Recording Deindustrialization in the New Populist Era

Across the deindustrialising world, racism and bigotry have become increasingly mainstream over the last decade. In the 2016 election of Trump and the UK Brexit vote, deindustrialising communities were given unprecedented prominence in electoral analyses; the rust belt voted Trump after decades of being failed by liberalism, and deindustrialising locales like Sheffield, North Tyneside, and Merthyr Tydfil voted to leave the EU following protracted industrial decline and economic contraction. Whilst these broad election results disguise many nuances, the general perception and commentary has been consistent; working-class areas harmed by deindustrialisation and its aftermath have rejected multicultural liberalism. People ‘want their country back’, and are pushing back against the ‘woke agenda’ (previously known as political correctness). 

It might seem obvious that this shift would impact on our work in deindustrialising communities, particularly when our research involves life oral history interviews. However, when embarking on a project analysing the impacts of historic deindustrialisation on contemporary experiences of later life in Britain, with fieldwork beginning in 2022, I didn’t appreciate how the rise in populism and shifts in ‘acceptable’ views would emerge in the interviews. There has been a consensus among many oral historians that respondents filter their memories and narratives through what is socially acceptable at the time of the interview. Within the Newcastle Oral History Unit, where I worked while conducting this project, we discussed this frequently and considered approaches that might allow respondents to reflect on historic racism. One of these methods, developed by Professor Graham Smith, was to ask indirect questions that wouldn’t centre the narrator. For instance, rather than asking whether their family and friends disliked migrants, we could ask general questions about those people, families, and groups within communities that were ‘generally’ disliked, untrusted, and who didn’t quite fit-in. By doing so, interviewees would be more able to discuss community tensions in a way that didn’t focus on their direct involvement, thus achieving the aim of acceptability when composing their narratives.  

In this project, I conducted life oral history interviews recorded over two sessions; the first being a broad conversation that offered the interviewee the opportunity to discuss their life on their terms with minimal intervention by me, and a follow-up that was structured around the specific themes of the research, as well as probing further the data collected in the first session. Naively, I didn’t consider the dynamics of ethnic and racial change within deindustrialising areas when embarking on the project, despite its focus on socio-economic change over time. There were no questions on these themes in my interview schedule; rather, broader questions about change over time within the communities of the North East of England. However, from the very first interview, racial and ethnic change emerged as a dominant theme and remained so throughout the data collection process. I’ve opted against including long excerpts here, as I haven’t decided how to publish them. However, I can state that the vast majority of interviewees provided narratives that I would consider racist. Migrant communities (of colour) were blamed for poverty, unemployment, urban decline, sexual assault, overpopulation, social degradation, and so forth. At times, these views were subtle (‘I’m not racist, but’) – on other occasions they were articulated with clarity and anger (‘black men only want to get our women pregnant’). On one occasion, a respondent recalled violently targeting black migrants in his youth, reflecting on this as a possible solution to multiculturalism. 

I want to spend the remainder of this blog considering possible impacts of this shift in what’s seen as socially acceptable statements made by our interviewees on our work. The first impact that I have identified is on rapport, the relationship between interviewee and interviewer. Many oral historians stress the importance of rapport in contributing to a successful interview interaction, and I have constantly placed great emphasis on this. I want them to like me, and I want to like them, often bordering on ‘liking them too much’, as Valerie Yow cautioned against. This rapport was significantly impacted by the narratives presented by many respondents, particularly when preparing for the second session. In one instance, I travelled a distance to conduct a second interview and, having reviewed the first session the previous night, I woke the next day and decided that I simply wasn’t in the mood to go to their house and spend hours in their company. I had never cancelled an interview at such short notice before and, while I did eventually rearrange and conduct the follow-up, I was aware throughout that I didn’t like the person at the other end of the microphone, which inevitably impacted the quality of my interviewing. I never challenged my respondents’ perspectives, as I don’t feel that it’s the place of an oral history interviewer, but I was acutely aware that I wasn’t as engaged as I might otherwise be, on several occasions. 

The second issue that this presents is on publication and dissemination. Within this blog, and likely in all outputs relating to this aspect of the project, interviewee names aren’t given. Despite adhering to all ethical requirements on consent and informed consent, I don’t feel comfortable – and don’t think I should – refer to the real people whose narratives I discuss in this way. This could be overly cautious on my part, and perhaps removes a degree of agency from my interviewees; however, I have no intention of returning to them for co-production, nor a desire to publicly critique specific, named individuals. That is my choice, and one that you may agree or disagree with, but it does add another layer of complication to how we present our research on deindustrialisation, particularly its contemporary ramifications. Relatedly, this could have an impact on how we archive our materials and make them available for future use. Although our interviewees may consent to the recording being archived – and many don’t take the time to listen back, simply complete the forms – it isn’t difficult to envisage a scenario where their families request withdrawal from public archives. And, should this be a persistent issue, archivists may be increasingly wary in taking these collections, undermining the archival imperative of our oral history work.  

Most importantly, however, this could have an impact on who conducts these projects and who might be excluded. I’m writing here about feeling uncomfortable or angry when collecting narratives, but the fact remains that I’m white and was born in Scotland. When entering these interviews, I am of the similar demographic to my interviewees. What impact can the increasing prevalence of racist narratives within oral histories of deindustrialisation, as evidenced in my project, have on who feels able to conduct the research? I can’t answer this, because I’m not a part of a minority ethnic community and won’t speak on behalf of anyone else. However, when supervising students, I have a duty of care when they conduct their projects. Based on my experience in this project, I’m unsure whether I would feel comfortable with a student of colour conducting research on this topic with this demographic.