¹ Hobsbawm, E. J., “Economic Fluctuations and Some Social Movements since 1800”, in Labouring Men (London, 1964); F. Boll, “International Strike Waves: A Critical Assessment”, in: The Development of Trade Unionism.Google Scholar

² For a useful review under that very rubric, see Evans, E. W. and Creigh, S. W., “The Natural History of the Strike in Britain”, in: Labour History, No 39 (1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ On the quality of UK strike statistics and the methods involved in gathering classifying them, see Knowles, K., Strikes (Oxford, 1952);Google Scholar Creigh, S. W., “The Origins of British Strike Statistics”, in: Business History, XXIV (1982).Google Scholar

⁴ For some of the detail, see my “Coping with Labour, 1918–1926”, in: Social Conflict and the Political Order in Modern Britain, ed. by Cronin, J. E. and Schneer, J. (New Brunswick, 1982).Google Scholar

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⁷ One implication of this recurring pattern is that the tension between entrenched union leaders and rank-and-file activists is a long-term, indeed structural, aspect of labor history, not peculiar to any particular moment, but to those various periods when workers on the shop-floor perceive a possibility of advance beyond what the leaders have come to expect. Ideological factors, generational differences, degrees of bureaucratization, and government policy all help to condition and mediate this tension, but its roots seem to me to go much deeper. The evidence for this view is scattered widely throughout the record of labor history, but one might begin the study of the unofficial character of virtually all insurgencies with George Howell. He claimed in 1890 that “It is perhaps a bold thing to say, but the statement can be made with considerable confidence, that in ninety per cent, of the strikes which take place, the men directly concerned are the instigators and promoters, and that the union is the brake on the wheel which prevents too great precipitation, and liability to consequent failure.” See Howell, G., The Conflicts of Capital and Labour, 2nd ed. (London, 1890), p. 211,Google Scholar for the specific instance; and, for a more general argument to this effect, Sabel, Ch., “The Internal Politics of Trade Unions”, in: Organizing Interests in Western Europe, ed. by Berger, S. (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

⁸ See Porter, J. H., “Wage Bargaining under Conciliation Agreements, 1870–1914”, in: Economic History Review, Second Series, XXIII (1970);Google Scholar Davidson, R., “Social Conflict and Social Administration: The Conciliation Act in British Industrial Relations”, in: The Search for Wealth and Stability, ed. by Smout, T. C. (London, 1979).Google Scholar

⁹ For the most recent overview, see Hunt, E. H., British Labour History 1815–1914 (London, 1981).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Dobson, C. R., Masters and Journeymen. A Prehistory of Industrial Relations 1717–1800 (London, 1980),Google Scholar esp. the appendix listing strikes; Rule, J., The Experience of Labour in Eighteenth-Century England (London, n.d.), pp. 147–93.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ch. Tilly, “Britain Creates the Social Movement”, in: Social Conflict and the Political Order, op. cit.

¹² Rose, A. G., “The Plug Plot Riots of 1842 in Lancashire and Cheshire”, in: Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, LXVII (1957);Google Scholar The Chartist Experience, ed. by Epstein, J. and Thompson, D. (London, 1982);Google Scholar Prothero, I., “William Benbow and the Concept of the ‘General Strike’”, in: Past & Present, No 63 (1974);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brown, B., “Lancashire Chartism and the Mass Strike of 1842: The political economy of working-class contention” [Center for Research on Social Organization, University of Michigan, Working Paper 203] (1979);Google Scholar Calhoun, C., The Question of Class Struggle (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

¹³ Perkin, H., The Origins of Modern English Society (London, 1969), pp. 380–407,Google Scholar Tholfsen, T., Working-Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England (London, 1976),Google Scholar Fraser, D., Urban Politics in Victorian England (Leicester, 1976),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics (Brighton, 1980),Google Scholar provide useful information on the organization underpinnings of urban politics. On unions and strikes, see National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Trades' Societies and Strikes (London, 1860); Dutton, H. I. and King, J. E., Ten Per Cent and No Surrender (Cambridge, 1981);Google Scholar Price, R., Masters, Unions and Men (Cambridge, 1980);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Holbrook-Jones, M., Supremacy and Subordination of Labour (London, 1982).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Richter, D. C., “Public Order and Popular Disturbances in Great Britain, 1865–1914” (University of Maryland, Ph.D. thesis, 1965), pp. 30–31;Google Scholar Storch, R., “Popular Festivity, Social Protest and Public Order: The Devon Food Riots of 1867” (Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Meeting, Los Angeles, 04 1979).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Richter, , “Public Order and Popular Disturbances”, pp. 85, 260;Google Scholar Potter, G., “Strikes and Lockouts from the Workman's Point of View”, in: Contemporary Review, XV (1870), pp. 34–35,Google Scholar quoting Brassey; id., “Trades Unions, Strikes, and Lockouts. A Rejoinder”, ibid., XVII (1871), p. 535.

¹⁶ See Fraser, W. H., Trade Unions and Society (London, 1974), pp. 167–97,Google Scholar for a brief survey of the law regarding strikes; also Orth, J., “Striking Workmen before the Courts, 1859–1871” (University of North Carolina, School of Law, unpublished paper, 1980);Google Scholar Trades' Societies and Strikes, op. cit. The comments on Bevan are in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, XLIII, pp. 55–64. On the public support for the Newcastle engineers, see Burnett, J., Nine Hours' Movement. A History of the Engineers Strike in Newcastle and Gateshead (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1872),Google Scholar and, more recently, Allen, E. et al., The North-East Engineers' Strikes of 1871: The Nine Hours' League (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971).Google Scholar On political economy, see also Pollard, S., “Trade Unions and the Labour Market, 1870–1914”, in: Yor shire Bulletin of Social and Economic Research, XVII (1965),Google Scholar which makes a rather pessimistic argument on the ability of unions to increase labor's share of national income. See also Howell, G., “Strikes: Their Cost and Results”, in: Fraser's Magazine, New Series, XX (1879), p. 767.Google Scholar

¹⁷ “The Journeyman Engineer”, “The English Working Classes and the Paris Commune”, in: Fraser's Magazine, New Series, IV, p. 62.

¹⁸ Quoted in Potter, “A Rejoinder”, loc. cit., p. 529.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Bevan, , “The Strikes of the Past Ten Years”, loc. cit., p. 45;Google Scholar Lees, L. H., “Strikes and the Urban Hierarchy in English Industrial Towns, 1842–1901”, in: Social Conflict and the Political Order.Google Scholar

²⁰ Bevan, , “The Strikes of the Past Ten Years”, pp. 39–42; Cronin, , Industrial Conflict in Modern Britain, op. cit., pp. 159–61 and, on mining in particular, pp. 179–83.Google Scholar

²¹ On these two issues, see Garside, W. R. and Gospel, H. F.,Google Scholar “Employers and Managers: Their Organizational Structure and Changing Industrial Strategies”, in: A History of British Industrial Relations 1875–1914, op. cit.; Ch. Wrigley, “The Government and Industrial Relations”, ibid.

²² These statistics were taken originally from the Department of Employment and Productivity, British Labour Statistics: Historical Abstract, 1868–1968 (London, 1971).Google Scholar They also appear, together with extensive strike statistics, in Cronin, , Industrial Conflict in Britain, pp. 206–38.Google Scholar

²³ Cronin, J. E., “Stages, Cycles, and Insurgencies: The Economics of Unrest”, in: Processes of the World System, ed. by Hopkins, T. K. and Wallerstein, I. (London, 1980).Google Scholar

²⁴ See Table 1 for details, as well as Bevan, , “The Strikes of the Past Ten Years”;Google Scholar Howell, ,Google Scholar “Great Strikes”, loc. cit.; Report on Strikes and Lockouts in 1888. On the iron and steel workers, see Howard, N. P., “Cooling the Heat: A History of the Rise of Trade Unionism in the South Yorkshire Iron and Steel Industry, from the Origins to the First World War”, in: Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire, ed. by Pollard, S. and Holmes, C. (Barnsley, 1976).Google Scholar

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²⁶ Howell, G., Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders (London, 1902).Google Scholar More generally, see Hunt, , British Labour History, op. cit., pp. 304–15, where the contrast between the new unionism and the old is reviewed. Hunt generally opts for the “revisionist” perspective, which minimizes the difference between the two, but the evidence he marshals nevertheless makes clear that the labor movement was very different after 1889 than before.Google Scholar

²⁷ See Lewenhak, S., Women and Trades Unions (London, 1977);Google Scholar Hunt, , British Labour History, pp. 299–300.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Wigham, E., The Power to Manage (London, 1973), pp. 29–62,CrossRefGoogle Scholar on the Engineering Employers' Federation; Saville, J., “Trade Unions and Free Labour: The Background of the Taff Vale Decision”, in: Essays in Labour History, ed. by Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (London, 1960), more generally.Google Scholar

²⁹ Wrigley, Ch., The Government and Industrial Relations in Britain 1910–1921 (Loughborough, 1979), p. 5,Google Scholar quoting Buxton. On rank-and-file movements and Syndicalism, see Holton, B., British Syndicalism, 1900–1914 (London, 1976),Google Scholar and Masters, Price, Unions and Men, op. cit., pp. 238–67.Google Scholar For the view that the unrest was a matter of the trade cycle and little else, see Pelling, H., “The Labour Unrest, 1911–1914”, in Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (London, 1968).Google Scholar See also Brown, E. H. Ph., The Growth of British Industrial Relations, 1906–1914 (London, 1959).Google Scholar

³⁰ The general pattern of strikes is most clearly indicated in Askwith, G. R., Industrial Problems and Disputes (London, 1920).Google Scholar

³¹ Thus, if one calculates the ratio of the number of trade unionists (in thousands) to the peak number of strikes during strike waves, one gets the following pattern of dramatic decline: 1873–;73–1.01; 1889–90– 0.77; 1911–13–0.36. No doubt part of the drop reflects underlying shifts in the organization of industry, and a further part the spread of organization from craft to semi- and unskilled occupations and the attendant sectoral differences entailed in that, but a portion of the change must certainly be attributed to a genuine relationship between organization and strikes.

³² See, for example, Phillips, G. A., The General Strike (London, 1976).Google Scholar A view much closer to that expressed here is contained in Brown, H. Ph., The Origins of Trade Union Power (Oxford, 1983), pp. 68–88.Google Scholar

³³ The beginnings of such an interpretation are presented in my “Labour Insurgency and Class Formation: Comparative Perspectives on the Crisis of 1917–1920 in Europe”, in: Work, Community, and Power. The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900–1925, ed. by Cronin, J. E. and Sirianni, C. (Philadelphia, 1983).Google Scholar