Abstract
As a coalminer’s daughter growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, my experiences were of a coalmining community that has always been divided between socialist traditions and more deferential conformist ones, between a powerful commitment to equality and deeply entrenched racisms and sexism, and between strong trade union loyalties and elements that have always colluded with management and the bosses (including within the NUM itself). Yet, we are constantly presented with damagingly nostalgic views of coalminers and coalmining communities in the past as harmonious and unified. This chapter is written as a challenge to over-simplified stereotypes of working-class history, and I attempt to unravel some of the lived complexities experienced by coalmining families in the twentieth century. It is also a very personal account of the experience of growing up in a coalmining community which recognises the divisive inheritance that comes with being a coalminer’s daughter.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arnold, J. (2018). ‘Like being on death row’: Britain and the end of coal, c. 1970 to the present. Contemporary British History, 32, 1–17.
Barron, H. (2009). The 1926 miners’ lockout: Meanings of community in the Durham coalfield. Oxford University Press.
Beatty, C., Fothergill, S., & Gore, T. (2019). The state of the coalfields 2019: Economic and social conditions in the former coalfields of England, Scotland and Wales. Sheffield Hallam University.
Beynon, H., & Hudson, R. (2021). The shadow of the mine: Coal and the end of industrial Britain. Verso Press.
Benn, T. (1989). Against the tide. Diaries 1973–76. Hutchinson.
Berger, J. (1980). About looking. Bloomsbury.
Brierley, W. (1935). Means-test man. Spokesman Books.
Cameron, D. (2012). Conservative party conference speech, 10 October, Retrieved June 28,2021, from: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9598534/David-Camerons-Conservative-Party-Conference-speech-in-full.html.
Campbell, A. (2000). The Scottish miners 1874–1939. Aldershot.
Campbell, A. (2006). Reflections on the 1926 mining lockout. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 21, 143–181.
Coman, J. (2020, 23 January). If labour doesn't talk to the voters it lost, I fear for the future. The Guardian.
Crow, G. (2002). Social solidarities. Open University Press.
Darlington, R., & Upchurch, M. (2011). A Reappraisal of the rank-and-file versus bureaucracy debate. Capital & Class, 36(1), 77–95.
Daniels, S. (2019). The Thatcher and major governments and the union of democratic mineworkers, c. 1985–1992. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 40(1), 153–185.
Dicks, B. (2008). Performing the hidden injuries of class in coal-mining heritage. Sociology, 42(3), 436–452.
Douglass, D. (1973). Pit talk in County Durham: A glossary of miners’ talk, together with memories of Wardley Colliery, pit songs and piliking. History Workshop Pamphlets, 10.
Garside, W.R. (1971). The Durham miners. Allen and Unwin.
Halevy, E. (1924). History of the English people in the nineteenth century (Trans., E. I. Watkin). Ernest Benn, Ltd.
Hoggart, R. (1957). The uses of literacy. Routledge.
Howard, W. (1991). Miners’ autobiographies, 1790–1945: A study of life accounts by English miners and their families. PhD thesis, Polytechnic of Sunderland.
Lawson, C. (2020). Making sense of the ruins: The historiography of deindustrialisation and its continued relevance in neoliberal times. History Compass, 18(8), 1–14.
Linkon, S. (2014). The half-life of deindustrialisation: Twenty-first century narratives of work, place and identity. Unpublished presentation to Deindustrialization and Its Aftermath: Class, Culture and Resistance, Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling / Scottish Oral History Centre May 1–4, Montreal, Quebec.
Moores, B. (2020). Militancy, initiative and support: The conduct of the 1972 miner’s strike. PhD thesis, King’s College.
Obama, M. (2018). Becoming. Penguin.
Obama, B. (2020). A promised land. Viking.
Okwonga. M. (2021). One of them: An Eton college memoir. Unbound.
Reay, D. (2017). Miseducation: Inequality. Policy Press.
Sahota, S. (2021). China room. Harvill Secker.
Simmons, R., Thompson, R., & Russell, L. (2014). Education, work and social change: Young people and marginalization in post-industrial Britain. Palgrave Macmillan.
Simpson, K., & Simmons, R. (2021). Education and social haunting in post-industrial Britain: Primary school pupils’ experiences of schooling in a former coalmining community. British Journal of Educational Studies, 69(6), 715–733.
Smart, R. (2014). Some poems. Arthur Stockwell Ltd.
Steedman, C. (1986). Landscape for a good woman: A story of two lives. Virago.
Steven, J. (1984). The coalmining lockout of 1926 with particular reference to the cooperative movement and the poor law. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
Thatcher, M. (1993). The downing street years. HarperCollins.
Todd, S. (2014). The people: The rise and fall of the working class. John Murray.
Turton, G. (2020, 10 December). Don’t blame remainers for this disastrous Brexit. The Guardian.
Walkerdine, V. (2010). Communal beingness and affect: A study of trauma in an ex-industrial community. Body and Society, 16(1), 91–116.
Walkerdine, V. (2016). Affective history, working class communities and self-determination. The Sociological Review, 64(4), 699–714.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Reay, D. (2022). A Conflictual Legacy: Being a Coalminer’s Daughter. In: Simmons, R., Simpson, K. (eds) Education, Work and Social Change in Britain’s Former Coalfield Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10792-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10792-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-10791-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-10792-4
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)