Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century
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Examining working class welfare in the age of deindustrialisation through the experiences of the Scottish coal miner
Throughout the twentieth century Scottish miners resisted deindustrialisation through collective action and by leading the campaign for Home Rule. This book argues that coal miners occupy a central position in Scotland’s economic, social and political history, and highlights the role of miners in formulating labour movement demands for political-constitutional reforms that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The book also uses the struggle of the mineworkers to explore working class wellbeing more broadly during the prolonged and politicised period of deindustrialisation that saw jobs, workplaces and communities devastated.
Key features
Examines deindustrialisation as long-running, phased and politicised process
Uses generational analysis to explain economic and political change
Relates Scottish Home Rule to long-running debates about economic security and working class welfare
Analyses the longer history of Scottish coal miners in terms of changing industrial ownership, production techniques and workplace safety
Relates this economic and industrial history to changes in mining communities and gender relations
Jim Phillips is Professor in Economic & Social History at the University of Glasgow, and author of Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and with Valerie Wright and Jim Tomlinson Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy since 1955 (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).