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THE LATEST PROGRAMME |
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Jonathan Freedland looks for the past behind the present. Each week, The Long View, recorded on location throughout the British Isles, takes an issue from the current affairs agenda and finds a parallel in our past.
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The firefighters are in dispute at the moment over the issue of low pay, and image of Manningham Mills.
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 Sources used for readings in the programme
A threat to strike in support of a wage claim to raise alleged low wages.
This is not Britain in the 21st century but Victorian England. By the late 19th century the wool and worsted industry of the West Riding of Yorkshire was in decline.
The owner of Manningham Mills, Samuel Cunliffe Lister, an archetypal Victorian industrialist, was seeking to cut back his workforce. His export markets slashed and profit margins reduced following new US tariffs, Lister insisted that workers should accept wage reductions of up to 30%.
A strike/lockout began shortly before Christmas 1890 - initially around a thousand workers were involved, but the strike spread and thousands more came out - some in sympathy, some as wages were reduced in other parts of the mill.
Strikers and their families were supported by a strike committee which collected money throughout the north, largely from trade unionists, and provided soup kitchens and handouts of cash and food.
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| On Location |
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Left-hand picture:The now derelict Manningham Mills in Bradford
Right-hand picture: The actor Paul Copley
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Left-hand picture:Jonathan Freedland and journalist Beatrix Campell
Right-hand picture:St George's Hall, Bradford.
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The strike became particularly bitter in the spring of 1891 when the Bradford authorities, the Liberal ‘millocracy’, tried to stop the strikers holding mass meetings and rallies in the halls and squares of the city.
Rallies and processions continued, however, as tens of thousands of people gathered to listen to speakers such as Tom Mann and Ben Tillett ( leader of the London Dock Strike of 1889 ) - in fact the threat to free speech attracted speakers from across the country.
On the 13th of April 1891, the Durham Light Infantry were sent into the city and a riot resulted - there were several serious injuries but no deaths.
Within weeks the strikers were forced back to work - Lister had refused to moderate his position and the strike fund could no longer support the workers. The resulting anger led to the formation of the Bradford Labour Union to seek a political solution to the problems of low pay and poor conditions for working men and women.
While the Trade Unions were mainly Liberal supporters, The Bradford Union - and West Yorkshire - was at the forefront of socialist politics. In recognition of that radicalism, Bradford was chosen to host the founding conference of the Independent Labour Party, an amalgamation of several regional ILPs, in January 1893.
Contributors
Historian - Professor Keith Laybourn, from the University of Huddersfield,
Actor - Paul Copley,
Journalist and writer, Beatrix Campbell,
John Mann MP,
Malcolm Peel, Chairman of the Yorkshire and Humberside Firebrigades Union.
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Listen to - introduction
