G to understand the development of self-conscious group identity. Equally, the term can be an applied label and politically useful construct; generations can be retrospectively produced. Drawing on the concept those whose experiences come to epitomise an event of historic and symbolic importance this article examines the narrative -shapes the desire for soci B -5 in the narrative history of the British left, it examines the selective appropriation and transmission of the past in the development of political consciousness. It foregrounds the autobiographical narratives of activists who, in examining and legitimising their own actions understanding.

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Deindustrialization is a complex and multifaceted series of processes and transitions, reflecting the equally complicated web of social relationships and interdependencies that constitute(d) an industrial society. Contemporary scholars have looked beyond just the economic impact of industrial loss, to the cultural, temporal and spatial legacies and impacts wrought by the mass closures of the 1980s, as well as the continuing presence of an industrial identity in struggles over representation and regeneration. However, deindustrialization has a history that precedes the volatility and culmination of that period, and has impacted upon a more geographically diverse range of former industrial locations than are commonly represented. The narratives that surround some sites are complicated by their displacement in time, place and discourse; they lack the political capital of an 'industrial' identity through this disassociation. In this article I aim to go beyond what we might consider the industrial 'heartlands' of the UK to a place that has felt the impact of deindustrialization, but which falls outside of the usual representations of the UK's industrial past. I explore how the industrial identity and memory of a place can be naturalized and selectively reworked for the needs of the hour, the very meaning of 'industrial' altered in the process. I argue that for sites unable to access or utilize the imagery of modern, heavy industry for community or promotional aims, deindustrialization becomes a process of rewriting an historic identity - one that sheds new light on industrial loss in diverse situations, and at an ever-increasing distance from closure.

Community is elusive, desirable, rhetorical; something lost and something to be built; a relationship, a concept, a synonym, a place (real or imagined). This article explores the roles that has played in the development of political identities, goals and rationales for action. Drawing on the ways in which it has been conceptualised and utilised in sociological, historical and political understandings of social change, and a series of interviews with members of British socialist organisations, I examine develop as these terms become drawn into a wider project for social transformation. I argue that ideas of location have not only framed how community is operationalised to imagine and enact this transformation, but that location itself is conceptualised in multiple, equally complex ways through this association. Social change becomes relatable, an articulable experience of large-scale processes, of social problems, of power and resistance. Community is reified, and change is made possible through a sense of locality.