The history of labour movements is a hitherto neglected area of Manx historiography. Little has been written on this subject, except for memoirs by a few participants. Samuel Norris's major work, focusing on the reform movements of 1903 to 1919, is a substantial contribution to Manx history, but refers to labour movements only peripherally: Norris made common cause with labour leaders on issues of constitutional reform, but was himself an independent Liberal. Less well-known voices, from within the Manx Labour Party, are to be found in the illuminating but sketchy accounts by Alfred Teare and Cecil McFee. This chapter will explore this area of Manx history more fully, if necessarily selectively, and demonstrate that, especially during the last hundred years, Manx trade unionists and socialists have played a larger part in the Island's history than is now generally recognised.

1830–80

The Manx common people expressed their grievances for much of this period primarily through riot or direct action: the bread riots of 1821 and the potato or tithe riots of 1825 were followed within our period by the copper currency riots of 1840, and direct action against enclosure of common lands in Lezayre in the 1850s and in Rushen in the 1860s. These popular ‘pre-industrial’ protests merit further research, but cannot be analysed here. ‘Labour history’ as usually understood is concerned with the development of the characteristic modern forms of articulation of popular demands, through trade union activity and political organisation, usually embodying an element of working-class consciousness, and radical or socialist ideology. Such movements are the subject of this chapter.

The years from 1830 to 1850 saw widespread social and political turmoil and large popular movements in Britain, but not in the Isle of Man. The ‘early trade union episode’ at Ramsey which attracted the attention of the authorities in 1829/30 involved delegate meetings of cotton spinners from England, Ireland and Scotland, with no Manx participation. The middle-class agitation in the 1830s and 1840s for reform of the House of Keys did not embrace universal suffrage, and, as the Chartist Bronterre O'Brien observed, ‘the great mass of the Manx people take little or no interest in the struggle’. The 1840s influx of Chartist journalists, wishing to exploit Manx postal privileges to produce newspapers aimed primarily at the British public, initially made no greater impact.