Community Social Work in the ‘Big Society’

Throughout most of the twentieth century, coal mining communities in the UK were known for features such as enduring solidarity in the face of adversity, working-class culture and self-help through trade union, cooperative and other organizations. Some were so resistant to the norms of capitalism that they were known as ‘Little Moscows’ because of their collective socialist aspirations and communist political representation (Macintyre 1980). Such traditions were inevitably eroded through the course of the century but were revived in the mid-1980s (Freese 2006) when miners fought back against the destruction of their communities through a bitter year-long strike. The organization shown by the women as well as the men strikers helped unite the communities against an orchestrated onslaught from the media, most mainstream politicians, the police and the courts. The strike was, however, lost, the pits were shut and these same communities have gone into rapid decline.