Mark Curthoys
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199268894
- eISBN:
- 9780191708466
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268894.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This is a study of how mid-Victorian Britain and its specialist advisers, in an age of free trade and the minimal state, attempted to create a viable legal framework for trade unions and strikes. It ...
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This is a study of how mid-Victorian Britain and its specialist advisers, in an age of free trade and the minimal state, attempted to create a viable legal framework for trade unions and strikes. It traces the collapse, in the face of judicial interventions, of the regime for collective labour devised by the Liberal Tories in the 1820s, following the repeal of the Combination Acts. The new arrangements enacted in the 1870s allowed collective labour unparalleled freedoms, contended by the newly-founded Trades Union Congress. This book seeks to reinstate the view from government into an account of how the settlement was brought about, tracing the emergence of an official view — largely independent of external pressure — which favoured withdrawing the criminal law from peaceful industrial relations and allowing a virtually unrestricted freedom to combine. It reviews the impact upon the Home Office's specialist advisers of contemporary intellectual trends, such as the assaults upon classical and political economy and the historicised critiques of labour law developed by Liberal writers. The book offers an historical context for the major court decisions affecting the security of trade union funds, and the freedom to strike, while the views of the judges are integrated within the terms of a wider debate between proponents of contending views of ‘free trade’ and ‘free labour’. New evidence sheds light on the considerations which impelled governments to grant trade unions a distinctive form of legal existence, and to protect strikers from the criminal law.Less
This is a study of how mid-Victorian Britain and its specialist advisers, in an age of free trade and the minimal state, attempted to create a viable legal framework for trade unions and strikes. It traces the collapse, in the face of judicial interventions, of the regime for collective labour devised by the Liberal Tories in the 1820s, following the repeal of the Combination Acts. The new arrangements enacted in the 1870s allowed collective labour unparalleled freedoms, contended by the newly-founded Trades Union Congress. This book seeks to reinstate the view from government into an account of how the settlement was brought about, tracing the emergence of an official view — largely independent of external pressure — which favoured withdrawing the criminal law from peaceful industrial relations and allowing a virtually unrestricted freedom to combine. It reviews the impact upon the Home Office's specialist advisers of contemporary intellectual trends, such as the assaults upon classical and political economy and the historicised critiques of labour law developed by Liberal writers. The book offers an historical context for the major court decisions affecting the security of trade union funds, and the freedom to strike, while the views of the judges are integrated within the terms of a wider debate between proponents of contending views of ‘free trade’ and ‘free labour’. New evidence sheds light on the considerations which impelled governments to grant trade unions a distinctive form of legal existence, and to protect strikers from the criminal law.
MARK CURTHOYS
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199268894
- eISBN:
- 9780191708466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268894.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This book examines the structures inherited by policymakers of mid-Victorian Britain from their Liberal-Tory predecessors a generation earlier granting trade unions a distinctive form of legal ...
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This book examines the structures inherited by policymakers of mid-Victorian Britain from their Liberal-Tory predecessors a generation earlier granting trade unions a distinctive form of legal existence and withdrawing the criminal law from strikes, how those structures functioned, and why they began to fail. The decisions which brought about a replacement are discussed, with the purpose of reinstating the role of government into an established narrative. The politicians and administrators responsible for devising a legal settlement had sooner or later to acknowledge the evidence brought to light by the industrial disputes which punctuated the mid-Victorian period: habits of combination and even of collective bargaining were deep-rooted and could exist independently of the policy of the state. This fact, which fatally undermined policy prescriptions founded upon deductive systems of thought, whether economic or legal, became a commonplace in studies of labour law.Less
This book examines the structures inherited by policymakers of mid-Victorian Britain from their Liberal-Tory predecessors a generation earlier granting trade unions a distinctive form of legal existence and withdrawing the criminal law from strikes, how those structures functioned, and why they began to fail. The decisions which brought about a replacement are discussed, with the purpose of reinstating the role of government into an established narrative. The politicians and administrators responsible for devising a legal settlement had sooner or later to acknowledge the evidence brought to light by the industrial disputes which punctuated the mid-Victorian period: habits of combination and even of collective bargaining were deep-rooted and could exist independently of the policy of the state. This fact, which fatally undermined policy prescriptions founded upon deductive systems of thought, whether economic or legal, became a commonplace in studies of labour law.
Elaine Hadley
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226311883
- eISBN:
- 9780226311906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226311906.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter presents an introduction to political liberalism in mid-Victorian Britain between the mid-1850s and the early 1880s. It describes Victorian society that mid-century political liberalism ...
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This chapter presents an introduction to political liberalism in mid-Victorian Britain between the mid-1850s and the early 1880s. It describes Victorian society that mid-century political liberalism ambivalently inhabits and its distinctive response to it. It discusses the form liberal individualism took and examines mid-century political liberalism's attempted revision of the public sphere. It explores the politics of liberal citizenship and the version of abstract embodiment in the political public sphere, the liberal citizen of the ballot box, a formation that emerges in the debates concerning secret balloting, which was made into law in 1872. It describes the mid-century political liberalism's deeply fraught relation to Ireland and in this way placing mid-century liberalism in its appropriate imperial context but also to a consideration of how mid-century liberal politics sought grounding authority in a precarious world of opinion.Less
This chapter presents an introduction to political liberalism in mid-Victorian Britain between the mid-1850s and the early 1880s. It describes Victorian society that mid-century political liberalism ambivalently inhabits and its distinctive response to it. It discusses the form liberal individualism took and examines mid-century political liberalism's attempted revision of the public sphere. It explores the politics of liberal citizenship and the version of abstract embodiment in the political public sphere, the liberal citizen of the ballot box, a formation that emerges in the debates concerning secret balloting, which was made into law in 1872. It describes the mid-century political liberalism's deeply fraught relation to Ireland and in this way placing mid-century liberalism in its appropriate imperial context but also to a consideration of how mid-century liberal politics sought grounding authority in a precarious world of opinion.
Elaine Hadley
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226311883
- eISBN:
- 9780226311906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226311906.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter discusses liberal formalism in the middle of the nineteenth century. It states that economic commerce amplified and sustained social commerce, which in turn enhanced and sustained ...
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This chapter discusses liberal formalism in the middle of the nineteenth century. It states that economic commerce amplified and sustained social commerce, which in turn enhanced and sustained artistic and intellectual commerce. Print discourse, as asserted by Jürgen Habermas, combined with conversational discourse in coffeehouses to produce the temperate and civilized souls that David Hume celebrated in his essays. Thomas Paine later in the eighteenth century exerted pressure on the exclusivity of this civilized public and championed a sphere of absolute publicity, where the significance of face-to-face commerce was translated into open-air politics, a conception of political publicity that survived among certain socialists and radicals, such as George Holyoake. Mid-Victorian liberalism contributed forms of abstracted embodiment to the long tradition of liberalism. Liberalism in mid-nineteenth-century Britain encompassed such a diversity of opinion and personality that it has always frustrated efforts at definition, reducing many descriptions to seemingly banal references to progress and reform.Less
This chapter discusses liberal formalism in the middle of the nineteenth century. It states that economic commerce amplified and sustained social commerce, which in turn enhanced and sustained artistic and intellectual commerce. Print discourse, as asserted by Jürgen Habermas, combined with conversational discourse in coffeehouses to produce the temperate and civilized souls that David Hume celebrated in his essays. Thomas Paine later in the eighteenth century exerted pressure on the exclusivity of this civilized public and championed a sphere of absolute publicity, where the significance of face-to-face commerce was translated into open-air politics, a conception of political publicity that survived among certain socialists and radicals, such as George Holyoake. Mid-Victorian liberalism contributed forms of abstracted embodiment to the long tradition of liberalism. Liberalism in mid-nineteenth-century Britain encompassed such a diversity of opinion and personality that it has always frustrated efforts at definition, reducing many descriptions to seemingly banal references to progress and reform.
Geoffrey Hicks
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719075957
- eISBN:
- 9781781700785
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719075957.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This book examines the mid-Victorian Conservative Party's significant but overlooked role in British foreign policy and in contemporary debate about Britain's relations with Europe. It considers the ...
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This book examines the mid-Victorian Conservative Party's significant but overlooked role in British foreign policy and in contemporary debate about Britain's relations with Europe. It considers the Conservatives' response—in opposition and government—to the tumultuous era of Napoleon III, the Crimean War and Italian Unification. Within a clear chronological framework, the book focuses on ‘high’ politics, and offers a detailed account of the party's foreign policy in government under its longest-serving but forgotten leader, the fourteenth Earl of Derby. It attaches equal significance to domestic politics, and incorporates an analysis of Disraeli's role in internal tussles over policy, illuminating the roots of the power struggle he would later win against Derby's son in the 1870s. Overall, the book helps provide us with a fuller picture of mid-Victorian Britain's engagement with the world.Less
This book examines the mid-Victorian Conservative Party's significant but overlooked role in British foreign policy and in contemporary debate about Britain's relations with Europe. It considers the Conservatives' response—in opposition and government—to the tumultuous era of Napoleon III, the Crimean War and Italian Unification. Within a clear chronological framework, the book focuses on ‘high’ politics, and offers a detailed account of the party's foreign policy in government under its longest-serving but forgotten leader, the fourteenth Earl of Derby. It attaches equal significance to domestic politics, and incorporates an analysis of Disraeli's role in internal tussles over policy, illuminating the roots of the power struggle he would later win against Derby's son in the 1870s. Overall, the book helps provide us with a fuller picture of mid-Victorian Britain's engagement with the world.
