George Smith was the final general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, and the first of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians. His son, also George Smith, offers a personal recollection of his father’s life. Continue reading George Smith (1914-1978) the joiner who built a union
Labour History Review Volume 86 (2021), Issue 1 has now been published. From the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of 1971, to the Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) occupation of 2017, there is a long history of workplace occupations. However, despite the prominence and significance of occupation as a tactic, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, current historical examinations have been fragmented. This special issue of Labour History … Continue reading Labour History Review Volume 86 (2021), Issue 1
Author: Alan TuckmanThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 7-35. Find out more. 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 new-liberalism, leaving a sedimentary alternative which periodically reappears. We first need to consider the … Continue reading After UCS: Workplace Occupation in Britain in the 1970s
Author: Andy ClarkThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 37-61. Find out more. 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, … Continue reading ‘There Is Nothing There for Us and Nothing for the Future’: Deindustrialization and Workplace Occupation, 1981-1982
Author: Valerie Wright, Jim Philips, Jim TomlinsonThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 63-90. Find out more. 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 … Continue reading Defending the Right to Work: The 1983 Timex Workers’ Occupation in Dundee
Author: Stephen MustchinThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 91-116. Find out more. This article considers the uses and decline of workplace occupations in the 1980s. Developing the contribution by Alan Tuckman on the rise of occupations in the 1970s, attention is given to the structural factors that can explain the reasons why workers’ uses of the tactics … Continue reading Job Destruction and Closures in Deindustrializing Britain: The Uses and Decline of Workplace Occupations in the 1980s
Author: Ewan GibbsThis is the abstract of an article published in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 117-143. Find out more. 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 … Continue reading ‘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
The books listed below are reviewed in Labour History Review (2021), 86, (1), 145-164. Find out more. W.W.J. Knox (University of St Andrews) and A. McKinlay (Newcastle University). Response by the authors to the review of Jimmy Reid: A Clyde-Built Man by Roger Seifert in Labour History Review, 85 (2-2-), 212-15 Dr Joan Allen (Newcastle University) reviewsMarie Fedelma Cross, In the Footsteps of Flora Tristan: A … Continue reading Book reviews in Labour History Review Volume 86 (2021), Issue 1
I would be obliged for information on: 1) Peter Keating, Labour councillor, London, 1921-1922, associate inter alia of Shapurji Saklatvala and Rev. Herbert Dunnico, a prominent Baptist minister, future Labour MP and General Secretary of the Peace Society. Keating may also have been connected with Marylebone Trades Council; and 2) the activities in London of the (Belfast) Expelled Workers’ Representative Committee, who had an office at 2 … Continue reading In search of Peter Keating and the (Belfast) Expelled Workers’ Representative Committee
We have now completed the indexing of the SSLH Bulletin and Labour History Review, publishing the final part online. This article looks at some of the treasures to be found in its pages. Continue reading Treasures from the index: mapping six decades of labour history research
