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“Rank and Filism” and Labour History: A Rejoinder to Price and Cronin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Jonathan Zeitlin
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Few theoretical paradigms in labour history are so deeply entrenched as “rank and filism”. It was only to be expected, therefore, that a frontal assault on its assumptions would provoke a vigorous reaction. The responses to my article by Richard Price and James Cronin thus offer a welcome opportunity to clarify the theoretical claims of “rank and filism” and reassess its empirical plausibility as an interpretation of British labour history. But as in any clash between rival theoretical perspectives, the points at issue in this debate extend beyond factual disagreements to the meaning of basic concepts and the standards of proof involved in their assessment, and neither party fully recognizes itself in the account of their ideas presented by the other. No accumulation of discordant facts can conclusively disprove a theory, as students of scientific revolutions have demonstrated, but readers will have to judge for themselves whether the counter-evidence I have presented amounts to minor discrepancies which can be satisfactorily accommodated within the assumptions of “rank and filism” or fundamental anomalies which necessitate the abandonment of the paradigm itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 89 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1989

References

1 For the concept of scientific paradigms and the ensuing debate, see Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (rev. ed., Chicago, 1970)Google Scholar; Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan (eds), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suppe, Frederick (ed.), The Structure of Scientific Theories (Urbana, IL, 1974)Google Scholar; Barnes, Barry, T.S. Kuhn and Social Science (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hirst, Paul and Wooley, Penny, Social Relations and Human Attributes (London, 1982), pp. 265–7.Google Scholar

2 See also my “Shop Floor Bargaining and the State: A Contradictory Relationship”, in Tolliday, Steven and Zeitlin, Jonathan (eds), Shop Floor Bargaining and the State (Cambridge, 1985), esp. pp. 5–8.Google Scholar

3 Price, Richard, Masters, Unions and Men: Work Control in Building and the Rise of Labour, 1830–1914 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Hyman, Richard, “The Politics of Workplace Trade Unionism: Recent Tendencies and Some Problems for Theory”, Capital and Class, no. 8 (1979), pp. 54–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Burgess, Keith, The Origins of British Industrial Relations (London, 1975), pp. vi–xi, 309–10Google Scholar, who places greater emphasis on the sociological and ideological differentiation of union leaders from the “rank and file” resulting from their bargaining relationship with employers.

5 Cronin, James, “Strikes, 1870–1914”, in Wrigley, C.J (ed.), A History of British Industrial Relations, 1875–1914 (Brighton, 1982), p. 93, n. 6.Google Scholar

6 Price, , Masters, Unions and Men, p. 8Google Scholar; Hyman, , Industrial Relations: A Marxist In troduction (London, 1975), p. 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the Marxist analysis of the employment relationship which underlies these formulations, see Price, , Masters, Unions and Men, pp. 7–9Google Scholar; and Hyman, , Industrial Relations, pp. 18–27.Google Scholar

7 Price, , Masters, Unions and Men, p. 17.Google Scholar Cf. the echo of this formulation, stripped of its explicit theoretical content, in Cronin's discussion of “the great waves of militancy of 1871–3,1889–90 and 1911–13”: “although on the surface the demands usually concerned wages, piecework, apprentices and similar narrow, ‘economistic issues’, the real issue was power, which is, of course, the essence of the entire history of strikes” (“Strikes”, p. 92).

8 Hyman, , Industrial Relations, p. 199Google Scholar; see also pp. 97–9 and 184–203.

9 The quotation from Granisci which illustrated this view was in fact taken from an earlier pamphlet by Hyman, on Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism (London, 1972), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

10 Price, , “‘What's in a Name’”, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Masters, Unions and Men, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 25, 30.

12 Price, , Masters, Unions and Men, p. 17Google Scholar; Hyman, , “Politics of Workplace Trade Unionism” p. 61.Google Scholar

13 Hyman, , Industrial Relations, pp. 42–3Google Scholar; idem, “Politics of Workplace Trade Unionism”, pp. 59–60, 55–56.Google Scholar

14 See, for example, the quotation from Clegg, Fox and Thompson cited by Price, “‘What's in a Name?’”, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar For a fuller discussion of these writers' view, see my “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”, Economic History Review, 2nd series, LI, 2 (1987).Google Scholar

15 Cronin, , “The ‘Rank and File’”, p. 82Google Scholar; Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, p. 70.Google Scholar

16 Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, pp. 16–21Google Scholar; “The Labour Process and Labour History”, Social History, 8 (1983), p. 61Google Scholar; Labour in British Society: An Interpretative History (London, 1986), pp. 83–8, 93–4, 127–30.Google Scholar For a valuable discussion of the sectionalism of job control practices on the waterfront, see Lovell, John, “Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism in Britain, 1850–1914”, International Review of Social History, 32 (1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Cronin, , “The ‘Rank and File’”, p. 82Google Scholar; Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, p. 72.Google Scholar

18 See, for example, the cases of Bow, McLachlan (Paisley), 1914: EEF Archives, microfilm P(2)19; William Beardmore (Dalmuir), 1915: Ibid., P(4)l; and “Overtime: Returns from Associations, September 1921”, Ibid., O(7)28. The national negotiations on working conditions can be followed in the multi-volume transcripts held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS. 237/1/13/1 and 237/1/12/4–13. For a fuller analysis, see my forthcoming book, The Triumph of Adversarial Bargaining: Industrial Relations in British Engineering, 1880–1939 (Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar

19 See, for example, the discussion of the relationship between the ASE executive and unofficial strikers during the First World War, in Zeitlin, , “‘Rank and Filism’ and British Labour History: A Critique”, p. 50.Google Scholar

20 Thus, as Lovell argues, “The limited and conditional recognition accorded to the national unions seems to confirm Price's view as to the nature of formalised industrial relations systems. Yet for unions that aspired to more than a merely local significance, there was no alternative but to come to terms with the large steamship companies. The terms upon which such an accommodation could be reached might not, from the union standpoint, have been ideal, but some degree of joint regulation, on a permanent basis, was surely preferable to a continuance of unilateral managerial control, restrained only by intermittent outbursts of spontaneous insurgency […]. National union leaders looked towards the transformation of the casual dock labour market as a whole, a comprehensive change entailing standardised conditions and greater regularity of employment for all dockers. Such a strategy, however […] held greatest appeal for the weakest among them, so that work groups that had discovered a capacity to assert their sectional interests were less inclined to compromise their own immediate objectives in the interest of the long-run policy goals of the institution” (“Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism”, pp. 247, 249).Google Scholar

21 In addition to the cases discussed in my original article, see Lovell, , “Sail, Steam and Emergent Dockers' Unionism”, especially p. 246Google Scholar: “[…] formal procedures, in them selves, did not threaten traditional regulatory practices. They could in fact contribute to their amplification and more general observance”.

22 Cronin, , “The ‘Rank and File’”, p. 82Google Scholar; Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, pp. 67–9; 72–3Google Scholar; Labour in British Society, pp. 100–101.Google Scholar

23 See Jones, Gareth Stedman, “‘Class Expression’ or ‘Social Control’? Reflections on Recent Trends in the Social History of Leisure”, in his Languages of Class (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; and Thompson, F.M.L., “Social Control in Victorian Britain”, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXXIV, 2 (1981).Google Scholar

24 Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, p. 69.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 73.

26 Hyman, Richard, “Rank-and-File Movements and Workplace Organisation, 1914–39”, in Wrigley, C.J. (ed.), A History of British Industrial Relations, 1914–39 (Brighton, 1986), pp. 149–52Google Scholar; Undy, Roger, “The Devolution of Bargaining Levels and Responsibilities in the Transport and General Workers' Union 1965–75”, Industrial Relations Journal 5 (1975).Google Scholar

27 Cronin, , “The ‘Rank and File’”, p. 84Google Scholar; Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, p. 64.Google Scholar

28 Cronin, , “The ‘Rank and File’”, pp. 83–4, 87–8Google Scholar; Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, pp. 74–77Google Scholar; Zeitlin, , “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”.Google Scholar

29 For recent discussions of the British literature, see McKibbon, Ross, “Why Was There No Marxism in Great Britain?”, English Historical Review (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reid, Alastair, “The Division of Labour and Politics in Britain, 1880–1920”, in Mommsen, W.J. and Husung, H.G. (eds), The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880–1914 (London, 1985)Google Scholar; and idem, “Class and Organization”, Historical Journal 30 (1987).Google Scholar

30 Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, pp. 68–9.Google Scholar For a persuasive overview of the theoretical weaknesses of class analysis more generally, see Hindess, Barry, Politics and Class Analysis (Oxford, 1987).Google Scholar

31 Price, , “”What's in a Name?’”, pp. 63–5.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., pp. 63, 73, 75; Zeitlin, , “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”Google Scholar; “Industrial Structure, Employer Strategies and the Diffusion of Job Control in Britain, 1880–1920”, in Mommsen, and Husung, , Development of Trade Unionism.Google Scholar

33 See “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations” for a fuller exposition.

34 Ibid., pp. 160–9, 178; Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, p. 64.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., p. 28. For an interesting discussion of this point in the context of “the economic theory of politics” and “the positive theory of institutions”, see Moe, Terry M., “Interests, Institutions and Positive Theory: The Case of the NLRB”, in Studies in American Political Development, vol. 2 (New Haven, 1987), especially pp. 273–99.Google Scholar

36 Price, , “‘What's in a Name?’”, p. 76.Google Scholar For a useful survey of recent research on early trade unionism, see Rule, John (ed.), British Trade Unionism, 1750–1850: The Formative Years (London, 1988)Google Scholar; “While there might still be room for disagreement over what were the typical forms, objectives and contexts for eighteenth-century trade unionism”, the editor concludes, “there can be no doubt that by the time of the passing of the Combination Acts in 1799 and 1800, organised labour was an important presence in the manufacturing economy of Britain”: Ibid. p. 10.

37 Zeitlin, , “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”, p. 178.Google Scholar