Trade Unions and the British Labor Party

Almost all the recent work on the British Labor party has been concerned with analysis of the party's electoral performance or possibilities, interpretation and reinterpretation of party policy, or discussion of the ideological forces currently at work in the party. These studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of the policy of the party. But there have been only one or two recent works on the organization and composition of the Labor party, and hardly any on the organizational and policy-making importance of the affiliated trade unions which make up its electoral and financial strength. This is understandable in view of the fact that the trade union elements, unlike those in the party's political wing, have not generally provided the policy controversy upon which both publicists and academicians feed. But the strength and stability which the trade unions provide for the party are probably of more long-term importance than are the topical conflicts of the “political side.”It is the purpose of this article to discuss the organization and functions of the British Labor party in terms of the formal and informal interrelations of the political and industrial elements, mainly during the years 1945–1953. Policy and policy conflicts are subordinated here to an institutional and statistical analysis of these interrelations.