ABSTRACT
The Workers’ Committee movement has produced no official and authoritative exposition of its objects and policy; but there is a considerable pamphlet literature, written by prominent members of the movement, which can be taken as indicating with sufficient clearness its general ideas and tendencies. In 1918 Mr. J. T. Murphy, at one time the leading spirit in the Sheffield Workers’ Committee, and also active in the national ‘rank and file’ movement, published a pamphlet entitled ‘The Workers’ Committee: an Outline of its Principles and Structure. Mr. Murphy begins by explaining that the whole tendency of modern large-scale Trade Union organization is towards ‘government by officials’. For all the workers in each industry in a district a Local Industrial Committee should be appointed, and all the Industrial Committees should unite to form the Local Workers’ Committee, on a basis which would include all the workers in the area.
