ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author uses the Beverley case-study evidence to show how industrial workplaces in the post-war decades could play an important role in underpinning local social networks and sense of belonging at a town level. Post-war sociologists who had little to say on the integration of workplaces in community life were often those who wrote about working-class life in London, or in the new suburban council estates many miles from old workplaces. The author begins with a description of the industrial dimensions of Beverley in the age of affluence, before examining the role of workplaces in the social worlds of employees and the contribution local factories made to the collective life and identity of the town in the three post-war decades. He/she concludes with a consideration of ways in which the relationship between work and community developed across this period.
