'Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire': Grassroots Activism and Left-Wing Solidarity in 1980s Sheffield

Payling, Daisy

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwu001

Cited by 39 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Some of the experiences found might connect broadly with Koopman’s (2011) work around the role of accompaniment, where claimants are supported through their encounters with the state. The account below offers an alternative perspective to such encounters, as framed through a trade union sensibility that linked with a broader political left culture of antagonism and resistance, as emergent during this period in the places mentioned here but also other UK cities, such as Sheffield (Payling 2014).…”

Section: Labour Geographies Presence and “Non‐movement”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The nature of these spaces would be shaped by a centre committee, with a wide range of services and groups found in different localities, including the women’s advice groups against domestic violence in Coventry and Chelmsford, the computer classes in Stockton‐on‐Tees, and the sports and arts initiatives found in Chesterfield 11 . Such community and trade union crossovers, as found within centre spaces, are testament to an emergent political left culture that shifted the sphere of trade unionism beyond the workplace in the 1980s (Payling 2014).…”

Section: Spaces Of Care / Spaces Of Campaigningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In doing so, the paper brings to the fore a politics of space in reflecting on the role of centres as cutting across trade union and community organising (Perrett and Martinez Lucio 2009). As noted further below, such histories can connect with a wider spatial politics that forged creative and persistent alternatives within a period often characterised by industrial and trade union decline (see also Payling 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978–): Spatial Politics, “Non‐Movement”, and the Making of Centres

Griffin

2022

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This paper revisits the histories of Unemployed Workers' Centres to consider the politicisation of unemployment in the UK. Drawing upon archive material and over 50 oral histories, it considers the emergence of centres as a response to a crisis of increasing unemployment and retrenchment of the welfare state. The paper indicates how Asef Bayat's concept of "non-movement" proves useful for capturing a wider sphere of labour organising, moving beyond more conventional spaces and actions. This approach critically revisits the role of centres in conversation with emerging work in labour geography and social movements studies around the fostering of solidarities. It reveals tensions around their making, whilst also stressing the potential of seemingly small acts when held alongside campaigns. Revisiting this repertoire of activity reveals the persistence of trade union engagements with communities beyond the workplace, as well as a critical insight into the politics of space in forging such alternatives.

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Section: Labour Geographies Presence and “Non‐movement”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Spaces Of Care / Spaces Of Campaigningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978–): Spatial Politics, “Non‐Movement”, and the Making of Centres

Griffin

2022

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“…Local context was important in this, as Daisy Payling has shown in her discussion of Sheffield City Council's distinctive opposition to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. 52 Peter Kennard, commissioned by the Greater London Council, produced a series of images of a skeleton reading the Protect and Survive pamphlet. Raymond Briggs's powerful anti-nuclear graphic novel When the Wind Blows (1982) derives much of its poignancy from the faith its doomed central characters place in simplistic government advice that proves useless in protecting them from death by radiation.…”

Section: Civil Defence In the 1980s And Aftermentioning

confidence: 99%

Making sense of nuclear war: narratives of voluntary civil defence and the memory of Britain’s Cold War

Grant

2019

Social History

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In interviews with members of Britain's Civil Defence Services, experiences of Cold War voluntarism are recalled in different ways. Some remembered their desire to help defend their nation and local community. Others remembered making a leisure choice that had little connection to the potential nuclear war the organization was ostensibly preparing for. No one provided a well-developed account of civil defence's ability to provide a defence against the effects of a nuclear war. Popular memory theorists suggest cultural discourse limits the ability of individuals to narrate stories that do not align with culturally valued frameworks: in this case, dominant understandings of civil defence as at best ridiculous or at worst dangerous were established in the 1980s. This article argues that memories of civil defence voluntarism in the 1950-60s have been shaped by these discourses, but that individuals were able to express the different meanings civil defence had in their lives in ways that provide a more nuanced and holistic picture of the intersections of leisure, service and sociability that made up civil defence. As such, it argues that oral history allows us to understand the various 'horizons of possibility' that made up individual experiences of the Cold War.

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“…And, what is more, recent research also reveals that local councils often based their opposition to nuclear weapons (and civilian nuclear energy) on their constituents' social demographic and the structure of the local economy. Or as Daily Payling has observed for the broader anti‐nuclear politics of South Yorkshire County and Sheffield City Councils: “Pro‐nuclear was seen as anti‐coal, and Sheffielders worked in coal pits not power stations” (Payling, , p. 615).…”

Section: Uncertainty and The Nuclear Threat Within A Wider Economy Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of the unknown: Uncertainty and the nuclear threat in Britain, 1979–1985

Laucht

2018

History Compass

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This article seeks to map out possibilities for conducting a microhistorical study of the socio‐political and cultural roles that uncertainty, as a consequence of a lack of verifiable knowledge, played in political debates over the nuclear threat in Britain in the Second Cold War. Focusing on this politics of the unknown in the period from 1979 to 1985 when Britain witnessed resurging fears of nuclear war, this exploratory essay sets out to make three main interventions: First, it conceptualizes “uncertainty” as a subjective social and cultural construct with fluid meanings that does not necessarily have to hold exclusively negative connotations but might offer opportunities for historical actors. Second, this essay proposes an examination of the politics of the unknown about the anticipated effects of a nuclear war within a wider synchronic economy of non‐nuclear‐weapons‐related concerns such as de‐industrialization or unemployment. Finally, the article introduces the periodization of “Britain's long nuclear 1980s” to allow for a consideration of relevant diachronic aspects of this politics of the unknown, thereby adding further depth to the microhistory. Throughout, this exploratory study draws on historical examples to illustrate its key theoretical points.

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'Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire': Grassroots Activism and Left-Wing Solidarity in 1980s Sheffield

Cited by 39 publications

References 0 publications

Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978–): Spatial Politics, “Non‐Movement”, and the Making of Centres

Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978–): Spatial Politics, “Non‐Movement”, and the Making of Centres

Making sense of nuclear war: narratives of voluntary civil defence and the memory of Britain’s Cold War

The politics of the unknown: Uncertainty and the nuclear threat in Britain, 1979–1985

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