VOLUME 2
1931-1945 MARGINALISATION
TO
GOVERNMENT
Chapter 1
Setting the scene
- Running a union in conditions of mass unemployment
- Rescuing the Labour Party
- Conflict with the Left
Chapter 2
Developing the union in conditions of mass unemployment
- 1931-8 struggle against Bedaux leads to unionisation of new industries, esp
- women, WU adding engineering
Chapter 3
Bevin and rank and file movements
- London buses
- Other rank and file movements – including NUWM
- Banning of rank and file news-sheets 1937
Chapter 4
T&G members and Spain
- Jack Jones
- Portraits of other TGWU members
Chapter 5
T&G and Ireland
- Class unity against sectarianism: its limits
Chapter 6 T&G and organisation by women workers
- Pre-war
- Wartime: 400,000 women members – demands for facilities as well as pay
Chapter 7 T&G, Bevin and wartime trade unionism
- Joint Production Committees and development of shop stewards
- movement
- Statist legacy of JPCs?
Regional studies
- All regions: Spain, organisation of women workers, rank and file movements
- South Midlands: Oxford Pressed Steel strike (women workers)
- London: bus workers
- Ireland: T&G and sectarianism
- Wartime Joint Production Committees and shop stewards movement
Strategic issues
- How valid was the union strategy of closed shop/no strike deals with employers for union survival ~ what were the benefits and costs ?
- How far did Bevin’s ‘centrist’ influence exercised over the Labour Party in the 1930s, through control over the D Herald and in the nat exec, hold back anti-fascist mobilisation and allow space for the government to pursue appeasement policies (tactical alignment with Germany to protect Britain’s imperial interests against the US)?
- What, in terms of the understandings developed during the war about TU- government cooperation in Keynesian economic management, were the potential benefits and costs for organised labour?