The Structure of Good Industrial Relations

When William Broadhead, secretary of the Sheffield Grinders Union and landlord of the George Inn, put gunpowder in a house of some ‘scab’ workers in October 1866, the resultant blast had more far-reaching implications than could have been supposed in the wildest imagination. The Royal Commission on Trade Unions the following year marked the first of many formal inquiries into trade unions and industrial relations concerned to bring about reform. The terms of reference were far from auspicious for the growing trade union movement, being to inquire into ‘any recent acts of intimidation, outrage or wrong alleged to have been promoted, encouraged or connived at by such Trade Union or other associations’ (Marsh and Evans, 1973: 281). Largely through the advocacy of Fredric Harrison, the trade union nominee on the Commission, the findings were much more favourable to the unions than could have been expected and ‘resulted in a remarkable change in the public attitude to trade unionism’ (Pelling, 1963: 69). The question posed by the influential minority report has been asked and re-asked throughout the years since, and especially when ‘outrages’ of one sort or another occur, be they outbursts of unofficial strikes or major confrontations with government.