ABSTRACT
Much discussion of the nature of strikes in Britain in the period of the fifty years or so leading up to the First World War has focused on the development, or otherwise, of working-class consciousness. Certainly, it has been the norm within British labour history to concentrate on case studies rather than grand theory, with a few notable exceptions. In the studies of strike activity between 1870 and 1914, little or no attention has been paid to the part played by immigrants. Descriptions and 'analysis' of the foreign labourers coincided with popular images of Jewish immigrants. The first study deals with an example of strike-breaking on the 'classic' Irish model, during the strike in the Cheshire salt industry in 1868. A further study, moving beyond the bounds of the London sources, involves an analysis of Jewish trade unionism in Manchester. The study of strikes pushes into a more sophisticated appreciation of the nature and consistency of anti-Jewish attitudes before 1914.
