Divisions in the movement: the national unemployed workers’ movement and its rivals in comparative perspective

This chapter deals with questions of division and unity, uniformity and diversity in organisations of the unemployed in Britain between the wars. Its first purpose is to reassert that there was more than one organisation. British labour historians have largely focused on the principle one: the Communist - led National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM). Even if our aim was to be limited to the understanding of the NUWM some serious considerations of alternative organisations need to be considered. There is a sense in which British unemployed organisations shared certain characteristics, and therefore it is relevant to look at the whole range rather than at one particular case.