Beyond Coal & 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?    

Lutz Raphael reconstructs the highly variegated story of deindustrialization 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.

Lutz Raphael is Professor of Contemporary History at Trier University.