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

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.

Who benefits?

The project will have significant public impact benefitting from the social and cultural connections developed by PI Gildart during his experience as a coal miner and CI Perchard through his expertise as a former head of energy supply policy in the Scottish Executive. This will be complemented by a dissemination strategy informed by the advisory board.

The website and oral history project will be of value to diverse groups including:

- Museums/archives: coal mining museums in England, Scotland and Wales
- Local historians/local history societies/colliery preservation groups
- Primary schools/high schools
- Institutions investigating their own history: the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) (Scottish Area, Yorkshire Area, North Wales Area, North Western Area, North East Area, Nottinghamshire Area, North Derbyshire Area, South Wales Area), the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM), the National Association of the Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS), and the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation (CISWO).
- Surviving Miners' Welfare Institutes
- Family historians
- Those promoting local historical awareness e.g. the North Wales Miners Association Trust
- Local history organisations including but not exclusive to named project partners.
- The project will more generally stimulate and support public engagement with twentieth century British history. The first version of the website will be available early in year one, along with the project blog and the bi-monthly 'colliery of the month' feature, with a mechanism to support public submission of former miners and their families.

Anticipated benefits include:

- Recognition by user groups of the value of the coal industry for understanding continuity and change in British society. The development of awareness that the eight selected collieries were symbolic of the link between work, identity, community, culture and politics in the post-war period. They were also crucial in engendering a sense of individual and collective identity that reached beyond the workplace. By identifying, recovering and making accessible the history of the collieries, the project supports and publicises the work of local historians, as well as stimulating and activating local communities' and institutions' interest in their own histories
- Project partners will benefit from assistance in recovering and recording evidence of the history of the collieries and from participation in project events. The good practice in retrieving evidence of the importance of the collieries in working, domestic and socio/political lives will be disseminated in the wider local history constituency.
- Greater knowledge/understanding of coal mining resources in national and local mining museums and record offices, including those run by local authorities, leading to more footfall among all types of user
- Impact on archival repositories' acquisition, as the significance of new material related to the eight collieries is highlighted. Targeted institutions will be the named partners but also the People's History Museum (Manchester), the Working Class Movement Library (Salford), and the Modern Records Centre (University of Warwick).
- The website will be promoted as a resource for schools and colleges in the specific coalfields and beyond the chosen localities: its content (images, text, finding guides and downloadable education packs) will support teaching at various levels from primary to A-Level.
- The project's recovery of documentation and artefacts will extend and deepen collections held in partner organisations. This will not only assist in the interpretation of such sites for visitors, but could facilitate re-enactments of mining life that could enhance the reputation of mining museums as visitor attractions.
- The findings will also inform the historical content of courses offered by organisations such as the General Federation of Trade Unions