¹ Hobsbawm, E. J., “The ‘New Unionism’ Reconsidered”, in Mommsen, W. J. and Husung, H.-G. (eds), The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880–1914 (London, 1985), pp. 15 and 17.Google Scholar

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⁴ Webbs, , History of Trade Unionism, p. 416.Google Scholar It was the socialist politics of the New Unionism that set it apart from earlier examples for the Webbs.

⁵ Marsh, Arthur and Ryan, Victoria, The Seamen: a History of the National Union of Seamen, 1887–1987 (Oxford, 1989), p. 5.Google Scholar

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⁸ Marsh, and Ryan, , The Seamen, p. 5Google Scholar; Lovell, , “Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism”, p. 232Google Scholar, and Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, p. 59Google Scholar; 1853 also saw a strike in Liverpool: Taplin, , Liverpool Dockers, p. 1.Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Pelling, H., A History of British Trade Unionism (London, 1976), 3rd ed., pp. 105, 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunt, , British Labour History, p. 299Google Scholar, and Pollard, , “The New Unionism in Britain: its Economic Background”, p. 38.Google Scholar

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¹³ Hobsbawm's evidence for the initial policy of One Big Union prior to 1892 is in fact a statement by the gasworkers' union made in 1897; while in Hobsbawm's cautious period, in his own words: “the incentive to recruit widely remained”, ibid., pp. 191–192, and Hobsbawm, “The ‘New Unionism’ Reconsidered”, pp. 19–21.

¹⁴ Fox, Clegg and Thompson, , History of British Trade Unions, p. 94Google Scholar; Pelling, , History of British Trade Unionism, p. 102Google Scholar; Lovell attempts to fit the dockers' union into the Hobsbawm model while admitting that the London dockers were attempting to practice exclusive membership in the autumn of 1889, Lovell, J., “The Significance of the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in British Labour History” in Mommsen and Husung, The Development of Trade Unionism, pp. 105–109.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Lovell, , “Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism”, p. 248Google Scholar; Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, p. 99Google Scholar; Lovell, , “The Significance of the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in British Labour History”, pp. 105–107Google Scholar; Matthews, , “The London Gasworks”, pp. 323 and 440.Google Scholar

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²² Cole, G. D. H., A Short History of the British Working Class Movement (London, 1948), p. 103.Google Scholar

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²⁵ Boll, F., “International Strike Waves: a Critical Assessment”, in Mommsen and Husung, The Development of Trade Unionism., p. 94.Google Scholar The myth of militancy continues to be perpetuated, see also Brown, Kenneth D., The English Labour Movement, 1700–1951 (Dublin, 1982), p. 173Google Scholar, and Falkus, M., Britain Transformed: An Economic and Social History, 1700–1914 (Ormskirk, 1987), p. 175.Google Scholar

²⁶ Sadly Crowley's Ph.D. thesis was never published and, though much consulted, its findings were ignored.

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³¹ For the struggle during this period see: Matthews, “The London Gasworks”, ch. 8.

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³⁴ Rules of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers (1889), p. 14.Google Scholar Held in the Webb Collection and quoted more fully in Matthews, “The London Gasworks”, p. 430.

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⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 426; Fox, Clegg and Thompson, , History of British Trade Unions, pp. 79 and 89.Google Scholar The Tyneside secretary was replaced by a socialist in turn dismissed for “neglect of duty” in 1898.

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⁹⁰ Hunt, , British Labour History, p. 313Google Scholar; Lovell is somewhat unclear on this issue maintaining at once that: “there is no good reason why the movement of the early 1870s should be regarded as merely ephemeral and 1889 taken instead to mark the real starting-point for union development”; while “1889 marked the beginning of a new era […] the triumph of a new kind of mass unionism”, Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, pp. 73 and 120.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁰ Ibid., p. 44.

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¹⁰⁹ Pollard, , “The New Unionism in Britain: its Economic Background”, p. 45Google Scholar; indeed Pollard makes the opposite argument that increasing real wages lead to rising expectations and therefore unionization, ibid., p. 40.

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¹³² Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, pp. 22, 26–27, 38.Google Scholar The argument is confused by Lovell's recent view that the coming of steam shipping retarded the growth of unionism because of the increased economic power of the larger steamship companies; Lovell, , “Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism”, p. 242.Google Scholar

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¹⁴⁹ Smith, and Nash, , The Story of the Dockers' Strike, p. 26.Google Scholar

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¹⁵³ Census Returns (1881), RG11, 461, 467, 578.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁴ Census of England and Wales, 1881, P.P. (1883), LXXX, p. 191. There were 1,903 dockers enumerated in West Ham (the area covered by the sample) in 1881.Google Scholar

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¹⁵⁶ Smith, and Nash, , The Story of the Dockers' Strike, p. 26Google Scholar. Booth estimated the maximum employment in the London Docks in 1891–1892 as follows:

¹⁵⁷ Again this was obscured for London by the calculations of Shannon, based on implied death rates, which show Irish immigration peaking in the 1880s at almost three times the level of the 1860s; Shannon, H. A., “Migration and the Growth of London, 1841–1891”, Economic History Review (1935), pp. 85.Google Scholar He was followed by Jones, Stedman, Outcast London, p. 147.Google Scholar More reliable figures and evidence are found in: Jackson, J. A., The Irish in Britain (1963), p. xivGoogle Scholar; Lees, L. H., Exiles of Erin: Irish Migration in Victorian London (Manchester, 1979), p. 46Google Scholar, and Treble, , “The Market for Unskilled Male Labour in Glasgow”, p. 121.Google Scholar Irish immigrants were also mainly rural in origin; for this reason Lovell's statement: “Countrymen avoided the waterside […]. It was thus the Irish who took over” is a non sequitur; Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, p. 57.Google Scholar

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¹⁶³ Found also by Hines, A. G., “Trade Unions and Wage Inflation in the United Kingdom, 1893–1961”, Review of Economic Studies, XXXI (1964), pp. 121–152.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁴ The full equation is:

where N₁ is membership of the NUGGL in one year and U_t-1 is the level of unemployment in the previous year. Standard errors in parenthesis. Over the whole period, 1892–1914, the correlation disappears; full equation:

¹⁶⁵ Bain, G. S. and Elsheikh, F., Union Growth and the Business Cycle: An Econometric Analysis (Oxford, 1976), pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, P., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁷ Cronin, “Strikes and the Struggle for Union Organisation”.

¹⁶⁸ For a useful summary of the economics of collective bargaining see: Mulvey, Charles, The Economic Analysis of Trade Unions (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁹ For a more detailed discussion of this issue see, Matthews, , “The London Gasworks”, pp. 452–463.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁰ Hobsbawm, , Labouring Men, p. 144Google Scholar, and Hobsbawm, E. J., “Custom, Wages, and Work-Load in Nineteenth-Century”, in Briggs and Saville, Essays in Labour History, pp. 113–139.Google Scholar The idea that workers have to go through a learning process is unjustifiably popular, see Cronin, , Industrial Conflict, p. 39Google Scholar, and Cronin, , “Strikes and the Struggle for Union Organisation”, p. 61.Google Scholar

¹⁷¹ Report on the Strikes and Lock-outs of 1888 by the Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, P.P. (1889), LXX, p. 711.Google Scholar

¹⁷² Hobsbawm, , Labouring Men, p. 217.Google Scholar

¹⁷³ To give one example among many: in Cardiff the railwaymen won their strike in 1890 because they could not be replaced; the Cardiff dockers lost their strike in 1891 because they were. Williams, , “The New Unionism in South Wales”, pp. 422–425.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁴ Matthews, , “The London Gasworks”, pp. 262, 286, and 331.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁵ Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, p. 139Google Scholar; R.C. on Labour, P.P. (1892), XXXIV, p. 147.Google Scholar Foreign labourers were also used and Tillett was anti-immigration for this reason; but probably because of the expense and language problems this source never had major significance. See R.C. on Labour, P.P. (1892), XXXV, p. 79, Q. 2212Google Scholar; also McIver, Arthur J., “Employers' Organisation and Strike Breaking in Britain, 1880–1914”, International Review of Social History, XXIX (1984), p. 7.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Lovell, , “The Significance of the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in British Labour History”, pp. 105–106.Google Scholar See also Schneer, , Ben Tillett, p. 48Google Scholar, and Crowley, , “Origins of the Revolt”, p. 385.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁷ Tillett, Ben, Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers' Union: A Brief History of the Dockers' Union (London, 1910), p. 20Google Scholar; Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, p. 75Google Scholar; Schneer, , Ben Tillett, p. 35Google Scholar, and Jones, Stedman, Outcast London, pp. 144 and 149.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁸ Smith, and Nash, , The Story of the Dockers' Strike, p. 102.Google Scholar Hinton also asserts that “it was the leadership and organising ability of the Socialists that ensured the victory” in the dock strike, Hinton, , Labour and Socialism, p. 47.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁹ Smith, and Nash, , The Story of the Dockers' Strike, p. 106Google Scholar; Brown, , Waterfront Organisation in Hull, p. 38Google Scholar; Report on the Strikes and Lock-outs of 1889 by the Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, P.P. (1890), LXVIII, p. 447.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁰ Smith, and Nash, , The Story of the Dockers' Strike, p. 106.Google Scholar

¹⁸¹ McIver, , “Employers' Organisation and Strike Breaking”, p. 5.Google Scholar

¹⁸² Lovell, , Stevedores and Dockers, p. 123.Google Scholar

¹⁸³ Matthews, , “The London Gasworks”, p. 359.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁴ McIver, , “Employers' Organisation and Strike Breaking”, p. 12.Google Scholar The corresponding figures for the number of workers involved was 3.1. per cent, 2.4 per cent and 0.3 percent.

¹⁸⁵ Report on the Strikes and Lock-Outs of 1889 by the Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, P.P. (1890), LXVIII, p. 447.Google Scholar