The political economy of public sector trade union militancy under Keynesianism: The case of local government

Public service labour’s distinctiveness is insufficiently understood or recognised; and in its ad hoc growth under liberal ideologies of state intervention (those of Mill and Keynes), it has been treated both as if it were and were not public service labour. This paper teases out some of the crucial links between liberal ideologies of state intervention and the social praxis of public service unionism, outlining the latter’s historical struggle against this paradoxical treatment, which culminated in 1970s militancy. The paper supports this argument with a Marxist analysis of public sector labour, drawing on Polanyi’s ‘double-movement’ to understand the limitations of liberal ideologies of state intervention.