Performing the Hidden Injuries of Class in Coal-Mining Heritage

Abstract

Industrial heritage deals directly with working-class experience in a very public forum, but has not really been analysed in relation to class issues. This article discusses the case of ex-workers re-employed as heritage guides to tell the story of their own lives at a living history coalmining-museum, exploring the nature of the performances/representations of class that are produced. Heritage performance is caught up in a double bind that is familiar to other kinds of working-class representation: a continual equivocation between foregrounding dignity and autonomy on the one hand, and acknowledging subjugation and defeat on the other.This tension is played out, though differently, both in the guides' past occupations and their present ones.The article examines the public narratives they produce for visitors in the here and now as well as locating these in an understanding of their current positions as tour guide employees and their living through of their memories and identities as mineworkers.