RADICALISM AND RESPECTABILITY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LABOUR ORGANISATIONS

Abstract

Rosemary Aris, Trade Unions and the Management of Industrial Conflict. London: Macmillan, 1998, £42.50 (£15.99 pbk), vii+201 pp. (ISBN 0-333-65798-5 hbk; 0-333-65799-3 pbk). Huw Beynon and Terry Austrin, Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation. London: Rivers Oram Press, 1998, £12.95, xvii+403 pp. (ISBN 1-85489-001-8 hbk; 1-85489-000-X pbk). These books are both concerned with the historical development of labour organisations. There is overlap in the time periods concerned, with Aris looking at the role of trade unions and the State in the management of industrial conflict in the years 1910–21, and Beynon and Austrin, whilst focusing more sharply on the single case of the Durham miners, covering the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of the 1930s. Here the similarities end and while both books succeed well in their own terms, they contrast greatly in their methodology and ultimately their whole approaches to historical sociology.