ABSTRACT
Striking has become a disease, and a very grave disease, in the body social', intoned George Phillips Bevan at the beginning of his learned lecture on strikes to the Royal Statistical Society on 29 January 1880. The importance of strikes in the general evolution of modern labour movements is obvious and well-recognized by historians and students of industrial relations. The industrial distribution of strikes was similarly broad from 1870 onwards, and broadened further in the years approaching 1914. The strikes in general reflected a broad attempt to organize unions, and membership in TUC-affiliated societies grew from about a quarter of a million in 1870 to almost 1.2 million in 1874. It seems that unions and strikes, though still strongest in the older, skilled trades, were spreading trade, were spreading into basic industry. Issues of power were equally central to the evolution of strikes and unions on the continent.
