Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005

UK Data Archive

Study Number 6237

Deprived White Community? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005

USER GUIDE REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC ‘Deprived White Community’? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005

ESRC Grant Reference RES-148-25-0047

Research Report, August 2008

Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor, University of Sussex

Background

Based on detailed, grounded research, this project makes an intervention in the fraught debates in England over what have often been referred to as ‘deprived white communities’. Using the case study of North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit - three adjoining social housing estates in west Norwich – we have combined historical, geographical and migration studies perspectives to interrogate each of the three concepts: ‘deprived’, ‘white’ and ‘community’. Outputs include a book, entitled Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England, which has been accepted for publication by Palgrave MacMillan, three book chapters, two journal articles and a photographic exhibition.1

We gathered archival evidence and carried out life history interviews with long term residents, ex-residents and newcomers, analysing variations in the meaning of place to different individuals living there, and changes in these meanings over time. Because places were not fixed but in flux and what they meant to people was influenced by people’s connections to other places (Massey, 1995), and because community was so often elided with place, this raised critical questions about the idea that the place should be assumed to be a ‘community’. Building on insights from Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (2002), our ontological position was that relations between individuals in and over place were intrinsically political and were contested in both material and discursive ways.

We also set out to understand poverty in the area in connection to changes in the local, national and global economy. This entailed an investigation of class relations, as opposed to studying one particular class, and also consideration of relations between long term settled and more recently arrived people (see Hickman et al, 2008) from within the UK as well as from other countries. The concept of ‘moving histories’ used in the title of our book refers to three overlapping themes of the book – spatial mobility; the emotion that people’s stories invoked; and what we see as an innovative arrangement of material that contributes to changing the ways in which histories of class and community are told. Our outputs therefore reflect not only the concepts and theories we started with (see Rogaly and Taylor, 2007), but the reading and thinking we were able to do alongside the analysis of data.

1 Of these, one chapter and one article are under review (see Outputs).

1 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC Objectives

In what follows, each of the five objectives of the research is listed and details are provided of how it has been addressed.

1. To contribute to knowledge of changes in social and spatial identity practices since 1940 in a neighbourhood which has been categorised as a ‘deprived white community’.

This has been addressed through seventy-three oral history interviews, twenty-five of which were full length life histories, archival and ethnographic work (see Methods section). We then analysed the resulting data together using NVivo and produced a book length manuscript (see attached nominated output Moving Histories), as well as journal articles and book chapters (see Outputs). We also facilitated photographic work by Chris Clunn with selected research participants, which was exhibited in national exhibitions.

We exceeded our original objective by going back in time further to the 1920s and 1930s when the first houses were built on the estates. The vivid and positive memories of people who moved into those houses ran counter to subsequent negative and stigmatised reputation of social housing estates. We showed how, contrary to prevalent myths about the area, people were not moved into the houses en bloc but were spread around the newly built streets. We contributed to the history of how ideas about social housing held by residents, ex-residents, officials, architects and others changed over time, how these ideas influenced the ways people lived their lives, and how emerging spatial practices created a sense of belonging for some and exclusion for others (Moving Histories, chapter 2; chapter in Wetherell et al (eds), 2007, Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion).

Further, we showed that, while there was continuity of engrained material deprivation in the estates, this has not always been generalised. The structural causes of poverty varied across the period, and the meaning and experience of poverty changed along individual life courses. Some research participants expressed resentment at being labelled as ‘poor’ just because they lived in the estates. For them, resisting the category, including through humour, was an important complement to material practices of resourcefulness (Moving Histories, chapter 3; article in Twentieth Century British History, 2007).

2. To contribute to understanding of the relation between changing welfare policy, community dynamics and individual identifications in the same neighbourhood.

We conducted archival work on welfare policy and practice in relation both to Norwich as a whole and to the three social housing estates. This was integrated with extensive oral history evidence on research participants’ experiences of the everyday manifestations of the state in council offices, in the person of health visitors, and through the process of raising funds for local level initiatives. Our own ethnographic observations, for example through visits to the local area housing office and the NELM New Deal for Communities project, and our interviews with staff at various levels as well as with local activists, were also used. These data and their analysis were combined with a reading of the national and international literature on the state to develop a perspective which could account for the state’s multiple scales of operation (eg local and national), and the interaction and sometimes tension between them; the changes over time in the state’s ways of operating, and its ways of ‘seeing’ and making sense of the ‘governed’; and the extent to which these were influenced by changes in the socioeconomic composition of the ‘governed’ themselves (Moving Histories, chapter 4).

2 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC

We used the idea of ‘technologies of rule’ in our analysis of welfare policy and of the location and layout of social housing, the building of schools, and the provision of education. Consistently important in the research was analysis of how people responded to the practices of the state, including its discourses, at different levels, but particularly in its everyday, local manifestations (article in Twentieth Century British History, 2007). We paid attention to the dynamics of social and political relations in the estates (always problematising the notion that the population of the area necessarily comprised a ‘community’) in our case study of the NELM New Deal for Communities project. This has wider lessons for welfare policy because it shows both how the notion of ‘community’ deployed by the state can be a resource for people in mobilising funding for local initiatives, but also how it can enable small groups to set their own particular agenda, through claiming to speak for ‘the community’. The story of how funding for the New Deal project was won showed that determined local activists, with deep knowledge of needs and requirements, and a strong stake in the outcome, could take on the local and national state and win. It also showed that identifications could be deployed instrumentally to this end – in our case study, this involved a claim to Traveller heritage, thus distinguishing the Norwich bid from that of other ‘deprived neighbourhoods’ (Moving Histories, chapter 4).

As the research progressed, we extended this second objective to include the analysis of class relations. The state’s ‘technologies of rule’ involved class categorisations, including notions analogous to the Victorian idea of the (un)deserving poor. Within a structural context of socioeconomic inequality, our research has contributed to knowledge of such categorisations as having material consequences, and of people’s subjective experiences of class and their classed self-identifications as inherently relational (between classes) and involving complex emotions including pride, shame, loss and resentment (Moving Histories, chapter 5; chapter under review for Wetherell (ed), 2009, Liveable Lives: Negotiating Identities in New Times).

3. To contribute to knowledge and understanding of the diversity of ‘white’ identities in a particular area and thus to be able to contribute to national debates on migration, citizenship and belonging.

This objective was inspired by early consultations with staff of the NELM New Deal for Communities project, and of grey literature about the estates, which suggested that there were clear cut collective identifications in the estates of groups, all seen locally as ‘white’, but differing according to their history of settlement or ethnicity: Travellers, Irish immigrants and their descendants, people who had been cleared from ‘slums’ in Norwich’s city centre, and former agricultural workers, who had moved to the estates from lives of rural poverty. We had also been told that there were strong collective identifications associated with each estate, and that there had been periods of conflict between, for example, the Larkman and the Marlpit.

Through oral histories, ethnographic observation, and our archival work, we sought out these apparent collective identifications, divisions and histories of conflict in order to unpack ideas about ‘white’ identities in British debates on migration, citizenship and belonging. Yet we found that, though there was some truth in each identification – we did meet descendants of Irish migrants, for example, and residents of the Larkman and Marlpit estates held disparaging views about each other – there was no evidence of cohesive collective identifications based on ethnicity or settlement history. Moreover,

3 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC there were widely divergent views on where the boundaries between the estates lay, and several different interpretations of which streets made up the Larkman (Moving Histories, Chapter 2).

However, we took our work considerably further than had been envisaged under objective three by expanding standard notions of migration through including emigration by ‘white’ people; temporary as well as permanent moves; and internal as well as international migration. These stories emerged during life history interviews revealing involvement in the British colonial armed forces (particularly in Singapore, Cyprus and Aden), migration of children or siblings to Australia and Canada (through the ‘ten pound Pom’ and other assisted passage schemes), and the migration of young women to the USA (often as ‘GI brides’). Moreover, people told us of the pain they experienced as a consequence of this migration, and of what the absences and silences of some, and the visits and regular communication of others, continued to mean to them.

We started to think about such stories alongside those of new arrivals to the estates, including people from other parts of Norwich, elsewhere in the UK, and from other countries, including Filipina nurses in the local hospital, asylum seekers from Palestine and Iraq, businesspeople from India, and a white south African priest. This combination of spatial mobility and emotions contributed to the idea of ‘moving histories’ (for a third element of the idea, see Background and objective five). It also led us to propose broadening the analysis of transnational and translocal lives to include ‘indigenous’ transnationalism (Moving Histories, Chapter 5; article for Runnymede Trust Perspectives; article under review for Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies).

4. To collect a set of approximately twenty-five life histories in transcript and audio-tape form to be deposited at the UK Data Archive.

We carried out and recorded many more in-depth oral history interviews than we had planned to. We found that through diverse routes, including contacts we were led to through friends and acquaintances in the estates and elsewhere in Norwich, through the local history group (see objective five) and through newspaper advertisements, we were able to approach a wide variety of current and former residents of the estates. We felt it important to include the latter to take account of the meanings of the estate to people who had moved away as well as to those who still lived there. We interviewed twenty-six men and forty-seven women of all ages, white people, people of colour, British and foreign nationals, council tenants and people who owned their own homes, and residents of different parts of the estates.

Having gained consent to record the interviews, we returned to each participant for consent to quote from their transcript, and asked them to indicate any sections that they wished us to omit. We wrote to twenty-seven participants a third time, asking explicitly for permission to deposit them in the UK Data Archive. Because four people did not respond, we have deposited twenty-three rather than twenty-five, though these are histories of twenty-seven people as four of the transcripts deposited are based on interviews carried out with pairs (either married couples or siblings). Moreover, the transcripts are of a length and quality which, with the notes we deposited to accompany them (both on each individual interview and on the general process of collecting the transcripts), we hope will form a lasting resource.

4 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC Early on in the research we realised that it would not be possible to make deposits of audio versions of the interviews as, unlike the written transcripts, we would not be able to anonymise these. We consulted with the Director of the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme, who agreed that we should not go ahead with the deposit of the audio tape versions. To be able to do this in future research it would be necessary to get permission not only from the participant being interviewed but also from the other individuals mentioned (sometimes in intimate detail) in the course of the life history interview.

5. To develop methods of working with research participants to create a shared piece of research on a particular area.

We worked closely with research participants throughout the period of funded research and continue to be in correspondence with some people, and to speak with, visit or receive visits from others. Part of the success of the project was based on our pre- existing connections with the estates and in Norwich more widely. Taylor had long- established friendships there and Rogaly had lived and worked nearby for seven years and developed links with residents through the NELM New Deal for Communities project. We built up and maintained different ways of working according to the nature of our connection with, or introduction to, particular research participants. Some of these connections occurred through the process of the research. For example, Rogaly found, during one interview, that the research participant was a fellow parent at the school his daughter had attended in Norwich, and that their children had been in the same year. Taylor’s gardening expertise was a strong source of connection and conversation with a number of participants.

From the start of the research, our major local commitment was to the local history group that had been supported in part by the New Deal project. This involved residents from all three estates in collecting information on the estates’ histories, whether in the form of interviews, private collections of photographs or newspaper cuttings, and in compiling material for publication and exhibition. We had intended to produce a second book jointly with the group, based on life histories both we and they had collected. In discussion with the group at their monthly meetings, it became clear that they had different visions for this output. Consulting the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme Director, we decided to work alongside the group inputting to the books and exhibition they wanted to produce (see Activities section). At the same time, they readily agreed to support our continuing work towards the Moving Histories volume. The group also participated actively in the work of photographer Chris Clunn, who produced photographs of research participants and of the estates in collaboration with us. These were exhibited nationally. Four members of the group, along with other estate residents, travelled to the national exhibition sponsored by the ESRC Festival of Social Science at Brick Lane Gallery. Thus, by working closely with research participants, we were able to exceed objective five by creating a shared body of outputs on the case study area.

Methods

The main body of our empirical material is seventy-three in-depth interviews mostly conducted as oral histories, including twenty-five life histories.2 The research also

2 Just five participants were under twenty. A minority of people were interviewed in pairs (siblings, couples, friends). There were 90 sittings in all, with 13 people interviewed twice and three people interviewed on three occasions. Each interview varied in length, up to three hours, and the vast majority involved open-

5 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC involved six months of archival work: in the National Archives at Kew; the newspaper archives at Colindale and at local city archives in Norwich. Most of this archival work was done by Taylor. Together with the review of published literature, this enabled us to put our work in national and international perspective, and we thus made only minimal use of the Mass Observation Archive. The research also entailed ethnographic engagement through a three month period spent resident in the estates by Rogaly, and regular visits (between two and four days per week) by Taylor over an eight month period. We kept detailed fieldnotes as part of this work. The archival material, the fieldnotes and oral history interview transcripts were all entered into the qualitative data analysis programme NVivo for analysis and for ease of sharing between the two of us.

In Moving Histories, we sought to make visible the way the book was produced by writing sections about our own life histories and by reflecting on the relations between ourselves and research participants at various points in the text. Importantly, we drew attention to research participants’ conscious agency in the ways in which stories were told, and, thus ultimately in the content of the transcripts that formed a major part of the raw material for our study. Each transcript was sent to the interviewee to check over and for a second round of consent – this time that the content of the transcript could be quoted from in our writing.

Our interpretation and analysis, in keeping with oral history practice, was not only of speech but of silences and hesitations. In some instances, particularly in cases relating to memories of poverty, education and housing, we were able to set participants’ recollections against findings in the archives. This could confirm and enrich their accounts, or, conversely, the archives could contradict their memories. More often, the archival material offered another slant, giving ‘outsider’ and official discourses that we were able to set alongside the ‘insider’ memories of estate residents.

Results

This section comprises two sub-sections. The first presents six key findings arising from our study of the Norwich estates. The second sets the findings of the research within the broader literature with which we began this report.

i) Key findings from our research on the three Norwich estates

x Movement across the imagined and administrative boundaries of individual streets, estates, regions and nation-states shaped experiences and meanings of estate life including, for example: the presence of GIs in wartime; emigration of white British residents and their moves to multi-ethnic cities; and the arrival of new residents from within the UK and abroad.

x The estate residents were remarkably diverse and included council and private sector tenants, home owners, middle-class professionals, long-term unemployed people, Filipina nurses, Indian shop-keepers, people with British BME backgrounds, and asylum-seekers. Some were proud of the respectability they had nurtured; others displayed disdain for authority and polite conversation.

ended conversation to draw out people’s own oral histories. All but a small handful were taped and just over two-thirds were transcribed.

6 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC x Educational aspirations varied, with some feeling disadvantaged, for example by disparaging teachers, or by peer pressure not to reveal interest in study. For some older male residents, joining the armed forces had been a route to education without sacrificing peer group relationships.

x A small minority were actively involved in community organisations such as community centres and New Deal-funded projects. The setting up of the New Deal for Communities (NELM) project from the late 1990s involved committed social entrepreneurs, sometimes in competition with each other. Active long term residents had demonstrated their savviness in obtaining New Deal funding and subverting middle-class agency staff.

x Poverty had been experienced throughout the period studied but in different ways. The widely shared experience of poverty in the 1930s, and the age of austerity that followed World War Two, contrasted with individualised and isolating experiences of poverty from the late 1960s.

x While class remained critical in structuring people’s life-worlds, class identifications were contingent, ambivalent and relational, intersecting with gender, ‘race’ and generation, and expressed in complex ways with regard to socially mobile family members, other residents, and the middle-class interviewers.

ii) reflections on our findings in the context of our theoretical concerns (see Background section and Moving Histories, chapter 1)

We sought an approach that would reveal not only what people wanted to tell us regarding what had happened in the past (how and why), but how they felt about it. Our constant theme was relatedness – the relations between classes; the complex relations between class and place; and the need to move away from the assumption implicit in much literature that social housing estates have a single, static ‘culture’ that is working class, communal, and necessarily threatened by newcomers.

We built critically on Lefebvre’s idea of the production of space in the interactions, and sometimes contradictions, between ways the estates were represented by architects and planners and the perceptions and practices of people who lived and worked there. We found, moreover, that all of these changed over time, just as national discourses on the residents of social housing estates and the class composition of the people living in them changed too. Entrenched stereotypes about place and class have, to extend Skeggs (2004), led to people being ‘fixed’ in place. We explored how the state at different levels – importantly national and local – maintained discourses that portrayed some households as ‘deserving’ and others ‘undeserving’ of its support. These discourses were reflected in people’s narrations of class and the meanings of place, as, in order to express their own self-identifications, people distanced themselves from others who were ‘rougher’.

Importantly, however, identity play occurred in other ways too. In one research participant’s memories of cross-class relations in the military, we illustrated how wit was used to deflect and deflate class differences. A similar dynamic could be seen in the many tales of the ‘little person’ standing up to authority which came across in research participants’ narratives. Highlighting such reverse power relations allowed us to consider the agency of those on the estates who have so often been categorised as dependent and

7 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC passive consumers of welfare. It also revealed the range of tactics and strategies deployed by residents in order to ‘get by’ and ‘get (back) at’ (Lister, 2004), as well as the often deep material and emotional costs of living in poverty.

In spite of the delight some working class people took in besting those in authority, structural and class inequalities remained firmly in place. Yet, cross-class social mobility was, for some residents, not necessarily seen as desirable. In discussions about family members who had in some senses become middle class, there was an ambivalence about whether this should be seen as an achievement, or whether the material advantages were outweighed by people losing touch with their roots, becoming pretentious or ‘stuck up’. Similarly, there is a mix in the oral histories of class pride, and pride in the idea of belonging to a local community (for some), with the internalisation of shame, often linked to the idea that residents were ‘thick’ and unable to achieve other than manual or casual service jobs.

We learned that, for several participants, pride in practical skills was paramount. But we also saw some of the obstacles faced within state-provided education, structured in such a way as to reproduce separate education for working class and middle class people, and leading to profound discomfort and discomposure. One of the means used by estate residents, mostly men, to find a more ‘comfortable’ education was through the military, which also provided them with opportunities to expand their spatial and social horizons. When the mainly white, mainly working class, residents of the estates joined the military in the 1940s and 1950s, it usually involved temporary emigration. Just as with the arrival in the estates of different streams of newcomers, from GIs during the second world war to asylum seekers and refugees in the 1990s, emigration spoke of relationality too. The research suggested that ideas about ‘race’ and belonging were produced, to an extent at least, by flows of people out of as well as into the UK, and were rooted in the practices of British colonialism and its ending through the independence struggles of colonised peoples in the post-war period.

State discourses and state legislation produced categories of otherness. The harsh laws that effectively fixed asylum seekers in place in the UK also worked concurrently with popular media discourses to give life to the idea that people in the category ‘asylum- seeker’ or even refugee were likely to be surreptitiously seeking to get more than is due to them from UK society. These examples suggest that racist discourses and stereotypes were produced in part at least by middle class journalists and politicians in a position to publicise their views widely. At the local level we found that white middle class racism could be coupled with a very classed approach to schooling. This could lead in turn to working class children becoming a racialised group themselves. Thus the categorisation and ‘fixing’ in place of asylum seekers by estate residents and elites alike was mirrored in the ways in which estate residents themselves had been categorised and ‘fixed’ over the decades. The power of these stereotyping discourses is such that individuals focus more often on what distances them from ‘others’ than what binds them together. As people struggle to make livelihoods in the present economic downturn, this research has attempted to turn attention back to the categorisations that shape the conditions of such struggles, and the processes through which people of all classes variously shape, appropriate and resist them.

8 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC Activities

We were active participants in two key networks during the research: the local history group in the estates, and the network of fellow researchers in the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme. We attended local history group meetings on a monthly basis, both giving and receiving advice and information. By the end of the research the group had produced five volumes, which have been deposited in Norwich’s main library and city archives, and held an exhibition at Norwich Cathedral, which we attended in April 2007.

Our involvement in the Programme led us to attend and make presentations at the following conferences or workshops:

x Roundtable on Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion, Runnymede Trust and ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme, Royal Geographical Society, London, September 2005 x Identities and Social Action Programme Residential Conference, Aston University, July 2006 x Panel on Memory and Identity, British Sociological Association Annual Conference, University of East London, April 2007 x Programme Workshop on Ethnic Identities, London School of Economics, October 2006 (participant in discussion) x Programme Workshop on Thinking Spatially About Identity, Open University, March 2007 x Programme Workshop on Identities - Theoretical and Methodological Journeys, Loughborough University, April 2008

The ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme also funded our involvement with photographer Chris Clunn (http://www.chrisclunn.com), who visited the estates in September 2006. His photographs were later exhibited at London’s Brick Lane Gallery as part of the 2007 ESRC Social Science Week and at two major conferences.

We presented papers based on our research findings at the following additional events: Social History conference, Reading University, April 2006 Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, April 2007 Conference on Nationalism and National Identities: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, University of Surrey, June 2007 Workshop on Post/colonial Encounters?, University of Sussex, September 2007 Workshop on Migration, Education and Socio-Economic Mobility, University of East Anglia, November 2007 Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research seminar series, University of Sussex, November 2007

Outputs

x In August 2008 we deposited a set of twenty-three life history transcripts, fully anonymised, with introductory notes and a user-friendly explanation, in the UK Data Archive.

9 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC x Jointly authored book: Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor, 2009, Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England, Basingstoke: Palgrave x National and local exhibitions as detailed in previous section x Refereed journal article for Twentieth Century British History x Chapter for edited book (Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion, eds M. Wetherell, M. Lafleche and R. Berkeley, 2007, London: Sage), x Article ‘Moving representations of the “indigenous white working class”’ for an edited collection in Runnymede Trust’s Perspectives series (2008). x Journal article under review as part of a special issue of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. This paper is entitled ‘“They called them communists then… what d’you call ‘em now?... Insurgents?” Narratives of British military expatriates in the context of the new imperialism’ x Chapter under review for a book edited by Margie Wetherell, Liveable Lives: Negotiating Identities in New Times, to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2009. The chapter is entitled ‘“I don’t want to be classed, but we’re all classed”: making liveable lives in contemporary England’ x Presentation for the final user conference of the ESRC Identities and Social Action programme – UK Identities Today - in September 2008, entitled Post-Colonial Lives and Intersecting Identities. x In the proposal we planned to complete a volume of life histories. However, it became especially important during the research, for both ethical and practical reasons, to seek ways of complementing the NELM local history group, with whom we collaborated. In discussion with the group and with ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme Director Professor Margaret Wetherell, it was decided that we would focus on writing an academic volume relating to a wider national and international social science literature, and that group members would produce volumes based on material about the estates and their residents alone (see Objectives section). However, having made a deposit of twenty-three life history transcripts in the UK Data Archive, we would like to go ahead with a life history volume at a later stage, resources permitting. x We also planned policy outputs. Our contributions here came first in the workshops at which we either presented or actively participated, for example the workshop organised by the Runnymede Trust in collaboration with the programme in September 2005 (see above) and the roundtable mentioned below (in Impacts section) co-organised by the Social Exclusion Unit and the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme. Secondly, we interviewed and shared findings verbally with both the Chief Executive of the New Deal for Communities project in Norwich and with Alison Gilchrist, Director of Practice Development at the Community Development Foundation. Thirdly, we have begun dissemination of written work to policy audiences (Runnymede Trust article; presentation at final Identities and Social Action programme conference). Our planned outputs with the Traveller Education Service did not materialise as we were not able to carry out interviews with any Travellers in the estates, and indeed found that the locally constructed and deliberately perpetuated idea that the Travellers formed a distinct ethnic group among estate residents was in fact a myth.

10 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC Impacts

The exploding of myths about ‘white’ working-class estates interested local users, including the NELM New Deal for Communities Trust, the NELM Local History Group and West Norwich Partnership. National users from the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and John Denham MP also expressed interest in and appreciation of the work at the joint Social Exclusion Unit and ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme Roundtable on Identities, Disadvantage and Empowerment: New Thinking.

The idea of ‘indigenous’ transnationalism came to the attention of the Runnymede Trust, who commissioned an article on it (see Outputs). The idea simply stated is that the concept of transnationalism applies to groups often portrayed as ‘indigenous’ by popular media. Such groups maintain connections across space (translocally as well as transnationally) through temporary emigration by family members, neighbours and friends.

Future research priorities

This research has been truly interdisciplinary, using an unusual combination of disciplinary perspectives and methods, and leading to new insights about the history and geography of class, place, ‘race’ and migration.

Future research on poverty and inequality could usefully build on our findings about the importance of the relation between categorisation and self-identification and its material implications.

Future research on class could build on our relational approach, seeing class identifications as mobile and hybrid, even in the midst of worsening socioeconomic inequalities.

In a similar vein, opening out research on ‘race’ and migration in a direction which paid as much attention to emigration as immigration, to internal as international mobility, and to temporary as longer term mobility and settlement, could break down artificial boundaries and make an important contribution to mutual respect between individuals and communities.

There has been strong engagement with our research by research participants. Although not the case for all of those we interviewed or interacted with more informally, it was clear that many people had found their involvement to have been a positive experience.

Moving histories could be followed by research on moving geographies, building in a notion of the changing and diverse meaning of place to the individuals who live there.

11 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Full Research Report, ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC References

Hickman, M., H. Crowley and N. Mai, 2008, Immigration and social cohesion in the UK. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Lefebvre, H., 2002, The production of space. In M. Dear and S. Flusty (eds), The spaces of postmodernity: Readings in human geography. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lister, R., 2004, Poverty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Massey, D., 1995, The conceptualisation of place. In D. Massey and P. Jess (eds), A Place in the World? Oxford: OUP. Rogaly, B. and B. Taylor, 2007, Welcome to ‘Monkey Island’: identity and community in three Norwich estates. In M. Wetherell, M. Lafleche and R. Berkeley (eds), Identity, ethnic diversity and community cohesion. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore: Sage. Skeggs, B., 2004, Class, self, culture. London and New York: Routledge.

12 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Non-Technical Summary (Research summary) ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC ACTIVITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS QUESTIONNAIRE

1. Non-Technical Summary A 1000 word (maximum) summary of the main research results, in non-technical language, should be provided below. The summary might be used by ESRC to publicise the research. It should cover the aims and objectives of the project, main research results and significant academic achievements, dissemination activities and potential or actual impacts on policy and practice.

Social housing estates in Britain are often portrayed as places of poverty, widespread use of the welfare system, criminality, ‘deviant’ behaviour and family structures. In such accounts, responsibility is usually seen as lying with the individuals or the area concerned. Using a case study of the North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit estates in Norwich over seven decades, we show how individual lives are closely entwined with local, national and international processes of change. We set out to question the stereotypes about these and other similar places. To do this we carried out grounded, interdisciplinary, multi-method research; wrote a book (to be published by Palgrave in 2009), two articles and three book chapters; and worked with a photographer and local residents on the production of local and national exhibitions.

We were interested in the ways in which people were categorised, and how this influenced their own social identifications, whether individual or collective. Structural inequalities, produced and perpetuated in part through categorisation, limited people’s room for manoeuvre. But we also focused on what people were able to do within changing structural contexts, within the kinds of jobs, housing or schooling available to them as estate residents. Our research combined a dynamic historical analysis and a spatial approach to identity and brought out the importance of migration and transnationalism in relation to white working class people often constructed as entrenched and immobile.

As with the poorest households elsewhere in the country, residents of the estates were at the frontline of changes in the welfare system, from increased reliance on means-tested benefits, to the residualisation of council house tenancies and the introduction of ‘workfare’ measures. The move towards a service economy in Norwich was exemplified through the building of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the 1960s, heightening the sense that university was ‘not for the likes of us’. However, people’s stories revealed diversity, ambivalence and contingency about their own class identities. The research took a relational approach looking also at intersections between class, gender and ‘race’ identities.

Central to our analysis has been the concept of ‘moving histories’, rejecting the idea of the area and its inhabitants as bounded. Lines and divisions – social as well as spatial – are blurred, shifting and profoundly relational. We explored connections between places and between classes, and changes in both over time. Unusually for historical and geographical work, we wrote ourselves into our research, reflecting on our own self- identifications and ongoing relations with certain participants. We thus move the way histories of class and community are told.

‘Moving histories’ also refers to the importance of migration in the lives of people who

7 REFERENCE No. RES-148-25-0047 To cite this output: Rogaly, Ben et al (2008). 'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates, 1940-2005 : Non-Technical Summary (Research summary) ESRC End of Award Report, RES-148-25-0047. Swindon: ESRC did not necessarily consider themselves as migrants. The research period saw travel abroad for individuals in the armed forces in World War Two, the end of formal British imperialism across parts of Asia and Africa, and a continuation of other forms of spatial mobility both within and beyond UK borders. Stories of past lives in the estates grounded in the ‘local’ were often told alongside ones revealing participants’ own, or their close relatives’, periods spent as migrants. Spatial mobility is an important aspect of self-identification (as is immobility).

The final sense in which ‘moving histories’ is used in our work is in relation to emotions. Much of the material on changing identifications is based on in-depth interviews with 73 people, including 25 life histories. The stories people told were sometimes painful, and often humorous, for the speaker, the listener, or both. State discourses portrayed some as ‘deserving’ and others as ‘undeserving’ of support. These discourses were reflected in people’s narrations of class and the meanings of place, as people often distanced themselves from others who were ‘rougher’. Identity play occurred in other ways too. Wit was used to deflect and deflate class differences. A similar dynamic fuelled the many tales of the ‘little person’ standing up to authority in research participants’ narratives. Highlighting such reverse power relations revealed the range of tactics deployed by residents in order to ‘get by’ and ‘get (back) at’, as well as the often deep material and emotional costs of living in poverty.

In spite of the delight some working class people took in besting those in authority, structural and class inequalities remain firmly in place. Yet, cross-class social mobility was, for some, not necessarily seen as desirable. Discussions about family members who had in some senses become middle class, revealed an ambivalence about whether this was an achievement, or whether the material advantages were outweighed by losing touch with roots, becoming pretentious or ‘stuck up’. There was a mix in the oral histories of class pride, and pride in the idea of belonging to a local community (for some), with the internalisation of shame, often linked to the idea that residents were ‘thick’ and unable to achieve other than manual or casual service jobs.

We found racist discourses and stereotypes that were produced in part at least by middle class journalists and politicians, who were in a position to publicise their views widely. Working class people have become ‘fixed in place’ and themselves racialised by the middle classes and sections of the media, mirroring the negative portrayal of asylum seekers by estate residents and elites alike. The power of these stereotyping discourses is such that individuals focus more often on what distances them from ‘others’ than what binds them together.

As we came to the end of the research, however, some dissenting voices found their way into national and international policy debates, advocating solidarity among people experiencing marginalisation and growing inequality. As people struggle to make livelihoods in the present economic downturn, our on-going dissemination activities (so far through presentations at twelve academic and non-academic conferences/workshops/roundtables and through outlets such as the Runnymede Trust) have attempted to turn attention back to the categorisations that shape the conditions of such struggles, and the processes through which people of all classes variously shape, appropriate and resist them.

8 ‘Deprived White Community’? Social action on three Norwich estates, 1940-2005

Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor, University of Sussex

Explanation of the process of consent and production of the transcripts

The twenty-five transcripts (based on interviews with twenty-eight individuals) lodged with the UK Data Archive form a subset of interviews with seventy-seven individuals as part of the ‘“Deprived white community”?’ project. Our general methodology, findings of the project and our interpretation of them may be found in the end of project report and also in B. Rogaly and B. Taylor (2009) Moving histories of class and community: identity, place and belonging in contemporary England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Below we set out more specific details relating to the transcripts lodged with the archive.

The research participants whose life histories have been archived actively consented to each stage of the process. We explained the nature of the project when we first met them, and stressed that they and anyone they mentioned would be anonymised in any outputs from the project. If people were happy with this, they then signed a consent form agreeing to be interviewed and for a digital audio recording to be made of the interview.

The voice file was then sent to a transcriber, who had been instructed to transcribe not only the interview, but also any interruptions or other sounds occurring on the file. Anything which was unintelligible to the transcriber was highlighted, and Becky or Ben then listened through the interview to see if they could clarify. After this a hard copy of the transcript was sent to the research participant, for them to check they were happy with what was contained in the document. Some participants at this stage used it as an opportunity to add further comments and reflections– participants were also invited to clarify any parts of the interview which neither the transcriber nor the researchers had been able to understand. Some participants asked for sections of the transcript to be omitted or only used in a very sensitive manner, while others made substantial changes to their patterns of speech. However, most participants requested no changes at all. When the participant was happy with the transcript, they then signed a consent form allowing the material contained within it to be quoted from in the outputs of the research project. Once the transcripts had been fully anonymised, participants were once again contacted to gain their consent for their interview to be lodged with the UK Data Archive.

The choice of which of the research participants’ stories were to be archived was thus, to a great extent constrained by the nature of the active consent process. Some participants simply did not return their forms, or had moved away. We were unable, for example, to archive the transcript from an individual who had disappeared from the area in order to avoid the police, leaving no forwarding address. While in some cases we felt able to seek consent from next-of-kin of a research participant who had subsequently died, in others we felt it would be inappropriate.

Within the constraints of this lengthy consent process we also made active choices over which interviews we would like to lodge with the archive. All except one of the full length life history interviews are archived. Many of the interviews were with individuals who were born in the 1930s and 1940s and spent their childhoods living in the estates. Some of them remained in the area, while others moved away. Of the other transcripts, we decided to include individuals who had been involved in local projects and activities on the estate; those who had moved to the estates more recently; and members of a family where we had interviewed other family members of a different generation. Unfortunately, not all of the diversity we wished to show – particularly through the inclusion of transcripts of younger people and those new to the area – is reflected in the final collection, because we did not receive active consent from a small number of people.

The transcripts themselves

Each transcript is preceded by an explanation of how we met the participant, where and when the interview(s) took place, and other details which we felt were relevant to understanding the transcript. In some cases, where we had recorded detailed field notes of an interview(ee) these are also included here. This section also indicates if the participant is connected to any other of the participants whose transcripts are lodged in the archive.

In general the two researchers are identified in the transcript as BR (Ben Rogaly) and BT (Becky Taylor). The participant is usually identified as I1, and any subsequent people identified as I2, I3 etc. Where a couple were interviewed together, the preliminary material indicates which is I1 and which is I2. The transcript indicates both how long the interview was (at the end), and gives, in five minute intervals, how long it has been running.

In many cases not all of the sitting was transcribed in full. This was due in part to financial constraints, but also to the fact that interviews often diverted far from the matters we were interested in. Where a part of the interview has been omitted from the transcript for this reason it is represented by:

[transcript stops 0:06:28 - resumes 0:07:34]

In some cases parts of the interview were omitted on the request of the research participant. In other cases, during the process of anonymising the transcript, sections were omitted in order to preserve anonymity. The reason for this is given in square brackets at the appropriate place in the text.

Square brackets are also used to denote sounds, speech or other business not directly related to the interview. This is typically offers of hot drinks or other refreshments, and speech directed at pets. Square brackets are also used to include comments written on the transcript during the consent process.

[??] – indicates an unintelligible piece of speech.

A note on anonymisation

Public figures who are referred to in the interviews have not been anonymised, but semi-public figures, such as doctors and teachers have simply had their names represented by [X]. House numbers or other details which might locate an individual’s home have been replaced by [X] or [no. X], or have been removed. Research participants were invited to choose their anonymised name. Those who did not do this (the majority), had a name given to them. Owing to sensitivity over a particular community project, all contemporary or recent community projects (with the exception of NELM Development Trust) have been given a different name. The names have been chosen to reflect the aims and nature of the project in question.

‘Deprived white community’? Social action IDENTITIES in three Norwich estates, 1940-2005

Context This project analyses how residents of three social housing estates in Norwich were categorised by others since the 1930s, and the inﬂ uence on their individual and collective social identiﬁ cations. Structural inequalities produced and perpetuated in part through categorisation, limited people’s room for manoeuvre. But we also investigated what people were able to do within changing structural contexts, within the kinds of jobs, housing or schooling available to estate residents, including through the instrumental use of social identity. We conducted archival and ethnographic research, as well as oral history interviews, to record how people remembered their experiences in their own words.

Key Findings Movement across the imagined and administrative boundaries of individual streets, estates, regions and nation-states shaped experiences of estate life including e.g. the presence of GIs in wartime, emigration of white British residents and moves to multi-ethnic cities, new arrivals from the UK and abroad.

The estate residents were remarkably diverse, e.g. council and private sector tenants, home owners, middle-class professionals, long-term unemployed, Filipina nurses, Indian Research Team shop-keepers, people with British BME backgrounds and asylum-seekers. Some were proud of the respectability they had nurtured; others displayed disdain for authority and polite Dr Ben Rogaly conversation. University of Sussex b.rogaly Educational aspirations varied with some feeling disadvantaged e.g. by disparaging teachers, @sussex.ac.uk or peer pressure not to reveal interest in study. For some older male residents joining the Dr Becky Taylor armed forces was a route to education without sacriﬁ cing peer group relationships. University of Sussex becky.taylor A small minority were actively involved in community organisations e.g. community centres @sussex.ac.uk and New Deal-funded projects. The setting up of the New Deal for Communities (NELM) project from the late 1990s involved committed social entrepreneurs, sometimes in competition with each other. Active long term residents had demonstrated their savviness in obtaining New Deal funding and subverting middle-class agency staff.

Poverty had been experienced throughout the period studied but in different ways. The widely shared experience of poverty in the 1930s and the age of austerity that followed World War 2 contrasted with individualised and isolating experiences of poverty from the late 1960s.

While class remained critical in structuring people’s life-worlds, class identiﬁ cations were contingent, ambivalent and relational, intersecting with gender, ‘race’ and generation and expressed in complex ways with regard to socially mobile family members, other residents, and the middle-class interviewers.

You feel alone, even in so many people.... Over in ... Long Beach, we never felt like that. I mean same thing was there. Me and my family was there and there was no other Indian over there but we never felt that lonely. We were there for three years. Continually, without any break. And, and we never felt so lonely, sometimes we feel lonely here. Satnam Gill

WWW.IDENTITIES.ORG.UK Highlights of the Research liberal de-regulation of the labour market; and consequent re-regulation Social housing estates in 20th century of work-place relations. The context Britain are often portrayed as places throughout is one of structural of poverty, widespread use of the inequalities in English society - © Chris Clunn, 2007 © Chris Clunn, welfare system, criminality, ‘deviant’ inequalities that shift over time, and behaviour and family structures. Such have particular spatial characteristics. accounts tend to lay responsibility Places like the Norwich estates, with the individual or the area neither metropolitan, nor rural, have concerned. This ‘commonsense’ become associated with poverty, depiction might best be summed with ‘community’ responses to it; up in former Prime Minister John and often with whiteness, stasis and Major’s injunction that Britain should isolation. We set out to question learn to ‘condemn a little more and the stereotypes about these specifi c to understand a little less’ about the estates, but also more generally about poorest in society. Over a decade class. Working class lives and social housing estates are often closely later, mainstream media seem to ‘As soon as you walked on the road, in my day when I have taken Major’s words to heart, associated in public discourses on was a kid, it was like going into someone’s house you, with stereotypes of ‘white trash’ and English society. kind of go through the door and the doors shut, you ‘chavs’ used as short-hand to describe The experience and identifi cations felt secure all the way along the road you knew all the and write-off vast sections of Britain’s of any particular class cannot be neighbours, by ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle’... we used to think they were nosey but they were all looking after you all. ‘ population - often white, often living studied in isolation from other Mark Fry on council estates and nearly always classes. Moreover, discussions of poor. working class lives are too often and brought out the importance of Our research turns this elided with discourses about migration and transnationalism in phenomenon on its head. Using the whiteness, so that working class black relation to white working class people case study of the North Earlham, and minority ethnic people in Britain often constructed as entrenched and Larkman and Marlpit estates in are defi ned by their ethnic heritage immobile. Norwich, we show how individual alone. Indeed, white Britishness From the 1940s to the 1960s, lives are closely entwined with local, is often seen as being exclusively residents leaving school, male and national and international processes working class (as evident in the female, could expect to get work, of change. The research covered a promotion of the 2008 BBC TV most commonly a factory job in period from the 1930s Depression series White Season), and, contrary Norwich’s boot and shoe, food to Blair’s New Labour regime in the to a long history of migration both processing, printing or engineering 21st century, which saw expansions within the UK and internationally, industries. Since the 1970s, when and contractions of the state; shifts white working class people in Britain these industries largely relocated from the mid-1970s towards a neo- are portrayed as immobile, ‘impacted and become more capital intensive, on’ by the immigration of foreign jobs for people with few formal nationals. qualifi cations became harder to We were interested in the ways in get and more temporary. While which people were categorised, and the city’s economy as a whole may how this infl uenced their own social have made a relatively successful

© Chris Clunn, 2007 © Chris Clunn, identifi cations, whether individual transition away from manufacturing or collective. Structural inequalities, towards the service sector, pockets produced and perpetuated in part of the city where the population through categorisation, limited had relied heavily on the factories people’s room for manoeuvre. But for employment - including the we also focused on what people were three estates - experienced high and able to do within changing structural sustained levels of unemployment contexts, within the kinds of jobs, from the early 1980s. housing or schooling available to As with the poorest households them as estate residents, including elsewhere in the country and through the instrumental use of through history, residents were social identity. Because structural disproportionately employed in inequalities have continued stubbornly informal sectors of the economy and and even worsened in the UK since casual agricultural employment. They ‘These were all open fi elds that period of time... the 1970s understanding the role of were at the frontline of changes in when we came in they then fi nished building identifi cation in people’s responses is the welfare system, from increased it – paint was still wet... that was February, my particularly pertinent. Our research reliance on means-tested benefi ts, to mother come down got out two children, they sat on the stairs apparently with ice cream... combined a dynamic historical analysis the residualisation of council house February freezing cold’ and a spatial approach to identity tenancies and the introduction of

IDENTITIES and SOCIAL ACTION ‘workfare’ measures. More generally is an important aspect of self- in the area, the move towards a identification. Discourses used by service economy was exemplified certain estate residents about ‘race’ through the building of the University and contemporary immigration in of East Anglia (UEA) in the 1960s. Britain demand to be understood For people locally, links to UEA in the light of their own temporary 2007 © Chris Clunn, have been as workers rather than emigration in the colonial military students, with men working on the as well as the contemporary anti- construction of the campus, or in immigrant (and Islamophobic) security roles, and women working as sentiment propagated by some cleaners. Working class lack of access members of the media and political to higher education and what can feel elite. like the exclusive middle class culture Non-migration too, as much of university students remain ongoing as migration, is connected to problems in Britain. UEA on the identification. We were presented doorstep heightened the sense this with the strength, comfort and was ‘not for the likes of us’. However, enjoyment people could draw from understanding, for example, the being intimately tied to a place. One worlds of cleaners in universities and task then, was to avoid re-writing in private homes, began to complicate the history of the area as one of categories such as ‘working class’ and unbridled movement in an effort ‘middle class’, because they involved to destabilise more established class encounters. People’s stories narratives of community and stability. a source of jokes, occasional evasions, revealed diversity, ambivalence and One person’s move of a few streets and, for some, painful memories. contingency about their own class from the Larkman to the largely We found the interplay between identities. The research took a middle class ‘golden triangle’ area categorisation and identification relational approach looking too at of Norwich, or from one part of a had profound effects on people intersections between class, gender street to another over the course of a materially as well as emotionally, and ‘race’ identities. lifetime, could be of as much personal through historical time. These effects Central to our analysis has been significance as another’s migration to are variously produced, perpetuated the concept of ‘moving histories’, Leicester, to the US or Australia. and resisted by individuals and their rejecting the idea of the area and its The final sense in which moving actions. We have built critically on inhabitants as bounded. Lines and histories is used in our work is in Lefebvre’s idea of the production divisions – social as well as spatial relation to emotions. Much of the of space in the interactions, and – are blurred, shifting and profoundly material on changing identifications is sometimes contradictions, between relational. We explored connections based on in-depth interviews with 73 ways the estates were represented between places, between classes and people, including 25 life histories. The by architects and planners and the their changes over time. Unusually stories people told were sometimes perceptions and practices of people for historical and geographical painful, and often humorous, for who lived and worked there. We were work, we wrote ourselves into our the speaker, the listener, or both. able to show that all of these changed research, reflecting on our own self- They were moving histories in the over time, just as national discourses identifications and ongoing relations emotional sense. It is an emotional on the residents of social housing with certain participants. We thus risk to try to reconstruct one’s life estates and the class composition of move the way histories of class and to tell someone else, even if they are the people living in them changed too. community are told. a stranger - it can be harder still if We found the local and national ‘Moving histories’ also refers to the you know them well. We found this state maintained discourses that importance of migration in the lives to be the case when we wrote about portrayed some households as of people who did not necessarily ourselves. deserving and others undeserving consider themselves as migrants. The One man was in tears as he spoke of support. These discourses were research period saw travel abroad of his forced retirement through reflected in people’s narrations of for individuals in the armed forces illness and what he saw as his failure class and the meanings of place, as, in World War 2, the end of formal to live up to a kind of masculinity that in order to express their own self- British imperialism across parts of he would have been capable of in his identifications, people often distanced Asia and Africa, and a continuation youth, when he found himself unable themselves from others who were of other forms of spatial mobility to sort out a quarrel with disruptive ‘rougher’. Identity play occurred in both within and beyond UK borders. and abusive neighbours using physical other ways too. Wit was used to Stories of past lives in the estates force. More than one woman spoke deflect and deflate class differences. grounded in the ‘local’ were often told with quiet dignity while revealing the A similar dynamic fuelled the many alongside ones revealing participants’ profound impact of domestic abuse tales of the ‘little person’ standing up own, or their close relatives’, periods they had suffered at the hands of their to authority in research participants’ spent as migrants. Spatial mobility husbands. Class identifications were narratives. Highlighting such reverse

WWW.IDENTITIES.ORG.UK power relations revealed the and unable to achieve other estate residents themselves range of tactics deployed by than manual or casual service have been categorised and IDENTITIES residents in order to ‘get by’ jobs. ‘fi xed’ over the decades. The and ‘get (back) at’, as well as State discourses and state power of these stereotyping the often deep material and legislation produced categories discourses is such that emotional costs of living in of otherness drawn on again individuals focus more often poverty. in the current decade to on what distances them from In spite of the delight some legitimate new imperialist ‘others’ than what binds them working class people took ventures by the U.S. and together. in besting those in authority, Britain in Afghanistan and As we came to the end structural and class inequalities Iraq. This imperialism, like of the research, however, remain fi rmly in place. Yet, others, produces not only some dissenting voices have cross-class social mobility was, new seekers of sanctuary found their way into national for some, not necessarily seen outside confl ict zones, and international policy as desirable. Discussions about but also particular ways of debates, advocating solidarity family members who had in categorising people fl eeing among people experiencing some senses become middle confl ict and persecution more marginalisation and growing class, revealed an ambivalence generally. We found that racist inequality. As people struggle about whether this was an discourses and stereotypes to make livelihoods in the achievement, or whether were produced in part at least present economic downturn, the material advantages by middle class journalists our research too has were outweighed by losing and politicians in a position to attempted to turn attention touch with roots, becoming publicise their views widely. back to the categorisations pretentious or ‘stuck up’. Working class people have that shape the conditions There was a mix in the oral become ‘fi xed in place’ and of such struggles, and the histories of class pride, and even racialised by the middle processes through which pride in the idea of belonging classes and sections of the people of all classes variously to a local community (for media. Thus the categorisation shape, appropriate and resist some), with the internalisation of asylum seekers by estate them. of shame, often linked to the residents and elites alike is idea that residents were ‘thick’ mirrored in the ways in which

ESRC Identities and Social Action Background to the Study Programme A range of methods were had worked in the area. Most, on 3 occasions. Contacts with • used such as archival work but not all, participants were research participants came via Director and ethnography including white and had been born in the NELM Development Trust Prof Margaret Wetherell three months living on the Britain. We interviewed 26 (the organisation created • North Earlham estate. The men and 47 women of all ages, as a result of receiving New Administrator main data source was oral with a bias towards middle- Deal for Communities money Kerry Carter history interviews with current aged and older people. Just 5 from central government • residents and ex-residents, participants were under 20. in 2000), the local history Social Sciences most but not all of whom There were 90 sittings in all, group, through a piece in local The Open University were working class, and some with 13 people interviewed newspapers about the project, • middle-class professionals who twice and 3 people interviewed and personal networks. Email esrc-identities @open.ac.uk Publications Include Rogaly, B. and Taylor, R. (2009) Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Rogaly, B. and Taylor, R. (2008) Moving representations of the ‘indigenous white working class’. In K. Sveinsson (ed.) Who Cares about the White Working Class? London: Runnymede Trust. Taylor, R. and Rogaly, B. (2007) ‘Mrs Fairly is a dirty, lazy type’: Unsatisfactory households and the problem of problem families in Norwich, 1942-1963. Twentieth Century British History, 18 (4), 429-52. Rogaly, B. and Taylor, R (2007) Welcome to ‘Monkey Island’: Identity and community in three Norwich Estates. In M. Wetherell, M. Laﬂ eche and R. Berkeley (eds) Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion. London: Sage.

design by [email protected] IDENTITIES and SOCIAL ACTION

27th September 2005

RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF NORTH EARLHAM, LARKMAN AND MARLPIT ESTATES, 1930 – 2005

We are carrying out research about the history of these three estates. The project began in April 2005 and continues until September 2007. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Identities and Social Action Programme.

We have already carried out archival work to understand how decisions were taken about the building of the housing in the area and criteria for its allocation. Now, based in the area for a year, we are interviewing people about their lives in these estates, their memories of the past and the changes they have observed. We hope to interview long-term residents as well as newcomers, people who used to live here but have now left, and others who work in the area.

From this we intend to produce a book made up of people’s stories of their pasts, radio and newspaper features, and academic writing. We also want to use the material to engage in debates about wider national housing and social policy. It is our belief that the area has been stereotyped by outsiders as a ‘deprived community’ and we expect to find a much more complicated picture than this implies.

Any information you provide will be treated as confidential and unless you specify otherwise in writing will be made anonymous too. If we carry out a taped interview with you, we will ask you to sign your consent below on the understanding that we will show you the transcript and seek your confirmation before using it in our writings.

Dr Ben Rogaly and Dr Becky Taylor, University of Sussex

------

I understand the purposes for which the research is being conducted and agree to my interview being recorded on the basis that the researchers guarantee confidentiality and anonymity and will show me the transcript for confirmation before they make use of it in their work.

Signature: Name (printed): Date:

6th September 2006

RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF NORTH EARLHAM, LARKMAN AND MARLPIT ESTATES, 1930 – 2005

Dr Ben Rogaly and Dr Becky Taylor, University of Sussex

Signature: Name (printed): Date:

Dear ,

Please find enclosed a copy of the transcript of the interview you did with us for our project on the North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit estates. Hopefully it is self- explanatory, but there are a few things we would like you to have in mind as you read it:

• We have sent a long transcript, but is it likely we will only quote short extracts from it in anything we write. • We have made you anonymous by calling you I1 (interviewee one), but we have not yet anonymised the names of family, friends or anyone else you mentioned in the interview. We will do this before we use any material from the interview. Normally we choose the names, but if you have any strong preferences then let us know! • There may be spelling mistakes of names, companies or places not familiar to us. Please feel free to correct these. • We hope that you feel the transcript is an accurate representation of what you said during the interview. If there is any part you want to make clearer or would rather we did not quote then please let us know.

One of us – probably Becky – will be happy to come and talk over any issues you have with the transcript, or the interview in general. You can contact us at the following numbers:

Becky Taylor: Ben Rogaly:

If you are satisfied with the transcript then please sign and return the slip at the bottom in the SAE provided. You may keep the transcript as your record of the interview you gave.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for sharing your time and memories with us, they are invaluable to our project.

Yours

Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor

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I confirm that I am satisfied the transcript is a fair and accurate representation of the interview I gave, and am willing for quotes from it to be used in Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor’s research [subject to any agreed amendments]

Name: Signed:

29th April 2008

‘Deprived white community? Social action in three Norwich estates, 1940-2005

Dear ,

We are now in the closing stages of our research looking at the history of the North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit estates which we began in 2005. One of our aims in doing the project was to make sure that the stories and memories we recorded reached as wide an audience as possible. We now have the opportunity to put the transcripts of the best twenty-five life history interviews we recorded in the UK Data Archive, held at the University of Essex. This archive is used by researchers from Britain and abroad and is of international importance.

We would very much like to include the transcript from your interview with us in the selected transcripts, and need your written agreement to do this. If you are happy for us to so this then please fill in the tear-off slip and send it back to us in the pre-paid envelope. If you think you would like it to happen, but feel you need more information, then please contact us on one of the numbers below, or using the pre-paid envelope. Becky is currently in the process of anonymising the transcripts (changing people’s names, taking out addresses or anything else that might link the interview with you) and would be really happy to answer any questions you might have.

Once again, thanks so much for taking part in our project, we could not have done the research without your participation, Yours,

Ben (Rogaly) and Becky (Taylor)

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I consent the transcript of my interview, after it has been fully anonymised, to be placed with the UK Data Archive, held at the University of Essex.

Name:______

Date:______

Signed:______

'Deprived White Community'? : Sussex Centre for Migration Research :... http://www.sussex.ac.uk/migration/1-2-2-2.html

Sussex Centre for Migration Research Home > Research > Current research > 'Deprived White Community'? 'Deprived White Community'?

'Deprived White Community'? Social Action in Three Norwich Estates. 1930-2005

Ben Rogaly and Becky Taylor, University of Sussex January 2007

The Project

This research project is part of the ESRC's Identities and Social Action programme (www.identities.org.uk (http://www.identities.org.uk)). It has involved long-term engagement with people resident in three Norwich housing estates, often referred to collectively as the Larkman, as well as archival work. Both of us knew estate residents before the research, as we had lived, worked or studied nearby, and had friends living in the area. The Larkman is seen by others in Norwich as a 'white working-class estate', and its residents have been stereotyped in the past as poor, criminal, and of low educational potential. The project aimed to explore the relation between such categorisations by outsiders and residents' individual and collective identifications, in the context of social, economic and cultural change in the period 1930-2005.

Working with the local history group, we wanted to explore myths that had grown up about the Larkman, through collecting oral histories from residents, old and new, as well as from people who had left the area. Seventy-eight people were interviewed in all, and their stories reveal a much more nuanced and dynamic picture than the stereotypes convey. We found social identities to be in flux rather than static, and influenced by relationships between classes, generations, genders and ethnic groups, and by the categories used about people by others and by organisations, including the state.

References

i) B.Rogaly and Becky Taylor, 2007, Welcome to 'Monkey Island': Identity and Community in Three Norwich Estates, chapter in M.S. Wetherell, M. Lafleche and R. Berkeley (eds) Identity, Ethnic Diversity and Community Cohesion, London: Sage.

ii) B. Taylor and B.Rogaly, 2007, 'Mrs Fairly is a dirty, lazy type': Unsatisfactory Households and the Problem of Problem Families, Norwich 1942 to 1963, Twentieth Century British History, 18 (4).

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"as soon as you walked on the road, in my day when I was a "You feel alone, even in so many people.... Over in... Long kid, it was like going into someone's house you, kind of go Beach, we never felt like that. I mean same thing was there. through the door and the doors shut, you felt secure all the Me and my family was there and there was no other Indian way along the road you knew all the neighbours, by 'auntie' over there but we never felt that lonely. We were there for and 'uncle'... we used to think they were nosey but they three years. Continually, without any break. And, and we were all looking after you all." never felt so lonely, sometimes we feel lonely here."

Tony Cooper Sukhpreet Singh

"these were all open fields that period of time... when we "My old man used to shout out 'new po-ta-to'. You could come in they then finished building it - paint was still wet - hear him at school... And I wouldn't do nothing [at school], that was February, me mother, come down got out two would I... I said, 'I don't need it for fruit and veg, do I? All I children, they sat on the stairs apparently with ice cream, wanted to do is fruit and veg, and I won't learn up there', February freezing cold!" and I was right..."

Jack Baker Roy Wymer

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"I do feel a lot different because I feel as if I haven't had "I always played on the street... it's very much a street the education but I've been educated by life. I've seen a lot. culture but I think it was then more safe, thirty, forty years I've been a lot of places. I went through the Suez Canal on ago.... yeah playing on the street, always kids everywhere. a troop ship... when I saw the film of Lawrence of Arabia There was never, you never had to go and knock on and you see the line up as if that's in the sand I thought, anyone's door there were just kids everywhere and... com, 'I've been there, done that'" reasonably comfy, you know, nice."

Flo Smith Sharon Wilkinson

Reflections on the Visual and Working with Chris Clunn

Our aim with the visual side of the project was to record something of the physcial presence of individuals we have worked with, to complement the vividness of their recorded life histories. As with the project as a whole, we wanted to get behind the stereotypes of the estates and to reveal the diversity of people and their experiences. In the process of conducting the research project, we built relationships that went beyond a recorded interview, and hoped that something of this personal contact could also be captured through the photographs.

As with the interviewing process, working with Chris revealed the collision of what is 'natural' and what is 'artificial' in the process of doing research and collecting data. When you build some degree of rapport with people, it is easy to forget what a constructed situation we are all acting within; how, when we walk into a virtual stranger's sitting room armed with a voice recorder or camera, we are in a very physcial sense intruding into people's lives. In spite of this, we were consistently met with openness and co-operation, reflecting participants' willingness to be photographed, Chris' calm and quietly authoritative persona, and the good relations that had, we hope, emerged from the approach taken during the preceding year of research.

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13:40 > Monday 7th December 2009 Home page Story Search Text only News & Sport TV listings New book is trying to dispel myths surrounding three Norwich estates Members Norwich youngsters in tree planting record bid SAM EMANUEL Log in City centre electrical 03 December 2009 10:00 Sign Up fire Forgotten password Fire crews called to home fire Car fire believed to be The North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit areas of Norwich are not always deliberate blessed with the best of reputations. However, the estates actually have a Norwich priest's charity fascinating 80-year history, which has now been revealed in a new book bike ride to climate aimed at dispelling the myths of the area. summit News stories in full Video News Forums People living in North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit have been sharing their views and memories of their estates in a new book being launched Sport latest tomorrow. Paul Lambert The book, which is called Moving Histories of Class and Community, Milton Lindsay includes the personal histories of more than 70 past and present local residents, and has been written by Dr Ben Rogaly from Sussex University Paul Newman and Dr Becky Taylor from the University of London. City View Neil Adams It was funded by the West Norwich Partnership and the University of East Anglia's CUE East project, which was set up just over a year ago to boost League One Chat engagement between academics and the local community. Notes from a Sportsdesk Dr Rogaly, a former senior lecturer at UEA, said: “The book sets out to Blog: Head of Sport look behind the myths of the estates, which were, and are, often written Golfing tips off by the rest of Norwich as full of welfare dependents, criminals and cut Champions! off from the rest of the city.” PinkUn.com It shows how people have attempted to improve their circumstances over the decades and explores community achievements, including the £35 What's On million New Deal for Communities funding in 2000. Eating Out The bid was made by the North Earlham, Larkman and Marlpit Partnership Listings Search - a group of community organisations working together to make the area safer, healthier and more productive. MyDate24 Live reviews Dr Taylor said: “When we spoke to people we saw again and again how, far from being passive victims of poverty, people actively fought to better their circumstances and in doing this also created a rich community on the Jobs24 estates.” Homes24 Bonnie Carpenter, 61, who has lived on the Marlpit her whole life, was Drive24 one of the residents involved in providing information for the book, and Small Ads said that while the area used to be “very rough”, things had improved a LocalQuotes24 great deal over the years.

Buy a Photo The mother-of-four and grandmother-of-seven, who now lives in Jex Subscribe Avenue with her husband Richard, also 61, said: “When I was about 10, Shop police officers would go round here three at a time, because otherwise they wouldn't get out the other end. Place an ad Leaflets “Most people were on welfare and there were a lot of petty criminals. My mother would never let me go over the Larkman when I was younger. Family Notices But you got good and bad people living there, just as you do anywhere.

Forums “I don't think it is like that so much now; it's fairly quiet. A lot of people have bought their council houses now and places change - people move Blogs on and new people move in. It is a place where people don't have much MyDate24 money, but it doesn't matter how much you have got, you can still be a good person. Family Notices Reader Photos “There is a real sense of community and I would never want to live Text the Editor anywhere else because I know so many people here.” Games

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Reader Travel Mrs Carpenter, who was a full-time mother and then a babysitter, but has now retired, has a vast array of memories of life on the estate from when On The Web she was a child. Video Vault She said: “I can remember when trains used to go past the little station in Search the archive the Marlpit, but I think that closed in the '60s. When you crossed the Dereham Road it was like being in the countryside, and if we saw one car Family Notices a week we were doing well.

Local Life “Down Gunton Lane used to be the Gunton brickworks, which used to Your Tributes make red bricks for the city. And years ago, Romany gypsies used to camp down there. I can remember them all coming past with their Business twinkly little lights.” Derek James Life Matters Val Clements, 54, a mother-of-three and grandmother-of-four, who was also involved in the project, has seen four generations of her family living Norwich features on the Marlpit estate on Jex Road. Originals Stacia Briggs The escort for a special needs children's bus, who presents a weekly show on community radio station Future Radio, said that she grew up in a Your Rubbish three-bedroom house with eight brothers and sisters, just 50 yards away from where she lives now, and that her mother had lived in the house for 62 years. Infodesk Links She said: “When I was young there were a lot of big families and we were Travel latest all in the same boat. Some were living in four bedroom houses with 15 or 20 children, but now families are smaller, obviously. Speed cameras OTHER TITLES: Parking “I've never had any problems living here; I've always loved it. There is a very good community atmosphere and we always welcome newcomers. Homes24 Weather Homes24 has been “We do have a reputation of not being a nice area, which can sometimes produced to make life easy for people looking Contact us be quite hurtful. In the 70s and 80s there was quite a lot of crime, but for homes and property since then the police have mingled more and worked with the community for sale or rent in Feedback and things have improved a lot. Norwich, Norfolk and Advertise further afield Place a trade ad “The NELM development trust has spent an awful lot of time and money improving education, aspirations, health and employment in the area. Drive24 Subscribe Looking to buy or sell? “But I've been to a lot of meetings in the past where you hear people Or simply interested in Wedding form the latest motoring talking about this place and you think 'oh my God, I wouldn't want to live Privacy news? Then drive24 has wherever that is', and then you realise they are talking about where you been built with yo u in Terms & Conditions live. mind.

“Before people make a judgement, they should come here and see what SEND US NEWS, PICS, Jobs24 it's really like and meet people and find out their stories. VIDEOS Find your dream job in Norwich and Norfolk on MMS 07907 902190 “I hope this book will help to show what it's like and show all the good the Jobs24 website e:[email protected] things about the place, because there are a lot.” t: 01603 772443 Nelson's Journey: A special launch for the book, which normally costs £50, will take place The Evening News tomorrow at the Fourways Community Centre in Stevenson Road, Charity for 2008. Norwich, from 2.30pm to 4.30pm, when it will be on sale for £15. Anyone Find out more wishing to attend should call 01603 591561 or email [email protected].

Are you involved in a project to help improve your community? Call reporter Sam Emanuel on 01603 772438 or email [email protected] Future Radio Listen live

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