‘To develop a strategy of advance’ say the authors of this bookfootnote1 ‘is the crucial task of the left today.’ (page 407). It is in the search for such a strategy that a new interest in industrial democracy and workers’ control has arisen. This was evident at the Nottingham Conference on Workers’ Control which was held this March and attended by nearly 500 delegates. The resolution passed at this Conference called for ‘Workers everywhere . . . to form Workers’ Control Groups to develop democratic consciousness . . extending workers’ control over industry and the economy itself, through uniting Workers’ Control Groups into a national force in the Socialist movement.’
‘Have we not been here before?’ I was asking myself. I had already begun to delve into working class history when the appearance of this admirable book lightened the task. Ken Coates and Anthony Topham have been amongst the main architects of the new Workers’ Control Movement and in this book are explicitly directing their learning in support of this important political activity—one that may well be the most significant growth point in the British Labour Movement today.