Class, Community and Collective Action

A study of the making of mining communities and their collective responses to strikes. The author begins by discussing the idea of community, looking at the ways in which sociologists and historians have constructed models of mining communities. He argues that community, perhaps more than other terms in social science, needs to be understood historically, taking into account both small-scale changes in local institutions and social structure and the ideas that people have of the places in which they have lived and worked. Although he points to the relevance of these issues to the 1984-85 dispute, Dr Gilbert's main concern is with the very different histories of community development in South Wales and in Nottinghamshire and the influence of these histories on collective action in the two areas. He examines how the mining settlements of Ynysybwl in South Wales and Hucknall in Nottinghamshire reacted to the nine-month lockout of 1926 - in that dispute many Nottinghamshire miners returned to work early while their Welsh counterparts remained on strike to the end. Dr Gilbert focuses on the changing balance of local power and explores the changing ideas of community held by the inhabitants of the two settlements.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Traditions of community. Part 2 Mining communities and collective action: Kerr and Kiegal - the isolated mass and collective action; Olson - small groups and collective action; Craig Calhoun - communal collective action; mining towns and villages as communities. Part 3 South Wales: the valleys; the structure of a local society; local politics - the axis of change; the decline of Mabonism; the miners' next step - class action and local autonomy; the reorganization of the union; the lodge in its community; the strikes of the 1920s; the strange death of liberal Wales - a sociological revolution? Part 4 Ynysybwl: the role of the chapels; the colliery company in the village; the decline of the company's influence and the rise of the lodge; labour leaders and community leaders; the sociology of Ynysybwl; strikes. Part 5 Nottinghamshire: socks and the squirearchy; butties and sticky cherries; religion and the miners; the development of a regional society; the political sociology of the coalfield; Nottinghamshire in the lockouts; the social origins of Spencerism? Part 6 Hucknall: before the mines; the coming of the pits; John Edward Ellis; labour relations and working-class organization; Hucknall into the 20th-century; strikes and Hucknall. Part 7 Class, community and collective action.

Review :
"The style is clear and purposeful....Social relations and social organization are the central themes, but the material should interest all those concerned with British coal-mining history."--Journal of Economic History