ABSTRACT
Speaking to an audience of dockyardmen at Devonport in 1913, the Labour MP, George Barnes said that 'he was glad to see that Dockyardmen were in tune with the general labour movement. Analysis of the way in which dockyardmen became more in tune with the general labour movement has to be set against the broad development of trade union history. At the start of the 1880s dockyard society was essentially inward-looking. Dockyardmen had long been involved in organizations, but these were specifically dockyard affairs, stressing the peculiarities of dockyard employment and tending to isolate dockyardmen from other workers. On the eve of the Great War, Portsmouth Dockyard continued in many respects to be different from a commercial shipyard. The establishment system still offered the prospect of a job for life, underpinning the low-wage and relatively quiescent dockyard working environment.
