The Lucas Plan: wind turbines and heat pumps instead of armaments production S4F AT

by Martin Auer

Almost 50 years ago, employees of the British conglomerate Lucas Aerospace drew up a detailed plan for switching from military production to climate-friendly, environmentally friendly and people-friendly products. They demanded the right to “socially useful work”. The example shows that the climate movement could successfully approach employees in less climate-friendly industries.

Our society produces many products that are harmful to the environment and therefore to people. The most common examples are combustion engines, the many plastic products or the chemicals in many cleaning and cosmetic items. Other products are produced in ways that are harmful to the environment, primarily by using energy from fossil fuels to produce them, or by emitting exhaust fumes, sewage or solid waste into the environment. Some products are just too much made, just think of fast fashion and other throwaway products and all those products from laptops to sneakers that could last a lot longer if they weren't designed from the start to become obsolete quickly or to break (this is called planned obsolescence). Or think of agricultural products that are harmful to the environment when produced and harmful to health when (excessively) consumed, such as the huge quantities of meat products from factory farming or the products of the tobacco industry.

But jobs depend on all these products. And the income of many people depends on these jobs and on this income their well-being and that of their families.

Many employees would like to have more say in order to make their company more environmentally friendly and social

Many people do see the dangers of the climate catastrophe and environmental destruction, many are also aware that their job is not necessarily the most climate and environmentally friendly. According to a recent survey of 2.000 workers in the US and as many in the UK, two-thirds of those surveyed think the company they work for is “not making enough efforts to address environmental and social issues”. 45% (UK) and 39% (US) believe that top managers are indifferent to these concerns and only out for their own gain. The vast majority would rather work at a company that “makes a positive impact on the world” and about half would consider changing jobs if the company's values ​​do not align with their own values. Of those under 40, almost half would actually sacrifice income to do so, and two-thirds would like to have more influence to see their businesses “change for the better”1.

How can you keep jobs during the crisis?

The famous "Lucas Plan" offers an example of how employees can try to exert their influence in a very concrete way.

In the 1970s, British industry was in a deep crisis. In terms of productivity and thus competitiveness, it had fallen behind other industrial nations. The companies reacted with rationalization measures, company mergers and mass redundancies.2 The workers at the armaments company Lucas Aerospace also saw themselves threatened by a massive wave of layoffs. On the one hand, this was related to the general crisis in industry and, on the other hand, to the fact that the Labor government at the time was planning to limit arms spending. Lucas Aerospace produced components for the major military aviation companies in the UK. The company made about half of its sales in the military sector. From 1970 to 1975, Lucas Aerospace cut 5.000 of the original 18.000 jobs, and many employees found themselves out of work practically overnight.3

Shop stewards join forces

In the face of the crisis, the shop stewards of the 13 production sites set up a Combine Committee. The term "shop stewards" can only be roughly translated as "works councils". The British shop stewards had no protection against dismissal and no institutionalized rights to have a say in the company. They were directly elected by their colleagues and were directly responsible to them. They could also be voted out at any time with a simple majority. They represented their colleagues both to management and to unions. The shop stewards were not bound by the directives of the unions, but they represented them to their colleagues and collected membership fees, for example.4

What was unusual about the Lucas Combine was that it brought together shop stewards of both skilled and unskilled workers, as well as shop stewards of constructors and designers, who were organized in different unions.

In its election program before 1974, the Labor Party had set itself the goal of reducing arms spending. The Lucas Combine welcomed this goal, even though it meant that ongoing Lucas Aerospace projects were under threat. The government plans only reinforced the Lucas workers' desire to produce civilian products instead. When Labor returned to government in February 1974, the Combine stepped up its activism and secured a meeting with Industry Secretary Tony Benn, who was quite impressed by their arguments. However, the Labor Party wanted to nationalize the aviation industry. Lucas employees were skeptical about this. The state should not have control over production, but the workers themselves.5

Inventory of knowledge, skills and facilities in the company

One of the shop stewards was the design engineer Mike Cooley (1934-2020). In his book Architect or Bee? The Human Price of Technology,” he says, “We drafted a letter that detailed the composition of the workforce by age and skill set, the machine tools, equipment and laboratories we had at our disposal, along with the scientific staff and their design capabilities .” The letter was sent to 180 leading authorities, institutions, universities, unions and other organizations who had previously spoken out on issues of socially responsible use of technology, asking: “What could a workforce with these skills and facilities produce, that would be in the interest of the general public?”. Only four of them answered.6

We have to ask the staff

“We then did what we should have done from the start: we asked our staff members what they thought they should produce.” In doing so, respondents should consider not only their role as producers but also as consumers. The project idea was carried to the individual production sites by the shop stewards and presented to the workforce in “teach-ins” and mass meetings.

Within four weeks, 150 suggestions were submitted by Lucas employees. These proposals were examined and some resulted in concrete construction plans, cost and profit calculations and even some prototypes. In January 1976, the Lucas Plan was presented to the public. The Financial Times described it as one of "the most radical contingency plans workers have ever devised for their company."7

The plan

The plan comprised six volumes, each about 200 pages. The Lucas Combine sought a mix of products: products that could be produced in a very short time and those that required long-term development. Products that could be used in the Global North (then: "metropolis") and those that would be adapted to the needs of the Global South (then: "third world"). And finally, there should be a mix of products that would be profitable according to the criteria of the market economy and those that would not necessarily be profitable but would be of great benefit to society.8

Medical products

Even before the Lucas Plan, Lucas employees developed the "Hobcart" for children with spina bifida, a congenital defect of the spinal cord. The idea was that a wheelchair would make the children stand out from the rest. The hobcart, which looked like a go-cart, was supposed to allow them to play on an equal footing with their peers. Australia's Spina Bifida Association wanted to order 2.000 of these, but Lucas refused to make the product a reality. The construction of the Hobcart was so simple that it could later be manufactured by youth in a juvenile detention center, with the added benefit of instilling awareness of meaningful employment in offending youth.9

Other concrete suggestions for medical products were: a transportable life-support system for people who have suffered a heart attack, which can be used to bridge the time until they arrive at the hospital, or a home dialysis machine for people with kidney dysfunction, which allows them to visit the clinic several times a week could spare. At that time, Great Britain was massively undersupplied with dialysis machines, according to Cooley, 3.000 people died every year because of it. In the Birmingham area, he wrote, you could not get a place in a dialysis clinic if you were under 15 or over 45.10 A Lucas subsidiary manufactured hospital dialysis machines that were considered the best available in Britain.11 Lucas wanted to sell the company to a Swiss company, but the workforce prevented this by threatening to go on strike and at the same time calling in some parliamentarians. The Lucas Plan called for a 40% increase in dialysis machine production. "We think it's scandalous that people are dying because they don't have dialysis machines at their disposal, while those who could produce the machines are at risk of unemployment."12

Renewable energy

A large product group concerned systems for renewable energy. The aerodynamic knowledge from the production of aircraft should be used for the construction of wind turbines. Various forms of solar panels have been developed and field tested in a low-energy home by designer Clive Latimer. This house was designed to be built by the owners themselves with the support of skilled workers.13 In a joint project with Milton Keynes Council, heat pumps have been developed and prototypes installed in some of the council's homes. The heat pumps were operated directly with natural gas instead of electricity generated by natural gas, which resulted in a far improved energy balance.14

Mobility

In the area of ​​mobility, Lucas employees developed a gasoline-electric hybrid engine. The principle (which, by the way, was developed by Ferdinand Porsche back in 1902): a small combustion engine running at optimum speed supplies the electric motor with electricity. As a result, less fuel should be consumed than with a combustion engine and smaller batteries would be needed than with a purely electric vehicle. A prototype was built and successfully tested at Queen Mary College, London, a quarter of a century before Toyota launched the Prius.15

Another project was a bus that could use both the rail network and the road network. The rubber wheels enabled it to climb steeper gradients than a locomotive with steel wheels. This should make it possible to adapt rail tracks to the landscape instead of cutting through hills and blocking valleys with bridges. It would also make it cheaper to build new railroads in the Global South. Only small steel guide wheels kept the vehicle on the rails. These could be withdrawn when the vehicle switched from rail to road. A prototype was successfully tested on the East Kent Railway.16

Obtained Silent Knowledge

Another focus was "telechiric" devices, i.e. remote-controlled devices that transfer the movements of the human hand to grippers. For example, they should be used for underwater repair work to reduce the risk of accidents for workers. Programming a multifunctional robot for this work had proven to be almost impossible. Recognizing a hexagonal screw head, choosing the right wrench and applying the right force requires a tremendous amount of programming. But a skilled human worker can do this work "without thinking about it." Cooley called this “tacit knowledge”. Those involved in the Lucas Plan were also concerned with preserving this empirical knowledge from workers instead of displacing it through digitization.17

Products for the Global South

The project for an all-round power machine for use in the Global South was typical of the way of thinking of Lucas employees. "Currently, our trade with these countries is essentially neo-colonial," Cooley wrote. "We strive to introduce forms of technology that make them dependent on us." The all-round power machine should be able to use different fuels, from wood to methane gas. It was to be equipped with a special gearbox that would allow variable output speeds: at high speed it could drive a generator for night lighting, at lower speed it could drive a compressor for pneumatic equipment or lifting equipment, and at very low speed it could drive a pump for irrigation . The components were designed for a service life of 20 years, and the manual was intended to enable users to carry out repairs themselves.18

What is socially useful?

The Lucas employees did not provide an academic definition of "socially useful work," but their ideas differed markedly from management's. Management wrote that it “cannot accept that [sic] aircraft, civil and military, should not be socially useful. Civil aircraft are used for business and pleasure, and it is necessary to maintain military aircraft for defense purposes. (…) We insist that [sic] all Lucas Aerospace products are socially useful.”19

The slogan of the Lucas employees, on the other hand, was: "Neither bomb nor stamp, just convert!"20

Some key characteristics of socially useful products emerged:

• The structure, functionality and effect of the products should be as understandable as possible.
• They should be repairable, as simple and robust as possible and designed to last a long time.
• Production, use and repair should be energy-saving, material-saving and ecologically sustainable.
• The production should promote cooperation between people as producers and consumers, as well as cooperation between nations and states.
• Products should be helpful to minorities and disadvantaged people.
• Products for the "Third World" (the Global South) should enable equal relationships.
• Products should be valued for their use value rather than their exchange value.
• In production, use and repair, attention should not only be paid to the greatest possible efficiency, but also to maintaining and passing on skills and knowledge.

Management refuses

The Lucas plan failed on the one hand because of resistance from company management and their refusal to recognize the Combine Committee as a negotiating partner. The company management rejected the production of heat pumps because they were not profitable. That's when Lucas workers learned that the company had commissioned an American consulting firm to do a report, and that report said the market for heat pumps in what was then the European Union would be £1980 billion by the late XNUMXs. "So Lucas was willing to forego such a market just to demonstrate that Lucas, and only Lucas, had the power to decide what was produced, how it was produced, and in whose interests it was produced."21

Union support is mixed

UK union support for the Combine was very mixed. The Transport Workers Union (TGWU) supported the plan. In view of the expected cuts in defense spending, she urged shop stewards in other companies to take up the ideas of the Lucas plan. While the largest confederation, the Trade Union Congress (TUC), initially signaled support, various smaller unions felt the Combine had left out their right to representation. A multi-location, cross-divisional organization like the Combine did not fit into the fragmented structure of the unions by division and geographic area. The main obstacle proved to be the attitude of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), which insisted on controlling all contacts between trade unionists and government officials. The Confederation saw its job only as preserving jobs, regardless of the products.

The government has other interests

The Labor government itself was more interested in Britain's leadership in the armaments industry than in alternative production. After Labor was overthrown and Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party took power, the prospects for the plan were nil.22

The Legacy of the Lucas Plan

Nonetheless, the Lucas Plan left a legacy that is still being discussed in the peace, environmental and labor movements today. The plan also inspired the establishment of the Center for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems (CAITS) at Northeast London Polytechnic (now the University of North East London) and the Unit for the Development of Alternative Products (UDAP) at Coventry Polytechnic. Mike Cooley, one of the driving shop stewards, was awarded the "Right Livelihood Award' (also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize').23 In the same year he was terminated by Lucas Aerospace. As Director of Technology at the Greater London Enterprise Board, he was able to further develop human-centric technologies.

The Movie: Doesn't anybody want to know?

In 1978 the Open University, the largest public university in Great Britain, commissioned the film documentary "Doesn't anybody want to know?", in which shop stewards, engineers, skilled and unskilled workers have their say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pgQqfpub-c

Environmentally and people-friendly production can only be designed together with the employees

The example of the Lucas Plan should encourage the climate justice movement to approach workers in "non-climate-friendly" industries and productions in particular. The APCC special report "Structures for a climate-friendly life" states: "Change processes in the area of ​​gainful employment towards a climate-friendly life can be facilitated by active participation of the workforce with operational and political support and oriented towards climate-friendly life".24

It was clear to the Lucas workers from the outset that their plan would not revolutionize the whole of Britain's industrial landscape: "Our intentions are much more measured: we want to challenge the basic assumptions of our society a little and make a small contribution to it by showing that workers are willing to fight for the right to work on products that actually solve human problems, rather than create them themselves.”25

Sources

Cooley, Mike (1987): Architect or Bee? The Human Price of Technology. London.

APCC (2023): Summary for decision-makers In: Special Report: Structures for a climate-friendly living. Berlin/Heidelberg.: Springer Spectrum. On-line: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4225480

Löw-Beer, Peter (1981): Industry and happiness: Lucas Aerospace's alternative plan. With a contribution by Alfred Sohn-Rethel: production logic against the politics of appropriation. Berlin.

Mc Loughlin, Keith (2017): Socially useful production in the defense industry: the Lucas Aerospace combine committee and the Labor government, 1974–1979. In: Contemporary British History 31 (4), pp. 524-545. DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2017.1401470.

Dole queue or useful projects? In: New Scientist, vol 67, July 3.7.1975, 10: 12-XNUMX.

Salesbury, Brian (oJ): Story of the Lucas Plan. https://lucasplan.org.uk/story-of-the-lucas-plan/

Wainwright, Hilary/Elliot, Dave (2018 [1982]): The Lucas Plan: A new trade unionism in the making? nottingham

Spotted: Christian Plas
Cover photo: Worcester Radical Films

Footnotes

1 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer: https://www.paulpolman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/MC_Paul-Polman_Net-Positive-Employee-Barometer_Final_web.pdf

2 Löw-Beer 1981: 20-25

3 McLoughlin 2017: 4th

4 Löw-Beer 1981: 34

5 McLoughlin 2017:6

6 Cooley 1987:118

7 Financial Times, January 23.1.1976, XNUMX, quoted from https://notesfrombelow.org/article/bringing-back-the-lucas-plan

8 Cooley 1987:119

9 New Scientist 1975, vol 67:11.

10 Cooley 1987: 127.

11 Wainwright/Elliot 2018:40.

12 Wainwright/Elliot 2018: 101.

13 Cooley 1987:121

14 Cooley 1982: 121-122

15 Cooley 1987: 122-124.

16 Cooley 1987: 126-127

17 Cooley 1987: 128-129

18 Cooley 1987: 126-127

19 Löw-Beer 1981: 120

20 McLoughlin 2017: 10th

21 Cooley 1987:140

22 McLoughlin 2017: 11-14

23 Salesbury nd

24 APCC 2023: 17.

25 Lucas Aerospace Combine Plan, quoted from Löw-Beer (1982): 104