The Politics of Representation

Abstract

one of the main forces that the working class has created for itself over the last hundred years or so has been its organisation on the factory floor; around the job, at the productive centre of capitalism. Struggles within factories have provided one of the central dynamics of trade union organisation and an important bolster to some of the crucial elements of working-class consciousness. This has not, however, been a simple, straightforward process. While it is true that one of the strengths of the British working class lies in the depths of its trade union or factory consciousness, this consciousness has many sides to it and has, historically, been channelled into various, different, political forms. Social democracy—as expressed through the Labour Party and the trade union organisations—has been the dominant form. The continuance of this dominance, though, is ultimately dependent upon its ability to relate meaningfully to the significant experiences of working-class men and women. Ideologies which become little more than abstract formulations are lost in the grind of history. Those that endure do so because their roots go deep into everyday life; because they become a part of people’s lives. In the past syndicalism and revolutionary communism have challenged social democracy and remnants of these traditions are still alive within parts of the working class.

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