Reading Hugh Clegg’s ‘The Bullock Report and European Experience’ (1977) in Historical Context

Hugh Clegg's riposte to the 1977 Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy was one of seven papers published from a conference on the subject in April that year. His contribution has to be seen against his long-standing views (expressed, for example, in 1951 and 1960) on industrial democracy which he saw in practical terms as free trade unions conducting collective bargaining. On the Donovan Commission (1965–68), he supported the majority opposition to recommending even voluntary schemes for worker directors. In 1977 he regarded worker directors as irrelevant to the urgent, practical task of reforming British industrial relations. For Clegg, continental versions of industrial democracy worked where there was already a successful prior industrial relations system, developed through workplace and industry institutional practices over decades. One new, top-level initiative could not create that.