The Radical Urban Lab and GOSSIP at the School of Geography and Sustainable Development proudly present:
Dr Paul Griffin (Northumbria University)
Spatial Politics, Solidarity Infrastructures, and Unemployed Organising
This talk will reflect on the politicisation of unemployment across UK towns and cities in the early 1980s. With a particular focus on trade union and community organising, the presentation will reflect on the role of Unemployed Workers’ Centres in articulating opposition to deindustrialisation, redundancies, and long-term unemployment. Focusing upon centres as ‘solidarity infrastructures’ allows an analysis that considers the quieter acts of care and advice alongside organising practices and campaigning. This paper revisits these histories through archives and oral histories of unemployed organising and includes reflections on the People’s March for Jobs 1981, the emergence of TUC Unemployed Workers’ Centres and wider unemployed resistances. In doing so, it connects with ongoing works across social movement studies and labour geographies, as well as related works focusing upon the politics of working-class presence within urban environments.
April 3, 2023
12pm – 1pm
Lapworth laboratory (IRV: 208)
Irvine Building
University of St. Andrews
