First published in 1999 , this book discusses trade unionism in Britain from 1964 to 1979. Detailing political change in British politics from union strikes to Thatcherism in the late 1970s and the implications that had on trade unions and industrial politics.

First published in 1999, this volume describes the political climate and state of trade unions after the second world war in Britain. Detailing the transition of individuals who had survived in the war or had taken part in the war effort to going back a civilian life in 1945. Following the rise of the Labour party in Britain until 1964.

A history of British trade unions between 1933 and 2000, covering key issues and controversies.

Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World is the first book to provide readers with an authoritative and comprehensive assessment of the impact of New Labour governments on employment relations and trade unions. This innovative text locates changes in industrial politics since the 1990s in the development of globalization and the worldwide emergence of neoliberalism. The advent of Tony Blair’s government in 1997 promised a new dawn for employment relations. In this rigorous but readable volume, a team of experienced and respected contributors explain in detail how the story has unfolded. This book looks at all aspects of New Labour’s policies in relation to employment relations and trade unionism. The first half of Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World presents an overview of industrial politics, the evolution of New Labour and an anatomy of contemporary trade unionism. It discusses relations between the Labour Party and the unions and the response of trade unionists to political and economic change. The second part contains chapters on legislation, partnership, organizing, training, strikes and perspectives on Europe.

Hugh Clegg was a founding figure of post-war British Industrial Relations, the forerunner of Employment Relations and Human Resource Management, as taught in most Business Schools today. He defined ‘industrial democracy’ as collective bargaining with trade unions, laid the foundations for the pluralist approach to Industrial Relations, was a key figure in the post-war social sciences and a major public policy player. More widely, he was an important figure in the Cold War social democratic academic left, who broke with his earlier Communism to champion free trade unions in a liberal democratic society. He also produced the major Oxford University Press trade union history. This book aims to understand the politics and industrial relations of the post-war period in Britain (in which trade unions were central) through the life of a key public intellectual. It will help readers understand the political and social science roots of contemporary Employment Relations and Human Resource Management through a deep historical study of Clegg’s life and times, in the context of his post-war social democratic generation. It illustrates how the failures of post-war industrial relations led to Thatcherism. Current Employment Relations academics and public policy can learn much from this history, making it of value to researchers, students, and academics in the fields of Human Resource Management and business and management history.

Allan Flanders was one of the leading British industrial relations academics and his ideas exerted a major influence on government labor policy in the 1960s and 1970s. But as well as being an Oxford academic with a strong interest in theory and labor reform, he was also a lifelong political activist. Originally trained in German revolutionary ethical socialism in the early 1930s, he was the founder and joint editor of Socialist Commentary, the leading outlet for ‘revisionist’ social democratic thinking in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also the leading figure in the influential 1950s ‘think tank’ Socialist Union and played a key part in the bitter factional struggles inside the Labour Party. The main argument of the book is that Flanders’ ethical socialist ideas constituted both his strength and his weakness. Their rigor, clarity and sweep enabled him to exert a major influence over government attempts to negotiate labor reforms with the trade unions. Yet he proved unable to explain the failure of the reforms amidst rising levels of industrial conflict, as his intellectual rigor turned into ideological rigidity. The failure of negotiated reform led to Margaret Thatcher’s neo-liberal assault on trade union power in the 1980s.

Written by leading international scholars, Twentieth Century Britain investigates key moments, themes and identities in the past century. Engaging with cutting-edge research and debate, the essays in the volume combine discussion of the major issues currently preoccupying historians of the twentieth century with clear guidance on new directions in the theories and methodologies of modern British social, cultural and economic history. Divided into three, the first section of the book addresses key concepts historians use to think about the century, notably, class, gender and national identity. Organised chronologically, the book then explores topical thematic issues, such as multicultural Britain, religion and citizenship. Representing changes in the field, some chapters represent more recent fields of historical inquiry, such as modernity and sexuality.

This book compares the ways in which trade unions in five EU member states have responded to increased migration.

Winner of the SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2010. The long ascendancy of pluralism and 'collective laissez-faire' as a guiding ideology of British labour law was emphatically shattered by the New Right ideology of Thatcher and Major. When New Labour was finally returned to power in 1997, it did not, however, attempt to resurrect the pre-Thatcher preference for pluralist non-intervention in collective industrial relations. Instead, it purported to follow a 'Third Way'. A centrepiece of this new approach was the statutory recognition provision, introduced in Schedule A1 TULRCA 1992. By breaking with the tradition of voluntarism in respect of recognition of trade unions, New Labour sought to provide a model of collective labour law which combined legal support with control through juridification. A closer study of both the history of approaches to recognition and the current provisions opens up fundamental questions as to the nature of this new model and the ones it aimed to replace. This book uses political philosophy to elucidate the character of those historical approaches and the nature of the 'Third Way' itself in relation to statutory union recognition. In particular, it traces the progressive eclipse of civic republican values in labour law, in preference for a liberal political philosophy. The book articulates and defends a civic republican philosophy in terms of freedom as non-domination, the intrinsic value of democratic participation through deliberative democracy, and community. This can be contrasted with the rights-based individualism and State neutrality characteristic of the liberal approach. Despite the promise of civic community in the 'Third Way' rhetoric, this book demonstrates that the reality of New Labour's experiment in union recognition was an emphatic reassertion of liberalism in the sphere of workers' collective rights. This is the first monograph to offer a sustained critical analysis of legal approaches to trade union recognition. It will be of particular interest to labour lawyers, but also a wider audience of scholars in political philosophy and industrial relations.

The papers that comprise this volume reveal how people are intent on preserving not only their wealth but culture too. The individual contributions identify the key arguments used to coax voters, whose natural sympathies might gravitate to the left, to vote for the Conservative Party en masse.