Whatever Happened to the ‘Enemy Within’? Contemporary Conservatism and Trade Unionism

Abstract

Anyone even vaguely acquainted with British politics since the late 1960s or so will be aware of the centrality of the ‘trade union question’. Governments, so it seemed, succeeded or (more usually) failed according to the extent to which they were able to manage ‘trade union power’. Even eminent academics were given to express their concerns in the most hyperbolic terms. ‘This trade union power’, wrote Samuel Finer ‘which has brought successive governments to a standstill in recent years … is manifestly a political power’ (Finer, 1973, 391). Various aspects of union activity came to be seen as causes of Britain’s economic malaise: their tendency to induce crippling industrial stoppages; their ability to create inflationary wage settlements; their increasing role in decision-making in Westminster and Whitehall; and their privileged access to the Labour Party.