Assembling Cultures : Workplace Activism, Labour Militancy and Cultural Change in Britain's Car Factories, 1945-82

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, 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, car workers’ capacity for collective action has often been taken for granted, with mobilisation attributed to uncomplicated economic motivations or the last gasps of a declining ‘traditional class consciousness’ and the effects of the post-war settlement.This book looks at the changing forms of agency and subjectivity expressed by labour militancy, considering workplace activism in the motor industry as a specific historical creation of post-war Britain rather than a reflection of ‘tradition’. It traces the origins of shop-floor organisations, which first emerged in the 1950s, studying the processes by which workers built their union cultures and exploring the capacity of car workers to generate new solidarities and collective values in this period.Focus then turns to the 1960s and 1970s and the social practices and cultural norms that resulted from this cultural assembling, looking to understand how worker activism shaped the agency of car workers in post-war Britain, influencing the forms that strike action took. Through a mixture of oral history interviews, letters, meeting minutes and periodicals, this book analyses the meanings workers attributed to industrial conflict, asking whether factory activism generated attitudes distinct from the dominant values of wider British society. In British political discourse the idea that in the 1970s trade unions'ran the country'has become a truism, a folk mythology invoked against the twin perils of socialism and strikes. But who exactly wielded power in Britain's workplaces and on what terms?Assembling cultures takes a fine-grained look at factory activism in the motor industry between 1945 and 1982, using car manufacturing as a key case for unpicking important narratives around affluence, declinism and class. It traces the development of the militant car worker stereotype and looks at the real social relations that lay behind car manufacturing's reputation for conflict. In doing so, this book reveals a changing, complex world of social practices, cultural norms and shared values and expectations.From relatively meagre interwar trade union traditions, during the post-war period car workers developed shop-floor organisations of considerable authority, enabling some to make new demands of their working lives, but constraining others in their more radical political aims. Assembling cultures documents in detail a historic process where, from the 1950s, groups and individuals set about creating and reproducing collective power and asks what that meant for their lives. This is a story of workers and their place in the power relations of post-war Britain.This book will be invaluable to lecturers and students studying the history, sociology and politics of post-war Britain, particularly those with an interest in power, rationality, class, labour, gender and race. The detailed analysis of just how solidarity, organisation and collective action were generated will also prove useful to trade union activists. "Assembling cultures takes a fine-grained look at workplace activism in car manufacturing between 1945 and 1982, using it as a key case for unpicking narratives around affluence, declinism and class. It traces the development of the militant car worker stereotype, looking at the social relations which lay behind the industry's reputation for conflict. This book reveals a changing, complex world of social practices, cultural norms, shared values and expectations. From the 1950s, car workers developed shop-floor organisations of considerable authority, enabling some new demands of their working lives, but constraining other more radical political aims. This is a story of workers and their place in the power relations of post-war Britain. 0This book is invaluable to academics and students studying the history, sociology and politics of modern Britain, particularly those with an interest in power, rationality, class, labour, gender and race." [éditeur] Front matter Contents List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction Car workers, trade unions and public discourse Organising the car factories, 1945–64 Decentralised direct democracy, 1964–68 Remaking workplace trade unionism, 1968–75 Towards ‘strike free’, 1975–82 Conclusion Bibliography Index Assembling cultures charts the development of workplace activism in the British motor industry between 1945 and 1982.