Geographies of Belonging in the Nottinghamshire Coalfield: Affect, Temporality and Deindustrialisation

GEOGRAPHIES OF BELONGING IN THE NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COALFIELD: AFFECT, TEMPORALITY AND DEINDUSTRIALISATION Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leicester by Jay Emery School of Geography, Geology and the Environment University of Leicester December 2018 Abstract This thesis investigates the affective-temporal processes of belonging among mining families in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, examining how affective histories and memories of deindustrialisation and the coal industry mediate belongings. Literatures on the post- industrial working-class have noted how processes of deindustrialisation and industrial ruination have dismantled previous formations of belonging based around work, community and place. Research has also highlighted ways that the past emerges and surfaces in the present to unsettle and disrupt contemporary belongings. Analysis prescribed around specific methods belies the relationalities of discursive, embodied and sensorial textualities and distorts from how the past in the present is lived. Further, fundamental to understanding and recognising the past in the present is an attentive reading of those pasts from an historical perspective. Relatedly, social scientists have identified how affective class histories transfer intergenerationally and dispose working-class bodies to industrial forms of life that no longer exist. I suggest that the relationalities between belonging and memory, lived experience and intergenerational transferences need to be understood as one affective-temporal process. Drawing on weak theory, Anderson’s ‘analytics of affect’ and the genealogical method, I propose a multi-modal methodology emphasising attunement to the embodied, reflexive and more-than-representational modes that the past emerges, as well as a nuanced tracing of place pasts. Through this methodological and analytical framework, I conceive the Nottinghamshire coalfield as a set of temporal and affective enfolded blendings conditioning the capacities of residents to belong and resist alienation. I begin by documenting the affective genealogies of belonging in the Nottinghamshire coalfield from 1850s until the present, examining the atmospheres and embodiments of the mining community over time, apprehending previous means of belonging or not and how these conditions have been transmitted and transformed. I argue that the intergenerationality of working-class bodies and spaces is discernible in forms of behaviour, sensibilities, atmospheres and embodiments. i Acknowledgements Professors John Martin, Simon Gunn and Keith Snell for supervising. A special thankyou to Dr Katy Bennett for being an attentive, stimulating and supportive supervisor and for guiding me through the unknown world of Human Geography. Thank you to Frankie Hallas-Emery for enduring and Stella for companionship. ii Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ ii Contents ................................................................................................................................ iii List of figures ........................................................................................................................ iv Abbreviations ......................................................................................................................... v Chapter One – Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 Chapter Two – Reviewing the literatures: Belonging, deindustrialisation and industrial ruination ............................................................................................................................... 12 Chapter Three – Researching affective-temporal belongings: epistemologies, methodologies and communication ..................................................................................... 51 Chapter Four - Insecurity, alienation and barriers to belonging: the development of the Nottinghamshire coalfield, 1850s – 1947 ............................................................................ 95 Chapter Five – Scales of communal belonging and security: The Nottinghamshire coalfield under nationalisation, 1947 – 1984 .................................................................................... 125 Chapter Six – The deindustrialisation of the Nottinghamshire coalfield: Miners’ Strike 1984 – 85, union splits, colliery closures and ineffectual regeneration ............................. 157 Chapter Seven – Contested belongings and memories of industrial change: ruination, remembering and mediated nostalgias ............................................................................... 185 Chapter Eight – Growing up deindustrialised: affective narratives of belonging, memory and inheritances of class .................................................................................................... 220 Chapter Nine – Conclusions, implications and directions ................................................. 247 Appendix A – Interview List ............................................................................................. 260 Appendix B – Interview Transcript ................................................................................... 262 Appendix C – Extract: Report of Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, 1925 (Samuel Report). Cmd 2600. ........................................................................................................... 265 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 267 iii List of figures Figure 1: Collieries in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, 1900 ............................................... 96 Figure 2: Pleasley Colliery built 1870s................................................................................ 98 Figure 3: Mining families’ housing, Eastwood ................................................................. 107 Figure 4: Alley behind houses, Eastwood ......................................................................... 108 Figure 5: Collieries in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, 1930 ............................................. 110 Figure 6: ‘New’ housing in Clipstone ................................................................................ 112 Figure 7: Welbeck Colliery, 1970s .................................................................................... 135 Figure 8: Clipstone Miners’ Welfare ................................................................................. 137 Figure 9: Women’s group, Bilsthorpe, c. 1960s ................................................................ 138 Figure 10: Creswell Miners’ Welfare ................................................................................ 139 Figure 11: Mansfield Colliery branch banner .................................................................... 141 Figure 12: Bilsthorpe branch banner and procession, 1960s ............................................. 142 Figure 13: Bilsthorpe Miners’ Welfare trip ....................................................................... 143 Figure 14: The Derbyshire Miners’ Retreat, Skegness ...................................................... 144 Figure 15: Mansfield & District TUC May Day 1984, Event Programme ........................ 167 Figure 16: Rows of houses with Main Road running through ........................................... 187 Figure 17: Coaling Machine, Pleasley Museum.. .............................................................. 195 Figure 18: Volunteers at Pleasley Pit Museum .................................................................. 198 Figure 19: Rainworth Miners’ Welfare ............................................................................. 205 Figure 20: Commemorative plates in Miners’ Welfare.. ................................................... 206 Figure 21: Annesley Miners’ Welfare ............................................................................... 207 Figure 22: Half winding wheel, Rainworth ....................................................................... 208 Figure 23: ‘Tribute to the British Miner’ ........................................................................... 209 Figure 24: Sculpture, Hucknall.. ........................................................................................ 210 Figure 25: Bilsthorpe memorial.. ....................................................................................... 211 Figure 26: Clipstone headstocks.. ...................................................................................... 212 Figure 27: Silverhill Pit Woods.. ....................................................................................... 214 Figure 28: Ollerton Pit Wood ............................................................................................ 215 Figure 29: Carving by ‘Bob.’ ............................................................................................. 216 Figure 30: ‘Testing for Gas’. ............................................................................................. 217 Figure 31: Welbeck Miners’ Welfare, 2015 ...................................................................... 234 Figure 32: Erased Welbeck Miners’ Welfare ...................................................................

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