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This volume focuses on labour history in Britain, but brings in comparative material on the Continent, in particular inter-war Germany. Special attention is given to wages and living and working conditions in the 19th century, to Robert Owen and Co-operation, and to the modern trade union movement and its attempts to keep up the interests of its members in the fluctuating conditions of the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. The author defends the notion that wage-earners have common interests and frequently share common experiences, and that their organisations have both a strictly economic aspect (trade unions) and a wider political dimension. The profound changes which the labour organisations underwent in the 19th and 20th centuries are a major concern of these essays.
The collapse of Britain's powerful labor movement in the last quarter century has been one of the most significant and astonishing stories in recent political history. How were the governments of Margaret Thatcher and her successors able to tame the unions? In analyzing how an entirely new industrial relations system was constructed after 1979, Howell offers a revisionist history of British trade unionism in the twentieth century. Most scholars regard Britain's industrial relations institutions as the product of a largely laissez faire system of labor relations, punctuated by occasional government interference. Howell, on the other hand, argues that the British state was the prime architect of three distinct systems of industrial relations established in the course of the twentieth century. The book contends that governments used a combination of administrative and judicial action, legislation, and a narrative of crisis to construct new forms of labor relations. Understanding the demise of the unions requires a reinterpretation of how these earlier systems were constructed, and the role of the British government in that process. Meticulously researched, Trade Unions and the State not only sheds new light on one of Thatcher's most significant achievements but also tells us a great deal about the role of the state in industrial relations.
Why did American workers, unlike their European counterparts, fail to forge a class-based movement to pursue broad social reform? Was it simply that they lacked class consciousness and were more interested in personal mobility? In a richly detailed survey of labor law and labor history, William Forbath challenges this notion of American “individualism.” In fact, he argues, the nineteenth-century American labor movement was much like Europe’s labor movements in its social and political outlook, but in the decades around the turn of the century, the prevailing attitude of American trade unionists changed. Forbath shows that, over time, struggles with the courts and the legal order were crucial to reshaping labor’s outlook, driving the labor movement to temper its radical goals.
Historical study of the labour movement in the UK from 1750 to 1955, with particular reference to the sociological aspects of the role of trade union leadership as an Elite group within the working class - covers the evolution of the labour political party, political leadership, etc. References and statistical tables.
Written at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! is a thought-provoking and highly original interpretation of the party's evolution, from its trade union origins to its status as a national governing party. It charts Labour's rise to power by re-examining the impact of the First World War, the general strike of 1926, Labour's breakthrough at the 1945 general election, the influence of post-war affluence and consumerism on the fortunes and character of the party, and its revival after the defeats of the Thatcher era. Controversially, Pugh argues that Labour never entirely succeeded in becoming 'the party of the working class'; many of its influential recruits - from Oswald Mosley to Hugh Gaitskell to Tony Blair - were from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds and rather than converting the working class to socialism, Labour adapted itself to local and regional political cultures.
Based on a section of the author's thesis, University of London.
In this short and accessible book, Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union, presents the case for joining a trade union. Drawing on anecdotes from his own long involvement in unions, he looks at the history of trade unions, what they do and how they give a voice to working people, as democratic organisations. He considers the changing world of work, the challenges and opportunities of automation and why being trade unionists can enable us to help shape the future. He sets out why being a trade unionist is as much a political role as it is an industrial one and why the historic links between the labour movement and the Labour Party matter. Ultimately, McCluskey explains how being a trade unionist means putting equality at work and in society front and centre, fighting for an end to discrimination, and to inequality in wages and power.
Ladjevardi follows the rise and ebb of political development in Iran from 1906 to the recent past by looking at one aspect of political growth: the emergence of labor unions. Presenting a history of the labor movement in Iran, he begins with the genesis of the movement from 1906 to 1921 and then looks at the state of labor unions under Reza Shah from 1925 to 1941. During the 1940s polarization between the unions and the government increased, as did Soviet and British influence on the unions. From 1946 to 1953 Iran saw the rise and fall of government-controlled unions and, after 1953, workers without unions. After years of frustration and countless examples of contradiction between words and deeds, the workers and most of the politically aware populace became cynical about constitutional government, parliamentary elections, the promises of the ruling elite, and the friendship of the Western powers. Ladjevardi’s account of the labor movement in Iran leaves little doubt as to why the workers turned against them all: the monarchy, “Western democracy,” and the West itself.
Knights Across the Atlantic tells the story of the Knights of Labor, one of the great social movements of American history, in Britain and Ireland.