Joseph Havelock Wilson (1858 - 1929)

Wilson was a union leader and a Liberal Party politician who served as an MP (1895 - 1900, 1906 - 1910).

He went to sea at thirteen as a ship’s boy, and spent the next ten years in a variety of capacities including able-bodied seaman and mate, but most of his voyages were as a ship’s cook.

In 1882 Wilson left the sea, opened an hotel, and joined the North of England Sailors’ and Seagoing Firemen’s Friendly Society, eventually becoming its president. When his vision for expansion of the union was not supported, Wilson left and established the National Amalgamated Sailor’s and Firemen’s Union of Great Britain and Ireland (NASFU). In 1889, two years after its formation, the union had 65,000 members, or so Wilson claimed. It was one of the first of the so-called “unskilled” workers’ union, which is to say that it was quite different from the earlier smaller craft unions. Wilson’s objectives for the union included better manning of vessels, professional certificates for seamen and firemen, increased safety provisions in the law, and the establishment of a uniform wage list.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s the NASFU was involved in labour unrest. Striking workers mostly succeeded in their aims, but relations between shipowners and British merchant seaman deteriorated. In 1890 shipowners formed the Shipping Federation, a strike-breaking organization, and men were in any case put out of work by the depression of trade. In 1894 the NASFU went bankrupt. Wilson soon saw to its replacement by the National Seamen’s and Firemen’s Union [NS&FU].

Wilson’s claims that his unions were “national” were challenged regularly throughout the pre-war period by local and breakaway unions. But the NS&FU ultimately did prevail as the seafarers’ union after it secured exclusive rights on the government’s National Maritime Board. This was in 1923, and by then Wilson’s personal dominance, middle-road politics, and apparent prejudice against non-white seafarers alienated potential members. The difficulties of sustaining organization amongst peripatetic seafarers were anyway great, and have remained so to the present day.

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