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Intergenerational Learning and Place-making in a Deindustrialized Locality: “Tracks of the Past” in Lanarkshire, Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

Ewan Gibbs*
Affiliation:
1Lecturer in Global Inequalities, University of Glasgow
Susan Henderson
Affiliation:
2Lecturer in Education, University of the West of Scotland
Victoria Bianchi
Affiliation:
3Lecturer in Drama & Performance, Queen Margaret University
*
Corresponding author: Ewan Gibbs, email: ewan.gibbs@glasgow.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper contributes to scholarship on the long experience of deindustrialization. It emphasizes contemporary place-making in navigating the much-changed socioeconomic landscapes that the closure of mills, mines, shipyards and factories have left behind. The ‘half-life of deindustrialization' suggests these experiences have been received through understandings of labour and community with origins in the industrial era. ‘Tracks of the Past' was a school-based education project themed around workers' occupation of Caterpillar's earth-moving machinery plant in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The occupation was a response to Caterpillar's shock closure announcement and the loss of 1,200 jobs. It lasted 103 days between January and April 1987 when closure was reluctantly conceded. A Caterpillar Workers Legacy Group (CWLG) commemorated the occupation's thirtieth anniversary. During 2018, academics collaborated with the CWLG to develop a curriculum for a local high school class. ‘Tracks' produced lessons where students engaged with archival sources and physical objects, interviewed members of the CWLG and conducted online research. The ‘learning journey' montages that the students produced combined conversations in 2018 with sources from three decades earlier, often reflecting on the occupation as a historical episode in a highly localised context. Others implicated the closure within an international pattern, linking Caterpillar’s divestment to the actions of multinationals in the contemporary global economy. In neither case did the invocation of the occupation lead to a straightforward translation of the occupation into contemporary workplace justice issues as the CWLG had hoped. However, these results did suggest a creative deployment of the past that rationalised the occupation with reference to contemporary deindustrialized contexts. These findings demonstrate the utility of the half-life through a lingering industrial past, but also demonstrate the need to conceptualise agents or custodians of labour history and challenge the linearity of passing time that an incrementally receding industrial era implicates.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2022

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References

Notes

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41. Ibid; Neil Hood and Stephen Young, Multinationals in Retreat: The Scottish Experience (Edinburgh, 1982), 2.

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43. Ewan Gibbs, “‘It's Not a lot of Boring Old Gits Sitting About Remembering the Good Old Days’: The Heritage and Legacy of the 1987 Caterpillar Factory Occupation in Uddingston, Scotland,” Labour History Review, forthcoming.

44. John Gillen, interview.

45. Parliamentary speeches: Richard Leonard and John Brannan, January 18, 2017, CWLGA.

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47. Mick Ward, interview with author one, UWS Hamilton Campus, July 5, 2017.

48. Cowie and Heathcott, “Introduction,” 4.

49. John Gillen, “Occupation and Legacy: Chronology” (2018).

50. Ibid.

51. Unite Focus Group, Unite offices, Glasgow, June 6, 2018.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

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55. Unite Focus Group.

56. Parental Questionnaire Analysis (2018).

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid

59. Ibid.

60. Clark and Gibbs, “Voices of Social Dislocation”; Bella Dicks, Heritage, Place and Community (Cardiff, 2000), 4–5; Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London, 2012), 242–49.

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62. Gibbs and Phillips, “Who Owns a Factory?,” 111.

63. Teacher focus group, a Lanarkshire school, August 20, 2018.

64. Teacher focus group; “Biscuit maker Tunnock's passes £60m sales milestone,” BBC News, December 2, 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50629253 (accessed May 12, 2020).

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66. Teacher focus group.

67. Debbie Take home Grid in Debbie and Thomas Folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

68. Enquiry Grid (Calum) in Jenni and Calum Folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

69. Debbie Take Home Grid in Debbie and Thomas Folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

70. Enquiry Grid (Jenni) in Jenni and Calum Folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

71. Observer 3, September 13, 2018.

72. Student focus group, a Lanarkshire school, September 27, 2018.

73. Bright, “‘The Lady’,” 142.

74. Student focus group.

75. Woolfson and Foster, Track Record, 254.

76. Observer 1, September 14, 2018.

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89. Learning Journey in Debbie and Thomas Folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

90. Student focus group.

91. Learning Journey in Debbie and Thomas folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

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94. Observer 1, September 27, 2018.

95. Learning Journey in Rachel, Claire and Jamie folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

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98. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, 6.

99. Linkon, Half-Life, 2; Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford, 2010), 331.

100. Observer 3, September 14, 2018.

101. Observer 1, September 20, 2018.

102. Learning Journey in Aria and Julie Folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).

103. Student focus group.

104. Andrew Perchard, “A Little Local Difficulty? Deindustrialization and Globalization in a Scottish Town,” in Steven High, Lachlan MacKinnnon, and Andrew Perchard, eds., The Deindustrialized World: Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places (Vancouver, 2017), 296.

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106. Contents in Rachel, Claire and Jamie folder, Children's Work Analysis (2018).