Life in a Railway Factory
Life in a Railway Factory

Author: Alfred Williams

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13:

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In this book, Alfred Williams wrote a vivid and honest account of life in the Great Western Railway Works in Swindon in the early 1900s. Williams, who worked at the factory for over two decades, describes every aspect of the enterprise from the workers' point of view, and spares no criticism for the bosses, foremen, and capitalism itself. Despite this, the book is not a theoretical critique of economics, but rather an expression of Williams' personal experiences and observations. He covers a wide range of topics, including labor unrest, the composition of the workforce, the physical effects of working in the factory, and the psychology of workers. This is a fascinating and unvarnished look at life in a railway factory, and an important historical document.

Life in a Railway Factory
Life in a Railway Factory

Author: Alfred Williams

Publisher: London : Duckworth

Published: 1920

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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A man who for 23 years worked in the railway factory at Swindon writes about life as a hotter and stamper. An idealist with his feet on the ground, the author had some reputation as a poet while still at work and was unable to publish this account until illness drove him to leave the factory because the truth would cost him his job. He is appreciative of man's generosity and sense of fair play, his skill and strength, but scornful of his inhumanity and ruthlessness.

The tide of democracy
The tide of democracy

Author: Alastair Reid

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1847797601

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This comprehensive study examines British shipbuilding and industrial relations from 1870 to 1950, addressing economic, social and political history to provide an holistic approach to industry, trade-unionism and the early history of the Labour Party. Examining the impact of new machinery, of independent rank-and-file movements and of craft and trade unions, The Tide of Democracy provides an authoritative account of industrial action in shipyards in the period and their effect on the birth and development of the Labour Party. This volume is clearly presented, elegantly written and suffused with a distinctly human touch which brings the technical material to life. Unique in the combined attention it gives to Scottish and English history, and drawing upon an impressive range of primary sources, this volume will be indispensable for specialist researchers, undergraduates and postgraduate students.

The West Country
The West Country

Author: John Payne

Publisher: Andrews UK Limited

Published: 2011-11-10

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1908493518

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The English West Country is a land of exceptional landscapes: many miles of wild, unspoilt coastline and vast expanses of wild moorland; great cities such as Exeter, Plymouth, Bath and Bristol; and market towns, villages and hamlets. Farming, mining, quarrying, fishing and trade are the traditional industries of the counties of Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. On one level, the West Country is the most English of all English regions, home of clotted cream, thatch, church spires, folksong, hobby horses and Cecil Sharp. Yet the area was trading with Mediterranean Europe before the Romans. For many years Bristol was the centre of the slave trade, and many of its great mansions were built on the proceeds of slavery. Great swathes of land in Dorset, Wiltshire and Devon are still used by the military and are off-bounds to visitors. And within the West Country is the special case of Celtic Cornwall, and the even more remote Isles of Scilly. People lived in the West Country long before Britain, or England, were invented. From the great stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge in Wiltshire to the menhirs of Cornwall, and the wealth of prehistoric remains on the Isles of Scilly, this has always been an inhabited landscape, crafted by men and women working closely with nature and natural forces. John Payne explores this culturally rich and varied region, revealing many facets of its distinctive and much-loved identity.

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors
Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Author: Di Drummond

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1844686701

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Di Drummond's concise and informative guide to Britain's railways will be absorbing reading for anyone who wants to learn about the history of the industry and for family history researchers who want to find out about the careers of their railway ancestors. In a clear and accessible way she guides readers through the social, technical and economic aspects of the story. She describes in vivid detail the rapid growth, maturity and long decline of the railways from the earliest days in the late-eighteenth century to privatization in the 1990s. In the process she covers the themes and issues that family historians, local historians and railway enthusiasts will need to understand in order to pursue their research. A sequence of short, fact-filled chapters gives an all-round view of the development of the railwaysIn addition to tracing the birth and growth of the original railway companies, she portrays the types of work that railwaymen did and pays particular attention to the railway world in which they spent their working lives. The tasks they undertook, the special skills they had to learn, the conditions they worked in, the organization and hierarchy of the railway companies, and the make-up of railway unions - all these elements in the history of the railways are covered. She also introduces the reader to the variety of records that are available for genealogical research - staff records and registers, publications, census returns, biographies and autobiographies, and the rest of the extensive literature devoted to the railway industry.

Managing the Modern Workplace
Managing the Modern Workplace

Author: Alan Booth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1317101375

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A recurring theme in the history of modern Britain in the twentieth-century has been the failure of its manufacturing industry and the record of disorder and conflict in the industrial workplace. This image was reinforced by the evidence of national strikes from the 1960s until 1984. This emphasis on decline and disorder in British manufacturing has distorted our understanding of workplace relationships and cultures in the post-war years. This volume provides a fresh assessment of the diverse and complex world of the workplace and Britain's production cultures during the long boom. Essays investigate the public and private sectors, and both manufacturing and service industries. The volume begins with a comparison of labour management in the post-war automobile industry, exploring the role of the foreman in the management of shop floor labour in Britain and the USA. The following two essays are concerned with relations between management and workers in the publicly-owned corporations. The first examines negotiations over pay and effort at the Swindon locomotive works, including the cultural values which informed the behaviour of the bargainers. The second investigates managerial responses to technical change in the British gas industry. We then move into the service sector, with an essay on the management of clerical staff in banks, including a discussion of the different roles available to male and female workers, and the incorporation of automated technologies. The final essay looks at the involvement of the unions in workplace productivity and the extent to which Labour politics informed union behaviour. The essays in this volume shed new light on the reasons for Britain's economic performance and opens up earlier interpretations of national decline and adversarial workplace cultures for further debate.

The Folk Handbook
The Folk Handbook

Author: John Morrish

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780879309015

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Many of the great songs that have inspired performers around the world in the last 50 years come from the English folk song tradition. This book provides words and melodies for nearly 100 songs, along with an exploration of their history and meaning, the context in which they arose, and their value to writers and performers around the world.

The British Working Class 1832-1940
The British Working Class 1832-1940

Author: Andrew August

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1317877969

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In this insightful new study, Andrew August examines the British working class in the period when Britain became a mature industrial power, working men and women dominated massive new urban populations, and the extension of suffrage brought them into the political nation for the first time. Framing his subject chronologically, but treating it thematically, August gives a vivid account of working class life between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, examining the issues and concerns central to working-class identity. Identifying shared patterns of experience in the lives of workers, he avoids the limitations of both traditional historiography dominated by economic determinism and party politics, and the revisionism which too readily dismisses the importance of class in British society.

A Good Man and a Brave Man
A Good Man and a Brave Man

Author: Alan Gaunt

Publisher: Mereo Books, mereobook, mereobooks

Published: 2017-04-26

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1861515324

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Cecil Packer was a farm labourer, a factory worker, a shepherd and a devoted family man from Wiltshire who like so many others was sent to France to fight for his country in the First World War, and never returned. Cecil survived both the Gallipoli and Somme campaigns, so for his descendants, his death on the Western Front when his battalion was far from the front line was a mystery as well as a tragedy. Alan Gaunt, whose wife Shirley is Cecil's great-granddaughter, set about researching Cecil's humble but interesting life and finally established the tragic circumstances of his accidental death in December 1916 at the age of 31."This is not the story of a traditional hero in the mould of Nelson or Wellington but that of a village shepherd, a local man who did not come from the nobility or the ranks of the nation's leaders but simply loved his family and died in the service of his country."ΓΏ