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fuel for the race towards the renaissance and the age of enlightenment was provided. The great achievements such as the great Cathedrals of this age were only possible due to the advancements in ideas that had been harboured under the guild system.

One interesting foot note of English history is that the first army raised by Parliament at the start of the English Civil War was one made up of the guild apprentice boys who were organised into militia groups known as the Trained Bands to protect London. It is from the close cropped hair that the apprentices were obliged to sport as a sign of low rank, that the Parliamentary supporters became known as "roundheads". It is fair to say that basis of the first proffessional army in England was made up of groups of teenage London skinheads banding together to throw off traditioonal authority. I do take some comfort in that fact.

With the Industrial age the power of the guilds waned in many ways. The new middle class or "Iron Masters" managed to rule their new industries with a despotic will and the modern idea of Trade Unions almost had to be reinvented. Even in the early 1800's the plight of the working man can be seen when a small group of agricultural workers from Dorset, England were deported to Australia, then a new and bleak British colony, just for joining a trade union. as the Industrial Age moved into the present day, Unionisation became the norm with its biggest influence, in Britian at least, being in the 1970's the Thatcherite age of miners stikes and the decline of the countries industrial power. It was onlt through the power of the union groups that this was challenged but unfortunately not prevented.

Today however most industries are covered by trade groups, and they proved to its members the same security that those old medieval guilds did in their day.

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