Fundamentals at stake: the Conservatives, industrial relations and the rhetorical framing of the miners’ strike in 1984/1985

Steber, Martina

doi:10.1080/13619462.2017.1408536

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Thatcher and her government during the 1984-5 Miners' strike, with unionists portrayed as the UK's 'enemy within' with the USSR as the 'enemy without' 14 , may cast a long shadow over a period and places for no new economic narrative or rationale has been found (Steber, 2018;Beatty et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The shadow of the Pithead: Understanding social and political attitudes in former coal mining communities in the UK

Abreu

Jones

2021

Applied Geography

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The economic plight and consequent social and political attitudes of 'left behind' communities have become subjects of intense focus across a world impacted by inequality, social unrest, and political populism. We examine whether particular forms of long-term economic decline affect how residents in different places view the world; here in former coalmining communities of the UK which remain economically peripheral, and are home to community narratives that emphasise the shared economic, political and cultural heritages that are often fundamental those places' very existence. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to contrast political views and social attitudes in communities that were, in 1981, economically dependent on coal mining, with other communities that are similarly economically peripheral in contexts and challenges, but without a shared history of economic decline. We find that residents of former coalmining communities are highly politically disengaged, with low levels of trust and political efficacy, and low involvement in the political process. Moreover, our analysis shows an increase in political engagement over the Brexit campaign period, which directly addressed some of the grievances felt by these communities.We conclude that community narratives of economic peripherality are strongly inter-linked with trust in government and political engagement.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The shadow of the Pithead: Understanding social and political attitudes in former coal mining communities in the UK

Abreu

Jones

2021

Applied Geography

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“…Mining community residents are on almost all our measures (compared to matched individuals elsewhere) less interested in, and feel far less knowledgeable about politics; they are less likely to have voted (and feel this is true of their neighbours), and far less likely to intend to; and they (no doubt-relatedly) are more likely to think voting doesn't matter. It is impossible to say from where these attitudes stem, but the rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher and her government during the 1984-5 Miners' strike -with unionists portrayed as the UK's 'enemy within' with the USSR as the 'enemy without' 11may cast a long shadow over a period and places for no new economic narrative or rationale has been found (Steber, 2018;Beatty et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Shadow of the Pithead: Understanding Social and Political Attitudes in Former Coal Mining Communities in the UK

Abreu¹,

Jones²

2020

Preprint

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The economic plight and consequent social and political attitudes of ‘left behind’ communities have become subjects of intense focus across a world impacted by inequality, social unrest, and political populism. We examine whether particular types of local long-term social and economic history affect how residents in different places view the world; here in former mining communities of the UK which remain economically peripheral, and are home to community narratives that emphasise the shared economic, political and cultural heritages that are often fundamental those places’ very existence. We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to contrast political views and social attitudes in communities that were, in 1981, economically dependent on coal mining, with other communities that are similarly economically peripheral in contexts and challenges, but without a shared history of economic decline. We find that residents of former coalmining communities are highly politically disengaged, with low levels of trust and political efficacy, and low involvement in the political process. Moreover, our analysis shows an increase in political engagement over the EU referendum campaign period, which directly addressed some of the grievances felt by these communities. We conclude that community narratives of economic peripherality are strongly inter-linked with trust in government and political engagement.

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“…Modernization becomes an absolute imperative, which is defined at least in part by its opposition – ‘That which is not “on-side” or “on-message” is by definition anti-modernisation and out-dated’ (Finlayson, 1998: 18). 10 This rush to ‘modernisation’ left working-class memories of the conflict unaddressed, with lasting effects in twenty-first-century British society (Steber, 2018), including the impact on the defeated mining communities themselves (Nettleingham, 2017; Perchard, 2013), and particularly the toxic legacy in the former coalfields of Nottinghamshire, where Unions and communities were bitterly divided (Emery, 2018). Attempts to tell the story of labour history in the United Kingdom, and particularly the pivotal moment of the strike and its aftermath, demonstrate clear tensions between mediatized versions of collective memory, most of which internalize the modernization narrative to some degree, and the unresolved trauma of a largely untold bottom-up history rooted in experience.…”

Section: ‘Modernize or Die!’: Burying Struggle In The Coalfieldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obstinate memory: Working-class politics and neoliberal forgetting in the United Kingdom and Chile

Watkins

Urbina-Montana

2022

Memory Studies

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In the 40 years since Chile and the United Kingdom became the crucibles of neoliberalization, working-class agency has been transformed, its institutions systematically dismantled and its politics, after the continuity neoliberalism of both the UK Blair government and the Chilean Concertación, in a crisis of legitimacy. In the process, memories of struggle have been captured within narratives of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher) – the present, past and future collapsed into Walter Benjamin’s ‘empty homogeneous time’. This article explores ways in which two traumatic moments of working-class struggle have been narrativized by the media in the service of this ‘presentism’: the 1973 coup in Chile and the 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike in the United Kingdom. We argue that the use of ‘living history’ or bottom-up approaches to memory provides an urgently needed recovery of disruptive narratives of class identity and offers a way of reclaiming alternative futures from the grip of reductive economic nationalism.

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Fundamentals at stake: the Conservatives, industrial relations and the rhetorical framing of the miners’ strike in 1984/1985

Cited by 11 publications

References 24 publications

The shadow of the Pithead: Understanding social and political attitudes in former coal mining communities in the UK

The shadow of the Pithead: Understanding social and political attitudes in former coal mining communities in the UK

The Shadow of the Pithead: Understanding Social and Political Attitudes in Former Coal Mining Communities in the UK

Obstinate memory: Working-class politics and neoliberal forgetting in the United Kingdom and Chile

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