ABSTRACT
This chapter is a study in how labour was reshaped during a period stretching roughly from the midst of the Great War to the mid-1920s. Firstly, the authors develop an argument concerning notions of organisation and their impact on labour. Secondly, they examine the shifting pattern of allegiances within the labour movement; the authors argue that alliances and coalitions were based around key sets of understandings, and that the immediate post-war years were a key period of reassessment of these. As the years around the Great War represent a turning point for labour politics, so they mark a shift in the chief focus of historians of labour or at least, of those who have been influenced by the Marxist tradition. Gramsci remarks that in the study of political movements, 'currents of opinion are normally taken as already constituted around a group or a dominant personality'.
