The Dukeries Ascendant: migration, affluence, and community cohesion in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield 1920-1974

Metcalfe, James (2022) The Dukeries Ascendant: migration, affluence, and community cohesion in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield 1920-1974. MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

The Dukeries Ascendant investigates the impact of industrial migration and community formation in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield, during its most intensive periods of development and consolidation.

The work explores how differing conditions and motivations in the Dukeries pit villages produced variations in opinion and outcome, significant as the coalfield entered decades of dispute and challenge in the later decades of the twentieth century. It explores thematic questions during the period to evaluate this hypothesis, with emphasis placed on migration history, the role of prosperity and security in occupational communities, ownership and labour-industrial cultural norms, community infrastructure, and interrelationships between place, industry, economics, and political action.

The thesis concludes that, whilst ‘particular’ circumstances did influence economic and sociopolitical behaviour in the coalfield, these were not in themselves ‘peculiar’, or unique, to the area. These particular circumstances influenced workers and their families - themselves part of a long history of migration and transformation within the mining industry - to react in largely predictable and rational ways.

Understanding the place of the north Nottinghamshire miners within the wider industrial community, rather than alienating their experience as a discordant ‘other’, could aid a greater understanding of the later trajectories of deindustrialisation and political change across coalfield Britain.

• Item Type: Thesis (MPhil(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences
• Supervisor's Name: Phillips, Professor Jim and Kelliher, Dr. Diarmaid
• Date of Award: 2022
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2022-82972
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 16 Jun 2022 11:18
• Last Modified: 16 Jun 2022 11:20
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.82972
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/82972