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The Story of the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards’ Alternative Corporate Plan
In 1976, facing rationalisation and redundancies, shop stewards at Lucas Aerospace approached Tony Benn, then Secretary of State for Industry in the UK Labour Government, to discuss their future in the context of Labour’s plans for the nationalisation of the aerospace industry. Benn, a high-profile supporter of the Institute for Workers’ Control, suggested to the Lucas Shop Steward Combine Committee that they produce their own business plan.
Approaching employee representatives at all the Lucas Aerospace plants across the UK, as well as academics and other interested parties, the Combine drew up its plans, often by highlighting products of medical or social use that had been abandoned because the aerospace conglomerate was focusing on military contracts. The stewards explored not only potential products but also alternative ways of organising production — forms of organisation that liberated rather than subordinated the human operative.
When the ‘Lucas Plan’ was published, it quickly became recognised as an iconic document promoting ‘socially useful production’. However, it was dismissed by Lucas Aerospace management, by trade unions that attacked shop steward combine committees for bypassing ‘official channels’, and by the Labour Government, which had marginalised Benn and begun the move towards neoliberalism. The attached article links to a series of materials on the Lucas Plan, including a contemporary film made by academics at the Open University, one of the few institutions to respond favourably to the Lucas stewards’ initial research. It also includes an occasional paper by Adrian Smith mapping the development of the Lucas Plan and its influence.
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Approaching employee representatives at all the Lucas Aerospace plants across the UK, as well as academics and other interested parties, the Combine drew up its plans, often by highlighting products of medical or social use that had been abandoned because the aerospace conglomerate was focusing on military contracts. The stewards explored not only potential products but also alternative ways of organising production — forms of organisation that liberated rather than subordinated the human operative.
When the ‘Lucas Plan’ was published, it quickly became recognised as an iconic document promoting ‘socially useful production’. However, it was dismissed by Lucas Aerospace management, by trade unions that attacked shop steward combine committees for bypassing ‘official channels’, and by the Labour Government, which had marginalised Benn and begun the move towards neoliberalism. The attached article links to a series of materials on the Lucas Plan, including a contemporary film made by academics at the Open University, one of the few institutions to respond favourably to the Lucas stewards’ initial research. It also includes an occasional paper by Adrian Smith mapping the development of the Lucas Plan and its influence.
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