ABSTRACT
Some of the key events in British trade unionism and industrial relations have occurred during periods of Conservative-or prior to the 1830s, Tory-government: the 17991800 Combination Acts, the 1926 General Strike and the subsequent 1927 Trade Disputes Act, the establishment of the neo-corporatist National Economic Development Council in the 1960s, the ill-fated 1971 Industrial Relations Act, the two momentous miners’ strikes of the 1970s, and the systematic curbing and marginalisation of the trade unions in the 1980s and 1990s, etc. Yet there remains a notable paucity of literature on the Conservative Party and the trade unions, particularly on any period prior to the Thatcher decade of the 1980s. Such material as exists is invariably either fragmentary (dealing with the Conservatives and the trade unions indirectly as part of a wider or different project) or highly partisan and polemical-the Left invariably seeing Conservative policies towards the trade unions as manifestations of ‘ruling class’ attempts at suppressing and exploiting the working class, the Right instinctively proclaiming that any measure invoked against trade unions by a Conservative government constitutes a valiant defence of freedom and liberty, and the maintenance of a civilised society. Needless to say, this latter perspective has been proclaimed particularly trenchantly and triumphantly since 1979.
