British Unions Research Articles

The Implications of the ASLEF Case

The decision of the European Court of Human Rights in ASLEF v United Kingdom (27 February 2007) will require the government to re-visit the law relating to the right of trade unions to exclude and expel individuals because of their membership of political organisations perceived by trade unions to be hostile to their interests. It is now clear—as was pointed out at the time—that the changes made by the Employment Relations Act 2004 do not go far enough to meet obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, the case also raises much wider questions about the compatibility of other statutory restraints on trade union autonomy with Article 11 of the ECHR, notably ss 64-67 (on unjustifiable discipline) and 174-177 (on exclusion and expulsion as a whole, and not only the measures relating to membership of hostile political parties). This article considers both the immediate and the wider implications of the ASLEF decision for British trade union law, in the context of what appears to be a greater willingness of the Strasbourg Court to listen more carefully to trade union grievances than in the past. The article also draws attention to the role of litigation as a trade union strategy to recover lost rights, and again emphasises the importance of International Labour Organisation Convention 87 and the Council of Europe's Social Charter of 1961 (as well as the jurisprudence thereunder) as important sources in the construction of the ECHR, Article 11.

The Right to Strike: From the Trade Disputes Act 1906 to a Trade Union Freedom Bill 2006

This edited collection of essays was published in 2006 so as to commemorate the adoption of the Trade Disputes Act 1906. It does so by providing detailed historical analysis of the context in which this legislation was introduced, alongside discussion of the ways in which these statutory provisions have been applied and modified subsequently. The over-arching concern is that expressed by Jim Mortimer in the Foreword: ‘[t]he law in Britain on trade disputes is today more restrictive on trade unions than it was 100 years ago after the passing of the Trade Disputes Act 1906’ (p viii). The volume closes by making the case for contemporary legal reform, beginning with the adoption of a Trade Union Freedom Act, so as to provide greater protection for organisation of (and participation in) industrial action. Published by the ‘think tank for the labour movement’, the Institute of Employment Rights (see http://www.ier.org.uk/node/6), the first chapter of the book sets out the strong political motivations that lie behind exploration of this topic. While Keith Ewing and Carolyn Jones the President and Director of the Institute, respectively, wish to celebrate the centenary of the 1906 Act, they also identify the limitations of the content of that legislation. For example, they explain how casting a freedom to strike as an immunity, rather than as a positive right, has led to the paucity of legal protection for workers and their organisations. They state that: ‘Trade unions should also have rights which empower them and their members. These rights should be clear and unequivocal, and they should properly equip trade unions as autonomous bodies to act within the boundaries of international labour standards to protect the interests of their members. This means a right to organise, a right to bargain and a right to strike in a new legal settlement for British trade unions to deal with the sharp practices of globalisation.’ (p 5)

From ‘embedded liberalism’ to ‘negotiated openness’: British trade unions and the European Union from the 1960s—A world-order approach

This article1 is primarily concerned with the political economy of British trade union policy towards the European Community (EC) in the 1960s and 1970s. Its aim is to reassess union engagement with the EC in this period from a viewpoint informed by the now established perspective of world-order analysis in international political economy (Cox, 1981; Lipietz, 1992; Gamble & Payne, 1996; Payne, 2005). The article is specifically concerned with the re-evaluation in this light of two notable but contrasting and substantially contradictory perspectives on British unions and Europe: Dorfman (1977) and Teague (1985, 1989, later incorporated into Teague & Grahl, 1992). In its concluding section, the article briefly considers the implications of this reassessment for British union policy in relation to the contemporary EU.

Co-option or resistance? Trade unions and neoliberal restructuring in Europe

The purpose of this article is to engage critically with recent scholarship that accuses European trade unions of having been co-opted into neoliberal restructuring within the EU. The article first demonstrates, through a focus on British and German unions, that even if they have accepted economic and monetary union as such, trade unions still reject its underlying neoliberal rationale and demand changes to its operation. Then an analysis at the European level shows how trade unions have potential strategies at their disposal that allow them to counter restructuring, with specific reference to the European Metalworkers' Federation and the European Federation of Public Service Unions.

‘There Isn't Supposed To Be a Speaker Against!’ Investigating Tensions of ‘Safe Space’ and Intra‐Group Diversity for Trade Union Lesbian and Gay Organization

Trade union engagement with the continuing inequalities facing minority groups has been one of the guiding principles of attempts to re‐energize the labour movement in recent years. This article focuses on attempts by six British trade unions to create and maintain separate organizational ‘spaces’ for their lesbian and gay members. Through consideration of group representation within a union framework, the strategy of separate organizing and the complications of representing a diverse membership, this article considers issues of intra‐group diversity and ‘safe space’ for this particular group of members. It concludes that the recognition and actualization of the internally diverse lesbian and gay constituency will be important in the long term for trade unions seeking to renew their pool of potential activists.

Response on Assembly Action

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Letters to the EditorFull AccessResponse on Assembly ActionHerbert Peyser, M.D., Jerry Rogoff, M.D., and Richard Altesman, M.D.Herbert PeyserSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., Jerry RogoffSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and Richard AltesmanSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:20 Jul 2007https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.42.14.0028cThe letter to the editor in the June 1 issue by Dr. Michael Cleary, titled“ Politics Detract From Position Statements,” criticizes an Assembly action (subsequently approved by the Board of Trustees and announced in a statement issued in a press release by APA's Office of Communications and Public Affairs). Dr. Cleary complains about recent Assembly actions, commenting that the Assembly's “condemnation of the action of a group of British teachers [calling for a boycott of persons and organizations that do not disassociate themselves from Israel's Palestinian policies] is the most troubling..... [I]t would seem that the Assembly reacted in a knee-jerk fashion to criticism of Israel. The teachers' action was eventually withdrawn, but the Assembly went ahead with its condemnation.” He goes on to urge the Assembly and APA to “steer clear of pronouncements on foreign conflicts.... and to avoid the perception that APA favors one side or the other.”We call Dr. Cleary's attention to the actual language of the action item and the press release and also call his attention to the following facts:This was not carried out in a “knee-jerk fashion.” There was much careful discussion and consideration at the Reference Committee and the Area Councils and on the floor of the Assembly. Matters having to do with the question of a professional organization engaging in politics, APA's tradition and history of such engagements in other situations, etc., were all laid out and discussed, and the necessity for freedom of academic exchange affirmed.If the action and the press release are reviewed, one will see the emphasis on academic freedom, no trivial matter these days. This was the basis for opposition to the British teachers' union proposal by the Royal Society there, the American Association for the Advancement of Science here, and the many scientists and Nobelists around the world. APA joined this distinguished group. And the Assembly did indeed favor one side over another; the side of academic freedom over those who would vitiate it.As for the matter of the British teachers' union proposal having been withdrawn and APA going ahead with its concerns anyway, that British teachers' union had withdrawn the proposal and put it on hold for it anticipated merging with a larger group, which is what it did, and it was not clear what was to happen with the proposal. But the issue of academic freedom remained, and when the merger occurred the boycott proposal came up again from the new organization. The APA policy had been passed and now is official policy, timely, relevant, and necessary.Drs. Peyser, Rogoff, and Altesman are members of the APA Assembly. ISSUES NewArchived

Frame Extension in a Mature Social Movement: British Trade Unions and Part-time Work, 1967-2002

Since the 1960s, British trade unions have developed a policy for representing the interests of part-time workers, a significant process of frame extension within a mature social movement. This article seeks to account for this change. It concludes that change was a product of the growth of feminist activism within unions, the deployment of instrumental and solidarity frames and a response to political opportunities provided by both the British state and European Union.

Turning Eurosceptic: British trade unions and European integration (1961–1975)

Turning Eurosceptic: British trade unions and European integration (1961–1975)

The influence of the Scottish covenant on the ‘election’ of representatives in the new American republic

SUMMARY This article analyses the nature of British and American political union in the late eighteenth century, and the manner in which Scottish religious ideas influenced the interplay between these two alternative political models, in order to contribute to new forms of representative assemblies. It uses the figure of John Witherspoon as a case study in order to outline the intellectual and structural links between American federal representation and the formation of religious representative hierarchies in the Anglo-Scottish Union during the eighteenth century. A notion of ‘virtue-as-duty’ was promoted by Witherspoon towards his students, and more generally, from within the large deliberative assemblies to which he belonged. If Witherspoon's students could correctly adopt his notion of virtue-as-duty, they could be set apart as small clusters, separate from other unregenerate factions, thereby giving them more authority as political representatives. This idea allows a link to be made between a Presbyterian form of representative hierarchy, and a classical republican one. In the Presbyterian hierarchy, although humans were ‘equalized’ by their shared depravity, some of the depraved could be ‘elected’ to higher social positions. In the classical hierarchy, general human equality nonetheless allowed social stratification. Yet where Witherspoon connected an elect few and a moral many, this also distanced the individual role in electing, or being elected. Both took place as a result of correctly fulfilled duty to divine moral conscience, rather than through any autonomous political choice moderated by individual moral sense, as imposed by a form of Scottish common-sense philosophy that most scholars argue was introduced into the American political context by Witherspoon himself. Rather, the legitimacy of those ‘elected’ derived from their ability to articulate that their position of leadership was ‘disinterested’ because it was divine grace that had placed them in such a position of public prominence, rather than their own agency or interest. That we can identify Witherspoon as the figure who was charged with teaching a new generation of leaders this form of counter-intuitive legitimacy allows us to connect him to a fundamental paradox with regard to the rise to prominence of his student-politicians, such as James Madison: Witherspoon's religious strain of thought, which shared many analogues with the late eighteenth-century Scottish covenanting movement, meant that his students could only justify their entrance into an aristocracy of leaders by negating the agency which supposedly allowed them to become a member of a public political elite within a federal representative system.

United We Stand

MOST previous discussions of the history of British trade unions, as Alastair Reid says in his opening sentence, ‘have portrayed a unitary figure of “the working class” in either a heroic or a sinister light’. Reid offers instead an approach based on the ‘alternative idea of “working people” who were an integral part of the society in which they lived’. This appears to be admirable; but on closer reading some difficulties arise. First, it is surprising to read that previous work worth taking seriously portrayed a unitary figure of the working class. Disregard Communist and fellow-travelling heroics (and save yourself a lot of reading). Serious histories of working-class politics have always queried how unitary, or otherwise, the British working class was. E.P. Thompson argued unconvincingly that something called ‘the English working class’ was ‘made’ by, at the latest, 1834. It would have been made sooner and more firmly, but for the ‘ritualised form of psychic masturbation’ (The Making of the English Working Class, p. 368) which is Thompson's description of Methodism. Less vivid but more credible historiography is kinder to Methodism and respects the plurality of the working classes into the twentieth century and even the present day. The Webbs; the Coles; Clegg, Fox, and Thompson; and indeed Reid himself in his important contribution to the debate on the redness of Clydeside during World War I: all see the history of Britain's Trade Unions as at best a dubiously united stand. Fundamentally, the interests of a trade union are the interests of those who voluntarily pay membership fees, unless hijacked by somebody else. The interests of (the Amalgamated Society of) Locomotive Engineers and Firemen overlap with, but are not identical to, those of other Rail, Maritime and Transport workers. These divisions survive in the names of twenty-first-century trade unions, even though there are no longer many locomotive firemen in ASLEF. Indeed, Reid immediately, and rightly, qualifies his opening generalisation by reasserting the traditional three groups of craft, industry (Reid = ‘seniority’) and general unskilled (Reid = ‘federal’) unionism, distinguished by different amounts of labour-market power and hence different strategy and tactics. If ‘the working class’ is a straw man whose stuffing has been knocked out by a century of careful historiography, what about Reid's alternative, ‘working people’? The problem is that a history of working people would be a history of everybody except the retired, the unemployed, homemakers, rentiers, and perhaps capitalists. That is not the set of people of whom Reid writes. He goes outside the set to write about the unemployed, and excludes the subset of working people who did not join unions. Maybe the best description of his subject set is ‘people in those social classes who, if male, in 1912 wore flat caps or bowlers, but no ties’, as depicted in the evocative cover picture.

Trade union women's groups and their effects on union goals and strategies

Although academic work reflects on the roles of women's groups (WG) in British unions, research on their impacts is scant. This study employs survey, interview and documentary evidence to evaluate the meaning of WG effects for progress towards union goals. It draws in particular on specific findings relating to WG – union relations in the public and civil services. While the monitoring of WG effects is limited, taken collectively, the data sources indicate that WGs have helped to advance a range of union aims. Some have also imbued or challenged certain union goals with particular equality approaches and/or have enlarged their union's goal repertoire. WGs adopt conventional and less orthodox strategies in these pursuits. Implications for union and WG relations, theory and research are discussed.

The politics of British union in 1642 and the purpose of civil war pamphlets

This article demonstrates that there is more than one context in which to place early modern polemical pamphlets, and by submitting one particular tract from 1642 to intellectual, political and bibliographical contextualization, it highlights the implications for our understanding of a particular work's ‘meaning’ and purpose. By means of a close textual reading, as well as a detailed archival examination of ‘three kingdoms’ political manoeuvring, and examination of copy-specific information, it indicates that early modern politicians had a subtle understanding of the utility of print, and of the need to reach out to different political audiences in different ways.

Retired members in a British union

This research note examines pensioner activism in a major British union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). The subject is an important one for unions’ future development: if they can become effective vehicles for pensioner activism, they may widen their social appeal beyond the employed.

Why Do Members Leave? The Importance of Retention to Trade Union Growth

Drawing on survey results from three British trade unions, this paper examines why members leave trade unions. In this study, as anticipated, a great many members left their unions because of some change to their employment circumstances (they were made redundant, they changed employers, or they retired). A significant proportion left because they were dissatisfied with some aspect of union organization. The paper also demonstrates that the proportion of members leaving because of dissatisfaction varied according to a range of factors, including union "type" and sector of organization. The research implies that if unions are to reverse membership decline and promote retention, they must address a range of issues in addition to introducing new means of organizing and recruitment.

Towards Equality and Renewal: Women’s Groups, Diversity and Democracy in British Unions

Discussion of union equality and democracy usually locates women’s group (WG) organizing as a special representative form within unions. This study focuses on the extent to which WGs themselves address the interests of diverse constituent groups. Data from a national survey of Trades Union Congress affiliates were used to map WGs across unions and analyse the attention they give to group diversity relative to gender in pursuit of equality and better interest representation. It emerged that most members belong to unions where WGs tackle diversity to some extent. Implications for WG and union renewal strategy, research and theory are examined.

Nazis in pre-war London, 1930-1939: the fate and role of German party members and British sympathizers

A Nazi journalist comes to London Founding the London Ortsgruppe, 1931-32 Otto Bene, Ortsgruppenleiter, 1932-35 Establishing a Nazi Brown House The expulsion of Hans Wilhelm Thost Appointment of a Nazi consul-general The Nazi take-over of German news agencies Party and SS members in the German embassy Bonhoeffer and the Struggle for church autonomy Nazi infiltration of business and labour Mosley's British union of fascists The Government's Dilemma: Whether to outlaw foreign organisations German journalists: First targets for expulsion Nazi intimidation leads to deportation The question of espionage Index.

A New Paradigm for British Labour History

A recent trend towards ‘revisionism’ in British labour history has been characterized by a number of new emphases. First, it has seen a shift away from attempts to pin down the emergence of genuine ‘class struggle’ towards a focus on diverse experiences among groups of working people. Second, the emerging new paradigm has highlighted the importance of long-term continuities. Third, it has reminded us of the nature of the mainstream tradition of British trade unionism: basically moderate, but still capable of widespread and stubborn mobilization in defence of its own immediate interests. Overall, the work of the ‘revisionists’ has combined to shift the political significance of British labour history from a search for breakthroughs to state socialism towards a recognition of the persistence of broadly liberal, or libertarian, attitudes.

JAMES VI AND I, THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, AND BRITISH ECCLESIASTICAL CONVERGENCE

Recent historiography has argued that the British ecclesiastical policies of James VI and I sought ‘congruity’ between the different churches in Scotland, England, and Ireland, rather than British ecclesiastical union or the anglicanization of all the churches. It is argued here that the asymmetry of the changes he sought in Scotland and England has been underplayed and that this has masked his choice of a fundamentally Anglican model for the British churches. Through allowing the archbishop of Canterbury to interfere in Scottish ecclesiastical affairs, undermining the presbyterian system, promoting episcopal power and liturgical reform, anglicanization of the Church of Scotland was the goal of James VI and I, and one which he pursued until his death. The motivation for King James's persistent desire for the fulfilment of this policy is to be found in his rapid assimilation to the Church of England after 1603 and, moreover, in his goal of the reunification of Christendom as a whole, on the Anglican model.

Learning for revival; British trade unions and workplace learning

Against a background of declining union significance and falling membership, this article reviews the recent development of trade union workplace learning in Britain. It is argued that the dominant framework within which this learning is currently undertaken is one of ‘employability’. Instead of an employability framework, it is suggested that an educational framework informed by ‘democratic citizenship’ better serves the need for unions and their members to engage with changes within the workplace and within the wider societal context.

Accessing Empire: Scotland, Europe, Britain, and the Asia Trade, 1695–c. 1750

The close, reciprocal relationship between overseas expansion and domestic state formation in early modern Western Europe has long been understood. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Portugal, the Netherlands, and England used the resources arising from their Atlantic colonies and Asia trades to defend themselves against their respective Spanish and French enemies. Creating and sustaining a territorial or trading empire, therefore, enabled polities not only to survive but also to enhance their standing with-i n the hierarchy of European states. The proposition that success overseas facilitated state development at home points however to the opposite logic, that where kingdoms failed as colonial powers they might well suffer from inhibited state formation. Indeed, if the example of England demonstrated how empire augmented a kingdom's power, then the experience of its neigh-bour, Scotland, seemed to reveal one possible outcome for a country unable to access colonial expansion. In 1707 Scotland negotiated away its political sovereignty and entered into an incorporating union with England. The new British framework enabled the Scots to access English markets (both domestic and colonial) previously closed to them. This does not mean that the 1707 union was simply an exchange of Scottish sovereignty for involvement in England's economy. Pressing political concerns, not least the Hanoverian succession played an equal if not more important role in the making of the British union. The question of political causation notwithstanding, the prevailing historiography of 1707 still places Scotland in a dichotomous framework of declining continental markets on the one hand and the lure of more expansive trade with England' domestic and overseas outlets on the other.