Abstract
The concept of a separate organisation of employed workers, to determine wages and conditions by negotiation with their employers, had no place in the medieval system of industry. The recognised crafts were catered for by the gilds, which were combinations of both masters and journeymen. The journeymen were skilled workers who had served an apprenticeship to their trade. The gilds had the responsibility of protecting the standards of their respective crafts by defining the terms of service for apprentices, which usually ran for a period of seven years. Furthermore, they could fix the prices for the manufactured product and determine the piece-rate to be paid to the journeyman. The journeymen were of course vitally interested not only in the level of the piecerate but also in the conditions of their work and in the protection of their status vis-d-vis the unskilled. They were anxious to restrict the number of those who could enter their craft and share their privileges: and to this end they favoured the limitation of the proportion of apprentices to journeymen. But if they combined and went on strike to enforce their views on any of these matters, they risked punishment under the common law of ‘conspiracy in restraint of trade’.
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Further Reading
Eighteenth-century unions in general are dealt with in C. R. Dobson, Masters and Journeymen (1980) and J. Rule, The Experience of Labour in the Eighteenth Century (1981).
For a study of a strike-prone occupation, see J. M. Fewster, ‘The Keelmen of Tyneside in the Eighteenth Century’, Durham University Journal, n.s. xix (1957–8). On the passing of the Combination Laws, there is a useful narrative in J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760–1832 (1918), but their significance is more carefully assessed in M. D. George, The Combination Laws Reconsidered’, Economic History, i (1927), and also in J. V. Orth, ‘The English Combination Laws Reconsidered’ in F. Snyder and D. Hay, Labour, Law and Crime (1987) and J. L. Gray, ‘The Law of Combination in Scotland’, Economica, vii (1928).
D. C. Coleman, ‘Combinations of Capital and Labour in the English Paper Industry, 1789–1825’, Economica, xxi (1954) is of relevant interest. N. McCord and D. E. Brewster,’ some Labour Troubles of the 1790’s in N. E. England’, International Review of Social History, xiii (1968) and N. McCord, ‘The Seamen’s Strike of 1815 in N. E. England’, Economic History Review, 2 ser., xxi (1968) present new material. On the Luddites, see J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer, 1760–1832 (1919); F. O. Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (1934); E.J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men (1964), ch. 2; and R. A. Church and S. D. Chapman, ‘Gravener Henson and the Making of the English Working Class’, in E. L. Jones and G. E. Mingay (eds), Land Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution (1967). On friendly societies in this period, see P. H. J. H. Gosden, Friendly Societies in England, 1815–71 (Manchester, 1961). For Francis Place, see W. E. S. Thomas, ‘Francis Place and Working-Class History’, Historical Journal, v (1962). There is much of interest for this period in E. P. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class (1963), but its thesis is controversial. A. E. Musson, British Trade Unions, 1800–1875 (1972) is a useful summary in the Economic History Society Series.
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© 1992 Henry Pelling
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Pelling, H. (1992). The Origins, to 1825. In: A History of British Trade Unionism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12968-3_2
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