Working Lives Research Institute
Britain at Work, Voices from the Workplace 1945-95 is a nationwide oral history programme set up by historians, social scientists, community history groups and librarians of labour history collections. Led by the TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University, it aims to collect memories of the working lives of men and women 1945-95. This includes accounts of their work and their trade union activities. It will act as an umbrella for an increasing number of local, regional or sectoral oral history projects.
Photo: Women bus conductors, Fulwell Depot, 1947. © TfL from the London Transport Museum collection
Interviewees talk about their experiences of health & safety, adult education, labour law and trade union organisation. They also talk from their perspectives, some as women, as migrants, as black and ethnic minorities, as working class and as white collar workers.
Allan Tyrrell talking about his apprenticeship as a wood machinist in 1958:
"I was just coming towards the end of my apprenticeship... because conditions were pretty horrendous there. There was no safety equipment on the machines. I mean, if you had all your fingers and thumbs you was really unusual, and I mean that, really unusual. Ear defenders, they weren't even heard of, overalls, well, just weren't heard of. Machinery covered in snow because they were all outside, so when there was snow all you done was got a wheelbarrow or oil drum, filled that with scraps of wood, melted the snow and ice on it, and carried on until it shorted-out the electrics."
Pam Osborne, talking of her experience working in a bank in the 1960s:
"Because women actually didn’t have many rights then. I know it wasn’t that long ago, but they didn’t. They had to be backed by a man. They couldn’t get finance on their own or anything like that. They had to have a male guarantor. And I guess it was a case of we sort of knew our place. That sounds terribly old-fashioned, women didn’t ... The women that were career women were often looked upon as being very hard and not really very nice. Very pushy. But I think it’s because they had to be. There weren’t that many career women. It was generally accepted that women got married, had babies, didn’t work. And most women did the office work. You didn’t really get anybody that was in managerial that was female. Very few."
The project will expand on the successful The Union Makes Us Strong website www.unionhistory.info/. Images from project partners and the TUC Library Collections will be scanned and made available from the website, whilst narratives from academics will provide background and context.
The website www.unionhistory.info/britainatwork/ will be launched in early 2012.