Gateway Chronicle 2021

53
planned because the mines were not economically
viable in their existing state. It is the media portrayal
of those communities which is particularly significant
to understanding the enduring prevalence
of assumptions about the miners and their families.
The violence of the clashes between the strikers
and the police was played out to an increasingly media-consuming
audience and these images are still at
the forefront of an internet search of the event.
However, these rather extreme portraits may elide
some of the more nuanced voices of the lived experiences
of members of the mining communities and
recent research has illuminated stories of motivation,
aspiration and change. Work in the field of
Classical Reception Studies, particularly that of Edith
Hall and Henry Stead, has foregrounded some
of these voices. Their research highlights the role
of adult education institutions in changing the intellectual
lives of members of mining communities.
In the early nineteenth century the proliferation of
more affordable literature created a drive for self-education
which led to institutions being created
which supported this. Examples of adult education
institutions include Mutual Improvement Societies,
Adult Schools, Mechanics Institutes, University
Extension Schemes, the Workers’ Educational
Association (WEA) and the Labour Colleges. Adult
Schools, whose primary initial function was to
enable illiterate adults to read the Bible, tended to
be Methodist and
Quaker. However,
a widening
of the curriculum
to include
the teaching of
grammar, geography
and arithmetic
followed.
Mechanics Institutes
originated
in Glasgow in
1800 and offered
scientific lectures;
unlike Mutual
Improvement
Societies, these
were established
not by workers
but philanthropists,
particularly
landowners and
businessmen.
Hidden Voices
Throughout the nineteenth century, the drive
towards more inclusive education continued; by
the 1870s universities were beginning to be more
inclusive of wider communities, through their
University Extension schemes, and the WEA was
established in 1903.
Against this background of widening participation
in education by adults, the question needs to be
asked to what extent did members of mining communities
participate in these activities or similar.
The full extent of the engagement of mining communities
with educational experience is difficult to
measure as records are incomplete and the capture
of individual experience relies on precarious factors
such as a decision to keep personal papers or family
memory. Although a quantitative answer cannot be
produced, a qualitative approach to researching the
question can cast light on individual personal experience
and, in doing so, can undermine preconceptions
about mining communities. For this, we can
turn to the field of classical education, historically
seen as something of a marker of class.
An examination of some of the cultural activities
of the workers in the town of Ashington in Northumberland,
which lies twenty miles from Bolden
Colliery, suggests that there was a great deal of
Below: miners at Ashington Colliery