Beyond Coal and Steel

In the 1970s, the economic and social foundations of Western Europe underwent an unprecedented transformation. Old industries like coal and steel disappeared, millions of people lost their jobs, and formerly flourishing towns and cities went into decline. Traditional political agendas gave way to new social problems and concerns.

What happened to industrial citizens – their workplaces, their careers, and their homes? How did social rights and political participation of workers change when markets became global, management lean, and financial capital dominant? How did companies change, and how were personal skills and work tasks reinvented under the impact of new technologies? How did workers – men and women – live through these decades of uncertainty and upheaval?

Beyond Coal and Steel by Lutz Raphael reconstructs the highly variegated story of deindustrialisation in Western Europe, with a particular focus on Britain, France, and West Germany. Extending over three decades, this transformation was accompanied by significant rises in productivity and consumerism, but it also came at a heavy cost, ushering in many low-income jobs, growing inequality, and a crisis of democratic representation. Its legacy is everywhere around us today – it is the transformation that has shaped our world.