ABSTRACT
On the first level, labour historians have provided over the past two decades a clear and detailed account of the organizational history of the trade union movement in the generation prior to the First World War. This chapter considers the supposed dichotomy between conservative trade unionists on the one hand and middle-class socialists on the other during the war. After 1914 most trade union leaders worked in effective partnership with civil servants, experts and employers in the organization. To accept the modest and vague socialist commitment of the 1918 Labour Party constitution may be understood, therefore, as a way for trade unionists to head off a growing body of working-class militancy in the factories. In Salford, as in the rest of working-class Britain, a vote for the Labour Party after 1918 was a vote not to return to the prewar world.
