Introduction

Friday 15 April 1921 seemed to be the beginning of the greatest massed battle between capital and labour in Britain. Despite expressing sentiments like the mines are 'the property of the nation’, Prime Minister Lloyd George had decided to hand back full responsibility for the mines to the owners on 31 March 1921 - five months earlier than had been expected. The owners at once gave notice that the new rates of pay would represent big cuts in wages and that they could not agree to national negotiations but would resume the old pre-war practice of district scales which the miners had fought hard to abolish for good. This brought them in conflict with the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), that decided to call its members out on strike. The MFGB asked the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the National Transport Workers’ Federation (NTWF), with which it formed the so-called Triple Alliance, to strike in support. Fearing that a possible defeat of the miners would lead to a general attack on wages, and to a decentralisation of collective bargaining, the NUR and the NTWF agreed to call out their members. The strike was fixed on ten o'clock Friday night, April 15th 1921.

On the eve of the strike, however, the secretary of the MFGB, Frank Hodges, explained their position to some interested MP’s in the House of Commons. According to some people present, Hodges suggested terms for a temporary settlement involving a vital modification of the MFGB’s program and, therefore, of that of the Triple Alliance also. After this, Lloyd George invited the miners to a further meeting with the owners. They refused this, because - in their opinion - their position was not in any way changed. They still kept to their original demands and hoped that the other partners in the Alliance would still stand loyally by them. The position of the other partners, however, had been changed. They thought, that Hodges’ statement - publicised in almost all British newspapers - had caused a lot of confusion among their members. No reasonable hope remained - they said - of securing spontaneous and united action among their men. As H. Gosling, then NTWF-president pointed out: "The general morale was broken, and no other course was open to us than to call the Alliance strike off officially as well”. Friday 15 April 1921, therefore, did not bring the beginning of the 'greatest massed battle between capital and labour”, but the collapse of what was, on paper, "the most formidable industrial organisation in the world” the Triple Industrial Alliance. Friday 15 April 1921 became 'Black Friday' .

The idea of a triple alliance was first promoted by the MFGB. Strikes in 1911 and 1912 had proved to the MFGB, the NUR and the NTWF, that the outbreak of a dispute in any one of their industries necessarily dislocated the others. Thus in 1912 the miners had to face the fact that railwaymen and transport workers conveyed the reserves of coal, during their first strike on a national scale. They, therefore authorized the Executive Committee of the MFGB to enter into relations with other trade unions with a view to preventing such situations, and - if possible and necessary - to taking joint action for mutual assistance.

To this end the MFGB approached the NUR and the NTWF. In April 1914 these organisations held a conference at which they appointed a committee to draw up a working agreement. The outbreak of the First World War interrupted these negotiations. In the course of 1915, however, they were resumed, and on 9 December 1915 & Joint Conference of the Executive Committees of the MFGB, the NTWF and the NUR, ratified the constitution of the Triple Industrial Alliance; an alliance with a joint membership of 1.350.000.

On paper the Triple Alliance was a very powerful organisation, and it was clear, right from the beginning, that the leaders of its constituent bodies should use its powers to back up their demands. The First World War, however, postponed their actions temporarily, though it was clear that the unions wished to make the Alliance as effective as possible. As R. Smillie, president of the MFGB and of the Alliance, pointed out:
I want this Alliance of ours to be strong when we shall require the strength. I want it to face tho great industrial problems we shall have to face after the War. And should the time ever come - we all hope that time will not arrive - when the strength of this organisation is tested, then this Alliance must either win or go under. I want it to be strong enough to make its influence sufficiently felt with the Government and the nation as to make action by this Alliance unnecessary. If it is felt by the nation that we are sufficiently strong, when we ask for changes in our conditions which are considered just and reasonable, it may not be necessary to declare what we know, as a general strike, of the three bodies.

Until April 1921 the threat of action of the Triple Alliance was in many occasions sufficient. Then, however, the Government tested its strength, with the above-mentioned result. The Titanic, on paper the strongest ship ever built, at least started its first journey. The Triple Alliance did not even do that; it was wrecked even before it was launched, before it was called into action.

The purpose of this theses is not to re-tell the whole history of the Triple Alliance, or to re-examine the events before Black Friday. The central questions are not whether Frank Hodges did or did not suggest terms for a temporary settlement, and whether the NUR and NTWF were right or wrong to call off the strike. Questions like these are as futile as the question whether the snake actually spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden: they imply that history is just a series of accidents. History, however, is created by men under given political, social and economic circumstances. Thus a trade union organisation - whose main task is to maintain and improve the working, and subsequently the living, conditions of its members — has to adapt its structure and strategy to the political, social and economic context in which it operates. Central in this theses, therefore, is the question whether the failure of the Triple Alliance was inevitable, because the structure and the strategies of its leaders were not adequate in dealing with the changing political, social and economic situation. In the following chapters this issue will be analysed.

For this study all kind of sources are used. The Triple Alliance has been described by various authors, from various points of view. Despite the very valuable information that they provided, - as much as possible primary sources are used. It was, however, very difficult to find the minutes of the meetings of the Triple Alliance, since no complete set seems to be available. The 1914-1921 Annual Reports of the MFGB, and of the NUR, included the majority of them. These Reports also included the minutes of meetings of Executive Committees, Delegate Committees and the like, of the concerning unions. They can therefore, with the 1914-1921 Annual Reports of the NTWF, be regarded as primary sources.

For the analysis G.D.H. Cole and R. Williams were invaluable. Cole may be regarded one of the most outstanding analysts of the British trade union movement, its history, its structure, its organisation, and its objectives. Williams, who was one of the leading persons in the Triple Alliance, held some high opinions of it. In some internal memoranda and in an article written after Black Friday, however, he revealed himself as a realistic observer of the Alliance, who was aware of its many weaknesses.