Working-Class Heritage Revisited in Alan Warner’s The Deadman’s Pedal

Abstract

This chapter explores how Alan Warner’s The Deadman’s Pedal (2012) revisits the social-democratic, public infrastructure that was constructed largely by, as well as for, working-class people in Britain between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1970s. The novel’s representational details draw upon the author’s experiences working for British Rail but also reflect the durable influences of Raymond Williams and James Kelman. The chapter analyses how Warner pointedly and parodically employs materials from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, a key text in the feudal fantasies of British “heritage” that have buttressed neoliberalism since the 1970s. The novel is shown to resonate positively with other contemporary critiques of neoliberal Britain in reconstructing the heritage of the welfare state as far more than merely residual.