Search

Although coalmining and Scotland (and indeed the Scottish coal industry) have long been core case studies utilized by historians of deindustrialization, Ewan Gibbs' I Coal Country: The meaning and memory of deindustrialization in postwar Scotland i pushes our understanding of deindustrialization in a bold new direction making it both an exciting and ambitious contribution to this growing literature. In his exploration of the nature of Scottish nationalism as it developed in the Scottish coalfields over the long-term, Gibbs cautious against interpretating the politics of deindustrialization as exclusively - or necessarily - a '"Rust Belt" rebellion' (p. 226) that takes a right-wing populist form; the Scottish coalfields show that a more progressive manifestation of the politics of deindustrialization is possible. Overall, I Coal Country i persuasively makes the case for deindustrialization as a long-term process that should have important ramifications beyond the confines of its own case study. [Extracted from the article]

Factory occupations are rare and sporadic events which shed light on the processes associated with the collective mobilization of workers' power. This article utilizes Kelly's agential and Atzeni's structural explanations of worker mobilization to examine two disputes which took place during Britain's long experience of deindustrialization: the occupations of Caterpillar's tractor factory in Uddingston, Scotland, during 1987 and Vestas' wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight during 2009. Each occupation shared the context of multinational divestment and collective workforce grievance based on a common perception that their plant was economically viable and vital to the local economy. However, contrasting sources of leadership mobilized this sentiment in each case: union stewards from within Caterpillar, socialist activists from outside at Vestas. The article concludes that an effective explanation of occupations must synthesize structural and agential factors, emphasizing the coalescing role of activist networks and workers' perceptions of their labour's social utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite frequent associations, deindustrialization features rarely in studies of organized crime, and organized crime is at best a spectral presence in studies of deindustrialization. By developing an original application of Linkon's concept of the "half‐life," we present an empirical case for the symbiotic relationship between former sites of industry and the emergence of criminal markets. Based on a detailed case‐study in the west of Scotland, an area long associated with both industry and crime, the paper interrogates the environmental, social, and cultural after‐effects of deindustrialization at a community level. Drawing on 55 interviews with residents and service‐providers in Tunbrooke, an urban community where an enduring criminal market grew in the ruins of industry, the paper elaborates the complex landscapes of identity, vulnerability, and harm that are embedded in the symbiosis of crime and deindustrialization. Building on recent scholarship, the paper argues that organized crime in Tunbrooke is best understood as an instance of "residual culture" grafted onto a fragmented, volatile criminal marketplace where the stable props of territorial identity are unsettled. The analysis allows for an extension of both the study of deindustrialization and organized crime, appreciating the "enduring legacies" of closure on young people, communal identity, and social relations in the twenty‐first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article examines the relationship between long-running deindustrialisation and skilled male employment culture in the West of Scotland. The age of deindustrialisation is a valuable designation: the contraction of industrial production and employment in the United Kingdom was gradual rather than sudden, managed carefully in the 1960s and 1970s and then recklessly in the 1980s. In Scotland there was an important transition in the 1960s from established to younger industrial sectors. In the sphere of employment culture this tested the Clydesider skilled male identity, which was constructed and reproduced in workplaces and industrial communities. The resilience of this identity is tracked through oral history examination of workers employed at the Fairfields shipyard in Govan, Glasgow, and the Linwood car plant, ten miles west in Renfrewshire. The Clydesider identity was derived from shipyard employment culture. It privileged earnings, workplace voice and relative autonomy from managerial supervision. Workers at Linwood used the Clydesider identity to advance their influence on the shop floor, contesting the frustrations of assembly goods manufacturing and asserting skill and autonomy. The article shows how manual workers on the Clyde adjusted to and made sense of deindustrialisation in the 1960s and 1970s in moral economy terms. The protracted and incomplete 'half-life' of deindustrialisation contained positive as well as negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The force and coherency with which Margaret Thatcher and her inner circle outlined their vision for 'enterprise culture', like so many aspects of Thatcherism, have masked the complexity of its origins and the histories of alternative responses. This article provides a history of an alternative vision for enterprise culture by examining the community business movement in Scotland, the largest experiment of its kind in the UK in the 1980s and a forerunner of social enterprise. Working across Scotland, but with a hub of activity in the Strathclyde region, practitioners worked with local people to find ways to develop their neighbourhood economy while improving their environment, creating jobs, and developing services needed in their area. This article outlines the origins of the movement, the shared values of its founding members, and how their training in community development informed the community business model. It analyses how practitioners put their ideas into practice and the reasons behind the fragmentation of the movement in the 1990s. It argues that although at face value the concept of community business may appear to chime with the dominant political rhetoric of Thatcher's 'enterprise culture', the history of the movement provides a signpost to an alternative, if unrealised, vision for Scotland's recovery from social and economic depression. Where previous historical research has focused on the political consequences of Thatcher's policies in Scotland, this research connects this discussion to the transformation of Scotland's civic society in the wake of deindustrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Colliery in east Fife was the largest National Coal Board (NCB) unit in Scotland when it closed in 1967, following a disastrous fire which killed nine miners. The NCB, operating within the constraints of the Labour government's policy framework, decided not to invest in Michael's recovery, although this would have secured profitable production within five years and access to thirtyplus years of coal reserves. This outcome, which had major local economic implications, demonstrates that deindustrialization is a willed and highly politicized process. The Labour government ignored workforce entreaties to override the NCB's decision and invest to bring the pit back into production, but made significant localized adjustments to regional policy that within a year attracted a major employer to the area, the Distillers Company Limited. The article relates the closure to moral economy arguments about deindustrialization. It shows that coal closures in the 1960s, while actually more extensive than those of the 1980s, were managed very differently, with attention to the interests of the workers and communities affected, and an emphasis on cultivating alternative industrial employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between the study of modernity and the study of history in Scotland. The author evaluates modernity's connection to the development of Scottish national identity and notes studies related to local history, Scottish popular culture, and everyday Scottish life. He examines interdisciplinary research that combines historical and sociological methods in order to investigate themes of identity. Other topics include de-industrialization, cultural history, and social class.

Background: The link between the effects of de-industrialization (unemployment, poverty) and population health is well understood. Post-industrial decline has, therefore, been cited as an underlying cause of high mortality in Scotland's most de-industrialized region. However, previous research showed other comparably de-industrialized regions in Europe to have better and faster improving health (with, in many cases, a widening gap evident from the early to mid-1980s). Objectives: To explore whether ecological data can provide insights into reasons behind the poorer, and more slowly improving, health status of West Central Scotland (WCS) compared with other European regions that have experienced similar histories of post- industrial decline. Specifically, this study asked: (1) could WCS's poorer health status be explained purely in terms of socio-economic factors (poverty, deprivation etc.)? and (2) could comparisons with other health determinant information identify important differences between WCS and other regions? These aims were explored alongside other research examining the historical, economic and political context in WCS compared with other de-industrialized regions. Study design and methods: A range of ecological data, derived from surveys and routine administrative sources, were collected and analysed for WCS and 11 other post-industrial regions. Analyses were underpinned by the collection and analysis of more detailed data for four particular regions of interest. In addition, the project drew on accompanying literature-based research, analysing important contextual factors in de-industrialized regions, including histories of economic and welfare policies, and national and regional responses to de-industrialization. Results: The poorer health status of WCS cannot be explained in terms of absolute measures of poverty and deprivation. However, compared with other post-industrial regions in Mainland Europe, the region is distinguished by having wider income inequalities and associated social characteristics (e.g. more single adults, lone parent households, higher rates of teenage pregnancy). Some of these distinguishing features are shared by other UK post-industrial regions which experienced the same economic history as WCS. Conclusion: From the collection of data and supporting analyses of important contextual factors, one can argue that poor health in WCS can be attributed to three layers of causation: the effects of de-industrialization (which have impacted on health in all post- industrial regions); the impact of 'neoliberal' UK economic policies, resulting in wider inequalities in WCS and the other UK regions; and an as-yet-unexplained (but under investigation) set of factors that cause WCS to experience worse health outcomes than similar regions within the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oceanspan was a grand design for Scotland's economic, industrial and social regeneration. It attempted to position Scotland as a land bridge between the Atlantic Ocean and Continental Europe: raw materials would flow in from the west, utilising the deep water of the Firth of Clyde, and be converted into finished goods for export across the North Sea. The chief architect of the plan was William Lithgow, the Port Glasgow shipbuilder, and it was publicised by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, an organisation that encompassed representatives of local authorities and trade unions but was dominated by business interests. The plans were geared to assisting new industries notably electronics, but implied special privileges for the older heavy industries with which Lithgow and Lord Clydesmuir, chairman of the Scottish Council, were associated. Substantial public investment was required, which was resisted by both Labour and Conservative governments. Only the political sympathies of the Scottishcouncil leaders, nurtured further by the various social and industrial difficulties facing the Conservative government in 1971 and 1972, notably the miners' strike and the work-in at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, averted a substantial public row. Oceanspan nevertheless represents an important episode in the longer history of the emergence of devolutionary or nationalist impulses in modern Scotland, for the plkans linked Scotland's apparent economic and industrial stagnation with the alleged problem of remote administration of policy in Scotland from Whitehall, and incorporated demands for enhanced policy powers for the Scottish Office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]