Ben Tillett

Benjamin Tillett (September 11, 1860–January 27, 1943) was a British socialist, trade union leader and politician. He was born in Bristol and began his working life as a sailor, before travelling to London and taking up work as a docker.

Trade union activities

He began his career as a trade union organiser in 1887 by forming the "Tea Operatives and General Labourers Union" at Tilbury docks. Tillett and his union, renamed the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union, rose to prominence during the London Dock Strike (1889), although the strike itself began without union involvement. Tillett also played a prominent role as a strike leader in dock strikes in 1911 and 1912. He was instrumental in forming the National Transport Workers' Federation in 1910, along with Havelock Wilson of the Seamen's Union.

Tillett's union was the largest of the unions which came together in 1922 to form the Transport and General Workers' Union, however, it was Tillett's deputy, Ernest Bevin, rather than Tillett himself, who took the major role in bringing about the amalgamation. Bevin became the General Secretary of the new union, but Tillett held the post of International and Political Secretary until 1931 and retained his seat on the General Council of the Trades Union Congress until 1932.

Political career

Tillett was a member of the Fabian Society and a founding member of the Independent Labour Party, but subsequently joined the Social Democratic Federation instead. He also joined the Bristol Socialist Society in the 1880s, when he often travelled to that city.

Tillett began a political career as an alderman on the London County Council from 1892 to 1898 and was a Labour Party Member of Parliament from 1917 to 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931 for Salford North.

Tillett courted controversy with some of his supporters in the labour movement through his outspoken support of Britain's involvement in the First World War, an issue which split the Labour Party. In article in the July 3, 1915 issue of "Illustrated London News" G. K. Chesterton offered an explanation:

:It is the moderate Socialists who are Pacifists; the fighting Socialists are patriots. Mr. Ben Tillett would have been regarded by Mr. Ramsay Macdonald as a mere firebrand; but it is precisely because Mr. Tillet was ready to go on fighting Capitalism that he is ready to go on fighting Krupp. It is precisely because Mr. Macdonald was weak in his opposition to domestic tyrants, that he is weak in his opposition to foreign ones. The wobblers who wanted a one-sided arbitration to end the strikes would to-day accept a one-sided arbitration to end the battles. But the men who wanted strikes want nothing but shells. That great artist, Mr. Will Dyson, laid aside the lethal pencil with which he had caricatured the sweaters and the middlemen, and sharpened a yet deadlier one to draw all the devils in Prussia.

His autobiography "Memories and Reflections" was published in 1931.

Further reading

*Jonathan Schneer, "Ben Tillett: Portrait of a Labour Leader", (Croom Helm, 1982)