United Labour Front

The United Labour Front was an alliance of Ardunan labour unions which played a major part in the Ardunan Civil War. The United Front counted on the participation of over fifty trade unions, and was used to organize and direct general strikes. Their central leadership ensured coordination between the unions, which made them more effective in the years leading up to the Ardunan Revolution.
After the Civil War, and throughout the revolution, the United Labour Front became the primary government structure, transitioning into the Trade Union Congress.

History

Early Union Cooperation

Since the early days of industrialization, urban workers worldwide had organized for collective bargaining, with varying levels of success. In Ardun, the rapid growth of mines and factories in the 11th century drove rural workers, immigrants, women and children away from the increasingly impoverished countryside and into the cities, where they were often met with long work hours and abysmal working conditions. The close-knit environment of the urban factory naturally led to many workers commiserating about their situation, and the first "Workingmen's Associations" were born from these environments, spontaneously and short lived at first, but increasingly militant and organized.
In 1092, steelworkers from several mills in Caerun banded together to form the first high profile trade union, the Northern Brotherhood of Steel Labour (later renamed the United Steelworkers' Alliance). This is the earliest recorded instance of workers from different factories forming a single union, divided into four separate Locals.
The first trade unionists faced large hostility from employers and the government, and were regularly prosecuted under conspiracy statutes. In response to the spread of multi-shop trade unions, the Ardunan Parliament passed the Industrial Discipline Act in 1098, which banned labour organizing and collective bargaining. Although unions were placed under severe repression from the new legislation, they had become far too widespread, and continued to work outside the law.
As a defensive measure against this repression, different unions began to band together, forming larger blocs which operated over different regions of the country.

George Snowden and the General Labour Congress

Though there had been previous attempts at establishing a national trade union center in Ardun, they were short lived. Internal divisions in leadership, made worse by undercover agents of the Royal Directorate, and extrajudicial repression from employers, led to the successive failure and disbandment of these union federations.
Despite the lack of a single central congress, regional unions continued to organize and advance their interests, primarily in the Marseton region, which had become the industrial heartland of the country. The winter of 1152 would see the first labour organization to bring together workers of divergent occupations, The General Northern Union.
Led in part by the socialist George Snowden, the GNU was a leading force in the Gaeler Rising of 1180, where over 60,000 workers went on a general strike for the right to organize, increased wages, and the end of child labour. The revolt was crushed, but it was followed by a shift in public opinion that saw Snowden granted an audience with the recently-crowned Queen Rianna III. One year later, Parliament would repeal the Industrial Discipline Act, ending the ban on labour organizing.
What followed was a relatively peaceful period where workers made significant gains in wages, as well as drastically reducing the occurrence of child labour. Several members of the Social Democratic Party of Ardun were elected into parliament, and the GNU and other six labour associations successfully organized many unions nationwide into the General Labour Congress, which held its founding convention in April of 1184. There, it was decided that the congress would be governed via yearly conventions, where one delegate would represent every 4,000 workers within a union. Snowden was elected chairman of the congress by a wide margin.
However, the early death of Queen Rianna III and the crowning of her brother, Brannen IX, would eventually lead to a repressive turn in the government. Brannen was both a staunch traditionalist and friend of notable industrialists, and his reign would see an increase of royal executive powers and a massive crackdown on labour unions. Within the first two years of Brannen's reign, over half of all sitting Social Democrat MPs were persecuted under treason charges in a wide "Anti-terrorism" campaign.
In 1186, Parliament passed the Workmen Combination Act, which severely restricted labour activity and officially disbanded the General Labour Congress. The act was met with resistance, with the Labour Congress refusing to disband and instead calling for a general strike, later known as the Caerad Revolt. Police repression escalated hostilities, which led to a group of workers raiding an armory and storming the city hall of Mulder, establishing a short lived autonomous zone named the Mulder Commons. In the ensuing crackdown, several union leaders were taken into government custody. and either imprisoned, exiled, or sentenced to death by firing squad.
Snowden spent ten years in prison for his leading role in the uprising. During this time, he wrote extensively on the lessons he learned from the general strike. He argued about the state's monopoly on violence, and the necessity to combat that monopoly in order to build Dual Power. His resulting manifesto, simply titled "The Popular Front", lay the groundwork for the slow transformation of the General Labour Congress into what would become United Labour Front.
Snowden would eventually be released from prison in 1196, as part of the conciliatory policies of Prime Minister Oswald McKay.

Resurgence

The government crackdown which followed the general strike of 1186 led to significant losses for the General Labour Congress. Leading members who had escaped prison were blacklisted from public office, and were closely followed by the Directorate for decades after. Trade unionist John Dennis famously joked: “If I ever misplace my house keys, I could probably head on over to the police station to borrow one of their five copies”.
However, as time passed, and police activity around unions began to loosen, some junior members of the GLC began attempts to rebuilt the organization. Initially, this process was slow, with many of the original unions having become more moderate in the preceding years.
This changed rapidly following the economic downturn of the early 1200’s, as more and more urban workers became willing to turn towards radicalism as a means to overcome their systemic poverty. The GLC saw their numbers swell during Alan Cormac’s Labour Party campaigns, which helped introduce a new generation to political activism.

The First Workers’ Congress

In 1224, the GLC announced a new convention, where they would completely re-structure the organization to adapt to the changing times. GLC leaders Allister “Big Al” Cook and Audrey Black were inviting outspoken GLC members who might serve as delegates, when they heard of a firebrand labour advocate with a talent for public speaking named Jack Lennon. Lennon had just emerged victorious from the infamous Callagan County Wars, where he had participated as an agitator and legal representative, so by the time the convention was called, he had accrued a large following.
An old friend of Cook, Lennon was eager to participate in the convention. He had developed a large body of work in political theory, and believed that the GLC should be re-imagined from the ground up as the spearhead of a militant mass movement that would pose a direct challenge to capitalism.
The first point of contention at the congress was the issue of membership. Albert Parker, an anarcho-syndicalist, believed all members of the organization should have equal standing and obligations, while Lennon’s camp defended an inner circle of members that would function as full-time agitators and revolutionaries. The issue was hotly debated, but Lennon counted on the support of a large number of veterans from the First Heartland War, who believed in bringing military discipline into the organization, which helped him win out. A concession was given to Parker’s camp in that all workers in the participating unions would count as full members of the organization, which would remain a general alliance of trade unions and not a political party, as Lennon initially suggested. This would also allow individual unions to write their own constitutions.
Members also clashed over what presence the organization would hold in parliamentary politics. Ruben Kaur, of the Popular Alliance of Longshoremen, dismissed the idea out of hand, saying that “one does not bite into a rotten cake in the chance that the filling is sweet”. However, many delegates, including Lennon himself, were members of the Labour Party of Ardun, and claimed that it would be wise to secretly incorporate the party structure into this new organization. This would give the unionists the chance to, if not outright pass legislation, to have a direct connection to what went on in the halls of state power, which would in turn provide the organization leadership with valuable intelligence.
By the end of the convention, Jack Lennon had emerged as an undisputed leader within the organization, by Cook’s own admission. With debates settled for the time being, the attending delegates who had not yet stormed out in anger signed the Declaration of Labour Resistance, and founded the United Labour Front.
Members of the ULF would eventually be colloquially referred to as “Ulfies”, first derisively by authorities, and then with pride by the members themselves.

Structure

Membership

Following Jack Lennon's philosophy of Revolutionary Professionalism, the United Labour Front consisted of a dedicated core membership that engaged in strategy meetings and militant operations ("operatives"), as well as a much larger membership group that consisted of the regular members of all unions represented by the United Front ("constituents"). Both cohorts of members would have access to services provided by the faction, such as legal representation, but operatives would also receive a salary from the union treasury (which would be waived if an operative was an elected Labour Party official or already demonstrably wealthy), with which they would engage in revolutionary work full-time.
There were also two branches in the United Front that were hierarchically unrelated to the union structure: The Labour Party of Ardun and the "Contractors".
The Labour Party of Ardun was functionally the public face of the United Front. Its members and elected representatives were often Ulfies themselves, and their political campaigns were mostly funded directly from the ULF. This is considered Lennon's most important reform proposal, as it completely unshackled the Labour Party from the traditional political donors and lobbyists. By the eve of the civil war, virtually all members of parliament knew that the Labour Party was directly involved with the ULF to some extent, but either bribery or fear kept them quiet.
The other branch, the Contractors, were essentially elements of the Ardunan criminal underworld who would perform bank robberies, bootlegging, blackmail, petty theft, and other acts in order to help fund the extensive revolutionary infrastructure of the ULF. Many high profile contractors were gang members, but the vast majority were either the homeless, who acted as spies and conmen, or street urchins, who would pick-pocket passersby around the rich urban neighborhoods of Caerun and Valken. The Contractor branch also included the extensive list of police informants to the ULF. All contractors would receive a cut of the profits from criminal operations, as well as rewards and salaries from the union treasury.

"Solidarity Forever"

Founding Date

1219-4a

Type

Political, Faction / Party

Alternative Names

The Front, United Syndicates, The Trade Union Council

Subsidiary Organizations

• Redwatch

Notable Members

• Jack Lennon
• Owen Booker