Challenging the de-industrialisation narrative: East Midlands textile workers 1980-2005

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The second half of the 20th Century saw large scale changes in the East Midlands textileindustry, as the mergers and takeovers of the 1960s were unravelling. The proposedresearch will make a strong contribution to a currently under-developed body of work onthe textile workers of this era. The work of historians such as Stanley Chapman andBramwell Rudd concentrate mainly on the business strategies and economics of themergers and takeovers within the industry. Historians such as Tomlinson (2016), havewritten about the process of de-industrialisation, but largely in terms of male loss. Thepredominance of female workers in the textile industry complicates this view. This study ofthe East Midlands textile workers in the period 1980-2005 will use principles from the fieldsof material culture and memory studies to examine textile workers' testimonies. It will askif there is such a thing as collective identity, and if so, which narratives might have informedthis for the textile workers?Material culture, and its influence on memory is not an approach commonly taken byhistorians, therefore, by combining disciplines, the work will be methodologicallyinnovative. Adopting the strategy used by Layman (2009) and Arnold (2018), I will explorehow material culture (including photographs, film) might influence interviewees' practicesof remembrance, and assess how media representations of the textile industry from theperiod might play a part in the stories that are being told. I will examine the 55 oral historyrecordings collected as part of the 2019 Textile Tales project (held at NTU), and conductfurther in-depth interviews as follow-ups to existing recordings.Recorded in 2019/20, the Textile Tales oral histories give a unique, contemporaryperspective on the past, which cannot be gained from older recordings. The data wascollected from workers at all levels, on all aspects of their lives at work, and thereforeprovides a more personal insight than economic histories, asking questions that only theworkers' themselves can answer, such as where do they place the blame for the industry'srapid contraction? How did they view the industrial changes, and have they retained thatview? What did they do after working in the industry?I anticipate that the work will draw extensively on local archives, including the collections ofolder oral histories at East Midlands Oral History Archive and Nottingham Local StudiesLibrary, however, I intend to conduct a brief overview of other relevant archival collectionswithin the UK. The Media Archive Central England, Lincoln will be essential, as holders of theClothing The Nation collection and regional news archive footage (as used by Murray, 2013).There is also an opportunity to examine relevant recordings from the Courtauld MemoryProject, collected during a similar time period. During the 1960s, Courtaulds Textiles plcwere one of the main players in creating a textiles empire in the UK. In their acquisition ofsome of the famous hosiery and knitwear brands, many of the textile companies in the EastMidlands were brought under their control, until Courtaulds Textiles plc itself was takenover by the global Sara Lee Corporation in the early 2000s. The inclusion of these newrecordings in this research will address some of the gaps in the Textile Tales material (forinstance the presence of ethnic diversity), and provide a significant UK-wide comparison.The Courtauld project is still ongoing and some recordings are already accessible and havebeen transcribed.