ABSTRACT
The railway trade unions had a large and early impact on the Labour Party. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) moved the resolution at the 1899 Trades Union Congress (TUC) to set up the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), of which it was accordingly a founder affiliate with 60,000 members. The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) joined the LRC in 1902, with 10,000 members and, like the ASRS, entered the Labour Party on its foundation in 1906. The Railway Clerks’ Association (RCA) was slower off the mark, affiliating in 1910 with 9,000 members, but this was precocious for a white-collar organization. Subsequently, the rail unions remained an important element in the party’s union base. The ASRS alone was the fourth largest union in 1900, and the third largest in 1920 and 1933, having merged in 1913 into the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR). The NUR affiliated to Labour on the basis of 317,000 members in 1926 and 341,000 in 1931 (out of a total of 387,000 and 295,000 respectively). The RCA signed up for 60,000 and 47,000 in the same years. ASLEF had 60,000 members in 1925 and 53,000 in 1937. The collective influence of the rail unions probably declined slightly after 1920, as their employment base had peaked and the party had a wider spread of affiliations. But Labour constituency parties and local trades councils benefited continuously from the dispersed nature of railway employment. By 1945, the NUR had more than 1,600 branches, ASLEF over 450, and the RCA nearly that number. For this reason, it has often been observed that railway trade unionists ‘play[ed] a large part in the general work of the labour movement, especially in the more backward areas’.1
