Abstract
Studies recurrently emphasise the critical role played by memory in the production of belonging in the context of deindustrialisation. This paper examines the interrelations of memory, history and belonging among former coal miners in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield surrounding Mansfield, UK, an area of complex and contested memories and histories. Couched in the approaches of emotional geographies and the ‘turn to affect’, the paper investigates the emotional and affective dimensions of remembering histories of the coal industry under nationalisation between 1947 and 1994 including job security, the 1984–1985 miners' strike and colliery closures, as well as the industrial ruination which these closures caused. To fully apprehend and empathise with the emotional processes of memory, the paper contends that memories must always be situated within a reading of the wider historical geographies and politics upon which they are constituted. Drawing on archival research and psychosocial life history interviews, the paper broadly argues that historicising memories as well as examining their affective dimensions advances understanding into what has been lost and disrupted through localised processes of deindustrialisation and postindustrialism. In the case of north Nottinghamshire the contested solidarities of the miners' strike and subsequent colliery closures have endured in affective memories which, in turn, have problematised the production of individual and collective belonging.
Highlights
This paper examines the interrelations of memory, history and belonging among former coal miners in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield surrounding Mansfield, UK, an area of complex and contested memories and histories
This paper examines the interrelations of these memories and histories and how they have mediated forms of belonging among former miners in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield surrounding Mansfield (Fig. 1)
Archival work has evidenced that belonging was shaped by the particularities of the coal industry as it was experienced in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield
Summary
These memories of lived histories include the fracturing of social relations resulting from opposing positions during the 1984e1985 miners' strike, bitter splits in trade union support and the traumas and loss of colliery closures and redundancy All these are juxtaposed to and problematised by a faltering nostalgia for the old ways of life and work in the mining community.[7] This paper examines the interrelations of these memories and histories and how they have mediated forms of belonging among former miners in the north Nottinghamshire coalfield surrounding Mansfield (Fig. 1). Experienced cultures of mining work, perceptions of job security, the miners' strike and colliery closures dominated the memories of participants leading to a complex and divided emotional geography which positions positive memories alongside negative associations such as shame, guilt and betrayal.
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