About the project
This research is led by Principal Investigator Christine Wall, Co-Applicant is Linda Clarke, with research fellows Charles McGuire and Olivia Muñoz-Rojas. It is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, £147,682, 2010–2013.
The built landscape of the British Welfare State was constructed in the three decades after the Second World War, when new forms of housing, the use of industrialised techniques, the New Towns, schools and hospitals, refineries, power stations, cultural monuments and motorways all contributed to a historically distinct built environment. In each case the site of production was also the site of specific social and industrial relations. However accounts of this era of building are missing a key source, the voices of the actual site workers and their trade unions.
This project set out to rectify this by tracing over 50 building workers who had been employed during the 1950s and 60s. The research focused on five case studies: the Barbican, City of London built in successive stages from 1963 onwards, Stevenage New Town, the first of the post-war New Towns, the South Bank Arts complex comprising the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery built in the mid 1960s, the M1 motorway started in 1958, and Sizewell A nuclear power station built between 1961–66. These sites were all high profile, publically funded schemes employing large numbers of workers over several years and which, between them, profile the main developments and changes in the construction industry over this period.
The oral histories of the men who worked on these sites are key to this research both as an invaluable record of working life in a harsh industry and for the insights they provide to many under-researched aspects of this period. Their words illuminate changes in building methods and technologies, trade union organisation, training, and new wage and employment systems, in particular bonus systems and labour-only subcontracting. The interviews reveal the hazards endemic in the industry before Health and Safety legislation, the use of blacklisting and the human cost of this practice on the families of building workers, and the role of the Communist Party in organizing site workers. The men interviewed also told us of the strength of building site camaraderie and mutual support, their commitment to work in the face of very difficult site conditions and, for many, their pride in contributing to the rebuilding of Britain.
The five case study sites, all reflected the importance of large projects in shifting entrenched attitudes and traditional social, technical and industrial relations in the construction industry. The project addresses a subject which has been largely ignored, and a depth of interpretation not before attempted in accounts of post-war reconstruction.
Contact
For further information, email:
- Professor Emerita Christine Wall at [email protected]
- Professor Emerita Linda Clarke at [email protected]
Outputs
- Wall C., Clarke L., McGuire C., and Muñoz-Rojas O. (2012a) The Art of Concrete: Building the South Bank Arts Centre, London: ProBE, 46pp
- Wall C., Clarke L., McGuire C., and Muñoz-Rojas O. (2012b) Building a Community: Construction Workers in Stevenage 1950-1970, London: ProBE, 40pp
- Wall C., Clarke L., McGuire C., and Muñoz-Rojas O. (2012c) It was a new world: Building Sizewell A Nuclear Power Station, London: ProBE, 50pp
- Wall C., Clarke L., McGuire C., and Muñoz-Rojas O. (2012d) Building the Barbican 1962-1982: taking the industry out of the dark ages, London: ProBE, 54pp
- Wall C., Clarke L., McGuire C., and Muñoz-Rojas O. (2012e) Building the M1 Motorway, London: ProBE, 42pp
- Clarke, L., and Wall, C., (eds.) (2013) A Bible of Discontent: the memoir of Hugh D’Arcy bricklayer and trade unionist, London: ProBE/CLR
- Wall, C. 2013. An architecture of parts: architects, building workers and industrialisation in Britain 1940-1970. Abingdon Routledge.
- Wall C. (2019). “It was a totally different approach to building!” Constructing Architectural Concrete in 1960s London, in Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research, Editors: Naomi Stead, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, Princeton Architectural Press
- Wall C. (2016) New Notions of Value in Modern Architecture, in Modern Futures, eds. Craggs, R., and Neate, H,. London: Uniform Books
- Wall, C., (2014) ‘Recording the ‘Building World’: how oral history transforms construction history’ in eds., Campbell, J, Andrews, W, et.al Proceedings of the first Construction History Society Conference, Construction History Society.
- Clarke L., McGuire C, Wall C. (2012) ‘The significance of building labour to the production of the built environment’, in eds Carvais R, Guillerme A, Nègre V, and Sakarovitch J. Nuts and Bolts of Construction History Vol II, pp 107-114 Clarke L, McGuire C., and Wall C. (2012) ‘The changing and distinct character of construction labour in Britain’ in eds Dainty A. and Loosemore M., HRM in Construction: Critical Perspectives, Taylor and Francis (Oxon)
- Wall C., Clarke L., McGuire C. (2012) ‘Concrete Constructors: oral history accounts of building work on a large, complex site in 1960s Britain’ in eds Carvais R, Guillerme A, Nègre V, and Sakarovitch J. Nuts and Bolts of Construction History Vol II, pp 125-133
- McGuire C., Clarke L. and Wall C. (2016) ‘Through Trade Unionism you felt a belonging – you belonged’: Collectivism and the Self-Representation of Building Workers in Stevenage New Town’, Labour History Review, Vol. 81, Issue 3, pp 211-236
- McGuire C., Clarke L. and Wall C. (2013) ‘Battles on the Barbican: the struggle for trade unionism in the British building industry 1965-7’, History Workshop Journal, 75, Spring, pp. 33-57
- Christine Wall was an invited speaker to the Evening Lecture Series, The use of oral history in architectural and construction history: narratives and critiques, June 26 2017, Institute of Art History and Historical Urbanism, Technical University of Berlin.
- Christine Wall was a Keynote speaker at the launch of the project, Building Brussels. Brussels city builders and the production of space, 1794 – 2016, June 6, 2017, Vrije Universiteit Brussels.
- Christine Wall and Linda Clarke were invited speakers to Oral History Seminar, Constructing Post-War Britain, May 22, 2017, Scottish Oral History Centre, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
- 2016 July 14th, ‘Changing divisions between building workers and architects: a production-based approach’, presentations of Linda Clarke and Christine Wall to ProBE symposium Architecture and Building Labour: Afterword or Prologue?, University of Westminster.
- Christine Wall was an invited participant in May 2015 to the ESRC funded Modern Futures Network seminar series based King’s College, London.
- Christine Wall was an invited speaker at the IOTA design history seminar series, University of Brighton, April 2015.
- Christine Wall was invited to give a seminar in the Oral History strand on Constructing Post-war Britain at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London in February 2015.
- Christine Wall presented, Standardization on Site: skill and the construction process in mid-twentieth century Britain, at Standard Architecture Symposium, October 20 -22, 2017, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.