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Author: Andy Clark

‘Not our jobs to sell’: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982

Over a 13-month period, the three most militant actions taken in opposition to factory closure in Scotland were conducted by women workforces. Andy Clark tells us what happened in this article...

Find out more about The Open University's History and Social Sciences qualification.

This article belongs to the Women and Workplace Struggles: Scotland 1900-2022 collection.

Silhouettes of people holding a variety of protest banners

 
Background

The public, political and cultural representations of working-class activism in opposition to industrial closure are dominated by the image of the militant male worker. Leaders like Jimmy Reid, Arthur Scargill and high-profile disputes by miners, shipyard workers, car workers, steel workers and others are synonymous with resistance to the process of deindustrialisation. Where women appear in academic or popular accounts, they are primarily support figures for men coming to terms with displacement from manufacturing work.

However, over a 13-month period in 1981 and 1982, the three most militant actions taken in opposition to factory closure in Scotland were conducted by women workforces. Faced with shutdown due to the decisions by their multinational employers, the workers at Lee Jeans (Greenock), Lovable Bra (Cumbernauld), and Plessey Capacitors (Bathgate) refused to accept that they were redundant.

With victory secured, Lee Jeans workers hold shop steward Helen Monaghan aloft in celebration, August 1981.

With victory secured, Lee Jeans workers hold shop steward Helen Monaghan aloft in celebration, August 1981.

Rather than attempt to bargain over improved severance packages, they embedded themselves in their workplaces to force their employers to reconsider. And remarkably, all three were – to varying degrees – successful. Following the occupations, all of the sites remained in operation due to the actions of the workers. These disputes remain incredibly relevant today, demonstrating how the mobilisation of ordinary workers can resist and prevent the unjust decisions of multinational corporations. The use of occupation in work settings has decreased dramatically since its height in the 1970s; however, the tactic has continued to achieve important victories for working-class and socialist campaigns in Scotland, such as the 2001 occupation of the Govanhill Baths, the 2011 student takeover of Hetherington House, and the 2017 work-in at the Bi-Fab yard in Fife. Understanding the occupations in Greenock, Cumbernauld and Bathgate can provide crucial lessons for worker and social movements today. 

Rescuing Women’s Factory Occupations from Obscurity

These occupations have been marginalised in our knowledge and understandings of the period, of experiences of deindustrialisation, and the gendering of class action. The story of deindustrialisation is told – in popular culture, political debate and academic research – as a story of redundant male workers. The women who led and participated in these occupations are not part of the Scottish – or British – narrative of factory closure and the harms caused by industrial rupture. And this is despite their public significance at the time; the occupations at Lee (February to August, 1981), Lovable (January to March, 1982) and Plessey (January to March 1982) dominated the printed and TV media, but have slipped into obscurity in the four decades since, only retold when the workers organise events to mark key milestones. 

Between 2013 and 2017, I undertook the first comparative analysis of these occupations. Through archive research and the creation of new oral history interviews, I have attempted to reconstruct and interpret the industrial actions that were launched by women across Scotland in 1981 and 1982. In doing so, I have developed the argument that these occupations collectively represent the most significant period of working-class resistance to manufacturing closure in twentieth-century Scotland. 

In the three pieces in this OpenLearn collection, I give a short overview of each occupation, placing them within their local socio-economic contexts, before outlining the actions that developed and integrating the memories of those involved. If you’d like to read more, please consult the materials below. I hope you enjoy learning about these incredible, remarkable, and almost forgotten actions by working-class women in Scotland during the first Margaret Thatcher government.

View the three articles here

  • The Lee Jeans Occupation, Greenock, 1981

    The Lee Jeans Occupation, Greenock, 1981

    In 1981, mostly female workers seized control of the Lee Jeans factory management planned to close. Andy Clark tells us what happened and the result of the occupation.

    Read now to access more details of The Lee Jeans Occupation, Greenock, 1981
  • The Plessey Factory Occupation, Bathgate, 1982

    The Plessey Factory Occupation, Bathgate, 1982

    How successful was the occupation of Plessey factory? Andy Clarke investigates in this article...

    Read now to access more details of The Plessey Factory Occupation, Bathgate, 1982
  • The Lovable Bra Occupation, Cumbernauld, 1982

    The Lovable Bra Occupation, Cumbernauld, 1982

    At the Lovable plant in Cumbernauld, a predominantly female workforce were also informed that the future of their factory was uncertain. Andy Clark looks at how they responded and the result of this...

    Read now to access more details of The Lovable Bra Occupation, Cumbernauld, 1982

References, Sources and Links


For more reading on these specific occupations: 

Clark, A. Fighting Deindustrialisation: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, forthcoming 2022. 

Clark A. 'There is nothing there for us and nothing for the future': Deindustrialization and workplace occupation, 1981-1982. Labour History Review 2021, 86(1), 37-61. 

Clark A. ‘Stealing Our Identity and Taking It over to Ireland’: Deindustrialization, Resistance, and Gender in Scotland. In: High, S., Perchard, A., and MacInnon, L, ed. The Deindustrialized World: Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017, pp.331-347. 

Clark A. ‘And the next thing the chairs barricaded the door’: The Lee Jeans factory occupation, trade unionism and gender in Scotland in the 1980s. Scottish Labour History 2013, 48, 116-134. 

Clark, P. ‘The 1981 Lee Jeans occupation: women showed how to win’, Socialist Worker, March 26, 2005:

https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/5964/The+1981+Lee+Jeans+occupation%3A+women+showed+how+to+win 

Lorentzen, N. ‘“You can’t fight for jobs and just sit there”: The Lee Jeans Sit-in’, pp.43-63 in

Levie, H. Gregory, D. and Lorentzen, N. Fighting Closures: Deindustrialisation and the Trade Unions, 1979-1983. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. 

Robertson, M. and Clark, A. ‘We Were the Ones Really Doing Something About It’: Gender and Mobilisation against Factory Closure’, Work, Employment and Society, 2019 33(2), 336-344. 

Findlay, P. ‘Resistance, Restructuring and Gender: The Plessey Occupation’, pp.70-96 in Dickson, T. and Judge, D. (eds). The Politics of Industrial Closure. London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1987. 

Miller, K. ‘Plessey Co Ltd. V. Wilson’ pp.115-116 in Industrial Law Journal, (11:1), 1982. 

For reading on occupations in British History broadly:

Clark A. (ed) ‘Workplace occupations in British labour history: Rise, fall, and historical legacies’. Labour History Review 2021, 86(1). (This special issue of Labour History Review focuses on the history of workplace occupations in Britain, with five articles) 

Coates, K. Work-ins, Sit-ins and Industrial Democracy (Nottingham: Russell Press Ltd., 1981. 

Dickson, T. and Judge, D. ‘The Politics of Closure’, pp. 165-186 in Dickson, T. and Judge, D. (eds). The Politics of Industrial Closure. London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1987. 

Foster, J. and Woolfson, C. The Politics of the UCS Work-In: Class Alliances and the Right to Work. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986. 

Gall, G. ‘Resisting Recession and Redundancy: Contemporary Worker Occupations in Britain’ pp.107-132 in WorkingUSA (13:1), 2010. 

Tuckman, A. ‘Workers’ Control and the Politics of Factory Occupation: Britain, 1970s’, pp.284-302 in Ness, I. and Azzelini, D. (eds). Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Councils from the Commune to the Present. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011. 

Women, work and trade unionism

Boston, S. Women Workers and the Trade Unions. London, Lawrence & Wishart, 2015. 

Baillie, M. ‘A New View of Dilution: Women Munitions Workers and Red Clydeside’ pp.14-31 in Scottish Labour History (39), 2004. 

Bain, P. ‘’Is you is or is you ain’t my baby’: Women’s Pay and the Clydeside Strikes of 1943’ pp.35-60 in Scottish Labour History (30), 1995. 

Beechey, V. ‘Women’s employment in contemporary Britain’ pp. 124-143 in Beechey, V. and Whitelegg, E. (eds) Women in Britain Today Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986. 

Cavendish, R. Women on the Line. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982 

Cobble, D.S. ‘“A Spontaneous Loss of Enthusiasm”: Workplace Feminism and the Transformation of Women’s Service Jobs in the 1970s’ pp.23-44 in International Labor and Working-Class History (56), 1999.

 Cohen, S. ‘Equal pay – or what? Economics, politics and the 1968 Ford sewing machinist’s strike’ pp. 51-68. in Labor History (53:1 ), 2012. 

Glucksmann, M. Women Assemble: Women Workers and the New Industries in Inter-war Britain. London: Routledge, 1990. 

Gordon, E. Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1850-1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. 

Lewenhak, S. Women and Trade Unions: An Outline History of Women in the British Trade Union Movement. London: Ernest Benn, 1977. 

McIvor, A. ‘Gender Apartheid? Women in Scottish Society', pp.188-209 in Devine, T. and Finlay, R. (eds). Scotland in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996.

Pollert, A. Girls, Wives, Factory Lives. London: Macmillan, 1981. 

Deindustrialisation in Scotland, Britain, and internationally

Bryer, R. Brignall, S. and Maunders, A. ‘The Origins of Plant Closings in UK Manufacturing Industry’ pp. 18-43 in Levie, H. Gregory, D. and Lorentzen, N. Fighting Closures: Deindustrialisation and the Trade Unions, 1979-1983. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. 

Clarke, J. ‘Closing Time: Deindustrialization and Nostalgia in Contemporary France’ pp.107-125 in History Workshop Journal (79:1), 2015. 

Cowie, J. and Heathcott, J. ‘The Meaning of Deindustrialization’, pp.1-15 in Cowie, J and Heathcott, J. (eds). Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. 

Emery, J. ‘Geographies of deindustrialization and the working‐class: Industrial ruination, legacies, and affect’. Geography Compass (12:2): 1-14, 2019. 

Gibbs, E. Coal Country. The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland. London: University of London Press, 2021. 

High, S. MacKinnon, L. and Perchard, A. ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-14 in High, S. MacKinnon, L. and Perchard, A. (eds). The Deindustrialized World Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017. 

High, S. Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America's Rust Belt, 1969-1984. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 

Hodson, P. ‘Titanic Struggle: Memory, Heritage and Shipyard Deindustrialization in Belfast’, pp. 224–249 in History Workshop Journal (87), 2019. 

Linkon, S.L. The Half-Life of Deindustrialization: Working-Class Writing about Economic Restructuring. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018. 

Perchard, A. ‘“Broken Men” and “Thatcher’s Children”: Memory and Legacy in Scotland’s Coalfields’ pp.78-98 in International Labour and Working Class History (84), 2013. 

Phillips, J. ‘Deindustrialization and the Moral Economy of the Scottish Coalfields, 1947 to 1991’ pp.99-115 in International Labour and Working Class History (84), 2013. 

Phillips, J., Wright, V. and Tomlinson, J. ‘Being a ‘Clydesider’ in the age of deindustrialisation: skilled male identity and economic restructuring in the West of Scotland since the 1960s’ pp.151-169 in Labor History (61:2), 2020, p.154. 

Strangleman, T., Rhodes, J. and Linkon, S. ‘Introduction to Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory’ pp.7-22 in International Labour and Working Class History (84), 2013. 

Tomlinson, J. ‘De-industrialization Not Decline: A New Meta-narrative for Post-war British History’ pp. 76–99 in Twentieth Century British History (27:1), 2016. 

Tomlinson, J. and Gibbs, E. ‘Planning the new industrial nation: Scotland, 1931 to 1979’, pp. 584–606 in Contemporary British History (30), 2016.


 

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