The Roots of Current Trade Union Politics

Abstract

REVIEWING THIS WORK for British industrial relations scholars when it first appeared at the end of 1980, I called attention its combination of meticu lous documentation, sharp and persuasive theoretical argument and acute ana lytical insight. My judgement that this was the most important historical study of British trade unionism since Turner's Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy has not been shared by most subsequent commentators, and I welcome this opportunity, in the light of the controversy which Price has stimulated, renew my assessment for a very different audience. Price focuses on the development of labour relations and labour control in British construction, drawing primarily, though by no means exclusively, on trade union archives (in particular those of masons, bricklayers, and carpenters). He also discusses more general trends in union organization and status during the period of his study, as well as drawing on more recent evidence from industrial sociology and industrial relations. His central aim is not only offer an alternative the institutional approach union history of the Webbs and their successors, but also challenge their built-in teleology. Viewing mod ern collective bargaining procedures as the embodiment of rationality, con ventional labour historians traditionally interpreted their subject as the natural unfolding of enlightened progress toward this goal. But a historiography rooted in the experience of workers themselves, insists Price, involves a radically different perspective. Conflict is central their day-to-day relationship with capital, and informs their collective aspirations and strategies; hence we may best conceptualise the dynamic of industrial relations as a struggle for power and authority. The professed aim of the book is to make sense of the relationship between industrial conflict and the work process over a broad range of time.