Breaking/Unmaking the Working Class: Jonas Patrick Marvin & Ewan Gibbs

Jonas Patrick Marvin and Ewan Gibbs are coming to Lighthouse - Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop on Monday 16 November to talk about British social history and class life. The evening is built around two books that look at the same subject from different angles, and the two authors will be discussing them together.

Marvin is a writer, researcher and campaigner based in Stoke-on-Trent, and he hosts the podcast Life of the Party. His book, The Breaking of the English Working Class, is described as a phenomenology of class life in twenty-first-century Britain. It traces the tragedy and possible revival of the British working class from the potbanks of the Potteries to the gig economy, retelling the working-class story over the last forty years—from Thatcher's war on the unions to New Labour's neoliberalism.

Gibbs is a Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. His book, An Injury to All, is a social history of Britain since 1945, following the transformation of a class forged in mines and shipyards into one scattered across call centres and gig-economy apps. Between the two, they cover a huge stretch of time and a lot of ground, from the mid-century industrial heartlands to the precarious work of today.

The session is organised by Lighthouse - Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop, at 43-45 West Nicolson Street, EH8 9DB. It runs from 7pm to 8pm on Monday 16 November, and tickets are up to £6.