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The Growth and Role of Employers' Associations in the UK, 1916-45: Comparisons and Contrasts

Literature › Works

Philip Ollerenshaw (2012). The Growth and Role of Employers' Associations in the UK, 1916-45: Comparisons and Contrasts. World Economic History Congress (WEHC), session 168, Stellenbosch.
Type conference paper
Scope Comparative and methods
Method archival narrative
Period studied 1916–1945
Regions United Kingdom, Britain
Themes business and state, unions strikes, comparative theory, labour markets wages
Citation key ollerenshaw2012

Argument

The paper traces the growth and role of two British peak employers' organisations, the Federation of British Industries (1916) and the National Confederation of Employers' Organisations (1919), from their founding to 1945. It argues that the First World War changed relations between capital, labour and the state, and that the FBI/NCEO split between 'commercial' and 'labour' questions was in practice blurred by overlapping personnel, liaison committees and links with bodies such as the Economic League. It treats Middlemas's 'corporate bias' thesis as ambiguous and contested. Employers were stronger and less threatened in the Second World War, but fought a rearguard action over reconstruction and the welfare state. The paper is a short narrative based on organisational minutes and press sources, and it contains no South African material.

Evidence and method

Minutes of the FBI Executive Council and NCEO papers held at the Modern Records Centre, Warwick (MRC MSS 200); FBI and NCEO publications; The Times and Daily Herald; the Labour Research Department pamphlet of 1923; secondary literature (Lowe, McIvor, Holland, Middlemas, Turner, Blank).

Findings

  • The NCEO was founded partly to prepare employers for Lloyd George's 1919 National Industrial Conference. (p. 3)

    the need to organise rapidly in time for the National Industrial Conference was a powerful influence on the emergence of the NCEO.

  • The NCEO had broad coverage from its first membership list. (p. 3)

    The first membership list indicates that 39 employers' organisations with a total membership of 3.65 million had joined the Confederation.

  • By the early 1930s the NCEO claimed to represent a large share of the industrial workforce. (p. 3)

    some 45 employers' organisations in different industries subscribed to the NCEO, which by then claimed represented 7 million employees

  • Strike waves in 1917-21 hardened employer attitudes, especially in engineering and metals. (p. 2)

    the 1919 figure, 35 million, was six times higher than that for 1917 and two years later the figure had risen to almost 86 million.

  • The formal commercial/labour division between the FBI and NCEO was porous in practice. (p. 4)

    it seems unwise to accept at face value a watertight separation of 'commercial' from 'labour' questions.

  • The FBI and NCEO, with other employer bodies, welcomed restrictive labour legislation after the General Strike. (p. 4)

    both welcomed The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act passed in 1927 which placed very considerable restrictions on trade union action.

  • The Economic League linked employer bodies and offered anti-socialist blacklisting and strike support. (p. 4)

    a broadly-based pro-capitalist, anti-socialist organisation which provided a large-scale blacklisting service to employers in order to minimise employment of socialists and communists.

  • The FBI moved from avoiding a tariff stance to open protectionism. (p. 6)

    by 1930 sentiment in the FBI had swung decisively in favour of protection

  • In the Second World War employers co-operated with government on production but resisted welfare reconstruction. (p. 7)

    one key area where employers' organisations found themselves fighting a rearguard action was reconstruction and the role of the state.