The TUC and the Failure of Labour’s Postwar Redistributive Agenda

Abstract

This article illustrates the crucial role played by the TUC and its occupationally organized affiliates in the failure of Labour’s postwar social agenda. It has been widely recognized that Labour’s inability to improve the social insurance system and construct an effective floor under wages during the first decades of the postwar period was of crucial importance to the continual underdevelopment of the British welfare state and the emergence of a dual welfare system in the United Kingdom. Yet that Labour’s inability to do so was to a large extent the result of union opposition has largely been neglected. This article shows that Labour’s postwar social agenda had strong consequences for the distribution of earnings among different groups of workers, and that these consequences were fiercely resisted by unions representing privileged workers. In doing so, it illustrates the limited political feasibility of government measures that aim to provide adequate earnings and security against labor market risks for all workers in countries where privileged workers largely organize along occupational lines.