ABSTRACT
The workshop movement of 1914 to 1918 has none of the neatness and precision which are possible only in organizations made to order, in pursuance of a definite plan executed by a controlling will. It was a spontaneous movement, arising naturally and inevitably out of the industrial circumstances of the time, in many places simultaneously. The mere fact of working together, within a system which conditions the actions of the whole group, naturally engenders a certain sense of solidarity and some capacity for common action. Workshop and Works Committees were largely regarded as anti-Trade Union devices, of which particular employers had made use in order to keep their employees out of the ranks of the Unions. Loyalty to a particular Trade Union, which enrolled only some of the workers in many different factories, was more keenly felt, than the common solidarity of all the workers, belonging often to as many as a dozen different Unions, working in a particular shop.
