ABSTRACT
The perspective enunciated in The Industrial Charter, and subsequently reiterated through various speeches pertaining to trade unionism by Conservative politicians in opposition, therefore provided the framework and ethos of the Party's approach to industrial relations and trade unionism throughout the 1950s. Clearly, in accordance with the twin perspectives of voluntarism and human relations in industry, the notion of state-imposed industrial partnership have been an oxymoron. Indeed, so anxious was the Conservative leadership to avoid antagonising the trade unions that, at the end of 1951, when a Conservative parliamentary candidate publicly claimed that the newly-elected Churchill Government was in favour of replacing contracting-out with contracting-in. Meanwhile, Walter Monckton, Minister of Labour from October 1951 to December 1955, explained to his colleagues that the Conservative Party's established policy to leave the regulation of their relationships and the determination of terms and conditions of employment to employers and workers, normally acting through their collective organisations, thereby supporting the basic principles of industrial self-government.
