ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the nature of anti-strike violence in labour disputes that took place in rural areas of Spain and Portugal between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It examines the different types of state intervention during strikes in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire. The book investigates the ideas, worldviews and types of action engaged in by the Union of the Russian People and the other right-wing bodies that emerged across the Empire to “actively oppose” labour protest. It describes how employers’ organisations drew on the practices and imaginaries of frontier vigilantism to praise those employers and workers who took the law into their own hands for the purpose of protecting individual freedom, private property and freedom of contract from trade union policies and methods.
