Militancy and Whiteness amongst the Working People of County Durham, 1919: A Multi-Occupational Approach.

The project will situate County Durham during the year 1919 transnationally, exploring the global implications of Empire on British society through regional working-class consciousness. The research will resist the temptation to homogenize the working class(es) in County Durham, attending to its occupational diversity and test the utility of the contentious concept of the 'white working-class'. Using Bakhtin's conceptualisation of thought and language, it will consider the extent to which working people managed to overcome fault-lines in order to produce a sense of class cohesion within the region; thus, renewing our understanding of class consciousness in an age of world empires.