ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book outlines miners and the mining community in County Durham, where mining was long the dominant industry and where even today the National Coal Board remains one of the largest employers. Durham County in the last quarter of the twentieth century is very different from what it was in 1900 or even 1918. This book attempts to explain how such social changes have occurred. A reason for undertaking this work was the significance of long-term historical change. County Durham is the nineteenth-century was a melting-pot for immigrants from all parts of England, from Scotland and from Ireland. In the twentieth-century, in total contrast, its most striking characteristic is immobility - although there has been much emigration the very large majority of those who remain were born in the county.
