The Fall of a Transnational Movement

Only four years separated the peak membership of the British and Irish assemblies from their end. This chapter addresses the decline of the Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland and the events that led to their dissolution. It begins with the changing nature of the relationship between the British and Irish assemblies and headquarters in Philadelphia. That relationship, so beneficial when American Knights went from victory to victory and aided their overseas brethren, turned sour in the 1890s as that assistance ceased. Financial scandals, splits within the assemblies, and the economic downturn of the mid-1890s all contributed to the decline of the British and Irish Knights. The chapter ends with what fragments survive of their last two years’ history.

Origins

Why did the Knights of Labor go abroad and set up assemblies in Britain and Ireland? Comparing the British and American labour movements over the course of the nineteenth century, this chapter argues that the 1880s was a unique decade: the victories and success enjoyed by American Knights and other American reformers attracted great interest in Britain, where the labour movement faced numerous problems and challenges. It then finds two major reasons behind the internationalism of the Knights of Labor: first, the idea of Universal Brotherhood, with deep roots in American fraternal and political traditions, and second, fears over mass immigration which seemed to require an international response. This chapter notes the important role of glassworkers in the Order’s international history, their creation oo the Universal Federation of Window-Glass Workers, and ends with the opening of the first assemblies on English soil.

The Knights and Politics

This chapter explores the political ventures of British and Irish Knights at a municipal and national level, and compares them with the great working-class political mobilisation that American Knights led in in the mid-1880s. It categorises the various political stances held by leading figures in the British and Irish assemblies and then charts their attempts to elect councillors and MPs, build political movements at a local level, and join political organisations set up by trade unionists to support independent labour representation. In England, and in Scotland, Knights were part of the different political traditions and ideas - working-class Liberalism, socialism, and the desire for working-class representation – that coalesced in time in the form of the British Labour Party.

The Knights in Industry

The history of the British and Irish Knights was defined to a large extent by their approach to industrial relations, which followed the industrial prescriptions of their American leaders to the letter. They insisted on arbitration rather than conflict, boycotts rather than strikes, and tried to put their resources into co-operative enterprises of various kinds. This chapter also explores how these attitudes played out in a number of industrial disputes and helped to determine the rise and fall of the British and Irish assemblies. In places where arbitration was common or when economic conditions were poor, Knights did well. Once trade improved and workers began to think about strike action, however, the Knights found themselves opposed by many of their own or potential members even as they failed to get recognition from employers.

The Rise of a Transnational Movement

British and Irish Knights depended on the fortunes of American Knights from beginning to end. This chapter gives a brief sketch of the rise of the British and Irish assemblies, some idea of their geographical scope and size, and explores the nature of those international ties and the consequences that flowed from them. British and Irish workers were attracted to the Knights through the American Great Upheaval, the financial help and organisers that Americans sent them, and the steps Knights took to build an international community. Finally, this chapter emphasises the importance of the Irish diaspora in the history of the Knights of Labor as a whole, and its racial and imperial implications for their history.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the American history of the Knights of Labor, and provides an overview of the ways in which scholars have approached that history. It then places the Knights of Labor within a wider international context in two key ways. First, this chapter locates the Knights as part of a larger, global trend of international organising by early feminists, social reformers, and especially working-class activists. Second, it explores the global history of the Knights themselves and the fragmentary nature of the scholarship concerning it. Finally, this chapter brings together what we do know about the Knights across the world, and provides synopses of the chapters that follow.

Conclusion

In only ten years the Knights of Labor helped to reshape the British labour movement and won several major successes at a local level as well. The conclusion addresses their achievements, and the wider significance of the Knights of Labor within global labour history. The Knights represented an alternative, and a powerful one at that, to the subsequent development of international working-class movements such as the Second International and the International Trade Secretariats. Yet the Knights themselves, especially through bodies such as the Universal Federation of Window-Glass Workers, contributed as well to the development of those movements. The conclusion ends by locating the Knights as part of a long transatlantic radical tradition that still has its representatives today.

Organisation, Culture and Gender

Knights drew on a rich and varied array of cultural traditions and practices, including the ritual conducted at each assembly meeting. This chapter looks at how British and Irish Knights engaged with those traditions and practices, and how they sought to replicate the fraternal culture of their American Order across the Atlantic. It examines major cases where British workers not attached to the assemblies nevertheless adopted the Order’s model for their own ends. This chapter then asks why British and Irish Knights were so unsuccessful at recruiting women where American Knights had been so successful, and finds the answer in differences between British and American reform traditions, cultural divergences, and connections between class battles and gender attitudes.

The Knights and the Unions

Between 1880 and the 1900 the British labour movement started to become a truly mass movement. British, Irish and American Knights all played a role in that transformation. This chapter explores how they, and their calls for the representation of workers of all trades within the labour movement, influenced the rise of the “new unionism” between 1886 and 1891. But this chapter also emphasises the degree to which the British and Irish Knights were undone by opposition from rival trade unions, first the skilled unions and then, as new unions appeared, from them as well. As in the United States, conflict with the unions became a major reason for the decline of the British and Irish Knights.