The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 - Mike Richardson

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