Community, de-industrialisation, and post-industrial regeneration in a Merseyside town : St. Helens, 1968-2018

This thesis explores the impact on community of de-industrialisation and (post-industrial) regeneration, via a case study of St. Helens (Merseyside, England) from the late 1960s to the present day. The main argument is that community has transformed from being centred around the working-class and industrial work to a less tangible but still present multiplicity of micro- and personal communities. This contrasts existing scholarship which often associates industrial and community decline. The thesis tends towards long-term analyses and explanations of its main themes: community, de-industrialisation, and regeneration. It offers these in the context of a large, formerly industrial town, a category often overlooked in favour of bigger cities, ‘new’ towns, or mono-industrial places. This long-termism is an existing trend in de-industrialisation studies, and the thesis endorses Jim Tomlinson’s proposition of de-industrialisation as a ‘meta-narrative’ for post-war Britain and Sherry Lee Linkon’s de-industrial ‘half-life’ theory. The thesis argues regeneration is similarly an important meta-narrative: towns like St. Helens have been constantly redeveloping and regenerating across the thesis’ time period, with similar aims and objectives recurring. The thesis adopts what Robert Colls calls an ‘inside-out’ approach. In studying community’s development, the thesis embraces its messiness as a concept, with each chapter offering a different perspective on community. It seeks not to neatly define or measure community but to explore how it was experienced by the people of St. Helens. To this end, it uses various approaches including oral history interviews, surveys, ‘imagined futures’ essays, and close analysis of materials produced by local grass-roots groups and the local press. It examines the role local industries and local/national government play in community, an important consideration for a town so influenced by its paternalist industries even today. Ultimately, it argues that community both evolves and persists in towns like St. Helens, despite the challenges of de-industrialisation and regeneration faced in recent decades