First Published in 1979, Industrial Conflict in Modern Britain examines the unique rhythm of British strikes since the 1880’s and suggests that the explosive pattern of recurring strike waves provides the key to understanding both the evolution of British industrial relations and the major changes that have taken place in working class culture and behaviour. Two major themes emerge from this analysis: to explain how and why strikes themselves occur, and the association between industrial conflict and social relations. This thorough critique of prevailing research and concept within labour history, provides insight into the cause of strike waves, the varying propensity of workers in different industries to engage in strike action, and into the general history of British trade unionism. This is a must read for scholars and researchers of British labour history, British trade unionism and Industrial sociology.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.
First Published in 1982, Social Conflict and the Political Order in Modern Britain offers a selection of work on British social history done by scholars working in a distinctly American context. The authors strongly feel that the way forward in social history is not some retreat into still more detailed, apolitical history, nor a move away from social analysis back towards a study of the purely political. Rather, it seems that the most fruitful path to follow is to build upon the strengths and achievements of the previous social history with a view towards theorizing its political significance while struggling to create a new kind of political history that will be more integrally social. The book brings important themes like Britain and the social movements; strikes and the urban hierarchy in English industrial towns; British dockers during First World War; the British Labour and the Cold War; and rethinking labour history and the importance of work. This is a must read for scholars and researchers of labour history, British history, social history and history in general.
In the years following World War II the health and well-being of the nation was of primary concern to the British government. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between health and stress in post-war Britain through a series of carefully connected case studies.
First published in 1999, this volume describes the political climate and state of trade unions after the second world war in Britain. Detailing the transition of individuals who had survived in the war or had taken part in the war effort to going back a civilian life in 1945. Following the rise of the Labour party in Britain until 1964.
This title was first published in 2001. Nineteenth-century employers played a crucial role in the training and education of young workers in England. This multi-disciplinary study traces the connection between problems of technical education development and the increasingly antagonistic relations with skilled workers, culminating in the Great Strike and Lockout of 1897. Cronin demonstrates that employers, dominated by economic short-termism, extended their hegemony beyond the boundaries of the factory gates. Their reluctance to endorse and sponsor technical education radically influenced the perception of technical education held by government and local authorities.
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.
17 The National Free Labour Association: Working-Class Opposition to New Unionism in Britain by Geoffrey Alderman -- Part Five Trade Unions, Employers and the State -- 18 The British State, the Business Community and the Trade Unions by John Saville -- 19 Industrial Structure, Employer Strategy and the Diffusion of Job Control in Britain, 1880-1920 by Jonathan Zeitlin -- 20 Repression or Integration? The State, Trade Unions and Industrial Disputes in Imperial Germany by Klaus Saul -- Part Six Trade Unions and the Political Labour Movement -- 21 Trade Unions and the Labour Party in Britain by Jay M. Winter -- 22 The Free Trade Unions and Social Democracy in Imperial Germany by Hans Mommsen -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.
