On a cool morning in December, Johnella LaRose stands in a 2-acre field in east Oakland, overseeing a group of volunteers preparing a section of this land that the Sogorea Te Land Trust stewards for the arrival of a shipping container. LaRose is dressed to work, wearing jeans and boots that look broken in.
The container will serve as storage for farming equipment, she says, and in case of a natural disaster, as a safe shelter for people to gather, sleep, and access resources.
LaRose is co-founder of the Sogorea Te Land Trust, an intertribal women-led organization that is in the final stages of securing nonprofit status. It’s working to acquire access—and ownership—to land in the Bay Area, where Ohlone people have lived for centuries.
Label for buckwheat in the hugel raised bed where the Sogorea Te Land Trust grows plants native to the region. Photo by Deonna Anderson
The goal, says LaRose, is to establish a land base for the Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone people, whose ancestral territory includes cities in the East Bay. “The land gives us everything that we need in order to survive,” says Corrina Gould, a Lisjan Ohlone leader and the other co-founder of the land trust. “That’s how people lived for thousands of years on our land and other Indigenous people’s land. … You work with the land so that it can continue to provide, but that you honor that relationship by not taking too much.”
Gould says Sogorea Te plans to steward the lands it has in a way that honors it.
Sogorea Te got access to the land in east Oakland in 2017 through a partnership with Planting Justice, a local grassroots organization that owns the property and uses it to house a nursery of edible tree crops for purchase by community members and others online. The land is also a place where Planting Justice’s reentry work takes place, because the nursery is staffed mostly by people who were formerly incarcerated.
Planting Justice plans to give the deed on the parcel to Sogorea Te—at no cost—in the future. And the two organizations plan to continue to work on the land together. In the future, Sogorea Te intends to purchase land by partnering with organizations who own land and are willing to transfer ownership.
LaRose hopes the lands Sogorea Te stewards will facilitate healing and build resiliency for Ohlone people. When she imagines the purpose the shipping container could serve, for example, LaRose thinks about Hurricane Katrina and its disproportionate impacts on poor and Black communities in New Orleans.
The Trust’s vision for this particular plot of land is to create an Indigenous cultural site.
As LaRose talks about her hopes, the volunteers build the foundation for the 5,000-pound shipping container. So far, volunteers have dug down 4 inches, removed the dirt, leveled it out, and started hauling gravel to fill in the hole. Once the container arrives, they’ll build it out with a kitchen, deck, and solar panels.
The 2-acre parcel where LaRose and volunteers are working is in the Sobrante Park neighborhood of east Oakland, which has little access to public transportation and grocery stores. It is surrounded by dense rows of apartments and houses. Train whistles and freeway noise can be heard from where LaRose and the volunteers are working.
Sage—called “miriyan” in the Ohlone language—grows in the hugel raised bed. Photo by Deonna Anderson
Near the back fence of the plot runs San Leandro Creek—renamed with its Ohlone name, Lisjan Creek, by the trust. Previous work parties have installed a hugel (short for “Hügelkultur”) raised bed where plants native to the region are growing. A no-till mound of soil and wood chips, Sogorea Te’s hugel has sage, wild onion, and milk weed, each labeled with their Ohlone name—miriyan, ‘uuner, and šiska. The plants are used for ceremony and medicine.
The trust’s vision for this particular plot of land is to create an Indigenous cultural site with a traditional arbor 9- to 15-feet tall, built out of redwoods. The arbor will be a place for ceremony that Ohlone people can pass on to future generations.
Gould says that the Ohlone never lost their connection to the land.
“We’ve been here since the beginning of time, so there continues to be a deep connection to land and how we relate on a daily basis has changed because of colonization,” she says. “It’s really been my generation that’s been able to come out and begin to speak about these horrific issues and to talk truth to history.”
Sogorea Te comes from a history of Ohlone people working to gain recognition and access to land in the Bay Area. The name Sogorea Te is the Ohlone name of a site in Vallejo, California, where a cultural easement fight took place in 2011. LaRose and Gould’s first organization, Indian People Organizing for Change, was involved in reoccupying the territorial site for 109 days. During that time, together with the Yocha Dehe and Cortina tribes, they recreated a village site with a sacred fire and stopped development of a sacred site along the Carquinez Strait.
Owned by the nonprofit Planting Justice the east Oakland plant nursery is planned to be transferred to the Sogorea Te Land Trust once the mortgage is paid in full. Photo by Deonna Anderson
The occupation led to the first cultural easement agreement among a city, a park district, and a federally recognized tribe. Gould says the easement allowed the tribe to have the same rights to that land as the other entities.
LaRose and Gould say they began Indian People Organizing for Change in 1999 to address issues relevant to their community, including homelessness and protection of sacred Indigenous sites. All of these issues, they say, are rooted in the same problem: dispossession from their people’s ancestral lands.
The issue of land return is particularly important for the Ohlone people who for centuries have had no land base and have been politically and economically marginalized. Today, the Ohlone are not on the list of 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States.
The idea behind establishing a land trust was for these Indigenous women to create a land base for their community.
Ohlone life changed dramatically when Spanish military and civilians began to encroach on the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1700s.
Colonizers raped and forced Ohlone people into labor, brought diseases such as small pox and measles, and dispossessed Ohlone people of their lands.
Ohlone people survived and continued to live in that region, which today is one of the densest and most expensive metro areas in the U.S.
In 2015, LaRose and Gould established Sogorea Te Land Trust. It was another step in the work they’d already been doing to restore cultural access to ancestral lands.
Planting Justice and Sogorea Te Land Trust staff use this work area to store equipment sell plants and conduct portions of trainings. Photo by Deonna Anderson
Gould says they hope the land trust will allow Ohlone people for generations to come to reengage the land in the way that it was and has been done traditionally. That looks like bringing back traditional songs, dances, and ceremonies back to the land “and to try to create a balance.”
The idea behind establishing a land trust, which was sparked after Gould attended a meeting with existing Native-led land trusts in 2012, was for these Indigenous women to create a land base for their community.
“When you follow the rules, man, you’re not going to get anywhere,” LaRose said. “You really just have to really be brave and just put yourself out there and say, ‘This is what’s going to happen. This is what we’re going to do.’”
So far, the largest lot of land that Sogorea Te has access to is the quarter-acre in east Oakland.
The organization Planting Justice purchased that plot in the fall of 2015 as an additional location for its food justice work, with a low-interest loan from the Northern California Community Loan Fund and individual donations from community members. The nonprofit already owned land elsewhere in the East Bay.
Volunteers from the group Manhood Embodied moved and leveled gravel at the plant nursery stewarded by Sogorea Te Land Trust in east Oakland. Photo by Deonna Anderson
In November 2016, its founders Gavin Raders and Haleh Zandi drove North Dakota to join the #NODAPL protests in Standing Rock. On their way back to the Bay Area, they started thinking about their relationship to the land and their role in the Indigenous people in their own community.
Raders said both he and Zandi were aware of the history of colonization and genocide that happened to Indigenous people in California. But during their conversations with Indigenous elders, they began to ask themselves what it meant for Ohlone people to not be federally recognized and have no land base.
“I’m not really sure how this is going to look, but we want to be able to figure out how to give the land back to Indigenous people,” Raders remembers thinking.
Diane Williams, a friend of Sogorea Te’s founders who worked at Planting Justice, connected the two organizations in hopes that they’d work together in some capacity.
After numerous months, members of the groups, including LaRose, Gould, and Raders, finally met in August 2017 and officially started their partnership in fall 2017.
Trichostema grows in the back section of the land shared by Sogorea Te Land Trust and Planting Justice in east Oakland. Photo by Deonna Anderson
At that meeting, Sogorea Te learned that Planting Justice still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars on the mortgage but that when it was paid off, the organization wanted to sign the title over to the land trust, “which was a real surprise to us,” LaRose says.
“We want to be able to figure out how to give the land back to Indigenous people.”
That’s the first piece of land that the land trust was given to steward, with a verbal agreement between the organizations that they’d share it and work in cooperation with one another.
“It’s clearly understood by the Planting Justice board and the Sogorea Te Land Trust that this is a partnership that’s going to continue,” says Raders, a Planting Justice co-founder, who notes that his organization is committed to transfer the land to Sogorea Te ownership no matter how long it takes to pay off the mortgage. From there, the trust will establish a lease agreement with the organization so it can still have operations on the 2-acre parcel.
Planting Justice considered putting a cultural (or conservation) easement on the site, one that the Land Trust would manage, but it couldn’t because it is still paying off the mortgage of the land. Raders said the mortgage holders did not allow Planting Justice to move forward with an easement in case the mortgage did not get paid in full.
“Conservation easements last forever, no matter who owns the property in the future so those restrictions still run with the land,” said Sylvia Bates, director of Standards & Educational Services at the Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization.
Johnella Larose points out the soap root plant that grows in the hugel raised bed. Photo by Deonna Anderson
In a scenario where an entity owns or is stewarding land with a conservation easement, the organization is obligated to make sure those restrictions stay in place. The mortgage holders did not want to deal with that possibility.
LaRose and Gould say that they’re figuring it out as they go along and are open to all the possibilities of acquiring land. “I don’t think that there’s one way that we’re looking at it,” Gould says. “We’re just trying to figure out, ‘how do we do that?’ and we’re bringing people along with us.”
In addition to the land in east Oakland, the trust stewards five plots of land throughout the Bay Area where they grow native plants and gather for ceremony.
Sogorea Te is also now in talks with an organization about land in Sonoma County. And in March, LaRose and Gould caught wind of a couple of vacant lots in Oakland that they might want to take into their care.
The organization doesn’t yet own any of these parcels, but they hope to soon.
Passionfruit grows along a section of the back fence on the land shared by Sogorea Te Land Trust and Planting Justice. Photo by Deonna Anderson.
In partnership, Planting Justice and Sogorea Te continue to work on the land together, as Planting Justice pays off the mortgage on the 2 acres in east Oakland and Sogorea Te raises funds to buy other parcels in the east Bay. Planting Justice plans to give the land to Sogorea Te once the mortgage is paid off. From there, Planting Justice will continue to operate on the land with a lease from the land trust.
LaRose said she’d really like someone with the resources to come in and give them the money to pay off the mortgage in full.
“Weirder things have happened,” she said.
One way Sogorea Te is raising funds is through the Shuumi Land Tax, a tax that the land trust has been implementing since 2016. It’s a voluntary tax for people who live on Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone land, encompassing two dozen cities that make up most of the East Bay.
It was modeled after the Honor Tax that the Wiyot people started in Humboldt County, California. And there are other groups running similar taxes, like Real Rent, which encourages Seattleites to make rent payment to the Duwamish Tribe.
The Shuumi Tax is based on how many rooms people have in their home and whether they rent or own. As the value of a person’s home—or of rental costs—increase, so does the tax.
“But a lot of people give a lot more money. A lot more money but it’s this idea that you’re really paying for the privilege of living on Ohlone land, occupied land,” LaRose said. “It’s like reparations of some sort.”
Bins of sage and other plants in the back quarter-acre of a plant nursery stewarded by Sogorea Te Land Trust. Photo by Deonna Anderson
In 2018, KALW reported that the land trust received $80,000 from 800 contributions in the previous year.
The tax funds have been used for staff, office costs, and supplies. And in the future, they will be used to buy and maintain lands that are under the land trust’s stewardship.
Back at the Planting Justice site, two hours have gone by and the volunteers’ work is almost done for the day. Their last big task begins when the contractor brings another truckful of gravel. Volunteers spread out this new load until it’s level.
LaRose says volunteers and other community members are always thanking her and the Sogorea Te team for doing this work.
“But I’m like, ‘we have to do it.’ It’s not like we want to do it,” she said. “We have to do it.”
DEONNA ANDERSONis a freelance digital and radio reporter and a former Surdna reporting fellow for YES!
Editor’s note: We are no Marxists, but we find it important to look at history from the perspective of the usual people, the peasants, and the poor, since liberal historians tend to follow the narrative of endless progress and neglect all the violence and injustice this “progress” was and is based on.
How 16th century reformers fought privatization of land and capitalist agriculture
Featured image: A 16th Century printing press. Commonwealth views were widely disseminated in books, pamphlets and broadsides.
Capital versus Commons is a series of articles on early capitalism and agriculture in England. It was previously titled ‘Robbing the Soil.’
PART ONE discussed the central role of shared property and common rights to resources in pre-capitalist agriculture. In the 1400s that system began to break down, beginning the transition from feudalism to capitalism
PART TWO discussed the processes known as ‘enclosure.’ In the late 1400s, landlords began evicting small tenant farmers to increase profits, often by creating large sheep farms. In the 1530s that change was intensified when Henry VIII seized the church’s vast lands and sold them to investors who raised rents and imposed shorter leases. The twin transformations that Marx called primitive accumulation — stolen land becoming capital and landless producers becoming wage workers — were well underway when thousands of peasants rebelled against the changes in 1549.
PART THREEdiscusses the protestant reformers who opposed the growing drive for privatization of land in the mid-1500s.
by Ian Angus
“I must needs threaten everlasting damnation unto them, whether they be gentlemen or whatsoever they be, which never cease to join house to house, and land to land, as though they alone ought to purchase and inhabit the earth.”—Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1550[1]
“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”—Karl Marx, 1867[2]
The privatization of land has been justly described as “perhaps the weirdest of all undertakings of our ancestors.”[3]
Enclosure — the transformation of common resources into private property — was a fundamental feature of the rise of capitalism in early modern England. It involved not only new ways of using the land, but also, as both cause and effect, new ways of thinking about it.
The idea that individuals could claim exclusive ownership of parts of nature on which all humans depend was very weird indeed. Contrary to the oft-expressed view that greed is inherent in human nature, the shift from commons-based to private-profit-based farming was not accepted easily — in fact, it was denounced and resisted as an assault of the laws of God and the needs of humanity.
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Henry VIII died in 1547, succeeded as king by Edward VI, then only nine years old. For the next six years, actual political power rested with a regency council, headed by the Duke of Somerset until 1549, and by the Duke of Northumberland from late 1549 until Edward’s death in 1553.
Somerset and Northumberland were strong protestants who wanted the English church to move farther from catholic doctrine and practices than Henry had allowed. To promote that, the law outlawing heresy was repealed and censorship was relaxed, beginning a period that has been called “the first great era in the history of English public discussion.”[4]
Liberal protestants took advantage of that opening to campaign vigorously, not just for religious reform, but against sin and corruption in society at large, particularly the erosion of traditional economic values. Their powerful condemnations of greedy landlords and merchants circulated both as books and sermons addressed to the wealthy, and as inexpensive pamphlets and broadsides that were sold in city streets.
They don’t seem to have acted as an organized group, but their speeches and writings clearly reveal the presence of a strong current of anti-capitalist opinion in England in the mid-1500s. Because they focused on the common weal — common good — historians have labelled them the commonwealth men.
Cormorants and greedy gulls
R.H. Tawney’s 1926 book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism remains the best account of the complex connections between social and religious criticism in Tudor England.
“It was an age in which the popular hatred of the encloser and the engrosser found a natural ally in religious sentiment, schooled, as it was, in a tradition which had taught that the greed of gain was a deadly sin, and that the plea of economic self-interest did not mitigate the verdict, but aggravated the offence.
“In England, as on the Continent, doctrinal radicalism marched hand in hand with social conservatism. The most scathing attack on social disorders came, not from the partisans of the old religion, but from divines on the left wing of the Protestant party, who saw in economic individualism but another expression of the laxity and licence which had degraded the purity of religion, and who understood by reformation a return to the moral austerity of the primitive Church, no less than to its government and doctrine.”[5]
The great sin they condemned was covetousness — the desire to accumulate ever more wealth. Hugh Latimer, the most popular preacher of the day, condemned landlords’ greed in general, and enclosure in particular, in a sermon preached before the King and other worthies.
“You landlords, you rent-raisers, I may say you step-lords, you unnatural lords, you have for your possessions yearly too much. For what here before went for twenty or forty pound by year, (which is an honest portion to be had gratis in one lordship of another man’s sweat and labour) now is let for fifty or an hundred pound by year. … Too much, which these rich men have, causes such dearth, that poor men, which live of their labour, cannot with the sweat of their face have a living …
“These graziers, enclosers and rent-raisers, are hinderers of the King’s honour. For where as have been a great many householders and inhabitants there is now but a shepherd and his dog.”[6]
Those views found support in the country’s top ruling circles. The Book of Private Prayer, prepared by Archbishop Cranmer and other officials of the established church in 1553, included a prayer “For Landlords.”
“We heartily pray Thee to send Thy Holy Spirit into the hearts of those that possess the grounds and pastures of the earth, that they remembering themselves to be Thy tenants may not rack nor stretch out the rents of their lands, nor yet take unreasonable fines. … Give them grace also … that they … may be content with that which is sufficient and not join house to house and land to land, to the impoverishment of others, but so behave themselves in letting out their lands, tenements and pastures that after this life they may be received into everlasting dwelling places.”[7]
One of the most vehement critics of greed and exploitation was the London-based printer and poet Robert Crowley, who offered this explanation for the 1549 peasant rebellions.
“If I should demand of the poor man of the country what thing he thinks to be the cause of Sedition, I know his answer. He would tell me that the great farmers, the graziers, the rich butchers, the men of law, the merchants, the gentlemen, the knights, the lords, and I can not tell who; men that have no name because they are doers of all things that any gain hangs upon. Men without conscience. Men utterly devoid of God’s fear. Yea, men that live as though there were no God at all! Men that would have all in their own hands; men that would leave nothing for others; men that would be alone on the earth; men that be never satisfied.
“Cormorants, greedy gulls; yea, men that would eat up men, women, & children, are the causes of Sedition! They take our houses over our heads, they buy our lands out of our hands, they raise our rents, they levy great (yea unreasonable) fines, they enclose our commons! No custom, no law or statute can keep them from oppressing us in such sort, that we know not which way to turn so as to live.”[8]
Condemning “lease mongers that cancel leases on land in order to lease it again for double or triple the rent,” Crowley argued that landlords should “consider themselves to be but stewards, and not Lords over their possessions.”
“But so long as this persuasion sticks in their minds — ‘It is my own; who shall stop me from doing as I like with my own as I wish?’ — it shall not be possible to have any redress at all. For if I may do with my own as I wish, then I may suffer my brother, his wife, and his children toil in the street, unless he will give me more rent for my house than he shall ever be able to pay. Then may I take his goods for that he owes me, and keep his body in prison, turning out his wife and children to perish, if God will not move some man’s heart to pity them, and yet keep my coffers full of gold and silver.”[9]
Back to the feudal
While no one can doubt the sincerity of their criticism of the rich, the commonwealth men were also “united in denouncing the rebels, whose sin could never be justified even if their grievances could.”[10]
The Archbishop of Canterbury, whose denunciation of wealth accumulation is quoted at the beginning of this article, also, in the same sermon, condemned “unlawful assemblies and tumults,” and people who “confound all things upsy down with seditious uproars and unquietness.” “God in his scriptures expressly forbids all private revenging, and had made this order in commonwealths, that there should be kings and governors to whom he has willed all men to be subject and obedient.”[11]
Speaking of the 1549 rebellions, Latimer declared that “all ireful, rebellious persons, all quarrelers and wranglers, all blood-shedders, do the will of the devil, and not God’s will.” Disobedience to one’s superiors was a major sin, even if the superiors were themselves violating God’s laws. “What laws soever they make as concerning outward things we ought to obey, and in no wise to rebel, although they be never so hard, noisome and hurtful.”[12]
Immediately after condemning landlords as cormorants and greedy gulls, Crowley told the 1549 rebels that they had been misled by the devil: “to revenge wrongs is, in a subject, to take an usurp the office of a king, and, consequently, the office of God.” The poor should suffer in silence, awaiting royal or divine intervention.
Like the nineteenth century “feudal socialists” who Marx and Engels criticized three centuries later, the commonwealth men were literally reactionary — they wanted “to roll back the wheel of history.” “From the ills of present-day society this group draws the conclusion that feudal and patriarchal society should be restored because it was free from these ills.”[13]
As historian Michael Bush says, the commonwealth men “showed concern for the poor, but accepted the need for poverty.”
“Without exception they subscribed to the traditional ideal of the state as a body politic in which every social group had its place, function and desert. … They pleaded with rulers to reform society, and proposed various means, but not by changing its structure. Their thinking was paternalistic and conservative. Although they censured the nobility, it was for malpractices, not for being ruling class.”[14]
English protestant reformers in the mid-1500s “inherited the social idea of medieval Christianity pretty much in its entirety,” so their views were “especially antithetical to the acquisitive spirit that animated the emerging society of capitalism.”[15]
In the 1500s, Tawney wrote, “the new economic realities came into sharp collision with the social theory inherited from the Middle Ages.”[16] What shocked and frightened the commonwealth men was not just poverty, but the growth of a worldview that repudiated “the principles by which alone, as it seemed, human society is distinguished from a pack of wolves.”
“That creed was that the individual is absolute master of his own, and, within the limits set by positive law, may exploit it with a single eye to his pecuniary advantage, unrestrained by any obligation to postpone his own profit to the well-being of his neighbours, or to give account of his actions to a higher authority.”
The wolf-pack creed they were fighting, Tawney commented ironically, was “the theory of property which was later to be accepted by all civilized communities.”[17]
A Losing Battle
The commonwealth men were eloquent and persuasive, but they were fighting a losing battle. The aristocrats who owned most of England’s farmland and controlled the government could tolerate public criticism and ineffective laws, but not anything that actually threatened their wealth and power. They blamed the 1549 rebellions on the critics, and quickly ousted the Duke of Somerset, the only member of the regency council who seemed to favor enforcing the anti-enclosure laws.
What remained of the commonwealth campaign collapsed after 1553, when the catholic Mary Tudor became queen and launched a vicious reign of terror against protestants. Some 300 “heretics,” including Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer, were burned at the stake, and hundreds more fled to protestant countries on the continent.
Capitalist practices already had a strong foothold in the countryside in the 1540s, and they spread rapidly in the rest of the century, without regard to what Christian preachers might say. “Forms of economic behavior which had appeared novel and aberrant in the 1540s were becoming normalized virtually to the point of being taken for granted.”[18]
For landowners who wanted to preserve their estates, that shift wasn’t a choice. It was forced on them by changes beyond their control.
“Between the beginning of the sixteenth century and 1640 prices, particularly of foodstuffs, rose approximately sixfold. … [This] put an unusual premium energy and adaptability and turned conservatism from a force making for stability into a quick way to economic disaster. Landed families which stuck to the old ways, left rents as they were, and continued to grant long leases soon found themselves trapped between static incomes and rising prices.”[19]
As a result, the trends that Latimer and his co-thinkers opposed actually accelerated, and their vision of a reborn feudal paternalism was replaced in ruling class thought by what historian C.B. MacPherson calls “possessive individualism” — the view that society is a collection of market relations between people who have an absolute right to do as they wish with their property.[20]That view has remained central to all variants of capitalist ideology, down to the present.
Parliament never passed another anti-enclosure bill after 1597, and the Stuart kings who succeeded the Tudors in 1603 only gave lip-service to protecting the poor from enclosure. “Commissions were issued from time to time for the discovery of offenders, but their crimes were pardoned on payment of a money fine. The punishment of enclosers had degenerated into a revenue-raising device and little else.”[21]
As Christopher Hill writes, in the century before the English Revolution, ruling class attitudes toward the land changed radically. “No government after 1640 seriously tried either to prevent enclosures, or even to make money by fining enclosers.”[22]
But only the rich had decided that land privatization was a good idea. The poor continued to resist that weird undertaking, and for some, the objective now was communism.
To be continued …
Notes
I have modernized spelling, and occasionally grammar and vocabulary, in quotations from 16th and 17th century authors.
[1] Thomas Cranmer, “A Sermon on Rebellion,” The Works of Thomas Cranmer, ed. John Edmund Cox (Cambridge University Press, 1846), 196. The date 1550 is approximate.
[2] Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, (Penguin Books, 1976), 742.
[3] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon Press, 2001), 178.
[4] Arthur B. Ferguson, The Articulate Citizen and the English Renaissance (Duke University Press, 1965), xiii.
[5] Richard H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (Angelico Press, 2021 [1926]), 140-41.
[6] Hugh Latimer, “The First Sermon Preached before King Edward, March 8, 1549,” Sermons by Hugh Latimer, (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
[7] Quoted in Thomas Edward Scruton, Commons and Common Fields (Batoche Books, 2003 [1887]), 81-2.
[8] Robert Crowley, “The Way to Wealth,” The Select Works of Robert Crowley, ed. J.M. Cowper, (Kegan Paul Trench Trubner & Co., 1872), 132-3.
[9] Robert Crowley, “An information and petition against the oppressors of the poor commons of this realm,” The Select Works of Robert Crowley, ed. J.M. Cowper, (Kegan Paul Trench Trubner & Co., 1872), 162, 157.
[10] Catharine Davies, A Religion of the Word: The Defence of the Reformation in the Reign of Edward VI (Manchester Univ. Press, 2002), 159.
[11] Thomas Cranmer, “A Sermon on Rebellion,” The Works of Thomas Cranmer, ed. John Edmund Cox (Cambridge University Press, 1846), 192, 193
[12] Hugh Latimer, “The Fourth Sermon upon the Lord’s Prayer (1552)” Sermons by Hugh Latimer, (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) https://ccel.org/ccel/latimer/sermons/
[13] Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6, (International Publishers, 1976) 494, 355.
[14] M. L. Bush, The Government Policy of Protector Somerset (Edward Arnold, 1975), 61.
[15] Arthur B. Ferguson, The Articulate Citizen and the English Renaissance (Duke University Press, 1965), 248.
[16] Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 135.
[17] Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 146-7.
[18] Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (Yale University Press, 2000), 202.
[19] Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford University Press, 1965), 188, 189-90.
[20] C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford University Press, 1962).
[21] Joan Thirsk, “Enclosing and Engrossing, 1500-1640,” in Agricultural Change: Policy and Practice 1500-1750, ed. Joan Thirsk (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 67.
[22] Christopher Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), 51.
Editor’s note: As a radical environmental and social justice organization, we believe it is important to study the history of capitalism. Only by learning about all the force, the violence, the exploitation, and the class struggle involved can we understand how an insane system like industrial capitalism could eventually succeed and create the worldwide mess we are facing today.
The series about the history of trade unions in Britain has six parts. Interested readers can continue reading here:
This is a summary of “In Cause of Labour: History of British Trade Unionism” by Rob Sewell. You can find the whole book online here.
It was published in 2003 and gives a radical history of the British trade union movement from the 1700s until 2002. I’m going to summarise this book in four posts. In the fourth post I will summarise from 2002 to 2019. Rob Sewell is a Trotskyist so follows Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. So some of his terminology comes from that tradition and I’ll stick with it as it’s useful. I have left out a lot of Marxist, Leninist and Trotskyist propaganda and focused on the history plus some of Sewell’s excellent analysis. He is highly critical of the Labour Party and trade unions and I think this is a useful analysis. I’ve included links to web pages with more information on the historical events, mostly strikes, unrest, groups, organisations or parties.
In this post, part 1, I will cover the 1700s until the end of the First World War in 1918.
The birth pains 1700s
Sewell describes the Enclosure Acts in the 1700s and early 1800s, forcing large numbers of peasants off the land and into the towns looking for work and provided cheap labour for capitalist factory owners. This process created industrial capitalism and resulted in overcrowding and unsanitary conditions for the workers. There was no clear drinking water, infant mortality was high and the average age of workers in Bolton was 18, Manchester 17 and Liverpool 15.
There was a mass migration from Ireland in the first half of the 1800s. Hundreds of thousands of Irish came to work in English northern towns and cities. Employers used them to undermine wages but the Irish were more likely to make demands, speak out and enforce their demands with bad language and strikes. Many radical union leaders were Irish.
From the age of 7 children and adults worked 12-15 hours a day, 6 days a week. The intensification was increased by the introduction of large machinery. Workers existed to work or rest to recover to start work again the next day. Near Gateshead, children from the age of 7 worked 18-20 hours a day until they could not work any more, life was cheap. There were no legal protections.
Inventions revolutionised the methods of work and transformed the factory system – handlooms to power looms and gaslighting. Work was intensified further – nightshifts, double-shifts, weekend work, 24-hour work, 7 days a week, all to increase the capitalists’ profits, with the workers barely surviving. Workers were seen as old at 40. Attempts to introduce regulations about the conditions met strong resistance from the employers. Any regulations that were introduced were weakly enforced.
Workers were forced to buy what they need from ‘tommy’ shops, the factory store at extortionate prices and inferior quality. Employers paid their workers in beer as well. Many workers would end up in debt to the tommy shops.
During the 1700s workers resisted the conditions with ‘go-slows’ and ‘turn-outs’ against the “starvation wages, excessive hours and insufferable conditions.” Illegal trade clubs were formed and the state responded with anti-union legislation. The trade unions were forced underground to continue their fight to survive in self-defence.
Into the Abyss of Capitalism 1790s-1820s
The French Revolution of 1789-94 popularised the ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality. This caused a lot of fear in the British ruling class. There was also widespread bread riots and a naval mutiny in Newhaven in 1795.
The French Revolution led to the founding of Corresponding Societies from 1792 that shared democratic, radical and Jacobin ideas. Tens of thousands joined them and they were heavily repressed by the government and reactionary mobs. In response to the ongoing uprisings and spread of seditious ideas the state worked to crush them through martial law, imprisonment, public floggings, capital punishment, deportation and the suspension of Habeas Corpus (the right to a free trial). The government came down hard on the printers, publishers and sellers of seditious literature, including a stamp duty to tax newspapers and price them out of reach of the masses. This resulted in a revolt and resistance by the ‘unstamped’ press.
In 1798 there was a failed uprising in Ireland against English rule and naval mutinies in Spithead and Nore. These were severely repressed and the leaders killed.
The Corresponding Societies were driven underground resulting in oath-taking becoming a common practice. Harsh legislation was introduced to punish any form of worker organising to increase wages or decrease hours. The laws were also meant to stop employers’ conspiring together but were never enforced. These laws gave employers unlimited power to reduce wages and make conditions worse.
The British capitalist state used its full force to crush the spirit of revolt in the working class and the trade unions. Soldiers were used to putting down local disturbances. A network of army barracks was created to prevent contact between people and the soldiers. Government spies, agents and informers infiltrated the workers’ groups. Their ‘evidence’ was used to imprison organisers and leaders. A price was paid for every worker found guilty leading to false convictions.
Forcing the trade unions underground resulted in these early illegal unions enforcing iron discipline to keep out informers, which tightly bound their members together.
The Luddite unrest in 1811/12 was a response to the desperate conditions but they knew they couldn’t win. They were named after the mythical ‘General Ned Ludd.’ They destroyed employers machines and property. In response, the state increased the punishment for frame-breaking from 14 years deportation to a capital offence. Those caught in this northern and midlands resistance were dealt with harshly.
Sewell lists strike that took place under these high repressive circumstances: Scottish weavers (1812), Lancashire spinners (1818, 1826, 1830), miners on the NE coast (1810, 1830-1), Scotland (1818) and South Wales (1816, 1831). An underground General Union of Trades formed in 1818 in Manchester bringing 14 trades together. Communication between different underground trade unions across the country was also taking place.
The high levels of state repression from 1800-1815, the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the introduction of the Corn Laws, which kept bread prices artificially high, resulted in high levels of social unrest from 1815 onwards. In 1819 there was a large working-class rally in St Peter’s Field in Manchester of between 50,000 – 60,000 people. They were attacked by cavalry, with 400 being badly wounded. It is known as the Peterloo Massacre. The ‘Cato Street conspiracy’ was stopped by informants, it aimed to overthrow the government.
Trade unions continued to form: the Calico-printers, Ironfounders, the Steam Engine Makers and Papermakers. There was also widespread public agitation for the repeal of the anti-union laws. This was successful in 1824. This was a huge victory for the working class. Those in the ruling class and some workers involved in the repeal process in parliament, did so because they believed it would reduce the conflict. This was a big mistake as it resulted in a flood of strikes. So the new legislation was changed in 1825 to restrict picketing. Legal trade union activity was limited to dealing with wages and hours. Following the legalisation, hundreds of new unions and association were formed and new sections of workers became organised.
Schools of war 1820s-1830s
The 1820’s strike wave over wages mostly resulted in defeat. But it did provide important education for class struggle and lay the foundations for the establishment of the large-scale national trade unions such as the Spinners’ union 1829, Potters’ union 1831 and Builders’ in 1831-2.
Government troops were used to violently break strikes and workers responded by forming ruthless clandestine organisations that hunted down and killing traitors and informers. They also destroyed employers mills.
In 1830 the National Association for the Protection of Labour (NAPL) formed and enrolled 150 local unions in the north and midlands. It also established a weekly journal. It grew to 100,000 members but following the defeat of the Spinners’ union in 1831 and most of the local unions fighting bitter struggles, the NAPL broke up. The General Union of Carpenters and Joiners formed in the years after that with 40,000 members and fought a series of strikes.
Severe poverty and starvation outside the town and cities resulted in the 1830-31 agricultural uprisings. These started in the Southeast rural counties, with threshing machines and hayricks destroyed. They spread to the Southwest and midlands, under the name of the mythical ‘Captain Swing’. Historians have identified 1831 as the year that Britain was most close to revolution since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Those caught were harshly punished – hangings, transported to Australia, imprisoned, flogged. The British establishment use repression when they could and when faced with mass movements gave some concessions to gain some breathing space.
Sewell describes how the mass agitation for electoral reform resulted in the government increasing the electorate through the Reform Act to those that owned property. This benefited the capitalist business owners by giving them the vote resulting in their dominance over the land aristocracy.
The Grand National Consolidation Trade Union (GNCTU) formed in 1833. It aimed to fight for day-to-day issues and also to abolish capitalist rule and bring about the revolutionary transformation of society. It quickly gained 500,000 members including many women. This led to several strikes nationally across different sectors. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were agriculture labourers that contacted the GNCTU to set up an agricultural union in Dorset. The local magistrate found out and sentenced 6 of them to 7 years transportation to Australia. A national campaign started for their freedom resulting in a 200,000 demonstration in London. The campaign was successful and after 2 years their sentences were cancelled and they returned in 1839. They were involved in the Chartist Movement. Five Glasgow cotton-spinners were transported for 7 years in 1837 resulting in equal national-wide protests to the Whig government, with a national campaign to free them.
Employers were using the ‘Document’, making workers sign it saying they would not engage in union activity, or be sacked. This resulted in many workplace lockouts and by the end of 1837, the GNCTU’s funds were depleted. This combined with differences among the leadership resulted in it breaking apart.
Sewell describes the ‘Hungry Thirties’ when the conditions for the working class were terrible. Factory legislation was introduced in 1833 but only to reduce children’s working hours to 12 and it was not enforced. The New Poor Law of 1834 made things worse, removing the limited government support to be replaced by philanthropy. The failures of the trade union movement drove workers into the ranks for the Chartist Movement.
Breaking the yoke 1830s-1840s
Chartism was a national working-class protest movement for political reform with strong support in the North, Midlands and South Wales. The movement started in 1836/7 and support was greatest in 1839, 42, 48. The Chartist Movement involved a complete spectrum of action: mass petitions, mass demonstrations, lobbies, general strikes and armed insurrection. It presented petitions with millions of signatures to parliament, combined with mass meetings to put pressure on politicians. There were splits in the movement between the old leadership that was more middle class and advocated ‘moral force’, and the new membership from working-class factory areas supported ‘physical force’.
The People’s Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic:
A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period.
The Newport Rising of 1839 was the last large-scale armed protest in Great Britain, seeking democracy and the right to vote and a secret ballot. The army was deployed to support the police and fired on the crowd, killing and injuring. The leaders of the uprising we transported to Australia.
In 1840 the Chartist Movement formed the National Charter Association (NCA), the first working-class political party in history. It reached a total of 40,000 members. The 1842 Plug Plot Riots (also known as the 1842 general strike) started with miners in Staffordshire and spread to mills and factories in Yorkshire, Lancashire and coal mines in Dundee, South Wales and Cornwall.
The combination of the pressure from the Chartist Movement and the European revolutionary wave in 1848 forced the state to give some concessions to the working class including repealing the Corn Laws and factory legislation was passed improving the working conditions.
The “Pompous Trades” 1840s-1880s
British capitalism dramatically developed a grew in the 1850s and 1860s so it dominated the world market, with the help of the unchallenged British navy ruling the waves. This changed the unions from the earlier decades from revolutionary unions for the workers as a whole to a focus on skilled craft unions with sectional interests.
The super-profits from Britain’s industrial monopoly in the world, combined with the British Empire, meant that the ruling class could give concessions to the upper layers of the working class. This ‘divide and rule’ tactic had been perfected throughout the British Empire. In 1847 the Ten Hour Act was introduced. Sewell describes how this cultivated an ‘aristocracy of labour’, that are above the majority of workers. This privileged layer were on higher wages than most workers and developed a more conservative disposition that corresponded with their new social position. They were supportive of alliances with ‘the liberal bourgeoisie’ and were against class struggle and class independence. Sewell describes how this privileged layer grouped together in the newly formed craft unions.
An example of the craft unions or ‘new model unions’ was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) formed in 1851 from several local craft societies. Sewell describes how these new unions had high contributions and benefits, centralisation of control, and a ‘class-collaborationist policy’ – working with the establishment.
The high dues (regular member payments) meant they could create a strong centralised organisation run by full-time officials. Instead of radical leaders from the previous decades, leaders with different characters to charge – ‘conservative-minded officials and opportunist negotiators’. They asked for a ‘fair share’ of the bosses profiles in the form of ‘friendly benefits’ such as unemployment, sickness, accident and death allowances. Sewell explains that to protect their section of privileged workers they restricted the support labour into the trades and left the rest of the workers to the mercy of the employers. They promoted prudence, temperance, enlightenment and respectability.
The respectable leadership of the new model unions were known as ‘the Junta’. They saw themselves as administrators rather than agitators and took on ‘the social character of a trade union bureaucracy’. These leaders were made to feel very important and respected by the capitalist Establishment to keep them onside.
The biggest industrial struggle since the ‘Plug Riots” of 1842, was the Preston lockout of 1853. Sewell describes the Nine Hours movement and the Nine Hours Strike in Newcastle that was successful in gaining the nine-hour day. This encouraged the movement for shorter working hours elsewhere.
During the 1860s there were many demonstrations in industrial towns demanding the vote. The Tory government introduced the 1867 Reform Act, giving the vote to urban male workers who paid rates. This doubled the size of the electorate. Women and those without property were excluded, which the majority of the working class.
In 1867, Parliament set up a Royal Commission on trade unions and following pressure from the ‘Junta’, legislation was introduced to parliament to give the unions some concessions. At this point there was no legal protection for trade union funds and strikes could be imprisoned for ‘conspiracy’ and ‘intimidation’. The new concessions reduced this slightly but workers could still be imprisoned for ‘aggravated’ breach of contract. Picketing was severely restricted and could result in tough penalties.
In 1871, the revolutionary masses of Paris took control of the city and announced ‘La Commune’ or Paris Commune. This was ruthlessly crushed by the French and German Establishment, with an estimated 20,000 killed. The Tory Prime Minister Disraeli introduced trade union reforms “from above to prevent revolution from below”. These reforms improved the financial status of unions.
Marx and Engles set up the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) in 1864, also known as the First International. This new international organisation received support and affiliation from several British trade unions and trade councils. Marx and the IWMA supported the Paris Commune publicly and the new model trade union leaders separated themselves from the IWMA.
During the 1860s local trade councils started forming, which was a new trade union organisation. They brought together different trade unions in a locality to work together. The trade councils had several conferences in different cities in the 1860s. The Manchester and Salford Trade Council called the first official Trades Union Congress (TUC). Sewell explains that the conservative ‘Junta’ new model union leaders were initially wary of the TUC. Following some government anti-union actions, this “forced them to lend their authority to the newly established TUC – the better to keep it under control, than risk it falling into the hands of dangerous agitators.”
Sewell describes how the two Acts in 1871 was a classic case of giving with one hand and taking away with another. The Trade Union Act of 1871 legalised trade unions in Britain for the first time and protected union funds. The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1871 deemed peaceful attempts by workers to encourage them to strike was seen as ‘coercion’ and a criminal offence. Employers of course had no restrictions on what they could do. Judges generally interpreted whatever unions did as in breach. This was threatening unions ability to operate so they decided to fight to repeal the laws and obtains ‘immunity’ for damage in the same way that business have ‘immunity’ in the form of limited liability.
From 1873 a significant campaign developed that forced the Liberal government out of office and repealed the Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Master and Servant Act. Two Acts in 1875 – Employers and Workmen Act 1875 and Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 – made peaceful picketing legal, and breaches of contract became a civil matter, no imprisonment or fines. Judges responded by creating the civil law offence of conspiracy, making picketing illegal, and employers used this to claim damages. Sewell makes the point that any gains are always under threat and this is decided by the class balance of forces – do trade union and social movements have more power in workplaces or on the streets or do the ruling class and capitalists have more power in the form of parliamentary legislation, the courts, the police, the army and being supported by general public opinion.
The early 1870s saw the formation of the National Agricultures Labourers’ Union (NALU) to fight for better wages and conditions. This grew quickly to 150,000 members by the end of 1872. The capitalist gentry and landlords, plus the Church of England responded severely with a series of lockouts. By 1874 workers were staved back to work on the employers’ terms and the NALU collapsed.
There was a trade recession in the mid-1870s and several strikes. The pattern makers broke away from the ASE due to the failures of the conservative union leadership.
From a Spark to a Blaze 1880s-1890s
By the 1880s Britain was facing intense international competition from the US and Germany. Britain was still in an important global position and still had its Empire of 370 million people. This resulted in repeated crises for capitalism leading to wages cuts, mass unemployment so the majority of the working-class were extremely insecure and destitute.
The 1880s was a new period of social upheaval and revival of socialist ideas, dormant since the Chartist movement. The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) formed in the 1880s, which focused on socialist propaganda and the unemployed, rather than the trade unions. It was from this party that a new form of militant trade unionism grew to challenge the ‘Old Gang’ of new model trade union leaders. A number left the SDF and set out to reform the old trade union movement. They met resistance from the ‘Old Guard’. This was the start of New Unionism.
The Matchmakers’ strike in 1888 against the terrible conditions the women endured, won several concessions and the Matchmakers’ Unions was formed as a result. This was followed by the 1889 Beckton Gas Works struggle for better conditions and wages, which was successful. In 1889 there was also the dockers strike for better wages that were also successful and received huge support from the trade union movement. A union was established with 30,000 members.
This New Unionism spread to other parts of Britain and into other sectors such as the Railways, Miners, and Printers. Sixty new Trade Councils were established between 1889 and 1891. The first May Day in Britain in 1890 had nearly 200,000 in attendance in Hyde Park.
The ‘Old Guard’ attempted to fight against this new threat to their authority. The 1890 TUC Congress was an open battleground between the two factions, with New Unionism coming out on top.
New Unionism was put to the test with the 1893 5-month lockout/strike in Yorkshire. The army was called in and fired on crowds, with two men dying from their injuries. The 25% wage cut that was demanded by mine owners was resisted.
The 1898 South Wales strike lasted 6 months and although not successful in the wage demands resulted in significant feelings of class solidarity and the formation of the South Wales Minters’ Federation.
Sewell describes how the new unions for the unskilled were created and also the craft unions opened up their ranks to the mass of unorganised workers. He explains that even when traditional working-class organisations are controlled by the conservatives, events can result in them being transformed into organisations of struggle.
The First Giant Step 1890s – 1900s
The Scottish Labour Party was formed in 1892 and Kier Hardie and twelve other workers won seats in the House of Commons, Hardie and two others on independent labour tickets, ten as Liberal candidates. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was founded in Bradford in 1893. The Social Democratic Federation did not engage with this new political formation. Many militant trade unionists joined the ILP. The ILP ran 28 candidates in the 1895 elections but all were defeated. Sewell explains that the ILP weaknesses were its failure to build a mass base and its rejection of class struggle. The revolutionary socialists in the SDF, had they joined the ILP, could have pushed it to be more radical.
Sewell describes several union defeats in the early 1890s. The newly formed Gasworkers’ union was smashed by employers and the eight-hour day abolished. Shipowners in London, Cardiff and Hull enforced a series of worker lockouts. Employers also used legal means to cripple the trade unions in the 1890s, even though unions had more legal protections at this point. A general employers organisation was formed – the Employers Parliamentary Council – to agitate legal actions against unions by challenging the right of peaceful picketing and the union’s protection from liability for damages. All this showed the necessity for independent working-class political representation in the form of a party.
At the 1899 TUC Congress, a vote went in favour of independent Labour political representation. The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) (later known as the Labour Party) was founded in February 1900. Organisations in attendance were trade unions, ILP, SDF and Fabian Society. Sewell describes three tendencies that were represented at the founding conference of the Labour Party: middle-class Fabian viewpoint of Lib-Lab politics that defended class collaboration; the Kier Hardie and ILP perspective that opposed an alliance with the liberals and advocated a union-socialist federation but did not advocate socialism publicly; and the Harry Quelch and SDF position that called for a fully class conscious Socialist Party that did not collaborate with capitalism or liberals and backed class struggle.
The ILP centrist position won and the SDF left in 1901 so the other two tenancies dominated the new Labour Party. Sewell is critical of the SDF sectarian approach and argues that had they stayed they would have prevailed. Ramsey MacDonald, a liberal, joined the new party. This new party failed to ensure that it was democratically accountable to the trade unions and workers. It was a cause of celebration though as now finally the British working class had its own party and had broken the two-party system of big business.
In the 1900 election, the LCR field on 15 candidate and many trade unions were unsure to back it or not so waited. Two were elected: Kier Hardie and Richard Bell. This was quickly followed by the Taff Vale unofficial strike in South Wales. The employers fought back through the National Free Labour Association and Employers Parliamentary Council with a successful injection. The strike was settled after eleven days but the employers took their case to the House of Lords and won huge compensation. This effectively made strikes illegal undermining the union rights won in the 1870s. The employers’ legal challenge caused a huge response in the labour movement, with 100,000 joining the LCR in 1901-2 and the same amount joining in 1902-3.
At the 1906 general election, the LCR fielded 50 candidates and 29 become MPs. The Miners’ Federation instructed another 11 Lib-Lab MPs to join this group taking the total to 40 MPs. This concerned the ruling class significantly. Sewell describes how this election result was encouraged by the 1905 Russian revolution that became a rallying cause for social democracy everywhere. It was at the 1905 LCR annual conference that the party finally adopted an overtly socialist resolution. He describes how great events can have significant impacts on mass organisations and the consciousness of the working class.
The 1906 election resulted in a Liberal government. To placate the militant nature of the working class, it introduced the Trades Dispute Act (1906) to correct the legal position of trade unions. It absolved the unions of any legal responsibility for civil damages in strikes and ensured the legality of picketing. This government also introduced several reforms on pensions, unemployment and health insurance.
The early 20th century saw intense rivalry between the European Empires that led to the First World War. In Britain, the Liberal government reforms made little difference to inequality and a 1905 report stated that out of a population of 43 million, 38 million were categorised as poor. The cost of living steadily grew, with wages increasing very little, resulting in real wages declining.
In these conditions, strikes began to take place including the 1907 music hall strike, a seven-month engineers strike and a five-month shipwrights and joiners strike. The 1907 Belfast strike was called after demands for union recognition were refused. The strike spread to other workplaces in Belfast and the police mutinied so the army had to be called in. The docker’s strike was unsuccessful but led to the formation of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union.
Sewell describes the ruling class’s all-out offensive against organised labour. In 1909/10 there was the case of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants union vs Mr Osborne that resulted in workers having to opt-in if they wanted a portion of their wages to go to trade unions. This was followed by injunctions against 22 unions that forbid their political affiliation fees to the Labour Party. The Labour Party fought two elections in 1910 by scrapping together financial donations. In 1913 the Liberal government, under pressure from the working-class, introduced the Trade Union Act of 1913 that allowed Labour Party affiliation but included harsh restrictions on funding. It restricted general union funds being spent on political activities. They “could only come from a special political fund, which could only be set up after a successful ballot of union members.” No such restrictions were put on the Liberals on Conservatives and the funding they received from big business. This is still the situation today.
By 1910, union membership was at 2.5 million. There was growing frustration in the unions among the rank and file at the lack of progress. Syndicalist trade unionism became popular that focused on trade union strategy to change society without working through political parties and parliament.
This was the peak of Britain’s Empire as it was being challenged by Germany and the US. The ruling class started cutting back on the concessions they had given over the last 30 years especially to the top layers of the working class. The period of 1910-14 is known as the ‘Great Unrest” due to the revolutionary nature of the actions of the working class. The number of days lost of strikes increased to 10 million and union membership went from 2.5 million in 1910 to 4 million in 1914.
The first major strike was the South Wales Cambrian strike in 1910-11 in response to the owner’s reduction in wages and worsening conditions. The army was sent in and miners were killed but the strike was unsuccessful. But it did establish the demand for a minimum wage across British coalfields, resulting in a national stoppage in 1912.
Sewell describes dockworker strikes in 1911 in Southampton, Cardiff, Hull, London and Manchester. The government threatened to send troops to the London docks but huge demonstrations in support of the strike resulted in the employers negotiating with the workers.
The 1911 Liverpool general transport strike involved dockers, railway workers and sailers. The scale of the strike causes the government to send in troops and special police. Two warships were rushed to the Mersey with their guns aimed at the centre of Liverpool. A large demonstration was attacked by the police resulting in fighting and the death of two strikers. It ended with the employers giving in on the unions terms. The Dockers’ Union membership increased from 8,000 to 32,000.
There were 2 days of national rail worker strikes in 1911. The army opened fire on strikers in Liverpool and Llanelli, South Wales, killing two strikers. The unions and employers compromised resulting in union-management representation.
The 1912 national coal miners strike last 37 days and secured a minimum wage from the government. 1912 saw a huge dockers strike in London for 80,000 but was unsuccessful. The 1913 Dublin strike or lock-out involved 20,000 strikers and 300 employers with clashes between strikes and the army, resulting in several workers being killed. This led to a formation of an armed Irish Citizen’s Army to defend itself against the violence of the state and employers. There was a lot of support for the strike across Britain and Sewell describes how the TUC’s failure to widen the dispute undermined the resolve of strikers and they were starved back to work with no gains.
Sewell quotes strike data from those years: 1908, averaged 30 strikes a month; 1911, averaged 75 strikes a month; 1913-14, averaged 150 strikes a month. Sewell describes the revolutionary militancy of the labour movement and the fear of the ruling class.
Sewell describes the important contribution of syndicalism. The positive side being its rejection of class collaboration and opportunism from the union leadership, Labour Party and Liberal Party. Its strength came from its focus on industrial unionism, rank-and-file movements and rejection of ‘official’ leadership. The syndicalist ‘Miners Next Step’ was produced in 1912 in South Wales, it argued for placing industrial democracy at the centre of British working-class politics. Sewell praises the syndicalist support for class struggle and for workers to take control of factories. Sewell critiques syndicalism in that it sees unofficial action as a principle, rather than a tactic to respond to official union leadership being a barrier. He states its weakness is a lack of clear understanding of leadership and political parties to overthrow capitalism.
Plans for Irish Home rules caused the Ulster leader to threaten mutiny and the Tory Party leader to threaten civil war. This combined with the revolutionary militancy of the labour movement meant a political crisis was close. This was avoided by the start of the First World War.
War and Revolution 1914-1918
Sewell describes the horrors of the First World War, with 10 million dead by the end and millions more disabled. He explains that the war was caused by a “build up of imperialists contradictions and tensions prior to 1914”, caused by industrial competition between Britain, Germany, France and the US and imperial conflict in Africa and the Far East between Britain, Germany, Belgium and Portugal. There was then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, which provided the final excuse for war. Sewell quotes the military historian Clausewitz, that war is a continuation of imperialist rivalry or geopolitics by ‘other means’ – war extends the horrors of capitalism to its extremes.
The Socialist International, with which the Labour Party was affiliated, had promised to oppose the coming war. It recognised that the war was between the different imperialist powers and that the working class in any country had nothing to gain from capitalism in peacetime or war. But instead, each national section supported its own ruling classes and it collapsed.
In response to the outbreak of war, the TUC passed a resolution to end all disputes and if difficulties arise to seriously attempt to reach settlements before further strikes. The brought the huge wave of industrial militancy to a halt. It was believed that the war would be over quickly. Sewell describes the Labour Party and trade union leadership, who either fully supported the war and conscription or those who initially opposed the war, eventually submitting to going along with it in some way. Trade union leaders agreed to ‘industrial peace’, all strikes were suspended, declared all worker organisations.
As the war continued the British soldier’s opposition to it grew, especially their resentment to the generals and their incompetence. In 1916 there was the Irish East Rising against the British government to establish an independent Irish Republic.
The government demanded increased production in engineering and shipbuilding. The owners pushed for continued relaxation of trade practices and restrictions. This resulted in worse working conditions and rights. The cost of living had gone up and unemployment increased. In response engineers in Clydeside (Glasgow) struck for a pay rise to help with rising food prices and rents, and won.
Sewell describes how trade union leaders and officials joined government and joint industrial councils to promote the war. All the unions signed a new agreement, the Treasury Agreement, that for the first time introduced industrial conscription in Britain. A new Coalition government was formed in 2015 including Liberal, Tory and Labour MPs. It brought in new draconian laws that gave the government greater powers over the munitions industry. These included authorising compulsory arbitration of disputes and the suspension of trade practices. “Munitions workers were not allowed to leave their jobs without a ‘Leaving Certificate’. Such measures introduced a virtual militarization of labour, allowing the complete subordination of the working class to the war machine.”
At the end of 1915, industrial action continued in Clydeside (Glasgow), with Minister of Munitions Lloyd George attending a meeting where he was shouted down. This was nationally censored in the press but a few local papers reported on it resulting in the government banning them in early 1916. The strike leaders were arrested and imprisoned. Six shop stewards were arrested and deported from Glasgow and banned from returning. By July 1916, over 1,000 workers nationally had been arrested for striking illegally and breaking the Munitions Act.
Due to the inaction of the union leaderships, shop steward committees formed around the country and joined up to form the National Shop Stewards’ and Workers’ Committee Movement. Many of its leaders were members of socialist groups and parties giving it a revolutionary focus.
In 1916, a new Coalition government formed with Lloyd George as Prime Minister. He promoted Labour MPs and trade union leaders into government posts that we responsible for the war effort and so used them to police the workers. Their authority over the workers was effectively exploited by the ruling class to hold back the growing discontent.
February 1917 was the first Russian Revolution. In Britain, a convention was called in Leeds to celebrate the event. It had over 1,000 delegates from the Labour Party and trade unions. The Russian Provisional Government failed to withdraw Russian from the First World War and in October 1917 the Bolshevik Party led an armed insurrection and took over the government in the second revolution of the year. The leaders, Lenin and Trotsky, issued an international appeal to end the war. This was followed by the Labour Party and TUC starting to oppose the war.
The Shop Stewards Movement in Britain was in a powerful position. TUC membership had increased from 2.25 million in 1913 to 4.5 million in 2018. Many of the unions joined together in amalgamations and federations. The Triple Alliance of miners, railway and transport workers was officially ratified, which had been put off in 1914.
There was a lot of support for the Russian revolution at the 1918 Labour Party conference in Nottingham. The Labour Party had a special conference in Westminster in 1918 where it adopted a new socialist constitution. This included the famous Clause Four : “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”
In November 1918, the German Revolution helped bring the First World War to an end. This was followed by revolutions in other countries in Europe such a Bavaria, Hungary and more. The European ruling classes felt seriously threatened and that the existing order was a risk. Britain plus twenty other countries sent armies to support the Russian counter-revolutionary White armies. In response protest movement in several countries appeared. Sewell describes how the British labour movement was against the attack on the Russian revolution.
In December 1918 a snap general election was held and Labour Party ran with a very radical manifesto: “Labour and the New Social Order” and called for a new society. Lloyd George’s National Coalition was returned to office was a large majority but this was not an accurate reflection of society with many soldiers yet to be demobilised and the voting registers well out of date. The Labour Party got 2.5 million votes and 57 seats in Parliament. This was a big increase from 1910 when they got 0.5 million votes.
This post includes sections on: can capitalism be reformed, proposed reforms, do reforms protect capitalism, why reforms won’t work, and capitalism undoes reforms that benefit ordinary people.
This post is critical of reforms because they mostly protect capitalism in different ways and get in the way of building transformational mass movements. But I also do not completely discount them, as I think they might have a positive part to play in moving us towards ending capitalism.
The obvious answer is no. But its more complicated than that. It depends what you mean by reform and timescales. If the question means can capitalism be reformed long term to meet the needs of ordinary people, then no way. If you mean when capitalism gets out of control can it be reformed so things are a bit less unequal to quieten demands for system change, then quite possibly, such as the 1930s in the US and the post-war decades in the UK.
Twenty-first-century capitalism may be less profitable but the corporate elite are clearly securing massive profits. These could be redistributed in workers wages, or from tax increases to fund a welfare state to meet everyone’s needs, unlike the substandard social safety net we currently have. I do think redistributive reforms are possible but it will require pressure from mass movements, which do not currently exist.
The Tory response to Covid could be seen as a reform and it certainly shows what’s possible. It contradicts the neoliberal claims that if we leave things to the free market and everything will be fine. I more see this as crisis response, with the Tories needing to balance the demands of the public to meet their basic needs and capitalists demands to keep the economy running. Extending the job retention or furlough scheme in the Spring and Winter was due to pressure from unions and business leaders, but there has not been a strong demand from the left. The question now is how will the government deficit be paid for – tax rises or more austerity. We’ve still not recovered from the last round of austerity by the coalition government following the 2008 financial crisis. Austerity now would continue the process of rolling back postwar gains related to benefits, more NHS privatisation and the welfare support for the most vulnerable (see the final section of the post for more on this).
In the UK, Ed Miliband when he was the leader of the Labour Party (2010-2015) wanted to introduce a proper industrial strategy to introduce national and regional investment and to bring in controls over the excesses of corporate behaviour. The Corbyn project presented itself as democratic socialist but due to the limits of global neoliberalism, could have only moved us towards social democracy. The current Tory government are looking to copy past Labour Party policies with their ‘levelling up’ rhetoric, although it seems unlikely they will follow through.
Mostly yes. Many on the radical left argue that fighting for reforms maintains capitalism by making it more stable or profitable.
Nate Hawthorne has a more nuanced understanding. He describes in this post that reforms help capitalism function, he gives the example of extending credit to companies so they can operate. This could be broadened to include all the things that governments do that make the economy and business environment easier for companies to operate in and make profits.
Nate also describes the importance of the spreading of ‘capitalists class consciousness’ to ensure capitalist system stability. Capitalists will have ‘boss-consciousness’ related to their employees in their business but some will be more focused on increasing their personal wealth over the long term interests of the capitalists class. Reforms can limit the excesses of some self-serving capitalists. This is called the ‘corporate compromise’ by Young et al in Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It. The book describes how the creation of US legislation goes through a process of being generally agreeable to difference corporate interests to ensure the stability of capitalism [1]. It describes how Barak Obama worked very hard to keep the capitalist system stable so it worked for the business world as a whole [2]. And that Donald Trump violated the corporate compromise because he advanced certain business interests over others [3].
Reforms also prevent social unrest by doing just enough to stop it from boiling over. This relates to movements, campaigns, street protests, demonstrations and riots. Examples of this would be the US civil rights laws in the 1960s or the poll tax riots in 1990 in the UK.
Reforms have also saved capitalism from revolution by giving mass movements what they demand to quiet them down. The example here would be the New Deal in the US in the 1930s following a mass movements of trade unions, socialists and communists. [4]
As well as reforms protecting capitalism from itself, greedy capitalists or mass movements, reforms are also used to protect capitalisms profits in the form of anti-trade union laws. (for more information on this see a summary in the final section of this post).
Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression in the 1930s, several factors combined to saved capitalism: Keynesian economic theory; mass movements demanding state support and welfare reform; and the economic stimulation generated during the war and the rebuilding after. Richard Wolff asks an important question: has the systematic crushing of the left over the last forty years taken away one of the important mechanisms for protecting capitalism? [5]
Why reforms won’t work
There are several ways to think about this. First, if reforms are achieved that benefit ordinary people but you leave the capitalists in power, they will always undo or roll back any gains for ordinary people (see the next section for more details). The capitalists can’t help themselves. So reform is not enough and we need to end capitalism. [6]
Second, the mid-twentieth century reforms were achieved because of a combination of rebuilding after the war resulting in a high demand for labour, powerful working-class movements, the increasing profitability of capitalism with capitalist classes willing to share some of their profits, and British capital could not move abroad as it does now so had nowhere else to go. There is also an argument that the threat of communism from the Soviet Union put pressure on western elites and states. [7]
Third, currently, the left is so weak and corporate power so dominant that we’re not winning any reforms. This is the ‘structural power’ argument. [8]
Fourth, some on the left advocate a gradualist strategy through reforms to ending capitalism and creating a socialist society. There is a lot to unpack in future posts on this point but I do think that a rupture with capitalism will be required, a revolution.
Capitalism undoes reforms that benefit ordinary people
Since the 1980s the current form of capitalism, neoliberalism has been rolling back the gain that ordinary people made through the 20th century. Using the four categories from the previous post on these gains I will briefly describe how they have been undone.
Paul Foot in The Vote: How it was won and it was undermined, provides an excellent history of success of electoral reform up to the early 20th century. And then how it was undermined for the rest of the century. The continuing struggle for electoral reform is ongoing and important to weaken the Tories and open things up for the radical left.
The most recent reform of the welfare system was The Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016. A 2019 report by Frank Field MP, Heidi Allen MP and Feeding Britain called The ‘Other Britain’ and the failure of the welfare state, found that the welfare system is failing the most vulnerable. They list the key issues to be:
benefit freeze – claimants no longer get an annual increase in line with inflation so have less and less to live on
Universal Credit, issues include 5-week wait and advance payments, third party deductions and old social loans, sanctions, Work Capability Assessments
Medical assessments and Personal Independence Payments (PIP)
No recourse to public funds for migrants
Jobcentres are unsupportive and uncaring
The gig economy and the working poor cannot afford to cover their outgoing so need food banks
Problem Debt due to low pay force people into high-cost debt
The increasing use of food banks in the UK is another clear indication that the welfare state is failing: “In 2019/20 approximately 1.9 million people used a food bank in the United Kingdom, around 300 thousand more than the previous year.” [10]
creating competition so private companies provide services funded by taxpayers;
the reorganisation of the NHS so regional commissioning groups allow local NHS service contracts to be managed by private companies;
the Tory governments have reduced the level of funding, which could make people think a publicly owned NHS isn’t working and so the private sector might be seen as a solution.
Endnotes
Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It, Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee and Michael Schwartz, 2020, chapter 2
Environmental and public health advocates on Monday celebrated the demise of a proposed fracked gas pipeline across Pennsylvania and New Jersey after PennEast decided to cease development because of difficulties acquiring certain state permits.
“Today, water, the environment, and people spoke louder than fossil fuels.”
—Jim Waltman, The Watershed Institute
“This is a huge victory. Today, water, the environment, and people spoke louder than fossil fuels,” said Jim Waltman, executive director of the New Jersey-based Watershed Institute, in a statement. “We congratulate and thank the many local, state, and federal officials of both parties and thousands of residents for their determined opposition to this unnecessary and destructive proposal.”
Joseph Otis Minott, Clean Air Council executive director and chief counsel, said that “PennEast’s cancellation of this unneeded, dangerous fracked gas pipeline is a momentous win for the communities that have fought hard for years to defend their property and the environment.”
“Others who seek to exploit the residents and natural resources of New Jersey and Pennsylvania should take note: We are not easy-take states and we will continue to resist,” he added.
A huge win for long-suffering landowners, for the environment, and for everyone who worked to block the PennEast pipeline!
But we're not done yet — we must reform a system that allowed this economically unnecessary project to be approved in the first place. https://t.co/KkvY7nYQns
The announcement from PennEast, a joint venture of multiple companies including Enbridge, follows several years of local opposition to the proposed 120-mile pipeline as well as speculation about the project’s future last week, after a court filing revealed that the developer would not use eminent domain authority to acquire state land in New Jersey.
The decision to stop development comes despite a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling about the New Jersey land dispute, which favored the developer, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approving the project.
As PennEast spokesperson Pat Kornick explained in a statement Monday:
Although PennEast received a certificate of public convenience and necessity from FERC to construct the proposed pipeline and obtained some required permits, PennEast has not received certain permits, including a water quality certification and other wetlands permits under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act for the New Jersey portion of the project; therefore, the PennEast partners, following extensive evaluation and discussion, recently determined further development of the project no longer is supported. Accordingly, PennEast has ceased all further development of the project.
Waltman pointed out that “the proposed pipeline would have ripped through dozens of our state’s most pristine streams and bulldozed through more than 4,300 acres of farmland and open space that has been ostensibly preserved in perpetuity.”
“From the beginning, it was clear to us that this PennEast proposal was in severe conflict with the state’s strong environmental protections,” he said. “As we and others have urged, through two administrations, the state of New Jersey has consistently held PennEast to the Garden State’s strict environmental laws.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy also welcomed the development. In a statement, the Democrat highlighted his administration’s opposition to the “unnecessary” project that would have destroyed acres of conserved land and threatened species, and reiterated his commitment to “protecting our state’s natural resources and building a clean energy future.”
The @GovMurphy Administration fought PennEast all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to stop the construction of a pipeline we said was unnecessary, dangerous, and illegal.
At long last, the company has abandoned the project. This is a great win for New Jersey.
The New Jersey attorney general and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network had challenged FERC’s approval of the project in federal court. Maya van Rossum, the network’s leader, said Monday that “we knew we would get here eventually, it was just a matter of time.”
Applauding the opposition efforts of frontline organizations, community leaders, property owners, and environmental advocates, van Rossum declared that “we have advocated, litigated, conducted critical scientific ground-truthing, and been clear throughout that we would accept nothing short of cancellation!”
“Today is a day to celebrate,” she added. “Tomorrow we battle on to end the fracking that spawned this evil pipeline project as well as the other LNG, pipeline, and compressor projects that are part and parcel of the devastating and dangerous fracking industry advancing the climate crisis and putting the health and safety of our planet and future generations at such consequential risk.”
