EDUCATION AND SOCIAL HAUNTING IN POST-INDUSTRIAL BRITAIN: PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS’ EXPERIENCES OF SCHOOLING IN A FORMER COALMINING COMMUNITY

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the intergenerational effects of deindustrialisation on the processes and experiences of education at ‘Lillydown Primary’, a state primary school in a former mining community in the north of England. Complicating Avery Gordon’s notion of ‘haunting’, and drawing on conceptualisations of affect and community ‘being-ness’, it highlights how contemporary experiences of education continue to be affected by historical and cultural relations and rhythms of everyday life, even though most of Britain’s traditional industrial base is now gone. The paper draws on data from ethnographic research carried out at the School and explores the complex ways in which historical, class-based relations and modes of ‘being’ continue to haunt across time and space. Its findings suggest that by coming to know the fullness of a social haunting – the loss, injury and the ‘goodness’ of the past – schools may have the potential to engage working-class children in educational processes and experiences from which they might otherwise feel excluded, alienated or detached.

Keywords:

• social haunting
• education
• deindustrialisation
• mining communities
• working class

1. Introduction

This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted at Lillydown Primary, a local authority maintained primary school in Lillydown,¹ a former mining community in the north of England. It mobilises Avery Gordon’s (2008) notion of haunting alongside the work of Walkerdine and Jimenez (2012) and others to show how historical embodiments and performances of community life are ghosted into the present, forming and maintaining a sense of security, collectivity and a ‘sense of being’ at the School. Data presented show how shared experiences of working-class life – social and domestic routines, cultural networks, collective relations and performances of labour and social life – haunt Lillydown Primary. The paper therefore relates in some ways to extant work on place inasmuch as it deals with a particular location, its material form, and notions of attachment, meaning and value (see Gieryn, 2000). But it focuses especially on affective and historical dimensions of social relations, performances and ways of being at the School. The paper is concerned with making visible the fullness of a social haunting. Central to this is coming to know the goodness of a social haunting whose ghostly desires linger in the familiar ‘fixtures and features’ that provide ‘a homely recognition of that which was supposedly over and done with’ (Edensor, 2008, p. 314). These echoes and murmurs of the past are, often unconsciously, reckoned with and harnessed by both staff and pupils to create somewhat more encouraging experiences of schooling, than when they are dismissed, denied or eschewed.

We, the authors of this paper, both come from former coalmining towns and recognise that our personal histories frame our thoughts and feelings, and the way we understand both the past and present in such locales. This paper is not, however, an attempt to engage in ‘smokestack nostalgia’ (Cowie and Heathcott, 2003). Our interests lie in recognising the value and goodness within working-class history and culture without ‘falling into an uncritical nostalgia or, at the same time, engaging in a critique which denies any value in such communities’ (Strangleman, 2008, p. 18). This means a more conscious and critical understanding and recognition of the ‘hidden rewards’ as well as the ‘hidden injuries of class’ (Sennett and Cobb, 1972) so as to make the ‘past come alive as the lever for the work of the present’ and the future (Gordon, 2008, p. 66).

The first section of the paper locates the work of Avery Gordon (2008) in the literature on education and social class and introduces the concept of social haunting. Section two provides an overview of the research upon which the paper is based. Section three begins by giving an insight into the development of community life in Lillydown. It then presents data from the ethnography. Split into three parts, each illustrates different aspects of the enactment and representation of traditional communal relations at the School. Data illustrates how traditional working-class relations and performances continue to haunt and shape experiences and processes of schooling through a reworking of the community’s ‘containing skin’ (Walkerdine and Jimenez, 2012). We conclude by explaining how the notion of social haunting, as mobilised in this paper, can be used to advance analysis and understanding of working-class experiences of schooling in places like Lillydown.

2. Education, Deindustrialisation and the Working Class

Research on the relationship between education, inequality and social class draws on different perspectives and traditions and emphasises different aspects of the ‘classed’ nature of education. These include Marxist and functionalist analyses, and work which draws on the ideas and concepts of Bernstein, Bourdieu, Foucault and other key thinkers. Whilst much of this research focuses on systemic patterns of inequality, there is also an extensive literature on the classroom experiences of working-class learners drawing on different understandings of the relationship between education and social class, which goes back to the work of Jackson and Marsden (1966), Willis (1977) and Corrigan (1979), for example. More recently, there has been something of an affective turn (Clough, 2007) across the social sciences and there is a growing body of literature on working-class pupils’ thoughts, feelings and emotions, and the ways in which they negotiate the formal and informal structures and processes of schooling. Reay (2017) has, for example, written about how the norms, values, customs and habits of those from working-class backgrounds are misrecognised and devalued in schools, universities and other settings. Meanwhile, there is an emerging interest in the affective intergenerational dynamics of space, place and social class, particularly in seeking to understand the social, cultural and psychic effects of deindustrialisation in and ‘beyond the heartlands’ of working-class communities (see, for example, Emery, 2019; Linkon, 2018; Mah, 2012; Nettleingham, 2019; Walkerdine and Jimenez, 2012).

Less well-documented are the effects of deindustrialisation within the parameters of the school, although Bright (2011, 2018), Smyth et al. (2010) and Ward (2015) help us to understand school-based relations in certain locales. Bright develops Gordon’s (2008) notion of haunting to examine pupils’ experiences of schooling in England’s former Central Coalfield. His main argument is that the physical and psychological violence of the Great Strike of 1984–1985, the subsequent closure of the mining industry, and its turbulent aftermath continue to affect young people’s experiences of education in overwhelmingly adverse ways (Bright, 2011, 2018). In Bright’s work, ‘resistant histories’, which traditionally characterised mining communities, resurface in school-based conflicts between pupils and teachers, and young people’s rejection of dominant discourses about the positive functions and benefits of education.

Drawing on literary texts, Gordon (2008) turns to three ‘ghost stories’ to understand how historical racial injustices, state violence and oppression continue to haunt particular communities. For Gordon, haunting is the language and method of ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ the ways in which historical loss, violence and injustice remain affective, even when these events are ‘supposedly over and done with’, or when their oppressive nature and effects remain ignored or denied (Gordon, 2011, p. 2). Haunting is, according to Gordon, about the ways in which we interact, experience and understand ourselves and others. It is about a shared ‘structure of feeling’ and a ‘specific type of sociality’ where social life is ‘unaware of its shadowy but exigent presence’ (Gordon, 2008, p. 201). It is:

[A]n encounter in which you touch the ghost or the ghostly matter of things: the ambiguities, the complexities of power and personhood, the violence and the hope, the looming and receding actualities, the shadows of ourselves and our society (Gordon, 2008, p. 134).

Gordon’s epistemology challenges us to engage with the complex, often contradictory, dynamics of social life and subjectivity. This, she contends, need not only to recognise political and economic forces and structures, but also ‘confront the ghostly aspects’ of it. So, whilst the miners’ strike ended over 35 years ago and the British coal industry is long gone, its effects, we argue, continue to haunt the living – forcing, in Gordon’s words, ‘generations to co-exist with their ghosts’ – ‘[passing] on to us today our haunting inheritance’ (Gordon, 2008, p. 200). We must, then, come to know the fullness of a social haunting – the loss, injuries, and the goodness – to fully understand and begin to transform experiences and processes of schooling for working-class young people.

3. Researching Lillydown: Fieldwork and Methodology

Data presented in this paper are drawn from a critical ethnography conducted at Lillydown Primary, a ‘one-form entry’ school for 3–11-year-olds with 47 staff and 249 pupils on roll at the time of fieldwork. All staff and the vast majority of pupils present as White British, reflecting the makeup of the local area. The School has a higher than average proportion of pupils qualifying for free school meals. Levels of unemployment, poverty and ill-health in the local community are all considerably above national and regional averages, and educational achievement, especially progression to university-level study, is comparatively low (see Simpson and Simmons, 2019).

The research examined how experiences of education are shaped not only by current structures and relations of contemporary capitalist society, but also by historical performances, traditions and codes rooted in Lillydown’s industrial past. Fieldwork took place between April–December 2016. The first phase was explorative, allowing for trust and respect to be built, and the field to be scoped. Here, a total of 15 days – over 90 hours – were spent in the field. During the second phase, 44 days were spent in the field and a total of 264 hours of participant observation were carried out. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted and transcribed – six teachers, four teaching assistants (TAs), five higher-level teaching assistants (HLTAs) and the Headteacher were interviewed. Two local residents were also interviewed to help gain a more holistic understanding of the historical and contemporary nature of Lillydown as a community. Field notes, photographs, and secondary data sets were collected, capturing emotionalities, contextual and social relations, and recording how time and space was utilised. All those who took part were either from Lillydown or Oakshire or had moved to the area for family or personal reasons.² All staff identified as ‘being working class’, although a few believed their class position had shifted over time due to their occupation, and associated social and material status. They still, however, believed that their working-class backgrounds remained embedded within their identities:

My Grandads were both miners … I am from a working-class background and my parents and I, even though we went into less manual jobs, still very much have that working-class ethic … we still have those values … I certainly have those values instilled within me (Erica, Teacher).

Staff felt this allowed them to be perceived as being ‘equals’, ‘insiders’ – ‘not posh, just normal like everybody else’ (Hazel, HLTA):

I’m working class definitely … See they [pupils] won’t understand class and stuff like that but … We are still like their [pupils’] Mums and Dads, we are just local (Jackie, TA).

Ethnography’s distinctive ability to ‘get beneath’ the complexities of social life through direct and sustained contact in the field is a well-established method for researching lived experiences of schooling. Whilst ‘mainstream’ ethnographies have, over time, provided a range of insightful accounts into the complexities of the social world, such studies have often been criticised for their lack of development in, and contribution to, building critical consciousness and theory (Allman, 1999; Maisuria and Beach, 2017). Critical ethnography, particularly that which is influenced by Marxist theory, attempts to move beyond ‘descriptive’ knowledge. Using the tools of ethnography, it critically explores institutions, people, and social relations within contemporary capitalist society. Critical ethnography emphasises the need to demystify oppressive structures and practices as they materialise and are experienced in everyday life. It aims to form an ethnography that stresses theoretical and pedagogical advancements for the ‘transcendence and transformation of the conditions toward a more just form of political economy and human existence’ (Maisuria and Beach, 2017, p. 1). However, if we are to truly understand the complexities of social life and transform it, this paper argues that a way of knowing and seeing that stretches the limit of ‘what is representable’ is necessary (Gordon, 2008, p. 150). Used in combination with the notion of social haunting, critical ethnography allows a way of seeing historical and current social, economic and political forces and structures and the ‘affective, cultural, and the experiential’ matters that haunt our every turn (Gordon, 2008, p. xii). At the core of both a social haunting and critical ethnography lies a notion of transformation – bringing about change out of a concern for social justice.

4. Findings: the Haunted Realms of Lillydown Primary

Community, Class and Schooling

Traditionally, coalmining communities were depicted as spaces and places of collectivity, solidarity and camaraderie. ‘Pit villages’ existed in close proximity to collieries and, whilst these places were dependent on coal for employment, various forms of leisure and social activity also revolved around the industry (Turner, 2000). Typically, family and community relations were ‘close knit’ and, for most young people, the transition for youth to adulthood was rapid, linear and predictable. We should not, however, romanticise the past. Traditional working-class culture was often harsh and sometimes cruel, and mono-industrial communities, such as those based on coal or steel, could be insular, parochial and intolerant of difference. Sexism, racism and homophobia were, for example, often part of the fabric of life in such places (Simmons et al., 2014). Either way, the construction, character and physical being of mining communities can only be properly understood in relation to the industries that built them (Dennis et al., 1956).

Lillydown is no exception. Originally, a small semi-rural settlement, its population, spatial divisions and community developed rapidly after its colliery opened in the late nineteenth century. The pit and its associated institutions and activities – trade unions; working men’s clubs and welfare institutes; football and cricket teams; club ‘outings’ to the coast, fishing trips and so on – were central to social and cultural life in the village. Lillydown’s colliery survived the first wave of pit closures after the Great Strike but shut following a second round of closures in the early-1990s, which signalled the end of coal mining as a major industry in Britain. Royce Turner (2000) has written about the social and economic damage caused by the closure of the pits and the rise of crime, drugs, and other forms of social dislocation thereafter. None of this should be surprising. Most pit villages not only lost their staple industry but their raison d’être when the mines closed, and discourses of loss and injustice continue to characterise the former coalfields today (Bright, 2018).

Frank, an elderly man who worked at Lillydown Colliery for over 40 years, provides some flavour of how embodied notions of collectivity materialised:

Well, there wo galas … every year and the parade through ‘village led by Lillydown band. There wo St johns, scouts, girl guides, football and cricket … And other sports: wrestling, boxing, and all that. They had everything for ‘families … Pubs used t’ organise tug o’ wars … aye … n darts, n dominoes. N of course on a Tuesdi you used t’ have a free n easy where you used t’ dance … the’ used t’ have good entertainment. At ‘club ther’ wo a lot, the’ used t’ tek trips from ‘club, 43 buses from ‘old club guin t’ ‘Southsea, Bridlington and Scarborough! But ‘highlight o’ day wo ex-service men’s club, ther’ wo a train load t’ Blackpool … everybody wo together (Frank, local resident).

Lillydown Colliery and its associated institutions – especially the Miners’ Welfare Club and Institute (Stute) – provided a range of social and cultural activities, and various forms of formal and informal learning. Staff reflected on how there used to be ‘a real social side to working in the mines’ (Frances, Teacher) and recalled how the Stute was the main hub for recreational activities in Lillydown. The Stute was, however, demolished in 2010 and with it the community suffered a loss of traditional performances of leisure and collectivism. Frank describes what was lost when the Stute closed:

[S]tute wo knocked darn n that wo an absolute tragedy. N nar you’ve no cricket, you’ve no majorettes, you’ve got first aid, there’s no boxing, no karate that’s gone, n that’s gone … Nar when that wo all guin off, it wo a good atmosphere. It’s a shame! (Frank, local resident).

Staff at the School stressed the need to continually enrich pupils’ experiences in order to compensate for such loss:

You’ve got to make it [school] every single zoo, museum, town or city because they [pupils] don’t go anywhere. I’ve kids in class who’ve never been to the zoo or seaside. It’s our responsibility to them to give them those experiences (Louise, Teacher).

Most staff felt that Lillydown Primary was a place where they could provide a continuation of some traditional experiences. First-aid training and competitions, trips to the seaside and zoo, bike ability, football, cricket, Taekwondo, and dancing were some of the activities observed. Ex-miner, Frank, taught first aid on a voluntary basis at the School. Here he reflects on its historical importance in Lillydown:

I started St John’s in Lillydown 1963 … .We also had a nursing section, it wo a big organisation at Lillydown and we wo one o’ best teams in Great Britain … Cos ther’ wo many accidents, inspectors decided that every pit ought t’ have a first aid team. They then set out a competition to see who wo best. In 1960-61, juniors won ‘Yorkshire final and senior team went on t’ win Great Britain’s Coal Board finals in 62, 63, 65, 68, n 75. The’ wo good, I’m not just saying it ‘cos I wo in it, but the’ wo really good.

First aid was traditionally taught at the Stute and was an essential and valued part of the mining industry and community life (see Dennis et al., 1956). For Frank, continuing such practices and forms of knowledge remains valued:

I come up eya t’ teach them initial first aid. The’ get a certificate saying they’ve attended a course … They take it seriously. At times, they’ll be out on duty at playtime n dinner time as first aiders. If anyone gets hurt the’ know what t’ do n who t’ send fo’. Kids enjoy it cos it’s hands on. N of course, we took 6 teams from eya to a competition recently, n the’ did pretty well. I mean 8-years-old … it’s a start! We’ve a lot who gu into caring n nursing n paramedics so we do pretty well in ‘St John for ‘kids here.

Here, what can be seen is a continuation and reworking of traditional performances within the School. First-aid continues to be a respected skill and form of knowledge that continues to protect and contain those within the School, as many first aiders have historically done so within the community and work. Frank also noted the importance of career progression. Other than factories and warehouses in Lillydown, human health and social work account for the second largest employment sectors in Oakshire (OMBC, 2020). Employment at two local care homes in Lillydown remains a ‘viable’ and ‘socially approved’ employment opportunity and prospect (see Dennis et al., 1956, p. 121).

Sport was also a significant part of the Stute’s activities:

I used to go down to the Stute and support the local girl’s and lad’s football team … now the teams are in the next villages so there is less opportunity. I try to say, Kids, ‘if you really like this there is this club and that club’, but the parents don’t want to take them. They are limited – money, travel and that. Now, they don’t get that opportunity and they need it. The sports coach walks in now and he’s God. He walks into the dinner hall and he will sit down … he gets high-fives and asked if he is teaching them P.E (Louise, Teacher).

Sometimes, when they had finished their set work, pupils were allowed to decide how they wanted to spend their ‘free time’ and typically they chose to do some form of sport. This also provided opportunities for staff and pupils to ‘gossip’ whilst waiting on the side-lines. An important part of social and cultural activities in mining communities, especially for women, was having space and time for ‘callin – talking in pubs and clubs, and in gardens and back yards, with neighbours, friends, and family (Dennis et al., 1956; Walkerdine and Jimenez, 2012). Social haunting helps us to understand how the School served as an alternative space where at least some traditional social and cultural experiences can be rejuvenated. Whilst similar activities may exist in other schools, at Lillydown Primary they appear to have arisen, at least in part, as a response to and understanding of historical performances of working-class life in and around Lillydown.

We begin to see how the ghostly matters of traditional performances and practices of community life materialise and are harnessed in the present. Material and emotional support was also found to be essential to the workings and rhythms of ‘being’ at Lillydown Primary:

I think it was an Ofsted inspector who described the School as ‘a safe hub’. I liked that description because for our children this is a good place to be, a safe place to be … they are getting their basic needs met – food, drink, snacks (Frances, Teacher).

The Headteacher adds:

Communities like Lillydown need someone who cares and who really understands the community. They need to understand where it has come from, the journey it has been on, and why it is like it is … and looks at how they can make it better for the children. Unless you have been part of it … you don’t totally understand that (Headteacher).

Lillydown Colliery closed many years ago, but certain elements of traditional coalfield culture – a sense of community, collectivity and solidarity – remain embedded, or are at least re-enacted, in the School. Staff talked about the School being ‘a community’ or ‘a big family’, where pupils’ ‘feel safe’ (June, TA). This, they believed, was essential, particularly for pupils whose lives were seen as difficult outside school:

I remember an educational psychologist saying, ‘children in this area need consistency more and if you stop being consistent, they feel less safe … that being consistent makes them feel safe’. That made sense to me because home can be chaotic (Frances, Teacher).

Lillydown Primary has had something of a chequered history and has not always had such a ‘familial’ feel. Shortly after the closure of Lillydown Colliery, it was deemed a ‘failing school’ by the state-funded inspectorate, Ofsted, which described it as characterised by low levels of pupil attainment, high staff turnover, and a ‘lack of stable and effective leadership’. Uncertainty and a lack of continuity within the School were identified, alongside ‘multiple deprivation’ in the local area, as the main causes of poor pupil attainment (Ofsted, 2002).

Things have, however, changed over time and nowadays Lillydown Primary is classified as a ‘good school’. The current Headteacher has been in post since 2003 and it is perceived to be much more stable and organised than in the past. Lillydown Primary is now deemed to be a place where children ‘feel safe and cared for’. Pupils are described as making ‘better than expected’ progress and staff are said to be ‘united’ behind the School’s leadership (Ofsted, 2013, 2018). A programme of restructuring took place after the Headteacher was appointed but probably the most significant change has been a concerted attempt to ‘put relationships at the centre of the School’ (Headteacher). This is evident in numerous ways but is exemplified by staffing arrangements where a dedicated teacher, TA, and HLTA are assigned to each class. This, the Headteacher said, was introduced because:

[T]he children can’t cope with change. If I have a teacher that goes on a two-day course, and I buy a supply teacher in, the behaviour of the children is all over … they don’t know how to cope. So, I started training staff TAs up into HLTAs … to improve security for the children. So, when the teacher is out it will be a HLTA who will cover … It’s a known adult for the children. It keeps consistency (Headteacher).

The vast majority of staff either grew up in Lillydown or nearby, or lived locally, rather than ‘being from elsewhere’, as was the case in Bright’s (2011) research. Most staff believed that their localised knowledge and familiarity with Lillydown’s past and present enabled a social and cultural affinity with pupils:

[I] get our kids and I get where they are coming from … it’s maybe something that I can’t even speak about or grasp but I know that I am the same as these kids … it is just something deep inside that is installed within me and within all the other children … I can’t really put it in to words (Clara, Teacher).

Important here is not just how these relations are formed and maintained but the affective dynamic – the sense of being – these relationships produce. Through relationships of kinship and collectivity, we begin to see how Lillydown Primary forms a space where historically embodied relations and performances hold the School, collectively in a containing skin:

Somebody from a completely different area … might struggle to understand where some of these children are coming from and some of these things these children have to face daily. Whereas being from this area you do know what happens in ‘area and what some families have got to deal with. So yeah, it does give you that understanding (Jennifer, TA).

During the course of the research, the School began a programme of training TAs to become ‘key attachment teaching assistants’ (KATAs), the aim being for a KATA to be attached to each class and ‘follow them through school’ from Year 1 until they leave in Year 6. The purpose of this, the Headteacher reasoned, was to provide consistent nurture and support for pupils – particularly for the most vulnerable. We begin to see then how Walkerdine and Jimenez (2012) notion of ‘community as family’ moves from a ‘metaphorical form’ – of relations and feelings of being familial – into a more ‘literal’ and physical sense where a kind of ‘informal extended family’ materialises as those ‘outside the family’ frequently provide ‘quasi-familial support’ (p. 60). Data show how traditional notions of collectivity and community support that historically characterised mining communities are ghosted into the present to support pupils’ social, emotional and material needs. Affective solidarity and support were mutual between staff and pupils:

[I]’ve been escorted from school down to ‘Asda by kids! The’ have said, ‘where are you going Miss?’ and I’ve told them, ‘I am off to catch ‘bus home’. They have literally walked with me and said, ‘I’ll make sure you are okay’ and the’ wait ‘till you get on ‘bus (Estelle, HLTA).

The ‘spirits of continuity’ (Edensor, 2008) which continues to haunt and the School, we suggest, provide a space where the community’s complex social traditions, relations and performances are harnessed and retraditionalised. Similarities can be drawn between traditional notions of collectivity and community support that many mining communities depended on for day-to-day living, particularly during times of hardship, and the current ways in which staff support pupils. During chronic periods of uncertainty and insecurity, many mining communities created and maintained what Massey and Wainwright (1985) called an ‘alternative welfare distribution system’ (p. 8) where community-based systems of support – food, clothing, finances, and the regulation and preservation of community morale, for example, helped sustain community life. This, in many ways, is what is being re-traditonalised at the School. We begin to see how the ‘closely-knit fabric of community’ in which ‘people looked after each other [and] cared for each other in the absence of resources’ continues to weave its ghostly presence around Lillydown primary, containing and holding those within it (Walkerdine, 2014, p. 4).

‘Pit Humour’

The affective relations and performances of the School provided a place where kinship and community are negotiated and re-traditionalised, and a shared space where an ‘affective community’ is forged and maintained (see Walkerdine and Jimenez, 2012). Louise talked about how relations with parents were developed and maintained through notions of familiarity, safety and solidarity:

When they hear that familiar accent, they realise that I am actually down to earth, I am a real person … that I am not some authoritative figure from somewhere that doesn’t understand … [then] they open up a bit more and see me more in a friendly manner, rather than just a teacher (Louise, Teacher).

Taylor (2012) describes ‘invisible forces’ that, for the working classes, constitute either a ‘sense of belonging or rupturing’ and act either as a ‘restriction on getting ahead’ or provide ‘a sense of comfortable ease or belonging’ (p. 1). Smyth et al. talk about the ‘relational school’ and the importance, especially in deprived areas, of mutual trust, care and respect between teachers and pupils, as opposed to more formal structures and relations (Smyth et al., 2010). At Lillydown Primary, many staff drew on shared histories to forge and maintain relationships based on working-class dispositions of ‘trust’, ‘respect’, and ‘authenticity’.

The use of humour was central to providing pupils with a space where they felt a sense of being. Typically, pupils engaged through personal relationships rather than more formal educational processes:

[Humour] does really help with the building of relationships … If you are just someone in a suit and stuffed shirt then they worry … if you can have those conversations and that bit of banter and fun it is lovely (Headteacher).

Traditionally, ‘pit humour’ – essentially ‘taking the piss’ – was a significant feature of social relations in coal mining communities. Such humour provided not only a coping strategy for miners engaged in arduous and dangerous labour, but was also something of a social lubricant at the level of the family, peer group and across generations (Turner, 2000). Particular forms of working-class humour provided a vehicle through which relations could be formed and maintained, and were used to regulate the structures of schooling in an often informal fashion:

Pupil tells the teacher that it is break time

Teacher:

Who are you ‘union representative?

Staff and pupils laugh

Pupil:

Yeah, we are, it’s brek (break)

Teacher:

laughs, you’ll be ‘death o’ me you lot, go on get out to play

(Observation Data)

Here, a member of staff conjures up the image of the trade union official – a figure historically central to labour relations in the coal industry – to gently rebuke a child who decides to inform the teacher that he wants the lesson to end. The image of the trade union official is re-traditionalised through the pupil who acts on behalf of classmates to protect leisure time, reminding the teacher that ‘work’ must now end. Social haunting helps to see and know the way in which pupils carry their industrial heritage, and how it continues to work to underpin structures, relations and performances of work and leisure.

Data showed humour was often used by both staff and pupils at the School:

Teacher:

‘You had your hair cut? (pupil nods) Hmmm, it looks good. I might have my hair cut like that’ (pupil laughs)

Pupil:

‘Yha ‘ant got no hair’

Staff and pupils all laugh

(Observation Data)

On another occasion, a pupil was upset because they could not complete some classwork and humour appeared to diffuse a potentially difficult situation:

The teacher goes over to a pupil who is becoming increasingly frustrated and emotionally stressed by the SPaG work set in class, and the looming prospect of SATs. The teacher looks at their work and they work through the question together. Before moving on, he looks at the pupil and says:

Teacher:

‘Don’t worry about it, I wo rubbish at school and look at me now’

Pupil:

laughs and replies, ‘Yha still rubbish now!’

They both laugh

(Observation Data)

Like the lads in Willis (1977) study, humour continues to contribute to the formation and maintenance of a particular culture. Rather than a form of resistance though, humour at Lillydown Primary helps to create and maintain relationships between staff and pupils as it once did underground and in their community. Although such distinctive forms of humour can sometimes seem problematic, particularly to ‘outsiders’, the fact remains, as Gordon (2008) argues, that it is the particular way of seeing and understanding the connection between certain histories and present realities that is necessary to understand a haunting. It is the specific cultural know-how – recognising and understanding such humour – that helps forge and maintain positive relationships and experiences of schooling:

It’s almost like a semi-industrial type of humour, isn’t it? It reflects what you would have found in the industry … that sort of almost unkind ribbing of each other sort of thing and that’s probably ‘sense o’ humour these kids have got from their industrial background and where the’ have come from and they’ve probably kept that haven’t the’. That’s probably why the staff in my class have still got it and they get it as well and probably why I’ve got it (Joe, Teacher).

These distinctive forms of humour mirror the creative and self-protective practices which historically characterised mining communities. Continued use of distinctive forms of humour provides a way of forming and maintaining a sense of ‘being-ness’ at Lillydown Primary. Here, we begin to see how the ‘goodness’ of traditional modes of community life are ghosted into the present and begin to mediate, encouragingly, relations and processes of schooling.

Risk of Rupture

We have shown how various echoes and murmurs of traditional community life recreate a sense of containment and ‘being’ at Lillydown Primary. It is often argued that tight-knit industrial communities drew collective strength and resilience from particular rhythms, relations and performances of work and community life, particularly in times of hardship and uncertainty (Warwick and LittleJohn, 1992). Ghosts, Gordon (2008) reminds us, are, however, ‘never innocent’ (p. 22) and so we must come to know the fullness of a social haunting and reckon with the complex dualities of the past. Or, more specifically, some of the exclusionary and deleterious consequences of historically constituted performances, relations and ways of being. Particularly salient here is the association staff made between being ‘other’, and pedagogies of authority and control. Estelle, for example, believed that rigid approaches to teaching and learning caused tensions between staff and pupils:

This teacher has come from a very authoritarian teaching style and it is causing real friction … I can see it and feel it … he will get his head round it and he will change to fit ‘school ‘cos ‘school won’t change to fit to him (Estelle, HLTA).

For Bright (2011), authoritarian pedagogies risk summoning the ‘resistant histories’ which often characterised social relations between miners, the police and other authorities in the former coalfields. There was an understanding that historical social violence, in particular that which took place in the 1984–1985 miners’ strike, continues to affect relations with authority in places like Lillydown. Most staff were conscious of how pupils could, when met with authoritarian discourses and performances of schooling, act within a ‘socially remembered repertoire of refusal’ (Bright, 2011, p. 502):

The’ hate being humiliated and shown up publicly … if you are overly authoritative with ‘em it would just turn ‘em totally away from you … If the’ hate you then the’ won’t work. If you are authoritative and aggressive wi’ ‘em [with them] … and make ‘em try to behave in a way that is just to show you have control, it can lead to a danger that the’ are going to hate you and you then lose control (Joe, Teacher).

Being authoritarian and controlling can give sustenance to ghosts that harbour the social violence and conflicts of the past. Traditional class-based performances of authority, moral codes and ethics appeared, however, to penetrate the rhythms and structures of the School through relationships, and educational processes built on moral and more equitable grounds, rather than through regimes of control and oppression. Staff and pupils’ shared class origins and histories helped negotiate a degree of respect and stability. Staff were able to ‘call upon’ their knowledge and experience of working-class life to harness the goodness, albeit often unconsciously, of the past (Maguire, 2005).

At Lillydown Primary, however, staff generally used more informal, ‘relational’ ways of working with pupils, which enabled the School to engage with and resolve ‘internal conflict’ (Walkerdine, 2010, p. 108). Here, the Headteacher reinforces the importance of a relational approach:

The teachers who are here now are very big on all the relationships. If you have not got relationships with the children, then you are not going to get the best out of them, and all my teachers believe that … all my teachers, teaching assistants, and HLTAs … are very much from the community but they can see the power and buy in to what we are doing with all the relationship work (Headteacher).

Walkerdine and Jimenez (2012) examine rhythms of community life of Steeltown, a South Wales town built on steel production. Drawing on psycho-social approaches to affect (see Anzieu, 1989; Bick, 1968), they argue that local people were able to develop a ‘buffer against uncertainty’ through certain practices, spaces, and ways of being that formed a sense of continuity and containment (p. 11). They describe the growth, over time, of a ‘protective membrane’ in Steeltown – a containing skin – which served to stop the community from ‘spilling out’, ‘leaking’, particularly in times of crisis (pp. 53–56)). Walkerdine (2016) goes on to describe a rupturing, followed by something of a reworking, of this affective skin after the closure of the local steelworks. She describes how Steeltown’s reworked skin remains characterised by particular ‘practices of communal relations’, ‘poor toleration of outsiders’, a ‘strong identification of place’ and ‘chronic insecurity’ (p. 702). In some ways, what can be seen here is a continuation of such practices to ‘protect’ and ‘contain’ the School – ‘to expel the dissenters in order to save the group’ (Willoughby, 2004, p. 192). This was also evident, for example, when we were told how certain members of staff were not accepted, particularly by parents, because they did not ‘fit in’ with localised standards and norms – in terms, for example, of dress, speech and disposition. Whilst these practices cannot be condoned, previous research in the former coalfields describes similar forms of suspicion and hostility towards ‘outsiders’ (see, for example, Bright, 2011; Turner, 2000). Such findings are unsettling, but processes of haunting are, as Gordon (2008) maintains, difficult, complex and sometimes contradictory. They are also, we argue, part and parcel of reckoning with and coming to terms with social haunting. Ghosts, in and of themselves, do not bring about change. They are ‘pregnant with the unfulfilled possibilities of the something to be done’ (Gordon, 2008, p. 183). But to harness these potentialities, those who are haunted must become conscious of them. They must listen to, follow and make ghostly matters of the past ‘come alive as the lever for the work of the present’ (Gordon, 2008, p. 66). Reckoning with ghosts is, Gordon argues, about:

[P]utting life back in where only a vague memory or a bare trace was visible to those who bothered to look. It is sometimes about writing ghost stories, stories that not only repair representational mistakes, but also strive to understand the conditions under which a memory was produced in the first place, toward a countermemory, for the future (Gordon, 2008, p. 22).

Data showed how, over time, most teachers were able to harness the ‘echoes and murmurs’ of Lillydown’s past, especially those who had either moved into Lillydown or surrounding villages from elsewhere. Clara, for example, believed she was able to strengthen relations with parents and pupils through learning to ‘speak the same language’ as them (see Maguire, 2005):

Now, whenever I speak to parents, especially … that I know I need to get onside or parents that are a bit stand-off-ish … my accent gets stronger because I feel it puts them at ease … they realise that I’m actually down to earth … a real person from Oakshire, not some authoritative figure from somewhere that doesn’t understand (Clara, Teacher).

Similarly, Louise reflects on the relational strength of knowing and harnessing the uniqueness of the Lillydown accent:

A Lillydown accent is different … I didn’t know some of the words and phrases they used, they have their own language … All that builds trust because you are not just a teacher, you are a person too. With that comes the relationship (Louise, Teacher).

Social haunting raises spectres. It is that moment of unsettledness when feelings and experiences of the ‘something-to-be-done’ waver in the present and create feelings and conditions that invite transformation (Gordon, 2008). To harness these potentialities, those who are haunted must not only uncover, listen to and see what was in their blind spots but they must also harness ghosts. Although we recognise that specific codes of working-class life can be difficult for someone from elsewhere to understand and effect, what is important here is that there is space to listen to ghosts – to learn the class logic – and reckon with and harness the echoes and murmurs of Lillydown’s industrial past.

Whilst we acknowledge the hurt and suffering experienced in Lillydown and similar places, our argument in this paper is that the social relations, performances and ways of being observed at Lillydown Primary go at least some way towards recreating a ‘protective membrane’ at the School. It is these echoes and murmurs of the past which we argue provide a feeling of security and belonging and connect with working-class experiences of the past in ways which both recognise what has been lost but also embrace and celebrate the past. Social haunting is, after all, a way of knowing the past, not as ‘cold knowledge’ but as ‘transformative recognition’ for the present and the future (Gordon, 2008, p. 8). To recognise and harness the ghosts’ potentiality we must come to know all facets of the ghost.

5. Conclusion

In many ways, Lillydown remains socially and culturally injured by the past and its ‘containing skin’ has been significantly ruptured (Simpson and Simmons, 2019). This, however, is not the full story. This paper advances our understanding of how working-class pupils’ experiences of schooling remain characterized by rhythms and narratives of the past. We develop this by thinking about the fullness of a social haunting and data which invites us to recognise that ghosts transmit not only pain and suffering but potentially a ‘goodness’ that we must too come to know. Throughout, we stressed a seeing and knowing of how industrial and cultural ways of being and doing are embodied and retraditonalised through certain relations and performances at Lillydown Primary. Walkerdine and Jimenez (2012) help us to understand how historical transmissions create a sense of containment and belonging – a containing skin – for staff and pupils. Lillydown Primary is, in some ways, is beginning to reposition itself to ‘fit the lives of working-class students’ (Simmons and Smyth, 2018) by placing history and culture at the centre of its being – making ‘links back to its own creative history’ – to ‘reach forward into a new future’ with and for their pupils (Walkerdine and Jimenez, 2012, p. 190). Our understanding of the nature and experience of working-class schooling in de-industrialised marginalised settings such as Lillydown is, we argue, enhanced through mobilising the notion of social haunting. It must, in other words, be located within the historical context of its locale which so critically frames and affects its very being.

Linkon (2018) reminds us, however, that harnessing ghosts is not enough to ‘overcome the structural and ideological power of global capitalism and neoliberalism’ (p. 25). It is also necessary to enact broader social and economic reform if we are serious about improving the educational and life experiences of working-class pupils (see Simmons and Smyth, 2018). A change in our mode of knowledge production is, nonetheless, necessary to see and think ‘beyond the limits of what is already comprehensible’ if we are to understand and, ultimately, effect change ‘however small a measure’ (Gordon, 2008). That, we maintain is through an epistemology of social haunting. Society, communities, institutions, and people are full of individual and collective ghosts. To be blind to such ghosts, or to mishandle them, risks rupturing their potentialities and re-awakening the ‘unhallowed dead’ (Gordon, 2008) – the ghosts that carry loss, injustice and violence. Social haunting offers a way of understanding the nuances and intricacies in and beyond deindustrialised heartlands, and the lived complexities of the social world more broadly. Social haunting asks us, then, to be willing, when ghosts arise, to ‘learn how they speak’ and to grasp the fullness of their ‘life world’ (Gordon, 2008). Ghosts demand our attention. They demand an understanding of the ‘generations that preceded us’ as transformative recognition for the present. Perhaps more importantly, they demand change for ‘the ones whose futures we ourselves will haunt’ (Walkerdine, 2015, p. 180).

7. Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Lillydown is a pseudonym for the locale where the research took place.

2 Oakshire is a pseudonym for the metropolitan local authority in which Lillydown is located.