Abstract
This paper uses Gramsci’s concept of interregnum alongside contemporary research on Britain’s former coalfields to critically consider the ‘condition’ of coalfield communities 40 years after the Great Strike of 1984–85 and the rapid demise of the coal industry thereafter. It focuses particularly on the former central coalfield, once home to Britain’s largest and most productive collieries, where mining remained a significant source of employment for longer than elsewhere. Whilst progress is varied and uneven, it is recognised that former coalmining communities have recovered to some extent from the debilitating effects of forced deindustrialisation. In Gramscian terms, a new hegemonic order has arisen to replace the old regime, but recuperation is, I argue, both precarious and partial. Rising levels of employment and educational attainment mask ‘morbid symptoms’ which continue to fester beneath the veneer of recuperation, in terms, for example, of low income, poor health, crime and other indices of deprivation. The relationship between education and work is, I suggest, played out in particularly problematic ways in the former coalfields where educational success is, in many cases, associated with outward migration and the loss of ‘talent’ set against the backdrop of local labour markets based largely on low-skill, insecure employment.