The mobilisation of and response to 'political' protest strikes 1969-1984.
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Troup, A.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Paisley College of Technology
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
1987
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Body granting the degree
Paisley College of Technology
Text preceding or following the note
1987
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
The thesis traces the development of the political protest strike as anew tactic within British trade union practice. This tactic evolved inresponse to government interference in the internal affairs of tradeunions. The main thrust of the work concerns the study of the processesof mobilisation and demobilisation within the formal and informalmachinery of union decision making and government.The dissertation contains the first attempt to record systematicallyresponse rates to these protests nationally and regionally, and overtime. A statistical series has been created which has made it possibleto test for relationships between political strike action, generalindustrial militancy and changing levels of unemployment.The thesis can be regarded as a contribution to the literature on tradeunion government structure and internal politics, and to that onindustrial conflict. It reveals the importance of ideological factionswhich operate within unions, and suggests that conflict between thesefactions is the most important source of division in the internalpolitics of trade unionism. It highlights the importance of activistsand lines of argumentation in the process of mobilisation/demobilisation.The thesis focused specifically on the AUEW(E) and on the Clydeside andWest ~idland regions to allow for comparative study and to test for theregional impact of factional organisation on response rates