Change at Work

In the early 1980s, Guinness found itself facing serious financial problems as a result of the recession, falling profits, and mistaken diversification decisions. This chapter tells how the company confronted these challenges by appointing a new managing director, Ernest Saunders, who transformed Guinness into a multinational beverage conglomerate and changed the culture of the organization forever. In the process, he also committed serious financial misdemeanors. This chapter tells the shop floor workers experienced these changes, in particular how the reorganizations and layoffs affected workplace culture and identity. Drawing on a series of oral histories and autobiographical accounts, the author places what happened at Guinness in the 1980s and 1990s within the wider context of the brewing and spirits sectors in the United Kingdom and globally.

The Machine in the Garden

This chapter looks at the decisions made by Guinness related to the building of its English brewery at Park Royal in west London. It places these decisions within the context of Anglo-Irish politics of the 1920s and 1930s. Using a variety of archive sources, oral histories, and autobiographies, it tells the story of how the Park Royal site was identified and developed in secret. The chapter looks at the building and architecture of the brewery and the role of the world-renowned architect Giles Gilbert Scott. It also relates the experience of some of the early workers employed at the site during construction and subsequent production. The chapter finishes at the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Conclusion: Returning to Park Royal

This final chapter is a reflection on the meaning of work in the twenty-first century. The author takes a walk around the site of the former Guinness brewery at Park Royal and observes and analyzes what replaced the brewery buildings. The chapter examines the profound shifts in the way economic activity has been organized and working careers have been transformed. The story of the Guinness brewery acts as an important marker for the way work used to be thought of; this was a humane, expansive, and dignified vision of work. Today, however, this vision has become eclipsed in the new capitalism.

The Ruined Garden

After the brewery at Park Royal closed, the old buildings were demolished and the real estate on which they stood was sold. This chapter looks at the attempts to fight the destruction of the buildings by the heritage lobby and the response from the company. Guinness workers share what they thought of the attempts to preserve the brewery buildings and their feelings over the ultimate demolition. The chapter looks at the wider debate about industrial preservation, heritage, and the role of urban explorers who photograph abandoned former workplaces. The chapter shows how images of destruction help to reveal attitudes to the built environment, work, and industrial loss. It considers the ideas of smokestack nostalgia and industrial romanticization.

The Ghost in the Machine

This chapter looks at the process of closing the Guinness Park Royal Brewery, from the announcement by management in 2004 through the actual last brew, which was made in the summer of 2005. It looks at how the workers experienced this process and how they reflected on not just the closure announcement but also their wider feelings about work at Guinness. The oral histories contain moving reflections on the meaning of work for Guinness workers and for their children, who face an increasingly uncertain work future. It puts what happened at Park Royal in the wider context of deindustrialization and rationalization.

Remembering the Work of the Long Boom

This chapter looks at the experience of work from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. It draws extensively on oral histories carried out by the author with former shop floor workers, supervisors, and managers. It details the type of labor carried out by production workers and in particular explores the idea of an independent shop floor culture and identity at Guinness Park Royal. It looks at issues such as boredom, humor, and authority as well as the nature of unionization at the plant. The chapter looks at questions of industrial citizenship and how a strong workplace identity allowed workers a great deal of autonomy over what they did and how they did it. This Guinness workplace culture is put in context with a broader discussion of work identity in the United Kingdom during the long boom.

Introduction: The Imagined Garden

This chapter provides an overview of the book and the project on which it is based. It places the closure of the Guinness brewery within a wider context of the process of plant closure and deindustrialization in the United Kingdom and North America. It shows how the story of one plant, from its beginnings in the 1930s through its closure in 2005, can tell a much bigger story about contemporary capitalism. It outlines and explains the project and the methods, theories, and concepts used in the book. The chapter places the interview material collected here within other examples of oral history. In particular, it examines the notion of image and imagination developed by Humphrey Jennings.

The Garden in the Machine

This chapter on the landscape of the Park Royal brewery explores the tension between modernity and tradition, rural and urban, and the natural and human-made environment. It looks at how Guinness management extensively landscaped the brewery grounds and the ways in which it saw its role as cultivating a beautiful environment for business and its workers. The chapter contextualizes the Guinness example within wider debates about corporate landscapes in the United Kingdom and North America in the postwar period. It draws on ideas and concepts from geography and landscape studies to understand Guinness’s “estate in factoryland.” It emphasizes how different corporate assumptions about investment were during this period

Creating Industrial Citizens

This chapter looks at the way Guinness management developed its workforce in the postwar period from 1945 to 1975. This was the era of the long boom, in which millions of UK workers enjoyed rising living standards and material conditions. The chapter examines how Guinness management developed “Guinness Citizenship” and how this vision related to contemporary ideas about a wider industrial citizenship. The chapter provides a detailed reading of the company magazine, Guinness Time, especially its photo essays focusing on aspects of labor in the plant. This is contextualized in a wider discussion of industrial photography.