¹ Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York and London, 1974), p. 27Google Scholar.

² Elger, Tony, “Valorization and Deskilling: A Critique of Braverman”, Capital and Class, 7 (1979)Google Scholar; Littler, C.R. and Salaman, G., “Bravermania and Beyond: Recent Theories of the Labour Process”, Sociology, 16 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stark, D., “Class Struggle and the Transformation of the Labour process”, Theory and Society, 9 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Price, Richard, “The Labour Process and Labour History”, Social History, 8 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Elbaum, B. and Lazonick, W., “An Institutional Perspective on British Decline”, in Elbaum, B. and Lazonick, W. (eds), The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; see also Nichols, Theo, The British Worker Question: A New Look at Workers and Productivity in Manufacturing (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁵ Lewchuk, W., American Technology and the British Vehicle Industry (Cambridge, 1987), p. 215Google Scholar.

⁶ Lewchuk, W., “The Role of the British Government in the Spread of Scientific Management and Fordism”, Journal of Economic History, 44 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Edwards, Paul et al. , “Great Britain: Still Muddling Through”, in Ferner, A. and Hyman, R. (eds), Industrial Relations in the New Europe (Oxford, 1992), p. 5Google Scholar.

⁸ Fox, Alan, History and Heritage (London, 1985), p. 227Google Scholar; this view of the origins of industrial relations has many parallels with the critique of an “aristocratic establishment” in, for example, Wiener, Martin J., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Anderson, Perry, “Origins of the Present Crisis”, in Anderson, P. and Blackburn, R., Towards Socialism (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Bamett, Correlli, The Audit of War (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁹ Pollard, S., Britain's Prime and Britain's Decline (London, 1989), p. 54Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Friedman, Andrew L., Industry and Labour (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Tolliday notes that a loss of managerial control might simply lead to dog-eat-dog conflict rather than control passing to the union: Tolliday, S., “High Tide and After: Coventry Engineering Workers and Shop Floor Bargaining”, in Lancaster, B. and Mason, T. (eds), Life and Labour in a Twentieth Century City (Coventry, 1986)Google Scholar. But for the most part, employer conservatism and worker resistance are simply added together as if they operated in the same way to inhibit the rationalization of production organization.

¹² Gospel, H.F., Markets, Firms and the Management of Labour in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1992), p. 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Political and Economic Planning, Thrusters and Sleepers (London, 1965).

¹³ Chandler, A.D., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), p. 244Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Child, J., “Quaker Employers and Industrial Relations”, Sociological Review, 12 (1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Northcott, C.H. told the 36th Oxford Management Conference in 1937 that at Rowntree's cocoa plant in York, scientific management had been tested “with the workers educated to accept it as a procedure, philosophy and idea”: Scientific Management in Great Britain, (Management Journals Ltd, 1937)Google Scholar; Morris, told the Institution of Automobile Engineers that if a man can go out on the town “and amuse himself, he will come to the works the next morning full of keenness” (Proceedings, Institution of Automobile Engineers, XVIII (1923–1924), p. 442Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Noble, D., America by Design: Science, Technology and Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York, 1977), p. 264Google Scholar; idem, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Innovation (Oxford, 1986), p. 34.

¹⁶ Thoms, D. and Donnelly, T., The Motor Car Industry in Coventry Since the 1890s (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Melman, S., Decision Making and Productivity (Oxford, 1958), p. 36Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Edwards, Paul, Conflict at Work (Oxford, 1986), p. 45Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Richards, Francis H., “The Increasing Productiveness of Labour”, Cassiers Magazine, 17 (11 1899–April 1950), p. 518Google Scholar.

²⁰ Doray, Bernard, From Taylorism to Fordism: A Rational Madness (London, 1988), p. 62Google Scholar.

²¹ Burawoy, Michael, The Politics of Production (London, 1985)Google Scholar; despite all the sound and fury generated by Braverman's use of the notion “class-in-itseif”, both he and Burawoy appeal to E.P. Thompson's notion of class-as-relationship! Ibid., p. 39; Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital, p. 409.

²² Tolliday and Zeitlin are setting up straw men when they assert, against radical economists, Marxists and others that, “employers and managers must be treated as potentially autonomous historical actors whose substantive choices can modify as well as reflect their environment”; Tolliday, S. and Zeitlin, J., “Employers and Industrial Relations – Between Theory and History”, in Tolliday, and Zeitlin, , The Power to Manage (London, 1991), p. 2Google Scholar.

²³ Armstrong, Peter, “Labour and Monopoly Capital”, in Hyman, Richard and Streeck, Wolfgang (eds), New Technology and Industrial Relations (Oxford, 1988), p. 144Google Scholar.

²⁴ Brown, Richard K., Understanding Industrial Organizations: Theoretical Perspectives in Industrial Sociology (London, 1992), p. 208Google Scholar.

²⁵ Littler, Craig R., The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies (Guildford, 1982), p. 3Google Scholar.

²⁶ Price, The Labour Process, p. 62.

²⁷ Batstone, E.I. et al. , New Technology and the Process of Labour Regulation (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Lenin, V.I., “What is to be Done?”, Selected Works (Moscow, 1970), pp. 119–270Google Scholar.

²⁹ More, C., Skill and the English Working Class (London, 1980)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Zeitlin, J., “Labour Strategies of British Engineering Employers 1890–1922”, in Gospel, H.F. and Littler, C.R. (eds), Managerial Strategies and Industrial Relations (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

³¹ McKinlay, A. and Zeitlin, J., “The Meanings of Managerial Prerogatives: Industrial Relations and the Organization of Work in British Engineering 1880–1939”, Business History, 31, 2 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² Penn, R., “Skilled Manual Workers in the Labour Process 1965–1964”, in Wood, S. (ed.), The Degradation of Work? (London, 1983), p. 78Google Scholar.

³³ I discuss some of the evidence for this in more detail in “Scientific Management and Production Management Practice in Britain between the Wars”, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 1 (March 1996).

³⁴ Tisdall, P., Agents of Change: The Development and Practice of Management Consultancy (London, 1982)Google Scholar.

³⁵ Herbert, Alfred, “Machine Tools and Workshop Methods of a Former Period”, The Engineer, 127 (03 1919), pp. 283–284Google Scholar.

³⁶ Montgomery, D., The Fall of the House of Labour (Cambridge, 1989), p. 231Google Scholar.

³⁷ “Modem Manufacturing Methods”, Engineering, 75 (February 1903), pp. 181–182.

³⁸ “Industrial Administration”, Engineering, 117 (March 1924), p. 311; see also, “Engineers of the Future”, The Engineer, 136 (December 1923), p. 672.

³⁹ Scaife, J.D., replying to the toast at the Third Annual General Meeting, Institution of Production Engineers, Proceedings, 4 (1924–1925), p. 9Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Hiscock, W.J., “The Production Manager and the Progress Chief”, Machinery, 14 (1919), pp. 693–694Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Lawrence, Max, “Production and the Engineer”, Proceedings, Institution of Production Engineers, 1 (1921–1922), pp. 23–41Google Scholar.

⁴² Hiscock, W.J., “The Progress Department – Does it Pay?”, Machinery, 16 (1920), p. 335Google Scholar.

⁴³ Maplethorpe, H., “The Foreman and His Job”, The Foreman, 34 (1923)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Child, J. and Partridge, B., Lost Managers: Supervisors in British Industry and Society (London, 1982)Google Scholar; National Institute of Industrial Psychology, The Foreman: A Study of Supervision in British Industry (London, 1951)Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ “The Duties of the Foreman”, Cassiers Engineering and Industrial Management, 5 (January 1921), pp. 11–12.

⁴⁶ “Report on Education for Foremanship”, The Foreman, 36 (July 1923).

⁴⁷ Burnham, T.H., Modern Foremanship (London, 1937), p. 55Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ McGuffie, Chris, Working in Metal: Management and Labour in the Metal Industries of Europe and the USA, 1890–1914 (London, 1985), p. 8Google Scholar. The case for the persistence of “craft control” can only be made by mixing up control which flows specifically from the deployment of highly specialized craft knowledge with the effects of partial job monopolies, and job controls of all kinds, by workers who may or may not be skilled, and with the effects of collective bargaining on the freedom of action of employers. Lazonick, for example, equates craft control with “the management of production”, but it is clear that by craft he means job controls, and the latter are certainly not “management”. The fact that pieceworkers have had to chase up materials late coming from the stores does not mean that employers have been willing to leave the control of work organization to the shop floor. Nor does the involvement of shop stewards in overtime schedules and staffing on jobs mean that they are “managing production”, though they may be laying down conditions for those who are: Lazonick, W., “Employment Relations in Manufacturing and International Competition”, in Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald, The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 2: 1860–1939 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 100Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Reports on apprenticeship and training in The Engineer. “Education of Apprentices”, vol. 97 (January 1904), p. 43; “The Training of Managers”, vol. 99 (March 1905), p. 320; “The Midland Railway Co. System”, vol. 107 (April 1909), p. 399; “Unskilled Labour”, vol. 108 (October 1909), p. 372.

⁵⁰ Fleming, A.P., “Training of Apprentices for Craftsmanship”, Engineering, 143 (03 1937), p. 274Google Scholar. Metropolitan Vickers was unusual among big companies in having an apprenticeship scheme at all. The percentage of apprentices moving into the office cannot be taken as typical but indicates a trend.

⁵¹ “Skill and the Machine Age”, Machinery, 36 (August 1930), p. 625.

⁵² “Apprenticeship and Training”, Engineering, 126 (July 1928), pp. 107–108.

⁵³ Jefferys, J.B., The Story of the Engineers (London, 1945), p. 207Google Scholar; Yates, M.L., Wages and Labour Çonditions in British Engineering (London, 1937), p. 32Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ “The Status of Engineering Workers”, Amalgamated Engineering Union, Monthly Report and Journal (February 1937).

⁵⁵ Engineering and Allied Employers National Federation Minute Book, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, January, May, August, October (1900).

⁵⁶ Engineering and Allied Employers National Federation, Microfilm Records, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS 237/1/161.

³⁷ EEF Microfilm Records, MSS 237/1/160.

⁵⁸ Ibid, MSS 237/13/4/5.

⁵⁹ EEF Minutes, March 1925.

⁶⁰ Ibid., October 1929.

⁶¹ Ibid., July 1936.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Hyman, Richard, Strikes (London, 1977) p. 124Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ AEU Journal, February 1935.

⁶⁵ Tanner, Jack, “Our Next Steps – Left Foot First”, AEU Journal (04 1925)Google Scholar; Smith, Frank from the AEU Branch in Battersea wrote pointing out that, “As the instruments of progress the operative engineers have been used first, to dilute and simplify the labours of all other workers. Parallel with this we have greatly simplified and diluted our own, and in the very nature of things this process must continue. Progress demands and insists on the simplification of the methods of production” (09 1923)Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ EEF Minutes, February 1924.

⁶⁷ AEU Journal, October 1926.

⁶⁸ Cole, G.D.H., British Trade Unionism Today (London, 1945), p. 354Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ In 1920 a rough estimate by the EEF classified 25 per cent of machinemen as skilled, but a higher percentage will have been paid as skilled workers in the 1930s: EEF Microfilm Records, MSS 237/13/3.

⁷⁰ EEF Minutes, May 1946.

⁷¹ Hart, R.A. and McKay, D.I., “Engineering Earnings in Britain 1914–1968”, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, ser. A, 138 (1975)Google Scholar; Knowles, K.G.J.C. and Robertson, D.J., “Earnings in Engineering 1926–1948”, Bulletin of Oxford University Institute of Statistics, 13 (1951)Google Scholar.

⁷² Renold, C.G., “Mass Production and Skill in Industry”, Cassiers Industrial Management, 15 (05 1929), p. 157Google Scholar.

⁷³ E.J. Hobsbawm, “Artisans and Labour Aristocrats?”, in idem, Worlds of Labour: Further Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1984), p. 269. Hobsbawm refers to, among others, Lewchuk, McLelland, Reid, Melling, Price and Zeitlin.

⁷⁴ Lewchuk, American Technology.

⁷⁵ Barr, Professor, of Barr and Stroud, responding to Rowan's paper on premium bonus, Engineering, 75 (03 1903), p. 411Google Scholar; William Rowan Thompson thought premium bonus brought to light defects and shortcomings in the management and organization of the works: EEF Microfilm Records, MSS 237/3/1/205.

⁷⁶ Ibid., MSS 237/3/1/204.

⁷⁷ Barth, Carl, “Premium Systems as Applied to Machine Shops”, The Mechanical Engineer 25 (1910), pp. 112–113Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ EEF Microfilm Records, MSS 237/13/3/4.

⁷⁹ Cole, G.D.H., The Payment of Wages (London, 1918), p. 53Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Letters, The Engineer (January 1917), p. 45.

⁸¹ Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions, p. 86.

⁸² Mavor, S., “Payment by Results and Ratefixing”, Journal of the Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland (10 1930), pp. 11–53Google Scholar; idem, “Time Study in Engineering”, ibid. (October 1931), pp. 53–72; idem, “The Mavor and Coulson System of Time Study and Rate Fixing”, ibid. (October 1932), pp. 13–53.

⁸³ See the debates among production engineers between 1930 and 1932: Proceedings, Institution of Production Engineers, vols 10 and 11.

⁸⁴ Austin's, works manager, Englebach, C.R.F., claimed that each job was graded according to skill, that possible piecework earnings were worked out theoretically in advance by the efficiency department, and that inefficient operatives were weeded out: “Some Notes on Reorganising a Works to Increase Production”, Proceedings, Institution of Automobile Engineers, XXII (1927–1928), p. 510Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ EEF Microfilm Records, MSS 237/3/1/235;Downs, Laura Lee, “Industrial Decline, Rationalisation and Equal Pay: The Bedaux Strike at the Rover Automobile Company”, Social History, 15 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁶ EEF Minutes, June 1933.

⁸⁷ Ibid., July 1933.

⁸⁸ Ibid., June 1945.

⁸⁹ Records of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS 292/112/2.

⁹⁰ Brownlow Papers (undated); private collection held by Ms Mildred Brownlow, former research director for the Bedaux Company (hereafter Brownlow).

⁹¹ Trades Union Congress, Bedaux: The T.U.C. Examines the Bedaux System of Payment by Results, TUC MSS 292/112/2.

⁹² TUC to W. Collingson of the National Union of Leather Workers, 15 February 1934, TU C MSS 292/112/3.

⁹³ McConnell, 28 April 1933, Ministry of Labour Reports, Public Record Office, London, LAB2 149/IR404/1933.

⁹⁴ Institute of Personnel Management Records, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, Vanesta MSS 97/5/17.

⁹⁵ Brownlow, undated.

⁹⁶ White, M., Payment Systems in Britain (Aldershot, 1981), p. 70Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Currie, R.M., “Work Study – The Basic Management Service”, Time and Motion Study (11 1964)Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ Littler makes a similar point, observing that craft deskilling has occurred in a nonconfrontational way with the growth of new industries, geographical locations and “the development of new production processes”, The Development of the Labour Process, p. 141.

⁹⁹ Thompson, Paul argues that Marx too, “failed to reconcile adequately his analysis of the transformation of work and the form and content of workers' struggles”, The Nature of Work (London, 1983), p. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Thompson, Paul (Snr), “Playing at Being Skilled Men”, Social History, 13 (1988), p. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Ibid, p. 67.

¹⁰² Austin, Bertram and Lloyd, W. Francis, quoted in Brown, Geoff, Sabotage (Nottingham, 1977), p. 228Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Edwards, “Muddling Through”, p. 6.

¹⁰⁴ Hobsbawm, “Artisans”, p. 266.

¹⁰⁵ E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', in idem (ed.), Customs in Common (London, 1991), p. 390.