“That was never what it was supposed to be about”: Interpreting the shift from

self-contained industrial communities to dormitory towns in the Lanarkshire

coalfields since the 1940sEwan GibbsESRC funded Ph.D candidate University of Glasgow

Designated decline

1951-1971 over 16,000 coal jobs lost

Industrial reconstruction

Effect on communities

The Lanarkshire coalfields

Bluestone and Harrison “capital versus communities”

Cowie and Heathcott “beyond the ruins”

High “smokestack nostalgia”

Deindustrialisation literature

Mick McGahey “social fabric”

Occupational community

Miners’ Welfare activities

Integration of industry and life patterns

Communities

Loss of local pits

New industries, ‘cosmopolitan’ pits and migration

House demolition and construction

Industrial restructuring

Bobby Flemming: It certainly fragmented. In the mining there was a common strand running through everything whereas going to all different industries it certainly fragmented

Betty Turnwood: The more people went out to different jobs the less people were all the same.

Willie Hamilton: The community as you say fragmented they werenae so closed as what they were. I once said tae ma son when I was young every door you could go intae it wisnae locked. He says “what if somebody” I said “we had nothing to steal!” Willie Hamilton: The other thing is I lived in Lansdowne Crescent in Shotts a street of maybe what well I think the numbers went up to about 120 or 130 and eh so 120 or 130 houses I could actually name I would say 95% of the people in that street. I moved down to Morningside ten years ago I know my next door neighbour the guy across the road and that’s it. Cathie Radcliffe: Cause they’re all going different places.

Shotts Focus Group

DM650019_B_A.wma

End deep coal mining 1983

Decline other industrial work

Private house building and commuting “incomers”-Coalburn, Carluke, Shotts.

Siobhan McMahon: They’re seeing it as a town to build nice new houses in absolutely because it’s half way between Glasgow and Edinburgh so it gets you along the motorway. That was never what it was supposed to be about that was never what Bellshill was.

Intensified deindustrialisation

clip_A.wma

Gilbert Dobby: Am a type ae person I like nostalgia I like seein’ old things and that. It broke ma heart the day I come oot ae that school and locked it the last person janitor or staff member tae work in it ah had a lump in ma throat. Same when the schoolhouse went doon years ago that was a bit ae a dispute wi’ people in Coalburn caused that to come down. Things like that heritage well I’m in the heritage! These things cannae be brought back that school that wis up there the sandstone school beautiful school it had character. There’s a big new modern building sitting up there with traditional houses round about it. It’s like a sore thumb sticking out. And ah think we should ah think it’s a shame that people don’t think so much aboot the heritage

Nostalgia 1

Bonnet “radically critical” Mah “ambivalent” nostalgia

Alan Blades: It’d maybe be good for some ae them cause some ae them would probably say “I’ll need to be good I’ll need to start gettin’ into ma education” y’know. And go to uni and college and aw that y’know.

Michael McMahon sectarianism

Jessie Clark, Marian Maleod women’s employment

Nostalgia 2

Sense of place and identity

Awareness of sites of old pits

Trigg “landscapes of memory”

Auchengeich memorial

Continuity

Qualitative social change

Stages in transition

Continuity in industrial and community identities

Conclusion

Images

Gibbs, E. ‘Auchgeneich Memorial’, 12/3/2014.

Gibbs, E. ‘Shotts pavement design’, 3/3/2014.

Campbell. J. ‘Burroughs Factory Under Construction, Cumbernauld (1957)’ The Jim Campbell Show <https://www.flickr.com/photos/thedouglascampbellshow/2973475338/> [accessed 9/4/2014].

‘Supporters of Douglas Water Thistle Junior Football Club’ c.1954 in Hamilton, J. Rigside Record Part Four (Hamilton, 1993) p.144.

References

Bluestone, B and Harrison, B. The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. (New York: Basic Books, 1982)

Bonnett, A. Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010)

Cowie, J. and Heathcott, J. ‘Introduction: The Meanings of Deindustrialization’ in Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization ed. by Cowie, J. and Heathcott, J. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni Press, 2003) pp.1-15

High, S. Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003)

Trigg, D. The Aesthetics of Decay: Nothingness, Nostalgia, and the Absence of Reason (New York: Peter Lang, 2006)

References