This paper examines the construction of a factory occupation’s ‘usable past’. It analyses how the political culture of the multinational ‘branch plant’ has combined with the optics of class and nation that predominate in accounts of Scottish deindustrialization. During 2017, the Caterpillar Workers Legacy Group commemorated the occupation of Caterpillar’s tractor plant in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, thirty years earlier. The occupation endured for 103 days, becoming a labour-movement cause célèbre. Commemoration included workforce reunions, museum exhibitions, drama performances and an anniversary debate in the Scottish Parliament. Legacy Group members archived the occupation ‘from below’, including by recording oral testimonies. The occupation was rooted in a tradition of ‘rank-and-filist’ factory trade unionism and sustained by a left-wing activist infrastructure which shaped the dispute’s contemporary framing and historical legacy. A culture of radical labourism that rejected managerial authority and profit-making as the factory’s basis for operation enthused the occupation’s defence of the right to work. These actions now form the basis for embedding a political and cultural ‘working-class presence’ long after Caterpillar departed from Uddingston. The (co-) production of labour-movement heritages is a complex process, shaped by enduring activist repertoires as well as dominant public memories.
{"title":"‘It’s Not a Lot of Boring Old Gits Sitting about Remembering the Good Old Days’: The Heritage and Legacy of the 1987 Caterpillar Factory Occupation in Uddingston, Scotland","authors":"Ewan Gibbs","doi":"10.3828/LHR.2021.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/LHR.2021.6","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper examines the construction of a factory occupation’s ‘usable past’. It analyses how the political culture of the multinational ‘branch plant’ has combined with the optics of class and nation that predominate in accounts of Scottish deindustrialization. During 2017, the Caterpillar Workers Legacy Group commemorated the occupation of Caterpillar’s tractor plant in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, thirty years earlier. The occupation endured for 103 days, becoming a labour-movement cause célèbre. Commemoration included workforce reunions, museum exhibitions, drama performances and an anniversary debate in the Scottish Parliament. Legacy Group members archived the occupation ‘from below’, including by recording oral testimonies. The occupation was rooted in a tradition of ‘rank-and-filist’ factory trade unionism and sustained by a left-wing activist infrastructure which shaped the dispute’s contemporary framing and historical legacy. A culture of radical labourism that rejected managerial authority and profit-making as the factory’s basis for operation enthused the occupation’s defence of the right to work. These actions now form the basis for embedding a political and cultural ‘working-class presence’ long after Caterpillar departed from Uddingston. The (co-) production of labour-movement heritages is a complex process, shaped by enduring activist repertoires as well as dominant public memories.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43698480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Workplace Occupations in British Labour History: Rise, Fall, and Historical Legacies","authors":"A. Clark","doi":"10.3828/LHR.2021.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/LHR.2021.1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45403650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In January 1983 the US-owned multinational Timex, a prominent employer in Dundee since 1946, announced it would cease production of mechanical wristwatches in the city. Substantial redundancies would accompany closure of the Milton of Craigie production unit where 2,000 mainly male skilled engineers and toolmakers were employed. About 2,000 mainly female assembly-line workers would be retained at another factory in the city, at Camperdown, as Timex completed its diversification into subcontracting work in electronics. With this announcement Timex violated the workforce’s moral economy. Significant changes were only permissible where negotiated with union representatives and where the security of those affected was preserved. Capital was leaving Dundee, despite the firm’s receipt of many grants from national and local government. On 8 April Milton workers resisted compulsory redundancy by occupying their plant. Timex was not stopped from ending watchmaking, but compulsory redundancies were averted and a union voice was preserved. Those who wished were transferred to Camperdown. The occupation was a crucial episode in Dundee’s deindustrialization, but has been obscured in popular memory by the bitter dispute accompanying the firm’s final departure from the city in 1993.
{"title":"Defending the Right to Work: The 1983 Timex Workers’ Occupation in Dundee","authors":"V. Wright, J. Philips, J. Tomlinson","doi":"10.3828/LHR.2021.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/LHR.2021.4","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In January 1983 the US-owned multinational Timex, a prominent employer in Dundee since 1946, announced it would cease production of mechanical wristwatches in the city. Substantial redundancies would accompany closure of the Milton of Craigie production unit where 2,000 mainly male skilled engineers and toolmakers were employed. About 2,000 mainly female assembly-line workers would be retained at another factory in the city, at Camperdown, as Timex completed its diversification into subcontracting work in electronics. With this announcement Timex violated the workforce’s moral economy. Significant changes were only permissible where negotiated with union representatives and where the security of those affected was preserved. Capital was leaving Dundee, despite the firm’s receipt of many grants from national and local government. On 8 April Milton workers resisted compulsory redundancy by occupying their plant. Timex was not stopped from ending watchmaking, but compulsory redundancies were averted and a union voice was preserved. Those who wished were transferred to Camperdown. The occupation was a crucial episode in Dundee’s deindustrialization, but has been obscured in popular memory by the bitter dispute accompanying the firm’s final departure from the city in 1993.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70532273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper traces the development of this form of industrial action through the 1970s, the emergence of an alternative economic voice, ultimately almost silenced in the 1980s with the dominance of neo-liberalism, leaving a sedimental alternative which periodically reappears. We first need to consider the context for this occupation movement and the social, political and economic developments of the post-war period which facilitated this form of resistance. Then we consider the nature of ‘occupation’, the forms it takes, and what differentiates it from strikes and other manifestations of organized conflict arising from the employment of labour power under capitalism, before examining the pattern of occupation after UCS. We indicate that the movement left a sediment of ideas and practices, not just in terms of ‘occupation’ itself as a form of industrial action, but also of an alternative economy rooted in workers’ self-management and socially useful production.
{"title":"After UCS: Workplace Occupation in Britain in the 1970s","authors":"A. Tuckman","doi":"10.3828/LHR.2021.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/LHR.2021.2","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper traces the development of this form of industrial action through the 1970s, the emergence of an alternative economic voice, ultimately almost silenced in the 1980s with the dominance of neo-liberalism, leaving a sedimental alternative which periodically reappears. We first need to consider the context for this occupation movement and the social, political and economic developments of the post-war period which facilitated this form of resistance. Then we consider the nature of ‘occupation’, the forms it takes, and what differentiates it from strikes and other manifestations of organized conflict arising from the employment of labour power under capitalism, before examining the pattern of occupation after UCS. We indicate that the movement left a sediment of ideas and practices, not just in terms of ‘occupation’ itself as a form of industrial action, but also of an alternative economy rooted in workers’ self-management and socially useful production.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46046370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article draws on research into three female-led occupations that occurred across central Scotland in 1981 and 1982. The actions at Lee Jeans, Lovable Bra and Plessey Capacitors were each in response to closure and relocation and, crucially in the context of this time period, were at least partly successful in opposing full closure. The piece considers the uses and limitations of mobilization theories in accounting for the collective action that emerged at the plants. Rejecting the individualistic frameworks that place extensive importance on injustice, it is suggested that the immediate impacts of manufacturing decline through the process of deindustrialization were a crucial factor in sustaining the action. Through an analysis of the statements made by the workers, their leaders and supporters at the time, along with an examination of oral-history interview narratives, the argument develops that these disputes were not localized actions at one site against one plant closure. By placing the factories and the workers within the social and economic contexts in which they took action, the research indicated that the process of collective action was dynamic and motivations were inevitably multiple, but that the detrimental impacts of deindustrialization - particularly as they related to the future of the localities - was crucial.
{"title":"‘There Is Nothing There for Us and Nothing for the Future’: Deindustrialization and Workplace Occupation, 1981-1982","authors":"A. Clark","doi":"10.3828/LHR.2021.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/LHR.2021.3","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article draws on research into three female-led occupations that occurred across central Scotland in 1981 and 1982. The actions at Lee Jeans, Lovable Bra and Plessey Capacitors were each in response to closure and relocation and, crucially in the context of this time period, were at least partly successful in opposing full closure. The piece considers the uses and limitations of mobilization theories in accounting for the collective action that emerged at the plants. Rejecting the individualistic frameworks that place extensive importance on injustice, it is suggested that the immediate impacts of manufacturing decline through the process of deindustrialization were a crucial factor in sustaining the action. Through an analysis of the statements made by the workers, their leaders and supporters at the time, along with an examination of oral-history interview narratives, the argument develops that these disputes were not localized actions at one site against one plant closure. By placing the factories and the workers within the social and economic contexts in which they took action, the research indicated that the process of collective action was dynamic and motivations were inevitably multiple, but that the detrimental impacts of deindustrialization - particularly as they related to the future of the localities - was crucial.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70531780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Bronstein, J. Belchem, K. Navickas, Tom Scriven
{"title":"Malcolm Chase: Appreciations","authors":"J. Bronstein, J. Belchem, K. Navickas, Tom Scriven","doi":"10.3828/lhr.2020.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2020.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42311945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article queries the merits and limitations of the historicization approach that informed many of the productions on Marx’s two-hundredth anniversary in Germany in 2018. The article presents the approach’s application in exhibitions, biographies, and movies. In order to contextualize the historicization project in the discussions surrounding Marx in Germany, a framework for assessing the approach is provided by a close reading of the discussions related to monuments erected to Marx, with special attention given to a new statue in his birthplace, Trier.
{"title":"A Place in History? The 2018 Marx Bicentennial in Germany","authors":"Detlev Mares","doi":"10.3828/lhr.2020.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2020.12","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article queries the merits and limitations of the historicization approach that informed many of the productions on Marx’s two-hundredth anniversary in Germany in 2018. The article presents the approach’s application in exhibitions, biographies, and movies. In order to contextualize the historicization project in the discussions surrounding Marx in Germany, a framework for assessing the approach is provided by a close reading of the discussions related to monuments erected to Marx, with special attention given to a new statue in his birthplace, Trier.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42052162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.3828/lhr.2020.85.issue-3
{"title":"Labour History Review: Volume 85, Issue 3","authors":"","doi":"10.3828/lhr.2020.85.issue-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2020.85.issue-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49041289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the case studies of Cadbury’s and Rowntree’s to show how two particular factories have been transformed into what could be called middle-range experimental spaces. It demonstrates how one particular setting of industrial ‘governmentality’ was established, based on cooperation, ‘mutual understanding’, and ‘empowerment’ in order to overcome confrontational approaches in personnel management as well as outdated modes of ‘benevolent paternalism’. Cadbury- and Rowntree-style social engineering, the article argues, redefined its task to create what one could call ‘factory citizenship’. Within this context, it was the metaphor of building a house that made it possible to foster workers’ ‘responsibility’ without making too many concessions to a more radical version of industrial democracy. Since these concepts had a strong gender bias, the article interprets this particular kind of social engineering as an effort to turn factories into ‘gendered spaces’.
{"title":"Building the ‘House of Industry’: Factory Citizenship and Gendered Spaces at Cadbury’s and Rowntree’s1","authors":"Timo Luks","doi":"10.3828/lhr.2020.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2020.10","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article examines the case studies of Cadbury’s and Rowntree’s to show how two particular factories have been transformed into what could be called middle-range experimental spaces. It demonstrates how one particular setting of industrial ‘governmentality’ was established, based on cooperation, ‘mutual understanding’, and ‘empowerment’ in order to overcome confrontational approaches in personnel management as well as outdated modes of ‘benevolent paternalism’. Cadbury- and Rowntree-style social engineering, the article argues, redefined its task to create what one could call ‘factory citizenship’. Within this context, it was the metaphor of building a house that made it possible to foster workers’ ‘responsibility’ without making too many concessions to a more radical version of industrial democracy. Since these concepts had a strong gender bias, the article interprets this particular kind of social engineering as an effort to turn factories into ‘gendered spaces’.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47177513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the impact of industrial decline on popular constructions of selfhood and place during the 1970s through a case study of the Bilston Steel Works in the West Midlands, which closed in May 1979. Following recent work exploring deindustrialization as a process of transformation, rather than simply a discreet event that is reacted to after the moment of closure, the article makes use of the contemporary accounts of local television and print media to uncover the immediacy of deindustrialization as a disruptive force. While studies of deindustrialization have long identified nostalgia as a characteristic, identity-defining trope of retrospective testimonies, the approach taken in this article suggests that the nostalgic reworking of identity was already a prominent feature of everyday language in late 1970s Bilston. Long-term processes of regional economic restructuring had already begun to recast the personal politics of place. The Bilston Steel Works was the last bastion of the once dominant steel industry in the West Midlands, a feature that Bilston’s steelworkers celebrated as a mark of uniqueness and pride at both an individual and community level. A consequence of the closure of the steelworks was its far-reaching social and cultural impact, with the implications for self and place complexly intertwined. The article argues that notions of community and belonging did not necessarily wane but were rather reconstructed and adapted to make sense of, and begin the process of navigating through, industrial decline.
{"title":"2019 Labour History Review Essay Prize Winner: Navigating Deindustrialization in 1970s Britain: The Closure of Bilston Steel Works and the Politics of Work, Place, and Belonging1","authors":"Matthew Beebee","doi":"10.3828/lhr.2020.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2020.11","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article examines the impact of industrial decline on popular constructions of selfhood and place during the 1970s through a case study of the Bilston Steel Works in the West Midlands, which closed in May 1979. Following recent work exploring deindustrialization as a process of transformation, rather than simply a discreet event that is reacted to after the moment of closure, the article makes use of the contemporary accounts of local television and print media to uncover the immediacy of deindustrialization as a disruptive force. While studies of deindustrialization have long identified nostalgia as a characteristic, identity-defining trope of retrospective testimonies, the approach taken in this article suggests that the nostalgic reworking of identity was already a prominent feature of everyday language in late 1970s Bilston. Long-term processes of regional economic restructuring had already begun to recast the personal politics of place. The Bilston Steel Works was the last bastion of the once dominant steel industry in the West Midlands, a feature that Bilston’s steelworkers celebrated as a mark of uniqueness and pride at both an individual and community level. A consequence of the closure of the steelworks was its far-reaching social and cultural impact, with the implications for self and place complexly intertwined. The article argues that notions of community and belonging did not necessarily wane but were rather reconstructed and adapted to make sense of, and begin the process of navigating through, industrial decline.","PeriodicalId":43028,"journal":{"name":"Labour History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47934914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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