The Labour Movement

300px The Labour Movement STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
The term 'Labour Movement' is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour relations.

The Industrial Revolution
The onset of the Industrial Revolution altered the relationship between the capitalist owners and the workers especially in Great Britain, where the first modern trade unions where formed in industrial areas such as Northern England, Northern Wales, Western Scotland and Glasgow. The most militant labour movements were involved in the coal mining, railway, and shipbuilding industries. By 1914 the British trade unions were very powerful and usually from legal penalty if they went on strike.

The First World War
The First World War brought about a crucial transformation in the trade union movement. The government could not have undertaken the war effort without the support of the trade union leadership. The first step in this new collaboration was the abandonment by the union leaders and their Labour Party colleagues of their opposition to war, so they called off all existing disputes. The urgent demand for war munitions led to wholesale attacks on working class living standards. Added to this were steeply rising prices. In February 1915, about 9 000 engineering workers went on an unofficial strike for increased wages on Clydeside, one of the main arms producing areas. The government’s call to resume work was echoed by the union leaders. Faced with this hostility, a new leadership, the shop stewards, emerged to fill the gap. The government now was alarmed and summoned the union leaders to a special conference that resulted in the notorious Treasury Agreements by which all independent union rights, including the right to strike, were abandoned. Employers where now allowed to ‘dilute’ labour, employing unskilled workers in normally skilled jobs to meet the growing labour shortage and the insatiable demands from the front for men and munitions.