BURNETT, John.

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Commemorative plate. Commemorating the "9 hours king", the prominent Tyneside trade unionist John Burnett (1842-1914), who achieved national renown for his successful campaign for a nine-hour day for the engineering workers of Tyneside, leading a strike which was seen as a major victory for the labour movement."In 1871 growing industrial prosperity produced renewed demands for a shorter working week, a theme that had the advantage of avoiding sectional differences between skilled and unskilled workers. A successful campaign on Wearside secured a reduction to fifty-four hours, and acted as the curtain-raiser to a more prolonged and intense struggle on Tyneside, in which Burnett was the principal leader and spokesman of the Tyneside engineering workers. Employers' intransigence led to a major strike, lasting from May until October 1871, in which the Tyneside engineering workers, organized in the Nine Hours League, achieved a considerable victory. The strike's leadership was cleverer than that of the employers, headed by Sir William Armstrong, whose prolonged refusal to negotiate and tactics of intimidation alienated public opinion. The strike's leaders managed to raise some £20,000 to maintain their followers during the strike, and this task was eased by the willingness of engineering employers elsewhere to recruit many of the strikers. Burnett was largely responsible for the strikers' public image of moderation and law-abidingness, while in practice the employers' attempts to

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