ILPC 2027

Labour History and Labour Process: Developing a Critical Political Economy of Past and Present

The ILPC’s 2017 conference’s focus on reconnecting political economy with labour process theory presents an opportunity to discuss developing approaches to labour history which integrate an analysis of industrial relations with political economy contingencies. This symposium will consist of dialogue between researchers using different approaches to develop innovative perspectives on broadly defined historical labour and working class experiences. It emphasises discrete themes and theoretical approaches to labour history with a strong interdisciplinary influence but a retained emphasis upon the centrality of changing methods of production. These include the political economy of health and the body, geographical analysis based on networks, migration and diaspora, sociological discussion on generation formation and elements of economics and political science centred on resource mobilisation and claims to legitimacy. At the heart of these discussions are transitions between regimes of political economy, and associated shifts in labour processes. The movement from a managed social democratic economy towards an increasingly liberalised market environment over the late twentieth century and the experience of deindustrialisation are at the heart of this symposium. The event will take the form of a roundtable with innovative perspectives brought by Ph.D students and early career scholars in dialogue with an established leading name in the field.

Paul Brook is an Associate Professor in Sociology of Work and Employment. His recent research centres on customs, class and resistance at work, structured through the enduring relevance of E.P. Thompson’s moral economy. Within the sociology of work there has been a revival of interest in moral economy approaches to the study of work, employment and society, principally based on the pioneering work of E.P. Thompson, Karl Polanyi and more recently, Andrew Sayer. While contemporary moral economists do not reject class as a continuing social category, there is a tendency to view resistance to domination, injustice and inequality in work, employment and society as principally acts of moral resistance, viewed through the lens of moral philosophy (see Sayer, 2005). By contrast, Thompson’s moral economy is built on concrete, material conditions of class and the resulting ideological struggle over notions of fairness and justice in work, employment and society. Paul’s contribution will centres on how the moral economy of the past, continues to speak in its entirety to the present. Not least through the enduring and developing relevance of Gramsci’s theory of consciousness and language through studies of workplace resistance as a complex of emotion, thought, speech and action in the workplace.    

Ewan Gibbs is an Early Career Lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland. His contributions will centre on his research on Scottish coalfield deindustrialisation and recent research on the experience of the Scottish mining diaspora in the Nottinghamshire coalfield. Changes in mining technologies and production cost pressures were at the heart of this process. Ewan will bring forward the centrality of combining a generational approach to labour history with an understanding that emphasises how experiences of major social conflicts and junctures of transition in political economy shape cohorts, and historical narratives.

Diarmaid Kelliher is currently completing a PhD at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on translocal networks of solidarity between London and the British coalfields in the 1970s and 1980s. Diarmaid will highlight the utility of a conversation between labour geography and labour history. He will emphasise the role of uneven geographical development in shaping labour movement responses to the shifting political economy of this crucial period. In particular, he will argue that deindustrialisation and high unemployment in the 1980s undercut the possibilities for repeating the industrial solidarity of the early 1970s, encouraging greater emphasis on activism outside of the workplace. 

Andy Clark is a final year ESRC-funded PhD student at the Scottish Oral History Centre, University of Strathclyde. His research focuses on the experience of female manufacturing workers in Scotland c. 1970 – 1985, with a particular focus on the factory occupations launched by Scottish women in resistance to capital mobility, 1981- 1982. Andy will seek to expand the discussions on the significance of latent forms of collectivism that emerge through the labour process, and the ways in which accelerated deindustrialisation saw these transposed to militant collective action. In particular, he places his own discussion within narratives of work, community and gender, seeking a greater analysis of the importance of intersectionality at the point of mobilisation.

Sophie Rowland is a second year PhD Student at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on understanding the deindustrial body through the legacies of occupational injuries and disease within the former Kent Coalfields. Sophie will highlight the role of memorialisation and heritage culture in the legacy of labour process. She will draw on narratives of both disabled and deindustrial identity to explore the competing interpretation of labour history. ​

Ruth Turner is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow.  Her contributions will come from her research on the Singer sewing machine factory in Clydebank, Scotland, and the ways in which the factory has been remembered since its closure and demolition.  Ruth will discuss the importance of the language of place, memoryscapes and local public history in preserving memories of industry and the labour process, and in shaping understandings of the impact of deindustrialization upon local communities and landscapes.