Professor Jim Phillips
- Professor of Economic and Social History (Economic & Social History)
telephone:
01413308426
email:
James.Phillips@glasgow.ac.uk
R218A Level 2, Economic & Social History, Lilybank House, Glasgow G12 8RT
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5183-9469Biography
I have been working at the University of Glasgow since 1995, after education at the Universities of Aberdeen (MA First Class Honours in History, 1986-90) and Edinburgh (History PhD, 1990-94).
I take pride in my role as an educator. Helping our students at Glasgow is my first priority. I hugely enjoy supporting the learning of undergraduates and post-graduates. At all times I encourage student participation and involvement. I emphasise the benefits of cooperative learning, where students work closely together.
I am a long-serving member of the MA Social Sciences student advising team at the University. As one of the Senior Advisers I welcome new undergraduates to our community and support continuing students as they progress towards completing their degrees.
Research interests
Research is an important feature of my role as educator and citizen. I explore the historical dimensions of one of the core problems in our contemporary world: how individuals and communities identify and pursue their economic security. My research shows that well-regulated paid employment and labour organisation are central to this objective.
The loss of manual employment in industrial sectors and the diminution of trade-union voice in workplaces has contributed to the erosion of economic security in many countries across the world. I have contributed to understanding of this vial global issue through my pioneering research on deindustrialisation in Scotland. This has explained popular understanding of changes in industry and employment through the critical application of a moral economy framework. Whether people understood their transition out of industrial employment as just or fair depended on the extent to which their security was protected, and their voices were heard, by policy-makers.
With Jim Tomlinson and Valerie Wright, I showed that deindustrialisation in Scotland was a long-running, phased and politicised process. It was managed carefully by policy-makers in the 1960s and 1970s, and recklessly in the 1980s and 1990s. Workers and communities affected by deindustrialisation understood their experiences in moral economy terms, seeking at times to protect security through collective action. The perceived injustices of deindustrialisation contributed significantly to the growth of support for Home Rule within the UK in from the 1960s to the 1990s and then for Independence in the 2000s. Our book, Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy in Scotland since 1955, was published in 2021.
My 2019 book, Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century, analysed a key group of industrial workers and their struggles for workplace justice and economic security. The book used generational analysis to highlight changes over time and demonstrated how miners took a leading role in the campaign for Home Rule. The miners’ resistance to deindustrialisation reflected the importance of their moral-economy thinking. The great strike of 1984-85 was an unsuccessful attempt to prevent an unjust transition from taking place.
My next book is Coalfield Justice: the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike in Scotland
Coalfield Justice (edinburghuniversitypress.com)
This shows how veteran strikers in Scotland won a collective pardon from the Scottish Parliament in 2022 for public order convictions arising from their activism in defence of communal economic security in 1984-85. Based on interviews with more than 30 former strikers and family members, the book analyses the distinct pattern of injustice in Scotland, where strikers were twice as likely to be arrested and three times more likely to be sacked by their employer, the National Coal Board, than strikers in England and Wales. Coalfield Justice demonstrates the influence of oral history in shaping the current world. Scottish government ministers and MSPs listened to the veterans’ testimonies of injustice. The pardon acknowledged that the criminalisation of strikers was a key element in the unjust transition out of coalmining in the 1980s. Union voice was unfairly removed from decisions about the future of the industry and no alternative provision was made for the economic security of the communities affected.
Publications
Selected publications
Phillips, J. (2012) Collieries, Communities and the Miners' Strike in Scotland, 1984-85. Series: Critical labour movement studies. Manchester University Press: Manchester. ISBN 9780719096723
Phillips, J. (2008) The Industrial Politics of Devolution: Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s. Manchester University Press: Manchester. ISBN 9780719075339
Phillips, J. (2019) Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. ISBN 9781474452311 (doi: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474452311.001.0001)
Phillips, J. (2017) Economic direction and generational change in twentieth century Britain: the case of the Scottish coalfields. English Historical Review, 132(557), pp. 885-911. (doi: 10.1093/ehr/cex199)
All publications
Grants
Employment, Politics and Culture in Scotland, 1955-2015, Leverhulme Trust, RPG-2016-283, £215,596, for 36 months from 1 April 2017
Supervision
I welcome the opportunity to work with students using a wide range of methodologies and theoretical approaches to the study of economic and social history. Students with interests in the following areas will find my supervision particularly helpful:
- Deindustrialisation and just transitions, particularly relating to employment
- Labour organisation and activity
- The politics and sociology of work and industrial relations
- Moral economy and fairness in employment
I have a lengthy track record of helping students to secure research funding, particularly through the ESRC/SGSSS, and complete their theses under my co-supervision. I have also helped students gain scholarships from the Carnegie Trust and the University of Glasgow’s College of Social Sciences. Under my supervision students have used a variety of methodologies and theoretical approaches, including oral history as well as study of documentary materials in government, business, trade union and local authority archives, and deploying both class and gender as analytical categories.
- Shibe, Riyoko
Energy, Industry and Society: Security and Justice in Grangemouth, Scotland, from the 1950s to the 2000s
PhD theses completed under my co-supervision have included:
- The Cooperative Movement in Scotland After 1945
- Deindustrialisation in Lanarkshire, from the 1940s to the 1980s
- Class, Gender, Inequalities and Consumerism in Industrial Scotland, from the 1930s to the 1990s
- Industrial Relations at Bathgate’s Commercial Vehicle Factory in the 1960s and 1970s
- Work Culture and Industrial Relations at the Linwood Car Plant in the 1960s and 1970s
- Employee and Union Loyalties in British and American Retailing from the 1930s to the 1960s
Teaching
Undergraduate
Level 2
- Economic & Social History 2A: Britain 1770-1914
- Economic & Social History 2B: Britain since 1914
Honours
- Researching Economic and Social History 1 and 2
- Work and Labour in Britain since 1940
- Dissertation supervision
Postgraduate
- Contributions to core courses in MSc in the Globalised Economy
- Contributions to core courses in Int M Global Markets, Local Creativities, Erasmus Mundus International Masters
- Globalisation and Labour, taught within various School of Social and Political Sciences PGT programmes
Additional information
Research Contribution
- Member and Contributor, History and Policy
- Council member, Scottish Labour History Society
- Editor, Scottish Labour History
- Editorial Committee member, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations
Research Presentations
- ‘Family and Coalfield Justice in Scotland’, DePOT Annual Assembly, University of Strathclyde, June 2024
- ‘Voices from the Miners’ Strike Forty Years On’, with Robert Gildea, Oxford Talks, Worcester College, Oxford, March 2024
- ‘Oral History and Justice: Coalfield memories and the Miners’ Strike (Pardons) (Scotland) Act, 2022’, Ian MacDougall Memorial Lecture, National Library of Scotland, April 2023
- ‘Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century’, Edinburgh Open History Society, Royal Scots Club, Edinburgh, October 2021
- ‘Memory and Justice in the Scottish Coalfields in the 21st Century’, Institute Francophone pour la Justice and Démocratie, Bayonne, online, 7 January 2021
- ‘Employment, Politics and Culture in Scotland since 1955’, with Val Wright and Jim Tomlinson, Economic History Society, Queen’s University Belfast, April 2019
- ‘Deindustrialisation and Industrial Relations in Scotland’, British Universities Industrial Relations Association, Westminster Business School, June 2018
- ‘The Moral Economy of Deindustrialisation: how workers in Scotland made sense of economic changes from the 1950s to the 1990s’, with Val Wright and Jim Tomlinson, European Social Science History Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, April 2018
