From ‘embedded liberalism’ to ‘negotiated openness’: British trade unions and the European Union from the 1960s—A world-order approach

Abstract

This article1 is primarily concerned with the political economy of British trade union policy towards the European Community (EC) in the 1960s and 1970s. Its aim is to reassess union engagement with the EC in this period from a viewpoint informed by the now established perspective of world-order analysis in international political economy (Cox, 1981; Lipietz, 1992; Gamble & Payne, 1996; Payne, 2005). The article is specifically concerned with the re-evaluation in this light of two notable but contrasting and substantially contradictory perspectives on British unions and Europe: Dorfman (1977) and Teague (1985, 1989, later incorporated into Teague & Grahl, 1992). In its concluding section, the article briefly considers the implications of this reassessment for British union policy in relation to the contemporary EU.