Liam Gillick, the Lucas Plan, and karaoke

Bar Laika will close for a short summer vacation from August 14 through 25. For our last event before the break, join us this Thursday, August 1 at 9pm to celebrate Liam Gillick’s poster design for the B52 bus shelter on Greene Ave between Grand Ave and Classon Ave. This is the first in a year-long series of artist commissions of oversize posters for the bus shelter in front of the bar. Following the reception, we will screen The Story of the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards Alternative Corporate Plan.

Originally produced for the Open University by BBC TV in 1978, the film documents a remarkable development in the history of labor. In 1976, facing rationalization and redundancies, shop stewards at Lucas Aerospace approached Tony Benn, then Secretary of State for Industry in the UK Labour Government, to discuss their future in the context of Labour’s plans for nationalizing the aerospace industry. Benn, a high profile supporter of the Institute for Workers’ Control, suggested to the Lucas Shop Steward Combine Committee that they produce their own business plan. In drawing up their plan, the Combine approached employee representatives at all the Lucas Aerospace plants across the UK, as well as academics and other interested parties. They often highlighted products of medical or social use that had been abandoned in the aerospace conglomerate‘s focus on military contracts. Not only did the stewards explore potential products, but also looked at alternative organization of production, forms of organization that liberated rather than subordinated the human operative. When the “Lucas Plan” was published it quickly became recognized as an iconic document promoting “socially useful production,” but was dismissed by Lucas Aerospace management, trade unions (who attacked such shop steward combine committees as bypassing “official channels”), and the Labour Government, which had marginalized Benn and begun the move towards neo-liberalism.

The screening will be followed by karaoke, led by Liam Gillick.

All are welcome!
Cash bar.

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.