Mobilizing the Powerless: Collective Protest Action of the Unemployed in the Interwar Period

Abstract

This paper examines the origins and evolution of collective protest action, and of organized movements, of the unemployed in Britain and the USA in the interwar period. It addresses three interrelated issues in the study of social movements: the problems of collective action amongst a relatively powerless sector of society; the role of external agents in the processes of mobilization and organization; and the effects of organization on levels of militancy and mobilization. Examination of both cases confirms first, the importance of the mass nature of unemployment in fomenting initial protest action of the unemployed in the early 1920s and early 1930s; second, the critical role of external agents in developing and consolidating organizations of the unemployed; and third, that the allegedly deradicalizing effects of organization on the behaviour and objectives of poor people’s movements are exaggerated. However, sharp contrasts between the (more hostile) British and (more benign) American political contexts in the 1930s casts doubt on the ability of the so-called political opportunity structure to explain the emergence and evolution of collective protest action by

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