Introduction

The modernisation that took place in Britain and France in the mid-twentieth century was driven by new forms of state intervention and labour market regulation. These developed from the promotion of industrial modernisation and the growth of public sector employment, particularly the expansion of nationalisation and state welfare. After the second world war, new products to meet new needs and new markets appeared, realising the technological potential of the interwar years. This involved change—in specific industrial sectors, in the organisation of work, in the construction of skill, in the nature of industrial bargaining. Changed modes of economic thought fostered novel assumptions about the powers of the state as an agency for social and economic amelioration. The success of state action in promoting new economic and social systems, however, demanded the acceptance by established interests (employers, workers, financial institutions) of the terms within which policy was now being discussed, the internalisation of new macro-economic modes of labour market analysis and co-operation with new official agencies created to co-ordinate and implement policy. For this to happen (and both countries experienced resistance to this extension of state powers), existing diversities in labour management, in economic co-ordination, in working conventions and agreements had to conform to new political and economic orthodoxies. In general terms, established forms of collective co-ordination, which shaped economic activity among entrepreneurs, workers and public authorities at local and national level, had to readjust continuously to accommodate changing conditions. Such adjustments, the different ways actors adapted according to product, branch, region and scope for collective action, created new typologies of state intervention.