Frow Memorial Lecture: Energy Workers and the Transformation of Britain

Energy Workers and the Transformation of Britain, late 1940s to mid-1990s
This lecture demonstrates how the working class and labour movement were at the heart of the transformation of Britain in the second half of the twentieth century by focusing on the central role of energy industry workers and trade unionists in broad-ranging processes of economic and political change.
Developments in coal mining, conventional electricity, the nuclear project and the oil and gas sector reveal crucial dynamics. They illuminate the evolving balance of political power and important changes to the organisation of work in the private and public sectors.
The lecture duly engages with existing accounts of Britain’s post-Second World War history, which have emphasised the transition from a social democratic to neoliberal political economy, deindustrialisation and the rise and fall of economic nationalism respectively. It emphasises the fundamental centrality of the energy economy and its labour regimes. Analysis draws on records of government, industry and trade unions along with testimonies from current and former workers recorded during an extensive oral history project themed around workplace and community experiences of energy employment.
Ewan Gibbs is a historian of energy, industry, work and protest based at Glasgow University. He published his first book, Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Postwar Scotland in 2021. Ewan is currently researching worker perspectives of the expansion and evolution of the British energy economy since the 1940s.