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Occupations—alternatively known as sit‐ins or sit‐down strikes—are historically a well‐known, if rather infrequently used, response of well‐organized workers to employer actions. In Britain, the best and most widely known example is that of the successful UCS (Upper Clyde Shipbuilders) of 1971–1972 in Scotland. The workers' action prevented the yards' closure and secured their jobs. It seemed to typify the wider ability of militant workers in Britain in the period of the early 1970s to not only have the capacity to struggle collectively in defense of their interests at work but to also do so in a successful manner and in a way that made a political challenge to the prevailing order in society. In its wake, many other workers took the example of UCS as both template and inspiration for their own actions. Thus, Darlington and Lyddon commented that this occupation “popularized the idea of workers taking over factories throughout Britain.” Subsequently, occupations have been used by workers in Britain for an array of mostly defensive reasons, ranging from resisting victimization of union representatives and activists and employer unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions to demanding higher pay. However, and as a result of recession and restructuring, the occupation tactic is potentially a particularly powerful tool by which workers can collectively respond to and resist redundancy for reasons of providing leverage against employers than strikes cannot. But the global recession of late 2007 onwards in Britain has witnessed very few examples of workers deploying this tactic—certainly far fewer than might have been expected, given the depth and extent of this recession and when compared with the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s.
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