With the 40th
anniversary of the Lucas workers celebrated alternative plan coming up, the Breaking the Frame group,
has, with others, organized a conference in Birmingham in November. It aims to
link the experience of radical trade union groups then, trying to redirect the
technology focus of their companies to create sustainable, socially useful
work, with similar current campaigns:
http://lucasplan.org.uk
The Alternative
Corporate Plan produced by shop stewards from the 13 Lucas Aerospace plants in the mid 1970s outlined a series of
socially useful projects that they felt could secure employment on a
sustainable basis. The company was heavily reliant on defence orders and the
Labour government of the time was cutting back and there were threats of large
scale redundancies. The cross-plant cross-union shop stewards ‘Combine’
committee thought that, to avoid that, the companies resources and their skills
could be used on alternative products. The diversification plan they produced included
medical aids, new transport systems and a range of alternative energy
technologies, then very novel, including solar and wind technologies. The idea
was that the public funding saved from the defence cuts could be retargeted to
socially useful production along these lines.
The overall plan was resisted by the
company management, who objected to being told what to produce, although some
prototypes were developed under pressure from the trade unionists or by
supporters independently. For example, an absorption cycle gas-fired heat pump,
based on an early Open University idea, was built by Lucas at its
plant in Burnley, with some middle management actually being quite keen
since there were prospects of a joint OU/Lucas research grant from the (then) Department
of Energy. A 15kW prototype was tested, but no funding emerged and the
idea was not followed up. See p22/23 in this report: http://oro.open.ac.uk/19946/1/EPMK_Aug_09.pdf
Heat pumps are nowadays very widely used,
although very few gas fired
heat pumps have been built - the 150kW (th) one currently used at
the OU is a rare example. See: http://modbs.co.uk/news/archivestory.php/aid/9841/__65279;Ener-G_teams_up_boreholes_with_absorption_heat_pumps_.html
Most heat pumps are electric powered and designed for use in
individual homes (and the OU has surveyed them). That approach is backed
by government, partly as a way to use the excess nuclear electricity they will
have at night from the proposed new nuclear plants at Hinkley
etc. There are all sorts of problems with that- the power grid
couldn't supply enough power to take over from ordinary gas central heating
(which is their plan)! Gas heat pumps would be better- the gas grid is
already there. And they would also be bigger, and more suited to community
heating. That was very much to Lucas plan’s credo - not small eco-toys for
middle class houses, but large efficient systems for council high rises.
It’s arguably what we should be doing now. It’s the same for many of the
other ideas that were in the plan.
The political point is that this group of workers could identify
what was needed in the communities to which they belonged- and they had the
skills to make the technology. But they didn’t have the power or money to make
it happen-and the Labour government offered warm words but little practical
help. The official trade union bureaucracy was also less than helpful- the
Combine committee was an unofficial grass roots organisation which they did not
recognize. Then, in 1979, Maggie Thatcher was elected and launched a major
attack on the trade union movement,
culminating in the defeat of the Miners. Many of the Lucas activists were
sacked or moved on and the battle for radical product diversification was lost.
There had been some other similar ‘workers plans’, following on from the Lucas plan,
for example in power engineering (Clarke Chapman and Parsons in Newcastle,
backing CHP) and in defence (Vickers in Barrow, with wave power being one idea),
but they too were side-tracked. 40 years
on it’s still the same. What actually emerges is what government and corporate
leaders think is best. Though some now do think that renewables are a good
idea!
The Lucas campaign may have failed, but the idea lives on, with,
in the current context, one focus being the development of alternatives to employment
on projects like the proposed Trident nuclear submarine system renewal. With UK coal plants closing there is also a
need to develop alternative employment options for staff in that sector, and
the same would be true when and if the nuclear programme is abandoned. What the
Lucas campaign showed was that it is possible for the workforce themselves,
rather than external experts or technocrats, to develop plans for the future,
and arguably better plans, more attuned to needs rather than profits.
The need for better plans for sustainable energy and other
environmentally appropriate technologies is now if anything even clearer. But
are we any more ready for that politically than in the 1970s? Some of the ideas from the Lucas plan had
been taken up by radical local authorities, notable the GLC via its local
Technology Networks, but they too were seen off as politics swung to the right
in the 1980s. With trade union power much diminished and local councils on the
defensive, as yet, no new power base exists, although the renewal of grass
roots support for Labour, and the growth of wider green movement, may change
that. We may see at the Birmingham
conference…
Catch up on Lucas: www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2014/jan/22/remembering-the-lucas-plan-what-can-it-tell-us-about-democratising-technology-today
The academic
journal Science as Culture recently
had a special issue on ‘Contested Technology’ (Vol. 25 No.3), which includes my
paper on ‘The Alternative Technology movement: an early green radical
challenge’ identifying links to and conflicts with the Lucas workers plan
campaign and practical focus. There were
some ideological differences, with the ‘AT’ movement more inclined to
small-scale experimental projects, the Lucas plan more concerned with meeting
the needs of existing mainstream communities. In the extreme this revealed a
class-based conflict, with one Lucas Combine member disparaging some of the AT
movements proposals as ‘gimmicks for individual
architect built houses’ and ‘playthings for the middle class’. Is that still
the case? Or have both sides now moved on?
