Voices Of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery

Imagine a workplace where workers enjoyed a well-paid job for life, one where they could enjoy free meals in silver service canteens and restaurants. In their breaks they could explore acres of parkland planted with hundreds of trees and thousands of shrubs. Imagine after work a place where employees could play over thirty sports, join one of the theatre groups or dozens of other clubs. Imagine a place where at the end of a working life you could enjoy a company pension from a scheme you had never contributed a penny to. Imagine working in buildings designed by an internationally renowned architect whose brief was to create a building that ‘would last a century or two’. This is no fantasy or utopian vision of work but just some aspects of the working conditions enjoyed by employees at the Guinness Brewery established at Park Royal West London in the mid-1930s. Voices of Guinness tells the story the company’s London brewery from pre-cradle to post grave after the site’s closure in 2005, showing how the history of one plant reveals a much wider picture of changing attitudes to work and organisations in contemporary society. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as archive and photographic sources Voices of Guinness explores the experience and meaning of work, the ultimate loss of employment and deindustrialisation for Guinness workers. It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in work history, contemporary organisations and industrial loss.

Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as archive and photographic sources the book shows how progressive ideas of workplace citizenship came into conflict with the pressure to adapt to new expectations about work and its organisation. Strangleman illustrates how these changes were experienced by those on the shop floor from the 1960s through to the final closure of the plant in 2005. This book asks striking and important questions about employment and the attachment workers have for their jobs. It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in contemporary organisations and deindustrialisation.