Ralph Darlington
Biographic Data
| ID | 296872 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ralph Darlington |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ralph |
| FAMILY NAME | Darlington |
| SIGNATURE | DARLINGTON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Salford |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 136 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1937 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Author’s response to “ Labor History Symposium: Ralph Darlington, Labour Revolt in Britain, 1910-1914”
Strikers versus scabs: Violence in the 1910-1914 British labour revolt
Over the last 200 years of British labour history there have beenfrequent examples of aggressive and sometimes violent masspicketing aimed at stopping non-striking scab or so-called ‘blackleg’labour [sic]. Yet remarkably little detailed attention has beengiven within the field of British industrial relations or even labourhistory to the contributory causes, characteristic features, impactand broader implications of this violent dimension of the s…
The pre-First World War British women’s suffrage revolt and labour unrest: Never the twain shall meet
During the years immediately preceding the First World War Britain experienced mass social unrest on a scale not seen since the early nineteenth century. Despite their distinctive priorities of gender and class, respectively, both the women’s suffrage revolt for the vote (embracing suffragettes and suffragists) and the labour unrest of 1910–14 (involving strikes in pursuit of higher wages, better working conditions and trade union recognition) ut…
The role of the TUC in significant industrial disputes: An historical critical overview
Historically the British Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) role in a significant number of major industrial disputes has been subject to both accusations of ‘betrayals’ and ‘sell-outs’ as well as more sympathetic accounts which emphasise the constraints faced by the TUC both in terms of their institutional role and their relationship with constituent unions. Drawing on evidence concerning the role of the TUC in significant disputes including the 1926…
British labour movement solidarity in the 1913-14 Dublin Lockout
While most accounts of the Dublin Lockout of 1913–1914 consider it primarily as an event in Irish history, it was also one of the most important struggles in twentieth-century British history. It was influenced by, and was an integral part of the great ‘labour unrest’ that swept over Britain in the years 1911–1914 and had tremendous repercussions in Britain as well as Ireland. This article provides much neglected analysis of the nature, extent an…
Strike waves, union growth and the rank-and-file/bureaucracy interplay: Britain 1889–1890, 1910–1913 and 1919–1920
Gerald Friedman's Reigniting the Labor Movement was a highly ambitious, unashamedly partisan, historical and transnational comparative analysis of the rise and demise of the labour movement, which identified the way in which rank-and-file workers' spontaneous and innovative strike militancy represents an ‘incipient rebellion against the capitalist system’. In the process, the book made a compelling case for the restoration of past militant worker…
An alter factual methodological approach to labor history: The case of the British miners' strike 1984–1985
In recent years, a small number of the so-called ‘counterfactual’ or ‘what-if’ historical books, which ask us to imagine what would have happened if events in the past had turned out differently than they did, have been published. They have stimulated an important, albeit not entirely new, methodological debate about issues and questions which are (or should be) of central relevance to the work of labor historians, and which such labor historians…
Syndicalism and Strikes, Leadership and Influence: Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States
The explosion of industrial and political militancy that swept the world during the early years of the twentieth century gave the revolutionary syndicalist movement a prominence and notoriety it would not otherwise have possessed, while at the same time providing a context for syndicalist ideas to be broadcast and for syndicalists to assume the leadership of major strikes in a number of countries. This article sheds new light on the complex natur…
Objective but not detached: Partisanship in industrial relations research
This article considers whether industrial relations (IR) research is objective, impartial or value-free, and argues that many IR academics in Britain have tended to start from a social-democratic premise which makes them relatively more sympathetic to the interests and objectives of workers and their trade unions than to the business needs of employers and managers. Focusing attention on the partisanship of those who have made a distinctive 'radi…
Partisan, scholarly and active: Arguments for an Organic Public Sociology of Work
Despite a thriving tradition of critical scholarship in United Kingdom-based sociology of work, Burawoy's call for a partisan organic public sociology that is part of 'a social movement beyond the academy' and Bourdieu's plea for committed scholarship in the service of the social movement against neo-liberalism have received scant attention. This article seeks to stimulate debate by presenting a framework for a left-radical organic public sociolo…
Re-evaluating syndicalist opposition to the First World War
It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime…
A reappraisal of the rank-and-file versus bureaucracy debate
This paper celebrates some of the considerable strengths of Hyman's 1970s/early 1980s analysis of unions in general and bureaucracy specifically, and reapplies it to more recent developments within British unions, while at the same time providing a critique of Hyman's refutation of the 'rank-and-file' versus 'union bureaucracy' conception of intra-union relations. It argues that the wider set of implications Hyman drew from the accentuated pressu…
The state of workplace union reps' organization in Britain today
This article provides a brief evaluation of the state of workplace union reps' organization in Britain as we approach the second decade of the 2000s. It documents the severe weakening of workplace union organization over the last 25 years, which is reflected in the declining number of reps, reduced bargaining power and the problem of bureaucratization. But it also provides evidence of the continuing resilience, and even combativity in certain are…
Leadership and union militancy: The case of the RMT
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), which represents the majority of mainline railway and London Underground workers, is currently one of the most militant and left-wing trade unions in Britain. Drawing on the study of leadership provided by mobilisation theory, this article explores the extent to which union leadership, dominated by left-wing activists at every level of the union, has been an important contributory …
Revolutionary Syndicalist Opposition to the First World War: A Comparative Reassessment
Agitator ‘Theory’ of Strikes Re-evaluated
This article re-evaluates the so-called ‘agitator theory’ of strikes, the popular (often media-induced) notion that industrial militancy is the work of a few hard-core militant shop stewards and/or left-wing political ‘agitators.’ It suggests that while many industrial relations academics have traditionally refused to accept such a one-dimensional explanation for strikes, for example in relation to the Communist Party in the post-war years, many …
There is no alternative: Exploring the options in the 1984-5 miners' strike
This article critically reassesses the predominant argument that the 1984-5 miners' strike was inevitably doomed, and examines the potential for alternative courses of action and a different outcome
Shop stewards' leadership, left-wing activism and collective workplace union organisation
Providing an account of the dynamic interrelationship between shop steward leadership and membership interaction, Ralph Darlington focuses particular attention on the much-neglected crucial role that left-wing political activists can play in shaping the nature of collective workplace relations
The Domesday Geography of Eastern England
Part of folio 305b of the Domesday Book Preface List of maps 1. Yorkshire: the West Riding I. S. Maxwell 2. Yorkshire: the North Riding I. S. Maxwell 3. Yorkshire: the East Riding I. S. Maxwell 4. Nottinghamshire I. B. Terrett 5. Derbyshire D. Holly 6. Cheshire I. B. Terrett 7. Lancashire I. B. Terrett 8. The Northern counties H. C. Darby Appendix I: The Yorkshire folios I. S. Maxwell Appendix II: Summary of the Domesday Book for the Northern cou…
The Last Phase of Anglo‐saxon History 1
Partisan, scholarly and active: Arguments for an Organic Public Sociology of Work
Despite a thriving tradition of critical scholarship in United Kingdom-based sociology of work, Burawoy's call for a partisan organic public sociology that is part of 'a social movement beyond the academy' and Bourdieu's plea for committed scholarship in the service of the social movement against neo-liberalism have received scant attention. This article seeks to stimulate debate by presenting a framework for a left-radical organic public sociolo…
Shop stewards' leadership, left-wing activism and collective workplace union organisation
Providing an account of the dynamic interrelationship between shop steward leadership and membership interaction, Ralph Darlington focuses particular attention on the much-neglected crucial role that left-wing political activists can play in shaping the nature of collective workplace relations
Leadership and union militancy: The case of the RMT
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), which represents the majority of mainline railway and London Underground workers, is currently one of the most militant and left-wing trade unions in Britain. Drawing on the study of leadership provided by mobilisation theory, this article explores the extent to which union leadership, dominated by left-wing activists at every level of the union, has been an important contributory …
A reappraisal of the rank-and-file versus bureaucracy debate
This paper celebrates some of the considerable strengths of Hyman's 1970s/early 1980s analysis of unions in general and bureaucracy specifically, and reapplies it to more recent developments within British unions, while at the same time providing a critique of Hyman's refutation of the 'rank-and-file' versus 'union bureaucracy' conception of intra-union relations. It argues that the wider set of implications Hyman drew from the accentuated pressu…
Agitator ‘Theory’ of Strikes Re-evaluated
This article re-evaluates the so-called ‘agitator theory’ of strikes, the popular (often media-induced) notion that industrial militancy is the work of a few hard-core militant shop stewards and/or left-wing political ‘agitators.’ It suggests that while many industrial relations academics have traditionally refused to accept such a one-dimensional explanation for strikes, for example in relation to the Communist Party in the post-war years, many …
The state of workplace union reps' organization in Britain today
This article provides a brief evaluation of the state of workplace union reps' organization in Britain as we approach the second decade of the 2000s. It documents the severe weakening of workplace union organization over the last 25 years, which is reflected in the declining number of reps, reduced bargaining power and the problem of bureaucratization. But it also provides evidence of the continuing resilience, and even combativity in certain are…
There is no alternative: Exploring the options in the 1984-5 miners' strike
This article critically reassesses the predominant argument that the 1984-5 miners' strike was inevitably doomed, and examines the potential for alternative courses of action and a different outcome
Syndicalism and Strikes, Leadership and Influence: Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States
The explosion of industrial and political militancy that swept the world during the early years of the twentieth century gave the revolutionary syndicalist movement a prominence and notoriety it would not otherwise have possessed, while at the same time providing a context for syndicalist ideas to be broadcast and for syndicalists to assume the leadership of major strikes in a number of countries. This article sheds new light on the complex natur…
Strike waves, union growth and the rank-and-file/bureaucracy interplay: Britain 1889–1890, 1910–1913 and 1919–1920
Gerald Friedman's Reigniting the Labor Movement was a highly ambitious, unashamedly partisan, historical and transnational comparative analysis of the rise and demise of the labour movement, which identified the way in which rank-and-file workers' spontaneous and innovative strike militancy represents an ‘incipient rebellion against the capitalist system’. In the process, the book made a compelling case for the restoration of past militant worker…
Objective but not detached: Partisanship in industrial relations research
This article considers whether industrial relations (IR) research is objective, impartial or value-free, and argues that many IR academics in Britain have tended to start from a social-democratic premise which makes them relatively more sympathetic to the interests and objectives of workers and their trade unions than to the business needs of employers and managers. Focusing attention on the partisanship of those who have made a distinctive 'radi…
The pre-First World War British women’s suffrage revolt and labour unrest: Never the twain shall meet
During the years immediately preceding the First World War Britain experienced mass social unrest on a scale not seen since the early nineteenth century. Despite their distinctive priorities of gender and class, respectively, both the women’s suffrage revolt for the vote (embracing suffragettes and suffragists) and the labour unrest of 1910–14 (involving strikes in pursuit of higher wages, better working conditions and trade union recognition) ut…
Strikers versus scabs: Violence in the 1910-1914 British labour revolt
Over the last 200 years of British labour history there have beenfrequent examples of aggressive and sometimes violent masspicketing aimed at stopping non-striking scab or so-called ‘blackleg’labour [sic]. Yet remarkably little detailed attention has beengiven within the field of British industrial relations or even labourhistory to the contributory causes, characteristic features, impactand broader implications of this violent dimension of the s…
An alter factual methodological approach to labor history: The case of the British miners' strike 1984–1985
In recent years, a small number of the so-called ‘counterfactual’ or ‘what-if’ historical books, which ask us to imagine what would have happened if events in the past had turned out differently than they did, have been published. They have stimulated an important, albeit not entirely new, methodological debate about issues and questions which are (or should be) of central relevance to the work of labor historians, and which such labor historians…
The role of the TUC in significant industrial disputes: An historical critical overview
Historically the British Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) role in a significant number of major industrial disputes has been subject to both accusations of ‘betrayals’ and ‘sell-outs’ as well as more sympathetic accounts which emphasise the constraints faced by the TUC both in terms of their institutional role and their relationship with constituent unions. Drawing on evidence concerning the role of the TUC in significant disputes including the 1926…
British labour movement solidarity in the 1913-14 Dublin Lockout
While most accounts of the Dublin Lockout of 1913–1914 consider it primarily as an event in Irish history, it was also one of the most important struggles in twentieth-century British history. It was influenced by, and was an integral part of the great ‘labour unrest’ that swept over Britain in the years 1911–1914 and had tremendous repercussions in Britain as well as Ireland. This article provides much neglected analysis of the nature, extent an…
Re-evaluating syndicalist opposition to the First World War
It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime…
The Last Phase of Anglo‐saxon History 1
The Last Phase of Anglo‐saxon History 1
The Domesday Geography of Eastern England
Part of folio 305b of the Domesday Book Preface List of maps 1. Yorkshire: the West Riding I. S. Maxwell 2. Yorkshire: the North Riding I. S. Maxwell 3. Yorkshire: the East Riding I. S. Maxwell 4. Nottinghamshire I. B. Terrett 5. Derbyshire D. Holly 6. Cheshire I. B. Terrett 7. Lancashire I. B. Terrett 8. The Northern counties H. C. Darby Appendix I: The Yorkshire folios I. S. Maxwell Appendix II: Summary of the Domesday Book for the Northern cou…
Shop stewards' leadership, left-wing activism and collective workplace union organisation
Providing an account of the dynamic interrelationship between shop steward leadership and membership interaction, Ralph Darlington focuses particular attention on the much-neglected crucial role that left-wing political activists can play in shaping the nature of collective workplace relations
There is no alternative: Exploring the options in the 1984-5 miners' strike
This article critically reassesses the predominant argument that the 1984-5 miners' strike was inevitably doomed, and examines the potential for alternative courses of action and a different outcome
Revolutionary Syndicalist Opposition to the First World War: A Comparative Reassessment
Agitator ‘Theory’ of Strikes Re-evaluated
This article re-evaluates the so-called ‘agitator theory’ of strikes, the popular (often media-induced) notion that industrial militancy is the work of a few hard-core militant shop stewards and/or left-wing political ‘agitators.’ It suggests that while many industrial relations academics have traditionally refused to accept such a one-dimensional explanation for strikes, for example in relation to the Communist Party in the post-war years, many …
Leadership and union militancy: The case of the RMT
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), which represents the majority of mainline railway and London Underground workers, is currently one of the most militant and left-wing trade unions in Britain. Drawing on the study of leadership provided by mobilisation theory, this article explores the extent to which union leadership, dominated by left-wing activists at every level of the union, has been an important contributory …
The state of workplace union reps' organization in Britain today
This article provides a brief evaluation of the state of workplace union reps' organization in Britain as we approach the second decade of the 2000s. It documents the severe weakening of workplace union organization over the last 25 years, which is reflected in the declining number of reps, reduced bargaining power and the problem of bureaucratization. But it also provides evidence of the continuing resilience, and even combativity in certain are…
Re-evaluating syndicalist opposition to the First World War
It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime…
A reappraisal of the rank-and-file versus bureaucracy debate
This paper celebrates some of the considerable strengths of Hyman's 1970s/early 1980s analysis of unions in general and bureaucracy specifically, and reapplies it to more recent developments within British unions, while at the same time providing a critique of Hyman's refutation of the 'rank-and-file' versus 'union bureaucracy' conception of intra-union relations. It argues that the wider set of implications Hyman drew from the accentuated pressu…
Syndicalism and Strikes, Leadership and Influence: Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States
The explosion of industrial and political militancy that swept the world during the early years of the twentieth century gave the revolutionary syndicalist movement a prominence and notoriety it would not otherwise have possessed, while at the same time providing a context for syndicalist ideas to be broadcast and for syndicalists to assume the leadership of major strikes in a number of countries. This article sheds new light on the complex natur…
Objective but not detached: Partisanship in industrial relations research
This article considers whether industrial relations (IR) research is objective, impartial or value-free, and argues that many IR academics in Britain have tended to start from a social-democratic premise which makes them relatively more sympathetic to the interests and objectives of workers and their trade unions than to the business needs of employers and managers. Focusing attention on the partisanship of those who have made a distinctive 'radi…
Partisan, scholarly and active: Arguments for an Organic Public Sociology of Work
Despite a thriving tradition of critical scholarship in United Kingdom-based sociology of work, Burawoy's call for a partisan organic public sociology that is part of 'a social movement beyond the academy' and Bourdieu's plea for committed scholarship in the service of the social movement against neo-liberalism have received scant attention. This article seeks to stimulate debate by presenting a framework for a left-radical organic public sociolo…
Strike waves, union growth and the rank-and-file/bureaucracy interplay: Britain 1889–1890, 1910–1913 and 1919–1920
Gerald Friedman's Reigniting the Labor Movement was a highly ambitious, unashamedly partisan, historical and transnational comparative analysis of the rise and demise of the labour movement, which identified the way in which rank-and-file workers' spontaneous and innovative strike militancy represents an ‘incipient rebellion against the capitalist system’. In the process, the book made a compelling case for the restoration of past militant worker…
An alter factual methodological approach to labor history: The case of the British miners' strike 1984–1985
In recent years, a small number of the so-called ‘counterfactual’ or ‘what-if’ historical books, which ask us to imagine what would have happened if events in the past had turned out differently than they did, have been published. They have stimulated an important, albeit not entirely new, methodological debate about issues and questions which are (or should be) of central relevance to the work of labor historians, and which such labor historians…
British labour movement solidarity in the 1913-14 Dublin Lockout
While most accounts of the Dublin Lockout of 1913–1914 consider it primarily as an event in Irish history, it was also one of the most important struggles in twentieth-century British history. It was influenced by, and was an integral part of the great ‘labour unrest’ that swept over Britain in the years 1911–1914 and had tremendous repercussions in Britain as well as Ireland. This article provides much neglected analysis of the nature, extent an…
The role of the TUC in significant industrial disputes: An historical critical overview
Historically the British Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) role in a significant number of major industrial disputes has been subject to both accusations of ‘betrayals’ and ‘sell-outs’ as well as more sympathetic accounts which emphasise the constraints faced by the TUC both in terms of their institutional role and their relationship with constituent unions. Drawing on evidence concerning the role of the TUC in significant disputes including the 1926…
The pre-First World War British women’s suffrage revolt and labour unrest: Never the twain shall meet
During the years immediately preceding the First World War Britain experienced mass social unrest on a scale not seen since the early nineteenth century. Despite their distinctive priorities of gender and class, respectively, both the women’s suffrage revolt for the vote (embracing suffragettes and suffragists) and the labour unrest of 1910–14 (involving strikes in pursuit of higher wages, better working conditions and trade union recognition) ut…
Strikers versus scabs: Violence in the 1910-1914 British labour revolt
Over the last 200 years of British labour history there have beenfrequent examples of aggressive and sometimes violent masspicketing aimed at stopping non-striking scab or so-called ‘blackleg’labour [sic]. Yet remarkably little detailed attention has beengiven within the field of British industrial relations or even labourhistory to the contributory causes, characteristic features, impactand broader implications of this violent dimension of the s…
Author’s response to “ Labor History Symposium: Ralph Darlington, Labour Revolt in Britain, 1910-1914”
Political science (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · History (7 works) · History (7 works)