Charlie Lynch interviews Andy Clark about his book Fighting Deindustrialisation: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982
THE early 1980s were a period of widespread closures in industry and Scotland suffered the accelerated deindustrialisation of its economy. In 1981, three multinational companies decided they would end production and relocate elsewhere.
Lee Jeans, the US-owned firm which had a factory in Greenock announced its closure in February 1981; in October of the same year, Lovable, a US-owned lingerie company said it was closing its factory in Cumbernauld, and the Plessey Company, a British-owned multinational; decided to shut its Bathgate plant where it made capacitors – an electronic component that stores electrical energy in an electric field in December.
At each site, the predominantly female workforce resisted, launching factory occupations, barricading themselves inside along with stock and machinery.
They argued that the closures were motivated by corporate greed and that the decisions breached the moral economy of industrial communities. All were, to varying degrees, successful and production continued.
I spoke to historian Andy Clark about his book: Fighting Deindustrialisation: Scottish Women’s Factory Occupations, 1981-1982. First, I asked him to tell me about how his own life experience and circumstances have influenced the kind of history he studies.
He said: “Many historians are interested in knowing more about their communities and how the places where we live and work in came to be how they are.
“I was born and brought up in Greenock and have always been fascinated by the history of the town and the broader Clydeside area, from ancient times to the present, and particularly how the river has shaped these communities.”
Growing up in the 1990s, Clark saw the area changing and wanted to know more. When he was considering a career as a historian, he knew he wanted to focus on places such as Greenock, Newcastle, and Detroit.
“I wanted to know more about how these areas, and the people who live within them, had changed over the recent past,” he said. “Politically, I was motivated by an anger at what had been inflicted on them by the movement of global capital and political choices framed by greed rather than care.
“I wanted to analyse how working-class people have fought – and continue to fight – against the harms afflicted from above.”
Clark’s book tells of disconnect between popular representations, memory and stories of successful resistance to closure by female workers. “Broadly”, he explains, received history is a “story of male workers fighting against Thatcher and ultimately losing their industrial employment, ushering in the era of neoliberalism and industrial contraction.
“Rather, we see groups of women workers – with little to no trade union experience or a history of militancy – fighting back against the global movement of capital, and succeeding. This is a counter-narrative of deindustrialisation in Scotland which, while in no way invalidates the popular history, does illustrate the complexity of class struggle at the time.
"The dominant historical narrative of deindustrialisation is masculine, figures such Arthur Scargill and Jimmy Reid leading miners and shipbuilders against the government and being involved in clashes with the police.
“This is often assumed, and reinforced by TV and film telling the story of male workers, while statues commemorating industry are also masculine.
“There’s minimal space in this to consider women who worked in textile mills, clothing factories and light electronics, who also experienced the brutality of deindustrialisation and, in these three cases, fought a militant struggle in opposition.
“I tried in the book to recover these experiences, using oral history interviews to understand the motivations of the workers and how they now reflect on the importance of the action that they took. And the overarching theme that emerged was that the majority of the interviewees didn’t recognise the importance of what they did in the broader history of Scotland in the last 40 years.
“If society largely forgets these actions, and there aren’t memorials, TV shows, and reminders of their significance, even those involved slowly forget their own importance.
“My main argument in the book is that these three occupations – given their proximity, that they involved workers struggling against massive corporations, and that they were all successful – should be seen as one of the most important periods of Scotland’s recent history.”
So how can this precarious public memory be addressed, and what can these women’s struggles in the early 1980s teach us today?
Clark said: “I’m clearly biased, as I spent 10 years researching and writing the book but these occupations should be known about, celebrated, and taught on.
“Some attempts have been made, and featured heavily in a Kirsty Wark-fronted documentary in 2021. But there’s so much more that could and should be done.
“There should be memorials and monuments, there should be a docudrama that focuses only on these occupations and tells the stories of the workers, and they should be part of every university course on modern Scottish working-class history.
“Taken together, these steps can ensure the memory of these events are preserved and celebrated. I would welcome anyone with expertise in these fields reaching out to me to discuss how we can do this.”
Since his book was published, Clark has continued to investigate deindustrialisation. “I’ve become increasingly interested in how the deindustrialisation of the later 20th century impacts contemporary society, and the ways in which the long-term legacies continue to shape lived experience,” he tells me.
“And I’ve done work across Britain attempting to understand how places affected are shaped by their recent pasts, particularly those ‘forgotten communities’ that have been left behind in the name of progress and then blamed for the ills of addiction, poverty, unemployment, and crime.
“I’m currently writing a number of articles that aim to demonstrate the link between the violence of industrial closure, political choices and the resulting label of ‘multiple deprivation.’
“They centre on the narratives, memories, and experiences of those who live in these areas rather than looking from the outside and assigning labels and assumptions.”
