RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES ON THE SHOP-FLOOR IN BRITAIN, 1945-60 - MYTH AND REALITY

It is widely assumed that shopfloor restrictive practices were both pe rvasive and very damaging in post-war British industry. Indeed, this p oint has been repeated by both politicians and academics, receiving pe rhaps its most sophisticated exposition in the work of Mancur Olson. H owever, a review of the contemporary evidence reveals that such an int erpretation is almost wholly erroneous. Some commentators made much of restrictive practices in the 1940s and 1950s, but their accounts are hardly convincing. On the other hand, a range of more comprehensive en quiries into the problem consistently showed that it was of limited im portance. Serious restrictionism, in fact, was confined to a very few sectors - the printing industry, the docks and shipbuilding - and cann ot, anyway, be explained simply in terms of labour intransigence. Thes e facts clearly need to be incorporated in future accounts of Britain' s post-war industrial decline.