ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with origins. It will seek to identify the long-term economic and political factors which shaped the industrial relations crisis of the late 1980s. The immediate causes of this crisis were new and largely unexpected. They included the Piper Alpha explosion in 1988, the jump in oil prices in 1989 and the tightening of the labour market in 1989 and 1990. But to understand how these factors combined to create a major industrial crisis, and why it resulted in such profound changes, it is necessary to go back to the beginnings of the industry in the North Sea and beyond.
