In
the 19th century railwaymen found it difficult to organize into trade
unions. In 1865 men working on the Great Western
Railway attempted to form a Railway Working
Men's Provident Benefit Society but it was quickly destroyed when
its leaders were sacked by the company. In the next thirty five years
there were ten new railway unions were started but many of these failed
to survive more than a couple of years. The most successful of these
was the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) that was established
in 1871 and the Amalgamated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
(ASLEF) in 1880.
By 1890 the total number of trade unionists on the railways was about
48,000 out of a total work force of 381,000. Numbers continued to
grow and by 1910 it had increased to 116,000, two-thirds of whom were
in the ASRS and about one-sixth in ASLEF. In 1913 the National Union
of Railwaymen (NUR) was formed by the amalgamation of the ASRS, the
United Pointsmen and Signalmen's Society and the General Railway Workers
Union.
The most important figure in these negotiations was Jimmy
Thomas, the Labour MP for Derby.
Although still a member of the House of Commons,
Thomas was elected General Secretary of the NUR in 1917 and two years
later led a successful railway strike. When Ramsay
MacDonald became Prime Minister after the 1924
General Election, he appointed Thomas as Secretary of State for
the Colonies. He was expelled from the Labour
Party after he joined MacDonald's National Government in 1931.
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