POLI20532 Course Outline 1112 - School of Social Sciences

POLI20532: Course Guide 2011-12
of conflict and contestation to which this gave rise. As always there are different
views; but by common consent this marked the crisis of the post-war settlement and a
period of relative polarisation, political and social. Though this had many aspects, we
focus particularly on the issue of industrial relations. As suggested at the beginning of
the course, the unions were embedded in the post-war settlement and the increasing
volatility of industrial relations may be seen as a measure of its breakdown,
culminating in the industrial conflicts of the 1970s. The focus here is particularly on
the ’74-’79 Wilson-Callaghan governments, and appropriately so: for the crisis in
industrial relations was more particularly a crisis for the Labour Party and for British
social democracy, and it went to the heart of the party’s identity in a way that could
not have ben true for Heath or Thatcher. Eric Hobsbawm’s lecture on ‘The forward
march of labour halted?’ was an influential discussion of the issue from the left which
you need to be familiar with. However, problems in industrial relations had been
mounting for a decade or more, and the earlier Wilson and Heath governments had
both tried and failed to address them.
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