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From Industrial Serf to Wage-labourer: The 1937 Apprentice Revolt in Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Alan McKinlay
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Since the publication of Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital in 1974, an increasing number of social historians have turned their attention towards the workplace as a major site of class struggle. In particular, social historians have focussed on the unequal struggle between employers and craft-workers to determine patterns of work organisation and the balance of power in the labour market. However, despite the growth of interest in the historical relationship between the division of labour, trade unionism and business strategy, no academic work has yet considered the development of apprenticeship in the post-1914 period.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 2 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1986

Footnotes

*

My appreciation and thanks for the advice and criticism of J. Melling. W. Knox, R. Martin and the editors of this journal. All dates cited refer to the year 1937, unless otherwise specified.

References

1 Braverman, H., Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974);CrossRefGoogle Scholar see inter alia Price, R., Masters, Unions and Men: Work Control in Building and the Rise of Labour 1830–1914 (Cambridge, 1980);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Montgomery, D., Workers' Control in America (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

2 For apprenticeship in the pre-1914 period see More, Ch., Skill and the English Working Class, 1870–1914 (London, 1980);Google Scholar Knox, W., “British Apprenticeship 1800–1914” (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh University, 1980).Google Scholar

3 See Burgess, K., The Challenge of Labour: Shaping British Society 1850–1930 (London, 1980).Google Scholar

11 Knox, , “Apprenticeship and Deskilling in Nineteenth Century Britain”, op. cit., p. 19.Google Scholar

12 Knox, W., ‘“Down with Lloyd George’: The apprentices strike of 1912” in: Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, No 19 (1984), p. 27.Google Scholar

13 Hinton, J., The First Shop Stewards' Movement (London, 1973), pp. 95–98;Google Scholar Greenwood, W., Love on the Dole (Harmondsworth, 1981), pp. 48–53, 70–75.Google Scholar

14 Ministry of Labour, Report of an Enquiry into Apprenticeship and Training for the Skilled Occupations in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, VI (1928), pp. 7, 30, 39.Google Scholar

15 Ibid, pp. 10, 13, 57.

16 Position of Apprentices: Statement of Association Members, February 1921, Clyde Shipbuilders' Association Papers, Strathclyde Regional Archives, Glasgow, TD 241/13/20.

17 Amalgamated Engineering Union, Glasgow District Committee, “Engineering Mirror”, Spring 1934, p. 1, Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, Glasgow.Google Scholar

18 Stephen, F. J. to Hyde, R., Industrial Welfare Society, 16 02 1925,Google Scholar Personal Letter Book, University of Glasgow Deposit 4/3/13. Notwithstanding Stephen's express commitment to welfare they did not formalise their paternalism through the use of traditional indentured apprenticeships: “It has been our practice here for some considerable time to leave our apprentices free to take their departure from our employment if and when they desire to do so, and we ourselves are equally free to dismiss them for bad conduct or other good reasons”. Stephens Captain Allen, 5 February 1929, Company Letter Book, ibid., 4/1/75.

19 Stephens, to Fairfields, , 1 04 1926, Company Letter Book, 4/1/72.Google Scholar

20 Kibblewhite, E., “The Impact of Unemployment on the Development of Trade Unions in Scotland 1918–39: Some Aspects” (Ph.D. thesis, Aberdeen University, 1979), p. 171;Google Scholar McLaine, , New Views on Apprenticeship, op. cit., p. 56, for the changing entrance requirements of the engineering union for apprentices.Google Scholar

21 AEU, Glasgow District Committee, 7 12 1929.Google Scholar

22 AEU Glasgow, Report of Organising Sub-Committee, December 1934; similarly Boilermakers' Society, Monthly Report, September 1935, p. 18.

23 AEU, Executive Council, Report of Sub-Committee considering Industrial Section, 29 May 1926, Modern Records Centre, Warwick University, Coventry; Gollan, J., Youth in British Industry: A survey of labour conditions to-day (London, 1937), pp. 67–68.Google Scholar

24 The maximum rates for apprentices were:

Report of Special Sub-Committee Considering Position of Apprentices, March 1921, Clyde Shipbuilders' Association Papers, TD 241/12/144. The report stressed that firms were free to set lower rates if local labour markets were favourable.

25 Tyne Shipbuilders' Association to Clyde Shipbuilders' Association, April 1921, Ibid.

26 NWETEA Minutes, 25 August 1936, Scottish Engineering Employers' Federation, Glasgow.

27 More, , Skill and the English Working Class, op. cit., pp. 71–74.Google Scholar

28 Report of an Enquiry into Apprenticeship and Training, op. cit., VI, p. 20: in 1925 an engineering apprenticeship typically lasted 5.7 years. It is certain that depression considerably lengthened the average apprenticeship. In June 1937 a Glasgow AEU branch received an application for apprentice membership from a man aged twenty-five years and one month, AEU Executive Council, 15 June.Google Scholar

29 Clyde Apprentices' Committee, “Strike! Clydeside Apprentices' Committee, full story” (Glasgow, 1937), p. 1.Google Scholar

30 Chief Conciliation Officer Glasgow, Weekly Report, 3 September 1936, Ministry of Labour Papers 10/76, Public Record Office, London (hereafter CCO Report).

31 NWETA, Shipyard Apprentice Wages, June: a fifth-year Fairfields engineering apprentice received 21/6d, compared to 29/10d earned by joiners, blacksmiths and boilermakers.

32 CCO Report, 3 September 1936.

33 AEU, Glasgow District Committee, 27 January.

34 Saville, J., “May Day 1937”, in: Essays in Labour History, ed. by Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (London, 1977), p. 49.Google Scholar

35 Oral-history transcripts of Clydeside Apprentices' Strike (Interviews 1984) “Watson”, “Maitland”, “Maley”, in the possession of the present author; Francis, H., Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War (London, 1984), for a vivid description of the forms of support the British working class extended to Republican Spain.Google Scholar

36 Jupp, J., The Radical Left in Britain 1931–41 (London, 1982), pp. 77–78, 100–02, for the “popular front” and radical youth organisations.Google Scholar

37 “Watson”, oral-history transcripts.

38 CCO Report, 24 March.

39 Oral-history transcripts of National Minority Movement, “Cowe”; Mr Cowe was the Communist Party's Industrial Organiser in West Scotland, 1937–38.

40 Clyde Apprentices' Committee, “Strike!”, op. cit., p. 4; CCO Report, 24 March.

41 NWETEA, telephone message to EEF, 5 April;, EEF Microfilm Accession (1937)A(7)138, Modern Records Centre. This accession is currently being re-catalogued; all subsequent messages etc. to EEF bear the same reference.

42 Wm. Simon and Co., telephone message to NWETEA, 31 March.

43 NWETEA, Apprentice Strike, March 1937, for examples.

44 NWETEA Minutes, 5 April.

45 NWETEA, telephone message to EEF, 6 April.

46 CCO Report, 7 April.

47 “Johnston”, oral-history transcripts; W. Maitland described these first delegate meetings as “like a section football crowd crammed into a small room. You couldn't put your hands in your pocket”.

48 Albion Motors, telephone message to NWETEA, 8 April, for example.

49 CCO Report, 9 April.

50 All the veterans of the strike interviewed were involved in at least one of these diversions; one recalled that for the duration of the strike a boxing gym offered free tuition to apprentices.

51 AEU, Executive Council, 13 April, Clark.

52 Croucher, R., Engineers At War (London, 1982), pp. 28–33, for examples of significant strikes which the AEU failed to support or actively discouraged during this period.Google Scholar

53 AEU, Executive Council, 17 and 18 March 1936, 19 January; Parker, R., “British Rearmament 1936–39: Treasury, trade unions and skilled labour”, in: English Historical Review, XCVI (1981), for discussion of these issues.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 AEU, Executive Council, 13 April, Tanner.

55 AEU, Executive Council, 13, 20 and 21 April.

56 NWETEA, Apprentices' Strike: Current Position, 9 April.

57 AEU, Executive Council, 13 April.

58 The Bulletin, 7 April.

59 NWETEA, Notes of Informal Meeting with Unions, 8 April,; NWETEA Minutes, 12 April.

60 Challenge (YCL), 8 April.

61 Mayor, J. B., telephone message to NWETEA, 9 04.Google Scholar

62 AEU Glasgow, Report of Special Meeting of Shop Stewards, 11 April. Emphasis original.

63 AEU, Glasgow District Committee, 9 May.

64 NWETEA, Returns: One Day Strike, 16 April.

65 NWETEA to EEF, One Day Strike, 16 April.

66 AEU, Divisional Organiser, Quarterly Report, June; Gollan, , Youth in British Industry, op. cit., p. 315Google Scholar; Croucher, , Engineers At War, op. cit., p. 52Google Scholar.

67 NWETEA, Apprentices: Urgent Memo, 18 April.

68 Clyde Shipbuilders' Association, Minutes, 22 April; by this date only 209 apprentices – “mostly pieceworking apprentices” – had returned to work.

69 NWETEA to EEF, Memo, 4 May; CCO Report, 4 May.

70 NWETEA Minutes, 21 April.

71 Challenge, 15 June; W. Maitland was threatened with expulsion from the AEU for his part in maintaining the apprentice committee; see AEU, Executive Council, 21 and 28 October.

72 AEU, National Committee, June, p. 209.

73 Croucher, , Engineers At War, p. 54.Google Scholar

74 Carr, F., “Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry, 1914–39”(Ph.D. thesis, Warwick University, 1978), pp. 439–40.Google Scholar

75 Challenge, 14 October.

76 EEF, Circular Letter to Regional Associations. 28 October. pp. 1–2.

77 Ibid., p. 2.

78 NWETEA Minutes, 28 October.

79 AEU, Executive Council, 16 November 1937, Little.

80 CCO, Memo, November, pp. 1–2, Ministry of Labour Papers 10/80; EEF, Circular Letter to Regional Associations, 8 November; Mortimer, J., History of the Boilermakers' Society, II: 1906–1939 (London, 1982), pp. 288–89, for similar agreement between shipbuilding unions and employers.Google Scholar

81 Challenge, 8 April, cited in Croucher, , Engineers At War, p. 46.Google Scholar