This is a study of how governments and their specialist advisers, in an age of free trade and the minimal state, attempted to create a viable legal framework for trade unions and strikes. It traces the collapse, in the face of judicial interventions, of the regime for collective labour devised by the Liberal Tories in the 1820s, following the repeal of the Combination Acts. The new arrangements enacted in the 1870s allowed collective labour unparalleled freedoms, contended by the newly-founded Trades Union Congress. This book seeks to reinstate the view from government into an account of how the settlement was brought about, tracing the emergence of an official view - largely independent of external pressure - which favoured withdrawing the criminal law from peaceful industrial relations and allowing a virtually unrestricted freedom to combine. It reviews the impact upon the Home Office's specialist advisers of contemporary intellectual trends, such as the assaults upon classical and political economy and the historicized critiques of labour law developed by Liberal writers. Curthoys offers an historical context for the major court decisions affecting the security of trade union funds, and the freedom to strike, while the views of the judges are integrated within the terms of a wider debate between proponents of contending views of 'free trade' and 'free labour'. New evidence sheds light on the considerations which impelled governments to grant trade unions a distinctive form of legal existence, and to protect strikers from the criminal law. This account of the making of labour law affords many wider insights into the nature and inner workings of the Victorian state as it dismantled the remnants of feudalism (symbolized by the Master and Servant Acts) and sought to reconcile competing conceptions of citizenship in an age of franchise extension. After the repeal of the Combination Acts in the 1820s collective labour enjoyed limited freedoms. When this regime collapsed under judicial challenge, governments were obliged to devise a new legal framework for trade unions and strikes, enacted between 1871 and 1876. Drawing extensively upon previously unused governmental sources, this study affords many wider insights into the nature and inner workings of the mid-Victorian state, tracing the impact upon policy-makers of contemporary assaults upon classical political economy, and of the historicized critiques of labour law developed by Liberal writers. As contending views of 'free trade' and 'free labour' came into collision, an official view was formed which favoured allowing an unrestricted freedom to combine and sought to withraw the criminal law from peaceful industrial relations.

Newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and books all reflect the ubiquity of 'public opinion' in political discourse in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Through close attention to debates across the political spectrum, James Thompson charts the ways in which Britons sought to locate 'public opinion' in an era prior to polling. He shows that 'public opinion' was the principal term through which the link between the social and the political was interrogated, charted and contested and charts how the widespread conviction that the public was growing in power raised significant issues about the kind of polity emerging in Britain. He also examines how the early Labour party negotiated the language of 'public opinion' and sought to articulate Labour interests in relation to those of the public. In so doing he sheds important new light on the character of Britain's liberal political culture and on Labour's place in and relationship to that culture.

Despite the dramatic expansion of consumer culture from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards and the developments in retailing, advertising and credit relationships in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were a significant number of working families in Britain who were not fully free to consume as they chose. These employees were paid in truck, or in goods rather than currency. This book will explore and analyse the changing ways that truck and workplace deductions were experienced by different groups in British society, arguing that it was far more common than has previously been acknowledged. This analysis brings to light issues of class and gender; the discourse of free trade, popular politics and protest; the development of the trade union movement; and the use of the legal system as an instrument for bringing about social and legal change.

Inspired by recent research on the cultural impact of economic change, an international team of leading academics and younger scholars examine the ways in which state and society responded to fundamental economic transition. The studies embrace all aspects of the regulatory process, from developing ideas on the economy, to the passage of legislation, and to the negotiation of economic policy and change in practice. The book challenges the general characterization of the period as a shift from a regulated economy to a more laissez-faire system, highlighting the uncertain but significant relationship between the state and economic interests across the long eighteenth century.

Guilds and fraternities, voluntary associations of men and women, proliferated in medieval Europe. The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages explores the motives and experiences of the many thousands of men and women who joined together in these family-like societies. Rarely confined to a single craft, the diversity of guild membership was of its essence. Setting the English evidence in a European context, this study is not an institutional history, but instead is concerned with the material and non-material aims of the brothers and sisters of the guilds. Gervase Rosser addresses the subject of medieval guilds in the context of contemporary debates surrounding the identity and fulfilment of the individual, and the problematic question of his or her relationship to a larger society. Unlike previous studies, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages does not focus on the guilds as institutions but on the social and moral processes which were catalysed by participation. These bodies founded schools, built bridges, managed almshouses, governed small towns, shaped religious ritual, and commemorated the dead, perceiving that association with a fraternity would be a potential catalyst of personal change. Participants cultivated the formation of new friendships between individuals, predicated on the understanding that human fulfilment depended upon a mutually transformative engagement with others. The peasants, artisans, and professionals who joined the guilds sought to change both their society and themselves. The study sheds light on the conception and construction of society in the Middle Ages, and suggests further that this evidence has implications for how we see ourselves.

This book explores the emergence and growth of state responsibility for safer and healthier working practices in British mining and the responses of labour and industry to expanding regulation and control. It begins with an assessment of working practice in the coal and metalliferous mining industries at the dawn of the nineteenth century and the hazards involved for the miners, before charting the rise of reforming interest in these industries. The 1850 Act for the Inspection of Coal Mines in Great Britain brought tighter legislation in coal mining, yet the metalliferous miners continued to work without government-regulated safety and health controls until the early 1870s. The author explores the reasons for this, taking into account socio-economic, environmental, medical, technical, and cultural factors that determined the chronology and nature of early reform. The comparative approach between the coal and metalliferous mining sectors provides a useful model for exploring the significance of organized labour in gaining health and safety concessions, particularly as the miners in the metalliferous sector, in contrast to the colliers who unionised early, placed a high value on independence and self-sufficiency in the workplace. As an investigation into the formation of health and safety legislation in a major industry, this work will be valuable to all those with an interest in medical history, occupational health, legal history, and the social history of work in the nineteenth century.

One cannot conceive of capitalism without labor. Yet many of the current debates about economic development leading to industrialization fail to directly engage with labor at all. This collection of essays strives to correct this oversight and to reintroduce labor into the great debates about capitalist development and economic growth before the Industrial Revolution. By attending to the effects of specific regulatory, technological, social and physical environments on producers and production in a set of specific industries, these essays use an “ecological” approach that demonstrates how productivity, knowledge and regime changed between 1400 and 1800. This book will be of interest to researchers in history, especially labor history, and European economic development.

The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes--from the development of democracy, the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation--have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also presented challenges to the historians who have researched and written about Britain's past politics. This Handbook shows the ways in which political historians have responded to these challenges, providing a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain's political past and a thought-provoking 'long view' for those interested in current political challenges.

International law and most national legal systems recognize the right to strike as a fundamental human right. However, the most common qualification for a strike is that the action must first be approved by ballot. These types of requirements are often said to be necessary to protect the democratic rights of the workers - the so-called democratic imperative. But is that truly their aim? This book draws on detailed empirical study of the Australian legislative provisions for pre-strike ballots; a comparative analysis of law and practice in a range of countries including Canada, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom; and the approaches of the supervisory bodies of the International Labour Organisation to evaluate the true purpose and effect of the ballot requirement. While in some cases the ballot requirement provided additional bargaining leverage for unions, overall, the study showed that the principle purpose of ballot requirements is to curtail strikes rather than vindicate the democratic imperative it claims to support. Exploring collective bargaining and union democracy, this is an essential title for those involved in or studying labour law. This book also demonstrates the fundamental shortcomings of ballot regimes, and provides and accessible exploration of the operation of said regimes, which makes this a helpful tool for unionists to understand their rights as workers. It also considers significant policy questions in the field and is relevant in the respect of the international labour law regime.

Martin Daunton provides a clear and balanced view of the continuities and changes that occurred in the economic history of Britain from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the Festival of Britain in 1951. In 1851, Britain was the dominant economic power in an increasingly global economy. The First World War marked a turning point, as globalisation went into reverse and Britain shifted to 'insular capitalism'. Rather than emphasizing the decline of the British economy, this book stresses modernity and the growth of new patterns of consumption in areas such as the service sector and the leisure industry.