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In this edited interview, Peter Carr summarized his working life: from woodworking apprentice in the 1940s and his work on construction sites (in the mid-1950s) to being appointed Labour Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington (1978–82) while still holding membership of his construction trade union. In between, there are his spells in adult education – Fircroft College, Birmingham, and Ruskin College, Oxford – which he funded himself, before training as a college lecturer and then pioneering shop-steward training in Halifax, Yorkshire, and at Thurrock, Essex. He then worked part-time at the National Board for Prices and Incomes, before playing a leading role in the Commission for Industrial Relations and its successor, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. After Washington, he was recruited into a series of high-profile, public-sector positions, initially in the Employment Department, then in the Health Department, where he worked part-time into his eighties.
Carr’s life illustrates the informal way in which well-connected people could move into jobs at different levels. In that sense he was a product of his time, being particularly adept at cultivating networks in the labour movement world and the industrial relations community (when unions had more influence than in later periods). In his post-Washington years, his success reflected his hard work, networks, competence, and adaptability.
