Research Catalog

Shop floor citizens : engineering democracy in 1940s Britain

Title: Shop floor citizens : engineering democracy in 1940s Britain / James Hinton.
Author: Hinton, James.
Publication: Aldershot, Hants, England ; Brookfield, Vt. : E. Elgar, [1994], ©1994.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	TA157 .H519 1994	Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 222 pages; 23 cm

Summary

Production, planning, participation! Around these three objectives an unlikely alliance of reformers came together during the 1940s to challenge long-established norms of industrial and political life in Britain. The institution of Joint Production Committees in British engineering factories during World War Two represented the most substantial experiment in worker participation ever undertaken in British industry.
Shop Floor Citizens explores the politics of this experiment and assesses its impact on factory life. James Hinton's richly researched and engagingly written study rescues from obscurity the efforts of communist militants, trade union leaders, maverick industrialists and innovative civil servants to lay the foundations for a 'developmental state': dynamic, democratic, rooted in a productionist culture of shop floor citizenship.
In relating the story of a neglected campaign for industrial democracy, this new book breaks new ground in the debate about where - and why - Britain's post-war settlement went wrong.

Subjects

Engineers > Great Britain > Societies, etc
Engineering > Political aspects > Great Britain
Engineering > Trade unions
Industrial relations > Great Britain > History > 20th century
Labor unions > Great Britain > History > 20th century
Great Britain

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-216) and index.

Contents

1. Planning, Participation and the Communists -- 2. The Production Debate, 1941-42 -- 3. Pressure from Below -- 4. Defusing the Crisis -- 5. Making Links -- 6. Frontiers of Control -- 7. Reconstruction and the Regional Boards -- 8. Plan for Engineering -- 9. Crisis, 1947 -- 10. Going Through the Motions -- 11. The Adventure Has Gone.

ISBN

185898081X :

LCCN

94013035

OCLC

ocm30624844

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries