The Triple Alliance and the Threat of Revolution

It appears from the above-mentioned statements, that G.A. Phillips was right, as he argued that the Triple Industrial Alliance was in no sense a 'victory for the syndicalist idea’. It was not a concession to the pressure of rank and file militancy. On the contrary - he pointed out - it was designed specifically to control and discipline such militancy. Therefore, he said, to assume that the Triple Alliance would have declared a general stoppage almost as soon as it was constituted was, in fact, to ignore all the evidence concerning its 'raison d'etre’.

So the First World War did not postpone a general strike of the Triple Alliance. Its leaders were very much aware of the consequences of such a step, and they expressed this repeatedly, at almost all occasions when the Alliance was discussed. They did so before the formal formation of the Triple Alliance in December 1915 and they did so after it until the end of the First World War. Contemporary observers with some syndicalist sympathies, though, were less cautious in their prognosis. Carter, for instance, pointed out that the Alliance's economic power was sufficient to call a general strike that would paralyse most national activities, within a few days. This, he said, admitted of only one method of solution. The State would then be forced to take the trade unions of the Triple Alliance into partnership as the official agencies to whom must be delegated considerable control over their respective industries.

Ironically J.H. Thomas wrote a preface to Carter's booklet. He acknowledged that through the Triple Alliance miners, railwaymen and transportworkers could continue to bargain with capital on virtually equal terms,  and added to  this:
Let us hope that in the future wise counsels will prevail, and that the natural desire of the workers for the highest possible standard of life shall be gratified, as far as the present capitalist system can do it (my emphasis, spr), and so stave off the great catastrophe which would follow a conflict between Capital and the Triple Industrial Alliance.

The other leaders of the Triple Alliance committed themselves less openly to 'the present capitalist system’, or had less expectations about the possibility of the contemporary capitalist system to produce a higher Standard of life to the workers. Nevertheless, they were not more anxious to press the government by industrial action. Shortly after the First World War, however, some of the leaders changed their tune, and advocated a policy of 'Direct Action’. Was a revolution pending?

The 'khaki-elections’ of 1918 meant an overwhelming victory for Lloyd George, who promised the electorate a 'country fit for heroes'. The union leaders were very disappointed with the results of these elections, for the Labour Party only returned 57 MP’s. Some of them, among them the leaders of the Triple Alliance, therefore, decided to adopt a more militant attitude maybe encouraged by the result of the 1917 Bolshevist revolution in Russia. According to Glyn and Sutcliffe, in the first post-war years, the Cabinet was haunted by the possibility that continued strikes, especially from the Triple Alliance, would lead to coups in major cities. Whatever the case might have been, the government handled all labour matters with care, if not shrewdness.

In 1919 the awkward situation was created, that three million men were flooding back into the labour market at a time when industry was trying to switch over from wartime to peacetime production. Numbers of them had been home for only a short time before they were wishing they had not been in such a hurry to get away from the army. The Unemployment Insurance part of Lloyd George's National Insurance scheme relieved their problems. Originally, it had been applied experimentally to only a few industries, but now it was expanded in scope. It brought in every employed worker except domestic servants and farm labourers. To silence the last echoes of criticism, all troops were classed as insured persons, and entitled to claim out—of-work benefit for up to six months after being demobilised.

In February 1919 the Government convened a National Industrial Conference, where employers and labour leaders were present. Almost the whole Labour movement was suspicious about the intentions of the Government concerning this institution. The Triple Alliance and the Engineers desired to have nothing to do with it. Despite that, a majority of them decided to co-operate in this Conference, and in the Provisional Joint Committee, that emerged from this and they gave, therefore, the Government some breathing space. The unions affiliated to the Triple Alliance had promised each other to assist each other in the pursuance of their individual National Programmes early 1919. It might be argued, that the Government with the NIC separated the 'militant’ seotion of the Labour movement (Triple Alliance and Engineers) from the more 'moderate’ section. In its handling of the claims of the allied unions, it split the Triple Alliance. The miners saw their claims referred to the Sankey Commission, the Transport Workers reached a satisfactory settlement, and only the railway men needed the support of the Triple Alliance to get their negotiations resumed, after they had ended in a deadlock previously, and to reach - subsequently - a settlement, from that moment onwards, concerted industrial action of the Triple Alliance was less likely, for all aynchronisation of claims, and negotiations was abandoned. The unions went their own way, and until Black Friday they only appealed ~ or did not even do that -for assistance of their partners, when their individually conducted negotiations ended in a deadlock. In those situations, the allied unions appeared to be divided, and a full-scale support never was reached.

Since then, the biggest threat from the Labour movement to the Government to use their industrial strength was not concerning industrial matters, but political matters. Already during the war, the Labour movement was very annoyed by the conscription bills, and they pledged themselves and their members t o get them abolished as soon as the war was over. The Triple Alliance unions launched a campaign in the Labour movement to  get these bills abolished and in connection with this, the release of conscientious objectors, the raising of the blockade against Germany, and against the intervention in Soviet-Russia. The Labour movement as a whole was not so anxious to use 'Direct Action’ for these political purposes. In 1920, however, when there appeared to be a serious threat that Britain might be involved in the war of Poiand against the Soviet-Union, the Labour movement 'forced’ the Government to back down by threatening a general strike.

Although the Triple Alliance is quite often associated with revolutionary threats, with 'bringing about a revolution by general strike, it never was involved in such an enterprise, merely because it did not want a revolution. Before the First World War the leaders of the Alliance - although not formally established yet - said so openly, Thereafter they showed a more militant attitude, but more to pursue some practical industrial and political demands than a complete transformation of society, as was advocated by the Syndicalist. Besides that, in those years they were confronted with a very carefully, if not shrewdly, acting Government, that mastered the situation.