Corn Exchange & Lock-out

The Great lock-out of 1853-4 has been the subject of a detailed analysis by Dutton and King. Karl Marx, writing in the New York Daily Tribune just six years after completing the Communist Manifesto, claimed that -Me eyes of the working classes am now fully opened: ‘They begin to cry 'Our St Petersburg is at Preston''. Faint shadows of the events made their way into Dickens' Hard times and Mrs. Gaskell's North and South. After 'a great struggle upon the wages question at Stockport mill workers in several towns gained an advance in wages. The Preston masters paying wages estimated to be 20% below average rates held out, but eventually conceded the restoration of a 10% cut they had made in 1847. Only a handful of firms refused, and in these the agitation continued. The Preston masters responded by closing all the mills and locking out their workforce. They regretted: To find that the operatives have put themselves under the guidance of a designing and irresponsible body ... To this spirit of Tyranny and Dictation the Masters can no longer submit, in justice either to the operatives or themselves; and hence they am reluctantly compelled to accept the only alternative left - to close their mills, until those on strike am prepared to resume their work and a better understanding is established between the Employer and the Employed.

The dictat dated 15th September 1853 was signed by the members of the Masters’ Association, who had provided stiff financial guarantees against coming to separate settlements. The 36 firms included Horrockses, Miller and Co.; John Paley junior, Ainsworth and Co. (William Ainsworth was Secretary of the Association); Swainson, Birley and Co. and John Hawkins and Sons. From the Walton annexe of the Preston industry, Miles Rodgett, William Bashall, Willian Calvert and Richard Eccles had signed. The masters were in a strong position, for the cotton boom of the earlier 1850s had run its course.

From October 1853 onwards an enormous campaign on behalf of the Preston operatives was launched and contributions flooded in from all over the country During a severe winter between fifteen and twenty thousand people were out of work In February 1854 the masters re- opened their mills in an effort to force a return to work on their terms. Pickets we placed on the mills and the lock-out became a strike. Their strategy having failed, the masters began to try to find "knobstick” labour to run the mills. A party of poor emigrants despatched from Ireland en route for the mills was captured at Fleetwood, given a good meal at the Farmer's Arms and escorted home by union officials. As union funds began to run out a trickle back to work began, and on May Day 1854 a huge meeting of ten thousand operatives gathered by Walton Bridge to ratify a return to work Major strikes occurred again in 1869 (against wage reductions), 1878 (when the Preston operatives were locked out for assisting their friends in the 1853-4 contest the Blackburn operatives) and 1912.

Preston lock-out, a contemporary cartoon "Knobsticks" were people imported by the masters to run the mills in the places of the workpoeple who work either locked out or on strike. Often imported from workhouses in Ireland they were not infrequently waylaid by union officials, given a meal and put on the next boat home. George Cowell was the leader of the Preston operatives, and the Mr. Large Firms' included those of Thomas Miller and William Ainsworth.