ABSTRACT
T HE organ of the industrial labour movement is thetrade union, 'a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the condition of their working lives' (Webb). Of all the associations into which the worker enters, the trade union has most pronouncedly a working-class character. Unlike the political labour movement described in the last chapter, trade unionism appeals almost exclusively to the wage-earners; it can count on little support from middle-class opinion; and its leaders are drawn from the same social class as its rank and file. It is, in short, a working-class movement pur sang. There is therefore point in the remark that' until there are trade unions, there is no labour movement '.1 It is in the ranks' of his trade union that the worker first achieves classconsciousness. He comes to realize his position as a wageearner before he understands and values his privileges as a citizen, and the trade union which fights the battle of his daily needs commands his allegiance in a higher degree than the political labour parties with their wider but vaguer social programmes. Trade unionism is indeed the cement of the working-class movement. Amongst the many varied elements which make up the army of labour, it is the trade unions which have hitherto presented the most united front, shown the strongest powers of resistance and displayed the greatest capacity for steady if slow advance. In the words of the author already quoted, , they are and they remain the essential basis of the working-class movement'. 2
Trade unionism is the child of industrialism. When the development of capitalist production proceeds so far that the worker is deprived of all chance of becoming a master, when he realizes that he is condemned to be a wage-earner all his life and learns by bitter experience that he is no match for his employer in bargaining power, then he combines in self-
defence with his fellows and trade unions come into existence. It is in England, the first country to be industrialized, that we must seek for the earliest examples of this tendency.
