Leadership and union militancy: The case of the RMT

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), which represents the majority of mainline railway and London Underground workers, is currently one of the most militant and left-wing trade unions in Britain. Drawing on the study of leadership provided by mobilisation theory, this article explores the extent to which union leadership, dominated by left-wing activists at every level of the union, has been an important contributory catalyst, symptom and beneficiary of union militancy relative to other influencing factors such as the impact of privatisation, managerial belligerence, and immediate grievances over pay and conditions

The gulf between behavioural psychology and fundamental physiology: a systematic attempt to bridge the gap

Direct experimentation in much of this area is very difficult or impossible. For such circumstances, it is argued that much can be achieved by a rigorous quantitative programme of interdisciplinary theorizing based on available data. The paper then outlines progress arising from this approach from: (1) a Piagetian view of behaviour, through (2) a model for the "scheme" as a statistical population of discrete linear molecules (despite Hebb's synapse suggestions), down to (3) the physics and chemistry of signal emission, transmission and absorption. The latter analysis yields the surprising suggestion (corroborated by Cope's work) that a vital frequency-component for neural signals occurs in the infra-red range: about 10^13 cycles/second. This helps to explain several current mysteries concerning memor

Revolutionary syndicalist opposition to the First World War: An international comparative reassessment

It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime Europe, can be seen to have constituted an authentic movement of opposition to the war in their refusal to subordinate class interests to those of the state, to endorse policies of ‘defencism’ and to abandon the rhetoric of class conflict. This article, which attempts to contribute to a much neglected comparative historiography of the international syndicalist movement, re-evaluates the syndicalist response across a broad geographical field of canvas (embracing France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Britain and America) to reveal a rather more nuanced, ambiguous and uneven picture. While it highlights the distinctive nature of the syndicalist response compared with other labour movement trends, it also explores the important strategic and tactical limitations involved, including the dilemma of attempting to translate formal syndicalist ideological commitments against the war into practical measures of intervention, and the consequences of the syndicalists’ subordination of the political question of the war to the industrial struggle

Syndicalism and the influence of anarchism in France, Italy and Spain

Following the Leninist line, a commonly held assumption is that anarchism as a revolutionary movement tends to emerge in politically, socially and economically underdeveloped regions and that its appeal lies with the economically marginalised lumpenproletariat and landless peasantry. This article critically explores this assumption through a comparative analysis of the development and influence of anarchist ideology and organisation in syndicalist movements in France, Spain and Italy and its legacy in discourses surrounding the nature of political authority and accountability

Short papers and letters on the 'linear micro-element' theory of mental mechanism; and related questions of scientific method

Seven papers/letters further developing the ideas raised in Monographs #12 and #15 (q.v.), and in two papers published in Kybernetes (vols 5 and 7) -- later incorporated into the Thesis (q.v.) as "Part A". In particular: *Chapters I & VI: apply the postulated 'linear elements' to explain Piaget's notion of how the mental concept of 'object' is developed. *Chapter II: extends this to account for the rudiments of 'personal identity'. *Chapter III: answers criticisms and queries raised by Dr N.E.Wetherick, mainly on the plausibility of RNA and infra-red as a Second (multiplexed) Neurotransmitting System. *Other chapters offer critiques of some accepted views on scientific method

Thinking as mental model-building: a Piagetian-cum-mechanistic explanation of the 'engram'

Piaget (like Skinner) appears to deny the relevance or possibility of describing thought in mechanistic terms. Nevertheless, this paper attempts to outline one way in which this might be done for Piaget's concepts. Three domains or "worlds" are considered (following both Piaget and Popper); Reality and the senses, thought proper, and a symbolic domain (divided into [a] internal, and [b] external). Within the second domain are linear codings (pre-set but changeable) which can comprise "schemes" when activated synchonously in sufficient numbers. Non-linear schemes and schemata are explicable in tems of "sub-programming" and "cross-referencing". Elementary units for schemata may be scheme-elements (or ensembles of them) which have become more or less permanently stabilized due to their self-sustaining cross-references. These inhabit the symbolic domain ("world 3a")