Jim Phillips

Deindustrialization and the moral economy of the Scottish coalfields, 1947 to 1991

The long-running deindustrialization in the Scottish coalfields, the consequence of political decisions, took place in three distinct periods analyzed here: “restructuring,” 1958–1967, when, in response to union activism, a large number of closures was offset by government and industry initiatives to provide or stimulate alternative employment; “stabilization,” 1968–1977, when closures were minimized as the broader industrial economy slowed; and then “accelerated contraction,” 1978–1987, within the larger program of economic restructuring engineered by Margaret Thatchers Conservative UK governments. Moral economy arguments shaped the debate about deindustrialization in the first two phases: closures were legitimate only where agreed to by the workforce, who would in turn receive guaranteed economic security. These factors did not apply in the final phase, when closures were enforced and redundant miners had limited employment alternatives.

Business and the limited reconstruction of industrial relations in the UK in the 1970s

Industrial relations were reconstructed in the UK in the 1970s, but only in a limited way. This article examines how business preserved ultimate managerial prerogative in the organisation of the firm and the workplace by constraining the process of reconstruction. The analysis contributes to understanding of business in the 1970s and varieties of capitalism literature on comparative political economy by suggesting that changes in industrial relations were accepted by business only where congruent with corporate strategy. Evidence comes from industrial relations surveys and the Bullock Inquiry on board-level worker participation.

The meanings of coal community in Britain since 1947

Abstract This article offers an original contribution to the literature on coal communities and the history of the coal industry in Britain by examining changes and contested interests within Britain’s coal territories since nationalisation in 1947. The analysis is organised around three distinct but over-lapping meanings of coal community: economic locality, ideological communality and occupational group. As economic localities mining communities became stronger in the 1960s, even as the coal industry itself was shrinking, but then less viable as all forms of industrial employment dwindled in the 1980s. In ideological terms coal communities were divided by gender as well as class, but became more cohesive with social change and greater opportunities for women. A network of increasingly solid localities contributed—despite the divisions of 1984–1985 and subsequent job losses—to the strengthening of a national occupational community, partly because deindustrialisation was a common working class disaster that transcended regional boundaries.

Book Review: Perspectives on risk and regulation: the FDA at 100

This collection of short essays is derived from a conference at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia in May 2006 to mark the centenary of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The editors, senior research fellow and research fellow respectively at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, bring together FDA officials, including nutritional scientists, and industry scientists, in what is styled as a collaborative enterprise between regulator and business. This is perhaps designed to emphasize the FDAs role in partnering rather than simply policing business activity. Some important industry figures are here: the global nutrition director of Heinz; the vice-president of regulatory affairs at Johnson and Johnson; the senior vice-president and chief medical officer for GlaxoSmithKline; and the volume closes with comments from Andrew C von Eschenbach, the current (and twentieth) FDA commissioner. These and five of the books other contributors concentrate essentially on current concerns in the regulation of food, food supplements, drugs and medical devices. Some interesting insights are offered, chiefly relating to the apparently accelerating nature of advances in scientific and medical knowledge, but generally there is a limited engagement with scientific and indeed social scientific debates, especially in relation to the key issues of risk and regulation which are flagged in the books title. Surprisingly too, perhaps, given the centenary that is being marked, there is relatively little historical insight. The editors provide a short introduction, subtitled ‘Historical and contemporary perspectives’, which glides over the former in a single paragraph (p. 4). Peter Barton Hutt, a Washington lawyer and former chief counsel for the FDA, then provides a discussion of ten ‘Turning points in FDA history’. This is useful, drawing attention to the very wide range of the organizations remit and responsibilities over the course of its first century, but in this slightly truncated “highlights package” form it does not really do justice to the FDAs highly contested origins and early decades. The 1906 Food and Drugs and Meat Inspection Acts provided improved consumer protection but offered a blanket to business also, legitimizing the methods of food and pharmaceutical producers. The meat packers, who were arguably the worst offenders against food consumers, and whose practices were vividly exposed in Upton Sinclairs socialist novel, The jungle (1906), were also excused from the burden of funding the inspection and regulation regime. This was borne instead, to the producers’ satisfaction, by the Federal government. This important tale also highlights the fact that global food security has deep historical roots. The jungle precipitated a crisis in the export market for US meat products, and this in large part accelerated the drive towards Federal regulation. Yet elsewhere in the volume the current director of the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, making otherwise sensible observations about the problems of food security in the contemporary globalized market, seeks to present the issue as very largely an unprecedented phenomenon, which clearly it is not. Difficult issues and problems, it should be emphasized, are not ignored in the book. There are references to the absence in the US of a comprehensive system of national health care, which is not unrelated to the activities of pharmaceutical companies, and the still contested nature of the FDA is alluded to, with the struggle to secure continued Federal funding leading the organization into the problematic practice of charging user fees for new drugs and medical devices. These lively and ongoing concerns are well presented in the book, which would—it bears repeating—have been considerably strengthened with more robust and extensive historical perspective.

The Great Alliance : Economic Recovery and the Problems of Power, 1945-1951

Labour in power, 1945-1950 on the waterfront unofficial dock strikes, July 1945 to February 1950 communist conspiracies? allegations and reality the alliance under strain, 1950-51 conclusion - the great alliance.