This paper examines the role and meaning of nostalgia, and its opposite nostophobia, in the contemporary railway industry. It charts the way the past is passively and actively used by organisational actors, management as well as at the political level. It is argued that in the contemporary railway industry history and heritage are selectively annexed, negatively in order to win consent for change, and positively in an attempt to recapture the `golden age of railways' for marketing purposes. The paper makes sense of these processes by deploying a framework derived from various writers on issues connected with nostalgia and the emotional attachment to work.
Albrow, M. 1997. Do Organizations have Feelings?. London: Routledge.
2.
Bagwell, P. S. 1984. End of the Line? The Fate of British Railways Under Thatcher. London: Verso.
3.
Bagwell, P. S. 1996. The Transport Crisis in Britain. Nottingham: Spokesman.
4.
Baldwin, S. 1937. On England and Other Addresses. London: Penguin.
5.
Barr, C. 1993. 2nd edn.Ealing Studios, London: Studio Vista.
6.
Bate, P.1990. `Using the Culture Concept in an Organization Development Setting'. Journal of Applied Behavioural Science26:83-106.
7.
Bate, P. 1995. Strategies for Culture Change. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
8.
Casey, C. 1995. Work, Self and Society after Industrialism. London: Routledge.
9.
Davis, F. 1979. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. New York: Free Press.
10.
Deal, T and Kennedy, A. 1988. Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. London: Penguin.
11.
Department of Transport . 1994. Britain's Railways: A New Era. London: Department of Transport.
12.
Department of Transport . 1995. New Safeguards for Rail Services. London: Department of Transport.
13.
Ferner, A. 1988. Governments, Managers and Industrial Relations: Public Enterprises and Their Political Environment. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
14.
Ferner, A.1989. `Ten Years of Thatcherism: Changing Industrial Relations in British Public Enterprises'. Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations27.
15.
Fineman, S. (ed.) 1993. Emotion in Organisations. London: Sage.
16.
Furedi, F. 1992. Mythical Past, Elusive Future: History and Society in an Anxious Age. London: Pluto.
17.
Gabriel, Y. 1993. `Organizational Nostalgia - Reflections on “The Golden Age” '. In S. Fineman (ed.), Emotion in Organisations. London: Sage.
18.
du Gay, P. 1996. Consumption and Identity at Work. London: Sage.
19.
du Gay, P. and Salaman, G.1992. `The Cult(ure) of the Customer'. Journal of Management Studies29:616-633.
20.
Glaister, S. and Travers, T. 1993. New Directions for British Railways? The Political Economy of Privatisation and Regulation. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.
21.
Gouldner, A. W. 1964. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. New York: Free Press.
22.
Gourvish, T. R. 1986. British Railways 1948-73: A Business History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Gourvish, T. R.1990. `British Rail's “Business-Led” Organization, 1977-1990: Government-Industry Relations in Britain's Public Sector'. Business History Review64:109-149.
24.
Grey, C.1994. `Career as a Projection of the Self and Labour Process Discipline'. Sociology28:479-497.
25.
Hall, S. and Jacques, M. (eds.) 1987. The Politics of Thatcherism. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
26.
Harris, N. 1997. Railway Paintings by Cuneo: A Retrospective. Peterborough: Emap Apex Publications.
27.
Harris, N. G. and Godward, E. 1997. The Privatisation of British Rail. London: Railway Consultancy Press.
28.
Hay, C.1996. `Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the “Winter of Discontent” '. Sociology30:253-277.
29.
Hewison, R. 1987. The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline. London: Methuen.
30.
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds.) 1992. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31.
Hornby, N. 1993. Fever Pitch. London: Golancz.
32.
Kellett, J. R.1969. `Writing on Victorian Railways: An Essay in Nostalgia'. Victorian Studies13: 90-96.
33.
Le Goff, J. 1992. History and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.
34.
Lowenthal, D. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35.
Lowenthal, D. 1998. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
Macinnes, J. 1987. Thatcherism at Work: Industrial Relations and Economic Change. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
37.
McKillop, N. 1950. The Lighted Flame: A History of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. London: Nelson.
38.
Milkman, R. 1997. Farewell to the Factory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
39.
Munro, R.1998. `Belonging on the Move: Market Rhetoric and the Future as Obligatory Passage'. Sociological Review46:208-243.
40.
Murphy, B. 1980. ASLEF 1880-1980: A Hundred Years of the Locoman's Trade Union. London: ASLEF.
41.
Nichols, T. and Beynon, H. 1977. Living with Capitalism: Class Relations and the Modern Factory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
42.
O'Connell Davidson, J. 1993. Privatization and Employment Relations: The Case of the Water Industry. London: Mansell.
43.
Orwell, G. 1984. The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. London: Penguin.
44.
Parker, P. 1991. For Starters: The Business of Life. London: Pan.
45.
Payton, P. 1997. `An English Cross-Country Railway: Rural England and the Cultural Reconstruction of the Somerset and Dorset Railway'. Unpublished paper to Railway Identity and Place Conference, Truro, May.
46.
Pendleton, A.1991. `The Barriers to Flexibility: Flexible Rostering on the Railways'. Work, Employment and Society5:241-257.
47.
Pendleton, A. 1993. `Rail'. In A. Pendleton and J. Winterton (eds.), Public Enterprise in Transition: Industrial Relations in State and Privatized Industries. London: Routledge.
48.
Pendleton, A. 1995. `The Emergence and Use of Quality in British Rail'. In I. Kirkpatrick and M. Martinez Lucio (eds.), The Politics of Quality in the Public Sector: The Management of Change. London: Routledge.
49.
Pendleton, A. and Winterton, J. (eds.) 1993. Public Enterprise in Transition: Industrial Relations in State and Privatized Industries. London: Routledge.
50.
Pollitt, C. 1993 (2nd edn). Managerialism and the Public Services: Cuts or Culture Change in the 1990s?, Oxford: Blackwell.
51.
Poole, P. (ed.) 1996. Marigolds Grow Wild on Platforms: An Anthology of Railway Poetry. London: Cassell.
52.
Railtrack 1997. 1996/97 Annual Report and Accounts. London: Railtrack.
53.
Railtrack 1998. 1997/98 Annual Report and Accounts. London: Railtrack.
54.
Ramsay, H. 1996. `Managing Sceptically: A Critique of Organizational Fashion'. In S. R. Clegg and G. Palmer (eds.), The Politics of Management Knowledge. London: Sage.
55.
Raynes, J. R. 1921. Engines and Men: The History of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. Leeds: Goodall and Suddick.
56.
Rifkin, J. 1996. The End of Work. New York: Putnam.
57.
Roberts, I. 1993. Craft, Class and Control: The Sociology of a Shipbuilding Community. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
58.
Samuel, R. 1994. Theatres of Memory, Volume 1. Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. London: Verso.
59.
Samuel, R. 1998. Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, Theatres of Memory, Volume II. London: Verso.
60.
Seldon, A. 1998. Major: A Political Life. London: Phoenix.
61.
Sennett, R. 1998. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: Norton.
62.
Smith, K. 1989. The British Economic Crisis: Its Past and Future. London: Penguin.
63.
Sosteric, M.1996. `Subjectivity and the Labour Process: A Case Study in the Restaurant Industry'. Work, Employment and Society10:297-318.
64.
Storey, J. 1992. Developments in the Management of Human Resources: An Analytical Review. Oxford: Blackwell.
65.
Strangleman, T. E. 1998. `Railway and Grade: The Historical Construction of Contemporary Identities'. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Durham.
66.
Sykes, R. , Austin, A., Fuller, M., Kinoshita, T. and Shrimpton, A.1997. `Steam Attraction: Railways in Britain's National Heritage'. Journal of Transport History2: 156-175.
67.
Turnbull, P. and Wass, V. 1995. `Anorexic Organisations and Labour Market Lemons: The (Mis)Management of Redundancy in Britain'. Unpublished paper to British Universities Industrial Relations Association Annual Conference, Durham.
68.
Vincent, M. and Green, C. (eds.) 1994. The Intercity Story. Sparkford: Oxford Publishing Company.
69.
Whittaker, N. 1995. Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as Twentieth-Century Hero. London: Victor Gollancz.
70.
Willmott, H.1993. `Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations'. Journal of Management Studies30:515-552.
71.
Wolmar, C. 1997. `Can Branson get back on track?'New Statesman, 7 November.
72.
Wright, P. 1985. On Living in an Old Country, the National Past in Contemporary Britain. London: Verso.
73.
Wright, P. 1993. A Journey through Ruins: A Keyhole Portrait of British Postwar Life and Culture. London: Flamingo.
74.
Wright, P. 1996. The Village that Died for England: The Strange Story of Tyneham. London: Vintage.
