The Role of the Industrial Workplace in Working-class Community, 1945–1980

Historiography of the post-war working classes has tended to underplay the role of industrial workplaces in the community life of many localities. This article uses an oral history case-study of Beverley, East Yorkshire, to show how industrial workplaces could still be central to the construction of social networks and local identity across the three post-war decades. I suggest that the decline of British manufacturing, which gathered pace in the 1970s and 1980s, may have been more detrimental to working-class community life than the supposed post-war shift towards consumerism and individualism.