Thomas Langford, The Lights on the Tipple are Going Out: Fighting Economic Ruin in a Canadian Coalfield Community, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024. 400 pgs. ISBN 780774869294.
Reviewed by Sarah Perry
Why does the death of Robert Lilley matter in a history of coal and dust? This is the question that sociologist Tom Langford implores his readers to consider in The Lights on the Tipple Are Going Out. As the reader learns, Robert Lilley was an officer of his union local who fought to make working-class voices heard in Victoria legislation. Tragically, Lilley died by suicide by a coal-carrying freight train on June 28th, 1963. Lilley’s death, Langford argues, was symbolic of the political concerns he raised: “his suicide symbolized the death of Fernie as a trade union city sustained by the labour of hundreds of unionized underground coal miners” (5). As a socio-environmental historian and a woman of partial Indigenous descent (Mi’kmaw), I found that Lilley’s death helped me to see beyond the sterile statistics of a collapsing industry town in 20th century Canada: it served as a crucial reminder of the complex layering of social and economic factors that come with ultimate ruination of a society trapped within a dying natural environment.
For Langford, Lilley embodies the fight for workers’ rights and unionization in a growing capitalist society. Fernie, a small mining community located in British Columbia, Canada, followed a trajectory that will be familiar to historians of extraction and serves as a primary location for Langford’s analysis: like its counterparts across many parts of North America, the problem of deindustrialization ushered in a rise in unemployment and suicide rates among union workers. Workers and their families resisted these economic and social changes; evident in Langford’s analysis of the struggle for political recognition, economic advancement, and action against mine closures. The miners would not allow for a passive departure amid increasing devastation. Like Lilley, workers of Crowsnest Pass and Elk Valley ensured that the collapse of their mining communities would not be without pushback, evident in the Labor-Progressive Party’s newsletter The Lamp’s “The Fight for Autonomy” article published in May 195
Perhaps the most captivating of Langford’s chapters is Chapter 3: Ghost Town Future? Searching for Economic Revitalization, 1957-62. This chapter engages with the “new normal” of Crowsnest Pass and Elk Valley, following mass mine closures in the area. Langford argues that in the face of abandoned mines and economic despair, “local growth coalitions expected residents to ‘grin and bear it’ when it came to new economic schemes: a growth-at-all-costs assumption underpinned elites’ economic boosterism” (171-172). This, unfortunately, is a story all too well known in the field of mining history: as local economies collapsed, labour became vulnerable to exploitation and subject to forced adaptation to post-war capitalist schemes. One can point here to the noticeable gap between workers’ wages and workplace danger levels: many had to supplement their income by “tending a vegetable garden, raising chickens and milk cows, and hunting and fishing” (177), despite being employed in hazardous conditions that qualified for adequate pay with risk compensation.
Mining and labour scholars often speak of the temporary life expectancy of a mine, resulting in a community built only to find ruination when natural resources become finite. Langford’s discussion of ghost towns does well to highlight how mine closures were haunted by the previous lives of both individual workers and the community as a whole. The death of a community leaves traces as evident as an abandoned mine itself: not only in death records, but in schools, houses, and buildings left to decay once the mine fulfills its life expectancy, and in the nature that adapts its regrowth accordingly. Robert Lilley serves as a useful example of this process. As Langford writes in his introduction, “Lilley was among the ex-miners who, abandoned by their former employer and given only meagre assistance by governments and the UMWA, were unable to adjust to a new reality in which coal miners had become ‘yesterday’s people’” (5). In a rising economy that values machine over human, understanding the significance of “yesterday’s people” is important in recognizing the consequences of capitalism in nature: all living things can become disposable.
The fifth and sixth chapters address attempted efforts at restoring economic stability and community allegiance within Crowsnest Pass and Elk Valley. Here, we see the way that social, economic, and environmental histories are inextricably layered together: In addition to being targeted by community officials, women faced violence from their domestic partners. Langford tells the story of a Natal man who shot and killed both his wife and himself, and another of a coal miner who murdered his estranged partner with an axe (210-211). While these recollections are perhaps difficult to digest, Langford brings attention to an important notion: the history of boom and bust was violent and ugly. Although a study primarily focused on labour unionization and worker resistance, Langford does not glorify the worker movement of Crowsnest Peak and Elk Valley, emphasizing its marginalization of women (292-93). It can be far too easy to forget humanity in a history of coal and dust. Langford’s entwined analysis of both desperate workers and victims of gendered violence is a stark but important reminder of the widespread consequences of mining collapse.
A refreshing and welcome addition to previous scholarship that tends to value older, occasionally outdated Marxist frameworks, Langford does not merely present his research through a male-dominated, Eurocentric, colonial lens. His discussions on the marginalization of women illustrate the complexities of the worker movement and help to extend the scope of mining closure devastation beyond merely a labour-economic framework. In addition to his work on gender, Langford also continuously engages with the experiences of First Nations communities concerning Crowsnest Peak and Elk Valley. Most notably, he raises conversations surrounding historical relations of racist mining policies and future developments toward land conservation. Langford emphasizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge resurgence in addressing the environmental decline of the region, stressing that decolonization and collaboration with Indigenous communities are essential to repairing Crowsnest/Elk Valley from the sacrifice zones they have become (307). With the growing recognition of mass mining as an environmental crisis, instead of merely an economic or industrial affair, it is imperative to address that mining communities established on unceded territories are forms of ongoing colonial violence. Additionally, the resulting environmental racism, devastation and pollution that mining brings to the land disproportionately affects Indigenous and other marginalized communities in Canada. Langford’s inclusion of First Nations’ perspectives in this study is therefore a necessary and required aspect of environmental mining scholarship, and one that he handles with sophistication.
In Langford’s telling, Robert Lilley ultimately serves as a martyr of a well-fought battle against capitalist destruction and environmental ruin. He was a miner abandoned by his company, and a leader in a movement toward worker recognition. However, in Langford’s hands, he becomes more than simply the roles he undertook in his lifetime. Lilley also serves as a symbol for the casualties of a deindustrialized, over-exploited mining community, a decline in worker health, the marginalization of women and Indigenous communities, and environmental degradation. The Lights on the Tipple are Going Out is a compelling, thoughtful, and necessary addition to both studies of coal regions and overall environmental mining scholarship that models a new way of telling the complex history of boom towns. Whether seeking a narrower, more focused analysis on labour and economics, or a broader conversation on class, gender and society, Canadian Environmental historians will find Langford’s book to be a staple on their reading list- especially for those invested in the growing field of mining history.
