Post-pluralist Collective Industrial Relations

Abstract

This chapter argues that the defeat of the Labour Party in the 1983 general election signalled the end of the centrality of internal ideological divisions in the development of labour movement policy and the beginning of a long period in which the focus was and remains on a largely pragmatic rearguard defence of the prerogatives of trade unions. The chapter describes how the arguments of the TUC and the Labour Party in support of collective industrial relations have developed and diverged from the mid-1980s to the present. While the common ground between the political and industrial wings of the labour movement has significantly narrowed, the chapter shows that they are at least united in their unwillingness — or inability — to challenge the basic conceptual foundations for industrial relations policy laid during the Thatcher and Major years.