All Together Now

John Lloyd

• British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics: Vol. I: The Postwar Compromise, 1945-64 edited by John McIlroy and Nina Fishman et al
  Ashgate, 335 pp, £35.00, January 2000, ISBN 0 7546 0099 8
• British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics: Vol. II: The High Tide of Trade Unionism, 1964-79 edited by John McIlroy and Nina Fishman et al
  Ashgate, 389 pp, £35.00, January 2000, ISBN 0 7546 0099 8
• The TUC: From the General Strike to New Unionism by Robert Taylor
  Palgrave, 299 pp, £45.00, September 2000, ISBN 0 333 93066 5

Two days after May Day, the festival of labour, a story appeared on the front page of the Financial Times under the typically downbeat headline: ‘Work permit shake-up targets skill gap.’ It told of the Government’s introduction of a permit system which would allow rapid entry into the UK for foreign professionals and highly skilled technicians – doctors, nurses, software engineers, information technologists and others. The same package proposed that non-British students who possess skills which are in short supply should be able to move easily from completing their degrees to finding employment. Aimed primarily at Asia and Central/Eastern Europe, the scheme was commended by David Blunkett as proof that the Government was ‘delivering nothing less than one of the world’s most flexible modern work permit systems. To maintain a buoyant economy we need to ensure employers can quickly fill key posts where shortages exist.’