16. “Labour in the War”¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter dissects the role of organised labour during the Second World War, arguing that the British trade union bureaucracy became a fully integrated arm of the capitalist state, suppressing working-class militancy in the name of national unity. The British Establishment, having harboured pre-war sympathies for fascism — figures such as Churchill, Montagu Norman, Lord Beaverbrook, and Viscount Rothermere had admired or financed Hitler and Mussolini — rebranded the conflict as a patriotic “war against fascism” only once German imperialism threatened British interests. Labour and trade union leaders immediately offered support to Chamberlain’s government, with TUC representatives placed on wartime committees. The Joint Advisory Council, formalising collaboration between the Employers’ Confederation and the TUC, was established in October 1939. The Essential Work Order (1941) militarised labour, enabling bosses to transfer skilled workers to essential jobs at lower pay. Order 1305 rendered strikes and lockouts illegal, yet 900 illegal strikes occurred in the first months, with few prosecutions. Engineering expanded dramatically; AEU membership reached 825,000 by 1943, including 139,000 women conscripted from December 1941. Despite labour shortages strengthening workers’ bargaining power, union leaders prevented this advantage from being used. Bosses maximised profits through dilution and union compliance, generating shop-floor discontent.
In May 1940, Churchill formed a Coalition government, bringing Attlee, Greenwood, and Bevin into the War Cabinet. Bevin called 2,000 union officials to Central Hall to secure co-operation. The Shop Stewards’ Movement re-established itself but was integrated into Joint Production Committees. The Communist Party initially supported the war, then opposed it after the Nazi-Soviet Pact, then fervently supported it after June 1941, demanding increased production, dilution, and opposition to strikes. Industrial unrest grew: factory occupations, shipyard strikes, and widespread coalfield strikes — by 1944, strikes reached their highest level since 1932, two-thirds in coal. Under Order 1305, 18,436 workers were punished for lateness or absenteeism by March 1945, 1,323 jailed, but no employers imprisoned. Bevin introduced Defence Regulation 1AA, making incitement to strike unlawful, and four Revolutionary Communist leaders were arrested. The government issued a new regulation on 17 April, six days after a mass Yorkshire coal strike had ended, making it illegal to declare, instigate, or further any strike or lockout in essential services, punishable by five years’ penal servitude or a £500 fine — described as the most powerful legal weapon since the Combination Acts.
Internationally, Britain and America had hoped Germany and the Soviet Union would exhaust each other, but the Red Army’s counter-offensive, backed by a nationalised planned economy, stopped the German advance at Stalingrad. The imperialists delayed the Second Front until fear of the Red Army sweeping across Europe forced their hand. At the Teheran, Moscow, Yalta and Potsdam conferences, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin agreed on spheres of influence; Churchill’s memoirs record a cynical division of the Balkans with Stalin. A post-war revolutionary wave swept Europe. In Britain, Labour won the July 1945 general election with 393 seats. Throughout the war, trade union officialdom acted as an arm of the capitalist state, its bureaucracy intertwined with government committees. Trade union membership rose from 6,053,000 in 1938 to 7,803,000 in 1945; female membership nearly doubled to 1.8 million. The Labour government, resting on a radicalised mood, chose to tinker with capitalism rather than overthrow it, throwing the ruling class a lifeline and making the working class pay the price.