Ageing and Change in Pit Villages of North East England

Britain's coal mining communities are often regarded as exemplars of the working class community without compare. However, to what extent can it be said that such communities persist in the face of the loss of their central material referent? The coal industry in Britain has been in dramatic decline since the 1950s, and that decline become practically terminal following the Miner's Strike of 1984-85. In this book Andrew Dawson considers this question in relation to the last generation of coal-mining people in a large Northumbrian mining town. What becomes clear is that the idea of the coal mining community persists as a resource that is central in the mediation of life's crises, from unemployment to death.