English Labour politician, born at Newport (Monmouthshire), of working-class parents, and educated in the board schools. He started at nine years old as an errand boy, but he soon passed into the service of the Great Western Railway Co., first as engine-cleaner, afterwards becoming fireman and engine-driver. He was elected town councillor of the famous Great Western railway centre, Swindon, and became chairman of the Finance Committee and of the Electricity and Tramways Committee. At an early date he associated himself with the development of the policy of unions among the railway servants. He became president of the A.S.R.S. in 1910, and for many years was secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, and the most powerful voice in deciding their policy. He was elected to Parliament in the Labour interest for the great Midland railway centre, Derby, in 1910. For some years he took no very prominent part in Parliamentary life, being actively engaged outside in the interests of his railwaymen, who, besides many smaller disputes, came out in a body in the great strike of 1911. Another matter of vast importance in which he was deeply involved, was the organization of the so-called “Triple Alliance” between the unions representing coal-miners, transport workers, and railwaymen. When the war came, he took his stand, with the bulk of the Labour leaders, on the national and patriotic side; but, like many of them, deprecated the introduction of compulsory service, until it should be clear that the necessary men could be got in no other way. In September 1915 he declared in Parliament that trade unionists were absolutely against conscription, that to introduce it might provoke revolution. Nearly every branch of his own railwaymen’s organization, he said, had not only passed resolutions against the policy, but had threatened on its introduction to stop work. There were many who questioned at the time the justice of his estimate of the workmen’s feelings; and, though he renewed his vehement protest against the first Military Service bill in January 1916, and though the Labour party in conference condemned the measure, there was no difficulty in applying it and no agitation arose for its repeal. Even against the stronger measure of the following April only nine Labour members were found to go into the lobby on the second reading. Throughout the war Mr. Thomas, while securing large advances of wages for the railway servants, used his unique influence with them in composing disputes and preventing any stoppage which should interfere with national interests; and for this considerable service he was made a privy councillor in 1917. It was a bitter blow to him when in September 1918 the rank and file disregarded an agreement which the executive of the National Union of Railwaymen had come to with the Government for an advance of 5s. for adults and 2s.6d. for boys. In spite of this, there was a general strike of railwaymen in South Wales, and the disturbance spread partially to London and elsewhere; but the courts, on the application of the Board of Trade, prohibited the Union from paying strike pay, and the movement collapsed. In disgust at his advice being disregarded, Mr. Thomas resigned the secretaryship of the Union, but was eventually persuaded, on promises of better discipline, to resume office. He approved of the subsequent decision of the Labour party to sever itself from the Coalition, and to appeal to the electorate in December 1918 for independent support, announcing as his own battle-cry “No more war.” He was once more returned at the head of the poll for Derby, and by a huge majority. After the war he became a more prominent figure both in Parliament and in the national life. He made a strong speech in support of the Labour amendment to the Address in 1919, stating that he stood both against Bolshevists and against profiteers. He called upon the Government to deal with the reactionaries in Labour disputes as they would with Bolshevists, and upon the employers to recognize that the working classes could no longer be treated by them as hewers of wood and drawers of water. He welcomed both the bill establishing a Ministry of Health and that establishing a Ministry of Transport; but he warned the House of Commons not to expect cheaper passenger fares and freight charges; the railwaymen would not allow themselves to be sweated for the benefit of the travelling public. But, once again, his real activity was outside. In the disputes in March 1919, between the railwaymen and the Government, he was the chief leader of the men, and at a moment of crisis he flew across to Paris to discuss the question with Mr. Lloyd George, then in attendance at the Peace Conference. The terms which he finally arranged with the Government, involving an approximate addition of over £10,000,000 per annum to the railway expenditure, included a standard week of 48 hours, and a standard wage for that week; for the fixing of the new standard rates of wages negotiations were to be continued. In the last week of September he suddenly announced that a crisis had arisen in these negotiations, and after a futile conference with the Government on September 25th, a strike began without further notice on September 26th. Neither the community nor the Government was intimidated; and Mr. Thomas used his power for peace, and for a settlement, after ten days, on terms not materially different from what the men might have had at first. His efforts for the men had already, it was calculated, amounted to a permanent annual increase in the railway wage bill of £65,000,000, and an increase of 50%—which in August 1920 became 75%—in passenger fares, and more than 50% in goods rates. In 1920 he and his executive were faced by the difficult problem of the refusal of Irish railwaymen to handle munitions of war; and the only solution he and they could suggest was that the Government should cease to send such munitions and that the Labour party should make an appeal to the Irish people—a solution which ministers, of course, could not accept. His own policy for Ireland was the gift of Dominion Home Rule. During this year he published a book When Labour Rules, in which he, speaking, of course, only for himself, depicted the kind of policy which Labour in power would favour—such as the right to work, development of nationalization, better homes, shorter hours, state endowment of motherhood, great extension of university facilities and a national theatre and opera.
