when is a trade union not a trade union

The celebration of Australia's federation took numerous forms, the major events being in Sydney in the first week of the new century, 1901. The centrepiece of the public celebrations was a huge street procession on 1 January. Rank upon rank of 'the gentry' and row upon row of military, the protectors of the Empire, were followed by 'community' representatives, the mounted police, 'trades-unionists' with an Eight Hours Day banner, 'friendly society' leaders in carriages, firemen and so on.

Five days later on 5 January, a further huge parade took place, this time of just the 'common folk'. In the following day's report of the Sydney Morning Herald, this was designated the 'Trades Procession.' It ended, as outings for the common folk were wont to do, with a sports carnival. This second 'peoples' gathering' was designated by the same paper the 'Friendly Societies Sports.' Why the change in title from the procession to the sports?

The second parade, in fact, had two equal parts, one of 'trade' and one of 'friendly' societies. Similarly, the sports included teams from 'trade societies' and from 'friendly societies.' There was clearly a close relationship between these two, however the media dealt with them. But what was the nature of that relationship? And how were they to be told apart?

Members of Parliament followed the parade to the Sports Carnival which was also attended by the Governor-General and Prime Ministers of both New South Wales and New Zealand. The State organisations of 'Trades Unions' and 'Friendly Societies' also contributed separate 'Banquets' to the festivities, each attended by a bevy of dignitaries. Prime Minister Barton spoke at the second of these of the Federal Ministry's powers:

(So) far as I can judge at present, the passage of a Friendly Societies Act does not come within the scope of the subjects entrusted to the federation..(However) I can assure you that...any legitimate influence I can exercise will be right heartily employed to smooth away inequalities in the law under which these societies operate.

The NSW's Colonial Secretary See asserted:

No institution could do so much good as the Friendly Societies, and he hoped before the expiration of the present Parliament to bring in a Bill to give the relief which they so urgently required.

His call for a Federation of all Australia's Friendly Societies was repeated by EW O'Sullivan, the State Minister for Works:

(The) Friendly Societies..should have a Friendly Societies' Ground on Moore Park (Sydney).., Secondly, they should establish a Friendly Societies' holiday, and hold an annual procession like the Trade Unions. The bank holiday on the 1st August might be utilised for such a purpose. Thirdly, they ought to have a federated Friendly Societies' Hall, in which delegates from all parts of the Commonwealth could meet, exchange views, and hold Federal banquets, and local gatherings. ²

British reformer and long-time power-broker WE Gladstone asserted in the 1870's:

Friendly Societies have become so important and telling a feature in the Constitution of British society in its broadest and most fundamental part that any account of our nation and of the people, to whom we rejoice to belong, would deserve no attention as a really comprehensive account of it if it was wanting in a good and full description of such Societies. ⁹

Colonial Australia would have had to have been totally unlike the Britain from which its settlers had largely come to justify the fact that Russell Ward's famous argument concerning the sources of 'characteristically Australian traits'¹⁰ such as collectivism contains no material relating to such societies.

The Austrian academic Professor Baernreither travelled to Britain in the 1880's to study precisely this 'collectivist' phenomenon. As a result he argued in 1889 that 'the influence exercised by the Friendly Societies, as voluntary fraternities, cannot possibly be overestimated' with regard to the moral and economic 'muscle' of the working classes.

They are also increasing the cohesion of the working class, and welding together elements...into a social power, by creating a union based on brotherly support. ¹¹

By the turn of the century, however, Ramsay Macdonald was equating mutual aid with State welfare¹² and even the trumpeter of village-level mutual aid, Peter Kropotkin was giving 'trade unions' a separate, primary place and bundling up in two sentences the countless other associations of working people prepared to 'sacrifice time, health and life if required'. ¹³ This shift was in the face of the facts. One published survey, of the town of York in 1899, will suffice here. The number of 'Trade Unionists' in March 1899 was 2,539, of 'Friendly Society' members, 10,662. ¹⁴

By the 1940's, Kropotkin's essential argument that the world was growingly progressively more attuned to decentralised organisation and toward co-operative principles was easily dismissed by socialist scholars:

On the main issue, this vast multiplicity of voluntary organisations is an undeniable fact; but it is almost the reverse of the truth to regard voluntary associations as possible inheritors of the functions of the State. ¹⁵

In a world of centralised 'Welfare States', references by politically-astute historians to citizen-run systems of welfare based on locally-autonomous lodges seemed completely unnecessary. For those committed to State-run welfare and a State-directed economy, pride in one's self-sufficiency such as in the following was at best a joke, at worst a flag indicating bourgeois duplicity:

To provide for a rainy-day, to set aside some tithing from the harvest time of health and strength to meet the requirements of an hour when both may fail, is the duty of every man who values 'the glorious privilege of being independent.' More especially it is the duty of every working man. ¹⁶

Less politically-obvious British authors often quoted official figures substantiating the claim that in the 19th century 'the friendly societies' in the UK embraced a larger proportion of the working class than any other institution, eg, four times as many as 'trade unions' in 1872. They could conclude that 'friendly societies' were 'the most typical'¹⁷ or 'the most characteristic'¹⁸ working class organisation of the period, yet simultaneously dismiss them in a few lines with erroneous statements, often 'borrowed' from earlier authors.

This 'most characteristic' working class organisation was, for example, 'a-political and non-religious'¹⁹, or it was a mere rehearsal for 'trade unions'²⁰, or was a 'disguised trade union', or politically and socially irrelevant because it was 'founded from the beginning (!) as (an instrument) of working class amelioration within the existing social system' and therefore was not 'seeking in any way to overturn it.'²¹ We will see that the only conclusion to be drawn from these assertions is that these authors have not been prepared to do any original research based on even the figures they quoted. The Hammonds were prepared to quote Clapham's belief that 'no less than two-thirds of the men of Lancashire belonged to some Friendly Society in 1847' and to point out that sixteen Friendly Societies, over 4,000 people, marched through one Lancashire town on Whit-Monday in 1884, and yet make no effort to find out the why's and wherefores behind such clearly significant phenomena.²² Could it be they believed they already knew the answer?

The pre-eminence of 'friendly societies' in the UK in the last decades of the 19th century has been argued by a more recent scholar, David Neave. He has set out their centrality, financially, socially and culturally, and agrees their neglect by 20th century historians requires explanation:

Few published histories of towns or villages pay anything but passing attention to friendly societies yet in the century and a half before the First World War they increasingly affected the lives of the majority of the inhabitants of Britain.²³ [My emphasis]

Neither excuse nor explanation, Neave has documented the erroneous belief among British historians that 'friendly society membership was confined to "the aristocracy of the wage earning classes" ' and believes that such views can be traced to evidence given to various Royal Commissions, 'in particular to that relating to Friendly Societies in the early 1870's.' The incongruity of the other half of the error, that such artisans were in pursuit of middle class ideals of respectability, alongside the belief of, for example, Reverend Booth that the societies were 'half heathen clubs utterly unlawful for a Christian man', has still not occurred to many.²⁴

Neave's concluding remark on the research situation in the UK can be generalised:

The role of friendly societies in the development of the labour movement in Britain is one of the many aspects of the history of friendly societies that has yet to be explored.²⁵

Anxiety amongst ideologically-committed historians about the truth concerning 'benefit societies' has naturally also influenced portrayal of 'trade unions'. As Johnson observed in 1985:

The welfare policies of trade unions have not received the attention they deserve from labour historians; the student who looks through the standard histories will find little information aside from the accurate but unenlightening generalisation that the 'new' unions paid "'fighting' benefits only", whilst the old craft unions were dismissed by their more radical confreres as 'coffin clubs.'²⁶

The relative importance of the welfare and trade protection functions of UK 'craft unions' in the 1870's has received a little attention but from the point of view of union leaders, so there are few insights into how the membership saw the different benefits. Some contemporary observers certainly believed it was the benefits rather than the politics which attracted and held members.²⁷

Despite its flaws, a major conclusion of Gosden's 1961 work on English Friendly Societies, one of the very few in the 20th century on the subject, can also be generalised further:

One of the most interesting aspects of the history of the development of friendly societies between 1815 and 1875 is the light which it sheds upon the social life and ideas of the classes which joined them.²⁸

It is simply unfortunate that a co-terminous study of 'The People's Health' in the UK such as Smith's should refer to 'friendly societies' not at all, and be so egregiously at error in his only relevant material, that of 'sick clubs', eg:

The GP's also enlarged 'the dignity of our...profession' by raising their fees for sick clubs...The clubs had been created by doctors and local bigwig philanthropists in the 1820's and 1830's and, excepting the miners' clubs', had run on the doctors' terms.²⁹

He doesn't appear to have realised the dangers inherent in drawing 'facts' almost entirely from The Lancet, The British Medical Journal and the Medical Gazette.

In the more general area of what Clawson has called 'the construction of brotherhood', the last two decades or so of northern hemisphere scholarship have seen some significant steps towards correcting the errors of the past. English academics have begun examining welfare statistics from an associational point of view while some excellent work is being done by social history curators such as Nicholas Mansfield, Andy Durr and others into the reality of pre-20th century mutual aid by way of surviving memorabilia.³⁰

A similarly interesting project has been the examination of 'ethnic fraternal benefit associations' in the United States of America. A Finnish-American scholar concluded in 1981:

The mission of the fraternal-aid society - to provide "for mutual moral and material assistance" - took it far beyond a simple economic function. It assumed a vital role in the new ethnic communities. Along with the church and the newspaper, it served to create and sustain group identity and cohesion.³¹

Unfortunately, and despite the insights of de Tocqueville and others³², researchers in that country will need to do battle with a strongly-held belief that Americans invented the 'fraternal beneficiary society' in the 1860's.³³

Franco has suggested that reliable historical studies of fraternal organisations in America are rare because of intensity of feelings about them, but she noted a recent change in attitude among scholars inclined to see 'fraternalism' sociologically. Mary Ann Clawson's 1989 Constructing Brotherhood has traced the development of fraternalism from early modern western Europe through eighteenth century Britain to nineteenth century United States of America.³⁴ She defined fraternalism in terms of four characteristics - 'a "corporate" idiom, ritual, proprietorship and masculinity.'³⁵ She is less concerned with whether benefits were paid than with an explanation of a phenomenon she can hardly credit has been ignored:

(When) we consider the range of organisations that made use of fraternal identity, it is remarkable that it has gone unexplored for so long...Over centuries of European and American history, fraternalism exerted a persistent appeal...(Scholars') lack of awareness is most pronounced in the study of nineteenth century American society, where a Masonic type of fraternalism served as the organisational model for trade unions, agricultural societies, nativist organisations, and political movements of every conceivable ideological stripe, as well as for literally hundreds of social organisations.³⁶

In Australia benefit societies other than 'trade unions' have been almost totally invisible to historians. Their invisibility has endured despite the obvious need in this colonial society for extensive mutual aid and self-help systems, and despite the fact that their relevance, albeit much weakened, has continued to the present day.

The role of benefit societies in the delivery of health, and death services in particular was pivotal in Australia. Cromwell and Green, virtually on their own, have realised that in this country 'friendly societies were always foremost amongst organisations raising funds for the local hospital' and they record the establishment of medical institutes and dispensaries by Friendly Societies acting in concert. Some understanding of this has trickled into 'Health Care History' where acknowledgement is sometimes made that:

The (friendly) societies developed as the main source of medical services for the working class in the late nineteenth century.³⁷

If mentioned at all in Australian 'welfare history', the contribution of 'friendly societies' is usually confined to the provision of benefits, for which purpose they are treated as unique and separable from other similarly treated kinds of benefit providers, eg, building societies and co-ops. A Senate Select Committee on Health Legislation and Health Insurance reported in 1990 that:

Australia has a long tradition of private hospital and medical insurance, which had its origins in nineteenth century friendly societies, churches and charitable organisations.³⁸

Earlier, Kewley had written:

A feature of the Australian colonies, often remarked upon by outside observers, was the extent to which the colonists joined together in societies for their mutual benefit...At the end of the nineteenth century the charitable relief activities of the Government were less extensive than the co-operative efforts of the people themselves, many of whom joined together in friendly societies.³⁹

In neither case, do the author/authors refer to a single study of the phenomenon which they are implying they have examined, for the very good reason that there have been no studies. And though this is the world of THE POOR, THE UNEMPLOYED, THE NOT-RICH, the world on which the 'labour tradition' has been constructed, it is a world which has not, thus far, penetrated that area of Australian scholarship known as Labour History (LH).

Only a very small number of Australian professional historians have recognised a need to re-focus working people's history. Geoffrey Blainey's extensive education had not adequately prepared him when he was commissioned to write an account of one 'affiliated friendly society', the Independent Order of Oddfellows, [IOOF]. After completing the task to his satisfaction he recorded his own initial blindness, and the change of attitude to which the evidence led him:

I started with no view about friendly societies. I knew so little about their history and activities. More and more I became impressed. Here were tens and thousands of Australians...trying to prepare for the difficult times which were likely to come at some stage or other. Their motto was simple: help each other. In many ways they could teach us a lesson.⁴⁰

Nancy Renfree, an unpublished student of such societies around Castlemaine, Victoria, supported these contentions.⁴¹ She noted a widespread acceptance of friendly societies from the 1840's across nationalities, occupations and backgrounds.⁴²

The authors of the only published, general study of Australian Friendly Societies⁴³, Cromwell and Green, point out that what became the affiliated Orders arrived quite early in all parts of the colony and that they spread quickly, achieving broad coverage of the working population:

By the 1860's the (friendly) societies were a major presence in every Australian town. They were known for their organisation of medical services, for organising the supply of medecines, for their sick pay, and for the help they gave those who fell on hard times. They were known, too, for the social life they offered, often providing the only organised social activities in the early years of colonisation.⁴⁴

Cromwell and Green provided figures to show that at least twenty-five per cent of the population of all States was directly benefiting from friendly society benefits before 1914. In some States and in some areas the percentage was well over half:

It was thought...[in the 1890's] that throughout Australia eighty to ninety per cent of manual workers were members of friendly societies.⁴⁵

Most recently, Brian Stevenson has privately published two very useful accounts of the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society in Queensland and Victoria⁴⁶ and Beverley Kingston has inserted a number of sensible insights into the 1860-1900 volume of the Oxford History of Australia, including the following:

(In 1880) Mortimer Franklyn (an American) thought the fondness he perceived for formal observation of status and procedure, especially in Masonic, friendly societies and trade unions simply typical of English-speaking peoples.⁴⁷

Franklyn was by no means alone. British visitor James Inglis wrote in 1879:

One characteristic feature of the social economy of our Australian cousins is the system of mutual assurance which so largely prevails in all the towns...These societies are principally organised and supported by the working classes.⁴⁸

Thus, the notable presence of 'friendly societies' as representatives of the people in both major Federation processions. Again: how and why did they drop so completely from sight?

problems with the terms

The term 'friendly society' is useful as shorthand in certain situations, as the term 'trade union' sometimes is, but like that term has many shortcomings when one is attempting to be accurate, logically correct and consistent. Thus I keep both in inverted commas, much of the time. We shall see that ambiguities in the literature range from the confusing use of a variety of terms for the same situation, to the use of the same term to cover a range of situations. For example:

Charles Dilke, well-connected visitor from the UK and whom Kewley (above) was quoting, used 'provident societies' in referring to the 'remarkable' spread of what I would call 'benefit societies' in Australia and other colonies of Britain.⁴⁹ At precisely the same moment, Timothy Coghlan, NSW Statistician and author of a series of volumes on the wealth and progress of that State could find no place in his text, even in his index, for 'friendly society', 'benefit society' or 'provident society.'⁵⁰ Putting the AMP Society and the Mortality of Life Tables into the section on 'Population and Vital Statistics', along with fire risks, life assurance and savings; and land, building and investment companies into the 'Finance and Public Wealth' section, he further separated 'Food Supply and Cost of Living' from 'Social Conditions and Charities' - all of which left no place at all for 'benefit societies.'

On the other hand, the use of 'friendly society' has ranged from meaning just 'Friendly Societies', ie, with caps, the nationally-federated or 'Affiliated Orders', to meaning the full range of related institutions, where the more inclusive 'benefit society' is more accurate. Similarly, the term 'trade union' has experienced bouts of such elasticity in application as to make it well-nigh useless in serious studies of working peoples' combinations.

Despite the long-standing focus on one particular relationship in working people's lives, ie the employer-employee relationship, and despite the fact that certain characteristics have been attributed to one particular association which claims to define itself through that relationship, ie the 'trade union', there is enormous ambiguity around the terms that are used to describe and analyse that relationship, especially and most relevantly, around the term 'trade union' itself.

Don Rawson, a longtime and respected student of labour affairs, argued in 1986, that after decades of the dominant work-based approach to Australian labour history, scholars still had no agreement about definitions, in particular of 'trade union'. He preferred that offered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that:

...a trade union is...an organisation consisting predominantly of employees, the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members.⁵¹

Notice the qualifiers 'predominantly' and 'principal'. For Hagan there was no need for any definition⁵², while many other Labour Historians [LH's] have sheltered under that provided by the Webbs a century ago without always being aware that these UK Fabians had significantly altered their key definition between editions of their book The History of Trade Unionism. In 1976, Ian Turner chose the narrower of their alternatives:

A trade union is, in the classic definition of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 'a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment.'⁵³

This is the wording which appeared in the Webb's 1894 edition, the first edition. In the second, 1920, they replaced 'conditions of their employment' with 'conditions of their working lives', a much broader definition.

Turner acknowledged the shift in a footnote but contended that only 'in their earliest days' did 'trade unions' confine themselves to the limited field implied by the definition he'd adopted. Very quickly, he says, they realised the need to advocate 'political' not just 'economic or 'industrial' strategies, a change he believed in line with the words of the second definition.

The Webbs say they adopted the broader definition in order not to give the impression that they thought that workers would always be wage-slaves. I will argue that the struggle between these definitions has affected the whole of LH/'the labour movement', that the struggle is on-going, that the issues involved are many and varied, and that not even the issue apparently separating 'trade unions' and 'friendly societies', ie that of benefit payments, is as clear-cut as it seems. We shall see that the Webbs wrote that friendly society benefits, what they called 'Friendly Mutual Insurance', have been the oldest form of 'Trade Union' (NB their caps) activity 'in many industries', and been adopted 'by practically every (trade) society which has lasted.'⁵⁴

We will see that the Webb's stated reason for their change, as well as the change itself, was ideological, career-driven and future-oriented, while Turner's is a claim about past historical fact. That is, that the Webbs provided the essentials for Turner's 'interpretation' as part of an argument, but that he and other Australian Labour Historians [ALH's] have treated those essentials as unarguable 'facts'.

Because the Webb's overall approach suited them, LH's generally have not reflected on the dynamic context the Webbs were alluding to, and have built their accounts on rhetoric rather than substance. If they had carefully read and then thought about all that the Webbs said, LH's, in Australia and elsewhere, might have saved the 'labour movement' from its 20th century decline. In 1897 the Webbs pointed out that:

If the reader were to seek out, in some tavern of an industrial centre, the local meeting place of the Foresters or the Carpenters, the Oddfellows or the Boilermakers, he might easily fail, on a first visit, to detect any important difference between the Trade Union branch [NB caps] and the court or lodge of the friendly society.[NB no caps] (They) all seem 'clubs' managing their own affairs. Every night sees the same interminable procession of men, women and children bringing the contribution money. When the deliberations begin, they all affect the same traditional mystery about 'keeping the door', and retain the long pause outside before admitting the nervous aspirant for 'initiation'; they all 'open the lodge' with the same kind of cautious solemnity, and dignify with strange titles and formal methods of address the officers whom they are perpetually electing and re-electing.⁵⁵

Nearly a century later, one European scholar summarised debate amongst LH's as follows:

The emergence of trade unions and labour parties has been moved within the past thirty years from the history of institutions into their social setting. In the [new] study of the 'formation of the working class', economic, social, socio-cultural and political stages have been distinguished and have provided an influential framework for transnational comparisons, especially of the early phases of class organisation.⁵⁶

While this summary would be understood and accepted by Australian LH's, they are unlikely to admit that the reconsideration should have been unnecessary.⁵⁷ But precisely because it was necessary, those formulating the latest round of changes in 'Labour History' have been unaware of the full extent, let alone the significance, of their original blindspot. This has resulted in a continuing, but confused struggle between narrow and broad definitional contexts for 'the movement' and its history, and a raft of ill-informed, unreflective claims by LH's. Some of the genre's most powerful practitioners continue to assume that 'the movement' and therefore its history can only be valid if it is aligned with their, largely unexamined, assumptions. Quite apart from winners or losers in any 'Cold War' or whether one rendering of Marxism is superior to another, this is poor historiographical practice.

the importance of freemasonry

The evidence accumulated in this study strongly suggests that students of 'the labour movement' need, at the very least, to come to grips with the phenomenon of Freemasonry/freemasonry. Beverly Kingston's 1980's summary of a religious essence fueling the nascent Australian movement (in the 1890's) is useful as an indicator:

After stripping away all belief in the supernatural, what was left was a simple system of ethics, which reappeared in several guises - in the bushman's creed of mateship or WG Spence's idea of the New Unionism.

As a result, she argued, quasi-religious organisations flourished. She quoted an estimate of 10,000 Freemasons in 185 lodges in 1890 just for NSW. She then made the relevant leap, but did not remark its significance:

Memberships were probably overlapping, but taken together, the numbers accepting the rules and principles of Freemasonry, the friendly societies, and trade unionism suggest that the male population had begun to develop organisations which either augmented or substituted for the traditional churches.⁵⁸

She believed that 'brotherhood, self-help, mutual responsibility and protection of the weak' were values compatible with both Christianity and democracy, but that they were 'more suited' to egalitarian than to hierarchical organisation. This last is a most contentious issue, but one that must be debated.

Little primary research has yet been carried out and some errors of fact and theory are being recycled by those authors and scholars who are attempting the revisionist task. Even a comprehensive map of exactly what is involved with 'benefit societies' remains to be drawn.

Nevertheless, it is possible to say that many, many societies shared the heritage here referred to by my main title. Further, that neither the heritage nor 'benefit societies' has died out as white, 'modern' society has urbanised, though individual lodges and Orders have peaked and declined over time.

Because the practice of individual members has often contested the then-perceived boundaries of decency, reason and the law, many lodges have been divided internally over detailed Rules which paralleled the external societal disciplines drawn up to govern lodge structure and activities. The strongest or the most flexible lodges/Orders have thrived, ensuring that clear and definite ideas about democracy, station in life and what are now seen as the elements of Australia's national character have been carried by lodge brothers and sisters into every corner.

The many parallels, overlaps and shared memberships of the three major 'strands' of benefit societies - Freemasonry, 'friendly societies' and 'trade unions' - are generally unknown, mainly because the first two strands are substantially under-studied. Before one of the earliest versions of political correctness descended upon us, the knowledge that many working class men and women were Freemasons was not considered incredible. In comparative terms, quite a few remain so, notably in industrial 'heartlands'. One important Masonic historian has called Freemasonry a network of 'self-help unions'⁵⁹, while an English author wrote in 1824:

It is not a little curious this celebrated association [Freemasonry] which reckons among its members, kings, princes, nobles and gentlemen, should have been originally framed by a number of POOR WORKMEN, for the purpose of keeping up their wages.⁶⁰ [Author's emphasis]

Freemasonry today invites a knee-jerk reaction from many persons who like to see themselves as radical/progressive. By their lights the Freemasons were and are either quaint and anachronistic or else were and are one of the chief bastions of the conservative Establishment. By others, Freemasonry is perceived to be a unique, semi-secret organisation of adult males who practice arcane ritual for purposes of sociability, out of which sometimes comes a substantial capacity to raise funds for charitable and welfare schemes. For the Vatican, and for some other religious authorities, Freemasonry remains a threat, pure and simple, to them and to 'their' Christianity.

It has been argued⁶¹ that the mythology of secret societies enabled them to 'exercise their greatest power' in the period 1789-1848 but that the nonsense contained in 'unscientific, sensational, frivolous, infatuated publications' attempting to map this influence into the 20th century has turned many serious historians away and has obscured important realities.

It was no doubt believed by certain Scottish villagers in 1696 that a local 'Mason's house' was haunted because he had 'devouted his first child to the Devil' when 'he took the Mason's word'. This secret 'word' is central to Speculative Freemasonry (SF) and SF authors simply assume this man to have been one of them. But it is at least arguable that, on the evidence, 'he' was an operative stone-mason, not a speculative 'Freemason'. Note that 'the word' was first defined in labour terms, then in symbolic, viz:

a term used primarily to differentiate the pay and assignments of workers, but also, the ritual implied, bearing deeper, mystical significance.⁶²

In the over-heated, expose literature 'secret societies' are those which hide their existence and attempt to bring down 'Church, State, Morality, Property, (and) the Family'. Disraeli apparently believed in 1870:

It [the Age] is the Church against the secret societies. They are the only two strong things in Europe, and will survive Kings, Emperors or Parliaments.⁶³

Conspiracy theorists have often lumped together a number of organisations which won't find a place in these pages, yet some of their favourites will, and it is Freemasonry which sits at the point of overlap. I am concerned to show the function of secrecy within a package of benefit society principles and should that take me into the world of the Illuminati, Sinn Fein, Zionism and Bolshevism, the political uses to which that package may have been put is (largely?) irrelevant. As it happens, the great percentage of societies falling within my definition of 'secret society' will be publically-known and sanctioned organisations.

Historically, even among Freemasons, there has been a great deal of contention about the origins of Freemasonry, as there is about the organisations' significance, and whether or not it has had or still has a hidden, politically conservative agenda.

At various times over at least 200 years, debate has raged as to whether Freemasons are or can be Christians, whether Freemasonry is a separate and unique religion and/or to what extent its practice has matched its theory. Some of the anti-Masonry literature is selective and hypocritical, being premised on alleged opposition to the secrecy all fraternal Orders practice as a matter of course, and which Freemasonry's opponents also practice when it suits them. A different criticism, from Christians, is based on the view that Freemasonry has tried to be 'all things to all men' and has diminished, even dismissed certain essential Christian elements.⁶⁴

Within Labour History, the slight wave given to Freemasonry in explanation of a perceived difference between 'old' and 'new' 'trade unions', has been more often than not disguised through use of references to a 'craft union tradition' or 'mentality' which was somehow, somewhere replaced by allegedly more modern, progressive industrial unions.

This situation may be beginning to unscramble. John Sheild's article on 'Craftsmen in the Making', in the work he also edited, All Our Labours, illustrated the point reached by a few courageous academics in the early 1990's when the word 'craft' was virtually code for everything not taken seriously by the custodians of LH. He argued that '[the] scenario of decline [of skill, postulated by earlier historians like Hobsbawm and Braverman] has seriously under-estimated the historical resilience of the craftsman, his institutions and his culture.'⁶⁵ He backgrounded 20th century initiation of apprentices and of supposedly anachronistic practices such as 'tramping for work' and concluded that:

For better or for worse, then, the craftsman's culture has profoundly influenced the fabric of working life in twentieth century Australia and the shape and texture of the Australian labour movement.⁶⁶

This is a useful first step, and my larger text attempts further clarification, including the need to re-examine the hostilities between craft and industrial unionism, and the accounts of such struggles, both of which appear to derive their substance from factional struggles within the labour movement. We will see that the lodge movement has had a major role in the production of working people's solidarity, whatever the organisation involved, and that the 'craftsman's culture', 'much of it traceable directly to the pre-industrial craft guilds', as Shields devined, has been arguably the major conduit of what has been loudly trumpeted by the 'industrials' as working class consciousness.

Tom Mann, in a 1920 journal (UK) of the Amalgamated Engineers, responded to charges that the ASU stood for 'craft unionism pure and simple':

Many [members] who cheerfully extend the hand of fellowship to sections of tradesmen who formerly were not counted of the elite find themselves unable as yet to look with satisfaction upon a form of industrial organisation that will cater for every section in an industry, irrespective of skill or sex.⁶⁷

During his time at Broken Hill, and no doubt elsewhere, this doyen of revolutionary syndicalists, happily wore lodge regalia, in street processions, and elsewhere.

A perceived 'gulf' between a 'first, elitist wave' of 'trade unionists', and the 'real, blue-collar, battling trade unionist' has been the site of extensive name-calling and grand-standing, but it is not necessarily well understood. The so-called 'aristocrats of labour', the 'Gentlemen Jims of the workshop', those defined by their claiming the right to determine how many apprentices, what trade rankings, what pay and conditions will hold in their 'craft', have been stigmatised for seeking negotiation and compromise between capital and labour, rather than direct struggle and conflict. They have been assumed to be the only combinations concerned with guild-related paraphenalia, and have felt forced into asserting their 'true-blueness' by, among other things, disavowing any concern for that 'superstitious baggage.'⁶⁸

Thus, dismissal of oppositional politics and agendas within 'the movement' can and has been bolstered and the tradition of the 'true believer' built up by sneering dismissals of the contextualising heritage of all trade combinations. Any 'worker' who appeared interested must be at best half-hearted and superficial in 'his' allegiance, has no doubt been bourgeois-contaminated, and is probably a Freemason, if not a total class-traitor. Where necessary, evidence pointing to a different conclusion has been ignored or deliberately suppressed.

We will see that the Webbs, without the beginnings of an understanding and with no research base to speak of, in effect pronounced on one of the most contentious bundle of issues in the story of western civilisation -

• the claims to legitimacy of contending Christian factions;
• the claims of conspiracy made by those contending factions of one another, and on similar claims exchanged between Christian and non-Christian factions; and
• the claims to know which was the 'true' path to 'the Divine' and which were sacriligious excresences or satanic lies.

The choice of the class analysis path has, among many other things, denuded LH of much of its real life passion, it has denied LH its historical connections to a rich world of symbolism and non-material meaning, and it has attempted to locate LH beyond criticism by de-contextualising it.

'Modern' society has suffered greatly from the gaps in its cultural consciousness, including the connecting of people's life experiences to the shaping of their cities, towns and villages and to the development of their civic administration. The gaps are doubly tragic in the context of claims of the special significance of the labour experience.

The circumstances which made voluntary benefit societies crucial to their memberships are the very same circumstances explaining struggles over wages and conditions, the struggles taken in isolation by LH and 'the labour movement' as representative of the complete history of working people. Clawson has this:

In the case of Masonic fraternalism..the image of one particular social actor, the artisan, dominated the reality-defining drama/discourse of fraternal ritual...Masonic fraternalism valorised craft labor and material productivity. In traditional liberal fashion it justified social inequality by presenting it as a system open to talent, a ladder that anyone and everyone could ascend. But it simultaneously recognised the dislocations of capitalist development through its promise of mutual aid. It thus offered the vision of a society in which individual advancement and social solidarity were complementary rather than antagonistic - and attempted to create that society in miniature.⁶⁹

the way ahead

Some readers will seriously contend that in what follows I am fighting a war well and truly consigned to the dustbin of history. Since an acknowledgement of 'social history' by LH's around the world and by journals of LH, they will say, the narrowness and the attempted monopolisation of the LH agenda are themselves historical relics of limited usefulness. For the following reasons I don't accept this approach:

• The acknowledgement of 'social history' has been well-intentioned, but its implementation has, inevitably, been at best partial;
• The narrowing attitudes were and are deeply-engrained;
• Labour culture - film, books, pamphlets, songs - continually reinforces the 'popular version' of LH, ie, the narrow, exclusionist one;
• Many LH's themselves consider the issue to be a 'live' one;
• While the history of the originating heritage remains invisible, no healing of what amounts to a running sore is possible.

It appears to be the 'invisible' material, about benefit societies other than 'trade unions', which most irritates and worries LH's. They have certainly spent a lot of time trying to explain it away. Ian Turner, one of the earliest and most influential shapers of Australian LH, told the story of the labourers transported to 'Australia' in 1834 this way:

Men who joined unions were declared criminals; thus, the six Dorsetshire farm labourers known to trade union history as the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' were transported to Van Diemens Land for swearing an illegal oath of loyalty to their union.⁷⁰

This brief account manages to not fit the facts on a number of grounds and is better described as overblown rhetoric rather than History. For Turner it seems any workers' combination was a 'trade union', and most importantly, it was not something else. The society in question was actually called the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers, and I discuss it in detail below. More generally, and this applies to most if not all LH's, his fundamental belief linking 'unions' and this transportation was that 'the labour movement' was the response by workers to 'the new society which had grown out of the Industrial Revolution - capitalism'. This claim has been made or implied thousands of times with regard to Australia without that country's 'industrial revolution' having yet been proven, mapped or analysed.

The 'response' connection is in itself arguable, but to claim that 'trade unions' were the only response is totally far-fetched. This error has created both, what might be called, internal and external difficulties for LH's.

Externally, there has always been a tension around the emphasis since the most broadly-accepted definitions of 'trade union' have been based on the employer-employee relationship and therefore have always been in competition with reality. The totality of working peoples' lives is much more than that relationship, even if individual working people have sometimes so defined themselves, ie 'I am a boiler-maker at BHP, etc.' There has always been more to people than their 'employee-ness'. It follows therefore that the emphasis on that relationship in LH has been at odds with the stated aim of LH's and Labour Movement activists to represent the lives of those working people. The internal difficulty is that numerous working people have continued to feel 'invisible' and unrepresented.

Anyone seriously attempting re-assessment of (Australian) LH and the arguments sustaining its literature would be struck by the number of times references are made to four points of apparent tension. Two relate to the UK heritage - firstly, the period 1829-34 at the end of which the so-called 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' were transported to Australia, and, secondly, the work of UK historians Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The two other points of tension relate to the struggle by politically-active historians in Australia to make that heritage 'fit'. The first concerns the decade of the 1850's, the other the period of the 1880's - 1890's.

The tension within these 'hot spots' has superficially to do with the problem of what a 'trade union' is or is not, and it is around this issue that the present work is constructed. Out of a reconsideration of this dynamic will flow the story of benefit societies and thus a more complete understanding of the contribution of ordinary working people to modern Australia.

Their need for survival strategies was the ultimate reason for the spread of benefit societies, not the exoticism of the rites of association or even their encouragement of a necessary sense of fraternity, but their role as support mechanisms in the real lives of real people. What I, after Durr, call the 'rites of association' could not fail, therefore, but have deep impact.

the contribution of the webbs

In the 1920, revised edition of their The History of Trade Unionism, Sidney and Beatrice Webb observed that in the 30 years since 1890 the (UK) 'Trade Union Movement' (NB the capitals) had gone from including 'scarcely 20% of the adult, male, manual- working wage earners' to over 60%. The clear implication was that 'adult, male, manual-working, wage earners' comprised the only group which could be the source of the 'Trade Union Movement' and of 'Trade Unionism.' This, on page v, constitutes their 1st definition.

They subsequently introduced other criteria in shifting through what amount to a further ten definitions. It is useful to note two things immediately: one is that there would be no need for this concern with definitions if the titles of relevant 'combinations' were self-explanatory and discrete, ie if all 'trade unions' titled themselves 'Trade Union' and if only 'trade unions' did so. Secondly, the Webbs, throughout, claim to be proving their definitions when in fact they are making arbitrary and not evidence-based decisions about the content of groups they are attempting to define.

Introducing the first of the new criteria, 'continuity', the Webbs remind us that recent claims made on behalf of a re-vitalised LH are anything but new. The Webbs wrote before 1920:

In spite of all the pleas of modern historians for less history of the actions of governments, and more descriptions of the manners and customs of the governed, it remains true that history...must, if it is to be history at all, follow the course of continuous organisations.[My emphasis]⁷¹

In going on, they introduce two further criteria crucial to later debates - 'the State and 'democracy':

The history of Trade Unionism is the history of a State within our State, and one so jealously democratic that to know it well is to know the English working man as no reader of middle class histories can know him.[My emphasis]⁷²

This introductory statement contrasts a 'modern' image of 'trade unions' with the emotive 'old branches or ancient local societies', 'old-fashioned societies', 'archaic chests with three locks', 'long forgotten societies', 'musty records' and so on.⁷³

In beginning their first Chapter, the authors provide what has been a most influential definition incorporating some, but not all, of the criteria mentioned so far:

A Trade Union, as we understand the term, is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives.⁷⁴

In a footnote, they point out that at the comparable point in the earlier, 1894 edition they concluded this key definition with the words 'of their employment' and that they had changed it to 'of their working lives' because of objections that the original implied 'eternal wage slavery.'

The shift could imply that the Webbs wished their new definition of 'trade unionism' to encompass all and every aspect of the lives of working people, whether male, whether manual, whether always employed, whether white, at work or not, etc, etc. However, their stated intention was not to widen the original definition at all but rather to accommodate their more 'revolutionary' acquaintances who wished the definition to encompass an altered work-relationship.

In relation to the 1920 definition they assert that 'This form of association has...existed in England for over two centuries and cannot be supposed [even then] to have sprung at once fully developed into existence.'⁷⁵ One presumes this means that 'trade unions' had already come into being by 1720, and that the titles of such 'combinations' cannot be used as a guide.

From this notion they have excluded, they say, 'ephemeral combinations' even if engaged in strikes of labour because no permanent associations were produced and because the strikers 'were not seeking to improve the conditions of a contract of service into which they voluntarily entered.'⁷⁶ That is, they wish to exclude strikers who were slaves, or were born into oppression or into a labouring caste. This phrasing constitutes their 3rd definition.

Why voluntaryism is of crucial importance to the Webbs is not immediately clear but it does seem clear that they did not consider the criteria's implication. Is the nature of the 'working class' anything other than that its members are born into it? What would be left of the conception of 'the working class' and how many members of the class would there be if this criteria were seriously applied? And how many members of officially sanctioned 'trade unions' today would be permitted into the definition if voluntary membership were to be a rigorously-applied criteria?

(After) detailed consideration of every published instance of a journeyman's fraternity in England, we are fully convinced that there is as yet no evidence of the existence of any such durable and independent combination of wage earners against their emloyers during the Middle Ages.⁷⁷

Now, apparently, to be a 'Trade Union' an association has not only to be 'durable' and 'independent', it is also required by a 4th definition to be 'against their employers.'

Then they insist on the association being much more than just 'continuous' or 'durable', it must be 'permanent.' They explain that the prospect of obtaining economic advancement by which they mean becoming a Master - 'engaging in profitable arrangements over Apprentices or Materials' - prevented the production of long-lasting combinations of 'wage-earners.' But there were some, eg 'Masons' who had 'yearly congregations and confederacies' before 1425 when they were expressly prohibited by an Act of Parliament.

It appears probable, indeed, that the masons, wandering over the country from one job to another, were united, not in any local guild, but in a trade fraternity of national extent.⁷⁸

But then they say:

(Of) combinations in the building trades we have found scarcely a trace, until the very end of (the 18th) century. If, therefore, adhering strictly to the letter of our definition, we accepted a mason's confederacy as a Trade Union, we should be compelled to regard the building trades as presenting the unique instance of an industry which had a period of Trade Unionism in the fifteenth century, then passed for several centuries into a condition in which Trade Unionism was impossible, and finally changed once more to a state in which Trade Unions flourished. Our own impression, however, is that the 'congregations and confederacies' of the masons are more justly to be considered the embryonic stage of a guild of master craftsmen than of a Trade Union.

That is, because some of the descendants of the operative masons prohibited in 1425 from meeting, gradually and to some degree or for some period of time became employers of labour (they offer evidence from 1735) the pre-1425 situation must be pre-something, an 'embryonic'- something, and not something that can be allowed to undermine their process of elimination. They opt for it having been a 'master craftsmens guild'. This constitutes their 5th definition, and here the notion of a 'modern' 'trade union' first appears.

When...the capitalist builder or contractor began to supersede the master mason, master plasterer, etc, and this class of small entrepreneurs had again to give place to a hierarchy of hired workers, Trade Unions, in the modern sense, began, as we shall see, to arise.⁷⁹

Note the sudden appearance of capital letters. They point out that it is not in these institutions that the origin of Trade Unionism [caps again] has usually been sought. 'For the predecessor of the modern Trade Union, men have turned, not to the mediaeval associations of the wage-earners, but to those of their employers...the Craft Guilds.' The Webbs reject these on the same grounds as before - guilds were not made up of wage-earners.

Along this path, they assert that 'Trade Unions' were not for brain workers, only for 'manual workers' who were not in any way controlling the processes of production. Because the 'modern Trade Union' has only one of the functions of the craft guild it could not possibly have evolved from the craft guild. They then say that it is easy to account for the popular argument that it did so evolve. Firstly,

there are the picturesque likenesses which Dr Brentano discovered - the regulations for admission, the box with its three locks, the common meal, the titles of the officers and so forth.

The phrase 'picturesque likenesses' is a linguistic dismissal akin to those already used in their Introduction. The Webbs, however, also attempt a more sophisticated dismissal:

But these are to be found in all kinds of associations in England. The Trade Union [caps] organisations share them with the local friendly societies, or sick clubs which have existed all over England for the last two centuries. Whether these features were originally derived from the Craft Gilds or not, it is practically certain that the early 'Trade Unions' took them, in the vast majority of cases...from the existing little [!] friendly societies around them. In some cases the parentage of these forms and ceremonies might be ascribed with as much justice to the mystic rites of the Freemasons as to the ordnances of the Craft Gilds. The fantastic ritual, peculiar to the Trade Unionism of 1829-34...was, as we shall see, taken from the ceremonies of the Friendly Society of Oddfellows. But we are informed that it shows traces of being an illiterate [!] copy of a masonic ritual. In our own times the Free Colliers of Scotland, an early attempt at a national miners' union, were organised into 'lodges' under a 'Grand Master' with much of the terminology and some of the characteristic forms of Freemasonry. No one would, however, assert any essential resemblance between the village sick club and the trade society, still less between Freemasonry and Trade Unionism. The only common feature between all these is the spirit of association, clothing itself in more or less similar picturesque forms.⁸⁰ [My emphasis]

This key passage has 5 important points:

1. The 'local friendly societies and sick clubs', in existence, by their reckoning, for 200 years, provided the early 'trade unions' with the 'picturesque likenesses' which Brentano believed derived from the craft guilds, and which the Webbs call 'forms and ceremonies';
2. In the momentous years, 1829-34, 'Trade Unions' took up rites 'peculiar' to them;
3. An 'early attempt' at a national miners' organisation in late 19th-early 20th century was organised under a 'Grand Master';
4. Freemasonry is mentioned as the possible source for all three of these ceremonial/organisational 'forms'; and
5. Friendly societies were the possible go-betweens in two cases.

Already, I think it's fair to say that the Webbs appear to believe in some essential quality held by 'trade unions', something not conveyed by or inherent in the 'forms and ceremonies' of local societies established by working people, despite a 'common spirit of association' carried over hundreds of years by these 'similar forms.'

It is also abundantly clear that their argument around this issue is very, very ambiguous. Beginning their discussion which led to the above conclusion, they make a number of statements implying they are intent on opposing 'the popular idea of (an) actual descent of the Trade Unions from the gilds'. The process behind the common acceptance 'that the Trade Union had... really originated from the Craft Gild' is according to them 'undefined'. And yet on the same page, they enlist the aid of a knighted author and his conclusion:

My own impression is that we shall by and by find that...(as in Germany)..the trade clubs of eighteenth century England were broken-down-survivals from an earlier period, undergoing, with the advent of the married journeyman and other causes, the slow transformation from which they emerged in the nineteenth century as the nuclei of the modern Trade Union. ⁸¹

Their problem seems to be that

If it could be shown that the Trade Unions were, in any way, the descendants of the old gilds, it would clearly be the origin of the latter that we should have to trace. (My emphasis)

Such a digression is clearly not to their taste. Later, we discover why. And so, despite the suggestion of Sir William Ashley of 'a slow transformation', and their own grudging acknowledgement of a 'common spirit of association' conveyed by 'similar picturesque forms', they still need to assert, as fact:

The supposed descent in this country of the Trade Unions from the mediaeval Craft Guilds rests, as far as we have been able to discover, upon no evidence whatsoever. (My emphasis)

This is more than a denial of a direct and unbroken line of descent, this is a denial of any kind of descent. It is the necessary denial if 'Trade Unions' are to be boosted as modern, unique creations. At a time when the spirit of rational secularism made them easy to ignore, the 'picturesque likenesses' were the key target. The Webbs would have done well to study Brentano's text and Freemasonry more closely.

However, given that they, consciously or sub-consciously, avoid the obvious possibility that the widespread rites and practices are themselves the necessary evidence of a long-standing, organic culture, the Webbs are bound to use organisational distinctions as transportation for their case. One reason why the 'little' sick clubs and 'little' friendly societies can't have been the originators of 'trade unionism' seems to be that these associations (sometimes) accepted workers from different trades, a criteria not ruled out by the early definitions, but which becomes the 6th definitional requisite:

So long as they were composed indiscriminately of men of all trades, it is probable that no distinctively [!] Trade Union [caps] action could arise from their meetings.⁸²

They argue that combinations of 'hired wage earners' multiplied during the 18th century, until prohibited in 1799, yet subject it to no analysis since it is by their lights the only form of association working people can or need look forward to:

If we examine the evidence of the rise of combinations in particular trades, we see the Trade Union [caps] springing, not from any particular institution, but from every opportunity for the meeting together of wage-earners of the same occupation.⁸³ [My emphasis]

They discuss public houses as 'houses of call', where workers gathered collections for future benefits, and where their 'groups' could 'turn into' Trade Unions, if and only if membership had already been restricted to one trade:

Local friendly societies giving sick pay and providing for funeral expenses had sprung up all over England during the 18th century. Towards its close...in some parts at any rate, every village ale-house became a centre for one or more of these humble [!] and spontaneous [!] organisations. The Rules of upwards of a hundred of these societies, dating between 1750 and 1830, and all centred around Newcastle-on-Tyne, are preserved in the British Museum. At Nottingham, in 1794, fifty six of these clubs joined in the annual procession. But in some cases, for various reasons, such as high contributions, migratory habits, or the danger of the calling, the sick and burial club was confined to men of a particular trade. This kind of friendly society frequently became a Trade Union.⁸⁴ [My emphasis]

Their reasoning here is as astray as that concerning the stonemasons (above) to which I return in due course. What a pity they didn't ask why 56 'sick and burial clubs' were marching in Nottingham in 1794, why such a huge gathering was an annual event and why small, local societies had Rules before they had been asked to register by the authorities. For the moment, it's enough to know that the emphasis in their search for criteria is now on 'becoming'. A number of associations are canvassed but because it is still not yet the right time for 'real Trade Unions', these are labelled 'in the making' or 'becoming' Trade Unions.⁸⁵ Labels such as 'a network of local clubs' and 'the early unions', always without capitals, are used to maintain the distance between these 'embryonic' associations and 'the Real Thing'.⁸⁶

They then assert that the sort of combination they are reserving the title 'Trade Union' [caps] for, came about only when a separation opened up between the decision-making in a trade or industry and the carrying out of those decisions. This separation meant the journeymen could no longer think of becoming employers themselves, the costs involved having outdistanced their wages. They therefore began to combine in order to improve their wage-earning situation.

This separation, seemingly a result of the Industrial Revolution, was, they acknowledge, not a result of technology or the factory-system, since it's possible to point to the existence of 'Trade Unions' in trades where such revolutions had not yet occurred, eg, the hatters from 1667, Tailors from 1727, wool operatives from 1675. With this 7th definition, of 'lifelong wage earners'⁸⁷ with nothing to sell but their labour, we are back to the 1894 definition supposedly repudiated.

But even for these the Webbs are loath to use the capitalised label 'Trade Union', preferring to call them 'continuous associations', 'local trade clubs' or 'permanent trade combinations.' The Old Amicable Society of Woolstaplers dating from 1700 approx. formed a 'federal union' in 1785, but is still in lower case because it was not 'modern.'⁸⁸

A 'durable Trade Union' did appear among the stockingers in 1780, but the Webbs have further, narrowing requisites to deal with them. It was also necessary, in order to meet the definition, that protections enjoyed by journeymen relating to limitations on apprentices and commonly agreed rates for work for example, be removed by legislation:

It was a change of industrial policy on the part of the Government that brought all trades into line, and for the first time produced what can properly be called a Trade Union movement.⁸⁹

They quote Brentano - 'Trade Unions [caps] originated with the non-observance of the Elizabethan Statute of Apprentices', his argument being that the primary object of these associations was to attempt to force the Government to apply the still-extant law¹ - and they assert:

It is often assumed that Trade Unionism [caps] arose as a protest against intolerable industrial oppression. This was not so...(Along with the woolcombers) the curriers, hatters, woolstaplers, shipwrights, brushmakers, basketmakers and calico-printers, who furnish prominent instances of eighteenth century Trade Unionism, all earned relatively high wages, and maintained a very effectual resistance to the encroachments of their employers.⁹¹

They had earlier written:

When these regulations (legal or customary, protecting their interests) fell into disuse (in the 17th and 18th centuries) the workers combined to secure their enforcement...In this respect, and practically in this respect only, do we find any trace of the gild in the Trade Union.⁹²

And so they go on from the use of Brentano:

It appears to us from these facts that Trade Unionism would have been a feature of English industry, even without the steam engine and the factory system. Whether the association of superior workmen which arose in the early part of the [18th] century would, in such an event, ever have developed into a Trade Union Movement [caps] is another matter.

So, the argument has changed again. No longer is it a search for 'Trade Unions' but for 'the Movement'. A further, 8th definitional criteria emerges:

The typical 'trade club' of the town artisan of the time was an isolated 'ring' of highly skilled journeymen, who were...decisively marked off from the mass of the manual workers.

For having already organised themselves and adopted attitudes emphasising the rewards that organisation can bring, these 'town artisans' are to be punished - in this case a further definition puts them outside the sacred area, which now must be where 'the mass of manual workers' is. It was further necessary that 'the mass' think and act in a certain way, which, of course, these artisans did not:

Enjoying as they did...legal or customary protection, they found their trade clubs of use mainly for the provision of friendly benefits, and for 'higgling' with their masters for better terms. We find little trace among such trade clubs of that sense of solidarity between the manual workers of different trades which afterwards became so marked a feature of the Trade Union Movement.⁹³

Beatrice Webb explaining 'class consciousness' in her autobiographical My Apprenticeship wrote:

So long as each section of workers believed in the intention of the governing class to protect their trade from the results of unrestricted competition no community of interests arose.⁹⁴

Parliament since the 18th century had been the arbiter of wages and work conditions because of the importance of product to trade and thus to 'the Empire.'⁹⁵ Thus, societies which found themselves harassed and their leaders arrested and jailed were mostly ones judged to be in 'restraint of trade'. The 'prohibition of combination' was 'only a secondary feature.'⁹⁶ Any disputes the 'trade clubs' had were more like 'family differences than conflicts between different social classes.' This further, arbitrary extension is the point at which the heroic nature of the whole construction enters:

(The trade clubs) exhibit more tendency to 'stand in' with their masters against the community, or to back them against rivals or interlopers, than to join their fellow workers of other trades in an attack against the capitalist class. In short, we have industrial society still divided vertically trade by trade, instead of horizontally between employers and wage earners.

And this from authors who have just finished arguing that if workers in different trades joined together their association could not be a 'trade union'. Nevertheless, referring to the horizontal division they say:

This latter cleavage it is which has transformed the Trade Unionism of petty groups of skilled workmen into the modern Trade Union Movement. [caps]

As a result, therefore, they argue:

The pioneers of the Trade Union Movement were not the trade clubs of the town artisans, but the extensive combinations of the West of England woolen workers and the Midland framework knitters.⁹⁷