THE FIRST wave of the modern workers movement, that is the first with an organisational continuity with the present day, was the creation 'Amalgamated', unions from the early 1850s onwards. Its prototype was the Amalgamated Society Engineers (ASE)
December 1851 the ancestor of today's AUEW.
The ASE had 5,000 members when it was formed — rising rapidly to 11,000 before being savagely counterattacked by the employers. By 1866 the ASE had 33,000 members - and by 1874 43,000. In 1891 the ASE's membership had reached 71,000.
The basis of the success of the ASE in organisational terms was clear. It was a iruly nanonal unloll earlier local union organisations. It had a high dues level - - a shilling a week. It was centralised and efficient.
The other Amalgamated new model unions showed the same notably the Amalgamated society of Carpenters and Joiners. This was formed soon after the ASE and set about organising the skilled building trades.
Older unions of ironfounders and boilermakers were reorganised during the 1850s and 1860s on the 'new model lines. The ETU was formed later in 1889, but consciously took the older ASE as its model.
The new model unions had a clear character. They were craft unions. They organised excusively among workers on a craft basis.
Their political nature was also clear. The Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners declared that its members aspired to become and respected. The new model unions were part of the core support of the Liberal Party.
Peak membership of the founded under this regime in 1868, was members, before the new model unions une Calv 1870s with came under severe attack with the onset on the 'Great Depression' in the 1870s.
1 ne • cran unions were not merely based on skilled workers but in many cases their aims were directly oriented against unskilled male workers and, it goes without saying, against women.
The boilermakers union, for example, directly opposed piecework to platters' labourers as it increased their Society decided in the 1880s to refuse ts work with platters' helpers who insisted on piecework. The result was that the employers sacked labourers • - the Boilermakers Society directly helping the employers to hire new unskilled workers.
If the craft unions of WOrKCIS. formed wards, were the first wavę of the labour movement, then the second great wave Table 1:
Number of men in TUs Number of women in TUs Number of manual workers in TUs Number of white collar workers in TUs White collar workers as To of TU members Women as 7 of TU members :.trhie wollar manual workers 1931 unskilled model, unskilled male workers. unionism was the of formed direct gas workers.
unions' was Karl establishing unlike the General Labourers predecessor of the GMBATU.
BUlL Dy
features Uprising only Table 1)
did begin skilled Society respectful unionisation of TUC, 1,200,000 dustry -Spared to 28 per welc wollicu.
payment of Boilermakers the Labour Party in 1900 hundreds of axis or trade umonisin lo by the new model skilled 1896 1.4 0.1 Source: 1896-1979 calculated from Hyman 'Class Struggle and the Trade Union Movement' in A Socialist Anatomy of Britain ed Coates, Johnston, and Bush, Polity Press 1985. 1981 calculated form The Fact About Women Is, EOC 1985 began in 1889 with what is generally referred to as the unionisation of the • but wmien in reanly Is belter characterised as the unionisation of The classical form of this wave of general union. The TGWU and GMBATU are the lineal descendants of the new unions of 1889 the TGWU from the dockers strike of that year and the GMBATU from the The character of this wave as one of male unskilled workers is evident from the figures. The wave of unionisation did touch women at its outset. The har-
----- pull-quotes -----
from the 1850s on- Composition of trade union membership in Britain