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This thesis is a history of the gas industry down to 1914 with special reference to London. Part One deals with the industry's origins and its technical and business history and traces the development from the discovery of coal gas manufacture at the end of the seventeenth century to its first commercial exploitation in the early nineteenth century. It then sets out the subsequent technological progress made in the industry from the manufacturing process to the applications of coal gas. The commercial history of the gas companies in London is related from the early period of competition between an increasing number of speculative and often fraudulent concerns to the agreement of monopoly districts in the 1850s and amalgamation in the 1870s. The increasing government and legislative regulation is dealt with in detail and biographies of the leading industrialists are given. Part One concludes with an analysis which sets out to explain the nature and progress of the industry, its initial innovation, the pace of subsequent technological change and its commercial history, particularly relating to growth, competition, the actual role of government regulation and municipalisation, the relationship with the electricity industry and other linkages with the rest of the economy. Part Two deals with the fortunes of the workers employed in the London gasworks and deals with working conditions, wages, hours, welfare benefits and the attempts of the companies to discipline their men. It relates the early strikes in London particularly those of 1834, 1859 and 1872 and looks at the rise of the permanent union in 1889, the winning of the eight hour day and the prolonged strike at the South Metropolitan company in 1889-90. The history of the profit sharing schemes which became a feature in gas companies is given as is a brief history of some aspects of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers down to 1914. Part Two concludes with some analysis to explain the major variables in the labour relations of the gasworks, especially wages, strikes and the level of union membership.

Au sein de la société babylonienne (actuel Irak) de la seconde moitié du premier millénaire avant Jésus, plusieurs modes d'organisation du travail coexistent : travail rémunéré, esclavage, différentes formes de dépendance. Ma thèse se concentre sur le statut et activités des esclaves et dépendant(e)s rattaché(e)s aux temples, ainsi que celui des déportés d'origine judéenne et ouest-sémitique déplacés de force en Mésopotamie par l'empire néo-babylonien lors de la conquête de la Syrie-­Palestine. Ces trois groupes sociaux ont pu être analysés comme étant soumis à des formes d'esclavage. Je tente une étude précise de leurs activités économiques, leur implication dans différents secteurs (agriculture, commerce, artisanat, construction), que ce soit en milieu rural ou urbain, tout en confrontant cela avec la documentation juridique et judiciaire disponible. Ainsi, je tente de montrer les frontières théoriques des statuts des esclaves, dépendant(e)s et déporté(e)s, mais aussi comment la seule lecture juridique est insuffisante pour cela. Ma thèse s'intéresse ainsi particulièrement à distinguer les hiérarchies socio-économiques présentes dans chacun de ces groupes de travailleurs afin de percevoir les dynamiques sociales qui se jouent. La constitution d'une classe de travailleurs intermédiaires (esclaves-agents, dépendants gestionnaires, déportés disposant de capital à investir ...) est un fait important à analyser de ce fait. Quelles possibilités de mobilité sociale et d'émancipation en Babylonie au premier millénaire avant J.-C. pour les membres de ces groupes? C'est l'enjeu de mon étude, pleinement inscrite dans l'histoire du travail. / Several modes of production exist in first millennium BCE Babylonia (modem Iraq): wage-labour, slavery, different forms of dependency. My thesis is mainly focused on the study of the status and the activities of slaves and temple dependants, with the addition of Judean and West Semite deportees, forced by the neo-Babylonian to live and work in Mesopotamia after the conquest of Syria-Palestine. These three social groups have been analysed as different forms of slavery in the historiography. My aim is for a precise study of their economic activities, their part in several economic sectors (agriculture, trade, craftsmanship, building) in rural and urban context. I try to put this in contrast with the available legal documentation. Therefore, I try to show the theoretical boundaries of the statuses of slaves, dependants and deportees and how their legal analysis isn't sufficient. My dissertation aims for revealing the hierarchies present inside those three groups of labourers and the social dynamics at play. The making of a class of intermediary workers (slave agents, dependants having an administrative position, deportees investing capital ... ) is an important historical fact needing an analysis. Are there possibilities for social mobility and emancipation in their favour in first millennium BCE Babylonia? Answering this is one objective of my study, grounded in the perspective of an history of labour.

One of the most controversial debates in contemporary Swedish history centred on a proposal to create “wage-earner” funds. The main institutional actors of Swedish society were involved in this debate during the 1970s and 1980s. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the most important institutional actors in Sweden, namely LO, the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish Employer Confederation (SAF), participated in and defined themselves in the wage-earner funds debate, against the background of the crisis of the Swedish Fordism, i.e. the mass production society. Chapter 2 consists of an analysis of those inherent features of Swedish Fordism that potentially could imply dissolution of the Fordist society in Sweden after the 1960s. Chapter 3 investigates debates about wage solidarity policy and the concentration of power and ownership in the Swedish economy that resulted in the LO wage-earner funds proposal from 1975. Chapter 4 discusses the opinions of active members in LO regarding the wage-earner funds proposals from 1975 and 1978. Chapter 5 investigates the Social Democratic Party's relationship to wage-earner funds. The chapter surmises that SAP leaders took a pragmatic attitude towards funds. This pragmatism differed from the opinion expressed by the radical activists in the party. Chapter 6 deals with the reaction of the Swedish Employer Confederation to the wage-earner funds proposal. The SAF anti-fund campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s are investigated in detail in the context of a neoliberal ideological offensive in Sweden. The chapter argues that the decision to abandon the centralized wage bargaining model influenced SAF's strategy in the debate over wage-earner funds. The dissertation’s main conclusion is that the radical wings of LO and SAP as well as the SAP leaders and the Swedish employers all used the mobilization around wage-earner funds for their own political purposes to solve problems resulting from the crisis of Swedish Fordism.

From 1838 until the end of the European Revolutions in 1852, the French Revolution provided Chartists with a repertoire of symbolism that Chartists would deploy in their activism, histories, and literature to foster a sense of collective consciousness, define a democratic world-view, and encourage internationalist sentiment. Challenging conservative notions of the revolution as a bloody and anarchic affair, Chartists constructed histories of 1789 that posed the era as a romantic struggle for freedom and nationhood analogous to their own, and one that was deeply entwined with British history and national identity. During the 1830s, Chartist opposition to the New Poor Law drew from the gothic repertoire of the Bastille to frame inequality in Britain. The workhouse 'bastile' was not viewed simply as an illegitimate imposition upon Britain, but came to symbolise the character of class rule. Meanwhile, Chartist newspapers also printed fictions based on the French Revolution, inserting Chartist concerns into the narratives, and their histories of 1789 stressed the similarity between France on the eve of revolution and Britain on the eve of the Charter. During the 1840s Chartist internationalism was contextualised by a framework of thinking about international politics constructed around the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, while the convulsions of Continental Europe during 1848 were interpreted as both a confirmation of Chartist historical discourse and as the opening of a new era of international struggle. In the Democratic Review (1849-1850), the Red Republican (1850), and The Friend of the People (1850-1852), Chartists like George Julian Harney, Helen Macfarlane, William James Linton, and Gerald Massey, along with leading figures of the radical émigrés of 1848, characterised 'democracy' as a spirit of action and a system of belief. For them, the democratic heritage was populated by a diverse array of figures, including the Apostles of Jesus, Martin Luther, the romantic poets, and the Jacobins of 1793. The 'Red Republicanism' that flourished during 1848-1852 was sustained by the historical viewpoints arrived at during the Chartist period generally. Attempts to define a 'science' of socialism was as much about correcting the misadventures of past ages as it was a means to realise the promise announced by the 'Springtime of the Peoples'.