United We Stand / Alastair J. Reid

While previous histories of organized labour have tended to treat the working class as a single, separate entity, Alastair Reid instead sees them as integral to Britain as a whole. He examines how various unions have grown and shrunk, the social and political factors that affected them, the people who campaigned in them – from Francis Place of the Breeches Makers Benefit Society to Manchester chartist John Doherty, from women’s rights pioneer Mary Macarthur to 1970s hero Jack Jones – and shows that understanding the trade unions is in fact vital to understanding the history of Britain.