On Behalf of The People: Work, Community, and Class in the British Coal Industry 1947-1994

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The project is a new intervention into academic, political, and public debates on the history of the British coal industry between 1947 and 1994. The study is particularly timely given the recent closure of Kellingley in December 2015 the last deep coal mine in Britain. It draws upon both the experiential and academic knowledge of PI Gildart who spent seven years as an underground coal miner in Wales between 1985 and 1992.The research will be based on extensive archival work in the coalfields, a comprehensive oral history project, interaction with former miners and colliery managers, a partnership with mining museums, and the development of a comprehensive interactive website, blog and touring exhibition. It will explore the development of the industry, its workplace cultures, industrial identities, politics, and individual and collective experiences through a detailed examination of eight collieries located in England, Scotland and Wales: Bickershaw Colliery (Lancashire, 1830-1992), Easington Colliery (Durham, 1899-1993), Hatfield Colliery (Yorkshire, 1916-2015), Annesley-Bentinck Colliery (Nottinghamshire, 1865-2000), Markham Colliery (Derbyshire, 1882-1993), Barony Colliery (Ayrshire, 1910-1989), Tower Colliery (Cynon Valley, 1864-2008), and Point of Ayr Colliery (Flintshire, 1890-1996). The oral history project will seek to understand the everyday experiences of coal miners and officials in the workplace, the community and the domestic sphere. This will involve interviews with around 80 participants and substantial community engagement in former mining localities. As such it represents a landmark scholarly intervention into the history of the industry by examining policy development, deployment and reception at macro (Government/NCB), meso (coalfield) and micro (colliery/community/domestic) levels. The project will tease out the unifying and diversifying identities and tensions in the eight collieries and their connected communities. In contrast with much of the existing scholarship on the industry there will be a specific emphasis on gender, generation, masculinity, femininity and regional/national identity and how these aspects of mining life contributed to a sense of individual and collective memory. The research will be organised around particular themes: the political evolution of public ownership and its local social/political impact, occupational culture and identity, the tensions between divergent industrial relations cultures and their impact on organisations, the changing nature of underground work, masculinity, gender relations, community fragmentation, deindustrialisation, memory, heritage, and the resilience of occupational and class identities. Chronologically the project will shed new light on key-moments in the history of the coal industry such as the debates around the nature of public ownership, the industrial disputes of 1972, 1974 and 1984/5 and the subsequent closure of all of the nation's deep mines in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Yet just as importantly it will gauge the impact of these events on miners, their wives/girlfriends, children, and the wider community in which the collieries were located. The project will go beyond the organisational/institutional frameworks adopted by many historians of the industry in order to reveal both the unifying and fragmentary nature of occupational, national, local, and class identity. The comprehensive coverage of the eight collieries, will support, stimulate and publicize research material that will be of use to academics, policymakers, schools, and the three major mining museums of England, Scotland and Wales. The website and published outputs will ensure that the project has broad impact in both the academic and public sphere. The project represents a significant reappraisal of the importance of the coal industry in shaping the identities, politics, and cultures of industrial localities in post-war Britain.