Angry arguments across the picket lines: Left Labour councils and white collar trade unionism

Abstract

This paper examines the experience of those Labour authorities who emerged from the 1982 local elections, saw themselves as part of the 'new urban left' and so committed to constructing 'local socialism'. It seeks to explain how those councillors then became locked into a series of unantici pated but actually inevitable bitter industrial disputes with their workers organised in NALGO. It traces some of the recent developments both within the left of the Labour Party and white collar trade unionism which led to those conflicts. These wider ideas are then tested out by events in the London Borough of Southwark, specifically 1) the residential social workers' action and 2) the campaign against rate capping. The paper draws on interviews with NALGO shop stewards in South wark and concludes that the traditional positions of these trade unionists, although characterised as defensive, negative and obstructive by some Labour councillors, have actually stood the test of time rather better than the more ambitious hopes of their socialist employers .