This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Change in British Society, given by A.H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H.

was originally broadcast in 1978.

This week, I want to trace the development of deliberate organisation in relation to the changing structure of class and status in Britain.

This will lead me in the end to the fact that the trade unions and the Labour Party had eventually

to face the problem of what Colin Crouch calls alienation of the organisational apparatus from the

membership. This fate befalls all large organizations.

They tend to become remote from the interests they're created to serve.

The more so, the more successfully they recruit members.

So Marx's remarked that history is made behind men's backs

applies to those who consciously seek to change that history as much

as to those who do not. At the beginning of the century, economic organizations were dominated by

a private owning and controlling class, and political organization by the conservative and liberal

wings of the middle and upper classes.

The Labour Party didn't exist, and the trade union movement, though it had deep roots

especially among skilled workers in the earlier stages of industrialism, was struggling to

extend its organizational sway among semi-skilled and unskilled workers.

There were two million union members at the beginning of this century. sway among semi-skilled and unskilled workers.

There were two million union members at the beginning of this century,

out of a total potential membership of nearly 16 millions.

In other words, only one-eighth of all possible recruits had in fact been recruited.

Put more technically, the density of membership was 13% in 1900.

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