Red Clydeside: A history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932

Events

The Munitions of War Act on Clydeside 1915

The British government, realising the vital role which certain industries played in the supply and production of munitions, enacted the 1915 Munitions of War Act in order to ensure the efficient and uninterrupted production and supply of munitions for the British armed forces.

Workers on Clydeside were incensed at the consequences of the Act, as it quickly became apparent that the Act strengthened the hand of employers and severely curtailed skilled workers' autonomy in the workplace. The majority of skilled workers on Clydeside came to see the Act as little more than a legal instrument whose main objective was to eliminate their hard-won industrial rights. The Act was coined 'the slavery Act' by Clydeside workers.

Under the Munitions of War Act it became a penal offence for a worker to leave his current job to work for another firm without the consent of his employer. This clause gave employers the power to issue or refuse certificates of discharge. Other clauses in the Act made it an offence for a worker to refuse to undertake a new job, regardless of the rates of pay on offer. The Act also made it an offence for a worker to refuse to work overtime, whether overtime pay was to be paid or not.

The Act allowed for munitions tribunals to be set up to deal with transgressors against the Act, and it was at one of these tribunals in October 1915 that three shipwrights from the Fairfield Yard in Govan were sentenced to one month's imprisonment because of their refusal to pay a fine imposed as a result of sympathetic strike action in support of two sacked workers.

The increasing tendency of employers to revert to munitions tribunals (in the early phases just after their introduction it was estimated that there were between 70 and 80 cases a day in Glasgow alone) and the imprisonment of the Govan shipwrights, was seen by Clydeside workers as further proof that employers and the state were acting in collusion to impose draconian practices on workers.

Following the imprisonment of the Govan shipwrights, official trade union representatives called for a public inquiry into their case. The Labour Withholding Committee, reformed after the failed engineers' strike of February 1915, were keen to call immediate strike action. There was an uneasy peace whilst the official trade union leaders and the more militant LWC waited for the government's response. As time dragged on without any response from government the LWC took matters into their own hands and issued an ultimatum to the government that if the shipwrights were not released within three days there would be widespread industrial action throughout Clydeside until their release had been secured.

Three days after the LWC's ultimatum to the government the shipwrights were released from prison. It later transpired that the men's release had been approved by the authorities after the anonymous payment of the men's fines. The strong suspicion amongst the LWC leaders was that official trade union leaders had paid the men's fines, fearing wide-scale industrial action throughout the Clydeside region over which they would have little or no control.

The munitions dispute revealed for many workers the reluctance of the official trade union leadership to protect them against the aggression of employers. They were increasingly seen as too moderate and too willing to comply with government directives that helped underwrite the authority of management and eroded workers' industrial rights. This resistance to executive authority on the part of rank-and-file trade union members created a vacuum into which the more militant LWC stepped. The LWC were ordinary shop stewards who were more politically motivated and more determined not to surrender workers' bargaining strengths in the face of draconian war-time state policies.