Papers of H A F Turner, professor of industrial relations

This collection contains notes, correspondence and draft and published papers by Turner and others arising from his research into various aspects of industrial relations and economics. The deposit consists of about one third of the papers originally at Churchill College; the rest, which relate mainly to Turner's overseas interests, were left at the college for possible deposit at the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House. 61 items.

Herbert Arthur Frederick 'Bert' Turner was born in 1919. He obtained a first-class degree in economics at the London School of Economics in 1939, and between 1940 and 1944 he was in charge of the statistical section of the Second Sea Lord's staff. Between 1944 and 1949 he was on the Trades Union Congress staff, firstly in the research and economic department, then as assistant education officer. He drafted various TUC reports on reconstruction, industrial and education policy, and TUC evidence or statements to various official enquiries and committees. Between 1949 and 1960 he was lecturer, then senior lecturer, in industrial relations at the University of Manchester. During this period he was awarded a PhD for a comparative study of the development of labour organisation in textile trades. He then became Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Leeds and in 1963 was appointed to the chair of the same name at the University of Cambridge, a post he held until 1983. In 1964 he was formally admitted as a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He served as a part-time member of the National Board for Prices and Incomes from 1967 and provided advice on labour and pay policy to the governments of developing countries in Africa, the Middle East and Africa. He died in December 1998.

Turner's major publications:

'Trade union growth: structure and policy:a comparative study of the cotton unions' (1962).

'Labour relations in the motor industry: a study of industrial unrest and an international comparison' with Garfield Clack and Geoffrey Roberts (1967).

'Is Britain really strike-prone?: a review of the incidence, character and costs of industrial conflict' (1969).

'Do trade unions cause inflation?: two studies, with a theoretical introduction and policy conclusion', with Dudley Jackson and Frank Wilkinson (1972, 2nd edition , 1975).

'Management characteristics and labour conflict: a study of managerial organisation, attitudes and industrial relations', with Geoffrey Roberts and David Roberts (1977).

The records have been listed according to the numbering of the box files in which they were originally stored.

This collection is available to researchers by appointment at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. See https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/using/

Link to full catalogue: https://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/TUR

Collected from Churchill College, Cambridge in 2006.