Papers of Reg Glover (1900-1977), writer on the engineering industry

This collection includes: 'The gaffer', a play in four scenes about a dispute in a midlands car plant in the 1950s.

Reg Glover (1900-1977) was born in Coventry in 1900. Apprenticed to a pharmacist on leaving school, his father died in 1916, and Glover was forced to give up his trade and take on a job in an engineering firm. After the war, he took an active part in the Labour movement, and following a period in the car industry he moved to Leicester where he became a machine knitting expert. This gave him the opportunity to travel widely in Europe, but he returned to Coventry in 1936 and became an aircraft fitter. After the war, he became self-employed, but later went back to the engineering industry as an "ideas man". Glover also wrote on the Labour movement within the engineering industry, producing articles and pamphlets under the pseudonyms Reg Wright and Dwight Rayton, and a play entitled 'The Gaffer', describing a Coventry strike.

Reference: Dwight Rayton, 'Shop Floor Democracy in Action: A personal account of the Coventry Gang System' (Nottingham, 1972).

This collection is available to researchers by appointment at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/using/

Link to full catalogue: http://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/GLO

The collection was deposited with the Centre in 1978, by Paul Derrick of the International Co-Operative Alliance.