Women, workplace militancy and political subjectivity in Britain, 1968-1985

This thesis examines the experiences and political subjectivity of women who engaged in workplace protest in Britain between 1968 and 1985. The study covers a period that has been identified with the ‘zenith’ of trade-union militancy in British labour history. The women’s liberation movement also emerged in this period, which produced a shift in public debates about gender roles and relations in the home and the workplace. Women’s trade union membership increased dramatically and trade unions increasingly committed themselves to supporting ‘women’s issues’. Industrial disputes involving working-class women have frequently been cited as evidence of women’s growing participation in the labour movement. However, the voices and experiences of female workers who engaged in workplace protest remain largely unexplored. This thesis addresses this space through an original analysis of the 1968 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford, Dagenham; the 1976 equal pay strike at Trico, Brentford; the 1972 Sexton shoe factory occupation in Fakenham, Norfolk; the 1981 Lee Jeans factory occupation in Greenock, Inverclyde and the 1984-1985 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford Dagenham. Drawing upon a combination of oral history and written sources, this study contributes a fresh understanding of the relationship between feminism, workplace activism and trade unionism during the years 1968-1985. In every dispute considered in this thesis, women’s behaviour was perceived by observers as novel, ‘historic’ or extraordinary. But the women did not think of themselves as extraordinary, and rather understood their behaviour as a legitimate and justified response to their everyday experiences of gender and class antagonism. The industrial disputes analysed in this thesis show that women’s workplace militancy was not simply a direct response to women’s heightened presence in trade unions. The women involved in these disputes were more likely to understand their experiences of workplace activism as an expression of the economic, social and subjective value of their work. Whilst they did not adopt a feminist identity or associate their action with the WLM, they spoke about themselves and their motivations in a manner that emphasised feminist values of equality, autonomy and self-worth.

Creating a modern home: homeowners in post-war suburban Glasgow, 1945-1975

This thesis examines how married couples bought and created a modern home for their families in suburban Glasgow between 1945-1975. New homeowners were on the cusp of the middle-classes, buying in a climate of renters. As they progressed through the family lifecycle women’s return to work meant they became more comfortably ensconced within the middle-classes. Engaged with a process of homemaking through consumption and labour, couples transformed their houses into homes that reflected themselves and their social status. The interior of the home was focused on as a site of social relations. Marriage in the suburbs was one of collaboration as each partner performed distinct gender roles. The idea of a shared home was investigated and the story of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ emerged from both testimony and contemporary literature. This thesis considers decision-making, labour and leisure to show the ways in which experiences of home were gendered. What emerged was that women’s work as everyday and mundane was overlooked and undervalued while husband’s extraordinary contributions in the form of DIY came to the fore. The impact of wider culture intruded upon the ‘private’ home as we see they ways in which the position of women in society influences their relationship to the home and their family. In the suburbs of post-war Glasgow women largely left the workforce to stay at home with their children. Mothers popped in and out of each other houses for tea and a blether, creating a homosocial network that was sociable and supportive unique to this time in their lives and to this historical context. Daily life was negotiated within the walls of the modern home. The inter-war suburbs of Glasgow needed modernising to post-war standards of modern living. ‘Modern’ was both an aesthetic and an engagement with new technologies within the house. Both middle and working-class practices for room use were found through the keeping of a ‘good’ or best room and the determination of couples to eat in their small kitchenettes. As couples updated their kitchen, the fitted kitchen revealed contemporary notions of modern décor, as kitchens became bright yellow with blue Formica worktops. The modern home was the evolution of existing ideas of modern combined with new standards of living. As Glasgow homeowners constructed their modern home what became evident was that this was a shared process and as a couple they placed their children central to all aspects of their lives to create not only a modern home, but that this was first and foremost a family home

Politics and protestant Lordship in North East Scotland during the reign of James VI: The life of George Keith, fourth Earl Marischal, 1554-1623

George Keith, fourth Earl Marischal is a case study of long-term, quietly successful and stable lordship through the reign of James VI. Marischal’s life provides a wholly underrepresented perspective on this era, where the study of rebellious and notorious characters has dominated. He is also a counter-example to the notion of a general crisis among the European nobility, at least in the Scottish context, as well as to the notion of a ‘conservative’ or ‘Catholic’ north east. In 1580 George inherited the richest earldom in Scotland, with a geographical extent stretching along the east coast from Caithness to East Lothian. His family came to be this wealthy as a long term consequence of the Battle of Flodden (1513) where a branch of the family, the Inverugie Keiths had been killed. The heiress of this branch was married to the third earl and this had concentrated a large number of lands, and consequently wealth, in the hands of the earls. This had, however, also significantly decreased the number of members and hence power of the Keith kindred. The third earl’s conversion to Protestantism in 1544 and later his adherence to the King’s Party during the Marian Civil War forced the Keiths into direct confrontation with their neighbours in the north east, the Gordons (led by the Earls of Huntly), a Catholic family and supporters of the Queen’s Party. Although this feud was settled for a time at the end of the war, the political turmoil caused by a succession of short-lived factional regimes in the early part of the personal reign of James VI (c.1578-1585) led the new (fourth) Earl Marischal into direct confrontation with the new (sixth) Earl of Huntly. Marischal was outclassed, outmanoeuvred and outgunned at both court and in the locality in this feud, suffering considerably. However, Huntly’s over-ambition in wider court politics meant that Marischal was able to join various coalitions against his rival, until Huntly was exiled in 1595. Marischal also came into conflict briefly with Chancellor John Maitland of Thirlestane as a consequence of Marischal’s diplomatic mission to Denmark in 1589-1590, but was again outmatched politically and briefly imprisoned. Both of these feuds reveal Marischal to be relatively cautious and reactionary, and both reveal the limitations of his power. Elsewhere, the study of Marischal’s activities in the centre of Scottish politics reveal him to be unambitious. He was ready to serve King James, the two men having a healthy working relationship, but Marischal showed no ambition as a courtier, to woo the king’s favour or patronage, instead delegating interaction with the monarch to his kinsmen. Likewise, in government, Marischal rarely attended any of the committees he was entitled to attend, such as the Privy Council, although he did keep a keen eye on the land market and the business conducted under the Great Seal. Although personally devout and a committed Protestant, the study of Marischal’s interaction with the national Kirk and the parishes of which he was patron reveal that he was at times a negligent patron and exercised his right of ministerial presentation as lordly, not godly patronage. The notion of a ‘conservative North East’ is, however, rejected. Where Marischal was politically weak at court and weak in terms of force in the locality, we see him pursuing sideways approaches to dealing with this. Thus he was keen to build up his general influence in the north and in particular with the burgh of Aberdeen (one result of this being the creation of Marischal College in 1593), pursued disputes through increasing use of legal methods rather than bloodfeud (thus exploiting his wealth and compensating for his relative lack of force) and developed a sophisticated system of maritime infrastructure, ultimately expressed through the creating of the burghs of Peterhead and Stonehaven. Although his close family caused him a number of problems over his lifetime, he was able to pass on a stable and enlarged lordship to his son in 1623.

Graphic satire and the rise and fall of the First British Empire: political prints from the Seven Years' War to the Treaty of Paris, c. 1756-1783

This thesis examines the early stages of the transformation of emblematic political prints into political caricature from the beginning of the Seven Years' War (1756) to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War (1783). Both contextual and iconographical issues are investigated in relation to the debates occasioned by Britain's imperial project, which marked a period of dramatic expansion during the Seven Years' War, and ended with the loss of the American colonies, consequently framing this thesis as a study of political prints during the rise and fall of the so-called 'First British Empire'. Previous studies of eighteenth-century political prints have largely ignored the complex and lengthy evolutionary process by which the emblematic mode amalgamated with caricatural representation, and have consequently concluded that political prints excluded emblems entirely by the end of the 1770s. However, this study emphasizes the significance of the Wilkite movement for the promotion and preservation of emblems, and investigates how pictorial political argument was perceived and received in eighteenth-century British society, arguing that wider tastes and opinions regarding the utilization of political prints gradually shifted to accept both modes of representation. Moreover, the marketplace, legal status, topicality, and manufacturing methods of political prints are analyzed in terms of understanding the precarious nature of their consumption and those that endeavoured to engage in political printmaking. The evolution, establishment, and subsequent appropriation of pictorial tropes is discussed from the early modern period to the beginning of the so-called Golden Age of caricature, while tracing the adaptation of representational models in American colonial prints that employed emblems already entrenched in British pictorial political debate. Political prints from the two largest print collections, the British Museum and the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale are consulted, along with a number of eighteenth-century newspapers and periodicals, to develop the earlier research by M. Dorothy George, Charles Press, Herbert Atherton, Diana Donald, Amelia Rauser, and Eirwen Nicholson.

Deindustrialisation and industrial communities: the Lanarkshire coalfields c.1947-1983

This thesis examines deindustrialisation, the declining contribution of industrial activities to economic output and employment, in Lanarkshire, Scotland’s largest coalfield between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. It focuses on contraction between the National Coal Board’s (NCB) vesting in 1947 and the closure of Lanarkshire’s last colliery, Cardowan, in 1983. Deindustrialisation was not the natural outcome of either market forces or geological exhaustion. Colliery closures and falling coal employment were the result of policy-makers’ decisions. The thesis consists of four thematic chapters: political economy, moral economy, class and community, and generation and gender. The analysis is based on archival sources including Scottish Office reports and correspondence relating to regional policy, and NCB records. These are supported by National Union of Mineworkers Scottish Area and STUC meeting minutes, and oral history testimonies from over 30 men and women with Lanarkshire coalfield backgrounds, as well as two focus groups. The first two chapters analyse the process of deindustrialisation, with the first offering a top-down perspective and the second a bottom-up viewpoint. In chapter one deindustrialisation is analysed through changes in political economy. Shifts in labour market structure are examined through the development of regional policy and its administration by the Scottish Office. The analysis centres upon a policy network of Scottish business elites and civil servants who shaped a vision of modernisation via industrial diversification through attracting inward investment. In chapter two the perspective shifts to community and workforce. It analyses responses to coalfield contraction through a moral economy of customary rights to colliery employment. A detailed investigation of Lanarkshire colliery closures between the 1940s and 1980s emphasises the protracted nature of deindustrialisation. Chapters three and four consider the social and cultural structures which shaped the moral economy but were heavily altered by deindustrialisation. Chapter three focuses on the dense networks that linked occupation, community, and class consciousness. Increasing coalfield centralisation and remote control of pits from NCB headquarters in London, and mounting hostility to coal closures, contributed to an accentuated sense of Scottish-ness. Chapter four illuminates gender and generational dimensions. The differing experiences of cohorts of men who faced either early retirement, redundancy or transfer to alternative sectors, or those who never attained anticipated industrial employment due to final closures, are analysed in terms of constructions of masculinity and the endurance of cultural as well as material losses. This is counterpoised to women who gained industrial work in assembly plants and the perceived gradual attainment of an improved economic and social position whilst continuing to navigate structures of patriarchy.