ABSTRACT
Comparisons between trade unionism in the major Western European countries generally emphasise the differences in their attitudes towards the state, and more generally, towards political action. This chapter examines what images and ideas workers constructed about themselves, about their adversaries, their conflicts, and their sense of politics. British trade unionism appears to have configured around the rules of the trade, leading to a preoccupation with unorganised workers and with the unions' strength in the struggle to improve the wages of labour. German trade unionism is obsessed with organisation, and envisions equality for the rights of labour in the whole of German society; it is a trade unionism of significance imbedded in a political and social movement. French syndicalism appears at one and the same time as both a movement of confrontation, and a movement of identity, resting on the notion of the exclusive and salient dignity of work and workers.
