Children of Workers
The Times Of Their Childhood
How The Steel Was Tempered - Page 1
From: "A People's History of England" by A.L. Morton
During the first few months of the War strikes almost ceased, prices rose rapidly, while wages lagged far behind. [...] In February new signs of life appeared in the great engineering centre of the Clyde, under the leadership of the Shop Stewards' Movement which had taken the position left empty by the official Union leadership. The wartime strikes were at first entirely unpolitical, that is they were directed not against the War but against economic grievances. Later, when the struggle against conscription, which was introduced by instalments between the autumn of 1915 and the spring of 1916, began, and even more, after the Russian Revolution, they took on a more political character. From the start, however, many of the leaders like MacLean, were avowed revolutionaries and anti-militarists.
[...]
The Clyde continued to be the main centre of agitation. The Shop Stewards had organised themselves into a body called the Clyde Workers' Committee which rapidly became the spokesman for the whole area. A rent strike, supported by welltimed industrial action, put an end to the worst exactions of the Glasgow landlords and forced the Government to pass a Rent Restriction Act. All through 1915 there were constant strikes which neither the Government nor the Union officials could prevent. Early in 1916, and largely owing to weaknesses within the Committee, the Government was able to intervene. The Committee's paper The Worker was suppressed, and the most active leaders of the agitation were deported to other areas or imprisoned, John MacLean receiving a sentence of three years.
[...]
In Ireland the reaction to the war was somewhat different. While Redmond and the bourgeois Nationalists supported England and turned themselves into recruiting agents, the left wing of the Volunteers and Connolly opposed the war and prepared for an armed rising. They were ready, if necessary, to seek German aid [...] At the same time, Connolly had no illusions about German Imperialism, and his attitude was crystallised in the famous slogan: "We serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland" [...] a rising was decided upon at Easter 1916 [...] although the rising was almost confined to Dublin, it took 20,000 troops a week to suppress it. Pearse, Connolly and most of the other leaders were taken prisoner and executed.
The crushing of the Easter Rising proved to be the beginning rather than the end of the rebellion in Ireland. [...] In 1918 an attempt to extend conscription to Ireland was defeated by a General Strike.
(pp.533-34, 535-36)
©Renate Mitchell. May not be reproduced in any form online or offline without explicit written permission.
