There are many narrative histories of the struggles of British workers. However, Rob Sewell's book is different. This book is aimed especially at class-conscious workers who are seeking to escape from the ills of the capitalist system, that has embroiled the world in a quagmire of wars, poverty and suffering. This history of trade unions is particularly relevant at the present time. After a long period of stagnation, the fresh winds of the class struggle are beginning to blow. Rob Sewell's book was written precisely with these new forces in mind. The British labour movement is the oldest in the world. More than two hundred years ago, the pioneers of the movement created illegal revolutionary trade unions in the face of the most terrible violence and repression. In the course of the nineteenth century they built trade unions of the downtrodden unskilled workers - those with "blistered hands and the unshorn chins," as Feargus O'Connor called them. Finally, they established a mass party of Labour based on the trade unions, breaking the monopoly of the Tories and Liberals. In the stormy years following the Russian Revolution they engaged in ferocious class battles, culminating in the General Strike of 1926. Nor did the achievements of the British trade union movement cease with the Depression and the Second World War. The post-war upswing served to strengthen the working class and heal the scars of the inter-war period. By the time of the industrial tidal wave of the early 1970s, they drove a Tory government from power, after turning Edward Heath's anti-trade union laws into a dead letter. Later, the miners, the traditional vanguard of the British working class, waged an epic year-long struggle in 1984-85 against the juggernaut of Thatcherism. They could have succeeded, had the rightwing Labour and trade union leaders not abandoned them and left them isolated. The book contains vital lessons and is essential reading for today's worker militants.

The current debate about industrial relations cannot be understood without a knowledge of trade-union history. Dr Pelling's book, which has for several years been a standard work on the subject, has again been revised and updated to take account of recent research and to explain the course of events up to the Thatcher years, the miner's strike and the Employment Acts. The growth of white-collar unionism and the extension of women's rights are dealt with in the concluding chapters.

From small and largely ineffectual beginnings the British trade union movement gradually emerged into a force to be reckoned with--a powerful organization that, at its peak, could make or break the operation of British politics and industrial relations. A History of British Trade Unionism sets out to describe, discuss and, furthermore, evaluate the major developments in the evolution of the trade union movement and provides an essential and up-to-date summary of the chief debates that have long divided historians. It focuses upon both the institutional nature of trade union growth and the more rank-and-file shopfloor experience which has been the subject of discussion in recent years. In this fascinating book Keith Laybourn examines the problems of trade union growth in the early nineteenth century, the emergence of the so-called 'new model' and 'new unionism' of the late nineteenth century, the link with the Labour Party, the shop stewards' movement since the First World War, inter-war developments including the General Strike in 1926, the success of British trade unionism between the Second World War and the late 1960s and, finally, the more recent decline of British trade unionism particularly in the face of restrictions imposed by the Thatcher governments. A History of British Trade Unionism gives a full and discerning account of the trade union movement from 1770 to the present day and clears an invaluable 'pathway through the forest of detailed research...to enable the general, rather than specialist, reader to appreciate the major debates which have convulsed the study of British trade union history...'.

The Economic History Society commissioned this series which aims to provide a guide to current interpretations of the key themes of economic and social history in which advances have been made or in which there has been significant debate. The books are intended to be a springboard to futher reading rather than a set of pre-packaged conclusions.

In recent years, historians have debated fervently on the reason for the decline of British Labour History as an academic discipline. Most certainly the challenge of Thatcherism to the working classes and trade unions in the 1980s, and the fragmentation of Labour history into gender studies, industrial studies and women’s history, have contributed to its apparent decline. Post-modernists’ challenges to the concept of class, culture and community have done their damage. As a result “Labour history”, in its broad-school sense, has been taught less and less in British universities. Yet it survives and there are grounds for believing that it will revive. This collection of chapters arose from a conference held at the University of Huddersfield in November 2010, held under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Labour History, where nineteen papers were presented. Ten of this disparate array of papers form the basis of this collection. The theme of community and localised struggle form the first section, ranging as it does from the newspapers’ representation of Yorkshire miners to brass bands and the development of separate culture. The second section deals with the more traditional trade unionism and varieties of industrial struggle. The third section focuses upon the political aspects of working-class activity, drawing upon the role of women, and Labour policy on steel nationalisation and defence. The fourth deals with radicalism, ranging from the failure of Chartism, the policy of working-class organisations to emigration, and the failure of the “soft” section of the British left in the 1920s and 1930s. There is no all-embracing concept here for what is a varied collection of chapters. However, what can be said is that British Labour history continues to provide new areas for research. Indeed, its death as an academic discipline has been greatly exaggerated. This collection of book chapters represents the current revival in Labour history which has emerged in a form that brings together community and culture alongside class and political representation to explore the breadth and depth of working-class identity.