Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes is both a celebration and commemoration of working class culture. It contains sometimes inspiring accounts of working class communities and people telling their own stories, and weaves together examples of tangible and intangible heritage, place, history, memory, music and literature.

Rather than being framed in a 'social inclusion' framework, which sees working class culture as a deficit, this book addresses the question "What is labour and working class heritage, how does it differ or stand in opposition to dominant ways of understanding heritage and history, and in what ways is it used as a contemporary resource?" It also explores how heritage is used in working class communities and by labour organizations, and considers what meanings and significance this heritage may have, while also identifying how and why communities and their heritage have been excluded. Drawing on new scholarship in heritage studies, social memory, the public history of labour, and new working class studies, this volume highlights the heritage of working people, communities and organizations. Contributions are drawn from a number of Western countries including the USA, UK, Spain, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, and from a range of disciplines including heritage and museum studies, history, sociology, politics, archaeology and anthropology.

Heritage, Labour and the Working Classes represents an innovative and useful resource for heritage and museum practitioners, students and academics concerned with understanding community heritage and the debate on social inclusion/exclusion. It offers new ways of understanding heritage, its values and consequences, and presents a challenge to dominant and traditional frameworks for understanding and identifying heritage and heritage making.

Contents

1. Introduction Laurajane Smith, Paul Shackel and Gary Campbell 2. The 1984/85 Miners' Strike: re-claiming cultural heritage Michael Bailey and Simon 3. Remembering Haymarket and the control for public memory Paul Shackel 4. The social and environmental upheaval of Blair Mountain: a working class struggle for unionization and historic preservation Brandon Nida and Michael Jessee Adkins 5. This is our island: multiple class heritage or ethnic solidarities? Richard Courtney 6. Don’t mourn organize: heritage, recognition and memory in Castleford, West Yorkshire Laurjane Smith and Gary Campbell 7. Images, icons and artefacts: maintaining an industrial culture in a post-industrial environment David Wray 8. A working town empowered: retelling textile history at Cooleemee, North Carolina Tamasin Wedgwood 9. The silencing of Blackball working class heritage, New Zealand Paul Maunder 10. Working class autobiography as cultural heritage Tim Strangleman 11. You say ‘po’-boy’, I say poor boy: New Orleans culinary and labour history sandwiched together Michael Mizell-Nelson 12. Swedish working class literature and the class polit...