Hello. This thread investigates the impact of industrial closure on the meaning of place through the case study of the Bilston Steel Works, a small town in the Black Country conurbation of the West Midlands, during the 1970s to its eventual closure in May 1980. #SWOS20 1/15
Moving beyond retrospective remembering of deindustrialisation, the thread captures the immediate lived experience of industrial decline. The focus is on the changing meanings of place and the relative speed at which a politics of nostalgia entrenched itself. #SWOS20 2/15
By the mid-1970s, BSW was an island of an older economic order not only nationally but within the wider Black Country. Against this backdrop, BSW was central to the Bilston and Black Country economy, with a workforce increasingly drawn from across the region. #SWOS20 3/15 
BSW workers were conscious of and celebrated not being swept up in regional industrial decline as a mark of their distinctive attributes and sense of ‘local patriotism’. As in this 1976 Steel News article, workers self-fashioned a reputation as ‘the last of a breed’. #SWOS20 4/15
BSW’s success was built on longstanding familiarity, commonality, and self-respect. For a workforce increasingly drawn from across the Black Country conurbation, BSW represented the final vestige of a specific industrial culture. But this was to change dramatically. #SWOS20 5/15
On the 1 October 1977, BSW’s blast furnace– ‘Elisabeth’ – was mothballed. British Steel Corporation insisted the mothballing would last for six months or the duration of the trade recession in the steel industry. In actuality, the blast furnace was never to be relit. #SWOS20 6/15
The decision caused confusion, doubt and distrust amongst the workforce. Language of ‘betrayal’, ‘cheating’ and the use of ‘dirty tactics’ became widespread. Workers were left with little to do as a 1978 tongue-in-cheek cartoon in the Sandwell Evening Mail captured. #SWOS20 7/15
A sense of what had long kept Bilston apart from both local and national level change began to evaporate into a more common 1970s experience of post-war conceptions of a ‘shared future’ breaking down. Workers radically adjusted to a sense of inevitability. #SWOS20 8/15
The centrality of the steelworks to the future of Bilston’s local identity came into sharp focus. For example, a letter to the Express & Star newspaper in 1978 complained ‘if Bilston Steelworks closes, it will be a blow from which Midland industry may never recover’. #SWOS20 9/15
The final acceptance of closure was secured in May 1979 when redundancy payments were agreed. Most were advised to use this money to re-establish themselves elsewhere. But BSW’s workplace culture had created a synergy between work and place that made Bilston ‘home’. #SWOS20 10/15
The ‘Elisabeth’ blast furnace was demolished unceremoniously in October 1980. This marked a moment where Bilston experienced its ‘death’ but also remained in the minds of locals and former workers ‘a steel town’. A culture of place stubbornly remained embedded. #SWOS20 11a/15
See this You Tube video #SWOS20 11b/15
Former steelworkers saw the 1970s as a heyday, albeit one that was not necessarily representative of wider experience. Bilston’s sense of place as a ‘steel town’ was defined against, rather than alongside, the prevailing winds of change. It was a mark of resistance. #SWOS20 12/15
Everyday realities were caught between this lingering culture. This was beautifully captured in a 1979 poem by J. Richards titled Redundant. Through imagery of stillness and quietness, the poem imagines Bilston as a place where very little would happen without BSW. #SWOS20 13/15
This thread’s case study of Bilston suggests how a sense of place did not necessarily wane as a result of industrial decline but was rather reconstructed and adapted to make sense of, and begin the process of navigating through, this process of immense flux. #SWOS20 14/15
Thank you for reading! If you have further questions please email mb867@exeter.ac.uk. Also, a journal article exploring the case of Bilston in more detail will be published with Labour History Review @StudyLabHistory in December this year! #SWOS20 15/15
