Unemployment and Protest: New Perspectives on Two Centuries of Contention(Studies of the German Historical Institute London)

The unemployed are usually depicted as passive and politically apathetic individuals who are traumatized by their experience and broken in body and spirit. The seminal study of Marienthal's unemployed in the 1930s, based on pioneering methodology and rich empirical findings, helped to entrench this image as cross-disciplinary common sense. This book challenges this dominant view by revealing the wide transnational repertoires of protest and resistance that the unemployed have deployed from the early nineteenth century to the present. They have contested their situation in a discontinuous but recurrent battle for recognition, for rights to work or welfare, and for dignity. The case studies in this volume deal with contentious actions of the unemployed across different European countries, the United States, New Zealand, and Palestine. They highlight the diverse responses of the workless to their fate beyond the apathy habitually ascribed to them, from passive resistance and individual protest to organized large-scale protest marches and from protest in newspapers, books, or internet forums to agitation and direct action in the streets, benefit fraud, and legal challenges of administrative measures or government laws. Instead of following the traditional focus on Communist-led protest during the inter-war period, this volume accentuates the plurality of individuals and organizations that have tried to organize the unemployed over the past two centuries. Taken together, these essays suggest that the unemployed exercised agency over their lives and were more than willing to express themselves, defend their interests, and participate in collective action.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Introduction 1: Matt Perry and Matthias Reiss: Beyond Marienthal: Understanding Movements of the Unemployed 2: Bert Klandermans: Mobilizing the Unemployed: The Social Psychology of Movement Participation Part II. Movements of the Unemployed in Nineteenth-Century Britain 3: Margrit Schulte Beerbühl: The March of the Blanketeers: Tragic Failure or Pioneer of Unemployed Protest? 4: Matthias Reiss: From Poor Relief to Politics: The Protest of the British Unemployed in the 1870s and 1880s Part III. The Golden Age of Unemployed Movements: The Inter-War Years 5: Jeannette Gabriel: 'Natural Love for a Good Thing': The Struggle of the Unemployed Workers' Movement for a Government Jobs Programme, 1931-42 6: Alex M. Zukas: Explaining Unemployed Protest in the Ruhr at the End of the Weimar Republic 7: Philip H. Slaby: Violating the 'Rules of Hospitality': The Protests of Jobless Immigrants in Depression-Era France 8: David De Vries and Shani Bar-On: Politicization of Unemployment in British-Ruled Palestine Part IV. Beyond Collective Street Protest 9: Michael Seidman: Protesting Individuals: The French Unemployed in the 1930s 10: Stephanie Ward: 'The Workers are in the Mood to Fight the Act': Protest Against the Means Test, 1931-5 11: Malcolm Chase: Unemployment without Protest: the Ironstone Mining Communities of East Cleveland in the Inter-War Period Part V. Self-Representations of Movements of the Unemployed 12: Matt Perry: Breaking the Silence: Rationale, Protest, and Identity in the Provincial Press of the Unemployed in France, 1931-9 13: Antoine Capet: From Protest to Warning: Representations of the Unemployed in Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club, 1937-45 14: Ingrid Hayes: Radio Lorraine Coeur d'Acier, Longwy-France, 1979-80: Reacting to the Threat of Unemployment Part VI. Recent Movements of the Unemployed 15: Cybèle Locke: Fractious Factions: The Organized Unemployed and the Labour Movement in New Zealand, 1978-90 16: Deborah Vietor-Englander: How Far Beyond Marienthal? Unemployed Protest in Germany in the Internet Era Part VII. Conclusion 17: Didie Chabanet and Jean Faniel: The Moblization of the Unemployed: A Recurrent but Relatively Invisible Phenomenon

Review :
a well-researched and well-written collection of essays which should reinvigorate the debate about the historical experience of unemployment This is an excellent collection of essays which provides fresh insights into its subject. This book clearly demonstrates the vast complexity of the phenomenon of movements by the unemployed ... It is a welcome addition to the historical labour literature.