| home | about | academic| news | features | links |
What the papers said
excerpts from the railway press from the 1840s
to the 1990s
The purpose of this section of the IRS web site is to provide a glimpse of what the British railway press was saying about various issues in the past. Every month there will be a different selection of excerpts from the railway press from the 1990s to as far back as the 1840s, taken from the collections in the National Railway Museum Library here in York. Sometimes we will group the excerpts according to particular themes, but there will also be space for a more random selection of some interesting, entertaining, or just plain bizarre corners of the railway news of the past. We hope that you will find it interesting and illuminating. It's one way of finding out what has changed, and what has not, over the past century and a half of the railway press. Last month's edition is now accessible through the archive page.
Next update: 31 July 2001.
July
2001
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Labour troubles,
1848-1994
A look at what the railway papers have had to say about
strikes on British railways since the mid-nineteenth century.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1848: The Railway Chronicle reports on the end of the LNWR engine drivers' strike
1849: The Railway Times comments on a strike on the Midland Railway in 1849
1887: The Railway News reflects on the end of a strike of Midland Railway engine drivers in 1887
1911: The Railway Gazette finds strike-related violence in a London signal box
1911: The Railway Gazette reflects on the lessons of the national railway strike of 1911
1919: The Railway Gazette comments on the significance of the 1919 national railway strike
Background
In August 1848 locomotive drivers on the London & North Western Railway
withdrew their labour in protest at a new system of grade classification which
they claimed would make them vulnerable to future arbitrary decisions to cut
their wages. The LNWR responded by hiring replacement drivers and, allegedly,
trying to force non-drivers among their staff to drive trains. The striking
drivers claimed that these practices endangered the public.
Explanatory Notes
'Combination': organised trade union. 'New men': strike breaking labour.
At the Railway Tavern, Hampstead-road, about 150 engine-drivers and firemen employed on the London and North-Western held several meetings for the discussion of their grievances, from 4th to 11th inst ... Mr. J. Brown, an engine-driver, having been called to the chair, observed, that at the last meeting it had been resolved to apply to the Commissioners of Railways to receive a deputation from the engine-drivers on the subject of their grievances with the directors of the London and North-Western. A reply from the Secretary of the Commissioners was read, declining to interfere, but stating that they would communicate with the company on the subject, as it is stated 'that the public safety is endangered by the present state of things.' - The Chairman said this communication refuted the declaration of Mr. M'Connell, the chief of the locomotive department, when the deputation waited upon him on the 3rd., - that if the men were determined to stick to their notices, he should have the assistance of Government. The Times had endeavoured to make it appear that there was a strike and a combination amongst the engine-drivers for an advance of wages. They all knew, and the directors knew, that was not the truth. It was proper that the truth should go forward to the world, and the whole difference between the engine-men and their employers was simply this:- Mr. M'Connell, the chief of the locomotive department, had resolved upon a classification of the men, varying in price from 5s. 6d. per day to 8s. per day. By this classification he reserves the power to himself to reduce any man to the lowest scale, and leaving it to his (Mr. M'Connell's) discretion whether such men shall be ever allowed to rise again. The enginemen want no advance of wages, being satisfied with the present scale; but what they did want was, that the same system of promotion should be continued as it was under the management of Mr. Bury, the former chief of the locomotive department ... The fact was that the company had acted towards the men in a most arbitrary manner. On the 31st finding that Mr. M'Connell was determined to stick to his plan of classification, every man had tendered his resignation, giving a fortnight's notice, in accordance with the terms of their agreement with the company. There was no combination on the subject, but each man acted on his own opinion, and the resignations were delivered at Euston station on the 31st ult., by the 4 p.m. train. Since that had taken place arbitrary measures had been adopted. Many engine-drivers had been removed forthwith, and others had to do their duty under the influence of the police. Policemen were all down the line in plain clothes ...
Mr. Wingrove had to report that a new man (whose name he gave) had just been stopped with his engine at Camden station, being drunk. This same man, on the 2nd, had to bring up the 8 a.m. train from Birmingham, and when required to go to work, he was in such a beastly state of intoxication taht another man had to bring up the train. This man had now been employed on the line three days, although it was known that he had been discharged six times before for drunkenness, and once fined 2l. and imprisoned for a fortnight by the magistrates at Manchester, when he was employed on the Bolton and Preston line. - Mr C. Langham had to report that that evening a new man, with the engine No. 18, had been brought in with his train 8 minutes before time. On the express train arriving at Rugby at 7.50 that evening, the man who had charge of the engine was staggering about, and in such a state that he was incapable of performing his duty, and he (Langham) had to bring the express train up to London ... H. Clements, a youth apparently about 17 years of age, said that Mr. Walker, the foreman at the Camden station, came to him and said - 'Clements, I want you to take charge of an engine.' He (Clements) replied - 'That he could not take charge of an engine, as he was incompetent.' Mr Walker then said - 'What! not at 7s. a day? You are a foolish fellow to be led away by that set of fellows.' ... Mr. Wood said he was an assistant turner in the engine-shed. On Wednesday morning Mr. Walker came to him and said he was short of hands, and then said to him - 'I want to make you an engine-man.' He said - 'He could not, as he did not understand it.' Mr. Walker then said - 'Then John Jones, your mate, must.' Jones said - 'I have no objection, but you must be responsible for all the passengers I kill.'
The return of the enginemen to their work on the London and North-Western will be felt by man to be a subject of congratulation. The accident which unluckily happened during their revolt, - although it was one that might have taken place at any other time, and with the ablest drivers, - was evidently thought by great numbers of the travelling public to have had some connexion with the employment of new hands: and no small part of the sudden falling off in the traffic returns last week, as compared with those of the year preceding, may probably be ascribed to the alarm from this notion. The announcement of the dispute being ended, and of the old men being at work again, will have removed this cause of anxiety, at least: and the effect of its removal will, we hope, be felt in an improvement of next week's business.
Still, the satisfaction with which the issue may be regarded is far from being unqualified. We cannot thoroughly approve of the terms on which the dispute is stated to have been arranged. The directors, by giving up Mr. M'Connell's classification, have virtually afforded the men a triumph over their superintendent; which we fear may produce effects more injurious than any panic that could have been caused by their continued standing out. These men will now be apt to think that by quitting their work in a body they can at any time overthrow the declared resolution of the directors by whom they are employed; and it cannot be expected that they will use this discovery with absolute modernation hereafter. We do not see, indeed, how they can be induced on any future occasion to submit to any regulations whatever that it may please them to think at variance with their interests, - how it will be possible to prevent them from laying down, on the strength of this first success, whatever conditions they may choose to consider necessary for their own convenience and profit - without bringing the question of obedience once more to trial, and once more facing the worst consequences of men en masse refusing to obey. Such being the visible upshot of the arrangement of the present dispute as it has been settled, it might, we believe, all things considered, have been better to go through with it once for all, instead of merely putting off the evil day by concessions that may have the effect of requiring all to be done over again on the next occasion, - unless it be intended that the enginemen shall become the masters of the London and North-Western Railway. As the matter had gone so far, we think it would have been better to have brought it to a decisive issue, at whatever cost: - not that we underrate the cost of persevering - which the untoward accident at Ashton Bank of course greatly increased, - but because we fell that no price is too high for the preservation of that discipline without which no railway can be well or even safely worked; and because we see that if discipline is to be kept up it can only be by determining the question now raised, whether the directors and their officers, or the working men under them, are to have the controlling voice in the arrangements of the line. The effect of patching up a peace at the sacrifice of a clear decision of this question cannot be permanenet: and as the point was once mooted, it would, all things considered, have been best, we think, to have disposed of it once for all in the right way. Such was certainly the feeling of the proprietors when they supported the chairman in his assertion of the necessity of resisting the enginemen's dictation: and such will be the deliberate conclusion of all who examine the bearing of the matter, and weigh the consequences of a want of firmness in so important a crisis.
This opinion, it is clear, cannot be affected in one way or another by the particular merit of the enginemen's case. There was no longer any time for going into this, after the directors had heard the complaints, been threatened with the consequences of adhering to Mr. M'Connell's orders, and had nevertheless determined to support him, with the strike fully in view. From this moment the question at issue was not the fairness or hardship of the regulations which had provoked, or were declared to have raised, the mutiny. It was simply one of the directors' whole authority, which they had chosen, on a sufficient view of the case, to stake on the support of the locomotive superintendent; and they could not from thenceforth revoke that support without compromising themselves. This, we fear, they have done by allowing the original matter of dispute to become a subject of arbitration, at a time when the question really at issue was not whether this matter had been properly determined in the first instance, but whether the determination, formally taken up by the Board, should or should not be overthrown by the menaces of the enginemen being carried into effect. It is clear to us that, under such circumstances, the language of a resolute directory, aware of the importance of preserving its authority, as the first of all conditions, in a matter like this, would have been - 'We cannot treat on this subject at all, at this moment, with men in your situation. We have already informed you that we believe Mr. M'Connell to have given you no just reason for complaint, and that consequently we had determined to support him, in spite of your threats to strike work. You are now no longer in our employ; and the first condition on which we can give you a chance of returning to it, must be your willingness to accept what we have already informed you we believe it right to maintain; and we shall not allow any inconvenience or loss whatever, that your combination to quit may inflict upon us, to make us give up what we think indispensable to the proper discharge of our duties both to the proprietors and to the public ... You have chosen to quit the company's service: we have not chosen to keep you on the terms you sought to impose upon us: we shall put no men into places of responsibility who come to ask for them in what is virtually a threatening manner, with conditions of their own framing; but we must do as we can with those who will enter the service on the only terms which it properly admits of. We do not compel any man to stay; we desire to treat all fairly who do stay, and believe that we have so done; but we cannot submit, on the other hand, to compulsion from them - to be ruled by those whom we are responsible for ruling, so long as they remain in our employ.'
This, we believe, would have been the proper answer to the proposal of an arbitration; and in so far as the course followed has been in the opposite direction, we must regret its tendency. It is clear that a question has now been started, which no temporizing can settle, and which must be settled, in the most positive way, before any safety can be had in the working of the most important of all the internal organs of the railway system. For the moment an encouragement has been given to exaction sustained by threats of a strike, which is likely to prove a dangerous example; and it would be too much to expect the example will not be followed, and the experiment repeated. Thus it is, that a straight resolute course will, after all, in all cases, be found the best. It is of no use to compromise a difficulty, because it may be exceedingly unpleasant at the moment to face it; if you evade it, it will merely be on the condition of meeting it again, when it will only be more unwelcome and intractable than before. Meanwhile we do not see what means the directors can adopt to rescue Mr. M'Connell from the questionable position in which they seem to have placed him - how they can recover his authority over the men for whose conduct and discipline he is responsible. This difficulty is the first untoward effect likely to result from letting the enginemen's dictation virtually prevail over an authority, which the directors themselves, indeed, were openly pledged to support. We apprehend that it may not be the last; and that the concessions of the Board have opened a chapter of disputes, the settlement of which will not be the easiest of the many tasks that the railway interest has yet to encounter.
Explanatory notes
'Lord Campbell's Act': a law of 1846 whereby railway companies became liable
to pay compensation to the relatives of people killed in accidents on their
lines. 'Communis cista' (Latin): the corporate wealth of a body
We regret to find that the disputes on the Midland line between the Board of Directors and the labourers, porters, &c., have not been satisfactorily adjusted. We are not in a position to do more than deplore the determination at which the Directors have arrived at the present season of the year, when privation is aggravated by the weather. We are fully alive to the necessity for retrenchment, but we cannot consider that a prudent economy, which tends to replace, at at time when the greatest skill is demanded, the services of experienced hands [p.1308>] by those of men wholly ignorant of their duties. At the same time we abhor the dictation of unions, and feel it our duty to apprize those who seek to advance their claims by combination, that they will ultimately be the sufferers. We would further beg of them to consider their position, under its worst aspect, compared with that of men now being displaced in the dockyards, not because their masters cannot afford to pay them (which is the actual case in the Midland Railway Company), but because new inventions have been voluntarily adopted, by which labour is dispensed with. We know the hardship to be great; but let the labourers on the Midland line reflect that they are not the only sufferers. It is with them as with the crew of a ship, when provision and water run short - the rations of all must be cut down. We hope that some middle point will present itself, upon which a good understanding may be resumed, and that the company will not lose the services of good and faithful servants, if upon fair and reasonable terms they can be retained in their situations. On the other hand, we think the Directors are bound to see that they do not press the point too far. They may gain a victory over the bellies of their men; but actions at law for goods lost, spoiled, or otherwise rendered useless, to say nothing of the terrors of Lord Campbell's Act, may come heavily upon the communis cista of the Company.
The ill-advised strike of the engine-drivers of the Midland Railway is now practically at an end, and the result has been such as might have been expected, and was the most desirable not only for the company, but for the public, and, indeed, the men themselves. This was almost a foregone conclusion, but the strikers were evidently not aware of the great reserves that the company were able to fall back up on in such an emergency. The chairman at the meeting yesterday ... entered into detail as to the cause of the strike and the admirable manner in which it was dealt with by the staff, of whom he spoke in high terms of praise. The figures quoted by Mr. Thompson clearly set forth the position, and showed that of the ordinary staff of 3,187 drivers and firemen, 2,352 either did not strike or had, up to yesterday, returned to their duty, being 74 per cent. of the whole of the staff, 558 new appointments had been made, and 227 vacancies remain to be filled up. As several of their old and tried men are still out, the officials, in the hope that they will return to their allegiance, do not propose to fill up all those posts until they are subject to absolute inconvenience in the working of the traffic, in which case they have new men ready to take their places. The meeting, with but one dissentient, supported the board in their action, and we are informed that the traffic is now being worked with its usual regularity. Engine-drivers and firemen are, as a rule, men who, by the able and conscientious manner in which they discharge their duties, and the skill and pluck which they bring into their everyday work, deserve and receive the respect of their employers and of the public at large. It is, therefore, the more to be regretted that they should place themselves in the power of an irresponsible body - guided, possibly, by a discharged railway servant - to whose interest it is occasionally to show their power, even at the expense of those on whose contributions they live. In the present case it pleased the paid secretaries of this body - we do not believe that the majority of the men themselves were really seriously interested in the question - to order a strike because the Midland Company wished to put their system of payment on the same basis as that adopted by the other leading companies. The attempts of the men to enforce their claims by leaving their engines on the road, and which might have caused injury to the public, much more serious than any pecuniary loss inflicted upon the company, affords evidence of the unfitness of those who seemingly directed the strike to act as advisers in the dispute. The instructions given by this irresponsible society to the men to leave their engines on the line, obstruct the traffic, and cause risks of fatal and serious injury to the public, utterly failed to alarm the company, while it had the effect of alienating from the men any sympathy which they might have had on the part of the public. It might possibly be that, under the pressure of some extraordinary act of injustice to the men, excuse might be found for resorting to such extreme measures, and the public, ever ready to lend a favourable ear to the complaints of the oppressed, might have regarded with leniency acts which it was sought to justify on the ground of self-defence. Here, however, nothing of the sort could be alleged. The grievances of some of the men were of the most shadowy description. Practically their earnings were not to be reduced, their hours of work were not to be increased, but the mode of estimating the amount of wages due for the services of some of the drivers of the goods engines was proposed to be altered, with the view of improving the discipline, and establishing a more fair and equitable distribution of work among the men in the employ of the company. There was nothing unreasonable in all this, nothing to justify resort to a general strike, or, still more, to acts which have been justly, but most mercifully, dealt with by the magistrate, by punishments inflicted on the men who were summoned for leaving their engines on the line, at the risk of obstructing the traffic on the railway. Were further proof required of the dangerous advisers in whose hands the engine-drivers have placed themselves, it is afforded by the circular issued by the secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, in which it is stated:-
'The society will, as far as its members are concerned, give the fullest protection to any man who may be intimidated in declining to act as a "black-leg." And if there should be, although it is not expected that there is, one who will allow himself to be used for any such purpose, he will most assuredly expect the frown and the censure, if not something worse, of the organisation named.'
While we regret, for the sake of a most deserving body of men that they should have surrendered their individual opinion and good sense to the ruling of an irresponsible body of men, who live by creating and fostering alleged grievances, we cannot but express our satisfaction that the strike has terminated as it has done. The memory of the short-lived struggle may be useful in the future, and may teach a very salutary lesson when, on some future occasion, such a council may issue its decrees consigning hundreds of honest and intelligent, but too credulous dupes, to idleness and want if they dare to exercise the right which every man possesses, to be the judge of his own interests.
The story of a violent struggle in a London signal box was told at the Guildhall on Monday, when Ernest Hands, a signalman in the service of the Central London Railway Company, was summoned for assaulting W. G. Neal, a fellow signalman. During the recent strike the complainant remained loyal and kept to his work, but the defendant went on strike, and that was the explanation of the trouble. During a dispute after the men had returned to work at the Post Office Station Hands rained blows on Neal's face, knocking him on to the instruments. On a train coming into the station the defendant gave up the attack and assisted the complainant, whose face was bleeding, to work the train into the platform. When the train passed through, however, the defendant renewed the attack, and as the complainant left the box he followed him onto the platform and again punched him. The result of it was that the complainant had a fractured nasal bone and severe bruises and cuts on the face. Result: £3 and 13s. 6d. costs or fourteen days.
Background
The first national railway strike in Great Britain took place in August 1911
over the issue of union recognition. The railway directors were supported in
their efforts to break the strike by the Asquith Government, but the strike was
well-supported and effective.
The unrest in the industrial world and in the railway world in particular, culminating in the recent strike, is fraught with lessons to all concerned. The railway companies, the railway employees, the trades union leaders, and the general public can all learn from what has happened, for it would be foolish to suppose that the faults were all confined to one side.
Perhaps the principal lesson for the railway companies is the need of greater solidarity and greater firmness ... Having made up their minds to a certain course of action they should absolutely refuse to be turned from it by a mere public outcry. The futility of making agreements which cannot be enforced, still more of recognising the union officials until the union itself can ensure the obedience of its men, is obvious, and it is to be hoped no pressure on the part of the Government will change their decision in this matter; the enforcement of discipline is essential not only to the commercial success but to the safe working of the railways, and it is out of the question for the railways to yield on this point unless they be relieved from all responsibility. The railway service differs from other industries, firstly, in that it is vital to the nation, and secondly, because it effects the safety of the public ... firmness in dealing with railway strikers is the only hope of getting a permanent settlement.
The railway employees, if they are wise, will also learn various lessons from the recent troubles. Not the least important of these is if they wish for the support of the general public, without which no great labour movement succeeds, they must be very careful not to make the public suffer. The sentimental sympathy of this great body is, as a general rule, extended soon enough to any body of men who are really ill-used, but is is just as rapidly withdrawn from any body of men which causes inconvenience to the public, as was the case in the recent strike ... That the railwaymen as a whole were not guilty of outrages against those employees who elected to remain at work was pretty generally admitted, but the cases in which intimidation was resorted to furnished another fact which helped to alienate public sympathy. The working men of this country have got to realise that a man is just as free to work as to strike, and that the duty of any State is to protect the individual in this right...
The trade unions have also a lesson to learn. The tactical mistakes of which they have been guilty, especially in allowing strikes to take place on lines where they were already recognised, and on such absurd pleas as their objection to handling the traffic of firms whose men were on strike, are doubtless obvious enough to them now...
[p.373>] The lessons to the general public have been pretty well enforced by the inconvenience which was suffered from the strike. The English public more and more suffers from what Carlyle calls 'an outrageous sentimentality,' and is apt to concentrate its attention on the comparatively small number of underpaid workers in any industry, wholly oblivious of the enormous mass of contented, well-paid workers which exist in the railway service. The general public, however, entirely supported the Government in its efforts not only to repress rioting but also in its efforts to maintain the railway service and would have liked to see it do more towards preventing peaceful picketing degenerating into intimidation.
Elsewhere in this issue we publish a series of tables giving details of strikes of employees on the railways in the United Kingdom from 1889 up to the first eight months of 1911 ... The information contained in these tables is worthy of study by everyone interested in current labour problems. In view of the fact that the railway industry forms in the aggregate one of the largest employers of labour in this country, the first impression derived from examining these tables is that only a very small number of labour disturbances have taken place in the railway world. Thus, during the whole period referred to there have been only four years, 1890, 1897 and 1910, and the present year, when more than 5,000 railway employees have, in the aggregate, been involved in strikes during a period of 12 months. Otherwise, the total number of employees concerned in a year's strikes have fluctuated from 28 to 2,400. These figures in themselves would seem to show that conditions of service in the British railway industry must be very much more satisfactory to the rank and file of the employees than would appear from the allegations of trade unionist officials, since an industry employing very nearly 600,000 men, in which strikes are, on the whole, very few, has hardly the look of 'seething with discontent.' The second outstanding impression that is gleaned from the study of these strike statistics is that, with a few exceptions, most of the strikes that actually took place had their origin in very trivial grievances. For instance, 347 railway servants took part in an Irish railway strike owing to an agitation for remission of punishment of a man removed to an inferior station for an alleged neglect of duty. In another case, a little over 800 men were concerned in the stoppage of work which was caused by instructions for brake vans to be used indiscriminately, instead of each goods guard having a van allotted to him. Again, there was a strike at Hull early in the present year, involving 1,984 employees, who left work in order to obtain the re-instatement of six fish porters who had been dismissed for removing to perform certain work. It will also be remembered that last year over 10,000 men came out on strike on the North-Eastern Railway, mainly owing to the removal of the head shunter from one point in the goods yard to another. In this case, as a matter of fact, the removal of the shunter concerned was subsequently confirmed. Detailed statistics of this kind are to be welcomed since they show, as we have already indicated, that such grievances as may exist in the railway service in the United Kingdom are nothing like so serious or so general as they would appear on the strength of the allegations of the labour leaders.
Background
The national railway strike of 1919 was over an agreement to standardize
wages which was applied in such a way as to bring about wage cuts for some
grades of workers. The strike was successful, forcing the railway companies and
the Government to abandon attempts to cut wages, and demonstrating in clear
terms the power and effectiveness of the railway trade unions.
Explanatory notes
'Mr. Thomas': J. H. Thomas, General Secretary of the National Union of
Railwaymen.
'A Model Strike.' An admirable feature of the railway upheaval was the generally prevailing good conduct of the strikers. Mr. Thomas promised 'a model strike without any disturbance or violence of any kind,' and it is largely to him that the country owes its freedom from unfortunate incidents. It is true that, in a few isolated cases, railway volunteers were attacked and hindered, and efforts made to obstruct train working, but it was not to be expected that all the men would remain quiet in the growing knowledge that much of their work was being done, and well done, by volunteers. It is a matter of congratulation to all concerned that no serious accident occurred to aggravate the situation. The Government, too, should be congratulated for the tactful manner in which the military was handled.
Loyalty of railway clerical staffs. A word of praise should be accorded to the members of the railway administrative and clerical staffs for their valuable assistance during the strike period. Whilst the members of the Clerks' Union has been instructed to perform nothing beyond their ordinary work, many of them felt such irritation at the character of the strike that they promptly volunteered for any class of duty and worked long hours uncomplainingly. Thus the training schemes initiated by the various railway companies bore fruit. A large number of men who had qualified as signalmen were placed in the various boxes, some acted as guards, whilst many others were utilised as passenger and goods porters. Additionally, many of the administrative staff who had gained knowledge of footplate work performed valuable service on the locomotives. The assistance afforded by the railway staff was undoubtedly of great value, for, in addition to their actual work, their general knowledge of railway working and conditions contributed very largely to the successful employment of public volunteers. [...]
The Public Attitude. As we read the situation there appear to be three main principles underlying the public support of the Government in resisting the strike. (1) As long as strikes are successful there is bound to be a temptation to all workers, whether sufficiently or underpaid, to start fresh ones - all of us like more money - thus causing our national life to remain dislocated and the recovery of trade impossible. (2) As long as wages go on rising, the cost of living must also increase in a vicious circle ... (3) A nation of 40 millions cannot, with self-respect, allow itself to be suddenly 'held up' by half a million or more of its members. The Government is elected by a majority of the nation and must be obeyed or changed. The strength of the public resistance arose from three main reasons: (1) As a result of the war the average man, especially if he had served abroad, looked upon the crisis much more calmly than he would have done in 1913. (2) Large numbers of men and women have gained in physical strength and learned discipline; hence they can and do regard dis-[p.438>]comforts and hardships very differently. (3) The war has taught most of us a keener sense of public duty and has given those in authority the experience and the machinery for organisation to meet with bigger emergencies. Subsidiary causes would appear to be the feeling: (1) That the suddenness of the strike was not justified. (2) That the majority or at least many railwaymen did not want it, or misunderstood the reasons for it. (3) That other and more sinister influence than trade union principles and loyalty helped, unknown to the railwaymen themselves, to produce the strike. (4) That in view of the increase already made in the railwaymen's wages due to the increased cost of living coupled with the other advantages of railway service, the heavy loss on the railways, the question of their adjustment after the cost of living has fallen in 1920, was a subject for reasonable negotiation, not threats.
Background
In 1962 the Chairman of the British Railways Board, Dr Beeching, announced a
plan to cut the number of railway workshops on BR, involving a programme of
extensive redundancies. The railway unions responded by calling a one-day
stoppage. Discussions between union and management brought about an agreement
in the wake of the strike.
Explanatory notes
'B.T.C.': British Transport Commission, the overall body responsible for
Britain's nationalised transport concerns. 'B.O.A.C.': British Overseas Airways
Corporation.
Seldom has organised labour had so sympathetic a press as the railway unions over their one-day stoppage of October 3. Naturally, the wisdom of striking to remedy grievances was questioned; but there were few dissentients from the view that the Government and the B.T.C. are mishandling the human relations involved. Two main points are obviously at issue. One ... is the B.T.C.'s revision of the previously understood scope of joint consultation. The other is the justice of applying to the staff relations of an industry with great traditions of long service - often running through generations of one family - the authoritarian methods that are accepted as part of the gamble in the get-rich-quick labour world of a great deal of post-war commerce. The B.T.C. has been directed by the Government to pay no attention to the social consequences to the public of its closures and withdrawals of service; these, we are assured, will be the Government's care. The Commission seems to feel - apart, of course, from its recent proposals for compensation, which are nevertheless no substitute for firm promise of employment to most men - that it is required to pay little more heed to the social consequences for many of its staff; in this case, however, the Government has plainly not made adequate provision for what is in large part the result of its own policies - and, moreover, is occurring in a state industry. It has been vehemently criticised from Right as well as Left for the vagueness of its plans to retrain and resettle the men who will be made idle. But the need for the contraction of workshop capacity is not wholly attributable to the Government. The unions themselves had accepted the inevitability of some reduction because of the designedly more durable character of modern equipment - though not, of course, any closures that could be attributed to new construction by private industry instead of in railway workshops. It is not clear to us why, in an industry with such a proud record of lengthy and dedicated service by many of its staff, and one whose joint consultation machinery has hitherto been nationally respected, the B.T.C. took an obviously calculated risk in publishing notice to 18,000 railwaymen - even though it was of some years' duration - with little more finesse than Whitehall would use to terminate a guided missile contract, seeing that by all accounts there was a certain amount of common ground on the problem. One of the most significant comments we noticed was that of Sir Miles Thomas, an industrialist of no less repute than Dr. Beeching, who recalled the successful reduction of B.O.A.C. staff by 25 per cent in 1949-56 (when he was chairman of that concern) and observed that it was achieved by constant discussion - not by 'just presenting a plan and making all the men angry'. Many railway officers complain that the deep interest of the old-school railwaymen in their job is dying; the B.T.C.'s new approach seems calculated to hasten its death and breed thousands more time-servers. Added to the inevitable tragedy of redundancies on B.R., plainly we now have the more avoidable misfortune of sourer staff-management relations than at any time since the war.
A series of one-day strikes by the signalling staff represented by the Rail, Maritime & Transport union crippled the rail network on Wednesdays in late June and July. At issue was an 11% pay claim made by the union; the RMT claimed that its 4,600 signalling staff members had suffered from an eroding of differentials. Basic wages of the lowest grade signalman, at £146 per week, have slipped to a mere 1% above that of a supermarket check-out operator; in 1984, they were 14% more. Average earnings for signalling staff, at £324 for a 51.4hr week, are below the average for BR manual staff.
Railtrack, the employer, refused to pay for past productivity improvements, but instead offered a 2.5% pay rise with extra money for new cost-saving measures, such as an agreement to being paid by bank transfer rather than cash.
Deadlock resulted in the union calling out its signalling staff on strike on 15 June, with stoppages on four subsequent Wednesdays, despite talks in the meantime at the conciliation service ACAS. As we closed for press, the executive of the RMT had just decided to step up the dispute, calling out the signalmen from noon on 26 July until 28 July, with 24-hour strikes on 20 July and 3 August.
On the strike days, Railtrack was manning some signalboxes with managerial grade workers and non-union staff. The Chiltern Line, controlled throughout from an Integrated Electronic Control Centre at Marylebone, was running normally south of Bicester from the outset of the dispute. Other lines were added as Railtrack became more adept; by the fifth one-day strike about one in five trains was running.
Political issue
Early on in the dispute the involvement (or not) of the Government became a major factor. Less than a week before the first strike, a settlement seemed on the cards: a leaked internal Railtrack fax revealed a pay increase of 5.7% had all but been agreed. This was later dubbed by the union the 'Paul Daniels offer', as the RMT said no sooner had it been mentioned than it mysteriously disappeared - like a prop in the magician's act.
Meetings between Transport Secretary John MacGregor and Railtrack Chairman Bob Horton, who returned from an absence at a critical stage in the negotiations, were blamed for the disappearance of the 5.7% offer. Mr MacGregor denied interfering in the bargaining process, but conceded that he had reminded Mr Horton of the Government's anti-inflationary pay policy, which sets a ceiling of 2.5% on public sector pay rises.
Adding to the controversy was the revelation that Jill Rutter, a member of the Prime Minister's staff at No 10 Downing Street, had attended a crucial Railtrack board meeting two days prior to the strikes. It later transpired that Martin Helm, John MacGregor's chief press officer at the Department of Transport, was controlling press access to Mr Horton.
Spotlight on Railtrack
The dispute turned a national focus on Railtrack, the company responsible for running the railway infrastructure. It became embroiled in the arcane world of railway industrial relations barely two months after incorporation as a separate company.
Chairman Bob Horton was formerly chairman of BP, where he was on a salary of £787,000 prior to being ousted with a £1.5 million pay-off. His three days a week at Railtrack earn him £121,800 annually.
Controversy surfaced when it became public in a Parliamentary answer that part-time directors of Railtrack receive £500 for attendance at Railtrack board meetings, in addition to a £10,000 salary. Board members include Sir Christopher Foster, the Transport Secretary's personal adviser on rail privatisation and a senior partner in Coopers & Lybrand, the accountancy firm which was paid £1.6 million for advice to the Department of Transport on track charges.
Meanwhile, Labour transport spokesman Frank Dobson accused Railtrack of spending £7 million on refurbishing its offices, when he claimed settlement of the dispute on the 5.7% formula would have cost £5 million.
Transport Secretary John MacGregor retorted: 'I understand that the cost of the premises is £1.8 million, which is a very modest arrangement for a very important body.'
Compensation
The issue of compensation between the new parties in the railway industry soon became an issue. British Rail's Train Operating Units were claiming that Railtrack's failure to deliver train paths to them on the strike days meant that they were seriously out of pocket: InterCity Great Western, for instance, said it was losing £500,000 revenue each strike day. Waiving track charges - some £330,000 per day in the case of ICGW - would not adequately remunerate for that.
In a similar instance in a full-blooded privatised railway, Railtrack would be liable to the train operators for their loss of farebox income and subsidy (as the Franchise Director would be expected to withhold subsidy for lack of service). The Rail Regulator would be on hand to prevent Railtrack from using its monopoly powers to recoup losses from the operators with higher track charges once the dispute was settled.
It became apparent early on, though, that such a regime would not be applied in this case. BR refused to pay track charges, but was not actively seeking compensation for other costs such as TOU staff wages. BR appeared likely to end up in a roughly neutral position, as the £5 million a day loss of farebox revenue roughly equated to a waiver of access charges; the Franchise Director continued to pay subsidy to BR for the strike days, and this money would have covered costs other than track charges. A spokesman for the Franchise Director said extra compensation was being considered for certain TOUs with a high farebox take, for which continued subsidy would not entirely make up. Gatwick Express, an early candidate for privatisation, must be a likely candidate for receipt of any such 'top-up' funds.
With a 'full-blooded' system of compensation, Railtrack might be facing a bill of £10 million for each day of strike action.
Updated 30 June 2001