Trade unions and the management of industrial conflict 1996

with the views about the attitudes and mood of workers expressed by those directly concerned with industrial conflict. The concept of the 'working class' has been a major preoccupation and a source of controversy among sociologists for more than a hundred years, and there is an extensive sociological literature on the subject. 40 It is important to be aware, however, that for the state in the period under study the term had a precise meaning. A good illustration of this precision is to be found in the report by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade to the Royal Commission on Labour in 1894. In this report the term 'working class' refers to 'the industrial class . . . especially that portion of the five and a half million males (in England and Wales) who are adult workmen (over ten years of age) and engaged in productive as contrasted with distributive enterprise. The class engaged in transport adds an appreciable but very vague and fluctuating contingent and the industrial population of Scotland and Ireland has to be taken into account.' 41 No modern-day sociologist would sanction such a narrow definition of class, not least because of its blindness to gender and ethnicity. Nevertheless, this is what is meant in discussions of the working class in state papers at this time, even during the First World War when women formed an appreciable proportion of the 'industrial class'. ## PLAN OF THE BOOK The book is organized in the following way. Chapter 1 analyses those theories of trade unionism which influenced the study and provides the theoretical context for the empirical examination of trade unions and their role in industrial relations policy between 1910 and 1921. It could be argued that industrial relations covers more than just trade unionism, and, of course, it does; but the core of industrial relations is trade unionism. As Allen has emphasized, industrial relations arise out of the prime economic relationship in society, which is the buying and selling of labour power, and there is perpetual interaction between the buyers and sellers, for three reasons. 42 Firstly, there is an enormous imbalance of economic power between the two classes -there are many sellers and relatively few buyers, and the latter are dominant over the former in every sphere of activity through their ownership of the means of production. Secondly, this imbalance is accentuated because members of the labour market possess varying degrees of freedom to exploit this power position for their own advantages; and lastly, there ## Trade Unions and the Management of Industrial Conflict provides important insights into the relationship between different departments of state. Chapter 7 focuses on the resurgence of large-scale industrial conflict and the threat of a general strike in the immediate post-war period. This chapter centres on the Ministry of Labour's detailed analysis of the prospects for a general strike, which reveals the limits and possibilities of both state and trade union action. The concluding chapter draws together the major themes of the book. An appendix provides a discussion of the status of the most heavily used and cited government records in studies of this period, which suggests that these should be looked at more critically. This book offers a new perspective on the relationship between trade unions and the state in the period 1910-21. Using a range of primary sources it explores the constraints placed by industrial conflict on both state and trade union action. It aims to contribute to and clarify some of the main issues raised by the Rank and Filist debate through an analysis of the sources from which state industrial relations policy derived for the whole of this period. Offers a perspective on the relationship between trade unions and the state in the period 1910-21. Using a range of primary sources, this book explores the constraints placed by industrial conflict on both state and trade union action. Examines the role of trade unions and trade union leaders played in the British State's management of industrial conflict during the years 1910-1921