Girls, Wives, Factory Lives

Girls, Wives, Factory

Lives

Anna Pollert

M
© Anna PolIert 1981

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.

First published 1981 by

THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 978-0-333-29178-8 ISBN 978-1-349-16609-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16609-1

Typeset by
CAMBRIAN TYPESETTERS
Famborough, Hants

Reproduced from copy supplied

by Billing and Sons Limited
Guildford, London, Oxford, Worcester

The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to

the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all
ordinary human life, it would be like hearing
the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat,
and we should die of that roar which lies on
the other side of silence.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Contents

Preface by Theo Nichols x

Acknowledgements Xll

List of Churchmans' Employees Interviewed or

Referred to in the Book Xlll

List of Tables, F£gures and Documents xv

Abbreviations used in the Book XVll

Introduction 1
PART I CAPITAL AND LABOUR
1. The Factory in its setting 27
The factory 27
The work-force 32
2. Going to the Wall in a Giant Corporation 36
Expansion and diversification 36
Concentration and rationalisation 38

3. The Employers' Strategy 43

'Looking after people' 43
Productivity deals - the background 44

4. The Productivity Scheme 52

The proficiency pay scheme 52
Control at Churchmans 60
Grading or degrading? 62
Vlll Contents

PARTII WOMEN WORKERS: IDEOLOGY AND

EXPERIENCE
5. Workers: So What If They're Women? 73
Women's wage labour 73
Women in a man's world 78
Men's images, female self-images 79
Working women's 'common sense' 87

6. Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 91

Social preparation 91
Working-class girls and unskilled work 94
Marriage and the 'temporary stay' 100

7. Married Women and the Family Burden 109

The 'temporary stay' continues 109
The housewife in the factory 111
'Time off' - health and the double burden 117
Survivors: the grateful, the stoical and the bitter 120

PART III STRUGGLE AT WORK

8. Shop-floor Culture: Resistance and Incorporation 129
Rules 129
Bringing in their own world 131
The mass media and the outside world 136
Discipline and sexual politics 139
Solidarity and cliques 145
Mature women and resistance 151
Holiday camp or prison? 155

9. 'Dear Brothers .. .': Organisation and Trade

Unionism 159
Union membership and representation 159
The union: what it does and what it's for 162
Rank-and-file involvement - and problems at home 170
Struggle at work and cold water from the union 174
Fear and the problem of solidarity 180
The factory council 185
The redundancies 195
 Contents IX

10. A One-day Strike: Demoralisation and Making Sense

of the World 204
Events and non.events 204
The strike 206
And back to normal 210
'Sold down the river' 214

11. Death of a Factory: Where Now? 227

The closure 227
Women workers: useful and disposable 229
Women workers' experience and consciousness 233
Conclusions 23 7

Bibliography 244
Preface
Many books have been published in the last few years present-
ing an alternative socialist viewpoint to the prevailing
managerial assumptions of most writing about work and
industrial relations. One of the novel features of these recent
books has been an attempt to allow workers to speak for
themselves in their own words. But the voices have been male
voices, not one of these books have provided any substantial
insight into the ways in which the experiences of women
workers are similar and the ways in which they are different. 1
Anna Pollert's book goes a considerable way to filling the
long-standing need for studies that deal with factory workers
who are women: with women who are not at home, who are
not in clericaljobs, and who are not professional and adminis-
trative employees, but who instead work on the shop floor.
Anna Pollert writes as a socialist but her commitment does
not overspill into the substitution of stereotypes of the Left
('militant heroines', 'downtrodden victims') for those of the
Right (the 'pin-money' syndrome, and the now almost
mandatory anti-strike media image of 'angry wives', exhorting
'their men' back to work). This temptation she is shielded
from, amongst other things, by her close relation to her
subject-matter - real-life people in real-life situations.
She shows how the ideology according to which each
individual is responsible for his/her fate has made its mark on
some of these women: 'I'm not satisfied, but I don't do
anything about it, do I? I'm stupid.' Such self-imposed and
self-perpetuated uncertainty and impotence is not limited to
women. 2 But there are many facets of the consciousness of
women factory workers which are distinctive. One of the
earliest writers of the Women's Liberation Movement charac-
terised contemporary female oppression as 'The Problem that
Has No Name'.3 In this book we see the objective conditions
and relationships, both at home and at work, which foster
this. We see the extra sense of exclusion from public life -
even the problem of coming out from being only a private
person - because, really, 'a woman's place is (still) at home'.
And running through almost everything is the actual domina-
tion of women by men. Thus:
VERA: My husband's branch secretary of his union - the
AUEW.
 Preface Xl

ANNA: Does he get you down to your own union meetings?

VERA: Oh no, he wouldn't do that. See - he's got a lot of
work - a hell of a lot, I don't know how he keeps up. See,
he needs me at home. [po 173]
In the factory studied there are male managers, with male
directors above them and usually male foremen below. As to
trade unionism, there are male union officials and below
them often male shop stewards. But outside of all this, and
making its effect felt within the factory, within work relations,
is the husband and family back home. On a partial view the
situation of the wife in her factory is identical to that of her
husband in his. Yet, looked at in its totality, their situation
- and their very identities - differ.
Men, men . . . It appears that whatever problems these
women face is thrust upon them, even represented for them
by men. But these working-class women are subject to a
'double burden': male oppression and capitalist exploitation.
It is for this reason that the book cannot treat them 'just as'
women, nor 'just as' workers. They are women factory workers
whose lives have to be situated within the structure and
dynamics of the particular capitalist corporation for which
they work and the wider system of which it is a part - a wider
system that embraces, among other things, their family and
gender status as women.
Girls, Wives, Factory Lives is more than a straight industrial-
sociological report on 'shop-floor behaviour'. Its content
and style distinguish it also from the highly general and some-
times rather abstract writings of some contemporary Marxists
and feminists. It is an important book which should be read
by anyone interested in how class and gender affect people's
lives and experiences in a modern capitalist society.

April 1981 Theo Nichols

Notes to the Preface

1. These include Beynon (1973) Working for Ford, Nichols and
Annstrong (1976), Workers Divided, and Nichols and Beynon (1977)
Living with Capitalism.
2. This point is discussed further in relation to male workers in Nichols
and Beynon (1977) ch. 12.
3. Friedan (1963) The Feminine Mystique, p. 13.
Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the co-operation of Churchmans'

management for allowing me on to the factory floor, and of
Imperial Tobacco Ltd for providing some background infor-
mation, though sometimes both got in the way of my progress.
Thanks also to the Tobacco Workers' Union and the Transport
and General Workers' Union for some help.
Special thanks to: Chris Smith for constant critical support,
encouragement and stimulus; Theo Nichols for reading, criti-
cising and commentary on my progress,] oan Smith for helping
to set me on the right tracks;] ackie West, Sarah Mottershead,
Lin James, Anna Paczuska and numerous others who have
offered their help and support; Doris Macey, who decyphered,
corrected and speedily typed the manuscript; and Steven
Kennedy, my editor at Macmillan.
My greatest debt is to the women workers at Churchmans
who put up with me, gave me their time and talked to me.
For reasons of anonymity, their names have been changed in
the text, as have the names of all employees and management.
But their words, and the people behind them, are real.

Anna Pollert
List of Churchmans' Employees
In terviewed or Referred to in the
Book

Dave Brown Foreman, former shop steward

Sheila Brown Supervisor
John Clark Shop steward
Mike Clifton Shop steward
Mr Dowling Manager
Geoff Morgan Training officer
Mr Nicholson Manager
Stan Smith Chargehand
Steven White Chargehand

Women manual employees

Aileen 36 (single) Jenny 17 (single)
Anita 19 (single) June 32 (married)
Ann 17 (single) Kate 45 (married)
Brenda 26 (married) Kathy 17 (single)
Caroline 20 (single) Linda 18 (single)
Cherry 16 (single) Lorraine 18 (single)
Chris 16 (single) Mary 24 (married)
Edy 40 (married) Pam 28 (married)
Elma 59 (married) Pat 24 (married)
Emy 42 (married) Patti 21 (single)
Gale 18 (single) Pearl 40 (married)
Ida 45 (married) Penny 16 (single)
Ivy 45 (married) Raquel 25 (single)
Jackie 17 (single) Rene 24 (single)
XIV List of Churchmans' Employees

Sandra 22 (single) Val 17 (single)

Stella 44 (married) Vera 42 (married)
Sue 19 (single) Vi 58 (single)

Previous employees mentioned in discussion

Lucy Haskins
Elsie Smith
List of Tables, Figures and
Documents

Tables
1.1 Numbers employed at Churchmans, 1971 29
1.2 Women factory workers by department and sample 29
1.3 Length of employment of female (weekly-paid)
factory employees, 1971 34
4.1 Estimated share of supplementary payments in
earnings for a standard week, October 1959 53
4.2 The proficiency pay scheme (PPS) of 1965 56
4.3 Imperial Tobacco Ltd: Comparison of women's
average weekly earnings with those of men, 1973 63
and 1978
4.4 Women's earnings as percentage of men's in the
UK, 1971 and 1976 64
4.5 Sample jobs and numbers of weekly-paid men and
women (manual workers) in each job group,
ITL 1974-9 - job assessment scheme (1979) 66
4.6 Samplejobanalysis,1972 67
9.1 Shop-steward representation at Churchmans by
departments covered 162
9.2 Departmental distribution of worker representatives
on the factory council, and distribution by sex 190
10.1 Diary of two disputes: Imperial Tobacco one-day
strike, and the dockers' strikes of 1972 218-19

Figure
1.1 Churchmans: main departments, production flow
and employees, July 1971 33
xvi List of Tables, Figures and Documents

Documents
9.1 Minutes of a factory council meeting,
Spring 1972 192-3
9.2 ) Leaflets distributed by socialist women's 197
9.3 ) group to Churchmans' women 198
9.4 Leaflet distributed by socialist women's group
to Wills' workers 200
Abbreviations used in the Book

BAT British--American Tobacco

BUR Beating-up room - name given to machine-

packeting department for loose tobacco

CMOS Cigarette Machine Operators' Society - the main

union for mechanics in the tobacco industry

EEC European Economic Community - which Britain

joined in 1975

EGM Extraordinary General Meeting

IGL Imperial Group Ltd - the parent company of

which the Tobacco Division is one part

ITL Imperial Tobacco Ltd - the Tobacco Division

ofIGL

MDW Measured day work - the new payment system

implemented together with job evaluation and
intended to stabilise labour costs

NIRC National Industrial Relations Court - set up in

1970 as part of the Conservative government's
Industrial Relations Act

NUT National Union of Teachers

XVlll Abbreviations used in the Book

PBR Payment by results - usually referring to

individual incentive pay

PPS Proficiency Pay Scheme - the Imperial Tobacco

Ltd productivity and incentive scheme introduced
in the mid-1960s

TGWU The Transport and General Workers' Union - the

main organiser of production workers at Church-
mans

TUC Trades Union Congress - the central congress of

the British trade-union movement to which most
British unions are affiliated

TWU Tobacco Workers' Union - the main organiser for

production workers in the tobacco industry
In trod uc tion

On 8 March 1979, International Women's Day, fifteen

thousand women gathered outside Tehran University in Iran.
It was the largest feminist demonstration to occur anywhere
in the world. They were protesting against a decre~ made by
the country's Islamic leader, Ayatollah Khomeini: women
could go out to work, but they had to wear the veil. They
could sell their labour power, so long as they hid their faces. 1
This book is about the fact that, under capitalism, most
women are both exploited and oppressed. It is about the fact
that, like all workers, they create the wealth of society, yet
receive only a fraction back in wages. 2 It is about the fact
that, as women, they are pushed down, discriminated against
and unfree, just as are blacks, immigrants and other oppressed
groups.
For the Iranian women it was the starkness of the contrast
between their contemporary position as wage workers in the
labour market and their archaic role as submissive creatures
of the shadows which sparked off their anger. But in
countries such as Britain and America women do not wear
the veil; their oppression is much more subtle. Betty Friedan
described it as 'The Problem that Has No Name':

It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a

yearning that women suffered in the middle of the
twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban
wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds,
shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate
peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured
2 Introduction

Club Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at

night, she was afraid to ask even herself the silent question:
'Is this all?'3
How many women who would not dream of describing them-
selves as oppressed still silently ask this question? To describe
the many ways women are made inferior, squashed, used and
manipulated would take us outside the scope of this book.
Here we can only briefly look at the roots of women's
oppression. There are a number of explanations of how it all
started which fall roughly into two groups. First, there is the
feminist position which argues that men oppress women
because the basic division in society is along the lines of sex.
The dominant social system, it is argued, is 'patriarchy'.
Men and women belong to distinct social groups, even, some
argue, to different classes.
Then there is the Marxist position. Class, based on the
ownership or non-ownership of the means of production,
and not sex, is the basic social antagonism. Woman's inferior
position springs from the manner in which reproduction -
birth and child-rearing - are organised in class society. It is
neither inevitable, nor biologically determined, nor a product
of 'patriarchy'.
Women's oppression is seen as arising from their gradual
exclusion from social production and public life, a process
during which reproduction became hemmed into the narrow
isolated sphere of the private family. Engels wrote of an
earlier time:
The old communistic household . . . was just as much a
public, socially necessary industry as the providing of food
by the men ... With the patriarchal family, the monoga-
mous individual family . . . the administration of the
household lost its public character. It was no longer the
concern of society. It became a private service. The wife
became the first domestic servant, pushed out of partici-
pation in social production. 4
Of course, this is only one part of a total theory of history,
and the precise mechanisms of its development are controver-
sial, particularly since much contemporary anthropology and
 Introduction 3

archeology has superseded what was available in Marx and

Engels's day. 5 But this does not alter the crux of the
analysis: that the roots of women's oppression lie in their
segregation and isolation as mothers outside the social
relations Of production. Today this is expressed in their
sexual oppression and their economic dependence in marriage
- which is reinforced both ideologically and by the state.
This view of oppression remains a central tenet of my
book. Yet it is not enough. Women's social experience cannot
be defined solely in terms of the family. The fact is that the
majority of women also go out to do paid labour, which
takes us back to the world of wage labour and exploitation.
But most feminists and many Marxists have been content to
regard these as two distinct problems - the first to be left to
'feminists', the second to be tackled by 'socialists'. Even the
recent re-examination by Marxists of women's position in the
social mode of production has become riveted to the family
and housework in the 'domestic labour' debate. 6
The deficiency in analysis can be traced back to the lack
of reference to class in discussions about women and the
family. Once we include class we include working-class
experience, and for women this means both the working-
class family and the lived experience of working-class jobs.
And the irony, as Engels saw, was that while capitalz'sm
revolutionised women's position by pushing them into work,
it also intensified their double burden:

Only modern large-scale industry again threw open to her

- and only to the proletarian woman at that - the avenue
to social production, but in such a way that when she
fulfils her duties in the private service of her family, she
remains excluded from public production and cannot earn
anything, and when she wishes to take part in public indus-
try and earn her living independently, she is not in a
position to fulfil her family duties. 7

Oppression, then, is not something that goes on within the

four walls of the home to be left behind when the front door
slams and taken over by exploitation at work. It follows
women to work, not only by making them 'second-class
4 Introduction

citizens' doing 'women's work' but also in their heads, in the

way they see themselves and experience work. At the same
time, the fact of being in the world of wage labour, of being
in a collective situation, and of having to confront exploita-
tion - whether in pay, speed-ups or over tea-breaks - alters
the experience of oppression. Women who go out to work do
not feel the same as women confined to the home. So while
the experience of female oppression shapes their exploitation,
their exploitation alters their oppression. The two together
combine into an unstable whole: both the 'double burden'
and a potentially explosive challenge - as the Iranian women
flashed a reminder to the world.

The importance of incorporating the experience of selling

labour power into the analysis of women's oppression today
is most eloquently expressed by the dry statistics. Between
1951 and 1971 Britain's working population increased by
2.5 million. Of this increase, 2.2 million were women. 8 In
1961 they formed 33 per cent of the labour force; in 1980
they formed over 40 per cent. The 1971 Census showed that
although less than half of women of working age were in
paid employment, 87 per cent of them had worked some
time in their lives. Results from the 1971 General Household
Survey showed that, even among those aged between 25 and
44 who were not at the time economically active only 43 per
cent had never worked, while of those aged 65 and over only
17.2 per cent had never worked. 9 In other words, with
interruptions, most women go out to work for a large part
of their lives.
But besides the absolute and relative increase in the
numbers of women in employment, what is most striking is
the increase in married women workers. In 1971,62 per cent
of all female employees were married, and the proportion is
rising. Concomitantly, of course, the proportion of married
women who go out to work has also risen: from 10 per cent
in 1931, to 22 per cent in 1951 and over 42 per cent in 1971.
The closeness of the relationship between family commit-
ments and wage work for women is reflected by the marked
differences in their work patterns according to their family
responsibilities and stage in life.
 Introduction 5

The 1971 Census showed that of those married women

who worked the more children they had, the more likely
they were to work part-time. In 1975, 3 million, or 38 per
cent of women who worked, did so on a part-time basis (the
corresponding figure for men was 5 per cent). Two out of
every three working married women with two or more
children worked part-time. 10 The fewer the number of depen-
dent children, the more likely a woman was to work longer
hours. In 1971, 24.4 per cent of working mothers with no
dependent children, but only 11.4 per cent of those with two
dependent children, worked over thirty hours _a week. The age
of children is also a vital influence: only 18.8 per cent of
those with under fives, but 51 per cent of those with 11-15-
year-olds had jobs in that same year. The picture that
emerges of the 'typical' woman worker today is of a married,
middle-aged woman, who has returned to work after her
children have grown Up.ll
The facts about women's participation in the labour force
are now well documented. What remains to be done is to
turn this into lived experience with an understanding of the
interplay between working women's oppression and exploita-
tion. This book sets out to do just this.
It is about factory life, about women doing unskilled,
manual work in contemporary Britain. Throughout, two
themes are explored: the common areas of wage labour for
men and women, and the way being a woman alters this.
First, there are forces which affect all workers selling their
'generalised' (unskilled) labour power in modern capitalism.
How are their lives affected by big business and a corporate
economy? How does the employers' strategy in a time of
economic crisis affect them? Second, all these questions must
be asked again, but with additions, now talking to women.
Does it make any difference being a woman worker? Is work
seen or felt differently from a man? How does marriage and
the family come into work? What is the atmosphere of a
'women's factory'? Do women deal with supervision,
discipline and control at work in the same way as men? How
does women's participation in trade unions differ from
men's? What are the economic prospects of women in a time
of rising unemployment? What, in short, is distinctive about
6 Introduction

wage labour for a woman, because of her socialisation as a

woman and her oppression as a woman?

The study is based on informal interviews and observation on

the shop-floor of a Bristol tobacco factory during 1972 and
subsequent contact. It is a glimpse into the everyday working
lives of the young girls and older women who worked there:
about how they got on with their jobs, their bosses and each
other - and in a background sense, their boyfriends, their
husbands and their families - and how all these strands wove
together into their experience and consciousness. 12
I myself was not employed there, and made no secret of
the fact that I was a researcher. In this sense my method was
not strictly one of 'participant observation'.
Why did I not get a job in the factory? The reason is
simple: I had already approached both the union and
management, and the latter would not entertain the idea. I
was permitted on to factory premises, with the strict proviso
that this should not interfere with production. This suited
me quite well. First, I did not have much chance of learning
how to do the work (weighing, for example) in a short period
of time, and become adroit enough to talk, observe or think
about anything except keeping up. The women's work in the
factory - while termed 'semi-skilled' - thoroughly intimi-
dated me. Second, had I got a job, the advantages of
experiencing for myself what it felt like, and possibly
becoming very close to a small work-group around me, would
have been heavily outweighed by the disadvantages of
restricted movement, abiding by the rules preventing entry
into other departments (without permission), and losing the
privileges of the outsider, of speaking to other employees in
the factory, including chargehands, supervisors and managers.
Third, the proviso of not interrupting production meant I
was not offered an interviewing room. I had to talk to
workers as they worked; whether I liked it or not, I had my
nose in the shop-floor, got to know informal groups as well
as individuals, and witnessed the subtleties of factory
relations within the inexorable pace of work.
There were difficulties. The initial interviews with the
trade-union official at Transport House and with the factory
 Introduction 7

management were gruelling, largely because 1 was a woman

trying to convince men (and the woman personnel officer)
that 1 was interested in women factory workers. Fortunately,
sociologists are regarded as cranks anyway, so they indulged
my femaleness and oddness without grilling me too deeply
about my motives, my politics or feminism. But this induction
was nothing to the terror of walking on to the shop-floor.
Although partly mitigated by the fact that 1 was a woman
among women, nothing could alter the artificiality of the
situation: that 1 was middle class, had a middle-class accent
and was not there to earn money. My position was the more
awkward because management had simply told their frontline
spokesmen - the supervisors - to instruct the women that
'someone was coming in to talk to them' and to co-operate.
1 had no trade-union introduction. A letter 1 had duplicated,
explaining that 1 wanted to write a book on what it was like
to be a woman factory worker, and which 1 specifically asked
both the union officer and management to pass on to the
girls via the stewards, never reached them. This was the best
1 could do, not having managed to meet the stewards before-
hand. And even this failed: a significant beginning to my
research which told a lot about the level of union organisa-
tion and the way the women and younger girls were regarded.
To begin with I was naturally scrutinised with a mixture of
hostility, suspicion and curiosity. My manner was necessarily
apologetic and explanatory, and I answered more questions
than I asked. As my motives became clearer - that I really
felt most people who had not worked in a factory had no
idea of what it was like, and that this was what 1 wanted to
communicate, suspicions softened to incredulity, some
amusement and some sympathy. Many still could not see
what 1 was on about, but saW little harm in it; but several
older women were positively encouraging - 'Go on, my love,
write your book', and 'I think it's a good thing: people
ought to know how people live. Don't just think about
yourself.' More than anything, however, the women were
shy and self-effacing; they simply could not see what they
had to offer.
Being a woman researcher was vitally important to my
study. Not only did it affect my relationships with women
8 Introduction

but it also coloured my contact with men. Class and gender

were both significant. here; what men - managers, super-
visors, foremen and shop stewards - reported to me about
the factory, and the women workers, was an interaction
between my questions and their definitions of me as middle
class, educated, apparently endowed with the rather threaten-
ing X-ray eyes of the 'professional' social scientist, but at the
same time an academic ignoramus about the 'real world'.
Such cocktails of images undoubtedly went through the
women's heads as well; this is the 'interactionist' assumption
that any outside observer must expect. But with the men it
was important that they could not assume automatic
sympathy or unspoken understandings from a female
interrogator in a way they might expect from a man. The
fact that I was a woman and my approach feminist, in that I
closely questioned and challenged taken-for-granted and
throw-away remarks, often forced men to pull out justifica-
tions and defences which they were unused to examining.
Their responses would be a subject in itself; but my main
preoccupation was not with men or masculine identity for
themselves but only in the ways they were woven into the
women's experience.
With the women my being female was one factor in slowly
breaking down barriers. More than this, however, was the
realisation that while I was different and was not working in
the factory, I did not set myself up just as a reporter but
tried to be open with my own opinions. In this sense my
study could be put in the category of 'interventionist
research'Y It was (I hope) less patronising than the attitude
which comprises the fascination of seeing 'how the masses
think'; I genuinely wanted to argue with and challenge
attitudes as well as to learn. We discussed not only the
concrete work situation, attitudes to employment, home
life, but also the company, the economy and the unions - in
short, 'politics' both in the here and now and in the outside
world.
Several times I was hauled over the coals by management
for apparently asking the 'wrong' questions, not obviously
relevant to research on 'women workers'. (How they found
out about this I never knew.) These were about un employ-
 Introductz"on 9

ment, whether the women felt they had a right to their jobs,
and, more specifically, what was being organised about
threatened redundancies at the factory. Did management
consider it out of keeping for women to trouble themselves
about class, about industrial action and solidarity among
workers, about the government and who runs the country,
about what was 'right' and what was 'wrong', and what
people could or should do about it? Often the stream of
conversation flowed with the women's interests, not my own
questions. My aim was not just to learn what they thought
and felt, but also to discover how they argued with an
outsider - and how complex their ideas were. My concern
was not to freeze for posterity some photographic represen-
tation of 'consciousness', nor could I hope to get a complete
picture of people's lives or to pro fer total explanations.
Rather, it was the conflicts and loose-ends in consciousness,
and how these changed, that I wanted to understand and
portray.
As well as this, I wanted to gain insight into the social
relations of the factory, both between the women, and
between the women and the men, including male workers,
foremen and management. In this I wanted to discover
whether a system of male domination operated - and if it
did, how it collided with women's consciousness and collec-
tive spirit. In other words, how was sexual oppression
reproduced and tied to exploitation in the work-place, and,
also, how was it challenged?
Inasmuch as a major problem of the study was the
relationship between inside and outside work experience, my
direct involvement with home, community and social life
was negligible. This was partly a matter of social decency. It
was simply not on to suggest we meet for a drink in a pub,
the normal 'neutral' meeting-place for men. And I did not
have the gall to invite myself into people's houses for tea,
or tag along like a chaperone to dances down in the Locarno
or Heart Beat Club. But besides the restrictions of female
social contexts, and the artificiality of intruding on them, I
did not think that much would have been gained for my
analysis in this way. What I learned about home life and
social life was what filtered through factory experience, and
10 Introduction

while this reduced the picture, the filter was important. What
was relevant was not the domestic background on its own
and for itself but how it related to work and became a
distinctive part of women workers' consciousness. This
should become apparent as the book unfolds. At this stage all
that I will say is that most women lived in three areas of
south Bristol, some distance from the factory, which was
centrally situated. These included Bedminster, a traditional
Victorian red-brick terraced area, Knowle West, a pre-war
local authority development, and Hartcliffe and Withywood,
two large 1950s council estates. Compared with the shops,
pubs and urban facilities of the first, the latter, with all their
fresh air, were typically ill-served dormitory areas, with few
communal or entertainment facilities. Life was anonymous,
families isolated. For any major shopping, for cinemas and
entertainment, it was necessary to take a long journey into
town.
Social life varied with age and, of course, family respon-
sibilities. Most of the younger girls still lived with their
parents, and while some led quiet, sheltered lives, staying in
most evenings, others were more outward-bound. They
visited each other's houses and the local youth club during
the week, and at weekends went into town, mainly to the
Bristol Entertainment Centre, a large complex of dance halls,
discos, a cinema and an ice rink - often in all-female groups.
Once girls were 'courting' the female group was largely
relinquished in favour of the couple, though for a time they
coexisted, half the evening spent with one's mates, the other
half with one's boyfriend. But the choice of what to do was
again the same: the local pub (if going out at all), or the
Centre. Not surprisingly, life for older women was very
homebound; for those with family responsibilities there was
little time for 'social life', as I shall describe later. For older
single women it was lonely. Life was not uncomfortable so
much as routine and dull. For the homebound housewife it
was typically isolated, oppressive and. cut-off. For the woman
worker there was the 'escape' to work. But that meant the
'double burden'.

The factory and parent company will be introduced more

 Introduction 11

fully in what follows. Here, however, it is appropriate to

sketch in the climate of the period of research and a brief
local background. It was during the early 1970s that it
became increasingly clear that the long wave of post-war
expansion (or rather, 'stop-go') was over. Unemployment
reached the million mark, profit margins were squeezed,
living standards were eroded by inflation. A confrontationist
Conservative government, set on controlling the unions by
law, was in power. Above all, it was a period of heightened
working-class struggle. Not only were there resounding
successes by the powerful battalions, such as the miners'
strike of 1972 which broke the government's income policy,
but new, previously non-militant groups gave battle. In 1970
there was the first national dustmen's strike - ending in
victory; in 1971 six million working days were lost by the
(unsuccessful) postmen's strike; and the following couple of
years saw the first ever national building workers' strike, the
first national teachers' strike and the first national hospital
workers' strike. 14
New forms of struggle appeared as well. Workers facing
sackings and closures occupied their factories; there was the
famous 'work-in' at the Upper Clyde ship yards. But more
than this, industrial action became explicitly political. In
1971, three million working days were lost in protest action
against the Conservative government's Industrial Relations
Act. In 1972 there were widespread stoppages in solidarity
with the 'Pentonville Five' - five dockers gaoled for
contempt of the Industrial Relations Court. In July of that
year the TUC General Council, forced by the mounting tide
of union pressure, prepared to organise for a general strike.
But before then the government capitulated, released the
dockers, rending a gaping hole in its new law. It was a time
of triumph for workers' organisation, unity and solidarity.
Trade-union and working-class history was being made.
And the female half of the working class was part of this
movement, too. After all, the effects of the economic crisis -
rising prices, shrinking wage packets and unemployment -
did not discriminate between men and women. The year
1971 saw an upsurge of tenants' organisations, largely led by
women, fighting against another Tory law - the Housing
12 Introduction

Finance Act, which put steep rises on council-house rents.

At work women were becoming better organised and joined
the industrial struggle. Since their mass entry into the labour
force after the Second World War women had been recruited
into unions at an unprecedented rate, far outstripping the
rate for men and accounting for two-thirds of new union
members. (Before the war, they formed less than a quarter of
TUC-affiliated union members; now they formed almost a
third.) But this in itself could not explain their turn to
militancy in this period. Rather, it was the growing
discrepancy between women's actual position in the labour
market and their rising aspirations for better pay and decent
treatment. For in spite of providing almost half the labour
force and the speed of their unionisation, three out of every
four women were still outside a union (compared with one in
two men). Women remained poorly organised, cheap, labour.
Talk about sexual 'equality' brought home the contradic-
tions between the9ry and practice in another area: women
were second-class citizens in their unions, too. And the young
Women's Liberation Movement helped fuel the sense of
injustice, anger and defiance necessary to mount a real
campaign for women's equality at every level: at work, in the
unions, at home. ls
It was the women sewing machinists at Ford, Dagenham,
who gave the first inspiration in 1968, when what began as a
dispute over sex discrimination in grading turned into a
struggle for equal pay. Not only did they win, but they also
sparked off the formation of the National Joint Action
Committee for Women's Equal Rights. The Ford strike
caused the then Labour government some embarrassment
and was among the factors which finally led to the passing
of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 - something the TUC had been
putting resolutions for since 1888. It was a victory benefiting
few women, but a victory nevertheless.
Women began to take on their employers in unexpected
areas. In 1970 the night cleaners who polished London's
offices came out of the dark, organised themselves and for
the next year fought for union recognition. And while 500
women were attending the first Women's Liberation Con-
ference in Oxford, 7,000 textile workers were on strike from
 Introduction 13

the clothing factories in Leeds, where the work-force was 85

per cent female. They wanted a shilling an hour rise - for
men and women. A week later the number had risen to
20,000 as the first flying pickets closed all the clothing
factories in the North-east and South Yorkshire. However,
enthusiasm played a greater part than experience, and while
male shop stewards, most of whom had not joined the strike,
led the women back to work, the union officials negotiated a
compromise.
Mapping more landmarks: in 1971 there was the London
telephonists' pay-dispute strike, while at Brannan's, a small
thermoIl1eter factory in Cumberland, women struck to
defend their shop-floor organisation. The year 1972 saw
women joining the occupations at Fisher-Bendix and Briant
Colour Printing, while they were among the pioneers of the
'work-in' at a leather factory at Fakenham, near Norwich.
Increasingly, the fights were for equal pay, for union recog-
nition, and against sexual discrimination. In 1972 women at
Goodmans, part of Thorn Electrical Industries Ltd, struck
for equal pay and won. But in some of the fights half the
battle was with the union itself. In 1973, when 200 women
at GEC, Spon Street, Coventry, struck for eight weeks over
piece rates, they had to contend with sabotage from their
own union convener. And when Asian women at Mansfield
Hosiery Mill took the lead in fighting racial discrimination,
they suffered both sexism and racism from their own union.
Most of the new wave of women workers' struggles were
not 'spectacular'. Many were small, and because they did not
'grind the country to a halt' could be conveniently ignored
by the mass media. 16 Many of the disputes were long drawn
out; many ended in defeat because they were isolated and
failed to draw support from other trade unionists. Many
undoubtedly slipped through the journalists' net simply
because there was no reporter at the right place and at the
right time. For while history was being made in the impor-
tant sense of the exception to 'normality', there were
thousands of people who made no apparent contribution to
the heightened class struggle. Yet because they never reached
the headlines it should not be assumed they were outside
that struggle, or that they lived untroubled, uncomplicated
14 Introduction

lives - content with their lot. Small struggles, mundane and,

from the outside, perhaps not newsworthy, continued. To
ignore these would be to take the Hollywood epic view of
history, where great battles eclipse the subtle movements
behind the scenes: the varying shades of consciousness, the
motives behind action - and lack of action. The women
workers who made this study possible were among those
many thousands of not newsworthy mortals. Those so often
called 'the silent majority'.

Bristol, the site of this study, was built on the colonial and
slave trade. Until the mid-eighteenth century it was the
second-ranking port in Britain, its mercantile wealth
dominated by the Society of Merchant Venturers, its
industrial development based on its imports of cocoa, sugar,
tobacco and sherry. When it lost its pre-eminence as a port to
rivals such as Liverpool which were closer to the new manu-
facturing centres, it remained a commercial centre, while its
traditional industries, including coal-mining, iron-foundering,
glass-making and sugar-refining, declined. Newer industries,
such as printing and boot- and shoe-making, gradually
expanded, and in the last quarter of the nineteenth century
railway, metallurgical, machine engineering and paper-making
became important. Today, tobacco and chocolate manufac-
ture at Wills and Fry's come closest to 'traditional' industries,
while engineering, printing and paper-making continue to be
locally significant. But the largest employers were established
after major decentralisation this century: the aerospace
industry in Filton (30,000 workers by 1940 - today British
Aerospace and Rolls-Royce), and the largely post-war growth
of port-orientated industries at Av()nmouth (Philblack 1951,
ICI 1962, Butler Chemicals 1964, and the Imperial Smelting
Corporation expansion in 1965-8).1' Because of its commer-
cial importance and diverse industrial pattern, Bristol has a
history of escaping the worst effects of economic depressions.
In 1842, while the cloth workers of nearby north Gloucester-
shire suffered heavy unemployment, Bristol workers were
relatively well cushioned against the recession. Similarly,
Bristol' escaped the worst of the Great Depression of the
1930s. More recently, apart from the already-mentioned
 Introduction 15

post-war industrial expansIOn, several large council trading

esta tes, such as A vonmou th Docks (470 acres), B rislington
(124 acres) and St Philips Marsh (118 acres), have been
developed.
During this period Bristol also experienced a boom in
office de\ dopment, not only because of the trend nationally
towards service employment, but also because of its commer-
cial roots and accessibility as a centre for the South-west. The
most dramatic physical expression of the local increase in
service employment, which is more marked than the national
average, has been the change in the skyline of central Bristol,
where 120 office blocks have been built since 1954. Before
1971 offices were mainly occupied by regional headquarters
for private firms and public bodies, but between 1971 and
1975 a major demand for office space in Bristol was
generated by firms relocating from London: Phoenix
Assurance (1,000 jobs), the insurance department of National
Westminster Bank (250 jobs), and Clerical, Medical & General
Life Society. Large new banks, insurance companies and
public-sector offices, such as the 100,000 square feet Sun
Life Assurance Co., and the Department of Environment
Planning Inspectorate, dominate the centre, and the latest
innovation (1978) was for a high-technology firm, Sperry
Gyroscope, to use office space for technical as well as
administrative purposes.
Over all the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a rapid
economic development with an annual net increase of 3,000
jobs. But this comfortable picture has come to an end.
Bristol, with all its past of growth and prosperity, could not
escape from the general recession of the 1970s. Between
1970 and 1976 forty manufacturing firms either closed or
left the Bristol area, causing the loss of between 4,000 and
5,000 jobs, mainly in the aircraft industry and small engineer-
ing firms.18 As in the rest of the country, long-term
unemployment has increased most for semi- and unskilled
workers, particularly manual workers, who cannot easily be
redeployed in the still-expanding service sector. This is
reflected in the vacancy figures: inJune 1976, 74 per cent of
Bristol's unemployed were manual workers, while only 40
per cent of the vacancies were for manual jobs. But the
16 Introduction

service sector is not immune: Bristol's office boom slumped

in 1976, with 14 per cent, or 1.2 million square feet, of
office space lying empty. In 1978 this had gone down to
'only' 400,000 empty square feet, but it still left 2,400
unemployed clerks in the city. In the meantime 790 shop
assistants and 220 teachers were officially registered without
jobs, the latter before the 1980 public spending cutS. 19 From
being a city with below-average unemployment, the figures
more than doubled between 1971 and 1980, from 2.5 to
5.5 per cent, and peaked well above the national average
during this time. 2 0 Yet even these figures mask the fact that
in many working-class districts such as the outlying council
estates of Hartcliffe, Southmead and Knowle West unemploy-
ment is estimated to be running at over 10 per cent, while in
St Paul's ward, an inner-city area with a high proportion of
immigrants and blacks, the rate has been estimated to be as
high as 50-75 per cent. Youth unemployment has soared
from 1,000 (July 1971) to 5,000 (July 1979), of whom
3,400 were under age 18, and projections for 1980-3
indicate a further deterioration in the situation, as the annual
number of school-Ieavers in Avon rises by 1,500 to 2,000. 21
Most pertinent of all to this study, however, are the figures
for women: while male unemployment doubled from
January 1971 to January 1980 (3.4 to 6.5 per cent), female
unemployment multiplied nearly five times (0.8 to 3.9 per
cent). This is a matter we shall return to later, in the more
general context of women's position in the labour market.

Considering that Bristol is a large industrial town with a

population of half a million, it is surprising that little
published material exists about its working class, its trade-
union traditions and political ideologies. Local library shelves
are strikingly empty on this subject; there are plenty of
books and pamphlets about Bristol's trading past, about its
fine Georgian architecture, about its customs and amusement
- everything, in short, for the leisured reader or tourist,
nothing about ordinary people. This omission undoubtedly
reflects the city's past as a prosperous commercial centre,
and a widespread but superficial belief that Bristolians are
slow, easy-going, perhaps complacent. As one union officer
 Introductz"on 17

for 'Chemco' described it, Bristol is 'a dozy part of the

world'.22 But deeper delvings reveal much more.
The Bristol Riots of 1831 over the franchise reform are of
course well known. One obscure pamphlet on this period
notes:

Many of the labouring population lived in conditions of

great squalor, particularly the thousands of Irish immI:-
grants: in the slums of Bristol, around Lewin's Mead,
cholera claimed scores of victims during the epidemic of
1849. The mortality rate in the city was exceeded only by
that of Manchester and Liverpool. The Bristol mob was
said to be the most ferocious in the country, and the city
had a long history of riots and tumults. 23

In fact, sharp fluctuations rather than inactivity charac-

terise Bristol's working-class history. In 1838 the local
Charter campaign began with fiery weekly meetings on
Brandon Hill, overlooking the docks, which allegedly terrified
'respectable citizens', who feared that more riots were on the
way. Yet by 1839 there were only 800 Chartists left in
Bristol, compared with 1,800 in Bath, a town one-fifth the
size, and the Mercury wrote in 1840 that it was notorious
that there were fewer Chartists in Bristol than in any other
comparable city. The Northern Star called it 'decidedly the
most prejudiced, bigoted and priest-ridden city of the
Empire'. Less value-loaded judgements returned to the theme
of Bristol's diverse and stable employment situation: 'It is
probable that the poorer classes in Bristol are not subject to
such extreme destitution as in some manufacturing towns.'24
Yet later Bristol became an open hun ting-ground for general
unionism. In 1911 there was an explosion of militancy among
transport workers; the dockers' union grew from 8,000 in 1911
to 40,000 in 1921; and in the 1926 General Strike they led the
support. Miners in the local coal fields, as elsewhere, refused
wage cuts and when they were locked out were joined on the
first day by dockers, railwaymen, road transport and building
workers, followed later by printers, breweryworkersandpower
workers. 25 But many workers did not come out: tobacco
workers, for instance, continued to work, though the
18 Introduction

Tobacco Workers' Union did organise collections for

the strike fund. There were blackspots, too: the Avon-
mou th flour mills, the non-unionised tramways and the
local press, which continued to produce powerful anti-
strike propaganda.
It is perhaps the post-war period and the 1960s, when
Bristol was very clearly a boom town, which put the stamp of
'complacency' on the local working class once again. Yet
already by the early 1970s, and well before unemployment
figures shot up to over 8 per cent for men and 4 per cent for
women (1977-9), insecurity loomed large. In the aerospace
industry, always vulnerable to changes in the military budget
and project cancellations and where the number of workers
fell nationally from 298,000 in 1961 to 205,000 in 1972,26
there was the Rolls-Royce crash of 1971 (salvaged by the
state) and the series of rationalisations in the building of
Concorde. In the relatively well paid, but heavy and
hazardous local chemical industry, insecurity and gratitude
for having any work at all weighed heavily on the minds of
the workers.27 But, as in the rest of the country, the early
1970s began to see a rise in militancy; in 1972 dockers,
railway workers and building workers joined in national
strike action, and there were local initiatives too: the nine-
week (and badly defeated) Rolls-Royce strike, and in early
1973 local hospital ancillary workers pioneered strike action
against the Tory wage freeze. During the late 1970s there
were fewer newsworthy struggles; but this followed the
national downturn during the period of Labour party office
and the 'Social Contract'. Yet later, with recession really
biting, annual inflation running at 20 per cent, ruthless public
spending cuts and unemployment up to 2Y2 million by early
1981, rumblings of resistance rose to the surface again.
Avon teachers, faced with the loss of 406 jobs in an already
severely cut-back education system, were in the forefront of
national NUT action against the cuts. In a town which had
seen few large demonstrations over the previous ten years,
10,000 took to the streets in their support. Spontaneous
anger flared up, too. April 1980 saw a second 'Bristol Riots',
an expression of general frustration by mainly young people,
black and white, in the run-down inner-city area of St Paul's.
 Introduction 19

The local bank was burnt, shops looted, and the police
beaten into a hasty retreat. Similar but less well publicised
skirmishes took place in another high-unemployment area,
the council estate of Southmead. Politicians, the media and
community relations organisations up and down the country
took due note. The organised labour movement, too, demon-
strated its hostility to the government's anti-working-class
legislation in May and turned out 10,000 people on the TUC-
backed national 'Day of Action'.
All this is not to romanticise, or claim Bristol to be a
rapidly radicalising city. It is simply to dispel glib, superficial
generalisations about its alleged lack of contribution to
working-class history. It is not a Red Clydeside - but neither
are most British cities. But it cannot escape from economic
crisis, and whether its inhabitants want it or not things are
changing. If this is more evident in the early 1980s, it is not
a sudden new departure; the causes had already taken root in
the early 1970s when this study was begun, and already then,
behind the apparent silence of the 'silent majority', there was
a good deal of noise. People did not live easy, satisfied lives.
And if we· know little about them, or draw wrong conclusions,
it is because few people asked them any questions. This book
is about what lay on the other side of this silence among a
group of women workers within the walls of one, small,
'ordinary' factory: young girls, mothers, housewives - a
group so often dismissed as 'conservative', 'apathetic' or
'backward'.

The book comprises three parts. Part I describes Churchmans,

its labour force and labour process: stripping and spinning,
weighing and packing tobacco - repetitive, fiddly, produc-
tion line work, 'women's work'. We then span out to look at
the firm's parent company, Imperial Tobacco Ltd, the
Tobacco Division of the vast Imperial Group Ltd, and locate
Churchmans within the broad corporate strategy of
expansion, diversification, concentration and merger. Of
particular significance was the general employers' strategy of
tightening control over wages and work-place relations during
the late 1960s and early 1970s through the policy of produc-
tivity deals, job evaluation and measured day work. At
20 Introduction

Imperial Tobacco Ltd this was applied in the Proficiency Pay

Scheme (PPS), where work study, flexibility agreements and
grading becam.e part apd· parcel of factory life from the mid-
1960s onwards. This company had been one of the earliest
pioneers 0 f job evaluation, and (as we shall see) it is no
coincidence that its successful application occurred in an
industry traditionally employing women workers, with
relatively little established shop-floor trade unionism.
Part II focuses on what is distinctive about women selling
generalised, unskilled labour power. This brings us to the
importance of the family, women's role in reproduction, and
its relationship to social production. While this has been
treated in a 'structural' sense in previous Marxist and feminist
literature, what is lacking, and what it is intended to rectify
here, is a treatment of the relationship between class and sex
in terms of the labour process as it is lived. Women workers'
consciousness must enter the scene. To this end, in Chapter
5, we first survey some common male- and management-held
stereotypes about women as workers, then examine how
both the men and the women factory workers at Churchmans
were bound by these. What is immediately apparent about
the women is their contradictory partial acceptance. and
partial rejection of these images.
In Chapter 6 we look at the social preparation of young
working-class girls for the future, and the ambiguous footing
it puts them on in the new world of wage labour. We analyse
their responses in the factory, and the way the collective
myth of marriage as a final escape prejudices their chances of
coming to grips with a future of unskilled work. We see that
already they are laid open to abuse as workers, and their
oppression as women becomes part of their exploitation in
the sense that they are easily handled, cheap, labour. With
older women, many already married and with children, the
myth that 'work' is temporary, or only peripheral to their
'real' lives, paradoxically continues - until it is too late to
go back.
Chapter 7, 'Married women and the family burden',
explores what it means in a practical sense to be half in the
'woman's world' of home, and half in the 'man's world' of
wage labour. Besides the intimate identification with the
 Introduction 21

world of the family, the conflict sets up a vicious circle of

lack of time, exhaustion, lack of confidence, lack of organisa-
tion at work, lack of control over the labour process. All of
which sinks women workers to the bottom of the labour
market, and leaves them sliding down when they try to climb
up.
But the picture is not all gloom. In Part III we tum to
struggle. Much of this expresses itself in terms of an informal
shop-floor culture, where assertions of dignity and defiance
are made in the face of being tied to a machine and being
'put down' as 'just' women factory workers. But again (as we
see in Chapter 8) male oppression gains the upper hand in a
system of discipline and control which is mediated largely by
patriarchal, sexual relations. Factory politics are also sexual
politics. And while the girls resist and fight back, it is largely
in terms of collusion again, with m'!le-created and male-
perpetuated roles of femininity. It is largely a 'friendly'
battle, part of the 'human-relations' school of 'permissive'
management, but it is set on the men's and the employers'
terms.
For the women, the use of femininity as a shop-floor
weapon is pernicious since it diverts attention from the need
to organise collectively. Chapter 9 takes us on from here to
the problem of organisation and trade unionism. We learn
that on top of the disadvantages already suffered through
women's dual world, the world of trade unionism is often an
alien, hostile one which perpetuates the schism. Contrary to
glib assumptions that women never try to become involved,
we learn here that they do, often only to be doused by cold
water. Their sense of exclusion is part of a self-fulfilling
prophesy which keeps trade unionism for men. But while the
problems of representation, solidarity and confidence are
central to this syndrome, it is stressed that the women them-
selves see their difficulties as their own responsibility, not
simply the 'betrayal' of their leaders. It was up to them as
ordinary rank-and-file women workers to change things. At
the same time, men reading of their experiences should (I
hope) become more sympathetic to the enormous dilemma
of facing 'two masters' - the husband at home, the trade
unionist at work.
22 Introduction

In Chapter lOwe move now to one specific event - or

non-event, as it turned out to be: the national one-day strike
over the annual wage claim in 1972. Whereas before it had
been the older women who involved themselves with
dispu tes, now the younger girls, who had claimed 'not to
bother', came forward. We follow a few to their first ever
union meeting, and see their new interest and expectations,
their attitudes to their first ever strike, and their return back
to normal on the shop-floor. But after working themselves up
for further action, the tension bursts with a pop as, totally
unexpectedly to them, the union negotiators make a
compromise settlement. In the wake of their sense of bitter
betrayal we explore the expressions of demoralisation.

The stress throughout this book is on potentials - the poten-

tials of the women's contradictory experience and conscious-
ness. The story of Churchmans itself ended in closure; it was
a small moment in a powerful capitalist logic of profit
maximisation, increasing productivity and streamlining.
Women (and men) lost jobs, they were defeated. But there
had been moments of change, possibilities of new departures.
For in spite of women workers' 'double burden', as women
and as wage workers, it was their collective experience in
social production which offered a challenge to break the
vicious circle of their oppression as women, their exploitation
as workers. It is to these unheard sounds and unseen move-
ments that we now turn.

Notes to the Introduction

1. Tabar (1979) Iran: No Revolution without Women's Liberation.
2. There are a number of technical difficulties regarding the concept
of 'exploitation' in some formulations of Marxist theory. For
example, there is the distinction between 'exploitation' as the
extraction of surplus value, and 'economic oppression' where
labour is 'unproductive' in that it is not producing surplus value -
e.g. a service. See Carchedi (1977) On the Economic Identification
of Social Classes, p. 9. See also Gough (1972) 'Marx's Theory of
Productive and Unproductive Labour', New Left Review, no. 76;
and Green (1978-9), 'The Necessity of Value and a Return to
Marx', International Socialism Journal, series 2, nos 3 and 4.
However, in this book exploitation refers to both productive and
 Introduction 23
unproductive labour (although the workers were productive in the
'pure' meaning of producing commodities and surplus value),
while oppression refers to all other forms of un freedom.
3. Friedan (1963) The Feminine Mystique, p. 13.
4. Engels (1970) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State in Marx and Engels (1970) Selected Works in One Volume,
p. 501.
5. See Reich (1971) The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality;
Delmar (1976) 'Looking Again at Engels' "Origins of the Family,
Private Property and the State" " in Mitchell and Oakley (eds),
The Rights and Wrongs of Women, p. 271; Sacks (1974) 'Engels
Revisited', in Rosaldo and Lamphere (eds), Woman, Culture and
Society; and Reed (1975) Woman's Evolution.
6. See, for example, Harrison (1973) 'Political Economy of House-
work', Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, vol. 3,
no. 4; Seccombe (1974) 'The Housewife and Her Labour under
Capitalism', New Left Review, no. 83; Coulson, Magas and Wain-
wright (1975) 'The Housewife and Her Labour under Capitalism
- A Critique', New Left Review, no. 89; Gardiner (1975) 'Women's
Domestic Labour', New Left Review, no. 89; Seccombe (1975)
'Domestic Labour - A Reply to Critics', New Left Review, no. 94;
Gardiner, Himmelweit and Mackintosh (1975) 'Women's Domestic
Labour', Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, vol. 4,
no. 2; Himmelweit and Mohun (19 77) 'Domestic Labour and
Capitalism', Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 1, part 1;
Smith (19 77) 'Women and the Family', International Socialism
Journal, no. 100; West (1980) 'Women, Reproduction and Wage
Labour', in Nichols (ed.), Capital and Labour: A Marxist Primer.
F or a recent collection of articles see Malos (1980) The Politics of
Housework.
7. Engels (1970) p. 501.
8. Counter Information Services (1976) Women under Attack.
9. Department" of Employment Gazette, September 1976.
10. Department of Employment (1975) Women and Work: A Review,
p.46.
11. Data in this paragraph come from the 1971 Census.
12. A necessarily brief definition follows: by 'consciousness' I refer to
a very broad understanding of the world - this comprises both
ideas derived from an external source (i.e. not one's own activity),
that is, 'ideology', and concrete experience of one's own and
others' activities.
13. For an interesting male comment on the interaction between
methodology and gender, see Morgan (1979) Men, Masculinity and
the Process of Sociological Enquiry, paper presented to the British
Sociological Association.
14. For discussions of 'the crisis' during this period see, for instance,
Glyn and Sutcliffe (1972) British Capitalism and the Profit
Squeeze; Cliff (1975) The Crisis: Social Contract or Socialism;
24 Introduction

Harman (1980) 'Theories of the Crisis', International Socialism

Journal, series 2, no. 9. For debates on the development of British
working-class movements during the 1970s, see International
Socialism Journal, series 2, nos 5, 6 and 8 for articles by Jeffreys
(1979), Cliff (1979) and Hyman (1980).
15. See Rowbotham (1972) 'The Beginnings of Women's Liberation in
Britain', in Wandor (ed.), The Body Politic: Writings from the
Women's Liberation Movement in Britain, 1969-1971, p. 91; and
Mitchell (1971) 'The Women's Liberation Movement', ih Women's
Estate.
16. See Red Rag, nos 5 and 8, for a list of strikes collated from reports
in the Morning Star and Socialist Worker. See also Cliff (1975) The
Crisis, pp. 141-5.
17. Research Section, City Planning Department, Bristol (1979) Facts
about Bristol, series 1 (also source for ensuing information).
18. Bristol Resources and Rights Centre (1977) A Resource and
Rights Centre for the Bristol Area, p. 4 (this is also the source for
regional unemployment figures given).
19. Research Section, City Planning Department, Bristol (1979) Facts
about Bristol.
20. Department of Employment unemployment records for the
Bristol-Severnside sub-region.
21. Data from Department of Employment records, and Facts about
Bristol.
22. 'Chemco' is a local chemical plant described in Nichols and Beynon
(1977) Living with Capitalism.
23. Quoted in Cannon (1964) The Chartists in Bristol.
24. 'Second Report on the State of Large Towns', quoted with no date
or author supplied in Cannon (1964) p. 15. The newspaper quota-
tions are also from Cannon (1964).
25. See Whitfield (1979) 'The Labour Movement in Bristol, 1910-
1939', M.Lit., Bristol University.
26. Bristol International Socialists (1972) Boom or Bust (a pamphlet
on the aircraft industry).
27. Nichols and Beynon (1977) Living with Capitalism.
 Part I
Capital and Labour
1
The Factory in its Setting

The factory
Start by the 'Floating Harbour' at the city centre; walk across
the green of Queen's Square with its regency Customs and
Excise buildings, dating from the old dockland days; cross
over the water and derelict red-brick Victorian wharf front,
and you reach the imposing medieval church of St Mary
Redcliffe, flanked, however, by a sprauling iron-girder flyover
and a thunderingroundabout. If you tum right here, you will
go towards South Bristol, the heartland of Bristol's tobacco
industry: Bedminster, site of the old Wills' Number 1 factory,
and headquarters of Imperial Tobacco Ltd; Ashton Gate,
where Wills' Number 2 and 4 factories produce cigars and
loose tobacco; and bordering the rural, green foothills of
Dundry, the 'Brave New World' of Wills' Number 6 factory at
Hartcliffe. Nearly everyone has heard of Wills. But tum left
at that roundabout, and you enter Redcliffe Street, a narrow
road, with an elegant old building - almost picturesque, with
a stone facade, mock-Corinthian pillars, arches, cornices and
a slate roof edged with balustrades making it resemble a
French chateau. This is the shell of a medium-sized branch of
Imperial Tobacco Ltd: Churchmans. Even Bristolians, except
perhaps pipe smokers, look blank when you mention the
name. Now, the place houses a medley of small printing
firms. But that is jumping ahead of our story.
In 1972 it was still a tobacco factory - small, employing
around 250 people, not exactly thriving but productive. It
manufactured goods for a declining market; loose hand-
rolling and pipe tobacco, including a variety of specialities,
28 Capital and Labour

such as flake, plug, roll and chewing tobacco used by miners

and seamen.
Through the heavy double doors on the Redcliffe Street
side, you entered a somberly distinguished panelled foyer,
from which an array of benevolent oil-painted portraits gazed
down, managers and benefactors from the company's
paternalistic past. Here, the visitor or nervous job applicant
could sit and leaf through 'house' magazines and Imperial
glossies, or politely inspect the glass display cases of tobacco
tins and smokers' knick-knacks. The liveried commissionaire
would show you to the personnel office. This was the
management end, the public face of the factory.
Behind the lobby, through another door, the scene opened
into an enormous glass-roofed hall, held up with Victorian
wrought-iron pillars, and incongruously broken up with
squat, pastel-painted prefabricated box rooms. These were
the staff offices, inhabiting what had been the dock-side
unloading bay of the former firm Edwards, Ringer & Bigg.
From here you were already approaching another, grimier
world: two wrought-iron stairways led up to the factory
floors, the racket of machinery and the strong, sweet scent of
tobacco. But the factory workers did not take this route.
They came in the back way, the plain brick side on St
Thomas Street. Here was the usual factory gate, the dispatch
entrance, the long, dull-painted corridor, the clocking-in
machines. At 7 a.m. the workers came in, the men to set up
the machines by 7.15 a.m., the women to start work at
7.30 a.m .. The men in navy dungarees or grey overalls, the
women in royal blue. At 12.30 p.m., a few trickled out over
lunch break, some to shop, some just to get out. Then at
4.25 p.m., the buzzer - one for the women, another five
minutes later for the men. Buses, shopping, home - mostly
across the roundabout, over the river, south.
While Churchmans was old, small and cramped by its
archaic layout, it nevertheless belonged to a large, modern
corporation, and shared its technology. It was certainly less
automated than the new cigarette factories, which are
estimated to use the second most capital-intensive productive
processes in the world after oil-refining. 1 But the early stages
of tobacco preparation - moisturising or 'wetting down',
 The Factory in its Setting 29

blending and cutting were heavily mechanised. These

departments looked half empty, dominated by large, shining
machines and the huge 'hogsheads' of tobacco leaves,
dwarfing the crews of male plant operators.
The labour-intensive work was done by women - weighing,
packing, stripping and spinning. In 1971, out of 222 manual
workers, 142 (including six cleaners), or nearly two-thirds,
were women (see Table 1.1). Most of them worked in the
weighing and packing departments (see Table 1.2). The
largest of these was the machine-weighing room, known In

TABLE 1.1 Numbers employed at Churchmans, 1971

Factory production workers 86men

136 women (+ 6 part-time cleaners)
222 in total

Supervisors 11 men
6 women
17

Foremen 8
Forewomen 0
Management 6 men
1 woman
Staff 50 (approx.)

TABLE 1.2 Women factory workers by department and sample *

Totals No. interviewed Proportion of total

interviewed (%)

BUR 70 25 36
Hand-packing: flake 15 8 50
Hand-packing: roll 7 4 57
Stripping (hand) 11 5 45
Stripping (machine) 18 2 11
Spinning 15 3 20
136 47 35(average)

*The classifications used in the table are only approximate as the work.force was
'flexible' and worked in different parts of the factory according to management
needs.
30 Capital and Labour

the tobacco industry as the 'beating-up room', or BUR,

because of the early method of weighing tobacco - using the
hands like a threshing machine to select and discard the
material until the right weight was found_ Here, cigarette and
pipe tobacco was automatically weighed, foil-wrapped,
bagged, labelled and cartoned. It was a big, noisy room, long
windows at either side, but still lacking daylight, cluttered
with machines, heavy with the clinging smell and dust of the
'rag' (tobacco). The 'straight-line weighing' machines were
placed in pairs facing each other: on each side, a crew of six
girls, likewise facing each other. Each machine had six holes
in a line, one for each girl, a red light above, a tiny unseen
bucket below. These were the automatic scales. Into the
holes the girls placed small finger-fulls of rag in two- or four-
ounce lots, depending on what was being packed. When the
scale had 'accepted' the right amount, the red light went on,
and the rag was automatically packed inside the body of the
machine and conveyed to the end. Little gold packs, like
butter, streaming out on the moving belt, to the girls waiting
to label or bag them on the 'overwrapping' machines.
Straight-line weighing needed finger-tip precision and
flying speed. Credited for manual dexterity, yet not qualify-
ing as skilled; fiddly, delicate, 'women's work', somehow an
innate attribute of femininity. A counter recorded the
number of weighings each girl made, and this, at the end of
the day, indicated her performance. She was dependent on
the rate of the machine, which, in 1972, was set at sixty
revolutions a minute: each minute, sixty empty foil packs
passed through the machine, hungry for the contents of the
little buckets. Ten packs below each scale every minute. One
weighing per girl every six seconds - if she filled them all,
or worked at 100 per cent capacity. But there was a
'reprieve'; to earn the maximum there was a 'relaxation
allowance': one weighing every ten seconds instead of every
six! And if a still 'easier' life was wanted - perhaps satisfying
the red light and its counter every fifteen or every twenty
seconds - that was all right, if you were happy with less pay,
or able to catch up later with one weighing every five
seconds. But a warning, too: there was a penalty clause. In
case a girl tried to cheat her scale, making it 'accept' a bundle
 The Factory in its Setting 31

which was slightly 'out' by causing a little draught with her

hand - which was possible - she would be caught. Anything
more than 5 per cent tiny inaccuracies in a day's weighing, as
detected by quality control, were black marks on the record.
Time and the work-study man were the masters.
The girls in the two hand-packing rooms, one adjacent to
the BUR, one upstairs, did not have the discipline of the
machine. They still had to keep pace with a set performance,
but instead imposed their own standards. Some supervisors
and management therefore described them as more 'respon-
sible'; some called these the 'ladies' departments. Hand-
packing was reserved for speciality brands of flake, or plug
pipe tobacco, which had to be individually weighed, placed
in decorative paper-lined tins, and vacuum-sealed. Flake
weighing was done on highly accurate hand scales. Upstairs
the girls on 'screw' or 'pigtail' had the added task of measur-
ing and cutting the rolls of tobacco, before weighing and
packing. Again, this was fiddly work.
A smaller number of women were employed in the earlier
stages of tobacco preparation. Machine or hand 'stripping'
involved separating the stem from the rest of the leaf - an
operation which took you back to the kitchen, like stripping
beans. The machine and the hand work had once been done
side by side but were now separated between two depart-
ments, the first downstairs in the spinning room, the second
upstairs next to the wetting-down and cutting room, where
the leaf was prepared.
Machine stripping looked superficially like feeding washing
through a mangle. The leaf was fed between two rollers in
which a blade cut out the stem; each half of the leaf was then
neatly stacked, while stem and waste matter were put in a
sack for weighing. Curiously, pay depended on the weight of
stem stripped off, together with avoidance of wastage or tears
in the leaf. High-quality leaf with little stem wastage
therefore brought less piecework pay than bad leaf with
heavy stems, however hard and fast the work was done. The
same unpredictable system applied to the hand workers, who
stripped the leaf between forefinger and thumb. Hard,
calloused skin, cuts and bent fingers went with the job.
Finally, there was the spinning room: highly specialised,
32 Cap£tai and Labour

with only seven skilled women, assisted by an equal number

of 'handlers' who passed them the tobacco. Of all the depart-
ments this was the most cloying, dark and oppressive. The air
was thick with hot, smoky fumes from the ovens which
'cooked' the tobacco to its typical liquorice appearance. The
actual work was concentrated and incessant, doing the
seemingly impossible task of spinning tobacco into a long,
unbroken cord. The two hands were perfectly synchronised,
the left placing and joining the 'wrapper' leaves together, the
right filling them with 'filler' tobacco, at the same time
twisting round the wrapper into a roll, which grew in length
as it was pulled and coiled round a revolving bobbin. A slight
hesitation and the bobbin would break the thread. Too little
pressure and the roll would go bumpy. The spinner was a
specialist craftswoman with considerable control over her
machine, the best-paid woman worker, but not on a par with
a 'skilled craftsman'.
There were some women in other departments too - in
testing and quality control, and in dispatch. But in general
men and women never worked alongside each other on the
same job. The men's departments were separate. It was the
BUR, the hand-packing, the stripping and spinning depart-
ments which gave the factory its atmosphere and flavour of
'women's work', and made Churchmans a 'women's factory'.
(See Figure 1.1.)

The work-force
In 1970 the food, drink and tobacco industries together
employed 8,703 women in the Bristol area, roughly a third of
all women manufacturing workers (28,000). Half of these
(4,227) worked in tobacco alone, which remains in 1980 the
single most concentrated women's factory work in the area.
The great majority were at Wills, which in 1972 employed a
total work-force of 6,000 men and women in Bristol, of
whom 4,500 were shop-floor workers. Two-thirds (3,057)
were women. They worked in three large factories, each
employing over a thousand workers. Wills, Number 1, for
instance, employed 2,300 altogether; over 900 were women
factory workers.
 1. Leaf room 4. Lamina store 5. Cutting room

j r , ..
2 men (for 24 hours) 19 men (9 machines)

, ,
1 foreman 4men 1 foreman
1 male supervisor
1 desk girl

2. Wetting-down 6. Cooling 7. Spinning 8. Flake press

room room room 4men

~
0
14 men (3 machines) 15 women
blending

3. Stripping room ~ ~ ~
29 women

~ 1 man section
supervisor
9. Tobacco store

t
10. Packing departments
Total 93 women manual workers

70 in ) 9 straight·line weighing machines

BUR) 4 overwrap machines

Hand-packing ) 1 vacuum-oven operator

) 14 hand weighers on tins
) 7 hand weighers on twist and roll
) 1 bagger

I
4 male machine operators
2 female, 2 male supervisors
2 foremen

11. Dispatch
4 women, orders' assemblers

l
1 woman clerk
9 men
1 foreman
2 male supervisors

Note: Several smaIl departments, such as quality control, have been omitted, as have miscellaneous
men's jobs, accounting for the discrepancy between the male workers' total here (56) and the total in
Table 1.1 (86).

FIGURE 1.1 Churchmans: main departments, production flow and

employees, July 1971
34 Capital and Labour

By comparison, Churchmans, with its 220 factory workers

(1971) - down to about 180 in 1972 - was very small. As
we shall see, this (together with its relative isolation)
contributed to several peculiarities about the factory. At the
same time, it made life much easier for the interviewer. 1
quickly found my way around the factory, and after three
months on the shop floor became familiar with most faces as
well as most departments.
The female work-force was strikingly young, two-thirds
being single girls; turnover was high, half the women having
been there for less than two years (see Table 1.3). Among the
married about half had school-age children (1 came across
only two with under fives), while the other half, the long-
term workers, were in their forties and fifties, with grown-up
families and grandchildren.
Considering that, today, two-thirds of women workers are
married and over a third work part-time, my choice of
factory did not offer a 'statistically representative' sample.
But in practice few factories meet this bill. Moreover, the
structural and ideological factors which determine women's
position in the labour market and in the family are processes
far wider than the individual work-place where they converge
and find material expression.
Married women were underrepresented in Churchmans
compared with their general representation among working
women, largely because the factory offered almost no part-
time work. Apart from two spinners and six cleaners who
were part-time, everyone else worked a full eight-hour day
from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. (one hour, unpaid, for dinner).

TABLE 1.3 Length of employment of female (weekly-paid) factory

employees, * 1971

Over 20 years 16 (11%)

10-20 years 6 (4%)
5-10 years 30 (21%)
2-5 years 24 (17%)
Under 2 years 66 (46%)
-
142 100%

*Including cleaners.
 The Factory in its Setting 35
This could largely be explained by Churchmans' circumstan-
ces: it was simply not worth while employing part-time
workers. Whereas Wills, a more buoyant company with a
steady demand for labour, employed part-time women as
approximately a third of its work-force, Churchmans'
demand was falling, and there was no shortage of full-time
women workers. In fact, it was quite the opposite. As far as
the firm was concerned, it was 'overmanned'. During the
summer of 1971 the slack in demand for its tobacco products
meant that workers were washing walls and cleaning windows
- an irony in view of the fact that this did not allow them to
work under less pressure when there was work to do (see
Chapter 3, which explains the drive to increase productivity).
It was no secret among management that unless demand went
up and costs went down the factory faced closure. Stream-
lining and rationalisations were temporary 'solutions' to the
problem. In 1971 the manual work-force was pruned to 180.
Thirty-one women had to go. Fourteen were made redundant,
and the rest 'disappeared' through 'natural wastage'. Some
months later demand went up, and more girls were taken on.
But this was only a minor reprieve. In 1972 further rationali-
sations were again on the cards. Churchmans was on the
slippery slope.
Yet it was only a withering leaf on a vast, spreading tree.
Its very decline was part of the growth of a giant corporation.
For the Imperial Tobacco Group was expanding - not
primarily in jobs or work-force - but in productivity, profits
and corporate size.

Note to Chapter 1
L Muller (1978) Tobacco and the Third World: Tomorrow's Epi-
demic?, p. 25.
2
Going to the Wall in a Giant
Corporation

Expansion and diversification

When people take a break from work or play, to relax

either in, or away from home, there will be an Imperial
company to supply them with many of the products and
services they will need (Chairman of Imperial Group Ltd).l

The Imperial Group is a vast and expanding empire. In the

ten years from 1968 to 1978 its corporate size, as measured
by capital employed, doubled from £550 million to £1,149
million. In that time it's world-wide work-force grew from
64,000 to 101,000,2 smaller only than British giants like
G EC or British Leyland, with over 190,000 workers each in
Britain alone, but larger than Ford (71,000), BP (81,000) or
Unilever (91,000).3 With sales of £3,432.8 million a year, it
ranks as the sixth largest British-based company in terms of
turnover. And the profit rate, at 18 per cent of capital
employed, amounting to £131 million in 1978, brings it up
to tenth place in the race for profitability of British com-
panies. 4
The original Imperial Tobacco Company was formed in
1901 by the amalgamation of thirteen British tobacco firms,
including the pioneers H.H. Wills, Player and Lambert &
Butler. This was part of a defensive strategy to outmanoeuvre
the American conquest of the British tobacco market in what
became known as the 'tobacco war'. Afterwards the British
side moved from defence to attack, and a settlement was
finally reached between the British and American companies,
 Going to the Wall 37

including the agreement to keep out of each other's markets,

and the setting up of a jointly owned new company, BAT
(British-American Tobacco), through which both would
conduct their export trade. BAT was a third owned by
Imperial Tobacco, and two-thirds owned by American
Tobacco until 1911, when US anti-monopoly laws forced
American Tobacco to disband its interests. BAT subsequently
became an independent British-based company, still a third
owned by Imperial Tobacco and still retaining its special
trading relationship with Imperial by not competing in the
same markets. s
BAT rapidly grew into a multinational corporation because
of its international export and marketing operations in
tobacco, general retailing and cosmetics. Now it dominates
the world tobacco industry, 6 and is the fourth largest British-
based company, measured by its annual turnover of £6,070
million and capital resources of £2,500 million. 7 Imperial
Tobacco, however, developed only a British market. While it
expanded enormously, the openings for tobacco in the world
market were limited by the agreement with BAT. The
solution to the problem of finding new market outlets was
therefore prolific diversification outside the tobacco industry
itself.
Beginning with activities directly associated with tobacco
production, the Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd, as it became
known in the 1960s, developed its paper, packaging, distri-
bution and general trading interests into specialised divisions. 8
Today it has an expanding Paper, Board, Packaging and
Plastics Division, with branches and assorted companies
making cigarette paper, printing paper, folding boxes, fibre-
board cases, plastic boxes and mouldings. But the greatest
expansion occurred in the Food Division in the early 1960s,
and (quite dramatically) in the Brewery Division in the early
1970s. The Group's domestic work-force shot up from
45,800 in 1969, to 61,000 in 1971, and after the takeover
of Courage Ltd to 88,000 in 1972. With these acquisitions
the company got its fingers into so many pies that it is
difficult to cross a supermarket or enter a pub without
bumping into Imperial Group household names: Golden
Wonder crisps and snacks, Ross fish fingers, Buxted frozen
38 Capital and Labour

chickens, Smedley's tins, HP and Lea & Perrins sauces, and

Young's seafoods. All are Imperial-owned. What is more, the
company owns the potatoes for the crisps, the breeders and
food for the chickens, their eggs (Buxted Poultry, Ross
Poultry Breeders, Daylay eggs), the ships that catch the fish
(British United Trawlers, 26 per cent owned, Ross Seafoods
International) - even the cold-store operators: perfect
vertical integration. Brewing is going the same way: Courage
beer and pubs (over 6,550 licensed premises); Arthur Cooper
off-licences; Saccone & Speed Ltd; Anchor Hotels & Taverns
Ltd; Harp Lager (33 per cent owned), John Smiths Tadcaster
Brewery Ltd; Taunton Cider (28 per cent owned) - to name
but a few.
Recently Imperial Group (in the 1970s the company
shortened its name) has widened its reach even further. As a
result of Britain joining the EEC in 1975, Imperial was forced
to break the trading relationship with BAT which gave each a
virtual monopoly over their own markets. Imperial sold off
its interests in BAT, lost its foreign earnings from that com-
pany, and the two had to compete in the open market. At
the same time, a drop in the British tobacco market, together
with a tightening competitive squeeze, hit the Tobacco
Division, which throughout the company's history had been
the single most profitable section; for the first time ever in
1977 tobacco accounted for less than half the total Group
profits. One response was aggressive foreign expansion: the
spectacular £280 million acquisition in 1979 of the vast
American catering chain, Howard Johnson, a company
employing 28,000 people in forty American states, the
Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Canada and the Bahamas. 9 With
pre-existing foreign tobacco interests in leaf-buying organisa-
tions in America, Canada, Rhodesea and Malawi, expanding
new cigarette markets in the Gulf States, the Imperial Group,
if not a giant multinational like BAT, is fast spreading out-
wards. tO

Concentration and rationalisation

I hope they're proud, as I am, to be part of the Imperial

 Goz"ng to the Wall 39

family, but identities and loyalties are locally based. I

believe they go beyond the company to factory, or even
departmental level, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
This traditional feeling of belonging to a particular work
group is something I want to see strengthened, rather than
weakened (Chairman of Imperial Tobacco Ltd).11

The sentiments expressed here are perhaps ironic to those

workers at Churchmans whose loyalties had to be rationalised
away when the factory closed in 1974. For while the
Imperial Group Ltd work-force as a whole was growing
because of diversification, the tobacco section work-force
was contracting. The process of concentration, takeover and
streamlining has been endemic to the very growth of the
Imperial Tobacco Company, from well before the squeeze on
tobacco profits illustrated by recent company reports.
Churchmans, Bristol, became dispensible to Imperial
Tobacco, just as any other unit of production is dispensible if
it is profitable to get rid of it. In capitalist expansion the big
fish eat the little fish, without sentiment for 'family feeling',
work groups, tradition, or anything else. This is the life
history of Churchmans itself. 12 In 1813 it began as Edwards,
Ringer & Bigg, an old Bristol tobacco house, which joined
the Imperial Tobacco Company in 1901, when it also merged
with Lambert & Butler: concentration and expansion. Half a
century later what was now Lambert & Ringer joined another
Imperial branch in 1961, the Ipswich-based W. A. & A. C.
Churchmans: Churchmans, Lambert & Butler - concentration
and merger, associated with rationalisation. Four years later
the name was shortened to Churchmans, but in the early
1970s more rationalisation took place, and by late 1972 the
Bristol factory was taken over by another Imperial firm,
Ogden's, with further rationalisation. For obvious reasons, no
sales, productivity or profit figures to explain the streamlin-
ing were revealed. All that was available was a public
statement to the Bristol Evening Post inJune 1974:

The acceleration in the long term decline of the pipe

tobacco market following the last budget has led to the
decision in principle, taken with regret, that the Redcliffe
40 Capital and Labour

Street manufacture should be transferred in stages over a

period of up to two years, to Ogden's, Liverpool.

Then, in 1974, the Bristol factory was liquidated entirely,

while the surviving Churchmans of Ipswich was taken over by
John Player.
Today most of the original small manufacturing units of
Imperial Tobacco have disappeared from the map. Three-
quarters of all the Tobacco Division's workers are concentra-
ted in three units - W. D. & H. O. Wills,John Player & Sons,
and Ogden's. In vivid illustration of the process, while
Churchmans closed in Bristol, a brand new £19% million
Wills complex, Europe's biggest tobacco factory, was built
amid lakes and trees, a few miles south at Hartcliffe. No wall
washing here: 1,800 workers, machines producing 2,500
cigarettes a minute, all pouring out a total of 400 million
cigarettes a week. 13 But the Tobacco Division work-force
throughout the country shrank. From 1967 to 1977 it went
down from 39,000 to 30,000. About half of these were in
the manufacturing sector alone, which went down from
23,000 in 1971 to 19,000 in 1979 - almost a 20 per cent
loss in eight years}4
Expansion and diversification, concentration and rationali-
sation - two sides of the same coin. Like any other
company, Imperial was out to maximise profits, accumulate
capital. And to expand sales it had to promote the company.
So while tobacco workers lost jobs, the company advertised
and cultivated its public image, sponsoring worthy causes.
In 1979 the Imperial Group created a £100,000 micro-
electronics chair over five years at Bristol University;
pioneered an Imperial international polo match over four
years; and sponsored a Royal Ballet production of Swan Lake
at Covent Garden. As for the Tobacco Division, an old hand
at sponsorship in the Arts, it financed Bristol' celebrity
concerts, the Imperial Tobacco Cello and Conductors'
Awards, the Pompeii Exhibition at the Royal Academy
(together with the Daily Telegraph) and the Bath Festival.
And it engraved its name in sport: the John Player cricket,
rugby and badminton championships (although economies
were made in tennis, golf and car-racing!), Embassy
 Going to the Wall 41

Hickstead international show-jumping, the World Snooker

Championship, the World Darts Championship, and the
Speedboat Grand Prix.ls Such efforts are vital to marketing,
not only to maintain the image of the caring, soulful
corporation, but also to perpetuate our belief that, without
the benefits of a buoyant free-enterprise economy, we could
not have 'culture' or entertainment. It is also this concern
to uphold the cause of 'free enterprise' which encourages
the group to give generous handouts to organisations which
'crusade for capitalism': in 1974 £5,000 to the Economic
League, £5,000 to Common Cause, and £12,500 to Aims of
Industry. In 1976-7, with a £7,000 donation, Imperial was
a major contributor to the Economic League. 16

Most people are as unaware of a company's private political

dealings as they are of the seemier side of big business: not
only that people work long hours in factories to produce the
wealth for the fun and games which are sponsored, but that
on the other side of the world tobacco production is less
entertainment- or culture-conscious; that 4,447,000 hectares
of scarce arable land is given over to the cancerous weed, that
in Africa, India and Brazil the tobacco harvest exacerbates
casual labour and seasonal unemployment; that tobacco
sorters and graders are the poorest-paid workers in those
countries; or that small farmers are unscrupulously exploited
by the dealers who sell to the great companies. I? But these
are not the unique sins and anomalies of Imperial Group Ltd.
They are part and parcel of the capitalist system: a few
symptoms of a heartless world.

Notes to Chapter 2
1. Statement in Wills World, September 1979.
2. Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd and Imperial Group Ltd, Report and
Accounts, 1968 and 1978, figures corrected to nearest £ million,
not corrected for inflation. In corporate size, IGL ranks as the
eighth-largest British company (The Times 1,000, 1978-9).
3. The Times 1,000,1978-9.
4. Figures: IGL, Report and Accounts, 1978; rankings: The Times
1,000, 1978-9. The profit figures are for pre-tax profits.
5. See the Monopolies Commission (1961) Report on the Supply of
Cigarettes and Tobacco and of Cigarette and Tobacco Machinery;
42 Capital and Labour
and Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd, The History of the Imperial
Tobacco Company 1901-1966, no date.
6. See Muller (1978) Tobacco and the Third World: Tomorrow's
Epidemic?
7. The Times 1,000,1978-9.
8. Imperial Group Ltd, Report and Accounts, 1972-8; and Labour
Research Department reports on IG L.
9. Wills World, September 1979.
10. Sources: discussions with Imperial Group Ltd management; Wills
World, September 1979; Financial Times, 8 February 1978;
International Union of Food and Allied Workers' Economic
Reports.
11. Statement in Wills World, September 1979.
12. See ITG, The History of the Imperial Tobacco Company 1901-
1966.
13. Welcome to Wills, Wills No.6 factory publicity handout, available
1979.
14. From ITL headquarters; Hoare & Co. Investment Research, The
Tobacco Industry, February 1969; Wills World, September 1979.
15. From IGL promotion and sponsorship management sources.
16. Labour Research Department analysis of Imperial Group Ltd,
1974-7, especially its Big Business and Politics - the Finances,
Propaganda and Secret Activities of Employers' Organisations,
1974: 'It has long been suspected that, as part of its "anti-
subversion" activity, the Economic League provides blacklists of
workers to employers. This would explain the wide support from
companies, who have a whole range of "free enterprise" groups
which they could support, but who choose to donate specifically
to the Economic League.'
17. See Muller (1978) Tobacco and the Third World. Since Rhodesian
UDI, in 1965, ITL's tobacco supplies have veered heavily towards
the Third World countries which supply BAT, Rothman and the
other major tobacco companies.
3
The Employers' Strategy

'Looking after people'

In the airy, glass-fronted foyer of the personnel department
at Wills, Hartcliffe - the pride factory of Imperial Tobacco
Ltd - is a pile of Welcome to Wills glossy handouts. Inside
they tell you 'How Wills cigarettes are made', 'This is the way
we roll cigars', and how, 'backed by experts', they are
'reacting to changes'. And the spread of illustrations is
certainly impressive: huge, automatic blending silos and
cutting machines, the fully automated store with computer-
controlled tobacco distribution, white streams of cigarettes
rolling out of gleaming metal, a whole computer room for
handling wages, salaries, sales documents, statistics, stock
control and tobacco blends - even robot smokers in the
central research and development department: Star Trek,
or Dr Who?
But an equally important facet of the publicity image is
the 'human' side. Not only is Wills a pace-setter in efficiency
but it is also committed to 'Looking After People', the
headlines on the back of the brochure. In contrast to the
centre page, this features grassy 'Industry in a pastoral
setting', the 'drinks and starters counter at Hartcli ffe 's
Severn Restaurant', the well-stocked supermarket (fore-
ground, Golden Wonder snacks!), skittles at the Swindon
sports club, snooker at Wills' Bristol club, and Wills' medical
department and recreation hall. Hartcliffe, with its
hairdresser and speciality restaurant, seems to reach the
heights of Brave New World with its boast that 'even the
kitchens received an award from Egon Ronay'.
44 Capital and Labour

But even without this, Wills, and the original Imperial

Tobacco Company as a whole, have a tradition of paternalism,
welfare schemes, annual 'binges', holiday outings, sports
events and 'taking care of', as well as employing, whole
families of workers. Later, a more modern equivalent of this
approach was added: the ideology of the 'human-relations'
school of 'job enrichment' and 'job satisfaction'. Whether or
not modern management still believed in this in the late
1970s,1 it was still part of the official rhetoric:

If people think of work as a drudge-ry and develop a 'roll

on Saturday' mentality, it is because their jobs lack satis-
faction and they feel their talents are not recognised ...
The human factor must be uppermost in our policies of
the future. 2

But the 'human factor' is not, nor can it be, the 'upper-
most policy of the future' in a capitalist economy. After all,
at Hartcliffe, in spite of the fine amenities, the air condition-
ing in the cigarette production hall had to be geared to the
optimum moisture and temperature for tobacco, not people.
The actual conditions of labour are dominated by no other
priorities than those of maximum productivity, efficiency
and profitability. And to achieve these work becomes ever
more intensified.

Productivity deals - the background

In 1968 the Donovan Report on Trade Unions and
Employers' Associations concluded that: 'The central defect
in British industrial relations is the disorder in factory and
workshop relations and pay structures promoted by the
conflict between the formal and informal systems.'3
By the early 1960s the twenty-year post-war boom in
Britain was showing cracks. 4 In them leered the image of the
'lazy British worker' who had 'never had it so good', and who
took the blame from the media for the ills of the economy.
Management was showing growing concern about the cost of
labour and the low level of productivity. Compared with the
 The Employers' Strategy 45

USA, Britain was called a 'half-time country',s and indeed

there were rough estimates that there was a growing 'produc-
tivity gap' of between a half and one-third between the two
countries. Britain's over-all prospects compared with the
other major industrial competitors looked equally grim:
between 1963 and 1966 the average annual increase in
output per head remained round 2.5 per cent, as it had been
between 1957 and 1964; in France it was 5.3 per cent, in
West Germany 4.7 per cent, in Italy 5.7 per cent, in Japan
8 per cent. 6 Something had to be done.
Despite the increasingly manifest evidence of structural
defects in British capitalism, the Donovan Report and other
commentators diagnosed the root cause of the disease to be
in British industrial relations, and it was here that remedial
surgery was to be administered. The trouble was that the
workers allegedly had too much power, while the employers
suffered 'a progressive loss of managerial control over pay
and work, and therefore over labour costs, at plant level'. 7
For while working-class organisation was, as it always is,
uneven, the post-war boom of full employment had spurred
on the most advanced sections to build up a system of
aggressive shop-floor bargaining. This posed a serious threat
not only to the employers but also to the formal union
machinery, which, while increasingly centralised since 1945,
seemed to get pulled along by a 'runaway' shop-stewards
movement. One of the main 'symptoms' was 'wage drift' - a
growing gap between nationally negotiated basic pay and
locally negotiated actual earnings, including bonuses and
incentive rates. The latter, or 'supplementary', portion of
the wage packet was becoming more important than the
basic rate: not only had it grown proportionately from 19
per cent of the total in 1948 to 26 per cent by 1959,8 but
(worse) it was leading to 'leap-frogging' between local plants
and factories, and even pushing up the floor of national wage
claims in industries where there was not necessarily much
shop-floor strength. During the 1960s, the effect of wage
drift was estimated to raise wages by between 2 and 4 per
cent a year in British industry as a whole. 9
The 'disorder in factory and workshop relations' went
wider than this, however; in general 'creeping change' or
46 Capital and Labour

'creeping workers' control' pointed to the ways in which

shop stewards managed to exert some control over work
practices and work speeds. From the employers' viewpoint
it was becoming increasingly clear that the movement was
becoming too confident to risk outright coercion, yet at the
same time that piecemeal manipulation was not getting to the
root of the 'disease'. It was in this context that productivity
deals, first pioneered with 2,461 workers at the Esso oil
refinery at Fawley in 1960, were adopted as the remedy.
Productivity bargaining essentially involved the restructur-
ing of work-place organisation, and the development of a
10ng-telID strategy of tightened managerial control. Broadly
it involved 'package' deals which offered pay rises, greater
stability of earnings or other benefits in exchange for new
controls over work methods, pay systems and union
organisation. The key words were 'productivity' (greater
efficiency and flexibility of labour) and 'formalisation'
(formalisation of pay, and formalisation of trade unionism).
At local, factory level, the practice of informal, 'mutual'
bargaining between stewards and managers was replaced by
the new apparatuses of productivity bargaining - works
committees, productivity councils, and the like, all well
removed from the shop-floor. National, formal union
machinery was strengthened. As the Donovan Report put it,
the trade unions' institutional structure could be rationalised
in such a way as to provide 'strong leadership' - in other
words, a strong policing role over the shop stewards. But
equally important was the emphasis on union 'participation'
and 'joint regulation'. As Flanders somewhat cynically put
it: 'The paradox, whose truth management have found so
difficult to accept, is that they can only regain control by
sharing it. ,10 So the ideological level of productivity was a
vital element in its success: union incorporation, or the
cultivation of the union leadership's faith in enlightening a
progressive management, went hand in hand with a corporatist
rhetoric of producing for the 'national interest' and 'building
a better Britain'. 1 1
A key to the strategy of removing control from the shop-
floor was the alteration of payment systems. Piecework - or
payment by results (PBR) - had at its introduction been a
 The Employers' Strategy 47

very effective stick-and-carrot method of intensifying

exploitation. But now, under conditions of strong work-place
organisation, it had 'turned on its master'Y As another
source stated:

Piece-work systems encourage wage-drift, in simple terms

because of the apparent impossibility of objectively fixing
a piece-rate and management turning a 'blind eye' to such
'looseness' . . . Furthermore [this] acts as a catalyst to
other individuals or groups in order to seek a similar
increase in earnings potential. 13

A way to strip away this driving potential of PBR was to

remove bargaining over the rate for the job to an outside
umpire, the 'expert', preferably in the white coat of a
scientist. This was the crux of job evaluation, the method
used to introduce measured day work (MDW). Under this
scheme a worker's earnings no longer hinged on how much,
through strength of organisation, he could win but on some
'objectively' defined criterion of how much the job was
'worth'. While the application of so-called 'science' to control
the labour process was certainly not new (witness the growth
of Taylorism, 'scientific management' and time-and-motion
study earlier this century) ,14 what was new was the
systematic analysis of jobs into 'profiles' which were then
given a price. The most commonly used system is 'points
rating', by which a range of what are regarded as the most
important requirements of a job are given 'points', added up
and given a grade. The highly arbitrary, value-loaded and non-
scientific nature of this exercise is discussed later in this
chapter and has long been noted by orthodox industrial
sociologists: 'However much care is taken, the fact remains
that the factor plan system of job evaluation is not only time
consuming, but gives a spurious air of objectivity to an
intensely subjective matter. ,15
But such judgements have had little impact on manage-
ment practice, where the convenience of job evaluation for
well-regulated industrial relations can be used as an argument
to outweigh considerations of 'scientific' validity. Thus an
Imperial Tobacco Company pamphlet for employees argues:
48 Capital and Labour

Whatever system of Job Assessment is used, human judge-

ment is involved, but by using systematic procedures for
analysis and comparison, the possibility of errors in
judgement can be reduced. The relative values of all jobs
covered by the Job Assessment Scheme can therefore be
established on a sound and equitable basis. 16

MDW and job evaluation tightened management control

over the work-force in a number of other ways besides
removing bargaining power from the shop-floor. Most
schemes replaced a wide range of pay rates by a small number
of grades; short upward pay steps were prevented by the
much more difficult task of climbing from one grade band to
another, so wage costs were more easily checked. Second,
grading facilitated the flexible deployment of labour -
moving workers around, or altering their jobs. And while the
'points' system retained the 'divide-and-rule' element of pay
distinctions, its anonymity and apparent neutrality masked
the identity of craft and skill demarcations. These were the
traditional arguments used by workers to keep to a particular
job and control it. With grading schemes the foundations of
these arguments were stripped away and workers could be
moved around and told what to do much more easily. So
while demarcation and grading disputes continued, they were
fought on the employers' terms, in the language of job
evaluation, which for most rank-and-file workers was quite
incomprehensible.
Another twist to this 'objective' system was that grading
could also disguise systematic sexual discrimination. With
male and female grades a worker knew where he or she was.
An 'unskilled' woman worker on a 'woman's' rate could at
least point to discrimination and fight it. Now 'unisex'
grading can and does happily coexist with the Equal Pay and
Sex Discimination Acts, often institutionalising women's jobs
in the lowest grades deeper than ever, but making it far harder
to recognise and argue against. 17 Because of this,job evaluation
has paradoxically been an effective employers' device to avoid
implementing equal pay. As the Engineering Employers'
Federation reasoned during the long five-year period during
which loopholes in the Equal Pay Act could be sought:
 The Employers' Strategy 49

Where job evaluation is used it may be possible to minimise

the impact of equal pay by changing the work content of
some jobs significantly so that re-evaluation is justified.
Alternatively, the withdrawal of men or women from
certain jobs in the existing job structure may limit the
scope for parity claims. is

Today, if job evaluation is seen as the only available means

of seeking equal pay by trade unions, it can backfire on
them, not only by camouflaging continuing discrimination,
but also by letting through all the other parts of a produc-
tivity package: changed work practices, weakening of shop-
floor organisation and increased flexibility.19
To date, it is hard to assess how many women are covered
by job-evaluation schemes, since the Department of Employ-
ment provides no separate statistics for women. Aggregate
figures are hard to interpret, since they do not clearly
distinguish different payment systems from the use of job
evaluation or productivity deals in general. In 1966 about
half a million workers were affected by 'productivity deals',
in the broadest sense of written agreements regulating pay
and union negotiations. By 1969 this had grown to six
million workers, or about 3,000 agreements covering about a
quarter of all employed workers. 20 By the late 1970s the
figure was very much larger. According to a survey by the
Warwick University Research Unit, 87.1 per cent of establish-
ments in all manufacturing industries were covered by 'pay
and conditions procedures', meaning defined procedures over
pay, and fixed conditions. For the food, drink and tobacco
industries the figure stood higher still at 98.2 per cent of
establishments. 21
Whether or not the Donovan recommendations have paid
off in terms of increased productivity, in terms of the
'formalisation' of industrial relations, since the 'disorderly'
1960s the signs point to 'success', not only in numerical
terms - the number of formal agreements - but also by the
curtailment of a 'runaway' shop-stewards' movement in its
former strongholds, notably the car industry and in engineer-
ing. 22 But in other industries - tobacco, for example - the
effect of the general strategy of productivity deals was not to
50 Capital and Labour

overturn but to reinforce established practice. For in these

industries industrial relations actually anticipated Donovan:
formalisation and centralisation were already well established
during the 1950s, and shop stewards posed far less threat.
Here the employers tightened a control they already enjoyed.

Notes to Chapter 3
1. Discussions in 1979 with younger members of ITL management
suggested a more sceptical approach to the 'human-relations'
school and the realisation of 'job satisfaction' among workers, and
a more pragmatic recognition of the basic conflict of interests
between employers and workers held together only by the 'cash
nexus'.
2. Statement by the Chairman of Imperial Tobacco Ltd, Wills World,
September 1979, p. 3.
3. Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations
(1968) Report.
4. See Allen (1966) Militant Trade Unionism for an account of indus-
trial relations, government and employers' policies in this period.
5. See Allen (1964) 'Is Britain a Half Time Country', The Sunday
Times, 1 March 1964, for an account by an American management
consultant at Fawley oil refinery.
6. Nightingale (1976) 'The Sociology of Productivity Bargaining',
Ph.D. thesis, Bristol University. See also Nightingale (1980) 'UK
Productivity Dealing in the 1960s', in Nichols (ed.) Capital and
Labour: A Marxist Primer.
7. Flanders (1967) Collective Bargaining: Prescription for Change,
p.25.
8. Dicks-Mireaux and Shepherd (1962) 'The Wage Structure and
Some Implications for Incomes Policy', Economic Review,
November 1962, p. 42.
9. Nightingale (1976).
10. Flanders (1967).
11. See again Allen (1966) for the post-war development of this
rhetoric; see also Cliff (1970) The Employers' Offensive.
12. Cliff (1970) p. 46.
13. Coventry and District Employers' Association (1968) Working
Party Report on Wage Drift, Work Measurement. and Systems
Payment (popularly referred to as the Coventry Blue Book).
14. See Braverman (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital, especially
pp.85-124.
15. North and Buckingham (1969) Productivity Agreements and Wage
Systems, pp. 97-8.
16. Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Job Assessment for Factory
Employees, p. 1.
 The Employers' Strategy 51
17. See Hunt (1975) Organising Women Workers, p. 13; Counter
Information Services (1976) Women Under Attack, pp. 3-6; and
Coussins (1976) The Equality Report, p. 35.
18. From an Engineering Employers' Federation confidential document
published in The Sunday Times,4 February 1973, quoted by Hunt
(1975) Organising Women Workers, p. 14.
19. See Huws (forthcoming) Women Workers.
20. Department of Employment and Productivity Register, 1969.
21. See Brown (forthcoming) The Changing Contours of British
Industrial Relations.
22. See 'Leyland: The Rise and Decline of Shop Floor Organisation',
Socialist Review, 19 January-16 February 1980, Introduction,
p. 11 and note 10.
4
The Productivity Scheme

Our future depends on increasing our market share and

having the edge over our competitors. This involves con-
tinued investment in new machinery, and systems agree-
ments with the unions on effective manning levels
(Chairman ofImperial Tobacco Ltd).1

The proficiency pay scheme

The tobacco industry was something of a pioneer in the use
of work measurement and job evaluation in British industry.
'It seems significant,' argued a 1968 Prices and Incomes
Board Report,

. . . that the leaders [in job evaluation] are coal mining,

virtually a single employer industry, and tobacco manu-
facture, a trade dominated by a few large companies; in
both industries, more than 70% of their employees are
covered. 2

The Imperial Tobacco Company and the main tobacco

production unions, the TWU and TCWU, had established a
well-oiled machinery of joint consultation and collective
bargaining since the Second World War. As well as belonging
to the National Joint Negotiating Committee for the whole
tobacco industry, the company also had its own Industrial
Committee made up of management and unions. Wages,
hours and basic conditions were negotiated nationally. Union
membership was encouraged and facilitated by the 'check-
 The Productivity Scheme 53

off' system - deduction of subs from the wage packet. The

company prided itself on its good labour relations, co-
operation rather than confrontation. It was a fine example of
the Donovan Report's recommendations for stabilising
workshop relations: union participation, formalisation and
centralisation.
Job assessment had been introduced at Imperial Tobacco
in 1952 for men and in 1955 for women, resulting in a
payment system with 'job plusages' approaching grading, but
much more unevenly spread and much looser, because of the
widespread use of payment by results. That management
already had fairly tight control over labour costs in the
tobacco industry compared with other industries could be
one of the factors contributing to the comparatively low level
of wage drift in the food, drink and tobacco industries at this
time, as compared with, say, the engineering or car industries
(see Table 4.1).

TABLE 4.1 Estimated share of supplementary payments in

earnings for a standard week, October 1959

Leather, leather goods and fur 13.9%

Food, drink and tobacco 14.5%
Paper and printing 17.8%
Chemical and allied trades 27.1%
Metal-using industries 27.4%
Metal manufacture 29.3%

Source: Dicks-Mireaux and Shepherd (1962) 'The Wage Structure and

Some Implications for Incomes Policy', Economic Review, November
1962, p. 42.

Even so, wage drift, individual incentives and 'creeping'

workers' control were still considered problems at Imperial
Tobacco, and after one major reconstruction of the wage
system in 1963 a more radical move towards tighter control
and removing piecework altogether was adopted:

Direct incentive schemes are an inducement to employees

to challenge standards, because any increase in Standard
Minute Values they can manage to secure will give them
more money. . . In our experience the traditional direct
54 Capital and Labour

incentive scheme can be a brake on change. Fears arise

over real or imagined reduction in earnings. Either over-
generous payments have to be made to get the change in,
which can steadily destroy the wage structure, or the
change is held up by lengthy negotiations during which
time efficiency is lower than it should be. 3

Other tobacco companies had come to the same conclu-

sions. By the mid-1960s many, such as Carreras, Gallahers
and BAT had moved to 'consolidated rates' payment, forms
of measured day work using job evaluation. Competitive
pressure forced Imperial to join the race; by 1965, apart from
BAT, most other tobacco firms in Britain had introduced
productivity deals which offered workers higher basic rates
than Imperial. The door was wide open for sectional
pressures on piece-rates and an expensive period of wage
leapfrogging. The company looked towards other industries
which had taken the lead in 'stabilised wages systems',
particularly Philips Electrical Company, Vauxhall Motors,
Mars Ltd and ICI. They were particularly impressed with the
first, which combined stable payment with tight management
control over efficiency, using intensive work study, retraining
or demotion procedures, and strict supervision. After ten
years' experience, Philips stated that:

the proportion who achieve performance above the stan-

dards set, and the facilities they have for making change
and adopting proposed revised standards without difficulty,
more than offset any increased cost through paying a
proportion of employees at a level above that justified by
the performance achieved. 4

In November 1965 Imperial put forward proposals to the

unions for a system of stabilised wages to replace the existing
system of incentives, with two main provisions: 5
(a) to maintain and improve efficiency;
(b) to create a situation in which change could be made
within a sound and realistic wage structure.
 The Product£v£ty Scheme 55

The rudiments of PPS, the proficiency pay scheme (see also

Table 4.2), proposed in 1965 and established afterwards,
were:
1. Stabilised payments related to performance and job
rates were to be maintained as long as employees ful-
filled their obligations under the scheme.
2. Regular reviews of performance were to be made at the
end of four-weekly reference periods. If performance
fell due to factors beyond employees' control, stable
pay was to be maintained. If it were established that the
employee was responsible, a warnings procedure
followed by retraining, downgrading or transfer was to
take place.
3. Job assessment would continue, so that increased
productivity in any section of the firm would not in
itself be accepted as a sufficient reason for an increase
in earnings of those directly involved.
4. Work study and other methods of setting performance
standards would be continued and intensified. 6
Under the new job-assessment scheme, jobs were allocated
into four categories, beginning with the lowest-paid 'labour
pool', and then divided according to whether they were
machine-controlled or not. Within the categories, pay was to
be defined by the former system of 'job plusages' and varying
degrees of opportunity for 'proficiency pay'. The basic
payment system was measured day work. The added
'proficiency pay' for some jobs differed from ordinary piece-
work, in that it depended on highly monitored performance
standards ('grades') which had to be maintained over four-
weekly reference periods. Failure was sanctioned, so that the
'stick' was in fact as important as the 'carrot' in some types
of jobs. We shall see how this affected workers at Churchmans
in later chapters.
The pay structure was a vital element in controlling wage
drift and maintaining efficiency. But for Imperial the priority
was increasing flexibility and acceptance of change (which
were the strong points of Philips' scheme):

When management defined objectives for a new pay

scheme, they decided that the ability to make method
56 Capital and Labour
TABLE 4.2 The proficiency pay scheme (PPS) of 1965
Job category
Labour pool, including
employees not appointed to
jobs when not employed on
jobs in categories II, III and IV
II (a) Individual work: work in
which the output of the
worker is limited wholly or
mainly by factors within the
control of the workers and
which can be measured by
'work measurement'
(b) Machine work, in which the
opportunity is available to
the worker(s) to achieve
perfonnances appropriate to
proficiency pay above
'nonnal'
Individuals in this category
may work as small teams
III Machine-operating jobs, e.g.
Cigarette-packing machine
examiners and mechanics
Cigarette-making machine
examiners and operators
Tobacco-packing machine
operators
Cigar-making machine
mechanics
Cigar-packing machine
mechanics
Etc.
IV All jobs not included in
categories I, II, III (other
than Maintenance Depart-
ment craftsmen)
Proficiency pay grades and
perfonnance standards
One grade only - perfonnance
standards not set, but where
appropriate the numbers
required for ajob to be detailed
Standards set by work measure-
ment: average perfonnance - %
of standard over a four-weekly
reference period (Grade 5: 90%;
Grade 4: 95%; Nonnal: 100%;
Grade 2: 105%; Grade 1: 110%
and over)
Performance standards set by
work measurement [and main-
tained as measured day work -
author]
Where standards are set by work
measurement, normal profic-
iency pay related to 100%
standard perfonnance - for
group work, and indirect or
service work, the numbers
employed to be controlled by
management, according to
production requirements to
maintain perfonnances at or as
close to an average of 100% of
standard as practicable.
 The Productivity Scheme 57

changes or to introduce new and better machines was a

more important factor in increasing efficiency than
attempting to obtain the highest possible performance
from every individual. 7

It was this side of PPS which was most difficult to sell to the
unions, though the company was confident of the amenability
of a work-force already used to job evaluation and 'scientific
management':

Work study and other methods of measuring productivity

and quality have become widely accepted and our
employees are accustomed to the practice of setting
performance standards, fixing establishments and other
methods necessary for control. 8

Nevertheless, when it came to PPS a carefully timed

gradualist approach was adopted in 1965, aimed at co-
operation in 'p.articipation schemes' and experiments, rather
than immediate acceptance of the whole package. It was a
long drawn out, finely balanced exercise in industrial-relations
diplomacy. The company's trump card was offering stable
earnings to those who had previously suffered fluctuations
due to circumstances outside their control. But many
workers smelt a rat in PPS - especially in the 'retraining' and
demotion procedures, productivity rises without pay rises,
and speed-ups. Rightly they feared redundancy.
Negotiations were uneven. For instance, in 1966 the
cigarette-packing department shop stewards at John Player,
Nottingham, rejected PPS in principle and refused outright
to co-operate with the experiments. In some factories, such
as Churchmans, progress was at this stage smooth; in other
firms, such as Wills, there were regional and departmental
differences, and within a broad acceptance of PPS detailed
bargaining over work-study methods, job rating, performance
standards and especially application of the warnings pro-
cedures took place. But the company had two advantages in
the struggle: the very unevenness and divisions in the work-
force and, linked to this, the broad backing of the union
leadership (mainly the TWU). For while the latter bargained
58 Capital and Labour

over the details of the deal, it presented no opposition to its

fundamental aims, provided it could participate fully in the
design stages. The work-force was therefore left wide open
to sectional splits, arguing over the share-out of the packet
but not the packet itself. Thus craftsmen, and many women
who stood to lose their piecework, opposed it, while cigarette
packers, previously ineligible for piecework because they
were dependent on machine speeds, enthusiastically accepted
it. This, combined with the long habituation to job assess-
ment, and with a tactful and 'reasonable' management
approach, allowed PPS gradually to sink it roots. By 1968
around 70 per cent of Wills', 100 per cent of Player's, 80 per
cent of Ogden's and 80 per cent of Churchmans' workers
had not only accepted but were operating PPS. The few
outstanding opponents became more isolated, and more
internally divided, as they saw other workers benefit from
the improved basic rates of measured day work, and
eventually they fell into line.
PPS appealed to the union leadership not only because of
its offer of stable earnings but also because it simplified and
centralised union negotiations. By the end of the 1960s it
pressed for an end to 'experiments' and final 'consolidation'
of the scheme, for the raising of basic rates, pensions, over-
time and holiday pay, and for the inclusion of the annual
profit-sharing bonus into MDW. But an equally important
factor was the ideological component of PPS, stressing the
enhancement of employees' status. As with most other
productivity deals of the 1960s, management was keen to
emphasise that PPS was not simply a new payment system
but a whole new 'philosophy' of co-operation, shared respon-
sibility and trust. Thus:

The main point of the Proficiency Pay Scheme is to

remove the element of direct financial reward for specified
performances and provide conditions in which employees
may be imbued with a sense of responsibility and involve-
ment. It is hoped to create an atmosphere in which the old
barriers of mistrust and suspicion are absent and in which
any problems arising can be discussed responsibly and
sensibly.9
 The Productivity Scheme 59

And:

Is the 'carrot' of the direct incentive scheme still applicable

in present social conditions? In our affluent society, will it
continue to be of the same value as in the past? There are
indications that once a given level of earnings is reached,
other motivational factors become more important.
Individuals [now] look for something more than just the
wage packet. A greater awareness of status and their own
personal dignity develops, leading to a greater sense of
personal responsibility.10

The over-all support of the union leadership for this ideology

was well expressed in a talk given in 1965 by the general
secretary of the TWU (significantly at a weekend school on
job assessment) in which he outlined his general support
for PPS:

(a) His long term objective is for Workpeople to be treated

similarly to Staff, because he sees no justification for
assuming that Workpeople cannot be relied upon to do
a proper job of work for fixed money in the same way
as Staff.
(b) He appreciates that there is more to this problem than
merely altering the system of payments and he men-
tioned the need, if such a system were to be successful,
of
(i) A change in attitude of Workpeople. The Union
Officers must educate their members to this end.
( ii) The attitude of Supervision would have to change
because they would no longer be able to rely on
the driving force of Incentive Schemes.
( iii) Retention of Work Study by Management and
this must be acceptedY

PPS finally reached 'consolidation' in 1970. But while the

basic system of MDW, job categories and, for some jobs,
graded proficiency pay remained, the number and composi-
tion of job groups now became a matter for continual
revision and negotiation as the employers tried to 'simplify'
60 Capital and Labour

and the workers tried to 'expand' the job structure. In 1972

differentials between jobs were revised, and the total number
of groups cut to eleven; in 1974 a major job-assessment
review took place, and the groups reduced to eight (A-H);
and in 1979 they were again expanded to 1 to 10 - largely
under the pressure of craftsmen and engineers demanding
higher job groups. But in the meantime the success of PPS
and MDW as a whole came under scrutiny. 'Worker motiva-
tion' and slipping performance standards - always the catch
of MDW for management - were becoming a problem after
all, especially in those production processes lacking individual
or group incentives. So factory and company-wide produc-
tivity schemes were introduced in 1977, as management wrily
came round to the conclusion that, participatory rhetoric
apart, workers worked for money, and the 'carrot' was as
powerful a driving-force a'> ever. But the essentials of PPS
were firmly planted: tight management control over labour
costs and work practices, flexibility agreements with the
unions, and (subsequently) the main priority of a clear go-
ahead for technological change, speed-ups and rationalisation.
It was all these elements of the employers' strategy which
formed the basis of work experience for the women at
Churchmans' factory.

Control at Churchmans
GEOFF MORGAN (Training Officer): I feel ... if you keep
people reasonably happy - I don't mean I want them
dancing about in short skirts and no bras and what have
you and giving them ice-cream every ten minutes - you're
going to have a far better employee than someone who's
just come for the money.

Churchmans prided itself on its harmonious labour relations

and progressive management. It was company policy not only
to foster good collective bargaining but also to apply the
'human-relations' approach to careful supervision on the
shop-floor. Foremen and chargehands were trained not to
'talk down' to the girls, to avoid confrontations and aim for
co-operation. The idea that everyone in the factory, manual
 The Productivity Scheme 61

workers, staff, supervisors, managers, were 'workers' was

emphasised, with frequent shop-floor visits by managers who
(in their shirt sleeves) showed both a 'personal interest' and
a willingness to get their hands dirty. The close 'family'
approach was particularly suited to a small factory like
Churchmans, but it also fitted in well with the sophisticated
running of the parts of a giant corporation.
Yet behind the 'friendly relations' the girls had little more
freedom or control over their lives than in the days of the
iron-fisted boss. They did not need to be bossed, because
they had their hands tied anyway. Tied by the incorporation
of trade unionism into management and government through
a complex web of centralised procedures which were as
distant as the stars, their effects filtered down through an
invisible, unknown bureaucracy. Power and decisions were
somewhere 'out there', never in the factory, let alone the shop-
floor. (This is discussed further in Chapter 9.)
But they were hamstrung at another, very immediate level:
PPS and grading; for the jobs they did at Churchmans -
stemming, spinning, weighing, packing - were all 'job
category II' jobs. They all involved some individual control
over output, which before PPS had been simple piecework. In
those days they had some margin of control over how they
used their energy and time. As one supervisor recalled:

It was an accepted fact that you did a fair day's work for a
fair day's pay. But to the workpeople, a fair day's work
was about a 70 per cent day; the other 30 per cent of the
day was spent going forwards or backwards to breaks, or
getting ready to go home or something.

It was to extract this alleged extra 30 per cent of labour

time that the company tightened job evaluation and brought
in the time-and-motion men. 'Performance standards' were
set by work measurement, and a number of 'proficiency pay'
grades established. For management this combined the best
of both worlds in terms of control: the standardisation of job
evaluation and MDW, and the incentives of PBR. With the
minute hold of the labour process over the girls, small
62 Capital and Labour

wonder that supervisors could cultivate 'human relations'!

What this meant to the individual worker was becoming
tied to a particular grade which dictated the exact rate of
doing a job. To keep up demanded perfect 'economy' of
movement: in other words, not using one nerve, muscle or
limb which was not directly necessary to do the job. It meant
keeping part of the body still, and turning arms, wrists, hands
and fingers into a high-speed machine. Luxuries like turning
the head to talk or having a stretch were only permitted if
you opted for a slower rate and a lower pay grade, or if you
were a super-efficient machine.
'Performance standards' and the 'four-weekly reference
period' have already been mentioned. In practice, at
Churchmans this meant a girl was allocated to, or opted for,
a particular grade or rate within one job. If her output fell
below the precise amount required over a period of a month,
she was warned, then downgraded, and received the lower
grade of pay for the next month, regardless of any subsequent
improvement. Only after she had 'proved herself' over
another month could she be reinstated to the higher grade; in
the meantime she would be working at the lower pay grade
and therefore at a highly intensified rate of exploitation. This
threat of demotion hung over every girl and secured her more
tightly to her job than the strictest supervision. It guaranteed
stability of output to the company, stability of earnings to
those who could keep up and stability of downgrading to
those who could not. This was the classic iron fist beneath
the velvet glove.

Grading or degrading?
Before examining the wider processes linking women's
consciousness and experience to their organisation and
susceptibilities to tight managerial control, it is worth looking
in more detail at the ways in which job evaluation and
grading both reflect and reinforce their subordinate position
in the labour market.
At Imperial Tobacco a common grading structure for men
and women was introduced in 1972 to replace separate male
and female grades. This coincided with a time-table to
 TABLE 4.3 Imperilll Tobacco Ltd: comparison o/women's average weekly earnings with those
o/men, 1973 and 1978

1973 Men Women Total Women's wa!fes

as % of men's
Number of weekly-
paid factory workers* 6,500 10,500 17,000
Total wage bill (.£) 13,000,000 12,600,000 25,600,000
Average annual
wage (.£) 2,000 1,200
60
Average weekly
wage (.£) 38.46 23
}
1978 Men Women Total Women's wages
as % of men's
Number of weekly-
paid factory workers* 5,800 7,800 13,600
Total wage bill (.£) 24,900,000 22,100,000 47,000,000
Average annual
wage (.£) 4,293 2,833
65
Average weekly }
wage (.£) 82 54.48

*Including part-time as well as fun-time workers.

Source: Imperial Tobacco Ltd figures.
64 Capital and Labour

TABLE 4.4 Women's earnings as percentage a/men's in the UK,

1971 and 1976

Women's average weekly Manual Non-manual All

earnings as % of men's (%) (%) (%)

1971 52 50.6 55.6

1976 60.5 59.8 64.3

Source: Central Statistical Office, New Earnings Surveys, 1971 and 1976.

achieve equal pay in four stages by 1975, during which

another anomaly - the age for adult pay - was to be
equalised at 20 years of age for both sexes. 12 Together with a
policy of equal opportunities, the new scheme was theoreti-
cally free of all sex discrimination (bar one case of staff grade
at Wills, Bristol, which was settled in 1976).13 But while pay
rates in each job group were the same, and indeed there were
some women who earned more than men, figures on average
earnings were no different from the national picture (see
Tables 4.3 and 4.4). While women's average weekly earnings
as a percentage of men's showed some improvement from
1973 to 1978 (60 to 65 per cent), this was far from being
'equality'. And, although women's relative position at
Imperial appeared better than the general trend in the early
1970s, the percentage improvement after equal-pay
legislation was smaller.
The interpretation of earnings figures is complex, taking
into account factors such as hours worked, full-time and
part-time workers, overtime hours and rates, age, sick pay
and 'fringe benefits'. But a glance at Table 4.5 (p. 66) provides
the most convincing explanation for the continuing disparity
between men's and women's earnings: the majority of
women workers were in the four lowest job groups, three-
quarters of the total in the bottom three. Whatever the equal-
pay legislation, whatever the formal equal opportunities and
formal non-discrimination, women, the main bulk of the
labour force, did low-grade, low-paid 'women's work'.14
Obviously this is a question of economic forces, and will
be briefly discussed in the next chapter. At the subjective
level the problem is that women do not take up 'equal
 The Productivity Scheme 65

opportunities' in any large numbers. Few women at Imperial

applied for training or retraining as craftsmen or engineers.
It is common knowledge, confirmed by those at Churchmans,
that there are ideological blocks: some jobs are seen as
'feminine', some as 'masculine'. It is a question of socialisa-
tion, expectations, opportunities and training - and also a
practical question of time, energy and home responsibilities.

It can be seen that the market factors and ideological factors

leading to women's segregation in the labour force meet in
the systematic undervaluation of 'women's work'. Qualities
such as close concentration, accuracy and manual dexterity
which require obvious skill and training in craft or
technicians' jobs are relegated to 'natural' and untrained
'aptitudes' in women doing women's occupations. And
women's 'natural' functions, being family- and home-based,
areas which are traditionally patronised as 'mere' women's
territory, are hardly regarded as 'real work'. Like all judge-
ments of the social worth of work, judgements of women's
jobs are value judgements. It is the same with mental and
manual labour; manual work is systematically under-rated in
our society. And women's manual work, because it is
women's and because it is manual, is doubly under-rated. 1s
Social labelling dies hard. The irony comes when a system
of so-called non-discriminatory, 'objective', job 'measure-
ment', aimed at getting rid of the awkward 'interference' of
ideological judgements, succeeds in rooting them in more
deeply. If job evaluation in general is a mysterious science,
then the business of judging the value of jobs which (it so
happens) are normally done by women must be divinely
inspired. Table 4.5 shows the grading structure at Imperial
Tobacco Limited in 1979. One might legitimately enquire
why a job such as hand-stemming (in practice, female) in
Group A should be rated lower than security patrols (in
practice, male) in Group D? One job might hold more
responsibility or danger, but the other involves more patience
and physical discomfort. Why is a straight-line weigher (in
practice, female)" in Group B and weigher in a BUR as
described in Chapter 2), in a lower job group than a cigarette-
making machine mechanic (in practice, male) in Group E?
66 Capital and Labour
TABLE 4.5 Sample jobs and numbers of weekly· paid men and
women (manual workers) in each job group, ITL 1974-9 -
job-assessment scheme (1979)

No. of %of No. of %of

Job Sample jobs men in men in women women
group each each in each in each
grade grade grade grade

A Cleaners, canteen assistants,

hand stemmers* (E) 150 2.9 1,160 15.0
B Straight-line weighers, * hand
weighers, * machine strippers, *
fork-lift truck drivers,
'hogshead' service operators,
craft mate (E) 475 9.2 1,660 21.3
C Cigarette-packing machine
crew, cigar-making machine
operatives, quality inspectors,
laboratory assistance, mixed
packers (E) 490 9.5 3,200 41.1
D Tipped packing machine
attendant, cigarette-packing
machine No.1 crews (leading
hands), senior cooks, pipe
tobacco spinner,* HGV
drivers, security patrols, fitters'
assistant, air-conditioning
plant operator (E) 1,260 24.5 1,750 22.5
E Plain cigarette-making
machine mechanics,
dispatch clerks, cutters,
sto kers, craft assistants (E) 580 11.3 5 0.06
F Tipped cigarette-making
machine mechanics, storing
complex and reliquoring unit
operator, leading scaffolder,
operator power house (E) 900 17.5 5 0.06
G Cigarette-packing machine
mechanic, carpenters,
painters (E) 560 10.9
H (No production workers)
Fitters, electricians (E) 730 14.2

Total 5,145 100 7,780 100

Total men and women weekly-paid workers, 1979 = 12,925.
E =engineers (separate negotiating rights).
* = main production work at Churchmans.
 The Productivity Scheme 67

The matter is allegedly 'objectively' decided by the rating

committee, comprising the factory work-study officer and a
representative from management and the union (at
Churchmans, usually a man!). Table 4.6, for example, gives
the job profile of a 'straight-line weigher' in 1972.
With the impressive respectability of numbers, judgements
of value are translated into judgements of quantity. This job
has supposedly been scientifically labelled, ready to file
neatly away. But is there perhaps a tiny element of bluff in
the exercise? What were the criteria for allocating eight
points for 'job knowledge and skill requirements', eight
points for 'correct practice', and sixteen points for 'mental
requirements'? And why was there no mention of noise and
tobacco dust in 'working conditions' (zero points), or stiff
necks, shoulders and arms and frequent headaches (all of
which the Churchmans' BUR girls complained of) in 'physical
demands' (again, zero points)? And no points for responsi-
bility? How does the rating committee decide what is skilled

TABLE 4.6 Sample job analysis, 1972

Job: straight-line weigher

Department: packeting
Job definition: one of crew of six weighing tobacco on automatic scales
by feeding straight-line weighing machine
Description of duties: weigh varying weights by judgement, remove
foreign matter, clear up around weighing stations, protect rag
(tobacco, AP)
Working conditions: warm, clean, dry, well lit (0 points)
Job knowledge and skill requirements: know weighing procedure within
time cycle (8 points)
Mental requirements: continuous attention to weigh within short, fixed
time cycle, assisted by light (attention - 16 points)
Responsibility: supervised by foreman and machine attendant (0 points);
correct practice, accuracy (8 points)
Physical demands: sitting, continual hand and arm movement, visual
attention (0 points)

TOTAL POINTS 32 Job Group B

(N.B. Normal, average performance weigher gets 32 points (1972 figures)

- but she can move up or down a 'proficiency pay' grade by increasing
her 'performance' above 100 per cent ('normal performance) or decreas-
ing it.)
68 Capital and Labour

and what is not, what is 'comfortable' and what is not -

quite apart from attaching numbers to these qual-
ities?
This is not to argue that skill and other differentials do not
exist at work. But to attach spurious figures to the compo-
nents of a job merely masks the social and historical roots of
occupations and the fact that in capitalist society the price
of human energy and resources - wages - is fixed by the
organisation and strength of workers pitted against the
organisation and strength of the employers rather than
through a system of rational planning. Grading schemes
applied to women workers cannot magically do away with
sex discrimination in the labour market, even if in principle
they are supposed to provide 'unisex' jobs. On the contrary,
they cannot be isolated from the whole system of industrial
relations of which they are a part - normally a productivity
deal - the way it is negotiated, and the conditions it imposes.
The fact that most women manual workers both occupied
and accepted the lowest job groups in the Imperial Tobacco
job-assessment scheme does nothing more than reflect and
reinforce the way that employers can exploit sexual divisions
within the balance of class forces.

The employers' strategy of control has been spelt out here in

some detail. This is because it is much more than just a
'structural setting' to a study of consciousness. For if the
competition of the capitalist market-place is one-half of the
equation in the employers' strategy, the other half must be
the strength of the workers for which it is intended. And
gender is no incidental factor. It is a crucial element in the
structure of the labour market and in workers' experience
and organisation. If the tobacco industry, and Imperial
Tobacco in particular, had long established a system of tight
control over its work-force, this was not just because trade
was 'dominated by a few large companies' (p. 52), it was
because the work-force was predominantly female and poorly
organised. The nature of the Imperial Tobacco productivity
scheme, and the way it was implemented, was both a product
and an explanation of the situation of the majority of its
employees: women. This process, the intervention of gender
 The Productivity Scheme 69

into the balance of class forces in social production, is what

we shall now look at more closely.

Notes to Chapter 4
1. Statement in Wills World, September 1979.
2. Prices and Incomes Board (1968) Job Evaluation, p. 10.
3. Harrison (1967) 'Proficiency Pays', paper presented to the South·
West Regional Conference of the Institute of Work Study Prac-
tioners, Bristol, March 1966, pp. 5-6.
4. Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Interim Report of the Sub-
committee on Incentives Policy, p. 5.
5. Hale (1966) 'A Consideration of Incentives Policy at the Imperial
Tobacco Company', paper presented to Bristol College of Science
and Technology, School of Management, p. 27.
6. Condensed from Harrison (1967) p. 6. To avoid confusion, in
Imperial Tobacco Ltd terminology, 'job assessment' refers to
manual workers, 'job evaluation' to staff. Job 'category' and
'group' refer to what we have referred to as 'grades' in job evalua-
tion, whereas 'grades' refer to proficiency performance rates
within the job groups.
7. Harrison (1967) p. 6.
8. Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Interim Report . .. on Incen-
tives Policy, p. 2.
9. Hale(1966)p.41.
10. Harrison (196 7) p. 6.
11. Quoted in Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Interim Report . ..
on Incentives Policy, p. 6.
12. National Joint Negotiating Committee for the Tobacco Industry
(1971) A Way to Equal Pay.
13. Bristol Resources and Rights Centre (1977) Equal Pay in Bristol:
A Short Survey of Some Problems.
14. The segregation of women's work into low-paid occupations and
the lowest grades of occupational ranges is confirmed in the
following studies: Department of Employment (1974) Women and
Work; Hunt (1975) Organising Women Workers; Counter Informa-
tion Services (1976) Women Under Attack; Equal Opportunities
Commission (1977) Women and Low Incomes; Mackie and Pattullo
(1977) Women at Work. At a broader and more theoretical level,
the structural reasons for this segregation are analysed in, for
example, Braverman (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital and
Barran and Norris (1976) 'Sexual Divisions and the Dual Labour
Market', in Barker and Allen (eds), Dependence and Exploitation
in Work and Marriage; Beechey (1977) 'Some Notes on Female
Wage Labour', and (1978) 'Women and Production', in Kuhn and
Wolpe (eds) , Feminism and Materialism.
15. See Chapters 5 and 6.
 Part II
Women Workers: Ideology and
Experience
5
Workers: So What If They're
Women?

Women's wage labour

KATE: I grin and bear it. If you want money, you have to
work.

JENNY: If I wanted to leave I can - 'cos I mean a load of

girls come up to me and say, 'Oh I wish they'd bum this
place down.' But I says, why don't they leave and they
says, 'It's only the money that keeps us here.' That's all
we're here for really.l

JOEY (male, future unskilled worker): It's just a fucking

way of earning money. There's that many ways to do it ...
Jobs all achieve the same, they make you money, nobody
does ajob for the love of ajob. 2

The women at Churchmans, as in factories all over the world,

were producing commodities. They happened to be handling
tobacco - but life would have been much the same had they
been making chocolate mints, cardboard boxes, or silicon
chips. For work was essentially unskilled, boring, repetitive,
alienated - something to be endured for the sake of the wage
packet at the end. And to this extent meaningless work, work
for profit, feels the same whether it is done by a man or
a woman.
Churchmans' employees and other tobacco workers at
Imperial were basically 'factors of production', undergoing
the experience of factory work, of productivity schemes,
74 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

grading, speed-ups - in short, the life of wage labour. And

yet in spite of this common ground between them there is
a world of difference between being a man and a woman
worker -- a fact curiously overlooked in most writing on the
'sociology of work,.3 In most studies women are glaringly
absent, if only because of the choice of occupations studied
- coal-mining, deep-sea fishing, lorry-driving, car manufactur-
ing, for instance. 4 Where they do appear it is usually as wives,
part of the community, rarely as workers. And even where
they are workers, they only happen to be women - a fact
which is not examined. A classic example of such omission
was the famous Hawthorne experiment in which it was
observed that workers in two departments of the US Western
Electrical Company behaved very differently from one
another: the fact that one group were women, the other men,
was never investigated. 5
At the other extreme, women are treated so much as a
species apart from male workers that all the common ground
of wage labour is buried beneath a heap of 'problems'
exclusive to women. It is asked why they work - something
never addressed to a man. Then, women workers are studied
as problems: to themselves in combining their two roles, to
their families, to the social services (as inadequate mothers
and housewives), and of course to their employers. Obviously,
there is some validity in the recognition that women workers
do face a double load of work. But more often than not this
'problems' approach, while sympathetic to women and
critical of their position in society, is largely concerned with
the waste of their potential labour power as a valuable
economic resource. 6 Women's oppression, and its relation-
ship to their exploitation as members of the working-class, is
not the issue at stake.
Only with the birth of the Women's Liberation Movement
and the growing confidence of organised women workers
since the late 1960s has such a critique developed. Much of
this has been vital empirical research prompted by the total
vacuum in official statistics on women's employment - their
occupations, pay, conditions, training, organisation, domestic
problems, and so on. At the same time, attempts have been
made to develop a theory of the structural position of
 Workers: So What If They're Women? 75

'women's work' - both domestic and also wage labour under

capitalism. What is the contribution of domestic labour to
capitalist production, and its relation to the extraction of
surplus value from wage workers?' And a linked problem, to
which we shall return later: Are women wage workers
members of a particularly disposable work-force, who can be
sucked in or blown out at the discretion of the labour
market? Are they increasingly part of capitalism's 'reserve
army' of labour?8 And are they rigidly stuck at the lower
end of the work-force - unskilled, low paid, with little
chance of upward, social mobility - because it is in the
employers' interest to maintain a 'dual labour market', with
a skilled, mainly male 'primary sector', and an inferior
'secondary'sector?9
To define the objective, material position of working-class
women in capitalism is obviously an essential part of under-
standing both how the system works, and what distinguishes
women's experience in it. At the same time, however, such an
approach remains sterile and mechanistic, without turning to
the question of consciousness, and, most importantly, action.
Perhaps surprisingly, while such information can easily be
gleaned from the chance conversation at the bus stop or
supermarket, and while much more is now being documented
in socialist and feminist publications, very little systematic
analysis has been done in this area.
An early pioneer in this area was Sheila Rowbotham,10
who explored women's oppression as expressed in female
stereotypes, women's dependence on men's mediation for
their self-images, women's lack of self-expression, and the
isolation and drudgery of house-bound existence. One
chapter, 'Sitting next to Nellie', broaches the problem of how
this experience enters working life, and looks at women's
oppression at work. It is not developed further, however,
since the book is only an introductory essay on women's
consciousness.
A more recent study, by Marilyn Porter,l1 explores in
depth the interaction of social class and sexual division, in
the context of 'two worlds' - the predominantly male world
of wage labour, and the female world of the home. Men and
women's own consciousness and experience are examined
76 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

independently and together in the way they collide in the

home, providing insights into the gulf separating them - a
gulf which continues in spite of women's own participation
in wage labour. Two myths in particular are nailed in this
research: that women passively reflect the views of their
husbands, and that women are necessarily a conservative
force. Many of the observations on the contrast between the
'two worlds' in this study are confirmed by my own.
However, the aim of the analysis is somewhat different.
Porter takes as her starting-point the significance of women's
economic dependence on their husbands in marriage, and
their exclusion from the world of social production. This is
an element of the present study, but the emphasis is
different: here the common ground of wage labour between
men and women, the interaction of female exploitation and
oppression, of their experience at work and at home, and
how this is likely to change consciousness, are brought more
sharply into focus.
Concentrating on women themselves as wage workers,
several studies have looked at the position of women in some
of the many 'feminine' occupations which reproduce the
patriarchal relations of marriage, or reflect women's
traditional work in the family.12 However, there has been
little or nothing said about the consciousness of women
factory workers. The reason for looking at women's factory
work in this study is that, more than any other 'unskilled'
women's work, it is comparable (in terms of conditions)
with men's unskilled work. The similarities of experience
were quoted at the beginning of this chapter: meaningless,
dull, repetitive, alienated work. Because factory work itself is
not especially 'feminine', in the sense that typing, nursing or
cleaning are considered to be today, it is possible to explore
undifferentiated, but female, labour power and analyse what
it is about being female that alters her experience from a
male worker. More specifically, instead of beginning with a
situation in which a woman's sexual oppression and class
exploitation are inextricably fused in the work, it is possible
to trace how they become fused, in the interplay between
experience inside and outside the work-place.
And to the extent that traditionally feminine 'white-
 Workers: So What If They 're Women? 77

collar jobs' such as office work are becoming deskilled with

office automation,13 and to the extent that deskilling and
'feminisation' of many labour processes in the period of
monopoly capitalism often go hand in hand,14 analysing
unskilled, women's factory production is of increasing
general significance.
This is not to say that there have been no studies about
women factory workers; and even if consciousness has not
been directly analysed, it has been brought in by implication
in several analyses of the possible connection between sexual
differences, work behaviour and collective actionY For
example, Lupton studied two workshops, one in a garment
factory, the other in an eni,rineering factory. In the first he
found that the women worked hard and exercised no 'will to
control' their work, while in the second the men regulated
their output and operated a 'fiddle' to stabilise their earnings.
Yet Lupton concluded that the contrasts were not due to sex
differences, but to the types of work and the traditions of
the factories as a whole: the men in the garment factory
behaved in the same way as the women, and the women in
the engineering factory used the same restrictive practices as
the men. A similar conclusion was reached by Cunnison in a
study of another waterproof-garment factory, suggesting that
it is not the gender of the worker which affects work
behaviour but particular technical, economic and social
conditions - some of which are to be found more frequently
in men's occupations than in women's. Studies of men and
women trade-union membership again come to similar
conclusions. Women employees have been consistently less
strongly unionised than men; yet all the evidence points to
explanations not in terms of the sex of the employees, but
rather in the nature of the work situation, and in particular
the size of the firm or plant. 16
But while it is important to emphasise how the operations
of the labour market, rather than 'innate' sexual differences,
affect work behaviour, these studies tend to neglect how
sexual divisions in the labour market and the experience of
gender might affect the experience of work. This problem is
more directly tackled in connection with white-collar
workers and with sexual divisions breaking class solidarity (a
78 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

question discussed later in the book).!7 Yet women, in

the relationship between their oppression and exploitation,
are not the explicit focus of attention in studies so far. It is
to this problem that we now turn.

Women in a man's world

That we live in a society in which men largely define our
world has been well documented in feminist literature. Until
recently history was largely written by men and about men.
Women did not exist - except as male appendages,
decorations and mothers.18 Language, the visual arts, the
mass media, force women to see themselves as men see them
- as sex objects, as wives, as mothers, as cooks. And it is this
problem which women experience as workers; whether or not
they actually physically work alongside men, their ideas
about themselves as workers are dominated by what they
think men think of them as workers. It is an ever-present
mirror which few men ever experience.
Stereotypes about women workers are still rife, in spite of
the growing volume of evidence to nail them. 19 For example,
one piece of research found that managers believed that
women were less likely than men to possess the important
employee attributes of good training, education and
personality, that they were unsuitable for skilled or technical
jobs, but had greater manual dexterity and patience, and had
an aptitude for dull, repetitive work. 20 This confirmed an
earlier study which also found beliefs that women were weak,
lacked leadership qualities, should not supervise men, and
accepted supervision more willingly than men. 21 At the same
time, others have found that women were generally indicted
for their instability, high absenteeism and high turnover, in
spite of the fact that this 'instability' was correlated with
youth and unskilled work in general, and went down with
age, as the period of child-bearing receded. 22 On the other
hand, women were considered easier to handle. Lupton's
observation that women workers were considered to be
'suckers' was confirmed by 65 per cent of Hunt's manage-
ment sample, who thought women were less likely to join
unions than men, and less likely to take industrial action.
 Workers: So What If They're Women? 79

Prejudice against women workers is by no means confined

to employers. Male workers, including active trade unionists,
have been shown to be extremely hostile to women workers.
In their study Perceptions of Work Beynon and Blackburn
traced how women workers became labelled as poor trade
unionists by male trade unionists, in a self-fulfilling prophesy
which turned trade unionism into a man's world. 23 This was
treated as a problem of solidarity in the case of six women
workers at 'Chemco', where male workers ended up on the
same side as management in wanting to get rid of them. 24
Another study found that not only were male employees
hostile to the idea of equal pay, but in four of the firms shop
stewards actively colluded with management's methods of
avoiding its implementation, while in another five they 'did
not protest'.25 Other workers' reactions to its introduction
included demands for transfers or upgrading, refusal to help
women with heavy work, and discouraging women from
asking for equal pay by telling them they would have to work
nights and do all the heavy jobs.

Men's images, female self-images

The experience at Churchmans bore out many of these
observations. The atmosphere was thick not just with
tobacco but with male stereotypes about the women. Not all
men were hostile; but the crux of their attitude was that the
woman's place was in the home, or in a 'feminine' job such as
nursing. As factory workers they were awkward, superfluous
- or downright problems:
DA VE (former shop steward, now a foreman): Well, I think
a woman, in the home or doing a nursing job and things
like that, is more than equal to a man. A man may be
physically more powerful, but I think we've all got our
different roles to play. But with this equal pay - I think
women are on a loser - especially in factory life. They'll
be priced out of the market.
JOHN (shop steward): You tell me - if you're an employer
and you pay exactly the same to a man or woman - which
would you choose? Well it's obvious isn't it - a man!
80 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

STEVEN (chargehand): Look at it this way. With this

women's lib, equal pay, women are talking themselves out
of work. Now, with a man, he's got a family to keep, he's
more reliable. I mean, men don't leave to have babies do
they? But the women do! It's not fair! If a firm had any
sense they wouldn't train a woman for a responsible job.
Not unless she can't have any children - that's fair enough
then.

So the logic of one argument was that women factory

workers were inferior as workers because they had babies,
and should therefore be paid less. But a twin theme ran on
familiar lines: women could be paid less - because they did
not really need it (it was only 'pin money') - this in spite of
personal experience that one man's wage was not enough: 26

STEVEN: Some women have to work. But 90 per cent it's

pin money. They don't have to work, they just say [whin-
ing voice], 'I shall miss the company.' All that type of
tommy rot.

There were also firm ideas about what constituted

'women's work' - routine, repetitive, 'fiddly' low-grade
work. Women were a poor employment investment compared
with men; yet would a virile man take their place?

STEVEN: When it comes to equal pay, an employer, if he's

got any bloody sense at all, will pick a man. [Pause.]
Providing, mind, that a man could do, could adapt himself
to a woman's job. Take weighing, for instance, which
you've seen these girls doing. 1 don't think 1 could do that
all day. Take my hand, for instance - my hands' too big.
1 couldn't do it, my hands aren't nimble enough.

DA VE: If a man wants to do that job (there's lots of talk

these days about society accepting the queer man and the
queer woman sort of thing) - if a man is effeminate, let's
put it this way, and he wants to do a woman's job, well if
women are willing to accept him, he should be able to do
that. If 1 was to tum round and start weighing, I should be
allowed to.
 Workers: So What If They're Women? 81

ANNA: Do you think it would be effeminate?

DAVE: Well, dextrous. Look at my hands - well, do you

think I could be a weigher? Look at yours and compare
them!

ANNA: Well, why aren't there more women craftsmen, air-

craft engineers or brain surgeons?

DAVE: Come off it - that's not the point! It's obvious,

isn't it? [Laughter.]

Management stereotypes also confirmed wider research

findings. In a reply to a questionnaire on employee-recruit-
ment policy at Imperial Tobacco, a Wills personnel manager
wrote: 'We want those who are not so bright that they will be
bored by the repetitive work, and yet, bright enough to apply
themselves to it and not risk injury on the machines.'
The general attitude that girls were conscientious but a bit
dull was echoed by the woman personnel officer at
Churchmans who was dumbfounded that I, or anyone else,
could possibly be interested in talking to 'her' female factory
workers, let alone learn anything new from them. Coming
from a woman, these doubts showed that patronising
attitudes to women workers are class attitudes, not solely
based on the male sex or 'patriarchal' views. Some members
of management were more sympathetic, respecting their
female workers as good, solid 'bricks'. But this was still
consistent with the stereotype of women as 'suckers', 'nice',
hardworking and easy to handle:

GEOFF MORGAN (Training Officer): They're quite happy,

they're in a fool's paradise. They've never had it so good.
If you make them that fraction over the mental capacity
(please don't think I'm denigrating them, I'm not, better
than me, a lot of them), they'd say it was too mundane.

ANNA: Do you think that's something to do with the

work?
82 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

GEOFF MORGAN: No, the work's got nothing to do with it.

It's their mental make-up.

But what about the women themselves? On the one hand

they rejected the male stereotype of the woman's place being
in the home:

EDY:Let's face it, you can't live on one man's wage now.
A woman's got to work if you want anything decent.

PEARL: If you want anything we have to work for it.

The phrase 'pin money' was about as meaningful to them

as an account at Harrods:

ANNA: Why do you work?

IDA: You need the money. Most men's wages aren't

enough.

BRENDA: It's the same, to decorate this house we've got.

With the three children, it's a bit difficult on one man's
wage.

VAL: For the money! What else?

But their expectations of pay confirmed their acceptance

of women's work as cheap labour. The Imperial Tobacco
Company offered the highest female rates for unskilled and
semi-skilled work in the area, and they were not only
satisfied but grateful. Their standards of comparison were
other women's low pay:

LORRAINE: I don't think I'd get another job because it's

such good money.

SUE:I think I'm lucky to be working here. It's very good

pay - for women. You won't get a better company.

PAT: We got good wages and it's an easier life than before.
We ought to be grateful for having jobs.
 Workers: So What If They're Women? 83
IDA: We think we've been well done by. Our money's
pretty good - they don't do so bad for us, Imperial
Tobacco.

Women's identification with low pay, and their satisfaction

with Churchmans' relatively favourable wage rates, were far
from simple, however. In fact, many plainly wanted more
money, because in spite of their modesty they found it hard
to manage. It was from the point of view of consumers that
they were dissatisfied - often with bizarre results:

EMY: Wages is all right here - we can't grumble. We could

have more, though - with higher rents and coal.

STELLA: Well, with this pay claim, I think the money might
just cover the prices going up. But if we can't get another
rise for another twelve months, it'll be swallowed up.

SANDRA : You know I thought it was good wages in here.

Well it is, I suppose, except for the price of flats and food
and bus fares.

At the same time, they were class-conscious inasmuch as

they had a clear conception of the unequal distribution of
wealth in society, and their position in it:

ANNA: What's this factory for?

IDA: Well it's for the bosses, the shareholders.

ANNA: Who gets the best deal?

RENE: Well like, we're at the low end of the ladder, we're
just working class.

ANNA: Could they pay more?

RENE: Yeah, I reckon they could, but it's their profits,

that's why they won't.
84 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

They were also conscious that their work created profits;

as consumers of highly expensive tobacco they were keenly
aware that the company was making money. But they were
unversed in thinking of themselves as producers; they were
only half in the world of wage labour and did not think
clearly in terms of selling their labour power, of a wage
contract, of the productivity of their labour, or of the 'rate
for the job'. To this extent they had no gut conception of
their exploitation:

ANNA: Do you think the company makes a lot of money?

SANDRA: Well, Wills's, I know Wills's made 6% per cent last

year on their production. Yeah - I reckon they make
quite a bit of money. We had overtime, not last year - the
year before, and we got quite a lot of work out. Well,
take for instance, one of those ounces of tobacco. You pay
50 pence for just one of them alone. They must be making
some money.

ANNA: Do you feel they're making money out of you?

SANDRA: [Long pause.] That's hard to say really.

This vagueness was not, of course, confined to the women.

But it did signify a lack of an alternative perspective in terms
of trade-union ideology, the wage bargain, or the 'rate for the
job'.
What was specifically female in the women's conception of
their wage labour was the fact that they still considered
themselves dependent on a man, and their pay as marginal
to a man's - even if they were single. To this extent
'women's pay' perpetuated the 'pin-money' myth, even
though the division of family income often meant that their
money went on the staple housekeeping expenses, while their
husbands' went into the bank for bills, rent or mortgages. 27
Satisfied yet dissatisfied, the roots of their dilemma were
highlighted by their attitudes to equal pay. This was an
abstraction in this factory as in most other sectors of
'women's work'. Although, as we saw earlier, the company
 Workers: So What If They 're Women? 85
had a progressive policy of abolishing sex discriminatory pay
grades by 1975, there were no men doing 'like' or 'broadly
similar' jobs. So women discussed the problem in terms of
the generalisations of the mass media and the men around
them. This revealed a double concern: with their position in
the labour market; and their stability in the family. Security
as cheap labour in the first was inextricably linked with
security and harmony in the home. Upset one, you upset
the other:

PAM: I believe women doing the same as a man should have

equal pay, but men will feel downgraded. I expect to be
supported by my husband if I'm married, but if I was
earning as much as him - he wouldn't feel he was support-
mg me - he'd be downgraded. And, if men do women's
work and women do men's, it'll also put women out of
work.

STELLA: They say about equal pay. But I can't see it

myself. Because they'll just put men into our jobs.

JUNE: Oh no, I don't believe in equal pay. Well from this

rise we're getting now, as soon as we get it, the cost of
living will go up. Well, equal pay will do just the same.
And we'll just lose our jobs.

They repeated the economic arguments they had read in

the papers and had heard on the television and radio:
inflation, new technology, pricing yourselves out of a job,
unemployment. And they were frightened - frightened and
guilty (frightened to lose their jobs, guilty for having them
anyway):

PEARL: A lot of newspapers are saying that with this equal

pay, companies will have to take on more machines with
fewer people.

EDY: And I think we'll have to give up our jobs; since the
war, more and more married women are working. Well,
don't you think a man needs ajob more? I think a married
man needs ajob more than we do.
86 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

They had no right to a job. From a position of clearly

rejecting that their place was in the home, they had been
buffeted by conflicting ideas into a full circle, suggesting
that, yes, in the final analysis their place was perhaps in the
home after all. The roots of this contradiction sprang from
their dual identification as dependent wives in the family
and as workers selling their labour power. Their oppression
as women explained and defined their consciousness of
exploitation as workers.
Yet general conversations about 'work' and 'pay' was one
thing; specific talk about how they felt actually working was
quite another. Here the immediate experien~e, the conscious-
ness as workers, clearly won. And what came out most
clearly was that oppression as workers was sensed most
sharply in terms of oppression as women in a sexual
hierarchy at work. The abstract problem of 'equal pay'
flashed into anger towards male mechanics who were visibly
doing nothing and earning twice as much as the girls. (The
machine operators set up the machines in the mornings, and
'maintained' them. This normally meant attending to them
only if they went wrong during the day.)
ANNA: Do you think you should get equal pay?

JENNY: Yes, because, be fair, like, we're working. Now you

look around and tell me how many men there are working.
They're not doing anything. They're just standing around.
And there's us, we nits, sat down working.

But resentment and resignation still went hand in hand:

RENE: I'd like to see some men doing the kind of jobs
we've got to do.

ANNA: Why do you think you're expected to do it?

RENE: It's your job, isn't it? I mean, men won't do it. I
wouldn't like their job, not a man's job. They wouldn't
do ours.

Where self-images came into most violent collision with

 Workers: So What If They 're Women? 87

male stereotypes was when their inner beings were labelled

'stupid' because of the stupefying work. If there was one
thing which made them explode, it was having their
intelligence insulted:

ANNA: What do you think of the work?

PATTI: It's boring. It drives you mad!

ANNA: Some of the management here think you're quite

happy, that you're not bored.

PATTI: Not bored! We tell them! Every time we're there, we

tell them!

RENE: They never listen, do they?

PATTI: I'd like to see them here. I'd like to turn it upside
down, see the Manager on a weighing machine for a week.

MARY: Not a week! An hour would be enough!

Yet at every point of potential challenge to their situation,

women's self-perception was held back by partial collusions
with the patriarchal and class stereotypes of 'women workers'
which met them wherever they went, at home and at work.
Their experience collided with popular belief.

Working women's 'common sense'

Class society is torn by contradictions. So is class conscious-
ness. Here we see an aspect of what Gramsci called 'common
sense', which 'even in the brain of one individual is fragmen-
tary, . incoherent and inconsequential'. 28 Working-class,
working women face a double yet interconnecting set of
contradictions: those of class and those of sex. Those we
have so far seen, concerning their perceptions of pay and
women's work, revealed they both accepted and rejected
their inferior position, that they were at once satisfied and
dissatisfied, that they lived an unresolved conflict. On the
88 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

one hand they were class-conscious to the extent they knew

they were at the bottom of the pile. Some wanted to 'tum it
upside down'. At times, this class concept of 'them and us'
was closely fused with their sense of oppression as women
workers: they, the working girls, told the men, the managers,
how they felt. Yet at other times - most often and
immediately - their oppression as women overshadowed
class relations, and a purely feminist consciousness erupted:
'They're just standing around. And there's us, we nits, sat
down working.' Then again, they colluded with this state of
affairs. Their concrete experience of work, their self-image
and self-confidence as workers, was constantly confused and
undermined by their awareness of being women and of their
role in the family. This was the essence of their 'common-
sense' conceptions of their lives. How did this happen?
If we take a materialist explanation of history and
consciousness, then clearly it is not good enough to argue
that women are the passive victims of 'false consciousness',
crushed under the weight of 'patriarchal ideology'. Popular
beliefs, while assuming the 'granite compactness of material
forces',29 have roots in experience. They do not persist over
time as hangovers from the past or as autonomous, self-
perpetuating ideological systems. 'Common sense', in
Gramsci's view, arises both from 'received' ideas and from
practice: from ruling-class ideology and from making sense of
the world of everyday action. And for working-class working
women this world is simultaneously that of social production
and of human reproduction: 30 the work-place and the
family. We shall look at the intermeshing of the two: first, at
the point of entry into the labour force (how do working-
class girls, prepared for marriage, make sense of their futures
as workers?); and second, at the experience of factory work,
once the double burden of wage work and family care have
become set patterns for working-class wives.

Notes to Chapter 5
1. A list of all Churchmans' employees interviewed or referred to in
this book appears on pp. xiii-xiv.
2. Quoted in Willis (1978) Learning to Labour, p. 100.
 Workers: So What If They're Women? 89

3. See Brown (1976) 'Women as Employees in Industry', in Barker

and Allen (eds), Dependence and Exploitation in Work and
Marriage, for a very useful summary.
4. See, for example, Trist et al. (1963) Organisational Choice; Dennis
et al. (1956) Coal is our Life; Tunstall (1962) The Fisherman;
Hollowell (1968) The Lorry Driver; ChihOY (1955) Automobile
Workers and the American Dream; Walker and Guest (1952) The
Man on the Assembly Line; and Goldthorpe, Lockwood et al.
(1968) The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behav·
iour.
5. Brown (1976) p. 25, referring to the work of Mayo (1946) and
Roethlisberger and Dixon (1939).
6. See, for example, Myrdal and Klein (1956) Women's Two Roles;
Jephcott et at. (1962) Married Women Workers; Yudkin and
Holme (1963) Working Mothers and their Children; and Klein
(1965) Britain's Married Women Workers.
7. Note 6 to the Introduction lists the main contributors to the
discussion in this area.
8. See Braverman (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital; Beechey
(1977) 'Some Notes on Female Wage Labour in Capitalist Produc-
tion', Capital and Class, no. 3; and Bruegel (1979) 'Women as a
Reserve Army of Labour: A Note on Recent British Experience',
Feminist Review, no. 3.
9. See Barran and Norris (1976) 'Sexual Divisions and the Dual
Labour Market', in Barker and Allen (eds), Dependence and
Exploitation in Work and Marriage.
10. Rowbotham (1973) Woman's Consciousness, Man's World.
11. Porter (1978) 'Worlds Apart: The Class Consciousness of Working
Class Women', Women's Studies International Quarterly, vol. 1,
pp. 175-88. See also Porter (1978) 'Consciousness and Second-
hand Experience: Wives and Husbands in Industrial Action',
Sociological Review, vol. 26, no. 2; and Porter (1979) 'Experience
and Consciousness: Women at Home, Men at Work'.
12. See, for example, Oakley (1976) The Housewife; Sharpe (1976)Just
Like a Girl; Benet (1972) Secretary: An Enquiry with the Female
Ghetto; Erzkowitz (1971) 'The Male Sister: Sexual Separation of
Labour in Society', Journal of Marriage and the Family; Gamar-
nikow (1978) 'Sexual Division of Labour: The Case of Nursing',
in Kuhn and Wolpe (eds) Feminism and Materialism; Downing
(1978) 'Towards an Ethnography of Secretarial Work', internal
paper for the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birming-
ham University.
13. See Counter Information Services (1979) The New Technology;
and Harman (1979) Is a Machine After Your Job?
14. See Braverman (1974) pp. 293-359.
15. See Brown (1976) p. 30 for a summary; also Lupton (1963) On
The Shop Floor; Cunnison (1966) Wages and Work Allocation;
Bridgewood (1978) 'Women Workers in Contemporary Britain'.
90 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience
16. See Brown (1976); Bridgewood (1978); and Turner (1962) Trade
Union Growth, Structure and Policy.
17. See Lockwood (1958) The Blackcoated Worker; Bain (1970) The
Growth of White-Collar Unionism; Beynon and Blackburn (1972)
Perceptions of Work; and Nichols and Annstrong (1976) Workers
Divided.
18. Rowbotham (1973) Hidden from History.
19. See Bridgewood (1978).
20. Hunt (1975) Management Attitudes and Practices towards Women
at Work.
21. Thorsell (1967) 'Employer Attitudes to Female Employees', in
Dahstrom (ed.), The Changing Roles of Men and Women.
22. See, for example, Wild and Hill (1970) Women in the Factory.
23. Beynon and Blackburn (1972).
24. Nichols and Annstrong (1976)
25. Glucklich et al. (1976) 'Equal Pay Experience in Twenty Five
Firms', Department of Employment Gazette, December 1976.
26. The Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth
(1978) Lower Incomes showed that when wives do not go out to
work the chances of a family in Britain being in poverty are almost
one in three; where wives work the chances are nearer to one in
fourteen.
27. Cf. Porter's 1978 articles referred to in note 11 above.
28. Gramsci (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 419.
29. Gramsci (1971) p. 404.
30. By 'reproduction' here I include both biological reproduction
(having babies) and reproduction of labour power (domestic
labour).
6
Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled
Work

Social preparation
That girls, especially working-class girls, come to see marriage
and a family as their 'career' has been amply documented by
a wide range of studies. This has often emerged 'by the way',
as in the British sociological studies of the 1950s which
looked at working-class life, and firmly (and unquestioningly)
located working-class girls in the family} But there is also a
wealth of research which does not take the acquisition of
gender roles, the female one in particular, for granted. Much
of this is in the fields of social anthropology, history and,
also, the psychology of child development and biology.2
More recently a new dimension has been added in the fields
of cultural and communication studies on the powerful ways
in which comics, magazines, advertisements and the other
currencies of the mass media both create and cement patterns
of sexual stereotyping. 3
In the current debate about the changing position of
women in the work-force the focus has turned to the school
and the education system, both because this is a key site of
skill and value formation, and also because it is here that the
crucial doors are opened or closed to the future, and the
process of class and sexual inequality sealed. While most of
the research has rightly concentrated on the class system,
within this the working-chss girl has emerged as getting the
worst of both worlds. 4 The priority given in official
education policy to the 'home-making' aspect of girls'
education gained clear expression and wide influence in The
Education of Girls back in 1948:
92 Women Workers. Ideology and Experience

She should be an artist in her choice of pottery, textiles

and furniture, in many cases she must be something of a
gardener and should have a working knowledge of what
little is known for certain in the science of psychology ...
she is the dominant, early influence as a personality on her
children and will affect their standards of right and wrong
and excellence. s

The same ideology was expressed in the 1959 Crowther

Report on 15- to 18-year-olds, and the 1963 Newsom Report
Half Our Future, on 'below-average' 13- to 16-year-olds. 6
As Sue Sharpe notes, in spite of professed changes in
recent policy the real problem is that there is a 'hidden
curriculum' in informal teaching practices which remain
rigidly conservative. For instance, working-class girls are not
only taught 'feminine skills' like needlework, cookery and
arts subjects, but even in the exceptional cases where metal-
work or carpentry are taught the emphasis on their other
work is on form rather than content: neatness and tidiness,
'feminine' attributes of 'looking good'.' From primary
school and right through secondary education it is the subtle
pressures of attitudes, teacher expectations, streaming and
motivation which converge to maintain the status quo so
that:

Like a self-fulfilling prophesy, the various 'labels' that

children fall under, like female, working class and black,
the particular school they attend, and the streams to which
they are allocated all channel them in certain directions,
often downwards towards low-level jobs. 8

It is not only the school's definitions, formal and informal,

which influence the eventual outcome of their pupils, but
also the interpretations girls themselves make. The existence
of 'unofficial systems' and school 'counter-cultures' have long
been recognised as having an equal, if not more powerful,
effect on pupil achievement than the official education
system. Working-class teenagers reject academic and, often,
even technical studies as irrelevant and useless to the lives
they know they will lead. They find school a bore. They stop
 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 93

trying. But already there are differences between boys and

girls:

Whatever level of jobs they are steered towards, [boys]

look unambivalently towards a working future. Girls,
however, are still schooled with the marriage market in
mind, although this may not be acknowledged consciously.
This inevitability in their lives provides as much excuse
within the school, as for girls themselves, for their ultimate
underachievement. 9

Studies of adolescent girls confirm this. Back in the early

1940s Pearl J ephcott noted:

A good many girls indicate that they do not really think

school work has any bearing on their future ... 'When I
was in the senior school ... I didn't really bother. They
don't teach you no more than last year and I was bored
stiff. I used to give out the tea and the milk. I wish they
taught you something a bit useful.'10

Now, the evidence suggests that many working-class girls

find everything boring, including the domestic subjects:

We did a load of cookery and needlework at school ... I

used to hate it.

Don't like school - too boring. They don't let you choose
your own subjects or anything in the first year. You have
to wait right until the fourth year and then the subjects are
not very goodY

There's plenty of time to study when you're older ... But

I'm not interested now. I like going out every night. We
like to have a good time at school. Play up to the teachers,
talk about the boys. They don't have any fun [i.e. the
middle-class 'creeps' and 'snobs'] .12

So they dream of leaving, romance and marriage:

94 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

We talk about boys, pop stars, getting married. The future.

I think most of me friends want to get married pretty
soon, y'know. Quite soon after they leave school. So we
talk about that. We imagine what it'd be likeY

Working-class girls immerse themselves in feminine attractive-

ness, fashion, romance, the teenage commodity market and,
ultimately, marriage.
And this process is accelerated by the sexual double
standards of their male peers, who squeeze them between
their 'brutal sexual mythology of masculine prowess and
bravado' and their exacting demands for fidelity from a
steady girlfriend. To protect themselves from being labelled
as 'slags' or 'tarts' girls must put their energies into 'capturing'
a man, for a long-term monogamous relationship - or find
surrogates in their best friends or pop heroes. 14 As for the
prospect of wage work, it is simply not relevant - at the
time.

Working-class girls and unskilled work

The one shortcoming of the research on gender stereotyping
and expectations is where it stops: at the crucial point of
entry into work. What happens now? From here the
sociology of youth employment and the 'transition from
school to work' takes over,1s but no specific attention is
paid to the dilemma of working-class girls. They are given
cursory treatment as a marginal sector of 'young workers'
whose 'difficulties' are undifferentiated from the rest of
'youth'. The central concern of these studies is the effective-
ness of the youth employment and career services, 'adjust-
ment' to work, motivation, and job satisfaction. They are a
frontier zone between the sociology of education and the
human-relations school of industrial sociology, with a
benevolent anxiety about the 'lack of fit' between the British
school system and the labour market. But the problem
hardly extends to girls because it is assumed that their
working lives will end with marriage. One recent study has
actually used this as a justification for looking only at boYS.16
Another displays an uncritical ideological bias which assumes
 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 95

that, because girls are conditioned for marriage, their subjec-

tive experience of work is less of a problem than for boys:

The frustration of careerless work creates more problems

for the men than for the women, although they may
generate similar levels of dissatisfaction and frustration.
This is because women can escape from work - even if
only temporarily - as they start a family.17

The same assumption goes unexamined for unemployment:

Prolonged unemployment is likely to pose less of a prob-

lem for the young women. In the first place, as we have
seen, work is not us'.lally as important to them as it is for
the young men. Secondly, the young women can contribute
to the effective running of the household through taking
over household tasks of various kinds which in some cases
may even free their mothers for work. IS

Quite obviously the dimension of sexual oppression is

totally lacking in this type of analysis; the fact that girls'
apparently 'unproblematic' attitude to 'careerless' work
might mask complex ideological conflicts, or that 'prolonged
unemployment' might reverse most of the advances won by
women workers since the Second World War, are totally
overlooked.
A much more incisive approach is one which explicitly
takes gender into account as a vital component of class
attitudes, and which particularly stresses the ideological
preparation for selling different types of labour power. The
dilemma for working-class girls bound for unskilled work is
set into much sharper relief if we not only examine their
social preparation for marriage but contrast this to the
positive, and in fact ironic, ideological preparation boys
undergo for a future of unsk£lled work. This is the subject of
Paul Willis's book Learning to Labour, which begins with the
provocatively simple question: 'The difficult thing to explain
about how working class kids get working class jobs is why
they let themselves.'19 The obvious answer would be: they
have no choice. But there is more to it than that: why do
96 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

many kids enter unskilled, 'grafting' jobs, apparently

willingly? The clues lie in the complex way 'labour power
is prepared in our society for application to manual work',
not just in the school curriculum but, crucially for working-
class kids, in the school counter-culture.
Many working-class boys, according to Willis, come to
'embrace' their futures as 'mere' labourers in a 'cultural
apprenticeship' with their peers which makes manual labour-
ing epitomise both their class and their male sexual identity.
When they come to enter work, instead of suffering self-
deprecation as school rejects, they experience the pride of
being 'men'. It is in the school that the non-conformist 'lads'
learn to reject official social condemnation as 'failures', and
to invert conventional definitions of 'stupidity' in academic
achievements into success in what matters to them: manual
labour, or 'real work'. This is where intellectual pursuits
become denigrated as mere 'pen-pushing', or not doing
anything:

Thus, the whole nature of 'really doing things', of being

physically active in the world of giving labour power in a
certain way, is seen by 'the lads' not simply as a defensive
measure, or as a negative response, but as an affirmation
and expression of what it seems has been genuinely and
creatively learned. 20

What Willis shows, and what is important to us regarding

girls doing unskilled, manual work, is that this practical
activity of 'really doing things' has, in our society, clearly
masculine connotations. 'Pen-pushing' is 'cissy' and
effeminate. The mental/manual split in the division of labour
is seen by working-class boys whose opportunities have been
restricted to unskilled grafting not only as a class antagonism
but also as a female/male dichotomy. Class opposition and
sexual opposition become fused, so that for these 'lads' class
identity in terms of fighting 'the authorities' is expressed in
terms of sexism and male assertion, of being the men who do
the work:

Thus physical labouring comes to stand for and express,

 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 97

most importantly, a kind of masculinity and also an

opposition to authority - at least as it is learned at school.
It expresses aggressiveness, a degree of sharpness of wit, an
irreverence that cannot be found in words, an obvious kind
of solidarity. It provides the wherewithal for adult tastes,
and demonstrates a potential mastery over, as well as
attractiveness to, women: a kind of machismo. 21

So the alignment of manual labour, class and gender

identity becomes the heart of male working-class machismo.
It combines toughness, combativity and virility, and for a
time at least comes to justify, even glorify, the brutalising
harshness of the work men are forced to do. For if this
revolt leads young men to agree to sell their labour power in
the way they do, it also paradoxically dulls them for a while
to their exploitation: 'This is, of course, the experiential
hook - the precise, unintended, unexpected reversal of the
conventional logic, which actually binds these kids into a
future of manual work.'22
The problem facing working-class girls entering unskilled
work is different. First, their informal cultural system does
not prepare them to sell their labour power, but grooms them
for marriage. They are steeped in a culture of femininity in
which wage work has little status, except for certain skilled
jobs, or nice, clean, respectable occupations, such as clerical
work.23 Second, unskilled 'women's work' has a lower status,
to both men and women, than unskilled men's work. It is
effeminate, to men, without being 'feminine' to women.
While heavy manual work can be culturally appropriated by
working-class men to celebrate maleness and machismo, the
so-called 'light' manual work of women cannot be subjective-
ly understood as in any way complimentary to their sexual
or class self-image. All it does is confirm further the
deprecatory self-perception of women as patient, passive and'
inferior creatures, fit for the mundane tasks of assembly
work and housework. There is no way girls can use the
cultural system of inverting the status of mental and manual
labour to confirm in their own terms the value of their future
in unskilled work. On the contrary, it is because of the boys'
clear-cut sexual interpretation of the social division of labour,
98 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

the clear demarcation between effeminacy and machismo,

that girls have to carve out their own meaning. This is where
their oppression as women compounds their experience of
exploitation as workers, and starts them off on a different
'gear'.
For the Churchmans' girls this meant they were not
'bound' to their work, in the sense the lads of Learning to
Labour were during and immediately after their 'cultural
apprenticeship'. They were immediately painfully aware of
the futility, the dehumanisation, the mind-destroying
emptiness of their jobs:

JACKIE (machine weigher, BUR): You're stuck up there on

the machine, and honestly, all you've got to do is wait for
the -little red light to go on, and then you've got it over and
over agam.

JENNY (labeller, BUR): When I first worked in here, I went

home and I see these packets coming down the band.

ANNA: Was it frightening?

JENNY: No, not really. It was just silent like. I used to sit
down and see the packets coming down the band.

They were closer to the consciousness of older men, for

whom any male glory in humping sacks about had long worn
off:

You move from one boring, dirty, monotonous job to

another boring, dirty, monotonous job. And then to
another boring, dirty, monotonous job. And somehow
you're supposed to come out of it all 'enriched'. But I
never feel 'enriched' - Ijust feel knackered.

Even when you're at home you see these fucking green

bags. Just lie back and shut your eyes and all you see is
green. 24

The girls were also very clear about the inferiority of

 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 99

'women's work'. As we saw earlier, comments about their

own capacities as women compared with men showed a
grudging half-acceptance, half-rejection of the conventional
'sexual division of labour'. They had already stumbled into
the female rut of 'putting themselves down':

KATE (stripping room): I can't imagine a man doing my

work. It's too boring for a man. Women have much more
patience.

GALE: Men'd go mad. It'd kill them with boredom! Girls

are expected to do that kind of thing. Girls are thought to
be the weaker sex.

So unlike the 'lads' of Learning to Labour, who began

work in a state of temporary euphoria, the girls, apart from
the 'kick' in having a wage, began on the defensive. Sexually
the label 'factory girl' did not give them as high a price in
men's eyes as a 'nice' job like nursing or typing, or a
'glamorous' job where they had to look good. And they
forced themselves to accept that they were at the bottom of
the labour market, both in class and in sexual terms.
All the same this was only one layer of meaning. It was not
as though they had no resistance to the whole system of
feminine ideology which seemed to go against them. First, to
some extent they borrowed the male cultural 'inversion'
which made manual work the 'world of really doing things'.
They developed their own identity, not as beings on the
periphery of social production, but inside it. As Engels put it,
'the first premise for the emancipation of women is the
reintroduction of the entire sex into public industry'. They
could develop collectively; they could strive for independence
as wage workers - as women wage workers.
But while the immediate experience of the work inevitably
'rubbed off' on to them, (we trace this in Part III), part of
this experience was also aversion to being 'factors of produc-
tion'. This meant they looked not just to the daily escape
from work, but again to a 'career' in marriage, as a total
alternative.
100 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

Marriage and the 'temporary stay'

ANNA: What's it like here [in the BUR] ?

JENNY: Hateful. To tell you the truth, I can't stand it.

ANNA: How much longer do you think you'll stay?

JENNY and JACKIE: Till I gets married!

JENNY: As soon as I gets married, I won't come back in

here.

ANNA: What'll you do?

JACKIE: Stay home.

ANNA: What'll you do at home?

JACKIE: Have a couple of kids.

Some accepted the possibility that they might have to work,

bu t grudgingly, as a last resort:

VAL: If I married and he wasn't getting very good wages,

I'd get a part-time job. I won't work full time, 'cos - you
work all day and then you've got to go home and work-
well, it's too much, really.

But there was the feeling that, whatever the realities,

marriage ought to be an alternative to having ajob. It was the
conventional wisdom: a married woman's place was in the
home. But it was also a rational assessment of the employ-
ment situation:

VAL: I hopes I'm out next year. I don't think I could stand
it much longer.

ANNA: What do you think you'll do?

 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 101

VAL: Get married. [Laugh.] Anything's better than work-

ing here. Well, most women gets married, don't they? Not
all of them works all their lives like a man. Put it this way,
I don't want to work when I'm married. I don't really
believe in married women working. Well, 'cos, there's not
much work anyway, and they ought to make room for
people what have got to lead their own lives.

The dreams of escape were cushioned in a feminine culture

as the girls tried to 'feminise' the ruthless atmosphere of the
production line. Romance permeated the factory. The
glowingly lipsticked magazine covers, the love stories, the
male pop heroes, the pictures of boyfriends, the circulation of
wedding photographs, all were a bizarre contrast to the
racket of the dark oily machines. I was frequently caught out
by the convention of rings: signet rings, friendship rings,
eternity rings - to be distinguished from the high status of
the engagement ring, next only to the pure golden sheen of
the wedding ring. Femininity and attractiveness were
endlessly discussed: fashion, hair, skin, bodies, diets,
slimming. One girl spent a third of her wages on a slimming
course at a, health and beauty studio. Then, personal life,
relationships and feelings, 'courting' and marriage - fidelity
and infidelity, freedom and possessiveness - all were
discussed:

GALE (single but courting): If he wanted to go out and I

don't feel like it, I'd let him go. You shouldn't bejealous
like that. But one thing I would mind was if he was a bit of
a Romeo. If I caught him at that, I wouldn't stand for it.

Sex, especially sex before marriage, and virginity were part

of this preoccupation, not in the sense of public bragging, but
more denoting a concern with reputation, decency and
monogamy, similar to the girls of Angela McRobbie's youth-
club study:25

JACKIE: I wouldn't be cheap, just go with any man. It's

terrible how you're with a chap, and he says he wants it
and you hardly know him. I wouldn't do that. Ah, horrid.
102 Women Workers: Ideology and Exper£ence

Not that they were prudish, or necessarily coy about sex:

RENE: No, I think it's up to the individuals what you do.

PENNY: Well- it's just nice isn't it?

And there was a certain amount of provocative hinting about

'how far' they had gone:

JACKIE: Can't have it more than once in one night or I get

tired. [Giggles.]

But most important was the long-term relationship and

having life clearly mapped out, with definite landmarks
towards the ultimate goal of marriage. Hence the vital
symbolism of rings:

PATTI: I've been courting for a year and a half, and I'm
getting engaged soon - well, Christmas eve next year. We
had to save for the ring - £38 it is. But we're not getting
married for about three years. Well I'm too young. 'cos
really, I think, we're not too young to get engaged - but I
mean, you've got to go saving and all that. But he wouldn't
get married till he's about 23, 24, and I wouldn't either. So
I think we're sensible there, like.

Babies were already important - even for some of the

youngest girls:

PENNY: It must be lovely to know what it feels like to hold

your own little baby.

JACKIE: Don't go putting ideas into her head - or she'll go

off and have one!

PENNY: I'd look after a mongol baby just the same as a

normal one. I think it's terrible the way some people don't
want to know their own babies.
 Femininity, Mam·age and Unskilled Work 103

Yet while motherhood figure in conversations, few girls were

as eager as Penny. Most valued their freedom and knew too
well from their own mothers what family responsibility really
meant. For the present, romance was all.important.
When they did talk seriously they were far from naive; nor
did they always take marriage as a formal institution for
granted. One or two were openly cynical, and showed an
astute and mature evaluation of what the future might hold
in store:

RENE: Marriage? I don't believe in it. It's just a piece of

paper. How much does it cost - £4? What's that - church
or register office?

They knew it brought little security:

PATTI: Well, a ring don't make no difference. It doesn't

stop a fella running off and leaving you, does it?

ANITA: I don't believe in marriage. It's just wrong for me,

anyway.

Trying to get to the bottom of what 'was wrong' was not

easy. The reasons were a jumble of bitterness about relation-
ships with boys, a desire to be different, but above all
reluctance to become dependent on a man. In spite of the
boredom of factory work, there were compensations: the
companionship of collective shop-floor life, and the wage
packet. They were outside the cosy, sheltered world of
daughters at home - and the future of the 'home' that they
were conditioned for. They liked to be independent.
These feelings were strongest among those aged between
18 and their early 20s, the 'older' girls who supported them-
selves in their own bed-sitters and flats. They were a select
but important minority who had opted out of the usual
pattern of living with their parents until they got married.
It was a luxury they could afford only because they earned
'good' money - and they did not relish the idea of becoming
housebound:
104 Women Workers: Ideology and Exper£ence

ANNA: Are you looking forward to settling down and

getting married?

SANDRA: Not for me, that's for sure. I know I won't have
all the luxuries I had when I was single having a family
round me, and I don't intend to be stuck in the home all
day. I intend to get out on a night time too, well, when I
can. And I don't intend to turn into a housewife all of a
sudden. I shan't change, not when I'm married, I don't
reckon. I'll be just the same as when I was single.

Deep down,however, the images of marriage and becom-

ing dependent housewives remained. Work, independence -
yes, they were important, but temporary:

ANNA: Are you married?

RAQUEL: That's an eternity ring, not a wedding ring. I'm

living with my chap now. I don't want to get married until
I've got a house. It's cheaper, if you're going to get married
to live together first, because one can save and you can live
on the other's wage.

ANNA: Do you think you'll stop work when you get

married?

RAQUEL: Well, not at first, I won't. But I will eventually,

yes.

None of the girls went so far as to conceive of themselves as

full-time, long-term wage-earners. They had little thought of
their lives as middle-aged women, or that they would want
to, or have to, work.
The idea that work is temporary adds to the tendency
among young unskilled workers of both sexes to regard one
'grafting' job as good as another, leading to high turnover in
a period of full employment: 26 'One of the most striking
facts about the life of the working girl ... is the number of
different jobs she tackles and the apparent casualness with
which she slips from one to another.'27
 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 105

The girls at Churchmans illustrated the point. Rene, who

was 24, started work aged 15. Her first job was at a chemist's,
which she left after two years because of the poor money.
Next she worked for two years at a tailoring factory but left
because she got bronchitis from the dust. She then moved to
an underwear factory, stayed for four years and finally
moved to Churchmans, where the pay was better. Patti, who
was 21, spent a year at a garment factory, two days in an
underwear factory, six months at a chocolate factory, six
weeks at another underwear factory, back to the first one for
two years, dole for six weeks, and then Churchmans. She had
sworn she would never 'work for tobacco'.
The net result of the high turnover, the focus on marriage,
the entrenchment in romance, prejudiced the girls' chances of
getting to grips with strategies of work-place organisation,
just at the time in their lives when they had the time and the
opportunity. This is something we shall look at more closely
later. At this stage it is again worth contrasting the situation
of the girls with that of their male counterparts. Young
workers, boys and girls, are notoriously difficult to 'pin
down' to wage labour, and therefore to serious union
organisation. The difference is that they look to different
adult models. Boys can afford a honeymoon period at work,
because they must eventually 'grow up' and knuckle under.
Even while 'messing around' they can begin to learn from
the men around them. Young girls have no such models; the
women around are housewives and mothers, not shop
stewards and conveners. If they miss their chance now, it is
twice as hard later. So a lack of commitment to work
becomes for girls a lack of a feeling of a right to work,
sustained by a lack of tactical sense of what to do about it
anyway.
This was vividly illustrated at Churchmans the year after a
series of rationalisations:

GALE: Most girls don't bother much about unions - that

sort of thing. Well it's not worth it, is it? Most of the
younger girls here, they plan to get married, they don't
plan to stay long anyway.
106 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

The rapid job-changing meant that girls were constantly

appeanng and disappearing, and redundancy was taken
flippantly:

ANNA: What did you think of the redundancies?

JENNY: Laughing. I didn't mind - so long as it wasn't me.

ANNA: What about her [Jackie, her friend]?

JENNY: Oh her. I'd mind if it was her.

ANNA: What would you do if it happened again?

JENNY: Well, you can't do nothing, can you?

JACKIE:Most of us won't be here long, see? You could do

something I suppose, but we don't bother.

The tragic irony was that the older women, who had
shared exactly the same illusions when they were young, had
not entirely lost them. Instead of warning the girls that work
might not be temporary, they sympathised with their focus
on marriage as life's 'solution', and if anything reinforced
their identification with the roles of housewife and mother.
The outcome was a shared female identity along a continuum
of different stages in a woman's life cycle. It meant they got
along together, but few lessons were passed on:
CHERRY: I always thought the older women would be the
bossy ones. But it doesn't seem to be like that here. They
all seem to muck in with the younger ones.
So if the girls failed to see that in the long run they could
spend most of their lives as unskilled wage workers, the older
women, who knew better, carried on the illusion of 'not
working for ever' - until it was too late. By then the rot of
poor organisation had already set in and they had already
worked away twenty or thirty years of their lives. By that
time the double burden of work had made it more difficult
to change anything - just when they needed to most.
 Femininity, Marriage and Unskilled Work 107

Notes to Chapter 6
1. For example, see Hoggart (1957) The Uses of Literacy; and Will-
mott and Young (1957) Family and Kinship in East London.
2. See Sharpe (1976) Just Like a Girl, especially ch. 2; Mead (1950)
Male and Female; and Oakley (1973) Sex, Gender and Society.
3. See the chapter on 'Reflections from the Media' in Sharpe (1976);
and also the work currently in progress at the Centre for Contem-
porary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University - especially
relevant here is McRobbie (1977) 'Working Class Girls and the
Culture of Femininity', M.A. thesis.
4. There is no room to chart the evidence here, but see again Sharpe
(1976) and her bibliography; see also Mitchell and Oakley (1976)
The Rights and Wrongs of Women, chs 5 and 6.
5. Newson (1948) The Education of Girls.
6. Sharpe (1976) p. 20.
7. Sharpe (1976); McRobbie (1977).
8. Sharpe (1976) p. 141.
9. Sharpe (1976) p. 130.
10. Jephcott (1942) Girls Growing Up.
11. Sharpe (1976) p. 123.
12. McRobbie (1977). See also the chapter entitled 'Working Class Girls
and the Culture of Femininity' in Women's Studies Group (1978)
Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination.
13. McRobbie (1977).
14. See Willmott (1966) Adolescent Boys of East London; Fyvel
(1961) The Insecure Offenders; Parker (1974) Vww from the Boys;
and McRobbie (1977).
15. See, for example, Carter (1962) Home, School and Work; Carter
(1966) Into Work; Moore (1976) From School to Work; and
Ashton and Field (1976) Young Workers.
16. Moore (1976).
17. Ashton and Field (1976) p. 102.
18. Ashton and Field (1976) p. 104.
19. Willis (1978) Learning to Labour, p. 1.
20. Willis (1978) p. 104.
21. Willis (1978) p. 104. This point is so important that it seems worth
while elaborating here: 'If a form of patriarchy buttresses the
mental/manual division of labour, this division in turn strengthens
and helps to reproduce modern forms of sexual division and
oppression. It is precisely because there are divisions at school and
work which operate objectively to [the lads'] disfavour but which
can be understood and inverted in patriarchal terms, that those
gender terms must themselves be continuously reproduced and
legitimated. If the currency of femininity were revealed, then that
of mental work would have to be too. A member of the counter
school culture can only believe in the effeminacy of white collar
and office work so long as wives, girlfriends and mothers are
108 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

regarded as restricted, inferior, incapable of certain things' (Willis,

1978,p.149).
22. Willis (1978) p. 103.
23. See the chapter 'A Nice Job for a Girl' in Sharpe (1976) p. 159.
24. Unskilled workers at 'Chemco' interviewed in Nichols and Beynon
(1977) Living with Capitalism, pp. 16, 17.
25. McRobbie (1977).
26. See Carter (1962; 1966) and Ashton and Field (1976).
27. Jephcott (1942). Note that this was during the Second World War!
In 1979 turnover of female manual workers at Imperial Tobacco
had declined; and with youth unemployment soaring among
school-Ieavers, and unemployment reaching two million, 'casual-
ness' would not characterise young workers' approach to work
today.
7
Married Women and the Family
Burden

The 'temporary stay' continues

BRENDA (26, married, 3 children): Well I'm not going to

work for ever.

IDA (45, married, 2 children, at Churchmans 22 years):

When you're young you think you'll stop sometimes, and
the years slip by. Time flies when you get older. Things
don't work out like that.

ANNA: When you started out here, did you think you'd
always work?

PEARL (40, married, 4 children, at Churchmans 11 years):

No! I never! I only went out for to get some toys for
Christmas for my children. Well, this firm was only small
and I got on with my work and they kept on for me to
stay. It was fun like, meeting so many people after being
on your own at home with the children. And it was the
money - that's what really mattered.

Setting out on a short-term job, getting trapped, learning the

unintended consequences of one's actions when there is no
going back, all are familiar themes of working-class exper-
Ience:

You're trapped in this job. Every man in this plant now is

trapped here, believe it or not. It might seem strange to
110 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

you, but everyone here is trapped. You've got to stay

whether you like it or not. 1

With women it is similar. The myth of ultimate escape

continues, even after marriage. Then the mists clear; but it is
too late. Life has gone by, the chances missed. Hopes are
pinned on the new generation of daughters escaping the trap.
but it is as individual mothers that they hope for their own
daughters. For working-class people doing working-class jobs
- for all the other daughters on the next machine - there are
no plans:

IDA: This used to be considered a marvellous job. It was the

main industry. But we've wasted our lives. I was never
encouraged. I had to come for the money. You should
encourage girls in school now - then there'll come a time
when they want to do something and they'll be able to.
I didn't want our Shirley to be stuck in a factory.

A system geared to accumulate wealth for its own sake

cramps and distorts the lives of those who labour for it. For
working-class men their exploitation shapes their oppression:
trapped in wage labour, overtime, shift work, night work,
hazards,2 there is not much time or energy for anything else.
Marriage and a family only tie them more tightly to the
system, as they struggle for the family wage:

You've got to grow up fast when you've got kiddies to

think of.

You know, when you're thirty with a wife and a couple

of kids in tow, the things you can do are quite limited
really. 3

As breadwinners, men become cut off from the families they

support; as oppressors who hold the purse strings over
women, they are also oppressed, deprived of children, of
domestic enjoyments and skills.
Women's oppression is the other side of this coin: the
 Mam"ed Women and the Famz"ly Burden III

privatised family becomes their cage, the men their overlords.

And as they continue in wage labour, their exploitation
becomes shaped by this oppression. As the dreams of
romance and marriage as escapes imperceptibly transform
into the double burden of work, their lives became crushed
and split at the same time, between home and work-place,
reproduction and social production, domestic labour and
wage labour. The quality and intensity of their work, the
wage bargain they can strike, their ability to organise, all are
subordinate to their role in the family. And it is not just a
question of the strain of two jobs, of running to keep still.
There are ideological conflicts which do not affect men
(unless they are unemployed or reverse roles and stay at
home). Women workers still feel they are housewives, even
when they are at work. At times they are pushed further into
this, at times punished for it. They serve two masters - the
employers and the husband - sometimes three, if you
include their 'brothers' in the trade union. And so, from
having started in unskilled work self-deprecatingly, now,
contradictions - and guilt, always guilt - take over. In the
meantime wage labour, which seemed temporary, becomes
peripheral instead, perpetuating poor organisation, exploita-
tion - in short, second-rate 'women's work'.

The housewife in the factory

Many of the married women at Churchmans had school-age
children. A few had young ones, but most workers were over
40 and had teenage children. Those with the youngest
suffered the greatest strain doing full-time work: they were
held by the money, but their turnover rate was high as they
left for part-time work. Those who survived for more than
two years generally relied on a relative, usually their mothers.
Home arrangements for getting the children up, breakfast,
collecting them after school and tea were complex and
cumbersome. Some had husbands doing nights and coping in
the mornings when they had already left for work, with a
friend or neighbour picking up the children after school. A
fortunate one lived with her mother-in-law, who cared for
the youngest and the two schoolchildren. She was deprived
112 Women Workers: Ideology and Experz"ence
of her children just like the majority of working-class fathers,
but still had the responsibility for the housework:

ANNA: How much do you see them?

BRENDA: Well, I see them up to 8 o'clock at night, that's all.

The strain showed. Women aged 30 looked 40: their skin

pale, tired and drawn. Little surprise they had no intention
of 'working for ever'.
What abou t the older women who had discovered 'working
for ever'? Most of the over-forties had been at Churchmans
for at least ten years, having had children in their twenties,
and then returned to work in their thirties. Many had been
there between twenty and thirty years, having started after
school, left for only three or four years to have children, and
then gone back. Although their children were older, they still
had the housework. A woman's work was never done:

VERA: Mm ... when you think you've got to go home and

start all over again. You've got to go home and do a bit
every night ... Or you can have every night off and then
work like hell on Saturday and Sunday. I'd rather do a bit
every night. But I mean, some nights I don't sit down till
about 9 o'clock.

The daily routine of most women began round 5.30 to

6 a.m. to 'do a bit of work'. They then had to catch the bus
and often wait for half an hour in case they missed it. Work
started at 7.30 a.m. prompt, but rather than risk being late
many got in at 7 a.m. for 'a cup of tea and a fag'. At 9.30 a.m.
there was a fifteen-minute break for a quick bite and a cup
of coffee. Lunch was between 12.30 p.m. and 1.30 p.m.,
during which some stayed in the canteen, but many went
over to Bedminster to do some shopping. Work 'finished' at
4.30 p.m., but of course started again. They shopped, caught
the bus, got home, had a quick cup of tea, cooked the tea
and did more housework. It was quite normal to have less
than an hour's 'free time', perhaps to watch television, before
going to bed ready to get up the next day - and start again,
the same old pattern.
 Married Women and the Family Burden 113

Home was something they brought into the factory. It was

always with them. After all, it was something more useful to
care for people and children than pack tobacco to go up in
smoke. But they not only talked about it: they lived out
their family lives at work, sometimes expressed silently in
distant. far-away looks, but sometimes aloud in detailed
sagas:

PEARL (talking about her daughter and grandchildren):

She's staying with me till the twins get bigger ~ they're
too small see, so I'm helping her with them ... I think,
while I've got her with me ~ well, I'm afraid to leave her
with the babies! [Laugh.] Well it's her first, see. You have
two put on you right away, and seeing they're so small.
One's still in hospital. They've got to be 5lb 80z before
they let them out at a month old. It's 'cos they're six
weeks premature. It was a shock to her to have twins. She
hadn't expected them. Not until the last. But the little
girl ~ she's lovely. She was the biggest of the two ... But
she sleeps all day and awake all night, and I heared her say,
I heared her swearing the night at her! So I don't know
how she'll be with two! She's not very big ~ she's only
7 stone 12 herself. Well, the midwife said she'd be coming
in every week till they're ten pounds . . . I said, 'You'd
better stay here then till they're that weight!' Give her a
chance to get used to them.

Men, too, are centred on their families and discuss them at

work.,4 But they relate to them differently: their family is
part of their concern as father and breadwinner. With women
it is the immediate, intimate and daily concern with the
actual processes of family care which penetrates and alters
their consciousness of work. Work is overshadowed by the
family.

Many sociological studies of the 1950s and 1960s concluded

that women's role in the working-class family had been
lightened by a more democratic division of labour with
husbands. 5 The evidence from Churchmans' wives and more
recent research, however, paints a less rosy picture. 6 Signifi-
114 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

cantly the contrast between male and female opinion on this

matter was sharp:

STAN (chargehand): All this women's lib stuff is stupid,

because I help my wife at home and most men do. Women
don't have anything to complain about. All these things in
the newspapers about women - they're just trying to stir
up trouble.

Superficially the women concurred, and liked to boast

proudly about how they shared their work with their
husbands. This is what the most 'egalitarian' picture looked
like:

ANNA: What about the home? Who does what?

STELLA: What, the work? We share it. Well, my husband

always does the kitchen, I never touch the kitchen at all.

ANNA: Cooking?

STELLA: Oh, I do the cooking.

ANNA: Always?

STELLA: No, sometimes he do it. He can't do very much.

ANNA: Washing-up?

STELLA: Oh, we share that.

ANNA: Cleaning the house?

STELLA: I do most of the house; but he does the windows,

you know, on the outside, and he looks after the car and
garden.

A closer look showed Stella still did most of the daily

drudgery of cooking and housework. And with most women
it became apparent that 'sharing' meant a limited delegation
 Married Women and the Family Burden 115

of specific tasks to their husbands, while they bore the

responsibility for the endless, undefined, niggling work. And
even this division often broke down - the women had high
standards, the men lacked the training and skill:

PEARL: My husband helps. When we had little children he'd

do all the polishing, and he always gets the coal in for me;
cleans the grate - I never hardly touch that.

VERA: I do. I do the work, because my husband used to

do it, or help me out. He hasn't got a lot of time anyway.
He says I'm too fussy. I goes over it again. So he won't
bother.

PEARL: You let things slide with men. They don't do it

like a woman.

VERA: Do you know if my husband wanted anything, he

don't know where anything's kept.

These full-time women workers still regarded themselves

primarily as 'housewives', their husbands as 'workers'. It
produced ambivalence: on the one hand they did not expect
help, on the other they resented its absence. There was guilt
for not doing enough, and resignation to doing too much:

ANNA: Can't you ever leave him to fend for himself?

PEARL: Ah! It's dishes! Dishes.

ANNA: Come on! It's just excuses.

PEARL: Ah! - you can't expect him to - not when you've

a husband on shift work. You've got to be there for him
to come home to meals. Can't expect him to do it. Oh! -
he's ever so good.

ANNE: But you work all day.

PEARL: Yes, I know.

116 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience
ANNA: Well, you don't have anyone to cook when you get
In.

PEARL: Oh, if he's home like when he's on 6 till 2 he does.

He's good. As long as I does it the night before, he'll put
it on.

ANNA: You have to do it the night before?

PEARL: Oh yes! Prepare it! [Uproarious laughter.] He

couldn't do that!

ANNA: Couldn't he?

PEARL: No!

VERA: Men take women for granted, see.

PEARL: Yes.

VERA: They do!

PEARL: You wait till you marry! It's surprising!

The collective 'laugh' about their domestic trials was a vital

release for their mixed feelings, and strengthen~d a feminist
consciousness and confidence that the situation was wrong:

VERA: Men rely on you.

PEARL: Too much.

ANNA: And what do you do?

VERA: Go a bit mad. [Laugh.]

PEARL: We all go mad.

VERA: We all go mad; you'll find that. They just take us for
granted.
 Mam·ed Women and the Family Burden 117
The fact that they could discuss and compare their exper-
iences at work together distinguished them from isolated
housewives, but did not, on its own, change things. To do so
demanded a radical transformation of their position as
women in the family, and this could not be achieved without
also changing their position as workers. Their oppression at
home and super-exploitation at work were different sides of
the same coin. The one led to the other in a vicious circle.
How could they break it? Where was the weakest link in the
chain? In the home, where they were isolated? Or at work,
where they had collective strength?
Marxists have, of course, pointed to the latter, where
financial independence and work-place organisation are the
preconditions for change: 'since large scale industry has
transferred the woman from the house to the labour market
and the factory ... the last remnants of male domination in
the family have lost all foundation'. 7 But things are not that
simple. Even at the most basic level of physical stamina many
women could only just keep their heads above water. And
some went under.

'Time off' - health and the double burden

Sf EVEN (chargehand): We get girls in here, that - 'I've got a

headache this morning, I'll clock out this afternoon.' But
I mean you do. For a blooming headache. You just can't
rely on them. Then, you look at married women. Atten-
dance, absenteeism, time-keeping. Well it's terrible, isn't
it? If they've got homes to see to, they should find a job
where it fits in for both. I'm going to be fairly hard on
them.

And so he was. As are most men who have never experienced

being a woman - having periods, being pregnant, bearing the
responsibility of homes and families, suffering that continual
drain on resources and energy borne of tension, conflict and
sheer overwork. At work, being victims of their biology was
bad enough, even for younger girls:
118 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

ANNA: Do they look after you here?

PENNY (Hesitant, embarrassed): Well, no; if you're ill

matron just gives you two aspirins and sends you back to
work.
EMY: No, that's what I thought, I 'don't think they do.
Like if a girl gets a period, she'll have an awful job to get
home.

Then there was the case of a woman who had just had a
miscarriage. She had been ordered to 'give out the work',
which involved carrying and lifting heavy bundles of tobacco.
She refused. She was told to visit the factory doctor to
explain her position. She thought it was her own business,
the f-actory should take her word for it, and not humiliate her
before a strange man. She refused. She happened to be an
unpopular figure among the girls and had no support. She
was sacked.
But older women with families had added problems.
Absenteeism was one response to the strain - as it is an
expression of industrial conflict for men:

I think this is what makes a lot of blokes take time off,

y'know. You might not really feel sick or ill, but you feel
a bit, you know, cheesed off ... I can't stick it sometimes,
I really can't. I don't know why.8

Only the reasons for the strain are different for men. The
work finally 'gets on top': the relentless pressure of hours
and overtime, shift work, broken sleep, disturbed appetite,
broken family and social life. But there is a slight compensa-
tion: most men' do at least have a refuge, a home to escape
to, a place away from exploitation. 'Time off' has a meaning.
For working-class women there is no relief, no escape. A
break from wage work merely brings them face to face with
a pile of work at home.
Many women found that weekends and holidays came
nowhere near their needs for rest. Some broke out in nervous
rashes, stomach complaints - a mixture of flat despondency
and raging panic. 9 So they tried to 'get on the club':
 Married Women and the Family Burden 119
STELLA: I think Dora's run down.

ANNA: She been working hard?

STELLA: No, I think she's fed up with work. I do, honestly.

I get like it sometimes, and I think, I just can't carry on
any more. I don't want to work any more. So I try to get
to the doctor, have a couple of weeks on the club and
come back feeling better.

The problem is, of course, that this condition is rarely a

diagnosable disease, especially by middle-class, male doctors,
unless they are exceptionally sensitive and sympathetic. So
visible signs were actually welcom€d:

EMY: The thing is, if the doctor'll put you on the club.

STELLA: That's it, yeah. I think you can make yourself look
ill anyway. I mean, I'm sure I've got overstrung sometimes,
and I've got enteritis. And if things get piled up at home,
and this has got to be done and that has got to be done,
well, I'm all strung up and it goes to my stomach.

Often, the effort to persuade a doctor to give them time off

was 'repaid' only by more time for housework!

IDA: I mean, that time I had that rash, I thought it was

coming in on top of me then. I think you need a rest now
and then, apart from your holidays. Because when you're
working and you've a holiday, you sort of leave every-
thing, your odd jobs that are piling up. Sometimes you
have to get on the club to do your housework.

But at certain times the oppression descended without visible

symptoms as a blank, grey depression, a hopelessness close to
breakdown:

STELLA (Very quiet): Sometimes I think I could throw all

this work out of the window. Sometimes it gets on top of
you . . . I just feel I want to pack it all in. I want to get
120 Women Workers: Ideology and Exper£ence

miles away. Ijust can't go on any more. I don't want to go

home and start getting the tea, but I do. It sometimes
comes on during the day, when I'm working or at home.
And then I feel I would like to go to the doctor and be
able to have a few days off, just to stop worrying.

But the doctor was blunted by queues of similar women,

isolated housewives and mothers, overtaxed workers, and
pages of glossy, coloured advertisements for anti-depressants
portraying harassed female faces containing houses and
bound by knots and chains. 10 Few women succeeded in
obtaining sick notes - hardly anyone understood how they
felt, or took their condition seriously:

STELLA: But he don't think it's that serious. So you just

carry on. I don't think the doctor knows what we're doing,
because he's never been inside a factory, I don't expect.
That you're tied by a clock, and that you want to get away
from that for a few days. I think doctors, they don't know
anything about the working man or woman, I'm sure of it.
I mean, how many doctors' wives have got to go home and
start doing their housework on a night time? Not many,
I mean, some of these girls in here, their husbands don't
raise a finger to help.

And so they soldiered on. They survived.

Survivors: the grateful, the stoical and the bitter

There were many women who were actually grateful they
could work. They never complained, they never asked for
more, they were hardworking. Such an attitude is also found
among the most oppressed men, especially at times when
work is.scarce:

Recrimination and regret dominate Ted's life . . . . These

emotions are healthy ones, at least in that they indicate
that men retain some idea of life having potentiality of
struggle and alternative. Far more shattering, and far more
shattered, are the few who, having been particularly ill-
 Mam:ed Women and the Family Burden 121

served by society, feel no sense of loss. Beaten down they

just feel lucky that they have a secure job with good
money. Lucky and grateful. 11

With older women who had experienced the loneliness of

being stuck in the home, and the lack of status of housework,
paid work was a welcome release in spite of its tensions:

ANNA: What did you do before you came to Churchmans?

PEARL: I just stayed home with my children.

ANNA: And what did you do?

PEARL: Nothing. I only just did the housework.

ANNA: What about the time spent at work?

PEARL: Well I've enjoyed every minute. More friends, like.

When you're home like that, you are lonely. 'cos like all
your friends are out at work - it's awful lonely, like.

This attitude was the management stereotype:

GEOFF MORGAN: They're perfectly happy here, because the

simple thing is, they're allowed to chatter all day about the
more ordinary things.

And to demand improvements at work was to 'moan'; wage

claims were greedy. People should be happy and satisfied
with what they had.
An associated form of consciousness was stoicism. Many
women prided themselves on being tough and indomitable,
and unflinchingly went from day to day, or job to job, each
unrewarding and ill-paid - the uncomplaining carthorse:

ANNA: What about you - you've been here for fifteen

years: what went before?

VERA: I worked until I had my two children, till I was

122 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience
seven months, and then I left for three months and went
out to work again. My husband wouldn't work see, so I
walked out. I worked for a pen factory, Robinson's jam
factory, the tramways, YWCA, the zoo, farming - all
sorts.

PEARL: She had a got at them all. She worked hard. But
she came up smiling, just as zf nothing had happened [my
emphasis] .

The pressure to put on a brave face, to keep smiling, is

strong among women. Stoicism is one way of maintaining
one's dignity and still carrying on; it is a way of rationalising
oppression, making a virtue out of necessity. But it is a brittle
and unstable consciousness. The long-suffering endurance can
crack, and show the uneasy stirrings of anger - a sense of
life's waste, a profound demoralisation, bitterness. Stella's
way of 'coming up smiling' was more sardonic:

STELLA: Well I'd rather be locked up in here eight hours a

day than locked in clink for twenty-four. I mean, I
suppose I do get a few hours.

Work was a prison. Worst of all, however, was looking back

on the past -- and finding there wasn't one:

STELLA: Me? I haven't got a past.

ANNA: Well, how long have you been working here?

STELLA: Let me see. Thirty-three years.

ANNA: Thirty-three years - and you say you haven't got a

past?

STELLA: No, I haven't. [Bitter laugh.]

IDA (Calling across): Everybody got a past!

STELLA (Laughing warmly): But not an interesting past,

 Married Women and the Family Burden 123

just a humdrum, day-to-day ... nothing ... I've wasted

me time. I should have got out years ago.

ANNA: What's it been like working here?

EMY: Thirty years of life here? I just had to put up with it.
This is a useless type of job - we've got nothing to show
for it.

IDA: No - you go and write your book and do what you're

doing. This is nothing.

These emotions (while uncomfortably deferential to my

'pen-pushing') were healthy ones, in that at least they
indicated that idea of life's potentialities, of alternatives, of
something better:

STELLA: You spend most of your life at work, don't you?

You should be happy. Because everybody has to work, but
I mean I don't know anybody that's really happy at work.

But in spite of the sparks of anger, a deep sense of

imprisonment was dominant. Again labouring men undergo
exactly the same deprivation at work, the same sense of life's
lunacy and entrapment: 'You come in here sometimes and
you think, "I'll do anything to get out of this" ... You think,
"God, what am I doing this for?" But next day you're back.
I think all of us are mad.'12
Again there is a subtle difference in the quality of this
consciousness of hopelessness between the men and the
women. With the men it was unambiguously rooted in the
exploitation of the job. With the women this was (as we saw)
extended into the home. And when things got too much
there was nowhere to run - unless illness and madness can be
called 'escapes'. But the claustrophobia could go deeper than
that. If men got home to recover, they could at least dream
up projects, get out, meet their friends. In theory there was
the pub and football even if not that many got there. The
women's world and horizons were so much narrower. They
never had the time or the opportunity to think outside the
124 Women Workers: Ideology and Experience

immediate family. Their prison was sandwiched between

work and home; and the walls seemed high.
None of the women explicitly referred to this claustro-
phobia, except in terms of ·physical and mental strain, or the
emptiness of factory work itself. But what expressed it most
clearly were their aspirations for a different sort of life. These
were of a very different nature from those of their male
contemporaries - also labouring away their lives in unskilled
jobs at a nearby factory:

The price of failure is a job at Chemco; quite a good job

'for people like us'.

Stuck up there, they dream of better things. They hope

for luck, they fill in football coupons, and they work out
new possibilities. Fantasy and strategy jumbled into
notions of possible futures. And running through many
of these is the idea of 'being your own boss'; to get a shop
or a smallholding. Notions of independence that belong
more to an era of cottage industry than the epoch of
international capitalism and giant multinational produc-
tion. 13

A few women might share these fantasies, but at Church-

mans I met not one. They did not think about action or
independence. They had less faith in the possibilities of
individual initiatives. If they filled in football coupons, they
did it in a group, not to set up a business but for a night out
with the girls. They had fewer illusions. They had not been
nurtured in the ideology of 'being their own masters', or
taking their lives into their own hands. In fact, they had no
concrete ideas of any alternatives at all. Packed tightly
between their two worlds of home and factory, surviving
from day to day, they could conceive of no practical strategy
of change.
So when they did dream of a different existence it was in
extravagant fantasies of getting out altogether: finding a new,
interesting, exciting world, far, far away from their 'hum-
drum, day-to-day ... nothing'. The smaller their real world,
the wider their imaginary one. So the picture of life was not
 Married Women and the Family Burden 125

concrete plans but travel catalogues of luxurious journeys,

restful holidays, lying back and being floated away:

ANNA: If you could choose, would you have things differ-

ent? A life you really would have liked?

PEARL: Yes, I'd like to travel ... I'd really like to go all
over the world and see all different places. I would, I really
would love that. If I had the money. Yes, it's nice I think.
Wouldn't you like to travel? I don't want to settle down
like. I'd like to be off -- I'd like to go to Egypt, I'd like to
go to all the tombs - Greece, anything like that.

STELLA: I would like to travel. Well, people talk about

Australia, or New Zealand, I'd love to go there for, say, a
month; I wouldn't like to stay for good, but I'd like to go
there. Or have a cruise around the world - something like
that. I'm a bit on the lazy side! I don't want to walk - I
want to be taken.

These are the fantasies of exhaustion. Everybody talks

about holidays, there is nothing unusual in that. But to refer
to them to the exclusion of all else, as projects of hfe, is
strange. The more exotic the pictures, the narrower were the
real boundaries. But in a sense the women indulged them-
selves very little in fantasies -- they were extravagant because
they never took them seriously.

But if so far women workers, young and old, have appeared

purely as victims of exploitation and oppression, this must be
corrected. For it is precisely because of these conflicts that a
new consciousness and meaning is carved out. As both
objects and agents, passive and active, the women at
Churchmans created their own form of resistance: a collective
shop-floor culture.

Notes to Chapter 7
1. Man at 'Chemco' interviewed in Nichols and Beynon (1977) Living
with Capitalism, p. 28.
126 Women Workers: Ideology and Experz"ence

2. But note, by 1977, that exemptions from similar conditions under

the 1961 Factories Act had been granted to over 200,000 women.
3. Nichols and Beynon (1977) pp. 90, 99.
4. See Goldthorpe, Lockwood et al. (1968) The Affluent Worker, for
an example of the 'home-centred' worker. Also Zaretsky (1976)
Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life.
5. For example, Willmott and Young (1957) Family and Kinship in
East London.
6. Ann Oakley (1976) The Housewife, p. 64, argues that 'the deep
separation between the lives of men and women continues to
structure marital roles'. See also Stellman (1977) Women's Work,
Women's Health, Myth and Realities, pp. 17-21.
7. Engels (1970) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State, in Marx and Engels (1970) Selected Works in One Volume.
8. Man at 'Chemco' interviewed in Nichols and Beynon (1977) p. 15.
9. Stellman (1977) p. 40.
10. See Hospital Medicine or the Lancet for examples of these adver-
tisements. Also Counter Information Services (1976) Women
Under Attack, p. 28.
11. Nichols and Beynon (1977) p. 186.
12. Men at 'Chemco' interviewed in Nichols and Beynon (1977) p. 17.
13. Nichols and Beynon (1977) p. 187.
 Part III
Struggle at Work
8
Shop-floor Culture: Resistance and
Incorpora tion

Rules
Churchmans, like any other factory, imposed discipline at
several levels. There was the tight hold over the labour
process, as described in job evaluation, grading and work
study. Then there was personal supervision in the presence of
chargehands, foremen and supervisors. And there were rules
- the written rules of the rule book, and visual reminders
stuck up on notices.
There was rule 7, against moving between departments and
'loitering on the staircases, in the corridors, at the entrance
doors or in the lavatories'.! There was rule 18: 'No employee
is allowed to enter any lavatory or cloakroom except the one
provided for his or her use.' And because of the unique value
of tobacco to the Exchequer, there were more rules. Like
rule 15, the 'right of search': 'Every employee is liable to be
searched at any time.' And rule 9: 'SMOKING is NOT allowed
on the Factory premises except in the dining rooms at times
prescribed by the Management. To enter or leave the Factory
with a lighted pipe, cigar or cigarette is prohibited.' It was
even a crime to possess the wrong tobacco!

No employee, whilst in any part of the Factory, other than

the cloakroom, is allowed to have in his or her possession
any tobacco, cigarettes, cigars or snuff, unless such articles
were legally acquired as a Gift from the Company or as
part of the regular allowance given by the Company or
were acquired by purchase from the Company through the
authorised channel of its sale to employees.
130 Struggle at Work

Many of the rules were for safety (not wearing dangling

jewellery), hygiene and protection of the product from
contamination, for example rule 16:

No drink, food or confectionery of any kind, flowers,

cosmetics, scents, emblems or handbags may be brought
into any Department, except for storage in a prescribed
place or by permission of the Management.

Hair combs and similar toilet gear: the combing of hair is

forbidden in any Department as is also the use of celluloid
(or similar) combs, mirrors, etc. No scented hair oil or nail
polish may be used in the Factory. Toilet articles must not
be carried in overall pockets.

All the same, while they were not unreasonable or heavily

repressive in themselves, like all rules imposed from above
they were reminders of the workers' subordination to
discipline. Bending or breaking them, like at school, were not
so much rational objectives as symbols of autonomy and self-
assertion.
It was in the context of their general powerlessness over
the labour process, together with these minute constraints
over 'how they went', that the women created their own
shop-floor culture. 2 Those elements of shop-floor life
formerly directed at asserting informal controls over the
labour process, that 30 per cent of the day which previous to
PPS had allegedly been spent in various strategies of indepen-
dence - 'going backward and forward' - were now gone. So
women replaced the rule book, as far as possible, without
conscious, deliberate organisation, with an informal code of
resistance to being turned into machines, to boredom, to the
humiliation of being ordered around. Only now they did this
within very tight limits. That is, without interfering with
production. Whatever forms of escape, distraction or
entertainment they adopted, tobacco still rushed through
their fingers, into the endless packets .and cartons, which
the machines rattled on. But at least it made life toler-
able:
 Shop-floor Culture 131
CHERRY: No, it's not too bad in here, seeing that I knows
most of them. It's not so strict in here. I expected a
factory to be a real dark place, hardly any lights, real
strict. It's daylight in here; I think that's why I likes it,
because I expected it to be worse than it was.

Or, as Willis put it, 'working class culture ... is not generally
one of celebration and mastery. It is basically one of
compromise and settlement: a creative attempt to make the
best of hard and brutalising conditions.'3

Bringing in their own world

These 'creative attempts' were largely about survIvmg the
mind-destroying boredom. 'Cutting off' or separating the
'inner self' from what is objectively happening on the
'outside' is one of the sorry 'skills' we are forced into, in an
existence dominated by alienated relations of production. It
is otherwise known as 'wishing one's life away'. Some girls
actually prided themselves in the art of switching off, pitying
those who were bad at it, and thinking themselves lucky to
be working at all:

RAQUEL: Ves, you get bored sitting up here, very bored ...
Vou gets used to it, though. I think it's imagination a lot
of the time. I get fed up sometimes, but I don't really get
that fed up, because I haven't really got anything to be
fed up about.

ANNA: What do you think about?

RAQUEL: Nothing really. I can sit up here a whole day

without really speaking.

In some departments, like the noisy and hectic BUR, it

was hard to block out the world, especially while concentrat-
ing on watching the little red light go on or off on the
automatic scales, and deftly adding or picking out a few
drams of tobacco. Yet some Grade 1 weighers in the BUR
had so perfected their robotic dexterity that their minds
132 Struggle at Work

somehow found room to function in other directions, like

looking at magazines or photographs on their laps while their
hands managed half a second's freedom from the tobacco to
flick a page or pass the picture across to a work-mate. There
were even some who accomplished the amazing feat of
reading a novel secretly. Such wonders of the human brain
were constant reminders of the endless resourcefulness
inspired by the struggle against rotting away.
Of course, there was some day-dreaming going on: mostly
it was about home; women with children worried about what
time they would pick them up, whether they would be late
or not, whether they could catch the usual bus and fit in the
shopping, what to cook for tea. Or, with younger girls, it
was naturally about escape:

RAQUEL: I don't really think about anything unless I'm

going out and then I think about what I'm going to wear.

Twice a day there was a reprieve from the grey sameness

of a working day: Muzac. (It was impossible not to be
reminded of Brave New World or 1984.) Too bad that it had
to be a deafening blare to be audible. But it was still keenly
looked forward to:

VAL: It's the best part of the day when the records come
on.

STELLA: 12 o'clock! Jimmy Young! They missed him twice

last week!

But the one great refuge from work was in each other:

JENNY: You've just got to be friends with everyone. Like

you might be doing your weighing on a machine, like its
terrible, isn't it, if someone's not talking to you. But if
you're talking to them and friends with them, its all right.

Friendship was important at all sorts of levels, from casual

mates to close intimacy. In the quieter departments, such as
the stripping room and the hand-packing room, talking in low
 Shop-floor Culture 133

voices between pairs created a soft atmosphere of personal

life, strangely incongruous with the speed and intensity of
work. Close couples were especially important, particularly
among older women, who distinguished them clearly from
looser relationships:

VERA (in the stripping room): We don't class each other as

friends in here. We just class each other as work-mates.

ANNA: Well, you behave as friends.

VERA: Well, no, not really, we're just work-mates. Some-

times you get one true friend.

STELLA: I've only ever had one.

VERA: That's it, you can meet one person in here and you
just go together and you're one true friend.

Ida and Emy were:

EMY: The best thing ever happened to me was I made true

friends with Ida.

IDA: Yes, that's the best thing.

But looser companionship was very important for stimulat-

ing discussion - where noise permitted. Conversations on
the shop-floor explored controversial themes such as sex,
marriage and abortion - mainly among the younger girls -
and child-rearing, psychology, the 'nature-nurture' problem,
health and the Welfare State among older women. Signifi-
cantly these were all part of the women's world of home and
the important business of caring for life. The split between
their deep involvement in these issues and their detachment
from their immediate activity again highlighted not only the
nature of their alienated work but also where their priorities
and conciousness lay. Among the older women in particular
(who had years of familiarity between them) there were long-
standing debates:
134 Struggle at Work

VERA: Pearl says if the children are brought up in a bad

atmosphere at home, it comes out in them. I don't agree.

PEARL: I think its inborn. Honestly I do.

EMY: How abouts children that are brought up good then?

VERA: I've got children and I've treated them the same and
they're all different. I've got a son and no matter how
much I talk to him, he just goes berserk with drink on a
Saturday. No matter how much I talk to him or taught
him, he still don't take no notice.

PEARL: Well, I've got three; and five grandchildren. Now

you look at a home where the children are allowed to go
anyhow, like, bring themselves up. You'll find that they
get in trouble. But I think if you've got a good, happy
home life, it comes out in your children. I haven't had no
trouble with mine.

VERA: Well, you're lucky, Pearl.

It was in 'tuning in' to these spontaneous discussions that

it became clear how women defined their spheres of respon-
sibility and concern. I quickly learned that interviewing with
questions on the factory, the work or the union were sure
conversation stoppers, unless, that is, these were on-going
issues or I persisted hard. Having said what they thought of
the work - 'OK' or 'not a lot' - what else was there to say?
They preferred to tum to other subjects that, ironically,
considering they were in the factory eight hours a day, they
found more familiar. Health - not just their own - was in
their custody; health and safety at work, rarely so. The
women confronted strain and the side-effects of exploitation
not at the point of production but at the point of consump-
tion, a fact which pervaded the shop-floor topics:

STELLA: I'd like to travel, but my husband's got ulcers.

PEARL: And mine has. I think it's like having meals all
 Shop-floor Culture 135

different times of the day. And then, I think it runs in

families. It's surprising how some illnesses run like that.
His mother - she had one -- was rushed to hospital. He's
very much like his mother. Did you see that on the telly
last night - about Frenchay hospital? Oh! - it was very
interesting in the casualty department: what happens in a
Bristol hospital in the evening. Oh, it was ever so interest-
ing. How there's only one doctor on at night and he's got
to see everybody that comes into hospital, and when it
quietened down he went to bed and all he had to sleep was
two hours. And a bad accident happened on the motorway
and they all had to get up out of bed.

The remarkable point about these preoccupations was not

just the subject-matter but the fact that the women had little
confidence in the social importance of talking about them.
They were convinced they had nothing interesting to say.
Again, they partially colluded with a sexist ideology
which segregated the world into the private, female half,
which it denigrated, and the esteemed public, male half. Even
in discussing obviously social issues, such as the state of the
National Health Service and the Welfare State, they still
agreed that they talked about the mundane - 'more
ordinary', as a male supervisor put it - things in life, not
'politics'. They were self-effacing both about the triviality of
their work and what in fact they felt was deeply important
to them. And this diffidence was constantly reinforced by
the men around them at work and at home:

GEOFF MORGAN: Now, take some of the girls here. I was

talking to a group of nice girls here - they'd make good
working-class wives, I mean, the very ordinary people who
live in council houses - and the simple thing is, they're
quite happy if they're allowed to chatter all day about the
more ordinary things. For example, if you went over to
them and started talking to them about Ted Heath, 50 per
cent of them probably wouldn't know who Ted Heath was.

However much women resisted this kind of patronisation,

it was with them all the time. One response was to break out
136 Struggle at Work

of the cultural straightjacket imposed on them. General-

knowledge games and quizzes were common shop-floor
pastimes. One supervisor kept an encyclopaedia under her
desk so she could supply famous names, dates and capitals.
This concern for self-education is not confined to working-
class women; it is one of the expressions of general working-
class resistance to having been rejected as 'failures' by the
education system and the dominant ideology - a process
demonstrated for boys in Paul Willis's Learning to Labour.
But it is arguably even stronger among women, because their
rejection is both by class and by sex. Favourite television
programmes among the women were again educational, and
took them into the outside world:

PEARL: That one with the coloured fellow, you know,

Love thy Neighbour. Now that's educational and it's
funny. And then I like, you know, answering questions -
the schoolchildren and the adults.

The women's own lives and experience qualified neither as

'political' nor as 'educational'. Instead of being able to
extend and generalise their 'private' concerns into social
ones, and integrate them into their working lives - in other
words, to develop an identity as women and as workers -
they were forced into an ideological ghetto. The paradoxical
inversion of values was bizarre: that collecting disparate
pieces of 'general knowledge', accumulating 'facts' as so
many commodities, was more esteemed than the whole
sphere of caring fO,r life. Yet women colluded with this only
at one level; at another they knew they were getting on with
the important business of life. But this was something they
shared only between themselves.

The mass media and the outside world

Women's 'privatisation' in their own world strangely boomer-
anged them into the outside world (a process examined later
in Chapter 10), so that their very exclusion and detachment
from the men's world' (in spite of being in it as workers)
gave them a wide, telescopic span of vision. With the
 Shop-floor Culture 137

important exception of younger girls, cushioned from

domestic cares and much more steeped in romance, sex and
having a good time, women were interested in what went on
in the world - but as spectators. This is the case most of the
time for the majority of 'ordinary people' - both men and
women. But women's lack of subjective identification with
the public outside world makes them most prone of all to
such passivity:

PEARL: Oh, I like the news, 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock on

lTV. I always watch the news.

ANNA: Do you think they tell the truth on the news?

PEARL: Well, it's generally the actual photos, ain't it?

VERA: They must tell the truth more than the newspapers.

PEARL: Oh yes - they tend to exaggerate and twist things.

ANNA:· Don't you think it's possible to do that with the

television, you know, by only looking at some things and
leaving bits out?

PEARL (Pausing): Well, generally, with the telly, its the

actual thing. Like you sees it actually happening.

IDA: I don't know - we've always had that argument

between the television and the paper.

EMY: Like one night, the news'll say forty killed and the
paper'll say sixty.

When I turned to discuss a demonstration I had been on

myself, they were surprised when I claimed that the
television coverage had distorted it, just as it distorts the
majority of industrial disputes: 4

PEARL: Well, you've got to be everywhere actually to know

what's true.
138 Struggle at Work

EMY (Pausing): Don't think we don't believe you. But I

never realised that it could do that until you just said.

It was only when a particular television programme

presented an alternative to the prevailing view that they
accepted that distortion was taking place:

ANNA: What did you think of the way the miners' strike
was reported on the news?

PEARL: Well, they didn't say much about the poor miners,
did they?

VERA: Only on the Frost Report. I like that because that's

the actual miners that got up and spoke. But as soon as it
got a bit overheated, he switched the cameras quick. I
noticed that.

ANNA: Do you think that's a case where the telly can

choose what it says?

PEARL: Oh, it can do there.

But in their eyes 'the News' was almost sacrosanct - exter-

nality was the overriding factor dominating their perception:

ANNA: Can distortion happen on the news?

PEARL: Some parts can be done like that, I expect, yes. Of

course we, the majority of people, do think the news is
reliable. See, you believe what your eyes see. But like with
that Frost Report, you always had both sides of the story,
for or against. That's why I reckon its a good programme.

While the serious side of shop-floor life had its place,

equally important and, in some departments which were too
noisy for sustained talking, more important were just
'mucking in' and having a laugh. When shouting across the
floor was the only possible form of communication, the
whole tone of life had to be different. In the BUR, drowned
 Shop-floor Culture 139
in the din of machinery, quick repartees and jokes broke
through the clatter and intensity of work. Or there were
practical jokes - teasing, messing around - anything for a
laugh.

Discipline and sexual politics

STEVEN (chargehand): These kids 0 f today, they've got no

sense of responsibility. I mean, when you talk to them,
they give you such daft answers. I say, if you want to act
like children, I shall have to treat you like children.

VAL: When we don't talk for two hours, I starts tormenting

them, pulling the rag about, muck about, sort of things. I
starts a row, with the Irish, you know, I picks on them,
only mucking about like, I don't mean it. But I get so
bored, I got to do something.

'Having a laff', as Willis points out, is a way 'to defeat bore-

dom, and fear, to overcome hardship and problems - a way
out of almost anything'.s
For young workers, having a laugh in a factory has much
in common with having a laugh at school. If factory rules
and chargehands made them feel like children, they might
as well live up to it. 6 Having a laugh was something between
the girls, but there was also the innuendo of bending rules,
poking at discipline, and pitching one's strength against the
supervisors. Where the supervisor was a woman the atmos-
phere really did resemble an all-girls classroom - from dirty
jokes to sheer goonery:

CHERRY (in the hand-packing department): What do you

think about polo? [Giggles.]

ANNA: Polo?

CHERRY (giggling up a pitch): Yes! The mint with the hole!

[Uproar all round.]
140 Struggle at Work

ANN: Want a banana? [Shrieks.]

CHERRY: Oh yeah - a banana!

ANN : Can I have it peeled please. [Fits of laughter.]

They then turn to Cherry, whose face is burnt red by a sun

lamp.

RENE: You've got radiation.

They repeat 'Radiation!' tirelessly, in an uproar of hysterics:

RENE: Only three weeks to live! Never mind, aye. What are
you going to do?

CHERRY: I don't want to be a virgin all my life. [A good

minute's uninterrupted ribaldry.]

SHEILA (supervisor; calling from her desk): I hope you're

talking in a proper manner up there, not being rude or
anything.

However, this was not nearly as good fun as when there

were men around. Older women recalled how during the war
they worked with the men:

STELLA: I worked with the young fellows then. We used to

have more fun - they chased us, we chased them, used to
gang up on each other, all sorts.

Now there were only a few men who came up to the BUR
from the dispatch departments, the machine operators and
mechanics, and the supervisors. Men, especially young men,
were a rarity. So girls took every opportunity to flirt, giggle,
tease, whenever they could. But the men they were in most
frequent contact with were their supervisors. And this was
the catch. For sexual banter and pranks became something
more than a laugh - it became the language of discipline:
 Shop-floor Culture 141
STEVEN: You see, I believe in a friendly basis. I believe in
saying, 'You help me and I'll help you.' But the environ-
ment of the girls has changed. This permissive society -
now these girls are changing with it. Well I'm afraid they're
not so mature, not so reliable as they used to be. That
makes our job harder.
The peculiar struggle over rules between male supelVisors and
girls was a complex, tense balance between confrontation and
collaboration: complex, because class control was mediated
by patriarchal control, and neither side of the relationship
could separate them; tense, because if either side went too
far in the sexy word-play, if the girls' flirtations turned to
disrespect or the chargehand's sexist cajolery went too far,
the rules of the game could snap. As we shall see, supervision
was a much more subtle exercise than it had been twenty
years earlier. For, in addition to the swing to a more
diplomatic approach, management had to contend with the
fact that girls and women had become more confident at
work. Since the Second World War there was full employ-
ment, and an enormous demand for women workers - and
the war itself had proved women's capacity. Times had
changed.
Before the war there had been 'Black Bess':
STELLA: Years and years ago, the forewoman, they used to
call her 'Black Bess' - she wore a black overall. Everybody
was frightened of the forewoman, and then some married
women come back [after the war], and they cowed her
down, and frightened her to death in the end. They used
to shout out, 'Here's Black Bess coming!' - wouldn't
have dreamt of saying that a few years before. But she had
you right down, the forewoman. You couldn't do this, do
that, you couldn't turn round, like she'd say, 'Turn your
head round', and 'Get on with your work' and 'Turn the
right way'. Well, the married women got back and she
couldn't do that to them, so they turned round and told
her to keep her head round the right way.
ANNA: Weren't they frightened to lose their jobs saying
that?
142 Struggle at Work
STELLA: Well, not really. Because they had their husbands,
or they'd just get another job. And they were older, I
suppose. They'd been out in the world, and they came
back and weren't frightened. They'd stick up for them-
selves.

The older women spoke with approval of the change, but

also of the 'defiance' of the younger generation, and,
ironically, what they had learned from them:

IDA: The younger generation, well, they're not defiant, but

they used to be more cowed down. The younger lot got
together, collective like. Good thing - you've only got one
life. But it can go too far sometimes.

STELLA: They're as good as you are, sort of thing.

IDA: I've got a married daughter of 25. I talk to her more

freely than I did to my own mother. I used to be told to
be 'seen and not heard'. Now I'm more independent than
I used to be.

It was certainly the young girls, particularly those of the

BUR, who were hardest of all for the supervisors to handle
'successfully': 7

STEVEN : You can talk to a mature woman. She accepts

responsibility - talks more sense. Now these kids of today,
they've got no sense of responsibility in themselves; I don't
think you could hold them responsible.

What he failed to see was that 'acting like children' was the
only way the girls could assert their dignity without
dangerously antagonising authority. Not only were they
subjected to the discipline of work and of factory rules, on
top of this, as women, they were exposed to constant sexist
patronisation, not just from the chargehands and foremen,
but from any men that worked around them: 'Hey gorgeous',
'Do us a favour, love', 'Come here, sexy' - all are familiar
addresses for most women. Supervision was sexually oppres-
 Shop-floor Culture 143
slve, the manner usually cajoling, laced with intimate
innuendo, and provocative jokes, hands placed on girls
shoulders as they worked, imposition mixed with flattery.
To survive with some pride, without melting into blushes or
falling through the floor, the girls had to keep on their toes,
have a ready answer, fight back. They were forced into a
defensive-aggressive strategy - but always on the men's
terms. They had to collude. And in this they also colluded
with the language of control.
On one occasion one of the BUR girls was 'messing around'
and was wheeled off to a lift on a trolley by a young man.
Everybody joined in the joke:

KATHY: It weren't my fault! [Shrieking.]

STEVEN: What are you up to? It's your sexy looks that
always does it.

BRENDA (looking on, and giving a husky laugh): Watch him

back there! Oh! - I wouldn't trust him!

There was no way the chargehand could have broken up the

general 'laugh' without antagonising the girls. So he diffused
it with jocular flattery, never even approaching the young
man who was responsible. The girl returned to work, put in
her place; but instead of sheepishly acknowledging his
authority, was able to continue giggling, as if to demonstrate
she did not feel humiliated.
This sometimes backfired on the men. I was once politely
repremanded for chewing on the factory premises (no con-
fectionery of any kind, witness rule 16!) in front of the girls.
It was a case of the supervisor demonstrating his authority to
the girls. But up came one of the girls, and, loudly telling me
not to take any notice, gave him a half-motherly, half-sexy
hug. He was stunned - utterly undermined. And yet he still
chose self-control in favour of confrontation, making a
shrewd assessment of long-term diplomacy and success. No
risks could be taken with the group.
Calculation and manipulation were part of factory politics.
Steven had each individual and each 'crew' measured up.
144 Struggle at Work

The girls likewise knew their strength and how far they could
go. The Number 7 crew were a particularly bold and 'defiant'
lot, and if a chargehand interfered when they thought it was
none of his business they just shouted at him to 'Get off', or
'Leave us alone' (always half-joking). He would reply, 'Now
don't be cocky' - but they would all laugh. It was all part of
the game. Some genuinely liked him: 'He's as good as gold -
don't tell him, mind, or he'll get big-headed.' Others more
cynically thought him 'soft', 'pliable', 'you can do what you
want with him'. Others sensed their weakness with him,
thought him 'a two-faced bastard' and kept quiet.
Because girls derived some enjoyment from these
skirmishes, it was a successful way of keeping them in line.
Their use of female sex appeal as a way of getting round their
supervisors, or retaliating against authority, was always a
double-edged weapon, which in the long term hurt them and
nobody else. For if they won momentary victories of self-
assertion, it was only by colluding with the conventional
male attitudes towards the female as sex object, and laid
them open to sexist advances whether they liked it or not.
And some clearly hated it:

VAL: You've got to be blue eyes in a factory, you know

what I mean? Your face has got to fit or else that's it.

Because there were some who would not or could not join
the repartee and fit the parts of both workers and sex
objects, they were more prone to arbitrary victimisation, not
only for breaches of discipline but also for failing in PPS
standards. They failed to 'please':

VAL: Well, mine don't fit, that's for sure. I get into trouble
- light ones, heavy ones [weighings]. Everybody does it.
There's certain people can get away with murder, like they
don't do nothing about it. But with others - when you go
in the office to the foreman, well he looks at you as
though you were nothing, you know what I mean? As
though he could spit on you. I hates he. And yet another
girl'll go in for the same thing, and he'll, you know, tell
her nice. Do you know, I went in there once, and you
 Shop-floor Culture 145

know what he says to me? 'We could do without girls like

you.'

ANNA: Are you scared of him?

VAL: I ain't scared of him, but you can't do nothz"ng much,

can you? [My emphasis.] I don't want to lose me job yet.
Waits till I leave. Tell him right off what I think then.

The ultimate perniciousness of femininity as a weapon of

shop-floor resistance was its individualism and competitive-
ness. It worked only on the isolated occasion. Because it took
the sting out of conflicts, its very success detracted from
developing collective, organised strategies of struggle, which
left the individual and the group helpless if it came to the
crunch.

Solidarity and cliques

But if 'mucking in' for a laugh could lead to collusion with
shop-floor sexism, there was also room for female solidarity.
Among the girls in the BUR a system of informal 'reliefs' had
been devised to allow girls to leave their machines for a few
minutes. Sometimes a girl who was 'on rag' distributing the
tobacco to the weighers from a metal trolley would 'sit up'
for a girl and take over for a while; or if there were a slack
period at another machine, one of the 'labellers' or 'baggers'
stepped in.
But there were few instances where solidarity meant
informal bids for control. More often, it expressed depart-
mental identity, a consciousness which was strong as it was
narrow. Among the young girls the sharpest line of demarca-
tion was between the BUR and the hand-packing departments:

PATTI: They [the hand-packing girls] take their work

seriously, whereas we don't. If you go down there, you
can't talk - they all keeps themselves to themselves.
Whereas we all mucks in together.

There were, in fact, marked contrasts between these depart-

ments.
146 Struggle at Work

The BUR was the largest department of the factory. There

were about sixty girls here, including nine crews of six at
each 'straight-line' weighing machine. It was the machines
which dominated - great clattering metal boxes cutting
across the room, each producing its never-ending stream of
little gold packs down the moving belt to the labeller and
wrapper. The noise was deafening. You had to shout to be
heard. And there was something hectic about the little red
lights blinking on the scales, and the frenzy of hands to keep
up, fill and refill the tiny weighing buckets which were
always ready for more. The exploitation of wage labour was
most naked here, as was the girls' oppression relative to the
men 'standing around'. Yet partly because of this brutal,
roudy atmosphere, there was a certain status about working
here. It was big. This was the place for bravado and laughs,
because you had to put up a fight to survive. If anywhere this
was where the factory work 'rubbed off' on to the girls,
giving them that borrowed 'machismo' of the 'tough' world
of work.
The two hand-packing rooms were much smaller, each
employing only about ten girls. They were quieter, because
the tobacco was weighed on hand scales, and then hand
packed. Girls could actually talk in normal tones. They were
less harassed, because, although working to a grade, they
were not tyrannised by an incessant, unyielding machine.
They set their own pace. Because they were up against less
stress, there was less need to build up resistance, to be
'tough'. And because supervision was female there was no
pressure to keep up the constant bravado, the constant
crossfire of sexual power games.
Because of these differences the BUR girls were not what
could be described· as more 'factory-conscious' than the
others. They had a clearer idea of 'us' and 'them', of class
loyalties at the shop-floor level of control and discipline. 8
The BUR girls were the 'defiant' ones who 'mucked in';
the hand-packing girls were quieter, more conventionally
feminine. It was the same as the enmities at a school. The
'softies' were despised for being unable to stand up for
themselves, and for being on the 'wrong side', i.e. with
 Shop-floor Culture 147

management. Trivial incidents brought suspicions of 'grassing'

to the surface:
RENE: You never know with some of the people - the
girls, too. In there, the hand pack, we don't really get on
with them here - they're thick as anything with their
supervisdr. They're her favourites. They tell her everything.
We don't like them and they don't like us in here. You
have to be careful with some girls.

Belonging to the BUR crowd involved subtle opposition to

the rules, to work discipline and motivation. 'Getting out the
back' was the big bond between them:

PATTI: In here they treat you like machines, not people.

We got to get out, have a laugh.

VAL: I'm only Grade 3 'cos I gets so fed up I goes out

back. I was Grade 2 but I got put down last week.

In leaving the work-place, or department, without official

permission, the rules on 'loitering' in corridors or toilets, on
the use of the specified toilet, and on smoking, were all
broken. Gradually whole groups, not always young girls, but
also older women, emerged as the 'non-conformists' who met
each other 'out the back'. The toilets became centres of mild
rebellion. Like in other factories and, again, schools they
came to represent a place of refuge for a smoke and a chat -
a potential forum for informal communication and organisa-
tion. Had I remained in the toilets for my entire study I
would probably have gathered more insight into what was
going on in the factory than by staying on the shop-floor.
(Later on, some of the best political debates took place 'out
the back'.)

In addition to the physical work environment a vital

influence on 'cliques' was what happened outside work, for
wider social alliances and interests fed inside groups,
particularly as there was a traditional link between the
factory and two local areas, Knowle West and Hartcliffe.
148 Struggle at Work

Many of the youngest girls came from the same schools, and
carried on with their old gangs, cliques and rivalries which
overlapped with their work crowds. From discussions about
home and social life, the following general conclusions
emerged. The stronger their all-female out-of-work ties, the
more collective-spirited, self-assured, assertive and 'non-
conformist' were the girls at work. Those who were isolated
at home were naturally quieter at work, and found it harder
to gain entry into a gang. But girls' 'non-conformity' at work
meant more than resistance to authority. It was also inspired
by a general sexual confidence with boys learned from the
experience of female group solidarity outside. In groups they
did things that a girl on her own or with a friend would never
dare: going to their own youth clubs and discos together
were the least exceptional. But they also went to pubs,
independently of boys, and what is more, chatted them up.
This is how one 17-year-old described a Saturday night:

JENNY: At weekends, we go drinking, and when we're a bit

pissed like, we let ourselves go - go up to the blokes,
pinch their sandwiches, tease them like. Then they do the
same to us. We end up dancing on the tables and things.
It's a laugh.

While girls could be quite a daunting spectacle together, in

intimate relationships with boys they said they acted
differently, more passively. This kind of fooling was the
privilege of the group, and disappeared when the crowd
dispersed. Yet it did leave its mark, and taught the girls they
could, by strength of numbers, subvert docile, acquiescent
femininity into frank boldness - which at work turned into
what the older women described as being 'generally defiant'
(messing around, shouting across the department, talking
back at their supervisors). And this was evidently infectious,
for others who (because they were 'courting' or 'married')
were outside the age-range of girl gangs joined in the
collective spirit of the BUR girls.
The girls in the two hand-packing rooms were much more
insular and reserved than the BUR girls. Some were so shy I
could hardly even talk to them and we both ended up in
 Shop-floor Culture 149

knots of embarrassment and blushes. Their age-range was

similar to that of the BUR, varying from school-leavers to
young married girls, yet from what they said their social lives
were different. Of course, there was an overlap between the
factory cliques and outside interests, but in general they
disliked large groups. The younger girls, still living with their
parents, stayed at home in the evenings, and only went out
in couples, either with another girl - their best friend - or
when asked out by a boy. At home they were isolated in
their dreams, engrossed in pop heroes and romantic
magazines. Their diffidence and dependence on boys to take
the initiative were part of their more conventional passive
female role and manifested itself in their greater placidity at
work and reputation of being more 'responsible' and 'lady-
like.'
This type of characterisation is necessarily too neat and
static, and omits how girls change when with each other and
when at work. It also cannot, for lack of evidence, detail the
interaction between sexual competitiveness outside work,
cliques and group solidarity. All the same, it attempts to
show that there is an important relationship between
concrete experience inside and outside work and that the
collective work situation is fertile ground for the female
solidarity learned as a tactic of strength with which to
encounter boys. Work-place confidence and sexual
confidence, in the sense of a more independent and active
'femininity', develop hand in hand.
While group solidarity and 'factory-consciousness' were an
important part of shop-floor culture, they were marred by
the fact that they remained little more than an amorphous
identity, not translated into practice and organisation.
Beneath this there was the common problem of fragmenta-
tion and personal hostilities. Cliques were as exclusive as
they were inclusive, and sometimes narrowed right down to
one machine crew: .

RENE: If you're different, like you want to keep yourself

to yourself, or don't want to join in, it's difficult. We all
stick together from Number Seven [the crew on the
Number seven machine] .
150 Struggle at Work

Worse still, was the common problem of 'divide and rule'.

It was not so much that group hostilities were 'engineered'
to divert attention from immediate problems. Far from it -
the girls themselves used the divisions as a source of gossip,
entertainment, and finally distraction, from any real 'factory-
consciousness' which might extend across the boundaries of
departments. So at one extreme, face to face, enmity often
turned into just another laugh, all tongue in cheek:

RENE (in the 'roll' hand-packing department): It drives me

up the creek up here.

ANNA: Isn't it better than the BUR?

RENE: Oh no! I just don't like the girls up here.

ANNA: What about the other hand-packing room?

RENE: Oh. I cannot stand the girls in there. Especially not

Ann. Can't abide her. She gets on my nerves. [Peels of
laughter all round.]

ANNA: Who's that?

RENE (pointing at Ann): Her!

ANNA (to Ann and Cherry): What about you two, do you
get on with them downstairs?

ANN: Not the BUR - don't like them. It's all right in the
hand-packing.

But there was also the more VICIOUS two-facedness and

back-biting. They couldn't stand 'Sandra the Irish' because
she was stuck up. Caroline, who had been out on the club
for seven weeks with suspected thrombosis of the leg, recieved
mocking laughter: 'She never worked, her father never
worked, she always forgot her glasses or found some other
excuse. She was women's lib one day and was saying she
wouldn't let her boyfriend lift a finger the next' (it was
 Shop-floor Culture 151

unclear which half of the inconsistency was less forgivable).

A Maltese girl was 'a hypocrite because she would not admit
she worked for the money'. And 'they both crawled to the
supervisors' .
Yet while sniping was the seamy side of group loyalty, it
also rested on definite systems of shop-floor values. There
were those who accepted their role as women, as wage
workers, and the subtle sexual oppression of being women
workers. They did not question the status of 'women's work',
and exercised no strategies of resistance - other than
'switching off', or taking refuge in a sole friendship with one
other girl. And then there were those who developed a
collective identity, valued solidarity and set up resistance,
both to the discipline of wage labour and to their sexual
subordination. The pitfall was that they had no actual muscle
with which to push their resistance. It remained at the level
of shop-floor style. Instead of challenging discipline and male
oppression, it became not only contained but also a weapon
for the other side.

Mature women and resistance

There was some irony in the older women's comments that
young girls were 'more defiant'. As one of these young girls
herself had said, the older women 'mucked in' with the
younger ones. Their problems were very similar; so were
their means of tackling them. But what the older ones
seemed to overlook was the way the girls' peculiar 'defiance'
backfired on them - for although they, too, were subjected
to male patronisation and a similar type of sexist control,
they were not approached in the intimate, stifling approach
as desirable sex objects. They were now 'not available'. Age,
and the status of being 'a married woman', commanded some
respect:

MARY: Men used to treat women in a way they wouldn't

dare now: chargehands bribed one group against another.
They would never dare treat married women now as they
had done then. They know they'd walk out if they said
anything like that now.
152 Struggle at Work

Older women displayed a kind of aggressive wit with men

similar to the BUR girls but with less coyness and sexual
appeal. If men were rude, they told them so without worry-
ing whether they were still 'blue-eyed' or not. Even when
they did banter along with sexist jokes, in fact they were
more confident than the girls. Older women took the
initiative more often. Many of their laughs were between
themselves, but sometimes they would drag in their male
chargehand, much to his embarrassment:

PEARL: Vi, sing 'Robinson Crusoe'. Come here, Stan!

VI: It's a dirty old man was Crusoe -

He sat on the rock and played with his sock ...
[Roars of laughter - Stan trying to look amused.]
Oh dear old Robinson Crusoe!
,

PEARL: Come on Stan - you sing!

It was with the managers that older married women

proved their greater self-assurance best, something the young
girls still found too daunting. The policy of 'mingling with
the workers' allowed ample opportunity for jokes and quick
repartee. Quite often the women got the upper hand, demon-
strating not only that they could be quite as aggressive and
quick-witted as the men, but also that they would not let
through progressive, 'human-relations' management without
comment.
There was one particularly hot summer's day when the
factory was stifling; the women had been promised the usual
cool lemonade. A personnel manager walked into the
spinning room, normally an intensely hard-working depart-
ment, and was met with a barrage of 'Where's our lemonade?'
Then a top-grade spinner in her mid-forties continued the
assault:

IVY: Where are going for your holidays this year, Mr Dow-
ling?

MR DOWLING: I'm not going anywhere. I can't afford it. I

bought the wife a car and I've spent our money. Honestly.
 Shop-floor Culture 153
IVY: Have you? Ah! What a shame. Can't you sell some of
your shares then?

MR DOWLING: No, can't do that.

IVY: Come on, just a few.

This produced laughter all round, the manager and his

attempt at being 'just one of the workers' exposed to
ridicule, and at the same time exploited for a laugh:

IVY: Pass me some more leaf, Mr Dowling.

MR DOWLING: That's good work you've got there [i.e. easily

workable leaf] .

IVY: It's only good when you come around. It's been
terrible all day.

In an amicable way class antagonism was gently voiced.

The individual manager, the 'boss', was verbally stripped, like
the emperor with no clothes. If the younger girls tried to
assert themselves to line management, to higher management,
they were only mildly plaintive ('We tell them we're bored').
These older women quite openly challenged their 'superiors'.
And they watched with an eagle eye, for any flaws or
inconsistencies with which to taunt them. As for the male
chargehands, they could have been their husbands, and were
treated as such.
On one occasion the women in the stripping room
witnessed management breaking the rules by allowing a
visiting party of salesmen to comb their hair for a photograph
in the 'cutting room'. For a laugh, but also to make a point,
they shouted so the men could hear them through the glass
partition separating the two departments:

STELLA: He's combing his hair! If we combed our hair in

the factory, he'd go out of his mind.

VERA: Well, that's nice, he ought to practise what he

154 Struggle at Work

preaches. [Enter Stan, the section chargehand.] Well go

and tell him, Stan, manager or no.

At this point the men posed with their arms around each
other, one holding a tobacco leaf, in the standard style of
publicity pictures:

ALL THE WOMEN: Aah! - Aah!

VERA: Wish they could hear us. Aah! Everybody together

say'Aah!'

ALL THE WOMEN (very loudly and provocatively): Aah! Aah!

STELLA: You'll look tall on a photograph [as if to the

manager] .

VERA: I'm glad that he had a sauna. He's slimming, Nichol-

son, he's on a diet.

ANNA: Which one is he?

STELLA: The manager. With his hand here. He's always got
his hands down his trousers.

Playing at turning the tables, being intimately personal as

they might be with their sons, or husbands, was the older
women's style of self-assertion. Of course, they did not really
tum the tables or alter power relations, nor did the majority
think about it or want to. In fact one had pointedly said,
'You know, Anna, I believe in bosses.' But they did give
gentle nudges to authority without in any way denting the
structure of control. For however forthright and cutting they
could be en masse, supervisors and bosses tolerated them
because (without being organised) they could never really
put up a challenge. And even if they could be taken seriously
as 'more mature' and 'responsible' than young girls on one
level, at another their criticisms could be patronisingly inter-
preted as no more than the nagging of housewives. Once
more they were assimilated into the patriarchal ideology of
 Shop-floor Culture 155

conciliatory, permissive management - but, luckily, without

the stranglehold of sexual conquest. Their collusion, of
course, was with the role of housewife, not that of sex object.

Holiday camp or prison?

Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasi-

ness ... All the animals remembered ... or at least they
thought they remembered. . . There was nothing with
which they could compare their present lives: they had
nothing to go upon except Squealer's lists of figures, which
invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better
and better. The animals found the problem unsoluble; in
any case, they had little time for speculating on such
things now!! (George Orwell, Animal Farm).

In spite of constant references by supervisors to the 'more

relaxed atmosphere' of discipline, the 'holiday-camp atmos-
phere' and 'free-and-easy managers', the older women who
remembered the crudely authoritarian days of the factory
still expressed uneasiness about the present, nostalgia about
the past. The young girls who knew no different took things
for granted. So what was wrong? It was hard to put a finger
on it.
On the one hand married women were proud of the gains
since the war - their greater freedom and status. And they
backed the younger girls' defiance and spirit. Yet, ironically,
they felt they had had 'more fun' in the past:

STELLA: I don't think the youngsters are getting the fun we

did.

MARY: I used to like it better before - there was a better

atmosphere, more fun.

When the older women tried to argue that the younger

generation were 'having a better time than they had', they
never referred to this much flaunted 'defiance', or freedom.
It was always in terms of consumer spending:
156 Struggle at Work

STELLA: These youngsters today are getting a much nicer

time than we had, really. With their clothes and cars and
pocket money.

These confusions and apparent contradictions were the

result of genuine conflicts between beliefs and experience.
They had partly assimilated the managerial 'human-relations'
ideology that things were better than before. It fitted in with
the dominant world-view of industry as a happy partnership
between capital and labour, and everyone, from the company
to the media, were telling them they were getting a better
deal, more freedom and security than before. Even 'women's
liberation' was no longer just an idea for bra-burning cranks.
Yet daily experience told them otherwise. They recalled the
comparative flexibility of doing their jobs before 'job assess-
ment' and grading, and knew that they now worked far
harder. They knew in every nerve and muscle the exhaustion
of being tied to a machine rate or a grade. While they were
told it was 'a holiday camp' by the supervisors, some, like
Stella, likened it to a prison. And as for their improved status
as workers, they were told to be 'responsible', but they had
no control. As women, they had to contend with a more
sophisticated but no less powerful system of discipline and
patriarchal control than before.
What did they really believe, then? They knew that they
were workers, and bosses were bosses. They knew who had
money and power. And, in spite of their collusion, they knew
too well their disadvantages regarding men, both in the
factory and in the family. Then why did they not work out a
coherent explanation of how they were controlled and
manipulated now, and why it was more subtly oppressive
than before?
The answer lies in the connection between ideology,
experience and fragmentary consciousness, for those who are
most successfully controlled and manipulated are, by
definition, the least conscious of how it happens. If the
women knew they had less freedom than before, in spite of
the tyrants like 'Black Bess', they could not point to anyone
event or change and say: 'That was when things began going
wrong.' For the whole skill of successful worker incorporation
 Shop-floor Culture 157

into the employers' strategy and ideology is the smooth,

invisible operation. This is not 'conspiracy' theory. Things
just 'happened' to the women: new agreements between
company and union, job assessment, grading, new machines,
factory reorganisations, new supeIVisors, new treatment -
they all 'happened'. It was part of the structure of industrial
relations. They were cut off so entirely from their union
that they knew nothing of the details of negotiation which
had led to these changes. Lacking this experience, they could
articulate the effects but could not map out a causal chain
of reasons. Their lack of a coherent picture of what was
happening, their piecemeal experience of 'unfair grading'
here and 'having to be blue-eyed' there meant no links were
made between the two. Control issues remained individual,
personalised. Consciousness remained fragmentary. This was
not because nobody had stood up and delivered a lecture on
the theory of 'Scientific Management', 'The Human Relations
Approach', 'Patriarchy and Incorporation'. It was because
they had little concrete experience of organisation and
personal involvement in collective struggle. This was why
resistance to control remained at the symbolic level of shop-
floor culture without shop-floor organisat£on. It was a step
forward; but on its own it posed no threat.

Notes to Chapter 8
1. Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Conditions of Employment
and Factory Rules including Additional Rules and Regulations of
the Churchmans Branch.
2. I define 'culture' as the creative informal practices and meanings
which people carve out for themselves - life 'as it is lived'. I would
also agree with the following definition of 'culture': 'The peculiar
and distinctive "way of life" of the group or the class, the mean-
ings, values and ideas embodded in institutions, in social relations,
in systems of beliefs, in mores and customs, in the uses of objects
and material life' (in Hall andJefferson (1976) Resistance through
Ritual, p. 10).
3. Willis (1978) Learning to Labour, p. 107, my emphasis.
4. See, for example, Glasgow University Media Group (1976) Bad
News; and Baharrel and Philo (1977) Trade Unions and the Media.
5. Willis (1978) p. 28.
158 Struggle at Work

6. When people are chronically belittled, this is a frequent way of

getting back. See, for example, Nichols and Beynon (1977) Living
with Capitalism, p. 140: 'The "idiots" acted their part - causing
as it turned out, physical chaos on the factory floor at "Chemco".'
7. McRobbie (1977) 'Working Class Girls and the Culture of Femin-
inity' argues that working-class girls have long been regarded as
'intransigent' and a 'threat to the social order'. See sociologists of
the 1950s like Hoggart (1957) The Uses of Literacy; Abrams
(1959) The Teenage Consumer; and, earlier, Jephcott (1942) Girls
Growing Up.
8. Hugh Beynon argues that factory consciousness 'understands class
relations in terms of their direct manifestation in conflict between
the bosses and the workers within the factory ... Inasmuch as it
concerns itself with exploitation and power it contains definite
political elements. But it is the politics of the factory' (Beynon,
1973, Working for Ford, p. 98).
9
'Dear Brothers Organisation
and Trade Unionism

Union membership and representation

Nearly all the workers at Church mans (90 per cent) belonged
to the tobacco section of the TGWU. This was something of
an anomaly in the area where most Wills workers belonged to
the TWU, a large industrial union based on the original
amalgamation of several craft unions, with over 3,000
members in Bristol in 1970. Churchmans' affiliation with a
general union dated back to its closeness to the riverside
wharves, when dockers unloading tobacco organised the
factory workers in the 1880s into their own union, the Dock,
Wharf and Riverside Labourers' Union, a predecessor of the
TGWU.
Union organisation among Imperial Tobacco workers
really took off after the Second World War. This was when
the company began to adopt a system of national collective
bargaining, and also when large numbers of women workers
became organised. The TWU was at the forefront of the
drive; in 1944 its first Women's Conference was held, and in
1946 a Women's Organiser was appointed. Today, production
workers belong to both unions - the TWU and the TGWU.
Membership is actively encouraged, not only by the unions,
but by the company, as a central part of its industrial-relations
policy. This has led to a distinctively incorporationist style
of trade unionism, where fighting for organisation from
below is superseded by enlightened management. And while
union organisation must be seen as an advance for workers,
this highly centralised, bureaucratic trade unionism must
also be seen, as argued earlier, as part of the employers'
strategy of increasing control by sharing it.
160 Struggle at Work

Membership was characteristically formal. Active shop-

floor participation was undermined by the 'check-off' system
of paying union dues, which made 'belonging' a passive,
effortless state of being. Without even the basic duty of
collecting money, there was no need for stewards to maintain
regular, weekly contact with rank-and-file workers. Shop-
floor organisation was more active in the larger factories, like
Wills, where there were also a number of women shop
stewards.
The difference between the two firms was reflected in
shop-floor conditions. At Wills there were tea bays; at
Churchmans there were none. At Wills the BUR weighers had
reliefs, and could have up to a twenty-minute break during
the day apart from meal times; at Churchmans there were
none. Instead girls had a '4 per cent relaxation allowance',
which meant they were allowed to miss 160 out of a
potential 4,000 weighings a day, if they were working at the
'average' 100 per cent performance. And then they could
only slip 'out the back', while the machine went on tabulat-
ing the lost weighings.
The shop stewards at Churchmans were all men. Elections
usually went uncontested, and new stewards were sent on
company courses in 'Industrial Relations' and 'Works Study
Appreciation', either at Imperial Tobacco's own college in
the country, or at the West of England Engineering
Employers' Association Management Centre. Most stewards
classed themselves as 'moderates'.
Promotion to the position of foreman was a normal
procedure, and the difference between the roles was seen in
terms of 'helping people' rather than a radical difference in
alms:

DAVE (former shop steward, now a foreman): I thoroughly

enjoyed being a union man. I always try to work on the
principle that we were both in it together, the manager
and the worker, and that if you could prove a thing unfair,
then the management should do something about it. But
facts speak louder than anything, when you're arguing
over a table. And all these shop stewards are banging on
the table and losing their temper - I mean to say, if I
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 161

want something, I don't go in and insult them and say

they're bloody Tories and capitalist swine; I go in and I
explain the case . . . Anyhow, I've accepted the job as
supervisor now. And I've regretted it, inasmuch I've less
power for helping people than when I was a shop steward.

In fact, the shop steward could see himself as a combined

father-figure and supervisor to the girls. Wanting more money
and supporting discipline on the shop-floor did not seem
incompatible in this type of trade unionism:

ANNA: Do you think the company's doing as much as it

can for the workers?

MIKE (shop steward): I haven't got no real kick with the

group. But they fell behind. Now I'm not a bloody-minded
shop steward mind - but wages have slipped back. Before
the war, we used to be second to none - but wage-wise -
I'm not decrying others overtaking us - we've gone down.

ANNA: Have things got easier or more difficult here?

MIKE: The atmosphere has definitely changed. It was very

strict in here - but I think it was a lot happier. And people
did know how they could go. But now, it's all slaphappy.

F or the women there was the problem that they were

represented by men. As we saw earlier, there was a consensus
among the men in the factory - workers, stewards, foremen,
managers - that women were different from men. They were
not like other workers: they were primarily housewives, their
place in the home, their wages 'pin-money'. The stewards
frankly thought that the women were not too bothered
about money:

MIKE: You ask any of the girls in here if they know any-
thing about this pay claim, and I'll lay a pound to a penny
they don't know what it's about. Mm? Do they?

Some were actually antagonistic to the women; others simply

162 Struggle at Work

did not understand them. They did different jobs - not

'women's work' on the production line. And they were not
women.
Added to this was the chaos of a very disproportionate
system of representation between departments. One steward,
Mike, stood for the BUR and the two hand-packing depart-
ments - the largest concentration of women workers. The
other four stewards were spread over the least labour
intensive departments - each with fewer than twenty men -
to which were added two isolated groups of women, ten in
the stripping room, and ten in the spinning room. (See also
Table 9.1.) As a result these four stewards were fairly close
to their male members, but virtually ignored the women.
Mike, already overloaded with sixty-odd girls, now became
the de facto steward for all the women in the factory. Con-
sequently the men were reasonably represented and the
women badly, and this further widened the ideological
distance between the female rank and file and the male
stewards.

TABLE 9.1 Shop-steward representation at Churchmans by depart-

ments covered

1 steward Cutting, Tobacco Store

1 steward Leaf and Wetting Down, Stripping and Lamina Store
1 steward Maintenance, Flake and Roll Press, Spinning and Door-
keeping
1 steward Packeting (i.e. BUR and Handpacking), Testing and
Cleaners, and Anchor Road Stores
1 steward Depot and Bulk Stores

The union: what it does and what it's for

ANNA: What about your union? What do you think of it?

JACKIE and JENNY (in chorus): Nothing.

ANNA: Are you going to stay in it?

JACKIE and JENNY: Yes!

 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 163

These sharp exclamations expressed very simply an attitude

held by most of the Churchmans' women. They were deeply
embittered by their immediate experience of trade unionism,
yet not to the extent to throw in their cards.
Basically, women were not 'anti-union'. They regarded
trade unionism in general as a necessary, basic defence of
their rights: 1

JACKIE: Well - it's to protect you: give you higher wages

and that.

IDA: Well, they've cutdown the hours over the years.

They've also given us a good wage.

STELLA: It's a safeguard, isn't it? You've got something to

fight for, if something goes wrong. Well - they're supposed
to - but whether they do or no, I don't know.

Yet while not broadly anti-union, they expressed many of

the inconsistencies of sectionalism, peppered with the
prejudices of an anti-union, right-wing press. For the other
side of their dissatisfaction with their own union was
hostility and resentment towards those who were better
organised (notably car workers and, in 1972, the dockers).
Suddenly the image of the 'militant union' 'holding the
country to ransom' reared its ugly head, and 'professional
agitators' and 'greedy workers' appeared:

JUNE: I don't think unions are a bad thing, but I do think

they can go too far. If everything doesn't go right it's
'everybody out!' - and everybody has to go.

IVY: Now tell me honestly, do you think England's a

country to be proud of? These dockers are going to grind
us to a halt. The unions have got too much power. We've
just got it too good here - living in clover. I've been
abroad, and they work a damn sight harder there. I think
they're right - the communists are doing it. It's just what
they want.
164 Struggle at Work

SI'ELLA: These dockers are getting more money for not

going to work than these men in here are getting for a
week's work.

ELMA: They get £4,000 redundancy pay offered; they

should have accepted it. My husband was offered £640
redundancy pay after forty years!

For most of the younger girls their own experience of

factory trade unionism was just a blank. They did not see
themselves as changing anything - in spite of their much-
applauded shop-floor 'defiance'. All had started work after
the implementation of PPS, and they knew no alternative.
All they knew was that the days dragged on in endless
monotony. They deeply resented being tied to a machine:

JENNY: Like with the hand-packing, they've got their own

scheme to keep up to, but with us, we have to keep up
to the machine. You can't stop the machine. I reckon it
would be better working by yourself, like, instead of to a
machine.

In particular, they resented the lack of breaks, and their

poor conditions as compared with those at Wills. But as for
doing something about it this was for 'them' to decide. The
union was something 'out there':

VAL: With Wills, they've got girls to relieve them, they've

got tea bays, they can go out and have a cup of tea when
they want and have a fag when they want, but we can't.
I know they gets reliefs, and they can stay out - well up
to twenty minutes, I think.

ANNA: And your breaks?

VAL: Breakfast, dinner, that's it.

ANNA: Do you think you ought to get more?

VAL: Yeah, definitely.

 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 165

ANNA: Have any girls asked about these breaks?

VAL: Yeah.

ANNA: Have you?

VAL: No, I haven't, but like before and that they've all
said about having more breaks and that. But I've heared
they was going to have something done about it, but I
don't know if it's true or no.

Most girls were vague and thoroughly bored with union

business. It was part of a man's world:

VAL: My dad's a shop steward.

ANNA: What union?

VAL: Trade workers, I think - same as ours, whatever it is.

ANNA: Transport and General?

VAL: Yeah, that's it.

ANNA: What's he do?

VAL: Well I don't worry about that sort of thing. He comes

home - 'Oooh' [sigh] and that's it. Like when he's been
to a meeting. He chats and chats, I suppose, and when he
comes home, says what it's about. Let's his hair off.

ANNA: From listening to him, what do you think a shop

steward does?

VAL: Well, I don't take much interest. All I know is that

they takes the money.

ANNA: What about women doing things like that?

VAL: Well, most girls gets married, don't they? Not all of
them works all their lives like a man.
166 Struggle at Work

This is a familiar theme, repeated by many young married

women whose identification with being a housewife quite
eclipsed their own work experience, and often alienated them
from their husbands, as if only they, the men, entered the
world of 'work'.2 Here it was again - the family invasion of
the work-place, the housewife in the factory:

JUNE: I only joined the union here 'cos I had to!

ANNA: What do you think of the unions?

JUNE: I don't understand them.

ANNA: What do you think they're for?

JUNE (laughing): Well, I suppose they're for the working

man [sic!] but ... my husband used to be a shop steward,
but I still don't understand what he did. I was never very
interested.

Most women were not ashamed to admit their ignorance

about trade unionism. The language was alien, and merely
confirmed their sense of exclusion from this 'man's world'. In
fact, their exclusion confirmed their belonging to the other,
'women's world', and also reinforced their sense of
'femininity' - something portrayed more by coyness of
manner than actual words:

ANNA: Have you heard about the Industrial Relations Bill?

JENNY (giggling): What's that?

ANNA: Hasn't your steward ever mentioned it - say about

your ballot? [This referred to industrial action over the
annual wage claim.]

JENNY: I couldn't tell you the first thing about it. We ain't
very good at these long words see.

ANNA: What about the Equal Pay Act?

 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organz"sation and Trade Unionzsm 167

JENNY: The Equal Pay Act? [Pause.] Yes - we're supposed

to be getting more money.

ANNA: Same as men on your type of job [if there were

any] by 1975.

JENNY (laughing): I hope I'm not here by then!

This professed indifference conveyed much more than just

'backwardness': for while it undoubtedly held girls back from
coming to grips with the problem of shop-floor organisation,
it also denoted honest impatience with the bureaucratic
jargon and rigmarole surrounding trade unionism as they
knew it. In different circumstances this 'ignorance' could be a
refreshing breeze to blow away cobwebs; it could be an
important element in building a new language of rank-and-
file, shop-floor-based trade unionism, and is something we
return to later.
The older women were more concrete about their
criticisms. They were more experienced, and being more
committed to a life of full-time work saw that what the
'union men' did mattered. They still saw 'the union' as
'them'; but this did not distinguish them from the majority
of workers, men and women - for to all intents and
purposes, where there was little shop-floor control, the union
was 'them', the leaders, not 'us', the union of rank-and-file
workers. Husbands and wives had this as a common bond.
So, with the railwaymen's ballot on their pay claim in 1972:

PEARL: My husband can't do nothing about the agreement,

he says. It's up to the union. If they accept it, they got to
put up with it. It's the same with us. It's up to the union.
We don't know. If they accept this present offer, we've
had it.

The older women watched the news and read the papers;
most were married and talked about work with their
husbands. They compared their factory with the world
outside in a way few girls felt able to do. And while many
held contradictory ideas about their own problems, and the
168 Struggle at Work

'greedy workers' 'out there', they also made more links. They
recognised their weakness as a question of factory solidarity
and shop-floor representation:

STELLA: Well, you hear the car industry, they go in leaps

and bounds, don't they? I mean, their money is ridiculous
compared with ours.

ANNA: Why do you think that is?

STELLA: Ah well, I suppose it's their union. I dunno. Got

good backing, I suppose. They all stick together. Dunno.

ANNA: What about your union?

STELLA: Nobody backs it, do they? Transport we've got.

ANNA: Why do you think that is?

STELLA: Backs it? Well, I think myself, what does the

fellow that comes in here know about tobacco work?
Nothing. He doesn't even walk about the factory and see
what's going on. I've never seen him in the factory. I've
seen him in the office, I've seen him with the management,
but I've never seen him walk to this room and look around
the room and see what we're doing. So how does he know
what's going on?

Opinions about shop stewards varied. A number were

quite fond' of Mike in the BUR: as a man he was 'as good as
gold', and as a steward - well, there wasn't much happening
anyway. Other stewards, notably those with the least tact
and sympathy with women, were despised:

AILEEN: I don't think much of the union men in here. John

Clark - our shop steward - he don't talk to you. When he
came in the stripping room for election he said 'Will you
vote for me? Thank you' - and went out without waiting
for an answer. He's never around when you want him. A
good shop steward would be there.
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 169

Some had experienced actual betrayal, particularly during

the implementation 0 f PPS (as we shall see later): .

IVY: Time and again this union has sold us right down the
river. You might as well not belong to any union if they
don't back you up: And the stewards - well - they're
all with management. They won't fight for you. Don't
come down to the spinning room - it's a slave camp!

Characteristically this was voiced by one of the most

vehement upholders of 'the unions have too much power'
OpInIOn.
Finally, there was resentment at always being left out and
the last to know if anything was happening. Where was the
shop steward? Or even worse - who was he? The following
recounts a conversation between Rene, now working in hand-
packing, and Vera and Pearl from stripping:

RENE: I mean, this morning we had to send down for Mike.

He seemed to forget all about us. We just don't know
what's going on.

VERA (to me): We don't get involved in hardly anything.

We haven't got a shop steward.

ANNA: Isn't Mike Clifton your shop steward?

VERA: Yes - but he's down on - well, I don't know where

he is.

PEARL: No, it's someone in the other room.

VERA: But he will just tell us what's going on. He never

asks. And he hasn't got a lot of time. [By now, it was not
clear whether 'he' was Mike Clifton or John Clark.]

But if alienation from the shop stewards was the major

problem at Churchmans, everybody knew the remedy. It
was up to them. Unless they put forward a woman shop
steward themselves things would remain as they were. What
prevented them?
170 Struggle at Work

Rank-and-file involvement - and problems at home

ANNA: Would it make any difference if there was a woman

shop steward?

JACKIE (after a long pause): Yes, I reckon you could tell a

woman more than you would a man. She'd listen. She'd
understand you more.

ANNA: Do you think women should get more involved in

their unions, then?

JENNY (another long pause): Yes, because, be fair, women

can do as much as men now, but we don't get our way.
Like a bloke's all might fora man's union, but I reckon it's
different for girls. Anyway, they don't do nothing for you.
The union don't do nothing.

Even the youngest girls, the most flippant and divorced from
their work situation, had a serious side. But they were the
least likely to do anything about it. The ideological block
against engaging in an activity which they saw as both
generationally and sexually alien was too much for them.
And besides, they simply didn't know the ropes:

VAL: I won't do it, 'cos I feel soft in front of all those

people. When you've got to go in the office, makes you
feel soft.

Of all the girls aged below 25, there was only one, Rene,
who had ever contemplated standing for steward:

RENE: I'd like to do that - with the union. I was going to

do that where I worked before, but ... I never [shaking
her head as if to say it was too great a leap] .

She had the energy and the sharpest awareness of union

issues in her age group. Yet, without a very firm, positive
kick from her fellows she would not take the plunge.
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 171

The older women, who (paradoxically) the younger ones

thought most fit for the job, had other worries. From their
male trade-union 'brothers' they received a constant stream
of conflicti1lg messages: on the one hand they were second-
rate workers who should really stay at home; on the other
hand, they should be better trade unionists. 3 Caught between
two stools, they blamed themselves:

PEARL: It's our own faults, 'cos none of us'll take it on.

VERA: Nobody'll take it on.

PEARL: That's what's wrong, see, we don't go to the meet-

ings, none of the women. See, you've got the chance to go,
like, but the majority of us is married, and we've got
homes to go to. That's where it is.

For working women, marriage and trade unionism were

simply incompatible. Even the over-forties without school-
age children had domestic responsibilities. While union
meetings were held outside working hours, the two just could
not fit in:

VERA: You've got to go to the meetings, you've got to have

plenty of time on your hands. You really want somebody
single.

PEARL: At night you just can't manage. You've got to go

home, and do housework and cook meals; you just don't
feel up to it.

ANNA: If someone helped with the home - and you had

more time?

PEARL: If you wanted to make a career of it, yes, it would

be nice. But I mean, if you've got homes to see to, you just
can't do these things, go to these meetings.

ANNA: What about you?

172 Struggle at Work

PEARL: Yes, if I'd been a lot younger and never had a home
life. I think it's interesting.

Implicit in these statements was an admission that lack of

involvement was ideologically blocked (i.e. was much more
than a simple question of time). It was breaking the
boundaries of men's and women's worlds. This led to a
paralysis which prevented rethinking these assumptions about
the sexual division of labour, let alone acting on them. Even
those most conscious of the need for change were blocked:

STELLA: I'm not satisfied, but I don't do anything about it,

do I? I'm stupid.

ANNA: Why do you think it's difficult to do anything?

STELLA: I don't know. Really, we should do something,

but we don't. Just let it slide and that's it. Think we can't
do anything about it and then don't bother. You go to
work every day, you run your home, and you think that's
all you've got time for. Instead of taking up politics and
things like that. Or local councils or even going to your
union meetings. Bad, isn't it? Not even going to your
union meetings.

The attitude of 'just letting things slide' - passIvIty,

fatalism - reappeared again and again, a general expression
of the alienation of the worker in a world running out of
control. But as well as this common class sentiment, women
felt extra exclusion from 'public' life - 'politics, things like
that' - because their place was in the home, however
grudgingly they colluded with this ideology. And, as with
their collusion with their economic subordination to their
husbands, they maintained this position so as not to upset
the balance of roles in the family where they had to live and
work, and from which there was little chance of escape:

ANNA: What does your husband do?

STELLA: He works in here. And he's not interested at all.

 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 173

ANNA: Not interested in what?

STELLA: The unions. He watches his wages, not interested

in anything else. Keeping his house decorated and watch-
ing his telly, and that's his lot. Probably if he was more
interested in unions and things, I would be. But I think,
because he's not, I'm not.

ANNA: And what do you think his attitude would be if

you got interested?

STELLA: He'd say, well you do it, but your work in the
home comes first - not messing around with things like
that. Let somebody else do it. That's his attitude.

The division between worlds was reinforced by husbands

who were active trade unionists as much as by 'home-centred'
men:

VERA: My husband's branch secretary of his union - the

AUEW.

ANNA (chuckling): Does he get you down to your own union

meetings?

VERA (very shocked): Oh no! He wouldn't do that. See-

he's got a lot of work - a hell of a lot, I don't know how
he keeps up. See, he needs me at home.

Pressures from home were the beginning of a self-fulfilling

prophecy: whatever women desired or intended to do, both
practical and ideological obstacles were placed before them
by a ruling ideology and the very husbands who, in another
context, condemned women as 'bad trade unionists'. And as
the vicious circle swung into motion, lack of experience, lack
of confidence and lack of articulacy tightened their grip.
Stella had many positive notions as well as negative criticisms
about union organisation. What happened to them? They
dried up before they were born:
174 Struggle at Work
STELLA: See, the girls in here need pushing. [Pause.] Some-
times ... I do ... I get ideas, and I think, ah, I won't say
anything, keep me mouth shut.

ANNA: Why?

STELLA: Well, it don't come out right. And I can't sit down
and write anything. I mean, I'd like to be a councillor or
something, but I can't even spell. [Pessimistic mutters.]
Oh - it's all muddled up. I don't know - I just can't be
bothered any more. See, I'm one of those that don't
bother. I know what's wrong, but I don't put it right.

Had there been the tiniest spark of encouragemen t at work,

Stella was a person who would have livened up. In a small
way this was already happening. A few provocative questions,
a few arguments - and she was off:

VERA (to me): What've you done to Stella? She's not

usually a chatterbox. I haven't seen her chatting like that
before in twenty years!

Shrouded in low spirits, a fire still smouldered. But experience

of struggle with the 'backing' of a patronising, male-dominated
union was enough to put it right out.

Struggle at work and cold water from the union

By the time this study was conducted there was very little
room for rank-and-file struggle over anything at Churchmans
without overthrowing twenty years of entrenched manage-
ment control. We saw how with PPS control not just over
pay but over the conditions of the detailed labour process
had been entirely removed from the shop-floor. For most
girls this was an inevitable part of factory life which they
learned to live with. But to the older generation of women
PPS meant a great deal more. They remembered their feeling
of helplessness against the company when the scheme was
introduced - although, as we saw earlier, this did not prevent
them from partially falling for the 'holiday-camp' view of the
factory floor!
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 175
PEARL: We never had no choice with PPS. That's gone now.
We've got to stick with it. I think, once the big firms get
something in their heads, you've had it. You got to go by
them.

And yet they had not given in quite so simply. Where they
had felt they could still manoeuvre, they had fought.
What issues were at stake? To look at women factory
workers, stationed like machines on a production line, it
might be tempting to assume, as many outside the factory
floor do, that they are unconcerned about control - provid-
ing the money is coming in and, as their training officer said,
'the chance to chatter' is there. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Like any other group of workers, they are
bothered not just about money but about the conditions
under which they earn it.
The largest group of long-term workers who could
remember the changes at Churchmans were the tobacco
strippers, who retained memories of lost control - and better
pay under simple piecework:

VERA: Before the new scheme, you used to do your work,

and what you did over, you got ten pence per pound extra.
I used to get my day's work - perhaps I shouldn't say it -
I'd get all my work done by dinner-time. And then I'd sit
and do all my piecework. Before we went on this scheme,
you'd work for yourself. Earn what you could.

Previously they could regulate their pace; the fastest

workers could earn a great deal extra. Now:

VERA: Once you've done your work for your grade, that's
it. What you do over, the firm has. On a good day, I've
done mine by half past two. But you can't go home, not
till the buzzer goes. So you've got to sit and work for
nothing.

At the same time, they were forced to accumulate an extra

weight of stem each day, as a safeguard against a bad day,
because their pay grade was assessed over a whole month.
176 Struggle at Work

There could be no such things as good days and bad days;

one 'bad' day could jeopardise all the 'good days', if it
depressed the month's output below what was required for
the grade. One of the alleged benefits of MDW was supposed
to be the stabilisation of earnings to account for vagaries in
work conditions beyond employees' control. It certainly did
not work this way here. Because the work was unpredictable,
most women did unpaid overtime most days, as a safety
margin. The fast workers lost out, while the slower ones
slaved to keep up:

IDA: See what I mean, lover, like some would find it easy
to go above the 110, where some have got to work really
hard to get up to it. Well, they won't pay anybody that's
capable of working that easily; they don't stand a chance
of getting any more money.

PEARL: So they has to waste a lot of time, see.

ANNA: Do you find that you work over the 11 °per cent?
IDA: Well, it can't be avoided.

ANNA: Couldh't you go off and have a cup of tea?

PEARL: We haven't got nowhere to go.

IDA: Yeah, but you still got to weigh a certain amount of

stem on each day. What it boils down to: we got to do
twenty-three pounds of stem a day, to be on top. Well,
you could do twenty-nine on a good day, even thirty or
more - when you get the good work. But still some find it
hard to do; it's all right for some but hard for others. It's
more or less a catch, isn't it? Because you've got to do
more each day because you don't know what sort of a lot
you're going to have the day after.

VERA: If you see how much everybody is doing over, I

think you'll find more or less everyone is doing work over
the top. It's a catch, see?
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organ£sat£on and Trade Unionzsm 177

When PPS had been consolidated in 1969, those who had

anticipated this had demanded an extra grade above the top
grade, to cut down the amount of unpaid labour, and give
the faster women an incentive to earn more. This was not
even a radical challenge to the principle of grading, and had it
been taken by their shop stewards it had a chance of being
accepted. It was over matters such as these that better-
organised branches of Imperial Tobacco, such as John Player,
Nottingham, had fought, from the beginning of the
'experimental' period of PPS (see Chapter 4). But here,
finding no support from their steward, the women had gone
along themselves to union headquarters to put it to the full-
time official:

IDA: And do you know what he said? He said we were

greyhounds. We had to be curbed. He said, we had to have
the carrot taken away from us. That is his exact words.
So I said to him, 'Well, that's a silly expression, because
you're chasing a carrot.'

ANNA: What did you think of your union after that?

IDA: Well, I didn't like that, because everybody got a

carrot to chase. Because, in fact, he [the union man] had
been made higher in his job. He had a carrot to chase,
didn't he? So I mean it's 'keep the workers down - I'm all
right then'.

ANNA: What happened after that?

IDA: Well, he wouldn't listen, he didn't want to know. We

always get shouted down, like. He never ever give us a
straight answer. He always went on to something· else -
bla, bla, bla.

On this, as on most other details of the productivity

scheme, the women fought against their union - and lost.
Stella had been given the work of a girl 'rationalised away' on
top of her own. This type of 'flexibility', in which a worker's
raised productivity was not on its own a reason for raising
pay, was an endemic part of the PPS agreement:
178 Struggle at Work

STELLA: I got to get a rise, let alone back pay, after six
months - but I don't think I'11 get it now. They'll say I'm
used to it ... See what I mean? You can't win anything,
because the union won't back you up. It's no good at all.
And this is the reason people won't bother to fight,
because they know damned well the union won't fight
with you.

It was the same with the job alterations and productivity

increases of hand-strippers and machine-strippers. The hand-
strippers had been made to 'forfeit' to the machine strippers
a specially skilled type of stripping for which they had earned
extra 'plusage'. Both lost out: the hand-strippers because
they lost 'skill-points', arid the machine-strippers who,
although in a higher job group, got no extra money for the
extra work. In this case the women were ignored by their
shop steward, and totally mystified by the union official,
who supported the PPS scheme, and felt the women too
ignorant to 'appreciate' that because the new 'points' system
simplified pay it was 'better' for them - even if they earned
less! In this dispute the women lost in utter confusion and
division among themselves:

PEARL: When we've had disputes and that - they keep

quiet.

ANNA: Who?

PEARL: The machine-strippers. When we went to the meet-

ings. When we all had to go over the road - they didn't go
then, nor the stewards - did they, Ida?

ANNA: What was that?

PEARL: When we was on about the scheme.

IDA: What's it called, Pearl?

PEARL: The proficiency . . . Well, different departments

were given different points for the work they done, and
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 179

then they got paid according to that. Well, we disagreed

with it because we weren't allowed any points at all. But
the machine girls, I don't know if you can remember that
we used to have machine girls with us, they did, they got
extra for being on the stripper. But because we were doing
it by hand we never had anything. So, well, we asked for a
meeting to see the union men, over at Transport House.

ANNA: And what happened?

PEARL: Well, some turned up and some didn't. Well, it just

fell through. He were speaking in different terms to what
we understood about the yardstick. We didn't understand
half what he was talking about.

ANNA: Who was that?

PEARL: The union man. How long ago was that, Ida?

IDA: Three years ago, wasn't it?

STELLA: '67. That was when we had the book.

ANNA: The book on PPS? Did you understand it?

STELLA: No. We had a new amendment in it, didn't we?

PEARL: Yes.

STELLA: A big one. I think they read it to us actually.

ANNA: That was the thing with the points system that you
didn't agree about?

PEARL : Yes. That was when he was on about the carrot. He

didn't want us working too hard. He reckoned it'd be a lot
easier, this points scheme.

The dense jungle of PPS language, together with the

collaboration of the union leadership, left the shop-floor
180 Struggle at Work

worker helplessly floundering. The whole experience was one

of demoralisation:

PEARL: They say we can all speak our minds.

IDA: Yes, we could speak our minds. But he wasn't listen-

ing!

ANNA: What's the point of speaking your minds if no one's

listening?

IDA: Well, there you are, that's what I'm on about.

And that was it. It just wasn't worth it.

Throughout this cycle of petty defeats these women had
tried to fight and failed, their self-confidence beaten down at
every turn. Like thousands of other workers, male or female,
they experienced indifference to their interests by their full-
time officials for the expediency of keeping employer-union
relations peaceful and smooth-running. But in this context
the problem of weakly organised women workers has an
extra twist, for not only do they have to battle against the
bureaucratisation and collaboration of their union, but also,
at every level, they have to struggle as women against being
ground down by a male-dominated union hierarchy. Ignored,
ridiculed and patronised, resources became doubly exhausted.
The result? A self-fulfilling prophecy. The 'brothers' said all
along that women were 'bad trade unionists'.

Fear and the problem of solidarity

PEARL: The union tried to get a woman shop steward but

nobody would do it.

ANNA: Why was that?

VERA: Well, people won't stick together.

PEARL: You find they say 'yes', but when the time comes,
they backs out.
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionzsm 181

ANNA: Why do you think that is?

VERA: Worry, I think.

PEARL: Frightened they'll be sacked.

If years of disillusion had sown the seeds of cynicism and

bitterness about their leaders, of one thing the Churchmans'
women were sure: their most fundamental problem was one
of their own solidarity. In this, they were strikingly honest,
demonstrating the double-edged nature of their relative
unfamiliarity with traditional trade unionism. The workers
at 'Chemco', men, in a similar situation of shop-floor
fragmentation, resorted to excuses in terms of trade-union
representation as a process of leadership. Having this kind of
perspective let them off the hook as being themselves respon-
sible for what was happening:

The men say that what they need is a steward who'll

'stand up to them' - as if their problem was one of leader-
ship alone: In practice, they have not demonstrated any
awareness of the fact that they will not get the representa-
tion they want until they themselves are willing to provide
the backing. 4

The Churchmans' women saw things much more simply: 'The

trouble is, we don't stick together.' Being uncluttered with
concepts of 'leadership' and 'procedure', they cut through
organisational explanations, and saw trade-union organisation
in the final analysis as a matter of personal responsibilz"ty - in
spite of their general alienation from the system as it stood.
But frankness was not enough to change the situation, for
they were stuck in a rut of fear - fear of lack of backing
from the union, fear of lack of support from each other. The
shop-floor was fragmented by mistrust and individualism, in
spite of the importance of personal friendship and 'mucking
in'. The vicious circle of poor organisation, vulnerability and
fear was exacerbated by PPS. Problems of grading were
approached individually; departmental and job sectionalism
and collective 'laughs' coexisted side by side. The problems
182 Struggle at Work

of hand-strippers were not those of machine-weighers; if one

woman were moved from one department to another, or if
her job load were altered, this was her own story, not that of
the shop-floor.
Lack of solidarity hit the hand-strippers badly. Insecurity
about the quality of leaf and proficiency performance
standards had turned some women into compulsive workers:

ANNA: Why can't you just stop when you've done your
grade?

VERA: Well yeah, but if you stop, you've got some people
who do pounds and pounds over. And the supervisor might
look at hers and look at yours, and say, 'why does she do
that, and you only do this?'

ANNA: Well, if you all stopped?

VERA: Ah!! Well you don't get this. I go out the back,
three, four times a day, but some, they do over their work;
they just sit there, they never move. Elma never goes out,
Pearl never goes out, Vi never goes out - they don't move.
So that's their fault, isn't it?

ANNA: Why don't you stick together?

VERA: They never have in here.

PEARL: Never have.

The paradox was that some, like Pearl, openly admitted

they were blameworthy for not sticking together, yet did not
alter their habits. Loyalty to their mates, they confessed, was
not a priority. They were plain scared. They were prepared to
slacken their pace slightly, once there were tea bays - but
still made excuses for sticking at their work. This caused
considerable resentment among those who could see that
collective restriction of output would help them all. But
unable to persuade them, they tolerated them:
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 183

PEARL: I don't like it out in the toilet.

ANNA: What about when there's tea bays? Will you stop
more then?

VERA: I shall.

PEARL (defensively): Ooh, I shall have a cuppa tea, yeah.

VERA (with sarcasm): Well, I know Stella will. I don't

know about the others [referring to Pearl].

Yet the individualism of the strippers was not out of

choice; they had resisted the new grading because they knew
it would cut down their control over output. It was the
triumph of PPS that they were forced into this position. 5
The same applied to the BUR girls; they resented the speed
of the weighing machines, but likewise were forced to keep
up a good record, for fear of downgrading. The only
collective challenge open to them would be all slowing down
their performance, to force a retiming of their grades. For
this, they lacked the necessary level of co-operation and
organisation. And so, for them, too, 'going out the back' was
the only available form of resistance.
But lack of solidarity in work-place organisation found its
most naked expression in 'turning' on one's work-mates. The
seeds of division were already sown in the cliques, rivalries
and petty hostilities among the younger girls. There was the
case of the girl victimised for refusing to see the factory
doctor after her miscarriage.
The older women suffered the same weakness, in spite of
their much-vaunted married women's confidence. They were
terrified of sticking their necks out over the smallest matter,
in case the others failed to support them. There were several
stories of this type of betrayal:

IDA: Up in our room, some of them wanted footrests to

put their feet on, and at that time Lucy Haskins was our
welfare rep and she asked. Well, the manager, he says,
'Who wants footrests?' And somebody's name was men-
184 Struggle at Work

tioned. Do you know what? They came up and ask that

person if she wants a footrest, and she says, 'I don't want
no blasted footrest', she said. There - she turned! Old
Lucy swore she'd never do welfare again. She never got
over it. That's how they are!6

Elsie Smith, another welfare representative, had been

hying to get management's permission for singing on the
factory floor at Christmas, but had failed. Another woman
began to provoke her about it, and claimed she had it 'in
black and white' from the office that they could sing:

IDA: Well, Elsie Smith went to get up - and that's as true

as the leaf in my hand - and went up to her. And who do
you think went downstairs to the office and said there was
a disturbance? But there wasn't. And they gave Elsie Smith
the sack. Well, I went to the union. I ran allover the place
for Elsie Smith. I went to the manager, but he refused to
see us. I said to the girls, 'Come on, let's try and do some-
thing; let's all stop stripping, and when the manager comes
in we'll say "It's because of Elsie Smith".' Do you think
they would do it? Not one Df them. One of them - and
she was a married woman - said, 'I'm not doing it, he'll go
"you and you - all got the sack".' 'Oh', I said, 'don't talk
such rubbish. What do you pay union money for?' And
that's when I lost all my faith. I couldn't do nothing about
it. I never forgot it.

Only one woman recognised these incidents as symptoms

of a highly centralised trade-union machine, where no
organisation exists to deal with the small, isolated incidents
at shop-floor level:

STELLA: You can't win, because the union won't back you
up. If the union was made to fight for one hundred or two
hundred, they'd have to fight; but you ask them to back
one person, and they won't do it.

The majority, however, had become cynical, and blamed it

all on 'human nature':
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 185

IDA: You get disillusioned as you get older. You finds out.
And you think you've got friends in the room. Well! When
it comes to the crunch, everybody looks after themselves.
If you work in a factory, you find that out.

ANNA: Do you think people are frightened because they've

got no union backing?

IDA: No. It isn't the union's fault, or the management's.

It's the work-mates. Honestly. You thinks - blimey, why
should I put myself out for people like that? As you gets
older, you gets wiser - you've got to fend for yourself.

Instead of balancing their self-criticism with criticism of

their union organisation, the women 'personalised' a complex
situation, and sought refuge in a cynical ready-made ideology
of individualism. This, of course, took them even further
away from developing a collective analysis and voice. From
partial insights to embittered misconceptions, they seesawed
between potential strength and weakness. It is in this context
that their participation in the factory council can be under-
stood.

The factory council

The Churchmans' factory council was originally set up as a
management-controlled worker-participation body, the
Welfare Committee, in 1927. This was in line with the
company's early paternalistic policies, but also part of the
wider strategy of union conciliation held by many large
companies during the lean 1920s, and dubbed 'Mondism'
from the recommendations of Sir Alfred Mond, chairman of
ICI, after the 1926 General Strike.
The history of union and worker incorporation in both
employer and government participation schemes is a key to
understanding the British labour movement. 7 Here it is
appropriate to make certain basic observations. There are,
of course, a wide variety of views on 'worker-participation'
schemes: there is the management conception of an equal
'partnership' between the company and worker; there is also
186 Struggle at Work

the view, chiefly found in the official trade-union movement

and the Labour Party Left, that 'industrial democracy' as
offered by joint consultation bodies increases the say of
workers in asserting their interests versus management. Both
these positions adhere to the belief that both 'sides' of
industry are part· of a 'functional relationship' in which
increased 'participation' is a progressive step forward. But as
we saw in the discussion of productivity deals, participation
and union incorporation is just one weapon in the employers'
armoury of control:

Participation in practice was offered by employers under

stress and withdrawn when it ceased to meet their require-
ments in terms of incorporation or of the need to be seen
to offer something to moderate labour demands. 8

This conclusion emerged after an analysis of five major

periods when union incorporation was greatly accelerated
and strongly pioneered: the 1860s and the end of the nine-
teenth century, both periods in which first the new model
'skilled-workers' unions, and then the general unions, put
pressure on the employers; the Whitley Councils of the First
World War and after, when the Shop Stewards'Movement,
followed by the Minority Movement, put the fear of
revolution in the ruling circles; immediately before and
during the Second World War, when labour was in a strong
position because it was scarce; the post-war reconstruction
period and the 1947 fuel crisis, when again employers were
under heavy economic pressure; and the mid-to-Iate 1960s
when the stop-go expansion of the post-war boom combined
with a strong shop stewards' movement gave way to profit
squeeze and crisis.
However, there is a danger of falling into a one-sided view
of the problem. A more realistic assessment would suggest
that employer-union (or government-union) collaboration
is as old as trade unionism in this country.9 It takes both
sides to make participation possible. When joint schemes
faded it was because one or both partners withdrew their
support. This happened during the 1950s. After the Second
World War joint production councils either faded entirely
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 187

or became 'empty shells', concerned only with 'tea, towels

and toilets'. They faded not only because employers
preferred to return to the operations of the free market in
the days of 'you've never had it so good', but also because
shop stewards took issues like productivity and work practice
into their own hands. And as we have seen, this led to a two-
tiered system of trade unionism, the unofficial and the
official - the official still co-operating in joint negotiating
bodies, the 'unofficial' having turned 'runaway' and
'disorderly'. Management-run factory councils lay moribund
in direct, inverse relation to strong shop-floor organis-
ation.
But they did not die out everywhere. Even where union-
card membership was almost 100 per cent, as at Churchmans,
a dormant factory council found life as soon as a shop-floor
problem arose. In the absence of any effective factory-based
trade unionism, it survived as the only institution to cater
for everyday work issues. The joint association resembled
other 'welfare' bodies in non-union firms, but in the context
of a unionised work-place it was perniciously confusing. It
was not ajoint management-union body but a management-
worker body. Some worker representatives happened to be
shop stewards, but they did not necessarily have to be even
union members. Elections of 'welfare reps' cut across and
undermined the development of a shop-steward system.
In terms of issues a dualism developed in workers' minds
between wages and conditions, which were for the union 'out
there', and miscellaneous problems which became jumbled
into the factory council. These were largely in the 'tea,
towels and toilets' category, but they were trivial only
because they were neutralised in a management-run scenario.
As Carter Goodrich illustrated in his analysis of British
workshop politics (which was originally published in 1920),10
while it is analytically useful to separate wage-related issues
from other matters relevant to workers' control over their
situation (freedom and authority, speed and work practice),
in practice they overlap. In concrete struggles the spillover
between them is important because small issues can be
generalised, and confidence built up. If workers cannot
organise over a cup of tea, they are hardly equipped to take
188 Struggle at Work

on the employer over speed-ups, manmng levels, payor

redundancy.
At Church mans 'tea, towels and toilets' were precisely the
final nooks and crannies of choice and decision which were
still tangible. Everything else seemed 'sewn up'. If there were
one grievance which got the BUR girls going, it was the speed
of work, combined with lack of reliefs, and lack of tea-bays.
Tea-bays were also hankered for in the spinning room. Wills
had made this concession, under union pressure; but
Churchmans' workers were worse organised. To have won on
this issue would have demanded struggle, and (had 'it been
a union struggle) could have been integrated into the whole
issue of speed, grading and, ultimately, of PPS as a whole.
As things were, the question was syphoned off to the factory
council, where it stagnated.
The survival of this institution was not a question of
positive support from the workers. It was rather part of the
vicious circle of poor union organisation. While women were
inhibited from standing as shop stewards, the job of 'welfare
rep' on the factory council did appeal to some. Many were
concerned to do something for their mates; they understood
'welfare' matters (immediate, concrete problems) better than
'union' issues - which seemed to be all about facts and
figures. The factory council seemed less drastic a step and
more accessible than the union; meetings were only held
monthly, and in working premises and hours. There was
neither the ideological nor the time commitment of
becoming a 'union woman' - of sticking one's neck out and
entering a man's world. It seemed more compatible with the
role of housewife.
The kind of women who had become welfare representa-
tives in the past varied considerably. Two had been fighters
and loyal to their work-mates, behaving much like shop
stewards. One of these was sacked, as we have seen. The
bitter experience of no backing put off others from standing
forward. Then there were a few who had started off with
illusions about the nature of the factory council, and about
the benefits of joint participation, but learning in practice
'that it never got you anywhere' they left in disgust (without,
however, having the influence to discredit it for other
 Dear Brothers . .. ': Organz"satz"on and Trade Unz"onz"sm 189

women). In this way, by management encouragement and a

process of self-selection, the women who now stood for
these posts were those most incorporated into management
ideology. But how did they carry on representing the rank
and file?
Elma, representing all the young girls from the BUR, and
close to retirement, had become an 'establishment' figure:

ELMA: I think this is a very co-operative company, all the

supervisors are decent, and there's never been anything
refused that was properly asked for.

ANNA: What's the complaints procedure?

ELMA: Well, if there's a grievance in the BUR, the girls

come and tell me, then I tells the foreman, and if he thinks
fit, it goes to factory council. But these girls in here
haven't really got anything to grumble about; they're
earning more here than some men outside.

ANNA: What happens at the meetings?

ELMA: Well, they're very sociable really. There's about six

factory reps, and the supervisors and the factory manager.
He asks what the problem is, we tell him, and then he
gives us the answer.

ANNA: What about the smoking bays?

ELMA: Well, they're seeing to this, but it's very complicated.

They have to comply with fire regulations and consult
with Head Office. It'll take a while.

ANNA: I heard some girls complain they should have the

same weekly cigarette allowance as men. Men have forty,
women only twenty.u

ELMA: Well, be fair, men smoke more.

Because of her age and sympathies this welfare represent a-

190 Struggle at Work

tive could hardly be said to represent the girls. Furthermore,

she never 'delivered the goods'. And yet they continued to
vote for her, and tum to her rather than their male steward
in case of difficulty. The reason was simple. She was a
woman. The girls felt they could talk to a woman; they were
not always sure what a union issue was, and besides felt 'soft'
about these matters. Elma was approachable - that was the
main thing:

ANNA: What do you do if there's a problem? Like reliefs?

VAL: They has meetings and that - Elma goes to them -

the older woman. If we're not happy about something, we
tells her, and she puts it to the committee.

The young girls' vagueness about trade unionism and the

appeal of any female representative ensured the perpetuation
of this non-union system of factory consultation, in spite
of the existence of male stewards. The vicious circle took
another twist.
The factory council consisted of seven worker representa-
tives (or their deputies), the six management members and
the factory manager, who chaired the meetings (see also
Table 9.2). It was still male-dominated, the women mainly
sticking to the job of deputies. Two of the five shop stewards
in the factory were on the committee, the others were in the

TABLE 9.2 Departmental distribution of worker representatives

on the factory council, and distribution by sex

Department Worker Deputy

representative

Stripping Male Female

Packeting and training Female Female
Roll (pressing, flake and spinning) Male Female
Leaf and wetting-down Male Male
Cutting, testing, tobacco store Male Female
Depot, general store Male Female

}
Maintenance, watchmen
Doorkeepers, cloakroom attendants Male Male
Cleaners and drivers
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 191

union, but did not bring this into their role as welfare repre-
sentatives. In fact, to call it a joint participation committee
is a misnomer: there was no actual negotiation in the
meetings, because the workers had nothing to negotiate with
without bringing in the union and thereby altering the very
basis of their participation. Meetings followed a set procedural
pattern of chairman's announcements, followed by workers'
comments and requests, a discussion period, and management
replies. The minutes shown in Document 9.1 illustrates how
recurrent problems, such as smoking allowances and tea-bays,
were stalled by 'referrals back' and 'further consultations'.
The agenda was formal and under management control.
Controversial issues of work-shop control were sunk among
charity appeals, cheap tights for the girls, raffles and
entertainment plans.
The factory council effectively quelled most rumblings of
conflict between labour and capital. This was partly due to
the fact that the worker representatives were not a united
body: some colluded with management more than others,
and each had a different axe to grind, having no concerted
policy. Management was in a strong position to divide and
rule, arid diffuse matters in a ragbag of issues on the agenda.
However, the ideological hold of the factory council went
deeper than this. For what it did was reinforce women
workers' sense of powerlessness, and the belief that the only
way to achieve an object was simply to 'keep asking'.
Throughout their work experience women were told that
they were weak and ineffectual because they were poor trade
unionists. Their own trade union reinforced the belief that
there was little they could do because tobacco was 'a luxury
trade'.12 Misleading ideas such as these were mixed in with
realistic observations that Churchmans was indeed a 'Cindarella'
factory within a giant corporation. Impotence, passivity and
fatalism paralysed shop-floor consciousness and action.
The case of the tea-bays was a telling illustration of this
consciousness. It was Hot part of the trivia of the number of
canteen tables or the position of the suggestion box because
it was a question of everyday control over basic working
conditions. It was ripe for a union struggle at shop-floor level.
But no. It was relegated to the sphere of polite requests.
192 Struggle at Work

DoCUMENT 9.1 Minutes of a factory council meeting, Spring 1972

MATIERS ARISING FROM THE MINUTES OF FACTORY COUNCIL

HELD 26 APRIL 1972

Suggestions scheme
No further suggestions had been received since the last meeting, and
there was one suggestion outstanding. The suggestor had been informed of
the situation.

Appeal
A letter of acknowledgement had been received from the Shaftesbury
Crusade, and this had been posted on the main Notice Board.

Wetting-down room
The ejector for lifting the flavour to the tank had been provided on the
No. 1 Rotary machine, and the No.2 machine would be similarly equipped
shortly.

Smoking allowances
The Chairman said that there was no further information available at
the present time.

Tights
Mrs B. said that a request had been made for tights in a 'fashion' colour,
but Robert Sinclair were unable to supply. Fifteen pairs of tights had been
sent free of charge with the last order, and it had been decided that these
would be sold to employees in the normal way, but the proceeds would be
donated to the children's Christmas Party Fund. Mrs B. added that the
stocks of tights may be a little low this week due to delays in transit as a
result of the Rail Strike.

Despatch Department
The glass roofing on the Despatch department had been shadowed.

Banking facilities
The Chairman said that, in view of the relatively small number of em-
ployees in this factory, and the amount of work which would be involved
on the wages section, he could not introduce banking facilities such as
obtained at the Wills Unit.

CUITING ROOM - TRUNKING

A Member commented on the dirty condition of the trunking in the
cutting room and asked if this could be cleaned.
Mr M. said that the window-cleaning contractors had been asked for a
quotation for cleaning the whole of the cutting room. Once the quotation
was received, then the work could be carried out.
It was asked if the walls and ceiling in the wetting-down room and
lamina store could also be cleaned. Comment was also made regarding the
cleanliness of the Rotary machines. Mr S. would pursue this latter point.
'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 193

With regard to the wetting·down, the Chairman said that this department
had only recently been redecorated, but it was the intention to introduce
scheduled cleaning by outside contractors. Mr M. said that, in the light of
the quotation received for the Cutting Room, the cleaning of the lamina
store would be considered.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Brand '0' Roll Manufacture

The Chairman said that plans for the introduction of this work had
been completed, and the first orders would be received in the week com·
mencing 5 June. Manufacture had already commenced in the spinning
room and the packing function should start immediately after the Spring
Bank Holiday. Taking over this work involved ten additional proprietary
lines and some eleven bulk lines. In view of this additional work it had
been decided to move the whole of roll packing function into the training
room under the supervision of Mrs J. The proprietary and bulk flake would
stay under the supervision of Mrs E. Layouts for the rooms had been
agreed and initial moves had already been made.

Smoking bays
The Chairman said that plans for the installation of three smoking bays
had been tentatively agreed. A combined hot and cold beverage machine
would be provided in each bay. The bays would be installed as soon as
possible, and instructions as to their use would be given at a later date.

Pay slips
It was said that the pay slips were poorly cut and the headings could
not be seen. The Chainnan said that this would receive attention.
Canteen
It was asked if an additional table could be provided in the canteen as
more people were now using the canteen at lunch time. The Chairman said
that there were definitely enough tables in the canteen, provided that
employees took the places as they became available - provisions could not
be made for separate groups to sit together.
It was said that the suggestion box was situated in such a way as to
cause an obstruction in the canteen. Mr M. said that this would be moved.

Wetting-down room
It was said that there was a shortage of cloths for covering down in the
wetting-down room. An order had been placed but as yet this had not been
received. The Chairman said that this matter would receive attention.

Carpark
A Member said that the entrance to the Redcliff Street car park was in
a very poor condition. Mr M. said that this would receive attention.

This concluded the business of the meeting.

194 Struggle at Work

Women did not see they had the power for anything more,
as Pearl, deputy welfare representative for the stripping room
explained:

PEARL: Well, we asked for smoking bays and a place where

we could have a drink, like they've got in other factories.
But they said no for a long time. But we kept on and on,
and now, at last, they're going to let us have them. They've
ordered three, but they haven't decided where they're
going to put them. I expect there'll be one on each floor.

ANNA: What would you have done if they'd said 'no' again?

PEARL: Well, you can just do nothing. Keep on asking them.

VERA: It's the same with the two overalls. You can only
have one. You've got to wash this one every weekend.
Pearl took it to the meeting: 'No. Can't afford it.'

ANNA: Would you ever do anything, like a go-slow, if they

refused something?

PEARL: No; they've never done anything like that.

VERA: I don't reckon it's worth the while.

PEARL: You can't cause a lot of trouble in here. We're not

very big, see. And like in a small room like this, we don't
stand much chance. But we were all in agreement about
these smoking bays - the men and the women - and I
think we've kept on that much, and at last they've realised
that other finns have got them and that we should have
them.

ANNA: Have you got a shop steward in this room?

PEARL: No, not in this room. We've got one of the men in
the other department.

ANNA: How do you get on with the union reps in the

factory?
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade UnioniSm 195

PEARL: We don't see them very often. They say it's our
fault by not having enough interest, by not having a
woman representative.

ANNA: And what do you say?

PEARL: Well we just can't do it; we've got home commit-

ments. That is the drawback.

Round and round it went, the eternal vicious circle. Home

commitments, and time - always the lack of time. And so
the factory council, the almost parliamentary ritual of
lobbying and relying on 'public pressure', took the place of
organised struggle: 'You can't cause a lot of trouble in here.'

The redundancies
This sense of weakness was more clearly brought out during
the redundancies of the summer of 1971. Such was the
feeling of resignation that it was hardly considered a union
matter. Like everyone else, Mike Clifton, shop steward,
thought it inevitable:

MIKE: How it was explained to me was that we've got to

save money, we're overstaffed; and we were. Everybody
was fed up, because they were sweeping, washing walls
days on end, painting - anything. Well, it's obvious, it
seemed to me, we were overstaffed.

As far as he was concerned, it was purely a matter for

national negotiations, which he trusted would ensure
redundant workers either got a handsome golden handshake
or were redeployed elsewhere within the Imperial Tobacco
Group. During the actual upheavals he had been off sick.
No arrangements appeared to have been made to deputise for
him. When he returned the 'operation' had been silently
completed. Taking together 'natural wastage' (several girls
left to get married or to have babies) and redundancies,
twenty-nine women and seven men went - a sixth of the
original work-force.
196 Struggle at Work

Not surprisingly, the older women took a similar view to

the stewards. Tired and demoralised, it seemed that if tea-
bays were such a battle, keeping jobs was well outside the
range of union business. It was all 'part of progress':

ANNA: Did you have a union meeting about it?

IDA: We didn't meet the union on that, did we, Emy?

These redundancies? We weren't asked to meet the union.

ANNA: Did you think it was a union matter?

IDA: Well, I don't think they could have done anything.

Because at the time, the trade wasn't very good.

ANNA: Say something like that cropped up again?

IDA: Do you know, I think the Imperial Tobacco Company

do look after their employees the best they can. If they
could possibly avoid it, they would. But it's progress, isn't
it? It's sad. I don't know how they're ever going to find an
answer to that. 'Cos you've got to have progress - haven't
you, really, compu ters and things like that.

The reaction of most Churchmans' workers was fatalistic.

The issue of redundancy and unemployment is a notoriously
difficult one to fight, and requires the organisation, the
confidence and an ideological commitment to 'a right to
work'. These were lacking. But there were exceptions. In
spite of the apparent hopelessness of the vicious circle
concerning poor trade unionism, a few young girls and older
women had learned some lessons and did not take things so
simply. Behind the apparent flippancy of 'I didn't mind so
long as it wasn't me', in the climate of rising unemployment
a year later they recalled the redundancies:

ANNA: What did you think of the redundancies?

JENNY: Well, it was stupid, wasn't it? They got rid of seven-
teen or something in here, and a fortnight later, started
having interviews for other girls.
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 197

They saw that under these circumstances the union could at

least have had a 'remedial' role:

ANNA: Should anything have been done?

JENNY: Yes.

ANNA: Was anything?

JENNY: No. They got their money, nothing was said about
it.

ANNA: What should have been done?

JENNY: Well - they should have made sure the girls who
had to leave got their jobs back.

DOCUMENT 9.2 Leaflet distributed by socialist women's

group to Churchmans' women

ARE YOU THE CINDERELLAS OF THE TOBACCO WORLD?

ARE YOU THE NEXT TO BE MADE REDUNDANT?

IS YOUR UNION REALLY YOUR FAIRY-GODMOTHER?
... SERIO USL Y,
Some of you are already under notice.
How many more? What are you going to do about it?

DID YOU KNOW THAT WHILE YOU'RE LOSING YOUR JOBS,

W. D. & H. O. WILLS CAN'T FIND ENOUGH PEOPLE TO FILL THEIRS?
AND WHILE YOU'RE ON SLACK-TIME, WILLS IS ON OVERTIME?

DEMAND: THAT YOUR UNION FIGHTS FOR:

(1) NO REDUNDANCIES
(2) The right for work-sharing within
the Imperial Tobacco Company

If there is anything we can do to help, in any way at all, please

contact: Bristol Socialist Woman Group.
198 Struggle at Work

DoCUMENT 9.3 Leaflet distributed by socialist women's

group to Churchmans' women

THERE MAY NOT BE ANY FAIRY-GODMOTHERS

BUT BETWEEN US WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING

COME AND MEET US HERE OUTSIDE THE FACTORY GATE AT
12.30 THIS LUNCH-TIME AND IF YOU CAN MAKE IT, COME TO A
MEETING THIS EVENING, WEDNESDAY 28th, AT:

THE BELL INN (next to the Co-op Hall), PREWETT STREET

(behind St Mary Redcliffe)

BRISTOL SOCIALIST WOMAN GROUP

What was even more striking was the vivid and generally
appreciative memory of an outside intervention offering
support. A small local socialist women's group, including
most importantly a female shop steward from Wills, had
leafleted the factory, arguing for work-sharing between Wills
and Churchmans because, while Church mans faced short-time
work aI1d more redundancies, Wills was on compulsory
overtime (see Documents 9.2 and 9.3). This idea was
discussed at an ad hoc factory-gate meeting addressed by the
Wills's steward.
Many girls had been instinctively suspicious of something
new, and kept away: 'They're a bunch of interfering busy-
bodies', 'It's none of their business', 'They don't know
anything about it'. But the forty who did attend were
impressed: 'She was great', 'Knew what she was talking
about', '1 liked her!' They had never heard a confident
woman shop steward before - someone who offered positive
alternatives, and asked them their opinions. And surprisingly,
the older women remembered their enthusiasm, the thick
crusting of demoralisation and cynicism slipping off,
uncovering a fresh willingness to try something new. This was
the first time any of them had heard of spreading support
outside their factory, making links themselves, self-activity.
And significantly, long afterwards they identified the
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organt"satt"on and Trade Unt"ont"sm 199

unofficial factory-gate meeting as thet"r union meeting,

eclipsing the official one, which (as so often before) denied
the ordinary worker a voice:

PEARL: The union officer was very rude. In the canteen.

When he was on about redundancies. He told the men to
shut up when they said their opinions, he told them to
shut up.

ANNA: Did any of you say anything there?

PEARL: We had our meeting more out in the street. It was

somebody from Wills, wasn't it, come to try to speak up?

ANNA: What did you think of her?

PEARL: Very good, she was. Very good.

These stirrings of rank-and-file movement at Churchmans

were dramatic, and showed how consciousness could take
rapid turns, in spite of years of apparent inertia. In terms of
self-confidence, a vital shift occurred - though short-lived.
A small core of about a dozen of the most committed
workers attended an evening meeting at a pub, to discuss
matters further. And significantly, there were men and
women. Men who had been inactive trade unionists suddenly
found that, with their jobs threatened, they were in the same
boat as the women and needed to get organised. They were
thoroughly disillusioned with their inactive shop stewards,
and together drafted a letter to their union officials:

Dear Brothers,

We, the workers of Churchmans' factory, are concerned

about the redundancies and general lack of work sharing.
We have no representation here, as the shop stewards are
bloody useless. We want you down here as soon as possible
to discuss with us the difficulties and to find solutions. We
will withdraw our support from the union unless we get
some action.
200 Struggle at Work

This had been a good beginning, in spite of the dubious

strategy of going over the stewards' heads - a strategy
apparently adopted as a final resort after getting no response
from them. The union official who had apparently refused to
listen to the members was forced to return to tire factory.
One of the Wills factories was leafleted about Churchmans
(see Document 9.4), and according to women who had
contacts there many workers were surprised and sympathetic
when they heard about the redundancies. But the movement

DOCUMENT 9.4 Leaflet distributed by socialist women's

group to Wills' workers

HE LP!

CALL FROM THE CINDERELLAS

DID YOU KNOW THAT CHURCHMANS ARE FACED WITH REDUN-

DANCIES?

OUT OF 200, 23 WOMEN AND 8 MEN, AND THAT'S JUST FOR A

KICKOFF

How would you feel in their shoes?

THEY NEED SUPPORT! YOUR SUPPORT!

ARE YOU PREPARED TO HELP THEM?

IF SO, CONTACT YOUR UNION REPRESENTATIVES, AND DISCUSS

IT AT YOUR NEXT BRANCH MEETING TO SEE IF YOU CAN

SA VE THEIR JOBS

BRISTOL SOCIALIST WOMAN GROUP

 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 201

never got beyond this. Given the lack of experience in shop-

floor organisation, the struggle was too sudden and too big.
The strategy of the militant core had been weakened by
illusions in mobilising the union leadership, and efforts to
mobilise other workers were sabotaged by stewards who
resented their initiative. They became isolated. At the same
time, offers from a Wills TWU branch officer to discuss
support with his members came to nothing. The odds were
against success, and the enthusiasm fizzled out. Cynicism
returned, which was the prevailing attitude to the union and
redundancy a year later.
But, within the drabness of resignation, was the brief
upsurge of militancy the year before no more than a flash
in the pan, a fluke soon to be forgotten? As a struggle it had
been a failure. But the fact that it had happened, and was
remembered, meant a great deal more than this. It prevented
drawing wholly negative, pessimistic conclusions about the
potential for change. In terms of the structural obstacles to
developing a trade-union or a wider class consciousness
among the women, there was the fact that they were
unskilled workers in a giant corporation; there was PPS and
the employers' strategy of control and incorporation; there
was the fact that, within this, they were women workers;
there was the tradition of at least a century of male-dominated
trade unionism; and finally, there were the ideological and
practical boundaries of femininity. Yet in spite of these
oppressive factors, a few broke out. The speed and unexpec-
tedness with which they did so showed that beneath the
bitterness, disillusion and apparent stagnation, consciousness
could take sudden leaps. There was still a strong will among
the women. The fact that it came to nothing showed the
profound organisational problems in harnessing such a
change - not that a change could not happen. The receptive-
ness to an outside intervention and spontaneity of response,
considering there had been no consistent contact with the
politics of the socialist women's group, showed something
else. Once more, the double-edged nature of the lack of
trade-union traditions emerged. The lack was largely respon-
sible for the meagreness of tactical sense. Yet at the same
time it was the absence of a stale repertoire of assumptions -
202 Struggle at Work

those very negative assumptions which turned the shop

stewards into a conservative force - which allowed the
women to move, and move fast. They cut through procedural
convention, and went to a factory-gate meeting: just to see,
and listen. They had a simple, straightforward directness to
their problems. But they were prevented from developing or
injecting this freshness into the existing organisational frame-
work:

ANNA (one year after the redundancies): What would you

do if the same thing happened again?

JACKIE: Well, you can't do nothing; they can't do nothing.

It's against the rules, or something.

JENNY: Well, they could, but they won't. What's a union?

Notes to Chapter 9
1. See Beynon and Blackburn (1972) Perceptions of Work, p. 122.
Although female trade-union membership at this factory was low -
35 per cent full-time and 29 per cent part-time women were in the
TGWU - three-quarters of all the women, both members and non-
members, thought workers should belong to a union.
2. For a full analysis of this question, see Porter (1979) 'Conscious-
ness and Experience: Women at Home and Men at Work', Ph.D.
thesis, Bristol University.
3. The process of women workers becoming apathetic trade unionists
because of a self-fulfilling prophesy instigated by male stewards
is observed by Beynon and Blackburn (1972). Perceptions of Work
is a study of men and women in a single factory which clearly
illustrates how trade unionism comes to be seen as the 'men's
affair' by the women, because the men constantly label them as
'working for pin-money', and therefore not worth recruiting
(see especially p. 115). For 'other accounts of male hostility to
female workers, see Nichols and Armstrong (1976) Workers
Divided, p. 88; and Beynon (1973) Working for Ford, pp. 167-9.
4. Nichols and Armstrong (1976) p. 110.
5. There is no evidence to suggest that women are any less capable
of 'regulating' or setting a ceiling to output than men. As Richard
Brown points out, existing evidence (Lupton, 1961, Money for
Effort, and 1963, On the Shop Floor; and Cunnison, 1966, Wages
and Work Allocation, suggests that the significant factor in
determining collective shop-floor controls over production is not
 'Dear Brothers . .. ': Organisation and Trade Unionism 203

sex difference in itself but the operation of technical, economic

and social conditions in the labour market. This ties in with the
link between occupational stability, skilled work and collective
involvement, and the converse with unstable, unskilled work. At
the same time, this should not blind one to the significance of
sexual divisions in the operations of the labour market, and their
effect on organisation, consciousness - and, in this instance,
collective bids for control ('fiddles'). See Brown (1976) 'Women as
Employees in Industry', in Barker and Allen (eds), Dependence
and Exploitation in Work and Marriage.
6. The role of welfare representatives is discussed below in the section
on 'The factory council'.
7. See, for example, Lane (1974) The Union Makes Us Strong; and
Ramsay (1980) 'Participation: The Pattern and its Significance',
in Nichols (ed.), Capital and Labour: A Marxist Primer.
8. Ramsay (1980).
9. This is Tony Lane's argument in The Union Makes Us Strong.
10. Goodrich (1975) The Frontier of Control - A Study of British
Workshop Politics, p. 19.
11. This anomaly was later removed in line with the National Joint
Negotiating Committee's (1971) Way to Equal Pay and policy to
eradicate sex discrimination.
12. That the February revolution in Russia was sparked off by women
textile workers striking on International Women's Day is a well-
known fact. What is less well known is that the first stirring of
industrial militancy among Russian women in the 1890s was a
strike among. tobacco workers, in a Petersburg cigarette factory.
Among the grievances were the coarse behaviour of the bosses, new
piece rates, and a mandatory fee for checking one's coat for stolen
tobacco. The cigarette girls began breaking windows, smashing
equipment, and making a general disturbance. More women
followed at another tobacco works, this time 'resisting the arriving
policemen by throwing tobacco in their eyes'. See Stite (1978) The
Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and
Bolshevism, 1880-1930. So much for the handicaps of a 'luxury
industry'.
10
A One-day Strike: Demoralisation
and Making Sense of the W orId

Events and non-events

As one Dagenham Ford worker commented about Huw
Beynon's Working for Ford: 'It was interesting; that's the
trouble, it made it too interesting. ,1
How do you portray the experience of daily sameness,
killing boredom, in writing? Faces can express the results -
drawn muscles, skin that has seen no sun, tired eyes. But
there is nothing to replace the slow jerks of the minute-hand
around the clock, waiting for the buzzer to go home. In
writing, a long boring day can be compressed into four
words. It takes two seconds to read that - not too painful
really. You can skip it - and get on to the 'good bits', the
few there are. But as well as getting shortened, time also gets
cut up and organised into some order by writing. Long,
uneventful experience comes out as a chain of events, each
separate and significant. Life is not like that - especially
not factory life. Yet, however hard we try to avoid these
distortions of expression, they are part of the pitfalls of
writing things down - in a diary, in a book, in this book.
The dilemma of writing about a non-event as an event
applies to Churchmans' one and only strike, the one-day
national stoppage of Imperial Tobacco in July 1972. In terms
of subjective experience, and in terms of results, it was a
complete non-event. The majority of Churchmans' women
lived passively through the day, with no control over its
running or its conclusion. Its failure to achieve anything
merely confirmed its lack of impression and negative
experience. And yet the strike has to be isolated from the
 A One-day Strike 205
rest of our picture of Churchmans' trade unionism. First, it
was potentially an exceptional moment, because it was the
first strike, and strikes evoke emotions and expectations
which are different from the mundane, daily, petty battles
of work. Strikes are for 'other' people, 'out there', on the
news: something dramatic. That is the image. (But if it did
not come out like that for the Churchmans' women, that in
itself demands comment.) Second, for the historian and
observer, too, as a particular form of industrial conflict
strikes are significant. This is partly because of their treat-
ment by the media as 'social problems' (and the public
opinion so generated). But it is also because the incidence of
strikes, and their anatomy, are one of the most telling
measures of the balance of class forces in our society. The
term 'strike' covers a complex variety of conflicts; they are
not always industrial, or class, conflicts. But those that are
can be economic, political, wild-cat, unofficial or official,
short or long, and various combinations of these. What is
important about strikes is that they are 'schools of struggle'
- potential changers of consciousness. In 1917 Lenin,
commenting on the 1905 Russian Revolution, wrote:

A specifically proletarian weapon of struggle - the strike

- was the principal means of bringing the masses into
motion . . . only struggle educates the exploited class.
Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own
power, widens its horizons, enhances its abilities, clarifies
its mind, forges its will. 2

At the same time, a strike can be a double-edged exper-

ience. It has the potential of victory or defeat: of being a
profound learning experience or one of profound confusion
- of encouragement or bitter demoralisation. This is why it
is more important to interpret the process of a strike than to
look merely at its end-product. And the Churchmans' strike
was one of defeat, confusion and demoralisation. The picture
is not uncommon: lack of rank-and-file involvement and
control, compromise by the union leaders, eventual betrayal,
and deepening of disillusion. It is a depressingly familiar
pattern - one which continued to happen in the darker
206 Struggle at Work

corners of the headily militant year of 1972. It is worth

examining in some detail such a collective experience, not in
order to fuel pessimists, cynics, or those who want confir-
mation of the 'backwardness' of women workers, but on the
contrary to demonstrate that even in a situation of so little
potential as at Churchmans, there were complexities, move-
ments, the stirrings of change.

The strike
The strike was over the 1972 national wage claim. It was a
simple issue of demanding £3.50 across the board, against
the company's maximum offer of £2.40 with differentials
which would have brought the minimum male basic wage to
£25 for a forty-hour week (for men aged 21 and over), and
the minimum women's basic to £23.55 per week (for women
aged 18 and over). The main spur behind the claim was the
men, who felt the company's pay, previously 'second to
none', was slipping behind other industries. In general,
however, Bristol Imperial Tobacco workers were less militant
than those in other parts of the country, such as Newcastle,
and the Churchmans' women were no exception. Not that
they did not want a rise. But, as we saw earlier, pay was the
one good thing about their jobs - compared with 'women's
work' in general. Besides, they were ambivalent about their
right to work, and unity was not helped by their divisions in
age and financial responsibilities. Even so, they felt they
might just as well get what they could, and go along with
the union strike decision. After all, what could they
lose?
Quite a lot - in terms of morale, a matter the leadership,
as we shall see, did not make the topmost priority. Nothing
was done to involve the girls. Proceedings fell in line with the
Tory Industrial Relations Act and could not have been more
orderly, constitutional - and dull. If passions ever existed,
there were plenty of delays ('cooling-off periods' in the
current jargon) in which they would die; it took twenty-one
days before the Claim was actually declared a 'dispute' by
the union; seven days' notice of an overtime ban; a ballot on
strike action; and finally, when negotiations broke down, and
 A One-day Strike 207

things were becoming 'dramatic', a week's notice of a one-

day stoppage. The union followed the rule book to the last
of the small print - good 'industrial relations'. But apart
from putting a cross on a piece of paper, the workers were
left out.
When it came to preparations for the actual strike, there
was the same lack of communication between shop stewards
and the workers as we noticed before. Nobody knew what
was going on. The girls in the hand-packing departments
were informed on Friday afternoon that they were to strike
on the Monday. There were no posters explaining the matter,
only small typed notices lost among the welter of yellowing
minutes of union meetings. Nobody thought about picketing,
and there were no instructions to do so; nobody was asked to
picket the local tax office along with Wills workers where
'conciliation and arbitration' was to take place under the
auspices of the government's Industrial Relations Commission.
For those who made the effort to find out, there was to be
an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of the TGWU on the
morning of the strike, at Transport House in Bristol. Other-
wise the message was simple: don't come to work. So they
stayed at home, as most strikers do.
More surprising were the odd few who did manage to turn
the strike into a new experience, an event. Odd they were -
for there was nothing in their past actions or apparent
interests to suggest that they would take an interest. The
women in the stripping room who were most battered by
trade-union experience now kept their heads low; either,
like Ida, they had had their fingers burned, or bitterness had
beaten them into apathy, timidity, or both. It was among
these that there was least support for the wage claim; it was
'unrealistic' asking for more than the £2.40 'plus increments'
offer. Stella was the one lone voice among them to speak
out against it:

STELLA: I mean, with this rise now, they say, 'Oh, we ought
to take it.' But I don't think we ought to take it. I think
it's a damned cheek. If we're having a rise, everybody
should have a rise, not the people who are better off get-
ting more. If they want incentive money, well make that
208 Struggle at Work

another case altogether. But let us all have a rise together.

We've all got to live.
But she was drowned by the others: the offer was good
enough for a woman - a married woman. It was, in fact,
some of the youngest girls, whose refrain had so often been
'we don't bother', who now came forward. They bothered to
turn up in the morning for the EGM at Transport House. It
was partly because those aged under 18 would get the rawest
deal from a differential pay rise; but also, they were curious.
The meeting might be interesting; it might be a laugh. And
there were not only BUR girls there: girls from flake hand-
packing, some from the testing room, one from dispatch,
about a dozen all told, turned up. Then there were ten men
from the cutting room - the department which had lost a
whole 'crew' of five cutters (a third of the department), while
maintaining previous productivity levels, in the 1971 round
of redundancies.
For the girls it was not only their first strike but also their
first ever union meeting: a small group in smart coats,
isolated, new and a bit awkward in the great meeting-hall of
Transport House. There were other women - about a
hundred - but all from Wills; otherwise it was a man's world.
And if, to a well-seasoned shop steward, the meeting
procedure followed a well-worn groove, to them it was all
novelty, a 'taste of life'. Their ears were all for the hard-
sounding resolutions and rounds of applause; they did not
see that a great deal of platform rhetoric took the place of
concrete plans of action, as resolution after resolution from
the floor was swept aside:

(a) A demand for an immediate all-out strike, instead of

one-day stoppages. Not even taken up for discusst"on.

(b) A request by the Churchmans' men for official union

support and solidarity action, in case of victimisation in
their isolated, vulnerable situation. Dt"smt"ssed as 't"rrele-
vant to the matter t"n hand'.

(c) A demand for an immediate work to rule. Dt"smt"ssed

because the 'members dt"d not know the rules'.
 A One-day Strike 209

(d) What about strike pay? No comment.

(e) Would the union negotiators really stick out for the full
claim? 'That all depended'; 'no answer could be given at
this time'.

Etc., etc.

The mood of the rank and file was clearly determined and
militant. They did not take easily to going on strike. But
having taken the plunge they wanted results. There was
heckling:

Why don't you know whether you'll stick it out?

The reply from the chair was:

Perhaps it's because I've been around a bit longer than

you.

To which the response was:

Why can't we take stronger action now and get it over

with?

Loud applause from the floor. The original harmony between

platform and floor, the hopeful enthusiasm for a lead,
cracked. It was a sea of angry eyes and inflamed faces - and
much of the fury was among the women, who were more
unused to the 'reasonable' language of union negotiators than
the men. But before tempers could be translated into some
alternative strategy, the platform was saved by the timely
arrival of the area union officer, the diplomat, more skilled in
cooling a rising head of steam than the platform of lay
officers. Dressed in a well-tailored black-and-white checked
suit, matching tie and hankie, greying hair, sweeping whiskers
and a twinkle in his eye, he was a familiar, popular figure.
There was loud applause from a meeting that had now been
transformed into an audience. His opening address stressed
that he, too, had once been a tobacco worker, and he was
210 Struggle at Work

now speaking in his capacity as Tobacco Branch member,

not union official. A few cynical smiles from listeners - but
not many. Now, a few jokes, and laughter from the floor. The
atmosphere slackened - the urgency and anger gently
released. The speech continued: he understood many of the
fears from the shop·floor, praised the militancy of the women,
and stressed that he wished the TGWU to take the lead in the
strike. And before any more could be said, he politely, and
with charm, proposed a short adjournment, while he
'suggested some ideas' to the platform.
The growing collective confidence of the floor was
scattered. There was confusion; some stayed in their seats,
others wandered off. We crossed the road to the pub, but our
conversation was subdued; there were no comments about
how the meeting was run, only keenness for some sort of
lead, and passive suspense. What would 'THEY' say? Then,
back in the meeting: it was obvious that the platform had
been instructed to be conciliatory. There was to be a new,
militant face, accompanied by very rapid proceedings.
Without further discussion, the chairman proposed 'That this
branch should give notice of national stoppages with
appropriate notice.' It was nearly time to empty the hall. The
motion was seconded, carried (with five abstentions from the
Churchmans' men), and with lightning speed the meeting
closed.
It was a clever piece of manipulation. Many left dissatisfied,
conscious that the resolution was vague, and in no way tied
the leadership to definite action. But there were enough
newcomers to union life to be placated by fighting talk. As
for the Churchmans' girls, they were pleased that a decision
had at long last been taken, and left, eager for further
developments, and feeling more involved in the whole dispute
than before.

And back to nonnal

But next day, back at work, life went on much as before. The
dozen or so girls from the meeting were scattered throughout
the factory, so that their enthusiasm was dampened by the
apparent indifference of the others. For the majority the one-
 A One-day Strike 211

day strike had been a day off, welcomed with mixed feelings;
it had been a break to stay home, or go down town, but it
was lost money. And nothing happened to alter this feeling
of distance: no reports, meetings or discussions. Some vague
rumours had spread about the union resolutions - that was
all.
The stripping room seemed depressed and far removed
from the whole dispute. Even Stella was half-hearted:

ANNA: What do you think of the union motion for further

stoppages?

STELLA: We voted them in; we've got to go through with it

now.

ANNA: Are you against it, then?

STELLA: The cost of living makes it hard to manage. The

company's making profits - it's time they paid up. No, the
union's right, really - I suppose.

If Stella began to warm to the idea of further action,

neither she nor the others had any knowledge of the meeting
at Transport House. Had they heard the arguments, they
might have felt more involved; as it was, most felt hostile
because they felt alienated. And that, as we saw, was a
vicious circle.
The same atmosphere of sameness and anti-climax
pervaded the testing room and flake hand-packing depart-
ment. In the first, the girls who had gone to the meeting were
flippant about it in front of the others. They claimed they
didn't understand what was going on. I tried to force a
serious conversation but failed; they would support a strike,
were worried about losing pay, but anyway preferred it when
we talked about more 'personal' things. As for the flake
packing room - it was quiet, perhaps too quiet to venture
opinions within earshot of the supervisor. The girls from the
meeting now kept their heads down, too, their ideas to
themselves.
The BUR, as usual, was livelier, and in spite of an initial
212 Struggle at Work
flippancy it was easier to sustain an interest in the dispute.
Some were apathetic, some enthusiastic, some explicitly
against striking, some in favour, some with reservations.
Here, the girls from the union meeting clearly gave the
militant lead, and there were much sharper, livelier clashes
of opinion:

GALE: I'm satisfied. I don't think it's worth striking.

UNDA: Well, it's worth striking if we get what we want.

But I hope it doesn't last too long. And that they don't
take away the annual bonus.

VAL: I'm worried about the holidays. But I suppose it's

better to fight for something in the long run. I'll go out.

RAQUEL: I wouldn't accept anything below £3 - and back-

dated to May. I'll strike.

JENNY: To be honest with you, I just don't bother. I don't

really know what's going on. I don't take no notice.

SUE (from the meeting): I reckon the idea of the strike is

the best thing out.

PATTI (from the meeting): And I do. Definitely.

RENE (from the meeting): And me.

Beneath the general lull in the factory, interest flashed out,

then died down, just like phosphorus. Consciousness was
uneven, volatile. It was hard to judge which way things would
go. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the roll hand-
packing department. Nobody had been to the union meeting
from here. The day of the strike, Ann got bored, Cherry went
swimming, most stayed home. Today there were no comments
on what might happen next. There was the sound of the
cutters guillotining the long rolls of tobacco, just the same as
ever. Then I mentioned that I had been to Transport House.
Had I? All eyes turned, eyebrows went up, and questions
 A One-Day Strike 213

flew. I was bombarded: What happened? What was it like?

What did they ask - the factory people? What did 'our' men
say? Was that woman from Wills there? What were the votes?
They were starved of news, of involvement. Life was not
such a bore after all. They had not realised how curious they
were. Girls from the other end of the room shouted over to
me because they could not hear: 'Come over here, Anna!
You never talk to us!'
The paradox and absurdity of the situation was that, in the
absence of a female shop steward, I, the outsider, nosy
parker, weird sociologist, was pushed in to the role of
substitute. So in spite of the strike's non-eventfulness, it had
stirred something: Why hadn't they been told about the
strike sooner? If only there had been someone to go with,
they would have gone to that meeting. The problem of a
woman shop steward reared its head again, only this time I
was to be sent as messenger to the BUR to ask Rene or Patti
whether one of them would stand. And all the other
grievances began bursting out:

JENNY: What we need is our own shop steward. We're fed

up being the last to know anything. And I'll tell you
another thing. We'll have an end to this grading. You just
can't keep up with it. If you're down one week, you have
to make it up the next. It's too much. You're bound to
have your ups and downs.

The factory floor here and in the BUR was at sea. While
the company's anti-strike propaganda, the factory magazine,
and the hue and cry of the newspapers against union
militancy tightened their control over ideas; the union leaders
were playing for time - a timely retreat. And meanwhile, the
substitute shop-floor messenger found Rene and Patti in the
BUR. Not surprisingly, it seemed a ludicrous joke. Without
genuine rank-and-file pressure, the idea that either girl could
stand as shop steward would simply not catch on. Patti
laughed it away. Rene, who had given the idea serious
thought, was at this moment shocked and bewildered. There
was simply nobody in the factory confident enough to take
on a struggle which, in this instance, would mean channelling
214 Struggle at Work

the pockets of militancy into action - and probably getting

the sack. Without being able to do anything about it, once
again the girls could do no more than recognise their dilemma:

JENNY: It's all right talking about it, but it's different doing
it. What we need is a spark here to set it off. That's all we
need, then we'll all join in. But there's no one to do it.

'Sold down the river'

The week passed, and it was getting close to a Monday again
- the day of the next proposed stoppage. There was a slight
tension in the air - but still no news or instructions. And
then came Friday:

PATTI (in amazement): Haven't you heard? The union have

recommended we accept £2.70. Mike Clifton says it's the
other union's fault - the TWU. Ours is too small to do
anything. It's Wills' fault.

So there were to be no 'further stoppages'. To the girls who

had slowly, not always easily, built themselves up for the
strike, it came like a bombshell. Their bitterness and scorn
scorched their first victims - in this case, Wills, the 'big
factory', the 'other union'.
But what about that meeting at Transport House? Surely
they had voted. This couldn't happen. Then slowly, among
the girls who had been to the meeting, a new suspicion
dawned. Patti remembered how questions and motions from
the floor had been stifled; how the men on the platform were
evasive. Suddenly a veil of illusion was tom off: they saw
through it all, the steamrollering, then the smooth-tongued
flattery, the placatory, vague promises of militancy. They
were livid at their own union leaders:

RENE: They've sold us down the river.

PATTI: They can stick their cards up their arse.

RAQUEL: 30p! What was the good of going out on strike

for 30p!
 A One-day Strike 215

CHRIS: They won't get me out on a one-day strike again.

They've made dummies out of us.

Bitterness and disillusion. From bracing themselves for

action, hun ting for a female shop steward, they were talking
about tearing up cards. A familiar experience for older
Churchmans' women and thousands of others.
Feelings were not everywhere this violent. A few were
relieved. But in general demoralisation took an insidious
hold. Mike Clifton, the 'women's shop steward', already cut
off from his rank and file and hardly a militant, felt like a
union pawn. He was less angered by the compromise offer
than by the instruction to resume overtime, which deviously
settled the matter:

MIKE: We had them rocking, and we pull out at the last

moment. By the time we ballot for this settlement next
Thursday, they'll have built up their stocks. It'll be too
late.

But since his role as shop steward came to no more than

'reporting union instructions', he was trapped. He had never
crossed the boundaries of his own union and factory to
build support elsewhere.
Many women just felt bored with the whole business.
But everyone, even those who had not been convinced about
the full claim, now felt they had been led up the garden path
and wound up for nothing. Again, cynicism about the union,
all unions, all action, all change, seemed the answer. About
the forthcoming ballot on accepting this latest offer, most
were non-commital: the matter was sealed anyhow; they
were 'not bothered'. Besides, the summer holidays were
coming up, and with a guarantee of lump-sum back pay,
wasn't a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? And the
long 'cooling-off' delay before the ballot again gave even the
most determined girls time to see 'sense'.
In the wake of the letdown came talk about the 'troubles'
of the world. Talk which might have come up anyway, at
any time, but which at this moment was perhaps a little
closer to the bone. Their own fate had proved beyond their
216 Struggle at Work
control. Life was like that. They looked out and away to a
world of seemingly bigger troubles than their own, beyond
their reach or their control. They talked about the dockers,
strikes (see also Table 10.1), jobs, unemployment, automa-
tion, progress - and blacks and immigration.
Demoralisation did not equal apathy but instead led to a
general search for answers. Debate moved away from work,
home, the personal, to broad ideological issues, and to
politics. In the spinning room the older women brought up
the theme that 'all these troubles are through greed'. The
dockers were the key scapegoats:

IVY: It's people like these dockers that are bringing us

these troubles. They get more money for standing doing
nothing than some of our men get for working a week.
They get £4,000 redundancy pay - they should have
accepted it. You can't fight progress.

ELMA: These men don't want containers - they're trying

to tum the clock back. You can't fight progress.

I argued they were fighting for their jobs - and Pearl saw
the point, but without solutions:

PEARL: It's like here, with automation; you have one man
on a machine where you had three or four. But it's pro-
gress - you can't stop it.

ANNA: But what sort of 'progress' is that - if everyone gets

unemployed?

PEARL: They should lower the retirement age to 60.

IVY: Nobody above that age should work. Keep the jobs
for the able-bodied out of work.

There were 'too many people' working - first 'women',

then 'coloured people'. But at every tum of argument there
were contradictions - without apparent solutions. Some we
have met earlier on in relation to women's work and equal
 A One-day Strike 217

pay. But now appeared the link between women and blacks
as 'problems' in the world:

ELMA: I think we'll have to give up our jobs. Well, don't

you think a married man needs a job more? Yet I don't
think you can live on one man's wage nowadays. But I'll
tell you where the root of all this trouble is. Don't get me
wrong, mind - because I'm not prejudiced. I've worked
quite happily along with coloured people. But before all
the coloured people started coming into this country we
didn't have all this.

PEARL: Yes, coming here, and they can go straight on the

social security and have all our health service that we paid
for. We couldn't do that if we went abroad. We have to go
with some money, or to ajob.

There was no time to comment that there was no immigra-

tion during the unemployment of the 1930s; that towns such
as Glasgow, with the highest unemployment, had the lowest
immigration rates, or that the age of most Commonwealth
immigrants meant that they contributed more to the British
economy than they consumed in 'welfare'. But some offered
other, more vivid, counter-arguments:

IVY: Ah - but if you go into a hospital, it's nearly all

coloured people doing the work, which our people won't
do.

ELMA: Well, if they didn't let them in, then our people
would have to do those jobs.

Again and again they fell back upon a stock of commonplace

scapegoatist beliefs:

IVY: And there's another thing - they come over here and
have all those children. Still, it's our forefathers' faults for
doing what they did to them. They're coming back at us
now.
218 Struggle at Work
TABLE 10.1 Diary of two disputes: Imperial Tobacco one-day
strike, and the dockers' strikes of 1972 *

THE DOCKERS IMPERIAL TOBACCO LTD

January
25,000 dockers throughout
Britain struck for the day
against redundancies in the
industry. The National Port
Shop Stewards Committee
demanded: the retention of the
National Dock Labour Scheme;
that men on the 'unattached
register' should receive average
earnings; that all handling of
containers should be registered
dock work.
March
The trade unions (mainly TWU,
TGWU, CMOS) applied for £3.50
wage claim to the Imperial Tobacco
Industrial Committee.
April
The company offered £1. 75; when
this was rejected it offered £2.25,
reducing the adult male age from
23 to 21.
May
Dockers in Liverpool and A national union ballot rejected
Hull continued their fight against this offer, and the unions gave 21
unemployment and blacked days' notice with the company. The
container firms. company revised the offer to £2.40
plus grade differen tials, which
would give men of 21-plus a mini·
mum 40·hour basic of £25 per week,
and women of IS·plus £23.55 per
week.
June
8th. Three London dockers The £2.40 was rejected by the
picketing Chobham Farm unions.
container depot were ordered
to appear before the NIRC
and to stop their action. The
NIRC ordered the arrest of the
three men if they refused to
comply by the deadline of
16 June.
16th. Dockers throughout the
country, joined by British
Leyland workers at Longbridge,
 A One-day Strike 219

THE DOCKERS IMPERIAL TOBACCO LTD

16th cont. 19th. When notice of the dispute expired,
struck in support of the three seven days' notice was given of an over·
men. The 'Official Solicitor' time ban.
appeared and the arrest orders
were overruled. July
5th. Midland Cold Storage Imperial Tobacco withdrew its
Company opened a case with the guaranteed working-week pay.
NIRC against the seven dockers
picketing and blacking the 3rd. The tobacco unions announced a
container terminal. The dockers series of one-day stoppages.
refused to attend the NIRC.
10th. Dockers'victory at 10th. One-day stoppages of Imperial
Chobham Farm, where Tobacco workers.
employers agreed all container
handling would be done by 14th. Announcement of tobacco unions'
registered dockers. recommendation to accept new offer of
£2.70 instead of £3.50. Overtime ban
21st. NIRC ordered the arrest of lifted and further strike action suspended
five of the London dockers for un til ballo t.
contempt of court. They were
sent to Pentonville prison.
London dockers immediately
went on strike. For the next
three days thousands of other
workers, pioneered by journalists
and print workers, struck in
sympathy throughout the country.
The jail was picketed day and
nigh t by dockers, printers, building
workers, South Wales miners and
others.
25th. The Official Solicitor
announced that he intended to
apply for the release of the
imprisoned dockers.
26th. The NIRC denied that it had
been influenced by outside
pressures, but ordered the release
of the dockers. Dockers continued
their figh t against unregistered
port work.
31st. Midland Cold Storage applied
(successfully) to the NIRC for its
order against the dockers to be
dropped.

* Information on dockers' strikes from Labour Research, June-September 1972.

220 Struggle at Work
ELMA: And another thing I'd like changed IS all those
layabouts who won't work.

ANNA: But we've just been saymg there's less and less
work.

NY: Come on, Anna, you look in the evening paper, and
there's plenty of jobs. You go down to Smith's depot near
Temple Meads; you'll see people sent there by the employ-
ment exchange and take one look at the heavy work and
go back on the dole.

ANNA: What's the pay like?

NY: Very good - they just don't like getting up in the

mornmgs.

The younger girls, particularly from the BUR, entered the

debate in a similar way. There was no discussion of the strike.
That was dead. Wider issues came up, again the same ones:
the dockers, unemployment, 'blacks', layabouts and
scroungers. But the general message was that they felt fed up,
they had had enough. Only unlike the older women, some
had a fine spark of sympathy for those - such as the dockers
- who still had some fight in them:

VAL: I wants a holiday - just a week off from this place.

JACKIE: Oh, I'm fed up. I can't be bothered. We should go

out for the dockers on Monday. It'd be great - I reckon.

RENE: It's their own fault for breaking the law.

VAL: Yeah, I'd stick up for them. I think they're right.

Fight for their rights.

Somehow, we turned to Enoch Powell, who had the appeal

of appearing 'simple' and outspoken, against the usual
political 'phrase-mongers' who turned the girls 'right off'. But
there was less unanimity among the young girls about
 A One-day Strike 221
'coloureds'. Reminiscent of the 1968 pro-Powell London
dockers' strike, many union 'radicals' were in this case
hardened racists; and many union 'moderates' displayed a
passionate anti-racism. The toilets 'out the back' became a
political battleground - even the usual laughs wore thin:

RENE: I want Enoch Powell as prime minister. I think he's

lovely.

JACKIE: I hates him. I'm not a racist.

RENE: Send them back. England for the whites. I hates

blacks.

JACKIE: If you gets your Powell prime minister, I'll be the

first to assassinate him.

PATTI: They're all right so long as there aren't too many.

JACKIE: What has a black person ever done to you? Any-

way, they're human beings, they've got to live like anybody
else. Look at the white people in their countries - South
Africa, for instance.

GALE: And where would they be without us? We made

things better for them, we brought them Civilisation. Why
do you think this country's called 'Great Britain'? Why
was it Great? Because it gave everything to all these
countries.

PATTI: Well we did take out as well as put in to those

countries.

About unemployment, beliefs were deeply Iromc,

considering the insecure employment circumstances at
Churchmans. The unemployed were 'tramps and layabouts':
'Tramps were tramps because they chose to live like that.'

RENE: They don't want to work like everyone else.

222 Struggle at Work
RAQUEL: If you want a job, you'll find one; if I have to I'll
work somewhere else. It's a risk you have to take. Any-
where you work, a factory might close down tomorrow.
If people can't find work, it's because they don't want to.
I know plenty of layabouts.

From these snatches of conversation alone, it seemed that

demoralisation ventilated, yet hardened, deep fears and
prejudices. Just as earlier on we saw how the response to
feeling trapped between work and home was to look away,
at some rosy holiday·brochure escape, so now a sense of
helplessness, of living in a world out of control, led to
blaming distant factors. But these factors were not seen as
economic processes. They were personalised. They had to be
pinned on to people - the wrong people. Everyone was
searching for solutions, but in the absence of an alternative
world-view most fell back upon a stock of ready-made, class-
divisive arguments and ideas.
However, in tow of these airings came another theme,
perhaps the theme underlying all the rest: resentment at
powerlessness. It came across in contradictions, inconsisten-
cies, even about-turns. It came across as a gut reaction to the
ready-made ideas that we were all 'free' in a real democracy:

IDA: Now with this Industrial Relations Bill we had our

chance to fight it. I reckon we in this country just let
things slide. What the government says is going to happen,
they lets happen. They want to put three hours on our
summer time next season, we lets them do it. They wants
to give us decimalisation, we lets them do it. We don't get
any say about anything. I reckon there ought to be a national
vote anyway about the Common Market. Anything big that
happens to us, I reckon we should all have our vote.

ANNA: But with the Industrial Relations Bill - the TUC

said all along that they wouldn't co-operate with it, so how
do you mean, 'we had a chance to fight'?

IDA: That's what I'm saying - all these important things -

I reckon any government, the Labour government, the
 A One day Strike 223
Tories - they're all the same. We don't get enough say.
They say, 'Well, you've got your Member of Parliament' -
but does he care? I don't reckon so.

There was a general feeling of being left out of the 'big

decisions'. What alternatives were there?

IVY: I think there should be another system altogether.

Get rid of Heath - he doesn't do anything, and the Royal
Family - they're a waste of money.

PEARL: We should have a coalition like in the war. Get the

best brains from both sides at the top. It don't matter
what they believe in - Labour, Conservative - the best
brains of the lot.

ELMA: Keep the Queen, but scrap the rest. Or have an

American system with just one at the top.

The younger girls, too, saw 'power' and 'politics' in terms

of Parliament, the three parties and the Queen. Even if
'Labour' were for the workers, they were still disparaging and
cynical about the lot:

RENE: I vote Labour. They're more for the working class.

ANNA: Is there any difference between the parties?

RENE: Well, no. But I know one thing. We should get rid of
the Queen. She's a waste of money, and her palaces could
make homes for thousands of homeless.

Solutions to 'the system' were invariably vague and full of

loose ends, lacking any over-arching theory or explanation.
Only when we returned to the immediate familiar world was
the focus clearer, among the young girls at least:

PATTI: I'd like to see management doing our jobs. I believe

in equals. No bosses above anyone.
224 Struggle at Work
RENE: I'm no better than nobody, and nobody's better
than me. I don't care what people think about me - just
let me get on with my own life.

But the fragments and questions remained unresolved.

Horizons soon folded back around the individual. Unless and
until there was new action, new experience, there was little
to fuel an ongoing debate.
As I left the factory for the last time, the mood was one of
fatalism - humorous fatalism:

ErMA: It's no good worrying about it, Anna. Live for today
my love, and let tomorrow take care of itself. There isn't a
tomorrow - today is tomorrow. Be fair, the way progress
is going, all up on the moon, you don't know where it's
going to end up! Up there, you might be!

ANNA: You think we'll all go together?

ErMA: I don't know. [Laughter.] I don't know - and I

don't bloody care. You wouldn't know much about it -
so why worry? [Whispers with younger girls and peels of
laughter all round.] We're going to use all our Durex up
before it all happens. Use it all up . . . I'm going to go
mad ... that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take all
my sex pills!

Fatalism is how we live with a lack of explanations, lack of

solutions, lack of sensing that we can influence the course of
our lives. It is a common expression of being the object, not
the subject, of history.

Returning to what Stella called 'the humdrum, day-to-day

nothing', what can be said about this episode? Broadly, it
both generalised and crystallised the previous patterns of
trade unionism in the factory. If it all slid over some as a
non-event, it opened the eyes of new groups to problems of
representation and the world of wheeling and dealing in
union negotiations. More than this, it took them outside
the confines of their own machine crew, their own depart-
 A One-day Strike 225
ment and their own factory. In spite of continuing divisions
over commitment to the wage rise, what was at issue as an
across-the-board deal was wider and more generalised than
any of the previous highly sectionalised and fragmentary
disputes on the shop-floor. For the first time some kind of
collective consciousness at factory level appeared; and
because of this a fragile bridge between the men and the
women was built as a few of them saw that as ordinary
rank-and-file workers they had similar problems of
representation.
The results of demoralisation showed both the dangers and
potentials in the search for answers. More than anything they
showed the possibilities of political intervention. Connections
between the immediate situation and the outside world were
hinted at, but they still remained separate spheres. Many
misleading and mystifying arguments were aired, and it
seemed that the apparent lack of an answer to it all hardened
prejudice and deepened passive fatalism: as witness the well-
worn British war song, 'Pack up your troubles in your old
kit bag, and smile, smile, smile'. Fortunately, however, the
troubles were unpacked, so they were also open to examina-
tion and challenge. Women argued with one another; but it
has to be said that some of the discussions would probably
not have begun without a new perspective being brought in
from outside. This in no way glorifies the role of political
intervention; part of the lessons already lay in the collective
experience of wage labour. As Marx and Engels say:

The development of Modem Industry, therefore, cuts from

under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie
produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie,
therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave diggers. 3

But there is also the problem of ideology, bourgeois ideology,

which takes us back to the concept of 'common sense' - the
contradictory, fragmentary consciousness which arises from
the collision of thought and action, ideology and experience.
Collective work-place experience and trade-union conscious-
ness do not necessarily demystify explanations of the world 4
- especially when one has fallen flat on one's backside. But
226 Struggle at Work

without such experience minds would not be receptive to

other explanations and answers - especially socialist answers.

Notes to Chapter 10
1. Beynon (1973) Working for Ford.
2. Lenin (1964) 'Lecture on the 1905 Revolution', in Lenin's Collec-
ted Works Volume XXIII.
3. Marx and Engels (1970) Manifesto of the Communist Party, in
Marx and Engels, Selected Works in One Volume, p.45.
4. See Hyman (1971) Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism.
11
Death of a Factory: Where Now?

The closure
Several years after my original VlSlt to Churchmans I
returned to the headquarters of Imperial Tobacco Ltd for a
follow-up enquiry. Here, over tea and cucumber sandwiches,
I learned the time-table of the factory closure. In the autumn
of 1972 Churchmans' life as a separate company was ended.
After further rationalisation, the Bristol factory became part
of another Imperial branch, Ogden's, continuing to manufac-
ture loose and pipe tobacco. This merger was the beginning
of the end. In mid-1974 the factory closed down completely.
The demand for loose and pipe tobacco was on the decline,
and by company standards the premises were old and
inefficient. The work done here could be done more cheaply
elsewhere within the company. It was part of the corporate
strategy of capital concentration, streamlining and raising
productivity.
Closure was 'civilised'; it took place over two months of
negotiations in the Central Negotiating Committee and at
local branch level. The final package offered either redeploy-
ment within the Imperial Group or redundancy pay.
Redeployment guaranteed no loss of pay but demanded the
worker to accept downgrading (at previous pay) if necessary,
until a vacancy occurred in his or her previous job group.
After three months' trial, the option to take redundancy pay
was still open. This was an initial payment of four weeks'
wages, plus increments according to age and seniority. There
was also a redundancy pension for those aged over 50 who
had given over ten years' service. But the majority, the young
228 Struggle at Work

girls on 'short-term stay', the married women who had only

been back at work a few years, had not been there long
enough to get much out of this deal. And those who had
given ten or twenty years of their lives, but were now only in
their forties, did not even benefit from the pension scheme.
In any case, however the closure package was dressed up,
there was never any real choice: Churchmans had gone to the
wall, and the workers had to go with it. Or that is how the
majority saw it.
According to the factory manager, everyone pulled
together in those last years. It was a 'family' misfortune,
managers and workers struggling together with the hand of
fate, and making the best of it in true Dunkirk spirit. They
even managed to keep going during the three-day week of the
1974 miners' strike, the engineers having devised a way of
operating the lifts using the small emergency generators. But
showing a willingness to work did not save jobs. Previous
lessons - many of them bitter - had not gelled into generali-
sations about class struggle. Many workers really did identify
with the small family firm in trouble. More importantly, as
we saw earlier, most workers regarded redundancy as inevit-
able - women in particular. After all, they were always
highly ambivalent about their right to work - the young
wanting to escape, the older ones riddled with contradictions
and guilt. This could be easy to exploit - and could smooth
the way to a peaceful end. Half in the home, half in the
factory, most women only needed a small shove to regard
themselves as full-time housewives.
According to company records, at the final closure in 1974
about half the work-force opted for redundancy money and
half for redeployment. But by this time 'natural wastage' had
already done much witt ling down. The traditional pattern of
high turnover, given an extra boost by rumours of closure
and the introduction of a voluntary redundancy scheme,
meant that most of the 1972 'generation' of workers whom I
had met had left before it was compulsory to do so. Out of
forty girls whom I traced in 1979, twenty had left, either to
marry or find other 'short-term' jobs, even before the
voluntary redundancy scheme was introduced. Of the twenty
who remained, ten went for redundancy, and ten were re-
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 229

deployed at Wills - five to leave within three months to take

their redundancy pay, and another two to get married. By
1980 the vast majority were at home.
Today most of the girls I had met are between 20 and 30
years of age and in the child-bearing phase of their lives when
they are most likely to be at home anyway. This, of course,
was one of the chief advantages of employing young girls:
not only were they cheaper labour, being below the full
adult age of 21, but in a crisis their attitude that work was
something temporary before marriage made them less
tenacious about any particular job. Yet what of the future?
Could they return to work? The refrain 'I'm not going to
work for ever' could take on a sour reality if it became part
of the unemployment that now manifests itself generally.

Women workers: useful and disposable

Between 1974 and 1978 the official rate of unemployment
among women increased more than three times as fast as that
among men. 1 In 1972 women formed only 15.6 per cent of
the total unemployed; by 1977 they formed 28.2 per cent,
which would be closer to 37 per cent if the Department of
Employment's estimate of the official undercount of
women's unemployment were taken into account. 2 Women
in the manufacturing sector were the hardest hit; Church-
mans, then, was just one casualty in a 29.1 per cent reduction
in women's manufacturing jobs between 1951 and 1976 (the
comparable loss for men was 10.9 per cent).3
But if recent trends are a reliable guide to the future, the
picture is much more complicated than this, for while
women's unemployment grew between 1974 and 1978
women's employment also rose by 145,000 jobs, reflecting
the over-all shift to an increasingly female labour force. 4 This
happened because two conflicting processes were at work:
while the rate of unemployment was greater for women than
for men in manufacturing, with a 9 per cent and a 5 per cent
loss of jobs respectively, the service sector, where women's
jobs are concentrated - in catering, nursing, teaching,
cleaning, for example - was expanding. Women workers were
therefore cushioned from the full impact of recession. But
230 Struggle at Work

with severe public expenditure cuts this pattern could be

reversed; in the past few years they merely slowed down the
expansion of the public sector. Now they could actually
shrink it, throwing thousands out of work.
The other major concentration of women's employment in
the service sector, office work, is also in danger. Because
much of the work here is simple, and repetitive, it is
particularly vulnerable to rationalisation and mechanisation.
Technological developments such as the microprocessor
could well prove a much cheaper alternative to female labour. S
From the evidence available, it would seem that women
workers supply a reserve army of labour, in the sense that
they are brought in when they are needed and thrown out
when they are not, as the interests of the market dictate. 6
But this is done in a complicated way. In the manufacturing
sector it appears that they are more disposable than men in a
period of crisis; their peculiar vulnerability has been illustrated
here and in other studies. 7 However, in the service sector
the rhythm of disposability is somewhat different, unemploy-
ment hitting much later. The pattern is further complicated
when one considers part-time work, the fastest-expanding
sector of the economy and of women's employment: 8 40 per
cent of women workers are now part-time workers. It was
mainly part-time women workers who supplied the
expanding service sector; but also, while full-time women
workers in manufacturing were losing their jobs in the 1970s,
part-time employment increased. The evidence suggests that
part-time workers are not only engaged during periods of
labour shortage, but. also, for a time at least, during down-
turns when labour costs are being cut down, and they supply
a cheaper, less well-organised and more flexible alternative to
full-time labour.
This took place, for a time at least, after the mini-boom of
1973. During the boom part-time women workers were
recruited at a fast rate, but even in the recession when full-
time workers were losing their jobs the employment of new
part-timers continued. 9 It was not until much later, in mid-
1975, that part-time women lost their jobs in large numbers.
Yet once the axe eventually fell, it fell heavily. In every
industry where employment declined between 1974 and
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 231

1977, the rate of decline for part-time women exceeded that

of men and full-time women. 10
Because of the adaptability of part-time labour to short-
term fluctuations in demand, long-term generalisations and
predictions are impossible; while part-timers are the most
vulnerable sector of the work-force during a crisis, and in
some areas bear the brunt of unemployment, in others their
number swells rapidly. It is in this sense of being rapidly
hired and fired with the vagaries of the market - often at
the expense of full-time workers - that part-time women
workers conform most closely to the model of women as a
reserve army of labour.
Given the uses and abuses of female labour power, the
choice facing women workers today is increasingly grim: go
back home or accept the role of being cheap and disposable
commodities, and this in the climate of the 1970 Equal Pay
and 1975 Sex Discrimination Acts. 'Women's lib' has now
become respectable; but in reality it is very far away indeed.
With the slump in jobs and public expenditure cuts, the
pressure is on, both economically and ideologically, to return
women to the kitchen sink. Yet this very same recession is
also making women's contribution to the family income
more essential than ever. And in the general insecurity the
gains in wages, conditions and organisation won over the
years since the Second World War are increasingly under
attack. Anti-sex-discrimination legislation, while hardly
touching the majority of women workers, who are concen-
trated in women-only work, is being used as a possible
bargaining counter in exchange for the limited protection
against night and shift work. Even the 1975 Employment
Protection Act, with its maternity-leave provisions, is
currently threatened with reversal by the Tory government's
1980 Employment Act. 11
And yet in spite of these attacks, because of the expecta-
tions raised by the Women's Liberation Movement and past
successes, the gap between hope and reality has widened and
caused anger. The recent instances 0 f militancy, such as the
Asian women fighting for union recognition at Grunwick
(1977) and the Chi x Sweet factory (1979-80), have shown
this defiance. And it has largely been women who have led
232 Struggle at Work

the fight to save the National Health Service from public

spending cuts, in campaigns and occupations such as those as
the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Bethnal Green hospitals
in 1978. At the Meccano toy factory in Liverpool, where
700 out of the 900 workers were women, the reaction to
the sudden announcement of closure at the end of 1979 was
immediate occupation. Yet here, as in so many other
examples, women have shown fantastic endurance in long
struggles which have finally been beaten into defeat.
A much more disturbing picture is one where there has
been no struggle at all, such as the axing of 2,800, mainly
women's, jobs at Singer's, Clydebank, in 1978. Most disturb-
ing is what we do not know - of the hundreds of small work-
places, like Churchmans, which quietly disappeared - of the
piecemeal attacks on women workers - rationalisations,
speed-ups, flexibility deals, and the silent trickle of 'natural
wastage'. And with all of this, there has been the insidious
erosion of women's relatively new-found and fragile confi-
dence, i.e. the ideological attack.
Even without any exceptional revival of ideological
pressure to return them to the kitchen sink, the women at
Churchmans illustrated the ambivalent subjective experience
of being part of a 'reserve army' of labour in the sense of
being useful, but dispensable:

I don't really believe in married women working. Well, 'cos

there's not much work anyway, and they ought to make
room for people what've got to lead their own lives.

It's a risk you have to take. Anywhere you work, a factory

might close down tomorrow.

Today, in the context of general recession, unemployment

rocketing to over two million in 1980, and drastic public
expenditure cuts, this pressure is increasing. If, during the
Second World War and the 1950s, there was official concern
about the wastage of 'womanpower' in the economy, now
the talk is of women's indispensability to the home and
family,t2 and there is even a revival of the once discredited
theory of 'maternal deprivation'Y
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 233

Women workers' experience and consciousness

This book has tried to unravel some of the threads which
make up women workers' experience and consciousness.
One of the central themes has been the collisions between
women's sexual oppression and their exploitation as workers,
both at the level of the ideologies of femininity and wage
labour, and as lived, at home and on the factory floor.
What emerge are the fragmentary ideas of an unresolved
'common sense'. It contains both class and gender concep-
tions of the world, and because it is a partial acceptance and
partial rejections of ruling conceptions of the world it is full
of contradictions:

Well, I'm not going to work for ever.

As soon as I get married, I won't come back here. I'll stay

home, have a couple of kids.

Then:

When you're young, you think you'll stop sometime

Things don't work out like that.

Women are ambivalent about resigrung themselves to the

monotony of 'women's work':

It's your job, isn't it? I mean, men won't do it.

But then:

It's boring! It drives you mad!

I'd like to see them here. I'd like to tum it upside down;
see the manager on a weighing machine for a week.

The same goes for women's pay: good enough 'for a woman'
-orisit?

You know, I thought it was good wages in here. Well it is,

234 Struggle at Work

I suppose, except for the price of flats and food and bus
fares.

About oppression in the home, resignation, humility and

revolt go hand in hand:

You've got to be there for him to come home to meals.

Can't expect him to do it. Oh, he's ever so good.

Then:

Men rely on you.

Men take women for granted, see.

Too much.

It is the contradiction between the ideology of women's

place in the home and the harsh reality of the need for their
pay which hangs women so precariously in the world of wage
labour:

Let's face it, you can't live on one man's wage. A woman's
got to work if you want anything decent.

But then:

Well, don't you think a man needs a job more? I think a

married man needs a job more than we do.

And:

They say about Equal Pay. But I can't see it myself.

Because they'll just put men into our jobs.

It is this apologetic insecurity which makes women so

much more easily dispensed with in a redundancy situation
than men. Yet sexual oppression at work also has its own
dynamic. It provokes resistance - both to patriarchy and to
the work discipline often mediated by it. We see escape,
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 235
bending rules, mucking in, laughs, sexy bravado, biting wit.
Defi"ance is there. What is lacking is shop-floor control and
organisation. And here, we see sexual oppression styling trade
unionism:

I mean, if you've got homes to see to, you just can't do

these things, go to these meetings.

We always get shouted down, like.

Yes, we could speak our minds. But he wasn't listening.

Well, you can just do nothing. Keep on asking.

There is the problem of confidence:

I get ideas, and I think, ah, I won't say anything, keep me

mouth shut ... I don't know, Ijust can't be bothered any
more.

I just feel soft, going in the office.

By a self-fulfilling prophecy, trade unionism has remained

an alien 'man's world', with its own, incomprehensible
language:

Well, he was speaking in different terms, to what we

understood, about the 'yardsticks'. We didn't understand
half he was talking about.

Yet everyday experience of being tied to a machine, of

exploitation, kept up the pressure to develop some sort of
trade unionism. At Churchmans most everyday problems
were diverted to the management-run factory council. Yet
the women knew what was needed. It was clear that the
Imperial Tobacco productivity deal had removed control
from the shop-floor; as for grading, it was 'too much'. What
they needed were their own, female shop stewards to put
across problems men did not experience. And if they failed,
they took the responsibility squarely on to their own
shoulders, and blamed themselves:
236 Struggle at Work

It's our own faults, 'cos none of us '11 take it on.

But while weakly organised, and vulnerable to incorpora-

tion by default, their very unfamiliarity with trade unionism
also made them less hidebound by convention. Recollecting
the Wills steward at the time of the redundancies:

We had our meeting more out in the street.

And commenting on trade unionism generally:

Well you can't do nothing . . . It's against the rules or

something.

Well, they could, but they won't. What's a union?

At least they recognised their dilemma, and knew there was a

way out - if only they could reach it:

It's all right talking about it, but it's different doing it.
What we need is a spark here to set it off. That's all we
need, then we'll all join in. But there's no one to do it.

In concentrating on 'common sense' throughout this book,

its opposite is always implied: 'good sense', i.e. a coherent view
of the world arrived at through a socialist critique and self-
activity; for the working-class majority of women, both a
feminist and a working-class view. And it is because the
potential for change is the underlying theme of this book
that consciousness is the main focus. The material conditions
and structural setting of the Churchmans' workers were of
central importance, which is why they were spelt out in some
detail. But an analysis of the workers at a structural level
alone is not enough. It is neither a sufficient explanation of
that structural situation - which itself is a product of human
actions, and therefore consciousness - nor a way into the
future. It leaves out the fact that we have heads, hearts and
the will to act.
There have been analyses of women workers in terms of
the 'reserve army of labour', the 'dual labour market' and
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 237

'domestic labour'; but the women themselves have been left

out. They cannot be treated as the abstractions of economists
- least of all Marxist ones. These theories are part of the
lived experience of workers; they relate to paradoxes such
as this one from a Churchmans' worker in 1972:

I think we'll have to give up our jobs. Well, don't you

think a married man needs ajob more?

And this, five years after the closure of Churchmans, from

the Chairman of Imperial Tobacco Limited:

This traditional feeling of belonging to a particular work

group is something I want to see strengthened, rather than
weakened. 14

And to self-evaluations such as:

I think I'm lucky to be working here. It's very good pay -

for women.

And just as surely, work, especially for women workers, must

be related to the lived reality of home and family:

Mm ... when you think you've got to go home and start

allover again. You've got to go home and do a bit every
night ... or you can have every night off and then work
like hell on Saturday and Sunday.

Conclusions
In view of the contrary tendencies and potentials in women
workers' consciousness, it is perhaps clearer why this book
cannot end on a note of crystal gazing into the future of
women's work. The very contradictions in women's
experience, the 'double burden' itself, are also the seeds of
their strength. If their preoccupations with marriage and the
family led to illusions in escape or the 'temporary stay' at
work, they also created the possibility of bringing privatised
concerns into a shared, collective sphere. And if women
workers were at the centre of ideological crossfire from
238 Struggle at Work

husbands on one side, trade-union brothers on the other

(and also from employers), and if they did not know which
way to turn, in having to combat all of them they had to kill
two birds with one stone: both their oppression as women,
and their exploitation as workers. The link between the two
must necessarily be made. The employer cannot be confronted
effectively without organisation; organisation at work
demands involvement in the union; organisation in the union
is possible only by fighting female oppression there;
recognition that this is important must be forced on to
husbands. So the fight against exploitation at work becomes
a fight against oppression at home, and vice versa.
There are other ways in which women's weakness can
become their strength. Like all oppressed groups, women
have the volatility of being able to break out of the most
silent passivity into the heights of passionate militancy.
Oppression produces its own revolt, and it is no coincidence
that some of the most dedicated recent industrial struggles
(Grunwick, Chix) have been led by Asian women, the doubly
oppressed.
If we return to Churchmans, what fired the greatest anger?
Not primarily pay, but becoming machines - and insults to
dignity: being 'us nits, working', while men stood by doing
nothing; or being 'taken for granted'. Exploitation - being
tied to a machine - was sensed, but resented most bitterly
when turned into belittlement or insult to their intelligence.
This was the context of resistance (albeit incorporated into
management control). This was the area where married
women watched their 'new' status, and where young girls
sharpened their defiance.
The same two-sidedness of the exploitation-oppression
duo appeared in trade unionism. Exclusion, weakness and
lack of tactical experience formed a vicious circle of poor
organisation; but they could also mean newness, enthusiasm,
honesty and initiative. Which way the coin dropped, whether
strength or weakness came face up, was not arbitrary: it
depended on support from other workers, union organisation
and traditions - and in our case the lack of continuity and
consistency in Bristol's working-class history which has left
it peculiarly lacking in militant traditions.
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 239

Drawing together the threads of this book shows, above

all, a dynamic: that women workers are workers in a man's
world; yet they also create their own. At present, this is not
a new, integrated whole, bridging the gulf between the two
worlds of women and men, home and work. Rather, they
remain separate, women importing their own world, living
in it, and maintaining a dual existence.
But because they are at the point of production, the
possibility of a fusion exists. On the one hand, women
workers share the world of wage labour with men; they do
not need to rely on second-hand reports about it, mediations
from the male breadwinner within the confines of the home.
At the same time, they are in the position to force to the
heart of the labour movement and to the consciousness of
men as wage workers matters normally hived off into home
and community issues: the local school, the local zebra
crossing, the health centre. Consumption and production,
the circle of exchange between the wage packet, the goods
it can buy and the life it finances, can be closed.
Locked away at home, women, however radical, end up
in a consciousness that is 'imprisoned'. As one writer
concluded about the most radical wives in her study of 'wives
and husbands in industrial action':

while these women demonstrated their VIgOroUS and .

intense opposition to the structure of society, it is clear
that they lacked any ideological organising principle.
Isolated and angry, each woman reacted with private
frustration. They were effectively cut off from the trade
union movement - both in practice and in terms of
ideological leadership and there was no effective alterna-
tive. ls

With women at work there is the possibility to develop

such an alternative. Together at work women break out of
their isolation. However much they remain cut off, both
ideologically and in practice from the world of men, they are
still in that same world of wage labour. More than this, they
share their world with one another as women; they can build
up confidence, share problems, have a laugh, learn collec-
240 Struggle at Work

tively. From this experience they can build a new conscious-

ness, not only to fight against the abuses of female wage
labour, but also against the sexual oppression which cuts
right across the home and the work-place.
For the working-class majority of women it makes no
sense to fight their oppression as women in isolation from
their exploitation as workers. A separatist women's move-
ment therefore offers them no solutions. By splitting off
women's oppression from their exploitation, it increases their
'ghettoisation' and never connects with their real experience.
The answer lies in building a movement which grapples
with the way sexual oppression is fused with class exploita-
tion, and this means recognising the importance of wage
labour as well as the home and the family. This implies
arguing for a reorientation of the women's movement as a
whole towards the work-place and away from an exclusive
preoccupation with domestic and personal experience. This
is not to say that those isolated as housewives and mothers
should be neglected as having no contribution to make.
Continuing struggles - over control of fertility and sexuality,
community issues and government cuts - remain vital to all
women. But it has to be remembered that for most women,
apart from a short period of five or six years when they rear
young children, the question of paid employment, whether
part-time or full-time, is a highly relevant one. Linked with
this is the tactical point that even issues concerned with
women's oppression alone are often fought most effectively
when they are brought into the work-place and the unions
and given industrial muscle. The union support for the
movement against John Corrie's proposed restrictive
legislation on abortion in 1979 indicate that, to some
extent, this is already beginning to happen.
Today an orientation towards women in the work-place
has a particular political significance. In a period when
unemployment is becoming a major threat, the position of
women at work - those who still have work - is very
precarious. As working-class organisation necessarily moves
to a defence of basic trade-union rights and principles and to
the struggle to keep jobs, this shift has to be reflected also in
relation to women workers. For while the campaigns of the
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 241

1970s - for equal pay and opportunities, for union organisa-

tion and recognition - came on the crest of the post-war
wave of women's recruitment to the labour force, the key
problem facing women workers now is the right to work
itself. This raises the thorniest problems of sexual divisions
between men and women workers when the right to work
is also the most crucial issue confronting male workers: the
'breadwinners'. It means that arguments must turn very much
to the basics: to an evaluation of 'the family wage'; to the
fact that an attack on women's jobs is an attack on working-
class organisation and living standards as a whole; to showing
that women's right to work is a precondition for their
emancipation. It is an area of contention which is bound to
open rifts within unions and work-places. And it is a
controversy which has not least to be tackled among the
many women who themselves half collude in the push to
return them to the kitchen sink.
One of the main tasks facing women, then, is to nail
finally the myths about their 'inferiority' as workers and
trade unionists: the 'pin-money' myth and the 'work as a
temporary stay' myth. And this demystification has to be
aimed almost as much at women as at men. Women have to
gain confidence in themselves. As workers, far from trying
to mould themselves to their male work-mates and brothers,
they must face the difficult and often unwelcome task of
raising their particular issues as part of an oppressed group
and forcing them into the mainstream of discussion and
action. To do this effectively without being apologetic they
need to organise themselves not only as workers but also as
women.
As most women live alongside men and need to build upon
the times when they are able to struggle together shoulder to
shoulder, this means organising independently, but not
separately. In order not to be left on the sidelines as
permanent tea-makers for a male-dominated labour move-
ment, the working-class majority of women do need to
develop their own collective identity and voice.
But such a women's movement has to be set in a wider
context. Without digging to the roots of women's oppression
in class society feminism is a futile belief system. Women's
242 Struggle at Work

liberation has to embrace the ideas and strategies of a

political movement committed to toppling capitalism. In this
book the many unrecognised contradictions and blind alleys
of 'common sense' have appeared again and again. None of
the dilemmas the women faced, either ideological or
practical, had solutions within their terms of reference - the
dominant world-view of capitalism. As they sought one
answer after another, from blaming themselves, blacks or the
unemployed, the world seemed to make less and less sense,
leaving no alternative but passive fatalism. But as we saw,
their apathy and indifference could crack; they were not the
simple contented 'silent majority' depicted by the mass
media. For their experience of work, of their poor
organisation and of the tensions in their lives, made them all
the more open to alternatives. To socialist alternatives.
Engels wrote that 'the first premise of the emancipation
of women is the re-introduction of the entire female sex into
public industry'. But it is an emancipation which is part of
a struggle for a new world. A world in which the labour of all
who work is no longer the negation, but the expression of
their humanity. And a world where the family, the caring for
life itself, is not a cage for half the human race but the
responsibility and fulfilment of everyone. The two go hand in
hand.

Notes to Chapter 11
1. Bruegel (1979) 'Women as a Reserve Anny of Labour', Feminist
Review, no. 3.
2. Trades Union Congress (1978) Women's Conference, p. 3.
3. See Mullier and Rosser (1979) 'The Changing Role of Women in
the British Economy', National Westminster Bank Quarterly
Review, November 1979.
4. Bruegel (1979); Trades Union Congress (1978).
5. Bruegel (1979); Counter Infonnation Services (1979) The New
Technology.
6. For Marx, the reserve army of labour had the specific meaning of a
'relative surplus population sloughed off from old to new branches
of production. It was both a product and lever of change. It was
flexible and drove down wages by providing a pennanent pool of
unemployed labour (see Bravennan (1974) Labor and Monopoly
Capital, p. 277).
 Death of a Factory: Where Now? 243
Some writers h-ave argued that women (primarily married
women) are a special part of this reserve army (Braverman, 1974;
Beechey, 1977), because of their position in the family. I would
argue that the family itself, as a system of reproduction and
consumption, sustains the reserve army of unemployed in states
such as Britain today, where migrant labour is little used: 'in
some families it might be the man out of work while the woman
gets the job, but in many families it is the man in work whilst the
woman is pulled in and out of part-time employment. Capitalism's
reserve army of labour - once a pool of workers in the nineteenth
century - is now composed of 16 million family "pools". Unem-
ployed youth are partially maintained by their parents, and their
dole is adjusted according to whether they are 16, 17 or 18 ... the
derisory sums paid by social security are based on the assumption
that there is a family "net" which catches people' (Smith, 1978,
International Socialism, no. 104, p. 13).
7. See Mackay et al. (1971) Labour Market Under Different Employ-
ment Conditions; Jenness et al. (1975) Last Hired, First Fired;
Department of Employment (1978) 'Age and Redundancy',
Gazette, September 1978.
8. Counter Information Services (1976) Women Under Attack, p. 16.
9. CounterInformationServices(1976)p.17.
10. Bruegel (1979) p. 18.
11. See Cockerill and German (1980) 'Women and the Crisis', Socialist
Review, February-March 1980, p. 18.
12. See note 6 to the introduction on the 'domestic labour debate' for
details of theoretical contributions on this question. Also, at a
journalistic level, see Condon (1979) 'Mother's Little Helpers',
Women's Voice, November 1979,p. 10.
13. For the original theory, see Bowlby (1951) Maternal Care and
Mental Health. See Rutter (1972) Maternal Deprivation Reassessed
for a critique. And for a revival see Leach (1979) Who Cares?
14. Statement in Wills World, September 1979.
15. Porter (1978) 'Consciousness and Secondhand Experience: Wives
and Husbands in Industrial Action', Sociological Review, vol. 26,
no. 2, May 1978, p. 278.
Bibliography

Abrams, M. (1959) The Teenage Consumer, London, London Press

Exchange.
Allen, V. L. (1966) Militant Trade Unionism, London, Merlin Press.
Allen, W. (1964) 'Is Britain a Half Time Country?', The Sunday Times,
1 March 1964.
Ashton, D. N. and Field, D. (1976) Young Workers, London, Hutchin·
son.
Bain, G. S. (1970) The Growth of White-Collar Unionism, Oxford
University Press.
Barker, D. L. and Allen, S. (eds) (1976) Dependence and Exploitation
in Work and Marriage, London, Longman.
Barran, R. D. and Norris, G. M. (1976) 'Sexual Divisions and the Dual
Labour Market', in Barker, D. L. and Allen S. (eds), Depcndence and
Exploitation in Work and Marriage, London, Longman.
Beechey, V. (1977) 'Some Notes on Female Wage Labour in Capitalist
Production', Capital and Class, no. 3.
Beechey, V. (1978) 'Women and Production', in Kuhn andWolpe (1978)
Feminism and Materialism.
Beharrel, P. and Philo, G. (eds) (1977) Trade Unions and the Media,
London, Macmillan.
Benet, M. K. (1972) Secretary: An Enquiry into the Female Ghetto,
London, Sidgwick & Jackson.
Beynon, H. (1973) Working for Ford, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Beynon, H. and Blackburn, R. M. (1972) Perceptions of Work: Varia-
tions Within a Factory, Cambridge University Press.
Bowlby, J. (1951) Maternal Care and Mental Health, Geneva, World
Health Organisation.
Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital: the Degradation
of Work in the Twentieth Century, New York, Monthly Review
Press.
Bridgewood, A. (1978) 'Women Workers in Contemporary Britain',
M.A. thesis, University of Bradford.
Bristol International Socialists (1972) Boom or Bust (pamphlet on the
aircraft industry), Bristol.
Bristol Resources and Rights Centre (1977) A Resource and Rights
Centre for the Bristol Area, Bristol.
 Bibliography 245
Bristol Resources and Rights Centre (1977) Equal Pay in Bristol: A
Short Survey of Some Problems, Bristol.
Brown, R. (1976) 'Women as Employees in Industry', in Barker, D. L.
and Allen, S. (eds), Dependence and Exploitation in Work and
Marriage, London, Longman.
Brown, W. (ed.) (1981) The Changing Contours of British Industrial
Relations (forthcoming), Oxford, Blackwell.
Bruegel, I. (1979) 'Women as a Reserve Army of Labour: a Note on
Recent British Experience', Feminist Review, no. 3.
Cannon, J. (1964) The Chartists in Bristol, Bristol Branch of the
Historical Association, Bristol University.
Carchedi, G. (1977) On the Economic Identification of Social Classes,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Carter, M. P. (1962) Home, School and Work, Oxford, Pergamon Press.
Carter, M. P. (1966) Into Work, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Chinoy, E. (1955) Automobile Workers and the American Dream, New
York, Doubleday.
Cliff, T. (1970) The Employers' Offensive: Productivity Deals and How
to Fight Them, London, Pluto Press.
Cliff, T. (1975) The Crisis: Social Contract or Socialism, London, Pluto
Press.
Cliff, T. (1979) 'The Balance of Class Forces in Britain Today', Inter-
national Socialism Journal, series 2, no. 6.
Cockerill, S. and German, L. (1980) 'Women and the Crisis', Socialist
Review, February-March 1980.
Condon, J. (1979) 'Mother's Little Helpers', Women's Voice, November
1979.
Coulson, M., Magas, B. and Wainwright, H. (1975) 'The Housewife and
Her Labour under Capitalism - a Critique " New Left Review, no.
89.
Counter Information Services (1976) Women Under Attack, Anti-
Report No. 15, London, CIS.
Counter Information Services (1979) The New Technology, Anti-
Report No. 23, London, CIS.
Coussins, J. (1976) The Equality Report, London, National Council
for Civil Liberties.
Coventry and District Employers' Association (1968) Working Party
Report on Wage Drift, Work Measurement and Systems Payments
(popularly referred to as the Coventry 'Blue Book'), Coventry.
Cunnison, S. (1966) Wages and Work Allocation, London, Tavistock.
Delmar, R. (1976) 'Looking Again at Engels's "Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State"', in Mitchell, J. and Oakley, A.
(eds), The Rights and Wrongs of Women, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Dennis, N., Henriques, F. and Slaughter, C. (1956) Coal is our Life: A
Study of a Yorkshire Mining Community, London: Eyre & Spottis-
woode.
Department of Employment (1974) Women and Work, a Statistical
Survey, Manpower Paper No.9, London, HMSO.
246 Bibliography
Department of Employment (1975) Women and Work: A Review,
Manpower Paper No. II, London, HMSO.
Department of Employment (1978) 'Age and Redundancy', Depart·
ment of Employment Gazette, September 1978, London, HMSO.
Dicks-Mireaux, L. A. and Shepherd, J. R. (1962) 'The Wage Structure
and Some Implications for Incomes Policy', Economic Review,
November 1962.
Downing, H. (19 7 8) 'Towards an Ethnography of Secretarial Work',
internal paper, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birming-
ham University.
Engels, F. (1970) 'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State', in Marx, K. and Engels, F., Selected Works in One Volume,
London, Lawrence & Wishart.
Erzkowitz, H. (1971) 'The Male Sister: Sexual Separation of Labour in
Society', Journal of Marriage and the Family.
Equal Opportunities Commission (1977) Women and Low Incomes,
London, EOC.
Flanders, A. (1967) Collective Bargaining: Prescription for Change,
London, Faber.
Friedan, B. (1963) The Feminine Mystique, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Fyvel, T. R. (1961) The Insecure Offenders, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Gamarnikow, E. (1978) 'Sexual Division of Labour: the Case of
Nursing', in Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A. (eds), Feminism and
Materialism, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Gardiner, J. (1975) 'Women's Domestic Labour', New Left Review,
no. 89.
Gardiner, J., Himmelweit, S. and Mackintosh, M. (1975) 'Women's
Domestic Labour', Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Econo-
mists, vol. 4, no. 2 (reprinted in On the Political Economy of
Women, CSE Pamphlet No.2, London, Stage One, 1976).
Glasgow University Media Group (1976) Bad News, vol. 1, London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Glucklich, P., Hall, C. R., Povall, M. and Snell, M. W. (1976) 'Equal
Pay Experience in Twenty Five Firms', Department of Employment
Gazette, December 1976.
Glyn, A. and Sutcliffe, B. (1972) British Capitalism and the Profit
Squeeze, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Goldthorpe, J. H., Lockwood, D., Bechhofer, F. and Platt, J. (1968)
The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour, Cambridge
University Press.
Goodrich, C. L. (1975) The Frontier of Control - A Study of British
Workshop Politics, London, Pluto Press.
Gough, I. (1972) 'Marx's Theory of Productive and Unproductive
Labour', New Left Review, no. 76.
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London,
Lawrence & Wishart.
Green, P. (1978-9) 'The Necessity of Value and a Return to Marx',
International Socialism Journal, series 2, nos 3 and 4.
 Bibliography 247
Hale, R. I. (1966) 'A Consideration of Incentives Policy at the Imperial
Tobacco Company', paper presented to Bristol College of Science
and Technology, School of Management.
Hall, S. and jefferson, T. (eds) (1977) Resistance through Ritual:
Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, London, Hutchinson/Centre
for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University.
Harman, C. (1979) Is a Machine After Your Job?, London, Socialist
Workers Party.
Harman, C. (1980) 'Theories of the Crisis', International Socialism
Journal, series 2, no. 9.
Harrison,j. (1973) 'Political Economy of Housework', Bulletin of the
Conference of Socialist Economists, vol. 3, no. 4.
Harrison, M. G. (1967) 'Proficiency Pays', paper to the South West
Regional Conference of the Institute of Work Study Practitioners,
Bristol, March 1966.
Himmelweit, S. and Mohun, S. (1977) 'Domestic Labour and Capital-
ism', Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 1, part 1.
Hoare and Co. Investment Research (1969) The Tobacco Industry,
London.
Hoggart, R. (195 7) The Uses of Literacy, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Hollowell, P. G. (1968) The Lorry Driver, London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Hunt, A. (1975) Management Attitudes and Practices towards Women
at Work, Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Social Survey
Division, London, HMSO.
Hunt, j. (1975) Organising Women Workers, Workers' Education
Association Studies for Trade Unionists, vol. 1, no. 3, London, WEA.
Huws, U. (1981) Women Workers, forthcoming book in 'Workers
Handbook' series, London, Pluto Press.
Hyman, R. (1971) Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism,
London, Pluto Press.
Hyman, R. (1980) 'British Trade Unionism, Post-war Trends and
Future Prospects', International Socialism Journal, series 2, no.
8.
Imperial Group Ltd, Reports and Accounts, 1968-79 (prior to 1973,
Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd).
Imperial Tobacco Company (1975) Interim Report of the Subcom-
mittee on Incentives Policy, London.
Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Job Assessment for Factory
Employees, London.
Imperial Tobacco Company (1965) Conditions of Employment and
Factory Rules Including Additional Rules and Regulations of the
Churchmans Branch, Bristol.
Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd (no date) The History of the Imperial
Tobacco Company 1901-1966, London.
Jeffreys, S. (1979) 'Striking into the 1980s - Modern British Trade
Unionism, its Limit and Potential', International Socialism Journal,
series 2, no. 5.
248 Bibl£ography

jenness, L., .Hill, H., Reid, N. M., Loveu, F. and Davenport, S. E.

(1975) Last Hired, First Fired, New York, Pathfinder.
jephcott, P. (1942) Girls Growing Up, Lonqon, Faber.
jephcott, P., Seear, N. and Smith,j. H., (1962) Married Women Work-
ing, London, Allen & Unwin.
Klein, V. (1965) Britain's Married Women Workers, London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A. (1978) Feminism and Materialism, London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Labour Research Department (1974) Big Business and Politics, London,
LRD.
Labour Research Department, Reports on Imperial Group Ltd, 1974-7,
London.
Lane, T. (1974) The Union Makes Us Strong, London, Arrow Books.
Leach, P. (1979) Who Cares?, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Lenin, V. I. (1964) 'Lecture on the 1905 Revolution', in Lenin, Collec-
ted Works, Volume XXIII, London, Lawrence & Wishart.
Lupton, T. (1961) Money for Effort, London, HMSO.
Lupton, T. (1963) On the Shop Floor, Oxford, Pergamon Press.
Lockwood, D. (1958) The Blackcoated Worker, London, Allen &
Unwin.
Mackay, D. I., Boddy, D., Brack,j., Diack,j. A. and jones, N. (1971)
Labour Market Under Different Employment Conditions, London,
Allen & Unwin.
Mackie, L. and Pattullo, P. (1977) Women at Work, London, Tavistock.
McRobbie, A. (1977) 'Working Class Girls and the Culture of Feminin-
ity', M.A. thesis, Birmingham University.
Malos, E. (ed.) (1980) The Politics of Housework, London, Allison &
Busby.
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1970) 'Manifesto of the Communist Party', in
Marx and Engels, Selected Works in One Volume, London, Lawrence
& Wishart.
Mayo, E. (1946) Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, New
York, Macmillan.
Mead, M. (1950) Male and Female, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Mitchell,j. (1971) Women's Estate, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Mitchell, j. and Oakley, A. (eds) (1976) The Rights and Wrongs of
Women, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Moore, C. H. (1976) From School to Work, London, Sage.
Morgan, D. (1979) 'Men, Masculinity and the Process of Sociological
Enquiry', paper to the British Sociological Association.
Muller, M. (1978) Tobacco and the Third World: Tomorrow's Epidemic?,
London, War on Want.
Mullier, T. and Rosser, M. (1979) 'The Changing Role of Women in the
British Economy', National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review,
November 1979.
Mungh am , G. and Pearson, G. (eds) (1976) Working Class Youth
Cultures, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
 Bibliography 249
Myrdal, A. and Klein, V. (1956) Women's Two Roles, London, Rout-
ledge & Kegan Paul.
National joint Negotiating Committee for the Tobacco Industry (1971)
A Way to Equal Pay, London.
Newsom,j. (1948) The Education of Girls, London, Faber.
Nichols, T. and Armstrong, P. (1976) Workers Divided, London,
Fontana.
Nichols, T. and Beynon, H. (1977) Living with Capitalism, London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Nightingale, M. (1976) 'The Sociology of Productivity Bargaining',
Ph.D. thesis, Bristol University.
Nightingale, M. (1980) 'UK Productivity Dealing in the 1960s', in
Nichols, T. (ed.), Capital and Labour: A Marxist Primer, London,
Fontana.
North, D. T. B. and Buckingham, G. L. (1969) Productivity Agreements
and Wage Systems, London, Gower Press.
Oakley, A. (1973) Sex, Gender and Society, London, Temple Smith.
Oakley, A. (1976) The Houswife, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Parker, H. (1974) View from the Boys, Newton Abbott, David &
Charles.
Prices and Incomes Board (1968) Job Evaluation, Report No. 83,
Cmnd 772, London, HMSO.
Porter, M. (1978) 'Worlds Apart: the Class Consciousness of Working
Class Women', Women's Studies International Quarterly, vol. 1,
Oxford, Pergamon Press.
Porter, M. (1978) 'Consciousness and Secondhand Experience: Wives
and Husbands in Industrial Action', Sociological Review, vol. 26,
no. 2, May 1978.
Porter, M. (1979) 'Experience and Consciousness: Women at Home and
Men at Work', Ph.D. thesis, Bristol University.
Ramsay, H. (1980) 'Participation: The Pattern and its Significance',
in Nichols, T. (ed.), Capital and Labour: A Marxist Primer, London,
Fontana.
Reed, E. (1975) Woman's Evolution, New York, Pathfinder.
Reich, W. (1972) The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality, London,
Souvenir Press.
Roethlisberger, F.j. and Dixon, W.J. (1939) Management and the
Worker, Harvard University Press.
Rowbotham, S. (1972) 'The Beginnings of Women's Liberation in
Britain', in Wandor, M. (ed.), The Body Politic: Writings from the
Women's Liberation Movement in Britain, 1969-1971, London,
Stage One.
Rowbotham, S. (1973) Hidden from History, London, Pluto Press.
Rowbotham, S. (1973) Woman's Consciousness, Man's World,
Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth (Chair-
man: Lord Diamond) (1978) Lower Incomes, Report No.6, Cmnd
7175, London, HMSO, May 1978.
250 Bibliography

Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations

(Chairman: Lord Donovan) (1968) Report, Cmnd 3623, London,
HMSO.
Rutter, M. (1972) Maternal Deprivation Reassessed, Harmondsworth,
Penguin.
Sacks, K. (1974) 'Engels Revisited', in Rosaldo, M. L. and Lamphere,
L. (eds), Woman, Culture and Society, Stanford University
Press.
Seccombe, W. (1974) 'The Housewife, and her Labour under
Capitalism', New Left Review, no. 83.
Seccombe, W. (1975) 'Domestic Labour - A Reply to Critics', New Left
Review, no. 94.
Sharpe, S. (1976) Just like a Girl, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Smith, j. (1977-8) 'Women and the Family', International Socialism
Journal, nos 100, 104.
Stellman, j. M. (1977) Women's Work, Women's Health, Myths and
Realities, New York, Pantheon.
Stite, R. (1978) The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia:
Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism, 1880-1930, Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Tabar, A. (1979) Iran: no Revolution without Women's Liberation,
London, Campaign for Solidarity with Iran.
Thorsell, S. (1967) 'Employer Attitudes to Female Employees', in
Dahstrom, E. (ed.), The Changing Roles of Men and Women, Lon-
don, Duckworth.
Trades Union Congress (1978) Women's Conference, London, TUC.
Trist, E., Higgin, G. W., Murray, H. and Pollak, A. B. (1963) Organisa-
tional Choice, London, Tavistock.
Tunstall,j. (1962) The Fisherman, London, MacGibbon & Kee.
Turner, H. A. (1962) Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy,
London, Allen & Unwin.
Walker, C. R. and Guest, R. H. (1952) The Man on the Assembly Line,
Harvard University Press.
West, j. (1980) 'Women, Reproduction and Wage Labour', in
Nichols, T. (ed.), Capital and Labour: A Marxist Primer, London,
Fontana.
Whitfield, B. (1973) 1926: The General Strike in Bristol, Bristol Inter-
national Socialist pamphlet, drawn from the author's Ph.D. thesis
of same title, Bristol University.
Whitfield, B. (1979) 'The Labour Movement in Bristol, 1910-1939',
M.Lit., Bristol University.
Wild, R. and Hill, A. B. (1970) Women in the Factory: a Study of Job
Satisfaction and Labour Turnover, London, Institute of Personnel
Management.
Willis, P. (1978) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get
Working Class Jobs, London, Saxon House.
Willmott, P. (1966) Adolescent Boys of East London, London, Rout-
ledge & Kegan Paul.
 Bibliography 251

Willmott, P. and Young, M. (1957) Family and Kinship in East London,

Hannondsworth, Penguin.
Women's Studies Group (ed.) (1978) Women Take Issue: Aspects of
Women's Subordination, London, Hutchinson/University of Bir-
mingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.
Yudkin, S. and Hohne, A. (1963) Working Mothers and their Children,
London, Michael Joseph.
Zaretsky, E. (1976) Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life, London,
Plu to Press.