The railway companies’ attitude to their workforce was a rather typical Victorian mix of paternalism and autocracy. On the Great Western, for example, staff who kept out of trouble and were good at their work received a bonus every six months. From 1847, a doctor on site was provided, though only the initial consultation for the administration of first aid was free.11 All Great Western staff were given cheap or free coal and apart from locomotive men who had to find their own white corduroy clothes – the poor womenfolk who had to wash these clothes must have been aghast at such a bizarre choice of colour – all other grades were supplied with a uniform, a practice that was typical of the better-run railways. The porters of the Great Western were decked out in an attractive green and wore an elegant glazed top hat, conferring immediate respectability on men from the most modest of backgrounds. Not surprisingly, these uniforms were a source of great pride for any new recruit and helped to create the sense of belonging that was deliberately fostered. The companies may have been authoritarian and considered that it was a privilege for the men to be ‘in service’ but the corollary of that was that they inspired fierce loyalty – even when it was not merited. The companies divided and ruled through the increasingly Byzantine grading structure that was based along military lines. There were different grades for every type of task and each job had its own promotion ladder, which was a great inducement for long service. Locomotive men, for example, started as cleaners then became ‘passed’ cleaners, who were able to fire locomotives, then firemen and ‘passed’ firemen who were permitted to drive occasionally but were still on relatively low wages. Then, at last, they became drivers but at first were confined to shunting engines around the yard or the occasional short goods run. It was only in their fifties that they would get the freedom of the rails and become one of the elite, driving passenger expresses around the country. In the same way, porters and ticket clerks could aspire, eventually, to become station-masters (and, if they were lucky, then enjoy progression to ever bigger stations) and telegraph boys might eventually qualify as signal inspectors. All this differentiation stimulated jealousy and rivalry between grades, which suited the employers as it ensured that strikes were normally confined to one group of dissatisfied men, making walkouts across the board difficult to organize and, consequently, rare.
Treatment of their employees varied too, with some companies taking a greater interest in the well-being of their workforce than others – but all were pretty ruthless in making workers redundant in bad times and in failing to pay compensation to those injured at work or to the relatives of those killed. The immediate assumption among the employers was that accidents were the fault of the employees and their cursory reports of incidents make cruel reading, such as these from the Caledonian railway: ‘Henry Hughes, platelayer, standing too close to a passing train at the Belmont Station, had his foot so severely crushed that death ensued; John Scott, pointsman, in the act of shifting points, lost his balance and fell under the wheels of a mineral train’, and so on. For those who broke the rules, there was little mercy: drivers who went too fast were summarily sacked, as were porters who were rude to passengers, or policemen who fell asleep at work. Yet, shifts of sixteen or even eighteen hours a day, six days per week, were routine and the terms of employment were weighted heavily in favour of the employers, with overtime frequently not recognized but any time off immediately penalized. While a worker wanting to better himself elsewhere would have to give three months’ notice, in the absence of any labour laws he could be summarily dismissed if he transgressed or simply became surplus to requirements. The railways expected their ‘servants’, an expression that was current right into the twentieth century, to do their bidding. The very word suggests that the companies treated their workers rather like the staff of a stately home, and they expected them to be like their children, well behaved, going to church and well turned out: ‘The object was to [create] a body of men with instinctive reactions of safety to train operating [a bit of a contradiction given the tiredness engendered by the long hours], willing to work where and when required, for as long as required, whose unquestioning loyalty could be taken for granted, but who could be sacked, fined or suspended for any infractions of the multitude of rules.’12
At times, though, the railways exceeded the limits of this unwritten contract and nothing could excuse their steadfast refusal to recognize even the most basic rights of the workers in their quest to maintain the dividends of their shareholders. The railway companies may not have been happy about their staff forming combines, but they were quick to do so themselves, creating in 1854 an effective lobbying organization, the Railway Companies Association,13 which was influential in preventing unwanted regulation of the railways being passed in Parliament and even, later, in delaying nationalization.
It was hardly surprising that in response to the harshness of their conditions and of the ruthless power of the companies, workers soon tried to organize themselves, first by providing support for each other through welfare schemes and then by creating unions. As soon as the Great Western started running trains in 1838, its workers formed a Provident Society to provide relief for its members who fell sick or suffered an accident, and a rudimentary pension. Although the railway companies notionally supported these societies, they built up their funds largely from contributions from the meagre wages of the workforce. The amounts that these societies were able to pay out were thus often insufficient and several fell into financial difficulties, though in periods of high profits the company would normally bail them out. Rather unfairly, workers in the most dangerous jobs, such as platelayers, were often not allowed to join a scheme because the hazardous nature of their job made the need for pay-outs too likely! The better companies normally did offer a small ex-gratia payment to widows of men who had died but their benevolence could never be relied upon. They also encouraged their staff to indulge in wholesome extra-curricular activity, such as musical bands, sport and even drama. They created Mechanics’ Institutes, too, in order to provide a theoretical basis for the skills that workers traditionally acquired on the job and many also offered ‘mutual improvement’ classes.
It did not go unnoticed among more militant workers that these provident funds relieved the companies of the need to provide such support themselves and thereby boosted their profitability, as the Pall Mall Gazette pointed out in 1866: ‘The dividends of the shareholders are kept up, and the widows of mangled porters and stokers have a pension from a fund provided by the porters and stokers themselves.’14 Not surprisingly, the tough working conditions prompted moves to industrial action and the creation of unions and, equally unsurprisingly, these initiatives were resisted strongly by the companies. A refusal to recognize the existence of a union and the mass dismissals of strikers were the knee-jerk reactions of virtually all directors of railway companies, big or small.
The right to organize collectively had been permitted in law since 1824, the year before the opening of the Stockton & Darlington, but that did not mean employers had to recognize any combines formed by the workers. As with so much in this history, the Liverpool & Manchester railway was the trailblazer and, with regard to industrial relations, that meant a draconian approach to labour unrest became the norm. In 1836, a group of engine drivers on the pioneering railway had stopped work, demanding extra pay for firemen. The leader, John Hewitt, was promptly sacked, resulting in a walk-out. Worse, four of the strikers were sentenced to a month’s hard labour for breaking their contracts, a punishment that included six hours daily on the treadmill. The directors eventually relented, facilitating the release of the men and taking them back, but ‘a stint on the treadmill obviously concentrated the minds of the strikers on their tasks for, in 1842, two of them were awarded £5 [two weeks’ wages] for good conduct’.15
In the first major attempt at a strike, 178 drivers, firemen and fitters of the Eastern Counties, a constantly struggling railway, handed in their notices to quit in August 1850, demanding that the corrupt locomotive
superintendent John Gooch (brother of the illustrious Daniel Gooch of the Great Western) should be sacked. It was they, rather than Gooch and his equally bent chairman, David Waddington MP, who had to go and, to add insult to injury, the men were blacklisted so that they could not find employment elsewhere in the industry. Gooch quickly found 178 replacements from other railways or from the pool of labour that seemed ever available at most times in the nineteenth century.
There were other small local and mostly totally unsuccessful strikes in the first three decades of the railways but the power and obduracy of the employers managed to see off any lasting trade union organization until the creation of the Railway Clerks Association in 1865. While it may seem surprising that the white-collar workers should be the first to organize rather than their blue-collar colleagues for whom the daily toil was far harder, the clerks were viewed as less of a threat by the owners and consequently given an easier passage. It was the locomotive drivers and fireman who had the industrial muscle, though, and it was not long before a strike by 400 men of the London, Brighton & South Coast railway became the first to result in train services being disrupted. They downed tools in March 1867 over their meagre daily pay, which was just 7s 6d for a driver, and 4s 6d for a fireman. The company’s attempt to recruit replacements failed and virtually all its services were stopped, including the lucrative race trains for the first spring meeting at Epsom. An accommodation with the management was quickly reached, involving a re-examination of their pay and – crucially – including the guarantee of no victimization for those who had gone on strike. Their fellows on the North Eastern, who were foolhardy enough to attempt to follow the Brighton men’s example the following month, were not so lucky, coming up against a far more vicious and tough-minded management. The men’s demands were for a ten-hour day (a sixty-hour week), two hours’ overtime to count as a quarter of a day, and time and a half on Sundays. But they were less well organized than the Brighton men and failed to attract all-out support. Blacklegs were quickly recruited, the strike collapsed without having disrupted services and some of the men were prosecuted, though only one successfully. There were threats of strikes on several other railways but following the defeat of the North Eastern men, these quickly dissipated in the face of a united front from the railway companies; the nascent union to which these men belonged, the Engine Drivers’ and Firemen’s United Society, collapsed barely a year after its formation.
However, trade unionism clearly could not be held back, given the reforming nature of the times and the growing numbers of workers, but it took the intervention of a sympathetic customer, Michael Thomas Bass, the Liberal MP for Derby, to ease the birth of a union that would encompass the majority of railway workers. Bass was critical of the employment practices of the Midland railway, which carried half a million barrels of his firm’s beer annually.16 Indeed, the undercroft of St Pancras had been built with the beer business from Bass and other Midland brewers in mind: it is supported by 800 columns17 that are 29ft 4ins apart, the right size to enable barrels to be stored efficiently between them. Bass, therefore, was rather more than a client – his custom, quite literally, underpinned the railway – which meant that the company could not afford to ignore his intervention on behalf of the workers. Bass realized that the long hours experienced by the Midland’s workers were probably no worse than many others and helped to organize the first meeting of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in London in 1872. He went on to help fund the nascent union and subsidized its newspaper, the Railway Service Gazette.
Attracting members to the new union was at first difficult, given the continued hostility of most employers, and the union concentrated on recruiting the better-paid men, such as guards, drivers and signalmen, rather than porters or platelayers, to stress its moderate credentials. Its strategy was not so much to call its members out on strike but instead it focused on lobbying to reduce hours and improve safety, knowing this struck a chord with the wider public. Improvements came slowly, such as the passing of the Employers’ Liability Act in 1880, which meant the employers were no longer free of responsibility for the accidents they caused to their workers. Membership of the union grew in the latter part of the 1880s to reach 26,000 by the end of that decade, though still well under 5 per cent of the industry’s workforce. However, the union established the beginnings of a system of collective bargaining when the North Eastern agreed to meet a delegation accompanied by trade union officials during a dispute in 1889. That was to prove the spur to more rapid growth as workers could clearly see the advantages of membership.
The main union for drivers and firemen, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF), established itself in 1880 through the efforts of a group of locomen on the Great Western and was open only to those on the footplate. This split remains to this day, with the continued existence of ASLEF and the separate Rail, Marine and Transport workers’ union (RMT), formed by a series of mergers from the original Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and later the National Union of Railwaymen, which has a few drivers as members. ASLEF was slow to grow but its endorsement of an ultimately unsuccessful strike by footplatemen on the Midland Railway in 1887 and, crucially, its successful legal support for two men who were accused of manslaughter following a fatal train crash on the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway in the same year, proved to be strong recruiting agents, enabling the union to build up its membership and industrial muscle.
The length of the working day was the principal issue, from both an industrial and a safety point of view. The more enlightened companies, such as the London & North Western and the Great Western, instructed their men to work a maximum of twelve hours but this was possible only if a relief man were available. The loyalty of workers like signalmen to the railway meant they never simply walked off the job and forced the closure of a line. At the other end of the scale, there were callous employers like the directors of the Cambrian, in Wales, who almost revelled in their harsh treatment of their workers. A parliamentary inquiry in 1891 revealed that for the previous two decades the company had routinely booked men on shifts of thirty-six hours and, on occasion, even forty-seven hours.
As well as this enormous permanent workforce on the railways, which reached 621,000 by the turn of the century, the navvies were still at work building lines. Arguably the greatest main line in Britain, and certainly the most scenic, was one of the last to be built: the Settle & Carlisle line which created an alternative route to Scotland and was an essential part of the Midland’s expansion plans. The beauty of the line through the most remote country in England was probably rather lost on those poor navvies who built it. The difficulty of their task was compounded by the mountainous terrain ravaged by blizzards in winter and the absence of any significant town throughout its seventy-three-mile length.
The decision to construct the Settle & Carlisle can be seen as the last throes of the railway companies’ competitive urges. Crazy as it seems, there was a case for a third trunk route to Scotland, evidenced in hindsight by the fact that despite an attempt by British Rail to close the line in the 1980s, it still flourishes today as a vital freight and diversionary route, as well as attracting considerable tourist traffic. The Midland was eager to develop its Anglo-Scottish traffic once St Pancras was opened in 1868 but was hamstrung by having to combine its carriages with those of the London & North Western, which made sure its rivals’ passengers were punished for not using its own trains. Midland passengers were transferred at a small North Yorkshire station called Ingleton, then hitched to the back of a freight train which meandered over the moors to a freezing platform at Tebay on the main line at the base of the climb to Shap. Here they were routinely dumped to wait for a connection.
Not surprisingly, the Midland sought to build its own route across the North Yorkshire moors and obtained parliamentary authorization in 1865, in alliance with the Lancashire & Yorkshire and, crucially, the North British. This Scottish railway had expanded from its origina
l route on the East Coast between Berwick and Edinburgh to reach Carlisle, south of the border, in 1862; therefore, once the Settle & Carlisle was built, it would provide a route for the Midland’s trains to all Scotland’s cities.
The Settle & Carlisle, however, nearly didn’t happen. The Midland got cold feet when the London & North Western cunningly promised better treatment of its Scottish passengers if the Midland’s madcap scheme were to be abandoned. Its chairman, W. P. Price, MP, wondered if the company really wanted to build this difficult railway, which would eventually cost £3.5m (£250m in today’s money), half as much again as the original estimate of £2.2m, through country with virtually no inhabitants or local business, just for the sake of its Scottish traffic? Price, urged on by his shareholders, tried to ditch the scheme. But that was not easy, since it required a bill through Parliament and the Midland’s two allies objected to its passage as they saw enormous advantages for themselves.
The Midland gritted its teeth and set out on this momentous task. It found a willing surveyor, a gaunt and tall young Tasmanian, Charles Sharland. Just as Stephenson had determined the route of the Liverpool & Manchester by pounding across the moors and fells half a century before, so in a similar way, armed with nothing but a few rudimentary instruments and a couple of assistants, Sharland spent months, including three weeks totally snowbound at an inn, working out where the line should go in this barren countryside. He managed to keep the gradient to 1 in 100, which was impressive given the hilly terrain, but the downside was that more than a quarter of the route would need such an incline, and expensive tunnels and viaducts were needed throughout. From Settle, the railway climbed 700 feet over twelve miles, then reached the mile and a third-long Blea Moor tunnel, which took four years to hew out of the limestone and shale. Hamilton Ellis, the chronicler of the Midland Railway, writing some eighty years later, suggests ‘it proved a damp, terrible tunnel. It drove men mad so that they could go underground no more. To this day, though much shorter than many English tunnels, it is a horrible place’18 where smoke seemed to linger and black icicles formed threateningly from the ceiling. In all there are 3.5 miles of tunnels and dozens of viaducts, the longest of which is Ribblehead, which stretches a quarter of a mile on its twenty-four arches. It is built of the local limestone with the result that, despite reaching 165 feet above the valley floor, it blends seamlessly into the countryside, especially on one of the all too common bleak grey days. The decay of the limestone was the excuse British Rail gave for its attempt to close the line in the 1980s but repairs were made and now the line’s future is assured.
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