Irish Workers Research Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue Commemorating the 170th Anniversary of the 1853–1854 Preston Lock-Out

This introduction to the special issue commemorating the 170th anniversary of the Preston strike and lock-out of 1853–1854 explains the significance of one of the most famous industrial disputes of the nineteenth century, updates its historiography since the publication of H.I. Dutton and J.E. King’s 1981 study, ‘Ten Per Cent and No Surrender’: The Preston Strike, 1853–1854 , provides context and a chronology, and summarises the eight articles of new research presented here. The articles examine women’s impact on the dispute and its impact on them, the role of Irish workers, the question of intimidation and conflict between workers, cultural and literary expressions of the dispute, its significance and legacy, and one creative interpretation of it, using animation. The editors argue that the Preston strike and lock-out had a wide impact, was widely reported, and had a strong cultural resonance, making it a microcosmic episode of mid-Victorian Britain. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Between Anger and Revenge: The Unpoetic Justice of “Counterparts”

Abstract James Joyce’s “Counterparts” is a poignant exploration of the multifaceted themes of anger, revenge, and justice within the backdrop of early twentieth century Dublin. The story takes the reader on a journey through the life of Mr. Farrington, whose struggles embody those of an average Irish worker in the face of British imperialism and societal pressures. Farrington’s gradual transformation from a man burdened by anger into one consumed by an insatiable thirst for revenge serves as a stark commentary on the corrosive effects of his predicament. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that the boundary between anger and revenge is a fine line, easily blurred in the tumultuous world of Mr. Farrington. The story challenges readers to consider the legitimacy of his emotions and actions, highlighting the complexities of the human psyche when subjected to perceived injustices. Farrington’s impulsive and misguided attempts at revenge only serve to underscore the tragic nature of his character, exemplifying the societal constraints that restrict his agency and expression. “Counterparts” ultimately paints a bleak picture of justice, where Farrington’s quest for revenge takes on a violent and delusional character that fails to address the core issues of perceived injustices. His inability to channel his anger into a purposeful course of action mirrors the broader sense of disempowerment experienced by many Irish citizens in Joyce’s time.

An Arduous Journey of Early Chinese Americans

After the state of California discovered gold in 1848, a gold rush immediately rolled out and spread across North America. But most laborers from the east coast did not want to go to California and only the white Irish workers were drawn to the West because they were smeared as “dirty whites” in the east coast. To attract more laborers to toil in the gold mines, employers began seeking immigrants from China. Unlike white workers, Chinese laborers did not want to stay in the US for very long time and all they wanted was making enough money to buy homes and marry a woman in China. They were willing to work longer time for less, which draw ire from their fellow white workers. Because white workers had voting rights, congressmen in California sided with white workers against Chinese laborers by passing a number of discriminative laws that culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. The law virtually banned all Chinese laborers to enter the US until 1943 when China became a wartime ally of the US. Some Chinese including Wong Kim Ark successfully challenged the law by capitalizing on the US legal system. The long and difficult journey of Chinese immigrants finally ran its course in the 1960s thanks to the Civil Right Movement.

The Panama Railroad by Peter Pyne (review).

Reviewed by: The Panama Railroad by Peter Pyne Michael K. Bess (bio) The Panama Railroad By Peter Pyne. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. Pp. 395. Peter Pyne's The Panama Railroad is a cogent, well-researched work about the challenges of building modern infrastructures against hostile environments in the mid-nineteenth century. He also shows that his book fills a void, noting the absence of recent studies on the history of the Panama railroad and citing a handful of much older texts published before 1970. The narrative is highly readable and avoids jargon but tends to be more descriptive in its study of this history and lacks a deeper historiographical engagement with scholarly literature on Panama and socioeconomic themes related to Latin America. The book is organized into three sections. Initially, Pyne introduces readers to the lives and activities of the individual managers and capital investors who oversaw construction of the Panama railroad. He contextualizes the scope and aims of the endeavor: in 1849, emerging victorious from its war against Mexico, the U.S. government wanted to integrate its new territories in the west. Congress provided some incentives for mail carriage, but individual investors raised additional funds to set up their operations. William H. Aspinwall, one of the masterminds of the project, devised an ambitious network of sea and rail transportation that allowed ships to dock at Pacific or Caribbean ports, unload their goods, and ship them overland on the 47-mile rail line, saving months of additional sea travel around South America. The most complicated challenge faced was cutting through the thick jungle canopy populated with poisonous reptiles and innumerable mosquitos that tormented laborers and spread disease (p. 134). Another critical challenge was the plan itself; the project's initial organizational structure relied on thirdparty contractors who competed on price for work. The original contractor underestimated the cost of laying track in Panama, producing a budget that made it difficult to recruit workers (pp. 33–34). Pyne shows that this error caused setbacks that forced the company to reorganize operations to see the work to completion. Pyne then turns his attention to the thousands of laborers who built the railroad. He synthesizes extensive records to develop an understanding of this population. Unsurprisingly for the era, managers applied a racialized framework that determined wages and social hierarchy. Although white workers from the United States and Europe were the highest paid, Pyne finds a more complicated situation for other groups. Due to high turnover from disease, the company was forced to raise wages to recruit and retain nonwhite workers. They arrived from Jamaica and other British colonies in the West Indies but also included hundreds of Chinese, Indians, and Malaysians. [End Page 1189] The final part of The Panama Railroad continues the narrative on laborers but focuses readers' attention on Irish immigrants. Pyne finds that of the 17,500 employees, only 360 were contracted from Cork, Ireland; however, he estimates that almost 4,000 men hired from U.S. cities were likely Irish born. He arrives at this figure by studying U.S. labor demographics from the nineteenth century and other sources. An entire chapter is dedicated to the "men from Cork." Pyne is an Ireland-based researcher, and he makes good use of the sources available, but the decision to cordon the narrative on Irish workers into a separate section was a mistake. After having covered workers' lives and living conditions in detail in the previous sections, the author raises some repetitive points here and weakens the book's narrative flow. It seems natural to compare Pyne's work on the Panama railroad to the famous canal that came decades later. The U.S. canal builders benefited from the knowledge of previous endeavors as well as advances in sanitation and epidemiological research that improved health conditions. In contrast, the railroad's builders had none of these advantages. They were true pioneers, setting up operations to bring a new technology to a hostile natural environment. While he cites many of the important works on the history of Panama and building the canal, his engagement with their arguments is superficial. As a descriptive narrative, Pyne's work captures the challenges the railroad...

A Return to the Commons: An Eco-Marxist Reading of Jewett's “The Gray Mills of Farley” and Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills

A Return to the Commons: An Eco-Marxist Reading of Jewett's “The Gray Mills of Farley” and Rebecca Harding Davis’ <i>Life in the Iron Mills</i>

All For Liberty: The Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion of 1849 by Jeff Strickland

In this brief, fast-paced volume, Strickland offers a much-needed comprehensive account of the under-studied Charleston Workhouse Rebellion of 1849. This slave-led uprising and eventual escape of more than three-dozen slaves triggered new rounds of public debate about control of the city’s enslaved population. The Workhouse facility served multiple purposes—as a place for punishment and short-term imprisonment of the enslaved, as a holding facility for the enslaved craftsmen who hired out, and as a place for slaves to lodge while awaiting sale. The incident, commonly called a “riot” by presiding Charleston authorities, occurred at a critical moment: At that time, Christian paternalists in the Lowcountry were attempting to establish separate worship facilities for slaves, and a large in-migration of Irish workers had recently arrived, creating a white majority in the city. Moreover, Congress and the Charleston press were engaged in ongoing national and local debates about the expansion of slavery.Strickland weaves these several complicated narratives together through the story of Nicholas (Kelly), a skilled enslaved plasterer who became the rebellion’s unquestioned leader, and William Kelly, his owner, who allowed Nicholas to hire out in return for a handsome percentage of his earnings. In 1845, however, William took Nicholas to New Orleans, a booming center of the international cotton trade, in hopes of generating even more profit from his artisanal skill. Strickland contends that Nicholas preferred life in New Orleans, where he converted to Catholicism. Unquestionably, Nicholas grew more defiant after his return to Charleston, where he continued to speak of his faith in a just God and his willingness to face death. When William, suspecting Nicholas of withholding money, asked employment agents to search Nicholas for cash, Nicholas attacked and injured two white men working for the agency, for which he was charged. Though represented by able legal counsel, Nicholas was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. But after the state appeals court overturned the verdict, Nicholas was retried and given a lesser sentence—confinement in the Workhouse for three years of hard labor and monthly whippings.In July 1849, when an owner came to remove his female slave from the Workhouse (her connection to Nicholas, if any, remains unclear), Nicholas resisted authorities forcefully and led the escape of thirty-seven slaves into the streets of Charleston. Authorities regrouped and quickly captured Nicholas and two other ringleaders. Nicholas was tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang with his two chief accomplices exactly one week after the incident. Other escapees sought refuge in and around Charleston, but only six remained at large by the time of Nicholas’ execution. The Workhouse rebellion and the escape of three-dozen slaves set Charleston on edge until well after the rebellion had been suppressed. A large hostile crowd threatened to tear down the new Episcopal church building (Calvary) constructed for separate slave worship. The protest forced a nearly four-month delay while a “Committee of Fifty,” appointed by the mayor, collected information from elsewhere in the South before recommending that the expanded mission to the enslaved be allowed to proceed.Strickland’s engaging narrative sheds new light on issues that challenged both Charleston and the lower South during the late antebellum era. His meticulous research in newspapers (both local and national), public records, and manuscripts tells the story of the Workhouse rebellion and its aftermath more fully than any previous account.Despite his prodigious research, however, his citations leave more than a few direct quotations unattributed in the notes. More consequentially, Strickland’s interpretation is self-contradictory on key points. He portrays slave discipline in Charleston as severe and the city as living constantly in fear of slave resistance. Yet he also gives the impression that the slaves had considerable leeway in the city: Enslaved artisans who lived in the workhouse frequently hired out, and other slaves hired out around the city, having only occasional contact with their owners and much free time on their hands. This comparative laxity of control doubtless facilitated the smooth flow of work and commerce in Charleston, but it hardly suggested a city under siege.Finally, the naming of the incident also highlights the ambiguity of the motive behind it. White contemporaries knew it as the “Workhouse riot” (paralleling modern prison riots), but it was also a rebellion of prisoners who were slaves. Escape from the Workhouse stood as its first goal. It stopped short (or authorities stopped it short) of a full-fledged insurrection. Once the enslaved prisoners escaped, however, their chief aim was to avoid recapture rather than to foment a full-scale revolt. Nonetheless, the Workhouse rebellion brought key issues regarding the future of slavery and white safety to the forefront of public life in Charleston, where they would remain for more than a decade.

An Interethnic Paradox: Chicago's Irish and Everyone Else

An Interethnic Paradox: Chicago's Irish and Everyone Else

Searching for the Famine Remnants in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

In North and South, the Irish are never part of a fully developed plot of their own. The Irish workers' actions, dialogues, and feelings are never clearly presented as a first-hand experience but mediated through third parties who talk about them and act in their name. Most notably, the starving Irish are almost invisible in the mob scene as well as in other scenes where they never appear in person. They are in the background, pushed literally and figurately to the remote corners of the mill and the narrative. Theirs is a double silencing by both the English factory owners and the English workers. Although their presence is in shadows and their voices are silenced in the narrative, these workers set the tone for the most climactic and critical moments of the novel.

Introduction

Introduction

“And I Shall Hear, Though Soft You Tread Above Me”

Initially known as an Irish folk song, “Danny Boy” is incorporated by the Sinophone writer Hsien-yung Pai into his short story of the same title, depicting the life of diasporic queers in New York City during the AIDS pandemic. Instead of analyzing Pai’s story from a regional studies’ perspective, this paper discusses the queer rendition of “Danny Boy” in a multiethnic context, with Asian diasporic queers, poor Irish workers, and African Americans interacting with one another. Such a critique of homophobia and racism within minorities via music invites the reader to envision the possibility of claiming territories through singing, like the migrant birds. Building upon the pivotal point where sound studies, queer of color critiques, and animal studies interact, this paper argues that claiming a land through music instead of racial identities is to acknowledge singing and even speaking as resulting primarily from physical vibrations of bodies. Furthermore, such bodily vibrations convey a sense of physical intimacy beyond the symbolic marker of race and sexuality in the lyrics/language. Frightened by the radical potential embedded in music, Roshanak Kheshti points out that some white bourgeois listeners project rhythms and vibrations on African music, thus securing their own identities. Tracing back this logic, the paper reveals the queer physical intimacy as internal to a piece of Western music like “Danny Boy.” This way, those diasporic queers may claim New York City like migrant birds as they touch/vibrate with each other and the land via shared sound waves.

Need to choose between cutting people and pay? A work sector may matter if maintaining work attitudes is your concern

Despite the increase in the cases of reducing payroll costs (i.e., the costs of wages and salaries), studies that directly compare the effects of related methods (cutting pay vs. downsizing) on work attitudes are extremely limited. Moreover, there has been no effort to answer the question of “who” is more or less affected by one method over the other. This study directly compares the effects of cutting pay vs. downsizing on work attitudes (i.e., affective commitment and job satisfaction) of remaining employees (i.e., employees whose pay is cut vs. survivors of downsizing). The study also examines the moderating effect of the work sector (private vs. public sectors) in this comparison. To do this, 4,359 Irish workers who participated in the 2009 National Workplace Survey (NWS) were analyzed. The analysis reveals no overall difference in the effects of the two methods in maintaining the work attitudes of remaining employees. However, this comparison is moderated by sector. In the private sector, downsizing better maintained the work attitudes of remaining employees than cutting pay. In the public sector, in contrast, there was no significant difference in these effects between the two methods. The results challenge the earlier belief that pay cuts cannot be a feasible alternative to downsizing due to their detrimental effect on employee motivation. The study outcomes indicate that this concern is applicable only in the private sector. Thus, the findings suggest that organizations in the public sector can utilize the pay cut option (rather than downsizing) to gain social approval, which can also be an essential resource that allows firms to better compete in the market.

A Parallel case?: The Irish in abolitionist thought and the emergence of white labor in the United States

ABSTRACT This article traces the rhetorical transformation from the Irish as an exemplum to the Irish as a historically situated demographic in U.S. abolitionist writings from the early to mid-nineteenth century. Through close readings of polemical essays, speeches, and newspaper articles, I argue that abolitionist writers such as David Walker, Samuel Cornish, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick Douglass begin to transition away from conceiving of the exploitation of Irish workers as a fraught, though generative comparative case to chattel slavery once a new demographic of native Irish Catholic emigrants are interpellated into the emergent category of “white labor.” The Irish are thus initially used by abolitionist writers to contrast chattel slavery with other forms of labor exploitation under capitalism until the political utility of those comparisons began to wane as the Irish-American laborer proved socially and conceptionally antagonistic to free and enslaved black laborers.

COVID-19 workplace impacts - Irish OSH professionals experience and observations

BackgroundCOVID-19 has had a significant impact on workers, arising from adaptations to control measures and consequent behaviour changes that minimise disease spread in the workplace. From an occupational safety & health (OSH) perspective, understanding how adaptations and behaviour changes have impacted workers is relevant to how organisations can preserve the health of their workers when adapting to future health emergencies.MethodsSemi-structured qualitative focus groups were conducted during April/May 2021. Participants were Irish OSH practitioners. Participants volunteered from industrial sectors (public & private) as defined by the Central Statistics Office. Participants (n = 60) partook in one of sixteen, two-hour focus groups (4-6 participants per focus group) with each comprising four themes for discussion: organisational preparedness; organisational impacts; worker impacts; and the future of OSH. Thematic analyses were performed using NVivo.ResultsMost participants started developing adaptation measures in February/March 2020. Organisations with an international presence started developing adaptation measures earlier. As OSH professionals, most participants felt personally prepared for the challenges induced by the pandemic but did not anticipate the impact it had on their workload. Nearly all participants indicated that isolation, loneliness, fear, and anxiety had a negative impact on their co-workers' mental health. Many OSH practitioners indicated that their co-workers had responded well to the pandemic, and that positive behaviour changes and new adaptation measures had been sustained from the first wave through the third wave of the pandemic in Ireland.ConclusionsWorkplace mental health evaluations and worker wellbeing initiatives must be prioritised post-pandemic. OSH will need to re-evaluate its relationship with organisational human resources in the future.Key messages Irish OSH practitioners responded well to the challenge presented by COVID-19 to protect their co-workers and maintain organisational continuity.COVID-19 has had a negative impact on the mental health of Irish workers as they respond to preserve their organisation’s operations. This will need to be addressed by organisations post-pandemic.

The prevalence of ill-treatment and bullying at work in Ireland

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of ill-treatment and bullying experienced by Irish workers and to explore individual and organisational predictors. The most recent national figures available are specific to bullying and predate the economic recession; therefore, this study is timely and investigates a broader range of negative behaviours.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey study on a national probability sample of Irish employees was conducted (N = 1,764). The study design replicated the methodology employed in the British workplace behaviour study.FindingsThe results showed that 43% of Irish workers had experienced ill-treatment at work over the past two years, with 9% meeting the criteria for experiencing workplace bullying. A number of individual and organisational factors were found to be significantly associated with the experience of ill-treatment at work.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides national-level data on workplace ill-treatment and bullying that are directly comparable to British study findings.Practical implicationsThe findings indicate that a significant number of Irish workers experience ill-treatment at work, and that workplace bullying does not appear to have decreased since the last national study was conducted in Ireland.Social implicationsThis study is of use to the Irish regulator and persons responsible for managing workplace bullying cases, as it identifies high-risk work situations and contributing individual factors.Originality/valueThis study provides national Irish data on workplace behaviour and ill-treatment following a severe economic recession.

The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation by Thavolia Glymph

Reviewed by: The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation by Thavolia Glymph Melissa Develvis (bio) The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation. By Thavolia Glymph. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 392. $34.95 cloth; $26.99 ebook) In the beautifully written The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation, Thavolia Glymph challenges historians of the Civil War era to re-evaluate their definitions of home, freedom, and womanhood. Even the notion of fighting the war, or, in the instance of Black women, "making freedom," changes based on the gender, race, and class of the historical actors (p. 223). Splitting her work into three sections, Glymph posits that writing the Civil War along the "lines of the regional divide imposed" by slavery's legality "disfavors class analysis" (p. 8). Living in a northern state did not an abolitionist make, and even abolitionist elites gained their fortune from family histories fraught with black exploitation. The women described in The Women's Fight transcend their assigned thematic chapters and interact with each other throughout, exposing the fault lines of power and race relations between northern and southern women alike. Glymph challenges temporal conceptions surrounding the Civil War. For the women in her study, there is little to no differentiation between home front and battlefield. Glyph employs a framework that, rather than viewing the Civil War as an entirely novel experience, considers women's history in "the context of previous wars, gender and class struggles, and slave resistance" (p. 11). South Carolinians remembered British occupation in Charleston, and the confiscation of property and slaves at wars' end. Enslaved women brought antebellum strategies of resistance to the Civil War and employed kinship and community networks to survive in refugee camps. The Women's Fight particularly shines in its examination of legal, military, and social definitions of refugees, womanhood, home, and politics. Poor white women of the South soon realized, for instance, that their idea of home and womanhood was not one the [End Page 649] Confederacy found worth protecting, and thus began to resist. Expanding historians' definitions of political activity, Glymph highlights Black women's resistance to slavery as their "antislavery politics," but shows how their gender and race prevented them from gaining recognition as abolitionists, refugees, and Unionists (p. 96). "To white Northerners," Glymph writes, "Southern 'Unionist women' were by definition white, which made them eligible for human consideration and, concretely, or support systems and privileges denied Black women Unionists" (p. 9). In the face of apathetic and even violent Union soldiers, racist white missionaries, and Confiscation Acts that only applied to male-coded labor, free and enslaved women of color persistently fought for their rights and forced Americans to reckon with their ideas of freedom and nation. To be sure, Glymph's study is not a comprehensive analysis of every woman during the Civil War. In a collaborative measure, she frequently cites other historians of Civil War women, such as Nina Silber, Stephanie McCurry, Drew Gilpin Faust, George Rable, and Steve Hahn. Yet while challenging historians to move beyond their northern- or southern-exclusive studies, she herself omits women west of Arkansas, including Indigenous women. Some regions appear as case studies: Glymph's section on elite white women narrows in on the destabilizing effects of planter refugees of the South Carolina Lowcountry, for instance. Yet the following chapter on poor white women often utilizes the same Lowcountry elites as a source base, giving the first section of the book a slight Carolinian skew. Any mention of poor whites, especially German and Irish workers in the North, begs expansion. Glymph is entirely convincing in her assertion that women, especially women of color, are often overlooked in historiography due to the gendered nature of their labor and politics. To "fight," she proves, is not simply to wield a gun, but to redefine freedom in one's own image, to produce goods for the war effort, to change or defend the meaning of home. Taking great care to name every woman mentioned, [End Page 650] Glymph weaves a captivating tale in parts...

Migration and Memorials: Irish Cultural Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell is considered as the birthplace of the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth-century United States. Originating in 1822, the new textile factories harnessed the waters of the Merrimack River using a system of canals, dug and maintained by laborers. While this work employed many local Yankees, it also attracted groups of emigrant Irish workers. Grave memorials are a valuable source of information concerning religious and ethnic identity and an analysis of the slate headstones contained within Yard One of St Patrick’s Cemetery, opened in 1832, provides insight into the mindset of this migrant community. The headstones evolved from contemporary Yankee memorials but incorporated Roman Catholic imagery, while the inclusion of shamrocks and details of place of origin on certain memorials attests to a strong sense of Irish identity. The blatant display of such features at a time of ethnic and religious sectarian tensions in Massachusetts demonstrates the confidence that the Irish had of their place in the new industrial town.

In a City of Mills and Canals: Mortality among Pre-teen and Teenage Irish Workers in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Industrial Lowell, Massachusetts

ABSTRACTLowell, Massachusetts, is considered as the birthplace of the industrial revolution in the United States. Established in 1822 by a group of Bostonian entrepreneurs, the new textile factories harnessed the Merrimack River to power their waterwheels using a system of canals. This work attracted groups of emigrant Irish workers from Boston, a process that continued into the middle of the century, particularly in the wake of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852). We are fortunate that two volumes known as The Hanavor Burial Records exist that provide a window into the lives and deaths of the early Irish settlers in Lowell. Some 1450 entries dating to the period between 1849 and 1865 provide details of the occupation of the deceased. This study focuses on Irish pre-teen and teenage workers; their age-at-death profile, the nature of the work they undertook, and the causes of their deaths are examined.

The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West by Ryan Dearinger

The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West by Ryan Dearinger

How Important are Firms in Explaining Wage Changes During a Recession?

During the Great Recession, many Irish workers experienced nominal earnings reductions, with about 50% of private sector employees receiving pay cuts at the height of the crisis. However, at the same time, a substantial minority of workers continued to receive pay increases. In this paper we use a unique dataset containing earnings on every worker in Ireland to examine the relative roles of worker and firm characteristics in explaining this heterogeneity in earnings dynamics. Our results show that between‐firm effects play a small role in determining pay changes in Ireland. Although between‐firm effects became more important in the peak year of the economic crisis, the vast majority of earnings changes continued to be driven by within‐firm forces. These findings raise a number of important questions about the role of morale and fairness in the wage‐setting process.

‘Some feckin’ jump like’: Fordism and Ford workers in Ireland

ABSTRACTThis article examines the experiences of Irish workers employed in the Ford Marina Plant, Cork, Ireland between 1917 and 1932. The piece reconstructs how workers in Cork, unused to modern factory employment, adapted to Fordism. It begins with an overview of the ideology of Fordism and how it was implemented in Cork and then proceeds to examine the difficulties experienced by craft and agricultural workers in adapting to a modern factory environment as well as other features of Fordism, such as the strict discipline of the firm and the company’s severe attitude towards trade unions. Finally, the article analyses resistance among the workforce to management authority, placing these in their broader context. Throughout, the article makes extensive use of later oral testimony, the social memory of the workforce and reading against the grain of official documents to reconstruct the experiences of workers whose own testimony is no longer available.