Last week’s industrial action did not quite convey the certainty with which in 1905 the Industrial Workers of the World (nicknamed the Wobblies) opened the preamble to their constitution: ‘The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.’ That was an era when anarcho-syndicalists excitedly spoke of industrial unionism. ‘Capable and courageous industrial activity,’ declared the revolutionary Tom Mann in 1909, ‘forces from the politicians proportionate concessions.’ It was another 62 years before the national press of Britain announced that newspapers would not be published the next day ‘because of industrial action’.
The word industrial came into the language in the 16th century, then slept until the end of the 18th century, with the advent of the industrial revolution (a term not used before 1848, by John Stuart Mill, and sanctified by Arnold Toynbee’s Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England in 1889).
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