For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: usir@salford.ac.uk.-1 - Kelly's (1998) seminal exposition and refinement of mobilization theory has generally been well received within the field of British industrial relations since it appeared a decade ago. Yet there remains a paucity of empirical studies that attempt to relate the role of activists to specific workers' struggles (for some exceptions see Taylor and Bain, 2003; Heery and Conley, 2006; Simms, 2007). Moreover Fairbrother (2005) has recently mounted a fierce, although brief and undeveloped, critique of Kelly's alleged 'theoretically blinkered', 'one-dimensional' and 'vanguardist' conception of trade union leadership. Fairbrother complains that the starting point for a Kelly-type analysis is a leader-led dichotomy, rather than the nature of work and employment relations. He insists it is necessary to throw off the shackles of this 'poverty of leadership thesis' and return to more comprehensive forms of analysis such as the sociologically-inspired workplace case studies of Beynon (1973) and Batstone et al (1977; 1978) that attempt to explore the conditions for various forms of workplace collective organisation, struggle, activism and 'leadership' in terms of period, situation, sector and circumstance.On one level Fairbrother's argument that questions of trade union leadership cannot be abstracted from the dynamics of social relations at work and its collective forms of union organisation is undoubtedly well founded. However, arguably a crucial feature of mobilization theory is the way it favours complex multi-factor explanations that seek to marry structural determination with deliberate agency. Thus while the centrality of agency in collective workplace mobilization, in particular the role of union leadership is reasserted, so is the question of the context and opportunity for collective mobilization: including, the structural conditions of labour and product markets, legal context, extent of management provocation, nature of workers' -2 -grievances, level of organisation and consciousness of workers, balance of power favourable to action, and the strength and traditions of solidarity.However, Fairbrother's explicit attempt to denigrate Kelly's emphasis on the role of union activist leadership effectively blurs the distinction between activists and members and, by re-focusing on what is implied to be a more spontaneitist dynamic, ignores the way in which even though union activists do not, and cannot, create the underlying material conditions that can lead to conflict and mobilization, they can stimulate awareness of grievances and of the potential for collective action for redress; they can take the lead in proposing and initiating such action; and they can provide cohesion to discontent by generalizing from workers' immediate economic grievances to broader, even political, concerns. In this sense union leadership can be seen to be as important as any structural or institutional complex...

Providing an account of the dynamic interrelationship between shop steward leadership and membership interaction, Ralph Darlington focuses particular attention on the much-neglected crucial role that left-wing political activists can play in shaping the nature of collective workplace relations.

Despite a thriving tradition of critical scholarship in United Kingdom-based sociology of work, Burawoy's call for a partisan organic public sociology that is part of 'a social movement beyond the academy' and Bourdieu's plea for committed scholarship in the service of the social movement against neo-liberalism have received scant attention.This article seeks to stimulate debate by presenting a framework for a left-radical organic public sociology of work based on Gramsci's concept of the connected organic intellectual rather than Bourdieu's expert committed scholar. The latter, it is argued, is ultimately incompatible with activist partisan scholarship based on democratised relations between researchers and researched. Participatory ActionResearch is offered as a methodological orientation that underpins and enables organic scholars of work to engage actively with the marginalised and labour in the co-creation of knowledge that aids their struggles for change.

Many recent pessimistic academic assessments of the prospects for the revival of European trade unionism fail adequately to capture evidence of continuing union resilience and combativity in certain areas of employment. An example is the distinctive and relatively successful form of highly militant and politicized trade unionism which has emerged in both the French and British railway sectors over the last 10 years. This has involved the repeated mobilization of members through strike action, combined with vigorous left-wing ideological opposition to both employers and government, as the pathway both to both advancing workers' interests and to revitalizing union organization. This article provides a comparative analysis of SUD-Rail and the RMT, documenting the dynamics, causes, effectiveness, limits and potential of such 'radical political unionism' and considers its implications for debates about union renewal.

While remaining in the public sector, the British Post Office has undergone massive changes in terms of its general orientation and structure over the last decade, with major implications for workplace management‐labour relations and shopfloor trade union organization. The most recent phase of restructuring within the core Royal Mail section of the Post Office has been accompanied by an assertive managerial strategy aimed at tackling the strong workplace union levels of control and autonomy that have developed in many city‐based sorting offices. Provides evidence from empirical case study research into one of the largest and most union‐militant Royal Mail sorting offices in the country based in central Liverpool. After outlining the strengths and weaknesses of workplace unionism during the mid‐1980s to the late 1980s, focuses on how the Liverpool UCW leadership have attempted to respond to Royal Mail′s 1992 restructuring initiative and HRM practices. Suggests that, notwithstanding new and complex dilemmas, workplace unionism within the Royal Mail remains relatively resilient.

Th e le a d e r s hi p c o m p o n e n t of Kelly's M o bilis a tio n Th e o ry : c o n t ri b u tio n, t e n sio n s, li mi t a tio n s a n d fu r t h e r d e v elo p m e n t D a rlin g t o n, RR h t t p:// dx. doi.o r g/ 1 0. 1 1 7 7/ 0 1 4 3 8 3 1X1 8 7 7 7 6 0 9 Ti t l e Th e le a d e r s hi p c o m p o n e n t of Kelly's M o bilis a tio n Th e o ry : c o n t ri b u tio n, t e n sio n s, li mit a tio n s a n d fu r t h e r d e v elo p m e n t A u t h o r s D a rli n g t o n, RR Typ e Articl e U RL This ve r sio n is a v ail a bl e a t : h t t p:// u sir.s alfo r d. a c. u k/id/ e p ri n t/ 4 6 3 0 2/ P u b l i s h e d D a t e 2 0 1 8 U SIR is a di git al c oll e c tio n of t h e r e s e a r c h o u t p u t of t h e U niv e r si ty of S alfo r d. W h e r e c o py ri g h t p e r mi t s, full t e x t m a t e ri al h el d in t h e r e p o si to ry is m a d e fr e ely a v ail a bl e o nli n e a n d c a n b e r e a d , d o w nlo a d e d a n d c o pi e d fo r n o nc o m m e r ci al p riv a t e s t u dy o r r e s e a r c h p u r p o s e s . Pl e a s e c h e c k t h e m a n u s c ri p t fo r a n y fu r t h e r c o py ri g h t r e s t ri c tio n s. Fo r m o r e info r m a tio n, in cl u di n g o u r p olicy a n d s u b mi s sio n p r o c e d u r e , pl e a s e c o n t a c t t h e R e p o si to ry Te a m a t: u si r@ s alfo r d. a c. u k . Taylor and Moore, 2015). Yet the nature and process of leadership and its relationship to collective mobilisation has remained relatively understudied and inadequately theorised by industrial relations (and social movement) researchers generally. In the 1970s and 1980s several highly insightful sociologically-inspired case studies provided rich narrative accounts of workplace industrial relations that confirmed the centrality of shop stewards' leadership to the dynamics of collective action (Armstrong et al., 1981; Batstone et al.,

The article provides evidence from case study research into trade union organisation and activity on the London Under‐ground during the 1990s. It explores the extent to which left‐wing political leadership influenced the collectivisation and mobilisation of workers in an adversarial direction, and whether or not this militant trade unionism was self‐defeating compared with a more moderate approach.

Against the backcloth of an upsurge in industrial militancy in Western economies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Richard Hyman crafted an unsurpassed Marxist analysis of the political economy of industrial relations. He drew attention to the way in which a hierarchy of specialist trade union representatives (notably full-time officials) had acquired interests and perspectives which tended to channel union policies towards accommodation with employers and governments. Officials acted cautiously, with concern for continuity and stability rather than take risks as leaders of mass activity and struggle (Hyman, 1975a: 74). In common with other Marxistinformed writers on trade unionism