MACASSEY, Sir Lynden Livingston

Macassey was a lawyer specialising in industrial disputes. He was best known for his wartime investigations into the shipbuilding industry on the River Clyde. 

Macassey was born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim on 14 June 1876, the son of a civil engineer who later became a barrister. He was educated at Upper Sullivan School at Holywood in County Down and then Bedford School before going to Trinity College, Dublin and then the University of London. Following in his father’s footsteps, Macassey trained initially as an engineer, and served an apprenticeship in a Clyde shipyard before deciding on a career in law. He was called to the bar the Middle Temple in 1899, and in 1900 received an LLB from Dublin, followed by an LLD in 1905. In 1903 he married Jeanne McFarland, the daughter of an Australian barrister. 

Macassey lectured on economics and law at the London School of Economics from 1901-09. From 1903-06 he was secretary to the Royal Commission on London Traffic. His legal career flourished, and he was appointed a KC in 1912. During the war he became involved in government service. From 1914-16 he served as Board of Trade arbitrator in shipbuilding and industrial disputes. His particular focus was the Clyde shipbuilding industry, where he arbitrated several disputes and introduced reforms that generally favoured the workers.  

In 1916 Macassey became caught up in the dilution controversy, where the unions argued that the skilled workforce was becoming ‘diluted’ by the introduction of unskilled workers and women into positions normally requiring an apprenticeship. Macassey served on the dilution commission which investigated the affair, and ran head-on into conflict with the Clyde Workers Committee, which strenuously opposed dilution. To break this resistance, Macassey and the commission secured the deportation from the Clyde of four members of the Committee including the prominent labour leader David Kirkwood. This heavy-handed action drew much criticism, at the time and since. 

From 1917-18 Macassey was director of shipyard labour at the Admiralty. In 1917 also he was knighted KBE. He served on several cabinet committees, and following the war became a labour assessor at the Court of International Justice at the Hague. His later appointments included chairman of the governors of Queen Mary College, master of the Drapers Company and president of the Institute of Arbitrators. He died at home in London on 23 February 1963. 

Macassey’s only written work of note is Labour Policy: False and True, published in 1922, the same year as his Rowntree lecture. The lecture is in essence a summary of the key points of the book. 

Macassey begins by defining what he calls the ‘labour problem’, acknowledging that the precise nature of the problem will differ from industry to industry. At its heart, however, the labour problem revolves around two key issues: ‘the problem of combining human development with human work’, and ‘the problem of persuading people to be industrious’. The present system, he says, is clearly not working, and change is needed. There are two proposals on the table: the socialist option proposed by the labour movement, or the reform of the capitalist system. 

Macassey rejects, in some detail, the concept of socialism and offers a number of objections to the notion of worker governance as put forward by the labour movement. Macassey does not reject out of hand the notion of worker participation, but he is clear that certain matters are the province of management alone and there is a clear line of demarcation. Coming down firmly on the side of reforming capitalism, he suggests three key reforms: (1) ‘an effective scheme of unemployment insurance’, (2) a ‘fair share’ of the product of their labour, which we can take to mean fair wages and benefits, and (3) ‘to confer upon the workers a human status’.  

‘Machinery matters little’, Macassey says, ‘what does matter is the spirit which actuates the machinery.’ He calls for a more human-centred approach to managing people, and for managers to have a greater care for the mental and physical welfare of their employees. One important part of his programme is improved education in economics for both workers and employer, and he castigates both for being equally ignorant on the subject. Most of all, though, he calls on employers to recognise that they are managing people with hearts and souls and aspirations of their own. How employers treat their workers has an immediate impact on the behaviour and spirit of the workers: ‘[the worker’s] consciousness of himself as an integral part of industry comes directly and specifically from the attitude and behaviour of those who are in everyday contact with him in the works.’ 

Major works 

Labour Policy: False and True, 1922. 

Lecture:  

‘The labour controversy dissected’, 24 September 1922, Balliol College