Ben Tillett, the son of a labourer, was born in Bristol
in 1860. His mother died when he was a child and a succession of step-mothers
treated him very badly. He ran away from home as a child and found
work as an acrobat in a circus. He also worked as a shoemaker but
at the age of thirteen he joined the Navy. In 1876 he was wounded
and invalided out of the service.
Tillet moved to London after after marrying
Jane Tompkins he settled down in Bethnal Green. He found a job as
a shoemaker but after he was made redundant he found work in the London
Docks. He eventually became a teacooper at the Monument Tea Warehouse.
It was while living in London that Tillett
became a Christian Socialist. He attended
the local Congregational Church
and joined the Temperance Society.
Tillet attended evening classes and despite a speech impediment, developed
an ambition to become a barrister. Tillet joined the Tea Operatives
& General Labourers' Association. Tillett was very vocal at meetings
and in 1887 he was elected to the post of General Secretary.
The following year Tillett led a strike at Tilbury Dock. The workers
were defeated and Tillett became so depressed that he considered leaving
the union. He campaigned for the post as General Secretary of the
Gasworkers' Union but he was defeated by Will
Thorne.
In 1889 Tillet's union members became involved in the London
Dock Strike. The dockers demanded four hours continuous work at
a time and a minimum rate of sixpence an hour. Tillet soon emerged
with Tom Mann and John
Burns as one of the three main leaders of the strike. During the
strike Tillett lost his speech impediment and was acknowledged as
one of the labour movement's greatest orators.
The employers hoped to starve the dockers back to work but other trade
union activists such as Will Thorne, Eleanor
Marx, James Keir Hardie and H.
H. Champion, gave valuable support to the 10,000 men now out on
strike. Organizations such as the Salvation
Army and the Labour Church raised money
for the strikers and their families. Trade Unions in Australia sent
over £30,000 to help the dockers to continue the struggle. After
five weeks the employers accepted defeat and granted all the dockers'
main demands.
After the successful strike, the dockers formed a new General Labourers'
Union. Tillett was elected General Secretary and Tom
Mann became the union's first President. In London
alone, 20,000 men joined this new union. Tillett and Mann wrote a
pamphlet together called the New Unionism, where they outlined
their socialist views and explained how their ideal was a "cooperative
commonwealth".
Tillett was now one of England's leading socialists. He was a member
of the Fabian Society and was one of the
founders of the Independent Labour Party. In
the 1892 General Election he was the the
ILP's candidate in Bradford and only
lost to the Liberal Party candidate by
500 votes.
Tillet was one of the founders of the Labour
Party but did not get on with its two main leaders, James
Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald.
In 1908 he attacked the leadership in his pamphlet Is the Parliamentary
Labour Party a Failure? and soon afterwards left to join the Social
Democratic Party.
In September 1910 Tillett helped to establish the National Transport
Workers' Federation, an organisation of 250,000 workers. He became
the leader of the union and in 1911 it won a national strike. However,
the following year, Tillett's union suffered a defeat at the hands
of the Port of London Authority. It was during this strike that Tillet
joined with George Lansbury and Will
Dyson to form the trade union newspaper, the Daily
Herald.
Unlike many socialist, Ben Tillett fully supported Britain's involvement
in the First World War. His enthusiasm for aerial bombardment of German
civilian centres and his views that pacifists should be severely punished,
made him unpopular with many people in the labour movement. Tillett
travelled throughout Britain and helped to recruit a large number
of industrial workers into the armed forces.
In 1917 Ben Tillett stood as an Independent candidate in a by-election
at North Salford. During the campaign he attacked the Labour
Party for its internationalist views. With the strong anti-German
feeling at the time, Tillett had little difficulty winning the seat.
In the 1918 General Election Tillett stood
as the Labour Party candidate in North Salford.
However, his views were now very conservative and was unable to obtain
a senior position in the parliamentary party. Tillett wanted to become
General Secretary of the new Transport and
General Workers Union but he had little support and he decided
not to stand for the post.
Tillett retired from the House of Commons
in 1931. Except for an attempt to organize a boxer's union in 1932,
he ceased to be active in the labour movement. Ben Tillett died on
27th January, 1943.
(1)
Ben Tillett, Memories and Reflections (1931)
I was the youngest of eight children. My brave little
mother, fighting a hopeless battle, died when I was just over a year
old. her mothering, the slavery of her devotion to her family, her
endless services to others killed her. She came of gentle Irish stock,
and was devoutly religious, but the drudgery of her life, hunger,
pain, and suffering destroyed her body, though there was flame in
her soul to the end.
(2)
Ben Tillett, Memories and Reflections (1931)
Trade Unionism (in 1889) substantially affected only the
minority of workers. Of the twelve millions of earners, he said, certainly
not one million were in Unions. In one or two of the most skilled
trades that unionists were perhaps in the majority. Existing Unions
were those of craftsmen, relatively well paid, and their organizations
were correspondingly wealthy - and well organised.
(3)
Ben Tillett, Memories and Reflections (1931)
As a docker I had tried to save money, and starved
to buy books. I was struggling to learn Latin, and even trying to
study Greek, lending my head and aching body to the task after my
day's work on the dockside, or in the tea warehouse where I was employed
- work which meant carrying tons on my back up and down flights of
stairs.
(4)
Ben Tillett, speech made at a meeting of the Tea Coopers
and General Labourers' Union (27th July, 1887)
There is nothing refining in the thought that
to obtain employment we are driven into a shed iron-barred from end
to end, outside of which a contractor or a foreman walks up and down
with an air of a dealer in a cattle market, picking and choosing from
a crowd of men who in their eagerness to obtain employment, trample
each other underfoot, and where like beasts they fight for the chances
of a day's work. To remedy this condition of affairs we have formed
the Tea Coopers and General Labourers' Association.
(5)
In his book, Memories
and Reflections, Ben Tillett describes meeting Tom
Mann for the first time in 1889.
He combined the qualities of whirlwind
and volcano. His was the genius of sheer energy. His tremendous capacity
for the work he enjoys the most became a mighty factor in the supreme
crisis of the Dock Strike. For Tom Mann I entertain a deep respect
as a comrade which has not been destroyed by the intellectual vagrancy
into which his energy led him in after years. I remember old Henry
Hyndman saying that Tom's intellect was a tidal one, swayed by changes
in the moon, and capable of the same ebb and flow. Still, he has been
a consistent class-conscious fighter for the various causes to which
he has adhered; sound at heart, self-sacrificing and courageous, he
has never deserted the flag, even if he has sometimes attempted to
plant it in impossible places.
(6)
In his book, Memories
and Reflections, Ben Tillett recalled how they raised money during
Dockers' Strike of 1889.
In our marches we collected contributions
in pennies, sixpences and shillings, from the clerks and City workers,
who were touched perhaps to the point of sacrifice by the emblem of
poverty and starvation carried in our procession. By these means,
with the aid of the Press, money poured into our coffers from Trade
Unions and public alike. Large sums came from abroad, especially from
the British dominions, whose contributions alone amounted to over
£30,000. Contributions from the public sent direct by letter
or collected on our marches totalled nearly £12,000; more than
£1,000 came in from our street box collections, and substantial
amounts were obtained through the help of the star, the Pall Mall
Gazette, the Labour Elector, and other papers.
(6)
In his book, Memories
and Reflections, Ben Tillett describes the work that Cardinal
Manning did for the Dockers' Strike in
1889.
From the first Cardinal Manning showed
himself to be the dockers' friend, though he had family connections
in the shipping interests, represented on the other side. Our demands
were too reasonable, too moderate, to be set aside by an intelligence
so fine, a spirit so lofty, as that which animated the frail, tall
figure with its saintly, emaciated face, and the strangely compelling
eyes.
On our side there was no margin for concession. We had made no extravagant
demands. The Cardinal's diplomacy, suave, subtle, ineffably courteous
to all parties concerned, yet exercised with the suggestion of authority.
He endorsed with a sense of responsibility the two main claims of
the dockers for the 6d. minimum, and recognition of the Union.
(7)
Ben Tillett, Memories and Reflections
(1931)
I can fairly claim to have played
an active part in the development of the political Labour Movement.
I was present at the Trades Union Congress in 1899 when adopted the
historic resolution instructing its Parliamentary Committee to invite
the co-operation of all Socialistic, Co-operative, Trade Union, and
other working-class organisations in a joint effort to establish at
a special Congress an effective political organisation for the workers.
At the special Conference on Labour Representation held at the Memorial
Hall in London, in obedience to this resolution early in 1900, I was
a delegate on behalf of my Society and made by voive heard in the
debate on the resolution proposing the formation of the distinct Labour
Group in Parliament and other aspects of the policy to be pursued.
(8)
Ben Tillett described work
as a London docker at the end of the 19th century in his book A
Brief History of the Dockers Union (1910)
We are driven into a
shed, iron-barred from end to end, outside of
which a foreman or contractor walks up and down with the air of a
dealer in a cattlemarket, picking and choosing from a crowd of men,
who, in their eagerness to obtain employment, trample each other under
foot, and where like beasts they fight for the chances of a day's
work.
(9)
In his book, Memories
and Reflections, Ben Tillett described his relationship with Lord
Rosebery, chairman of the London County
Council.
My experience on the London
County Council brought me into contact with its distinguished chairman,
Lord Rosebery. He was one of our great men, in spite of being an aristocrat.
What gifts of oratory, of tongue and pen alike, he possessed! A man
of outstanding culture, he was the embodiment of a tradition that
made him distinguished even when physical proportions lent no imposing
presence. One may talk of breeding, culture, and patter the language
of the obsequious, but one can scarcely say too much of Lord Rosebery.
(10)
Tom Mann, Memoirs, (1923)
Ben Tillett, general secretary of the Tea Operatives' and General
Labourers' Union, would pour forth invectives upon all opponents,
would reach the heart's core of the dockers by his description of
the way in which they had to beg for work and the paltry pittance
they received, and by his homely illustrations of their life as it
was and as it should be. He was short in stature, but tough; pallid,
but dauntless; affected with a stammer at this time, but the real
orator of the group.
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