Almost all the recent work on the British Labor party has been concerned with analysis of the party's electoral performance or possibilities, interpretation and reinterpretation of party policy, or discussion of the ideological forces currently at work in the party. These studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of the policy of the party. But there have been only one or two recent works on the organization and composition of the Labor party, and hardly any on the organizational and policy-making importance of the affiliated trade unions which make up its electoral and financial strength. This is understandable in view of the fact that the trade union elements, unlike those in the party's political wing, have not generally provided the policy controversy upon which both publicists and academicians feed. But the strength and stability which the trade unions provide for the party are probably of more long-term importance than are the topical conflicts of the “political side.”

It is the purpose of this article to discuss the organization and functions of the British Labor party in terms of the formal and informal interrelations of the political and industrial elements, mainly during the years 1945–1953. Policy and policy conflicts are subordinated here to an institutional and statistical analysis of these interrelations.

Since the days of the “New England Reformers,” about whom Emerson wrote, American politics has been characterized by great numbers of political action groups whose members had, personally, nothing to gain from their work except the satisfaction of improving, or attempting to improve, society. Such reform groups we may call altruistic to distinguish them from groups in which the members hope to gain economic or prestige rewards for themselves — but “altruistic” in this sense is not to be understood as having value content or implying agreement with the goals of such groups.