ABSTRACT
For over seventy years the government has published estimates of the ‘Principal Causes’ of strikes. Each year the Ministry of Labour Gazette contains a table which lists the number of stoppages, and the number of workers directly involved, as a result of seven different causes. Considering the amount of discussion which has arisen from time to time, concerning the origins of industrial unrest, little systematic analysis of this material has been undertaken. The object of this article is to attempt such an analysis of the period 1945-1957.1
One possible reason why the official statistics have been neglected may be the belief that they are essentially suspect. It is sometimes suggested that the whole idea of selecting and isolating the ‘principal cause’ of a dispute is misconceived. It is possible to argue that any one of a multiplicity of influences has caused a series of strikes. For example, many of the strikes which took place in the years immediately before the first world war have been related to the repeal of the Taff Vale Judgement, or the spread of revolutionary syndicalism; just as the relative increase in strikes since 1953 has been partially explained by reference to the removal of controls, and the increase in luxury expenditure, which has created a situation in which ‘social restraints, far more important than legal restraints, are losing their force’2. Then again, one can always interpret strikes as being in some way ‘fundamentally’ caused by still more general considerations-such as the trade cycle, or bad social conditions, just as one can attempt to explain any particular strike in sociological terms, speaking of ‘tensions’, or ‘motivations’, or ‘indulgency expectations’, etc.3
