Trade Unions and the 1964 General Election

Abstract

The Conservative party's approach to the trade unions was ambivalent. The party wished to benefit electorally by showing that it consulted them nationally on economic issues; and it sought to mobilise the votes of sympathetic trade unionists through the Conservative trade unionist organisation. Yet many Conservatives were highly critical of the unions, seeing them as impediments to economic efficiency. They wanted to contain them within a legal industrial relations framework and to break their role as the major funders of the Labour party. Labour leader Harold Wilson launched his election campaign at the TUC but did not thereafter stress trade union issues. The big trade union issue in the 1964 general election was the Rookes v. Barnard judgement, given by the House of Lords in January 1964. It undercut what were generally understood to have been the rights of trade unions under the Trades Disputes Act, 1906. This issue was a major feature of the trade unions' efforts to mobilise their members to vote for the Labour party.

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