This authoritative and comprehensive history does more than tell a story. It shows how trade unions created permanent organisation, based on "recognition" as a key concept. Those who had formerly been locked out from society now recognised their own strength in association, and saw that strength reflected in the eyes of their bosses.

The Making of the Labour Movement traces the growth of socialist ideas, syndicalism and guild socialism. It charts the influence of internationalism on the struggle of low-paid workers to improve their conditions of life. The organisation of the un-skilled, and the expression of their political and industrial voices, is followed from the struggle for the "docker's tanner", in 1889, to Ernest Bevin's passionate advocacy on behalf of the dockers, in 1920. The key figures who shaped events both nationally and regionally were all original thinkers, and are here allowed, whenever possible, to speak in their own voices