Taff Vale

Abstract

IT is possible to interpret the decision of the unions to participate in a political alliance with the socialist societies as stemming from a fundamental reappraisal of their position in society. The socialists could, and did, point to a range of developments taking place in the 1890s which indicated the hostility of the ruling class to labour: employer organisation, adverse legal decisions and the concentration of capital and weakness of unionism in the United States. In the face of this evidence many even of the old guard of union leaders began to accept parts of the socialist case, as Clegg et al. have noted [19:304]. Some labour historians of the socialist school have indeed argued that the period 18891900 did witness in reality a general reaction of the governing class against labour, so that the socialist propaganda of the time was no more than the truth. The most important contribution of this kind is that by J. Saville [63].