HUMSS - Jörg Arnold

The British Miner in the Age of De-Industrialisation: from Loser to Winner – and back again, ca. 1967-1997

As the British coal industry became caught up in the de-industrial revolution of the late twentieth century, the coal miners repeatedly found themselves at the centre of public conflict and debate: they were imagined as heroes and villains, traditional proletarians and affluent workers, perpetrators and victims. Rather than try to establish who the miners ‘really’ were, the talk asks about the frictions and intersections between self-images and broader social imaginaries. Drawing on the work of R. Williams and R. Koselleck, it makes an intervention in the fields of labour history, de-industrialisation studies and contemporary British history.