Labour intelligence and industrial relations policy 1886-1914 *

This article examines the contribution of labour intelligence to the policy-making process during a formative period of modern British industrial relations. It concludes that the experience of 1886-1914 has important lessons for current policy-makers in the use of labour intelligence.

The context N recent years, efforts to evaluate and to I reform Britain's system of industrial relations

have generated increasing interest in its late- Victorian and Edwardian origins. In particular, research has focused upon the forces that shaped government policy towards industrial relations during the period. The economic and social context of policy making, its institutional and legal environment, the role of political ideology and administrative initiative, the impact of union and management strategies and of public opinion and the press, have all received extensive treatment[l]. Yet the con- tribution of the data base of the machinery of government to industrial relations policy has been largely neglected. This is the more sur- prising in that social scientists and historians have long stressed the linkages between stat- istics and policy formation.

Organisational theorists such as Cherns and Rein have argued that statistics exercise a sig- nificant influence upon policy, although not necessarily an overt, direct, prescriptive influence. They have maintained that govern-

* Financial support for this research from the Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully acknowledged. 0 Roger Davidson is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh.

ment data performs a leading part in 'the complex process by which society constructs its perceptions of reality, defines what its problems are and determines what goals and strategies it should adopt"21. Economists have also located certain functions that statistical investigation fulfils in relation to policy. According to Carter and Roy, in summarising in a popularly digest- ible form the extent of social and industrial dys- functions, it serves to activate public opinion, faced with which governments are compelled to legislate. In addition, such data, in analysing past experience both at home and abroad, helps discriminate between a range of policy options. In monitoring the results of legislation, government statistics also provide a feedback for future decisions[31.

Welfare theorists and historians such as Hall et al. have subscribed to a similar viewpoint, normally within a contingency model of the re- lationship of 'intelligence' to policy formation. Certain conditions have been identified as par- ticularly conducive to the influence of social statistics upon policy; when, for example, they reveal a clear failure of an existing govern- mental programme to attain publicly stated or legally codified objectives or standards, when the value system of statisticians - of their techniques, aims and findings - is in accord with that of the establishment, and when, in periods of economic and political crisis, with an

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unstable policy paradigm, government seeks fresh information to help explain and manage novel social forces and friction[4].

It is within this type of framework of analysis that the impact of labour intelligence upon the evolution of British industrial relations policy assumes its historical significance,

Serious methodological problems arise in any attempt to monitor the flow of information through the decision-making hierarchy and to evaluate its impact upon policy [5]. Information was only one of several resources which policy makers used in reaching a decision. Further- more, there is the additional problem that the use of information tended to take place in clusters. Single reports regarding industrial relations were typically not used or applied in themselves. Officials accumulated evidence concerning a particular aspect of the problem, summarised it, and sent a report based on the compiled evidence to a policy maker. Rarely did a Cabinet memorandum, a legislative pro- posal or administrative guidelines directly draw upon and quote an empirical study. The pro- cess of information procurement and utilisation within late-Victorian and Edwardian govern- ment therefore makes it especially difficult to trace the influence of a particular piece of data.

Nonetheless, the difficulties are not insuper- able. The process of minuting departmental files furnishes an excellent indicator of the extent to which reports relating to industrial relations penetrated policy-making circles. The registration and preservation procedures of the Board of Trade also provide an invaluable insight into the subsequent use of this infor- mation, briefing papers relating to policy issues being docketed together in sequence. Where their original data base is absent, its identity can often be extrapolated from policy memoranda. Such evidence reveals that, despite the lacunae in official labour intelligence, it fulfilled a formative role in defining policy options.

The quest for consensus From the standpoint of the late-Victorian

and Edwardian governing classes, the most dis- turbing feature of the ‘social problem’ was the breakdown of British industrial relations. The long ideological and political truce observed by organised labour more or less since the 1840s had ended. A new and more militant trade unionism had emerged which condemned the consensus policy of the craft unions and chal- lenged both the prerogatives of management

and the conventional criteria of wage determin- ation. Not only did it endanger social stability, it was also regarded in government circles as a major obstacle to British economic growth. In- dustrial unrest would, it was feared, disrupt production, intensify resistance to technical innovation, and weaken Britain’s cost com- petitiveness in world markets.

The primary response of late-Victorian government to this threat was to refine the machinery of civil intelligence by the creation of a Labour Statistical Bureau within the Com- mercial Department of the Board of Trade in 1893. A permanent establishment of labour statisticians and investigators, headed by a Labour Commissioner, was created in White- hall and supported by a team of fee-paid local correspondents throughout the country. As contemporary briefing papers reveal, govern- ment policy was founded upon the belief that the provision of more regular and systematic labour market intelligence would reduce indus- trial unrest[61. Firstly, it would enable the conciliation and arbitration boards operating in many sections of industry better to evaluate the relative claims of Capital and Labour. Secondly, it would educate trade union leaders in the facts of life of wage determination within a free market economy and serve to strengthen their control over rank and file militants. Thirdly, it would serve to discredit conflict theories of industrial exploitation being advanced by Socialist agitators.

‘Crisis avoidance’ was therefore the central aim of official labour intelligence in the 1880s and 1890s and this effectively dictated the scope of the Board of Trade’s enquiries. Its analyses of strikes and lockouts were based upon the presumption that industrial unrest stemmed from a simple lack of awareness of the market forces operating upon the level and stability of all factor incomes[71. Industrial stoppages were viewed as temporary devi- ances from the conventional norms of collec- tive bargaining and not as systemic confront- ations between the competing interests of management and workforce. Accordingly, while traditional issues of hours and wage rates and working conditions (narrowly defined) received extensive coverage, broader ideo- logical conflicts over income distribution and the structure of industrial power were ignored, as was the impact of technical and managerial innovation upon the labour process. Similarly, many potential lines of enquiry into the legitimacy of labour unrest were suppressed in

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favour of a restricted examination of the cost ineffectiveness of strike action.

Consensus categories of analysis also characterised the Board of Trade’s enquiries into trade unionism[81. In monitoring the process of unionisation, they focused upon trade-specific issues at the point of production rather than upon more general economic and social factors. Government intelligence high- lighted the conciliatory role of the trade union movement and its potential as a welfare agency rather than its more combatative functions. In- deed, with the failure of trade unionism to fulfil the stabilising role accorded to it by social administrators in the 1880s, there was an in- creasing reluctance in Whitehall to furnish for public consumption a full analysis of its activi- ties; a great deal of information regarding strike tactics and funding being confined to confiden- tial memoranda.

A similar rationale underpinned official en- quiries into patterns of working-class income, expenditure and standards of living Bl. Their over-riding objective was to demonstrate the normality of short-term fluctuations in wage rates according to market forces and the pre- sumed long-term upward trend in real wages. It was anticipated that such data would reduce labour unrest by illustrating the material ‘pro- gress of the working classes’, by revealing the high wage costs of production within British industry relative to those of our competitors, and by deflating inflammatory claims as to the extent of low-income destitution.

Unemployment intelligence was also tailored to meet the crisis perceptions of late-Victorian government. A belief that disputes often origin- ated in uncertainty as to relative bargaining strengths at various stages of the business cycle inspired the Labour Department to construct an employment index. Other investigations stemmed from the fear in policy-making circles that the perpetuation of a draconic Poor Law strategy towards the respectable unemployed would not only alienate them from the existing industrial system but also provoke their alliance with the casual ‘residuum’ within the depressed inner city areas, and the escalation of trade grievances into generic social unrest. The Board of Trade therefore sought to identify different categories of unemployed and unem- ployment so that a package of measures could be implemented to mitigate the impact of cyclical unemployment upon the incomes of deserving workers while locating the undeserv- ing idle for more deterrent measures[l01.

Labour intelligence and the Conciliation Act

Meanwhile, the Board’s labour intelligence was playing a decisive role in shaping the con- tent and outcome of the Conciliation Act of 1896. Schemes involving compulsory con- ciliation with a statutory cooling-off period and/or compulsory arbitration with legally binding awards had been widely canvassed since the early 1890s. At Westminster, a size- able group of Conservative backbenchers rep- resenting ‘villa Toryism’ and fearful of the threat to property and dividends from industrial stoppages had persistently advocated legal coercion to control trade disputes. In addition, a small but vocal group of Liberal businessmen, and even some elder statesmen of craft unionism, had sought to contain rank and file militancy by investing existing voluntary collec- tive bargaining machinery with powers to enforce wage agreements. The Board of Trade firmly resisted such proposals both in Cabinet and before the Royal Commission on Labour. Citing evidence on relative factor costs of pro- duction and the price elasticity of demand for British exports, the Department argued that compulsory intervention in the process of wage determination would distort the labour market, dislocate the cost structure of British industry, and render it vulnerable to foreign com- petitionllll. In addition, on the basis of a series of opinion polls, the Labour Department was able convincingly to demonstrate that the con- sensus of industrial opinion favoured per- missive legislation and that any dispute pro- cedures involving overt compulsion would prove unacceptable to the majority of indus- trialists and trade unionists and would be certain to produce a confrontation between Labour and the State[lZl.

The subsequent success of State conciliation and arbitration procedures initiated by the Con- ciliation Act can also be attributed very largely to the data base provided by the Labour De- partmentIl31. Although the Conciliation Act prescribed no formal code of intervention com- parable to the statutory regulations that characterised other areas of social admini- stration, such information enabled the Board of Trade to pursue a coherent and vigorous strategy of positive voluntarism designed to contain labour unrest, to stabilise industrial relations and to protect a capitalist employment structure, by the institutionalisation of industrial conflict and the confinement of collective bar-

Labour intelligence and industrial relations policy, 1886-1914

gaining within the bounds of existing wage relativities and orthodox market criteria.

An accurate and intensive system of labour intelligence was vital to the process whereby, contrary to the intention of the Conciliation Act, Whitehall took the initiative in activating State arbitration and conciliation machinery. In each labour dispute, its strategy was based upon a detailed assessment of the factors likely to determine industrial response to State inter- vention, from economic variables such as the cost structure and profit margins of the firm and the financial resources of the union involved, to social and bureaucratic determinants such as the previous history of labour relations and bar- gaining procedures within the trade and the structure of authority within management and union hierarchies. Moreover, when an indus- trial stoppage was exceptionally bitter and pro- longed, involving severe social hardship, economic dislocation, or civil strife, the Labour Department interpreted its investigative powers as a mandate to exert public pressure upon management and workforce to resolve their differences; labour intelligence being either formally or informally deployed to educate public opinion as to the (officially perceived) merits of the dispute.

In practice, such intervention invariably operated against the interests of labour. It is evident that, after the turn of the century, the aim of these quasi-public enquiries undertaken by the Labour Department during serious and protracted disputes was less to erode the more dictatorial and provocative forms of industrial management than to discredit rank and file militancy within the trade union movement. More significantly, although the Board of Trade never imposed any formal wages policy upon its umpires, in briefing its arbitrators, the Labour Department ensured that the traditional criteria of wage determination were broadly adhered to, by focusing upon the state of trade, the competitive needs of the district, or changes in the selling price of the product involved. After 1906, umpires were occasion- ally supplied with additional data on local vari- ations in rents and commodity prices but these constituted little more than a token gesture to welfare criteria and were rarely incorporated within arbitration proceedings and awards. Aribrators were denied information concerning the profit margins and cost structure of firms involved in disputes, despite the fact that it would have provided the most accurate indi- cators of their ability to sustain pay advances.

The data base of State collective bargaining procedures clearly placed labour negotiators at a distinct disadvantage. While they were starved of vital information on production costs and industrial profits, the labour statistics pub- lished by the Board of Trade provided em- ployers with data on comparative wage rates and the financial reserves of trade unions. Thus, in sustaining the strictly commercial criteria of wage determination under the Con- ciliation Act, official ‘statistics’ inevitably hampered the efforts of the union movement to secure a more equitable distribution of income beween Capital and Labour.

The case against compulsion In the context of industrial relations policy,

perhaps the most vital contribution of Edwardian labour intelligence was in furnishing the empirical basis for the continued rejection by British government of successive measures designed to endow the machinery of collective bargaining with legal sanctions.

After 1895, however liberal its interpretation of the Conciliation Act, the Board of Trade retained its essentially voluntarist view of indus- trial relations. To protect the community against the more serious economic and social repercussions of industrial conflict, the Board was prepared to exercise a considerable degree of bureaucratic license in implementing its powers. In an effort to ensure that voluntary dispute procedures were fully utilised and the merits of protracted stoppages fully investi- gated and publicised, it was also prepared to endorse the various schemes for a National Conciliation Board advocated by the General Federation of Trade Unions, the Trades Union Congress and the Industrial Co-operative Movement between 1898 and 1904. Nonethe- less, the Board of Trade vigorously opposed a fresh campaign for compulsory arbitration with legal sanctions initiated by an ‘unholy alliance’ of right-wing politicians obsessed with the impact of strikes and restrictive practices upon national efficiency, trade union leaders in the engineering and transport sectors seeking legal sanctuary from the counter attack of the employers’ associations, and middle-class social engineers infatuated with Australasian collectivism I141.

Whitehall was concerned that any attempt to impose legal coercion upon collective bargain- ing would only exacerbate class conflict and foster the growth of revolutionary socialism.

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The statistics of industrial unrest and the sound- ings of industrial opinion regularly taken by the Labour Department clearly indicated that the frontal attack on the legal status of trade unionism culminating in the Taff Vale Judge- ment had not served t o stabilise labour relations but further alienated the workforce from the machinery of government, and seriously eroded the ability of trade union leaders in strategic sectors of the economy to control rank and file militancy and pursue conciliatory tactics. Official intelligence predicted that compulsory arbitration would merely reinforce this trend, discredit the existing system of voluntary collective bargaining and render the Conciliation Act a ‘dead letter’. Furthermore, detailed analyses by the Labour Department of the rationale and impact of statutory concil- iation and arbitration procedures in the Dominions served to strengthen resistance to compulsory measures within British policy- making circles[l51. Their apparent success in New Zealand was shown to be dependent on factors peculiar to the nature of its economy and labour market; in particular, the existence of a weak and highly fragmented trade union movement and the ability of employers within a temporarily buoyant and relatively isolated economy to sustain compulsory wage advances at the expense of the consumer.

With the escalation in industrial conflict after 1909, the Board of Trade was once again con- fronted with demands for more stringent legis- lation. While the Department now wished to incorporate a ‘cooling off‘ period as part of dis- pute procedure in major stoppages and to legalise the community’s right to investigate the merits of such disputes, its over-riding concern in advising government on the prevention of industrial strife remained that of dissuading it from policy options that involved compulsion. In the view of senior labour officials within Whitehall, the evidence from routine intel- ligence reports of industrial opinion and from specially commissioned investigations into overseas legislation, such as the Canadian Lemieux Act, was unambiguous[l61. Repressive measures entailing penal or military sanctions and threatening to curtail the right of the workforce to withhold its labour would prove ‘practically inoperative’ and merely strengthen the influence of Socialist agitators over the labour movement, thereby increasing the likelihood of industrial violence.

In contrast, in its administration of industrial relations, the Board of Trade sought to dis-

seminate the view that consensus strategies towards labour unrest, such a s voluntary arbi- tration and selective social investment, con- stituted the most effective antidote to Socialism and preservative of industrial capitalism. The Board was ideally equipped for the task. With its fund of labour statistics and extensive knowledge of the labour movement, its Labour Department could readily advise its political chiefs and the Cabinet as to which policy options would most effectively exploit divisions within trade unionism, reinforce the status of moderate leaders, and neutralise the influence of extremists. Similarly, the Board’s permanent officials could provide an informed and realistic assessment of the threat of revolutionary movements such as syndicalism, thereby preventing the government from over-reacting to minority groups with measures that could have precipitated bitter conflict between Labour and the State.

Conclusion During a formative period of modern British

industrial relations, labour intelligence there- fore performed two main functions. Firstly, during the 1880s and early 1890s, it acted as a substitute for government intervention in the labour market. In confronting the breakdown in industrial relations, policy makers anticipated that labour intelligence would provide the basis for industrial self-help. Voluntary welfare and collective bargaining initiatives would, it was hoped, be focused more effectively upon the crisis points of urban deprivation and industrial unrest, and collectivist measures, which might undermine managerial incentives or distort labour costs of production, rendered super- fluous.

In practice, this minimalist, educative strategy for labour intelligence proved largely abortive. Indeed, the Board of Trade en- countered active resistance from both sides of industry towards its intelligence work[l71. For example, many union leaders objected to the disclosure of details as to their financial resources for fear that such data would merely strengthen the bargaining position of employers and provide intelligence for any counter-attack on the trade union movement. A similar rationale - ‘of declining to enable the employers to know when t o put the screw on’ - underlay resistance to the provision of unemployment statistics. Labour leaders were also apprehensive that data relating to working

Labour intelligence and industrial relations policy, 1886-1914

class expenditure patterns and costs of living would merely provide a n excuse for ‘middle class moralising’ as to secondary poverty and that this ‘stomach policy of the bourgeoisie’ would obscure rather than illuminate the fundamental causes of destitution.

In contrast, many industrialists feared that the Board of Trade, whose Labour Department was staffed by former trade unionists and middle class radicals, would use statistics as a means of undermining private enterprise and business efficiency, by eroding market criteria of wage determination and by reinforcing left- wing demands for a range of welfare provisions such as contra-cyclical public works and minimum wage legislation. Accordingly, all the most vital enquiries undertaken by the Board were seriously impaired by the refusal of employers to disclose information. Not un- typical was the vitriolic response of one indus- trialist to a request for data:

‘This is utterly futile! . . . some idiot is hard up for employment and has hit upon this brilliant idea to give your overpaid and underworked officials a chance of wearing out government pens and filling government foolscap with rubbish. Your depart- ment is the last refuge of the decrepit trade union official or the out at elbows socialist orator’. Nonetheless, despite the lack of success of

labour intelligence in modifying industrial atti- tudes, it still played a decisive role in defining the pace and content of State intervention in industrial relations. Although its analysis of labour market developments was often im- paired by a range of ideological and logistical constraints, it proved vital in anchoring policy discussions in Whitehall and Cabinet to the realities of industrial opinion. It is arguable that, without such an input, industrial relations policy might well have exacerbated industrial conflict in Edwardian Britain, and significantly, Lowe has revealed that when, in the inter-war period, the intelligence work of the Ministry of Labour was reduced by economy cuts, this severely compromised the ability of British government to maintain an effective overview of industrial relations and to take the initiative in periods of acute unrest[l81.

In many respects, the role of labour intel- ligence is similarly threatened today. While paying lip-service to the centrality of labour statistics to economic and social policy, the Raynor Committee initiated substantial economy cuts[l9]. In attacking the historicist and empiricist foundations of British industrial relations research and policy, theoreticians

such as Crossley and Marsden have also in- directly discredited the value of measured experienceI201. Meanwhile, the concern of official statisticians within the Department of Employment that policy formulation should be securer ‘in its empirical basis”211 reflects a more general anxiety that, in a period of major innovation in the field of industrial relations law, politicians are in danger of losing touch with the real problems and polarities in society.

Certainly, various strands of recent industrial relations policy have revealed a singular dis- regard for available intelligence on the labour market, industrial opinion, and the incidence of disputes. Thus, the recent drive towards general procedural reforms and comprehen- sive controls designed to inhibit the strike potential of the whole workforce has ignored official findings that ‘Britain does not have a widespread strike problem but rather a problem of stoppages concentrated in a small minority of manufacturing plants and in certain non- manufacturing sectors”221.

Likewise, attempts, as in the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, to introduce legal sanctions t o enforce collective bargaining procedures and to penalise certain forms of militancy have lacked conversance with prevailing industrial opinion, and with the perceptions and expectations of British managementl231. Although the Con- servative Party may not be guilty of simply re- placing ‘neutral expert knowledge with amateur prejudice’, its efforts to inject ‘moral and market liberalism’ into the British system of industrial relations has been inconsistent with the underlying attachment of the major indus- trial institutions, and of enquiries such as the Donovan Commission, to a national, collect- ivist resolution of industrial conflict[2141. Most recently, the 1980 Employment Protection Act displayed a striking propensity to base policy upon false assumptions about the labour market. Its dismissal and maternity provisions entirely ignored systematic research evidence that employment protection rights did not impede the wealth-creation and (supposed) job-creation potential of small businesses, while its attack upon the ‘closed shop’ and the role of the CAC in determining ‘recognised terms and conditions of employment’ also lacked empirical underpinning[25].

This study would suggest that while labour intelligence cannot manufacture consensus to any significant extent, it can enable govern- ment to identify areas of agreement within British industry upon which statutory norms

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and procedures may successfully be grafted. On past evidence, to ignore it in formulating policy initiatives is to invite confrontation between industry and government and to com- promise existing agencies dedicated to the alle- viation of industrial strife.

References 1. See, for example, Allen, V. L., Trade Unions and the

Government, Longmans. London, 1960; Charles, R., The Development of Industrial Relations in Britain 1911-39, Hutchinson, London, 1973; Davidson, R., ‘The Board of Trade and Industrial Relations 1896-1914‘. Historical Journal. Vol. 21 No. 3 (1978). pp. 571-91; Phelps Brown, E. H.. The Growth of British Industrial Relations, Macmillan, London, 1959; Wigham, E.. Strikes and the Gouern- ment 1893-1974, Macmillan, London, 1976; Wrigley, C. J . (ed.) , A History of British Industrial Relations 1875- 1914, Harvester Press, Brighton, 1982.

2. Cherns, A. B., ‘Social Science and Policy’, in Cherns. A. B., Sinclair, R. and Jenkins, W. I . , Social Science and Government: Policies and Problems, Tavistock Publications, London, 1972, chapter 2; Rein, M . , Social Science and Public Policy. Penguin, 1976, pp. 111-17.

3. Carter, C. F. and Roy, A. D., British Economic Statis- tics: A Report, Cambridge University Press, Cam- bridge, 1954, pp. 9-12.

4. Hall, P., Land, H., Parker, R. and Webb, A, , Change, Choice and Conflict in Social Policy. Heine- mann, London, 1975, pp. 501-6.

5. For a general discussion of the problems involved, see Rich, R . F.. Social Science Information and Public Policy making. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco, 1981,

6. Hicks Beach Papers, Gloucester Record Office. PC/PP/60. memoranda by R. Giffen and J . Burnett. 28th and 30th April, 1892.

7. 3rd Report on Strikes and Lockoufs. P(ar1iamentary) Pfapers), 1890-1 (C.64761, LXXXVIII, p.8; 5 th Report on Strikes and Lockouts. PP. 1894 (C.7566).

8. 2nd Report on Trade Unions, PP. 1888 (C.5505), CVII, p.5; 5th Report on Trade Unions, PP, 1893-4 (C.6990), CII, p.4; 8 th Report o n Trade Unions, PP, 1896 (C.8232), XCIII. pp. xv-xvi.

9. Memorandum on the progress made in carrying out the arrangements for collecting and publishing statistics relating to labour, PP, 1888 (433), CVII, p.4; 1st Report on Changes in Wages and Hours of Labour, PP, 1894 (C.7567), LXXXI, pt. 2, p.ix; P(ublic) R(ecord) O(ffice), LAB 2/1555/L1099. memoranda on ‘The Extent of Destitution’, 1903.

10. Report on Agencies and Methods for Dealing with the Unemployed. PP. 1893-4 (C.7182). LXXXII. pp. 407-9.

pp. 111-28.

LXXXI, Pt. 1, pp. 10-11.

11. Royal Commission on Labour, Summaries of Evidence, PP, 1894 (C.7421). XXXV, pp. 362-4.

12. PRO, BT/13/26/E12293, memoranda on ‘Concil- iation in Trade Disputes’, 1893-6.

13. The following section is based upon a detailed study of the conciliation and arbitration files of the Board of Trade retained at the Public Record Office (preser- vation class LAB2)

14. PRO, LAB 2/1/L128, memoranda on ‘Trade Board Legislation’, 1902.

15. PRO, LAB 2/936/L416, memoranda on ‘The Con- ciliation and Arbitration (Amendment) Bill (1904)’ and ‘Trade Disputes (Arbitration) Bill (1908)’. 1904-8.

16. PRO, CAB 37/107/70, 98, Cabinet memoranda on ‘The Present Unrest in the Labour World’ and ‘Con- ciliation and the Board of Trade’, 25th June, 9th August, 1911; CAB 37/110/62, 63, Cabinet mem- oranda on ‘Industrial Unrest’ and ‘Labour Unrest’, 13th and 14th April, 1912; CAB 37/118/14, Cabinet memorandum on ‘industrial Disputes: The Question of Legislation’, 23rd January, 1914.

17. For a detailed treatment of this issue, see Davidson, R., Whitehall and the Labour Problem in Late- Victorfan and Edwardian Britain, Croom Helm, London, 1985, chapter 9.

18. Lowe, R., ‘The Demand for a Ministry of Labour, its Establishment and Initial Role, 1916-24, unpublished Ph.D thesis, London University, 1975, pp. 229-31.

19. Department of Employment, Reuiew of Statistical Seruices in Department of Employment and Man- power Seruices Commission: Action Report. 1981, pp. 1-3. For a similar tendency to sacrifice labour intelligence o n the altar of economy in the United States, see Edwards, P. K . , ‘The End of American Strike Statistics’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 21 No. 3 (1983). pp. 392-4.

20. Crossley, J. R., ‘The Donovan Report: a Case Study in the Poverty of Historicism’, British Journal of Indus- trial Relations, Vol. 6 No. 3 (1968). pp. 296-302; Marsden, R., ‘Industrial Relations: A Critique of Empiricism’, Sociology, Vol. XVI (1982),

21. Department of Employment, Strikes in Britain. Man- power Paper No. 15 by Smith, C. T. B., Clifton, R. , Makeham, P. , Creigh, S. W. and Burn, R. V., 1978,

22. Department of Employment, ibid., pp. 63, 87-90. 23. Weekes. B. et al. (eds.), Industrial Relations and the

Limits of the Law: The Industrial Effects of the Indus- trial Relations Act 1971, Basil Blackwell, Oxford,

24. Moran, M. , The Politics of Industrial Relations: The Origins. Life and Death of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, Macmillan, London, 1977. chapter 3,

25. Lewis, R. and Simpson, R . , Striking a Balance? Employment Law after the 1980 Act, Martin Robert- son, Oxford, 1981, pp. 23-5, 54-6, 76-8, 148-51; Hansard, 5th Series, Vol. 983, cols. 489-93. 1 am indebted to Phil White, Department of Business Studies, Edinburgh University, for advice on this and other recent sources.

pp. 232-50.

pp. 87-90.

1975, pp. 220-5.

pp. 149-50.