Sons of Vulcan: Ironworkers and Steelmen in Scotland

This is the first substantial history of iron and steel workers in Scotland, covering over 300 years of labor and working conditions in heavy industry. It focuses on the men and boys who mastered heat and fire to make and shape iron in furnaces, forges, mills and foundries before, during, and after the industrial revolution. The second part of the book concentrates on working lives in steel production from the beginning of the industry in the 1870s until its demise in the 1990s. Themes include skill and changing technology, master worker relations and conflict, and trade union responses. There are profiles and case studies of key workers: iron smelters, steel melters, iron puddlers, rollers and moulders. This lavishly illustrated, informative account of working lives in two of Scotland’s most important industries is based on a wide range of published work and primary sources, and uses personal testimony of workers, diaries, biographies, and interviews to give voice to direct experience of work and struggle. This book is a companion volume to the same author’s acclaimed study, “The Mineworkers”, published by Birlinn in 2005.