“We will never forget 1964!” Shopfloor Organisation and the Class Politics of Trade Union Officials at General Motors‐Holden

The article outlines the theory of contingent bureaucratic conservatism of trade union officials, which contends that elected officials represent a conservative stratum in the class struggle. The article also examines arguments made by those who oppose it, partly on the basis that it does not stand up to rigorous empirical analysis. The article tests the theory in the context of the important dispute at General Motors‐Holden's in Australia in October 1964. The events which emerged in the strike demonstrated the unwillingness of the union officials, conservative, moderate and Left alike, to support the strikers at General Motors‐Holden's during the final stages of the dispute, and validates the theory of contingent bureaucratic conservatism of union officials.