Contents

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: those who walked in the darkest valleys

1. ‘Buried treasure’: industrial development in the Scottish coalfields, c. 1940s–80s

2. Moral economy: custom and social obligation during colliery closures

3. Communities: ‘it was pretty good’ in restructured locales

4. Gendered experiences

5. Generational perspectives

6. Coalfield politics and nationhood

7. Synthesis. ‘The full burden of national conscience’: class, nation and deindustrialization

Conclusion: the meaning and memory of deindustrialization

Appendix: biographies of oral history participants

Bibliography

Index

List of figures

Tables

1.1 Male employment in Lanarkshire.

1.2 Female employment in Lanarkshire.

1.3 Unemployment in Lanarkshire.

1.4 Scottish Coal employment.

5.1 Generation, temporality and employment structure in the Scottish coalfields.

Figures

0.1 RCAHMS, Map of the Scottish coalfields (2005).

3.1 Auchengeich Mining Disaster Memorial, Moodiesburn.

6.1 Bob Starrett, ‘Phase 3’, Scottish Marxist, vi (1974), 24.

6.2 Miners’ Gala Day 1969.

6.3 Gala Day 1969, featuring Joan Lester (Labour MP), Lawrence Daly, and Vietnamese Federation of Union representatives.

6.4 1988 Gala poster.