At the 4th Conference of the European Labour History Network, the Memory and Deindustrialization Working Group organized three panels, with both on-site and online participants and panellists, under the title “Remembering Toxic Pasts? Memory, Deindustrialisation, and the Environment”. The organising committee enumerated a list of questions in the call for papers. These centred on the changing connections between (former) workers’ communities, their labour histories, broader memory and heritage discourses, and more specifically the environmental transformations under conditions of deindustrialization. Accordingly, the altogether 14 scholars addressed these issues and their interconnectedness through theoretical as well as methodological investigations and via specific case studies primarily from the European continent and during the late 20th and early 21st century. The presentations addressed among other things, the decommissioning processes and post-industrial regeneration, the nostalgia for lost or transforming workers’ identities, the impact and handling of industrial-environmental toxic hazards underground and above ground, in the water and in the air, and the negotiations around what may constitute a legitimate heritage narration.
The significant role of employees at the (former) industrial enterprises in environmental, sustainability and memory issues was the connecting element of the first panel. The concept “workers” has many connotations at different locations and been challenged for some time in academic discourse. Through the example of Operational Groundwork (established in the 1980s in Great Britain), PIERRE BOTCHERBY (Warwick) pointed out that environmental and urban regeneration especially at and after deindustrialization require the commitment and cooperation of all related actors, namely local authorities, the private sector and the general public. JAMES P. FERNS (Glasgow) explored nostalgia, remembering and narrating both theoretically and in relation to workers’ health, environmental awareness and occupational identity in relation at post-redundancy employment transitions of Scottish heavy industry workers. By analysing the existing grand narrative together with the conducted oral history research, Ferns identified what Smith and Campbell had called radical or progressive nostalgia1 and the notion of multivalency that is “the coexistence of multiple diverse values without implying contradiction especially regarding working class experience.”
ELENA DINUBILA (Bordeaux) used the example of the rural town Rotondella (Southern Italy), where the former reprocessing centre of radioactive nuclear fuel elements Trisaia-ITREC is located. This intervention explained how the concerns about job crisis and environmental issues are articulated in political choices and local actions to enhance the deindustrialized territory of Rotondella. This presentation also exemplified what ANNA STORM (Linköping), the general discussant of the conference proceedings, pointed out: there is a whole new industry for deindustrialization processes, and waste management should be seen as an industry itself that creates jobs and a possible future social unit. MELINDA HARLOV-CSORTÁN’s (Kőszeg) presentation provided an example for the transformation in representation of a landscape from being industrialized to heritagized and environmentally protected. Harlov-Csortán pointed out that despite its UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape status, at the Fertő/Neusiedler Lake region between Austria and Hungary the former industrialised activities with the connecting social units are hardly memorialized only on local level as a vernacular craftmanship. Storm, in her commentary, also emphasized that "as deindustrializing communities are most often finding themselves in deeply challenging situations, the relation to the past could be contested but also engaging, creating conflict but also work emancipation, hence its thorough investigation should be a key research interest.”
The second panel had the common theme of environment protection. Both sustainability and the threatening possible consequences of its denial were exemplified with diverse case studies from Canada to Czechoslovakia and from Germany to Italy. Both MARTIN BAUMERT’s (Bochum) and MARTIN BABIČKA’s (Oxford) presentations pointed to the Cold War period and the Eastern bloc of Europe. They challenged the notion about the Socialist lack of environmental awareness. Baumert highlighted the ways in which the scientific ideas of soil regeneration were formulated and set into practice especially regarding lignite open-cast mining in the German Democratic Republic. Besides the connection of industrial activities and environmental consciousness the contribution paid attention to the related actors (such as the mainly female workers in soil regeneration) and the narrative and (lack of) memory about the introduced aspect of the Cold War industrial past. Through the example of Northern Bohemia, Babička explained how, in the Czech Republic, the environmental question was linked to the capitalist transformation in the post-socialist time and society. By using narrative and visual analysis, the presentation called attention to the different understandings of the terms “nature” and “technology” at different time periods, and the influence of political and social circumstances in interpreting them.
LACHLAN MACKINNON (Cape Breton) provided a comparative study of community responses to the threat of toxification and ill-health as the result of industrial production in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. He provided cases for both cooperation of federal, provincial and municipal governments to include citizens in the clean-up and remediation decision making and for social division due to the controversy over the future of a mill and its consequences. Using the example of the cruise industry in Venice (more precisely in Marghera), JANINE SCHEMMER (Klagenfurt) focused on the connection between infrastructure of cruise tourism and shipbuilding, the interlinking between urban, environmental and workers’ protest movements, and the memory on toxic pasts in this process. The discussant also emphasized in their summarizing thoughts the connection of memory and current representation in forming narration or local identity at the given deindustrialized locations.
On the last day of the conference, the last set of presentations looked at history making and methods of re-evaluating past in order to create a more complex narrative of the former industrial activities in connection to its environmental surrounding. REGINA GÖSCHL (Bochum), through a contemporary museum exhibition project, discussed the possible approaches how environmental side of deindustrialisation and the linked social conflicts can be addressed in museum setting. The introduced exhibition project investigates the re-cultivation of mining landscapes in East- and West-Germany between 1949 and 1989. GERTJAN PLETS (Utrecht) spoke about the absence of a toxic memory discourse and the seemingly silenced environment protection aims in the Dutch petrostate. Besides the sources and consequences of the identified challenges to promote a more critical historical culture around Dutch oil and gas industry, the presentation included some of the adoptable strategies to ensure and produce a critical heritage engagement (by for instance, critical narrative reading and a kind of counter-historical culture production).
JAN KELLERSHOHN (Halle an der Saale) also used the case of open cast lignite mining in Germany, and mentioned its negative narrative. He called the attention to the possible juxtaposing, hence balancing aspect, such as the palaeontological excavations, which have been accompanying the production of lignite briquettes since the late 1920s. Such activities created a prehuman past which both legitimised and delegitimised the contemporary destruction by the open cast pits. Also, the role of the local museum (the Geisel Valley Museum in Halle) was analysed in shaping different politics of time through different political regimes (e.g. in the narration of destroying or creating Heimat). Anna Storm also emphasized in her concluding remarks that deindustrialization needs to be articulated as temporally multifaceted. She then scrutinized what these difference paces and rhythms may do to the “master” narrative of deindustrialization. She also emphasized the necessity to concentrate on power-relations and barriers to solidarity not just in building new societies, but also at mitigating the disappearing communities.
Members of the organizing committee STEFAN MOITRA (Bochum) and CHRISTIAN WICKE (Utrecht) introduced the research team and previous topics and activities (such as workshops and publications). They reflected on the importance of deindustrialisation studies, which require interdisciplinary approaches by incorporating among others sociological and environmental protection perspectives, with which the focus can be directed beyond national paradigms and in response to the contested Anthropocene discourse. The participants declared that deindustrialization studies should also be embedded more strongly in the history programs at universities around the world. Future topics for the working group discussions were debated (such as the question of gender focused investigations) and the next workshop in 2022 in Bologna on the history of futures under conditions of deindustrialisation was announced as well.
During the closing discussions the key points regarding the conference theme, “Toxic Pasts?”, were highlighted. These comprised memory, deindustrialisation and the environment through the related actors, locations and temporalities. There was a disagreement over the growing importance of the Anthropocene in historical cultures of labour. These perspectives provided food for thought for future research projects and a basis for the analysis at the next working group conference as well. Even though the near future is still unpredictable due to the current pandemic, if the circumstances allow the working group plans to organize conferences both in Bochum and in Bologna in 2022. The relevance of history and memory, value and interpretations was exemplified, and possible realizing methodologies were discussed. The complexity of theoretical, methodological and practical investigations formed also the complexity of the working group activities to address deindustrialization and memory in an interdisciplinary labour history.
Conference Overview:
Panel 1
Chair: Christian Wicke (Utrecht)
Stefan Moitra (Bochum) / Christian Wicke (Utrecht): Introductory Remarks
Pierre Botcherby (Warwick): Community involvement in post-industrial environmental regeneration in St. Helens, the North-West, and England: Operation Groundwork
James P. Ferns (Glasgow): Nostalgia, Workers’ Health and Occupational Identity
Elena Dinubila (Bordeaux): Cleaning up the Past from Nuclear Legacy. Employment Issues and Environmental Concerns in a Town of Southern Italy
Melinda Harlov-Csortán (Kőszeg): Memorizing the industrial utilization of a natural element. Where has the workers’ memory gone?
Panel 2
Chair: Melinda Harlov-Csortán (Kőszeg)
Martin Baumert (Bochum): Creators of a Socialist Landscape. Regeneration of Open Cast Mines in the German Democratic Republic
Martin Babička (Oxford): Sulphurous Atmosphere: Forests, Factories and Czechs after 1989
Lachlan MacKinnon (Cape Breton) Toxic Discourse: Community Environmentalisms and Deindustrialization in Nova Scotia, Canada
Janine Schemmer (Klagenfurt): Protect the lagoon. Cruise infrastructures, environmental damages and protest in Venice
Panel 3
Chair: Stefan Moitra (Bochum)
Regina Göschl (Bochum): Deindustrial regeneration, environmental history, and the museum
Gertjan Plets (Utrecht) in collaboration with Pim Huijnen (Utrecht), Marin Kuijt (Leiden): Towards a critical historical culture of Dutch oil and gas history: aims, challenges, and politics of writing a counter history in a corporate funded heritage arena
Note:
1 Laurajane Smith / Gary Campbell, “Nostalgia for the future”: memory, nostalgia and the politics of class, in: International Journal of Heritage Studies 23,7 (2017), pp. 612-627.