Photographing the Calder Valley: or social history at the 'mouth of hell'
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External
Book here (PhotographingCalderValley.eventbrite.co.uk)
How do we write histories of small towns in the post-1945 period? Towns such as Halifax in the Calder Valley feature little in an otherwise thriving historiography of contemporary Britain. Yet for an earlier generation of social historian, most notably E. P. Thompson, who wrote The Making of the English Working Class while living there, such towns were crucial to understanding the processes of industrialisation and capitalist modernity. How can we include such places in more purposeful narratives of the more recent past? How do we write inclusive histories of belonging for the residents of these towns that do not consign them to being ‘left behind’, as though their histories are only considered to explain their ‘unmaking’ and marginalisation: towards an overdetermined present of post-Brexit Britain, flags and Reform?
Towns such as Halifax have long evoked a particular visual culture. Pictures of terraced housing, cobbled streets and smoke from factory chimneys are often summarised as ‘Lowryscapes’. Drawing upon an analysis of photography this lecture examines how we might approach a social history of small towns in modern Britain. Using images from well-known photographers such as Bill Brandt, John Bulmer, Martin Parr and Nick Danziger, as well as the less known local photographer, Alice Longstaff, it explores how historians of contemporary Britain can peer beneath the smog that enveloped such towns to write their histories.
The lecture will be followed by a comment from Aditya Chakrabortty.
Matthew Hilton is Professor of Social History at Queen Mary University of London. He has written on the history of political activism, social movements and nongovernmental organisations. His most recent book is Charity After Empire: British Humanitarianism, Decolonisation and Development, Cambridge, 2026.
Aditya Chakrabortty is senior economics commentator for the Guardian, where he writes a regular column and reports from around Britain and the world. His work has won a British Press Award, a British Journalism Award, a Harold Wincott prize and a Social Policy Association award. He is writing a book for Allen Lane/Penguin, on the factory suburb of London where he was born and brought up.
For information contact Katy (k.pettit@bbk.ac.uk)
Facilitated by the Raphael Samuel History Centre
Contact name: Katy Pettit
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