Community and Workplace
“In parallel, the geography of working-class life has been transformed. Long commutes from suburbs whose culture bears no specific relationship to work are the new normal.” (p 209)
I wouldn't want to deny that there has been a change in the nature of the relation between work and community. But, I think that, in the last thirty years, this may simply be a question of quantity rather than quality. I grew up in what the descriptive road signs still describe as the “Mining Village” of Goldenhill. In fact, already, in the 1950's, that was an inaccurate description. The few streets of terraced houses had, indeed, in the 19th century, been built mostly to house miners and their families, at the nearby Birchenwood Colliery, or the various smaller footrails still dotted around the fields that surrounded the village. Some housed workers employed at the associated Birchenwood Ironworks that provided the iron for some of the bridges built in New York, or those employed at the Birchenwood gas and coke works. The heritage was that the land at Birchenwood was reputed to be the most polluted in Europe. The heritage is also reflected in the names of the roads on the new housing estate that has been built upon it, such as Cinder Rock Way, or Red Rock Drive etc.
But, the colliery closed in the 1930's. Some of the miners moved to other pits, in the area, some of them dying in the Sneyd Colliery Disaster, which killed 57 workers including the father of one of my school teachers.. However, these mines were several miles away. As a County Councillor, I spent some time trying to ensure that traditional footpaths and rights of way were kept open, maintained and properly signposted. As part of that, I became aware of the many “miners' paths” that crossed the area. These were footpaths used by miners who “commuted” by foot from the villages and settlements where they lived to the various collieries where they actually worked. As with the pottery union lodges, based on where people lived, there was no strict correlation between community and workplace.
By the 1950's, only a small minority of the people in my village worked in mining. Many women worked on potbanks, but again that was spread over a large number of workplaces, many requiring a commute by bus. The men worked in engineering, steel production, construction and after the Michelin opened, tyre production. So, again, there was no correlation between the workplace existence and the community existence. Moreover, even the community existence was not homogeneous. In idle moments, I test my memory by trying to recall all of the names and locations and descriptions of the pubs that existed in the village. There were very many, usually one every twenty metres or so, on each side of the High Street. Affiliation to each pub was, by this time, more clearly demarcated than was affiliation to one of the eight to ten different denominations of chapel or church that were also spread at intervals throughout the village.
Similarly, an annual community event was Bonfire Night. By the 1950's, some of the older cottages had been demolished. So, every street had some area of derelict land behind it, and despite the dereliction meaning these bits of land were scattered with bricks, weeds, and the occasional dead cat, they were our playgrounds, where we played cricket and rounders, in the Summer, and football whenever we felt like, built bonfires in the Autumn, and snowmen in the Winter. But, precisely because each street had its own bit of land, none of these activities were actually “community” activities. They were always “sub-community” activities, and the result was always fierce competition.
Preparation for Bonfire Night started as early as the August School holidays. Every bonfire was huge, and would not have been allowed today. There was always lots of material, including railway sleepers after the loopline closed, and with plenty of nearby woods, full of silver birch, that provided a regular excursion. With people's living standards rising, each year there were old chairs and sofas to dispose of. But, despite the abundance of material, it didn't stop each “sub-community” trying to rob materials from their competitors, or where that was not possible, to just set fire to it before bonfire night. With such a long period of preparation, this guerilla warfare continued for a prolonged period, and, out of school hours, a lot of time was spent preparing, or fighting off such “ragging raids”. Okay, unlike today's street gangs, we weren't attacking each other with guns and machetes, but the lad I sat next to in Junior School, and who lived two streets away, was the same person who, as part of a rival gang, was somehow able to get hold of a fire extinguisher, which was used to drench me on one of these raids, leading me to respond in kind with a bucket of water. Closer to Bonfire night, the backyard of every house was full of the material, as a safeguard against it being ragged or burned.
The idea of different characters is then nothing new. The context is essentially the same; its only the platform that has changed. And, to go back to the question of commuting, this is again nothing new. Marx, in Capital I, describes the position of Navvies, for example, but he describes the position of miners similarly, because, as indicated earlier, many of the earlier collieries could only be worked to a certain extent, before a new shaft had to be dug, so the miners were continually having to move. He relates the same thing in relation to agricultural workers, who had to travel for prolonged periods, each day, to get to where they were required.
In the early 1940's, my father lodged in Rugby, Wolverhampton and Coventry, to name a few, depending on which car factory he was working at, travelling home by train, at the weekend. And, though it may not be typical, my great grandfather was Swedish, and having come to Britain, and working as a journalist, was living in Dublin, when my grandmother was born. They were living in Carlisle, at the time she went to work in a munitions factory, where she met my grandfather, who was a colliery fitter. As part of his further meanderings, as an engineer, they moved to London, when he was working at Biggin Hill, and they were living in South Wales, when my mother was born, before they returned to Stoke. It was only at my uncle's funeral a couple of years ago, that I learned that my mother's sister's husband had been born in Afghanistan, at the start of the last century.
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