Works Councils and other forms of statutory workplace consultation play a significant role in many European countries. This has never been true in the British Industrial Relations system. Instead, employers and the state encouraged voluntary collective bargaining from the late nineteenth century onwards. Pluralist academics responded by redefining Industrial Democracy as ‘joint regulation’ by management and trade unions. Other participation forms were marginalized, until Thatcherism and 1980s union decline saw the emergence of weak, managerial employee involvement. Holding fast to the single-union channel, British unions have missed opportunities to spread workplace participation, notably within the EU. Drawing on personal research, I explain the relative failure of active, constructive participation in Britain, notwithstanding some successful workplace partnership agreements.