The National Programmes of 1919

During the war the unions of the Triple Alliance individually prepared a National Programme. They included a series of demands which would be put before the government as soon as the war ended. The main issues were wages and working hours. The MFGB demanded an advance in wages of three shillings per shift, a reduction of hours to six per shift, and nationalisation of the mines and minerals the NTWP demanded a forty-four hour week and the NUR an forty-eight hour week, as was promised by Churchill. The three partners in the Alliance had entered into 'a solemn and binding compact’ that there should be no definite and final settlement of the programme of any one section unless and until there was a certainty of a complete and all-round concession of the demands of all three. Since the individual unions each conducted their own negotiations with the government and the employers early 1919 - the mines and the railways were still under government control so the government performed the role of employer in the mining and railway industries - it was not very difficult to split the Triple Alliance. The government installed a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Sankey (the Sankey Commission) to deal with the miners’ claims, and the MFGB agreed to this course of action. The NTWF succeeded in getting a reduction of the working week to hours varying from 44 to 48 hours. Only the NUR was not successful by the end of March 1919. They decided, therefore, to ask the Triple Alliance to join them in a national strike. They must have done so very reluctantly, at least J.H. Thomas could not have been a convinced supporter of such a step, for at a rally of strikers on 9 February 1919 he said that - although the NUR was the strongest union in the world ~ they had to examine what was their duty in relation to that power. The State - he pointed out - was more important, and therefore they had to make their sectional claims consistent with and part of their duty as citizens of the State. They might succeed and achieve their object by holding the State up to ransom, but if they did so at the expense of the State, then as citizens they would have destroyed all their claim to citizenship. Since the miners and the transport workers had achieved satisfactory settlements, their response to the NUR's request was luke-warm. They agreed that instead of striking, the Alliance should make a combined approach to the government on the NUR's behalf. They interviewed some representatives of the government, and succeeded in a resumption of the negotiations, with which the possibility of a strike was averted.

The nature of the National Programmes, and the timing of formulation were close to uniformity. After March 1919 - after the first round of negotiations - miners, railwaymen and transport workers, within the confines of their own particular executives and delegate conferences, promoted their individual policies, unmindful of the policies of the other organisations. Until 'Black Friday' no more attempts were made to synchronise wage or other economic demands.  The individual unions only asked each others support, or that of the TUC if their negotiations ended in a deadlock or a strike.

The MFGB sought the support of the TUC, when the government did not accept the recommendations of a majority of the Sankey-Commission. At first the Sankey Commission had reached a compromise between the miners, and the government and the owners about wages and working hours. Later, the commission appeared to be divided on the question of ownership of the mines. A majority, however, composed of Sankey himself and the MFGB nominees to the commission, although divided among themselves, recommended the acceptation of the principle of nationalization. The Lloyd George Government did not accept this recommendation. Tories and Liberals were united in opposing it; and, anyhow, no unanimous or nearly unanimous conclusion on the nationalisation of mines had been reached. The miners’ leaders, however, who had adopted the notion that the Government were bound to carry out whatever Sankey recommended, insisted on regarding Lloyd George's refusal to nationalise the mines as a break of faith.

The TUC - that almost annually pledged itself to the nationalisation of the mines, and some other industries - gave virtually unanimous support to the miners in September 1919. The most it was prepared to do, however, was to launch a publicity campaign, 'The Mines for the Nation’.  The campaign was a fiasco. It failed to have much impact on either the Government or the public. Again the MFGB did not go to the Triple Alliance to consider further steps, but to the TUC. At 11 March 1920 a special Trades Union Congress decided overwhelmingly - four against one - against industrial action to secure nationalization of the mines. The miners themselves were divided, and concentrated their activities on wages and prices.