¹ Webb, Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, A History of Trade Unionism (London, 1894), p. vii.Google Scholar

² I borrow this terminology from Allan Flanders' usage (in a rather different context).

³ Jefferys, James B., The Story of the Engineers (London, 1945).Google Scholar

⁴ Hobsbawm, E.J., “Trade Union Historiography”, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 4 (1964).Google Scholar

⁵ Brown, E.H. Phelps, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London, 1959).Google Scholar

⁶ Cole, G.D.H. and Postgate, Raymond, The Common People (London, 1938).Google Scholar

⁷ Zeitlin, Jonathan, “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”, Economic History Review, XL (1987).Google Scholar

⁸ Our respective contributions to the conference were summarised in the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 46 (1983).Google Scholar

⁹ A couple of illustrations must suffice. In 1875 an Association of Trade Union Officials was reportedly formed to protect full-time officers from “unjust” criticism by dissatisfied members (Fraser, W. Hamish, Trade Unions and Society (London, 1974), p. 65)Google Scholar; in 1908 George Barnes resigned as secretary of the Engineers, protesting that “there had been the development of an undemocratic feeling in the trade unions which worked out in the direction of mistrust of officials and officialdom” (quoted in Jefferys, , Story of the Engineers, p. 168).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Roberts, Geoff, “The Strategy of Rank-and-Filism”, Marxism Today (12, 1976).Google Scholar

¹¹ Holton, Bob, British Syndicalism 1900–1914 (London, 1976), p. 23.Google Scholar

¹² Holton, , British Syndicalism, p. 204.Google Scholar

¹³ White, Joseph L., The Limits of Trade Union Militancy (Westport, 1978), p. 180.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See also White, Joe, “1910–1914 Reconsidered” in Cronin, James E. and Schneer, Jonathan (eds), Social Conflict and the Political Order in Modern Britain (London, 1982)Google Scholar; in this survey he is concerned to emphasise the very specific sources of militancy in different industries, unions and regions.

¹⁵ Burgess, Keith, The Origins of British Industrial Relations (London, 1975), pp. 308–310.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Burgess, , The Challenge of Labour (London, 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Burgess, , Origins of British Industrial Relations, p. 309.Google Scholar

¹⁸ See for example Burgess, “New Unionism for Old? The Amalgamated Society of Engineers in Britain” in Mommsen, Wolfgang J. and Husung, Hans-Gerhard (eds), The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880–1914 (London, 1985).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Price, Richard, Masters, Unions and Men (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Price, , “Rethinking Labour History: the Importance of Work”Google Scholar in Cronin, and Schneer, , Social Conflict and the Political OrderGoogle Scholar; “The Labour Process and Labour History”, Social History, VII (1983)Google Scholar; “The New Unionism and the Labour Process” in Mommsen, and Husung, , Development of Trade Unionism.Google Scholar

²¹ Price, , Labour in British Society (London, 1986), p. 12.Google Scholar

²² Cronin, James E., Industrial Conflict in Modern Britain (London, 1979), p. 195.Google Scholar

²³ Cronin, , Labour and Society in Britain 1918–1979 (London, 1984), p. vii.Google Scholar

²⁴ Hinton, James, The First Shop Stewards' Movement (London, 1973), p. 13.Google Scholar

²⁵ Hinton, , Labour and Socialism (London, 1983)Google Scholar; “Disconnecting Socialist Aspiration from Class Consciousness”, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 51 (1986).Google Scholar

²⁶ Hyman, Richard, The Workers' Union (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

²⁷ Hinton, and Hyman, , Trade Unions and Revolution (London, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁸ Hyman, , “Mass Organisation and Militancy in Britain: Contrasts and Continuities”Google Scholar in Mommsen, and Husung, , Development of Trade Unionism, p. 262.Google Scholar In part my argument involves a rejection of Price's interpretation of the pre-war “labour unrest”: as Price notes in his response to Zeitlin, the seven supposed representatives of the rank-and-filist school spend a considerable amount of time criticising each other. I have myself published critical reviews of works of Burgess, Cronin and Price in, respectively, International Socialism, 90 (1976)Google Scholar; Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 40 (1980)Google Scholar; and Labour/le Travail, 13 (1984).Google Scholar

²⁹ Hyman, , “Rank-and-File Movements and Workplace Organisation, 1914–39” in Wrigley, Chris J. (ed.), A History of British Industrial Relations, Vol. 2:1914–39 (Brighton, 1988).Google Scholar

³⁰ The Kuhnian notion of paradigm – a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying a protracted phase of “normal science” – is clearly not appropriate as a characterisation of what Zeitlin terms “rank-and-filism”.

³¹ Frank Rose of the ASE, quoted in Hinton, , First Shop Stewards' Movement, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

³² See, for example, the sensitive analysis in Brown, Phelps, Growth of British Industrial Relations, pp. 228–235.Google Scholar

³³ A notable instance is the study of industrial conflict in Manchester docks (Woodward, J. et al. , The Dock Worker, Liverpool, 1955Google Scholar), which identified a mutually conditioning dialectic of official union conservatism and successful rank-and-file militancy.

³⁴ Zeitlin has developed these arguments in various contexts; for example, “The Emergence of Shop Steward Organisation and Job Control in the British Car Industry”, History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980)Google Scholar; Shop Floor Bargaining and the State (ed., with Steven Tolliday, Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar; and “Industrial Structure, Employer Strategy and the Diffusion of Job Control” in Mommsen, and Husung, , Development of Trade Unionism.Google Scholar

³⁵ Hinton, with his insistence that “socialism is the aspiration of a community, not the destiny of a class” (“Disconnecting Socialist Aspiration”, p. 39Google Scholar) is in this respect exceptional.

³⁶ It is worth noting that while “class” is a category at odds with detailed empirical reality, the same is true of the notion of the “state” – a term which Zeitlin employs without embarrassment.

³⁷ I have attempted to grapple with a number of relevant issues in essays compiled in my recent collection The Political Economy of Industrial Relations (London, 1989).Google Scholar

³⁸ Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from Political Writings, 1910–1920 (ed. Hoare, Quintin, London, 1977), p. 265.Google Scholar

³⁹ Gramsci, , Political Writings, pp. 285–286.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Muste, A.J., “Factional Fights in Trade Unions” in Hardman, J.B.S. (ed.), American Labor Dynamics in the Light of Post-War Developments (New York, 1928).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Zeitlin is perhaps over-influenced by the arguments of Muste, who wrote in the context of inter-war USA. Partly because of forceful anti-union drives by major employers, the indifference or hostility of state and federal governments towards unions, and perhaps also the lack of cohesion among an ethnically differentiated labour force, grassroots organisation was relatively weak and union structures were strongly hierarchical. Hence intra-union conflict did indeed often take the form of factional rivalry. The development of internal union politics in Britain has been very different: union democracy has reflected many of the structures and traditions of the movement's localised grassroots origins; the number of full-time officials has been relatively small, and their powers more limited than in the US; and anti-leadership traditions (articulated particularly powerfully in The Miners' Next Step) have often proved very influential. It should of course be added that the more recent experience of American unionism (Muste was writing before the creation of the CIO) has shown considerable evidence of shop-floor organisation and rank-and-file revolts.

⁴² Harbison, Frederick H., “Collective Bargaining and American Capitalism” in Kornhauser, Arthur et al. (eds), Industrial Conflict (New York, 1954), p. 277.Google Scholar

⁴³ As with the very different argument of Muste, it would be rash to assume that Harbison's conclusion can be applied without qualification in the British context.