When it was first published in Sweden, in 1978, Dig Where You Stand by Sven Lindqvist sparked a wave of local groups researching their industrial and working-class history. It'd be nice if the same happened in the UK, now that there's an English translation.
It has lots of practical tips on how to go about research, my "dog-eared" notes tend to focus more on the wider questions and text.
Page 24
And my word to other readers is this: Do not fear the experts. You know your job. Your professional experience is a firm basis on which to stand when judging other people's activities—and non-activities. They may be experts, each one in their own area, but when they discuss your job, you are the expert. That is why your own job is such a good starting-point for your research. Dig where you stand!
Page 35
[On a trip over to the UK from Sweden, they happen upon a former cement worker by accident while looking for a cement factory that's actually closed down]
And before we knew what was happening, we were back in his yellow Mini and driving to his present job (although he goes there by moped, he won't ruin the paint on the car by leaving it in the car park with all its factory dust) and stopped in front of a mass of warehouses in Northfleet.
"It should be somewhere in here," he said, and we went back and forth through meandering corridors until finally we found a back door and entered a tiny yard where an old brick shaft kiln rose, surrounded by the metal walls of the warehouses. "This is Aspdin's kiln. This is where the Portland cement was made the first time."
We are in the classical country of origin for cement, and he drives us back and forth between Swanscombe, West Thurrock and Dartford, through what seemed to be a cemetery of closed-down factories—each collapsed chimney, each broken lump of concrete has its own story and behind him generations of cement workers appear, to his surprise as much as ours, until the day has passed and he suddenly remembers that...
"Blimey, I was going bloody shopping in Gravesend!"
Page 38
Kock's book follows the usual pattern, describing economy and technology. The only work revealed to us is that done by company management and technicians. They look out from their portraits, it's their work that we are invited to admire in all the pictures. One sole worker can be found. Nameless, he leans decoratively against an inoperative cement mill in a factory free from dust and noise. The final chapter of the book pays homage to the cement company as a social builder and exemplary employer.
Page 40
A few lines also suggest that cement is actually made by humans. But all we are told about these humans is the various ways in which the company caters for them: "There is of course a sauna, and we are building an 'interest office'." Apart from this, the whole stage is taken by owners and management.
Are they worthy of all this attention? Hardly.
Page 45
Has any book been written about the company that you work for? What picture does it give you of your place of work, of your job, of the contribution of your predecessors? Whose history is being recorded?
Page 53
The first thing you notice is the small, modest format of local union booklets, in comparison to the splendid publications of the company. The impression the company management present of themselves has been paid out of production, whereas that of the union is financed by members' fees.
Page 58
The main reason for the defects that cripple today's civilisation is the private Capitalist production method, which has dismissed old petty-bourgeois social conditions, gathered the capital in the hands of a small number of people and divided society into workers and Capitalists, the layer in between consisting partly of vanishing social groups—peasants, craftsmen and small merchants—partly of new groups being formed.
Page 61
The exploitation remained a theoretical problem, whereas the practical difficulty in Slite was the fact that many people could not find an employer willing to exploit them.
Page 69
The companies won't pay for a critical appraisal of themselves. They won't pay for a realization of the original programme of the local history movement. They pay for the movement to avoid today's problems and to render the past harmless.
Page 72
Four jubilee speakers are talking through a fifth. Nobody wants to be slow to forget an injury. "When Kylberg succeeded Scharengrad, Lomma was a pretty, sleepy little idyll." Nobody wants to disturb the atmosphere. "The relationship was always personal and favourable in this time."
Page 93
And what about cleaning? Is it really right that the school from the very start teaches children that they are free to make any mess they like and then leave it to others—low-paid, inferior adults—to clean it up? Should the school teach the children that food is something that is simply served, something they do not need to help prepare or wash up after?
Is it right that people during the first fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years of life should grow up with a pure consumer's attitude to life&mash;in a world where goods seem to appear by some sort of self-generation on the shelves in the shops, and that they themselves never ever have to help produce them?
Page 102
People today are trained for tomorrow's society. How does the educational plan for your job tally with the political aims of the workers' movement? Is it a suitable education for workers who are to take over the power of the companies? How should the training be planned?
Page 115
Thus history lives on in living people's bodies. It lurks there and finally it kills. When the dead body is opened up, history can be found in the shape of silvery fibres—the last remnants of the air these people breathed in the factories and workers' homes of the 1920s and 20s.
And when the votes are counted at the Board meetings, the same history is still there—the profits from those days still endow some people with power and dividends. Just as the workers' children inherited the fibres, other children inherited the shares. History is not dead. Even tomorrow it will do its utmost to influence the instructions issued by the Labour Safety Committee.
Page 134
Aids: The insurance company Folksam will on request send you free of cost Tariff 11:1 Occupational List: Individual Insurance for Illness or Accidents. The occupations are divided into four different risk groups. The risk in group 4 is considered to be 60% greater than the risk in group 1. Workers in cement factories com under group 4, technical managers group 2 and office staff who don't travel group 1. Shareholders are not included in the list.
Page 142
A company is owned by people. It is managed by people. The work is done by people. Often genealogical conditions decide who own it, who manage it, who do the work. Genealogical aids could therefore be used as keys to the history of the capital.
Page 161
The long sequence of annual editions of Who's Who provides a chance to examine changes—and, even more, the lack of changes—in Swedish society. How many women were included in the first edition? How has the proportion of women changed over the years? What proportion of the people listed in 1912 came from workers' homes? How has this proportion changed over the years?
[...]
Briefly: To what extent is the Swedish Establishment as recorded in Who's Who a closed circle? I am asking this question in the hope that someone will find the time to answer it.
Page 198
The people we can watch closely are generally the same as those in Who's Who. In their memoirs, the Swedish upper classes describe their contributions. We can also find the life experiences and social attitudes of the middle classes. But where are the memoirs of the Swedish working classes?
This is a huge gap in our knowledge of the past.
Page 211
And eleven of the eighteen everyday cement factory words were still completely unknown to linguistics. The records of the Swedish Academy Dictionary thanked me politely for the samples I had sent them and for the first time ever included the words cuttings, burners platform, kiln roll, rust cooler, planetary cooler, slurry ring, extra burning, gypsum ring, ash ring, trajectory and small skip in their records.
If you make the same investigation with some typical words from your own factory, you will probably get the same result; linguists have never heard some of your words.
Page 248
Even here in Sweden we should take care of industrial environments that carry the memories of the history of the working class. The plants should be preserved in such a way that they become the ideological property of the working class.
Page 277
Who owns your factory? Why?
Page 290
The old workers at Maltesholm were given "a certain annual allowance" which ceased long ago. The Maltesholm shareholders, however, were given Skånska Cement shares at a value of 1.4 million kronor, which, in 1970, via six stock emissions, had grown to 5.4 million kronor. These shares still yield the same profit and power as the other EUROC shares.
Isn't it time to give the shareholders "a certain annual allowance" and let them go?
Page 299
Vague references to "what the customers want" should not be accepted. The motivation ought to include a precise description of the consumer needs the product aims at satisfying and the social side effects that can be expected. The motivation should also include definite information on the conditions of production and consumption of resources. They should form the basis of criticism and debate around the product policy of the company.
But today no other reasons are required than the fact that a product is profitable. Many useful and necessary products are unprofitable and so wiped off the market. Often a product is more profitable if it is manufactured under dreadful, humiliating conditions—which helps wipe out products manufactured under more humane conditions. And it is we ourselves who are appointed to control this competition, by buying or not buying.
It's a terrifying power, granted to us by the market economy. I think we ought to refuse it. Because the moment of buying is really the worst possible occasion to decide about other people's working conditions.
Page 336
Every day that has passed in the thirty years since Stora Vika was built, someone has been sitting by the coarse crusher, in the small cabin which no one thought of proofing against vibrations and noise. Someone has been watching the fine crusher. Someone has been sitting in the cabin by the rope railway. Someone has driven the traverser across the materials store. Someone has worked in the noise from the mills.
Human beings have been working in this factory every day for thirty years—but the planners described their plans without them even being mentioned.
[,,,]
But even when all these factories are closed, history will live in the shape of the capital saved by Skånska Cement by the building they did without considering human beings. A few bob were saved on the little cabin by the coarse crusher, a few bob on the fine crusher works, a few bob on the mill house, at every spot in the factory they saved a few bob. This money did not disappear. It has grown with the accumulated interest over thirty years and is still part of the Industri AB Euroc's capital.
[...]
Of course capital is a good thing to have. The only question is who should have it?
Page 342
In 1952, the Personnel Administrative Board was formed. This Board always describes itself as a "neutral independent organization", in other words it was formed on the initiative of the Swedish Employers' Federation, its board members were appointed by the same body and it receives annual financial subsidies from it. Moreover, this board is naturally financially dependent on the satisfaction of its clients.
The clients in the 1950s and 1960s were mainly large companies. The activities culminated in 1966 when 14,000 aptitude tests were carried out under the control of the PA Board. Thirty-nine of these were done at the Limhamn cement factory to select staff for the new computerized kilns.
Page 344
The employers and their jobs, however, are not tested.
Page 348
Today these tests are considered outdated and other combinations of letters, such as the EPF, are more topical. In 1966, it was practically impossible for the tested persons, even afterwards, to find out what these letters were abbreviations for, why the questions had been asked, and how the answers had been interpreted.
Page 360
In such a society, research, whether researchers want it or not, is a power factor. How should this power of research be applied? To increase further the differences in financial and political power? Or as a counterweight to other power centres in society?
Page 369
The barefoot researchers [,working class, grass roots research groups,] had problems to solve instead of methods to guard. They wandered back and forth across the academic boundaries and so helped pull them down.
They also brought valuable experiences from industry.