ABSTRACT
In the early stages of the war, the workers’ most urgent grievances arose out of the rising cost of living. Wages lagged behind prices, because of the industrial truce; and soon the position threatened to become intolerable. Politically, the extreme Left was very weak during the war years. In effect, the real leadership of the extreme Left was industrial—in the Shop Stewards and Workers’ Committees. When war broke out in August 1914 the British Trade Unions immediately agreed to an ‘industrial truce’. Strikes which were actually in progress were called off; and many big Unions which were on the point of coming forward with demands agreed to postpone their claims until the war was over. In March 1915, under the Treasury Agreements, the Trade Unions accepted in principle the ‘dilution of labour’ by the substitution of unskilled for skilled workers, and the temporary suspension of Trade Union customs while the war lasted.
