Recent studies of industrial conflict during the First World War have challenged earlier interpretations of working-class politics in Britain. The debate has focussed on the events in west Scotland during the years when the legend of “Red Clydeside” was made. It is now commonplace to emphasise the limited progress of revolutionary politics and the presence of a powerful craft sectionalism in the industrial workforce. This essay discusses the recent research on workplace unrest, popular politics and the wartime state. Although the “new revisionism” provides an important corrective to earlier scholarship, there remain important questions which require a serious reappraisal of the forces behind the different forms of collective action which took place and their implications for the politics of socialism. It is argued that the struggles of skilled workers made an important contribution to the growth of Labour politics on the Clyde.

The record of strike activity on Clydeside is used to explore the interaction between workplace organisation and political attitudes in working-class communities, focussing in particular upon the shipyard labour force in the years immediately preceding the 1919 General Strike. The findings are used to question research by Iain McLean which minimised the political significance of industrial militancy during the period of the Red Clyde and that by Alastair Reid, which argued that the main consequences of wartime industrial experience were to strengthen social democratic perspectives. It is suggested that a limited but significant radicalisation did occur and that this was related to the specific labour relations practices of employers in the west of Scotland and the structural weakness of Clydeside's economy.

This paper examines a town in northwest England and a particular set of conditions that inhibited the growth of working-class politics during the twentieth century. The paradox of class politics in Lancaster is that despite a proletarian population, the labour movement locally remained extremely weak. Ironically, it was only upon the deindustrialisation of the town in the later 1960s that labour showed any collective strength. Explanation of quiescence in terms of paternalism and deference is rejected. Rather an account is given in terms of powerlessness. Local structural conditions rendered Lancaster workers so highly dependent that resistance to political domination was precluded.