Rolls-Royce engineers and deindustrialization in Scotland from the 1950s to the 2020s.

Abstract

Research involving Rolls-Royce engineers made redundant in 2020, when the firm ended its Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul operation at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire, Scotland, provides recent-world perspective on the history of deindustrialization in the UK. Specifically, it qualifies the half-life metaphor, which has been advanced in social sciences and humanities literature to explain the prolonged chronological impact of job losses and workplace closures. The metaphor imprecisely presents deindustrialization as a moment of rupture followed by a predictable contraction and downplays the continued importance of industrial work after the 1980s. Evidence provided by the redundant Rolls-Royce workers through life-course interviews and a survey questionnaire shows that deindustrialization is both a historical and continuing current-world process. Two phenomena are emphasized: the adaptation since the 1950s in Scotland of a robust industrial culture, equipped with moral economy understanding of employment changes; and, into the 2010s, the 'post-industrial' presence of significant levels of industrial and what we term 'industrial-analogous' employment in the UK.