This volume is an attempt to trace the development of government peace-making in industry from its first reluctant assumption of the function by the non-interventionalist Liberals in 1893 until 2 September 1974, when, on trade union insistence, it was handed over to an autonomous body. I have interpreted the subject widely to include not only the settlement of disputes but also their prevention, the provision of services, official and public discussion of possible ways of improving things, even when they have come to nothing, and indeed the whole field of government industrial relations policy.
Attention is centred on the department specifically made responsible for dealing with these matters, the Labour Department of the Board of Trade established in 1893 which became the Ministry of Labour in 1917, the Ministry of Labour and National Service in 1939, the Ministry of Labour again in 1959, the Department of Employment and Productivity in 1968 and the Department of Employment in 1970. But it has been necessary to look beyond the department in periods of strife when Ministers and Prime Ministers, Cabinets and Parliaments, even the national electorate have become involved. This has been particularly true since the Second World War, when successive governments have tried to restrain inflationary wage claims, so that most major disputes have been more between the government and the unions than between employers and workers.
In threading my way through the trends of policy and the complex relationships between individual politicians and civil servants, employers and union leaders and workers, within the shifting balances of power and against the background of a seldom predictable public opinion, I have been immensely helped from the beginning by the shrewd guidance of Sir Harold Emmerson, who read the whole of my manuscript. Sir Frederick Leggett, in his ninetieth year, drew freely and patiently on memories going back to 1904. Mr Rodney Lowe,

lgrsnf/K:\springer\10.1007%2F978-1-349-01968-7.pdf

nexusstc/Strikes and the Government 1893–1974/9a968c818540e01e87c4324af0cf8941.pdf

zlib/no-category/Eric Wigham (auth.)/Strikes and the Government 1893–1974_2668327.pdf

Eric L. Wigham

Macmillan Education UK

Red Globe Press

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

lg1458851

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Front Matter....Pages i-viii
The Government Steps In 1893–1906....Pages 1-17
Unorganised Revolt 1907–1914....Pages 18-33
Industrial Truce 1914–1918....Pages 34-46
Organised Revolt 1919–1926....Pages 47-64
The Challenge Abandoned 1926–1939....Pages 65-82
Strikes are Banned 1940–1951....Pages 83-105
Towards a Wages Policy 1951–1964....Pages 106-132
Harold Wilson Surrenders 1964–1970....Pages 133-155
Edward Heath is Vanquished 1970–1974....Pages 156-180
The Trade Unions on Top 1974....Pages 181-196
Back Matter....Pages 197-206

2016-03-14