Workers' rights

Model answer

A is the miners' strike of 1974, which caused the three-day week and led to the defeat of Edward Heath's government in the election of February 1974. B is the start of the year-long miners' strike of 1984-85 against pit closures.

Model answer

Source A is useful because it shows how the strikes of the 'Winter of Discontent' were presented to the public, which helps explain why there was strong support for trade union reform in the 1980s. In the winter of 1978-79 many workers struck against the Labour government's 5% limit on pay rises. Ford workers won about 17%, lorry drivers went on strike in January 1979, and on 22 January public-sector workers held a 'day of action'. Rubbish piled up in the streets and in Liverpool gravediggers went on strike. The Sun's headline 'Crisis? What crisis?' suggested that the government was out of touch and that the unions were out of control, a view many voters came to share. Callaghan lost a vote of no confidence in March 1979, and Margaret Thatcher won the election in May promising to curb union power.

The provenance increases the source's usefulness in some ways. The Sun was one of the most popular newspapers in Britain, read by millions of working-class voters, so it shows how the Winter of Discontent reached ordinary people and helped turn them against the unions.

However, the provenance also means the source must be treated with caution. The Sun supported the Conservatives in the 1979 election, so it had a political purpose, and the headline put words into Callaghan's mouth: he had actually said that other people would not share the view that there was 'mounting chaos'. The paper therefore exaggerated the government's complacency and the scale of the crisis.

The source also does not show the deeper reasons for reform. Governments had tried to reform the unions before, with Barbara Castle's 'In Place of Strife' in 1969 and Heath's Industrial Relations Act in 1971, and Heath had been defeated after the miners' strike of 1974. Thatcher believed in the free market and thought strikes and restrictive practices damaged the economy. These beliefs led to the Employment Acts of 1980 and 1982 and the Trade Union Act of 1984, which restricted picketing and required secret ballots before strikes.

Overall, Source A is useful for showing the public mood created by the Winter of Discontent, which made union reform popular, but it is a biased front page and cannot explain the longer-term and ideological reasons for the reforms.

Model answer

The Labour government's employment reforms of 1997-1999 were significant because they gave workers new legal rights after nearly twenty years in which governments had concentrated on restricting the unions. The most important was the national minimum wage. The National Minimum Wage Act of 1998 meant that from April 1999 every adult worker had to be paid at least £3.60 an hour, with the rate set on the advice of the independent Low Pay Commission. For the first time there was a legal floor under wages, which especially helped low-paid women and part-time workers in industries such as catering, cleaning and retail.

Other reforms strengthened workers' rights too. In 1997 the government signed the European Union's Social Chapter, and the Working Time Regulations of 1998 limited the average working week to 48 hours, although workers could opt out, and gave a right to paid holidays. The Employment Relations Act of 1999 gave unions a legal right to be recognised by employers where a majority of workers wanted it, protected workers on official strikes from dismissal for a period, and introduced parental leave. The government also restored the right to join unions at GCHQ.

However, the significance of these reforms was limited in some ways. Tony Blair promised the unions 'fairness not favours', and New Labour kept most of the Conservative trade union laws, including strike ballots, the limits on picketing and the end of the closed shop. Union membership continued to fall, so the reforms did not bring back the collective union power of the 1970s.

In the long term the reforms marked a new settlement in which workers' rights came mainly from the law rather than from union bargaining. The minimum wage, which Conservatives and many employers had warned would destroy jobs, became accepted by all the main parties; in 2016 a Conservative government introduced a higher 'National Living Wage' for older workers. The reforms were therefore significant as a lasting extension of individual workers' rights, even though they confirmed the decline of union power.

Model answer

Individuals have played an important part in the development of workers' rights, as leaders who inspired others and as reformers in Parliament. However, I do not think they have been the main factor. Workers' rights advanced or retreated mainly because of economic conditions and the actions of governments, and the leaders who succeeded were those whose ideas fitted those conditions.

In the Middle Ages individuals led protests but did not decide the outcome. Wat Tyler and John Ball led the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, demanding the end of serfdom and fair wages, but Tyler was killed and Ball executed. Serfdom declined over the next century because the Black Death had created a shortage of labour, which gave peasants the bargaining power to demand wages and freedom. Here the economy mattered far more than any individual.

In the early nineteenth century individuals made a bigger difference, often through Parliament and public campaigns. Factory reformers such as Richard Oastler, Michael Sadler and Lord Ashley, later Lord Shaftesbury, exposed the conditions of child workers and helped bring the Factory Act of 1833, the Mines Act of 1842 and the Ten Hours Act of 1847. Robert Owen inspired the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834, but it collapsed within months, and George Loveless and the other Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported. Their pardon in 1836 came through mass petitions rather than the efforts of one person. Governments, meanwhile, decided what was legal: the Combination Acts of 1799-1800 had banned unions until their repeal in 1824.

In the later nineteenth century individuals led the growth of 'new unionism'. Annie Besant's article on the Bryant and May factory helped the match girls win their strike in 1888, and Ben Tillett, John Burns and Tom Mann led the dockers to victory in 1889. Yet these successes depended on collective action and public support, and on wider changes: the growth of industry had created huge numbers of unskilled workers, and laws such as the Trade Union Act of 1871 and the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 gave unions legal protection.

In the twentieth century individuals were important on both sides, but government and the economy were decisive. In 1926 A.J. Cook rallied the miners with the slogan 'Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day', but Baldwin's government, well prepared, defeated the General Strike. War transformed the position of workers: union membership rose to over 8 million by 1920, and in the Second World War the union leader Ernest Bevin became Minister of Labour, making unions partners in government. Full employment after 1945 gave unions great power, until the economic problems of the 1970s. Barbara Castle introduced the Equal Pay Act in 1970, but her attempt to reform the unions in 'In Place of Strife' failed. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher, determined to curb union power, passed a series of laws and defeated Arthur Scargill's miners in 1985. Her success owed much to high unemployment and the decline of heavy industry, which weakened the unions anyway. In 1999 Tony Blair's government introduced a national minimum wage, a major new right decided by government.

In conclusion, individuals have been important as leaders, campaigners and symbols, and some, such as Shaftesbury, Bevin, Castle and Thatcher, made a real difference. But the main factors in the development of workers' rights were economic conditions, which decided how much bargaining power workers had, and the laws made by governments. Individuals succeeded when they worked with these forces and failed when they worked against them.