scholarly journals UNION AMALGAMATIONS AS A BASIS FOR UNION RENEWAL IN AUSTRALIA: INSIGHTS FROM UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Just Labour ◽  
1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Buchanan

For many in the labour movement, union mergers are viewed as a viable means of renewing labour organisations. This paper highlights the ongoing Australian experience with union mergers. In the first half of the 1990s, the number of Australian unions was halved as Australian Labour Party initiatives, supported by the labour movement, decreased the number of unions through amalgamations. Analysis of the mergers finds that union mergers have diverse forms, factional allegiances drive many mergers, and that mergers require strong transitional leadership and significant resources. Finally, union amalgamations by themselves do very little to reverse general trends of union decline.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-187
Author(s):  
Nikola Mijatov

The article analyses the influence of the leadership of the British Labour Party on the first Cold War dissident, Milovan Djilas. Up until his dissidence in 1954, the main Yugoslav official for official relations with the British Left was Djilas. He had many contacts with the members of the British Labour Party such as Morgan Phillips, Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee. While many of these contacts were professional, Djilas established a firm friendship with Bevan, under whose influence Djilas gradually abandoned communism and embraced the Labour movement. When he called for another party in Yugoslavia (one similar to the Labour Party), he was condemned by Tito’s regime.


The conclusion begins with an overview of the way the chapters in the volume have offered an exploration of three different levels of conflict – intra-organisational tensions, tensions which exist between different types of organisations, and tensions between labour organisations and spontaneous working-class protests – to collectively provide explanations to the paradoxes affecting the Labour movement. It then stresses the benefits of the volume’s integrated and multidisciplinary approach of the labour movement, underlining the fact that the contributors share a common concern for the future of the British labour movement. In the following section the conclusion ponders the future prospects for the labour movement and the Labour Party, sketching a number of possible scenarios. It stresses the fact that visions of the future differ according to political positioning. It then highlights the shared conviction of the contributors that class remains relevant as an analytical tool.


2020 ◽  
pp. 124-141
Author(s):  
Einar Lie

This chapter describes Norges Bank in the 1920s. Following the chaotic years during and after the First World War, politics ceded the economic realm to institutional technocrats, represented especially by the governor of Norges Bank, Nicolai Rygg. Rygg started out with strong support from the political and intellectual milieus in his programme for restoring the pre-war value of the krone. Gradually, the support eroded. The growing labour movement and Labour Party came to represent the most important threat to Norges Bank’s policies in its final stage. Labour came out as the winner of the parliamentary election in 1927 and formed a new, short-lived government in early 1928. When the government was overthrown after a few weeks in office, the parity policy could be completed and ‘normalcy’ restored. However, Rygg and Norges Bank won a costly victory. In the aftermath, the parity policy was mainly seen as erroneous and misguided. Rygg’s active role in overthrowing the Labour government in 1928 became a formative element in the labour movement’s perceptions of Norges Bank’s and its governor’s past and future role in Norwegian society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 39-75
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Jenkins

This chapter argues that it is impossible to understand the Kenneys’ politics without understanding their home life. It suggests that we need to see the Kenneys as a product of two related cultures: the tradition of autodidactism and the ‘religion of socialism’. Reading, Christianity, and socialism underpinned these cultures and help explain the sisters’ political trajectory. Though many women were drawn to feminist activism from particular strands of the labour movement, particularly the Independent Labour Party and the trade unions, these were not the only currents of thought which influenced women’s politics. The Kenneys’ childhoods not only give us access to working-class women’s political development outside the workplace but also begin to connect feminist militancy with a different political tradition.


2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Briskin

In the last three decades, nurses have gone on strike in many countries including Canada, the UK, the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Israel, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Portugal and South Africa. This article has a twofold purpose: first, to highlight oft-hidden patterns of nurse militancy through strike narratives; and second, to consider the contributions of nurse militancy to union renewal. It argues that the militancy of nurses speaks to many of the strategic threads in the union renewal project. It touches upon four themes: women’s militancy, rank-and-file militancy, coalition-building and community outreach, and professionals in the labour movement. In considering the militancy of women, this discussion genders the union renewal debate. At the same time, the article broadens the focus of the women and unions scholarship from issues of representation and leadership, constituency and cross-constituency organizing, and equity policy and bargaining to include workplace militancy. Au cours des trois dernières décennies, des infirmières sont parties en grève dans de nombreux pays, notamment au Canada, au Royaume-Uni, aux États-Unis, en Australie, au Japon, en Nouvelle-Zélande, en Israël, en Irlande, au Danemark, en Suède, en Pologne, au Portugal et en Afrique du Sud. Cet article poursuit un double objectif: tout d’abord, mettre en lumière le comportement souvent ignoré du militantisme des infirmières au travers du récit de grèves; ensuite, examiner la contribution de ce militantisme au renouveau syndical. Il montre que le militantisme des infirmières fait écho à bon nombre des axes stratégiques du projet de renouveau syndical. Il aborde quatre thèmes: le militantisme des femmes; le militantisme de la base; la construction de coalitions et le soutien de la communauté proche; le rôle des professionnels de la santé dans le mouvement des travailleurs. En examinant le militantisme des femmes, il intègre la dimension du genre dans le débat sur le renouveau syndical. Dans le même temps, l’article élargit à la problématique du militantisme sur le lieu de travail l’accent que la recherche sur les femmes et le syndicalisme met généralement sur les questions de représentation et de leadership, d’organisation catégorielle et intercatégorielle, ou de politique et de négociation sur l’égalité. In den letzten drei Jahrzehnten ist es in vielen Ländern zu Streiks von Krankenpflegerinnen gekommen, unter anderem in Kanada, dem Vereinigten Königreich, in den USA, in Australien, Japan, Neuseeland, Israel, Irland, Dänemark, Schweden, Polen, Portugal und in Südafrika. Dieser Beitrag verfolgt zweierlei Ziele: Einerseits soll er anhand von Streikberichten wenig sichtbare Strukturen des Aktivismus bei Krankenpflegerinnen aufdecken. Andererseits befasst er sich mit der Frage, welchen Beitrag dieser Aktivismus zur Erneuerung der Gewerkschaften leisten kann. Hier wird geltend gemacht, dass der Aktivismus von Krankenpflegerinnen viele strategische Schwerpunkte berührt, die Teil des Projekts zur Erneuerung der Gewerkschaften sind, insbesondere vier Themen: Aktivismus von Frauen, Aktivismus der Basis, Bündnisbildung und lokale Einbindung sowie Fachkräfte in der Arbeiterbewegung. Durch die Betrachtung des Aktivismus speziell von Frauen wird der Debatte über die Erneuerung der Gewerkschaften eine geschlechtspezifische Dimension verliehen. Gleich-zeitig wird der Fokus der wissenschaftlichen Literatur über Frauen und Gewerkschaften in Bereichen wie Vertretung und Führung, Organisation von Mitgliedern und gewerkschaftsferneren Personenkreisen sowie Politik und Verhandlungen zur Förderung der Gleichstellung um den Aspekt des Aktivismus am Arbeitsplatz erweitert.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Black

Whatever happened to labour history? In 2000, the Labour party’s centenary produced some dynamic and cutting-edge contributions to the field. Since then, however, some important historiographical trends, the crisis in the Co-Op, a journal occupied by debate over Communism, and the full force of New Labour have significantly thinned the ranks of self-identifying ‘labour’ historians. A discipline that was once in rude health faces novel challenges as a result. This chapter reflects on the historiographical impact of these major developments. It also assesses the current and likely future fortunes of political histories of the labour movement and the Labour party.


1958 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Inglis

The conference held at Bradford in 1893 to form an Independent Labour Party was accompanied by a Labour Church service which some 5,000 people attended. It was organised by John Trevor, who in 1891 had left his Unitarian pulpit in Manchester and founded the first Labour Church. “God in the Labour Movement”, he explained “– working through it, as once he worked through Christianity, for the further salvation of the world – that was the simple conception that I had been seeking, and which at last came to me…” The fullest account of this movement created by Trevor has been given in H. M. Pelling's The Origins of the Labour Party, where it is sensibly cited as a stage in the “transfer of social energy from religion to politics.” The purpose of the present article is to dissent from certain judgments made by Mr. Pelling and to suggest, in some particulars, a different interpretation.


1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Hill

The grass-roots activities of the Independent Labour Party have been the subject of increased scrutiny from historians over the past few years, especially in the pages of this journal. Consequently we can now be a little surer about the contribution of the party to the development of an independent labour movement in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, though with every fresh case-study a different local strategy seems to come to light. The one outstanding profile in this field is the closely observed account of the ILP in Bradford by J. Reynolds and K. Laybourn, who identify several key features in the party's growth in that city, notably the reformist nature of ILP socialism and the close associations with local trade unionism. “From the outset”, they tell us, “Bradford trade unionism and the Bradford ILP were seen as two aspects of a single homogeneous labour movement aimed at the emancipation of the working class from poverty and exploitation.”


1975 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Reynolds ◽  
K. Lay Bourn

Opening the 21st anniversary of the ILP in Bradford in April 1914, J. H. Palin, one of Bradford's most prominent trade unionists, remarked: “Of ordinary historical association, Bradford has none. In Domesday Book, it is described as a waste, and the subsequent periods of capitalist exploitation have done little to improve it. […] The History of Bradford will be very largely the history of the ILP.”1 Palin's remark – unjust as it is, perhaps, to a distinguished list of Victorian philanthropists – stands as testimony to the authority and influence which the labour movement in Bradford had acquired by that date. It also provides a clue to the origins of that authority and influence, for it demonstrates the importance which he and other Bradford trade unionists attached to their association with the independent labour movement. Whatever the reactions of trade unionists in the rest of the country, in Bradford, trade unionists were vital to its success. Indeed, strong trade-union support proved to be an essential corollary of effective independent working-class political action.


1969 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Barker

No socialist since Robert Owen has had any excuse for being unaware of the relationship between educational reform and social and political change, and a perception of this relationship was a feature of nineteenth century socialism and liberalism. The attention which the educational principles and policies of socialist, labour, and radical movements in Europe have recently received has thus been well deserved. The socialists have however come off better than those organisations which have been designated as merely “labour”, and two valuable contributions to the literature dealing with Great Britain – Professor Simon's Education and the Labour Movement, 1870–1920, and Dr Reid's article on the Socialist Sunday Schools – are concerned with the programmes and beliefs of left wing socialist bodies, rather than with those of the ideologically more diffuse but politically more important Labour Party. Both these contributions may perhaps profitably be placed in a new perspective by an examination of the attitudes adopted within the Labour Party and within its industrial half-brother the Trades Union Congress, to the problems raised by the content and character, as opposed to the structure and organisation, of the education available to the working class.


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