ABSTRACT
The structure of the British trade union movement was shaped by the environment in which it evolved. Its survival, like that of every other living organism, depends on its ability to adapt its structure to suit the quite different environment in which it now lives and in which it will have to live in the future. So far it has given little evidence of sufficient flexibility to accomplish that adaptation as quickly as is required. Trade unions came into being as a weapon in the class war as it was fought in a laisser-faire economy. Because they were born into a world of industrial anarchy, they developed a fierce, sauve-qui-peut, jealously-guarded independence. The growth of the joint stock company resulted in a divorce of ownership from management and faced the workers with a new class of professional managers who lived by the salaries they earned from their work and not from their ownership or part-ownership of the equity.
