Workplace Occupations in 1980s Britain: Resistance against Job Destruction

1. Workplace occupations in 1980s Britain in opposition to job destruction; the 1980 Gardner and 1984 Cammell Laird strikes in context Stephen Mustchin University of Manchester BUIRA Conference, Middlesex University, 29 June 2018

2. Introduction • Occupations – a revolutionary tactic for (often) reformist demands? • Wider questions of ownership, control, job protection, work sharing • 1972 – UCS work-in; ‘demonstration effect’; Fisher-Bendix, engineering occupations in Greater Manchester • Experiments in workers control, 1970s • 1971-81 – est. 264 occupations (only 69 over closure or redundancy); 1979-85 – est. 100 occupations, steep decline in incidence • 1980s occupations - Gardner, Meccano, Plessey, Lee Jeans, Caterpillar, Cammell Laird and Laurence Scott • Employment Act 1982, restricted tort immunity and trespass • Increasingly forceful state response, evictions, ‘coercive pacification’ e.g. Lawrence Scott, Cammell Laird

3. Gardner and Cammell Laird: the research • Based on two published articles: • Mustchin, S. (2016) “Conflict, mobilization, workplace occupations and deindustrialization; the 1980 Gardner strike and its wider implications.” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 37.141–67. • Mustchin, S. (2011) “From workplace occupation to mass imprisonment: The 1984 strike and occupation at Cammell Laird Shipbuilders.” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations. 31/32. 31-61. • Research based on: (limited) academic commentary, newspaper archives, internal union documentation and strike ephemera – Working Class Movement Library (Salford), Modern Records Centre (Warwick), TUC archive (London Metropolitan) • Augmented with interviews – 4 strikers and 2 other ex-employees (Gardner), 2 x group interviews with 10 strikers plus three follow up interviews (Cammell Laird) • Wider project of research on strikes and occupations in the 1980s – Silentnight 1985-7 • Ongoing research – hospital occupations

4. The 1980 strike and occupation at L. Gardner & Sons • Diesel engine factory in Eccles, Greater Manchester • Family owned since 1868, taken over by Hawker Siddeley multi-national conglomerate in mid-1970s • Series of strikes from late 1960s: 1968, 1972, 1973 (including partial occupation of the plant • Strike triggered by redundancy proposals • 7 week strike and occupation • Partial ‘victory’, i.e. job losses delayed and compulsory redundancies avoided (initially) • Strike completely shut down during strike, 2-300 workers occupying, management locked out • Aftermath: victimisation of shop stewards, job losses, company decline and closure

5. The Gardner occupation: activism, delegation work and questions of ownership • 500 workers sitting in at any one time – 200 on morning pickets; 200 ‘hard core’ and 100 ‘very hard core’ strikers • High levels of activism, participation and involvement of younger workers: convenor: ‘it was amazing; the problem with that of course is that they got themselves really wound up for a fight … [T]hey had all this energy that they wanted to channel somewhere else, it was giving me nightmares about the return to work and the scabs that were coming back inside.’ • Sub-committees dealing with picketing, administration, food, entertainment, publicity, safety, and delegations • 6-point code – all visitors recorded, ‘correct and proper’ conduct, safety and cleanliness, no damage, stealing or alcohol • Management ballot on return to work, bypassing unions – ballot papers symbolically burned – company attempted to enlist local bishop to oversee the count • Factory addressograph commandeered to send direct mail to staff countering management propaganda • ‘The real ugly face of the Multi National is at last revealed and we must not run away like children from a Halloween mask.’ • ‘We believe it is our factory anyway, and we have elected to become custodians of it … We will hand it back at the end in the same condition as we have taken it over’. • ‘We’ve had enough of these Hawker Siddeley bastards shitting on us. It’s our factory now. We’re in control. We decide what happens.’ • ‘Our national people never get out of their pram. They worry me to death because I don’t know what they’re up to … [O]ur dispute’s like a beacon, shining out of the gloom.’

6. The 1984 Cammell Laird strike and occupation • 3 month strike and occupation, June-October 1984 • Strike triggered by announcement of mass redundancies • Context of sectoral retrenchment and privatisation of shipbuilding industry • Shipbuilding yard, Birkenhead, Merseyside – history of sectionalism • Group of workers occupied an under-construction gas accommodation rig and a Type 42 Royal Navy destroyer • Back to work movement • Workers under police siege on gas rig, state forces (thought to be military) removed them following legal injunction • 37 workers imprisoned for 1 month

7. Workplace occupations in retrospect and context • Workplace occupations – ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ – work-ins as continuity of management aims? • Use determined by industry and sector – manufacturing and heavy engineering • Labour market context – deindustrialisation and job destruction, lack of alternative work as a catalyst • Questions of ownership – nationalisation, scope for state bailouts, role of multinational capital • Contradictions of organisational survival and ‘saving’ jobs and what this meant for participants • Some examples post – 2008: Vestas, Visteon, Thomas Cook occupation, Southern Europe post-2010 • Occupation tactic adopted by students, social movements, but policing, nature of ownership and decline of collective organisation central to decline within industrial disputes