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The “Rank and File” and the Social History of the Working Class

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

James E. Cronin
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Labor history continues to progress. It continues, too, to transform itself from a field staffed by enthusiasts and partisans into a discipline peopled with scholars sympathetic to their subject but also highly conscious of the methods, theories and interpretive frameworks within which they work. The last few years in particular have witnessed a considerable intensification of scholarly controversy within labor history and a growing sophistication of debate. To some extent the discussion parallels the ongoing conversation among social historians about the boundaries of social history, the power of primarily social explanation and the role of language, culture and politics in social history. Unfortunately, however, the stepping up of debate in labor history coincides with a dip – temporary, one hopes, but perhaps more long-term – in the fortunes of labor movements themselves. This conjuncture seems to have produced a sense of pessimism and malaise as the sentimental accompaniment to many of the debates within labor history.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 78 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1989

References

1 See Hobsbawm, Eric, “Labour History and Ideology”, in Worlds of Labor (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

2 See Eley, Geoff and Nield, Keith, “Why Does Social History Ignore Politics?” Social History, 5 (05, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Gareth Stedman, Languages of Class (Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cronin, J., “Language, Politics and the Critique of Social History”, Journal of Social History, XX, 1 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 177–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Zeitlin, Jonathan, “‘Rank and Filism’ in British Labour History: A Critique”, International Review of Social History, this volume, pp. 42–61.Google Scholar The arguments in Zeitlin's article were to some extent anticipated in arguments between Zeitlin and Alastair Reid on the one hand, and Richard Price, Richard Hyman, Keith Burgess and myself on the other at a meeting held in 1981 on the development of trade unionism. For the various positions, see the articles in Mommsen, Hans and Husung, H.-G. (eds), The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany, 1880–1914 (London, 1985).Google Scholar

4 Price, Richard, Masters, Unions and Men (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Rethinking Labour History: The Importance of Work”, in Cronin, J. and Schneer, J. (eds), Social Conflict and the Political Order in Modern Britain (New Brunswick, 1982)Google Scholar; and “The New Unionism and the Labour Process”, in Mommsen, and Husung, , Development of Trade Unionism, pp. 133–149.Google Scholar

5 Hinton, James, The First Shop Stewards' Movement (London, 1983).Google Scholar

6 Holton, Bob, British Syndicalism, 1900–1914 (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Burgess, Keith, The Challenge of Labour (London, 1980)Google Scholar; White, Joseph, The Limits of Trade Union Militancy (Westport, CT, 1978)Google Scholar; Hyman, Richard, The Workers Union (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; and “Mass Organization and Militancy in Britain: Contrasts and Continuities”, in Mommsen, and Husung, , Development of Trade Unionism, pp. 250–265Google Scholar; and Cronin, J., Industrial Conflict in Modern Britain (London, 1979).Google Scholar

7 Zeitlin's alternative is derived largely, as he himself says, from Sabel, Charles, “The Internal Politics of Trade Unions”, in Berger, Suzanne (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge, 1982).Google Scholar It should be noted, however, that the uses to which Sabel puts his argument are almost the exact opposite of those to which Zeitlin puts it. Sabel is arguing that corporatist models of political bargaining between strong and stable organizations of workers and employers are misleading and inapplicable precisely because they overestimate the capacity of union leaders to deliver the continued support of the rank-and-file for policies agreed at the top. This is clearly an argument that has at least as much in common with a “rank-and-filist” view of unions as with Zeitlin's more anodyne perspective.

8 Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

9 Settling upon a useful theoretical approach to labor history is no easy task, but my instinct at this point would be to follow up the leads contained in work by various scholars writing about class formation. A good example is Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide (eds), Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986).Google Scholar I have tried to make use of a similar approach in Labour and Society in Britain, 1918–1979 (London, 1984).Google Scholar

10 See Zeitlin's, “From Labour History to the History of Industrial Relations”, 2nd series, Economic History Review, XL, 2 (1987), pp. 159–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar