Ewan Gibbs

At the end​ of April, the fuel trading company Petroineos quietly announced that more than a century of oil refining at Grangemouth had ended. The manner of the refinery closure, which had been announced in November 2023, confirmed how peripheral the plant and its workforce were to the international petroleum business. Scotland remains a significant oil producer, but has no refining...

Halfway​ between the end of the Second World War and the present, the 1984-85 miners’ strike marks a dividing line in Britain’s recent history. Before the strike, the country was characterised by comparative egalitarianism, the (relative) power and legitimacy of organised labour, and an industrial economy in which state industries played a prominent role. After it, economic...