The passage of the Trade Disputes Act (TDA) of 1906 reversed this cycle of judicial intervention and protected trade unions from civil and criminal proceedings. ⁵⁶

With the passing of the TDA, the shipowners’ desire for industrial self-defence gained a new sense of urgency. The anti-unionism of American employers and their vast reliance on strikebreaking agencies, private police and labour espionage became a possible model for overcoming the constraints imposed on strikebreaking by the Liberal government’s assertion of neutrality in labour disputes. ‘If things go on as they seem to be shaping up’, stated Cuthbert Laws, the new General Manager of the Shipping Federation, in an interview with the Daily Mail, ‘we in this country may be compelled in our own defence, from the sheer necessity of the case, to form some such force as the Pinkerton police in America’. ⁵⁷

A matter of grave concern – at least for the shipowners – was section 2 of the Trade Disputes Act, which in lieu of the provisions of section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection Act of 1875, provided for the right to picket for peaceful persuasion. The Belfast dock strike of 1907 appeared to justify their disquiet. In the Annual Report of the Central Labour Office, the General Labour Superintendent, E. G. Irvine, declared:

In all my experience I have never seen a strike conducted with such violent and venomous methods as those employed by the Union at Belfast, and it is very evident that unless this new Act is considerably modified and the local authorities exhibit more energy and determination at the beginning of those disputes by a just and firm administration of the law, our strike will become much more difficult and costly than in the past. ⁵⁸

Between 1908 and 1909, the Shipping Federation’s structure was again put under pressure in the Irish Sea by the dissemination of James Larkin’s appeal for militant action. During the summer of 1908, the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) dockers employed by the City of Cork Steam Packet Company refused to work alongside members of the General Labourers Union and insisted that the company discharge them. After the company rebuffed their demands, the carters, checkers, storekeepers and railway chockermen all went out on strike in sympathy with the dockers and refused to handle any cargoes consigned to or carried by the Cork Steam Packet Company and the railway companies. The Shipping Federation dispatched 382 dock labourers, carters and storemen from Liverpool, Hull and Grimsby, together with a supply of foremen, clerks, timekeepers, stewards and cooking staff. The strike then extended to the coal porters, compelling the Shipping Federation to deliver new batches of strike-breakers from different English cities. ⁶⁰ To avoid alienating the general public, who were becoming alarmed at the levels of violence and disorder, the shipowners agreed to negotiate with union delegates. In its November 1908 issue, Fairplay, the shipowners’ official publication, lamented that the opacity of the provisions concerning picketing, which did not establish a rule as to the number of workers who might be placed on picket lines in the exercise of their right to peaceful persuasion, undermined effective policing and left employers helpless to protect their businesses. ⁶¹

Aside from the problem of picketing, the shipowners were aggrieved by increasing government intervention in labour disputes. In Dublin, the carters, at the instigation of Larkin’s newly founded Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), embarked on a violence-marred strike at the end of November 1909. The dockers followed in sympathy. The shipowners applied for assistance from the Shipping Federation, and the Labour Department began to arrange for the transportation of labour replacements. However, the Lord Lieutenant intervened in the dispute and offered to arbitrate between the parties. The Dublin District Committee accordingly requested that the importation of free labourers be postponed. The stalling of negotiations prompted the Shipping Federation to issue a 48-hour ultimatum to the local authorities, after which the importation of labour would not be held back. In the meantime, 1000 blackleg dockers were held in readiness to be dispatched on the Federation depot ship, the Dominion liner Vancouver and a passenger vessel, the Nora Creina. A further request by the Lord Lieutenant to delay labour replacement was deemed untenable, ‘feeling sure that the strike could only be terminated by decisive action’. Before any strike-breakers arrived at the docks, however, a settlement was reached, thus preventing the imagined violent confrontations. ⁶²

The Liberal government’s impartial style of law enforcement, as well as its commitment to formalizing procedures for the resolution of labour disputes through statutory mediation and arbitration, became even more evident during the Newport dock strike of 1910. Houlder Brothers & Co., which had connections with the Shipping Federation, arranged to bring in strike-breakers and made a formal demand for protection. The Watch Committee feared that supplying police or troop protection for the imported workers could result in serious disorder and possibly a labour stoppage in the neighbouring Monmouthshire collieries. On the advice of the Home Office, which had, through the Board of Trade, tried unsuccessfully to mediate a settlement, the Chief Constable refused the firm and its employees protection and threatened to prevent the arrival of imported labour on the docks. At the end of the strike, the Shipping Federation accused the Home Office of refusing to abide by the legal obligation to protect free labourers and of seeking to coerce Houlder Brothers & Co into arbitration. ⁶³

The more conciliatory approach of the Liberal government to labour and the passing of a body of laws regulating the maritime sector diminished the shipowners’ trust in the political authorities. The state’s sanctioning of collective bargaining procedures and any concession to organized labour were perceived by the shipping employers as an assault upon property and contract rights and an incentive to industrial insubordination. All of this undermined their faith in a political culture that unreservedly recognized the state’s monopoly of force and contributed to the emergence of leanings towards the privatization of security.

‘The Labour Question Adopts More and More an International Character’ – The Shipping Federation and Schemes for International Strikebreaking

The international nature of shipping, which led maritime unions in different countries to form alliances, as signalled by the foundation of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITWF), hastened the formulation of similar transnational schemes for anti-labour collaboration and coordination among shipowner federations.

As early as 1898, the Executive Council of the Shipping Federation appointed a special committee to consider the issue of intervention in foreign strikes. The committee made no recommendations as to the desirability of extending the Shipping Federation’s operations abroad, although any member affected by strikes outside Britain could receive assistance. ⁶⁴ The first formal attempt at international collaboration was made by the Chairman of the Verein Hamburger Rheder, Adolf Woermann, in the aftermath of the Hamburg dock strikes of 1896–1897. Woermann requested British shipowners to employ only stevedores from the Labour Office of the Hamburg Federation of Shipowners and Ship Agents. ⁶⁵ At the beginning of the century, and in response to the outbreak of the strikes that had hit continental ports, the leading shipowner associations of Denmark, Holland and France communicated with representatives of the Shipping Federation to gather information on its organization and methods. ⁶⁶ In 1902, the Schutzverein Deutscher Rheder and the Dampskibsreederei Foreningen made an official proposal for cooperation with the Shipping Federation. A subcommittee was appointed by the Executive Council to consider cooperation with foreign employers’ federations and a resolution was passed stating

the time is not yet ripe for close alliance as proposed … but the best consideration of the Federation will always be given to exceptional cases which may arise in this country for which assistance is requested, provided they involve no question of wages. ⁶⁷

In the spring of 1907, consolidation of a militant international labour front, as would materialize during the Sixth International Convention of Transport Workers in Vienna in 1908, prompted the Shipping Federation to consider the formation of an international body of shipowners to deal with ‘the question of labour’. The General Manager, Cuthbert Laws, in endorsing a scheme for cooperation and mutual support between the various shipowners’ organizations of Europe, stated:

The labour question adopts more and more an international character … The unions have for a long time had in their minds the formation of a body so great, so influential, and so far-reaching that the shipowner, if he is not willing to send his ship without profit from one port to another, will be compelled to absolutely surrender to the demands of the seamen’s unions. To prevent the realization of such a state, the shipowners of all countries must also combine. ⁶⁹

The Shipping Federation and the ‘Great Unrest’, 1910–1914

The unprecedented industrial struggle in the years before the outbreak of the war – in concert with the Agadir incident, the constitutional crisis of 1909–1911, the women’s suffrage movement, the escalating battle over Irish Home Rule and the arming of Ulster in the same period – raised fears of political and social disintegration among the propertied upper and middle classes. ⁷³ Amongst the shipowners, the unceasing pattern of agitation and the difficulties in counteracting the new forms of mass protest and mass action increased the already sizeable support for a private response to the growing force of trade unionism and socialism.

After November 1910, rumours of the possibility of an imminent international seamen’s strike had rarely ceased to haunt the shipowners of both Europe and the United States. At the beginning of May 1911, General Manager Cuthbert Laws informed the Executive Council that preparations for an international cessation of work continued with ‘great force’. ⁷⁴ Due to the reduced pool of potential strike-breakers as a result of lower levels of unemployment, the General Purposes Committee warned that ‘the time has now arrived when every shipowner must recognize that he is responsible for doing his part towards creating a supply of seamen’. ⁷⁵ The chief and district offices were urged to maintain a large pool of strike-breakers and to seek police protection. On 10 June, they were further instructed to proceed with ‘provisional arrangements’, which included the engagement of crews on the continent to ease the demand placed on the home supply. Four days later, a strike of seamen was declared at all the principal European and North American ports. ⁷⁶

While on the continent the seamen’s uprising was generally curbed by the employers’ precautionary voluntary concessions, the British ports ‘burst into flames’. ⁷⁷ The strike began in Southampton then spread like wildfire across the country. Among the seamen’s demands were union recognition and preferential employment for union members through abolition of the engagement of seamen in the registry offices of the Shipping Federation.

Almost from the beginning, the combination of tightness in the labour market and sympathetic action revealed cracks in the strikebreaking apparatus of the Shipping Federation. ‘A sufficient body of pickets’, stated a report by the General Purposes Committee, ‘having been got together to overpower the men working upon any particular vessel, a tour of the docks would be made, during which each ship would be visited, and the men employed ordered to cease work. The process was continued, the picket being thus continually reinforced in numbers until the strike became general’. ⁷⁸ In this context, the local authorities were accused of being reluctant to provide sufficient police reinforcements so as to avoid increased charges on the county rates. It was said that after failing to contain the violent picketing at the start of the dispute, the police were forced to confront forms of industrial action that were well beyond their resources. Blame was placed on the Home Office’s pursuance of a policy of impartiality, which appeared to ‘proceed upon the assumption that any attempt of labour replacement was regarded as a provocation’. ⁷⁹

In these conditions, the strikebreaking mechanism of the Shipping Federation was ‘rendered virtually inoperative’, which resulted in the laying up of a substantial amount of tonnage upon indemnity. ⁸⁰ The first ‘general collapse’ of the Shipping Federation occurred in Hull. After weeks of affray between pickets, free labourers and the police, a strike settlement was reached under the auspices of the Board of Trade. ⁸¹ Following this precedent, similar settlements were ratified in other ports. In Liverpool, the demands of the sailors, firemen, stewards and cooks were met without recourse to a strike. Here, the large passenger companies operating at the North End Docks, such as White Star, Cunard and Booth and Canadian Pacific, were not affiliated to the Shipping Federation and therefore were less able to withstand the National Transport Workers’ Federation’s pressure. However, to overcome the resistance of those cargo firms that were affiliated to the Shipping Federation, the seamen remained on strike in solidarity with the porters (dock labourers), thereby preventing the movement of freight through the docks. Work was finally resumed at the beginning of July and a conference between shipowners and the NUDL was held a month later to sanction a permanent settlement – the White Book Agreement – which ratified the establishment of a Conciliation Board and provided for the institution of certain closed shops arrangements. ⁸²

In Cardiff, vessels were successfully manned until the riveters and dry-dock labourers went on strike in mid-July. The arrival of the depot ship Lady Jocelyn and the use of free labourers to unload the steamer Annan led to violence. The extension of the strike was accompanied by attacks against local shipowners’ offices, the burning of a warehouse at the docks, and pitched and running battles between tumultuous crowds and the police. Racial hatred was unleashed at the Chinese workers who had been recruited and crewed in the South Wales ports. Although the world’s largest coal port was brought to a virtual standstill after the trimmers and tippers came out in sympathy, an agreement was reached between the Cardiff Shipowners’ Association and the Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union. The shipowners had conceded. ⁸³ In Manchester, the Shipping Federation was able to send steamers with full blackleg crews until the dockers and then the carters went on strike. ⁸⁴ In London, where the consequences of the port transport workers’ stoppage for the general population were becoming serious, many vessels and approximately 1600 free labourers from various parts of the country were dispatched through the agency of the Chief Office of the Shipping Federation in London and the outports. However, the Lady Jocelyn, with numerous strike-breakers on board ready to unload H. and W. Nelson’s meat-laden vessel, was forbidden by the Home Office and police authorities from entering the docks. ⁸⁵

By the end of summer 1911, the shipowners had secured their control over the regulation of work and ‘freedom of contract’ in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Leith, Dundee and London, at least as far as the hiring of sailors was concerned, although union recognition was still formally denied. Over the following months, the Executive Council attempted to impose new, more stringent disciplinary control over its members and to shuffle its labour staff across districts. ⁸⁶ There was much talk of protecting sailors and firemen while they were being engaged at the Shipping Federation’s registry offices and of organizing their own private security force. A special committee appointed to consider the subject commented:

The committee realized very strongly that the comparative helplessness of employers during the recent strikes of dock labourers was due to the protection of men who were willing to work, who were all the times obtainable by the Federation … If any effective resistance is to be offered to unreasonable demands on the part of Trade Unions – such protection – so long as it is not forthcoming from H.M. Government – must be in the last resort provided by shipowners themselves. The Committee, however, shrink from recommending at this stage a step involving such serious expense as the maintenance of a protective force by shipowners alone. They feel that this is a matter which should properly be dealt with by employers as a whole, and that the object desired might be more effectively achieved by the general support by employers of an organization for supplying protection during labour disputes should be available to any section which is attacked [sic]. ⁸⁷

At the beginning of 1912, the Shipping Federation received a deputation from the Volunteer Police Force (VPF, or Civilian Force), a vigilante group that had been formed in London during the autumn of 1911, in response to the problems posed by the national railway strike. The main aim of the VPF was to assist the police in defending law and order and to protect ‘life or property where attempts are threatened to wreck trains or signal boxes, set fire to warehouses, loot shops, or do other malicious injury to public methods of locomotion, transport or private property without awaiting the initiative of absentee officials’. ⁸⁹ The Executive Committee of the Shipping Federation, after conferring with the Finance Committee, agreed to make a donation of £500 to the VPF, which would be increased to up to £1000 if it developed along the promised lines. ⁹⁰ In a report by the special committee, the decision was said to have been motivated by the fact that

unless we can get some protection other than we can get at present under the Trade Disputes Act, it will be necessary for shipowners and for other employers to constitute a force which will give their men protection when they are willing to work and not allowed to by other influences. We shall have to take that step sooner or later, unless we can get the Trade Disputes Act repealed. ⁹¹

Right from the beginning of the London Transport Strike, the Shipping Federation had favoured the importation of labour. In spite of the decision by the Home Office to forbid the Lady Jocelyn and the 500 labourers on board from entering the Royal Albert Dock, over 2,000 strike-breakers were hurriedly brought into London and housed on board the ships being worked or in sheds ashore. ⁹⁴ Nevertheless, the bar on using depot ships to house the imported labourers consistently increased the need for police protection. As a result, the Shipping Federation decided to request the services of the VPF, ‘whose presence contributed largely towards a feeling of security on the part of the imported men’. ⁹⁵ A report by the General Purposes Committee stated that ‘a determined attack in force by the picket boats was repulsed by the Civilian Force, with casualties on both sides’. ⁹⁶ In the aftermath of these events, the VPF released a statement on its role in the dock strike to the effect that it had assisted the Shipping Federation in the ‘transportation of food supplies for London, protected free labourers from molestation, escorted large bodies of willing workers to the docks, and guarded vessels from damage by strikers, and some detachments have in addition to protection duty, worked hard in discharging cargoes of food’. ⁹⁷ Rumours circulated that the VPF had been armed with revolvers and the resultant public pressure led Cuthbert Laws to deny these rumours in the press, while in the House of Commons the practice of substituting private for public police authority to protect strike-breakers spawned a lively discussion. ⁹⁸

At the end of June, the shipowners, then regrouped under the aegis of the Port of London Authority, remained resolute on breaking the strike. About 3,000 blackleg dockers from various Shipping Federation centres and about 5,000 local free labourers were engaged and sent to the docks together with 300 supervisory staff (stevedores, clerical workers and cooks). ⁹⁹ In addition, a considerable number of ‘old hands were returning to work at some of the wharves’. ¹⁰⁰ On 27 July, the Strike Committee issued a manifesto recommending the immediate resumption of work. The following day, the men unanimously resolved not to resume work, although on the following Monday a certain number of dockers and stevedores gave up and on 30th and 31st July the return to work was general. Months later, reporting on the condition of the strikebreaking apparatus of the Shipping Federation in London, General Labour Superintendent E. G. Irvine wrote:

The reversion to the conditions of taking-on alongside the Employer’s premises and our depots (which existed from 1890–1911) has been most satisfactory for both Free Labourers and Employers, and the constant friction which existed during the few months of 1911 and 1912, when men were selected outside, has practically disappeared. ¹⁰¹

In 1913 and 1914, the labour situation in the ports of Britain continued to be uncertain and tense. Between 1 April 1913 and 31 March 1914, the Shipping Federation supplied labour during five strikes. In Limerick and Galway, the Central Labour Office provided relatively small batches of strike-breakers from Liverpool, while 1,500 men, including crane drivers and tippers, were boarded onto the steamers Paris and Lady Jocelyn and sent to Leith docks. At the end of 1913, during the great Dublin lockout, some shipowners, master carters and timber and coal merchants who had pledged not to employ any of Larkin’s ITGWU members requested the assistance of the Shipping Federation. Over the six months of the dispute, 1,100 men were sent to Dublin on depot ships. The Ella was continually used to transport blackleg labour and stores from Merseyside, while the Paris was used to house them. ¹⁰³

The steamer Paris was also deployed, together with the tug Zealandia, to provide a large crew during the seamen’s dispute in the Bristol Channel at the beginning of 1914. When presenting the Annual Labour Report, E. G. Irvine declared that

the fact that we can send a large number of men with our own vessels fully provisioned for a week or ten days into any port must produce a great deal of moral effect upon union organizations who suddenly discover that their picketing energies are being wasted at railway stations. ¹⁰⁴

Conclusions

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a series of strike waves in Britain, unprecedented in terms of their scale and intensity, prompted the formation of employer associations largely devoted to organizing strikebreaking and replacement work activities. Although historians have long recognized that labour replacement was an important method for defeating strikes and undermining trade unionism, its organizational and operational features have so far not been fully discussed. The case of the Shipping Federation, as analysed in this article, highlights the ubiquity of strikebreaking practices in a strategic economic sector like shipping. Even though the recruitment and importing of strike replacements was not confined to the waterfront, there is no denying that they attained their most systematically brutal and uncompromising forms there. Over a span of 20 years, the Labour Department of the Shipping Federation engaged hundreds of thousands of free labourers, an unquantifiable number of whom provided strikebreaking services to its associates. This article has detailed the techniques and strategies that the shipowners employed to break strikes and protect their control over hiring procedures and wages from the interference of waterfront unions at both the national and international levels.

The article has shown the determination of shipowners to use violence as a means to counteract the advance of industrial democracy and hence protect the safety of the whole system of social and economic relations upon which national and vested interests rested. This propensity to violent conduct challenges the traditional assumption that British employers were generally less aggressive towards organized labour and more disposed to compromise than their continental counterparts. ¹⁰⁶ It has, instead, been demonstrated that the shipping companies were inclined to consider using private and, in certain cases, illegal instruments to smash the unions and violate workers’ civil liberties. In particular, in response to the increased pressure on parliament from labour to institute a programme of welfare legislation and a distrust in the government’s willingness or ability to protect private corporate interests, the associates of the Shipping Federation time and again discussed in-house security plans and the employment of private guards. The legal implications and costs associated with private law enforcement might have suggested a more conservative course of action.

Nonetheless, shipowners were willing to contract out security services to private groups. For instance, perceived deficiencies in law enforcement agencies during the Great Unrest resulted in the employment of a quasi-militarily organized body, the Volunteer Police Force. This practice exposed the vigilante orientations of shipowners in their quest for industrial and social discipline and explicitly called into question the state’s monopoly of violence. The delegation of protection tasks to commercial strikebreaking agencies and private police (or parapolice) forces was an attempt to supplant or, at the very least, supplement public policing and transfer responsibility for the protection of assets and production continuity to corporate entities. However, the ability of the state to protect its formal boundaries against this move – in good part assisted by the renewed congruence of state security and corporate interests in the midst of fears of an imminent general labour stoppage and aggravation of international relations – stemmed the incipient development of vigilante propensities among shipowners and other militant employers’ associations fighting organized labour. Pressure in favour of private (or semi-private) security protection remained a latent and persistent threat up to the outbreak of the war and re-emerged with different emphases during the volatile post-war years. ¹⁰⁷