The Labour Party’s dependence on trade union backing led it to postpone the sorts of industrial reforms that many (including some of its own leaders) knew to be long overdue. British industrial relations remained mired in adversarial shop-floor confrontations and craft-based piece-rate and wage disputes of a kind virtually unknown in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria or the Netherlands. Labour ministers made half-hearted attempts to break clear of this encumbering inheritance, but without much success; and partly for this reason the achievements of continental social democracy were never quite
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