Building a Union, 1906–14

Abstract

This chapter examines the Federation’s approaches towards organising in the years before the First World War. It considers its responses to strikes, many of which undoubtedly swelled its numbers and raised its profile, both within the labour movement and throughout the country. In 1914, four years after what has become perhaps its best-known dispute (that of the women chain makers of Cradley Heath), the branch secretary there declared that ‘after what has been achieved by the Federation in this trade, there ought not to be a single worker outside its ranks’.¹ These were years that witnessed the Federation’s growing strength and confidence; from 21 branches in 1908, there were over 70 by 1914 and claims that its membership was approaching 20,000, a record figure ‘built on a more solid foundation than ever before’.² Its growth was part of a wider expansion in the labour movement: in 1906 the total number of trade unionists in Britain was around 2,210,000, but had increased to 4,117,000 by 1914.³ Between 1910 and 1914 the fastest rate of growth was amongst the general unions, whose numbers were boosted by heightened industrial militancy.⁴