National Union of Seamen - World War I and After

World War I and After

After the outbreak of World War I the union began collaborating closely with the Admiralty and shipowners in support of the war effort. From 1916, Havelock Wilson emerged as one of the most vehement supporters of the war in the labour movement, ostensibly because of Germany's conduct of the war at sea, especially the alleged targeting of non-combattant vessels. In 1917 the Union provoked controversy by refusing to convey Arthur Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald to a conference of socialist parties in Stockholm, which had been convened in the wake of the Russian Revolution to discuss the possibility of a peace policy.

A further development in 1917 was the formation of the National Maritime Board as a governing body for the merchant marine. The union's involvement in this body allowed it to negotiate directly with shipowners over wages and conditions. In 1922 these arrangements were extended by the establishment of the 'PC5 system' which was intended to allow the Shipping Federation and the union to exercise joint control over access to employment in the shipping industry.

In 1921, the National Maritime Board imposed wage reductions which were supported by the NSFU. This acceptance of cuts in pay provoked considerable resistance from ordinary seafarers and from the rival organisations: the British Seafarers' Union and the National Union of Ship's Stewards. Other sections of the trade union and labour movement were also strongly critical of the NSFU's detrimental collusion with employers. This was especially the National Transport Workers' Federation, which helped to merge the rival organisations referred to above into a new organisation, the Amalgamated Marine Workers' Union, intended as a viable alternative to the NSFU. Further wage reductions were made in 1923, and 1925, which again outraged members.

Militant resistance to the NSFU was expressed through the Seamens' Minority Movement (founded 1924) part of the Transport Workers' Minority Movement. Criticism of the NSFU became increasingly widespread with its apparent role in the 1925 Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order, which is now seen as the first path-breaking attempt to expel non-British-born people; its failure to observe the General Strike in 1926; and its support of a 'non-political' Miners' Union in Nottinghamshire. In September 1928, the Union was officially expelled from the Trades Union Congress. However, after the death of Havelock Wilson in 1929 the NUS quickly began to pursue a more mainstream policy and became reconciled with the rest of the trade union movement. It adopted the title 'National Union of Seamen' in 1926. The term failed to recognise that women were also members; some seawomen had earlier organized in an unsuccessful Guild of Stewardesses.

By 1932 the Seamens' Minority Movement was 1,000-strong (less than one-hundredth of the maritime workforce). Attempts were made among SMM black activists to combat the notorious post-war racism. Race riots had occurred in seaports such as South Shields, Liverpool and Cardiff. And the union itself felt a duty to support its white British-born members first during times of high unemployment. Key SMM figures in the 1920s and 1930s included Barbados-born, London-based Chris Braithwaite (a.k.a. Chris Jones). His connections with many anti-racist initiatives including the Colonial Seamen's Organisation and the Pan-African Movement widened the SMM's links and brought international attention to the NUS's failure to back the largest black and minority ethnic workforce in Britain.