Speakers: Professor Huw Beynon, WISERD, Cardiff School of Social Sciences & Steve Davies, Cardiff School of Social Sciences

Lecture Summary: 

The 1980s was a time of mass closure of manufacturing and mining industries in Britain. During that period, however, there was considerable resistance, of which the miners strike of 1984-85 was the most significant. In these union struggles, teachers, academics, union officials and others worked together to develop collective worker education, worker planning, and strategic responses to corporate attacks. There were many mistakes made. But now is a good time to look back and learn lessons for what can be done to carry forward new union struggles over the coming decade.

Time: 6.00pm for a drinks reception

A buffet will be served following the talk

This public lecture is co-sponsored by the Wales TUC Learning Services

Professor Huw Beynon is an industrial sociologist, and was director of the Cardiff School of Social Sciences until 2009 and founding director of WISERD (Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods) from January 2009 to August 2010, where he is still a linked academic.  His main theoretical interests relate to sociology and organisational change with particular reference to occupational change, issues of regional regeneration and the relationship between work and class. Particular research interests are: labour organisation, forms of social solidarity; individualism and collectivism; trade unionism; labour politic; globalisation, de-industrialisation and regeneration; new forms of business organization: new technologies and new spatial patterns of employment. Major publications include: Managing Employment Change: The New Realities of Work (2002), Changing Images, Looking at Class, (2001), Digging Deeper: Issues in the Miners' Strike 1985, Living With Capitalism (1979), Working For Ford (1973) and Perceptions of Work (1972). He was elected to the Academy for the Social Sciences in 2001 and became a founding Fellow of the Learned Society for Wales in 2010. Most recently, he was awarded an honorary doctorate at Durham University.