De-industralisation

Question 1

What does actually mean?

Answer 1

• reverse of industrialisation- development of industries on wide scale
• recent and not fixed
• process- has a relationship to the political agency- someone doing the de-industrialising

Question 2

Name some key texts associated:

Answer 2

-Steven High’s ‘Wounds of Class” and Konrad Jarausch ‘Out of Ashes’

Question 3

What did Jim Tomlinson suggest?

Answer 3

-deindustralisation not decline- change to service industry sprouted from de-industrialisation- should take more central place as narrative (meta narrative)

Question 4

When did industry peak in the U.K.?

Answer 4

1955

Question 5

What were the 3 biggest consequences as a result of de-industrialisation?

Answer 5

• lessening of predominance of manufacturing, shift to services, production to consumption
• (causes)- globalisation (cheaper elsewhere), technological change- same output with fewer people
• (consequence)- majority negative such as mass unemployment and blighted regions

Question 6

What are the dimensions of de-industrialisation?

Answer 6

• spatial- heartland to rust belt
• political- willed?
• Social-class, race and gender, breadwinner to doomed proletarian?
• cultural- smokestacks nostalgia?

Question 7

Explain spatial further:

Answer 7

• mainly a western focus
• focus on how US states turned to ‘The Rustbelt’-peripheral problem area
• towns/ cities too eg: steel city of Youngstown in Ohio becomes blighted

Question 8

Explain political further:

Answer 8

• who does the de-industrialising, politically willed?

- is there agency behind- gov eg: Thatcher… consequence of government policy?

Question 9

Explain social further:

Answer 9

• sense of dislocation

- male-orientated and fate than opportunities for ex-steel workers

Question 10

Explain cultural further:

Answer 10

-how encapsulated eg: films like ‘Pride’ (2014)- set 1984 miner’s strike

Question 11

How studied?

Answer 11

• emphasis of loss
• continuity and change
• early- grey out of political activism- reverse process, shift political economy to cultural consequences and memory- behind ‘body count’ of job loss eg: Strangleman (2017) focus’ on the theoretical understandings for industrial change, half life, cultural ramifications linger

Question 12

What was the Great Miner’s Strike of 1984-85?

Answer 12

• regions most affected- Nottinghamshire, Cumberland…
• 280,000 employed (700,000 pre-war- decreased)
• 1/3 British energy and 70% electricity

Question 13

What popular representations are there?

Answer 13

• civil war rhetoric
• contest between 2 temporal orders
• notion of trap and question of violence
• miners as ‘doomed industrial proletarians’
• theme- community resilience, renewal and disintegration
• films like ‘Billy Elliot’, ‘Pride’…
• village radicalism- lass stand
• contest over cultural indentures- what defines miner? Class? Masculinity?
• Thatcher as an unseen villain
• contest temporalities- last vs future, industrial vs post

Question 14

What are the limitations/ selective?

Answer 14

• silences eg: little of coal industry itself
• only know immediate cause
• little sense of industrial muscle ascribed to miners- feared than pitied
• focus on modernity of mining as occupation and mining communities in 1980s- way depicted as if frozen in time and unchanged as described by 1950s sociological literature

Question 15

What are the key dimensions of the strike?

Answer 15

• industrial conflict- miners vs management- who decides future of industry?
• internal union conflict over decision making- activists vs ordinary members
• political conflict over organised labour- NUM vs state- neo-liberal Thatcher
• symbolic conflict-collective vs individual (agency or subordinate, renewal or breakdown of community, women involved- change for them?)
• symbolic conflict- future of industrial Britain and society under Thatcher revolution

Question 16

How did the strike end?

Answer 16

• organised return to work without resolution
• 50% abandoned then returned on own initiative- catastrophic defeat and win for Thatcher gov- not only stopped then but excluded Union from any decision making in future- scaled back even more
• bitter workforce

Question 17

Main ideas from ‘Wounds of Class’:

Answer 17

1)3 waves of historiography- 1) initial activist generation of 1970s and 80s 2)meaning of deindustrialisation- 2000s 3) socio-cultural outlook of working class culture in post-industrial

2) disorganised and uneven working class resistance
3) been positive interpretations as well as a new age of humanity
4) national contexts shaped
5) broadened outlook from causes and resistance to long term affects
6) focus on areas where most visible and left out other eg: Canada- cyclical downturns preceded de-idnsutralisation
7) gentrification scholars- turn back on working class, politics of resistance- willed renewal

Question 18

‘Wounds of class’- activist beginnings?

Answer 18

• started in 1970s Canada as an anti-imperialist critique to US authority on economy
• broadened and became product of global economy crisis
• wider political movements eg: Independent Socialist Canada

Question 19

‘Wounds of class’- cultural meaning:

Answer 19

• shift from ‘body count’
• challenged ‘sense of community’
• middle class saw as ‘desirable’
• moral as well as economic
• urban wastelands- hipster commodification
• not all scarred by de-industrialisation
• sanitised approaches- workplace segregation
• can be good- local identity

Question 20

‘Wounds of class’- culture in post-industrial age:

Answer 20

• 3rd wave on post-industrial era
• persistence of culture
• mining traditions eg: Durham Miner’s Gala
• some more negative as undermine collective
• cultural erasure
• loss of predictability of work
• resignation
• civil war resemblance
• physically gone but left political, psychological and environmental scars

Question 21

National Women Against Pit Closures- explain their angle and involvement:

Answer 21

• women helped domestically- sustained strike with feeding- soup kitchens, food parcels…
• Scargill underplayed as are the internal divisions
• some pre-existing political and new for most
• differed in miltancy
• communist popular front
• rally 1984 of 10,000-12,000 women
• some feminist dislike of NUM as patriarchal
• sense of ordinariness
• to get legitimacy had to renounce political in identity
• dual incomes becoming more common
• use of pre-existing bodies eg: Kent’s Aylesham Ladies Action Group
• political education for women
• Anne Scargill also involved
• newsletters to spread eg: Nottingahm’s “Here We Go!”
• some not ready for a broader political agenda
• NUM hostility to independent action and splits as more became formal
• women gave image of ordinariness and respectability and keep traditional ways of life
• put together women’s support groups
• inclusion difficult- must be related to miners…
• aftermath of strike left in economic hardship, closure of communal feeding centres, networks evaporated as met less, move to other campaigns such as unemployment, became more of a folk memory
• 1985 Sheffield conference and some revival eg: 1992 Lancashire
• overall= not spontaneous but political planning, popular base of NWAPC but control of unelected leftists and leader Arthur Scargill- limits view as a feminist organisation and hard to keep activism after passing of strike, women aim most as supporters, achieved a lot especially local- able to persevere through hardship, desire to be more serious and move away from celebratory tale of women

Question 22

Remember!

Answer 22

-check seminar and lecture notes from year one- deindustralisation folder in Contemporary World 😎