INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1920
The thirty years that have elapsed since 1890, down to which date we brought the first edition of this book, have been momentous in the history of British Trade Unionism. The Trade Union Movement, which then included scarcely 20 per cent of the adult male manual-working wage-earners, now includes over 60 per cent. Its legal and constitutional status, which was then indefinite and precarious, has now been explicitly defined and embodied in precise and absolutely expressed statutes. Its internal organisation has been, in many cases, officially adopted as part of the machinery of public administration. Most important of all, it has equipped itself with an entirely new political organisation, extending throughout the whole of Great Britain, inspired by large ideas embodied in a comprehensive programme of Social Reconstruction, which has already achieved the position of "His Majesty's Opposition" and now makes a bid for that of "His Majesty's Government." So great an advance within a single generation makes the historical account of Trade Union development down to 1920 equivalent to a new book.
We have taken the opportunity to revise, and at some points to amplify, our description of the origin and early struggles of Trade Unionism in this country. We have naturally examined the new material that has been made accessible during the past quarter of a century, in order to incorporate in our work whatever has thus been added to public knowledge. But we have not found it necessary to make any but trifling changes in our original interpretation of the historical development. The Home Office papers are now available in the Public Record Office for the troubled period at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and these, together with the researches of Professor George Unwin, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Professor Graham Wallas, Mr. Mark Hovell, and Mr. M. Beer, have enabled us both to verify and to amplify our statements at certain points. For the recent history of Trade Unionism we have found most useful the collections and knowledge of the Labour Research Department, established in 1913; and we gratefully acknowledge the assistance in facts, suggestions, and criticisms that we have had from Mr. G. D. H. Cole and Mr. R. Page Arnot. We owe thanks, also, to Miss Ivy Schmidt for unwearied assistance in research.
The reader must not expect to find, in this historical volume, either an analysis of Trade Union organisation, policy, and methods, or any judgement upon the validity of its assumptions, its economic achievements, or its limitations. On these things we have written at great length, and very explicitly, in our Industrial Democracy, and in other books described in the pages at the end of this volume, to which we must refer those desirous of knowing whether the Trade Unionism of which we now write merely the story is a good or a bad element in industry and in the State.
SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.
Westminster,
January 1920.