Harry Gosling, the son of a lighterman and a schoolteacher, was born in Lambeth on 9th June 1861. He was educated at a school in Blackfriars where one master had the responsibility of teaching 250 children. Harry received help from his mother but she died when he was seven.

Gosling left school at thirteen and found work as an office boy. The following year he was apprenticed as lighterman. In 1889 the successful London Dock Strike encouraged other workers to form unions. When the Amalgamated Society of Waterman & Lighterman was formed later that year, Gosling was one of the first to join. In 1890 he became president of the Lambeth branch and a member of the union's executive council. Three years later he was elected to the full-time post of general secretary.

Membership of the union was restricted to men who had served apprenticeships. However, an increasing number of men working on the Thames had been recruited without training. Gosling argued that unless these men were allowed to join, the union would remain weak. Most members were opposed to this and it was not until 1900 that they voted to allow non-apprenticed men into the union.

Harry Gosling was also active in local politics. He failed to be elected in 1895 and 1898 to represent Rotherhithe on the London County Council (LCC). However, he did receive an alderman's seat and joined other trade union leaders such as John Burns and Will Crooks, supporting the ruling Progressive Group on the LCC. In 1904 he was elected to the LCC when he stood for the waterside constituency of Wapping. Four years later Gosling was elected to the influential Trade Union Congress parliamentary committee.

In July 1910 Ben Tillett, the leader of the Dockers' Union, called a meeting with other waterside unions to discuss the possibility of forming a National Transport Workers' Federation (NTWF). The representatives of the sixteen unions present at the meeting agreed and Harry Gosling was elected president of the new organisation. In 1911 attempts to negotiate union recognition and a uniform scale of payment throughout the port ended in failure and a NTWF strike. This was called off when agreement was obtained at the end of August. The relationship between the NTWF remained poor and another strike took place in May 1912. This was less successful and at the end of July the men were forced back to work without achieving their objectives.

Gosling continued to argue for further amalgamation and in June 1913 the General Labourers' Union joined the NTWF. The organisation was considerably strengthened by the election of Ernest Bevin to the executive. Gosling and Bevin worked closely together in their efforts to make the NTWF a powerful union. In 1922 the two men were instrumental in establishing the Transport & General Workers Union (TGWU).

Gosling made several attempts to enter the House of Commons. After being defeated in 1910 (Lambeth), 1918 (Uxbridge), and 1922 (Lambeth), he was returned at a by-election at Whitechapel in February 1923. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the first Labour Government in 1924, he appointed Gosling as his Minister of Transport. A post he held until the fall of the MacDonald government in October, 1924.

In 1927 Gosling published his autobiography, Up and Down Stream. Harry Gosling remained in the House of Commons until his death on 24th October 1930.

 

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