Meaning of Militancy? Postal Workers and Industrial Relations, The

Capital & Class, Summer 2004 by Darlington, Ralph

Significantly, although it comments on events as late as early 2003, the vast bulk of the book was clearly written from the vantage point of the late 19903. That was before the election of 'awkward squad' union leader Billy Hayes (amongst other left leaders), and the increasing distance that has emerged between the cwu (and other unions) and the Labour government over a variety of issues (including the debate over the union's political funds), reflected in the emergence of a significant unofficial/ official national left-wing and oppositional grouping with its own regular newspaper, Post Worker. This is only partially compensated for, by Gall, in a couple of the final chapters, and in a very brief postscript covering the period 2001-2003. Ironically though, the author, in justifying an addendum on such developments, acknowledges that an attempt to have integrated them into the main period covered by the book (1988-2001) would 'have hampered an understanding' of the period by 'involving too much qualification' (p.299). Quite!

Such qualification appears even more compelling when the book is read, as it was by this reviewer, in the wake of the spectacularly successful, mass unofficial/ illegal militant strike-wave that swept RM offices across the country in the autumn of 2003, but which (ironically, for his analysis) occurred after Gall's book had been published. The strike forced management, and behind them, the Labour Government, to back away from a union-busting offensive, and represented the most important trade-union victory in Britain throughout the period surveyed.

At the very least, such developments throw a serious question mark over his dismissive assessment of the nature of worker and union militancy in RM. Similarly, if the author had adopted a rather broader canvas of analysis than a purely industrial relations focus-examining the degree of political discontent with New Labour, and the impact on postal workers' political attitudes of the anti-globalisation and anti-war movements of the early 2000s -then his assessment of the link between militancy and political consciousness, and of the nature of 'political militancy' itself, might also have been revealed as rather more problematic than he has claimed.

Note:

Ralph Darlington is a senior lecturer in Industrial Relations in the School of Management, University of Salford., and the author of The Dynamics of Workplace Unionism (1994), The Political Trajectory of J.T. Murphy (1998) and (with Dave Lyddon) Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain, 1972 (2001).