The Board of Trade and Industrial Relations 1896–1914

Abstract

From the standpoint of the late Victorian and Edwardian governing classes, the most disturbing feature of the ‘social problem’ was the breakdown of British industrial relations. The long ideological and political truce observed by organized labour more or less since the 18405 had ended. A new and more militant trade unionism had emerged which condemned the consensus policy of the craft unions and challenged both the prerogatives of management and the conventional criteria of wage determination. Not only did it endanger social stability, it was also regarded in government circles as a major obstacle to British economic growth. Industrial unrest would, it was feared, disrupt production, intensify resistance to technical innovation, and weaken Britain's cost competitiveness in world markets. In the establishment press, in the parliamentary reports, and in the political memoirs and diaries of the period, one therefore finds a growing concern to secure industrial peace; a concern reflected in the growth of state intervention in industrial relations.

The Origins of Unemployment Insurance in Edwardian Britain

“…6 However, thereafter, Davidson withdrew the argument that the civil servants of the Board of Trade were pro-labor social reformers, and instead put forward a new interpretation that the labor policy by the Board of Trade tended to support the employers' side in cases of industrial disputes and embodied a conservative vision of social control to constrain the labor movement. 7 However, Davidson has not analyzed unemployment insurance through his new perspective.…”