title: Masculinity and the British mining industry from nationalisation through to pit closures
Creators: name: Peirson-Webber, Emily
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2022

description: Since the 1842 Mines Act, the underground world of the British coal mine had been the exclusive 
preserve of men and boys. This thesis explores how the British mining industry influenced how its 
workers understood and expressed their masculine identities. The nationalisation of the British mining 
industry in 1947 was heralded as a new dawn for both the industry and its workers, yet within fifty
years it had been privatised and just one per cent of its workforce remained. In the intervening period 
major changes within the industry impacted how and where miners worked, as mechanisation 
escalated and as some coalfields contracted. In the year-long miners’ strike, from March 1984 to 
March 1985, over 180,000 miners came out in protest against prospective pit closures. These events 
are well known, and many historical accounts have been written of them. What is less clear is why so 
many men felt strongly about the industry, and so compelled to act to prevent its demise. It is only 
through understanding how the industry shaped its workers and how men brought meaning to their 
work, that we can appreciate how through pit closures men lost not only a job but also a close 
homosocial community, and for some, a sense of who they were as men. 
This thesis draws on forty new oral history interviews, written testimonies, published and unpublished 
memoirs, industry-related publications and films, and the material culture of the mining industry and 
its communities. My four chapters are structured to reflect the masculine life-journey in the pit.
Through exploring the relationship between mining fathers and their miner sons, I argue that the 
industry influenced familial relationships and roles. The second chapter explores men’s understanding 
of their embodied masculinity, and how their relationship with this changed as the industry was 
mechanised. Reflecting on the hegemonic masculine culture of the pit in the third chapter, I 
demonstrate how this shaped men’s attitudes towards risk and injury. The camaraderie between 
miners has been observed in many studies of the industry. Yet, few have explored how this 
camaraderie was defined, experienced, and manifested. In the final chapter I argue that men’s 
definitions of camaraderie were polysemic, reflecting both jovial relations with co-workers and an
emotional bond that compelled some men to act to protect the welfare of colleagues. I also challenge
one-dimensional understandings of miners’ camaraderie by arguing that not all men accepted, or were 
accepted into pit culture, and such men often had a different experience of the industry. Alternatively, 
I argue that for some miners, the industry exerted a strong influence on their masculine identity, 
which following pit closures, they were forced to renegotiate. Throughout this thesis I foreground 
subjective experiences to highlight the heterogeneity of mining lives and demonstrate how stereotypes 
of miners as hypermasculine and militant trade unionists overlook the ambivalences of men’s lived 
experience.