The article is concerned with the political attitudes and electoral behaviour of trade union members in western Europe from 1973 to 1995. To what extent has there been a decline of ideology among European trade unionists? How different are political stances of white-collar union members compared to the traditional core blue-collar membership and to non-organised employees? These are the guiding questions. Based on a re-analysis of large surveys, little evidence can be mobilised for the end-of-ideology hypothesis. Union members have had and continue to have different political attitudes and behaviour than non-unionised employees. However, these differences are not so great—neither in the 1990s nor in the 1970s. Many of the assumptions about declining affiliation of union members to particular political parties and programmes in the 1990s might be due to an overestimation of the strength of this affiliation in the past.
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