WWI-era Clydeside workers bypassed employers’ divide-and-conquer tactics via councils

Evidence

In Britain this development began in Clydeside, a dense area of munitions industries in Scotland that was at the forefront of the opposition to the government’s authoritarian manpower policies. In February 1915, during an unoffi cial strike for higher wages and shorter hours, metal workers collectively organized so as to impede the divideandconquer strategies of the employers, who tried to negotiate separately with different categories of workers. Th e fi rst strike committees developed into a more permanent body, the Clyde worker committee, that represented all grades of workers regardless of their skill. … Th e strikes of May 1917 were the largest of the war, involving 200,000 metalworkers for more than three weeks. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 478

Categorization

• SHARE: For someone interested in labor history or the Clydeside radical tradition: the Clyde Workers Committee organizing 200,000 metalworkers in the May 1917 strikes.
• XREF: connects to: Proletarianization created divisions among workers instead of erasing them; Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267

Broader Connections

• Capitalism triumphed by cultivating divisions rather than erasing them within the working class #contradicts (0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 267
• Proletarianization created divisions among workers instead of erasing them #contradicts (0.85)