Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes

Laurajane Smith, Paul Shackel, Gary Campbell, Laurajane Smith, Paul Shackel, Gary Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415618113
• eBook ISBN: 9781136698538
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes is both a celebration and commemoration of working class culture. It contains sometimes inspiring accounts of working class communities and people telling their own stories, and weaves together examples of tangible and intangible heritage, place, history, memory, music and literature.

Rather than being framed in a 'social inclusion' framework, which sees working class culture as a deficit, this book addresses the question "What is labour and working class heritage, how does it differ or stand in opposition to dominant ways of understanding heritage and history, and in what ways is it used as a contemporary resource?" It also explores how heritage is used in working class communities and by labour organizations, and considers what meanings and significance this heritage may have, while also identifying how and why communities and their heritage have been excluded. Drawing on new scholarship in heritage studies, social memory, the public history of labour, and new working class studies, this volume highlights the heritage of working people, communities and organizations. Contributions are drawn from a number of Western countries including the USA, UK, Spain, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, and from a range of disciplines including heritage and museum studies, history, sociology, politics, archaeology and anthropology.

Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes represents an innovative and useful resource for heritage and museum practitioners, students and academics concerned with understanding community heritage and the debate on social inclusion/exclusion. It offers new ways of understanding heritage, its values and consequences, and presents a challenge to dominant and traditional frameworks for understanding and identifying heritage and heritage making.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Class Still Matters

Laurajane Smith, Paul A. Shackel and Gary Campbell

This volume offers an international celebration of the heritage of the working class in its many and diverse forms. The focus is not so much on working class history – though that is discussed in various ways in the articles – but on the positive uses that heritage is being put to by working class people, communities and organisations in the present. By ‘heritage’ we mean not only tangible artefacts, buildings, places, sites and monuments, but also intangible traditions, commemorations, festivals, artwork, song and literature. We believe that it is important to stress the capacity for self-expression of working class people and communities, and the ways in which they draw on the past, and senses of place and tradition, to re-interpret and re-work contemporary identity, especially in the face of economic, social and political changes that have eroded long-standing bonds of class solidarity. These chapters show that working class people have a remarkable ability to avoid reactionary nostalgia and self-pity, and can build on their history, traditions and sense of place and community in novel ways. This leads us to reject the recent intellectual fashion of considering class a defunct, almost boorish interest, as it is a political position that is just that, a political position, but not one that captures the reality of modern working class life and culture.

The question that often arises in any community is ‘which heritage is best to preserve, and will the promotion of heritage have an impact on the local cultural resources, the community, and the environment?’ In his recent monograph that focuses on heritage development in the Chesapeake region, Erve Chambers writes that, ‘heritage has largely become an instrument that defines the disturbances, irregularities, and uncertainties of the present much more than it truly represents the past’ (Chambers 2006: 2). These disturbances and irregularities in the present are an opportunity for stakeholders to address current inequities, and it also leaves the door open to address the difficult pasts.

We would like to stress, for all those who hold an interest in forms of heritage, be they material or intangible, that there is a moral imperative to address issues of class and economic and social inequality (Sayer 2005) and its hidden injuries to self-respect and self-worth (Cobb and Sennett 1973). By revealing these inequalities it becomes easier to see how they were developed and are sustained, and we can choose whether we want to challenge these situations. Uncovering hidden injuries can set the tone for some form of justice and reconciliation within communities (Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2007).

We would also like to make it clear, to those who think that any heritage site or museum that references issues of class, work and de-industrialisation is anathema, that there are complex, authentic and genuine examples of working class heritage informing assertive reflexive projects of social memorymaking. There are two misinterpretations of the moral imperative of addressing class and heritage. The first is the simple fact that the Authorized Heritage Discourse (see Smith 2006; Smith and Waterton 2011; Waterton 2010a) that animates what is chosen as ‘heritage’ in the West, deifies the great and the good, the beautiful and the old, the comfortable and the consensual. It also ignores or distains people, places, artefacts and traditions that are not associated with the economic and cultural elite, or recall uncomfortable or dissonant heritage. Industrial heritage makes some appearances, especially in Europe, and particularly in the UK and Scandinavia, and to some extent in the US, but the people, communities, events and places that constitute working class heritage are underrepresented in national and international heritage efforts. Its interpretation also tends to stress physical fabric and technology over the social relations of production, labour process and class conflict. For instance, while UNESCO’s World Heritage List recognises over 900 sites, only 33 are related to industrial heritage (UNESCO 2010). In these few instances, working class heritage is often only indirectly commemorated, as the focus on industrial heritage is often void of people and class struggle. Nonetheless, these places have the potential to remember the human component of industry – working class life. England, known as the cradle of the industrial revolution, has more industrial-related sites designated by UNESCO than any other country. While European countries have the majority of UNESCO’s industrial sites, they are also found in China, India, Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico. The United States, known as an industrial power for about a century, has none. While the United States has several national parks that celebrate industrial heritage, many interpretations are void of working class histories.

The second misinterpretation of the moral imperative is the tendency, often informed by the ‘heritage industry’ critique of Hewison (1987), Wright (1985) and Lowenthal (1985), to construe any heritage or museum attempt to present working class issues, in the face of de-industrialisation and attacks on organised labour, as conservative triumphalism, commercialisation and trivialisation of working class life and experience. Indeed, Debary (2004:123) for example, argues that ‘wilful amnesia lies at the heart’ of attempts to remember lost industries. This sense of amnesia is often linked to critiques of ‘nostalgia’, which is characterised as an insatiable yearning that, in regard to the working class, ‘cherishes the romantic memory of a time when the working class could more easily produce its own meaningful world-view: the unproblematic community of the “general interest”’ (Wright 1985: 22). As Smith (2006: 195f) argues, ‘nostalgia’ is often misidentified as being simply expressive of the ethos ‘it was better back then’, and fails to understand that nostalgic recollections can also involve critical and mindful memory work that recognises and engages with the emotionally painful. Discourses of ‘nostalgia’ and the ‘heritage industry’ critique work, as Robertson (2008) notes, to not only de-legitimise what he terms ‘heritage from below’, but also to obscure its inherently dissonant nature and the links it maintains to social protest.

The chapters in this volume show that, contrary to assumptions embedded in the ‘heritage industry’ critique, working class people, communities and organisations can speak for themselves. This is not to sweep the damage done to working class people, communities, organisations and political parties under the metaphorical carpet – they are real and profound – but to maintain Gramsci’s lively pessimism of the intellect allied with an optimism of the will in the face of adversity. There are numerous examples of more positive accounts of working class life and culture that inform the position we take. The influential work of Raphael Samuel (1994) shows that heritage, rather than being a commercial misrepresentation or simulacra that dishonestly stands in for a ‘real’ history, can be a theatre of memory where active, complex and nuanced representations of working class life have contemporary resonance. Likewise the international network of labour and working class museums Worklab (http://www.worklab.info/) also demonstrates that there are, in the heritage sector, attempts to display working class heritage in all its messy detail, complete with industrial and class conflict. One example in the United States is the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, which provides exhibits that are narrated by former factory workers. The stories of exploitation and oppression are prevalent throughout the museum. The work of Shackel (1996, 2009), Hayden (1997), Bruno (1999), Strangleman (1999, 2005, 2010), Dicks (2000), Linkon and Russo (2002), Bagnall (2003), Nadal-Klein (2003), Smith (2006), Rogaly and Taylor (2009) and West (2010) and the special edition of the journal International Labour and Working Class History (2009) amongst others, are at the forefront of what seems to be a re-awakening of interest in working class heritage.

The chapters in this book are either informed by, or echo, the ‘new working class studies’, which, according to Russo and Linkon (2005: 14–15) has:

A clear focus on the lived experiences and voices of working-class people; critical engagement with the complex intersections that link class with race, gender, ethnicity, and place; attention to how class is shaped by place and how the local is connected to the global … new working class studies is multidisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary; it provides a site for conversation and opportunities for collaboration among scholars, artists, activists, and workers representing a wide range of approaches. New working class studies is about working-class people, but it also involves working-class people as full participants.

The new working class studies also shares territory with what has recently been referred to as ‘critical heritage studies’ (Harrison 2010). Critical heritage studies is a reaction against the AHD, and argues for a broadening of heritage analysis which takes as its starting point the understanding that heritage ‘does’ things in societies. It requires embracing the dissonant, and not simply acknowledging the multiplicity of values and cultural meanings that heritage places and practices may have, but also understanding their wider social consequences and ideological significance. For Smith (2006, 2010) heritage is redefined not simply as a thing or place, or even intangible event, but rather as a cultural process involved in the performance and negotiation of cultural values, narratives, memories and meanings. Heritage is one of the cultural tools used in the processes of individual and collective remembering and commemoration, while it is also a performance involved in ‘working out’ and asserting identity and sense of place and the various cultural, social and political values that underpin these. This emerging viewpoint challenges not just the assumptions but the practices of heritage, which we argue open up the entire heritage sector to more meaningful relations with subaltern groups, and demand that the unquestioned assumptions about class and national narratives are vigorously interrogated. It also implies a democratisation of heritage practice, as the power of the ‘expert’ is questioned, which creates openings for new heritage narratives and presentations that are shaped by people and communities rather than experts and traditional institutions.

The issue of social inclusion/exclusion has exercised much of national and international debate within the cultural sector. Museums and heritage agencies in a number of Western countries have been tasked with addressing ways of ensuring that traditionally excluded audiences and communities are encouraged to participate in cultural activities. Working class communities are one of the key groups identified among the socially ‘excluded’. Cultural institutions are now faced with the difficult undertaking of how to ensure excluded groups participate in democratic and genuinely inclusive ways. All too often inclusion policies have been criticised for being little more than cynical attempts to increase visitor numbers or as practices designed to assimilate excluded audiences into dominant cultural values and understandings of history and heritage (see for instance chapters in Littler & Naidoo 2005; Smith 2006; Tlili 2008; Smith & Waterton 2009a). One of the key issues faced by museums, heritage institutions and those academics concerned with such debates is that there is often a misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about alternative forms of heritage that may sit outside of or are excluded and obscured by the Authorized Heritage Discourse. This volume explores various forms of tangible and intangible heritage and offers a way forward in these debates by addressing the questions what is labour and working class heritage, how does it differ or stand in opposition to dominant ways of understanding heritage and history? The book explores how heritage is used in working class communities and by labour organisations, and considers what meanings and significance this heritage may have, while also identifying how and why communities and their heritage have been excluded.

Chapters in this volume draw from a number of Western countries including the USA, UK, Spain, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. Contributors are from a range of disciplines including heritage and museum studies, history, musicology, sociology, politics, archaeology and anthropology. This volume represents an innovative and useful resource for heritage and museum practitioners, students and academics concerned with understanding community heritage and the debate on social inclusion/exclusion. The volume offers new ways of understanding labour and working class heritage, its values and consequences, and it presents a challenge to dominant and traditional frameworks for understanding and identifying heritage and heritage making.

Class, Commemoration and Conflict

The studies in Part 1 of the book highlight issues related to either race conflict, or remembering the conflict between labour and capital. The authors acknowledge that versions of heritage can be communicated through various institutions, including schools, amusements, art and literature, government ceremonies, families and friends, as well as commemorative landscape features. The articles show the conflict about remembering how a working class past can be physical and violent, and/or racialised and exclusive.

Commemorating and remembering working class heritage is connected to how individual and collective memories develop through dialogue. In the case of Bailey and Popple’s article, remembering the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike in Great Britain has developed only after considerable effort to rethink the event as part of the community and national heritage. Post-industrial mining communities are beginning to claim the memory of the 1984/5 strike. The process of cultural reclamation helps to create meaning for communities, the veterans of the strike as well as working class life. The authors show that the mediation and commemoration of the strike is predominately negotiated through popular culture and via heritage-based discourses. However, museums, archives and dramatisations of events increasingly threaten to remove the history of these important events from the communities in which they unfolded and the people who bore the brunt of defeat and subsequent social and economic dislocation.

Race conflict is a form of symbolic violence. The conflict is about the political construction of race to create a situation of power over a subordinate group. Overt violence can be part of race conflict, although in these case studies the conflict is about the control over heritage. Subordinate groups who were successfully erased from the official memory or were portrayed in a negative light by the dominant group, struggle to be represented and become part of the official memory.

In the case of remembering class heritage in Thurrock, Essex, Richard Courtney shows that folk heritage is and has always been represented in constructions of Englishness, which is the construction of whiteness. This construction is opposed to Britishness, which is associated with multiculturalism. Scholarship shows that the social construction of whiteness and the connection to class and status frames the construction of racial identities. White equals good, pure, rich; and black, defined in opposition to white, equals defeated, ruined, bad, backwards and poor (see for instance Dyer 1997; Lipsitz 1998; Roediger 1998). Courtney demonstrates that the white communities predominantly recognised class as rooted in civic, rural and industrial heritage. This resulted in an insular, paranoid and reactive form of class identity that shared interests with far right and nationalist politics. He compares this to the narratives of minority groups whose class identity was future orientated, civic minded and structured within relations of global capitalism, and trans-national migration.

In the case studies about armed conflict, groups with opposing ideals confront each other in acts of aggression, often leaving physical traces of these events on the landscape or beneath the ground. While the event occurred many years ago, groups continue to battle over control of the meaning of the event. For instance, Paul Shackel shows how the events at Haymarket in May 1886 have had a lasting effect on how we remember the labour movement. Today, most of the world celebrates May Day, an event originally created to remember the labour movement martyrs at Haymarket. On the other hand, capital views the Haymarket event as a defeat of anarchists and socialists who confronted capitalism. The struggle between labour and capital to remember the events of Haymarket has resulted in an uneasy co-existence on the landscape and in the public memory. Recently, the City of Chicago reached out to both labour and law enforcement to help develop a compromise memorial at Haymarket.

The struggle to commemorate the memory of Blair Mountain also continues today. Like Haymarket, capital and labour are at odds on how to preserve and remember this important place in labour history. Brandon Nida and Michael Jessee Adkins describe the battle of Blair Mountain as the largest armed labour insurrection in US history. In 1921, approximately 10,000 coal miners participated in a battle against law enforcement officers and Baldwin-Felts Detectives, resulting in the US military suppressing the uprising. This conflict was pivotal in shifting narratives of the time about the labour movement from ‘Bolsheviks fomenting social unrest’ to ‘quintessential Americans fighting for basic labour rights’. Because of the archaeology performed at the battle site portions of Blair Mountain were listed on the National Register of Historic Places; however recently, it was delisted. The Massey Energy Company is planning to conduct Mountain Top Rem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Series general co-editors’ forward
• 1. Introduction: class still matters
• Part I: Class, Commemoration and Conflict
• Part II: Recognising and Commemorating Communities
• Part III: Working Class Self-Representation and Intangible Heritage
• Part IV: Case Studies in Commemoration, Remembrance and Forgetting
• Index