Bitter industrial dispute saw troops on streets of Bolton

It was the most significant industrial conflict in Bolton’s history, was immortalised in a novel and led to major changes in the town’s politics.

The Great Engineers’ Strike of 1887 was no ordinary trade dispute but was marked by a bitterness and violence seldom seen in British industrial relations.

The strike involved the ‘aristocracy’ of the Bolton labour movement – the skilled engineers whose expertise was in demand across the world. By the standards of the day they were well-paid and they enjoyed an orderly system of wage bargaining, between their own unions – mostly the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) - and the Iron Trades Employers Association.

In addition to the ASE, other engineering artisans were organised in The Steam Engine Makers Society, Pattern Makers and the Metal Planers’ Society amounting to a unionised engineering workforce of some 2,000 men.

Yet this orderly system of industrial relations collapsed in 1887, leading to troops being deployed in the town and the importing of non-union labour – known by the abusive Lancashire dialect term of ‘knobsticks’.

Bolton’s engineering industry had grown in tandem with the cotton industry.

The great firms of Dobson and Barlow, Ryders, Hick Hargreaves, Musgroves and Woods were world leaders in textile engineering. Bolton was the third biggest centre of engineering in the North, after Manchester and Oldham.

Wage rates in each town were negotiated locally and a major bone of contention was the better wages and conditions enjoyed by engineers in the neighbouring towns.

The previous couple of years had seen a depression across the engineering industry and wages had been reduced by 7.5% - two shillings - with the reluctant consent of the unions, with the proviso that when trade improved wage levels would be restored to their previous levels.

Yet in Bolton, the employers, led by the firm of Dobson and Barlow, seemed determined to take a hard line.

The spark that started the conflagration was the employers’ determination to introduce compulsory overtime working.

On April 28 a notice was issued that “workmen will be required when necessary to work overtime and any workmen refusing will be discharged at once.”

The strike began on May 16, though some firms which had not implemented the overtime threat were not affected, initially. The main aim of the strike was restoration of the wage cuts from the previous year.

Dobson and Barlow, then based at Kay Street near to the town centre, was by far the biggest engineering employer in Bolton and its managing director, Benjamin Dobson, was generally regarded as a good employer.

Yet in 1887 he seems to have got the bit between his teeth and provoked the unions not only into strike action but roused them to fury by quickly resorting to the use of blackleg labour – the hated ‘knobsticks’.

Within a week, knobsticks were arriving at Trinity Street station, to be met by jeering crowds. It quickly turned very nasty.

The employers’ efforts to find accommodation for the strike-breakers was a failure: no local accommodation providers were willing to take them on. They were forced to accommodate the knobsticks within the factories themselves, in makeshift camp beds.

On May 24, carts conveying bedding for the factory ‘hostels’ were attacked by angry crowds.

A few weeks later, one of the managers at J R Woods Foundry was assaulted. Some local clergymen who performed religious services for the strike-breakers were verbally abused, though most refused the employers request to come onto the premises.

By early July, the knobsticks had become prisoners within their factories; it was far too dangerous to venture out to a local pub, and local breweries refused to supply the affected factories with beer.

The first really major incident happened on June 30 when a crowd estimated at over 8,000 attacked Dobson and Barlow’s Kay Street factory.

A hail of stones and iron bolts were thrown at the factory, smashing every single pane of glass in the place.

At this point the local authorities panicked. The mayor, Alderman T. Fletcher, realised the situation was getting out of control and he sent a telegram to the barracks of the 13th Hussars, at Hulme in Manchester, requesting urgent assistance.

Before the troops arrived there was a further pitched battle between police, strikers and their supporters as some knobsticks tried to leave Dobson and Barlow’s factory on Kay Street at 5pm.

Within four hours several hundred of the 13th Hussars had arrived.

A large force of police from outside Bolton, mostly from the Lancashire Constabulary, was already stationed in the town. The soldiers camped in part of Queens Park, which was partly closed off to the public.

A total of 86 pubs in the vicinity of the affected factories were closed by magistrate’s order, in the hope that this would reduce the risk of violence. It had the more obvious effect of infuriating local publicans and their customers.

A further confrontation took place on Friday July 1 when both police and soldiers, many on horseback, charged a crowd of several thousand. One girl of 13 was nearly killed by a baton blow and many more were badly injured.

The strikers’ efforts were co-ordinated by the Joint Strike Committee, which involved all the main engineering unions. Its headquarters was the Rope and Anchor pub, whose landlord was an ASE member and former employee of Dobson and Barlow.

The committee organised fund-raising efforts and sent delegates to other major towns and cities to raise support, including a speaking tour around Ireland which generated huge support. Bolton Trades Council co-ordinated support among other local unions including the powerful cotton spinners.

Contributions came in from union members, many of whom were Bolton ‘ex-pats’, from as far afield as Russia, America and Australia.

A total of 25 union branches in the USA contributed to the strike fund.

A feature of the fund-raising campaign was a number of football matches held at the Wanderers’ ground at Pikes Lane. A good crowd watched Bolton Wanderers play Halliwell Rovers, though the result was not recorded. A brass band concert was held at the football ground and some 3,500 tickets were sold.

The committee took a highly pro-active stance towards ‘the knobsticks’, some of whom had been tricked into coming to Bolton by suggestions that the strike was settled. Many of these men were given their train fare home and a meal in the strike HQ.

Much of the violence towards the knobsticks seems to have come from local people outside of the union ranks and was condemned by the Defence Committee.

The main flashpoint of the violence was at Trinity Street station when the strike-breakers arrived by train from various destinations including Leeds and Glasgow.

Support for the strike went far beyond the trades unions in Bolton. Local businesses and many public figures took the strikers’ side, infuriated by the confrontational tactics used by the employers. The loss of part of Queens Park to the troops’ encampment was another source of annoyance.

Many local publicans supported the strikers through organising events, such as a tea party for strikers’ children, at The Elephant and Castle on Kay Street. “Sweetmeats were distributed and the children were sent home happy” according to a press report. The Tramways Inn on Blackburn Road organised a concert for the strikers, which included a “substantial dinner”.

The meal was followed by a violin recital and singing. A large concert took place in the Co-operative Hall which included entertainment by the St James’ Minstrels and a display of ‘bird warbling’ by a Mr Davidson. Comic songs and a banjo solo were performed, to the amusement of the audience.

On August 2, a mass ‘indignation meeting’ was held at The Temperance Hall, which attracted a crowd of over 3,000. It was chaired by the Reverend R. Lambert of the Congregational Church on Blackburn Road. The veteran radical and Chartist James Kirkman was one of the speakers.

Outrage was expressed at the behaviour of the police, particularly those drafted in from other towns. Women and children had been hit during the baton strikes, some it would seem were just bystanders caught up in the excitement.

The meeting was unanimous in demanding the removal of the troops. Sympathetic members of parliament, including Charles Bradlaugh, were appealed to for help.

The meeting agreed to hold a major demonstration the following week, on Saturday, August 13. Some 7,000 people took part with a vast array of union banners; the march culminated in a brass band concert on Pike’s Lane playing fields, attended by over 10,000. Seven brass bands took part, including St Marie’s, Farnworth Old Band, Brownlow Fold, Bradshaw, and Westhoughton Bands.

Special trains brought in supporters from Manchester, Preston, Bury and Wigan though the railway company refused to provide a special train from Blackburn owing to the local inspector’s anti-union attitude.

A major feature of the strike was its political impact. Bolton Trades Council built an alliance with the local Ratepayers’ Association which was to prove highly effective later in the year. A by-election took place in August in Derby Ward, while the strike was still on.

Michael Battle, supported by the Trades Council and Ratepayers, was elected as Bolton’s first ‘Labour’ representative, many years before the Labour Party itself was formed. Political pressure, including questions asked in the House of Commons, led to the soldiers departing on August 9.

Both sides were increasingly concerned at the effects of the strike and in September the employers proposed the issue should go to independent arbitration, a move accepted by the unions.

Mr. S. Pope QC, The Recorder of Bolton, was appointed to the job and effectively backed the employers’ case. The unions honoured their commitment to arbitration and returned to work on October 29.

However, in what looks like an informal deal, wages were raised back to their previous level, by two shillings, early in the following year.

Local elections took place on November 1, 1887; according to James Clegg’s ‘Annals of Bolton’ they were “greatly influenced by the feeling consequent upon the recent strike and the employment of the military and mounted police.” The Trades Council, supported by the Ratepayers’ Association, fielded 10 candidates, eight of whom were elected. The left-wing Social Democratic Federation also put up several candidates, none of whom were elected.

Yet there is no doubt that the strike helped them establish a strong base in the town that was to blossom a few years later in 1896 at the time of the Winter Hill rights of way battle, which they led.

The strike featured in Allen Clarke’s novel The Knobstick, published in 1891. It closely follows the events of 1887. He was living in Bolton at the time of the strike and the novel is a fictionalised account of the conflict, including chapters on ‘The Great Strike Riot’ and ‘The Soldiers’ Camp’. It has been out of print for well over a century but would be well worth republishing.

Many thanks to Bolton History Centre, in Bolton Public Library, for their assistance with this article. The late Bill Dagnall, former engineering union secretary, wrote a detailed account of the strike called ‘A Wage Cut Too Many’ which is available to read in the History Centre, together with Allen Clarke’s novel about the strike, ‘The Knobstick’ and other documents relating to the strike.

The new edition of Paul Salveson’s Allen Clarke (‘Teddy Ashton’) - Lancashire’s Romantic Radical will be available from September 1 price £18.99. See www.lancashire.loominary.co.uk for pre-publication offer of £15 with local delivery – email Paul at info@lancashireloominary.co.uk for details. Moorlands, Memories and Reflections, a centenary celebration of Clarke’s Moorlands and Memories, is available at £20