ABSTRACT
A fundamental source both of strength and weakness of Labour politicians lay in their relationship with Britain’s trade unions. Incomes policies cemented the reciprocal agreement to exchange high investment by enterprises in return for wage restraint by labour. Agreements on dilution, skilled rates of pay, female labour and production committees provided the boundaries within which national, district and shop bargaining progressed. Many influential historians of Labour politics have emphasized the weakness of Marxist socialist ideas compared to the robust influence of radical Liberal values in what became a long historical trajectory of popular liberal politics during the twentieth century. The Amalgamated Engineering Union achieved spectacular growth during the years between rearmament and the demise of the Attlee government, particularly during the huge industrial expansion of the war years. Labour leaders and followers shared a practical as well as an ethical understanding of realistic socialism which distinguished them from syndicalists, Marxist revolutionaries, and hard-line communist activists.
