ABSTRACT
The emergence of severe unemployment had been a stimulus to genuine political action in the United States. And there were abundant indications of concern among TUC leaders about the rising rate in Britain. The tiny majority of the 1964 Labour Government may have inhibited that Government from new social initiatives, but the vast increase in power which it won in 1966 failed to lead to bolder policies. In the late 1960s, Jack Jones not only developed a multi-faceted approach to such bargaining, but began a process of identifying with, and possibly absorbing into the national structure, the shop stewards who were now at the centre of collective bargaining in Britain. In summation: Perlman’s model of ‘mature’ unions in a laissez-faire framework was pure and simple unionism. He had envisaged the possibility of serious political action by the trade union movements in both Britain and the United States when the legal status of the movement was threatened.
