From the Preston Lock Out 1854 to the CWU post-strike 2022. Stopping scabs
The Preston lock-out of 1853/4 was one of the great labour disputes of the nineteenth century.
My thanks to Robbie Judkins who has written a new piece on workers organisation in Preston in the 1840s and before for reminding me that Marx had written on the lock-out
https://libcom.org/article/workers-organisation-1843-radical-unionism-and-preston-cotton-martyrs
Writing in the New York Daily Tribune on 31st March 1854 Marx noted that, while there seemed little real legal basis for it, several workers leaders had been arrested for conspiracy. They had successfully persuaded scabs hired by the employers not to work but to return home.
Strike organisers had met scabs being brought in by train (this was when trains in the north of England ran) and diverted them into a local hostelry. After a few beers the scabs were escorted back to the rail station and despatched home.
Until the 1871 Trade Union Act collective union action to stop scabs was regarded as conspiracy. Hiring scab labour while a balloted industrial dispute is underway was recently legalised by an obscure politician called Kwasi Karteng, although whether he had the power to do so remains disputed.
No matter effective action to stop scabs still works. The CWU has revealed that in an attempt to undermine a further two days of strike action to defend jobs and our postal service the Royal Mail planned to recruit couriers via the Ryde App. The CWU posted on twitter that they managed to pre-empt management. No pubs were involved this time. Rather hundreds of people applied for the jobs on the App and on the first day of strike action- 30th November- they were nowhere to be seen…
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