We're back after an extended break with a great episode. In this episode I walk with my colleague Christopher Lawson about two really big things that happen in the 20th century: deindustrialisation and neoliberalism. These are hard topics to deal with on their own, and Christopher tells the story of how they both interact by telling the story of Scottish steel plants. The big question: should Britain's industry be efficient and globally competitive? or should it build local communities?
We talk about so much more!
And a programming note: I'm going to try to keep up with the episode a week schedule, but sometime in December, we're going to abruptly stop because our family is expanding! My wife is expecting a kid, due in December, so the podcast will probably go on the back burner at that time.
Reading List
1. Jim Tomlinson, ‘De-Industrialization Not Decline: A New Meta-narrative for Post-war British History’ Twentieth-Century British History 27 (2016): 76-99.
2. Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Class, Politics, and the Decline of Deference in England, 1968-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)
3. Monica Prasad, The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
4. Huw Beynon, Ray Hudson & David Sadler, A Tale of Two Industries: The Contraction of Coal and Steel in the North East of England (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991)
5. Barry Bluestone & Bennett Harrison, Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982).
6. Steven High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America's Rust Belt, 1969-1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003).
7. Robert Duncan, Steelopolis: The Making of Motherwell, 1750-1939 (Motherwell, 1991).
8. Jim Phillips, The Industrial Politics of Devolution: Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008)
9. David Stewart, ‘Fighting for Survival: The 1980s Campaign to Save Ravenscraig Steelworks’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 25:1 (2005): 40-57.