HSIR 18(29-3)

Apprentice Strikes in the Twentieth-Century UK Engineeringand Shipbuilding IndustriesPaul Ryan

‘Was it serious? I don’t know. It certainly had serious consequences.’1

The lead story in the Manchester Evening News on 29 April 1960, underthe headline ‘Apprentices Storm Works: Singing 700 Hold Up Traffic’,reported that 300 yelling apprentices had just scaled the walls of theAssociated Electrical Industries (AEI) factory in Trafford Park andbrought out 200 younger colleagues from the firm’s apprentice school.The factory’s gates had been locked after a decision at a lunchtimemeeting to join a strike that had started in Scotland nine days before.An apprentice delegate from Glasgow, one of two who had travelled bymotor-cycle to gather support, denied that the march was ‘communistinspired’. He claimed that ‘the only time the apprentices get a rise iswhen they strike’. A 700-strong group, accounting for half the factory’scomplement of apprentices, then marched off to raise support fromnearby factories, sending two strikers on bicycles to do the same at themore distant Mather and Platt works.

Several attributes of these events are worthy of note. First, work-places with so many apprentices could still be found then. Second, thecarnival-like atmosphere evoked the historical apprentice traditions oflarking about and rioting in public. Third, the political attributes of thestrike were controversial. For example, a Scottish cleric claimed that ithad been organized by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CP) andsupported by a ‘Trotskyist’ body.2 Fourth, the 1960 movement wasclassed, in terms of working days lost, as the largest industrial disputeof the year. Finally, the strike precipitated a substantial pay rise for allyoung males in the engineering and shipbuilding industries.

HSIR (AUTUMN ) ‒

1. J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (Vintage Books: 2000), p. 69.2. Rev. W. MacIntyre, organizer of industrial chaplaincies for the Church of

Scotland, (Aberdeen) Evening Express, 20 April 1960.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 1

The 1960 dispute was far from unique. Nine strike movements werelaunched by engineering and shipbuilding apprentices between 1910and 1970. They typically started in engineering, in either Glasgow orManchester, and then spread to shipbuilding and to the other city, sub-sequently to other northern metalworking centres, and occasionally tothe Midlands and the South as well. They lasted on average around amonth, drawing in many thousands of young people for an average ofnearly two weeks apiece.

This apparently prominent feature of the industrial relationslandscape has remained obscure. Although the movements form partof the official strike record, and particular ones have been discussed indetail, primarily by social historians,3 the attention paid to them in theliteratures on industrial conflict and vocational training has remainedmarginal.4 This paper has three objectives: to view the movements as a

HISTORICAL STUDIES IN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 2

3. N. Branson and M. Heinemann, Britain in the Nineteen Thirties (Weiden-feld and Nicolson: 1971), pp. 114–15; R. Croucher, Engineers at War(Merlin: 1982), pp. 45–57, 123–31, 230–9; J. E. Cronin, Labour and Societyin Britain, 1918–79 (Batsford Academic and Educational: 1984), pp.108–9; W. Knox, ‘“Down with Lloyd George”: The Apprentices’ Strike of1912’, Scottish Labour History Society Journal (SLHSJ) 19 (1984), pp.22–36; A. McKinlay, ‘The 1937 Apprentices’ Strike: Challenge “from anUnexpected Quarter”’, SLHSJ 20 (1985), pp. 14–32, and ‘From IndustrialSerf to Wage-Labourer: The 1937 Apprentice Revolt in Britain’, Interna-tional Review of Social History (IRSH) 32:1 (1986), pp. 1–18; D. Fowler,The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage-Earners in InterwarBritain (Woburn Press: 1995), pp. 55–63; N. Fishman, The BritishCommunist Party and the Trade Unions, 1933–45 (Scolar Press, Aldershot:1995), pp. 96–8, 231–2; see also J. Gollan, Youth in British Industry(Gollancz: 1937), pp. 311–17, and E. and R. Frow, Manchester’s BigHouse in Trafford Park: Class Conflict and Collaboration at Metro-Vicks(Working Class Movement Library, Manchester: 1983), pp. 31–8.

4. Studies of industrial conflict during the period that do not mentionapprentice disputes are: K. G. J. C. Knowles, Strikes: A Study in IndustrialConflict, with Special Reference to British Experience between 1911 and1947 (Basil Blackwell, Oxford: 1952); C. T. B. Smith, R. Clifton, P.Makeham, S. W. Creigh and R. V. Burn, Strikes in Britain, ManpowerPaper 15, Department of Employment (HMSO: 1978); J. E. Cronin, Indus-trial Conflict in Modern Britain (Croom Helm: 1979); E. L. Wigham,Strikes and the Government, 1893–1981 (Macmillan: 1982); J. W. Durcan,W. E. J. McCarthy and G. P. Redman, Strikes in Post-War Britain: A Studyof Stoppages of Work due to Industrial Disputes, 1946–73 (Allen andUnwin: 1983); A. Charlesworth, A. D. Gilbert, A. Randall, H. Southalland C. Wrigley (eds), An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain, 1750–1990(Macmillan: 1996); and N. Fishman, ‘“A Vital Element in British Indus-trial Relations”: A Reassessment of Order 1305, 1940–51’, HistoricalStudies in Industrial Relations (HSIR) 8 (Autumn 1999), pp. 43–86.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 2

whole, aiming at a more comprehensive and quantitative account thanhas been available in a literature confined largely to the qualitativeattributes of individual disputes; to interpret them, in terms of therelative importance of social, political, economic and industrialrelations factors; and to suggest reasons for their neglect in the litera-ture.

The principal objective is the interpretative one. Two broadaccounts, which have to date been distinguished only partially, aredeveloped here. The first approach combines political, social andcultural factors. Political goals are seen as central to mobilization andmilitancy among young people and their adult supporters in an epochof intense ideological conflict. From a sociological standpoint, theapprentice strikes represent outbursts of youth exuberance and indisci-pline, part of the precarious socialization of young people, and a con-tinuation of historical traditions of apprentice disorder. Aninterpretation that unites these two attributes might hold that a strikeby apprentices should be viewed as akin more to one by students infull-time education than to one by regular employees. Apprenticestrikes may therefore not even belong in the history of industrialconflict proper. The second, ‘economics–industrial relations (IR)’approach views apprentice strikes in terms of collective organizationand economic conflict. The movements are taken to have involvedorganized discontent, economic damage for both strikers andemployers, and serious implications for economic outcomes. In thisview it is entirely appropriate to treat them as part of mainstreamindustrial conflict.

The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. Both proverelevant to an understanding, in that particular attributes of the strikespoint to a distinct role for each of four factors – political, socio-

RYAN: APPRENTICE STRIKES IN UK ENGINEERING & SHIPBUILDING 3

Studies of vocational training showing the same omission are G. Williams,Recruitment to the Skilled Trades (Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1957) andK. Liepmann, Apprenticeship: An Enquiry into Its Adequacy under ModernConditions (Routledge: 1960). By contrast, apprentice strikes are discussedin some of the more general histories: H. M. D. Parker, Manpower: AStudy of War-Time Policy and Administration (HMSO and Longmans:1957), pp. 459–66; H. A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since1889, Vol. 3: 1934–51 (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1994), pp. 242–3, 249–51;C. Wrigley, ‘The Second World War and State Intervention in IndustrialRelations, 1939–45’, in idem (ed.), A History of British Industrial Relations,1939–1979 (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham: 1996), pp. 32–4, all three of whomdiscuss the wartime movements (1941 and 1944); and, notably, A. Tuckett,The Blacksmiths’ History (Lawrence and Wishart: 1974), pp. 213, 252–3,265 and 354–7, which covers the movements of 1921, 1937, 1939 and 1960.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 3

cultural, economic and IR. Although the evidence compiled to datedoes not determine clearly the relative importance of these factors,qualified priority is given here to the economics–IR interpretation.

The neglect of apprentice strikes in the literature also warrants dis-cussion. Why would so salient a phenomenon have been so rarely andso narrowly considered by social scientists,5 despite Richard Croucher’sappeal for the consideration of the movements as a whole?6 One possi-bility is that only one set of factors really mattered. Thus, were politicalaspects the primary consideration, the volume and orientation of theexisting literature might be considered appropriate. Alternatively, weresocial and cultural considerations predominant, apprentice strikeswould matter only for the sociology of youth – though that literaturetoo has paid surprisingly little attention to them.7 Both answers areundermined by evidence that political, social, industrial relations andeconomic factors all mattered. The key source of intellectual neglect istaken instead to have been the complexity of both apprenticeship andapprentice strikes: phenomena so multi-faceted are not readily assimi-lated and interpreted, requiring an interdisciplinary approach, which ishardly favoured in contemporary social science.


5. ‘Narrowness’ is represented by consideration of typically only one or twomovements, in isolation from the others, and one-dimensional interpreta-tions. Thus Fowler’s account of the second phase of the 1937 movement,in Manchester, does not mention the important procedural outcomes ofthe year’s movement as a whole: The First Teenagers, pp. 55–63. Croucher,Engineers at War, remains the broadest treatment to date, but even thataccount, confined to 1937–45, omits the 1939 movement.

6. ‘A history of the apprentices’ movement would be immensely valuable forthe light it would throw on the historical situation of young workersgenerally’: Croucher, Engineers at War, p. 131.

7. Notably F. Musgrove, Youth and the Social Order (Routledge and KeganPaul: 1964), pp. 48–50, who does not refer to the movements, despitewriting soon after one of the largest and delving into riots at publicschools in the eighteenth century. Sociological studies of the school-to-work transition have also ignored apprentice strikes, despite widespreadinterest in youth resistance, group as well as individual, to establishedauthority in working-class schools – e.g. P. Rudd, ‘From Socialisation toPostmodernity: A Review of Theoretical Perspectives on the School-to-Work Transition’, Journal of Education and Work 10 (1997), pp. 257–79.See also T. Ferguson and J. Cunnison, The Young Wage-Earner (OxfordUniversity Press: 1951); T. Vaness, School Leavers (Methuen: 1962); M.Carter, Into Work (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1966); J. Maizels, Adoles-cent Needs and the Transition from School to Work (University of LondonPress: 1970).

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 4

Evidence is derived here from published strike statistics, the archivesof employers’ associations and trade unions, and newspaper reports.The next section presents the statistical attributes of the strikes, makingcomparisons to strike patterns for other employees. An outline of thequalitative attributes of the movements follows, including their organi-zation, procedural status, the demands put forward, and their courseand outcomes. The evidence is then brought to bear on the two lines ofinterpretation, followed by the conclusions.

Quantitative attributes

Between 1910 and 1970 the engineering and shipbuilding industries –henceforth ‘metalworking’8 – saw nine apprentice strike movements: i.e.an event classed in official statistics as a ‘principal dispute’,9 in whichthe primary or sole class of employee involved was ‘apprentices’ or‘apprentices, boys and youths’, and which involved a sufficient numberof employers and districts to be termed here a strike movement.10 Theyoccurred in 1912, 1921, 1937, 1939, 1941, 1944, 1952, 1960 and 1964.11

Table 1 shows that the average movement lasted more than five weeks,involved 18,000 young workers and caused the loss of 190,000 working


8. The sector is taken to include all metalworking manufacture, includingvehicles, but to exclude metal manufacture. Employees and apprentices inoccupations associated with engineering and shipbuilding (e.g. fitters,boilermakers) but employed in other sectors, including railway workshopsand construction, are also excluded.

9. A ‘principal dispute’ came to be defined as one in which at least 5,000working days were lost. Official statistics did not report days lost in indi-vidual disputes until 1925, but the number of strikers and the duration ofthe dispute almost certainly put the movements of 1912 and 1921 abovethe threshold.

10. A strike was excluded from the official statistics if it lasted for less thanone working day or involved less than ten workers, unless it led to the lossof at least 100 working days: Durcan et al., Strikes in Post-War Britain, pp.3–7. As political strikes were in principle excluded, the 1944 movement,which attacked conscription into coalmining, is measured here usingarchival evidence. The reliability of official strike statistics is limited by theintrinsic difficulty of counting participants and days lost, intensified bythe interest of both employers and strikers in estimating numbers so as tosuit their own interests: R. Hyman, Strikes (2nd edn; Fontana: 1977), pp.17–19.

11. Although the 1921, 1937 and 1941 disputes all had two distinct phases,each involving separate districts, there was sufficient continuity of issuesfor each to be treated as a single movement.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 5

Tab

le 1

:Att

ribu

tes

of a

ppre

ntic

e st

rike

mov

emen

ts, U

K, 1

910–

70

Yea

rP

erio

d D

istr

icts

invo

lved

aD

urat

ion

Num

ber

Wor

king

day

s lo

stc

of s

trik

ersc

Out

brea

kP

arti

cipa

tion

Day

sbT

otal

p.c.

dR

anke

1912

6 A

ugus

t– 5

Oct

ober

Dun

dee

Cen

tral

Sco

t.,

7014

,600

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

NE

Coa

st,

Man

ches

ter

1921

21 J

une–

20 J

uly;

Man

ches

ter;

M

anch

este

r, 33

6,50

0n.

a.n.

a.n.

a.10

Aug

ust–

13 O

ctob

erB

lack

burn

Lin

coln

, Cly

de

1937

18 M

arch

–5 J

une;

C

lyde

; Sc

otla

nd,

9432

,500

406,

000

123

6 Se

ptem

ber–

30 O

ctob

erM

anch

este

rN

.Ire

.,N

&N

E.E

ng.,

Cov

entr

y, L

ondo

n

1939

18 M

ay–5

Jun

eC

lyde

Cly

de16

2,20

019

,000

97

1941

5 F

ebru

ary–

5 A

pril

Edi

nbur

gh

Cen

tral

Sco

t.,

62

25,1

0022

0,00

09

1N

.Ire

., S.

Lan

cs

1944

28 M

arch

–12

Apr

ilN

E.E

ng.

Cly

de,

1617

,000

150,

000

94

Hud

ders

fiel

d,S.

Wal

es

1952

7 F

ebru

ary;

fC

lyde

Scot

land

, 24

16,4

0019

4,00

012

110

Mar

ch–2

Apr

ilN

.Eng

., N

.Ire

.

1960

24 F

ebru

ary;

fA

berd

een

Scot

land

27

36,9

0034

7,00

09

120

Apr

il;f

N.E

ng.,

N.I

re.

25 A

pril–

16 M

ay

Cov

entr

y, L

ondo

n

1964

7 Se

ptem

ber;

fM

anch

este

rN

.Eng

.,23

6,00

026

,000

49

2–25

Nov

embe

rC

entr

al S

cot.

,L

ondo

n

Ave

rage

g38

17,5

0018

7,00

010


HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 6

RYAN: APPRENTICE STRIKES IN UK ENGINEERING & SHIPBUILDING 7T

able

1 (

cont

inue

d)

Sou

rce:

Min

istr

y of

Lab

our

Gaz

ette

, var

ious

issu

es (

sum

mar

ies

of p

rinc

ipal

dis

pute

s); K

nox,

‘“D

own

wit

h L

loyd

Geo

rge”

’, pp

. 22–

36; C

rouc

her,

Eng

inee

rs a

t W

ar; E

EF,

1921

Cir

cula

r L

ette

r 19

4 an

d A

(7)1

64, 2

75, 3

30, Z

64/6

9 (5

2), M

RC

; SE

F, S

NR

A/4

946,

NM

M. W

here

sou

rces

diff

er, a

rchi

ve e

vide

nce

is p

refe

rred

.

Not

es: n

.a.:

not

avai

labl

e. T

he s

ympa

thy

stri

ke b

y ad

ults

on

Cly

desi

de o

n 16

Apr

il 19

37 is

exc

lude

d.a.

Cly

de: G

lasg

ow r

egio

n. C

entr

al S

cot.

: sam

e, p

lus

Edi

nbur

gh a

nd D

unde

e; S

cotl

and:

sam

e, p

lus

Abe

rdee

n; N

.Eng

(lan

d): i

ndus

tria

l dis

tric

ts o

f L

ancs

and

Yor

ks;

NE

.Eng

.: T

yne,

Wea

r an

d T

ees;

N.I

re.:

Nor

ther

n Ir

elan

d.b.

C

alen

dar

days

(fr

om c

olum

n 2)

.c.

In

clud

es in

dire

ctly

invo

lved

em

ploy

ees

(put

out

of

wor

k by

the

dis

pute

at

sam

e w

orkp

lace

as

stri

kers

).

d.

Per

cap

ita

(i.e

., pe

r st

rike

r: ‘W

orki

ng d

ays

lost

’ div

ided

by

‘Num

ber

of s

trik

ers’

).e.

In a

ll di

sput

es t

hat

year

.f.

Toke

n st

rike

(s).

g.

Unw

eigh

ted

arit

hmet

ic m

ean

(day

s lo

st: 1

937–

64 o

nly)

.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 7

days. The average striker stayed out for ten – not necessarily continu-ous – working days.

The movements varied in size. Four accounted for at least one-thirdof total working days lost in ‘principal disputes’ in the two sectors inthe relevant year (Figure 1). Those of 1941, 1952 and 1960 constitutedthe year’s largest dispute, in terms of days lost, in the country as awhole; the other four for which data are available ranked within the tenlargest disputes of the year (Table 1, last column). In the biggestmovements, those of 1937 and 1960, more than 30,000 apprentices par-ticipated and districts ranging geographically from Aberdeen toLondon became involved. In 1937, 406,000 working days were lostduring a two-stage movement that spanned seven months and lastedthirteen weeks in all. By contrast, in 1939 and 1964, events weredominated by a single region (Glasgow and Manchester respectively)and were shorter-lived (two to three weeks) and smaller (a fewthousand participants and the loss of less than 30,000 working days).

The movements centred on two sub-periods: rearmament and theSecond World War, and the 1960s. All involved both engineering andshipbuilding, but little else.12 The centre of gravity was typically theindustrial districts of Scotland and the North of England, with eitherGlasgow or Manchester normally taking the lead, and with occasionalspillage into the Midlands and the South of England. Most of thelarger ones proceeded in wave-like fashion, with new groups of appren-tices, as defined variously by occupation, employer and district, joiningthe dispute while earlier ones returned to work.

As the class of employee involved, e.g. ‘apprentices in engineeringand shipbuilding’, was indicated in official statistics only for ‘principaldisputes’, this analysis is confined largely to that category. Within it,apprentice militancy involved, in addition to the nine movements, afurther three, all at single establishments in the 1960s. The largestoccurred at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow in 1968, when apprenticeswent in and out of work over a six-month period.13 Various smallerapprentice disputes also occurred at works level, including fifteen

12. Metal manufacture participated marginally in 1937 and 1952, and electri-cal contracting in 1941: LAB 10/76 and 10/509, Public Record Office,London (PRO).

13. Details are provided in the Appendix.


HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 8


Fig

ure

1: Y

oung

man

ual m

ale

shar

e of

‘pri

ncip

al d

ispu

tes’

in e

ngin

eeri

ng a

nd s

hipb

uild

ing,

UK

191

9–69

(%

)S

ourc

e:M

inis

try

of L

abou

r G

azet

te, m

onth

ly r

epor

ts (

1919

–24)

and

ann

ual s

umm

arie

s (1

925–

69).

Not

e: ‘N

umbe

r of

str

iker

s’ a

nd ‘W

orki

ng d

ays

lost

’ inc

lude

the

rel

evan

t pa

rt o

f di

sput

es in

pro

gres

s th

at h

ad s

tart

ed in

the

pre

viou

s ye

ar; ‘

Num

ber

of s

trik

es’ i

s co

nfin

edto

str

ikes

tha

t st

arte

d in

the

cur

rent

yea

r. W

okin

g da

ys lo

st n

ot a

vaia

ble

for

1921

.

1919

1921

1923

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1925

1927

1929

1931

1933

1935

1937

1939

1941

1943

1945

1947

1949

1951

1953

1955

1957

1959

1961

1963

1965

1967

1969

Num

ber

of s

trik

esN

umbe

r of

str

iker

s

Wor

king

day

s lo

st

%share

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 9

‘youth only’ strikes in federated engineering establishments between1920 and 1951.14 Apprentices also participated at times in adult-relatedand general disputes.15

Youth–adult comparisons

The quantitative importance of apprentice strikes can be gauged fromcomparisons to disputes by other employees, both in metalworking andin the economy as a whole. Two strike series are potentially appropri-ate: ‘principal disputes’ and ‘all disputes’. The former compares likewith like, using the same category of dispute for apprentices and otheremployees. It potentially overstates relative apprentice activism, as‘principal disputes’ probably constituted a larger share of strike activityfor apprentices than for adults, given that safety was even more likelyto lie in numbers for apprentices than for adults. A comparison is alsomade to ‘all disputes’, in order to view the militancy of apprentices inrelation to industrial conflict as a whole.

Between 1919 and 1969, the period for which adequate official sta-tistics are available, young manual males – the category that has to beused here as a proxy for apprentices16 – accounted for only a small


14. Engineering Employers’ Federation (EEF), Strike Record from 1920(undated typescript, formerly held at EEF headquarters) records, for theperiod 1920 to 1951, 57 strikes at individual firms over youth-relatedissues. Young workers acted alone in 15 and together with adults in 16,while adults acted alone in 26.

15. In the 1922 lockout, 17% of the apprentices employed by federated engi-neering employers – and more than 50% in some towns in the north ofEngland – were on strike in the sixth week of the dispute: file M19, Appen-dices 17, 25, EEF Archive, Modern Records Centre, University ofWarwick (MRC). Similarly, in the 1950s shipbuilding employers com-plained to union officials that apprentices frequently joined adult walk-outs: file SNRA/4946, Shipbuilding Employers’ Federation (SEF)Archive, Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (NMM).

16. As employment data are not available for apprentices alone, manual maleyouth employment has to be used as the denominator in indicators ofapprentice strike intensity. The measure includes non-apprenticed manualmale youth and excludes non-manual, female and over-age apprentices.The former distortion greatly exceeded the latter, particularly before theSecond World War. In 1925–26, the number of ‘drawing office, over-21and female’ apprentices amounted to only 0.9% of that of manual maleapprentices aged less than 21 in metalworking industry: Ministry ofLabour, Report of an Inquiry into Apprenticeship and Training, 1925–6(HMSO: 1928), Vol. 6, pp. 11–12, 22, 37, 56, 60 and Vol. 7, p. 155. By

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 10

share of the annual count of ‘principal disputes’ in metalworking(Figure 1).17 At the same time, the extent of industrial action amongyoung manual males, as indicated by working days lost per thousandemployees, stood comparison with its adult counterparts. Figure 2shows that in 1937 and 1960 militancy among young manual malesattained peaks exceeded after 1926 among other employees in metal-working only in 1957. The youth series exceeded its ‘other employee’counterparts in five years: 1937, 1941, 1944, 1952 and 1960. In 1937and 1941, young manual males accounted for the great majority ofworking days lost in ‘principal disputes’ in metalworking (Figure 1).

If the ability of apprentices to mount major strikes was comparableto that of adults, the timing of their actions differed. None of theapprentice movements occurred in the same year as an all-employee,sector-wide ‘principal dispute’. Nor did any occur during the widerupsurge of industrial conflict in the late 1960s. Statistical correlationsbetween the time-series indicators for youth and adult disputes areinsignificant, in contrast to the significant associations typically foundbetween strike-activity indicators across other categories of employee(e.g. by sector).18 Indeed, apprentices sometimes took action whenadults were reluctant to do so. The 1937 movement helped to break the


contrast, the number of non-apprenticed junior male employees infederated engineering firms was 87.4% of the number of apprentices in1934: EEF, A(7)111, MRC. As apprentices are shown below to have beenmore prone to join the disputes than were other youths, Figure 2 under-states industrial action among apprentices proper. Similarly, the lowincidence of apprenticeship in light engineering reduces the index of youthstrike-propensity relative to what it would be for shipbuilding and heavyengineering alone.

17. All youths, including apprentices, were treated in official strike statistics asemployees, despite the residual legal differentiation of the contract ofapprenticeship from that of employment (‘service’): B. A. Hepple and P.O’Higgins, Employment Law (2nd edn; Sweet and Maxwell: 1981), pp.169–70.

18. Cronin, Industrial Conflict, pp. 82–8. Pearson correlations between the sixpermutations of dispute categories and strike indicators for junior manualmales and other employees are all negative and less than 0.09 (absolutemagnitude). The divergence in timing between youth and adult disputesdoes not rule out all potential links between them. In 1921, the strikesagainst wage cuts paralleled adult actions. In 1960 and 1964, apprenticeactivism may have been fostered, albeit with a lag, by that of adults, asexpressed in unofficial disputes over the implementation of recent nationalagreements.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 11


Fig

ure

2: W

orki

ng d

ays

lost

by

cate

gory

of

empl

oyee

and

dis

pute

, UK

, eng

inee

ring

and

shi

pbui

ldin

g, 1

927–

69S

ourc

es: F

igur

e 1.

Em

ploy

men

t se

ries

(M

anua

l Mal

e Y

outh

and

Oth

er E

mpl

oyee

s) a

re c

onst

ruct

ed f

rom

: Dep

artm

ent

of E

mpl

oym

ent

and

Pro

duct

ivit

y, B

riti

sh L

abou

r S

tati

s-ti

cs:

His

tori

cal A

bstr

act

1886

–196

8 (H

MSO

: 197

1), T

able

s 11

4, 1

32; C

entr

al S

tati

stic

al O

ffic

e, S

tati

stic

al D

iges

t of

the

War

(HM

SO: 1

951)

, Tab

les

19–2

1; D

epar

tmen

t of

Em

ploy

-m

ent

Gaz

ette

, var

ious

issu

es, 1

968–

71; E

. Wig

ham

, The

Pow

er t

o M

anag

e(M

acm

illan

: 197

3), A

ppen

dix

J. E

mpl

oym

ent

by a

ge s

erie

s ar

e co

nstr

ucte

d on

the

ass

umpt

ion

that

the

rati

o of

tw

o se

ries

bas

ed o

n di

ffer

ent

defi

niti

ons

of t

he s

ame

vari

able

(by

sec

tor,

age,

etc

.) in

the

yea

rs o

f ov

erla

p re

mai

ned

cons

tant

acr

oss

tim

e. D

ata

avai

labl

e fr

om a

utho

r.

1927

1931

1935

1939

1943

1947

1951

1955

1959

1963

1967

1400

1200

1000 800

600

400

200 0

Man

ual M

ale

Yout

h, E

&S,

Prin

cipa

l Dis

pute

s

Oth

er E

mpl

oyee

s,E&

S, P

rinci

pal

Dis

pute

s

Oth

er E

mpl

oyee

s,E&

S, O

ther

Dis

pute

s

WDLper 1000 employees19

57:

1

772

1695

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 12

protracted post-1926 quiescence.19 The 1941 dispute was the first majorchallenge to the Coalition government’s wartime ban on industrial actionunder Order 1305. The 1944 strike caused the government such concernthat it extended the ban to cover incitement to strike.

Apprentice strikes also differed in extent and duration from thewider dispute pattern in their sectors. The typical post-war strike inengineering and shipbuilding affected only a single establishment andwas resolved within a matter of hours or days. Industry-wide, all-gradesdisputes occurred rarely and were mostly short-lived. Apprenticestrikes tended by contrast to be multi-employer and multi-district(though not strictly industry-wide) and protracted rather than brief.

Apprentice participation

Large factories and shipyards featured prominently in the strikemovements. Not only were they large works, they took on apprenticesin numbers that lack modern equivalents. Leading cases included: Metropolitan-Vickers/AEI in Manchester, which employed around2,000 apprentices in the late 1930s, 250 of whom struck in 1937, 700 in1941, 800 in 1952, 700 in 1960 and 570 in 1964; John Brown & Co.,Clydebank, a shipyard with 2,000 apprentices and boys in the late1930s, and 812 apprentices in 1941, of whom 432 went on strike;Vickers-Armstrong in Barrow, the great majority of whose 2,000apprentices struck in 1941; the two members of the Belfast MarineEngineering Employers’ Association (EEA), which in 1941 employed1,200 apprentices in engineering trades alone, almost all of whomstopped work; and Siemens, which saw 1,000 of the apprentices at itsLondon plant strike in 1937.20

Despite the prominent part played by large workplaces, only in 1937and 1960 did more than 10% of young manual males employed in metalworking go on strike and was there an average of at least oneworking day lost per potential striker. The average was pulled down notonly by a lower tendency to strike among non-apprenticed young


19. The 1937 movement was ‘a watershed between the dark years of theDepression and the growing strength and confidence evident in themonths immediately preceding the war’: Croucher, Engineers at War, p.47.

20. Manchester Guardian, 17 September 1937, 27 March 1952; LAB 10/140,LAB 482/1952, PRO; (Glasgow) Evening Citizen, 19 May 1939; Manches-ter Evening News, 29 April 1960; March 1941 strike report, file TD241/12/242, Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association (CSA) Archive, MitchellLibrary Glasgow (MLG); EEF, Z64/69(52), MRC.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 13

employees, but also by limited participation of apprentices, particularlyin the Midlands and the South. The involvement of Coventry andLondon apprentices was limited largely to the biggest movements, in1937 and 1960, and then to short-lived episodes at a handful of firms.Apprentices from Birmingham, who in 1934 constituted the fifthlargest district grouping in the Engineering Employers’ Federation(EEF), never took part.21 Overall participation was also reduced by thetendency of particular apprentice groups – as defined variously byoccupation, works or employer – to divide internally over whether tostrike or not.

The highest participation rates appear to have been attained incentral Scotland, where that for apprentices reached 62% in federatedengineering in 1952 (Table 2) and was estimated by the employers’ asso-ciation at around 90% in 1960.22 In Clyde shipyards, 57% of apprenticesparticipated in 1941, but only 31% in 1964. Participation also variedgreatly over time at works level. At John Brown in 1939, only 10% of the yard’s 2,000 apprentices were involved one week after the start of the strike, compared to 53% in 1941.23 In Manchester in 1952, 73% ofMetropolitan-Vickers/AEI apprentices went on strike, compared toonly 15% in 1937.24

Participation patterns were closely associated with payment systems.


21. Federation records indicate 1,100 engineering apprentices in Birminghamin 1934, similar to Coventry’s 1,300 and many fewer than the more than3,000 in each of the North West (Glasgow), Manchester and North EastCoast Associations, but many more than in such regular strike centres asAberdeen, Dundee, and East Scotland (Edinburgh), which recorded lessthan 300 each: EEF, 1934 Survey of Apprentices (file formerly available atEEF headquarters). Birmingham apprentices made a rare appearance in1952, when a group of them requested the Manchester strike committee tosend a delegate to explain the issues: Manchester Guardian, 26 March1952.

22. In 1952, junior male participation rates of 50% were reported forAberdeen and 45% for Dundee, but only 27% for Manchester and 7% forSheffield. In the same year, the 21% of central Scottish engineeringemployers affected by the initial token strike became 52% during the indef-inite stoppage: EEF, A(7)275, MRC.

23. In 1939, a sequence of lunchtime factory gate meetings persuaded variousapprentice groups in the outfitting trades, including plumbing, joinery andengineering, to go out but did not induce any of the more numerous ship-building trades to join in: Glasgow Evening News and Evening Times, 26May 1939; EEF, A(7)164, MRC; CSA, TD 241/12/242, MLG.

24. R. A. Leeson, Strike: A Live History 1887–1971 (Allen and Unwin: 1973),p. 159; Frow and Frow, Manchester’s Big House, pp. 21–37.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 14

RYAN: APPRENTICE STRIKES IN UK ENGINEERING & SHIPBUILDING 15T

able

2: A

ppre

ntic

e pa

rtic

ipat

ion

in a

ppre

ntic

e st

rike

s in

fed

erat

ed f

irm

s by

indu

stry

and

dis

tric

t

Yea

rIn

dust

ryD

istr

icts

Dat

e D

ays

No.

A

ppre

ntic

esP

arti

cipa

tion

into

dis

pute

aof

em

ploy

ers

em

ploy

ed

rate

repl

ying

1941

Ship

build

ing

Cly

desi

de10

–12

Mar

ch11

–13

232,

828

57.2

%

1952

Eng

inee

ring

Cen

tral

Sco

tlan

d7

Feb

ruar

y;b

(1)

174

8,13

832

.5%

Cen

tral

Sco

tlan

d14

Mar

ch

419

88,

642

61.6

%Sh

effi

eld

17 M

arch

7

964

443

.8%

1964

Ship

build

ing

Cly

desi

de24

Nov

embe

r22

221,

781

31.0

%

Sou

rce:

CSA

, TD

241

/12/

242,

TD

241

/12/

359,

ML

G; E

EF,

A(7

)275

, MR

C; L

AB

482

/195

2, P

RO

.

Not

es: Q

uest

ionn

aire

s w

ere

dist

ribu

ted

to a

ll m

embe

rs o

f th

e A

ssoc

iati

on; d

ata

excl

ude

non-

appr

enti

ce s

trik

ers,

whe

re s

epar

atel

y id

enti

fied

(19

52).

a.C

alen

dar

days

sin

ce s

tart

of

inde

fini

te s

trik

e m

ovem

ent

in f

irst

dis

tric

t in

volv

ed.

b.

Init

ial t

oken

str

ike.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 15

Table 3 shows that nearly three-quarters of time-rated apprentices inshipbuilding joined the 1941 movement on the Clyde, whereas less thanone-quarter of their piece-working counterparts did so. The earnings ofapprentices who received incentive bonus payments were in the post-war years between one-eighth and one-quarter higher than those oftheir time-rated counterparts, according to sector and year, and the gapis unlikely to have been much different in 1941 (Table 4). Apprenticeearning-power may therefore have influenced willingness to takeaction, though its association with mode of payment may also reflectselection effects.25 By contrast, occupational differences, notably thosebetween the shipyard trades proper and the outfitting and engineeringtrades, were marginal in three of the hardest-hit Clyde yards in 1941(Table 5).

Participation in the movements was often volatile, with individualstrikers and groups of strikers going out and returning to work, andin some cases going out again, as the wider dispute unfolded.According to an official of the Manchester EEA in 1952, ‘everythingis very fluid and no sooner do you get a number of lads back in onefactory than another set of lads go on strike somewhere else’.26 Suchconditions appear to have been the norm: the average individual par-ticipant remained on strike for only one-third of the duration of the


25. Apprentices may have been selected, by their own or by employers’decisions, into payment mode according to personal traits associated withthe propensity to collective action, such as individualism.

26. EEF, A(7)275, MRC.

Table 3: Apprentice employment and strikers by method of payment,federated Clyde shipyards, March 1941

Payment Employment Strikersmethod

Number Share Number Share Participationof strikers rate

Time-work 1,886 66.7% 1,398 86.3% 74.1%Piece-work 942 33.3% 221 13.7% 23.5%All 2,828 100.0% 1,619 100.0% 57.2%

Source: CSA, TD 241/12/242, MLG.

Notes: Aggregated data for 23 shipyards affiliated to the CSA, c. 13–20 March. Three incompleteresponses are excluded, as are 26 strikers who had already returned to work.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 16


Table 4: Employment share and relative earnings of apprenticesreceiving incentive bonuses, by sector and strike movement

Age Number of Bonus Relative pay ofcategory apprentices recipients as apprentices

share of receiving apprentice bonusesb

employmenta

Engineering 1948 16–20 n.a. n.a. 118.6%1950 16–20 n.a. n.a. 121.6%1959 19 15,161 43.2% 112.1%1960 19 11,829 46.7% 115.0%1968 19 10,016 28.3% 112.9%

Shipbuilding 1952 16–20 11,503 57.8% 125.7%1960 16–20 n.a. 75.6% n.a.

Source: EEF, A(7)270, A(7)330, Z67(590), MRC; SEF, SNRA/4831, SNRA/3912/1, NMM.

Notes: Apprentices employed by federated firms only.a. Apprentices paid under payment by results (engineering) or piece-work, payment by results or

lieu rates (shipbuilding), as opposed to by plain time rates, as percentage of all apprentices.b. Weekly (1968: hourly) earnings of apprentices receiving incentive bonuses as percentage of those

of time-paid apprentices.

Table 5: Apprentice employment and strikers by trade in three Clydeshipyards, 10 March 1941

Trade Employment Strikersgroup

Number Share Number Share of Participation all strikers rate

Shipyarda 271 45.0% 237 47.3% 87.5%Otherb 331 55.0% 264 52.7% 80.0%All 602 100.0% 501 100.0% 82.3%

Source: CSA, TD 241/12/242, MLG.

Notes: Aggregated data for Barclay Curle (Elderslie), Alex Stephen & Sons and Connell(Scotstoun); apprentices who had already returned to work are not counted as strikers.a. Platers, sheet iron workers, shipwrights, caulkers.b. Engineers, welders, electricians, carpenters, joiners, painters, plumbers.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 17

episode (Table 1). The major exception was the Clyde in 1937, whenfew apprentices returned to work, despite mounting hardship, until amass meeting on 4 May decided to do so. The Ministry of Labour’slocal official was impressed by their ‘rather astonishing … solidar-ity’.27

Strike constituency

‘Apprentice strikes’ were, as the term presumes, largely the preserve ofapprentices.28 Non-apprenticed young manual males, includinglearners, trainees, operatives and labourers, were less numerous thanapprentices, though their numbers remained substantial until theSecond World War.29 Many of them did join the movements but theirquantitative contribution to the strikes, like that of non-manualapprentices, who worked mostly in drawing offices, was low. The lists ofstrikers circulated among federated engineering employers on theClyde in the early phase of the 1937 strike comprised overwhelminglyapprentices.30 Table 6 reports a rare instance for which comprehensivedata are available, for federated engineering on the Clyde in 1952. Trade(manual craft) apprentices accounted for fully 97% of youth strikers.Only one in eight non-apprenticed manual male youths, and only onein fifty drawing-office apprentices, took part – in contrast to two-thirdsof manual apprentices. Non-apprenticed young males did play a greaterpart on other occasions,31 and apprentice militancy sometimestriggered separate activism among non-apprenticed youth.32 Neverthe-


27. Minute sheet, entry for 16 April 1937, LAB 10/76, PRO.28. An ‘apprentice’ is taken here to be a young worker who could expect to be

considered eligible by employers and unions to enter craft employment atage 21 as a result of having served his or her time.

29. Data on the share of apprentices in youth employment are fragmentary. In1939, 43% of 156,000 junior males employed by EEF members wereapprentices, rising to 73% in 1949 and 78% in 1956, following the declinein non-apprenticed youth employment during the war: EEF, A(7)275,MRC.

30. The only significant exception was the 46 ‘boys’ on strike at Mechams’works: North West Engineering Trades Employers’ Association(NWETEA) Circular Letters, March–April 1937, MLG.

31. In 1939, 15% of youth strikers in the engineering departments of Clydeshipyards were non-apprenticed, as were 29% (of 656) at James Mackie &Sons in Belfast in 1937: EEF, A(7)164, A(7)137, MRC.

32. Thus rivet heaters at John Brown’s, Clydebank, struck in 1944 in sympathywith the apprentices and in support of their own claim for minimum dailyearnings: CSA minute book, 30 March 1944, MLG.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 18

less, ‘apprentice strike’ appears to be a valid characterization of thesedisputes.

Young females were not considered relevant when such statisticswere compiled. Only a handful of the two sectors’ apprentices werefemale: primarily French polishers and drawing-office tracers in ship-building.33 Although female apprentices participated at least once,34

they were too few to have made much difference. Moreover, malestrikers were not necessarily prepared to accept female help: in 1937two offers of assistance made by young females were turned down bythe Glasgow strike committee.35

In sum, apprentices in the metalworking industry constituted duringthe period what might be termed a strike-prone employee category.Their distinctiveness is underlined by the near total absence of appren-


33. Ministry of Labour, Report of an Inquiry, Vol. 7, p. 155; NWETEA,Circular Letter 116, 22 March 1941, MLG.

34. Ten female French polisher apprentices joined the 1941 strike at Dennyand Bros, Dumbarton (NWETEA, ibid.).

35. The sympathy action was taken by young female employees at Barr andStroud in Glasgow, the financial support (in the shape of a postal order)by their counterparts in a Bristol factory. The local Ministry officialreported concerning the former that the young women ‘were rather hurtwhen informed that they would be more of a hindrance than an aid, inview of the fact that they were not apprentices but only learners’ – anexcuse that Croucher (Engineers at War, p. 51) plausibly discounts. Theyoung women responded by joining the distributive workers’ union: reportof 7 April 1937, LAB 10/76, PRO; Evening Citizen, 24 April 1937.

Table 6: Participation in 1952 strike movement in federated engineeringfirms in Glasgow district by category of youth

Strikers All Participation Share ofemployees rate all strikers

Apprentices: manual 5,311 7,895 67.3% 97.1%Apprentices: drawing-office 12 747 1.6% 0.2%Non-apprentices: manuala 147 1,222 12.0% 2.7%All 5,470 9,864 55.5% 100.0%

Source: SEEA letter to EEF, 14 March 1952, EEF A(7)275, MRC.

Note: a. ‘Boys and youth’.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 19

tice strikes from the other sectors that employed substantial propor-tions of apprentices, notably building and printing.36

Qualitative attributes

This section discusses the organization and conduct of the movements,their relationship to trade-unionism, the demands made on employers,and their outcomes.

Apprentice organization

The conduct of apprentice strikes depended primarily on district-levelad hoc committees set up by apprentice activists to run and extend thestrike (Table 7, column 1). The strike committee typically used massmeetings, marches, leafleting and picketing, and sometimes a strikebulletin, to increase participation locally. Travelling emissaries wereoften used to spread the strike to other areas and inter-district com-mittees were formed, particularly in Scotland. When the strike waned,the committee sought to rally support or, when that looked unpromis-ing, to organize a co-ordinated return to work.

The similarity of the titles of successive committees, particularlyvariants of the Clyde Apprentices’ Committee (CAC), suggests organi-zational continuity, but the evidence is fragmentary and suggestivemore of ephemerality. The principal exception was 1937–42, whenapprentice committees appear to have functioned fairly continuously atworks and district levels in the Glasgow and Manchester areas andmore intermittently at industry level. A national official of the Amal-gamated Engineering Union (AEU) subsequently recalled havinghelped, as an apprentice, to form a Manchester apprentices’ committeein 1938, having been appointed treasurer of a ‘national’ apprentices’committee in 1939, and having attended two conferences organized bythe latter.37 James Hunter, ex-secretary of the CAC, told the Court of


36. The only ‘principal dispute’ recorded for apprentices (as opposed to otheryouth) in a different sector during the period was that by 750 plumbingapprentices in Scotland in October 1941. Its timing suggests an influencefor the 1941 movement in metalworking: Ministry of Labour Gazette,November 1941, p. 224.

37. Interview with Bob Wright, assistant general secretary, AmalgamatedUnion of Engineering Workers/Amalgamated Engineering Union(AUEW/AEU), May 1985; LAB 10/509, PRO; EEF, A(7)111, A(7)186,MRC; I. Johnston, Ships for a Nation (Mitchell Public Library, Glasgow:2000), p. 219.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 20

RYAN: APPRENTICE STRIKES IN UK ENGINEERING & SHIPBUILDING 21U

noff

icia

l str

ike

orga

niza

tion

sa

Edi

nbur

gh &

Lei

th A

ppre

ntic

e E

ngin

eers

’U

nion

n.a.

Cly

de a

nd M

anch

este

r st

rike

com

mit

tees

b

Nor

th E

ast

Cam

paig

n C

omm

itte

e

Cly

de A

dvis

ory

Com

mit

tee

of A

ppre

ntic

es

Edi

nbur

gh, C

lyde

, Bar

row

and

Sco

ttis

h A

ppre

ntic

es’ C

omm

itte

es; E

ngin

eeri

ng a

ndA

llied

Tra

des

Nat

iona

l You

th M

ovem

ent

Tyn

esid

e A

ppre

ntic

es’ G

uild

; C

lyde

side

App

rent

ices

’ Com

mit

tee

Cly

de A

ppre

ntic

e an

d Y

outh

Com

mit

tee;

Abe

rdee

n A

ppre

ntic

es’ C

omm

itte

e; M

an-

ches

ter

App

rent

ices

’ Str

ike

Com

mit

tee

Cly

de A

ppre

ntic

es’ C

omm

itte

e;

Scot

tish

App

rent

ices

’ Com

mit

tee

Man

ches

ter

Eng

inee

ring

App

rent

ices

’ Dir

ect

Act

ion

Com

mit

tee;

Nat

iona

l App

rent

ices

’W

ages

and

Con

diti

ons

Cam

paig

nC

omm

itte

e; C

lyde

side

App

rent

ices

’C

omm

itte

e

Str

ike

dem

ands

Exe

mpt

ion

from

nat

iona

l ins

uran

ce c

ontr

i-bu

tion

s; p

ay in

crea

se; a

bolit

ion

of ‘b

lack

tim

e’c

Wit

hdra

wal

of

impe

ndin

g ap

pren

tice

pay

cuts

(w

ithd

raw

al o

f W

ar B

onus

es)

App

rent

ices

’ Cha

rter

: pay

ris

e, d

istr

ict

age–

wag

e sc

ales

, day

rel

ease

rig

hts,

lim

its

toap

pren

tice

num

bers

, uni

on r

epre

sent

atio

n

Mili

tary

ser

vice

to

coun

t fo

r ap

pren

tice

ship

;Y

outh

Cha

rter

(pa

y ri

se, d

ay r

elea

se, p

aid

holid

ays)

; end

of

impr

over

ship

s

Pay

incr

ease

: AE

U n

atio

nal y

outh

pay

cla

im;

day

rele

ase;

all-

roun

d fa

ctor

y tr

aini

ng;

revi

sion

s to

agr

eem

ent

of 2

6 M

arch

194

1

App

rent

ice

exem

ptio

n fr

om c

onsc

ript

ion

into

coa

lmin

ing

CSE

U n

atio

nal c

laim

for

£1 in

crea

se in

pay

for

youn

g m

ales

CSE

U n

atio

nal c

laim

for

pay

incr

ease

s fo

ryo

ung

mal

es

App

rent

ice

You

th C

hart

er: i

ncre

ased

app

ren-

tice

pay

; 35-

hour

wee

k; 4

wee

ks’ p

aid

holid

ay; f

ull s

ick

pay

Out

com

es:

imm

edia

te (

subs

eque

nt)

Con

diti

ons

befo

re s

trik

e; t

ight

enin

g of

inde

ntur

e cl

ause

s; ‘c

erta

in a

dvan

ces’

in a

min

orit

y of

wor

ks

Con

diti

ons

befo

re s

trik

e

(May

) I

ncre

ased

pay

sca

les

in s

ome

dist

rict

s(O

ctob

er)

Ret

urn

to w

ork

pend

ing

offi

cial

nego

tiat

ions

; (na

tion

al a

ge–w

age

scal

es fo

rpa

y ad

vanc

es; y

outh

pro

cedu

re a

gree

men

t)

Six

mon

ths’

cre

dit

tow

ards

app

rent

ices

hip

serv

ice

for

mili

tary

tra

inin

g; o

ther

wis

e as

befo

re s

trik

e

Cou

rt o

f In

quir

y; p

rose

cuti

on o

f st

rike

lead

ers;

(nat

iona

l age

–wag

e sc

ale

for

juni

orm

ales

; rev

ised

you

th p

roce

dure

agr

eem

ent)

Con

diti

ons

befo

re s

trik

e; p

rose

cuti

on o

fex

tern

al s

uppo

rter

s as

soci

ated

wit

h R

evol

u-ti

onar

y C

omm

unis

t P

arty

Ret

urn

to w

ork

pend

ing

rene

wal

of

offi

cial

nego

tiat

ions

; (ag

e-gr

aded

pay

incr

ease

s fo

ryo

ung

mal

es)

Ret

urn

to w

ork

pend

ing

rene

wal

of

offi

cial

nego

tiat

ions

; (ag

e-gr

aded

pay

incr

ease

s fo

ryo

ung

mal

es)

Con

diti

ons

befo

re s

trik

e; (

incr

ease

inag

e–w

age

scal

es; n

atio

nal p

roce

dure

agre

emen

t fo

r al

l you

ng m

ales

)

Tab

le 7

:App

rent

ice

stri

ke m

ovem

ents

: org

aniz

atio

ns, d

eman

ds a

nd o

utco

mes

1912

1921

1937

1939

1941

1944

1952

1960

1964

Sou

rce:

As

Tab

le 1

, pl

us T

he A

ppre

ntic

e St

rike

rs’

Bul

leti

n, n

o. 3

, A

pril/

May

193

7; C

rouc

her,

Eng

inee

rs a

t W

ar,

pp.

47–5

7, 1

23–3

1, 2

30–9

; K

nox,

‘“D

own

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Inquiry into the 1941 movement in Scotland that the committee hadcontinued in skeleton form after the 1939 strike and had organized aScotland-wide conference in November 1940. Following the 1941strike, the CAC continued to function and even tried to organizeapprentices in Lancashire, but signs of life soon disappeared.38

The strike committees chalked up major achievements in organizingthe strike movements. When union premises were not available,meetings of strikers were organized variously at factory gates, onbombsites and in public parks, with Glasgow Green featuring fre-quently. Strike headquarters were established in the premises of tradeunions (notably when district officials sympathized with the strikers, asin the AEU in Glasgow in 1941), trades councils (particularly whendistrict officials did not, as in Manchester in 1937), the Labour Party,and even (in Manchester in 1960) in a coffee bar. Mass picketing offactory gates and the verbal abuse of non-strikers were widelypractised.39

The strikes were typically spread by apprentices themselves, travel-ling within districts on foot, typically as columns of demonstrators, andby bicycle, and between districts by motor-cycle, by car (1960) andfinally by aeroplane (from Manchester to Glasgow in 1964).40 The 1944Tyneside strikers sent two deputations to London by train to lobby


38. In May 1941, more than a month after the end of the strike, the ClydeApprentices’ Committee (CAC) arranged a victory ball, published anewsletter (The Apprentice Mag), and organized a conference of Scottishapprentices, which in turn founded an ‘Engineering and Allied TradesNational Apprentices and Youth Movement’ and called its first nationalconference for 5 October in Manchester. In August, EEF officials warnedthe Manchester Association’s officers that ‘the … [CAC] are busy againand they are busy in Lancashire, particularly in the Bolton and Burydistricts, for the purposes of prevailing upon boys to attend a massmeeting of apprentices to be held in Glasgow on 9 August’. Reports ofsuch activities then dried up – possibly in association with low attendanceat CAC meetings, about which a correspondent had complained in theMay newsletter: EEF, A(7)186, MRC.

39. Manchester Evening News, 29 April 1960; Verbatim Report of Proceedingsof Court of Inquiry, 15–16 March 1941, pp. 162–4, LAB 10/509, PRO;Fowler, The First Teenagers, p. 60. The role of mass meetings is illustratedby the reversal by the Edinburgh strikers in 1952, after a ‘harangue’ froma Glasgow apprentice at a ‘stormy meeting’, of their previous decision toreturn to work: Daily Mail, 24 March 1952.

40. During apprentice strikes at three factories in 1960, the Coventy Engi-neering Employers’ Association (EEA) reported that ‘the start of this was,of course, a visit of some lads from Clydeside’: EEF, A(7)330, MRC.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 22

politicians.41 Attempts to co-ordinate activity across districtssometimes proved decisive. The concessions by employers that finallydefused the protracted 1937 dispute were made soon after a nationalconference of apprentices on 10 October had called for a national strikeon 18 October.42

Apprentice self-organization attracted some admiration. In thefourth week of the first phase of the 1937 movement, a Ministry ofLabour official observed that

it is quite clear that the apprentices must have a very perfect organi-zation. They have a cycle corps of no less than 500 members andthey have arranged a telephone system which enables their head-quarters to keep in touch with practically every town in Scotland.Trade Union organisers admit that the perfection of the arrange-ments puts them to shame.43

During the 1960 dispute, the reborn CAC set up finance, propagandaand demonstration sub-committees, staffed entirely by apprentices andtaking multifarious initiatives.44

Apprentice organization tended to precede the strike itself. The 1937strike followed ‘a widespread movement amongst apprentices for anadvance of 2s. [10p] per week in wages’ across Scotland in 1936. The 1941dispute began only after two mass meetings of apprentices in Edinburghhad expressed discontent about low pay.45 The Tyne Apprentices’ Guildstarted up in 1942, well before it launched the 1944 strike.46 Themovements of 1952, 1960 and 1964 all began with a token strike whoseintention was probably, and whose effect – fuelled by the punishment ofparticipants by some employers – was clearly, to precipitate an indefinitestrike. Such tactics indicated prior organization by apprentices.47


41. LAB 10/451, PRO.42. Croucher, Engineers at War, p. 56. The dispute continued until the end of

the month in Coventry and London.43. Chief Conciliation Officer (CCO), Scotland Area, memo of 9 April 1937,

LAB 10/76, PRO.44. Tuckett, The Blacksmiths’ History, p. 199.45. CCO memos of 3 September 1936 and 4 February 1941, LAB 10/76 and

10/422, PRO.46. The Times, 3 April 1944.47. The CAC was reconstituted early in February 1960, two months before the

token strike, to pursue demands for increased apprentice pay: CSA minutebook, 27 April 1960, MLG.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 23

Apprentice self-organization did not always run smoothly. Continu-ity was hampered by the annual round of ‘coming out of their time’among older apprentices, on whom strike committees largely relied.Some employers reported receiving unstable or incoherent demandsfrom, and facing rapid membership turnover in, deputations of strikingapprentices.48 The 1941 Court of Inquiry heard how the activities of theCAC had been handicapped by limited record-keeping, itself promotedby turnover among its ‘officers’.49 The use of air travel to spread thestrike from Manchester to Glasgow in 1964 was not accompanied bycomparable organization on the ground, where the strike involved mis-located, leaderless and chaotic mass meetings – though the priorcollapse of the strike in Manchester amid political in-fighting probablypromoted disorganization on the Clyde.50

Procedural status

All apprentice strike movements were both unofficial and unconstitu-tional, in that they were launched with neither official union approvalnor prior recourse to the two industries’ national disputes procedures.51


48. For example, at Blackburn Aircraft, Glasgow, in 1939: EEF, A(7)164,MRC.

49. ‘I believe there is a minute book somewhere’, said James Hunter, addingthat there had been ‘about six minute secretaries within a period of threemonths … [A]fter a while we stopped taking minutes for some reason orother. The apprentices are not so good at the official procedure’: VerbatimReport of Proceedings, p. 151, LAB 10/509, PRO.

50. The mother of Barry Foxhall, the Manchester Dry Dock apprentice whotoured factory gates on the Clyde in 1964 to little effect, told the press that‘Barry is the only one on strike now. All the others went back to work afterBarry left for Glasgow’: Daily Record, 20 November 1964; CSA, TD241/12/359, MLG.

51. The post-1918 engineering and shipbuilding industries both featuredindustry-wide (‘national’) regulation of employment issues, involving anemployers’ federation (EEF and SEF respectively) and national tradeunions, notably the AEU and a union federation – from 1936, the Confed-eration of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU). Both industries’disputes procedures in principle channelled locally contested issues througha sequence of joint ‘conferences’ at works, district and national levels. Onlyin the event of failure to agree at all levels in succession did either sidebecome free to take industrial action. These procedures represented‘employer conciliation’: the presentation by unions of their case to a quasi-court of employer representatives: I. G. Sharp, Industrial Conciliation andArbitration in Great Britain (Allen and Unwin: 1950), ch. 4; A. Marsh,Industrial Relations in Engineering (Pergamon, Oxford: 1965), pp. 112ff.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 24

Moreover, the apprentice strike committees were never formally recog-nized by either employers or unions, and most movements continued,in their later stages at least, in defiance of official instructions by unionsto apprentice members to return to work.

Although unofficial and unconstitutional strikes became commonin engineering from the late 1930s onwards,52 in the case of the appren-tice movements those attributes reflected also factors specific toapprenticeship. Their unofficial status was promoted by weak linksbetween trade unions and apprentices, few of whom were unionmembers when the movements started. Until the Second World War,few apprentices were members of unions, not least because most unionsmade little effort to recruit them and some unions did not accept themat all.53 The AEU estimated that only 20% of engineering apprenticesparticipating in the 1937 dispute in Manchester were union members.Despite recruitment efforts by various unions, membership ratesamong apprentices appear to have been as low as 10% on Tyneside in1944 and in Scotland in 1952.54

The unconstitutional nature of apprentice strikes was promoted bythe exclusion, from the two industries’ (post-1937) procedure agree-ments for young males, of the standard adult option of recourse toshop stewards for handling individual grievances. Apprentices wererequired instead to approach either management or a district official inorder to retain procedural legitimacy, which in turn encouraged themto ignore procedure.

The unofficial and unconstitutional attributes of apprentice strikeswere both ambiguous. Some unions made the apprentice movementsofficial, either as they went along, as did the engineering, pattern-making and foundry workers’ unions on the Clyde in 1937, or afterthey were over, by granting strike benefit to prior members who hadgone on strike, as did the AEU in 1952 and 1960. Some unions evenencouraged strikers to join up during the dispute by waiving thenormal qualifying period for benefit eligibility, as did the woodworkers’union on the Clyde in 1937. These decisions indicated the wish of


52. Croucher, Engineers at War, pp. 363ff.; Royal Commission on TradeUnions and Employers’ Associations (Donovan), Report, Cmnd 3623(1968), ch. 7.

53. Apprentice membership in the AEU had long been restricted to thoseaged 18 and above: J. B. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers 1800–1945(Lawrence and Wishart: 1945), p. 137.

54. Manchester Guardian, 16 September 1937; CCO memo, 27 March 1944,and Industrial Relations Officer (IRO) phone call, 18 March 1952, LAB10/451 and 482/1952, PRO.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 25

officials to use the strikes to increase membership,55 but that was notnecessarily an overriding consideration: the AEU refused to grantstrike benefit, even retrospectively, in 1939, 1941 and 1964.56

In terms of their constitutionality, apprentice strikes could strictlyspeaking be termed unconstitutional only after 1937–38, when the firstprocedure agreements for junior male employees were signed in the twoindustries. Even then, indentured apprentices, who, though in theminority, were still numerous,57 were excluded from disputes procedureagreements until 1965. In every strike movement, therefore, some strikersdid not act unconstitutionally, in that they did not violate any procedureagreement – as opposed to their indentures – in going on strike.

Not surprisingly, union officials – particularly at national level – forthe most part objected to unofficial organizations and unconstitutionaldisputes. In the AEU, national officials of various political hues movedat some point to stop all of the movements from 1937 onwards. Thesame sometimes applied at district level. In Barrow in 1952, and Wiganand Halifax in 1960, district officials quickly instructed their appren-tice members to return to work immediately.58

Opposition to apprentices’ tactics was far from universal or unam-biguous among union officials. District officials and district commit-tees often favoured the strikers. In the AEU, the traditional autonomyof district committees permitted them to give effective support to thestrikers, particularly in the crucial early phase of a movement. Themost notable example was the Clyde in 1937, when the Confederationof Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU) district committeenot only asked the national executives of member unions to make thestrike official and to pay strike benefit, but also organized a one-daystrike and an indefinite overtime embargo in support of the apprenticesand persisted with sympathy action despite the opposition of nationalofficials. In both Manchester and Oldham in 1964, AEU district officials


55. Fowler, The First Teenagers, p. 60, concludes from the second, Manches-ter-based, phase of the 1937 movement that union officials were ‘preoccu-pied’ with the recruitment issue.

56. The unions cited are the AEU, United Patternmakers’ Association,National Union of Foundry Workers, and Amalgamated Society ofWoodworkers; AEU Executive Committee minutes, 20 April, 20September 1937, 27 June 1939, 23 April 1941, 22 April 1952, 25 April1960, 8 December 1964, MSS 259/1/2/1–97, AEU Archive, MRC; CCOmemo, 24 April 1937, LAB 10/76, PRO.

57. In 1925, only 28.4% of apprentices in the two industries (23.3% and 50.5%,in engineering and shipbuilding respectively) served under an indenture orother written agreement: Ministry of Labour, Report of an Inquiry, Vol. 6,pp. 12, 56.

58. EEF, A(7)275, A(7)330, MRC.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 26

actively encouraged apprentices to strike. AEU officials in Glasgow alsoproved sympathetic, albeit less overtly, in 1939 and 1952. The support oftrades councils, with their greater independence from national unionofficials, could be especially valuable, particularly with facilities forrunning the strike, as in Manchester in 1937 and Glasgow in 1939.59

Further down the hierarchy, among shop stewards and journeymen,and even among the public at large, support for apprentice strikers wasoften widespread. In 1952 and 1960 shop stewards undermined theefforts of union officials to secure a return to work on the Clyde.60

Adult craft-workers got the credit in 1964: the Glasgow, Halifax andSheffield associations reported that attempts by local officials topromote a return to work had been undermined by widespreadsympathy for the strikers among adult workers.61

The reactions of union officials to apprentice strikes showed a fun-damental ambiguity. National officials might formally oppose thestrikes as unofficial and unconstitutional but they also sought twobenefits from them. The first was increased recruitment. Apprenticestrikes saw many young people become members. In 1952, Jimmy Reid,then a nineteen-year-old strike leader, claimed that a thousand youngworkers had joined a union during the strike.62 The second was anincrease in union influence over youth employment and training. Inmost of the national negotiations occasioned by apprentice strikes,union officials urged on employers the potential benefits to both partieswere the employers’ association (until 1937) to recognize, or (after 1937)to universalize, the right of unions to represent apprentices, therebyallowing them to guide youth discontent into less damaging channels.63


59. LAB 10/76, PRO; EEF, A(7)164, A(7)275, A(7)330, Z64/69(52), MRC.60. In 1952, a Ministry regional official reported that ‘naturally some

elements are making the most of the dispute, and it is understood thatmilitant shop stewards are attending the meetings of the Strike Committeeon the pretence that they are encouraging them to return to work, while,in point of fact, their influence is being used in the opposite direction’:memo, 13 March 1952, LAB 482/1952, PRO. In 1960, the informationgiven by CSEU officials to shop stewards was said by one employer ‘tohave acted more as an incentive than as a deterrent’ to helping the strikers:Rolls-Royce letter, 29 April 1960, Scottish Engineering Employers’ Asso-ciation (SEEA) Archive, 60/81, MLG.

61. EEF, Z64/69(52), MRC.62. Daily Worker, 21 March 1952.63. ‘Some of the trade-union officials are very anxious to make use of this par-

ticular strike to overthrow the traditional attitude of the employers inrefusing the trade-unions to represent apprentices’: CCO Scotland, memoof 7 April 1937, LAB 10/76, PRO.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 27

The strikes also prompted the largest union to improve its officiallinks to apprentices. In the early 1940s the AEU set up official channelsof representation for its young members, comprising district-levelJunior Workers’ Committees (JWCs) and an annual national YouthConference, intended as an alternative to unofficial bodies for theexpression of youth grievances.64 The union’s efforts intensified duringthe 1944 strike on the Tyne, when it successfully pressed the nineteen-year-old secretary of the unofficial Tyne Apprentices’ Guild, J. W.Davy, to abandon that body in favour of its own district JWC.65 Yet thecreation of official youth institutions in the AEU did not prevent there-emergence of unofficial activism after the war. Indeed, by arrangingfor district-wide meetings of young workers while offering only limitedscope for their activities,66 the JWCs may actually have encouragedunofficial organization and militancy. The relationship between officialand unofficial youth organizations could be fraught: the minutes of the1961 AEU Youth Conference did not mention the recent strikemovement, for example.67

Strike demands

Apprentice disputes resembled their adult counterparts in the primacyof pay-related claims.68 They differed in the extent to which paydominated. In eight of the nine strike movements higher pay for appren-tices and other youth led the list. Only in the 1944 anti-conscriptiondispute did it fail to feature (Table 7, column 2). The other demandsadvanced by apprentice strikers included improved training, as in thedemand for day release for all apprentices contained in both the


64. Jefferys, Story of the Engineers, p. 263; J. V. C. Wray, ‘Trade Unions andYoung Workers in Great Britain’, International Labour Review 75 (1957),pp. 304–18.

65. An EEF officer stated on 27 March 1944 that ‘the AEU are doing every-thing possible to form a Youth Committee movement, and have toldDavey [sic] that he must join one or the other’: LAB 10/451, PRO.

66. The functions formally allocated to the Junior Workers’ Committees(JWCs) were limited to increasing the union’s youth membership and co-operating with the district committee to promote social, educational andrecreational activities for young members: memo by J. C. L., Ministry ofLabour, 22 March 1944, LAB 10/451, PRO.

67. AEU, Minutes of the 18th Annual Youth Conference held at the RoyalPavilion, Brighton (1961).

68. Pay was the central issue in more than half (57%) of the ‘principaldisputes’ in the UK during 1946–73: Durcan et al., Strikes in Post-WarBritain, p. 203, Table 6.17.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 28

Apprentice Charter of 1937 and the Youth Charter of 1939. Formulatedby the Clyde strike committee, the 1937 Charter called for higher pay,district-wide minimum age–wage scales, a right to part-time technicaleducation during the working week, a ‘reasonable’ proportion ofapprentices to journeymen, and the right to union representation.69

Demands that employers recognize union rights to representapprentices featured only before their attainment in 1937 (for all butindentured apprentices). Thereafter unofficial apprentice committeesdid not join the national unions in giving priority to full representationrights for all young workers. Other apprentice demands – concerningconscription and the transition to journeyman status – provedephemeral and marginal respectively.70

The dominance of pay within apprentice-strike demands increasedover time. The last three movements advanced exclusively pay-relatedclaims, whereas their 1937, 1939 and 1941 predecessors had alsoincluded training-related ones. Although some apprentice groupsshowed interest in training issues after 1945, training-related issuesfeatured regularly only in the motions submitted to annual AEU YouthConferences – where they were typically blocked by unwillingness tosee the use of piece-work restricted in order to improve training.71

The priority given by national unions to pay over training in their


69. The formulation of these Charters may have been inspired by theEngineers’ Charter, adopted by the AEU in 1929: Jefferys, Story of theEngineers, pp. 238–9. The demands for higher pay and day release origi-nated from the strike leaders themselves. Those concerning apprenticenumbers and representation rights emerged after discussions with sympa-thetic adult unionists: Croucher, Engineers at War, p. 51; McKinlay, ‘The1937 Apprentices’ Strike’, SLHSJ, pp. 14–32. Although the appeal ofapprentice charters dwindled after 1941, a National Conference ofApprentices (NCA) in Glasgow in 1952 adopted one with a more organi-zational orientation, including demands for apprentice closed shops,apprentice committees in all factories, a reduction in military service toone year and full recognition inside the CSEU: Clyde Apprentice andYouth Committee (CAYC), ‘Youth in overalls unite!’, undated leaflet.

70. Demands involving conscription were not surprisingly confined to warconditions, incipient or actual, in 1939 and 1944. Claims concerning thetransition to journeyman status featured twice: to abolish the require-ments that time lost during an apprenticeship (‘black time’) be made up (in1912) and that apprentices coming out of their time serve up to two moreyears below the adult craft rate as ‘improvers’ (in 1939). Both claimsimplicitly involved pay, given that both practices delayed the attainmentby apprentices of the adult craft rate.

71. The decline of training-related demands characterized the official negoti-ating agenda at sector level too. The only claim related to training quality

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 29

apprenticeship-related demands can be attributed to the difficulty ofenforcing training clauses in collective agreements, given the informa-tional obstacles to the monitoring of work-based training by tradeunions.72 The adoption of the same priority by the apprentice strikersmay, however, have a simpler explanation. A leader of the 1941 striketestified to the Court of Inquiry that apprentices took a short-termview, preferring an immediate pay gain to more training and the asso-ciated benefit for their career prospects.73 They were encouraged to doso by increasing task specialization, which jeopardized those careerprospects.74

Dispute outcomes

The movements at one level appear to have failed: most ended in areturn to work on conditions prevailing prior to the dispute. Suchresults might suggest that the apprentices gained nothing from theirefforts (Table 7, column 3). In 1912, 1921, 1939 and 1944 that wasessentially the case. The other five movements – 1937, 1941, 1952, 1960

RYAN: APPRENTICE STRIKES IN UK ENGINEERING & SHIPBUILDING30

advanced nationally by engineering unions after 1940 was that in 1963 forcompulsory day release on average earnings for apprentices aged less than18: P. Ryan, ‘The Embedding of Apprenticeship in Industrial Relations:British Engineering, 1925–65’, in P. Ainley and H. Rainbird (eds), Appren-ticeship: Towards a New Paradigm of Learning (Kogan Page: 1999), pp. 48,54.

72. Union efforts in the 1940s to improve apprentice training through jointregulation, in the form of sectoral Recruitment and Training of Juvenilesagreements rather than through collective bargaining, are consistent withsuch an interpretation: P. Ryan, ‘Training Quality and Trainee Exploita-tion’, in R. Layard, K. Mayhew and G. Owen (eds), Britain’s TrainingDeficit (Avebury, Aldershot: 1994), pp. 92–124; Ryan, ‘The Embedding ofApprenticeship’, pp. 41–60.

73. Asked if receiving more training would have compensated the apprenticestrikers for low pay, James Hunter, former CAC secretary, stated, ‘we justlooked at the amount of work we were doing and found to our astonish-ment that we weren’t being paid for the work we were doing … Thequestion of training was – not absolutely washed out, but when thecommittee came to the conclusion that the primary demand of the appren-tices was a question of a wage increase, we concentrated on that’: LAB10/509, p. 175, PRO.

74. The priority that apprentices gave to higher pay, particularly in low-paiddistricts like Glasgow, had also been visible in 1939: the strike’s flaggingimpetus revived when the apprentice committee shifted its demands fromconscription issues to the Youth Charter, with featured higher pay as theleading objective: The Bulletin, 23 May 1939.

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and 1964 – were called off on the understanding, as conveyed from theemployers’ associations by the trade unions, that industry-wide negoti-ations on the apprentices’ claims, which had been in progress before thestrike, would be rapidly resumed after a return to work – and that con-cessions to the strikers’ demands were to be anticipated. In all fivecases, substantial concessions soon materialized.75

Apprentice pay was governed, in federated firms in both engineeringand shipbuilding, by age–wage scales that specified time-rated appren-tice pay as a percentage of the adult craft rate in the same occupation.Those scales, initially imposed locally by employers’ associations asmaximum rates, were converted in the aftermath of the strikes of 1937and 1941 into collectively negotiated, nationally uniform minimumrates. After 1937, union officials pursued claims for higher scale ratesat national level, convoking the special conferences with the sectoralemployers’ association at which they were entitled to raise issues ofindustry-wide import.

Those negotiations led between 1937 and 1970 to an episodicsequence of increases that broadly doubled apprentice scale rates inengineering (Figure 3). The timing of the pay increases aligns moder-ately closely with that of the disputes. The 1939 movement was notfollowed by a pay rise, nor did the scale increases of 1943 and 1969follow a strike. But five pay increases – those of 1937, 1941, 1952, 1960and 1964 – did come after an apprentice movement (Figure 4).76 Withina month (on average) of these movements ending, a national agreementthat increased pay scales for junior males, and in 1937 and 1941 alsoextended the trade unions’ representation rights vis-à-vis apprentices(Table 8).

The importance of apprentice strikes in precipitating those wagerises is underlined by the average of four years and four nationalconferences that had elapsed (in engineering) between the start ofnational negotiations on the unions’ claim for increased youth payand the start of the movement (Table 8). In all five cases an appren-tice strike released a log-jam in national negotiations. Moregenerally, while the interests of apprentices and trade unions over-lapped,77 the overlap was not great enough to permit the apprentices


75. In 1937, the first, Scottish, phase of the strike had led to increases inapprentice pay scales at works and then district levels before the end of thestoppage: CCO memo, 18 May 1937, LAB 10/76, PRO.

76. As the pay data refer to April, pay increases that occurred later in the yeardo not show up in Figures 3 and 4 until the year after.

77. Trade unions are not generally expected to support a demand by a smallminority of the membership (apprentices) for an increase in its pay relative

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 31


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HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 33

HISTORICAL STUDIES IN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 34T

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HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 34

to rely on union officials alone to promote their claims. The lack ofresults from national negotiations for higher age–wage scales in theyears before the 1952 and 1960 strikes was widely attributed amongapprentices to a low priority attached to that goal in official circles.

Other factors may also have contributed to the five payincreases.78 Although in all cases the EEF and the ShipbuildingEmployers’ Federation (SEF) sought to avoid making concessions, insome years a number of their members favoured a pay increase. Suchinclinations were particularly widespread in 1952, when the demand foryouth labour was still strong and the youth population cohort wassmall. An EEF survey of local associations, conducted between thetoken strike and the indefinite strike, found that 33 out of 43 respon-dents favoured a pay increase whereas only 7 opposed it.79 Even on thatoccasion, it took a strike movement to break the resistance of theemployers’ federation. The pattern in engineering was repeated in ship-building, whose national agreements on apprenticeship generallyfollowed engineering ones closely in both timing and content.80

These increases in apprentice wage rates did not necessarily translatedirectly into higher relative earnings and payroll costs. Increases in


to that of other members (journeymen). A convergence of interests wasencouraged in the case of metalworking apprentices by, inter alia, thethreat posed by their low paid, unregulated status to the interests of adultmembers: P. Ryan, ‘Trade Unionism and the Pay of Young Workers’, in P.N. Junankar (ed.), From School to Unemployment? The Labour Market forYoung People (Macmillan: 1987), pp. 119–42.

78. Williams, Recruitment to the Skilled Trades, pp. 155–6, attributed earlypost-war increases in apprentice relative pay to tight youth-labourmarkets, without mentioning apprentice strikes. Her interpretation cannotaccount for further scale increases in the 1960s, when labour marketsslackened as the supply of youth labour increased.

79. Report, ‘Association Views on Pay Increases for Apprentices, Boys andYouth’, March 1952, following the survey distributed with Circular Letter47, 5 March 1952, EEF, A(7)275, MRC. Employer support for a wage risehad probably been increased by the time of the survey by the return ofapprentice militancy, in the shape of the token strike of 7 February and theincreasing prospect of an indefinite stoppage.

80. The exceptions included 1941, when the SEF had recently signed with theCSEU a national agreement on apprentice pay that had to be reopened as aresult of the apprentices’ strike, and 1969, when, for once ‘the tail wagged thedog’ (as an EEF committee had put it in 1960), in that the SEF’s acceptanceof a reduction of the duration of apprenticeship from five to four years andof payment of the adult rate at age 20 forced the EEF to follow suit: EEF,Management Board Report, 27 November 1969, Z67/590(5); Meeting ofNegotiating and Policy Committees, 20 July 1960, A(7)330, MRC.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 35

‘wage drift’ – i.e. the gap between negotiated wage rates and actualearnings, including incentive bonuses81 – benefited apprentices as wellas adults, given that through the 1960s a substantial minority ofapprentices in engineering, and a majority in shipbuilding, receivedoutput-related bonuses (Table 4).82 In engineering, adults gained morefrom the growth of bonus earnings than did apprentices. Relativeapprentice earnings actually declined, albeit only marginally, between1959 and 1968, notwithstanding the 1960 and 1964 scale increases. Ittook the large scale rises of 1969 and the abandonment of piece-workby many employers around that time to move apprentice earningsstrongly towards those of adults and for the efforts of the post-warapprentice strikers finally to bear fruit.83

In sum, the apprentice striker and the union negotiator, the unoffi-cial and the official, generated together a cumulatively large change inthe training-related wage structure of the metalworking sector between1937 and 1970.

The interpretation of apprentice strikes

How should a strike movement among apprentices be understood?This section discusses four sets of factors – political, sociological,economic and industrial relations – in relation to the relevant attributesof the movements, informed by the economics of work-based trainingand bargaining. These factors are then grouped, partly for heuristicpurposes, into two broad interpretations: socio-political andeconomic–IR.


81. E. H. Phelps Brown, ‘Wage Drift’, Economica 29 (1962), pp. 339–56.82. The gap between rates and earnings was reduced in the case of apprentices

by the legal restrictions imposed by the Factory Acts on night shift andovertime work by young workers.

83. The EEF’s surveys of its members put average apprentice hourly earnings(all ages) at 39.1% of those of journeymen in 1959 and 37.5% in 1968:sources as in Table 4. Unpublished data from the New Earnings Survey(NES) indicate a figure of 51.6% for 1974 (including non-federatedemployers, in mechanical and electrical engineering and shipbuilding only,and relative to all adult manual employees). The comparability of the EEFand NES estimates is limited, not least as a result of the removal oftwenty-year-olds from the apprenticeship category in 1970; but, as thatshould have reduced the measured increase relative to the true one, thelarge increase between 1968 and 1974 is unlikely to have resulted fromdifferent definitions and coverage in the two surveys.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 36

Politics

The first set of factors is associated with the period’s politics, bothindustrial and national. The issue is the extent to which the strikers andin particular their leaders were motivated by left-wing political goals,usually involving social and political revolution – and to which thosewho did not share those goals were manipulated by those who did. Thepotential manipulators, in the accounts offered at the time by manyemployers, union officials, politicians and journalists, and by someapprentice leaders too, included the CP and various Trotskyistgroups.84

Evidence of political influence is both fragmentary and poten-tially distorted by the tendency of contemporary commentators to mis-represent the situation to their own advantage, assigning eitheroverwhelming or negligible importance to ‘agitators’ as the source ofconflict.85 The most readily available evidence is also the least reliable:statements made by the individuals involved, particularly their publicutterances. Less readily accessible, but potentially more informative,are the political affiliations, policies and actions of strike leaders andsupporters.

Allegations of the manipulation of young workers by far-left groupswere widely levelled in public by employers in particular. In 1960 themanager of a Manchester factory, trying to keep his drawing-officeapprentices at work, told them ominously that the Glasgow apprenticerepresentatives had travelled down, not on a motor-cycle, but ‘in a bigblack saloon driven by a man over 21’, adding ingenuously, ‘I am notsuggesting that this is the work of the Communist Party, but this allseems very well organised.’86

The internal communications of employers offer potentially morereliable evidence. In 1937 the local engineering employers’ associationdescribed the North East Campaign Committee, one of whose leafletsit forwarded to the EEF, as ‘one of those communistic bodies ofmushroom growth’.87 A less conspiratorial view was offered in private


84. A new twist was provided by the suggestion by Belfast engineeringemployers in 1964 that the dispute had been spread to the city by twoYoung Socialist students from Liverpool University: letter, NorthernIreland EEA to EEF, 26 May 1965, Z64/69(52), MRC.

85. R. Darlington, ‘The Agitator Theory of Strikes’, British UniversitiesIndustrial Relations Association (BUIRA) conference paper, Nottingham,July 2004.

86. Manchester Evening News, 29 April 1960.87. Letter, North East Coast Employers’ Association to EEF, 8 May 1937,

A(7)330, MRC.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 37

in 1941 by a leading Clyde shipbuilder: ‘practically all the agitationseems to be by the younger employees and although this element iscommonly spoken of as “communistic”, I am confident that it onlymeans that natural agitators are taking advantage of this busy time foragitating for increases and improvements’.88

Union officials also made similar allegations, sometimes with unin-tended effects. At a mass meeting of strikers in Edinburgh in 1941 thathad been expected to decide to return to work, a district official made

a very pointed attack on the Chairman of the Apprentices’Committee and criticised those ‘who were stupid enough’ to be ledaway by the advice of the communists. The result was of courseretaliation from the apprentices. Finally, peace was, more or less,restored, but a vote, on resumption pending negotiations, resulted in132 for and 154 against.89

Apprentice strike committees sometimes went out of their way to denypolitical motives and connections – as when the Clyde delegates whosought to rally support in Manchester in 1960 claimed that ‘this is def-initely not communist inspired … we just want a fair increase’.90

Among the less plausible denials was the decision in 1944 by the TyneApprentices’ Guild (TAG) to add the qualifier ‘non-political’ to itstitle, along with the claim by its leaders that it had turned down offersof help from the Militant Workers’ Movement (MWM), a Trotskyistumbrella group.91 The latter statement was contradicted by evidencegiven at the trials of four non-apprentice leaders of the RevolutionaryCommunist Party (RCP), an MWM affiliate, on charges of aiding andabetting an illegal strike by the TAG. The appeal judge noted that allfour defendants had effectively conceded having incited one – withwhich, ironically, they had not been charged. Two ex-leaders of the


88. Letter from Sir Stephen Piggott, John Brown & Co., to Admiral Fraser, 5March 1941, LAB 10/138, PRO.

89. Conciliation Officer (CO) memo, 7 April 1941, LAB 10/422, PRO. ErnestBevin, Minister of Labour, famously denounced the Tyneside strike of1944 as purely political: ‘this is not an industrial dispute. It has beenfomented by a few irresponsible mischief-makers and is flatly contrary tothe advice of the trade unions. It is in short an attempt to use the strikeweapon to coerce the Government at a critical moment of the war’:statement, 29 March 1944, LAB 10/451, PRO.

90. Glasgow Evening Times, 31 May 1939; Manchester Evening News, 29 April1960.

91. CO memo, 14 February 1944, LAB 10/451, PRO; Daily Herald, 3 April1944.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 38

TAG stated that the four had provided advice, facilities and funds forthe organization of the strike, and then tried to redirect the movementtowards the RCP’s campaign for the nationalization of the coalindustry.92

The limits to political motivation in apprentice strikes are suggestedby the evasive actions taken on occasion by strike committees. The1939 apprentice leadership on the Clyde decided not to go ahead witha proposal for demonstrations at Labour Exchanges, as it wanted ‘notto be confused with the political demonstrations taking place at thesame time’.93

Secretive behaviour by apprentice leaders or adult supporters wasoften seen as evidence of far-left involvement. In Manchester in 1964,the press was excluded from a ‘national’ apprentice conference calledby one of two rival strike committees, the Trotskyist-oriented Man-chester Engineering Apprentices’ Direct Action Committee(MEADAC). At the ensuing press conference, Mike Hughes,MEADAC’s nineteen-year-old organizing secretary, appearingnervous, was assisted by an older man, aged around thirty, who refusedto give his name and fielded the ‘sticky’ questions.94 The other strikecommittee, the Communist-oriented National Apprentices’ Wages andConditions Campaign Committee (NAWACCC) behaved similarly. Ata previous delegate meeting, its leader had refused to tell the press hisname, but suggested that communications be addressed to a J. F.O’Shea at an address in Islington, London – which proved to be thedetails of a CP candidate in a recent local council election.95 Theseevasions could have reflected simply fear of misrepresentation in thepress, but on that occasion they aligned with other evidence of left-wing political influence.

Further evidence is provided by the political affiliations of, and thestatements made by, apprentice leaders. The leader of the 1937 Clydestrike committee, eight out of nine members of its 1941 successor


92. LAB 10/451, PRO; Law Report, The Times, 26 September 1944; NewcastleJournal & North Mail, 1 April, 15 June 1944.

93. Evening Times, 31 May 1939. In 1937 the Manchester strike committeehad refused to seat any member of a ‘political organisation’: Fowler, TheFirst Teenagers, p. 61.

94. Confidential Manchester EEA report on Manchester EngineeringApprentices’ Direct Action Committee (MEADAC) national conferenceof 31 October 1964: EEF, Z64/69(52), MRC; Financial Times, 2 November1964.

95. The Week, 8 October 1964.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 39

(CAC), the secretary of the TAG in 1944, and the secretary of the CACin 1952 were members of the Young Communist League (YCL).96 Inthe first phase of the 1937 movement, YCL members encouraged therejection by the Scottish strikers of calls by trade-union officials for anunconditional return to work; in the second phase, they promoted theunofficial national conference whose threat of a national apprenticestrike precipitated victory.97 Strike leaflets put out by the 1939 Clydeand 1944 Tyne strike committees included wider political demands, for‘peace’ (by which was meant the overthrow of the ‘pro-Fascist’ UKgovernment and the adoption of a national alliance with the USSR) in1939 and coal nationalization in 1944, that the CP and the RCP respec-tively were promoting at the time.98

Similar attributes and actions were sometimes visible among adultsupporters. The spread of the 1944 strike within England to Hudders-field alone was associated with the presence of an Independent LabourParty majority on the AEU district committee and a reputedly Trot-skyist district secretary.99 The strongest instance of the often-allegedpolitical manipulation of youth by adults was the Tyneside strike of1944, when the strikers faced opposition from the CP, given Britain’swartime alliance with the USSR,100 but gained support from Trotsky-ists, who opposed the war. The secret services, the police and a Ministry


96. Croucher, Engineers at War, pp. 50, 130; Fishman, The British CommunistParty, pp. 201ff. The Economic League reported to the EEF in 1952 thatEric Park, Jimmy Reid’s successor as secretary of the CAC, was an appren-tice engineering draughtsman, the son of a long-time Communist Party ofGreat Britain (CP) mother, a ‘wearer of very powerful lensed glasses, indi-cating bad sight’ and a Young Communist League (YCL) member: memo,12 March 1952, EEF, A(7)275, MRC.

97. McKinlay, ‘The 1937 Apprentices’ Strike’, SLHSJ, pp. 14–32. 98. Glasgow Evening News, 18 May 1939; NWETEA letter to EEF, 22 May

1939, EEF, A(7)164), MRC; Croucher, Engineers at War, pp. 235ff.99. EEF memo to Ministry of Labour, 5 April 1944, LAB 10/451, PRO;

Croucher, Engineers at War, pp. 235ff.100. The CP’s North East District Committee called for a rapid return to work

and denounced the Militant Workers’ Federation (MWF) for exploiting‘genuine fears about the mines ballot schemes for other ends than thosesought by the apprentices themselves’: Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 1April 1944.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 40

of Labour investigator all concluded that the London-based leaders ofthe RCP had increased apprentice discontent on the Tyne by misrepre-senting the ballot that was to allocate conscripts between the armedforces and the coalmines.101

Political factors undoubtedly accounted also for the proliferation ofyouth and apprentice committees during the four movements in whichthe role of left-wing politics was particularly prominent: those of 1939,1941, 1944 and 1964. The first of these saw, on the Clyde alone, activityby, inter alia, the Glasgow Youth Campaign Committee, the NationalYouth Campaign, the Youth Peace Council and the West ScotlandYouth Pilgrimage for Peace and Freedom, in addition to the strikecommittee itself.102 The aftermath of the 1941 strike saw the creation inEast Lancashire of several secretive local apprentice committees, asso-ciated, according to an engineering employers’ official, with a ‘LeftWing element … very active in attacking our economic system and insupporting the Russians and Communists’.103 The 1964 strike saw theCommunist-oriented NAWACCC and the Trotskyist-orientedMEADAC fight it out for control of the movement. The NAWACCC,formed as a breakaway from MEADAC, launched the indefinite strikeon 2 November 1964. The MEADAC faction opposed the move, pre-dicting a flop and advocating a postponement to March 1965 in orderto increase support.104

These rivalries and manoeuvres brought to the surface the mostlysubmerged attempts of left-wing organizations to promote and steerapprentice discontent. They also show the limitations of those efforts,which, as far as the effectiveness of the movements were concerned,rebounded at least partially on all four of the movements that showedthe clearest political component. The most vivid case was the 1964 one,when overt conflict between the two strike committees reduced support


101. LAB 10/451, PRO.102. EEF, A(7)164, MRC.103. Letter from EEF to Manchester EEA, 25 August 1941, A(7)186, MRC. 104. MEADAC subsequently came up with only a poorly attended ‘national

conference’ at which plans to strike were postponed to May 1965, beforesubsequently being abandoned. MEADAC was described privately bylocal employer representatives as ‘a purely political organisation’composed of ‘Trotskyists’; the National Apprentices Wages and Condi-tions Campaign Committee (NAWACCC) was termed by AEU officials‘communist inspired’: EEF, Z65/68(52), MRC.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 41

in both Manchester and Scotland.105 At least one employer anticipatedbenefits from in-fighting on the left: the deputy director of the Man-chester EEA asked the EEF, ‘do you think we can rely on support fromunion officials with communist leanings when we come to the Trotsky-ists’ effort next March?’106 The extent of left-wing political motivationand factionalism may even have been inversely associated with thescale and success. Of the four with the most salient political attributes– 1939, 1941, 1944 and 1964 – the first and last were the smallest, andthe first and third among the least successful, of the nine movements(Tables 1, 7).

The geography of apprentice strikes suggests that the political stanceof district union organization – a central attribute in the AEU in par-ticular107 – also influenced strike activity by apprentices. At one polestood Glasgow, whose presence in all nine movements, and whose lead-ership of most of them, aligned with its long-established left-wingpolitics, both industrial and municipal.108 At the other pole stood Birm-ingham, another large engineering centre, with its centre-right labourpolitics, whose apprentices never featured in a strike movement. The


105. In Manchester, Mike Hughes, MEADAC chairman, denounced theNAWACCC’s strike call for 2 November 1964, claiming that the call was‘made by a bogus committee set up by disgruntled apprentices, and others,who were removed from our committee two weeks ago … [T]heseelements, members of the Communist Party and supporters of the Pabloitegroup [sic], refused to accept democratic decisions’: The Apprentice, 7September 1964. In Glasgow, Alex Ferry, secretary of an AEU districtwhose officials had hitherto invariably shown sympathy for the apprenticecause, attacked the apprentice who had flown from Manchester to bringout Glasgow apprentices as ‘an agitator from England’: Daily Record, 20November 1964.

106. Letter, 16 November 1964, EEF, Z64/69(52), MRC. The extreme demandsfor apprentice pay and conditions that MEADAC advanced, together withthe weakening of the strike by political in-fighting, paralleled the tacticsand effects of the left-wing organizations, notably the Militant Tendency,Socialist Workers’ Party and Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), thatsought to harness youth discontent on the Youth Training Scheme in the1980s: P. Ryan, ‘Trade Union Policies towards the Youth Training Scheme:Patterns and Causes’, British Journal of Industrial Relations (BJIR) 33:1(1995), pp. 1–33.

107. J. D. Edelstein and M. Warner, Comparative Union Democracy (Allen andUnwin: 1975), pp. 291–4; R. Undy, ‘The Electoral Influence of the Oppo-sition Party in the AUEW Engineering Section’, BJIR 17:1 (1979), pp.19–33.

108. D. Gilbert, ‘Little Moscow and Radical Localities’, in A. Charlesworth, D.Gilbert, A. Randall, H. Southall and C. Wrigley, An Atlas of IndustrialProtest in Britain (Macmillan: 1996), pp. 151–7.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 42

prominence in the annals of apprentice militancy of Manchester beforethe 1950s and the low profile of London throughout are, however, lessreadily explained in terms of local industrial politics.109

Finally, a significant role for political factors might be suggested bythe ‘spontaneity’ of apprentice strikes. As unofficial actions by largelyunorganized workers, the apprentice movements can be seen as purelyspontaneous outbreaks, the manner and timing of whose occurrencewas difficult to predict in advance and remains difficult to explain inretrospect. The ‘spontaneity’ attribute was emphasized by some strikeleaders. John Moore, secretary of the CAC, asked by the Court ofInquiry to identify when the 1941 strike had started, replied, ‘it is hardjust to place when it actually happened … [The apprentices] justseemed to be coming out here and there spontaneously.’ The trivialevents that precipitated some movements, such as the dismissal of anEdinburgh apprentice for stealing a bicycle in 1941, were indeed con-sistent with such an interpretation.110

Moore’s insistence on spontaneity is rendered unreliable by hisposition – that is, facing an official inquiry into an illegal strike that headmitted leading – and by the evidence of prior organization by ad hocapprentice groups. The 1941 movement had been preceded in late 1940in Edinburgh by two apprentice meetings called to discuss lack ofprogress in national official negotiations on junior male pay. Moorehimself stated that the CAC had been in existence since 1937 and evenclaimed that it had restrained a district apprentice meeting fromstriking in January 1941, two months before the movement got underway.111 An important role must therefore be attributed to leadership,


109. The traditional conservatism of the Manchester AEU hampered the localapprentice strikers until the advent of Hugh Scanlon and Eddie Frow asdistrict officials in the 1950s and 1960s: interview with Bob Wright, May1985; Frow and Frow, Manchester’s Big House, pp. 33, 35. The marginal-to-zero role played by London apprentices throughout is perhaps surpris-ing, given the growth of shop steward militancy in West Londonengineering factories from the mid-1930s: Fishman, The BritishCommunist Party, pp. 129ff.

110. Verbatim Proceedings, Court of Inquiry, 15 March 1941, p. 26, LAB10/509; CCO memo, 5 February 1941, LAB 10/422, PRO.

111. James Bachelor, an Edinburgh strike leader, said that apprentice represen-tatives from Glasgow and Edinburgh had communicated over whether thepay demand should be 3d. or 4d. (1.25 or 1.67p) per hour: Verbatim Pro-ceedings, Court of Inquiry, 15–16 March 1941, pp. 43, 109, LAB 10/509,PRO. Evidence of apprentice organization in the months before the strikesis also visible for 1937, 1944, 1952, 1960 and 1964. The token strikes thatpreceded the last three of these movements also suggest prior organization.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 43

and to the politically committed individuals who took that on, even instrike movements as apparently ‘spontaneous’ as those by appren-tices.112 At the same time, the limits to the role of political factors inapprentice strikes can be seen in the predominance of the economicover the political in strike demands, and in the disappearance of themovements after 1964, despite the wider upsurge of left-wing politicsand the continuing organizational strength of the CP in engineering.113

Social and cultural factors

An additional source of apprentice activism may be located in thesocializing functions of apprenticeship. Ideally, apprenticeship insertsyoung people into the adult world gradually rather than abruptly, whilerespecting their developmental needs.114 This function is less pro-nounced nowadays than it was during the period when apprenticeshipstypically began between fourteen and sixteen years of age, lasted five ormore years, and ended on the apprentice’s twenty-first birthday withthe attainment of the legal age of majority.115

The normative content of apprenticeship, as expressed traditionallyin indentures, involved the exchange of obedience and loyalty by theapprentice for protection and training by the employer. Acting in locoparentis, employers resisted the intervention of third parties – notably


112. J. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism andLong Waves (Routledge: 1998), pp. 34ff.; Darlington, ‘The AgitatorTheory’.

113. J. McIlroy, ‘“Every Factory our Fortress”: Communist Party WorkplaceBranches in a Time of Militancy, 1956–79, Part 1: History, Politics, Topog-raphy’, HSIR 10 (Autumn 2000), pp. 99–139.

114. Apprenticeship may be contrasted both to full-time post-compulsoryschooling, which segregates youth from the adult world, and to regularyouth employment, which tends to ignore the developmental needs ofyouth. Musgrove, Youth and the Social Order, who prized the early assimi-lation of youth into adult life, might therefore have been expected to favourapprenticeship, but he viewed it instead as quasi-slavery and advocated earlyand unregulated youth employment instead. By contrast, P. Garonna and P.Ryan, ‘The Regulation and Deregulation of Youth Economic Activity’, in P.Ryan, P. Garonna and R. C. Edwards (eds), The Problem of Youth: The Reg-ulation of Youth Employment and Training in Advanced Economies(Macmillan: 1991), pp. 25–81, see apprenticeship as a potential vehicle forthe ‘regulated inclusion’ of youth in the labour market.

115. In contemporary Britain, what is left of apprenticeship rarely lasts morethan three years and no direct link remains between completion and attain-ment of the age of majority, which was reduced from 21 to 18 years in 1970.

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trade unions – in their ‘privileged’ relationship with their apprentices.116

A corollary was the paternalism and even affection that someemployers showed towards their apprentices, as well as the hostilitythat the apprentice strike, with its explicit disobedience, evoked in manyemployers, especially when the strikers were indentured.

The socialization of the apprentice involved a further authorityfigure: the craft-worker, as organized by trade-unionism. The relevantnorms – involving craft skill, collective organization and solidarity –diverged from those prized by employers. The journeymen alongsidewhom the apprentices worked, and on whom their learning typicallydepended, drew them into the community of adult craft-workers, usingrituals that expressed the subordination of the apprentice to, and eventhe apprentice’s humiliation by, the adult craft-worker.117 From thisperspective, apprentice strikes appear as a form of self-socialization byyouth, influenced by the values and practices of the labour movement.The executive committees, delegate conferences and mass meetingsused by the apprentices resembled their counterparts in adult trade-unionism.118

Effective apprentice self-socialization is suggested by the subsequentcareers of several of the leaders of the movements.119 For all that, theprocess was far from smooth. In adult disputes, notably the 1922 engi-neering lockout, apprentices often faced competing claims on theirloyalty from employers and trade unions.120 The apprentice strikes


116. ‘There should be no interference between the employer and the apprenticeor boy which would detract from the sense of responsibility on the onehand and the sense of service and discipline on the other hand’: note of aSpecial General Meeting, 28 October 1937, NWETEA minute book,MLG.

117. A third influence on the socialization of the apprentice was parentalauthority. Many apprentices were the sons of metalworking journeymen,often employed at the same works. The vast majority of apprentices livedin the parental household. Many contributed their earnings to thehousehold purse in return for pocket money. There is little evidence oneither the attitude of parents to apprentice strikes, including their responseto the competing claims of the employer, the trade union and the strikecommittee on their sons, or their influence on their sons’ actions.

118. The CAC may have been inspired by the unofficial Clyde Workers’Committee of the First World War: J. Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’Movement (Allen and Unwin: 1973), pp. 68, 80, passim.

119. The apprentice leaders who went on to prominence as adults, mostly astrade-union officials and left-wing political leaders, included Jimmy Reidand, reputedly, Alex Ferguson in Glasgow, and Eddie Frow, Bob Wrightand Dick Nettleton in Manchester.

120. EEF, M(19), MRC.

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themselves involved explicit disobedience towards adult authority, inthe shape of the employer, and sometimes of the trade-union officialand the parent too, when refusing instructions to return to work.

More specifically, the strikes evoke misbehaviour by pre-industrialapprentices, including absence from work, skylarking and rioting onthe Shrove Tuesday apprentice ‘holiday’.121 The Shrove Tuesdaytradition appears to have carried over to industrial apprenticeship insome districts, primarily in Lancashire. The efforts of employers tosuppress it had had limited success.122 Dick Nettleton, a leader of the1941 strike, recalled that ‘in Manchester there was a habit amongapprentices of leaving the factory on Shrove Tuesday each year to gohome. It was regarded more or less as a lark. The management tried tostop it but not seriously, though, and the older workers egged us on.’123

One of his peers linked apprentice horseplay in Manchester to the uni-versity students’ Rag Day: ‘there was the Shrove Tuesday tradition ofwalking out ... the craftsmen would hammer us [the apprentices] out …we’d go and march against the students, taking oily rags with us ... itwasn’t “dear brothers” … if they [the students] didn’t come out, we’dgo and get them’.124 Such practices were not confined to Manchester.In 1950, apprentices at a vehicle factory in Leyland, Lancashire, left


121. ‘The day was usually kept as a holiday; games of football were common,together with throwing at cocks, and all sorts of horseplay took place inschools, universities and among apprentices’: Encyclopaedia Britannica(1970 edn), Vol. 20, p. 458. Absence from work on Shrove Tuesday hadimplicitly been licensed, to the extent that employers acquiesced in appren-tices’ absence from work.

122. In 1905 the Manchester EEA printed for members’ use a notice, headed‘Shrove Tuesday Holiday: Apprentices’, stating that ‘it has been decided… that for the future the above holiday will not be allowed and that anyapprentices or boys absenting themselves from these works on that daywill render themselves liable to summary punishment’ (original emphasis):EEF, A(7)32, MRC.

123. Leeson, Strike, p. 159. The 1941 strike was termed a ‘holiday’ by thestrikers in Manchester, probably to reduce the manifest threat of legal pro-ceedings, but possibly also in cognisance of regional apprentice traditions.

124. Interview with Bob Wright, May 1985. Manchester University studentshave held their Rag Day on Shrove Tuesday since at least the 1940s, whichin conjunction with the apprentice ‘holiday’ meant an annual ‘afternoonof fun’ in the city: Mike Morris, e-mail of 7 February 2003, ‘Eng-Manchester-L Archives’ pages, RootsWeb.com website.

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work at 10 a.m. on Shrove Tuesday, accompanied by ritual teasing and‘blacking’ by adult workers.125

The continuation of Shrove Tuesday customs into post-war indus-trial Lancashire suggests that the ‘stripping away’ of the socialfunctions of apprenticeship, in train for over two hundred years,continued into the modern period.126 The extent of these practicesduring the period, even in Lancashire, remains unclear.127 No sign ofthem is visible for the Clyde, where the combination of Presbyterianismand left-wing politics may have left little space for pre-Lenten revelling,but they may well have contributed to apprentice militancy in Man-chester. Nettleton recalled ‘a general tradition of frivolity aboutapprentice strikes’, which he linked directly to Shrove Tuesday antics.128

The seasonality of apprentice strikes, which tended to start in latewinter or spring, also suggests a link to Shrove Tuesday customs, but asnone of the movements started on the day itself and as the number of


125. The situation was revealed by an apprentice’s appeal against denial ofNational Insurance (NI) benefit for a finger injury. The NI Commissionernoted that ‘it is a custom long established, though in abeyance during thewar years, for apprentices to run out from work at 10 o’clock in themorning on Shrove Tuesday and remain away for the rest of the day. It isa part of the custom that, before the apprentices run out, the older mentease them, and apparently “blacking” is included in the ritual. It seemsthat it is part of the custom for the apprentices to try to evade beingblacked, and it was while endeavouring to escape this ordeal at about 9.50am that the claimant fell and injured his finger … He was skylarking, orat any rate he was the victim of skylarking by others.’ The Commissionerallowed the apprentice’s appeal, holding that his injury had indeedoccurred while he was performing the job of an apprentice: PIN 62/348,PRO.

126. The social functions of apprenticeship had previously included thecurbing of youth marriage and fertility, and entitlement to poor relief: K.D. M. Snell, ‘The Apprenticeship System in British History: The Frag-mentation of a Cultural Institution’, History of Education 25 (1996), pp.303–21.

127. An ex-apprentice who had participated in the 1964 strike at Metropolitan-Vickers (by then Associated Electrical Industries (AEI)) in Manchesterrecalled no such activities on Shrove Tuesday: interview with Brian Peat, 3July 2004. Nor do such traditions feature in a study of craft engineering inRochdale: R. Penn, Skilled Workers in the Class Structure (CambridgeUniversity Press: 1984).

128. Leeson, Strike, p. 159.

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movements was not large, no link can be inferred statistically.129 Theseasonal pattern may have reflected simply the release of hibernallysuppressed youth energies.

A further attribute of the strike movements that suggests a role forsocial and cultural factors was the exuberance shown by participants,both within factories and in public. One leader in the Manchester arearecalled the events of 1937–41: ‘talk about flying pickets … [It was] “dep-utations”. We went by bicycle. I remember walking into the factory …“we are the apprentices” … we’d bring the lads out’.130 Similarly, a par-ticipant in the 1964 strike at Metropolitan-Vickers/AEI described thestrikers as jumping across desks in the apprentice school and runningthrough the factory, cheered on by adult workers as they called out otherapprentices.131 Marches and rallies featured prominently, as in the eventsoutside the same factory in 1960 that were described in the introduction.At the start of the 1937 movement on the Clyde, the press reported that‘the youths spent the time today in playing football and parading thestreets’.132 In Sheffield in 1952, apprentices marched through the citycentre chanting ‘it’s not a question of greed, £1 is what we need’, whiletheir Glasgow counterparts paraded to the anthem ‘one, two, three, four,we want one pound more’.133

The public displays that characterized apprentice strikes resembledthose during ‘strikes’ by schoolchildren in 1911 and university studentsin the 1960s and 1970s.134 There may be a further, deeper resemblance


129. Five of the nine movements – those of 1937 and 1941–60 – started in latewinter or spring, less than six weeks after Shrove Tuesday. The preliminarytoken strikes of 1952 and 1960 occurred two weeks and one week respec-tively before Shrove Tuesday. Three of the four movements that started atother times of the year were prompted by an exogenous shock: the intro-duction of NI contributions, post-war wage cuts, and the introduction ofmilitary conscription, in 1912, 1921 and 1939 respectively. Principaldisputes involving adult employees showed by contrast little seasonalityduring 1946–73, beyond slight biases to both spring and autumn: Durcanet al., Strikes in Post-War Britain, p. 201.

130. Interview with Bob Wright, May 1985.131. Interview with Brian Peat, July 2004. The actions of the adult workers

resembled those in the Shrove Tuesday practices in the Leyland factory(see n. 125 above).

132. Evening Citizen, 31 March 1937.133. Daily Worker, 11 March 1952. Ministry of Labour memo, 17 March 1952,

LAB 482/1952, PRO.134. D. Marson, Children’s Strikes in 1911 (History Workshop, Oxford: 1973);

D. Jacks, Student Politics and Higher Education (Lawrence and Wishart:1975), pp. 86–96; D. L. Westby, The Clouded Vision: The StudentMovement in the United States in the 1960s (Associated University Presses,Cranbury, NJ: 1976), pp. 136–53.

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between the two types of ‘strike’: a lack of economic substance, in thesense of involving no credible threat of economic damage to one’sopponent. When employers invest in the skills of their apprentices, thevalue of the apprentices’ output during training (net of training costs)is by definition less than the payroll cost of their services to theemployer. Any withdrawal of the apprentices’ services would thenimpose no immediate economic damage on the employer: profits wouldactually increase, in the short term at least. For the apprentices, a strikewould mean not only an immediate loss of pay but also reducedlearning of skills.135 Under such conditions, a strike threat by appren-tices would not be economically credible. It would resemble one under-taken by full-time students against an educational institution in that,while it might cause disruption and undesirable publicity, it wouldimpose no serious economic damage.136 If so, the strike movementsmight be viewed as simply youth rampages, lacking significance froman industrial relations or an economics standpoint.

An interpretation of apprentice strikes in terms of ‘no economicdamage’ is consistent under particular conditions with the economicsof work-based training. In imperfectly competitive occupational labourmarkets for skilled workers, employers who possess market power asbuyers of labour are predicted to finance, albeit only in part, as well asto provide, apprenticeship training.137 Bargaining theory predicts that


135. The only damage that would face the employer would be a reduction in itsskill supplies in the long term, and then only to the extent that the strikerslearn less or leave the firm as a result of the dispute.

136. A. Muthoo, Bargaining Theory (Cambridge University Press: 1999), pp.9–40. Student groups that seek to influence university policy have usuallygone beyond simply boycotting lectures and classes, and used sit-ins, occu-pations and even violence in order to exert serious pressure on universityadministrators: Jacks, Student Politics and Westby, The Clouded Vision.

137. M. Stevens, ‘A Theoretical Model of On-the-Job Training with ImperfectCompetition’, Oxford Economic Papers 46 (1994), pp. 537–62; D.Acemoglu and J.-S. Pischke, ‘Beyond Becker: Training in ImperfectLabour Markets’, Economic Journal 109 (1999), pp. F112–42. Thesemodels of monopsony power implicitly (but not necessarily plausibly)assume that labour markets for trainees and unskilled workers are morecompetitive than those for skilled workers. Models of perfectly competi-tive markets also predict that employers will provide apprenticeshiptraining, but that they will refuse to finance it, even in part: G. S. Becker,Human Capital (University of Chicago Press, New York: 1964), ch. 2. Asapprentice pay is then lower, an apprentice strike costs the apprentice less,in terms of foregone pay, and reduces the employer’s payroll costs by less,than in the presence of monopsony power, but it still imposes no signifi-cant damage on the employer.

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the employer will then remain unmoved, on economic grounds at least,by any threatened suspension of the ‘services’ of its apprentices, as anapprentice strike would hurt the apprentice but not the employer, in theshort term at least.138 In such circumstances apprentice strikes would beprimarily non-economic phenomena. The resistance of employers toapprentice strikes might then result not from any anticipation ofserious economic damage but rather from objecting to youth disloyaltyand disobedience.

The evidence does indeed suggest that in particular respects and cir-cumstances apprentice strikes did little or no damage to employers. Insome cases the lack of damage to production was intrinsic: e.g. whenthe time lost would have been entirely spent off the job, in a companytraining school or a technical college – as in the case of the youngestapprentice strikers at Metropolitan-Vickers in 1964, who spent theirfirst year in the firm’s apprentice school. Nor was the loss of the on-the-job services of younger apprentices, with their limited skills, likely tohave affected output significantly. The brevity of participation by manyapprentices also limited the effect on production. Even in the face ofprolonged participation by older and more productive apprentices,employers might limit the damage by requiring adult journeymen to dothe work that the apprentice strikers would otherwise have done.

Apprentice strikes might well be expected not to have caused seriousdamage. A press report on the one at the Fairfields shipyard on theClyde in 1966 stated that ‘neither the number of boys nor the sum ofmoney is substantial. In most companies or industries a strike of 130apprentices would provide more amusement than concern. It would beexcused as a youthful gesture and the company or industry wouldeasily survive the young men’s cat-calls and placard protests’.139


138. The Nash solution to the standard bargaining problem, in which twoagents negotiate the division of a joint surplus, defined in relation to theiroutcomes if they fail to agree (launch a dispute), sees each party’s sharerise with how well off it would be in the event of failure to agree. Were anapprentice strike to impose no damage on an employer, the employerwould then appropriate the entire surplus and the strike threat would benon-credible: Muthoo, Bargaining Theory. An apprentice strike might alsoinvolve little economic loss for apprentices themselves, to the extent thatlow pay and access to parental support cushions the effect on theirincomes, but that would remain a secondary consideration were theeconomic effect on the employer negligible.

139. Glasgow Herald, 18 November 1966. Ironically, the reporter went on toclaim that in the company’s precarious financial condition even an appren-tice strike could cause serious damage.

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The key issue is the effect of the strikes on production. Evidence onthat is unfortunately confined largely to qualitative observations,whose veracity is often undermined by the interested status of theobserver.140 A potential exception is the nuanced account provided bythe Manchester AEU district secretary ten days into the 1952 strike: ‘itis difficult to assess the effect of the strike on production … In manyfirms the full effect would not be felt for some time … Some of thestrikers, who normally make small components, will not be seriouslymissed until existing stocks of the components are used up’.141 The ageprofile of the apprentice strikers was potentially important for theeffect on production, as the damage done to the employer could beexpected to rise with the apprentice’s length of service. The evidence onthis is particularly thin. Some reports claimed that it was the younger,and less productive, apprentices who were the more prone to take part,but those reports may also have been filtered through the economicinterests of the employers affected.142

Limited economic damage is also suggested, paradoxically, by thelong duration of the disputes. When serious damage is involved, theparties have an incentive to settle quickly. The fact that the averageapprentice movement went on for more than five weeks (Table 1,above) suggests that the economic pressure to settle was less thanintense for both parties to the dispute. Most disputes involving adultsproved shorter-lived.143

Finally, there is the indulgence with which some employersresponded to the strikes. Managers frequently referred paternally to thestrikers as ‘lads’ and ‘boys’.144 Some of their actions evinced the same


140. Thus the Clyde shipbuilders’ responses to the 1941 strike simultaneouslyemphasized and played down the gravity of the situation. One of its pressstatements announced that ‘the majority of those apprentices involved arejunior boys, not eligible for military service’, while also declaring that‘their stoppage very seriously impairs important war production’.Members were encouraged to telegraph the Admiralty with the claim thatthe strikes were holding up war production: CSA Circular Letter 98, 8March 1941; minute book, 13 March 1941, MLG.

141. Manchester Guardian, 20 March 1952. 142. When more than 200 apprentices walked out at a Teesside yard in April 1944,

those who stayed at work were said by the firm to be ‘the older, more respon-sible type of apprentice’: Newcastle Journal & North Mail, 1 April 1944.

143. More than three-quarters of principal disputes in the economy as a wholeended within the thirty-eight calendar-day average duration of an appren-tice movement: Durcan et al., Strikes in Post-War Britain, p. 208.

144. Thus a Greenock shipbuilder reported during the 1921 movement that,‘with the exception of a few lads’, all of its strikers had returned to work:NWETEA Circular Letter 21-408, 11 October 1921, MLG.

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spirit. At Metropolitan-Vickers in 1937, after a parade inside thefactory by 1,200 apprentices, reluctant to go out for fear of breakingtheir indentures, the factory manager led them to an impromptu eventin the canteen, comprising refreshments and a ‘sing song’, ‘preferringnot to send the boys back into the workshops in their excited frame ofmind’.145 Even the decision in 1952 by the management of Rollo andGrayson, a Birkenhead ship-repairer, to turn its fire hoses onto acolumn of apprentice strikers from other firms can be viewed in suchterms.146 These responses suggest that an apprentice strike could fail toprovoke managerial concern, on economic grounds at least.

These attributes indicate the importance of social and culturalfactors in the generation of apprentice activism. Together with itspolitical attributes, they suggest a socio-political interpretation, withthe movements viewed, akin to student strikes, as outbursts of politicalactivism and youthful exuberance – put crudely, as politics and fun.The implication would then be that the apprentice movements, insteadof being treated as part of the history of industrial conflict, should beexcluded from it, as student strikes have – entirely reasonably – been.

Collective organization and economic damage

The second interpretation unites industrial relations and economicaspects. The movements are viewed in terms of collective organization,industrial conflict and divergent economic interests. The evidence infavour of such an interpretation starts with the qualitative attributes ofthe strikes – their organization, procedural status, and outcomes – asoutlined in the previous section.

A key issue is the potential emptiness of an apprentice strike fromthe economic standpoint, which was cited above as consistent with apurely socio-political interpretation. That property, however, is notuniversal. It does not apply when the role of the apprentice is closer toproduction worker than to full-time student and, in particular, whenemployers exploit apprentices, paying them at the margin less than thevalue of their net output (marginal value product).147 Sufficient condi-tions for that outcome are, first, that employers possess market(monopsony) power over apprentices and, second, that they possess


145. Manchester Guardian, 17 September 1937; Leeson, Strike, p. 159.146. Daily Worker, 18 March 1952.147. Exploitation is defined here in neoclassical rather than in Marxist terms.

As Marxist analysis sees all wage labour as exploited, it offers no insightinto the specific position of apprentices.

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more market power over apprentices than over skilled employees.148

Employers then have an incentive to substitute production work forlearning during the apprenticeship – e.g. by limiting apprentices to par-ticular production tasks rather than giving them an all-round training.As unit labour costs (payroll costs per unit of output) are then lower forapprentices than for other employees, including skilled adults, appren-tices appeal to employers as ‘cheap labour’. The apprentice strike threatbecomes economically credible, as a prospective source of economicdamage to employers.149

Such an interpretation was advanced by the leaders of the 1937movement, who claimed that

in many cases the workshops are run by the employment of a greaternumber of apprentices than journeymen ... [W]e frequently findourselves unable to get secure or permanent employment on com-pletion of our apprenticeship. When we finish our apprenticeshipand qualify for a higher rate of pay we are too often dismissed andreplaced by juniors. The employers use this method to obtain cheaplabour … this is exploitation of boy labour.150


148. The potential sources of monopsony power over apprentices include invol-untary unemployment, employer collusion, asymmetric informationabout training content, and low collective organization and bargainingcoverage: Ryan, ‘Training Quality and Trainee Exploitation’; J. M.Malcomson, J. W. Maw and B. McCormick, ‘General Training by Firms,Apprentice Contracts and Public Policy’, European Economic Review 47(2003), pp. 197–227. Although recent models mostly assume that buyerpower applies only to skilled workers, it was probably greater for traineesin the sector and period discussed here.

149. The ‘exploitation’ of apprentice labour may be seen as applying not to theapprenticeship contract as a whole but only to its later stages, i.e. to seniorapprentices, whose pay can be held below their marginal value product inorder for the apprentice to repay within the contract period the employer’sinvestment in training during its early stages: M. Stevens, ‘The EconomicAnalysis of Apprenticeship’, paper to Colloquium on Skills and Training,Centre for History and Economics, King’s College Cambridge, July 1994;R. A. Hart, ‘General Human Capital and Employment Adjustment in theGreat Depression: Apprentices and Journeymen in UK Engineering’:Oxford Economic Papers, forthcoming. The difference between the twointerpretations is not important for this analysis. Both view senior appren-tices as being paid less than their marginal value product, and strikes thatinvolve them primarily as having economic leverage.

150.The Clyde Apprentice, no. 1, undated, 1937, EEF, A(7)111, MRC.

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Several attributes of apprenticeship training and apprentice strikessuggest the relevance of such an interpretation to inter-war metalwork-ing apprenticeship: the prevalence of informal contracts, of trainingprogrammes limited to informal on-the-job instruction in practicalskills, of high apprentice–journeyman ratios,151 and of piece-workbonus systems that paid apprentices less than journeymen for givenoutput (not just less pay for less output). Some metalworkingemployers did provide high-quality training, investing in rather thanexploiting their apprentices, but they were in the minority. In 1925, only11% of metalworking firms both employed apprentices and gave thempaid time off for technical education, and only 2% had a works trainingcentre or offered technical courses to apprentices at the workplace.152

Most employers opted to deskill craft work and cheapen labour wherepossible, with apprenticeship as a convenient vehicle.153 The substanceof the ‘cheap labour’ charge was even conceded privately by someemployers.154

Labour-market conditions between the wars were consistent withwidespread power for buyers of apprentice labour. Until 1937 appren-tice wage rates were determined locally and unilaterally by employers.In both sectors, local employers’ associations recommended maximumapprentice age–wage scales. The scale rates were not only low; manyfirms paid their apprentices less – notably on Clydeside, despite its


151. MacFarlane Engineering Co., Cathcart, which refused to take back 30 ofits 60 striking apprentices after the 1937 strike, had previously employed102 apprentices for only 25 journeymen. The trade unions’ concern toensure the reinstatement of the apprentice strikers proved correspondinglymuted in this instance: CO and CCO memos, 6, 11 and 19 May 1937, LAB10/76, PRO.

152. Ministry of Labour, Report of an Inquiry, Vol. 6, pp. 9, 56; Vol. 7, pp. 108,110. As such practices were more common in large than in small firms, theshare of apprentices covered by them was undoubtedly higher than theshare of employers offering them.

153. J. Zeitlin, ‘The Labour Strategies of British Engineering Employers,1890–1922’, in H. Gospel and C. Littler (eds), Management Strategies andIndustrial Relations (Heinemann: 1983), pp. 25–54; J. Zeitlin, ‘TheTriumph of Adversarial Bargaining: Industrial Relations in British Engi-neering, 1880–1939’, Politics and Society 18 (1990), pp. 405–26.

154. According to the manager of a Birkenhead marine engineering firm,‘many employers are using apprentices as a form of cheap labour at thepresent time, evading all responsibility in respect of the boys’ training’:Subcommittee on Apprentices and Young Persons, verbatim report ofmeeting of 7 December 1933, p. 4, EEF, A(12)1, MRC.

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potentially competitive youth labour market.155 Local associationsreduced competition for apprentice labour still further by discouragingmembers from recruiting each other’s apprentices.156

In the war and post-war years, the scope for the exploitation ofapprentice labour fell, with the arrival of full employment, collectivelybargained floors to apprentice pay and the extension of day-release fortechnical education.157 Nevertheless, piece-work payment remainedwidespread, particularly for senior apprentices (Table 4, above). Tradeunions attacked the continuing incentive to exploit apprentice labour,158


155. The CSA adopted in March 1921 maximum apprentice time-rates ‘beyondwhich firms were not to go but firms were free to arrange lower rates ifthey so desired’. Its 1924 survey found that ‘a large majority of firms werepaying below the maximum rates recommended’; its 1933 survey showedlittle change. In March 1937, just before the start of the strike movement,the average rate paid to third-year apprentice shipwrights by nine CSAmembers was 5s. 9d. (28.75p), only 28.6% of the maximum rate of £1 0s.0¾d. (£1.003p) per week: CSA, TD 241/12/231, MLG.

156. Just before the start of the 1937 movement, the NWETEA, followingnormal practice, circulated the names of two apprentice welders who ‘haveleft the employment of the Fairfield Shipbuilding and EngineeringCompany without completing their apprenticeship’, asking members:‘kindly keep the names prominently before you in the event of any of theapprentices applying to you for employment’: NWETEA Circular Letter44, 10 March 1937, MLG. The practice was initially applied to all theapprentices who walked out, but soon discontinued in view of the largenumbers involved.

157. Under the 1947 Recruitment and Training of Juveniles for the Engineer-ing Industry agreement, the EEF recommended that member firms givepaid release for one day of technical education a week to all apprenticesaged less than 18. By 1953–54, 46.2% of male apprentices and employeesaged less than 18 in metalworking and metal manufacture received dayrelease or block release: Technical Education, Cmnd 9703 (1956), pp. 18,29.

158. Shipbuilding unions complained regularly to the SEF in the 1950s thatpiece-working apprentices were paid lower piece-prices than were adults –i.e. that apprentices earned less than adults not just because they producedless, but also because they earned less even when producing the sameoutput – which encouraged employers to favour apprentice over adultlabour on tasks that both could perform. The national negotiations asso-ciated with the 1960 movement saw union officials attack the deductionsfrom standard piece-work prices that were applied to apprentices as ‘verylargely reimburs[ing] employers for the whole cost of training thoseapprentices’. They threatened to press for their abolition unless the SEFgave a pay increase to piece-working as well as time-rated apprentices:SEF, Circular Letter 112/60, 17 June 1960, SNRA/4831(a6), NMM.

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which retained its appeal to many employers until the IndustrialTraining Boards (ITBs) improved training standards after 1964.159

Turning to the strikes themselves, the evidence suggests that they didimpose economic damage on employers, albeit only in certain respectsand under particular conditions. Although no firm appears to havebeen shut down on account of a strike by apprentices alone, there isevidence of damage to output and profits, especially when seniorapprentices were extensively involved and when the strikers enjoyedactive support from adult craft-workers. The Manchester AEU districtsecretary cited above went on to note the ways in which he expected the1952 strike to hurt employers:

one immediate result … was that adult engineers in many caseswould have to be paid a man’s wage for doing an apprentice’s work… The absence of older apprentices, whose work is often vital toproduction, will be felt more acutely ... Some strikers claim that themen at their works are refusing to do apprentices’ tasks as anindirect way of supporting the strike.160

Adverse effects on output appear to have been particularly marked inthe 1941 and 1944 disputes, two large-scale events that held up urgentwar production and galvanized government intervention – in 1941 witha Court of Inquiry, whose institution, in the face of employer opposi-tion, the government justified with the claim that ‘essential governmentwork was delayed by these stoppages’.161 Less dramatic but still sub-stantial effects were reported for some of the peacetime movements. In1937, Babcock and Wilcox, Dumbarton, stated to its local association,without obvious reason to exaggerate, that ‘the output from their WestFactory had suffered materially on account of the absence of theapprentices on strike and had now become entirely unbalanced; that itwas useless to continue working the men on overtime and piling upcomponents while no corresponding components were being producedby the apprentices’ and that the firm had stopped all overtime working


159. P. Senker, Training in a Cold Climate (Science Policy Research Unit, Uni-versity of Sussex: 1991); D. W. Marsden and P. Ryan, ‘Initial Training,Labour Market Structure and Public Policy: Intermediate Skills in Britishand German industry’, in P. Ryan (ed.), International Comparisons ofVocational Education and Training for Intermediate Skills (Falmer Press:1991), pp. 251–85.

160. Manchester Guardian, 20 March 1952.161. Ministry of Labour Gazette, June 1941, p. 117.

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‘until the apprentices changed their attitude or production becamebalanced’.162

In some cases, the effect of the strike on production was reported tohave grown as it progressed. On the sixteenth and last day of the 1939strike the Manchester press reported that ‘the absence of apprenticelabour was beginning to have its effect on the output of various estab-lishments’; on the tenth day of the 1952 strike, that ‘the effect of thestrike is now gradually being felt in north-west arms and exportfactories, where processes, often highly skilled, which are done byapprentices, are being neglected’.163 By contrast, Clyde employersreported declining effects on production during the 1937 strike, as workwas progressively reorganized and sympathetic blacking by adultswaned.164

The participation of older apprentices, whose unit labour cost maybe taken to be the lowest (i.e. output highest relative to pay) amongapprentices, was particularly damaging to employers. The AEU districtsecretary’s assertion (above) of the particular importance of the olderapprentices in Manchester in 1952 had probably applied in 1941 aswell, when the strongest sense of grievance was reported for the olderapprentices, many of whom were required at the time to supervise andtrain dilutees who were not only being paid more than them but werealso mostly female.165

As the AEU official suggested, the damage done to employers by anapprentice strike appears to have depended on the reactions of adultemployees, whose services employers often sought to use to offset thestrike’s effects on production. The outstanding case of adult supportwas the district-wide one-day sympathy strike on the Clyde on 16 April1937, and the indefinite overtime ban that accompanied it. Thesympathy strike was supported by only half the district’s adult metal-working workforce, but even that tally indicated considerable supportfor the apprentices’ cause.166 Sympathy action by adults raised the pos-


162. NWETEA minute book, 7 May 1937, MLG. 163. Manchester Evening News, 3 June 1939, 20 March 1952. 164. McKinlay, ‘From Industrial Serf to Wage-Labourer’, IRSH.165. According to Sir Stephen Piggott of John Brown & Co., Clydebank, ‘the

discontent among the apprentices appears to arise through women, aftera few weeks’ training, receiving the full tradesman’s rates, whereas themost advanced apprentices, such as the fifth year, receive approximatelyhalf the tradesman’s rate’: letter to Admiral Fraser, 5 March 1941, LAB10/138, PRO.

166. The sympathy strikers accounted for 58% of adult employment in thedistrict in engineering and 47% in shipbuilding: EEF, A(7)138, MRC;CSA minute book, 22 April 1937, MLG.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 57

sibility of shutting down a factory, thereby increasing the leverageexerted on the employer. In Glasgow in both 1952 and 1960, the disci-plining of apprentices who had joined the initial token strike inducedsome adults to strike in sympathy. In 1952 one firm shut down as aresult.167

Adult employees who stayed at work might refuse to do ‘apprenticework’, which they often blacked at works level, with the encouragementof shop stewards and even district officials. Such actions directlyincreased the cost to the employer and threatened to widen the disputeshould the employer punish those involved.168 Following the call in1937 by the Clyde district committee of the CSEU for the blacking ofapprentice work, ‘several firms … reported that their journeymenengineers had refused to undertake work which normally would havebeen done by apprentices and that the shop stewards had intimatedthat if any man was dismissed in consequence of a refusal to do suchwork, all the men in the shop would be taken out’.169 Further adultoptions included pressing blackleg apprentices to join the strike,170 andimposing levies on union members or holding collections in aid of theapprentice strike fund, as in Manchester in 1952.171

The economic effects of an apprentice strike depended also on theemployers’ responses. Strong reactions might have been expected, giventhe historical willingness of the EEF to organize lockouts of entire cat-egories of employee and the affront posed by apprentice indiscipline. Inpractice, although individual employers often reacted dismissively to


167. In 1952, adults walked out in sympathy at two firms; in 1960, at sixshipyards and the Singer works: Evening Citizen, 8 February 1952;Tuckett, The Blacksmiths’ History, p. 354.

168. For example, apprentice work was blacked in at least one firm in Aberdeenin 1952 and 1960, Glasgow in 1952 and Manchester in 1964; non-strikingapprentices were blacked in Oldham in 1952 and Aberdeen and Sheffieldin 1960: EEF, A(7)275, A(7)330, Z64/69(52), MRC. Three works-levelstrikes by adult employees in response to instructions by their employersto do the work of striking apprentices were reported in Clydeside engi-neering in 1952: Daily Worker, 22 March 1952.

169. NWETEA minute book, 21 April 1937, MLG.170. In 1960, Hall Russell & Co., Aberdeen, 83% of whose 206 apprentices were

on strike, reported that an attempt by an apprentice caulker to restartwork had been defeated by journeymen boilermakers, who had variouslyblacked his work and gone on strike themselves until he went out again.Pressed by a shop steward, the apprentice did not return after lunch: EEFA(7)330, MRC. Adults also struck against non-striking apprentices at aScottish firm in 1952: Daily Worker, 17 March 1952.

171. Daily Worker, 18 March 1952.

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apprentice-strike threats, employers’ associations proceeded cautiouslyonce an apprentice movement got underway, fearful of extending itand, in particular, of provoking sympathy action by adults. Theytypically advised members to write to the apprentices’ parents, makingominous but imprecise threats, primarily to refuse to pay the strikersfor time spent at technical college during the dispute, and to extendperiods of service to make up time lost on strike – but to go no further.In particular, members were urged not to dismiss any strikers.172 Thefew employers who took a hard line, e.g. suspending or firing strikers,tended to prolong the dispute and increase the damage to otheremployers.173

Another attribute that suggests that taken as a whole the movementscaused economic damage to employers was the willingness of the EEFon the biggest occasions (1937 and 1960) to allow members to claimcompensation along standard lines from its Indemnity Fund fordamages caused by the strike.174 Finally, the outcomes of apprenticestrikes suggest significant economic content. As noted above, five ofthe eight movements that set out to increase apprentice pay achievedsubstantial successes. Serious results need not indicate serious inten-tions and activities, but they do tend to be associated with them. In


172. In 1960 the EEF suggested that members write to apprentices and theirparents to remind them that ‘participation in the strike is a breach of theApprenticeship Agreement, rendering the Agreement liable to termination… [but] in relation to the present dispute … no obstacles should be placedin the way of a return to work and that, upon return, there should not beany retaliatory action, e.g. suspension of apprentices or termination ofApprenticeship Agreements by the employers. Time lost on account of thestoppage, however, may be required to be made up.’ The Scottish EEAgave yet more cautious advice, urging member firms not to allocate‘apprentice work’ to adult employees during the dispute nor even to disci-pline apprentices when they returned to work: EEF Circular Letter 119, 9May 1960, A(7)330, MRC.

173. The 1952 dispute was prolonged in Manchester by the sacking andreplacement by R. Broadbent & Son of the seven of its eight apprenticeswho had gone on strike. The city strike committee refused to recommenda return to work until the firm had reinstated all of the strikers. One weeklater, after discussions with union officials, the company allowed thedismissed strikers to apply individually for reinstatement, stating that theircases would ‘be considered favourably’. The strikers voted the followingday to return: Manchester Evening News, 19, 20, 27 and 28 March 1952;IRO memo, 27 March 1952, LAB 482/1952, PRO. Allegations of victim-ization also delayed the return to work on the Clyde in 1937 and 1944:LAB 10/76, 10/451, PRO.

174. EEF, Circular Letters 265, 18 December 1937, and 179, 21 July 1960,MRC.

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sum, an economics–IR interpretation of the strike movements receivessupport both from the economics of training, given the conditions andpractices prevailing during the period, and from evidence that underparticular conditions (notably wartime) and in particular respects (par-ticipation by senior apprentices and sympathy action by adults) theyreduced output and imposed serious costs on firms.

Conclusions

The nine strike movements that apprentices in engineering and ship-building launched between 1912 and 1964 are a neglected feature of thehistory of industrial relations. Although the movements spanned an eraof major change in both markets and national politics, they show suf-ficient continuity of purpose and method to be taken as a whole. Com-parable in scale to their adult counterparts, they blended spontaneitywith organization and on occasion gave the lead to wider industrialmilitancy.

The apprentices’ movements are of interest from the standpointof politics, sociology, industrial relations and economics alike. Left-wing politics influenced their genesis and course throughout. Thestrikers continued historical traditions of apprentice exuberance andmisbehaviour. They demonstrated an impressive capacity for collectiveaction in complicated situations. Although under some conditions andin some respects the strikes involved little economic damage, they didexert sufficient economic leverage, in conjunction with sympathy actionby adults and national negotiations by trade unions, to elicit substan-tial concessions from employers.

The bounds to the incidence of apprentice strikes across time andplace are potentially informative. In metalworking itself, the apprenticestrike disappeared in the late 1960s, which suggests that it became thevictim of its own success.175 In conjunction with the raising of trainingstandards by the ITBs, the cumulative increase in apprentices’ relativepay, to which the strikes contributed directly, raised training costs toemployers and ended the exploitation of apprentice labour. Employerswho recruited apprentices were by the 1970s obliged to invest signifi-cantly in them. The apprentice strike had lost its economic leverage.


175. The AEU/AUEW president, Hugh Scanlon, threatened the EEF with anapprentice strike in 1969, but the threat appears to have had little effectand no strike materialized; Policy Committee report, 18 November 1969,EEF, Z67/590(5), MRC.

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The near total absence of apprentice strikes from other apprentice-intensive sectors, notably construction and printing, but also from theother industries that employed engineering craft-workers, notablypublic utilities and railway workshops, is also potentially informative.It is unlikely to have meant the absence of low pay and exploitation forapprentices, particularly in printing. What was distinctive about metal-working was the protracted deskilling of craft work, to the detriment ofthe career prospects that might have induced apprentices to accept lowpay. On the rare occasion when the apprentices’ unofficial representa-tives spoke on the record, at the 1941 Court of Inquiry, they expresseddissatisfaction on that score.176

The evidence does not determine definitively the relative importanceof two lines of interpretation: economics–IR and socio-political. Eachapproach is relevant to some aspects of the movements. To some extentthe interpretations are complementary.177 The economic leverage of themovements could increase when political, social and cultural factorslent direction and momentum, though too prominent a part for left-wing politics tended to weaken support.

Pride of place is given here to the economics–IR interpretation.The movements involved collective organization and action, conflict-ing economic interests and serious economic consequences. Theytransferred the regulation of apprenticeship from employers’ unilat-eral control to collective bargaining. Their disappearance after 1964is more readily explained in economic than in social or politicalterms. The movements compressed training-related wage differentials.They increased the payroll cost of training, which contributed to thetrend reduction of apprentice intakes that set in at the end of theperiod, and they closed off any option for a ‘low pay, high volume,high quality’ apprenticeship system, such as developed in post-warGermany.178

The limited attention that has been paid to apprentice strikes inhistories of industrial relations, vocational training and youth insociety is therefore not appropriate, even if their neglect can be under-


176. LAB 10/509, PRO.177. The point is reflected in a participant’s recollection of the 1960 movement:

‘it is doubtful if Clydeside has ever seen anything as amusingly funny, yetat times so grimly determined, as some of the demonstrations organisedbefore and during the strike’: Tuckett, The Blacksmiths’ History, p. 199.

178. Marsden and Ryan, ‘Initial Training’; H. Gospel, ‘The Decline of Appren-ticeship Training in Britain’, Industrial Relations Journal 26:1 (1995), pp.32–44; P. Ryan and L. Unwin, ‘Apprenticeship in the British “TrainingMarket”’, National Institute Economic Review 178 (2001), pp. 99–114.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 61

stood in terms of their heterogeneity and complexity. Some attributessuggest that they be viewed as akin to student strikes, and even thatthey be excluded from the history of industrial conflict. The impor-tance of productive labour, wage earning and exploitation in appren-ticeship warrants their continued inclusion in the history of industrialrelations, while recognizing their idiosyncrasies as instances of indus-trial conflict.

The importance of apprentice activism was recognized, as its heydaydrew to a close, by a right-wing trade-union leader who otherwiseshowed it little sympathy. Sir William Carron, AEU president,remarked in 1963, during renewed national negotiations with the EEFfor higher pay scales for apprentices, that ‘it might be a coincidence, orit might not be a coincidence, but on each and every occasion, so far aswe can recall, when apprentices have felt themselves impelled to takethis course, something has been done about the problem which was notdone prior to this kind of thing happening’.179 His guarded choice ofwords suggests discomfort over apprentice activism on both sides of thetable, but his assessment rang true.

Management Centre, King’s College London150 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NH

Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the International Conferenceon the European History of Vocational Education and Training, University ofFlorence, the Economic and Social Research Council Seminar on HistoricalDevelopments, Aims and Values of VET, University of Westminster, and theannual conference of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association.I would like to thank: Alan McKinlay and David Lyddon for their generousassistance, and Lucy Delap, Alan MacFarlane, Brian Peat, David Raffe,Alastair Reid and Keith Snell for comments and suggestions; the EngineeringEmployers’ Federation and the Department for Education and Skills for accessto unpublished information; the staff of the Modern Records Centre, Univer-sity of Warwick, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, the Caird Library, Greenwich,and the Public Record Office, Kew, for assistance with archive materials; andthe Nuffield Foundation and King’s College, Cambridge, for financial support.


179. EEF, Minutes of Central and Special Conferences, 31 October 1963,

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 62

RYAN: APPRENTICE STRIKES IN UK ENGINEERING & SHIPBUILDING 63A

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HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 63

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HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 64

Worker Mobilization in the 1970s:Revisiting Work-ins, Co-operativesand Alternative Corporate PlansMichael Gold

The 1970s in the UK have been characterized as a decade dominatedby crisis in industrial relations. Over its course, governments – Conser-vative and Labour – concentrated on addressing the UK’s poor recordin productivity and competitiveness by attempting to reform the indus-trial relations system, which was widely blamed for many economic ills.Contemporary commentators observed that governments used twobroad approaches.1 The first was to impose state authority and restrictunion powers, while the second was to develop partnership policieswith the unions, whose membership peaked in 1979. Though the dis-tinction is by no means rigid, the Conservative Party generally favouredthe former approach and the Labour Party the latter. The Conserva-tives were the party of the Industrial Relations Act 1971 and laissez-faire (or ‘lame duck’) industrial policies, though these were laterabandoned when the government decided to support Upper ClydeShipbuilders (UCS). Labour rejected the regulatory approachenshrined in its 1969 White Paper, In Place of Strife, after its electoraldefeat in 1970, and later became the party of the Social Contract, apartnership model of macro-economic policy, which has been dubbeda form of ‘weak corporatism’.2 The Social Contract integrated incomes

HSIR (AUTUMN ) ‒ 65

1. D. Barnes and E. Reid, Governments and Trade Unions: The British Expe-rience, 1964–79 (Heinemann: 1982). For further contemporary analyses ofthe ways in which successive governments had attempted to reform indus-trial relations over this period, see D. E. Macdonald, The State and theTrade Unions (Macmillan: 1976), ch. 11; G. A. Dorfman, Governmentversus Trade Unionism in British Politics since 1968 (Macmillan: 1979).

2. B. Casey and M. Gold, Social Partnership and Economic Performance: TheCase of Europe (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham: 2000), p. 14.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 65

and tax policy, industrial relations reform, nationalization of keyindustries and proposals for planning agreements in the private sector,among a variety of measures agreed between the government and theTrades Union Congress (TUC). It eventually collapsed principallybecause of the insistence of the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, onimposing an unrealistic pay policy.3

None of these attempts to resolve economic crisis produced – orappeared to produce – any long-lasting results. Unemployment inGreat Britain, for example, increased from the election of the Conserv-ative government of Edward Heath, in June 1970, to 927,000 in January1972 before falling to a low of 484,000 in December 1973. It then roseagain steadily until it topped one million in August 1975. From thenon, it never dropped below that mark for the rest of the decade, andstood at 1,238,000 by May 1979.4 Furthermore, the level of industrialstoppages and wage and price inflation also reached record post-1945levels.5 Overall, as Henry Phelps Brown observed, ‘stagflation becamemanifest as the dominant problem of the 1970s’.6 Eventually, thefailure to ‘solve’ industrial relations problems contributed to the defeatof the Callaghan government, just as it had contributed to HaroldWilson’s defeat in 1970 and Heath’s in February 1974.

The conventional wisdom now regards the 1970s as a disaster. Theformer economics editor of the Guardian, Will Hutton, for example,described the decade as ‘despairing’,7 while New Labour PrimeMinister, Tony Blair, in his introduction to the 1998 White Paper,Fairness at Work, stated: ‘There will be no going back. The days ofstrikes without ballots, mass picketing, closed shops and secondaryaction are over’.8 The 1970s – the immediate, pre-Thatcher era – haveaccordingly become a shorthand reference for industrial chaos andeconomic gloom by contrast to the 1980s, when industrial order was


3. R. Taylor, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract’, in A. Seldon and K.Hickson (eds), New Labour, Old Labour: The Wilson and Callaghan Gov-ernments, 1974–79 (Routledge: 2004), pp. 70–104.

4. Annual Abstract of Statistics, no. 118 (HMSO: 1982), ‘Unemployed inGreat Britain’ (table 6.9), p. 164.

5. Number of stoppages peaked in 1970, working days lost in 1979 andworkers involved also in 1979. See Annual Abstract of Statistics, no. 118,‘Industrial Stoppages’ (table 6.15), p. 168. For wage rates and retail prices,see ibid., ‘Basic Wage Rates of Manual Workers’ (table 6.18), p. 171, and‘Index of Retail Prices’ (table 18.1), p. 457.

6. E. H. Phelps Brown, The Origins of Trade Union Power (Oxford Univer-sity Press: 1986), p. 8.

7. W. Hutton, The State We’re In (Vintage: 1996), p. 10.8. Department of Trade and Industry, Fairness at Work, Cmnd 3968 (1998),

p. 3.

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 66

allegedly restored and significant improvements in output and produc-tivity took place.

Yet the conventional wisdom about the 1980s has been challenged onthe grounds that the alleged improvements were not based on structuralor sustainable changes in production but at least partly on the fear ofunemployment. Though labour productivity in the UK did improve, itstill lagged behind other European countries because a ‘cheap, disposableand malleable labour force inhibited the emergence of high wage, highproductivity growth strategies’.9 It is, arguably, now also time to reassessthe 1970s, as the failures of that decade contributed to the increasingprevalence of the low-wage, low-productivity economy of the 1980s,whose legacy remains today.10 The story of policy shifts and uncomfort-able compromises is only part of what happened in the 1970s. A refocus-ing and re-emphasis allow the consideration of a parallel perspectivebased on the widespread grass-roots struggle to develop an imaginativeand flexible alternative vision of how industry might be run more in linewith workers’ interests. This vision embraced work-ins, the use of socialaudits, the formation of ‘new’ co-operatives and the role of alternativecorporate plans in widening industrial stakeholding to include not justshareholders but also workers and their communities. These initiativeswere rapidly and brutally snuffed out in the Thatcher era.

A series of analyses have now traced the course of industrialrelations over the 1970s from the point of view of shop-floor workersand their shop stewards. Some of these have focused on factory-levelcase studies.11 Others have examined developments in individualsectors, such as the docks, cars, road haulage and engineering.12 Yet

GOLD: WORKER MOBILIZATION IN THE S 67

9. P. Nolan, ‘Industrial Relations and Performance since 1945’, in I. J.Beardwell (ed.), Contemporary Industrial Relations: A Critical Analysis(Oxford University Press: 1996), p. 100.

10. There are signs that such a reassessment is beginning. See K. O. Morgan,‘Was Britain Dying?’, in Seldon and Hickson (eds), New Labour, OldLabour, pp. 303–7; J. Tomlinson, ‘Economic Policy’, ibid., pp. 55–69.

11. Examples include T. Nichols and P. Armstrong, Workers Divided: A Studyin Shop-floor Politics (Fontana/Collins, Glasgow: 1976); T. Nichols and H.Beynon, Living with Capitalism: Class Relations and the Modern Factory(Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1977).

12. See three chapters in C. J. Wrigley (ed.), A History of British IndustrialRelations, 1939–79 (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham: 1996): J. Phillips, ‘Decasu-alization and Disruption: Industrial Relations in the Docks, 1945–79’, pp.165–85; D. Lyddon, ‘The Car Industry, 1945–79: Shop Stewards andWorkplace Unionism’, pp. 186–211; P. Smith, ‘The Road Haulage Industry,1945–79: From Statutory Regulation to Contested Terrain’, pp. 212–34.See also M. Terry and P. K. Edwards (eds), Shop-floor Politics and JobControls: The Post-War Engineering Industry (Blackwell, Oxford: 1988).

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 67

others have assessed the role of shop-floor workers and shop stewardsin the key events of the decade, notably the struggle against the Indus-trial Relations Act 1971, the ‘glorious summer’ of 1972 and the ‘winterof discontent’ of 1978–79.13

This article takes a different direction, and aims to bring together anumber of otherwise disparate trends in collective action over thedecade, trends that Richard Hyman has referred to as ‘qualitative aswell as quantitative advances in struggle’. He includes here the UCSwork-in, ideas about workers’ control and guidelines for an alternativeeconomic strategy – the combination of Keynesianism with shop-steward and trade-union participation in planning agreements – whichhe sees as the ‘left’, ‘progressive’ and ‘solidaristic’ face of trade-unionism in the 1970s.14

The broad context for these ‘advances in struggle’ was the 1974–79Labour government’s industrial strategy. The Trade Union and LabourRelations Act 1974 (amended in 1976) repealed the Industrial RelationsAct and restored legal immunities to unions. The Employment Protec-tion Act 1975 encouraged the extension of collective bargaining by,among other means, establishing a statutory obligation on employers todisclose information to recognized trade unions and conferring newrights, such as maternity leave and time off for trade-union duties, whichopened up new areas for negotiations with employers. New rights forunion safety representatives were similarly covered by the Health andSafety at Work Act 1974. These measures were supplemented by theIndustry Act 1975, which aimed to increase union influence over thenational formulation of economic and industrial strategy. This Act set


13. See, for example, F. Lindop, ‘The Dockers and the 1971 IndustrialRelations Act, Part 1: Shop Stewards and Containerization’, HistoricalStudies in Industrial Relations (HSIR) 5 (Spring 1998), pp. 33–72; F.Lindop, ‘The Dockers and the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, Part 2: TheArrest and Release of the “Pentonville Five”’, HSIR 6 (Autumn 1998), pp.65–100; D. Lyddon, ‘“Glorious Summer”, 1972: The High Tide of Rankand File Militancy’, in J. McIlroy, N. Fishman and A. Campbell (eds),British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, Vol. 2: The High Tide of TradeUnionism, 1964–79 (Ashgate, Aldershot: 1999), pp. 326–52; P. Smith, ‘The“Winter of Discontent”: The Hire and Reward Road Haulage Dispute,1979’, HSIR 7 (Spring 1999), pp. 27–54. See also R. Darlington and D.Lyddon, Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain, 1972 (Bookmarks:2001).

14. R. Hyman, ‘Afterword: What Went Wrong?’, in McIlroy et al. (eds),British Trade Unions, Vol. 2, pp. 353–64. For the thought behind the alter-native economic strategy, see S. Holland, The Socialist Challenge (QuartetBooks: 1975).

HSIR 18(29/3) 30/3/05 5:59 pm Page 68

up the National Enterprise Board, a state-holding company designedto take a controlling stake in leading companies, as well as a system ofplanning agreements and tripartite sector working parties.15 Along withthe 1977 Bullock proposals on worker participation on companyboards,16 these measures formed the backbone of the Social Contractwith the TUC, through which voluntary pay restraint was to be securedin exchange for greater union involvement across broad areas ofeconomic and industrial policy.17 As we know, this strategy soon raninto difficulties, which included employer hostility and union opposi-tion to the pay norms imposed by the government, particularly in the1978–79 bargaining round.18

Against this background of ostensible union influence, ‘new’ formsof collective action emerged at shop-floor level that had not been usedon a wide scale since before the Second World War, if at all. Theseincluded work-ins, the use of social audits, the formation of co-operatives and alternative corporate plans; all these were generallyresponses to factory closures, redundancy or its threat, but thendeveloped a more enduring life of their own as medium- or longer-termmeans of establishing job security.

This article examines two specific questions relating to these ‘quali-tative advances in struggle’. The first analyses what these had incommon, despite appearing so diverse and emerging under suchdifferent circumstances. Each form of action was a means to maintainor protect jobs that went beyond strikes, working-to-rules or go-slows,which are short-term responses and do not challenge management’sright to manage. Over the period 1966–76, the three most commoncauses of strikes were pay-related issues (56%), ‘manning’ and workallocation (12%) and dismissal and other disciplinary measures (11%).


15. M. Sawyer, ‘Industrial Policy’, in M. Artis and D. Cobham (eds), Labour’sEconomic Policies 1974–79 (Manchester University Press: 1991), pp.158–75. For a more general overview, see M. Hatfield, The House the LeftBuilt: Inside Labour Policy-Making 1970–75 (Victor Gollancz: 1978).

16. Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy (Bullock), Report, Cmnd6706 (January 1977).

17. K. Mayhew, ‘The Institutional Context of Incomes Policy’, in R. E. J.Chater, A. Dean and R. F. Elliott (eds), Incomes Policy (Clarendon Press,Oxford: 1981), pp. 32–7.

18. For contemporary accounts, see R. Taylor, Labour and the SocialContract, Fabian Tract no. 458 (Fabian Society: September 1978), pp.5–13; T. Forester, ‘Neutralizing the Industrial Strategy’, in K. Coates (ed.),What Went Wrong? (Spokesman, Nottingham: 1979), pp. 74–94.

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Only 4% resulted from redundancy questions.19 In all cases, theintention of the stoppage was to bring pressure on the employer toremove its cause, whereupon the workers were to return to work asbefore within the same employment relationship.20

By contrast to such ‘negative’ methods of industrial action, the useof sit-ins and occupations as a tactic contains elements of a ‘positivechallenge to the employer, involving the assertion of a different rela-tionship of control’ and so are ‘very much out of the ordinary’.21 Thenature of these ‘different relationships of control’, and the extent towhich they can be sustained, are discussed below. These ‘positive chal-lenges’ to the employer reveal attempts to harness creatively the moti-vation and commitment of shop-floor workers to defend their jobs intimes of threat. They all took into account the specific circumstances ofthe workers involved, such as their labour-market conditions, the sizeand structure of the industry concerned, the nature of its productmarkets, skill profile and links into the wider community. They alsopromoted forms of decentralization of decision-making driven frombelow, with workers taking responsibility for the business strategy ofoften failing companies. In the 1980s and 1990s, by contrast, processesof decentralization were driven from above by management in attemptsto promote greater workforce flexibility in the face of intensifying com-petitive and technological pressures.22 The ‘new’ forms of collectiveaction in the 1970s all potentially challenged the foundation of man-agement’s right to manage and, in some cases, represented longer-termsolutions to industrial relations problems. The formation of co-operatives and alternative corporate plans, for example, was an attemptto institutionalize workers’ input into business strategy and developingand sustaining product markets, both old and new. Though in appear-ance very different, they reflected pragmatic responses by workersattempting to save their jobs in small and large companies respectively.


19. C. T. B. Smith, R. Clifton, P. Makeham, S. W. Creigh and R. V. Burn,Strikes in Britain: A Research Study of Industrial Stoppages in the UnitedKingdom, Department of Employment Manpower Paper no. 15 (HMSO:1978), table O, p. 44.

20. For a case study of the dynamics of redundancy at a manufacturing plantin the late 1960s, see R. Martin and R. H. Fryer, Redundancy and Pater-nalist Capitalism: A Study in the Sociology of Work (Allen and Unwin:1973).

21. R. Hyman, Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction (Macmillan:1975), p. 101.

22. B. Towers, ‘Collective Bargaining Levels’, in idem (ed.), A Handbook ofIndustrial Relations Practice (Kogan Page: 1993), pp. 167–84.

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The second question is why these forms of collective action becameso popular during the 1970s. The twentieth century had witnessedseveral waves of factory occupations, including Russia (1917), Italy(1920), Spain (Civil War), the USA (mid-1930s) and France (1936 and1968).23 Until 1971, experience of factory occupations in the UK hadbeen sparse. In 1916, women in large munitions factories in Newcastlehad staged a ‘stay-in’ in pursuit of a pay rise, as strikes had beenforbidden during wartime.24 In 1935, miners in South Wales hadorganized ‘stay-down strikes’ – that is, occupations of their pits – toprevent the use of non-union labour, with strong support from theirlocal communities.25 In the 1960s, there had been similar attempts tooccupy coalmines to combat pit closures, though these had not caughton.26 It was not until the early 1970s that the most significant wave ofoccupations – and indeed other forms of innovative collective action –surged ahead as part of ‘the most intense period of class struggle inBritain’ since the General Strike in 1926.27 Mobilization theory, asdeveloped by John Kelly,28 can be used to explain why shop-floorworkers and their shop stewards were prepared in the 1970s to engagein such action in their struggle against rising levels of unemploymentand, in particular, how they came to try to consolidate the gains theyhad made on a lasting basis.

Political and social conditions within the UK in the early 1970soften gave these new forms of collective action a wide public, whichthen itself began to question the role of employers in treating labour asa commodity to be manipulated and discarded under pressures forprofitability. Indeed, the February 1974 general election, held against


23. For a brief outline of these waves, see A. G. Tuckman, ‘Industrial Actionand Hegemony: Workplace Occupations in Britain 1971 to 1981’ (Ph.D.,University of Hull: 1985), pp. 1–13. There were also occupations inPortugal following the 1974 revolution and an occupation of the Gdanskshipyards in Poland, 1980–81.

24. Tuckman, ‘Industrial Action and Hegemony’, p. 2.25. H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in

the Twentieth Century (Lawrence and Wishart: 1980), pp. 279–98. ‘Stay-down strikes’ were also known as ‘stay-ins’.

26. K. Coates, ‘Converting the Unions to Socialism’, in M. Barratt Brown andK. Coates (eds), Trade Union Register 3 (Spokesman, Nottingham: 1973),p. 19.

27. Darlington and Lyddon, Glorious Summer, p. 2.28. J. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and

Long Waves (Routledge: 1998). See also idem, ‘The Future of TradeUnionism: Injustice, Identity and Attribution’, Employee Relations 19:5(1997), pp. 400–14.

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the backdrop of a national miners’ strike, ‘was fought on the issue“Who Governs Britain?” On that basis it seemed impossible for theGovernment to lose – but lose it did’.29 This process was checked by theresult of the referendum in June 1975 when the political left was deci-sively defeated in its campaign to leave the European EconomicCommunity (EEC). Yet such explicit questioning about the relation-ship between capital and labour, and a robust defence of workers’interests, remained influential items on the agenda of the left until theend of the decade.30

Management and the right to dispose of property

The new forms of collective action emerged against this background ofinstability and apprehension. To understand their significance, and toappreciate the gravity with which employers viewed them, it isnecessary to analyse the nature of management prerogative and itsfoundation in property rights that they were putting under pressure.Under the 1948 Companies Act, shareholders are guaranteed theexclusive right – even if it is actually exercised only by a tiny minorityof their number – to appoint and remove directors after submission ofappropriate resolutions at its annual general meeting. No mention ismade anywhere of workers’ rights.31 Such property rights constitute the


29. As noted by Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1974–79. See D.Healey, The Time of My Life (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1989), p. 370.

30. During the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978–79, ‘[e]ach night the televisionscreens carried film of bearded men in duffle coats huddled aroundbraziers. Nervous viewers thought the Revolution had already begun’:ibid., p. 463. Indeed, such images contributed to what J. Coe, The Rotters’Club (Viking: 2001), p. 176, has dubbed the ‘ungodly strangeness’ of the1970s. By this he means the tense and uneasy political atmosphere.Domestically, it was also marked by continuing violence in NorthernIreland, the rise of the National Front, persistent talk of private armies,and minority government. Popular culture was to become suffused by theiconoclasm of punk rock. Internationally, the period was dominated byintensification of the Cold War, bracketed by the triumph of NorthVietnam at the start of the decade and the invasion of Afghanistan bySoviet forces towards the end. Popular literature penned by authors on thepolitical right projected a bleak totalitarian future for the UK: C. Leys,Politics in Britain: An Introduction (Heinemann: 1983), pp. 313–24. Amore light-hearted and balanced assessment of everyday life in the 1970scan be found in A. Pressley, The Seventies: Good Times, Bad Taste(Michael O’Mara Books: 2002).

31. Sections 183–4 and 130–46 of the Act. See M. Finer, The Companies Act,1948 (Eyre and Spottiswoode: 1948).

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foundation of industrial power in capitalist societies. This is becausethe value of private property does not consist in the mere ownership oftitle deeds or share certificates but in the rights to control certainscarce resources. Jack Winkler lists four of these: ‘the right to use thegoods owned, the right to direct their use if one does not wish to usethem oneself, the right to appropriate the fruits of their use, and theright to transfer the property to another owner.’ The ‘enforceability ofthese rights rests ultimately on the state’s monopoly of legitimatecoercion’.32

There are two limiting conditions on these rights. First, the stateprotects certain interests of those directly affected by the disposal ofproperty. Up to 1979, employees’ rights at work had been generallyextended, thereby restricting the unlimited power of owners to imposeconditions on them (though the labour movement has long recognizedthe limitations of the law as an instrument to protect workers’interests).33

Second, the state may simply not be called on, in certain circum-stances, to use its ‘monopoly of legitimate coercion’. For reasons ofexpedience, some companies during the 1970s did not contest theorganized opposition of workers to the disposal of assets leading toredundancies, even though such opposition included the seizure ofcompany assets through sit-ins or work-ins. Recognizing companies’rights to legal protection, the TUC passed a resolution in 1975 thatcalled for work-ins and occupations ‘to be treated as accepted forms ofindustrial action with immunity from legal proceedings’.34 The govern-ment’s response was reported two years later. The Secretary of Statewas not prepared to extend trade-union immunities because of concernover possible abuse by dissidents, the difficulties of drafting appropri-ate legislation and the precarious Parliamentary situation (the govern-ment had lost its majority in April 1976).35 So, throughout this period,work-ins and sit-ins remained unlawful.

The Institute of Personnel Management (IPM) warned against hastyaction in instances of occupation, because ‘the underlying problem isan industrial relations problem ... and while the civil authorities willintervene at the request of the company, they can thereafter handle the


32. J. T. Winkler, ‘Corporatism’, European Journal of Sociology 18 (1976), p.112.

33. P. O’Higgins, Workers’ Rights (Arrow Books: 1976), chs 8–10; J.McMullen, Rights at Work: A Worker’s Guide to Employment Law (PlutoPress: 1979), ch. 1.

34. Trades Union Congress (TUC), Annual Report, 1975, p. 403.35. TUC, Annual Report, 1977, p. 45.

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situation as they see fit, having regard to their law enforcement rolerather than to the company’s industrial relations policies’.36 The IPMnoted only three cases where legal proceedings had been taken against‘unauthorized occupiers’, two of factories and the other by students ofa foreign power’s High Commission.37 If a company went into receiver-ship, the Labour government, during the earlier stages of its 1974–79administration, occasionally even assisted occupying workers to raisecash to form a producers’ co-operative. The transfer of assets to theworkers was then consolidated.

These strategies were all brought to prominence in the 1970s by thelabour movement’s struggle against high levels of unemployment. Theychallenged management’s right to dispose of property on the basis ofprivate profitability alone, and they frequently generated mass supportwithin the labour movement and among the general public in theearlier part of the decade, though this waned later on. In short, thesestrategies brought the role of property rights and management prerog-ative into the mainstream of political debate, though their successvaried. The UCS work-in, for example, galvanized in the short termvirtually the entire population of the west of Scotland in its defence,though subsequent attempts to consolidate work-ins through the estab-lishment of co-operatives generally failed. Indeed, the first attempt tochange tactics in the struggle against redundancies, by organizing a sit-in at the General Electric Company (GEC) in 1969, also failed. Thereasons are significant.

In August 1969, GEC – with 250,000 workers, the largest private-sector employer in the UK – announced almost 5,000 redundancies inaddition to 12,000 already implemented over the previous year.38 Threefactories on Merseyside were affected; at a mass meeting strikingworkers mandated their action committee to take any further stepsnecessary in response, ‘including sit-ins and other measures’.39 This ini-tiative had been inspired by a series of recent events: a television playby Jim Allen, entitled ‘The Big Flame’, which had depicted a fictitiousworkers’ take-over of Liverpool docks; the example of Catholicworkers in Belfast who had taken control of their communities in the


36. Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), Sit-Ins and Work-Ins (IPM:1976), pp. 15–16.

37. Ibid., pp. 35–9.38. This account is based on G. Chadwick, ‘“The Big Flame” – Events at the

Liverpool Factories of GEC–EE’, in K. Coates, T. Topham and M.Barratt Brown (eds), Trade Union Register (Merlin Press: 1970), pp.178–97.

39. Ibid., p. 183.

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course of their struggle for civil rights; and the wave of factory occu-pations that had surged across France in May and June 1968.40 The sit-in at GEC, scheduled for 19 September 1969, collapsed for severalreasons: variations in organization and motivation between the threesites involved; concerted attacks on the action by employers, local andnational press and Labour MPs; concerns among the workforce itselfabout the legitimacy of a sit-in and fears of retribution (a strike wouldhave been more familiar); and splits among the shop stewards, with apersuasive bloc set against the action. Ken Coates adds that theworkers, unlike those at UCS who found themselves in possession of£90 million worth of shipping under construction, did not possess amajor capital asset that they could seize as a bargaining weapon.41 Sowhile a clear opportunity for a sit-in had presented itself, a coherentunderstanding among the workforce of its interests, good organizationand a united leadership were missing. Nevertheless, GrahamChadwick, writing in 1970, concluded with some prescience thatdespite the failure of the sit-in at GEC, it was only a ‘matter of months’before another group of workers would try again, and that ‘many more[would] follow’.42

Mobilization theory and the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in

One of the most remarkable developments during the early 1970s wasthe spread of the employees’ work-in and sit-in. By 1974, the TUCalready distinguished four types of occupation: work-ins; sit-ins overmajor management decisions (e.g. closures); collective bargaining sit-ins; and tactical sit-ins (e.g. as part of a wider strategy).43 Since suchoccupations challenged locally the ‘unlimited property rights’ ofemployers to close factories and carry out policies ‘that would blightthe lives of workers (and often the prospects of whole areas andtowns)’, the TUC concluded that their use was ‘an appropriate trade-union tactic in certain circumstances’.44


40. For an analysis of these occupations, see A. Hoyles, Imagination in Power:The Occupation of Factories in France 1968 (Spokesman, Nottingham:1973).

41. Coates, ‘Converting the Unions’, p. 23.42. Chadwick, ‘“The Big Flame”’, p. 192.43. TUC, Industrial Democracy (TUC: 1974), para. 12.44. Ibid., para. 71. As noted above, the IPM produced a booklet for its

members confronted by occupations with tips on preventive, protectiveand legal countermeasures. Its introduction remarked that: ‘Sit-ins and

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A stream of academic studies analysed the causes and effects ofoccupations.45 Despite the important differences in emphasis betweenthese studies, they had one critical element in common:46 the view thatthe UCS work-in in 1971–72 was the major precursor of the movementwhose example ‘transformed the nature of the struggle against unem-ployment and redundancies in Britain’.47 Indeed, as one observer put it:‘if there had not been UCS, there would not have been Plessey atAlexandria nor the River Don works at Sheffield, nor Fisher-Bendix atLiverpool, nor the wave of Manchester sit-ins’.48 Another commenta-tor noted that since many occupations had begun before the successfuloutcome of UCS, it was the latter’s example rather than its success thathad caught the imagination.49

The story of UCS has been told many times, by Conservatives, Com-munists and Trotskyists as well as by academics, journalists and theparticipants themselves.50 Even so, none explicitly links the UCS work-in to the development of subsequent ‘new’ forms of collective action.The deepest analysis, by John Foster and Charles Woolfson,51 examines


work-ins, while no longer automatically attracting headlines in thenational press, are becoming a feature of life for many companies sincethey are increasingly being used as an alternative to more traditionalforms of industrial action’: Sit-Ins and Work-Ins, p. 1.

45. See, for example, A. J. Eccles, ‘Sit-ins, Worker Co-operatives and SomeImplications for Organization’, Personnel Review 6 (1977); J. Greenwood,Worker Sit-ins and Job Protection (Gower Press, Farnborough: 1977).

46. IPM, Sit-Ins and Work-Ins, p. 2; TUC, Industrial Democracy, para. 12;Eccles, ‘Sit-ins, Worker Co-operatives and Some Implications’, p. 39;Greenwood, Worker Sit-ins and Job Protection, p. 29.

47. Coates, ‘Converting the Unions’, p. 21.48. J. Gretton, ‘To Sit or Not to Sit’, New Society, 15 June 1972, p. 564.49. A. J. Mills, ‘Factory Work-ins’, New Society, 22 August 1974, p. 489.50. Conservatives: F. Broadway, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders: A Study of Gov-

ernment Intervention in Industry, preface by Sir Keith Joseph (Centre forPolicy Studies: 1976); Communists: Alex Murray, UCS – The Fight for theRight to Work (Communist Party: 1971); Trotskyists: S. Johns, Reformismon the Clyde: The Story of UCS (New Park Publications: 1973);academics: Robin Murray, UCS: The Anatomy of a Bankruptcy(Spokesman, Nottingham: 1972); J. Foster and C. Woolfson, The Politicsof the UCS Work-In: Class Alliances and the Right to Work (Lawrence andWishart: 1986); journalists: A. Buchan, The Right to Work: The Story ofthe Upper Clyde Confrontation, introduction by Harold Wilson (Calderand Boyars: 1972); and participants: J. Reid, ‘The UCS Campaign: ThreeSpeeches’, in idem, Reflections of a Clyde-built Man (Condor Books:1976), pp. 84–98.

51. Foster and Woolfson, Politics of the UCS Work-In.

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the political economy of the work-in and how it influenced other sit-insand work-ins, but not its lasting impact on the social audit, the new co-operatives or alternative corporate plans. Mobilization theory seeks toaccount for levels and intensities of collective action by reference to fiveprincipal factors: interests, recourse to appropriate forms of action,opportunity, organization and mobilization.

Interests

Shipbuilding in the UK, since 1945, had suffered from declining sharesin global markets, falling profits and declining capacity.52 Following aninfluential report on shipbuilding in 1966,53 the then Labour govern-ment had set up a Shipbuilding Industry Board (SIB) designed to ratio-nalize production. It recommended that all five yards on the upperClyde should merge into one consortium, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders.54

UCS began trading in February 1968 with a loan of £5.5 million fromthe SIB. Problems soon arose: the plant had been under-invested, man-agement remained autocratic and the order book was full of loss-making contracts. Even a Conservative commentator observed: ‘One ofthe few absolutely incontrovertible conclusions to be drawn about UCSis that it was acutely short of working capital throughout its briefhistory’.55 Though the financial position of UCS had temporarilyimproved by 1971, the Conservative government – then operating itslaissez-faire or ‘lame duck’ policy56 – announced on 14 June 1971 thatit would withhold a further £6 million loan, a decision that would haveled to many thousands of redundancies. This event was critical in trig-


52. A. Burton, The Rise and Fall of British Shipbuilding (Constable: 1994); B.Stråth, The Politics of De-industrialization: The Contraction of the WestEuropean Shipbuilding Industry (Croom Helm: 1987).

53. Shipbuilding Inquiry Committee, 1965–1966 (Geddes), Report, Cmnd2937 (1966).

54. For the ownership structure of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS), see W.Thompson and F. Hart, The UCS Work-In (Lawrence and Wishart: 1972),p. 38.

55. Broadway, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, p. 30.56. ‘Lame duck’ was a term used by John Davies himself when he was the

Conservative Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. It referred to thepolicy, adopted at the Selsdon Park conference of the Conservative Partybefore the 1970 election, to encourage businesses to accept responsibilityfor their own decisions and not to expect state support. See R. Taylor, ‘TheHeath Government, Industrial Policy and the “New Capitalism”’, in S.Ball and A. Seldon (eds), The Heath Government 1970–1974: A Reap-praisal (Longman: 1996), ch. 6, pp. 139–59.

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gering the subsequent work-in. ‘The sine qua non for collective action’,argues Kelly, ‘is a sense of injustice, the conviction that an event, actionor situation is “wrong” or “illegitimate”.’57

Indeed, just ten days later, on 24 June, the first of two mass protestdemonstrations took place in Glasgow, a clear indication of the senseof injustice pervading the entire community.58 The Times estimated thatthe UCS reorganization could cost 6,000 jobs and that ‘a further 6,000employed by firms supplying materials to UCS could be jeopardized’.59

Tony Benn – then Labour spokesman on trade and industry – put thenumber of jobs at risk in ancillary trades at 15,000.60 Furthermore, theConservative Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, John Davies,had handled the issue poorly in Parliament.61

Responsibility for the crisis was immediately and unequivocally laidat the door of Davies and Heath, as the speeches of Jimmy Reid,chairman of the UCS shop steward conveners and a ClydebankCommunist councillor, make plain.62 In their attribution of blame, theshop steward leaders of the work-in were supported by a wide cross-section of the local population.63 Some 80,000 people joined the seconddemonstration through Glasgow on 18 August and a further 200,000downed tools in sympathy.64 In this case, ‘us’ embraced in a populistfashion all but owners of large-scale capital and the Conservatives, whowere seen as their agents.65 As opposition to the closure spread, so toodid support for the UCS work-in throughout the country. NormanBuchan MP observed succinctly: the Tory government had ‘made theclass struggle respectable’.66


57. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations, p. 27.58. J. Reid, ‘An Introduction to the UCS Crisis’, in idem, Reflections, p. 79.59. ‘Workers Seize Control of Shipyard on the Clyde’, The Times, 31 July

1971.60. Buchan, Right to Work, p. 73.61. The Times correspondent, reporting the debate, wrote: ‘Mr. Davies’s

somewhat cold and precise statement [on the need to rationalize] and hisdismissal in a single short paragraph of the redundancies issue … con-tributed to the furious reaction’: ‘Commons in Uproar as Labour MPsAttack “Butchery” of Clyde Yards’, The Times, 30 July 1971.

62. J. Reid, ‘The UCS Campaign: Three Speeches’, in idem, Reflections, pp.84–98.

63. For details of organized support, see Morning Star: housewives, 2 and 18August 1971; churchmen, 2 August 1971; Glasgow City Council, 3 August1971; artists and musicians, 12 August 1971; Scottish Trades UnionCongress special conference, 17 August 1971.

64. Morning Star, 19 August 1971.65. Foster and Woolfson, Politics of the UCS Work-In, p. 17.66. Ibid., p.191.

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The workers whose jobs were under discussion had had one of themost radical histories of any in the United Kingdom.67 Pauline Hunt,in her empirical study of workers’ consciousness during the work-in,acknowledges that alternative models to capitalist society are mostlikely to evolve in ‘solidary’ working-class communities. She arguesthat their background of class conflict gave many UCS workers ‘an his-torically evolved form of consciousness’68 that was lacking in otherindustrial disputes. A sense of injustice, an attribution of responsibilityand a high degree of group and community cohesion therefore charac-terized the UCS dispute from the outset. In such circumstances, thenature of leadership is to articulate interests, maintain cohesion anddefend collective action. At UCS, leadership went much further inurging a unique form of collective action, a work-in.

Collective action

Shop stewards from the five affected yards were concerned to find aneffective initiative with which to answer the announcement of liquida-tion. Sammy Barr, the convener of stewards at Connells (one of theyards), proposed a work-in, which was at first received scepticallybecause of the failure at GEC two years previously. The proposal wasthen accepted on 13 June 1971 as the method most likely to publicize‘the men’s determination in the most dramatic fashion possible’ tooppose closure.69 However, this hardly passes as an analysis of thesocial pressures that made the work-in possible as a form of collectiveaction. Why not, after all, a strike?


67. W. Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde: An Autobiography (Lawrence andWishart: 1942); H. McShane, ‘The Early Twentieth Century – RedClydeside’, WEA day conference on ‘Aspects of Scottish Working ClassHistory’, Falkirk, 4 December 1977, author’s notes.

68. P. Hunt, ‘The Development of Class Consciousness in Situations of Indus-trial Conflict’ (M. Phil., University of Edinburgh: 1975), p. 65. See also D.Lockwood, ‘Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society’,Sociological Review 14 (1966), pp. 250–1. It should be noted thatLockwood’s ideal type of ‘proletarian traditionalism’ has been criticizedon the grounds that it fails to take into account sectional interests inindustry and the dynamics of workers’ own perceptions of their classposition. See respectively: R. K. Brown and P. Brannen, ‘Social Relationsand Social Perspectives among Shipbuilding Workers – a PreliminaryStatement, Part Two’, Sociology 4 (1970), p. 207; and J. H. Goldthorpe, D.Lockwood, F. Bechhofer and J. Platt, The Affluent Worker: IndustrialAttitudes and Behaviour (Cambridge University Press: 1968).

69. Thompson and Hart, UCS Work-In, p. 48.

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A contrast can be drawn with another factory – Fisher-Bendix, laterto become the Kirkby Manufacturing and Engineering (KME) co-operative – which was also in difficulties early in 1971. Thorn Electri-cal Group had taken over the factory in April and it became apparentthat the new management intended to improve productivity throughhalving the workforce. On 25 June, the workers went on strike. ‘Thiswas not a powerful tactic since it increased the chance of total closureof the plant’, noted one commentator.70 Only sympathy strikeselsewhere saved the jobs in August, but under the threat that the wholefactory might close the year after.71

The divergence between UCS and Thorn can be attributed to thenature of the leadership. Partly owing to the community factors that hadled to a ‘traditional proletarian’ outlook, and partly owing to the sheersize and scale of UCS that required considerable organizational skills, theleaders at UCS were more confident and politically aware than theircounterparts at KME. The role of the Communist Party of Great Britain(CP) was significant, as it contributed a network of key activists to theUCS work-in. Jimmy Airlie, Barr and Reid, who each played a ‘vitalpart’72 in the work-in, were all members of the CP’s shipbuilding branchin Scotland, which had a sizeable membership, peaking at 110 in theaftermath of the work-in.73 Their leadership – and the leadership of theCP itself – was solid and hegemonic from the start, in a way that leader-ship in the later struggles reviewed in this article was rarely to prove. Theypersonified the role of the Communist factory branch that was, accordingto a CP guide, ‘to give all-round leadership on all the current politicalissues and in the Battle of Ideas between capitalism and socialism’.74


70. A. J. Eccles, ‘Kirkby Manufacturing and Engineering’, in K. Coates (ed.),The New Worker Co-operatives (Spokesman, Nottingham: 1976), p. 144.

71. For background on Kirkby Manufacturing and Engineering (KME), seeT. Clarke, Sit-In at Fisher-Bendix, IWC pamphlet 42 (Institute forWorkers’ Control, Nottingham: n.d.); Eccles, ‘Kirkby Manufacturing andEngineering’; D. Monnies, ‘KME: Study of a Workers’ Co-operative’(Labour Studies Diploma, Ruskin College, Oxford: 1979).

72. J. McIlroy, ‘Notes on the Communist Party and Industrial Politics’, inMcIlroy et al. (eds), British Trade Unions, Vol. 2, p. 238.

73. J. McIlroy, ‘“Every factory our fortress”: Communist Party WorkplaceBranches in a Time of Militancy, 1956–79, Part 1: History, Politics, Topog-raphy’, HSIR 10 (Autumn 2000), p. 136.

74. Communist Party of Great Britain (CP), Build the Factory and PitBranches (CP: June 1958), pp. 3–4. This extract is quoted by J. McIlroy,‘“Every factory our fortress”: Communist Party Workplace Branches in aTime of Militancy, 1956–79, Part 2: Testimonies and Judgements’, HSIR12 (Autumn 2001), p. 58.

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Such a broader political perspective was embedded in the approachof the members of the shop stewards’ co-ordinating committee as awhole, who soon became used to addressing mass meetings andappearing on radio and television.75 Indeed, Foster and Woolfsonattribute a large measure of the success of the work-in to the leadingshop stewards’ skilful use of language – ‘the construction of contextsand the deployment of emotions’76 – as well as to the workers’ ownclass understanding and the government’s insistence on organizationalrationalization. These points are echoed by Kelly, who notes the way inwhich the shop stewards carefully widened the context of the UCSstruggle ‘to construct a broad alliance of class forces against theemployer’.77 In such ways the shop stewards managed to ‘embrace buttranscend’ trade-unionism to great effect.78

The discussion prior to the work-in had already demonstrated anadvanced understanding of strategy. It had embraced objections tostrike action (‘it would enable the liquidator to put up the padlocks allthe quicker’) and to a sit-in strike (‘that would be almost impossible tomaintain for the exceptionally long drawn-out battle that was inprospect, especially in view of the geographical spread and scatter ofthe workforce’).79 A work-in would be unexpected, attract widersupport for its originality, avoid the problems of the other types ofaction and, by controlling the gates, challenge the right of owners todispose of their property in a socially arbitrary manner.

Such a debate was in stark contrast to the eventual occupation of theThorn plant in 1972. Shop stewards and senior management werehaving talks to try to avert closure when a group of workers decidedthey should call a demonstration of support, which in fact grew intothe occupation:

the workers felt they were taking a step into the unknown – and wereunderstandably nervous – [T]hey had always believed that manage-ment and their enclave were forbidden territory … ‘when we did getto the boardroom there was this invisible barrier, it’s got to be said,


75. Jimmy Reid came third in BBC Radio 4’s ‘World at One Personality of theYear’ competition in 1971 – after Edward Heath and Enoch Powell. SeeMorning Star, 28 December 1971.

76. J. Foster and C. Woolfson, ‘How Workers on the Clyde Gained theCapacity for Class Struggle: The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ Work-In,1971–2’, in McIlroy et al. (eds), British Trade Unions, Vol. 2, p. 311.

77. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations, p. 33.78. J. McIlroy, ‘“Every factory our fortress”’, Part 2, HSIR, p. 58.79. Thompson and Hart, UCS Work-In, p. 48.

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it was a barrier ... You got this feeling ... and Tom, one of our seniorstewards, was jockeyed into the office, he wouldn’t go at first’.80

Although this sit-in was temporarily successful (the co-operative wasset up later), it is clear that its leadership, at least initially, was less expe-rienced and less confident than the UCS stewards.

At UCS, a campaign against the government’s decision to refuse the£6 million loan was launched and, on 27 July, Reid, the shop stewards’spokesman, announced plans for a work-in:

[an unfavourable government decision would spark off] the mostmilitant struggle ever seen in the history of Clydeside ... When wespeak of occupying the yards we do not merely mean a sit-in. Weintend to continue producing ships. After all, UCS has an orderbook worth £90 million. We will have a work-in, which is unique intrade union history. People have been out on the street before now,and others have been on strike. But no one has ever had a work-inbefore now.81

On 29 July the government confirmed that the yards at Clydebank andScotstoun would be closed, with an immediate loss of 6,000 jobs. Thefollowing day, the Clydebank yard was occupied.82 The role of leader-ship in inspiring the work-in had proved decisive.

Opportunity

The political context of the decision to occupy the UCS consortiumwas also critical in creating a historic opportunity for the shopstewards. The Labour Party’s furious criticisms of Trade and IndustrySecretary, Davies, were based on the social considerations of liquida-tion – criteria for evaluating the purpose of an industrial enterprise (itscapacity to provide stable employment) quite different from those usednaturally by the Conservatives (commercial viability and ‘success’). Itis unusual for this to be debated openly and systematically by theLabour Party since it questions the role of property in legitimizingmanagement’s authority to dispose of assets.83


80. Clarke, Sit-In at Fisher-Bendix, pp. 4–5.81. ‘Clyde Yards Ready for Work-in’, Morning Star, 28 July 1971.82. ‘It’s Clyde Workers Unlimited Now’, Morning Star, 31 July 1971.83. However, these alternative criteria arguably reflected a key objective of the

Labour Party as then specified in Clause IV (4) of its constitution: ‘Tosecure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry

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This process of parliamentary legitimization helped to shift thefocus of national debate. The traditional rights of owners to dispose oftheir capital had been subverted by workers’ insistence on the sameproperty rights in their job: they ‘owned’ their job as they had‘invested’ their working lives in it and chose to keep it.84 After Davies’sannouncement of the liquidation, the thrust of Labour’s arguments wasto question the arbitrary disposal of property and, in the case of TonyBenn in particular, to urge workers to occupy the yards. The Times cor-respondent noted that he ‘has probably spent more time in Clydebankthan in his own constituency since the crisis began. Workers’ controlseems assured at least until Mr Wilson’s visit, and probably beyond’.85

The actions of the stewards’ leadership were naturally strengthenedby this support and by Wilson’s, the Leader of the Opposition. ‘Weshould not condemn’, he stated, ‘any action they [the UCS stewards]take, within the law, to maintain their right to work.’86 Wilson had, byall accounts, been initially angry with Benn for spending so much timeat UCS.87 Yet he soon understood the political implications of thework-in and, during a visit to UCS on 4 August, had placed hisauthority behind the campaign for jobs. Later, he wrote that the work-in ‘was a natural reaction to an obsolete ideology. What the men ofClydeside proclaimed, and what I went to Clydeside to assert, was the“right to work”’.88 Such support for action that was technically illegalwas critical: ‘the militant stewards of Upper Clyde – many of themCommunists – were now leading and acting as the spokesmen for thewhole labour movement’.89


… that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of themeans of production, distribution and exchange …’ This wording lastappeared on membership cards in 1995.

84. H. A. Turner, G. Clack and G. Roberts, Labour Relations in the MotorIndustry (Allen and Unwin: 1967), pp. 336–7, argue that ‘property rightsin a job’ had been given a certain ‘legal embodiment’ for workers generallythrough the Contracts of Employment Act 1963 and the RedundancyPayments Act 1965, with their initial recognition of ‘job ownership’ andpartial provision for employer-financed compensation for job loss.

85. The Times, 31 July 1971.86. Morning Star, 5 August 1971.87. Robert Jenkins, Tony Benn: A Political Biography (Writers’ and Readers’

Publishing Co-operative: 1980), p. 156.88. Wilson’s introduction to Buchan, Right to Work, pp. 9–10.89. Buchan, Right to Work, p. 90.

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Organization and mobilization

The UCS workers strongly identified with the work-in, which itselfderived support from the local community and developments in Par-liament. The work-in also ensured a high level of interaction betweenthe shop stewards and the workers, and their habit of working. Absen-teeism halved, time-keeping improved and morale soared. ‘It could beargued’, observe Foster and Woolfson, ‘that UCS provided a fleetingglimpse of that kind of voluntary self-discipline that workers impose onthemselves when they feel themselves to have a real stake in determin-ing their own lives’.90

The clear definition of interests, firm and committed leadership,appropriate opportunity and a high degree of organization togethercreated the conditions for the declaration of the work-in and for itsmaintenance and conclusion.91 The work-in had succeeded in creatinga measure of public tolerance for direct action. One of its mostenduring results was undoubtedly the development and popularizationof the ‘social audit’, a campaign instrument that widened the struggleagainst unemployment by explicitly highlighting the social costsinvolved.

Towards institutionalization

The social audit

Full employment and the election of Labour governments in 1964 and1966 had kindled an interest in workers’ control among trade-unionists, political activists and academics keen to build on theseapparent shifts in the balance of power towards organized labour. TheInstitute for Workers’ Control (IWC), which had been launched in 1968after a series of conferences initiated in 1964, acted as a forum through-


90. Foster and Woolfson, Politics of the UCS Work-In, p. 203. These observa-tions closely reflect those made about the sit-down strike at GeneralMotors in 1936–37, where the workers had created ‘a palace out of whathad been their prison’: S. Fine, Sit-down: The General Motors Strike of1936–1937 (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI: 1969), p. 171.

91. The conclusion, which included the restoration of subsidies to UCS,formed part of the Conservative government’s lurch back towards inter-ventionist policies in industry – ‘the famous U-turn, which Heath wasnever allowed to forget’: H. Young, One of Us: A Biography of MargaretThatcher (Macmillan: 1989), p. 75.

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out the late 1960s and 1970s for debates and campaigns on ways topromote industrial and social accountability. It published a regularbulletin among a stream of other publications, and many influentialpoliticians and trade-union leaders became associated with its activi-ties.92

In particular, the IWC pioneered the use of social audits, which weredesigned to reflect the wider economic and social costs of decisionsotherwise taken within the narrow confines of organizational budgets.93

As part of the campaign against mass redundancies at GEC onMerseyside in 1969, shop stewards had commissioned the IWC to carryout an early version of a social audit on their behalf: a survey of third-world embassies and relief agencies revealed buoyant demand for theproducts that the company proposed to stop manufacturing at thethreatened sites, thereby demonstrating their economic viability.94

Michael Barratt Brown, in the first full-scale social audit, assessedthe external economies of keeping the UCS yards open, transformedperhaps into a multi-purpose port with ore and oil terminals. Heevaluated: the external costs of allowing the yards to run down in termsof wastage of assets and the deterioration of housing, schools, roadsand hospitals; the additional costs of moving, re-employing, housing,educating and providing for an infrastructure of transport and socialservices for an entire, displaced community; and the costs of unem-ployment and social security benefits, as well as the grants and loans(about £21 million) awarded by governments to the consortiumbetween 1968 and 1971.95

A further social audit on UCS was prepared as evidence on behalfof the IWC to the Committee of Enquiry into the Proposed Rundownof Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, which was set up by the Scottish TradesUnion Congress.96 Murray observes:


92. For an overview of the role of the IWC in promoting workers’ control atthis time, see K. Coates, Workers’ Control: Another World is Possible(Spokesman, Nottingham: 2003). Relevant publications are listed in‘Select Bibliography of Writings by the late Tony Topham’, HSIR 17(Spring 2004), pp. 139–46. By the late 1980s, the IWC was ‘no longer aliving thing’: Coates, Workers’ Control, p. 177.

93. K. Coates, Work-ins, Sit-ins and Industrial Democracy (Spokesman, Not-tingham: 1981).

94. Chadwick, ‘“The Big Flame”’, pp. 194–5.95. Coates, Work-ins, Sit-ins and Industrial Democracy, pp. 87–99.96. This committee’s report appears in Barratt Brown and Coates (eds), Trade

Union Register 3, pp. 253–9.

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Far from promising increased social efficiency, bankruptcy promisesmerely to restore the rate of profit on private capital by transfersfrom other parts of society … [T]he restriction of discussion to theterms dictated by the market can no longer be accepted … [T]hequestion … is not how to adjust ourselves to maintain this particu-lar economic system, but how to organize the system to meet ourneeds.97

The social audit approach was also used with success at the secondwork-in undertaken, in autumn 1971, at the River Don steel works inSheffield. The British Steel Corporation (BSC) had announced plans toclose the plant by hiving off some orders to private competitors andshutting down its heavy forge. The unions and middle-managementtogether approached customers for heavy forgings to ask whether theyknew of the plans. Closure would have meant that heavy forgings couldbe obtained only from abroad; following customers’ protests, BSCwithdrew the decision.98

The approach was used elsewhere, for example at Imperial Type-writers,99 and refined to develop the notion of local participatorydemocracy. Stan Bodington set out a model of democracy based on thesocial audit: the community is to relate social needs to the resourcesavailable to satisfy them as a way to avoid the inefficiencies of both the‘automatic market system’ and centralization.100 Yet the social audit’smore immediate, if indirect, impact was on the institutionalization ofnew co-operatives and on workers’ alternative corporate plans(ACPs).101 Both these developments were based on a concept ofindustry’s social responsibilities in providing secure, useful employ-ment. The formation of co-operatives during the 1970s came to be seenincreasingly as a way to socialize small companies, and the propagationof ACPs as a way to socialize large companies. Both methods wereintended to steer a course between the free market and the bureaucraticcentralization of traditional nationalization. Both ‘went beyond’ the


97. Murray, UCS, p. 80.98. Coates, ‘Converting the Unions’, p. 32.99. Why Imperial Typewriters MUST NOT Close, a preliminary social audit

by the Union Action Committee, IWC pamphlet 46 (Institute for Workers’Control, Nottingham: n.d.).

100. S. Bodington, ‘The Political Economies of Social Auditing’, Workers’Control (1978) no. 2, pp. 8–9.

101. For a summary of the relationships between these strategies, see M. Gold,‘When Workers Take over the Works’, Tribune, 24 July 1981.

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sit-in and work-in by attempting to institutionalize and formalizeworkers’ control on a long-term, stable basis from below.

This process of institutionalization presents a series of challengesthat goes well beyond the use of work-ins as a reactive form of collec-tive action. Most analyses of mobilization centre on strikes,102 but it canaccount too for work-ins and even social audits. Yet what of attemptsto build on such temporary foundations to create enduring solutions toclosures or redundancies, such as co-operatives? Or what of efforts toextend collective bargaining into new areas that have major implica-tions for managers’ right to manage and shareholder value, such asACPs?

The ‘new co-operatives’

The ‘new co-operatives’, which emerged in 1974–75, can be regarded asambitious forms of collective resistance to closure and redundancy,involving often high densities of worker mobilization. Their origins canbe analysed by reference to the factors used already in this article –including interests, sense of injustice, leadership, opportunities and organization. The difference lies in the barriers that the new co-operatives encountered as they evolved from ‘collective action’,through ‘habitual action’ to ‘viable institution’. A work-in, as a form ofcollective action, requires the continuation of the habit of attendingwork, which could even lead to improved rates of attendance andmorale, as in the case of UCS. This form of habitual activity remainedcontroversial as it was not sanctioned by the employer and had beenorganized as a direct challenge to the employer’s interests. UCSsucceeded as the work-in eventually wore down the government, whichwas concerned at the political implications of soaring unemploymentand the apparent risk of civil disorder.103

The formation of a co-operative demands a crucial further step:institutionalization, which ‘occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typifi-cation of habitualized actions by types of actors. Put differently, anysuch typification is an institution.’104 The key phrase is ‘reciprocal typ-ification’. Clearly, an institution will not pass beyond the stage of‘habitual activity’ and emerge as an institution unless the typicalactions that it defines and structures are accepted and shared by allparties to them as legitimate and enduring. It follows that the failure to


102. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations, p. 37.103. J. Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (Jonathan Cape: 1993), p. 443.104. P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality

(Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1973), p. 72.

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institutionalize a habitual activity requires careful examination of thebarriers that have prevented its ‘reciprocal typification’ by the actorsinvolved. If the barriers that hampered the consolidation of the new co-operatives can be identified and evaluated, then it is possible to explainwhy it proved so difficult for even well-organized and reflective shop-floor interests to make lasting progress in creating the foundations ofalternative forms of industrial production, even when – as in the 1970s– the circumstances appeared most propitious.

The co-operatives contrasted with UCS in a variety of ways. Thework-in was never intended to be permanent, but the co-operativeswere: workers had to assume managerial roles in the co-operatives andbear responsibility for implementing wage cuts and redundancies.While workers elsewhere had no reason to oppose the UCS work-in,the co-operatives often evoked hostility from those whose jobs werethreatened as a consequence. UCS had a massive backlog of work, butthe co-operatives were generally desperately seeking markets. The UCS work-in was a means to an end – securing state aid – but the co-operatives were ends in themselves.105

In his study of factory occupations, A. J. Mills distinguishes three‘waves’ of occupations that followed the UCS example between July1971 and March 1974.106 At first, engineering workers were the vastmajority of occupiers (91.5%), and it was they who ‘had a pioneeringrole in initiating and establishing occupation strategy’. The secondwave ‘brought in other unions, notably the Transport and GeneralWorkers’, while the final wave, beginning in February 1972, marked ‘adeeper acceptance of the strategy … when 28 print workers occupiedtheir work premises to protest a pay claim rather than redundancy.Another 25 occupations (all involving the Amalgamated Union ofEngineering Workers) over pay disputes followed this move’.According to the union leader Alan Sapper, in 1977, there had beensome 200 factory occupations since 1971, involving over 200,000workers.107 Alan Tuckman listed 264 occupations over the period1971–81, of which 69 had involved responses to closures or redundan-cies, and the remainder issues such as pay and conditions.108


105. For an overview of the co-operative movement in the UK, with particularreference to the development of larger co-operatives, see ICOM, No SingleModel: Participation, Organization and Democracy in Larger Co-ops(Industrial Common Ownership Movement, Leeds: 1987).

106. A. J. Mills, ‘Factory Work-ins’, New Society, 22 August 1974, p. 489. Seealso G. Chadwick, ‘The Manchester Engineering Sit-ins’, in BarrattBrown and Coates (eds), Trade Union Register 3, pp. 113–24.

107. TUC, Annual Report, 1977, p. 559.108. Tuckman, ‘Industrial Action and Hegemony’, appendix two, pp. 558–63.

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In February 1972, at the start of the ‘final wave’, an occupation ledto the formation of the first producers’ co-operative by a small group ofwomen workers in Fakenham, Norfolk. Though opposed by theexecutive committee of their union – the National Union of Footwear,Leather and Allied Trades (NUFLAT) – they resisted the closure oftheir leather factory during a seventeen-week work-in.109 Theycontinued making dresses and bags and eventually obtained financialbacking from the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. The reasons for theeventual failure (in 1977) of Fakenham Enterprises – the name of the co-operative as it became – are instructive. The demand for shoes, in which it had specialized, slumped; the co-operative was under-capitalized; there was no help from the labour movement; and there waslittle genuine interest in self-management in any case.110 The workerswere prepared to negotiate virtually any deal to secure their jobs.

The Fakenham example raises two major questions. First, underwhat circumstances did a sit-in or work-in develop into a producer’s co-operative? And, second, what chances were there during the 1970s forthe emergence in the UK of genuinely democratic forms of work orga-nization, especially in larger enterprises, which were not necessarilybased on common ownership (a question we examine below in thesection on ACPs)?

The relationship between sit-ins, work-ins and co-operatives

The term ‘new co-operatives’ is applied to those co-operatives aided byBenn during his term as Secretary of State for Industry from March 1974until June 1975 (the three most significant were KME, Meriden andScottish Daily News). Benn was then demoted following the defeat of thereferendum campaign to withdraw the UK from membership of theEEC.111 The emergence of the ‘new co-operatives’ is best seen as the lastresort by workers trying to avoid unemployment, provided that financewere available. They did not generally have a special regard for the qualityof their jobs. Among the new co-operatives of the 1970s, only at Meridenwas reference ever made to the enthusiasm of the workforce for theirproduct (motor-cycles) as a factor in eventual success.112


109. K. Coates, ‘Some Questions and Some Arguments’, in idem (ed.), NewWorker Co-operatives, pp. 11–13.

110. J. Wajcman, ‘The Caring, Sharing Co-op?’, New Society, 2 July 1981, pp.12–14.

111. T. Benn, Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–76 (Arrow Books: 1990), p. 388.112. See, for example, G. Whiteley, ‘Triumph at Meriden after One Year’,

Guardian, 5 March 1976; M. Leighton, ‘The Workers’ Triumph’, SundayTimes Magazine, 4 June 1978.

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There has historically never been a coherent strategy in Britainto advance workers’ control through co-operatives, with the result thatthere was no political leadership available to give systematic assistancein developing co-operatives from work-ins. For example, in a reportsubmitted to the CP’s executive committee in 1975, Bert Ramelson, itsindustrial organizer, stated that since a co-operative was suited chieflyto either distribution or small-scale production, ‘we would be creatingillusions if we were to foster the idea that it is a major solution or analternative form to nationalization in a highly sophisticated large-scaleand interdependent industry such as Britain’s’.113

Another commentator argued that:

the problem of the market has not been seriously answered by theleaders of the struggle for a co-operative [at Meriden] ... The way inwhich the workers are maintaining production means that they havealso taken upon themselves the penalties which capital demands in acrisis situation (i.e. wage reductions and redundancies).114 (originalemphasis)

There is considerable validity in these arguments. At Meriden, theunions lost their traditional influence on the shop floor.115 As a result,many new co-operatives in their formative stages received help overorganizational and similar issues from individuals rather than fromunions or political groups: Ray Loveridge (Aston University) atFakenham;116 Ken Fleet (secretary of the IWC) at GranthamFashions;117 Tony Eccles (Glasgow University) at KME;118 andGeoffrey Robinson (Labour MP for Coventry North-West) atMeriden.119

A further obstacle to be surmounted in forming a new co-operativewas the hostility of those workers elsewhere who feared that their ownjobs would be undermined by a successful venture.120 Meriden was such


113. B. Ramelson, ‘Public Ownership and Industrial Democracy’, Comment,22 March 1975, p. 86.

114. S. Parker, ‘Meriden and Workers’ Control’, Revolutionary Communist 1(January 1975), pp. 28–9.

115. Whiteley, ‘Triumph at Meriden’, Guardian.116. Private correspondence from Ray Loveridge, 5 July 1977.117. H. Frayman, ‘Grantham’s Workers’ Co-operative’, Workers’ Control

(1978) no. 2, p. 13.118. Private correspondence from A. J. Eccles, 13 June 1977.119. ‘Save Meriden!’, Tribune, 14 June 1977.120. E. Mandel, ‘Self-Management – Dangers and Possibilities’, International

2 (Winter/Spring 1975), p. 5.

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an example: Norton Villiers Triumph (NVT) had been formed in July1973 with £4.8 million of public money and Dennis Poore as chairman.That autumn, the Meriden plant was closed to concentrate productionon the company’s other plants at Small Heath (in Birmingham) andWolverhampton. After an eighteen-month sit-in, Meriden workers setup their own co-operative (March 1975), though NVT continued tomarket Meriden’s products until 1977.121 Poore warned Benn thatmotor-cycle demand could not sustain all three factories, a view sharedby the Small Heath workers who had angrily told Benn that they fearedthat the Meriden co-operative threatened their jobs. Though Bennemphasized his commitment to revitalizing the industry through theNational Enterprise Board (NEB), both the Wolverhampton and theSmall Heath plants eventually closed. This led to another sit-in atWolverhampton, not supported by Eric Varley, Benn’s successor at theDepartment of Industry.122 The Times, in a leading article, declared thatNVT had been expected to rationalize under the programme attractingstate aid in 1973 but that Benn’s support for Meriden had ‘wrecked’ theplan.123

A similar situation arose during the formation of the Scottish DailyNews (SDN) as a co-operative.124 Beaverbrook Newspapers Ltddecided to close its Glasgow office in May 1974 and cease printing itsthree Scottish papers. The rationale was that the Glasgow printingoperations had to stop to allow those in London and Manchester tocontinue. The national print unions backed Beaverbrook and so theworkers’ action committee, formed on being notified of the closure,decided that other means would be necessary to keep the site open.Faced with having to raise money rapidly, the action committee soondiscovered that most union executive committees were hostile or indif-ferent.125 In the event, the SDN co-operative closed in December1975.126


121. J. McLoughlin, ‘The Meriden Baby That Fights for Survival’, Guardian, 23May 1978.

122. ‘Policy of State Aid for Ailing Companies Suffers Sharp Reversal’, TheTimes, 8 August 1975.

123. ‘A Forlorn Attempt to Keep Going’, The Times, 12 August 1975.124. The full account of the Scottish Daily News (SDN) can be found in R.

McKay and B. Barr, The Story of the ‘Scottish Daily News’ (Canongate,Edinburgh: 1976).

125. A. Mackie, ‘The Scottish Daily News’, in Coates (ed.), New Worker Co-operatives, p. 120.

126. ‘Final Chapter Ends for “Scottish Daily News”’, The Times, 17 December1975.

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Such opposition to co-operatives – as demonstrated by massmeetings of shop-floor workers at Small Heath and official lack ofinterest by unions over SDN at Glasgow – reveals the difficulty informing one without outside support. In at least one case, at the BriantColour Printing work-in in south London, appeals to establish a co-operative were voted down on the recommendation of the leadershipinside the plant.127

Weak product markets also presented problems. In the case of thenew co-operatives, a slump – leading to liquidation or its threat – hadbeen behind the crisis in the plants in the first place. The reorganizationof a company from private to co-operative ownership could not in itselfregain lost sales and arrest a declining market share. Indeed, the moti-vation to establish a co-operative during the first half of the 1970s wasgenerally in reaction to the threat of redundancy, just as recourse toself-help has been a traditional reaction to economic crisis throughoutBritish labour history.128 The prospect of saving jobs was seen as thesingle most important motivation in setting up KME, SDN andMeriden.129 One essential condition, then, for a sit-in or work-in todevelop into a co-operative was the readiness of the shop floor tosupport a leadership committed to resist redundancies. Benn stressedthat the new co-operatives were assisted only because they were self-selected – he was unable to set one up when Aston Martin, for example,went bankrupt, because the workers did not want it.130

There was a further, crucial condition for success: access to finance.British co-operatives, unlike their French or Italian counterparts or theMondragón organization in Spain, had no substantial sources offinance or credit especially geared to their needs.131 As a result, avicious circle ensued: lack of credit meant that cash reserves disap-peared, so the co-operative was forced to lower its prices to establish amarket, which further squeezed the finance available for expansion andput the co-operative at risk. This eroded confidence, and justified with-


127. Coates, ‘Some Questions’, p. 13.128. R. Fletcher, ‘Worker Co-ops and the Co-operative Movement’, in Coates

(ed.), New Worker Co-operatives, p. 179.129. Eccles, ‘Kirkby Manufacturing and Engineering’, p. 155; Mackie,

‘Scottish Daily News’, p. 109; Parker, ‘Meriden and Workers’ Control’, p.29.

130. T. Benn, Arguments for Socialism, ed. C. Mullin (Penguin, Har-mondsworth: 1980), p. 68.

131. J. Thornley, Workers’ Co-operatives: Jobs and Dreams (Heinemann: 1981),ch. 7, p. 93.

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holding credit.132 This kind of structural weakness has prevented theco-operative movement in the UK from challenging traditional formsof private ownership in industry.

Because the plants in question had been on the point of closurebefore becoming co-operatives, management had not normally providedfunds to continue, although Beaverbrook did supply both unsecuredand secured loans to SDN. In addition, it was no longer adequate, giventhe scale of operations in the examples in question, to build up a fundprincipally of members’ savings. The remaining three methods offinance – support from an individual benefactor, grants from centralgovernment and assistance from specialist agencies – often provedunsatisfactory as well. The result was that the new co-operatives’ failure reflected (unfairly) on co-operative organization assuch, rather than on credit starvation or poor methods of capitalization.

The most notorious example of reliance on an individual benefactorinvolved Robert Maxwell’s association with SDN. Maxwell, alreadywith a record of dubious business dealings,133 effectively bought himselfthe co-chairmanship of the works council. Later, following quarrelsover format, pricing and editorial line, he gained full control of thebusiness.134 It was eventually liquidated, and the occupiers evicted inautumn 1976.

A second source of finance was grants from central government,associated with the period Benn spent as Secretary of State forIndustry. These grants – notably to KME, SDN and Meriden –attracted considerable criticism, particularly from the Industrial Devel-opment Advisory Board.135 From June 1975, when Varley replacedBenn against a background of mounting economic crisis, the govern-ment took a harder line over such grants. Varley allowed the reposses-sion of the Imperial Typewriters factory in Hull, which workers hadoccupied in the face of closure and drawn up a social audit.136 He


132. J. Pearce, Sources of Finance for Small Co-operatives, ICOM pamphlet no.7 (Industrial Common Ownership Movement: 1979), p. 4.

133. I. Jack, P. Knightley and J. Fox, ‘How Maxwell Sabotaged the Workers’Dream’, Sunday Times, 21 September 1975.

134. Mackie, ‘Scottish Daily News’, p. 136.135. ‘A Dead Duck’, The Times, 23 December 1974.136. Other factors were also involved in the failure of the campaign to convert

Imperial Typewriters into a co-operative. The Hull plant was merely leasedto the parent company, which therefore could not sell its assets to theworkforce to its advantage. Furthermore, the parent company was deter-mined to retain the brand name and the marketing, so the workforcewould have had to start the business again from scratch: Tuckman, ‘Indus-trial Action and Hegemony’, pp. 265–6.

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refused to aid the NVT Wolverhampton sit-in137 and eventually allowedKME to slip into liquidation in March 1979 after take-over attemptsby Worcester Engineering had failed to satisfy creditors.138

Finally, other co-operatives and especially co-operative agencieshelped to finance new ventures. Scott-Bader, the common-ownershipenterprise operating in the plastics and chemicals industry,139 aidedRowen Engineering (Glasgow), Rowen Onllwyn and Fakenham Enter-prises. The Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM),founded in 1958 with inspiration from Scott-Bader, provided financialassistance through Industrial Common Ownership Finance Ltd(ICOF). This latter body, founded in 1973, was a non-profit-makingloan fund deriving finance from individual contributions and the pro-visions of the Industrial Common Ownership Act l976.140 Under thisAct, £250,000 was made available over five years from the Departmentof Industry for loans to common-ownership enterprises. The projectsthat ICOM and ICOF could support were, therefore, very small.141

Funds available from other agencies – such as the Co-operative Devel-opment Agency (CDA), established by the government in 1978 – werelikewise limited.142

By the end of the decade, it was believed that, in the longer term, theco-operative sector was most likely to flourish through ICOM and theCDA.143 Indeed, the number of co-operatives in Britain supportedthrough these agencies rose from 75 in 1977 to 140 in 1978 and 162 in1979.144 These co-operatives remained very small and constituted onlya tiny proportion of industrial output.145

Key factors, then, in explaining the formation of the new co-operatives include the firm cohesion of the workers involved and the


137. J. Elliott, ‘The Workers’ Co-operatives: A Political Own Goal’, FinancialTimes, 21 November 1978.

138. ‘Assets Bid Too Late To Save Kirkby Co-operative’, Financial Times, 28March 1979.

139. E. Bader, ‘From Profit Sharing to Common Ownership’, in J. Vanek (ed.),Self Management (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1975), pp. 227–37.

140. D. Watkins, Industrial Common Ownership, Fabian Tract 455 (FabianSociety: 1978), pp. 2–4.

141. ‘Rebirth Co-operative Style’, ICOM Newsletter (Industrial CommonOwnership Movement: January/February 1980), p. 1.

142. Thornley, Workers’ Co-operatives, pp. 54–61.143. ‘Co-operatively, To Collapse’, Guardian, 29 March 1979.144. D. Owen, ‘Exponential Growth in Industrial Co-ops’, ICOM Newsletter

(Industrial Common Ownership Movement: March/April 1980), p. 1.145. C. Logan, ‘Do-it-yourself Socialism’, New Statesman, 16 April 1982, pp.

6–7.

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role of leaders in arguing the case and exploiting opportunities forsources of finance. Other factors emerged to constrain their success.First, the new co-operatives relied on workers’ concern for their jobsand on public funds, whose supply turned out to be erratic. Indeed,their intention – to save jobs – sometimes led to an organizationalstructure not always regarded as genuinely co-operative. Jo Grimond,the Liberal Party leader, dubbed them ‘government funded syndicalistenterprises’.146 Second, they sometimes provoked the hostility ofworkers elsewhere who felt that the co-operatives threatened their ownjobs. Third, they were not supported by a coherent governmentstrategy. Indeed, when workers at Meriden, KME and SDN shiftedtheir interest from a ‘mere’ defence of their jobs towards an alternativeindustrial structure, there was no unambiguous strategy of supportfrom the Labour Party as there had been for UCS:

To give the movement real shape and direction, a committedapproach would be necessary from the Labour Party itself. Thiswould not mean simply handing round the hat to individual co-operatives, but would involve an acceptance of this form of enter-prise as part of a political programme and strategy.147

Yet no such committed approach was forthcoming. Indeed, the co-operatives aided through ICOM and the CDA tended to be small andisolated, and could not in any sense be presented as an alternativemodel to the private sector.

Alternative corporate plans

Co-operatives have a tendency to be small not only because smallnessfavours direct democratic accountability, but also because the processof capital accumulation is more restricted: co-operatives must financeexpansion purely from within and cannot rely on raising funds on thestock market. By contrast, the second major development in the insti-tutionalization of ‘new’ forms of collective action during the 1970s –the emergence of workers’ alternative corporate plans (ACPs) –


146. Elliott, ‘The Workers’ Co-operatives’, p. 18. Grimond is referring here to‘syndicalism’, a social movement, peaking between the 1890s and 1920s,that sought to overthrow capitalism through ‘the revolutionary potentialof working class economic organization, notably the trade union or indus-trial union’: B. Holton, British Syndicalism 1900–1914 (Pluto Press: 1976),p. 17.

147. Thornley, Workers’ Co-operatives, pp. 177–8.

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involved large, multi-plant manufacturing companies. The factors thatled to the diffusion of ACPs in a number of industries can, again, beexplained by mobilization theory. These include the attribution ofblame for redundancies to poor management, a sense of injustice, astrong sense of solidarity fostered through the action of the shopstewards’ combine committee, creative leadership, efficient organiza-tion and appropriate opportunities.

The Industry Act 1975 had already introduced voluntary planningagreements that were designed to strengthen the relationship betweencorporate strategy and the attainment of certain government objec-tives, such as reducing unemployment and import penetration. Agree-ments were to provide government with current information from eachcompany covered on matters such as investment, pricing, productdevelopment and marketing.148 They were to form an intrinsic part ofthe government’s industrial strategy, and the original intention was tocover around one hundred manufacturing companies by 1978, a targetstrongly endorsed by the TUC.149 Only two were ever signed: theNational Coal Board and Chrysler.150 Such lack of progress createdmuch disappointment in union circles, though it was acknowledged atthe time that the government was too weak to force through legislationto make the system compulsory.151

Alongside these formal, top-down structures there emerged a seriesof alternative corporate plans drawn up by shop stewards’ combinecommittees in close collaboration with the workers involved. TheseACPs built on the discourse of planning and on the expanded scope ofcollective bargaining, such as disclosure of company information,152 tobreak free of government agendas and to challenge management’s rightto manage at the level of business and investment strategy. Whileplanning agreements were officially recognized but failed to capture the


148. The Contents of a Planning Agreement: A Discussion Document, preface byEric Varley, Secretary of State for Industry (Department of Industry:1975).

149. TUC, Annual Report, 1976, p. 320.150. Sawyer, ‘Industrial Policy’, pp. 168–9.151. N. Vann, ‘Negotiating Planning Agreements’, Studies for Trade Unionists

3:9 (Workers’ Educational Association: March 1977), pp. 5–7.152. Sections 17–21 of the Employment Protection Act 1975 granted unions

certain rights to information for the purposes of collective bargaining. If acompany resisted disclosure, the union could request the Central Arbitra-tion Committee (CAC) to intervene. By the end of April 1979, eighty-fourcomplaints had been referred to the CAC: M. Gold, H. Levie and R.Moore, The Shop Stewards’ Guide to the Use of Company Information(Spokesman, Nottingham: 1979), pp. 113–15.

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popular imagination, ACPs – in a kind of parallel universe – did thereverse. They captured the popular imagination but were never offi-cially recognized.

Arguably, had the terms of Industrial Democracy, Labour’s WhitePaper,153 ever been implemented, then these are the very issues thatworker directors could have raised at company boards. By contrast,ACPs used the principle of the social audit to counter the threat ofredundancies by presenting management with possible alternativeinvestment strategies. These were designed to achieve several relatedobjectives: to save jobs; to produce ‘socially useful’ products; and toachieve these aims by adapting the existing technology and equipmentin the company, thereby avoiding capital expenditure on a new plant.Above all, ACPs were designed to involve actively all workers in theplant by tapping their own ideas for new products in a highly effectiveoperation of ‘bottom-up’ direct democracy. Even so, the implementa-tion of ACPs was hindered by management prevarication, technologi-cal constraints and fears in some union quarters of incorporation intomanagement interests. Union leadership was consequently often frag-mented both politically and organizationally.

These points are best illustrated by examining the first and best-known ACP, that at Lucas Aerospace.154 A division of Lucas IndustriesLtd, Lucas Aerospace had begun to rationalize its operations and layworkers off towards the end of the 1960s, when it employed around18,000. In 1974, the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards’Committee (LACSSC) – then representing 14,000 members in 13unions across 17 sites – began to develop a proactive strategy to opposemass redundancies.155 It circulated a questionnaire throughout theworkforce for ideas on products designed to achieve the objectivesnoted above. On the basis of returned questionnaires, the LACSSCdrew up in 1976 a list of 150 such products, grouped under sixheadings. These covered oceanic equipment, robots, transport systems,braking systems, alternative energy sources and medical equipment.156

The LACSSC subsequently campaigned for recognition of its Alter-native Corporate Plan with Lucas management, the national unionsinvolved, the Labour Party, the TUC and the Department of


153. Industrial Democracy, Cmnd 7231 (May 1978).154. H. Wainwright and D. Elliott, The Lucas Plan: A New Trade Unionism in

the Making? (Allison and Busby: 1982).155. Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards’ Committee (LACSSC), ‘The

Lucas Plan’, in K. Coates (ed.), The Right to Useful Work (Spokesman,Nottingham: 1978), pp. 212–16.

156. Ibid., pp. 228–31.

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Industry.157 In January 1978, along with North East London Polytech-nic (NELP), it established the Centre for Alternative Industrial andTechnological Systems (CAITS) with a grant from the JosephRowntree Charitable Trust.158 Its aims were to act as a ‘clearing house’for the Lucas Aerospace ACP, to promote the notion of socially usefulproduction in union negotiations, and to provide research and experi-ence for shop stewards wishing to set up joint combine committees andACPs of their own.159 Then, in March 1978, Lucas Aerospaceannounced further redundancies. At this point, the LACSSC decidedto involve the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions(CSEU), the body that negotiated at national level in shipbuilding andengineering, as it was the official channel to represent the Combine’sideas and proposals.160 Under its auspices, the Lucas Aerospace TradeUnion Committee produced a 400-page report on possible investmentinitiatives at Lucas, which also included a social audit of LucasAerospace’s closure plans.161 Lucas Aerospace agreed to consider thereport and not to carry out compulsory redundancies; in the event,only a relatively small number of jobs were lost.162

The originality of the LACSSC ACP, as Coates has argued,consisted in its attempt to present a solution to four interwoven aspectsof the underlying industrial crisis: unemployment, lack of democracy,unmet social needs and environmental concerns.163 For these reasons,no doubt, it attracted both favourable (the LACSSC was nominated forthe Nobel Peace Prize in 1979) and unfavourable attention.164


157. LACSSC, Democracy versus the Circumlocution Office, IWC pamphlet 65(Institute for Workers’ Control, Nottingham: 1979), p. 3.

158. J. Proctor, ‘Alternative Technology Centre Founded’, Workers’ Control(1978) no. 3, p. 7. In September 1982, the Centre for Alternative Industrialand Technological Systems (CAITS) moved to North London Polytech-nic.

159. CAITS Broadsheet no. 135 (North East London Polytechnic (NELP):November 1979), n. p.

160. The CSEU – Friend or Foe? (LACSSC: n.d.), p. 1.161. Lucas Aerospace Confederation Trade Union Committee, Lucas

Aerospace: Turning Industrial Decline into Expansion – a Trade Union Ini-tiative (interim report) (CAITS: February 1979); M. George, ‘New LucasWorkers’ Plan To Save Jobs’, Workers’ Control (1979) no. 2, p. 12.

162. CAITS Quarterly (September 1980), p. 1.163. K. Coates, ‘Planning by the People’, in idem (ed.), Right to Useful Work,

p. 11.164. M. George, ‘Behind the Scenes: How ATV Handled the Lucas Aerospace

Affair’, Workers’ Control (1979) no. 3, p. 18.

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Most importantly, the Lucas ACP, aided by CAITS, stimulatedmuch debate among shop stewards’ combine committees facing redun-dancies in other multinational companies. Some combine committeesestablished their own ACPs, for example at Vickers.165 Others acknowl-edged the importance of ACPs and drew up ‘rational strategies’ fortheir industry though in less detail, for example at C. A. Parsons.166 Stillothers discussed possible transfers of work to the plant under threat –though not in the same systematic manner associated with an ACP, forexample at British Leyland in Liverpool.167 A one-day conference,organized in November 1979 by CAITS, discussed the opportunitiesand challenges presented by ACPs in different sectors: aerospace, heavyengineering, motors, power engineering, and telecommunications andpostal engineering. The conference agreed to create and maintain linksbetween shop stewards’ combine committees through regular meetings,a decision which was interpreted in some quarters as a step towards aneffective way to deal with the emergence of multi-union, multi-plant,multinational companies.168 Indeed, by 1982, CAITS listed initiativesacross six industries, with case studies drawn from companies includingDunlop, ICL, Metal Box and Thorn, where joint shop stewards’ com-mittees were at different stages of drawing up alternative plans.169 Asurvey by Labour Research in 1983 revealed a further expansion of ini-tiatives, with examples of alternative plans and strategies drawn fromthirty-one sectors. These included plans and reports prepared not onlyby shop stewards for their companies but also by trades councils, pro-gressive local authorities and enterprise boards, and resource centresbased in Leeds, London and Newcastle. However, the survey concludedthat with the re-election of the Conservatives in June 1983, ‘the grandvision of the alternative economic strategy faded away’.170


165. H. Beynon and H. Wainwright, The Workers’ Report on Vickers (Pluto Press:1979); Vickers’ National Combine Committee of Shop Stewards, ‘Building aChieftain Tank and the Alternative’, in Coates (ed.), Right to Useful Work, pp.233–61.

166. Corporate union (CU) committee of C. A. Parsons, The Turbine-GeneratorIndustry – Options and Possibilities, leaflet (CU committee, Heaton Works,Newcastle: October 1979).

167. F. Banton, The Closure of British Leyland’s No. 2 Factory at Speke, Liverpool,leaflet (n.d.).

168. J. Murray, ‘The Shop Steward’s Who’s Who – Or How To Recognize a CombineCommittee’, in Workers’ Plans: Cutting Edge or Slippery Slope?, report ofCAITS one-day conference, 17 November (CAITS, NELP: 1979), p. 79.

169. A Brief Review of Workers’ Plans (CAITS, Polytechnic of North London: 1982).170. ‘Alternative Plans and Strategies’, Labour Research, January 1984, p. 8. See also

the second part of this survey in ‘Popular Planning’, Labour Research,September 1984, pp. 222–4.

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Barriers to institutionalization

The development of ACPs in the 1970s raises important issues. Tobegin with, they presumed the existence of a united shop stewards’combine committee. Such committees bring together stewards fromdifferent sites across a multi-plant company. They are ‘seldom recog-nized by unions or management’ and ‘thus occupy an anomalous andnecessarily unofficial position’ within companies.171 Indeed, it is noteven certain how many existed in Britain in the 1970s, still less whatdifferent types there were (division, company or industry-wide), or howunited, effective and independent they were, or how they derived theirincome.172 Gaining recognition for ACPs from such an insecure foun-dation was always going to prove a struggle.

Not every industry was amenable to the development of an ACP,even where there were robust combine committees. For example, at C.A. Parsons, Newcastle, the corporate union committee stated:

The most important difference in our approach is that we cannotapply the same formula as at Lucas Aerospace where socially usefulproducts are posed as an alternative to military production. We seethe production of turbine generators for electrical power transmis-sion as socially useful work in itself, essential for production andessential to maintain living standards of workers generally.173

The committee added that the company’s technology was suitable onlyfor the production of turbine generators, yet only a few were manufac-tured each year. ‘Many of the workers are highly specialized; much ofthe plant would be only of limited use for other heavy engineeringproducts and useless for small-scale production.’174 Faced by govern-ment pressures to rationalize turbine production, the committeeattempted to build a campaign to prevent private mergers. It also drewup a ‘rational strategy’ for the company to develop turbine generatorsusing wind/wave/tidal energy, intermediate turbine generator technol-ogy, and combined heat and power generators. The objection thatfactories are often purpose-built, and so not amenable to ACPs, has


171 J. F. B. Goodman and T. G. Whittingham, Shop Stewards (Pan Books:1973), pp. 142–3.

172. M. Terry, ‘Combine Committees: Developments of the 1970s’, BritishJournal of Industrial Relations 23:2 (1985), pp. 359–78.

173. CU committee, The Turbine-Generator Industry, p. 1.174. Ibid.

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been made elsewhere as well.175 CAITS acknowledged the diversity ofACPs, and produced guidelines on ‘what needs to be done’ if a combinecommittee decided to develop one.176

A further objection to ACPs was that they might lead to some formof incorporation: ‘The Corporate Plan has been criticized as a fuzzyreformist demand which removes workers from a position of directopposition to management.’177 Senior shop stewards allegedly ran therisk of co-option into top-level consultations with management, whichcould have undermined their independence. Meetings and discussionscould be used as delaying tactics while redundancies went ahead. Shopsteward ‘corporate planners’ could become distanced from their con-stituents. ACPs could also become enmeshed in bureaucratic proce-dures of tripartite planning or else degenerate into glorified suggestionboxes for management. Yet it could be argued that because ACPs wereso complex – involving the defence of jobs, use of technology and socialneed – they allowed workers to advance along a series of ‘fronts’ at thesame time and therefore helped to strengthen bargaining positions.This might have encouraged the independence of shop stewards becauseattention would be drawn to the fact that other interests in industry –the company itself, government, and union leaderships – could not berelied on to save jobs.178

These divergent perspectives resulted in fragmented support amongthe unions. At the political level, some union leaders, such as ArthurScargill of the National Union of Mineworkers, argued that ‘workers’control means in effect the castration of the trade union movement’and ‘total collaboration as far as the working class is involved’.179 Bycontrast, Mike Cooley, a founder member of the LACSSC, maintainedthat workers’ control – in lending workers an opportunity to sense theirown power – represented a significant challenge to ‘the naked power ofthe multinationals in this country’.180 Such a stark polarity of view washardly conducive to building union solidarity around the creation ofACPs.


175. Comments made by F. Banton, discussion group leader for motorindustry, CAITS conference, 17 November 1979, author’s notes.

176. M. George, ‘Combine News: Workers’ Plans and Reports’, Workers’Control (1978) no. 5, pp. 7–8.

177. M. George, ‘The Pros and Cons of Workers’ Alternative Corporate Plans’,Workers’ Control (1979) no. 4, p. 17.

178. Ibid., p.18.179. A Debate on Workers’ Control, IWC pamphlet 64 (Institute for Workers’

Control: November 1978), p. 4.180. Ibid., p. 3.

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At an organizational level, too, the TUC was clearly uneasy with thenature of the shop-floor activity that lay behind the ACPs. Combinecommittees enjoyed an uncertain status in the union movement, andthe issues raised by ACPs were seen as ‘matters for political parties, andbeyond the legitimate brief of local and plant unions as far as thebureaucracy was concerned’.181 Indeed, there is evidence that Lucasmanagement and the CSEU even collaborated in attempting to destroythe Lucas Aerospace Combine.182 Lacking unified union support, andfacing a hostile economic and political climate after 1979, ACPs neversecured their breakthrough into management recognition.183

Nevertheless, at the time, ACPs extended and decentralized collec-tive bargaining in a radical way: ‘Workers’ plans and reports are notobjects, rather they are processes of expropriation over managerial pre-rogatives.’184 This extension of collective bargaining into new areas –information disclosure, investment and product planning, marketingstrategies, factory location and take-overs – formed a major incursioninto the traditionally defined areas of management’s ‘right to manage’.From the point of view of the shop stewards, the merit of this approachwas that it did not compromise their independence. Not only did theirmembers readily understand it, but it also significantly extended theirmembers’ involvement in bargaining strategy as their own ideas andviews formed its foundation. As Audrey Wise put it: ‘The greatest con-tribution of the Workers’ Plan is that it depends on workers thinkingconstructively about their own work and people’s needs’ (originalemphasis).185 The formation of CAITS, the forging of links with therelevant unions and the spread of ACPs into broader areas of industryall demonstrate the extent to which such an approach had gainedacceptance across significant – though clearly not all – sectors of thelabour movement in the 1970s.


181. Private correspondence from Mike Cooley, 13 June 2004.182. George, ‘Pros and Cons’, p. 17.183. The ideas embodied in ACPs – notably the nature of the interaction

between people and technology, and socially useful production – stillcommand attention: M. Cooley, Architect or Bee? The Human Price ofTechnology (Hogarth Press: 1991).

184. George, ‘Combine News’, pp. 7–8.185. A. Wise, ‘Useful Production: The Key to a Worthwhile Industrial

Democracy’, Workers’ Control (1979) no. 6, p. 9.

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Conclusions

This article has traced the development of ‘new’ forms of collectiveaction in the 1970s from their inspirational origins in the UCS work-in,through the social audit to their peak and eventual demise. The analyt-ical framework – mobilization theory – has helped to highlight the con-ditions common to all these forms of collective action, which includeredundancy or threat of redundancy, a sense of injustice, creative lead-ership, good organization and appropriate opportunities, as well as fre-quently support from broader social and political communities.

The common features of these ‘new’ forms of action are summarizedin Table 1. The left-hand column lists the problems faced by theworkers involved in the new forms of collective action, whereas theright-hand column links the objectives or solutions that they corre-spondingly evoked.

The forms of mobilization are diverse, but they reflect the pragma-tism of the workers involved in devising schemes that were appropriateand workable. They are linked by the creativity and optimism ofworkers reacting, under very different circumstances, to common,underlying threats – namely redundancy or its prospect. In each case,the workers involved believed that their action undertaken collectivelycould make a difference to their lives and help secure stable employ-ment.

Table 1 also reveals that, at certain moments in the 1970s, there wasa match between shop-floor aspiration for job security and popularsupport for the creative means to achieve it, even when these meanschallenged management prerogative and property rights. On occasion,as at UCS, this popular support was articulated at national levelthrough the Labour opposition in Parliament. Though the limitationsof the unions to transform society are widely documented and under-stood,186 it seemed at such moments, fleeting though they were, thatthey were indeed pushing the boundaries of capitalism. The example ofUCS – an attempt to demonstrate the priority of workers’ interests overthose of capital – continued to emblazon the decade that followed.Indeed, the promotion of ACPs and strategies based on popularplanning techniques lasted until 1983, when hope for further advanceswas finally extinguished by the second successive election victory of theConservatives.


186. See, for example, T. Lane, The Union Makes Us Strong (Arrow Books:1974).

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Problem

(Threat of) redundancy

Closure, bankruptcy

Failure of management

Top-down decisions frommanagement

Workers regarded aspassive and submissive

Management prerogativeand property rights to beaccepted

Traditional forms of col-lective action not neces-sarily appropriate in thecircumstances

Narrow definition ofstakeholders (company,shareholders)

Lack of private finance

Declining demand forproducts

Short-term reaction

Pessimism

Solution

Job security

New forms of institution(e.g. co-operatives) orconsolidation (e.g. ACPs)

Workers’ control

Bottom-up mobilizationby workers

Workers as creative andresilient

Management prerogativeand property rights to bechallenged

‘New’ forms of collectiveaction based onpragmatic adaptation tothe circumstances

Broad definition ofstakeholders (communityand society, throughsocial audit)

Co-operation, statesubsidy, alternativesources

New products, marketing

Long-term institutionalization

Optimism

Table 1: Common features of ‘new’ forms of collective action

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The key point is that the development of co-operatives and ACPsrepresented attempts to institutionalize alternative forms of industrialorganization that placed the interests of labour above those of capital.A co-operative is designed to ensure that production, finance and man-agement are controlled by the workforce through a directly electedworkers’ board. ACPs acknowledged that the interrelationshipsbetween sites in a multi-plant company were so complex that thestruggle to prevent redundancies had to take account of the company’soperations as a whole. Indeed, among the new co-operatives, two –SDN and Meriden – were individual plants owned and controlled bymulti-plant companies (Beaverbrook and NVT respectively). As co-operatives, the first failed, opposed by plants in Manchester fearingtheir own job losses, while the second temporarily succeeded, though atthe expense of the plants at Small Heath and Wolverhampton, both ofwhich subsequently closed. In neither case had the unions involvedformed a company-level structure – that is, a joint shop stewards’combine committee – to consider redundancies at company level.Instead, the unions fought at plant level, which was inappropriate in thebroader perspective.

Co-operative organization is therefore best suited to single-plantenterprises, though its effectiveness in combating redundancies hasproved to be strictly limited. It is not surprising that the ‘second wave’of (successful) producer co-operatives in the 1970s, aided by the CDA,ICOM and other agencies, were small enterprises based on one unit ofproduction, organized and financed from the start as co-operatives.The ACP of the LACSSC, by contrast, was a major organizationaladvance in union negotiating strategy in a multi-plant, multinationalcompany. It consolidated and extended the principles of collective bar-gaining on which industrial democracy in Britain has traditionally beenfounded.

The development of co-operatives and ACPs in the 1970s demon-strates how managerial prerogative, based on discretionary controlthrough the property rights of shareholders, may be challenged in theright economic, political and social circumstances. In the co-operativestructures, management was reduced to a technical function, directlyaccountable to the workforce, and therefore shorn of the need to legit-imize itself through property rights. ACPs left traditional managementstructures intact but opened up new areas of collective bargaining overplanning decisions and business strategy. Analysis of the ways in whichboth initiatives formed and unfolded bears out the principal contentionof mobilization theory, that ‘it is the perception of, and response to,injustice’ that should play the central role in the industrial relations


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agenda.187 From this sense of injustice there sprang the workers’ deter-mination – underpinned by leadership, organization and creativity – toconfront the assumption that they were powerless in the face of marketforces. Such determination reveals that, for these workers at least,‘another world was possible’.188

School of ManagementRoyal Holloway University of London

Egham TW20 0EX

I should like to thank the following for their encouraging comments on earlierdrafts of this article: Donna Brown, Ken Coates, Mike Cooley, Nina Fishman,Richard Hyman, Chris Smith and the late Tony Topham. Ron Mendel con-tributed sources on factory occupations in the USA in the 1930s. I am particu-larly grateful to the editors, Dave Lyddon and Paul Smith, for their detailedsuggestions on ways to clarify the text. I remain responsible for the finalversion, which is based on my Ph.D. thesis, ‘Industrial Democracy, Incorpora-tion and Control: Britain, 1945–80’ (University of Edinburgh: 1982), chapters10 and 11.


187. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations, p. 126.188. Adapted from subtitle of Coates, Workers’ Control: Another World is

Possible.

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Free Trade-Unionism in Latin America:‘Bread-and-Butter’ or PoliticalUnionism?Magaly Rodríguez García

The foundation of the International Confederation of Free TradeUnions (ICFTU) in 19491 formalized the ‘free’ trade-union ideologywithin the international labour movement. Unions around the worldhad to be convinced of the ‘democratic principles’ of free trade-unionism. To achieve this goal the ICFTU turned its attention toAfrica, Asia and Latin America, and set out to give them technical,financial and educational support by means of its regional organiza-tions. In 1951, the Inter-American Regional Workers’ Organization(ORIT) was founded as the ICFTU regional organization on theAmerican continent.

The idea of free trade-unionism appeared on the Americancontinent long before the formation of the ICFTU – with the creationof the Pan-American Federation of Labor (PAFL) in 1918. This wasfounded through the efforts of Samuel Gompers, leader of theAmerican Federation of Labor (AFL),2 to propagate his economicvision of trade-unionism in Latin America. PAFL’s ephemeralexistence was followed by the Inter-American Confederation of


I am indebted to my Ph.D. supervisors G. Vanthemsche and M. van der Linden,and to B. Coppieters, D. Lyddon and an anonymous reviewer for their usefulcomments on this text. See p. 134 for acronyms for Latin American union bodies.

1. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) wasfounded after the non-Communist unions within the World Federation ofTrade Unions (WFTU, founded in 1945) disapproved of the WFTU’ssympathy for the Soviet regime. The ICFTU united non-Communisttrade-union organizations of fifty-one countries and territories. For acomprehensive history of the ICFTU, see M. van der Linden (ed.), TheInternational Confederation of Free Trade Unions (Peter Lang, Bern: 2000).

2. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) merged with the Congress ofIndustrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955 to form the AFL–CIO.

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Workers (CIT) – also a US creation – founded in 1948 to defend the‘free’ trade unions in the western hemisphere. Both organizations pavedthe way for the ORIT in 1951.

In the formulation of its objectives and tasks, the free trade-unionmovement resembled very closely the business unionism practised byUS unions. According to the vision of the predecessors to the ORIT,trade unions are economic organizations created by workers for theprotection of jobs, the improvement of working conditions, and theincrease of wages through collective bargaining.3 ‘Big business’ wasinevitable, and the emancipation of the working class could, accordingto the defenders of business and free trade-unionism, be achievedwithin the capitalist system. Organized workers must thereforeabandon every effort to transform society as a whole, and concentrateon bread-and-butter trade-union issues, in order to create ‘an ever-increasing sphere of economic security and opportunity’. This is whatthe American theorist Selig Perlman called ‘job consciousness’.4

Free trade-unionism is an ambivalent ideological construct. Someauthors and insiders claim that free trade-unionism, as much as US


3. Trade Unions: what they are, what they do, their structure (ICFTU,Brussels: 1969); G. Meany, Labor Looks at Capitalism (AFL–CIO,Washington DC: 1966). A. Carew, ‘Ideology and International Trade-unionism’, in B. De Wilde (ed.), The Past and Future of InternationalTrade-unionism (Archive and Museum of the Socialist LabourMovement (AMSAB), Ghent: 2000), p. 236, has observed that the‘tendency to concentrate on trade union practicalities rather than themore theoretical questions thrown up by political debate’ was alsopresent in the European continent and its unions as early as thebeginning of the twentieth century. The author agrees with Carew’sstatement but is of the opinion that the tendency to concentrate onindustrial relations, and to avoid (at least officially) political issues andformal organizational links with political parties, was emphasized prin-cipally by the US unions. Many European unions maintained close linkswith political parties during the twentieth century and were not alwaysreluctant to debate on political matters.

4. According to S. Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement (Augustus M.Kelley, New York: 1970; first published 1928), pp. 252–3, trade-unionmilitants developed a so-called trade-union mentality, in contrast to theanti-capitalist mentality of intellectuals. This represented ‘a shift from anoptimistic psychology, reflecting the abundance of opportunity in a partlysettled continent, to the more pessimistic trade union psychology, builtupon the premise that the wage earner, in a complex industrial structure,is faced by a scarcity of opportunity. The new attitude no longer called fora restoration of free competition, but for control and administration bythe union of all job opportunities available to the group.’

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business unionism,5 could not be considered an ideology as such.6

Gompers promoted a ‘pure and simple’ trade-unionism, which wouldconcentrate on economic issues. He refused to accept any dogma,doctrine or ‘ism’. According to him, dogmas and ideologies endan-gered the freedom of humankind and limited the economic vision ofworkers.7 The ICFTU, in a document on trade-union education, main-tained that it had avoided laying down ‘an ideological approach’ as ithad committed itself to ‘respect the philosophical views of the [affili-ated] national organisations’ and that ‘trade-union organisations mustby definition deal much more with practical things than ideologicaloutlooks’. The post-war world, according to ICFTU members, was fartoo complex to follow ‘mechanistic interpretations of the evolution ofsociety’ such as those formulated by ‘Marx and Engels, according towhich the capitalistic world is bound to collapse and that workers haveto wait and take over.’8 Trade unions needed to go beyond any ideo-logical approach to find solutions to modern problems.

Indeed, free trade-unionism, as an ideology, is vaguer than, forexample, communism or socialism, in the sense that it does not claimto make use, to the same extent, of scientific knowledge and that it isdifficult to define concepts such as ‘independence’ or ‘freedom’. Butthis does not mean that the free trade-union movement is withoutideology, defined as a system of ideas, beliefs and values whichcontains: a particular conception of the (past and future) world; a dis-tinctive way to understand liberty, democracy, social justice andauthority; and a programme to achieve its objectives in the future.9

RODRÍGUEZ GARCÍA: FREE TRADE-UNIONISM IN LATIN AMERICA 109

5. Carew, ‘Ideology and International Trade-unionism’, p. 236, discussestrade unions and their tendency ‘to work in the “here and now” whileavoiding politics’, and continues: ‘In making these points I am arguingthat business unionism or Selig Perlman’s “Tom, Dick and Harry” theoryof non-ideological trade-unionism represent a natural order of things.’

6. V. Alba, Politics and the Labor Movement in Latin America (Stanford Uni-versity Press: 1968), p. 353; Meany, Labor; P. Reiser, L’OrganisationRégionale Interaméricaine des Travailleurs (ORIT) de la ConfédérationInternationale des Syndicats Libres (CISL) de 1951 à 1961 (Droz/Minard,Geneva/Paris: 1962), p. 179.

7. R. Salazar, Samuel Gompers: Presencia de un líder (Inter-AmericanRegional Workers’ Organization (ORIT), Mexico: 1957).

8. (Untitled document) ‘ICFTU European Conference on Education, 30October–1 November 1950’, pp. 13, 16, folio 2569c, International Instituteof Social History, archive of the International Confederation of FreeTrade Unions, Amsterdam (hereafter, ICFTU archive).

9. R. Borja, ‘Ideología política’, Enciclopedia de la política (Fondo deCultura Económica, Mexico: 1997), p. 508.

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The free trade-union ideology, as any other ideology, was neitheruniversal nor static. It had distinctive meanings in different parts of theworld; it evolved and modified its ideological nature according topolitical and socio-economic transformations. For the US unions,‘freedom’ meant that unions should be entirely independent of politicalparties, governments, employers and church, while some Europeanunions, particularly those which were linked to political parties, chosea vaguer definition, namely ‘free from external domination’. Since theLatin American labour movement was historically highly politicized,the ORIT Latino leaders also favoured the vaguer definition of inde-pendence. But the ORIT was strongly influenced by the US unions andtheir purist notion of free trade-unionism. ORIT members thereforeemphasized independence from political parties, governments,employers and church, and promoted, at least in theory, ‘apolitical’trade-unionism.

In practice, especially after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the freetrade-union movement in Latin America played an active political rolein protecting the existing economic order. Until the mid-1970s the freetrade unions of the western hemisphere concentrated on the fightagainst Communism (and to a lesser extent against Peronism in the1950s). Therefore, the word ‘free’ in the trade-union movement of theAmerican continent meant ‘free of anti-capitalistic ideas’. In the 1970s,Latin American labour leaders started to question the US ideologicalinfluence within the free trade-union movement. They distanced them-selves from US unions and sought more contact with their WesternEuropean counterparts, to whom ‘the word “free” had come to be syn-onymous for Socialist’.10 Since then, the free trade unions in theAmerican continent have identified themselves with other social forcesfighting against the neo-liberal policy followed by governments andenterprises. Yet, the ideological nature of the free trade-unionmovement remains vague.

The following contribution complements the recent (2000) historyof the ICFTU, edited by Marcel van der Linden. It differs from thework of authors who claim that the ICFTU and its regional organiza-tions have been of ‘minor significance’.11 The ICFTU has been rather‘silent’ in the international arena. It organized only a few worldwidecampaigns: the most well known were the boycott of Chile at the endof the 1970s and the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa during


10. W. Buschak, ‘The Meaning of the Word “Free” in Trade Union History’,in De Wilde (ed.), Past and Future, p. 275.

11. P. Pasture, ‘A Century of International Trade-unionism’, InternationalReview of Social History 47:2 (2002), pp. 277–89.

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the 1980s. But the ICFTU and its regional organizations wereextremely efficient in the fight against Communism. The achievementsof the ICFTU and its regional organization in Latin America were par-ticularly felt at the political level, which in turn influenced theeconomic and social development of the continent.

This paper will focus on the history of international free trade-unionism, and the formalization of its ideology, el sindicalismo libre, inLatin America, by the creation of a regional structure. It examines thepre-war situation with regard to international trade-unionism in LatinAmerica and the efforts made by the AFL to influence it. It thenanalyses the political and socio-economic factors that paved the wayfor the creation and consolidation of the ORIT, the methods that freetrade-unionists used to spread its ideas, and the reaction of LatinAmerican labour leaders. It presents, in this way, a short history of theORIT, which has been marked by crucial moments in Latin Americanhistory: the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the Chilean coup of 1973.These events allow a division of the ORIT’s history into three majorperiods: from its foundation in 1951 to 1959, from 1960 until the mid-1970s, and from 1977 to now. The conclusion discusses the achieve-ments of the free trade-union movement in the western hemisphere, aswell as some aspects in the debate on labour internationalism and,more specifically, the (political or economic) role of the free trade-union movement and its prospects in the post-Cold War era.

Research was conducted in 2001 on the activities of the ORIT inBolivia and Ecuador during the 1960s.12 Primary sources includereports of international trade-union activities, minutes of ICFTU andORIT conferences and meetings, ICFTU and ORIT publications(brochures), correspondence between labour leaders and other author-ities, and press releases and cuttings kept by the ICFTU. These sourcescan be found in the International Institute of Social History(Amsterdam).


12. M. Rodríguez, ‘De samenwerking tussen de Organización Regional Inter-americana de Trabajadores (ORIT) van de International Confederation ofFree Trade Unions (ICFTU) en de Andes-landen Bolivia en Ecuadortijdens de jaren 1960: Een vergelijkende studie’ (Graduate dissertation,Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels: 2001).

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Internationalism in Latin America before 1945

The US influence over its southern neighbours began in the late eigh-teenth century. The Monroe doctrine of 1823 became an operationalpart of US policy, serving as cover for American expansionism, espe-cially between 1890 and the early 1920s. The message ‘leave LatinAmerica alone’ changed then, with the expansion of US power, into‘leave Latin America to us’.13 The USA wanted to avoid external ideo-logical influences on the western hemisphere, as this was considereddangerous for American development. Economic investments,combined with diplomatic and military interventions, were consideredthe best tools to influence the Latinos and to keep them away from‘immoral’ influences, such as socialism, fascism, and communism.

During the twentieth century, the US presence was felt in everysector of the Latin American society. The labour movement was noexception. The US unions played a decisive political role. They builtimpressive networks with the backing of the US State Department, inorder to propagate ‘American’ values and US foreign policy. Capitalistexpansion in the world contributed to create bigger markets for USproducts. Investments abroad generated profits, which helped tomaintain high wages and other benefits for US workers. The contactwith friendly foreign labour organizations was also positive for theimport of cheap raw materials and natural resources. All this promotedemployment and economic growth in the USA.14 For the US unionsinternationalism was therefore, as Catherine Collomp observes, morean instrument to protect the economic interests of the USA than theexpression of labour solidarity.15

The attempt to create an international federation of trade unions onthe American continent was in line with the policy of the US govern-ment. As the US (military, diplomatic and financial) interventionexpanded in Central America and the Caribbean, the need for a pan-


13. J. Slater and J. Knippers Black, ‘United States Policy in Latin America’, inJ. Knippers Black (ed.), Latin America, Its Problems and Its Promise: AMultidisciplinary Introduction (Westview Press, Oxford: 1991), p. 235.

14. H. A. Spalding, ‘US Labour Intervention in Latin America: The Case ofthe American Institute for Free Labour Development’, in R. Southall(ed.), Trade Unions and the New Industrialisation of the Third World (ZedBooks: 1988), p. 261.

15. C. Collomp, ‘La politique étrangère de l’AFL et de l’AFL–CIO’, in J.Sagnes (ed.), Histoire du syndicalisme dans le monde: Des origines à nosjours (Editions Privat, Toulouse: 1994), p. 513.

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American labour organization increased as well.16 Gompers, the AFLleader, wanted to promote bread-and-butter trade-unionism in theSpanish-speaking countries of the continent and isolate them bothfrom the socialist influences coming from Europe and from the revolu-tionary ideas coming from the US’s own Industrial Workers of theWorld (founded in 1905). Latin American trade-unionists had to followthe example of their northern neighbours, concentrate on economicissues, and distance themselves from political questions.

The AFL, together with the Mexican Confederación RegionalObrera Mexicana (CROM), founded the PAFL in 1918, with head-quarters in Washington, and Gompers as president. It was dominatedby the AFL and its ideology. Many Latin American trade-unioniststherefore perceived the PAFL as being more beneficial to US business-men than to Latin American workers. The PAFL also failed to extendits influence beyond the USA, Mexico, Central America and theCaribbean islands, regions where US influence was traditionally verystrong. The biggest South American unions never became members,and the PAFL did not become a real pan-American labour organiza-tion. The different ideological views within the federation also causedmany troubles. After Gompers’s death in 1924, the AFL neglected thefederation, and US interference in the Latin American labourmovement decreased. The AFL’s 1941 congress declared that the pan-American federation had ceased to exist.

‘Free’ unions v. ‘extremist’ unions

During the inter-war period US unions turned their attention toEurope, where fascism was gaining in importance. Internationalcontacts between US and Latin American labour leaders weremarginal, although the Latin Americans themselves were making plansto create a confederation of trade-union organizations. In 1938,Vicente Lombardo Toledano, the Mexican Marxist trade-union leader,organized a trade-union assembly for the foundation of a LatinAmerican labour organization, the Confederación de Trabajadores deAmérica Latina (CTAL). The AFL’s domestic rival, the Congress ofIndustrial Organizations (CIO), was also involved in this endeavour. Atfirst the CTAL followed the line of the Popular Front parties. It strove


16. M. Dreyfus, ‘The Emergence of an International Trade Union Organiza-tion (1902–1919)’, in van der Linden (ed.), The International Confedera-tion, pp. 44, 70–1; Collomp, ‘La politique étrangère de l’AFL’, p. 513.

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for a coalition of Latin American unions of different leftist trends. Butthe CTAL was immediately identified with the internationalCommunist movement, and especially with the Latin AmericanCommunist parties. It became very successful among Latino workersbefore, during and immediately after the war. In only a few years afterits foundation, the CTAL succeeded in uniting Communist and inde-pendent labour leaders, in order to create new national labour federa-tions and, at the same time, to convince employers and governments toaccept trade unions as normal organizations of modern society. Theleftist confederation promoted industrial growth and the creation ofnew workplaces in Latin America. In 1945 the CTAL, together with theEuropean (Communist and non-Communist) unions and the CIO,took a leading role in the foundation of the World Federation of TradeUnions (WFTU).17

The growth of the leftist labour confederation worried the USunions. The AFL decided therefore to focus its attention again on itssouthern neighbours.18 By sending missions, ‘labour ambassadors’,secret agents and financial help, the AFL tried to convince the Latinosof the principles of free trade-unionism. It considered the LatinAmerican labour movement to be too politicized and tried to promotea more pro-US ‘business-oriented’ trade-unionism. The US StateDepartment supported fully the efforts made by Serafino Romualdi,the ‘roving labour ambassador of the AFL’.19 His Latin and Catholicbackground facilitated contact with Latin American trade-unionists.20


17. J. P. Windmuller, International Trade Union Movement (Kluwer, Deventer:1980), pp. 132–4.

18. For this purpose the AFL worked through the Free Trade UnionCommittee (FTUC). This was a semi-independent organ of the AFL,founded in 1942, and strongly dependent on Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) funding. In exchange for financial support, the FTUC acted, from1949 to at least 1958, as a cover for CIA activities and as a source of intel-ligence abroad. For detailed information on this topic, see A. Carew, ‘TheAmerican Labor Movement in Fizzland: The Free Trade UnionCommittee and the CIA’, Labor History 39:1 (1998), pp. 25–42.

19. I. Roxborough, ‘The Urban Working Class and Labor Movement in LatinAmerica since 1930’, in L. Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of LatinAmerica, Vol. 6:2 (Cambridge University Press: 1994), p. 328.

20. Serafino Romualdi was an Italian immigrant who escaped fromMussolini’s Italy, because of his socialist ideas. Once in the USA he shiftedto the right and became involved in the International Ladies’ GarmentWorkers Union, and afterwards in the AFL’s FTUC: I. W. F. Brandt andW. G. ‘t Hart, ‘De internationale vrije vakbeweging (IVVV en ORIT) inLatijns-Amerika van 1950 tot 1960’ (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam:1979), p. 46; Reiser, L’Organisation Régionale Interaméricaine, p. 179.

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Romualdi warned that the AFL should be very careful in its contactwith Latin American labour leaders. US unionists were aware of thewidespread anti-Yankee feeling among large segments of LatinAmerican society. Thus, if the AFL wanted to co-operate with LatinAmerican democratic unions, it had to wait until they made the firstmove. This was to avoid accusations of dirigisme.

The frequent contacts between US and Latin American non-Communist trade-unionists facilitated the idea of creating a new inter-American labour organization. The time was opportune since theopposition within the CTAL, and especially against its general secretaryLombardo Toledano, had started to grow from the mid-1940s onwards.By following the line of the Popular Front parties, the leftist confedera-tion had managed to unify the labour movement, but at the expense ofits own Marxist ideology. In order to help the Soviet Union in its struggleagainst Nazism during the Second World War, the CTAL had urged itsmembers to co-operate with their national governments, independentlyfrom the ideological orientation of those regimes. By the end of the war,the Latin American leftist unions were therefore ideologically weak, andits members disaffected with the Communist parties and the CTAL.Indeed, they ‘felt profoundly disillusioned and abandoned [their]political position, to take refuge in a sort of business unionism, only andexclusively in defence of [their] immediate interests’.21

Conservative forces in the American continent took advantage ofthe situation to attack the Communists and to create a new inter-American labour organization. This resulted in the organization of atrade-union conference in Lima in January 1948. The invitation to theconference was sent pro forma by the Peruvian and Chilean nationallabour federations,22 but the US support was crucial. During this FirstConference of Free Trade-unionism, the CIT was founded.23 The


21. Alba, Politics and the Labor Movement, p. 352.22. Respectively, the Confederación de Trabajadores del Perú (CTP) and the

Confederación de Trabajadores de Chile (CTCh).23. Doce años de lucha por el Sindicalismo Libre en América Latina (notas

polémicas en defensa de la ORIT) (ORIT, Lima: 1960), p. 8; Esta es laORIT: Información referente a la ORIT, la mayor entidad sindical interna-cional del hemisferio (ORIT, Mexico: 1958), pp. 13–14; Discursos, asis-tentes, mociones, acta, resoluciones, datos e informes del Segundo CongresoContinental de la CIT, efectuada en el palacio de los trabajadores de laHabana (sede de la Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba), 7–11September 1949 (ORIT, Havana: 1949), p. 55; O. Molina García, ElSindicato Interamericano: 50 Años (1951–2001) de su acción social ypolítica (ORIT, Caracas: 2001), p. 24; Brandt and ‘t Hart, ‘De interna-tionale vrije vakbeweging’, p. 48; La ORIT: sus programas y sus realiza-ciones (ORIT, Mexico: 1962), p. 8.

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pillars of the new labour organization were the US (AFL), Chilean,Peruvian, and Cuban national labour federations. The inter-Americanconfederation promoted a brand of trade-unionism very similar toAmerican business unionism, and it opposed heavily the actions of theCommunist-led CTAL and WFTU. It was extremely dependent on USfinancial support. Most of the CIT’s key positions went to LatinAmericans, but the AFL was pulling the strings. Therefore, many LatinAmerican trade-unionists viewed the CIT as an instrument of the USunions and the US State Department to fight Communism.

The CIT’s brief existence did not allow it to make much of animpact. Furthermore, the ‘CIT’s activities, planned by the Americans,were not in concordance with the complex socio-political reality of theLatin American countries’.24 But the CIT played a crucial role in theincreasing conflict between Communist and non-Communist unionswithin the WFTU, which led to the division of the federation and to theformation of the ICFTU in 1949. Since its foundation, the CIT hadconsidered Communism to be a major threat to western nations, andpleaded for the unity of all non-Communist workers of the world.Thus, as an observer noted, ‘the CIT represented the first step for theorganization of the free trade unions on the international level’.25

At the preparatory conference for the foundation of a new interna-tional labour confederation (Geneva, 1949), a new concept was intro-duced in the international trade-union movement – regionalism. USlabour leaders strove for the immediate creation of a decentralizedstructure, based on regional organizations. The AFL wanted the CITto become the regional organization of the new confederation, but ithad to be sufficiently autonomous. In this way the AFL tried to keepthe Latin American unions away from European (socialist) influences,and to lead them to a more ‘apolitical’ form of trade-unionism. Whenthe creation of regional structures was approved, the labour leaders ofthe American continent decided to dissolve the CIT, and to create aregional organization of the ICFTU in the Americas.26


24. Brandt and ‘t Hart, ‘De internationale vrije vakbeweging’, p. 51.25. Reiser, L’Organisation Régionale Interaméricaine, p. 36.26. Esta es la ORIT, pp. 15–16; La ORIT, p. 9; International Trade-unionism:

Report of the Preparatory International Trade Union Conference 25–26June 1949 (ICFTU, Geneva: 1949); A. Carew, ‘Towards a Free TradeUnion Centre: The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions(1949–1972)’, in van der Linden (ed.), The International Confederation, pp.191–3.

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Foundation of the ORIT

Two factors played an important role in developing the plans of Northand Latin American labour leaders to create a new labour organizationin the western hemisphere: the WFTU’s division in 1949, and theoutbreak of the Korean war in 1950. Washington claimed thatCommunism was a threat not only for Europe, but for the whole world.Anti-Communist actions were needed in every region and in everysector of society. At trade-union level this meant that non-Communistlabour organizations had to be strengthened, for example through awell-organized international confederation.

The CIT was dissolved in order to create a new inter-Americanlabour organization including ex-CIT and ex-CTAL members. Oncemore, US unions played a crucial role at the foundation of the newregional structure. Their influence was so strong in the western hemi-sphere and in Europe,27 that they easily transformed the CIT into theICFTU’s regional organization. The CIT’s structure stayed almostunchanged, as well as the US domination over it.

For the creation of the new inter-American organization, the USlabour leaders were again very careful, so that there would not be com-plaints about interference. Romualdi ‘suggested’ – in a letter to theICFTU general secretary, Jacobus Oldenbroek – the date of the foun-dation congress, as well as the organizations to be invited. Romualdialso wrote that the general secretary of the central bureau had to bepresent at the foundation congress, in order to clarify the relationshipbetween the ICFTU and the new regional organization. He recom-mended Oldenbroek to prepare a document stating the principles ofthe free trade-union movement, which the regional organization wouldhave to respect. As Romualdi wrote, it was very important that ‘thebasic points … be drafted by you [Oldenbroek] or your office, thusassuring a better reception from the Latin American delegates thanwould be the case if the draft constitution were presented by the UnitedStates delegation’.28 He also set out explicitly how the new regional


27. The AFL (and later AFL–CIO) was the biggest organization within theICFTU, and one of its most important sources of income.

28. Romualdi to Oldenbroek, 20 April 1950, pp. 2–3, folio 4971, ICFTUarchive.

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organization should be managed,29 and emphasized the US wish tocreate a regional structure that would keep its autonomy. The head-quarters were to be placed ‘as close as possible to the United States forreason of travel convenience and economy’, preferably in Havana,Cuba.30

The AFL’s ‘suggestions’ were heard by the ICFTU. The latterorganized an international conference, for the foundation of a regionallabour organization in the western hemisphere, in January 1951 inMexico City. The pillars of the CIT (the Peruvian, Chilean, Cuban, andUS national centres) were present, together with important organiza-tions, such as the CIO, the United Mine Workers of America, and theMexican Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), which hadnot been CIT members.31

Oldenbroek was also present at the foundation congress, andpresented the ICFTU principles which the new inter-American labourorganization had to follow. These included: to defend and strengthenthe free trade unions of the world; to defend workers’ rights; topromote international actions in order to achieve political andeconomic independence; to strive for full employment and the improve-ment of the standard of living; to stimulate the economic, social andcultural progress of all countries; and to defend democracy and thefreedom of nations against totalitarian or imperialist aggression.32


29. Romualdi stipulated that the regional organization should be adminis-tered by an executive council, consisting of a president, a vice-president,and the members of the secretariat. The last had to consist of a generalsecretary and three or four specialized secretaries. The US unions, CIOand AFL, would deliver one specialized secretary each. He also specifiedthat the general secretary had to be fluent in at least two languages andhad to have sufficient experience in international trade-unionism. If sucha person were not available in Latin America, Romualdi proposed one ofthe two US secretaries. He also suggested to appoint ‘full-time organizers’or representatives for regions with special problems, such as the Caribbeanislands, ‘or territories that are very backward in trade union developmentsuch as Central America, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.’: Romualdi to Olden-broek, 18 May 1950, p. 3, folio 4971, ICFTU archive.

30. Romualdi to Oldenbroek, 20 April 1950, p. 3.31. The CIO and the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM) had

been Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina (CTAL) members,but they withdrew in the late 1940s, when the CTAL began to lean to theCommunist camp.

32. La CIOSL: Lo que es, cómo funciona, lo que hace (ICFTU, Brussels: 1961);Constitution adopted by the Continental Congress of the ORIT (ORIT,Mexico: 1951).

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The new confederation was called the Inter-American RegionalWorkers’ Organization or Organización Regional Interamericana deTrabajadores (ORIT). Its headquarters were in Havana (until 1952),then in Mexico City (until 1994), and finally in Caracas, Venezuela.The foundation congress of the ORIT seemed to go well but its hetero-geneous character led to several conflicts. The Mexican representatives(from the CTM) were disappointed because the conference organizershad not accepted their suggestion to invite the CROM, anotherMexican labour organization. The CTM was of the opinion that, as ahost organization, it had to invite every Mexican union, but the USunions refused, in spite of AFL’s close relation with the CROM afterthe First World War.33 The AFL had not appreciated CROM’s refusalto take part in the foundation of the CIT and then the ORIT. TheCROM’s critical position towards the AFL’s hegemony over the labourmovement of the continent and to the AFL’s support for US foreignpolicy was a sore point.

The question of the attendance of the Argentinian ConfederaciónGeneral de Trabajadores (CGT) at the congress was also a bone of con-tention between the US and Cuban labour leaders and the other LatinAmerican unionists. The CGT had not received an invitation from theICFTU but the CTM, the host organization, did not want the Argen-tinian workers to be left out. The US and Cuban representatives werestrongly opposed to the presence of Peronist trade-unionists. Disap-pointed with this, the Mexican representatives from the CTM ques-tioned the degree of autonomy of the national labour organizations.Some other representatives reproached the ICFTU for having invitedreactionary trade unions in order to please Washington. The rhetoricof an organization ‘entirely independent from states’ seemed question-able. As a result of these tensions, the Mexicans left the congress andrefused to join the ORIT, though did so a year later.34


33. In 1918, the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) helped theAFL in its efforts to create the Pan-American Federation of Labor(PAFL).

34. Molina García, El Sindicato Interamericano, pp. 33–5, 39; ‘Wrijvingentussen Latijns- en Engelssprekende Amerikanen’, Algemeen Handelsblad,5 May 1951; ‘IVVV-Congres te Mexico geëindigd’, Volksgazet, 16 January1951; ‘Oprichting van een regionaal secretariaat van het IVVV’, NieuweRotterdamse Courant, 1 February 1951; Reiser, L’Organisation RégionaleInteraméricaine, p. 48; A. Marvaud, ‘L’action Interaméricaine contre leCommunisme: Une nouvelle centrale syndicale est née à Mexico’, LeMonde, 16 February 1951.

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The CTM’s departure from the congress did not end the tensions.During preparatory talks on the organization’s constitution, a debatearose over the relation between the ORIT and the ICFTU. Someadvocated ORIT as a completely independent organization, but otherspreferred it to be a direct branch of the ICFTU. A compromise wasreached: the ORIT would have its own executive committee, which wasfinancially independent, but it had to co-ordinate its activities with theICFTU. In this way the US unions succeeded in keeping the Latinos atarm’s length from the Western European unions.

ORIT’s foundation congress closed with speeches by someprominent trade-unionists, who emphasized the moral and spiritualduties of the new organization, as well as the economic conditions forjustice and peace in the world. Jacob Potovsky, from the CIO, noted:

Human dignity is as important as economic independence …Remember we must be strong to be independent and respected. Wemust also be constructive and responsible. The strongest moral andspiritual force the world over is a militant progressive labormovement dedicated to democratic ideals and a higher standard ofliving … We seek the brotherhood of mankind. We want peace onearth, and justice for all. Let us join hands to work for these loftyideals without friction and politics, with self-sacrifice and humility.The job is a big one, and I am confident that it will be done.35

In spite of the rhetoric, many observers did not consider this congressto be a trade-union action, but a political stratagem of the USA tocombat Communism. A few years later this was confirmed by the USgovernment: ‘ORIT may be regarded as the successor to the inter-American Confederation of Workers (CIT) formed early in 1948 tocombat a pro-Communist Latin American labor confederation(CTAL).’36


35. ORIT Address by Jacob S. Potovsky, CIO, quoted in Reiser, L’OrganisationRégionale Interaméricaine, p. 50.

36. United States–Latin America Relations: United States Business and Laborin Latin America (US Government Printing Office, Washington DC:1960), p. 87, quoted in Reiser, L’Organisation Régionale Interaméricaine, p.213.

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Promoting the free trade-union ideology

The first years of ORIT’s existence were a period of propaganda and ofmoderate anti-Communism. Labour leaders from the ORIT and theICFTU tried to meet the Communist challenge by means of strongorganization but this proved difficult to sustain. The ORIT had manymembers, but only a few were able to support it financially. It neededto strengthen its affiliated national centres, and to propagate the freetrade-union ideology to all segments of the labour force in theAmerican continent. This strategy seemed essential, since the leftistunions within the CTAL had started a heavy campaign against theORIT.

Furthermore, the barrage of criticism did not only come from theCommunist side. The Peronist unions were also harsh in their opposi-tion. They began to make plans for the foundation of a new LatinAmerican labour organization. In association with the MexicanCROM, they organized conferences in 1951 and 1952, from which anew organization emerged: the Agrupación de Trabajadores Lati-noamericanos (ATLAS). Its headquarters were situated in BuenosAires, and it started immediately with intensive propaganda through-out Latin America. The ATLAS strove for a society somewherebetween Communism and capitalism (Perón’s justicialismo). Washing-ton regarded the Peronists as dangerous, since they planned to create apurely Latin American labour organization that would undermine USinfluence in the continent. Therefore, the free trade-union movementattempted to keep the Latin American unions away from Peronistinfluence. When the Peronist regime fell in 1955, the ATLAS wasdissolved, having lost financial support.37

The early 1950s were very important for the ORIT. In 1952, GeneralFulgencio Batista rose against the regime of Prío Socarras, president ofCuba. Batista’s coup d’état put the ORIT in a difficult position, sinceits headquarters were in Havana. The new pro-American regime inCuba did not disturb the activities of the ORIT’s secretariat, whoseheadquarters remained in Havana until December 1952. Oscar MolinaGarcía – author of the ORIT’s 2001 publication on the occasion of itsfiftieth anniversary – claims that the ORIT moved to Mexico Citybecause it could not function properly: its first general secretary,Francisco Aguirre, was a member of the Cuban parliament and was


37. Alba, Politics and the Labor Movement, pp. 325–7; Reiser, L’OrganisationRégionale Interaméricaine, pp. 51–3, 89–90; Windmuller, InternationalTrade Union Movement, p. 135.

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therefore not fully concerned with the ORIT. This explanation isunsubstantiated. The ORIT did not need to move its headquarters inorder to get more attention from its general secretary; an election of anew one would have been sufficient. A more substantiated explanationis that it moved in order to avoid (more) political criticism. LatinAmerican trade-unionists had condemned the ORIT for not havingdenounced Batista’s undemocratic and violent regime.

The ORIT did not expel its Cuban affiliate, the Confederación deTrabajadores de Cuba (CTC), which was a major factor influencing itsfuture. The Cuban labour leaders did not oppose Batista’s dictatorshipand, in the name of ‘apolitical’ trade-unionism, decided to concentrateon economic issues. Despite their ‘apolitical’ stance, CTC trade-unionists actually became Batista’s loyal allies during the last years ofthe dictatorship. Even today, the ORIT justifies the CTC’s actions,claiming that the Cubans had only two choices: ‘to perish or to stayalive’.38 To stay alive meant to co-operate with a dictator. The alliancebetween the CTC leaders and Batista harmed not only the Cubantrade-union federation, but also the ORIT, as key positions within thelatter’s executive committee were held by CTC leaders. In spite of apetition of Cuban trade-unionists (opponents of the CTC) to denouncethe CTC, and to expel it from the ORIT, the international free trade-union movement did not react.

For the first generation of ORIT Latino leaders, Communism wasnot the main concern. First, the Communist CTAL had already lostmuch of its popularity and, second, the Latin American ORIT leadersbelieved that compulsive anti-Communism and exaggerated anti-Americanism were both negative forces working against the develop-ment of Latin America. Latin America’s main problem was notCommunism but military dictatorships.39 Thus there was a progressivegroup within the ORIT which wished to combat authoritarian regimes.There were, for example, clearly differing opinions between the ORIT’spresident, Ignacio González Tellechea (Cuba), and its generalsecretary, Luis Alberto Monge (Costa Rica), about its policy towardsthe Batista regime. In 1957 Monge criticized the dictatorship in Cubafor the first time, and declared that the ORIT should support theCuban opposition led by Fidel Castro. But González Tellecheadeclared that the CTC backed Batista and resigned. Eventually, the


38. Molina García, El Sindicato Interamericano, p. 57.39. L. A. Monge, Mirando a nuestra América (ORIT, Mexico: 1953), p. 9;

Official Report of the Free World Labour Conference and of the FirstCongress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU,London: 1949).

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ORIT executive committee in January 1958 reached a compromise: hisresignation was not accepted, and the executive committee admittedthat Cuba was being ruled by a dictatorial regime – it therefore had tobe overthrown. This does not mean that the ORIT accepted Monge’ssuggestion to support the opposition movement led by Castro.

During the first years of the ORIT’s existence, its progressive leadersthought that the best way to keep peace in the world was to guaranteea better standard of living and to improve social conditions of allpeople. They pushed for industrial development, agrarian reforms,increases in wages, fair prices for raw materials, diversification of theeconomy, and improvement of the tax system. To achieve these aims,the Latin American states needed the help of the developed nations, forpublic and private investments, and technical help.40

In order to disseminate its ideology, the ORIT represented theICFTU in the regional and specialized United Nations (UN) organi-zations, such as the Economic Commission for Latin America, theUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and theFood and Agricultural Organization. The ORIT had a consultativestatus in the Organization of American States, the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank, and the Latin American Free Trade Association.At governmental level, the ORIT strove for good relations with all‘democratic’ states in the western hemisphere. It also tried to influencepublic opinion by means of brochures, communications, and radio andtelevision programmes. Nevertheless, large segments of the population– even among trade-unionists – knew nothing about the ORIT’sexistence; those who had heard of it did not necessarily know what itstood for or what its activities were.41 This was, contradictory as itmight seem, an important factor that contributed to the ORIT’snumerical growth. The rank and file were not aware of its ideology,


40. Ignacio González Tellechea and Llenin López to the ORIT (n.d.), folio5005, ICFTU archive; Esta es la ORIT, pp. 25–31; La ORIT, p. 29; Alba,Politics and the Labor Movement, pp. 328, 333; B. Benassar, ‘Les organi-sations syndicales régionales en Amérique latine’, in Sagnes (ed.), Histoiredu syndicalisme, p. 525; Carew, ‘Towards a Free Trade Union Centre’, pp.222–3, 316; C. Hawkins, ‘The ORIT and the American Trade-Unions:Conflicting Perspectives’, in W. Form and A. A. Blum (eds), IndustrialRelations and Social Change in Latin America (University of Florida Press,Gainesville: 1965), p. 88.

41. R. J. Alexander, Organized Labor in Latin America (The Free Press, NewYork: 1965), p. 257; Carew, ‘Towards a Free Trade Union Centre’, p. 278;Molina García, El Sindicato Interamericano, pp. 65, 73–4; Reiser, L’Or-ganisation Régionale Interaméricaine, pp. 128–32, 187–96.

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tasks and objectives. This made it easier to persuade them to becomepart of the free trade-union movement, as knowledge of the ORIT asbeing a pro-US labour organization that concentrated on anti-Communist actions would not have made it very popular among LatinAmerican workers.

Cuba’s dictatorship: ‘the most sorrowful of all’42

The period of moderate anti-Communism came to an abrupt end withthe Cuban Revolution. Most ORIT leaders had supported the CubanCTC, which, in turn, had given unconditional support to Batista in hisefforts against Castro and the guerrilleros. Many CTC leaders had heldpositions in Batista’s cabinet and had had good relations with the USgovernment. Castro’s victory resulted in a wave of anti-Communism,led by Washington, throughout Latin America. Within the free trade-union movement, the successful Cuban Revolution also caused ashock. During this period the ORIT went through its worst crisis,which many feared would precipitate its dissolution.

Castro declared that he was not a Communist, and that the revolu-tion’s purpose was to end Batista’s entreguista-regime. He wished tobuild up a state that would be less dependent on the USA, as well as toimplement progressive reforms in Cuba and Latin America in general.The ICFTU published a communication to congratulate the Cubanpeople on their victory against Batista. But it also defended CTCleaders, as they had ‘always’ been the workers’ protectors against thedictatorial regime. The ORIT published a communication – muchshorter than the ICFTU’s – claiming that both its executive committeeand the CTC leaders had condemned Batista’s dictatorship.

The Cuban Revolution led to a change in leadership in the CTC.During the first months of Castro’s regime, the new CTC leaders wereunsure about staying in the ORIT and the ICFTU. At first, they didnot withdraw from the ORIT, thanks to negotiations with some of itsleaders, such as Monge, who was known for his opposition to Batista.But the more radical Cuban trade-unionists, strong opponents of theCTC’s old leadership, and therefore of the ORIT, became more influ-ential within the Cuban labour movement.

The new Cuban labour leaders supported the proposal of the leftistLatin American labour confederation, CTAL, to create a new ‘neutral’


42. The Philosophy of ORIT: A Statement of Principles of the Free Inter-American Labor Movement (ORIT, Mexico: n.d.), p. 7.

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organization, which would consist of Latin American unions only andexclude US and Canadian unions. The advocates of a new organizationwanted the ORIT to build the labour unity of Latin Americans, but thefree unions refused, denouncing this petition as a Communist tactic tocontrol the Latin American labour movement. The ORIT started acampaign against Communism, in close collaboration with the formerCTC leaders, now in exile, while the new Cuban union leadershipdenounced the free trade-union movement for being more concernedwith the former CTC leaders than with the thousands of victims of theBatista regime.43

Under the circumstances, the new CTC leaders were not willing toremain members of the ORIT. They withdrew from the ORIT andICFTU and organized a foundation congress for a new revolutionaryconfederation of Latin American workers. The ORIT’s nightmarebegan when Castro’s ideas threatened to spread across the rest of LatinAmerica. Fidelismo was growing in popularity, and the ORIT feared achain reaction. Its difficulties increased when the Christian labourmovement declared that it might be prepared to work with leftistunions for the foundation of a new Latin American confederation. InDecember 1954, the International Federation of Christian TradeUnions (IFCTU, founded in 1920) had organized a meeting inSantiago de Chile and created a regional organization: the Confed-eración Latinoamericana de Sindicalistas Cristianos (CLASC). Duringthe 1960s, the CLASC became very critical towards the ORIT and, likethe Communists, accused the free trade unions of being a tool for USinterests.

For the ORIT, 1960 was a decisive year. The threat of a new labourorganization, founded by pro-Castro, Communist, and Christianunions, required a new strategy to keep other Latin American tradeunions within the ORIT. It strengthened its anti-Communistcampaign: the Cuban regime was depicted as totalitarian, undemocra-tic, repressive and monstrous, serving the interests of the Soviet Union.The ORIT described the leftist unions as pseudo-labour organizations,subordinated to Moscow, while the free trade unions were described asthe defenders of the principle of co-operation between Latin and NorthAmerican workers, and as being entirely independent of Washingtonand US private interests.44


43. L. A. Monge and F. Melgosa Quiroz, Report of Exploratory Mission toCuba: Confidential 17 January 1959 (ORIT, Mexico: 1959), p. 9, folio5005, ICFTU archive; Alexander, Organized Labor, pp. 254–5; Carew,‘Towards a Free Trade Union Centre’, pp. 257–8; Reiser, L’OrganisationRégionale Interaméricaine, pp. 113, 116, 119–22.

44. La ORIT, p. 19; Molina García, El Sindicato Interamericano, p. 59.

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The merger of the CLASC and the CTAL did not happen, and thefoundation of a ‘neutral’ labour organization was not achieved imme-diately. The leftist unionists dissolved the CTAL, but the foundation ofa new organization was not easy. After all, Washington, the US unionsand the ORIT were leading an impressive anti-Communist campaignthroughout Latin America. Nevertheless, in 1964, the leftist labourleaders met in a trade-union congress in Brazil. Neither the ORIT northe CLASC was present. In fact, not many trade-unionists attended, sothe organizers decided to declare the congress permanent. The doorsremained open for the eventual affiliation of new labour organizations,which paved the way for the so-called Congreso Permanente de UnidadSindical de los Trabajadores de América Latina (CPUSTAL). Itfollowed the ideological tradition of the CTAL by declaring itself anti-imperialist. The CPUSTAL was officially independent of any interna-tional labour organization but maintained close relations with theCommunist WFTU. Although the Christian unions did not agree to anew labour organization, they often worked together with leftist trade-unionists in name of the defence of Latin American workers.

The ORIT recovered quickly from its crisis. Arturo Jáuregui, its newand dynamic general secretary, helped to expand the principles of freetrade-unionism throughout Latin America. He also helped to improveco-operation with the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs), tostrengthen the relation between ORIT affiliates, and to persuade othersto join the free trade-union movement. Jáuregui, together with othermembers of ORIT’s secretariat and US trade-unionists, travelled todifferent Latin American countries to meet labour leaders. Relationswith Latin American trade-unionists were also strengthened by thepresence of permanent ORIT representatives in different regions.

From its foundation, the ORIT considered workers’ education asthe most important instrument to spread its ideology. Its educationalactivities were impressive, especially from the early 1960s. For theseactivities, the ORIT worked together with universities and institutionssuch as the American Institute for Free Labor Development(AIFLD),45 the ILO and UNESCO.

The activities of the free trade-union movement paid off. In spite ofthe severe criticism of leftist and Christian unionists, and even ofcertain ITSs, the ORIT succeeded in becoming the largest trade-union


45. The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) wasfounded in 1961 by the AFL–CIO, and financially supported by the USgovernment and US corporations, in order to offer financial and technicalaid to Latin American trade unions: Spalding, ‘US Labour Intervention inLatin America’, pp. 259–86.

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organization in Latin America. It owed its success partly to the financialsupport of the US, Canadian and other ICFTU affiliates. This supportwas particularly important, as the ORIT consisted of poor and weaklyorganized Central and South American unions. Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) infiltration in the ORIT also helped the ‘free’ trade-unionmovement to expand its activities during the 1960s.46 The ORIT alsosucceeded because of the Latin American trade-unionists themselves.Many of them were disappointed with the traditional leftist and rightistparties and trade unions, and sought an alternative. Large segments ofthe Latin American society were also still very Catholic and conserva-tive. Many viewed Communist expansion as a real danger. The ideologyof the ORIT had a popular appeal.

National labour federations and individual unions joined the ORIT.This went hand in hand with the industrial development of the 1960sand the expansion of Latin American state machinery. Foreign invest-ments and state intervention stimulated the growth of the industrialand service sectors, from which a new, ‘modern’ working class emerged.This resulted in the foundation of new trade unions that strove for inte-gration into the capitalist system, focusing on bread-and-butter trade-union issues, in order to maximize immediate economic benefits. This‘modern’ trade-union movement was not willing to challenge the capi-talist system. On the contrary, it wanted to form an alliance betweencapital and labour. Collective bargaining was considered to be the besttool to achieve benefits,47 while strikes were viewed as aggressiveactions used by ‘extremist’ unions, which should only be used as a lastresort.48 But once the interests of the ORIT were in danger (i.e. when


46. Benassar, ‘Les organisations syndicales régionales’, p. 525; Carew,‘Towards a Free Trade Union Centre’, pp. 315–16; R. Gumbrell-McCormick, ‘Facing New Challenges: The International Confederationof Free Trade Unions (1972–1990s)’, in van der Linden (ed.), The Interna-tional Confederation, p. 450.

47. The conditions for an effective system of collective bargaining were almostnon-existent in most Latin American countries. Many of them lacked thelegal and political system required to guarantee the existence of relativelyindependent, strong, and well-organized unions: M. van der Linden,‘Conclusion: The Past and the Future of International Trade-unionism’,in idem (ed.), The International Confederation, pp. 531–2. The complexityof collective bargaining also demands certain technical knowledge thatmany Latin American trade-unionists at that time did not have.

48. L. Pita, Informe sobre la misión al Ecuador mayo-julio 1955 (ORIT: 1955), pp.2–3, folio 5444, ICFTU archive; Trade Unions: What they are, what they do,their structure (ICFTU, Brussels: 1969), pp. 3, 12; A. Paez Cordero, ‘Elmovimiento obrero ecuatoriano en el período (1925–1960)’, in E. Ayala Mora(ed.), Nueva Historia del Ecuador, Vol. 10 (Corporación Editora Nacional,Quito: 1990), p. 160; Alba, Politics and the Labor Movement, p. 349.

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leftist unions gained in importance), its members changed theirdiscourse of ‘apolitical’ trade-unionism and used political tools.

Through its educational programmes and its organizational activi-ties, the ORIT played an active political role in the fight againstCommunism. Latin American leftist political and labour leaders wereforced to accept the principles of free trade-unionism. Otherwise theyhad to suffer the consequences: isolation, persecution, or exile.49 As aresult of this determined anti-Communism, the ORIT ended up toler-ating, and on many occasions supporting, repressive regimes, such asBatista’s in Cuba, Castillo Armas in Guatemala, Castelo Branco inBrazil, and dictatorships in Bolivia and Ecuador. According to theORIT, and especially the AFL–CIO, strong and authoritative govern-ments were necessary to control ‘totalitarian’ movements, which hadbeen indoctrinated by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Beyond Chile’s 11 September

The brutal overthrow of the democratically elected president of Chile,Salvador Allende, shocked the entire political and labour world andplayed a crucial role in the evolution of the ORIT,50 which had beenambivalent about the Allende administration and made only a modestcomment on the military coup of 11 September 1973. But in the secondhalf of the 1970s, the Latin American labour unions within the ORITdemanded a trade boycott against the Chilean regime. The AFL–CIOtried to thwart this plan – the US unions would support the action, onlyif Cuba were included – but it was confronted by progressive Latino freetrade-unionists such as the Venezuelans José Vargas and Juan José del


49. This was, for example, the case of Juan Lechín, the Bolivian labour leaderwho refused to join the free trade-union movement: M. Rodríguez, ‘DeOrganización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores in Bolivia in dejaren ’60’, Brood & Rozen: Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van SocialeBewegingen 3 (2002), pp. 7–33.

50. The trade unions were one of the targets of the Chilean military regime.According to the military, Chilean society, and particularly the leftistlabour movement, was too politicized. In order to achieve political, socialand economic stability, society in general had to be depoliticized. In theChilean context depoliticization meant in practice the suppression of allleft-wing individuals and organizations. In November 1973 the leftistnational centre, Central Unica de Trabajadores (CUT), was dissolved andtrade-union activities were systematically repressed: Y. Cieters, Chilenen inballingschap: Het migratieproces, de opvang en de integratie van Chileenseballingen in België (1973–1980) (VUB-Press, Brussels: 2002), pp. 23, 32–3.

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Pino, who insisted on boycotting Chile only. Eventually, a week of inter-national solidarity actions and boycotts of all forms (air and seatransport, post and telecommunications) took place in September 1979.51

The period of the ORIT’s conservatism, and of extreme anti-Communism, ended during the mid-1970s. In 1977, the ORIT and theICFTU organized a conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on trade-unionfreedom and human rights, and elected a new general secretary, theVenezuelan del Pino. Progressive sectors of the Latin American labourmovement took the initiative to reform the organization. They wanted toimplement the founding principles approved by the ICFTU in 1949, andto organize activities that would go beyond the anti-Communist actionsthat had dominated the organization during its first twenty years. Theydistanced themselves from the ‘apolitical’ trade-unionism propagated bythe US unions, which they considered unrealistic. At the same time, theytried to approach the ICFTU affiliates in Europe, especially the GermanDeutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) and the Scandinavian unions.

The ORIT became increasingly influenced by the ideology of socialdemocracy and started to make a serious effort to defend the interestsof workers, democracy and human rights in Latin America. The abusesof dictatorships in Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala andUruguay were condemned. But the US influence did not disappearcompletely from the ORIT. Financial support from ‘external’ sources,such as the AIFLD, was still accepted.52

Luis Anderson, of the Confederación de Trabajadores de la Repúblicade Panamá (CTP), became the ORIT general secretary in 1983,53

playing a crucial role in its reform.54 It finally achieved political and


51. Gumbrell-McCormick, ‘Facing New Challenges’, p. 458.52. Benassar, ‘Les organisations syndicales régionales’, p. 526; Gumbrell-

McCormick, ‘Facing New Challenges’, pp. 447–51, 454–60; MolinaGarcía, El Sindicato Interamericano, pp. 89–93, 96.

53. After his sudden death in November 2003 Luis Anderson was replaced bythe Paraguayan Víctor Báez Mosqueira.

54. Jorge Chávez, labour leader of the Confederación Ecuatoriana de Organiza-ciones Sindicales Libres (CEOSL), states that when the US unions decided toreturn to the ICFTU in 1982 – after having withdrawn in 1969, because oftheir conflict with the Western European unions regarding contacts withCommunist unions – they came to an agreement with the Europeans. TheICFTU apparently stressed that, under the political circumstances, it seemedabsolutely necessary to support social-democratic ideology in Latin America.The AFL–CIO was willing to accept this on the condition that the ICFTU’ssecretariat in Brussels accepted an American appointed leader of the ORIT:Luis Anderson. According to the Ecuadorian trade-unionist, Anderson was avery competent labour leader, but was very much controlled by the US labourleaders: interview with J. Chávez, Quito, 19 December 2001.

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organizational stability, expanding into the south of the continent, andmillions of workers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguaybecame affiliated. As a cost-saving measure, in 1994 the executivemoved the headquarters to Caracas, closer to the Latin Americanunions.

The ORIT’s activities increased in the 1980s and 1990s. It welcomedthe return of democracy in different Latin American countries anddemanded political and economic democracy throughout thecontinent. The rhetoric of ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ remained,despite the growing dependency of the countries of Latin America onthe USA, the European Union, and international organizations such asthe International Monetary Fund. While human rights are still violatedin different countries of the western hemisphere, and many of its stateslive under political and economic instability, at present the ORIT paysgreater attention to these problems than it did previously.55 As withother international labour organizations, it is presently engaged ininformation campaigns countering orthodox neo-liberal policies, onthe importance of rural sectors of the population, and on the specificproblems of (non-organized) workers in the so-called informal sector ofthe economy.56

Conclusion

The success of the international free trade-union movement in LatinAmerica was specifically felt at the political level. Until the mid-1970sinternationalism was driven by an anti-Communist agenda, striving forharmonious co-operation between labour and employers in order tomaintain industrial peace and hopefully guarantee economic growth.The ICFTU and its regional organization were (and still are) a confed-eration of national organizations. They concentrated primarily on thestrengthening of the existent non-Communist national labour federa-tions, and on the creation of new ones in countries where the trade-union movement was dominated by Communist, socialist or Christianlabour leaders. For this purpose, free trade-unionists, in close co-operation with various ITSs and the AIFLD, engaged in impressiveeducational and organizational campaigns aimed at opposing


55. Gumbrell-McCormick, ‘Facing New Challenges’, pp. 461–2; MolinaGarcía, El Sindicato Interamericano, pp. 162–3.

56. See the websites, www.ilo.org and www.cioslorit.org; for example, ‘Másallá de la supervivencia: organizar la economía informal’, www.ilo.org/public/spanish/dialogue/actrav/publ/informs.pdf

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Communism and promoting the economic expansion of thecontinent. They found supporters among Latin American trade-unionists, who were disappointed by the traditional leftist and rightistpolitical parties and unions, and who wanted to create a new form oftrade-unionism: on a non-confessional basis, but still appealing toconservative and Catholic trade-unionists. Free trade-unionism rep-resented such an alternative to Communist- and Christian-dominatedunion movements.

The ORIT Latino leaders were genuinely interested in the improve-ment of the working and living conditions of the Latin Americanworkers. They assumed that economic growth would automaticallylead to social reform. Their belief in what is called ‘desarrollismo’ led tocloser co-operation with the USA, as this would stimulate LatinAmerican economic – and, in turn, social – development. The northernneighbours had achieved a high standard of living and were viewed asan example of progress.

As economic expansion was considered to be the only way toachieve social progress, the democratic forces of every region had tofight any obstacle that would interrupt this development. The freetrade unions had to oppose ‘disturbing elements’ or ‘extremists’ withinthe Latin American labour movement. This meant primarily Commu-nists or progressive leftist trade-unionists. Therefore, during the 1950sand 1960s, the ORIT, often in close co-operation with authoritarianregimes, concentrated on the fight against Communist unions, whichwere viewed as the major threat to democracy and freedom in thewestern hemisphere. As a result of this extreme anti-Communistposition, the leaders of the free trade unions neglected the mainproblems of Latin American workers, such as low wages, unemploy-ment, restrictions on freedom of association, inefficient social welfareand discrimination against ethnic minorities. They also neglected largesegments of the Latin American labour force (unskilled industrialworkers and agricultural – mostly indigenous – workers) as they iden-tified – as much as US business unionism did – primarily with skilledor semi-skilled workers employed in the export industries and theservice sector.

Despite this, the ORIT consolidated itself in the American continentduring the 1960s and gained more supporters among workers after themid-1970s, by paying more attention to the political and socio-economic problems of the various Latin American countries and bymaintaining an image of pluralism. Indeed, since the 1980s and the1990s, the free trade-union movement in Latin America consists ofnational centres of different political orientations and different degreesof radicalism. Its internationalism is nowadays ‘driven by an anti-


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neoliberal and anti-corporate agenda, rather than by anti-communism’.57

Since its foundation (and up to the present) the free trade-unionmovement, while maintaining its independence towards politicalparties, has played a crucial political role in the western hemisphere.58

Considering the political instability of most Latin American countriesthis seemed inevitable. With respect to the (political or economic) roleof the free trade-union movement and its prospects in the post-ColdWar era, three questions need to be answered: can the structure of thefree trade-union movement form an effective answer to the challengesof globalization; is this needed; and should trade unions advance apolitical agenda? In the author’s opinion, the answer to all thesequestions is yes. The world labour force has expanded dramaticallysince 1970 and will continue to grow, but union membership hasdeclined during that period.59 Organizing unprotected workers shouldnot be seen as a purely economic strategy but also as a political one.Indeed, as Jeffrey Harrod and Robert O’Brien state, ‘such a mass ofpeople, almost by definition unaffected by rationalizing influence offormal organization structures, may be producing the core forces for


57. I. Robinson, ‘The International Dimension of Labour FederationEconomic Strategy in Canada and the United States, 1947–2000’, in J.Harrod and R. O’Brien (eds), Global Unions? Theory and Strategies ofOrganized Labour in the Global Political Economy (Routledge: 2002), p.127. ORIT’s new position became clear when it declared itself against theFree Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which aims to eliminate thebarriers to trade and investment. ORIT’s general secretary, BáezMosqueira, affirms that the regional organization has assumed a positionof ‘No to FTAA’, because this process will only favour the multinationalcorporations, to the detriment of the majority of the population of thewestern hemisphere: ‘La ORIT frente al ALCA’, 8 June 2004, ORITwebpage, www.cioslorit.org

58. ORIT supported the actions of the Venezuelan trade-union confederation,the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), against presidentHugo Chávez. ORIT abstained from stating publicly its position towardsChávez, but its interest in the political situation of Venezuela, and itsattention to the actions of the opposition movement to Chávez becomesobvious when the reader opens ORIT’s webpage. In the section ‘Fortalacerla Democracia’ (‘Strengthening Democracy’) the reader can choosearticles by country: as of 19 July 2004, the average number of articles percountry was two, while for Venezuela alone there were sixty-three articles.

59. Trade Union Membership (International Labour Organization (ILO),Geneva: 2004); M. Van der Linden, Transnational Labour History(Ashgate, Aldershot: 2003), p. 165.

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international conflict’.60 The tradition of unions as a political movementis not exhausted.61 The enlargement of the labour force with migrantworkers, women and workers in the informal economy requires a politicalagenda.

The free trade-union movement can still play an important role. Thiscan be achieved only on the condition it reorganizes its structure,employs new strategies to organize workers worldwide, and its affiliatednational centres start to ‘think global’.62 Nationalism and internation-alism do not have to contradict each other. As one observer has noted,the ‘main objective – and difficulty – is to provide labour protectionwithout protectionism’.63 The response of the world labour force to thechallenges of globalization should be threefold: to strengthen formallabour organizations, such as the international labour confederations,the ILO, and the ITSs (recently renamed Global Union Federations);to strengthen the less structured and local organizational forms; andreadiness to co-operate with governmental organizations and othersocial movements.

The Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (Belgium) (FWO – Vlaanderen)

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium


60. J. Harrod and R. O’Brien, ‘Organized Labour and the Global PoliticalEconomy’, in idem (eds), Global Unions?, p. 9.

61. Liberal-oriented articles do not support this vision. ‘Trade Unions: Adaptor Die’, The Economist, 7 June 2003, p. 13, argued that trade unions oughtto use ‘a bit of imagination’ in order to ‘play a useful role in the moderneconomy’, and continues: ‘This would require them to think harder, or atall, about the services their members or could-be members wouldnowadays value. Advancing a political agenda is not one. Why shouldworkers give a hoot what their union leaders think of the war in Iraq, say,or Europe’s new constitution?’

62. The decisions of the ICFTU Congress in Miyazake, Japan, in December2004, are a positive start. The Australian Sharan Burrow was elected to thepost of ICFTU president. She is the first woman to hold this position. TheCongress also approved a resolution ‘Globalising Solidarity – Building aGlobal Union Movement for the Future’. This ‘gives the ICFTU amandate to undertake a series of reforms in its own structures andworking methods, and to move towards unification with the World Con-federation of Labour’: ‘Historic World Union Congress concludes byelecting first woman president’, 13 December 2004, ICFTU webpage,www.icftu.org

63. A. Breitenfellner, ‘Global Unionism: A Potential Player’, InternationalLabour Review 136:4 (1997), p. 542.

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Acronyms

ATLAS Agrupación de Trabajadores LatinoamericanosCGT Confederación General de Trabajadores (Argentina)CIT Confederación Interamericana de Trabajadores

(Inter-American Confederation of Workers)CLASC Confederación Latinoamericana de Sindicalistas Cris-

tianosCPUSTAL Congreso Permanente de Unidad Sindical de los

Trabajadores de América LatinaCROM Confederación Regional Obrera MexicanaCTAL Confederación de Trabajadores de América LatinaCTC Confederación de Trabajadores de CubaCTM Confederación de Trabajadores de MéxicoCUT Central Unica de Trabajadores (Chile)ORIT Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores

(Inter-American Regional Workers’ Organization)


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Look Back in Anger: MiningCommunities, the Mining Novel and the Great Miners’ StrikeJohn McIlroy

As I write this twenty years after the great strike of 1984–85, the finalnails are being driven into the coffin of the British coalmining industry.The privatized company UK Coal has announced closure of its mine atSelby, Yorkshire, the ‘super-pit’ of the 1980s. The National Union ofMineworkers (NUM), its power broken by the state, its 3,000 membersa pitiful remnant of past splendours, is merging – a grandiloquent termfor absorption – with the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union. ArthurScargill, once world famous, the last in a lineage which stretched backto A. J. Cook and Herbert Smith and beyond to AlexanderMacDonald and Tommy Hepburn, stepped down as NUM presidentin 2002 and survives only as a marginal public figure as boss of the tinySocialist Labour Party, the fruit of defeat. Yet no matter how distantthe past appears today, for historians it requires remembering, explain-ing and celebrating. In the case of the miners we are lucky enough tohave a developed historical literature dealing with diverse aspects ofcoal capitalism.1 It is still being expanded and there is also a rich veinof creative literature. In comparison with other groups of workers, theminers have been well served by their novelists.


1. See, for example, R. Church and Q. Outram, Strikes and Solidarity:Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1896–1966 (Cambridge University Press:1998); A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, 2 Vols (Ashgate,Aldershot: 2000); K. Gildart, North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity (Uni-versity of Wales Press, Cardiff: 2001); A. Taylor, The NUM in BritishPolitics, Vol. 1: 1944–1968 (Ashgate, Aldershot: 2003); J. McIlroy, A.Campbell and K. Gildart (eds), Industrial Politics and the 1926 MiningLockout: The Struggle for Dignity (University of Wales Press, Cardiff:2004). I use the term ‘miners’ as shorthand. There were, of course,important differences between them.

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Novels are products of the imagination: they do not meet the evi-dential tests of history or industrial relations. Whether they evoke con-temporary situations or recuperate the past – ‘historical novels’ –whatever the direct involvement or detailed research of the author, theylack authority for all but postmodernists. Nonetheless, creative litera-ture may provide information and insights to historians and social sci-entists. Novels may ignite, reinforce or extend our feeling for the past,suggest what it was like to live in that foreign country and enhance ourunderstanding of its actors and events. They may capture importanttruths and provide imperfect compensation for the absences inacademic analysis.

It is noteworthy that in the four decades after the war, a period ofsustained public interest in coalmining, sociologists produced only ahandful of studies of mining communities.2 The public and studentssometimes depended on fictional accounts for their understanding ofhow miners lived.3 It is difficult to think of compelling work on perhapsour most important industry, or the NUM, or the strikes of 1969, 1972,1974 and 1984–85, published by industrial relations specialists. Onlyone monograph and a handful of articles are cited in John Kelly’ssurvey of the discipline. Moreover, his justifiable criticism of much ofthis kind of work is that it tells us too little about the processes bywhich workers collectively acquire and mobilize power.4 Industrialrelations academics may expand their canvas and their concerns byreflecting critically on creative literature that gives greater play tohistory, to human action, to the generation and exercise of power, to


2. F. Zweig, Men in the Pits (Gollancz: 1948); N. Dennis, F. Henriques andC. Slaughter, Coal Is Our Life: An Analysis of a Yorkshire MiningCommunity (Eyre and Spottiswood: 1956).

3. If my memory serves me well, as students in the 1960s we were typicallyreferred to Coal Is Our Life and Clancy Sigal’s novel, Weekend in Dinlock(Secker and Warburg: 1960), to help us understand miners.

4. J. Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism andLong Waves (Routledge: 1998), pp. 9–13. Kelly cites C. Edwards and E.Heery, Management Control and Union Power: A Study of LabourRelations in Coalmining (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1983); C. Edwards,‘Measuring Union Power: A Comparison of Two Methods Applied to theStudy of Local Union Power in the Coal Industry’, British Journal ofIndustrial Relations 16:1 (1978), pp. 1–15; idem, ‘Power and Decision-Making in the Workplace: A Study of the Coalmining Industry’, IndustrialRelations Journal 14:1 (1983), pp. 50–67; and P. K. Edwards, ‘A Critique ofthe Kerr–Siegel Hypothesis of Strikes and the Isolated Mass: A Study inthe Falsification of Sociological Knowledge’, Sociological Review 25:3(1977), pp. 551–74.

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conflict and to the state, than their own discipline typically does.Interrogating the fictional, allowance must be made for the values

and preoccupations of the novelist; but of course the same applies toacademic authors. There is, undeniably, some tendency among creativewriters to highlight the fighters, the leaders, the socialists. They are,after all, writing about power and the struggle for power within thecommunity and between labour, capital and the state. Many of thesenovelists were themselves fighters, leaders and socialists, and write assuch, albeit from a range of perspectives. More broadly, conflict may beenvisaged as more engaging than co-operation. The audacious, theenduring, the committed, may be perceived as more admirable, moreworthy of remembrance. As with the charge that labour historians haveromanticized mining communities, over-emphasized their militancy,solidarity and power and neglected the mundane, the element of truthis exaggerated.

Certainly, socialist optimism sometimes leads to simplification andcolours conclusions. The virtues and potential of the miningcommunity are sometimes inflated by novelists; but it has also beendepicted as a powerful alternative society by labour historians.5 Thedilemmas of individuals rising from, rather than with, their class, arecurring motif, have sometimes been over-dramatized: but, in fact aswell as in fiction, such social emigration was a painful process althoughmobility does not necessarily entail desertion.6 And yet, mining novelsoften depict the tenuous nature of miners’ power, the disequilibrium ofpower between capital and labour and the limitations and brittleness ofthe mining community as a realized community of interests. What runsthrough them are the fissures and fragmentation, the tentativeness ofthe ties that bind, the resilience of internal conflict and the necessity todevelop and continually renew understandings of common identity andbelief in collective action. There is a sense of what can be achieved here,but also a sense of its limited socialist valency. One puts down many ofthese novels with a belief in the possibility of solidarity and unity, butan understanding of the continual necessity for dialogue, negotiationand the regeneration of resources for struggle between leaders, activists,

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5. A criticism levelled at H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of theSouth Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (Lawrence and Wishart:1980): see C. Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict: The SouthWales Coalfield, 1898–1947 (University of Wales Press, Cardiff: 1998), pp.4–5.

6. The point for socialists, as Raymond Williams used to emphasize, is notwhether you ‘leave’ the working class – that’s often inevitable and essential– but whether you ‘go back’ to help the people you have ‘left’.

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members, revolutionaries, reformists, conservatives, different men anddifferent women with different values, beliefs and politics, if mobiliza-tion is to be achieved and if temporary achievement is to be tran-scended.

I

This is nowhere clearer than in the work of the great French novelist,public intellectual and social reformer, Émile Zola. More than acentury after its publication, Germinal remains the mining masterpieceand the greatest of all strike novels. Zola was inspired by themouvement de grève of miners at Anzin, near Valenciennes in northernFrance, exactly a century before the great British miners’ strike of1984–85. But his novel transcends time and place.7 In its pages weencounter the working class as it is, almost at its inception, in the shapeof the mining community of Montsou. A microcosm of industrialsociety, it includes the reformist leader Rassenau and his competitor,the anarchist Souvarine. But it also includes the ‘ordinary’ miners, thecalculating Pierrons, the feckless Levaques and the self-interested indi-vidualist, Caval. Moreover, Zola portrays, if less successfully, the bour-geoisie, the Hennebeaux and Grégoires, with understanding. Theminers appear powerless and passive; they are almost like the minehorses, stoic in their suffering. But the novel is about change, birth,growth and the uneven, conflictual, restricted process by which workerscease to be objects, begin to make their own history, exercise power andengage in class formation.8


7. It has been almost continuously in print since the nineteenth century. Thetranslation by Havelock Ellis published in 1894 was regularly reprinted inthe Everyman Library and the translation by Leonard Tancock, which isnow the most popular, has been almost continuously available for fiftyyears: Émile Zola, Germinal (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1954; firstpublished 1885). In 1993 Oxford University Press published a new trans-lation by Peter Collier in its World’s Classics series. Page references hereare to the Penguin edition. Zola attended strike meetings at Anzin, inter-viewed some of the 12,000 strikers and went down a mine.

8. Germinal, the time of renewal and optimism, was the first month of springin the French revolutionary calendar of 1792. On 12 Germinal Year III, April1795, crowds rioted demanding bread and democracy. See, for example, E.M. Grant, Zola’s ‘Germinal’: A Critical and Historical Study (Leicester Uni-versity Press: 1970); C. Smethurst, Emile Zola: Germinal (Edward Arnold:1974). For shorter essays, see I. Howe, ‘Zola: The Genius of “Germinal”’,Encounter, April 1970, pp. 53–61; I. Birchall, ‘Zola for the 21st Century’,International Socialism 96 (Autumn 2002), pp. 105–28. See also the filmGerminal (1993) directed by Claude Berri and starring Gerard Depardieu.

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Economics ignites events: reductions in pay crystallize awareness ofexploitation, stimulate rebelliousness and suggest the possibility ofcontesting oppression. The strike dominates the novel and Zola’sportrayal of its movement and rhythms is masterly. The conflictreleases the potential of its protagonists who try to control it.9 ÉtienneLantier, a newcomer, is the catalyst and apparent hero. He has begunto read and he discovers that he can orate and capture and develop themood of the miners. The hopeless Levaque becomes a militant. Thefatalistic Maheu, who saw alternatives as fairy tales, hears himselfaddressing the manager as if it were a stranger who was talking. Hiswife, la Maheude, becomes the voice of intransigent opposition to thebourgeoisie, and the women as a whole emerge as an active, sometimessavage force. At the heart of the story is the mine, Le Voreux, a monsteremblematic of capitalism. Like the system, it devours lives; but it alsoestablishes the basis for workers’ discipline and engenders proletariansolidarity. In the process of its making, Étienne is superseded as heroby a community awakening to collective consciousness.

But solidarity and organization generate their own difficulties. Here,at the birth of workers’ resistance to capital, Zola unobtrusively intro-duces a potential barrier to it. With power comes bureaucracy. Zolauses the image of the ladder to denote mobility between the workingclass and the bourgeoisie. Étienne finds that he likes the sound of hisown voice, enjoys his new prestige, appreciates fine clothes. Thedelegate of the International, Pluchart, prefigures bureaucracy and thedomination of workers by their own representatives and suggests whatÉtienne may become: ‘the workers must manage their own affairs.Thereupon he found renewed delight in his dream of becoming apopular leader: Montsou at his feet, Paris in the mists of the future,who could tell? member of parliament some day’ (p. 22). As the strikedevelops and moods shift, collective consciousness fragments, thelimits of leadership and discipline are exposed, the crowd becomes amob. The miners oscillate, reject Étienne and then return to theinfluence of the more reasonable Rassenau.

The political leaders, in Montsou and beyond, are exemplified byRassenau’s moderation and caution; Souvarine, who resists all com-promise; and Étienne, searching for a new, different and more effective


9. The novel articulates strike strategy as the activists picket nearby pits: ‘It’sour right, old chap. How can we make the strike general if we don’t forceall the blokes to come out with us?’ (p. 316). It is slightly anachronistic,however, to talk of ‘flying pickets’. What happens in Germinal is akin tothe ‘processions’ in Britain in which large numbers of strikers would walkto nearby pits to bring the workers out.

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truth. The strike is defeated, Souvarine destroys the mine and Germinalclimaxes in the catastrophe of the flooded pit. But Souvarine’s actionleaves the system, which Le Voreux incarnated, intact but nonethelessunder threat from the germination of a ‘black avenging host’. AsÉtienne continues his search for understanding and justice, it is clearthat class formation and class conflict is the face of the future. But itsoutcome is uncertain.

Zola’s sympathies are clear and they engage the reader. But he sawthe plight of the miners as much as a warning of the terrible conse-quences of conservatism as a call for class struggle. Among his achieve-ments was the fact that Germinal was enduringly read by minersthemselves and that the naturalism in the service of social criticism, thethick-textured detail and gritty realism which he espoused and theframework which he laid down with its focus on the local community,came to dominate the mining novel in Britain.10 Nonetheless, the firstexample published at the end of the nineteenth century appears to havehad an indigenous origin. It grew out of the struggle of the infantMiners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) in the 1893 lockout,which created intense public interest. Written by the Liverpool-bornjournalist, W. E. Tirebuck, it presented what was, in the context of thetime, a sympathetic picture of miners on strike, their insistence injustice and their fierce resistance to the coalowners, the military and thechurches.11

The miners also haunt the life and work of a novelist as great asZola, D. H. Lawrence, the son of a miner raised in a Nottinghamshiremining community. Such a community is realized in all its complexitiesand conflicts in Sons and Lovers. Paul Morel’s refusal of its values, theresult of a struggle between his father, whose identity is forged in thecollectivism of his work underground, and his mother who representsindividualism and mobility – ‘He is not going in the pit’12 – reflects the


10. See J. McIlroy, ‘Finale: A View from a New Century’, in McIlroy et al.(eds), Industrial Politics, pp. 299 and 310, n. 1.

11. W. E. Tirebuck, Miss Grace of All Souls (Heinemann: 1895). See G. Klaus,The Literature of Labour: Two Hundred Years of Working-Class Writing(Harvester Press, Brighton: 1985), pp. 86–8. A poor translation ofGerminal was published by Vizetelly and Co., London, in 1886. Strikes ofmillworkers figure in earlier English novels, notably in Elizabeth Gaskell,Mary Barton (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1996; first published 1848) andidem, North and South (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1995; first published1854).

12. D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (Penguin, London: 1948; first published1913), p. 70. For a detailed account of Lawrence’s background, see A. R.and C. Griffin, ‘A Social and Economic History of Eastwood and the Not-

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complications and continuing tensions of Lawrence’s own estrange-ment from his working-class upbringing. In The Rainbow the imaginedmining town of Wiggiston emerges as the negation of community, theminers ‘not like living people but like spectres’, the mine ‘demon like’,‘a monster’, as in Zola a destroyer of humanity, the bearer ofLawrence’s hatred of the industrial system which destroys spontaneouscreative life.13 In Women in Love the mining industry again epitomizesindustrial capitalism. The miners are a dark, alienated mass. They areseen through the eyes of the coalowners who are entirely absent fromSons and Lovers. They have surrendered to the will to power andembrace of ‘the mechanical principle’ of the industrial magnate GeraldCrich, a power which destroys his and their humanity: ‘They were uglyand uncouth but they were his instruments. He admired their qualities.But as men, personalities, they were just accidents, sporadic, little,unimportant phenomena.’14

In Lawrence’s novelized version of the past the 1893 lockout was adecisive turning-point. Real events find an echo, although they aretransformed. The challenge which the conflict offered to paternalistEast Midlands coalowners is suggested by the tension between ThomasCrich, a believer in philanthropy and social harmony, and his sonGerald, a modernizer and mechanizer in whom the struggle instils thedesire for domination. But the miners’ resistance to innovation and theintroduction of coal-cutting machinery, and the strikes it stimulated


tinghamshire Mining Country’, in K. Sagar (ed.), A D. H. LawrenceHandbook (Manchester University Press: 1982), pp. 127–63. Lawrence’sfather, Arthur, was a small ‘butty’ (in reality the leader of a gang of col-lective piece-workers rather than ‘an independent contractor’ in anygrandiose sense) at Barber, Walkers’ Brinsley pit. The continued influenceof his social background can be seen in, for example, ‘Strike Pay’, in D. H.Lawrence, The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1 (Heinemann: 1965), a tale offamily hardship inspired by an incident in the 1912 national strike whenLawrence travelled around with a miner issuing relief tickets; ‘A SickCollier’ – more tensions in a mining marriage, presciently located onScargill Street – in idem, The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1; ‘Odour ofChrysanthemums’, in idem, The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 2 (Heine-mann: 1965), about a mining disaster at Brinsley; and ‘The Miner atHome’, in idem, Love Among the Haystacks (Grafton Books: 1988), whichportrays the conflict between husband and wife over a pit strike. See alsoThe Collier’s Friday Night, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and Touch andGo, in idem, The Complete Plays (Heinemann: 1965).

13. D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1981; firstpublished 1915), pp. 345, 349–50.

14. D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1982; firstpublished 1920), p. 305.

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before 1914, find no place in Women in Love.15 Beyond his imaginedhistories, Lawrence perceived a deep change in what he saw as thebattered-down children he had gone to school with: ‘after the war thecolliers went silent … Till 1920 there was a strange power of life inthem, something wild and urgent that one could hear in their voices’.16

His ambivalence, his desire to solidarize with and escape from his classwere contradictory and changing. Returning home in 1926 he observedthe miners moving towards defeat, at times like an outsider. But he alsoreflected that the miners ‘are the only people who move me strongly’,who were ‘in the life sense of the word good’.17 Like Zola he saw classwar coming. But he shied away from its consequences, musing insteadon consensual, organic change: ‘I know that we could, if we would,establish little by little a true democracy in England: we could nation-alise the land and industries, and means of transport, and make thewhole thing work infinitely better than at present, if we would. It alldepends on the spirit in which the thing is done.’18

At other times he was more reconciled to class war, even if he failedto support it: ‘I know the ownership of property is a problem that mayhave to be fought out. But beyond the fight must lie a new hope, a newbeginning.’19 As literary critics have pointed out, The First Lady Chat-terley, written in the aftermath of the 1926 mining lockout, in whichParkin, the forerunner of the gamekeeper Mellors, is a Communist,embodies this thinking. It permits the possibility of a radical economic,social and human transformation quite different from the sexualmysticism of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In the latter novel Lawrencereturns to his representation of the miners in Women in Love: ‘Men not


15. The ‘real-life’ equivalents of Thomas and Gerald Crich have been seen asThomas Charles Barber, who died in 1893, and Thomas Philip Barber,who succeeded him at the helm of the Barber, Walker Company, for whomLawrence’s father worked: G. Holderness, D. H. Lawrence: History,Ideology and Fiction (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin: 1982), pp. 209–11.

16. D. H. Lawrence, ‘Return to Bestwood’, in W. Roberts and H. Moore (eds),Phoenix II (Heinemann: 1968), pp. 263–4.

17. Lawrence, ‘Return’, p. 264. See also idem, ‘Nottingham and the MiningCountryside’, in E. D. McDonald (ed.), Phoenix: The Posthumous Papersof D. H. Lawrence (Heinemann: 1936): ‘The physical awareness andintimate togetherness was at its strongest down pit … And if I think of mychildhood, it is always as if there was a lustrous sort of inner darkness, likethe gloss of coal, in which we moved and had our real being’ (p. 135;original emphasis).

18. Lawrence, ‘Return’, p. 265.19. Ibid.

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men … anima of coal and iron and clay’.20

Lawrence was a critic and opponent of industrial capitalism and itsdestructive consequences. In the end he rejected not only ‘the dead mate-rialism of Marxism’ but any political programme for change beyond theutopian. His path lay away from the working class, but during the inter-war years there was no shortage of writers, often from the coalfields,sometimes inspired by Lawrence, willing to depict the lives and strugglesof miners in the novel. There was, however, a decline in literary merit andin some cases an attempt to replace complexity with a socialist realismwhich demanded that ambivalence be cast aside and the working class bedepicted as moving in the direction of the conquest of power or at leastbeginning to comprehend its historical necessity.21

This was far from the approach of James Welsh whose novel, TheUnderworld, was a bestseller of Catherine Cookson proportions in the1920s. A Lanarkshire miners’ official and subsequently a Labour MP,who went underground in 1892 when he was aged twelve, Welsh’sbooks still talk to historians about life in the Scottish pits and pitvillages as well as about trade-unionism and problems of leadershipbefore 1914 and, unusually, of an attempt by a woman to rise from herclass.22 Like the work of the Derbyshire collier Fred Boden, whoescaped to Exeter University College but whose Miner provides avaluable account from below of the powerlessness of miners during the1926 lockout in the Midlands to effect events, Welsh’s books are longout of print and generally forgotten today.23 A happier fate wasaccorded to the Nottinghamshire miner Walter Brierley whose novels,


20. D. H. Lawrence, The First Lady Chatterley (Heinemann: 1972; firstpublished 1944); idem, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Penguin, Har-mondsworth: 1960; first published 1928), p. 166. The most successful filmsof Lawrence novels are Sons and Lovers (1960), directed by Jack Cardiff,starring Dean Stockwell, Trevor Howard and Wendy Hiller; and Womenin Love (1969), directed by Ken Russell, starring Glenda Jackson, JennieLinden, Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.

21. The transition within Stalinism was from proletkult to socialist realismafter 1934. For socialist realism and its antipathy to modernism in thenovel, see V. Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties (Clarendon Press,Oxford: 1988), pp. 299–305.

22. James C. Welsh, The Underworld: The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner(Herbert Jenkins: 1920); idem, The Morlocks (Herbert Jenkins: 1924), andidem, Norman Dale, MP (Herbert Jenkins: 1928), reflect Welsh’s movetowards moderation; see G. Klaus, ‘James Welsh, Major Miner Poet’,Scottish Literary Journal 13:2 (1986), pp. 65–86; T. Rogers, ‘Politics, PopularLiterature and the Scottish Miners: The Poetry and Fiction of James C.Welsh’, Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society 27 (1992), pp. 23–41.

23. F. C. Boden, Miner (Dent: 1932).

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notably Means Test Man, a moving if relatively politically detachedevocation of the impact of unemployment on family, community andclass solidarity, were republished in the 1980s.24

The miners’ struggles of the 1970s and 1980s and socialists’ searchfor ‘a useable past’ also revived interest and facilitated republication ofsome of the political novels of the 1930s. Last Cage Down, a saga ofindustrial conflict written by the left-wing Durham activist, HaroldHeslop, ends with local leader Jim Cameron concluding a prolongedand bitter learning-process with acknowledgement that the futurebelongs not to Labour but to his opponent, the Communist Joe Frost,and his party with its vision of a workers’ Britain cast in the glitteringmould of the Soviet Union. Labourism is treacherous, managers evil,women the embodiment of pure militancy and Lenin and Stalin thearchitects of the future.25

Like Heslop, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CP) activist,Lewis Jones, used experience, autobiography and documentary realismto weave across two epic novels a massy, labyrinthine tale of the clashof ideas and personalities, pit meetings, political arguments, strikes andlockouts from the 1890s to the 1930s. Like Heslop, Jones has hisstrengths and due tribute has been paid to them. But in We Live theincreasing presence of political speeches as well as idealization of theCP and garrulousness about it mars the text and occasionally descendsinto bathos:

‘Oh my dear, our line is wrong’, he moaned. ‘Never mind’, she consoled. ‘Right or wrong, it is the line and wehave to be true to it.’‘But it means we have to become strike-breakers.’26


24. Walter Brierley, Means Test Man (Spokesman, Nottingham: 1983; firstpublished 1935); idem, Sandwichman (Merlin: 1990; first published 1937).These editions have insightful introductions by Andy Croft and PhilipGorski respectively.

25. Harold Heslop, Last Cage Down (Lawrence and Wishart: 1984, with anintroduction by Andy Croft; first published 1935); see also idem, The Gateof a Strange Field (Brentanos: 1929), which depicts the suffering, disillu-sion and sense of betrayal surrounding the battles of 1926 as well as thefactionalism in the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB); and theautobiography, idem, Out of the Old Earth, ed. A. Croft and G. Rigby(Bloodaxe Books, Newcastle upon Tyne: 1984).

26. Lewis Jones, Cwmardy (Lawrence and Wishart: 1978; first published1937); idem, We Live (Lawrence and Wishart: 1978; first published 1939).The quotes are from We Live, p. 289. These reprints have valuable intro-

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Jones’s message – like Heslop’s – is that the miners can only progress andattain real power under the leadership of the CP. His characters tend tobecome mouthpieces of an imagined march of history rather than compli-cated flawed human beings, as he chronicles a Rhondda miningcommunity transformed from the days of syndicalism into a ‘littleMoscow’ by the time of the Spanish Civil War.27 Whatever their literarymerit, these novels provided inspiration for socialists and in their treatmentof strikes and politics in the pit and beyond they contain valuable materialfor historians, even if they cannot be taken as reliable guides.

A more independent and more adventurous novel without any kindof consolation was The Back-to-Backs, written by the London Schoolof Economics graduate and civil servant J. C. Grant. Influenced byexpressionism and aspects of Zola’s melodrama and ‘sensationalism’, itportrayed the debauchment of a north-eastern mining community after1926. Grant’s unrelieved vision of hell on earth in County Durham wasperhaps more redolent of the contemporary French novelist and poetof pessimism, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, than Zola: it was praised by theintelligentsia but excoriated by labour movement critics, whetherMFGB officials or Communists, for its disregard of the miners’ soli-darity and dignity and for eliminating resistance from the picture.28 A


ductions by Dai Smith. See also D. Smith, Lewis Jones (University ofWales Press, Cardiff: 1982); G. Holderness, ‘Miners and the Novel: FromBourgeois to Proletarian Fiction’, in J. Hawthorne (ed.), The BritishWorking Class Novel in the Twentieth Century (Edward Arnold: 1984). Onunemployment among South Wales miners there is Jack Jones, RhonddaRoundabout (Faber and Faber: 1934); see also the autobiography, JackJones, Unfinished Business (Hamish Hamilton: 1937).

27. See S. McIntyre, Little Moscows: Communism and Working ClassMilitancy in Inter-War Britain (Croom Helm: 1980).

28. J. C. Grant, The Back-to-Backs (Chatto and Windus: 1930). Its receptionparallels the left-wing criticism of Zola’s realistic depiction of Frenchworkers in L’Assommoir (Oxford University Press: 1995; first published1877); see the introduction to that edition by Robert Lethbridge. Fordifferent views of Grant’s novel, see R. Colls, The Collier’s Rant: Song andCulture in the Industrial Village (Croom Helm: 1977), pp. 184–91; A. Croft,Red Letter Days: British Fiction in the 1930s (Lawrence and Wishart: 1990),pp. 75–80. Its reception demonstrates that union officials were aware, orwere made aware, of such novels. There is no evidence that fiction played arole in cohering a sense of identity among miners or in institution-building(cf. the commissioning of R. Page Arnot’s miners’ union histories after1945). No miner was typical, but Arthur Lawrence’s reaction to his son’snovels was one of bafflement rather than identification: he might as wellhave been reading Hottentot: J. Chambers, D. H. Lawrence: A PersonalRecord (Frank Cass: 1965), p. 49, and see n. 38 below.

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wider audience read and watched A. J. Cronin’s The Stars Look Down(1935). The experiences of its hero, a former Northumberland minerwho becomes a Labour MP, are sometimes credited with contributingto the significant change in consciousness represented by Labour’svictory in 1945. Another bestseller was Richard Llewellyn’s How GreenWas My Valley (1939), a romantic retreat from the world that the pro-letarian novelists confronted into a utopian pre-1914 South Wales.29

In the post-war years the proletarian genre re-exerted itself withwork such as the stories by north-east colliery blacksmith Sid Chaplin,collected in The Thin Seam, later the basis for Alan Plater and AlexGlasgow’s musical, Close the Coalhouse Door.30 The CP sought torevive the socialist realism of the 1930s through publication of a rangeof novels, perhaps most notably the work of Len Doherty, a youngYorkshire miner from Thurcroft Colliery, Rotherham. Written againstthe background of the party’s attempts to re-establish itself in theimportant Yorkshire coalfield in the early 1950s, Doherty’s best book,A Miner’s Sons, embodies many of the strengths and flaws of the earlierwork by Heslop and Jones.31 In keeping with the conventions of the


29. The Stars Look Down (1939), directed by Carol Reed, starring MichaelRedgrave and Margaret Lockwood; How Green Was My Valley (1941),directed by John Ford, starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara andRoddy McDowell. See also Gwyn Thomas, Sorrow for Thy Sons(Lawrence and Wishart: 1986; written 1936); and Gwyn Jones, Times LikeThese (Lawrence and Wishart: 1979; written 1936), which links the 1930sin the South Wales coalfield with the lockouts of 1921 and 1926 and pow-erfully conveys the miners’ demands for justice and dignity: ‘We aren’thuman beings. We are just like pick handles or old mandrils’ (p. 294).There are valuable comments on the Welsh novelists in D. Smith, AneurinBevan and the World of South Wales (University of Wales Press, Cardiff:1993), passim, particularly pp. 115–49.

30. Sid Chaplin, The Thin Seam (Pergamon Press, Oxford: 1968; firstpublished 1949); Alan Plater, Close the Coalhouse Door, based on Storiesby Sid Chaplin, Songs by Alex Glasgow (Methuen: 1969). A fine histori-cal novel of these years is Gwyn Thomas, All Things Betray Thee(Lawrence and Wishart: 1986, with an introduction by RaymondWilliams; first published 1949), set in South Wales at the time of theNewport Rising and Rebecca Riots.

31. Len Doherty, A Miner’s Sons (Lawrence and Wishart: 1956); idem, The ManBeneath (Lawrence and Wishart: 1957). The problems with socialist realismin the 1950s are suggested by the fact that A Miner’s Sons was Lawrence andWishart’s best-selling novel with just over 3,000 copies sold: I. VonRosenberg, ‘Militancy, Anger and Resignation: Alternative Modes in theWorking-Class Novel in the 1950s and Early 1960s’, in H. G. Klaus (ed.),The Socialist Novel in Britain (Harvester, Brighton: 1982). Also of interest isMargot Heinemann, The Adventurers (Lawrence and Wishart: 1960).

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genre, CP members are the central actors, the best trade-unionists andthe best people; there is no sense of the decline of the party, while theCold War and – in contrast with pre-war novels – Russia are almostcompletely absent from the text. However, party issues dominate andthe problems of the CP tower over the pit and the union.

Too much of the novel is taken up with evangelical homilies byidealized, cardboard cutouts. The prosy perorations of the Communistteacher Mainwaring and the CP organizer Frank Wells are rewarded byapproving cries of ‘dead right’ from earnest young miners, the ‘partylads’ who appear to develop through pedagogic induction rather thanaction and experience. In a rare flash of insight, Wells, modelled on thereal-life CP organizer, Frank Watters, murmurs: ‘Och, I should havebeen a preacher’.32 The hero Robert Mellers, prone to doubt, insecurityand individualism, is a more rounded character and there are convinc-ing episodes such as the organization and defeat of the overtime ban –ironically through the intervention of the party – and a superblyrealized finale in which local union delegate Barratt resists the attemptof management to buy him over. But the novel moves to its inevitableconclusion: both Barratt and Mellers accept that they must subordi-nate their inclinations to the discipline of a party, which represents thebest hope of the miners against capitalist power that has effortlesslysurvived nationalization.

So it seems now. When I read it more than forty years ago I recallthat I found it inspiring if at times wooden and a little antique, in com-parison with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Lonelinessof the Long Distance Runner. A year or so after the publication of AMiner’s Sons, Doherty left the CP over Khrushchev’s speech revealingthe barbarities of Stalinism and the Russian invasion of Hungary.33 Asthe 1960s dawned, even revamped socialist realism increasinglyappeared a quaint echo of a vanished world – certainly compared withthe portrayal of workers and their predicament by a new generation ofnovelists, notably Alan Sillitoe, even Stan Barstow. A maverickAmerican socialist, Clancy Sigal, who settled in Britain and becameinvolved in the post-1956 New Left, attempted a different, and whatappeared at the time quintessentially modern approach with his exper-imental, documentary novel Weekend in Dinlock. Stimulated by his


32. Doherty, A Miner’s Sons, p. 245. F. Watters, Being Frank: The Memoirs ofFrank Watters (Monkspring Publications, Barnsley: 1992), p. 31.

33. See Doris Lessing, Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiogra-phy, 1949–1962 (HarperCollins: 1997), pp. 234–7. Frank Watters blamedDoherty’s defection in characteristic terms on the influence of Lessing and‘the social snobbery of his regular weekends with the literary elite’:Watters, Being Frank, p. 31.

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friendship with Doherty and with a hero, Davie, who bears a resem-blance to Doherty, the book is based on two visits by an Americanobserver to a Yorkshire pit village.34

Divided by almost a hundred years and hundreds of miles, Dinlockis, like Montsou, a warring world unto itself, a genuine communitywith an intense public life expressing itself through the pubs and clubs,the union branch – an active forum – strikes – a real expression ofopinion – debate, argument and rivalries between miners and theirfamilies. It is a masculine world ruled with a rod of iron by elitist face-workers. Their work remains brutal but it still gives them their identity.Their standing depends on their commitment to the village, theirabilities as miners, their union skills and their fists. They are cynicalabout nationalization, militant about money, contemptuous of NUMofficials and insecure about the future of their industry. They arenarrow minded about women, those who leave the pit and those whoget ideas above their station, as well as Hungarian and Polish immi-grants. Some support the Labour Party left-wing weekly Tribune,others vaguely identify with the CP and at pit level the Dinlock minersexercise an element of countervailing power; but no compelling alter-native vision of mining or British society is articulated.

The gifted artist Davie, torn between Dinlock and flight from it, andthe hard, calculating Bolton, the NUM branch potentate suspected ofbeing on the brink of incorporation because of his desire to get on first-name terms with the under manager despite his solidarity with theRussian invasion of Hungary, are vivid and complex characters. Sigal’shonest translation of what he saw attracted both approval and oppro-brium. The criticism of his depiction of hard drinking, violence,sexuality, the role of women and his extended account of a trip under-ground recalled at times the fear of challenges to myth and dread of the


34. See n. 3 above. There are brief recollections by Sigal of his experience inthe New Left in Oxford University Socialist Discussion Group, Out ofApathy: Voices of the New Left 30 Years On (Verso: 1989), pp. 131, 133.Lessing, Walking in the Shade, pp. 154–5, describes Sigal as a Trotskyist.It is worth mentioning here that superb evocation of the decline ofAmerican trade-unionism and socialism, Clancy Sigal, Going Away (Cape:1963). For American mining novels, see, for example, F. M. Blake, TheStrike in the American Novel (The Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ: 1972).Two films dealing with American miners stand out: The Molly Maguires(1970) directed by Martin Ritt, starring Richard Harris and SeanConnery, and Matewan (1987), directed by John Sayles and starring ChrisCooper and Mary McDonnell.

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inauthentic vision of the outsider which had informed the reception ofGrant’s book thirty years earlier.35

Doherty and Sigal evoke a post-war era of pit politics in whichnationalization and the economic boom have only softened thecontours of conflict focused on piece-work and price lists. The greatnational issues, immanent in earlier novels, are as distant as the oldmasters, while industrial relations is restricted to the pit and thebranch. Power is mobilized at local level, but the National Coal Board(NCB) bureaucrats remain ‘the bosses’ and, if real hardship has beenpushed to the margins, the greater affluence of the 1950s co-exists withcontinued insecurity and fear of illness, accidents, closures and old agewith an inadequate safety net.36

However, the best novel of the 1960s set in a mining community hadlittle to say of industrial relations or pit politics. Barry Hines’s A Kestrelfor a Knave was a powerful reassertion of human potential and thestory of its squandering in the two decades after 1947. Billy’s talentsand his lively imagination open up all sorts of possibilities for a goodlife; but he is destined by the system for the pit. His only hope lies inthe kestrel he trains, which symbolizes escape and egalitarianism: it wasthe bird that both peasants and nobles could own in medieval society.Neglected by his mother, Billy is betrayed by his brother Jud, a minerwho, maddened by Billy’s failure to place a bet that cost him a week’swages, kills the kestrel and Billy’s hopes. Compared with earlier novels,Hines presents a harsh but subtle account of a mining community in


35. See, for example, R. Frankenburg, ‘First Thoughts on Dinlock’, New LeftReview, March–April 1960, pp. 65–6; ‘“Weekend in Dinlock”: A Discus-sion’, New Left Review, May–June 1960, pp. 42–5. The book is alsomemorable for a fleeting cameo appearance by a character Charles, suspi-ciously like Edward Thompson, who pronounces Dinlock as ‘backward’:Sigal, Dinlock, pp. 82–3. Another writer active in the New Left, DennisPotter, who came from a mining family in the Forest of Dean, devotedhimself largely to television plays. But see, on rites of passage, D. Potter,The Glittering Coffin (Gollancz: 1960), and idem, The Changing Forest:Life in the Forest of Dean Today (Secker and Warburg: 1962).

36. Other interesting novels of this period set in South Wales are MennaGallie, The Small Mine (Gollancz: 1962) and Ron Berry, Flame and Slag(W. H. Allen: 1968). For pit politics and the period generally, see P.Gibbon, ‘Analyzing the British Miners’ Strike of 1984–5’, Economy andSociety 17:2 (1988), pp. 151–94, particularly pp. 152–4. Among historicalnovels published at this time Alexander Cordell’s books set against theindustrial revolution in Wales are worthy of mention: Alexander Cordell,The Rape of the Fair Country (Gollancz: 1959); idem, The Hosts ofRebecca (Gollancz: 1960); idem, Song of the Earth (Gollancz: 1969).

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which Billy is trapped with the majority of young people in the worldof manual labour and in the end becomes resigned to his fate.37

II

As far as I can discover, the re-emergence of national conflict from1969 and the strikes of 1972 and 1974 produced no new novels. Perhapsthese strikes were lacking, at least in comparison with 1926, inintensity, duration and hardship. Perhaps there is something in the oldadage that the labour movement prefers to commemorate its defeats.Perhaps reading habits were changing.38 Whatever the explanation, thesmall number of mining novels of the 1970s looked to the past,although at their best they did so in ways that taught us about thepresent. The most compelling example of this was a 1975 novel by anunderrated but gifted and committed writer, the son of a miner raisedin Kilmarnock, who has spent his life trying to portray and sustainwhat he perceives as the vanishing sense of common predicament,feeling, interdependence and endeavour to create a collective protectionagainst the wounds inflicted by capitalism and life, values which heinsists have characterized many working-class communities.

William McIlvanney’s Docherty narrated the story of three genera-tions of miners in the imagined Ayrshire town of Graithknock from1903 to 1921. McIlvanney’s hero, Tam Docherty, only a generation


37. Barry Hines, A Kestrel for a Knave (Michael Joseph: 1968). The novel wasfilmed as Kes (1969), directed by Ken Loach and starring David Bradley,Lynn Perrie and Colin Welland.

38. The extent to which miners themselves read these novels remains largely amatter of conjecture. Jonathan Rose’s small-scale study of the borrowingledgers of the Welsh miners’ libraries concludes of Tylorstown in 1941:‘Miners were not much interested in reading about miners’: J. Rose, TheIntellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Yale University Press, NewHaven, CT/London: 2001), p. 246. Nonetheless, at Markham Germinalwas the most borrowed novel between 1937 and 1940: ibid., p. 252. Denniset al., Coal Is Our Life, pp. 167–9, echoes other studies, suggesting that, inone Yorkshire community at least, the preferred diet was westerns, crimenovels and romances. For the post-war years, however, there are referencesto miners reading Chaplin: M. Pickering and K. Robbins, ‘The Making ofa Working-Class Writer: An Interview with Sid Chaplin’, in Hawthorne(ed.), Working Class Novel, p. 143; and Sigal, Dinlock, pp. 142–3, while itis claimed that William McIlvanney’s novels ‘are read throughoutScotland’: N. Ascheson, Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland (Granta:2003), p. 126. At least some miners were not encouraged to write by theirworkmates: ‘Yer writing about the pits? Nothing much to write about isthere? Just the muck and the dirt and that. An’ perhaps a nasty accident’:J. G. Glenwright, Bright Shines the Morning (Martini: 1949), pp. 82–3.

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away from Connemara, is one of the often forgotten creators ofcommunity in mining areas. He struggles to impose dignity, decencyand order on degradation, division and disease through the force of hisself-belief and integrity. The defeat of the 1921 lockout is for Dochertyone reverse too many in a lifetime of defeated struggles and, in a worldwhere decency is an act of heroism, he accepts death to save a fellowminer. His attempt to create a world within a world has failed. One ofhis sons, Angus, turns to self-interest and individualism. The others,Conn and Mick, confront a choice between different political paths,reformist and revolutionary, a division that McIlvanney treats withdisregard for absolute alternatives and a sensitivity to the strengths andweaknesses of both roads which surmounts socialist realism.39

Despite its epic scale, the 1984–85 strike, like its predecessors,produced little imaginative literature. I can trace only three novels40 and


39. William McIlvanney, Docherty (Allen and Unwin: 1975). McIlvanney’slater autobiographical novel, The Kiln (Sceptre: 1996), continues someaspects of the story. Neil Ascheson, Stone Voices, p. 75, exaggerates butmakes a point when he observes: ‘McIlvanney is the one writer whose faceis recognized in any Scottish street’. See also W. McIlvanney, ‘Growing upin the West’, in K. Miller (ed.), Memoirs of a Modern Scotland (Faber andFaber: 1970). Another Yorkshire mining novel set in the 1930s is DonBannister, Sam Chard (Routledge: 1979). Among historical novels of the1970s, Alexander Cordell, This Sweet and Bitter Earth (Hodder andStoughton: 1977), imagining the early years of the twentieth century, isworth reading. Cordell pays tribute to the historical memory of the minersand the work of Page Arnot.

40. Barry Hines, The Heart of It (Michael Joseph: 1994); Martyn Waites, Bornunder Punches (Simon and Schuster: 2003); David Peace, GB 84 (Faber andFaber: 2004). Waites’s thriller deals largely with the consequences of thestrike. It portrays a journalist, footballer, gangster, a young woman studentwho ends up in call-centre and a miner in the imagined town of Coldwell,Northumberland, whose lives are changed by the conflict. It is depicted asopening a bleak post-industrial age in which New Labour consolidatesThatcherism and lives are impoverished, although optimism and hope arenever extinguished. At least one children’s novel is set in a pit village duringthe 1984–85 strike: Bel Mooney, A Flower of Jet (Hamish Hamilton: 1990;Puffin: 1991). It traces divisions in a community insulated from the shadowynational dimension and, although it is set in Yorkshire, mines are workingfrom the start of the stoppage. Mooney attempts to develop the argumentswith fairness and sensitivity through the unravelling and remaking of friend-ships among teenagers. But the book centres on a clash of principles whichprioritizes independence, conscience and standing up for beliefs, almost com-pletely uncomplicated and unmediated by issues of democracy. While notexplicitly about 1984, Raymond Williams, Loyalties (Chatto and Windus:1985), provides fascinating insights into the experience of socialist miners inSouth Wales from the 1930s to the 1980s.

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I will discuss two of them here. The first, by Barry Hines, appeared tenyears after the convulsion. Hines was born in the mining village ofHoyland Common, near Barnsley, and trained as a mining surveyorbefore becoming a teacher and later a full-time writer. He had alreadyreturned to mining country with the sombre novel, The Price of Coal,which addressed class conflict more explicitly than its predecessor.41

It is the late 1970s and life at Milton Colliery is presented in twocontrasting episodes. The first part of the book, ironically entitled‘Meet the People’, explores the consciousness of a group of miners andtheir feelings of powerlessness, acceptance, resentment and antagonismtowards an official visitation by Prince Charles, with its consequentflummery and cosmeticization of the colliery. The visit is inevitable;within that boundary, some see it as an honour and some as an oppor-tunity to improve pit conditions, while others use humour to expressresistance. Opposition is voiced by the central character, Syd, who seesthe choice of Milton as demonstrating the absence of power of itsunion organization in comparison with other collieries. Milton hasbeen selected, ‘Because they know the Branch officials are as soft asshit and wouldn’t oppose it’ (p. 46). Syd voices the absurdity andinequity of the pantomime. When other miners point to the ancillarybenefits of the visit, he reflects: ‘But that’s the point, Ronnie … If allthis fuss is worth making, it’s worth making for us. It’s us who workhere … it should be our needs that come first, not his’ (p. 45). The eventpasses without interruption; apart from ‘Scargill Rules. O.K.’ sprayedin red capitals on the canteen wall.

The second half of the book, ‘Back to Reality’, involves an explosionwhich blasts away the illusionary world of the royal visit: five minersare killed and Syd is seriously injured. History repeats itself, the past isstill present. An album of cuttings presented to Prince Charles refers, ina few terse lines embedded in extensive coverage of the visit of GeorgeV and Queen Mary to South Yorkshire collieries in 1912, to the deathof eighty-six miners in an explosion at Cadeby Main. The alterationsmade for the 1977 visit have not improved safety and working condi-tions. As the NUM official remarks, it takes accidents to do that,accidents caused by pressure. Thirty years after nationalization,pitwork remains dangerous and unrecognized, and miners still seethemselves as powerless to change things. The Price of Coal is stillhuman lives.


41. Barry Hines, The Price of Coal (Michael Joseph: 1979; Penguin, Har-mondsworth: 1982). The novel was based on Hines’s play, The Price ofCoal, screened in the BBC television Play for Today series in 1977, directedby Ken Loach, produced by Tony Garnett and starring Bobby Knutt asSyd.

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The novel is strengthened by its economy of narrative and characterand its occasional use of sections of film script. These techniques aretaken further in Hines’s novel about the strike of 1984–85, The Heart ofIt.42 Echoing Lawrence, Hines uses the device of the revenant, now inimportant ways an outsider, who on his return home reflects upon theevents of the great strike, seen, as in the traditional mining novel, throughthe eyes and experience of a local community. Hines’s book, like earlierwork, is about alienation from, and reconciliation with, the values of thatcommunity; the difference is that its culture is now vanishing into history.Depicting the strike, the closures, privatization and disintegration, thenovel is about loss and the pain of loss. It records the disruption and thenthe dissolution of a way of life. But it promises remembrance andrenewal. The book begins: ‘The houses had been demolished’ (p. 1). Itsfinal sentences return to Attlee Way: ‘The houses had been demolished… but Karl remembered the people who used to live there’ (p. 280).

The novel’s central protagonist, Karl Rickards – known as Cal in hisnew life as a scriptwriter in the South of France – returns in the 1990sto the Yorkshire town where he grew up and where his father is nowseriously ill. Leaving home confirmed his estrangement, based on hisconflict with his father, Harry, an NUM activist and Stalinist, whonamed his sons after Marx and Uncle Joe and would not have Bull’sBlood in the house. The 1984–85 strike, which had little impact on theindividualist, upwardly mobile Karl, continues to pre-occupy everyonehe meets. It was a devastating turning-point: ‘The strike knocked thestuffing out of this place, Karl. Destroyed it. It was like a police statearound here. The government was determined to win at all costs …


42. Hines, The Heart of It. A number of films touched on the strike but it wascentral to the popular Billy Elliot (2000), directed by Stephen Daldry froma screenplay by Lee Hall and starring Jamie Bell, Julie Walters and JamieDraven. In what might be seen as a sentimental counterpoise to Kes, Billy’sballet dancing and self-realization are presented in a loaded opposition tothe masculinity, militancy and rootedness of his brother and father. Theconflict reaches crisis when financing the boy’s education at ballet schoolthreatens his father’s commitment to the strike. However, all ends happily.Social mobility is achieved, social inequality persists, the ladder is stillworking. The film has just been adapted as a stage musical, with the scorewritten by Elton John. See also Channel 4’s ‘The Comic Strip Presents TheStrike’ (1988), directed by Peter Richardson and, for the aftermath, BrassedOff (1996), directed and written by Mark Herman and starring PeterPostlethwaite, Ewan McGregor, Tara Fitzgerald and the GrimethorpeColliery Band. Of the limited reflective documentary literature on the strike,M. Hudson, Coming Back Brockens: A Year in a Mining Village (JonathanCape: 1994; Vintage: 1995), a portrait of Horden Colliery, County Durham,locating 1984–85 in its past and its aftermath, is outstanding.

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When you try to tell people what it was like they don’t believe you’ (p.14).

Neither at the beginning does Karl. Slowly, through a series ofencounters with the past, he relives, not the experience of the struggle,but how it is remembered and how it has transformed the lives of thepeople he grew up with. Putting aside his film script about a boy turnedinto a dog by a mad professor, Karl journeys into the past. Graduallyshedding his impulses to opportunistic appropriation – the strike wouldmake a better script – and gradually accepting the limits of recupera-tion of the lived experience of others – ‘You’ve no idea what it was like:you weren’t here’ (p. 51) – he discovers the inauthenticity of the life hehas escaped to. Karl, too, is transformed by the strike.

What happened in 1984–85 is represented through the memories ofparticipants who struggled to understand and control calamities thatseemed to happen to them. Hines makes no attempt to provide ahistory of the strike. This is a local narrative focused on the role of thepolice, the courts and the media, depicted in clashes between picketsand returning miners, pickets and police. Crisis and defeat is tracedthrough the story of Harry Rickards, who held the strikers together:Harry’s decline embodies the decline of a way of life and his illness isidentified with his experience of the strike:

When he got beaten up by the police. That and going to prison. He was never the same again somehow.That’s a long time ago isn’t it, 1984?These things can have a delayed effect, Karl. (p. 38)

The consequences of 1984–85 were destructive but they were also lib-erating. The beneficial transformations the strike wrought are repre-sented through the change in Harry’s wife, Maisie. She had alwaysseemed ‘totally dominated by your dad. She wasn’t after the strikeended, though. They came out of it on equal terms … the women werethe backbone of the strike. If it had been up to them, the men wouldnever have gone back to work. They’d still be out now’ (p. 80).

With new confidence engendered by speaking at meetings and trav-elling across Europe to raise funds, Maisie becomes an individual, acreative force with the courage to explore her own troubled past. Herdaughter-in-law, Christine, also learns the lessons of the conflict anddevelops a new decisiveness and a new autonomy. Karl’s journey intothe past affirms the continued relevance of collectivism and collectiveresponsibility, ‘that’s one thing people outside mining areas neverunderstand, how close we all are and how working together develops asense of comradeship and trust in each other’ (p. 76). It also affirms the


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need for a new culture and a new solidarity based on the dissolution ofancient oppressions and prejudices within communities. The strike wasdefeated, the mines and the mining communities have disappeared; thatis not the most important thing. What lies at the heart of it is the con-tinuation and extension of their best values.

Hines’s novel ends with the death of Harry on the last day of nation-alization. His pit, recently closed, has given way to silence andshadows: ‘Everything that he believed in and fought for has beendestroyed’ (p. 274). In these sobering times there is no call to arms. Butothers are left to carry the torch of integrity, if in different ways. Karlis unlikely to follow his father’s path of class struggle; but his capacityfor human sympathy is revitalized and he can create a more authenticlife and respond to his father’s reproach that he should ‘writesomething that mattered’. But hope now lies in working-class women.For Maisie the lessons are simple ones:

Whether we lost [the strike] or not what we did achieve was to showwhat you can do when people work together, and the pride you feelwhen you’re fighting for a cause. And what’s happened since with allthe unemployment and that, has started to make people realise thatperhaps selfishness and greed are not the answer. (p. 278)

Too hopeful, perhaps, ten years on, ten hard years which have seen NewLabour successfully accept a softened Thatcherism, socialism marginal-ized, trade-unionism in sustained decline and feminism reject socialismand marginalize class in favour of individualism and careerism. Thejudgement that The Heart of It is not Hines’s best work may reflect theseprofound changes. The sections of film script sit uneasily with the sparenarrative; the vox populi recollections sometimes become clichéd and thesub-plot of Maisie’s affair with an Italian prisoner of war does notalways work. But The Heart of It tells us enough about the injustice andinhumanity of 1984 and the human resistance to it to merit an hon-ourable place in the long line of mining novels.

David Peace’s GB 84 is something different: it represents a startlingand significant break with that tradition. Peace, who was born inOssett, West Yorkshire, was only seventeen at the time of the strike. Henow lives in Tokyo and has become increasingly well known as theauthor of the Red Riding Quartet which explores violent crime and thesubversion of morality and justice in Yorkshire in the 1970s and 1980sagainst the background of the Peter Sutcliffe ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ case.43


43. David Peace, Nineteen Seventy Four (Serpent’s Tail: 1999); idem, NineteenSeventy Seven (Serpent’s Tail: 2000); idem, Nineteen Eighty (Serpent’s Tail:2000); idem, Nineteen Eighty Three (Serpent’s Tail: 2002).

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A powerful influence on Peace is the American novelist James Ellroy,the celebrated exponent of contemporary Californian noir. Ellroy hasgraduated from an extended alternative history depicting the corruptworld of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s through the eyes of police,criminals and victims, to work dealing with political corruption and theassassination of John F. Kennedy.44 His writing passes lightly over dis-tinctions between fact and fiction and his evocations of the past mixstaccato prose, stream of consciousness, extended conversation,newspaper and archival reports in a harder, profane adaptation of thecollage, cinéma vérité and multiple narratives of the great twentieth-century American novelist, John Dos Passos.45 Peace is indebted toEllroy for both his method and his dark vision in which evil is all-pervasive.

GB 84 takes Peace’s earlier experiments further. Working on acanvas broader than any other novel we have looked at, or indeed anyother attempt to address the strike, and rejecting traditional forms, heuses these techniques to produce an extended fictional history of theconflict as a microcosm of Britain in 1984. George Orwell may have gotthe specifics wrong, but he got the flavour of things about right. TheNew Right’s attempt to organize GB75 to keep the workers in theirplace was premature: with Mrs Thatcher the hour for class wararrived.46 In GB 84 the Arthur Scargill figure, referred to only as ‘The


44. His best-known novels are James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia (MysteriousPress: 1987) and idem, L. A. Confidential (Mysterious Press: 1990). Seealso the excellent film of the latter, L. A. Confidential (1994), directed byCurtis Hanson, starring Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, KimBassinger and Danny DeVito. The first volumes of his political trilogy areJames Ellroy, American Tabloid (Century: 1995) and idem, The Cold SixThousand (Century: 2001). See also J. Walker, ‘James Ellroy as HistoricalNovelist’, History Workshop Journal 53 (Spring 2002), pp. 181–204.

45. The John Don Passos trilogy, USA (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1966; firstpublished 1938), remains of great interest to historians of America and itslabour movement. See D. Pizer, Dos Passos’ USA: A Critical Study (Uni-versity of Virginia, Charlottesville: 1988).

46. The efforts of the founder of the Special Air Service (SAS), Colonel DavidStirling, to create a para-military group, termed GB77, to intervene inindustrial disputes during the mid-1970s are documented in P. Hain,Political Strikes: The State and Trade Unionism in Britain (Penguin, Har-mondsworth: 1980), pp. 162–4.

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President’, carries Germinal everywhere.47 Its presence is one of the fewconnections between Peace’s ambitious book and the traditional nar-ratives of earlier novels.

True, we witness through the book the day-to-day experience of Martin and Peter, two young Yorkshire pickets for whom Scargill now unquestionably rules. But their story is conveyed in a stream-of-consciousness interior monologue, spiked with clipped con-versation and profuse profanity.48 This torrent of Yorkshire demotic,often terminating in mid-sentence, prefaces each of fifty-three chapters,every one covering a week of the war. These stanzas, saturated in detail,chronicle the machinations inside the NUM hierarchy, events at theNCB headquarters, the role of politicians and the Trades UnionCongress (TUC), and the activities at all levels of the strike-breakers.49

But their account of the high politics of 1984–85 is encased withinunderground narratives featuring a gallery of sordid desperadoes whosedeployment demonstrates for Peace the determination of the state todestroy the NUM and its summoning of dark forces for that purpose.

In the nocturnal world of GB 84 we encounter the watcher and fixer,Paul Dixon of Special Branch; Dave Johnston, the Mechanic, availablefor hire and dirty tricks; Malcolm Morris, Tinkerbell, who taps thephones; Diane Morris, the temptress agent; Julian Schaub, anotherdirty-jobs operative and paedophile; Roger Vaughan of Jupiter Securi-ties, who knows people upstairs and passes jobs on to Neil Fontaine,who knows people under the floorboards and passes jobs on toBrendan Matthews, who organizes the scab drivers; while the Mechanictrains assault squads to break the picket lines and get the scabs throughand is watched all the time by Paul Dixon of Special Branch. Orgreaveis a set-up. The NUM’s dealings with Colonel Gaddafi are engineered.


47. Peace, GB 84, p. 95. The Roger Windsor character is also readingGerminal, but he ‘can’t get into it’: ibid. A further parallel with Zola lies inPeace’s use of the vernacular and melodrama. Leonard Tancock, in hisintroduction to Germinal (Penguin: 1954), refers to the ‘coarse, direct andoften obscene’ language of Zola’s characters (p. 15). Peace, too, writes asminers spoke; but although there is no shortage of gore in GB 84 it rarelysurpasses the mutilation of the murdered shopkeeper Maigrat’s corpse inGerminal.

48. One of the best books on the dispute focuses on Yorkshire: J. and R.Winterton, Coal, Crisis and Conflict: The 1984–85 Miners’ Strike inYorkshire (Manchester University Press: 1989).

49. The chapters are divided into five parts, initially headed by contemporarysongs such as Nena’s ‘Ninety-Nine Red Balloons’ and Frankie Goes ToHollywood’s ‘Two Tribes Go to War’ but culminating in March 1985 with‘Terminal or Triumph of the Will’.

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The human costs in this bleak landscape between the coercive state andthe fascist fringe include torture and severed heads carried in paperbags. These subterranean stories spiral off into sub-plots dealing withthe Hilda Murrell episode and the Brighton bombing.50 They lend thenovel its texture of nightmare and its complexity. It is a complexity thattaxes, sometimes overpowers, and reminds me of Raymond Chandler’scomment that he himself did not know who had murdered thechauffeur in The Big Sleep.

Peace’s ‘Argument’, which prefaces the text, is that the strike was awar. It was provoked. It was prepared. It was about power: electricity,gas, political and personal. Its purpose was to destroy the power ofBritish miners in the interests of capital and the state.51 In developingthis theme he has meticulously researched extensive sources. Forexample, his account of the pickets embraces some of the lesser-knownliterature that the strikers and their supporters have continued toproduce since 1985.52

Martin and Peter move through history from the confidence ofMarch as the mobile pickets cross the border into Nottinghamshire tothe final days of desperation as their enemies close in for the kill. Asearly as May, Martin’s marriage is in trouble; after Orgreave he isfalling apart: ‘Lifted. Threatened. Beaten. Hospitalized. Broke in everyfucking sense – I lie here and I listen to rain on our windows. To hertears …’ (p. 110). Peter shares the pain: ‘That was Great Britain in 1984for you – Policemen could belt fucking shit out of an unarmed shirtlesskid on national television and get away with it’ (p. 150); the elation:‘Fucking brilliant. To see him lie there in road. That cunt off his whitebloody horse. That cunt and his horse that have chased and fucking hitus all over bloody county’ (p. 282); and the learning: ‘grew up thinking


50. The Murrell case is examined in J. Cook, Unlawful Killing (Bloomsbury:1994). The bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in October 1984, anattempt to kill Mrs Thatcher, resulted in five deaths: T. P. Coogan, Irelandin the Twentieth Century (Hutchinson: 2003), p. 603.

51. The arguments and evidence are in J. Saville, ‘An Open Conspiracy: Con-servative Politics and the Miners’ Strike 1984–5’, in R. Miliband, J. Saville,M. Liebman and L. Panitch (eds), Socialist Register 1985–86 (Merlin:1986); A. Taylor, ‘The “Stepping Stones” Programme: Conservative PartyThinking on Trade Unions, 1975–9’, Historical Studies in IndustrialRelations (HSIR) 11 (Spring 2001), pp. 109–33; P. Smith and G. Morton,‘The Conservative Governments’ Reform of Employment Law, 1979–97’,HSIR 12 (Autumn 2001) at pp. 131–8; J. Hoskyns, Just in Time: Inside theThatcher Revolution (Aurum Press: 2000).

52. Particularly A. Wakefield, The Miners’ Strike Day-by-Day (WharncliffePress, Barnsley: 2002). Peace acknowledges a range of texts and songsused in writing what he terms ‘a fiction based on fact’ (pp. 464–5).

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that blacks had a chip on their shoulder and that Irish were all bloodynutters. I don’t think that now’ (p. 182).

As the scabs emerge in Yorkshire, Martin returns to the fray withmixed feelings: nostalgia for 1983, work and his marriage; bemusementat militants going back, even at Cortonwood; dreams of NACODS (theNational Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers) asan unlikely Seventh Cavalry. With Peter he witnesses the emergence ofa mini-police-state in Yorkshire: ‘Like something you saw on the newsfrom Northern Ireland’ (p. 322) – and tastes defeat: ‘Shoulder toshoulder. United – Marching as one. Now it’s too fucking late’ (p. 452).

None of the earlier novels really addressed union leadership or man-agement strategy.53 In GB 84 ‘The President’ is the disembodied agentof historical forces: he is programmed, implacable, paranoid and, in hisown world, infallible. In a non-stop stream of left-wing trade-unionjargon he attempts to direct a machine over which nobody else,certainly not ordinary miners such as Martin and Peter, possesses anycontrol.54 Likewise disembodied personifications, the other leadersDick (Mick McGahey?) and Paul Hargreaves (Peter Heathfield?) deferto the President’s power and only once – in July – ineffectively urge thecase for concessions and settlement. Peace traces the demonization ofthe President, ‘the Yorkshire Galtieri’, against the unfolding mobiliza-tion and militarization of the police, manipulation of the law and sub-version of NUM members.55 Yet the miners still stand alone. This is not


53. The only relevant novel I know of which attempts to deal in detail withproblems of leadership and bureaucratization on a personal level isHoward Fast, Power (Panther: 1966; first published 1962), which tracesthe career of an American miners’ leader; see also Joe Eszterhas, FIST(Pan: 1978), based on the screenplay for the 1978 film of the same name,directed by Norman Jewison, starring Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger andPeter Boyle. It is loosely based on the career of the US Teamsters’ leaderJimmy Hoffa, as is the eponymous Hoffa (1992), directed by DannyDeVito and starring Jack Nicholson. A superb but neglected novel aboutlabour organizing in 1930s’ California is John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle(Heinemann: 1936).

54. There are two studies of Arthur Scargill: M. Crick, Scargill and the Miners(Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1985); P. Routledge, Scargill: The Unautho-rised Biography (HarperCollins: 1993).

55. For discussion of the role of the police in the strike, see B. Fine and R.Miller (eds), Policing the Miners’ Strike (Lawrence and Wishart: 1985). Onthe use of the law, see J. McIlroy, ‘Police and Pickets: The Law against theMiners’, in H. Beynon (ed.), Digging Deeper: Issues in the Miners’ Strike(Verso: 1985); idem, ‘The Law Struck Dumb: Labour Law and the Miners’Strike’, in Fine and Miller (eds), Policing the Miners’ Strike; and idem, ThePermanent Revolution? Conservative Law and the Trade Unions(Spokesman, Nottingham: 1991), pp. 87–93.

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the second or third English civil war. The majority of the roundheadsepitomized by the TUC in the figure of the Fat Man (Norman Willis)have not the slightest intention of taking the field.56 Peace replays a taleof evasion and empty invocations of support, powder kept dry in theinterests of self-survival in order to impose a final settlement. The fab-rication of solidarity at the September 1984 TUC, in which all sides arecomplicit, is savagely summed up:

A dirty fucking lieAnd everyone saw it … Everyone heard it … Everyone smelt it – Tasted it. Knew it –Everyone except the men and women out in the minefields. (p. 236)

Unrelenting to the end, the President’s rhetoric is revealed as a substi-tute and finally no substitute for power. By March 1985, when heabdicates and declines to cast his deciding vote in favour of either set-tlement or return, he has lost the support of the area leaders. His finalspeech to the conference is greeted with ‘Total. Fucking. Silence’ (p.449). Among some of the rank and file it is different. As he promisesthe intransigents outside the conference hall a renewal of struggle, ‘themen screamed back at him “No surrender! No surrender! … Sell Out… You’ve been betrayed… You’ve been betrayed!”’ (p. 449).

The NUM headquarters in Sheffield are the scene of planning,paranoia and intrigue. An embattled leadership with a bunkermentality, distrustful of incompetence in the areas and fearful of secret-service penetration in Yorkshire, struggles to centralize decision-making, direct picketing like a military operation and foil sequestrationof NUM assets through laundering funds. Conversations are clippedand coded – pickets are ‘apples’, policemen ‘potatoes’ – as ‘the tweeds’jostle with ‘the denims’, the Communists with the Socialist Workers,the areas with the national bureaucracy. Central to this narrative isTerry Winters, the NUM’s national executive officer, loosely based onhis real-life counterpart, Roger Windsor. Here Peace has creatively andbrilliantly used the research gathered together in Seamus Milne’s TheEnemy Within.57


56. I presume that the appellation stems from Willis’s penchant for perform-ing at any opportunity the old music-hall song: ‘I am the man, The veryfat man, Wot waters the workers’ beer’.

57. S. Milne, The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners (Verso:1994; new edition 2004). Peace has also used coverage of these issues inRobin Ramsay’s journal, Lobster, and Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay,Smear: Wilson and the Secret State (Grafton: 1992). Codes were used bytrade-unionists in the 1926 General Strike, to neutralize police agents andtelephone tapping; see, for example, J. Symons, The General Strike(Cressett Press: 1957), pp. 140–1.

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Milne concludes – and the evidence he assembles is perhaps moresuggestive than conclusive, although the standard of proof required inthese matters is always difficult to decide – that Windsor was plantedby MI5 to destabilize the NUM and undermine Scargill.58 Peace is lessexplicit. He presents an enemy within who is an ambiguous figure,drawn into a world of treachery and moral squalor, through his owndemons and itching libido by the agent Diane and the growing hostilityof his colleagues. However, Winters follows Windsor along the trail ofmoney-laundering and creative accounting that leads to the embrace ofhis ‘fellow trade unionist’ Colonel Gaddafi and in Winters’s casebreakdown and self-destruction.

Like the President, Mrs Thatcher and Ian McGregor, ‘theChairman’, are elemental representations of class forces far removedfrom characters in the realist novel.59 NCB headquarters at HobartHouse is perceived by capital’s class warriors as unreliable. Replenish-ing Thatcher and stiffening the Chairman is Stephen Sweet, the profes-sional strike-breaker whose career is based on the real-life activities ofDavid Hart.60 Sweet is connected to the Conservative leadership butalso to the secret world through his chauffeur, Neil Fontaine, who, likeSweet, ‘has his orders’. Presumably as perceived through the eyes ofsuch feral elements as well as the Conservative plutocracy, the volatile,self-lacerating Sweet is referred to throughout the book as ‘The Jew’.

Living in daily dread of negotiations – a settlement is unthinkableand ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) stands


58. Seamus Milne’s evidence was based on testimony of the ex-MI5 officerMichael Bettaney that there was an unnamed spy at the National Unionof Mineworkers (NUM) head office and on information provided byinformants to Milne and Tam Dalyell MP, one of whom stated unequivo-cally that Roger Windsor was an MI5 plant: Enemy Within, 1994, pp.238–9. It is now strengthened by MI5 operative David Shayler’s claim thatthere was a source in the NUM head office: Enemy Within, 2004, pp.391–2. Milne’s evidence on surveillance, telephone tapping and dirty tricksin relation to the NUM and other unions is persuasive. Few would denythe existence of MI5 agents in the labour movement, as evidenced by ex-MI5 operative Cathy Massiter’s naming of Harry Newton, well known intrade-union education and research, and the claim in the programmesTrue Spies (BBC2, October–November 2002) that twenty-three seniorunion officials, including the NUM’s Joe Gormley, acted as informants.See also J. Saville, Memoirs from the Left (Merlin: 2003), pp. 124–7.

59. The best-known account of the strike from the management’s perspectiveis I. MacGregor, with R. Tyler, The Enemies Within (Collins: 1986). Anintriguing study is N. Smith, The 1984 Miners’ Strike: The Actual Account(Ned Smith: 1997).

60. For Hart see Milne, Enemy Within, 1994, particularly pp. 364–75.

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for Appeasement, Compromise And Surrender – Sweet is the quintes-sential voice of the New Right, searching for the grail: surrender of theminers and the disgrace of the President. He soon establishes ascen-dancy over the Chairman: ‘They get on like a house on fire, theChairman and the Jew – They love Capitalism and Opportunity. Theyhate Communism and Dependency’ (p. 134). More successfully thanthe President, he directs a military-style operation, manipulating the media and the police and distributing largesse and persuasion allthe way along the path that leads from Silver Fox (Silver Birch) to theNational Working Miners’ Committee and eventually the Union ofDemocratic Mineworkers. Victory is achieved, the past is set to rights.A veteran of the defeats of 1972 and 1974, now near breaking-point inthe service of the secret state, makes a farewell pilgrimage to embracethe ghosts that haunt Saltley Gates. David Stirling takes the stage buthis form of traditional ruthlessness is now outmoded.61 So too is Sweet.The miners are broken, he has outlived his usefulness and he isdiscarded by Thatcher.

In GB 84 there are no soft landings, no happy endings. The novel ispermeated with anger and despair. In style, scope and sensibility it rep-resents a seismic shift in the mining novel. It lends vindication to theargument that while technological development would have devastatedthe workforce, there was nothing inexorable in what happened to coaland its miners. The demolition of the industry was a political decision.A way of life, whatever its inadequacies, was wantonly destroyed. Thefinal message as Martin watches the strikers marching with the wraithsof long-dead miners, while Thatcher squats triumphantly on amountain of skulls, tells of the destructiveness and sterility of the neworder. Peace has written a memorable and at times beautifully writtennovel. Some will find it atmospheric and addictive, although whatothers will see as its excesses and its undeniable intricacies may deternot a few potential readers. Like the work of Dos Passos it is aboutpower and the malignancy of power, not only when wielded by the statebut when embedded in man-made institutions which turn intomachines, debilitating humanity. The danger is that Peace’s bleakly pes-simistic portrayal of the corruptions of power erases the nuances, sub-tleties and tensions of the traditional novel. As a critic of Ellroyobserved: ‘In his pitch blackness there is no light left to cast shadowsand evil becomes a forensic banality … a supersaturation of corruptionthat fails any longer to outrage.’62


61. See n. 45 above.62. M. Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Verso:

1990), p. 45.

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III

There is little danger of that in contemporary labour history or in anindustrial relations that paints power and its problems out of thepicture, sanitizes its ruthless actors, believes that the discipline can andshould peacefully co-exist with the opportunist unitarism of humanresource management and, if it conceives of class struggle at all,conceives of it in an inverted vision as essentially the property ofworkers. The lessons of the mining novel, and in particular GB 84, forspecialists in industrial relations and for historians of labour, do notrequire underlining.63

More broadly these novels remind us of the debt that society owedthe miners. As Orwell put it in the 1930s:

It is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior personscan remain superior. You and I and the Editor of the Times Lit.Supp. and the nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury andComrade X, author of Marxism for Infants, all of us owe the com-parative decency of our lives to the poor drudges underground,blackened to the eyes with their throats full of coal dust, drivingtheir shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.64

Mining novels enable us to hear something of the authentic voice ofthese workers. They teach us not a little about their lives and theirhuman and political predicament. They reinforce our understanding ofthe successes and failures, the potential and limits, of even strong trade-unionism in twentieth-century Britain. In the context of Orwell’s reflec-tions they provide one means of looking back in understanding andanger. Looking back at the calculated inhumanity which the historicalrecord, as well as the imaginative literature, affirms was inflicted on theminers in return for their indispensable contribution to society. EdwardThompson recalled the advice of a Yorkshire coalowner when CharlesII was on the throne: ‘if the colliers complain, be sure to give themless’.65 In the following three centuries, despite heroic struggles of


63. Cf. C. Whitston, Review of P. Edwards (ed.), Industrial Relations: Theoryand Practice, HSIR 17 (Spring 2004), pp. 160–6. And for a recent uncon-vincing attempt to write class out of labour history, see ‘Editorial’, LabourHistory Review 68:3 (December 2003), p. 292.

64. G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin, Harmondsworth: 1989; firstpublished 1937), pp. 30–3.

65. E. P. Thompson, ‘A Special Case’, in idem, Writing by Candlelight (Merlin:1980), p. 65 (an expanded version of an article first published in NewSociety, 24 February 1972).

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‘inconceivable stubbornness and courage’,66 less was what they got; lessthan men and women needed to lead lives of dignity; less than whatthey were worth. Even nationalization was less than emancipation,conceived and carried on in something less than Lawrence’s spirit oftrue democracy. The miners remained the loose change of history, paidin loose change. Then they were wiped from the face of the earth. Thepreordained imperatives of Heslop and Jones never came to pass. Thefutures envisioned in different ways by all these novelists from Zola andLawrence onwards never happened.

We should not forget. With Hines we should remember the pits andthe people who lived there. With Heslop and Jones, Doherty, Sigal andMcIlvanney, we should register the timeless potential for resistance ina world where resistance is as necessary as it ever was. With Peace weshould reflect on the supple perennial re-invention of capitalist power.But we should also remember the future. Although British miners willplay little part in it as a social force, we should ponder the possibilityof other groups of workers learning from the lost worlds of Britain’sminers; learning new methods of countering capitalist power in decisiveways, which, for all their stubbornness and courage, the miners them-selves failed to achieve. The past and present demand pessimism. Butwe should not forget that it was not all that long ago that 1984–85 andits aftermath was an unexpected future.

Department of Sociology, University of ManchesterOxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

Thanks to Ian Birchall, Alan Campbell, Bob Jones, Dave Lyddon, Gina, andPaul Smith for their help.


66. Ibid.

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History of Britain’s Trade UnionsDave Lyddon

Alastair J. Reid, United We Stand: A History of Britain’s Trade Unions(Allen Lane: 2004) xvii + 471pp., hardback £25.00, ISBN 0-713-99758-3.

‘The serious history of British trade unionism’ started with Sidney andBeatrice Webb in 1894, wrote Eric Hobsbawm some forty years ago. Hecontinued: ‘If we leave aside the herculean attempts … of its foundersand G. D. H. Cole, its progress for the first fifty years was disappoint-ing’. Yet in the twenty years preceding Hobsbawm’s 1964 essay therewas a ‘sharp’ increase in ‘output’, mainly of single-union histories – somuch so that a new synthesis was possible.1

Henry Pelling, the historian of the Labour Party, produced AHistory of British Trade Unionism, just such a work of synthesis, whichwent through five editions from 1963 to 1992;2 in the same period theoriginal researche of industrial relations specialist Hugh Clegg, initiallywith two collaborators, produced three major volumes on the years1889–1951.3 Labour history flourished, particularly in the 1960s and1970s. The valuable literature reviews by A. E. Musson and John Lovellwere testament to this.4 Histories of individual unions have continued


1. E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Trade Union Historiography’, Bulletin of the Society forthe Study of Labour History (BSSLH) 8 (Spring 1964), p. 31.

2. H. Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (Macmillan: 1963) wasfollowed by new editions in 1972, 1976, 1987 and 1992. As well as revisingthe text and the ‘Further Reading’ where necessary, each new editionextended the narrative. The book was also generally available as a Penguinpaperback.

3. H. A. Clegg, A. Fox and A. F. Thompson, A History of British TradeUnions since 1889, Vol. 1: 1889–1910 (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1964); H.A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, Vol. 2: 1911–1933(Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1985); idem, A History of British Trade Unionssince 1889, Vol. 3: 1934–1951 (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1994).

4. A. E. Musson, British Trade Unions, 1800–1875 (Macmillan: 1972); J.Lovell, British Trade Unions, 1875–1933 (Macmillan: 1977).

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to be written and the flow shows little sign of dissipating.5 In the 1990snew general histories of trade-unionism, by Keith Laybourn and W.Hamish Fraser, also appeared.6

The audience for general histories once was more clearly working-class. The Webbs were not just interested, as Fabian socialists, ineducating the opinion-formers in society, they also sought a trade-union audience – by presenting inscribed copies of The History ofTrade Unionism to trade unions in 1898 and, later, by printing cheapeditions for ‘students of the Workers’ Educational Association’ and‘the trade unionists of the United Kingdom’.7 The tradition of writinglabour history, but with a clearer political message, for working-classactivists, can be seen in, for example, W. W. Craik’s short history, aimedinitially at members of the National Union of Railwaymen, RaymondPostgate’s series for the National Council of Labour Colleges, andAllen Hutt’s for the Communist Party of Great Britain and its sup-porters.8 The most outstanding recent example, aimed at activists, wasTony Lane’s The Union Makes Us Strong, published over thirty years


5. D. Lyddon, ‘Industrial-Relations Theory and Labor History’, Interna-tional Labor and Working-Class History 46 (1994), p. 138, n. 38, lists sixpublished between 1988 and 1991 alone.

6. K. Laybourn, A History of British Trade Unionism, c. 1770–1990 (Sutton,Stroud: 1992); W. H. Fraser, A History of British Trade Unionism,1700–1998 (Macmillan: 1999). For Fraser, see D. Lyddon, ‘Review’, His-torical Studies in Industrial Relations 9 (Spring 2000), pp. 167–70.

7. C. Wrigley, ‘The Webbs: Working on Trade Union History’, HistoryToday, May 1987, pp. 51–5; for correspondence on the economics of cheapeditions, see, for example, N. MacKenzie, The Letters of Sidney andBeatrice Webb, Vol. 3: Pilgrimage, 1912–1947 (Cambridge UniversityPress: 1978), pp. 128, 134.

8. W. W. Craik, Outlines of the History of the Modern British Working-ClassMovement (London District Council, NUR: 1916); idem, A Short Historyof the Modern British Working-Class Movement (Plebs League: 1919); R.W. Postgate, A Short History of the British Workers (Plebs League: 1926);idem, A Pocket History of the British Workers to 1919 (London: 1937);idem, A Pocket History of the British Working Class (NCLC, Tillicoultry:1942), with new editions in 1947 and 1964; A. Hutt, British TradeUnionism: An Outline History (Lawrence and Wishart: 1941); revised orextended editions of Hutt followed in 1942, 1945, 1952 and 1962, culmi-nating in idem, British Trade Unionism: A Short History (Lawrence andWishart: 1975), with a concluding chapter by John Gollan. Also seeRuskin History Workshop Students Collective, ‘Worker-Historians in the1920s’, in R. Samuel (ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory(Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1981), pp. 15–20; I am grateful to JohnMcIlroy for drawing this to my attention.

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ago. In it he argued that the working class’s ‘one durable monument’was the trade unions.9

Yet Cole, who was pre-eminent in writing labour-movement, ratherthan just trade-union, history,10 once emphasized the indivisibility ofthe labour movement: ‘Until there are Trade Unions, there is noLabour Movement … [for they are,] historically, the first form ofdistinct working-class organisation … [and are] the principal schools inwhich the workers learn the lessons of self-reliance and solidarity’. Asimportantly, ‘Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, political partiesand Socialist organisations … together’ made up ‘the modern working-class movement’. They were, ‘at bottom, not three or four movements,but one and indivisible’.11 Raymond Williams further observed in thelate 1950s that working-class culture had been ‘primarily social (in thatit ha[d] created institutions) rather than individual (in particular intel-lectual or imaginative work)’. The formation of the ‘collective democ-ratic institution, whether in the trade unions, the cooperativemovement, or a political party’ was ‘a very remarkable creativeachievement’.12

As the Webbs long ago proclaimed:

Trade Unions are democracies: that is to say, their internal constitu-tions are all based on the principle of “government of the people bythe people for the people” … These thousands of working-classdemocracies, spontaneously growing up at different times andplaces, untrammelled by the traditions or interests of other classes,[are] perpetually recasting their constitutions to meet new andvarying conditions.13

LYDDON: HISTORY OF BRITAIN’S TRADE UNIONS 167

9. T. Lane, The Union Makes Us Strong: The British Working Class, Its TradeUnionism and Politics (Arrow: 1974), p. 28.

10. One of his most famous works was G. D. H. Cole and R. Postgate, TheCommon People, 1746–1938 (Methuen: 1938) – this was revised as idem,The Common People, 1746–1946 (Methuen: 1946), which was periodicallyreprinted with minor corrections until 1961. Other books on the labourmovement include A. L. Morton and G. Tate, The British LabourMovement, 1770–1920 (Lawrence and Wishart: 1956), and M. Davis,Comrade or Brother: The History of the British Labour Movement,1789–1951 (Pluto: 1993).

11. G. D. H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working-Class Movement,1789–1947 (revised edn; Allen and Unwin: 1948), pp. 6, 7.

12. R. Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (Penguin, Harmondsworth:1961; first published 1958), p. 314.

13. S. and B. Webb, Industrial Democracy (Longmans, Green and Co.: 1897),pp. v–vi.

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Trade unions are created, and re-created, by their members, in a societymany of them would not have chosen. Although general histories ofunions do not now tend to be written for a trade-union audience, theyare necessarily drawn upon by, among others, trade-union and labour-movement activists, whether the books sit on library shelves or appearin affordable paperback editions.14 These histories also reflect, in someway, the changing preoccupations of authors and the concerns ofchanging audiences.

I

United We Stand is the direct successor to the trade-union histories byPelling, who had collaborated with Alastair Reid on the last edition ofhis A Short History of the Labour Party15 and had put Reid ‘in touchwith his publishers’ (p. 423) before he died in 1997. Reid’s book is anambitious attempt to cover around 250 years of trade-union history insome 400 pages of text. When it is considered that Clegg’s volumes onBritish unions, covering just over sixty years, are nearly four times thelength of United We Stand, the difficulty of the task is obvious.

Most general British trade-union histories, starting with theirorigins, take a more or less chronological approach. Reid is moreambitious. His book is divided into four main periods – designated asearly, middle, classical, and modern – incorporating, in turn, roughly50-year periods corresponding to ‘economic waves’, each generallyinvolving ‘phases of expansion’ that followed ‘phases of instability anddecline’ (p. xii): the 1770s to the 1820s, the 1820s to the 1870s, the 1870sto the 1920s, and the 1920s to the 1970s. The first and second periodsoccupy together about the same number of pages of text as is devotedto the third and fourth individually; one must assume that this was aconscious decision. A prologue, ‘From Medieval Guilds to ModernTrade Unions’, and an epilogue, charting the years after the firstgeneral election victory of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, complete thetext.

Within each period there is a thematic subdivision into chapters.These follow specific groups of workers and their unions. The firstgroup is of workers ‘mainly concerned with assembling products from


14. J. Saville, Memoirs from the Left (Merlin: 2003), p. 180, notes that idem,The Labour Movement in Britain: A Commentary (Faber: 1987), was ‘tomy surprise my most commonly used text in public libraries’. Reid’s bookis being published as a Penguin paperback in 2005.

15. H. Pelling and A. J. Reid, A Short History of the Labour Party (11th edn;Macmillan: 1996).

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a number of components’, known here as ‘assembly workers’, and theirform of organization, ‘craft unionism’. A second type consists of‘process workers’ who were ‘mainly concerned with processing a singleraw material through a variety of stages’, such as in textile manufac-ture, coalmining and iron and steel manufacture (railways are alsoeventually included in this category); ‘seniority unionism’ is used todescribe their organization. A third group, which does not make itsappearance in Reid’s book until the 1870s, are the ‘general workers’,‘who performed general manual labouring tasks’, not just in fixedworkplaces but particularly in transport operations; their union bodies‘evolved into what here will be called federal unionism’ (pp. ix–xi). Theindividual chapters following the fortunes of these groups are furthersubdivided and thus move back and forth through the allotted half-centuries. The final chapter in each period discusses trade unions’involvement in and with political movements; a slightly more chrono-logical arrangement is necessarily adopted here.

Reid’s justification for separating workers and their unions intothree groups is that:

British trade unionists were not a uniform army marching towardsa single goal under a disciplined leadership, but rather a cross-section of the working population attempting to meet theirimmediate needs by whatever means lay at hand, and consequentlyacting in different ways and at different times. (p. ix)

This leads him to stress the ‘significant continuities within each of thetypes’ of unionism (p. x). The craft unions’ commitment to voluntarism‘became the basic underpinning of wider labour politics in Britain’ (p. xi), notwithstanding the dependence of the seniority and federalunions on government intervention in, or regulation of, their con-stituent industries. Industrial continuities are paralleled, in Reid’sjudgement, by political ones. Given the stress on the different industrialexperiences of Reid’s three groups of workers and unions, the book’stitle, United We Stand, is perhaps surprising.

One result of Reid’s arrangement of material is that some of thefamiliar landmarks of trade-union history are diluted, appearingbriefly in more than one chapter. This is clearly not a reference book.For example, his coverage of the ‘Great Unrest’ of 1911–14 is frag-mented: nine of the period’s fourteen major strikes, examined byClegg,16 are dispersed across three chapters by Reid (between p. 175


16. Clegg, History of British Trade Unions, Vol. 2, p. 26, Table 1.

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and p. 227). Only late on, when discussing (on pp. 225–6) the transportworkers’ strikes (quite separately from his account of the 1911 nationalrailway strike – on p. 207 – despite their interconnection in Liverpool),does Reid acknowledge that there was anything special about theseyears. Similarly, the General Strike of 1926 merits just a dozen lines inan account of the mining crisis (p. 315), followed some fifty pages laterby interspersed comments on the political consequences of the strike(pp. 365–7). In between, there is the first of many mentions of the‘Winter of Discontent’ (pp. 355–7), of which more below.

Another consequence of covering particular years or events up tothree or four times is the dispersal of information on relative price andwage movements. Thus, we are told of engineers (p. 282) and railwayworkers (p. 310) experiencing wage cuts through the 1920s and into theearly 1930s, but only when Reid addresses the same phenomenon forthe textile workers are we informed that this might relate to ‘the fall inthe cost of living’ (p. 311). We are not always given even this amount ofinformation. Thus Reid claims that coalminers, after their successful1974 strike, ‘were able to gain regular wage increases of anything up to30 per cent a year’ (p. 329), but no figures are cited for the level of(price) inflation. The public-service strikes of early 1979 (p. 355), partof the ‘Winter of Discontent’, resulted in the public employees’ unionhaving to accept a 9% rise. Yet we are not informed that prices wererising at over 9% per annum17 at the beginning of that year nor (untillater on the same page) that there was a 5% pay norm – the juxtaposi-tion of which two factors precipitated the public-service and otherstrikes of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in the first place. Given the sensi-tivity of wage movements to (rising or falling) price levels and (for the1960s and 1970s) to incomes-policy norms, the specialist as well as thegeneral reader requires some assistance.

One feature, which marks out Reid’s history, is that he begins eachof the thematic chapters with a potted biography of a trade-unionistwho spans the period in question: namely, in order, Francis Place, JohnDoherty, John Gast, Robert Applegarth, Alexander Macdonald,George Howell, John Hill, J. H. Thomas, Mary Macarthur, ArthurHenderson, Hugh Scanlon, Joe Gormley, Jack Jones and JamesCallaghan. This technique introduces an important human note but


17. Department of Employment Gazette, November 1979, p. 1161, Table 1,shows a continual rise in the annual rate of increase of the Retail PriceIndex (RPI) from late 1978 through 1979. In mid-January 1979, the RPIwas rising at an annual rate of 9.3% and by mid-May this had increased to10.3%.

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Reid’s selection highlights some of its drawbacks. First, among theirvarious national positions, nine of these individuals became the leadingofficial of their union, one the first Trades Union Congress (TUC)secretary, and four of them also became MPs, including three Labourministers. Not surprisingly, only one woman features in such company.Second, by selecting figures whose active life usually spans the fifty-year periods into which the core of the book is divided, Reid confineshis examples mainly to those reaching prominence at the end of theseperiods. Thus, for the 1920s to 1970s, we have three major unionleaders, Scanlon, Gormley and Jones, and Callaghan, a Labour PrimeMinister (and former white-collar union official). The generations rep-resented by the likes of Ernest Bevin, Arthur Horner and WalterCitrine, for example, do not fit this schema.

The written or spoken words of (or occasionally words about) thesefourteen trade-unionists provide one-half of the book’s endnotes –some 73 of 143. The remaining notes are also only given for quotations.Even this relative paucity of sources is a significant advance on Pelling,who directly referenced nothing in his successive editions. Like Pelling,though, Reid does provide a guide to ‘further reading’. He acknowl-edges his ‘main intellectual debts’ here; interestingly, Reid does not citethe Webbs in his lists of further reading. Yet, for Pelling, in 1992 as in1963: ‘the classic work by Sydney and Beatrice Webb … remains indis-pensable for any detailed study of the subject’ and, even more impor-tantly, ‘of great value is the Webbs’ Industrial Democracy … , ananalytical survey of the changing character of trade unionism’.18

Even the Webbs ‘acknowledge[d] the value’ of the work of their ownforerunners:19 Lujo Brentano – with whom they debated for severalpages, in the first chapter of their History, on his view that unions werethe direct descendants of the guilds – and Howell, who, from hisposition as a leading trade-unionist and reformer and then an MP,chronicled the development of trade-unionism in various books.20 Asnoted by Hobsbawm, and others, the Webbs’ History transformed thesubject: their work was rooted in primary, secondary and newspapersources. In their 1920 revision some 250 pages were also added for the


18. Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (5th edn; 1992), ‘FurtherReading’, p. 328; in the first (1963) edition (p. 264) the word ‘classical’,rather than ‘classic’, is used.

19. S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (Longmans, Green andCo.: 1894), Preface, p. x.

20. Three of Howell’s books are cited in the Webbs’ bibliography in ibid., pp.518–19. The only one mentioned by Reid (p. 134) was published after thefirst edition of the Webbs’ History.

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years since 1890, but relatively few sources were cited.21 After theWebbs, Cole was the most prolific writer on unions and their historybut, in his more general works, his easy style of writing was built on hisprofound knowledge and he also did not tend to display his sources. Hewas a popularizer.22 In some ways this feature was less important thanthe general neglect in union histories of the Webbs’ theory of trade-unionism, developed by them in Industrial Democracy (published threeyears after their History). Unfortunately, the Webbs’ updating of theHistory in 1920 did not integrate the insights of Industrial Democracy.Hence a separation between history and theory was built in; with a fewnotable exceptions, most subsequent historical accounts of trade-unionism (either of individual unions or the wider movement) havebeen distinctly atheoretical.

II

Reid’s book is no exception to this neglect of theory, though his sepa-ration of workers and their unions into three main groups is a seriousattempt to recast two centuries of trade-unionism. Yet his chosendivision reproduces, but not in name, the traditional, but inadequate,textbook classification of craft, industrial and general unions.23 Itwould have worked better if Reid had used other authors’ insights moreexplicitly. Instead, there are a number of weaknesses in his categories:assembly workers and craft unionism; process workers and seniorityunionism; general workers and federal unionism.

The most stimulating attempt, after the Webbs, to theorize unionstructure and government was by H. A. Turner. He put forward atypology of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ unions, based on whether the unionregulated entry into the occupation or whether it did not.24 Cleggdisputed the utility of Turner’s typology and John Hughes’s develop-


21. S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (revised edn, extended to1920; Longmans, Green and Co.: 1920).

22. See L. P. Carpenter, G. D. H. Cole: An Intellectual Biography (CambridgeUniversity Press: 1953), ch. 7.

23. G. D. H. Cole, An Introduction to Trade Unionism (Labour ResearchDepartment and Allen and Unwin: 1918), pp. 13–18, though this alsooffered some other classifications; ibid., (Allen and Unwin: 1953), pp.76–88; A. Flanders, Trade Unions (Hutchinson: 1952), p. 26; ibid. (7th edn:1968), p. 25; H. A. Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations inGreat Britain (Blackwell, Oxford: 1979), p. 165.

24. H. A. Turner, Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy: A ComparativeStudy of the Cotton Unions (Allen and Unwin: 1962), p. 114.

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ment of it.25 For Clegg, their categories were ‘of very limited value indescribing the unparalleled complexity of British union structure.There is no acceptable alternative to examining individual unions inturn.’26 Despite this, even Clegg did attempt to identify patterns; theone that most concerns us here, as we will see below, is that encom-passing what he identified as the ten ‘conglomerate’ unions with over50,000 members each in 1976.27

Before examining Reid’s classification of unionism, it is necessary tochallenge his phrase ‘assembly workers’; these were really manufactur-ing workers. Assembly has connotations of flow production, withworkers putting together interchangeable components. In practice,most craft workers made, by hand (i.e., manufactured), the constituentparts of the product, fitting (rather than assembling) them together. Inprocesses where machines (as opposed to mechanical aids) wereincreasingly used, craft workers were often, but not always, displacedfrom these operations. In the classic twentieth-century assemblyindustry of motor cars, craft unionism was slowly marginalized, withcraftsmen pushed out into toolmaking, maintenance or developmentfunctions. So when Reid discusses ‘Shop-floor Bargaining among theAssembly Workers’ (the title of his Chapter 12 on the 1920s to the1970s) and emphasizes the car industry, it is misleading to suggest thatthis industry was anything other than a meeting ground of craft, ex-craft and general unions. Here Turner’s dynamic typology of open andclosed unions would have been helpful. In some industries craft unionswere able to retain, despite technological change, the traditional area ofwork for their members and so remained closed; in others they had tofind a way of regulating those non-craft workers now undertakingsome of their former work. In the latter cases, Turner argued that whenan ‘originally-closed’ union, for example the Amalgamated Engineer-


25. J. Hughes, Trade Union Structure and Government, Part 1: Trade UnionStructure and Government, Royal Commission on Trade Unions andEmployers’ Associations, Research Paper 5, Part 1 (HMSO: 1967), paras7–39.

26. Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations, p. 165.27. Ibid., pp. 171–4, 165 n. 3. Clegg also identified eighteen public-sector

unions with over 50,000 members in 1976; these were generally single-service/industry unions with the exception of the National and Local Gov-ernment Officers’ Association and the National Union of PublicEmployees (NUPE). Finally, there were eleven private-sector unions ofthis size, with ‘relatively simple structures’; these again were either single-industry or industry-group unions: ibid., pp. 166–71.

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ing Union (AEU), opened up, its government would be dominated byan ‘aristocracy’ of the skilled members.28

The originally-closed union did not have to have apprenticeship-based craft members: the cotton spinners and their subsequent recruit-ment of the ‘piecers’ would be an example of a different type ofaristocracy. Turner also extended the term ‘aristocracy’ to those‘largely-vertical unions operating in industries where the higher-grade(or better-paid) wage-earners have secured some control over their ownrecruitment’. He gave, as an example, ‘face-workers in the miners’unions’.29 Clegg was more matter-of-fact: in ‘trades where there was noapprenticeship, … the unions systematized the rules [many of whichpredated the unions] governing the size of each team and thepromotion ladder from labourer to the top man; and the top men ranthe unions’. Clegg referred to these bodies as ‘promotion-line unions’.30

Reid’s second group (the process workers) exhibit, according to him,‘seniority unionism’. While this term is less precise than Clegg’s, Reiddoes capture an important aspect of trade-unionism in textiles,coalmining, and iron and steel. Here there was a division between thesenior workers, paid on piece-work, and their helpers (often employedby the senior workers on a subcontract basis), who were usually ontime-work.31 Whether it is useful to extend the category of processworkers into the very different world, and pay systems, of railways, asReid does, is doubtful.

There is, though, one feature of unionism in coal and cotton, in par-ticular, that does stand out and has attracted the attention of the majorwriters in the subject: that is, its federal nature. It will be argued herethat federal unionism is a much more meaningful term for Reid’ssecond group than his attempt to use it for the unions of generalworkers. Turner even noted that a ‘federal structure appears … to havebeen quite typical of such “Old Unions” as were not also craft organi-zations’.32 As early as 1926 Cole had drawn attention to the existenceof two ‘new models’ in the third quarter of the nineteenth century: the


28. Turner, Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, pp. 289–90.29. Ibid.30. Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations, pp. 26, 182. Turner,

Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, pp. 234, 260, referred variouslyto occupations with a ‘promotion ladder’ and a ‘job ladder’.

31. H. A. Turner, ‘Trade Unions, Differentials and the Levelling of Wages’,The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies 20:3 (1952), pp.264–5.

32. Turner, Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, p. 230; by ‘Old Unions’he meant before the ‘New Unionism’ of the 1880s.

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unions of the engineers and of the cotton operatives. The engineers had‘a centralised constitution, but local bargaining’ while the cotton oper-atives had ‘a localised constitution, but tended … to central bargain-ing’.33 The ‘amalgamations’ in cotton unionism had nothing to do withthe craft amalgamations: ‘The local [cotton] associations … , instead ofbecoming mere branches of a national body, retained their separateexistence and funds, only uniting in a central “amalgamation” forindustrial purposes.’34

The coalminers also developed a series of federal organizationsduring the nineteenth century, both regionally and nationally, culmi-nating in the establishment of the Miners’ (later Mineworkers’) Feder-ation of Great Britain (MFGB) in 1889. The Northumberland andDurham associations were the last regional bodies to join the MFGBpermanently (in 1907–08). In between times regional federal unionswere still being created: the Scottish Miners’ Federation was formedduring a strike in 1894 and the South Wales Miners’ Federation as aresult of a lockout in 1898.35 In the first part of Industrial Democracy,the Webbs praised, at length, the representative institutions of thecoalminers and the cotton operatives, not only observing their ‘federalbasis’ but advocating generally that for union organization ‘to reach itshighest possible efficiency’ it ‘must … assume a federal form’ (addedemphasis).36

Beyond federal unionism there also existed a separate tradition ofunion federations, where autonomous unions joined together, formutual support, particularly for bargaining purposes but sometimesfor political ends (such as the United Textile Factory Workers’ Associ-ation in the cotton industry).37 These federations were to be found in alltypes of industry.38 Thus craft and general unions united in the Feder-


33. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement, 1789–1925,Vol. 2: 1848–1900 (Allen and Unwin: 1926), pp. 62, 63. Almost exactly thesame formulation is found in J. W. F. Rowe, Wages in Practice and Theory(Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1969; first published 1928), p. 123, n. 1.

34. Cole, A Short History, Vol. 2 (1926), p. 62. Also see G. D. H. Cole, ‘SomeNotes on Trade Unionism in the Third Quarter of the NineteenthCentury’ (1937), in E. M. Carus-Wilson (ed.), Essays in Economic History,Vol. 3 (Edward Arnold: 1962), pp. 202–19.

35. Clegg et al., History of British Trade Unions, Vol. 1, pp. 123–5, 407 n 3.36. S. and B. Webb, Industrial Democracy, pp. 57, 140.37. S. and B. Webb, History (1920), p. 553, noted a shift from ‘loose alliances’

to ‘negotiating bodies’. Cole, An Introduction to Trade Unionism (1918),pp. 23–5, identified three main types of federation.

38. B. C. Roberts, Trade Union Government and Administration in GreatBritain (Bell: 1956), noted that there were forty-nine separate trade-unionfederations listed by the Ministry of Labour in 1952.

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ation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades in 1891 (reconstituted asthe Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions in 1936;with the AEU finally joining permanently in 1947).39 The NationalFederation of Building Trades Operatives (NFBTO, 1918) went furtherthan involvement in national and regional collective bargaining,forming ‘composite branches’ in places where the separate unions weretoo weak to set up their own branches.40 It was only disbanded after theformation of the industrial union UCATT in 1971.41 As with thePrinting and Kindred Trades Federation (1901), which, after a numberof union mergers, was dissolved in 1974,42 the NFBTO broughttogether unions representing skilled and unskilled workers. Reid notes(p. 335) that most of the constituent unions of the other big, thoughshort-lived, union federation, the National Transport Workers’ Feder-ation (1911), formed the Transport and General Workers’ Union(TGWU) in 1922.43

Having argued the case for categorizing many of Reid’s secondgroup of unions more accurately as federal (though not denying thevertical nature of employment practices), we now turn to his thirdgroup. According to him, the TGWU was ‘a federation of trade groups’and the National Union of General and Municipal Workers(NUGMW) was ‘a federation of regions’ (p. 336). There is some truthin the former, as it reflected what generally became separate industry-wide bargaining units; yet the trade groups in the TGWU had limitedautonomy (certainly no financial powers) while the general executivecouncil had a mixture of trade-group and regional representation.44


39. A. I. Marsh, Industrial Relations in Engineering (Pergamon, Oxford:1965), pp. 6–7.

40. Clegg, History of British Trade Unions, Vol. 2, p. 202.41. The Union of Construction and Allied Trades and Technicians.42. J. Gennard, A History of the National Graphical Association (Unwin

Hyman: 1990), pp. 274–6; separate provincial and London federations hadbeen formed earlier but with no independent income: J. Child, IndustrialRelations in the British Printing Industry: The Quest for Security (Allenand Unwin: 1967), p. 195.

43. Reid wrongly claims that only the seamen’s union stayed out. TheTransport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU)’s withdrawal from thefederation in 1923 dealt it ‘a mortal blow’ and it ‘faded away’ in 1927: A.Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, Vol. 1: Trade Union Leader,1881–1940 (Heinemann: 1960), p. 222.

44. J. Hughes, Trade Union Structure and Government, Part 2: MembershipParticipation and Trade Union Government, Royal Commission on TradeUnions and Employers’ Associations, Research Paper 5, Part 2 (HMSO:1968), paras 78–80, explained the ‘adaptability’ and ‘limits’ of the trade-group structure in the TGWU.

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The NUGMW had a much stronger regional structure: the regional(formerly district) secretary ‘wields very great power’ (elsewhere, Cleggreferred to them collectively as the ‘barons’). While Clegg claimed thatthe NUGMW was ‘considerably more decentralized than otherunions’, the regions were clearly not independent organizations in thefederal tradition.45 In fact, the presence of the regional secretaries onthe NUGMW national executive committee was inherited from themove away from a ‘local’ executive by the Gasworkers’ union in 1908.46

According to Reid, these unions were ‘poorly equipped for the longeconomic boom after 1945’ (p. 336). The TGWU’s ‘centralized consti-tution’ (hardly a feature of federal unions) ‘remained unchanged’ evenafter the reforms under Jones. The ‘welding together’ of the organiza-tion ‘still depended … on the qualities of leadership provided by thegeneral secretary … This was not a stable basis’ (p. 345). The govern-ment of such unions of general workers has been categorized by Turneras ‘popular bossdom’, though he distinguished between the ‘centraland usually dominating role of the General Secretary in the T&GWU’and ‘the virtual oligarchy of District Secretaries in the NUGMW’.47

Reid’s account of such unions does not find any support in the liter-ature of industrial relations. Clegg observed that the ‘conglomerates’,as he described most of the largest unions (which included those ofgeneral workers), were ‘the main beneficiaries from amalgamations’,one of the two main causes of change in the external structure ofunions (the other being the rapid membership growth or decline ofsome unions). Clegg also argued that, while ‘[f]or some years’ after theSecond World War, the conglomerates ‘might have been represented asinflexible bodies’, they showed themselves in the 1960s and 1970s to be‘highly flexible … ; capable of adapting their forms of government; andcapable of responding to radical alterations in the structure of collec-tive bargaining’.48 The TGWU, in particular, was a merger-friendly


45. H. A. Clegg, General Union: A Study of the National Union of General andMunicipal Workers (Blackwell, Oxford: 1954), pp. 51, 55. The ‘barons’quote is in Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations, p. 211.

46. H. A. Clegg, General Union in a Changing Society: A Short History of theNational Union of General and Municipal Workers, 1889–1964 (Blackwell,Oxford: 1964), pp. 50–1. I am grateful to Paul Smith for drawing this tomy attention.

47. Turner, Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, pp. 290–1; Hughes,Trade Union Structure and Government, Part 2, para. 34, argued that,within popular bossdoms, ‘there are many gradations in the relationsbetween officers and members, in the forms and extent of participation,and indeed in the “popular” character of the “bossdom”’.

48. Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations, p. 225.

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union.49 It was also able to accommodate two big shifts of influencewithin its ranks in the 1970s: from national officers towards shopstewards; and from members in the docks and London buses towardsthose in manufacturing industries.50

The term ‘federal unionism’ is surely then a misnomer for Reid’sthird group of unions. ‘General’ unionism, or Turner’s ‘open’unionism, would be preferable and not as misleading as Reid’s choice,which should be used for the second group. In the book’s last chapter,Reid does refer to ‘massive new conglomerates’ when discussing theresults of some big mergers from the 1980s onwards; the GMB,UNISON and Amicus are specifically named (pp. 411–12). Due toReid’s lack of referencing, it is not clear whether he has gleaned theterm ‘conglomerate’ from Clegg or if it is his own; but as he also usesthe expression ‘mega unions’ (p. 420), one suspects the latter.

Reid’s tendency to use the term ‘federation’ when discussing what heconceives to be federal unionism (and the limitations of his use of thislatter term) is further shown in his account of white-collar unions in the1960s and 1970s. The ‘white-collar bodies which were growing mostrapidly were those … adopting the federal ambitions of the largegeneral manual workers’ unions’; and he notes the ‘explosive growth’ of‘the new federations’, such as the ‘significantly renamed’ National andLocal Government Officers’ Association (NALGO), the Association ofScientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) and the NationalUnion of Public Employees (NUPE)51 –– mistakenly identifying thelast as white-collar (pp. 348–9). Yet while NALGO moved in the 1960sto some autonomy for its different public-service groups, according toits historian it ‘emphatically rejected the idea of a federal system’.52

ASTMS was a general white-collar union, one of Clegg’s white-collar‘conglomerates’, having ‘little regard for either occupational or indus-


49. R. Undy, V. Ellis, W. E. J. McCarthy and A. M. Halmos, Change in TradeUnions: The Development of UK Unions since the 1960s (Hutchinson:1981), p. 218, described the TGWU (along with the Association of Scien-tific, Technical and Managerial Staffs) as a union that possessed ‘featuresthat facilitated mergers’, particularly its trade-group structure (originalemphasis); also see n. 44 above.

50. J. England, ‘Shop Stewards in Transport House: A Comment upon theIncorporation of the Rank and File’, Industrial Relations Journal 12:5(1981), pp. 16–29.

51. According to Reid, NUPE’s position in early 1979 ‘manifested all thefamiliar weaknesses of federal unionism’ (p. 356).

52. A. Spoor, White-Collar Union: Sixty Years of NALGO (Heinemann:1967), p. 325.

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trial boundaries’, whereas NUPE was, according to Hughes and Clegg,a ‘sectoral-general’ union in the public services;53 the government ofboth at the time would fit Turner’s ‘popular bossdom’ category,54 farremoved from federalism.

Overall, though, the rise of white-collar and public-service unionism(with considerable overlap between the two) merits only a few pages’discussion in Reid’s book (pp. 346–50), despite their growing impor-tance since the 1940s and their centrality to the trade-union movementof today. The role of women is also briefly addressed at this point (pp. 350–3), given their numbers in public-service white-collar unions.While both topics receive only limited coverage, it is an advance onPelling’s meagre fare.

III

Whether or not Reid’s categories of trade union could have beenimproved, there are a number of areas where his interpretation of eventsneeds challenging. The first concerns ‘new model’ unionism. BecauseReid does not discuss the Webbs’ work, let alone take issue with them, hemisses the opportunity to give his view on a long-standing debate. Hedoes admit: ‘There has been much discussion about whether thecraftsmen’s organizations in the middle of the nineteenth century deserveto be called “new model” unions [the Webbs’ term], as they drew many oftheir practices from earlier organizations and their methods were far fromuniversally adopted.’ He continues, ‘Be that as it may, Applegarth and hiscolleagues may still be referred to as “new model” unionists’ (p. 87).

The Webbs have been accused of exaggerating the importance of thenovelty of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) as a ‘newmodel’. A. E. Musson and Allen, for example, were among the critics,with the latter declaiming that calling the ASE a new model union‘ranks as a piece of historical fiction’.55 Yet the Webbs made clear that


53. Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations, pp. 176, 169; Hughes,Trade Union Structure and Government, Part 1, para. 16.

54. Hughes, Trade Union Structure and Government, Part 2, para. 29 forNUPE.

55. Musson, British Trade Unions, 1800–1875, ch. 6, summarized the debate.See, also, A. E. Musson, Trade Union and Social History (Frank Cass:1974), pp. 9, 17–21; V. L. Allen, ‘Valuations and Historical Interpretation’,in idem, The Sociology of Industrial Relations: Studies in Method(Longman: 1971), p. 32. For earlier expressions of these authors’ views, seethe separate contributions by V. L. Allen, A. E. Musson, and H. Clegg, inthe conference report on ‘The Webbs as Historians of Trade Unionism’,BSSLH 4 (Spring 1962), pp. 4–9.

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the ASE took over ‘in its entirety, the elaborate constitution, thescheme of benefits, the trade policy, and even the official staff of theJourneymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’Society’.56 For the Webbs, it was ‘the dramatic events of 1852 [i.e. thesurvival of the lockout] which made the establishment of the … [ASE]a turning-point in the history of the Trade Union Movement’, espe-cially as a trade union which ‘could count on a regular income of £500a week was without precedent’.57 Turner made a similar point, stressing‘the undoubted stimulus the … [ASE’s] survival of its 1852 lock-outgave to the idea of closer grouping in other trades where the seeds oforganization had already taken firm root’.58

Reid does revise the generally accepted understanding of the role ofcollective bargaining in nineteenth-century craft unionism: accordingto him, during the ten years after the 1852 engineering lockout‘employers began to recognize the union [ASE] and to reach compro-mise agreements with it over wages and working conditions on adistrict-by-district basis’ (p. 99). More generally, he contends that the‘central demand’ of craft unions was ‘for the recognition of collectivebargaining, in which they were largely successful by the end of the1860s’ (p. xiii). This claim seems to be based mainly on the experienceof the building crafts; J. W. F. Rowe argued long ago that the effective-ness of local collective bargaining in building was ‘almost unique’ andexplained it by the industry’s ‘peculiar economic structure’ and theprevalence of hourly wage contracts, allowing ‘great potential fluidityof labour between different firms in any district’.59 As a result there was‘an almost natural standardisation of wage rates’ in a town or district.By the 1880s, ‘once agreed a rate continued to operate until revised …[A]lterations were demanded by either side as and when the state of thelabour market, and the state of trade … appeared to provide an oppor-tunity’.60

Allan Flanders suggested that collective bargaining in engineeringdeveloped during the 1870s and 1880s, though Clegg, Fox andThompson claimed that any such bargaining was based only on‘uniform advances or reductions in the existing spread of rates for thedistrict’. Employers did not recognize the union’s (minimum) district


56. S. and B. Webb, History (1894), p. 194.57. Ibid., pp. 198, 195 n. 1; once the ASE started growing again, its ‘income …

surpassed the wildest dreams of previous Trade Union organisations’,ibid., p. 203. Reid (p. 144) mistakenly cites the date of the lockout as 1851.

58. Turner, Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy, p. 201.59. Rowe, Wages in Practice and Theory, pp. 126, 65–6.60. Ibid., pp. 130, 126.

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rates. The union enforced these, where it could, by withdrawing thoseindividual members who received less than the district rate, and payingthem benefit, using what the Webbs called the ‘strike in detail’ and themethod of mutual insurance.61 For Rowe, even in 1886, ‘collective bar-gaining in the engineering industry … was a very limited affair’ andFlanders identified bargaining arrangements in building and engineer-ing in the late nineteenth century as ‘two extremes’.62 Printing isanother (though smaller) industry where Reid’s dating of the institu-tion of collective bargaining is premature: ‘In 1890 there was hardlyone effective written agreement in the printing industry. By 1914 therewere more than eighty’. This period saw the transition from ‘regulationby union rule’ to ‘bilateral collective bargaining’ in the printingindustry.63

In keeping with his account of collective bargaining in engineering,Reid continues: ‘by the early 1870s’ the ASE was ‘strong enough … toimpose improved conditions unilaterally on reluctant employers duringa district-based campaign for a nine-hour day initiated on Tyneside’ (p. 99; added emphasis). In fact, the movement started with a four-week strike in Sunderland before spreading northward. As the Webbsmade clear, what became a four-and-a-half-month strike on Tynesidewas not led by the ASE (‘the greatest trade movement since 1852 wasundertaken in spite of the official disapproval of the governing body’);it was a movement mainly of unorganized workers, with a local ASEactivist leading them in a temporary ‘Nine Hours League’.64

While unions and employers could ‘impose’ terms on each other,this would usually only occur in the absence of negotiation. In chapter8, Reid uses the term ‘impose’ on at least ten occasions when he is


61. A. Flanders, ‘Collective Bargaining’, in A. Flanders and H. A. Clegg (eds),The System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain: Its History, Law andInstitutions (Blackwell, Oxford: 1954), p. 267; Clegg et al., History ofBritish Trade Unions, Vol. 1, pp. 11–12; S. and B. Webb, IndustrialDemocracy, p. 169 and part 2, ch. 1.

62. Rowe, Wages in Practice and Theory, p. 131; Flanders, ‘Collective Bar-gaining’, p. 268.

63. Child, Industrial Relations in the British Printing Industry, p. 203 for firstquote; the other terms are the titles of chapters 9 and 13 of ibid.

64. S. and B. Webb, History (1894), pp. 303–4; E. Allen, J. F. Clarke, N.McCord and D. J. Rowe, The North-East Engineers’ Strikes of 1871: TheNine Hours’ League (Frank Graham, Newcastle: 1971). The Webbssuggested that the strike lasted five months, but the dates given in Allen etal., above, indicate four-and-a-half months.

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referring to agreements;65 thus, ‘employers’ associations … shifted …towards the imposition of formal procedures’ and ‘[t]he strongest [union]bodies could sometimes impose national agreements on the employers’(pp. 165, 177; added emphasis).66 On the other hand, the EngineeringEmployers’ Federation is credited with being ‘prepared to grant …shop-steward recognition’ (though, in 1917, without the ASE and, then,with it in 1919) – as a result of ‘the unions’ new position of strength’ (p. 183), according to Reid. Yet the government pressured the employersto make such an agreement, and mainly as a mechanism for the ‘offi-cialization’ of the shop stewards’ movement and the isolation of the rev-olutionary shop stewards, rather than as a response to union strength.67

For a later period, Reid exaggerates the influence of, first, the unionsand, second, their shop stewards. He claims that the working week forcraft unions was generally reduced from 48 to 44 hours in the years1945–47 (p. 291), with the engineers making ‘significant progress over… shorter working hours’ before the war (p. 288). Yet the workingweek in engineering remained at 47 hours from 1919 until 1947 when itwas reduced to 44.68 What does not come across in Reid’s account isthat many of the post-war reductions took place against a backgroundof industrial action – for example, in printing and road haulage.69 Asimilar process had occurred at the end of the First World War, whenthe first national strike of all the cotton unions, in 1919, over a shorterworking week, was the largest dispute that year; in coalmining andengineering, reductions in working time led to large district-widestrikes in 1919 over their implementation.70


65. Later in the book there is a further confusion of terminology when theshift from multi-employer to single-employer bargaining is described as amove to ‘unilateral, organization-wide decision-making’ (p. 408).

66. Reid wrongly claims that the ASE withdrew from the national engineeringprocedure in 1913 (p. 171); this seems to be conflated with the Boilermak-ers’ Society’s withdrawal from the shipbuilding national procedure in thesame year (p. 173).

67. G. D. H. Cole, Workshop Organization (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1923),chs 8–9; p. 77 for ‘officialization’. J. Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’Movement (Allen and Unwin: 1973), ch. 8; Clegg, History of British TradeUnions, Vol. 2, pp. 187–9.

68. Marsh, Industrial Relations in Engineering, p. 150.69. Clegg, History of British Trade Unions, Vol. 3, pp. 331–7. The printing

unions had already negotiated, after a successful strike ballot, a 45-hourweek in 1937: ibid., pp. 47–8.

70. Clegg, History of British Trade Unions, Vol. 2, pp. 267–71. Reid doesdiscuss the 1919 engineering strikes in Glasgow and Belfast for a furtherreduction in working hours (p. 184) but underestimates how long thestrikers were out (particularly in Belfast).

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Again, it is claimed that, in the post-war years, overtime rates weregenerally ‘time-and-a-half in the evenings and double-time atweekends’ (p. 292). This is misleading.71 In engineering, by far thelargest manufacturing industry, it was very different: namely, overtimewas paid at time-and-a-third for the first two hours on a weekday, andthen at time-and-a-half (which was also the rate for Saturday), whileSunday work was paid at double-time; and ‘time’ was not the hourlyearnings figure, but the national minimum rate (which was a decliningproportion of actual earnings, as Reid himself acknowledges on p. 292),so the monetary advantages of overtime are greatly overstated.72

From exaggerating overtime rates of pay, Reid then suggests that, inthe post-war period, ‘the allocation of overtime to individuals becameone of … [the] major functions’ of shop stewards (p. 292). It is true thatin well-organized workplaces, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s,stewards would often keep an overtime rota (with some accepted ruleson how it should operate), in order to ensure fairness in its distribution;but only in a small minority of workplaces would controls overovertime working extend much further than this.73 Yet, at one point,Reid makes an even stronger assertion: that shop stewards ‘took overmany of the traditional functions of gang leaders in the assemblysectors, including … allocating overtime and piece-rates to individualmembers’ (p. 286). This usurping of managerial function seems to bebased on a reading of one company in one industry at a particularpoint in time, the Standard Motor Company (which Reid cites) fromthe late 1940s to the mid-1950s. Even if something similar may haveapplied to a few more factories, in certain labour- and product-marketconditions, it does not justify the generalizability that Reid implies.


71. Of 88 ‘major’ collective agreements covering manual workers in allemployment sectors at the beginning of the 1970s, 61 paid time-and-a-third or less for the first two hours of overtime on a weekday; only oneagreement specified double time during any of the first four hours ofovertime on a Saturday: National Board for Prices and Incomes, Hours ofWork, Overtime and Shiftworking, Report No. 161, Cmnd 4554 (1970), p. 98, Table 1A, and p. 99.

72. Marsh, Industrial Relations in Engineering, p. 154.73. W. E. J. McCarthy, The Role of Shop Stewards in British Industrial

Relations, Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associa-tions, Research Paper 1 (HMSO: 1966), para. 22; A. I. Marsh, E. O. Evansand P. Garcia, Workplace Industrial Relations in Engineering (Kogan Page:1971), p. 105, Table 30; P. K. Edwards and H. Scullion, The Social Orga-nization of Industrial Conflict: Control and Resistance in the Workplace(Blackwell, Oxford: 1982), pp. 205–9.

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IV

As with all labour historians, including those who are, in John Saville’sexpression, ‘outside the orbit of the labour movement’,74 Reid has anideological position on the role of working-class organizations. Hisviews on the British labour movement are clear from his consistentlyantagonistic attitude to anything left-wing. This is flagged up in thebook’s introduction: the ‘first burst of political radicalism after theFrench [i.e. Napoleonic] wars … had nothing whatever to do withsocialism’ (p. xiii); the ‘wider labour politics’ of the 1870s–1920s periodsaw ‘a marked continuity with nineteenth-century popular Liberalism.Moments of excitement over “class struggle” and the “revival ofsocialism” were brief exceptions’ (pp. xiv–xv); and the ‘growth ofinformal shop-floor bargaining’ after 1945 ‘had very little to do withany mood of revolutionary revolt’ (p. xv). Later there is a throwawaycomment on those Scottish workers who were ‘disturbed by fantasiesof Bolshevism’ in 1919 (p. 184). And the ending of the General Strikeand the defeat of the miners in 1926 was, according to Reid, a ‘turning-point for the far left in Britain … [It] dissipated the dream of a revolu-tion exploding out of ordinary industrial conflict’ (p. 367).

This general perspective can be illustrated further by his treatmentof individuals. W. P. Roberts, the Chartist solicitor, described byRaymond Challinor as ‘the People’s and the Miners’ Attorney-General’,75 is accused by Reid of becoming ‘increasingly wild’ and, byimplication, of encouraging the defeated four-month miners’ strike inthe north-east of England in 1844 (p. 127). When discussing the Inter-national Working Men’s Association (founded in 1864), Reid refers to‘its more revolutionary elements’ (p. 145) but cannot bring himself tomention Karl Marx as one of them, despite the profound importanceof that fact for the international communist movement.76 It is thus notsurprising that Eleanor Marx’s practical involvement in British trade-unionism in the 1880s and 1890s is ignored, despite being a rare


74. Saville, Memoirs from the Left, p. 118, uses this expression to describeHenry Pelling.

75. R. Challinor, A Radical Lawyer in Victorian England: W. P. Roberts andthe Struggle for Workers’ Rights (I. B. Taurus: 1990), p. 1; see chapters 8and 9 for a different account of Roberts’s role in the 1844 strike.

76. See H. Collins and C. Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British LabourMovement: Years of the First International (Macmillan: 1965).

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example of a woman elected to a union executive committee in thenineteenth century.77

Reid’s antipathy to the left is underlined by his claim that Gormley,president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the1970s, and Thomas of the National Union of Railwaymen from anearlier era, were ‘pragmatic masters of the technical detail and grouppsychology of collective bargaining, and they took far more satisfactionfrom achieving favourable settlements than from engaging in dramaticindustrial action’ (p. 308; added emphasis). Reid presumably discountsthe possibility that there might be a connection sometimes betweenindustrial action and favourable settlements. Thomas’s role in ‘BlackFriday’, 1921, is noted; Reid considers that presenting this as ‘straight-forward betrayal’ of the miners is ‘too simplistic’ (p. 313); Thomas’slater close involvement in the calling off of the General Strike, and theconsequent abandonment of the miners, in 1926 is not mentioned.

In contrast to the praise lavished on Gormley, Arthur Scargill’s risein the NUM apparently ‘guaranteed’, according to Reid, that anyimpending showdown over pit closures in the industry in the 1980s‘would be particularly controversial, drawn-out and eventually disas-trous for ordinary working miners’ (p. 403). Scargill ‘and his far leftsupporters on the executive’ launched what ‘proved to be a disastrouslybackward-looking strategy’ (p. 404). While damning Scargill, Reid doesnot do the same for his nearest historical equivalent, though he cannotresist a barb. Thus, ‘the much-publicized outbursts of such far-leftfigures as [miners’ national secretary] A. J. Cook’ are not blamed forprolonging the 1926 miners’ lockout; instead, Reid recognizes, as haveother historians, the ‘extraordinary determination of the mining com-munities themselves’ (p. 315). The parallel with 1984–85 is not specifi-cally drawn.

In conclusion, Reid finishes his book by suggesting that there will be‘a major revival of British trade unionism’. This is consistent with hisbelief in the continuation of fifty-year cycles, ‘one of the organizingprinciples of this historical account’ (p. 418). It makes a refreshingchange from those who would merely extrapolate the present into thefuture. He also looks to the past for inspiration that ‘new types ofworkers have repeatedly defied widespread assumptions that they could


77. Eleanor Marx served on the executive of the National Union of Gas-workers and General Labourers from 1890 to 1895: Y. Kapp, EleanorMarx, Vol. 2: The Crowded Years, 1884–1898 (Lawrence and Wishart:1976), pp. 383, 632.

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not be organized’ (p. 419).78 He believes that, ‘[a]s unemployment falls,… managers will, sooner or later, be reminded of the advantages of col-lective bargaining’ (p. 418). At the same time, and in line with hisdistaste for militancy, Reid sees unions as likely to be ‘spending moretime on the negotiation of realistic initial settlements’, as part of ‘abetter-coordinated annual pay round’ (p. 419; added emphasis). He isaware, though, that past experience indicates that unions cannot always‘respond to their members’ rising expectations’ (p. 420), but seemsunaware that ‘realistic’ settlements might not assuage such rising expec-tations.

This highlights the weakness running through the other mainorganizing principle of United We Stand: Reid’s understanding ofunions and his particular categorization of them in order to explaintheir differences. Here it is appropriate to return to Hobsbawm, withwhom this review essay began. Industrial relations specialists, heclaimed, had ‘advanced the subject’ of trade-union history. They wereresponsible for ‘the serious study of the process, the theory andpractice, strategy and tactics of union activity’; and the Webbs hadbeen ‘the great pioneers’ with Industrial Democracy.79 By engaging onlyhalf-heartedly with this tradition,80 Reid unnecessarily shackleshimself.

Centre for Industrial RelationsKeele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG


78. This mirrors the point made in R. Darlington and D. Lyddon, GloriousSummer: Class Struggle in Britain, 1972 (Bookmarks: 2001), p. 230.

79. Hobsbawm, ‘Trade Union Historiography’, BSSLH, p. 33.80. See D. Lyddon, ‘History and Industrial Relations’, in P. Ackers and A.

Wilkinson (eds), Understanding Work and Employment: IndustrialRelations in Transition (Oxford University Press: 2003), pp. 89–118, for adiscussion, among other matters, of how most labour historians ignoreindustrial relations theory and concepts while most current industrialrelations academics neglect history.

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Book Reviews

Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globaliza-tion since 1870 (Cambridge University Press: 2003), xv + 238 pp.,hardback £45, ISBN 0-521-81751-X, paperback £16.99, ISBN 0-521-52077-0.

This book, a product of the Fernand Braudel Center, whose well-known core focus is capitalism as a world system, is the culmination ofa programme of work examining patterns of labour unrest, with thegoal of relating such patterns to the dynamics of capitalism as a worldsystem. This vast task is approached in two ways: development andanalysis of a database, and what I can best describe as a historical essayin the style of the New Left Review on labour protest and ruling-classstrategies in a global context.

The book has many excellent qualities. It is grounded in a cleartheory of class relations, which expects that capital’s organization ofwork will produce a working class that challenges capitalist rule. Itidentifies four strategies (‘fixes’) that capital can use to try to reduce itslabour problems and three sources of workers’ bargaining power – anduses these notions systematically. It applies these ideas to a wide sweepof examples from across the globe, demonstrating that the global reachof capital does not necessarily undermine workers’ power and thatstruggles between capital and labour take place on new sites as capital-ism advances and new groups of workers are proletarianized. And it iswritten with verve and clarity. John Kelly judges it to be ‘one of themost important books on globalization and labour to have appeared inmany years’.1 I have to return a more qualified assessment.

The empirical core is the World Labor Group (WLG) database oflabour unrest. Unrest constitutes any protest against, or reaction to,labour’s commodity status, and it thus excludes peasant or soldierdemonstrations but is broader than strikes. It was measured usingreports in two major newspapers, The Times (London) and the NewYork Times over the period 1870–1996. These papers were chosenbecause of their global spread. The unit of analysis is the ‘mention’.Each mention of unrest was counted separately. Reports in the twopapers were then added together, except that reports relating to thepaper’s own country (e.g. the UK for The Times) were not counted. The


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key ground for this approach is that papers record episodes that arenon-routine and are in some way seen as significant enough to report(p. 38 n.). And the data are used not to try to count all cases of unrestbut as statistically reliable indicators of changes in patterns over timeand place. Further justification is provided by reference to reliabilitychecks reported earlier. These examined the WLG against other infor-mation in seven countries and concluded that the data catch the mainturning points of major unrest. But, in the words of the study ofGermany, the WLG indicator ‘privileges unusual, or disruptive, orpoliticized, or politically significant forms of labor unrest’.2 As long asit is grasped in this way, the index does perform a very useful function.

The issue is its use. The database is huge, embracing 91,947‘mentions’. I hoped to see it analysed in rather more detail. Threeexamples will suffice. First, there is no discussion of the different com-ponents of unrest so that, despite the effort to embrace hidden forms ofresistance as well as strikes, contrasts in the use of different types ofweapon of protest are not made. At a minimum, one might expect adescription of what went in to the total of 91,947. Second, there is noeffort to control for the size of the population at risk. Thus perhaps thechart to which most readers will turn is Figure 4.1, which shows thetotal of ‘world labour unrest, 1870–1996’. If there has been a rise in therelevant population, the figures will exaggerate rises and underestimatefalls over time. This problem may not be easily resolved, but it surelydeserved discussion. Third, there is no systematic statistical analysis ofpatterns, for example of any links between unrest indices and the levelof globalization of the world economy.

Silver’s preferred strategy is to use the data as a starting point for aseries of essays on labour unrest. These range widely, covering patternsof class action, ruling-class strategies, US global hegemony, the impactof world wars, and much else. Silver stresses the importance of a‘systemic’ analysis (p. 29), as distinct from a comparative study ofdifferent countries that, in her view, stresses variation at the expense ofunderstanding similarities and connections. Two main questions areposed: whether the development of capitalism tends over time to erodeworkers’ bargaining power; and whether labour internationalismremains alive or, alternatively, has been eroded by the collapse of theworking class as a key actor.

Analysis proceeds in three stages. Chapter 2 addresses the worldautomobile industry. The WLG data demonstrate a clear spatial shiftin the location of unrest, from North America in the period 1930–60,through Europe and on to such countries as Brazil and South Africa.These data are placed in the context of a historical review of classconflict in this industry. The emphasis here is the relative distribution


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of unrest, which is the proportion of ‘mentions’ in a set of countries; itwould also be useful to know what the level of unrest was. Silver’sargument is that capital tried a ‘spatial fix’ (moving to new locations)and a ‘technological fix’ (post-Fordism), but that neither was success-ful.

Chapter 3 turns to a ‘product fix’: moving from sectors where profitsare hard to achieve to newer industries. Starting by comparing theproduct cycles of the automobile and textile industries (with strongechoes of the work of Andy Friedman,3 though this is not cited), Silveridentifies a shift in unrest from the latter to the former. She thenexamines transportation industries, expecting them to account for asubstantial proportion of unrest and that the distribution will shiftfrom railways towards aviation. These expectations are met (thoughagain on the basis of relative rather than absolute figures). Finally,prospects in a series of newer sectors such as personal services areaddressed. As against those who equate class and collective protestwith manufacturing industry, Silver is clear that there are new groupsof the working class in formation. She concludes, however, that ingeneral their bargaining power is relatively weak (p. 123).

The overall picture is analysed in Chapter 4. Figure 4.1’s essentialstory is of a rise of unrest from 1870 to 1920, major fluctuations up to1950 with peaks after the two world wars, and then a steady decline toabout 1980, with a rapid fall thereafter. As against those who see thislast decline as irreversible, or those from a rather different view whoexpect labour protest to peak under conditions of mass production,Silver stresses long-run ‘swings of the pendulum’, shaped bymovements in world politics and experience of world wars. In additionto the previous ‘fixes’, Silver now introduces a ‘financial fix’, whereincapital shifts out of trade and production and into finance and specu-lation. Such a fix was the key explanation for the decline in unrestduring the 1980s and 1990s: one might expect spatial fixes to increasethe bargaining power of workers in recipient countries, but any sucheffect was overwhelmed by the power of global capital flows (pp.165–6). The overall conclusion is thus that labour’s bargaining powerhas been weakened, but Silver stresses that new classes are in themaking and that the future of class conflict remains uncertain.

In addition to issues with the use of the data, my main qualificationsare three. First, much of the analysis ranges very broadly, so that theconnections with patterns as revealed in the data are loose and indirect.There is something of a disjuncture between the data on ‘unrest’ andthe much larger essay on class relations. Second, the book is a short(180 pages of main text) treatment of some massive themes, and someof the writing becomes rather breathless. It is in effect an extended

BOOK REVIEWS 189

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essay that raises more issues than it can resolve. Third, though the ana-lytical point that classes are being reconstituted and that workerresponses to capital may generate new forms of resistance is profoundand important, the use of this becomes at times strained. Measures of‘unrest’ have declined and it is not yet clear what form new class actionmight take, or indeed whether it will appear in guises that measures ofmajor unrest as noted in newspapers cannot capture. All this leaves onethinking about the nature of the historical project. I formed the impres-sion that for Silver the new working classes are essentially like theirforebears, developing bargaining and associational power and thenengaging in unrest. That a proletariat is emerging in countries likeChina is not in doubt, but its nature and consciousness may or may notimply unrest in established forms.

All that said, Silver’s clarity and boldness of analysis suggest astrong future research agenda. Her book may not have answered all itsquestions, but it has posed them in new and important ways, and itshould act to inspire further research.

Paul EdwardsUniversity of Warwick

Notes

1. J. Kelly, book review, British Journal of Industrial Relations 42:3 (2004), p.567.

2. J. Casparis and F. Arrighi, ‘Labor Unrest in Germany, 1906–90’, Review(Fernand Braudel Center) 18 (1995), p. 147.

3. A. L. Friedman, Industry and Labour (Macmillan: 1977).


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Abstracts

Apprentice Strikes in the Twentieth-Century UK Engineering and Ship-building Industries (pp. 1–63) Paul Ryan

Between 1910 and 1970, apprentices in engineering and shipbuildinglaunched nine strike movements, concentrated in Scotland and Lan-cashire. The average dispute lasted for more than five weeks and drewin more than 15,000 young people for nearly two weeks apiece.Although the movements were essentially unofficial, they comple-mented official sector-wide negotiations. Two interpretations are con-sidered: a political-social one, emphasizing political motivation andyouth insubordination, and an economics–industrial relations one,emphasizing collective action and conflicting economic interests. Bothinterpretations prove relevant, with qualified priority to the latter. Theapprentices’ actions influenced economic outcomes, including paystructures and training incentives.

Worker Mobilization in the 1970s: Revisiting Work-ins, Co-operativesand Alternative Corporate Plans (pp. 65–106) Michael Gold

This article analyses work-ins, social audits, co-operatives and alternativecorporate plans as shop-floor responses to redundancy and factoryclosures in the 1970s. It uses mobilization theory to bring these disparateforms of collective action together into one analytical framework toexplain what these advances had in common, and why they became sopopular over this period. It focuses on the conditions that inspiredworkers to challenge managerial prerogatives and property rights inattempts to institutionalize types of industrial organization based ontheir own interests. It also examines the reasons for the eventual demiseof many of these alternative models of worker involvement.


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Free Trade-Unionism in Latin America: ‘Bread-and-Butter’ or PoliticalUnionism? (pp. 107–34) Magaly Rodríguez García

The deteriorating relations between East and West in the early post-warperiod favoured the propagation of ‘free trade-unionism’ as a majorideology within the international trade-union movement. Supported bynon-Communist unions, extensive networks were established to dis-seminate this ideology. The idea of ‘free trade-unionism’ had appearedin Latin America even before the foundation of the International Con-federation of Free Trade Unions in 1949. The paper focuses on thedevelopment of the principles of free trade-unionism in the region andit seeks to clarify such questions as: where and when the ideology wasborn; its concept of freedom; the methods used to reproduce theideology; and the achievements of the free labour movement in thewestern hemisphere. The conclusion briefly discusses the debate onlabour internationalism and, more specifically, the (political oreconomic) role of the free trade-union movement and its prospects inthe post-Cold-War era.

Look Back in Anger: Mining Communities, the Mining Novel and theGreat Miners’ Strike (pp. 135–64) John McIlroy

In an essay commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the 1984–85strike of British miners the author explores how mining communitieshave been depicted in the novel. He addresses the work of Émile Zolaand D. H. Lawrence as well as pre-war novelists such as James Welsh,Harold Heslop and Lewis Jones. The essay assesses post-war writerssuch as Len Doherty, Clancy Sigal and William McIlvanney, beforediscussing two novels based on the events of 1984–85, Barry Hines’sThe Heart of It and David Peace’s GB84. The author concludes byreflecting on the fate of mining communities in twentieth-centuryBritain.


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Aims and Content of the JournalHistorical Studies in Industrial Relations has been established by the Centre forIndustrial Relations, Keele University, to provide an outlet for, and to stimulateinterest in, historical work in the field of industrial relations and the history ofindustrial relations thought.

The editorial committee has no rigid assumptions as to what falls within thecompass of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. The content wouldbroadly cover the employment relationship and economic, social and politicalfactors surrounding it – such as labour markets, union and employer policiesand organization, the law, and gender and ethnicity. Articles with an explicitpolitical dimension, particularly recognizing divisions within the working classand within workers’ organizations, will be encouraged, as will historical workon labour law.

The journal will also contribute to existing historical debates on the gendereddivision of labour and promote discussion of the role of language in industrialrelations. The Centre for Industrial Relations at Keele has particular researchinterests in public-sector industrial relations and trade-unionism, and we wishto stimulate historical research in these areas. A series of articles will analyseimportant strikes (and, where possible, the employers’ role within them), asubject currently out of fashion in Britain. We also intend to carry historicalstudies on management’s role in the organization of work as well as in the reg-ulation of the employment relationship.

Contributions on countries other than Britain, particularly those with acomparative focus, are welcome, as is work on the nineteenth century and evenearlier.

Journal format

The journal will be published twice a year (Spring and Autumn). Articles willgenerally be of no more than about 10,000 words, though longer ones will bepublished where the nature of the topic dictates. Briefer contributions are alsowelcome, especially short ‘Research Notes’. There will be a regular ‘Essay’ on asignificant or neglected industrial relations publication from the past. Shorter‘Review Essays’ will deal with more contemporary work. Most issues will alsoinclude a ‘Discussion and Comment’ section to provide a forum for more spec-ulative pieces and for (short and long) replies to earlier articles. The editor ishappy to have informal discussions on possible contributions.

AIMS AND CONTENTS OF THE JOURNAL 193

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Submission of papers

All contributions should contain references and sources in the form ofendnotes; except in the case of book reviews, these will be printed as footnotesin the published journal. Three copies should be sent to the editor, on A4 paper,with both the text and the endnotes double-spaced; the author’s name shouldappear on a separate front sheet. Contributions should also be accompanied bya short abstract. A style sheet for prospective authors is available from theeditor; this includes instructions for submitting material on disk.

Any paper published will have been considered first by the editorialcommittee and then reviewed anonymously, usually by two external referees.

Send papers to: Dave Lyddon or Paul Smith, Joint Editor HSIR, Centre for Industrial Relations, Keele University,

Keele, Staffs ST5 5BG, England.Fax: 01782 584271 Tel: 01782 583396/583254

email: [email protected] (Dave Lyddon)[email protected] (Paul Smith)

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Subscription rates for 2004 (two issues), including postage:

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Cheques (in pounds sterling) should be made payable to ‘Keele University’ andsent to: Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, Centre for IndustrialRelations, Keele University, Keele, Staffs ST5 5BG, England.

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Documents

HSIR 18(29-3)