Labour as an Arm of the State?

British political history from the 1940s to the late 1970s is very much that of ascendant labour. In harnessing a labour-consuming economy more or less in its entirety to a labour-consuming war effort, Britain’s fight against fascism had ensured the incorporation of its labour representatives at the highest levels of government decision-making. It was a ‘People’s War’, says Calder (1969), and in the votes they cast in 1945 the people seemed to show a decided preference for perpetuating this people’s society. The first Labour government with a workable majority was elected, a 12 per cent swing in its favour resulting in 393 Labour seats, 213 Conservative and 12 Liberal. In the next six years, Labour ruled over full employment, the initiation of the welfare state, and the relocation of 20 per cent of the national economy into public ownership. It repealed, in 1945, the 1927 Trades Dispute Act, thus enabling Bevin to continue the wartime concordat with the unions such that, by 1948–49, the Trades Union Congress had representatives on 60 government committees (as against 12 in 1939). The figure was to rise yet further in subsequent years (180 by 1977 according to the Observer, 7 September 1977).