The 1926 Miners' Lockout

Meanings of Community in the Durham Coalfield

Hester Barron (Lecturer in History, University of Sussex)

$313

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Oxford University Press
05 November 2009

British & Irish history; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Social & cultural history; Mining industry; Strikes

Series: Oxford Historical Monographs

The miners' lockout of 1926 was a pivotal moment in British twentieth-century history. Opening with the heady days of the general strike, it continued for seven months and affected one million miners. In County Durham, where almost three in every ten adult men worked in the coal industry, its impact was profound. Hester Barron explores the way that the lockout was experienced by Durham's miners and their families. She investigates collective values and behaviour, focusing particularly on the tensions between identities based around class and occupation, and the rival identities that could cut across the creation of a cohesive community. Highlighting the continuing importance of differences due to gender, age, religion, poverty, and individual hopes and aspirations, she nevertheless finds that in 1926, despite such differences, the Durham coalfield continued to display the solidarity for which miners were famed. In response, Barron argues that the very concept of the 'mining community' needs to be reassessed. Rather than consisting of an homogeneous occupational identity, she suggests that the essence of community lay in its ability to subsume and integrate other categories of identity. A collective consciousness was further grounded in a shared historical narrative that had to be continually reinforced. It was the strength of such local solidarities that enabled both an exemplary regional response to the strike, and the ability to conceptualise such action within the wider framework of the national union. The 1926 Miners' Lockout provides crucial insights into issues of collective identity and collective action, illuminating wider debates about solidarity and fragmentation within working-class communities and cultures.

By: Hester Barron (Lecturer in History University of Sussex)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 223mm, Width: 145mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780199575046
ISBN 10: 0199575045
Series: Oxford Historical Monographs
Pages: 332
Publication Date: 05 November 2009
Audience: College/higher education , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Hester Barron is Lecturer in History at the University of Sussex. She studied at Magdalen College, Oxford and completed her D.Phil. in November 2006. Her research focuses on twentieth-century British social history, particularly labour history and the history of the working classes in the early part of the century.

Reviews for The 1926 Miners' Lockout: Meanings of Community in the Durham Coalfield

The 1926 Miners' Lockout represents a significant contribution to mining and regional historiography; it also demonstrates how innovative exploration of traditional topics can revitalise and refurbish labour and working-class history. Alan Campbell, Times Higher Education Supplement