Quick questions on Labour and trade union movements (QCE Modern History Unit 2)

British legislation banning trade unions; repealed in 1824-1825 under pressure.

Six Dorset farm workers transported to Van Diemen's Land for forming a trade union. Public outcry led to their pardon (1836) and shaped the early union movement.

British working-class movement demanding the People's Charter (universal male suffrage, secret ballot, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, abolition of property qualifications for MPs, payment of MPs). Mass petitions, demonstrations, and Newport Rising (1839). The Chartist demands were achieved progressively over the next century (most by 1928).

Craft unions of skilled workers (engineers, carpenters).

Mass strike led by unskilled workers ("New Unionism") winning the "Dockers' Tanner" (six pence per hour).

Defeats for the unions on the ground but produced the formation of the Australian Labor Party in 1891 as a political wing of the labour movement.

First labour party to form a national government anywhere in the world (1904, under Chris Watson). Australian Labor governments shaped Federation politics from the start.

Formed by trade unions and socialist societies. First Labour government 1924 under Ramsay MacDonald; majority Labour governments 1945-1951 under Attlee (welfare state) and 1997-2010 under Blair and Brown.

Strongest socialist party in Europe before 1914; the model for Marxian parliamentary politics.

Manufacturing shrank in OECD economies; service-sector workers were harder to organise.

Studied the relative strength of left-wing and conservative US unions.