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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]