IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/brjirl/v52y2014i1p33-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Introducing OMOV: The Labour Party–Trade Union Review Group and the 1994 Leadership Contest

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Wickham-Jones

Abstract

Most scholars conclude that the introduction of one member, one vote (OMOV) into the electoral college that chooses the Labour leader demonstrates a new, reduced role for the party's affiliated trade unions. This article examines the adoption of OMOV by Labour. It looks at discussions in the Labour party–trade union review group that moulded the decision to adopt OMOV during 1992–1993. Drawing on the full breakdown of results, it goes on to examine the outcome of the 1994 leadership contest. The distribution of votes, union by union, indicates that, contrary to the conventional view, trade union leaderships retained the capacity to shape the pattern of voting through their ability to nominate candidates. The article concludes that the introduction of OMOV did not reduce the role of trade union leaderships in Labour's internal affairs in the manner that many scholars have concluded to be the case.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Wickham-Jones, 2014. "Introducing OMOV: The Labour Party–Trade Union Review Group and the 1994 Leadership Contest," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 52(1), pages 33-56, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:brjirl:v:52:y:2014:i:1:p:33-56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2012.00910.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steve Ludlam & Andrew Taylor, 2003. "The Political Representation of the Labour Interest in Britain," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 41(4), pages 727-749, December.
    2. John McIlroy, 1998. "The Enduring Alliance? Trade Unions and the Making of New Labour, 1994–1997," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 36(4), pages 537-564, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Wickham-Jones, 2016. "John Smith's settlement? The work of the 1992–93 Labour Party—Trade Union Links Review Group," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 21-45, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Bryson & P Willman, 2007. "Union Organization in Great Britain," CEP Discussion Papers dp0774, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Testa, Cecilia, 2012. "Is polarization bad?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1104-1118.
    3. Mark Wickham-Jones, 2016. "John Smith's settlement? The work of the 1992–93 Labour Party—Trade Union Links Review Group," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 21-45, January.
    4. Paul Smith, 2015. "Labour under the law: a new law of combination, and master and servant, in 21st-century Britain?," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5-6), pages 345-364, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:brjirl:v:52:y:2014:i:1:p:33-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.