Political history and labour history.

This article discusses the political history of labor in Great Britain. Some early labor history assumed the inevitable onward march of an integrated labor movement. Subsequent, and more scholarly, work, such as Henry Felling's very important contributions, seemed to convey a similar impression. The Labor Party's expansion was seen as a consequence of its origins in the economic interests of trade unions and in the social cohesiveness of working-class life. Like Marxist historians with very different views and approaches institutional historians identified a muted sense of class consciousness which they saw as the main social force in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Equally, the pattern of labor politics in the early nineteenth century was said to reflect a rising tide of working-class consciousness. There were disagreements, largely between Marxist and non-Marxist historians, over the extent to which this class consciousness contained the potential for militancy The underlying emphasis on labor politics as a reflection of social forces had implications for discussions of labor policy. Pelling and McKibbin agreed albeit, for different reasons, with those Marxists who saw Labor Party policy as an unsophisticated reflection of a protective and conservative class consciousness.