The Attlee and Churchill administrations and industrial unrest, 1945-55 - Justin Davis Smith

This book looks at government handling of industrial unrest in the decade following the end of the Second World War. It is a particularly interesting period in the history of British industrial relations. The first part saw the election of the first majority Labour Government under Clement Attlee and raises the interesting issue of Labour's relationship with organized labour during a period of reconstruction and of massive increased state involvement in peacetime economic affairs. The latter part of the period saw the return of a Conservative administration under Sir Winston Churchill committed to accelerating the process of decontrol and to freeing up the economy but also to achieving tranquility in industrial relations following the virtual freezing of contact between Conservative governments and unions in the inter-war years. By taking the period as a whole it enables an assessment to be made of the degree of continuity in industrial relations policy between the Labour and Conservative administrations: to determine to what extent there was a "Butskellism" in industrial relations related to that in economic affairs.