ABSTRACT

In 1913 the National Union of Railwaymen was hailed as a new form of industrial unionism by the Webbs, while G. D. H. Cole believed its structure promised to be a model ‘as influential for the twentieth century as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had been for the Victorian age’. In 1972 all the railway workers supported their unions in the compulsory strike ballot enforced by the Heath government under the Industrial Relations Act. The marble corridors of Unity House on London’s Euston Road resemble the inside of a Victorian gothic town hall, recalling the great days of the railwaymen in the age of steam. The railwaymen retaliated and the union decided to provide financial support to its members under threat. The railway companies had a major pressure group in Parliament. In the 1900–6 period as many as fifty-three railway directors sat in the Commons.