Dundee and the Empire: ‘Juteopolis’ 1850-1939 9780748686155

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Dundee and the Empire

Dundee and the Empire ‘Juteopolis’ 1850–1939

Jim Tomlinson

To Beth, and to our life together in Juteopolis

© Jim Tomlinson, 2014 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10/12pt Goudy Old Style by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 8614 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 8615 5 (webready PDF) The right of Jim Tomlinson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

List of Figures vi List of Tables vii Acknowledgementsviii Abbreviationsix Introduction1 Part I 1. The Rise of Juteopolis 2. Juteopolis and Imperial Globalisation 3. The Employers’ Response 4. The Workers’ Response 5. The Politics of Dundee: The 1906 and 1908 Elections

9 23 38 60 78

Part II 6. War, Recession and the Response on the Left 7. Conservatism, Protection and Empire in the 1930s 8. The Empire Strikes Back: Responding to Crisis in the 1930s 9. Aftermath and Conclusion

103 121 138 156

Notes164 Bibliography201 Index217

Figures

Pages 94 to 99   1 Victoria Arch, Dundee dockside   2 Women cutting raw jute in Bengal   3 Raw jute prices   4 Baxter Park sign   5 Workers’ thanks to their employer   6 Workers leaving Caldrum jute works   7 Inside a Dundee jute factory   8 A new use for jute   9 A welcome to Dundee for the King-Emperor George V 10 A suitably gloomy view of the rooftops of Juteopolis 11 A more optimistic view 12 Jute no more

Tables

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2

Growth of flax and jute employment in Dundee, 1841–1911 Jute in the employment structure, 1911 Structure of the Dundee jute spinning industry in 1908 Main female employments outside jute, 1911 Main male employments outside jute, 1911 Proportions in middle-class occupations in Scotland in 1911 Export destinations of Dundee jute goods, 1900 General election result, 1906 Dundee by-election result, 1908 Jute Trade Board decisions on weekly wages, 1920–37 Britain and imperial trade between the wars Indian trade with Britain, 1913–37 Exports of jute goods from India to the UK, 1930–8 British imports of jute goods from Europe, 1920–38 Unemployment amongst jute workers, 1924–38

9 10 13 15 17 19 27 79 91 106 125 125 131 139 140

Acknowledgements

This book was completed while I was making the transition from working at the University of Dundee to the University of Glasgow – while continuing to live in Juteopolis. I am grateful to all those who made my nine years at the University of Dundee, overall, such a positive experience. A large number of people, both in Dundee and elsewhere, have discussed Juteopolis with me, and I am grateful to Kenneth Baxter, Esther Breitenbach, Billy Kenefick, Carlo Morelli, George Peden, Jim Phillips, Gordon Stewart, Alexis Wearmouth, Christopher Whatley and Valerie Wright for stimulation and help. Thanks also to Chris Swanson for allowing me to cite his unpublished papers on Hatry in Chapter 6. I am also grateful to the archivists at the City Archives and the University Archives, and staff of the Local History Collection at the Dundee City Library for their assistance. Susan Keracher at the McManus Gallery found the cover picture for me, and I am grateful to the Gallery for permission for its use. Caroline Brown from the University Archive assisted me in finding most of the illustrations, and I am grateful to her for her help, and to the Archive for permission for their use. Quotations from Winston Churchill are reproduced with the permission of Curtis Brown, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill. The archives of the DDUJFW and the Dundee Chamber of Commerce are cited with the agreement of Dundee City Archives. I am grateful to the LSE Library for permission to cite material from the E. D. Morel papers in the LSE Archives.

Abbreviations

Advertiser Courier

Dundee Advertiser (merged with the Courier in 1926) Dundee Courier (and Argus until 1926, when it merged with the Advertiser) CP Communist Party DCA Dundee City Archives DCC Dundee City Council DChC Dundee Chamber of Commerce DCL: LHC Dundee City Library: Local History Collection DCUA Dundee Conservative and Unionist Association DDFMOU Dundee and District Mill and Factory Operatives Union DDUJFW Dundee and District Union of Jute and Flax Workers DECS Dundee Eastern Co-operative Society DFP Dundee Free Press DSU Dundee Social Union DTC Dundee Trades Council DTLC Dundee Trades and Labour Council DUA Dundee University Archives HCDebs House of Commons Debates (Hansard). ILP Independent Labour Party TNA: PRO The National Archives: Public Record Office (Kew)

Introduction

What did the possession of Empire mean to the people of Britain? How did it impact upon them, how did they understand it, and how did they respond? These questions have increasingly been posed by historians, recognising that alongside the powerful, but much contested, effects of the British Empire on those it colonised were potentially powerful, but equally disputable, effects on those in the metropole. For a long time, as Andrew Thompson suggests, “‘Empire” was something that was judged to have happened overseas; although originating in Britain, imperialism remained marginal to the lives of most British people’.1 This marginalisation of empire in histories of modern Britain is now widely contested. Criticism of such a view has come most persistently from John MacKenzie, the books he has written dating back to the 1980s, but also many other books published in the Manchester University Press series ‘Studies in Imperialism’ which he inspired.2 Much of this work was influenced by the broader linguistic and cultural turn in historical writing, which has placed particular emphasis on the discursive constructs surrounding empire, and how these constructs shaped domestic cultures. These approaches have suggested that empire was crucial to the evolution of modern Britain, and that the British understandings of themselves, their identity, depended crucially on the imperial ‘encounter’.3 There have always been dissenters from this view, most prominently Bernard Porter.4 In recent contributions to this debate MacKenzie and Porter have continued to disagree fundamentally about whether empire mattered to the mass of the British population, or whether it mainly engaged only a small elite whose lives were intimately bound up with the fortunes of Britain’s overseas possessions.5 A key problem with this debate has been its sharp distinction between ‘culture’ and ‘economy’. Porter writes: ‘no-one, incidentally, who questions the effect of her empire on Britain’s popular culture doubts its impacts materially. There is sometimes confusion here’.6 But this is an unhelpful dichotomy. Britain’s popular culture has always been shaped by material forces; conversely, understanding of ‘material’ forces was shaped by the prevailing culture. This point is superbly illustrated by Trentmann’s recent work on free trade.7 As he shows, support for free trade became, for a while, an important element of popular culture; equally, the significance of that culture is inexplicable without the material consequences that free trade

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brought. In parallel fashion, in seeking to understand the relation between empire and popular culture we need to integrate the study of the material consequences of empire with the analysis of popular understandings of empire. This is a central aim of this book. I In the half century before the First World War Britain simultaneously expanded its empire and globalised its economy. These were intertwined processes. In these years the Empire was an important, in some respects growing, element in Britain’s international economic connections, though globalisation extended far beyond the Empire. Indeed, one important strand in recent literature has been to see the Empire and globalisation as focused on a ‘British world’ of English-language communities, embracing the whitesettler empire countries of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, alongside the USA.8 While this was certainly an important dynamic, it needs to be set alongside the importance of other, non-settler, parts of the Empire, in the globalisation of Britain. Above all, India needs to be recognised as playing a crucial role. In these years it was Britain’s most important imperial market, whilst also a supplier of key raw materials. But even more importantly, competition from Indian manufactured goods presaged the kinds of pressures that would be exerted on much of British industry in the future, pressures arising above all from the difficulties of responding to competition arising fundamentally from much lower wages than were paid in Britain. In the interwar period such pressures were to shape crucially the fortunes of the British economy. This book uses the case of Dundee to analyse the impact of these interwoven issues of empire and globalisation, covering the ‘expansionary’ period before 1914 and the much more difficult era from the First to the Second World War. Dundee is especially wellsuited for this purpose given both the strength of its imperial connections (especially with India) and the intensity of its globalisation. Thus the book seeks to follow in the footsteps of other highly focused studies of single cities and towns which have contributed to much broader discussions of modern Britain, such as Martin Daunton on Cardiff and Mike Savage on Preston.9 Dundee’s connections with India arose above all from its role as ‘Juteopolis’.10 From the 1850s the jute industry in the city expanded rapidly, so that by the end of the century the city’s employment structure had become enormously skewed towards this sector, with over half the population directly or indirectly dependent upon it. All the raw jute for this industry came from Bengal, and raw material prices were crucial to the industry’s prosperity. No wonder then that the local Dundee newspapers regularly reported the state of the monsoon and the prospective jute harvest on their front pages. But Bengal was not just a supplier of raw materials, important as that



Introduction

3

was. From the 1880s Calcutta was also emerging as a major competitor to Dundee in the production of jute manufactures.11 This factory industry was initiated by English entrepreneurs in the 1850s, but soon Dundonians were playing a major part in the industry’s expansion, supplying capital, machinery and a variety of managerial and technical workers.12 Especially before the First World War, but continuing in considerable degree even after Indian independence, the Scottish played a large, and paradoxical, role in creating a competitor to Dundee, which by 1914 had far overtaken its rival.13 The world of the ‘jute wallahs’ who dominated this Calcutta industry has been marvellously evoked in Gordon Stewart’s study, which places them firmly in the cultural and economic space of empire.14 In contrast to Stewart’s work, this book focuses on the Dundee end of this imperial connection. Dundee was, in a very important sense, an ‘imperial city’, in many respects its connections with empire being stronger than with the rest of Scotland.15 The analysis offered here shows the ways in which imperial issues became woven into the debates in the city about how to respond to Calcutta’s rise as a competitor. The book’s approach thus differs sharply from that of Anthony Cox’s recent work, which offers a comparative labour history of jute production in Dundee and Calcutta.16 In contrast, here the focus is wholly on Dundee, but puts the city’s relationship with empire in the context of the national and international developments and debates that shaped that relationship. If Dundee’s plight was inextricably linked to questions of empire, its international connections were not limited to that domain. Most of its jute manufactures were exported, and the biggest markets were the USA and other non-Empire countries such as Argentina, alongside the imperial ‘white settler’, primary producers, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In addition, Dundee emerged in the late nineteenth century as a significant contributor to the other two main strands of late-Victorian and Edwardian globalisation – the export of capital, and the export of people. Dundee was a pioneer centre for the investment trust, and the proportion of local income invested abroad was unusually high.17 It also contributed disproportionately to the Scottish diaspora, probably because of the limits on job opportunities for men, given that work in Dundee jute was a predominantly female preserve (a point returned to below).18 In the light of the scale and intensity of these connections, Dundee can plausibly be claimed as the most globalised city in world by 1913, with a greater dependence for its prosperity on events outside its national boundaries than any other significant urban settlement.19 The central issues addressed in this book concern British responses to this complex world of imperial and global connection, over a period and in a place where this relationship became more and more problematic. On the one hand, politically, Britain’s hold over India became more tenuous as Indian nationalism grew. On the other hand, economically, competition

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from India raised profoundly difficult problems, problems especially acutely felt in Dundee, stimulating both a local and a national response. II The discussion of these responses draws on a range of approaches and analytical frameworks. Cultural historians of empire have, of course, focused attention on how knowledges of empire were constructed, many of these discussions taking inspiration from Said’s work and the concept of ‘orientalism’.20 From the 1890s onwards Dundonians were presented with a range of accounts and reports about India in general, and Calcutta jute in particular.21 Much, but not all, of this reportage was directly the result of a desire to understand the basis of the competition that Dundee was facing. In turn, these differing accounts fed, in complex ways, into local views on the appropriate response to that competition. Does the notion of orientalism help our understanding of these views? From a quite distinct literature on globalisation comes the analysis of ‘distributional coalitions’, where responses are seen as tied to calculations about the consequences of globalisation for economic prosperity, with the idea that mobilising social forces for and against globalisation will depend upon forging alliances between disparate winners and losers.22 So here we analyse the extent to which jute owners and jute workers (and others) did find a common position on trying to shape Dundee’s answer to low wage competition. What forces encouraged such commonality, and what discouraged it? In seeking to answer these questions we need to go beyond any assumption that economic calculation was the sole basis for action, as the simplifying assumptions of the distributional coalition approach might suggest. In particular, we need to integrate the ‘knowledges’ held by actors in Dundee into our understanding of how they interpreted the problems they faced. These knowledges were mediated by the politics and political culture of the city, and these latter need to be addressed in their own right. Most obviously directly relevant here is the strength or otherwise of the politics of free trade, adherence to which, as Trentmann stresses, cannot be reduced to a simple economic calculus.23 Rather, the culture of free trade had, by 1900, come to have a powerful hold over the minds of many Britons. What evidence is there for such attachment in Dundee? Did such an attachment shape the willingness of Dundee’s workers to ally with the growing protectionist spirit of the city’s employers? In addressing the specifically working-class response to the insecurities brought about by competition, we can usefully draw on the arguments of Savage’s work on pre-1914 Preston.24 He argues that the key underpinning for working-class action is pervasive economic uncertainty, given an overwhelming reliance on unstable wage incomes, and that there are three broad categories of response: economic, mutual and state action.25 This schema,



Introduction

5

if not applied too rigidly, can help us understand the range of responses evoked in Dundee, and, it will be argued, the evolution of popular attitudes towards state action was especially important in affecting responses to Dundee’s plight. Detailed analysis of Dundee will allow us to address Porter’s key claim that responses to empire in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain were fundamentally shaped by class position. In particular, how accurate is his belief that ‘the working class were either apathetic towards the empire or superficial in their attitude to it, for structural “class” reasons . . .’?26 The majority of jute workers in Dundee were women, so, when looking at how those workers responded, we need to address the gender aspect. There has been important work done on Dundee’s female jute workers, focusing especially on their collective action at the workplace, or their conditions of work.27 We also know a great deal about Dundee women’s formal role in politics.28 But in addition we need to be sensitive to women’s role as consumers as well as producers. As is well known, the appeal of free trade, especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, rested in part on it delivering falling prices for key commodities, especially food. How far did this underpin a ‘consumptionist’ politics in Dundee, and, if such a politics existed, was it strongly gendered?29 III In the years covered in this book Dundee’s experience concentrated together many key aspects of the modern British experience of empire and globalisation.30 The rise of jute production in the imperial city of Calcutta exposed its inhabitants to the full blast of competition from a low-wage economy. This competition forced a highly illuminating debate about India, as the country that provided the competition, and the world economy more generally; this in turn informed a range of responses to Dundee’s problems. For Dundonians, the Empire was not an abstract entity, an ephemeral concern for political rhetoricians, or only for high days, holidays and empire days, but a factor shaping the material basis of everyday life.

Chapter 1 The Rise of Juteopolis

The designation of Dundee as Juteopolis can be justified by long usage, and as accurately reflecting the extraordinary dominance of one economic activity in the city, especially in the period c.1850-1914. The legacy of those years endured well into the twentieth century.1 No large city in Britain was ever so dominated by a single industrial sector as Dundee was by jute.2 This dominance is best measured by employment patterns. Table 1.1 charts the rise in employment from 1841, and Table 1.2 summarises the employment position at the census closest to Dundee jute’s zenith, 1911, when forty per cent of the workforce were directly employed in the industry.3 This forty per cent figure, itself striking, significantly underestimates the role of jute in the city’s economy. Alongside the producers of jute were the merchants and clerks who organised and recorded the buying of raw jute and sales of the finished product. The transport of raw and manufactured jute completely dominated employment on the docks, and was hugely important in local road and rail transport. Machines to prepare, spin and weave jute were made in the city. Other industries, notably linen and flax, and ropemaking were, literally, interwoven with jute. More broadly, the prosperity of most of the substantial service sector relied heavily on the state of the industry. It was also the case that very little jute manufacture took place in Britain outside Dundee and district, so jute and Dundee were almost synonymous. Table 1.1  Growth of flax and jute employment in Dundee, 1841–1911 Year

Flax and jute operativesa

1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911

11,000 21,000 24,000 32,000 34,000 37,000 37,000 37,000

a 

Flax and jute were not separately enumerated until 1861

Source:  Graham, ‘Dundee jute industry’, p. 94

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Dundee and the Empire

Table 1.2  Jute in the employment structure, 1911 Population

Male

Female

Of whom, married women

Total enumerated Total occupied Jute workers

56, 223 47,374 11,042

74,712 38,836 23,368

6,444 5,532

Source:  Census of Scotland 1911 vol II, table XXVII

Employment is not of course the only measure of the key role of jute in the city. It was also manifested in the physical structure. Most obviously this was true in the impact of the two-hundred-plus jute mills that were built, largely in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.4 But it was also evident both in the tenements that sprang up to house (however inadequately) the workers who flooded in to work in the industry, again, especially in the middle decades of that century, but also in the buildings and parks built with jute money, such as Caird Hall (the city hall) and Baxter Park.5 Of course, Dundee has an architectural heritage that long predates jute, but, even today, the physical texture of the city is unmistakably largely the legacy of that industry’s rise and decline.6 So jute dominated the economic and the physical character of the city, especially in the years down to the Second World War. The political culture of the city in this period was also fundamentally shaped by its status as Juteopolis. Much of this book aims at untangling how this complex relationship between Dundee’s economic life and politics developed from the midVictorian heyday to the disastrous years of the 1930s. I Dundee’s emergence as Juteopolis stemmed from its prior role as key centre for linen production, the most important textile product in Britain before the rise of cotton from the late eighteenth century.7 In the middle decades of that century Dundee became the undisputed centre of Scottish linen production, and from the 1780s the industry began the transition from a domestic to mechanised activity with the introduction of flax spinning machinery.8 The strength of Dundee in linen rested to a substantial extent on its harbour, as linen goods both relied increasingly on imported flax and were sold in international markets. Not only was the industry an early pioneer of ‘globalisation’ but it also had a strong imperial connection, especially to the East Indies. Under the aegis of the East India Company, landowners, merchants and manufacturers built up extensive connections with the sub-continent in the eighteenth century, leading to substantial flows of wealth from India into Dundee and the surrounding Angus countryside. As MacKillop has argued: ‘the extent of Dundee’s early links with Asia suggests that the burgh’s nineteenth century role as “Juteopolis” was less an unprecedented new age of



The Rise of Juteopolis

11

empire so much as a logical evolution from its eighteenth century phase of “industrious” and “gentlemanly” capitalism’.9 How did this evolution from linen to jute come about? The most sophisticated analysis of this issue suggests the following narrative.10 Dundee specialised in coarse linens used for purposes such as bagging for raw cotton. There were persistent concerns about the supply of flax, which came largely from Russia, especially after the beginning of the Napoleonic wars. Depending upon the relative price, experiments were made by Dundee producers with a variety of alternative fibres. Jute, which the East India Company had first sent to Dundee in 1822–4, was taken up in 1825 when the trade slump again encouraged the search for cheaper substitutes for flax.11 The coarseness of the fibre rendered these initial efforts unsuccessful, but slowly technical changes suggested that with some adjustment existing machinery might be altered to deal with jute. In the trade cycle of 1836–47 the decisive breakthrough came with a squeeze on profits in the bagging market. This squeeze, presaging what was to occur much later in jute, arose in part from Indian competition in hemp bagging.12 This was not the only early impact of India on Dundee jute. Warden suggests that ‘it was not until Mr Rowan got the Dutch government, about 1838, to substitute Jute yarn for those made from Flax tow in the manufacture of the coffee bagging for their East Indian possessions, that the Jute trade in Dundee got a proper start’.13 The other link with India was through the supply of raw jute, which was more or less a monopoly of Bengal. From 1839 Dundee had the right to import jute granted by the East India Company, and the first direct import arrived the following year.14 From 1847, when the railway link with London was established, increasing quantities of raw jute came by this method, displacing the previous coastal shipping route.15 But direct importing from Calcutta and Chittagong soon developed, and from the end of the 1860s this was the dominant route for the raw material.16 Working raw jute was challenging because of its coarseness, and it was only by incremental adaptation of machinery previously used for linen and hemp that jute manufacturing became viable. Also important to this possibility was the use of whale oil as a softening agent. It was a fortunate conjunction that Dundee was a major whaling port, so making this oil cheaply and readily available, but Chapman suggests we should not put too much weight on this factor, given that other linen areas – Belfast, Leeds and Inverness – had ready access to whale oil without linking it to the possibility of jute production.17 Conversely, the use of whale oil by the jute industry, until it was replaced by mineral oil gradually from the late nineteenth century, boosted local whaling in the face of the decline in demand for whale oil for lighting purposes.18 While the rise of jute production from the 1840s was extremely rapid, linen continued to be an important local product down to the twentieth century, with Baxters, one of the largest jute companies, still producing half

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Dundee and the Empire

as much linen as jute cloth as late as 1903/4.19 Coarse linens were given a great boost by the American Civil War, with the huge demand generated for canvas (finer linens were made not in Dundee but largely in Belfast).20 A decade earlier jute had been given an enormous boost when the Crimean War had temporarily almost stopped supplies of flax. Because Russian flax continued to be imported during the war, linen production was surprisingly buoyant, but nevertheless the vulnerability of the industry had been demonstrated, and at the same time it became clear that jute was a serious challenger to linen in many uses. So it was in the two decades of the 1850s and 1860s that jute production saw its most rapid expansion, with imports of raw jute rising from 17,000 tons in 1851 to 140,000 in 1873.21 Reflecting the demand for labour from this expansion, over the period 1851 to 1871 the city’s population went from 79,000 to 119,000, reaching 140,000 by 1881.22 These population increases derived from heavy immigration into the city, especially significant in the 1860s when over half the increase came from new arrivals. Most of the incomers were from nearby parts of Scotland, but there was significant Irish influx, especially after the Famine of the late 1840s. By 1851 18.8 per cent of the population was of Irish origin, a majority of them women.23 Many of these migrants came from the linen-producing areas of South Ulster.24 The development of the jute industry before the Great War was characterised by heavy investments in new mills and factories, especially in the 1850s and 1860s, and continuous technical changes in the production processes. In 1850 the process of applying steam power to the basic spinning and weaving processes was well-advanced but incomplete; power looms for example, did not dominate the industry until the 1860s.25 A key technical challenge was to overcome the hardness of jute compared with flax, so that even before ‘hackling’ (the separation of the wood and fibre) jute had to be softened by mixing it with oil and water (‘batching’). But jute is also relatively impervious to moisture, and, whilst this has advantages in use, it means dyeing and bleaching are difficult.26 Technical change in the industry was incremental rather than dramatic. It seems often to have been associated with the bigger firms in the industry, such as Baxters and Cox’s, but also with the textile machinery companies themselves.27 In their pioneering study of the Dundee jute industry in the pre-1914 period Lenman, Lythe and Gauldie suggest a broad three-stage narrative of technical development and dynamism. They see the 1850s and 1860s as the period of most rapid change, with key shifts made to a mechanised industry. The 1870s and 1880s, by contrast, they consider ‘relatively sterile’. After 1890 they see a more conscious effort to innovate, but in an industry where the room for manoeuvre was highly constrained by the buoyant but limited market for traditional products.28 This schema seems broadly persuasive. The 1850s and 1860s expansion brought together rapid mechanisation, major investments in plant and



The Rise of Juteopolis

13

machinery, and unparalleled increases in both output and the labour force. After 1870 output was still expanding, but employment growth was much slower, and competition from continental Europe and India was emerging. There was some movement into new products, such as by Grimonds and other producers into carpet and linoleum backing, but the intractability of jute as a fibre seriously constrained product innovation.29 Given the competitive environment and the narrow range of product possibilities, much effort went into securing profitability by transactions in the raw jute market, where price fluctuations were both a danger and an opportunity for money-making. In terms of industrial economics we can helpfully think of Juteopolis as a Marshallian industrial district, where there were substantial ‘external’ economies of scale arising from the geographical proximity of participants in the industry.30 This proximity encouraged localised skill development, the growth of subsidiary trades, the use of highly specialised machinery and also, Marshall suggests, an interweaving of social and economic connections which encourages ‘industrial leadership’. More broadly, industrial districts are characterised by complex patterns of both co-operation and competition between their constituent firms.31 All these characteristics fit the Dundee jute case, with an industry structure which, while it contained big firms, also included a large number of small enterprises, and with no evident trend for these to be squeezed out by the bigger units. Table 1.3 gives some idea of the size structure of the industry, though the data are restricted to spinning activity. While these firms competed with each other, there was also a lot of knowledge-sharing and joint action, and this made it relatively easy for a coherent ‘interest’ to be established in the industry, a point returned to in Chapter 3. The snapshot from the 1911 census emphasises the pre-eminence of jute in that year. This position was obviously the result not only of the Table 1.3  Structure of the Dundee jute spinning industry in 1908 Estimated bales per week Cox Brothers J and A. D. Grimond James Scott and Son Gilroy, Sons and Co. John Sharp and Sons J. K. Caird Malcom Ogilvie and Co. Harry Walker and Sons 12 establishments 16 establishments 9 establishments Source:  Lenman et al., Dundee, pp. 114–15

2,300 1,500 1,400 1,250 1,200 1,150 1,100 1,100 500–1,000 250–500 0–250

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Dundee and the Empire

expansionary dynamics of jute but also of the weakness of other employment sectors, where absolute decline was in some cases evident. The early twentieth century saw the sale of two of Dundee’s shipping fleets, and the migration of another to the Tyne; whaling was in decline from the early 1880s; shipbuilding was sharply reduced when Gourlay’s shipyard was closed in 1908, and that year roughly marked the all-time peak of the industry’s output in the city.32 II Alongside Juteopolis the most common epithet applied to modern Dundee is ‘women’s town’. This has arisen from an obvious source, the prevalence of women in the city’s main industry, making it a highly unusual case where women provided the majority of the workforce for a manufacturing sector.33 Given the absence of any male-dominated industry of anything like comparable size, women’s role in jute was associated with a numerical predominance in the population (Table 1.2), a predominance which has endured to the present day. While this pattern is hugely significant, we should be careful not to exaggerate, it being especially important to note that at the time of Juteopolis there were always more men at work in the city than women. While jute dominated the female labour market, women were of course not confined to this sector. The overall pattern of women’s formal employment is given in Table 1.4. After jute the biggest sector by some margin was domestic service, though this was proportionately much less extensive in Dundee than in other Scottish cities.34 This limited size was partly a demand-side phenomenon; with fewer members of the professional middle classes in the city, especially compared with Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the demand for domestics in Dundee was likely to have been depressed.35 But the contrast with Glasgow, where the numbers in the professional classes were also small, but the proportion of domestic servants significantly higher, suggests there were also supply-side factors. With the ready alternative of employment in jute, Dundee women in the years before the Great War may have ‘voted with their feet’ against domestic service on a scale that was not to become common elsewhere in the country until the 1930s, although it had occurred in other, much smaller, textile towns in Scotland by 1900.36 These figures also show the very limited extent of the ‘white blouse revolution’ in women’s employment in Juteopolis. Non-working-class occupations for women were largely confined to clerks, teachers and nursing and other ‘caring’ activities. These occupations seem to have operated a rigid marriage bar, so that, as in the rest of Britain at this time, married middle-class women were effectively barred from the formal labour market. However, for working-class women, it is clear that jute (along with linen) offered employment for married women that no other sector matched. The



The Rise of Juteopolis

15

Table 1.4  M  ain female employments outside jute, 1911 (occupations with more than 100 workers) Occupation

Numbers

Indoor domestic Commercial clerks Clothiers/outfitters Students and scholars over 14 Flax and linen Drapers Schoolmistresses/lecturers Charwomen Canvas and sailcloth Laundry workers Jam making Carpets and rugs Tailors Nurses and midwives Dressmakers/milliners Grocers Shopkeepers (not otherwise specified) Bleaching, printing and dyeing Waiters Hospital/benevolent society Printing/lithography Bread/biscuit/cake making Milk and dairy Wigmakers/hairdressers Chocolate makers Seamstresses Photographers Greengrocers

2,155 984 910 874 834 540 512 381 371 369 356 338 319 312 273 213 210 203 186 160 155 152 136 128 127 119 111 110

Of whom, married women 68

107

80 59 37 17 46

21 29 16 10 44 16 17

Source:  Census of Scotland 1911 vol. II, tables XXVII, XXVIII, XXX

large-scale employment of these women, alongside jute’s predominance of female employment, is the most striking differentiating feature of the city’s labour market. Large-scale industrial employment of women had major implications for household structure in the city. The traditional stereotype of the male breadwinner supporting a non-working wife applied to a quite small minority of Dundee households according to a major investigation of 1905.37 While the data are not based on a random sample, they are matched by the census enumerator’s books sampled by Graham Smith suggesting a third of households were headed by women.38 The 1905 report also suggests

16

Dundee and the Empire

that there were significant numbers of both dual earner (husband and wife) and multiple earner (young women) households. There is evidence that the former enabled households with low-earning men to increase their household income, whilst men with better-paid jobs were more likely to have non-working wives.39 Households of multiples of unmarried women provided some ‘economies of scale’ in household expenses, and so may have given some material reality to the characteristic Victorian and Edwardian complaints amongst the respectable classes of Dundee about the extravagant consumption habits of Dundee’s young women.40 Extravagant consumption was not the norm amongst the working class in Juteopolis. The issue of jute wages and conditions is returned to in Chapter 4, but the general material conditions are well brought out by the DSU Report, whose overall tenor is conveyed simply by the fact that it is regarded by experts in the field as a pioneer study of poverty, to be set alongside the landmark work of Booth and Rowntree in contemporary England.41 That poverty derived in large part from the pre-eminence of a low-wage industry in the city’s employment. But it also arose from rents and prices higher than elsewhere in Scotland. A Board of Trade inquiry in 1912 found that Dundee had both the highest rents and the highest retail prices of any major industrial city in Britain, with rents even higher than central London.42 III For men, employment opportunities in Dundee were far more diverse than for women. Gendered occupational segregation meant that women were effectively barred from engineering, construction, road transport, the docks, shipbuilding and the railways, the six largest manual labourer occupations for men (Table 1.5).43 In comparison with the rest of Scotland, what is most striking is the limited development of the engineering and metal trades, which dominated the rest of industrial Scotland by the Edwardian years.44 The figures given in Table 1.5 can be compared with an estimate for the 1860s of around three thousand skilled engineers in the city.45 As already noted, shipbuilding was in absolute decline by 1911, and, while other parts of engineering were growing, Dundee never made the shift from the ‘first industrial revolution’ of textiles to the second, of coal and steel and metal and engineering products. The biggest element in the local engineering sector, apart from shipbuilding, was textile machinery. The largest producer of textile machinery in the area was Low’s of Monifieth, which is not included in the Dundee census data.46 Within the city, machinery manufacturers tended to be relatively small, highly specialised companies concentrating, for example, on power looms or batching machinery.47 Compared with other parts of industrial Scotland the opportunities for well-paid employment for working-class Dundee men were undoubtedly limited. This helps to explain the high levels of male emigration from the

622

838 817 814 814 801 636

Shoemakers Dealers Carpet and rugs Flax and linen Art, music and drama Insurance workers Navy and marines Gasworks Electrical appliance makers Caretakers etc. Barmen Coal dealers School masters and  lecturers

Local government

Source:  Census of Scotland 1911 vol. II, tables XXVII, XXVIII, XXX

Docks Commercial clerks Shipbuilding Railways Grocers General labourers Students and scholars over  14 Bleaching, printing, dyeing Merchant seamen Woodworking Bread/biscuit/cake makers Printers, lithographers Merchants, agents (incl.   commercial travellers) Furniture Milk and dairy Waiters

Medical

Outdoor domestic Vehicle making

(ministers: 25 Established Church, 34 United Free, 10 Episcopalians, 18 Catholic, 36 other) 180 179 (cars 29, cycles 41) 170 (64 doctors, 64 dentists) 162 160

231 221 207 (104 stone) 191 190 190 190

Ropemakers Wigmakers/hairdressing Mining Lawyers etc. Publicans etc. Oilcake workers Tinplate and non-ferrous   metal workers Ministers of religion/   missionaries etc.

540 480 473 437 (355 in Post Office) 413 (229 policemen) 409 395 379 376 348 344 284 253 247 241 240 236 231

Hat-maker Butcher Agricultural workers National government

4,399

Engineering and machinery  making Building and construction Road transport

3,256 2,232 (1,728 vanmen) 1,982 1,709 1,424 1,119 1,039 975 860

Numbers

Occupation

Numbers

Occupation

Numbers

Occupation

Table 1.5  Main male employments outside jute, 1911 (occupations with more than 160 workers)

18

Dundee and the Empire

area (an issue returned to in Chapter 2). It would also help to explain the high levels of military recruitment the city became famous for, even before the Great War (those who went into this occupation are excluded from the Dundee census data). There is clear exaggeration involved, but there was some truth in the claim that ‘Female labour is the best recruiting sergeant in Dundee. It prevents the employment of men in civil life. In fact half of the men who join the army are forced to enlist by the successful competition of their mothers and sisters.’48 But because of the city’s poverty and consequent poor health, the desire for a life in the army significantly outstripped the numbers allowed in. Because of the failure of large numbers of Dundee would-be recruits to meet the physical requirements of the recruiters; fifty per cent fell short in 1904.49 But we should not overstate this lack of male work opportunities. As noted above, more men than women were in employment in Juteopolis, and, while jute was relatively poorly paid for all its workers, men did dominate the better-paid jobs it offered, and were paid more than women even when they did the same job. Unemployment (including short-time) was a frequent occurrence in Dundee, though this problem was also widely prevalent in the more ‘advanced’ industrial areas in the west of Scotland, and, of course, affected women as well as men. The idea that large-scale male unemployment was endemic in Dundee seems to underlie the idea of the ‘ketttle boiler’, the working-class man without a job who stays home and looks after the children, while his wife works. While this is an enduring myth, there is no evidence the pattern was common.50 It may have gained some traction from the irregular patterns of working of the whalers, sailors and soldiers who made up a limited but not insignificant part of the local labour force.51 While undoubtedly a working-class and industrial city, Dundee did have both a substantial service sector and a middle class, albeit both were proportionately smaller than in other Scottish cities.52 Table 1.6 compares the four major Scottish cities in 1911. Dundee’s low proportion stands out, though, as in the other cities, the figure had grown over previous decades, from 11.6 per cent in 1861. Within the Dundee figure for 1911, a higher proportion of white-collar workers than the national average were in manufacturing, as entrepreneurs, managers and clerks. Though on average poorer than their counterparts in other Scottish cities, these members of the middle classes funded a perhaps surprisingly large art, music and drama sector.53 The role of art in the city, while no doubt involving only a minority of the population, provides some counterweight to the notion that Dundee was completely characterised by industrial grind and poverty.54 This middle-class population also supported philanthropic and benevolent activities on a substantial scale; a study published in 1907 found thirty-two ‘charitable and benevolent institutions’ ranging from the Royal Infirmary, the Home for the Reformation of Females to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.55 Of course, it is wrong to suppose



The Rise of Juteopolis

19

Table 1.6  Proportions in middle-class occupations in Scotland in 1911 City

Percentage

Aberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Scotland

30.4 17.8 37.0 27.6 25.1

Source:  Morgan and Trainor, ‘Dominant classes’, p. 106

philanthropy is a purely bourgeois virtue, but most of Dundee’s working class was too poor (in money and time) to devote as much as the middle classes to charitable activity, and received little encouragement to do so. The one exception was the Royal Infirmary, ‘the only one of the town’s charities to enjoy a relatively high and sustained level of working-class support’.56 Walsh emphasises the close connection between charity and business patronage, which reduced the role of women, given their virtual exclusion from business.57 On the other hand, given this exclusion, and the barriers to any paid employment, charitable work did provide an outlet for some women’s energies (and often, also, religious commitment) and their role seems to have increased around the turn of the century. The DSU is a very good example, with its 1905 investigation largely organised by two women, Mary Walker and Mona Wilson, and the house-to-house visiting done by ‘Miss L. Johnston and Miss N. Andrews’.58 A direct product of Juteopolis were the ‘jute barons’, the capitalists who owned and controlled the industry. All of the jute companies were family firms, and this remained de facto the case even when the biggest became public companies around the turn of the century. These men derived considerable wealth from the industry, with those who presided over the hectic expansion of mid-century leaving fortunes which ranged from over £200,000 by Joseph Grimond to £1.2 million by David Baxter of Baxter Brothers.59 A later generation accumulated at least comparable wealth; John Caird gave away over £100,000, mainly to Dundee for medical facilities, but including at least £10,000 to combat Joseph Chamberlain’s protectionist campaign.60 These ‘barons’ both owned and controlled the industry; most of them were involved in the day to day running of the companies, rather than leaving this to professional managers. By 1870 many of the early owners were moving out of the city, but generally to surrounding areas, so they could continue to travel regularly to their works.61 Some of the ‘barons’ lived in jute ‘palaces’ beyond the pre-1914 city boundaries, especially in Broughty Ferry, though McKean and Whatley suggest this was a misnomer: ‘palaces were little more than inflated suburban houses’.62

20

Dundee and the Empire

In the introductory film at Dundee’s excellent jute museum, the Verdant Works, it is suggested that before the First World War Dundee was ‘like a third world city’ in its gap between rich and poor. If this is meant to suggest a city without a middle class, this is mistaken. But there is no doubt that industrial grind and poverty were the most striking characteristics of the Victorian and Edwardian city for most of its population. When Jesus visited Juteopolis soon after the publication of the DSU Report in 1905 he laid out the dimensions of the iniquities he found in the city, addressing these questions to the Town Clerk: Is it true that about six thousand married women are employed in your jute mills and factories alone, that the woman with child is compelled by poverty to work, and by this means frequently to kill offspring and shorten her own life?   . . . Is it true that you compel little children to attend school when they are partly blind, partly deaf, wholly underfed, unwashed, verminous, and totally unable either in mind or body to learn lessons?   . . . Is it true that about half your population are living more than two persons to a room; that half the number of your families are living in houses of two rooms, and a fifth of them in houses of one room?   . . . Is it the case that none of these houses have baths; and that hundreds of them are destitute of the smallest approach to sanitary convenience?63

To all these questions the Clerk had to answer in the affirmative, as the questions were based on evidence from the DSU Report. The alleged association of married women’s employment in jute with high infant mortality was found not only in the DSU Report but in a number of other accounts of the city.64 But while it is true that Dundee’s infant mortality rate was the highest in industrial Scotland in the early twentieth century, the relationship between women’s employment and child health was by no means straightforward. Lennox, while happy to denounce the prevalence of women’s work in Dundee, nevertheless argued that ‘Nor can the fact of married women working in mills be adduced as evidence of the deleterious antenatal effects of that occupation on their offspring until it is statistically shown that these children suffer more than others from developmental diseases’. He went on to argue that the poor housing conditions and poor diet were the likely major causes of the high mortality rates.65 Smith’s arguments support this view, as he notes that, while aggregate overcrowding was higher in Glasgow (and infant mortality lower), overcrowded households in Dundee were characterised by especially large numbers of infants.66 The second iniquity that Jesus identified in the quotation above was the treatment of children. Alongside the role of women, the jute workforce was striking for the continuing role of children; children had been vital to the industrial revolution in Britain, but by the beginning of the twentieth century their role was generally much reduced.67 At the time of the 1901 census 17.7 per cent of boys aged between ten and fourteen, and 16.4 per cent of girls,

The Rise of Juteopolis



21

in Dundee were occupied.68 This pattern was associated with the granting of exemption certificates from school attendance by the School Board, and in 1904 over 1,600 such certificates were issued in Dundee. These certificates were issued without requiring any level of educational attainment. Over half of these exemptions were for half-time, so children spent either alternate days at work and school, or half-days in each. Children completely exempted were usually obliged to attend evening schools for four evenings a week from 7.15 to 9.15pm.69 In 1891 the jute employers before the Royal Commission on Labour had defended the employment of children as a benefit to the incomes of the poorest families, and stressed that ‘the half-time work is very light’.70 This latter assertion may be doubted, but there is no doubt that for many families the earnings of children were crucial in trying to escape some of the worst aspects of poverty.71 Finally, on housing, the DSU was again reinforcing a long-standing recognition of how the mushroom growth of the city’s population in the middle decades of the century had not been anything like matched by the expansion of accommodation. As in most of urban Scotland, tenements were the main type of working-class housing in the city. These were concentrated close to the mills and factories in the city centre, and, by the simple measure of percentage of population living more than two persons to one room, Dundee exceeded all other Scottish cities, with 49.2 per cent in that overcrowded situation at the time of the DSU inquiry.72 Overcrowding could be seen as the obvious correlate of high rents, but may also have been caused by the long leases on housing in Scotland (making tenants careful of committing themselves long-term in an insecure economic environment), and, possibly, a Scottish culture which gave a lower priority to housing space than in England.73 IV The DSU Report cemented Dundee’s reputation as a city of low wages, poverty, and overcrowded housing and high mortality. The Report eschewed the advocacy of remedies for these problems. But it had a clear narrative about their cause: Economic conditions beyond the control of employers have settled that labour in jute mills and factories must be cheap labour. The jute brought from India to be spun and woven in India has to compete in the world’s markets with the product of the native labour of Calcutta. The unequal fight has gone on for the past thirty years or more, with the advantage always in favour of Calcutta . . . It is true that efficient labour and cheap labour are not interchangeable terms, but it is an open question whether in the ordinary processes of jute manufacture the white workers have any special advantage in brain or skill in a contest with the Indian workers. If

22

Dundee and the Empire they have not, they must, in time, yield place to the cheaper workers, unless a way is found to develop aptitudes in the white workers for more specialised forms of production. The problem is a difficult and anxious one.74

The remainder of this book is devoted to those difficulties and anxieties, and how Dundonians sought to come to terms with them.

Chapter 2 Juteopolis and Imperial Globalisation

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the first great wave of economic globalisation of the modern era, with Britain at its core. Through enormously rapid growth of international trade, capital flows and migration, the world became economically interdependent to an unprecedented extent.1 This wave coincided, of course, with the rising tide of European imperialism in the last decades of the century, and so this growth of economic interdependence was intertwined with changing relations of imperial power. We can therefore usefully describe this period up until the First World War as one of ‘imperial globalisation’, a term which emphasises the interconnectedness of these two processes, and obliges us to analyse how the connections operated. This chapter outlines these two aspects of global developments, and then situates Dundee as an important case study of how globalisation and empire impacted upon industrial Britain. I Economic historians have emphasised the combined effects of falling transport costs and reductions in trade barriers in generating an upsurge in trade volumes in the nineteenth century.2 These processes have been most intensively studied for trade across the North Atlantic, where the expansion of the grain traded from North America into European markets epitomised much of what was happening. The rapid spread of European settlement, displacing indigenous land use with extensive cultivation of marketed farm crops, coupled with railway and steamship development, led to a huge fall in the price of food grains in Europe, with volumes also being driven up by fast-growing urban populations as Europe industrialised.3 But while the North Atlantic was at the centre of this process, similar forces were at work in many other parts of the globe. Cheap freight changed the economics of trade in a whole series of bulky commodities, raw materials and manufactured goods as well as foodstuffs. A striking summary measure of this process is the fall in the gap in the price of raw jute between Calcutta and London, which went from 35 per cent in 1873 to 4 per cent by 1913, as shipping rates tumbled; transport costs now made little difference to the price of the material, wherever it was sold.4 The expansion of trade in the North Atlantic was closely associated with

24

Dundee and the Empire

two other key features of contemporary globalisation, the multiplication of international capital flows and migration. By any historical benchmark the scale of British capital exports in the sixty or so years before the First World War is extraordinary, with around a third of all British investment going overseas. This scale of accumulation meant that by 1913 around a third of all British-owned assets were overseas, and that total was equivalent to about twice that year’s GDP.5 The biggest capital movements from Britain, and Europe as a whole, were to the ‘areas of recent settlement’: in other words, the white empire plus the United States. Between 1865 and 1914 funds from 59 per cent of new issues went to these areas, with 23 per cent going to the tropics and 12 per cent to Europe. Within these totals, the USA was the single largest destination, with around twenty per cent, with Canada and Newfoundland each taking around ten per cent.6 The flows of British migrants followed a broadly similar geographical pattern to overseas investment, with the most important destination being the USA. Substantial numbers flowed to Canada, and to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.7 Beyond Britain’s formal empire, trade and capital flows, if more limited migratory movements, also embraced the ‘informal empire’ in countries like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.8 The overlap between rapid globalisation and imperialism in this period was partial. The focus on the ‘expansion of Europe’ as the key dynamic brings out the primarily economic forces at work in spreading Europeans and European capital into areas where their combination could in turn feed the appetites of industrialising and urbanising Europe for food and raw materials. Of course, the ‘opening up’ of these areas had relied on a preceding and massive exercise of imperial military power to massacre, displace or suppress the existing inhabitants. But once that genocidal process had occurred, the patterns of economic activity which developed in these areas largely reflected market forces at work, rather than the direct exercise of imperial might.9 Conversely, areas which were very much the object of late nineteenth-century imperial power struggles, most obviously in Africa, provided relatively little impetus to economic globalisation, though capital flowed into mines and plantations.10 If the core dynamic of globalisation in these years was this ‘expansion of Europe’, it drew in many other parts of the globe. Partly this was because trade became increasingly multilateral, with complex patterns of commercial relationships generating large import and export surpluses between individual countries and regions. Most important was the European import surplus with the USA, reflecting above all the scale of food imports, offset by European trade surpluses with Asian countries, which in turn had trade surpluses with the USA.11 In addition, while the migration of Europeans to the ‘new world’ dominates our understanding of this period, it also saw major movements of Asians from their home countries to British colonies in the Caribbean,



Juteopolis and Imperial Globalisation

25

South East Asia, South Africa and the Pacific. These movements were the direct consequence of imperial power ‘opening up’ new areas of economic activity and creating demand for migratory labour.12 II Within this fast-expanding multilateral trading system, India became a linchpin in the run-up to the First World War. For the whole period from the Napoleonic to the Second World War, India was Britain’s largest market for its single most important export, cotton piece goods. Cotton manufactures made up the greater part of the 14 per cent of all British exports that went to India by 1913.13 India’s imports of these goods provided Britain with an export surplus, while India in turn had an export surplus with the USA and with continental Europe; this pattern of payments settlement was crucial to sustaining trade growth in this period, and placed India at the heart of the international economic system. From an economic globalisation perspective Indian trade was crucial: ‘The key to Britain’s whole payments system lay in India, financing as she did more that two-fifths of Britain’s total deficits’.14 Between 1870 and 1914 Indian exports grew in value nearly five times, with the principal elements being jute, raw cotton, indigo and tea, mainly for European markets, with rice and opium, mainly for Asian markets.15 The biggest export to the USA was jute. India, it should be noted, was also a significant participant in the boom in the world wheat trade in the years leading up to the First World War, exporting over 33 million tons, about onesixth of total production; in 1904, 1911 and 1912 India was Britain’s largest source of imported wheat. However, overall Britain took a declining share of Indian exports, down to under a quarter by 1913.16 This trade expansion was greatly facilitated by the fall in freight rates already noted, with especial benefits coming from the impact on such costs from the opening of the Suez Canal in the 1870s. Another hugely important infrastructural change was the telegraph, which had a major impact on the ease of international trade by immensely speeding up the international transmission of information. Two telegraph lines linked India to Britain in the 1860s, and by 1900 there were three, with the fastest transmission of messages taking seventy-four minutes.17 On the eve of the Great War India played the role of a major global supplier of raw materials and foodstuffs. On the other side of the accounts, its imports were dominated by manufactures, a pattern that emphasises the classic international division of labour that European imperialism had first created and then entrenched.18 India under British rule ran an export surplus on its commodity trade, which gave it the revenues to pay in sterling for the British army and civil service that sustained the Raj. These ‘Home Charges’ were an object of bitter criticism by contemporary Indian nationalists, and can rightly be seen as part of the imperial tribute.19 This tribute can be seen as a nice case of how empire

26

Dundee and the Empire

and globalisation were interwoven, with the flows, which clearly would not have existed without the empire, helping Britain’s balance of payments, and so sustaining its role as the world’s biggest importer, a key element in the process of contemporary globalisation. Relative to the overall totals, India was not a major recipient of either capital or migrants from Britain, with around 8 per cent of new overseas investment going to British India and Ceylon between 1865 and 1914.20 Capital did flow in, for example into railway building, especially in the period after the first war of independence of 1857, after which rule by the East India Company was displaced by direct rule. Aided by government guarantees, in the decade after 1858 the main Indian lines were constructed.21 But British ownership and control of Indian economic activity mainly rested financially on the mobilisation of money from British residents in India, rather than from the ‘home country’. Before the First War there was very little in the way of direct investment by British companies in India, in the way in which modern multinational corporations invested in overseas ‘branch plants’ in the later twentieth century.22 This kind of investment became of any significance in India only in the interwar period.23 Before 1914, as with British overseas investment in general, more came in the form of portfolio investment, where British residents bought Indian financial assets. But in the Indian case there were also many financial flows which do not fit a simple direct-versus-portfolio investment dichotomy, especially those organised via managing agencies, which dominated many of India’s industrial sectors and ‘advanced’ agricultural activity like tea plantations. These agencies were especially prevalent in jute, and are returned to in the next section. Most European migrants, like most European capital, flowed to the ‘areas of recent settlement’ not Asia or Africa. India attracted a relatively large European population to service the empire and to play a role in some Indian industries, but their numbers were tiny relative to the indigenous population, and most of them were not permanent migrants; most aimed to, and most managed to, return home after their period ‘in the East’. In Belich’s evocative terms, they were ‘sojourners rather than settlers’.24 Unlike the flows to ‘areas of recent settlement’, most civilians going to India came from the better-off sections of British society. In 1913/14 65 per cent of the Indian budget went on the army and civil administration, creating a ‘large vested interest of the educated upper middle class’.25 There were opportunities for skilled manual and junior white-collar workers in some occupations, but the aggregate numbers were trivial compared with the movement to the white Dominions and the USA. III Juteopolis was at the centre of this process of imperial globalisation. The enormous expansion in demand for its main products, jute bags and sacking,



Juteopolis and Imperial Globalisation

27

directly reflected the expansion of global trade in bulky commodities which was at the heart of that process. American and Canadian grain, Argentinian meat, Australian and New Zealand wool were the products whose economical movement relied on the availability of cheap bags and sacks. At the end of the nineteenth century about 75 per cent of Dundee’s jute manufactures were exported, the biggest market being the USA. The importance of the American market for Dundee is brought out by the existence in Dundee of an (honorary) US consul, who by the 1880s was producing an annual report on Dundee/US trade.26 In 1895 the US ambassador addressed the Dundee Chamber of Commerce, and noted that more than half by volume of Dundee’s jute and linen exports went to the USA, and nearly two-thirds by value. In responding, Dalgleish, a director of Baxters (a major jute and lined company), and the Chair of the Chamber, stressed how the USA was ‘far and away our most important and valued customer’.27 This dependence helps to explain why Dundee’s jute employers were so sensitive to Calcutta’s entry into American markets. Thus, for example, the rather panicky tone of an article in the DYB for 1892, speaking of ‘the whole of the Western USA demand being supplied from Calcutta’, along with growing incursions into markets in the eastern USA.28 A detailed snapshot of Dundee’s exports to the USA for 1900 shows, unsurprisingly, the dominance of ‘burlaps’ (the American name for coarse canvas made of jute), followed by linens and paddings, bags and bagging. The only substantial exports not associated with ‘Juteopolis’ were ‘wool and hair’, and whisky. Imports from North America, in contrast, were very limited. Dundee was not a major grain port, though 59,000 quarters were recorded as entering the port in 1879. The other significant food import across the North Atlantic was Canadian cattle, with 11,837 cows coming from Montreal in 1891.29 Dundee’s imports were, of course, dominated by raw jute, which (from the 1870s) almost all came directly into the city’s port, with a small proportion coming through London, while by contrast a high Table 2.1  Export destination of Dundee jute goods, 1900 Destination

Volume (millions of yards of piece goods)

USA Argentina Canada Australasia Brazil Germany Holland Other countries All countries

86.4 31.1 13.5 9.1 1.3 0.6 0.4 31.3 173.9

Source:  Dundee Year Book 1900, p. 200

28

Dundee and the Empire

proportion of exported manufactured goods were commonly moved by rail or coastal shipping to west coast ports such as Glasgow and Liverpool. The result was that the port was very much dominated by incoming traffic, a pattern made viable by departing empty ships commonly going to Tyneside to pick up coal for transport to coaling stations along the Suez canal.30 Juteopolis contributed on a large scale to the British outflows of capital and migrants, mainly to ‘areas of recent settlement’. Scotland as a whole was a major source of emigration in this period, with gross population lost to the country amounting to over half of the natural population increase over the years 1861 to 1939. This outward movement was dominated by men, of whom roughly twice as many emigrated compared with the number of women.31 Dundee lost a significant proportion of its natural population increase in every decade after 1881, the peak disparity being in the intercensal decade 1901 to 1911, when the natural increase amounted to 8.8 per cent, but the actual increase only 1.3 per cent.32 Devine’s question as to why a rapidly industrialising, and by world standards rich, country like Scotland should be such a large source of mass emigration does not appear so hard to answer for the men of Dundee.33 The relative absence of well-paid manual jobs for men, in such sectors as metals and engineering, encouraged male migration from the city and its region, leading, as noted in Chapter 1, to a female predominance in the city’s population.34 Like most Scots, indeed most European emigrants, these departing Dundonians overwhelmingly went to the ‘areas of recent settlement’, especially North America.35 They were nearly all working-class, and some of them were to play an important role in mobilising working-class movements across the globe.36 Very few emigrants went to India, though temporary movement there was common for soldiers, and for those with jute connections. Scottish, and especially Dundonian, expatriates played a very large role in the Calcutta jute industry.37 The ownership and directorial aspect of this role is discussed below, but it was underpinned by a substantial movement of European personnel who acted as overseers, mechanics and white-collar staff in the Calcutta jute mills. These expatriates are an important feature of Juteopolis. While their numbers peaked before 1914, they retained a role in the management of (Indian-owned) jute mills even after Indian independence in 1947. The possibility of such relatively well-paid activity for aspirational Dundonians is an important aspect of the city’s experience of empire. The jute-wallah (mill manager) and his wife would certainly enjoy a luxurious lifestyle.38 But that of the assistant manager would also be much superior to that enjoyed in Scotland. An article of 1894 described the latter as living rentfree in a company house, and having a bearer to attend personal needs. The salaries started at around £20 per month, with annual rises and bonuses, at a time when an overseer in a Dundee mill would earn around thirty shillings per week. But prices were much lower than in Dundee, so that only about thirty-five shillings per month would need to be spent on food: the author’s



Juteopolis and Imperial Globalisation

29

suggestion that ‘in Dundee at the present moment there would be ten good applicants for any vacant Calcutta billet’ seems plausible.39 The reverse flow, of Indians coming to train in jute techniques in Dundee, does not seem to have occurred before the Great War. The first south Asian name recorded in the registry of the Dundee Technical College was in 1923/4.40 This reflects how difficult it was for Indians to break into the technical and managerial layers in the Scottish-run jute industry. The only non-manual jobs normally open to Indians in the mills were as clerks, plus a considerable number of clerical jobs in the managing agencies. In his comparative labour history of the Dundee and Calcutta jute industries, Tony Cox has argued that this Dundonian managerial and supervisory strata created an ‘imperial nexus’ which brought ‘paternal despotism’ from the mills and factories of Dundee to those of Calcutta: ‘Similar methods of labour control were perpetuated and reinforced in both centres through the agency of these men who often, following success in Calcutta, returned to finish their working lives within the “home” jute industry’.41 However, while it is certainly true that management in both countries was despotic compared with the systems deemed normal in twentieth-century industry, it is not clear that in other regards they had much in common. While a ‘Dundee School’ of despotic managers might have emerged on Tayside in the conditions of the 1830s and 1840s, these managerial practices were much modified by the late nineteenth century.42 This helps to explain why, once established, Calcutta mills increasingly relied on internal promotion or recruitment from other local mills for their managers; they had been schooled in a more despotic environment than existed in Dundee. So it is not evident that the full range of management practices of Juteopolis was transferred to Calcutta. The proportion of supervisory and managerial staff to the total workforce was much higher in Calcutta than Dundee.43 The role of the sirdar, or foreman, in the Calcutta industry had no real parallel in Dundee.44 There was considerable use of both new and second-hand British-made jute machinery in Calcutta mills, but this machinery seems to have been deployed quite differently, with different associated labour processes.45 These processes were also shaped to some degree by Dundee’s attempts to respond to Calcutta’s competition by moving ‘up-market’ to produce different products, though the nature of jute fibre limited this room for manoeuvre.46 One indication of the difference in the way jute was produced is the nature of the working day. By the 1890s a Dundee jute mill operated from 6am to 6pm Monday to Friday, 6am to 1pm on Saturdays, but with weekly working hours restricted to sixty. In Calcutta, mills worked six shifts of twelve hours, with workers’ hours under the 1891 Factory Act fixed at seventy-two, though the number of hours actually worked was determined by all manner of local considerations (including output restrictions mandated by the IJMA) rather than legislation.47 In economic terms the differences between Dundee and Calcutta

30

Dundee and the Empire

production were stark, with both wages and labour productivity significantly higher in the former. The gap in weekly money wages was around 4:1, but the productivity difference is much harder to quantify.48 The most detailed comparative cost analysis dates from the 1940s, and implies a productivity superiority in Scotland at that time of perhaps 2:1.49 Gupta’s analysis of cotton is probably the best guide to the economic mechanisms underlying such productivity differences.50 She argues that we should see the causal link running from wages to productivity, with wages held down by the excess supply of labour in the Indian economy. (This is effectively the same as Cox’s emphasis on the role of the ‘reserve army of labour’ in reducing the bargaining power of jute workers.) In Gupta’s account, lower productivity was due not to lower effort on the part of workers but to the absence of much incentive for this labour to be used economically. This productivity difference must also tell against seeing the two jute industries’ labour processes as very much alike.51 The rise of Dundee as a source of major overseas investment is notable as part of a Scottish acceleration in that activity which is especially evident from around 1873. After that date Scotland seems increasingly to have invested disproportionately more abroad than the rest of the UK, while within Scotland Dundee seems to have played an equally disproportionate role. Using probate records Christopher Schmitz has calculated that by 1913 there were perhaps eighty thousand Scots with overseas investments, amounting to 3.4 per cent of all adults over twenty-five years of age.52 While this is clearly a very small proportion of the population, it makes clear that foreign investment had extended beyond the very rich. A turning point in the volume of such investment in the early 1870s seems broadly to fit the story of Dundee, where large-scale investment in new local jute capacity was concentrated in the 1850s and 1860s, so that by the 1870s local investors were looking for different investment options. One of the most important analysts of British imperialism, John Hobson, emphasised how far the unequal distribution of income and wealth underpinned the capital outflows of the period.53 This point resonates strongly when we look at Dundee, where accumulations of wealth amongst the owners of jute mills, but also many other better-off inhabitants of the city, allowed large-scale overseas investment to be funded. Lenman and Donaldson argue that these high levels of foreign investment were possible only because Calcutta competition did not lead to a major fall in trend profitability in the Dundee jute firms in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Precise assessment of profits is impossible because until late in the century the jute companies remained private concerns. But, they suggest, profits remained ‘remarkably healthy’. Their detailed analysis of Cox Brothers shows the nine partners’ share of gross profits varying from £9,900 to £81,600 per annum in the years 1877 to 1893, with an average of £36,000, with no clear downward trend until after the First World War.54 The other detailed figures available



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for this period also suggest ‘reasonably high profit levels’, though with major fluctuations, and losses in some years.55 As with the UK pattern, Dundee sent most of its money to North America and the Dominions in the southern hemisphere. The particular channels down which this money flowed were partly the effect of Dundee’s long-standing commercial connections with the USA, especially agricultural purchasers of jute bags. As noted above, America had long been Dundee’s biggest export market, and this had led to intensive links between Dundee firms and buyers of their products. This helps to explain the especially large investments in ranches and land mortgages.56 The establishment of a Dundee stock exchange in 1879 is evidence of the growth of number of such local investors. Most of the stocks traded on this exchange were foreign, and most of these North American, though shares in the Samnugger, Victoria and Titaghar jute mills were also dealt with there.57 Dundee jute companies remained private until the 1890s, but, even when public, their shares were little traded and do not appear on the local stock exchange.58 The most prominent domestic stocks were railway companies along with locally based investment trusts, whose business was, however, entirely overseas.59 These trusts were the most distinctive feature of the local investment business, developing rapidly from the 1870s, as a vehicle especially for the middle classes to invest predominantly in a relatively low-risk form of foreign investment, though one offering higher returns than domestic financial assets. From the 1870s these trusts expanded rapidly as channels for investment especially in the USA. The assets acquired were broad-ranging, especially in mortgages and railways. The trusts grew out of the surge of investment in mortgage companies in the USA from the 1870s, though this sector suffered major losses in the early 1880s.60 Charles Munn’s recent history of the main (still surviving) Dundee-based investment trust, the Alliance Trust, shows the links between these investment flows and pre-existing commercial links with Dundee, with a significant role played by the US consul (a Dundonian) in the early history of the Dundee trusts. His work emphasises the attractive rates of return which initially stimulated these investment flows. Mortgages, for example, were typically for two years, financed only about 35 per cent of the value of the land involved, but still yielded 10 to 12 per cent returns. Such high returns emphasise the money to be made from land appropriation on the America frontier, but this level of profits could not be sustained. Over time the interests of the Trust moved eastwards and especially into railways. They also diversified their portfolios away from the USA and Canada, to take on a ’global’ character; but not into Calcutta jute.61 The sponsorship and directing of these Trusts was drawn largely from the jute magnates.62 Detailed analysis of the shareholders in these Trusts shows that they were overwhelmingly drawn from Dundee and the nearby east

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Dundee and the Empire

coast of Scotland, and most had links with the jute industry, but many were drawn from the ranks of the middle-income groups of merchants, salesmen and engineers, rather than the owners of jute mills.63 Many of these investors were women, with Claire Swan finding that between 25 and 30 per cent of shareholders in her sample of investment trusts were women, a figure broadly in line with parallel investment levels in English quoted companies.64 While some of these women were very wealthy, such as Mary Ann Baxter of the jute and linen family, many of them were relatively small wealth-holders, dominated by spinsters who typically would have holdings around the £300 mark: a decent ‘nest-egg’ but not a fortune. By contrast, the other major category of female investors, widows, tended to have holdings more than twice as large as spinsters’.65 This analysis reinforces the picture of Juteopolis as a place where, in line with the rest of Britain, ‘globalisation’ had directly affected the lives of the population in very different ways. Alongside the numerically predominant jute workers, for a small, but not insignificant, number of ‘middling’ investors, it linked their economic fortunes to economic forces well beyond British shores. The scale and personal benefits from this foreign investment help us to understand the prevalence of occupations in Dundee designed to serve a relatively affluent local population. In Chapter 1 we noted the importance of typically middle-class cultural and philanthropic activities in the city, and these in part relied on rentier incomes rather than incomes earned in, rather sparse, middle-class occupations. These investments also financed a considerable expansion of Dundee’s suburban villa housing in the years after the turn of the century.66 Villa acquisition might also come within the means of those returning from working in a Calcutta jute mill, where, as noted, real earnings were high, and ‘a mechanic could quickly become a works manager or a clerk could become a manager’.67 The precise scale of Dundee’s overseas investments in this period is unknowable. Jackson calculated that the town, with an annual income of £1.5 million in the 1880s, had invested about £5 million in the USA by 1890.68 An estimate made just before the First World War suggested that the market value of all the Dundee-based investment trusts was around £9.5 million, though this of course is not a measure of outward capital flows, and includes the benefits of capital appreciation.69 The precise amount of money invested by Dundonians in the Calcutta jute industry is unknown, as indeed is the amount invested by Britons in total. Using the same basis of stock market valuation as applied to holdings in investment trusts, Marshall estimated the total market value of the three Dundee-financed companies, the Samnuggur, the Titaghur and the Victoria, as £1.58 million, or approximately 17 per cent of the value of shares in the trusts.70 As noted already, we know that most of the overseas investment funded from the city, as for Britain as a whole, went elsewhere. We also know that most of the money raised by British-owned jute companies in



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India was for rupee-denominated companies, and came from European residents in India, with limited shareholdings by Indians.71 Of the sixty-four jute companies in Calcutta in 1914 only nine started as sterling ventures.72 There was nothing of the kind of activity of establishing ‘branch plants’ by Dundee jute companies that we would commonly associate with multinational corporations today.73 Thus Devine’s claim that ‘Several of the big Dundee jute companies were starting to open mills in India’ is misleading.74 The extent of Juteopolis investment in its rival is not only a matter of business practice. Almost as soon as competition from India began it was alleged in Dundee that the city’s capitalists were funding Calcutta’s rise, and hence cutting the city’s, if not their own, throats. This allegation was to be repeated often over the next century, and indeed remains a feature of the ‘folk memory’ of the city. The allegation was criticised as early as 1884, when a Calcutta correspondent of the Advertiser noted the statement that ‘the mills in India are chiefly owned by Dundee capitalists’ but went on to say, ‘a statement which is absurd’. This refutation was backed up by a detailed account of the development of the Calcutta industry, which showed that most of the mills had been funded by money raised in India, with a small number based on money from Glasgow, and, at that time, only two, the Samnuggur and Titaghur, subscribed in Dundee.75 In 1912 the British Association suggested that only about one-eighth of the industry was in the hands of investors from Dundee and district.76 Why was there little direct investment by Dundee’s jute owners in Calcutta mills? First, as note above, the alternatives were very attractive: the jute business could never offer long-term reliable returns on the scale offered by investing in the US frontier or American railways. This is in part because the focus on wage differences between India and Scotland ignored the offsetting effects of higher productivity in Dundee, significantly narrowing the differences in profitability.77 Secondly, even the ‘frontier’ in the USA was a much more familiar environment for Scottish investors than ‘the East’ with the perception of its very different climate and cultures. More specifically, the Calcutta industry was seen by Dundonians as suffering from too-rapid expansion in relation to available markets. An early report on the Calcutta industry asserted that ‘Few industries have so rapidly expanded, and with such little benefit to the projectors, as the Jute mills of Bengal’. The advice that flowed from this to Dundee investors about investing in Calcutta jute was: ‘’don’t’. This negative assessment stressed the over-capacity of the industry, and the devastating effects of this on profit levels. A few years later potential Dundee investors were being told, ‘the balance sheets of the Calcutta mills, as lately published, are dismal reading, and quite as bad as, if not worse than, anything we have had in Dundee’.78 Certainly, the early decades of the industry in Calcutta were characterised by exceptional levels of instability, which gave impetus to the attempt to control output and prices by the creation of the IJMA in 1884. This had only limited, periodic,

34

Dundee and the Empire

success.79 As Dipesh Chakrabarty summarises the problem, the Calcutta mills ‘were often differently placed with regard to such variables as labour supply, loomage capacity, reserve funds, and trading orders. A trade crisis, therefore, always contained a potential, and sometimes real, threat to the “unity” of the IJMA.’80 The partners in the biggest pre-1914 jute company in Dundee, Cox Brothers, were sceptical about investing in Calcutta jute production for a variety of reasons, including worries about the climate.81 Cox’s did invest directly in India, but this was limited to a company formed in 1882 for compressing raw jute to render the bales more compact for shipment to Scotland.82 On the other hand, the company (as well as the individual owners) invested heavily in American shares directly, as well as in the First Scottish American Trust.83 As individuals the Coxes were heavily committed to investment in American railways, though probably the biggest single Dundee investor in these was another jute capitalist, J. K. Caird, who by his death had assets of over half a million pounds in the American Pullman and Pullman Palace Car Companies.84 The very limited use of Dundee money in jute manufacturing in India was compatible with a very high degree of control over the industry by Europeans: ‘the industry was initiated, managed and until the First World War entirely controlled by Europeans’.85 The key mechanism of this control was the managing agency, a very particular form of company which evolved out of merchant enterprises, and was largely confined to Asia, and was particularly associated with Scottish entrepreneurs, especially from Glasgow.86 Such agencies commonly acted as a kind of holding company, with investments in multiple sectors, but also had extensive patterns of interlocking directorships amongst the companies in which they owned equity, whilst typically not holding a majority of the shares. Chapman has summarised the essence of these agencies as ‘not agents at all, but private partnerships that contrived to control public companies by the device of using the prestige of their name and the British legal system to have permanent control written into the articles of association of various companies’.87 In India, especially in and around Calcutta, these agencies were early investors in industry, by, for example, recycling profits from tea and cotton cultivation into jute and coal companies.88 Many managing agencies had Scottish origins, but only one was Dundeebased: Thomas Duff. Duff, who had strong connections with both the jute industry in Dundee and the Glasgow mercantile community, had established the Samnuggur Mill in 1874, as a sterling company, with Dundee money and other directors from the Dundee industry. In 1883 he established his Dundee-based managing agency which eventually managed all three Dundeefinanced jute companies in Calcutta, the Victoria and the Titaghur, alongside the Samnuggur. Duff’s was unusual amongst managing agencies not only for its focus on one industry but also for its financing of its jute companies in sterling rather than rupees. The shares of the companies it ran were quoted



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on the Dundee stock exchange. Duff’s success was linked to his knowledge of both the production and commercial processes in jute, and his wide connections in Calcutta, Dundee and Glasgow. Duff’s made large commissions from its managing agency fees, but its directors were also shareholders in the jute companies it owned.89 IV From the 1880s the idea that Calcutta was a competitor of Dundee came more and more into prominence. Cox has suggested that in fact the extent of competition between jute production in Calcutta and Dundee was limited, and that the employers in Dundee exaggerated its extent, as a weapon in their collective bargaining with their workers.90 The easiest way to do this was to concentrate entirely on lower wages in Calcutta, whilst ignoring the degree of offsetting by lower productivity. Precise differences in overall costs are impossible to establish, but two widely spaced estimates give surprisingly similar estimates. Following his visit in the 1890s (discussed further in Chapter 3), Leng followed the DYB estimate noted above, suggesting a wage ratio of 1:4, counterbalanced by the fact that in Calcutta ‘one-third more hands are required’; while an estimate of 1919 also suggested a total cost difference (including raw materials) of 1:3.91 It is undoubtedly true that Dundee employers used the threat of Calcutta competition in an opportunist way. But there was competition between the two centres from as early as the 1880s, mainly in third-country markets, but including small amounts of Indian imports into Dundee. Dundee’s producers were not passive in the face of this competition, and were innovative in seeking new uses for jute, and seeking to move ‘up-market’ and away from Indian competition. But there were limits to the extent to which this strategy could succeed, given the inherent limitations of jute as a raw material. Despite heroic attempts, jute was not suitable for clothing.92 One new use for jute was as a backing for linoleum, which began to be made on a large scale in the 1870s, at Nairn’s in Kirkcaldy. This expanded to become a significant source of demand, especially in the interwar period, then expanding again after 1945.93 Dundee also faced competition from the rise of continental European producers. The rapid expansion of world trade, and the jute products that underpinned that expansion, tempted entrepreneurs in other countries into the business. The first country to establish a jute industry was France, where Dundonians played a role in establishing the industry in Dunkirk from the 1850s. By the 1880s there were industries in Belgium, Italy Austria and Russia. Production also began in the USA, in 1848, though the USA was not a significant competitor in world markets.94 The most formidable competitor was Germany. The challenge here was of a different order from competition from India. While Calcutta had the fundamental advantage of low wages, continental producers seem to have had no competitive advantages over

36

Dundee and the Empire

Dundee. Calculations of comparative German and British labour productivity in the industry for 1906 suggest a small advantage for Dundee.95 This favourable situation is probably best explained by the external economies of scale noted in Chapter 1, with Dundee’s Marshallian ‘industrial district’, like that in the contemporary Lancashire cotton industry, enabling the British industry to keep costs down compared with other high-wage countries.96 Dundee’s problem in relation to German competition derived from tariff barriers erected against the British product, so that, as exemplified by George Baxter’s campaign in the 1908 by-election, there was a political clamour for retaliatory tariffs against Germany.97 V In 1912 the Dundee Medical Officer of Health, writing for the local proEmpire newspaper, the Courier, attempted to summarise ‘What Dundee contributes to the empire’ for the British Association’s visit to the town.98 The first contribution noted was to the armed forces, and this section took up over half of the article. The second contribution itemised was through educating emigrants: Lord Rosebery once said that Britain could do with fewer people leaving her shores. The exodus unfortunately continues, but there is some satisfaction in thinking that the admirable facilities existing in Dundee amply equip the men who leave her to court fortune in the Colonies and Dependencies.99

The third element discussed was ‘Dundee and the Indian Jute Industry’, where it is argued that ‘Calcutta is Dundee’s most formidable opponent in the jute industry, yet Dundee brains and capital have been chiefly instrumental in establishing and developing the trade on the banks of the Hooghly’.100 After praising the role of Thomas Duff as a pioneer of the Calcutta industry, the author responds to complaints ‘that the Dundee capital invested in Indian mills has the effect of diverting the industry from Dundee’ but goes on to suggest that only one-eighth of the Calcutta industry is in Dundonian ownership ‘and Dundee shareholders have benefited by comparatively good and steady dividends’.101 For all its mixture of boosterism and defensiveness, this assessment of Dundee’s role in the development of the Calcutta industry seems about right. As we have seen, the direct role of the jute owners in the rise of Calcutta’s industry was financially quite limited, though in a managerial and technical sense the mechanised Calcutta industry could be seen as an offspring of Juteopolis, though like all offspring it later followed its own path of development. But what is not made clear in this account is the peculiar role that capital flows from Dundee had in the development of contemporary imperial globalisation. While many standard accounts of foreign investment present it as a process whereby funds flow from the richer parts of the world to the poorer, in Dundee’s case profits derived largely from a low-wage industry



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flowed to a country, the USA, which was already becoming richer than Britain as a whole by the end of the nineteenth century.102 But contemporary discussion focused not on this irony but rather on the extent to which Dundee’s jute barons were undermining the city’s economy by investing in a dangerous rival. Defenders of the ‘barons’, like Templeton, were able to show that the extent of such investment was quite limited. The jute companies’ scepticism about investing directly in production in Calcutta suggests that threats to relocate to India were not very credible. One jute employer, J. H. Walker, issued such a threat in 1891 when he said that an Eight Hours Bill ‘would be the ruin of the industry in this country, and my firm would be quite prepared to go to India at once’.103 In the event, the eight-hour day did eventually come in, but the firm did not flee to India. The one clear example of a company moving employment abroad from Dundee in the nineteenth century is Keillers, the marmalade company, which moved part of its activity to Guernsey in 1857.104 The reason no such shifts took place in jute is in part for the reasons noted above that Cox Brothers put forward, about the risks of investment in such an ‘alien’ and unstable environment, and the profits to be earned from foreign investment elsewhere, especially North America. But also important was the fact that, for all the problems, posed by Calcutta competition, and periodic scare-mongering, the Dundee industry was still expanding up until the early years of the twentieth century. And while profits were not as easily made as in the heady days of the 1850s and 1860s, and there were sharp cycles in activity, with some companies forced out in the downturns, most companies continued, on trend, to be profitable

Chapter 3 The Employers’ Response

In 1919, Winston Churchill participated in a delegation on behalf of the Dundee jute industry to the Board of Trade, calling on the Board to do something about Indian competition. During the discussion he ‘emphasized the point that where competition was between peoples living under wholly different modes of life, Government would have to formulate principles of equity and economy for regulating such competition; these principles were not at present apparent to him’.1 This sense of the breadth and complexity of the problem thrown up by such competition, and the difficulties in formulating a response, provides the starting point for this chapter. As previously emphasised, Juteopolis’s connections with India were multiple and complex. But after the 1870s they were increasingly shaped by this problem of competition from Calcutta in markets for jute goods, competition which came to be seen to threaten the prosperity, and in some views the very survival, of the city’s staple industry. This chapter focuses upon the response of the jute employers, and asks: how was this Indian competition understood in Dundee, and how did these understandings help shape the employer’s responses? How effective were these responses? I Literature on the Raj has long recognised that British interactions with the sub-continent were shaped by diverse and changing ideas about the nature of Indian society.2 Such analysis has focused on trying to understand the ideas which informed the policies of the British. This has often led to a chronology which links British approaches to ruling India to underlying ideological transitions, for example the change from an eighteenth-century ‘orientalism’ to an early nineteenth-century utilitarianism, leading to a much greater willingness on the part of the British to ‘modernise’ Indian institutions.3 After the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 there was a reduced willingness to challenge Indian ‘traditions’, and this political stance was linked to analyses which often rested on highly problematic accounts of an essentialised, unchanging ‘Indianness’, linked to institutions such as castes.4 The link between the kind of imperial ‘knowledges’ that Europeans developed and the imperial power they simultaneously exercised is, of course,



The Employers’ Response

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at the core of modern understandings of orientalism, above all the work of Edward Said.5 And the great bulk of work which analyses British knowledges of India focuses in similar fashion on those closely interconnected with the governance of the Raj.6 But for Dundee’s jute employers there was no such close nexus of knowledge and power. Developing understandings of some kind about the nature of the competition they faced was a necessary condition of making a response. But the power these knowledges brought was seriously curtailed by the political weakness of the jute employers. As many of their laments were to illustrate, they saw themselves as largely excluded from the decision-making about British imperial policy in India, and there was a deal of truth in this calculation of relative impotence. Because of this gap between ‘knowledge’ and ‘power’ this chapter will combine an analysis of the understandings developed in Dundee with a ‘political economy’ assessment of the extent to which Dundee’s employers could make themselves effective in shaping events in Calcutta. II Before the First World War we can trace the Dundonian jute owners’ responses to Indian competition through three main sources. Most important for employers’ views is the Dundee Chamber of Commerce, which was dominated by jute interests, the jute manufacturers not establishing their own separate organisation until 1918. Second are the local newspapers, the Liberal Advertiser and the Unionist Courier.7 (Articles from the former were gathered together in the Dundee Year Book (DYB), published annually from 1878 to 1916.) Reflecting the city’s character as Juteopolis, both of these newspapers carried an enormous amount of material on all aspects of the jute industry, including in relation to Calcutta.8 A third source is miscellaneous material such as the very detailed and revealing public letters from India of the local Liberal MP, John Leng, who visited the sub-continent in the mid-1890s explicitly to report back on the Calcutta industry on behalf of the jute employers. There is also an important report from the two women journalists who reported on India for the readers of the Courier as part of their round-the-world trip in 1894.9 Also useful are the summaries of conditions in Dundee produced for the two visits of the British Association, which held its annual conference in Dundee in 1867 and 1912.10 Concern with Indian issues is evident in the Chamber of Commerce’s records from the 1850s, but at this time the focus was not on jute but on flax, which was being rapidly replaced as Dundee’s staple sector at this time, but continued to be a significant sector. The specific issue was the desire to press the Indian government to encourage flax growing, with the aim of reducing dependence on unreliable European supplies.11 Judging by the relevant article produced for the 1867 British Association meeting, by that

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Dundee and the Empire

date awareness of Calcutta competition in jute was growing, but the tone was complacent: There are also several large works for the production of the same class of goods in Calcutta, and these places compete with Dundee in the home markets, as well as in foreign countries. Dundee has several disadvantages to contend against when competing with these places, but she also has various compensating advantages which enable her to hold her own against all competitors, and jute fabrics can nowhere be better or cheaper made than in this town.12

This complacency was still evident in the first significant reference to jute in the Chamber’s records in 1869, when representations were made to the India Office calling for the abolition of the 7.5 per cent duty on jute goods imported into India, arguing that, though purportedly for revenue purposes, this duty acted ‘as a protection to native industry, and more so, as jute goods manufactured in India are now competing with those of this country in some of the markets of the world’.13 These agitations seem to have been successful, as the duty was quickly repealed.14 The tone of Dundee discussion in the 1870s was mixed. For example, in a Courier editorial of 5 November 1874, the late Governor of Bengal, Sir George Campbell, was cited as offering reassurance that ‘there is no rivalry between the jute factories of Dundee and Calcutta’ because the latter ‘have never attempted to manufacture the finer class of goods which are produced in Dundee’. He argued that the jute factories in India were just replacing old handloom production, and that while competition might happen in the future it was not currently occurring. However, this complacency was challenged when a wage dispute in Dundee was put in the context of Calcutta competition. The idea that Dundee’s wage earners should moderate their wage demands because of Indian competition was to become a key, recurrent link made between this competition and life in Dundee. An early example is in letters to the Courier on 31 August 1875, where links were made between the threat of Indian competition and a current wage dispute, with the jute employers saying that higher wages would ruin the industry in the face of that competition.15 This linkage is returned to in detail in Chapter 4. Another dimension to the debate was the attractiveness of the Calcutta industry to Dundee investors. In 1880 the Advertiser’s special correspondent in Bengal published a series of articles collected in book form as The Jute Mills of Bengal. The focus was on investment prospects for European investors in Indian jute. The tone of this assessment is relentlessly negative. It opens with the words ‘Few industries have so rapidly expanded, and with such little benefits to the projectors, as the Jute mills of Bengal’.16 This scepticism about the likely returns in investment in India was one common trope in the rather dismissive attitude commonly adopted in Dundee at this time to the fledgling rival. So, for example, in the general election of 1885, at a



The Employers’ Response

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candidature meeting of Mr Lacaita (Liberal) he expressed scepticism about whether Indian competition was at the root of Dundee’s problems, given that the Calcutta mills were losing money.17 But others argued that, though the Calcutta industry was indeed poorly managed, its fundamental advantages in wage costs posed enormous problems for Dundee: If factories in India were held and managed similarly to those in Dundee – say with an expert commercial manager and a mill manager working together – then the words ‘Dundee to Let’ which went the round of the papers the other day as a joke, would be no joke indeed.18

These attitudes show how Dundee’s responses to what was happening in Calcutta were a blend of cultural assumptions and economic calculations. The first of these may be partly explained by an ingrained sense of Dundee superiority, with clear racist or orientalist overtones.19 The second often emphasised the differences in wage costs as a fundamental factor (a point explored in more detail below), but was also linked to more transient issues. From the 1870s the financial uncertainties involved in foreign investment in India were greatly exacerbated by the depreciation of the silver-based rupee against gold-based currencies like sterling, a depreciation which lasted into the 1890s.20 Evidence of Dundonian concerns is shown in a Report of me eting of the Bimetallic League in Manchester addressed by Mr Walter Shepherd from Dundee. Competition from Calcutta before 1873 was insignificant: ‘a small quantity was exported, but only to supply a portion of the Australian demand’. But since the fall in the rupee’s value, the Calcutta mills had recently expanded rapidly and they were now eating into Dundee’s markets.21 Responding to this issue, the Courier noted the protection imposed by European producers, but went on to say: ‘That, perhaps, they could not help, but they could help ruinous competition arising simply from the use of a different standard of value between different parts of the same empire.’22 Here we see another example of a recurrent trope in Dundee’s response to competition from Calcutta: that competition from Europe was one thing, but competition from within the Empire was quite another, the latter something which was inherently ‘unfair’ and to many Dundonians plain wrong. The depreciation of the rupee was invoked in Dundee as yet another reason for wariness about improving the working lives of local jute workers. The Courier pointed out the competitive advantage gained by Calcutta mills by this depreciation, and went on to ask: are the men who are blindly agitating for making the expensive plant here productive for only eight hours out of the four-and-twenty, while Calcutta plant is productive for thirteen or fourteen hours, aware of the peril in which they put – not the interests of capital, which can quickly shift for itself – but the interest of all

42

Dundee and the Empire dependent for work and wages upon a trade which is met by such extraordinary and in many respects unfair competition already.23

The question of the regulation of working hours and conditions was central to the Dundee response to Indian competition. On the one hand this competition was used by employers and their allies to try and resist improvements driven by either trade union action or statutory regulation in Scotland.24 On the other hand, Dundee employers were involved in a longdrawn-out struggle over factory legislation in India.25 This nature of struggle was shaped in large part by prevalent ideas about the character of Indian competition and how Calcutta jute production fitted into Indian society. It was also shaped by the political economy of British rule in India. The first of these factors takes us directly to the problem identified by Churchill in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter. On one hand much of the pressure from Dundee (and other British employers) invoked notions of fairness of competition as between British and Indian producers (what today we would probably call a ‘level playing-field’ argument). On the other, at various points it was recognised that British Factory Acts, of which the Indian version was in many respects a copy, were designed for British conditions, conditions which might not exist in India. The incompatibilities suggested were readily rendered as a distinction between Eastern ’culture’ and Western ‘efficiency’.26 The Dundee debate about the Indian Factory Acts began in the 1870s. In 1877, following some discussion at a meeting in June, the Chamber of Commerce approached the British government about the fact that, unlike in Scotland, the Calcutta industry was wholly unregulated by such legislation. The Courier editorialised that ‘The British Government can as easily limit the factory hours at Calcutta as it can the hours of operatives at home’; but this was to prove a wholly naive view of the possibilities. On this occasion the India Office told the Chamber that legislation for India had been under consideration for some time ‘for the sake of the physical well-being of the workers in Calcutta’. In the light of this response the Chamber decided to step back as ‘any action of the Chamber was likely to be ascribed to merely interested motives’.27 It seems that prior to 1877 the Dundee Chamber had been unaware of the discussions already going on about possible legislation, and the role of Lancashire cotton manufacturers in pressing the issue.28 This sensitivity reflected in the comment cited above reflects the complex politics of Dundee’s relationship to Calcutta wages and conditions. Liberal politicians were understandably concerned that calls for intervention from Dundee were motivated not by concern for the conditions of Indian workers but by desires to limit competition. An early example of this sensitivity came in the mid-1880s, when Lacaita said that he would support the extension of Factory Acts from Britain to India only if it was clearly to the advantage of

The Employers’ Response



43

Indian workers: ‘If such a measure should clearly be to the loss and ruin of the factory-workers in India, he was sure no English, Scotch or Irish electorate would impose it upon them’.29 As we shall see, this theme was to recur when the issue sharpened in later decades. While it was Bengal’s role as a competitor with Dundee in the production of jute manufactures that became most contentious, it was also of course the sole supplier of raw jute to the Scottish industry. As raw jute comprised up to fifty per cent of the costs of the manufactured item, it is unsurprising that much of the Chamber’s time devoted to jute in all the decades from the 1870s to 1914 was taken up with issues surrounding the quality and price of this material. These issues were diverse, but one recurrent theme was a desire to find alternative sources of supply, though this never resulted in any practical outcome.30 One aspect of the raw jute issue connected to much broader matters of protectionism and empire. A recurrent theme in these discussions was the desirability or otherwise of pressing for an export tax on Bengal’s raw jute, and remitting this for exports to Britain. Responding to the increase in tariffs on jute goods imported into European countries, a proponent of such a measure argued in 1883: I think it is utterly preposterous that we should do nothing in the way of retaliation. Why should we not impose a duty on jute exported from jute to those ­counties? . . . India is a colony of Great Britain. By the present system we are just taking our own heads off. Such a proposal would, I suppose, savour of protection, but I think it is only reasonable.

The sentiments expressed in this way seem to have found a sympathetic hearing in the Chamber, but allied to the view that such proposals were likely to fail in the face of India Office commitments to free export of Indian produce.31 III There is no one moment when the issue of Indian competition came to dominate the consciousness of those in the Dundee industry. The industry was subject to sharp fluctuations in activity, and unsurprisingly it was during the downturns that questions about the future of the industry tended to come to the fore.32 In the mid-1880s a recession across British industry underpinned a revival of protectionist sentiment, and similar circumstances in Dundee occasioned a much more extensive debate about free trade. Like many industrial employers, the jute owners had traditionally been strongly Liberal, and Dundee had not elected a Conservative MP since the 1832 Reform Act. But the debates in the Chamber show growing albeit limited questioning of Liberal free trade doctrine from the 1880s. There was increasing support for ‘doing something’ about foreign competition, though precisely what was to

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be done was contentious.33 Much attention focused on responding not to Indian competition but to that from continental Europe, where jute manufacturing grew quickly behind tariff walls from the 1880s. Wide-ranging discussion of the competitive state of the industry was stimulated in the mid-1880s by a request to the Dundee Chamber from the Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade and Industry to give evidence.34 In debates about how to reply to this request, the advocacy of a duty of raw jute exports was raised, but the majority view seems to have been to oppose such a plan, as tasting of protection. Proposals for pressing for a Factory Act for India faced no such principled opposition, but there was hesitation about this issue, presumably because of worries about how Dundee’s motives would be portrayed, as noted above.35 When it came to the Memorandum presented to the Royal Commission, the jute employers put most of the emphasis on tariffs as the cause of their current problems, though also noting the adverse effects on their competitiveness of the recent British Factory Act – though this was coupled to recognition that wages in Dundee had fallen recently, and were lower than they had been since 1872. The fact of duty-free export of raw jute from India was contrasted with the tariffs imposed on manufactured goods in Europe and the USA, but no proposal to change this was made.36 By contrast, the minutes of evidence of the Commission reveal some of the ambiguities in Dundee employers’ views of the conditions of labour in Calcutta and the relevance of the Factory Acts. This passage of evidence is worth extensive quotation: (Mr Weinberg) There was something said about extending the Factory Act to India, they have a kind of Factory Act there. Sir Richard Temple went to Calcutta about three years ago and made an inquiry into the matter, and since that time children from about seven to ten years of age are examined by a doctor, and only allowed to work six hours a day. There is no registration in India to ascertain the age of children the same as we have in this country, and the consequence is that when they want to find out their age the doctor opens the mouth and looks at the teeth, as we do with a horse. They work as shifters in the mill six hours a day, for which they get from 1s 3d to 1s 9d wages per week; weavers are about half what they get in this country, and mechanics also rather less than half. That is one reason of [sic] the bad state of the Dundee trade. Before I leave that subject I may mention that the women and boys, twelve and 16 years of age, in India do not work more than nine hours a day, so that no Factory Act would give you more than that . . . so that I do not myself think that if there were a Factory act they would gain anything by that.37

As a result of the evidence given to the Royal Commission the Chamber was approached by the National Fair Trade League to see if it could come and speak in Dundee. This request occasioned a debate about free trade, but also illustrated recognition of how complex Dundee’s connections with



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its rival were. One speaker effectively tied most of the issues together in the following way: Britain and her Indian possessions supplied the Continent with the material duty free, and if any of them wanted to erect a factory they came across to this country, and their worthy friend, the President, he had no doubt, would be glad to supply them with the latest improved machinery to oppose Dundee manufacturers (laughter) as they went back to their homes and worked seventy-two hours a week against the fifty-four or fifty-six as the case might be in this country.38

Of these matters, that of working hours was least contentious. Dundee employers were simultaneously keen to resist any further restriction in Scotland, but keen to see legislation introduced in India. On the first half of this policy, they seem around this time to have found acquiescence or even support from the local unions.39 While the Chamber was moving, albeit gradually, in a protectionist direction, the City’s parliamentary representation remained firmly Liberal and free trade. On the issue of protectionism the senior local MP, John Leng, was unbending. In September 1891 he addressed the Chamber on the matter of trade policy. Reflecting contemporary Liberal anxieties about rising protectionist sentiments, he stressed that Britain did both more trade and more shipping with foreign countries than with imperial possessions. He also argued that any proposal for closer economic links with these possessions should come from the colonial side, given sensitivities in Britain on the protectionist issue.40 He was also sceptical about the importance of the depreciation of the rupee in causing Dundee jute’s problems, a stance which led to allegations of complacency from the Chamber.41 But it was the issue of the Indian Factory Acts that drew Leng most directly into the issue of how to respond to Indian competition. The first of such Acts dated from 1881, and was passed only after a drawnout debate which resulted in a very conservative piece of legislation, which only restricted the working hours of children (to nine hours per day), with a minimum age of seven.42 There was much controversy at the time about the extent to which Lancashire cotton producers were crucial to the pressure for the original Bill. Undoubtedly they were highly active on the matter, and one commentator suggested that the agitation for the Factory Act was part of a two-pronged struggle by the English cotton employers against competition from India, the other being the fight to reduce Indian duties on cotton good imports.43 The second of these struggles has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, because of what many historians have seen as the key role of arguments about free trade and protection in defining the relations between Britain and its colonies, including India.44 That attention has focused on the cotton industry, because of both the significance of cotton goods to the British economy at this time, and the crucial role of exports to India in sustaining the Lancashire industry.45 In the case of jute much less has been

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written, and this in part reflects the fact that Indian tariffs were never a major preoccupation in Dundee. There was a brief spat in the 1860s, as already noted, but the Indian market was never a major one for Dundee’s exports; its problems with Indian competition lay overwhelmingly in third-country markets. This helps to explain why so much more of Dundee’s attention was on the Factory Acts, as opposed to Lancashire, where there was this ‘twopronged’ approach. Commentators on the development of those Acts concur that Dundee’s presence was not felt either in the initial legislation of 1881 or in the debates of the following decade down to the amending Act of 1891. In the 1880s the Manchester Chamber of Commerce continued to call for the toughening of the 1881 Act, in 1888 pressing for the extension of the British Acts to India in so far as they covered women, children and young people. This did not happen, but the 1891 Act did extend the coverage of controls to women workers, raised the age at which children could be employed to nine, and introduced more stringent inspection.46 The operation of the 1891 Act was being criticised as early as 1893, and this round of controversy very much involved Dundee.47 An article in the Advertiser at the beginning of that year initiated a debate which was to draw Dundee into a sharp exchange of views with Calcutta jute interests.48 The Calcutta jute employers, through the IJMA, denounced the hypocrisy of the Dundee jute owners, stressing the poor conditions in Dundee mills.49 In the following year debate on the issue was exacerbated when the Hastings Mill in Calcutta installed electric light, which Dundee interpreted as incompatible with the restrictions on hours imposed by the 1891 Act. At a time of desires to restrict output, the IJMA was unhappy with this innovation, but united behind a robust response to Dundee’s further criticisms.50 By June of 1894 the Dundee Chamber was approaching the Chambers of Commerce of other textile centres in Lancashire and Yorkshire about making representations to the India Office, with the issue already having been raised in the Lancashire cotton towns. The Chamber argued that, in particular, the clauses on the employment of women were not being followed.51 In addition, the matter was raised in the House of Commons by Leng.52 The nature of Dundee’s complaints was well summarised by the Courier. Noting that the Dundee trade was depressed, it went on: The Indian Factory Act, the real nature of which is not thoroughly understood in this country, gives the Calcutta and Bombay mill-owners enormous advantages over Dundee and Manchester, which are the principal sufferers from Indian competition. Lads and men engaged in mills working on the shift system may be employed by day and night for six days in the week, or 144 hours a week without rest, and for 141 hours in mills using the electric or other artificial light but not working on the shift system. In mills not using artificial light, men and lads are kept at work from dawn to dusk, about fourteen hours a day, in the hottest season



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of the year. Lads and men are only protected by the Act of 1891 in so far as they are allowed one day’s rest in the seven, and in factories not working on the shift system, half an hour’s interval for the meals at noon. Against this the British fiftysix and a half hours a week appears a most liberal measure.53

Leng’s enquiries led eventually to a response from the government of India which exonerated the Hastings Mill from breaches of the Factory Act. The December debate at the Chamber in that year revealed some of the political tensions surrounding Dundee’s role in pressing for strengthening of the Indian Act. There was an attack on the perceived hypocrisy of Liberals in supporting factory legislation at home, but not in India, and an urging that Dundee electors should put pressure on their two Liberal MPs (Leng and Robertson) to take action. In response Leng sought to depoliticise the issue, and advocated allying with Lancashire to bring pressure to bear: He did not think it would be difficult to show that the factories in this country were placed at a most serious disadvantage in comparison with the factories founded in India, a part of the British dominions, by British men, and worked under British management for British interests. Why they in India should have such immense preponderating advantages over them in Dundee or their friends in Lancashire, seemed to him utterly unreasonable.54

This position put Leng in alliance with the local Liberal Unionist position.55 Other speakers insisted that any such action would be motivated entirely by philanthropic motives. The Lord Provost, after reminding his listeners that the British Factory Acts ‘were brought into operation on the grounds of humanity’, went on to say, ‘and that was one of the grounds on which they should approach the Secretary of State for India’. While recognising that ‘the Indian factory system was most injurious to industry here’, he proclaimed ‘they did not want protection’ and the grounds for action were that ‘the worker in India were [sic] fellow-citizens under the Crown’.56 Another contributor made the link between ownership of the Dundee mills and Factory Acts, arguing that unlike a situation where capital was invested in a foreign country, where the investor was reasonably subject to the laws of the country invested in, in the Calcutta case the jute mills ‘had not been established by the natives of that country, but by the people of this country – people who were amenable to the laws of the United Kingdom; and their property ultimately depended on the protection of the British force, supported by taxation in this country’.57 Readers of the Dundee newspapers were made well aware of the Calcutta response to Dundee’s agitation on the Factory Acts. The Courier of 27 March 1895 quoted The Englishman published in Calcutta, summarising the chairman of the IJMA, George Lyell’s recent comments on the idea of applying the British Factory Acts to India. Lyell said ‘conditions of labour in India, and especially on this side of India, are so wholly different from anything

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obtaining in Dundee as to make a common law, or system of work, impossible of operation in the two cities’. Lyell went on to argue that, if, under pressure from home, shorter hours were to be insisted on in India, ‘then Indian manufacturers will exact, and must exact, more labour from each individual than they have hitherto done; the result will be that pressure from home, so far from reducing Indian competition is likely to make that competition more and more effective’. He also pointed out that in Dundee some of the work such as bag sewing was done at home where Factory Acts did not apply. Four months later the Courier reported a further response by S. Clarke, secretary of the IJMA. Clarke stressed that there were more workers to every machine in Calcutta, and that under the shift system no woman worked more than ten hours, nor any child more than seven. He also argued that the shift system resulted from pressure from the workers. Clarke also charged Leng with inconsistency, suggesting that after his speech at the Dundee Chamber meeting in December 1894, where he supported calls for cuts in hours in India, he made a speech in the House of Commons a few weeks later where he blamed Dundee’s problems on depreciation of the rupee. Clarke concluded by saying that he could see no objection to night work for women in India – it allowed them to work during the cooler hours. On this basis he rejected calls for the Indian Factory Acts to be assimilated to the English (sic) with regard to working hours. If this were done: there was little doubt that the social and physical conditions of these people would deteriorate under the new system without in any way accomplishing the object – and apparently the sole object – which the members of the Dundee Chamber of Commerce appeared to have in view, viz the lessening of the competition of Indian mills, for it was clear that if the working time of existing mills was to be cut down new mills would be erected and stricter methods of work, with more attention to fixed hours, would be adopted, and these would certainly not suit the people as well as the present system.58

Further attacks on the Dundee jute owners were reported in the local press through 1895. In October an article from the Calcutta newspaper Capital was reported as suggesting that the Dundonian proponents of tougher Factory Acts for India had given up the pretence that their motives were philanthropic: ‘The motive was shown to be as pure and unsophisticated as Keiller’s marmalade’. Later the same month the Elgin Mills company in Cawnpore was reported as saying that ‘working in the leisurely manner usually followed by women and children in India, the maxima of eleven and seven hours respectively, with compulsory intervals now ruling, are in comparison with English rules, certainly not too great’. A similar theme was evident in the comments of Messrs Dyer of Simla, who argued against assimilation of Indian to British rules because ‘the native of India, they say, prefers working lazily for a rather longer number of hours, instead of more



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briskly for a shorter period, and the existing system is no doubt better suited for the Indian climate and people’. Also in similar vein, the Agra Spinning and Weaving Company claimed that its mill suffered an absenteeism rate twenty times that experienced in England.59 In the wake of this controversy, Leng visited India in 1895/6, and wrote back a series of letters published in the Advertiser.60 In these letters Leng argued that the biggest advantage of Calcutta in competition with Dundee was much lower wages (less than one-quarter of Dundee levels he suggested). But, he said, this did not translate into lower living standards for Indian workers, because of the much reduced demand for clothing in the Indian heat, low food prices (especially for the prevalent vegetarian diet) and ‘nominal’ rents. Using some illustrative family budgets, he argued that wages were such in Calcutta jute that a family of five, all working in the industry, could meet all their needs and save up to forty per cent of their income.61 Similarly, Leng argued that the shift system worked in the Calcutta mills fitted with the local norms: ‘the habits of the natives, consequent on the greater heat during nine months of the year, their weaker constitution, the distance in some cases of their dwellings, and their love of bathing led them to prefer working in what may be described as alternating shifts, so that they might work at two different parts of the day with a pretty long interval between’.62 Leng’s conclusion was that Dundee could not hope to compete in the basic products of bags and sacking, but could prosper by combining movement ‘up-market’ to more sophisticated products, and searching for new fibres with more versatile uses than jute, whose coarseness limited its possibilities, especially for clothing.63 These themes were reiterated when Leng returned to Dundee and addressed the Chamber of Commerce. He stressed the competitive advantages of Calcutta: ‘The astonishing cheapness of native labour, wages being on average less than one-fourth what they are here, and although one-third more hands are required, and the cost of European superintendence is heavy, the low wages bill on the aggregate tells immensely in favour of Indian mills’.64 Leng linked this assessment to the argument that the Factory Acts were largely irrelevant to the competition issue. He accepted that the Indian Act allowed a greater ‘elasticity of working’ than in Scotland. But, he went on, ‘I am satisfied that the Indian method of working by shifts is adapted to the climatic conditions and the habits of the people, and is not open to attack on humanitarian grounds, since the hours any of the women and children are employed not only do not exceed but are often fewer than in our own mills’. Leng linked the genesis of the Calcutta industry in Dundee to a view that ‘it would not benefit Calcutta, as the phrase is, to wipe out Dundee, from which its own vitality has been and is being largely drawn’. More practically he argued Dundee could survive by developing the finer end of the jute business, but alongside this advocated developing the use of a different raw material, rhea. But more generally he urged energy and perseverance in seeking

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out new commercial opportunities. There is no clear evidence on how this talk was received by the industry in Dundee, though one respondent noted that while Sir John spoke of energy and perseverance, ‘unfortunately, energy and perseverance alone will not suffice to do away with the stubborn facts’. Leng was undoubtedly increasingly out of step with the growing protectionist views of the Chamber. Shortly after Leng’s address the Chamber got a long-delayed response from the India Office about the Indian Factory Acts, saying that the government of India was not prepared to modify them. This, for the time being, seems to have closed the matter.65 These intensive debates of the mid-1890s, and their outcomes, allow us to assess the key issues in Dundee’s thinking about Indian competition, as well as suggesting why the current political economy of the Raj restricted the impact of Dundee’s views and actions. A useful starting point here is Metcalf’s argument that the British in the time of the Raj never had a single view of India. Rather, there existed, he contends, as the British contemplated India, an enduring tension between two ideals, one of similarity and the other of difference . . . At no time was the British vision of India ever informed by a single coherent set of ideas. To the contrary, the ideals sustaining the imperial enterprise in India were always shot through with contradiction and inconsistency.66

Metcalf is concerned with understandings that underpinned the governance of India, and he does not deal with economic issues. However, his broad framework gives us a way of thinking about the peculiarities of the Dundonian response to Calcutta. As suggested above, a key part of the rhetoric of those Dundonians who believed that the Indian Factory Acts should match those legislated in Britain was the idea of ‘equality within the Empire’. In this view Calcutta capitalists, most of whom were at this time themselves British, should work their mills under a common legal framework; as the IJMA’s Clarke had suggested, what was being suggested was an assimilation of Indian rules to those prevailing in Britain.67 The alternative view, which Leng, after some equivocation, came to, emphasised difference. In this account any such assimilation would be entirely inappropriate, because Indian society and the economic activity it supported were fundamentally distinct from society and economy in Scotland. This distinctiveness was partly a matter of climate, with significant impact on hours and intensity of work, but also ‘cultural’, relating to attitudes to work. Hence the idea that Indian workers did not conform to European norms in which there was a total separation of workplace from all other activities, and whilst at the workplace an intense focus on work was to be expected.68 Such views were not new. In 1879 Alexander Robertson had given two speeches in Dundee on ‘Our Indian Empire’, in one of which he spoke of



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India ‘as a country essentially different from our own in all that pertains to modes of life, its customs, its laws, and its religion’.69 But such notions were especially strongly believed in Dundee by many of those who were compelled to come to terms with Indian competition. For example, one of the most extensive accounts of Calcutta mills embodying a powerful sense of difference was given by the Advertiser’s correspondent in Calcutta in 1894.70 Drawing on the experience of the Hastings Mill, the correspondent argued that the Calcutta workers welcomed ‘paternal despotism’ in the factory, and that because the work patterns suited their needs they desired neither to belong to a trade union nor to see tightened legal intervention in their working lives. The possibility of shiftworking did not mean long hours for Calcutta workers: ‘no individual woman or child works more hours per week than the corresponding class of worker does at home’.71 The existing Factory Act was, it was argued, largely a dead letter. However, the correspondent went on to argue that almost all Europeans working in the mills would favour a cut in the working week because ‘They would be more efficiently supervised, they would make more money than they now do, and the mills would be kept up to the mark, and be more valuable properties at the end of the year than they can possibly be under such wear and tear as they undergo at present’.72 This same article contains a characteristically confusing picture of working conditions in Calcutta mills. On the one hand it conjures up an almost Utopian picture: ‘The shifters are as merry a set of youngsters as one could wish to see, and not a whit behind their white brethren and sisters in Dundee in the time they take to shift a frame’. This happy picture is extended to working mothers who suckle their children for two years at least, and take them to the mill with them. It is no uncommon thing in the preparing department to see a lot of youngsters lying sleeping among the jute while their mothers are attending to the breakers and finishers. When the youngsters waken up they run a get a little refreshment from the maternal breasts, and then sit together and play with some broken bobbins they had captured.73

But elsewhere a more negative picture is given, where working patterns are seen as oppressive rather than happily adapted to local conditions: ‘Many of the women are practically, if not actively, employed hanging on to the work from dawn to sundown’.74 Everyone knew that wages in Calcutta were lower than those in Dundee, though many also pointed out that the jute mills on the Hooghly paid considerably higher wages than most occupations in Bengal. These lower wages posed problems for Dundee’s understanding of India. Unsurprisingly, employers in Scotland were generally no more likely to regard Calcutta’s wage levels as exploitative than did Calcutta employers; on this matter capitalist solidarity seems to have generally dominated over any desire to attack

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the conduct of competitors. (The same reticence plainly did not operate with regard to working conditions – hence the issue of the Factory Acts.) On the other hand, Dundee’s employers were keen to stress that wages in Dundee would have more scope for increase in the absence of low-wage competition from India (see Chapter 4). Estimates of how much lower wages were in Calcutta were invariably accompanied by a ‘difference’ narrative, which told how Indian lifestyles meant that such low wages actually delivered a high standard of living to ‘native’ workers. Leng suggested that Calcutta wages were somewhat less than a quarter of those in Dundee, but that ‘It is most incredible of all that the wages they receive are considerably in excess of their requirements, and that they can, if they choose, and most of them do, save as much in some months work at the mill as enables them to go home and live at ease for a considerable time, until they have spent their money, and return to work for more’.75 The high standard of living on low wages was explained by Leng as a result of the climate, reducing the need for shelter, clothing and food. But beyond that, he argued, the habits of their lives are the results of centuries of experience. Their wants are few and easily supplied . . . they have never been used to working steadily eight, nine, ten hours a day, or day after day, week after week. Short spells of work and long intervals of rest are what they and their fathers before them have been familiar with. The, to them, comparatively high wages of the mills are necessary to compensate them for an unpleasant change of habits.76

This analysis, in which any objection to low-wage competition is undermined by stressing how in Indian conditions such wages brought high standards of living, is common in contemporary European representations of Calcutta. It was strikingly evident in another, distinctive, ‘report back’ to Dundee from India, that by two women journalists, Marie Imandt and Bessie Maxwell, sent on a tour round the world, by the Courier in 1894. This is distinctive in its gender dimension – not only were the journalists women but when they reported on conditions in Indian industry they put special emphasis on women workers.77 The first relevant report was from Bombay: Dundee working girls work for a few shillings a week. Rents are high and coals dear, a great deal of clothing is needed merely to keep out the cold. At prayer meetings these girls give their substance to send to India to convert the heathen. Why? These heathen, the very poorest of them, have a thousand things our starving people at home do not have.78

This tendency to assert the superiority of workers’ living conditions in India over those in Scotland was again evident in their reports from Calcutta. Marie Imandt explicitly drew this comparison from a women’s point of view, arguing that



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When I declare that women working in Calcutta for one rupee eight annas [two old pence] a week, there will not be wanting those utterances of amazement will involve visions of women starving in Dundee on eight shillings. To draw a parallel is not possible for those who have not seen the two sides of the question. It is scarcely conceivable, but true, that circumstances forge a chain mighty enough to render the woman one rupee eight anna a week, happier, more comfortable, and in some ways even the superior to the eight shilling Dundee woman.79

How did these approaches to understanding India relate to Dundee’s views on the practical response to Calcutta competition? Here there are some important ideological positions evident. Most (but not all) members of the Chamber of Commerce seem to have supported a policy of assimilation in factory legislation, emphasising arguments in the style of ‘level playing field’ within the Empire. This was at a time when the Chamber was becoming noticeably more protectionist in orientation, but protectionism was put forward primarily in the form of allowing retaliatory tariffs, and so could be reconciled with the idea that such protection would deliver ‘true free trade’ by forcing down the tariffs of protected countries. Conversely, Leng and the opponents of assimilation seem to have come to think of toughening the Indian Factory Acts as a protectionist measure, undermining the ‘natural’ advantages that India had in producing jute goods in accordance with its own societal norms. This went along with emphasising differences in cultural conditions, so that any notion of complaint about ‘unfair’ competition based on lower wages paid in Calcutta was pre-empted. In that sense Leng, though not an ally of the Chamber in what he saw as its protectionist tendencies, allied himself with the employers (in both Calcutta and Dundee) against any notion that workers in Calcutta were underpaid. His liberal internationalism did not include any notion of international workers’ solidarity in the cause of higher wages. Many factors were in play in deciding the form of India’s Factory Acts, but one element in limiting their scope and effectiveness was the ‘difference’ narrative, which undermined the drive for assimilation. The difference narrative, while not always coherent, clearly suggested that legislation akin to the British Factory Acts would be an alien imposition in a fundamentally different environment. As a result, it was argued, they would, if imposed, undermine the ‘natural’ rhythms of factory production in Calcutta, rhythms adapted to the climatic, cultural and economic norms of the sub-continent. Of course, the motives of those who put forward such arguments were undoubtedly mixed. Some, most obviously Calcutta employers, used such notions to defend the status quo, and this was very much the official view of the IJMA. However, as noted especially by the Advertiser’s correspondent in 1894, there were those who saw the imposition of such Acts as a desirable impetus to ‘modernisation’ in India; these were people who wanted to supersede India’s ‘difference’ with European modernity.80

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From a political economy perspective Dundee employers’ desire to toughen the Indian legislation was not helped by the city’s having Liberal MPs who coupled this difference narrative to a suspicion of any measure that might be deemed protectionist. Of course, Dundee’s political weight would in any event have been small, even if its spokesmen had been united. Allowing for the districts around the city with close economic connections, the largest number of MPs likely to see themselves as needing to represent jute interests would have been seven or eight – compared with fifty-eight in Lancashire in 1895.81 This disparity suggests why Dundee’s employers looked for co-operation with Lancashire on Indian matters, though as suggested above Factory Acts were more important to Dundee than to Lancashire because Lancashire had a more direct stake in keeping open the Indian market for its goods, rather than worrying about competition in third markets. But even when the two textile areas were united, they were up against a major and growing obstacle in the political economy of Britain’s rule in India. Britain never had a strategy of ‘economic development’ in India – indeed the term itself would be anachronistic if applied to the Raj. Britain did however want to encourage revenue-producing activities. Increasingly in the late nineteenth century it also wanted to conciliate Indian opinion and major interest groups, by not being seen to block employment-creating and expansionary economic activities.82 This dynamic created strong opposition in the British government in India, and at the India Office in London, to acting, or being seen to act, as a tool of British textile interests; cotton and jute were major Indian industries with huge employment effects, and very substantial economic linkages.83 These pressures were all clearly at play in the years leading up to the 1891 Act, when the Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, negotiated between his masters in London, pressure from Lancashire and domestic Indian politics, eventually leading to an Act which fell far short of assimilation.84 The arguments of the mid-1890s, detailed above, were unsuccessful in bringing about any significant change in Indian factory legislation. While some issues concerning the legislative framework rumbled on in the background, there was little appetite in government circles in London or Delhi to accede to pressures from British textile interests, not least because of the political controversy stirred by the debate over imposing import duties on cotton goods, followed by legislation which imposed excise duties on both Indian-produced and imported yarns.85 Such concessions to Lancashire reduced the likelihood of acceding to British industries’ pressures for changes in factory legislation, and the India Office gave an explicit repudiation of Dundee’s claims about the failings of the 1891 Act in 1896.86 There was no significant legislation for twenty years after 1891, though from 1905 a ‘period of investigation’ laid the basis for a new Factory Act in 1911.87

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IV The Indian Factory Acts issue never loomed so large in Dundee’s thoughts and actions after the 1890s, though the issue came back to some prominence around 1911 (see below). In the early 1900s the setting up of the Tariff Commission enabled the jute employers to rehearse their complaints about the weaknesses of the Indian Factory Acts, alongside their complaints about protectionism in American and European markets.88 But in the years after the turn of the century it was the issue of trade protection which predominated in the employers’ concerns, though Factory Acts were never wholly ignored. While protectionist sentiment was undoubtedly growing amongst the jute manufacturers from the 1880s, the Chamber of Commerce was wary of getting directly involved in the political contention over free trade. In 1902, a special meeting decided against protesting against the newly imposed registration duty on corn, which many free traders saw as the beginning of a slippery slope to protection.89 But in 1904 this reticence diminished, following Joseph Chamberlain’s initiative in re-opening the fiscal question, and setting up a Fiscal Commission. Early in that year the first protectionist motion got through the Chamber, though this reiterated support for the principle of ‘unrestricted free trade’, before going on to support ‘freedom of action in fiscal negotiations’.90 Most of the discussion at the Chamber was on continental European competition. The political impossibility of getting direct restrictions on Indian competition was clearly recognised, though the possibility of addressing that issue through factory legislation was held out by some as an alternative response. One opponent of protectionism asked whether ‘any responsible statesman prepared to propose that the Mother Country should be protected against the competition of its own great dependencies’ before going on to deplore the impact of the British Factory Acts in increasing Dundee’s costs. He also pointed out that Chamberlain had said little about Calcutta, but ‘but they might take it that he had no idea of favouring them at the expense of Calcutta’.91 In supporting the anti-protectionist minority, Leng stressed that Britain had no overall trade problems, although ‘a few particular trades were not as prosperous as they once were’. Changing patterns of production were normal: ‘one fails and another prospers. One rises and another decays.’ The problems of jute were down to local conditions, and in the case of jute the problem was clearly Calcutta: The mills on the Hooghly, several of which have been built by Dundee capital, and most of them planned, engined, spindled, and loomed by Dundee engineers, financed and directed from Panmure Street, within a few yards of this Exchange – these Dundee-owned and managed mills have been the chief invaders of Dundee

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Dundee and the Empire markets, and in a sense the most formidable dumpers of cheap jute goods in ­competition with those made in Dundee mills.

He went on to ask whether ‘any responsible statesman prepared to propose that the Mother Country should be protected against the competition of its own great dependencies?’92 Others pointed out how problematic an emphasis on colonial trade was for an industry like jute, which sent eighty per cent of its exports to markets outside the Empire. On India, the stress on the fact that India was a free trade country went along with an attack on the Indian Factory Act: ‘But India has more than Free Trade. It has a Factory Act which is an injustice to Britain, and calls for something more like an equality of conditions within the Empire, or, in other words, an approach to fair play.’ He went on to cite the long hours worked in one Calcutta mill, albeit accepting that ‘under the shift system they work fewer hours than is done here’.93 Despite the vote in favour of retaliation in 1904, the Chamber seems to have been wary of being embroiled in the political arguments about protectionism and free trade. In September 1905 it agreed to ‘sit on the fence’ on the issue in the run up to the 1906 general election.94 But strong opposition was voiced to a proposal for a raw jute export duty, combined with an excise duty on jute used in Calcutta, in order to fund civic improvements in that city. The coincidence of this proposal with the publication of the Dundee Social Union’s damning report on conditions in Dundee led to the belief that it was ‘a little strange that the citizens of Dundee, having their own burdens to bear, should be called upon to pay for the improvement of Calcutta’.95 The extent to which protectionist issues dominated the general election of 1906 and the Dundee by-election of 1908 is discussed in Chapter 5. These elections took place in very different economic circumstances, with jute booming in 1906 but slipping into recession by 1908. There was a slow recovery thereafter, but it was not until 1912 that boom conditions temporarily returned. The years immediately prior to the First World War were notable, in Dundee as in much of Britain, for a much greater degree of industrial unrest than had previously been usual. While jute was never the centre of labour discontent in the city, there were major disputes, and industrial relations issues seem to have gained much greater prominence in the concerns of the jute employers as a result. But Indian issues still stimulated debate. It had long been perceived in Dundee that co-operation and price-fixing amongst Calcutta manufacturers would reduce competitive pressure.96 But some regarded this as inhibited by activity in the raw jute market. A highly racialised account of this activity appeared in the Advertiser in 1911, in an article titled ‘Marwaris and the Jute trade’ which explicitly attacked that group. They were alleged to have been ‘gradually tightening their grip’ on the raw jute trade, and their speculative activity was said to have ‘upset all industrial calculations’. These remarks



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were made in the context of considerable instability in the Calcutta industry, including mill closures which led some to say ‘Good to Dundee may come out of the evil to Calcutta’.97 In 1911 fresh provisions were proposed for the Indian Factory Act, and a new argument about this Act was made in Dundee. This accepted that the new clauses would not have a significant impact on Calcutta’s cost advantages, but averred that the amended legislation would for the first time bring European supervisors into direct contact with mill-hands, who previously had been dealt with through the janadar.98 But the key contention came from those in Calcutta opposed to the measure once again deploying the difference argument. They suggested that the measure was aimed at protecting the interests of manufacturers in England (sic) at the expense of Indian factory owners, and that ‘the proposed legislation is unsuited to India, as it is more or less a parody of English law’.99 The proposed amendments to the Factory Act led to a suggested compromise between the Calcutta mill-owners and the government of India, in which tighter controls on adult hours would be combined with a small lessening of limits on child labour. The Advertiser opined that ‘After the undisputed revelations regarding the grave abuses of child labour in Indian made at two separate official enquiries, it is surprising that such a proposal should have been entertained at all’. The paper went on to say that ‘the fact that the Calcutta “jute interest” is largely under British control should be an additional incentive to refrain from any compromise which might afterwards seem to place its good faith under suspicion’.100 In the spring of 1911 the export tax on Calcutta jute was agreed.101 As previously noted, discussion of this tax was linked to the Dundonian advocacy of a differential export tax, favouring imperial users. A long article in the Advertiser argued that such a discriminatory tax would yield significant benefits for Dundee, whilst not harming Calcutta, because in practice the duty would be paid by the continental European purchaser. This was contrasted with what the author believed to be the serious damage that an undiscriminating new duty would do to both Calcutta and Dundee. The author invoked the events of 1865 and 1866, when, he suggested, the imposition of a similar tax had been quickly reversed by Dundee pressure: ‘Dundee was then a power in the State, and might again become so’. But in fact Dundee was unable to resist the new duty, while on the differential tax its own views were divided, with the Liberal Advertiser continuing to oppose on anti-­ protectionist grounds.102 The year 1911 saw the Durbar in Delhi, a ceremony following the Coronation in which the new King, George V, visited Delhi with full imperial splendour. This event occasioned significant reflections in Dundee on the wider issues of India and empire. These reflections tended to follow broad difference narratives, typical of contemporary British writing about India. One argued about the dangers of elementary education in India,

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in a country lacking the ‘Western climate of thought and morality’. This was linked to a classic statement of the post-Mutiny consensus on how to approach India: It would be a mistake to attempt – and it could only be an attempt – to occidentialise India in the manner contemplated by Macaulay and the administrators of his day. India possesses a many stratated civilization of her own, and the path of wisdom lies in developing, not crushing it – developing its best features, which is to say, developing those traits which link it to the civilization of Europe.103

One trait which, happily for the British, India did not possess was apparently the idea of a nation. In an article significantly titled ‘A People of Caste and No Nationality’, the standard British view that caste was the bedrock of Indian society, and wholly differentiated it from Europe, was strongly reasserted.104 In 1912 the British Association held its annual meeting in Dundee, and, as on the previous occasion in 1867, to mark the occasion a booklet was prepared telling the delegates about Dundee. The local Medical Officer of Health contributed a piece called ‘What Dundee contributes to the Empire’. He argued that ‘Calcutta is Dundee’s most formidable opponent in the jute industry, yet Dundee brains and capital have been chiefly instrumental in establishing and developing the trade on the banks of the Hooghly. The overseers, managers, and mechanics in the Indian jute mills are almost wholly recruited from Dundee.’ But to deflect possible blame laid at the employers’ door for Dundee’s plight, the author continued: Complaints have been made that the Dundee capital invested in Indian mills has the effect of diverting the industry from Dundee, but out of a total capital of £10m sunk in jute mills in India only about one-eighth is from Dundee and District, and Dundee shareholders have benefited by comparatively good and steady dividends.105

Another chapter in this booklet suggested the ‘unwisdom of the indiscriminate extension’ of Calcutta production in recent years evident in most of them working on short-time. It notes that the restrictions imposed by the 1912 Indian Factory Act takes the place of this short-time working ‘but there seems to be in this prolonged depression experienced by the Indian mills a compensatory nemesis rebuking an author who published in 1909 a booklet, wherein with “Maharajic” scorn, reference is made to “harmless wails of their competitor on the Tay”’.106 These wails had indeed been largely ‘harmless’. Dundee’s pressures were largely ineffectual in shaping the rapid development of the Calcutta industry, which by the First World War had grown to three times that in Dundee. While that development had been far from smooth, and accompanied by major instability, it had in particular been little affected by the Factory Acts.



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The political weight of Dundee in the imperial scheme of things was much too small for its views to have much impact. But, in addition, Dundee employers’ response to Calcutta’s competitive pressure was weakened by their lack of agreement about the nature of the competition they faced, and how far Indian conditions justified treating this imperial possession on a par with the home country. As noted above, many adhered to a difference narrative which was in tension with a view that both countries should be subject to a uniform legal framework as befitted components of an empire. Liberals like Leng saw that this narrative could be used to undermine what he saw as the protectionist intent of this assimilation strategy; the evidence suggests a significant minority of Dundee’s jute employers shared his views. Dundee’s employers were not alone in adhering to this difference narrative. When a sophisticated social commentator like Beatrice Webb assessed the economic effects of such difference she wrote of the worker in the cotton mills of Agra: He does not care enough for his earnings. He prefers to work away in semi-­ starvation rather than overwork himself. However low his standard of life his standard of work is lower – at any rate when he is working for an employer he does not like. And his irregularities are baffling.107

‘Baffling irregularities’ might well sum up the Dundonian view of much of what was happening in Calcutta. And, as Churchill was to suggest, such bafflement made the emergence of any simple idea of how to respond to such competition very difficult to achieve. Dundee’s jute employers found no easy way before 1914.

Chapter 4 The Workers’ Response

Nineteenth-century Dundee’s population was overwhelmingly dominated by the industrial working class.1 Across Britain in the late nineteenth century working-class life was subject to profound insecurities, given the very limited access to resources beyond the daily or weekly wage for the vast bulk of workers, a wage which for many was subject to frequent fluctuation and interruption.2 But in Dundee this normal, ‘structural’ uncertainty was exacerbated by two factors. First, money wages were lower on average than in most other parts of industrial Britain (above all because of the predominance of employment in jute), and this money wage bought less than in many places because of high rents and food prices.3 Secondly, while much of Britain’s industrial economy was highly globalised at this time, Dundee was exceptional in its degree of exposure to international forces, largely because of its extraordinary degree of reliance on jute. The international forces impinging on Dundee were in part the same as in the rest of Britain. There was a trade cycle which brought sharp fluctuations in activity, especially to the more export-oriented parts of the economy. The precise cause of this regular pattern is much debated, but it was accompanied by a variety of specific incidents, such as bank failures or stock market crashes, which prevented any likelihood of ‘smooth’, even cycles. In addition, though to greatly varying degrees, industrial Britain was subject to growing competition in many product lines, as its near monopoly in many industries at mid-century was increasingly challenged in the decades before 1914.4 However, in both aspects Dundee’s exposure to external forces was extreme. First, while the trade cycle was very directly transmitted to Dundee via fluctuating demand for jute goods used predominantly to package many of the major staples of international trade, the industry also had to contend with the impact of sharply fluctuating raw jute prices (for example, because of varying monsoon conditions). Raw material prices were especially important in jute because its cost typically made up around half of the total production costs of the finished goods, so these prices were usually the key factor in determining whether production would expand or contract, yield profits or losses. Dundee was also exceptionally exposed to competition. Few, if any,



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British industries faced such intense pressure in their product markets. Arguably, also, few industries had such limited scope for escaping some of that competition by changing the product mix – jute’s physical characteristics as a textile severely limited the range of products it could be used to manufacture. Finally, by far the most important competition to Dundee jute came from a country with much lower wages, in a sector where wage costs were a large part of total costs, which simultaneously made the competition much harder to counter, and led to wage levels being an especially sensitive element in debates about competitiveness. Such intense low-wage competition from an Empire country in a global market for such a constrained product range is unique to Dundee, though Lancashire cotton came closest, sharing some of these characteristics.5 I This chapter focuses on Dundee workers’ responses to this highly unstable environment. It uses Savage’s threefold division of responses to insecurity as a framing device. He divides these responses into: ‘mutualist’, which seek to reduce the degree of reliance on wage labour; ‘economistic’, which seek to ensure job security; and ‘statist’, which seek to get the state to ensure measures of security.6 This framework offers a useful way in to the issues, as it allows the ‘choice’ between these three responses to be in part the result of (local and national) social conditions and political argument, while not detaching these from compelling economic forces. In analysing Dundee workers’ responses in this period a key issue is the impact of gender. The jute industry was exceptional in its level of employment of women, including married women, and from this grew notions of Dundee as a distinctively ‘women’s town’.7 Therefore, asking how far gender shaped the world of Victorian and Edwardian working-class Dundee, including its implications, if any, for how empire was responded to, is important to the task here. The gendered nature of work in Dundee in this period has attracted considerable academic attention, and indeed women’s work in the jute industry in these years is the single most explored issue in the historiography of Juteopolis.8 This work provides much of value, but the questions it poses are not those of central concern here. Walker provides an immensely detailed institutional labour history which juxtaposes the conditions of working-class life in Dundee with a questioning of how far common narratives of ‘the rise of labour’ apply in the city. He emphasises the distinction between the respectable weavers and the ‘mill-girl’ in spinning, the latter seen as an unrespectable figure who constantly disappointed male trade unionists with her ‘undisciplined’ behaviour. These women were, he claims, ‘instinctively committed to a rigorous hedonism’, which might draw them into anti-boss attitudes but provided a weak foundation for sustained workplace organisation.9 Walker

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is careful not to collapse the slow development of trade unionism amongst jute workers into a story of women’s inherent resistance to unionism. While he emphasises that trade unionism did not become strongly entrenched amongst these women until after the Great War, he notes that it was, if anything, even slower to grow amongst male jute workers. Indeed, he argues, ‘the reversal of male and female economic roles was complete enough to promote a mode of masculinity among females which, when appropriate conditions appeared, encouraged a propensity to organize’.10 Gordon’s work is exclusively focused on gender issues, especially women’s relationship to formal, male patterns of industrial relations. She uses a Marxist-feminist approach, based on seeing ‘sexual division of labour as central object of study and tool of analysis’. She is sceptical about the hold of Victorian domestic ideals amongst the Dundee working class, so a key aim is the ‘rediscovery of women in the world of work and making visible the forms of their workplace resistance’.11 She also emphasises the key role of domestic relations in shaping women’s waged work: most obviously, she claims, women’s low wages reflected notions of their dependence on male workers. While agreeing with Walker that women were not docile in the face of their poor conditions, Gordon sees the key division in the jute workforce not as the ‘respectable’ versus ‘unrespectable’. Rather, she argues that ‘pivotal distinctions of earnings and authority clove the jute workforce into a small group of relatively well-paid men and the mass of mainly female workers’.12 However, while she believes this gendered distinction was the ‘real’ divide in the workforce, she recognises that ‘in popular consciousness’ the key division was between spinners and weavers. And this popular consciousness had ‘concrete foundations’ in the separation of workplaces, payment levels and systems (hourly pay versus piece-work), between mill-workers and weavers. Where Walker shows clear sympathy with nineteenth-century male trade unionists’ impatience with the unruliness of the ‘mill-girl’, Gordon celebrates this behaviour, seeing it as an appropriate manifestation of hostility both to the jute capitalists and to the stultifying embrace of respectable male trade unionism. For her, ‘respectability’ is unambiguously part of a damaging ‘false consciousness’ which worked to disadvantage women.13 A clear implication of this analysis is that women who sought to build up formal trade union organisation amongst women were misguided about where women’s true interests lay. Wainwright offers a Foucauldian analysis of women’s work in jute, foregrounding questions of cultural representation of women’s work, and the significance of its spatial attributes. She outlines the ways in which women’s role in the workplace excited ‘consternation’ amongst middle-class commentators, but what was particular to Dundee was the separation of figures of mill-worker and weaver. She argues that these were counterposed in spatial terms in relation to different workplaces, but also that they occupied public



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spaces, with mill-workers seen as ‘invading’ these in disorderly fashion, linked to adverse commentary on their dress and behaviour: ‘In at the same gates . . . go the respectable, well-dressed industrious girl, and the frowsyhaired, bare armed, short petticoated, shawlied lassie, of hard voice and rough manners’.14 Wainwright draws attention to the significance of the substantial number of married women who worked in jute. While various moralists denounced this feature of the city, for example alleging detrimental effects on infant mortality, she rightly emphasises that employers saw the matter differently; for them, married women workers were to be ‘actively encouraged for the elevating effect they had on those around them’.15 While these accounts offer important insights into the many issues surrounding women’s (and men’s) working lives, and trade union activity, none engages with the issue of Dundee worker’s responses to Indian competition in the pre-1914 period.16 To address the issues at stake in this chapter we have to rely on a miscellany of sources, as none of the trade unions, political parties or voluntary bodies active in the city at this time has left complete records. Neither of the two main jute unions of these years has left behind significant official material.17 However, for the unions we have some important material for the Trades Council.18 As on other issues, there is considerable relevant material in the local newspapers, but this has to be used with especial care in this period as the Liberal Advertiser and particularly the Unionist Courier were increasingly hostile to trade union and Labour politics.19 In Chapter 3 it was possible to talk without great difficulty of the jute employers as a fairly homogeneous body, articulating an agreed interest, largely through the Chamber of Commerce. When one turns to the workers’ side, no such homogeneity or simplicity of interest representation existed. The most all-embracing and longest-lasting body seeking to represent Dundee labour was the Trades Council, a typically more important body in a Scottish city than in its English counterparts.20 The activities of this body provide some of the most important insights into the character of formal labour organisation in the city. But we need to clearly recognise the limits of the Council’s activities. First, and most important, it was overwhelmingly composed of unions from outside the jute industry, so it cannot be seen as organising the labour side of Juteopolis, in the way the Chamber of Commerce organised the employers’ interest. Secondly, by the 1890s the Council was being ‘outflanked’ by the creation of other, political, bodies seeking to represent labour in the city, with whom the DTC commonly had no or only poor relationships.21 The gap between the DTC and the jute workers of the city partly derived from the strengths and weaknesses of union organisation. The strongest unions in Dundee were amongst engineers, shipbuilders, railway workers and bakers.22 In jute, a clergyman, the Reverend Henry Williamson,

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organised a union (the Dundee and District Mill and Factory Operatives Union, DDFMOU) which survived from the 1880s to the 1920s, but whose membership was always a small fraction of the total workforce.23 This union had a troubled relationship with the Trades Council, not least because its leader was not himself a worker.24 Another union, the Dundee and District Union of Jute and Flax Workers (DDUJFW), was established only in 1906, and its membership reached a prewar peak in 1913 with perhaps 8,500 members.25 There were other unions in jute, amongst the skilled workers, such as tenters and calenderers, but the numbers involved were very small. The Trades Council, like many such pioneering bodies in this period, was largely an organisation of artisans.26 In this it followed its precursor, the Dundee Working Men’s Association, which existed from 1864 to 1870, and which was a typical mid-Victorian body created with encouragement from the local Liberal MP, John Leng.27 The DTC periodically sought to reach out to the mass of unskilled workers, for example at the time of the unrest amongst dockers and others at the end of the 1880s, but its core strength was always amongst the relatively well-paid skilled workers.28 Linked to this, it was also always overwhelmingly male. It did have women representatives, from Williamson’s union, from 1890 but these were always a small minority.29 There was always therefore a considerable gap between the male artisans who dominated the Trades Council and the mass of women workers in the jute industry, relatively few of whom were union members. This had important implications for labour in Juteopolis. The Trades Council was not a significant body for articulating the views of the jute workers. There was never a serious possibility that the jute employers would have looked to workers’ organisations as allies in, for example, their campaign for protection, but, even if they had been sympathetic, the Council could not have fulfilled such a role. Its concerns were not focused on jute. This point is underscored if we look at its approach to the issue of Indian Factory legislation. This matter seems to have come first to the Council’s attention in 1890, following a request from the Manchester and Salford Trades Council to support the assimilation of the Indian to the British Factory Acts.30 The President of the DTC supported the proposal, though with somewhat qualified enthusiasm: Mr Ritchie said he had been told that the natives of India ceased work at any moment they thought proper to observe their religious services and rites, and he thought that if thy exerted the same independence in the matter now before them there would be very little difficulty in obtaining that measure. He questioned if they had the stamina to work so hard as the operatives in this country, and, if their work was spread over a longer day, he did not believe more work could be got out of them than a British workman with a shorter day. The fact of their machinery being kept going, however, acted against similar trade in this country, so that he thought it would be a good thing to get the hours assimilated.31



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Five years later the Council also responded positively to Miss Irwin, of the National Federal Council for Women’s Trades, for support for an inquiry into the Indian Factory Acts. At the Conference on women’s trades that year, Thomas Scott, from the Tenters’ Union, called for the ‘assimilation of the Indian to the British Factory Acts’.32 The Trades Council did, therefore, support the idea of toughening-up the Indian Factory Acts, but it is noticeable that it took no initiative in this area, responding only when stimulated from outside. It also seems clear that it was not pressed on this matter by Dundee’s main jute unions. In the 1890s, when the issue was on the Council’s agenda, there is no evidence of input from the Williamson union, the concern coming from one of the small skilled men’s societies. In the years after 1900s down to the Great War there is no evidence that this union, or later the DDUJFW, took up the issue. Beyond this specific issue, there is evidence of a lack of fit between the culture of the Trades Council and a significant number of those, especially women, who worked in jute. Especially in the years before 1900, the Council was very much a body of respectable artisans, who prided themselves on their responsibility. Whether they constituted a ‘labour aristocracy’ in the Marxist sense has been disputed, but their attitude to industrial relations was undoubtedly largely conciliatory and non-militant.33 Their activity was often focused on settling disputes in the city. For example, the Annual Report for 1894 noted that ‘unfortunately, there occurred quite a number of strikes and disputes during the year, in some of which the Council was asked to intervene’. The following year, when a big strike in jute occurred, the Council’s role was to help organise a return to work.34 The attitude of the Council is especially well captured in its comment on a dispute three years later: ‘Perhaps the most notable dispute of the year was that of the millworkers. This strike was entered into, without the sanction of any of the unions, by a number of thoughtless people, and was far-reaching in its effects, many thousands of workers being themselves idle against their will.’35 The conciliatory attitude of the Council perhaps reached its apogee when, in 1900, it met the DChC to discuss the causes of ‘irregularity’ of attendance of workers in the jute mills. The Trades Council argued that this irregularity arose from poor working and living conditions amongst the workers, with low wages leading to poor diet. They also pressed for a Conciliation and Arbitration Board for the industry.36 What is striking here is not the points put forward by the Council but their willingness to co-operate with the employers to seek solutions to the latters’ problems. These conciliatory attitudes undoubtedly fitted with similar views amongst some jute workers. The Williamson union had been explicitly set up to avoid strikes, and this posture proved attractive to some in the industry, including women, who made up the bulk of its membership and provided most of its officers.37 However, membership of unions amongst women in jute was always low. There were no doubt more than one reason for this;

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women’s ‘double burden’ of factory work and housework was likely to have discouraged many. But it also seems clear that there were tensions between the culture of many jute workers and the respectable male trade unionism of both the Williamson union and the Trades Council. To some degree we can see this as resulting from the peculiar economic and social conditions of jute production. As stressed above, jute was subject to exceptional instability and insecurity, but also to unusually intense competition. The result was that money wages in the industry showed almost no trend between the 1870s and the First World War, but very frequent fluctuations. Lennox records nine increases and ten wage cuts in jute piecework wages between 1878 and 1906.38 In the face of these conditions, women workers were not passive. Indeed, the evidence suggests frequent outbreaks of unrest amongst women jute workers, often accompanied by spontaneous demonstrations and ‘unruly’ behaviour, to the distaste of the local bourgeoisie and respectable (male) trade unionism alike. Williamson’s union seems to have been set up precisely to regulate this challenge to dignified industrial relations.39 The behaviour of the predominantly female jute workers often created what, with only slight exaggeration, we may call ‘collective bargaining by riot’ as they sought to oppose wage cuts in the bad times, or gain wage increases in the good. Usually they failed to prevent such cuts, but did achieve restoration of these when trade improved. Jute was therefore very far from having embedded, orderly industrial relations of the kind that Williamson or the Trades Council would have wished. From an employers’ point of view also there was dissatisfaction. They were unenthusiastic about trade unionism, but at least as unhappy with the spontaneous discontent they periodically faced. They looked with some favour on the conciliatory attitude of the Williamson union, but only transiently, in the wake of a large strike in 1912, was there any sign that the employers would grant any formal recognition to this union, or the DDUJFW, and even then it was on a very grudging basis.40 As noted above, the story of women in Dundee jute is complicated by the importance of Victorian notions of ‘respectability’ in shaping attitudes and behaviour. When respectable male trade unionists condemned the behaviour of jute workers, their especial targets were the young, unmarried, women, especially the mill-workers in the spinning sector. But the issue was not always about gender; sometimes the target of criticism was ‘young boys’, and it is worth noting that jute did have a younger workforce than the average for the city, so there may have been an ‘age gap’ as well as a ‘gender gap’ between the patriarchs of the DTC and jute workers.41 The founding of the DDUJFW in 1906 seems to have brought women jute workers somewhat closer to the male-dominated unions and the DTC, though the new union still organised only a small proportion of women in the industry.42 After the turn of the century more of the industrial unrest in jute seems to have been channelled through formal union mechanisms, with



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some decline in ‘collective bargaining by riot’. Nevertheless, jute was far from experiencing what later generations would call ‘orderly industrial relations’. In 1907, for example, there was a series of small-scale strikes around wages and the quality of material. The union got agreement to 5 per cent wage increase for the lower-paid, but this left many workers unsatisfied, and this led to a strike of three thousand workers and a threat of a lockout. The union tried to maintain discipline by threatening to withhold strike pay from those who left their work without union sanction.43 The importance of the trade cycle in shaping workers’ activity always needs to be emphasised. Jute and Dundee were hit hard by the recession which followed the US stock market crash of 1908, and the recovery was slow to develop. One striking measure of this is the rate of unemployment amongst the most important engineering union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, where in April 1909 the rate was over twenty per cent, much the highest in any recession since the 1850s.44 Recovery from this cycle was accompanied by the most extensive and sustained industrial unrest across Britain since the 1840s, and Dundee was part of this pattern. The years 1911 and 1912 especially were marked by three major disputes, in jute, amongst seamen and amongst carters and dockers, the latter leading to the mobilisation of the Black Watch as a precaution because of ‘rioting and scenes of disorder unparalleled in the modern history of the community’.45 The 1912 jute strike was much more planned and prepared for than any previous dispute in the industry, and distinctive also in, initially, uniting the Williamson union with the DDUJFW (as well as the tenters and calender workers). The strike led to a discrediting of Williamson’s union, after his plea for an early return to work, and the recognition by the employers of the DDUJFW, though the promised Joint Industrial Committee and the rationalisation of wage scales were not achieved until 1915.46 The union’s politics were still strongly influenced by the kind of apolitical ‘labourism’ strong in the DTC down to the 1890s. For example, in 1913, a £10 donation to the Daily Citizen, a socialist paper, was the subject of a vote of censure on the union’s executive committee, the committee being charged with being ‘a clique of the LRC and ILP’; the censure failed by 53 votes to 26.47 As labour historians have rightly emphasised, Dundee was a pioneering city of trade union activity in Scotland.48 However, this activity, while not excluding jute, was almost always centred elsewhere, in the sectors dominated by male artisans, though especially in the ‘great unrest’ preceding the Great War, wider groups of workers were drawn in. Paradoxically, therefore, while numerically jute workers were by far the largest component of Dundee’s labour force, in the pre-1914 era they were a marginal influence on the development of the city’s unionisation, and a marginal force in the DTC, the body which aspired to, and to a degree succeeded in, becoming the leading force in local trade unionism. The DTC’s development from co-ordinating the activities of small group

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of elite trade societies to playing a significant role in a much broader ‘rise of labour’ was linked to the displacement of a form of Radicalism, closely allied to the Liberal party, and the shift to a much more class-conscious politics amongst the city’s politically active workers.49 This displacement had many ramifications, but in the current context what is most important is the consequence of making any ‘producers’ alliance’ between jute workers and their employers all but unthinkable. Ideologies grounded in the assumption of fundamental conflict of interest between capitalist and employee made co-operation against a ‘common enemy’ in Calcutta or elsewhere wholly implausible, even if the employers had sought it. In 1875 an editorial in the People’s Journal had welcomed the activities of the DTC, arguing that it might ‘render valuable service by demanding, in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce, a Factory Act for India’. This Liberal newspaper argued further that ‘all resistance to the abuse of capital in Dundee will be in vain if it is allowed to do as it likes in India’.50 In the following decade, when recession hit, Leng, owner of the Journal as well as a later Liberal MP for the city, pressed local unions to put international limits on the working day high on their agenda.51 But while there were occasional expressions of sympathy for the plight of Indian workers amongst their Dundonian counterparts, alongside attacks on the exploitative actions of jute employers in both cities, the jute workers’ union had neither the inclination nor the resources to go beyond such expressions. The DTC did, as noted, offer support for the strengthening of the Indian Factory Acts when others put it forward, but that was the limit of action taken. The organisation and politics of trade unionism in Dundee precluded serious co-operation between jute workers and employers. Such ­co-operation around the issue of Factory legislation was compatible with the politics of a Liberal like Leng, and up to the 1890s the DTC, and the Williamson union in jute, were closely allied to the radical brand of liberalism Leng espoused. When Leng was adopted as candidate in 1889 he stressed the closeness of his programme to that of the TUC. He was proposed as candidate by the President of the DTC, who declared that ‘now we have failed to obtain a working man to represent us, I think our next best thing to do is to get an employer in whom we have confidence, and I think in Mr Leng we have that gentleman’.52 The continuing adherence of the Trades Council to radical Liberalism is evident in its failure to support the idea of a Labour candidate in 1892.53 But, as suggested in the above quotation, the failure of the Liberals to put forward a working-class candidate was a divide which was eventually to persuade the DTC, in conjunction with ILP, to support a Labour candidate in 1895.54 Thus the ‘staunchly Gladstonian’ DTC of the 1880s came in the following years to separate itself organisationally from the Liberal Party, a pattern common across industrial Britain.55 But this organiszational separation marked no sharp break with Radical Liberal ideas: David Howell’s claim that



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‘many spokesmen for independent labour abandoned the Liberal party as an instrument, but did not abandon many of their Radical liberal principles’ has considerable resonance in Dundee.56 This is not to dispute that socialist groups grew in strength in Dundee, especially from the 1890s, and that this had some impact on trade union views. Closer relations between the ILP, which emerged as the most important socialist group in Dundee after coming to the city in 1893, and the trade unions, was aided by the election of a Conservative government in 1895, and further by the Boer War at the turn of the century. The latter united many Radicals and socialists in opposition, and served to emphasise the similarities in their outlook.57 But even at the turn of the century there were serious disputes at the DTC about labour representation, and how it should be done. Thus at a meeting in 1900 there was reiteration of the case for political neutrality, given that unions contained members of all political persuasions. The candidature of Burns in the election of that year was supported by the DTC, but this was based on quite slim majorities when the issue was voted upon.58 II At the core of our understanding of the relationship between the Radical and socialist positions must be an account of attitudes towards state action: how far were statist solutions to their problems sought by Dundee workers and their organisations? The Radical tradition grew out of a profound scepticism about both the desirability and the efficacy of state action, and British socialism as it emerged from the late nineteenth century only slowly shook off a similar scepticism. As several authors have noted, in a variety of contexts, popular belief in the efficacy of state action was very limited in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, even amongst socialists.59 There is clear evidence of such doubts in Dundee. Given the limited role of the central state, this is most evident in attitudes to the local state. While organised labour sought to gain a place in Dundee’s local government, it was often sceptical of the likely benefits to be gained by the workers from expanding local government action, and as a result commonly allied itself against proposals for increased rate-financed expenditure, in the name of defending the interests of the workers as ratepayers.60 Opposition to central state action was also strongly articulated; in 1892 the President of the DTC attacked the principle of state pensions, asserting that ‘he deprecated the idea of converting the working class into an army of state pensioners’.61 The major exception to this ideological position was the issue of legislation to limit the working day.62 The desire for such legislation was undoubtedly a key raison d’être for the DTC, as it was for Trades Councils throughout Scotland.63 It was also an issue which consistently brought workers’ organisations into conflict with employers, especially jute

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employers, who deployed the threat of Calcutta competition as an argument against unilateral shortening of hours. The earliest extant example of this linkage can be found in a speech by Cox, who was both City Provost and a leading jute employer, in the context of arguments about Mundella’s ninehour bill in 1873. Addressing a public meeting on the bill, Cox suggested that the only stumbling block to such legislation was foreign competition, especially from the ‘East Indies’: where in Calcutta a number of very large works are being erected to compete with Dundee in jute spinning and weaving. There the hours of labour are at least twelve per day, and the wages paid are exceedingly low. I have an interest myself in certain works there, and can speak from knowledge of the cheapness of labour there. I also think that you might with great propriety assist the operatives in those countries I have named to obtain a bill such as you have been working under for some time past, and which everyone will admit has been of so great advantage to all concerned, especially in the matter of the education of the young. After this is obtained, I confirm I see no reason why the curtailment you suggest should not be acted on in this country.64

Mundella’s bill became law, and hours of work fell.65 This was to be a source of complaint by employers, with the DYB reporting in 1878 that ‘many manufacturers are of the opinion that the late decrease in the hours of working was at least premature, and that this, together with the high rate of wages, has materially told against our trade’.66 In 1889 Ritchie, President of the DTC, told the TUC that the eighthour day ‘is the most generally approved method by which it is proposed to provide employment for the surplus labour of this country’. He also defended such a restriction against the charge of aiding foreign competition: ‘but the same outcry was made against adoption of the Ten Hours Factory Act, yet it only resulted in the introduction of new machinery by which production was increased, so that at the present time more work is produced than when factories were run for seventy hours a week’.67 Two years later, in their evidence to the Labour Commission, the employers stressed the impact of Calcutta competition. The following interchange indicates how strongly the employers sought to make their point: Question: ‘Under these circumstances you are quite clear what effect an Eight Hours Bill would have?’ to which Mr J. Walker replied, ‘It would be the ruin of the jute industry in this country, and my firm would be quite prepared to go to India at once’.68 The limited working-class support for state action on working conditions is well illustrated by the issue of half-time working by children. The Dundee mills had long employed a significant number of children of school age, and in 1891 the DTC unanimously supported proposals to raise the minimum age for this system from ten years of age to eleven, and, if possible, twelve. This reform was opposed not only by the employers but by



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the Williamson union, with Williamson disputing the DTC’s claim to represent the jute workers, and arguing that the ten years of age rule was good for both workers and masters.69 Unsurprisingly the jute employers celebrated this stance: at the Chamber of Commerce in 1891 when they referred to the ‘almost wonderful unanimity which prevailed in Dundee between the employers and the workers as to the keeping of the children’s age at ten years, as hitherto’.70 (In the event, the age was raised to eleven with the support of Dundee’s MPs.)71 Also of note in this context is the state’s absence in Dundee jute in one sphere where nationally such a role was commonly supported by organised labour, that of wage regulation. It was well established that jute manufacture was a poorly paid employment, but it was never officially regarded as a ‘sweated’ industry, and hence did not have a wage board to set minimum wages.72 This absence was not contested by representatives of Dundee workers, who looked to improved union organisation as the route to higher wages. In sum, late-Victorian and Edwardian Dundee was not a place where advocates of state intervention in economic life could point to persuasive examples of its benefits, beyond the area of regulation of hours. Legal restrictions on the working day were not initially an issue that divided trade unionists from Liberals. The early history of such legislation showed broad parliamentary support, including some Tories as well as more conservative Liberals. Locally, as noted above, Leng saw campaigning for such restrictions as the basis for common action between Dundee’s and Calcutta’s workers, though this seems to have evoked little active response. Leng himself seems to have had growing doubts on the state regulation of hours, certainly when it came to the eight-hour day, and this was one symptom of a deterioration in relations between him and the DTC from the mid-1890s.73 Hours of work were increasingly an issue that divided employers and workers in jute, the former strongly opposing reducing hours in Dundee, in the face of longer hours in Calcutta.74 In this they were supported by the Courier. The Courier pointed out the competitive advantage gained by Calcutta mills by depreciation of the rupee, and went on to ask: are the men who are blindly agitating for making the expensive plant here productive for only eight hours out of the four-and-twenty, while Calcutta plant is productive for thirteen or fourteen hours, aware of the peril in which they put – not the interests of capital, which can quickly shift for itself – but the interest of all dependent for work and wages upon a trade which is met by such extraordinary and in many respects unfair competition already?75

More broadly, early British socialism was at one with its liberal heritage in its hostility to state action in the area of international trade; with few exceptions, British socialists adhered strongly to free trade and opposed the protectionism that gained increasing support from both employers and the

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Conservative Party from the 1880s onwards. Attempts to argue that a logical corollary of the eight-hour day was protection against low-wage foreign competition made little headway in Labour circles.76 In Dundee the sensitivity on this issue is evident in the DTC’s proceedings. In 1881 the Council passed a resolution against the use of bounties on sugar duties by France in the following terms: ‘free trade can only exist when competition proceeds upon the basis of relative natural advantages. And when wealth is produced, distributed and exchanged without state favour to any competitor.’77 In 1903, at the time of Joseph Chamberlain’s campaign for Imperial Preference the Labour candidate spoke at a public meeting called to protest at such ideas, saying ‘the Labour party was Free Trade party. They had no desire to tax the food of the people, but they wanted more that free trade. They wanted free men as well as free trade.’78 This was a common stance in Labour circles at this time; free trade was not socialism, but socialists should support free trade because the alternative was far worse. Protectionism meant higher food prices, monopoly behaviour by British producers and, more broadly, the stirring up of international tensions through competitive trade controls and damaging restrictions. Trentmann has rightly stressed that adherence to free trade was a key feature of British socialism before the Great War, and that there existed a powerfully entrenched culture of free trade, not reducible simply to an economic doctrine.79 Of course, this culture rested on firm material foundations. From the 1870s until the mid-1890s the free import, and falling price, of food in Britain were a key component of the rise in living standards.80 For many in Dundee this was especially significant: as noted above, money wages for jute workers showed no clear trend before 1914, and so increases in real wages were almost wholly reliant on falling prices. Dietary data for Dundee show both the very large proportion of household incomes typically spent on food, and the high proportion of that spend which went on bread, made from one of the most important imported commodities.81 The national political campaign counterposing the ‘big loaf’ of free trade and the ‘small loaf’ of protection had great resonance in Dundee.82 III As a corollary of limited faith in the benefits of state action, popular responses to economic uncertainty in Dundee led to considerable mutualist activity – collective action by workers to improve their situation outside the workplace. Some of this was very closely linked to ‘economistic’ activity via trade unions. Trade unions at this time were in most instances bodies that provided financial benefits as well as bargaining power to their members. A contemporary estimate suggested that in 1905 trade union membership in the city stood at around 15,000, with over 4,900 of those entitled to death benefits, 3,800 to sickness benefits. These allowances were concentrated in



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the unions in the more highly paid sectors. In the 1880s the President of the DTC had noted that It has been made a reproach of Unionism that its objects are selfish, that it benefits the members only, and they are the aristocracy of labour. To a large extent this is true, and only natural. The great Unions have their out-of-work, their sick and funeral, their superannuation and accident funds. Besides being trade unions they are great friendly societies.83

Financial support for the unemployed was the most restricted. Out-ofwork benefits were prevalent in the non-textile (predominantly male) sectors, and, within jute, only the tiny unions of skilled male workers provided such support: ‘Out-of-work benefits therefore cannot be paid in those occupations which need them most, such as masons, slaters and dock labourers nor extensively by poor unions such as the Dundee Textile Operatives’.84 The reasons for this pattern are far from clear. It may reflect the greater wage flexibility in textiles, producing lower levels of persistent unemployment, though ‘sliding scale’ arrangements also operated in some other Dundee industries.85 Probably more important were the lower wages in jute spinning and weaving, leading to low contributions and little money to fund such benefits.86 Such contrasting provision meant that, in periods of poor trade, members of trade societies only rarely had recourse to the public purse, unlike the rest of the workers, including those in jute.87 By no means all mutualist activity was tied to trade unions. Membership of burial clubs was much more extensive than union membership, in line with patterns of working-class expenditure elsewhere in Britain.88 By contrast, there was only a tiny amount of house purchase via co-operative building societies, with only 120 houses being financed in this way between 1889 and 1904.89 This may have reflected the limited number of ‘aristocrats of labour’ in the city, with their numbers constrained by Dundee’s failure to move from predominance of textiles to the predominance of engineering, as happened in so many late nineteenth-century industrial cities.90 But more generally, as Daunton emphasises, in this period ‘building societies were not central to the working class response to social insecurity’, with workers more inclined to put any spare money in savings banks rather than building societies.91 Mutualism amongst the Dundee working class was not necessarily the product of working-class initiative. The Dundee Savings Bank was founded by local notables in 1815 to ‘promote industry and economy among the poor’ by ‘receiving such small sums as tradesmen, mechanics, labourers, servants and others shall be able to save from their earnings’.92 It was very successful in attracting wage earners’ deposits, with 29.5 per cent of the total population having an account in 1901. This coverage is substantial, but has to be set alongside the fact that over half the deposits were less than £10, with a mean of £12 3s 11d. The Bank also tried to encourage pensions,

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by selling annuities – but sold only 236 in the whole period from 1847 to 1900.93 Food prices were crucial to working-class living standards in Dundee, as elsewhere in Britain. A mutualist way of seeking to influence these was, of course, through consumer co-operation, which could in turn potentially form part of the basis of a ‘consumer’ politics, alongside the producer politics of trade unionism.94 But there is little evidence of such developments in Dundee. The history of consumer co-operation in the city appears to be one where a resolutely ‘anti-political’ society dominated, certainly before the Great War. This society was the Dundee Eastern Co-operative Society (DECS), established in 1873, and with a membership of 7,213 in 1902.95 The DECS seems to have been characterised by a strong anti-socialist politics, and the relationship of co-operation to the DTC was a fraught one. The DTC’s scepticism about co-operation in general, and the DECS in particular, was based on the belief that co-ops charged higher prices than other retailers, in order to raise their dividends. In 1894, in declining to send a delegate to a local co-op congress, the view was expressed that co-ops typically charged 25 per cent more than other shops.96 Others argued that lower prices in non-co-ops were the result of sweated labour, and therefore trade unions should support co-operative development.97 The issue was periodically raised at DTC meetings, with some attacking the whole ‘dividend system’, which was seen as giving incentives to high prices, and turning co-ops into savings banks rather than a source of cheaper food. Where co-ops were seen as having reduced prices, such as the Co-operative Coal Association, there was strong support.98 However, relations with co-ops improved after the City of Dundee Co-operative Society was founded in 1897, as this was much more part of the local labour movement, and was linked to three branches of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, which together had over two thousand members in the city by 1913.99 Despite this evidence of better relationships between unions and co-ops from the later 1890s, overall consumer politics in the sense of local organisations focused on improving the workers’ lot as consumers were weak in Dundee before 1913. Trentmann suggests some evidence of the beginnings of a shift to such a consumer politics in some parts of Britain, for example around improving milk supplies, a key dietary item.100 But in Dundee there is no evidence of such activity, beyond passing mentions and a single, descriptive article in the DYB.101 IV As emphasised at the beginning of this chapter, Dundee was a strikingly working-class city. But in and of itself this tells us little about the possible responses to the pressures exerted by the insecurities of imperial globalisation. The Dundee working class was divided by gender, by occupation, by



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politics and by notions of ‘respectability’ and its ramifications. Like most British industrial cities in this period, Dundee saw a rising presence of labour organisation, both in trade unions and in political groupings. Unlike in those other great ‘imperial cities’ of this era, Glasgow and Liverpool, popular Conservatism and Unionism were weak (though by no means absent) forces. While a significant proportion of jute employers shifted rightwards towards Unionism in the late nineteenth century, the working class divided its support mainly between Liberals and Labour. This contrast may partly be explained by the almost complete absence of a sectarian divide, an absence of an effective Protestant Unionism amongst Dundee workers, despite the presence of a significant Irish Catholic community.102 Attempts to construct a protective, cross-class, producers’ alliance between jute employers and workers to defend the city against Calcutta competition were never much more than the vain hope of newspaper editorials and political speeches. Neither the organisational nor the ideological underpinnings of such an alliance ever came close to existence. Organisationally, the jute unions were weak and the main ‘voice of labour’, the DTC, was dominated by workers from other sectors. As a prominent jute employer, and chair of the DTC, rightly pointed out in 1896, ‘It was quite true that, unlike the Chamber, the bulk of the members [of the DTC] were only indirectly connected with what was called the staple industry’.103 In the 1870s and 1880s the idea of close co-operation between employers and unions in the city was far from unrealistic, at least as far as many trade unionists were concerned. The liberal trade unionism they predominantly espoused was conciliatory and ‘class collaborationist’. But by the 1890s the ideological divide was growing, with employers increasingly moving to Unionism, and trade unionists moving (albeit slowly and partially) to adherence to some kind of socialism. These political shifts were complex in motivation and effect, but they undoubtedly made politics more class-conscious and reduced the likelihood of collaboration. Protectionism in trade was not favoured by unions in either their Liberal or their more socialist phase. Free trade offered obvious material benefits in cheap food, but was also an integral part of working-class (and much middleclass) culture in the city. ‘Protectionism’ in the indirect form of legislation to improve factory conditions in India was supported by the DTC and by the jute unions, but never formed the basis of joint action with employers. The campaign for protectionism launched by Chamberlain tried to widen its appeal by linking the policy to the Empire, using the mechanism of imperial preference. As noted in Chapter 3, Dundee’s jute employers embraced such ideas with their support for a discriminatory export levy on Indian jute exports. There is no evidence of support from Dundee’s unions for this policy. More broadly, Chamberlain’s campaign made much of the claim that such preference would strengthen Britain’s links with its white empire, and with their European expatriate populations. As we have seen in Chapter 1,

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Dundee was an especially heavy contributor to emigration, and many of these emigrants ended up in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Did this, along with the jute link, make Dundee an especially proimperial city, as has been suggested for another highly ‘imperially connected’ city, Liverpool?104 This is a difficult question to answer. In this period responses to the Boer War have often been used to try to assess ‘imperial-mindedness’. In his foundational work on the British working class and the Boer War, Price controversially argued that there was a distinct lack of jingoistic, pro-imperial sentiment amongst the mass of the working class.105 For Dundee he suggests that the rowdyism that accompanied some pro-Boer meetings was caused by ‘students and the young gentlemen of the city’. This included the breaking up of a meeting to be addressed by Walter Walsh, a prominent local clergyman, and Keir Hardie in March 1900.106 Hardie, the key Labour anti-war figure, addressed the DTC on the war in October 1899, and saw the Council as beginning to overcome the past weaknesses, with co-operation with the ILP in forthcoming municipal elections.107 Attitudes to the Boer War might provide some guide to popular attitudes to empire, but, given that the war was against another ‘white’ country, it cannot tell us much about racial attitudes that are commonly associated with empire. Nationally, growing organised working-class attachment to socialism in this period led to stirrings of notions of international worker solidarity.108 But the practical and ideological obstacles to any effective solidarity between jute workers in Calcutta and Dundee were immense. Dundee’s jute workers were poorly organised. Their unions were predominantly attached to the less socialist end of the spectrum of labour opinion. Attitudes to Indian workers were complex. While expressions of sympathy with their conditions were given, these sat alongside strong notions of ‘difference’, an infirm basis for solidarity. Neville Kirk aptly summarises the general British socialist attitude to non-white workers in the empire as a ‘blend of superiority and desire for unity and co-operation between black and white workers’, but in jute the practical possibilities of co-operation were more or less non-existent.109 Support for higher wages in Calcutta was voiced by Dundee unions (as well as occasionally by employers) but, again, this was more an occasional statement of hope rather than the basis of sustained activity. It would of course have been surprising if employers and unions had joined together in such a campaign; the Dundee employers often had financial interests in Calcutta mills, and so their attitude to wage levels in Calcutta was, to say the least, ambiguous. Dundee jute workers were often told that low wages in Calcutta ruled out higher wages for themselves, but such assertions seem to have been found unpersuasive. It was common to suggest that employers exaggerated the competitive threat from Calcutta, partly by not bringing out how lower wages in India had to be set against higher levels of employment (that is, lower productivity).110



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At the DTC references to India were infrequent. As noted above, there was support for toughening the Factory Acts, but little initiative on the issue. Probably the most common point made about India at Council meetings was criticism of the ‘unpatriotic’ attitude of the Dundee jute capitalists in financing the Calcutta competitor. For example in 1895 a delegate, responding to employer calls for wage cuts because of Calcutta competition, asked ‘where the patriotism of the employers themselves came in? The Hindoo [sic] labourers, who lived in the most abstemious manner, were the worst paid in existence.’111 The following year, a speaker on bimetallism at the Council suggested ‘There was a certain class of people always telling them how dearly they loved the working man, but when they had a ten-pound note to invest they would send it to India if they could get ten per cent for it, although that act might assist in ruining the working men of this country’.112 While informed Dundee workers recognised that free movement of capital in general, and its export to Calcutta in particular, undermined their livelihoods, there was little they could do beyond protesting. This free movement of capital, whilst attacked, never seems to have been the object of reform proposals in this period. British workers such as those in Dundee resented the export of capital, and with it, as some saw it, their jobs, but there was no doctrine that translated that feeling into a political agenda.113 This was another consequence of the deeply embedded liberalism which was a key inheritance of the British working class, and against which ‘national political economy’ had made little headway before 1914.114

Chapter 5 The Politics of Dundee: The 1906 and 1908 Elections

This chapter analyses in detail two parliamentary elections in Dundee, the general election of 1906 and the by-election of 1908. Elections are, of course, always occasions when political arguments are articulated and mobilised exceptionally intensively. But beyond this, these two elections are especially important in helping to understand the responses of Dundonians to the dilemmas they faced in responding to the challenges of globalisation and imperial competition. The 1906 election brought into the Westminster Parliament one of the first two Labour MPs in Scotland, Alexander Wilkie, the first break in Liberal representation in Dundee since 1832. This apparent seismic shift in electoral politics enables us to examine some of the underpinnings of political allegiance in the city. The by-election of 1908 was won by Winston Churchill for the Liberals, defeating a Labour candidate. We can examine this victory especially to see what it can tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of Dundee Liberalism as it grappled with the challenges to the city, while fighting off the advance of Labour.1 I The national context of the 1906 election was the decline of the Conservative government, which had won a huge majority in 1900, in the face of the divisions caused by Chamberlain’s revival of the issue of protection.2 The Liberals came to office at the end of 1905, and called a general election which was fought in January 1906.3 The outcome of the election was one of the most sweeping electoral reversals in twentieth-century Britain, comparable only to 1945 and 1997. The Liberals emerged with a majority of 241 over the Conservatives and their allies. The other striking feature of the election was the success of forty-six Labour candidates, facilitated by the ‘Lib-Lab pact’ which gave a significant number of Labour candidates a straight run against Conservative or Unionist candidates, with no Liberal being put forward.4 However, this pact did not apply in Scotland, and in Dundee the Labour candidate finished second in the poll, sandwiched between two Liberals. The central political issue of the election nationally was free trade versus protection, though other issues between the Liberals and the Conservatives

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Table 5.1  General election result, 1906 Candidate

Party

Total vote

Plumpers

Cross vote with Labour

Robertson Wilkie Robson Shackleton Smith

Liberal Labour Liberal Unionist Unionist

9,276 6,833 6,122 3,865 3,183

51 2,553 13 70 16

3,183 – 124 769 204

Source:  Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, p. 302

and Unionists which had prominence in the election included, especially, the importing of Chinese labour into the Rand in South Africa. Unionists also tried to focus attention on the issue of Home Rule for Ireland, given the divisive nature of this issue for the Liberal Party. But if most analysts see the decisive issue giving the Liberals their stunning victory as free trade, this of course could not be the issue on which choices were made between Liberal and Labour candidates, as both parties were agreed on this policy. The Conservatives were notably weaker in Scotland than in England in the period before 1906. In the years from 1886, only in the election of 1900 did they capture a majority of Scottish seats, whereas in England over the same period they failed to secure a majority only in 1906.5 Post-1900 this weakness was added to significantly by divisions over protection: ‘It was the tariff reform campaign launched by Chamberlain in 1903 which was, almost on its own, the crucial destroyer of the recently cemented Unionist strength in Scotland’.6 For most of the Victorian period Dundee was a Liberal bastion, based on a cross-class alliance between employers, many of the middle classes and the more prosperous workers who gained the vote after 1867. As in so much of provincial Britain, this Liberal hegemony was fractured by the Irish Home Rule controversy of the 1880s, leading to the emergence of Liberal Unionism as an ally of the Conservative (Unionist) party.7 This defection of significant sections of the industrial capitalist class from formal allegiance to the Liberal Party is perfectly captured by the case of Sir George Baxter, who was the Liberal Unionist candidate in the 1908 election. Baxter was the chairman of one of Dundee’s biggest linen and jute firms, and his father had been a Liberal MP for another Scottish constituency. The younger Baxter broke with the Liberals over Home Rule for Ireland in the 1880s, and became a Liberal Unionist, along with other prominent local capitalists like Alexander Buist, Edward Cox, Joseph Grimond and John Don, alongside those with a Conservative allegiance such as James Cox and William Dalgleish.8 But the Liberal Unionist position was in some cases combined with a continued strong adherence to free trade, so the idea of the divisiveness of the

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protection issue in Conservative and Unionist circles certainly seems to fit Dundee. We do not have direct evidence of debates within the Conservative or Liberal Unionist parties, but we know for example, that, in the 1906 election, a prominent jute baron, Edward Cox, of Cox Brothers, recommended in a local newspaper that ‘every elector should support the Free Trade candidates irrespective of party, and failing there being a Unionist Free Trader . . . give his vote to the Liberal’. Cox was supported by another prominent jute manufacturer, and Liberal unionist, J. C. Buist (but attacked by another correspondent for alleged inconsistency because Cox’s investments in the USA benefited from tariff protection).9 The Unionists who stood in Dundee in 1906 were protectionists, though neither was a jute employer. The candidates were Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, and Duncan Smith, another non-Dundonian.10 They faced a number of problems in their campaign beyond the divisiveness of protectionism in local Unionist ranks. The protectionist case relied on representing the state of the local economy, especially jute and linen, as parlous. However, at the time the election was fought the evidence of an economic upswing was clear. During the campaign itself the Courier, without comment, published an article saying ‘not for many a year has the shipbuilding industry in Dundee been in such a flourishing condition as it is at present’.11 But the key question was the state of jute. Here the Unionists sought to back up their protectionist case by citing the Report of the Tariff Commission, which conveniently came out during the course of the election campaign, and was given significant coverage in the Courier.12 As discussed in Chapter 3, this Report stressed the strength of continental European and Calcutta competition, and proposed retaliation against European producers along with a discriminatory export duty on raw jute from Bengal, and the Dundee Unionist candidates supported both these policies.13 The Unionists attempted, then, to present a bleak picture of the state of jute, with the Courier using the Tariff Reform Report to allege that ‘the trade of today is small compared with that of thirty or forty years ago, and is ever tending to decrease’, while Shackleton, using data ending in 1904, also claimed the industry was ‘declining’.14 But such claims fitted poorly with the upswing in the industry already apparent in late 1905, and which was to make 1906 ‘the best year for jute since, perhaps, the American Civil War’.15 Finally on the Unionist campaign, it is worth noting how little direct discussion there was on how to deal with Indian competition. India largely figured only in terms of the argument for putting a discriminatory duty on its raw jute, and this was linked with a great focus on Germany as the key problem for the city’s jute producers. A typical Courier report headed ’Jute in Germany’ stressed that industry’s prosperity, before going on to ask: ‘Were Germans owners of India would they allow us their raw material on like terms and allow us to cut them out of the markets of the world? I say no.’16



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II The converse of Unionism’s electoral weakness in Scotland was the strength of Liberalism. As in England, after 1903, Chamberlain’s raising of the banner of tariff reform strengthened the Liberals, but starting from an already stronger position.17 Scottish liberalism tended to be more radical than its English counterpart, and more ready to embrace the ‘New Liberalism’ after the turn of the century.18 This generalisation would broadly apply in Dundee, as discussed in the previous chapter. Leng, Liberal MP from 1889 until 1906, was originally a strong Radical, his 1889 platform including payment of MPs, triennial parliaments and adult suffrage as well as free education, land nationalisation and legal regulation of working hours. As Walker suggests, ‘It is quite certain that no Labour candidate in 1889 would have confronted the Dundee electorate with a bolder programme’.19 But Leng became a Liberal imperialist, and this offended significant pro-Boer sentiments in the city, leading to liberal abstentions which helped the Unionists to cut his majority in 1900.20 He announced his retirement in 1905, so that in the election the following year the Liberal candidates were Edmund Robertson, MP since 1885, along with a London stockbroker, Henry Robson. Robertson had been a junior minister and much less involved in local political arguments than Leng, but he too seems to have lost some of his radicalism in later years. Like Leng he broadly supported the Boer War, and, for example, opposed women’s suffrage during the 1906 campaign.21 The Liberals were clear that locally, as nationally, the election was about free trade. The initial Liberal election leaflet for the campaign began with: We denounce the attempts now being made to re-introduce Protection into the country, whether under the disguise of ‘Retaliation’ or ‘Colonial Preference’. Our country has flourished, and is still flourishing, under the policy of Free Trade, and we desire to maintain and defend that policy.22

This support for free trade was extended to free movement of capital. Hence, when Robson was asked at an election meeting whether he would ‘support a method of restricting British capital from being so lavishly used abroad in building up every other country but this’, he replied in the negative ‘because it meant an immense addition to the wealth of the country. Mr Robertson also replied, and said that British capital going abroad meant British goods going abroad’.23 Asked more explicitly ‘Is it not the fact that the sinking of capital in Indian jute mills by Dundee merchants has crippled the jute industry in Dundee?’ Robson gave the reply: ‘That is a question you know more about than I do’.24 The only other time Indian competition is reported as having been raised at a Liberal election meeting, Robson was asked about the application of the Factory Act in Calcutta, and said ‘he would be quite willing to suggest to Mr Morley that this matter should be

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inquired into, and to see if the Act at present in force could not be made more stringent in its provisions’.25 To judge by the pages of the Advertiser, the Liberal campaign focused as much attention on Wilkie, the Labour candidate, as on the Unionists. The reason for this was not that Wilkie could be presented as a radical socialist. Indeed, Liberals went out of their way to stress his moderation, and that he stood for a policy agenda no different from that they themselves supported, or, as Robertson put it, his policies ‘appeared to be those of a rather moderate Liberal, certainly they are not extreme’.26 Rather, the purported reason for so much hostility was that Wilkie’s election would end Dundee’s place as a Liberal city, and that he was not a reliable supporter of a future Liberal government because his first loyalty would be to a Labour ‘caucus’. This was linked to the argument that, as a trade unionist, Wilkie’s votes would come from both Conservative and Liberal members of unions, and therefore he would not be able to always vote with the Liberals.27 After Wilkie defeated Robson for the second seat, the Advertiser published a bad-tempered attack on him for using ‘novel and sensational electoral methods that belong rather to England than to Scotland, and do not improve our political atmosphere’. Further, ‘aided by Tyneside henchmen, Mr Wilkie has changed the accepted order of battle without bettering it. It is not quite agreeable to find political contests in Dundee moved from the old ground of purely intellectual appeal.’28 Part of this diatribe reflected the fact that Labour spent more than twice as much as each Liberal candidate did in fighting the seat, and mobilised supporters much more effectively than the Liberals, amongst whom there were bitter post-defeat recriminations about how the party was run.29 Wilkie, a trade-unionist, born in Fife, but now working in Tyneside, personified many of the tensions of Lib-Labism.30 He had been at the founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee, forerunner of the British Labour Party, in 1900. On the other hand, he had tried for the Liberal nomination in Dundee (or at least Liberal support for his standing under the Labour banner), and only after he was refused did he stand on a Labour platform.31 Wilkie was endorsed by what was now called the Trades and Labour Council. At his first public meeting of the 1906 campaign Wilkie claimed that ‘his socialist friends complained that he was not a socialist, and now his Liberal friends complained that he was one’, and went on to describe talk of socialism in the election as a ‘red herring’.32 While it is true, as the Liberals suggested, that Wilkie’s policy ideas were ‘moderate Liberal’, he did attempt to put a different slant on the election than Robertson and Robson did. Above all, he argued, the election was ‘not a question of Protection and Free Trade. It was not to be a one-horse election if the industrial people had their say. There were many questions affecting them, socially and industrially, that needed to be considered.’ When he spelt out his priorities,



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these were ‘taxation based on ability to pay’, ‘free trade’ and ‘the right to work’.33 When asked about tariffs, Wilkie’s response was notable for a narrowly focused realism rather than a broad ideological defence of free trade: I have the greatest sympathy with my fellow working-men who think they are suffering from tariff barriers of other nations. The difficulty is that any remedy yet proposed amounts to this, that the cure is worse than the disease, and therefore we cannot favour a greater barrier or heavier rate on the foodstuffs of the people.34

In response to attacks upon him from the Liberals, Wilkie stressed that he ‘had been a Liberal all his life, but he went a great deal further now’. On another occasion he said: ‘I have been Labour all my life. I was a Liberal because I thought the Liberal Party would assist the workers, but I found it would not. Now I am for Labour, and Labour alone’.35 These statements are not necessarily contradictory if ‘labour’ is taken to mean not a political ideology but a class interest, an interest which Wilkie was coming to believe was not well served by the upper and middle classes who dominated amongst Liberal parliamentarians, an interest which could be well served only by electing working-class MPs, such as himself. Wilkie represented a very class-conscious (but very un-Marxist) politics, which later generations would call ‘labourism’. For him it was vital that labour be directly represented in Parliament because ‘during the last ten years the legislature has done something for almost every corner of the globe. The interests of brewers, distillers and churches, had been very well attended to, but very little had been done for labour. That was really the crux of the General ­election – not Free Trade or Protection.’36 The Liberal fear that such an appeal might be popular amongst workingclass Tories was shown by the election results to have some considerable force, as almost a thousand of his voters also voted for a Unionist candidate.37 In addition, almost a third of his voters were ‘plumpers’ – they had voted for Wilkie and no one else.38 In that sense Wilkie had ‘broken the mould’ of Dundee politics by effectively challenging the cross-class alliances which kept both the other parties, but especially the Liberals, in a strong position. Three points may be made about this. First, it is doubtful whether Wilkie would have won if he had been, and was seen to have been, a strong socialist.39 Secondly, the extent to which the mould was ‘broken’ should not be exaggerated; he was far out-polled by Robertson, and beat Robson by only 700 votes – and Robson, an elderly London stockbroker, nominated at the last moment, was hardly the Liberal figure best placed to hold off Wilkie’s challenge. Thirdly, despite these qualifications, Wilkie’s success can be seen as part of a shift in the city’s broader politics, for which other evidence can be found. First, the changes in trade unionism. Helped no doubt by Wilkie’s own union, the shipwrights, sponsoring his candidacy, there seems to have been

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no evident dissension about supporting him within the Trades Council. The year 1906 was also important in seeing the creation of a new union for jute workers, the DDUJFW, which arose in part from a concerted effort by the Trades Council and the ILP to displace Williamson’s union. The opportunity to create a new body partly arose from the period of prosperity in the industry from late 1905, which led, as usual, to claims for workers to share in the benefits. Initially this pressure resulted in a spontaneous strike by some of the industry’s spinners, but Williamson’s intervention served to undermine his credibility when he responded to the unrest by proposing a plebiscite, but also denounced the strikers’ actions.40 In March 1906 a meeting was held to found the DDUJFW, partly in the face of intransigence by the employers, who had given a 5 per cent wage increase to the spinners, but refused one to the weavers, and, as the dispute continued, locked out all the workers. As well as local support, the new union was greatly aided by the role of Mary Macarthur, Secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League, who successfully urged affiliation to the General Federation of Trade Unions.41 When it was proposed that no married women should be allowed as office holders in the union, ‘Miss Macarthur demurred, expressing the opinion that as married women were among the workers they should be represented. She strongly deprecated married women having to work in the mills, and said they hoped to increase men’s wages to enable them to support their wives at home.’42 The creation of the DDUJFW as a new and viable body was, as Walker argues, made possible by the fact that ‘in 1906 there was a web of progressive forces in the city anxious and able to assist’, and this in turn was linked a sense of growing strength in the local labour movement.43 This sense of strength is also evident in local politics. Kemp argues persuasively that class-consciousness in municipal politics rose sharply from about 1904, when claims to be representatives of the workers became a prominent (if not always plausible) part of local elections. In the following year the first Labour Councillor was elected, along with Edwin Scrymgeour, the prohibitionist, but who always combined his prohibitionism with his own brand of socialism.44 One other strand in the city’s contemporary politics needs to be noted, the publication of the DSU Report in 1905. The DSU was a predominantly middle-class philanthropic body, some of whose leading members were socialists and/or anxious to encourage the growth of trade unionism as one way of seeking to reduce poverty; two of these were at the founding meeting of the DDUJFW.45 The DSU Report had been deployed during the 1906 election, but less than one might expect from its potential relevance to the issues at stake. Unionists did not cite it in support of the alleged lamentable state of the city in the face of free trade. Robson for the Liberals cited its evidence on housing to support the case for a tax on unused land.46 Surprisingly, there are no accounts of Wilkie using the Report.



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The 1906 election in Dundee was a victory for free trade, and a victory for a new class-consciousness, but one without a sharp ideological edge for many of its adherents. Socialism, in many varieties, was a growing force in the city, but still very much a minority one. Partly this reflected the limited franchise for Dundee’s working-class men. The vote was linked to a property qualification, with the main issue being a minimum rental value of the property, or to being a lodger paying above a minimum rent. The complexity of the rules left much scope for geographical variation, and retrospective arguments about the effects of the rules on different classes.47 In Dundee the levels of poverty and patterns of housing tenure reduced the working-class electorate substantially compared with many parts of Britain. In 1900 only fifty per cent of adult males in Dundee had the vote, the lowest proportion of any substantial town in Scotland.48 While some of those excluded would have been young men of all classes, it is difficult to see in Dundee how the system could not have especially disadvantaged the potential working-class Labour voter.49 Certainly both Unionists and Liberals thought so, given the considerable efforts they put into resisting the electoral registration of lodgers (the most contentious category) supported by Labour. For example, in 1907 Labour put in 182 claims for registration on behalf of lodgers, but 172 were rejected after the other parties objected.50 On the issue of competition from India for the city’s staple industry, strikingly little was said in the election. The Unionist and Liberal positions have been noted above. The newspaper reports of the time show little evidence that Wilkie for Labour felt the need to give much prominence to the issue, or that his questioners at the many meetings he spoke at raised it with him. There seems to be only one account of his raising the issue when he said, ‘What was necessary was the placing, as far as practicable, of India in the same position as this country as regards Factory Acts’.51 On his general attitude to non-white workers we have only his response when asked about Chinese labour immigration into South Africa. He said he was opposed to this because, after its abolition, ‘more white men would get employment, and there would be more opportunities for the Kaffir, who was a very good workman if treated decently’.52 III The by-election in Dundee in 1908 took place in very different circumstances to the general election of 1906, a background which gave dramatic evidence of the dangers of the ‘globalised’ nature of Dundee’s economy. In 1906 heavy borrowing by US banks in London to finance a domestic boom led to a rise in the British bank rate.53 Through 1907 any adverse effects from this domestic monetary tightening were offset in Dundee by a booming demand for jute in the American market. But by early 1908 jute exports were falling due to the end of the speculative boom in the USA, which was accompanied by a

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major stock exchange crash on Wall Street. Dundee’s exports of piece goods to the USA fell from 28.1 million yards in the first four months of 1907 to 17.7 million in the same period of 1908 – a fall of almost forty per cent.54 The Economist commented: ‘The old truth, which is so easily overlooked, that prosperity in one country creates rather than destroys prosperity in its neighbour, has seldom found a more telling illustration than this decline in British trade, which is directly traceable to the commercial troubles of the USA’.55 Unsurprisingly, this context made arguments about the basis of the future prosperity of the city extremely prominent in the by-election. That election was occasioned by the retirement of the sitting Liberal MP, Robertson, which was followed by the candidacy being offered to Churchill as soon as his defeat in Manchester North West was announced, he having had to resign that seat on promotion to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Unsurprisingly, the story of the contest has largely been told from the point of view of the Liberal candidate.56 Churchill’s initial address to the electors of Dundee set out his agenda in the following terms: ‘Upon the maintenance of our free trade system, upon the Temperance cause and its conflict with the organized forces of the Liquor Trade, upon the hope of a Concordat in Education . . . upon the Land Reform in town and country, upon South Africa, upon Ireland I vow myself entirely unrepentant’.57 Churchill set out the issues of the campaign in detail in a number of set-piece speeches which were subsequently published as a pamphlet under the title ‘For Liberalism and Free Trade’.58 In the first of these speeches, Churchill acknowledged the current ‘set-back in our commercial activities’, but argued this did not alter the basic case for free trade, and that protection would ‘allow people for private profit to impose taxation upon bread and meat’ and ‘will cheat and starve your children’. He went on to stress the importance of free trade to cheap food, and to say that ‘some day’ the taxes on sugar and tea imports would be abolished like those on bread and meat. He also attacked tariff reform as bringing about a reversal of the long-running trend towards more tax being raised from direct as opposed to indirect sources, which meant shifting taxes on to the poor.59 In this speech there was no explicit attack on the Labour party, though an implicit one on Labour’s Right to Work Bill as a solution to unemployment, though Churchill held out the possibility of some counter-cyclical public works, such as afforestation, to provide jobs for the unskilled. However, the next speech was explicitly aimed at drawing a dividing line between liberalism and socialism. This involved a broad ideological critique of socialism, albeit couched generally in moderate tones as an appeal to the need for a combination of collectivism and individualism, rather than socialism’s abolition of the former.60 His speech to businessmen addressed in most detail the protectionist issue, including retaliatory tariffs. In the light of Dundee Unionist proposals (below) what is notable is the explicit argument against retaliating against Germany, stressing how low German tariffs were, much



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lower than in the USA or Russia, and how, apart from the unlikelihood of retaliatory tariffs yielding significant economic benefits, they would ‘cause ill-will between great and friendly peoples, who have no quarrel, and no reason to quarrel’.61 In his eve of poll speech Churchill again focused on free trade: You know what would be the result of a Tory Tariff reform victory . . . ­corruption at home, aggression to cover it abroad; the trickery of tariff juggles; the tyranny of a wealth-fed party machine; sentiment by the bucketful – patriotism and Imperialism by the Imperial pint – an open hand at the public exchequer, an open door at the public house – Dear food for the millions, cheap labour for the millionaire . . .62

Churchill’s own account of the election stresses the split into an anti-Tory and anti-Labour phase: ‘At the end of the first week when the Liberals had been marshalled effectively against the Conservatives, it was time to turn upon the Socialists’.63 But the attacks on the socialists were accompanied by a recognition of the supportive role of Labour MPs in the Commons.64 On the whole, the tone of the speeches was much more virulently anti-Tory than anti-Labour. Churchill clearly sought to make free trade the key issue of the campaign, evidenced not only by the speeches noted above but by other smaller scale statements during the campaign.65 Unsurprisingly, Churchill’s opponents taxed him with inconsistency, given his previous status as a Conservative MP.66 But on what he presented as the key issue of the campaign, free trade, Churchill seems never to have altered his views significantly. In Peter Clarke’s words: ‘Churchill . . . having mastered the essential workings of the system, he remained enraptured by the “beautiful precision” with which free trade and the Gold Standard complemented each other’.67 While Churchill sought to put free trade at the centre of the election debate, Baxter, the Unionist candidate, focused less attention upon it, though his leader, Balfour, saw it as the key issue.68 Baxter presented tariff reform as the second most important election issue, his election address putting it behind the question of Ireland.69 However, later he said: He stood chiefly because he was determined that the people of Dundee, amongst whom his life’s work had been spent, and especially the working classes of the city, should at least have the opportunity of expressing their opinion upon a fiscal system which, in his view, was gravely detrimental to their interests.70

Despite this assertion, Baxter’s position on tariff reform during the election was circumspect. In his election address he wrote: ‘The frequent Unemployment of willing workers is in my view largely due to the want of such reform, and the Leader of the Unionist party has given the strongest pledges that reform would involve no increase in the cost of living’.71 He attacked dumping, but as a prospect in times of slump rather than an

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actuality.72 The specific focus in his pronouncements was on retaliation against Germany, hence Churchill’s gibes about Unionist approaches to that country. In relation to the question of Indian competition, Baxter was notably vague. When asked about the imposition of a levy on raw jute exports he said he was not sure, because ‘we would need to take the Indians with us on that’.73 In a speech on 5 May he focused entirely on tariffs as the problem causing the industry’s difficulties.74 Two days later he argued that had they in Dundee had fair play, equal competition and equal terms they would have increased the trade enormously. Of course, he knew all about the competition with Calcutta, but apart from that altogether in his own time they used to export great quantities of jute manufactured goods to foreign European countries.

At the same meeting, when asked whether ‘the conditions of jute workers in the East were as good as the conditions of jute workers at home’ he accepted that ‘not only had the Dundee manufacturers to compete against tariffs, but he had to compete against countries whose people were not working under the same beneficial conditions and Factory acts as the workers of this country’.75 While Baxter went quite lightly on the tariff issue, and when he did raise it focused mainly on retaliation against Germany, the issue came to the fore because, it would seem, of the activities of the Tariff Reform League. The League had expanded significantly in Scotland, rising from fourteen branches in 1905 to fifty-five by 1908, going up to 182 by 1910.76 Its role in Dundee in 1908 is suggested by the leaflets it distributed. One of them began with the clear recognition that ‘It is not Free Trade which is crippling the Dundee Jute Trade, but Indian competition in neutral markets’. But the answer to this was not action directed at Indian competition but the negotiation of ‘Preferential Trade with our great Colonies like Canada and Australia’.77 What is not at all clear in this is why India, as part of an imperial system, should not capture the bulk of these imperial markets. Another leaflet stressed the loss of Dundee’s export markets in tariff-protected continental Europe, emphasised these countries’ absolute dependence upon raw jute from the Empire, and asked ‘why should we not resume our power of fiscal negotiation with the view of trying to have such Tariffs reduced?’78 These leaflets suggest how wary tariff reformers were of the Indian question, seeking to find protective devices with the least impact on that country. The League was probably behind the ‘scare story’, headlined ‘Dundee Jute Industry hit by Tariffs’ and ‘Hundreds of Workers to be Thrown Idle’ published by the Courier on 7 May, which reported two jute manufacturers as having to lay workers off because of American tariffs. The same story was repeated the following day, but on neither occasion was the company involved identified by name. But on 9 May letters to the paper named the companies alleged to have suffered on this way as Malcolm, Ogilvie and



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Company and J. Mollison Kidd.79 However, the Liberals in the city were quick to denounce this argument, stressing that problems in the American market were due to the depression in the (protectionist) USA rather than any changes in tariffs, and Churchill too denounced the ‘dodges’ of the League.80 Interestingly, Baxter distanced himself from this story, denying knowledge of its origins.81 IV While Wilkie in 1906 had run as a Labour candidate and defeated a Liberal, he had clearly seen himself and been seen by most Liberals as a ‘Lib-Lab’ candidate, and he was soon reconciled with official Liberalism in the city. Conversely, the candidature of Stuart for Labour in 1908 was regarded with hostility not only by Liberals but also by many Labour people. In the wake of Stuart’s defeat the political issues surrounding his candidacy were publicly aired in some detail. According to his own account, Stuart was invited by the Dundee Labour Representation Committee to stand for the seat, and this was endorsed by the Scottish Workers Representation Committee (SWRC). Ramsay MacDonald for the London Labour Party denied any jurisdiction in the matter. However, Stuart alleged, Wilkie was opposed to his candidature, and MacDonald offered a ‘personal’ opinion in the same vein. Stuart argued this division had led to limited support on the ground for his campaign, which he suggested had cost Labour the seat.82 MacDonald replied to these allegations, calling Stuart a ‘little back biter’, and suggested he was invited to fight the seat only because his postal worker union offered to fund the whole campaign. In his view, Stuart had ignored the strategic issues raised by two-member seats, and shown disloyalty to the Labour cause.83 The action of Stuart and his support from the SWRC so worried the London Labour party that it decided it would run its own candidates in Scotland, a decision that precipitated the merger of the SWRC with the Party on the latter’s terms.84 In his commentary on this matter, Wilkie stressed that he had always sought a single seat for Labour in the city, and had not been consulted on Stuart’s candidature, but if he had been he would have opposed it. Along the way he stressed that he was a representative of all Dundonians, not one class. Also, that he was not a socialist and neither were the workers of Dundee: ‘if there is anything more definite, it is that the trade unionists of Great Britain are not yet socialists, and least of all the Scottish Workmen’.85 These exchanges reveal some of the dilemmas of Labour politics in prewar Britain, and in Dundee in particular. While there was no formal agreement in Scotland about dividing two-member seats between Liberals and Labour, many senior Labour figures believed such a division was strategically correct. In this light, opposing Churchill was an error, which threatened rather than

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furthered Labour’s advance. This calculation was based on estimates of Labour’s electoral strength, and in Scotland the evidence is that that support showed no clear signs of growing in the years around 1908. Dundee’s ILP membership fell from 150 in 1908 to eighty or ninety in 1912, and began to increase again only in 1914.86 There is little evidence that Dundee, like the rest of Scotland, was seeing growing electoral support for Labour in the years before 1914. In the two elections of 1910 Churchill and Wilkie effectively sustained a Lib-Lab alliance, with the great bulk of Wilkie’s voters giving their second vote to Churchill.87 Setting aside these questions of electoral support, what did Labour stand for in Dundee? Wilkie was quite clear: he stood for ‘direct representation of the industrial classes in the House of Commons’.88 But on policy matters his stance was indistinguishable from the ‘New Liberalism’ represented by Churchill. In Parliament Wilkie strongly supported the Liberal government, and in policy terms he seems to have had no noticeable differences with Liberalism. In 1910 he was effectively supported by the Liberals, when they decided not to stand a second candidate against him, the debate on this being settled by arguments about his loyalty to the Liberal cause.89 In contrast, Stuart stood for Labour, attacking Liberal seats and asserting electoral independence. The strength of the Labour party lay in being an independent party, and so long as they maintained that, and so long as they were able to probe both parties and make them do not exactly as they ought to do, but as they wanted them to do, they would be able to get many political reforms.90

But it is not clear that on policy matters he was any different from Wilkie. Stuart was unambiguously for free trade: Tariff reform was said to be a cure for unemployment, but why did those who said so not tell them why there was so much unemployment in countries where tariff reform . . . was in force. They had been told that the unemployment in America was due to financial corruption. His opinion was that corruption was due to Protection. He need not waste time over the Tariff reform arguments, they were so much nonsense they were hardly worth touching upon. The Labour Party were for Free Trade, but they did not think it was the only or the chief thing.

In relation to jute, Stuart put the main emphasis on Indian competition derived from child labour, and his solution to the problem was ‘the application of the British factory Acts to the Indian mills’.91 On another occasion Stuart spelt out his interpretation of the position of jute: ‘The Dundee workers had first of all been exploited, and after the profits had been wrung from them Dundee capitalists had built mills in India in which they in turn exploited Indian labour’. The answer was again the application of the Factory Acts to India: ‘if these Factory acts were so applied child labour in the Indian mills should be abolished, or, at all events,

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its worst feature abolished, more adult labour would be employed, and by a kind of reflex action the prosperity of the workers in Dundee would be increased’.92 On 8 May The Times reported that: Mr Stuart is also making capital out of the stagnation in the local industry. As a free-trader he supports the contention that what Dundee suffers from is not so much the tariffs raised against her manufactures by the other great commercial nations, as the unequal economic and legislative conditions existing in Calcutta as compared with Dundee. He therefore advocates the extension to India of the British Factory Acts, limiting the hours of adult labour and their employment in India.93

V In retrospect it is hard to be surprised by Churchill’s victory (Table 5.2). Dundee had long been a Liberal stronghold, and having a Cabinet Minister as the candidate probably helped the cause. Personal position may have helped outweigh the negative effects of coming from outside Dundee; Unionists might characterise their opponents in 1908 as ‘two carpetbaggers and a crank’, but on this occasion Baxter’s local origins seem not to have counted for much.94 While there were political divisions in the Irish community, the Home Rule vote seems to have trumped the concern with denominational education which had hurt Churchill in Manchester.95 The election was preceded, two days previously, by the budget which introduced Old Age Pensions and cut the Sugar Duty. The second of these was especially resonant in Dundee. As The Times noted: Doubtless the reduction in the sugar tax was framed some time ago for appeasement of recalcitrant supporters of the Ministry, for budgets are not prepared in a day. But it is an odd coincidence that this measure of relief should be announced on the eve of the election at Dundee, where there are important sugar industries which will benefit by the change.96

These measures seemed to suggest the viability of overall Liberal political economy; measures of social reform could be funded while they continued Table 5.2  Dundee by-election result, 1908 Candidate

Party

Votes

Churchill Baxter Stuart Scrymgeour

Liberal Unionist Labour Prohibitionist

7,079 4,370 4,014 655

Source:  Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, p. 302

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to cut remaining protective barriers to cheap food. So though, in the absence of opinion polls, we cannot be sure why Churchill won, there seem to be lots of explanations which together add up to a persuasive story. We can regard this as, above all, a victory for free trade. Certainly, the Unionists in the city acted very circumspectly on this issue, however much national leaders might have wanted to see Dundee as a potential further victory for protectionism, following their defeat of Churchill in Manchester North West.97 As in Lancashire, it seems clear that many Dundee jute capitalists became protectionists because they had become Unionists for some other reason – opposition to Home Rule, to heavier taxation or proimperialist sentiment – rather than views on trade driving their political allegiance.98 Despite the efforts of the Tariff Reform League to sharpen up the arguments, Baxter remained vague on the issue. The Advertiser was his political opponent, but its comments on his position appear fair: We have a candidate representing the orthodox Unionist and Tariff Reform policy: a candidate by no means positive as to his courses, prone to qualify proposals regarding which his leaders are unhesitating, anything but sure that a particular cause will have a particular effect, but, since he must follow where his party goes, he is a candidate bound to the protective and preferential taxes on bread and meat, against which Mr Churchill ‘bangs, bars and bolts the door’.99

This equivocation left little in the Unionist position that could be offered to address the problems of jute caused by Calcutta’s competition. Baxter was sceptical about the idea of helping Dundee by legislative improvement of labour conditions in India, so in the absence of a clear protective policy against India he was left with no clear position on how to improve the prospects of the industry. For Labour, there was, in combination with support for free trade, the proposal to help Dundee jute by legislative action to improve labour conditions in India. This idea was rejected by Churchill in the following words: I do not think it would be possible to deal with the question in the gentlemen’s mind by extending British factory acts to India, the conditions in India being so different from those here. But certainly I should be very glad to see humane legislation introduced to prevent evil conditions in Indian factories. That must be done by the Indian Government in the interests of the Indian people. I may say that this is a question I have been asked several times, and in connection with which there seems to be a misunderstanding. People seem to think Factory Acts are a deadweight we have to carry. Not at all. It is better to have healthy conditions of labour than unhealthy.100

In 1908 the Liberals offered Dundee a tried and tested response to g­ lobalisation – free trade. The Unionists talked vaguely of protection, but were constrained by the fact that their major competitor was in the Empire, while the main markets were outside it. Protection of the home market was



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largely irrelevant, seeking to retaliate against Germany almost as marginal, and no protectionist scheme emerged that looked able to give Dundee substantial help. Labour could snipe at the slow pace of reform, including the measures announced in the budget, but its support for the general stance of the Liberal government, and especially free trade, was unequivocal.101 After the poll result, The Times commented on Labour: I am convinced they were absolutely sincere in their belief that that the discontent of the jute workers with the low wages and other hardships of their employment would lead to a striking upheaval, as they phrased it, of labour against capital. How hopelessly wrong they were in their estimate of the forces to which they appealed is perhaps the most remarkable feature of the election.102

But we might see that failure as also bringing out the difficulties of Labour in finding a plausible policy response to Dundee’s globalisation. We know little directly about the views of jute workers on this ­by-election. The newly created union ‘shared Wilkie’s careful inactivity’, believing support for Stuart would threaten Liberal support for Wilkie.103 Of course, most of the union’s members would have been disenfranchised, because they were either women or men who did not qualify for the vote. Emergent Labour in Dundee, while increasingly pursuing separate parliamentary representation, de facto allied itself to liberal economics. Globalisation was effectively embraced, rather than challenged. Concern with Indian competition showed itself in some support for enhanced Indian factory legislation, but in the class-conscious politics of the 1900s there was no chance that this would unite employers and workers in the industry. Of course, we cannot equate this political failure with contentment. The Times’ complacent words, quoted above, were mistaken in believing there would be no uprising of labour against capital. In the years between the 1908 election and the Great War there was to be a ‘striking upheaval’, but, as noted in Chapter 4, this was to be shown in wage disputes and industrial unrest rather than in parliamentary politics.

Figure 1   Victoria Arch, Dundee dockside, built in 1849–52, demolished in 1964 to clear the site for the Tay road bridge. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 2   Women cutting raw jute in Bengal, no date. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 3    Raw jute prices. These prices were crucial to the profitability of Juteopolis, and fluctuated violently. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 4   Baxter Park sign. The park was provided by a major jute and linen producer for the benefit of well-behaved Dundonians. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 5   Workers’ thanks to their employer. Such sentiments would have been less common in the twentieth century. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 6    Workers leaving Caldrum jute works, Dundee, c.1900. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 7   Inside a Dundee jute factory in 1908. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 8   A new use for jute: inspecting jute for linoleum backing, 1913. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 9   A welcome to Dundee for the King-Emperor George V in 1914. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 10   A suitably gloomy view of the rooftops of Juteopolis in the 1930s. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 11   A more optimistic view: plans to modernise Eagle jute mill, c.1930. (Photograph courtesy of University of Dundee Archive Services)

Figure 12   Jute no more: a derelict jute mill in Dundee today. (Photograph by Beth Lord)

Chapter 6 War, Recession and the Response on the Left

The First World War fundamentally undermined the imperial and global economy described in Chapter 2. Given how reliant jute was on that economy, it is wholly unsurprising that war had radical implications for the jute industries of both Dundee and Calcutta. In the short run both were seriously affected by the economic priorities of the war, which brought sharp increases in demand (along with falls in output in continental Europe) and enormous increases in profitability in both the industries. But in the decade following the war it became clear that Dundee’s relative position had deteriorated starkly compared with its Indian competitor. Responses to this deterioration were profoundly shaped by the fact that the war also fundamentally changed the dynamics of the imperial relationship between Britain and India. The first section of this chapter outlines the economic impact of the war on Juteopolis and its rival. The second analyses the shifting balance of power in the imperial relationship. The third summarises the responses in Dundee to this new situation on the part of the jute employers, down to the pivotal year, 1931. The final part focuses special attention on the response on the Left to the new situation of the 1920s, as in the postwar decade the jute unions became, at least initially, more powerful, and the Labour party came to dominate Dundee’s parliamentary politics. This last discussion allows us to place the dilemmas posed for Dundee by Calcutta’s competition in the context of the national debate about how those on the Left should respond to the need to sustain employment in Britain’s staple industries, without advocating a simple protectionist strategy against low-wage competition. I After initial uncertainties in 1914, the war brought Dundee jute to a level of prosperity not seen since the American Civil War.1 As in other industries vital to the war effort, the government incrementally extended controls over jute to prevent the manufacturers taking too much advantage of their newfound bargaining power. Manufactured exports and raw jute imports were controlled, and later maximum prices imposed.2 In order to restrict demand for scarce shipping space, from May 1917 the export of jute goods from Calcutta to Britain was prohibited. However, the same shipping scarcity

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put limits on Dundee’s production capacity because of controls on raw jute imports. As an indicator of wartime activity, retained imports of raw jute rose from an average of around 200,000 tons per annum in the prewar decade to 295,000 in 1915, before falling to a low of 82,000 in 1917, with a wartime average (1915-19) of around 180,000 tons.3 The labour expended per unit of imported jute was however increased, as there was a big expansion of bag-sewing to provide for the wartime demand for sandbags.4 The wartime demand for jute goods meant increased demand for labour at a time when alternative opportunities were opening up for Dundee’s workers, with expansions of munitions production in the city, alongside mobilisation of workers for the forces.5 In addition, women were drawn into previous male preserves, such as on the trams and trains, though this shift had to be fought for against strong resistance, and was very much seen as a concession purely for the duration of the war.6 Production of munitions was mainly in two facilities, one producing acetone (a component of explosives) from wood distillation, and one a National Shell Factory. The latter was established in part of a jute mill owned by Grimonds, and at its peak (October 1918) employed 427 workers, three-quarters of them women.7 There was a considerable influx of women workers from the fishing industry, which was severely hit by war conditions, but overall the shift towards a tight labour market meant there was considerable upward pressure on wages, leading to serious strikes in the jute industry as employers resisted workers’ claims, but resulting in an underlying upward trend in pay levels.8 The main jute union (the DDUJFW) flourished in these conditions, doubling its membership between August 1917 and August 1918, to reach twenty thousand members.9 The restrictions on raw jute supplies led to agreement to restrict production by cutting working hours, and it was especially in negotiating the terms of this, including compensation to the workers for hours lost, that the DDUJFW was most effective.10 The idea of cutting hours as a response to raw material shortages was initially resisted by the employers, who wanted to reduce the numbers employed. But the Ministry of Labour supported the union, arguing that there were few men of military age who could be freed by a reduction in numbers, ‘while the resulting unemployment of some thousands of other workpeople, mostly women, in the middle of winter, with prices so high, is too serious to contemplate’.11 ‘Thousands’ was an exaggeration, as the employers estimated that the reduction in demand for labour would be around 1,340, but they accepted that 91 per cent of those affected would be women, and only 4 per cent men of military age.12 There was strong support amongst the workers for short-time working, with a union poll showing a majority of 10,181 to 1,377 for ‘stoppage of work’, and after considerable resistance from the employers, but Ministry support, the union got its way.13 When the war ended the employers sought to reverse the concessions made on working hours, especially by re-establishing Saturday working. This



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led to a prolonged struggle, eventually lost by the workers, but the settlement of the dispute did involve a substantial cut in the working week from fifty-five to forty-eight hours.14 Alongside hours and wages, rents were a potent cause of unrest in Dundee, as in other parts of Scotland during the war.15 A successful battle was fought to restrict rent increases, suggesting how far the wartime conditions had shifted bargaining power towards labour. Also reflective of labour’s enhanced wartime strength was the extension to the industry of Trade Boards, regulating wages, despite employers’ objections.16 Churchill backed the Dundee employers in seeking to resist the Trade Board, arguing that ‘The trade itself is under intense competition from India. The capital sunk in the Indian mills was not subject to the British income tax or Excess Profits Duty . . . Behind them stand relays of Indian labour capable of earning less than one third of the present wage scale.’17 But these objections were ignored and, beginning its work in December 1919, the Board initially decreed improved, standard wages in the industry.18 However, the onset of the postwar recession in 1920 brought an end to this upward trend, and there were successive wage cuts in 1921, 1922 and 1923.19 The last of these coincided with a major strike in the industry, which, eventually lost by the union, emphasised the return to much less favourable conditions for the industry, conditions which were to become chronic.20 The wartime boom was especially favourable to profits for the Dundee jute employers, as rises in neither wages nor raw materials kept pace with price rises, even though the latter were controlled. Some idea of the scale of this is given by Jones et al.: ‘The pre-war standard of profit, as adjusted for excess profits duty, of six Dundee companies is stated to have been £344,464, whereas their profits for 1919, before providing for income tax or excess profits duty, were £1,224,139 17s 11d’.21 As in other temporarily prosperous staple industries in Britain, this profitability stimulated r­ e-capitalisation and amalgamation. The most radical of these saw the creation of Jute Industries Limited, which amalgamated the interests of six of Dundee’s major jute firms, Cox’s, Grimonds, Gilroys, Walkers, Kyd’s and Bells Cox’s and Grimonds were the two biggest firms in the industry, and the new entity controlled around a third of total output.22 The stimulus for this amalgamation seems to have come from a Dundee accounting firm, R. C. Thomson, which wanted to fend off the return to the ‘cut-throat’ competition of the prewar years, and the desire of some owners to cash in their wartime capital gains. Thomsons approached Clarence Hatry, a company promoter later jailed for fraud. The prospectus for the company held out the prospect of a profitable future on the basis of increased demand for linoleum, along with economies of scale and the efficiencies arising from recent investment. Even at the time the Economist expressed scepticism over this venture, and the subsequent financial performance was poor, with repeated losses through the 1920s, and a major capital reconstruction in 1928.23

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Table 6.1  Jute Trade Board decisions on weekly wages, 1920–37 Adult males 21 and over

Adult females 18 and over

June 1920 September 1921 February 1922 February 1923 June 1925 January 1927 May 1928 May 1930 May 1931 May 1933

50s 43s 9d 40s 7½d 39s 1d 40s 7½d 39s 1d 40s 7½d 39s 1d 37s 6d 37s 6d

32s 28s 0d 26s 0d 25s 0d 26s 0d 25s 0d 26s 0d 25s 0d 24s 0d 24s 0d

May 1937

39s 1d

25s 0d

Change on original rates (%) 12.50 218.75 221.875 218.75 221.875 218.75 221.875 225.00 0% (cuts in wages for younger workers) 221.875

Source:  DUA: MS 84/2 AJSM Annual Report 1939, appendix H

In addition to Jute Industries, in the same period Low and Bonar was created as the second biggest combine.24 The industry now had two dominant firms, and their policies had an important role in shaping the industry’s response to interwar problems.25 Jute Industries, in particular, seems to have led the way in seeking to reverse the wartime gains of labour but also aiming for ‘rationalisation’ of the industry’s practices, especially when it seemed a floor had been reached in wage-cutting after the reductions of 1923 (there were further cuts in the early 1930s). That year saw a large-scale strike then lockout in the industry begun when Jute Industries tried to increase the numbers of frames minded by each spinner. Eventually the strike was settled on the employers’ terms, though only after six months of bitter dispute. The result was, as Walker puts it, that ‘from 1923 the employers were free to proceed with the modernization and rationalization of the industry secure from effective protest by Sime and the union’.26 Through the interwar years this strategy brought significant changes in spinning, inaugurated in the 1920s, and in weaving, especially from the 1930s. There was also a major shift from steam to electricity for ­powering machinery. The availability of cheap night-time electricity brought the introduction of night-shift working for the first time in 1934, which in the long run reduced the predominance of women in the industry, as they were debarred from night work.27 A broadly similar picture of rapid expansion followed by collapsing demand can be drawn of the fortunes of the Calcutta industry in the war.28 Government demand quickly led to full-capacity working, though expansion was constrained by the availability of new machinery rather than the supply of raw material, as was the case in Dundee.29 Most output expansion came



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therefore came from working the mills longer and employing more labour. The benefits of the industry’s prosperity seem to have been even more unevenly shared between owners and workers than in Dundee, with extraordinary profits earned.30 But, unlike in Dundee, Calcutta’s long-run prospects were enhanced in wartime by the opening up of markets previously served from Scotland, following the export restrictions that were imposed on the latter. The broad story of the impact of the First World War is that it marked the beginnings of a period of chronic depression in Dundee, largely as the consequence of the growth of competition from Calcutta, though the war also encouraged the long-run expansion of the industry in continental Europe, including ‘new’ countries like Czechoslovakia. However, the full weight of this Indian competition was not felt immediately, as the Indian Jute Mills Association, the Calcutta jute employers, negotiated output restrictions in a bid to keep prices and profits up. Such agreements had been brokered before 1914, and a new agreement was successfully implemented in 1921, though in the long run its breakdown in the 1930s meant that Dundee would be faced with an ‘existential’ crisis in that decade.31 II India under British rule was treated very differently from the colonies of major European settlement, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The latter used their substantial autonomy established in the later nineteenth century to deploy policies of state patronage to help industrialisation. These policies usually included tariff protection, with some elements of imperial preference. By contrast, in India before 1914, laissez-faire and free trade had been the rule, with tariffs accepted by the British government only on the basis of the need for revenue to run the Raj.32 As a result, India’s role in the world economy was predominantly as an exporter of raw materials, industrial inputs and foodstuffs, and an importer of manufactured goods – the common pattern of the colonies. In 1913/14 raw materials and food, drink and tobacco made up almost eighty per cent of exports, while manufactured goods made up almost eighty per cent of imports.33 But prewar India had developed huge cotton and jute manufacturing industries, though the markets for these products were mainly either at home or in other parts of Asia, rather than Europe and America.34 In India the war exposed the very limited scale of industry which existed, especially outside the textile sector, and spurred for the first time a deliberate policy of industrial development. The colonial state in India had never seen such development as a prime responsibility, but had welcomed the tax revenues such development brought, as well as recognising how such development could potentially increase political support for the Raj. The war saw the establishment of an Indian Industrial Commission which urged

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a significant shift towards greater industrial self-sufficiency.35 This policy was inherently linked to the capacity of India to pursue a protectionist agenda, and this was recognised in the contemporary constitutional discussion. The Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill in 1919 declared in its report that nothing was more likely to endanger good relations between India and Great Britain than the belief that India’s fiscal policy was dictated from Whitehall in the interests of the trade of Britain. This view led to the acceptance by the British government of the ‘fiscal convention’ that the Secretary of State for India should intervene in such matters only to safeguard the international obligations of the Empire or arrangements within the Empire that the British government was party to.36 Despite this recognition of political realities, the wartime political pressure for greater national self-determination was inflected in a direction which reduced the possibility of such a national strategy, by devolving responsibility to provincial governments which lacked both resources and incentives to pursue it.37 Nevertheless, most historians see the First World War as marking an important shift in the activities of the government of India. It would be highly anachronistic to talk of a ‘developmental state’, but there could be no reversion to the kind of laissez-faire stance of 1913, however much some in both Delhi and London hankered for such a restoration.38 Liberals like Churchill articulated opposition to Indian fiscal autonomy in traditional free trade terms: ‘It seems to me monstrous that India should be allowed to put on a protective tariff against British goods while Britain herself remains a free trade country’.39 Despite this stance, Churchill did not at the time criticise the Indian constitutional reforms, though later he was to allege that they were ‘a mere experiment which could be arrested or reversed at any time’, an implausible characterisation of measures which were aimed at ‘the progressive realisation of responsible government in British India’.40 In any event, Churchill’s free-trader sentiments went against the tide of wartime opinion in both Britain and India. It was above all the wartime need for greater tax revenues, in combination with the pressures for industrial development, which led to a sharp increase in tariffs in India. In 1917 the general tariff was raised to 7.5 per cent, then to 11 per cent in 1921 and 15 per cent in 1922, with higher rates for some luxuries. Rates were raised substantially again in the early 1930s. In addition to these general tariffs, specific industries could obtain greater protection if their case was accepted by the Indian Tariff Board, and this led to enhanced protection for, most notably, the iron and steel and cotton industries.41 This enhanced protection was not extended to jute, which was predominantly an export industry, facing almost no competition in the home market. But this general protectionist trend was indicative of the shift in Indian and imperial sentiment, which meant that, in fighting Calcutta competition in the future, Dundee was going to find the political environment even less favourable than before 1914.



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III As amongst many of Britain’s capitalists, Dundee’s jute employers’ protectionism was strengthened by the First World War.42 As early as January 1916 the Chamber of Commerce was pressing for an export tax on raw jute with a rebate for Empire and allied countries – a typical wartime combining of anti-German and pro-imperial sentiments.43 This proposal gained support from the official committee looking at the prospects for the textile trades after the war.44 By early 1918 the Chamber was protesting to the government about restrictions on the industry, arguing that these were driving their customers to substitute alternative materials. This was linked to laments about the growth of the competitive capacity of the Calcutta industry, and these, plus especially worries about supplies of raw jute, led to a meeting convened by the Board of Trade on the future of the industry in July 1918.45 The Chamber also protested against Indian fiscal autonomy, using a common rhetorical device of suggesting that it would put Indian policies in the hands of a small, unrepresentative minority of English-speaking Indians who would not represent the interests of the country’s population of over two hundred million.46 The Chamber sought to put pressure on the Board of Trade issue, focusing on the imperial raw material argument, rather than directly on competition between Dundee and Calcutta. It gained some support from the IJMA on this, but the Board was clear that the Chamber’s idea was to use the excise as a bargaining chip with countries which put tariffs on imported jute manufactures, and this raised broad problems of imperial economic policy. As the President of the Board noted, ‘We might come the most appalling “cropper” in Lancashire if we dealt very lightheartedly with jute’.47 The AJSM, founded in 1918, was immediately active on the issue of protection against Indian competition, taking up most of the running on the issue, though the Chamber of Commerce also continued to act on behalf of the jute employers. In January 1919 the Association approached the Board of Trade, arguing that ‘the huge difference between the cost of manufacturing in Dundee and Calcutta (about four to one) if continued, will make it impossible for us to compete with any hope of success’. They called for the end of imports from India, stressing that these imports represented only 4.5 per cent of the output of the Calcutta mills, but 30 per cent of UK p ­ roduction.48 At almost the same time, Sime from the DDUJFW approached the Association to express joint views on conditions of employment in India, in response to the request from George Barnes, the Minister without Portfolio, for information relevant to the possibility of international regulation of conditions of employment.49 This regulation, enshrined in the 1920 Washington conference, is an important part of Labour’s response to international competition, and is returned to in section IV of this chapter. But in Dundee the approach by Sime led to a confused period

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of interaction between the union and the employers’ association, from which, ultimately, little agreement emerged. The Association wanted union support for its approaches to the Board of Trade, urging protection against Calcutta.50 But the DDUJFW, while not hostile in principle to the idea of co-operating with the Association in approaching the government, made clear that in its view the issue was about improving wages and conditions in Calcutta, but the Association expressed the view that ‘such alteration of wages and hours in Calcutta would have no material effect on the situation, and what was more important, would have no immediate effect’. The Association declined to meet with Sime to discuss this issue, and he determined to respond to Barnes’s request solely on the union’s behalf.51 This difference of view was complicated by the fact that the DDUJFW would not participate in any delegation where the DDFMOU was present, and this meant that when a joint delegation went to London in April 1919 the DDFMOU and the Tenters’ Union were present, along with the two MPs, Churchill and Wilkie, and the Lord Provost, Don, a prominent jute manufacturer, but not the Jute and Flax Workers.52 In a letter to the Board of Trade denouncing the role of the DDMFOU, Sime made clear that ‘It must not be assumed that we agree with all the statements put forward by the employers on the question of Indian competition’, but he did not elaborate on the disagreements.53 At this meeting the unions present offered ‘general approval’ for the AJSM’s pleas for protection against Calcutta. However, the DDMFOU wanted to stress the issue of wages and conditions in India, and called for a Royal Commission to consider these.54 Churchill set out the problem faced very clearly in his contribution. It was, he said, one of extreme difficulty because ‘any form of prohibition in this case would be against one of the Dependencies of the empire, and further any form of protection would be against the Free Trade principles of the Government’. He went on to say that, ‘Although he was a strong advocate of Free Trade, he was not prepared to say that some modification of free trade principles would not be necessary to overcome circumstances such as had arisen in the Jute Trade’. In response the Minister, Geddes, said that the root of the problem was ‘the clash of two civilizations’ and that the issue was ‘how to equalize the problem of Sunlight’. He explained that by this he meant that ‘owing to the Indian climate, and perpetual sunshine, the workers in India got sufficient sustenance from a vegetable diet’, while owing to the climatic conditions in Dundee, the workers in Dundee must have a meat diet and warmth in their homes. He further considered ‘that the problem as to how workers in this country, and even more so in Canada, were to compete with coloured labour, was one of the more difficult problems to solve, and one of the greatest menaces which workpeople, belonging to the higher civilization, had to face’.55 This revealing but pessimistic view did not lead to much in the way of



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positive response to the employers’ pleas for protection. Geddes talked vaguely about the possibility of a short-run subsidy for Dundee. But the only immediate result was the sending of a government inquiry to Dundee to look at the issue of costs. By the time the inquiry completed its work in December the industry was booming, and in the words of The Times was ‘unable to recommend artificial means to enable the UK to compete with another portion of the Empire’.56 In fact, the Dundee industry, along with most of industrial Britain, enjoyed a boom from mid-1919 to mid-1920, which appears to have quietened the immediate pressure from the employers. When the decline of 1921 came, the employers seem to have focused their attention on wage cuts and pressing for abolition of the Trade Board.57 During the rest of the 1920s, the Association never again showed any interest in co-operating with the DDUJFW. IV In parliamentary politics the Dundee electorate was transformed in 1918 by the coming of manhood suffrage and the granting of the vote to women over thirty. With the number of voters trebling, and the impetus of wartime gains, the local ILP put up a candidate in 1918, who, however, was opposed by Wilkie and Churchill, who both received the Coalition ‘Coupon’. In a low turnout (47 per cent), Wilkie and Churchill were returned, with Edwin Scrymgeour, the prohibitionist-cum-socialist, beating the ILP candidate into fourth place. But by 1922 the political tide had turned sharply. On an 82 per cent turnout, and with Wilkie now retired, the candidates of the Left triumphed, with Morel and Scrymgeour easily beating Churchill and MacDonald, the Coalition Liberal candidates.58 Contemporary newspaper coverage does not suggest that the issues of protectionism or India were significant in Churchill’s defeat: in any case, neither Scrymgeour nor Morel was a protectionist. Also, despite some local Unionist misgivings about supporting Churchill, there was no Unionist candidate to make the protectionist case.59 Unemployment certainly figured strongly in the election, but the debate on this was not linked to trade policy or competition with India.60 While Scrymgeour was very much a local MP, whose interests were almost wholly domestic, E. D. Morel was a major anti-imperialist figure in British politics.61 But his knowledge was not of India, rather his formidable reputation rested on his pre-1914 critiques of European, especially Belgian, policy in Africa, along with his anti-war stance.62 He survived less than two years as MP for Dundee, and seems not to have engaged seriously with issues relating to protectionism or India.63 He was approached by Shapurji Saklatvala, the Labour/Communist MP who was seeking to encourage co-operation of jute workers in Dundee and Calcutta, and had organised a Workers’ Welfare League to try and unite British and Indian trade unionists.64 Morel’s successor, Tom Johnston, was however to play a much greater

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role in the debate on these issues. This was partly because he was an important figure in the national debate in the Labour party about its policies on trade and on empire, as well as having to grapple directly with this issue as an MP for Dundee in the 1920s. Nationally the Labour party in the 1920s was faced with huge difficulties as it became the second party in the country and had to respond to unprecedented economic and political challenges. On the economic side, there was the emergence of mass unemployment, stemming especially from problems of the competitiveness of the staple industries in international markets, which inescapably challenged the predominant free trade ideas that labour had inherited from nineteenth-century Radicalism. Politically, there was especially the challenge of responding to the reshaping of the British Empire. Labour had an entrenched tradition of anti-colonialism, but this legacy was questioned by some who sought a ‘constructive’ relationship with Empire countries rather than rapid decolonisation.65 Particularly complex were relations with India, where political pressure for self-determination was coupled to competition from Indian industries with the British staples of cotton and jute.66 The Party’s traditional adherence to free trade came under challenge not only from the existence of mass unemployment but also from the strongly protectionist sentiments of the Conservative party, along with many employers. Labour’s normal rhetorical position on free trade and protection became that it was an out-dated dichotomy, which distracted attention from the real struggle between socialism and capitalism.67 In the 1920s this rhetoric went along with a continuing hostility to protectionism, both as a threat to cheap food and more broadly as a threat to international stability – the traditional liberal arguments.68 However, a new element was Labour’s support for the view that imports should not be allowed if goods were produced with ‘sweated labour’. ‘Sweated labour’ was a term from late nineteenth-century arguments about poverty in Britain, with Labour arguing for state intervention in industries where poor conditions were accompanied by an absence of collective bargaining. Such arguments, supported by many Liberals, lay behind the Trade Boards Act of 1909, with its setting of minimum wages on an industry-by-industry basis.69 An important theme of Labour’s policies in the 1920s was the search for international agreements to reduce ‘sweating’. This policy had roots going back to the beginning of the century, when an International Labour Office was founded in Basel with British government support, and the Berne Convention of 1906 limited the employment of women at night.70 At the 1917 Labour party conference there was unanimous support for a resolution on postwar economic policy which advocated ‘a policy of free trade for every country, with safeguards for the maintenance of international labour conditions fixed by international trade union agreement’.71 The wartime impetus in this direction led to the founding of the International Labour



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Office under the auspices of the League of Nations, initially agreed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The founding Convention was drawn up in Washington the following year.72 The Washington Convention on restrictions on hours of work became a touchstone of adherence to new norms of international trade which Labour hoped would reconcile its anti-protectionism with its desire to defend ­working-class wages and conditions. A key figure in the foundation of the ILO was George Barnes, formerly a Labour MP, who was Minister in the Coalition government. In his account of the beginnings of the Office he was clear on the mixed motives involved. While on humanitarian grounds keen to improve labour conditions in ‘Eastern countries’, he also stressed that ‘the East was the great field of supply for the raw material of European industries, and that such raw material was being increasingly manufactured on the spot by cheap eastern labour and was supplanting the goods from the countries of the old industrial world’.73 Barnes used Dundee as an example of this problem, couched in terms common in Labour accounts of the industry’s position: wealth having been amassed in Dundee from the profits derived from the manipulation of jute fibre, is sent to Calcutta where the fibre is grown, and is employed there in competition with the Dundee jute workers. If Indian operatives were to be left to work long hours of labour, then it was obvious that the standard of life of the Dundee operatives would be jeopardised. The only way, or at all events the best way, to safeguard Dundee was to raise Calcutta.74

Labour spokesman echoed these views from early on, with Clynes in 1919 setting out a position that was to be much repeated over the next decade: ‘It is of the highest importance that our high levels of conditions in respect of wages and working hours should not be undermined and destroyed by the low level of the state of things in certain other manufacturing countries in remote parts of the world’.75 Labour pushed the Coalition government for British adherence to the Washington Hours Convention, but nothing was done.76 A beginning was made on ratification under the 1924 Labour government, but the government fell before the process was completed. In fact, the Convention remained unratified throughout the decade; all three parties proclaimed their support, but found it complex to implement.77 With others in the ILP such as John Wheatley, Johnston argued that, rather than waiting for international agreement, action on sweated goods should be pursued by boycotts. This stance was strongly resisted by the Labour party leadership, and, apart from leading to an inquiry into sweated trades, it did not achieve any significant shift in the party’s policy.78 How significant adherence to the Washington Hours Convention would have been as a general policy is a matter for conjecture. But its impact on jute was never going to be great because the Washington discussions had explicitly recognised that, given lower levels of efficiency in poor countries, it would be impossible to impose the same level of restrictions on hours

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as in rich countries: ‘For all these, and many more, reasons, a uniform or an unvarying code or charter was quite impossible, and provision had to be made for the application of common sense principles in the light of varying facts’. Ironically, perhaps, this flexibility allowed India to adhere to the Washington Conventions, when London did not. The legal limit on weekly hours of work in factories was reduced from seventy-two to sixty, the minimum age for workers raised to twelve, and the hours of work for children cut to six a day.79 Whatever the other significance of these restrictions, they were not in practice crucial to the course of competition between Calcutta and Dundee; as discussed in Chapter 8, the key factor here was the willingness and ability of the Calcutta employers to restrict output, not the law relating to hours of work. Labour consistently held out the prospects of such international agreements on labour conditions as a superior alternative to the safeguarding policies pursued by the Conservatives in the 1920s. Safeguarding had originally been introduced in 1921, with a mixture of anti-German and broader protectionist aims, and included an element of imperial preference.80 Labour repealed the legislation when in government in 1924, but it was reintroduced in slightly changed form under the Conservatives in 1925, as a compromise between the whole-hog protectionism rejected by the electorate in 1923 and free trade which many in the Conservative Party now opposed. The legislation required application to a Board on an industry by industry basis, and the process was slow and complex. The outcome was that only a small number of small-scale industries were protected, and, in particular, the key industry of iron and steel was denied safeguarding.81 The dominant position in Labour circles in the 1920s continued to be that embodied in the 1917 resolution: free trade plus the rejection of sweating.82 Conservatives argued that this position was incoherent, and sought to draw Labour into support of safeguarding as a practical measure to keep out sweated goods. But this was rejected, in terms clearly set out by Snowden: I happen to have been the Chairman of the Committee that made those recommendations, and, therefore, I think even hon. Members opposite may take it that the Free Trade orthodoxy of those recommendations cannot he impugned. As a matter of fact, we condemned tariffs unreservedly. What we had in mind was to raise the world conditions of labour by international Conventions. My right hon. Friend was speaking to an audience that knew this report. What is our policy? What we propose is that in regard to the observance of the economic obligations of each State which has accepted a Convention of the League, the same principle is to be applied as has to be applied under the Covenant of the League of Nations to a State which refuses to conform, in a matter of international dispute, to the conditions laid down. That does not mean absolutely uniform conditions, but it means an international Convention ratified by all these States, and what is the use of such a ratification unless there can be some means to enforce it?83

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In the same debate Johnston argued: But when we declare for free and untrammelled trade we believe that that trade must be on the basis of an adequate return to the producer, with humane conditions under which to labour. Over long years we have built up inside this country a protective labour system, with trade unions, trade boards, and factory Acts, and with these weapons we do our utmost to prevent a traffic in sweated goods within our own boundaries. We have minimum standards, enforceable at law, below which production is forbidden. But let some capitalist transfer his machinery to Bengal or Czechoslovakia, and get his labour supply at half the trade board or trade union price! There has hitherto been a school of thought in this country which welcomed the sweated product, provided always that that sweated product was produced outside the confines of this country. That system is indefensible.84

He went on: We reject tariffs because a mere fine upon the sweaters’ goods is not enough. If there is a sale, the sweater has triumphed over our Trade Board standards of British civilisation, and the mischief is done. We reject the tariff, again, because if the sweated goods are excluded they have the run of our neutral markets and intensified corn-petition ensues there. A boycott by Britain alone – this is where some right hon. Gentlemen have obviously not understood our proposal – ­presents the same difficulty. If Britain alone were to boycott these sweated goods – jute goods, for example, coir matting and so on – they would have the run of the neutral markets of the world, and competition would be intensified. Besides, if Britain acted alone we should have difficulties with our favoured nation treaties. But at the International Labour Office at Geneva we secured what many of us believed to be the only thing worth saving from the wreckage of the War. We believe we have there a weapon by which, if properly used, civilisation can begin to save itself. By Article 23 of the Covenant the signatory Powers bind themselves in the following words: To endeavour to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children, both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial relations extend. By Part 13 of the Treaty of Peace the following declaration is made: The failure of any nation to adopt humane conditions of labour is an obstacle in the way of other nations which desire to improve the conditions in their own country. We are asking that this country, which has a comparatively high standard, should propose to the International Labour Office at Geneva that conventions should be signed, and, when signed, should be enforced . . . We do not propose exclusion because the goods are cheap; we propose an international exclusion, an international prohibition, if they violate the international conscience.85

As with general protection, Labour’s dominant response to notions of imperial protectionism was hostile. But this stance was complicated in the Indian case by support for Indian self-determination, which would clearly lead to enhanced protection for Indian industries; as Gupta suggests, ‘The

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Party supported economic nationalism in India for political reasons, despite opposition from certain trade union quarters’.86 This opposition came particularly from the cotton unions, who opposed the raising of Indian cotton duties in 1917 and 1921 (and were supported in this by the Labour party).87 However, these unions still accepted that India’s tariff autonomy could not be constitutionally constrained.88 For Johnston, it was a logical extension of general advocacy of restricting trade in sweated imports, to include those from the Empire.89 In this way, Johnston was drawn into a wider advocacy of a ‘pragmatic’ approach to Empire, which argued against working for the disintegration of the British Empire, and in favour of developing it as an economic unit. In his memoirs Johnston tells of his revolt against the predominance in the Labour party of ‘a curious if undefined prejudice in antagonism to the Empire’. Against this he argued that ‘The self-governing parts of the Empire were in fact a league of nations in being; the standard of trusteeship for other parts of the Empire was steadily improving’. So he joined with George Lansbury to start a Labour Commonwealth group to develop new approaches to imperial questions.90 The idea of closer economic links within the Empire which emerged from this group also embodied Johnston’s broader under-consumptionist analysis of the slump, with the argument that Labour should concentrate on raising consumption both at home and abroad.91 Critics in the Labour party generally had sympathy with Johnston’s anti-sweated imports policy, but wanted it applied to all imports without any special concern for the Empire aspect, which they regarded as playing into the Tories’ imperialist rhetoric.92 Such policies were relatively unproblematic when applied to the white Dominions, where domestic restrictions on sweated labour were common, and exchanges of bulk purchases of goods could be seen as mutually beneficial. But in relation to India the situation was obviously more complex. In arguing for restrictions on sweated imports within as well as outwith the Empire, Johnston invoked the Washington Convention. Johnston explicitly argued that this should be applied to India on the same basis as in Britain, thus returning to the prewar arguments about applying the British Factory Acts to India in order to make competition ‘fair’, but ignoring the fact that the Washington Convention had applied different standards. These were the arguments put forward by the report in 1925 of the Labour party’s committee on Sweated Imports and International Labour Standards, a committee which Johnston had initiated.93 As part of its policy of seeking international agreement on labour standards, Labour in the 1920s sought to co-operate with unions in the Empire. The party organised the first ‘British Commonwealth Labour Conference’ in 1925. Most of the participants were from the Dominions, and the focus of attention was mainly on questions of emigration. But Chaman Lall from India participated, and India proved to be the most contentious issue at



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this conference. Lall wanted a declaration in favour of self-determination for India, and denounced the 1924 Labour government’s actions in the sub-continent.94 On economic issues, he emphasised the impact on British unemployment of poor conditions in India: There existed a state of affairs where a British Imperialist would go to India, and invest money in India because he would get cheaper labour. Did they expect him to pay forty shillings a week for labour here when he could get it at the rate just mentioned? (six shillings) . . . And there were instances known where Dundee manufacturers had dismantled their plant and machinery, gone to Calcutta, and established their plant there. For five pence a day they could get cheap female labour in India.95

In response Wedgwood said of Lall: Most of the complaints he made he could remedy himself, if only he could get his Party to co-operate and to carry through the factory legislation that was required in India. It was not Britain but Chaman Lall and his friends who were primarily responsible, as they were in a position to pass what acts of Parliament they liked, in the Assembly and in the Councils, and the complaint that Britain had not done it really did not cut much ice.96

In the same year as this Party meeting, Johnston, and Sime from the DDUJFW, went to India to examine the conditions under which jute goods were produced in Calcutta. The report they produced, along with the debates during and after their visit, demonstrated many of the issues facing those seeking to reduce the impact of Indian jute production on Dundee’s employment.97 The decision to send Johnston and Sime to investigate Indian conditions seems to have been made by the DDUJFW because of persistent emphasis by the Dundee jute employers on the need to keep wages low in order to compete with Calcutta – though some doubted whether the information was not already available.98 As regards the key issue of competition, the Report produced after this visit argued that Calcutta was not currently a major competitor of Dundee because of its focus on lower-quality manufactured items. Furthermore, they argued that because of the inefficiency of Indian labour, due to climatic conditions and poor skills, competition was not feasible: ‘While the wages are scandalously low, the relative efficiency of the Dundee millworker is at least three to one, and we have heard competent authorities place the ratio very much higher.’99 Thus the report, while denouncing the combination of high profits and poor wages and conditions in the Calcutta industry, did not see an immediate problem for Dundee workers arising from these conditions. But, the report argued, Dundonians should not be indifferent to these conditions:

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It is therefore essential in the interests not only of the workers of India, but in the interests of the workers in Dundee, that the remuneration and status of the Indian worker should not remain at its current low level. What competition there may one day be should not be of international starvation or based upon the misery and degradation of the workers.100

The conclusion of the argument was that Dundee trade unionists should aid jute workers in Calcutta, especially through support for building up effective unions.101 There was a tension in this report between emphasising the ‘exotic’ character of Indian society and the desire to establish British norms of industrial organisation. One way of dealing with this tension was to historicise Indian developments, with Johnston in one speech in Calcutta suggesting that Indian industry was at a similar stage to that in Britain during the period of the industrial revolution.102 This sense that Calcutta lay further back in the evolution of industrial civilisation also led to one of the strongest criticisms of the Calcutta mills, which was aimed at the ‘sardar’ system whereby, it was alleged, those Indians responsible for labour hiring ruthlessly exploited their position to extract money from the workers. In his memoirs Johnston especially emphasised this aspect of the investigation, and argued that both the President of the IJMA and other employers, as well as the local unions, wanted to stamp out the practice.103 Thus, to a degree, the problem of lowwage competition faced by Dundee was displaced on to a problem of how to stamp out an ‘oriental’ practice which worsened the conditions of life of the Calcutta jute worker. A similar perspective may be seen at work in the discussion of Calcutta’s trade unions, which are seen as largely ill fitted to their task, and requiring re-organising along British lines. The existing unions are seen as chiefly creatures of political figures, rather than effective ‘grass-roots’ organisations.104 For Calcutta’s problems the solutions are British-style unions and ­co-operatives, and the extension of primary education. At other points Johnston emphasised the common humanity of jute workers: ‘You cannot hit the working class of one race without hitting the working class of the other. We are all of Adam’s race, no matter whether we are black, brown, yellow or white, but we have the same kinds of problems to face.’105 Johnston also recognised that India, almost alone, had incorporated the Washington Convention on hours of work. He went on to argue that this had disfavoured the Indian cotton industry in the face of unregulated working hours in Japan.106 What was not made clear however was that the key issue restricting Calcutta’s impact on Dundee in this period was not the legal restriction on hours but the output restrictions organised by the IJMA. By focusing so much attention on the hours issue, both at the time of this visit, and more broadly, on hours limitations, British Labour figures exaggerated the efficacy of this measure in limiting competition.



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After his visit, Johnston expounded his general views on the ways in which inter-imperial trade with countries like India should be developed to mutual benefit. This drew on his long-expressed view that the key issue was to develop consumer purchasing power. Hence: To give one illustration; there is India, where one fifth of the human race lives meanly and miserably on an annual income of only £4 head. With a proper organisation of our public credit to India’s 60,000 agricultural co-operative societies, where the security is ample and the investment safe, it has been estimated that there is a market for two or three million iron ploughs a year, 50,000 small engines for water raising at the village wells, and possibly 150,000 larger engines for cane crushing etc.107

This was certainly a more positive perspective on British–Indian economic relations than offered by other commentators at the time. But it did assume that India’s role would be to buy British industrial exports from the proceeds of its development, whereas Indian nationalists were, by this time, challenging this subordinate role in the imperial division of labour. In summarising the overall implications of the Johnston/Sime visit and report it is important to note that they resisted some of the common tropes of British opinion on India at this time. While, for example, they did conjure up an ‘exotic’ India, with ‘mysterious’ and alien habits, they were publicly sceptical about the extent of communal antagonism in India, with Sime attacking the Courier for alleging that such antagonism was behind unrest in the jute industry.108 The gap on Indian issues between Johnston and Sime and politicians on the Right is also clear from the Courier’s attack on ‘the mischievous nonsense of our socialists’ in supporting any notion of Home Rule for India. The Courier argued for the repeal of Montagu-Chelmsford and said that ‘Britain will never be able to relinquish administrative control of India within any period that need concern us’.109 Johnston and Sime resisted this imperialist rhetoric, and focused on what they regarded as the key issue of improving workers’ conditions in Calcutta. To this task they brought great sympathy and a sense of solidarity, albeit coupled to a patronising sense that Britain’s socialists had the answers to all India’s industrial problems. What they did not have was an answer to how, in the short run, Dundee’s problems from Calcutta’s competition were to be relieved. Only after the collapse of the Calcutta cartel in the 1930s, and the unleashing of much fiercer competition, was this issue to be brought home with full force. While Johnston and Sime’s visit to India was the result of a local, Dundee, initiative, it can be put in the context of a growing concern in British labour and especially trade union circles about conditions in Indian industry. At the end of the war union organisers in India had persuaded the British TUC to lobby the India Office at the time of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms to legalise union action in India. This lobbying achieved some limited success in the mid-1920s, when an Indian Trade Union Act was passed, though it

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imposed highly restrictive conditions on the unions’ actions.110 The TUC’s knowledge of labour conditions in India was reliant on individual union initiatives, like that of the Dundee jute workers, until a TUC mission was sent in 1927/8. This mission produced a report by Purcell and Hallsworth which, as far as Calcutta jute was concerned, focused much more narrowly on hours and wages than Johnston and Sime. Its conclusion for British unionism as a whole was the paramount need to co-operate with Indian unions, both for reasons of self-interest given that it took six to eight workers to obtain as much in wages as one of the lowest-paid workers in Great Britain, but also ‘with the object of lifting Indian workmen and workwomen out of the morass of filthy and ghastly conditions’.111 Boyce argues that ‘For the Labour Party the years between its first and second terms of office were a time of almost constant effort by the left-wing as well as elements of the right to break free of the immobilising combination of political and economic internationalism, which left so little scope for easing the plight of industry’.112 But the official stance of Labour when it entered office in 1929 still combined a broad rhetoric of support for economic internationalism with calls for a planned economy, with little to suggest how these were to be combined. Johnston, who stopped being MP for Dundee in 1929, continued to be an important figure in Labour’s search for a new approach to trade and the imperial economy.113 In the face of mounting unemployment Oswald Mosley prepared his famous 1930 memorandum on unemployment, with support from Johnston. This argued that the focus should be on the home market rather than export markets, with the control of imports through an import control board.114 Such sentiments found support at the highest level in the TUC, with, for example, support for a tariff for iron and steel in 1930.115 While broadly supporting Mosley’s programme for economic revival, Johnston criticised the downplaying of the importance of export markets, and stressed the potential of inter-imperial trade: ‘It is precisely the development of our export trade in such matters as cycles which has been one of the most hopeful features of recent years in our Empire trade development; and Coventry and other towns are to-day living upon the very fact that the West African native has been taught to ride a bicycle.’116 Few in Labour circles fully followed Johnston in this positive view of the Empire, though there was some shift in position shown by the continuation of the Empire Marketing Board, and the passing of the Colonial Development act of 1930.117 The crisis after 1929 certainly shifted party opinion further against free trade, but this was coupled to enhanced concerns about cheap imports from the Empire, so that in cotton, for example, the unions and employers in 1931 fleetingly allied themselves to attack the boycott of Lancashire cotton goods called to support the drive for independence, though this alliance was short-lived.118 In Juteopolis the slump also led to major challenges to the status quo, a theme taken up in the next two chapters.

Chapter 7 Conservatism, Protection and Empire in the 1930s

In the anti-Labour landslide of 1931 Dundee elected its first Conservative MP since the Great Reform Act, Florence Horsbrugh.1 Re-elected in 1935, for the whole of the decade she was faced with responding to the desperate economic plight of Juteopolis as it suffered from the collapse of international trade, but above all the competition from the Calcutta jute industry. In the face of the shrinkage in markets for its products, Dundee suffered from the worst unemployment rate of any major city in Britain in the 1930s.2 For a Conservative MP, responding to this situation meant working with the complex, intertwined Conservative politics of protectionism and empire. I The Conservative party had been converted to protectionism at the beginning of the twentieth century.3 It had fought the 1906 general election on this issue, and lost disastrously. This did not lead to a reversal of sentiment in the Party, but made its leaders extremely wary of the electoral consequences of advocating protectionist measures. The First World War seriously undermined free trade sentiment in Britain, and pushed the Conservatives into an even stronger pro-tariff, as well as pro-empire, position.4 In 1923 Baldwin again committed the Party to a protectionist programme at a general election, and again the result was defeat.5 In office between 1924 and 1929, the Conservatives had pursued only a very limited protectionist agenda, not least because of the role of the free trader Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer, backed by a Treasury very unenthusiastic about financing any expensive schemes of imperial promotion.6 As noted in Chapter 6, what protectionism was pursued in the later 1920s came largely in the form of ‘Safeguarding’, which gave tariff protection to a small range of products deemed to be suffering from ‘dumping’, a cautious approach which led to considerable unhappiness amongst the Conservative rank and file.7 The biggest battle was over iron and steel, a major industry whose protection would have had economy-wide ramifications. But it was defeated, after heated battles within Conservative ranks, by Churchill and the Treasury.8 In sum, the protectionist policies of the 1920s ‘were all rather insignificant in terms of the volume of imports they affected but they were of some

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importance for their inroads on free trade ideology’.9 But the economic crisis which developed at the beginning of the 1930s provided a golden opportunity for the Party to seek a ‘doctor’s mandate’ at the November 1931 election, a mandate which would include the imposition of tariffs.10 The protectionist tide in the Conservative party was mirrored in business opinion across most of Britain. The 1880s, under the impact of the lateVictorian ‘great depression’, which brought a squeeze on prices and profits coupled with growing German and American competition, saw the beginnings of a serious revolt against free trade. This shift of opinion was greatly reinforced by the First World War, and manifested itself strongly in the wartime Balfour Committee, set up to suggest appropriate British policy for the postwar years.11 Capie sees the First War as the catalyst for major protectionist pressure from business, but he also emphasises the unemployment and balance of payments problems of the 1920s as reinforcing the process.12 The combination of trade and budgetary deterioration in 1931 shifted much British opinion, in business circles but well beyond, more strongly in favour of protectionism. Even a Liberal like Keynes argued that as part of the response to the fiscal crisis ‘revenue-tariffs’ would be appropriate.13 The TUC also moved in this direction, though with considerable equivocation.14 For the great bulk of Conservatives protectionism seemed a self-evident way to respond to the crisis, though they mostly focused more on the purported employment benefits of such measures than on the revenue-raising aspect; for them the fiscal crisis was mainly to be addressed by retrenchment in public spending.15 But while the protectionist agenda could be pursued with little effective opposition after the 1931 election, the nature of that protection, and its relation to the Empire, was very much an open question. When Joseph Chamberlain launched his protectionist campaign in 1903 it was centrally conceived as an imperial policy, designed to underpin the Empire by much closer economic links: ‘Tariff Reform was above all a great imperial ideology, originating in concern over the future development of the empire’.16 But from the beginning Chamberlain’s strategy faced major obstacles not only from free traders but from those who doubted its political viability as a way of strengthening the Empire. On the one hand, the most important area in which Empire products competed with foreign products in the British market was foodstuffs. Thus, from an Empire point of view, significant preferences in British markets would have to include taxes on foreign food imports, a policy fraught with great electoral risk as a threat to the entrenched policy of cheap food and the ‘big loaf’. On the other hand, the main Dominions, especially Australia and Canada, were unwilling to play the role of simply food and raw material suppliers to Britain, and wanted to build up their own industrial capacity behind tariff walls. They might be willing to give preferences to British manufactured goods, but they were very unlikely to give them free entry.17



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Most national debate on imperial economic relations in the 1920s was dominated by Britain’s relationship to the white Dominions. It was this white empire that the ‘imperial visionaries’ such as Milner and Hewins saw developing as an inter-dependent entity, with British capital and people flowing outwards, and imperial goods flowing in.18 But alongside this focus there was an evident political concern with the economic position of the colonial Empire, culminating in the passing of the Colonial Development Act of 1929, which set up a Colonial Development Advisory Committee to encourage economic development. But a key feature of these (limited) efforts was their predication on the idea that colonial development would be based on the production of goods complementary to, rather than competitive with, Britain’s own output.19 This idea of the Empire as a complementary supplier of foodstuffs and raw materials in exchange for British manufactured goods was a key element in most British understandings. As already noted, it was an idea effectively resisted by the white Dominions. In the great bulk of the colonies, on the other hand, it was easily enforced by the colonial power. India, however, was different; however reluctantly, most politicians recognised that sustaining British power in the sub-continent could not be based on wholesale rejection of industrialisation.20 Soon after the formation of the National government in 1931 the ‘Abnormal Importations Act’ was passed, imposing a general 50 per cent tariff, but this did not affect imports from the Empire. It was quickly superseded in February 1932 with the Import Duties Act which imposed a general tariff of 10 per cent on manufactured goods, but again did not apply to imperial products.21 This was intended as a temporary measure, and the long-run imperial aspect of protection was left to be decided at the Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa in 1932. Contrary to notions of amity amongst kith and kin, this conference was characterised by extremely hard bargaining amongst the Empire countries; in Chamberlain’s words ‘It isn’t hands across the sea, it’s fists across the sea’.22 While protectionism was now national policy, how was this to be applied to competing products from Empire countries? Imperial preference was an important part of the new policy regime, but the meaning of this term was far from straightforward. Preference was the most that could possibly be achieved, because non-British countries were unwilling to expose their industries to the full weight of British competition, given their desire to develop their own industrial capacity. In the 1930s the consequence of this was the hard bargaining between these Dominions that characterised the Ottawa Conference and led to a complex set of preferential agreements within the Empire. One policy that had no chance of emerging from these discussions was ‘Empire Free Trade’, though this was the basis of the intensive press campaign by the Beaverbrook and Rothermere newspaper empires in 1930

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and 1931, and caused a major crisis for the Conservative party.23 Given the serious impact of the slump on their economies, at Ottawa the main Dominions were even more determined than at the beginning of the century to protect their nascent industries, while their key demand on Britain was for a tax on wheat.24 Equally, the British government, whilst desirous of obtaining a bigger proportion of food imports from the Empire, was also committed to greater protection of British farmers, so free imports of food were not on the agenda. It is evidence of the complexity and confusion in Conservative relations with its empire in these years that the most highprofile press campaign, which greatly disrupted the Conservative party, was aimed a promoting a policy which had no chance of success, and was indeed seen by most protectionists in the Conservative party as having no such chance.25 The prewar debate inaugurated by Joseph Chamberlain about imperial economic relations was almost entirely focused on the ‘white’ Dominions. As Drummond observed of the 1920s and 1930s: It was the Dominions that mattered most; they had markets; they welcomed the settlers and the capital. Funds moved reluctantly towards the rest of the Empire, and settlers went only in small numbers, drawn only by natural resources and by government service. In economic affairs it was Dominion questions, not Indian or colonial ones which came before the Cabinet frequently, and which preoccupied committees of senior ministers.26

Drummond is clear that he is talking about imperial economic issues. Politically and strategically matters were different. In that context India figured as a crucial issue for British politics and policy, above all in the six years leading up to the 1935 India Act. In these years, and especially from 1932, the question of British policy in India was at the forefront of Conservative politics, with a deep split between those who favoured the Act, and those who saw it as a fundamental betrayal of British interests, and, they claimed, also of the interests of the great mass of ordinary Indians, who, they believed, had little interest in constitutional evolution towards Indian home rule. These dissenters from government policy, led by Churchill, drew on widespread concerns in Conservative ranks about the direction of imperial policy in India, though in the end the leadership of the party won a decisive victory.27 In the early 1930s both the question of imperial economic policy and the question of India were central to political debate in the Conservative party: but largely as separate issues.28 Economic policy dominated relations with the Dominions, whilst it played only a small role in debate about India. This variation in approach was largely due to the differing significance of the two components of the Empire to Britain. The white Dominions played an increasing role as major suppliers of foodstuffs and as expanding markets for British goods in the 1930s, whilst India was a shrinking market for British



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Table 7.1  Britain and imperial trade between the wars (percentages) Dominions India, Burma and Ceylon Other empire (including Ireland) Total empire

1929 imports

1938 imports

1929 exports

1938 exports

13.0 5.5

23.1 7.4

19.6 4.9

25.4 4.3

10.4

11.8

14.9

18.4

28.9

42.3

46.0

52.3

Source:  League of Nations, International Trade Statistics (Geneva, 1938), pp. 285, 307

Table 7.2  Indian trade with Britain, 1913–37 (£000s) 1913 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937

Exports to Britain

Imports from Britain

38,247 49,917 38,830 32,157 27,619 35,407 35,943 37,857 47,619 45,166

102,538  77,327  45,965  33,611  36,598  35,690  40,294  39,140  36,049  38,972

Source: Hancock, Survey, p. 308

exports, and had never been a major supplier of food (in the 1930s for the first time India had a visible trade surplus with Britain, but, except for tea, little of this was made up of consumption items). It was also shrinking as a destination for British foreign investment.29 More broadly, the 1930s show an exceptionally sharp divergence in the fortunes of Britain and India. While Britain, however unevenly, recovered after 1932, India was condemned to a decade of stagnation and decline. This was because, unlike in Britain (and the white Dominions), there was no easing of monetary policy when Britain departed from gold. Tight money and tight fiscal policy had their usual deflationary effects. Feinstein et al. summarise this outcome as: ‘misguided demand management stood in the way of economic prosperity’.30 If it was misguided, it fitted with the long-run emphasis of policy under the Raj of maintaining the international value of the rupee and of fiscal conservatism rather than on growth and development.31 But if, for most Britons, economic links with India were limited, the belief that it was at the heart of the imperial ‘mission’ was widespread, and this accounts for the great agitation which the government’s policies aroused. Of course, we now know that India was soon to be lost to the British Empire,

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but the evidence is clear that what divided the Conservatives in the 1930s were different views about how to hold India to the Empire. British policy in India underpinning the 1935 Act was not of imperial retreat but ‘a bold attempt to destroy that facet of Indian nationalism – the all-India operations of the Congress – which threatened to turn India away from full participation in the imperial system’.32 Of course, for some particular industries and localities the Indian economic connection mattered a great deal more than for the country as a whole; above all for Lancashire cotton, and Dundee jute. Economic matters, above all the freedom of India to set its own tariffs, certainly figured in the debate about India’s constitutional future and the 1935 Act. But there has been controversy about the significance of this issue, and especially about Lancashire’s capacity to affect the outcome. Most historians have played down this capacity, suggesting that under the earlier MontaguChelmsford reforms of 1919 India had already gained a considerable degree of tariff autonomy, and that there was no serious chance of this changing in the 1930s legislation. Pugh, for example, argues that the rebels on the Indian constitutional issue failed to take the economic issues seriously, and emphasises the weak links the rebels had with Lancashire Conservatism.33 As Whiting observes, ‘Churchill had never made Lancashire cotton the centre of his argument; it was essentially about the claims of the British to provide good government’.34 On the other hand, Chatterji argues for the continued importance of Lancashire in decision-making on India down to the Second World War: ‘despite the political and revenue constraints in India which began to set serious limits to imperial policy-making after the first World War, Whitehall’s control over the Government of India and the latter’s commitment to serve metropolitan interests was not substantially weakened’, and, within this, Lancashire ‘retained the capacity to influence British policy in India’.35 It has rightly been argued that ‘Conservatives naturally identified defence of the integrity of the empire with patriotism and claimed a monopoly in both’.36 The problem for the Party was that in the 1930s there was so much disagreement about what the Empire meant and how best its integrity should be defended.37 This disagreement went very deep, symbolised by the divergence between two avowed imperialists, Amery and Churchill, over the 1935 Act. The former saw the Act as ‘another step in creation of a great federation, while Churchill saw it as an act of abandonment’.38 Summarily, we may say that there were a number of very different notions of empire, and notions of how to defend imperial power, at work in the Conservative party in the 1930s. This absence of a single viewpoint and policy made the position of Conservative MPs in seats affected by imperial, and especially Indian, competition, such as Horsbrugh, so difficult to negotiate.



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II Dundee was never going to figure heavily in London and Delhi’s calculations; it never had the political significance of Lancashire. But its Conservative MP had to develop some kind of strategy to respond to the dilemma of Empirebased competition mortally undermining employment in the staple industry of her constituency. Such competition necessarily raised issues about the general issues of protectionism and empire but in a very particular form, because by the 1930s, along with cotton, the jute industry had become a site of a new phenomenon; extensive competition between the products of a high-wage industrial country and those of an insurgent low-wage economy. Traditional Conservative thinking about the Empire had never envisaged this as a possible issue. As noted already, the idea of the British Eempire as involving a ‘natural’ division of labour between a manufacturing metropole and food and raw material colonies had a long history. Though strongly challenged by the white Dominions from at least the 1890s, this notion survived, if somewhat modified, in Conservative circles in the 1930s. For example, in his book published in 1930, Lord Melchett argued that ‘the British Empire as an economic unit consists of elements which are in the main complementary to one another and not competitive’. He went on to note that 90 per cent of the manufactured goods imported into Britain came from non-Empire counties, and that the problem of competing manufactures from within the Empire only related to the Dominions.39 In his landmark speech on protection when introducing the Imports Duties Act in 1932, Neville Chamberlain was careful to emphasise that he recognised the desire of the Dominions to pursue their own economic development, and that this would involve bargaining over protective duties. His case for preferences rested upon the idea that total trade would expand on the basis of such preferences, which in turn would enable the Dominion economies to grow, and this would stimulate further trade growth in which Britain would share.40 In regard to the rest of the Empire, Chamberlain made no reference at all to India; a recognition, perhaps, that the sub-continent did not fit any easy schema concerning imperial economic relations. However, in relation to ‘the Colonies, Protectorates and Mandated Territories’ he pictured a system of complementarity, but also argued that these countries were already in many cases giving Britain preferences, whilst receiving little in return. Given the dire conditions of many of these economies, they would be granted preferential access to the British market, not least to prevent their financial collapse.41 Other Conservatives were more willing to develop the arguments about the problem of declining complementarity of the components of the world economy; but this was largely done without relating the problem to the

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Empire. Thus, for example, Harold Macmillan in a speech in May 1932 argued for protection: The policy that we pursued in the nineteenth century was, I think, the right policy at a time when the world was organised on what might be called a complementary basis. The world to-day is organised on a competitive basis and a new twentieth century policy is required to suit twentieth century facts . . . the character of the imports must be controlled. We can no longer allow our industrial system, our well-built up and developed system of relationship between capital and labour, to be attacked and shattered by the free introduction into this country of dumped and sweated goods.42

Later in that decade, in his famous book on The Middle Way, Macmillan returned to this theme. Again he shows recognition of the strength of free trade arguments, but goes on to say that ‘By following the cult of cheapness we should be conniving at a process which undermines the standards of the most advanced countries and rewarding, with a premium, the most ruthless exploitation of labour’.43 Again, no connection is made between these general statements and the imperial or specifically Indian case. From Horsbrugh’s point of view part of the problem of responding to Dundee’s crisis was that, as a Conservative politician, she could not draw on any substantial Conservative doctrine about how low-wage competition from within the Empire should be responded to. Conservative imperial doctrine was still very much dominated by relations with the white Dominions. There were emergent protectionist notions about how to deal with low-wage competition, in line with the general Tory rejection of free trade, but the reconciliation of such protectionism with Conservative notions of empire was not achieved. So Horsbrugh could happily proclaim that free trade was a ‘glorious obsolete doctrine’, but could offer little alternative beyond general support for protectionism and empire, without reconciling the two.44 III As in Conservative parties across the country, the Dundee Unionists saw the slump from 1929 as demanding a protectionist response.45 The desire to keep out foreign manufactures was symbolised by the decision in 1931 to put a ban on the giving of foreign goods as prizes in the Party whist drive.46 At the local party AGM of 1931 Horsbrugh said ‘she wanted a British government which gave our Home Industries a chance. The Unionist party stood for economic unity of the British Empire based on an extended scheme of preferences.’47 This was standard for Conservatives at the 1931 election, but it did not, of course, address what to do about Dundee’s particular problem of Indian competition. In her election meetings Horsbrugh declared that she was opposed to food taxes, but supported taxes on ‘fully manufactured items’.48 The prospect of such tariffs, she claimed, was already leading to the



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likelihood of a bottle-making plant being established in the city.49 In regard to jute, she seems to have focused attention on the rise in manufactured products from Czechoslovakia and Belgium, rather than the problem of Calcutta.50 This, it may be noted, is similar to Baxter’s strategy in the 1908 election, when he focused his protectionist arguments on Germany rather than Calcutta.51 Once elected, Horsbrugh initially maintained this geographical focus. In her maiden speech in the House of Commons she argued that all Scottish textile industries ‘are suffering grievous unemployment, and all are up against what we call unfair competition from the Continent. Linen piecegoods and linen yarns, jute piece-goods and jute yarn, and carpets are coming in from Russia, from Czechoslovakia and Belgium at prices with which we cannot compete, in view of the local wages in this country.’ She went on to argue that the key issue was the need for protection ‘from unfair competition from a lower standard of life on the Continent’.52 Alongside this focus on the specific impact of European competition went a general emphasis on protectionist imperial economic links. Thus in a speech in Edinburgh in December 1931 she claimed that since the election Britain had seen two big changes. The ‘fortress of free trade was shattered’; and ‘the other great change was the turning from the idea of a Great Britain linked up in some international scheme with the Continent of Europe to a Great Britain linked up with a Greater Britain – the Empire throughout the world. If they got that linking-up with the Empire, they would get probably the biggest and strongest economic unit that the world had ever seen.’53 If Horsbrugh was initially reluctant to say much about the Indian issue, she was soon under pressure from the jute employers to do so. In the context of the legislative moves on protection, the AJSM obtained a meeting with the Board of Trade in December 1931 to press for an emergency tariff of 20 to 33.3 per cent emergency tariff on all jute goods. Horsbrugh was briefed on the meeting at the Board of Trade, and suggested to the Association that they contact the Conservative Trade Research Department on the issue.54 After the passing of the Import Duties Act the Association formed an ‘ad hoc fiscal committee’ with a remit to pursue protection for the industry at the Tariff Advisory Committee, set up by the Act, and they agreed to employ a King’s Counsel to lead this campaign.55 While the AJSM was lobbying for a removal of discrimination in, if not total abolition of, the Indian export duty on raw jute, it was also emphasising to Horsbrugh that this was not the key issue. Rather, the Secretary of the Association told her, ‘There was such a difference between the costs of production of Indian goods and home goods that it was essential that there should be some Import Duty against goods coming into this country. The Secretary also explained to her that India was the real competitor, and he had given her some indication of the rate of wages.’56 In the run up to the Ottawa conference Horsbrugh suggested that the

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AJSM send its representative to meet the Indian delegate to Ottawa, but the India Office resisted this approach. Pressing its case through the Board of Trade, the Association recognised how poorly jute fitted with the overall focus of Ottawa; unlike most other industries, it was looking not for tariff cuts in Dominion markets but for the protection of the home trade from Indian imports.57 The AJSM invested considerable hope in the Ottawa negotiations, and it was in the preparation for these that it first talked to the DDUJFW about forming a common front in lobbying the government.58 Such optimism was also evident in local Conservative party circles.59 But the Ottawa conference yielded very little for Dundee. The AJSM sent two representatives to the conference, who lobbied the President of the Board of Trade and the Board’s Industrial Adviser, but to no avail; under the agreements at Ottawa Indian jute goods had free access to the British market. The AJSM men told the Board’s spokesman that Dundee’s interests had been ‘sacrificed for Empire politics and Indian officialdom’.60 In the wake of this rebuff Horsbrugh vowed to continue to appeal for increased protection for jute. Despite the failure of Ottawa vis-à-vis India, by 1934 Horsbrugh was claiming overall success for the Agreements. At the DCUA Annual Meeting she claimed that Empire trade ‘had increased a great deal since the Ottawa agreements. Trade with South Africa this year was up by three and a half millions and with every other dominion trade was improving at a similar rate.’61 This statement made no explicit reference to India, but was linked to general claims about improvement in the fortunes of the industry, which had indeed shown some recovery (see Table 7.1).62 There is no record of Horsbrugh having had contacts with the opponents of the government’s proposals on Indian constitutional reform, and both she and Foot voted for the Bill on second reading in April 1933.63 Indeed both Horsbrugh and Foot seem to have been wary about any overt Dundee lobbying on this matter, advising the AJSM against pressing them, as MPs, to support amendment to the Government of India Bill to keep powers over tariffs in the hands of the Indian central government, with veto powers for the Governor-General.64 The AJSM however met with Conservative members of the ‘ginger group’ who opposed the Bill, notably Henry Page Croft and Leo Amery, and who expressed sympathy with the ideas of the Association. These Conservative MPs suggested approaching the Indian High Commission, a suggestion which seems to have been acted upon, the Commission in turn suggesting that the Association approach the Calcutta industry direct.65 The Association also had contacts with the Empire Industries Association regarding ‘the import of manufactured goods into the UK, especially from oriental countries’, and linked to the EIA’s desire to collect ‘information for a campaign against the importation of goods made by Black Labour’.66 Horsbrugh was unable to achieve any influence on economic policy-­ making relating to India in the early 1930s. Her main success was in using



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trade bargaining with Denmark and Argentina to get those countries to send their meat to Britain wrapped in Dundee jute. She located that agreement in the general context of the National Government’s protectionism: ‘we are getting that trade because we had explained to the nations of the world that Britain was no longer to be a dumping-ground for all their goods. We buy from those who buy from us in future.’67 In the 1935 election the Scotsman supported Horsbrugh on the grounds that ‘thousands of men and women who are now in full employment there would been idle but for Miss Horsbrugh’s efforts. It was mainly due to her persistent vigilance that the recent trade agreements had inserted in them a provision that imported meat should be wrapped in all-British material. In practice that meant jute.’68 The 1935 election came in a relatively quiet period in the middle of the decade when Horsbrugh was focused on her role at the League of Nations. She suggested that the Dundee industry had enjoyed some small improvement, citing the rise in imports of raw jute from 599,000 tons in 1931 to 965,000 in the year to July 1935.69 Horsbrugh won again in November 1935, albeit with a reduced majority, down from 16,000 to 6,000 over her nearest Labour rival.70 In her manifesto for that election she made no reference to India, but pointed to the improvement in jute, arguing that this was the effect of ‘a well-planned programme for safeguarding in Britain work of the British people and increasing our exports by Trade Agreements’.71 But the slight recovery had been in a period when the IJMA cartel had been effective, but this was breaking down even as Horsbrugh won the 1935 election.72 But after the collapse of the cartel, the problem came back in a much more urgent form as imports of Calcutta jute goods into the UK increased rapidly (Table 7.3). In a speech in the House of Commons in July 1936 Horsbrugh reiterated her claim that the trade agreements with countries such as Argentina and Denmark had radically reduced unemployment in Dundee. But, she went on, the trade was now facing ‘a new emergency’, ‘a new terror’ because of the Table 7.3  Exports of jute goods from India to the UK, 1930–8 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938

Hessian cloth (000 yards)

Jute cloth of all types (000 yards)

Bags (000s)

 42,267  54,562  53,100  44,212   46,843  64,019 123,936 150,535 175,409

 45,710  57,168  55,560  48,488  51,481  69,019 132,833 159,291 182,255

42,945 43,175 49,394 41,804 49,857 51,836 75,872 65,404 61,880

Source: AJSM, Annual Report 1939

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breakdown of the IJMA agreement. She asserted that ‘Last year the manufactured imports from India were greater than they have ever been since 1920, and in the first three months of this year they were 125 per cent above the imports of last year. If something is not done, and done quickly, the jute trade of the United Kingdom will cease to exist.’73 In arguing for a government response to this, she emphasised the security aspect, suggesting that the trade provided an ‘absolute necessity in time of war’. Some response was also justified in terms of ‘fairness’ between British and Indian producers: Those who come into touch with the people in the jute trade are continually being asked why it is that, if cotton textile goods going into India are taxed, jute textiles are allowed to come into this country free. Jute manufactured goods are taxed in every other country in the world – in the Irish Free State the duty is as much as fifty per cent. – because of this rush of imports from India, but this country alone has its market flooded with competition that it is impossible to stand up against.74

Horsbrugh was challenged on her position by Shinwell for Labour, who in a general attack on tariffs asserted: ‘Let it be duly noted that the hon. Lady wants an improvement in the Dundee jute industry at the expense of the Empire. It is a question of shutting out goods from India.’75 This criticism was in turn replied to by another local Unionist MP, Colonel Kerr from Forfar, who attacked Shinwell’s stance: He knows as well as I know that the reason why we are in such distress in the jute industry – and I should not have thought he would have approved of it – is that the goods which are being imported into this country to-day and which are wrecking the jute industry are produced uneconomically at wages of which he cannot approve. In view of that surely he cannot be so scathing, and rather sneering, at those who are interested in jute trying to get better terms for the industry.

In supporting controls on imports from Calcutta he went on to say A very little help to the jute industry would put it on its legs again, and I trust he will do his best to see what he can do. If we are suffering from duties put upon our imports to India, although they do give us a Preference, surely a little tit-for-tat which would save the jute industry, is an admissible thing to ask for.76

As assessed in more detail in Chapter 8, the period around and after this speech saw a flurry of activity in Dundee aimed at persuading the government to control Calcutta imports, and Horsbrugh played a leading role in this ‘united front’. She seems to have combined this activity with seeking to exert pressure through Conservative channels, both approaching Ministers and through more public forums such as the Scottish Unionist Annual meeting.77 She also pursued the issue at a parliamentary level, and this eventually led to the most sustained debate on jute and empire ever to reach the Commons.78



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The precise terms of the motion debated were: That this House is of opinion that in negotiations for trade agreements with the Dominions and with foreign countries His Majesty’s Government, while doing everything possible to assist the export trade and promote the prosperity of the country as a whole, should have especial regard to the effect upon particular industries in this country of imports from countries with low standards of wages, especially where the industries in question are concentrated in a limited area in the United Kingdom; and urges that the need for safeguarding the United Kingdom jute industry against the competition of Indian jute goods should be placed in the forefront of the resumed negotiations with the Government of India.79

The specific means of protection, according to the proposer of the motion, would be a tariff ‘as high as necessary to equalise the difference between our standard of living and that of potential importers, but not so high as to exclude a fair element of competition’.80 In her speech Horsbrugh began by criticising Tom Johnston, as a previous Labour MP for Dundee, for supporting the opposition amendment calling for an international agreement to prohibit trade in goods produced below minimum standards. She would have liked to ask him ‘whether he thinks that it is right that while he endeavours to raise the standard of living of people in other parts of the world we should stand by and wait while the standard of living and of employment of the people in this country go down?’ She went on to point to the likelihood that any such process of international negotiation would take a very long time, and that Dundee’s needs were ‘desperately urgent’. She also queried the concept of a ‘minimum standard of labour’ – how was this to be defined?81 Horsbrugh proclaimed her support for imperial trade and imperial preference, but argued this should be built on a complementary basis, and that it should be made clear to all the Dominions and Empire countries that they should not seek to ‘spoil or extinguish industry in this country’. She argued that protecting employment in Dundee should be seen as on a par with the protection of wages and standards by Factory Acts and Wage Boards.82 With regard to India, the argument was that exports to Britain were such a small part of total Calcutta production that no significant damage would be done by cutting these exports. So protection ‘would not strike a very bad blow at the jute industry of India but would make all the difference to the industry in the UK’.83 Following her past practice, Horsbrugh made no attempt to link the issue of jute to that of British policy on India more generally. But other Unionists made connections. Sir Nairne Sandeman, an MP for a Lancashire seat, said he now regretted previously being swayed by the argument that protesting about Indian tariffs on British cotton exports was dangerous because of political repercussions in India. He also rejected the argument that, if Britain protected jute, India would retaliate against cotton imports from Britain: ‘I

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should need to have very good proof indeed that Lancashire was going to benefit to any extent as against the prospect of affairs in the jute industry of Dundee being worsened still further, because I do not think that India cares a rap about this country’.84 Beyond this kind of political calculation Sandeman made another, ‘orientalist’ argument: Further, it might compel the Government of India, over whom we have no control in domestic matters, to pass legislation reducing the hours of labour in the Calcutta jute mills. I am pretty certain that might happen. I should remark that no native works in the mills for more than nine months on end. After that he goes up country, because he is a country-bred man and likes working in his field far better than in the mills. He could do that, and I should think he would be far happier, and be living a far healthier life. But there is no going back to the land for our poor people in Dundee. There is not the land, and they are not land born; they are born industrialists.85

As noted already, one way of justifying restrictions on Indian exports by those who wished also to support imperial trade was to assert a ‘natural’ imperial division of labour, a division which in jute was now being infringed. Thus, James Duncan, Conservative MP for Kensington North: Our old conception of the Dominions and Colonies was that they were mainly raw material producers, and that we and other Continental countries were the manufacturing nations. But this is one of the few cases where a Dominion product competes with European products . . . This is a problem which future Governments will have to look into much more closely, because it affects the whole question of Asiatic competition with European standards. The sooner a general line of policy is laid down on this question, the better it will be for this country and the Asiatic countries.86

In response to this debate, the Board of Trade representative (Captain Euan Wallace) accepted the motion on behalf of the government, whilst suggesting that the best road to any result would be industry-to-industry negotiations rather than hoping for agreements between the Indian and British governments. On general issues of trade policy, he noted that any selective import restrictions would be damaging to the most- favoured-nation approach to trade policy: To discriminate against one particular country in respect of one particular kind of goods because their wage standards were in our opinion inadequate would cut across the most-favoured nation system and destroy what we believe is one of the most essential elements in our overseas trade policy.

He attacked the Labour amendment, saying That policy is going to stop Indian rice from coming in, South American meat, bananas, all Chinese goods, practically everything from Russia, and cane sugar.



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These are a few of the results that have occurred to me. If that policy were pursued to its logical conclusion the United States of America would cease to import anything at all.87

The negotiation of an Anglo-Indian trade agreement to which this parliamentary debate related followed the Indian government terminating the Ottawa and supplementary agreements in May 1936. The Indian government’s aim was to reduce the preferences granted to Britain under the earlier agreements, while the British sought to extend them. The core of the discussions concerned cotton, and discussion about other products largely figured as bargaining counters in the attempt to settle the cotton issue.88 London’s political calculation about what was needed to maintain India’s goodwill meant that most analysis has suggested that in economic terms it was India which benefited most from the agreement.89 What is certain is that there was no realistic possibility of getting any agreement on protecting Dundee’s jute, and no such agreement occurred. The realities of the time were spelt out by the President of the Board of Trade in responding to AJSM pressure: The President was bound to look at the question in its relation to the general trade position between this country and India, and could not afford to sacrifice the advantages which the UK industry as a whole obtained from the Indian market. He could not at that stage promise any quantitative limitation on imports from India or that a duty would be imposed on these imports.90

When the Agreement had been signed, the AJSM asked why nothing had been done for jute, and the Board of Trade told them ‘The Government of India defend refusal on grounds that agreement to limit hours in India is safeguard against excessive competition. Government might also take view that couldn’t help unless the trade itself did “did something in the nature of rationalisation”’.91 As Stewart rightly observes, ‘It was evident to all except the Dundee jute men and their Parliamentary champion that placing restrictions on India’s largest export industry was a political and economic impossibility’.92 The government consistently urged direct negotiations between Calcutta and Dundee jute, but Dundee had no counters to bargain with.93 The Dundee negotiators were not helped by the role of the United Kingdom Jute Goods Association, which spoke for the import merchants and sought to get the AJSM to agree to accepting unlimited imports in all but the highest-­quality parts of the market.94 Calcutta delegates were even less amenable to the Association’s claims, at a dinner in 1937 telling it that ‘effective competition with Dundee only covered about ten per cent of its trade, and that owing to pressure of circumstances in India and elsewhere they might have to extend these activities into Dundee’s own special lines’.95 Juteopolis obtained some contingent aid in 1937 from a big strike in Calcutta and increased American demand arising from floods in the

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Mississippi valley, but most important was the expansion of demand for sandbags by the British government as part of its war preparations.96 This avenue was stressed by Horsbrugh in her presentations to the Dundee Unionists, when in 1938 she proclaimed, ‘I want to see not a single ounce of government orders is made in Calcutta, and that every ounce is made in Dundee’.97 This recovery was sustained up to the war, though output and employment still fell well below the levels before the IJMA cartel collapsed. The overall economic position of Dundee in the 1930s was a declining reliance on jute, with some offsetting employment rise, especially in the distributive trades, a traditional absorber of excess labour into low-productivity activities when the labour market is under stress.98 IV The Conservatives found no route to protect Juteopolis from Calcutta competition in the 1930s. In the wake of the parliamentary debate in February 1937 this failure was recognised and lamented by the Courier in the following terms: An almost sinister feature of the case is that Dundee is confronted by a ruinous prospect because the competition which is swamping her industry comes from within the Empire. If it came from a foreign country few things are more certain than that it would be dealt with effectively. Because it comes from an empire country the claim for fair dealing is met with halting hesitation and inaction. This is not the way to stimulate Empire sentiment . . . The lamentable situation today is that every country in the world is protecting itself against Indian jute dumping except Great Britain, and Dundee is overwhelmed with the flood of cheap goods which these countries are shelling out. And Dundee is subjected to this treatment because India is an Empire country.99

The Courier was clearly right that no way had been found to reconcile Dundee’s desire for protection and London and Delhi’s views about what imperial politics required. In part this reflected the limited weight of Dundee in London’s political calculations; at the most, the fate of jute was likely to affect the economic wellbeing of no more than six or seven constituencies in Dundee, Angus and North Fife. But even the weight of Lancashire, once thought of as the cockpit of British politics with its dozens of marginal seats, had had far less influence in the 1930s than before the Great War. So both textile industries could rightly see themselves as sacrificed to the bigger imperial calculation about what policies would keep India within the Empire and in a relatively contented state. Plainly neither industry was sacrificed on the altar of free trade; no one argued in the 1930s that they should not be protected because such protection would be damaging to their efficiency or damaging to consumer i­nterests.100 The Conservatives had been wholly converted to a protectionist



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national political economy. At the same time they continued to embrace the Empire, and the Ottawa Agreement underpinned an unprecedented degree of legislated imperial economic integration. For Britain and the white Dominions this Agreement arguably brought some success. Their economies did better than most in the 1930s as they traded more with each other, though this was only in part the effect of Ottawa, and owed a great deal to their departure from gold, which made possible expansionary domestic monetary policies.101 But the relationship between the white Dominions and Britain in the 1930s was not based on the happy recognition of wholly compatible interests, underpinned by ethnic commonality, that imperial enthusiasts had hoped for. Ottawa involved hard bargaining and recognition that, while benefits were to be had from some elements of economic integration, there were clear limits to this. The Dominions wanted some of Britain’s manufactures to aid their own industrial development, but that development also required protection for their own infant industries. The outcome was imperial preference rather than free entry on many British manufactures sold in the Dominions. Similarly, Britain wanted access to the cheapest possible imported food, but also wanted to protect elements of domestic agriculture. Again, the result was complex deals which gave both sides some, but not all, of what they wanted. The Ottawa agreements were not based on the degree of complementarity between an industrial metropole and agrarian empire that some ideologues had hoped; by the 1930s Dominion industrialisation was well under way, and Britain had recoiled from the degree of dependence on foreign food reached in 1913. Nevertheless the degree of complementarity remained substantial. Ottawa probably did divert trade from the channels it would have run in if left unregulated, although this was strongly linked to the easing of monetary conditions in both Britain and the Dominions. The case was very different for India (Table 7.1). India’s trade under the Raj had always been very multilateral, and indeed much of its economic importance to Britain before the Great War rested on its capacity to earn dollars by its exports to the USA, when those to Britain were quite limited. India was of course a major export market for British goods, above all for cotton manufactures, but once India had developed its own industry this sector was characterised by competition not complementarity. In a smaller way jute was similar; the Calcutta and Dundee industries competed with each other mainly in third countries, but, in the 1930s especially, also within Britain. So in these textiles, Indian competition, based on low wages and hence low overall costs, was rapidly successful in out-competing the British goods. National political economy had sought protection against such low wage competition, and to a degree in the 1920s and 1930s this was achieved, especially in relation to Japanese goods.102 But such remedies were not politically possible against India.

Chapter 8 The Empire Strikes Back: Responding to Crisis in the 1930s

None of the main political parties offered a plausible solution to the crisis of Dundee jute in the 1930s. The National government, though highly protectionist, drew the line at any statutory restriction on imports from India. Its priority was to shape Indian politics to sustain British rule as long as possible; the Conservatives were bitterly divided on how this aim was best achieved, but both sides to this dispute regarded the importance of this objective as far outweighing concerns about a small industry like jute. The die-hards who opposed the 1935 India Act sought to link the issue of Indian constitutional reform to Indian protection against Lancashire cotton, but this purely tactical manoeuvre was defeated.1 Dundee’s much smaller political weight meant no such linkage was even seriously attempted. On the Labour side, equivocation about the benefits of free trade, already evident in the 1920s, was greatly increased by the crisis after 1929. But the triumph of a protectionist Conservative party in 1931 acted to revive and reinforce Labour’s traditional ideological opposition to tariffs. The problem of competition from low-wage countries was to be addressed by international agreements on hours and wages in combination with international solidarity in the form of British encouragement for trade unions in poor countries, not protection. Growing support for Indian nationalism in the Party reinforced opposition to any policy which might be seen as subordinating Indian to British interests. The Communist party’s political strategies gyrated in this period, but its economic policies never had any place for protectionism. Its commitment to international worker solidarity meant that de facto it became the inheritor of the traditional liberal opposition to tariffs, regarded as instruments of employer collusion, the underpinnings of monopoly and a means of reducing real wages. But these national postures had only limited influence in Dundee, where the profound crisis of the city underpinned quite distinct alignments of forces. We can summarise these alignments as two ‘united fronts’. One of these was a local version of a Labour party/Communist party alliance, advocated nationally by the CP, strongly resisted by the national Labour leadership, but with considerable support in Dundee. More intriguing was the formation of a second, purely local, ‘united front’ which brought together a

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protectionist alliance between the local jute employers and jute trade unions, along with the city council and the local MPs. I The crucial underpinning for both these developments was the depth of the unemployment crisis of the 1930s in the city. The economic basis of this crisis was twofold. First was the worldwide recession after 1929, which hit international trade especially hard, and with it the demand for the staple sacking and wrapping products of the global jute industry. Greatly exacerbating that general decline in demand was the loss of competitiveness of Dundee’s producers in the face of foreign competition. In the case of European competition relief was given by the protectionist measures of the National government in 1931 and 1932, and imports from these sources fell sharply to negligible levels in the 1930s (Table 8.1).2 But far more significant was competition from Calcutta. As discussed in Chapter 7, this had been held in check by the cartel organised by the IJMA, but when this cartel collapsed imports surged, especially from 1936 (Table 7.3). Together these factors meant not only exceptionally high levels of unemployment in the industry in Dundee but a much more prolonged problem, with the cyclical Table 8.1  British imports of jute goods from Europe, 1920–38 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938

Jute yarns (000 lbs)

Jute piece goods (million square yards)

2,202 271 379 3,586 3,123 2,764 2,623 3,565 3,370 2,284 2,742 1,669 205 28 32 15 38 21 36

6.1 7.0 15.8 47.3 19.7 14.7 18.1 16.4 19.2 14.3 10.8 22.1 0.8 0.9 0.1 .05 1.0 1.0 1.0

Source: AJSM Annual Report 1939

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Table 8.2  Unemployment amongst jute workers, 1924–38 (percentage) 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 Mean 1924–38

9.9 14.2 23.7 8.3 8.5 12.9 37.8 46.9 42.1 30.5 31.0 26.3 26.7 23.0 28.4 24.4

Source: Beveridge, Full Employment, p. 83

recovery in activity after 1932 less evident than in most other industries, and which stalled after 1935. The broad picture of unemployment in jute is summarised in Table 8.2. But while these figures probably accurately portray fluctuations over time, the absolute level of unemployment is underestimated by the official figures. One reason for underestimation was the Anomalies Regulations Act of 1931. This Act was one of the ways that the 1929 Labour government sought to reduce expenditure on unemployment, and its clauses included a reduction in the eligibility of married women for unemployment benefit, a particularly important issue in jute where such women were present in large numbers.3 Another feature of the labour market in Dundee was the relatively slow decline in the number of insured workers (both employed and unemployed) attached to the industry, despite the very high levels of unemployment. The number of insured workers fell from 41,200 in 1924 to 30,000 in 1937, a fall of 34 per cent.4 In most industries with such high unemployment rates, the numbers insured fell considerably more, as people left the industry completely, and this disparity reinforces the point that there were very limited alternative sources of employment in the city for jute workers. Again, this problem of lack of alternatives was most acute for women. While the total insured population in the city actually rose slightly from 70,037 to 72,055 between 1924 and 1939, the number of insured women fell from 29,677 to 26,300 over the same period.5 The insured numbers in jute fell much faster for women than for men: 28,070 to 17,220, compared with 13,150 to



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10,760.6 This difference reflected the movement in the industry towards shift working, with women barred by law from working at night.7 Discontent arising from unemployment was a reflection not just of the numbers affected but also of the way in which the unemployed were treated. Nationally the broad trajectory in unemployment relief went through two phases. Until 1931 the postwar collapse of a strictly insurance base for National Insurance against unemployment led to tougher conditions on the receipt of benefits (such as under the Anomalies Regulations) combined with ad hoc extension of benefits to prevent widespread reliance on the Poor Law.8 In 1931 the National government greatly extended one of the conditions attached to the relief of those who had exhausted their right to insurance benefits, by taking into account the finances of the whole household in which the claimant lived. This household Means Test was a focus of a great deal of discontent, above all because it often involved the reliance of relief for unemployed men on the incomes of their adult children and/or wives. It also created a space for conflict between local and central government, as the operation of the Test was in the hands of local Public Assistance Committees.9 In 1935 a radical reform of the whole unemployment relief system led to the creation of an Unemployment Assistance Board (UAB), which aimed to nationalise the giving of benefit to the non-insured, taking powers away from local bodies. This attempt to ‘take unemployment relief out of politics’ was a failure. The reduction in benefits for many implied by the UAB’s initial scales of payment led to widespread discontent, and some improvement in the scales was forced on the National government. Nevertheless, in the long run the aim of reducing local discretion in the system was largely realised.10 In Dundee the treatment of the unemployed led to major and bitter protests at various points in the interwar years. In 1920 and 1921 the particular flashpoint was the treatment of ex-servicemen; a government survey of the situation in September 1920 found that in Dundee (and other cities) fifty per cent of disabled ex-servicemen had been unemployed for more than half the time since leaving the forces.11 Unemployment insurance in the 1920s was available only for a limited period, and in Scotland until November 1921 it was illegal for parish councils to provide outdoor relief to the able-bodied. The prospect of large numbers of the unemployed, including ex-servicemen, having no relief at all led to the Scottish Office encouraging local authorities in Scotland, including Dundee, to break this law, prior to its amendment.12 Pressure to change policy also came from the widespread discontent amongst women as well as men. In July 1921 the refusal of benefit to women whose husbands were getting relief led to a big protest at the council, with the lead, according to the local press, being given by married women.13 Women also played a prominent part in the disturbances later that same summer which led up to the change in policy on the granting of outdoor relief.14 Their role was, like that of women jute workers in prewar industrial

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disputes, regarded with displeasure by local male labour leaders, who called on the women to ‘Stop this fooling’.15 There was also serious unrest in 1923, again with women playing a prominent role, when the issue of unemployment relief became entangled with the big jute strike and subsequent lockout of that year.16 The widespread introduction of the Means Test was the focus of discontent in Dundee in September 1931. A demonstration organised by the NUWM led to sustained rioting, and charges by mounted police were accompanied by the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of local activists, with the prominent local Communist Mary Brooksbank amongst them.17 II It was against this background of mass unemployment, and mass discontent and the treatment of the unemployed, that we can best contextualise support for the ‘United Front’ between the Labour and Communist parties in Dundee.18 Nationally, the emergence of advocacy of such a front followed the shifting policy positions of the Communists towards support for co-operation with Labour. Historians of the CP have argued about how far the changing positions of the British Party simply followed the dictates of Moscow, but that there was a huge shift in policy in the early 1930s is clear.19 Previously, in the so-called ‘Third Period’ (1928 onwards), labour and social democratic parties had been denounced by the Communists as ‘social fascists’, while from around 1934 these same parties were embraced as partners in the common struggle against fascism. This United Front brought together two parties opposed to protection. This was a long-standing position which the parties’ official representatives adhered to throughout the interwar period. For Labour this was a continuation of the approach of pre-1914, noted above, rooted in a combination of recognition of the benefits of cheap food, hostility to tariff-induced industrial monopoly, and solidarity with workers in other countries who would be hurt by cuts in British imports. These official positions had wobbled in the face of the world depression after 1929, but the election of an avowedly protectionist National government in 1931 seems to have revived Labour’s anti-tariff politics.20 In 1931 the Labour manifesto (entitled ‘Plan or Perish’) rehearsed these arguments in the following terms: The Labour party has no confidence in any attempt to bolster up a bankrupt capitalism by a system of tariffs. Tariffs would artificially increase the cost of living. They would enrich private interests at the expense of the nation. They would prejudice the prospect of international co-operation . . . in the face of the millions unemployed in high tariff America and Germany, they are clearly no cure for unemployment.21



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At the national level the Labour arguments were also clear in the Commons debates on jute. The Labour spokesman in the 1936 debate (Emmanuel Shinwell) followed the line of attacking both free trade and protection in general, and advocated a policy of economic planning and the increase of purchasing power. The specific suggestion was linked to Argentina, and the belief that expanding purchasing power in Britain would increase food imports from Argentina, which would give ‘a much needed stimulus to trade’.22 In 1938 the second major parliamentary debate on jute brought greater clarity about what Labour would do about the industry, the party’s amendment to the protectionist motion reading as follows: taking note of the effects of the exploitation in the jute industry in Bengal by British and other capital, calls upon the Government to promote an international conference for the purpose of fixing minimum standards of labour conditions and imposing an international prohibition of imports of goods produced under conditions below those standards so long as there is an alternative supply of such goods produced under fair and reasonable conditions.23

In his speech supporting this amendment, its proposer (McLean Watson) argued that he was no free trader, on the contrary ‘I have been more or less a protectionist since I started work – not a protectionist for the capitalists, but for the workers. I want to protect the workers’ interests from the capitalists, whether the capitalists be British or foreign,’24 He went on to stress how the Calcutta jute industry was financed and organised by Dundee: ‘That is where the trouble began and how it began’. Finally, he stressed that if protection was introduced in jute this would be like Britain treating ‘the Dominions as they treat foreigners’.25 Thus Labour had a clear policy: ‘the prohibition of Indian goods coming into this country when they are produced in India under worse conditions than in Dundee or other parts of this country’ secured by international agreement.26 But it was a policy which even its proponents recognised would take a long time to bring into effect. As a critic put it, ‘I do not believe that, if the Amendment were carried, there would be a trade union left in Dundee because, by the time theories could be put into effect, Dundee would be shut up’.27 Dingle Foot also suggested the implausibility of Labour’s policy – it would mean that, if the proposed international conference reached agreement, the countries involved would be ‘expected to fix standards of labour and wages in excess of those which now obtain in their countries, knowing that that would immediately lead to a cessation of their export trade’.28 National Labour party views were reproduced in the local debate in Dundee. In his first speech in the 1931 campaign, one of the Labour candidates, Marcus, attacked tariffs in the following terms:

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When tariffs are applied you may reduce unemployment in certain industries but you will double unemployment in other industries. The policy of tariffs will undoubtedly suit certain wealthy manufacturers in this country just as the Great War suited those manufacturers. The policy of tariffs won’t suit the common people because tariffs mean that the prices of commodities which are purchased by working class housewives will go up enormously and the purchasing power of each home will be correspondingly decreased.29

Later in the campaign, Marcus stressed that Labour did have a policy for the provision of work: We propose to take the initiative in bringing together an international conference to regulate hours of labour throughout the world. We believe that you can’t provide work for industrialist [sic] countries unless it is based on an agreement throughout the world . . . this was an age of internationalism, and all nations must come together.30

Such arguments were strongly echoed in the DFP, the local labour paper, which for a period was financed by the Trades and Labour Council, and may be said to represent the broad non-Communist Left in the city.31 In July 1932 the paper reported without comment the AJSM’s call for protection of jute in the run up to the Ottawa conference, but a week later it published a long article entitled ‘Protection for the jute industry. Will it save local industry?’ This argued, pragmatically, that given India’s membership of the Empire ‘it was unthinkable that a Tory government would extend the tariff system against Indian or Empire produced commodities’. Furthermore, protection was not the answer because: Asiatic labour, or coolie labour, because of its general incompetence plus the lack of economic organization, is very dear labour . . . There must be jute manufacturers in Dundee who know that if international conditions were reorganized, stabilized and, of course, freed from tariff restrictions, Indian jute would be of no consequence to their trade contracts.32

In a strong echo of some of the accounts of Indian jute from before the Great War, the article went on to argue that conditions for ‘Indian coolies’ were actually very good, with low wages matched by low prices, and the ability of the worker to afford to absent himself from work for several months of the year. The comforting conclusion was drawn that these lower wages were offset by the much higher productivity of the Dundee worker so that ‘India can never seriously menace the British jute industry’.33 In the election of 1935 the broad anti-protectionist stance was sustained: the local Labour manifesto followed traditional lines of argument, arguing that the National government’s tariff policy ‘has not only strangled our Overseas Trade by raising up national barriers to commerce between all the countries of the world, but has also created enmity between the nations and



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thereby endangered the peace of the world’.34 When a new Labour candidate was selected in 1937 she continued to attack tariffs, calling protection ‘the great betrayal’ which had led to rising food prices equivalent to a cut in the real wage of seven shillings per week.35 The Communist party was active in Dundee from 1920, and in 1922 William Gallagher its candidate gained 5,906 votes in the election that saw Scrymgeour and Morel elected and Churchill defeated. In 1923 the Communist vote almost doubled, to 10,380, while votes for Scrymgeour and Morel both fell significantly, the former suffering from his attack on the DDUJFW leadership in the 1923 dispute.36 In the mid- and late 1920s, reflecting the national pattern, both the Communist and the Labour parties increasingly established themselves as distinct, and often hostile organisations. The strong opposition of Morel to the attempts by the Communistaffiliated MP Shapurji Saklatvala to encourage Dundee workers’ links with Calcutta workers emphasises the growing hostility between the two parties.37 In 1923 Gallagher had sought to stand as a Labour candidate in Dundee, this still being the CP’s policy, but this was rejected by the national Labour party, with Morel strongly supporting the rejection.38 The leadership of the DDUJFW also had very poor relations with the local Communists. Sime fell out with the Party at the time of his visit to India in 1925/6, and in 1928 the union banned Communists from holding office.39 This division in the local labour movement was accentuated after 1928 by shifts in national Communist policy, paralleled by increasing resistance by Labour to any role for the CP in either party or union activity.40 But while the majority of the DDUJFW leadership remained staunchly antiCommunist, there were many others in the non-Communist Left in the city who were less inclined to see the Communists as enemies. A major obstacle to co-operation was removed when the CP changed its line in the early 1930s. As noted above, national CP policy changed in that period to support for Left unity, and in parliamentary terms, in Dundee, this meant that where in 1931 the Communists had fought a bitter campaign against Labour (and gained over ten thousand votes), in 1935 they did not put up a candidate, and actively supported Marcus and Gibson, the Labour candidates.41 This support for the Labour candidates seems to have encouraged closer links, though, when the Chairman of the local Trades and Labour Council publicly endorsed a ‘United Front’ strategy in March 1937, he was forced to make clear that it was only a personal opinion.42 But this endorsement followed years of partial, troubled, but significant local co-operation which transcended party boundaries. For example, in the wake of the 1931 riot and arrests, Marcus, the Labour MP, was active in securing bail for some of those held in prison, supported calls for a public enquiry into the arrests and proclaimed at a public meeting, ‘I have very little in common, perhaps, with Bob Stewart on political grounds, but on legal grounds I have one hundred per cent in common with him’.43

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This took place at a time when the national CP was violently attacking the Labour party, but many local Labour members favoured co-operation. In November 1931 the Dundee Trades and labour Council supported the Dundee Council of Action, created by the Communist Mary Brooksbank as a ‘united front’ against the Means Test. This raised problems for some unions because of their ban on Communists, but it was the opposition of the national Labour party which eventually put an end to the proposal.44 Other local bodies also defied the national policies of both parties in the early 1930s. The Dundee Working Women’s Guild, very much a CP-sponsored body, nevertheless seems to have drawn in non-Party women for its campaign against the Means Test, perhaps the issue which most acted to unite all of the Left in the early 1930s.45 The National Unemployed Workers Movement (NUWM), set up by the CP, also attracted many non-party members, albeit the organisation’s membership was highly fluid, with large numbers joining for short periods. There is evidence that the NUWM was active in Dundee at the time of a hunger march in 1922, and it organised the demonstration in 1931 which, as we have seen, accidentally acted as a catalyst for Left unity when the authorities responded so harshly.46 This co-operation should not be exaggerated. Communists like Brooksbank, who could gain support well outside the CP, were at odds with those party members who supported the view that Labour were ‘social fascists’, and there were suggestions in the local labour press that any threat to what the party saw as its leading role, for example in fighting the Means Test, would be directly undermined.47 On the other side, the DTLC was continuously embattled over relationships with the CP and its various front organisations. The sympathies of the Council were clearly complicated: in 1936 it voted strongly in favour of sending a delegation to the Soviet Union, called on the national Labour party to rescind its ban on affiliation by the CP and rejected a protest against the Moscow show trials of Bukharin and other ‘Old Bolsheviks’.48 But in 1937 it arranged for Woodburn from the Scottish executive of the Labour party to come to the city to lay down the law on the unacceptability of close relations with the CP, and the DTLC agreed that all its members should sign a declaration pledging themselves to uphold such principles.49 In 1938 the DTLC, as elsewhere in Scotland, lost its key place in local Labour organisation, in a move to prevent union delegates from outside the Party having a role in selecting Labour candidates. This development was linked to the serious problems facing Scottish Labour in the 1930s, which, following the disaffiliation of the ILP in 1932, saw major upheavals, both organisational and ideological. The ILP had been the backbone of the Labour party in Scotland, so after 1932 much of the local organisation of the Party had to be built up again from scratch, and in the face of the rivalry of the Scottish Socialist party, consisting of those ILPers (the majority in



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Scotland) who had opposed disaffiliation. The overall picture was one of weakness, greatly exacerbated by the events of 1931, and in which relations with the CP added to the disunity and disputation within the movement.50 By 1937 it seems clear that the Scottish Labour party was fighting back against manifestations of Dundee’s united front, and with some local official support. Nevertheless, once the national CP leadership changed tack in the early 1930s, and after the Party did not field a candidate in the 1935 parliamentary election, a considerable proportion of the local labour movement seems to have been happy to co-operate, especially on issues around the Means Test; though this willingness did not include the leadership of the DDUJFW. In this regard Dundee’s sentiment was in line with much rank and file opinion in the rest of Scotland, where, as Knox and Mackinlay point out, ‘Many members of the labour movement clearly supported the idea of a United Front’.51 With regards to responding to the crisis in the jute industry, the Communist party put less faith in international agreements to regulate competition than the national Labour party, but likewise supported the view that protection was at odds with international worker solidarity. It supported the Labour candidate’s argument in 1935 that nationalisation was the appropriate policy for the jute industry.52 In the long run, it argued, the only effective way to protect Dundee jute workers’ jobs was to raise wages in India, by strengthening trade unions, and in the even longer run by achieving independence for India.53 III Dundee’s second united front was of an entirely different type, involving an alliance between the jute unions, the jute employers (acting through the AJSM), the City Council and the Chamber of Commerce (but excluding the local trades and labour council, and the Communist party), to press the government for protection.54 This alliance seems to have arisen from two main forces. This united front did not fully emerge until 1937, but as early as 1932 there is evidence that the main jute union, the DDUJFW, was willing to take a protectionist stance. In that year the union urged the General Council of the TUC to meet a deputation from the AJSM, who had prepared a memorandum for the Ottawa conference on imperial trade, in which the Association called for protection against Calcutta goods. Sime, for the union, made it plain that the union backed the employers’ protectionist stance.55 At the end of the First World War the newly formed AJSM had discussed with the DDUJFW a joint approach to the Board of Trade to call for protection against India.56 While willing to act in unison with the employers, the union had made clear that in its view the answer to Calcutta competition was the improvement in Indian wages and conditions. In the event the discussions soon broke down on the employers’ insistence on involving

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the DMFOU, with whom the DDUJFW would not co-operate. The other unions did take part in a delegation, and were recorded as offering ‘general approval’ of the AJSM call for protection.57 There is no record of these approaches being renewed in the 1920s. Sime’s private breaking of ranks on the issue of protection at the beginning of the 1930s was despite his publicly continuing to attack the claims by Horsbrugh that the tariffs introduced in 1931 and 1932 had actually helped Dundee.58 But in these articles he was careful to avoid attacking tariffs in principle, focusing on the existing controls’ alleged failure to produce results (and, of course, these controls did not apply to Calcutta jute products). The impetus for protection, as we have seen, was greatly increased when, in the wake of the collapse in the cartel in Calcutta, imports of Indian jute manufactures into Britain surged, and unemployment, at best, stopped falling (Tables 7.3 and 8.2). While nothing had come of its initial representations from 1932, the DDUJFW continued to approach the Board of Trade about conditions in Dundee, despite being firmly told there was no prospect of tariffs on Indian jute goods. With the surge in imports after 1935, and seeking a more effective avenue, it eventually approached the employers directly to see whether they would agree to a joint approach.59 This approach followed a routine union–employer meeting, where the employers stressed their inability to raise wages because of Indian competition. This argument, linking wages directly to imports from Calcutta, seems to have drawn the Tenters’ Union into agreement alongside the DDUJFW to support a protectionist alliance.60 A joint union–employer meeting was held, and they both in turn met representatives of the Board of Trade.61 Simultaneously, in March 1937, the newly elected Labour majority on the Town Council called on the Provost to convene a meeting of interested parties ‘with the view of coming to some decision to press upon the government the necessity of meeting this very serious threat to the life of Dundee workers and to the social and economic well-being of Dundee as a whole’.62 The meeting which followed involved the unions, the employers, the Town Council and the Chamber of Commerce. This agreed to form a delegation from the four parties to ‘wait upon the President of the Board of Trade with the view of persuading him that to institute a quota on manufactured goods being imported into the country’.63 For the next eighteen months the Council took the local lead in pressing the government for protection against Indian competition, seeking support from Scottish MPs and the Secretary of State for Scotland. These efforts had a bi-partisan character; while the Council reverted to Moderate (that is, Unionist) control in November 1937, after a year of a Labour majority, these activities continued.64 The Council emphasised the loss of local rate income brought about by the collapse of jute, and the threat that Dundee would become a ‘Distressed Area’ requiring government financial support.65



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In the House of Commons debate of 1938 Horsbrugh pointed to this united front: last year there was a deputation which I think is unique in the history of the City of Dundee. It was a deputation which consisted of the Lord Provost, members of the town council – and at the time a majority of the town council were members of the Labour party – members of the employers organizations and the employees, led by the Labour trade union secretary, a representative of the Chamber of Commerce and both MPs representing the City of Dundee. That was a unique deputation.66

Important local Labour figures in Dundee, both union leaders and Councillors, were pursuing a policy at odds with the official doctrine of their national party, and with the Communist party with which Labour was in many respects involved in a de facto local united front. The initiative in the Council was taken by John Reynolds, who was also a leader in the bleachers’ union.67 He rested his case for united action partly on the argument that ‘when they went to the employers for an increase of wages for the operatives they found that the industry had not got it to give them’ and he expressed the hope that ‘the jute trade should return to such a prosperous condition that they would have a “good old scrap” fighting for the proceeds of the industry’. This was combined with the claim that ‘it was not his intention nor did he think it was the intention of those representing particularly the workers side of the industry, to do anything detrimental to the economic interests of the jute operatives in India’. He ended his argument with the plea that ‘we should on this occasion leave aside all our political theories and have a united front of employers and employees’.68 There is no evidence in the DDUJFW minutes that this support for a protectionist alliance aroused any great controversy. The various meetings with other local organisations and the National government were periodically reported to Union members and seemingly these meetings aroused no dissent.69 The Courier reported that a Union meeting in June 1938 passed a motion condemning the co-operation with the employers to achieve protection, but even the terms of this motion suggest a lack of ideological opposition.70 In the same period the Union was offering financial support for striking Calcutta jute workers.71 At the time of the big strike in Calcutta in 1937 the AGM expressed admiration for the Indian workers’ struggle and agreed to ‘establish permanent connection with our brother Jute Union in India with the object of mutual assistance in the fight for the betterment of the standards of living of both the Indian and Dundee jute workers’.72 But there is no evidence that the support for Calcutta workers led on to any but the most tenuous links, rather than a ‘permanent connection’.73 One element underpinning this front was the recognition that national imperial policy was working against the interests of Dundee. Sime, leader

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of the main jute union, claimed that on one occasion he had been told that pleas for protection against India were rejected because of the government’s desire to create ‘a happier India’. In his view, Sime asserted, ‘the British government ought to be concerned first of all with a happy Britain’.74 This was something of a trope in the debates of the 1930s, a Courier editorial suggesting ‘it is surely unthinkable that an important home industry should be sacrificed because the unfair competition comes from an Empire source’ and on another occasion saying that the sacrifice of Dundee to Calcutta was ‘the way to make Empire ideas unpopular’.75 At times this argument could lead the staunchly Conservative Courier into stances which could have been endorsed by Labour: ‘It is a case for laying the strongest emphasis on the dictum that the first duty of a British government is to the British people. That many thousands of them should be sacrificed to the wealth-pursuing impulses of Indians in Bengal which have produced the present disastrous over-supply of jute goods is an intolerable thought.’76 One of the Labour councillors on the delegation to the government was of Indian descent, Dr Saggar. In his contribution to the discussion prior to the visit to London he stressed the interconnectedness of the fortunes of Dundee and Calcutta, asserting that ‘as long as cheap labour in India, working under both British and Indian capital, went on increasing, the over production of cheap commodities would have a detrimental effect on Dundee’, going on to assert that ‘My India people don’t want to see their friends in Dundee in distress owing to their being employed in those industries at a cheap rate of wages’.77 In forming a united front with the employers, the Dundee trade unionists and councillors did not give up in principle the view of the other United Front that the long-run solution to the problem of Indian competition was higher wages and better conditions in India. Sime retrospectively noted his visit to India with Tom Johnston in the mid-1920s, and said ‘he was not without hope, and he would like to see India giving us the lead in the matter of a forty-hour week’.78 But the tone suggested this was a pious hope, and that he knew it to be so. IV How do we explain this divergence on the Left about how to respond to the crisis in jute? Why did two ‘united fronts’ appear in the city? First, we must note the important role of the Town Council. The 1920s saw the Council subject to bitter battles related to the economic problems of the city. Partly this related to new responsibilities taken on by the Council, notably housing. Dundee was a pioneer in the provision of council housing, but like many other places in the 1920s it faced a battle between council rent levels and the desire of ratepayers to hold down rate levels.79 The Moderates, who dominated the Council, and had a majority



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throughout the interwar period except in the year 1936/7, favoured housebuilding as a way of easing unemployment, but wanted this done from central government grants, and wanted the ratepayers’ contribution minimised. In a meeting with Scottish MPs and later with the Board of Trade in July 1937 Phin, the Lord Provost, stressed that Dundee had spent £3 million on housing up to May 1936, and had incurred £6.7 million in debt.80 A second issue was the local cost of the expansion of social services, such as public health. Phin argued that ‘Unless they were assured of the continued prosperity of the city at its present level the Corporation might seriously have to consider the curtailment of many of these essential services to which he had referred’.81 These disputes, and the desire to restore prosperity to improve the Council’s finances, provided an incentive for the City Council to seek for ways of reducing the city’s unemployment problems. One idea was that of building a road bridge across the Tay to encourage better connections with central Scotland.82 Another was to encourage new industries to come to Dundee by extolling the city’s virtues, notably in a (jute-bound) book published in 1931 entitled Do it in Dundee. This was produced by a newly created Economic Development Committee of the Council.83 Later in the 1930s the Council was active in setting up industrial estates to attract new industry, alongside petitioning the government to provide financial support for such activities, including through granting Dundee ‘Special Area’ status.84 The initiative on petitioning the London government for protection for jute can be seen as another arm of the same strategy. On the local union side, the DDUJFW had long been set somewhat apart from much of the city’s labour movement, which was dominated by male unions in shipbuilding, engineering and the railways.85 Indicative of this was the persistent denial of Communists any role as union officials in the DDUJFW, at a time when the CP had very much become a ‘mainstream’ part of the city’s labour movement. This ban, introduced in 1928, was much debated within the Union, but never revoked in the 1930s.86 Arguments within the jute union about relations with the Communist party were especially intense in 1937, though the stimulus for this seems to have been the issue of the banning of CP links to the DTLC, rather than the union leadership’s support for the ‘class-collaboration’ version of the united front. In April of that year the Union’s secretary, Mrs Miller, alleged that a number of its delegates to the DTLC were Communists, which led to a series of acrimonious exchanges.87 At the first of two meetings the following month the Union was divided by the DTLC’s requirement that delegates make a declaration of loyalty, including a pledge ‘not to take part in any “United Front” or other joint activities which are in association with the CP’. At a second meeting the Executive members swore before a Justice of the Peace that they were not members or supporters of the ‘CP, the National Minority Movement, the International Class War Prisoners’ Aid society, the National

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Unemployed Workers Committee Movement, the Fascist Party or any similar or allied organization’.88 While the DDUJFW was affected by the general dispute on the Left about links with communism, it seems to have had a distinctly more anti-­ communist posture than other parts of the local labour movement. Part of this separateness can plausibly be ascribed to gender differences related to the highly ‘masculine’ character of that movement, and given the DDUJFW’s predominantly female membership. Direct evidence on the culture of the local Labour party is absent, but we know that the local CP was deeply riven, largely on gender lines.89 Cox plausibly suggests that the ‘CP failed to develop a large active cadre amongst jute workers . . . with women, and millgirls in particular, woefully under-represented’.90 The Union was also driven to respond to the employers’ claims that only protection would provide the revenues with which better wages and conditions could be afforded. Having suffered cuts in the minimum wages set by the Trade Board in 1930, 1931 and 1933, the Union was understandably anxious to restore money wages, as was commonly happening in other industries in the mid-1930s.91 A small increase was achieved in January 1937, but the Union’s aim to achieve holidays with pay, which were becoming common in this period, was also denied by the employers on the grounds of unaffordability in the face of Indian competition.92 Of course, such claims about the inability of an industry to afford better pay and conditions are commonplaces of collective bargaining, and as we have seen had been voiced by the Dundee jute employers since the first appearance of Calcutta competition in the 1880s. But the force of such arguments must have seemed especially compelling to the unions in the 1930s, when the pressure on the Dundee industry caused by Indian imports was undeniable. Linking these two elements was the great shift in the role of the state from before 1914 to the interwar period. Reflecting trends across the whole of Britain, the state now mattered to the lives of jute workers in a way which had not been true before the war. While hostility to local state action in housing, especially rent rises, and over the limits on unemployment relief was widespread, the response to this was not to attack state action per se, but to attempt to wrest political control of the state. Similarly, at the level of the central state, the wage council, however much its decisions on wage cuts in the early 1920s and early 1930s were bitterly resented, was not treated as a body to be got rid of (it was the employers who pressed for its abolition). The jute union never believed that ‘free collective bargaining’ was likely to yield a superior outcome for jute workers. It is also worth stressing that after 1923 the jute employers stopped focusing on wage cuts as the main route to improving the industry’s performance (though wages were cut again in the early 1930s), and this may have helped focus attention away from the conflictual issue of the distribution of the industry’s revenues on to the more unifying issues of protecting the industry’s markets.



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These union views can be seen to have followed shifts in broader popular attitudes, including attitudes in the labour movement.93 Graham Smith’s highly detailed discussion of such attitudes in Dundee in the interwar period, including evidence drawn from oral testimony, stresses the growing acceptance of the role of the state in a range of issues such as health care. He plausibly sees this beginning during the First World War, after which there was much greater ‘acceptance of the role of the state, including health reforms, in everyday life. Women, however, did not passively accept what the state could offer, instead they fought, struggled and shaped that intervention.’94 The rallying of the jute unions to protection did not mean the abandonment of the idea that in the long run the most advantageous prospect for Dundee was better wages and conditions in Calcutta. As noted above, Sime had focused much attention on this with his trip to Calcutta in the mid1920s, and he continued to refer to it as the best hope even while negotiating the ‘united front’ in the 1930s.95 But this had a sense of paying obeisance to traditional gods, while focusing most practical action on the protectionist idea. Conversely, for the other ‘united front’, the unofficial combination of the Labour and Communist parties, this belief in improvement in Indian workers’ conditions as the best route to Dundee’s revival remained central. In this they, ironically, continued the tradition of pre-1914 liberalism in Dundee, which had also looked to improvements in Calcutta conditions to improve Dundee’s competitive position as an alternative to protection. The only detailed analysis we have of the Dundee Communist party in the 1930s suggests that its ‘abstract internationalism’ caused major problems for its membership, grappling with extraordinary levels of joblessness. Tolland has argued that the latter factor led to a major battle within the party on the issue of how far efforts should focus on wage issues, and how far on the conditions of the unemployed. This issue led to disputes with women members, and the expulsion from the Party of Mary Brooksbank.96 These events can be seen as a reflection of the tensions in Dundee’s labour movement in the 1930s which in part mirrored the divergent politics of the two ‘united fronts’. Seeking immediate if ideologically uncongenial remedies for unemployment by the use of tariffs can be seen as parallel to seeking to orient Communist activity away from the class struggle in industry towards defence of the conditions of the unemployed. V If we return to the two frameworks set out in Chapter 4, some broad conclusions can be drawn about the responses in Dundee to the crisis of the 1930s. Before the 1930s no ‘distributional coalition’ or ‘producers’ alliance’ advocating protection emerged between workers and employers in the Dundee jute industry. The Liberal and Labour campaigns, and the outcome of both

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the 1906 and 1908 elections, suggest that the long-run benefits for food prices of free trade were widely appreciated in the prewar city (though, of course, these prices had stopped falling from the mid-1890s).97 But as producers many of Dundee’s workers were increasingly adversely affected by international competition from the 1880s, and disastrously so in the 1930s (although food prices again fell sharply in this decade). Given the absence of alternative employment opportunities locally, and the absence of easy movement to alternative labour markets, it is perhaps the adherence to free trade, rather than its eventual rejection, which is particularly in need of explanation. No simple economic calculus of costs and benefits seems entirely adequate to the task, though the extraordinary intensity of the pressures on the local labour market in the 1930s can help us explain the ‘united front’ which did emerge in support of protectionism. The second framework to be returned to sees responses to globalisation amongst workers’ organisations as linked to the respective appeals of ‘statist’, ‘economistic’ and ‘mutualist’ responses to insecurity. As suggested in Chapter 4, before 1914 ‘statist’ enthusiasm on the Left was extremely muted, and many Dundee workers looked to ‘mutualist’ and ‘economistic’ solutions as superior alternatives. However, these latter two responses were more difficult for the largely female and poorly organised jute workforce even before 1914, so that we can suggest that the institutional underpinnings for resisting the claims of protectionism were weaker in Dundee’s core industry than in better-organised but much smaller sectors of the local economy. As Harris has emphasised, the Great War had an ambiguous impact on Labour views of the state. On the one hand, wartime labour conflicts and postwar budget cuts reinforced the notion of the state as enemy of the workers. On the other hand, the large-scale experiments in state control in many areas of economic and social policy ‘were gradually to transform Labour’s expectations about what could be done by a dynamic central government (even among those members of the party most convinced that the state was the tool of a repressive class power)’.98 This seems the most useful context in which to place what happened in interwar Dundee. Other factors, such as the political disorientation caused by Labour’s national collapse in 1931, and the sharp deterioration in the circumstances of the city, mattered. But across much of the Left it was the acceptance of the efficacy of state action that is most important in the long run. Strikingly, this national trajectory coincided with a marked acceleration in the shift on the Conservative side against economic liberalism, so that, increasingly, ideologically, the liberals in all parties were marginalised. For official Labour the trend is best known in leading to the embrace of strong notions of state ownership and planning, the hallmarks of Labour’s economic and social policy in the 1930s.99 Labour’s arguments in the 1930s combined this emphasis with a continuing ideological distaste for protectionism,



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though in practice this was muted as the slump hardly seemed a propitious time for campaigning vigorously against the National government’s tariffs. The position of a local Labour leader like Sime mirrored this ambiguity. Formally, he held to an anti-protectionist ideology, and saw raising Indian wages as the only long-term solution to Dundee jute’s problems; but in the circumstances of the 1930s he was willing to sacrifice this argument for the ‘short-term’ benefits of protection.100 For the national leaders of the two major parties of the Left, the official ideology remained resolutely opposed to national protectionism, however much their rhetoric inveighed against aspects of international capitalism. But such positions were increasingly at odds with notions of national planning and national ownership. In the 1930s, this conflict, between a key commitment to regulating and managing the national economy (especially to achieve full employment), and a distaste for traditional protectionism, was resolved, at least verbally, by increasing talk about ‘planned trade’. But the substantive issue of reconciling domestic economic prosperity with recognition of Britain’s reliance on international markets was to be seriously addressed only in the much changed circumstances of the Second World War and its aftermath.101

Chapter 9 Aftermath and Conclusion

The Second World War, like previous wars, was good for the economy of Juteopolis. In the short run, strategic concerns about sustaining domestic supplies of jute products brought the imposition of a state-sponsored Jute Control, which not only took over trading in raw jute but also restricted trade in manufactured products, allowing Indian goods to be sold in Britain only at prices with which Dundee could compete. During the war itself the operation of this Control was affected by the shortage of shipping space, which led to cuts in raw material imports, and by the concentration of the industry into fewer units in order to free labour and production capacity for war uses. As a result, imports of jute goods from India actually increased in the middle years of the war.1 Allied to industrial concentration, employment in the industry in Dundee halved during the war, but unemployment in the city more or less disappeared, reflecting the overall strength of the demand for labour.2 In 1948 the Labour government’s Working Party on the industry advocated modernisation of the industry to be combined with ‘protection against low-priced Indian imports’.3 Overt protection was immediately and publicly rejected by Harold Wilson, the President of the Board of Trade, as a breach of the trade agreement with India.4 But this was a general statement of the issues facing the government, and did not presage an immediate end to the existing limits on jute imports. Events in India in the late 1940s added to concerns about reliance on that source, with the Partition that accompanied independence destabilising the industry, with the main jute-growing areas in East Bengal forming part of Pakistan, whilst the manufacturing areas of West Bengal were in India.5 In the longer run the fate of the industry in Britain was profoundly shaped by the new social settlement brought about by the war, in which, for the first time, governments committed themselves to give high priority to achieving ‘high and stable’ levels of employment.6 For postwar Dundee this new dispensation meant two major policy shifts. First, Jute Control, despite Wilson’s statement, and whatever the original motives for setting it up, was kept in place for employment reasons.7 Secondly, regional unemployment was addressed seriously for the first time by substantial subsidies to investors in areas deemed vulnerable to job shortages, such as Tayside.



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Policy was not the sole determinant of Dundee’s prosperity in the twentyfive years after the end of the war, as will be suggested below, but it very much helped the city to share to a degree in the ‘golden age’ of the British economy in the 1950s and 1960s, especially when measured by the low levels of unemployment.8 In the ten years after 1945 Dundee’s jute industry enjoyed an unexpected degree of prosperity, with output and employment trending upwards until the late 1950s.9 This was aided by Jute Control, but also by strong domestic demand for jute related to the ‘consumer revolution’ in Britain, which manifested itself in part in strong demand for jute-backed linoleum. Where the war had driven the industry back to concentration on the most basic sacking and bagging products, once wartime restrictions had gone production shifted significantly ‘up-market’ to meet these consumer demands. This shift, followed in the 1960s by expanding use of jute for carpet-backing, provided a degree of ‘natural’ protection against Indian competition, which was concentrated in low-quality products. The result was that when protection started to be eroded, first in 1957 and then especially in 1963, there was no great surge in imports.10 As an economist analysing the industry stressed, ‘Cheaper imports have not taken the place of home-produced jute manufactures’.11 After the mid-1950s the fate of the industry depended more on changing patterns of demand than directly on import controls. Both the linoleum- and carpet-related demands proved vulnerable to shifts in taste and technology in floor coverings. Linoleum fell out of favour, while ‘tufted’ carpets eroded the demand for ‘backed’ carpets. The carpet makers, and other users of jute, were also affected by the substitution of other materials for the raw material. This had been happening for a long time with, for example, the use of paper for sacking, but the most important innovation postwar was the invention of polypropylene. Cheaper to produce and more durable than jute, this plastic was taken up by many jute companies, but in the long run it was a death-knell for them, as the economics of this new material favoured producers closely integrated with the oil-companies that refined the raw material from which polypropylene was derived.12 From the 1960s the notion of a distinct ‘jute’ industry began to lose much applicability. Use of the raw material declined rapidly, while the jute companies disappeared or diversified. Employment fell below ten thousand in 1972, and by the 1980s had fallen to under three thousand; the last jute goods were manufactured in Dundee in 1999.13 The relative prosperity of Dundee in the 1950s and 1960s was aided not only by the arrest in the decline of jute but also by the success of the new regional incentives in attracting investment into Dundee. A range of mainly American manufacturing companies invested heavily in the city, the two biggest, NCR and Timex, creating around fourteen thousand jobs at their peak in the mid-1970s.14 But thereafter, responding to changes in the international division of labour and new management strategies in multinational

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companies, these employers shrank their operations, so that by the end of the century Timex had disappeared from the city completely, and NCR had only a residual, non-manufacturing, presence. Together with the decline of jute, this retreat of the multinationals led to Dundee once again suffering very high levels of unemployment from the 1970s.15 In the ‘good times’ from the late 1940s the jute employers were in strong competition for labour with the new inward investors. This competition led them to successfully petition the government to stop encouraging these new entrants. For a period the balance of power in the industry shifted towards the employees, and wages and conditions improved significantly, though many workers voted with their feet against the industry, by taking up the cleaner, quieter and often better paid jobs in electronics and engineering provided by the American companies.16 Women, especially, were in short supply in the early postwar jute industry with, for the first time, significant employment opportunities outside jute.17 The difficulty of recruiting women, in combination with the long-run trend to recruit more men, meant that by the 1960s jute had, for the first time in its history, become a predominantly male industry – but a very small one. A new feature of the industry in the 1960s was the influx of Asian workers, though the absolute numbers were small. In this regard, the migratory legacy of empire for Dundee was much smaller than in other textile centres, such as Leeds and Bradford or some of the Lancashire cotton towns.18 Asian migrants later in the twentieth century were likely to be attracted by the city’s burgeoning health-care, research and university sectors, which were crucial to the city’s revival, notable from the 1990s onwards. Evidence of this change of fortunes was the ending of a long period of population decline. The city’s population, which had initially exploded on the back of linen and then jute in the nineteenth century, stagnated as Juteopolis declined. But from the 1970s population numbers fell sharply, from 183,000 at the time of the 1971 census to 146,000 in 2001. Paradoxically, while this (smaller) population had become more cosmopolitan than it ever was in the great age of imperial globalisation before 1914, in economic terms the post-jute city was very much ‘deglobalized’. By the end of the twentieth century its economic fortunes rested to a large extent on public spending decisions in London and increasingly in Edinburgh concerning health and education spending, rather than the vagaries of the international economy. In that regard at least, the economic insecurities which characterised Juteopolis, while not abolished, had been substantially reduced.19 I The story of jute in Dundee ended when, in 1999, a ship from Bangladesh came to the city’s port and was used to transport away to the sub-continent



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the last operational jute-working machinery left in the city.20 The Empire had conclusively ‘struck back’. What does the previous century and a half of Dundee’s imperial connection tell us about how the British understood and responded to empire? Two broad generalisations can be offered to contextualise answers to this question. First, Dundee’s experience was multifaceted, empire impinging differentially on the city’s inhabitants. Secondly, evidence of imperial understanding and impact is always partial and imperfect, and open to dispute, with impact usually easier to assess than understanding.21 Direct evidence on the general level of enthusiasm for the Empire in Dundee is inherently difficult to find; opinion polls had not been invented, and expressions of view, such as through electoral behaviour, are hard to interpret. In Glasgow, it has been suggested, a ‘wave of pugnacious imperialist sentiment hit the city during 1900’ in the context of the Boer war. This claim is substantiated by the results in the khaki election of that year, when all the Liberal MPs lost their seats to Conservatives and Liberal Unionists.22 Simply in electoral terms, there was no such war-related shift in Dundee; the rise in the Unionist vote in the city in 1900 compared with 1895 was 0.6 per cent, where in Glasgow it averaged 4 per cent.23 As we have seen in Chapter 4, the extent of Boer war jingoism amongst the Dundee working class has been (controversially) downplayed by some analysts, and this view would seem to gain some support from the electoral data. It has also become recognised that, even where jingoism was strong during the war itself, there was commonly a backlash thereafter, registered in the revival of radical Liberalism, and the Liberal landslide in the 1906 election.24 This fits with Dundee’s electoral trajectory. This is not to dispute that the local Unionist newspaper, the Courier, was full of jingoistic material; but the Liberal Advertiser, whilst editorially supporting the war, was much more measured in tone.25 Of course, imperial consciousness could be the consequence of all kinds of activities. Esther Breitenbach, for example, has pointed out the significance of missionary activity (especially in Africa) for bringing home a sense of empire, and suggested this was a powerful force in Dundee.26 For a significant number of its male inhabitants, the Empire was primarily important as a place where at least part of a military career was pursued. Throughout the last two centuries, during and after Juteopolis, Dundee provided a disproportionately large supply of soldiers to the British army, a fact most strikingly evidenced by the casualties sustained in the course of the great imperial war of 1914-18. We have no way of knowing how many of these recruits were motivated to join up by love of empire; for many, at least in peacetime, the absence of alternative occupations is likely to be an important factor. In addition, as Porter suggests, once recruited, soldiering in the Empire might well not be a cause of enthusiasm for empire; indeed, the effects might be quite the opposite.27 Whatley suggests that,

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in the Victorian period, joining the local Volunteers in Dundee was a sign of imperial enthusiasm, but, even if that is the case, the Volunteers were composed of artisans and those higher in the social scale, so the appeal may have been limited.28 The rationale for this book is that what differentiated Dundee from most of Britain in relation to empire was the directness of the connection between imperial policy and the city’s economic fortunes. Of course, a very small number of Dundonians gained directly from the rise of jute in Calcutta: it gave them the means to a challenging but financially rewarding career.29 For the city’s wealthier inhabitants the rise of Indian competition was undoubtedly significant. Because of that competition the heady profits of the early years of expansion up to the 1870s were never to be experienced again, and the owners of jute mills recognised this in greatly slowing the rate of investment in the industry in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Unlike the workers in the industry, the jute owners could diversify away from the risks of jute, so that by 1900 it can be asserted that events in India were important, but not overwhelmingly so, for their financial fortunes. Money was invested in a small number of Calcutta jute companies, and money also flowed indirectly from investment in managing agencies. But for Dundee’s investing class (which was much wider than the jute capitalists) the crucial source of revenue was the USA, and to a much lesser extent, within the Empire, the white Dominions, rather than India. Compared with most of Britain, empire mattered very directly for the welfare of Dundee’s workers. In other cities where Empire economic links were crucial, such as Liverpool and Glasgow, most of the inhabitants gained substantial benefits from these links, however unevenly those benefits may have been shared.30 For Dundee, it was the costs rather than benefits of empire for the mass of the population which seem clear. This means Dundee was not like Liverpool, an ‘imperial city’ in the sense suggested by Haggerty et al.31 This competitive aspect also differentiates it from Glasgow, to which in a Scottish context it is perhaps too easily coupled.32 But as the contributors to the Liverpool volume stress, this status is not simply determined by economics. While the significance for Liverpool of trade with the Empire is rightly emphasised, so also is the importance of a powerful local pro-imperial politics in shaping popular consciousness.33 Such a politics was largely absent in Dundee. Indian imperial competition, we may argue, inhibited the emergence of such a politics. Pro-empire politicians had to try to avoid addressing the issue of Indian competition because for them it posed an acute dilemma: how could local prosperity be safeguarded if doing so by the most obvious means, some kind of protective device, was ruled out by the bigger demands of imperial rule? Hence in the pre-1914 period the focus on the very indirect mechanism of the Indian Factory Acts. Hence, also, Baxter’s characteristic focus on European rather than Indian competition in the 1908 election. Stress on the glories of Empire was common enough in Dundee in these years, as



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elsewhere in Britain, in this period; but a locally resonant politics of empire was much more difficult to formulate.34 Porter suggests that few ordinary workers, such as those in the cotton industry, would have recognised their dependence on empire. This idea seems to be linked to a nation that only the upper-class groups directly involved in its running were very conscious of empire.35 But while we have no conclusive evidence on the matter, this view can be challenged, at least in part, in the case of Dundee. From the 1880s many Dundonians, including the organised working class, were talking about India and the Empire because what was happening in Calcutta was very much affecting their lives. Steele, on the basis of the Liverpool case, has argued that ‘The idea that the possession of a vast empire, with all its economic, cultural and educational ramifications had little effect upon the home population, particularly the working class, is inherently unlikely’.36 This conclusion, especially in regard to ‘economic ramifications’, clearly applies to Dundee. In thinking about India, some Dundonians undoubtedly shared the stark, uncomplicated racism of Churchill, whose attitudes shaped his opposition to the India Bill in the 1930s, and contributed significantly to the catastrophic wartime famine in Bengal during his premiership.37 But as suggested above, the range of views evident in Dundee was much more diverse than this, and also subject to change over time. The debates about the wisdom of Dundonians investing in the Calcutta jute industry in the 1880s reveal a clear ‘exoticising’ of India, as an alien place where the judicious investor would be extremely wary of getting involved. Part of this sense of the alien was based on concerns about the climate of India, which Europeans undoubtedly found difficult. But more broadly these concerns rested upon doubts about the capacity of Indians to become efficient industrial workers. Such doubts were often expressed in straightforward tones of European superiority. But they could also be linked, as with the ‘Two Intrepid Ladies’, to an exoticisation which rested on ‘orientalist’ notions of ‘Indianness’ which are closer to those of Gandhi, with his belief in the superiority of a specifically ‘Indian’ route to the future, than to notions about the superiority of the white races.38 So orientalism in the form of exoticisation, while essentialisng ‘Indianness’, did not necessarily go along with a sense of superiority. While we have little in the way of direct expressions of working-class opinion on India in the pre-1914 period, commentary from spokesmen for organised labour tended to focus on the perfidy of Dundee’s jute employers in allegedly funding the rival industry. There is no extant evidence of racist attitudes to Indians, the tone of discussion being one similar to that of the ‘Two Intrepid Ladies’, with its exoticisation of Indian conditions, and emphasis on difference rather than inherent superiority.39 But at the same time, there was an emergent sense of solidarity with Calcutta’s workers, as joint victims of employers’ inhumanity and exactions.

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Sympathy with the conditions of Indian workers may have helped gain support amongst their Dundee counterparts for toughening the Indian Factory Acts; but such toughening was clearly also in the interests of Juteopolis. More obviously motivated by selfless sympathy was support for the victims of the famine in India in the late 1890s.40 The famine relief effort revealed the recognition in Dundee of its dependence upon the Indian connection: ‘Dundee has benefited to a very large extent from her connection with India. Indeed, the upbuilding of the city has been very largely the outcome of their connection with India.’41 Nationally there was a debate about what the famine demonstrated about the impact of British rule on India, but in Dundee the focus was on the scale of relief required and how funds could best be secured.42 The national response to the (less severe) famine of 1897 was more generous than to that of 1900, when there was the competing claim for support for the widows and orphans of British soldiers killed in the ongoing South African war. Locally, however, the figures of money raised were similar.43 After the First World War the involvement of labour organisations in discussions about India were much more extensive than before 1914. The visit by Johnston and Sime in the mid-1920s, discussed in Chapter 6, along with those of others from the British labour movement, produced lots of evidence of the combination of attitudes of solidarity and often implicit superiority long evident in official Labour circles. For the crisis years of the 1930s we have no crystallising event in Dundee to match Gandhi’s visit to Lancashire in 1931. That visit, despite coming at a time when the Indian nationalist boycott of Lancashire’s goods added to the already serious crisis in the industry, showed very little evidence of Churchillian-style contempt for the Mahatma.44 The majority of Labour and popular opinion in the cotton towns responded favourably to Gandhi’s visit, approving him as a supporter of improved conditions for Indian workers, but also recognising that good rather than antagonistic relations with India were likely to be better for Lancashire’s exports.45 In Dundee, as shown in Chapter 8, the pursuit of a ‘united front’ by the DDUJFW in the mid-1930s went along with continued financial support for Indian trade unions. This was coupled to a patronising attitude towards the capacity of Indian union leaders, Sime stating in public that ‘it would require a white man to organise the jute workers in Calcutta’.46 Nevertheless, upholding solidarity with Calcutta workers was not seen as incompatible with seeking protection against Calcutta goods. While patronising attitudes towards Indians were prevalent, the absence of any feelings of innate superiority is evident in the local Labour party’s adoption of the prominent Indian nationalist Krishna Menon as parliamentary candidate in 1939. When the National Executive debarred Menon as a Communist sympathiser, the DDUJFW was, surprisingly given its anti-Communist stance, prominent amongst those who protested.47



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One of the key conclusions of Porter’s sceptical appraisal of the impact of empire on the British at home is that how imperialism had its effects depended upon its relationship to other powerful, pre-existing discourses. Especially important here is the relationship to liberalism. The Dundee evidence supports the view that the rise of Labour in Britain was strongly shaped by liberalism, most obviously in its attitudes to state action. Dundee labour before the First World War did not ally with the jute employers to call for protection, in part because of their continuing adherence to a sceptical attitude to state interference. This scepticism was compatible with support for Factory Acts, in the same way that such legislation had proved compatible with high liberalism in mid-Victorian Britain. Before 1914, an alliance with employers to go any further in supporting state action was in conflict with both Labour’s rising class-consciousness and its liberal inheritance. In the same vein, these two influences prevented most ‘official’ spokesmen for Labour supporting protectionism in the interwar period, though we have seen that the economic disasters of the time induced considerable ideological ‘wobbling’. Dundee’s ‘united front’ in support of protection which emerged in the 1930s was notable for its lack of ideological justification on the Labour side; but, on the other hand, its emergence surely owed a deal to the erosion of liberal views of the state amongst the working class which has been recognised elsewhere as an important feature of the British Left after the Great War. II Ultimately, whatever the attitude of Dundonians to India, the outcome of the ‘united front’s’ battle for protection was determined by imperial politics; from London’s point of view the desire to contain Indian nationalism outweighed the pain inflicted on the domestic jute industry. Participants in the battle were well aware that they were being sacrificed to London’s view of the larger imperial interest. This was a recurrent theme in the Courier, though we have no evidence on whether its worry that the sacrifice of Dundee to Calcutta ‘was the way to make Empire ideas unpopular’ is justified.48 In terms of the complex local politics of the 1930s, resulting in the formation of the two ‘united fronts’, it seems the imperial dimension was ultimately rather marginal. The Left’s official adherence to anti-protectionism was not the result of imperial considerations, but the combining of a long-standing ‘abstract internationalism’ that transcended all political boundaries, with a class-consciousness which eschewed alliances with employers. Likewise, the ‘united front’ in favour of protection drew on a desperate hope that national state action might rescue the jute industry from disaster, rather than on any belief that the Empire could provide a framework for assisting its survival.

Notes

INTRODUCTION   1. Thompson, ‘Introduction’ in Thompson, Britain’s Experience of Empire, p. 2.  2. The pioneer works were MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire; MacKenzie, Imperialism and Popular Culture.   3. Thompson, ‘Introduction’ to Thompson, Empire Strikes Back?  4. Porter, Absent-minded Imperialists; see also Marshall, ‘Imperial Britain’.   5. Porter, ‘Further thoughts’; Mackenzie, ‘Response to Porter’.   6. Porter, ‘Popular imperialism’, p. 839.  7. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation.  8. Belich, Replenishing the Earth; Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalization; Thompson, Imperial Britain; Tomlinson, ‘Empire/Commonwealth’.  9. Daunton, Coal Metropolis; Savage, Dynamics; for Scotland, the nearest comparable works are Macdonald, Radical Thread, and Smyth, Labour in Glasgow. 10. Lenman et al., Dundee. 11. Ray, ‘Struggling against Dundee’. 12. Wallace, Romance of Jute. 13. The decline of Dundee jute after 1939 is analysed in Tomlinson et al, Decline of Jute. 14. Stewart, Jute and Empire. 15. Haggerty et al., Empire in One City. 16. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class. 17. Lenman and Donaldson, ‘Partners’ incomes’. 18. Devine, To the Ends of the Earth, pp. 85–106; Brock, Mobile Scot, pp. 124, 133. 19. Tomlinson, ‘De-globalization of Dundee’. 20. Parry, Delusions and Discoveries; Parry et al, Cultural Readings of Imperialism; T. Richards, The Imperial Archive. 21. These reports included Leng, Letters from India; Keracher, Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies; Johnston and Sime, Exploitation in India. 22. O’Rourke and Williamson, Globalization and History, pp. 93–118; Huberman, ‘Ticket to trade?’. 23. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation. 24. Savage, Dynamics. 25. This schema is discussed more fully in Chapter 4. 26. Porter, Absent-minded, pp. xiv–xv, 311–12. 27. Walker, Juteopolis; Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement; Wainwright, ‘Constructing gendered workplace “types”’.



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28. Baxter, ‘“Estimable and Gifted”?’. 29. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, pp. 106–8; Chessel, ‘Women and the ethics of consumption’. 30. In addition, for the historian, the local resources for research on the city are especially rich, with three significant archive centres, and an unusually vibrant local press.

CHAPTER 1   1. The first use of the term has been traced to the Courier 17 September 1863; Whatley, ‘Contesting memory and public spaces’, pp. 175, 287; McKean and Whatley, Lost Dundee, offer a three-stage history of the city: seaport; juteopolis; university city; see also Whatley, ‘From second city to juteopolis’.   2. Rodgers ‘Employment, wages and poverty’, pp. 36–7, shows that textiles and clothing taken together were the biggest industrial sector in all the big four Scottish cities throughout the period 1841–1911, but in no other city did they reach the over-fifty per cent figure sustained by Dundee throughout those years.   3. Given the extreme cyclicality of the industry, it is especially difficult to disentangle cycles from trends, but, measured by raw jute imports, there were three cyclical peaks, in 1895, 1902 and 1912, with no clear trend between them; Lenman et al., Dundee, p. 105. Before and after these peaks activity never reached the same levels again.  4. Watson, Jute and Flax Mills.  5. Baxter Park was gifted ‘in grateful acknowledgement of the worldly means bestowed on us by a kind Providence . . . affording to the working population the means of relaxation and enjoyment after their hard labour and honest industry’: cited in Walsh, Patrons, Poverty and Profit, p. 33.  6. Charles McKean was the unchallenged expert on that architectural heritage: McKean, ‘What sort of Renaissance Town?’; McKean ‘“Not even the trivial grace”’; McKean and Whatley, Lost Dundee.   7. Miskell and Whatley, ‘“Juteopolis” in the making’.  8. Durie, Scottish Linen Industry; Moore, Linen, pp. 28–9.   9. MacKillop, ‘Dundee, London and the Empire in Asia’, pp. 180–1. 10. Chapman, ‘The establishment’; see also Whatley, ‘The making of “Juteopolis”’, pp. 7–11. 11. Chapman, ‘The establishment’, p. 44. 12. Chapman, ‘The establishment’, p. 47; Advertiser 7 May 1839. 13. Warden, Linen Trade, p. 75. 14. Chapman, ‘The establishment’, p. 48; Warden, Linen Trade, p. 619. 15. Jackson with Kinnear, Trade and Shipping of Dundee, pp. 23–42; Beckles, ‘Textiles and port growth’, pp. 91–2; McKean and Whatley, Lost Dundee, p. 83, see the railway’s arrival as changing Dundee from ‘a seaport to an industrial city with a harbour’. 16. Warden, Linen Trade, p. 633. 17. Chapman, ‘The establishment’, p. 34.

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18. Jackson, British Whaling Trade, pp. 135–7. 19. Cooke, Baxter’s of Dundee, p. 22; in absolute terms linen production expanded up until the 1870s, though its rate of growth was far slower than jute after 1850: Ritchie, ‘Textiles’, p. 275. 20. Carrie, Dundee and the American Civil War. 21. Lenman et al., Dundee, pp. 23–6, 106. 22. J. Jackson, ‘Population’, p. 90. The largest percentage population growth, from a lower base, had been in the 1830s, when the expansion was around forty per cent; Miskell and Whatley ‘“Juteopolis” in the making’, p. 177. 23. Whatley, ‘Altering images’, pp. 94–5; Flinn et al., Scottish Population History, pp. 312, 456–7. 24. Collins, ‘Origins of Irish immigration’, p. 9. 25. Lenman et al., Dundee, p. 47. 26. ‘Jute spinning and weaving’ in DYB 1890, pp. 94–8. 27. Lenman et al., Dundee, pp. 48–9; Gauldie, Dundee Textile Industry. 28. Lenman et al., Dundee, p. 54. 29. Ibid., p. 33; Muir, Nairns. 30. Marshall, Principles, 8th ed., pp. 270–3. 31. Belussi and Caldari, ‘At the origin of the industrial district’. 32. ‘Industrial and commercial life: Introduction’ in British Association, Dundee 1912, p. 264; Jackson, British Whaling Trade, p. 139; Lythe, Gourlays of Dundee; Lythe, ‘Shipbuilding’, appendix table II. 33. The only parallel cases are cotton and pottery. 34. Rodger, ‘Employment’, pp. 29–33. 35. Ibid., pp. 32–3; Morgan and Trainor, ‘Dominant classes’, pp. 103–37. 36. Morris, ‘Urbanization and Scotland’, p. 82. 37. DSU, Report. 38. Smith, ‘Making of a woman’s town’, pp. 112–35. 39. DSU, Report, p. 45. 40. Watson, ‘Daughters of Dundee’. 41. Gazeley, Poverty, p. 36. 42. Board of Trade, Report of Enquiry, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. 43. Whaling, another male-dominated industry, had almost disappeared by 1911: Anderson, Dundee Whaling Fleet, pp. 38–49. 44. Slaven, Economic Development. 45. Whatley, Diary, p. 5. 46. Monifieth successfully resisted incorporation in Dundee when Broughty Ferry was annexed in 1913. The price of this annexation was a serious over-representation of the more conservative end of the city, with the Ferry getting 17 per cent of the new city council seats with less than 7 per cent of the population: DYB 1913 pp. 87–91. 47. Lenman et al., Dundee, p. 49. 48. DUA: MS134/1 Lennox, ‘Working class life’; Templeton, ‘What Dundee contributes to the empire’, pp. 107–13. 49. Lennox, ‘Working class life’, pp. 66, 78.



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50. The DSU Report, p. 45, identified 304 households out of the 3,560 surveyed with unemployed husbands and working wives, but offers no clues on how long the men had been out of work. 51. While a potent myth-maker, H. V. Morton in his In Search of Scotland, 6th ed. (London, 1930), p. 106, at least ascribes the phenomenon to a specific and plausible cause, unemployment in the shipyards. Smith, ‘The making of a woman’s town’, p. 23, associates it with part-time and short-time working amongst women, especially in the interwar period. 52. Rodger, ‘Employment’, p. 29; D. Reeder and R. Rodger, ‘Industrialization’, pp. 565–71. 53. Income tax assessments suggest per capita middle-class incomes less than half those in Edinburgh in 1880: Morgan and Trainor, ‘Dominant classes’, p. 112. 54. Jarron, ‘Dundee’. 55. Morgan and Trainor, ‘Dominant classes’, pp. 126–7. 56. Walsh, Patrons, p. 42. 57. Ibid., p. 36. 58. DSU, Report, p. xvi; see also Walker, ‘Work among women’, pp. 69–76; Baillie, ‘The Grey Lady’; Small, Mary Lily Walker. 59. Miskell, ‘Civic leadership’, pp. 62–3. 60. DYB 1912, p. 89; Whatley, ‘J. K. Caird’. 61. Miskell, ‘Civic leadership’, p. 62. However, in 1891 the DYB, pp. 5–6, suggested that ‘Dundee manufacturers, when they retire, go either to Edinburgh or England. If social conditions continue advance at the pace of last year they will soon have inducement to remain and spend their money where it is earned.’ 62. Walker, ‘Architecture of Dundee’, pp. 290–1; McKean and Whatley, Lost Dundee, pp. 85–6, 128–31. 63. Walsh, Jesus. Walsh was a Dundee clergyman; Jesus was eventually thrown into the Tay. 64. For example, ‘The working poor of Dundee: I, Causes of infant mortality’, DYB 1903, pp. 146–9. 65. Lennox, ‘Working class life’, pp. 121–2; compare the DSU, Report claim, p. 69, that the excessive infant deaths from gastric conditions ‘may be confidently associated with the predominance of married women’s labour’. 66. Smith, ‘Making of a woman’s town’, pp. 244–51. 67. Humphreys, ‘Childhood’. 68. DSU, Report, p. 48. Twenty-two per cent of all those working in jute were girls under twenty, 11 per cent boys under twenty. 69. Ibid., pp. 93–4. 70. DYB 1891, pp. 128–9. 71. ‘How the poor live’, DYB 1888, p. 120. 72. DSU, Report, p. viii. 73. Gazeley et al., ‘Why was urban overcrowding much more severe in Scotland’. 74. DSU, Report, pp. xi–xii.

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CHAPTER 2

1. 2. 3. 4.

Daunton, ‘Britain and globalisation since 1850’. Harley, ‘Trade, 1870–1939’, pp. 164–7. O’Rourke and Williamson, Globalisation and History, pp. 29–53. Ibid., p. 53; in 1871 transporting raw jute to Britain from Calcutta cost between 90 and 100 shillings per ton, in 1913 between 20 and 33 shillings: Angier, Fifty Years Freights, pp. 9, 139. 5. Edelstein, ‘Foreign investment’, p. 191. 6. Ibid., p. 194. 7. Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire; the timing of these flows of capital and people showed considerable similarity, and this linkage has been seen as causal: Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment, pp. 209–21. 8. Baines, Emigration; on the ‘informal empire’ see Cain, Economic Foundations, pp. 59–66. 9. Though the governments of these dominions did, of course, shape the operation of their economies by ‘nation-building’ activity such as railway construction. 10. Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa. 11. Harley, ‘Trade’, pp. 172–4; Saul, Studies. 12. Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, pp. 65–6. 13. Tomlinson, ‘Anglo-Indian economic relations’. 14. Saul, Studies, p. 62. 15. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 289. 16. Statistical Abstract, p. 362; Saul, Studies, pp. 195, 197. 17. Kaul, Reporting the Raj, pp. 31–4. 18. Bagchi, Private Investment in India, pp. 5–6. 19. There was much dispute about whether payment of dividends on railway shares is such a ‘tribute’ or a standard price to be paid for developmental investment: Tomlinson, Economy of Modern India, pp. 12–17. 20. Edelstein, ‘Foreign investment’, p. 194. 21. Jenks, Migration of British Capital, pp. 206–31. 22. On the limited scope of British investment in India, Sen, ‘Commodity pattern’. 23. Tomlinson, ‘Continuities and discontinuities’. 24. Belich, Replenishing the Earth. 25. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 286. 26. DYB 1889, pp. 184–5. 27. DYB 1895, pp. 105–6. In 1906 the US ambassador was made a freeman of the city: DYB 1906, p. 113. 28. ‘The jute industry: Calcutta and Dundee-relative progress in ten years’, DYB 1892, pp. 87–9. 29. DYB 1900, p. 203; DYB 1880, p. 34; DYB 1891, pp. 115–16. 30. Kenefick, ‘Growth and development’, p. 43; alongside jute, direct imports from India included linseed, castor oil, tea, saltpetre, iron and bones: DYB 1880, p. 46. 31. Flinn et al., Scottish Population History, pp. 441–2; Brock, ‘Importance of emigration’, p. 122.



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32. Flinn et al., Scottish Population History, pp. 311–12. 33. Devine, To the Ends of the Earth. 34. Brock, Mobile Scot, pp. 124, 133. 35. Emigration to England was also, of course, substantial, but smaller than international emigration in this period. 36. Kenefick, ‘Confronting white labourism’. Bob Stewart, an engineer and important local communist figure in Dundee, went ‘on the tramp’, including visiting South Africa in the years just before the First World War: Stewart, Breaking the Fetters, pp. 35–41. 37. This topic is the central concern of Stewart, Jute and Empire. 38. The ‘jute wallah’ and his wife could find a congenial life in Calcutta; see Fraser, Home by the Hooghly. 39. ‘The Calcutta jute mills’, DYB 1894, pp. 100–2. 40. Abertay University, Technical College Register 1909–1925, Bejaity Vinhatadri 1923/24. Before the First World War the IJMA had helped to fund jute training at Dundee Technical College: Stewart, ‘End game for jute’, p. 32. 41. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, p. 7. 42. Ibid., p. 184; for a jute employer’s account of working practices, see the evidence of J. H. Walker to the Royal Commission on Labour, recorded verbatim in the DYB 1891, pp. 125–32. 43. I owe these points to Alexis Wearmouth. 44. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, pp. 21, 47–9. 45. The understanding of these labour processes is complicated by the attitudes which contemporary Europeans brought to bear in discussing Calcutta and its workers, an issue returned to in Chapter 3. 46. The issue of competition is also returned to in Chapter 3. 47. Griffiths, ‘Work, leisure and time’, pp. 187–8; ‘Calcutta jute mills’, in DYB 1896, pp. 93–115. 48. Calcutta money wages from ‘Calcutta jute mills’, DYB 1896, p. 97. 49. Working Party Report, pp. 59–61. 50. Gupta, ‘Wages, unions and labour productivity’. 51. Conditions of work in the Calcutta jute industry are returned to in Chapter 3. 52. Schmitz, ‘Nature and dimensions’; Jackson, Enterprising Scot; Lenman and Donaldson, ‘Partners’ incomes’. 53. Hobson, Imperialism; Cain, Hobson. 54. Lenman and Donaldson, ‘Partners’ incomes’, pp. 6–7, 11–12. 55. Whatley, Onwards from Osnaburgs, pp. 119–21; half of this company’s output was still in linen in 1913, but it was being squeezed out of linen markets by foreign competition; ibid., pp. 122–3. 56. Swan, ‘Dundee as a centre of financial investment’; Swan, Scottish Cowboys. 57. Thomas, Provincial Stock Exchanges, pp. 286–7, pp. 313–14. These mills were run by Thomas Duff, whose important role is discussed further below. 58. Lenman and Donaldson, ‘Partners’ incomes’, p. 9. 59. For the changes in patterns of stocks traded in Dundee, see DYB 1882, pp. 25–9; DYB 1890, pp. 43–6; DYB 1900, pp. 48–51; DYB 1910, pp. 43–5.

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60. Thomas, Provincial Stock Exchanges, pp. 302–8; Swan, Scottish Cowboys; Michie, Money, p. 158. 61. Munn, Investing for Generations, pp. 4, 9–12, 20, 119–20. 62. Ibid., pp. 48–9, 80–1. 63. Jackson, Enterprising Scots, pp. 23–4; Swan, ‘Dundee as a centre’, pp. 229–34; Munn, Investing for Generations, p. 83. 64. Swan, ‘Dundee as a centre’, pp. 260–6; Maltby and Rutterford, ‘She possessed her own fortune’. 65. Swan, ‘Dundee as a centre’, pp. 266–74. 66. Lenman et al., Dundee, p. 89. 67. Ibid., p. 39. 68. Jackson, Enterprising Scot, p. 315. 69. Marshall, ‘Dundee as a centre of investment’, pp. 347–56. 70. Ibid., pp. 355–6; Tomlinson, ‘British business in India, 1860–1970’, appendix, pp. 114–16. 71. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise, p. 126, shows that for one agency, Bird, in 1917, Indians held about one-seventh of the value of shareholdings in the eight jute companies owned. This was probably typical of all managing agencies. 72. Chaudhuri, ‘Foreign trade’, p. 568. 73. Such foreign direct investment by British companies was limited before the First World War, but one Scottish company that pioneered this pattern was J. P. Coats, the Paisley thread manufacturer: Schmitz, ‘Nature and dimensions’, p. 60. 74. Devine, Ends of the Earth, p. 233. 75. ‘The Calcutta jute factories’, DYB 1884, pp. 84–5; the Victoria mill was founded in 1888. 76. Templeton, ‘What Dundee contributes’, p. 120. 77. The general proposition that capital flows much less than might be expected to low-wage areas, partly because of compensating productivity differences, is known in economics as the ‘Lucas paradox’, following Lucas, ‘Why doesn’t capital flow?’. 78. Anon., Jute Mills of Bengal, p. 87; DYB 1884, pp. 21–2. 79. Wallace, Romance of Jute, pp. 38–45. 80. Chakrabarty, Re-thinking Working Class History, p. 46. 81. Ibid., p. 51. 82. DUA: MS66/II/10/37 Camperdown Pressing Company. 83. At a Board meeting in 1897 it was recorded that the company had recently purchased over $60,000 worth of shares in five different American railroads; the following month that they had loaned $15,000 to the Trust: DUA: MS86 11/1/1 Minute book 7 October 1897, 15 November 1897. 84. Whatley, ‘J. K. Caird’. 85. Chaudhuri, ‘Foreign trade’, p. 568; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise, pp. 121–3; Bagchi, Foreign Investment, pp. 262–7. 86. The largest was Andrew Yule and Co., on which see Chapman, Merchant Enterprise, pp. 119–21, 236–7; Parker, ‘Scottish enterprise in India’, pp. 207–16.



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87. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise, p. 271. The impact of this peculiar corporate form on Indian development is controversial: see Oonk, ‘Motor or millstone?’. 88. Jones, Merchants to Multinational, pp. 28–34, 288–90; Tomlinson, ‘British business’, pp. 96–100. Bagchi, Private Investment, pp. 263–7, seeks to explain why Indian companies made almost no entry into jute manufacturing in this period, unlike in cotton. The managing agencies’ extensive role in raw material purchasing and worldwide marketing of the finished product is an important part of the answer. 89. This account of Duffs draws heavily on research by Alexis Wearmouth at Dundee University; see also obituary in DYB 1896, pp. 76–7. 90. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, p. 3. 91. Leng speech in DYB 1896, p. 92; report on trading conditions in jute cited in Scotsman 23 December 1919. The impact of cost differences on competitiveness is, of course, complicated by exchange rate changes, both trends, such as the depreciation of the rupee in the late nineteenth century, and fluctuations, such as that of the rupee/pound around the First World War. 92. The Verdant Works jute museum in Dundee has a jute skirt designed by Mary Quant in the 1960s, but there is no evidence that this was more than a curiosity. 93. Muir, Nairns, pp. 70–5. 94. Board of Trade Jute Working Party, Report, p. 8; John Leng visited an American jute mill in Oakland, California, in 1876 and found it managed by men from Tayside, but otherwise all the workers were Chinese: Leng, America in 1876, pp. 168–71. 95. Broadberry, Productivity Race, p. 193. 96. Leunig, ‘British industrial success’. 97. On the debates of 1908, see Chapter 5, below. 98. Templeton, ‘What Dundee contributes’, pp. 98–120. It is perhaps worth noting that no such chapter was seen as necessary in the handbooks for either the 1867 or 1938 British Association visits. 99. Ibid., p. 113. The summary given of the destination of Dundee’s emigrants ‘during the past five years’ wholly omits the USA, with the claim that ‘forty-five per cent have gone to Canada, thirty per cent to the Australian Commonwealth, fifteen per cent to New Zealand, and ten per cent to South Africa’ (p. 120). 100. Ibid., p. 118. 101. Ibid., p. 120. 102. Lenman and Donaldson, ‘Partners’ incomes’, pp. 17–18. 103. Evidence to Royal Commission on Labour, in DYB 1891, p. 131. 104. Partly because wages were rising as jute and linen production expanded rapidly, and partly to gain access to duty-free sugar: Mathew, Keillers, pp. 43–5.

CHAPTER 3 1. DUA MS 84/3/1(1) AJSM Minutes ‘Report of Deputation to London 15 April 1919’. Churchill was an MP for Dundee from 1908 to 1922. 2. Merton, Ideologies.

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3. Rendell, ‘Scottish Orientalism’; Stokes, English Utilitarians. 4. Merton, Ideologies, pp. 43–52, 114–22; Dirks, Castes of Mind. 5. Said, Orientalism; Said, Culture and Imperialism, which deals explicitly with the Indian case; for a sympathetic critique by an imperial historian, MacKenzie, Orientalism. 6. For example, Bayly, Empire and Information; Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. 7. These papers merged in 1926. 8. Discussion of contemporary British newspaper coverage of India has focused on the major national dailies, and on the manipulation of their coverage by the government. Kaul, Reporting the Raj. 9. Keracher, Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies. 10. British Association, Meeting; British Association, British Association, Dundee 1912. 11. DCA: GD/CC/4/3 DChC AGMs 30 March 1859, 28 March 1860, 27 March 1861. 12. ‘Local industries of Dundee’ in British Association, Meeting, p. 11. 13. DCA: GD/CC/4/4 DChC AGM 1869; representations were also made to the House of Commons Select Committee on Indian Finance: AGM 27 March 1872. 14. Ibid., GD/CC/4/5 Letter from India Office 3 September 1874. This campaign paralleled an earlier one by Lancashire’s cotton producers: Harnetty, ‘Imperialism of free trade’. 15. Courier 31 August 1875. 16. Anonymous, Jute Mills of Bengal, p. 3. 17. Courier 22 October 1885. 18. Communication from ‘An Indian shareholder’, Advertiser 22 June 1877. 19. Stewart, Jute and Empire, passim. 20. Tomlinson, Economy of Modern India, p. 117. 21. Courier 7 February 1894. 22. Ibid. 23. Courier, editorial 13 September 1892. 24. See Chapter 4. 25. The development of this legislation, and the role of British interests in its shaping are summarised in Kydd, History of Factory Legislation; Clow, ‘Indian factory legislation’; Das, Factory Legislation; Gilbert, ‘Lord Lansdowne’. 26. Robb, Empire, Identity and India, pp. 199–201. 27. DCA: GD/CC/4/5 DChC Minutes 2 August 1877; Courier 21 June 1877. 28. Courier 27 September 1877. 29. Courier 22 October 1885. 30. Suggestions for growing outside India ranged from the Nile to Uganda to Sierra Leone: DCA: GD/CC/44/6 DChC AGM 1881; ibid., GD/CC/4/7 Minutes 23 November 1892; ibid., GD/CC/4/8 Minutes 28 December 1905. 31. DCA: GD/CC/4/6 DChC Minutes 26 September 1883. 32. ‘We can hardly say there is any normal level of the jute trade. You have either



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very good or very bad trade’: Chairman of DChC, DCA: GD/CC/4/6 22 September 1885. 33. The first stirrings of this can be found in 1881: DChC 22 June 1881; Courier 28 January 1881 on French sugar bounties; 1 August 1881, editorial entitled ‘The protectionist revival’; Masrani, ‘International competition’. 34. Second Report: Memorandum from DCC, p. 81; Minutes of Evidence Qs. 6175–6271. 35. DCA: GD/CC/4/6 DChC Minutes 22 September 1885. 36. Second Report, Memorandum from DChC. This suggested that 1869, following the opening of the Suez canal, was a key moment in expanding the scope of Indian competition. 37. Second Report, Minutes of Evidence, Q 6187. 38. DChC 29 September 1886. The President of the DChC at this time was J. F. Low, head of the biggest textile machinery company in the Dundee area. 39. DCC 24 December 1890; 25 June 1891. 40. DCA: GD/CC/4/7 DChC Minutes 29 September 1891. 41. Ibid., Minutes 18 January 1894, 23 February 1894, 20 September 1894, 26 February 1895. 42. Clow, ‘Indian factory legislation’, pp. 1–11. 43. Das, Factory Legislation, pp. 7–8. 44. Harnetty, ‘Indian cotton duties controversy’. On the high politics of these debates see Gopal, British Policy, pp. 108–13. 45. Tomlinson, ‘Anglo-Indian economic relations’. 46. Das, Factory Legislation, pp. 40-41; Clow, ‘Indian factory legislation’, pp. 18–19, 22. For the complex of forces at work in this particular Act, Gilbert, ‘Lord Lansdowne’. 47. As all the commentators note: Clow, ‘Indian factory legislation’, p. 24; Das, Factory Legislation, pp. 94–8; Kydd, A History, pp. 71-79. 48. Advertiser 28 January 1893; Stewart, Jute and Empire, pp. 63–73, recounts this episode in detail, largely from the point of view of the IJMA. 49. Advertiser 7 March 1893. 50. Stewart, Jute and Empire, p. 64. 51. DCC Minutes 27 June 1894. 52. HCDebs 25 1 June 1894, cols 179–80. 53. Courier 23 June 1894 54. Report of DChC meeting 26 December 1894 in Courier 27 December 1894. A few weeks later Leng was quoted as having told his constituents that on this issue ‘it was necessary that change should be made’: Courier 10 January 1895. 55. Courier 29 January 1895. 56. Report of DChC meeting 26 December 1894 in Courier 27 December 1894. 57. Report of DChC meeting 26 December 1894 in Courier 27 December 1894 58. Courier 27 July 1895. 59. Courier 11 October 1895. 60. Leng, Letters; see Stewart, Jute, pp. 73–4, for the conduct of this visit. 61. Leng, Letters, pp. 57–9.

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62. Ibid., pp. 63–4. 63. Ibid., pp. 111–16. Leng argued that the most important reform to working conditions would be to ban Sunday working, a point he pressed in the HCDebs 37 27 February 1896, col. 1217; also 40 18 May 1896, cols 1580–5. 64. DCA: GD/CC/4/8 DChC Minutes 7 April 1896. This speech is reproduced in DYB 1896, pp. 91–4. An attack on Leng’s failure to support assimilation of the Indian Factory Acts was published in the Courier 9 April 1896. On the same day Leng wrote to the paper stressing that contrary to the claims of a previous correspondent ‘I have not one penny of interest in any Calcutta mill’. 65. DCA: GD/CC/4/8 DChC Minutes 25 June 1896. 66. Metcalf, Ideologies, p. x. 67. Though some wanted to differentiate between ‘fairness’ and assimilation: DChC Meeting 26 June 1895 in Courier 27 June 1895. As noted in Chapter 2, there was considerable contemporary exaggeration about the direct Dundee (as opposed to British) investment in the Calcutta mills: ‘Calcutta jute factories’, DYB 1884, pp. 84–5. 68. Historical analysis of the actual conditions of workers in Calcutta jute mills is very extensive, two of the most important contributions being: Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-class History; Sen, Women and Labour. 69. Robertson, Two Speeches, p. 84. 70. These articles were gathered together into an article entitled ‘The Calcutta jute mills’ in the DYB 1894, pp. 93–130. 71. Ibid., p. 95. 72. Ibid., p. 96. 73. Ibid., pp. 97, 98. 74. Ibid., p. 114. 75. Leng, Letters from India, p. 57. 76. Leng, Letters from India, p. 57. This kind of argument links directly to much later academic and policy arguments in the field of development economics as it flourished after the Second World War. In this literature a key concept was the idea of a ‘backward-sloping demand curve for labour’, suggesting that workers in poor countries did not follow European norms in which labour supply increases as wages increase. Rather, it was argued, workers in poor countries supplied enough labour to achieve a target level of income, and if wages rose this target could be achieved with fewer hours of work. Enormous efforts went into investigating this alleged phenomenon, seen by some as a major cultural obstacle to ‘modernisation’, but by others as based on structural aspects of underdeveloped economies, especially the attachment of rural labour to the land. 77. Keracher, Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies. 78. Courier 24 May June 1894 (this article is not included in Keracher’s collection). 79. Courier 16 July 1894, quoted Keracher, Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies, pp. 56–7. 80. The argument that regulatory legislation of this kind is often welcomed by the more efficient producers as a way of forcing less efficient competitors out of business is a standard theme in some economics literature. 81. Clarke, Lancashire, p. 7.



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82. Tomlinson, Political Economy, pp. 13–17, 83. Bagchi, Private Investment, chapters 7, 8. 84. Gilbert, ‘Lord Lansdowne’. 85. Harnetty, ‘Indian cotton duties’; Das, Factory Legislation, p. 99. 86. Details in Courier 8 May 1896. 87. Clow, ‘Indian factory legislation’, pp. 23–45. 88. LSE Archives TC1 2/7 Report of the Tariff Commission vol. 2 The Textile Trades. Part 7 – Evidence on the Flax, Hemp and Jute Industries (London, 1905) Qs. 3926– 3927, 3943. 89. DCA: DChC GD/CC/4/8 Minutes 22 April 1902. 90. DCA: DChC Minutes 15 January 1904. The vote was 92 to 45. For a broad view of local jute employers’ opinions on protection see ‘The protectionist revival’, DYB 1903, pp. 160–76. 91. Ibid., speech by J. C. Buist. 92. Ibid., speech by Sir John Leng. 93. Ibid., speech by Mr G. Thom. 94. DCA: GD/CC/4/8 DChC Minutes 29 September 1905. 95. Ibid., 21 October 1905. DSU, Report. This proposal to fund improvements in Calcutta originated in India, and must be distinguished from the proposal emanating from Dundee for a duty on raw jute exports, which would be rebated for Empire users, hence discriminating against continental European producers. 96. The IJMA had sought to raise prices and profits by short-time working and other forms of co-operation since the 1880s, though with vary variable success; Stewart, Jute and Empire, pp. 55–60. 97. Advertiser 3 January 1911. 98. Advertiser 24 January 1911. 99. Ibid. In the event this compromise was rejected: Advertiser 20 March, 10 April 1911. 100. Advertiser 7 March 1911. 101. In March 1912 the DChC was pressing Churchill to find out how long this tax was intended to last: DCA: GD/CC/4/9 DChC AGM 28 March 1912. 102. Advertiser 16 December 1911, 23 December 1911 (these dates are inaccurate – it should be 1869). However, by January 1916 such a tax found ‘overwhelming support’ in the DCC: DCA: GD/CC/4/9 DChC EGM 20 January 1916; see also ibid., AGM 26 March 1917. 103. ‘The King-Emperor in India’, Advertiser 4 December 1911. 104. Advertiser 30 November 1911. 105. Templeton, ‘What Dundee contributes’, p. 120. 106. Ritchie, ‘Textiles’, pp. 266–82, p. 280. 107. Feaver, Webbs in India, pp. 255–6.

CHAPTER 4 1. Rodger, ‘Employment, wages and poverty’, pp. 28–33. 2. Savage, Dynamic. The pervasive uncertainty of working-class life was, of course,

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a key assumption of Beveridge’s foundational document on the welfare state: Social Insurance and Allied Services. That economic uncertainty is the norm in modern British capitalism is nicely illustrated by the Bank of England’s recent identification of forty-eight recessions in Britain since 1700: Hills et al., ‘The UK recession in context’. 3. Wages in jute and linen in the late nineteenth century were below the average in textiles, itself a low-wage industry: Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 87–96; Lenman et al., Dundee, appendix III. On prices and rents, Rodger, ‘Employment, wages and poverty’, p. 43; Gazeley et al., ‘Why was urban overcrowding much more severe in Scotland’; Feinstein, ‘New look’. 4. Aldcroft, Development of British Industry. 5. For the cotton comparison from a working-class perspective see Savage, Dynamics, and Griffiths, Lancashire Working-Classes. 6. Savage, Dynamics, pp. 17–38. 7. Watson, ‘Daughters of Dundee’. Browne and Tomlinson, ‘Women’s town?’. 8. Walker, Juteopolis; Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement; for women in jute, see also: Wainwright, ‘Dundee’s jute mills and factories’; Wainwright, ‘Constructing gendered workplace “types”’; these draw on Wainwright, ‘Gender, space and power’. 9. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 17–31, quote at p. 22. 10. Ibid., pp. 36, 49, quote at p. 36. 11. Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement, pp. 1, 5. 12. Ibid., p. 156. 13. Ibid., pp. 209–10. 14. Quoted in Wainwright, ‘Constructing’, pp. 473–4. 15. Wainwright, ‘Gender, space and power’, p. 205. For denunciation of married women workers, DSU Report, pp. 65–82. 16. Walker has a brief discussion of the issue for the 1920s: Juteopolis, p. 195. 17. There are no surviving records from the Williamson union; for the DDDUJFW, founded in 1906, there are surviving minute books which are skimpy for the years before 1914. 18. MRC: Annual Reports of Dundee and District United Trades and Labour Council, 1894–1905. 19. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 229–30. 20. Fraser, ‘Trades councils’, pp. 12–15. 21. For example, in 1893 it refused to take part in a mass meeting with the SDF: Courier 14 September 1893; there was also contention about relations with the ILP, but there was agreement to a joint meeting by 1894: Courier 11 October 1894. 22. ‘History of Dundee Trade Societies’, DYB 1889, pp. 92–102; Ward, ‘Trade unionism in Dundee’. 23. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 148–98. 24. DTC evidence to Labour Commission, in DYB 1891, p. 138. 25. Ibid., p. 290. There was also a short-lived Textile Workers Union, from 1894 to 1898: MRC: MSS524/4/1/21 DTC Annual Report 1899/1900, pp. 8–9. The



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Union collapsed in some acrimony about financial issues: Courier 2 October 1899, 26 October 1899, 17 May 1900. 26. Its pattern of affiliation was of a large number of relatively small bodies. In 1894, the first year for which we have reliable figures. it represented 6,000 workers in 33 societies: MRC: MSS 524/4/1/7 DTC Annual Report 1894, p. 1. At the end of the century the numbers seem to have fluctuated at around 12,000 to 14,000 with around forty affiliated societies: ibid., MSS/4/1/21 Annual Report 1899/1900, p. 3; MSS524/4/1/26 Annual Report 1902/3, p. 3. 27. St John, Demands, pp. 13–31. 28. In the early 1870s it sought to help the newly formed, but short-lived, Domestic Servants Association: Courier 8 June 1872. Ben Tillett, the dockworkers’ leader, addressed the Council in 1890, and the President took the opportunity to emphasise that it was for unskilled labourers as well as artisans: Courier 20 May 1890. 29. Courier 18 September 1890. It is notable that the Council sent a male delegate to the Conferences on Women’s Trades in the mid-1890s: MRC: MSS524/4/1/7 DTC Annual Report 1894/5, p. 6, 1895/6, p. 4. 30. Courier 3 April 1890. 31. Courier 17 April 1890. 32. MRC: MSS 524/4/1/7 DTC Annual Report 1894/1895, p. 6; Courier 17 January 1895, 14 February 1895. 33. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men, pp. 284–90; Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, pp. 67–8. Whatley, Diary, is the best personal account of the life of a Dundee labour ‘aristocrat’. 34. MRC: MSS 524/4/1/7 DTC Annual Report 1894, p. 2; ibid., 1894/5, p. 5. 35. Ibid., 1898/9, p. 3. 36. Ibid., 1900/01, pp. 4–5. 37. In 1889, while the President was a man, ‘the Vice-President, Secretary and nearly the whole of the Committee are females’: ‘History of Dundee Trade Societies’ DYB 1889, p. 97. 38. DUA: Lennox ‘Working class life in Dundee’, table 127. 39. Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement, pp. 181–205. 40. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 292–319. 41. Courier, 8 September 1899. 42. In October 1913 it voted by 45 votes to 43 that its Committee of Management should consist fifty per cent of women ‘where possible’: DCA: GD/JF/1/1 DDJFWU Minutes 30 October 1913. 43. DYB 1907, p. 122. 44. Southall, ‘Regional unemployment patterns’, p. 278. 45. DYB 1911, p. 7; ibid., ‘Carters’ and dockers’ strike: The Black Watch guards Dundee’, pp. 105–8. Baxter and. Kenefick, ‘Labour politics’, pp. 200–3. 46. Forrester, ‘Dundee and its textile Industry’; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 307–14. 47. DCA: GD/JF/1/1 DDJFWU minutes 30 October 1913. 48. Baxter and Kenefick, ‘Labour politics’; Kenefick, Red Scotland, pp. 50–1, 78–9, 107–14; also Kemp, ‘Red Tayside?’.

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49. For this evolution in England, see Savage, ‘Dynamics’; Lawrence, Speaking for the People. The most sophisticated account for Scotland is MacDonald, Radical Thread. 50. People’s Journal 11 September 1875, cutting in DCL: LHC Lamb Collection 196E. 51. DCL: LHC Lamb Collection 197 (37) J. Leng, ‘What are the best methods of dealing with the unemployed?’ 29 April 1886, p. 12. 52. DYB 1889, ‘Dundee Parliamentary election, 1889’, pp. 105, 110. Leng organised a welcoming dinner for the TUC meeting in Dundee in 1889. At that Congress the President of the DTC reiterated his desire for working-class representation in Parliament, but coupled this with the hope that the Congress would ‘tend to bring capital and labour into closer harmony with each other, and to hasten the time when each shall occupy its true place in the social economy, when their interests shall be found to be identical and when the good of all shall be the aim of both’. DCL: LHC Lamb Collection 197 (34) ‘TUC meeting in Dundee, September 1889’, p. 26. 53. Kemp, ‘Red Tayside?’, p. 227. The motives for this were at least as much financial as ideological; before the payment of MPs, funding independent Labour representatives was very constrained. The DTC had been paying for two of its members who had been elected to the City Council, but by 1892 was having trouble continuing these payments: Courier 23 December 1891; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 256–60. A hostile editorial in the Courier asked how an MP was to be funded in the light of this problem: Courier 5 January 1892. 54. Howell, British Workers, p. 168. 55. Ibid., p. 150. In 1889 the DTC opposed the candidature of John Burns: Courier 18 September 1889. 56. Howell, British Workers, p. 364. 57. See further, section II below. Nationally, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald sought ‘a resurrection of popular Gladstonianism through an anti-imperialist alliance between labour, radical and Irish MPs’ during the war’: Reid, Short History, p. 255. 58. Courier 6 September 1900, 29 November 1900. 59. Thane, ‘Labour and welfare’; Harris, ‘Labour’s political and social thought’. On the specific issue of the ‘welfare state’ it may be noted that Dundee had a highprofile philanthropic body, the Dundee Social Union, which in 1905 produced a landmark report on conditions in the city. DSU, Report. The Labour response to this focused on providing free school meals: MRC: MSS 524/4/1/33 Annual Report of Dundee and District United Trades and Labour Council, 1905. 60. Fraser, ‘Trades councils’, pp. 12–15; MRC: MSS 524/4/1/30 Annual Report of Dundee and District United Trades and Labour Council, 1904; Kemp, ‘Red Tayside?’, pp. 224–8; Courier 26 June, 10 July, 1890, 10 March 1898. 61. Courier 4 February 1892. MacDonald, the socialist candidate in the 1892 election, made his priority shortening the working day: Courier 4 July 1892. 62. This also was a big part of union activity alongside wage bargaining: for ASE: ‘The only local struggles with capitalists in which the Dundee branch have



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engaged was in 1871, when, after a sharp fight of short duration, they succeeded in getting the working week reduced from 56 to 51 hours’: ‘History of Dundee Trade Societies’ Lamb Collection 197 (3), p. 121. 63. Fraser, ‘Trades councils’, pp. 6, 11. 64. Courier 13 May 1873. 65. Though note that some jute workers fell outside the scope of the Act, most notoriously many bag sewers, who sewed the bags at home on a piece rate system and therefore worked unregulated hours. 66. DYB 1878, p. 15. 67. Lamb 50 (5) TUC proceedings 1889, p. 24: these comments were described by members of the DTC as ‘incredible claptrap’: Courier 10 December 1891. 68. ‘The labour commission the state of the jute industry’ in DYB 1891, p. 131. The Trades Council representative reiterated its support for the eight-hour day: ibid., p. 138. 69. Courier 13 June 1891. 70. DCA: GD/CC/4/7 DCC meeting 25 June 1891. 71. Courier 11 June, 25 June 1891. Children’s working hours and the half-time system continued to be contentious into the new century: Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 82–4. 72. In 1908 a House of Commons Select Committee had recommended the establishment of a Trade Board, but nothing was done until 1919: Ward, ‘Trade unionism in Dundee’, p. 260; Sells, British Trade Boards System, pp. 94–100. 73. Courier 4 July 1895, 20 April 1899; not that opinion on the DTC was unanimous on this issue: Courier 1 August 1895. The DTC was subject to criticism by socialists on its level of enthusiasm on this matter: Courier 16 March 1892. For the national debate, Reid, Short History, pp. 251–2. 74. DCC: GD/CC/4/7 25 September 1901. 75. Courier, editorial 13 September 1892. 76. An exception to this broad pattern was Aberdeen, where the dissent was led by H. Champion; there was also dissent from Blatchford and the socialist newspaper Clarion on this issue: Howell, British Workers, pp. 158–9, 373–5. 77. Courier 28 January 1881. 78. Scotsman 3 December 1903; Baxter and Kenefick, ‘Labour politics’, p. 197. 79. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation. 80. Feinstein, ‘A new look’. 81. DUA: Lennox, ‘Working class life’, pp. 228–9; ‘Women’s work and wages in Dundee’, DYB 1893, p. 176; ‘The working poor of Dundee’ DYB 1903, pp. 146, 155. 82. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation; see on this Chapter 5, below. 83. Lamb 50 (5) TUC proceedings 1889, p. 25. 84. DUA: Lennox, ‘Working class life’, pp. 250–5, p. 255. 85. On the sliding scale see Porter, ‘Wage bargaining’. Apart from jute, most occupations seem to have upward trends in money wages in our period. 86. The 1889 report on ‘Trade Societies in Dundee’ has details of subscriptions and benefits for most unions, but not for the Williamson jute union.

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87. After the Unemployed Workmen’s Act of 1905 Dundee set up a Distress Committee which in late 1908 was relieving 1,144 registered unemployed, while the trade societies had about eight hundred out of work, ‘very few of whom are amongst those registered’: DCL: LHC Lamb Collection 197 (38) Report of the Distress Committee of the Burgh of Dundee for year to 15 May 1909, p. 9. 88. A compelling explanation of this phenomenon can be found in the classic contemporary study of working-class life, Reeves, Round About, pp. 66–74. 89. DUA: Lennox, ‘Working class life’, pp. 247, 263. 90. Output in the industry peaked in the Edwardian period: Lythe, ‘Shipbuilding at Dundee’, p. 232; Lythe, Gourlays of Dundee. 91. Daunton, State and Market, p. 308; also Johnson, Saving and Spending, pp. 116–24. 92. Don, Dundee Savings Bank, pp. 12, 14. 93. DUA: Lennox, ‘Working class life’, pp. 264–7. 94. Hilton, Consumerism, pp. 35–41 95. DUA: Duncan ‘Co-operation in Dundee’, pp. 40, 60ff; DUA: Lennox, ‘Working class life’, p. 227. 96. Courier 22 March 1894. 97. Courier 29 March 1894. 98. Courier 15 April 1895, 7 May 1896, 11 February 1897, 5 October 1899. 99. Duncan, ‘Co-operation’, pp. 62–4, p. 58. Courier 23 June 1900. 100. Trentmann, ‘Bread, milk and democracy’, pp. 138–9. 101. ‘The milk supply: Dundee’s unenviable record. What is the remedy?’, DYB 1909, pp. 80–1; DYB 1893, p. 148. 102. Steele, ‘Transmitting the ideas of empire’; MacKenzie ‘Afterword’, pp. 210–27. 103. Courier 5 March 1896. 104. Steele, ‘Transmitting’. 105. Price, An Imperial War, especially pp. 236–9. 106. Price, pp. 151–2; also Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 276–8; Advertiser 12 March, 17 March 1900. 107. Courier 16 October 1899; the role of students was disputed in the press: Advertiser 8 March, 9 March, 12 March, 14 March; People’s Journal 10 March. 108. Before the First World War the TUC had no direct international links, but union federations had been established amongst metal and transport workers, and the ASE had a large number of overseas branches, largely in countries of the British diaspora: Nicholson, TUC Overseas, p. 4. 109. Kirk, Comrades and Cousin, p. 189. On the issue of contemporary working-class and socialist attitudes to issues of ‘race’, as well as Kirk, see Hyslop, ‘World voyage’, and Kenefick, ‘Confronting white labourism’. All this work concentrates on the ‘white’ Empire. 110. For example, James Mann, Chairman of the DTC, Advertiser 2 April 1896. 111. Courier 11 September 1895. 112. Courier 30 April 1896; see also Courier 26 February 1897, when a speaker at the DTC was quoted as saying: ‘Capital was not a particularly patriotic thing, and it always went to the country where it could get the best dividends’.



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113. On the contemporary debate on capital exports, see Offer, ‘Empire and social reform’, pp. 127–8. 114. Trentmann, ‘Wealth versus welfare’.

CHAPTER 5 1. Clarke, Lancashire, assesses these issues for the cotton towns. 2. Green, Crisis of Conservatism, pp. 1–23. 3. Voting was spread over two weeks, with the election in Dundee on 16 January. 4. Tanner, Political Change, pp. 21–3, 40–3. 5. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, p. 1. 6. Hutchison, Political History, p. 218. 7. These separate parties came together to form the Scottish Unionist Association in 1913: Ward, First Century, p. 24. 8. Southgate, ‘Politics and representation in Dundee’, p. 298. In Scotland, the issue of Church disestablishment also led to some defections from Liberal to Conservative: Howell, British Workers, p. 38. 9. Advertiser 6 January, 10 January 1906. 10. Jute employers do not seem to have been very prominent in the campaign, the exception being R. B. Don, who spoke for the Unionists, backed by D. C. Thomson, the owner of the Courier: Courier 16 January 1906; and George Baxter, who became the Unionist candidate in 1908: Advertiser 16 January 1906. 11. Courier 6 January 1906. 12. ‘Ruining Dundee’s trade’, Courier 15 January 1906. The Advertiser was critical of the pessimistic evidence given by the jute employers to the Commission, while agreeing that heavy linen’s position was poor; 15 January 1906. 13. Courier 10, 11 January 1906. The latter report of a Unionist election meeting notes calls also for retaliation against Brazilian coffee imports as a way of trying to force a lowering of Brazilian tariffs on British jute bags. 14. Courier 15 January, 10 January 1906. 15. DYB 1906, p. 5; also Advertiser 8 January 1906. 16. Courier 8 January 1906; Edward Cox, the Unionist Free Trader, was blunt in his assessment when, during a defence of free trade, he wrote: ‘that in the free markets of the world the competition the competition that Dundee has to fear is that of India because of cheap labour. As far as I know, no reasonable method has been suggested for getting rid of that competition.’ Advertiser 13 January 1906. 17. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, pp. 2–11. 18. Hutchison, Political History, pp. 234–45. 19. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 255. 20. Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, p. 299. 21. Ibid.; Advertiser 10 January 1906. 22. DCA: GD/DLA/4/6 Dundee Liberal Association, election leaflet, 9 January 1906. The leaflet also called for social reform, with the first item being local liquor licensing, as well as ‘stringent economy in every branch of the Public Service’.



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23. Advertiser 9 January 1906. 24. Courier 9 January 1906. 25. Advertiser 10 January 1906. Morley was the Secretary of State for India. At another election meeting Robertson proposed that there be ‘international treaties of labour between the great manufacturing counties of the world, whereby the conditions governing the employment of women and children should be made identical’ and hoped that this ‘would be welcomed by the employer as much as by the employed’. Advertiser 11 January 1906. 26. Advertiser 10 January 1906, also 5, 16 January. 27. Editorial, Advertiser 9 January 1906. 28. Editorial, Advertiser 17 January 1906. 29. Election expenses in Advertiser 15 January 1906; People’s Journal 3 November 1906. 30. Reid, ‘Old unionism reconsidered’, p. 238. 31. Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, pp. 301–2; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 280–4. 32. Advertiser 5 January 1906. He also said that his first remedy for unemployment was ‘putting people back to the land’. 33. Advertiser 10 January, 5 January. LSE Archive: Parliamentary Representation of Dundee. Reports of Public Meetings. Addresses by Councillor Alexander Wilkie (Dundee, 1906). 34. Courier 5 January 1906. 35. Advertiser 16 January, 13 January 1906. 36. Advertiser 15 January 1906. 37. Lady Leng, wife of Sir John, found this cross-voting ‘a curiously lamentable exhibition of mental confusion, incredible indeed to the ordinary logical mind’. Advertiser 25 January 1906. 38. Table 5.1; Advertiser 16 January 1906. 39. One ILPer described Wilkie as ‘less advanced than either of the candidates already before the constituency, Tory, Unionist or Liberal’: quoted in Kemp, ‘Red Tayside?’, p. 229. 40. Advertiser 4 January 1906; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 199–200. This affiliation was seen as crucial for giving the new union financial ‘muscle’: Advertiser 4 April 1906. 41. DCA: GD/JF/1/1 DDUJFW Minutes 13 March 1906; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 200–6. 42. Advertiser 14 March 1906 (the Advertiser gives a more extensive summary of the meeting than the official minutes). 43. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 201–2. 44. Kemp, ‘Red Tayside?’, especially pp. 229-230. 45. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 201; on one of these see Baillie, ‘The Grey Lady’. 46. Courier 9 January 1906. 47. Tanner, Political Change, pp. 99–118, 443–5. 48. Dyer, Capable Citizens, pp. 21–2. 49. For this discussion, especially in relation to Glasgow, Smyth, Labour in



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Glasgow, pp. 10–17. If we make the extreme (but not absurd) assumption that all those excluded from the franchise were working-class, and combine this with the 1911 data suggesting 20 per cent of the city population were working-class, the enfranchised working class would have outnumbered the middle class by only sixty per cent to forty per cent in the electorate circa 1906–8. 50. Advertiser 2 October, 21 October 1907. On this issue see Clarke, Lancashire, pp. 104–9. 51. Meeting in UF Church Hall Lochee, 27 March 1905, in Parliamentary Representation, p. 10. 52. Courier 8 January 1906. 53. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics and Crashes, p. 70. 54. Economist Vol. LXVI, ‘Monthly Trade Supplement’ (May 1908), p. 13. 55. Economist Vol. LXVI, no. 3376 (9 May 1908), pp. 983–4. 56. There is a journalistic account in a Paterson, Seat for Life, pp. 47–76; also Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 378–81; Walker, ‘Dundee’s disenchantment’. The election does not figure heavily in the standard biographies of Churchill: Churchill, Young Statesman 1901–1914. For Churchill’s own account, ‘Some election memories’, Strand Magazine September 1931, reprinted in Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures, pp. 201–15. 57. CHAR 5/1 ‘To the electors of Dundee’ 30 April 1908; see also Scotsman 1 May 1908. 58. Dundee, no date. Copy in Churchill Archive, CHAR 9/31/66. 59. For Liberalism and Free Trade, pp. 7, 8, 11. 60. Advertiser 5 May 1908. 61. For Liberalism and Free Trade, p. 23. 62. Ibid., p. 29. 63. ‘Some election memories’, p. 244. 64. The Scotsman 8 May 1908, Churchill responding to questions from Labour Councillor John Reid. 65. For example, speech at Lochee, 3 May 1908: Courier 4 May 1908. 66. The Times 7 May 1908, where it is suggested that Churchill had once advocated tariff reform. For this theme, also Courier 1 May 1908. 67. Clarke, ‘Churchill’s economic ideas’, pp. 87–8. 68. Scotsman 9 May 1908. 69. The Times 4 May 1908. 70. Scotsman 1 December 1908. 71. DCL: LHC ‘1908 Election’ ‘To the Parliamentary electors of Dundee’, p. 3. 72. Scotsman 29 April 1908. 73. Courier 1 May 1908. 74. Advertiser 6 May 1908. 75. Scotsman 8 May 1908. 76. Hutchison, Political History, p. 220. 77. DCL: LHC Dundee Parliamentary Election 1908, leaflet ‘Growth of the jute trade’. 78. Ibid., leaflet ‘Fair Play in the Jute Trade’.

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79. Courier 7, 8, 9 May 1908; The Times 8 May 1908 commented that ‘Tariff reform has been woven into the very texture of the contest’ by this argument. 80. Advertiser, ‘Smashing tariff reform dodge’, 8 May 1908; CHAR 9/31/66 ‘Churchill’s message to Dundee after the declaration of the poll’. 81. Advertiser 8 May 1908. 82. The Labour Leader 22 May 1908; much of this was first published in the Courier 15 May 1908; also People’s Journal 2 May 1908. 83. Ibid. The division of two-member seats in Lancashire was central to the Gladstone–MacDonald entente, the formal foundation of ‘Lib-Labism’: Clarke, Lancashire, pp. 316–20. 84. Hutchison, Political History, p. 253. 85. ‘Dundee Labour Quarrel’, Courier 18 May 1908. 86. Hutchison, Political History, p. 247; also, Brewer, ‘Independent Labour Party’. 87. Ibid. Hutchison, pp. 256–65; Wilkie ‘plumpers’ in the two 1910 elections were just over four hundred on each occasion: Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, p. 302. 88. Courier 18 May 1908. 89. Advertiser 8 November 1909, reporting a Liberal meeting which agreed by a large majority not to run a second candidate. 90. Advertiser 18 April 1908. 91. Advertiser 3 May 1908. 92. Advertiser 4 May 1908; in this respect Stuart was echoing the views of Wilkie at the time of his Dundee campaign three years earlier: ‘What was necessary was the placing, as far as practicable, of India in the same position as this country as regards Factory Acts’: Meeting in UF Church Hall Lochee, 27 March 1905, in Parliamentary Representation, p. 10. 93. The Times, 8 May 1908. 94. The Times, 4 May 1908 95. Clarke, Lancashire, pp. 254–6; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 138, 379–81. 96. The Times 8 May 1908. 97. Clarke, Lancashire, pp. 285–7, suggests it is not clear that the issue was that straightforward in that constituency. 98. Clarke, Lancashire, p. 100: ‘By 1910 many of them [cotton employers] were Tariff Reformers because they were Conservatives’. 99. Advertiser 1 May 1908. 100. Advertiser 6 May 1908. 101. Advertiser 8 May 1908. 102. The Times 11 May 1908. 103. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 286.

CHAPTER 6 1. A broadly similar pattern is evident in the city’s linen industry, with rapid expansion of demand for military purposes, complicated by problems of flax supply (especially as the main supplier was Russia), and leading to an increase in



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output which was unsustainable once peace returned: Ollerenshaw, ‘Stagnation, war and depression’. 2. Day, ‘Jute industry in Scotland’, pp. 276–83. 3. Board of Trade, Jute Working Party Report, table VII. 4. TNA: PRO NATS 1/1178 D. Young, ‘Report on jute industry in Dundee with reference to 10 per cent reduction in use of raw material’, 8 February 1918. 5. On resistance to conscription in Dundee and Scotland generally, Kenefick, Red Scotland!, pp. 136–55. 6. Glen, ‘“Of myth and men”’. 7. History of the Ministry of Munitions vol. II . . . Local Organization in the UK, p. 142; and vol. VIII . . . The National Factories, pp. 83–4, 118. 8. DYB 1914, pp. 16–24; DYB 1915, pp. 17–27; DYB 1916, pp. 16–27. 9. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 394–5. 10. Ibid., pp. 401–7. 11. TNA: PRO NATS 1/1178 F. McLeod to Mr Hands 12 January 1918. 12. Ibid., F. McLeod to Sir H. Morgan 10 January 1918. The union suggested that these gender proportions had become typical of the whole industry in the war period: ibid., conference at Ministry of National Service 13 December 1917. 13. TNA: PRO NATS 1/1178 John Sime to F. McLeod 11 January 1918; NATS 1/1179 W. Henderson to F. McLeod 28 February 1918. 14. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 407–19. This was part of a national shortening of the working week; Lee, ‘Scottish economy’, pp. 25–6. 15. Petrie, 1915 Rent Strikes. 16. TNA: PRO LAB 2/842/TBM114/4/1921 and TBM114/18/1921 Jute Trade Board. While Calcutta competition is mentioned by the AJSM as a reason for lower wages in Dundee, this issue is not given prominence. 17. Churchill papers, CHAR 5/24 Churchill to Prime Minister, 23 September 1921. 18. Sells, British Trade Boards System; Craig et al., ‘Abolition and after’. 19. Sime, the leader of the DDUJFW, was dismissed from the Jute Trade Board in 1922 because of his refusal to keep its proceedings secret: Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 429–33. 20. The basis of the dispute was how many frames spinners were to work – see DUA: MS84/2/6 AJSM Annual Report 1923 and 1924; Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 486–527. 21. Day, ‘Jute industry in Scotland’, p. 287. These figures are broadly in line with those at the firm of Don and Low: Whatley, Onwards from Osnaburgs, pp. 140, 158. 22. C. Swinson, ‘Clarence Hatry and Jute Industries Limited: a company promoter at work’, unpublished paper to the Conference of Accounting Historians, 2007. The size ranking of firms is based on data for 1908 in Lenman et al., Dundee, pp. 114–15. 23. C. Swinson, ‘Jute Industries Limited and Clarence Hatry: a misleading prospectus?’, paper for the World Congress of Accounting Historians, 2012; Economist 2 October 1920, p. 501.

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24. Low and Bonar acquired Baxter Brothers in 1924: DUA: MS 24, Low and Bonar Archive. 25. Though the industry continued to have a large number of smaller firms: eightyfive were counted in the Census of Production of 1935: Working Party Report, p. 22. 26. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 529. 27. Knox, Industrial Nation, p. 209; Menzies and Chapman, ‘Jute industry’, pp. 239–46. For unstated reasons Jute Industries obstructed the formation of a research association for the industry: DUA: MS84/2/6 AJSM Annual Report 1922, p. 19. 28. Buchanan, Development, pp. 251–2, 327; Morris, ‘Growth’, pp. 602–3. 29. Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 273, suggests that machinery investment in the industry fell by eighty per cent between 1913/14 and 1918/19. 30. Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 276, gives figures suggesting that the ratio of net profits (excluding interest) to paid-up capital rose from ten in 1914 to a peak of seventy-five in 1916: dividends increased even more: Buchanan, Development, pp. 251–2. 31. Gupta, ‘Why did collusion fail?’; see Chapters 7 and 8 below. 32. Bagchi, Private Investment, p. 421. 33. Chaudhuri, ‘Foreign trade’, p. 856. 34. Tomlinson, Political Economy, pp. 1–3. 35. Ibid., pp. 57–62. 36. Royal Institute of International Affairs, British Empire, p. 127. 37. Tomlinson, Economy of Modern India, p. 132. 38. Tomlinson, Political Economy, p. 57. 39. CHAR 2/106-162 Churchill papers, Churchill to Montagu 19 December 1919. 40. Toye, Churchill’s Empire, p. 172. 41. Ibid., pp. 133–4. 42. The war saw a great upsurge in employers’ organisations across Britain, both to respond to government intervention and to deal with labour, and many of these organisations had a protectionist bent: Turner, ‘Politics of “organized business”’; Rooth, British Protectionism, pp. 35–59, details the rise of protectionist sentiment, especially amongst employers, in the 1920s. 43. DCA: GD/CC/4/9 DChC directors’ meeting 20 January 1916; Whatley, Onwards From Osnaburgs, p. 140. 44. Report of the Departmental Committee . . . to Consider the Position of the Textile Trades after the War, pp. 38–9. 45. DCA: GD/CC/4/10 DChC AGM 28 March 1918; directors’ meeting 27 June 1918; Walker, Juteopolis, p. 396. 46. DCA: GD/CC/4/10 DChC Directors’ meeting 5 September 1919. 47. DCA: DChC Directors’ meeting 5 February 1920. 48. DUA: MS84/3/1 (2) AJSM to President of Board of Trade 14 January 1919. 49. DUA: MS84/3/1 (3) Sime to AJSM 3 February 1919. 50. It had a previous meeting on its own with the Board in February 1919, which seems to have yielded nothing. At this meeting the representative of the India



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Office spelt out the imperial policy calculation when he stressed that ‘India had put all her strength behind Great Britain and her Allies during the War, and that such an act against her biggest industry now would be a peculiar way of repaying India for her services’: DUA: MS 84/3/1 (2) AJSM Deputation to Board of Trade 7 February 1919. 51. DUA: MS 84/3/1 (7) AJSM Minutes of meeting with DDFMOU 11 April 1919; MS 84/3/1 (3) Minutes of meeting 11 February 1919. 52. DUA: MS 84/3/1 (2) AJSM Report of deputation to Ministry of Reconstruction 15 April 1919. 53. DUA: MS 84/3/1 (3) Sime to Board of Trade 16 April 1919. Sime described the DMFOU as a ‘blackleg’ union with three thousand members, mostly aged, who paid one penny per week to qualify for death benefit. 54. Wilkie and the unions also raised the issue of the Dundee jute employers’ investments in Calcutta jute. When Geddes asked what proportion of Calcutta mill shares were held by Association members, he was told by the Association representative that it was ‘very small’: DUA: MS 84/3/1 (2) AJSM Report of deputation to Ministry of Reconstruction, 15 April 1919. This was an issue that Sime and the DDUJFW were also keen to raise at this time when the employers raised the issue of Indian competition: see Walker, Juteopolis, p. 433, citing Jute and Flax Workers Guide May 1919. 55. Ibid., Report of deputation. It was in response to this statement from Geddes that Churchill made the comment quoted in the introductory chapter. 56. The Times 23 January 1920; DUA: MS84/3/1 (3) AJSM from Board of Trade 20 May 1919; DUA: MS84/3/1 (2) AJSM Minutes of meeting 1 February 1921. 57. For example, DUA: MS84/3/1 (2) Minutes of meeting 1 February 1921. 58. Figures in Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, pp. 302–3. The 1922 election also saw the first Communist candidate in Dundee, with William Gallagher getting 5,906 votes. 59. Paterson, Seat for Life. 60. Walker, ‘Dundee’s disenchantment’, pp. 425–7. 61. For Scrymgeour, see Knox and Saville, ‘Edwin Scrymgeour’. 62. Cline, E. D. Morel; Porter, Critics, pp. 254–66. 63. Morel was re-elected in 1923, and topped the poll in the October 1924 general election, but died the next month. Johnston succeeded him in a by-election in December 1924. An important feature of Morel’s prewar stance was support for free trade, especially the opening-up of international markets to African farmers, so he would have been a highly unlikely convert to any protectionist policy. 64. LSE Archives, Morel Papers F2 1/8 Saklatvala to Morel, 24 January 1923. There is no evidence that Morel responded to this advance, and he told his Dundee agent that ‘it is very awkward indeed for a member of the Labour Party – so-called – who is really a Communist, and says he is, to invade my constituency’. Ibid., Morel to J. Ogilvie 29 January 1923. On Saklatvala, see Gupta, Imperialism, pp. 43–5. 65. Howe, Anti-colonialism; Claeys, Imperial Sceptics, pp. 224–33.

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66. Owen, British Left and India, chapters four to eight, emphasises the political aspects. 67. For example, John Wheatley, ‘The fallacies of free trade and protection’, Forward 21 February 1925. 68. Though increasingly the party looked to state intervention rather than free trade to secure cheap (and good-quality) food, much influenced by the perceived successes of wartime food price control. 69. Blackburn, Fair Day’s Wage. 70. Mahaim, ‘Historical and social importance of international labour legislation’. 71. Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1917, p. 143. 72. Mahaim, ‘Historical and social importance’. 73. Barnes, History, p. 45. 74. Ibid., pp. 36–7. 75. HCDebs 114 16 April 1919, col. 114. 76. HCDebs 142 27 May 1921, cols 471–552. 77. HCDebs 203 28 February 1927, cols 58–174. 78. Boyce, Capitalism, pp. 84–7; Johnston, despite these setbacks, continued his advocacy: HCDebs 203 28 February 1927, cols 81–3. 79. Barnes, History, pp. 44, 63–4; also Anstey, Economic Development, pp. 302-303; Shotwell, Origins vol. 2, pp. 404–5. The new restrictions were embodied in a new Factory Act in 1922: Clow, ‘Indian factory legislation’, pp. 59–63. 80. Boyce, Capitalism, p. 34. 81. Safeguarding of iron and steel had been rejected by Baldwin as too close to a general tariff. HCDebs 189 21 December 1925, cols 1945 –6. For a superb summary of the issues surrounding protection for iron and steel, see Tolliday, ‘Tariffs and steel’. 82. For debates in Labour circles in the early postwar years, Gupta, Imperialism, pp. 26–8. 83. HCDebs 222 14 November 1928, col. 932. 84. Ibid., 14 November 1928, col. 1025. 85. Ibid., cols 1026–8. 86. Gupta, Imperialism, p. 61, see also pp. 38–51. 87. Tsiang, Labour and Empire, p. 47. 88. Owen, British Left and India, p. 153. There is no evidence of the Dundee jute unions taking a position on Indian tariff autonomy in this period. 89. Walker, Thomas Johnston, pp. 63–4, 67. 90. Johnston, Memories, pp. 49–50; Boyce, British Capitalism, pp. 87–9. 91. Walker, Thomas Johnston, pp. 60–1, 66–8; the ILP’s under-consumptionist position was spelt out most extensively in its important document ‘The living wage’ (1926): see Skidelsky, Politicians, pp. 63–6. 92. Skidelsky, ibid., pp. 68–9. This issue led to furious discussion in Labour circles, notably in the ILP journal Forward which Johnston edited: for example, 17 January, 24 January, 21 February, 21 March 1925. In the last of these B. Villiers accurately defined the majority view in Labour circles as wanting ‘high wages through trade unions and cheap food through free trade’.



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93. Johnston, Memories, p. 54; Walker, Thomas Johnston, p. 73. 94. Report of First British Commonwealth Labour Conference, 27 July to 1 August 1925, pp. 13–14. 95. Ibid., p. 14. 96. Ibid., p. 18. 97. Doud, ‘Tom Johnston in India’, is highly critical of Johnston’s broad stance on empire, seeing it simply as evidence of an insufficient anti-imperialist stance, rather than recognising any dilemmas in how, from a Dundee perspective, such issues were to be approached in the 1920s. See also Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, pp. 144–7. 98. Courier 6 June 1925; Advertiser 9 June, 12 June 1925. 99. Johnston and Sime, Exploitation in India, p. 4. 100. Ibid., p. 19. 101. After returning from India Sime was involved in trying to support trade unionism in Calcutta, supplying small sums of money to unions there: DCA: GD/JF 5/6, Sime Correspondence 1926–1927. 102. Times of India 21 December 1925. 103. Johnston, Memories, p. 73. 104. Exploitation, pp. 15–17; the Daily Herald 29 January 1926 summarised the message as ‘with one exception, the Bengal Jute Workers Association, the trade unions are useless’. 105. Indian Daily Mail 20 December 1925. 106. ‘Talk to Calcutta Rotary Club’, Statesman 3 December 1925. 107. Daily News 24 February 1926. 108. Sime, letter to Courier 5 April 1926. 109. Courier editorial 2 January 1926; the unrest in Calcutta jute in spring 1926 unleashed a stream of this kind of commentary in the Courier: see, for example, 5 April, 8 April 1926. The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, embodied in the Government of India Act of 1919, ceded some powers to Indian political representatives in the Provinces, but maintained clear British rule at the centre. 110. Collins, ‘Brothers under the sun’, pp. 31–3. 111. Purcell and Hallsworth, Report, pp. 32, 43. The Scottish TUC had a fraternal delegate from the All-India Trade Union Congress in 1923 and 1924, Shapurji Saklatvala, the Labour/Communist MP, and he reported on conditions in Calcutta jute, but no significant action by the STUC seems to have followed: Tuckett, Scottish Trade Union Congress, pp. 178–80; also Breitenbach, ‘Scottish trade union movement’. 112. Boyce, Capitalism, p. 197. 113. Johnston’s departure from Dundee, to become MP for West Stirling, was linked to a quarrel between the DTLC and the ILP, specifically about the latter’s policy on the boycott of the newspapers of the local publishers D. C. Thomson, following Thomson’s banning of union membership in the wake of the general strike. But this quarrel was linked to Johnston’s wider disillusion with the ILP: Galbraith, Without Quarter, pp. 100, 106–7. He was Under Secretary for Scotland and then Lord Privy Seal under the second Labour government.

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114. Skidelsky, Politicians, pp. 190–207; an important element in Mosley’s subsequent transition to fascism was the expansion of his focus on the home market to embrace the Empire as a whole, an empire conceived in increasingly racial terms: Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley, pp. 221–45. 115. Rooth, British Protectionism, p. 53; some trade unions, notably that in iron and steel, had shown support for safeguarding and protectionism in the 1920s: Boyce, Capitalism, p. 86. 116. HCDebs 239 28 May 1930, col. 1388. 117. Williamson, National Crisis, pp. 82–4. 118. Collins, ‘Brothers under the sun?’, p. 41.

CHAPTER 7 1. Dundee was a dual-member seat, and in 1931 the other new MP was Dingle Foot, a National Liberal, who adhered to the ‘Samuelite’ wing of the Liberals, and opposed the National government’s protectionist policies. But, as we shall see in Chapter 8, he went along with the local ‘united front’ pursing protection. 2. The only industry with a worse official unemployment record than jute was shipbuilding, and this was not concentrated in one city: Beveridge, Full Employment, p. 83. 3. Green, Crisis of Conservatism. 4. Keohane, Party of Patriotism, pp. 109–14 5. Garside, British Unemployment, pp. 153–6. 6. Peden, Treasury, pp. 211–12; Self, ‘Treasury control’. 7. Safeguarding of Industries. Dumping in economics means goods being sold below the costs of production, but it was commonly used in the interwar period in a much looser sense. On Party discontent, Ramsden, Age of Balfour and Baldwin, p. 290. The Act also allowed for protection against countries with depreciating currencies, but this was applied only against Germany in 1922–4. 8. Self, Tories and Tariffs, pp. 425–98. The Dundee jute employers did not pursue the possibility of safeguarding the industry. The possibility was raised with them by the MP for Middleton and Prestwich, Nairne Sandeman, but, as it was clearly recognised in subsequent discussion, the legislation could be invoked only against European imports, which compared to those from India were negligible. The AJSM decided not to pursue the matter: DUA: MS84/1 (3) Minutes of meeting 11 January 1927; ibid., 84/3/1 (2) 4 March 1927. 9. Capie, Depression, p. 41. 10. How far the 1931 election gave mandate for protection was disputed, most vehemently by the ‘National Liberals’ who had fought the election alongside the Conservatives, but recoiled from protectionism. This difference led, in 1932, to the split in the Liberal party into a ‘Simonite’ faction willing to go along with tariffs, and a ‘Samuelite’ grouping who on this issue went into opposition. Philip Snowden, previously the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, also left the National government on this issue.



Notes

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11. Marrison, British Business; Turner, ‘Politics of “organised business”’, pp. 42–8; Final Report . . . on . . . Industrial Policy after the War. 12. Capie, Depression, pp. 63, 69-74; Davenport-Hines, Dudley Docker, pp. 84–132. 13. Keynes, ‘Mitigation by tariff’, pp. 231–44. 14. Booth and Pack, Employment, pp. 98–101, and Williamson, National Crisis, pp. 64–5, 195–6, 312–14 on the TUC’s position, which at most saw a tariff as a better way of raising revenue than cuts in unemployment benefit, but favoured more ‘planned’ trade with the Empire. 15. Williamson, National Crisis, pp. 299–303. 16. Ball, Baldwin, p. 5. 17. Hancock, Survey, pp. 83–9. 18. Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy, pp. 32–40; Tomlinson, ‘Empire/ Commonwealth’, pp. 216–19. 19. Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, pp. 140–86. 20. Tomlinson, Political Economy, pp. 104–37. 21. Benham, Great Britain, pp. 32–3. The Act also created an Import Duties Advisory Board to adjudicate on claims for tariffs in addition to the general ten per cent rule. 22. Dilks, ‘Baldwin and Chamberlain’, p. 348; Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy, pp. 219–99, gives a detailed account of the negotiations. 23. Ramsden, Age of Balfour and Baldwin, pp. 303–9; Williamson, National Crisis, pp. 121–2, 131–2, 178–80. 24. Skidelsky, Politicians, p. 281. 25. Peele. ‘Revolt over India’, p. 120; Dilks, ‘Baldwin and Chamberlain’, p. 321, points out that Chamberlain was not in favour of Empire Free Trade. 26. Drummond, British Economic Policy, p. 121. 27. Rhodes James, Churchill, pp. 231–76; Toye, Churchill’s Empire, pp. 162–92. For a persuasive overview of Britain’s imperial posture in these years, Darwin, ‘Imperialism in decline?’. 28. The Conservative party chairman told Churchill ‘the British public were much more interested in the size of their pay-packet on Friday than by the great rhetorical appeals to their loyalty to the British Empire. I told him that they might cheer him, but they wouldn’t vote for him.’ Rhodes James, Memoirs of a Conservative, p. 385. 29. Tomlinson, ‘Foreign private investment’. 30. Feinstein et al., World Economy, p. 146. 31. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, pp. 554–9. 32. Darwin, ‘Imperialism in decline?’, p. 677. 33. Pugh, ‘Lancashire, cotton and Indian reform’. 34. Whiting, ‘Empire and British politics’, p. 178. 35. Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs, and Empire, pp. 475, 476. 36. Peele, ‘Revolt over India’, p. 115. In similar vein Ball, Baldwin, p. 108, argues, ‘Pride and concern about the empire was the motive force behind the involvement of many, if not most, Conservatives in active politics. But this common ground obscured a wide range of different attitudes and priorities.’

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37. Bridge, Holding India to the Empire; Muldoon, Empire, p. 5. 38. Rhodes James, ‘Conservative Party’, p. 517. 39. Melchett, Imperial Economic Unity, pp. 21, 179, 73–4. 40. HCDebs 261 4 February 1932, cols 291–2; see also his speech HCDebs 244 3 November 1930, cols 512–13. 41. HCDebs 261 4 February 1932, cols 292–4. 42. HCDebs 265 4 May 1932, col. 1155. 43. Macmillan, Middle Way, p. 272. 44. HCDebs 269 19 October 1932, col. 225. 45. DUA: MS 270/1/1/1 DCUA Executive Committee 14 November 1929. 46. Ibid., 17 September 1931. 47. Ibid., 14 October 1931. 48. Courier 16 October 1931. 49. Courier, 22 October, 23 October 1931. 50. Courier, 17 October, 21 October 1931. See also DFP 13 October 1931. Marcus, the Labour candidate, also cited the same sources of imports, suggesting that in these two countries ‘there existed a condition of slave labour and low standard of wages’: Courier 26 October 1931. For imports from Europe see Table 8.2. 51. See Chapter 5. 52. HCDebs 259 18 November 1931, cols 950, 953. 53. Scotsman 16 December 1931; for similar rhetoric, speech at Galashiels, Scotsman 6 April 1932. 54. DUA: MS84/5/2 (8) AJSM Fiscal sub-committee 16 December 1931, 17 December 1931, 19 January 1932. 55. Ibid., 4 April, 7 April 1932. 56. Ibid., 13 May 1932. 57. Ibid., 17 June 1932. 58. Ibid., 27 June, 4 July 1932; see also Chapter 8, below. 59. DUA: MS 270/1/1/1 DCUA Executive Minutes 28 April, 12 October 1932. 60. DUA: MS84/5/2 (8) AJSM Fiscal sub-committee 9 August, 30 August 1932. 61. DUA: MS 270/1/1/1 DCUA 23 October 1934. 62. Ibid., 19 October 1933. 63. Scotsman 12 April 1933. 64. DUA: MS 84/5/3 AJSM Fiscal sub-committee 6 August 1935. 65. DUA: MS 84/5/2 (8) AJSM Fiscal sub-committee 15 June 1933. 66. DUA: MS 84/5/3 AJSM Fiscal sub-committee 11 September, 9 October 1934. 67. Scotsman 30 May 1932. 68. Scotsman 11 November 1935; also Courier 12 November 1935. 69. Courier, 1 November 1935. 70. Figures in Southgate, ‘Politics and representation’, pp. 321–2. 71. DCL: LHC Lamb Collection 373/8 ‘For the whole nation’s good vote Horsbrugh’, November 1935. 72. Gupta, ‘Why did collusion fail?’. 73. HCDebs 314 15 July 1936, col. 2169. 74. Ibid.



Notes

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75. Ibid., col. 2181. 76. Ibid., cols 2188–9. 77. DUA: MS 270/1/1/2 DCUA AGM 8 October 1936; Executive 21 October and 18 November 1937, AGM 14 October 1938. 78. HCDebs 331 2 February 1938, cols 239–305; this debate had been postponed from November 1937 owing to the death of Ramsay MacDonald. Horsbrugh had lost her place in the queue for private motions because of the postponement, so it was proposed by Sir Arnold Wilson. 79. Ibid., col. 239. 80. Ibid., col. 240. 81. Ibid, cols 247, 256–7. 82. Ibid., cols 249, 251. 83. Ibid., col. 253. Horsbrugh’s position was supported by Dingle Foot, who said he was still in principle opposed to tariffs and the Ottawa Agreement but said ‘while we have a protective system, I would not deny my constituents their share in any advantages that the system might bring’, ibid., col. 281. The proportion of Indian jute exports sold to Britain rose from a low of 5.2 per cent in 1929/30 to a maximum of 10 per cent in 1935/6: Working Party Report, Jute, p. 12. 84. HCDebs col. 272. 85. Ibid., cols 275–6. 86. Ibid., cols 286–7. 87. Ibid., cols 299–300, 302. 88. Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire, pp. 426–73; Tomlinson, Political Economy, pp. 133–5; Hubbard, Eastern Industrialization, pp. 266-2–72. 89. For very different views, contrast Drummond, British Economic Policy, pp. 138–40, and Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire, pp. 457–8. 90. DUA: MS84/5/3 (4) AJSM Note of meeting with Board of Trade 7 September 1937. 91. DUA: MS84/5/3(4) AJSM Telegram for Board of Trade 22 March 1939. 92. Stewart, Jute and Empire, p. 129. 93. Stewart provides an insightful account of these discussions: Jute and Empire, pp. 129–32. Horsbrugh supported these discussions: DUA: MS84/5/3(4) AJSM Conversations with Horsbrugh, 25 February 1937. 94. DUA:MS84/5/3 (4) AJSM Meeting with UKJGA 21 June 1937. 95. Ibid., 2 July 1937. On another occasion, representatives of Calcutta claimed most of their jute goods imported into India were re-exported, and that the Dundonians were exaggerating unemployment in the city: ibid., 10 September 1937. 96. HCDebs 331 2 February 1938, col. 253. 97. DUA: DCUA AGM 14 October 1938. However by March 1939 she was arguing that the requirements of jute for defence purposes made it impossible to restrict Indian imports: Scotsman 25 March 1939. 98. Fogarty, Prospects, p. 138. 99. Courier 3 February 1938.

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100. Though the UK Jute Goods Association had used this argument, it seems implausible to see at as very important in the policy outcome. 101. Rooth, British Protectionism, pp. 307–21. 102. Rooth, British Protectionism, pp. 181–8.

CHAPTER 8 1. Muldoon, Empire; Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs, and Empire. 2. In 1929 George Bonar, a leading figure in the Dundee industry, argued that the main threat to juteopolis came from these continental imports, as they directly competed with Dundee’s products, especially in imperial markets. In line with many British employers in the 1920s, he alleged that this loss of competitiveness was due to excessive costs in Britain, especially wages, taxation and the costs of the social services: Bonar, ‘Industrial outlook’. 3. Tomlinson, ‘Women as “Anomalies”’. 4. Beveridge, Full Employment, pp. 51–2, 318–19. 5. Working Party Report, Jute, p. 43. 6. These figures are for 1924 to 1938; Menzies and Chapman, ‘The jute industry’, p. 247. 7. Tomlinson et al., Decline of Jute. 8. Garside, British Unemployment, pp. 38–58. A study of the first component of this policy is Deacon, In Search of the Scrounger, a title accurately conveying the tone of policy at this time, and with striking similarity to current (2013) governmental rhetoric branding the unemployed as ‘shirkers’. 9. Garside, British Unemployment, pp. 67–8. 10. Ibid., pp. 74–81. 11. NRA: PRO CAB24/114 ‘Enquiry concerning classes of ex-servicemen receiving out of work donation’ 9 November 1920. 12. Garside, British Unemployment, p. 40. Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, pp. 107–25. 13. Advertiser 22 July 1921; Smith, ‘Woman’s town’, pp. 259–60. 14. Levitt, Poverty and Welfare, p. 114; Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, pp. 109–10. Special Branch ascribed the discontent in Dundee to the Communist party, though this is likely to be a considerable exaggeration of the significance of the Party at that time: Croucher, We Refuse to Starve, p. 11. 15. Advertiser 10 September 1921; Smith, ‘Woman’s town’ pp. 260–362. Phillips, Hungry Thirties, pp. 13–16. 16. Walker, Juteopolis, pp. 486-528; Stewart, Breaking the Fetters, pp. 131–6. 17. Smith, ‘Woman’s town’, pp. 266-267; Phillips, Hungry Thirties, pp. 65–8. For Brooksbank, see Tolland, ‘Jist ae wee woman’. 18. Some of the tensions in this relationship are innovatively explored in Petrie, ‘Public politics’. 19. Thorpe, British Communist Party; Worley, Class against Class; on the United Front and trade unions, Fishman, British Communist Party and the Trade Unions, pp. 48–106.



Notes

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20. Williamson, National Crisis, pp. 97–8, 217–18. For similar uncertainty on this issue at the TUC: Booth and Pack, Employment, pp. 99–100. 21. Cited in DFP 13 October 1931. 22. HCDebs 314 15 July 1936, cols 2180–7. 23. HCDebs 331 2 February 1938, col. 256. 24. Ibid., cols 258–9. 25. Ibid., cols 261–2, 263. 26. Ibid., col. 265. 27. Nairne Stewart Sandeman, ibid., cols 270–1. 28. Ibid., col. 278. 29. DFP 13 October 1931; note also Marcus’s attack on Dundee capitalists for exporting British jobs by investing in jute in Belgium and Czechoslovakia: DFP 22 October 1931. The Free Press, a Labour-supporting newspaper published from 1926 to 1933, also frequently used the ‘big loaf/small loaf’ argument in the 1931 election, comparing the low price of bread in Britain with the price in protectionist countries: for example, DFP 15 October, 17 October. 30. Courier 23 October 1931. 31. The paper had its financial support from the Trades and Labour Council withdrawn in January 1932, in the wake of the decision of the ILP to disaffiliate from the national Labour party, a policy which seems to have had little support in Dundee: DFP 29 January 1932. 32. DFP 8 July 1932. 33. See a similar article, DFP 17 November 1932. The paper ceased publication in March 1933. 34. Dundee Labour Party, To the Electors of Dundee (Dundee, 1935) DCL: LHC, Lamb collection 367 (24). 35. Jean Mann, ‘The great betrayal’ in Dundee Labour Yearbook (Dundee, 1937), p. 16, DCL: LHC, Lamb collection D6065G. 36. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, p. 136. 37. LSE Morel papers F2 1/8 ‘Letter to John Ogilvie’ 27 November 1922, and ibid., F2 1/7 ‘E.D.M’s statement on communism’ 30 October 1922. Scrymgeour alleged that Morel co-operated with the Communists, an allegation angrily repudiated: F2 1/9 ‘Letter to John Ogilvie’ 12 December 1922. Saklatvala called for the Calcutta jute workers and the Bengal jute growers to be ‘part and parcel of the British Jute worker’s Federation’: India in the Labour World. 37. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 530. 38. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, p. 140. 39. Walker, Juteopolis, p. 530. 40. Brooksbank was expelled from the DDUJFW in November 1930, after disrupting the AGM the previous month: DCA GD JF1/2 AGM 23 October 1930, GD JF1/14 11 November 1930. 41. Courier 14 November 1935. In 1931 almost half of Communist voters (4,811 out of 10,264) were ‘plumpers’, i.e. did not use their second vote to support Labour or anyone else; Southgate ‘Politics and representation’, table 12.5. 42. Courier 11 March 1937. In 1935 the DTLC had strongly rejected calls for a

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United Front at the November municipal elections: DCL: LHC Lamb collection 2306 DTLC minutes 18 September 1935. In 1938 the DTLC, as elsewhere in Scotland, lost its key place in local Labour organisation, in a move to prevent union delegates from outside the party having a role in selecting Labour candidates 43. DFP 20 October, 30 September 1931. 44. DFP 27 November 1931. It is noteworthy that, when local unions came together to support the DCA, the DDUJFW was not involved: DFP 24 December 1931. 45. Tolland, ‘Jist ae wee woman’, pp. 130–1, 133–40, 142. 46. Smith, ‘Woman’s town’, p. 266; on Dundee and the Hunger Marches, see the reminiscences of Frank McCusker in MacDougall, Voices, pp. 29–38. 47. DFP 1 April 1932, 15 August 1935. Though Brooksbank had been expelled from the DDUJFW in 1930 for disrupting the annual members’ meeting: DCA: GD JF1/2 DDUJFW Minutes 23 October 1930; GD JF1/14 Executive committee minutes 11 November 1930. 48. DCL: LHC Lamb collection DTLC Minutes 11 March, 3 June, 9 September 1936. 49. Ibid., 21 April, 5 May, 16 June 1937. 50. Knox and McKinlay, ‘Re-making’; on the ILP, Dowse, Left in the Centre. 51. Knox and McKinlay, ‘Re-making’, p. 191. 52. Courier 13 November, 14 November 1935. 53. These arguments were being made in the 1920s, and are still evident in the general election of 1945: People’s History Museum CP/LOC/SCOT/1/11 Dundee Communist Party Minutes 19 May 1925; Bowman, Case for Jute. 54. The term was used in a headline in the Courier 3 March 1937: ‘“United front” to press jute trade’s claims’. 55. MRC: MSS 292/935.1/26 TUC J. Sime to W. Milne-Bailey, TUC, 5 July 1932, MRC MSS 292/935.1/26; ibid., ‘TUC research department meeting with representatives of the jute industry at the Board of Trade’ 17 June 1932. 56. DUA: MS84/3/1/(3) AJSM Meetings 3 February, 11 February,10 March 1919. The union minutes suggest the initiative came from the AJSM: DCA: GD JF 1/10 DDUJFW Executive minutes 4 February 1919, but otherwise confirm the unwillingness to get involved with the DDMFOU: ibid., 11 March 1919. 57. DUA: MS84/3/1 (2) AJSM Meeting 22 April 1919 ‘Report of deputation’. 58. DFP 7 October, 14 October 1932. 59. DUA: MS84/5/3 (4) AJSM Fiscal sub-committee 2 February 1937, 25 February 1937. 60. DUA: MS84/5/4 (2) AJSM Meeting with workers’ representatives 13 November, 27 November and 28 December 1936; DUA: MS 84/5/3 (4) AJSM Fiscal subcommittee 2 February 1937. The third jute union in the united front was the bleachers’, like the tenters’ small and male-dominated. 61. DUA: MS84/5/4 (2) AJSM Meeting with worker’s representatives 10 May 1937, 28 May 1937. 62. DCL: LHC Dundee Corporation Minutes 15 March 1937.



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63. Ibid., Conferences in Connection with the Jute Trade, 18 March 1937, 25 June 1937. 64. The Provost from 1935 to 1938 was Phin, a Moderate and vice-chairman of the local Unionist party. 65. Ibid., 25 June 1937, 12 July 1937, 18 October 1937, 8 November 1937, 19 September 1938. 66. HCDebs 331 2 February 1938, col. 254. 67. DCL: LHC Dundee Corporation Minutes 15 March 1937: it is noteworthy that later in 1937 Reynolds was de-selected for his council seat, and he alleged that this reflected the fact that Dundee Labour party was ‘run by communists’: Courier 1 October 1937. 68. Courier 19 March 1937 69. DCA: GD/JF 1/15 DDUJFW Executive minutes 3 March, 17 March 1937; GD/ JF 1/16 29 June, 16 July, 4 August, 1 October 1937, 1 February 1938. 70. Courier 17 June, 1938; no discussion on these lines was recorded in the Union minutes for the meeting that month: DCA GD/JF/1/2 General meeting 16 June 1938. 71. DCA: GD/JF/1/15 Executive minutes 4 August 1937. 72. Ibid., 9 June 1937. 73. Courier 4 August 1937. 74. Courier 19 March 1937. 75. Courier 11 September, 24 September 1937. 76. Ibid., 3 September 1937. 77. Ibid., 19 March 1937. 78. Ibid. 79. Rates were the local tax imposed on property owners. 80. Courier 14 July, 15 July 1937. 81. Courier 15 July 1937. 82. Phillips, ‘The “retreat” to Scotland’. 83. DCL: LHC Corporation Minutes 31 January 1931; Finance committee subcommittee 9 January 1931. 84. Courier 11 March, 15 March, 23 March 1938; DCL: LHC Corporation minutes 1 February 1937. 85. In 1936 the largest delegations to the Trades and Labour Council were ten from the Transport and General Workers Union, nine from the Amalgamated Engineering Union, eight each from the National Union of Railwaymen and the shop assistants’ union, with six from the DDUJFW: Dundee Labour Year Book 1936. 86. Denver and Bochel, ‘Political socialization’. 87. DCA: GD/JF 1/15 DDUJFW Executive minutes 13 April 1937. This was a continuing issue: ibid., GD/JF 1/16 Executive minutes 21 June 1938. The general meeting in June of that year rejected calls to reverse the ban on communists by only 136 to 127: GD/JF/1/2. Minutes 16 June 1938. 88. Ibid., 4 May, 18 May 1937; Courier 14 May 1937.

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89. Tolland, ‘“Jist ae wee woman”’, also Hughes, Gender and Political Identities, pp. 51–3. 90. Cox, Empire, Industry and Class, p. 138. 91. The changes in wages agreed by the Board are detailed in DUA: MS 84/2 (21) AJSM Annual Report 1939, appendix H. 92. Courier 2 December 1937. The employers opposed the wage increase agreed by the Trade Board, though they were willing to increase tenters’ wages: DUA: MS84/5/4 (2) AJSM meeting with workers’ representatives, 27 November, 28 December 1936. 93. On this shift at a Scottish level, Knox and McKinlay, ‘The re-making’, pp. 181–7. 94. G. Smith, ‘Woman’s town’, p. 243. 95. J. Sime, ‘Report on DDUJFW’ in Dundee Labour Yearbook (Dundee, 1937), p. 42, DCL: LHC D6065G. 96. Tolland, ‘“Jist ae wee woman”’. For the parallel case of cotton, Bruley, Leninism, Stalinism and the Women’s Movement, pp. 199–220. 97. Though we know almost nothing directly about ‘consumer politics’ in Dundee, the Free Trade League was active, helped by funds from one of Dundee’s ‘jute barons’ who remained faithful to liberalism, Caird: Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, pp. 105, 109, 119. 98. Harris, ‘Labour’s political and social thought’, pp. 16–17. 99. Ritschel, Politics of Planning. 100. After 1945 the union was to press strongly for the continuation of jute control in peacetime, to preserve employment in jute: for example, ‘TUC: European Free Trade area-jute industry’ 12 March 1958 MRC: MSS 292/629/3 TUC papers; more generally, Tomlinson et al., Decline of Jute. 101. Toye, ‘Attlee government’; Tomlinson, Democratic Socialism, pp. 23–46.

CHAPTER 9



Working Party Report, p. 14. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid, p. 2. TNA: PRO BT64/3762 ‘Note of President’s Talk with Chairman and Members of the Working Party’ 10 June 1948. 5. Pakistan soon developed its own jute manufacturing sector, while India greatly expanded raw jute growing. 6. These are the words of the 1944 White Paper on Employment Policy. 7. Millward and Brennan, Britain’s Place, p. 7; the Jute Control, operating through minimum prices for imports, encouraged collusion in the industry, which eventually the government attempted to undermine by referring the industry for investigation under competition law: Morelli et al., ‘Managing of competition’. 8. Unemployment in this period was significantly below both the interwar years, and the years from the 1970s. At under 3 per cent it was below the Scottish average.

1. 2. 3. 4.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Notes

199

Morelli and Tomlinson, ‘Women and work’. Tomlinson et al., Decline of Jute, pp. 29–31. McDowall et al., ‘Protection’, p. 48. Tomlinson et al., Decline of Jute, pp. 112–13, 131–2, 155–6. Ibid., pp. 68–9. Hood and Young, Multinationals in Retreat, p. 9. By 1979 the official rate of unemployment was 9 per cent, by 1991 18 per cent, but these figures increasingly understated the extent of joblessness: Tomlinson, ‘De-globalisation and de-industrialization’, p. 19. 16. Knox and McKinlay, ‘The union makes us strong?’. 17. Wright, ‘Women and work’. 18. For a detailed study of one of these towns, Blackburn, see Robinson, Transients. 19. Tomlinson, ‘De-globalization of Dundee’. 20. Courier 26 June 1999. 21. Thompson, ‘Publicity’. 22. Maver, Glasgow, pp. 162–3; compare Paisley, where Liberal imperialism crowded out more anti-imperial Liberal currents: Macdonald, Radical Thread, pp. 183–6. 23. Pelling, Social Geography, pp. 389, 401. 24. Thompson, ‘Introduction’ in Thompson, Britain’s Experience, p. 11. 25. For example, Advertiser 9 March 1900. 26. Breitenbach, Empire and Scottish Society, p. 76; Thompson, Empire Strikes Back?, pp. 105–11. 27. Porter, Absent-minded, p. 37. 28. Whatley, Diary, p. 15. 29. Though these returns had to be set against the high levels of early death experienced by British expatriates in India. 30. On Liverpool, Haggerty et al., Empire in One City. 31. Haggerty et al., Empire in One City? 32. Finlay, ‘National identity’, pp. 297, 312. 33. Steele, ‘Transmitting’, pp. 138–9; MacKenzie, ‘Afterword’, p. 212. One important difference in local politics was the absence of significant sectarian divisions in Dundee, divisions which were an important underpinning of Unionism in both Glasgow and Liverpool. On sectarianism in Glasgow, Smyth, Labour in Glasgow, pp. 125–54, 194–207; on religious divisions in Dundee see Walker, ‘Irish immigrants’. 34. The article on empire for the British Association visit in 1912 focused overwhelmingly on the city’s contribution to military manpower and empire emigration. The jute issue was passed over rapidly, with the comforting conclusion that even without Dundee’s role Calcutta jute would have developed, and indeed that their role in its development was evidence of the prescience of Dundonians: Templeton, ‘What Dundee contributes to the Empire’. 35. Porter, Absent-minded, p. 37; Thompson, Empire Strikes Back?, pp. 3–5, 9–11, 239–41. 36. Steele, ‘Transmitting’ in Haggerty et al., Empire in One City, p. 221.

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37. Toye, Churchill’s Empire, pp. 234–6, 249, 315; Mukherjee, Churchill’s Secret War. 38. For Gandhi as an ‘orientalist’, Brown, ‘India’, p. 441. 39. Courier 17 April 1890. 40. Davis, Victorian Holocaust. 41. Bailie Doig at local meeting in support of famine relief, Courier 27 January 1897; for similar sentiments, for example Courier 8 March 1900. 42. Courier 27 January 1897. 43. The DYB for 1900, p. 21, noted that ‘In India this year has been rendered fatally memorable by the greatest famine in history’. The national Mansion House Fund raised £310,000 in 1900 while the Widows and Orphans fund raised £973,000: Courier 3 July. The local famine relief fund raised £5,556 in 1897, £5,248 in 1900: Courier 13 May 1897, 22 October 1900. 44. Churchill described Gandhi as ‘a malignant subversive fanatic’ and ‘a halfnaked fakir’: Toye, Churchill’s Empire, pp. 176–7. 45. Barron, ‘Weaving tales of empire’. 46. DCA: DDUJFW Minutes 24 November 1937. 47. Sherwood, ‘Krishna Menon’; DCL: LHC DTLC Minutes 19 April, 24 April 1940. It is also worth noting that, by 1944, the local Indian doctor and Labour party activist Jainti Saggar was top of the poll at the Party AGM in voting for the Executive: Minutes 13 February 1944. 48. Courier, 24 September 1937.



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Index

Aberdeen, 14, 19 Advertiser, 33, 40, 46, 49, 56–7, 82, 92 agencies, managing, 26, 29, 34, 160 agreement, international, 112–14, 116, 133, 138, 143, 147 Anglo-Indian trade agreement, 135 Anomalies Regulations Act, 140,141 Argentina, 3, 24, 27, 131, 143 Association of Jute Spinners and Manufacturers, 109, 129–31, 135, 144, 147–8 Barnes, George, 109, 113 Baxter, Sir George, 87–9, 91–2,129 Baxter, Mary Ann, 32 Baxters, 11–12, 27, 79 benefits, out-of-work, 73 Board of Trade, 38, 86, 105, 109–11, 115, 129–30, 134–5, 147–8, 152, 156 Boer War, 69, 76, 81, 159 boycott, 113, 115, 120 British Association, 33, 36, 39, 58 British Empire, 1, 112, 116, 125, 127–8; see also empire, imperialism British Factory Acts, 42, 44, 47, 53, 55, 64–5, 90–1 British government, 42, 107–8, 124, 128, 136, 150 British industries, 2, 36, 43, 54, 61 British market, 122, 127, 130 Brooksbank, Mary, 146, 153 budgets, 91, 93 by-election (1908), 36, 78, 85–6, 93 Calcutta, 3, 21, 29, 33–42, 44, 47–9, 51–3, 55–9, 70–1, 76–7, 110, 113–14, 117–19, 148–50, 160–3 competition from, 29, 30, 35, 37, 40, 53, 70, 75, 77, 92, 103, 19, 136, 147, 152

employers, 46, 51, 53, 107, 114 jute, 4, 31, 33, 49, 57, 120 jute workers, 51, 71, 118, 145, 149, 161, 162 wages, 42, 52 capital flows, 23–4, 36, 77, 81; see also foreign investment Census of Scotland, 10, 15, 17 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 34 Chamber of Commerce (Dundee), 27, 39–40, 42–7, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55–6, 63, 65, 68, 71, 75, 109, 147–9 Chamberlain, Joseph, 55, 72, 75 Chamberlain, Neville, 127 Chapman, C., 11 Chapman, S. D., 34 Chatterji, B., 126 child labour, 57, 90 children, 18, 20–1, 44–6, 48–9, 51, 70, 86, 114–15 Churchill, Winston, 42, 86–7, 89–92, 105, 108, 110–11, 121, 124, 126, 161 city of Dundee, 2–4, 9–10, 14–16, 18–21, 32–3, 63, 68–9, 72–6, 83–7, 89, 138–41, 144–6, 150–1, 156–60, 164–6 City of Dundee Co-operative Society, 74 City of Dundee Council, 63–5, 72, 76–7, 117, 139, 146, 147, 148–151 class, 5, 40, 51, 77, 85, 89 employing, 19, 33, 35, 39, 42, 44–5, 46, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 58–9, 65–71, 76, 77, 79, 88, 90, 92, 104–6, 110–12, 117, 118, 143,147–50, 152–3, 163 middle, 18–20, 31, 79, 83 working, 16, 61, 63, 68, 76, 113, 120, 147, 149, 158, 163; see also workers

218

Dundee and the Empire

climate, 33–4, 50, 52, 161 clothing, 35, 49, 52, 165 Communist party, 138, 142, 145–6, 147, 149, 151, 153 companies, 19, 34, 37, 88–9, 105, 158 competition, 2–5, 13, 33, 35, 38–42, 48–9, 54–6, 59–61, 107–9, 111–18, 126–7, 132–3, 136–9, 158 threat from Calcutta, 35, 38–46, 48, 50–1, 52, 55, 70, 80, 88, 90, 93, 103, 107, 109–10, 118, 128, 148, 150, 152, 157, 160 unfair, 42, 53, 71, 129, 150 conditions, working, 51–2, 70 Indian workers, 42, 162 Conservative party, 72, 78–80, 87, 112, 114, 121–2, 124, 126, 128, 136,138, 154; see also Unionists co-operation, 13, 54, 56, 68, 74, 76, 111, 142, 145–6, 149 cotton industries, 45, 108, 161 Courier, 36, 39–41 Cox, Anthony, 3, 29, 152 Cox’s, 12, 30, 34–5, 70, 80, 105 Delhi, 54, 57, 108, 136 development, industrial, 107–8, 137 Devine, Tom, 28, 33 Dundee Free Press, 144 dispute, 65, 67, 69, 84, 105, 138, 142, 145, 151, 153, 159 district, industrial, 13, 36, 166 Dominions, 31, 116, 122–5, 127, 133–4, 137, 143; see also settlement, areas of recent Drummond, Ian, 124 Duff, Thomas, 31n, 34–5 Dundee capital, 36, 55, 58 capitalists, 33, 90 electorate, 47, 81, 111 exports, 27, 46, 86 shareholders, 36, 58 stock exchange, 31, 35 trade unionists, 75, 76, 118, 150; see also Dundee Trades Council, Dundee Trades, Labour Council, jute trades unions women, 5, 14

workers, 4, 61, 69, 71, 75, 89–90, 104, 117, 144–5, 148, 154, 160 Dundee and District Mill and Factory Operatives Union, 64 Dundee and District Union of Jute and Flax Workers, 64–7, 84, 104, 109–11, 117, 130, 145, 147–8, 151–2, 162 Dundee Eastern Co-operative Society, 74 Dundee Free Press, 144 Dundee Labour Representation Committee, 89 Dundee Savings Bank, 73 Dundee Social Union, 19, 21, 56, 84 Report, 16, 20–1, 84 Dundee Technical College, 29, 169 Dundee Trades and Labour Council, 146, 151 Dundee Trades Council, 63–4, 66–71, 73–6 Dundee Working Men’s Association, 64 Dundee Working Women’s Guild, 146 Dundee Year Book, 27, 39, 70 duty, 40, 43, 57, 132, 135 on raw jute exports, 44, 56 East India Company, 10–11, 26 Edinburgh, 14, 19, 129, 158 eight-hour day, 37, 70–2 emigration, 28, 76, 116 empire, 1–5, 23, 25–6, 28, 41, 43, 56–9, 61, 76, 108–9, 110, 111, 112, 121–2, 123, 126–9, 133, 136–7, 144, 150, 158–61, 163 Empire Free Trade, 123 employment, 9–10, 14, 16, 18–19, 21, 70–1, 91, 93, 109, 127, 131, 133, 136, 140, 155–7 England, 21, 49, 57, 79, 81–2 Europe, 23–4, 41, 44, 58, 107, 139 exports, 3, 25, 27, 31, 43, 45, 56, 77, 88, 103, 107, 120, 125, 131, 133, 137 factories, 12, 20–1, 29, 41, 44–5, 47, 51, 70, 114 Factory Acts, 29, 42, 44–9, 51–2, 54–8, 68, 77, 85, 88, 90, 92, 117, 163; see also hours of work



Index

famine, 12, 162 First World War, 23–5, 30, 32, 34, 39, 56, 58, 103, 107–9, 121–2, 126, 147, 153, 162–3; see also war flax, 9–12, 15, 17, 39 food, 5, 24, 28, 52, 72, 87, 107, 122, 124–5, 127 food prices, 60, 72, 74, 145, 154 Foot, Dingle, 121n, 130, 133n,143 foreign competition, 43, 70, 72, 139 foreign investment, 30–1, 36–7, 41 free trade, 1, 4–5, 43–5, 55–6, 71–2, 78–88, 90, 92–3, 110, 112, 114, 120, 128–9, 154; see also protection Gandhi, Mohandas, 161–2 Geddes, Eric, 110–11. gender, 61, 66, 74; see also women general election (1885), 40 (1895), 69 (1900), 159–60 (1906), 56, 78–82, 159–60 (1922), 144–5 (1923), 144–5 (1931), 121, 122, 128–9, 142, 154 (1935), 131 Germany, 27, 35–6, 80, 86, 88, 93, 129, 142 Glasgow, 14, 19–20, 28, 33–5, 75, 159–60 globalisation, 2, 4–5, 10, 23–4, 26, 32, 78, 92–3, 154 goods, sweated, 113–15, 128 Gordon, Eleanor, 62 Government of India, 126, 133–5 Grimonds, 13, 104–5 Gupta, Bishnupriya, 30 Gupta, P. S., 115 Hatry, Clarence, 105 Hobson, John, 30 Horsbrugh Florence, 126, 128–33, 136, 148–9 hours of work, 29, 41–2, 44–6, 48–52, 56, 64, 70–1, 81, 91, 104–5, 110, 113, 118, 120, 134, 138, 144 households, 15–16, 141 housing, 21, 84, 150–2 Howell, David, 68–9

219

Imandt, Marie, 52–3, 161 imperialism, 1, 3, 24, 38, 87, 103, 109, 123–8, 159, 163 imperial city, 3, 5, 75, 160 imports, 25, 27, 107, 109, 112, 120–1, 123, 125, 128, 130–3, 135, 138–9, 148, 156–7 Independent Labour Party, 68–9, 76, 84, 113, 146; see also Labour party India, 2–5, 25–6, 33–5, 37–45, 47–54, 56–8, 75–7, 90–2, 107–12, 116–19, 123–7, 129–38, 149–50, 156, 160–4 climate, 49, 110 conditions, 52, 117, 161 cotton duties, 116 cotton industry, 118 exports, 25, 134 Factory Acts, 42, 45–6, 48, 50, 53, 54, 55–8, 64, 65, 68, 160, 162 government of, 39, 47, 50, 57, 75, 92, 108, 135 imports, 35, 130, 152, 156 independence, 3, 28 industry, 9–10, 12–14, 26, 33–7, 43–4, 52, 54, 60–1, 65–7, 105–9, 112, 115, 118–19, 122–3, 129–30, 132–3, 136–7, 139–41, 143–4, 149–50, 156–8 jute industry, 13, 14, 36, 42, 48–9, 58, 81, 90, 91 105, 132, 133, 136, 144, 148, 163 labour, 21, 42–3, 49–50, 68, 76, 90, 105, 117, 118, 149, 153, 162 market, 46, 54, 135 nationalism, 3, 126, 163 society, 38, 42, 50, 58, 118 trade, 25, 125, 137, 138 trades unions, 55, 62, 65, 66–7, 93, 111, 115, 120, 162 wages, 16, 36, 147 India Act, 47, 49, 124, 138 India Bill, 108, 130, 161 India Office, 40, 42–3, 46, 50, 54, 119, 130 Indian Industrial Commission, 107 Indian Jute Mills Association, 29, 33–4, 46–8, 53, 107, 109, 118, 139 Indian Trade Union Act, 119 ‘Indianness’, 38, 161 International Labour Office, 112, 115

220

Dundee and the Empire

investment, 26, 30–2, 34, 37, 40, 105, 119, 157, 160 iron, 108, 114, 120–1 Jesus, 20 Johnston, Thomas, 19, 113, 116–20, 187–9 jute bags, 26, 31 employers (Dundee), 19, 27, 30, 33, 34, 35, 37–40, 44–5, 46, 48, 52, 54, 55–6, 59, 62, 63–4, 68, 70–1, 75, 76, 77, 80, 88, 92, 103, 105, 109, 117, 139, 147, 152, 157, 158, 160, 161 goods, 38, 40, 43, 60, 103–4, 115, 117, 129, 131, 139, 150, 156–7 manufacturing, 3, 11, 21, 34, 39, 44, 55, 71, 88, 144 mills, 20–1, 28, 33, 40, 47, 51, 58, 65, 104 trades unions, 63, 65, 75, 103–4, 139, 147, 150–3, 154 wallahs, 3, 28 workers, 4–5, 10, 20, 30, 62–8, 71–2, 76, 84, 93, 111, 118, 140, 152, 162 Jute Control, 156–7 Jute Industries Limited, 30, 103, 106 jute trade, 110, 132, 149 raw, 12, 29, 56, 103–4, 113, 131 Jute Trade Board, 106 Juteopolis, 9–10, 13–14, 16, 18–21, 26–9, 32, 36, 39, 61, 63–4, 120–1, 135–6, 156, 158–9 Keiller’s, 37 Kirk, Nevill, 76 labour, 47–8, 62–4, 70, 82–3, 85–6, 89–90, 92–3, 104–7, 111–17, 127–8, 142–6, 148–50, 154, 156–8, 162–3 adult, 91 cheap, 21, 87, 150 imperial division of, 119, 134 native, 21, 49 organised, 69, 71, 161 sweated, 74, 112, 116 labour aristocracy, 65, 73 Labour Commission, 70 labour conditions, 44, 47, 92, 113–14, 120, 143

labour market, 104, 136, 140, 154 local, 15, 74, 84, 145, 147, 152 Labour party, 72, 86, 90, 103, 112, 113, 116, 120, 138, 142, 13 145–6, 149 candidates, 68, 72, 78, 81–2, 89, 143, 145 labour movement, 75, 146, 147, 151, 153, 162 Labour Representation Committee, 89 MPs, 87, 113, 145 national, 143, 145–7 politics, 63, 89 labour productivity, 30 labour supply, 34, 115 labourism, 67, 83 Lancashire, 46–7, 54, 92, 109, 126–7, 134, 136, 162 Leng, John, 35, 45–7, 49–50, 52–3, 55, 59, 68, 71, 81 Lenman, Bruce, 13, 30, 164–6 Lennox, D., 20, 66 Liberal party, 41, 43, 45, 47, 59, 68–9, 71, 75, 78–85, 87, 89–92, 108, 112 candidates, 81–2, 86 Liberal Unionist, 79–80 Liberalism, 81, 86, 90, 163 New Liberalism, 81, 90 linen, 9–12, 14–15, 17, 27, 79–80, 158 Liverpool, 28, 75–6, 160–1 London, 11, 23, 27, 54, 108, 110, 114, 135–6, 150, 158, 163 Labour party, 89 Low and Bonar, 106 MacDonald, Ramsay, 89 Mackenzie, John, 1 Macmillan, Harold, 128 Manchester, 46, 91 Marcus, Michael, 143–5 Marshall, Alfred, 13, 32 Maxwell, Bessie, 52–3, 161 McKean, Charles, 19 Means Test, 141–2, 146–7 Menon, Krishna, 162 Morel, E. D., 111, 145 Munn, Charles, 31 National Fair Trade League, 44 National Unemployed Workers Movement, 142, 146



Index

occupations, 14–15, 17–18, 20, 26, 32, 73–4, 159 orientalism, 4, 38–9, 161 Ottawa agreements, 124, 130, 135, 137 politics, 4–5, 10, 68, 75, 83, 141, 160 consumer, 74 popular culture, 1–2, 164 population, 2, 12, 14, 18, 20–1, 30, 32, 158, 160 Porter, Bernard, 1, 159, 161, 163–4 poverty, 16, 18, 20–1, 84–5, 112, 194 power, 39, 57, 88, 103, 119, 130, 141, 143–4, 158, 189 preferences, 75, 122–3, 127–8, 132, 135; see also protection, tariffs productivity differences, 30 profits, 11, 30–1, 36–7, 60, 90, 105, 107, 113, 122 protection, 40–1, 43–5, 55, 72, 78–9, 92, 108–12, 121–4, 127–30, 133, 136–8, 139, 142–5, 147–53, 155–7, 162–3; see also tariffs enhanced, 108, 115 protectionism, 43, 45, 53, 55–6, 71–2, 75, 80, 89, 92 109, 111–12, 121–3, 127–8, 136, 138, 142–3, 154, 163 railways, 16–17, 23, 31, 151 Raj, 25, 38–9, 50, 54, 107, 125, 137 raw jute, 2, 9, 11–12, 13, 23, 27, 43–4, 56, 80, 88, 94, 95, 104, 109, 129, 131, 156 raw materials, 2, 11, 23–5, 35, 49, 80, 105–7, 113, 123, 157 recovery, 67, 130–1, 136, 140 rents, 16, 52, 105, 152 restrictions, 45–6, 58, 70–2, 104, 109, 113–14, 116, 135 retaliation, 43, 56, 80–1, 88 Robertson, Alexander, 50–1 Robertson, Edmund, 47, 81–3, 86 Robson, Henry, 81–4 Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade and Industry, 44 Royal Commission on Labour, 21 rupee, 34, 41, 45, 48, 53, 71, 125 Salatvala, Shapurji, 111 Sandeman, Nairne, 133–4

221

Savage, Mike, 2, 4–5, 61 Scotland, 12, 14–16, 18, 28, 30, 32–4, 42, 49–52, 67, 69, 78–9, 88–90, 105, 141, 146–7 Scottish Workers Representation Committee, 89 Scrymgeour, Edwin, 91, 111, 145 Secretary of State for India, 108 settlement, areas of recent, 24, 26, 28 shift system, 46–9, 56 Sime, J. F., 106, 109–10, 117, 119, 145, 147–50, 153, 155, 162 Smith, Graham, 15, 20 Snowden, Philip, 114 socialism, 72, 75–6, 82, 84–6, 112 socialists, 69, 72, 82, 84, 87, 89, 119 staple industries, 75, 112, 127 state, 2, 9, 47, 57, 61, 80, 108, 113–14, 117, 148, 152–4, 163 state action, 4–5, 69–72, 163 efficacy of, 69, 154 steel, 16, 108, 114, 120–1 Stewart, Gordon, 3, 135 Stuart, G. H., 89–91, 93 Swan, Claire, 31n, 32 tariff reform, 81, 87, 90, 122 Tariff Reform League, 88 tariffs, 43–4, 88–9, 91, 107–9, 120, 122, 126, 130, 132–3, 138, 142, 144, 148 general, 108, 123 retaliatory, 36, 53, 86–7 see also trade tax, 57, 72, 84, 86, 122, 124 trade, 23–4, 36, 38, 42, 44–5, 70–1, 86, 88, 108–10, 112, 120, 122, 129–35, 147–8 agreements, 131, 133, 156 inter-imperial, 119–20 policy, 45, 111, 134 Trade Board, 105, 106, 111, 112, 115, 152; see also wages trade cycle, 11, 60, 67 trades unions, 51, 62, 63–9, 72–5, 82, 83–4, 89, 104–6, 110, 115, 11, 120, 138, 143, 146–9, 151–3 new, 66, 84 Williamson union, 64, 65–8, 71 Trades and Labour Council, 82, 144 Trades Council, 63–6, 68–9, 84

222

Dundee and the Empire

Trentmann, Frank, 1, 72, 74 trusts, 31–2, 170 TUC, 68, 70, 120, 122, 147 unemployment, 18, 86, 90, 104, 111, 120, 122, 139–42, 144, 148, 151, 153, 156–7 mass, 112, 142 relief, 141–2, 152 Unemployment Assistance Board, 141 unionism, 62, 73, 75 Unionists, 79–82, 84–5, 86, 91–2, 106, 128, 133, 136, 148 Unionist Free Trader, 80 united front, 132, 138, 142, 146–7, 149–51, 153–4, 162–3 United Kingdom Jute Goods Association, 135 USA, 2–3, 24–7, 31–3, 35, 37, 44, 80, 85–7, 89, 137, 160 votes, 56, 67, 79–80, 82–3, 85, 90–1, 93, 111, 145 wages, 30, 44, 51–3, 66–7, 70–1, 76–7, 104–6, 110–11, 117, 120, 132–3, 147–50, 152–3 low, 21, 35, 52, 62, 65, 76, 93, 137, 144 lower, 2, 35, 49, 51–3, 61, 73, 76, 144 money, 30, 60, 66, 72

Wainwright, Emma, 62–3 Walker, William, 37, 61–2, 70, 81, 84, 106, 164 war, 76, 103–7, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 125, 132, 136, 152, 156–7, 159 Washington Convention, 113–14, 116, 118 Wearmouth, Alexis, 169n, 171n Whatley, Chris, 19, 159 Wilkie, Alexander, 82–5, 89–90, 110–11 Wilson, Harold, 156 women, 12, 14–16, 18–19, 28, 32, 44, 48–9, 51, 52, 53, 61–2, 64, 65–6, 104, 106, 140–2, 152–3 married, 10, 14–15, 20, 61, 63, 84, 140–1 role of, 19–20 young, 16 Women’s Co-operative Guild, 74 women’s trades, 65 work, 1, 3–5, 20–1, 23–4, 39, 44, 48–52, 59, 61–2, 64–5, 67, 70–1, 113–14, 118, 144 workers, 5, 6, 19, 47–8, 51–3, 59–60, 62, 63–5, 67, 69, 71–5, 83–4, 87–8, 104–5, 110, 118, 142–4, 153–4, 159, 161, 163 skilled, 64 white, 21–2, 76