The Shop Stewards Movement was a movement which brought together

shop steward A union representative, union steward, or shop steward is an employee of an organization or company who represents and defends the interests of their fellow employees as a trades/labour union member and official. Rank-and-file members of the un ...

s from across the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

during the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. It originated with the Clyde Workers Committee, the first shop stewards committee in Britain, which organised against the imprisonment of three of their members in 1915. Most of them were members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE). In November 1916 the Sheffield Workers Committee was formed when members of the ASE there went on strike against the conscription of a local engineer. The government brought the strike to an end by exempting craft union members such as ASE engineers from military service. However, when this policy was reversed in May 1917, this was met by a strike involving 200,000 workers in 48 towns. The Shop Stewards Movement arose from organising this strike. In 1917, a National Administrative Committee was established for what was named the Shop Stewards' and Workers' Committees. George Peet of the Manchester-based Joint Engineering Shop Stewards' Committee was elected as secretary, while Arthur MacManus of the Clyde Workers' Committee was chair, and J. T. Murphy from the Sheffield Workers' Committee was assistant secretary.Edmund Frow, Ruth Frow and John Saville, "Peet, George", ''Dictionary of Labour Biography'', vol.5, pp.170-173 Two months after the formation of the committee, it merged with a movement for the amalgamation of engineering unions, which had been founded in 1915 but had achieved little during the war. The organisation supported the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, and Peet represented it on the committee of the Hands Off Russia movement. The movement became gradually less active until 1920, when Willie Gallacher, David Ramsay, Ted Lismer and J. T. Murphy organised a national conference of the movement. The conference agreed to affiliate to the

Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...

(Comintern). Gallacher, Murphy, Ramsay and Jack Tanner represented the group at the Second Congress of the Comintern, later in the year, but affiliation was not permitted, on the grounds that the organisation was not a political party. Gallacher rejected suggestions that the movement should affiliate to the International Trade Union Council, a recently founded group of communist trade unions, arguing that it was necessary for members to remain active within mainstream trade unions. Instead, in September, a compromise was agreed: the movement would affiliate to the new

Red International of Labour Unions The Red International of Labor Unions (, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern (), was an international body established by the Communist International (Comintern) with the aim of coordinating communist activities within trade unions. Formally ...

, while individual members who also held membership of the new

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

would come under the discipline of that group.Reiner Tosstorff, ''The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920 - 1937'', p.274 The Shop Stewards' and Workers' Committee became part of the National Workers' Committee in 1921, and it agitated unsuccessfully for a

general strike A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions ...

on Black Friday. The National Workers' Committee in turn merged with the British Bureau in 1922, Peet remaining joint secretary for a year, after which the Comintern ordered that Gallacher and J. R. Campbell replace Peet and Lismer among the leaders of the movement.

References

{{reflist Labour movement in the United Kingdom United Kingdom in World War I