15
Workers’ Control and the Politics of Factory Occupation
Britain, 1970s
Alan Tuckman
 
 
On July 30, 1971, members of the press waiting at the gates of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) heard Jimmy Reid, chair of the shop stewards committee at the yards in Glasgow, announce
the first campaign of its kind in trade unionism. [The yard workers] . . . are not going on strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. We are taking over the yards because we refuse to accept that faceless men can make these decisions. We are not strikers. We are responsible people and we will conduct ourselves with dignity and discipline. We want to work. We are not wildcats (BBC 1971).126
The reason for this announcement was the ending of financial support from the government, putting the yards formally into bankruptcy and into the hands of a receiver whose role was to realize any assets for creditors. The very presence of the press at the gates indicates their anticipation that the shop stewards were to stage some opposition to the closure. However, since Reid had distanced the action from a sit-in and, for the following eighteen months, the shop stewards organizing the “work-in” essentially maintained a system of dual power with the receiver’s office, the action proved the focal inspiration for more than 260 worker occupations in Britain during the following decade.127

The Logic of Workplace Occupation under Capitalism

Reid was also distancing the work-in from strikes, the traditional weapon in the arsenal of industrial action. A strike, as the withdrawal of labor, means workers abandoning the workplace, perhaps a counterproductive tactic in the circumstances of possible closure. The UCS work-in meant those dismissed by the receiver still turned up to work each day, although not as paid labor. However, while this remained the defining action of the period, other occupations went further in their command of the workplace. Workplace occupation inherently challenges the fundamental principles of the control of private property, involving workers claiming control through their labor and excluding those with ownership rights.
Occupation also challenges the limits of the sale of labor power to capital, posing an extension of access rights beyond the temporal limits of the employment contract. While a recent commentator argues that the “occupation of a factory is a tactic of class struggle—not an experience in workers’ control,” there are inherent issues of control raised by the action (Sherry 2010, 126). Not only were workers appropriating, however temporarily, the means of production, they were also maintaining organizational capacity to sustain the plant while promoting their justification of the action. If the occupation involves a continuance of production, a work-in, then this will also involve the organization of production and therefore some element and an anticipation of workers’ self-management. It raises questions of alternative futures for the organization and role of the workforce as well as of formal ownership of the plant.
The occupation tactic clearly raises further questions. Why should this particular tactic be adopted at a particular time? And why should such a tactic then almost disappear for the next quarter century? Even in its disappearance, what heritage has the tactic and the period of conflict left behind for later generations of struggle? This essay might shed some light on the reappearance of the workplace occupation in reaction to crisis through examining the explosion of creativity that accompanied the tactic (Gall 2010).

The End of Britain’s Political Consensus

By the early 1960s the postwar political consensus in Britain, based around industrial expansion and economic growth, underpinning greater consumer affluence, was beginning to appear frail. While the economy had been expanding it had been doing so at a far slower rate than its industrial competitors. The consensus had also been built on state ownership of key industries and services, health and welfare provision, and strong organization by the trade unions, which were becoming contentious in the growing economic crisis. The Wilson Labour government, taking office in 1964, launched its own more explicit modernization, attempting links with the explosion of popular culture in the wake of the Beatles.
The program included the extension of industrial and economic planning—launching Britain into “the white heat of technological revolution”—by attempting to meet international competition through the merging of companies in particular industrial sectors, a process also known as rationalization. One of these mergers, of five shipyards, resulted in the creation of UCS in the 1960s. Principally this was to be attempted through the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (IRC), whose purpose was “to promote structural change which will improve the efficiency and profitability of British industry” (Hansard 1974). The IRC had a significant impact in its attempt to rationalize British industrial capital, bringing together large conglomerates that sought to streamline multisite operations to achieve their promised economies of scale, which itself led to confrontations with organized workers championing “the right to work.” Conservative opposition formulated a “quiet revolution,” arguing that the market ought to operate to allow for failing companies—the “lame ducks” of the economy—which were not to be given state support, and so allowed to collapse.
Unemployment was growing and approaching one million, a number considered politically unsustainable. Trade unions were growing in membership as well as influence in the new corporate state, with a significant shift in influence to the shop-floor organization (see Panitch 1976 and Crouch 1977). The Wilson government also made the first attempt at a legislative reform of industrial relations of the period, “In Place of Strife,” a bill that sought to regulate the actions of trade unions. While basic terms and conditions may have been subject to national bargaining between employers’ organizations and full-time officers of the trade unions, these were now enhanced or superseded by local bargaining by shop stewards. With the growing significance of multiplant conglomerates, shop stewards were increasingly establishing cross-site combine committees for communication and coordination of strategy.
Although portrayed in popular imagery as the promoters of conflict within the workplace, the shop steward system had in reality minimized open dispute through bargaining disputes down into a plethora of “plus payments.” An important corollary to the rise of shop stewards was the development of training courses, which emerged principally in the extramural departments of universities. These courses existed haphazardly, largely dependent on sympathetic instructors, and while considering the role of stewards in recruitment, organizing, and bargaining skills, the curriculum was often renegotiated annually to address broader industrial and economic issues and policy.
It was not only Labour and Conservative Party support that fractured in the 1960s. The Communist Party, which had sustained a strong base in the postwar trade unions, had been hit first by the Khrushchev denunciation of Stalin and then by the 1956 invasion of Hungary, which saw the revival of workers’ councils as a focus for the organization of popular revolt (see, e.g., Anderson 1964, Lomax 1976, and Lomax 1980).
A “New Left” began to emerge, exploring alternative models of socialism. Some examined the potential of the “self-management” of the postwar Yugoslav regime. Drawing on this experience, as well as on past experience of workplace organizations, some New Left commentators argued for the need to return to a concern with “workers’ control.” In an article published in New Left Review in 1964, Tony Topham argued that:
the quantitative growth of the shop stewards’ strength in industry, the causes and numbers of strikes (particularly local, spontaneous strikes) are significant factors, and that the whole area of conflict surrounding the role of the shop steward is likely to intensify in the near future...whilst the Left’s main task should be to assist at the birth of articulate and explicit demands for control at shop-floor level, we must insist upon the need to generalize these outwards to embrace the whole framework of social, economic and political decision-making (Topham 1964, 4).
A series of conferences were organized involving trade union officers, shop stewards and other activists, and academics, leading to the founding in 1968 of the Institute for Workers’ Control (IWC). While it is a mistake to generalize about a specific IWC position or line (Barratt Brown, Coates, and Topham 1975), as their publications covered an eclectic range of areas and perspectives (Hyman 1974), the central academic figures presented a view of workers’ control as “encroachment” by organized labor into managerial prerogative. Promoting the slogan of “open the books,” they advocated the development of control bargaining by trade unions, and particularly shop stewards, in nonremunerator areas around working conditions and work rate. By the late 1960s they had initiated a number of industrial working groups around the docks, the steel industry, and other industries (Coates 1968; see also Topham 1967). Key figures in the movement were engaged in trade union education; plans and discussion often emerged from classes run for shop stewards in these industries.
With massive unemployment blamed largely on factory closures, there was speculation about an escalation of industrial action to challenge closures. Increasing insecurity in the labor market drew inspiration from the recent experience of student sit-ins and the occupations in France. In February 1969 the BBC broadcast a television play, The Big Flame, directed by Ken Loach, which depicted an occupation of the Liverpool docks.

The Occupation in Britain

In the context of strongly organized and potentially militant workplaces, as well as the increased currency of the idea of “workers’ control,” there was anticipation that some major resistance to large-scale redundancy was imminent. However, while the occupations have been principally associated with the large-scale closures of the period, and most of the protracted occupations were indeed contesting closure, many others involved more limited challenges to layoffs, redundancies, dismissals, or the threat of lockout. In this context it is also necessary to establish an accepted definition of “occupation” since, it could be argued, the normal state of the workplace is when the workforce is in occupation; a traditional image of dispute—of strike action—is the workforce withdrawing from the workplace. However, many tactics in industrial disputes, such as a work-to-rule or an overtime ban—often presented as “short of strike action”—involve workers remaining in occupation. The very progression of a spontaneous dispute may mean some period of uncertainty with the workforce withdrawing from work but not from the workplace. While the eviction of management is a sure indicator of worker occupation, this is not a requisite: at UCS the receiver remained at the yard.

The Big Flame and UCS

One of the key targets of IRC support was the electronics and electrical power conglomerate GEC-AEI. Formed from the merger of three companies—GEC, AEI, and EE—in order to achieve economies of scale, it hoped to achieve competitiveness in an increasingly global market. At the time of the merger the company operated on 135 sites in Britain with 228,000 employees, making it the largest private-sector employer at the time in the UK (see Anti Report 1972 and IWC 1969). Rationalization following the merger precipitated large numbers of redundancies (see, e.g., Newens 1969 and Schubert 1970).
When workers at three Merseyside plants were faced with closure, the shop stewards agreed to resist with an occupation. The proposal was abandoned due to concerns over the loss of redundancy pay or the possibility of criminal prosecution (see IWC 1969 and Chadwick 1970). This indicates the main tension within a workforce facing closure: on the one hand, collective resistance; on the other, acceptance of redundancy pay or the chance of alternative employment. Trade unions have a strategic choice between the mobilization of resistance and bargaining the terms of redundancy for those losing jobs.
It was not until 1971, after the election of Heath’s Conservative government, that the “big flame” was lit by the occupation at UCS. The “lame ducks” policy meant a government rejection when the company approached it for continuing financial support, leading to threats of redundancies to the workforce. Shop stewards had discussed some form of occupation and, when redundancies were announced, they informed the gatekeepers at the yards that they had taken over control.
As with other occupations of the period, the work-in built on the trade unionism at the yards. The usual divisions between different craft unions in the yards were transcended with the transformation of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee into the Work-in Coordinating Committee, following its extension into representing managers also under threat of redundancy. “Dual power” existed for the next eighteen months, shared between the shop stewards trying to maintain employment and the receiver appointed to realize the capital assets. Shipyard workers made redundant were encouraged by the stewards to continue coming to work in the yards. While the action can only tenuously be defined as an occupation, the UCS work-in mobilized considerable support.

Labor’s Movement and Labour Politics

Mass demonstrations were held through the streets of Glasgow, which attracted senior Labour politicians, most notably their Industry spokesperson Tony Benn, along with trade union leaders. The government worried about possible social unrest if they attempted to evict the work-in or bar access to the yards. Merging the yards had created a key tension between the navy yards required by the government and the civil yards, which were under severe competition from the shift to cheaper bulk shipping containers. Little argument challenged the yards’ military role, so arguments began to emerge concerning the social cost of closure (see IWC 1971 and Murray 1972). Lasting for eighteen months, the UCS dispute was the very act of resistance to have an impact on the UK labor movement, particularly in mobilizing occupation and raising new questions concerning closure and redundancy.
UCS, however, was not typical of the occupations to follow. Perhaps the first incident typical of the UK occupations in the 1970s was at a Plessey armaments plant, just a short distance from Glasgow on the River Clyde, which started about a month after the work-in at UCS. The workforce at the plant had been downsized and when the last 250 workers were told to report to collect their remaining wages rather than attend for work, they jumped the locked gate.
The Plessey occupation was to last four months until a deal was reached for a takeover that protected seventy of the jobs (see Labour Research 1972; Times 1972; Coates 1981, 55–56). After such a protracted occupation, seventy was likely the approximate expected number of remaining participants: this highlights two significant factors concerning the development and outcome of occupations. First, numbers were subject to decline as participants found alternative employment or simply became disillusioned or pessimistic about prospects. Second, when solutions did emerge, the number offered reemployment and the qualifications for it seemed to equate to the number and qualifications of those remaining in occupation. As with most occupations, resistance was sustained in support of employment, for “the right to work,” but with little clear strategy for achieving this.

Escalation of Worker Factory Occupations

By the end of 1971 occupations had spread further south to the steel and engineering works around South Yorkshire and into Wales, all resisting redundancies. Most of the reflection on occupation and property rights initially revolved around property rights in the sale of labor, the idea being that in some way employment vested property rights in the job similar to those of a shareholder. This was the very ethos—never explicit—that developed around redundancy pay. Initially introduced, reflecting Keynesian views on labor mobility, to assist the flow of industrial change and enhance the ability of workers in declining sectors and regions of the economy to move to developing areas, its practice was to commodify jobs by putting cash payment in place to buy out any job “possession” by workers (see Fryer 1973; 1981).
Thus divisions among workers occurred around whether to resist or accept redundancy terms, as they did in terms of support for public or private ownership; little debate occurred, except pragmatically, concerning any form of self-management or how things might operate under workers’ control. While occupation was sometimes suggested as resistance in advance of impending closures, the action itself tended to be spontaneous. The occupations also tended to be acts of relative desperation in the face of job loss with no real plan beyond the hope that another owner might be found. However, some occupying workers began to drift into establishing worker cooperatives—out of pragmatism rather than any deeper commitment—when an alternative buyer did not materialize.
In February 1972 the shoe manufacturer Sexton, Son and Everard declared bankruptcy and announced that their factories in East Anglia would be closed and the seven hundred workers made redundant. A meeting of the employees voted almost unanimously to contest the closure by means of occupation and controlling machinery and stock (Wajcman 1983; Socialist Worker 1972). Before the resolution was implemented the firm was bought by a local developer, who guaranteed five hundred of the jobs. But among those still to lose their jobs were forty-five women workers at a satellite factory in Fakenham, which machined leather uppers for the main factory. Feeling ignored they decided to go ahead with occupation when the first round of the women lost their jobs. They had machinery and scraps of leather from which they produced bags and other goods for sale locally, bearing the label “Fakenham Occupation Workers.” The women began to contemplate the prospect of working for themselves in a workers’ cooperative.
At Briant Colour Printing, workers occupied to resist the closure of their East London plant. This became a work-in when the occupying workers obtained printing contracts, often for left-wing or labor movement organizations. Members of this work-in also seemed to have addressed the possibility of establishing a workers’ cooperative but rejected the idea (Inside Story 1973). Mass pickets were held when the plant workers were threatened with eviction and, eventually, a new owner was found. However, only fourteen weeks after the new ownership took over, the plant was again closed. This time the workforce could not respond with an occupation: having received redundancy notices through the post they arrived at the plant to find it already shuttered and guarded by a security firm (Labour Research 1973a).
Workers at Leadgate Engineering in Durham also began an occupation against closure. The date of closure had been strategically chosen and would have allowed for the removal of machinery without the repayment of government grants; it also meant the minimum redundancy pay to the work-force. However, one hundred members of the three hundred–strong workforce occupied the site, prohibiting any movement of plant and machinery. Ultimately, after a six-month occupation, the owners came to an agreement with the remaining thirty workers for a plan to establish a workers’ cooperative. In exchange for the machinery still held in the plant, the workers could lease one of the factory buildings, supported by a loan to the cooperative and guaranteed against subcontract work for the previous owner (see Mooney 1973; Labour Research 1973b).
The Leadgate workforce seemed no less cynical about a workers’ cooperative than those at Briant Colour but occupation on its own did not constitute a solution. The cooperative repaid the loan by the end of the year, even taking on extra workers, and gained additional contracts although it collapsed in late 1975 and work ceased (Coates 1981, 137; see also Labour Research 1973b).
Fisher-Bendix, a motor components plant near Liverpool, had diversified into a range of other products following changes in ownership. In early 1972 there was talk of redundancies and the shop stewards made contact with UCS and Plessey as well as the stewards at the nearby Merseyside plant of GEC-AEI, which had considered occupation in 1969 (see Clarke 1974; Eccles 1981; Solidarity 1972). Although there had been prior discussion, the occupation of Fisher-Bendix was spontaneous and unplanned: a meeting was stormed and management evicted, with the gates subsequently welded shut. With the intervention of Harold Wilson, local Member of Parliament and—at that time—Leader of the Opposition, a new owner was found although without offering any long-term security for the plant or workforce.
These occupations built on the influence of workplace organization, formally represented through the shop steward system. This was sometimes at odds with the formal trade union structure, which was more inclined to come to terms on redundancy and suspicious of unofficial shop-floor organization. These roots in the shop steward movement, and tension with trade unions, were to become more evident in the events around the national dispute in the engineering industry.

The Manchester Engineers

Shortly before the occupation in Fakenham, in early 1972, workers at Bredbury Steelworks took over the plant near Manchester, setting a pattern for about fifty further occupations in the engineering industry. Basic pay and conditions in the industry were determined in long-term agreements between the Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, constituted of the thirty-one trade unions with members in the industry. However, workplace bargaining had become increasingly important, with shop stewards negotiating local deals that could mean double the basic pay in some plants. The union had presented a claim for £25 a week for skilled workers, a thirty-five-hour week, and an extra week of vacation with the latter two items part of a strategy to counter rising unemployment. When the claim was rejected by the employer’s side, the unions moved the campaign to the regions.
The Manchester region, with perhaps the best-organized and most militant shop steward organization, put forward national demands on a plant-by-plant basis. Submission of the claim was often accompanied by the imposition of sanctions—an overtime ban, work-to-rule, etc., to which some employers responded with threat of lockout (Chadwick 1973). Commentators have tended to see the escalation of the dispute into occupation in about thirty plants in the region as being promoted by the integration of the left, predominantly Communist as well as a few Socialist Worker shop stewards and union officials (Mills 1974; Darlington and Lyddon 2001). However, it was the EEF that targeted a challenge at particular plants where there were, as they saw it, “communist stewards.”128 The president of the EEF stressed to employers “the importance of standing firm in this situation. There’s little doubt that a policy of militant plant bargaining . . . [was] intended to expose the industry to a free-for-all in wages and conditions claims. If the unions are out to test the fibre of our unity, we should leave them in no doubt as to its durability” (EEF 1972).
In plants with shop-floor representatives more amenable to compromise with the EEF position, the workforce was rewarded with offers of pay increases beyond the national claim but without any other benefits. At Mather & Platts, with a moderate union organization, the offer accepted was for a £5.50-a-week increase, significantly more than the claim that amounted to a £4.00 increase without any concessions on holidays or hours.
The EEF took a page out of the trade union book and maintained unity and discipline among its membership, holding the federation line that plant settlements should only be reached on pay. Most of the settlements claimed by the union had been made with companies outside of the EEF. The few members of the EEF who made agreements also covering holiday and working hours faced expulsion. Not only was this an attack on militant shop stewards and support for the more acceptable face of workplace representation, it also highlighted what was to become the initial neoliberal position on bargaining: collective bargaining should be premised on what a company could afford—the relative market situation of the company—rather than extraneous subsistence concerns of workers, such as considerations of the cost of living.
By April 1972 workplace occupations had spread to the Sheffield region, where unions also put in the “carbon copy claim”; employers at two plants threatened to withhold pay in retaliation against trade union sanctions. Elsewhere, at for instance Stanmore Engineering in London, long-standing grievances coalesced with the presentation of the national claim, and conflict between employers and workers escalated into occupation. The occupations continued into August. However, the Manchester shop stewards dropped opposition to cash-only settlements and gradually the national unions imposed discipline over disputes that had not had explicit union sanction. The EEF loosened its opposition to settlements, including some concession on hours and holidays.

Changes

The UCS work-in and the occupation movement began to have an impact. The Heath government, which had entered office with a neoliberal policy, was moved to make a U-turn. A new Industry Act was introduced in 1972, allowing intervention to support industry in deprived areas or where it was considered in the national interest.
Powers were assigned to the secretary of state for Industry to give up to £5 million to an enterprise before it needed to be put to a parliamentary vote. To avoid the bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce, the flagship company would be nationalized; assistance could be given as well to UCS to implement a survival plan. One of the shipyards was sold to Marathon Oil for the construction of rigs for the expanding North Sea oil field. To this sale the government contributed grants worth £6 million, and declared that the company was not a “lame duck.” The remaining yards were reorganized, receiving £35 million in government aid, a sum considerably more than they had previously been refused.
The economic situation was deteriorating, with unemployment continuing its rise while inflation was moving into double figures. The government introduced pay restraint, holding down wages across the economic sectors. The oil crisis hit the economy in 1973 and, at the same time, the miners threatened their second national strike in two years. Further emergency measures were introduced to save power, including a three-day workweek. Finally, in 1974, Heath called an election around the issue of “who governs Britain?” The obvious inference was that power was slipping toward organized labor.
In March 1974 Labour took office as a minority government with policies of establishing a National Enterprise Board to manage and expand public enterprise, and of extending industrial democracy. The architect of the industrial policy was to be Tony Benn, who had played an active role within the IWC as well as in the campaign around UCS; he sought a new model of state enterprise alongside greater involvement of workers in “bottom up” decision-making (see Benn 1979). For a short period while he was in office, causing antagonism from other ministers, trade unions, and his own officials, Benn offered direct access to problems brought to him by shop stewards’ committees in threatened plants and companies.
The Conservative administration had left a number of open applications under the 1972 Industry Act, some with a long heritage of state intervention and worker occupation. One concern was the decline of the motorcycle industry. Consolidation of the remaining manufacturers (into NVT, Norton Villiers Triumph), meant the proposal of factory closure and created conflict between workforces over the allocation of work. Initial proposals from NVT, supported by the government, were for the closure of the Meriden plant with work transferred to the two remaining plants. When the closure was announced, Meriden workers evicted management and occupied, initially around a work-in during which they produced motorcycles from existing components.

The Heyday of Occupation

In the limbo of the election period, as a means of freeing up machines, spares, company records, and “the contents of the engineering department,” NVT had come to an agreement with the Meriden occupation. This plan would allow the prospective workers’ cooperative assets of between £2 million and £7 million, to be selected from a list compiled by the company, as long as evidence of their ability to pay was provided before the end of March (NVT 1974). When Benn arrived at the Department of Industry this plan was on his desk. Previously the government assistance to the motorcycle industry had been directed at NVT itself but Benn now encouraged the Meriden workforce to formalize their plans for a workers’ cooperative into an application to the Department of Industry for assistance under the 1972 Industry Act.
Benn facilitated rapid assistance to the Meriden workforce. It incorporated as a separate entity so that it could qualify for £4.96 million in aid awarded separately from the assistance that NVT had already received. This allowed not only the establishment of the cooperative but also for NVT to get the release of the machine tools and plans they had been waiting for. It also gave them a ready buyer for the factory and excess plant capacity. It also meant the creation of, essentially, a subcontractor to produce the Triumph Bonneville motorcycle.
The Meriden experience had a profound effect on Benn’s perspective. Through his identification of the workers’ cooperative—reminiscent of the roots of Labour radicalism—he had resolved the paradox between extending “socialization” of the economy with the commitment to extending industrial democracy. The workers’ cooperative that the Meriden workers had proposed seemed to be the solution, especially when similar plans were forwarded from workers at Beaverbrook newspapers in Glasgow, occupying over closure. Their plan was to allow the establishment of a newspaper, the Scottish Daily News, which they were to run for a few months as a workers’ cooperative. Other groups of workers approached Benn directly. The workers at Fisher-Bendix, by then renamed IPC, were again facing closure and sought assistance. Benn encouraged them to put forward their own business plan to support their request and advised them to consider establishing a cooperative.
Lucas Aerospace, which had assistance through the IRC to facilitate mergers and rationalization, was also proposing plant closures. Some of these were resisted by occupation. To challenge the proposed restructuring, shop stewards across different plants had established a combine committee that met regularly. With concern about these job losses, and how this might be alleviated by inclusion in the government-proposed nationalization of the aerospace industry, the combine met with Benn at the Department of Industry. There he asked them to produce their own plans for preserving jobs (Wainwright and Elliott 1982). This followed the logic emerging in the resistance to closures and occupations, efforts that had been reflected in the “social audit” at UCS but going much farther. Consideration was increasingly given to the “use” of products and of production itself, with the Lucas Combine challenging the dependence on armament production, initiating a wider debate on arms conversion, as well as addressing the alienating character of work under capitalism (see Cooley 1980).
Benn was picking up on some of the IWC strategy. Workers were directed to put forward their own proposals for how to save their industries. This was integral to a realization by these workers that the minister favored the cooperative form rather than “old style” nationalization. When, in January 1975, Litton Industries announced plans to close its Imperial Typewriter factories in Hull and Leicester, workers produced a plan arguing for support from Benn’s department (TGWU 1975; IWC 1975).129 When Benn addressed a lobby of workers from the Hull plant he advised that they “stay together.”130 When the Hull factory was closed on February 20, a day earlier than announced, members of the workforce climbed the gate and started an occupation. A sign was erected outside the plant announcing “Tony is with us.” However, by the following month Benn was to write to Tony Topham, “The whole official machine is 100% against you as you probably realise, and I am doing my best to prevent disastrous recommendations from going in so as to give you time to reorganise. It is going to be very hard, but I will do my very best” (Benn 1975).
While Benn was instrumental in mobilizing action among groups of workers, his openness to delegations, especially from workforces staging what appeared to be militant industrial action, was isolating if not demonizing him elsewhere.
When the Lucas Combine Committee produced their plan, which was to pioneer and symbolize “socially useful production” (Lucas 1978; Wainwright and Elliott 1982), they found their path blocked by a bureaucratic web (Lucas 1979; 1982). Trade union officials also objected to ministerial access being given to shop stewards and combines, both of which they considered unofficial bodies. A crucial factor in the state assistance for the workers’ cooperatives in the short period Benn was at the Department of Industry was that not only was the aid minimal compared to the overall assistance given by government to private industry, but also most of it went to compensate previous owners for what was already an obsolete plant. Hence while all three cooperatives were short-lived, their eventual closure was inevitable, as even with assistance they were still drastically undercapitalized and therefore unable to resolve problems or to establish an independent existence through research and development.

Toward Thatcherism and Declining Workplace Occupations

With the exception of early 1972, which saw the Manchester engineering dispute, the period of late 1974 to mid-1975 saw more occupations than any other. The period brought together workers facing closures and redundancies, the conditions that generate occupation, and the apparent possibility of support from the very center of government. The three workers’ cooperatives—the “Benn cooperatives”—have become totemic of the period and cooperative development became associated with economic policies, formulated by some UK local authorities, that challenged the emergent neoliberalism of the Thatcher government.
The idea of socially useful production, associated with the Lucas Combine shop stewards, is another important outcome from the period; its proposals, including hybrid engines and alternative power sources, have a significant resonance with growing environmentalism.
This is not to argue that workplace occupation disappeared altogether. Several significant occupations, including at Meccano, Lee Jeans, Lawrence Scott, and the magazine Time Out, occurred toward the end of the 1970s. However there was a noticeable decline in number. Occupation had always been a minority activity; even earlier in the 1970s only a small minority of workers facing closure or large-scale redundancy considered the tactic and even fewer deployed it. And this deployment was usually the relatively spontaneous action of a small minority of the workforce involved.
Far more commonly, when closure or redundancies were announced, the union saw its role not as mobilizing opposition but as negotiating the most advantageous redundancy terms. The 1975 Employment Protection Act, enacted by the Wilson government, introduced the formal requirement for employers to give ninety days’ notice of redundancies, and to consult with recognized trade unions over these redundancies. This consolidated the role of the trade union as negotiating terms and conditions of redundancy and allowed collective resistance to fragment and dissipate.
The Labour government, faced with a monetary crisis, approached the IMF for a $3.9 billion loan in 1976. Conditional of the loan was a 20 percent cut in the budget deficit. Almost three years before the election of Thatcher’s Conservative government Britain witnessed the initiation of the rolling back of the Keynesian welfare state. One significant area of rationalization was in the National Health Service (NHS), with moves toward consolidation in larger units and the closure of smaller, specialist, or local hospitals and some hospital wards. This often meant redeployment of staff rather than redundancy, but it still led to opposition. A number of occupations occurred to try to keep hospitals open. The first, at Elisabeth Garret Anderson, a specialist women’s hospital in central London, lasted for more than two years. In some cases these occupations involved continued care; however, at Hounslow, despite a “raid” staged by the management to remove hospital patients, occupation continued based around ex-staff, usually redeployed within the health service, and local supporters (see Hounslow Hospital Occupation Committee 1978). As such the hospital occupations developed in a rather different way than the factory occupations.

A Future for Worker Resurgence?

We might see the foundation of the occupations in Britain in the 1970s as being rooted in the strong and confident workplace trade unionism that had developed within the full employment of the postwar consensus. Through the 1960s and 1970s we can see signs of this form of organized resistance coming under threat, for example, in the escalation of the engineering industry dispute in 1972, caused by management’s attempt to control shop stewards. By the early 1980s this threat had become a full assault. Signs were evident earlier that employers were becoming more willing to challenge and attempt legal action to evict occupying workers, but in the early 1980s the legal framework for trade unions and employment relations in Britain was itself transformed, making workers’ direct action more difficult.
In a detailed study of the occupation of Caterpillar in Uddingston, Scotland, in 1987, perhaps the last of this wave of actions in Britain, Woolfson and Foster note that while the work-in at UCS had been dependent on strong organization by politically active shop stewards, the action at Caterpillar lacked these “organisational advantages” (1988). The motive for mobilizing the occupation was that the workers at Caterpillar saw no alternative: they literally had nothing to lose. The Caterpillar occupation, paradoxically, may represent not the tail end of the ’70s wave of occupations but a precursor of a new wave, sparking occupations at the wind turbine plant Vestas and the Ford component plants of Visteon in the UK (Gall 2010), or at Republic Windows and Doors in the United States, during the very different climate of 2008 (Lydersen 2009).

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