ABSTRACT
In retrospect the summer of 1892 seems to mark crest of new unionist wave. It had swept Hardie, Burns and Havelock Wilson into Parliament; it had borne emerging leaders of unskilled casual labour into battle with employers and frequently to victory. The dispute opened on 5 November 1892, when Bristol timber merchants hired non-union labourers to work alongside Dockers’ Union members. This was viewed by the men as the thin end of wedge; if employers could open closed shop, as for example in Cardiff, then the union’s power would be broken, since there was always a surplus of labour. Tillett, who had remained in London only long enough to win an acquittal from the Bristol charges of the previous winter, raced back to Hull on the 18th, in time to deliver impassioned exhortation: that day, right up and down the length and breadth of England, the dockers were preparing for what would be one of the greatest strikes in history.
