Thomas Joseph Dunning (12 January 1799 – 23 December 1873) was an English bookbinder and trade unionist.

Biography

He was born on 12 January 1799 in

Southwark Southwark ( ) is a district of Central London situated on the south bank of the River Thames, forming the north-western part of the wider modern London Borough of Southwark. The district, which is the oldest part of South London, developed ...

, the son of Joseph Hill Dunning, a waterworks turncock, and Ann Barber Dunning.Edward J. Davies
The Origins of some Trade Unionists
''Notes and Queries'', Volume 61, Issue 4, 1 December 2014, pp. 570–573. He was apprenticed to a bookbinder in 1813. In 1820, he joined the ''Journeymen Bookbinders of London'' and was elected to its chairing committee in the late 1830s.Iorwerth Prothero
Dunning, Thomas Joseph (1799–1873)
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 18 April 2010. In the strike of 1839 he favoured a view, in contrast to the majority, that a deal should be struck with the employers. He resigned from the committee but was part of negotiations of the final settlement. In 1840, he took part in reorganization of the existing in London bookbinders' trade union groups which resulted in defection of the London Consolidated Society of Journeymen Bookbinders from the national union. Dunning stayed at the helm of the ''London Consolidated Society'' until 1871 when he resigned for health reasons. He continued to edit the ''Bookbinder's Trade Circular'' that he founded until his death in 1873. Dunning married twice, first, on 28 June 1824 taking Susannah Hooper as his wife; and then, after becoming a widower, on 8 September 1840 he married Susannah Heath.

Political and economic views

Dunning was involved with the Chartist movement in 1840s and collaborated with William Lovett. He continued to support

political franchise Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...

after the defeat of

Chartism Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, w ...

becoming a staunch Liberal. However, as a trade union leader he advised to avoid entanglement in disputes and schemes of major party politics and negatively viewed participation in potentially dividing political campaigns especially when they involved international issues. For example, Dunning advocated non-involvement during the 1863 Polish rebellion crisis and supported the independence of the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

in the American Civil War; like some other ex-Chartists, i.e.,

John Bedford Leno John Bedford Leno (29 June 1826 – 31 October 1894) was a Chartist, radical, poet, and printer who acted as a "bridge" between Chartism and early Labour movements, as well as between the working and ruling classes. He campaigned to give the v ...

and Patrick Matthew, he distrusted centralization of the federal government in America and compared Abraham Lincoln to Xerxes. Dunning viewed laws regulating relations between employers and employees, such as Master and Servant Acts, as putting industrial labour under "the old feudal notion of serfdom". In his writing, he called for industrial harmony but also justified the right of British workingmen, both urban and rural, to strike and unionize in order to raise the price of labour during the ongoing mid-Victorian economic upswing. On the request of the members of his trade union, he wrote and published a pamphlet on the philosophy of trade unionism, ''Trades' unions and strikes: their philosophy and intention'' (1860). He argued that employer and employed workmen were not standing on equal footing during bargaining process and encouraged workers to combine into unions to increase their bargaining powers. However, he cautioned against falling into radicalism and anarchy and emphasized that capital and labour "are each, notwithstanding these occasional disagreements, the truest friends of the other, and neither can inflict an injury on the other without its recoiling on himself. Capital and Labour should go hand in hand. Experience has amply proved that the Capitalist cannot injure the Labourer, or the Labourer the Capitalist, without each inflicting injury, and perhaps ruin, upon themselves." He argued that rural trade unionism was not a revolutionary threat: "...the landowners and farmers ought to rejoice that it has taken place, for it is of all others a circumstance which if successful, will give stability to their position and render impossible to them similar fate to that of the French nobility and farmers who were swept from the face of the earth for the same kind of oppression. To avert such a catastrophe, success must attend the movement of the agricultural labourers.". He criticised land nationalisation as not only economically inefficient but politically dangerous as it would create a government monopoly. The solution was to liberalise the market through the abolition of

primogeniture Primogeniture ( ) is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn legitimate child to inherit the parent's entire or main estate in preference to shared inheritance among all or some children, any illegitimate child or any collateral relativ ...

and the laws of settlement and entail.

Recognition

Liberal political economist

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...

commended Dunning for writing an "able tract" containing "many sound arguments." Socialist economists

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and

Beatrice Webb Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term ''collective bargaining''. She ...

characterized Dunning as "one of the ablest Trade Unionists of his time."Kenneth Lapides
''Marx's Wage Theory in Historical Perspective: Its Origins, Development, and. Interpretation''
Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 1998, pp. 83-84. In his turn, Karl Marx thought highly of Dunning and quoted him several times. Famous quote in Marx's

Capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

from Dunning's pamphlet, ''Trades' unions and strikes'' runs as: British labour historian Royden Harrison called Dunning, "the authoritative voice of the Trades Union oligarchy". Another British historian Lawrence Goldman summarised Dunning's legacy as follows: "Dunning and his contemporaries had harnessed the organized working class to the Liberal Party, to liberal political economy, and to the liberal values of equality before the law."

Later life

Dunning remained secretary of the London Consolidated Lodge for thirty-one years. In June 1871, he was knocked over by a vehicle, hospitalised with a severe concussion, and partially paralysed. He resigned as secretary, but was granted a pension by the union, and continued to edit the union's newsletter, the ''Circular'', until 1873.

Works

''Trades' unions and strikes: their philosophy and intention''
(1860)
''The advantages and disadvantages of trade combinations''
(1864)

Biography

Political and economic views

Recognition

Later life

Works

Notes

Further reading