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3 The Scottish industrial politics of the strike Coal production ceased on 12 March in Scotland, but solidarity across the coalfield was still being consolidated one week later, when the NUMSA and SCEBTA strike committee met for the first time. Picketing was still required at Barony, where some miners were appealing for a national ballot, and at Bilston Glen. 1 These partial divisions were acknowledged in a press statement issued by Eric Clarke for NUMSA on 15 March, which referred in low-key terms to the ‘growing sense of unity’ among Scotland’s miners. Clarke
The industrial politics of disablement 163 5 THE INDUSTRIAL POLITICS OF DISABLEMENT In 1843, one year after Parliament had passed the landmark Mines and Collieries Act banning females and children under the age of 10 from working underground, Punch magazine printed a cartoon titled ‘Capital and Labour’ (Figure 4). Reflecting the magazine’s sympathy for the poor and downtrodden and the spirit of social justice that characterised its radical early years, the image contrasted the circumstances of those who grew rich from coalmining, the wealthy coal owners
This book sheds new light on the human cost of industrialisation by examining the lives and experiences of those disabled in an industry that was vital to Britain's economic growth. If disability has been largely absent from conventional histories of industrialisation, the Industrial Revolution has assumed great significance in disability studies. The book examines the economic and welfare responses to disease, injury and impairment among coal workers. It discusses experiences of disability within the context of social relations and the industrial politics of coalfield communities. The book provides the context for those that follow by providing an overview of the conditions of work in British coalmining between 1780 and 1880. It turns its attention to the principal causes of disablement in the nineteenth-century coal industry and the medical responses to them. The book then extends the discussion of responses to disability by examining the welfare provisions for miners with long-term restrictive health conditions. It also examines how miners and their families negotiated a 'mixed economy' of welfare, comprising family and community support, the Poor Law, and voluntary self-help as well as employer paternalism. The book shifts attention away from medicine and welfare towards the ways in which disability affected social relations within coalfield communities. Finally, it explores the place of disability in industrial politics and how fluctuating industrial relations affected the experiences of disabled people in the coalfields.
Embodiment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015). 3 For key works in the comparative coalfield societies literature, see Stefan Berger, Andy Croll and Norman LaPorte (eds), Towards a Comparative History of Coalfield Societies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); John McIlroy, Alan Campbell and Keith Gildart (eds), Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout: The Struggle for Dignity (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004); Stefan Berger, ‘Working-Class Culture and the Labour Movement in the South Wales and Ruhr Coalfields, 1850–2000: A Comparison’, Llafur, 8
this rooftop chase as the starting point for a consideration of London’s role in the global film industry and its current status as a thriving production centre for Hollywood tentpole blockbusters. The chapter addresses a series of questions. Beyond its obvious merits as an impressive piece of genre spectacle, what does this scene have to tell us about the intersecting industrial, political-economic and cultural factors that shape the production of high-budget franchise films in the United Kingdom? What are the specific
Crow was returned unopposed for a further five-year term of office in 2006. His second term of office indicated that he had reached a peak – on which he would continue – in terms of dominating the union with his political authority and fighting track record. Three industrial-political initiatives were taken in this term of office; the creation of the National Shop Stewards’ Network, NO2EU and TUSC (Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition). Whilst the first sought to underpin the latter two, NO2EU and TUSC sought to provide alternative means of political representation for the RMT in order to avoid being sent into the political wilderness after disaffiliation. The pursuit of industrial unionism, increased bargaining gains and strengthening union organisation all continued apace.
This is the first book-length study of one of the most significant of all British television writers, Jimmy McGovern. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all his work for television including early writing on Brookside, major documentary dramas such as Hillsborough and Sunday and more recent series such as The Street and Accused.
Whilst the book is firmly focused on McGovern’s own work, the range of his output over the period in which he has been working also provides something of an overview of the radical changes in television drama commissioning that have taken place during this time. Without compromising his deeply-held convictions McGovern has managed to adapt to an ever changing environment, often using his position as a sought-after writer to defy industry trends.
The book also challenges the notion of McGovern as an uncomplicated social realist in stylistic terms. Looking particularly at his later work, a case is made for McGovern employing a greater range of narrative approaches, albeit subtly and within boundaries that allow him to continue to write for large popular audiences.
Finally it is worth pointing to the book’s examination of McGovern’s role in recent years as a mentor to new voices, frequently acting as a creative producer on series that he part-writes and part brings through different less-experienced names.
This book is a social history of northern soul. It examines the origins and development of this music scene, its clubs, publications and practices, by locating it in the shifting economic and social contexts of the English midlands and north in the 1970s. The popularity of northern soul emerged in a period when industrial working-class communities were beginning to be transformed by deindustrialisation and the rise of new political movements around the politics of race, gender and locality. The book makes a significant contribution to the historiography of youth culture, popular music and everyday life in post-war Britain. The authors draw on an expansive range of sources including magazines/fanzines, diaries, letters, and a comprehensive oral history project to produce a detailed, analytical and empathetic reading of an aspect of working-class culture that was created and consumed by thousands of young men and women in the 1970s. A range of voices appear throughout the book to highlight the complexity of the role of class, race and gender, locality and how such identities acted as forces for both unity and fragmentation on the dance floors of iconic clubs such as the Twisted Wheel (Manchester), the Torch (Stoke-on-Trent), the Catacombs (Wolverhampton) and the Casino (Wigan).
home, mainly from Lanarkshire to Fife in the 1950s and 1960s, and many others taking longer daily journeys to work. The link between community and colliery was duly weakened, although not ultimately fractured, as the 1984–85 strike would demonstrate. The restructuring of the 1950s and 1960s reshaped the industrial politics of the coalfields, creating tensions in the new and redeveloped collieries. Workplace conflict and union militancy, key features of the pre-1947 privately owned industry, duly re-emerged, with Scottish miners prominent in major unofficial disputes
British industry with outrageous pay demands, of slack workmanship producing shoddy cars and of political militants calling strikes on the slightest of pretexts have become part of our political folklore. Yet the details of the electricians’ strike reveal a world of complexity in the industrial politics and workplace culture of Britain’s car factories. Woolfie Goldstein, fifty-nine years old, five feet tall and heavy set, the son of Russian Jewish émigrés, was no union baron, only a relatively conservative shop steward (‘a pillar of the Rootes-Chrysler establishment