E W A N G I B B S ( P H . D C A N D I D A T E ) E C O N O M I C A N D S O C I A L H I S T O R Y U N I V E R S I T Y O F G L A S G O W

THE CULTURAL CIRCUIT OF COALFIELD MEMORY: FAMILY AND COMMUNITY IN MINING NARRATIVES

INTRODUCTION

•Breaking down “the workers” shibboleth

•Restoring individuals

•Meanings and understandings

•Family and community in the coalfield context

CULTURAL CIRCUIT

•Interplay of private and public memory

•Role of hegemonic narratives in framing experiences.

•Thomson, Anzacs, Summerfield, women in war.

•But possibility of appealing to “particular publics.”

FAMILY

•Cultural circuit through family stories and memories.

•Campbell’s "genealogies of victimisation and radicalism.”

•Mick McGahey (Junior): My father was born in Shotts, my family was born in Shotts, and once eh they moved fae pit tae pit cause miners were like gypsies at that time the pits were owned by coal owners, werenae nationalised. So in my grandfather’s day eh y’know they moved when they were victimised. My grandfather was involved in the 1926 general strike, he got sent to jail, he did six month in the jail. My grandmother got evicted, family oot the pit owner’s hoose, and they ended up in Kent and they moved aboot the coalfields in England and eventually came back to Scotland and settled in Cambuslang.

FAMILY 2

•Ewan Gibbs: You mentioned sort of stories of your grandfather and the ’26 strike. Was that something those sort of stories and identities that you were aware of?

• •Brendan Moohan: I think in some families like in mine yes. Because ma grandfather had been political, he’d been a Communist. And ma father had been political, he was a kinda hybrid between kinda Catholicism and left-wing Labour. So that did exist, there was , I wasn’t, I have to say I wasnae hugely into it until the actual miners’ strike. But we knew about, I knew he’d been blacklisted. I knew ma auld man had been involved in strikes. I actually can even remember us cheering the power cuts in the 1970s as kids cause we knew we were wining.

FAMILY 3

•Jessie Clark: My father was a union man and during the ‘30s when I was growing up my father was unemployed quite a lot, you know it was a question of first out you know last in. And I have no doubt I have no doubt, eh, there were people who, eh, I’m afraid there’s two things that, the enemies, that my father always talked about was the likes of the landowners and the Masonic Lodge.

•Jessie Clark: Little Moscow…Had sweet nothing to do with the people that owned the pits but it was the miners themselves you took the initiative to eh create these different organisations you know eh you could have a very busy life in that wee village.

COMMUNITY

•Extension of attachment to industry and both ‘alternative’ and ‘oppositional’ culture.

•Role of institutions and organisations.

•Focus groups and couple interviews distinct.

•Differing forms of dialogue.

COMMUNITY 2

•Bill Paris: It was actually quite a busy town and there was many local amenities for everyone well the Miners’ Welfare existed at that time and eh I can remember there was swimming baths and a library and various other...I would say y’know associations clubs built round aboot it ie eh there was tennis courts, bowling green

• •*Interruption* Margaret Beresford : Snooker

•Bill Paris: Snooker, there was a billiards club and eh also there was the junior football clubs. Football was a strong very strong thing in the area because there were junior clubs amateur clubs juvenile clubs and they were they say probably quite a lot at least half a dozen maybe even more eh and all sorts ae other pastimes associated you had the dog track as well doon there and eh so if anybody else wants tae?

••Willie Hamilton: Willie Hamilton eh when I was born it was a miners row and most of the houses in Shotts was miners row and at one time there were 22, 21 pits in this area y’know between mines and eh eh pits and mines eh pits and mines they reckon there’s in the region something in the region between 7 and 8 thousand men worked in the industry between the steel industry and the coal industry. I was born in the Garrat Row and majority of men at that time people were born in miners rows and eh half past 5 in the morning hte place was absoloutely chock a bloc with people going work. But now you could go out at half past five you could be there same.

• •Ella Muir: Billy what was it like to live in that sort of what was it liek the circumstances like?• •Willie Hamilton: Oh people were very close.

COMMUNITY 3•Billy Maxwell: Nationalisation was good but I worked in Cardowan from 1957 to 1979 22 years and there were more than 20 men killed so think aboot that that’s wan pit now think aboot the amount ae pits there was in Scotland. And that’s only 22 years it was open for 50 years.

• •Willie Allison: You just think about the pit just doon the road 47 men killed.• •Billy Maxwell: Auchengeich I did a wee bit of history of Auchengeich I looked into it up to 1931 I’ve got the names up in the hoose. It started getting sunk in 1905 the first coal come oot in 1908 and that’s when Bridgend was built and well it was built there were 20 hooses built first for the shankers and that that were sinking the pit. But between 1905 and 1931 there were 31 men killed in Auchengeich that’s in 20 odd years now that was before the big disaster of ’47 if you add up Auchengeich lifetime I’ll be very surprised if there wasnae a hundred men killed in it and that’s 1 pit.

• •Willie Allison: The situation that’s how miners somebody got killed they’d a day aff it was a protest it was mare of a protest situation because in the ‘30s it was killings every pit every day. And the safety was was non-existent so what the miners did they went on strike they wouldnae go to work the next day so the company lost money.

• •Peter Downie: And it was also a bit ae respect for the men killed as well.• •Billy Maxwell: I mean if you talk aboot deep mining for the start you’d need to go back 300 years or 4 you’d know more aboo that than us they first discovered coal and coal lies in the shape o’ a saucer so it goes to the surface. That’s how drift mines were started first before deep mining. And deep mining came with the industrial revolution. And deep mining in the industrial revolution financed the world we have today at the cost ae a lot of miners.

CONCLUSION

•Both family and community key sites for the cultural circuit.

•Collective memory operating at different levels.

•Role of social institutions, trade unionism and health and safety.

•Differing forms of dialogue.

REFERENCES

REFERENCES

•Images•http://www.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-199-850-C&scache=24589br665&searchdb=scran

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

•Literature•Campbell, A. The Scottish Miners, 1874-1939 Volume One: Industry Work and Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)

•Portelli, A. The Battle of Valle Giulia, Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)

•Summerfield, P., ‘Culture and Composure: Creating Narratives of the Gendered Self in Oral History Interviews’, Cultural and Social History vol.1 (2004) pp.65–93.

•Thomson, A., ‘Anzac memories: putting popular memory theory into practice in Australia’, in Green, A. and Troup, K. The houses of history: a critical reader in twentieth-century history and theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) pp.239-252.