Government versus Trade Unionism in British Politics since 1968

Dorfman, Gerald A.

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-03891-6

Cited by 25 publications

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“…The Labour government's incomes policy, a key component of its Social Contract with the trade unions, had now collapsed, like all preceding incomes policies as far back as 1948 (Dorfman, 1973; 1979). In light of the trajectory of his views, it is hardly surprising to find Roberts heaping praise on the Conservative programme of industrial relations legislation designed to remove legal protection from sympathy strikes, limit picketing to one's own place of work, erode the closed shop and oblige unions to hold secret ballots before official strikes.…”

Section: The Evolution Of Ben Roberts's Industrial Relations Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

In from the cold?BenRoberts and Conservative industrial relations reform

Kelly¹

2015

Industrial Relations Journal

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Section: The Evolution Of Ben Roberts's Industrial Relations Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

In from the cold?BenRoberts and Conservative industrial relations reform

Kelly¹

2015

Industrial Relations Journal

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“…Arguably, as trade unions became more powerful during the post-war period (perhaps as a result of the impact of full employment upon bargaining power) so the policy mix within the UK polity became disoriented. Such incoherence was experienced in an intense fashion between 1964 and 1979 as unions were able to exercise a veto over policy development (for a narrative see Whitehead 1985; see also Dorfman 1979;Fishbein 1984;Hall 1986). Initiatives to resolve such inconsistencies merely provoked union militancy and resulted in policy instability as economic strategy oscillated in political terms between left-wing administrations and right-wing ones.…”

Section: The British Labour Movement and The Uk Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

New Labour in the Global Economy: Partisan Politics and the Social Democratic Model

Wickham‐Jones

2000

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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“…Pluralism, as political theory, celebrated the liberal democratic political system and portrayed it as driven by the free competition of parties and interest groups, from which preferences emerged that parliamentarians and a neutral state machine implemented. A good starting point for understanding the post-war perspective on the unions-party link of liberal and social democratic pluralists is the concept of 'pluralistic stagnation' , applied to British politics by Samuel Beer (1965 and1982), and in a series of studies of British unions by Gerald Dorfman (1974Dorfman ( , 1979Dorfman ( and 1983 and Robert Taylor (1980, 1993and 2000. The concept of 'pluralistic stagnation' depicted post-war Britain as characterised by a new producer-group politics, in which capital, labour and the State bargained collectively on a range of public policy issues.…”

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Too much pluralism, not enough socialism

Ludlam¹

2018

Interpreting the Labour Party

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A central object of Labour's re-branding as 'New Labour' was to distance it from its trade union affiliates (Gould 1998: 257-8). The relationship was tense before and after the 1997 election, when Blair reduced the unions' formal power in the party, and restricted employment policy initiatives largely to his predecessors' promises (Ludlam 2001). But discontent was limited by real union gains, and tension eased markedly between Labour's mid-term election losses in 1999 and the 2001 election campaign, in which the unions played a crucial role. After the 2001 campaign, though, bitter conflict erupted over the Government's drive to place more public services under private sector management, and discontent over New Labour's stance on EU labour market policy became more intense. To younger students of British politics, this public conflict may have appeared novel. Since the mid-1980s most unions had supported Labour's organisational and policy modernisation under Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Only the occasional public reference to the allegedly 'bad old days' of the 1970s acted as a reminder of earlier conflicts. Yet in the first postwar study of the labour alliance-the unions-Labour Party link-Martin Harrison (1960: 12) had dubbed it 'the most controversial relationship in British politics'. And thirty years later Lewis Minkin (1992: 646) echoed Harrison, describing 'a disputatious and controversial relationship-the most contentious in British political life'. Nevertheless, the relationship has attracted little specialist scholarship. Between Harrison's and Minkin's seminal studies, just seven other monographs appeared: Irving Richter's studies of the politics of three affiliated unions (1973); Leo Panitch's study of incomes policy (1976); William Muller's study of unionsponsored MPs (1977); Lewis Minkin's study of the Labour Party Conference (1978); Derek Fatchett's study of the first struggle over political fund ballots (1987); Andrew Taylor's analysis of the link during the Social Contract era and its aftermath (1987); and Paul Webb's study of the link's institutional forms and of union members' electoral behaviour (1992). These monographs have not generated a sustained academic dialogue about the linkage, although Minkin's Contentious Alliance was the result of an extended 10

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Government versus Trade Unionism in British Politics since 1968

Cited by 25 publications

References 0 publications

In from the cold?BenRoberts and Conservative industrial relations reform

In from the cold?BenRoberts and Conservative industrial relations reform

New Labour in the Global Economy: Partisan Politics and the Social Democratic Model

Too much pluralism, not enough socialism

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