ABSTRACT
Strikes are a display of industrial relations at their points of tension. Strikes are the best available indicators of a sum of specific dissatisfactions—or are, at least, the only unambiguous ones. Strikes by car workers seem frequent, and quite small ones may lead readily to large consequences in terms of men laid off work for lack of the bits and pieces to work with. Strikes by car workers, however, provide only one instance of a more general rise in the strike-liability of British employees. In 1965 there was a new jump in the car firms’ strike-incidence, with several biggish stoppages before the summer. The disclaimer needs making because the British motor industry has become a popular sounding-board for opinion and speculation about almost all aspects of strikes. Ministry of Labour strike statistics up to 1948 included the motor trades in the general ‘Engineering’ industry.
