By bringing together and critically engaging with accounts of certain themes in business and labour history, and utilizing original research, this book aims to widen understanding of industrial society and provide a background to further study and research in the area management and labour relations history.

This volume focuses on labour history in Britain, but brings in comparative material on the Continent, in particular inter-war Germany. Special attention is given to wages and living and working conditions in the 19th century, to Robert Owen and Co-operation, and to the modern trade union movement and its attempts to keep up the interests of its members in the fluctuating conditions of the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. The author defends the notion that wage-earners have common interests and frequently share common experiences, and that their organisations have both a strictly economic aspect (trade unions) and a wider political dimension. The profound changes which the labour organisations underwent in the 19th and 20th centuries are a major concern of these essays.

There are many narrative histories of the struggles of British workers. However, Rob Sewell's book is different. This book is aimed especially at class-conscious workers who are seeking to escape from the ills of the capitalist system, that has embroiled the world in a quagmire of wars, poverty and suffering. This history of trade unions is particularly relevant at the present time. After a long period of stagnation, the fresh winds of the class struggle are beginning to blow. Rob Sewell's book was written precisely with these new forces in mind. The British labour movement is the oldest in the world. More than two hundred years ago, the pioneers of the movement created illegal revolutionary trade unions in the face of the most terrible violence and repression. In the course of the nineteenth century they built trade unions of the downtrodden unskilled workers - those with "blistered hands and the unshorn chins," as Feargus O'Connor called them. Finally, they established a mass party of Labour based on the trade unions, breaking the monopoly of the Tories and Liberals. In the stormy years following the Russian Revolution they engaged in ferocious class battles, culminating in the General Strike of 1926. Nor did the achievements of the British trade union movement cease with the Depression and the Second World War. The post-war upswing served to strengthen the working class and heal the scars of the inter-war period. By the time of the industrial tidal wave of the early 1970s, they drove a Tory government from power, after turning Edward Heath's anti-trade union laws into a dead letter. Later, the miners, the traditional vanguard of the British working class, waged an epic year-long struggle in 1984-85 against the juggernaut of Thatcherism. They could have succeeded, had the rightwing Labour and trade union leaders not abandoned them and left them isolated. The book contains vital lessons and is essential reading for today's worker militants.

Written at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! is a thought-provoking and highly original interpretation of the party's evolution, from its trade union origins to its status as a national governing party. It charts Labour's rise to power by re-examining the impact of the First World War, the general strike of 1926, Labour's breakthrough at the 1945 general election, the influence of post-war affluence and consumerism on the fortunes and character of the party, and its revival after the defeats of the Thatcher era. Controversially, Pugh argues that Labour never entirely succeeded in becoming 'the party of the working class'; many of its influential recruits - from Oswald Mosley to Hugh Gaitskell to Tony Blair - were from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds and rather than converting the working class to socialism, Labour adapted itself to local and regional political cultures.

This collection of fresh, incisive scholarship, by some of the leading business historians, critically examines the nature of economic recovery in Britain in recent years. Covering the key issues for business history in this period, the book confronts the traditional literature on conclusions of relative decline, and monocausal, simplistic explanations. It provides an impressive range of studies forming a platform for a new debate on the nature of British business in the 20th century. Themes include productivity, management, research and development, marketing, regional clusters and networks, industrial policy, the use of technology, and gender. Sector studies include newer, post-war hopefuls and successes including: * aerospace, * IT, * retail, * banking, * overseas investment, * the creative industries. The book demonstrates that our understanding of the historic strengths and weaknesses of business in Britain, and the shifting balance between sectors of the economy, has until now been poorly understood, and that British business history needs a fundamental reappraisal.

The Economic History Society commissioned this series which aims to provide a guide to current interpretations of the key themes of economic and social history in which advances have been made or in which there has been significant debate. The books are intended to be a springboard to futher reading rather than a set of pre-packaged conclusions.

This volume focuses on labour history in Britain, but brings in comparative material on the Continent, in particular inter-war Germany. Special attention is given to wages and living and working conditions in the 19th century, to Robert Owen and Co-operation, and to the modern trade union movement and its attempts to keep up the interests of its members in the fluctuating conditions of the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. The author defends the notion that wage-earners have common interests and frequently share common experiences, and that their organisations have both a strictly economic aspect (trade unions) and a wider political dimension. The profound changes which the labour organisations underwent in the 19th and 20th centuries are a major concern of these essays.

What part has organized labour played in the history of modern Britain? To what extent has British society been shaped by working class organization in industry and labour in politics? A major reinterpretation of the relationship between the history of the working class and the history of British society from 1780 to 1980, Labour in British Society (originally published in 1986) traces two recurrent themes—how the pattern of social relations in industry has developed since the Industrial Revolution, and how these patterns have been affiliated to national political and economic developments. This book is a must read for students and researchers of history.

17 The National Free Labour Association: Working-Class Opposition to New Unionism in Britain by Geoffrey Alderman -- Part Five Trade Unions, Employers and the State -- 18 The British State, the Business Community and the Trade Unions by John Saville -- 19 Industrial Structure, Employer Strategy and the Diffusion of Job Control in Britain, 1880-1920 by Jonathan Zeitlin -- 20 Repression or Integration? The State, Trade Unions and Industrial Disputes in Imperial Germany by Klaus Saul -- Part Six Trade Unions and the Political Labour Movement -- 21 Trade Unions and the Labour Party in Britain by Jay M. Winter -- 22 The Free Trade Unions and Social Democracy in Imperial Germany by Hans Mommsen -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.