Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. 1963 1st edition. Pages in excellent bright condition. No notes or highlighting. Some marking and tanning due to age but very light. Cover is faded and has some marking. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Hundreds of books have been written about the railway companie which functioned before 1947. Hundreds more have described in great detail the development of the railway locomotive and the evolution of rolling stock and signalling systems. But the companies and their vast and expensive capital equipment would have been worthless without the men to run them. It is therefore surprising that the number of books about the lives and working conditions of railwaymen could be counted almost on the fingers of a man’s hand. Fifty years ago through the foundation of the N.U.R. the majority of railwaymen were for the first time organized in a big industrial union. The last full account of this dramatic development was written over forty years ago by the late Mr George Alcock. Dr Philip Bagwell’s book which relates the stirring events in the struggle to end inhuman conditions of employment and to gain union recognition carries the story forward to the Guillebaud Report in 1960 and will I am sure satisfy a long-felt need. To those who would like to know what railway life was like before the days of the union; what happened in the great national railway strikes of 1911 and 1919; and what the N.U.R. did to gain the guaranteed week holidays with pay and numerous other improve- ments I can strongly recommend this authoritative finely illustrated and well written book. In the last fifty years the organized workers have played an increasing part not only in determining the conditions of employment but also in shaping the very structure of industry. No student of transport can afford to ignore the essential background to industrial trade unionism provided by this excellent book. (MP)