Abstract
During the period under review in this study the long-term decline of the British economy became acute, and it is in the context of a considerably worsening economic situation on several dimensions that the disintegration of Britain’s characteristic post-war industrial relations system should be seen. Although several new factors had appeared by the end of the 1960s to intensify the economic problem, the underlying weaknesses had been present throughout the post-war period; but for several years they had been largely denied major political significance by the fact that mass prosperity was advancing at an unprecedented rate. Certainly prosperity rather than relative decline was the relevant experience for the working population of the 1950s, whose immediate past included a world war, high unemployment and an international economic depression. Although they appear in retrospect as a period of low growth and a deterioration in Britain’s position as a dominant trading nation, the 1950s seemed at the time to be an era of increasing wealth and full employment.
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© 1978 Colin Crouch
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Crouch, C. (1978). The Intensification of Industrial Conflict in the United Kingdom. In: Crouch, C., Pizzorno, A. (eds) The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03022-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03022-4_6
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