The Power Politics of Regional Deindustrialization: The Cape Breton Development Corporation, State Ownership, and Pit Closure in Canada’s Coal Industry 1967-2001

William Gillies

The Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) was an ambitious attempt by the Canadian federal government to manage the deindustrialization of coal mining on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Created in 1967 by nationalizing the unprofitable collieries, DEVCO’s original mission was to incrementally close them, while fostering an alternative economic base in the area. The mines operated until 2001 when they finally closed. DEVCO has primarily been studied as an example of federal regional development policy, as its Industrial Development Division experimented with many projects to stimulate economic growth. However, DEVCO’s Coal Division has remained almost entirely unstudied, despite absorbing the vast majority of the money, and well outliving the regional development programs. Not only that, managed wind-down was quickly abandoned, and from 1973 the Coal Division massively expanded, a process that continued into the 1980s. I argue that the Coal Division’s history significantly modifies our understanding of DEVCO, as regional development was only one factor in the crown corporation’s trajectory. Those other factors mostly related to coal, which the Canadian state was deeply entangled with through energy policy, labour relations, and political patronage. Furthermore, as a state-owned enterprise, DEVCO had key differences from private sector deindustrialization, as this formally politicized pit closure and made governments vulnerable to pressure from those most impacted, particularly workers. DEVCO was a unique response to deindustrialization, which has some enduring implications for shutting down fossil fuel infrastructures today.

The New Mercantilism: Kari Polanyi Levitt’s Silent Surrender and Canada’s Branch-Plant Economy

Steven High

British sociologist Tim Strangleman argued in an influential 2017 essay that the study of the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries offers us a model of how to think about the de-industrial revolution of the late 20th century. Drawing inspiration from E.P. Thompson’s classic study The Making of the English Working Class, and applying Karl Polanyi’s theorization of social dis/embeddedness under capitalism as well as Raymond William’s related conceptualization of structures of feeling, Strangleman suggested that over the longue durée we see the making and unmaking of a social order.  In his mind, these “two historically discrete epochs” of transformative economic change “can be thought of as two bookends of what was an industrial era.”  To visualize his argument, he helpfully produced a timeline with three overlapping circles demarcating the pre-industrial, industrial and deindustrial stages of societal development over a two-hundred year period. While this visualization of the past aligns with how many people in Europe and North America speak of the late 20th century as the end of the industrial age, I argue here that the historical bookends analogy mis-represents what is actually going on. The world didn’t deindustrialize, far from it. But where things are made certainly changed.

Rather than a linear evolutionary process at the societal or global level, regional or sectoral deindustrialization is best understood as a normal feature of global capitalism. Writing back in 1981, sociologist Charles Tilly noted that waves of economic restructuring and deindustrialization accompanied European colonial expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as mid-20th century decolonization.  In India, for example, textile handicraft workers were displaced by the cheap textiles being mass produced in British factories during the colonial period.  Tilly even noted that deindustrialization was present almost from the outset of Europe’s industrial revolution. The late 20th century likewise saw concurrent regional industrialization, mainly in Asia, and regional deindustrialization, mainly in Europe and North America (though not exclusively so, as many other economies pivoted from import substitution to export-industries). A geographic sensibility is therefore essential to understanding deindustrialization, something that is missing in Strangleman’s linear and overly universalized explanatory framework.  To explore this further, my proposed paper will explore the how and why of deindustrialization as well as the where and when. Each register affords us important insights into deindustrialization as a socio-economic, cultural and political process.

Negotiating the End of Coal: UMW District 26 and the DEVCO Coal Closures, 1999-2000

Lachlan MacKinnon

In January 1999, the Government of Canada announced plans to close the remaining two  nationalized coal mines in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The mines had been taken over by the  federal government in the 1960s and had launched two significant hiring waves during the  1970s. As a result, although the workforce was aging, nearly 2,000 coal miners would fail to  qualify for pension under the terms of the initial closure announcement. District 26 of the United  Mineworkers of America, the union that represented the Cape Breton miners since the early 20th  century, responded immediately by calling for ongoing negotiations with DEVCO management  and representatives of the federal government. While the bargaining team met management in  Ottawa, rank-and-file miners launched an illegal occupation of the Prince Mine while others  vandalized DEVCO headquarters in Glace Bay. Through oral history interviews with former  members of the union executive, coal miners, and their supporters, this presentation explores the  lessons gleaned from organized labour under conditions of industrial closure.