THE
BRISTOL STRIKE WAVE OF 1889-1890 –
MIKE RICHARDSON
I wonder why it is that local history is never taught in schools? Or
at least it wasn't in my day and I've always wished that it had
because quite simply – it's empowering. I grew up on a council
estate in Bristol called Southmead and the only thing we were ever
taught about our local area was to be ashamed of it and to keep quiet
about the fact that we live there. On job applications, for example,
on leaving school it was always better to put Westbury-on-Trym as
your address rather than Southmead to avoid prejudicing yourself;
Westbury-on-Trym being the middle class neighbouring area.
It wasn't until I began reading up on what little recorded history
there was on Southmead that I discovered the name derived from what
the area used to be known as in the past – South Meadow. I liked
that. It had a sunny, fresh feel about it as opposed to the 'poor'
and 'violent' connotations that the name Southmead was now associated
with. I didn't want to feel ashamed of where I came from and I
objected to being forced into feeling ashamed. I wanted to be proud
and not have to show it only by fighting with gangs from other
estates, which is what a lot of my peer group did. Discovering that
Southmead was once known as South Meadow was a tiny, first step
towards that pride.
There's a history to Southmead that I suspect has now largely been
lost to the sands of time. A history not ever recorded in books but
passed on through word of mouth and council estate folk tales. With
the passing away of generations these tales and these memories dim
and eventually pass away too. Even in my lifetime there is a history
to Southmead that I know will also one day be forgotten. Events that
though not on the same scale are no less significant than other
historical national events.
The great fires of Southmead, the riots, the culture, the heroin
wars, the characters – Joyce, the Queen of the Mead – the
Southmead Boot Boys, the Pen Park hole, Concorde and its relationship
to Southmead, the central Bristol slum clearance and the reconvening
to Southmead, and so on and so forth. Even such things as the coach
trips to Weston-super-Mare that were really just glorified mass
shoplifting sprees, on one such outing the day trippers even
returning with a whole juke box they'd stolen from a pub.
This obviously isn't the kind of stuff that would be taught in
schools if only for the fact that teachers wouldn't even know about
any of these things. It is, however, the stuff that makes us and
helps to bring us to where we are now, much more so than the
so-called great events and characters we are taught about in school
due to it being deemed 'real' history.
Which brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and the
pamphlets they publish recording history from below as opposed to the
history of great wars, kings, queens and noblemen as recorded in the
history books. And so to The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890
(Parts 1 and 2) by Mike Richardson, wherein the author charts the
events in Bristol during those two years.
The subtitle of Part 1 is 'Days Of Hope' and reflects the
optimism as engendered by various workforces throughout Bristol as
they unionised and took strike action over working conditions,
working hours and pay. What Richardson highlights about these
strikes, however, is the involvement of women workers and in
particular the role that two middle class women from the Clifton area
of Bristol played in them.
Among the number of strikes during this period was one conducted by
1700 mainly women workers of the Great Western Cotton Mill in the
Barton Hill area of the city in 1889. Do people even remember there
was once a cotton mill in Barton Hill let alone that all the workers
there went on a strike that caused fall-out throughout the whole of
the city? As an example of that fall-out, Richardson quotes from a
letter published in two of the local newspapers at that time from the
headmaster of Clifton College that is brazen in its defense of
elitism, entitlement and class privilege:
'You employees must leave the judgement of all such matters in the
hands of the directors, and when, with full knowledge, with large
experience, such men tell you that it is of necessity a choice
between the present rate of wages or none you must accept their word.
Believe
me, it is safer to trust the word of responsible and honourable men
of the stamp of your directors than it is to any one else who is
busying himself, or herself, in this matter. And you know it is so.
You cannot really believe all that is put before you in speeches ,
even though you may applaud it at the time. You must know that the
directors are trusted for the money which has been entrusted to them,
and they have no right to defraud the shareholders of their just
claims for interest.
These are foolish people (the strike leaders) with warm
hearts and weak heads who tell you that if you only hold out you will
win. You have been misled, as all Bristol knows, not wilfully but in
ignorance.'
By all accounts the working conditions of the cotton workers were
atrocious and the pay abysmal, their demands for improvement being
absolutely fair and justified. Ranged against them, however, was not
only the directors of the cotton mill but also the Bristol
Establishment and Bristol Church leaders all of whom were telling the
women workers that there was no chance of change and that their
suffering must remain. In response, the striking workers were
insisting they would rather go to the workhouse, or to prison, or
starve than go back under the same conditions. Moreover, the idea
that the shareholders must get a continuous dividend and that this
was sacrosanct was also beginning to be challenged. The strikers were
now rising against that idea, or as Richardson puts it, the strike
was beginning to go beyond protest against immediate conditions and
shifting towards a rejection of the profit system.
The cotton workers strike ended not in a pay rise but in vast
improvements in working conditions and so as the women returned to
work it was seen as a victory for them and a defeat for the
Establishment. One of the outcomes of the strike was also the
introduction of the need for arbitration, an idea that whilst viewed
by some as another advance in workers' struggles was viewed by others
as a retreat from effective militant unionism.
Part 2 of the pamphlets, subtitled 'Days Of Doubt' records a
series of other strikes that took place the following year in 1890,
and the way in which they were approached and dealt with by workers,
union committees and bosses alike. Richardson charts a downturn in
militancy and the entrance of more moderate voices speaking on behalf
of the working class as bosses adapted and learnt from the lessons of
the previous year in how to deal with discontented workforces.
The two middle class women from Clifton whom Richardson highlighted
in Part 1, who were so active during the cotton workers strike become
burnt out and lose their faith in the workers attaining emancipation.
Interestingly, having moved from their well-to-do homes and
lifestyles in Clifton to the slums of the St Phillips area of
Bristol, they eventually up-sticks and move away from Bristol
entirely, emigrating to America, in fact. A choice that the workers
who they had spent the last year agitating for and representing would
never have been able to even dream of.
There are all kinds of lessons to be gleaned from these two pamphlets
– as there are from all the pamphlets published by the Bristol
Radical History Group – regarding struggle, revolution, social
change and ideology. There are also, of course, the lessons in how
history is recorded as in from below and above, and subsequently the
interpretation of that history. Why is it indeed that very few
Bristolians know about the cotton workers of Barton Hill yet
everything about Isambard Kingdom Brunel – who wasn't even a
Bristolian? These pamphlets are a step towards addressing all these
things and are worthy of attention.
John Serpico
