How Workplace Cultures Shaped Labour Militancy
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The British motor industry, 1945-77: How workplace cultures shaped labour militancy. Jack Stacy Saunders Thesis submitted for a PhD in History, June 2015 University College London 1 Declaration I, Jack Saunders, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract Car workers' union activism has long held a strong grip on popular memories of the post-war period. Working in the quintessential industry of modernity, and as the ªaffluent workerº par excellence, their labour militancy has been linked to narratives of economic decline and of rising working-class living standards. Yet despite their centrality to understanding of this period, historians have often given their workplace activism superficial treatment. Seeing this period as one where class solidarity was eroded by the rise of ªprivatismº, scholars have been unwilling to see novelty in collectivism. Consequently, car workers' capacity for collective action has often been taken for granted, with mobilisation attributed to a combination of uncomplicated economic motivations, the last gasps of a declining ªtraditional class consciousnessº, and the effects of the post-war settlement. Existing study has thus suppressed the changing forms of agency and subjectivity expressed by labour militancy, something this thesis rectifies by considering workplace activism in the motor industry as a specific historical creation of post-war Britain, rather than a reflection of ªtraditionº. Studying the processes by which workers built their union cultures, I look to discern the origins of the shop-floor organisations that were established in the 1950s, and explore the capacity of car workers to generate new solidarities and collective values in this period. Turning to the 1960s and 1970s this thesis examines in detail the social practices and cultural norms that emerged from organisation, aiming to understand how worker activism shaped the agency of car workers in post-war Britain, influencing the forms that strike action took. Finally, using a mixture of oral history interviews, letters, meeting minutes and periodicals, I look at the meanings workers attributed to industrial conflict, asking whether factory activism generated attitudes distinct from the dominant values of wider British society. 2 Contents Chapter One: Introduction 6 Trade union militancy in post-war historiography 11 Agency and subjectivity 21 A social and cultural history of the shop floor 35 Chapter Two: Car workers and public discourse 1945-79 43 The new estate of the realm 1945-53 45 The case for reform 1953-63 49 Wrecking the nation 1968-79 61 Conclusion 72 Chapter Three: Organising the car factories, 1945-65 76 Trade unionism in the motor industry before 1950 79 Organising in the 1950s 93 From shop to factory 117 Conclusion 144 Chapter Four: The social practices of shop-floor unionism 1964-77 147 Piecework and shop bargaining in the mid-1960s 152 The limitations of sectionalism 166 ªRegaining control by sharing itº: 1968-75 180 The problems and opportunities of factory trade unionism 217 Conclusion 221 Chapter Five: Militancy, attitudes, values and rationalities 224 Mainstream values and workgroup autonomy: 1964-68 227 The introduction of productivity bargaining: 1968-71 247 Productivity bargaining and the high tide: 1970-74 258 The social contract: 1974-77 285 Conclusion 299 Chapter Six: Conclusion 304 Bibliography 317 3 List of Illustrations Chapter Two Figure 1: Daily Express cartoon: ªOut! Out! Everybody Out!º Figure 2: Daily Express cartoon: ªHelp! Send the police! Lord Stokes has written a four-letter word!º Figure 3: The Sun cartoon: ªEre! How did that car get on the assembly line?º Chapter Four Figure 4: Note for Longbridge Works Convenor ªThe men walked out.º Figure 5: Note for Longbridge Works Convenor: ªMen in the West Works are getting restless.º Figure 6: Mass meeting on Stoke Green, Coventry. Figure 7: Record of vote on whether to strike in protest at In Place of Strife Figure 8: Record of vote on whether to strike in protest at In Place of Strife. 4 List of initialisations AEU / AEF / AUEW : Amalgamated Engineering Union (1920-68); Amalgamated Union of Engineering and Foundry Workers (1968-1970); Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (From 1970). BL: British Leyland. CPGB: Communist Party of Great Britain. IS: International Socialists. JSSC / SSC: Joint Shop Stewards Committee / Shop Stewards Committee. MAC: Management Advisory Committee. MATJSSC: Motor and Ancillary Trades Joint Shop Stewards Committee. MDW: Measured Day Work. NUVB: National Union of Vehicle Builders. SLL / WRP: Socialist Labour League (1959-73), Workers Revolutionary Party (From 1973). TUC: Trades Union Congress. TGWU: Transport and General Workers Union. 5 Chapter One: Introduction Between 1945 and 1977 Britain experienced a changing pattern of industrial conflict, with strikes increasing in frequency and number of participants, particularly between 1968 and 1974.1 The same period also saw the emergence and re-emergence of many tactics previously absent from industrial relations, including political strikes, mass pickets, and factory occupations.2 These were accompanied by an unprecedented expansion in union membership and activism, with a 250 per cent increase in workplace representatives between 1961 and 1980.3 Alongside their union leaders, shop stewards emerged as one of the public faces of trade unionism, developing new organisations with increasingly complex functions.4 These developments left a mark on Britain©s political culture which remains powerful to this day, reflected in the centrality of industrial unrest to recent popular depictions of the period.5 In Britain©s broader cultural and political life, the idea that strikes and excessive union power bore heavy responsibility for a period of prolonged economic stagnation continues to be an important part of popular narratives about contemporary history and the state of modern Britain. This could be observed in the obituaries for Margaret Thatcher in 2013, which 1 J.W. Durcan, W.E.J. McCarthy and G.P. Redman, Strikes in Post-War Britain : A Study of Stoppages of Work due to Industrial Disputes, 1946-1973 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), p. 174; John McIlroy and Alan Campbell, `The High Tide of Trade Unionism : Mapping Industrial Politics, 1964-79', in British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, Vol.2 : The High Tide of Trade Unionism, 1964-79, ed. by Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman, and John McIlroy (Monmouth: Merlin, 2007), pp. 93±130 (p. 122). 2 McIlroy and Campbell, ©The High Tide©, p. 109; Durcan, McCarthy and Redman, Strikes, p. 195. 3 Chris Howell, Trade Unions and the State : The Construction of Industrial Relations Institutions in Britain, 1890-2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 122±123. 4 Howell, Trade Unions and the State, pp. 122±123. 5 Dominic Sandbrook, State of Emergency : The Way We Were : Britain, 1970-1974 (London: Allen Lane, 2010); Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went out : Britain in the Seventies (London: Faber, 2009); Alwyn W. Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? : Britain in the 1970s (London: Aurum, 2008). 6 made repeated reference to the supposed neutering of trade unionism that took place under her government, often juxtaposed with the ªbad old daysº of the 1970s, when the country was beset by the ©rapacious demands of all-powerful trade unions barons©.6 These narratives echo the interpretations of labour militancy popular at the time. The idea that over-powerful unions were a key problem for the nation was reflected in a multiplying literature diagnosing Britain©s ªdeclineº.7 As national politicians and the media became increasingly concerned by the capacity of organised workers to disrupt production, influence national politics, inconvenience the public and damage the economy, industrial relations became a regular feature in political debate. Industrial unrest and the supposed obstructionism of trade unionism figured heavily in the emergent discourse of ªdeclinismº, which became prominent from the late 1950s and sought to discern the underlying causes of Britain©s perceived economic and political decline.8 Writers like Michael Shanks and Andrew Shonfield, then later Correlli Barnett, Douglas Jay and Samuel Brittan, made the inadequacies of trade unionism central to their diagnosis of Britain©s apparently deteriorating economic position, holding unions responsible for the inefficiencies of public corporations, lack of private investment, resistance to change in industry, low productivity in manufacturing and high levels of inflation.9 Beyond its connection to declinism, labour militancy in this period also features 6 `Nothing Less than a State Funeral Will Do', Mail Online <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2306102/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-Nothing-state- funeral-do.html> [accessed 9 April 2015]. 7 Jim Tomlinson, The Politics of Decline : Understanding Post-War Britain (Harlow: Longman, 2000), pp. 84±86. 8 Tomlinson, The Politics of Decline, pp. 55±57. 9 Michael Shanks, The Stagnant Society : A Warning (Handsworth: Penguin, 1962); Andrew Shonfield, British Economic Policy since the War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958); Roger Middleton, `Brittan on Britain: Decline, Declinism and the ªTraumas of the 1970sº', in Reassessing 1970s Britain, ed. by Pat Thane, Hugh Pemberton, and Lawrence Black (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 69±95; Roger Middleton, `The Political Economy of Decline',