The History of Trade Unionism was published by Longmans, Green in 1894, the product of six years of research by Sidney and Beatrice Webb — the husband-and-wife team who were the intellectual engine of the Fabian Society and, through it, of the British Labour movement. The book was the first serious historical study of trade unions, and it remained the standard work for over half a century. A substantially revised edition appeared in 1920, incorporating the dramatic developments of the war years and the immediate postwar period.
The Webbs’ method was exhaustive empirical research combined with a clear interpretive framework. They examined minute books, correspondence, pamphlets, parliamentary records, and newspaper reports for dozens of individual unions, tracing the evolution of working-class organization from the early “combinations” of the eighteenth century (illegal under the Combination Acts until 1824) through the great mid-Victorian unions of skilled workers (the “New Model” unions like the Amalgamated Society of Engineers) to the “New Unionism” of the 1880s and 1890s, which brought unskilled and semi-skilled workers into the movement for the first time.
The Webbs’ interpretation was Fabian: they saw trade unions not as revolutionary organizations but as practical institutions for improving workers’ conditions through collective bargaining, friendly society benefits, and political pressure. They distinguished sharply between the “method of mutual insurance” (strike funds, unemployment benefits, sick pay), the “method of collective bargaining” (negotiation with employers), and the “method of legal enactment” (lobbying for legislation). This analytical framework, elaborated in the companion volume Industrial Democracy (1897), shaped the way the British labour movement understood itself for generations.
Critics from both left and right challenged the Webbs’ interpretation. Marxists argued that the Webbs domesticated trade unionism, stripping it of its revolutionary potential by presenting it as a reformist institution compatible with capitalism. Conservatives argued that the Webbs’ sympathetic treatment ignored the coercive aspects of union power — the closed shop, the intimidation of non-members, the restriction of output. Both criticisms had merit, but the Webbs’ factual research was so thorough that even hostile critics had to rely on it.
The 1920 revised edition is the more commonly encountered and the more useful: it incorporates the massive expansion of union membership during the Great War, the shop stewards’ movement, and the political transformation that led to the Labour Party replacing the Liberals as the main party of the left. The Webbs’ account of this transformation — which they had helped bring about — is both scholarly and triumphant.
Collecting The History of Trade Unionism
First edition (Longmans, Green, London, 1894): Green cloth, gilt lettering.
Revised edition (Longmans, Green, 1920): The more substantial and sought-after version.
Market values:
- 1894 first edition, good condition: $80–$200
- 1920 revised edition: $30–$80
- Later reprints: $10–$25
The 1894 first is genuinely scarce in good condition; institutional copies dominate the market. The 1920 revision is more readily available.