Representing Women: The Introduction, Context, and Implications of Reserved Seats for Women in the National Union of Public Employees

This paper explores the impact of the decision by the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) in 1975 to revise its constitution to include elected reserved seats for women on its executive and other bodies. The analysis is situated within the context of women’s employment and trade-union representation in the UK at the time. Reserved seats for women were part of a wider restructuring of NUPE intended to extend democracy, incorporate the emergent system of shop stewards formally into its structure and government, provide for more effective representation and mobilization of different sections of members, and increase the accountability of full-time officials to lay members and their representatives. The initiative was successful; and although women’s participation in NUPE did increase, this was uneven. This was not entirely unexpected given the limited change initiated in just one haltingly democratizing trade union and the wider social and economic forces that constrain women.

Formation, Legacy, and Change in the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, 1889-1978

This article explores the paradox of the two large ‘general’ workers’ unions - the former Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) and the National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW) - which from their militant origins to within a comparatively few years were seen as undemocratic, moderate in industrial tactics and right-wing in labour politics - ‘pillars of conservatism’. In due time they moved from the fringes to centre stage, acquiring one in four of all trade-unionists, and dominating with their block votes the decisions of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party conference. Even more dramatic was the apparent overnight conversion to left-wing views within the TGWU when Frank Cousins became general secretary in 1956. Then under his successor, Jack Jones, responding to the dynamic of shop-floor organization, the TGWU radically changed its ethos and government. The NUGMW, with David Basnett as general secretary from 1973, also moved away from its long-standing positions but its government remained unchanged. But in 1979 the economic and political environments within which the unions were operating completely changed.

In Defence of Trade-Unionism: Bill Wedderburn and Rookes v. Barnard

Bill Wedderburn (1927-2012) - from 1977, Lord Wedderburn of Charlton - was a towering figure in the world of labour law. His commitment to trade-unionism and the right of workers to take industrial action, given the asymmetrical nature of the employment relationship, ran deep, pervading every aspect of his forensic, sometimes biting, analysis of labour law and the role of the common law. Prompted by the Rookes decision in the High Court, 1961, and the subsequent decision of the House of Lords Judicial Committee, 1964, Wedderburn launched a wide-ranging defence - academic and public - of trade unions’ freedom to strike and the Trade Disputes Act (TDA) 1906. He argued that the House of Lords’ decision had created a new common law liability which evaded the protections in the TDA 1906. This was neutralized by the Trade Disputes Act 1965, but a new wider version of the TDA had to wait for the passage of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, as amended in 1976.

The Industrial Relations of In Place of Strife (1969): The Search for Sanctions through the Prism of Key Industrial Disputes

The 1969 White Paper In Place of Strife was the Labour government’s response to the 1968 Donovan Report. Its most contested proposals were three penal clauses, where fines could be imposed: against unions for refusing to ballot in certain official strikes or if they struck against a ruling in inter-union recognition disputes; and against workers for refusing to return to work when a ‘conciliation pause’ was ordered in certain unconstitutional strikes (in breach of a disputes procedure). Peter Dorey’s political account Comrades in Conflict (2019) provides an opportunity to explore the industrial relations aspects of the White Paper. First, the proposed sanctions are explored in an analysis of the Donovan Report and government discussions. Second, key industrial disputes, which shaped the White Paper and the decision to present an interim bill, are examined. Third, the impracticability of fines on unconstitutional strikers prompted the exploration of legislative alternatives. The opposition of the Trades Union Congress is assessed.

The Working Class and the Poverty of Electoral Strategy

The defeat of the Labour Party in the 2019 general election was widely seen as a rebuttal of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn but it has also raised the question of the nature and direction of the party and whether fundamental social changes have undermined its long-term electability. A concentration on the changing structure and orientation of the working class of Britain, and the implications for political parties, is the focus of a book by former executive director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), Claire Ainsley, appointed in 2020 as the chief policy adviser to the new leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer. The book’s rationale is that a new working class, lacking political and workplace representation, is being forged, distinct from the working class that preceded it. However, Ainsley’s empiricist approach hinders a coherent analysis of class, which as a result is confused and confusing. Moreover, her analysis lacks any appreciation of the structure of power within which values and opinions are created. Her analysis clearly underpins the shift in policies espoused by Starmer - a move to the ‘centre’ of politics, decency, fairness, family, and patriotism - but gives no indication that it can address the anger and alienation of the working class and its disenchantment with its treatment by Labour.

The Amendment of the Wage-Fund Theory and the Legalization of British Trade Unions in 1871

Before the Trade Union Act 1871 the legal position of trade unions in the United Kingdom was at best ambiguous, as in many ways they remained outside the law. At the same time, Political Economy maintained that, given a country’s stock of capital and the population of workers, any rise in wages would undermine profits and accumulation. This provided the rationale for politicians and industrialists to argue that wages were not negotiable and that collective action was illegitimate. In reviewing William Thornton’s defence of workers’ right to claim higher wages, John Stuart Mill accepted that the denial of the positive effect of trade unions on wages ‘is deprived of its scientific foundation’. Using evidence from debates in the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, 1867-69, this article examines the extent to which Mill’s acceptance of the economic argument in favour of trade-union collective action contributed to improving the legal status and role of unions in wage bargaining and to change in industrial relations.

The Second World War: Remaking the British Working Class?

In the post-war years, to the 1970s, most historians’ verdict on the Second World War was abundantly clear: it represented a watershed in social and political relations, shifting Britain in a social-democratic and more egalitarian direction. In more recent years, this verdict has increasingly been called into question. Some historians began to judge the war’s results, especially in terms of the flattening of social and gender hierarchies, to have been considerably exaggerated. Geoffrey G. Field has produced a sizeable, detailed and well-produced work which reaffirms the judgements of the ‘war as dramatic watershed’ school. He synthesizes much of the work on British society and the working class in the Second World War, interspersed with analysis of the vast holdings of The National Archives, the Mass Observation Archive, as well as film and literary sources. This review focuses on industrial relations, particularly the arms industries: where unionization, collective bargaining and workplace union organization were transformed. Joint production committees, however, proved ephemeral.