ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the evolution of working-class struggle and class compromise in Scotland, and how the concept of class has shifted in Scotland’s economic imaginary. It examines the centrality of workplace struggle in economic analysis and political debates in the 1960s and 1970s, and the impact of Thatcher’s confrontational tactics on curtailing this form of conflict. The author argues that Scotland’s relationship to class politics has followed a distinct trajectory, with the decline of the Scottish capitalist class and the rise of the militant Scottish working class as a heroic figure in national narratives. The chapter begins with an analysis of the Upper Clyde work-in of 1971 and its significance for the displacement of class for a national “Scottish lobby”, and explores the changing role of class in Scottish nationalist politics and socialist politics in response to industrial decline. It ends by suggesting a shift into class-as-community, which reached its heroic phase with the Poll Tax movement but has subsequently proved a weak foundation for replacing the historic role of workplace conflict in establishing political agency.
