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Shadow factories, shallow skills? An analysis of work organisation in the aircraft industry in the Second World War

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 52; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0023656x.2011.571476

1469-9702

Stephen Little, Margaret Grieco,

Italy: Economic History and Contemporary Issues

Abstract The relationship between design and the determination of social and skill practices has been under-considered within the literature. This paper investigates the relationship between design and skill transmission in the context of the Second World War ‘Shadow Factory’ programme. The Shadow Factory programme formed an integral part of the Second World War re-armament strategy of the British Government. The term came into widespread use to describe both (1) duplicated facilities under the direct control of the parent company and (2) distributed facilities managed by other companies with appropriate skills. This paper examines the Shadow Factory component of the wartime expansion of manufacturing production in Britain, and its implications for skill formation and gender in the workplace. The paper also explores the extent to which these shadow plants represented a government-sponsored attempt at technology transfer from the automobile industry to the aircraft industry. The rationale for the advent of this policy was that the introduction of metal fabrication to both aircraft and motor industries had narrowed the difference between them. The managerial skills developed in mass car production were deemed essential to the volumes now required from an aircraft industry that had survived the inter-war period on limited government orders. The shortage of appropriately experienced labour had, during the recovery of the 1930s, prompted the dilution of the proportion of skilled employees and the deskilling of component tasks. In this situation, women were seen as a significant additional source of factory labour. With the advent of preparations for re-armament, this source of labour gained enhanced importance. The paper charts, in the context of re-armament, the alliance between government and unions on the temporary and crisis character of the widespread employment of women. It also documents the deliberate and open governmental strategy of ‘containing’ the impact of women's employment by defining it as a discrete and reversible state of affairs appropriate only to a crisis situation. It is within this context that this paper examines the genesis of the policy decisions relating to the deployment of new manufacturing technology, its impact on work organisation, and the responses of managements, unions and workers. Notes 1. Little, Design and Determination. 2. Zeitlin, ‘Flexibility and Mass Production’. 3. Zeitlin, ‘From Labour History’; Cooper and Patmore, ‘Trade Union Organising’. 4. Rose, ‘Gender and Labor History’; Van Voss and van der Lindon, Class and Other Identities. 5. Combes, ‘Aircraft Manufacturing in Georgia’. 6. Wilson, Wirraway, Boomerang and CA-15. 7. Hartnett, Big Wheels and Little Wheels. 8. At that time a minimum of some five years was required to put a new aircraft design into production, and eight for a large, complex type since aircraft production involves the design and development of both airframes and the engines required to power them. 9. Hornby, Factories and Plant. 10. Lloyd, Rolls Royce. 11. This was designed in 1936 to produce 40 Blenheim twin-engined medium bombers per month. Annual extensions from 1938 to 1941 finally gave it a capacity of 60 much more complex four engined Halifax aircraft per month. 12. Flight, ‘Shadow Factories in Being’ 13. Aeroplane, ‘On What We are Getting’. 14. Penrose, British Aviation. 15. Fearon, ‘Aircraft Manufacturing’. 16. Other firms such as Shorts and Gloster survived only by diversifying to omnibus bodies and milk churns respectively (Fearon, ‘The British Airframe Industry’). Two major companies left the industry during the interwar period: English Electric who had produced hydroplanes and Austin Motors who had established an airframe factory. Both became re-involved through the Shadow programmes. 17. Concurring with the SBAC line of increased sub-contracting to expand production the company resisted the suggestion of a Liverpool location for an expansion of its own activities on the grounds of lack of suitable labour. 18. Inman, Labour in the Munitions Industries. 19. Inman, ibid., points out that despite short-time operation in the motor industry in 1937 and 1938 the aero-industry was only able to absorb labour slowly. 20. Rolls were also preoccupied with technical difficulties in the development of the powerful but highly complex Vulture engine, two of which were to power the Manchester heavy bomber. This ill-fated project diverted resources and attention from Merlin production until the Derby works was faced with a 66% rejection rate on Merlin cylinder head castings. When, after persistent problems, four Merlins were substituted for the two Vultures of the Manchester to produce the Lancaster, the engine was finally abandoned. Attention focussed on the Merlin which was consequently in even greater demand. 21. Fearon, ‘Aircraft Manufacturing’. 22. Hornby, Factories and Plant. 23. Inman, Labour in the Munitions Industries. 24. The order was switched from Battle light bombers to Spitfire fighters, before production began. However, the facility had been placed under Vickers’ direct control by 1943 when it produced 70% of the peak annual production of Spitfires. 25. Lloyd, Rolls Royce. 26. Calder, The People's War. 27. The London Midland and Scottish Railway company was one of four private companies grouped from smaller constituent undertakings by the government in 1922, principally serving London, Northwest England and Scotland. 28. This achievement reflected the advantage of a single location and management structure rather than the inherent superiority of private over public sector organisation claimed in the press coverage. 29. Lloyd, Rolls Royce. 30. Ibid. 31. The AEU originated in 1826 as a society of mechanics, becoming the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1851. As a craft-based union it was concerned with the control of skills and occupational access and wary of the newer general unions, such as the Trasnport and General Workers Union, which recruited from a wider base of workers. 32. An additional problem was that the economic recovery underway in Britain in the second half of the 1930s was based on newer light engineering and electrical manufacture in the Midlands and South East of England. 33. Jeffreys, The Story of the Engineers. 34. McGoldrick, ‘Crisis and the Division of Labour’. 35. Postan, British War Production. 36. Lloyd, Rolls Royce. 37. After he was displaced to the Ministry of Health by Ernest Bevin, Minster of Labour, Beveridge became synonymous with the planned post war construction of the British welfare state. 38. Neutral Eire was initially a source of unskilled, mobile men of value in filling the demand for heavy unskilled labour created by military conscription. Up to 1941 ICI and Ford Motor Company used their existing recruiting offices in southern Ireland on behalf of the Ministry of Labour. Significantly, women were dealt with separately, being recruited into a common pool for munitions and ball-bearing plants. 39. Croucher, Engineers at War. 40. Civilian occupations specified as essential to the war effort and reserving their occupants from military conscription. 41. At this stage the compulsory transfer of ‘mobile women’ to areas of shortage was considered, even if they were already engaged in essential work, although nationalist resistance to compulsory cross-border movement was expected from Wales and Scotland. 42. Postan, British War Production, 152. 43. Ibid., 218. 44. Calder, The People's War. 45. Court of Enquiry, Cmd 6474 Court of Enquiry, Cmd 6474. 1943. Report by a Committee of Enquiry Concerning a Dispute at an Engineering Undertaking in Scotland, London: HMSO. [Google Scholar]: Appendix 1. 46. Wages are expressed in shillings and pence. 12 pence equal 1 shilling, 20 shillings equal 1 pound, although amounts above one pound were often expressed in shillings and pence: 37/6 = 37 shillings and six pence. 47. Inman, Labour in the Munitions Industries. 48. Court of Enquiry, Cmd 6474, 1943. 49. Croucher, Engineers at War. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Inman, Labour in the Munitions Industries. 53. Fearon, ‘The British Airframe Industry’. 54. Calder, The People's War. 55. The most direct transfer of technology was in the opposite direction to that envisaged, with the adoption of aircraft quality jigs by London Transport for the post-war version of their standard RT bus. This allowed ready interchange of body and chassis, and reflected their experience as coordinating organisation of the London Aircraft Group, building Halifax bombers. 56. Middlemas, Politics in Industrial Society. 57. Shay, British Re-armament in the Thirties. 58. Scott and Hughes, The Administration of War Production. 59. Shay, British Re-armament in the Thirties. 60. Scott and Hughes, The Administration of War Production. 61. Croucher, Engineers at War. 62. Rolls Royce Hillington employed 20,000 workers against the 17,000 at Ford's Trafford Park plant building Merlin engines. 63. Grieco, ‘Gender, Transport and Social Empowerment’. 64. Mass Observation was founded in 1937 as an independent research project collecting data from diverse members of the general public through diaries and questionnaires. During the war it provided qualitative data on reactions to major and minor events. 65. Owen, War in the Workshops 66. Croucher, Engineers at War, 295–6. 67. Postan, British War Production, 383. 68. Croucher, Engineers at War, 296. 69. Calder and Sheridan, Speak for Yourself. 70. Ibid., 180. 71. Young, The Production Front and You, 15. 72. Owen, War in the Workshops, 66.