For some time now I have been reading histories on early labour movement activity in Labour heritage and elsewhere. I see little mention of Woolwich and early activity in trade union, co-operative and Labour Party history there. There have been a number of studies of aspects of Woolwich’s Labour history and I have also attended many talks using material which was never written up by the speaker. I am grateful for the recent Survey of London volume on Woolwich, edited by Peter Guillery, which has put into print material which – at least – gives me something respectable to quote here.
It is important to put Woolwich into context. It is an early industrial town where at least two very large establishments employed many men. Henry VIII commissioned his Great Harry in 1512 – a ship of ‘unparalleled size’, to be built here and the dockyard subsequently was developed on neighbouring sites. A hundred years later, to quote the Survey of Woolwich, it was ‘for size and quantity of its vessels, among the most important shipyards of 17th century Europe”. The adjacent ropeyard dated from the 1570s and closed around 1800. These were huge workplaces employing “large waged workforces, without parallel at the time” and certainly long before anything which is now described as the ‘industrial revolution’. To this we have to add the Arsenal which from the late 17th century expanded into a workplace of a staggering size – It is said that 80,000 people were employed there in the Great War – although that may not have included the staff on its several internal railways, or indeed the ‘Woolwich Navy’. To these we have to add a local quarrying industry, the normal activities of a town and of course the busy river. The point I am making is that in Woolwich there were some very large workplaces very much earlier than is normally supposed - and what we would understand as trade union and labour related activity went along with that.
By the late 18th century “Labour relations in the dockyards had become institutionally fractious”[i] with a ‘well organised’ workforce. There were many issues including the long running dispute over ‘chips’ - pieces of spare wood which workers were allowed to take home as a ‘perk’. This system went on for many, many years and the history is not without amusement at the ruses deployed by workers to exploit it – it has been suggested that whole houses in Woolwich were constructed of ‘chips’. There were strikes and other actions. I remember being told by a long dead researcher that he had traced the earliest description of picketing to Woolwich dockyard in 1777. Out of this grew a culture of workplace solidarity and mutualism
It must also be noted in terms of Woolwich history that until 1963 the Borough included what is now known as North Woolwich in the London Borough of Newham – although all traces of this South London connection appear to have been removed. This area also had a large industrial base which included the Harland and Woolfe shipyard, the biggest such yard in London and extant until 1972. This area clearly made a difference in terms of labour organisation and electoral success.
The earliest Woolwich co-operatives were obviously on a different model to the later consumer organisations set up at Rochdale and elsewhere, but that should not deny their existence. Survey of Woolwich tells us that a ‘retail society with its own corn mill” was established following a clash between the ship wrights society and the Navy Board in 1757. This stood in what is still called Mill Lane, and included a bakery. Despite a fire and other problems it appears to have survived into the 1840s. In addition to the mill there was a co-operative butchers shop in 1805, a baking society in 1842 and a coal society in the 1850s. Rita Rhodes, in her book on RACS, says it has been claimed that when the Dockyard closed in the 1860s there were suggestions that it could be run as a co-operative
This was a progression which led to the setting up of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society in the 1860s. This is not the place to go into detail on the mighty RACS – there are a number of histories, and alongside them the efforts of Ron Roffey to preserve what is left. The last Company Secretary of RACS Ron had an enormous collection of material which filled two floors of RACS vast Powis Street department store. RACS was a huge and all encompassing organisation providing cultural activity, an education department, housing estates, a large factory on the old Dockyard site, a mine and much else along with the shopping. As an organisation it was active in promoting co-operative-supporting candidates in elections from the 1890s.
When the Co-operative Party began to grow after the Great War, to quote Rita Rhodes, ‘the co-operative movement took one decision, the RACS another’. Out of this grew the Political Purposes Committee – its history and development has been outlined by Rita Rhodes and indeed there are still many around who were members of it. RACS was the only co-operative society affiliated directly to the national Labour Party and a number of distinguished members of the Party’s National Executive Committee originated from it – including, among others, Arthur Skeffington and John Cartwright.
In 1985 RACS ceased to exist and became part of CWS. Although most of the smaller shops remain open, as does the funeral business, the huge Woolwich department stores – including one with a statue of founder Alexander MacLeod which is now a Travel Lodge. The art deco store which stands opposite is now flats. There are many other relics if you know where to look – for instance there is a dramatic wall sign in Bostall Lane, Plumstead , which is surrounded by the Co-op based street names of the RACS estate. Nearby is the Abbey Wood camp site where the original reception building had originated as a canteen for workers in the adjacent RACS mine. The mine, incidentally, has proved to be a subject of great interest to students of such underground strucrures.
Out of the Co-op movement in Woolwich a number of things have come – Greenwich Council has championed co-operative structures where possible. Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency is over 30 years old, now employs some 40 staff and is a leader, particularly in the field of healthy eating. I would also encourage all readers to enquire who is running their local leisure centre, you never know, it might be part of a Woolwich based social enterprise – but it would be better if you find out about this yourself.
With the end of RACS the Political Purposes Committee had to go and a Co-operative Party branch was set up. That wasn’t particularly difficult to do and we were quickly one of the biggest branches in terms of membership and certainly one of the most active.
In early 20th century Woolwich close behind the Co-op came the Labour Party. A Labour Representation Committee had been set up in 1900 and contested elections to Woolwich Borough Council under the aegis of the Woolwich and Plumstead Progressive Association. Woolwich Trades Council was active as was the Independent Labour Party. From 1902 a series of by elections were won by candidates described as ‘Labour’. In November 1902 Will Crooks was selected as Labour Parliamentary candidate, winning with a 3,229 majority. It was immediately decided to set up the Woolwich Labour Representation Association, later known as Woolwich Labour Party.
This was followed by more electoral success and Labour took control of Woolwich Borough Council 1903, and took the two county council sears in 1904. The history of Will Crooks role in Woolwich has been published by Paul Tyler and that should be read for all the details. Woolwich Council has evolved into the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the councillors for its Woolwich seats continue to be returned with massive majorities. It is however only fair to point out that over the past 116 years vote have sometimes fallen and in a couple of occasions the Tories have reigned briefly in Woolwich Town Hall!
Offices were set up at 3 Woolwich New Road which also functioned as a printer’s office and from 1904 Woolwich Labour Party produced a weekly paper, The Pioneer, which this continued until after the Great War. Most importantly, uniquely, the early Woolwich Labour Party had an individual membership from its inception. I was told by a researcher of its tight organisation– with ‘street captains’ to oversee the individual membership locally. Like the vote the membership has had its ups and downs - in 1953 it was 9,761.
In a history of Woolwich Labour Party, written in the 1950s, there is very little mention of events around the setting up of the national party or indeed of early electoral successes outside of Woolwich. It does however note the setting up of the national party in 1918 and comments “the principle of individual membership .. was accepted by the national party and embodied in its new constitution drawn up in 1918’.
Woolwich Borough Council became part of the London Borough of Greenwich in the 1960s – not without some angst on the part of both Woolwich and Greenwich. Greenwich’s new Town Hall was sold off while Woolwich had to rename theirs’ as ‘Greenwich Town Hall’ – a subject which still, after over fifty years, provokes some angst on Greenwich doorsteps.
Woolwich Labour Party is technically no longer with us. In 1993 changes in constituency boundaries joined a substantial part of Woolwich to Greenwich and it is now part of Greenwich and Woolwich Labour Party. It no longer has an office in Woolwich but what was the Woolwich West Constituency is covered by an office in Eltham for the Eltham Constituency. The Greenwich and Woolwich Party is based at the old Greenwich Party Office in the Woolwich Road, their home since 1926. The site of the old Woolwich office is now in a redevelopment area but it is hoped a commemorative plaque can go on whatever finally is built there.
There is little now to remind us of Woolwich’s Labour heritage. I have outlined some of the RACS relics but we need to look hard for some memorial to the Labour movement in a town which pioneered so much. Perhaps we should find a memorial in some of the earlier and very popular cottage housing estates, at the parks, the Pleasaunce, the huge areas of woodland, at the early electricity-from-rubbish generator and the many other things which Woolwich’s Labour Council established for the people of Woolwich, and some of which, like their power station, they had to reluctantly relinquish. But keep in mind that even in these hard times the Royal Borough has opened libraries rather than close them and perhaps another memorial is our still very substantial Party membership.
None of the above is original – it is based on the following – and please read them for more and better information
Andrew Saint and Peter Guillery., Survey of London. Woolwich Parish. 2012
Paul Tyler. Labour’s Lost Leader. 2007
`Fifty Years History of the Woolwich Labour Party 1903-1953 Ed. Stucke
John Keys. A Journey with the Labour Movement 2003
John Laxton. The Making of a Labour Victory: Woolwich in the Years up to 1903 1975. (MS in Greenwich Heritage Centre)
Rita Rhodes. An Arsenal for Labour 1998
Ron
Roffey. The Co-operative Way: The
Origins and Progress of the Royal Arsenal and South Suburban Co-operative
Societies 1999
E.F.E.Jefferson. The Woolwich Story
Web sites – there are a number of webs sites
covering Woolwich and Plumstead history – ie http://www.plumstead-stories.com/ for the mine see www.kurg.org.uk and http://www.subbrit.org.uk/, for GCDA https://gcda.coop/
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