scholarly journals Leading the White-Collar Union: Clive Jenkins, the Management of Trade-Union Officers, and the Politics of the British Labour Movement, c.1968–1979

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Melling
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
White Collar ◽  
The Political ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
British Trade ◽  
British Labour ◽  
History Of ◽  
Career Structure ◽  
Union Governance ◽  
Specific Interests

The growth of white-collar unionism and its impact on British trade unions in the postwar period has received little attention from social historians. Radical critics have noted the failure of Clive Jenkins to provide a clear lead in defending workers' conditions, while mainstream, institutionalist commentators more often stress the diversity of specific interests served by such unions. Recent research has called into question earlier models of union governance, though there remain few studies of the history of officer relations within trade unions. This article examines the leadership of ASTMS in the decade after its formation. It is argued that the strategies pursued by Jenkins, including the recruitment, training, and deployment of fieldworkers, were guided by accumulated knowledge and culture (as well as brilliant opportunism) rather than by the structure of the union or the composition of the membership. In offering educated officers a career structure, ASTMS increased its capacity for expertise and effective communication without descending into the political sectarianism of the postwar years. The charismatic, capricious style adopted by Jenkins, as well as the difficulties of absorbing a diverse membership in this period of rapid growth, contributed to the tensions which culminated in a series of struggles between the union and its bargainers during the 1970s.

‘We never trained our children to be socialists’: the next Lansbury generation and Labour politics, 1881–1951

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Abortion Law ◽  
British Labour ◽  
History Of ◽  
East End

George Lansbury, the Leader of the Labour Party from 1932-1935, and his wife Bessie had twelve children – ten surviving into adulthood - many of whom played a significant role in the history of the British Labour movement in the early and mid-twentieth century.This Lansbury generation is the focus of the essay by John Shepherd, whose monumental study of the life and political career of George Lansbury is well known and highly respected. In the early 1920s members of the Lansbury family for a time became members of the Communist Party of Great Britain - a factor that weighed against their father’s inclusion in Ramsay MacDonald’s first Labour Cabinet in 1924. Others became important pioneers in various campaigns in working-class politics, including women’s enfranchisement, birth control and abortion law reform. Altogether, they created something of a memorable Lansbury Labour dynasty in the East End, as well as in national political life. Nevertheless, what emerges from John Shepherd’s detailed and meticulous work is that, although the influence of this Lansbury generation was noteworthy in Labour politics, they never reached the political heights of their popular father. Like Herbert Gladstone, in an earlier essay, they played a very important role but in the shadow of their father’s dominating presence.

‘The age of Cloe’? G. D. H. Cole and the British labour movement 1929–1933

1995 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 933-957 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Riddell
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
National Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Political Events ◽  
British Labour ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTThe period 1929–33 was perhaps the most traumatic in the inter-war history of the British Labour movement; the ignominious collapse of the second Labour government led the Labour party to question not only the role of its former leaders but also its ideology. This article will reassess the role of the Oxford academic and socialist intellectual, G. D. H. Cole, in this period and will argue that his contribution to the reshaping of the party in the wake of the 1931 financial crisis and the formation of the national government was of much greater significance than has previously been acknowledged. In addition, it will analyse the effects that the political events of the 1920s and the failures of the Macdonald government had upon Cole's socialist ideology and will illustrate that his move away from his earlier guild socialism to a collectivist philosophy was more profound than he himself, and many commentators since, have been prepared to concede.

Knights Across the Atlantic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Parfitt
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Knights Of Labor ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Industrial Landscape ◽  
British Labour ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Wage Earners

The Knights of Labor became the first national movement of American workers between 1869 and 1917. They also established branches of their movement across the world. This book explores the history of the Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland, where between 1883 and the end of the century they organised upwards of 50 individual assemblies (branches) and 10,000 members across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It treats the Knights as an important but under-recognised part of the great changes taking place within the British labour movement at the end of the nineteenth century, whether in terms of the growth of labour politics (and ultimately the Labour Party) or the transformation of the trade unions from the movement of a minority of wage earners to a majority of them. This book looks at the approaches that British and Irish Knights took to politics, industrial relations, race, culture and gender, drawing on and making comparisons with the well-established historiography of the Knights in Canada and the United States, and shows how British and Irish Knights tried and ultimately failed to make their American movement a permanent part of the British and Irish industrial landscape.

The Mensheviks and NEP Society in Russia

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Brovkin
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
New Period ◽  
History Of

AbstractContemporary scholarship on the development of the Soviet political system in the 1920s has largely bypassed the history of the Menshevik opposition. Those historians who regard NEP as a mere transition to Stalinism have dismissed the Menshevik experience as irrelevant,1 and those who see a democratic potential in the NEP system have focused on the free debates in the Communist party (CP), the free peasantry, the market economy, and the free arts.2 This article aims to revise some aspects of both interpretations. The story of the Mensheviks was not over by 1921. On the contrary, NEP opened a new period in the struggles over independent trade unions and elections to the Soviets; over the plight of workers and the whims of the Red Directors; over the Cheka terror and the Menshevik strategies of coping with Bolshevism. The Menshevik experience sheds new light on the transformation of the political process and the institutional changes in the Soviet regime in the course of NEP. In considering the major facets of the Menshevik opposition under NEP, I shall focus on the election campaign to the Soviets during the transition to NEP, subsequent Bolshevik-Menshevik relations, and the writings in the Menshevik underground samizdat press.

History of the Workers' Museum in Denmark

2009 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Ludvigsen
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
General Council ◽  
Governing Board ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
Prime Location

The Workers' Museum in Copenhagen was formally inaugurated on April 12, 1982, at a meeting held at the historic Workers' Assembly Hall at Rømersgade in Copenhagen, the prime location near the Royal Gardens and Rosenborg Palace where the museum is located. At that time the museum had a governing board with representatives of The National Museum, The Museum of Copenhagen, The Library and Archives of the Danish Labour Movement, The University of Copenhagen, the National College of the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), the Friends of the Workers' Museum, and the General Council of the Federation of Trade Unions.

Policy analysis and advocacy in the Canadian labour movement: when the force of argument is not enough

2018 ◽  
pp. 331-350
Author(s):  
Bryan Evans ◽  
Stephanie Ross
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Rational Analysis ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Internal Architecture

As states in the early twentieth century established labour ministries to manage and mitigate class conflict, the question of whether and under what conditions the public policy perspectives of the working class and their trade unions could find a hearing within the state became significant. As the labour-capital compromises that characterized the political economy of post-1945 liberal democracies unravelled and the internal architecture of states transformed with the rise of neoliberalism, the labour movement’s policy influence has declined, even within institutions of social dialogue. While it remains strategically important for trade unions to engage in state-oriented policy analysis and advocacy, the force of argument, of good rational analysis, is insufficient in the current era. This exploration of trade unions’ resulting reorientation of their policy advocacy tactics and strategies suggests a creative process of engaging members and the public is underway.

A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889. Vol. I

1967 ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
John Child ◽  
H. A. Clegg ◽  
Alan Fox ◽  
A. F. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
British Trade ◽  
History Of
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