The History of the Yorkshire Miners, 1881-1918

THE HISTORY OF THE YORKSHIRE MINERS 1881–1918 This detailed social history is concerned with the workers in the Yorksh...

Author: Carolyn Baylies

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THE HISTORY OF THE YORKSHIRE MINERS 1881–1918

This detailed social history is concerned with the workers in the Yorkshire coal industry, their union, and the broader mining communities in which they lived from the formation of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association in 1881 through to the end of the First World War. The period covered is of considerable importance for the consolidation of the Yorkshire Miners Union, and indeed for the building of a national miners’ federation and an international miners’ organisation, in both of which the role of Yorkshire’s leadership was central. The decades straddling the turn of the century were characterised by volatility in the mining industry, reflected in a number of strikes. This was also the period during which the eight-hour day was established, the issue of the minimum wage was fought out, and the miners turned towards affiliation with the Labour Party. Towards the end of the period, the union made its contribution to the war effort. Carolyn Baylies traces these general processes and focuses in detail upon a number of episodes during which union struggles and community involvement coalesced. She explores the dynamic between district and local levels of the union, and the tensions that accompanied a progressive rationalisation of bargaining machinery. While primarily tracing the fortunes and stance of the union, she also situates these in broader accounts of the development of mining communities and of the Labour movement. Carolyn Baylies is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds.

THE HISTORY OF THE YORKSHIRE MINERS 1881– 1918 Carolyn Baylies

London and New York

First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1993 Carolyn Baylies All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-16823-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26339-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-09359-7 (Print Edition) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Baylies, Carolyn L. (Carolyn Louise), 1947– The history of the Yorkshire miners, 1881–1918/Carolyn Baylies. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-09359-7: $100.00 1. Trade-unions—Coal miners—England—Yorkshire—History 2. Coal miners—England—Yorkshire—History 3. Coal trade—England—Yorkshire—History I. Title HD6668.M615B39 1993 92–38842 331.7′622334′094281–dc20 CIP

Dedicated to the coal miners of Yorkshire, past and present, and to their families and communities

CONTENTS

Preface

vii

Acknowledgements

xi

Part I Economy and community 1

OPENING OUT OF THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD

3

2

COMMUNITY AND COMBINATION

13

Recruitment; family; variety of community types

13

Community institutions—working-class initiatives

30

Early traditions of trade unionism

42

Labour and political struggles, 1880–1900 3

THE YORKSHIRE MINERS’ ASSOCIATION DURING THE 1880s

61

Formation of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association; leadership

61

Struggles of the 1880s

73

4

TESTING—1893

95

5

FEDERATION ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONS OF THE CONCILIATION BOARD, 1894–1906

131

6

WORKER SOLIDARITY AND THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY

151

7

THE UNION AT BRANCH AND DISTRICT LEVELS; GRIEVANCES AND INDUSTRIAL ACTION

169

Patterns of strike activity and local variations in militancy

169

Price-list issues

181

Technological change—the balance between safety and increased efficiency

190

vi

8

9

SCOPE OF UNION MEMBERSHIP

215

Agitation against non-unionism

215

Relationship of the YMA to lads and surface workers

225

POLITICS AND THE YMA—THE BARNSLEY BYELECTION OF 1897

237

Tradition of trade union militancy and political moderation

237

Part II Economy and community: Major patterns of grievance 10

THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD AFTER 1900— OPENING UP OF THE DONCASTER AREA

271

Labour and political struggles, 1900–18 11

DENABY-CADEBY STRIKE OF 1902 AND ENSUING LEGAL ACTION

299

12

EVOLVING UNION POLICIES AND POLITICS— HEMSWORTH DISPUTE, 1906

329

13

THE MINIMUM WAGE STRIKE—OPERATION OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ACT

365

14

THE YMA DURING THE WAR

397

15

TOWARDS AN INDUSTRIAL UNION

421

Appendix I

433

Appendix II

435

Appendix III

437

Notes

439

Biliography

501

Index

517

PREFACE

The first county-wide miners’ association in Yorkshire, formed in 1881, was built on a strong tradition of trade unionism which stretched back to the eighteenth century. The Yorkshire Miners’ Association was created through the amalgamation of two existing organisations, whose jurisdictions, in West and South Yorkshire respectively, roughly matched those of owners’ associations and reflected the somewhat differing geological conditions and markets in the two sections of the county. While the owners maintained their separate organisations, the miners established a unity through amalgamation which was to serve them well, securing considerable strength and providing a more powerful voice within both county and nation than they had enjoyed previously. This volume is concerned with the fortunes of the miners in Yorkshire, their union and, to a lesser extent, the broader mining communities in which they lived during the Yorkshire Miners’ Association’s first decades. Covering the period from amalgamation in 1881 through to the end of the First World War, it explores the policy and performance of the union at the district level, its involvement in both national and international miners’ organisations, the link between district and locality, and the experience of communities in labour struggles which particularly exemplify the ethos of the period. It treats the miners and their union as actors in both economic and political arenas. While organised through a focus on the county association and its leadership, it is not intended to serve as simply a union history. The flow of district business and changing district initiatives rather provide the framework for a glimpse of the more mundane and yet more profound experience of miners and their families in collective action which affected the nature of their communities as well as their jobs, and which bound them to the broader national and international working class. The YMA was born from the weakness of the South and West Yorkshire miners’ associations which prevailed at the beginning of the 1880s. Possibilities of merger had been explored previously, but it was only when economic recession led to the frustration of collective action and a degree of internal wrangling, especially in the southern part of the county, that the amalgamation finally came about. The coal industry had experienced particularly rapid development during

viii

the previous decade, with most of the major pits whose labour force would form the backbone of the union beginning operations during this time. The unions in the south and west of the county had themselves caught the enthusiasm of capital and had undertaken investment in co-operative/capitalist mining ventures. But expansion outstripping potential markets led to decline within the context of broader economic recession and the collapse of these union ventures as well as those of many more established capitalists. Vagaries of the market and the general uncertainty of the times convinced some within the labour movement of the need to initiate new strategies and build broader structures in order to gain some degree of control within a system which otherwise, as individual victims, thrust them out of work or toward lower standards of living. Attempts had been launched by the miners over a number of years to create a national organisation. And this impetus continued through the 1880s, finally seeing fruition with the formation of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) in 1889. The establishment of the YMA as a larger, more solidly based organisation than those previously existing, which could in turn serve as a reliable component of a national organisation, was part of this general initiative. Early leaders of the YMA, and in particular Benjamin Pickard and Edward Cowey, were at the forefront throughout the 1880s of efforts to effect nationally co-ordinated industrial action and to set the basis for what might ultimately become national wage bargaining. From its formation until he died in 1904, Pickard was the president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain and among the top leadership of the international miners’ organisation. The level of both his and Cowey’s involvement in these bodies testifies to the importance of their contribution, but also signifies the importance of Yorkshire and of the YMA as a county organisation within the broader miners’ movement. It is in consequence impossible at all points to separate out the story of the YMA from that of miners’ national and international organisations. The YMA leadership was militant in regard to the use of collective industrial action to insert order into the industry, achieve reasonable returns to labour, improve conditions of work and defend miners against attack. They appreciated that the struggle over workers’ interests could involve them in virtual ‘war’ against the employers and were willing to undertake the withdrawal of labour on district, national and even international levels to achieve their aims. They were aggressive in the use of collective muscle to gain better representation and also to lobby for better conditions within the political system. But at the same time they accepted the legitimacy of existing political and economic structures. They believed in the possibility of harmonious relations between workers and their employers, albeit holding that this could only be achieved through assertion of the workers’ collective strength. To this end they worked tirelessly to construct a form of conciliation machinery in which bargaining could be carried out with parties of as close to equal strength as possible, the threat of strike ever present

ix

even so, and indeed helping to ensure that conciliation procedures should become routinised and rationalised. In view of this combination of orientation and action it is possible to classify the YMA leadership, as they indeed classified themselves, as both industrially militant and politically moderate. YMA membership remained essentially loyal to its leadership and could be collectively characterised as of a similar mould. Inevitably, there was friction from time to time, with recriminations, justificatory counter-claims, and at least partial reconciliations. Often periods of mild internal turmoil coincided with particularly bitter disputes within the county, such as the great strike of 1893 or, on a more localised level, when frustration over lack of negotiating progress led to grievances being extended to encompass a perceived ‘neglect’ of the locality by officials in Barnsley. On several such occasions, at Ravensthorpe in 1900, South Kirkby in 1897 and Hemsworth in 1906, local leaders emerged with a critique combining opposition to union policy on the conduct of a local dispute with disagreement over broader policy relating to both the union’s internal operations and its leadership’s political stance. Such incidents are important by their relative rarity in revealing the essential continuity of broader internal solidarity which characterised the YMA. But inevitably they also lay bare incipient tensions which occasionally led to changes of perspective and policy. While giving broadly consistent support to its leadership, the YMA membership also pushed the union gradually to the left. Following the initial tenure of Pickard and Cowey, there was an episode of somewhat less consensus within the union and perhaps a lesser degree of authority on the part of the leadership. This would only be fully reasserted towards the 1920s when Herbert Smith fully assumed the reins of the union and even more when he subsequently rose to a position of prominence within the Miners’ Federation. In the interim the membership affirmed its sympathy and full solidarity with the Labour Party. In the first decades of the twentieth century, development of the Yorkshire coalfield continued its historic physical displacement toward the east. As some of the old, thin-seam pits in the vicinity of Leeds closed, a number of large mines in the Doncaster area, exploiting the wide Barnsley seam, were opened up. Employment and output increased overall, as Yorkshire’s share of both increased within the industry. In consequence of the entrenchment of conciliation machinery established earlier, industrial relations became largely routinised. But the county’s miners retained their industrial militancy and exhibited willingness to engage in county or national action when need be, as in the minimum wage strike in 1912 and subsequent and related actions in South Yorkshire in 1913 and in West Yorkshire in 1914. As the union increased in size, the impetus of earlier years to consolidate industrial muscle led to initiatives to widen membership far beyond the ranks of skilled face workers upon which it had initially been based. Youths were brought in and then, increasingly, moves were made to incorporate surface workers and

x

indeed all those at work in and about the mine. Toward the end of the period under consideration, the YMA moved firmly toward becoming a fully industrial union. The story of the union’s development, if central, is but one element of a broader history of the coalfield and of coalfield communities. At the same time that its eludication contributes to that broader history, it is also true that the YMA cannot be extracted from its social environment. For the union is ultimately embedded within the community, serving as a vehicle of expression and action of its residents. And at the same time, communities inevitably become involved and implicated in union actions. Union battles are seldom fought by their members alone, but by many within the community, through innumerable separate acts. For these reasons we begin this volume with a description of the evolution and nature of the coal industry in Yorkshire, and, more importantly, of the nature of the workforce and of the communities which emerged in consequence of the industry’s development. Communities were partly made by their inhabitants, with impressive but characteristic self-reliance. Seen as a community institution, the union itself evolved over a long period of time, with patterns of industrial action and reaction characterising the YMA being based in many earlier episodes. A full understanding of the YMA requires its being firmly set within this earlier context.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume is based on research commissioned by the National Union of Mineworkers (Yorkshire Area). It is the result of the initiative taken by Arthur Scargill when he was president of the Area, and the commitment of its executive, to extend the history of miners in Yorkshire beyond the period covered by Frank Machin in The Yorkshire Miners, a History, which was published in 1958 under the auspices of the union. The present volume deals with the period following the formation of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association in 1881 through to the end of the First World War. This was a crucial period in the union’s history, when, in addition to building a strong county union, Yorkshire’s leaders were instrumental in the formation of miners’ organisations at national and international level. This volume follows the course of a number of major industrial disputes, the development of national and local conciliation machinery and the changing political orientation of the miners. There are many to whom thanks must be extended for their help and encouragement of the work done to produce this volume. Without the financial and organisational support of the union, it would never have been written. Vic Allen set up the project in conjunction with the NUM (Yorkshire Area). The University of Leeds provided space, research facilities and further support. Many officials of the union, including Arthur Scargill, Owen Briscoe, Jack Taylor, Sammy Taylor and Ken Homer, and the executive as a whole, gave strong support throughout. Andrew Taylor provided assistance and advice in the final stages of the project. Assistance with source material lodged at the Barnsley offices was provided by Philip Thompson and work there was eased by Joan Blackburn. The union’s own archives constituted the most important source of data, but the author is also grateful for the help of those in various libraries and archives consulted throughout Yorkshire. The period covered by this volume precluded any major reliance on oral history but a number of interviews were conducted, with the assistance of Margaret Holderness and, particularly, Frank Vernon, which helped to build up a more comprehensive picture of community and individual experience than would

xii

otherwise have been possible. The co-operation of those involved is greatly appreciated. A number of individuals also made generous loan of unpublished material which they had written, a reflection of the wealth of historical material which exists in the coal mining communities. All were gratefully received. Throughout this study, these individuals and many others provided support, information and encouragement which enriched the work considerably. The story is, of course, still unfinished and it must be hoped that there will be an additional history or histories, to bring the account of union activities and community involvement up to the present. For the moment, this study must suffice to indicate that the struggle of Yorkshire’s miners and mining communities for a fair deal and more just society has a long and robust history, with images of the past mirroring and illuminating those of the present.

Part I ECONOMY AND COMMUNITY

2

1 OPENING OUT OF THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD

The mining of coal in Yorkshire began several centuries prior to the period covered in this volume. Records are increasingly obscure the further one goes back and provide no more than a partial picture of the beginnings of the industry and the early burden of the miner. But there is evidence of organised extraction of the mineral for local use well before the fifteenth century. The eastern dip of the coal bearing strata has always been a factor of critical importance in shaping the history of the mining industry in the region, bearing directly on the development and decline of mines and colliery villages and on the very nature and health of local communities. When mining began in earnest, pits were first sunk on the western side of the field, where outcrops proved the existence of the mineral.1 For a considerable time, production of coal was limited by inadequate means of transport to external markets. In the early days, it was moved either by horse and cart or river barge, and since only the Calder was navigable to points within the coalfield throughout the seventeenth century, it was from West Yorkshire that exports from the immediate locality first occurred. But improvements on the Don making it navigable as far as Aldwarke in 1733, to Tinsley in 1751 and then to within a few miles of Sheffield, from which it was ultimately connected by turnpike, had the effect both of opening up an export market for pits in South Yorkshire and, by stimulating industrial growth in both Sheffield and Rotherham, greatly increasing the local market.2 Expansion of the industry in the middle of the nineteenth century The middle years of the nineteenth century saw a particularly rapid expansion of the Yorkshire coal industry. The greater number of pits were still in the western section of the county, where in 1855 there were 255 collieries as against eightyone in South Yorkshire.3 The adoption of steam power by local textile and woollen mills in the first half of the century had important implications for the coal trade in West Yorkshire, with a pattern emerging of certain pits supplying

4 ECONOMY AND COMMUNITY

particular mills. There were forty-two pits in the neighbourhood of Bradford in 1855, forty-six in the Huddersfield area and twenty-six each in Halifax and Dewsbury.4 By 1865 a further eighty-five pits had been added to the total in West Yorkshire and output had increased by almost one and a half million tons.5 The greatest increase was in the Leeds area, which had 107 collieries in 1865 as against sixty-five ten years earlier. In South Yorkshire there was also considerable expansion in the number of collieries, which increased from eighty-one to ninety-seven between 1855 and 1865, partly in consequence of the growth of local industry and most notably the production of steel.6 The collieries in South Yorkshire were much larger operations than in West Yorkshire, with average annual production in 1855 at 34, 981 tons in the former as against 19,500 tons in the latter. The exploitable coal measures were deeper in this area and profitable mining required the benefit of the latest technological advances in shaft-sinking, winding and more effective control of water, gas and heat. In 1864 Denaby Main was sunk near Mexborough, further east than it had been formerly considered feasible to reach and mine coal. Overall, coal production in Yorkshire edged forward at about 160,000 tons a year between 1855 and 1865. By 1865 output reached almost 9,400,000 tons, giving Yorkshire a 9.5 per cent share of national output. The changes in the industry during this period were largely a result of the coming of railway transport, which proved a superior alternative to transport by water. Private rail lines, generally running only a short distance and often built by colliery owners to transport coal to a local market, canal terminus or turnpike, had existed previously, the line constructed by Middleton Colliery in 1803 being an important example. But in the 1830s construction began of public lines in Yorkshire. By 1845, at the height of the railway boom, proposals for seventy-six Bills were deposited at the Board of Trade requesting parliamentary approval for lines affecting Yorkshire.7 The high density of rail lines in the Yorkshire coal field indicates both the extent to which coal was a basis of railway construction in the area and the high level of competition within the rail industry. By 1855 Yorkshire coal was being moved on the Great Northern Railway, the North Western Railway, the Eastern Counties Railway, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, the Midland Railway and the Northeastern Railway.8 The railways eased distribution within Yorkshire itself, and most of the coal produced continued to be consumed by local industry and households. But it also allowed competition for the London market. Coal had been shipped to London via the Yorkshire ports for some years, albeit in small quantities. Over 16,000 tons had been sent in 1833. In 1846 the figure had reached 25,667 tons.9 But successful competition of railed coal in London became possible in the 1850s when altered toll charges on the Midland Railway removed the price advantage previously enjoyed by the coal industry of the Midlands and further south.10 In

OPENING OUT OF THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD 5

1855 over 260,000 tons were carried to London from the Yorkshire field by the Great Northern Railway alone.11 Lowering of transport costs led to re-examination of reserves on the western edge of the coalfield and the re-opening of some old mines, which were now deepened so that lower seams could be exploited.12 But the general tendency was for production in the county to shift towards the east, coming closer to the vicinity of Barnsley. Over the period 1850 to 1880 as a whole, however, expansion was uneven, reflecting the cyclical movement of the larger national economy. From an average annual increase in production in the county of about 307,000 tons between 1855 and 1860, the figure slipped to just 14,000 over the next five-year period, before moving up to 250,000 tons between 1865 and 1870. The most dramatic growth occurred during 1870 to 1875, when there was an average annual increase of 964,000 tons. This was a period of massive expansion in the industry nationally, with an economy buoyant in the aftermath of the FrancoPrussian war.13 Production patterns were roughly paralleled by the number of collieries in operation. As new pits opened, some old ones closed when their reserves were deemed exhausted in accord with prevailing calculations of profitability. The boom of the early 1870s registered particularly strongly, with a net increase of 107 collieries between 1870 and 1875. At its height in mid-1874, more than 100 collieries were reportedly being sunk in Yorkshire, many of them scheduled to produce an average of 1,000 tons a day. The Yorkshire coal industry settled in this period into a structure of ownership and a pattern of production which prevailed until the close of the century and to some degree through the First World War. Many of the pits which had previously dominated the industry and whose workers had made up the ranks of organised labour declined and closed by the 1880s, while many forming the core of the industry during the latter years of the century were sunk and their operations initiated from the late 1850s to 1875. Table 1.1 includes a number of these. For over half, sinking began during the four-year period from 1872 to 1876. Ownership structure in the Yorkshire coalfield By 1880 the structure of capital in the Yorkshire coal industry revealed the legacy of past traditions as well as a greater inter-penetration of capital from different sectors and from various regions of the country. In terms of the number of collieries represented, perhaps the dominant type of owner was still the individual, family or partnership locally resident in the county. The typical pit owned thus, however, was generally small and more predominant in West than in South Yorkshire.


Several Yorkshire landowning families continued to operate pits, though their number had diminished since the very early period of coal mining. The Clarke family still operated the Old Silkstone pit at Barnsley in 1880, the Lister family, Lower Shibden and Shibden Hall, and the Gascoigne family, the Garforth pits. Of far greater importance, however, was the Earl Fitzwilliam who owned three pits in the Rotherham area, at Elsecar, Low Stubbin and Simon Wood.14 Fitzwilliam was a paternalist employer, operating pits as part of the larger estate under which they were worked, looking after mine workers from ‘cradle to grave’ in a manner similar to the treatment of his agricultural workers. It was this as much as the nature of the collieries he operated which distinguished them as a unique set within the Yorkshire coalfield. A case of particularly extensive ownership by a single family was that of the Charlesworths who had moved into the gentry by virtue of their colliery investments. J. & J.Charlesworth owned eight pits in 1880, including such major collieries as Robin Hood, Rothwell Haigh, Kilnhurst, Thrybergh Hall, Warren Vale and Newmarket. Charlesworth was also important as one of the few owners operating in both West and South Yorkshire. Five Charlesworth pits were in the Leeds-Wakefield area and three in the vicinity of Rotherham.15 In most cases colliery owners—even of multiple concerns—confined themselves either to West or South Yorkshire, thus underlining the distinction between the two sections of the county’s coal industry. Though the same general geological formation underlay the coalfield as a whole, a different set of seams tended to be worked in the two districts.16 And though conditions were variable throughout both districts, West Yorkshire had the greater proportion of thin-seam collieries. The domestic market for house coal was also divided by the existence of two major urban centres, West Yorkshire coal going primarily to LeedsBradford and South Yorkshire’s to Sheffield-Rotherham. While local industrial users were present throughout the area, they were of a somewhat different composition in the two districts—with a greater concentration of textile and engineering works in West Yorkshire and of steel in South Yorkshire. Export markets also varied, South Yorkshire having the relative advantage in respect of rail-borne coal to the London market and West Yorkshire having slightly the greater advantage in respect of sea-borne coal both to London and to the continent. All of these factors made for a difference in the nature of the ‘most typical’ colliery in West and South Yorkshire and a different composition of ownership. In West Yorkshire collieries tended to be smaller, situated closer to consuming industries and more frequently owned by local residents. In South Yorkshire they tended to be larger, more technologically advanced, more dependent for their very development on the railroad network constructed in the mid-nineteenth century and more frequently owned by companies with the more common involvement of outside capital.


But such generalisations require qualification. For while distinctions did exist between West and South Yorkshire, reflected in different sets of owners in the two districts and the emergence of separate owners’ associations which through the First World War found no basis for merger, there was also considerable variation within each district. The characterisation of the ‘typical’ West Yorkshire colliery as given, for example, most clearly approximates those on the northern and western sides of the district. Collieries developed to the east of Wakefield and to the south of Pontefract bore much greater similarity to those in South Yorkshire, even if still somewhat smaller, working different seams and having a somewhat different market position. In South Yorkshire there was a distinction between that set of pits working the Silkstone and other thinner seams, mostly in the area around Barnsley, and those working the wider Barnsley seam. The specific circumstances of these thinner-seam pits was reflected in the formation of a separate owners’ association in the Barnsley area. The boom of the early 1870s induced new investment by existing mine owners as well as the entry of new capital, both from local manufacturing and from external sources. The increased scale as well as the greater depth frequently required for a profitable mining enterprise necessitated a considerably larger capital input than at the beginning of the century or even during the 1840s. Such changing capital requirements coincided with the evolution of the firm in the larger economy and resulted in increased presence of the joint stock company in local coal production, in consequence both of the reorganisation of existing enterprises and the initiation of new ventures under this organisational form. Already in 1854, 32.6 per cent of collieries were listed as owned by companies rather than individuals. By 1880 the proportion had climbed to 37.3 per cent. This development was most pronounced in the Barnsley area where in 1880 twothirds of all collieries were owned by companies. A large portion of capital invested in the industry was internally accumulated, created through the labour of the miners. But expansion during the second half of the nineteenth century was also based on the infusion of capital from other sectors. Some came from banking or commerce, some from manufacturing. In West Yorkshire an important source was textiles. Another was the iron industry, as reflected by the names of some of the firms listed among colliery owners in the 1880s: the Yorkshire and Derbyshire Coal and Iron Company, the York Road Coal and Iron Company, the Staveley Coal and Iron Company and the West Yorkshire Coal and Iron Company. An important feature of the second half of the nineteenth century, however, was the entry of a number of steel firms into the Yorkshire coalfield. In these cases internal integration of the steel industry, with the bringing together of furnace, forge and mill within a single establishment, had progressed vertically downward to include integration of the supply of coal, through the acquisition and development of mines. Examples in Yorkshire included Samuel Fox who


owned Stocksbridge pit, John Brown with Aldwarke Main and Carhouse, Cammel Laird which owned the New Oaks at Barnsley, the Mitchell family which opened Mitchell Main, Chambers and Co. which operated Thorncliffe and Tankersley, and the Barrow Haematite Steel Company which owned Barrow.17 Developments over the last decades of the nineteenth century— capital, coal and the market Subsequent to the marked increase of investment in response to coal’s extraordinarily high price in 1873, development in the Yorkshire coalfield proceeded slowly to the end of the century, though at a faster rate than in the older fields of the northeast. A number of new collieries were sunk— South Kirkby in 1880, Hartley Bank in 1881, Syndale in 1881–2, Mirfield Moor in 1882–5, Orgreave in 1887–8, Cadeby Main in 1893, Whitwell in 1891, and Rotherham Main in 1890–3 among them—but many fewer than in the 1870s.18 And whereas the average annual increase in output had been about 690,000 tons over the period 1870 to 1880, it dropped to 480,000 tons between 1880 and 1890, moving up to only 590,000 tons between 1890 and 1900.19 In some years output actually declined. It fell by 343,000 tons in 1884 from the total of the previous year, and by a further 722,000 tons in 1885. In these years miners suffered job losses, with employment in the Yorkshire collieries falling by 484 between 1884 and 1885.20 The entire period from 1875 to 1888 and more particularly from 1880 to 1888 was one of depressed prices which, as elaborated in later chapters, had severe consequences for the progress of unionisation. The price of coal at the pithead dropped in West Yorkshire from 11s 10.17d in 1873 to 4s 11.98d in 1880, bottomed out at 4s 10.06d in 1882 and stood at just 5s 0. 04d in 1888.21 The depression in the coal industry followed commercial collapse in international markets in 1873–4 which saw British exports of iron and steel falling dramatically.22 Prior to this time demand had outstripped supply, but partly in consequence of the decline in railway expansion both at home and abroad, excess capacity emerged in the iron industry, especially in the sector producing railway equipment.23 In the latter years of the 1870s the depression was reflected in an abnormally high rate of pit closures. Twenty-one mines were registered as abandoned in Yorkshire in 1877 and a further twenty-one in 1878.24 Some of those who had been encouraged by the high prices of 1873 to take over collieries or engage in new developments floundered in the ensuing lean years, to the detriment of the miners their firms employed. Hallroyd Colliery, for example, floated in 1873 as a limited company under the name of the South Yorkshire Coal and Iron Company, had only a portion of its shares taken up by 1876 and subsequently went into bankruptcy. Church Lane Colliery, purchased in 1873 by a group of Manchester businessmen and industrialists, yielded large


profits for three or four years, but by the end of the decade had run into financial difficulties.25 The thin-seam collieries suffered especially during the period and many ventures encountered long delays in coming on stream. Though sinking began at Treeton in 1875 and the Barnsley seam was reached in 1878, it was several more years before extraction of coal could begin there.26 Still, most of the major developments initiated in the mid-1870s did come to fruition. And the greater proportion of older works managed to survive, though not without cost to the miners who suffered short-time working in many pits. In 1886 some revival of trade with the Americas began, with exports being nudged further forward in 1889 and 1890.27 In Yorkshire the price of coal began to rise in 1888, reaching 8s 9d by 1890.28 But the revival was short-lived. Renewed depression, felt first in the iron trade,29 was reflected in a falling price of coal which reached a trough of 6s 5d in Yorkshire in 1895 and 1896, when Yorkshire pits were being worked on average just 4.6 days per week.30 In the midst of this period the long and bitter strike of 1893 occurred, one consequence of which was a fall in production of some 6.8 million tons. The following year trade picked up with production in Yorkshire outstripping that of 1892, but the price remained low. The year 1894 began in the midst of high prices and artificial prosperity, but newly invigorated production confronted slackened demand, bringing about a lowering of prices. Indeed in 1895 output dropped to 650,000 tons less than the previous year.31 Within a few years, however, the prosperity of industry as a whole improved. The president of the Miners’ Federation—Ben Pickard of Yorkshire—remarked in early 1897 that the iron and steel trades were booming and the value of coke and house coal had already begun to creep upwards, replacing doubts of the previous year with renewed optimism: First it was going to the dogs, then it had revived and everyone was happy. But everyone has now come to the conclusion that at the end of the year there is now a revival in trade. I am pleased, for one, that men who were working a year or two ago, and for several years one, two and three days a week are now working full time. In fact, colliery managers are seeking to pull creation up in order to get the whole of the coal to the surface.32 Certainly Yorkshire’s coal output began to increase dramatically, by about 1.6 million tons between 1897 and 1898 and by 1.3 million tons during each of the following two years.33 The upsurge was further stimulated by the demand derived from the Boer War in South Africa. Employment in Yorkshire mines jumped to 100,803 in 1900 from 60,474 in 1880,34 representing an increase of some 67 per cent. Output over this same period increased by 61 per cent. By 1900 most pits were working full time, with the average at 5.57 days per week.35


Table 1.1 Pits sunk in Yorkshire, 1860–97

Source: Committee of the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 1875, Sections of Strata of the Coal Measures of Yorkshire, 1927, University of Sheffield. Note: In Hunt’s Mineral Statistics (1875), Mitchell Main listed as ‘sinking’.


New development work was undertaken in during the 1890s, perhaps initially stimulated by the brief optimism prevailing as the decade began. A new shaft was sunk and extensive developments commenced at Ackton Hall, for example, between 1892 and 1894. The Prince of Wales pit was sunk to the Silkstone seam in 1894 and Wombwell 1 was sunk to the Parkgate seam between 1892 and 1898. In spite of the slump in the mid-1890s, some investment continued. Hemsworth was sunk in 1897, West Riding and Silkstone in 1898, and Manor Haigh Moor in 1899. The structure of production and of ownership in Yorkshire had shifted by this time from the pattern of twenty years previously in accord with trends already then set in motion. The number of pits in South Yorkshire still constituted a minority of the county total. Just under a third were located there as against 28 per cent in 1880.36 But the gradual proportionate increase paralleled a gradual decline along the western edge of the coalfield in the Bradford-HalifaxHuddersfield nexus. Moreover, the pits in South Yorkshire tended to be increasingly larger. In 1900, 40 per cent of all pits employing 100 or more workers and 71 per cent of those employing 1,000 or more workers were located in South Yorkshire.37 Well before the turn of the century total output in South Yorkshire outstripped that in West Yorkshire. A representative of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association told the Commission on Royalties that of an estimated 23, 000,000 tons produced in the county in 1889, about 13,000,000 was contributed by South Yorkshire as against 10,000,000 by West Yorkshire.38 The trend also continued toward increased ownership of pits by companies. While 37.3 per cent of Yorkshire pits were so owned in 1880, the figure in 1900 was 53.1 per cent. Of the larger pits, employing 100 or more workers, the proportion was 68.7 per cent.39 Throughout the last two decades of the nineteenth century the Yorkshire coal industry grew at a faster pace than other coalfields in the UK, but with progress experienced through fits and starts, in consequence of cyclical movements of the larger economy. After registering various peaks and troughs, the price of Yorkshire coal which applied during the brief boom of 1873 was eventually regained in 1900.40 The cost of living fell slightly during the period, though it is questionable whether Yorkshire miners felt much improvement, given the insecurity attending extended periods of depression and short-time work. In the context of the British coal industry as a whole, however, the future prospects for Yorkshire mining were relatively encouraging. The county had the advantage of extensive reserves of high-quality coal. The wide Barnsley seam in particular was a significant resource which would stand the county industry in good stead for generations to come. Its geographic location facilitated its orientation to a primarily local market. But Yorkshire coal also competed with that of the Midlands in the London market for railed coal. And increasingly Yorkshire gained a foothold in the export market, sending coal particularly to


northern Europe. Thus by the end of the century the county industry and its markets were well established, poised for continued growth.

2 COMMUNITY AND COMBINATION

RECRUITMENT; FAMILY; VARIETY OF COMMUNITY TYPES In Yorkshire as elsewhere, the emergence of mining as a viable enterprise was dependent on labour. The skilled collier and less-skilled hurriers or surface workers were crucial to the development of the industry. Miners were initially drawn from the ranks of agricultural labour and in the Elizabethan period probably moved back and forth between pit work and cultivation. As the need for pit labour increased, however, a distinctive workforce was stabilised, recruited by mining capital, sometimes with the promise not just of a wage but accommodation as well. With this process of stabilisation a tradition of colliery families evolved, for more than in perhaps any other occupational group, mine work followed through the generations from parent to child. And partly in consequence of this perpetuation of occupation, the miner came to be seen as occupying almost a caste-like position and thereby as apart from the rest of society. The characterisation became imaginatively, if scurrilously, elaborated with the miner being regarded by some as a curious, almost inhuman creature, living according to moral codes at variance with those of others. To the extent that communities or neighbourhoods arose comprised primarily or even exclusively of miners and their families, these merely reinforced the stigma of the miner as ‘set apart’. To some extent the miner’s reputation followed from the nature of mining itself, whose working environment was never seen, let alone experienced, and only imagined by those outside the industry. Only the effects of the work—the grime, the bent shapes of men not yet into middle age—were visible to others. These manifestations of the collier’s lot were partly a function of geological conditions, but also a consequence of the dictates of mining capital, which determined what was ‘safe’, what length of working day was appropriate, what measure of strain must be borne by the workers.


Data obtained by official government enquirers in the 1840s confirmed that labour was being used up by capital at a reckless rate in the mining industry. On the evidence entering the public domain, the Victorian middle classes may have been appalled by the apparent immorality implied by the proximity of males and females in the dark of the pit, and by the scant clothing or occasional nakedness of the men and the raggedness of the clothing of the women and girls. But more shocking was the fact that children as young as four were employed in the mines and that all workers of whatever age or sex were subjected to long hours and abhorrent conditions. Roads in some of the thin-seam pits in Yorkshire at this time were little more than two feet wide and often no more than a yard high. The space through which workers had to crawl and corves had to be dragged was characterised as at times no larger than that of a common drain.1 Side roads, moreover, were frequently on an incline. Widespread use of children in the mines was justified by the claim of competitive pressures.2 Children of six or over were at a premium to the mine owners for the work of hurrying coal and so the younger ones were given the task of trapper, obliged to sit next to the ventilation doors in the pit, opening and shutting them as needed. Almost 7,000 between the ages of 5 and 18 were estimated to be employed in the pits of Yorkshire at this time. Over 300 of these were female.3 The stark quality of information obtained from government enquiries was instrumental in promoting legislation which—in 1843—prohibited the future employment of women in the mining industry, thus changing the character of the workforce and ensuring that thenceforth the role of women in the mining industry would be universally what it had in any case always predominantly been: indirect, unpaid, supportive and proffered largely in the form of household tasks. The Act of 1843 was in many ways a watershed, not just prohibiting female labour but also preventing the employment of boys under the age of 11 and introducing the principle of government inspection of mines, even if the machinery provided could scarcely have permitted efficient and comprehensive inspection to take place. But if the legislation and prior investigation alerted the public to working conditions in the nation’s mines and aimed in some measure to ameliorate them, it had little effect on the conditions of the bulk of the workforce. Hurrying may have been relegated to older and exclusively male children, but the arduousness of the task was not altered. Nor did the character of the collier’s work at the face change appreciably. And, ironically, the images emerging from the investigation served far more to confirm than to diminish the public view of the miner as an odd mixture of the heroic, the brutish, the pitiable, but above all as separate from the rest of society. The combination of myth and reality which informed the image of the collier extended also to the colliery community. In an important though not unique sense, however, the community of miners and their families had a coherence

COMMUNITY AND COMBINATION 15

based on shared experience and proximity. If the miner contributed paid labour, the unpaid labour of others, and especially wives and mothers, also contributed to the viability of the industry. All, moreover, were subject to potential collective trauma attending the high risk of injury or death suffered by all who worked in the pits. The precise nature of community, the extent of its cohesiveness and the specifics of its members’ experiences were not uniform across time or place. But given that the industry spawned certain general elements of community and that the community in turn experienced the consequences of mining, it is appropriate that the story of miners in Yorkshire be set within the broader context of the communities in which they lived. Variety of mining communities It must be said that in the later years of the nineteenth century there was no typical community in the Yorkshire coalfield. There were some isolated, homogeneous villages where virtually every household contained someone connected with the mines. And there were a large number of communities where mining was the dominant occupation among the male workforce. But there were many others where miners were integrated within a more diversified occupational structure and their families absorbed into heterogeneous working class neighbourhoods. Miners lived in communities of all sizes, including Yorkshire’s large metropolitan centres. Some of these were in the immediate proximity of a pit, but others were at a distance of a mile or even several miles or more. Even when a row of houses or a village was constructed at the mouth of a pit, it seldom incorporated all of the colliery’s workforce. Many miners lived in the larger urban areas or neighbouring villages and commuted daily by foot, tram or paddy. Thus there was seldom a complete coincidence between a mine’s workforce and an associated residential community. Most of the early mines in the West Riding were sunk near existing villages and consequently there was little need to provide separate communities or social amenities for colliers. On occasion, however, owners built a row of houses or a set of cottages to accommodate recruits immigrating to the area. In the early nineteenth century, for example, the Fentons who owned several collieries in the Leeds area paid rates on ninety-one houses on Rothwell Haigh. A colliers’ row was built at Outwood near Wakefield and another, referred to as Angel Row at Rothwell Haigh. Several rows were also built by the Low Moor Iron Company near Bradford. But even in these cases miners were essentially assimilated into existing communities and, if occupying a colliers’ row, did not constitute a separate community. One of the first cases of a planned housing settlement was at Waterloo. But this was itself adjacent to the existing Rothwell.4 In later years, however, and particularly during the ‘boom’ of the 1860s and the 1870s, when pits were increasingly sunk in rural areas, there was invariably a


need to recruit workers and provide for their accommodation. It was in such circumstances that the relatively isolated and homogeneous mining community was created. Bullock describes this as having been the case for Bowers’ Row, the community he grew up in and to which his parents moved in the early 1870s when the place consisted of but a few rows of newly completed and mostly empty houses. The village appeared, said Bullock, never to have been planned at all, buildings just having sprung up ‘where it was most convenient to build’.5 His father, who had previously lived in nearby Altofts, applied for both house and job at the colliery office, and was given a key, fitting virtually all the locks in the village, and told to pick out a house to live in. A similar situation prevailed at West Riding Colliery, Sharlston and Denaby. While close to existing rural settlements, sufficient housing in the immediate area was initially lacking in each case and was supplied in part by the colliery company. Sinking of the pit at West Riding Colliery began around 1851 and shortly thereafter construction of housing began. Ultimately the village at Lower Altofts, which came to be known as Silkstone Buildings, was created, entirely owned by the company. Prominent within the buildings was Silkstone Row, built around 1864 and reputed to have been the largest three storey terrace in Europe.6 To accommodate workers at Sharlston pit, a row of sixty houses, twenty-eight of them back to back, was built. At some small distance from the tiny existing agricultural settlement, it was named New Sharlston. The houses were built by the company and to the design of its architect.7 The village of Denaby contained just thirty-seven houses before the sinking of Denaby Main and most of its household heads were employed as agricultural labourers.8 By 1871 a number of the houses of ‘Old Denaby’ were occupied by miners, and many other members of the newly recruited labour force resided in the 100 houses newly built by the colliery company.9 Recruitment of labour That new mine labour was drawn primarily from the agricultural sector is evident from village and parish population figures. While the population of some rural areas stayed steady or even declined over the second half of the nineteenth century, that of villages in the vicinity of newly developed mines rose (see Table 2.1). There were falls in population between 1851 and 1911 in a set of parishes on the western and eastern fringes and increases within the centre of the exposed coalfield of South Yorkshire, with demographic growth roughly paralleling the pattern of pit sinkings and industrial development around Barnsley, Sheffield and Rotherham.10 In West Yorkshire the pattern was similar, with the older textile villages on the western edge showing little or no growth and the rural areas on the east showing a population drain. In the last decade of the century, in-


Table 2.1 Population 1851 and 1881 of selected parishes and villages

Source: Jones (1966).

migration was particularly heavy in Doncaster, Ecclesall Bierlow and Hemsworth registration districts. In the latter, new migrants made up 20 per cent of the 1901 population. Registration districts in the West Riding showing the greatest loss of population through out-migration over this same period were Huddersfield and Dewsbury.11 Agricultural labour was drawn into the mines by the prospect of material gain, both in the form of higher wages and, in some cases, a house. This attraction drew workers not just from the immediate vicinity, but from outside of the county. It was indeed a particular characteristic of colliery communities or large housing units built to accommodate miners to be comprised largely of migrants. The West Riding as a whole experienced a net increase, attributed to migration, of 13,505 in population between only 1899 and 1901.12 As this figure is net of any movement out of Yorkshire, either abroad or to other areas in the UK, it is probable that the actual number entering the county —many destined to work in the mines—was even higher. The greater proportion of migrants into the county came from neighbouring areas— Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and to a lesser extent, Lancashire. A considerable number also came into Yorkshire from Ireland, and a smaller but still important contingent came


from Staffordshire and Warwickshire. Most were drawn to the industrial urban centres, but a fair number also came into the growing mining villages. Some had worked as colliers elsewhere and moved to Yorkshire as pits in their own areas became worked out or on hearing of better working conditions and wages. The ultimate destination of migrants coming to Yorkshire was often serendipitous, but, as with most patterns of migration, once some initially had ventured forth, others followed to the place where a friend or relative had settled and reported on favourably. Thus concentrations of miners with a common regional background arose in certain mining villages, as was the case, for example, of the Welsh in Carlton or those from Staffordshire in Royston. In some instances the concentration can be traced to a specific cause or event. Attempts were not infrequently made, for example, to break strikes by recruiting from outside the county on the assumption that distance would make for ignorance among potential recruits as to the sudden need for their labour and that the very trauma of a break once made would prevent what might have otherwise been a strong resistance to gain work through blacklegging. But there were also cases of a group of miners from a certain area being brought in to help open up a new mine. A Staffordshire man, for example, was appointed manager to Fence, Orgreave and Treeton collieries in 1879 and apparently brought a number of men from his area of origin to serve as officials and workers at Treeton Colliery. Communities made up of migrants were often characterised by a sort of frontier quality, or even on occasion a cosmopolitan air. But there was also a tendency for them to turn in upon themselves and for their residents to be regarded by neighbouring communities as distinctly different—as foreigners or even in some cases as inferiors. This was all the more so when they were physically set apart by virtue of occupancy of company houses. Variation in occupational diversity Company ownership of housing had a clear impact on industrial relations, particularly when a firm saw fit to exercise its legal right of eviction when workers went on strike. While this might serve to pacify or constrain unified worker action in some cases—or divide it along lines of those in company houses and those otherwise accommodated—it could also serve as a common grievance in unifying the workers and solidifying their militancy and resolve. Where company control was limited not just to housing, but extended to other community institutions, the sense of common experience, and often of common grievance, could be even further entrenched. The isolated colliery community which was also a company town, however, was rare in Yorkshire, a fact which of itself highlights the great variability of community types within the area. Perhaps the closest approximation was Denaby.


At the opposite end of the spectrum from the isolated colliery village almost exclusively populated by mining families was the community where miners made up only a small proportion of the workforce. This was true, for example, of the larger metropolitan areas such as Sheffield and Leeds, which served as the residence of miners working at pits in the outlying neighbourhood. In 1901, for example, Sheffield CB contained 3,334 miners, representing 2.6 per cent of its male workforce aged 10 and above.13 Some of these worked at Treeton Colliery and travelled to and from the pit by paddy train.14 In Leeds CB, 2,532 of the working male population were miners in 1901. Many worked at small pits, such as Elland Road, which had forty-six workers in 1901, Granny Lane, which had nine, or Harehills, which had thirty-six. But others commuted to the larger pits in the immediate area, including Waterloo, Rothwell Haigh and Middleton.15 A workmen’s paddy train ran, for example, from Leeds to Brooks and Pickup’s Waterloo Main during the late nineteenth century. The pattern of miners making up a fairly small group within a diversified working population occurred not just in the larger urban areas, but was generally common to all those communities which housed miners working at small pits. It was true, for example, of many of the villages and larger communities in the Pennines area on the western side of the coalfield. In fact, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was probably the most typical situation of Yorkshire miners. By the end of the century, however, coal mining in the Pennines had undergone a considerable decline. Bradford, in the vicinity of which the Bowling, Low Moor and Bierley companies once employed large numbers of workers, now had only 1,312 miners living in it, constituting just 1.4 per cent of the adult working population.16 In Halifax and Huddersfield the decline was even more pronounced. The former had only ninety-four miners among its residents in 1901 and the latter just 204. But further to the east, near Batley and Dewsbury in the north and Stocksbridge in the south, substantial mining continued to be carried out. Here, miners made up a slightly larger proportion of the adult male population, and in some cases the largest single occupational group. But they were still a minority. Thus at Stocksbridge miners made up just under 20 per cent of male workers, followed by iron and steel workers—the second largest category—at 11 per cent. In Liversedge urban district, miners similarly formed the largest single occupational group, but comprised just 19 per cent of male workers. But in others of these western areas below the Pennines, mining took a second or third place to jobs in the wool and worsted or other industries. And here working class traditions were informed by the experiences of workers in factories as well as in pits, and miners were but one component of a larger industrial community. To the extent that the development of textiles had preceded the rapid expansion of mining and was the source of demand stimulating some of that expansion, pits in this area were normally situated near urban settlements with existing stocks of


housing. Where labour requirements for the pits exceeded the capacity of the existing stock, new housing was required. But it was, as often as not, integrated into existing communities. It was, in fact, only as the larger pits began to be sunk during the 1860s and 1870s and located at a distance from existing industrial centres that extensive new housing was required and that communities emerged with less occupational diversification. But even as the centre of the coalfield moved to the east, many pits were sunk near existing urban centres such as Wakefield, Barnsley and Rotherham, or larger communities such as Castleford, Pontefract, Swinton or Mexborough. This central section of the coalfield-from Castleford in the north to Rotherham in the south—exhibits a wide range of community types. Of the three centres which housed workers at Denaby Main, Denaby, Conisborough and Mexborough, for example, only Denaby fits the model of an exclusively (or nearly so) mining village. In 1871 most of its employed residents worked in the mines, with only a scattering engaged as agricultural labourers or as quarry workers, railwaymen, joiners and the like. In neighbouring Conisborough on the other hand, agriculture remained the dominant source of employment. Coal mining ranked third, well behind glass making, for a glass-bottle works had opened at Conisborough in the late 1860s and absorbed a sizeable section of its labour force. It was Mexborough, further away, that served as the residence for a larger number of miners, though undoubtedly some of these also worked at Manvers Main, on the far side of Mexborough from Denaby. If Denaby was dependent on a single industry and Conisborough on two or three, then Mexborough represented a community with a much more diversified industrial base. A total of 274 of its inhabitants were listed as coal miners in 1871, another 245 as labourers with no place of work given, 115 as pottery and earthenware workers, ninety-five as glassworkers, eighty-four as railway workers, sixty-eight as canal and waterways workers, fifty as iron workers, thirty-four as stone masons and twenty-five as agricultural labourers. Other assorted workers made up the remainder of the male workforce.17 The relative dominance of mining among Yorkshire’s coalfield communities can be gleaned from Table 2.2, giving occupational breakdown of urban districts. Their boundaries typically encompassed a number of towns or villages, which may have varied considerably in composition from one another, similarly as was the case with Denaby, Mexborough and Conisborough. But if not portraits of separate communities, they still give an approximation of the variability which existed within the coalfield. Overall more than 20 per cent of all Yorkshire miners lived in urban districts overwhelmingly dominated by mining in 1901, where colliers made up 60 per cent or more of employed males. Another 30 per cent resided in urban districts where miners formed 40 to 60 per cent of male workers. On the other hand, 25 per cent resided in the metropolitan boroughs of the West Riding: Batley,


Table 2.2 Major occupational groupings in selected coalfield communities, 1901

Key: B=building and construction Br=brick, cement C=conveyancing D=domestic E=engineering F=tobacco, food and drink G=glass I=iron and steel M=mining Mi=milliner R=railways S=stone T=other textiles U=umbrella makers W=wool and worsted Source: Based on census data for 1901.

Barnsley, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Morley, Ossett, Pontefract, Rotherham and Wakefield. For the rest, a relatively small proportion (about 12.5 per cent) lived in the large county boroughs of Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds and Sheffield, primarily in the latter two. And a similar proportion (about 11 per cent) were distributed in communities along the western edge of the coalfield where they formed, in most cases, less than 20 per cent of male workers.18


Changing ratio of males to females The mines recruited young men and inevitably there was a disproportionate number of single males in most Yorkshire mining communities, save those on the western edge of the coalfield where mining co-existed with the wool and worsted industry. The changing ratio of males to females over time in many communities reflected the rise of the local mining industry, with an initial period of heavy recruitment and entry of young, single males, and later, increased stability as men married or brought their families to live locally. In Carlton, for example, when the population stood at 380 in 1871, there was near parity between the sexes with 104 males per 100 females. But in 1881 the population had shot up to 1,085 and there were 125 males to every 100 females. By 1891, with numbers still rising, the disproportion was even greater with 129 males per 100 females. Expansion continued, but by the turn of the century the excess of males was beginning to diminish, with the ratio in 1901 at 113 males to 100 females. That the excess of males in many mining communities were mainly single and independent can be gleaned from comparing the number of unmarried men aged 25 to 35 with the number of unmarried females of similar age. In Pontefract in 1891 there were 215 of the former to every 100 of the latter. In Hemsworth the figure was 206 unmarried males to each 100 unmarried females aged 25 to 35. In Barnsley 247, in Sheffield 178, in Wakefield 149 and in Rotherham 209.19 Many of these unmarried miners found accommodation in rooms, if thus providing some additional income to householders, also contributing to overcrowding. In Denaby there were 6.37 persons per house in 1881 and 6.49 in 1891. Figures for Featherstone, Sharlston, Tankersley and Treeton for 1891 were, respectively, 5.95, 6.03, 6.21 and 6.44 per house.20 The shortage of housing undoubtedly added to delayed marriage in some instances, further aggravating the situation. Unattached young men were often prone to be transitory and, when present in large numbers with insufficient or inadequate accommodation, were apt to give a community a reputation for a certain roughness. Thus rapid development of the mining industry through the digging of deeper and bigger mines and the greatly increased demand for labour which this entailed had a clear impact on the nature of the community, especially where the provision of housing was insufficient to cope with population increase. Alongside this pattern of new mines drawing in recruits from a wide area and a preponderance of young single males being characteristic of communities in the vicinity of mines, at least during their early years of operation, must be set the tendency for employment in pits to ‘run in the family’ and for the family to serve as a significant pool of recruitment. It is this factor which served to make


miners be seen almost as a separate breed, though it was a pattern born of economic necessity. The close ties of families to pit work were manifest in a pattern of sons going to the same mine their fathers worked in and in many instances working with their father in the same stall. This was particularly characteristic of certain pits, which continued to be known well into the twentieth century as ‘family pits’. In these recruitment was predominantly among relatives and dependants of those already employed. Frequently it was the father who taught his sons the skills of mining and who used his sons as informal apprentices. Records of accidents are a clear, if melancholy, indication of the extent to which father and son or brothers worked together in the same pit and often in the same work unit. Yet while the family served as a major and persisting locus for the recruitment of new labour, it could not be the source of all labour requirements, especially during periods of rapid growth. To this degree the universality of the miner as born and bred of a mining family is as little accurate as the universality of the isolated, mining community. Economic participation of women The nature of communities was not only affected by the influx of men and the nature of opportunities available to them and their sons, but also the opportunities —or the lack of them—for women. The industrial revolution in Yorkshire, as elsewhere, drew large numbers of women into the workforce. Many were employed in the mining industry in the early years of the nineteenth century. But —for ill or good—this was an industry essentially closed to them by the Act of 1843. Though legally permitted to work on the surface, through practice and ‘tradition’ they were soon eliminated from there as well.21 But women’s employment did continue in wool and textiles, even though conditions and wages in some of the factories were arguably far from ‘good’. Indeed to the degree that women could be employed at lesser rates, they were often preferred to men, so that wool and textiles came to be regarded—especially in respect of unskilled or semi-skilled work requirements—as largely ‘women’s work’. Factory work was essentially the occupation of young women and girls. While the age at which entry into the labour market was permitted had been pushed up considerably from what it had been in the mid-nineteenth century, young girls followed the patterns of their brothers in getting jobs virtually as soon as the law permitted. The availability of jobs for young girls, however, clearly differed among communities and thus economic necessity interacted with economic opportunity to colour ‘tradition’. In the vicinity of the factories, the proportion of young girls entering work was nearly as high as that of young boys. In Dewsbury municipal borough in 1911, for example, 49 per cent of young girls aged 13 and


75 per cent of those 14 years old were employed, as against 60 per cent and 86 per cent of boys of this age. By age 17 the figures for females and males were 89 per cent and 97 per cent respectively. The proportion of females of a given age tended to drop, however, as young women approached their twenties, and especially as they entered into marriage. For while economic necessity did not stop with marriage, the labour required of the women to accomplish domestic tasks and childcare often precluded continued outside employment. But for young unmarried females, employment was the rule. And if higher in those communities where factory work was available, this rule also applied elsewhere. Thus while in Dewsbury in 1911, 88 per cent of all women aged 19 were employed, the figure for Barnsley was 65 per cent.22 In the area on the western edge of the coalfield, therefore, where miners made up only a minority of all working men, the workforce was also characterised by a high rate of female participation. In this area, too, there tended to be a slightly greater proportion of women than men, probably primarily due to the outmigration of men in search of better paying work, but perhaps also reflecting a movement inward by women toward (or certainly a tendency to remain in) those areas where employment was available to them. Thus in 1901 there were just eighty-seven males for every 100 females in Dewsbury. In Batley the figure was the same.23 Communities where the wool and worsted industry was a significant employer housed only a small proportion of Yorkshire miners—certainly less than 10 per cent by the turn of the century. Even so the diversity and high level of female participation in their workforce had an important impact on the nature of community and family. That married women were not so rigidly tied to the home —even though it was the norm and probably desired that they should be there if possible—may have given them a greater or at least a different role and degree of authority within the family. Both male and female children would be expected to be wage earners as soon, or almost as soon, as they left school. And in some circumstances adult women as well as men might routinely be expected to provide cash income to the family. Boys would have some degree of ‘choice’ of the employment they wished to obtain. Where more than one industry existed locally, there may have been less of a ‘tradition’ of sons inevitably following their fathers into the pits. On the other hand the extent of real choice may have been limited for boys in such communities, since work in local industries often earned fairly low wages and, indeed, earnings in mining were less locally than they were in other parts of the coalfield. Thus there would have been a greater incentive than elsewhere for males to leave their homes at a fairly early age, travelling in search of better circumstances.24 In the heart of the coalfield—in that area between Pontefract and Castleford in the north and Rotherham in the south—the situation was quite different. This was the destination of many of the young males seeking work. There was a


considerable variability within this area, with greater diversification in the larger urban centres and therefore greater opportunity for employment. But for the most part there was much less opportunity for female employment. Though many girls did obtain work after leaving school, possibilities locally were often severely limited. Particularly in those communities most dependent on the coal industry, where the mines provided employment for 60 per cent or more of all male workers, virtually the only sort of job available to females was as a domestic.25 As where wool and worsted predominated, female workers in communities in the heart of the coalfield were overwhelmingly unmarried. But the proportion of married women working was much lower than on the western edge of the coalfield. Only 3.5 per cent of all married and widowed women were employed in Womb well in 1901 and only 3.3 per cent in Featherstone, as compared with about 20 per cent in Batley and Bradford. Even in Pontefract where opportunities were much more diverse, the figure was only 8.4 per cent. Thus, while there was some variability, the feature of married women remaining within the home, or leaving work on marriage, was much more pronounced in the centre than on the western edge of the coalfield. If partly a function of lack of opportunity as well as the fact that men’s wages were higher and more able on their own to support a family on at least a moderately modest scale, this tendency was ultimately reinforced by attitudes defining what was proper and right. It became in some respects a measure of one’s male integrity and respectability that his wife should not (nor have to) work after she married. If clearly exercising authority by proclaiming that he ‘would not allow’ his wife to go out to work, a man was also specifying his own role: he should be able to provide by his own labour (or that of his sons) for the needs of his family. There was, however, no such general prohibition on daughters going out to work after finishing school. But in many cases limited local opportunities meant that they had to leave the area to find work. Positions as domestics were necessarily in very short supply in predominantly working-class areas, particularly those in rural settings. Thus many went off to Rotherham or Sheffield or Leeds or even further afield, in some cases relying on agents to place them. To have to travel so far at so young an age was traumatic for both the girls and their families. But the practice also had an important impact on communities, depleting them, if but partially, of females in their teenage years and early twenties. Their temporary (and sometimes permanent) departure inevitably added to the disproportionate number of young men to young women in such communities. Thus did the labour market wrench apart families and distort the population structure of many coalfield communities. If adult women remained predominantly outside of the workforce, their contribution to the home economy and indirectly to industry was far from insignificant. Women’s contribution to the coal industry is most obvious in


regard to those services later taken over and provided by the industry itself—in particular, pithead baths and canteens. These were not introduced at some pits until well into the twentieth century. Prior to this, the tasks of providing snap, of preparing baths for working members of the family, and of laundering pit clothes were absorbed among the other household tasks of women. Such work was far from negligible. It occupied women for many hours each week, albeit, of course, unpaid. Major household tasks were often relegated to different days. But these invariably overlapped one another. For washing occupied not one but several days a week, as did baking. The task of ‘managing’ on whatever income was available for food and clothing and other household needs fell inevitably to women. And managing entailed extra labour to do or make things in the home so as to avoid external expenditure: baking bread, making clothing or rugs. Occasionally when making ends meet proved particularly difficult, women would earn extra small cash by taking in washing or selling baked goods. Though publicly portrayed in a subordinate, albeit highly supportive role relative to their husbands, women frequently took the initiative on their own account. Being so close to the details of family finance and directly responsible for the care and feeding of their children, they were particularly quick to take offence should any attempt be made to break a strike. Being free from the direct discipline of any trade union organisation, but very close to the hardship brought when funds ran out during a strike or lock-out, they often gathered spontaneously to taunt a strike-breaker. They responded to disruptions or injustices in the industry from the perspective of their own ‘place’ in respect of that industry—as propping it up from within the household. When the pinch came, they were prone to militancy, if only infrequently to violence. The vulnerability of mining families While a collective action by male workers could draw a collective response from women, female members of the community characteristically suffered hardship on a more individual basis. When difficulties occurred within the home, by virtue of death or separation removing a major earner permanently, or injury or illness doing so temporarily, they attempted to cope as best they could. All workingclass communities share a certain common sense of hardship. Living so close to the edge, any misfortune can have a very serious impact. And in consequence they generally evolve a tradition of mutual aid, which is all the greater in communities or neighbourhoods predominantly sharing a single employer. And among miners it is further exaggerated by the possibility of disaster striking at random. When there was no state welfare apparatus and where parish relief was often inadequate, it was the least and the most that people could do to assist each


other. Women in particular devoted a considerable amount of their time to such activity. Where doctors’ services were scarce, women filled the breach as best they could. Each neighbourhood typically had a woman who was called upon when there was a birth, her midwifery skills frequently coming more from experience than any training. The same woman who assisted with births often took charge of ‘laying out’ when a death occurred, thus completing in herself a circle of sorts with respect to the continuity and tradition of community life. But while mutual assistance served to bind together and create a sense of community, coping still remained for many a largely individual and family affair. Families could be made destitute by accident or death of the ‘breadwinner’. When her husband was killed, a widow had little recourse but to enter the labour market herself. But when her husband was incapacitated and required nursing at home, there was little possibility for any outside work on her part. And if her children were too young to work, there would be precious little income about. Even when she did not lose her husband, injury and, to some extent illness, were part of the job for a miner, and his wife had in consequence to be prepared for periods without full pay when he was unable to work. Miners were prone to respiratory diseases26 and to such job-related conditions as nystagmus, which impaired vision, and beat knee or beat elbow, involving inflammation of the affected area.27 Along with their contemporaries in the larger working class, inadequate food, poor nutrition and strenuous work wore them down and told on their bodies. At the end of the nineteenth century the mortality rate of the younger Yorkshire miners was lower than that of the average Englishman, perhaps in consequence of the fact that only the stronger youths went into the pits in the first place, so that some degree of self-selection ensured that they were healthier than their contemporaries working in other occupations. For older miners, however, and particularly after the age of 55, the mortality rate shot up much higher than that of the average Englishman. In the 1840s government investigators for the Children’s Employment Commission had observed that miners were spent by their forties, bent and haggard and looking much older than their years. And while, by the turn of the century, their life expectancy had increased, it was still less than that of their contemporaries. Pit work used them up, but its harmful effects built up only gradually, ultimately leaving many ill and unable to work. While much more likely than the average Englishman to succumb to accidents, those who survived on this score were more likely than others of the male population to die of respiratory diseases.28 Miners who lived to their sixties or seventies thus often spent their later years in illness and destitution. The colliery companies sometimes put them on lighter work on the surface, though this invariably entailed lower pay than they had received previously. Even this gesture of apparent goodwill and beneficence was


liable to be removed should the companies consider the costs too great. After long and bitter strikes, older workers were often left off the employment rolls when the pit was started up again, as though they were being punished and made the scapegoats for the defiance of their younger fellows. And just prior to the implementation of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, when collieries considered the older and partly disabled workers to be too great a financial risk under the law, many were summarily dismissed. In formalising the owners’ responsibility and liability, their informal paternalism was lost in the bargain. And though the workforce as a whole gained, the older workers who were sacked sustained very personal hardship. Families lacking able-bodied workers to ensure their support invariably suffered greatly. But the pinch of poverty was felt by many others as well. How well a family was able to manage depended on a number of factors, including its size, the number of wage earners against that of dependants, whether the pit worked at was high or low paying and whether the family’s wage earners worked in high- or low-paying jobs, whether the pit was on full- or short-time working, and whether the family was ‘provident’ in their expenditure. Inevitably there was a wide range of family situations, even among those connected with the same pit and the same type of job. A large family which included several wage earners was often better off than a small one with a single earner. And whatever the size of the family, where the wage earner had a high rate of absenteeism or tended to allocate a considerable portion of the family income to alcohol, family circumstances were often tenuous. Poverty showed up clearly in the quality of diet. In the better-off families meat might be eaten once or perhaps twice a week, but in many others it was rarely seen. There were cases where families kept pigs and slaughtered one very occasionally and others where the bit of meat which found its way to the table had been poached from the land surrounding estates. But meat was far from a regular item of diet. The staples of existence were bread, potatoes and dripping, with the addition perhaps of jam and tea.29 To some degree diet depended on whether a family was able to grow some of its own requirements, and this in turn depended on the availability of space for gardens. Before the general introduction of allotments miners were dependent on having housing which included gardens or obtaining the right to grow crops on land owned by others, In many cases, including at Low Moor, New Sharlston, Lower Altofts and Denaby, the housing built to accommodate or be occupied by them made no such provision. Nor, for those miners living in the more congested urban settlements was there much possibility of keeping a garden and here, perhaps, the state of nutrition was particularly low. In Sheffield, just after the turn of the century, children were said to live characteristically on bread and butter and dripping. Only occasionally were they


able to get milk and when they did it tended to be in the form of tea with bread and butter. Deficiency of diet showed up in abominably high rates of infant mortality, in deformity through rickets and susceptibility to disease. The infant mortality rate in Sheffield in 1901 was 201 per 1,000 births, and in some districts rose as high as 234 per 1,000.30 The highest rate was unsurprisingly in the poorest section of the town, where there were small back-to-back houses, few if any gardens, unsanitary privy middens and mothers inadequately educated as to childcare. A particularly high rate between 1891 and 1901 was attributed to the effects on sanitation of a string of abnormally hot summers, alongside the more constant factor of poverty.31 In other parts of the coalfield infant mortality was lower than in Sheffield but still high. In Hemsworth Union it was 155 per 1,000 live births over the period 1891–1900, and in Barnsley Union, 177.32 Moreover, deaths of children under 5 formed an unacceptably high proportion of total deaths. In the Swinton Board of Health area this figure ranged from slightly under half to two-thirds during the last decades of the nineteenth century.33 Children were vulnerable to diarrhoea, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Many suffered and some died from rickets. Children as well as the general population were prey to epidemics as communities were periodically ravaged by smallpox, scarlet fever, measles or typhoid. But children were not only at risk from disease, but also from the nature of their environment. Each year cases were recorded of children injured or dying in consequence of accidents occurring while they were at play. In 1888, for example, a little girl climbed up the side of a steam tub at Fence Colliery near Rotherham and fell in head first. So badly scalded was she that she died shortly afterwards.34 In 1890, an infant just over a year old was run over by a locomotive at Monk Bretton Colliery. Her parents lived in a cottage at the pit yard and she had been left in the charge of a young brother. He, however, had gone away and left her. The experience of growing up in a colliery village and particularly in a neighbourhood predominantly housing miners and their families, was often rough and tumble, or catch as catch can. Where houses were small and overcrowded, children often spent as much time out of doors as possible, simply because there was not enough room for them to be inside. One’s privacy was limited by the closeness, by the set-up of communal privies, and by the fact that the most common form of entertainment was being abreast of what precisely was happening to everyone else. Within the house, privacy was even more elusive than in the community at large. Lack of space and lack of separate bathing areas meant that baths were taken in the main living area, a large tub of heated water set before the fire, and being used and re-used by various members of the family. Several members of the family would sleep in a single room, often divided by a curtain to provide a


gesture of privacy for the older female children. Rare indeed was it for a family member to have a bed for herself or himself. A poignant allusion to the extent to which the hardship of life was taken for granted by children is made by Eaglestone, recording a conversation of a schoolchild with his teacher: Please, Miss, there’re gan’ter bury our Earnest to-morrow, he’s in t’big bed in t’room now. Our Jimmy wouldn’t sleep wi’ him last night— ‘e wor frightened—but I worn’t, ‘e carn’t hurt ya, e’s dead and wrapped in a sheet, so I slept next ‘im and our Allice next to me, an’ our Joe at t’bottom. Aar Jimmy had to go at bottom s’my mother’s bed.35 Communities were frequently tight, frequently supportive. The family could be a source of enormous strength. Yet at the same time communities were often heterogeneous, their residents drawn from both far afield and from within the county, and internally compartmentalised. And the family could be a prison of patriarchal privilege and individual loneliness could fester as easily within it as elsewhere. While a ‘tradition’ defining the typical colliery community and the typical colliery family arose over time, it could never describe the experience of all miners. But the extent to which family and community were drawn into mining, contributing to its fortunes and suffering from its unpredictability, sometimes with collective grief, served to distinguish this from other industries. If such an experience was not exclusive to mining, it was at the same time true that the industry characteristically spawned certain community characteristics. The community was tied up with the pit in a close and symbiotic manner. COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS— WORKING-CLASS INITIATIVES Miners and their families were largely subject to the conditions in communities as they found them—to the type of housing which their wages allowed—and which the colliery companies or private contractors had constructed, to the provision for sanitation or the lack of it, to the presence or absence of various social amenities. In some ways the relative fortune of a mining family was dependent upon the pit to which its members were attached and the concern which the owner of that pit had for the needs of the community. A family in Elsecar working for Earl Fitzwilliam, for example, might count itself lucky that garden plots were provided, that concern was directed toward keeping the streets clean and that their houses had one or two more rooms than those of miners elsewhere. Others were less fortunate. Workers constituted the single largest component of their communities, but at least initially had little control over their nature, whether of the layout of streets or the provision of transport facilities, shops or centres for recreation.


They quickly built up a sense of neighbourliness, however, and a network of ties for sharing meagre provisions, friendship and caring. This often developed a reality more satisfying than that of the ragged and inadequate institutions formally constituting community life. Indeed it was only through such neighbourliness that any sort of sane survival was possible in situations where houses were crowded, water supplies limited, food scarce, diet unvaried and hours of work long and hard. Over time, however, miners and their families became less passive recipients of the poverty of their communities and more active in creating structures to suit their needs. If economic and political control were as yet beyond their grasp, they at least made inroads in local commerce and politics and thereby gradually gained some influence over their quality of life. Through collective effort they directed energy and funds toward schools and curricula which suited their needs. They established centres and facilities for pleasurably filling such leisure time as they could muster. The story of communities in the Yorkshire coalfield was not, therefore, simply one of company intervention or occasional ‘benevolence’ by the landed gentry, but also of the initiative of workers and their families, of the development of their own institutions and of their gradual movement into the local political arena. Religion Yorkshire miners were on occasion derided as a ‘godless lot’. Inspector Tremenheere quoted a surgeon in the area to the west of Bradford as complaining that numbers could be seen strolling about the fields and idling the whole day on Sundays. The colliers, he said, assembled at beer shops in the vicinity of the mines and spent the day in ‘intemperance’, thereby setting a bad example to their children.1 And there were some coal owners and managers who took it upon themselves actively to encourage attendance at churches and Sunday schools, through funding the construction of churches or through leading missionaries’ efforts. But whatever the accuracy of interpretations regarding the miners’ religiosity, the church unquestionably stood as an important element of coalfield communities, a source of fellowship, as well as of assistance and support. Among some groups, such as the Irish immigrants who settled at Denaby, the church was a dominant influence and the basic means of establishing both a sense of community and of continuity with their former homes in Ireland. The priest became the arbiter of multiple spheres—the home, the community and the workplace—capable of both curbing indiscipline and reducing absenteeism on the job. Their proximity to the mines and to mining families sometimes gave church personnel a strong sympathy with their needs and occasionally with their struggle against the mine owners and there were occasions when the churches


opened their doors to miners and mining families. At the miners’ annual demonstration in Barnsley, for example, they offered, any who might wish, a place to rest their feet and a cup of tea. In 1903, the assistance of the Reverend Jesse Wilson of the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Mexborough was much more substantial. Wilson made space available in the chapel to families evicted during the course of the Denaby Main strike. He organised a nationwide relief fund and for many months was involved with his wife in distributing goods and money to the families of those affected by the strike, his closeness to the suffering and the rather draconian manner in which miners at Denaby had been treated having persuaded him of the correctness of the workers’ cause.2 The churches in the coalfield were also important to the extent that they provided some of the relatively meagre educational opportunities which were available. Most miners gained at least rudimentary skills through their experience in Sunday schools and in some cases in church schools. But another, very fundamental, contribution came from the tradition of lay preaching among the non-conformist denominations. For in some ways this served as a training ground for public speaking, helping to develop the skills of several men who over the years filled the leadership ranks of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association. Primitive Methodism, by the church’s own proud admission, was closer to the working classes than were other denominations.3 Ned Cowey, the Yorkshire Mining Association’s first president, William Parrott, its first agent and Samuel Jacks, an important local official in the Ravensthorpe area were all Primitive Methodist lay preachers. Parrott had been converted at an early age at Methley Chapel in the Leeds circuit and two years later began to teach Sunday school. He later served as a preacher for some sixteen years.4 But other leaders came from different backgrounds. Benjamin Pickard, the Yorkshire Miners’ Association’s first general secretary, for example, was a Wesleyan Methodist. The influence of the Primitive Methodists and other religious denominations on miners was not only through the training ground they provided for union leaders, but also the perspective they put forward. While tested against practical situations and struggles in which the miners found themselves and not simply taken on face value, their religious beliefs were at least consistent with, if not a contributor to, the preference for compromise and moderation that came to characterise some of the Yorkshire miners’ leaders in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The Primitive Methodist Magazine decried not capitalism, but what were considered to be its excesses: ‘the competitive strife that goes on under the name of trade, [through which] capitalists contend with one another for advantage, and then seek to recoup themselves out of the labour of the toiler’.5 The contributors to the magazine sympathised with the workers, even advocating the principle of a living wage.6 But there was little sympathy for strikes which were described as


akin to wars among nations: ‘bad things at best’,7 and one of the primary causes of the trade depression. The solution advocated by the magazine to unfairness visited upon workers was neither strikes nor arbitration, but the volitional recognition by capitalists of the folly of excessive competition and the inhumanity of their denying to workers a decent and living wage. While leadership of the Yorkshire miners’ leaders did not reject the weapon of the strike, they did regard it as an instrument of last resort. They accepted the need for compromise and supported the view that the system could work to the benefit of both workers and owners if rationalised and if both sides perceived the co-existence of their mutual interests. The working classes in Yorkshire, including the miners, responded to a brand of religion which sympathised with their class. But though the religious sphere in their communities constituted a certain separatism and a certain affirmation of their own collective identity, it still tended to be couched in a general acceptance of the structures of the existing order. Only at the beginning of the century, with the strengthening of the labour movement and the rise of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), was there an attempt to substitute labour churches for Sunday morning services and Sunday schools. But such attempts saw relatively little success. Socialism as conceived and accepted was not a substitute for religion, but so moulded that it stood as a complement to it. The co-operative movement in the Yorkshire coalfield As in religion, initiative from within the community was also evident in other areas. In the sphere of commerce it involved the formation of co-operatives in an effort to reduce retail prices of consumer goods. Among the earliest was a cooperative store set up in Barnsley in 1822 by the weavers of ‘Wilson Piece’ and ‘Barebones’.8 But the flourishing of the co-operative movement did not occur until some decades later following the success of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers, founded in 1844. The majority of the earliest societies formed in Yorkshire, at least to the end of the 1860s, were in the woollen and worsted districts around Halifax, Huddersfield and Leeds.9 The inspiration for the Leeds society, founded in 1847, came from a group of flax spinners at the Holbeck mill of Benyon & Co. who objected to what they regarded as the exorbitant price of flour. They dubbed themselves the Holbeck Anti-Corn Association and issued a statement to the working classes of Leeds of their intention first to rent and then, through subscriptions raised from members, to construct a mill which would be the property of the combination. Initially their enterprise involved little more than a cheap selling store, there having been no arrangement for making or distributing profits. But over the years it evolved into something more closely akin to the co-operative model.10


In Morley, a co-operative began—probably some time in the early 1850s — when a group of ‘earnest working men’, most of them abstainers, rented a shop to carry on the trade of butchers for their mutual benefit. For a time they had some success, but then the company ran into difficulties and was dissolved. In 1866 another attempt was made. Forty-five working men enrolled and subscribed £35 to begin a co-operative butchery, which proved so successful that the society soon branched out into a grocery business and by 1875 had 881 members.11 In Dewsbury, the Batley Carr Equitable Pioneers’ Industrial Society was formed at a cottage in 1857. By the early 1890s it had a large central store and thirty-five branches, specialising variously as groceries, draperies, tailors, booteries and butcheries.12 One of the earliest Yorkshire co-operatives formed to the east of the Pennines, counting workers connected with the coal industry among its founders, was in Barnsley. A number of small societies had previously been formed in the neighbourhood at Ardsley, Worsbro’ Dale, and Cawthorne in the late 1850s. But while most of these were short-lived, the Barnsley British Co-operative Society Ltd, established in 1862, was to grow into one of the largest in the country. It was founded by a group of men who frequented Tinker’s Temperance Hotel and were both serious-minded and progressive. Tinker himself served as the treasurer prior to the society’s official establishment and three terms as its president. One of its initial leading lights was George Adcroft who had come from Lancashire and had formerly been a member of the Rochdale Pioneer’s Society. He had found work at Old Oaks Colliery and, when there, was involved in the growing union movement. He was a delegate from Yorkshire to a national miners’ conference in Ashton-under-Lyme in 1859 and was appointed a member of a three-man deputation to take the conference’s petition to Parliament.13 While employed at Old Oaks Colliery, he also extolled the virtues of co-operation to his fellow workers, and clearly convinced some, since Charles Crossley and James Kaye, who both worked at Old Oaks, were also among the Barnsley Co-op’s founders. Kaye was a pit carpenter and one of the first subscribers to the society. He was a member of the first committee and served a term as an early president. As a teetotaller, Adcroft had made his way to Tinker’s Temperance Hotel not long after coming to Barnsley, where his advocacy of the doctrine of cooperation,14 combined with the interest shown by the Barnsley Flour Society, constituted predominantly of working men, set the stage for the founding of the Barnsley Co-operative, whose initial headquarters were at Tinker’s Temperance Hotel. By 1869 the co-operative was purchasing as much as 85 per cent of the flour ground by the Barnsley Corn, Flour and Provision Company. From the mid-1860s and especially during the last decades of the century, the co-operative movement spread quickly in Yorkshire. Though initially hugging the Pennines, it moved rapidly east, in some measure following the expansion of the coalfield. New independent societies were set up at Flockton in 1865,


Ravensthorpe in 1866, Wakefield and Altofts in 1867, Brightside and Carbrook (Sheffield) and Allerton in 1868, Mexborough around 1870, Churwell in 1872 and Carlton in 1873.15 But the movement also expanded via the opening of branches of some of the larger societies in outlying areas. When exception was occasionally taken to the distance the Barnsley society took its goods, its committee responded that as the new coal seams could not be brought to Barnsley, it was necessary to take goods to where the coal was worked and miners and their families resident.16 The Leeds society opened branches in a number of communities, including some in the coalfield. Stores were opened in Beeston, Farnley, Lofthouse, Rothwell and Stourton in the 1870s and at Garforth in 1892.17 The Barnsley society opened branches at Dodworth, Wombwell, Higham, Warren, Ardsley, Gawber and Penistone between 1861 and 1871 and at Worsbro’ Dale, Holyland Common, Monk Bretton, Darfield and Silkstone during the following decade.18 Between 1881 and 1891 further stores were opened at West Melton, Swinton, Darton, High Green, Birdwell, Hemingfield, Elsecar, Chapeltown, Royston, Wombwell Pilley and Jump. In the 1890s a ‘colony’ emerged in the vicinity of Bolton-on-Dearn where a new colliery had been opened and in 1901 operations were begun at Thurnscoe, in consequence of the opening nearby of the Hickleton Main Colliery.19 Towards the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century branches also began to be set up by the Doncaster Mutual and Industrial Co-operative Society.20 By 1900 co-operatives were thick on the ground in Yorkshire. The Leeds society was the largest in the nation with 48,000 members. Barnsley’s was the sixth largest with over 19,000.21 The co-op was an important part of the coalfield and a dominant feature of most communities, serving for the most part as a symbol of the self-reliance of workers and in some regard even a monument to their sense of community. It was the supplier of foodstuffs, but also the beneficent provider of a periodic treat—the ‘divi’, providing not only cheaper goods but also a means of saving and the opportunity on occasion to ‘splurge’ on that special item of added comfort or even luxury. It frequently served as the central meeting place for the widest number of community members. For while not all chose to share the fellowship of church, and those who did were invariably divided among a number of congregations, all had to shop and most used the co-op for at least a part of their needs. The co-op was equally dependent upon the community. In the early 1890s, two-thirds of the Barnsley society’s 15,000 members were estimated to be miners and throughout its history this society, at least, was closely attuned to the fortunes and misfortunes which touched the industry. A number of members of the Barnsley society were among those killed at the explosion at Edmund’s Main in December 1862 and at Old Oaks in December 1866. Following the latter


disaster the society donated £10 to the relief fund set up to assist dependants of the dead and relaxed its own rules to enable the withdrawal of shares by widows to a discretionary limit.22 During the depression in the coal trade in the 1870s the co-op suffered not just a reduction in trade but also a loss in assets as many miners treated their investment shares as savings now required for basic survival. In 1876, 227 ceased to be members of the Barnsley Society and withdrawals of ‘nest eggs’ increased by £2,000. During the great miners’ strike of 1893 when the pits were stopped for some 4 months, the co-op’s business and its capital stock were also affected. Even so it was agreed to make a grant of £250 per week for four weeks to relieve the evident distress in the community. A month later, the grant was extended for a further four weeks. It was also agreed that members should be allowed to withdraw their shares without notice throughout the duration of the strike. In the event £67,000, a figure equal to a quarter of the society’s share capital, was withdrawn and 350 ceased as members. It took the society until 1898 to return to the same level of turnover as had prevailed before the strike, but it weathered this crisis, along with the miners, reasonably well, its level of capital stock and its membership having already recovered within a year of the strike.23 In the meantime it had offered its members a service of considerable importance; the symbiotic relationship had been tried and certainly not found wanting. The importance of the co-op as a central feature of community life and a creation of community initiative went far beyond the sphere of commerce. The running of the co-op proved an important training ground for the government of the community as a whole and there was often an overlap between officers of societies and of local councils. In many communities, and particularly in those where miners predominated, colliers sat on the committee or held offices of the local co-ops. John Dixon, a union branch official at Denaby Main who served first as auditor and then from 1904 as financial secretary of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, was chairman of the Denaby Main Co-operative Society in 1897.24 Samuel Jacks, who was president of the YMA Ravensthorpe branch and served on the district level joint committee of the union for many years, was said to have ‘wielded a mighty influence’ in co-operative as well as trade union affairs.25 Fisher, an engine winder at Darfield Colliery who had been a member of the Barnsley Co-op since 1864, took charge of the Womb well branch for several years before returning to his former employment. Ultimately serving as Secretary of the Yorkshire Steam Enginemen’s Association, he also served several terms on the Barnsley Co-op’s committee.26 Even so, particularly in the larger and more diversified communities, miners were less often represented on the committees of co-ops or among their officers than were artisans, white collar workers or skilled workers in other trades. The bulk of the membership tended to be the better-off manual workers,27 but the


leadership of co-ops was typically more highly educated and often rather more privileged than the average member. Many co-operative societies designated a portion of their profits to be utilised for educational purposes, replicating the model of the Rochdale Pioneers, where 2.5 per cent was allocated for the promotion of ‘intelligence among the members.’28 The Leeds Co-operative established an education levy of 0.75 per cent of net profits in 1886. The Dewsbury Pioneers’ Industrial Society Ltd gave 1.25 per cent of net profits to education and by 1893 had established two libraries and ten reading-rooms.29 The Barnsley British Co-operative Society set up a reading-room for members in 1870 and in 1885 agreed to allot 1 per cent of profits to education. The funds contributed to the improvement of a library which by 1902 had over 12,000 books. The Barnsley society’s education committee was similarly an important force behind the early provision of evening classes in the district. Lectures and evening continuation schools began in 1888 in Barnsley, with classes being subsequently extended to Wombwell and Elsecar. By the turn of the century, classes were held in such subjects as French, German, shorthand, bookkeeping, nursing, dressmaking, ambulance training, physiography, carpentry, joinery, wood carving, drawing, building and music.30 Through the co-operative movement, therefore, the working class contributed substantially to their own continuing training—making up for gaps in what was otherwise offered and for the opportunities missed through poverty or other factors in their earlier years. Co-operative societies in the Yorkshire coalfield, as elsewhere, were initially founded and dominated by men, a gentle irony given that women were most immediately concerned with the details of household finances and the purchase of food and other household necessities, but a consequence of the dominance of men in the public arena. But the progressive ideas on which the movement was based permitted a certain transcending of their initial structure and functions, reflected not just in the attention to education but the gradual development toward ‘open membership’ and the increased participation of women. If scarcely able thereby to achieve an equitable role with men in the running of the societies, the establishment of the Women’s Co-operative Guild in 1883 did offer a basis for the early involvement of women in the ‘public affairs’ of their communities and contributed subsequently to their substantial participation in the labour movement—through the ILP and later the Labour Party.31 Through the guild as well as through projects originated from the society’s education committee, women gained opportunities for self-improvement and a forum for discussing issues pertinent to their lives. The Barnsley British Co-operative Society, for example, sponsored public lessons in nursing and cookery. And if not opening all of the facilities to women it did at least establish a ‘ladies’ reading-room’ in Barnsley.


Leisure Not all of the ways in which the working class ‘made’ their communities, constructing a part of the fabric which challenged their subordinate economic and political position, were of a formal or organisational nature. In the sphere of recreation and leisure, the development and elaboration of pastimes and pursuits was often informal, sometimes quite separate from, sometimes parallel to and sometimes dovetailing with recreational pursuits sponsored or favoured by the upper classes. Sport was an important feature of community life in the coalfield, as witness the numerous cricket and football teams which arose, sometimes in connection with a particular pit. Bullock describes how at Bowers Row cricket was thoroughly a creature of the community. The village streets had their various teams, from which the local cricket committee chose the village team. The street teams played on bare patches of earth, the village team alone playing on a grass pitch and throughout the season regularly meeting teams from neighbouring mining villages.32 The village also had its soccer and rugby teams. In 1895, twenty-two clubs in the mining areas of Yorkshire and Lancashire broke away from the Rugby Union over the issue of pay for loss of working time and formed the Northern Rugby Football Union. Music was also an important aspect of community life. Bands, orchestras and choirs were in abundance throughout the coalfield. Some were sponsored by or enjoyed the patronage of the colliery proprietors or their managers. Others were more spontaneously formed. The pleasure of participating in or forming the audience for musical events was scarcely the monopoly of the more privileged classes. At times, indeed, quite the opposite, as music served as the medium for expressing both individual and collective experience. Leisure time for some was inevitably spent in the public houses, which, as places where people congregated, became important centres of community life. Colliery owners on occasion disdained the presence of pubs, not so much for the ‘bad habits’ they may or may not have bred, as for their tendency to serve as centres for the airing of grievances out of which miners’ organisations might arise. And well might they have been concerned, for certainly some of the first friendly societies of miners and later the first unions often did use pubs as their meeting places. But the relationship between the pub and the origin of the union is a complex one. For while the pub served as a natural meeting place and its frequenters a core from which organising might occur, early union leaders were often concerned that over-indulgence might counter the need for discipline on the part of union members. Many early leaders were in fact teetotallers who were loath to spend their own time and money in pubs. One further place where members of the community congregated was the working-men’s club, though as


in the case of the public house, in the years around the turn of the century, it was the adult members only of the community who were involved. The union Though an organisation borne of conditions in the workplace, the union had a larger significance and often became one of the most important of community institutions. In mining communities, its importance reflected the centrality of the mine and its dominance over the lives of mining families. In many ways, it forged the link between the workplace and the community. Where the union was strong, the solidarity it symbolised served to bind the community more tightly together. Where it was weak, the impact of workplace grievances on community life was frequently fragmented and the link between the pit and the community more diffuse. The local branch was much more than an agency for assisting with grievances at the pit. In many instances, local union officials came to be regarded as individuals who would assist in a whole variety of problems. The branch official frequently became a sort of counsellor, the secular equivalent of the local parson, though perhaps more versed in life’s practical difficulties. Frequently the branch undertook to provide specific welfare benefits for its members and their families, a function which eventually permeated into community life. When the district unions in West and South Yorkshire found the financial burden of granting benefits to miners out of work through injury or other causes too great to bear in the late 1870s, this function devolved on those branches able to administer it, leaving patchy provision. Where this function lapsed altogether, the local branch still retained a sense of obligation to its members and typically undertook to organise a voluntary subscription to aid in the support of the family of a miner injured or killed during the course of his work. Even more substantial involvement in the life of the community occurred where miners’ institutes were set up. These were formally attached to and run by the district union. There were relatively few in the coalfield as a whole and were meant to cater not to a single community, but to a much larger population. But they tended to be viewed as extensions of the local branch. They provided a place where miners could gather for educational and social as well as strictly union events. They also provided space where other organisations could meet or hold socials. And in some instances, they became the site of local cinemas. In all these they extended the sphere of the miners’ union well beyond the workplace and served as monuments to the importance of miners in local communities.


Politics Trade union activity extended beyond the miners’ association to local trades councils and through these to the political arena. Branch involvement with trades councils varied considerably in different parts of the coalfield. In general, trades councils were based on the larger urban areas in the county and dominated by unions other than those of the miners. A number of strong miners’ branches became affiliated to the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council in the 1890s, for example, but remained a minority within this organisation, which at the time was dominated by such groups as the steel smelters, the scissor grinders and the file hardeners. Few if any officers of the Sheffield Trades and Labour Council appear to have come from the miners.33 But in some locales miners’ participation was active and strong. Representatives from Denaby Main and Manvers 1 and 2 were all on the committee of the Mexborough and District Federated Trades Council in the last years of the nineteenth century. When, in accord with the more general programme of the trades councils to increase working-class representation on local political bodies, the question of nominating working-men magistrates arose, miners were among those put forward for consideration. Their representatives on the Mexborough Trades Council were at first cautious about the prospect. When it was suggested that he would be a useful nominee for Rotherham, in that there were often colliery cases from Thrybergh about which he would be able to provide useful background information, one of the miners’ representatives, Mr Kerry, commented woefully that ‘if a man was fined, I should have to pay it for him’. He was as little keen on the post as was his colleague, Mr Liversedge, who declared: ‘I could not bring myself to send any man down the line’.34 It was pointed out, however, that ‘there were too many of a certain class on the Bench’ and that workers should be represented there. After further discussion and additional consultation with their branches, several miners agreed to put their names in, including W.Annables from Manvers 2, who at various times also served on both the Executive and the Joint Committee of the YMA, and J.Dixon, a local officer at Denaby Main, who was ultimately to serve as the YMA’s financial secretary.35 The miners’ union provided an important organisational base from which to approach local public office. And whether through the union or via the trades council or entirely independently, a number of miners acquired local political office as soon as such posts became open to them. Those concerned to offer time and talents to the service of fellow workers in the union were often the same sort who, with a sense of (class-based) civic duty, sought to offer themselves to the local electorate. The history of the Yorkshire miners is filled with cases of such individuals who were highly active in both the union and community politics. Some became involved at the national level as well.


Participation in local government by district officials began with the example set by John Normansell, the president of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association who was elected to the school board of Barnsley Town Council in 1872. The example was well-followed thereafter, with cases so numerous that only a few can be mentioned. Benjamin Pickard, the miners’ leader during the last two decades and who served as a Member of Parliament for many years, was earlier in his life active in local politics. He was elected to the Wakefield School Board in 1881 and served as an alderman of the West Riding County Council in 1889.36 William Parrott, who served as the YMA agent for many years and, after Pickard’s death, briefly as general and corresponding secretary for the union as well as MP for Pickard’s old seat, was a member of the Barnsley school board from 1889 to 1892 and was elected to the Barnsley town council in 1893, 1899 and 1901. He became a JP for Barnsley in 1904.37 Herbert Smith who became President of the YMA in 1906 and served as president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) from 1922 to 1929, first ventured into public office in 1891 when he was elected to the Glasshoughton school board, having been nominated by his union branch, on which he had served as a local officer. Within the next several years he was elected to the community’s first parish council, the Pontefract Rural District Council and the Board of Guardians. In 1903 he was elected to the West Riding County Council. During this same general period, between 1896 and 1904, he was also president of the Castleford Trades Council. In his later years, after his move to Barnsley in connection with his YMA position, he served as JP for Barnsley and County and later, from 1932–3, mayor of Barnsley.38 Branch officials were also involved in community politics. Annables of Manvers 2, for example, was a member of the Swinton District Council in 1897. He was a nominee of the Mexborough Trades Council, the nomination having come initially from the miners of Manvers Main.39 Worsley, a representative for Manvers 1 on the Mexborough Trades Council, was also a member of the Wath District Council. Dixon of Denaby Main was both a member of the Mexborough District Council and chairman of the local school board.40 Dixon also served as chairman of the Denaby Main Co-operative Society at this time. Over time, the influence of the miners and the broader working class of which they were part came to be indelibly stamped on the communities in which they lived. If they did not exert either economic or political control, their impact in both arenas was evident. Through struggles, through hardship and through collective initiative, they both created a spirit of community and helped to mould the institutions which arose therein. Through it all the union evolved into a central institution, linking workplace and community, and increasingly became a force to be reckoned with.


EARLY TRADITIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM Miners’ organisations and collective action to secure wage increases and improved working conditions have been recorded in Yorkshire as early as the 1790s. Undoubtedly their unrecorded history stretches back much further. But until about the early 1860s the history of mining unions in Yorkshire was one of fits and starts, of leaders emerging and then being victimised and prevented from securing further employment in the industry. There were some successes though, and on occasion the creation of remarkably extensive organisations, linking pits across the breadth of the county, as well as across different coalfields. Gradually, the idea of combination gained currency and workers’ organisations gained in effectiveness, though their popularity and strength still remained subject to the broader cyclical changes within the economy. There were occasions of faintheartedness and episodes when miners bowed to the superior economic strength of colliery owners, which in turn influenced the sort of union which developed and the initial terms on which it operated. But, once formed, the organisation had an impetus of its own, independent of the influence or desires of the owners. It offered a forum for more radical positions being put and a basis for educating miners not just as to their industrial but also their political rights. From early on the struggle for combination was led by and frequently confined to underground workers, and among these often to face workers. The hierarchy of the work process gave the various categories of workers different sorts of grievances and different senses of their relative importance in the mine. Face workers were generally skilled men who had served a number of years apprenticeship and considered themselves thereby the more capable and perhaps the more deserving. Managements preferred to confront sections of the workforce rather than the unified whole and often strove to undergird divisions by agreeing to meet with unions representing only specific segments of workers. But the tendency to limit organisation to homogeneous categories was also promoted from below. As the earliest and most sustained initiatives came from face workers, it is their experience which constitutes a predominant place in the early history of unionism among Yorkshire’s miners. Although this volume is primarily concerned with the period after 1881, traditions which informed the union’s activities and preoccupations, as well as its relationship to the community, were set in train much earlier. A long history of struggles, punctuated by major stoppages in 1844, 1858 and 1863, as well as by various organisational initiatives at both local and national level, established patterns which would subsequently be drawn on, moulding miners’ responses. It is this continuity which warrants a brief review of the earlier period.


Combination prior to the 1840s One of the earliest recorded strikes at a Yorkshire pit took place at Middleton Colliery in 1787. As on so many later occasions, the grievance was that wages were too low. This strike, occurring in January when demand was characteristically near its highest, was apparently successful, as was another at the colliery four years later.1 The Anti-combination Acts which operated from the turn of the century until 1825 did not so much eliminate organisations among Yorkshire miners as restrict the nature of those formed. But by so doing, they were to have a longlasting influence on the functions and tactics of miners’ unions contributing thereby to a certain ‘tradition’. Organisations during this period could formally and openly operate only as friendly societies. Though some may have been covers for trade union activities, the bulk of their work was in accord with their most commonly stated aims: to provide friendly benefits through mutual collection and insurance programmes. When carried over in unions formed later in the century, this emphasis served as a major drawing card for recruitment. One such early friendly society formed in and around the neighbourhood of Wakefield in 1811 and met at the Three Tuns Inn. Its rules prohibited any connection with trade union activities. Should a member be convicted of combining with others illegally to raise wages, they were to be immediately expelled. Members were expected to be orderly, respectful of those in authority within the organisation and moderate in their drinking habits. Neither were members to curse, swear, lie or raise disputes concerning religion or politics or speak disrespectfully of the King, the Houses of Parliament or any public officers. The primary purpose of the organisation was to provide support for members out of work. Once they had contributed a total of 10s 6d through the 1 shilling entrance fee and weekly subscriptions of 3d, those judged by the committee as unable to work through sickness or injury were granted 6 shillings per week until such time as they were again fit. At the officers’ discretion, moreover, members out of work through no fault of their own could also be given assistance.2 While this Wakefield society formally distanced itself from the wage issues, others embraced it. In 1819, despite the Combination Acts, miners in the vicinity of Leeds and Bradford joined together paying weekly subscriptions, in order to support those they considered to have been unjustly dismissed.3 In November of that year, apparently considering themselves sufficiently financially strong, they asked for a rise in wages. When the demand was refused, 400 men withdrew their labour, informing their employers that more would do so unless the rise was agreed to. The employers swiftly retaliated by dismissing the men whereupon the miners took their appeal to the public. Between 2,500 and 3,000 paraded through the streets of Leeds accompanied by several bands offering renditions of ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the King’.


If in this case the miners defied the Anti-combination Acts, the legislation’s more general legacy was to temper organisation, so that of collective agitation most frequently involved an almost ad hoc joining together of the aggrieved in relation to a particular issue. Legislative restriction on direct negotiation with employers may also have encouraged more public appeals which, together with longstanding traditions of annual feast days, laid the basis for the miners’ annual gala or demonstration which continues to the present. The reaction of the mine owners to unions and wage demands was invariably hostile. They engaged in various strategies to break the union: dismissing and blacklisting organisers, requiring workers to finally disclaim any association with the unions, recruiting strike-breakers from other industries or other areas or simply closing a pit and dismissing the workforce.4 During a strike at Smithson’s Colliery at Alverthorpe in 1833, for example, colliers were brought in from the Newcastle area. The firm ultimately obtained sufficient recruits to break the strike and cause the union’s demise at the pit. In instances such as this the entire composition of the workforce at a pit could change and the regional origin of inhabitants of villages near a pit could exhibit a considerable shift. Elsewhere the response to workers’ combinations was similarly strident. The scope of organisation which nevertheless occurred is therefore all the more remarkable. National organising efforts—the great strike of 1844 In the early 1840s, for example, a handful of Yorkshire miners were in the forefront of the move to establish a national miners’ union. They were bitterly aware, often on the basis of personal experience, of the risks to the local organiser. Victimisation of organisers through dismissal was the easiest strategy of resistance for employers and the first to be seized upon. Often they were not merely sacked by their employer but also blacklisted by neighbouring colliery owners. Their initiative in the early 1840s roughly coincided with the government’s inquiry into the employment of children, which in investigating the situation of the mining industry, focused public attention on the horrendous conditions under which all miners laboured. Public indignation at the plight of child workers in the pits as well as the very fact of the inquiry itself must have heightened the miners’ own sense of outrage at their situation and motivated some to seek to improve it.5 Delegates to a meeting in Halifax in early August 1842 declared their intention of forming themselves into district societies, which would be subsumed in turn into one ‘grand body’ to ‘consist of the whole of the coal miners of England’. It was hoped thereby that a fund would be established to support a general strike aimed at securing relief from the prevailing poverty and distress. One Yorkshire miner, who later served as an agent for the national union, recalled that wages at the time were so low as to make it impossible to maintain a family. His own


wages during much of 1843 and the first part of 1844, he said, had averaged just 9s 7d after deduction for fire, coal and candles.6 Other meetings followed, one in Halifax and then another in early November in Wakefield, where the Miners’ Philanthropic Society was established, with David Swallow serving as its full-time secretary. Having been delegated the task of promoting and developing a national union, he appealed through the columns of the Northern Star for miners throughout the country to join in the endeavour. A response from the northeast led to a delegate meeting in Newcastle in May 1843, attended by representatives from Durham, Northumberland and Scotland, as well as Yorkshire. Here a new association was established—the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland, the composition of its officers and committee reflecting the greater relative numbers of miners from the northeast during this period of the industry’s history. John Hall was its secretary, John Armstrong its president and Martin Jude its treasurer. From the beginning the organisation promoted the strategy of miners restricting output in order to reduce the overall supply of coal in the market, thereby fostering a price increase and with it a justification for an increase in wages. The Newcastle meeting resolved to this end that coal hewers be restricted to earning no more than 3s per day.7 It was a significant feature of the miners’ association that it concentrated on recruitment in a concerted and serious way. Organisers, referred to as missionaries, or occasionally as lecturer or even travelling preacher,8 were sent throughout the coalfield, operating on a model similar to that of the non-conformist churches. In Yorkshire organisation was relatively slow and many pits only had their first taste of the missionaries’ message in the summer of 1843. But the response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.9 The national association’s policy on restriction was invoked in early 1844 when it was decided that colliers should earn no more than 2s 6d per day. A meeting in Bradford decided to restrict income even further, to 2s 4d, for a trial period of a month. And at several meetings in the county it was further advocated that restriction should apply to hours worked, which should be no more than eight.10 From this early period, then, the call for an eight-hour day was raised. Finally, early in the spring of 1844, it was proposed that miners in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire should request a wage advance and give notice to cease work should this not be granted. When miners in Yorkshire tendered their notices in April 1844, a number of owners met in Wakefield and declared the union to be an ‘unjust and uncalled for interference with the rights of masters and workers’. They resolved to refuse employment to any miner who was a member of the union11 When the strike began they reaffirmed their joint resistance. At some small pits owners broke ranks and granted an advance, but at others the miners gave in, returning to work under terms described as ‘stringent and harsh’12 At many pits, however, the miners remained out and here, after several weeks, the owners resorted to more


direct strategies of opposition. In some cases miners were prosecuted for breach of contract; in a great many they were evicted from colliery houses. Blacklegs were also recruited, many among them said to have had no former association with colliery work—tailors, shoemakers and the like. Ultimately many of the strikers drifted back to work, frequently having gained much less than they demanded and in some cases on terms unchanged or even worse than had applied previously. In some areas the struggle had persisted through October. In West Yorkshire, where it lasted perhaps longer than anywhere else in the country, only in November, after twenty-four weeks, was it finally at an end. In view of the importing of ‘strangers’ many miners found they had no jobs to which to return. And union leaders and activists were excluded from the pits as a matter of course. Yet in spite of a general failure to attain demands, Swallow contended that the strike had brought certain clear advances. Working hours had been reduced; but perhaps more important, the miners had demonstrated their strength and resolve, setting an example that the owners would not soon forget, and inevitably informing the tone of future negotiations between the two parties. Even so, a sense of demoralisation intruded and in Yorkshire the district framework in the union, spanning both southern and western sections of the county, disappeared shortly after the end of the 1844 strike. It would be another 37 years before both sections of the county would again come together within a single organisation. Industrial action in 1853 and 1858; checkweighman initiative Localised struggles and stoppages continued to occur, but in West Yorkshire the next major episode in unionism and the disciplined withdrawal of labour was not until 1853 when, following a rise in the price of coal, a new union was formed in the Leeds area to assist in the securing of a wage advance. Stoppages occurred at a number of pits, and at Pope and Pearson’s Altofts Colliery miners were out for some five months. But advances were ultimately gained.13 An upswing in the market brought further increases in the price of coal and the pressure the union represented by virtue of its very existence apparently persuaded owners to grant additional increases to the miners. Success, however, reduced the urgency for combination and the union appears to have ceased activity. The owners’ combination, goaded into existence in 1853, persisted, however.14 And in 1858, following a fall in the price of coal, its members determined to cut wages by 15 per cent throughout West Yorkshire, effective from early April. Renewing their own combination in collective self-defence,15 West Yorkshire miners resolved to accept reduction at all but a few select pits, where labour


would be withdrawn for as long as possible in order to wear the owners down. Those out would be supported by contributions of those still at work. The strike had dragged on for some time when, in early September, the owners took their attack a step further, initiating a lock-out throughout the breadth of West Yorkshire and declaring they would close all pits unless the men as a whole agreed to the specified reduction, to working eight hours a day when required, and to signing a declaration that they would conform to all colliery regulations and not contribute to any men remaining on strike.16 The miners’ position was undeniably weak, for their union had only been formed in response to the owners’ provocation and, in spite of the generosity of miners still at work, they had had little time to accumulate funds, nor to devise a strong organisation. Attempts to generate support for their cause led to a meeting in mid-November of representatives from Durham, Northumberland and Derbyshire as well as both South and West Yorkshire, from which emerged an initiative to form the ‘Miners’ Association of the United Kingdom’. In the event the plan fell by the wayside, but it helped to prepare the ground for later national efforts.17 As the dispute in West Yorkshire persisted, the union there appealed for it to be submitted to arbitration, but the owners declined. The men then offered to accept a 5 per cent reduction and agreed to work six days per week if required. But they steadfastly clung to the right to organise, refusing to sign any document disclaiming the organisation. Far from conceding, the owners rather began to import strike-breakers, moving them into houses, whose previous residents were now reduced to dire straits, and distributing lists of the striking miners to prevent their being hired at other pits still operating.18 As the weeks dragged on the miners and their families suffered considerable privation. There were many times, according to one collier, when they could not get bread. ‘I think that we had one week only 10d, and you may judge what a family could get for 10d.’19 One of the costs was their children having to be taken out of school, the fees being impossible to pay.20 A more tragic cost was the increased mortality of women and children in the spring of 1859, weakened by the hardship of the previous year and falling victim to infection.21 Finally, in late November and not long after the alleged admission of one coal owner that they meant to starve the miners out, there was a break in the stalemate. A firm near Leeds offered to take the men back on a lesser, 7.5 per cent reduction, conceded their right of continued association with the union, and agreed to rescind the by-laws to which the miners held strong objection.22 The union accepted and thereafter other owners followed with similar terms in view of the onset of winter and the pressing demand for their product. One of the strike’s leaders conceded the cost, estimated just in respect of lost wages at £40, 000, to have been a great deal more than they gained. But, he said, ‘we won.’23


The pattern of union activity in South Yorkshire was in many ways distinct from that in West Yorkshire during the 1850s and 1860s. Similar events or the effects of similar economic trends led to episodes of agitation occasionally occurring at or around the same time in both, a case in point being in 1858. But the rhythm of the union development, achievement and disappointment differed markedly in the two sections of the Yorkshire coalfield. Given that at midcentury the initiative toward combination among miners was so frequently in response to owners’ demands for wage adjustments, this variation was partly in consequence of differences in level and nature of organisation among owners. In 1858 it was the prior assertion by West Yorkshire owners that a 15 per cent reduction must be implemented which led those in South Yorkshire to meet and agree to a similar demand. In both parts of the county the response was rapid combination on the part of the miners, though in separate initiatives. But whereas in West Yorkshire the owners remained firm and a long, bitter and wearisome stoppage occurred, at the end of which the miners gained only a compromise of 7.5 per cent reduction (their union thereafter falling into disarray for a period of several years), in South Yorkshire the owners’ combined resolution quickly crumbled. The decisiveness of the miners’ victory was a powerful factor in the embryonic South Yorkshire union becoming entrenched, to grow thereafter in size and strength. When the owners of South Yorkshire gave notice of a reduction representatives from twenty-six pits met to discuss a strategy for holding deputations at the various collieries. Soon the number of pits represented by the newly formed union had increased to thirty-six and a meeting reaffirmed a resolution underlying the men’s counter-attack: that the miners should follow a policy of restriction, working no more than eight hours and earning no more than 4s per day. A fragmented and unsteady stand by the owners, some apparently unnerved by the speed and effectiveness of the miners’ incipient organisation, was to severely undermine their campaign. Before notices expired they had begun to backpedal, agreeing to call for a reduction of just 10 per cent. The newly formed union recommended that the men take such terms as they could get; and while most remained at work miners at nine or so pits went out on strike. But the caving-in in some quarters led some colliery owners who had instituted a reduction to retreat and return to the old wages. And at a meeting held on 17–20 April, representatives of the owners withdrew their demand altogether. Employers, however, stubbornly refused to grant the union in South Yorkshire official recognition24 and through various means attempted to break and destroy it over the next several years. Recourse to the courts was tried as well as victimisation of any local leaders. But the basis of the union had been set down and the conviction of the miners as to its fundamental importance meant that, though the next four years would see considerable struggle, the union itself would not die.


In 1859 the South Yorkshire union was involved in a dispute which had important ramifications, setting a foundation for subsequent legislation governing all collieries. A dispute at Wharncliffe Silkstone, involving a lock-out of twenty-eight weeks, culminated in management agreement to the miners appointing and collectively paying the wages of a scrutineer to examine the weighing machine and the figures recorded by the company’s weighman on the pit bank or bottom. The call for a checkweighman had been made at various South Yorkshire pits for a number of years and on several occasions had figured as a basis for strike action.25 The miners’ underlying grievance was over frequent and apparently arbitrary confiscation of tubs claimed by management to be underweight or to contain too much dirt or shale. Miners contended that in view of colliery by-laws officially prohibiting the practice they would be fools to fill at all unless they filled tubs properly.26 They felt that they were frequently made to pay unjustly for the spillages occurring after tubs left the face or for the mistakes of the banksman or the improper operation of weighing machines. They considered themselves defrauded thereby of very substantial amounts and regarded the system—by which they must simply take the word of the management’s agent—to be a convenient means of extracting excess profits by the firm. The solution they proposed was to have one of their own oversee the weighing process. Should any deductions be made for deficient weight, they preferred that they be proportionate to the deficiency rather than involve loss of the tub as a whole. At two South Yorkshire pits, Lundhill and East Gawber, the men had been permitted to appoint such a scrutineer. But winning that same right through prolonged and bitter struggle at Wharncliffe Silkstone was to prove particularly important, not least because the checkweighman appointed, John Normansell, was to become secretary of the South Yorkshire miners’ association, and perhaps the strongest of its early leaders. Partly in consequence of pressure by the miners nationally a clause permitting the appointment of checkweighmen was included in the Mines Regulation Act of 1860. Its wording was not what the miners had originally wanted, however, and it required further struggle and the use of the courts before the principle became generally adopted. The most significant episode in this process involved John Normansell, and again, Wharncliffe Silkstone. As if to penalise Normansell for assisting the men at the pit to secure a favourable revision of piece rates, Wharncliffe Silkstone’s checkweigher was effectively removed from his position in the summer of 1863. Management essentially argued that as Normansell was a leading man of a powerful organisation at the pit, they were unable to put the Coal Mines Act into force without his interference.27 During the next several months the union took out a series of summonses against the management, but while magistrates consistently affirmed Normansell’s legal appointment, the union was unable to get costs paid. Only in early 1864, when the case came before the Queen’s bench,


was a ‘compromise’ effected with each side agreeing to pay their own costs and Normansell reinstated and his former privileges observed.28 Legitimising the checkweighman’s role was to have important implications for union organisation. As individuals relatively free from potential victimisation, because they were paid by the miners rather than the firm and involved in less arduous labour than most miners, checkweighmen were particularly well situated to serve as branch secretaries and many did so. Disputes in the early 1860s At about the same time that John Normansell and the South Yorkshire miners were engaged in the final episode of the checkweighman’s question, there was also an important dispute in West Yorkshire, though of a very different nature. In May of 1863, in a scene remarkably similar to that five years earlier, the owners in the Wakefield and Methley area declared their intention of reducing wages by 15 per cent giving the miners just two weeks’ notice.29 Protest meetings were held in many localities and once more in response to crisis the union was shored up, some of those involved in 1844 and 1858 coming forward to offer their assistance and leadership abilities, though in some cases blacklisting meant that they were no longer employed as miners.30 In mid-June in the face of perhaps unanticipated opposition, the owners offered new terms—a reduction of just 1d per ton or 7.5 per cent on the price paid per yard and on byeworkman’s wages. The men agreed and most returned. Almost immediately, however, the owners moved again, their association declaring that in exchange for the 7.5 per cent being returned, miners must riddle coal at all pits where it was not then being done. When the miners balked, those at a number of larger West Yorkshire pits (for example, Briggs, Pope and Pearson’s, Bowers, Locke and Warrington, and Wood and Rayner) were locked out on 10 July.31 As on previous occasions, but with rather greater speed, the owners initiated a drive to recruit new labour, hoping to crush the union by changing the composition of the workforce. Several, including Briggs, travelled to Ilkeston in Derbyshire to distribute handbills and recruit men personally. Some hundreds were brought in.32 The scene of evictions in Yorkshire was similarly repeated, and the ensuing protest was similarly robust. With 186 children among those turned out, the outrage was so great that the neighbourhood was said to be in a state of ‘civil war’.33 Deciding that their property was in danger, the owners used their influence as on previous occasions to have additional police drafted into the area.34 The police complied by ‘doing their duty’ for those who summoned them, in the process making a number of arrests. Several women were among those brought before the magistrates charged with throwing stones and wounding new ‘recruits’.35 Then on the night of 24 September a large group of trade unionists


from neighbouring collieries attacked cottages occupied by strike-breakers as well as the house of a colliery steward at Whitwood. The latter, enacting the drama of class battle, used firearms in his defence.36 In the end the community protest was partially effective, for a large number of the imported ‘recruits’ were persuaded to return from whence they came.37 But miners failed to achieve the objectives which had motivated the strike. After some twenty weeks they were forced to concede to working with riddles as the owners demanded. Even so the union spirit remained strong and at a number of pits concerted attempts were made to compel owners to oust non-unionists. Further attempts at national organisation Throughout the 1860s and 1870s the West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire miners’ associations remained distinctly independent organisations, fighting their largely separate battles. Both suffered wage reductions in 1868, of 5 per cent in South Yorkshire and 10 per cent in many parts of West Yorkshire. But otherwise there was little coincidence of initiatives by either the owners or miners in the two areas. There was, however, communication between the two miners’ unions. Indeed South Yorkshire miners made two loans of £100 each to their comrades in West Yorkshire, in 1867 when successive battles had eaten into funds and left their association debt-ridden, and again in 187038 when a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to gain an advance left the organisation crippled and in virtual disintegration. Early in 1871, with only six branches remaining and no more than 300 members, the West Yorkshire association proposed an amalgamation with that in South Yorkshire. But the terms stipulated by the latter were considered unacceptable, implying too great a subordination to the South Yorkshire organisation and involving contributions far too heavy for the struggling West Yorkshire members to manage.39 But if remaining separate, both South and West Yorkshire miners’ associations were involved in the creation and sustenance of an overarching body, formed to represent miners nationally. One of the first efforts to rebuild a national organisation following the demise of the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland occurred in 1858. But ambitious planning came to naught, the prevailing differences between the districts seeming too great an obstacle to coordinated action and the regional associations having inadequate facilities for ensuring the collection and payment of levies. The experience may have well convinced some that regional bodies needed building up and strengthening before such ambitious objectives could be realised and that, in the meantime, national organisations should confine themselves to the more modest— but still highly important—function of monitoring and attempting to influence legislation. Various delegate conferences directed toward this end occurred over the next few years.40 Then at the end of a conference instigated by Richard Mitchell of


the South Yorkshire miners in the autumn of 1863, a national association of miners was formed. Alexander MacDonald, the Scottish miners’ leader, was president, but two Yorkshire men, Richard Mitchell and John Holmes, held positions of secretary and treasurer respectively. Yorkshire miners were also prominent on the executive council, having three of nine seats.41 Over the next several years while MacDonald retained the presidency, other leadership positions tended to be held by Yorkshire and Lancashire miners.42 The objectives of the Miners’ National Association were essentially moulded by experiences of the previous years. It was determined that it would not generally interfere in any local strike. Nor would there be any involvement as regards accident, sickness or death benefits. These were to be the business of local associations. The emphasis of the organisation was on attending to legislation, working within parliamentarianism to ensure that the interests of miners were at least represented to government. The 1870s—great strides and precipitous decline The early 1870s brought one of the periods of greatest expansion ever experienced in the history of British mining. The development of the Yorkshire coalfield was described as unprecedented, with many new collieries, often of considerable scale, being opened out and the demand for labour accordingly high.43 It was to be followed by crashing decline marked by overproduction and manifest in price reduction, short-time working, the failure of pits, widespread unemployment, encroaching poverty and struggle for the very survival of miners’ unions. But in the early years of the decade there was considerable optimism. With demand high, prices rose and the prospects of super-profits induced many plans for the development of new mines and the expansion of existing ones. In these heady days the workers shared in the gains, finding that their requests for wage increases were acceded to with little protest being made by owners unwilling to forgo production when business was so lucrative. In South Yorkshire there were advances of 5 per cent in September 1871 and again in January 1872. Wages rose by 10 per cent in July 1872 and 15 per cent in the autumn of the same year.44 A further advance, and the last for several years, was gained in March 1873, when the owners agreed to an additional 15 per cent. According to Normansell, the miners’ calculation in pressing for advances was based partly on a rise in prices, but also on the relative demand for their labour. As the industry expanded and many more workers were required, the leverage of the miners in ‘regulating’ their own wages necessarily increased.45 Growth in union membership paralleled success in wage bargaining, as ‘hundreds of recruits’ to the industry joined the association.46 While in September 1871 there were just over 6,000 members among fifty lodges, by June 1874 there were almost 23,000 financial and up to 400 non-financial members in 100 lodges.47 New


branches included those from Fitzwilliam’s collieries and several from Derbyshire. In West Yorkshire, where wages had been generally lower, there were higher percentage increases between the autumn of 1871 and the autumn of 1872. Wages rose by 7.5 per cent in October 1871 and by 15 per cent respectively in March 1872, May 1872 and again in August of that year. Miners in the district strove to make up for past hardship and in some cases made demands far in excess of what was ultimately granted. In all cases save for one, their pressure on employers followed increases in the price of coal.48 In May 1872, unorganised miners in the Leeds area met and decided to demand 22.5 per cent. When the owners offered only 15 per cent, they struck, though most returned after a fortnight, accepting the original offer. In August, later in the year, participants at a delegates’ conference called for a further 25 per cent and only very reluctantly agreed to take their leaders’ advice and accept the lesser offer of 15 per cent. In the spring of 1873 the miners requested an increase of 20 per cent; the owners, with much professed reluctance and some misgiving, offered 15 per cent and this was accepted.49 As in South Yorkshire, the miners’ union in West Yorkshire increased substantially in membership during these boom days. Whereas there had been fewer than 500 at the end of 1870, the number increased to 9,000 members by the spring of 1873. Increased size required the addition of another official and in March 1873 an assistant secretary, Benjamin Pickard, was elected. He was only 31 at the time, but was to remain in the labour movement until his death and was to become a prominent figure both in Yorkshire and in the miners’ national organisation.50 The better times of the early 1870s were manifest clearly in the standard of living of miners and their families. Miners, who had lived so close to poverty for so long, now began to acquire the goods which might otherwise seem normal requirements of a comfortable household, but in the context of previous years seemed closer to luxuries. They purchased furniture and other household goods, watches and a finer quality of cloth than had previously been conceivable.51 Many established banking accounts and accrued substantial savings.52 According to Normansell, there were more harmoniums, pianos and perambulators in the homes of South Yorkshire miners than ever before.53 And many now owned their own houses.54 Overall a general sense of well-being, if not of security, began to permeate communities. An orientation toward self- and collective improvement also began to pervade the two miners’ unions in the county. In the midst of the industry’s prosperity and fired by the general optimism, both turned toward an upgrading of their own offices and toward investment of their accumulating resources in what were hoped to be lucrative and secure ventures. Particularly noteworthy investments during this period involved attempts in both parts of the county to set up and


operate co-operative collieries. The co-operative movement was well entrenched by this time and trade unionists often felt strong affinity with its aims. Many as individuals were members of the co-operative societies in their communities, which operated primarily in the commercial sector. There were some co-ops, however, which ventured into production, most frequently by operating mills. And there was a general sense that co-operation could and should be applied in productive as well as distributive operations. The form of co-operation envisioned was one compatible with a general capitalist rubric. It involved purchase of shares by workers, but did not exclude such purchase by other investors. It allowed for some distribution of surplus produced to workers, but not at the expense of profit-making and reinvestment. In the event, it was not individual miners who invested in the co-operative venture, but their union; though it was firmly believed that if the union owned or held majority ownership of a company, and was thereby able to appoint and monitor the activity of its management, it would necessarily operate in accord with the interests of its workers. With some enthusiasm the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association purchased and began operations at Shirland Colliery in Derbyshire.55 The West Yorkshire union undertook investment at Hayswood in North Staffordshire.56 Sadly both enterprises ended in failure and disillusionment, entailing considerable cost. The reasons were various, but overwhelming among them was the unforeseen slump in industry. Plans were laid when the market was robust. But by the time they materialised the economic environment had vastly altered. This exacerbated a tendency to underestimate the amount of capital required to bring acquired mines to a state of viable operation, which would of itself have led to considerable difficulties. The downturn which ate away at whatever meagre possibilities for success existed at Shirland and Hayswood had its first impact on miners’ wages in April 1874 when owners in West Yorkshire called for a reduction of 25 per cent. It was heralded by a severe drop in the price of coal from 16s per ton in December 1873 to 12s in January 1874,57 the decline being all the more alarming because it occurred at a time of year of characteristically high demand, when prices were more likely to move upwards. Stoppages occurred at some pits, but the reduction was nevertheless effected.58 It was the turn of the South Yorkshire miners just a few months later, when owners first asked for a 20 per cent reduction and then settled on a demand for 12.5 per cent off wages. When the miners proposed 10 per cent as a more tolerable figure, the owners gave notice and there followed a lock-out involving some 23,000 workers and costing the association £20,000. It was finally agreed to submit the remaining 2.5 per cent of the owners’ stipulated 12.5 per cent to arbitration. But in the event the miners proved unsuccessful and the full 12.5 per cent was applied.59


Over the next several years, there followed a number of similar episodes characterised by various levels of resistance and invariably culminating in defeat for the miners and further enforced reductions. The attack on wages in 1877 was a concerted one involving owners in both parts of the county. By this time the union in South Yorkshire had declined in membership from more than 22,000 in August 1874 to just under 9,000. There was little ability to resist and the council agreed to 6.5 per cent being taken off.60 In West Yorkshire, where membership had declined to just 3,400 from 6,000 the previous year there was a similar agreement.61 The following year there were more problems. In both sections of the county owners attempted to bypass the union altogether by imposing a new reduction. There was a degree of joint action between miners’ unions in West and South Yorkshire at this time, and agreement that the owners’ claim should be resisted as far as possible. But capacity for effective action even within a section of the coalfield was highly limited. Particularly in South Yorkshire, organisational weakness was expressed through serious in-fighting, resulting in a set of lodges breaking away there in early 1880 to form a separate association under the leadership of William Chappell. And under sustained assault on wages, there were attempts in both West and South Yorkshire to bring some order into the system by adopting sliding scales. Though it was far from universally applauded, agreement of sorts on a sliding scale was in fact reached between owners and the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association in February 1880. By this time trade unionism among Yorkshire miners had been considerably buffeted. Numbers had fallen as wages suffered constant reduction. Some had emigrated as urged by miners’ leaders both locally and nationally. But others had left because the union seemed increasingly unable to protect the interests of its members, nor could it have much capacity to do so, given the state of its resources and the nature of the broader economic situation. For all this trade unionism still survived, but as a shadow of what it had been earlier in the decade. It was abundantly clear to those remaining in the rumps of the two district unions that their further survival required amalgamation and unified action. Patterned tradition of industrial action The course of trade union development and activity among Yorkshire miners and the pattern of successes and failures varied to some degree with the ebb and flow of the market. Both owners and workers were subject to market forces, the owners consistently arguing that their losses must be shared by their employees, though perhaps less keenly conceding advances with upturn as an automatic right. Miners were affronted by the arbitrariness with which owners attacked their incomes with outright reductions or strove with apparent meanness to alter their working conditions such as to effect indirect reductions, and they reacted


with organisation to protect and advance their interests through collective strength in the only form which appeared available to them. Thus there were waves of defensive collective action, dissolving when an immediate crisis had worked itself out. And though recurring leadership personalities and general collective memory provided some continuity, organisations with potential longevity were relatively slow to emerge. The owners for their part responded to market vagaries and worker combination with organisations of their own, through which they hoped to reduce some of the uncertainty they themselves faced and to confront with some rational co-ordination the strength implied by worker organisation. They dabbled in attempts to regulate prices and with variable effectiveness strove to regulate wages on a district basis. Their response to worker combination was initially and fundamentally to frustrate and eliminate it as far as possible. They indulged in practices of victimisation, sacking those of their workers involved in union activity and particularly those who presumed to take on leadership roles. In some instances they closed pits rather than concede to the resistance mounted by workers supported by their union. Their association itself became a means of offering collective resistance to unions, in the sense that it operated as an insurance fund through which the group would help financially maintain a member involved in an industrial dispute, through the laying of levies. When ultimately conceding to unions as a persistent reality (though not without reluctance), they still subscribed to the principle of keeping the workforce as divided as possible through the maintenance of separate unions for separate groups of workers. The history of early miners’ unions in Yorkshire shows workers having been prone to a fundamentally moderate and reasoned approach. When they perceived their interests threatened, they took their grievance to their owners in the form of an appeal. When rejected, they held firm to the extent circumstances permitted, with the union supporting those out of work, on strike or locked out. On some occasions they held demonstrations, appealing to the public to recognise the justice of their cause. In an attempt to increase the strength of their side within the arena of industrial conflict, they persistently moved over the years to build as solid a local union as possible, incorporating as large a proportion of working miners as could be achieved. Extending the principle further, Yorkshire miners were periodically and persistently involved in attempts to build a national union. The miners’ history does not simply consist of a series of battles with employers, but disputes mark off the episodes of that history and are crucial for their effect on miners’ lives and the vitality of their communities as well as for the impact upon their collective consciousness. Over time there emerged a clear pattern to the substance and course of these disputes, with common tactics being employed and similar responses being made, creating a tradition whereby the memories of previous disputes informed the conduct of those which followed.


Elements varied in their proportionate importance (and even in their presence or absence) and in the sequence in which they appeared. But their occurrence was repeated frequently enough for them to be readily identifiable. Tactics employed by mine owners included evicting workers on strike from company houses, recruiting strike-breakers and, should they perceive the need, calling in police to ‘protect’ their ‘new’ workers and prevent disruption to production or damage to property. The miners for their part became subject to community privation which increased the tension and the sense of enmity between themselves and their employers. They often lost their homes as well as their wages; their children often had their schooling interrupted as money was insufficient to pay their fees. Whereas the union co-ordinated the workers’ side, much community involvement also characteristically occurred, with women frequently involved, particularly in the heckling or barracking of strike-breakers. Their frustration, anger and commitment led miners and other community members to defend themselves in all ways available and if this sometimes involved them in activities deemed by the authorities as unlawful, so be it. Arrests of community members often accompanied strikes; and whereas the activities which led to such arrests only ever involved a minority of community members, those concerned often regarded their activity as a legitimate means of preserving their interests and the law applied to their cases as essentially biased toward the protection of those of their employers. If mine owners lost profits and sometimes productive capacity during a strike or lock-out, the workers suffered dearly from lack of food in their stomachs and those of their children and in some cases the loss of the few possessions they owned. At the end of a dispute, were it successful for their side, they could look forward to future income, though also the need to rebuild their community and recoup what they had lost. If unsuccessful, miners, and particularly their leaders, were often subject to blacklisting and thus forced to move to other areas or into other occupations. For those who remained, there was demoralisation and reduced wages or otherwise altered conditions or work. The union and its struggles were clearly a fundamental part of miners’ lives and mining communities. Its emergence and growth had meaning for their very well-being and the potential security of their futures. Over the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Yorkshire miners’ unions had various degrees of solidity and strength, with certain periods marking very low points indeed. By the end of the 1860s, miners’ unions were at least well entrenched within the county, though their fortunes were far from high. The following decade was one of extremes, with rapid rises of wages and expansion of output followed by just as rapid decline. The fortunes of the union followed suit and the hard times saw not just a diminishing of members and of the leverage which the union was able to wield, but also, in some cases, internal bickering. It is ironic that a fracture at least of the South Yorkshire association should have preceded and in fact marked


the final necessity for its amalgamation with the union in West Yorkshire. The joining together of the two sections did not immediately resolve existing difficulties, nor restore the union’s authority, but it set the basis for what was to become a much stronger organisation.

LABOUR AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES 1880–1900

60

3 THE YORKSHIRE MINERS’ ASSOCIATION DURING THE 1880s

FORMATION OF THE YORKSHIRE MINERS’ ASSOCIATION; LEADERSHIP In the spring of 1881 several meetings were held of the Joint Council of the West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire Miners’ Associations leading to an agreement in early April, subsequently confirmed on 25 April and 23 May, that the two organisations should amalgamate.1 This marked the official founding of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association. Of its initial officers, Edward Cowey as president, Benjamin Pickard as corresponding secretary and William Parrott as agent were drawn from West Yorkshire. John Frith, its financial secretary, was the only member of top leadership formerly associated with the southern section of the county. Beginning operations as from 1 July 1881, the new amalgamated body used as its headquarters the impressive building formerly used by the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association on Huddersfield Road in Barnsley. Initiatives to bring about the amalgamation of the South and West Yorkshire unions had been made by one or other of the two district associations over a number of years. In the early 1870s West Yorkshire, weakened by a disastrous strike, first broached the possibility of unification, but balked when it appeared that South Yorkshire would only agree on condition that the new body continue to be designated the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association (YMA).2 In the late 1870s, when the fortunes of both districts suffered reversal, discussions were again begun, and in the spring of 1879 it was agreed that amalgamation should occur. But only after the frustration of the miners’ wage initiative in South Yorkshire two years later did this tacit agreement realise fruition. As the miners’ leader in West Yorkshire, Benjamin Pickard, declared, the time was overdue for unification: ‘Had the men of Yorkshire one association we should not see one part of it fighting and the other part working’.3 While the new YMA included the great bulk of all organised miners in the county, some splinter groups remained, notably the Rotherham and District

62 LABOUR AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES

Miners’ Association under the leadership of William Chappell and a small organisation led by Phillip Casey called the ‘Remodelled Association’, both in South Yorkshire. Indeed the proposal to amalgamate produced the possibility of further splintering, with murmured threats by some local officials in the Leeds area to keep their branches outside the new county association, though these at least eventually acceded to the change. The structure and objects of a unified YMA The objects of the YMA, recorded in rules specified at its formation, were similar to those of other regional miners’ associations of the period. As did those of the Durham Miners’ Association, the YMA rules emphasised the necessity of protecting members unjustly dealt with by the management, pushing for improved legislation affecting mines and miners and providing weekly allowances for members on strike or locked out. But there were also a number of rules specific to the YMA which were presumably inherited from former miners’ associations in Yorkshire. These included undertakings to secure compensation for accidents due to negligence of employers, to abolish illegal stoppages at pay offices, to secure the true weight of material sent out by miners, and to secure prices and wages that members had bargained for. From its beginning, the union also affirmed the objective of shortening hours of labour down the pit to an eighthour working day, a concern notably missing, for example, from the Durham Miners’ Association rules.4 In respect of insurance benefits, the YMA guaranteed payment toward the cost of funerals on the death of a member or his wife. In general, however, its social welfare provisions were less extensive than either those of county unions in Durham and Northumberland or of its own predecessors in Yorkshire. The SYMA had provided a weekly allowance to members injured in the course of their work. A small union in West Yorkshire, the Woodlesford and Methley Miners’ Association which operated between 1878 and 1890, had even granted a weekly allowance to members off work through either sickness or accident. But the YMA made no such provisions. The hard times of the 1870s had depleted central union funds and led to both the SYMA and the WYMA abandoning these benefits, leaving it to local branches to carry on if they wished and were so able. The YMA also found it necessary to omit another provision made by the SYMA, a weekly allowance to widows and orphans of members whose lives had been lost while at work. By nature of its functions, then, the YMA was much less an agency providing insurance to members out of work through misfortune than a body geared to bargain for better conditions and wages and to protect members from injustice suffered at management hands. YMA rules reflected past battles in the district, an overwhelming concern for ‘justice’ in the relationship between worker and

THE YMA DURING THE 1880S 63

employer, and a missionary zeal to extend principles of trade unionism as far as possible. On the other hand, in interesting contrast to the Durham Miners’ Association whose rule book specifically included as an objective the support of a labour candidate, that of the YMA made no mention of party political concerns. Internal structure of the union When the YMA was formally set up in 1881, its structure was essentially modelled on those of the two unions which preceded it. It was composed of a number of local branches or lodges, some of which were based on employment in a particular pit. Many, however, especially in the early years, were based on locality and drew membership from miners working for several different employers. This pattern was most common in the vicinity of Leeds, where pits were relatively few and generally small, though locality also seems to have served as the basis for branches in the thinner seam pits around Barnsley. In 1880 each section of the county had about forty branches and after amalgamation, at the end of 1881, the YMA had about eighty-six. By 1890 there were 155 branches, with the number ranging between 145 and 160 through to the end of the decade.5 In June 1900, the union had 149 branches, eight of which had fewer than fifty financial members and twenty with over 700. The largest was Barrow Haematite with 1,323.6 According to the rules set down at amalgamation, branches were to be managed by a committee of between five and nine members, including three officers—a president, a secretary and a treasurer. The actual size of the committee was determined by the size of the branch, with those of less than 100 having five, those from 100 to 200, seven, and those over 200, nine. In financial terms, the local branch was the collection agency for moneys which were, for the most part, officially the property of the county union. When allowances were granted to individuals—in the form of strike, lock-out, victims’ pay or funeral benefit—the branch served as an agency for their dispersal, but only with funds from the centre and on its authorisation. The essential functions of the branch were to consider complaints and grievances of members and to attempt as far as possible to deal with them locally. Patterns of course varied among branches, but in some cases, such as at Wombwell Main, a system of fairly regular deputations with management operated, giving opportunity for union representatives to report new grievances as they arose. Two cases taken up by this branch during deputations in 1913 illustrate the type of work routinely done by the local branch. In one a branch member appealed to the union after having been sacked for repeated nonattendance. The deputation pleaded that he be reinstated and this was permitted on condition that there be no second chance should he continue his irregular


attendance. In a second instance a face worker found himself out of work for several weeks by virtue of the coal being finished at his normal working place. Management ultimately found him work as a night shift ripper but he was dissatisfied with this, given that others in a similar position had been found other face jobs. The deputation brought forward the case to an indignant management which considered they had made considerable attempts to find the man suitable work. They grudgingly agreed, however, that the next available face job would be given to him.7 When no local settlement was reached, grievances were forwarded to district headquarters. More generally the YMA rules stipulated that when any alteration in the mode of working occurred which operated against members’ interests, the local committee should investigate the matter and then immediately lay the facts before the district. Similarly any emergency at a branch requiring prompt action should be reported. And should any fatal accident occur, the rules held that the local committee should immediately investigate its circumstances and send a report directly to headquarters. Thus while local issues were the purview of the branch, in many cases they were also the direct responsibility of the district organisation. At district level the YMA was run by a set of elected, full time officials. Traditionally the two who exercised most power and served as official spokesmen for the union were the president and corresponding secretary, the balance between the two being dependent partly on individual leadership qualities. At its outset in 1881 Ben Pickard, the YMA’s first corresponding secretary, was the more dominant, though the president, Edward Cowey, was also an extremely strong and important figure, both in Yorkshire and in national miners’ organisations. The president presided over all meetings at district level, seeing that the rules of the association were carried out and signing all documents. The corresponding secretary officially called all meetings of the association, recorded their minutes and was responsible for preparing the written output of the body—its plans, documents, circulars, bills and general correspondence. It was through this latter function that the initiative of this official could be exercised and their general orientation widely publicised. The officers had considerable scope for influencing the nature and direction of union policy. But the actual government of the association was vested in the council, which included the officers but was primarily comprised of delegates elected by and acting as the official representatives of branches. All business for ordinary council meetings was required to originate from the branches as proposed by their general meetings and properly signed and stamped by their local officials, though no branch could forward more than three proposals to any given council meetings.8 The council was required to meet at least once every six weeks, but in practice did so more frequently. The normal pattern of scheduled meetings was one per


month with additional special meetings called as necessary. While only one delegate from each branch attended, voting was weighted by branch size, with one vote for each fifty members. It was a system of which some were, on occasion, to speak with pride. Cowey noted in the late 1880s that the YMA was based on ‘the most democratic principle’. ‘Everything’, he said, ‘went back to the lodges for consideration…’9 The council served as the disciplinary body of the union, taking up cases of members who considered themselves dealt with at branch level contrary to rule and dealing with branches which appropriated funds in an improper manner. The council could withdraw membership status from any individual judged to have contravened the rules or acted against the interests of the association. Similarly it could debar a branch from official participation or membership within the county organisation. The greater part of council business, however, was taken up with authorising victim pay and considering requests from branches to take official action over local grievances. In addition resolutions emanating from national miners’ bodies on general policy or demanding collective action were considered by the council, as were requests from other unions for assistance in the carrying out of their disputes. Supplementing the work of the council was an executive committee which met at least once every six weeks at regular intervals between council meetings. Much smaller than the council, it was comprised of a variable number of delegates nominated by branches and elected by panels or sections roughly demarcating sub-regions within the county. It was intended that there should be some degree of equivalence among panels, but in fact some represented larger sections of union members than did others. The executive committee dealt with matters similar to those considered by the council, but which cropped up and required attention between council meetings. But the executive committee was specifically not empowered to decide on issues of strike action or authorisation of payment to members during lock-outs or the granting of money to other districts or any internal payment exceeding five pounds. These were the exclusive responsibility of the council. While the council was the main decision-making body of the association, provision was made for more decentralised accountability in certain instances. The council, for example, could lay levies on members or make grants only after proposals to these ends had been submitted to the branches for approval. In addition when a quarter of branches at a council meeting so requested, a registered ballot to be taken in local branch rooms was required on such questions as the authorisation or prolongation of a strike, alteration of rules, granting large sums either within or without the district or dismissal of district officials. Calculation of results was based on the principle that the majority of registered votes in the branch should be taken as representing the views of the branch as


a whole. This principle was commonly employed in district-wide membership ballots, the majority determining the position of the branch as a whole, and the minority proportions effectively ignored. The extent of representativeness within the union thus depended both on the number of members who turned up to the branch to vote and the size of the majority in favour of a given position. Very occasionally the union carried out a referendum in which each individual member was granted a vote. Perhaps because it was a costly exercise it was fairly rare. Yorkshire’s early leadership The amalgamation of the South and West Yorkshire miners’ associations was part of a more general tendency to merge miners’ unions into units large enough to be effective in pressuring owners for improved wages and conditions of work. While leading to the formation of a single county union in Yorkshire, on other levels it was manifest in the attempt to form an alliance among individual regional unions and ultimately to establish a national organisation of mineworkers. Leaders of the YMA were closely involved in this larger movement to build a national organisation. And in many ways it is impossible to understand the activities of the district union without viewing it in relation to initiatives promoted at the national level. The 1880s marked a sustained effort to co-ordinate wage negotiations on as close to a national level as possible, albeit with uneven success. Virtually every year renewed efforts were made. Conferences were held and resolutions passed, though it was only towards the end of the decade that a formal organisation finally emerged capable of carrying out collective action and providing the promise of greater co-ordination. Many years later, Thomas Ashton, a long-time secretary of the MFGB, recalled this period and the role of the Yorkshire leadership within it. In 1882…we got sufficient districts that we decided to take action, drastic action. We decided to put in notices and that those notices must not be withdrawn until employers agreed to give workmen an advance of 10 per cent, in wages. And we succeeded. But after 1882 the districts went back again, there was no organisation, and the advance was taken off in one district after another. North Staffordshire came first in 1883, Lancashire in 1884, Yorkshire in 1885, and so on. This went on for a while, and then we began to agitate again, and we said ‘If we get an advance it will go off the same as the other has gone off unless we are organised’. Well, we got an advance again in 1888 of 10 per cent, and we decided to form a Federation of the Districts, and that is the Federation of Great Britain. Now, I might say that Mr Pickard was the man for those times, and we owe a great debt


of gratitude to him. We owe the establishment of the Federation of Great Britain to him.10 Ashton’s remarks came during a memorial ceremony to commemorate the contribution of Pickard to the national miners’ movement, and he may be excused for pointing so strongly to the singularity of Pickard’s role. Even so, it must be acknowledged that the dedication of the Yorkshire leadership as a whole, and of Pickard in particular, to build an organisation which could bargain effectively at the national level on behalf of the miners was substantial. Pickard seems to have regarded his role in the MFGB as his single most important contribution to the miners’ struggle, having commented at one point with uncharacteristic emotion that ‘I love this Federation of miners more than any man I know.’11 By any measure Pickard’s work for the miners was extensive, and certainly among the YMA’s leaders over the years, he stands out as a particularly strong individual. Benjamin Pickard was born in West Yorkshire at Kippax into a mining family. On leaving school at age 12 in about 1854, he went into the pit, working first as a hurrier. As with many others who gained prominence in the labour movement, his leadership qualities became apparent early on; by the age of 18, he was secretary of his local lodge. Later he also served as checkweighman at Kippax Colliery.12 As a youth he would have experienced the hardship and frustration of the gallantly conceived but unsuccessful strike in West Yorkshire in 1858. And he would have been a local official of just a few years’ standing when West Yorkshire’s 1863 strike occurred. From all accounts Pickard was a conscientious man of serious character. He was said to have been a rigid teetotaller and non-smoker. Like many of his fellow miners’ leaders, he was a dedicated churchgoer. But unlike most others who occupied the top levels of the YMA, and who tended to belong to the more ‘populist’ sects, often serving as lay preachers, Pickard was a member of the Wesleyans. He was also a supporter of the Lord’s Rest Day Association.13 He seems to have had a close family life and to have relied heavily on his wife for support and strength. In many instances, and particularly in his later life when illness sapped his strength, his wife travelled with him on his journeys to meetings and conferences. Pickard has been described most commonly as stubborn and pugnacious, a man who was aloof and distant and not one to join with his fellows in rowdy companionship. His personality seems to have had a sharp edge to it and to have generated friction both within and without the labour movement. He could hardly be described as one to suffer fools gladly. But what was prickly intransigence to some was to others a sign of staunch integrity and dogged perseverance to obtain what he regarded as right. As Herbert Smith, president of the YMA in later years, was to remark, Pickard was often misunderstood:


When he had an object in view it had to be a strong willpower that prevented him achieving that object. He always took some convincing that he was wrong, but when he was convinced that he was wrong he was always ready to admit it and accept wiser counsel.14 From time to time, Pickard suffered criticism from his own membership. Often this was occasioned by the circumstances of local disputes where frustration over lack of progress led to cries of neglect by district officials or even occasionally of double dealing. And though for the most part his effectiveness as a leader was unquestioned by Yorkshire miners there were times when his popularity ebbed. When subject to personal attack, Pickard was wont to take up a quick defensive stance and lash out at those who dared to question his integrity and unbiased support of his members. Those he opposed in industrial struggles—mine owners, managers and the like —were occasionally piqued by his manner and doggedness in battering out facts which they considered incorrect or only partially valid representations of the state of the market or of mining conditions. But in the end, few of his opponents questioned Pickard’s dedication and honesty. Mr Alfred Whitham remarked at his memorial service in 1918 that: Unfortunately I was on the opposite side to Mr Pickard, but I always saw him as one of the straightest, one of the most honest, and one of the most upright men I have ever come across during my career. When he said yea he meant yea, and when he said no he meant no.15 Pickard was a man of considerable intellect and was confident of the logic of his own position. He prided himself on being conversant with contemporary facts and figures of the coal industry, including the balance sheets of the mining companies, and introduced them with alacrity into negotiations with the owners.16 Colonel Raley, who served for many years as solicitor for the YMA, regarded Pickard as ‘the cleverest man I ever knew’. He recalled a time when, as a young man, Pickard invited him to stay in his office during a conversation with a prominent local coal owner. The owner made a few remarks, upon which Pickard gave a reply which, to Raley, seemed utterly foolish. The owner continued with Pickard silent save for offering a word or two which Raley again felt had nothing to do with the matter at hand. But then when the owner had had his say, Pickard began, ‘Now, Mr So-and-So’, and according to Raley answered the man’s points from beginning to end: Although he had been saying things before which appeared to men to be foolish he had carried everything the coalowner had said in his mind and answered all his points. That was the cleverest thing I ever saw in my life,


and I have been in courts many times and seen these things done. Mr Pickard had been weighing all the arguments pro and con, and had been waiting his opportunity, and then rended that coalowner as no man had rended him before.17 Pickard had moved from local to district level leadership around the age of 31. He was appointed assistant secretary of the West Yorkshire Miners’ Association in 1873 and elected secretary in 1876, succeeding John Dixon.18 Early on he became convinced of the need for a national body to carry forth the miners’ cause; in 1877 he became vice-president of the Miners’ National Union, alongside its president, Alexander MacDonald.19 The Miners’ National Union was essentially a lobbying body, working within the system to bring about legislative changes and thereby to improve the miners’ lot. It was militant in championing the miners’ cause, but not in respect of tactics adopted. Its leadership did not oppose national strike action, but neither did it see the MNU as the agency for proposing and supporting it. And though formally cordial relations were maintained with the Amalgamated Association of Miners— an organisation active in the early 1870s which specifically incorporated a central strike fund and was oriented toward industrial action—the MNU declined to lend material support to local disputes. Pickard at one point explained his involvement with the MNU in terms not of ambition but of trade union responsibility. When nominations were being made for officials of the National Union in 1884, he added a note to the YMA minutes saying that he had no desire whatever to be an official of the organisation, but considered himself bound to serve in any position his own union so requested him: however simply and old-womanish it may appear to some, that I, as a paid servant of the Association, should consult those who employ me as to what I shall do in all public matters where our members’ interests are at stake, I shall always consider it one of my responsibilities to act in that way.20 Whether Pickard associated himself so firmly with the MNU because he agreed fundamentally with its principles, or whether such involvement helped to mould his notions of the proper orientation and form of trade unionism is difficult to assess. Although Pickard accepted the existing political and economic system to be essentially legitimate and was prepared to work within its framework, he considered it flawed because of its failure to protect and advance the interests of workers. But he regarded such flaws as correctable through utilisation of legislative machinery, trade union structure and essential goodwill. He seemed to believe that mutual good to both workers and owners could come through cooperation, though he never imagined such co-operation would come about of its


own accord. It was unified strength of the workers which could appropriately prevent owners’ greed from keeping workers impoverished. And if the strike was a suitable weapon of trade unionists at the local level for pushing owners toward reasonable negotiation, then it was equally legitimate and undoubtedly much more effective at the national level. And so Pickard was in the forefront of moves to bring the districts together to achieve a concerted strategy, not just for ensuring legislative change, but for influencing the relationship between wages and profits. According to Thomas Ashton, Pickard was at the head of the movement in the early 1880s to bring together as many districts as possible for the purpose of discussing how they might collectively improve their situation. For, as Ashton noted, things were ‘very bad, very bad indeed’ at this time: Wages were low, so low indeed that I was going to say you would not have been able to buy food in these days. But you could not buy food then really with the wages that these men who worked at the coal face received at that time, to say nothing about clothing and other necessities. Families at that day were half-starved, many of them.21 Ashton related how the embryonic movement, with Pickard prominent within it, met ‘once or twice’, but not until 1882 did it involve sufficient districts to launch a collective effort. Pickard was active in calling or lending support to subsequent meetings throughout the 1880s, even in the lean years, and finally took a firm hand in steering them toward the establishment of the Miners’ Federation at the end of the decade. But Pickard’s inclination toward increasing solidarity and collective strength did not stop here. For he was also active in the setting-up of an international miners’ association in the early 1890s. Pickard’s acceptance of the existing political structures led him, moreover, to take an active role within representative bodies at both local and national level. If believing in the power of strong trade unionism, he was also convinced that legislatures could be turned toward the needs of working people if the latter increased their participation within them. Yet for Pickard, personally, such activity was a minor element within the scope of his total work. He was elected to the Wakefield School Board in 1881 and to parliament in 1885. From 1889 he served as an alderman of the West Riding County Council.22 But he was first and foremost a trade unionist and in this capacity in both Yorkshire and at the national level left the strong stamp of his influence. If Pickard was the dominant figure within the YMA during his tenure of office and the most prominent Yorkshire representative on national and international bodies, his fellow leaders in the YMA in the 1880s and 1890s were also men of high calibre. This was certainly true of Edward Cowey, formerly checkweighman at Sharlston Colliery, who was president of the West Yorkshire Miners’ Association from 1876 and elected president of the YMA immediately


after amalgamation. The fact that Cowey and Pickard had evolved a good working relationship in West Yorkshire undoubtedly provided continuity to the early years of the YMA. Cowey was representative of an important segment of mining labour in Yorkshire, in that he migrated to the county from another coalfield in search of employment. He was born in the northeast and began pit work when just 10 years of age. As was Pickard, he was active in union organising and activity from an early age. In 1858 his involvement in a strike against the yearly bond which still persisted in the northeast, tying miners to a particularly servile form of contract labour, led to his victimisation and blacklisting in the local area. Joining the Royal Navy for want of a job, he then spent four years at sea, but afterwards went down the pit at Sunderland’s Monkwearmouth Colliery. Here, in 1868, he was again involved in a strike to abolish the bond, which this time met with success. Following an unsuccessful strike in 1869, however, Cowey was once again subject to victimisation. And a number of months of subsequent hardship finally persuaded him to move his family to Yorkshire where, in early 1871, he obtained work at Sharlston, where a number of northeasterners were already in residence. Shortly thereafter he was elected the first checkweighman for the pit.23 Cowey was a man of considerable bearing and dignity, eloquent in speech and solid in his commitment to the miners’ cause. He was a lay preacher with the Primitive Methodist church and spent considerable time with chapel activities. Though he was considered by Yorkshire miners to be a potentially effective parliamentary representative, his tenure in public office was relatively minimal, limited to a short spell on the West Riding County Council. His major preoccupation was the union and among Yorkshire members he was highly regarded. Herbert Smith referred to him as ‘a man we all loved’.24 His opponents seem also to have held him in high esteem. Colonel Mitchell remarked that Cowey was one of the finest men who ever came into the district.25 And Percy Greaves, associated with Old Roundwood and other pits in West Yorkshire, attested generously to his strength of character: He had a voice like a bull but was a man of great character, and he never hesitated to rebuke men for advancing a wrong argument. If he thought an owner was wrong, then the lash of his tongue was most severe. I respected him so much as an individual that I used to go and see him after he was stricken with cancer.26 Cowey, like Pickard, was also active in national miners’ organisations. He was on the executive of the Miners’ National Union for some ten years.27 And he campaigned actively with Pickard for a new national organisation capable of coordinating wage demands in the 1880s, officiating at many of the conferences


held during this period. He was a member of the first provisional executive of the new MFGB in 1889 and remained a member of the executive until he died. Cowey and Pickard were not always in precise agreement on issues of principle and strategy, though the consensus between them on both trade union and political matters was sufficiently high to maintain a thoroughly solid front. Nor was their manner the same. Cowey was wont to speak from the heart and to recall his own experience of hardship in the mining industry. His dedication to improving conditions was in part a consequence of the suffering he himself had experienced. Among others at the district headquarters in the early years of the YMA were John Frith, financial secretary, and William Parrott, agent. Parrott came from West Yorkshire and together with Cowey and Pickard gave something of an initial imbalance among permanent leadership in favour of this part of the district. Parrott’s family had come to Yorkshire from Somerset when he was very young. His father was a miner and Parrott went down the pit at West Normanton, just before his tenth birthday. He had in fact stopped school particularly early having worked in a brickyard when only 8 and in a factory when 9.28 He was the first checkweighman at Good Hope Colliery, elected in 1872. Four years later he was elected assistant secretary of the West Yorkshire Miners’ Association following the death of John Dixon and Pickard’s assumption of the post of secretary. Parrott was in some respects overshadowed by Cowey and Pickard, being less eloquent a speaker than either of them. Yet he was a firm colleague and a strong advocate of the interests of the miners at district, national and indeed international levels. His civic activities included service on the Barnsley School Board from 1889 to 1892,29 on the Barnsley Town Council, as Barnsley JP from 1904 and, briefly, as MP for the constituency which Pickard’s death had vacated.30 John Frith was the member of the leadership team drawn directly from the SYMA, having been president of that organisation under John Normansell and stood alongside seven others in the election to determine Normansell’s replacement as general secretary in early 1876. In a runoff he defeated William Chappell with whom he was later to have considerable disagreement. Frith had the misfortune to preside over the decline of the association as the industry encountered hard times. But he was clearly respected by the membership in South Yorkshire among whom he gained the epithet of ‘honest John’.31 The YMA’s early leadership team of Pickard, Cowey, Parrott and Frith remained in office for over twenty years, all of them dying within a short period of one another between December 1903 and November 1905 (the first three having passed on within a short three-month period between 16 December 1903 and 17 February 1904). They guided the growth of the YMA and its assumption of a major role within both national and international miners’ associations. While it cannot ever be assumed that the views of the membership of an association are


identical to those of its leaders, nor that it is solely its leaders who determine an association’s political and strategic directions, the leadership invariably exerts strong influence by virtue of their opportunity to articulate principled positions in various arenas. As with any organisation there were occasions when local YMA leaders and branches rebelled against the position taken of the district leadership, or registered their dissent by putting forward and voting for candidates for high office other than the incumbents, or sponsored resolutions to which the district leadership clearly objected. Union policy was a product of this tension and of the interplay between the inclinations of the leadership and pressure from membership. But while granting this, there is still an important sense in which views articulated by the leadership came to stand for the ‘Yorkshire’ position and to influence the broader course of events. STRUGGLES OF THE 1880s A set of principles was clearly subscribed to by YMA officials in the 1880s and in some cases subsequently. Among them was the notion that the greater the proportion of miners included in an association and the larger the association generally, the greater its leverage in bargaining with employers. As a corollary it was assumed that the greater the extent to which an action was carried out on a national as opposed to a regional level, the greater the probability of success. A second was a belief in the justice of miners gaining a decent or living wage, which would allow them to adequately feed and clothe their families. A third was a rejection of the sliding scale, partly because experience showed that an acceptable minimum for such a scale, which kept miners above a poverty level, was difficult to negotiate with employers. A fourth was advocacy of a policy of restriction as a means of influencing the market so as to push up the price of coal and thereby allow an increase in wages. And a fifth was the belief that there should be a maximum of eight hours in the miner’s working day. It was largely around such views, and the understanding of the workings of the economic system which informed them, that the policy of the YMA was based. Dispute of 1882—emphasis on the need for national action Proceedings of the 1882 dispute illustrate something of the YMA’s, and more specifically Pickard’s, position regarding both the operation of the market and what constituted a just return to the workers. The argument put by Pickard was two-fold. First he asserted that the state of trade justified an advance. The price of soft coal or house coal had advanced by 1s as summer turned to autumn and to Pickard this indicated a general upward trend. Second, he contended that miners were highly underpaid relative to what they had received some eight years


earlier.1 He put both points in a meeting with South Yorkshire owners who, not unexpectedly, begged to differ. Perhaps the price of soft coal had risen, they acknowledged, but this was simply a normal seasonal increase and definitely not indicative of a trend. Should they raise their prices further, they would lose their market share. Nor did they accept the claim that miners were underpaid. According to Ellis, one of the representatives of the South Yorkshire owners, prevailing wages were not as bad as miners’ leaders made out. Though he had heard of such things as misery, destitution and starvation, he had not seen evidence of any of these and did not believe that they could possibly exist among the miners of his immediate district.2 Rather than granting an increase, South Yorkshire owners renewed the terms of an offer first introduced the previous year. This was that a sliding scale should take as its basis—or starting point—the net average selling price over the two years ending 30 January 1882 or any four half-years as might be selected by the miners, that company books be submitted for inspection and that if any advance be shown to have occurred over the three-month period ending 30 September 1882, miners’ wages should be advanced by 2.5 per cent for every 4d advance in the selling price up to 1s 4d per ton over the basic price. For the fifth advance of 4d, 5 per cent should be given.3 The YMA might have accepted a sliding scale if its terms were much more generous. Its officers argued, however, that the suggested basis was simply not adequate.4 Pickard returned to his basic point that if the prevailing wage was too low it could in no way be construed as a ‘decent wage’. If in fact the selling price was too low to permit both a rise of wages and a ‘suitable’ level of profits, then an appropriate strategy in which both owners and workers could participate was to restrict output and thus alter market conditions. Owners in South Yorkshire refuted any such ‘mutual action’, arguing that restriction would increase production costs and bring no benefit to their side.5 Nor was there consensus among miners across districts on the utility of the strategy. YMA officials therefore turned immediate attention to the possibility of national industrial action as a means toward gaining the increase. At the National Conference of Miners held in late August 1882, Pickard proposed and Parrott seconded a motion that if an increase were not achieved by 1 October, miners should take a general stand and go out on a national strike. Though some expressed reservations, the motion was passed, as was a subsequent one put by Pickard that, while the action should be national, it should be co-ordinated on a regional basis, each district making their own claim in their own manner.6 Yorkshire officials issued a circular in September declaring that if an immediate advance of miners’ wages could not be obtained through peaceful means, coercive means must be resorted to. And while some might consider a general stoppage a wild scheme, it was the opinion of the YMA that ‘there is no more wildness, chimera or impracticality about it than there is impracticability of


a colliery owner setting down his works for a week, ten, or twenty days owing to a fact that a colliery is stated not to be paying a profit’. ‘We in Yorkshire’, continued the circular, ‘believe miners’ wages are low, much too low, for the health and comfort of the miner, his wife, and family.’7 Miners from various regions reconvened in mid-October at a conference in Manchester at which Cowey was president and Pickard, secretary, an indication of the strength of Yorkshire’s commitment to the initiative. Northeastern coalfield representatives were notably missing from this meeting, with delegates only from Yorkshire, Lancashire, North Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and North Wales in attendance. It was confirmed that a fight for 15 per cent should proceed, albeit with details of procedure being left as before to the districts.8 The atmosphere among Yorkshire miners at this time was one of general enthusiasm, and a number of new YMA branches were formed, including those at Woodthorpe, Tinsley Park, Wharncliffe Woodmoor, Handsworth Woodhouse, Nunnery, Brightside, Monk Bretton and Hoyland Silkstone 2. By 23 October 1882, almost 20,000 members had tendered their notices in the county. Yet another conference was held in Manchester on 27 October 1882, where the fallback position was accepted that miners agree to 10 per cent as a compromise should it be offered. But further co-ordinating machinery was also discussed and agreed to. Participants resolved to give financial as well as moral support to any district which might have actually to go out on strike and a committee was formed to adjudicate on the amount of support which should be granted in any given case. The strike threat put the owners under considerable pressure, and before notices expired South Yorkshire owners offered an immediate increase of 5 per cent in combination with a sliding scale, while West Yorkshire owners offered a 10 per cent advance. A meeting in Rotherham of Yorkshire’s miners rejected the South Yorkshire owners’ offer and accepted that from West Yorkshire, with the reservation that a claim for the remaining 5 per cent might be made at a later date. It was soon evident that the 10 per cent offer from West Yorkshire, even if confined to only a portion of the pits there, was sufficient to break the resistance of owners in the southern part of the county, lack of unity effectively undermining their strength relative to that of the miners’ union. On 31 October the South Yorkshire owners, still protesting that the price of coal was too low to justify an advance, conceded a 10 per cent increase as a means of avoiding a stoppage. The miners’ initiative of 1882 was of significance for a number of reasons. It marked the first general increase for a number of years and thus seemed to signal an end to the continuing decline and demoralisation of virtually a decade. And because it occurred in the context of an attempted national stand and so soon after


the amalgamation of South and West Yorkshire unions, it seemed to confirm the premise that unity meant strength both on a county and trans-regional basis. In fact had the owners not conceded, it is probable that a strike involving the participation of several regional bodies of miners would have quickly collapsed. For other districts failed to act in concert with Yorkshire even to the extent of laying and collecting a levy in support of miners in those isolated pits where strikes did occur.9 Even so the action did generate wage increases in a number of areas, including West Lancashire, East Lancashire, Derbyshire, Leicester, Nottinghamshire, North Staffordshire, South Staffordshire and Worcester. If in Yorkshire the 10 per cent gain in 1882 was achieved on a general basis, it was not forthcoming with uniform ease at all pits. The owners of Wharncliffe Woodhouse, for example, protested that they could offer no more than 5 per cent.10 At Darfoulds owners totally refused the demand and 300 went out on strike.11 Trouble brewed temporarily at Pope and Pearson’s pit at Altofts, where owners initially asked for a 1d reduction before putting 10 per cent on, arguing that miners there were already better paid than elsewhere.12 Difficulties also occurred at Elsecar where a strike was narrowly averted and management met miners’ complaints with a paternalist reprimand. There was also discontent over the size of the 1882 advance at the Briggs pits in West Yorkshire—Don Pedro, Good Hope, Silkstone Haigh, Moor Junction, Savile Pit and Methley—where the miners considered themselves cheated of ½d, a small sum, but still sufficient to yield the company an estimated £200 per annum.13 Rumbling frustration contributed to the calls for a strike later in the month at Don Pedro and Good Hope over notification of an increase in the price of home coal by 3d a ton and the practice of compelling miners to use lamps without extra payment.14 As with the Fitzwilliam pits the response of the management was to admonish the men by characterising their action as precipitate and rather foolish.15 The management indicated that they would overlook the matter if the men returned to work the following Monday but would otherwise treat absences as constituting a breach of contract. And in the event the miners capitulated. But in spite of somewhat unhappy outcomes to this and other localised disputes, the general outcome of the initiative of the autumn of 1882 was one of success for both the union and the workforce in Yorkshire. The policy of restriction and the push for further advances YMA leadership was convinced of the need to maintain momentum and capitalise on gains achieved by sustaining unified action. To this end they pressed for a scheme of restricting output as mooted earlier in the year. At a conference in Leeds in December 1882 specifically convened to consider the strategy, it was agreed that no collier or other underground worker, except when engaged in necessary safety work, should work more than five days or shifts a


week. Where there were single shifts or double shifts for both coal-getters and boys, hours should not amount to more than eight, but where there was a system of double shifts for colliers and just one for boys (as prevailed in much of the northeast), hours should remain as they were.16 As with recent wage agitation, while the principle was agreed nationally, implementation was left to the districts.17 Enthusiasm whether on this or on other matters of ‘national’ action was not to be matched in practice, however, and as the market declined over the next several years, Yorkshire and other leaders fought an uphill battle to achieve a united front against employers. But in the first months of 1883, the attempt to implement a policy of restriction preoccupied the miners. On 22 January 1883 a conference called specifically to consider the matter resolved to send a deputation to coal owners in the county to request that Saturday be a day when no work was done. Not surprisingly the owners balked at what they regarded as an attempt by miners to dictate the times and hours of work. West Yorkshire owners refused even to discuss the matter, while those in South Yorkshire maligned restriction as wrong in theory and unworkable in practice. Mr Chambers of Thornfield Colliery declared that it was through free trade that the country’s prosperity had been established. Restriction was opposed to that principle and therefore could result in considerable harm. The owners were little inclined to accede to the policy and the YMA seems to have been powerless to enforce it.18 Nor was there much movement elsewhere, any isolated district actions as did occur being quickly frustrated.19 Advocacy of the principle of restriction was reaffirmed at a subsequent national miners’ conference held in Manchester, but with confidence in the merits of its immediate application waning, districts were directed to ballot their members on the question.20 In the event, the ballot in Yorkshire indicated continuing support for the policy, only 10 per cent voting against implementing the Leeds conference resolutions.21 And a national conference held in Birmingham in early April 1883 produced sufficient continuing support to prompt an approach to the Mining Association of Great Britain. But the response was little different from that when delegations met with local owners’ associations; the association flatly rejected the miners’ request.22 An adjourned session of the Birmingham conference met at the end of March 1883 to consider matters and regret was expressed at the owners’ refusal to cooperate in restricting output. Cowey then introduced, and Pickard seconded, a motion adopted by the conference confirming once again that: over-production is the bane of the coal trade and unless some steps are taken to prevent the same, ruinous competition will continue, profits will remain stationary and wages in a low condition; we therefore recommend all miners in the United Kingdom to restrict the output of coal the same to be brought about by each district in the best possible way.23


But enthusiasm for the initiative was already slipping, and though Yorkshire leaders made a gallant effort to keep the principle alive, little serious effort was made toward its implementation. The issue was reasserted in 1885 when the General Miners’ Conference in Manchester resolved to relegate restriction ‘along with other important matters’ to a committee charged with formulating schemes which could be laid before a subsequent conference planned for the following October.24 And indeed restriction always remained in the back of many minds as a potential weapon for miners. But it was some years before it gained such prominence as it had in 1883. Thwarted attempts to gain a rise in 1883 Prospects and proposals for national action diminished by the middle of 1883. Toward the end of summer, however, a slight price rise motivated some to try for renewed co-operation among the regions to achieve a wage increase. Once more the initiative came with particular strength from Yorkshire. But in contrast to the previous year, the effort proved a failure. A YMA Council meeting in mid-September called for a national conference on 2 October in Manchester, with invitations issued to all districts which participated in the 1882 action.25 As during the previous year, Pickard justified the demand for a rise on the grounds that trade had improved. And once again he contrived to persuade owners that an advance was in their interests as much as in that of the miners. The owners, he said, were the better for having conceded the 10 per cent the previous year and ‘they will be better if they give us 20 per cent this year’.26 Reports of Pickard’s views generated immediate response, goading several owners or shareholders to angry retorts in letters to the local press. A correspondent signing himself a ‘disgusted collier shareholder’ referred to Pickard’s claim that some collieries had made ‘enormous profits’ the previous year as a monstrous assertion and asked if Pickard might inform the public where these collieries were. He described Pickard as a labour-tyrant, flushed by previous triumph, and considered that the owners should respond with ‘War to the Knife’.27 In similar, if more restrained vein, one owner declared that of about 470 collieries in Yorkshire, not fifty had paid a dividend the previous year. If Pickard could show that as many as 100 had paid out he was prepared to donate the princely sum of £5 to any Yorkshire hospital.28 Enthusiasm for seeking a wage increase was solid, however, among the delegates to the miners’ conference on 2 October, who voted to try for a 15 per cent advance. Subsequently, a reconvened meeting of miners in Yorkshire agreed to send a delegation to request the 15 per cent from the county’s owners to be paid as from 1 November.29 At a meeting held with South Yorkshire owners, Pickard repeated his claim that present trade justified a wage increase, but the


owners would have none of it. J.D.Ellis, who was in the chair, and who represented John Brown & Co., complained that though having objected to the advance of 1882, the owners had gone on quietly, not attempting an alteration, even while feeling they were paying more than they should be. In the circumstances they were surprised, not to say annoyed, to find representations for a further advance on the basis of arguments which the owners ‘knew were inaccurate’.30 West Yorkshire owners took a similar line, resolving that the state of trade by no means justified an advance.31 In order to avoid the chain of events of the previous year, they met with South Yorkshire owners and the two resolved to take joint action in firm opposition to any wage demand. Given this apparent impasse, the YMA announced that notices would be handed in, with contracts set to terminate the first week ending in December 1883 if the owners still refused an advance. Initially the miners continued to entertain some hope for success, for Pickard reported having received several letters from colliery owners stating that the men would get the 15 per cent. But in the end little materialised and whatever resolve might have remained among Yorkshire colliers was dissipated as it became evident that other districts were not able or willing to stand with them. And at a national conference in early December it was agreed to withdraw notices unreservedly.32 Many in the YMA were not yet ready to give up and early in 1884 it was agreed to ballot members in the various branches regarding what action might be taken for the best means of obtaining a reduced figure of 10 per cent. But qualms were clearly beginning to be felt in some quarters, as illustrated by a resolution from Sharlston branch that a ballot should not be taken, ‘seeing the great depression in trade throughout the country’. The branch suggested that district officials should press for further local organisation in order to preserve the advance obtained in 1882 rather than continue in a futile effort to gain another increase.33 Pickard was furious at this development. ‘Had they studied to throw doubt on the work of agitation, they could not have done so more effectively’, he said. Considering himself personally an object of censure by virtue of the Sharlston motion, he quickly took a stance of self-justification: I simply say I have done my best, worked myself up, and if censure is to be the reward, it is a poor result for all the midnight oil one has spent. I am pleased to think, however, or at least hope so, that all branches do not think the officials have neglected organisation, and ceased to do hard work to secure the best interests of the miners of Yorkshire.34 The vote went ahead but it was evident that the hearts of many more than the Sharlston members were not in it. Though the majority voting favoured giving notice to demand an increase, results of only forty branches were recorded. And


the YMA minutes reported that ‘vast numbers’ of branches had simply not held a vote.35 An adjourned conference of miners was reconvened in Birmingham during the last days of January 1884, attended by delegates from eighteen area associations, including Durham but not Northumberland, and claiming representation of 211, 000 miners, directly or indirectly.36 By now the general stance had turned clearly to the defensive. Forest of Dean miners had suffered a reduction the previous year and within a few short weeks it was Lancashire’s turn to suffer an attack. The conference resolved that it was not possible to take immediate general action on the wage question and recommended the districts to respond locally as required. It was agreed to call a further meeting to discuss necessary action should any district or county be attacked. The YMA itself capitulated to circumstances, its council resolving on 11 February to waive the wage demand for the present, even while maintaining that a 10 per cent advance remained justified. The next national wage conference occurred in July 1884 in Manchester, this time to discuss the threatened 10 per cent reduction in Lancashire.37 Representatives from only a small number of areas attended, but an attempt to retain the spirit of concerted action was realised in the recommendation that miners throughout the UK should contribute financially to support Lancashire’s campaign of resistance. Pickard was charged with drafting an appeal to solicit such assistance and distributing it throughout the various regions. All donations forthcoming were to be sent to him.38 The YMA Council itself resolved to grant £100 to this fund, in support of Lancashire, Staffordshire and wherever else a threat materialised. To raise it a levy of 3d was laid on all YMA members.39 In the event, Lancashire’s resistance caved in fairly quickly and it was rather to South Staffordshire that a substantial portion of the support fund voted by Yorkshire was sent. As resistance both there and in East Worcestershire continued into the autumn, additional levies were laid on YMA members.40 But by this time isolated incidences of imposed reductions were emerging at pits in Yorkshire. When the 1883/4 wage attempt failed, YMA officials tried to maintain some momentum by proposing machinery for conciliation through which the resolution of wage-related and other disputes might be rationalised, reflecting thereby a fundamental belief in a mutuality of interest between employers and employees in the industry, such that were both sides to act in goodwill, benefits would accrue to each. This notion did not discount the clear existence of conflicts, nor the need, should overtures toward reason and engaging in negotiation fail to bring results, to withdraw labour through strike action. But YMA leaders always had a clear preference for ‘peaceful’ settlements, a belief in the power of reason, and a sense that conflicts need not lead to inevitable disruption. They believed that the union represented strength through which they


might progress toward rational decision-making and dispute handling, their very strength checking the arbitrariness of the employer’s power and guarding against owners’ ‘excessive’ and indiscriminate action. In February 1884, Pickard forwarded to the coal owners a set of suggested rules under which a joint committee could be set up in Yorkshire and asked for a meeting.41 Subsequently, Rhodes, secretary to the South Yorkshire Owners’ Association, wrote back to reject the proposals. The owners, he said, had found them ‘so thoroughly unreasonable’ that they could not possibly form a fair basis of discussion. They would be quite willing to meet the miners to discuss a means by which wages could be self-regulating—presumably a reference to a continued preference for a sliding scale—but they objected to being dictated to by the miners as to the terms for such an arrangement. Pickard reacted to Rhodes’s letter with characteristic disdain,42 but little more came of the proposals. The following January, however, the council resolved that Pickard should make another approach to the owners.43 The response came back little different from that of the previous year. Rhodes stated that the miners’ proposal that the present level of wages should serve as a minimum for future negotiations was unacceptable. The owners, he said, did not wish to reject out of hand any scheme which might facilitate wage regulation, but found this specific one—or this element of the YMA’s present proposal—objectionable.44 The question of conciliation machinery subsequently lapsed. YMA on the defensive—1885 wage reduction Following the imposition of reductions in various districts, it was the turn of Yorkshire to become subject to attack in 1885, when owners demanded the removal of the 10 per cent gained in 1882. Indeed it is probable that a fundamental reason for the owners rejecting the YMA’s scheme on conciliation machinery early in the year was their perception of it as a ploy on the YMA’s part to maintain as a minimum a wage rate which was imminently subject to planned reduction. That the campaign to bring about a reduction was a concerted effort on the part of the owners is evident from a subsequent statement by Parker Rhodes, secretary of the South Yorkshire Owners’ Association, that they had ‘initiated a successful strike, brought about a reduction in wages, and stopped aggression’ on the part of the miners’ union.45 In early March 1885, as a reduction became a distinct possibility, the YMA girded itself for resistance. A conference of miners in the county resolved to resist the reduction by all legal means and workers at each pit were urged to meet their employers to inform them of their resolve and their belief in the injustice of the impending reduction.46 But Pickard harboured little optimism, commenting that the owners were like men ‘coming as a friend, but with a knife behind ready to rip up their bowels, and whilst they were talking quietly stab


them under the fifth rib’.47 If the miners were to argue that they needed an extra 2s per week to prevent their children from dying of starvation, such owners were likely to reply that they had no right to be married.48 Regardless of the YMA’s stated resolve to resist, notices were given to miners at a number of pits and there followed in subsequent weeks a series of meetings to review events and reassess policy. A conference in Rotherham on 23 March voted by 109 to twenty that all colliers at pits not under notice should be allowed to continue work at present rates.49 This was confirmed several days later at a YMA special council meeting where it was also agreed to lay a levy of 2s per week on all members not under their last week of notice.50 Resistance to the reduction was reaffirmed at conferences held on 30 March and 13 April 1885. On the latter occasion a central strike fund was also set up through which the strike committee could assist those now out.51 The YMA emphasised the need for unity, ‘Let nothing be done except at Conference’, they stressed.52 The miners held out throughout most of May, though by the middle of the month there were rumblings of concern in some quarters that continued resistance might well prove futile. Delegates to conferences were charged several times to return to their branches and survey opinion on the matter. And Pickard himself made clear that he would stand aside and give no official guidance.53 A vote was taken at a special council meeting on 21 May 1885 which established the majority still to be in favour of resistance. But of 106 votes cast, forty-one were in favour of a return, including branches at the Fitzwilliam collieries, at Thorncliffe and at Barrow Haematite.54 Just a week later, the position reversed itself and a special council voted eighty-nine in favour and fifty-two against a return to work. Branches at those collieries where workers remained out were instructed to appoint deputations to meet the owners and negotiate a return on the ‘best terms possible’.55 Thus after some eight weeks, the action was over, the miners drifting back to work in dejection and failure. Some employers clearly took advantage of the capitulation to stick in the boot and refuse the return of certain employees, making them victims. And at several pits, employers pressed to take off more than the 10 per cent. At Monk Bretton the owners informed workers that they would now have to accept a uniform rate for both coal cut on end and on board, as well as the reduction.56 Toward the end of June there were still some miners out in the county, resisting a reduction of over 10 per cent and a voluntary levy of 3d per member was laid to assist them.57 Although the General Miners’ Conference held in Manchester in early July 1885 reaffirmed the need for miners to secure increased wages, little illusion remained that any cross-district mobilisation of support was really possible. It was rather agreed that the best means of securing and maintaining good wages and fair contracts was through unified action within each mining county and district.58 Even so, a further attempt was made to co-ordinate a national move for a wage advance. A national conference was held on the wage question in August


1885, adjourning to take the matter back to the districts. It was agreed that the Yorkshire delegates should return to the adjourned conference with a motion that an advance of 15 per cent be asked for and that the best means of achieving it was to lay ‘the whole of the mining community idle’ subsequent to which a strategy should be implemented of limiting output through working shorter hours or fewer days per week.59 As was customary, a special district conference of miners was held within a fortnight to consider matters and here it was reported that the owners had refused even to meet a deputation. As news came through that miners in the vicinity of Manchester and Leicestershire had obtained a 10 per cent increase, a further Yorkshire conference voted to use ‘every legitimate means’ to secure a 15 per cent increase.60 The owners responded with a return to an old issue—the implementation of a sliding scale.61 West Yorkshire owners, were particularly adamant on this point, refusing to meet a YMA delegation on the wage question, but willing to do so if the agenda was confined to consideration of a sliding scale.62 The union was willing to formally consider this, but not as a substitute for pushing for an immediate wage advance. And as a number of other districts—Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and North Staffordshire—were preparing to give in notices, the YMA was concerned that their own members give in notices at or about the same time. Yet there were signs of difficulties. YMA minutes reprimanded two branches for disloyalty in refusing to give in notices, suggesting that lack of unity would only serve to pull down the association.63 And outside Yorkshire, several districts apparently began to back out from their pledge to proceed on the wage demand. A special council meeting of the YMA therefore recommended in early December 1885 that all notices be withdrawn as they could not ‘recommend Yorkshire and Lancashire to fight the wage battle for the rest of the mining community’. But neither did they wish to entertain the idea of a sliding scale. Rather they preferred to go to the consideration of a scheme for a board of conciliation within the county.64 During the following year, the YMA continued to press employers to consider and ultimately adopt conciliation machinery. This indeed became the primary focus of concern during 1886 as regards the issue of wages. While initially objecting to nearly all of the clauses of the union’s proposals, the owners did engage in limited negotiations and offered amendments, some of which the YMA found acceptable. In early 1886 the YMA Council agreed to a revised set of proposals whereby a joint committee of owners and miners would be established under an independent umpire chair who would deal with all disputes relating to the general rate of wages. It was further suggested that the general rate then applying be regarded as the minimum during the continuation of the scheme,65 and that the invoiced selling prices of coal over the last half of 1886 should be the standard rate or basis of all alterations. Where an alteration was sought by


either side, the two months prior to the demand would serve as the period for which prices would be monitored.66 As is evident, the scheme contained some elements of a sliding scale, in that it was premised on the notion that wages were tied to prices and could (or should) move in accord with them. But the YMA staunchly defended its concern to include the notion of a minimum wage, which should be as close as possible to what might be regarded as a ‘decent’ wage on which a miner and his family could reasonably be expected to live. The minimum now regarded as acceptable was not that which the YMA would have preferred, but neither in accord with preferences of owners. As a further departure from a sliding scale, no provision was made for the amount of change in wages which should be associated with a unit change in the price of coal. This was to be left to negotiation. The owners still resisted these provisions. In June 1886, F.Parker Rhodes, the secretary of the South Yorkshire Owners’ Association reported that owners continued to prefer the sliding scale, feeling that no scheme would work satisfactorily unless accompanied by such a scale. They also objected to present wages serving as a minimum.67 Further attempts were made by the YMA to discuss the matter, and union officials believed at one point that an essential agreement had been reached over the terms of a scheme.68 But they perceived a clear backpedalling on receipt of a letter from Parker Rhodes in August expressing continuing insistence on the need for both a sliding scale and a lower minimum.69 At this point the union decided it best to let the matter drop.70 Further correspondence from Parker Rhodes regretted the YMA’s seeming unwillingness to budge on the two points of contention, but Pickard replied that in fact the union had gone a long way toward a sliding scale, possibly too far. He acknowledged to his membership that he was glad to suspend discussion, given strenuous objection to the sliding scale.71 Yorkshire’s miners thus ended 1886 with wages still 10 per cent down from their level in 1884, with little immediate prospect for district level conciliation machinery and with co-ordinated national action to protect wages continuing to prove illusory. Market recovery and wage rises towards the end of the decade National conferences continued to be held over the middle of the decade. Where wage issues were concerned, a defensive stance was most frequently taken, with appeals to assist areas as they came under attack, one after another. When Cumberland resurrected interest in a policy of restriction, urging that pits across the country remain idle for one week at the end of each three months and that not more than eight hours be worked on any shift, the YMA quickly pledged support for the principle.72 It did not, however, prove possible to have the proposed scheme adopted by the national conference, primarily because of lack of


enthusiasm among miners from the northern fields, and once again national action was thwarted. But the YMA Council confirmed its general support of restriction in December 1887 and pledged to apply the principle at the earliest possible moment. Yorkshire miners also attempted to pursue a wage advance within the county, though this too proved unsuccessful.73 Within just a few months’ time the attempt was renewed, though again without success. And then in August 1888 when trade seemed on the verge of an upturn, the YMA decided once more to make a wage claim. District leaders then attempted to broaden the initiative by pressing for a co-ordinated national demand and to this end a conference was held in Manchester.74 Similar initiatives to Yorkshire’s were on the boil in several other areas and it was therefore resolved that the various districts should give in notices and pledge that once given in, they would not be withdrawn.75 Greater optimism prevailed on this occasion than on any in the recent past, Pickard remarking that the Manchester conference was more harmonious and more determined than any which had been held for some considerable time.76 Notices were put in by YMA members in the middle of October,77 the leadership stressing their intention that the matter be settled amicably and renewing calls for the setting-up of a district board of conciliation. The owners refused the advance, but there was clearly ill-ease amongst their ranks, particularly given the threat of a stoppage when the industry seemed on the verge of at least partial recovery. A suggestion to take the issue to arbitration was agreed to by the South Yorkshire Owners’ Association, with W.J.Clegg, then mayor of Sheffield, to act as arbitrator. Clegg proposed to the YMA that there be a joint meeting, detailing the willingness of the owners to submit their books to examination and offering an advance of 1.5 per cent for every 2d per ton advance proved to have been gained on the price of coal over the last several months, subject to the miners agreeing to withdrawing their notices.78 But the miners were not so easily deterred this time, and at meetings up and down the county their conviction and resolve were reaffirmed. Speaking at Wakefield, Pickard said the miners believed themselves honestly entitled to an advance, because ‘the mining trade had wonderfully developed during the past years’. Miners in Lancashire, he noted, were now getting 15 per cent more than those in Yorkshire. Moreover, since the agitation had begun, coal prices had increased by about 4s a ton, more than enough, he argued, to pay the 10 per cent. The membership, he said, could take their case to arbitration if they wished, but he himself was unwilling to present it on their behalf.79 The membership was no more inclined than Pickard to accept arbitration and was characterised by a mood of quiet determination.80 As one miner explained, ‘What we want is to be allowed to live like men, and to bring up our families decently and with sufficient food. We are going to win and we deserve it, for flesh and blood can stand the present bitter lives no longer’.81


Whether because of greater resolve and unity or simply by virtue of the economic situation, the strike in 1888 proved a short and successful one for the miners. An estimated 40,000 went out, but were relatively quickly back at work with an additional 10 per cent on their wages. The advance was refused at Church Lane and Old Silkstone which remained out for some time, the latter for three months.82 But overall, 1888 brought an important boost to the union. The miners took quick advantage of their victory and in 1889 there were further moves on wages. The economy on the whole was now much more buoyant than it had been in years, and with prices rising there was clear scope for the miners’ pressure. In mid-March 1889 a wage initiative was launched by Lancashire83 which Yorkshire quickly joined. A national conference at Birmingham, chaired by Pickard, claimed representation of some 317,000 miners. The principle of restriction was once more mooted with the conference in unanimous support of a resolution that miners should normally work only eight hours a day, five days a week. As for wages, it was resolved via a motion put by Parrott that districts ask employers for 10 per cent within the following fortnight. At a further conference held in Nottingham in April to enforce commitment of the districts, Yorkshire proposed and Lancashire seconded a motion that notices demanding 10 per cent should not be withdrawn until the advance had been conceded.84 Although some weeks in coming, the 10 per cent was ultimately granted. Yet a further 10 per cent was obtained the following autumn. Thus while in 1888 miners in Yorkshire regained the 10 per cent first conceded in 1882 and then lost in 1885, during the course of 1889, a further 20 per cent on wages was added. Push towards a Miners’ Federation What is of interest concerning the wage initiatives of the 1880s is the extent to which they took on a ‘national’ character. If there were relatively few occasions when all of the nation’s coalfields were involved, or involved with the same level of commitment, there was a clear appreciation in many quarters, and certainly in Yorkshire, of the need to extend unity as far as possible, lest districts be played off against one another. What is also of interest is the extent to which the owners acted not as a united national body but on the basis of region when seeking reductions. Subsequent to 1882 one after another of the regions was attacked and earlier gains clawed back. This situation partly reflected the lack of a national owners’ organisation capable of orchestrating a unified action against the miners. Associations of owners tended to be confined to regions or subregional units and even these frequently involved only a portion of all employers. At the same time, it was precisely over wage reductions that the miners were themselves most disunified. There was far more co-ordination and


co-operation among regional miners’ associations in attempts to increase wages than in defensive actions to counter threatened reductions. With the latter, little more tended to be done than to call districts to come forward with financial and moral support. Yorkshire’s leadership was active throughout the decade in calling national conferences. Indeed Yorkshire, along with Lancashire, seems to have been most prominent in this regard. Such conferences were separate from the activities of the Miners’ National Union. They tended to be called according to need— whether to co-ordinate offensive or defensive action —and not to give more routine consideration to general conditions of workers in the industry and potential or impending legislation affecting them. Increasingly, however, the latter tended to come onto the agenda and the national miners’ conferences began to take on board matters normally dealt with by the MNU.85 In early 1887, the YMA leadership was party to a suggestion that a new or restructured national organisation be set up. It was Pickard’s view that a federation of miners’ unions should be established, on a similar basis to the MNU, or even through an alteration of the MNU’s constitution.86 The central board of the MNU considered the latter possibility and decided not to act.87 But those in favour of such a scheme persisted and in February 1887 a conference of the MNU formally requested the central board to draw up a scheme for creating a federation of federations along lines suggested by Pickard to permit united action ‘on matters affecting the safety and welfare of the miners of Great Britain’.88 There followed some foot-dragging, the apparent intransigence of the MNU to effect a modification of itself overlying considerable internal ferment. Though Pickard served as its vice-president for twelve years, leadership of the MNU during the 1880s was largely in the hands of representatives from the northeastern coalfields who were in general more moderate in their orientation towards trade union activities than their colleagues elsewhere. Unions in the northeast adopted sliding scales and were convinced these represented the most appropriate means of regulating wages and avoiding active confrontation with employers. But miners’ leaders from other areas, not least from Yorkshire, were of a very different mind. In the second half of the 1880s, debates over the sliding scale became an issue symbolising the divide of opinion within the MNU which in turn threatened the effectiveness of the organisation as a national body. It is perhaps not surprising that division on this principle should have served as the basis for a split when, at a September 1888 conference called in Manchester for representatives of districts which had rejected or abandoned the sliding scale, discussion turned to the need to create an entirely new federation.89 During this period more generally, there were highly significant developments within the British trade union movement. Various industries and trades in which unions had been established for some time were experiencing similar initiatives toward the creation of more national, as opposed to regional, organisations.


Important organising activities were also occurring in industries not previously unionised, particularly among relatively unskilled labour. These would be designated by some as new unions and the spirit in which they were established, new unionism. For not only were some of the new organisations oriented toward unskilled labour, they were also in some instances formally open to membership on an industry-wide basis, in contrast to the older established unions which tended to incorporate a section of the workforce of an industry and in particular that section which was most highly skilled.90 With its membership largely restricted to underground face workers, the miners’ union was an example of this older, more traditional union. The momentum toward broadening opportunities for union membership in the late 1880s in some industries, then, was directed toward incorporation of a wider range of workers. And in these instances, as well, there was often a set of guiding principles rather more radical than in the case of the established craft unions. Affirmation of the necessity for engaging in industrial action through widespread strike activities was common, as was that of the need for raising political consciousness as a basis and essential part of raising ‘worker consciousness’. In a number of other industries, of which mining was one, the overall momentum was reflected in attempts to consolidate and extend existing organisations and to build industrial strength on a national level through which greater leverage could be exercised and conciliation on more equitable terms between employers and labour could be realised. Miners’ leaders were thoroughly imbued with the notion that trade union struggles should be carried out within the framework of constitutional procedures. Their goal was to substitute rational practice in dealing with capital-labour disputes for a situation where terms were dictated solely by employers. They were not averse to engagement within the political realm. Indeed, from early on the MNU was established as essentially a lobbying body, pressing for Parliament’s consideration of the needs of miners. But they were not, on the whole, motivated toward changing the nature of the political system. While preserving its structure, they pressed to increase the scope for participation within it. It was consistent with this view that workers should be neither outside the system, nor concerned to undermine or overthrow it; they should be present in strength within it. During the period of general trade union ferment and development, therefore, the miners were involved in an attempt to construct more solid trade union organisations and specifically to create a workable and active national Miners’ Federation. Through 1888 and 1889, as the mood of optimism rose with trade recovery, so too did the hope of accomplishing this goal. It was in the midst of the wage initiative in the latter part of 1889 that more formal plans were laid down for the establishment of the Miners’ Federation. Over the previous two years, the wages movement had already acquired a considerable stability and coherence, particularly through organising financial


support for districts where strikes had been necessary to obtain the advance demanded.91 At a conference in Birmingham in October 1889, a small committee appointed from among those districts which had contributed to the strike fund was enlisted to draft constitutional provisions for a permanent association. And at a meeting in Newport at the end of the following month (26 November 1889), it was agreed to form the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). Proposed objects and rules were agreed to and an executive committee and set of officials were elected to serve temporarily, pending the organisation’s first annual conference. Among them were Pickard as president, and Cowey and Murray— who was also from Yorkshire—as members of the committee. The rules of the new federation included a provision for raising a levy from all members whenever there was a general stoppage arising from a conference decision in any county, federation or district, so long as a special conference of the MFGB had been specifically called to consider the question of support. Though no support was to be granted unless more than 15 per cent were out in any county, federation or district and until members had been out of work for nine clear days. The same Newport conference which set the Federation in motion also concerned itself with the present state of wages and trade. Asserting that the situation seemed favourable, it was resolved that the miners should demand a further advance of 10 per cent, tendering notices toward this end. In the event no strike was necessary, as the 10 per cent was agreed to virtually everywhere within a fortnight.92 The new federation was not received with equanimity by the Miners’ National Union which regarded it as intruding into its preserve. The overlap of leadership must undoubtedly have caused friction. Pickard was the MNU’s vice-president and had attended its board meetings throughout the spring of 1889. Thomas Ashton, the new secretary of the Federation, had also been a member of the MNU’s central board. But as Pickard said in explaining his own position, efforts to transform the MNU into an organisation capable of taking up all questions affecting mining interests—that is, wage issues as well as legislation—had been unsuccessful.93 At the MFGB’s first annual conference in January 1890, Pickard was reelected president and Cowey and Murray re-elected to the committee.94 The new organisation did not include, much less claim to represent, all of the nation’s miners. Districts which continued to adhere to the sliding scale, including South Wales, Durham and Northumberland, were specifically excluded. Derbyshire was absent briefly and missed the first annual conference, though the district association resolved shortly thereafter to join.95 But a large number were represented from the beginning, far more than had been formerly pledged to collectively fight wage battles. The MFGB entered into this arena almost immediately, thereby keeping up the momentum already established. A conference in London in mid-February, 1890,


resolved to ask for a further 10 per cent and directed members to give in notices set to expire on 15 March. The owners initially resolved to stand firm. Formation of the MFGB had spurred them to a somewhat equivalent exercise in organisational creation to that of the miners. Early in 1890 those who operated collieries in the area covered by the MFGB were being referred to as Federation Owners96 and soon after the demand for a 10 per cent increase was publicised a ‘Federation Committee’ met with representatives of the miners to discuss the situation and attempt to stave off pressure for the increase.97 There was evidence of increased collective resolve among owners at the district level as well. The annual report of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, published in January 1890, reminded members that the society had initially been formed to counter the ‘aggressive attitude of the leaders of the men, the rising power of their union and the ceaseless agitation as to wages’. Though initially successful in bringing about a wage reduction (in 1885) and causing the miners’ union thereby to lose prestige, the lessening ‘danger’ had caused the owners’ collective attention and resolution to lapse. And it was this, suggested the association’s secretary, which allowed the advance of 1888 to be gained. But the consequence of that ‘error’ had been disastrous. While the miners’ union had ‘more than quadrupled its members and rapidly increased its funds until it now has control of a very large available sum in cash’, the owners’ body had not grown in the same way and indeed had lost members. But the secretary counselled that the situation was precisely such that owners’ collective strength should be increased and unity achieved, by implication, not just in South Yorkshire, but in the coalfields as a whole.98 It was precisely at this time, in fact, that the owners in West Yorkshire were resurrecting their own association. At the first meeting recorded in its minute books, held on 27 February 1890 in Leeds, representatives were chosen for a meeting in London with Federation leaders, and a resolution was passed that coal owners should continue to stand firm against the miners’ demands. A special meeting of the YMA shortly before notices were to expire was attended by ‘an unusually large number of delegates from all parts of the county’.99 Upon hearing that perhaps ten owners were willing to give the advance if the men were allowed to work on, and with some words of caution against engaging in a strike unless absolutely necessary, the meeting resolved to recommend a compromise of 5 per cent being granted immediately, with the remaining 5 per cent coming due in July. The MFGB took up this proposal and presented it officially to the owners.100 The owners did not meet until 17 March, however, and in the meantime many miners laid down their tools and left work. Estimates of the numbers involved varied between 200,000 and 300,000. But whatever the exact number it was the biggest strike on record.101


There were indications almost immediately that the owners were unable to hold the collective line. In Yorkshire a total of some 12,000 were working with the advance conceded. On 17 March the federated owners rejected the MFGB’s compromise proposal but asked to meet miners’ representatives in three days’ time. And there, in the face of the miners’ strength and the evident lack of unity in their own camp, they agreed to a measure little different to that previously proposed: 5 per cent was to be given immediately and a further 5 per cent the first week in August.102 The miners were left with 40 per cent above the rate prevailing at the beginning of 1888. The result underlined to the owners their need for an effective association to counter the Miners’ Federation. Fully one-third of the federated districts had arranged to give the advance prior to the final joint meeting with miners’ representatives on 20 March.103 For the MFGB, the episode proved to be an important boost, with its reaffirmation of the effectiveness of organisation. From this point there was to be little question of the Federation’s legitimacy as representative of the miners’ interests. Though some districts still remained outside, it had effectively become a national voice and an accomplished national actor. County consolidation around the YMA For Yorkshire miners, the decade of the 1880s was one of alternative success and failure. It was also a critical period for building the union into a viable county organisation. Even with the amalgamation which established the YMA in 1881, some organised elements—most notably Chappell’s association—remained outside the main union, implying a continued fragmentation. Moreover, at least initially, union power was restricted by the relatively small numbers incorporated as members. As its leaders noted, the YMA needed to serve both as a vehicle for forging greater unity and for spreading the principle of combination if it were to be effective in bargaining with owners. By the end of the decade, substantial membership gains had been achieved, but during its early years there was fluctuation with miners moving in and out. In part this was a reflection of the counter-attack of employers. The YMA’s annual report for 1883 referred to the prevalent practice of managements’ giving notice to those they suspected of taking an active interest in the union. ‘Managers at Stafford Main, Houghton Main, Newland, Sharlston, Morley, Messrs. H.Briggs and Sons seem to take rank among the foremost in this sniggering work. Victims have been caused at all these collieries and at other collieries as well, but not to the same or like extent.’104 Instances also occurred where an entire branch—or a substantial part of it—dissolved due to management pressure. In April 1883, for example, some of those in the union at Ravensthorpe clung to their jobs and returned to work after an unsuccessful local action on terms which required that


they would not belong to any trade union.105 YMA officials deplored such capitulation and remarked on the occasional fecklessness with which some miners approached the union. A circular to local secretaries and committees in 1883 referred to the case of Bruntcliffe whose miners, ‘after receiving the splendid support during their trouble, seem to have forgotten all about a Union. So it is as a rule, have a strike support them well, and they leave the Union.’106 It was not lost on YMA leadership that the state of trade played heavily on enthusiasm for the union. In difficult times miners would understandably have less money for paying union subscriptions. But when an upturn came and the potential seemed high for some degree of success, miners came into the association in numbers, giving their support and adding to the potential for future success. Even mild seasonal swings in the fortunes of the industry during the years of generally depressed prices gave cause for some optimism on the part of YMA leaders. A note inserted in the YMA minutes of August 1883, for example, suggested that local committees should do their best to get men to join the association ‘now that the better trade has set in’.107 The struggle to recruit more members was closely associated with the campaign to win over miners to the union’s policies. Similarly, as on the national level, the continued fragmentation of the union movement in Yorkshire in the early 1880s turned on advocacy or rejection of such issues as the sliding scale, the use of arbitration and readiness to make use of a national strike. As the decade wore on it was the splinter groups whose fortunes waned, their members being gradually absorbed into the YMA to form a single county union. The tiny Woodlesford and Methley Miners’ Association which operated in West Yorkshire was finally wound up in 1890. Five years earlier Chappell’s association, the only substantial (if always minor) competitor to the YMA in the county, saw its demise. Several of the pits affiliated with this body had gradually abandoned the sliding scale, the instrument of wage regulation to which Chappell was firmly committed. But others clung to their scales and to their support for Chappell’s brand of moderation for some time. A decisive blow against the continued viability of the splinter group came, however, in the course of a bitter and prolonged strike at Denaby Main in 1884 and 1885, which led to that lodge withdrawing loyalty to Chappell and transferring allegiance to the YMA. Denaby had had a troubled history from its origins, no doubt due in large part to the hard line so frequently taken by its management. In late 1884 the Denaby management sought to reduce costs by altering the price list so as to distinguish between the price for coal and for slack. Previously there had been a uniform rate for both, but in order to improve the ratio of large to small coal, a differential was to be introduced. In addition the company indicated that packing and gatetop cutting were no longer to be done by colliers, who hence would lose money previously gained from this task.


Chappell conceded that the miners and their unions could not prevent the management from introducing a different mode of working the mine. But, he said, they would not want to lose out in the process by suffering a reduction.108 The executive committee of Chappell’s association thus resolved that Denaby workers should reject the proposals of management, and the miners formally went on strike on 31 December 1884.109 Initially members received pay from the union and food from local tradespeople.110 But as the dispute dragged on, the association’s funds became exhausted and weekly benefits to those on strike ended in March.111 About this same time the company announced its intention to open the pit on 3 March and to provide ‘ample police protection’ for those wishing to return to work. Though relatively few availed themselves of the offer, the company remained on the offensive. By the end of the month ejectment orders affecting some 200 families were issued against striking miners who rented company homes.112 The company then moved to import new recruits from Staffordshire and Cornwall, the first arriving at the end of April. In the course of the troubles, tension flared between Denaby miners and William Chappell who, some complained, had not even been present when the evictions occurred, nor made any attempt to secure alternative accommodation. It was also objected that Chappell submitted proposals for obtaining a settlement without consulting the local branch.113 In mid-April, therefore, Denaby miners broke away from Chappell’s association, to the clear chagrin of other lodges who considered this a poor show of gratitude for the funds given out in support of their strike. No doubt there were some as well who saw a certain opportunism on the part of the YMA who quickly agreed, at a special council meeting on 20 April, to accept Denaby Main as a branch. If an important acquisition for the YMA, Denaby Main miners also represented an immediate financial liability, bringing no resources but considerable need at the very time that the YMA as a whole was under attack with threat of a 20 per cent reduction. But the principled need for supporting the Denaby miners was clearly apparent to the YMA, whose members as a whole were asked to dig into their pockets. The Denaby case received considerable attention. At one time the owners agreed that Thomas Burt, Member of Parliament and miner’s leader in Northumberland might act as mediator in the conflict, but they refused the men’s request that he should be appointed as an arbitrator.114 At the General Miners’ Conference held in Manchester in early July the dispute at Denaby came under discussion as a matter involving the recruitment of miners from one region to act as strike-breakers to another. The conference accepted the confirmation of Enoch Edwards that he and other miners’ leaders in North Staffordshire had done their best to prevent men from their area going to Denaby—thus marking an important attempt in co-operation among the regions in their opposition to owners.


Ultimately, however, the Denaby strike ended in failure for the miners in the autumn as the men began to drift back to work. An agreement was signed on a new price list, ironically and perhaps inappropriately, by William Chappell. Pickard denounced its terms bitterly, for while the company had originally suggested a change to 1s 6d for large and 6d for small coal or slack the new list gave only 1s 2½d and 6d respectively.115 But though demoralising for the Denaby miners, the episode was significant in marking the consolidation of a single union in Yorkshire. From this point the YMA continued to expand, particularly as trade saw an upturn toward the end of the decade. While at its origins it had no more than 5,000 members, there were approximately 50,000 in the association by 1889, representing the great majority of all underground workers in the county.116 The amalgamation in 1881, necessary for the survival of combination among miners in Yorkshire, had thus led to a strong district association capable not only of mediating local difficulties but, through its substantial contribution to the miners’ federation, effecting significant leverage in national wage negotiations as well.

4 TESTING—1893

Price rises at the end of the 1880s and the formation of the MFGB gave miners both nationally and in the various districts a heightened sense of optimism and confidence. Increased membership and the presence of machinery for united industrial action across districts promised much greater leverage against owners. Within a few short years, however, the miners in the federated areas were threatened with a reduction of 25 per cent. In resisting they entered into a bitter dispute which in some areas lasted up to sixteen weeks. The government ultimately moved in to assist in breaking the stalemate, though not before troops had been sent into the coalfields and an incident had occurred in Yorkshire during which the authorities opened fire on a crowd, leaving several dead and injured. The miners strike of 1893 was an episode demonstrating both the strength of commitment of miners and their families and the resolve of owners to counter that strength. Its description allows an exploration of the effectiveness of union strategy, the relationship between leaders and the rank and file within the union, the contribution of those outside the union—most particularly the wives of miners—to the course of the dispute, and the role of the government in ‘mediating’ the conflict. Changing economic climate 1889 and 1890 were boom years in the coal industry.1 The pithead price of coal rose by about 70 per cent between 1887 and 1890, from 4s 10d to 8s 3d, making owners amenable to pressure for wage increases. On top of the 30 per cent increase achieved by the miners during 1888 and 1889 in Yorkshire and a number of other areas, a further 10 per cent was gained in 1890. Coal production continued to expand with Yorkshire’s total output of 22,339,000 tons in 1890 increasing to 23,794,000 in 1892.2 The total workforce in the mines reached just over 86,000 in the latter year distributed among 408 pits.3 With 55,000 members, equivalent to 77 per cent of all underground workers,4 leaders of the Yorkshire association believed that they had achieved a certain


maturity. Local strength was reinforced by the YMA’s affiliation with the MFGB. Having begun with 36,000 members in 1888, the Federation represented a total of 178,515 by January 18925 through the affiliation of the district associations of Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands (the Midland Federation), Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, South Derbyshire, North Wales, Cumberland and Monmouth. Yorkshire represented the single largest county union within the MFGB, but its influence was probably exaggerated beyond its proportionate membership strength by virtue of the substantial role played by Yorkshire officials on the MFGB executive. Ben Pickard was president of the MFGB throughout the 1890s; Cowey was a member of its executive committee and occasionally served as vice-chairman of Federation conferences. As in the 1880s, it was largely from Yorkshire, and secondly from Lancashire, that initiatives for national action continued to arise. The potential leverage which the MFGB could exert was founded on a provision in its rules—rule 20—that should any affiliated county or district have a wage dispute, all members of federated unions should give notice to terminate their contracts following the advocacy of this course by a special conference of the Federation. As Pickard rightly pointed out in an address to the Federation’s annual conference in January 1893, this rule would ‘make or mar’ the Federation.6 The potential influence of the Federation was also, of course, dependent on the wisdom and effectiveness of its strategies of action. Federation policy remained adamantly opposed to the sliding scale which, along with the issue of the eight-hour day, remained a nub of contention between federated and non-federated coalfields. As against the principle that wages should depend upon prices, the view subscribed to within the MFGB was that prices should depend upon wages.7 As both Cowey and Pickard had argued from the early 1880s, the level of wages, moreover, should be determined by the needs of the worker and his family. That is, a viable ‘living wage’ should prevail whatever the vagaries of the market.8 Renewed calls for a policy of restriction Discussion concerning wages at the 1892 annual conference of the MFGB was both fighting and defensive. For in 1891 the market had begun to turn down. The average pithead price dropped to 8s 0d in 1891 and to 7s 3d in 1892.9 Where sliding scales were in effect, wages accordingly dropped.10 The MFGB annual conference resolved in January 1892 to resist any attempt at wage reduction and Yorkshire delegates proposed means by which miners might intervene in the market toward the broader goal of preventing any further decline in prices. One suggestion was to implement a policy of restriction, that tactic which had so frequently been put forward during the previous decade. The conference agreed but deferred the specific mechanics of the strategy to a special conference called

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at Manchester in early February 1892, where it was decided as a preliminary step to close down all pits in the nation for several weeks in order to clear away surplus stocks whose presence threatened miners’ wages via the market. Nonfederated districts were asked to participate, but effectively declined by virtue of limited or non-attendance at the meeting.11 The federated counties then went ahead on their own, beginning a general stoppage on 12 March, albeit with an air of some tentativeness since they also agreed to hold a further general conference during the first week to assess developments. At this meeting, with confidence waning, it was agreed to call off the stoppage after just one week.12 Pickard regarded the stop week as of great significance, claiming it to have ‘shown clearly that there was and is no need for any such reduction in miners’ wages in any county, and wherever such reductions have been conceded, it shows that ease and comfort, and want of Trade Unionism, has led owners to assume that they had only to ask and have’. Moreover, he declared, it had shown that ‘the selling of coal is not regulated by the much-abused laws of political economy—supply and demand’. The stop week, he said, was now a reality ‘and no doubt will be the fulcrum for all time, if the miners of the United Kingdom will only unite in one Union to obtain and maintain wages not merely to keep body and soul together, but health and surroundings fit for any portion of the human race to enjoy’.13 If perhaps overly optimistic, Pickard’s remarks show keen awareness of the significance of the miners’ achievement in acting collectively to carry off what was in effect a one week strike. The Federation had demonstrated its resolve and had intervened in the industry in a particularly dramatic fashion. Following the stop week an attempt was made to restrict output through limiting the working week to five days.14 The introduction of what was referred to as a ‘play Saturday’, however, met with mixed success. Adherence as well as sympathy from miners for the play day was uneven within the county. Several branches complained that they were unable to comply if the play day were to be on a Saturday.15 Elsewhere the situation was similar if not worse. Districts reported to an MFGB executive committee meeting that while most, though not all, pits were playing Saturdays in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, stoppages on Saturdays had created bad feeling among the men in many areas. In the Midland counties and North Staffordshire some were playing Saturdays, and some Mondays. Monmouth had been unable to adopt the practice of playing at all.16 Due to such problems the MFGB held a special conference in early August to reconsider the policy. The YMA declined to support its continuation through a local county vote of only thirty-one in favour from a total of 1,200.17 Other districts were even less enthusiastic and on 27 August restriction through the five-day week ended. As 1892 ended, leaders in Yorkshire continued to speak with great confidence about the accomplishments of their own union and of the Federation, but it was


recognised that greater effectiveness of the MFGB could only be achieved through greater unity, by bringing in those areas still unaffiliated. Considerable effort on the part of the MFGB leadership led to both Durham and Northumberland joining the Federation by June 1893. Of the major coalfields, only South Wales and Scotland remained outside.18 But an enlarged organisation gave only an illusory promise of increased strength. For entry of the northeastern counties did not eliminate differences among areas concerning such issues as the eight hours question or wages policy. The veneer of unity masked divisions which would serve to frustrate Federation stands during 1893 and lessen achievements which might have otherwise occurred. In spite of optimism over the Federation’s potentialities, the miners were facing a formidable economic climate in 1893. The YMA’s report of 1892, while glowing over the solidity of the house which the union had constructed, also acknowledged that the market’s depression was beginning to bite, with many pits on short time working. The tack taken in the report was to suggest that owners not sack individuals, but reduce work across the board.19 Economic hardship was also evident from distributions made through the YMA’s contingent fund, which showed a dramatic increase during 1892 and 1893. The fund was formally set up in the autumn of 189220 to grant 9s for full members per week, 4s 6d for half-members and 1s for children under 13 years of age whenever members were out of work through no fault of their own in consequence of a stoppage of a colliery or a part of a colliery. Other district associations such as Durham and Northumberland routinely granted ‘insurance payments’ for members caught in this situation, but the YMA rules of 1881 omitted any such provision. Handling what was an important and strongly felt need on an informal basis in Yorkshire, however, proved unsatisfactory and a motion from Wath Main ultimately led to the establishment of a fund which was generated and sustained through a levy of 6d per quarter on full members and 3d on half-members.21 Claims on the fund were heavy virtually from its initiation, with demand so great that a special executive committee in mid-May recommended that £10,000 be transferred from the union’s general fund to the contingent fund and the rules governing its operation be tightened.22 In order to cut down on claims, it was agreed by the June council that they should only be made where at least 15 per cent of those working at an affected pit were laid idle.23 But it is clear that the problem by this time was critical, the short history of the fund revealing as clearly as any other indicator how severe were the difficulties in the coalfield. In early 1893, with the situation acute, the primary strategy proposed for adoption by the Federation was to resume restriction of output through stop days or stop weeks.24 Membership was consulted directly and in Yorkshire a majority favoured a stoppage of two weeks.25 But there was little support for a collective

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stoppage in the other districts.26 Unable to secure any overall sanction for the policy, the matter was referred back to the Federation’s executive committee, where it was resolved in mid-March that because no general attack had yet been made or was judged likely to be made’, on wages, the question of a general stoppage or any other system of restriction should be indefinitely postponed.27 It was not long, however, before an attack began. Collieries in many districts were already working short time and various indirect means had been utilised to secure lower wages. But by April owners in Cumberland, the Forest of Dean, Bristol and Somerset announced that they would impose reductions.28 Owners demand 25 per cent off—defensive Federation strike called In Yorkshire the owners began serious consideration of a reduction in March, with figures of 20 per cent being mentioned in West Yorkshire. But neither in the western or southern section of the county was there consensus sufficient to take decisive action.29 On 30 June the owners in the Federated area called miners’ representatives to a meeting in London at which they formally announced their intention to reduce wages by 25 per cent.30 The cut was not to be from the total of wages then prevailing, but rather from wages as they had stood in 1888. The actual drop in current wages would be about 18 per cent. With notices set to expire on 28 July, an adjourned conference between representatives of the two parties was scheduled for 21 July in London to assess the position of the miners. Special branch meetings in Yorkshire yielded a unanimous rejection of the proposed reduction. A YMA Special Council resolved that in the event of a strike, no member should be allowed to work underground.31 At the London meeting on 21 July, owners were informed that not only in Yorkshire, but generally throughout the Federation, miners rejected the reduction. An exchange between the chairman, A.M.Chambers, and miners’ representatives set the stage for what would follow in subsequent months: Mr Pickard:

I take it for granted now that we have the stern realities of war before us. The Chairman: Do not call it war, it has not broken out. Mr Pickard: The owners have thrown down the gauntlet. The Chairman: Oh, don’t! Mr Pickard: And placed us in an awkward position. At the same time I do not think there will be any bad blood amongst us. We shall try to fight like men, and not hit below the belt; and I can only hope that we will fight and meet again. Mr Woods: If we are living. Mr Pickard: There is no chance of wrong being done. Mr Cowey: I thought war was declared.


Mr Pickard:

Yes, war is declared. I think it would be trying to make things worse by saying anything more, gentlemen. I wish to move that the best thanks of the meeting be tendered to the Chairman.32

Members of the Federation were by no means unanimous in rejecting the owners’ demand and thereby submitting to a lock-out. The vote in the MFGB was 198 to fifty.33 Partly to ensure the commitment of all affiliated districts to the agreed action, a resolution forwarded by the YMA’s Special Council meeting was passed by the MFGB as a whole: all those districts not under notice which had suffered wage reductions were directed to give notice for restoration of amounts taken away over the two previous years. Should they not comply they would be subject to expulsion from the Federation. Accordingly miners in Durham asked for an advance of 15 per cent, those in Cumberland for 20 per cent and those in Northumberland for 16.25 per cent.34 All were refused. Cumberland was treated as a somewhat special case and not made subject to the directive to give notice to strike should their request for a rise be rejected. Even so, miners there downed tools on 11 August in pursuit of their claim. Having gained 10 per cent, or half of it, they returned to work, later in August making an unsuccessful bid for the remaining 10 per cent.35 Miners in North Wales gave notice to leave work in the middle of August. In the large northeastern coalfield, however, miners for the most part remained at work, thereby frustrating the intent of the Federation to make the stoppage as general as possible. The clear division within the Federation was to culminate in the expulsion of Durham in late August. Federation policy to generalise the strike and stop production as far as possible was also evident in a resolution stipulating that even at pits within the affected areas where owners had not imposed a reduction, miners should give notice to leave work.36 This was to be a point generating considerable controversy, particularly given the variability in the solidarity of owners’ ranks. In consequence there were many within the Federation who considered it wiser to play upon divisions among the owners and at the least to allow those whose wages had not been threatened to remain at work and keep their income. But it was in pursuit of the illusory show of unity that Federation policy was initially constructed. Notice expired for the main body of miners on 28 July and over 200, 000 underground workers and many surface workers left work. Compliance with Federation resolutions and other factors raised the number out to nearly 300,000 by the third week of August.37 During the early period of the stoppage, the YMA’s main concern was to ensure that all members left work and that as far as possible no coal was cut in the county. At pits where employers had not demanded a reduction, an attempt was made to persuade miners to give in notice, One such pit was Whinny Moor near Wakefield. Its owners preferred their workers, most of whom were not in the

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union, to carry on under the old terms. Their employees gave in notice regardless at the outset of the main strike at the end of July. This was declined by the owners, since it did not expire on a making up day. So a fresh notice was given in and duly accepted. By the end of the second week in August, when notices at other pits were set to expire, the workers at Whinny Moor were, of course, still at work. They were just leaving at the end of a shift when met by a group of union members whose own colliery had just been set down, whereupon they were strongly cautioned against returning to work the next morning. The pit owners, anticipating trouble, secured a body of police to stand at the pithead the following day, but in the event the workmen heeded the call of their fellows. Due to stop in any case in another week’s time or so, they presumably regarded it as pointless to stand strictly by the terms of their notice.38 In line with MFGB policy, no YMA member was allowed to work underground or fill coal on the surface. The only work permitted was that required for tending pit ponies and maintaining the pit in workable order —for example, through removing water and putting out gob fires.39 Deputies were of course not members of the YMA and the union had no authority in preventing their continued working. But there was strong antipathy to their carrying out anything other than their normal activities and most particularly to their working coal or drawing it up. In the early days of the stoppage incidents occurred where miners attempted to gain broader compliance with the strike, most typically where the terms under which the YMA had agreed to carry out the stoppage were not being adhered to. Not all were officially sanctioned by the union, nor under the direction of branch officials. At Morley Main collieries, for example, miners and hurriers left at noon on the day their notices expired. But a number of surface workers volunteered to replace them underground and cut coal. Some of the company’s underground workers then surrounded the colliery entrance and reportedly engaged in stone throwing and hooting for about an hour before police arrived and brought an end to the demonstration.40 It was reported the next day that strike-breakers had gone to work at Morley Main and were being hooted and ‘attacked’ on their way to and from work. On this same day The Independent carried a letter from C.W.Fincken of Hoyland Silkstone Collieries complaining that shortly after the miners had removed tools from the pits a ‘large gang of rough lads’ collected on the top of the refuse heap and when a signal was given sent down a stone weighing some two hundredweight toward a locomotive which worked a steep incline between the colliery and the main line. The stone missed its assumed target, whereupon, according to Fincken, the lads ‘kept up a fusilade of smaller stones upon the driver, stoker and guard’. The next day was quiet apart from ‘false and malicious statements’ having served according to Fincken to persuade those working in the firm’s coke ovens to leave their work. As the new week began, the firm set to


work those few men who were not in the union. Most were labourers whom the management regarded as not covered by union ‘guidelines’ and therefore ‘free to pick coal from stock’. But the next day none of them appeared having, so Fincken claimed, succumbed to threats and in one case a severe beating. Fincken charged members of the community with deliberately causing trouble. Interestingly, he did not lay the blame at the feet of the YMA but at that of the ‘younger generation from 12 to 25 years of age, who go about in gangs of 15 to 20 to cause disturbances, and who are well backed up by a parcel of idle goodfor-nothing women’. And using similar imagery to that of Pickard in his allusion to ‘war’, Fincken reported that more than once the statement had been heard that the stoppage was not merely a question of retaining the 25 per cent but a conflict between two parties, one of which had property to protect and one which did not.41 These reports from so early in the stoppage indicate the depth of feeling on both sides as well as the inevitable divergence of interpretation of actions by those occupying different positions within both community and industry. Indeed there were two parties, one with property and one without. And from early on authorities were called on to protect that property as well as to prevent action deterring those willing to carry on working for property owners. Police were called in to attend to many ‘disturbances’, variously defined. In some instances, a very large number were drafted in, as noted by Mr Woods, the miners’ MP for a Lancashire constituency. Extra police had been sent into Farnworth, Walkden, Leigh, Wigan and Haydock in Lancashire, he said. Had these come at the instigation of the Home Office, local authorities or the coal owners? And had there actually been any justification for their presence? Had there been any disorderly or riotous conduct or any semblance of such conduct on the part of the miners in any of the places mentioned? And was the Home Secretary aware that the calling in of police was looked upon with disgust by miners of the county who were, said Woods, behaving themselves in a ‘most peaceful and dignified manner’. Was, by its action, the government not taking the part of the coal owners as against the work people in this dispute?42 The government had in fact authorised not just additional police but the sending of troops in a number of recent industrial disputes, such as that of dock workers of Hull in the spring of 1893, and at Bristol. And it was not long before troops were sent into the coalfields. The first instance was in mid-August, not in the Federation areas but in a dispute which erupted in a section of South Wales over the operation of the sliding scale. Employers obtained the support of a detachment of the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment at Ebbw Vale, the only area which had declined to join the strike and where miners worked at two pits protected by sixty constables and fifty soldiers.43 Large numbers of men from the surrounding valleys marched on the town but were repulsed, albeit not before several pistol shots had been fired and some men reportedly seriously injured.44 The incident provoked yet more troops being sent to South Wales.45 Later a

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march of striking miners from Heath to Swansea, intended to persuade those still working at collieries en route to lay down their tools, was met by troops being summoned to Swansea.46 Then in early September troops were brought into localities within the Federation areas and by 7 September dragoons were patrolling the Erewash Valley in Derbyshire.47 And about the same time fifty troopers from the 9th Dragoons in York arrived in Barnsley.48 A day or so later, twenty-six men of the artillery from the barracks at Hillsborough marched into Orgreave Colliery ‘much to the astonishment of the residents of Handsworth who were indignant at the display of force, claiming that it was in no way called for’.49 Elsewhere as well, troops joined police reinforcements, giving the government a direct presence in the dispute and invariably called out by the ‘side of property’. But if the stoppage inevitably pitted two sides against one another, it would be overly simplistic to see either as homogeneous or internally unified. Nor would it be correct to see all other ‘observers’ as of a single mind. There were among the coal owners some who would have preferred to maintain the prevailing level of wages or who were generally supportive of the miners’ action. Likewise there was divergence of opinion among mine workers, both between and within districts, as to the legitimacy of certain actions and of the Federation’s basic strategy and tactics. Moreover, those who supported the strike included a wide range of sub-groupings. If there was difference of opinion within the union as to what was legitimate and what was not, there was also divergence between union and non-union workers and between striking miners, members of their families and others in local communities. Generally, the YMA sought to prevent the working and movement of coal through means defined as legitimate by being within the law, through persuasion where union membership was low or where notice had not been given, through deputations to owners, and through publicising the issues behind the stoppage via the media, mass meetings and demonstrations. Union officials accepted the legal structure as given and admonished members who stepped beyond its bounds. But if remaining staunch adherents of the need to stay within the law, they were also acutely aware of the potential abuse of power on the part of authorities and of the extent to which systematic bias entered into the administration of ‘justice’. They were thus quick to broadcast incidents where the show of force or military presence seemed unwarranted, or where miners were wrongfully detained or unjustly portrayed in the press. Activities during the stoppage were not confined to official union picketing or deputations. In practice the strike of 1893 followed lines which ‘tradition’ had set for disputes within the coalfield. Because many miners lived in communities dominated by the pit and because the nature of pit work involved miners’ families, both emotionally and with regard to their labour, community involvement was always a strong characteristic of mining disputes. The sense that disputes


involved not just the workers pitted against their employer but the entire community so pitted was reinforced by the common practice of owners importing strike breakers from outside, who were thus identified as ‘strangers’ with respect to the community. Disputes in the coalfield had thus for decades followed a pattern where the participation of community members accompanied official union activity, sometimes complementing and sometimes frustrating it. The elements involved were of shifting composition. Sometimes an action initiated by union officials and intended to be strictly in line with official union policy was transformed when non-union members or those with slightly different understandings of the potentialities of the moment joined in. Sometimes an action initiated spontaneously from outside the rubric of the union was transformed as miners joined in. What is important to note is that both spontaneous and planned, official and unofficial action occurred during the course of a strike and that each was fluid and could merge into another. On the other hand it is possible to identify a number of specific types of action which happened repeatedly down the years and whose repetitiveness set up a ‘tradition’. One of the most common was the barracking of strike-breakers or deputies or anyone else regarded as breaking or threatening to break the solidarity of a stoppage. Often this involved union members and may have taken the form of an ‘official picket’. But it characteristically occurred as well outside of union directives, often involving women or youths. Not bound by union dictates, women, and to some extent youths as well, enjoyed the freedom of spontaneity. Their actions could dramatise and escalate a dispute beyond what would have otherwise been the orderly pace of routine procedures. Barracking, however, was not confined to women, but indulged in by many community members and many miners—at times as a deliberate tactic, at times as a spontaneous expression of rage over activity which could frustrate a strike and extend the period in which sufficient food was kept from miners’ families. A second sort of action involved damage to property or what might be termed sabotage. Seldom if ever was this sanctioned by the union, but was rather the expression of collective anger and a desire to prevent work continuing at a colliery where persuasion proved ineffectual. If never condoned by the union, it was regarded as having varying shades of legitimacy by community members. Some may have unthinkingly hit out at what they saw as their enemy. Others may have regarded it as an acceptable tactic countering the violence implied by employers cutting off their very means of subsistence or the drafting in of police or troops to ostensibly ‘maintain order’, but in reality to protect property. Such an interpretation is properly set in the legal context defining the rights and wrongs of industrial disputes. Neither absolute nor immutable, but a social and historical product, the prevailing legal structure reflected the relative dominance or influence of various

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groups within society. Its resulting bias was evident in the types of acts (or omissions) which earned a penalty under it and the relative severity of the penalty. At one point during the course of the dispute, Pickard compared the punishments meted out for three offences. The first involved a lad stealing a few ounces of coal off a cart, the second was a miner assaulting a superintendent of police and the third a policeman assaulting a collier. The lad was sentenced to fourteen days’ hard labour, the man who had struck the superintendent with a single blow of a stick was given three months’ hard labour without the option of a fine, and the police sergeant was fined 30s. Pickard reckoned that had the police sergeant been a miner and walloped his opponent to the same extent as the sergeant had indeed done, ‘then, judging from the other two sentences, the brother magistrates would have sent that miner to seven years’ penal servitude if the law would have allowed it’.50 From its early days, the dispute in Yorkshire involved individuals or groups following their various lights. Some were miners, some youths outside the union and some miners’ wives. A case was reported at Aldwarke Main in the second week of the stoppage where, according to the local press, ‘a determined army of amazons’ caused coal fillers to beat a retreat. In an arrangement agreed between management and local branch officials, non-union day workers were to have loaded coal stacked on the surface into wagons at Aldwarke sidings, which was destined not for sale but for the colliery boilers and even in part to meet arrears in the men’s own home allowance.51 In evidence perhaps of insufficient communication between local officials and community members but certainly of the depth of agitation within the neighbourhood, a large crowd of women descended on the fillers enraged by what they perceived as breaking the terms of the strike. The men were persuaded by verbal onslaught to leave their work, though some may have also been the victims of missiles thrown by the women.52 Several days later, there was an attack on the homes of byeworkers employed at Park Hills Colliery near Wakefield to ensure that the workings were efficiently maintained. A large crowd visited the homes and wreaked havoc on them, smashing the front windows and ornaments and pictures inside, even injuring some of the residents. A press report on the case alleges that ‘men and women to the number of several hundreds’ were involved. Miners, however, disclaimed any connection with the incident, saying that the crowd had consisted of some 200 to 300 children.53 Escalation of tension towards the end of August Such incidents as these, while important because indicative of the strength of feeling in the coalfield were nevertheless relatively rare during the first weeks of the strike. In many localities miners were rather praised for their ‘exemplary


behaviour’.54 Towards the end of August and particularly in the first week of September, however, the number of ‘incidents’ increased dramatically. A number of factors may account for this. One, whose influence was only indirect, was the escalation of militancy and the repressive response of the government in calling in troops in South Wales. A second was the extent to which hardship was beginning to be felt in the coalfield. And a third was frustration at the possibility that commitment within the Federation as a whole was beginning to weaken. It was precisely at the end of August and the first days of September that discussion re-opened on Federation tactics with the suggestion that a selective return to work be allowed where owners offered resumption on the old terms. All such factors are interrelated and difficult to separate out without risk of oversimplification. The possibility of a shift in Federation tactics was itself a function of the drying up of funds in various districts to support striking miners and the threat thereby of greatly increased hardship. The strike was begun at a time when many within the mining community were already feeling the hard pinch of poverty. In Yorkshire many pits had been on short-time working for months.55 Even where miners had been recipients of the contingent fund, their situation was dire. The YMA had agreed that when the great strike began all who had been either on the contingent or victim funds should be henceforth treated as one with the bulk of the strikers, with benefits subsequently being drawn from the general fund. But the decision that they should be subject to a two week period without benefit, prior to strike pay being granted,56 along with those just coming out, brought a cry of concern from some quarters.57 Given a situation which could only become progressively worse, patience quickly wore thin, particularly when it appeared that actions were being taken to frustrate the strike. By early September the terms on which families were required to subsist during the stoppage, supported only by meagre strike pay, had become starkly apparent to all. The different attributes, financial and otherwise, and the differing situational context in which the districts of the Federation found themselves, necessarily pulled against the unity its executive strove to maintain. Yorkshire, along with Derbyshire, had the largest financial reserves of any county union. But even in Yorkshire funds and property held at the end of 1892 amounted to something less than £3 per member.58 The various district associations differed not just in their financial resources, but also in the proportion of working miners they could count among their members, the extent of leverage they had been able to wield in the past against their employers, the strength of employer unity within them and the extent to which coal owners had elected to go along with the move to reduce wages by 25 per cent. As already noted, many owners in the Midlands, and most in North Staffordshire, had not given notice for a wage cut.59 Toward the middle of August, many in these areas began to question the wisdom of their joining the stoppage.

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Their misgivings focused on rule 20, which specified that the whole Federation should go out, should any section be under attack. Just prior to 22 August, when delegates of the MFGB were to reconsider the issue, the YMA Council held a special meeting to consider Yorkshire’s position. It was understood that Yorkshire would be loyal to whatever decision was made at the national conference, but the consensus was that rule 20 should be upheld and that all members of the Federation should continue ‘to play’ until the notice to remove 25 per cent was withdrawn.60 Federation delegates subsequently agreed to a proposal that they refrain from asking for an advance until prices returned to their 1890 level in exchange for withdrawing notice. In the meantime, however, the strike would hold firm. By a vote of 120 in favour and 64 against, the conference agreed that no pit in the federated area should be allowed to begin work until a general settlement was made for all and one to resume work at the same time.61 The Federation’s proposal was considered by the owners in London on the 29 August and summarily rejected, though they did offer to refer the dispute to arbitration. Shortly afterwards the MFGB met once again and agreed to submit a ballot vote to all members on three propositions: whether wages should be reduced by 25 per cent or any lesser percentage, whether the employer’s offer of arbitration should be accepted and whether all those who could do so should resume work at the old wages. By calling a vote the Federation leadership was in one sense extending democratic procedures, submitting the matter directly to the membership for its judgement. But in the process they were acceding to the growing division within the ranks of the MFGB and putting policy up for grabs. In Yorkshire a memo was issued strongly advising membership to vote in favour of point three, to allow a selective return to work. The fact that its author stressed that he was writing exclusively on his own behalf, however, suggested a division in the ranks of district leadership.62 While the ballot appeared to be ‘giving the membership its head’, the rank and file may therefore have been left in some confusion and bereft of the sort of clear guidance they would have wished. Several district officials were away from the county during much of this period and there would be subsequent complaints in some quarters over their absence during this very crucial period. It was in the midst of branch voting that the number of local incidents saw a sharp rise. These were not confined to Yorkshire. Indeed some of the first occurred in Derbyshire, which continued throughout the first week of September to be the scene of a number of encounters between members of mining communities and the ‘authorities’. In addition to the bite of hardship, the indirect influence of events in South Wales, the fact that Federation policy was precisely at this time subject to re-evaluation and a temporary lapse in unified guidance from district leadership, several other factors contributed to the increase in incidents. One was that coal was beginning to be brought into Yorkshire from the


northeast.63 Another was the suspicion that coal stacked at the pit top was being loaded for sale. It was reported that slack or smudge which sold for 1s or 2s prior to the strike was now selling at 6s a ton and sacked coal at up to 14s or 18s a ton.64 At these prices, owners could conceivably profit from the situation, should they get their coal to market. How far this actually occurred is difficult to assess, but rumours were rife and tempers quickly aroused. One of the first incidents during this period at the end of August and over the first week of September occurred at Hollbrook Colliery in Derbyshire. Apparently in response to a manager having sent labourers to load railway wagons with accumulated stock, a crowd descended on the mine and colliery offices were stoned and damaged.65 A few days later there was a disturbance at Bolsover Colliery, sparked off by suspicion that strike-breakers were working the face. The manager informed them that they were mistaken, but the miners would have none of it and sent an official delegation in protest. They were greeted courteously and told no strike-breakers were at work. The delegation accordingly informed the crowd that nothing was amiss and appealed for peace, but some declined to accept this information passively. They declared that no coal would be brought up and said if they saw any they would ‘follow Hollbrook’.66 The following day (Thursday, 31 August) Bolsover was again the site of disturbance. Still concerned about the possibility that coal was being cut and drawn, a number of miners were allowed down by the manager to carry out their own inspection. They declared themselves satisfied but others who visited the pit yard the same day were presumably of a different mind. Far from an official delegation, these were described as a large gang of youths from adjoining villages ‘who had got to know of the occurrences on Wednesday and desired to see some fun.’67 About 200 youths reportedly entered the yard and proceeded to overturn tubs, throw a few stones, break a few window panes and then, moving on, parade through a village and finally congregate under the trees to sing a refrain bearing on the strike and the 25 per cent reduction to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Variously displaying spontaneity and crude organisation, the group was said to have been under the direction of an individual with a whistle. If disruptive, they must not have been wildly so, as two village policemen were able to keep them in line. As they moved their numbers swelled, ultimately reaching 1,000. And at one point some among them hoisted a red flag. In spite of the rather mild nature of events in and around Bolsover, extra police were sent for, creating considerable surprise both en route and on arrival. As a reporter noted, ‘Bolsover is only a little station on a small branch line with a single set of metals, and the arrival of the large force came as a great surprise to the station master and porters, the only other occupants of the place. There was not a sign of any disturbance. No colliers could be seen and the situation was

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rather puzzling.’68 On arriving in Bolsover they were fated to suffer a heavy rain with little protection ‘nor refreshment’.69 As will be seen, a similar sequence of events—a roving picket provoking someone to send for extra police or troops who arrived to what was by then an empty stage and thereby an uncertain and slightly ridiculous situation—was to be repeated with slight variation in a number of locales during these days of ‘trouble’ in the coalfields. Notwithstanding that disturbances such as those at Bolsover were still of a relatively minor nature, it was the view of the press that ‘the whole country is fast becoming prey to the terrorism of the mob, and the sooner measures are taken to cow the men who attempt to wreck property and to destroy life in order to wreak a malignant vengeance on their employers, the better for all concerned…’.70 This feeling was undoubtedly shared by many on the side of the owners and was responsible for their being so quick to call further police reinforcements and later troops. It is probable that this sense of urgency was itself a factor contributing to the escalation of incidents. Whatever the case, the number of ‘disturbances’ rapidly multiplied over the first few days of September. On the same day (Wednesday 30 August) that trouble began to brew at Bolsover, rumours of deputies loading wagons underground at Broom Pit, Hunslet (near Leeds) generated a large crowd, whose ‘ringleaders’ were said to be women, and which surrounded the deputies’ homes, throwing a few bricks and stones.71 At Ardsley near Wakefield, a crowd said to be composed of miners, and about 2,000 strong, met a group of some thirty byeworkmen finishing their afternoon shift who had been engaged since the beginning of the strike gathering loose coal and sending it up the shaft. The crowd, frankly hostile to any such work being done, interviewed the men who agreed that they would leave off.72 A few days later there were rumours at Wath that forty miners were at work in the pit. Lodge officials sent a delegation to the colliery offices and were told that there was no truth to the rumour.73 By Monday, 4 September, encounters between management and strike supporters were occurring in a number of places throughout the area. In both Yorkshire and Derbyshire it was reported that groups of workers were collecting and sometimes moving from one pit to another.74 At a number of public meetings miners resolved to stand firm and to prevent any strike-breakers working or any coal being drawn or loaded.75 A meeting called by the Committee of Carlton Main Lodge on Monday, 5 September, to clear the air over rumours of coal being drawn by ‘strangers’ resolved that any such activities should cease. But at the same time miners were advised to refrain from violence of ‘any sort or shape’ and it was agreed to send a deputation to the manager of the pit.76 In other places, however, there seemed little inclination to wait for an official deputation. Most notable on that Monday were events which took place at Manvers Main, provoked by a rumour that deputies were working coal from the face and sending it up to the surface.


Shortly after mid-day a crowd of women, said to have been about 100, some with children in their arms, approached the colliery offices from the direction of the small hamlet of Bowbroom. As they walked they were joined by an equal number of youths and then, on reaching the bridge spanning the Don and Dearne Canal, by a number of men who, according to the reporter with more than a hint of sarcasm, ‘can any day be seen idling in the neighbourhood’.77 Assembling outside the colliery premises, they called for the manager and were told by his son that he was not there. When they persisted his son reportedly answered with a mixture of irritation and jest. This and the appearance of the deputies from out of the shaft provoked their annoyance and some fetched stones and threw them at the offices, smashing windows. The clerks inside managed to huddle in corners out of harm’s way, though the firm’s top manager was struck on the back as he was walking across the yard from one office to another. One of the deputies was also injured in his attempt to leave the premises.78 A call from the colliery for help brought four men from Mexborough, whose presence apparently led to the crowd dispersing. A half-hour later a busload of police from Rotherham found all quiet.79 On Monday evening branch officials at Manvers called an open-air meeting, apparently to condemn the day’s events. It was the first local meeting since the beginning of the strike. The president, Mr Storer, indicated a certain sympathy with his members’ sense of frustration, should it prove correct that deputies were drawing coal, and given the rather irritating behaviour of a certain man ‘who lived at the other end’, an apparent reference to the manager’s son. Still, he was sorry about what had happened and moved a resolution that the meeting strongly regretted the action of ‘certain persons in doing damage to the property on the premises of the Manvers Main Colliery’.80 This was met with cries of disapproval. Another official, W.Annables, then reminded the meeting that they had entered upon the strike on the assumption that if they kept the peace they could win. The local committee had had an undertaking with the company that engine men and deputies could continue working, so long as no coal was drawn. Now it appeared that the firm had broken its promise. But they must realise that breaking windows and damaging property was not a suitable response to such an indiscretion, for it would undermine the public sympathy which the miners now enjoyed. They must confront the manager with their present grievance, certainly, but at the same time the miners must keep quiet. Other speakers took a similar line, suggesting that though the company was in the wrong, an undisciplined response was counter-productive. When the officers’ proposed resolution was put, however, only one or two hands were raised in its favour, at which point an alternative motion was put: ‘that we don’t regret what happened’ which met with loud applause. When the chairman called for a vote ‘a perfect forest of hands went up’. While local leaders may have felt themselves compelled to preach quiet and to condemn the spontaneous activity of women and youths who formed the

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‘motley assembly’ described in press reports, the bulk of their membership would have none of it. While expressing their fullest confidence in the leaders of the Federation, the Manvers Main meeting soundly condemned the action of the deputies in filling coal and resolved that they, and indeed even the enginemen, should be removed.81 At Houghton Main a crowd had also formed on Monday, responding to a similar rumour as at Manvers. Being assured that no more coal would be drawn during the stoppage, they moved on to Darfield Main. With the company now totalling about 1,000 they confronted a number of men who were filling on the surface. Most of these beat the now familiar hasty retreat; others stood their ground but promised to cease their activity. Officials of Houghton Main and Darfield Lodges then appealed to the crowd to keep the peace, whereupon it dispersed.82 Rumours of deputies drawing coal were also rife at Mitchells Main and in a scene very like that at Manvers a group of some 500 men and women assembled on the canal bridge a short distance from the pit, waiting to meet the deputies at the end of their shift. One of those who came out gave no sign of hearing the barracking of the crowd and attempted to push his way through. A number of women immediately fell upon him, showering his head with blows. His companion rolled up his sleeves as if to join the fray in defence of his fellow and was meted out with similar treatment.83 On Tuesday and Wednesday (5 and 6 September), a very similar pattern of events occurred. Meetings were held protesting the working or presumed working of coal, deputations were sent, and crowds formed in demonstration and protest of what they regarded to be violations of the union’s terms for the strike. A meeting on Tuesday in the market place at Wombwell, attended by some 2, 000, resolved that the time had come for all men to be drawn out of the mines.84 A motion to march on Hoyland Silkstone to ensure that filling ceased was defeated. But at the end of the meeting a group of about 700 declared that they would march regardless. Incidents subsequently occurred at both Hoyland Silkstone and Rockingham.85 Details of what was done, who precisely did it and why, conflict and remain rather opaque, but what emerges from the various reports of these incidents with some clarity is that the cause for complaint among the mining community was justified by the activities of at least some coal owners. Even where managers met with crowds and sent them away peaceably with the promise that no more coal would be filled, their very words verified that coal indeed had been filled. Hoyland Silkstone had an enormous stack of coal on its premises which had been loaded since the onset of the strike.86 Coal was being filled at Rockingham well prior to the arrival of a protesting crowd there. Filling was also being done at Wombwell.87


Buildup of incidents at Featherstone Of a piece with events elsewhere in the district, only some of which have been described here, were those which occurred at Ackton Hall Colliery in Featherstone, near Pontefract in West Yorkshire.88 The Featherstone case allows a glimpse of the complexity which attended many of the incidents occurring in the coalfield during this period. For there was not one event at Featherstone, but a series occurring over several days. Nor was there one set of actors, but the involvement of a number of groups of differing composition. The case also indicates much about the conduct of the strike in Yorkshire, about the procedures followed by the local branch, the relation of the union to the wider community and the level of involvement of that wider community in the stoppage, as well as about the response of coal owners to a perceived attack upon property and the subsequent response of authorities—including the JP, the local police and the troops—who were called in. Throughout the strike, development work had been carried out at Ackton Hall. The shaft was being enlarged and deepened and the bulk of the firm’s 400 or so surface workers continued to work, engaged in sinking, building and engine fitting,89 all, it would appear, with the tacit consent of the local branch. Throughout the strike, as well, the firm had routinely loaded smudge from heaps accumulated in the yard into railway wagons, some of which was used for their surface engines and brick works and some of which was sold.90 During the first week of September, however, hostility to this practice was aroused in Featherstone, as it was elsewhere in the district. And on Tuesday, 5 September, a group of men, women and lads marched on the two pits in the vicinity of Featherstone village, Featherstone Manor Colliery, owned by Mr Shaw, and Ackton Hall owned by Lord Masham. At the latter, they ordered a number of men who were loading on the surface to leave.91 And on their complying, marched them back to their homes.92 The next morning, Ackton Hall was the object of a similar visit and the loading of smudge similarly prevented.93 Later that morning a deputation of miners from the colliery met with the manager, Mr Holliday, indicating their regret at the previous incidents which they said occurred without their knowledge or consent.94 They impressed upon Holliday, however, that feeling against loading coal for sale was very strong in the community and urged that it be discontinued.95 He was warned that there was danger of violence if he did not agree.96 Holliday gave his word that for several days the material would be loaded only for use by the colliery and not for sale. But he was adamant that this was a temporary arrangement only and unwilling to admit the right of the miners to interfere with company practice.97 In spite of this arrangement a contract foreman, Jacques, who was in charge of the loading, was surrounded by an angry crowd on the evening of 6 September, which suggested in no uncertain terms

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that he and his workers should leave and for their own safety return home immediately. Shortly after the day’s work began the following morning, 7 September, a group of women entered the yard, insistent that all work should stop. A little later a group of youths arrived, and the loaders were persuaded to stop.98 When Holliday arrived shortly before 9 am he found a crowd of some 200 people, some carrying sticks and cudgels. In spite of the departure of the loaders, they were bent on protesting against the colliery’s activities, claiming that Holliday had broken his promise not to load for sale. Holliday refuted this,99 but he may well have failed to use ‘car wagons’ only for colliery purposes, as he had agreed. Two of the wagons still being used had old tickets labelled ‘Bradford’ fixed on to them; this it would seem, was what was responsible for the confusion.100 As this exchange was occurring a new group entered the yard and the enlarged crowd then proceeded to overturn six full tip-wagons before leaving.101 A little later, around 10 am, a new group composed of women, children and men, visited Ackton Hall to see for themselves whether any smudge was being filled for sale. Seeing wagons labelled up, they thought ready to go out, they set about breaking a number of windows, upsetting some wagons and letting down the doors of others.102 Holliday was concerned about the spate of incidents and considered that Sergeant Sparrow, the local policeman, was unable on his own to maintain order. He therefore went to Pontefract to discuss with Sparrow’s superior, the acting deputy superintendent, Inspector Prosser, the possibility of gaining more protection for Ackton Hall. Prosser regretted that there was little he could do. He had already received a number of similar requests, he said, showing Holliday nearly a dozen telegrams103 but had no one available to send. He advised Holliday to go to Wakefield to see the chief constable. Returning to Ackton Hall in order to catch the 11.50 train to Wakefield, Holliday found an even larger crowd at the colliery than before, some possessing sticks and cudgels, concerned as had been those before them about what they believed to be the continuing loading of smudge Dismissive of Holliday’s claims that he had not contravened his agreement, they proceeded to overturn seven trucks on a colliery siding which had been standing loaded since before the strike. None of the group, according to Holliday, were employees of Ackton Hall, though some were from Featherstone village. Indeed in none of the groups which had come to the colliery that day had Holliday seen any Ackton Hall workers.104 Holliday’s train arrived in the midst of this latest protest and so he left the scene. But it is probable that it lasted but little longer, for Sergeant Sparrow testified that when he went to investigate the situation about noon, he found some damage done but all quiet.105 When Holliday reached the office of the Chief Constable, shortly after noon, he found that a request had also been made for assistance that morning from Lord St Oswald of Nostell Colliery. In the early afternoon, yet another arrived,


this time from the manager of Sharlston, near Creswick.106 The flurry of requests for additional protection to colliery premises which came to the Wakefield office were characteristic of similar pleas being made throughout the county during this period. A letter from A.M.Chambers of Newton Chambers & Co. in South Yorkshire, written on 5 September, indicates a feeling shared by many Yorkshire coal owners that the ‘authorities were not alive to the serious state of feeling in the district’. Pulling no punches about his own commitment to mounting a firm oppositon to the miners, he went on to specify the role he considered the state obligated to take. ‘If the police force is not sufficient to do this, then at once the military authorities ought to be communicated with and as speedily as possible an end should be put to this state of anarchy; which not only threatens the property of peaceable subjects, but is in danger of sacrificing the lives of workmen, managers and colliery owners’.107 Owners in West Yorkshire were equally convinced of the probable need for military forces and offered to arrange a meeting of magistrates should this be required for the official summoning of the military.108 Indeed on 5 September, magistrates of the Division of Staincross had met and forwarded a request that at least fifty troops proceed to Barnsley to quell ‘apprehended riots and disturbances’.109 It would appear that their action produced immediate results. The problem of obtaining adequate ‘protection’ was aggravated in West Yorkshire by the fact that the chief constable of the West Riding (based in Wakefield) had agreed with the mayor of Doncaster on 2 September to supply 264 constables of all ranks for the annual Doncaster races scheduled to be held between 4 and 9 September.110 This was later to be cited as a remarkable lapse on the part of the authorities in their appreciation of the level of agitation current among mining communities. The initial withdrawal of constables to Doncaster was further complicated as far as West Yorkshire was concerned by events in Barnsley on 5 September. In view of problems there, Barnsley constables sent to Doncaster returned and an additional 188 from other parts of the Riding were summoned there as well, further depleting local ranks.111 By 6 September, the chief constable’s office was receiving numerous requests for assistance from colliery owners who anticipated difficulties.112 A memo from the Silkstone and Haigh Moor Collieries Ltd, of Allerton Bywater, Castleford, claimed ‘certain information’ that a very large gang of ‘rioters’ was coming the next day, and as there were only five policemen present, at least thirty more would be required.113 Another from H.Carr of Denaby Main, noting the colliery management’s intention of loading about 18,000 tons of coal on 9 September, declared it would thus be necessary to have police and military protection ‘in view of riotous proceedings at Wath and elsewhere’.114 The superintendent’s office in Rotherham sent a message that requests for assistance had also come from Orgreave and Tinsley Park. ‘It is quite out of my power to do so’, said the note, ‘unless more men are sent here.115

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When on the morning of Thursday, 7 September, both Holliday and Lord St Oswald requested assistance, the chief constable apparently took it upon his own authority to call for troops, given the lack of available constables. Finding none available at the barracks in York, the deputy chief constable, Mr Gill, asked for fifty infantry from Bradford. At 3.35 pm fifty-four men from the 1st Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment arrived at Wakefield station from Bradford under the command of Captain Barker. Much to his consternation, Captain Barker was then told that because two requests for assistance had been made, it would be necessary to divide his troops into two sections, one to go to Nostell Colliery and one to Ackton Hall. Subsequent events would suggest that this division was an error of judgement. While the very presence of troops probably served to provoke further local agitation and thus contribute to the numbers who came to Featherstone on the evening of 7 September, the twenty-eight men whom Captain Barker led there may well have constituted too small a force to maintain effective control. When Captain Barker arrived at Featherstone station, a little after 4 pm, he found that a few windows on the colliery premises had been broken, but otherwise nothing was amiss. ‘There was no crowd, or anything’, he reported,116 giving some cause for questioning whether troops were in fact justified at Featherstone and lending weight to the interpretation of Terratt, who was highly critical of the haste with which troops were acquired to assist Holliday, whose colliery, as has been seen, was subject to a number of visitations but only minor damage, and Lord St Oswald, whose colliery had suffered no damage but where threats had been made concerning the loading of smudge: Will it now be believed that on the requisition of these two worthies, neither of whom had anything but the most trivial matters to complain about, both of whom might be congratulated on the astonishing immunity of themselves and their property during the progress of this great dispute, and one of whom had provoked the small trouble that arose by his own culpable carelessness and possible bad faith, a telegram was actually dispatched for military assistance?117 Finding no magistrate on his arrival at Featherstone station as he had expected, Barker had proceeded across the tracks with his men to the adjacent colliery where Mr Holliday confirmed that none had as yet arrived. As Barker later testified, he was ‘perfectly useless’ without a magistrate present. And it was the absence of the official until almost 8 pm due to a combination of misunderstanding and misdirections, which was to complicate an already confused situation.118 Troubled by the missing magistrate and aware that the small number at the station who had witnessed the soldiers’ arrival ‘did not seem to appreciate our coming there’, Captain Barker felt it best that the troops be kept


out of sight. After consulting Holliday, he therefore took his men to the third floor of the engine house.119 News of the troops’ arrival quickly spread through Featherstone village and the adjacent communities of Sharlston, Normanton and Castleford,120 drawing people to the colliery, some in curiosity and some in anger that the military should have been called in. Sergeant Sparrow, the local policeman, saw people crowding in Green Lane, near the entrance to the colliery on the far side from the railway, when he passed by at around 5 pm.121 At around 6 pm122 a number from this group at Green Lane asked to see Holliday. He recognised some of the assembled men and boys as having visited the pit earlier in the day, but none as employees of Ackton Hall. Some he said, were carrying sticks. A small deputation asked for his word that no more smudge would be filled and Holliday repeated what he had said on earlier occasions.123 Still apparently distrustful, however, the deputation asked that three of their number be allowed to look around the pit yard that evening to ensure that no smudge was being filled or removed.124 Holliday refused both this and a subsequent request to take the soldiers away.125 Then one, and perhaps two other groups, quite separate from those already present, came up from his rear. One, between 200 and 300 strong and led by a man with a bell, came from the direction of Streethouse, moving up Station Lane and entering the colliery across the railway lines from the south end, close to the station.126 The second reportedly came from the same direction and marched up Station Lane, down Green Lane and through the Green Lane entrance to the colliery. Both were composed of ‘strangers’ to Featherstone and had a decidedly menacing character. Most of the damage inflicted on the colliery on 7 September would appear to have been at the hands of one or both of these groups, who, in great anger at the presence of troops, smashed windows, lit fires and then left within the space of perhaps an hour. William Halstead, a shopkeeper in Featherstone, described them as a ‘villainous lot’, all of whom were armed with something or other.127 Some accounts suggest that the group led by the bellman appeared well disciplined,128 though it may have been only the presence of such a ‘leader’ which gave this impression.129 Sergeant Sparrow had been moving amongst those assembled, asking them to leave quietly. He felt for a while that he might be able to gain their compliance, but then a different crowd came behind and began to throw stones at Holliday and Inspector Gorden, shouting ‘Into the b——. Kill the b—— now you have them’. Sparrow continued to appeal for quiet and managed with Gorden to get Holliday to the safety of the railway station. But then some among the crowds set about breaking windows.130 From inside the engine house, Captain Barker saw the yard fill up. Men and boys, he said, nearly all armed with sticks and bludgeons and throwing immense stones, were ‘smashing in any windows which happened to be within their reach’.131 Other witnesses to this group and its activities included Elias Allen, a miner at Ackton Hall, who said that there had

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been a great mob of people who had come towards the station, most armed with sticks or cudgels, who had marched in files of three or four deep as near as they could down Green Lane. ‘They had not been there long before I heard windows breaking and saw boys running about the yard with torchlights, and it was not long before there was a large flame.’ When members of the crowd began to attack the engine house, Captain Barker first ordered his men to stay away from the windows and then to remove to the storeroom where high shelves might afford them more protection. Then about six of the crowd came up the stairs of the engine room, a glass door at the bottom having been broken.132 Finding Captain Barker, they demanded that he and his men leave. He spoke with them for perhaps a quarter of an hour trying to calm the situation and persuade them that the troops were doing no harm, but the protestors would have none of it, saying they would carry the soldiers down if they would not come of their own accord. Ultimately Barker said they would go if he could receive a guarantee that the crowd would leave the premises as well and do no further damage.133 Those who had negotiated with Barker, leaders in at least an unofficial sense, agreed, and the troops were cheered when they came out and crossed back over to the station.134 But this did not herald a peaceful end to events, for around 8 pm a magistrate arrived. And after consultation with Holliday and Captain Barker it was decided that the troops should go back to the colliery yard.135 The wisdom as well as the necessity of the soldiers returning to the colliery premises is, of course, open to question. Some reports suggest that damage to property had largely ceased with the soldiers’ withdrawal, though fires set alight between 6 and 7 pm, when various groups had entered the premises, continued to burn. The crowd had accompanied the soldiers back to the station, and remained outside it for some time, the group led by the bellman departing after some tweny minutes.136 But there were clearly people still about, and more were drawn by the flames. Holliday believed the threat of damage to Ackton Hall was still acute, but may also have regarded the previous ineffectiveness of the troops something of a humiliation and wished to impress upon the crowd the folly of its ways through a show of force. One witness overheard Sergeant Sparrow ask Holliday if the soldiers might be allowed to go home again, Sparrow considering that he would now be able to keep the situation under control without additional aid. Holliday had replied that he would not allow them to leave; on the contrary ‘before he would be beat he would have as many soldiers there as people’.137 Returning to the colliery, Captain Barker formed his men in the yard, facing the entrance along Green Lane. It was dark by this time and though the burning workshops and heap of timber provided some light, visibility was greatly restricted. Barker estimated that there may have been perhaps 2,000 people still about, but acknowledged that it was difficult in the circumstances to judge


precisely.138 He felt that while some may have been trying to spread the fire ‘as much as they could’, they allowed the troops to march among them without harm. With the arrival back of the troops, however, sporadic stone throwing began and continued for some thirty minutes, with various of the soldiers and Mr Hartley being hit.139 Perhaps five or six times Captain Barker and Hartley went up to the front of the crowd, saying that unless its members dispersed, it would be necessary to read the Riot Act. Then, with Hartley unprepared to wait any longer, Captain Barker fixed his men’s bayonets, brought them up in a line to a point about five yards from the front of the crowd, and the Act was read, informing the assembly that if they did not leave within an hour their continued presence would constitute a felony.140 The character of the crowd and the extent to which it was constituted of ‘rioters’ and behaving in a destructive way or otherwise was to be the subject of considerable dispute. Captain Barker certainly alleged that stones were thrown from the crowd. One of his men, he said, was knocked down as they tried to clear Green Lane.141 When they stood before the crowd, one had his cheek cut open and another was struck on the mouth and had his lip cut. A third was struck on the ankle. Their helmets and rifles, he said, also suffered ‘considerable’ damage.142 A Mr Saville who was riding next to the driver of the fire engine, which arrived at the pit just before 9 pm, said that he was hit on the thigh by a part of a brick, though it was only when the engine turned into the colliery that he was witness to any throwing of sticks or stones.143 Another member of the fire brigade, Mr Whardall, was similarly hit on the hand as the engine turned from Green Lane into the yard.144 The Bowen Commission, which subsequently enquired into the incident, concluded that men on the fire engine were assailed with both sticks and stones as the vehicle turned into the colliery. They also concluded that there was ‘unimpeachable evidence of great turbulence and disorder on the colliery premises’ after 7.30 pm and indications that ‘more than one large crowd and many isolated gangs and groups of men arrived from time to time threatening mischief and armed with sticks and bludgeons’.145 If no property of importance was set alight between 8 and 9 pm, this was only, the Commission concluded, because of the presence of the troops in the yard. There was, they said, ‘a violent and dangerous crowd facing the military at the entrance to Green Lane’.146 The commissioners were at pains to emphasise this point. ‘The testimony of no witness’, their report states, ‘can be accepted as satisfactory, who, being in a position fully to see and appreciate what was passing at the Green Lane entrance, deliberately asserts, in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that there was no serious stone-throwing, and that the crowd was not disorderly’.147

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Troops shoot at the crowd By these words the Commission justified the decision taken by Hartley that the troops should open fire on the crowd. This he did at approximately 9.15 pm, well before the end of the hour which the Riot Act allowed for dispersal of the crowd. The Commission acknowledged the lapse but argued that if not covered by the Riot Act itself, subsequent actions were justified under the law of the land which provided that every person is bound to aid in the suppression of riotous assemblages.148 Hartley asked Barker if blanks could first be used but Barker replied that this was contrary to regulations. Hartley then asked that the troops fire as little as possible. Without any further attempt to clear the crowd and apparently without any direct warning, a file of two men fired in accord with prevailing regulations at ground line. There was silence for a moment or two and then jeers and hooting and cries of ‘go on, it’s only blank’. The crowd made no move to clear and so Barker ordered a section of eight men to fire a second round. For a minute or two after this, there was no response from the crowd, and then a cry came up from the crowd that some among them had been shot.149 Two men extracted themselves from the crowd and in a scene oddly incongruent in its apparent calm, and thus perhaps reflecting the shock which must have been felt on both sides, complained to Barker with some astonishment of what his troops had done to them. As Barker reported to the commission: One of the men came up and one came up with him and said, ‘You have shot me’. I told him I was very sorry, it was his own fault for not having gone away when told, and they insisted upon showing us the wound. Mr Holliday then told him to go and see the doctor about it. He said he would not go and see any doctor until he knew who would pay the bill. Then he walked back, and contributed to the mob.150 But there were not only injuries. Two men, James Gibbs and James Arthur Duggan, were shot dead by the second volley. Both were miners, apparently drawn to the scene by the spectacle of the fire. The Commission judged that while innocent of rioting, they were imprudent to remain in the area and in the midst of a ‘riotous assemblage’ and so in a sense bore some responsibilty for their fate. The companions of these men and the others injured were horrified by the outcome of events. Their communities were in turn first shocked and then outraged. And if the Commission ultimately absolved the authorities of any wrong doing, many of those present on the evening of 7 September were of a very different view. It is of interest, as the Commission report fully acknowledges, that most of the miners and other members of the community who came as witnesses before it testified that there was no riot whatsoever at Ackton


Hall when the soldiers fired their fateful shots, and that subsequent to the damage done when the soldiers were first on the premises prior to 7 pm, there was little or no destruction of property. Mr Joseph Deveney, a miner at Ackton Hall, said that he had gone down Green Lane at about 7.30 pm, after having seen a cloud of smoke going up. The crowd there, he said, was simply looking on. Apart from lads throwing at the ‘hanging parts of sheds’, he saw no stones being thrown during the entire time he was in the lane. When asked why he thought the soldiers fired, he replied that he had no idea; he had not seen anything which might account for it. There was no stone throwing, no shouting or jeering and neither the soldiers nor the magistrate were in danger.151 Mr George Gibbs, the brother of one of the dead and himself one of the wounded, similarly testified that he could see no reason why the soldiers should have been at Ackton Hall on the evening of 7 September. He was pressed on the point repeatedly. Was there nothing to protect? ‘Not that I could see while I was there’, he answered. Was it not even necessary to protect property that had been burnt? ‘Well,’ he responded, ‘the property that had been burnt was almost burnt away.’ What about protecting the rest? ‘Well,’ he finally conceded, ‘they might do a little good protecting the rest.’ But he seemed unhappy about being manoeuvred toward this evaluation. ‘I do not think there was anything wrong’, he stressed.152 He was standing on the far side of Green Lane opposite the entrance to the colliery when the Riot Act was read, though he could not hear the magistrate’s words and had no idea at the time what it was he had read nor what it signified.153 At the time the magistrate read from his bit of paper, said Gibbs, there were about twenty or thirty youths throwing stones at the soldiers and the magistrate, rather to the consternation of the rest of the crowd who were orderly and ‘did not agree with the young men throwing stones’. There was talking and some pushing backward and forwards but not much more than this, certainly nothing to justify the subsequent action of the troops.154 Charles Dobson, a coal dealer who resided at Normanton Common, had gone to Ackton Hall with several companions to see what was on fire. The crowd at the colliery, he said, ‘seemed to be standing looking on the same as I should be’.155 He saw nothing thrown of any sort, nor anything to cause the soldiers to fire. Shortly after he arrived he heard the retort of guns and then felt his hand go numb and with that turned and walked toward some cottages belonging to Lord Masham. ‘There I felt myself a bit fainty like, and I sat myself down, and blood streamed down my hand, and I began to feel where it had been shot.’156 Mr Francis Wood, a miner from Featherstone, described those in Green Lane later in the evening as not really a crowd, just ‘people merely on-lookers’.157 This group, he said, was quite peaceable save for some youths who acted up when the fire engine was coming into the colliery. Otherwise he saw no

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disturbance. When asked why he thought the troops had been marched back to the colliery after having left it earlier given, as he suggested, that all was quiet, he said ‘because the magistrate had come’.158 It is evident from the damage done to the pit property, and from the injuries done to the equipment and persons of the soldiers and those on the fire engine, that all was not entirely peaceful at Featherstone on the evening of 7 September. There was not universal adherence to good conduct on the part of the public. But the question of importance is who and how many engaged in what might be regarded as ‘violent’ or illegal activities. It would appear that the period of most trouble occurred between 6 and 7 pm when the colliery was visited by several groups of non-Featherstone people who broke windows, lit fires and by their various activities compelled the exit of Captain Barker and his soldiers back to the station. Though there were undoubtedly a large number of people present outside the pit later in the evening, they did not constitute an organised group, but were largely spectators, drawn by the fire and the continued presence of the troops. Undoubtedly there were those among them who objected strongly to the presence of the troops; undoubtedly there was some jostling and some highspirited discussion or shouting. It is likely as well that a small number of youths took advantage of the anonymity provided by the crowd and the cover of night to throw stones.159 But the testimony to the Commission of Enquiry taken as a whole, suggests that for the most part those assembled at Featherstone on the evening of 7 September were not disorderly, but rather observers of a scene quite outside the experience of the village. The shootings left those present in a state of confusion and some agitation. Joseph Deveney testified that he had remained ‘looking on’ until about 3 am ‘the same as lots more’.160 Asked to clarify this he entered into the following exchange with his interrogator. D. I could not sleep, I was upset. I. Upset at what? D. I think you would have been disturbed if there had been eleven men shot. I. What were you upset about? D. I have told you, on account of the men, being shot and the disturbance. I. Did not that rather drive you home? D. Would it not unsettle your mind?161 If the outcome was more traumatic, the general pattern of protest was not unique to Featherstone. There had been many demonstrations and incidents in Yorkshire and Derbyshire on 7 September. At Watnell Colliery in Derbyshire, where railway wagons and buildings had been set alight, and a large crowd had gathered, a detachment of the 58th Dublin Fusiliers arrived, and here too the Riot Act was read. The crowd still declined to disperse but ultimately did so after


reinforcements of police dispatched from Hull arrived and charged the assemblage. The authorities in this case were present in much larger numbers than at Featherstone and presumably a longer period was left after the reading of the Act before any attempt was made to shoot into the crowd. In other locales as well, crowds formed, contingents of the military were sent for and police made charges into protesting assemblages. At Heckmondwike, a colliery manager threatened a crowd with a revolver, though did not fire.162 The following day there were further incidents, though their number was now much diminished, perhaps because of the increased presence of the military. Featherstone village was reported to be almost deserted on Friday morning.163 A sense of shock within the community, however, was accompanied by deep anger. A meeting of Featherstone miners passed a motion resolving to attack the residence of Mr Holliday after dark, but the authorities learned of the plan and were able to give the house adequate protection.164 Inquest into the deaths In the immediate aftermath of events at Featherstone there was some confusion as to who and how many had been killed or injured. Several were incorrectly reported to have been among the dead, including a man named Perkins, who was said to have succumbed to his injuries at Clayton Hospital in Wakefield, and a man named Tomlinson.165 The official count as reported by the Bowen Commission was two: Gibbs and Duggan. The inquest for the latter was held in Wakefield and returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. The inquest for Gibbs, however, was held in Featherstone, took much longer, with several adjournments, and involved much more active participation from jurors, who insisted on receiving testimony from Holliday.166 Initially the coroner declined their request ‘as it would be dangerous for Mr Holliday to be brought to the place of the inquest’. His testimony was only heard when the inquest adjourned to the colliery premises and met in the joiners’ workshop.167 The Gibbs’s inquest jury comprised three miners, three checkweighmen, a deputy and community members unconnected with the mining industry: a grocer, a builder, a butcher, a postmaster, an ironmonger, a bookkeeper and a stationer.168 Six had been among the crowd outside Ackton Hall on Thursday evening. Its conclusions were rather different from those of the Duggan inquest, or indeed of the Bowen Commission of Enquiry held the following month, and provide an illuminating view of a ‘non-official’ perspective. Testimony at the inquest followed the same pattern which would later obtain at the Bowen committee. Representatives of the authorities—Barker, Holliday, Sparrow and Gorden—tended to suggest that the crowd was violent and uncontrollable. Holliday said that every member of the crowd was armed with sticks or bludgeons when he returned with Hartley.169 Interestingly, although

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Holliday was adamant that stone throwing continued and that the crowd was ‘very dangerous indeed’ after 8 pm, he acknowledged that most of the stones fell short, and in what would appear to be an admission that the assemblage and its activities were effectively contained, said that there was no more damage to property after 8 pm but only stone throwing. ‘It was all they could do’, he said.170 The miners and community members, on the other hand, said that there was no violence, no sticks or stones thrown, though there were perhaps a few people with walking sticks and some shouting from youngsters.171 At one point in the proceedings, an interesting exchange occurred between Lodge, who represented the relatives of Gibbs, and the coroner. When questioning Holliday on precisely how the soldiers had been sent for, Lodge was informed by the coroner that this information did not affect the inquiry. When Lodge persisted, ‘assuming the soldiers were wrong, does not the question arise as to why they were there,’ the coroner replied, ‘they were here under the direction of the Government and the Government can do no wrong’. The point reflected precisely the conflicting perception of both the events at Featherstone and the wider context of the strike. ‘The Government can do many a wrong’, noted Lodge.172 The inquest met over three sessions and on 13 September, after two hours’ deliberation, in contrast to the ten minutes taken by the Wakefield inquest on Duggan, the jury’s foreman declared: that James Gibbs was killed by a bullet wound inflicted by soldiers firing into a crowd in Green Lane from Ackton Hall Colliery, after the Riot Act had been read, on Thursday evening last, and that since James Gibbs was a peaceable man and took no part in any riotous proceedings the jury record their sympathy with the deceased’s relatives and friends. The jury also find that if the whole distict had not been deprived of police, who had been sent to the Doncaster races, there would have been no necessity to call the military at all, as the police would have been assisted by miners and other residents in putting down the disturbance created by outsiders. They added a rider that ‘seeing Mr Holliday had sworn there was no further disturbance beyond stone-throwing after eight-o’clock, before the firing on the crowd, who had been got off the premises, it was deeply regretted that such extreme measures were adopted by the authorities.’173 The coroner was displeased with this statement and pressed the jury for a verdict of either wilful murder or justifiable homicide. But the jury refused to be drawn, nor to concur with the coroner’s question: ‘Do you agree that the deceased was shot by the military during a riot?’ The coroner regarded the open verdict delivered as unsatisfactory. But the foreman replied: ‘If we stay here till Christmas we can do no more.’174


Gibbs, who had been a Sunday School teacher and according to the curate from Normanton, ‘not a man who would have had the least desire to take part in any riotous act’,175 was buried on 10 September. Duggan, just 25 and recently married, was buried on Tuesday. His funeral at Ackton Hall served as a further occasion for the expression of community solidarity and grief. A brass band led the funeral cortege from Duggan’s house to Featherstone cemetery followed by some 3,000 mourners, many of them miners.176 After the burial a meeting was held in an adjoining field addressed by Cunninghame Graham, who commented that hitherto in England, during the reign of the current sovereign, ‘they had not had such a scandalous invasion of their liberties as that which was attempted at Featherstone on Thursday’. Granting there may have been some stone throwing and some ‘trifling damage to property’, he considered nothing to have occurred to justify the slaughter of men by the military and he called for a special inquiry into the matter.177 The official response of the YMA to the whole range of incidents in the county during the early part of September was to appeal for calm. At the time Pickard, Cowey and Parrott were all attending the TUC conference in Belfast. Among district officials only Firth was present in Barnsley, a point which, whether justified or not, led to some criticism. A telegram from the absent officials arrived in mid-week (prior to the Featherstone tragedy), stating their sorrow that disturbances had occurred and urging members not to break the law.178 The week following the Featherstone troubles, the YMA Council reaffirmed this general line, passing a resolution condemning the action of any person who had ‘been the means of causing riots, and done unlawful acts causing breaches of the peace’ and counselling all union members to refrain from any action which might lead them to break the law. But the council also expressed deep regret at the loss of life at Featherstone and was critical of the withdrawal of local police to Doncaster and the calling in of extra police and soldiers, an action not ‘calculated to preserve the peace’. Much the same sentiment was expressed in a resolution passed by the MFGB, meeting later in the same week, which lay responsibility for the tragedy squarely on the government for having imported soldiers and police.179 Pickard added the employers among those to whom blame should be attached. He adamantly declined to defend ‘anyone who sets fire to either colliery, pit heap, or head gear’. But even had there been a slight disturbance, he considered it a serious offence that shots had been fired at ‘a defenceless mob so called’, composed of ‘innocent persons who simply went to have a look at the fire’. It would appear, he said, that ‘soldiers are very ready to fire upon so-called mobs and magistrates appear equally ready to have soldiers down’. But then, he noted, it would only be expected that magistrates would side with the employers. It was the owners, he emphasised, who were predominantly in the wrong in this entire

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matter. It was difficult to understand the action of owners in demanding that troops be brought into Yorkshire since ‘they are the aggressors’.180 In response to numerous demands an official committee, the Bowen Commission, was appointed to enquire into the ‘circumstance connected with the disturbances at Featherstone on the 7th of September 1893’, which, if concluding that a number of misjudgements may have been made, ultimately absolved the authorities of any wrongdoing. In the meantime, tempers remained high in the coalfield and troubles continued to occur.181 The strike winds down During all this time the union was officially occupied with the balloting of membership views on continued resistance to the imposed reduction, referral of the dispute to arbitration and continued adherence to rule 20. Though apparently divided on the point, there were some Yorkshire officials who favoured a return to work where the demand for 25 per cent had been withdrawn.182 But in the event miners in Yorkshire rejected all three items on the ballot. There was virtual unanimity in opposition to the first two, that there should be submission to a wage reduction and that the MFGB should subject the case to arbitration. On the third the district was divided, 16,029 agreeing that men should resume work where possible at the old wages and 23,639 voting against.183 A number of branches in the vicinity of Featherstone—Whitwood Altofts, Normanton, Loscoe and Methley—were among those rejecting the proposal.184 An adjourned conference of the MFGB met on the 14 and 15 September and officials reported that in the federated area as a whole all three items had likewise been rejected. Opinion on the third was divided along district lines as had been the case throughout the course of the stoppage. Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, with a combined total of 103 votes, were against. The remaining areas with 71 votes were in favour. The result signalled the potential breaking up of the previously unified stand of the miners as Pickard feared it well might. Possibly as a means of buying time in order to prevent a collapse, a resolution, moved by Harvey of Derbyshire, seconded by J.Murray of Yorkshire and carried unanimously, advised men to maintain their position but affirmed the miners’ willingness to return at the old rates. Over the next couple of weeks a considerable change of opinion took place in Yorkshire on the issue of a selective return to work. And when a second ballot on the question was ordered by the MFGB executive, 31,423 voted in favour of a selective return and only 2,751 held out against.185 It became clear when the MFGB met in Chesterfield on 29 September, that there was virtual unanimity among the districts on the issue of selective return.186 The owners having rejected the MFGB’s latest overture to remove their demand for a wage cut, the Federation now resolved to carry on into the next phase of the dispute.


By mid-October over 37,000 Federation members had resumed work and by the end of the month the number totalled over 52,000. The vast majority, however, some 228,435, still remained out.187 Various initiatives occurred over this period to find a solution to the dispute, none, however, successfully.188 Hardship was now extreme for mining families in Yorkshire as elsewhere in the coalfield. As the weather turned cold, men, women and children spent hours collecting bits of coal from disused works or pit heaps.189 Strike pay having run out, the YMA shored up its own Yorkshire Miners’ Relief Fund and sent official representatives to Durham, Northumberland and Cleveland in an attempt to solicit further financial assistance from miners there.190 Soup kitchens opened and relief committees were formed in many areas, with coal owners ironically being among the contributors.191 There was sickness as well in many colliery villages. Visits by reporters to the Rotherham area found a home where a woman was ill of typhoid fever. There was no fuel or food in the house and the family of five was starving. In another case a collier had gone into a shop and asked for a loaf of bread. When refused, he simply took one and walked away. The police were called in but the man said, ‘Very well, I shall be locked up. My children are starving and want something to eat.’192 Towards the end of October the coal owners reaffirmed an earlier offer to accept a 15 per cent reduction and their willingness to establish some form of conciliation machinery. The gap between both sides was beginning to narrow. Both favoured the setting up of a conciliation board, but differed on whether it should be the vehicle for adjudicating a settlement to the present dispute. The two sides met in a conference at Westminster on 3 and 4 November where the owners proposed that a conciliation board meet as soon as possible and be empowered to determine the wages at which work should resume. But the miners’ representatives felt themselves unable to accept this position. The MFGB sent the matter back to the districts, recommending rejection. Only Yorkshire and Lancashire continued to have large numbers out and it was therefore the decision of these two which was crucial. In the event both rejected the owners’ terms. At this point, in view of the deepening economic crisis and frankly fearful that if the dispute were prolonged, permanent injury might be done to the country’s trade,193 the government stepped in and called both sides to a conference at the Foreign Office on 17 November. Here, under the chairmanship of Lord Rosebery, a settlement was finally achieved. It involved a degree of compromise by both sides. But importantly for the miners it stipulated an immediate return on the old rate of wages which should then prevail, not until 1 April as the MFGB proposed, but until 1 February 1894. The immediate establishment of a board of conciliation was also agreed. This should have fourteen members from each side and an independent chair, to be chosen by the board at its first meeting. Should they fail to do so, the chair, who would have a

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casting vote, would be chosen by the Speaker of the House of Commons. From 1 February, the board would have the power to determine the rate of wages.194 There has been much debate both in the immediate aftermath of the strike and in subsequent years over who was the victor. Inevitably, any such assessment must depend on the criteria applied. The miners were pleased that they had not succumbed to the imposed reduction. In this the sacrifice endured seemed to have gained some ultimate reward, though whether equivalent to its cost would be difficult to determine. Total funds held by the YMA dropped from £163,826 at the end of 1892 to £24,156 at the end of 1893. The miners’ union in Derbyshire ended the year with just £683 as against £28,871 at the end of 1892.195 This itself, however, can only be a very partial measure of cost. Total expenditure on disputes in 1893 amounted to £227,178 for the YMA. But broken-down, total YMA expenditures for the year amounted to only £4 17s 8¾d per member.196 Clearly the individual, family and community sacrifice was very great when this and the value of wages not lost through a reduction is measured against wages forgone over the course of the sixteen weeks when coal production in Yorkshire was at a standstill. The miners did gain conciliation machinery which they hoped might introduce a degree of rationality and even justice into the determination of wages and prevent any future major stoppages. But it may be questioned how far this compromised through institutionalisation the strength which miners were potentially capable of wielding. The Conciliation Board did not bring about anything close to an equal partnership between labour and employers in the process of wage determination, not least because its structure incorporated a chairman who, if independent, was unlikely to be drawn from the ranks of the working class and thus inevitably in closer sympathy with the owners’ view of the operation of the economy. Neither did the terms of the board’s operation incorporate an element which the YMA leadership and others considered essential to it: the fixing of a minimum wage. YMA officials had for some considerable time preached the importance of a decent or living wage which should always prevail, no matter what the economic climate. At the MFGB’s last meeting with the owners before the government stepped in, they had proposed that the minimum or standard rate of wages should be 30 per cent above the level applying on 1 January 1888, a suggestion rejected by the owners’ side.197 When the board ultimately met, its members were unable to agree on a chair and the Speaker of the House of Commons appointed Lord Shand to the position.198 At the first meeting he chaired, on 3 April 1894, the miners made a new attempt to have a minimum wage incorporated in the board’s constitution, but were frustrated. Lord Shand ruled that the principle of the minimum wage could not be included in the board’s rules, but must be decided on its merits when the point arose in concrete form.199 It was almost twenty years later, and


after another national strike in 1912, that the minimum wage was finally established for the mining industry. The absence of provision for a minimum wage and the institutionalised role of the chair with a casting vote were to remain points of contention on the part of the miners. In July 1894, when the owners asked for a 10 per cent reduction in wages, hardly more than six months after the end of the great strike, YMA officials noted that two options were available to members. Either they accept the owners’ proposal that wages at a reduced level of 30 per cent of the 1888 standard remain at that point, falling no lower, from August 1894 until January 1896, or they leave the matter in the hands of the Conciliation Board under Lord Shand. The officials advised against the latter, in that the Federation would then be ‘in the absolute power of an individual who may be unfavourable to us either on the percentage or the minimum wage question’.200 On the other hand, they argued that the owners’ offer at least represented a tacit affirmation of a minimum wage standing at 30 per cent of the 1888 standard.201 The owners’ terms were accepted, thereby inevitably diminishing the sacrifice made the previous year. It appeared to some that the very terms of the settlement of the 1893 strike, including as they did the setting up of the Conciliation Board, had served as a means with but a few months’ delay for the owners’ imposing at least part of the reduction previously demanded. According to this interpretation the settlement was not so much a victory for the miners as the institutionalisation of owner control achieved with the consent of the MFGB. If perhaps unfair as a blanket generalisation, such an assessment was valid to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the chair appointed to the Conciliation Board. At the end of the period during which it was agreed the 10 per cent reduction should apply, the miners pressed for an alteration to the board’s structure. As Pickard noted in the YMA annual report for 1896, he had always favoured a board of conciliation but never a board of arbitration where an individual could come in and determine the rate of wages.202 What the miners wanted, he said, was a board with no independent chairman, where the parties involved would sort out their differences among themselves. It was over this issue, and the owners’ contention that a further 10 per cent reduction was necessary for the board’s continuance, that it temporarily ceased to exist in 1896 to be reestablished only in 1898. It must be acknowledged that the great strike of 1893 was a mixed victory for the miners. They held out to the end against a reduction, in this demonstrating a high degree of commitment and determination. But this stand was not without its difficulties. Pickard, and clearly many others besides, believed that if unity among the miners were achieved, they could be reasonably successful in preventing deterioration in their income and working conditions and potentially effective in improving both. The Miners’ Federation, with its rule 20, was the

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structure on which many hopes were pinned; and the great strike of 1893 was the most significant testing of the principle it embodied. From the beginning of the stoppage, the affiliated districts were divided over tactics. The problem was fundamentally one of differences among the various districts in the strength of local associations and commitment of local owners toward the imposition of a reduction. An attempt was made to transcend these differences at the level of commitment. But they proved too great and ultimately the MFGB was forced to change its tactics lest it lose its very viability as an organisation. Ironically, however, rather than diminish the strength of the miners’ position, this tactical change may have served to drive the stoppage toward a conclusion and force concessions from the owners by virtue of its playing on the divisions among them. Yorkshire was at the heart of the 1893 strike. That the ‘troubles’ in early September should have been so widespread within the county is an indication of the depth of feeling which permeated mining communities. In spite of considerable hardship the great majority of Yorkshire miners remained out until the end of the dispute. It was by virtue of their solidarity that victory—however flawed—was achieved.

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5 FEDERATION ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONS OF THE CONCILIATION BOARD, 1894–1906

The importance of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association within the MFGB and the degree to which YMA officials saw the Federation as an extension of their activities in Yorkshire to a national level is indicated by a comment in the YMA annual report for 1896/7: ‘We can simply say that the Federation Work is practically your work and what is your work is practically the Federation work seeing that this Association numbers about one third of the entire Federation.’1 Both Pickard and Cowey were active members of the Federation throughout its first decade and were often joined on the executive by other representatives of the YMA. The Federation was hardly Yorkshire’s achievement alone, nor simply a vehicle for YMA leaders to put their theories into practice. Policy had to be hammered out within confines described by pressures exerted by the coal owners without and the divergent viewpoints of representatives of the affiliated areas within. And once hammered out, policy still had to gain acceptance from the rank and file, who on occasion showed themselves less than willing to agree with their leaders’ recommendations. One important object of policy was the Conciliation Board, established after the great strike of 1893. If the Federation never quite achieved the degree of power that miners’ officials hoped for, the Conciliation Board, as partly its creation, did represent the type of organisation that both Pickard and Cowey had long argued was essential if the miners were to have any real bargaining power on a national level. As initially structured, the Board was essentially a mechanism of accommodation to capitalist mining, an arena for civilised, moderated attempts to reach compromise without resorting to industrial battle. This was broadly in accord with the view of many contemporary leaders that recognition of the mutuality of owners’ and workers’ interests, at least in so far as they were part of the same industry and their various fortunes dependent upon its health, would allow reasoned discussion of such differences as arose and the ironing out of arrangements providing a decent return to both. A strong miners’ organisation was assumed necessary both to encourage this recognition on the part of the owners and to allow efficiency in the bargaining process.


But the miners wanted more than this, and Yorkshire’s officials, at least, were never satisfied with the structure of the board, nor with the terms on which wage negotiations were conducted. As already noted, Pickard was adamant in his rejection of anything which could be reduced to arbitration. It was for this reason that he rejected the inclusion of an independent chair, or at least a chair who had the deciding vote and hence was no more than a chair/umpire. Pickard was also adamant that the Conciliation Board should only operate with a clear notion of a minimum wage. Even if wages were to fluctuate in accord with the economic climate, there should be a point beyond which they should not be permitted to fall, marking the lower limit of a decent or living wage. But it was precisely these two principles which were points of contention with the owners. The wages issues, which by affecting the Federation also affected Yorkshire, turned on conflict over these matters, with the miners continuing to com-promise on many counts, ultimately preferring a flawed Conciliation Board to none at all. If the Federation necessarily encountered resistance from the owners to the aspirations of its leaders and members, it was also a body fraught with considerable internal debate about how precisely the owners should be confronted and how area organisations of uneven strength and effectiveness should co-operate in this endeavour. The various unions affiliated to the Federation had differing notions of its usefulness to them or of their obligations to it. The best organised with the largest membership, such as Yorkshire, saw the Federation as an extension of their bargaining power and a means of gaining leverage over the industry beyond their local arena. Weaker districts saw the Federation as a substitute for local strength and a means of both encouraging local recruitment and holding out against undesirable owner initiatives by trading on greater strength elsewhere. Perhaps most importantly, they saw it as a source of external financial support for such industrial action as they might find essential to take. These various orientations were overlaid by differing notions of appropriate strategy for attaining the best deal for the miners or resisting the owners’ attacks. Essentially at issue was the question of how far industrial action should remain on a regional basis or alternatively should incorporate the Federation’s membership as a whole. Clearly there was no single answer; it depended on the nature of the grievance involved or the extent of employer attack. Neither was there a single resolution to the problem of reconciling divergent interests of the Federation’s affiliates. Such matters in consequence continued to claim the attention and exercise the minds of Federation officials as well as the broader membership. One instance where they figured prominently was the strike of Scottish miners in 1894.

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Scottish strike of 1894 Scottish miners were represented by a number of local associations of varying strength. But for most only a fraction of potential members had been recruited by the early 1890s. The low level of organisation no doubt contributed to wages in Scotland being among the lowest in Great Britain. Scotland was not involved in the great strike of 1893 and in consequence its miners benefited from advances when the shortage of coal led to a rapid rise in its price. But as the strike ended, reductions began to be enforced. Only the districts of Blantyre and Larkhall had previously been formally affiliated to the Federation, but in January 1894 most other associations from the region applied to join. This was permitted on the provision that the various miners’ organisations of Scotland form themselves into a Scottish Miners’ Federation. The body thus formed did not have the coherence which might have occurred had it evolved otherwise and local tensions were to hamper its subsequent effectiveness. But for the first time there was a clear Scottish presence in Federation affairs. In the face of wage reductions in various of its constituent districts, the Scottish Miners’ Federation asked the advice of the MFGB in the spring of 1894. A special YMA Council called to consider the issue urged Scottish miners to ‘fight this battle like grim death’, and agreed to a levy to support the endeavour.2 The subsequent special conference of the Federation similarly resolved that miners should give notice to strike unless the amount taken off was restored and that a levy should be laid should a strike ensue.3 This decision was to prove to be yet another test of the strength and unity of the Federation. Only 30,000 of almost 80,000 miners employed in Scotland were organised at the time. But when the strike was called at the end of June following the owners’ refusal to negotiate, over 70,000 went out.4 Very thin resources had therefore to be spread very far. The levy, which was to prove so great a hardship in other areas, was clearly essential were the striking miners to have any hope of success.5 The Federation’s position was based partly on the conviction that a firm stand in Scotland was essential for maintaining the level of wages elsewhere.6 As a YMA circular issued in early July noted, ‘if we can only succeed in Scotland we feel that we shall be safe in England for some time to come’.7 In fact the English section of the Federation itself came under attack almost immediately. The owners formally asked for a 10 per cent reduction, and though a substantial minority were opposed, the MFGB ultimately agreed to the employers’ terms. When the 10 per cent was conceded by the English section of the Federation, the Scottish strikers found it necessary to alter their own demands. Hence instead of a return of 1s a day they asked for just 6d. But even this failed to bring a settlement. As the strike dragged on through the summer and into the autumn, friction arose among sections of the Scottish federation, leading to increasing


frustration not just among the strikers but among those in other regions who had been asked to support them.8 Almost as soon as the levy was laid, it was clear that enormous difficulty would attend its collection. Yorkshire officials acknowledged that the payment was heavy, especially for those who were only working a few days per week,9 and coming as it did so soon after a major strike in their own area for which losses had not yet been recouped. By the middle of October the strike began to collapse and shortly thereafter a general defeat was admitted. It was to be followed in 1895 by a further reduction of 12.5 per cent,10 leaving wages in Scotland at a level considerably below those in other parts of Britain. In spite of the failure, some degree of unity had been achieved in the 1894 strike and Scotland remained within the Federation. The episode was, however, to have important ramifications for that organisation. Given the burden which had been placed on members of affiliated unions, the collapse of the strike generated considerable ill-will. In Yorkshire, records of money owed by individuals in respect of the levy continued to be held over their heads. When the final deadline for payment passed at the end of June, Yorkshire’s executive committee informed local secretaries that those who had not paid should be declared unfinancial and thus denied a right to claim benefits from the union as might otherwise fall due.11 According to Cowey, hundreds of members lost their death claim and their right to victim and strike pay.12 Few could have felt anything but bitterness. Though they had strictly adhered to MFGB rules, the Scottish strike convinced Yorkshire officials that there was urgent need to modify the Federation’s operating procedures. Whatever the specifics of the Scottish case, it was imperative to address the broader question of which strategy was the more effective: supporting regional struggles through levy or effecting Federationwide action. The position of Yorkshire officials was that isolated action should be avoided. ‘What we want Yorkshire to do is to assist in making the Federation a solid trade union, based on the principle that if attacked, and that if it is necessary for one set of men to lay idle, all within the Federation area should consider themselves bound to lay idle too.’13 This was to remain an issue of considerable debate within the Federation but, in the meantime, rules were altered so as to prevent particular types of failure represented by the Scottish strike recurring. In order to reduce the amount paid in support of strikes in affiliated areas and to ensure the commitment of those undertaking industrial action, for example, the period of time strikers had to be out before qualifying for benefits was increased to twenty-one clear working days.14


Attempts to construct a greater unity across the regions The concern of Yorkshire to monitor carefully the dispersal of funds was evident in the YMA’s response a subsequent proposal in 1897 to relax the conditions upon which member areas could qualify for Federation support. Cowey objected strongly to the suggestion that the percentage involved in a strike qualifying an area for assistance should be dropped from 15 per cent to 10 per cent, arguing that this would drag the federation into ‘every little trifle’, and by lessening local responsibility for local affairs would even further weaken local associations. In the end the burden imposed on the central organisation would lead to its crippling. Pickard concurred with a veiled criticism of those who wanted too much support from ‘big brother’.15 But if Yorkshire as the largest district objected to the Federation being used as a crutch and a substitute for the hard work of local organising, there was also resentment from other areas of the manner in which Yorkshire’s size could, and occasionally did, allow it to dominate the Federation’s proceedings.16 The conflict was reflected not just in discussion of the obligations of members and benefits due to them, but also in respect of political orientation. It was characteristically the less well-organised areas which were more radical in their political views and the more well organised which were the strongest adherents of parliamentarianism. The preference of Yorkshire’s leaders for Federation-wide rather than regional initiatives was reflected in further debate in early 1897 on the advisability of pushing for a wage increase. Lancashire and Nottinghamshire were both in favour of such an initiative, but the MFGB executive committee had decided that there should be no movement on wages until greater equity had been achieved among the regions. While in most English districts at this time wages were 30 per cent above the 1888 standard, they were estimated in Scotland to have been between only 6.5 per cent and 20 per cent above. Consideration therefore turned to means of bringing up the low-wage areas, and it was ultimately decided to give Scotland primarily moral support and only the promise of voluntary financial support.17 The view was thereby sustained that weak areas could not expect limitless assistance from those stronger areas and must meet their own responsiblities as far as possible. The general plea for increasing unity and equity of conditions within the Federation was again reflected in the proposal, first mooted by Smillie of Scotland at the MFGB annual conference of 1902 at Southport, but generally supported by Yorkshire, to create a uniform system of wage fixing and a single conciliation board for all districts within the MFGB. The meeting carried a resolution recommending that no section of the Federation should enter into any wages agreement binding it beyond the end of 1903, the termination for the current term of the English Conciliation Board, in order to permit ‘a general


movement being taken to secure a minimum wage to all the districts, and to raise said minimum to a higher standard’.18 But protracted and somewhat acrimonious negotiations and industrial action in Wales failed to achieve standardisation there, with the English area of the Federation and the miners no closer than before to attaining a uniform structure of wage settlement by the end of 1903. Nor were the owners in any hurry to assist them. During the course of negotiations for the renewal of the English Conciliation Board, owners in West Yorkshire pointedly resolved to oppose any agreement permitting a new termination point to coincide with the termination of the new South Wales board.19 And in the end, the MFGB agreed to the board’s running until the end of December 1906, thus sustaining the lack of sychronisation between conciliation machinery in the various regions. The goal of unity across regions was therefore elusive throughout much of the Federation’s early history, at least as regards wage levels and changes. It would continue to be pursued and was to figure prominently in the minimum-wage struggle within the next several years. But by virtue both of the obstacles placed in the way by owners and continuing unevenness in levels of organisation, the scope for truly collective action was often limited. Yorkshire’s miners remained subject throughout to negotiations carried out within the English Conciliation Board. During the last years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, it was decisions reached there which had most profound impact on local wages. Impasse over terms for continuation of the English Conciliation Board The agreement reached in the summer of 1894 on a 10 per cent reduction in the English section of the federated area also stipulated that wages would remain steady until 1 January 1896. Toward the end of that period the Derbyshire Miners’ Association asked that the Federation push for recovery of the last 10 per cent lost.20 But an air of caution prevailed. The MFGB’s Executive Committee decided that for the moment the wages movement should remain dormant. The terms of settlement in the summer of 1894 had also set 1 August as the termination date for the Conciliation Board and much discussion during the first half of that year was devoted to the terms for its possible continuation. The entire history of the Conciliation Board over this period is coloured by the fragility and tentative nature of its existence, following from conflict over the principles upon which it should operate. Renegotiation of its terms and rules was imposed time and again, generally by the owners’ side. Both owners and miners sought to remould the board into something more closely resembling the sort of institution each would have preferred. The owners were apparently wary of giving away too much and in general wished the board to incorporate mechanisms


akin to a sliding scale, so that negotiations might involve little more than ratification of a previously agreed formula linking wages to prices. The miners desired a forum where they could meet the owners on as completely an equal footing as possible. Debate in and about the board was never, therefore, simply about the immediate level of wages, but also about the very structure of the negotiating process. Demands for advances and reductions were characteristically tied to others relating to the period during which the board should continue to operate, the length of time wages should remain unchallenged, the range within which they should be permitted to vary, the size of any single proposed change and, on occasion, the very existence of the board. The rules were constantly changing, sometimes even in the midst of a spell when it had been agreed that they would remain stable. There could be little possibility of complacency in regarding the board as an established institution. Hence, though wage settlements were achieved without recourse to major or generalised stoppages in the English area during a period stretching from late 1893 to 1912, relations with employers were far from untroubled. If the board was partly responsible for this period of ‘industrial peace’, its terms and procedures were also a constant preoccupation and at many points a source of considerable tension. Miners’ leaders often experienced profound frustration in dealings with owners over the compromises they found themselves making. Ordinary union members felt frustration with the caution expressed by their leaders and with the fact that wage negotiations seemed increasingly out of their immediate control. Early in 1896 it was clear both that some owners, such as those in the area covered by the Midland Federation, were opposed to continuation of the Conciliation Board beyond the summer and that the current level of wages was threatened with further reduction.21 When the owners formally proposed that the board continue, but only on condition that a reduction of 10 per cent be implemented,22 the terms were soundly rejected by the miners. They too wanted changes in the board, but of a very different order. A minimum wage had long been advocated, and certainly had been eloquently supported by both YMA leaders and others within the Federation. A document entitled, ‘What the Workmen Propose’, which was issued during 1896,23 contended that irrespective of profits, the miners would fight for a living wage and indeed a minimum living rate. It had long been held that a conciliation board should incorporate a minimum beyond which wages could not fall; certainly there was little sympathy for wages going below their present level. As Pickard noted on the occasion of the 1896 YMA annual demonstration, the miners believed in a living wage.24 The miners also advocated a board free from an independent chair. Pickard had no quarrel with the competence of Lord Rosebery in negotiations which brought an end to the great strike of 1893, considering that he had done ‘for the


trade what in my judgement no legal chairman could have done. His action was a conciliatory one, and he performed that office in a way and manner most acceptable to the miners’ representatives.’25 But Pickard was opposed to what might amount to a chairman/umpire. The board as constituted in the summer of 1894 could do useful work, he believed, so long as it was free from such a shackle. But there seemed little scope in 1896 for institutionalising either the principle of the minimum wage or the absence of an independent chair. The proposal put by the Miners’ Federation as counter to that of the owners was that the board be continued for two years, wages remaining at 30 per cent above the standard for seventeen months, and the miners being free to ask for an advance only at the end of that period, that is, during the last seven months of the two year extension.26 The two sides were unable to reconcile their differences and after two meetings acknowledged that they had reached a stalemate.27 The board ceased to be as of August 1896, but, perhaps because of the demonstrated resolve of the miners, the owners refrained from enforcing the threatened 10 per cent reduction. In the absence of the board, the level of wages in the English area was in fact to remain in accord with the miners’ proposal, at 30 per cent above the minimum, until 1898. The wages question in the absence of a conciliation board— 1897–8 In the meantime, the question of how to deal with wages was raised in Federation discussions. Pressure from Nottinghamshire and Lancashire to push for an increase in wages in early 1897 had been forestalled in accord with a decision of the Federation’s executive committee that low-wage sections be pulled up before higher-wage areas advanced further.28 But the moratorium on initiatives for wage increases generated ill-feeling within the Federation. Similarly at the district level, there was frustration over the quashing of requests for action from those branches in Yorkshire which considered wage increases in order. In May 1897, Monk Bretton and Carlton Main branches had both proposed that the district seek an advance of 15 per cent but were ruled out of order by the YMA executive committee who declared the time to be inopportune.29 Later in the year, when Denaby Main and Houghton Main suggested going for 15 per cent and Leeds Central for 10 per cent,30 they were similarly told that the time was not right.31 A note in the YMA minutes of the Ordinary Council meeting of 4 October declared, ‘with all the counties outside the Federation area so far below 30 per cent…how in the name of reason, common sense, and policy are the leaders to encourage such a demand?’32 Pressure for a wage increase continued and impatience of members escalated. In his address to the annual conference of the MFGB in January 1898, Pickard


continued his cautious stance. Though trade in coal had improved so much that ‘our colliery owners and coal sellers really don’t know what to do with if, he considered that ‘conditions surrounding us are not so good as we would like to see’. With other sectors of the economy much less buoyant, he declared that the present juncture was not opportune for taking decided action.33 In the absence of a conciliation board, the Federation met with a joint committee on which owners from virtually all districts in the English area were represented. It was the view of this committee that ‘the state of the coal trade did not justify any advance of wages’.34 Delegates from several districts to a special Federation conference on the Wages Question held in late May, however, remained undeterred. Given the rise in the cost of living since 1894, Aspinall of Lancashire felt the miners fully justified in asking for an advance and proposed that the conference endorse a move to gain back the 10 per cent lost in that year. Others were less enthusiastic. Cowey declared that more than sentiment was required. Should an advance be obtained by asking and pressing for it, well and good, but if notice were necessary to achieve it, not so. He did not relish a débâcle where, when it came to the testing time, the men hung back. Whitefield of Bristol said that the Federation’s leaders should have sufficient courage to tell the men (or to continue telling them) that the time was not ripe for an advance. He remarked that he had attempted to force an increase in the Bristol district, with the result that five pits out of fourteen were now closed. Sounding a similar note of caution, Wadsworth from Yorkshire counselled that great care was needed. The Federation had its weak spots and was not all powerful. ‘When they considered the latent powers in the coal trade it was wise to move carefully.’ In the end, Aspinall withdrew his motion and a more moderate one by Murray of Yorkshire was substituted for it and approved. The meeting agreed that before further steps were taken on the wage question an interview should be sought with the coal owners’ joint committee to determine whether they were willing to concede a 10 per cent advance.35 Whatever the apparent foot-dragging and fears of miners’ leaders, the owners, the ‘latent powers’ within the coal trade, were neither as formidable nor as cohesive as might have been imagined. In Yorkshire, associations of owners in both the southern and western sections were opposed to an advance and committed to putting up strong resistance.36 But similar resolve was not present elsewhere. Owners in several districts were reportedly unprepared to endure a stoppage.37 At a meeting with the miners in early July the owners proposed a package which included a wage increase of 2.5 per cent as of 1 October and an offer to reconstitute a conciliation board along the same lines as that formed under the Rosebery Agreement of 1893 to decide on wages between January 1889 and January 1901 within limits set at a minimum of 30 per cent and a maximum of 45 per cent above the standard.


A meeting of the Federation agreed to accept this package and recommmend it to the members. Though the advance suggested was considerably lower than had been asked for, Federation officials considered terms which included what was in effect the extension of a minimum wage over a period of two and a half years worthy of strong support. But the membership did not see it quite this way. Ignoring their officials’ recommendation, Yorkshire miners voted 466 to 260 against accepting the proposals.38 There was considerable dismay at district headquarters and while the vote was accepted, members were reminded that the YMA would be loyal to the vote of the Federation as a whole. In the event the result overall was regarded as so unsatisfactory ‘owing to the various districts not casting their votes properly’, that Federation officials decided nothing further should be done until a further meeting could be held with the owners. As the weeks dragged by, frustration grew. A note circulated to YMA members in early September asking that they reconsider their stance also took the opportunity to issue some defensive swipes at vocal critics among them. We are sorry that this state of things continues, because the longer this matter is held over the worse will appear and not the better, as some people think. Whatever our critics may say, £1,250 per week put into the pockets of our members should be more earnestly and carefully considered than running the risk of throwing it away. Gentlemen—We begged this 2½ per cent and we are sorry that our critics were not in the room to hear all that passed. If they had been there no doubt they would have been perfectly satisfied with what was done, and probably have advised differently.39 In September the owners suggested revised terms. Should the miners really consider the 2.5 per cent too low, they were invited to refer a larger claim to a reconstituted Conciliation Board. While on its face a possible concession, miners’ officials considered this a risky enterprise, offering no guarantee that any increase would be realised, but requiring a fight and potentially strike action. A circular issued to members on 17 September 1898 suggested that the miners were ‘now face to face with a great crisis in the history of the coal trade, the YMA and the Federation’, and pleaded for acceptance of the original offer: ‘We officials believe a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, therefore recommend our Members to agree to the 6th of July Suggestions, in order to secure higher wages peacefully, and to maintain intact the Minimum Rate of Wages of 30 percent on the standard of 1888.’40 With disarming assurance that they had no desire to thrust anything down members’ throats, officials asked for their advice to be heeded. Ultimately it was. Miners wages rose to 32.5 per cent above the 1888


standard and the Conciliation Board re-emerged as an institution for meeting with negotiating wages. YMA officials had always regarded the board as beneficial to both sides and though the YMA annual report for 1896–7 declared that its temporary disappearance had brought them no evident harm,41 there was considerable satisfaction with arrangements for its continuation. Yorkshire’s membership, however, was rather more immediately concerned with the level of wages. Monckton Main branch forwarded a resolution to district headquarters that the Federation be pressed to apply for ‘the other 7½ per cent to be paid in January next’, and the council, meeting in mid-November, concurred.42 The board re-established—wage increases, 1899–1901 The first meeting of the Conciliation Board in January 1899, however, yielded little for the workers, but at a second a fortnight later43 the owners agreed to give the 7.5 per cent in two stages; 5 per cent should be added from the first making up day in April and a further 2.5 per cent from the first making-up day in October.44 Characteristically owners in West Yorkshire were more reluctant than many of their colleagues elsewhere to make what they regarded as so large a concession, and, having failed in an effort to agree an increase of no more than 5 per cent, some employers in this section of the county tried to recoup their ‘loss’ in the autumn by increasing the price at which home coal was sold to their employees.45 The miners began to clamour for an increase almost immediately upon receiving the 2.5 per cent the first making-up day in October. Applications for 5 per cent came from a number of Yorkshire branches, including Aldwarke, Hoyland Silkstone, Mitchell’s Main, Rothwell, Barrow, Thrybergh and Bowling.46 Their determination was unquestionable, not just to improve wages, but also to alter the terms of operation of the Conciliation Board, even though it still had a full year to run in respect of the arrangements agreed in the autumn of 1898. Wages already stood at 40 per cent above the standard and thus had only 5 per cent more to go before reaching the prevailing upper limit of 45 per cent. The miners wanted, moreover, to protect their current level of wages, by reconstructing the floor to its equivalent. West Yorkshire owners for their part were adamant that the 30 per cent floor should remain, though they recognised that they could not both guarantee this and prevent a wage advance.47 It was ultimately agreed that the Conciliation Board should continue after its present termination date of January 1901 for a further three years until the end of 1903. And during this period, wages should be permitted to vary between 30 per cent and 60 per cent on the standard.48 In the meantime, a 5 per cent advance was agreed, to be granted from the first making up day in January 1900. On this more positive note, the YMA membership seems to have come back into closer accord


with district leadership. There were only 80 votes in opposition to these terms as compared with 807 in favour.49 As the new year began, the agreement was ratified and wages moved up to a level of 45 per cent on the 1888 standard. The previous term of the Conciliation Board still had a year to run, presumably with the ceiling of 45 per cent still applicable. But as the economy surged forward in a mild boom, pressure mounted for a further increase. The Conciliation Board met in August and resolved that miners’ wages should be increased a full 15 per cent further, taking them up to the new 60 per cent ceiling, but that this should occur in stages, with the first 5 per cent due the first making-up day in October 1900, the second in January 1901 and the third in February 1901. Miners’ officials pledged that they would not apply for any further advances until the end of 1903.50 The YMA Council approved this arrangement by a vote of 116 to 16 but there then followed a curious episode in the Yorkshire area, indicative perhaps of a festering tension between a number of branches and the district leadership. Miners at Manvers Main and Monk Bretton objected to the manner in which the August negotiations were carried out, arguing that the branches should have had the opportunity of registering opinions prior to the bargaining having been concluded. Manvers Main went so far as to bring forward to the district a resolution condemning officials. And though this was soundly defeated by a vote of 899 to 119, a number of branches clearly shared Manvers’s view. Their complaint was apparently that democracy had been sidestepped, but the specific focus of their ire, rather surprisingly, was that the agreement under which the Conciliation Board operated had been breached, since 5 per cent had been added before 1900 was out, taking wages above the prevailing ceiling to a full 50 per cent. Hence, it was argued, the advance had been gained unconstitutionally. A special note on the matter, included in the YMA minutes of the Ordinary Council Meeting of 10 September 1900, defended officials against their critics and pointed out that anticipation of a reduction was one thing and anticipation of an advance quite another. From the officials’ point of view, the 15 per cent allowed under the Conciliation Board’s terms for the period 1901–3 had been secured early on and this could only be to the good. But there were heated words in YMA meetings throughout this period and the re-emergence of small pockets of discontent within the district. The same note which defended officials’ actions referred to a ‘certain clique in a certain locality’ led by men who misled their fellows. Such sub-district groupings which formalised their alignments through meetings were contrary to YMA rules and were soundly denounced whenever they appeared. In this case their stated complaint had on its face something of an air of irrationality. Few really objected to an advance gained prior to the period when it was to be due. It is therefore likely that the specific substance of the issue was relatively unimportant and simply served to ignite a more deeply-felt grievance shared by certain sections of


the union. The example illustrates how national wage negotiations often brought to the fore prevailing tensions exaggerating the distance between YMA membership and district officials. The 5 per cent advance went through in the autumn of 1900, bringing wages to 50 per cent above the standard in an agreement, as noted, which was rather at variance with the terms of the Conciliation Board then in operation. Then, under new Conciliation Board terms, two further 5 per cent increases were granted in January and February of 1901. The miners may well have counted themselves lucky to have moved so quickly to secure the 60 per cent, for not long into the year the market began to fall. Wages remained steady throughout the remainder of 1901, but early in the following year, the owners began to press for a reduction. 1902–3—reductions, discontent, debate over new terms for the board The Conciliation Board met in May 1902 and agreed to recommend a reduction of 10 per cent, with 5 per cent to come off in August. Pickard did not believe any reduction justified, but was apparently reconciled to the fact that the miners had little chance of avoiding one. The owners pointed to wage reductions in Scotland, South Wales and other districts and argued that they could not successfully compete in such circumstances. MFGB leaders were well aware that their recommendation to accept the reduction would be unpopular. The author of a circular to members commented somewhat defensively: I have no need to say your Representatives did their best to stave off this recommended reduction. I may also add that, as is well known, under those schemes of the Board much good has resulted and trust the arrangement will be adhered to.51 In order to keep the conciliation machinery which had brought gains in the past, it was argued that a concession was now required. But miners in Yorkshire refused to accept this and voted 1,215 to 113 that the matter should go before the umpire, Lord James of Hereford, rather than that the 10 per cent be meekly accepted.52 The vote across the Federation as a whole registered a similar rejection of the officials’ recommendation and accordingly Lord James, as chairman of the board, was left to make the decision. He gave his casting vote in favour of a 10 per cent reduction, not to come off in stages, but in one lump as from the first making-up day in July.53 Somewhat later, Pickard mildly chided his membership. In Yorkshire, he noted, ‘You rejected your representatives’ recommendation and refused to accept any reduction


whatsoever. You declared that if there was to be any reduction at all it should be under the Umpire’s Award, namely Lord James of Hereford.’ And of course Lord James took the owners’ side.54 Later in the year, in November, the executive board of the Miners’ Federation sought to obtain a 10 per cent advance to counter the reduction suffered during the summer. The YMA Council ‘heartily’ endorsed the move.55 In contrast, owners’ representatives in West Yorkshire favoured a further 5 per cent reduction and resolved to press within the Conciliation Board toward this end.56 Unable to reach agreement the two sides handed the matter over to Lord James who, after some delay while accountants checked books and the two sides drew up their cases, finally cast his vote against both proposals in early May 1903, leaving wages as they were for the time being.57 The owners re-applied for a 10 per cent reduction towards the end of September and in mid-October the board met to consider it.58 As its current term was due to expire at the end of the year, the question of the board’s future lay heavily on the minds of those present and inevitably became entangled in wage negotiations. Failing to reach agreement on the proposed reduction, the two sides again called upon Lord James, but asked that any decision be deferred until 12 December, so that in the interim they might meet informally to try to reach agreement about the board’s renewal. At the first of the proposed informal meetings, on 20 November, the owners suggested a set of modified rules under which the board might operate after the year’s end: 1 The chairman would have the right to refer back to the board any question submitted to him with or without any expression of his opinion upon it and either side would be able to submit an altered proposal and return it to the chairman for his casting vote within 7 days. 2 Quarterly meetings of the board would be held. 3 No alteration in wages exceeding 5 per cent should be made at any one time. 4 A selling price would be agreed upon such as to be proportionate to a certain rate of wage during the life of the board. 5 A maximum of 60 per cent and a minimum of 35 per cent above the 1888 standard would continue during the life of the board.59 While miners’ representatives must have felt unease with some of these provisions, the meeting agreed to recommend them to their respective constituencies. It was also resolved that the board should be re-established for a term of five years from 1 January 1904 and that at its first meeting a chair should be elected. Should one fail to be selected, the Speaker of the House should be asked to nominate one. The meeting finally agreed that a wage reduction should be enforced.60


The package of rules incorporated a number of potentially contentious points. It allowed for some increased flexibility in the formulating and reformulating of proposals and some increased scope in the role of the chairman. It provided for rather more predictability than previously with its provision for regular meetings and clear limits to the amount by which wages should be permitted to change at any given time. But though conceding a slightly higher minimum, it also tied wage changes to alterations in prices. It was the view of YMA officials that the combined proposals represented by far the best which could be obtained from the employers,61 but the package provoked considerable disagreement. A YMA special delegate meeting argued over them for a day without gaining consensus for their endorsement. The main sticking point was the clause linking wages to prices which was considered ‘too much of a sliding scale’.62 Finally it was agreed to recommend adoption of the scheme with this clause omitted, and arrangements were made for balloting to be carried out in the branches.63 The result, even with this modification, was a fairly sound rejection; 16,157 voted for the amended proposals and 29,166 against.64 Miners in Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire also rejected the proposals and it was therefore necessary for the MFGB to reconsider the matter and clarify an alternative position. Pickard cannot have been happy with the clause linking wages to prices. He told the MFGB Special conference of 10 and 11 December that he had nursed the hope for over thirty years of establishing a conciliation board that could serve as a means for joint fixing of the selling price of coal. But in the present circumstances, said Pickard, miners must remember that they were still facing a possible 10 per cent reduction. Where compromise might be required, he advised that priority be placed on maintaining and preserving the minimum.65 In the end the meeting went rather beyond the advice offered by Pickard in structuring an alternative package. But any optimism as may have attended its being proffered as a negotiating document was quickly dashed when miners’ representatives met the owners in a second informal session on 11 December. As Pickard reported, the owners’ side simply asked for the miners’ decision on the 20 November proposals and on being so informed declared the matter closed. ‘… all they could say was—you refused, they accepted that refusal, and that ends the matter’.66 In a state of considerable frustration, Pickard commented that ‘they had got some very stupid men to deal with—men who had made enormous sums, men with petted stomachs, swollen heads’. He declared that miners’ representatives had ‘exercised all their skill and ingenuity and courtesy to talk to them— to talk when feeling a burning, immense desire to kick….’67 But now, as time seemed to be quickly running out for the Conciliation Board, it appeared to Pickard that there was little scope for continuing such close consultation with members as had previously occurred. As he told the MFGB special conference, ‘if there was to be any scheme to govern wages, they would


have to give those men who represented them power to deal with the question, so that it would not have to be referred to either Lord James or anybody else, except in great disputes’. If the miners were not prepared to do that, he suggested, they might as well throw up the Conciliation Board. With a faint possibility of continued negotiation still remaining, the special conference of the MFGB agreed both to propose that the present board be continued for a further period of three months until the end of March 1904,68 and that miners’ representatives on the board should have full power to form a new board on terms ‘foreshadowed at these conferences’ or ‘on such terms as may be agreed upon’. It was also agreed that in any subsequent wage considerations the board should have full power to determine any alteration to the extent of 5 per cent. These recommendations were subsequently submitted to the districts and though there appears to have been continuing misgivings in some quarters, they were accepted. The YMA’s vote was 699 in favour and 454 against.69 From out of this crisis, then, whether deliberately intended or not, a considerable change was effected in the relationship between the board and the general membership. Greater leverage for decision-making was granted to miners’ representatives, thereby allowing a short-circuiting of the consultation process with the rank and file. The owners agreed to the three-month extension, but with no settlement reached on terms for a new board, nor on the immediate wage issue, Lord James was left to give his casting vote. In the event he chose to adjudicate on the owners’ last proposal, that there be a reduction of either 5 per cent or 10 per cent. He decided in favour of the smaller amount to take effect slightly retroactively as from the first making-up day in December 1903, leaving miners’ wages at 45 per cent of the 1888 standard.70 Pickard’s contribution to the meetings of 10 and 11 December were among his last on behalf of the Federation. During much of this period he, and the YMA more generally, were preoccupied with a prolonged and bitter legal dispute emanating from a strike at Denaby Main and Cadeby Main. This led to his missing a meeting with owners’ representatives in January, and it was while in London, embroiled in the legal tangle, that he died in early February 1904. The loss to the Federation and to the YMA was enormous and intensified by the death of the YMA president, Edward Cowey, just a few weeks before and by that of Frith a few weeks later. Their passing marked the end of an era for the Yorkshire miners. But the principles for which they stood and had fought so hard were carried forward by others whose commitment was no less than their own. Early in 1904 discussions resumed between miners’ and owners’ representatives concerning the fate of the Conciliation Board. At a meeting on 27 January, Enoch Edwards, primary spokesman for the miners on the occasion, explained their preference for a term of two rather than five years for any


reconstituted board. When pressed he acknowledged the Federation’s ultimate desire that the English board should terminate at the same time as those in Wales and Scotland. Hewlett, for the owners, frankly admitted his side’s opposition to such a course, as it could allow the ‘entire dislocation of the whole coal trade in this kingdom at one time’, ‘…it would be nothing but an unmitigated national evil’.71 But there was disquiet even within the owners’ ranks over the length of a new term. West Yorkshire representatives agreed that a termination date which coincided with that of South Wales was to be avoided, but their glimpse into the future suggested sufficient shakiness to prevent agreement on a given minimum for even as long as five years.72 A further sticking point was the proposal that a selling price would be agreed as proportionate to a certain rate of wages during the life of the board. To the miners this smacked of the sliding scale, though the owners insisted otherwise. Hewlett reminded them that prices always came into their discussions one way or the other, figures being bandied about with little agreement as to which were valid and which were not.73 But the miners remained undeterred and ultimately agreement was reached through concession by the owners to the amendment that alteration in the selling price ‘not be the sole factor in the decision of the board’.74 1904–6—More reductions but the principle of conciliation affirmed Finally, after a further informal meeting on 26 February 1904, full agreement was reached on terms for the board’s continuation. In spite of repeated attempts, the miners had been unsuccessful in getting owners to budge on the minimum and maximum range and it was therefore accepted that over the three-year period, until the end of 1906, wages could fluctuate between 35 per cent and 60 per cent on the 1888 standard. Within this period, no alteration of more that 5 per cent could be made at any one time. The board would operate with respect to an agreed selling price as proportionate to the given rate of wages, although the selling price was not to be the sole factor upon which decisions of the board should be based, and either side should be able to argue for the status quo even where a change in the selling price had occurred.75 It was additionally accepted that the independent chairman could refer back to the board any question submitted to him, with or without any expression of his opinion on it, for further consideration. Though the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association agreed to these terms, South Yorkshire owners declined and so temporarily remained outside of the board.76 In a few months’ time, in the summer of 1904, the owners applied for a reduction of 5 per cent. The miners’ side conceded the demand and the Conciliation Board recommended a reduction in two stages, 2.5 per cent to come


off the first making-up day in August 1904 and a further 2.5 per cent the first making-up day in September, and agreed that no further alterations should be made until the end of the year. But it proved impossible to gain ratification from the rank and file. A special YMA Council accepted the recommendation by a vote of 92 to 43, but it was resoundingly rejected in a branch-level vote, 826 to 357. Similarly across the federated area as a whole a majority declined to accept a reduction. And once again the independent chairman was called in to make a decision. He decreed that the reduction should be enforced and that it should come off in a single lump sum as from the third making-up day in August. Though formally outside of the Conciliation Board, South Yorkshire owners agreed to go along with its prescriptions, so that Yorkshire miners in both sections of the county were similarly affected. Wages were subsequently left at 40 per cent on the 1888 standard, their lowest level of the decade.77 There they remained until the beginning of 1907. In the meantime, various attempts were made by both sides to effect wage changes. Late in 1904 the miners’ section applied for an advance, but their effort went little distance.78 In July 1905 the owners asked for a 5 per cent reduction, arguing that the selling price of coal was 6d per ton less than that prevailing when the last reduction was made.79 But changes of economic climate appeared in the wind, and though the matter was initially referred to the independent chairman and alternative proposals subsequently made, the owners refrained from pressing their claim, deferring it until the new year.80 Early 1906, however, found the miners pressing for an advance. In Yorkshire, Shireoaks and Streetley branch called for a wage increase of 5 per cent.81 Later, in July, Featherstone Main forwarded a resolution that an application for a 5 per cent increase be sent to the MFGB to be brought before the Conciliation Board as early as possible.82 Neither of these, however, came to fruition. The term of the board was again close to expiry and from early September discussion revolved around terms for its continuation. As before, these became closely intertwined with demands for a change in the level of wages. Accepting the importance of the board, even if acknowledging disappointment with its performance, it was the position of the Federation that any agreement regarding its continuation should be conditional on the owners’ concession of a wage increase.83 The package of proposals submitted by the miners, therefore, provided that wages should rise by 2.5 per cent as from the first making-up day in January 1907 and that the board should be reconstituted for a period of five years, during which wages should not fall below 37.5 per cent nor rise above 65 per cent on the 1888 rate. Wages should continue to be fixed within these limits following the five-year period until, upon six months’ notice, either side should suggest otherwise. As a final caveat, it was allowed that either party should be at liberty to put an end to the board at six months’ notice, should a compulsory limitation on the hours of underground labour be introduced. This last was a


clear allusion to current pressure for an eight-hour day, and strongly indicative of the threat which owners saw such change as posing. These terms were sent out to the districts and in Yorkshire branches were directed to put the matter before their members and take a branch vote. The result was just 265 in favour, with 793 against,84 reflecting even stronger opposition than in the Federation as a whole, where the total vote was 62,376 in favour and 94,550 against.85 The special conference of the Federation which received this vote again granted miners’ representatives power to settle on such new terms as might be hammered out with the owners. Those new or alternative terms, ultimately accepted by the membership,86 reduced the term of the renewed board from five to three years, lowered the maximum from 65 per cent to 60 per cent, but increased the immediate wage advance from 2.5 per cent to 5 per cent. Miners were impatient to obtain an increase after wages had remained steady if not on a downward slope for so long. And they were willing to accept a lower ceiling, if their commitment to it was only to last for three years. As it was, they were not to gain the 60 per cent until some time later, in 1913. Wages did increase a full 15 per cent by January 1908, taking the rate to 55 per cent on the 1888 standard and though 5 per cent was taken off in 1909, it was returned in 1912. After a somewhat lean period in the middle of the century’s first decade, therefore, wages moved back up and remained at between 50 per cent and 55 per cent on the standard throughout the next several years. The Conciliation Board continued to operate well past the three-year period agreed at the end of 1906. Its procedures became increasingly routinised, with fewer instances of referral back to the membership as a whole. Though debate continued over the relationship between prices and wages, the legitimacy, efficiency and utility of the Conciliation Board became firmly accepted. The machinery was never embraced without reservation, however. As the various discussions over the years indicate, the miners were aware of the compromise entailed in their negotiations, particularly within a structure which incorporated an independent chair, invariably drawn from a class different from their own. It was always a curious if unsurprising characteristic of the board that while maintaining the fiction that owners and miners met therein as equals, proceedings were invariably chaired by a representative of the owners, thus sustaining attitudes of deference and subordination. A basic suspicion of the board and its operations on the part of rank and file is reflected in their frequent rejection of recommendations emanating from it. There was little desire, at least in its early years, to simply hand over decisionmaking power to their representatives, nor of course to accede easily to the reductions which it dictated. In discussing terms for renewal of the board in late 1906, Edwards, who succeeded Pickard as president of the MFGB, was remarkably frank on this point. The miners had not been deluded that the board was anything other than a means for the owners to gain a degree of predictability


within the industry: ‘At the bottom’, he said, ‘do not let us make a mistake. The ground theory in the minds of thousands of men is that this Federation Board has been used as a machine merely to settle these questions smoothly while you put your coal at a cheap rate on the market, and everybody can get coal as cheap as they like.’87 Edwards’s image of the board as a mechanism for keeping the workers in order and thereby allowing competition to reign unhindered, to the likely detriment of the workers, is a perceptive one. But of course he and others repeatedly reminded themselves that the board also left them better off than they had been before. How far the board dampened the conflict between capital and labour or was a measure, bought by the miners’ strength through which they could collectively push for what they considered their due, is a matter for debate. It is at least evident that the board ushered in an era of wage negotiations beyond the level of the district which would ultimately become national in scope. And to this extent, the collective strength of the miners at least registered an impact, however routinised and confined by the institution through which it was articulated.

6 WORKER SOLIDARITY AND THE EIGHTHOUR DAY

At about the same time as participating in the establishment of the Miners’ Federation, the YMA was also involved in other initiatives in worker solidarity. One involved stepping across industrial boundaries through participation in the British Trades Union Congress, and another, crossing national boundaries with the founding of an international miners’ congress. In each case it was district officials and delegates selected from among the executive committee who were most closely involved. As with the MFGB, their contribution there was often substantial. The intricacies of debate in these bodies rarely had a direct effect on the rank and file, but even so the union’s external involvements were integral to its history.1 In 1889 two international conferences were held in Paris. One called by the German socialists has been regarded as the beginning of the second international. The second, the outcome of a London conference the previous year, was attended largely by British trade unionists and French Possibilists. It was as a spillover of sorts to the latter, when miners from several countries came together to discuss the potential for future expressions of solidarity, that the seeds of an international miners’ organisation were sown. The rival Paris conferences heralded a period of intense debate between proponents of marxism, revisionism, syndicalism and trade unionism.2 The labour movement in Britain, and especially in England, was characterised by a number of relatively strong and independent craft-based unions which were already largely committed to parliamentarianism. But the renewed ferment of socialist ideas found an enthusiastic reception among some of the as yet little organised unskilled workers and even made inroads into the ranks of some established organisations. As the government’s labour correspondent commented in respect of the 1889 TUC, not only were the new unions strongly in evidence, but many of the older and more conservative unions were represented ‘by men holding distinctly socialist opinions’.3 The question of the precise role of labour vis-à-vis the state may have remained a point of contention, but a sense of high optimism in the power of an organised working class reigned throughout.


The renewal of internationalism and the expansion of the British labour movement were no doubt encouraged by the buoyancy of the economy. Miners’ wages in the central coalfield rose 10 per cent in 1888 and a further 20 per cent in 1889. Elsewhere there were similar improvements. Victory after a period of demoralisation served as a spur to the invigoration of existing organisations and the founding of others. The YMA participated in these various arenas partly as an initiator. This was as true of the International Miners’ Congress as it was of the British Miners’ Federation. YMA leaders had long held as a central principle that broader unity based on strong local organisation was the key to attaining the goals they sought. In the process of struggle toward those goals, they had also developed a commitment to the active use of industrial strength. If the miners were members of what could be classed as old, established unions, they were not strangers to militancy. The wages’ struggle of the 1880s was testimony to that. But the YMA was also in an important sense caught up in the spirit and optimism of the times. And the period at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s shows a rather higher level of militancy through solidarity both with other trades and with other national bodies than was otherwise in evidence in the union’s history. There was a shared sense, at least for a time, that progress might be possible and that combined worker strength could bring a real and permanent change to working conditions. But then the obdurance of disunity owing to the differing environmental, industrial and political conditions of different sets of workers imposed itself. And at least some of the promise began to dissipate and other, generally well-worn roads, were more consistently turned to. A number of varied issues informed the debates of this period. But the one most central, which both motivated initiatives in broader solidarity and came to symbolise the spirit of the movement as a whole, was the eight hours question. It is against this issue, and both the potential and limitations which organisation around it reflected, that the broader sweep of the miners’ forays toward worker solidarity can best be recounted. Early calls for an eight-hour day The eight-hour-day issue had long been a rallying point among workers both in Britain and abroad. Martin Jude, leader of the Miners’ Association of Great Britain, had called for legislation limiting hours to eight hours in the 1840s.4 The issue was also raised in national miners’ conferences of the 1860s. The goal was enough a part of the tradition of mining communities for it to be specifically included among the objects of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association at its formation in 1881. In December 1882, a conference held in Leeds, reportedly representing 257, 000 miners and including delegates from Durham and Northumber land,5

SOLIDARITY AND THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY 153

resolved that miners should work no more than eight hours from bank to bank underground (i.e. from the time of leaving the pit bank to the time of return, thus including winding times) where there were single shifts or two shifts for both hewers and lads, though added the qualification that where hewers had a double shift, but boys only one, as was the case in much of the northeast, hours should remain as they were.6 The nature of this resolution reflects both the extent of unanimity in the conviction that hours should be reduced and an internal division within miners’ ranks which was to dog the progress of the eight hours movement for over two decades and by its very existence postpone enactment of legislation regulating hours of underground labour. The peculiar shift system which prevailed in the northeast coalfield allowed hewers there to work shorter hours than elsewhere in the UK. But at the same time that these skilled workers had shifts of eight or even seven hours, lads were required to work over ten. Miners in the northeast were supportive of the general movement to limit hours, but wary of any specific measure which could leave them worse off. And so they became a focus of resistance. While solidarity was being sought elsewhere, it was specifically lacking among British miners themselves. The plea for an eight-hour shift at Leeds in 1882, however, must be placed within the context of the broader goals sought by that conference. Limitation of hours was not regarded as an end in itself so much as a means for implementation of a strategy of restriction, itself intended to serve as a lever for improvement of wages. Restriction was advocated as a means by which miners’ collective action across several districts could influence the market, reducing supply, permitting an increase of prices (or at least forestalling a reduction) and thereby an increase of wages. The means for restricting output were characteristically the reduction of working time, both in days and hours. It was therefore resolved at Leeds in 1882 that no miner should work more than five shifts or five days a week and no more than eight hours a day, with the qualification indicated above. Similar resolutions were passed in subsequent years as the champions of restriction attempted to gain its implementation. And on at least two occasions, in early 1883 and in early 1887, balloting affirmed widespread support among Yorkshire’s miners for the strategy.7 Towards the end of the 1880s, and particularly as wage advances were gained, the eight hours issue became disentangled from the broader wages movement and pursued more fully as an independent goal. In 1887 an abortive attempt was made to attach an amendment to the Mine Regulation Act to provide for an eighthour day.8 That Henry Broadhurst, then secretary to the Trades Union Congress, had voted against this move in his role as MP brought considerable ill-feeling. By this time, and even more so as the decade moved towards its close, there was a strong eight hours movement in evidence in the country at large as well as on the continent. As the government’s labour correspondent wrote, ‘the question


of shortening of the hours of labour has been steadily pressed to the front, not only as a subject interesting and important to many special trades, but also as the most urgent problem of labour politics’.9 Quite a new eight hours literature, he commented, had sprung up and the argument as to how the goal should be realised was intense. Debate over the use of the strike to obtain the eight hours In the middle of March 1889 and in the midst of the miners’ wage campaign of that year, a national conference once again pledged participants to take the eighthour day, five-day week principle back to the districts. Later in this same year, the industrial muscle which had been regarded as instrumental in gaining a wage advance was turned to as an appropriate means for achieving the eight-hour day. With Durham remaining neutral, a conference of miners agreed in October by a vote of 91 to 13 that in order to put the eight-hour day from bank to bank into practice, each district, federation or association should prepare itself to tender notice on contracts, set to terminate the week ending 29 December 1889. Districts were then given leave to express their views through local ballot. The majority of Yorkshire miners voted in favour of the strike as a weapon for bringing about the eight-hour day.10 The conference at Newport in November 1889, where the result of district ballots were reported, was the same at which the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was inaugurated. The issue was therefore a central preoccupation of that body from the very beginning. Among the seven objects of the Federation was ‘to seek to obtain an eight hours’ day from bank to bank in all Mines for persons working underground’.11 But though there was strong feeling in favour of striking to attain this end, the debate about strategy was far from closed. Many favoured legislative enactment either as the sole means of obtaining their object or for ultimately consolidating gains achieved through more militant trade union activity. The issue of the eight-hour day had been on the agenda of the International Working Men’s Congress held in Paris in the summer of 188912 and received strong support there. Optimism about its realisation had been fuelled by a threeweek strike of German miners in the spring among the principal aims of which was the establishment of a shift of eight hours from bank to bank, an aim which had in fact been realised by some of the 110,000 who had downed their tools. The German strike was followed shortly afterward by others in the north of France and in Belgium, leading some to surmise that they were manifestations of preconcerted international socialist action.13 With the spirit of internationalism strong and in line with aims articulated and affirmed at the Paris congress, Keir Hardie introduced a number of motions at the September TUC meeting at Dundee. One was the simply expressed proposal


that ‘the maximum working day for all trades be eight hours’.14 It lost by a vote of 88 to 63. Among those who voted in opposition were miners’ delegates.15 While staunchly committed to the eight-hour day in their own industry and in some cases willing even to strike to achieve it, they were cautious about the wisdom of extending the principle more broadly. Though voting against Hardie’s motion at the 1889 TUC, they also proposed and gained acceptance of the motion that ‘this Congress desires to express the opinion that the time has come when there should be an eight hours Bill for miners, and we hereby request the parliamentary committee to consider at the earliest date, and to prepare a bill to be presented to Parliament’,16 thus gaining broader trade union support for an initiative to gain their 8 hours through legislative means. In the interim they lent support to a measure formulated by Cunninghame Graham for the 1889 parliamentary session to restrict underground work to eight hours a day. Though having little hope of succeeding, it allowed an initial testing of the water in respect of the issue. At the end of the year, therefore, when the newly formed Miners’ Federation of Great Britain considered its stand on the eight hours question at the Newport conference, both legislative and strike initiatives were on the agenda and both had strong advocates at various levels of union and workforce. Among those districts which had balloted their members, a majority were either in favour of tendering notices or had expressed willingness to abide by the decision of the conference, but this did not represent the opinion of miners in the industry as a whole. Durham was not represented at the Newport conference and Northumberland had not distributed a ballot. There could be little guarantee that either of these districts or South Wales would co-operate in a strategy of industrial action. Presiding over the meeting, Pickard declared himself willing to use trade union effort, but given the lack of unanimity overall, he felt unable to recommend the conference to take this route. In the end it was decided to adjourn the question of handing in notices until such time as support was demonstrated to be solid.17 The miners turned away, therefore, from the immediacy of strike action and concentrated on building support for legislative enactment. There was a brief interlude, toward the end of 1890 and the beginning of 1891, when, in an attempt to leave no stone unturned, direct negotiation was also broached. A special conference of the Federation, held in November 1890, resolved to meet with the owners to try to gain mutual support for amending the Coal Mine Regulation Act, 1887, so as to include provision for an eight-hour day from bank to bank. Joint conferences were duly held in the following January and February, with representatives on the miners’ side from the federated area, South Wales and Scotland, though not from either Northumberland or Durham.18 No ground was gained or given by either side. West Yorkshire owners maintained that the miners’ proposal was both impractical, in that it would


‘create absurd restrictions upon working of mines’ and far more ‘injurious’ to owners than were hours to be regulated by a general Act of Parliament.19 When meeting the miners at an adjourned joint conference on 11 February, owners as a body argued that the inclusion of an eight hours provision under the Mines Act would expose both worker and employer to penal offence. To this, they said, they could not agree.20 With their proposal categorically rejected, the MFGB then turned concentration upon lobbying for their own eight-hour-day bill. Over the next few years, their participation in both the TUC and the international miners’ congress focused on this concern. That they were in both less to promote worker solidarity than to achieve very specific ends is evident from the form their involvement took within both organisations. YMA leaders were keen to use external bodies to assist in the realisation of their members’ interests, but they were wary of any involvement which might lessen that strength or yield returns to the union significantly lower than its contribution. Following the first international meeting of miners in Paris in the summer of 1889, Charles Fenwick of Northumberland took on the task of corresponding with continental miners and organising a second congress. Pickard was one of those appointed to assist in this endeavour. This was precisely the time of Pickard’s departure from the Miners’ National Union and of the formalisation of the MFGB as a separate body. And his early involvement in the international initiative ensured that the Federation would enjoy strong links with it from the beginning. The split within the ranks of British miners was reflected, however, in the plans for the meeting. Both Burt and Pickard were appointed as presidents, each to serve on alternate days.21 Over the next several years Pickard presided over several congresses and took responsibility for receiving and co-ordinating correspondence for the body as a whole. In consequence, Yorkshire’s involvement was substantial. The first motion submitted to the second international meeting of miners, held at Jolimont in Belgium in 1890, related to the eight-hour day. The meeting affirmed that ‘the day’s work in mines, inclusive of descent and ascent, ought not to exceed eight hours in 24…’. The second motion dealt with the means for its achievement and endorsed ‘intervention of the legislatures’. But here the divide among British miners was immediately apparent. Delegates from Northumberland and Durham spoke and voted against the motion while all others at the congress were unanimously in favour.22 At this point Keir Hardie proposed that miners from the countries represented co-operate in a strike movement to attain the eight hours, with a stoppage planned to come into effect from 1 May 1891, thus bringing quickly to the fore the question of how far solidarity could materialise in concerted and cohesive trade union action. The suggestion created some disarray in the proceedings. While favoured by some of the British delegates, strike action had been rejected by the MFGB as a viable strategy and had not been discussed in the context of


international action prior to the Jolimont congress. It was the view of Pickard— acting in his role as chair—that it was not appropriate to the congress’s business. A number of the continental delegates were rather more enthusiastic, but the more moderate view, as expressed by Cowey, ultimately held sway. He declared that a matter such as this must be carefully thought out. ‘We do not believe in “a flash in the pan”’.23 Debate on a strike involving international co-operation was thus momentarily postponed and delegates directed to consult their various constituencies. Meanwhile on the home front, the Miners’ Federation pressed the TUC to make good its promise of support for the eight hours legislation. Cunninghame Graham’s bill had proceeded but little distance, and the Federation was keen for the parliamentary committee to draft an alternative bill. Just before the annual conference in September 1890, the MFGB formally affiliated with the TUC, ensuring that the various district unions which comprised it would have a more cohesive voice. In profound irritation that the miners’ eight hour issue had been left to drift—on the excuse of waiting to see what would become of Cunninghame Graham’s bill—the MFGB brought a motion of censure against the parliamentary committee at the September TUC, in the process engendering the sympathy of some of the new unionists. The old, established unions, on the other hand, lined up in opposition and the motion was soundly defeated. Then when discussion of the miners’ eight hours issue was cut off through procedural wranglings, the Federation delegates found themselves in the rather anomalous position of voting in favour of the general eight-hour day, which they had opposed the previous year.24 Their concern over the eight hours issue, and with ensuring that their considerable membership strength be effectively used in its support, led miners’ delegates to intervene in the discussion on constitutional matters and specifically on voting procedures in both the TUC and the international miners’ organisation. At the TUC they were instrumental in 1890 in overturning the previously accepted formula of one delegate, one vote, regardless of the number an individual delegate represented, and in 1891 in eliminating the practice of dual representation associated with delegates from both trades councils and unions having a vote.25 At the international miners’ congress held in Paris in 1891 they were similarly active. Terms of solidarity—debates in the International Miners’ Organisation Continental delegates wanted the international nature of the organisation reflected in voting by nationalities, while the British miners, not least because of their relatively larger numbers and the strength of their organisations, wanted proportionate voting, under the formula of one vote per 1,000 represented. The


British initially lost the contest, but continued to maintain a stubborn resistance, maintaining that an ongoing international federation could not succeed unless it effectively represented the views of the majority. In order to lay the foundation of a more permanent organisation, the question was temporarily deferred,26 only to re-emerge the following year when the International Miners’ Congress convened in London. Business on that occasion was largely devoted to the establishment of a permanent body, an international federation of miners to be composed of ‘as many nationalities from Great Britain and the continents of Europe and America as desire to join in’.27 MFGB delegates again supported the view that voting should be proportionate to numbers represented and the others that it should be by nationality. A proposed compromise that voting in committee be by nationality and in congress by numbers represented was greeted with muted enthusiasm by continental delegates, but they frankly acknowledged the wisdom of accepting it as had their British comrades, since ‘without England in an international federation of miners that federation would amount to zero’.28 The British miners for their part willingly took on the role of the wiser and more moderate older partners obliged to teach their continental fellows the most efficient and reasonable ways of proceeding, their approach on occasion acquiring an almost missionary spirit. At one point in the discussion, Burt appealed to English delegates to ‘have patience’. They were educating their foreign colleagues in this matter, and it was beginning to be recognised that, whatever the mode of voting, the principle of proportional representation was the only one that could possibly be just and fair.’29 Their own experience and their own understanding of the form a miners’ union should take not only informed their opinions on voting but also directly influenced the British delegates’ stand on the question of surface workers, a matter which similarly provoked forceful debate, starkly revealing the fundamental differences between miners’ unions on the continent and in Britain and boiling up almost immediately discussion had begun on the objects of an international federation, and initially in regard to the eight hours principle. In response to the reading out of object 2: to limit the hours of underground labour to eight hours from bank to bank, Monsieur Defnet of Belgium protested that it was certainly not his understanding that the committee which had formulated the proposals— and of which he had been a member—had intended any such limitation. The eight hours, he said, was to apply to all pit workers, whether above or below ground. After some debate, object 2 was finally agreed as proposed on the understanding that the situation of surface workers would be addressed separately.30 When the congress convened for its second day, however, the question of surface workers’ hours was immediately re-opened. On behalf of the Belgian and French delegates, Defnet moved that the International Miners’ Federation must


seek to obtain the eight-hour day for all workers employed in and about coal mines and expressed sorrow and surprise at the insistence of the English delegates in dividing the workforce in respect of the eight hours question. ‘If they divided the subject they were going to place in the hands of the capitalists an army of blacklegs to take their places in time of strike. They must be careful not to make an aristocracy of labour, but rather to make them understand that the interests of all were identical.’ Such language appalled some of the British delegates. Cowey rose to declare that the miners were no aristocracy and indeed were often regarded as the lowest class of his country.31 But the essential difficulty was in the very composition of miners’ unions among participating national delegations. A French delegate indicated that surface and underground workers alike were members of the union in his country. A representative of Austrian miners noted that 30 per cent of their trained miners worked above ground. But the situation was very different in the British industry. When the matter first arose, Cowey objected that surface men were not engaged in mining, but in dealing with the produce of mining. He later elaborated his argument, saying that the conditions were not the same above and below ground, and all those present who had worked the pit surely knew that. But more to the point, relatively few surface workers were included in British miners’ unions. As Cowey freely admitted, some among them, such as carpenters and blacksmiths, had their own unions. The British unions were essentially concerned with skilled underground workers, and they had no wish to dilute their campaign for the eight hours by extending it to include other workers. Cowey graced this somewhat elitist position with reasoned argument. The English miners’, he said, ‘were not trying to lift the world with one fulcrum. They were willing to go one step at a time.’32 The matter was repeatedly deferred and reintroduced throughout the course of the conference’s four days. At one point Whitefield of Bristol reminded the meeting that at the Newcastle TUC in 1891 the MFGB had voted in favour of a universal eight-hour day, albeit subject to a trade option under which the majority of any given trade might claim exemption from the principle. Might not this allow them a way out? Apparently not, since as Young noted, there was scarcely unanimity among the British delegates on the Newcastle resolution. Defnet of Belgium suggested a much watered down motion: that the Federation declare its sympathy with workers of all trades and nationalities who might seek to obtain the eight-hour day. But this was not to the liking of some of his continental colleagues nor could Defnet himself have been fully comfortable with his own motion. As he emphasised, when he and his colleagues on the continent had been invited to form an international federation of miners, ‘the one sovereign, fundamental idea governing the movement was to secure an eight-hour day for everyone all round’. It was that, he said, which had filled them with such


enthusiasm and hope. Now they felt frustration on learning, so late in the day, that this view was not shared by the British miners.33 Later in the day a compromise resolution was offered by the standing orders committee, ‘that as the British representatives had no mandate from their association to deal with the hours of surface labour about mines they be allowed to remain neutral on this question’. But this opened up once more the whole question of the Federation’s authority and the form any voting majority should take to grant a motion the status of policy. When Defnet declared that if the British were neutral, the resolution should be considered to have been carried by four nationalities to one, the British delegates protested, returning to the refrain that voting must be by numbers represented and not by nationalities.34 Bailey of Nottingham moved that the question be referred to the next congress and there it was left, the whole episode revealing the intransigence of the British miners or, perhaps looked at another way, their stalwart adherence to principles which they championed. As Cowey declared at one point, ‘we will not allow the minority to rule the majority in this case’.35 The following year, when a French delegate moved that there be no distinction made between surface and underground workers with regard to hours of labour, the meeting remained divided. The French, German, Austrian and some of the Belgian delegates voted in favour, the Miners’ National Union voted against, and the rest, including the MFGB, remained neutral. This argument over the position of surface workers indicates not just the stance of various participants in the international community, but also the centrality of the eight hours issue. It was the matter around which the entire enterprise of international solidarity revolved. When Keir Hardie moved at the Jolimont congress in 1890 that the various nationalities co-operate in a strike to attain the eight hours, the question was only temporarily deferred. It was raised again at Paris in March 1891, when the Belgians proposed that there be a general strike beginning from 1 May. But on this occasion there was considerably more division within the meeting. The MFGB had balloted its members and, having obtained a two-to-one majority in favour of a strike, had agreed to give it their support at the Paris meeting.36 But British miners from the northeast retained their aversion to such militancy and, indeed, even to support for the legislative route, reiterating their conviction that a reduction of hours could best be achieved through united negotiation with colliery owners. Only a small minority at the conference concurred, but at the same time there were relatively few who were willing to stand alongside the Belgians and the MFGB in full support of an international strike. In this regard the MFGB found itself occupying a rather uncharacteristic position of uncompromising militancy. In contrast, some of the German and French delegates now assumed the mantle of caution, arguing that the time was premature and inopportune for a strike. Various amendments to the Belgian motion were offered until it was finally agreed that an international


strike might become necessary to obtain the eight-hour day, but should be regarded as an extreme measure only resorted to after appeals had been made to governments and parliaments to ‘agree to an international convention in regard to the miners’ eight-hour day’.37 With this the possibility of concerted international militancy was effectively quashed. The general initiative toward international solidarity continued, however, and in 1892, the International Federation of Miners was formally established. But there was little further substantial energy put into the promotion of an international strike. Though the matter was on the agenda in 1892, it generated minimal enthusiasm.38 Ultimately the meeting agreed to a formula little different from that accepted the previous year: ‘that this congress considers a general international strike of miners should be discussed on all sides; that there is good cause to provide for its realisation if parliamentary means do not result in giving eight hours to miners’. As though to enforce the preference for parliamentary means to which the MFGB now subscribed, Bailey of Nottingham then moved ‘that this international congress is of the opinion that the most successful way to obtain a permanent eight hours working day for miners is by legal enactment’. This was carried with a vote of 38 in favour, the five against all representing the Miners’ National Union.39 Focus on legislative means of gaining the eight hours That parliamentary means should be turned to with greatest immediacy continued to be affirmed within the international forum over the next several years, thereby offering support to the MFGB position. Its officials consciously viewed their participation both there and in the TUC in respect to their stance on the eight hours question, and both organisations served as arenas where the two sections of the British mine workers vied for broader support for their respective views. Though the MFGB often formally gained such support, its efforts to obtain the eight hours continued to be thwarted by opposition from the Durham and Northumberland unions and the influence wielded by their leaders, as well as by more general conservative political forces. During the 1891 parliamentary session the eight hours bill had not even gained a second reading. The Leader of the House had decreed that it was unnecessary to set aside an entire day to its discussion since that it might well be dealt with by a royal commission on labour which the government intended to establish, a body the miners resolved to boycott.40 In 1892 the miners’ eight hours bill, whose second reading was moved by the Liberal MP, Leake, was defeated by a vote of 274 to 162.41 At the TUC in the autumn of that year, the MFGB attempted to bring a vote of censure against Fenwick, who along with Burt had voted against the bill.


As secretary of the TUC’s parliamentary committee and an official of the Northumberland Miners’ Association, Fenwick’s contribution to the parliamentary debate had been particularly influential and, for the MFGB, particularly damaging. That his position within the TUC should ensure the frustration of the organisation’s own resolutions in favour of the miners’ eight hours bill served to fuel their anger and bitterness. But though again gaining the support of some of the new unionists, the vote of censure they proposed was soundly defeated.42 The MFGB’s instruction to the parliamentary committee to assist in the attempt to gain passage of the miners’ eight-hours bill, on the other hand, was again accepted with a substantial margin. The congress also agreed to recommend that all trades societies should respect 1 May as a holiday for demonstrating on behalf of the eight hours principle.43 In early 1893, in an attempt to bridge the gap between sections of the mining workforce and gain some overall consensus on the issue of hours, a national conference was held in Birmingham. Not all areas were represented, but delegates from Durham were present and spoke to the general position of miners of the northeast. Cowey proposed a motion affirming the MFGB’s general view that the most appropriate and effective means of gaining the eight hours was through Parliament: I for many years did not believe in Parliamentary interference. I don’t wish to hoodwink you on this point. I have been a convert within the last few years to this legislative Eight Hours doctrine, because after a long experience and knowledge of the worker in our mines I have come to the conclusion honestly and seriously that an Eight Hours working day could not be maintained by organization, I care not how powerful.44 Given the composition of the meeting, it was hardly surprising that his motion was carried and an alternative specifying the position of the miners from the northeast defeated. But concurrence by the majority in no way healed the rift and the two sides remained as far apart as before and suspicion remained strong that the apparently principled objection of the northeast unions to legislative enactment of the eight hours was a cover for a self-interested rejection of any measure which might alter their prevailing seven-hour shift. Nor did their intransigence merely inhibit hewers from other districts gaining the eight hours. It was based on and permitted continuation of a shift structure where lads worked ten hours a day.45 There was considerable variation at this time both within and across districts in hours worked underground. Hewers in Yorkshire worked an average of just under nine hours per day bank to bank in 1890, whereas in Durham and Northumberland the average was a little over seven hours. In other districts it was close to or just over nine hours, though in Warwickshire, Fife, Kinross and Perth the figure was eight and a half, in Somersetshire about eight and a third,


and in Argyle, Dumfries, South Staffordshire and Worcestershire close to or under eight hours.46 Hours underground had declined over time and when the eight hours campaign was in full force, many miners in fact already worked a shorter period bank to bank, but many worked more and all were subject to the particular traditions or strictures of their area or their employer. While figures are unavailable to show the specific differences between men’s and lads’ hours, data for those involved in underground transport, a category incorporating the bulk of lads working below the surface, indicates a generally longer working day than that of hewers. But whereas in many districts the difference was small or even negligible, such as in Yorkshire, in the northeast it was strikingly large and nowhere else were hours of trammers and other haulage workers so long. Believing that their claim to an eight-hour day was just and that state intervention to enforce it legitimate, the MFGB, with the consistently strong support of affiliate associations such as the YMA, continued to press for legislative enactment, and continued to meet with frustration. On its second reading in May 1893, the Miners’ Bill was actually carried by a majority of 78.47 But the government could find no time for the bill’s further discussion, and its implementation still remained many years away. The great miners’ strike of 1893 intervened to claim the full attention of the Federation for many months, but the bill reached a second reading in April 1894 and under the Liberal government was again carried, this time by a majority of 87.48 But during its sojourn in the House, it had been subject to substantial modification. A local option clause included at committee stage left it significantly compromised in the view of MFGB officials, who were adamant that unless the eight hours principle was to be universally applied, it was neither viable nor desirable.49 There followed a period of dormancy in the struggle for the eight hours. Commitment remained high, but the practicalities of legislative success, given Tory control of the government and continuing opposition from the northeast, blunted efforts. The YMA annual report for 1896 noted that the current government, through the Leader of the House, ‘positively declined to give any facility to come to any decision on the principle of the bill, by this new Parliament, although they have given great facilities to other bills of much less importance’.50 In the spring of 1897 the bill was given a second reading, but though Pickard reported that there had been a ‘fairly good debate’, voting had been against the miners with the bill losing by 41 votes.51 Two more years passed with no further progress. In both 1898 and 1899 the bill failed to reach the second reading stage. It did achieve a second reading in February 1900, but again lost, this time by 24 votes.52 The question of MFGB strategy came up for reconsideration, with some support evident once again for direct negotiations and also for possible strike action to achieve the eight hours.


At the Federation’s annual conference at Saltburn in October 1900 the executive was directed to approach the coal owners ‘with a view of obtaining a reduction in the hours of labour within the Federation area’.53 In the event, the MFGB executive failed to carry out its instructions, partly because preoccupied during the year by discussions concerning the Coal Tax and partly because the eight hours bill had enjoyed rather more success in the 1901 parliamentary session. On its second reading it had been carried by 13 votes.54 The MFGB annual conference in October 1901 expressed collective pleasure with the progress made,55 but at the same time there was dissatisfaction over the failure of the executive to act on a resolution of the previous year to approach the owners directly and the need to do so was reaffirmed. In the course of the discussion Cowey also advocated consultation of the membership on the possibility of strike action. It was right, he said, that the executive should be castigated for having not carried out the Saltburn resolution and proper in the current situation to conduct a ballot, particularly given taunts in the House from Durham and Northumberland’s representatives that they had not dared to do so. They had certainly dared in Yorkshire, he said, and had wanted to put the issue before the membership twelve years previously, but had been persuaded that it was best to go the way of trying to get legal enactment. And if Cowey claimed conversion to support for the legal path in 1893 he was also willing by this time to accept the strike as a worthy accompaniment. They were cautious in Yorkshire, he said, but they were prepared once they got their backs up to go on to the end and he believed that at the present juncture a mandate from the membership in this regard would move the House more than anything they had done before. But there were others who doubted the efficacy of a strike or the clout of a threat to strike and some who may have feared that a solid mandate would not be forthcoming. And so it was agreed that if an effort at conciliation proved unsuccessful, a further conference should be convened to consider matters further.56 MFGB officials, however, remained reluctant to act on the conference’s resolution, perhaps through optimism that the bill would achieve success in Parliament. It reached the second reading stage again in March 1902, only to be defeated by a single vote.57 At a special conference of the Federation called in July on the eight hours question, officials reported having made an approach to the owners, but providing no details, merely indicated that it had been unsuccessful. After the boom at the turn of the century, the market had begun to fall and a general sense of ill ease may have accounted for the reluctance of the various districts to declare their position on strategy for gaining the eight hours. Pickard was on this occasion cautious, doubtful that the rank and file would respond to a strike call, though others from Yorkshire, including both Cowey and Walsh, spoke in favour of balloting, if for no other reason than to accurately gauge the mood of the membership since their previous mandate was by now long out of date. A positive response would counter those


who claimed in the debate in the House that the commitment of the rank and file to the struggle had waned. A negative one would forestall unjustified optimism in the potential for strike action.58 It was ultimately decided to make a further attempt at conciliation and then, if necessary, to attempt concerted trade union action. In the meantime districts were instructed to ballot as a means of determining the preferences of the workforce, for either legal effort or trade union activity. The MFGB met with owners in the Conciliation Board on the eight hours question on 10 December 1902. But once again discussion ended in deadlock.59 Balloting on the other hand, appears to have been subject to postponement. YMA minutes contain no evidence that it was ever carried out in Yorkshire. Three more years passed without movement on the eight hours question. In 1903 the bill failed to reach the second reading stage. In 1904 it was talked out and in the following year no version was even introduced.60 In 1906 it was read a second time but there was no division. The Liberals were again in control of government and legislative success now seemed much more within the realm of possibility. The Labour Party was also gaining ground and though the MFGB had not yet been formally affiliated to it, the miners’ eight-hour bill was introduced in April 1907 for the first time by a Labour MP.61 There was a second reading of the bill with a far more favourable outcome than at any time previously, the House dividing at 279 in favour and 33 against.62 In spite of this result, the measure remained stalled. Passage and implementation of the Act By now, however, the bill was enmeshed in the workings which would lead to its enactment, and the owners as well as the miners were involved in earnest in public relations exercises as well as private discussions with government in an attempt to influence its final content. Various forms of wording for the text of a suitable bill were under discussion and the MFGB supported a formula allowing gradual implementation of the eight hours over three years, with nine hours being the maximum for the first year, eight and a half for the second, and eight the third, but balked at the government’s proposal to substitute a clause providing that for five years the limit of eight hours should apply not for time worked by an individual bank to bank but to the period between the last worker going down the shaft and the first ascending.63 The miners, however, were not able to obtain a bill moulded according to their preference and the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1908, which came into effect on 1 July 1909 did not permit realisation of the old rallying call: eight hours from bank to bank. In fact both winding times were excluded. The crucial provisions of the Act were: (1) that workmen should not be below ground for purpose of work or for going to and from work more than eight hours


in any consecutive twenty-four, but that this eight hours was to be calculated as between the time the last worker in the shift left the surface and first worker in the shift returned to the surface; (2) that the time fixed for winding was to be approved by the inspector as that reasonably required for the purpose; and (3) that the owner was at liberty to extend the eight hours for up to sixty days a year, though not by more than one hour per day. Any such extension was to be registered and the register was to be open to the district’s mining inspector.64 Yorkshire’s coal owners never favoured government regulation of working hours and had obstinately resisted the bill’s progress. But they drew some pleasure from several modifications of the original text which had been won.65 The YMA, however, was unhappy with the exclusion of winding times and with the sixty hours clause. But given the bill’s passage, they were most concerned that it operated such as to give them maximum protection and no additional disadvantage. A special national conference of the MFGB on 4 to 6 May instructed districts to refuse any wage reduction which might be demanded upon the Act’s implementation. Should any district be attacked in this way or in respect of the extension of hours under the sixty hours clause, a subsequent national conference was to be convened to decide on appropriate defensive action.66 Shortly after this conference, Yorkshire’s miners met employers in a series of joint sessions intended to reach consensus on interpretation and practice in accord with the Act’s provisions. At the first meeting on 14 May 1909 the owners laid down their proposals and the YMA took them away for consideration, Smith as the YMA’s president, commenting only that they ‘didn’t intend having any truck with the 60 days’ business’.67 At a second joint meeting on 21 May a number of points were agreed. It was first accepted that no change would be made in rates of pay in consequence of the Act’s introduction. But in discussion it became evident that while the owners conceded their right to ask for a reduction in wages for employees whose working time would be reduced, they also expected the YMA to abandon its ongoing negotiations for wage changes, particularly those involving lads’ wage scales. YMA representatives expressed some disquiet but they reluctantly agreed.68 Second, it was agreed that those not actually engaged in hewing should, at the discretion of the management, go down during the first portion of the winding time and come out during the last portion, in order to enable those engaged in getting coal to utilise their time underground to its full advantage. Third, where pits paid wages on Friday, it was accepted that they should be at liberty to pay on Saturday. Finally, it was tentatively agreed that the sixty hours clause should be put into operation ‘as the Management may determine for the purpose of making good any losses due to breakdowns or stoppages’. But this remained a bone of contention and the YMA qualified their acceptance with the caveat that it must


be found to be ‘in accordance with the true interpretation of the resolution of the Miners’ Federation conference on the 6th May instant’.69 The YMA Council recommended acceptance of the four points and branches concurred with a vote of 838 in favour, 181 against and 156 for partial approval.70 But there was a final hitch when Wadsworth, the YMA general and correspondence secretary, who had been abroad when miners and owners had met in joint committee, declared himself unable to sign the document, because it contradicted the MFGB’s position on the eight hours Act, particularly with regard to the sixty hours clause.71 Ultimately only the first three regulations were jointly agreed. The miners thus had their eight hours Act, an achievement of considerable significance, even if the terms were ultimately inferior to what had been consistently demanded. There was not, however, universal acclaim at the Act’s implementation. In Yorkshire, lads were especially aggrieved. In many cases their hours changed little, but the agreement reached between the YMA and owners ensured that ongoing wage negotiations on their behalf were halted. Stoppages occurred at some twenty-five pits in Yorkshire, most of them initiated by lads and most illegal. Over the long period of struggle for the Act, there had been voices from various quarters advocating strike action both on a national or an international basis. Yorkshire miners had been willing. Whenever consultation extended down to branch level, the YMA had displayed commitment to trade union action as a means of securing the change. But this commitment was never tested because certainty of its strength across all districts or nationalities concerned remained imperfect. The MFGB, and certainly the YMA as well, opted for exerting pressure within the parliamentary system to achieve state intervention and state enforcement. They used their connections within the British labour movement and in the international arena to build support for this endeavour. Indeed they worked actively to construct and sustain international connections initially as an explicit means towards this end. Worker solidarity was judged essential, albeit useful only to the extent that it was on the Federation’s terms and built upon rather than dissipated present strength. Throughout, the split within the British workforce between miners from the northeast fields and those elsewhere frustrated the effort, and drew it out for a period of years longer than might have otherwise been required. Yorkshire’s officials, along with like-minded colleagues in other districts, pushed their conviction in the necessity of ever-broader alliances first toward the national level through formation of the MFGB and then, partly because a truly national miners’ organisation was not yet within reach, to the broader labour movement through the TUC and internationally through the International Miners’ Federation. But these broader exercises in solidarity, though valuable, did not immediately bring success on the eight hours issue. Much more time and the


convergence of other factors were required before this was achieved, even in its ultimate, partial, sense. The external involvements were, however, sustained by the union. Though inevitably transformed as times and conditions changed and new issues emerged, they continued to form an essential element of MFGB activity.

7 THE UNION AT BRANCH AND DISTRICT LEVELS; GRIEVANCES AND INDUSTRIAL ACTION

PATTERNS OF STRIKE ACTIVITY AND LOCAL VARIATIONS IN MILITANCY While the affairs of the YMA often involved international and national campaigns, a constant call on district time and resources was also made by those localised grievances for which solutions could not be easily negotiated at branch level. For individual members of the union, it was often the latter or indeed matters which remained entirely within the purview of the local branch, never even requiring the attention of the district council or executive committee, which were of most compelling concern. The individual’s experience of the union was necessarily affected by the stance it took in collaboration with other affiliates of the MFGB in pursuing a general wage claim or other national policy. But it was local grievances which had as much or greater immediacy. For the individual or the branch involved, experience of the union was a function of how these were played out and of how the YMA reacted to or assisted with them. Grievances and machinery for dealing with them For the most part business in the branch involved personal cases, sometimes taking the form of victimisation, as well as broader grievances. It was YMA procedure that where grievances arose local officials should arrange for deputations through which they could be presented to management. Only if these proved unsuccessful, would the matter progress further and the district be called in. Records are insufficient to provide any accurate sense of the number and variety of grievances which emerged across the union as a whole in all of its branches. However, Table 7.1 does provide at least a rough picture of those reaching notice of the district during a period around the turn of the century. Once a grievance was reported to the district an official deputation led by district representatives might occur. Should no solution be forthcoming, the branch could apply to ballot members on their willingness to give in notice. If so


Table 7.1 Grievances reported in YMA minutes (number of branches during year reporting grievance)

Note: These breakdowns are only partial, covering those grievances most frequently recorded. Among others for 1901 were: tramming 4 cases; timbering 7, home coal 2 and topmen 2. For 1903: dirt 11 cases, shift working 4; and for 1904, dirt 4 cases, home coal 2, and hard and difficult places 2. The quality of the data varies substantially from year to year, being best from 1899 to 1901 . Often there is simply a reference to a grievance having been brought forward, with little indication of the problem involved. The table is therefore only an approximation of the pattern of grievances obtaining.

permitted and if a two-thirds majority of at least three-quarters of the membership of a branch voted in favour, the matter would once again be referred to the district council. Only with the council’s authorisation could the branch give in notices and thus proceed to a strike.1 At this last stage, however, the council often displayed considerable caution, referring the matter back to the branch or endeavouring to hold yet more deputations with owners. The process of handling a grievance was thus drawn out, occasionally painstaking and clearly evident of a preference for handling conflicts through negotiation rather than through withdrawal of labour. This same preference underlay attempts to stretch the grievance procedure still further through formally bringing owners’ representatives into discussion via joint committees. The union pushed throughout much of the 1880s for such committees, where an equal number of representatives from among owners and workers could consider and adjudicate disputes. A specific proposal in 1886 for a joint committee under an independent chair to deal with all disputes relating to the general rate of wages faltered on the question of incorporating a minimum level of wages, which the miners staunchly defended but the owners found themselves unable to agree to. The matter then lapsed for some time. However, in 1890 disputes at Mitchell Main and Carlton Main in South Yorkshire were brought before what would seem to have been an ad hoc joint committee, with representatives from both workers and owners. Each was

THE UNION AT BRANCH AND DISTRICT LEVELS 171

referred to a different independent umpire. The experiment apparently proving satisfactory, the owners considered that the committee should grow into ‘a more important and permanent institution’.2 Over the next two years, two more disputes in South Yorkshire went to a joint committee.3 In West Yorkshire a similar committee was set up in the middle of 1891, largely, it would seem, at the instigation of the YMA.4 The West Yorkshire owners’ association had routinely appointed a sub-committee from their membership to advise the owners and management of any colliery where a dispute had arisen, but now appointed a special committee to meet a delegation from the YMA. Over the rest of the year, the joint committee so constituted dealt with difficulties at seven firms.5 Pleased with this performance, YMA officials suggested at the conference with owners attempting to find a solution to the great strike of 1893 that a conciliation board for the federated area as a whole might well be modelled on those already operating in Yorkshire.6 Once in place, the YMA pushed owners to utilise local conciliation machinery as much as possible. By the turn of the century, up to ten disputes per year were being considered by each of the county’s two committees. Patterns of strike activity The addition of joint committees to the YMA’s own grievance procedures reduced the number of disputes which ultimately materialised as stoppages through strikes or lock-outs. But negotiation alone was not always enough to prevent the giving in and acting on notices. And each year the mining industry in Yorkshire was subject to a number of strikes.7 Pickard addressed this point at the YMA’s annual demonstration in 1897, lamenting that the number of stoppages seemed to belie the union’s membership strength. Even though there had been no major strike that year, he said, ‘we have had so many disputes of one sort or another, that it almost makes one feel ashamed. With our membership of over 50, 000, still some colliery managers take the trouble to punish some of our weaker brethren.’8 Many more could have their work affected in a strike or lock-out beyond those immediately in dispute. Strike figures accordingly differentiate between those directly and indirectly involved in any stoppage. As indicated in Table 7.2, the majority of stoppages in most years during the period 1894 to 1902 were initiated by, or directly involved, underground miners, that group which the YMA primarily represented, though in a number of years a considerable number of disputes involved lads. Efforts of the YMA to limit stoppages through the construction of negotiation procedures was clearly of little use in dealing with those disputes involving non-members. And this would increasingly be a cause for concern and one factor underlying attempts to extend YMA membership to an industry-wide basis.


Table 7.2 Disputes in the Yorkshire mining industry as recorded in annual reports on strikes and lock-outs

Source: Annual Reports on Strikes and Lock-outs for years specified.

Based on information contained in the Annual Reports on Strikes and Lock-outs over a period near the turn of the century, a rough breakdown of the primary causes of strikes in the Yorkshire coalfield shows the extent to which issues of wage levels dominated9 (see Table 7.3). It is evident from the figures that strikes resulting from attempts by miners at a given pit to gain an advance were much less common than those resulting from resistance to a reduction, real or perceived. Among more specific causes were the establishment or change in a pit’s official price list, a change in the mode of working imposed by management which affected the level of output and therefore the level of wages, a complaint that changing geological conditions affected output, thereby requiring an adjustment in the price list, an attempt by management to impose an overall reduction or an attempt on the part of workers to secure an overall advance. In view of the fact that the nature of the coal and the ease with which it was cut varied from seam to seam and even from place to place within a seam in the same pit, let alone the fact that vagaries in the market persuaded owners from time to time to make alterations directly or indirectly so as to reduce the cost of labour, it is hardly surprising that grievances over price lists and ultimately over wages were common. What is surprising is that they did not more frequently lead to strikes. If the mining industry characteristically accounted for a considerable proportion of all strikes within the national economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,10 the number which occurred in any given coalfield, such as Yorkshire, was still relatively small. The YMA Council and executive committee always devoted a good portion of their time to ongoing


Table 7.3 Causes of strikes and lock-outs in the Yorkshire mining industry in which hewers were primarily involved, 1895–1902

Source: Annual Report on Strikes and Lock-outs for years specified.

disputes within the county. There were always a number of strikes each year. But given the number of pits in the district, the total so disrupted was very small. Once disputes reached the stage of a lock-out by owners or downing of tools by the workers, a new set of procedures was entered into. Workers now out of work and income were supported by strike pay where the action was officially sanctioned by the union. And further attempts at negotiation were entered into on the part of officials. The firm for its part often received an ‘indemnity’ from the coal owners’ association. The provision of such financial support during stoppages was indeed one of the primary reasons for the establishment of the county’s two owners’ associations. Amounts distributed to ‘protect’ the firm and assist it withstanding workers’ collective action were often quite substantial. The concern of the union was characteristically to maintain its stand as far as possible, entering into further discussions with management so far as this remained an option, but also giving in as little as possible. Exact procedures followed depended to some extent on the nature of the particular management involved. How far strikes or lock-outs ended with settlements in the workers’ favour is not always easy to evaluate, but on the whole the YMA enjoyed some success during this period. The outcome was at least partially, if not fully, successful, over 60 per cent of the time (see Tables 7.4 and 7.5). Level of success in these terms is a consequence of a number of factors, including strength of the union and the general economic situation. Summary figures covering just a few years thus indicate little about the longer-term pattern of worker-owner confrontation


Table 7.4 Outcomes of strikes and lock-outs in the Yorkshire mining industry in which hewers were primarily involved, 1895–1902

Source: Annual Reports on Strikes and Lock-outs for years specified. Table 7.5 Outcomes of strikes and lock-outs in the Yorkshire mining industry in which hewers were primarily involved by cause of dispute, 1895–1902

Source: Annual Reports on Strikes and Lock-outs for years specified.

in the Yorkshire coalfield. As will be seen there were a number of long and bitter strikes in Yorkshire which the workers and the union lost. Still on the whole, when strike action was adopted, however reluctantly, it more often than not assisted in maintaining, if not improving, the conditions of miners in Yorkshire.


Local variation in frequency of industrial action If at district level there was almost always a dispute somewhere in the county requiring attention, local committees were in general much less preoccupied with imminent strike action, their concern concentrated upon those relatively infrequent episodes when local strikes loomed or broke out. The number and substance of local grievances and the level of satisfaction gained in dealings with management varied considerably from one branch to the next. Some were relatively trouble free over long periods. Others were hotbeds of agitation, with frequent complaints over management activities. The extent to which any given pit can be judged as ‘troubled’ may be measured by a number of indicators including instances of victimisation, frequency of local deputations to management, extent to which grievances were forwarded to district level for consideration, number of deputations led by district officials, number of times cases were referred to joint committees, number of requests to hold local ballots to test opinion on handing in of notice, number of lock-outs reported and number of strikes engaged in. Different branches displayed very different patterns in terms of these various measures. For some there seems to have been repeated incidence of serious grievance which was, however, capable of being managed through negotiation and conciliation machinery. At others tensions seem to have escalated rapidly, with one side or the other clearly unwilling to compromise. At yet others, little indication exists that any problem arose sufficiently serious to require district intervention. At many pits workers never experienced a stoppage save for national initiatives, which in turn became relatively few following the great strike of 1893. Over the entire period, 1894 to 1918, as many as twenty-nine branches showed no record of any local strike or lock-out sufficient to be recorded in governmental reports of strikes or lock-outs or to draw mention in either YMA or owners’ associations’ minutes.11 Of the rest, most had only one or two over the entire period. For twelve of these the only stoppages which occurred were due to action by lads. YMA branches at pits owned by T. & R.W.Bowers in West Yorkshire, Bowers 1, 2 and 3, are cases where few local grievances assumed serious proportions and no local stoppages occurred. Throughout the period 1894 to 1918 there is only one instance of a local ballot being requested, in this case by Bowers 2 branch in 1897 and in the event not culminating in any further action. Apart from this, notices of grievances or requests for official deputations reached district headquarters from all three Bowers branches combined only fifteen times.12 Two other apparently quiet branches were those at East Ardsley and Elsecar. Yet even here where no strikes or lock-outs occurred during the entire period from 1894 to 1918, there were several incidents requiring district attention. A grievance from East Ardsley went before the joint committee in 1900. In 1909


Elsecar was allowed to take two weeks’ average of wages. The following year price-list problems came to a head and the branch requested permission to ballot. Throughout much of this and the following year the case festered, entailing episodes of negotiation and repeated deferral of the decision on balloting, until finally the problem was settled. Over subsequent years there were some difficulties about non-unionism at Elsecar and in 1915 the branch asked to ballot on a grievance related to home coal. A further difficulty emerged in 1917 relating to snap time, which was ultimately referred to the joint committee. But none of these materialised in stoppages. Only in 1918, in association with a district-wide campaign to improve wages and hours of surface workers, was there a lock-out involving payment of dispute benefit to YMA members on the pit top.13 At most branches, however, a number of grievances invariably arose over the years requiring district attention through official deputations or referral to joint committee. At most, several requests to ballot were made. But it is testimony to the effectiveness of the YMA’s negotiating machinery (as well perhaps as to a slight conservatism or reluctance to unnecessarily foment conflict), that relatively few ever erupted into strikes. Of those stoppages that did occur in the Yorkshire coalfield, moreover, many were initiated not by YMA members, but by other categories of workers. A measure of this is the fact that in the later years of the period, there were more cases where branches were authorised to receive lock-out pay than strike pay. Even so there were some branches which experienced an unusual level of disruption. Sometimes this was episodic or confined to a relatively short period. In other cases, an unsettled air seemed to plague a pit over a relatively long time. There were as many as twenty-two branches which suffered strikes lasting across two or more calendar years during the entire period 1894–1918, for which reasonably comprehensive records are available.14 In many of these cases work resumed rather earlier, but members remained on strike pay because strikebreakers had taken their places, newly-introduced machinery had reduced the need for labour, or the local branch, with district support, had refused to back off from its principled stand. For whatever reasons, such strikes were highly disruptive to the locality as well as a considerable financial burden on the union and thus had indisputable impact. Among such troubled branches was Hemsworth, which suffered as many as ten strikes or lock-outs over the period with one of considerable duration.15 It was a pit where calm seemed shortlived, until the original firm which opened it out went into liquidation and the colliery came under new ownership. Another unsettled pit was Glasshoughton, where there was a stoppage in 1894 by topmen, a strike lasting nine months in 1898, another in 1902, a lock-out over machine prices beginning in 1903 and lasting into the following year, with all members finally declared off the books and the action officially ending only in 1907, and


Table 7.6 YMA branches enduring longest duration strikes or largest number of strikes during 1894–1918 by general wage level

further instances of lock-out pay being authorised in 1907, 1908, 1909 and 1914.16 Yet another problem branch, at least during the early years, was Fryston 1, where there was a stoppage in 1894, a strike involving 150 workers in July 1895, a lock-out in 1896, a strike over a machine-cutter beginning in 1897 and lasting into 1899 and a further strike in 1902, lasting into 1904.17 It is easy to note, but more difficult to interpret, such variable patterns among branches with respect to grievances raised, ballots taken, or stoppages effected. In some cases branches most prone to strikes and lock-outs could be judged as industrially militant in the sense of showing unwillingness to compromise. But such militancy’ was frequently a function of managerial style. Branches appearing militant may have been those most subject to frequent provocation or perhaps to managerial clumsiness. It is certainly the case that most grievances were defensive, involving protests at changes in working conditions or wages which entailed relative disadvantage over what had maintained previously. Yet at the same time not all branches fought back against hardlined and recalcitrant managerial practice. Some were cowed or relatively complacent. It is of interest that low-wage pits were not more noticeably prone to strikes than high-wage pits. Among the most ‘troubled’ pits, there was a mixture of wage conditions, though perhaps those with the greatest number of strikes tended to be toward the lower end of the wage spectrum within the county and those out for long duration slightly toward the higher end (see Table 7.6).18


Variable Levels of militancy Militancy of branches can be seen not just in respect of local stubbornness and stoppages but also in respect of position on questions faced by the district as a whole regarding broader wage proposals or the conduct of county-wide or national action. Measures to gauge such militancy are both crude and meagre. But there are several district-wide ballots which can be used as very rough indicators of branch orientation.19 Their interpretation is problematic,20 but at the least it is possible to identify strong patterns of branches holding out on questions of principle or being at variance with the recommendations of district officials. What emerges from analysis of branch voting is the lack of a consistent position characterising many branches over the years as variously militant or moderate. Some branches may have acquired a reputation along these lines and local leaders may have energetically cultivated a ‘tradition’ of their branch as activist or complacent, but this was not always sustained throughout the entire period. Changes in local personalities as well as in both local and broader conditions frequently affected the general orientation of a branch, causing it either to fluctuate or move from militancy to passivity or from agreement with to opposition toward district leadership or vice versa as time progressed. While most of the district votes which have been taken as markers of opinion refer to wage questions, two relate to political stance, one concerning whether or not the YMA should affiliate with the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and the second whether there should be affiliation with the Federation of Trades. There is no reason to assume a necessary correspondence between political and industrial relations positions. Yet such a link may well have been perceived within the union. The extent to which it shows up in voting patterns is itself of some interest. Albeit no more than rough generalisations can be made on the basis of these data from YMA records, and granting that many branches were characterised by a mixture of views over the two decades from which the ballots are drawn (1885– 1904), there are those which can be described with some confidence as either particularly militant and politically progressive or particularly non-militant and politically moderate in their stance. These have been listed in Table 7.7. That there are more branches in the non-militant than the militant category is partly a reflection of the overall stance of the YMA which, while often fiesty, essentially leaned toward negotiation and conciliation (and Liberal politics) than toward confrontation. But it is also partly a function of the selection of ballots chosen as markers of opinion, which was intended to focus on those issues which were particularly controversial and with respect to which militancy, such as it might be judged, could be more reliably distinguished from moderation. Among those branches identified as most militant and politically progressive in district balloting are several which suffered particularly prolonged local


Table 7.7 Most ‘militant/progressive’ and ‘non-militant/moderate pits

strikes or were particularly ‘strike prone’. This was not true of all, for Beeston and Rothwell had no local stoppages at all over the entire period 1894 to 1918 and at Manvers 2 the only stoppage was an action by lads. At the same time there are several branches characterised by the district ballot vote as non-militant and politically moderate which endured long strikes, such as Fryston 2, Grange Moor, Rawmarsh and South Hiendley, or which were particularly ‘strike prone’ such as Old Silkstone and Soothill. Thus there was no absolute coincidence between militancy measured by local stoppages and voting on district ballots. But there is a clear tendency for the two to go together, since the proportion of ‘troubled’ pits is much higher among those in the militant than the non-militant category of Table 7.7. It may have been that a general militant stance was a factor promoting local disputes or prompting a reluctance to give in to perceived injustice. But there are also cases where persisting grievances and managerial recalcitrance in local negotiation prompted a broader, more critical view of industrial relations and of the political role of labour. These matters are complex and interlinked factors are difficult to sort out at a general level. But in specific cases it is sometimes possible to disentangle them. There were undoubtedly cases where stubbornness on the part of a branch, or even personality conflicts among branch officials, led to the initiation and sometimes the prolongation of disputes. There were others where a particularly hardlined or, in some cases,


inept management repeatedly fomented problems and where a bitter dispute radicalised branch members both politically and in respect of industrial action. In some cases, these ‘mobilised’ branches could be perceived as a somewhat unwanted thorn in the union’s side, since their persistent problems and appeals for district assistance could entail a considerable call on the time and energy of district officials as well as monopolising a disproportionate share of council and executive committee business. But they could also be significant in putting pressure on the union and in moving it in new directions. They could be its conscience as well as its occasional burden. On the other hand, moderate branches could serve as the solid centre of the union. There was a tendency for many quiet branches, with few grievances reported to the district and few requests to ballot on giving notice, to be characteristically moderate in political orientation or non-militant in their view of the course the union should adopt in respect of district or national industrial action. In some cases these may have verged toward apathy or timidity, their preference for inactivity being as great if not greater a problem than unbridled or unthinking militancy. The YMA was always a mixture and the richness of its history is a reflection of the variety of experience of individual branches. While it is possible to trace the general flow of policy and programme at district level, and much less so to detail that of the various branches, it is important to emphasise that the nature of the union differed from the perspective of each of its branches, as coloured by local conditions, campaigns, the character of local leadership and the response of the membership. The whole is made of individual traditions, among which there was considerable diversity. Alongside the mosaic of individual variation, however, it is possible to identify major areas of concern which repeatedly cropped up or which affected a number of branches in the district. These tended to be constituted as issues which were closely monitored and which occasionally became the objects of district policy. Some, such as non-unionism and orientation towards lads and surface workers, related to the scope and inclusiveness of the union itself as these were understood by its members and affected realisation of their goals. Others, such as the response to the introduction of technological change and the setting and adjusting of price lists in such a way as to allow some degree of comparability across neighbouring pits, were of a more immediate economic nature, relating to working conditions and gaining a just return for labour. As together these four issues were so central to the YMA’s business, their elaboration throws considerable light on the nature of the organisation, the conduct of disputes and the relations between district and branch. The following sections of this, as well as those of the subsequent chapter, look at each in turn, with illustrative cases which occurred during the 1890s and early 1900s. In the


process the experiences of individual branches as well as the overall district experience can be highlighted. PRICE-LIST ISSUES Among the various grievances which the YMA took up and pursued in the form of district-level campaigns, whether involving the issue of non-unionism or changes in working conditions or various forms of technological change, an overriding concern, often permeating other more specific ones, involved the level of wages. Miners were acutely aware that the distribution of value created in the mines between profits and wages marked the basis of conflict between themselves and their employers. They were under no illusions that coal owners would do otherwise than keep wage costs as low as possible nor that changes introduced in the pit were primarily directed toward this end rather than toward improving working conditions. Protection and promotion of wage levels were basic concerns of the Miners’ Federation and this was similarly so of the YMA. While the overall relation of wages to market changes was increasingly monitored at the level of the Federation, the district kept a sharp eye on local changes in wages as these were formulated and formalised in the price list. Price lists varied from colliery to colliery and were highly detailed. If day workers (or datallers) were so called because they received a wage for a day, face workers essentially worked at piece rates, each operation or task having a separate, specified price. This in turn was a function of the mode of working a pit. Given variations between pits, as well as changes over time, the situation was a highly complex one, such that comparability between cases could only be hazarded with caution. Variations in mode of working the coal A great variety of modes of working the coal were to be found in Yorkshire, in some cases two or more different modes being used in the same pit and even in the same seam. In the country at large, modes of working were generally categorised into two broad types—the pillar system, the oldest form and generally associated with the coalfield of the northeast, and the long-wall method, used in Shropshire from the seventeenth century.1 The pillar system involved what was referred to as narrow work, in that the face being excavated at any point was often no more than a few yards in width and bounded by pillars of coal left to support the roof. The size and shape of these pillars varied greatly according to depth and custom, so that on occasion they comprised a considerable proportion of the coal and if left unworked entailed extensive wastage. The long-wall system involved the working of a long or wide face. In


some cases it was distinguished by the term wide work as opposed to the narrow work of the pillar system. In its purest form the long-wall method involved extraction of the whole of the coal, with none being left and wasted. Over time there was a general tendency toward adoption of the long-wall method where conditions allowed. In Yorkshire it seems to have been introduced around the middle of the nineteenth century. But its introduction was uneven and throughout the second half of that century variations on both the pillar and the long-wall method were used.2 In general long-wall work was considered particularly suitable where the coal was very strong, or where beds were very thin and a considerable height was required for constructing roads, or where coal rested on a thick bed of dirt (which could then be holed thereby avoiding the creation of slack or small coal invariably produced by holing directly into the bottom layer of coal itself), or where a band of thick dirt separated sections of the seam. Where the roof was hard, the long-wall method was thought inappropriate because the roof tended to crush the coal as it settled. On the other hand where dirt or stone had to be removed from underneath or from a band running through the coal—and especially in thin seams where such rubble might for reasons of space have to be sent up out of the pit— long-wall working with gob roads was thought highly suitable. In other words, where expense could be saved through using materials in the construction of gob roads, which had to be removed anyway before clean coal could be extracted, the long-wall method was preferable. Pillar work was considered particularly suitable where the roof was strong, except in cases where the coal rested on a bed of dirt or was crossed by bands of dirt —or where the seam was very thin.3 The value of coal in any given mine generally depended on the amount which could be extracted per foot per acre, relative to the cost entailed to retrieve it, itself dependent upon such factors as the ease of extraction and the costs of driving and maintaining roads, and on the relative proportion of small coal or slack obtained, which might fetch only half the price of large coal In some cases the small coal was riddled out and left in the pit. In others it was sent to the surface and sold.4 But it was preferred that the mineral sent up contain as small a proportion of slack as possible and hence a method of working was sought which did not itself contribute to the crushing of the coal. One important means of achieving this aim was to work the coal from the end rather than along the grain. Hence there was concern in some cases to avoid too much strait work by which boards were driven through the coal perpendicular to the grain, though this too depended on the nature of the coal, whether hard or friable. It was perhaps particularly in the latter case that end work was suitable.5 The mode of working coal necessarily had implications for the labour process, affecting the division of labour, the conditions of work and the welfare of the miner. It was a management—not a workers’—decision as to which mode or


variation was adopted. But inevitably it was the workers who bore the immediate brunt of any decision which was misconceived. They were acutely conscious of the conditions under which they worked, with expertise gained from experience and the necessity of ensuring life and limb. And they were as schooled in the effects of the mode of working on their wages as was the management in respect of the question of profits. For all the complexity of the price-list system, they understood all too well the impact of even apparently minute variations. And this made the need to establish and monitor a workable and ‘fair’ price list all the more critical. Initial setting of a price list The first necessity at a pit, then, was agreement on a satisfactory price list. Otherwise miners were unable to present a clear case for a grievance over pay. At many pits a price list was established early on, but at others there was no formal specification, and there energies were engaged in the struggle simply to obtain a written document specifying prices. In 1900, for example, miners pushed for price lists at both Mirfield and Pontefract. As the Pontefract secretary explained, ‘We want a proper Price List, signed by the Management, so that every man can see what he is entitled to for the work he does. As it is now worked by custom, some men get paid for work done, and others do not, because they do not know what they are entitled to, owing to not having a Price List to refer to.’ In this instance unsuccessful deputations provoked the branch to request permission to give in notice as a last alternative.6 The initial formulation of a price list at any pit or in any new seam was a delicate task and sometimes became the occasion for bitter and prolonged dispute. This issue, among others, was one which dogged relations between workers and employers at Hemsworth and became an important factor in the major disruption at that pit which occurred in the early years of the century. But exercises in formalising getting prices elsewhere were sometimes troubled as well. The YMA was well aware of the difficulties involved in this process. Early in 1896, Wath Main branch forwarded a resolution to the district suggesting that when new collieries were started or when new seams opened in existing collieries, the number employed in getting coal should be kept at a minimum until a price list was agreed.7 It was important to fix prices securely as soon as possible in order to protect the interests of the workers, but at the same time was difficult to do so before a seam was fully opened out. Prior to the rate of productivity being fully established, it was in the interests of the workers as well as the management to operate on an interim basis with a day rather than a piece rate. But the changeover was fraught with potential dangers.


Ackton Hall—1897 In 1897 a problem was met at this point in the Silkstone seam of Ackton Hall, resulting in a stoppage of seven and a half months at the pit, which had only a few years earlier been the scene of tragedy when troops opened fire on a crowd. Settlement was reached only after a price list was worked out by the West Yorkshire joint committee on the basis of prices obtaining in the seams of a neighbouring colliery.8 Difficulties at Ackton Hall came to a head in March 1897 when the manager, Holliday, informed workers who had been on day wages for some time that the company now required a price list. He held several meetings with the miners who ultimately proposed that the matter be left to arbitration. But the men rejected the terms of the award subsequently made and resisting pressure from the YMA to send the case to the joint committee, Holliday gave notice to his workforce. His offer stood at 1s 7d per ton, a rate which the workers considered unreasonable in view of the amount of dirt which had to be removed in working the seam.9 After several unsuccessful attempts to hold deputations, the YMA authorised workers in the two seams still being worked at Ackton Hall to give in notices in support of those locked out. This seems to have concentrated minds and the entire matter was, after all, referred to the joint committee, where a settlement was reached. Strafford Main—1898 The following year a dispute bearing many similarities to that at Ackton Hall occurred at Strafford Main. The owners had opened up a new seam but were unable to reach agreement with the workers on a price list and in particular on the degree of difference in the appropriate prices between the old and new seams. The case went to the joint committee where it was first referred to a subcommittee of two representatives from each side and then to an umpire.10 Again the workers were dissatisfied with the award made and refused to work under it, declaring it to entail a large reduction over previous earnings and complaining about the disparity of prices between the old and new seams.11 When a strike involving 826 directly and 113 indirectly began at Strafford Main in November 1898,12 the owners received the firm backing of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association with financial support ultimately reaching £18,530 6s 11d.13 Its secretary, F.Parker Rhodes, expressed his conviction that what was involved was a question of principle as well as one of expediency. It was imperative in his view that the negotiating machinery within the district be adhered to and the results of arbitration carried out via that machinery upheld. ‘Every Coal-owner who takes part in protecting the Strafford Company,’ he said,


‘is protecting himself at the same time.’14 Paradoxically, the South Yorkshire owners were convinced of the necessity of sustaining the strike at Strafford Main as a means of supporting principles of negotiation and the gradual abolition of strikes, rather than giving in to the workers’ position and thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the strike weapon. It was the opinion of Parker Rhodes that in this case arbitration had resulted in a fair decision, providing a compromise between the demands of the workers and the owners. That the workers should have pressed the matter to a strike was in his view the work of a ‘small section of the men employed in the old pit [who] have for a long time past been seizing opportunities to create mischief’.15 The position of the union on the causes and legitimacy of the dispute was rather different, though here too there was strong resolve to give all support necessary to those immediately involved. In consequence the stoppage was to continue for many months. In April 1899 the branch appealed for further support. ‘Fellow workmen,’ they wrote, ‘we ask you to help us to fight this battle which we are engaged in, which is capital against labour, might against right; it depends upon you who will win.’16 In July 1899 the YMA Council recommended a continuation of informal discussion with management, and later that month there was finally an indication that a new price list had been adopted.17 The miners declared themselves pleased with the result and passed a resolution expressing gratitude to Pickard and others who had assisted in ‘bringing about such a splendid settlement of the Rob Royd dispute.’18 Necessity for price-list adjustments with changing conditions Once formulated, a price list could assume a fixed and almost immutable quality. Yet continuously changing conditions of work entailed the need for continuous adjustments. And it was with regard to disputes over the need for such adjustment that district support was often called upon. Ossett Roundwood—1900 A case in point was Ossett Roundwood in 1900. A price list had been fixed in 1891 which resulted in an average daily wage of 7s 6d for coal-getters in both the Cannel and Silkstone seams. Subsequently, conditions in the pit changed so that the work became more difficult and output per worker dropped from three tons a day in 1891 to two tons three-and-a-quarter hundredweight, in 1899. Wages dropped as well with the daily average falling to 5s 5d in the Cannel seam and 6s 3d in the Silkstone.19 The matter was considered by a sub-committee of the joint committee, but while agreement was reached on a price-list adjustment for the Haigh Moor seam, where problems had also emerged, company offers


regarding price changes for the Cannel and Silkstone seams were considered unsatisfactory by the workers, and a temporary stalemate ensued.20 In addition to a new price list for the Silkstone seam the workers also demanded that a day rate —or daily minimum—of 7s 3d be guaranteed where conditions did not otherwise permit this being reached. Ossett Roundwood branch was adamant on this point and voted 1,005 to 0 in March that notice be given to down tools. In the event noticing was suspended as the owners became rather more disposed to achieving a settlement.21 Nostell—1899 A similar grievance over changed conditions and the need for a price-list adjustment occurred at Nostell in 1899. The miners claimed that the proportions of dirt and coal in the Priory and Winter seams had altered since the initiation of the price list. The matter was referred to the joint committee,22 but the miners remained dissatisfied with the situation and the following year pressed their claim that the coal had narrowed over the period Priory and Winter seams had been worked. The management apparently acceding to the justice of this claim, offered an increase of 2d per ton in March. Yet as so often occurred, the offer was not a straight and simple one, but conditional upon the workers’ agreeing to alter their mode of work and henceforth bare the coal on end.23 The branch rejected the offer. As the branch secretary George Kaye explained, in view of the extra labour required by altering the mode of working, the 2d advance would not even allow wages to remain at their current level; hence they were being offered not a favourable adjustment, but a reduction.24 Nostell’s workers believed that they could not make a reasonable wage at less than an advance of 4d per ton. Further deputations bringing the matter no nearer a conclusion, the branch was finally authorised to give in notice.25 The management was confident that the strike would be shortlived and the men would quickly return to work if no chance were allowed their obtaining work at neighbouring collieries. Members of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association agreed to co-operate toward this end.26 The strike began on 19 April. There were 380 directly involved and a further 254 indirectly as the pit shut down. In spite of management confidence, however, the strike continued for several months, ending only in late September. In the end, concessions were made on both sides. Some advance was gained, but it was less than the 4d per ton asked for by the miners. Wheldale—1902 One further example of a price-list dispute following from changing conditions involved Wheldale branch in 1902. Here as at Nostell, the workers argued that the


seam of coal had gradually thinned out while an accompanying band of dirt had thickened, a claim similarly made at Denaby and resulting in a bitter dispute there about this same time. The Wheldale case was sent to the West Yorkshire joint committee, but various discussions there failed to bring agreement. The owners’ section of the committee held that even if conditions entailed wages having slightly fallen, miners were still making good earnings, relative to the average for the district, and that therefore no change was called for.27 The matter remained in abeyance for some months until August 1902 when Wheldale voted by 840 to 46 to give in notice. At the same time ballots were held by the YMA’s two branches at Fryston, which was under the same ownership as Wheldale. Fryston 1 voted 429 to 32 and Fryston 218 to 15 in favour of giving in notice in support of Wheldale.28 The council meeting which considered the vote and the question of authorisation of a strike, however, was divided in its opinion, influenced partly perhaps by the fact that wages were relatively high at Wheldale, but undoubtedly much more by the financial difficulties being experienced by the YMA at the time. Authorisation was given, but by a vote of just 69 to 62.29 At this same meeting, branches were issued with a general warning to exercise caution in bringing out any more men under the prevailing circumstances. Further discussions then ensued within the joint committee during which the period of noticing was extended. The chairman initially claimed analysis of wage data suggested that the men were earning more in 1902 than when the price list was formulated.30 But though both sides ultimately agreed that for the three months ending May 1901, average earnings had been 8s, while in 1902 they had been 7s 7½neither was inclined to compromise. On 16 October, therefore, the workers went out, with a total of 1,535 directly and 320 indirectly affected. The stoppage was to drag on for over a year, ending only in early 1904, and, as it turned out, unsuccessfully for the workers. The episode as a whole involved substantial expense which the YMA could ill afford at this point. Nor was there much satisfaction over the dispute on the side of the owners, some of whom were particularly disdainful in their assessment of the role played by Herbert Smith, one of the YMA’s representatives to the joint committee specifically assigned to the case. During the course of a deputation held late in the dispute, Percy Greaves, speaking for the company, remarked that ‘this strike was never gone into as other strikes were gone into’, and Oldroyd suggested that the whole dispute had arisen in ‘a most unbusinesslike way’. Alleging that responsibility for the entire situation should be put on the shoulders of Smith, he said that ‘if the men were foolish to begin a fight under prevailing conditions it was not their fault’. Rather they had been ill-led by ‘men of weak judgement, and they had to pay for it.’31 The owners may well have been taken aback by the strength of miners’ feelings and their tenacity in holding their ground and remaining out for so many


months. In March 1903, while not moving on the tonnage rate, the owners confirmed that they would offer other concessions equivalent to 1½d per ton. When the men refused, the offer was dropped, but in May the company offered a tonnage rate of 1s 6d which represented a substantial concession over previous prices.32 Again the men refused. And at a joint committee meeting on 15 September 1903, Sir Joseph Rymer, speaking for the company, stated that ‘the Wheldale people had been most anxious that this Strike, which never ought to have been begun, should be terminated as soon as possible’. Toward this end previously offered concessions were again put on the table. But none of these were regarded as sufficient by the workers.33 The Wheldale strike led ultimately to considerable hardship among the local mining community, contributing to the owners gradually gaining the edge. By the time of the joint committee meeting of 15 September 1903, Pickard was reduced to appeals to the owners’ humanitarianism. There had never been a better or more hardworking set of men in Yorkshire over the past thirty years, he said, than those at Wheldale. They had never had a stoppage that he knew of, a circumstance which he argued also spoke well of the ‘masters’.34 But seeing their advantage, the owners declined now to give in. If the Wheldale directors had once been willing to make certain concessions to get the pits restarted, now that the strike had gone on so long, they no longer felt disposed to do so. Both sides stubbornly stood their ground, but with the strike finally crumbling and the pits preparing to open in January 1904, the YMA was reduced to requesting the joint committee that ‘old hands’ should be set on before ‘strangers’. The reply was qualified. While there was no objection in principle, no clout could be exercised by the joint committee, since owners’ representatives there had given an undertaking that the company’s hands should not be tied.35 As firm as the union had been, it was unable in this instance to gain a satisfactory resolution. Staincliffe pit—1901 Apart from those cases where changing conditions under a static price list implied a reduction in wages and miners accordingly protested against continued adherence to the prevailing prices, there were others where changing conditions potentially entailed a loss for the owners. Then it was the owners who were liable to complain and, moreover, to devise means of sidestepping their obligations. Dewsbury Moor branch, for example, reported difficulties at Staincliffe pit in 1901, where the owners, G. and J. Haigh, were refusing to pay according to the price list. In order to keep the pit operating at a profit management had quite clearly decided to use cheaper labour than the agreed price list dictated.36 Notice, moreover, was given to five men, each of whom, according to the branch, had ‘stood up for the rate of wages according to the price list’. The branch was convinced that the firm intended to rid itself of all


those who were getting the standard rate. Indeed the manager had openly declared that he would not pay to the price list so long as it was possible to hire workers at 6s or 7s per week less to do the work.37 In early March, Staincliffe pit finally stopped completely, when, even with their manoeuvrings of the price list, the owners calculated that a profit could no longer be obtained.38 The YMA instructed its members at other pits associated with the firm to give in notice in support of those locked out, and by early April, 299 1/2 were on strike and receiving pay.39 The case was taken to the joint committee but the owners were little inclined to budge and indicated that it was not their intention to re-open either Staincliffe or another of their pits called Conyers.40 Here again the YMA encountered defeat, being unable to protect jobs, let alone the integrity of the price list. Disputes owing to conflicting interpretations of price lists Glasshoughton—1898 Alongside occasions when owners or workers made claims for price-list adjustments, there were numerous others where difficulties arose over conflicting interpretations of price-list items. The formal list might give a price for a particular task. But the very brevity of a task’s specification on the formal document could easily lend itself to differing interpretations of what was practically involved. At Glasshoughton, a grievance arose in 1898 over the proper payment for certain ‘dirt coal’. The workers insisted on being paid 3d per tub for getting all dirt coal, while the owners maintained that that price applied only to certain of this general class of material.41 A strike ensued, the owners receiving financial support from the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and the YMA supporting its aggrieved members. It lasted from January until late October, a settlement coming only with a change in management.42 Though the terms did not fully concede the workers’ position, they were taken to be mutually satisfactory.43 The 196 working days lost, however, demonstrate how great the price of such disagreements might be. And with the complexity of a price list, varying as it did from pit to pit and indeed from seam to seam, the possibility of such disagreements emerging was considerable. The examples given here suggest the myriad ways in which price-list difficulties could come to preoccupy both local branch and district union. Whether in terms of the initial negotiation of a list, alteration of its terms upon changing conditions in the pit or quarrels over its interpretation, the price list was a continuous source of concern, far outweighing other grievances and having far greater significance in terms of working time lost to stoppages. As already suggested, most miners’ grievances were ultimately reducible to the question of


‘just rewards’. Whether ostensibly concerned with working conditions, or even non-unionism, most grievances emerging from the branches were underlaid and informed by this issue. TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE—THE BALANCE BETWEEN SAFETY AND INCREASED EFFICIENCY Taken broadly, mining technology encompasses all details of the mode of working a pit—the choice of some variant of a pillar or long-wall system, the division of labouring tasks, the use of hand or machine power and the form or combination which these might take. The whole of the technological enterprise is informed by the requirements of efficiency and financial feasibility. But whether a specific change involved ventilation, lighting, securing the working place, cutting coal or haulage of the mineral to the surface, matters of safety as well as profit were invariably implicated, since viable changes were premised on ‘reasonable’ preservation not just of mechanical apparatus, but also of the workforce. Safety, though, is always a relative factor, and while coal owners may have sustained a general concern with the well-being of their workers, the history of colliery work is one characterised by persistent danger and strewn with mundane as well as dramatic loss of life. The inescapable possibility of a minor or major tragedy was necessarily confronted and lived with by every miner, every member of their family and indeed of the broader community in which they resided. The numbness of emotion, the hope which dared not be expressed for fear its object would not materialise, the agony of recognition of a corpse lifted up from the pit were well known and anticipated by all. Scenes of fearful and mourning families and of volunteers for rescue teams, unheeding of the possibility of personal risk, are perhaps the strongest symbol of mining as an occupation both binding communities and wrenching families apart. This being so, disputes over technology always had hovering beneath them a collective memory of the explosions and accidents which drew off and wasted productive members of the community. It is proper, therefore, to preface discussion of miners’ collective responses to technological change not just with a brief review of the evolution of techniques, but also of the history of lapses of safety. The toll of explosions For many years Yorkshire escaped the great calamities of mining explosions which claimed dozens of lives and depopulated mining villages. Much more grave in the earlier centuries were the explosions which occurred in the northeast. But as the era of deeper mines began and as the more fiery seams began to be exploited, Yorkshire’s share of tragedy began to escalate.


Barnsley Furnace—1805; Oaks—1847 In 1805 an explosion caused by a naked candle ignited gas at Barnsley Furnace, the first pit sunk to a lower depth in the Barnsley area, leading to seven deaths.1 In 1847 an explosion originating in an abandoned working occurred at the Oaks Colliery near Barnsley, and led to the deaths of seventy-eight workers. So violent was it that the landing at the mouth of the pit was blown up and timber, coal and stones shot up to a height of thirty or forty yards. Almost immediately there was a mêlée of friends and relatives of those underground, running frantically towards the site of the tragedy, milling about, calling out, trying to discern the extent of its seriousness. Shrieking and wailing soon trailed across the surrounding countryside in sorrowful communion.2 Several of those brought to the top of the pit presented a dreadful appearance, one or two being literally roasted to death, while others had evidently died instantaneously, the mouths and faces only a little blackened and their eyes still open.3 Bodies drawn up were taken to a public house, from which those who could be identified were claimed by their families, who took them home in carts. Two of the dead were boys aged just 10, three were just 11 years old. Darley Main—1849; Warren Vale—1851; Lundhill—1857 In 1849 the district was shaken by another massive explosion at Darley Main Colliery which left seventy-five dead. Only twenty-four of those who had been in the pit at the time survived. Carts took the bodies through the surrounding streets as distraught relatives ran behind, wary of recognising their own among the dead.4 In late 1851, shortly before Christmas, fifty-two lives were lost in an explosion at Warren Vale Colliery, Rawmarsh, and the following day nine were killed at Elsecar. Then in 1857 an explosion ignited the coal in the Barnsley seam at Lundhill Colliery and 189 of the 214 who were down the pit perished, most in consequence of the fire which sucked the oxygen out of the atmosphere underground. The tragedy provoked immediate criticism of the mode of working, typical of Lundhill, known as the advance-face method. Such a mode, which left workers on the following-on faces exposed to the goaf on three sides, was particularly susceptible to failure of ventilation. If air ever got into such a working place, it was once remarked, it would never get out.5 The fire at Lundhill was so fierce that a decision was taken to flood the pit, leaving bodies entombed for a number of months. Four were never recovered. The jury’s verdict in this case was that there had been criminal neglect on the part of management, but that the actual explosion had been accidental.


Edmunds Main—1862; Swaithe Main—1875 A similar pairing of the verdict of accidental death with criticism of management laxness occurred after an explosion at Edmunds Main Colliery, near Barnsley, late in 1862, where fifty-nine died and again the mine had to be flooded. Many of the dead had been involved in driving a connecting route between Edmunds Main and the recently sunk Swaithe Main shaft. The firing of a shot had ignited a blower of gas, causing a fire, and the men were frantically attempting to put it out when the pit blew.6 It was the unanimous feeling of the jury that the explosion had been in consequence of incautious and unsafe working of the dip board of the pit. Three explosions in all occurred in the Edmunds Main tragedy. The cages remained intact after the first two, allowing some to escape. But the third removed all possibility of exit.7 Management negligence was also implicated in an explosion thirteen years later at Edmunds Main’s companion pit, Swaithe Main, where 143 lives were sacrificed. The inquest jury found insufficient evidence to explain the cause of the explosion,8 but it was noted that the ventilation was defective in some parts of the pit, that men were allowed to get coal by blasting, that from time to time naked lights were taken into the pit, that some of the safety lamps used were of comparatively imperfect construction, and that powder was occasionally taken into the pit unknown to management and left exposed. The jury found that the general and special rules for the pit were not rigidly carried out and that gunpowder had been recklessly used.9 Old Oaks—1866 Of all the tragedies suffered in the Yorkshire coalfield, the explosion which rocked the industry most strongly and whose imprint was deepest in the consciousness of miners and mining communities was that at the Old Oaks Colliery less than a fortnight before Christmas in 1866. Of 340 workers who went down on 12 December, only six survived. But the death toll was to rise even further when on 13 December a second explosion occurred, claiming the lives of twenty-seven members of the rescue parties. The cause of the initial explosion was never determined, partly because there were so few survivors, and though the author of the special report on the case, Dickinson, did note his disapproval of the long-wall working to the rise side of the goaves which was practised at Old Oaks, it was not considered that management negligence had been a primary factor.10 Whatever its cause, the consequence of the explosion was utter devastation. The initial blast shook the entire neighbourhood as though a violent earthquake had occurred and transformed the pit into something akin to a volcano, with billows of dense black smoke and dust rising from the shaft. The cage of one


shaft was blown away and that of another broken and disconnected from the rope.11 Below ground most were killed almost instantly, either charred by the blast or suffocated by the afterdamp that followed it. Only about twenty were brought up still alive, all badly burned or affected by afterdamp, and most of these perished soon after. Rescue workers had volunteered in abundance, oblivious to the danger which descent promised and emboldened to a greater sense of urgency by the risk this danger posed for any below who might still be alive. Teams of six went down, one after another, for the remainder of the day following the first explosion, and through the early hours of the next, locating the dead and removing to the top as many as possible. They found groups of dead men in the mine, ‘some clasped in each other’s arms, others clinging to stronger men who seemed to have been helping them in their struggle to gain the bottom of the shaft, and many seated by the wayside in the attitudes they had assumed when they could go no further’.12 Then, shortly after 9 am, the pit fired again and rescuers met their deaths. Only one was brought up alive.13 Thornhill—1893 Following a gap of almost twenty ‘quiet’ years in the Yorkshire coalfield, another major incident occurred when Combs Colliery at Thornhill, near Dewsbury, fired in July 1893, leaving 139 dead. It was the consensus of those investigating the case that a small amount of gas had been ignited by a naked light at the landing in the Wheatley seam in the downcast shaft.14 It was not, however, this but rather dense smoke combined with afterdamp entering into the ventilation system which caused the deaths. Only nine were brought up alive and, by the time of the inquest, three of these had died.15 The particular horror of the Combs explosion was that gas, albeit in small quantities, had been known to exist at or near the Wheatley seam landing. The downcast shaft of the pit was driven through a fault, from which an issue of gas occasionally occurred. The former manager had at one time even tried to insert a pipe enabling the gas to be used for lighting the porches leading to the Wheatley area. But the new manager had neither knowledge of the fault nor of the fact that gas was occasionally given off from it, and at the time of the explosion naked lights were hanging at the landing in the Wheatley seam. The inquest jury ruled that the dead at Combs pit had been ‘accidentally killed’, but the jury considered that the pit ‘ought not to be worked in future with naked lights at the bottom of the shaft’, and the report of the inspectors on the matter stated even more emphatically that the law as to the use of safety lamps should be stricter and more definite and that, as far as possible, all wooden fittings should be avoided in colliery shafts and the maintenance of efficient appliances for extinguishing fires should be made compulsory at all mines.16


Peckfield—1896 In 1896 West Yorkshire was again the site of a major explosion. Peckfield Colliery, owned by the Micklefield Coal and Lime Company, fired on 30 April when gas was ignited, leaving sixty-eight dead. The inquest jury found the deaths to be accidental, with no blame apportioned to the management. But reports following further inquiry suggested that though the ignition of gas by a naked flame had been the triggering factor, it was the subsequent ignition of coal-dust which caused the fatalities.17 The point was one of some importance. For a considerable time the question of the role of coal-dust in colliery explosions had been a matter of debate. Many believed that dust was not even susceptible to ignition. But tests carried out on a number of occasions ultimately proved not only its implication in underground explosions, but also that its ignition could have more devastating effects than could gas alone. Still it was assumed that unless coal-dust was noticeably present in a pit, it posed no dangers. The Peckfield explosion was to cause some rethinking,18 since so little gas had been found in the mine prior to the catastrophe that naked lights were routinely used for coal getting. On the morning of the explosion the pit had been checked by deputies as usual and no gas was found. Unusually, but fortuitously, the ordinary working shift did not go down that morning. A crew of just ninety-eight men and boys descended to do repairs, drive roads and fill tubs. The explosion occurred shortly after their descent at about 7.15 am. Some years later a survivor, J.C.Ball, described the day and the horror it held: On the morning of the explosion I went on to work with seven other men out of Garforth. Poor souls, I never forget their names and I was the only one to get back home again out of the eight alive. …When we reached the bottom I turned into the East District and there met my Deputy. …I said ‘Good morning, Jim, have they all gone?’ meaning my father and all the other workmen, to their working places. But my Deputy seemed a bit rusty as if something had upset him that morning and he replied ‘Aye, and it’s time thar were off’, so as instead of sitting down to get my second sight after coming down from the pit top as we usually did I struck a match, lit my candle, and set off into my working place. And a good job for me that I did for had I wasted time I would have been killed in the main road which must have been terrible. …Well, I just got there and was talking to father, at the same time taking my jacket and waistcoat off and putting my two bottles of ginger beer to the side when we began to hear a big rumbling noise at the side of the pit. Well, it increased, both the noise and the wind. …The door which the wind had to break went off like cannon. It [was] awful to hear while [it] lasted and went down the return air way and back to the upcast shaft. So that when all the noise had died down I said to


father, ‘There’s something gone wrong somewhere’. He said to me, ‘It’s an explosion lad.’ Ball described how he was sent to search through the pit, being the youngest of the collection of workers in his work area and the most nimble. Finding the way blocked and the air ‘red hot’, he turned back and told the others they must find a road on the return airway. If they remained, the bad air would soon be upon them. They moved off and had reached the main road, when the man in the front blurted out: ‘O Lord, there’s a man there.’ I said [there was] not, because [I] could see no [one]. He was buried. But he said again, ‘I know there is.’ I had my foot on him and was trembling all over him. So…I got on my knees and scraped all the dust away where his feet had been and I got the biggest shock of my life. It was our Deputy dead and he had saved my life earlier in the morning by being a bit rusty with me. Well, we could do no more for him. He was dead. They finally reached the shaft where they shouted up for assistance and ultimately a way out.19 At the pit top, the scene was also one of disarray. A member of the rescue party wrote that the downcast shaft was ‘a complete wreck’. The flooring flat sheets and the roof had been blown away and one of the cages stuck up in the headgear, the other in the sump. The pit was ‘upcasting’, he said, ‘like a furnace’.20 The Peckfield explosion was cause for considerable anxiety, given that it occurred in a pit which was neither dry nor dusty. Holing was done in dirt and riddling on the surface. The only coal-dust detected was that apparently caused by the coal being shaken when in transit from the faces to the shaft or by pieces falling out of the tubs. But in view of the finding that coal-dust was responsible for the destruction, the management could not do other than introduce stringent precautionary measures, increased safety bought at the cost of the lives of yet another set of victims. Safety lamps were immediately introduced throughout the pit, the use of gunpowder prohibited and a pump installed at the bottom of the shaft from which pipes with sprinklers at regular intervals were to be laid through the main haulage roads.21 Cadeby Main—1912 Following Peckfield, Yorkshire remained free from major explosions for over a decade. Then, at Cadeby Main in July 1912, another great tragedy occurred. In broad outlines, its features were a melancholy parallel to the Old Oaks explosion


of almost half a century earlier. Three explosions occurred in all, with loss of life occurring during the first two. The first claimed thirty-five lives of night-shift workers, the second, fifty-three members of the rescue party. The public trauma in this case was perhaps heightened by the fact that the dead included not just workers but colliery and government officials, whose sacrifice somehow—or so media attention and presentation would suggest—was ennobled by their higher social status. But the indisputable courage of these had to be set against a remarkable lapse in managerial supervision which allowed workers to descend as usual on the day shift even after it was known that an explosion had occurred underground. The order was not reversed and the men drawn up until 9.45 am.22 Like many pits working the Barnsley seam, Cadeby was a hot mine and subject to spontaneous combustion. A fire had been found in late November 1911 and efforts were immediately made to extinguish it. But there were subsequently reports of renewed activity and in early July deputies reported ‘gob stink’ and considerable heating in a section of the pit near a fault. While attempts continued to put out the fire, work elsewhere in the pit went on as usual. Perhaps fortuitously, however, the occasion of a visit to the area by the king and queen induced many miners to take a holiday and the contingent for the repairs shift, which descended at 10 pm on 8 July, was less than half of normal.23 Though of devastating proportions, causing the deaths of some thirty-five workers, the explosion was confined to the south district of the mine and escaped attention of management for some time. But the particular horror of the Cadeby case was the higher toll, when rescue operations were initiated in the face of evident danger, from the second explosion than from the first. The inquest jury for the Cadeby explosion gave a verdict of accidental death. But the report of the Chief Inspector of Mines suggested that the order in which operations for dealing with the fire had been carried out had created conditions conducive to explosion. He was critical of the fact that normal operations continued to be carried on elsewhere in the pit while the fire was being attended to, and he questioned the wisdom of allowing rescue operations to proceed when the presence of fire made the risk of a second explosion so great. Such practice could only be ‘a race with death’.24 Other causes of injury and death in and about the pit Explosions were the major source of public drama in the coalfields, capable of shattering entire communities. But neither in the Yorkshire coalfield nor elsewhere were they ever the primary cause of death in the mine. More insidious was the grinding persistence of single or occasionally multiple fatalities which regularly combined to a total averaging over 110 each year in Yorkshire. Death was continuously lurking in the mine, ready to take the careless as well as the conscientious.


The cause of the greatest proportion of deaths in Yorkshire, averaging just under half of the total each year, was falls of roof or side.25 On occasion inspectors suggested that victims had brought about their own fate by failing to timber properly. A case of such apparent ‘want of care’ occurred at Nunnery Colliery in 1882. The coal had been holed underneath to a depth of six feet and the sprags drawn out. But it failed to fall and a shot was put in. When still nothing happened, one of the colliers went underneath to continue holing without replacing the sprags. Almost immediately the coal fell, killing him.26 If such ‘self-negligence’ was to be deplored, the case also demonstrates the dangers and difficulties which colliers routinely faced, lying full length under several tons of coal, with only sprags keeping the weight up while holing. Apart from the sense of claustropobia which this operation entailed, and the exaggerated sense of how meagre were the props which held off the weight, it differed only in degree, however, from that encountered by any pit worker, the moment they stepped from the cage into that cavity that was the pit—their habitual place of work—where tons upon tons of material were held suspended by timber and the temporary strength of the roof. Even the ‘proper’ setting of sprags and timbers was no guarantee of security. At Kiveton Park in 1883 a large piece of the roof fell upon and killed an experienced collier who had set the required number of sprags and was holing under the coal. A deputy had passed through and examined the place only half an hour previously.27 Time and again incidents of this type were repeated, subsequent investigations confirming the impossibility of having foretold the tragedy. At Old Silkstone Colliery in 1880 a deputy visited the place where a father and his two sons were working at about 4 pm, examined and sounded the roof and found it safe and sound. The place was well timbered and all ‘ordinary’ care had been taken. Yet within two hours a fall of stone 7′ 6" long and 6′3" wide and more than a yard in thickness had come down, burying them.28 Shortly thereafter a similar accident occurred at Tinsley Colliery, near Rotherham. In this case, the fall extended about thirteen feet along the face and was three to four feet wide and eight inches thick. It came without warning and killed two young colliers.29 A fair proportion of all accidents occurred to those engaged in haulage, thereby providing victims from some of the youngest workers in the pit, who tended to be concentrated on this work. A hurrier named Peace, for example, was helping his brother to twist a tub on the turn plate at a gate end at Darfield Colliery in March 1889 when the tub slipped on one side. Peace’s head was crushed against a prop and he was instantly killed.30 A 14-year-old boy named H.Smith was coupling corves at the bottom of Monk Bretton shaft in 1885 when he was pushed over by some full corves and fell into the sump and was fatally injured. In this case proceedings were taken against the under-viewer and manager of the pit and penalties imposed in that the sump was not properly covered over as it should have been.31 A confusion over signals led to the death


of a pony driver at Barrow Colliery in 1905. The lad was sitting in a refuge hole near a junction of two haulage roads when he heard a train of empty tubs coming in his direction. He ran out to try to safeguard his horse and the train caught and jammed him against a set of full tubs.32 As well as on the roads or at the face, a further area where a substantial number of accidents occurred was in or around the shaft. There were numerous accounts of individuals falling down the shaft or from the cage. In 1891, William Green was descending in a cage at Lidgett Colliery near Barnsley with his father and four others, when, about thirty yards from the surface, he suddenly fell out and to the bottom of the shaft. No reason for the mishap could be found and it could only be concluded that he had been seized with a fit or faintness. In the same year the under-manager of the Bruntcliffe Colliery, near Leeds, was killed in a fall down a shaft. He had been carrying out some brickwork in the shaft, perched on a ladder which stood on a bridge over the shaft at the Middleton Main level. The banksman was on the ladder as well, holding bricks for him. Suddenly the bridge and the ladder fell, both men being thrown off. The banksman landed on the bridge, but the under-manager fell down the shaft, ninety-four yards, to the seam below.33 In 1892, Robert Pearse was killed at Ackton Hall Colliery. He and three other workers were standing on planks laid across the pit top greasing the winding rope. No one seemed to be looking out for the ascending cage, when suddenly the ‘butterfly’ on the chain above the cage hit the planks, upsetting those standing upon them. Two of the men were thrown onto the landing and one caught hold of the chains and hung there until rescued. Pearse, however, fell down the shaft. In this case it was concluded that the engine-wright had not exercised proper care and he was therefore discharged.34 Though the number of fatalities on the top was much less than below ground, surface workers were at risk as well. At Monckton Main Colliery in 1880 a young boy named Oliver Wilson, who was employed about the screens to supply an elevator with slack for the coke ovens, was suffocated. Another lad had been sent up to the platform to clear off the slack which had dropped from the elevator and as he had not returned after some time, Wilson was sent up to bring him down. Wilson stayed to help the other lad and in the process must have stepped on the slack which was then level with the platform. At this very time, however, a cokeburner drew the slide door at the bottom to fill a tub with slack and Wilson went down with the falling load. As the elevator continued to discharge more slack above him, he was soon buried and before he could be rescued had died.35 In 1902 a young screen boy, only 13 years old, was run over by wagons and killed while he was looking for his breakfast which he thought he had dropped on the siding at Waterloo Main. And a young driver, aged 15, was crushed at Glasshoughton between the buffers of wagons being slowly moved together by two men unaware that he was passing between them.36


These are but a few cases of a vast catalogue of disasters and accidents, both minor and major, involving individual or multiple fatalities, which occurred in and about Yorkshire collieries. There were many other mishaps where lives were spared, but disablement or temporary absence from work resulted. Some were due to carelessness, but many as well testified to the prevailing balance between profits and safety working to the disfavour of the miners. If working conditions were always hazardous in some degree, any instance of their alteration was cautiously regarded, since even if intended to bring improvement, disruption of the precarious status quo could lead to new risks. And for this very reason, technological change was characteristically viewed with wariness by miners. They were well aware that if there were some mining engineers passionately concerned with matters of safety, the overriding motivation for technological development was increased efficiency and reduction of costs. Major technological developments in the mining industry The most fundamental technological developments in the mining industry related to the generation and transmission of power. Of particular importance in the early period was the introduction of steam. Steam engines were quickly installed not just for drawing and pumping, but also for haulage at pit bottom, replacing some of the labour of horses or human trammers. In the early days boilers were either placed on the pit top and the steam sent below through pipes or installed directly in the pit bottom. In the latter case there was potential danger of explosion—an instance of technological advance potentially working to the detriment of the workers’ ultimate welfare. Where pipes were used, however, considerable loss of energy was sustained through condensation. Some of the difficulties associated with the use of steam power underground were alleviated by an alternative system utilising compressed air as a motive force. Compressed-air engines began to replace steam power by 1850 and were in later decades used extensively in underground haulage as well as in new machines developed to assist at the face in the cutting of coal. Compressed air also had its drawbacks, however. While much safer for underground work, its generation and transmission involved a certain degree of wastage. Thus while compressed air enjoyed extensive usage in the second half of the nineteenth century, some owners continued to use steam power. The third major advance in energy technology to affect mining was the development of electricity, though it was not until the 1880s that it was applied in the industry. An early instance was at Nostell Colliery, near Wakefield, where the surface was lit by arc lamps and an electrically driven endless-rope haulage system was in use underground in 1883.37 Around 1886 electric lighting was installed underground at West Riding Colliery at Altofts and according to the


colliery’s managing director, W.E. Garforth, had an important impact on the level of production.38 Direct-current transmission was first used, and by 1900 alternating current had been introduced, although the general application of electricity to underground work was relatively sluggish and British coal mines were not to be substantially electrified until the 1920s. The pace of innovation was brisk up until the 1880s. But while developments to this point had already established the fundamental lines of subsequent advance,39 they were limited to only certain aspects of mining. The greatest improvements had been made in respect of ventilation and underground haulage. Much less attention had been given to work at the face. Although numerous designs for cutting-machines were patented in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was relatively little implementation of mechanical cutting techniques. Only 3¼ million tons was cut by machinery in the UK in the early years of the twentieth century, as opposed to 52 million tons in the US, though total output was roughly the same in both.40 Nor was there any marked utilisation of steel, cement or concrete underground.41 But while those innovations affecting underground work which did occur tended to be confined to adjustment or refinement of principles previously adopted, important improvements were made on the surface and by the turn of the century most collieries had been equipped with some sort of mechanical contrivance for screening, sizing, sorting and washing the coal.42 Overall, however, the pace of innovation in British mining had lagged and was notably slower than in the USA or Germany.43 Some owners and mining engineers were well aware by this time that developments were overtaking them and made expeditions to the continent to familiarise themselves with techniques in use there,44 or subsidised local experimentation. But such practice tended to be associated with only a few of the largest firms. Alongside them were others where colliery owners failed to maintain steady reinvestment and attempted to rest on the diminishing strength of previous developments, patching and repairing old equipment until it finally gave out.45 The very fabric of the coal industry, with numerous independent units, many working on a small scale close to the borderline of economic feasibility and with an inherent tendency to diminishing returns as reserves were extracted, meant that a steady, let alone an increasing, rate of investment would be resisted or impossible to achieve in a great many enterprises. The lack of consolidation in the industry was undoubtedly a factor underlying the pace of innovation, for what may have been possible with a larger capital base was much less so with a smaller one. But while the rate of innovation slipped overall, there were many developments which did occur. How and when they did and their effects on safety and economic calculations, were invariably matters of concern to the miners’ union.


Miners’ responses to technological change In some cases it was the miners who pushed for innovation. This was particularly true of changes regarded as necessary for improving safety. Even where the primary object of change was to increase productivity, it was sometimes the colliers, rather than the mining engineers, who were the innovators, or whose experience suggested possibilities of improvement. It is ironic, therefore, that they should have so often been considered conservative and their resistance to change cited as an excuse for overall lack of technological development. But if characteristically initiators of moves to improve safety, miners found themselves more frequently in a position of reacting to developments intended to improve efficiency. Overall they displayed an interesting variation of approach to different sorts of innovations. Campaigns to improve safety were directed at government perhaps more than at the coal owners. Such campaigns had formed the basis of some of the earliest national miners’ organisations, and it was via legislation, through the establishment of general rules, monitored by the state, that miners tended to see safety as most effectively improved. On the other hand, innovations intended to improve productivity were responded to via direct negotiation with individual employers, or through industrial action when negotiation failed. And the issue in such cases, while occasionally relating to effects on safety, was more commonly directly economic, relating to the configuration of costs, for both the owner and the collier. This varied pattern of approach reflected perceived distinctions between which sort of action was appropriate to the sphere of politics and which to the industrial sphere; which required state intervention and universal treatment and which should be free from such ‘rigidities’ and left to negotiated agreement on a pit or district basis; which should involve lobbying and which direct industrial action. While parallel, these distinctions were not absolute, nor were the dichotomies characterising each dimension fixed. It was possible, for example, for the miners to consider the strike as a political weapon in the campaign to gain a legislatively fixed eight-hour day, though it was, of course, most frequently seen as specific to the sphere of industrial relations and directed toward economistic goals. But there was a general understanding that different objects of concern—whether improved and safer working conditions on the one hand or preservation or improvement of the return to labour on the other—should be addressed by the miners to different audiences or authorities (alternatively the government or the employer), and should entail different sorts of collective action, with lobbying on one end of a continuum and withdrawal of labour on the other. While ultimately relative (and sometimes subject to definition only after tragedy prohibited their being any longer ignored), matters of safety were often treated as though measured by some absolute moral threshold which could and should be generally applied. There are many examples: that women and children


below a given age should not work in the mines, that management should be responsible for checking the working places and ensuring their security, that managerial and supervisory personnel should be qualified to a specified level of expertise, that ventilation should be of a certain minimum velocity, or that the number of exits from the pit should be sufficient to allow for escape should one become blocked. Yet either because they were considered so crucial or because there was evidence that they would not otherwise be honoured, these tended to be enshrined in legislation as regulations which must be upheld and to which, indeed, not just owners but also miners, were accountable. On the other hand, matters relating to the division of labour and remuneration to the workforce, though perhaps subject to some general guidelines—not least in respect of what the miners would regard as a ‘decent’ or minimum wage— were generally regarded as best dealt with by the parties directly involved and away from the gaze and surveillance of government. But innovations transcended these boundaries, frequently touching both matters of ‘costs’ and matters of safety. Precisely how the boundaries were transcended determined what approach was adopted in respect of them. Where the issue of safety was particularly obvious, as in the case of the substitution of lamps for naked lights, both the broad, lobbying approach and localised industrial action can be observed. When they first began to be introduced, miners expressed general opposition to the lamps, because they feared that owners too often took the easier or less expensive option of bringing in lamps rather than attacking more fundamental problems of ventilation.46 Later recognising the general safety advantage of substituting lamps for candles, they still objected to the use of certain lighting apparatus because it provided much diminished illumination and thereby decreased productivity and ultimately the return to the worker for a given amount of labour. They objected to riddles for bringing about much the same result. By allowing the smaller coal to fall through, the use of riddles required the cutting of greater volume to obtain the same level of output. Miners were seldom averse in principle to the use of new tools and techniques. But they objected precisely when changes worsened their perceived conditions of work, reduced their level of safety or led directly or indirectly to a reduction in their pay. They insisted on compensation or a compensatory rate of wages or a return to the status quo whenever a change threatened to have these consequences. Collective response by the YMA varied from one innovation to the next. But there were a number of cases where the approach essentially involved direct negotiation with employers or industrial action either exclusively or alongside political lobbying. This was true in particular of the introduction of lamps, coalcutters and riddles. In respect of all three, the YMA’s position regarding technological change can best be seen through its response to a number of specific local disputes.


Safety lamps The idea of a safety lamp where a flame was encased and screened from the surrounding atmosphere was first materialised by Dr Reid Clanny in 1813. Previously, mine work was carried on exclusively with the use of candles, or naked lights. These provided satisfactory light but were all too often the spark setting off an explosive mixture leading to the trauma of death or injury. The new apparatus was introduced specifically to increase safety, its effects on productivity being only indirect in the sense that prevention of explosions implied prevention of internal damage which could cause work to be temporarily or permanently suspended. While an important advance, Clanny’s lamp, in which a candle was insulated with glass, was cumbersome, and because it was dependent on a supplementary appliance for provision of oxygen, it was not readily adapted to practical mining. The principle of the safety lamp which would see general application involved the use of a metal gauze, the mesh of which was of such a size as to cause a flame passing through it to lose heat and thus be incapable of igniting an explosive atmosphere. The true safety lamp, then, was both fuelled by the surrounding atmosphere under normal circumstances and rendered incapable of igniting that atmosphere should those circumstances alter and an explosive mixture emerge. By acquiring a cap as the percentage of explosive gas increased or, in some cases, being extinguished altogether, the safety lamp could serve as a warning device as well as an apparatus providing a ‘safe’ form of lighting.47 Lamps employing the principle of wire-mesh insulation were independently constructed by both Sir Humphrey Davy and George Stephenson in 1815.48 In Yorkshire, records indicate their first being used as early as 1817. But their introduction was uneven due in part to the conservatism of colliery owners, who were often only jogged by the tragedy of an explosion to substitute lamps for candles. The story of an explosion occurring in a pit assumed to have been free from gas and where candles were routinely used continued to repeat itself. Time and again the district mining inspector was compelled to deplore the use of naked lights and call for the introduction of safety lamps.49 The safety lamp was, however, not without its shortcomings. A major problem of early lamps was their poor illumination. The Davy lamp was far worse in this regard than the Clanny, giving off just 37 per cent of the illumination of an English standard sperm candle burning 120 grains an hour.50 While presumably appreciative of the heightened safety factor, therefore, miners often considered the lamps to worsen other aspects of their working conditions, the lack of illumination hampering their productivity. Workers complained, moreover, that in certain respects the lamps adversely affected safety, in that their illumination was insufficient for adequate examination of the roof. The Davy lamp was also found by the mid-1830s to be wanting when air currents reached a certain


velocity.51 Ironically the greatly increased velocity of the airflow by the 1880s, due to improvements in the technology of ventilation, reaching as much as twenty or twenty-five feet in the airways and ten to fifteen feet per second along long-wall faces,52 rendered the original design of the Davy and Stephenson lamps inappropriate and ‘unsafe’. Though the ideal lamp remained elusive—108 different varieties having competed but none found worthy of a prize of £500 offered by a Mr Ellis Lever for a lamp which fulfilled the conditions originally required in a mine53— significant improvements were made. One of these was the Mueseler Chimney, the purpose of which was to throw the carbonic acid generated when an explosion occurred back on to the flame, thereby extinguishing the light. This would make the lamp safe in an explosive current of nineteen feet per second and up to fifty-one feet per second if a tin shield was fastened to the middle flange of the lamp. By the mid-1880s, moreover, the improved Mueseler was capable of providing illumination equivalent to 70 per cent of that provided by the candle.54 Bonnets and tin shields had been added to most of the major varieties of safety lamp by this time and the particular modified lamp utilised at any given mine varied with the preferences of workers and management. Some workers continued to prefer the Clanny, considering its light better than that of the Mueseler.55 The Davy also remained popular in Yorkshire, though over time the Mueseler and a lamp called the Marsaut took precedence across the British coalfield as a whole.56 Yet in the early days of their introduction, there were often difficulties, particularly when miners considered they were not adequately compensated for the effects of poorer illumination. At many pits an allowance of ‘lamp money’ was routinely granted. But at Fryston and Micklefield, when lamps were brought in without such a consideration in early 1897, miners raised the matter as a grievance. Micklefield branch was authorised to give in notice in February over their demand for an extra 1d per ton,57 whereupon the West Yorkshire owners’ association granted the firm full support in its willingness to endure a strike rather than give in to the workers’ request.58 The miners went out on 4 March, but the strike was a short one, lasting only until 8 March. It ended with a compromise. No specific ‘lamp money’ was granted, but the employer did agree to pay for explosives, and to supply shafts for picks, hammers and shovels and an extra lamp for each stall.59 Fryston—1897 At Fryston miners similarly requested 1d per ton ‘lamp money’, given that this was the figure being paid at a number of neighbouring pits. But they met with considerably stronger resistance. The firm declined a request from the YMA that the lamp question and a second grievance concerning arrangements for cutting


slack and thin coal be referred to the West Yorkshire joint committee and by midJuly 1897 950 workers were out in what the YMA described as a lock-out.60 The West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association evidently took the matter as a challenge on which they should take the offensive. Its chair, Briggs, remarked that the question of payment for lamps was a serious one for the district and that ‘inasmuch as it was probable that every colliery in County Yorkshire would eventually have to adopt the use of lamps the demand for this extra payment should be resisted’.61 The miners viewed the matter just as gravely, hence the view of the YMA that the Fryston workers were out on just cause, ‘not merely to keep up the price at their own colliery, but at all collieries where there is a contract that an allowance shall be made for the use of lamps’.62 A stand-off ensued, but by August the firm’s representatives were expressing concern that many of their former employees had been set on at neighbouring pits, an action they regarded as contrary to the collective support pledged by the owners’ association. Amidst some objections to the body adopting any official policy of refusing Fryston’s ‘refugees’, it was recommended that members should desist from this practice as far as possible, being on their guard against accepting recruits on strike elsewhere.63 Given the reasonably buoyant economic climate, however, striking miners were able to secure places at other pits with relative ease, only 250 of the original 560 on YMA funds were still on the books by the end of the year.64 Less collective success was gained, however, in resolving their grievances, as during 1898 the owners gradually broke the dispute, in part by resorting to further mechanisation. In May 1898 they reported to the owners’ association that they had put in a coal-cutter and hoped that when those still out saw coal being thus worked, they would be induced to resume work.65 They regained a workforce such that by December 1898 some 150 miners were reportedly working the coal face with machine-cutters.66 But rather than from a break in the ranks of those still out, this had been achieved by recruitment from other counties,67 which the YMA proved unable to stem. The owners of Micklefield and Wheldale collieries, moreover, honoured the call to dismiss new recruits at their own pits who had been laid off work at Fryston,68 and the YMA was obliged to return to its books members who were once again out of work.69 The YMA regarded this ‘newest phase’ of the dispute with some alarm, depicting the ‘character certificates’ used by owners recruiting new employees, which had emerged in connection with this apparent blacking of those locked out or on strike elsewhere as ‘the most foolish, ill-natured, and most provocative of mischief ever known in the county’.70 But whether due to management tactics or other factors, it was evident by the early part of 1899 that the dispute was close to an end. If lamps were introduced in many cases with an allowance, it was not to be at Fryston, and workers’ suspicions that the safety gained by removal of naked lights was at an economic cost which they were required to bear was


reinforced. But it is clear from this case that the YMA regarded ‘lamp money’ as essential and was prepared to lend the weight of district industrial muscle in the attempt to secure its being granted. Mechanical coal-cutting The Fryston case also illustrates the way in which coal-cutting machinery was on occasion brought into pits during the course of industrial action, either through conscious design to break the workers’ resistance or because a stoppage gave owners pause to reconsider the balance between technology and costs, or opportunity—with conflict already opened—to make previously intended innovations. Mechanical coal-cutters could alleviate some problems for pit owners, but could also be the source of new difficulties. Wharncliffe Silkstone—1914 The introduction of machine undercutting generally increased safety by removing the inherent risk involved in holing by hand, when the miner was stretched out beneath the weight of the overlying coal, supported only by sprags. But that the machine might also create new hazards was evidenced by an explosion at Wharncliffe Silkstone in May 1914 which involved an electric cutting machine and resulted in the deaths of twelve workers. A subsequent inquiry determined that faulty maintenance of the machinery, leaving apertures in the joint between the commutator box cover and the body of the machine, had allowed gas to enter and ignite. Given that machine-men were paid only piece rates for coal cut, there was a clear possibility that maintenance work, which normally took several hours, might be rushed and carried out with less care than it required. Whether for this or some other reason, a deficiency of care had occurred and the official report of the tragedy concluded that the pit’s foreman electrician had failed to see that the apparatus was properly worked and maintained,71 though it was also found that defective machinery had not been the sole factor involved. It was the combination of this and the temporary stoppage of the ventilating fan for the pit for some sixteen minutes when the machine was in operation which was responsible for the explosion. The fan was periodically stopped to allow a switch from a steam to a gas engine, in order to carry out routine maintenance of the parts of the steam engine. And while it was understood that such a stoppage should not occur while colliers were at work at the face and indeed was in violation of the Coal Mines Act, 1911, information concerning the scheduling was not always passed down along the line. Such management lapses and their consequence illustrate the delicate balance obtaining in the pit in respect of various operations and the risks attendant upon that balance being disrupted.72


Coal-cutting machines first made their appearance in Yorkshire pits in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. After about 1860 there was considerable experimentation with coal-cutters, but relatively little initial successful or sustained utilisation of them in routine operations. They tended to be developed either by mining engineers with little experience in mechanical design or mechanical engineers with little experience of coal-face conditions.73 Some of the early disc machines, for example, were capable of undercutting only eighteen to twenty-four inches and when introduced into seams where formerly hand-holing had been taken to a depth of perhaps five feet, it is little wonder that they saw minimal success. Sometime during the late 1860s or early 1870s coal-cutting machines were used in one of the Briggs Company’s pits in West Yorkshire and worked by compressed air. But their performance was unsatisfactory and they were subsequently removed.74 Around 1872 four compressed-air-driven Firth machines were introduced into Sharlston Colliery, which in the event were similarly unsuccessful and soon abandoned.75 Yorkshire’s mining industry, however, did make a significant contribution to the early development work on coal-cutting machines. One of the most successful of these was patented in 1861 by Donesthorpe, Firth and Radley; Donesthorpe and Firth were partners in the West Yorkshire Iron and Coal Company Ltd of West Ardsley and the machines were first used in their collieries. But perhaps of greater importance in both the development and publicising of coal-cutters was the work done by W. Garforth, mining engineer with Pope and Pearsons. In Garforth’s view, increasing utilisation of the long-wall method facilitated introduction of coal-cutting machinery, at least in regard to the disc cutter, since it was particularly on a long straight face that such a coal-cutter could be used with maximum efficiency and least cost.76 A prime advantage of the machine was that it not only eliminated the gruelling and often dangerous labour involved in holing, but, to the extent that the cut made by the machine was often thinner than that made by hand, a smaller amount of small coal would result from the undercutting operation. Pope and Pearson’s authorised experimentation with coal-cutters from the 1860s, most of which were powered by compressed air. Two Winstanley and Barker machines were in operation in Altofts Haigh Moor seam in 1882 but abandoned because they were capable of producing only a shallow undercut. An electric machine was experimented with in 1888 but similarly abandoned because of Garforth’s concern with the flashes it made. In 1892, however, in the midst of a strike, Garforth’s own design, the Diamond deep undercutting machine, was brought into use, ostensibly for financial reasons, but with the additional function or consequence of breaking the workers’ bargaining position, and of partially replacing recalcitrant workers through mechanisation. This marked the beginning of the successful and ultimately extensive use of machines


at Altofts. Garforth subsequently set up his own company to manufacture models, which produced twenty-one machines in 1899 and fifty-six in 1901.77 There was more rapid introduction of machines in Yorkshire pits than elsewhere in the British coalfield, with the exception of Scotland, in this early period just prior to and just after the turn of the century, partly, perhaps, in consequence of the work of Garforth and the publicity given to his machines. Of the 129 cutting machines in use in Yorkshire pits in 1902, almost 40 per cent were Diamond machines, the model manufactured by his company. The second most popular machine was the Gillot and Copley model. The great majority of coal-cutters used compressed air at this time, but over 20 per cent relied on electricity. Almost all were disc cutters. But the spread of machines within the county was highly uneven. In 1902 almost half, representing about two-thirds of all machine-cut coal, were located at just five collieries: West Riding, Wharncliffe Silkstone, Lidgett, Park Mill and High Hazel. And among these, perhaps not surprisingly, the most extensive use of machines was at the West Riding Colliery at Altofts, with which Garforth was connected. Here twenty-four disc cutters were in operation in 1902, and were responsible for over three-quarters of the colliery’s output. All but two were worked by compressed air.78 The great majority of Yorkshire’s pits, in contrast, had no mechanical cutting equipment whatsoever until well into the twentieth century, a characteristic as much and perhaps more true of those new collieries opening up on the eastern edge of the field as those already established by the 1880s. In the early days, it was in the relatively thinner seams of West Yorkshire that the machinery seemed best suited. But while grievances related to coalcutting machinery necessarily arose only at a small number of pits, the matter was increasingly one on which the YMA adopted a policy. For when they did arise, the import of such grievances was serious, involving the monitoring and preserving of workers’ interests during the implementation of innovations specifically designed to increase productivity through a substitution of capital for labour. High Town Liversedge—1896 If disputes were sometimes the occasion for the introduction of machinery, the sequence of events was also frequently the reverse with the entrance of the machine provoking grievances among the workers. Inevitably the issue concerned the price which would henceforth be attached to machine-cut coal. It was in anticipation of such problems that Shireoaks and Streetley branch wrote to district headquarters in 1895, asking for information concerning collieries where holing machines were already at work and expressing concern that they would face ‘some unpleasantness’ when prices were set for machine work at their pit.79 While a stoppage was avoided over the issue of holing


machines in this case, a grievance related to mechanisation erupted at High Town Liversedge the following year, resulting in no little unpleasantness. In March 1896, the branch informed the district of their problems and asked authorisation to give in notice, writing that ‘our masters have introduced into our colliery a coal-baring machine and instead of putting our own men to getting and filling the coal —as we think he ought to have done, seeing we have men playing regularly —he has set on men from other collieries and put on big lads, paying them mostly a matter of only 3s per day’. As well as denying their members much needed work, the branch believed this manoeuvre to have brought about a lower return for labour than was justified. They had offered to test the job with the machines at a rate of 5s per day but had been refused by management who had accused them of sabotage and intimidation: when we went before them they accused us of taking material belonging to the machine, and with interfering with the taps, valves, etc. so as to hinder it all we possibly could, also with intimidating and threatening the men so that they would only fill a certain quantity of coal; and they further threatened us that if any man sends out small coal, in future they have instructed the manager to stop that man at once.80 The branch rejected the management’s accusations and regarded the terms they offered in negotiation as provocative. The men who had been assigned to use the machines were working full time, while others had no more than four days of work a week, and the branch believed that they would have to give in notice to obtain any sort of satisfactory arrangement.81 The district adjourned the matter, presumably to see if a negotiated settlement might be reached. But local frustration was such that miners staged a one-day strike, without notice, on 3 June, when the management, finding the number of lads to assist the machine workers insufficient, transferred some of those who routinely worked for other miners to the new work.82 Though overwhelmingly in favour of striking, their having gone out rather too hastily made them legally vulnerable. Thirty-eight men were summoned to police court in the aftermath of their strike and fined for having left work without notice.83 Thus beaten back they were compelled to concede the management’s terms. Altofts—1896 A dispute over fixing the price for working with machine-cut coal (or ‘following after’ the machines) also occurred at the West Riding Colliery at Altofts, where William Garforth was mining engineer, after machines had been introduced in the midst of a more general price-list dispute there.84 In late 1896 the YMA asked for the matter to go before the West Yorkshire joint committee and in early


February of the following year the matter was referred by that body to Mr Thomas Marshall for arbitration.85 But the workers were dissatisfied with the terms of the award and before many months had passed, officially informed the district that they were earning less under the new arrangement where rates were fixed by the ton than previously when they had been fixed by the day. Garforth, however, emphatically refused any alteration, telling them, moreover, that even were the joint committee subsequently to recommend an increase, he would refuse it. He claimed that the problem lay squarely with the miners following the machines who were not doing ‘what they could’ and indeed were treating him unfairly.86 The YMA recommended the joint committee to take another look at the case, but gaining little immediate satisfaction from the owners’ side, agreed in August to the branch’s request to give in notices. In early September the Haigh Moor workers went out.87 The stoppage, regarded by the YMA as a lock-out, was to carry on for many months, with no final settlement until 1899. Garforth believed that the miners could earn a ‘large wage’ under the award as fixed, claiming that, compared with what they had earned when the coal was cut by hand, their wages were now 6d a day higher.88 But for the miners the measure of an acceptable level of pay was not what had been earned prior to the machines on piece rates, but what could be earned when the rate was for a day’s labour. This sort of issue was not uncommon in the Yorkshire coalfield. A price for output was only realistically applied when a seam was fully opened out and established or when a new piece of equipment was in place and operating on a routine basis. Prior to this a day wage tended to be given, as was the case more generally for those pit workers involved in driving roads or in routine maintenance activities, on the understanding that an appropriate piece rate would subsequently be fixed. Should it happen, as in this case, that earnings possible under the piece rate were less than with the day wage, miners were understandably aggrieved. In the early part of 1899, some of those out began to drift back and a number of new recruits from Staffordshire took up the places of others still out. In midFebruary, Garforth reported that thirty-eight men were currently working in the Haigh Moor seam and more were expected to return soon.89 Attempting to hold the line, the YMA executive recommended that those who had returned to their jobs at Altofts should be ‘dismembered’, and the council authorised men working the Silkstone and Diamond seams in an adjoining pit—covered by Altofts 2 branch—to ballot to see if they favoured giving in notice to assist those still out.90 The council also resolved to pay the expenses covering the return trip of any of those who had been recruited from Staffordshire. In the mean time, negotiations between the parties continued and finally in June 1899 agreement was reached whereby Haigh Moor colliers working with machine-cut coal would receive a minimum day wage at a rate of 7s and fillers, 6s 3d, rates higher than those earned immediately prior to the stoppage.91


Garforth’s acceptance of the terms was largely due to his optimism over the success of ongoing experiments with coal-cutting machines. He told the YMA deputation that he was about to embark on alterations of the machines in the Haigh Moor seam and thus would in any case have set a temporary day wage, a further adjustment coming when the new machinery was in place.92 He was fully confident of realising an even higher rate of productivity which might soon allow an even lower getting rate than that established by the Marshall award.93 This settlement represented, therefore, just the first phase of an ongoing dialogue, often breaking over into official grievances, concerning acceptable pay under the new mechanised regime at Altofts. Riddles Serious problems connected with the introduction of coal-cutting machines died down for several years after the settlement of the Altofts dispute. But a new matter related to the tools utilised by miners, which had a rather broader impact on the district, affecting a larger number of pits, came to a head and was the subject of a special meeting with the South Yorkshire joint committee in 1900. This involved the use of riddles or forks in the loading of coal into tubs. As opposed to a shovel, a riddle was a tool which allowed smaller coal to fall through to the floor and only the larger pieces to be loaded. It was a device much favoured by some owners because its use entailed an initial sorting of coal in the pit and the elimination of that volume of output which fetched little on the market. But for the worker, the riddle potentially meant more labour for a smaller return, unless a satisfactory adjustment was made to the getting price. Prince of Wales Pit—1898 Disputes involving riddles occurred sporadically throughout the years. But it was only toward the turn of the century that they were sufficiently prevalent to elicit substantial concern. In the late 1890s a grievance over riddles led to a year-long strike at the Prince of Wales pit in West Yorkshire, owned by John Rhodes. Its successful settlement with Rhodes’s agreement to remove the riddles may well have given the YMA encouragement to pursue a more general attempt to eliminate the device from the workings of all Yorkshire’s pits.94 Rhodes had first introduced riddles in the mid-1890s, offering compensation which his workers regarded as insufficient because entailing a lesser wage than was then being gained at neighbouring collieries working the same seam. The dispute had gone to arbitration and a price for riddled coal set by the umpire, Mr Marshall. Perhaps unhappy with the outcome, Rhodes decided to remove the riddles on re-opening the pit and suggested a getting price of 2d per ton less than that fixed by Mr Marshall, which was accepted by the YMA. In March 1898,


however, he reintroduced the riddles and, giving his employees fourteen days’ notice, said that coal would be subsequently riddled and paid in accordance with the price list. As his workers categorically refused to accept riddles on the terms specified, they downed tools and the colliery was stopped, with the conflict dragging on for months before Rhodes finally conceded their case. Early in 1900 the YMA Council considered the issue of riddles and agreed that it should be discussed by the joint committees of both South and West Yorkshire as soon as possible. This was an unusual decision, since previously the committees had not been perceived of or used as vehicles for negotiation toward district-wide agreements.95 At the same time that this broader initiative was being floated, several individual branches brought forward specific grievances regarding riddles.96 The coincidence of cases persuaded the owners’ association in West Yorkshire that it should adopt a collective position on the issue, and it was subsequently agreed that because the estimated value of riddling varied so greatly among the various pits, no universal price could be fixed in respect of their use or in determination of any reduction which might accompany their removal.97 This factor of variability became the basis of West Yorkshire owners’ rejection of the YMA initiative. Their solidarity on the matter was affirmed when they resolved that on no account must members consent individually to riddles being removed and agreed that the association should work in conjunction on the matter with their counterpart association in South Yorkshire.98 Owners in South Yorkshire were equally resolute in their opposition to entering a general agreement with the YMA over riddles, but perhaps less so in presenting a united front in support of the tool. When the YMA enquired, during a meeting of the South Yorkshire joint committee called to consider the issue of riddles, whether the owners’ association would prevent its members from negotiating on an individual colliery basis, the chairman, F.J.Jones, said he thought not. Any member who wished to make an arrangement with his workers about riddles was perfectly free to do so.99 But the association could not entertain a collective response or agree to the YMA’s proposals, he said, because trade was going down and riddles were increasingly essential to the maintenance of profits. He then went on to question whether the miners really had a case. Referring to the case of Darfield Main, Jones claimed that while the percentage of slack being sent out was previously 15 per cent, it had now fallen to 5 per cent. Yet on the surface the percentages of slack and coal remained the same throughout. The obvious implication, hotly disputed by the miners’ representatives at the meeting who regarded their side as having been accused of robbery, was that Darfield Main miners were now sending out and receiving payment as coal for the difference of 10 per cent. But whatever the rights or wrongs of this particular case, the South Yorkshire owners were obstinate in their rejection of the YMA’s proposal.100 In this round of negotiations to


achieve a district-wide solution to the riddles problem, then, the YMA was patently unsuccessful. But having failed to achieve agreement through negotiation, the YMA tried another tack. In February 1901, the council authorised a ballot at all collieries where riddles were in use with a view to bringing them out at once, and allowing a reduction in the tonnage rate equal to that which had been added by owners on their introduction.101 All of the twenty-five branches involved, save for Manvers 1 and 2, favoured striking to effect removal of the tool.102 YMA officials, preferring negotiation to strike action, may well have hoped that the ballot’s outcome would of itself be sufficient to bring some movement on the issue, for authorisation to give in notice was postponed several times and branches were directed to seek further interviews with management. But in the event little was resolved one way or the other and by the end of the year the YMA seems to have given up its district-level campaign to eliminate riddles from Yorkshire’s pits. Though individual branches were subsequently given full encouragement to effect their removal, the attempt to gain agreement with the owners on a general policy was not renewed. The YMA’s general approach to policy on technological matters Through to the end of the First World War there were occasional local disputes associated with the introduction of new technologies. But their impact was relatively minor. YMA campaigns to structure district-wide policy in respect of technological matters were largely confined to the period around the turn of the century. Attempts to make use of the joint committees as negotiating bodies toward this end met with some success. But the committees were broadly geared toward the resolution of individual disputes, and while owners were not antagonistic to the exercise, neither were they enthusiastic. General ‘policy’, at least as subscribed to by the YMA, did evolve through dealing with such questions, and in this sense the union was effective in protecting members under attack at a given pit by appeal to past experience and broader practice. But negotiated, district-wide, agreements remained elusive. The lack of any campaigns of this nature after the first years of the century may partly be a reflection of the limited success realised earlier. But it also reflects other factors, particularly important among them the relatively slow rate of technological innovation within the district. Introduction of lamps and of machine-cutting were truly innovative. Advances continued in many aspects of the mining operations, but perhaps none were so significant as these earlier ones. Later, during the course of the First World War, attempts were made to deal with shortage of labour with innovations in respect of underground conveyance and with the further introduction of machine-cutting. The YMA was intensely


concerned about another change, involving the substitution of metal props for wood, and ensured that it be agreed as a temporary, emergency measure. But as far as other innovations were concerned, there was relative quiet. On the other hand, the YMA continued to be vigilantly conscious of the effects of change on safety and to lobby more generally for better, safer working conditions for all of its members. Its concern with establishing an eight-hour day was of course in accord with this general orientation. But as before, the tendency in matters of this nature was to work on a broader, national basis, and more specifically within the political rather than the industrial realm.

8 SCOPE OF UNION MEMBERSHIP

AGITATION AGAINST NON-UNIONISM YMA leadership preferred negotiation as a means of settling disputes and improving conditions in the pits and viewed the growth of trade union strength as the most effective means of gaining the leverage required to make negotiations viable. Joint committees, established to further routinise the negotiation process, were primarily used for dealing with disputes at individual pits. Occasionally, however, they became fora for the consideration of more general issues of districtwide significance, such as the use of riddles or timbering regulations. In these instances the YMA endeavoured to use existing machinery to negotiate general understandings or working arrangements with owners. Pursuit of YMA policy, however, could not always take this form. Nor was it always so conscious or deliberate. Often the union’s position emerged only gradually, out of attempts to seek solutions to similar difficulties faced by various of its branches over the years. This is true to some extent of the issue of non-unionism. The YMA always, necessarily, took a clear and strong general stand on the matter. It is implicit in the very nature of a trade union that its aim should be to incorporate all potential members, with those remaining outside being a threat, if not to its very existence, then to its effectiveness. At one level, the union was perpetually involved in recruitment. Its leaders routinely rebuked those who had declined to enter or, worse, those whose subscriptions lapsed or who deliberately dropped out of the association when an immediate threat to wages receded. On occasion, Pickard even castigated women whose husbands remained outside the union. And when membership was strong, as in 1894, he suggested that it was due to wives who had ‘plucked up courage’ and told their husbands that if they didn’t pay their contributions, they would go and do it themselves.1 The YMA frequently used the informal tactic at the workplace of ostracising non-unionists, refusing to socialise or to ride up and down in the same cage with them.2 On the


other side of the equation, the YMA provided support to those stopped because of their union activities or sympathies through its ‘victim’ pay. Policy on victimisation Members qualified as victims in a number of circumstances, including being stopped by management on a basis considered unfair by the union. Examples taken from the YMA minute book for 1894 illustrate specific situations in which victim pay was authorised. Early in the year, two members at Houghton Main were granted victim pay after having been refused work because the manager had declared them to be ‘bad characters’. At Carlton Main several men were declared victims after refusing to work shifts in a certain section of the pit because they considered it would entail a new mode of working.3 And at Hoyland Silkstone a number became victims when stopped by management for sending up small coal which the manager claimed to be ‘dirt’.4 As Pickard noted in the YMA’s annual report for 1896–7, a victim was a member who either stood up for being paid a fair price for work done or for trade union principles. But the number of victims on the funds at any one time was never a direct measure of the extent of militancy in support of trade unionism or of attacks by managements on the principle of trade unionism. In many cases the grievance underlying victimisation was little different from that which led branches to take strike action, the distinction being that the former involved only an individual or a small number of workers. But the dividing line even so was fine; for as the number of victims increased, a grievance could easily become the basis for a branch as a whole giving in notice. This was true, for example, in the case at Hoyland Silkstone referred to above. So many had been stopped for sending out small coal and subsequently added on to the list of those receiving victim pay that the branch ultimately requested permission to ballot members on giving in notice.5 In some cases, indeed, a solitary victim could become the focus of a general branch grievance. There were those cases where victimisation entailed a deliberate and explicit attack on militant trade union supporters, serving as a convenient means of ridding a firm of workers quite frankly regarded as troublemakers or ‘bad characters’. The history of trade unionism is rife with examples. But even where not involving a direct attack by employers on activists, victimisation was often implicitly intertwined with the principle of trade unionism. Pickard once observed that ‘when we come to look at the victim we see at once he is not merely a martyr but a hero among many duffers’.6 And addressing the YMA’s 1897 annual demonstration, James Walsh, the checkweighman at South Kirkby, noted that in resisting management’s unfair practice, ‘the best of our men who have backbone and principle, who have the courage to stand up for their rights in the pit bottom, are picked at and made victims’.7

LABOUR AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES 217

The YMA was always keenly aware of the link between the rate of victimisation and both the strength of the union and the degree of owner hostility. It was precisely the high rate of victimization, like the high rate of pit disputes and stoppages more generally, which potentially signalled the weakness of the union and the need for much closer vigilance, even if, ironically, they could also be measures of strength in the unwillingness to buckle under to employer dictates. YMA records suggest that there were a ‘goodly number’ of victims in 1897, a ‘tyranny’ which prevailed largely because ‘some men are not as firm in their Union principles as they were prior to the reduction in 1894’. In addition, many new workers were entering the district having come from other areas ‘destitute of Unionism’.8 In 1898 the number of victims was still high and a resolution from Wombwell Main that there be a concerted push to increase union membership was based on the presumption that increased victimisation was a consequence of a decline in union membership.9 Recruitment rather than strike action to counter nonunionism It was decided on this occasion, as on others, that the best means of countering owner hostility manifest in high rates of victimisation was to push for further recruitment. More members meant a stronger organisation and the greater leverage this provided was the obvious antidote to owners’ direct or covert attempts to undermine the union. The approach of persuasion was characteristic of the YMA over the years on the issue of non-unionism, in considerable contrast to miners’ associations in other coalfields where a number of strikes were called to establish the authority and scope of the union. In 1900, for example, stoppages whose cause was officially listed as ‘trade unionism’ involved a larger number of workers than those attributed to any other cause in the mining industry. Over this and the next several years miners in South Wales in particular were prone to use the strike as a means of combating non-unionism, generally with considerable success.10 Quite a different picture obtained in Yorkshire, however. There was one case in October 1890 in Bradford where 350 workers struck against the employment of non-union men and, after several days out, gained the agreement of the nonunionists to join their organisation.11 But there are few if any other similar cases, though non-unionism was occasionally taken to district level as a grievance by branches seeking either further assistance or authorisation to take collective action on the issue. In 1899 there were at least six cases of this kind; in 1900, eight; in 1901, five; and in 1903, two.12 Some ultimately progressed as far as branch balloting over the giving in of notices.


At Lofthouse, for example, 576 of 620 casting ballots voted in favour of striking over non-unionism in 1901. They were authorised to give notice and did so, but there is no indication that a stoppage subsequently occurred.13 About the same time Low Laithes branch requested a local ballot on non-unionism. Authorisation was granted to give in notices, but once again a stoppage was avoided.14 These examples suggest that the YMA was willing to strike over nonunionism, should no other alternative be available. But alternatives were always preferred. The YMA was in any case a strong organisation by the mid-1890s, representing a substantial proportion of all underground workers in the county. It was not invulnerable. But as Pickard noted in the YMA’s annual report covering the 1893–4 period, the YMA was almost ‘at the head of all other Trades Unions’, with close to 60,000 members and with ‘very few more members to be added to those…working at the coal face’.15 There were relatively few spots in the county, and these primarily marginal areas, where any degree of resistance to join the YMA was evident. The greater threat was for members’ interest to wane, their contributions to lapse and their presence at local branch meetings to be lost. It was this which allowed for victimisation to increase and similar problems to emerge. YMA officials thus pushed continuously for further support and renewed vigour, clearly aware that union strength can never be conclusively achieved but must be created and re-created. Owners’ campaigns against the union For the most part colliery owners in Yorkshire had become reconciled to the YMA’s presence by this time and some no doubt appreciated the extent to which the union attempted to impose a degree of order on wage negotiations and other aspects of employer/employee relations. There were others, however, who continued to regard the union as an irritant, who were unwilling to engage in orderly negotiations and who would have been delighted to replace their unionised workers with non-union ones. It was these whose very action—or occasional inaction—seemed almost deliberately aimed at breeding tension and discontent. Branches at their pits always harboured a disproportionately high number of victims. Grievances were rather more prone to fester and become the basis for stoppages. YMA officials easily identified such owners. At the YMA annual demonstration in 1897 Pickard mentioned Glasshoughton, Frystone and Fox Holes as particular trouble spots. ‘We have a place called Glasshoughton’, he said, ‘and the time has come, I think, when the manager of that colliery ought to consider that he has been in a glass house and that if he will throw stones he may expect others to throw them in return.’16


Ravensthorpe—1900–3 One particularly notorious case, long and involved and revealing at times a certain obstructiveness on the part of management, concerns the Ravensthorpe branch. A dispute there, which commenced in 1900 and at one point involved the bringing in of an arbitrator, ultimately led to the disintegration of the local branch amidst considerable bitterness. Over the course of 1900, various grievances relating to home coal and pricelist matters were raised by the branch. Several times during the year suggestions were made by the YMA that the case be referred to the West Yorkshire joint committee if not quickly settled, and in the autumn two of the YMA’s representatives on the joint committee, William Lincoln and Herbert Smith, were assigned to look into the Ravensthorpe grievances.17 In the mean time a complication arose when lads at Dark Lane pit first went out without notice over a grievance involving afternoon shifts and then returned, gave the required fourteen days’ notice, and went out again on a six-day strike, entailing miners qualifying for lock-out pay.18 The lads’ dispute had in fact erupted during the course of an official YMA inspection of the pit by Lincoln and Smith, who were able to prove with the aid of colliery records that the lads were unable to earn as much on the afternoon as on the morning shift. When one lad refused to work in the afternoon and was summarily dismissed, the lot went out. Lincoln and Smith persuaded them to return and give proper notice and then, during the ensuing fourteen days, attempted with considerable difficulty to meet the management to discuss the matter. The owner, Nevin, would not concede to a meeting until the day before notices expired and then, when the miners’ representatives arrived, balked. A fundamental sticking point was his adamant refusal to meet with any deputation which included the local checkweighman, S.Jacks.19 There was little love lost between Jacks and Nevin. Jacks was outspoken and quick to raise his voice in criticism of poor working conditions, low wages and what he considered improper management procedures. He was a strong supporter of the union and a militant on the issue of non-unionism. Working in one of the pits administered by Nevin, who was perhaps not exemplary in the treatment of his workers and who apparently found dealings with the union decidedly unpleasant, he was placed in an environment where there was much to complain of. Jacks was clearly popular among union membership, at least in his section of the county, and is an example of one of those local leaders who became active on the district level. He was a member of the joint committee over a long period, from 1898 until its replacement by the Minimum Wage Board, on which he subsequently served for several years.20 He was a delegate to a number of national conferences and in 1905 attended the International Miners’ Conference


on behalf of the Miners’ Federation. In 1905 he was voted on to a list of five potential parliamentary candidates drawn up by the YMA and was runner-up in the election for the post of district treasurer. While a diligent and valuable worker on behalf of the YMA, he was also, however, to come into occasional conflict with district officials. In some respects it was his very bitterness at what he considered the lack of action or militancy by the district on certain issues— particularly the dispute at Ravensthorpe—which motivated his involvement and catapulted him into a position of local leader. In November 1900, in the midst of the YMA’s attempts to obtain a settlement at Ravensthorpe, Jacks issued a number of branches in the West Yorkshire area with an invitation to a conference of all ‘underground men, top men and lads’, intended to discuss the issues of non-unionism, wages, hours and privileges. Claiming to have consulted ‘other miners’ officials’, he asked that branches select and send representatives from the three groups specified. His circular suggested that poor wages were a consequence primarily of ‘the NON-UNION element so prevalent in the district, and the INDIFFERENCE of men to LOOK AFTER and CHECK the ENCROACHMENT of the Management of the Colliery’. ‘Today’, it continued, ‘from indirect reductions and the loss of privileges, a state of things exists that is not creditable to anyone.’21 District officials were furious when the circular was drawn to their attention. A special note in the YMA minutes referred to it as one of the most audacious ever distributed by any person since the formation of the association. If other officials had been consulted, they certainly did not include Pickard, Cowey or Parrott. Branches were informed that the meeting was illegal, not just because it was unauthorised, but because the YMA always held such sectional initiatives to be extremely disruptive of the unity of the association as a whole. Jacks had acted illegally and at the next council meeting was censured and condemned, albeit against the appeal of his own branch.22 When Nevin refused to meet any deputation which included Jacks, an offer was made by Lincoln and Smith to meet him anywhere he chose. An arrangement seemed to have been reached, but when they went to the colliery office to draw up the agreement, the manager backed out. The lads meanwhile held a pit-gate meeting and decided to stay out, but after a further session with Lincoln and Smith agreed to return. Though perhaps justified in their grievances, their overhasty action made them vulnerable to legal penalty and jeopardised their obtaining a satisfactory settlement.23 Management practices did not ease and the pattern of minimal co-operation verging on obstruction prevailed throughout much of 1901. Lincoln and Smith noted that there were grievances of one sort or another in all of Nevin’s pits in the district save one. Their inspection showed that in various parts of the Dark Lane pit the coal was much thinner and harder to get than in others and that the men were justified in asking for a revision of prices. They suggested that the YMA


executive should bring pressure to bear on Nevin, as they considered he would do nothing unless forced.24 Matters came to a head when the employer gave notice to a considerable number of Ravensthorpe’s miners and tools were downed on 3 January 1901.25 Workers at three of Nevin’s pits were granted authorisation to give notice in support of those already stopped and went on strike, thus enlarging a dispute which would occupy the district for a considerable time. By April, 415 were reported on strike against the Mirfield Coal Company and receiving strike pay.26 Nevin’s behaviour was something of an annoyance on occasion not just to the union but also to his fellow owners. In March he gave the curious response to a query at a West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association (WYCOA) special council meeting that he ‘was unable to state the position of affairs at his company owing to his having been away’.27 Regardless of this reply the owners’ association consented to a suggestion from the YMA that the matter be referred to independent arbitration. Nevin expressed his willingness to go along, though only so long as an umpire fixed a price no higher than that paid by his neighbours in the same seam and under the same conditions.28 In the interim the miners remained out. Finally on 3 October the umpire, Thomas Marshall, made his award, specifying prices for the Black Bed seam in the Calder New, Dark Lane and Mirfield Moor pits. Once the men returned at these prices, he said, those applicable to other seams could be subsequently fixed.29 The miners were satisfied with the outcome but Nevin was clearly not and balked at its implementation. On 9 October, Pickard wrote to Ben Day, secretary of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, of the qualms felt by Mirfield’s workers and the irritation of many in the union. ‘If you could hear what is rumbling in the minds of Messrs Lincoln and Smith’, he said, ‘you would think there was an earthquake about to break out by and by.’30 The owners for their part were somewhat uneasy with the terms of the award. Day wrote that Nevin had no intention of flaunting it, but that before proceeding, certain points of ambiguity required clearing up.31 Pickard agreed to the arbitrator being asked for further clarification, but in the meantime continued to press for a definite answer as to when the collieries would be re-opened, whether all the men would be re-engaged at once, and, if not, whether Nevin would be allowed to make selections from the men.32 He clearly suspected that Nevin might well take the opportunity to rid himself of those workers he considered disruptive, a move which the union was unwilling to countenance. In spite of its members’ general opinion that the umpire had ‘gone beyond the terms agreed upon for the reference’,33 the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association resolved to honour the award and assured Pickard that Nevin was ready to set his workers on. But delay ensued. Nevin seemed both offhand and evasive throughout, but eventually the pits were restarted. The dispute, however,


dragged on. Within a few weeks the YMA was complaining that Nevin was not carrying out the agreement and in mid-December expressed ‘deep regret that Nevin has set aside in many respects the Award of Mr Thomas Marshall, which we understand both sections agreed upon at the last joint committee at Leeds and as an Executive Committee we desire to know from the coalowners’ portion whether or not they are supporting Mr Nevin in his contention not to carry out the award’.34 The YMA executive treated the matter with utmost seriousness. It had been alarmed by a report from Lincoln and Smith that Nevin was now attempting to get the men to work the coal on a new system, which entailed a reduction. Nevin, moreover, had treated the YMA’s official representatives in a very brusque manner, telling them that though he would not turn them out, he would thereafter meet them only under his own arrangements, and then walking out of the room before they had even touched properly on all matters of concern. Refusal of the men to work on Nevin’s new terms led to many new cases of victimisation. Lincoln and Smith considered that ‘after the honourable way these men have carried out this Dispute for nearly twelve months, our Association either ought to end or mend this kind of treatment’.35 The problems at the Mirfield Moor Pit came under consideration of the joint committee in April 1902, with the YMA complaining that the matter was still unresolved. But Nevin by this time openly acknowledged his rejection of the award, whose terms, he claimed, obliged him to pay 1s a ton more than his neighbours.36 He had, in fact, already decided on a new tactic, having a month earlier informed the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association of his intention to introduce coal-cutting machines into the pit. This, he hoped, by effectively removing some of his former workforce, might finally bring the dispute to a close.37 On 22 April, the same day as the joint committee meeting, he told his fellow coal owners that he was in communication with some non-union men and hoped to get some started soon. In June he reported that a coal-cutter had been installed in one pit and that in another some twenty-nine men were at work, representing about a third of the original number. In November he predicted that he would have sufficient workers for his needs by the end of the year.38 From the YMA’s point of view, the strike remained official until the end of 1903, with pay being granted to those remaining out. The West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association also acknowledged ‘official’ prolongation of the strike by continuing to support the firm through an indemnity well into 1903, with the last payment being authorised at the end of March of that year.39 But Nevin’s strategy of introducing machinery, bringing in non-union men and attempting to lure back those of his workers who found themselves unable to hold out against the inevitable loss of their jobs eventually broke the YMA’s stand. By the end of March 1903 the owners’ association declared the strike ‘practically ceased’. The chairman congratulated Nevin, remarking that ‘this fight had proved beneficial to


all West Yorkshire Colliery owners’.40 They could not have been displeased at what constituted a defeat for the union and to some extent an eroding of the principles of trade unionism. When the ranks of strikers began to break, with some drifting back to work in the early part of 1903, those still out reaffirmed their commitment and assertively suggested that the district should do the same and not leave them in the lurch, nor allow the strike simply to sink to a quiet demise. In response Pickard wrote to F.Fisher, checkweighman and local secretary at Ravensthorpe, enquiring about rumours afloat of men resuming work at Mirfield and asking whether it was true that ‘one of the Checkweighmen now playing is a Candidate for the position of Checkweigher at one of the Pits now at work, and where we have been fighting for certain prices for the last two years’. ‘I want no evasions’, he said. ‘I am only interested to know, if the above are correct, whether or not it is worth while to continue the Strike.’41 Fisher replied that there were about 250 men working the pits, 100 of whom had formerly received strike pay. It was true, moreover, ‘that our men are going back to their work as Mr Nevin sends for them’, the trickle apparently increasingly a flood.42 He admitted to being the checkweighman in question and confirmed that he intended to return to work. His fellow checkweighman at Ravensthorpe, S.Jacks, then wrote an angry letter, castigating Fisher, whom he referred to as our late secretary, for saying that he had the sanction of the officials at Barnsley in returning to his work as checkweighman. ‘Will you say if this is true? and if not true, take steps to put you and the Officials right with our members and the public, for he is going up and down the place saying you say the Strike is over.’ Jacks then noted that of the 348 men who had been on the books when the pit stopped, 194 had got work elsewhere, but 146 were still out and on funds. Only eighty had gone back as ‘black sheep’.43 Pickard replied that Fisher’s claim to have official sanction was quite untrue.44 The strike remained official. But Fisher continued to press for support of his own position. He claimed that the dispute was effectively ended, or nearly so, and that Nevin declined to meet any deputation ‘simply because he can get the men back as soon as places can be got ready for them’. Moreover, he said, far from conceding to non-unionism, those returning wished to retain union membership and wanted to resume their contributions to the branch.45 But Jacks would not let the matter rest and wrote in appeal and complaint to Barnsley in early February. Nevin, had, he said, met a deputation, but had told them they could only return on what Jacks considered ‘black terms’, some 20 to 30 per cent below the Marshall award. What, he asked the YMA, should they do now and what was the union willing to do for them? He complained that no official had been seen at Ravensthorpe for months. ‘Not a line in the papers. No one refers in any public speech to Ravensthorpe, and it looks as if no one cares…’.46


District officials responded to what they saw as criticism in Jacks’s letter with an ‘emphatic denial’ of charges made. They had not neglected Ravensthorpe nor even encouraged men to return to work. Even so as the YMA began to be dragged into other troubles with legal entanglements connected with a dispute at Denaby and Cadeby, there was a sense in some quarters that a hopeless situation should be left to lie, and in May the executive committee advised the council to recommend those still out at Ravensthorpe to look elsewhere for work.47 But no doubt prodded by concern for those 124 still out, the council delayed for a period stretching many months. Finally at the end of the year a vote of 993 to 254 determined that the strike should be officially acknowledged as over. Those at work at Mirfield Moor Collieries were at the same time invited to resume contributions to the union and thereby reclaim their membership.48 In this sense the union continued to survive at Ravensthorpe and non-unionism was held at bay. But the ability of owners to inflict injury on the union by sidestepping its authority and bringing in non-union workers was also an obvious facet of the Ravensthorpe case. Efforts to reduce the number of victims on YMA books If the long Ravensthorpe dispute involved a particularly persistent degree of uncooperativeness and obstructiveness on the part of management, problems of less blatant or perhaps less wide-scale nature afflicted many branches where managements resisted the union and trade unionism in numerous direct and indirect ways. The number of victims on the books, often brought there on issues relating to trade unionism, continued to be a matter of concern to the YMA. Not only did this suggest a degree of union ineffectiveness at some level, it also began to be an uncomfortable financial burden. Indeed it was as much resistance to the outflow of funds as a resolve to aggressively counter management’s tendencies to victimise members that ultimately led the YMA in 1912 to institute new procedures compelling branches to give notice when victims were made. It was only in this sense that the union declared itself willing on a routine basis to strike over the issue of non-unionism, though only indirectly when this was the cause of victimisation. A proposal to systematise a general response to victims was made as early as 1897, though at this time it generated little support.49 But after the turn of the century, as the YMA suffered particularly high rates of victimisation, concern to implement a workable policy grew. A single council meeting in January 1902 dealt with ninety-six cases of victimisation, a number of which were associated with employers’ anti-union initiatives.50 Over the following year an average of thirty-five victim cases were routinely dealt with at each meeting of the executive and the council, and the continuing capacity of the union to carry so great and constant a cost began to be questioned. At Grimethorpe, for example,


victim pay was running at about £200 a quarter while the income from the branch stood at £249 7s 8d in the first and just £216 in the second quarter.51 The number of new victims in 1904 slightly decreased, but was still running at an average of twenty-seven per meeting of council and executive committee meeting. About 740 men were placed on funds as victims over the year as a whole, prompting the council to suggest that the two joint committees be enlisted in a general discussion of ‘the large number of men we have on our funds locked out, on strike, and victim to see if we can not get them back to work’.52 Several other suggestions, directed at modification of union rules rather than at specifically altering management practices, were made during the course of 1904 and 1905.53 One from Denby Grange, for example, stipulated that wherever members had been on the books for over three years, through strikes, lock-outs or victimisation, they should be paid two more weeks and then declared offfunds. Though there was by now considerable sympathy for this position, the council was not yet prepared to endorse it.54 The situation therefore persisted until finally, at the end of 1912 a rule change was enacted. Essentially victims were now to be allowed only sixteen weeks on the books; and where the case was considered serious, branches were directed to ballot with a view to giving notice. Moreover, machinery dealing with applications to ballot was to be speeded up, with the meeting of the council or executive immediately following such a request being required to give it consideration and refer it to the county as a whole, with permission to give in notice being given as soon as a favourable ballot should become known.55 In consequence almost all applications to ballot during the following year concerned victims. None, however, led to strikes. The threat posed by the union’s resolute stand presumably served to bring matters to negotiated settlements without stoppages occurring. The number of victims on the books at any given time, moreover, declined from 123 to thirty-five over the year.56 Thereafter, the number of victims remained relatively low. The new ruling, an indirect stand against anti-union machinations by employers, and in many senses the most forthright stance taken by the YMA on the issue, served to politicise cases of victimisation, making them of more central union concern, to be treated with the utmost urgency. RELATIONSHIP OF THE YMA TO LADS AND SURFACE WORKERS The YMA initially represented only those skilled underground workers involved in getting coal. It had effectively organised this section of the industry’s workforce by the 1890s and was well capable in consequence of monitoring and supervising its members’ disputes with employers. While never able to guarantee against action outside its rules and procedures, a high degree of orderliness in


industrial relations had been achieved. But the union had little leverage with other workers in the industry, whose stoppages could easily result in colliers being locked out and their income temporarily stopped. It was largely in order to reduce this element of unpredictability that the YMA was drawn toward increasing involvement with the grievances of non-face workers and ultimately toward breaking down the relative exclusiveness of the union and building an industry-wide organisation. Long before this was achieved, however, the YMA’s relative exclusiveness was gradually and deliberately eroded as non-face workers were admitted as members, if not systematically recruited. Trammers, for example, were frequently members and lads were routinely admitted at lower subscriptions rates. There were also cases from early on of surface workers joining the YMA. Yet the process was imbued with a certain tension. For while the prevalence of industrial disruption owing to action by lads or surface workers reinforced a growing conviction that the YMA should stretch its influence over these groups and attend to their grievances, the extent to which the interests of face workers remained predominant within the union engendered continuing hostility—or at the least disinterest—toward the YMA by non-face workers and gave room for other unions to enter the field. Once this occurred, as in the case of surface workers and winding engine drivers, the YMA’s involvement in their disputes became increasingly problematic. This complex process of maintaining distance while becoming increasingly concerned with the grievances of non-face workers was particularly evident in the 1890s and the early years of the twentieth century. Stoppages in 1894 owing to lads and surface workers The year 1894 was one in which a number of disputes and stoppages were initiated by lads and surface workers, largely in consequence of a prevalent complaint that they had been subjected to a reduction, the negotiations for which they had not been party. The MFGB agreed to the owners’ demand for a 10 per cent wage decrease in the summer of 1894, and wages were accordingly lowered through arrangement by the Conciliation Board. But the owners had suggested that boys would be dealt with separately and in many cases would suffer no reduction at all.1 In the event problems emerged at a number of pits in Yorkshire, as in other coalfields, and lads and surface workers went out. Many of these stoppages were short, but nonetheless disruptive. On 10 August, for example, 170 pit lads stopped a colliery at Dewsbury affecting a total of 700. They returned after five days, when the owners conceded a return to their old wages. On 13 August, fifty pit lads stopped a pit employing 850 at Barnsley, returning two days later on the YMA’s advice at a reduced rate pending a general settlement. A further 200


banksmen and pony drivers went out at a Rotherham pit on 13 August, putting a total of 1,000 out of work in their protest against the general reduction. They returned after 18 August, having gained agreement that many of their number could retain their previous wage rates. On 7 September sixty topmen at Wombwell went out in a strike affecting a further 740. Theirs was a one-day stoppage, as again the owners conceded their old rate being retained.2 The YMA’s response to these and many similar actions was to try to persuade those out to return, pending the operation of conciliation machinery. Surface workers were urged to continue working on the basis of understandings arrived at at individual collieries until the Conciliation Board could agree to a general policy. In the case of lads, the YMA offered a more specific proposal. The union asked to meet the joint committees and the Conciliation Board to obtain an arrangement by which lads should receive a flat minimum wage, so that, as Pickard declared, they might be paid a fair day’s wage for work done.3 The owners subsequently agreed to the principle of a minimum for lads, but rejected the proposed figure of 3s, suggesting 2s 6d as an alternative, and after a vote, these terms were accepted.4 Concern for establishing a minimum wage for lads was not wholly altruistic. Miners’ officials were well aware that lads could be employed on ‘cheap wages’ to do work little different to that done by adults, thereby threatening the overall level of wages. As this was a matter of concern to miners as a whole, district officers considered it essential that it be taken on board and even more important that lads should be drawn into the union. Were the lads so organised and arrangements regarding their wages made through the union, argued Pickard, ‘matters would not be so hopeless as we find them now and again.’5 Negotiations on a uniform wage scale for lads In 1896, when lads stopped several West Yorkshire pits, the council directed the union’s officials to collect information from branches on the ages, wages and different classes of work done by lads to aid in negotiations so that the matter might be ‘finally dealt with by the district’.6 No conclusive settlement was, however, immediately forthcoming. In February 1897 and again in April, district officials were instructed to call a joint committee meeting to deal with the question and try to raise the standard of lads’ wages.7 Finally in July an agreement was reached with both the South and West Yorkshire owners’ associations, according to which owners should pay the prevailing district percentage on the standard, fixed as the level of boys’ wages prevailing in 1888. The YMA failed, however, to obtain agreement on a definite scale of lads’ wages, where the rate was linked to age. Nor did the 1897 terms make any provision for a minimum wage. Indeed it was declared that the 1894 agreement that lads’ wages should not fall below 2s 6d a day had been intended as only a


temporary device to avoid friction at the time and referred to only particular pits. The owners were adamant that it had never been contemplated that it should become a permanent addition to the standard.8 In some ways, then, the union was further away than ever from a satisfactory settlement having gained little beyond an acknowledgement of the union’s right to negotiate on behalf of the lads. This rather unsatisfactory state of affairs was reflected in events the following year, which was again plagued by lads’ grievances. Sixteen stoppages, involving 2,070 lads, occurred in Yorkshire. In several instances lads went out without notice and were subsequently subject to penalties for breach of contract. There was no evidence of concerted action underlying these stoppages, nor in all cases were the objectives identical. But a frequent complaint was that the arrangement made the previous year had not been honoured by employers. Their action provoked immediate consideration by the South Yorkshire joint committee, which, meeting on 22 July in Sheffield, proposed a settlement that finally established the legitimacy of a scale for lads’ wages, though with a minimum much lower than the YMA had previously sought. The agreement also made provision for negotiations procedures specifically involving the union, should grievances arise in the future.9 West Yorkshire owners had not been party to the settlement nor for the most part had their pits been subject to stoppages by lads in the summer of 1898. Several months later, however, lads at Wheldale laid down tools to support their request for a scale similar to that agreed to in Sheffield. The firm took the case to the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association whose chairman acknowledged it as one with serious import for the entire district.10 Members of the organisation were strongly resistant to instituting any general scheme along the lines agreed at Sheffield, believing that a standard scale would be unreasonable given the great variation in lads’ wages then prevailing among the district’s pits. It was accepted that any wage arrangements should be fixed on an individual colliery basis. But none should incorporate a scale.11 The approach in this section of the county was consistent with a general orientation toward fostering individual solutions and keeping the workforce unorganised and internally divided as far as possible. The immediate case of the Wheldale strike was settled by an arrangement under which lads aged under 20 were to receive an advance of 4d per day, and over 20 an advance of 6d per day on rates paid prior to 1 October. It was further agreed that those under 20 should receive a rise of 2d every six months. All advances were to receive the district percentage. Other owners in the district were somewhat displeased, particularly by the provision for an advance every six months. But Briggs, as chairman of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, gave grudging acceptance to the settlement by rationalising that the scale conceded was not one based on age.12 The YMA dealt with events in 1898 strictly according to legal precepts, recognising an obligation to intervene on the lads’ behalf, but also displaying a


certain irritation with their rather incautious behaviour in leaving work without notice. Officials made many attempts to avoid both illegal and legal stoppages. But these having failed, the union was obliged to pay upwards of £10,000 to members locked out. Its annual report covering the incident repeated the hope that lads would join the union so that future disputes could be dealt with on a routine basis by the Conciliation Board, rather than through ad hoc and crisisgenerated means. It was the disorderliness of the lads’ actions in 1898 and the perceived wastage and ill-will they entailed to which the union objected. ‘When pits are set down, as in the lads’ case’, it was stated, ‘everybody gets put out, and into bad temper, then negotiations with owners and managers do not run smoothly.’13 Arrangements for dealing with lads’ wages made with South Yorkshire owners in the summer of 1898 and with Wheldale in West Yorkshire in the autumn did not end the matter. In 1899 grievances involving lads emerged at a number of pits, including Birley, Crigglestone, Hemsworth, Hickleton Main, Hoyland Silkstone, Wheldale, Wombwell, Fryston, and Shireoaks and Streetley.14 There were at least two stoppages during the year relating to lads’ wages—at Hickleton Main and Hemsworth. At Fryston, owned by the same firm as Wheldale, lads demanded similar provisions to those gained by Wheldale lads the previous year. After much consultation an agreement was finally reached which gave further legitimation to a scale-based wage structure. Lads’ grievances—1900–2 In 1900 there were further instances of lads’ grievances laying Yorkshire pits idle, often without notice. Such precipitate action, so common in cases involving lads, was perhaps partly a function of youthful impetuousness and impatience, but as much of lack of organisation and thereby of experience. Though their numbers were relatively small in proportion to total pit workers, withdrawal of their labour could effectively stop overall production in a short time. But if having clear leverage of this sort, stoppages without notice which entailed legal penalty only led to frustration of lads’ objectives.15 Problems with lads lapsed momentarily, only to be inflamed again in 1902 when many were affected by a 10 per cent reduction specifically applied to wages of underground and surface workers. Pit lads’ protests, which stopped production at many pits, underlined once again the difficulty caused by many of their number remaining outside the union as well as the fact that their interests were never systematically taken account of through the industry’s conciliation machinery. The stoppages began in Yorkshire from about the middle of July, as lads in colliery after colliery ceased work. The strikes subsequently spread to Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Lancashire. There was some


justice to the lads’ complaint over the imposed reduction since at some pits it effectively negated an advance to which many had been due under their prevailing terms.16 But once the lads began to stop colliery operations, the position of the owners hardened considerably. At a special council of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association convened to discuss strikes at Glasshoughton, Ackton Hall, Wheldale, Fryston, Nostell and pits owned by Pope and Pearson, and Briggs, Son and Company, several owners declared their intention to stand firm and not give way in the slightest degree. It was decided, moreover, to contact the South Yorkshire owners’ association and to act in concert with its members.17 Though widespread, the action was relatively short in duration. After the joint committee in West Yorkshire recommended that lads should resume work at once, with any ‘errors complained of to be subject to immediate investigation, most acceded.18 But some remained out, or came out again after initially returning, so that the issue remained a critical one in places within the district for some time. Particular trouble spots in West Yorkshire were at Newmarket Haigh Moor, some of Briggs’s pits and collieries owned by the Victoria Coal and Coke Company. Briggs, chairman of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, had problems with lads at Syndale and at his Whitwood pits, where there was also pressure for the age scale adopted in South Yorkshire. He categorically refused to consider their request and having gained the support of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, continued his resistance.19 But in spite of this rather adamant opposition, Briggs appeared to shift his ground in September when he asked for a concession from the owners’ association in allowing him a free hand to settle the dispute. He had found that a neighbouring pit owned by Pope and Pearsons operated a scale similar to that in South Yorkshire and this, claimed Briggs, constituted a special condition.20 While the YMA regarded the lads’ actions of 1902 with a certain degree of irritation, there were some local cases where miners actively supported lads’ claims for higher wages. At the Charlesworth’s pits, Rawmarsh, Thrybergh Hall and Swinton, for example, colliers went out alongside lads in an authorised strike in early September directed at gaining improved wages for their younger colleagues.21 Some 2,000 remained out for seven weeks but in the end the strike was called off and work was resumed on the owners’ terms.22 In view of persisting squabbles over lads’ wages, the YMA approached both the West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire owners’ associations asking for a meeting to discuss the matter, only to be rebuffed. But the owners did intimate that if it could be proved that any lad was not being paid in accord with existing pit agreements, ‘they would see that that was put right’.23 Subsequently, the YMA’s concern with lads’ wages lessened, largely because lads themselves entered a rather more quiet phase. And though in 1907 the YMA was again


engaged in trying to get the South Yorkshire age-based scale implemented in West Yorkshire, in this case at West Sharlston and Parkhill, there was little more general activity on the matter.24 Orientation toward surface workers If the YMA’s preoccupation in dealing with lads was over a scale which would allow uniform and automatic wage increases and thus prevent disruptions based on perceived injustice or the serendipity of owners, the issue claiming attention in respect of surface workers centred more on the boundaries of union jurisdiction. The YMA had initially delineated these boundaries in terms of level of skill and had thereby effectively excluded underground haulage or general workers as well as surface workers. This position left room for other organisers to move in and claim representation of the industry’s less skilled workers, and for many years there had been scattered initiatives from different sections of the workforce to form their own separate organisations. In 1882, for example, wage advances by colliers prompted a set of artisans including pit joiners, blacksmiths, fitters and head sawyers in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire to send representatives to a meeting in Rotherham to discuss combination for the purpose of gaining a similar advance.25 In 1890 an association in West Yorkshire of colliery enginemen incorporated 123 of the estimated 250 enginemen in the region26 and staged what turned out to be an unsuccessful strike. In subsequent years the enginemen dealt routinely with the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association on a wide range of issues. Such initiatives were, however, not characteristic of ordinary surface workers who remained for the most part unorganised in the 1880s and early 1890s. The YMA annual report for 1893–4 decried this lack of activity: ‘the topmen would not join our Union or any other union in order to secure advances.’ But the writer of this report was at the same time highly critical of attempts on the part of those outside of the industry to stimulate such activity. In 1894 the General Labourers’ Union had begun to agitate on behalf of surface workers. The YMA countered that ‘in our judgment neither the General Labourers’ Union or any other union have any right to come and interfere with the work of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association.’ ‘It is too late in the day now to attempt to create mischief in a trade in which they have no right, and which if they were responsible men, they would leave those engaged in it to deal with.’27 The YMA moved on occasion thereafter to take at least formal account of surface workers. On a broader plane, the MFGB attempted to include them, though not always successfully, in general wage negotiations. But the jockeying was to continue for some time with other unions vying for the loyalty of surface workers.


Conciliation Board agreements and surface workers’ wages The agreement between the Federation and the owners which resulted in a 2.5 per cent advance and the re-establishment of the Conciliation Board in 1898 was one of those which specifically incorporated surface workers. As a note in the minutes of the union’s Ordinary Executive Committee emphasised, the Federation had taken up the responsibility to secure benefits for various classes of workers and this merely underlined the need to gather all workers under the Federation’s fold.28 The YMA resolved in consequence to ensure that the advance actually be applied, at least for those who were among its members. This endeavour was to involve even yard men, who had not in fact been formally included in the agreement.29 Whatever the good intentions of miners’ leaders in 1898, however, the agreement reached by the Conciliation Board the following year, awarding a 7.5 per cent advance, omitted mention of surface workers. This may well have been a reflection of the increasing organisation of surface labour independently of the miners’ associations with its implication that the Miners’ Federation had shaky legitimacy as representative of other than underground labour. In Yorkshire the YMA sustained its concern for surface workers and urged local officials to assist in getting their wage claim settled, though for the less than altruistic reason that otherwise friction might arise when underground workers’ advances were granted.30 Shortly after the Conciliation Board agreement, however, a separate arrangement was worked out between South Yorkshire owners and representatives from the YMA, the National Amalgamated Union of Labour and the National Amalgamated Union of Enginemen and Firemen, whereby surface workers were to receive 5 per cent in two instalments.31 This left topmen 2.5 per cent short of the total advance granted to underground workers, but at least set something of a precedent for the dealing with surface workers’ concerns. West Yorkshire owners were not a party to this arrangement and resisted its implications. The first of two agreements on miners’ wages reached by the Conciliation Board in 1900, granting a further 5 per cent in January, again excluded surface workers, although the board did recommend that a 5 per cent increase on the 1888 rates be extended to the wages of surface labour engaged on the pit bank and screens manipulating the coal. In South Yorkshire, similar parties met as in the previous year—the owners, the YMA, the National Amalgamated Union of Labour and the National Amalgamated Union of Enginemen—and now joined by the National Union of Gasworkers, reached agreement on surfacemen receiving the 5 per cent advance. But it was understood that the proportion by which topmen’s wages would in future be increased or reduced as compared with miners’ wages should be left for future discussion.32 In West Yorkshire, owners


had initially resolved to give surface workers, apart from enginemen, no more than 2.5 per cent. But they succumbed to pressure from enginemen’s and labourers’ societies and ultimately conceded the 5 per cent on an individual colliery basis,33 once again only grudgingly being dragged into some sort of line. The second agreement reached by the Conciliation Board in 1900 granted a 15 per cent increase in three stages, the first in October 1900 and the last in February 1901. This time it formally provided that the advance should apply to surface labour on the pit bank engaged in screening, though not to mechanics, coke-burners, coke-wheelers or enginemen. The chairman of the West Yorkshire owners, Briggs, recommended that save for the enginemen, these excluded workers be granted advances according to the discretion of the individual management. As for enginemen, nothing should be given outright and the matter should be left until such time as their society made a formal application.34 Continuing ambivalence in approach to surface workers Agreements in 1902, 1903 and 1904 under the Conciliation Board sometimes explicitly included surface workers engaged in manipulating coal and sometimes not, leading to ambiguity, lack of consensus among owners, and, where workers felt themselves unjustly treated, intermittent strike activity.35 The entire catalogue of wage awards over the early years of the twentieth century indicates the lack of uniformity which prevailed in the treatment of surface workers both in Yorkshire and within the Federation as a whole. Contradictory tendencies seemed to be operating simultaneously, both towards centralisation of bargaining procedures as regards wage demands and negotiating machinery and their separation along lines of level of skill or type of worker. And on the ground at the individual colliery, the situation could be a complex one. The YMA as well as the Federation made gestures towards extending their representation and their responsibilities within the industry to include surface workers. But these were at best half-hearted. As if resenting the topmen’s previous aloofness from the union, a stance for which the YMA was itself in no little means responsible, they repeatedly stressed that they would work for surface workers only in so far as they were members of the union. But then apparently recognising that topmen were increasingly joining their own unions, and mindful that this introduced a new element of uncertainty into the industry (in Yorkshire at least), the YMA strove for an alliance with the new unions and thereby a hand in negotiations with local owners regarding surface workers. But in many respects the YMA seemed to have increasingly lost touch with surface workers, and by 1904 it was admitted that though many had formerly been YMA members, they had taken their clearances, ‘nearly the whole of them’. As Wadsworth, the miners’ president admitted in the context of a joint committee session with the South Yorkshire owners, ‘very likely they had been


promised something better than we gave them’. ‘We have no control over them.’ Many, he said, had joined ‘Bailey’s’ society. The owners were somewhat taken aback by these admissions. ‘The position’, said Rhodes, ‘was quite different from what they thought it was.’ And the question then arose as to how to deal with grievances related to surface workers through existing conciliation machinery.36 In the event the YMA was to be largely bypassed in subsequent dealings with surface workers. The National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers first approached South Yorkshire owners and then wrote to the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association asking to be recognised in all future advances and wage reductions. Briggs, as chairman of the West Yorkshire association, considered it prudent to give a positive response.37 The YMA continued to have surface workers among its members, but appears to have made little concerted attempt to either pursue their specific interests or to actively recruit from among their number. Its distance from their concerns is evident from a decision of the council in April 1906 not to send delegates to a conference of various surface associations.38 The YMA’s position relative to various groups or classes of workers in the mining industry clearly varied depending on the group in question. The union remained primarily oriented toward the interests of skilled underground workers and these comprised the great majority of its members. But it had gradually come to incorporate other underground workers, particularly the overlapping categories of haulage workers and lads. For the latter, especially, there had been concerted, if not always successful, attempts to gain a uniform wage scale throughout the county. Lads were always junior members, obliged to pay only half the subscription rate of their older colleagues. To the extent that they were often the sons of full members it was perhaps not surprising that the union would adopt a paternalistic attitude toward them, both watching over their interests and keeping a rein upon them should they prove recalcitrant or irresponsible. Moreover, though they did not always progress to become face workers, they were often in the position of and effectively treated as apprentices. In this regard too it was easy to legitimise the union’s claiming or taking over responsibility for them. But with respect to other specialist underground workers, as well as for the underground day workers and surface workers generally, the YMA was much more ambivalent. The specialist or skilled workers themselves, both underground and on the surface, were quick to form their own associations. Enginemen in particular often saw themselves as something of an elite within the industry and displayed little desire to join in a broader association. In any case the rather specific terms of their employment may have convinced them that it was only through an independent body that their interests could be properly represented and taken account of.


General surface workers, on the other hand, appear to have been largely ignored if not actively excluded by the YMA throughout much of its early history. Status differentials, based on level of skill and period of training, clearly intruded into the process of unionisation. Different categories of workers not only had different specific interests and grievances; they also saw themselves as occupying positions of greater or lesser importance or value and were loath to combine with those regarded as of lesser status. But segmentation and unevenness in the process of unionisation had a significant impact on the ability of any given organisation to protect its members and in particular to keep their employment steady. It was the YMA’s pragmatic concern to prevent such stoppages by other workers as might indirectly affect its own members that led to its taking on board the grievances of lads and to some extent of surface workers. But a degree of latent disdain toward the latter prevented any sort of systematic approach. And the breach left gradually became occupied by other unions, often those already representing general workers in other industries. By the early years of the twentieth century, the possibility for any initiative by the YMA toward the general inclusion of surface workers was already largely closed off. It was to be several years before new initiatives were to emerge for the breaking down of inter-union rivalry and for momentum to be established toward the creation of a broad-based industrial union.

236

9 POLITICS AND THE YMA—THE BARNSLEY BY-ELECTION OF 1897

TRADITION OF TRADE UNION MILITANCY AND POLITICAL MODERATION The growth of the YMA over its first decade was based on a belief in strength through unity and a readiness to engage in industrial militancy. Organising for the preservation and pursuit of workers’ interests was considered the key to the leverage necessary to ensure justice in dealings with employers. The YMA did not indulge in empty threats. The union was a mechanism for providing support against victimisation and sustenance in the form of strike or lock-out pay when pits were stopped through industrial action. It made withdrawal of labour a viable possibility and an effective tool against the mine owners. Where necessary, it allowed confrontation to take the form of what Pickard described as ‘war’. Yet despite their acceptance of the need for industrial militancy, Yorkshire miners—or more particularly their leaders—were also intent on establishing means for negotiating disputes which would obviate the need for strike action. Strength through unity and numbers which made the threat of striking a realistic one was regarded as the basis for rational discussion of differences and the reaching of mutually acceptable solutions. Likewise in the political realm, strength through numbers and unity was viewed as essential means for effective lobbying, all the more enhanced by the presence of those sympathetic to miners’ interests within Parliament itself. Yorkshire leaders were schooled in a belief in progress through gradual reform, being attuned to the practical. But not merely resigned to accepting what was currently practical, they were also firm adovcates of intervention through collective action to influence the context through which current practicalities were defined. When the suffrage was extended in 1885 they quickly moved to ensure the election of a miner-MP. In the process they affiliated with the party of the day with which they had greatest affinity—the Liberals. Pickard was a Liberal MP from the beginning and remained so. Though the party had within it mine owners


and representatives of new manufacturing capital, it was also associated with non-conformism and it incorporated a number of principles or values to which miners also subscribed. As Rubenstein and Howell argue, the miners were attuned to moderation, perhaps as an unsurprising complement to their status as well-paid and highly skilled workers.1 In the late 1880s Pickard described himself as a Radical and a supporter of Gladstone. Later he described himself as Liberal Labour, as a champion of the interests of labour within the Liberal tradition. Having made substantial gains through trade union strength, been convinced of the legitimacy of parliamentarianism, and entered Parliament as a Liberal, Pickard was resistant to the socialist ideas which gained currency in the late 1880s and the 1890s. He always suspected them—whether encountered among Scottish miners or among miners on the continent— of being easy substitutes for the hard work of organising, and therefore as manifestations of trade union weakness. He distrusted abstractions as having little do with the miners’ immediate existence, needs or interests. As his account of the International Miners’ Federation of 1892 made clear, he had little time for ‘isms’ seeing them as essentially obstructionist.2 Thus he was highly sensitive to the formulas or slogans under which such ‘isms’ presented themselves. If a proponent of the legitimacy of state intervention in regulating safety practices, establishing maximum hours and minimum wages or providing compensation for injury, he saw as utopian (and possibly counter-productive) any proposal that the state take over control of the mining industry as a whole. Given his adherence to the principles of combination and trade union strength and his hostility to the abstractions or slogans of the various ‘isms’ it was to be expected that Pickard (and Cowey as well) should have resisted the emergence and spreading popularity of socialist doctrines in the late 1880s and in the 1890s, particularly as they became associated with the ‘new’ unions or with the relatively weaker sections of the trade union movement—or among miners, with some of the less well-organised regions.3 As a proponent of socialism who introduced some of its principles into discussions within the TUC and the international congresses of miners, Keir Hardie was early on viewed with rancour by both Pickard and Cowey. Their hostility extended to the Independent Labour Party (ILP), founded in 1893, with which Hardie was closely associated, and which they opposed not because it purported to represent the interests of labour, but because it was socialist (and perhaps as well because it was seen as a vehicle for wresting support among the miners which Pickard and Cowey previously enjoyed). A speech which Hardie made in Rothwell in July 1896, subsequently misquoted or taken out of context, came to symbolise for Pickard the difference between his and Hardie’s positions. Hardie had suggested that trade unionism on its own was not enough. The workers must go beyond it through political

THE BARNSLEY BY-ELECTION 239

organisation to achieve the ends they sought. For Pickard this essentially implied both a rejection of trade unionism and, by extension, his own life’s work. That Hardie should have made the speech in Rothwell, within Yorkshire, and therefore within Pickard’s territory, simply underlined the potential threat posed by the ILP. In 1897 the primary threads constituting the YMA position—trade union militancy and political moderation—were reflected with particular clarity in two events. The first was a debate at the Annual Federation Conference and the second a by-election in Barnsley which the ILP chose to contest alongside a YMA-sponsored Liberal candidate. Debate pitting trade unionism against Socialism A motion introduced by the Scottish delegation that ‘to secure the best conditions of industrial and social life it is absolutely necessary that the Land, Minerals, Railways, and instruments of wealth production should be owned and controlled by the state for the People’, was a catalyst to the heated debate which characterised the MFGB Annual Conference in January 1897. This was not the first time the subject of nationalisation had come before the MFGB. In 1894, there had been a large majority voting in favour of the nationalisation of mines.4 Nor was the Scottish motion the only one on this subject introduced during the 1897 conference. Lancashire and Cheshire proposed ‘that it is essential for the maintenance of British industries to Nationalise the Land, Mines, Mineral Royalties and Railways of this country’, and Cleveland, ‘that every effort be made to secure the Nationalisation of Land and Minerals in the United Kingdom’. But it was the Scottish motion which drew the strongest objection, particularly from Yorkshire, which introduced as an amendment to it ‘that representatives to the Federation Conferences and Congresses act on Trade Union lines as in the past, and not on Socialist lines’.5 This suggested a curious dichotomy which stupefied some at the conference itself. As the discussion revealed, the opposition perceived and intended by Yorkshire was not between trade unionism and nationalisation, but between trade unionism and socialism. As Pickard said, ‘we came to the conclusion there should be a test at this conference and those who vote against Trade Unionism and for Socialistic lines, I shall know who they are…when the votes are counted’.6 But the reason for Yorkshire’s opposition was not immediately apparent to all delegates. One from the Scottish contingent confessed his inability to understand why the last phrase ‘and not on Socialistic lines’ should come into the matter at all. He personally regarded socialism and trades unionism as going hand in hand and not as opposed. It was the view of YMA leaders in contrast that the opposition between trade unionism and socialism had already been affirmed by Hardie in


his speech at Rothwell in July 1896 where, as an advocate of the ILP, he had described trade unionism as having been played out. There was considerable debate about whether Hardie had in fact done so. Smillie, of the Scottish miners, for example, protested the point, maintaining that Hardie was as good a trade unionist as any in the conference hall.7 But regardless, Pickard’s basic objection to the Scottish motion was that it was the ‘core of the Independent Labour Party as enunciated by its leaders’. In similar vein, Cowey remarked that it was the cardinal doctrine of socialism. They were convinced that the ILP was attempting to have its manifesto ratified by the Federation and believed this to smack of an interventionism which was both unacceptable and dangerous. The ILP, they felt, was really out to ‘capture’ the Federation for its own specific and political ends, and, not least, to gain access to Federation funds. Believing that the ILP had denounced trade unionism, they felt compelled to champion it. Cowey argued that: Unlike some Socialistic leaders who say Trade Unionism is played out, we say, that Trade Unionism has a great future before it, and we have not a delegate in this room belonging to our Society but puts Trade Unionism before any other ism in the world. And later: I want to know, are we not here as Trades Unionists [Cries of Yes] Then what has Socialism to do with this business? To the query, ‘where do you separate them?’ he replied ‘Trades Unionism is Trades Unionism and Socialism is Socialism. They are two different factions, and it is a hard thing to serve God and Mammon’.8 Pickard seems to have deliberately made the issue a test of loyalty and threatened that he would walk out of the debate if it degenerated into insulting himself as chairman. It was perhaps a measure of the high esteem in which he (and Cowey) were held that loyalty was affirmed. But many delegates were unwilling to sacrifice the principle of nationalisation on the altar of loyalty to individuals or to the organisation. There was widespread feeling about the need to nationalise and thereby eliminate the system through which royalties were claimed by owners of land beneath which minerals were worked. This was a position even subscribed to by the Liberal Party. So though state ownership may have been central to ‘socialism’ its support was not exclusive to that doctrine. The Scottish resolution was soundly defeated by a vote of 137,000 to 18,000 and by a relatively similar division (134,000 to 21,000), the Yorkshire amendment was accepted. However, though some abstained in the subsequent


voting, both the Lancashire and Cheshire and the Cleveland resolutions were accepted (97,000 in favour and 6,000 against and 98,000 in favour and 3,000 against respectively).9 That the perceived dichotomy between socialism and trade unionism retained general currency after the conference is evident from letters to the editors of various of the Yorkshire newspapers. One by J.C.Whitely of Attercliffe Common, printed on February 19, was highly critical of the ILP as utopian and seemingly bent on ‘party smashing’. Its author regarded the Liberal Party as that to which ‘every Trade Unionist owes his position.’ A rejoinder, contributed by Harry Bond of Mexborough was printed on February 26. He declared trade unions to be discredited as obsolete weapons. ‘They have benefited the skilled worker at the cost of the rest of the labour world.’ It was rather the ILP which was the ‘weapon’ of the contemporary period.10 The controversy was further aggravated at the annual conference of the TUC later in the year when Tom Mann castigated those trade unionists who sat secure in their positions and gave little heed to the advance of the working class. However well warranted or ill-advised his remarks may have been, the fact that Mann used such terms as ‘fat-headed’ and ‘ignorant’ in reference to some trade unionists and workers could not have endeared him universally to his audience. As was Hardie’s speech at Rothwell in 1896, Mann’s became subject to close scrutiny and considerable distortion and was on more than one occasion pointed to as further evidence that the ILP was bent on wrecking existing structures in an attempt to wrest away the support of the working class. Run-up to the Barnsley by-election The entire debate on the presumed dichotomy between trade unionism and socialism was re-opened, elaborated and extended shortly after the TUC when a by-election was called in the constituency covering Barnsley. The seat had been held by the Liberals since the division was established in 1885 and there was little doubt that it could be easily reclaimed after the sitting MP, Earl Compton, stepped down on 11 September in consequence of the death of his father and his own elevation to the peerage. Given the YMA’s close association with the Liberals and Pickard’s own prominent position in the party as Liberal MP for Normanton, there was little question of the miners’ official support for a radical candidate. But the matter was thrown wide open by the decision of the ILP to enter the contest. The campaign became quickly transformed in consequence into something of a test of loyalties between YMA members and their district leaders. In the parliamentary elections of 1895, the ILP had put up twenty-eight candidates, including Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, J.R.MacDonald, the Scottish miners’ leader Robert Smillie and Keir Hardie. None was successful. Even so, the party was gradually gaining support. In Yorkshire its presence was strongest


in the mill towns along the edge of the Pennines. In the autumn of 1895 the party’s newspaper, the Labour Leader, referred to branches in Leeds, Ossett and Sheffield and included reports from Dewsbury, Bradford, Halifax, Beeston, Holbeck and Rothwell. Plans were afoot by this time to contest a number of local government wards in Bradford, Sheffield, Halifax and West Hunslet.11 Though factory workers were more commonly represented at the ILP clubs in the region, some miners were also active in the party at this early period. Thomas Cowell contested a seat on the school board at Halton on behalf of the ILP,12 and two brothers, Joshua and William Lunn, who ran for the school board at Rothwell were central figures in an ILP club which opened in Rothwell on 9 November 1895, with Enid Stacey in attendance to mark the occasion.13 Their commitment contributed to a strong socialist tradition in Rothwell which, if not unique within the Yorkshire coalfield, is still worthy of note. Willie Lunn was also closely involved with YMA affairs. In 1891, at the age of 19, he succeeded his father as chairman of the Rothwell branch of the miners’ union. Though resident in Rothwell he worked at Middleton Colliery from November 1889 and in 1900 was elected checkweighman at this pit. Thereafter he was active on the district level as well as the local level, being elected to the executive committee of the union in 1907, 1911 and 1918 and selected as delegate on various occasions to the TUC, the MFGB and the International Miners’ Federation. Ultimately he was to serve as a Labour MP and government minister.14 Another Yorkshire miner associated early with the ILP was Isaac Burns, whose house in Hemsworth was said to have been the party’s campaign headquarters during the 1897 by-election.15 Burns served at various times as both sub-checkweighman and checkweighman of South Kirkby pit and from 1902 was chairman of the local YMA branch there. In 1914 he was among those selected by the YMA as possible parliamentary candidates and in 1916 was elected onto the YMA executive committee.16 In spite of pockets of ILP support within the coalfield, however, the miners remained most closely associated with the Liberal Party. In recognition of this weakness, the ILP appointed Tom Taylor, a Yorkshire miner, to serve as a paid organiser in the summer of 1896, who travelled in this capacity throughout Yorkshire, Durham, South Wales, Derbyshire and Lancashire.17 Taylor had been active from the mid-1890s in generating support for the Labour Party. In October 1896, he spoke in Rothwell on ‘better social conditions for the future’18 and may well have been instrumental in the setting-up of an ILP club there. He later formed branches of the party in Barnsley and Hemsworth. By the autumn of 1897 the former had about forty members.19 Taylor was never a dominant figure within the YMA at a district level. But that he commanded respect among his fellow miners is indicated by the votes some branches gave him in late 1895 in the YMA’s election of delegates for the MFGB annual conference. Amidst the more typical voting for Pickard, Cowey and Parrott, eight branches put down


Taylor’s name. Two branches, Ryhill and Rylands, listed Taylor as their sole choice.20 After the ILP’s disastrous showing in the 1895 parliamentary elections, when Keir Hardie lost his seat,21 the party contested several by-elections, including Bradford East, where Hardie stood, and Halifax, where Tom Mann was put forward. But again success eluded the party with the ILP candidate consistently coming in last.22 When the Barnsley seat became vacant there was immediate speculation as to whether the ILP would try again. The Liberals had rapidly moved to choose a candidate. An emergency meeting reviewed a set of possible names within a few days of the vacancy having occurred,23 and shortly thereafter that of Joseph Walton emerged as most suitable. That he was from the first favoured by YMA leadership is evident from the fact that his nomination was moved by John Frith and that the motion to accept his name at the Liberal’s formal adoption proceedings was seconded by Parrott.24 During the subsequent campaign, various YMA leaders spoke publicly on his behalf. When the Barnsley Labour Club decided to support Walton, its president James Murray justified the choice by declaring that Walton’s platform went the whole length of the Labour programme.25 But if described as having a firm faith in the principles of robust Radicalism26 and if an outspoken proponent of a legal eight-hour day for the miners, Walton was neither a miner nor a trade unionist. Indeed he was a mine owner, and if a man of conviction and apparent sympathy for the lot of the mine worker, he was also a capitalist. It was inevitable that these points should prove contentious. There was no such difficulty with the Conservative candidate, James Blyth, a captain in the 4th Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, who had neither pretensions of previous political experience nor strong sympathy for the working class. This was to be his only venture into electoral politics.27 The Liberals assumed they had relatively little to fear from the Conservative challenge, and it may well have been that the Tory’s choice of candidate reflected acceptance that the seat was unlikely to fall their way, whoever they put up. The by-election might, therefore, have been uneventful had not the ILP decided to contest it. Reflecting on the decision some years later, Hardie described how he had been deputed to consult with local members: The meeting was held in a small, evil smelling loft over a stable and there were present fourteen members all told. The Election, we knew, would cost three or four hundred pounds, and I suggested that the first thing to be done was to find out what funds could be raised. Each member present was asked to guarantee a certain sum which he would raise by hook or crook before election day, and when these promises were all totalled up, we found we had had sums promised amounting to £213s 6d. A majority of members were against fighting until one comrade, a Swiss, who had been


in a good way of business, but was then earning his living as a working jeweller, drew off a massive solitaire diamond ring which he was wearing, and putting it on the table said—‘There, that will fetch £25 in any pawn shop, this is my contribution to the fight’. That settled the matter and we straight away adopted Pete Curran as the candidate and the next day the campaign was in full swing.’28 The issue of finance was a critical one and perhaps inevitable given the nature of the ILP as a workers’ party. If a potential strength in terms of principle, it was an obvious practical detriment. The point was curiously acknowledged by Parrott who in response to a query as to why the Liberals had not chosen an ordinary worker as their candidate, replied that no ordinary workers had sufficient funds. It was financially taxing, he said, just to contest a ward or a borough.29 But if financial considerations influenced the ILP decision, they were not the only ones involved and the party’s deliberations were not so smooth as suggested by Hardie’s account. For several days speculation reigned as to the ILP’s intentions. Should a candidate be put up, it was initially thought that it would be Tom Mann, but he himself rejected this possibility, and in any case his recent remarks at the TUC were still much in people’s minds.30 A formal selection was made only subsequent to a series of meetings in Barnsley, Wombwell and Hemsworth where the proposal to run a candidate had met with considerable enthusiasm by audiences which often included miners. Also important was a promise of support from the Barnsley and District Trades and Labour Council, though as Rubenstein notes, this was of dubious value, given that the vote was taken after several delegates had already left and was later challenged on the grounds of being politically wrong.31 Pete Curran, the ILP candidate, was not new to parliamentary campaigns, having been one of the party’s unsuccessful candidates in 1895. As a regional organiser of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers, however, he had far stronger associations with ‘new’ than ‘old’ unionists. He was regarded as an effective speaker and competent promoter of socialist principles. Pickard’s intervention through the press Whatever the political or practical rights or wrongs of the ILP decision to contest the election, the reaction to it by YMA leaders was quick and strident (and seemingly curiously disproportionate to the threat posed). Presumably to ensure the most rapid and efficient communication with his members, Pickard sent a letter to a number of papers in the region damning the ILP action in no uncertain terms. The interpretation he put on the socialists’ entry into the campaign reflects the extent to which he saw it as of a piece with other incidents during the year, particularly the debate at the MFGB annual conference in January 1897.


With considerable derision Pickard characterised opponents of Walton as those who had declared trade unionism to be played out, who had represented trade unionists as ‘fat-headed’ people, and who declared there to be no hope for the worker save through socialism. ‘These men are the men who have come into Barnsley Division to show what good can be effected by a wrecking policy.’32 ‘They come into the division with the full knowledge that they are encouraged to do so by the Tory Party,’ he wrote. ‘They come with a purpose to strike a death blow at the power of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association and the [Miners’] Federation of Great Britain because the knee is not bowed to Independent Labourism.’33 Having thus dismissed the ILP position, he then turned to a justification of the YMA’s stance: Now Sir, why do we support a man like Walton? 1st Because we believe he means what he says. 2nd Because he is as good if not a better Radical and Socialist than any man in the Independent Labour Party. 3rd Because he will be able to represent Labour without the aid of the Tory Party. 4th Because he is a loyal supporter of all planks in the miners’ platform. 5th Because he does not wish to have a share in the £130,000 now in the hands of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association. 6th Because we believe he is a fit and proper person all things considered to represent a division like Barnsley.34 Pickard concluded by declaring disloyal to the YMA and the MFGB anyone who sought to prevent a real supporter of the legal eight hours for the miners going to Parliament.35 Not surprisingly, Curran’s campaign emphasised that he was a worker but it also explicitly proclaimed his advocacy of socialism. He was a democrat, he said, who wished to see power in the hands of the people: As a Trade-unionist of many years’ standing, I have at the Trade-union Congress and elsewhere advocated and voted for the advanced proposals of that body, including a Miners’ Eight Hours Bill with no exemptions, a Legal Eight Hours Day for all Trades— save where by reason of technical difficulties, a hard-and-fast rule could not be enforced, as in some departments of the glass trade— the Nationalisation of Land, Mines, Minerals, Railways and the like, and the Muncipalisation of Gas, Water, Trams, and other Public Services as stages leading to the development of Socialism.36


A number of prominent ILP members, including Keir Hardie, Robert Smillie, Tom Mann and Enid Stacey spoke in support of their candidate, emphasising throughout the virtue of electing an MP from among the workers.37 In early October Curran claimed to have been ‘encouraged beyond description’ by the manner in which the principles of the ILP had been received at a series of pit-gate meetings.38 But though he had some support from the mining rank and file, it is evident that his campaign meetings were not always harmonious affairs. Whether because of an underlying strength of opposition to the ILP or as an expression of the impact of Pickard’s intervention, there were frequent instances of heckling and the posing of questions clearly meant to underscore the view of the ILP as a ‘wrecker’ of the political and organisational strength of the YMA.39 At meetings at Jump and Hemingfield in early October heckling was reportedly ‘very severe’. And according to the Barnsley Chronicle reporter (writing for a paper far from sympathetic with Curran’s stand), ‘it is whispered that at Wombwell Mr Curran got just a trifle out of temper, whereupon the miners smiled sarcastically’.40 Election result In the end Curran received only 1,091 votes. Blyth got 3,454. But the Liberals achieved a resounding success with a total of 6,744. As several commentators have pointed out, the victory was as much Pickard’s as Walton’s. To some extent the vote registered the influence and active direction of YMA district officials. But it may also be interpreted as an indication of the degree to which YMA officials were of one accord with their members, sharing a similar outlook and set of political prinicples. As Rubenstein comments, Pickard’s position of strength as YMA leader was in large measure an expression of the fact that he provided the rank and file with the industrial and political leadership they were prepared to accept.41 Curran’s total in the poll was inevitably a great disappointment to his supporters and there were second thoughts as to the wisdom of the ILP having contested the seat.42 But the campaign played an important role in publicising the socialist position and exposing the mining community to a debate which would claim their increasing attention over the next decade. Though the district leadership had been uniformly antagonistic to the ILP’s involvement, there were some within the union who had publicly supported Curran. A meeting of Rothwell branch, for example, unanimously recommended members to support the ILP candidate, prompting the Yorkshire Post to declare, ‘we thus have the spectacle of Mr Pickard calling on the miners to support one candidate and a section of the miners themselves calling upon their comrades to support another’.43 Rothwell was, of course, just one among the union’s


branches. But its public advocacy of a position so clearly contrary to the advice freely extended by Pickard, is of considerable interest. The role of James Walsh in the campaign Perhaps the most notorious individual contribution to the campaign was that of James Walsh, checkweighman at South Kirkby pit. At the ILP meeting on 20 September, initially intended to select a candidate, Walsh proposed a motion, supported by Curran and Hardie and ultimately carried, that no candidate should be chosen who was not acceptable to the workers.44 Throughout the campaign he appeared frequently on the platform with Curran.45 Addressing a public meeting in late September, presided over by Tom Taylor, Walsh recounted how, after many years’ wading through the political papers, he had obtained education sufficient to ‘think for himself’ and had become a strong supporter of the need for a united Labour Party. He moved a resolution affirming that the ‘only solution of the Labour problem lies in socialisation of land’ and that no candidate was satisfactory who was not a trade unionist.46 Though not identified by name, Walsh was specifically singled out in Pickard’s letter to the press and referred to in language both blunt and scathing. Pickard clearly suspected Walsh of having designs on a top level position within the YMA and of using his association with the ILP toward this end.47 But Walsh protested his innocence. Presiding over a meeting at the Circus in Barnsley at which Curran, Hardie and Mann were all present, he declared himself sorry to have been subject to personal attack from Pickard. As a trade unionist, he said, he did not feel himself wrong to espouse the cause of a trade unionist candidate.48 But he then moved quickly into other matters which confirmed that his conflict with Pickard extended beyond the immediate campaign. Far be it that he had ever aspired to Pickard’s position, as he claimed the latter had insinuated. He had never felt capable, he assured his audience, of filling Pickard’s shoes and would never attempt to undermine that gentleman in his official position. He then read out a resolution passed by a meeting of his own, South Kirkby, branch, condemning the letter written by Pickard in favour of Walton, repudiating charges brought against himself and declaring that ‘if colliery proprietor, coal merchant and non-unionist is a more suitable representative of trades unionists in the House of Commons than a workman, a trades union leader, and a prominent and most able advocate of trades union’s principles in our TUC, then we cannot understand why we, members of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, should continue to pay £500 a year to Mr Pickard as representative of the Normanton Division.’ This was met with a combination of cheers and cries of ‘nonsense’, an indication of the extent of division within the community.49 A remark in the Clarion that some of the support accorded Curran had been generated more by anger with Pickard than the strength of socialist sympathies


may50 well have applied to the South Kirkby miners, who had endured an acrimonious dispute with district headquarters during the summer of 1897. While Walsh was undoubtedly sincere in his advocacy of socialist principles, the campaign provided an arena not just for the expression of political preferences and principles, but also of conflicts within the union itself, based on very different, and not always directly political, issues. In this regard the role of Walsh is of particular interest as indicating the extent to which the 1897 byelection incorporated and revealed the inter-mixture of tensions affecting the union at the time. Walsh as no stranger to controversy James Walsh excited a strong response from his contemporaries. There were those who were his fervent supporters and others whose reaction was one of intense hostility. He was articulate and an effective speaker, though perhaps at times incautious in his turn of phrase. He leapt into debates and controversies with relish, often using the press as a vehicle for publicising his particular viewpoint, and on occasion, perhaps, making animosities public which would have best been left within a more sheltered context. Walsh worked at a number of pits in his early years, travelled abroad and experimented with more than one occupation before settling down to a position of some responsibility as miners’ checkweigher, first at Park Hills Colliery and later at South Kirkby. But controversy often followed him closely. He left Park Hills amidst some acrimony and at South Kirkby trouble arose almost immediately over the terms of his selection and the assumption of his post. It was said in some quarters that the management was, from the beginning, bent on his removal. Legal action was taken on his behalf which in the event turned out unfavourably. The YMA Council considered there was little point in appealing,51 but Walsh was given full support as a victim until he was allowed by management to take up his checkweighman’s duties. Indeed Cowey commented later, with no little irony, that Walsh had cost the miners’ association more than any other man ever connected with it.52 There were those among his detractors who claimed that Walsh had been stridently non-union in earlier days and that when employed at Houghton Main in the mid-1880s he had been looked upon and treated as a scab.53 But if true, it is also the case that he developed strong connections with the YMA from an early age, and from 1892 was representing Yorkshire’s miners at national and international conferences. He was also a member of a group selected by the YMA to lobby the Home Secretary and was elected to serve on Yorkshire’s joint committee and on the YMA executive committee.54 In 1897 he was re-elected to the joint committee, selected as delegate to the TUC and the International Federation of Miners and participated in a lobby of MPs in May. If he had a


local base and substantial local support, it is evident that he also enjoyed a broader respect as well, and might justifiably be regarded as among the second tier of YMA leaders by the mid-1890s. To be described, as one of his supporters did, as a ‘well-known checkweighman’ was not amiss.55 In 1897, however, Walsh also became embroiled in a number of interrelated disputes which brought him into the bad graces of YMA officials, one of which involved a set of grievances at Hickleton Main. Walsh jumped into an affray which by his involvement substantially increased in level of vituperativeness. Early in the year, a correspondent who signed himself as ‘Truth’ began to send letters to the Mexborough Times highly critical of the role of certain branch committee members in a dispute the previous year at Hickleton, alleging that they had sold out the membership and not only condoned but in some cases participated in butty work.56 Other correspondents quickly appeared in support of his position.57 But soon after ‘Truth’s’ first letter appeared, William Layton and James Gibbons, local officials at Hickleton, also wrote to the paper to refute the allegations made. Gibbons asserted that relations between management and the great majority of workers at Hickleton were satisfactory and that not a single complaint had been brought to the branch regarding the terms on which the previous year’s dispute had ended.58 Layton declared himself to be a ‘thorough union man’ and issued a challenge to the whole of Yorkshire to prove a blemish in his character as far as union principles were concerned.59 It was Layton’s challenge which prompted James Walsh to enter into the debate. As his letter published 22 January noted, he was outside of the area of circulation of the Mexborough and Swinton Times, but a Hickleton miner had kindly sent him a copy of the paper. As a trade unionist, he said, he marvelled at Layton’s audacity in declaring himself to be without a blemish, then took up the latter’s challenge, saying he would meet him either before his own men at the branch or would discuss the matter through the press.60 When Layton failed to entertain this offer seriously, Walsh wrote again, this time giving more explicit bent to his opinion of the Hickleton official, in reference to the ‘mysterious manner in which Layton had left Park Hills Colliery’. This, it materialised, was the link between the two, both Walsh and Layton having been at Park Hills and involved in a now ancient dispute which Walsh was clearly loath to leave alone. What on earth did Layton mean, wrote Walsh, by his claim to be without blemish. ‘Did he think Jimmy Walsh was dead?’61 A fortnight later, Walsh extended his attack and directly addressing the allegations made by ‘Truth’, suggested that Layton and Gibbons had curried favour with the Hickleton management, allowed bannocking (the subject of the dispute at Hickleton the previous year) to be done contrary to the price list and turning the other eye as buttyism became established at the pit and lads were subjected to long hours.62


About this time the newspaper exchange was brought formally to the attention of the district by the secretary of Hickleton Main branch and the YMA executive committee called for a stop.63 But this did not end the exchange. A letter from Gibbons published on 12 March returned Walsh’s fire, questioning his integrity and the quality of his own trade unionist credentials. It was Gibbons who claimed that Walsh was non-union some thirteen years previously at Houghton Main and regarded there as a scab. Later, according to Gibbons, Walsh had gone to Darfield Main and got work on the night shift, only to be dismissed as an incompetent workman. He had then ‘lived and worked around Normanton for years and refused to pay to the union and check fund’. For a time Walsh had kept a pub in Wakefield and had then gone off to America where he had connections with the Land League, but had had to ‘skedaddle home in a hurry’, or so Gibbons claimed. He continued that Walsh had at one time routinely lectured in Darfield to ‘poor Irish harvesters on Home Rule’ and noted with disdain that he charged them sixpence each. ‘Is this not the Mr James Walsh’, asked Gibbons, ‘that has tried to lecture, write, live out of the Home Rule Socialism, Independent Labour Party?’64 Walsh countered with yet a further letter, headed Hickleton miners, which referred to a meeting of the YMA Council he had charred (as vice-chairman) in Cowey’s absence and derided an attempt by Hickleton officials to have the council confirm the dismissal of one Owen Cunningham who, perhaps not uncoincidentally, had authored a letter to the Mexborough and Swinton Times in support of ‘Truth’.65 But taking the council’s business so directly to the press was certain to earn Walsh little sympathy. He was soundly condemned by the YMA executive committee which regarded him as having abused the privilege of the vice-chairmanship,66 and subsequently directed an inquiry to be held of the entire Hickleton situation.67 Rarely did the council give such attention to an internal dispute, but then rarely had it to deal with one in which mutual slanging had been so intense and had reached into the council chambers itself. The tension between Walsh and district officials was evident during the YMA annual demonstration in 1897, where Walsh took the opportunity of having been selected as one of the speakers to rail against management practices at South Kirkby pit and to complain about the general state of working conditions within the mining industry. There had never been a time in the history of labour, he proclaimed, when it was more necessary to organise, his audience responding with enthusiasm to his call for less tyranny to be practised upon the miners.68 Though typical of the rousing words characteristically delivered at miners’ demonstrations, his speech seems to have been received with irritation by some among the district’s officials. Cowey in particular took offence at comments he took to imply that the union and its leaders had somehow been deficient. Quite the contrary, he said, conditions had substantially improved since his youth and this specifically as a result of trade unionism.69


South Kirkby dispute In the summer of 1897 problems involving Walsh arose again in connection with a dispute at South Kirkby, when the men struck without notice and thereby against union rule. The reaction of the council and executive committee was swift and forceful and that of district officials even more so. The executive formally regretted the action and strongly advised South Kirkby miners to resume work in accordance with the YMA rule.70 That this advice was flaunted and moreover that circulars were issued which reportedly widened the gulf between workers and management and ‘set at defiance’ the rules, officials and precedents of the association, could not but have led to an escalation of tension. Barnsley officials regarded the situation as sufficiently grave to include a lengthy note in the executive committee’s minutes, which stressed the importance of adherence to the rules and strongly admonished South Kirkby miners for having ‘taken the bit into their mouths’ at the behest of their local advisers.71 That the district officers’ quarrel was solidly with the local branch officials was clear: ‘The miners of South Kirkby ought to be told with no uncertain voice, and those who are leading them in a wrong direction, they must obey the rule….’72 Though denied financial support, the men remained out and tension between district and branch continued unabated. The branch requested two officials to be sent by the district to assist in geting the men back to work. But at a subsequent public meeting, miners resolved that district emissaries should not be allowed to speak, but simply take notes of what occurred, in effect suggesting that the district should be reduced to the role of official observer of branch activities, to which the YMA executive committee strongly protested.73 But if district-level condemnation of the South Kirkby action was unremitting, there were evidently some members of the union who sympathised with the striking miners and considered the executive committee’s hard line detrimental and regrettable. For some, South Kirkby demonstrated a level of militancy and commitment which required praise rather than denunciation. Some may also have suspected the hard line to have been a function in part of the escalating conflict between Walsh and the district officials, with South Kirkby miners its somewhat unwitting victims. Though it is of interest in this regard that Walsh was claimed by one observer to have been innocent of direct involvement in the strike’s initiation, having been ill at home when the men went out.74 Whatever the reasons, there was a considerable groundswell of opinion in the district favouring striking South Kirkby miners being put on union funds. In early September Roth well branch forwarded a resolution to the executive committee protesting against the stance adopted by the union. In affirming sympathy with the South Kirkby men, Rothwell regarded the council’s action in refusing financial support as:


being the most demoralising and degrading position that any body of trades unionists could have taken up and we further deprecate such action of bringing out fellow trades unionists into such a humiliating position, as we believe that the outcome of it is all the bitter personal prejudices that exist between the permanent officials of the association and the local officials of the South Kirkby branch.75 These were strong words and the action a highly unusual one for a branch to take. The fact that it should have been Rothwell branch which formally forwarded a protest is of interest on several counts. As already noted, Rothwell’s president, Willie Lunn, had strong connections with the ILP and that socialist sympathies permeated more broadly within the branch is evident from its resolution during the Barnsley by-election in support of Curran. The membership’s general orientation may have made them wary of apparent rigidity from the district headquarters or may have caused them to suspect the subtle intervention of political issues into an essentially union matter. An observer at the time characterised Rothwell as ‘an extremely intelligent branch’ which had no fear of red tape and was known to ‘have strong ideas on trade unionism and officialism’.76 Rothwell in addition was close to Middleton Colliery, also embroiled in a bitter strike which had similarly engendered tension between the branch and district headquarters. Indeed Lunn himself was employed there. The Middleton strike began in early July 1897 and dragged on until the following February, ending unsuccessfully for the miners with the owners’ terms being grudgingly accepted and some of the strikers replaced by non-unionists.77 Soon after the men had gone out the representatives of the YMA executive sent to investigate the situation had recommended acceptance of the owners’ offer and asked that the miners give it three months’ trial. Middleton’s miners were extremely dubious, but also worried that if they didn’t agree they might be denied further funds from the district. Ultimately, after much quarrelling and arguing, they voted to reject the offer, and so remained out.78 In early August the district voted by a narrow margin that Middleton should indeed accept the offer made.79 But by this time it had been withdrawn and the dispute remained at a stalemate. The district had clearly put pressure on the branch to concede and Middleton miners in turn felt aggrieved and somewhat isolated. Parallels in district-branch relations at both South Kirkby and Middleton were explicitly noted by Rothwell branch, which when forwarding a protest concerning the treatment of South Kirkby miners also complained of the situation at Middleton. Their resolution declared the vote to enforce the Middleton men to accept the terms offered by their employers as ‘contrary to the best principles of trades unionism’ and the intervention of officials in the dispute as having had ‘a far greater tendency to prolong it than to bring it to a close’.80


In early September South Kirkby branch itself asked that the question of granting strike pay be reconsidered.81 In consequence, and somewhat unusually, though also indicating the strength of democracy within the union, the South Kirkby case was laid before the district as a whole. A branch vote with 573 in favour and 375 against confirmed the earlier decision that no strike pay should be granted,82 and the council voted 90 to 38 to confirm the executive committee’s condemnation of the manner in which South Kirkby miners had treated the YMA’s official deputation, sent to assist with the difficulties.83 A further branch vote of 641 in favour and 316 against upheld the original executive committee decision on the South Kirkby strike, with its condemnation of the men’s going out without notice.84 This last ballot was particularly interesting, for it was extremely rare under the tenure of Pickard and Cowey that an executive committee decision should be referred to the district. In all cases the decision of district officers and district bodies was ratified and to this degree they were accorded a vote of confidence by the general membership. Still what is perhaps most striking is the strength of feeling against the actions of headquarters. Rothwell branch might have been dismissed as an anomaly within the county. But clearly Rothwell was not alone in the belief that the line taken against South Kirkby had been excessive. All told thirty-eight branches voted against upholding the executive committee’s decision regarding South Kirkby, thus in effect suggesting that one of the main governing bodies of the union should be censured. Among this number were New Hall and Middleton, Glasshoughton, Corton Wood, Wath Main, Houghton Main, Denaby Main, Thrybergh Hall, Manvers 1 and 2, Hemsworth, Hartshead and Cadeby Main, as well as Rothwell and South Kirkby branch itself. Evidently there was considerable division within the union and more than mere pockets of discontent. It was against a background of these events that the Barnsley by-election was fought. The South Kirkby strike ended unsuccessfully in September, only days before the Barnsley seat was vacated. Work resumed at the pit without the reinstatement of a number of men who had been imprisoned in default of paying damage for leaving work without notice.85 Walsh threw himself into the campaign and earned from Pickard sharp rebuke. The letter sent by the YMA’s secretary to various newspapers in the region, alluded to Walsh as having ‘broken away from Mr Pickard’, ‘converted to the ILP’ and ‘trying to capture the Association’.86 Pickard’s view of all this was broadly dismissive: Well, if our miners are of the opinion that the man who once worked at Darfield Main and Houghton Main Colleries is to be the leader of trade unionism and political thought or to have anything whatever to do with the business of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, it is quite clear ‘wreck’ is


written in large letters. Vide the misery which has fallen on the poor miners of Park Hills and South Kirkby Collieries.87 Pickard suggested that it was to himself that Walsh was indebted for ‘whatever position he now occupies in the count’. He was therefore particularly incensed by the position taken by the South Kirkby checkweighman whom he characterised as having ‘done his utmost unveraciously to refer to me’.88 The mixing of personal animosity and political preference with disputes and intrigue internal to the union became further exaggerated over the weeks of the campaign. In response to remarks attributed to Walsh, to the effect that Park Hills miners had got more weight allowed and higher wages during his tenure as checkweighman than afterwards, the local branch convened and determined that unless this claim were substantiated, apologised for or retracted, they would initiate legal action.89 That as seemingly petty and relatively dated a matter should provoke the formal entry of new actors into the foray is perhaps indicative of the atmosphere prevailing at the time.90 District officials clearly welcomed a further opportunity to distance themselves from Walsh, and three of their number, Parrott, Cowey and Pickard, spoke to Park Hills miners at a meeting called shortly before the by-election. Referring to the point of Walsh’s departure from the branch, several years earlier, Cowey declared the branch justified in the action they took to rid themselves of their checkweighman. Walsh, he said, had made more mischief than any other ten men had done. Pickard noted that while he, Cowey, and others had worked indefatigably on behalf of the YMA, Walsh had persisted in making untrue assertions and claiming honour and credit for work done by others.91 The result of the by-election must have allowed district officials the satisfaction of knowing that whatever challenge Walsh may have been mounting had received a setback. If an episode during which tensions could be displayed or displaced, it could also serve as a means of some reconciliation. District officials accordingly made several attempts to repair gaps of understanding between the union’s centre and its local extremities during this period. In midOctober, for example, Pickard attended a branch meeting at Middleton and Newhall where striking miners were particularly aggrieved at what they perceived to be lack of support for their struggle. After listening to him, the meeting expressed ‘utmost confidence’ in Pickard and accepted that whatever action he had taken in the past had always been in the interests of the association.92 Walsh: a continuing matter of concern Pickard and his colleagues may have consolidated their position by virtue of the outcome of the by-election, but controversy surrounding James Walsh did not


cease to occupy the attention of the district in its aftermath. From the end of 1897 and throughout the following year, he was involved in a series of related legal cases and matters of dispute within South Kirkby branch. In early December, a case of assault was brought against Walsh and two South Kirkby miners, Tom Curran and John Foley, by George Gustard who claimed to have been attacked for having worked at the pit during the strike of the previous summer. Walsh was not accused of initiating the affray, but of striking Gustard with a parcel, having seen him come under attack.93 Walsh and his co-defendants were found guilty and fined £1 with £1 5s 11d costs in lieu of a month’s imprisonment. Not long afterwards, in February 1898, charges were brought against Walsh by William Newton who claimed that the South Kirkby checkweighman had obtained some money through false pretences in respect of claims on branch funds, though in the end the case was dismissed.94 Then, in the spring of 1898, William Whitehouse, assistant checkweighman at the pit, complained about the manner of his dismissal from the post of branch treasurer. When he resisted committee pressure to pay additional wagonette fares, subsequent to a warning from the district office that should further fares be paid a surcharge would be levied, Walsh had indicated that it was time to find a new treasurer—or so Whitehouse claimed. In reporting this matter to the district headquarters, Whitehouse said he hoped his appeal would be laid before the executive, ‘as I want to know whether there is any protection for a local treasurer, or whether Jas Walsh is king of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association.’95 The council concluded that Whitehouse was in the right and condemned the branch’s dismissal of him. But the wrangles continued in branch meeting and magistrates’ court. In May 1898, William Newton brought a case against Walsh for unlawfully and maliciously publishing a defamatory libel. Walsh was said to have had 1500 handbills printed and distributed asking for funds to defray his previous court expenses and claiming that Newton was intent on defaming him and driving him from his checkweighman’s position.96 This time Walsh was fined £20 or a month’s prison and was bound over to keep the peace for a year or else forfeit £100. The various cases aroused considerable emotions within the locality and many scuffles occurred between those forming one or other faction. Clearly perturbed, the YMA executive committee meeting in early October urged the South Kirkby branch to do ‘the best they can in connection with the troubles existing amongst themselves’.97 Later in this same month Walsh, again brought to court, was convicted of using threats and having assaulted Newton.98 Walsh declared his innocence on this as on previous charges, but the chairman of the bench was unmoved, saying that peace would be returned to South Kirkby even if at a price of bringing 500 policemen into the community.99 Then in December, Walsh was charged with having perjured himself during the October court cause. When cross-examined he suggested that a conspiracy


had been waged against him, with the intention of removing him from his checkweighman’s post. But whatever the ins and outs of the case, Walsh was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to nine months’ hard labour.100 YMA minutes were perhaps understandably silent on the specifics of the legal cases affecting Walsh over the year, but this fuelled the view in some quarters that Walsh was being unduly neglected by his union. Criticism came from a rather unexpected source when a columnist in the Yorkshire Factory Times took up Walsh’s cause and carried intermittent reports of his situation. The column in which these appeared, whose author signed himself as ‘Sweeper Up’, typically included items of interest affecting a variety of local unions. Though the Yorkshire Factory Times carried short reports on YMA business from time to time, the paper was directed more toward workers in manufacturing than in the mining industry and to the Leeds-Bradford-Huddersfield nexus rather than to Yorkshire as a whole. It was perhaps therefore an unlikely setting for elaboration of the debate surrounding Walsh.101 In June 1898 ‘Sweeper Up’ lamented the failure of the YMA to assist Walsh directly with the costs from the libel case of the previous month. ‘I know that Walsh does not do everything as I think he should,’ wrote ‘Sweeper Up’, ‘but when he is persecuted for standing up for the miners and others in a legitimate way, he ought to have their help.’102 Variations on this theme were repeated on other occasions within the column. After the October court case, ‘Sweeper Up’ explicitly affirmed his belief in Walsh’s innocence suggesting that this view held wide currency within the community. ‘I wonder if a prosecution for terrorising and intimidating by the managers’ trade union and the amalgamated blacklegs is a feasible thing’, he asked.103 Further tensions within the union ‘Sweeper Up’ may have congratulated himself on mustering support for Walsh but his role was not looked on kindly by the YMA. Miners’ leaders in Yorkshire had often used the press as a vehicle for publicising their particular points of view, and they were used to editorial criticism within various papers of the region. But they were most displeased to have what they regarded as internal matters discussed within what was in effect a local trade union gossip column. Their annoyance must have been reinforced (and increased) by the fact that ‘Sweeper Up’ did not confine himself to the Walsh case, but also saw fit to remark on such items as the Federation’s wage negotiations during 1898. Over both this and the previous year there had been evidence of impatience at some of Yorkshire’s pits, as well as elsewhere, with the immobility of wages. Federation policy, strongly supported by Pickard, had been to encourage lowwage regions, and particularly Scotland, to move toward equity with the rest of the federated areas before wages elsewhere advanced above 30 per cent on the


standard. But in the spring of 1898 the Federation formally agreed to seek a 10 per cent wage increase from employers. The Conciliation Board had lapsed since the summer of 1896 and wage negotiations during 1898 were inextricably linked with proposals for its reestablishment. Federation officials ultimately agreed to a much reduced gain of 2. 5 per cent in exchange for agreement on a new conciliation board which would fix wages within the limits of 30 per cent and 45 per cent on the 1888 standard over the period from January 1889 to January 1901. Believing that no more favourable wage concession could be gained, Federation leaders emphasised the desirability of at least having agreement on a minimum level below which wages would not be permitted to fall. But though local officials in the various federated coalfields were advised to call meetings where miners could consider the offer ‘calmly and carefully’,104 members were not in all cases so sanguine. In Yorkshire, miners went against the recommendations of their district officials and voted 466 to 260 against accepting the suggested terms.105 In the Yorkshire Factory Times, ‘Sweeper Up’ took the part of those dissenting and criticised the YMA’s position in pushing for so small an increase as 2.5 per cent. Miners at South Kirkby and Hemsworth were specifically named by ‘Sweeper Up’ as strongly in favour of the original demand for 10 per cent.106 ‘Sweeper Up’ also noted other instances of tension within the union, recording, for example, an initiative on the part of a number of Yorkshire checkweighmen to set up their own association in the autumn of 1898. Though not necessarily the instigator of this plan, Walsh was one of those involved in discussions concerning it. The initiative seems never in fact to have materialised beyond the planning stage, but did indicate a further element of division and dissatisfaction within the YMA. Towards the end of the year further murmurings and organisational initiatives were in evidence, not so much of a separatist nature as representing an attempt to consolidate internal sectional support. In mid-December ‘Sweeper Up’ reported that a number of meetings had been held in various locales to consider ‘matters in connection with the miners’, referring in particular to one at Sheffield. Once again Walsh was involved. Those present at Sheffield pledged £56 in support of the defence fund for ‘Walsh & Co.’, but the general feeling of discontent which lay behind the meeting focused particularly on the person of Parrott, the YMA agent, whom the Sheffield meeting resolved should stand down and be replaced by J.Horsley of Kiveton Park.107 The YMA officially and categorically condemned any such gatherings as that at Sheffield, describing them as a recurrence of illegal clique meetings, denounced in no uncertain terms the previous year. A note in the executive committee minutes adopted a tone of both defensiveness and mollification in


reflecting on the apparent criticism of Barnsley officials implied by the meetings: Much has been said about what the Officials do, in opposing this, that and the other, but so far as the Officials are concerned, their business is to be impartial, do their duty in accordance with the rules and resolutions of the Association and having done that, condemnation from whatever quarter will be met fairly and squarely, but as we are informed insidious remarks have been made reflecting upon what the Officials do, it is only fair that we, as Officials, should declare to the district that with regard to the letters coming from any branch, or taking action to do any particular individual any harm, District Officials never lower themselves to, in any way or degree, take such low, mean, dirty actions.108 Given that Parrott was a target for the agitation and complaints against officials on this occasion, he was particularly prominent in denunciation of the cliques. He came to the November executive committee armed with details of the infamous Sheffield meeting, which, he said, was the third held on successive Thursdays at the Industry Inn in the town. Apparently there was greater sympathy for him and the views he advocated than there was opposition, for the following council meeting, held on 19 December and doubling as the yearly council meeting for 1898, confirmed the executive committee’s condemnation of clique meetings. Describing them as joint panel meetings intended to secure a joint panel vote, the council declared them illegal and their object contrary to rule.109 YMA documents never named the presumed instigator of this particular spate of clique meetings, nor is any more specific detail provided, but the record of the November executive committee meeting does contain a curious allusion to ‘the man that hung himself at Blackburn the other day’ and the suggestion that the revelations made by this individual ‘assuredly should stop the mouths of men, and take the stones out of the pockets of those who wish to hurl such stones at the officials of the Association’.110 The allusion and the ‘mysterious language’ in which it was cast was subsequently referred to by ‘Sweeper Up’ in the Factory Times. The man who hung himself in Blackburn, it would appear, was William Nash, formerly local branch secretary at Hemsworth and one of the three men whom James Walsh had claimed in court in October had been in his company at precisely the time that he was accused of having assaulted William Newton. Several months later, in December 1898, he was called back to answer the charge that he had perjured himself and indeed that he had been alone and not in the company of Nash and two others. Walsh’s alibi remained unsubstantiated in December because none of the three witnesses could be produced. Two it was said, could not be found, and


the third was dead. The precise reasons for Nash’s suicide died with him, but there was room for suspicion that they were closely connected with the Walsh case. But whatever the truth of the affair, discussion of YMA business in the columns of the press continued to be an irritant to YMA leadership. The YMA annual report for 1898 accused unnamed members of supplying verbatim copy of YMA minutes and circulars to the Factory Times and expressed astonishment that a paper presumably acting in the interests of trade unionists should corroborate in their publication. Branch secretaries were asked to be vigilant and to attempt to determine the identity of this ‘Sweeper Up’. ‘We want our members to see the gravity of this matter; because of disloyalty in our ranks, thieves and pirates on our borders, and lecturers outside our ranks pointing out the duty of your officials, if allowed, means much mischief in the near future.’111 The issue of cliques seems to have abated during 1899, and agitation associated with the Walsh case also quietened during his stay in prison. But some sympathy for Walsh remained. In January the question of petitioning the Home Secretary for mitigation of Walsh’s sentence was brought before the YMA Council, which first referred the matter to the branches for consideration and then in February resolved that though no district action would be taken, branches should be free to petition as they saw fit.112 In his capacity as MP, Pickard was said to have been swamped with petitions concerning Walsh presumably from both individuals and organisations. In March, Pickard forwarded a letter received from Whitehall to the local press which recorded that though numerous memorials had been received, the Secretary of State remained of the view that the sentence should be sustained.113 Walsh remained in prison for the duration of his sentence. But when he came out in August 1899, his popularity seemed to have waned but little. He was reportedly met by an immense crowd, many of them miners, and was carried high through the streets. Addressing the crowd, he once again maintained his innocence and his sense of having been the victim of much injustice.114 He continued his active involvement in union affairs and also maintained his sympathy and support for the direct political representation of workers. When serving as a delegate to a special conference which was called on the eight hours question in 1902, he pleaded for more miners being sent to Parliament on a Labour platform as a more effective means of securing legislation to protect and promote their interests than ‘going year after year to lobby’.115 In 1904 Walsh came third in the vote to select a new YMA vicepresident. In this same year he received the second highest number of votes in a contest held by the YMA to select a pool of potential parliamentary candidates. In 1906 he was selected to stand at Attercliffe when the next opportunity arose. But his prominence turned again toward notoriety the following year and his name was withdrawn from the pool of potential parliamentary candidates in consequence of renewed tensions at South Kirkby branch. On this occasion the


branch was divided among supporters of Walsh and supporters of Isaac Burns. Ironically both were among the relatively small number of Yorkshire miners who had had connections with the ILP. A committee was appointed by the district to enquire into the circumstances of the South Kirkby dispute and in the interim to supervise balloting for local branch officers. Its conclusion, confirmed by the council, was that Walsh and Burns had been working in opposite directions at South Kirkby, and that it was Walsh who was mainly responsible for the situation having turned sour. The difficulty was said to turn on his ‘manner’ and, ironically given his criticism of Hickleton Main’s branch officers a decade earlier as promoters of buttyism, on his active encouragement of the butty system at South Kirkby. Much sorrow was expressed on having had to arrive at this conclusion, given recognition of the often positive contribution which Walsh had made to the union over the years. But regret was not sufficient to save Walsh’s reputation. Letters arrived at district headquarters from a number of branches expressing concern over keeping Walsh as a candidate and the July council finally decided that his name should accordingly be removed.116 The various disputes and altercations involving James Walsh were manyfaceted and in some cases their political content was only incidental —or was constructed as a means of exaggerating his differences with district officials. However, if not consistently or coherently a political activist, Walsh did maintain his conviction in the need for increased representation by workers of the interests of the labouring class. Whatever its specific political content, his criticism of district officials often served as a rallying point for those who sympathised with the need to shift the YMA to the left. The rump of such sympathisers remained small, but gradually grew over the early years of the twentieth century, presenting a growing challenge to the YMA leadership. Pickard, however, remained consistently firm in loyalty to the Liberals and in his wariness of socialist principles. In 1900 he declared himself still anti-socialist and in 1901 he used the occasion of the Federation’s annual conference to reaffirm his position as a Lib-Lab MP and his preference for the Liberal Party.117 But the pressure wrought by increased political awareness and changing political preferences within the mining community, as well as increased radicalness within the ranks of the TUC, provoked the MFGB to take a much more deliberate political programme. In 1899, the General Federation of Trade Unions, many of whose sponsors were socialists, was established to pool strike funds across industries.118 The move served in large measure as a precedent for the subsequent establishment of a Labour Party. The reaction of the MFGB to such developments was to consolidate and extend its political role through establishing a political levy to sponsor the candidature of many more miners’ MPs. Pickard argued that what was needed was less a new party than the election of a further seventy or eighty to Parliament who would take a firm stand on all labour issues.119


The matter was taken a step further in 1902 with the MFGB’s decision to adopt a Labour Representative Scheme through which funds raised by the political levy would be controlled and nominations of suitable candidates monitored. Though Pickard’s death intervened, the scheme was carried forward. In 1904 it was agreed that districts under the Federation should be allowed to select one candidate for each 10,000 members. On this basis, Yorkshire was allowed six, or five in addition to the Normanton seat held by the miners since 1885. A pool of candidates was accordingly selected by the YMA in 1904, with James Walsh among them. The death of Pickard along with three other longstanding officials of the YMA over the period from December 1903 to 1905 marked an important watershed in the history of the YMA. There was, however, no immediate shift in political orientation and newly elected district officials maintained the old policies intact for several years. But their support by the union’s membership had begun to waver in the several years before the leadership change and subsequently dropped at a more pronounced pace. It may be argued that the decline in support for district leaders was never more than minimal and that dedicated loyalty remained characteristic of the great majority. Still some indications of sustained internal tension during the last years of the ‘old’ regime are reflected in the stubborn recurrence of clique meetings and in voting patterns which suggest a lessening tendency to give an unquestioned mandate to district officials. Elections were routinely held to select YMA delegates to various external bodies, with voting in branches determining the preferences which would go forward to the district. Over the years district officials, such as Pickard and Cowey, were repeatedly selected in these exercises to represent the union at the annual general meetings of the Miners’ Federation. Given their prominence in the Federation, their election was to some degree a formality. But as a democratic process was sustained over the years, the possibility for their rejection by the membership always existed. In the event, Pickard invariably received the highest number of votes and the total received by Cowey was also invariably substantial. When branches did not include them among their choices, particularly during the later years, it may have been in consequence of a judgement that the periodic illnesses which each suffered meant that attendance would constitute a considerable strain. Yet the omission of votes for district leaders may also have reflected a silent protest and measure of opposition on the part of some branches. In any case there was a noticeable increase toward the end of the century in the number of branches which did not include Pickard among their choice of candidates to the MFGB annual meeting. In December 1896, for example, eleven branches declined to name Pickard. The following year, the number had increased to twenty-eight. In December 1898, thirty-five branches declined to include Pickard among their


choices. In December 1899 the number was thirty and in July 1901—the changed date reflecting the annual conference being moved from January to August—the number was 36. In the summer of 1903, the last occasion when Pickard was to stand as a candidate for selection of delegates to the MFGB annual conference, he was not listed by thirty-three of all YMA branches casting votes.120 Yet this time, as in years previous, he still received the highest number of votes of any candidate. Pickard and others at Barnsley were certainly aware of recurrent criticism of their leadership. The YMA annual report covering the period 1901–2, repeating a somewhat familiar refrain, acknowledged that the advice of leaders was sometimes neither acceptable nor desired, but countered that it was the responsibility of district officials to offer it and one from which they could not shirk. And while confidence between local and district officials was claimed to be pervasive, there were still complaints from headquarters about illegal clique or panel meetings. A letter from Wharncliffe Woodmoor branch to the district in 1902 contended that such meetings were attended by ‘many of our leading members’. In 1903, elections for various union offices were alleged to have been decided at panel meetings, indicating a convergence of the issue of branch voting with the apparent co-ordination of sectional interests. Analysis of voting for representatives to the TUC in this year suggests that there were identifiable cases of bloc voting, two in West Yorkshire and one in the vicinity of Barnsley. Yet the only case named in YMA minutes was that of panel 16, in the far south of the district.121 Bloc voting is in fact evident in a number of elections around this time and was by far most characteristic of a set of branches (or in some cases two sets) in West Yorkshire. Yet if, as is likely, it was motivated there by a sense of domination by other sections of the county, it was also ineffective, for the simple reason that the size of the bloc was never sufficient to ensure the election of the slate being jointly supported. In July 1901, for example, twenty-two West Yorkshire branches voted for J.Jones in the selection of delegates to the Federation annual conference. Seven of these voted for J. Jones only, indicating their single-mindedness in trying to secure his selection. Yet overall he received only 146 votes and came in eighth.122 It may well have been that the union was willing to tolerate such practice when it constituted little more than a futile gesture. On the other hand, similar practice in sections of South Yorkshire could prove far more disruptive. If serving as a comment on the balance of power within the union between its western and southern sections, the quick response by district headquarters to co-ordinated action in South Yorkshire also illustrates both the existence of internal tension and the threat which it potentially posed.


Leadership change and an unsettled period for the union All of these problems, if nagging and potentially explosive, remained no more than incipient during the last years of Pickard and Cowey’s tenure in Barnsley. But they formed the basis for further tension as the leadership underwent a change in 1904, when Parrott was elected to replace Pickard as general and correspondence secretary, Wadsworth moved from vice-president to replace Cowey as president and Herbert Smith took over as vice-president. At this same time, Hall was elected to Parrott’s former position as agent, Hoskin took over as treasurer and J.Dixon was elected to the position of financial secretary. The elections proved an occasion for a degree of competition among sections of the district, with a general division between West and South Yorkshire being apparent in voting patterns.123 Those elected, however, tended to be capable of drawing support from all parts of the district. But this may have meant that some specific sectional interests, such as a group represented by pits in West Yorkshire and a set of branches close to the Derbyshire border, may have been somewhat aggrieved at the outcome. In the event almost all of the new officers were associated with South Yorkshire. Of the new team, Smith, who was one of the few from West Yorkshire, had early associations with the ILP and may well have represented a more radical tendency. Others who had fared reasonably well in the running included James Walsh and S.Jacks, who had both had their public differences with Pickard, and whose vocal criticism had occasionally provided a rallying point for those in the union pushing for more substantial changes. But in several contests they were pitted against one another. Thus while they had clear support, their efforts failed to shift the district leadership very far from its former balance of support for the Liberal Party. When Pickard’s death led to the Normanton seat falling vacant, Parrott moved in to take up the position and continued to uphold the solid Liberal line. Parrott was to die the following year, and yet another replacement was required. The individual chosen was Fred Hall, who was similarly willing to sustain a Liberal stance. But the period was clearly an unsettled one. Results in the voting for representatives to the TUC, the Federation annual conference and to the Federation’s executive committee show rather less consensus in confirming officials as YMA delegates than was so in the past. The selection of delegates to the TUC was in particular something of a free for all, with H.Smith receiving the highest single total of 390 votes.124 This was a testing time and to some degree an occasion for the opening out of opportunities to a wider level than previously. Moreover, while the district leadership retained its Liberal emphasis overall, there were indications of shifts at lower levels. Keir Hardie was invited to speak at the annual YMA demonstration in 1904, an event scarcely imaginable during Pickard’s lifetime. When the TUC mooted the possibility of a Labour


newspaper, the YMA voted in favour of giving its full support. But perhaps most significant during the year was a vote on two resolutions put forward by Carlton Main. The first, calling on the YMA to join the Labour Representative Committee, was defeated when submitted to the branches. But the second, calling for affiliation with the Federation of Trades, received a majority in favour. District officials were appalled by the result on affiliation with the Federation of Trades, and in an episode unprecedented in YMA history endeavoured to get the decision reversed. They were encouraged in this attempt by the very small majority which had favoured affiliation. Only 587 had supported the proposal as compared with 547 who had voted against and sixty who had not voted.125 In May 1905 an attack on the motion of affiliation with the Federation of Trades was launched from YMA headquarters. District officials argued that any such move would entail considerable loss of the YMA’s autonomy and voiced suspicion that the Federation was essentially after the money which so strong an organisation as the YMA commanded. They explicitly appealed to statements of the past, noting Cowey’s view that the Yorkshire miners would never agree to pay their money into a central fund for others to spend and Pickard’s position that only after the miners were united in their own federation should there be consideration of joining with unions outside of the industry. In a collectively signed statement they declared that while in principle favourable to federating morally and socially with all trades, the time was not yet ripe for the YMA’s participation in such an exercise. There was sufficient work to do in organising miners, let alone in any more ambitious scheme.126 Clear movement toward the left A second vote on affiliating with the Federation of Trades was then taken and this time members rejected the proposal, with just 245 voting in favour and 754 against.127 During this same year, the council voted 78 to 22 that an application by the ILP to have a platform at the YMA’s annual demonstration should not be entertained.128 But if some successful attempts were made to hold the reins, the edifice of unquestioned support for the Liberal Party was beginning to crumble. In early 1906 both J. Wadsworth and F.Hall were returned to Parliament, for Hallamshire and Normanton Divisions, respectively, and the YMA for the first time had two sponsored MPs, both of them Liberals.129 But the campaign had been characterised by some friction, much of it coalesced around the person of John Potts, and more broadly a dispute affecting Hemsworth pit.130 As the dissidence of James Walsh and his association with the ILP was several years earlier intertwined with a dispute at South Kirkby, this new episode similarly combined a local grievance and bitterly contested strike with political sympathies more radical than those of the district leadership. In a letter to the


Table 9.1 Voting figures for the YMA on a Federation ballot pertaining to affiliation with the LRC and the Federation Labour Scheme

Source: YMA Minutes, Special Council Meeting, 15 October 1906.

Sheffield Daily Telegraph on 16 January 1906, Potts declared himself a strong supporter of Labour Representation, ‘though not at the expense of reducing the YMA membership and influence to satisfy the ambition of two individuals’. He suggested that the YMA Council should ‘define its policy and settle the question as to whether its candidates are to be allowed to link themselves with the Liberal Party and the capitalists’. In his view nothing other than a ‘straight Labour Policy and Labour group will satisfy the rank and file of the miners’. Quick to denunciate the letter was a group of relatively high ranking men within the union who reminded Potts, and anyone else who cared to know, that Wadsworth had been unanimously adopted by the YMA. Among its signatories, interestingly, were such former dissidents as J.Walsh and S.Jacks, as well as H.Smith, James Murray, John Hoskin, John Dixon, J.Ballance, S. Roebuck and L.Dyson. Two lengthy statements were subsequently issued by YMA officials castigating Potts, and more particularly Keir Hardie and the ILP, along with its district organiser in Yorkshire, John Penny. It was the burden of these statements that it was the YMA, and not the ILP, which had brought the benefits Yorkshire’s miners now enjoyed. The second dispatch defended the union’s record in maintaining members through a severe depression and difficult legal testing, saying that the YMA compared favourably with other district unions and with the MFGB in this regard.131 But if a remarkable display of solidarity and pulling-in of the ranks, the incident also indicated the strength of growing opposition to the political status quo. In 1906 the question of affiliation to the Labour Representation Committee had reached the level of the Federation and in the summer of this year all districts were directed to hold ballots on this as well as on the question of affiliation with the Federation Labour Scheme. The YMA’s sensitivity on this issue is perhaps reflected in a special council’s decision that there be no publication of the ballot’s outcome though the totals were detailed in YMA minutes. In fact a majority voted in favour on both questions, though as the


figures in Table 9.1 indicate, a substantial proportion of miners failed to cast votes.132 Patterns of voting varied considerably among the districts, with South Wales, Lancashire and Scotland favouring affiliation with the LRC along with Yorkshire. But the overall result was against by a majority of 9,492.133 Thus if Yorkshire was swinging with the general trend, the momentum had not yet reached the point allowing formal policy change. The miners as a whole continued to remain outside of the Labour Party. With two Yorkshire officials elected to Parliament by early 1906, the question of the union sponsoring a third MP arose later in the year. In October, a special council meeting decided that should a vacancy occur in the division, James Walsh should be the candidate. All necessary steps were to be taken to get him before the division. In the event, as noted previously, the opportunity never arose for Walsh; an incident involving his alleged encouragement of buttyism at South Kirkby led to the removal of his name. But while Walsh’s personal political fortune suffered a reversal, support for formal affiliation with the Labour Party continued to swell. There was clearly pressure from below in Yorkshire, but also evidence of stubborn resistance from district officials. Evidence of some tension between the various branches and YMA leaders can be seen in widening sympathy for the position initially advocated by Potts in 1906, that union officials elected to Parliament should give up their union position. A resolution from Newland branch to this effect was defeated at the yearly council meeting by a vote of 607 to 475, but the number dissenting against the prevailing practice indicates the strength of feeling on the matter.134 There was also growing support for broadening the process of selecting parliamentary candidates through procedures which promoted solidarity with other trade unionists.135 YMA officials, however, saw this as potentially diluting the political influence of the miners and ultimately resulting in the YMA playing ‘second fiddle in all these matters’.136 Apparently the membership agreed, defeating a broadening proposal from Middleton branch. But pressure from below did result in a motion favouring nationalisation of the mines, originating from Middleton branch, being sent on behalf of the YMA to the Federation annual conference.137 Though it was Wadsworth’s responsibility to speak on the motion at the conference, he was clearly reluctant to do so with any enthusiasm. Derbyshire had proposed a similar motion and when Harvey asked whether he would accept this other version and incorporate it into the Yorkshire motion, Wadsworth commented that were he convinced ‘that by nationalisation of the mines the interests of the working classes were going to be better looked after then he would accept it’. When Smillie rose to second Yorkshire’s motion, observing in the process that Wadsworth appeared not ‘very


much in love with the resolution’, the YMA president interjected that he had indeed moved it.138 As with the issue of nationalisation, branches of the YMA continued to push their leadership toward formal ties with Labour. Good Hope branch held the view that ‘all candidates for Parliament should contest on the straight labour ticket free from Liberal and Tory Party’.139 Yorkshire officials declined to seriously entertain the notion at district level, saying that the district had spoken the previous year and the matter was now referred to the Federation. Indeed it did come up at the annual conference of the Federation where the Scottish delegation proposed that the meeting affirm that the time was opportune for affiliation with the Labour Representative Committee and where the South Wales Federation proposed, in rather milder vein, that another ballot be authorised to test general opinion on the wisdom of such affiliation. When the motions were put to the vote, both passed. The meeting thus made its own strong recommendation for affiliation while also permitting a democratic decision to be taken by the membership as a whole. Contention over Labour Party affiliation arose indirectly at a later point in the Federation annual conference in connection with a motion put by Yorkshire that MFGB should support ‘any party’ in the endeavour to abolish the House of Lords. In introducing the resolution, Wadsworth made the rather combative statement that on this matter even he and Smillie would be in agreement, indeed that even the Scotsmen would support ‘any party that gave them anything’. Smillie, clearly not amused by the tone of Wadsworth’s words, rose to declare that the Scottish delegates were against the proposal, not because they were against abolition of the House of Lords, but ‘because they, in the North, could not put their faith in any party but the Labour Party—the Labour Members of the House of Commons’. Ultimately the proposal went forward in altered form with the words ‘any party’ deleted.140 Thus as Yorkshire’s leadership obstinately sustained their loyalty to the Liberals, the movement toward Labour gathered force beneath and around them. In the summer of 1907, Keir Hardie was selected as one of the speakers at Yorkshire’s annual demonstration, having received more votes than anyone else in the running. In 1908 he was similarly selected, receiving a larger number of votes than E.Edwards, W.E.Harvey or J. Haslam, whose names were also put forward.141 On this latter occasion Hardie was unable to be present, but some of those in attendance made their Labour sympathies abundantly clear by repeatedly heckling F.Hall and deriding his Liberal politics. There are few if any reports of such vocal and public remonstrations against district officials at earlier miners’ galas in Yorkshire, and that they occurred on this occasion may reflect something of the distance between leadership and members which had arisen on this issue. Criticism was directed at Hall by miners from Pudsey division who objected to his having sent his blessing to the Liberal candidate, Mr Ogden, in the recent Pudsey by-election. Members of Bowling and Tong branches fastened the


telegram, printed in large letters, in a prominent position onto the platform from which he was to speak.142 The action disconcerted Hall and put him very much on the defensive. Referring directly to the telegram affixed to the platform, Hall claimed that it had been sent in his individual capacity, not as a trade union leader. Yet he acknowledged that he would have willingly sent it in his official capacity. The audience was far from uniformly hostile to Hall and ultimately the offending telegram was torn down. But once again a YMA official was taken to task for supporting a Liberal rather than an ILP candidate.143 Not long before the annual demonstration, the Federation had held a second ballot to elicit opinion on the issue of affiliation with Labour. This time there were many more voting and the margin favouring affiliation within Yorkshire had increased. Indeed the strength of Yorkshire’s support was greater than that of the Scottish miners and only surpassed by that in Lancashire and Cheshire and in South Wales. The Durham Miners’ Association did not vote, but combined totals for the remaining districts now showed 212,137 in favour and 168,294 against. The vote was decisive and marked the beginning of a new era in the formal relation of the miners to party politics. The period from the early 1890s to 1908 was therefore one of gradual movement toward support for a separate political party representing the interests of workers. Having moved into the arena of party politics relatively early on and thereby forged ties with the Liberals as the party in existence at the time most sympathetic to labour issues, the miners, particularly in Yorkshire, were little prone to shift their formal alliances. They frequently distrusted initiatives presented in the guise of eliciting moral support, suspecting them of being more fundamentally concerned with gaining access to the YMA’s substantial financial reserves. They believed, perhaps correctly, that the new militants and organisers were primarily interested in Yorkshire for its strategic importance, in potentially shifting the balance of support of any new movement or party. But beyond this, YMA leaders harboured some resentment of those who wished to mobilise through the mouthing of slogans and the promise of a new era. They were conscious of the arduous task involved in building their own union, the work entailed in gaining the benefits their members now enjoyed. And they were highly sensitive to any who appeared critical of their efforts or of the principles to which they had subscribed. To some extent they might be accused of having accepted too uncritically the legitimacy of parliamentary procedures and of having allowed themselves to be drawn into the comforts of established parties and institutions. But they were never less than fully sincere in their dedication to trade unionism and in their efforts to promote miners’ interests through the form of political activity and principles in which they believed.

Part II ECONOMY AND COMMUNITY: MAJOR PATTERNS OF GRIEVANCE

270

10 THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD AFTER 1900—OPENING UP OF THE DONCASTER AREA

State of the mining industry after the turn of the century While the last years of the nineteenth century saw general expansion, consolidation and increasing productivity in the coal industry, the first two decades of the twentieth century were characterised by a combination of increasing output and an overall tendency toward declining productivity. New developments were undertaken and the workforce continued to swell. In Yorkshire there were over 60 per cent more workers in the coal industry in 1914 than in 1900. For the country as a whole the figure was 45 per cent. Domestic and international demand fluctuated, but with a decisive upward trend. While getting bigger, however, the British coal industry was not becoming mechanised or otherwise improved in a manner sufficient to counteract increasing costs, partly associated with the sinking of deeper pits.1 As measured in output per person employed in the industry, productivity fluctuated considerably, with a high point overall in 1883 when 332 tons per person were raised. In the following several years, with the system strained by overcapacity, output declined while the number employed continued to increase, so that productivity fell. Thereafter output recovered, and with some variability from year to year, continued to do so. The number employed increased as well, often at a faster rate than production. But this trend was considerably more pronounced in the period after the turn of the century than before. If somewhat an arbitrary boundary, its choice draws some justification from the fact that 1900 marked a momentary peak in output and prices in consequence of demand related to the Boer War in South Africa. The period after 1900 was characterised overall by a lower level as well as a more rapid decline in productivity. A comparison of the fifteen years before and after the turn of the century gives an average of 294 tons raised for each person employed in the industry in the former period as against 268 tons in the latter. If the exceptional year of 1893 is omitted, then the average for the period 1885 to 1899 rises to 298 tons.2


According to Taylor, the boom at the end of the century, enhanced by demand for exports associated with the war in South Africa, led to prices increasing by almost a half, reaching ‘heights unknown since the great boom of 1872–3’. Wages also increased dramatically. In 1901 demand fell back, though wages, while falling, were still maintained, in Taylor’s view, at ‘abnormal heights’.3 As recruitment and new development continued apace, production was curbed through a shortening of the working week. In Yorkshire the average days worked per week dropped to 4.99 in 1901 from 5.57 the previous year.4 Over the next several years output and the labour force expanded only marginally. This was a time of adjustment rather than advance.5 A low point was reached in 1905, but productivity was by then already beginning to move upward again. By 1907 it was almost as high in Yorkshire as it had been in 1900. But the recovery was brief and the decline in 1908 virtually as precipitous as it had been in 1901.6 But if productivity fell sharply in 1908, output dropped only marginally in Yorkshire and then began to rise once more, while employment continued its rising trajectory.7 The rise of output and employment was checked only in 1914, with employment falling further in 1915, but thereafter showing a steady increase. Output remained almost level through 1917, with another fall the following year. The picture of the industry for the country at large was one of expansion without the development measured by productivity increase, a situation ultimately leading to a loss of competitiveness within the world market. Britain had led the way with coal and had early captured export markets. But others were now moving forward more rapidly, particularly in respect of technological development. In Yorkshire prices were at their highest in 1900, at 10s 2d per ton, and 1908, at 8s 5d. The low points were in 1905 when the pit mouth price was just 6s 8d per ton and 1909 and 1911 when it was 7s 6d. After 1911 there was a steady rise, with a particularly steep jump in 1918, when it stood at 18s 11d in West Yorkshire and 19s 7d in South Yorkshire.8 Wages tended roughly to follow changes in the price of coal in this period as previously. With the optimism following from the boom at the turn of the century, miners’ wages increased by 10 per cent in 1901, to a point 60 per cent above the standard of 1888, though reductions were effected in 1902, 1903 and 1904 as the slump took hold. Improvement was delayed beyond the market upturn, but finally in 1907, 15 per cent was added. With the decline after 1908 5 per cent was taken off, leaving wages at 50 per cent above standard. In 1912, with prices again clearly rising, a further 5 per cent was granted and in 1913, another 10 per cent. In 1915 the mode of calculating wages was revised and 1911 substituted for 1888 as the new standard. A 5 per cent increase in this year was equivalent to what would have been a 7.5 per cent rise under the old system.9 All of these adjustments had to be fought through, though as in earlier years prices and profit levels facilitated argument in favour of wage advances. By far

THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD AFTER 1900 273

Table 10.1 Output and employment in the Yorkshire coalfield as a proportion of UK totals

Computed from Gibson (1992).

the most significant battle involving wages during the period, however, was the struggle for the minimum wage, culminating in a national strike in 1912. The miners maintained their adherence to conciliation machinery and national bargaining, but also resorted to industrial action when sufficiently pushed. Expansion in Yorkshire The boom at the turn of the century also engendered optimism among colliery owners and led to ambitious development plans. Over the first two decades of the century output expanded in Yorkshire at a more rapid rate than for the country as a whole, so that while in 1900 the region was responsible for 12.5 per cent of the nation’s output, this increased to over 17 per cent in 1921.10 (See Table 10.1.) While many of Britain’s coalfields were experiencing stationary or declining output and had been worked almost to their full capacity, Yorkshire was regarded as an exception and was believed to promise the possibility of expansion for many generations.11 There was also a certain enthusiasm in the county for a degree of technological change. The use of conveyors was increasing and more and more pits were operating with electricity.12 Coal-cutting machinery, moreover, had been adopted more readily and extensively in Yorkshire than any other coalfield. And in the first years of the twentieth century there was a particularly notable increase in the number of machines in use, from eighty-five in 1901 to 278 in 1909.13 Even so, machines were still used in only a minority of pits and even there somewhat unsystematically. Figures collected by the Inspector of Mines indicate their presence in only sixty of Yorkshire’s 383 pits in 1906.14 Their use may have been associated with a somewhat different pattern of productivity changes in Yorkshire than in the industry as a whole. Whereas output per person employed was often somewhat lower in Yorkshire than the


Table 10.2 Output per person employed (tons)

Source: Gibson, 1922 (no figures given for the period after 1914).

national average, this ceased to be true after 1910. If still characterised by a tendency toward decline, productivity in Yorkshire was considerably higher than the national average during these years (see Table 10.2). The expansion in Yorkshire, however, was by no means unproblematic nor universally welcomed. New capacity was created and new export markets gained; but with market changes the new projects could imply relative overproduction and difficulties for pits operating at the margin. A review of the industry in South Yorkshire in 1911 noted the growing difficulty of gaining satisfactory financial returns: ‘Together with the double shift working more generally adopted now at all collieries and the great capacity of new concerns now being developed, the output of the district will have increased by an extensive amount, and until wider markets can be found for district fuel there must be a period of low values, owing to the strong competition of newcomers, who have to procure a test for their fuel.’15 In spite of the necessary battle for markets, improvement continued, and 1913 was one of the most prosperous the industry in Yorkshire had ever seen. Prices remained high and it was predicted by the Colliery Guardian that even with increases in wages, rates and materials, balance-sheets would make pleasant reading.16 West Yorkshire pits were exporting a significantly increased amount of coal, particularly to Russia. Expansion of trade in South Yorkshire was described as ‘exceptional’ with development ‘unexampled’ by other districts. Visions of continued progress were soon frustrated by disruption wrought by the First World War. Production of steam coal was affected by the cessation of trade with Russia and Germany, though this was partly offset by increased requirements of allied governments in Europe and indeed of the Admiralty. Of far greater significance was the loss of workers to the armed forces, estimated at as many as 30,000 for Yorkshire alone, a number equivalent to about a quarter of the YMA’s membership.17 There was subsequently an attempt by the government


to regulate the industry and stem recruitment and patriotic inclination toward enlistment. But the impact on production even so was substantial. Previous to the war, however, there was still optimism in the assumption that if some old concerns ceased to be profitable, the Yorkshire field as a whole, and particularly its southern section, was in a strong position within the British mining industry. In 1914, the Colliery Guardian still deemed the prediction justified that the district would ‘quickly become the chief producing area in the kingdom’.18 Increases in output and employment in the Yorkshire coal industry were partly a consequence of the further development of existing pits. But far more important was the opening out of the Doncaster area of South Yorkshire. As in previous decades some pits were closed as new ones were sunk. But there was also an overall increase in pits, with 417 in 1912, for example, as against 382 in 1900.19 As before there continued to be a shift from West to South Yorkshire, now exaggerated by developments near Doncaster. By 1918 South Yorkshire pits employed about 62 per cent of the total mining labour force in the county and were responsible for about 63 per cent of total output.20 For some years the eastward movement in colliery development in Yorkshire remained stalled close to the boundary separating two sections known respectively as the exposed and concealed coalfields. This line extended roughly north to south and lay several miles to the west of Doncaster. At this point the coal measures, dipping to the east as they did throughout Yorkshire, were overlaid with first a sheet of magnesian limestone or Permian and then Triassic sandstones and marls. Over a considerable period it was believed that the outcropping of the Permian sheet marked the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield or at least of the area within which coal could be profitably exploited. It was in view of this popular belief that the sinking of first Denaby, but more particularly Cadeby in 1893, was considered so risky a venture, though both pits were in fact to the west of this line.21 Indeed a number of old pits in West Yorkshire were similarly close to this line, including Wheldale, Allerton Bywater and Glass Houghton.22 Frystone and Peckfield in West Yorkshire and Shireoaks and Steetley in South Yorkshire were in fact beyond it. But the geological formations in these extreme positions at the northern and southern ends of the Yorkshire field were quite different from that towards the centre, and different seams at lesser depths were exploited within them rather than the Barnsley seam which was the main object of sinking in the Doncaster area.23 Towards the end of the old and in the first years of the new century a number of pits were sunk near the eastern edge of the exposed coalfield. These included Hickleton Main, sunk between 1892 and 1894, Manton (to the south) between 1897 and 1906, Dinnington Main in 1903, Frickley between 1903 and 1905 and Silverwood in 1904 (see Table 10.3). Shortly thereafter, sinking began on the concealed coalfield itself, in projects aimed almost exclusively at tapping the


Table 10.3 Pits sunk near to or on the concealed coalfield

Manvers Main collieries, Ltd

Barnsley seam. Many of these ventures were initiated by capital from outside Yorkshire, associated with the Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire mining industry. Geographically the Doncaster area was only in slightly lesser proximity to the Midlands than to the Sheffield-Rotherham complex or the Mexborough section of South Yorkshire. But the fact that the concealed coalfield had been tapped in North Nottinghamshire in 185624 and was subsequently worked fairly extensively perhaps predisposed mining capital from the Midlands to transfer its experience and expertise to this destination. One of the first of the Doncaster area pits was Bentley, sunk by Barbar Walker & Company of Nottingham and opened out in 1905.25 But of particular importance were two related companies which had strong interests not just in coal but in the iron industry—Staveley Coal and Iron Company and Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company. Staveley owned Hickleton Main, which had been sunk just west of the boundary of exposed and concealed coalfields over the period 1892 to 1894. Subsequently Brodsworth, Bullcroft and Yorkshire Main were sunk. Dinnington Main, just west of the boundary, and Maltby Main and


Rossington Main beyond it, were under the ownership of Sheepbridge.26 The entry of these concerns reflected an increasing concentration of capital in the Yorkshire coal industry as well as an increasing tendency for collieries to be operated by large public corporations. Nature of mining communities in the Doncaster area As in earlier years, new pits were sunk in a variety of specific environments, some close to urban settlements, some near existing rural communities and some in open countryside. Apart from Doncaster itself, however, the area as a whole was more rural than that in the centre or western sections of the coalfield. Coal production was less tied by proximity to other heavy industry. The tendency was more pronounced, therefore, for collieries to be located in open countryside, entailing a need for new communities to be constructed almost from scratch. Colliery companies had previously been involved in the construction of houses and provision of other amenities in colliery communities, as in the cases of Sharlston, Altofts, Denaby, Bowers Row and others. But the Doncaster section of the coalfield was particularly characterised by such new, and often almost autonomous, colliery communities. This was the general rather than the exceptional pattern in the area. The new communities bore many similarities to those created earlier in Yorkshire. But there were some differences, not least because of more widespread public concern for some degree of rational co-ordination if not comprehensive town planning. The Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909 both symbolised and facilitated this concern. Early in 1911 a special conference on housing and town planning in the Doncaster section of the South Yorkshire coalfield was convened by the Mayor of Doncaster and attended by the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Sheffield, Lord Scarborough, Lord Halifax, William Pickering, Inspector of Mines for the region, representatives of Carlton Main, Bentley, Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company, Pease and Partners, Dinnington Main, Maltby Main, Thorne, Denaby and Cadeby, owners of mining royalties and members of governing bodies of villages and centres where new collieries were being opened out. The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, had been invited to attend, but was unable to do so. Along with his apologies, he sent a message indicating his wholehearted approval of the aim of the conference, which, according to the mayor, was to draw public attention to the need for proper foresight and planning in building estates and entire communities to accommodate an anticipated addition of some 120,000 to the region’s population. A letter sent from Wadsworth of the YMA similarly indicated support and expressed the hope that the ‘disgraceful overcrowding and insanitary conditions which had been common in colliery villages in the past’ would be avoided in the future.27


Wadworth’s characterisation of past problems was shared by many at the conference. The Archbishop of York was asked whether any of those present could claim that past provision for miners reflected any honour upon the civilisation of the nineteenth century. Certainly not, was his rhetorical response. ‘They all know these familiar features, these long rows of monotonous ugliness; they knew the appearance of these blank spaces which might have been playgrounds of children or gardens for the recreation of men.’ He asked that the effect of such conditions on the character of the people be given due consideration.28 This common understanding has subsequently been affirmed by various observers. Writing in the mid-1960s, Coates and Lewis noted that unplanned mining communities occupied only a small proportion of the terrain on the exposed coalfield and yet constituted its most distinctive landscape type.29 These unplanned communities were described as characteristically untidy, colourless and for the most part treeless, albeit still having immense character. The skyline was generally dominated by slag heaps, headgear and chimneys. Housing, frequently built by speculators, was in rows of high-density terraces, ‘stark, dull and unredeemed by the current fashion for brightly painted front doors’.30 Little provision was made for gardens or green areas. Several decades before Coates and Lewis made their observations, Abercrombie and Johnson similarly characterised communities in the central part of the Yorkshire coal field as distinctly unattractive. They described Mexborough as ‘an object lesson of the necessity for the preparation of planning schemes which should provide against the repetition of the errors of a past generation’.31 Their harshest judgement, however, was reserved for Denaby, depicted as ‘an example of what is to be avoided for the homes of industrial workers’ and ‘worse than anywhere else in this region’.32 Heightened consciousness and public pressure prompted some colliery companies to give particular attention to housing needs. But not all of the new developments to the east were uniformly laudable. There were cases here as on the exposed coalfield of inadequate or misconceived planning. Shortly after initiation of sinking operations at Yorkshire Main, work began on the construction of what was to be a large ‘model’ village.33 A syndicate34 built the first 500 of an intended 1,200 dwellings to the specification of the colliery company, which guaranteed their tenancy.35 Subsequently the Stavely Iron and Coal Company took over direct control of the building programme.36 The project resulted in the community of New Edlington, situated close to the pit and separated from the quiet, previously existing agricultural community of Old Edlington by a mile or so of open countryside. The houses of the new village were brick and arranged in groups of four or six in crescents or along straight roads.37 Each had a strip of garden at the rear and was supplied with water and gas. Cottages were of various designs. The smallest had


a combined kitchen-living-room, along with a scullery and pantry on the ground floor, and two bedrooms above. Another type had three bedrooms plus an attic room and a bath.38 An attempt had been clearly made to avoid the monotonous and dreary image created by rows of terraces and to substitute a visually pleasing environment. According to Abercrombie and Johnson, however, the new village left ‘nearly everything to be desired in its planning’ and in the way the work was carried out, ‘reminding one of some of the early efforts at housing in the South Wales coalfield’. It was built on the main road between Doncaster and Sheffield, much too close to the shaft of the colliery, on low ground.39 Not all were so critical of Edlington, but there was general consensus about the virtues of another community, this time associated with the Brodsworth Main Colliery Co. Ltd. Deriving its name from the Woodlands Estate on which it was built and serving as residence for workers at the new Brodsworth Colliery, its conception and development were directly overseen by Sir Arthur Markham, head of the colliery company.40 Six hundred houses were built near Woodland Mansion during the year and a half after the pit was opened in 1907.41 Later more than 350 additional dwellings were constructed.42 The resulting village of Woodlands was particularly striking for the space it incorporated. Houses were distributed throughout the former parkland at an average of eight per acre, grouped around a large green on which there were many forest trees. Abundant playing fields were marked out and the old mansion transformed into a workmen’s club, managed by a committee which included representatives from both workers and the company. A church capable of seating 500 people was donated by Charles Thellusson of Brodsworth Hall on whose land Brodsworth Colliery was sunk.43 Primitive and Wesleyan Methodist chapels were subsequently added, as were schools. The village included more than twenty different types of houses, thus offering considerable variety in accommodation. There were no yards or outhouses, but many of the cottages had flower gardens in front. The smallest of the houses had a large kitchen-living-room, scullery, pantry coal-house and water-closet on the ground floor and three bedrooms on the first floor. The next size included a parlour as an additional room, with an optional separate bathroom, with hot and cold water.44 In Abercrombie and Johnson’s assessment, Woodlands was a model of what new communities should be like.45 Maltby and Rossington, constructed somewhat later under the auspices of the Sheepsbridge Coal and Iron Company, were less distinguished by the natural beauty of their respective sites. Neither gained the reputation of Woodlands. Nor in the case of Rossington were Abercrombie and Johnson particularly complementary when they assessed the region in the early 1920s. They considered the method of planning in the village to leave much to be desired, though accepted that the circular design which characterised it could provide for


a community of considerable population if carefully treated.46 But Maltby and Rossington both included ample open spaces and provision for gardens and were characterised by one commentator as good-examples of miners’ villages ‘of the best modern type’.47 As did Rossington and Maltby, other new communities in the Doncaster region fell along a continuum between patterns represented by Edlington on the one hand and Woodlands on the other in respect of the use of existing environmental features, awareness of the suitability of low or higher ground for building, visual attractiveness and convenience of access to major thoroughfares in the vicinity. The ideal community was one built on higher ground, above and at a reasonable distance from shafts and colliery outbuildings, with clear access to, but also set back from, major thoroughfares. It was additionally one where estates were spacious and geometrically designed to achieve an attractive appearance and provide sufficient room for gardens and other green areas. It was self-contained, with commercial establishments as required but, more importantly, schools, parks, public halls, sports grounds, cinemas and workingmen’s clubs. If many communities fell some distance below this ideal or even the model represented by Woodlands, it may have been partly because of the intense pressure on facilities and land resulting from the rapid population increase which the opening up of the Doncaster area entailed. During the period from 1901 to 1921 population doubled across the Doncaster region as a whole, from 57,000 to 114,000.48 In the vicinity of colliery developments the rise was much steeper as indicated by Table 10.4. Many workers came to the new pits from elsewhere in Yorkshire. But large numbers also came from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The composition differed with the particular pit, but this was the general pattern, so that as earlier as with Denaby Main, the new villages were composed to a large degree of strangers to the local inhabitants. There was also a tendency in the early days of such communities for there to be an imbalance between numbers of males and females. Men came initially on their own to secure work, drawn by the partly unknown but generally positive possibilities which a new pit offered. They found accommodation as they could, often crowding as lodgers into such houses as had been built. Often they were young since such journeys and displacements were easier the less one was already settled. If older and married, they returned for their families only when they were sure of their new situation and had the promise of a suitable house. Then the entire family would travel the distance, with their possessions loaded on drays. Gradually the balance between males and females adjusted, but in the early days, as figures indicate in Table 10.5, there was a clear excess of men.


Table 10.4 Population changes in selected parishes in the Doncaster area 1901–1921

Source: Census for relevant years; Abercrombie and Johnson (1922:13); Coates and Lewis (1966:22). Table 10.5 Population by sex in selected communities, 1911

Source: Census for 1911.

The Case of Dinnington The pattern of development of these new communities can be illustrated by the case of Dinnington. Lying just inside the boundary of the exposed coalfield and sunk slightly before Bentley and Brodsworth, its history bears close similarity to pits on the concealed coalfield, not least because it shared ownership with both Maltby and Rossington. Sinking began at Dinnington in 1902. Here, as elsewhere, those recruited to carry out the task were a distinctive lot. In some cases sinkers settled in an area


and were absorbed as part of the mining workforce. More commonly they moved from one new shaft to the next, in peripatetic existence. But if transient, they were numerous enough to form a roughshod community. In general they were housed in temporary tin huts. So before a community proper, many localities had a Tin Town, composed not just of shacks for the workers but also the first shops and, in some cases, the first churches or schools. At Dinnington about sixty families were housed in these tin huts. Water for washing was drawn from the water shaft and supplied via three or four standpipes. Drinking water had to be carried from a well about half a mile away.49 Dinnington’s Tin Town quickly acquired some of the elements for more entrenched communities. One of its huts was used from an early period as a Catholic chapel. Another may have served as the first meeting hall of the Salvation Army. As early as 1904 another religious grouping, the Primitive Methodists, also had a place of worship in Dinnington. A wooden building was erected as a temporary facility in this year on land given by the company for the purpose. Wesleyan Methodism was also represented in the village, St Andrew’s Wesleyan church being attended by a number of families who had come from north Wales in the early years of the century.50 Commercial outlets were established at much the same time as the first churches, sometimes through small private enterprise, but more typically by virtue of the in-migration of branches of co-operative societies. The Barnsley seam was reached at Dinnington in 1904 and in this same year a branch of the Woodhouse Co-operative Society opened. The following year saw the addition of a branch of the Rotherham Co-operative Society.51 Educational facilities were introduced from an early period as well. Initially temporary facilities were used and there was considerable overcrowding. This was relieved when the first council schools were built in 1907 and 1908, first to accommodate 350 and later, 950 children. The community’s first library was opened somewhat later in 1910 at the Colliery Institute.52 Tin Town was never intended to be anything but temporary and soon after the Barnsley seam was reached a building programme began under the auspices of the company. The first houses constructed were intended for management personnel. Accommodation for workers was not yet of the ‘model’ design which the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company was noted for at Maltby or Rossington. In contrast sets of terraces were constructed, rather in the style of ‘traditional’ mining communities of the exposed coalfield, on the very edge of which Dinnington was situated. Their appearance and character is suggested by the name popularly given them—The Barracks.53 In the early days there were often two families to each house,54 and overcrowding was characteristic of the community for some years. By 1912, 449 cottages had been built. Upwards of 2,000 workers were by this time employed at the pit but a continuing shortage of labour induced plans for construction of a


further sixty houses.55 Here, as elsewhere, provision of housing by the company was not a measure of beneficence so much as a necessary requirement for ensuring the viability of the operation as a whole. Interruption caused by the First World War As exploration within the Doncaster area continued, viable workings were found at Thorne and sinking there began in 1912. But even before this, in early 1911, it was reported that an extension of the seam found at Thorne had been located beneath the village of Newland near Selby, and arrangements were in hand to secure mineral rights in the vicinity.56 In fact the opening of the Selby section of the coalfield was to await many more decades. Prior to the First World War, and for many years thereafter, sinking at Thorne marked the furthest eastward extension of coal mining within Yorkshire. But with coal already ‘proven’ near Selby optimism in the ultimate possibilities of the future remained firm. Sinking operations at many of the Doncaster area pits, however, encountered unexpected disruption and delay. At Yorkshire Main, sinkers had to contend with an inrush of water so that nineteen months were taken in reaching the Barnsley seam.57 At Thorne the porous nature of the strata and inability to fully tub-off the excess water, a problem which became more severe the deeper sinking continued, led to high costs and a lengthy episode of sinking. It was estimated in 1912 when £330,219 had already been invested, that six or seven years would be required just to reach the coal and two or three years more before any substantial amount of mineral would be raised.58 Sinking at this pit in fact continued from 1912 until 1925.59 The effort, time and costs involved defined the limits on exploitation of the Doncaster area. Sinking had begun at Hatfield Main during 1912, the same year as its initiation at Thorne. But with war followed by depressed conditions during the second decade of the century, these were the last pits to be opened in the area for a good many years. At Harworth, a specific difficulty was that the sinking contract had been given to a German firm.60 In the event the pit was not sunk until 1920–3. Prospective sinking at Markham Main was also delayed until after the war in 1922.61 In spite of the immediate difficulty of severe labour shortage brought by the war, however, some developments did continue. The Barnsley bed was reached at Rossington in May 1915 and sinking continued at Barnborough and Hatfield Main. For those pits which became established, moreover, the rewards were potentially high. The Barnsley Seam at Hatfield Main, for example, included an unbroken layer of coal thirteen feet wide.62 The Doncaster pits were often large operations, employing several thousands of workers. By 1913 they were credited with having contributed an estimated 8 or 10 million tons to output.63 They quickly became the source of a large proportion of Yorkshire’s exported coal.64


And they brought good returns for their owners. In turn, though also as an inducement to recruitable labour, wages paid to miners at these pits were generally high, and certainly above those in West Yorkshire or the Barnsley area of South Yorkshire. But it was a curious characteristic of many of the Doncaster area pits that the level of technology adopted was ‘traditional’ rather than innovative. While a sizeable number of collieries of the exposed coalfield were utilising machinecutters by the second decade of the century, relatively few were in use in the Doncaster pits. At Maltby, for example, while endless rope and main-and-tail haulage systems were quickly introduced, coal continued to be cut by hand for many years.65 At Yorkshire Main the initial mode of working was by long-wall faces, divided into ‘tub stalls’ where coal was hand-cut and hand-filed. Only in 1933 was this system replaced with long-wall advancing coal faces where coal was loaded into conveyors at the face.66 It may well have been that the very richness of the Barnsley seam in the Doncaster area and the ease of its exploitation inhibited the introduction or reduced the attractiveness of new technology. As M.Deacon, the head of Dinnington Colliery told an excursion meeting of the Midland Counties Institutes touring the pit in 1912, the seam was of an excellent quality and extremely easy to work. ‘It was more a question of the organisation of a number of fillers’, he said, ‘than of skill or art in getting the coal.’67 Indeed though far from exclusive to the Doncaster pits, it was ‘old’ modes of working such as the butty system in particular which brought difficulties and engaged the defensive energies of the YMA during the period just prior to the First World War. The union and industrial relations in Yorkshire Total membership of the YMA moved up sharply from 55,211 in 1905 to 79,052 two years later.68 Pits such as Hickleton, Silverwood, Dinnington and Frickley, near the edge of the exposed coalfield, had already opened at this time, and the addition of branches there—even if still small—may have been partly responsible for the change. But the increase in these years was probably more attributable to members joining or rejoining as the industry moved out of its depressed state, since it was the proportionate decrease in membership after 1901 which was the more anomalous feature of the decade (see Table 10.6). But development both on the edge of the exposed and on the concealed coalfield itself certainly was important for growth of the union in subsequent years. By 1910 the workforce of pits in this section of the coalfield, sunk after 1900, totalled almost 11,000.69 Branches associated with them had a combined membership of almost 4,400.70 If constituting but a minority of YMA members,


Table 10.6 YMA membership as a proportion of total number of underground workers in Yorkshire, 1900–13

Source: Gibson (1922); Report on Trade Unions in 1908–10, CD 6109, PP 1912.

they were still an important group, their proportion increasing yearly as the Doncaster area pits came onstream and developed toward their capacity. As with all cases of new collieries, the union encountered some difficulties in organising branches and negotiating price lists with owners. As a whole, the Doncaster area pits (in that broader region defined as including pits both near the edge of the exposed field and on the concealed field) probably posed no greater problems than any other. As indicated in Table 10.7, figures for 1910 show that many of the pits operating by that time had a relatively high proportion of their workforce unionised. Several exceptions to the general pattern of solid trade union membership are apparent. Goldthorpe was but a recent addition to the YMA in 1910 and its own history too short then to allow adequate evaluation. Cadeby Main, in fact more associated with the earlier development of the coalfield, had experienced a bitter and devastating dispute several years earlier which left the local branch still crippled. Lower figures at Silverwood and Frickley are indications, like those at Cadeby, of local difficulties. Interestingly the owners of these last two collieries were both associated with other older and well-established pits in Yorkshire. Dalton Main collieries owned Roundwood as well as Silverwood, and Carlton Main Colliery Co. owned Carlton and Grimethorpe as well as Frickley. Theirs were not cases of the YMA’s involvement with new and unfamiliar employers. It was perhaps surprising, then, that it should have been these rather than others close to the edge of or on the concealed coalfield near Doncaster that claimed so much of the union’s attention. Silverwood was characterised over several years by a


Table 10.7 YMA members as a proportion of underground workers, 1910

Note: The YMA was of course not restricted to underground workers, but as these constituted the overwhelming majority of its members, it has been used in these calculations rather than the figure for the total workforce. Source: YMA membership figures for 1910, financial members only; Report on Trade Unions in 1908–10, Cd 6109, PP 1912.

particularly high number of victims. At Frickley there was trouble over the very process of unionisation. Frickley in fact become a major source of concern for the YMA, in a perverse sense taking the place of Hemsworth as the branch whose troubles dominated the arena of local disputes during 1907. Campaign over non-unionism—the case of Frickley Frickley is not strictly in the Doncaster district, but to the west on the edge of the exposed coalfield. But it was regarded as part of the new area being opened out at the time and both the YMA and the owners seem to have viewed it as something of a test case for this section of the county having wider implications than a merely local dispute.71 Both of the other two pits owned, like Frickley, by the Carlton Main Colliery Company, had been prone to frequent problems between workers and management, with grievances repeatedly taken before the joint committee. Hence it should not have been surprising that friction between union management would emerge early in Frickley’s history. Matters came to a head in 1907, shortly after the pit was opened out and a branch formally established. The dispute was two-fold, firstly relating to the setting of a price list and secondly to an attempt by the owners to prevent the union gaining a foothold. There had been trouble from the beginning in getting a branch established at Frickley, attributed by the YMA to an extremely hard line taken by the management. In March 1906 authorisation had been granted for setting up a branch at the pit, but this was almost immediately set aside.72 Only in August 1906 was the earlier resolution confirmed and steps taken to form a branch.73


But troubles continued. In February 1907 Wadsworth was directed by the council to write to Parker Rhodes, secretary to the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, about the attitude of Frickley’s management.74 At its 22 March meeting the joint committee took up the issue and heard Wadsworth’s somewhat rambling account of the Frickley situation. As Wadsworth explained, ‘they wanted to have a branch of their Association at Frickley. They wanted to do that in as mild a way as possible, but they intended having a branch there’75 in order to have a ‘fair and legitimate share’ in formulating a price list under which Frickley’s miners would henceforth be bound. Wadsworth particularly complained about a contractor whom the company had hired, known by the name of ‘Mad Dick’, who was apparently victimising anyone who attempted to set up a branch. According to Wadsworth, moreover, management had posted men in the lanes to check on who paid union dues or went to a meeting and then promptly sacked any so observed at a day’s notice. He noted that the YMA had had trouble with Mr Addy, Frickley’s owner, before and on the basis of past experience considered further correspondence with him futile. But Addy was mistaken, he said, if he thought the YMA would merely sit back and accept such harassment.76 Wadsworth asked the committee, and through it the pit’s owners, ‘to allow them to form a branch of their Association without interference from the contractor or anyone else and allow the men to become members of their Association, and be dealt with as they were at other collieries’.77 But in the event the owners’ side sidestepped the issue, saying that having discussed the matter they found themselves unable to suggest a solution. It was therefore left to stand over. Not long afterwards, when a price list was signed by management and a group of Frickley workers who were outside of the union, the YMA advised the relatively small number who had persevered in joining the county association not to abide by the price list or accept its legitimacy.78 After an initial protest to management, they complied by stopping work and were subsequently granted strike pay.79 All told, the strike at Frickley involved 280 miners and other underground workers directly and thirty more indirectly, considerably more than the total YMA membership at the pit.80 Strikers were evicted from their homes and new recruits, mostly drawn from Mansfield, took their places in the pit, thereby making the dispute one whose implications transcended Yorkshire, involving the Nottinghamshire miners’ association as well. As in all such similar disputes, striking workers and their families endured considerable distress and hardship and in June the YMA executive promised legal assistance to those evicted.81 About this same time the strike was officially ended,82 when after eight weeks many returned on the owners’ terms. But the YMA was far from convinced that the matter was finished. A total of sixty-four had been on the books receiving strike pay and many of these remained


subsequently. By the week ending 21 December, 33½ were still receiving union benefits.83 The YMA had been largely hampered in this dispute by its very weakness at Frickley. There may have been many who were dissatisfied with the price list and willing to go out, but only a minority could be officially paid. Those who were not members had limited resources for withstanding lengthy battles and gradually drifted back. The rehiring of YMA members, on the other hand, may have been less than palatable to the owners. Whether for this reason or because they preferred to remain true to principle, most remained out, giving incentive to the union to continue to seek some sort of settlement. The company gave intimations of willingness to meet YMA officials in July, and the union therefore held the question open when it arose on the agenda of the council. But when the anticipated meetings yielded nothing, a special council meeting was held on 17 August 1907 to consider the Frickley question. Once again, however, it was adjourned, ‘seeing that the men who were working have stopped on their own initiative, and in order to give Mr Addy another opportunity of settling this matter amicably’.84 Sporadic negotiations with the company continued through September, but at the end of this month, with little accomplished, and given management’s intention of retaining a price list, signed on 5 September, which the YMA regarded as thoroughly unsatisfactory, the YMA Council directed by a vote of 1,189 to 128 that the district be balloted on striking over the Frickley question.85 A county-wide strike would be costly and not a venture to be considered lightly. But the council was convinced that the Frickley question was a highly important one.86 An appeal to the Federation was considered partly justified because the Frickley dispute involved not just Yorkshire but also Nottinghamshire, from which workers which the YMA regarded as scabs were being recruited. But it was the particular nature of the grievance of Frickley which warranted broader attention, in that the question of non-unionism had been taken on board by the Federation as a whole and treated in a special conference early in 1907.87 Yorkshire succeeded on this occasion in getting standing orders suspended so as to allow their special appeal regarding Frickley to be made. Smith presented the case, giving details both on price-list difficulties and obstructive strategies against unionisation adopted by the Frickley management,88 which, he alleged, was receiving strong support from owners in South Yorkshire. There were those planning to sink pits in the vicinity who were watching the Frickley case closely and this gave all the more reason for the MFGB to give it attention. The YMA, said Smith, felt it important to obtain fair conditions in the particular coalfield where Frickley was located. But though they had asked that the matter be dealt with by the joint committee, or that an average of prices at six neighbouring collieries be taken, or that the case go to arbitration before an independent umpire,


Frickley’s owners had refused. Instead the colliery’s management had set down a price and would not move from it.89 The pit was currently being worked by scab labour, said Smith, some from Yorkshire, but most of which was from Mansfield. Wadsworth confirmed the point. Of 300 at work at the pit, three-quarters were from Mansfield.90 The YMA had created a special ‘Frickley Removal Fund’ based on members’ voluntary subscriptions to finance ‘strangers’ returning to their homes and had successfully persuaded about forty to depart. On presenting details to Nottinghamshire officials, the latter had taken it up immediately. Indeed they seconded the resolution proposed by Smith at the Federation’s annual conference that the MFGB pledge moral and financial support of the YMA in a county-wide strike, should this be necessary.91 The resolution was passed, leaving the Frickley case to a large extent in the hands of the Federation. But this unfortunately did not bring the hoped for result.92 Federation representatives met with the president of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, who agreed to call a meeting on the case as soon as possible. Ultimately after further investigation and discussion, a recommendation to ratify the price list was signed on 11 December by Jones and Rhodes for the owners’ association and Edwards, Abraham and Ashton for the MFGB.93 YMA officials were sorely disappointed by this turn of events,94 which they must have seen as capitulation. The recommendation allowed Addy for the company to declare that neither he, nor the Frickley committee—presumably composed of non-YMA members—could entertain the YMA’s request to reinstate the men ‘who are supposed to be on strike at Frickley Colliery’.95 YMA officials reluctantly concluded that they had little leverage to push the matter further given their low membership at Frickley. But the minutes for the council of 17 February 1908 recorded that ‘there shall be no peace between this company and this association under such circumstances or conditions.’96 Despite its rebuff, the YMA continued to press for those on its strike sheets from Frickley to be ‘restored’ to work. Through the technicality that they had not actually been on contract when they went off, reinstatement could not be strictly claimed. At one point an offer was made to find work at Carlton or Grimethorpe for those still out.97 But this was not particularly satisfactory from the point of view of the Frickley strikers. Wishing to achieve ‘a proper understanding at Frickley’,98 the YMA sought a further deputation to which Addy assented, so long as its purpose was ratification of the price list and none of those ‘alleged to be on strike’ attended.99 Wadsworth in turn agreed to recommend that the price list be signed on condition that Addy find work at the pit for the twenty-one men still on funds.100 But this Addy would not concede. The YMA Council declined a request from Frickley and Carlton that official district action accompany local action to promote the organisation of those currently working at Frickley.101 But a district vote also directed that the price list


already in operation at Frickley should not be ratified by district officials.102 In late September the council reaffirmed this decision.103 This, however, left local members at the colliery in something of a quandary. They remained on funds, but as a matter of principle could not return to work; nor did the colliery management give them opportunity. Gradually the number of Frickley miners receiving strike pay diminished, from eleven at the beginning of 1909 to four at the end. But throughout 1909 and into 1910, non-unionism at Frickley—or more specifically the sponsorship of alternative, company unionism —continued to nag at the YMA. In 1909, therefore, the YMA initiated a systematic attempt to authorise formal organising activities in targeted areas where potential problems were likely or where new pits were being opened up. In July, for example, Deepcar branch was authorised to appoint two from its membership to organise for a month and report back to Wadsworth. G.Proberts and S.W. Mason were directed to be present at the new Bentley Colliery each of the next four Saturdays to help organise miners there.104 In line with this general campaign, a number of individuals including Potts, James Walsh and S.Jacks were directed to assist with organising at Frickley. Their report, included in the minutes of a special council meeting on 18 September 1909, records that in spite of considerable opposition having been encountered, ‘reorganisation of this Colliery as Members of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association is, in our opinion, now assured’. But because the feeling remained acute that those actively involved in local organising would be subject to victimisation, the special council agreed that officials be given the power to make occasional grants as necessary for organising Frickley, but specified that this should not form a precedent.105 A district vote subsequently ratified this decision.106 Whatever the hopes for organising efforts at Frickley it is evident that problems continued with individuals being laid off in consequence of their union affiliation. Early in January 1910 the district office distributed a circular to local officials reminding members of the fight at Frickley and the need for financial support of those involved. ‘Our Members must remember that this is not an Ordinary Fight, but an Extraordinary Fight, and our men are requested to secure all the Voluntary Support they possibly can’, the circular stated.107 A second appeal later in the year referred to evictions suffered as ‘proof of the diabolical methods that some classes of capitalists still resort to. We are convinced that these men are being turned away from their work and out of their houses simply for the purpose, if they can possibly do it, of defeating the men that join this Association, and to defeat the Association itself.’108 The union persisted in making both direct and indirect approaches to Frickley’s owners and to the joint committee. In a letter to Addy dated 17 January 1910, Wadsworth reaffirmed the YMA’s intentions of organising a branch at Frickley and ultimately gaining union agreement on an acceptable


price list. He reiterated that the YMA’s refusal to sign the existing price list, even though it had been recommended by representatives from the MFGB, had resulted from the company breaking off negotiations, ‘going and getting the list signed behind our backs’,109 and sponsoring what was essentially a house union. ‘You say’, wrote Wadsworth, ‘there certainly is not room for two Unions at One Colliery. I quite agree with you. One union is quite sufficient at Frickley, as elsewhere, and we intend that there shall only be one.’110 By the time of the annual demonstration on 25 June, Potts, who had devoted considerable efforts to organising there, was able to report that despite all obstacles progress was now rapidly being made at Frickley. After just five months there were over 500 members. The association, he said, ‘would establish itself at Frickley, come what would’.111 Perhaps spurred by this success, but cognisant of its partial nature, the council resolved in August 1910 that the question of balloting over a county strike on the question of non-unionism should go before the district.112 District officers, however, were reluctant to take this course, given that while across the county as a whole the union represented about three-quarters of all underground labour, a reasonably good showing, several large pits remained scarcely organised at all. Better to concentrate on these exceptions, it was felt, than to force complete unionisation at the pits with established branches. In consequence the initiative fell by the wayside and the specific target of organising Frickley was reaffirmed.113 Negotiations continued over the Frickley price list, with Addy insisting that representatives from the ‘rival’ union attend along with those from the YMA. The immediate response from Barnsley was that ‘we never arrange with nonUnion men’.114 But there was some feeling within the YMA that a merger with the company union might be ultimately acceptable if engineered so as to reflect the proportionate strength of the two bodies. A special council meeting called on 3 December 1910 to deal with the ‘Frickley question’ yielded a decision to allow members of the ‘New Union’ into the YMA and to give them proportional representation on the committee. The case at Frickley was clearly not a happy one for the union, given the level and quality of MFGB support and the painstaking progress which met organising efforts. One small consolation may have been that other companies operating in the newly developed Doncaster area were far less obstructionist in their dealings with the union. If Frickley was viewed as a test case, the troubles ensuing did not apparently inspire imitation by other owners in the field. Organisers were dispatched to Bentley, for example, in August 1909 and apparently gained considerable success. As price-list negotiations proceeded, the new branch at Bentley became aggrieved and requested a local ballot. While the request was held over, the grievance was taken up by the joint committee.115 In this case as in most others, procedures and progress were routine.


Campaign to eliminate the butty system Throughout the period from 1906 until about 1916 there were rather fewer and less prolonged disputes than had plagued the YMA around the turn of the century.116 Each year there were new strikes and a renewed need to disperse lockout pay (often owing to actions of other categories of worker), and the YMA continued to support a sizeable number of miners who were victimised or caught up in officially sanctioned disputes (see Tables 10.8–10.10) But for a variety of reasons, some relating to the state of the economy and some to the altered machinery regulating the calling of strikes and governing the length of time members could remain on the books, the burden was relatively reduced. From 1905 branches declaring grievances over which they wished to ballot were often directed to take two, or more commonly four, weeks’ averages of wages received. In many cases this requirement, and the time entailed thereby, saw the grievances deflating and falling away. The length of time members could continue to qualify for strike or lock-out pay once authorised was in turn carefully specified in union regulations and the whole process closely monitored. Grievances of course continued to be raised and, in respect of these, patterns indicating preoccupation with a given issue can be easily seen. Throughout the period a sizeable number of cases reached the consideration of the council or the executive. As previously, the most important or most common related to wages. But non-unionism, and particularly victimisation, also featured with some frequency. However, what is of interest is the limited extent to which the new Doncaster area branches’ forwarded grievances became the focuses of YMA concern. By far the largest number of grievances, as also the largest numbers of strikes and lock-outs, derived from or involved the ‘old’ pits of West Yorkshire. Though it was an issue which also affected the Doncaster area branches — again, specifically, though not exclusively, Frickley—one of the more significant of these grievances involved buttyism. In 1911 Wadsworth declared that buttyism had been brought to the county from outside.117 But it was at Whitwood Mere, a well-established pit in West Yorkshire, owned by the Briggs family, that the issue first and most seriously erupted during this period. In June 1909 miners at Whitwood Mere voted to abolish the butty system. The decision may well have overlaid internal tension or leadership shifts within the local branch, given that a price list negotiated just five years previously, and presumably signed by branch officials, incorporated the term butty system and thereby legitimated its presence. But to some extent the use of the term was misleading. As Hodges, the firm’s representative, explained to a meeting of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, the mode of work and payment were not strictly along lines of the butty system, but really the Nottinghamshire stall system. Moreover, Hodges asserted, the system had been in operation


Table 10.8 Numbers of members on books as receiving strike and lock-out pay

Notes: The figures above are compiled from tables included in YMA minutes over the period specified. The data does not appear in this form in previous years and so comparison with an earlier period is not possible. After about 1914, tables are included much less regularly than previously and so information relating to these years is also of limited value. The numbers receiving strike and lock-out pay varies greatly from month to month in any year so that giving figures at just two points—the beginning and the middle of the year— may present some distortion of the overall pattern. But they do allow for some general comparison across the period.

‘practically ever since the collieries were opened’, and he implicitly questioned the basis of the grievance at this point in time. The firm was solidly against a change, for if the present mode of working were abandoned, said Hodges, it would mean an entire re-arrangement of getting prices, which could well lead to more serious trouble. The WYCOA for its part agreed to give the company support, should a strike ensue.118 When the YMA asked for an official deputation, Hodges replied that any deputation should consist of signatories of the present price list, which would make it, he suggested, a deputation of butties.119 Wadsworth countered that the deputation should be constituted of workmen.120 Hodges then refused to meet a deputation altogether.121 The district endorsed the request of the various branches associated with Briggs’s pits to ballot and later authorised notice being given in on 11 November 1909.122 But in the event noticing was postponed when the joint committee took up the case. Within a matter of days a settlement was reached which, if removing the terminology of buttyism, was essentially cosmetic and therefore regarded by the firm as quite satisfactory.123 The arrangement agreed was that four men would be in charge of each stall in practice and as symbolised by their division of earnings between them. But only two would be regarded as in charge of the stall by the management. This could potentially provide for a more equitable distribution than previously. How far it did is not clear, but at least it was agreed that the words ‘butty system’ would be removed from the price list.124


Table 10.9 Number of branches granted strike or lock-out pay as recorded in YMA minutes

Notes: Material relating to numbers of stoppages varies depending on the source used. Data from the ‘Strike and Lockout Annual Reports’ is restricted to disputes of a certain size and so only refers to large or major disputes. It also includes all disputes, whether affecting YMA members or not. YMA data on the other hand is based on sanctioned actions by YMA members or instances where miners are affected by the actions of others in the sense of being locked out. (However, for this as well as for other sources of data, determination of what constitutes a strike or lock-out is often unclear.) The data above gives the number of branches per year for which new authorisation has been given to allocate strike or lock-out pay. In many cases the numbers involved are quite small, particularly in respect of lock-out cases. Of the total of 21 strikes included in this table, 10 were at pits in West Yorkshire, 7 in South Yorkshire and 3 in the Doncaster area of South Yorkshire. The location of one has not been identified. Of the total of fifty-three lock-outs, thirty-seven relate to West Yorkshire pits, fifteen to South Yorkshire and one to a pit in the Doncaster area of South Yorkshire.

The following year the issue of buttyism again came to district attention, this time in respect of continuing troubles at Frickley. The YMA alleged that the company union there was essentially organised by buttymen, who had been authorised to collect contributions for a new union from miners who were compelled to work under them. At a joint committee meeting on August 3, 1910 which considered the Frickley case, Wadsworth complained about ‘what we call the Butty system’ at Frickley, explaining that the union wanted Addy to agree to procedures and arrangements applying to Brodsworth and Bentley where the men in a stall shared their earnings. Addy stated that there was but one collier with three trammers in the typical stall at Frickley and Wadsworth countered: We want you to have two colliers and two daymen like they have at other places; we don’t agree to three, so there is an end of that. We are not going to have the Butty system in Yorkshire.125


Table 10.10 Disputes in the Yorkshire mining industry as recorded in Annual Reports on Strikes and Lock-outs

Notes: From 1901, the criteria for inclusion were that disputes should have affected 750 persons or involved 37,500 aggregate days lost. PRO LAB/34/7 includes some additional disputes for Yorkshire which did not satisfy inclusion criteria and so were not included in the ‘Annual Reports on Strikes and Lockouts’. There were, for example, four additional disputes in 1905, one in 1906 and two in 1907.

When Addy protested that ‘you have it at Briggs’, YMA representatives denied the charge, saying the system had been altered there. ‘They pay the odd man by day’ said Wadsworth. The chairman of the meeting protested mildly that the matter of how many worked in a gate and how they were paid was outside of the price list, which in any case said nothing about the butty system. Ultimately the YMA side conceded and agreed to sign the Frickley list, but remained wary about the butty system gaining covert presence. For Wadsworth, one collier and three day-men still constituted the butty system, which he declared would be fought, whether at Frickley or anywhere else. There was in fact some difficulty at several pits over procedures and practices which—whether called so or not—had the air of buttyism and therefore inequity about them. To some extent this system had indeed come up from Nottinghamshire. Yet while an issue over which vigilance was required, it was on the whole not a serious matter in the new Doncaster field. Trouble would later emerge in the Doncaster area, however, in quite a different respect, through an initiative to break away from the YMA and form a separate association, a prospect founded on a desire to preserve the relatively privileged situation of Doncaster area miners, whose earnings were generally higher than those elsewhere in the county. Ironically it was this same characteristic of higher pay which may have accounted for less overt conflict with employers in the


region—save for the notorious case of Frickley. Any murmurings of discontent or secession could only bode ill for the future of Yorkshire miners. In this case, at least, the episode proved shortlived and the attempt abortive, but the threat it posed was still a matter of concern. For the Yorkshire mining industry and Yorkshire miners, the period after the turn of the century was particularly distinguished by the opening up of the Doncaster field. For most of the first decade this process was confined to the development stage. The proportion of YMA membership represented by branches from the area remained small. And even as they grew, they contributed less to the immediate grievances and conflicts to which the union was obliged to attend than did some of the older, declining pits, particularly in West Yorkshire. Yet while not dominating the union—at least not for many years to come—the addition of Doncaster area branches, like the development of the area as a whole, marked a new phase in the union’s and industry’s history. The expansion was potentially extremely promising for Yorkshire. Though it was never realised as fully as might have been predicted, it still thrust Yorkshire to a more central position within the industry than had previously been the case.

LABOUR AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES, 1900–18

298

11 DENABY-CADEBY STRIKE OF 1902 AND ENSUING LEGAL ACTION

A dispute which had been brewing for several years at the Denaby and Cadeby pits and led ultimately to some 3,000 workers walking off the job in the summer of 1902 without authorisation of the district was essentially a price-list grievance. Workers at Denaby had long contested provision of payment for the removal of ‘bag dirt’ which had to be extracted before the coal could be brought down. Their employers contended that its removal was part of their ordinary work and could warrant no special payment. But the miners disagreed, and particularly as the layer of ‘bag dirt’ grew proportionately larger over time, pressed for what they regarded as adequate compensation. The specific grievance in this case was little different from others which emerged from time to time in Yorkshire, as inevitable consequences of fixed and highly detailed price lists being imposed on continually changing geological and working conditions. But because of the manner in which the walk-out occurred and the legal complexities which attended it, the dispute assumed particular importance for the YMA and remained a source of preoccupation over a period of some four years, long after the workers had been forced to concede to the owners. It had larger significance, indeed, for the trade union as a whole, in that district officials were accused of conspiracy and of unlawfully bringing loss of income to the company involved. Several years previously the Taff Vale decision had been handed down against railway workers, making their union liable for the actions of its officials and union finances thereby highly vulnerable. The DenabyCadeby case became a test of that decision and an exercise in determination of the legal status of trade unions. As with many hard-fought and prolonged disputes, the Denaby-Cadeby strike was also characterised by personal and community hardship. Defeat was not officially conceded until March 1903. But well before that, in December 1902, the company had moved to evict strikers from premises it rented to them. In the midst of a difficult winter, many were forced to live in tents placed on muddy

300 LABOUR AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES, 1900–18

fields, to lose their possessions to the pawnbroker, and to scrape for food for their children. The owners of Denaby and Cadeby pits were particularly uncompromising and known for their hardline attitudes and their antipathy toward the union. Denaby village approached more the model of a company town than perhaps any other mining community in Yorkshire. The company wielded a paternalistic hand, not as had the old landlords who attempted to retain and extend a relationship previously sustained with their farm labourers and cottage workers, but in an unambiguous attempt to control the workforce as comprehensively as possible. Their stance both before the strike and in bringing legal action against the union after its initiation was instrumental in escalating a fairly ordinary dispute into one of national significance. As its impact on the association was necessarily coloured by other events of the period just after the turn of the century when the YMA seemed particularly embattled and embroiled in both local and national issues, a review of that situation provides the context for the Denaby strike. Pressure on union funds Over the period 1893 to 1910, the YMA sustained a high level of expenditure on strike and lock-out pay. There was the odd year when a major strike left another district with a greater burden, but overall Yorkshire’s expenditure on disputes exceeded that of other areas, whether measured by gross or per capita outlay.1 Total dispute expenditure as high, for example, as £35,368 in 1898 and £45,327 in 19012 provoked considerable concern within the association.3 Of the £40,254 dispersed on strike pay in the latter year, £13,619 3s 11d went to Hemsworth, £7, 289 11s 9d to Ravensthorpe and £2,690 5s 9d to Dewsbury Moor. An additional £13,000 went to collieries in dispute over implementation of new governmental timbering regulations. So serious was the situation that the YMA Council agreed to introduce a voluntary levy of 3d per week to assist members on strike,4 given that ‘the district is now in the midst of much strife and great cost to the association’.5 Financial pressure during 1901 came not just from strikes and lock-outs but also in consequence of victimisation and cases of workers being out of work ‘through no fault of their own’. The amounts involved were not substantial, but added to the total and reflected further dimensions of ‘strife’ being felt within the district. It had been agreed in 1900 that where a quarter of the workers at a pit were out for at least a fortnight through no fault of their own, they should be entitled to funds from the association. £1,017 12s was paid out on this account in 1901, the largest amount going to miners at Denaby Main.6 The YMA executive expressed alarm at the continuously increasing number of victims and highly cognisant of the costs involved, issued several requests to local officers to try to

DENABY-CADEBY STRIKE OF 1902 301

get men reinstated and off union funds.7 In October it was recommended that men try to get work in other districts, putting the onus on them to explain the reasons why they were unable to do so.8 By the end of the year, concern about finances prompted the yearly council meeting9 to vote for raising contributions by 1s per week. Given that contributions per member were already slightly higher in Yorkshire than in other areas10 there was, however, a certain reluctance on the part of district officials to implement this decision. The annual report for 1901–2 describes it as potentially disastrous, finding it better to relieve what was implied to be a temporary problem with ‘special steps’. In the event a large number of branches refused to collect the extra 1s, even where their delegates had voted in favour of the original motion. But that it was passed at all is evidence of the sense of financial pressure felt at the time. It was not just the monetary cost but more fundamentally the issues and grievances underlying the spate of extended stoppages which were of concern. There may have been some sense in Barnsley that branches were rather too quick to move to strike action. But the rate of victimisation and the number of serious stoppages indicated a worrying level of conflict and confrontation within the district. National issues—government regulations, legislation and wages In 1901 and early 1902 the YMA was preoccupied with a number of issues, including the implications of a new set of official timbering regulations, the ongoing campaign over the eight hours bill, federation-wide wage negotiations and the coal tax, passed in May 1901 and designed to recover an export duty on coal of 1s per ton for government coffers but judged highly detrimental and disruptive to the industry by both owners and workers.11 Conflict over the interpretation of a set of special rules on the supply and use of wooden props, issued by government in 1901 and intended to increase the level of safety in mines, led to an extended correspondence between the YMA and the Home Office in the autumn of that year.12 With no resolution achieved thereby and with problems over the implementation of the rules becoming particularly acute at a set of collieries owned by John Brown and Company, the district authorised local strike action.13 Some 2,733 were involved directly and another 2,602 indirectly in stoppages lasting up to six weeks.14 Work resumed in midDecember 1902 with conditions remaining as they had been previously.15 But it was a costly venture, adding to the burdens of the YMA at a time when there appeared a constant intermeshing of local and national issues and the need for vigilance with respect both to serious legal or legislative matters affecting the miners as a whole and to the intransigence or aggressive action of local owners.


In early summer in 1902, Lord James of Hereford gave his award of a 10 per cent reduction in wages.16 YMA leadership had been reconciled to this as a likely outcome of the current set of wage negotiations under the Conciliation Board, but the membership in Yorkshire was less sanguine and had voted overwhelmingly against the recommendation that the 10 per cent be accepted, preferring that the case go before the umpire.17 In the event, the 10 per cent came off from the first pay day in July. There was no specific provision that the reduction apply to lads’ wages,18 but in many cases, and particularly where in the previous wage round 10 per cent had been added, a percentage was removed. In protest, lads at a number of Yorkshire pits, as elsewhere in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Lancashire, came out, often without notice, in a series of essentially uncoordinated actions over the period from mid-July to September. Ultimately about thirty pits in Yorkshire were stopped, leaving some 30,000 workers idle for varying periods, but often for several weeks at a time, and costing the YMA upwards of £40,000 in benefits paid out. But this was not the only expense borne at the time. Workers at Denaby and Cadeby pits had walked out at the end of June, even before the new pay rates were implemented and the lads had begun their various protests. While not affecting so many workers as did the lads’ actions, the Denaby-Cadeby dispute was of much longer duration. Indeed any strike affecting these pits would necessarily be of significance given the size of their combined workforces. In 1900 Denaby branch had 1,015 financial members and Cadeby branch 461.19 There were claims by the management that the Denaby-Cadeby walk-out was directly related to the pay cut imposed by the award of Lord James of Hereford. It was alleged that the miners’ frustration had simply boiled over in an attempt to subvert the Conciliation Board procedures. But while undoubtedly profoundly disappointed by the Award, the miners’ specific grievance at Denaby was quite different and one which had been brewing over a considerable period. The apparent coincidence of timing in respect of the 10 per cent reduction notwithstanding, they regarded their action as specifically provoked by what they took to be severe and unjustified deductions from the wages of a group of face workers directly affected by the bag muck issue. Background to troubles at Denaby and Cadeby The workforce and management at Denaby Main (and to a lesser extent at Cadeby Main) had a history of conflict, on occasion erupting into prolonged and fairly bitter struggle. Barely had the pit opened than workers struck over the company’s attempt to institute a ‘free labour’ policy, by sacking those who were union members and insisting that they could only be re-engaged after signing an undertaking not to join a trade union. The strike lasted for some six months, from 3 March until 16 September 1869, with the owners ultimately relenting and


agreeing to employ union as well as non-union workers without prejudice. But before its resolution, the company exercised its hand in evicting those who resided in company-owned houses,20 thus instituting a pattern which was to be repeated in later disputes. Sinking of the Denaby pit had begun in 1863. At the time the nearest pits were several miles to the south and west and Denaby remained the easternmost pit in the Yorkshire coalfield for some thirty years.21 The venture involved considerable risk as it was far from certain that the Barnsley seam would be reached at a workable depth or would be of a similar width as was found in the Barnsley-Wombwell area. In the event it took four years amidst considerable difficulty to reach the seam at more than 422 yards below the surface.22 The opening out of Denaby is of interest not just for the risk and challenge involved but also for the composition of its owners. Rather unusually it involved an expansion by capitalists associated with West Yorkshire pits into the South Yorkshire field. Major shareholders included members of the Pope, Pearson, Crossley and Baines families who had interests variously in the West Riding Colliery at Altofts and in Sharlston. In the late 1850s, Richard Pope, whose father had been one of the developers of Altofts, joined with Edward Baines Jr, the son of the owners of the Leeds Mercury, in initiating the sinking of the Sharlston pit. Sir Francis Crossley, whose family were carpet manufacturers in Halifax entered the firm at its reorganisation in 1865.23 Around this same period, when coal at Sharlston had begun to be won and the colliery further developed with new shafts being sunk, many of the participants also joined in the Denaby venture. When the Denaby Main Colliery Company was registered in 1868, Joseph Crossley, George Pearson, Edward Baines MP, John Buckingham Pope and Richard Pope were its first directors, with Richard Pope the managing director.24 Denaby Main drew its workforce only to a small degree from those resident in the immediate vicinity. Only 4 per cent came from the neighbourhood of Denaby, Conisborough or Mexborough, and though a further 20 per cent originated from other parts of the county, the rest came from further afield, thus constituting a community of ‘strangers’ both with respect to each other and to the surrounding neighbourhood. As was true for both Altofts and Sharlston, with which Denaby’s owners had close connections, pit development at Denaby was accompanied by the construction of houses for workers. Denaby village had previously been an agricultural settlement, its population small and fluctuating. But between 1861 and 1871 it grew from 203 to 695, with the total influx being even greater than the direct comparison suggests, since by 1871 the non-mining section had dropped to 181.25 The houses built by the company were small; two up two down cottages, with no bath.26 Originally there were open spaces within the community and some of the earliest houses built had gardens where it was


possible to keep pigs or grow vegetables. But over time the green areas were lost as the company built more cottages, ultimately to a density of forty-nine to the acre.27 As in Altofts and Sharlston, the owners of Denaby built not just housing but also contributed to other aspects of community life. Indeed in Denaby this process went much further than elsewhere in the Yorkshire coalfield, with an apparent benevolence which, during the periods of conflict, could be transformed into the exercise of considerable control. Schools in the community were initially built and run by the company, as was the parish church. The Denaby Main Hotel was also built by the company, which appointed a licensed victualler to run it. A company store was similarly run until converted into the Denaby Main Industrial Co-operative Society.28 It was said in the mid-1880s that the company owned all of the village with the exception of two houses.29 It subsequently made land available at a low rate to the co-operative society on which the latter built houses for purchase by workers on a long-term basis of weekly payments. J. Buckingham Pope, chairman of the company, claimed that ‘the housing of the people, the laying out of the town, and the sanitary arrangements, have all been highly commended by Government Inspectors, who have stated that in all their experience they have never found such a large number of the working classes so comfortably situated’.30 But not all would agree with the generosity of this evaluation. According to Robert Shephard, a long-time Denaby resident, services in the village were often woefully inadequate. In the 1890s there were just two water taps. Only petitioning by miners’ wives, his own mother among them, moved the company to improve the situation.31 Company-owned houses were strictly tied to employment and workers thus subject to lose shelter for themselves and their family should they lose their job, a circumstances bound to give pause to potential militancy. Nor, as demonstrated by the strike in 1869, was the company slow to exercise this leverage. Denaby’s record of stoppages is not extensive; its industrial relations’ experience was not as fraught as such other Yorkshire pits as Frystone, Glasshoughton or Hemsworth. But that Denaby (later joined by Cadeby) miners did not shy away from strike action is, in the circumstances, testimony to their resolve, if not also ironically partly a consequence of the relatively hardlined approach taken by management. The policy of eviction from company houses was invoked in disputes in both 1877 and 1885. This latter was of importance to the history of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association as a whole32 in that it marked the consolidation of the union as the single organisation representing the whole of Yorkshire’s colliers. For Denaby had been the prize branch of the group of pits in South Yorkshire which had broken away from the body of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association under the leadership of William Chappell. The strike, which began in the last day


of 1884, was a long and tiring affair. As union reserves were run through and strike pay ceased, workers continued to hold out but were gripped by increasing disenchantment with their union’s leadership. This, in combination with their desperation to achieve some form of sustained assistance, led them to approach the Yorkshire Miners’ Association to request affiliation. Having done so and successfully established a basis of financial support, the Denaby workers were able to continue their action and the strike dragged on for several more months. But gradually the company secured a victory, as deprivation and a sense of futility forced the men to return individually to a price list ironically signed by William Chappell and the Denaby manager, Chambers, on 12 August 1885. Its terms were to haunt the Denaby workers, especially those dealing with bag dirt, which were at the basis of the dispute in 1902 and 1903. Ambiguity over price-list specifications Among the terms of the 1885 price list was the following: cutting tops, coal in gates and wastes and dropping and removing bag dirt in stalls 35 yards long and over on large coal only…1s 2d per ton.33 Bag dirt, specifically referred to in this item, was the term given to a layer of dirt within the Barnsley seam, sandwiched between two layers of coal, each some two and a half feet thick. A final, top layer was left in the pit to bind the roof.34 Though it could not be sent up, the bag dirt had to be removed. The issue it provoked was who should remove it and, if the face worker, whether the work involved should be paid for separately or included in the overall price of cutting and loading coal. Terms of the 1885 price list suggested that in certain circumstances its removal should be paid at the rate of ½d per ton. But generally payment was to be included in the basic rate for coal-getting: 1s 2d per ton for getting large coal in stalls and heading and 6d for small coal.35 In 1890 a further price list was negotiated and signed by Pickard for the union and Chambers for management, with somewhat different wording. The general rate for coal-getting, wooding, packing and top cutting for large coal was now 1s 4½d. Chambers was much later to claim that this constituted no essential change from the 1885 list, in that the 1s 4½d represented the amalgamation of what were previously three separate items: coal getting, wooding, packing and top cutting large coal 1s 2d per ton packing in stalls if 35 yards long and over on large coal only 2d per ton cutting tops, coal in gates and wastes and dropping and ½d per ton removing bag dirt in stalls if 35 yards long and over on large coal36


Thus the miners should expect no specific payment for the removal of bag dirt. But there was a complication in this story, for the 1890 price list also contained an item: ‘cutting tops in gates (including dropping bag dirt)… 1d per yard’.37 Given its inclusion many miners considered that specific payment for bag dirt was their due. It is not clear that the terms of this confusion were always clear cut. The miners seemed generally reconciled to inclusion of payment for bag dirt in the overall charge for getting coal, so long as the layer to be extracted was relatively manageable. Normally bag dirt ranged from six to eighteen inches,38 but where its thickness extended well beyond this, grievances invariably emerged. And even if affecting only a small proportion of the workers, it was destined to be a significant issue. In fact only one district in Denaby Main suffered excessive thickening. At Cadeby Main, a second mine opened by the same company in 1893 a short distance away, which was often linked with Denaby in industrial disputes and to which the 1890 price list also applied, bag dirt presented no particular problems.39 But by the beginning of 1902 there were a number of places in Denaby where bag dirt was well over eighteen inches.40 Changed conditions, it was argued by the miners, called for a change in payment, a refrain heard in many price list disputes. Bag dirt figured as a grievance at Denaby over a period of several years and specifically in 1897 and 1900. During the latter it was raised along with a series of other grievances concerning weighing, fast-end cutting, day’s wages and ripping. A meeting of the joint committee for South Yorkshire agreed to set up a sub-committee to consider the ‘Denaby ripping question’, described as a question of payment for getting bags, dropping and removing bag dirt. And YMA minutes record that at the end of 1900 Pickard was instructed to write to Chambers requesting that no further deductions be made with regard to bag dirt and also to refund any money already deducted until such time as the arbitrators might settle the issue.41 For apparently it had become the company’s policy to deduct money from wages, by way of a fine, when bag dirt was not removed by face workers as desired. Where the layer of bag dirt had become particularly thick, the miners adopted a strategy of removing just enough of it to enable them to carry on getting coal, while leaving the rest of the ripping and clearing undone. The response of the company was to send other men to do the job and then deduct the amount paid to them from face workers’ wages.42 Such deductions were not unique to Denaby. They were a common means at many collieries for promoting efficiency and channelling work patterns in accord with owners’ specifications and requirements. Miners could suffer deductions from their wages if dirty coal was sent up or if coal was considered to be too small. Similarly workers could be subject to fines if they transgressed rules and regulations. But management’s policy of making deductions, fining workers or bringing prosecutions against them was particularly notable at Denaby, all of


which added to the company’s reputation of being hardlined and difficult. While at most Yorkshire collieries prosecutions brought by owners against workers averaged only one or two per year, at Denaby and Cadeby (considered together) they were consistently in double figures. Over the period 1895 to 1904 they averaged thirty-three a year.43 Deductions and fines could only have heightened the general tension and increased workers’ concern to negotiate a new price list. While not achieving this, the joint committee did agree in late 1900 that on the question of a day’s wage, payment should be 5s a day for colliers working ‘out of place’, that is, sent to do a job other than their normal one by colliery management. But in accord with a pattern that was to be characteristic of the following eighteen months, Pickard wrote shortly thereafter to complain that Chambers, for the management, was not carrying out the agreement. And with other matters unresolved, particularly that of bag dirt, Parrott was instructed to write to Rhodes, secretary of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, in February 1901, asking for an urgent meeting of the joint committee on the question of a revised price list for Denaby and Cadeby with reference to the bag-dirt question.44 In February 1901, Hall and Annables, representing the YMA, in fact signed an agreement in the joint committee apparently conceding that the price of removing bag dirt was indeed included in the general price.45 But either this was considered unsatisfactory or its terms not fully communicated to the local workforce, for throughout subsequent months a series of deputations was authorised and concern was repeated about the need for consideration of the case by the joint committee. In August, the possibility of strike action was brought before the district and somewhat later Denaby and Cadeby branches were instructed to take a local ballot. The vote was 1,136 in favour of giving in notices and 907 against, a clear majority but less than the two-thirds required for a strike to occur.46 Deductions were clearly continuing to the grave annoyance of the union.47 And in September 1901 the YMA took out a summons against Chambers for making illegal stoppages.48 In February 1902, a ruling was given by Judge Masterman in the Doncaster County Court in favour of the company. Basing his decision on the 1890 price list, he claimed that there was little he could conclude other than that payment for bag dirt was included in the overall getting price.49 Yet even in this negative outcome some hope was given to the miners. Judge Masterman emphasised that his duty was to administer the law and not say what was fair between the parties. But he clearly suggested that were one to be fair, then the workers might well have a case. He said he was inclined to agree, as the workers argued, that the strata of bag dirt had been getting thicker and less friable and thus more difficult to extract over the years. But though it might be very hard that labour required should increase without an accompanying increase in pay, this was a separate question.50


There followed renewed requests for deputations and in March the YMA Council resolved that the case should be referred back to the joint committee, though there is no evidence that this was in fact done. In the meantime, a degree of friction between the district level of the union and the local branch emerged.51 When, shortly after the strike had begun, Chambers referred to the joint committee agreement, made more than a year earlier, signed by union representatives and conceding that the 1s 2d per ton for the bag dirt was included in the overall getting price, local officials declared that the news had come to them like ‘a shot from a gun’ and insisted that they should have had the right to have seen the content of any such agreement before its having been signed.52 In fact the YMA Council meeting in mid-June 1902 directed two officials to meet with the miners at Denaby and explain the agreement with respect to the 1s 2d per ton,53 but arrangements for this had not yet been finalised when the miners’ frustration finally boiled over. From the point of view of Denaby and Cadeby workers, the issue remained a serious grievance in need of attention and amelioration. On the other hand, both the joint committee agreement of 1901 and the county court decision reinforced the management’s view that their practice was thoroughly correct. When matters finally came to a head in late June 1902, there was a general air of dejection given the ruling of Lord James of Hereford that miners’ wages within the federated area should be reduced by 10 per cent. But it was not this which served to trigger-off industrial action at Denaby and Cadeby so much as the severity of deductions from the wages of a set of men at Denaby pit. Local officials claimed that when Judge Masterman considered the case in the county court there had been only fourteen or fifteen places affected while there were now twenty-six where bag dirt was between twenty and forty inches thick.54 A total of between £9 and £10 had been stopped, averaging 17s 9d from the wages of each of those affected.55 Miners walkout at the end of June 1902 On Sunday morning, 29 June 1902, a mass meeting was held in a field next to the Station Hotel in Conisborough with large attendance from both Denaby and Cadeby pits. Reference was made to the recent 10 per cent deduction but emphasis was placed on the bag-dirt question. The meeting unanimously resolved that ‘The time has now arrived when some steps should be taken with reference to deductions from men’s wages for “bag dirt” and fines for different things at Denaby and Cadeby Collieries seeing that we have tried all in our power to come to some amicable understanding and failed. The only thing that is left for us to do is to stop the wheels at both collieries’.56 A few workers turned up at the collieries on Sunday evening but most stayed away. Then early on Monday morning pickets were stationed at the pits to inform


any still unaware of it about the resolution passed the previous day. A further mass meeting was held, and again there was unanimity in the miners’ resolve that the pits should remain closed until grievances were once and for all attended to. Informed of events at Denaby during its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday 30 June, the YMA executive committee directed the workers back.57 Given that the miners had walked off the job without notice, this was the only official response possible. Pickard, however, immediately took it in hand to try to communicate with the management to seek some resolution.58 When the executive’s ruling was reported at a further mass meeting at Denaby on Tuesday 1 July, rather than accept the advice given, there was criticism of the district leadership for having left the matter unsettled for so long. In defiance of Barnsley, the meeting unanimously voted to continue the course of action previously agreed.59 A set of grievances, with the bag-dirt question first among them, was then specified and a deputation appointed to approach the management.60 It was clear that the build-up of frustration in dealings with management had reached a point of general discontent. Longstanding and cumulative anger over the apparent arbitrariness of company policy, which gave greater attention to punitive measures than adherence to mutually agreed arrangements, finally pushed the miners to a rather precipitous strike. While local officials admitted the irregularity of their action, they claimed that the situation had become so serious that it had been necessary to bring it to a crisis.61 At a meeting on Wednesday evening at the Denaby football field, a report was given of an attempt to negotiate with Chambers earlier in the day. According to John Nolan, the Denaby delegate to the YMA Council, Chambers had listened attentively but coolly and had treated the miners like ‘bull dogs’.62 Chambers had not in fact dismissed all of the stated grievances out of hand. But he refused to make any concession relating to the relaxation of fines for sending out dirty coal or losing lockers, or to give way whatsoever on payment for removal of bag dirt. The miners’ delegation asked whether management would attend to the top ten inches of dirt left behind if the miners removed eighteen inches or even two feet of the layer. But Chambers categorically refused, referring to the county court decision as well as to a document signed by Hall and Annables in the joint committee on behalf of the union. All he could offer, he said, was to deduct 1s 2d per ton in all districts—presumably so as to spread out the ‘loss’—in exchange for which he would contract specific workers to take down all of the bag dirt. He was adamant in his stance, saying that if the miners talked for six months, he would not alter his position and declaring that the colliery’s owners had ‘plenty of money’ and were as prepared to stand as were the workers.63 Hearing this, anger at the meeting turned on the agreement signed in the joint committee of which there appeared to be little knowledge and which left many


all the more convinced that they had been seriously let down by Barnsley. A telegram was dispatched to Pickard demanding that the signatories of the joint committee agreement, Hall and Annables, return immediately from a special conference of the Miners’ Federation at Southport which they were attending to explain its contents. Until such time as this occurred, the pits would remain idle.64 The reply indicated that the two could not attend until the following Monday but also expressed regret that the executive’s advice had not been heeded. Legal complications—the Taff Vale decision But regardless of any explanation subsequently received, the workers sustained their action and on 11 July formally requested the YMA Council to authorise strike pay.65 Given that their manner of downing tools had been both illegal and against union rule, this presented the association with considerable difficulties, particularly in view of the prevailing legal climate. During the period around the turn of the century trade unions had been subject to a number of decisions in the courts which restricted their range of activity and altered their legal status. Among them was Temperton v. Russell in 1893 which established that in cases where industrial action led to individuals suffering from ‘malicious interference with their freedom of contract’,66 the court could award damages against officers and members of the union concerned, though only as individuals and not as representatives of the corporate body. As a result of Lyons v. Wilkins in 1898, picketing was deemed lawful only if confined to ‘communicating information’. The most consequential, however, was the Taff Vale judgment in July 1901, which established the principle that even though it was not a corporate body, a union could be sued for damages caused by the action of the officers as though it were a corporate body. Moreover, it was liable to restraint by injunction from both criminal and other unlawful acts.67 The Taff Vale case resulted from an attempt by railway workers in South Wales to win recognition from owners of the Taff Vale line for their union, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. Without going through official union procedures and channels, the union’s West of England organiser, James Holmes, persuaded a number of employees of the firm to hand in their notices. Because of the irregularity of its initiation, the union’s secretary, Richard Bell, opposed the strike being officially recognised but was overruled by the executive and strike pay was extended to those who had gone out. The general manager of the railway line responded with a flourish by bringing in strike-breakers, issuing summonses against those who had gone out without proper notice and applying for injunctions to restrain unlawful picketing against both Bell and Holmes as individuals and the union as a body. Injunctions were duly granted, first against Bell and Holmes and then, more seriously (and when in fact the strike was


already over), against the union. For the first time a trade union was made subject to litigation as a corporate body, its finances accordingly put in jeopardy. On appeal this decision was reversed, but when subsequently taken to the House of Lords, it was upheld.68 The significance of this decision was not lost on the trade union movement and led to a sense of both caution and uncertainty.69 Addressing the annual conference of the Miners’ Federation in October 1901, Pickard suggested that illegal action of members or branch officials made a union vulnerable to litigation only when it had authorised local officials to so act: It comes to this so far as the Taff Vale is concerned. It only applies where anybody is authorised to attack and intimidate by violence or show of force in a strike, and we came to the conclusion that we must have our rules so framed that no official, whether local or otherwise, could do any unlawful act in bringing men out on strike.70 But as continuing court action relating to the Taff Vale dispute indicated, where a union was liable, the cost could be very great indeed. Following the House of Lords judgment in July 1901 upholding the original injunction against the railway workers, an action was brought for damages against the union for conspiring to induce the breaking of contracts and interfere with company’s business through picketing.71 The case was still pending in the summer of 1902 when Denaby and Cadeby workers downed their tools without notice.72 The Taff Vale case was thus very much in the minds of district officials, one of whom referred to it directly when telling a reporter for the Star shortly after the initiation of the Denaby-Cadeby strike that, given the illegal nature of the action, he doubted that any union funds could be dispersed to those involved.73 Meeting on 14 July the YMA Council decided that the workers at the two pits must be told to return to work and immediately thereafter take a ballot on whether notices should be given in to terminate their contracts.74 At the same time Chambers should be approached by the YMA and asked to meet a deputation.75 A mass meeting was held with the strikers on 15 July at which James Wadsworth (YMA vice-president) and James Walsh spoke on behalf of the district. The spectre of Taff Vale clearly overhung their words as it had the council’s deliberations the previous day. Walsh told them that while delegates were unanimous in their desire to vote for money to be given to assist the strikers, they ‘dare not’. ‘What you must try and do is to take a ballot of yourselves within the rules, give in your notice and come out, and let us all be behind you in the County and fight to the finish.’76 Such words were particularly poignant coming from Walsh whose own branch, South Kirkby, had been at odds with the district five years earlier after coming out without proper notice. As Walsh told the meeting, recalling the South Kirkby experience, they had acceded and had gone


back to work to put themselves in proper order. There had been no shame in it.77 But even in that previous case it had been possible to push for a district vote questioning the executive’s denial of funds. Now, following Taff Vale, the rules of what was permissible had dramatically altered. After the decision against the railway workers, there had followed two others of a similar nature, another against tailors in London and one against cotton operatives in Lancashire. Were the Yorkshire miners to be the fourth case, Walsh asked?78 Miners locked out—the dispute enters a new phase A vote was immediately taken, with 1,567 in favour and fifty-four against giving in notice, their determination no doubt heightened by news that Chambers had met the request for a deputation with the reply that there was no need for a meeting, since the pits were open and ready for the men’s return.79 When the men returned on 17 July with notices in their hands, however, they were presented by management with new contracts and required to sign before being allowed to resume work. The majority refused and stayed out. From this point, a new phase was entered into. The miners received immediate and supportive advice from the district, with Pickard cautioning them against signing any new rules and writing officially on 21 July on behalf of the council that ‘we cannot recommend you to sign on again’.80 The YMA sought legal advice and was told that once having presented themselves for work on the old terms and been refused by management, the striking miners would be ‘within rule’ and entitled to be paid. The council considered the advice and the longer situation carefully, for the rule book did not cover any such cases explicitly and as later legal opinion suggested, the question was a difficult one.81 Accepting the interpretation that the situation had now become a lock-out, the council authorised strike pay from 17 July, the day that Denaby and Cadeby workers ‘presented themselves for work and Mr Chambers would not allow them to resume work unless they signed a new contract’.82 It also recommended that other branches in the association do whatever they could of a voluntary nature to help make good the lack of strike pay during the period from 30 June to 17 July, given that nothing could be officially authorised to cover the time when the miners were out ‘illegally’.83 Despite its dramatic and irregular beginning, the conduct of the strike at Denaby and Cadeby was orderly. Its watchword, coined by local officials from the outset, was ‘be calm’, and this appears to have been generally adhered to. There were concerted attempts to persuade all employed at the pits to come off work, which in some cases led to a degree of barracking. But until the middle of July there was only one case of physical injury when a man named Berry was struck by a stone flung by someone in a small crowd assembled to protest against those still reporting for work. Beyond this, according to the later opinion


of Justice Mathew, there ‘was no evidence of more than incidents of a strike, which are easily exaggerated into evidence of more than was permissible’.84 Nor, he wrote, was there any shortage of those willing to join the strike, so that by 14 July there were only sixty at work at Cadeby and twelve at Denaby. Later, when it became evident that the pits would finally be shut down, there were complaints of some ‘unruly conduct’, none of which appeared to have been in any way authorised by the union, locally or nationally.85 If the villages in the vicinity of the pits remained quiet and the strikers’ conduct respectable, Denaby’s management and owners for their part took a decidedly forthright approach to the dispute, bringing a considerable number of miners before the Doncaster West Riding Police Court and claiming £6 damages for breach of contract from each, under the Employers and Workmen’s Act. All told, about 400 were summoned and in virtually all cases damages were awarded, thus laying a particularly heavy burden on those affected.86 Not long into the strike the focus of demands crystallised in a call for a new price list. This became the substance of a resolution routinely passed at mass meetings of the workers during subsequent weeks. It was evident that there was a difference of opinion in interpretation of the existing list. Even independent observers, such as the local press, argued that the matter at least required clarification.87 But management was adamant in its rejection of the call. The request was not a new one. A year or so previously Denaby and Cadeby branches had produced the draft of a new price list which had been the subject of some discussion with management. Now in the first week of August this same draft was held up as a reasonable proposal for change. According to the Cadeby checkweighman, G.H.Hirst, it was a list ‘every man can understand’.88 Chambers, however, claimed that the draft submitted in 1901 contained several unacceptable items. Implying that renewed demand for its implementation might well disguise an attempt to obtain higher wages overall, he noted that its cumulative effect would entail the equivalent of a 14 per cent advance.89 But in any case, he told a local reporter, the union had not formally resubmitted the draft price list. Comment upon it could therefore at most be speculative. Over the next several weeks, local officials revised the former draft and prepared proposals for a new price list. Early in September the Sheffield Daily Telegraph published a copy.90 According to the press report, the new proposals were based on consideration of price lists at thirty to forty Yorkshire collieries. But no resolution was to be gained on this or any other suggestions and the strike dragged on for many more weeks. There was a six-week period in September and October when no meetings were held by the striking miners, in consequence of their resolve to stand firm but do nothing more until Chambers sent for them to negotiate. It would appear that towards the end of this period, when a general restlessness was beginning to build, the company attempted to turn flagging enthusiasm and incipient doubts to


its advantage by specifically fomenting suspicion about the motives and integrity of the local YMA leadership. Several hundred miners had already been brought before the Doncaster West Riding Police Court for breach of contract and required to pay £6 each for damages incurred, though no money had yet been paid. By late October, however, the company’s impatience on this matter was growing and apparently to show that payment was not necessarily beyond the means of those so charged, their solicitor, W.M.Gichard, claimed that Croft, the chairman of Denaby branch, was the beneficiary of receipts from a flourishing shop, some of which found their way into his bank accounts.91 Shortly after Gichard’s court appearance, a letter by J.Buckingham Pope, chairman of the company ‘to the Denaby and Cadeby Miners’ repeated these general allegations, though without specifying any names. ‘Certain men amongst you’, his letter stated, ‘have grown rich upon your misery.’ These, he said, were men: who after being on strike for over 18 weeks, find themselves all of a sudden men of capital, who can afford to buy pigs, new clothes, and generally act like men of means, even going so far as to ostentatiously parade their wealth in public houses by pulling out handfuls of sovereigns in order to show that they are in possession of more money than anyone else in the room.92 According to J.Buckingham Pope, these were men who would tell falsehoods to prolong the strike as long as possible and thereby continue to enrich themselves. Croft responded by blanketly refuting all allegations made about the state of his finances. At a mass meeting held at the Station Hotel in Denaby on 29 October, he said that the only commercial activity associated with him or his family was his wife’s habit of selling a bit of spice from their home.93 When an attempt had been recently made to collect the £6 or its equivalent, owing by virtue of the police court action affecting him as well as so many others, nothing could be found, neither furniture nor money with which to make the claim good. The local branch committee fully supported Croft’s intention to contest the allegations made against him ‘to the bitter end’, and the mass meeting of striking miners similarly voted their support. The membership confirmed their full confidence in their leadership. And when queries and implied criticisms were voiced about their use of funds granted in support of the strike, an investigatory committee was quickly set up which fully exonerated their actions94 The company, however, took the offensive. Portraying their previous stance as one of immense tolerance, it was now declared that they could wait no longer. Their reply to a request from Cowey for a further deputation gave little hope for compromise and when read out at the mass meeting on 29 October permitted general knowledge of a stalemate. Chambers had written that he was always


willing to meet deputations, ‘with or without a union official, with a view to arrange amicable settlements of disputes’. But he claimed that there was in fact no dispute between the company and the workers: The miners lately in the employ of the company left their work without notice, and are therefore not now in the company’s service. If they are reengaged the discussion of any matters with which they are dissatisfied can be dealt with in the usual manner.95 Unwilling to negotiate, the company turned to coercion, pushing to have its claim of £6 per prosecuted miner made good and to exercise its rights as property owner by evicting those of the strikers occupying company houses. J.Buckingham Pope’s letter to the firm’s employees attempted to cajole and to persuade the strikers of the errors of their ways, the inaccuracy of their arguments and the duplicity of their leaders, before finally threatening them with further legal action. He reminded them of all that the company had done for the community. Even now there were plans—or had been—to build a new institute in Denaby, with baths as required, for the growing population. Misrepresenting their call for a new price list as a claim for a wage increase, and exaggerating it out of all proportion with reference to press reports of the men’s demand being the equivalent of a 28 per cent increase, he countered that their wages were already higher than at other pits in the neighbourhood. Given such benevolence the workforce should rather be grateful. In view of the present opposite response, the company had little choice but to carry on with different workers and to this end it would be necessary to free the houses of its ‘former’ employees.96 The YMA made one further attempt to arrange a deputation, but Chambers declared himself unable to see any good coming from such a meeting and repeated that the strikers were at liberty to resume work whenever they wished.97 The last two months of the year were therefore occupied with the threat of impending eviction. Many pre-empted forcible ejectment by packing up their belongings and leaving Denaby, applying for rooms elsewhere in the area. By the twenty-first week of the strike, in the latter part of November, there were reported to be ‘a great many’ houses standing empty in the village.98 As with many prolonged strikes in the coalfield, there had been hardship from early on. And similarly as elsewhere and at other times, the response from the community was immediate and generous. Towards the end of July breakfasts were being provided daily for some 120 children in the Baptist Chapel, Denaby Main. It was proposed to establish a soup kitchen in Mexborough to cater for children resident there who were affected by the strike. Fish was sent from Grimsby and collections were taken at other YMA branches and sent to striking miners and their families.99


Most seemed to manage, though there was inevitably greater suffering among families of those who were not union members or who had been unfinancial at the initiation of the strike. Towards the autumn and particularly as the cold weather came on, there were more frequent reports of suffering. While one reporter was able with some flippancy to suggest that no one was as yet actually starving and that because miners were a hardy sort, ‘the cold weather may not inconvenience them as much as it would some other people’, it was acknowledged that the frosty temperatures of the past few days had caused hardship due to lack of fuel or adequate bed covering.100 Attention was also drawn to the ‘most pitiable sight’ in many parts of the district of ‘young children’ trudging from door to door, like ‘professional vagrants’.101 As winter came on, the company initiated action to evict striking miners from the cottages it owned in Denaby. Seven hundred and fifty men were summoned to appear before the West Riding court in Doncaster to have ejectment orders served against them, but shortly before the day in question an appeal was made on their behalf that the applications be allowed to stand a fortnight given that the evictions would otherwise occur during the Christmas week. The company exercised its ‘good will’ by agreeing and so a short breathing space was allowed.102 But it was far from tranquil, for other legal developments were at hand. In the first days of December, hearings began in the King’s Bench Division on the case brought by the Taff Vale Railway Company against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, two of the union’s officials and three of its trustees for damages incurred by alleged ‘malicious conspiracy to bring about a strike for the plaintiff’s workmen by means of coercion, domineering, tyranny and intimidation with the object of dictating to the labour’.103 In the event the jury found in favour of the Taff Vale Railway Company, with profound implications for the trade union movement as a whole. The possibility of successfully obtaining an injunction against, or seeking damages from, a union as such was now strongly reinforced.104 Injunction to stop strike pay In the midst of this generally gloomy atmosphere, and even before the Taff Vale verdict was handed down, an injunction was brought against the YMA to restrain the distribution of strike pay by a Cadeby worker, William Henry Howden. Howden had been one of few who had objected to the strike from the beginning. A contractor normally engaged in stone-cutting who had been a member of the YMA at Cadeby for some two to three years and before that a member of Lofthouse branch, he had refused to go out illegally. Claiming to have been ‘hooted out’ by strikers as he continued to report for work, he finally stopped on 18 August, thereafter drawing lock-out pay from the union.105


Local YMA officials were under no illusions from the beginning but that Howden was a ‘handle for the Coalowners’ Association and the company’,106 and in later testimony Howden freely admitted that he had received support from the Denaby and Cadeby Colliery Company. When Howden’s case was heard in early January 1903, Mr Montague Lush, representing him, made a point of explaining that Howden himself was not ‘in a position’ to finance the action. ‘If he were right of course he would be paid out of the handsome funds of the Union, but if he lost the expenses would be defrayed by the Denaby Colliery Co.’107 The initiative for Howden’s action in fact came from F.Parker Rhodes, secretary of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, who, when discussing the Denaby case with Mr Chambers, was struck with the thought that if strike pay ‘was being distributed in contravention of the rules of the Union, a Member of the Union could maintain an action for an injunction to stop the illegal payment’.108 Legal opinion was sought and when seen to be favourable, proceedings were begun by Howden, underwritten by the company. But no sooner was the interim injunction against the union granted than it was temporarily lifted, given the new possibility of a meeting between Chambers and union representatives in Sheffield,109 as well as on the curious though clearly valid grounds that to withdraw strike pay at such short notice might cause grave hardship to women and children so affected.110 When the matter then went before Mr Justice Bucknill in chambers, he indicated his reservations about dealing with so serious a matter via an interim injunction and directed the action to be set down for trial on 14 January 1903.111 Thus strike pay continued to be distributed throughout the Christmas period. Within a few days of Howden’s action being brought another was initiated, this time by the company. On 13 December writs were served on district YMA officials Cowey, Pickard, Parrott, Wadsworth, Frith and Hall as well as on the union’s three trustees in a new application for an injunction to restrain the distribution of strike pay pending the hearing of the case brought by Howden. The company claimed that the payments were unlawful because in contravention of the union’s rules and, moreover, that the union was committing a number of other unlawful acts. But the company was unsuccessful in gaining an injunction. At the hearing on 18 December scheduled for receiving the application, Mr Justice Bucknill refused to grant it, presumably in view of the same reservations which prevented his granting Howden an interim injunction, though he did give the company leave to apply for a speedy trial for consideration of their claims for damages.112 The threat hanging over union funds thus remained heavy. On the same day, 13 December, that writs were served on YMA officials and trustees, Mr W.M.Gichard successfully applied for ejectment orders against 750 men on behalf of the company.113 It was left to the discretion of the police how and when they would carry out the evictions.114


Women’s protest By mid-December, as Christmas approached, the outlook for the union and for workers and their families at the two pits looked grim. It was sufficient to provoke women affected by the dispute to a dramatic instance of collective action. As during other coalfield strikes, in other places and at other times, women were drawn into the conflict, motivated by the suffering endured by themselves and their children, angered by the company’s recalcitrance and particularly incensed by those willing to work as scabs or failing otherwise to honour the strike. In the Denaby-Cadeby dispute there had been a number of occasions when women assembled to barrack men who continued to work. A lively demonstration was said to have been held by women, for example, in midAugust.115 But on Monday 16 December a more concerted protest occurred. Characteristically local press reports of the event treated it as an almost childish gesture, stressing its lack of tight organisation and questioning its effectiveness. But there was in fact sufficient co-ordination to enlist the Mexborough bell-man to call participants to an open air meeting, held in the football field next to Denaby pit. And there was sufficient notice, and appreciation of the participants’ dedication to their cause, for Superintendent Blake and a staff of constables to be present.116 Hundreds of women, many with infants in their arms, assembled at the appointed place.117 Enthusiasm was said to be high when, after listening to a few short speeches, they marched down the street to the pithead to confront workers finishing their shift. When the objects of their derision emerged, the women reportedly yelled and approached them threateningly but were prevented from more direct action by the Superintendent and his staff who walked beside the workers to escort them to their places of residence.118 Still able to use their voices, they called out, ‘You ought to be ashamed to show your dirty faces.’ When asked by bystanders how they stood in respect of the strike, they unflinchingly affirmed their full support, their general reply being, ‘play on, play on’. They put the blame squarely where they felt it should lie, with the company and, to a lesser extent, with the scabs. And they understood the need for sustained militancy. When one woman was told to take her young baby home, she shouted, ‘Hurrah, we’ve got twins; no matter, we’ll show ‘em, we can fight.’119 When word came drifting through the crowd that one of the strike-breakers had assaulted a woman, many made a rush towards the house he was seen to have entered and its windows were smashed, further damage being pre-empted by the police.120 Local reporters regretted the women’s ‘bellicose attitude’ and noted that as a rule the men expressed themselves ‘strongly opposed to it’. Yet their point had been effectively made. Nor could it be doubted that in the many families their


numbers represented, there was solid support for the sacrifice required to continue holding out. Community hardship—evictions Christmas came and went, the striking miners according to YMA custom receiving double pay for the Christmas week itself. The generosity of the community is seen in the special provisions offered at this time. The Reverend Jesse Wilson, a Primitive Methodist minister in Mexborough who ultimately became immersed in easing the difficulties of those on strike, arranged a Christmas dinner on 30 December 1902 for some 1,500 children from Denaby, Conisborough and Mexborough. The children, he said, were desperately hungry, wanting bread in preference to sweet cake.121 The new year promised only greater hardship, and was just a few days old when the first evictions began. A final opportunity was given to miners to sign back on and thus avoid eviction with an ‘agreement paper’ being circulated upon which was written: To Denaby and Cadeby Main Collieries, Ltd. I, the undersigned of Denaby Main, agree to return to work when required, on the same terms as existed on the 12 July, 1902 Signed ....................122 Though a few may have been persuaded to comply and all were disabused of any hope for a reprieve or a softening of the company’s position, most accepted their fate of being imminently displaced. The union was busy securing arrangements within the community for storage of possessions and shelter for evicted families; a number of large tents were made ready. Police gathered in abundance in the village, with others at the ready, should they be required. The services of troops in Sheffield and York had also been arranged as a fallback, and a magistrate was in attendance with a copy of the Riot Act.123 Having had experience of ‘labour troubles’ in the past, the West Riding authorities were well prepared, unwilling to be caught out again in an incident such as that at Featherstone in 1893. Memories in Denaby turned back to 1885 when families were removed from their homes in bitter cold, supervised by constables drafted in from Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley, Leeds, Bradford, Doncaster, Mexborough, Swinton, Wakefield and Rawmarsh.124 People had then talked in subdued tones. Laden wagons had moved away, sometimes pulled by miners themselves. Churches and other large halls had been opened to receive those made homeless. There was an odd calm on Sunday 4 January in expectation of the impending disruption. On Monday it rained steadily and for this or other reasons the expected evictions did not occur, but many began to move of their own accord,


with heavily loaded drays moving mainly towards Mexborough. On Tuesday 6 January, at 9 am, the evictions began, the human drama being marked by the presence of a photographer and a cinematographist, the latter working for a cinema owner, Mr Hasper Redfern of Sheffield, and the results intended for showing at his establishment at Montgomery Hall the same evening. Large crowds watched the proceedings which were also witnessed by Captain Russell, the chief constable of the West Riding, who had brought troops into Featherstone in 1893, and by Mr W.Smith Gill, the deputy chief constable, who, together with Russell, had observed the evictions at Denaby in 1885.125 Superintendent Blake of Doncaster, with 200 police at his service, directed the removals. He had decided to clear 100 homes per day between the permitted hours of 9 am and 4 pm and had given notice the previous evening of those designated for the first day’s attention. In general the police behaved with consideration and even some delicacy, deferring for a later date cases where there was an illness in the family126 and heeding the advice of Superintendent Macdonald, in charge of one contingent of the police, to handle furniture being removed ‘as though it was your own, or your father’s and mother’s’.127 In general all was orderly and calm, with little resistance from strikers or their families. There were some incidents of humour, but more frequently of quiet stoicism and sadness. Children were often perplexed, described by one reporter as innocent little victims ‘who watched the strange work with wondering tearstained eyes, realising that the homes which had been theirs, perhaps from birth, were theirs no longer, and incapable of fully comprehending the reason why. They could be seen running about and saving their favourite toys from the general accumulation.’128 Many years later, Denaby residents recalled the events of these days. A Mrs Parry said that her family was left to stay for a while, because her mother was pregnant. But eventually they had to go. ‘We were grieving to see the furniture put out into the street. Then the policemen came out, locked the door and took the key, and away they went.’129 According to Robert Shephard, interviewed in 1971, ‘Families had to find anywhere to live: in the churches, chapels, with relatives or friends who resided outside colliery houses, in tents, in the open fields. It was a terrifying time for our people…’130 The Reverend Jesse Wilson, who later recorded his impressions in a book, The Story of the Great Struggle, 1902–3, said of the evictions that they were one of the saddest sights he had ever witnessed: There the brave little woman with her ten children stood in the street beside their scraps of furniture, houseless and homeless, with nowhere to go. I never saw the family before, but the sight has haunted me ever since. The mother realised what it meant; the poor children were amazed. Some of them laughed, some of them wept, some could do neither…131


Wilson was personally moved to assist as far as possible in finding both food and shelter for those so evidently requiring it. He organised a public campaign of assistance and several times collected from the spectators at football matches. Ultimately, as the strike progressed, he took to distributing food from his home in Mexborough on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and also regularly sent parcels to Denaby and Conisborough. When the evictions occurred, Wilson and his colleague, the Reverend C.Mathison, put up eight families, including the family of twelve, in the Primitive Methodist schoolroom in Mexborough.132 Later the Goldthorpe school chapel was opened when it was found that a few families ‘were practically living in the open air’.133 Others of those evicted were similarly assisted by ministers of other denominations as well as by members of the general public. Temporary shelter was also available in the smallpox hospital in Mexborough courtesy of the Mexborough Urban District Council. In addition, local YMA officials and a number of workers in Mexborough were willing to take evicted families into their own homes.134 Finally there were the tents. It was initially planned that tents sufficient to accommodate 400 people would be erected on Monday 5 January. They were to have wooden floors and adequate heating apparatus. But by Wednesday morning only two had been erected, both in Clarkson’s field in Conisborough, though later that day more were put up at Mexborough. Those at Conisborough had no flooring whatsoever and apparently little else beyond the canvas sheeting. On Tuesday night the sixteen men who occupied one of them were subject to water pouring down from the hillside and turning the ground into a quagmire.135 There seems to have been an attempt initially to prevent women and children from having to use the tents, but within only a few days it became evident that some would have to endure this accommodation. At Clarkson’s field at Conisborough there were two bell tents housing families by the second week of January; in one there were three children and in the other five. The Reverend Jesse Wilson described the situation of one family: Five lovely children fast asleep…on a mattress with a thin sheet thrown over them, while a few inches above their little heads was the tent canvas blowing in and out at the pleasure of the wind. The poor mother was seated outside in front of the tent stove, half blinded with the smoke… …their bill of fare that day had not been enough to feed an ordinary child. …She was anxiously awaiting the return of her husband who had been away nearly all day in hope of picking up a few shillings.136 The situation was often little better for those in more permanent structures. The Reverend Jesse Wilson described how during the sojourn of the eight families in


the Primitive Methodist chapel a child was born who ‘seemed the property of all’. But there was also tragedy in the death of two children: One child wasted away. We saw it going nearer day by day to the Better Land. Gradually the mother’s heart’s sorrow was let loose as its little eyes sank and its white cheeks became thinner and thinner and its breathing slower. One day it opened its sunken eyes, smiled, then closed them in death, and the news spread rapidly that it was dead. They made it a little bed surrounded by white calico and placed it in the centre of the chapel until it was taken to ‘God’s acre’.137 His contact with the Denaby struggle left Wilson with a deep sense of respect for the community which sustained it. ‘These people’, he wrote, ‘have a rough and ready way of believing in the immortality of small kindnesses. They believe goodness survives, that evil dies.’138 But he was not given to sentimentality and also recorded weaknesses of character. ‘If one had walked from Conisborough to Mexborough through Denaby for weeks after the strike began’, he wrote, ‘he would never have thought the men and boys were “on strike”. They drank while the coppers lasted.’ Such foibles, however, could not shake his belief of where right lay in the struggle. He was solidly pro-union and derided those who flaunted the association, being prepared for the benefits but not for the sacrifices.139 With the miners out, the company began to introduce ‘strangers’, arousing pristine anger among the homeless and particularly among the women. As Bob Shephard later recalled, the protective (and oppressive) presence of the police did not prevent women and children throwing stones, or whatever else they could find, at the strike-breakers. The miners’ families howled at the blacklegs and they were militant, telling them to leave the pit and go home. There was a great number of tussles with the men as they proceeded to the houses which the company had provided. They were all kept in one block, to keep them under the protection of the police.’140 New legal initiatives Not long after the evictions were completed and Denaby largely emptied, the legal initiatives begun before Christmas to restrain the distribution of strike pay once again resumed. On 16 January the injunction applied for by W.H.Howden was granted. The decision of Justice Grantham, with a special jury from Middlesex, was that the miners had broken their contract of service before 17 July, and though an opportunity had been offered on that date for them to return to work on previously existing terms, they had refused. The union was thus guilty of mis-applying its funds. The YMA appealed and the case was heard again within a few days’ time. Though the spectre of Taff Vale still hovered


close, the YMA’s position was that, in accord with the Trade Union Act of 1871, a member of a union could not apply for injunction to prevent any particular use of union funds.141 After reviewing the facts in some detail, however, Lord Justices Vaughan Williams, Stirling and Mathew dismissed the appeal on 27 January. In summing up, Lord Justice Mathew said that it was idle to argue that the men had been locked out. They had put themselves out of employment. They had gone on strike without giving proper notice and had thereby committed an illegal act.142 The decision left the company free to sue for damages. Local YMA leadership put on as brave a face as possible under the circumstances, declaring that the strike would continue. At a mass meeting on 29 January the strikers were advised to stay calm and play on, and resolutions to this effect were duly passed.143 On 30 January a special circular was issued by the YMA, addressed to ‘Our Local Officials and Members’, and announcing a special council meeting to be held on 2 February to deal with the DenabyCadeby dispute. The circular stated that ‘everyone knows now the decision of Lord Justice Grantham and Lord Justices Vaughan Williams, Stirling and Mathews, that no further pay can be allowed, either according to the Act of Parliament or in accordance with our own Rules’, and concluded that ‘there is only one course left open now for the Association and that is to advise the men to resume work at once under the terms dictated to us by the Judges’.144 The circular also pointed to the wider implications of the legal judgement: This decision has, in fact, altered the whole phase of the Trades Union Act, as it bears upon Trades Unions and their Rules. Now and in future the Rules of the Trades Unions must be strictly carried out, or any person can be placed in a position to seek an injunction or prohibit the payment of strike, lockout or victim pay.145 Pickard, Cowey and Parrott were all absent from the special council meeting due to illness. Whether this made any difference to the deliberations is debatable, but the outcome of the meeting was to refer the matter to the branches and call for a registered vote on whether or not the striking miners should resume work. The minutes of the meeting emphasise that the position of the officials, at least, was that the legal situation offered little flexibility: all sensible men will see, in order to place ourselves right in the eyes of the Law, we must resume work as indicated by those judgments. We must, therefore, advise our men at Denaby and Cadeby Main… however humiliating it may be, the only course is to resume work, and by that means put ourselves right and within the Rules, and under the Law as now understood.’146


Feelings remained strong in many quarters and on 11 February a large demonstration was held at Conisborough, headed by members of the strike committee with the banners of Denaby and Cadeby lodges and joined by hundreds of strikers and many of their wives.147 The procession wound its way through Denaby and Mexborough and finally back to Conisborough. They cheered families housed in tents at the Sparrow Barracks as they passed by. The meeting, held in a field behind the Station Hotel at Conisborough and said to have been the largest assembly seen in connection with the strike, was addressed by local officials and a visitor from Taff Vale. It had been hoped that the results of the ballot could be announced and more importantly that a favourable outcome could be communicated, but this proved premature. Regardless, the meeting ended with resolutions to keep calm and not return to work.148 The ballot result had in fact been made known to the YMA executive, meeting on 9 February, but it took time for it to filter through to the locality. While there appears to have been a majority in favour of the strike continuing, it did not constitute the two-thirds required.149 The executive therefore strongly recommended that the men resume work as soon as possible.150 In spite of this advice a further demonstration was held in Conisborough on Thursday 12 February, preceded by a march through the neighbourhood in virtual repetition of events the previous day. As earlier women played an important role and were highly visible, singing ‘Rule Britannia’ as though a victory had been gained and waving handkerchiefs and brightly coloured flags. With considerable determination the meeting resolved that the strikers should ‘stand firm’.151 But regardless of their resolve, the strike was impossible to sustain once funds were stopped from Barnsley, and gradually the men drifted back. On 24 February the YMA Council confirmed by a vote of 115 to 22 that the men should resume work.152 The end was particularly ignominious with Chambers refusing even elementary co-operation and insisting on picking and choosing those to be taken back, active trade unionists being far less likely to be re-employed: My Board hope to be able to find work for a considerable portion of their late workmen if they apply for it, but it must be definitely understood that there are a certain number of them who will not be re-engaged.153 Pickard was incensed by these comments. ‘Evidently’, he wrote, ‘in the opinion of this great Company, the men are now down and only fit to be trampled on.’ He advised Denaby and Cadeby workers to return to work in a body to see how many the management was willing to take on.154 But some were refused and as late as September 1903 YMA minutes record that some had still not been reinstated.155 The official end of the strike was recorded as 21 March 1903 by the Report on Strikes and Lockouts for 1902.156 According to the Reverend Jesse Wilson,


‘Denaby for weeks was like a land of desolation. Hundreds of houses were empty and many windows broken.’157 Thereafter, Denaby and Cadeby gradually returned to some semblance of normality, the union somewhat battered. For the remainder of the decade and during most of the next, there would be little in the way of grievances from the two branches reaching the district level nor strikes, other than those of a national scope. The next major event affecting the workforce would be a most tragic one —a series of explosions at Cadeby Main on 9 July 1912, leaving eighty-eight dead and surrounding villages devastated. But though the strike was over at Denaby and Cadeby, the ordeal of the union provoked by it was not. The YMA faced two ongoing legal battles, one a final appeal on the case brought by Howden and the second the case brought by the company for damages. Together they threatened the very financial survival of the union and therefore ensured a highly stressful period lasting several more years. The YMA lost the case brought by Howden, the final decision being handed down by the House of Lords in 1905,158 but continued to hope for a more favourable outcome in the more significant, because potentially more damaging, case brought by the company. But the YMA lost in the first round when the case was heard by Mr Justice Lawrence before a special jury on 27 January, 1904.159 An appeal was lodged on which finally, in May 1905, a decision was handed down. The Master of the Rolls decided in favour of the plaintiffs, but the other two justices found in favour of the YMA and so the original judgment was overturned,160 much to the relief of the union. The Master of the Rolls believed the company’s case to have failed with regard to the claim that the association and its officers were responsible for the initiation of the strike. Branches had the right to determine for themselves whether or not they should strike. However, in his opinion, the YMA was responsible for the maintenance of the strike. Without its support, the strike would not have continued. In this sense the union could be held liable for damages.161 In contrast, Lord Justice Mathew found the charges of the plaintiffs untenable. The YMA, he contended, could not be regarded as vulnerable in the sense that a business might be. Branches were not agents of the association. The charge of conspiracy therefore fell away. The Denaby strike was not the act of the association as a whole. Representatives of the district had not attended the local situation to encourage the men to continue their strike, nor was there sufficient evidence to show that there had been molestation and intimidation of those who remained at work and of which the council was aware. Authorisation of strike pay could not be construed as an admission that the strike had been undertaken on behalf of the association. And, given that the plaintiffs had themselves discharged their workers, there was no conspiracy by the union to deprive the company of its employees’ services.162


Lord Justice Cozens-Hardy concurred with much of Lord Justice Mathew’s opinion. The YMA rule book made it clear that the executive committee could not decide on questions of strikes or lock-outs. This was the purview of the branch. Nor were branch officials agents of the union. Their acts could not be seen as binding on the association. Neither the council nor executive committee nor officials of the union ratified the action of branch officials in initiating the strike. It was, however, continued and maintained by the granting of strike pay in breach of union rules. For Lord Justice Cozens-Hardy, this was the only act of importance against the union. ‘Unless this act suffices’, he declared, ‘I think there was no evidence upon which the jury could find the Union liable.’163 Essentially, then, the principle established in the Taff Vale judgment was not upheld in this instance. Authorisation of strike pay, even if contrary to union rules, did not make the union a corporate body liable for damages incurred during the course of a strike, even if illegal and contrary to union rules. Branch officials were not in all cases agents of unions and unions were not automatically responsible for actions of branch officials. There was still one further stage to go, as the company appealed and the case went before the House of Lords. But there, in 1906, the decision of the Court of Appeal was upheld.164 The union had escaped a heavy penalty. But the cost had still been substantial. Costs and implications Over the period 16 December 1903 to 17 February 1904, the YMA suffered the deaths of three of its long-time officials, Cowey, Pickard and Frith. Pickard had died in London when a number of the association’s officials were in attendance at the initial hearing of the conspiracy case brought by Denaby and Cadeby Main Collieries Ltd, and there were many who were convinced that the strain of this prolonged legal battle had no small part to play in what they saw as a premature death.165 Speaking to a resolution regretting the loss of all three men at a special conference of the MFGB in London in March 1904, Parrott’s view was categorical: I want to say this to all who, perhaps, did not know that the terribly heavy law case that has been hanging over heads for a long time, has had something to do, in my opinion, with the deaths of the gentlemen whose names have already been mentioned. I used to visit Mr Cowey very often at his home at Crofton after his illness, and he almost at all times asked me how we were going on with that law case—it seemed to prey upon his mind. Now, Mr Pickard, in my opinion, had his nerves crushed to death with that law suit.166


Undoubtedly the case had troubled Parrott as well. He was concerned to persuade his colleagues in the Miners’ Federation to heed the lessons learned from the episode and particularly, in view of the legal climate, to take great care in connection with the initiation of strikes. The significance of the legal case was, in fact, well appreciated by miners across the country. The 1903 annual conference of the Miners’ Federation had, for example, passed a resolution approving ‘all efforts to have the Trades Union Law amended to bring us back to the position we occupied some five years ago’.167 Such a shifting of the current legal situation ultimately did occur, assisted by the outcome of the conspiracy case brought against the YMA. But in the interim the situation was highly insecure. The Denaby and Cadeby experience also prompted the Miners Federation to press for legislation preventing employers from evicting workmen and their families during trade disputes,168 so great was the anger at the hardship imposed on the company’s tenants. But these were all defensive stands. The episode and others like it had pushed trade unions into a corner, watchful of their funds and attentive to what might otherwise be ‘normal’ practices. The Denaby and Cadeby dispute had aspects similar to those of many others in the mining industry, if often of a more dramatic quality. There was the element of grievances festering over a long period with the local branch meeting recalcitrance, connivance and what they saw as duplicity on the part of the management. There was a sense of annoyance that the district had not responded earlier and with greater effectiveness, which contributed to enhanced local solidarity. There was the struggle itself and brooding impatience with inactivity and lack of progress which generated niggling complaints about the competence of local leadership. There was the protest against those who remained at work and the barracking of strike-breakers brought into the community. There was the show of independent initiative on the part of women—wives and mothers— who were not bound by union discipline or organisation and incensed at both management and strike-breakers. But the Denaby and Cadeby dispute also had some distinctive features, even if not all were unique. Striking without notice and thus against rule occurred from time to time in Yorkshire, but was less common among colliers than among lads. Nor was the characteristic sequence of events quite what it was in this case, with a lock-out ensuing when management refused to allow workers to resume work without conditions attached. Evictions from company houses occurred elsewhere and perhaps with as much drama and pain. And yet because of the very size of the workforce under tenancy of the company and because of the nature of Denaby as a company town, the experience of displacement in this case was perhaps more profound. But the primary feature distinguishing the Denaby and Cadeby dispute from others was the legal action sponsored by the colliery company. The original


grievance over the price list was similar to many others occurring throughout the coalfield. But the calculated and rigid stance of the company, backed by the existence of a particularly effective legal tool, made accessible by virtue of a set of fortuitous recent judgments, allowed the occasion to become a potential means of crushing not just the branch but the union as a whole. It is clear that coal owners in South Yorkshire saw this as a chance which should not be passed by and gave collective support to the company concerned. As F.Parker Rhodes wrote in the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association’s annual report for 1902, ‘It was quite time that the men’s attacks on existing price lists were met and fought out, and I think the Denaby and Cadeby Company have done the trade a service in fighting the matter as they have done. I do not believe that anyone grudges the compensation that has been paid to them, and am sure it will be cheerfully paid as long as the strike continues.’169 In the end, the company was successful in resisting miners’ demands, though found mixed success in the courts. For the union the episode was a trauma it could ill afford to endure.

12 EVOLVING UNION POLICIES AND POLITICS—HEMSWORTH DISPUTE, 1906

The years around the turn of the century were plagued by a series of bitter and often long-running local disputes within the Yorkshire coalfield, provoking district officials to diagnose a ‘strike mania’ which, if not watched carefully, would ‘prove destructive to the Association’.1 While not suggesting that any of these were necessarily avoidable, Pickard urged caution and care so that strikes only occur ‘when it becomes a matter of what might be called life or death in regard to the members of the branches’.2 The Boer War had stimulated an increase in the coal price and a false (because temporary) sense of buoyancy. But by 1901 a decline had begun, and though the Miners’ Federation secured a 10 per cent advance early in the year, it was soon evident it could not be maintained. As the slump continued through the next several years, the knowledge that the winning of industrial disputes would be increasingly difficult combined with a sense of financial pressure, underscored by the threat of virtual devastation should the YMA lose the conspiracy case connected with the Denaby and Cadeby dispute, made for huge reluctance to authorise strikes and anxiety at the prospect of imminent lock-outs. It was within this climate that a particularly troublesome and burgeoning dispute broke open at Hemsworth, involving lock-outs of workers in the colliery’s Barnsley and Shafton seams from August 1904 and May 1905 respectively and a strike of workers in the remaining, Haigh Moor, seam beginning in August 1905. Though officially registered as such, these should best be viewed not so much as single or discrete disputes as the culmination of a series of stoppages related to the same persistent grievance which had plagued the pit from the opening out of the Barnsley and Haigh Moor seams in 1897,3 perhaps stretching back even to the sinking of the Shafton seam in 1880.4 Hemsworth’s is the story of particularly severe price list difficulties. Whether because of geological peculiarities, lack of managerial finesse or other factors, a price list acceptable to both workers and owners never seems to have been settled at the pit. Time and again the issue was raised, with the colliers claiming that their return was far too low and the management complaining that they could not make a profit on any higher rates. Hemsworth grievances at one time or another


went through the gamut of existing conciliation machinery and procedures, involving numerous deputations, referrals to the joint committee and to outside arbitration and re-referral to the joint committee. This was accompanied by a series of strikes and lock-outs, which left Hemsworth seldom working normally and repeatedly the origin of requests for victim, lock-out and strike pay. The lock-outs and strike in 1904 and 1905 finally signalled the company’s surrender with its going into liquidation in October 1905 as ultimate testimony to the inability or willingness to pay the price fixed through arbitration. The complete stoppage of the pit in August 1905, followed by evictions from houses leased from the colliery, left the Hemsworth workforce stranded, suffering the full extent of hardship which could accompany a strike or lock-out. When the company was re-floated under new ownership, the terms offered were far less favourable than they had been formerly, compelling the miners to continue their resistance. The Hemsworth case would be of significance if for no other reason than providing an example of particularly extreme price list difficulties. But it was much more than this. As other prolonged disputes tended to spill over into other areas, so it was with Hemsworth. In such circumstances, industrial relations questions frequently acquired political dimensions. Local grievances became the basis of much broader tension within a district association and of generalised critiques of union leadership. Local officials became radicalised, challenging the political stance of district officers as well as their handling of local grievances. Such features were characteristic of the South Kirkby dispute in 1897 as well as the Ravensthorpe strike in 1901, where local circumstances became transformed into issues affecting the union as a whole, not just as regards its industrial relations policies, but also the dynamics of the relationship between branch and district. A very similar pattern characterised the Hemsworth dispute, where J.Potts and to a lesser extent J.Bull were cast in roles bearing some similarity (though of course also many differences) to those previously assumed by Walsh at South Kirkby and Jacks at Ravensthorpe. If the significance of any local dispute can only be fully appreciated when considered against the organisational context of the union, as well as in respect of the prevailing state of the industry, a full appreciation of the union can in turn only be gained through analysis of local disputes. All necessarily affect the union. But some do so in rather more fundamental ways, than others, highlighting weaknesses or existing animosities or generating an unexpected collective strength. Hemsworth is important to the Yorkshire miners’ history as one of these. The years following the deaths of Pickard, Cowey and Frith were marked by a certain restiveness. There was a brief period of transition when Parrott replaced Pickard as general secretary and later as MP. But Parrott’s tenure was short, curtailed by his own death in November 1905. Thereafter a relatively new

HEMSWORTH DISPUTE, 1906 331

leadership had the difficult task of filling the shoes of that group of very tough and competent individuals who had built the union and ensured its leading position, not just within national but also international miners’ organisations. At the end of 1904 it was decided that Wadsworth, who had succeeded Cowey as president, should hold that post permanently. But with Parrott’s death, Wadsworth moved to general secretary, and Herbert Smith took over as president. Other officers elected in 1904 retained their positions, Fred Hall as agent, Hoskin as treasurer, and Dixon, Denaby checkweighman and branch secretary, as financial secretary. The new leadership was very able and Herbert Smith later rose to the position of president of the Miners’ Federation, presiding over that body during the great strike of 1926. But Wadsworth never achieved the national prominence of Pickard before him, nor Smith afterwards. Nor was he able to command quite the authority as had Pickard within Yorkshire. Though in one respect he was very much the inheritor of Pickard’s mantle, committed to the same brand of Liberal politics as had been Yorkshire’s former general secretary. Wadsworth’s was the unenviable task of not just replacing an indomitable individual, but doing so at a time of considerable stress within the union, in view of the continuing conspiracy case and general recession. This was also a time when the character of the Yorkshire membership was itself beginning to undergo change. A new section of the coalfield was opening in the Doncaster area, entailing accommodation to new problems and occasionally different traditions. Yorkshire miners as a whole, moreover, were gradually acquiring greater sympathy for initiatives to create a labour party. All of this required a sensitivity and flexibility which Wadsworth, particularly in respect of broader political issues, was sometimes slow to assume. The period was thus characterised by some flux and perhaps a degree of uncertainty of which the Hemsworth case allows a glimpse. The difficulties at this pit also permit a fuller view of the dynamics of relations among coal owners in the Yorkshire field. Whereas with the Cadeby and Denaby dispute the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association not only supported but directly fostered the company’s offensive, the relationship between Hemsworth and the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association was far more tentative and fraught. As was true to some extent with Ravensthorpe, Hemsworth’s owners and management were on occasion at odds with the WYCOA, which in turn regarded the firm as variously far too soft and weak or as exercising unnecessary duplicity in dealing with its workforce. Early difficulties at Hemsworth Sinking at Hemsworth began in the late 1870s and the Shafton seam was reached in 18805 at about 140 yards. The Barnsley bed was not reached until a depth of just over 600 yards. Sinking to this and the Haigh Moor, a further seventy-five


yards or so below, was not completed until close to the end of the century.6 Initially named Fitzwilliam Main, the pit was originally owned by J.R.Fosdick of Pontefract.7 Its impact upon the local area can be judged from rapid population increase over the last part of the century in Hemsworth parish, which included both Hemsworth and South Kirkby pits. From a total population of 993 in 1871, there was a rise to 1,665 in 1881, to 2,887 in 1891 and to 9,283 just after the turn of the century.8 By 1905 there were 1,651 workers employed at the colliery, 1, 401 of them underground and 250 on the surface. The largest number were in the Shafton seam, where 600 were engaged underground. Three hundred and fifty worked in the Barnsley seam and 451 in the Haigh Moor seam.9 In January 1891, miners at Hemsworth threatened to strike over the price of ripping and the charge for pick sharpening, in an action which apparently did not have the consent of the YMA.10 Notices were temporarily withdrawn and the episode presumably passed without further ado.11 But it both presaged further troubles and served as a marker for past ones. According to Mr Higson, an early consulting engineer for the firm, there had been ‘no peace’ at Hemsworth from its beginnings. At the request of the YMA he had met with Pickard and Cowey in October 1889 and a price list had been drawn up which was finally agreed in September 1890.12 But difficulties over its application were apparent almost immediately. After the abortive conflict in 1891 there was a new dispute early in 1892 and the colliery was partially stopped for a week, the firm qualifying in consequence to receive an indemnity of £467 2s 6d from theWYCOA. Towards the end of 1892 there were yet more problems at Hemsworth, whose workers were characterised by management as making demands which would upset the entire price list.13 The WYCOA resolved to support the firm as required, with members expressing a generalised fear that if the price list were upset in this case, there would be no security for owners throughout the district with regard to getting prices.14 But again this passed off—or was temporarily displaced or postponed—without serious incident. In late 1893, following the culmination of the great Federation strike, Hemsworth’s miners sent a delegation to the manager, Mr Sutton, asking that two men who had blacklegged throughout the strike be dismissed. Sutton initially refused but agreed to refer the matter to Fosdick who similarly rejected the request. In consequence the workers put in their notices on 20 December and ceased work on 4 January 1894. Fosdick rapidly found himself unable to bear the cost of another dispute so soon after that of the previous year. With colliery owners throughout the Federation area intent on getting back into production and attempting to make good previous losses, he had little inclination to ‘stand firm’ and so ordered Sutton to dismiss the two men in order to get the men working. When Sutton came to the WYCOA to request an indemnity in respect of this dispute, the owners’ association refused, apparently unwilling to countenance so hasty a concession to this particular type of demand. As the owners’ association


had not been consulted and the matter was dealt with by the company entirely on its own, it was concluded that no claim could be honoured. But in any case Hemsworth was by this time in arrears on its levy to the association and its owners were informed that if not paid by 27 January, solicitors would be instructed to take steps to secure it.15 The matter went so far as the WYCOA agreeing to institute an action in the high court to enforce payment,16 though in the end was settled without going to court. Hemsworth’s owners subsequently withdrew from the association for a period of several years, it must be assumed with the taint of certain dishonour. Price-list problems, however, did not disappear. In March 1896 the branch voted to strike over ripping grievances, but were requested by the district to postpone giving in of notices to allow further deputations to occur. Eventually the strike went ahead, but was short-lived.17 An agreement was reached on 1 July regarding certain issues in dispute, but deputations continued over others, among them the workers’ demand that the management reinstate those out ‘on funds’.18 As well as having a history of stoppages, Hemsworth was also a pit with a particularly high level of victimisation, a further indication of either aggressive or inept management. Hemsworth branch suspected that the management was intent on introducing the butty system and claimed that it was also importing blacklegs rather than reinstating those out as victims.19 Though lads stopped the pit briefly in 1897,20 things quietened for a time. But by early 1899 grievances over price-list issues were again raised and the district’s assistance was requested in dealing with them. A coal-cutting machine had been introduced into the Shafton seam and one grievance concerned the price for ‘taking charge of and filling after the Iron Man’. But others related to the fixing of tonnage rates at 1s 9d for holing, blasting, wedging, timbering, barsetting and tramming into gateways in the Shafton seam.21 More generally the workers wanted to re-open the price-list question and arrange extra payment for shift work introduced into straight places.22 The manager, Sutton, was prepared to agree to some of these demands, or at least meet a deputation to discuss them. But in the autumn of 1899 negotiations became intertwined with a quite separate dispute involving lads. Drivers pursuing an advance and trammers pressing to be moved to the coal face stopped all three pits at Hemsworth in September,23 and in response the firm issued twenty-three summonses. This dispute by lads was something of a one-off, though the several stoppages at Hemsworth effected by lads and other categories of non-face workers indicate either the extent to which industrial confrontation had become a matter of habit or alternatively of the level of general management abrasiveness. But while such specific issues as figured in the lads’ dispute arose from time to time, the pricelist issue persisted. In 1900, it reached one of its points of periodic crisis.


Price-list negotiations—1900 Early in the year, the firm, by now reaffiliated with the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association,24 entered into discussions with workers on the fixing of a tonnage rate in the newly opened Barnsley and Haigh Moor seams. A number of proposals were laid on the table by both sides, only to be rejected and then resubmitted in modified form. In late January the company offered 1s 9½d per ton in the Haigh Moor seam and 1s 8d in the Barnsley seam, subject to workers accepting the remainder of the price list already operating in Shafton seam in the two new ones, with the exception of ripping which was left to be adjusted with respect to specific conditions. When the local branch rejected these figures as far too low, they were increased by the company. Still dissatisfied, the workers made a counter-proposal. This was rejected in its turn by the company which, on 7 February, made a third offer, suggesting that the rate be 2s 3d in the Haigh Moor seam, 1s 11d on the north side of the Barnsley seam, 1s 10d on the south side.25 The company had moved considerably during negotiations toward figures favoured by the miners, but the two sides were still some distance apart, by 3d for the Haigh Moor seam and between 5d and 6d for the Barnsley seam. The miners were also unwilling to give up a minimum day-rate figure as insurance, should the piece rates not prove sufficient. The figure proposed, 7s 3d per day, was one which appears to have been typically applied within the district at about this time. Face workers still generally favoured piece rates, since they rewarded higher productivity. Yet the variability of working conditions, due to geological changes, always made piece rates a risky business and thus cause for persistent price-list grievances throughout the industry. With conditions particularly changeable and untested at the opening out of a seam, all concerned preferred initially to adopt day wages. The minimum which they implied had clear appeal and, once begun, miners were sometimes loath to give it up. This was part of the point at issue at Hemsworth. The miners considered and rejected the company’s third offer. John Potts, Hemsworth’s checkweighman and branch secretary, told the YMA Council that the miners could not get ‘anything like wages’ at the price offered, particularly in view of the hardness, bearing, dirt and other difficulties which had been confirmed by inspectors. Sutton, manager of the company, had in fact admitted to some of these difficulties the previous year in discussion with other owners in the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association.26 It was perhaps for this reason that the firm was willing to entertain some concessions in negotiation with the workers. But only to a point. Nor, as it later turned out, was the WYCOA willing to entertain even this level of concession. With negotiations at a stalemate, the case was referred to the joint committee. But even before being considered there, the company issued some 350 notices to


workers in the Barnsley seam. The branch immediately appealed to the YMA Council for lock-out pay, should it be required, and also requested authority to ballot locally since it was feared that notice would also be given to Haigh Moor miners, whereupon the company agreed temporarily to withdraw all notices.27 When the question went to the joint committee, there was extensive discussion but no agreement among the sub-committee appointed to review it. The difficulty came not so much from Fosdick, who in order to keep the pits working was now prepared to offer 2s 4d per ton and a guarantee that earnings should come to at least a day’s wage of 7s 3d on a trial of nine months, so much as his colleagues within the WYCOA, who rejected any offer higher than 2s 2d. After discussion it was agreed by the WYCOA that Hemsworth should offer 2s per ton, with a guarantee to make up earnings to a day’s wage, or 2s 2d without a guarantee. But at the same time as urging this course upon Fosdick—well below the workers’ demands as well as below what he was himself willing to offer—it was made clear that in the event of a strike Hemsworth would not qualify for an indemnity from the WYCOA whose rules did not permit claims for compensation related to disputes involving newly opened seams where no getting price had yet been put in force.28 These were cases too risky for the owners’ association to wish to provide collective insurance for and on behalf of its members. Hemsworth was therefore put in an awkward position relative to the owners’ association, chided for suggesting a higher rate than others thought reasonable or permissible and put under obligation to respect the collective view of the organisation by virtue of its affiliation, but prevented from making any claim on collective resources should a strike subsequently ensue. In the event Fosdick went his own way, much to the annoyance of colleagues within the WYCOA. On 14 June, a special arrangement was entered into between the YMA and Hemsworth Colliery whereby for nine months Haigh Moor seam workers would get 2s 4d and a guarantee of 7s 3d as a day’s wage. But problems persisted. On 20 July the firm introduced motties into the Barnsley seam for those working at day’s wages. The workers downed tools in response, going out without notice, much to the dismay of the Yorkshire executive. As the strike was illegal, the YMA was neither prepared to pay those out from union funds nor further interfere in the matter.29 The situation escalated, however, and on 23 July miners in the Shafton seam stayed away, presumably, so the management reported, in sympathy with the Barnsley seam strikers.30 The following day, miners in the Haigh Moor seam joined in the walkout. All went back in on 26 July, but for the Haigh Moor men this was to be only a temporary return. Unhappy with the implementation of the 14 June special arrangement, they asked for the day’s wage of 7s 3d to operate as a minimum throughout the seam, regardless of whether or not management judged a place as ‘normal’. When this was refused they went out on strike, again illegally. The YMA, however, regarded the situation as a lock-out, and on 6 August the


council authorised payment to those who were out.31 Balloting was then permitted in the other two seams, resulting in 1,219 of 1,315 members voting in favour of giving notice.32 Whether under pressure for this or other factors, a meeting of the joint committee on 7 August recommended that the workers be allowed to return under the terms of the 14 June agreement.33 But an unsettled climate persisted at the pit with various categories of workers bringing forward and acting on grievances. In September pit-rope lads demanded a reduction in working hours. The case was taken on board by the WYCOA which found Hemsworth’s practice somewhat deficient in comparison with that at other pits in the area. Emphasising the advisability of boys not being kept at work beyond 4 pm, the secretary of the WYCOA recommended that the firm allow its lads to stop work at 3.30 pm and pay overtime beyond that if necessary.34 In November, the pit was stopped by surfacemen demanding an eight-hour day and the local YMA branch requested lock-out pay which was accordingly granted.35 Finally in late December another stoppage threatened and deputations were sought with Hemsworth’s management.36 The matter at issue was again the price list. Barnsley seam workers go out During the course of the trial period specified by the 14 June 1900 agreement, the view of the management that it could not afford the agreed rates was increasingly reinforced. Arguing that a profit could not otherwise be obtained, they made a new offer of 2s in the Haigh Moor seam and 1s 8d in the Barnsley seam (as against 2s 4d and 2s 2d respectively, under the 14 June agreement). Amidst mounting resistance to this new situation, workers in the Barnsley seam came out in January, 1901.37 The YMA regarded them as victims and agreed in late January that they should receive benefits accordingly.38 It subsequently authorised a request from the branch to hold another ballot.39 When the ballot proved supportive of local action, workers in all three seams gave in notices set to expire in March. In the meantime the YMA continued to press for the joint committee to take up the case again.40 It may be imagined that members of the WYCOA, who initially thought the terms of the June 14 arrangement too high, were neither altogether surprised nor displeased with the turn of events, and were more prepared than the year previous to support the company. Briggs, as chairman of the organisation, reaffirmed the general view that the setting down of a pit to enforce prices which could not possibly allow a profit could be nothing other than totally unacceptable.41 By early April, 1,304 were out on strike, funded by the YMA. Though the case had gone to the joint committee, nothing positive had resulted. Pickard countered the owner’s offer with one acceptable to the workers: 2s 6d in the Haigh Moor and 2s in the Barnsley seam. Fosdick for his part indicated willingness to leave


the matter in the hands of the owners’ association, an admission perhaps of having learned his lesson from the previous phase of the battle.42 On the other hand he argued that the owners’ association should ensure the financial support required for him to withstand the militancy of his workers. At the time he was only receiving financial support in respect of the stopping of Shafton seam, whose workers had joined in sympathy with others at the colliery. When in accord with the rules of the WYCOA the special rate of indemnity applying expired, he appealed for, but was refused, an extension of support, leading perhaps to some bitterness and a lesser commitment to be bound by the WYCOA in resolving the dispute. Negotiation of a new and controversial price list Whatever the case, Fosdick again took matters into his own hands, and without consulting either the WYCOA or the relevant sub-committee of the joint committee, agreed in August 1901 on a rate for the Haigh Moor seam43 which was considerably higher than the company said it could afford at the beginning of the year, but in accord with the miners’ demand.44 Members of the WYCOA were aghast. Briggs, as chairman of the WYCOA, declared the settlement a complete victory for the miners. At the WYCOA meeting on 10 September, Fosdick, called to task for his action, argued that as no indemnities were paid on strikes in newly opened seams, he had not felt constrained to consult the association concerning the settlement. He conceded that the terms agreed would probably entail a loss, but expressed hope that the mode of working could be altered so as to recoup some of the deficit. Briggs, however, countered that the WYCOA’s money had been wasted and its prestige with the miners prejudiced. In spite of general displeasure, the WYCOA resolved to pay an indemnity in respect of the Shafton seam at a rate of 1s per ton up to the date when the company negotiated its independent settlement.45 But Briggs’s displeasure carried over into a proposal to change the rules of the WYCOA so as to prevent the full extent of permitted indemnity being extended to firms taking such unilateral action in the future. Here was an interesting case of the owners both trying to protect their collective funds and exert greater control over members’ dealings with their workers. In this, practice in West Yorkshire would appear to have been much more interventionist than occurred under the auspices of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association. As the Hemsworth case illustrates, it could only be partially effective, as the immediate interests of participating firms were not always the same as those of the collectivity. For Hemsworth there followed a period of relative calm, if but briefly. There were at least two occasions in 1902 when pony drivers went out without notice, once because of new regulations as to the time of descending the pit and once


because they considered ponies to be unfit for work.46 Miners were subject to lock-outs in consequence but did not themselves initiate any stoppages. The agreement of August 1901 had set down price lists to operate for yet another trial period, this time of 18 months.47 As the expiry date of March 1903 loomed, deputations on the ground thickened. After several meetings between the parties failed to achieve any renewal or agreed alteration of the arrangement, it was decided to bring in an arbitrator.48 And the joint committee accordingly did so on 17 March. In the meantime work at the colliery continued, with grievances being raised and workers being made victims as in accord with the ‘usual’ pattern of activity at Hemsworth. The Atkinson award In autumn 1903, the award of the arbitrator, Mr Atkinson, the stipendiary magistrate for the city of Leeds, was given, intended to be binding on both parties. The tonnage rate in the Barnsley seam, north side, was to be 1s 11½d where the bottom dirt did not exceed twelve inches in thickness. In the Haigh Moor seam getting end-on or half endway was to be paid 2s 4d per ton and bord coal or bord juds 2s 2d per ton. Instances of arbitration in the Yorkshire mining industry seldom ended with satisfaction on both sides. The earlier case of Ravensthorpe was one where the company refused to abide by the terms prescribed. In others, it was the miners who felt badly done by. In the Hemsworth arbitration of 1903 the miners received less than their earlier demands. But any complaints they had were much more moderate than those of the company. As the company secretary wrote to Pickard on 30 September, ‘we feel sure that you will agree with us that it is quite impossible for us to compete with our neighbours under the unfavourable conditions of the award seeing that at South Kirkby, Sharlston, Monckton, Ackton Hall and Featherstone, the getting prices are as much as 1s per ton below the award for these Collieries’. The company’s reluctance to accept the award extended to procrastination in having it officially signed and printed.49 Subsequently they attempted to undermine or subvert it. But this could only lead to further disruption. During 1904 the company’s resistance to the award was reflected in a high level of victimisation at Hemsworth, resulting in the second highest amount of victim pay per branch within the YMA going there. In the summer of 1904, first the Shafton and then the Barnsley seams were stopped by the management, in total putting over 530 on the YMA books receiving lock-out pay. The Shafton seam soon restarted, but Barnsley seam miners remained out and indeed were never to return under Fosdick’s ownership of the firm.50 Among the owners in the region it was rumoured that the pit was being stopped with a view toward obtaining revision of the price list. When they confronted Thomas Hargreaves,


one of Hemsworth’s directors, with this possibility, he strongly denied that management had any such intention.51 Subsequent events, however, suggest the contrary. In September enginemen stopped work at the pit in protest at a reduction in their wages and, in consequence, colliers in the Shafton seam were again locked out.52 Additional grievances subsequently arose in regard of both Shafton and Haigh Moor seams but there was no immediate impetus to go out on strike. Early in 1905 Hemsworth branch requested an official deputation, given the continuing stoppage of the Barnsley seam and clear intimations that management wanted a lowering of prices. In the meantime, victim-making continued so that, by April, Hemsworth had the highest number of victims on the books of any branch in the YMA.53 Then, in the late spring, the company closed down the Shafton seam.54 Shortly before this, the branch had asked authorisation to ballot over what was a rapidly deteriorating situation. Now they also requested that lock-out pay be extended to cover Shafton as well as Barnsley seam workers.55 In the middle of May, both requests were granted.56 Only Haigh Moor seam workers were balloted, since it was only they who remained at work. A total of 444 voted in favour of handing in their notices in sympathy with those locked out and victimised. Only fifty-six voted against.57 The matter was then left with the district for final confirmation in accord with union rules. By this time Hemsworth branch had 653 members locked out in the Barnsley and Shafton seams as well as fifty-seven receiving victim pay.58 Towards the end of June, there was a period of tension in the community, when on several days running, more than a hundred men, women and children congregated in Kinsley village in protest at a number of miners regarded as strike-breakers by virtue of remaining at work. It was in connection with this general restlessness that four women, Amedia Langley, Kate Kielty, Susannah Brown and Emma Crosby, were charged with having thrown missiles—in fact clods of dirt—at the offending individuals,59 thereby earning the typical press epithet of ‘amazons’. What was at least obvious was that at Hemsworth as elsewhere, women played an active and sometimes particularly militant role. When the question of Haigh Moor miners handing in notices was considered by the YMA as a whole, the vote was decisive with 1,013 in favour and only 87 opposed. Given the extreme reluctance within the YMA to enter into strike action at this time, having just lost the case brought by Howden in connection with the Denaby and Cadeby dispute, the vote indicates overwhelming sympathy with Hemsworth miners and firm conviction as to the correctness of their position. Yet the YMA still hoped to avoid taking the dispute to this final stage and instructed solicitors to press claims which had arisen in respect of the company’s failure to pay in accord with Atkinson’s award.60


Joint committee negotiations over Haigh Moor There was also some hope that the case might still be resolved through the joint committee. However, it was only on 25 July 1906, after notices had been handed in, that the joint committee considered the impending crisis. Oddly, in view of the history of difficulties at Hemsworth, the owners seem to have been taken aback by the intention of the Haigh Moor miners to strike, thus bringing a colliery already largely down to a final stop. At a meeting of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association just prior to the joint committee, Fosdick was asked to provide some background to the situation and with notable ingenuousness claimed to be unaware of any grievances nor of attempts made over the previous months by miners to arrange deputations. He acknowledged the prior closing of both the Shafton and Barnsley seams, the former because it had been worked out, or so he said, and the latter because of depressed trade and problems of profitability, but claimed to have no idea why Haigh Moor miners had given notice.61 At the joint committee meeting, Wadsworth, for the YMA, confirmed the obvious, that in the workers’ view, the company had been ‘trying to get out of the Award’. Both he and Briggs concurred that if at all possible the matter should be settled without a strike, and the latter suggested that the workers be prevailed upon to withdraw their notices pending further discussions. Fosdick, for his part, seemed curiously resigned to the strike. Since the workers had given notice ‘without any reason assigned whatever’, he said, he was ‘rather inclined to let things go on’.62 As it later materialised the company believed that a strike would imply termination of contracts and thereby extricate it from any further obligation to pay according to the 1903 award. From this point of view, the workers’ action was actually welcomed. Late in July the YMA wrote to the WYCOA requesting an urgent meeting between Briggs, Higson and Scott on behalf of the owners, and Wadsworth, Jacks and Smith on behalf of the miners to try to prevent a stoppage.63 But nothing then materialised. For it was evident that the company had no intention of continuing operations under the 1903 price list.64 As Hargreaves for the Hemsworth board of directors told the WYCOA, they were not disposed to allow their employees to continue working even if they withdrew or suspended their notices unconditionally.65 This was soon made clear to the YMA as well. On 2 August, with the strike looming, the YMA Council resolved that Haigh Moor mines should suspend notices indefinitely in order to allow the sub-committee of the joint committee ample opportunity to settle the matter through negotiation.66 But whatever the willingness of the workers to suspend their action, the company was unmoved. The YMA was informed that the colliery was ‘absolutely closed’.67


August 1905—Hemsworth workers all out The following day, 3 August, the strike began. All told there were now some 1, 600 out at Hemsworth,68 the majority of them YMA members. When the district authorised strike pay for the Haigh Moor miners,69 the total on the books reached 1,166½ (with lads counted as half-members). Of these, 632 were listed as locked out, 4,63½ on strike and 71 as victims.70 As requested by the YMA, representatives of the WYCOA met with miners’ officials on 15 August to discuss Hemsworth. By this time, there was some sympathy from the owners’ association with the workers’ position and a degree of annoyance with that taken by Hemsworth’s owners. Briggs suggested that because the Haigh Moor workers had placed themselves in the ‘wrong position’ by giving notice before referring the matter to the joint committee, they should resume work unconditionally. Hemsworth miners agreed to do so if the company was willing to carry out the price list and pay all arrears owing in respect of it. But the company still had little intention of complying. Fosdick feigned ignorance of the question of arrears during a meeting of the WYCOA on 23 August and balked at Briggs’s suggestion that the workers be allowed to resume work unconditionally, adopting the view that it would set a bad precedent if men were allowed to stop a colliery without giving any reason and then be taken back as soon as they thought it fit to return. Briggs countered that the efforts of the miners to remedy their ‘mistakes’ deserved recognition and indicated in no uncertain terms that the tolerance shown by the company on the matter might have considerable bearing in deciding the position of the WYCOA towards the Hemsworth Colliery Company.71 At a further meeting of the joint committee later that day, Hemsworth’s owners remained unmoved and unmoving. Whether he need have done or not, Wadsworth granted Briggs’s point that the miners had made a mistake by giving in notices before allowing full opportunity for the joint committee to deal with the case. But he pointed to ‘innumerable complaints’ of non-payment according to the 1903 Atkinson award amounting to roughly £500 which the union was seeking to recover through legal means. Should Mr Fosdick agree to pay the arrears and respect the price list, he said, the union would willingly induce the men back to work.72 Fosdick responded on the theme of his ignorance of details of the grievance and with the easily refutable claim that Hemsworth’s management had not been asked for a deputation since January 1905. So feeble were his excuses that even the owners’ side joined in pressing the firm to agree to abide by the price list. In the end the joint committee resolved unanimously that ‘the men now on strike in the Haigh Moor seam at the Fitzwilliam Hemsworth Collieries be recommended to withdraw their Notices and to resume work under the printed Price List now in force for that seam, without prejudice to any matters before the Court between the Company and the


men’.73 But, regardless of the collective view, it was never the company’s intention to allow a resumption of work. With this increasingly clear, it was now for the owners of the district to come to some sort of arrangement with Hemsworth, since otherwise their funds would continue to drain off indefinitely. Having initially been supported by the WYCOA during the strike, Hemsworth was entitled by rule to continuing indemnity payments unless it was formally decided otherwise. However, should the association collectively decide it advisable to make some concession to the workers, continued liability to pay the indemnity would depend on whether or not Hemsworth acted in accord with that decision. While some members of the owners’ association may well have been inclined toward concessions, the company remained adamantly opposed. Ultimately a deal was struck whereby Hemsworth agreed to relinquish all claims to indemnity subsequent to YMA officials being informed via the joint committee that the company could not afford to re-open the pit on the old terms, but was prepared, with the sanction of the WYCOA, to negotiate a new price list. Thus the WYCOA relieved itself of further financial obligation in a manner which also involved its relinquishing whatever moral ground that it might have held. In effect it accepted as both legitimate and inevitable that the Atkinson award could not be sustained, leaving the workers to their fate, however just their claim. The company folds; miners evicted In the event the stipulated joint committee meeting did not occur. On 5 October, when the indemnity settlement was made to Hemsworth to the tune of £1,413 6s 8d, the company’s request to postpone the meeting for some two to three weeks was also accepted.74 As it soon became clear, the delay was in consequence of the firm’s imminent involvement in liquidation proceedings. By the time the joint committee finally met on 24 October, a receiver had been appointed and it already decided that the company could not be reconstructed until price lists comparable to those in neighbouring collieries were settled for the Barnsley and Haigh Moor seams. Briggs, as chairman of the joint committee, could do little, but offer his commiserations. The situation, he said, was no fault of the workers: they had got a Price List by Arbitration—there was no getting over that fact, and they had a right to stick to it, but the circumstances had shown it was not possible to continue paying to it…75 The immediate response of miners’ representatives was cautious. Wadsworth repeated the miners’ claim that they could only make a reasonable day’s wage at the figure specified in the 1903 award. Potts, also in attendance, implicitly queried the workers having to take on sole responsiblity and sacrifice for


ensuring that the firm operate profitably. ‘Was there no method of working the place more economically, than in the past?’ he asked. The miners, he suggested, ‘knew some things need not be spread about’, which gave them cause for believing that changes could be beneficially made. The matter was left for the moment for the parties to mull over, the men being duly informed of the situation. At a meeting of the joint committee a week later, a new extended committee with four on each side was appointed to try to renegotiate price lists all around.76 But in the meantime, Hemsworth’s workers remained out, in increasingly distressed circumstances. Barnsley seam workers had by this time been out for some fourteen months and those in Shafton seam for six months. As in the case of other bitter battles in the Yorkshire coalfield, those out were not only subject to drastically reduced income, essentially based on strike or lock-out pay. In many cases they also lost their homes. Clearly convinced from early on that the stoppage would be a total one and perhaps motivated to communicate this conviction to its workforce, the company applied for ejectment orders in July, well before Haigh Moor seam workers went out on strike. On 22 July 1905, in Pontefract, West Riding magistrates granted orders for over forty colliers then out.77 By the middle of August the evictions began. They continued over the next few weeks, a few at a time, with scenes reminiscent of those elsewhere on other, similar occasions. It was believed that the authorities specifically chose times for removals when hostile demonstrations would least likely be provoked.78 But crowds still turned up to watch with a mixture of sadness and anger. If some being removed seemed to accept their fate stoically, those in the watching crowd were less sanguine.79 As in so many similar instances, it was the women of the community who responded most directly in these scenes of domestic displacement and disruption. The general feeling of the crowd was of restrained hostility which ultimately broke out in hooting and jeering.80 But local folklore also records symbolic acts of protest. Some of those scheduled for eviction were said to have filled their trunks and cases with bricks and paving stones, locking them and leaving them in upstairs rooms for the authorities to bring down as they could.81 While some forty orders had been initially applied on homes owned by the company, a further seventy were added within a month, the latter on dwellings leased by the company from a local property owner and subsequently let to miners and their families. YMA representatives had brought up the question of evictions at the joint committee meeting of 23 August 1905, and asked Fosdick to use his influence to stop them. But while the former owner of Hemsworth claimed evictions to be ‘against his feelings’, there was nothing, he insisted, he could do to stop them.82 The question was raised again at a meeting of the joint committee in October. Briggs, chairing the meeting, expressed regret at the continuing evictions, but absolved the colliery of responsibility or indeed ability


to effect any response, as the orders had been set in motion some time before and a receiver was now in charge of the company.83 But this could be of little consolation to those involved. Appeals for assistance As early as April 1905, when Barnsley seam workers were still the only ones out, co-ordinated appeals were made for assistance and relief, especially on behalf of the children. In the interval between the Shafton seam being closed and its workers qualifying for lock-out pay, the situation became particularly acute and a special fund was set up to provide flour and bread for the affected families, who were said to be in a desperate condition.84 By mid-June the local YMA branch had consolidated its programme of appeals, designating twenty-eight ‘agents’ who were sent to various coalfields to ask for assistance from miners, trade councils and other trade unions. Later, choirs were sent on tour to publicise the situation at Hemsworth and solicit donations.85 The response overall was generous and sustained, donations largely coming from outside of Yorkshire. They were received and distributed under the auspices of what was officially designated the Hemsworth Miners’ Children’s Relief Fund.86 To keep all aboveboard and beyond criticism, a weekly account sheet was issued, detailing amounts coming in and the nature of their use. The Factory Times, a newspaper published in Leeds, was one of those organisations highly supportive of the relief campaign and active in calling on its readership to donate freely. It routinely listed some of those who had made contributions, reporting on 10 November 1905, for example, that a levy was collected fortnightly from weavers and tuners employed by Messrs Kay and Stewart, Broadfield Mills, Lockwood, and that a special appeal by Bradford Trades Council had resulted in the sending of several large parcels of boots, shoes, clothing and bedding, plus nearly £50 which had been subscribed by a number of societies, including smiths and strikers, wardressers, dyers, woolsorters and the like.87 As the workers remained out at Hemsworth, the campaign was to continue for a very long time. The Fund’s balance sheet for the middle of May 1906 indicated that collections had been taken in some 120 places, with total grants from unions amounting to £225 4s 3d. Over half had come from outside of Yorkshire.88 When initially faced with ejectment orders an eviction committee whose members included Green, Goddard, Potts, Watmough and Burns, had been instrumental in both securing a site for the camp and purchasing tents to accommodate the homeless. Towards the end of September 1905 the West Riding Education Committee at Wakefield agreed that a building formerly intended to serve as a school at Kinsley could be used to provide sleeping accommodation for children,89 adding to facilities previously made available at


the Kinsley Hotel, whose proprietor put up and fed some fifty children. By the first week of October there were reported to be fifty-two tents, five caravans, two schools and a public house chamber or lodge room housing evicted miners and their families.90 But none of this was ever regarded as other than temporary and inadequate for the prolonged stoppage which became inevitable once the company had gone into receivership. Convinced of the need for some permanent shelter, renewed appeals were made. Mr Watmough wired the TUC, then meeting in Hanley, asking for assistance.91 In response a motion was passed condemning the company’s action and a collection proposed.92 During the course of the Miner’s Federation annual conference, meeting shortly thereafter, more substantial assistance was promised, in the form of a grant of £1,000. Hemsworth miners were grateful and relieved. There was some thought initially that the money might be used to construct a single large shelter, but Potts expressed the hope that no decision would be made until MFGB officers came to the community and saw the situation for themselves.93 As it turned out discussions did not include Hemsworth officials, but were confined to officers of the MFGB and the YMA, with the latter given leave to administer the fund. And rather than build a shelter, it was decided to lease some of the properties from which miners had been evicted. Those subject to the last batch of evictions, on 24 October, were in consequence able to avoid a sojourn in the tents. They were immediately rehoused in the properties in question, owned by a man named Betts, and known as Betts Row.94 By virtue of the MFGB’s £1,000 grant, Kinsley camp was demolished and one element of the general suffering ameliorated. But in many other respects the situation remained as acute as ever. The local relief committee, with Potts often speaking on its behalf, became increasingly concerned about under-fed children and mounted a strong campaign to arouse public sympathies. This involved an initiative with potentially far-reaching implications for the labour movement as regards the responsibility of the state in ensuring the welfare and proper feeding of children regardless of their parents’ circumstances. Though the Hemsworth miners were unsuccessful in this endeavour, their bid was an important one. Earlier in 1905, the Local Government Board had issued an order called ‘The Relief (School Children) Order, 1905’ in order to deal with cases of under-fed children attending public elementary schools. Boards of guardians, charged with granting relief of destitution in local communities, were subsequently directed to consider any such cases. Parents, of course, remained responsible for the proper feeding of their children, and in order to avoid full costs of relief falling on local ratepayers, it was to be granted in the form of a loan wherever possible. But where this was impossible, the order provided a mechanism for it to be granted outright.95 The order provoked considerable discussion concerning the responsibility of the state and the extent of its legitimate intervention into the


traditional sphere of family life, as well as the precise nature of the role to be taken on by boards of guardians. Hemsworth miners saw it as an important and welcome device for relieving the destitution wrought by their dispute and, as they saw it, in direct consequence of the company’s non-adherence to the Atkinson award. Though wishing to obtain assistance for all of Hemsworth’s workers, they argued in particular for relief being granted to dependants of miners locked out and thus essentially disadvantaged by circumstances beyond their control. In the summer of 1905, a deputation of Hemsworth miners, including Potts, who was a local school manager, sent a letter to the Local Government Board asking that the Hemsworth Board of Guardians be empowered to feed children on loan without delay.96 Otherwise, they warned, their fathers would have little alternative but to apply for ordinary relief. The local guardians, however, were as aware of the implications of the application as were the miners. The order did not specifically refer to cases of parents destitute by virtue of trade union action (or, as in this case, company action), and there was general wariness about setting a precedent along these lines. Indeed the very possibility of locked-out or striking workers obtaining poor relief had important implications for the relation between capital and labour, potentially allowing labour struggles to be sustained for a much larger period of time than would otherwise be the case and relieving some of the overwhelming responsibility shouldered by unions in providing the financial support which made industrial action viable. Not wishing to be the final arbiters of whether or not the authors of the order intended that it apply to children whose fathers were engaged in trade disputes, the Hemsworth guardians appealed for clarification from the Local Government Board. But the reply was vague and unhelpful. Thereupon they practised such delaying tactics as might be devised. Initially they hoped that a settlement might relieve them of having to make any decision, but with the company in liquidation, this hope could no longer be sustained. When, on 24 August, 1905, a deputation comprised of Potts, Isaac Burns, W.O.Bull, E.Fernday, J.Garbeutt, A.Goddard and J.J.Green attended the board and asked that the order be put into operation as soon as schools reopened, the guardians remained indecisive, deferring the matter a fortnight on the somewhat flimsy rationale of ignorance of the numbers involved. Only when the school session resumed would they be able to assess accurately the number of under-nourished in public elementary schools, they claimed.97 During the interval the miners strove to arm themselves with irrefutable evidence of need. They investigated the circumstances of fifty-six families, having a combined total of 268 children, of whom 184 were attending school. The total income of the families over a given week was calculated to be £37 19s 6d, out of which £14 15s 9d went toward rent, and £7 10s 6d for clothing, light, coal and similar necessities. This left just £15 13s to be spent on food per week,


averaging 10d per head for the 377 people.98 Potts and a colleague brought this evidence with them and waited outside the boardroom on 7 September 1905. But they were denied an opportunity to present it, the acting chairman having rushed through the end of business and declared the meeting closed. When Mr Watmough, one of two miners’ members on the board, queried the precipitous ending of the session, the acting chairman claimed that he had had no intimation of the deputation’s intended presence, and even when pressed would not give way.99 The miners, it goes without saying, were furious. Three weeks later they tried again with a deputation including Potts and Burns who were both school managers and should, in the terms of the order, have been legitimately able to bring forward to the guardians a ‘special application’ on behalf of under-fed children. Potts presented the statistics relating to the fifty-six families, claiming that he could quote a thousand more. The board then retired to consider the matter in private, but on its return reported its unanimous decision to refuse the application.100 If partly an indictment of local authorities in their studied turning of heads from the needs of those whom they were ostensibly to serve, this episode was more a reflection of a certain gutlessness, and unwillingness to take a step which would displease central government by giving advantage to labour where none was intended. Such experiences may have given all the more incentive to miners to gain positions in local government so as to ensure its operation toward the just needs of the entire population; on the other hand it may well have been an object lesson in the extent to which any such task would always be an overwhelming one. Tension between branch and district Having lost the appeal to the guardians, it became crucial that Hemsworth miners increase the campaign for voluntary and trade union assistance. Among those appealed to was the YMA itself, which in December 1905 authorised a grant of £200 at £40 a week. But while the assistance given to Hemsworth here, and more fundamentally through weekly strike and lock-out payments, was crucial, accounting for by far the greater part of all funds received, and while relations between branch and district were generally cordial, there was also evidence of occasional and at times more sustained friction. As early as 1901 a degree of impatience was expressed by Hemsworth branch over the apparent inaction of the district (or lack of decisive action) in respect of persistent grievances over victimisation. A letter from the branch noted with mild criticism that they had fully anticipated the previous council ‘doing something definite with this young man’, the new manager, Harper, ‘and are much disappointed’.101


But much more impatience with the branch, rather surprisingly in view of the long history of trouble from the management, was expressed by Wadsworth in the course of the joint committee meeting just prior to the termination of notices of the Haigh Moor workers in July 1905. He may well have wished only to establish some basic grounds for discussion by acknowledging that the company, as well as the miners, had suffered from the sustained disruption. But his comments seem to have exceeded mere diplomacy. He said he regretted with Mr Fosdick that his pits were being stopped and that indeed he, personally, regretted the district decision to allow notices to be given in. He went so far as to agree with the meeting’s chairman, Briggs, that the owners had not officially received either notice of the impending strike by the Haigh Moor miners nor its underlying grievances communicated to them.102 Wadworth’s irritation seemed to spill over in his comment that ‘it was one everlasting thing at Barnsley, disputes being reported to us from Hemsworth.’ Of the present case, he commented rather non-committally, that ‘it was alleged, rightly or wrongly, the Company had been trying to get out of the Award’. This, he said, was the nub of the difficulty.103 Hemsworth had clearly become a problem pit in the eyes of Wadsworth and perhaps other of the district officials as well, soaking up a great deal of the union’s funds, though without apparent resolution. In subsequent joint committee meetings, Wadsworth faithfully and rigorously represented the interests of Hemsworth’s miners. But at least at the beginning of the Haigh Moor strike in 1905, he was less than enthusiastic. Something of this tentativeness must have been communicated to the local community and served to give those out of work a sense of isolation. At Hemsworth as during the course of disputes at other collieries, there were slight admonitions and almost wistful murmurings and queryings as to why no district officials had visited. Potts raised the point at a meeting in October, expressing regret and surprise that none of the Barnsley officials had taken the trouble to visit the Kinsley camp.104 This general atmosphere may have fostered what ultimately became a particularly notable effort in self-reliance. There are many instances in Yorkshire and other coalfields of local relief committees being set up. But the Hemsworth campaign was more sustained and more wide-ranging than was typical. And because the response brought the local branch into contact with a wide range of unions and trade councils and elicited particular generosity from those highly committed to labour politics, the relief campaign led to a degree of local politicisation, which in turn engendered conflict or tension with Barnsley. Indeed, problems between district and branch, focused around the person of Potts, occurred both on the issue of political position and on the question of ‘too much’ self-reliance, with the branch seen as frequently going over the head of the district.


That the relief campaign should have acquired a political dimension is perhaps not surprising, particularly at a time when the ILP was making increasing headway and itself latched on to such disputes as that at Hemsworth as a means of engendering and mobilising support. Moreover, the ILP had had support in the area for some years. In 1897 the campaign of Pete Curran in the Barnsley byelection was partly planned at meetings in the home of Isaac Burns in Hemsworth. Since then ILP branches had spread quickly and by 1905 were established in centres throughout the Yorkshire coalfield.105 The secretary of the Hemsworth branch was J.J. Green, who was active throughout the dispute, participating in deputations to the board of Guardians and serving as recipient of donations sent to the relief committee. Isaac Burns was chairman of the Hemsworth Parish Council on which Henry and Alfred Goddard, also ILP members, sat as well. Potts himself was something of a latecomer to the ILP, having been one of the miners’ representatives who signed the nomination papers of the Liberal candidate, Joseph Walton, during the 1897 Barnsley byelection.106 But he subsequently changed his political allegiance. During the two months or so of its existence, the Kinsley camp became a venue for a number of demonstrations, many of them acquiring political content. The collective courage, self-reliance and resistance represented by the camp made it something of a monument to the possibilities of labour struggle, drawing in activists and others. The Yorkshire Post reported that ‘hundreds of visitors walked, cycled or drove in wagonette parties to Kinsley Camp’ on 27 August.107 Several weeks later, if the reporters’ estimates may be trusted, the numbers had swelled to the thousands, coming by ‘motor-car and bicycle, char-a-banc and trap’.108 Nor were all demonstrations in support of Hemsworth workers held at the camp. On 24 September, for example, one was organised by the Normanton Trades Council.109 Long after the breakup of the camp, in late May 1906, miners from Ackton Hall, Featherstone Main, Snydale and Pontefract collieries organised a large meeting at Featherstone, among the speakers at which was Mr Compton Rickett, MP.110 But perhaps among the most interesting of demonstrations was that at Kinsley Camp on 7 October 1905, addressed by Keir Hardie and Ben Turner, ILP Labour candidate for Dewsbury constituency, as well as by Potts. Turner and Hardie also addressed a major demonstration in the People’s Hall in Leeds on the Unemployed Workers’ Act on this day.111 Before a large crowd at Kinsley, Hardie denounced the company for its evictions policy. ‘It was the same all over the country’, he said. ‘The rich landowners were doing all they could to crush the poor workers.’112 And he deplored the behaviour of the Hemsworth Board of Guardians. Arguing that the recent order of the Local Government Board clearly stated that the guardians must feed hungry children irrespective of the cause or of who was responsible, he accused them of open defiance in refusing to put the order into effect. Turner took up some of these same themes, using the


opportunity to draw out clear political lessons. Where, he asked, was Hemsworth’s MP when the evictions were taking place? It was time, he urged, that they stood true to their own class, ensuring election of its members so as subsequently to ensure that their just interests were recognised, taken account of and protected. Potts also made a direct political statement, alluding to how his views had undergone a change since he and Hardie last talked politics in the district. Now, said Potts, he should be on the side of Labour every time. ‘Labour must trust its own…’113 Hardie judged Potts to be a ‘slow, cautious, safe man’. ‘But even he’, wrote Hardie, ‘has been driven to the conclusion that Labour has nothing to hope for, or expect from any political party until it has created a party of its own.’ He was not certain whether Potts had by then been converted to socialism as well as conviction of the need for a Labour Party, but assumed that would inevitably follow.114 John Samuel Potts had many background characteristics in common with other strong local officials within the YMA. He was the son of a coalminer who had had to move from field to field in search of satisfactory work. While born in Bolton, his childhood was spent in Durham as were his early years in mining. He came to Yorkshire around 1897, obtained work at Hemsworth, and there he stayed. He had strong connections with the co-operative movement and was for a time a local Wesleyan Methodist preacher. At the age of about 28, he became a checkweighman. For many years he was secretary of the Hemsworth miners’ branch and also served on the YMA executive committee and as one of the union’s representatives on the joint committee. He was an unsuccessful candidate for official district-level positions in 1906 and 1913, but in 1915 was elected YMA agent and treasurer.115 In 1922 and again in 1935 he was elected MP for Barnsley. Here was an individual of sustained service, at local, district and national level. Indeed on one occasion he was delegate to the International Miners’ Congress.116 He was not, as was Walsh, a person prone to disputes with his colleagues, either within or outside of the union. He appears to have been highly respected and over a long period acknowledged as a reliable spokesman for Hemsworth miners. Potts’s conversion to the ILP must surely have strengthened the Labour movement in the local community. Whether or not at the outset an advocate of socialism, he took his commitment to Labour seriously. In 1906 he was included on lists of ‘ILP speakers’ for Yorkshire, his colleague in the union, W.O.Bull, being the only other such official speaker from Hemsworth. Potts was similarly listed in 1907.117 But the strength of the Labour movement in Hemsworth was much less a function of Potts’s conversion than of the solidity and perseverence of a strong core of activists. Isaac Burns has been mentioned as an early supporter of the ILP. While employed at South Kirkby and a branch official there, he lived in Hemsworth, hence the basis of his involvement in the


community’s organisations and committees during the Hemsworth dispute. But others —A.Goddard, H.Goddard, J.J.Green, J.Barrett and W.O.Bull—all represented the ILP on the parish council or the Hemsworth Board of Guardians at one time or another over the period 1905 to 1908. Most were also deeply involved in miners’ or community committees during the long stoppage of Hemsworth Colliery. The presence and increasing activity of these individuals mirrors a general movement among Hemsworth miners from Liberalism to Labour, perhaps rather more pronounced and somewhat earlier than elsewhere in the district, but also reflecting a more general trend. During 1905 and 1906 there was persistent agitation within the YMA to pull the union to the left. In 1904 the YMA had (perhaps surprisingly) voted in favour of affiliation with the Federation of Trades, but subsequent to a detailed attack on this body by district officials a second vote in the early summer of 1905 recorded a large majority against, reversing the previous decision. Hemsworth’s contact with other trade unions in the course of the long stoppage undoubtedly gave miners there an appreciation of the advantages of having a strong trade union organisation transcending industrial boundaries. Potts was certainly a strong advocate of the General Federation of Trades, taking the opportunity of one of the Kinsley camp demonstrations to argue for the YMA’s joining it.118 The branch voted in favour of affiliation on both ballots, as well as voting in December 1904 in favour of affiliation with the Labour Representation Committee (LRC).119 As the general election in early 1906 loomed, there was also a movement in Hemsworth to promote an ILP member as a miners’ parliamentary candidate. In accord with the miners’ parliamentary representation scheme Yorkshire was to have two constituencies, Hallamshire and Normanton, where miners’ candidates were to be put forward in this election. In early December the Yorkshire executive decided that the names to go forward should be those of Wadsworth and Hall, and these were duly sent off to Ashton, secretary of the Miners’ Federation. Subsequently, however, Hemsworth branch proposed that a third constituency, Barnsley—where Joseph Walton, the Liberal elected in 1897 still sat—should be contested and that the candidate should be Herbert Smith. Though Smith’s socialist credentials were for much of his life not put to the fore, he was early on a supporter of the ILP and his election to the position of YMA president in early 1906 was seen as something of a victory for the left.120 He represented the ILP on the Castleford Board of Guardians in 1905 and on the Glasshoughton Parish Council in 1905 and 1906.121 After this his name does not appear on ILP lists and it is probable that he turned more fully and exclusively to trade union rather than party activities. Whether he actively encouraged Hemsworth’s initiative to promote him as a parliamentary candidate in 1905 is not clear, but the symbolism of the gesture as regards Hemsworth’s miners’


political stance is apparent. In the event, the YMA yearly council meeting threw out the motion as one which could not be entertained by a vote of 61 to 42.122 Criticism of Hall and Wadsworth—counter-attack on the ILP Early in 1906, however, the legitimacy and wisdom of the candidatures of Hall and Wadsworth was publicly questioned by Potts. In a rather surprising move (since engaging in debate through the press was not previously characteristic of the man) and in the very midst of the campaign, Potts sent a letter to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph criticising the miners’ alliance with the Liberals ‘and capitalists’ and confirming his own support of ‘a straight Labour Policy and Labour Group’.123 But he went further to attack the two candidates as being personally ambitious in wanting to be elected as Members of Parliament while also maintaining their positions as officials of the YMA. ‘Messrs. Wadsworth and Hall knew perfectly that in the event of their return to Parliament, their work must be done by a deputy’, and no deputy, he claimed, would ‘undertake authority, responsibility and action in the absence of his chief’. Alleging that the YMA was already ‘fast sinking, both numerically and in power’, Potts urged that unless the two candidates were prepared to vacate their official union positions upon election they should be rejected by the electors. The Hemsworth checkweighman was not against miners’ representatives. Far from it. His letter advocated the YMA running six candidates. But the practice of union officials merely adding parliamentary duties (or status) onto their union responsibilities he regarded as ‘a calamity to the cause of miners’ interests’. Raising a complaint reminiscent of other times and other disputes, Potts suggested that their activities outside the county already left district officials unable to attend to local issues. What he diagnosed as the union’s decline he attributed to officials being ‘nearly always away from home whilst they ought to be in offices and attending meetings of the men, not only to keep up the 40,000 members, but to bring inside the YMA the 30,000 non-union men in the county’. That his criticisms were linked with frustrations suffered in the Hemsworth dispute is evident from a specific complaint that officials had not visited the Kinsley camp nor ‘been to advise the miners in their struggle’ and then justified their absence on the questionable grounds of their presence potentially endangering the union’s funds. A localised grievance against officials had thus sparked the elaboration of a broader political critique. Potts’s letter, however, went beyond the bounds of what was permissible particularly in the midst of an election campaign. It was immediately condemned by Barnsley in a letter appearing in the Sheffield Independent on 24 January 1906, confirming the union’s unanimous support for Wadsworth’s candidature. Both Hall and Wadsworth were returned, but the condemnation of Potts was


elaborated upon in two further statements, one filling eleven pages of the YMA minutes and using Potts’s intervention as a basis for denouncing the ILP, and the second a four-and-a-half-page defence of district officers and containing a personal attack on Potts. Both served as background material for an initiative to dismember Potts.124 In their vehemence as well as their detail both statements reveal the scope of the threat perceived in Potts’s letter and from the political movement to which it referred. The longer of the two statements, signed by Wadsworth, Dixon, Hall and Hoskin, though not Smith, contains phrases and arguments similar to those used by Pickard in 1897, both in debate within the MFGB and in letters and statements denouncing James Walsh. As with documents issued in 1905 to dissuade the YMA membership from support for affiliation with the General Federation of Trades, it makes frequent reference to the general tradition which Cowey and Pickard represented, invoking the past as a means of confronting present difficulties. Essentially it accused Hardie, and the ILP more generally, of taking undue credit for securing aid for Hemsworth via the MFGB, for falsely assuming a greater concern for miners’ interests than the union’s own officials, and for both ‘doing anything’ to ‘pull down’ the YMA and attempting to ‘capture’ the union in order to ‘dictate its policies’. In countering what its author took as the falsehoods and false practices of the ILP, it defended the YMA and its accomplishments, with detailed commentary on assistance given by the union to other trade unions and more especially to its own members. The statement began with reference to Potts: After reading the above from Mr J.Potts, we wish to say, seeing that he has joined the extreme party, namely the ILP, just recently, that we think it is about time that the Members of this Association took some means to protest against the interference of outsiders with the Business of the Officials, and the Members and the work of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association. And it continued with denunciation of Hardie specifically: We would point out to you that it was not Keir Hardie and his friends that built up this Association. It was built at great cost and sacrifice, and it must be maintained in the future whatever further cost and sacrifice may be required. …We would point out to you that this man Hardie is not a friend to Trade Unionism.125 This last comment harkened back to Hardie’s statement in 1893, which had much exercised Pickard, that trade unionism in its form at that time was incapable of


resisting the decline of wages or bringing about a shortening of hours of work. But, declared the author, miners’ unions had amply demonstrated their capability of meeting their members’ needs and YMA members were cautioned to be very careful before allowing either Hardie or ‘any other outsider to pull down the Organisation that has been built at such a terrible cost’.127 While it was Potts’s intervention that had caused immediate offence, the rebuttal put forward by officials was wide ranging, with Potts seen as merely the latest convert in a broader battle for YMA money, hearts and minds. Potts was decidedly an insider, but ‘what we want from our men’, the document declared, ‘is to tell these impertinent outsiders to mind their own business, as you are determined that no outsider interference shall be tolerated any longer’. In attacking the ILP, a defence was simultaneously made of continuing ties with the Liberal Party. Countering the alleged statement that Yorkshire miners lagged ‘lamentably’ behind those in Lancashire principally because of the ‘love of their officials for Liberalism’, was the retort that: when we have done our work for this Association we shall claim the right, as we always have done, and which our members have always allowed us to do, and which they will no doubt always allow us to do in the future, to spend any of leisure time either advocating Liberalism or anything else that we believe to be in the interests of our own members and workers generally.127 The second, shorter document signed by Smith as well as Wadsworth, Dixon, Hall and Hoskin, and addressed ‘To our Local Officials and Members’, took on board Potts’s contention that the union was sinking, both in terms of numbers and power. Potts’s figure of just 40,000 in the union exaggerated the level of decline. But there had been a fall in membership in 1904 and 1905, with a total drop of over 5,000 members.128 Officials were clearly on the defensive over this point and therefore at pains to show Yorkshire’s experience as little different from other areas or other industries. South Wales, indeed even the Federation, had lost members, it was stated. And given the trade depression and the legal difficulties faced by the union, it was considered that the membership record was unalarming: When we come to consider the short time worked, and the little wages that have been earned in many instances this last two or three years and the damage that has been attempted to be done by men of Mr Potts’s type, we think we have nothing to grumble about, and as trade is improving, we trust that the men will raise sufficient courage to come back into the association.129


The statement then turned more directly to Potts and to the injury said to have been caused to the association by his action. A number of swipes were taken at his character and assumptions drawn about his ambitions, in language again similar to that with which Pickard denounced Walsh in 1897. ‘In our opinion’, members were informed, ‘he has been seeking an official position for a long time. It seems now that when he cannot get one he has taken to abusing your Officials all that he possibly can, and damaging them and the Society as best he can.’ If he was so unhappy with Yorkshire, it was suggested, he should take his leave and move to another county. While politics had figured heavily in the first, longer document, the second gave it little direct reference, except to deny that Potts was being attacked for his political opinions. But he was strongly criticised for being less than helpful in attempts to arrive at a settlement in the Hemsworth dispute. ‘He is boasting that he has the key to the situation, but when he is asked to attend a Meeting and explain matters, he stays away, and leaves your Sub-Committee to do as they like.’ It was the burden of the document ultimately to castigate a troublesome local official who had presumed to go outside union structures to criticise district leadership. In this Potts was seen as a threat to the very integrity of the union. ‘The question will have to be faced’, members were told, ‘as to whether Mr Potts, or even Hemsworth Branch, is going to rule the 148 Branches and Members of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, or is the association going to be guided by your own Officials, your own executive committee Meeting, your own Council Meeting, and your own Branch Rooms?’130 Though incensed by Potts’s behaviour district officials were themselves reluctant to countenance his removal from the union, lest this provoke further disruption. Wadsworth himself spoke against Potts’s dismembering,131 and delegates agreed, voting 616 to 493 that he retain his position. A large meeting at Hemsworth unanimously passed a vote of confidence in Potts early in 1906,132 and he continued throughout to have the community’s support. Continuing impasse and more appeals for assistance From time to time over this period initiatives emerged regarding the negotiation of new price lists for Hemsworth. As early as November 1905 a committee had been set up with four representatives of the owners’ association and four from the YMA to this end.133 But little movement had occurred and the position of the Hemsworth branch remained firm that no reduction would be acceptable. In May 1906, Hemsworth justified a renewed appeal to trade unionists for support with the claim that the owners’ side was proposing terms which would entail a substantial reduction of as much as 22 per cent.134 The branch was profoundly unwilling to submit.


By June, however, patience at the Barnsley headquarters was wearing thin. Hemsworth miners continued to constitute a substantial drain on the union’s resources, an estimated £38,000 having been paid in benefits since the beginning of the dispute.135 Over 1906 as a whole Hemsworth accounted for over half of all YMA members on strike or locked out and for the single largest number of victims of any branch.136 The union’s financial situation was still acute, with prolonged disputes not just at Hemsworth but also at Thrybergh Hall, Rawmarsh and Swinton, and pay also continuing for some workers at Wheldale/Fryston, Glasshoughton, Wyke and Ravensthorpe. There was considerable pressure to get individuals and branches off funds wherever possible as well as reluctance to authorise any new action. Hemsworth’s adamant stand, however just the basis, thus came increasingly to be seen as unreasonable and the branch as recalcitrant. On 19 June, the YMA Council authorised the four men delegated to deal with the dispute on behalf of the union to continue negotiations with a view toward possible settlement. Hemsworth’s miners were recommended to discuss the matter with them so that some collective decisions could finally be reached.137 The immediate response of the branch, however, was to protest against both the suggested procedure and the recommendation that delegates vote on the Hemsworth case at the next council meeting.138 In July the colliery formally came under new ownership, having been purchased by Major Shaw and incorporated into a new company, the South Kirby, Featherstone and Hemsworth Collieries Ltd of Ropergate, Pontefract.139 The new owner wanted a settlement as quickly as possible and partly to this end there was a reshuffle of negotiators. Major Shaw, Percy Greaves, Mr Snow and Mr Archer now made up the owners’ team, Wadsworth, Hall and Smith represented the YMA and Potts, Watmough, Smith and Starkey represented Hemsworth. In August there was prolonged discussion, but by the month’s end no resolution had been reached. The frustration of district officials was by this point high and it was no doubt partly for this reason that matters boiled over in the early part of September at the TUC annual conference in regard to an appeal made directly by Potts and Bull on behalf of Hemsworth, and aborted by the intervention of the YMA’s official delegation to the congress. The previous year when Watmough wired the TUC asking that the Hemsworth case be put forward, just £12 10s was collected. But branch officials believed the publicity given the case well worth the effort and responsible for many more hundreds of pounds coming in over the next few weeks.140 In May 1906 Hemsworth took a letter to the district headquarters from a branch secretary in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers which seemed to promise substantial aid upon formal appeal through the Miners’ Federation. Herbert Smith, the only district official then in Barnsley, agreed to help, but wrote not specifically on behalf of Hemsworth, but the 2,000 or so on strike or locked out throughout the district. Hemsworth officials did not object to this, fully acknowledging the


needs of all in the county on strike or locked out. But they were loath to sacrifice assistance promised by virtue of their own efforts to a more general appeal, and when later convinced that the general request had been bungled, or at the least not sufficiently followed up, their dissatisfaction with Barnsley’s efforts on their behalf grew. A subsequent letter from Potts to Wadsworth, asking that the YMA officially request the assistance of ‘several large societies’ who had intimated a willingness to give it, contained the barbed remark that the branch was issuing this plea ‘pending the Yorkshire Miners’ Association making some arrangements whereby the Society can maintain its own suffering members endeavouring to uphold its principles’.141 Wadsworth’s reply was abrupt, reiterating Hemsworth would receive the same consideration as any other branch in the association.142 But Hemsworth miners pursued the initiative. Potts’s course of action in the autumn of 1906 was to make another appeal to the TUC, writing to Mr Steadman, secretary of its parliamentary committee, as directed by the branch and requesting that two delegates from Hemsworth be permitted to attend the congress at Liverpool to place their case before the body. Steadman replied that as a delegation was already appointed from the YMA its members should raise the point.143 The initial request was left late and subsequent action even later, so that Potts’s letter to Wadsworth asking that the case be formally put was sent to the YMA general secretary at Liverpool, where he and the other delegates were preparing to attend the congress.144 In the event Potts and William Bull went off to Liverpool themselves and having made but a feeble follow-up to Potts’s letter to Wadsworth, possibly because already convinced that the official delegation would not act on their behalf, saw members of the General Purposes Committee themselves. When the congress chairman ruled that Potts and Bull could not in fact be heard, Bob Smillie, of the Scottish miners and a member of the ILP, rose to query the ruling and to declare that if Yorkshire delegates would not raise the issue, then he would. At this point Smillie was apparently ordered out of the room.145 The upshot was that Potts and Bull were allowed on to the platform on Friday afternoon to make their plea without the knowledge of the YMA delegation. YMA officials, who had in fact made an unsuccessful attempt on receipt of Potts’s letter to have the cases of both Hemsworth and Thrybergh Hall brought before congress, were so outraged by Potts and Bull going over their heads that H.Smith, as one of the delegation, rose to protest their presence and the appeal was never officially made. Their outrage was compounded by the contents of a circular to those in attendance at the TUC which criticised a statement made in reference to Hemsworth by Fred Hall on the subject of compulsory arbitration at an earlier session of the congress. The circular, which appealed for broad assistance to those out at Hemsworth, also included the jibe that Barnsley officials would do well to ‘take off their jackets’ and fight with firm determination to uphold the original Atkinson award.


Their action and the circular led to Potts and Bull being severely rebuked by the YMA Council immediately after the Liverpool congress. They had not, as their circular claimed, been delegated to attend the TUC, it was declared, and they had done the cause of Hemsworth great and serious injury. So appalling did officials, and presumably council delegates, find the whole incident that it was considered in order to pass a vote of confidence in YMA officials and their conduct at the TUC, notification of which Wadsworth was instructed to forward to Mr Steadman, TUC secretary.146 But Potts and Bull were equally angered by their experience at the TUC. Over the following days they toured the district and attended several branches, including those at Castleford, Dinnington and South Kirkby,147 and complained about their treatment. This merely added to the growing ill-will and Potts and Bull were called to account and threatened with being ‘dismembered’. For Potts this was the second district-wide consideration of his position by the YMA within the year. Potts accused Potts attended the council meeting on 9 October 1906 where there was a long rambling review of his alleged wrongdoings. It is an odd account, with apparently petty points frequently raised and much of the argument obscure. Neither side emerges with much credit. But it is again evidence of the significance of Potts’s case for the union. He was accused of numerous misdeeds, mis-statements and presumptions, many of them centring on the TUC débâcle but others extending beyond it in time and substance, the whole touching on political stance, financial propriety in the handling of the Nipsey account, Potts’s own integrity with respect to the stand against threatened reduction at Hemsworth and the manner in which he—and others at Hemsworth—treated their district officials. Wadsworth began by reasserting the charge that, contrary to their claims, Potts and Bull had not been delegated to attend the TUC by resolution of a general meeting at Hemsworth and had not consulted officials prior to the congress about the Hemsworth case being put there. He considered Potts and Bull to have acted in a manner expressing contempt for district leadership, as though the latter were ‘lumps of wood’ which could be kicked about. In his view their behaviour was less directed at assisting the starving at Hemsworth than at setting ‘this Society and Officials at defiance’. His own irritation and impatience with Hemsworth was great, a product in part of difficulties encountered in negotiations with owners’ representatives throughout the year. ‘We have a new Company formed’, he told the council, ‘and I want to say this, gentlemen, and I say it seriously, I hope we shall be able to see a way out of that difficulty. The new Company will not be played with like Mr Fosdick was played with.’148


Potts’s contributions to the proceedings consisted largely of denials, explanations and self-justification, in some cases wholly reasonable in tone and content, but also reflecting a somewhat narrow preoccupation with Hemsworth as against the broader interests of the union as a whole. The arguments put by district officials for their part repeatedly contested too great an autonomy being claimed by local branches or too unilateral an approach. As Hall stated, what we do object to, and what I hope we shall always object to, is when we have more than one pitstead of men out on Strike or Locked-Out, or out of work from no fault of their own, and we have to appeal for assistance. We shall not do it individually, but do it collectively for the whole men out.149 It was precisely on this basis, said Smith, that he had objected to Bull and Potts’s initiative from the TUC platform. Both Smith and Wadsworth were at pains to detail the extent of assistance given Hemsworth by the YMA and in the process shame the branch for their contention that they were being deserted, neglected, or double-crossed by officials. Hemsworth, said Smith, had got more than any other branch in the association. Others had been locked out, but it was only Hemsworth which had received such rich assistance from the Federation. Commenting on the claim of some from Hemsworth to be stalwarts of the YMA, he noted that had they ‘many stalwarts like Hemsworth there would be no Society to Stalwart’.150 But if concerned to demonstrate sustained commitment and to press the point that the interests of no individual branch should ever come before those of the association as a whole, it also became clear that Wadsworth, at least, objected not merely to unilateral appeals but to any appeal at all to outside bodies. This represented a clear point of conflict between him and Potts, and perhaps an irreconcilable one, with each convinced of the correctness of their principled stands. Wadsworth commented that while voluntary cadging was one thing, ‘I hope we are not going to appeal as a Society.’ But Wadsworth was even more explicit than this and his words made clear that Potts was justified in his belief that the general secretary never had any intention of following up the appeal on behalf of Hemsworth to the engineers or other large associations. ‘If you appeal to the Engineers and all those Trades for one or two Collieries in this great Society which has over £200,000,’ he said, ‘it will be a disgrace to this Society.’ Nor did Wadsworth feel that the YMA should ‘stoop to lay the appeal before the Federation’ on behalf of two or three pits. Potts could only comment that this was a new issue. ‘We ought to be able to maintain our own, that is the original position of it, Sir, and I say, Sir, where I stand, it is not right.’ While it might be very well to be independent and to maintain members as required, ‘our own people are starving at the moment’.


Having been out for so long and there being so much distress in consequence, they were bound to do something, he said. The council witnessing this interrogation and explanation was clearly divided. There were those like the Dinnington delegate who felt that ‘this kind of thing that is being done by one or two persons from Hemsworth is no good to the Society’ and others who considered that ‘Mr Potts has nothing to do with it.’ The council resolved that particulars be sent to the district and a decision made at the next meeting.151 On that occasion the vote was 646 to 447 that neither Potts nor Bull be dismembered, the figures very similar to the vote taken in February on Potts’s dismemberment, though this second time slightly more in Potts’s favour. It is evident, then, that Potts was not seen as categorically in the wrong as district officials would suggest. That he still enjoyed a certain respect through the district is indicated by his re-election to the joint committee at the end of the year, albeit the total vote he received was the lowest of the seven returned. That he continued to enjoy the support of his own branch is suggested by Hemsworth having voted on his advice against proposals at the end of the year in connection with an offer of a 5 per cent increase and new terms of operation of the Federation’s Conciliation Board.152 Hemsworth in this case went against the district trend, since the Yorkshire vote as a whole was 978 in favour and 135 against.153 But what specifically was behind Potts’s advice and whether it implied his remaining at odds with district leadership over points of principle is not clear. The dispute winds down In the mean time Hemsworth miners remained out and district officials continued to press for a settlement. At the end of October 1906, the YMA executive committee issued a strong recommendation that Hemsworth men accede to Shaw’s request for datallers; otherwise strike and lock-out pay could well be jeopardised.154 But while some work may have begun at the colliery, many of the miners remained out, though their numbers were considerably reduced. From over a thousand on the books receiving strike and lock-out pay in the autumn of 1905, the number remaining by mid-March 1907 was just 233. A rule change at the end of 1906, intended to alleviate the association’s financial burden resulting from prolonged and apparently hopeless disputes, provided that whenever the YMA declare a strike or lock-out to be officially ‘off’, members could continue receiving benefits for an additional six months only, regardless of whether alternative employment was available or not. Almost immediately several stoppages, including those at Ravensthorpe, Wyke and Wheldale/Fryston were declared off. A motion proposed by Shireoaks and Streetley branch subsequently prompted the council, meeting on 8 April 1907, to consider all remaining cases. After a vote, disputes at the Haigh Moor seam at


Glasshoughton and at Halifax and Soothill Wood were duly declared off.155 And when the stoppage at Thrybergh Hall was similarly declared at an end in midJune, only Hemsworth remained from among those apparently hopeless cases, still being supported by the YMA. In addition to recipients of strike and lock-out pay, Hemsworth continued throughout 1907 to have the largest number of victims on the books of any branch, with fifty-three at the beginning of the year and thirty-two at the end.156 In this sense, perhaps, and despite any impatience felt with the branch by district officials, Hemsworth continued to enjoy a special position of continued support. The Hemsworth dispute, however, more or less came to an agreed end toward the end of the year, when the executive committee recommended that officials make arrangements so that Hemsworth miners could set to work as soon as possible.157 There was still a degree of ill-feeling in the branch and several more weeks of delay, but more than three years after the stopping of the Barnsley seam and many more since the beginning of price-list difficulties at the colliery, the dispute was officially recognised as ended. Any relief experienced could only be partial, however. Rather than setting on those first who were on strike and lockout sheets, workers were drafted in from the firm’s two other pits, South Kirkby and Featherstone. Their ire thereby aroused, the local committee determined both to stay out as long as possible in protest at the management’s strategy and to denounce any who agreed to be taken on. This led to division both within the community and the branch which persisted for some time. With elements reminiscent of the somewhat inglorious running down of the Ravensthorpe dispute, the committee held firm to trade union principles and demanded support from the district. Though while in the case of Ravensthorpe local union strength was the ultimate victim, at Hemsworth, in spite of a series of minor upheavals and inevitable adjustments, the branch prevailed. It was forced to accept those it earlier regarded as renegades, but also continued to command respect for the stolidity of its leadership. In the meantime many remained out of work and supported by the YMA. In the beginning of 1909, there were still 192 on the books, sixty-four receiving strike pay and 127 lock-out pay.158 A year later the numbers had decreased but a full 111 were still officially out.159 Inevitably the Hemsworth issue engendered continuing concern within the district as a whole, a mixture of both sympathy and irritation over the intransigence of a case which would not get itself fully settled and which persisted in costing the society dearly. Early in 1908 Hemsworth branch asked the YMA Council to dismember all those who had been drafted into the pit in a manner contrary to the spirit of the agreement so recently reached. They were particularly angered by nine individuals whom they considered to have led others in ‘furthering the interests of capital against labour and trade unionism’.160 After deliberation the council of 20 January 1908voted solidly against dismemberment. Nor was Potts successful in


his suggestion to Wadsworth that there should be a county wide strike to compel the company to keep its end of the bargain and that the case should be referred to the MFGB.161 District leaders tried to juggle the internal dissension, both sanctioning those taken on at Hemsworth and supporting those who remained out. In April the council directed Wadsworth to request that Colonel Shaw and his colleagues meet a deputation of officials who had settled the price list ‘to talk over in a friendly way the position of things at Hemsworth Colliery’.162 But the company had little inclination to alter its strategy. In May, the council directed Potts as Hemsworth secretary, along with the subsecretary, to take contributions from those who had been exonerated in the dismemberment row.163 Hemsworth appealed, though in vain. Still the branch dragged its feet and so in the summer of 1908 the council took matters more fully into its own hands, authorising three representatives—Jacks, Walsh and F.Wilkinson—to meet with three representatives of those at work at the colliery and a further three from the Hemsworth committee in order to make arrangements for bringing those at work into the branch. At the appointed date, however, five came on behalf of the branch, making it impossible to hold the meeting as directed by the council and laying the Hemsworth committee open to criticism as deliberate wreckers of peace attempts. District officials declared that ‘the Members must make up their minds once and for all whether this Association is going to be governed and controlled by the members of the 156 branches composing the association, or whether it is going to allow Hemsworth to govern the Society, and set the Branches, Officials, and Rules of the association at defiance’.164 When branches were requested to hold special meetings to vote on whether Hemsworth should agree to organise those at work, the result was decisive. It was agreed by a vote of 1,232 to 27 that Hemsworth should carry out the council’s resolutions, and by 1,000 to 190 that on refusal their own strike and lock-out pay should be stopped.165 Walsh, Jacks and Wilkinson were directed to return to Hemsworth to supervise an election of a new local committee and generally to see to the ‘remodelling of the branch’.166 The bulk of those elected to the new committee were from among those still off work, including Potts as secretary and delegate. But by virtue of its including three from among those ‘working’, a degree of reconciliation was achieved. Still the disjunction remained within the local branch between those out of work and those back, with perhaps somewhat different preoccupations entertained by each faction. A degree of sympathy still remained for the stalwarts who had sacrificed so much in the Hemsworth dispute, perhaps enhanced by the fact that some were closely associated with socialist or Labour principles, toward which sentiment within Yorkshire was now decisively turning.


During the YMA’s annual demonstration in 1908, both Wadsworth and Hall had been heckled, in some instances accused of not representing the union as efficiently as they should and in others specifically for their political positions. Those still out of work at Hemsworth were said to have contributed a touch of pathos to the day by ‘engaging a band of instrumentalists playing cardboard trumpets’.167 A disturbance erupted during the formal proceedings at the platform presided over by Wadsworth, apparently in protest at the YMA’s policy toward Hemsworth branch.168 In the midst of the speeches a member of the audience jumped to his feet shouting ‘what about the Hemsworth settlement?’ and complaining that district officials had not personally visited the community and had left its inhabitants ‘in the cold’.169 Wadsworth’s parting comment on the day was that he had no feeling against any one and only hoped that Yorkshire miners conducted themselves in branch rooms and did their business in a proper manner. They would all be the better for it.170 Keir Hardie had been scheduled to speak at the Yorkshire gala in 1908 but had been unable to attend. The following year, however, he was present, symbolising by his presence growing support for Labour politics. Alongside him at the same platform was John Potts. Whatever his disagreements with district officials over the previous several years, he evidently retained sufficient support among YMA membership at large to be selected as an official speaker. Potts argued a point later picked up and expanded upon by Hardie, that rather than continuing to sanction local strikes, the union should fight as a ‘common body’ on behalf of a victimised or aggrieved branch. In this he retrieved and elaborated upon the principle often invoked in Yorkshire miners’ history and certainly at the basis of the struggle of Pickard and his colleagues to establish the Miners’ Federation as an industrially powerful organisation. Potts believed strongly in Labour solidarity. And though his interpretation and application of this principle had sometimes put him at loggerheads with district officials, his unfailing and obviously sincere advocacy of trade unionism earned a sustained respect from the union’s rank and file. His was a support of trade unionism not posed against but effectively underpinning Labour politics.171 If preferring county-wide support for a principled stand against the perceived unjust action of colliery capital, Potts’s conviction in the need for unity may have ultimately allowed a capitulation of sorts to the wishes of district officials in the ‘remodelling’ of Hemsworth branch. In judicious language, the YMA minutes record at the end of 1909 that Potts had ‘kindly seen his way’ to withdrawing from the secretaryship at Hemsworth in favour of a replacement elected from among those at work at the colliery. It had been finally agreed that those working should hold positions of secretary and treasurer as well as a number of committee places equal to those held by miners still receiving strike or lock-out pay.172


But the district continued to fund scores of Hemsworth men still off work. They remained on the books until the middle of 1910 when it was finally agreed that payment should cease, marking the end of what was in some cases a six-year period out of work and in receipt of union dispute benefit. This chapter of Hemsworth’s marathon stand finally closed, not in all cases happily, but with the branch retaining its integrity and the community retaining its reputation of militancy and staunch support for Labour.

13 THE MINIMUM WAGE STRIKE— OPERATION OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ACT

After 1906 the depression in the mining industry which left wages just 40 per cent above the standard began to lessen and by the beginning of 1908 there was an improvement of 20 per cent. Across the second half of the decade wages fluctuated slightly but were characterised overall by a general rise. By the end of 1908 they stood at 55 per cent above the standard. They fell by 5 per cent the following year, but then in 1912 this loss was returned. Two more advances of 5 per cent each brought wages to 65 per cent on the standard by May 1913. Throughout these years there was pressure from the miners both for wage increases and for a change in the rules of play incorporated in the Conciliation Board’s procedures. The miners wanted to alter the formula for salary calculations, to set a new, higher, minimum and to rationalise procedures by adopting a uniform basis across all parts of the Federation. This initiative, which usually took at least partial form in the demand that current salaries in the English districts be taken as both the new minimum and the basis for further calculation, was repeatedly opposed by the owners. It was only as a result of national action in 1912 that any significant progress was realised. The 1912 strike was of importance as the first national (or Federation) action since the strike of 1893. It grew out of grievances over the manner in which piece rates were applied to what were known as abnormal places. The Conciliation Board’s specifications of minima, which along with maxima governed the range within which wages could vary, had for some time pointed toward the principle of a minimum wage, though one which necessarily varied from pit to pit, depending on the specific level of local wages applying in 1888. These minima, however, were not in fact wages, but percentages upon the agreed basis. In contrast the 1912 strike established the principle of an absolute figure serving as a minimum. In reality this figure was not uniform across the industry as a whole, but varied from region to region. But at least it was intended to be uniform within a given region and not specific to a given colliery. Moreover, it was a wage for each worker. It was applied to the person rather than to the pit.


These changes, which were fundamental, were only realised as a result of commitment, determination and sustained industrial struggle. It took a national strike to achieve them. Wage applications and attempts to reform conciliation machinery In the several years prior to 1912, the Conciliation Board worked in a routine fashion and with less accompanying acrimony than had characterised earlier periods. Miners were often impatient to obtain wage increases and owners typically reluctant to grant concessions. But applications for wage alterations were generally handled with ease and relative speed. In 1907 there were several such applications as the market appeared, to the miners at least, to improve. In January 1907 wages increased by 5 per cent in accord with an agreement reached by the Conciliation Board in December 1906. Almost immediately Yorkshire area miners were anxious to have a further rise and the YMA Ordinary Council of 14 January directed that an application for a 5 per cent increase be sent to Mr Ashton, secretary to the MFGB, to come before the English Conciliation Board.1 In February a formal application was made by the Miners’ Federation and after two meetings the 5 per cent was granted, though only, as stressed by the owners, on the understanding that it should not disturb the relationship ‘hitherto subsisting between wages and the average selling price’.2 It was the general view of the owners that the advance was not actually justified by the state of the industry and its market. But in a period of relative buoyancy there may have been little desire to quibble the point or translate hesitancy into opposition. The increase, which brought miners’ wages to 50 per cent above the 1888 standard, was intended to apply to all underground labour as well as to surface labour engaged on the pit-banks and screens in handling the coal. Again, almost immediately the new advance was granted, there were branches in Yorkshire eager to push for more. In May, Thornhill branch proposed that application be made for a further 5 per cent3 and the YMA Council again agreed to forward the proposal to the MFGB.4 In June the English section of the MFGB made formal application for an advance which was granted in August on much the same terms as before. As previously, the resolution passed by the Conciliation Board agreeing the increase included the qualification that it was not justified by current figures, ‘but is given in the belief that there is a rising market’.5 Once more there was a renewed call by Yorkshire for yet a further 5 per cent increase, the YMA Council instructing Wadsworth to send in an application to Ashton ‘at once’.6 In September the application went forward7 but this time the owners balked. With the parties to the Conciliation Board failing to agree, the question was referred to the neutral chairman, Lord James of Hereford, who

THE MINIMUM WAGE STRIKE 367

ultimately decided in favour of the miners but specified that the advance be delayed to the first making-up day in 1908. Owners in West Yorkshire were particularly displeased with this award because, by virtue of being based partly on increased output over the year, it disturbed the relationship which had formerly existed between selling prices and wages. The workers, on the other hand, were concerned less with output or selling price than with the prevailing cost of living, but were always ready to take advantage of a good market to argue that the proceeds it yielded justified a wage advance. They also hoped to take advantage of a rising market to gain greater uniformity on wage scales in different parts of the federated area. The standard for figuring wages was based on wages applying in 1888 for Scotland and England and in 1879, in contrast, for South Wales. And while there was general equivalence in wages as set by the standard between England and Wales—4s 6d to 5s a day in England in 1888 and 4s 6d to 5s a day in South Wales in 1879— this did not hold for Scotland where the standard rate paid in 1888 was only about 4s a day.9 Thus the Scottish miners received lesser absolute amounts for the same percentage increase than did miners in England and South Wales. Minima constraining movement of wages also varied, from 30 per cent above the standard for South Wales to 37.5 per cent on the standard for England and Scotland. In the miners’ view, the situation necessitated reform. They called for the designation of a new standard equivalent to the prevailing, and highest, minimum, as well as increases across the board. In early 1908, with wages temporarily at a high point of 60 per cent above the standard, there was some hope for movement in this direction. But it was not, however, rewarded with change and in September even the 60 per cent was lost.10 The owners applied for a reduction in August 1908. Agreement within the Conciliation Board proved impossible and so again Lord James of Hereford was called upon. He awarded a 5 per cent reduction, bringing wages back to the same level, 55 per cent above the standard, that had applied at the beginning of the year.11 Owners in West Yorkshire were highly relieved by this outcome. The minutes of their association record that ‘Lord James gave his Award in a firm and outspoken manner which was much appreciated by the Masters’ Representatives.’12 Almost immediately Newland branch of the YMA called for the 5 per cent to be returned, but the Yorkshire executive judiciously ruled that the matter should be left over for the time being.13 In October, however, Wadsworth was instructed to write to Ashton of the MFGB asking that steps be taken as necessary to bring Yorkshire’s application for a 5 per cent advance before the Conciliation Board.14 In the event this came to nothing. It was from the owners that the next application came to the board, when on 30 December they asked for a further reduction. The matter was adjourned until February 1909, and again Lord James of Hereford was called in to adjudicate. His award was a further 5 per cent


reduction to be applied from the first pay day after 20 March, bringing wages down to 50 per cent on the standard. Soon after there were calls in Yorkshire that the 5 per cent be restored. The YMA Council left the matter in abeyance, but there was evident concern over the state of affairs and the sense that an injustice prevailed which should be righted. At the same time there was a fear that the market might deteriorate further and the reductions continue. In July yet another application for a reduction was made by the owners. They did not get it, but were able to extract acceptance of certain terms, limiting the leverage available to the miners and cementing the tie of wages to prices. It was agreed that there should be no application for an advance until the selling price had risen above 7s 10.21d by an amount sufficient to recoup the loss incurred by owners through payment of the prevailing wage rate during that period when the price was below 7s 10.21d. It was further agreed that notice to terminate the Conciliation Board should not be given until the selling price had recovered and remained settled at a level judged sufficient by the board—or in the absence of the board’s consensus by an outside chairman—to recoup owners for losses previously incurred.15 During 1910 no applications were made to the Conciliation Board. The price did not rise high enough to permit appeal for an advance, nor low enough to warrant a claim for a general reduction. Nor was there any movement of wages in 1911. But this year saw important shifts in emphasis in discussions between miners and colliery owners, first toward a guaranteed price for work in ‘abnormal places’, and then more generally toward implementation of a minimum wage. The problem of abnormal places The issue of fair wages for work in abnormal places was a subject of discussion at the MFGB annual conference of 1909, held at Newcastle, when commitment to the general principle was affirmed. Many pits in Yorkshire and throughout the British coalfield had items specifically written into price lists providing a daywage for work in places where conditions had deteriorated or were sufficiently difficult to prevent an ‘average’ wage being gained. But securing payment for such abnormal conditions, even where price-list provision existed, required workers persuading management of the justice of their claim, usually on a caseby-case basis. Over time as the older collieries wore down and conditions generally deteriorated, ‘custom’ which might have prevailed earlier tended often to lapse. As it came to affect more pits and more colliers, the abnormal places issue gained increasing salience and this in turn brought into focus something of the anachronistic nature of the price list—a piece-rate system which left colliers behind while more and more sections of the working class acquired or took for granted a minimum day rate.


The question of abnormal places figured particularly acutely in South Wales where it prompted a series of strikes beginning in September 1910 and ultimately involving some 55,000 workers.16 At the annual meeting of the MFGB in October a delegate from South Wales raised the matter and the principle agreed a year earlier was reaffirmed, when it was resolved that miners in all districts should meet owners and demand a ‘fair living wage’ for all miners working in abnormal places.17 As the strike in South Wales wore on, an appeal was made for financial support from the MFGB and a special conference was called in January 1911 to give it due consideration. Maximum support via its rule 20 was not immediately granted by the Miners’ Federation but it was agreed that a levy of 3d per member should be laid in order to raise £3,000 as a contribution to striking miners.18 The MFGB also delegated Ashton and Harvey (of the Derbyshire miners) to assist the South Wales Federation in an attempt to bring an end to the dispute. On the general question of abnormal places, the position agreed at the annual conference was reaffirmed and strengthened. It was stipulated that each district should immediately press for a minimum wage for all those working in abnormal places and should this not be secured within three months, the MFGB should recommend national action to obtain it. The contribution of Harvey and Ashton to the South Wales dispute brought little success and at a special MFGB conference held on 26 April it was recommended that the matter should be settled by arbitration. The owners, however, preferred to continue with negotiations and in mid-May an agreement on the basis of a cutting price was reached between D.A. Thomas, chairman of the Cambrian Collieries Ltd and Ashton, Harvey and Edwards on behalf of the Federation. It was not, however, received favourably by the South Wales miners. When they continued to resist and to vent cricitism of MFGB officials, a further special conference, held on 13 June, decided amidst considerable acrimony that the MFGB should cease all involvement in the dispute.19 Even so, and regardless of the particulars of the South Wales case, general support remained for the securing of a minimum wage for work in abnormal places. While the MFGB resolution of 25 January that districts should meet with owners to press for a minimum for abnormal places within three months imposed a certain sense of urgency,20 it was only in May that the YMA Council resolved that coal owners should be formally asked to meet miners’ representatives to discuss the question. An initial meeting took place in late June 1911, during which Wadsworth laid out the union’s position. The current system of payment, he stated, left too many with returns which were much too low for the labour expended. He emphasised that their immediate concern was payment for abnormal places and not the ‘general minimum wage question’, but the two matters became blurred in subsequent discussion, as increasingly became the case more generally in Yorkshire and elsewhere. As Wadsworth indicated, miners were beginning to wonder why they lacked what was normal to the wage


and salary arrangements of many other workers. ‘Take the bricklayers, the stonemasons, the engineers and mechanics, they all have a day’s wage, and we don’t see but what a collier is entitled to have a day’s wage when he goes down the pit and is prepared to work.’21 He claimed that there were an estimated 114 price lists in Yorkshire where hard and difficult places were recognised, at least ‘to some extent’. In many of these the figure of 5s plus percentages was specified. In others it was simply stated that wages should be met in a fair way. In addition there were fifty-one price lists in the county where it was stated that any work not specifically defined and valuated should be dealt with ‘betwixt the Management and the men’. Were all these to be carried out conscientiously, there would be little difficulty over the matter. But this could not be guaranteed. Yorkshire, as elsewhere, even if to a lesser extent, had its difficulties with payment for abnormal places. And this was only to be regretted. For as Wadsworth noted: We think that Yorkshire is always the premier county, and we want it to be the premier county, so far as coal owners are concerned in paying wages. It is looked upon as giving a lead to a very large extent. They always look to Yorkshire if they want to look to anything good, and we want the Yorkshire coal owners to be as good and liberal as possible. What we are asking for is 5s. a day plus percentage for abnormal places…22 But the owners wondered, if the situation was so relatively superior to other districts, what all the fuss was about.23 They were unwilling to concede the principle of a uniform minimum whether for abnormal places or more generally, though there were clearly many who routinely allowed a day rate to apply in respect of an individual price list. Rather than permitting further standardisation of price lists, they preferred to retain and improve upon existing lists and machinery for regulating wages. As F.J.Jones, chairing the meeting, argued, ‘It is not good beginning to talk about destroying absolutely every Price List in the district. We have got the Price Lists, we have two joint committees to deal with these Price Lists; and it is not open for us in this room to set to work and tear all these things to ribbons.’24 Wadsworth reasonably observed that the YMA had no intention of tearing up price lists, but rather of making an addition to price lists where difficulties were not dealt with at present. But this would imply a uniform formula, and owners then began to quibble about the criteria involved and its implications. They finally drew discussion to a close, claiming inability to see their way to any reasonable settlement. YMA officials were disappointed that the meeting should have accomplished so little; for they were by this time under considerable pressure from the YMA membership to achieve tangible results. ‘Did you read the report of the Miners’


Demonstration at Barnsley?’ Wadsworth asked. ‘A man shouted to me—“You are clamming us to death”, and these are the people we have to deal with. Is that as far as you can go Mr chairman?’ Evidently it was, to the regret of miners’ officials.25 Increasing focus on the call for a minimum wage The Barnsley demonstraton, just a week earlier, had occasioned considerable discussion of both the specific South Wales dispute and the more general question of a minimum for abnormal places. It was around this period that a shift of emphasis was in fact occurring from abnormal places to the question of an overall minimum wage, with Welsh miners again at the forefront. At the special conference of the MFGB held in the middle of June when the Miners’ Federation had effectively washed its hands of the South Wales dispute, a resolution was submitted by South Wales calling for immediate action to secure a minimum wage for all mine workers,26 but it had been ruled unacceptable for inclusion on the agenda which was rather given over to the issue of abnormal places. When the conference broached this latter topic, a delegate from South Wales intervened to argue that his area had ‘gone beyond the question of abnormal wages’. But it still took some time for the MFGB as a whole to catch up. In the meantime a second meeting with employers in Yorkshire held on 10 July continued to focus on the question of abnormal places. The YMA presented a set of proposals, the first of which was that 5s a day plus percentages be accepted as the norm for work in abnormal places. Machinery for designating abnormal places would involve a collier applying initially to the deputy overseeing the area in question and, failing agreement, applying to the manager. Should agreement still prove elusive, two representatives of the local branch would meet with two management representatives to inspect the place and offer comment. Only when these procedures had been exhausted would the matter go before the Joint Board. The YMA also proposed that the criterion for a place being defined as abnormal should be the inability to make a day’s wage by virtue of the effects of faults, coal being ‘extra hard’, or any other factor over which the collier had no control. Similarly, as in previous negotiations, the owners rejected the principle of a uniform minimum, on the claim that the variability of industriousness and capabilities of individual workers or categories of workers precluded it. As an alternative, they suggested that ‘there is no doubt that the fairest and best way of dealing with this question is to adopt the North of England system of cavilling, which would equalise the earnings’, a proposal categorically rejected by the YMA. The owners also suggested an alternative machinery for agreeing places to be abnormal, involving initial application to the undermanager rather than the


deputy, and specifying the possibility for an umpire to intervene should agreement still be lacking at the level of the joint board.27 The miners were displeased. As became evident during the course of the meeting, it was their first proposal for 5s a day plus percentages which they regarded as fundamental. Smith commented several times that unless a minimum were accepted there could be little basis for the arbitration suggested by the owners’ alternative to their second proposal. In an attempt to move the negotiations forward they modified their first proposal and suggested instead that ‘the prices on the price lists or agreements now governing the various collieries for day wages when working for the company in abnormal places be accepted and implemented there, and that where no wage was specified on the price list the men working in abnormal places should be paid the average wage of the colliery’. Hence they were willing to concede a general minimum if they could at least achieve colliery-specific minima throughout the coalfield. But the owners would still not agree, the chairman seeing little difference between the miners’ new and their original proposal. The principle, he claimed, was still the same: ‘We are not prepared to admit the principle,’ he said. ‘This is really the position.’28 Miners’ delegates from the various regions of the Federation came together in London on 28 and 29 July to hear reports of district negotiations and assess the overall position. Having done so they resolved that Federation officers should endeavour to arrange a joint meeting with the coal owners of the UK to consider the question of establishing district minima for work in abnormal places.29 Commitment to national action, even of this initial, almost exploratory, sort had now been gained. Yorkshire’s negotiations for a minimum wage During the autumn of 1911 the shift from the question of rates for abnormal places to an overall minimum wage became increasingly pronounced. The principle of district minima was affirmed by the Federation Annual Conference and subsequently ratified locally by the YMA Council.30 A series of meetings was then held in Sheffield in November between the YMA on the one hand and the West and South Yorkshire owners on the other. At the first, on 1 November, Yorkshire miners proposed a minimum of 8s per day to face workers qualified according to the Mines Regulation Act, with other figures specified for byeworkmen, haulage workers, trammers and fillers and boys. The owners’ proposals in contrast were comprised of points of principle rather than concrete figures. They acknowledged the justice of paying a fair day’s wage to those unable to otherwise achieve it in consequence of factors outside their control, so long as the figure applied on a pit-by-pit basis and did not exceed the average for any given pit. But they also provided their own loophole by specifying that the case of old and inefficient workers should be


subject to discussion between management and workers’ representatives ‘if their labour is to be continued’. Beyond this their proposals laid out machinery for determining the working places to which the ‘fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ should apply which now omitted the possibility of arbitration and stipulated that where a dispute necessitated discussion by two representatives from each side, their decision should be final.31 The two sides retired to consider their respective proposals and on reconvening on 6 November, each submitted a second set. The YMA generally accepted the essence of the owners’ proposals, albeit with some crucial qualifications and amendments. Where the owners proposed that disputed cases should be settled by two representatives of the owners and two practical colliers appointed by the workers and approved by the owner or manager, the YMA insisted that miners’ representatives should be appointed by the union and need neither be practical miners nor approved by management. While agreeing that cases of old and inefficient workers might be reviewed, they rejected the notion that this should be to determine ‘if their labour is to be continued’ and asked that the clause be removed. Most importantly, while not now naming a figure, they insisted on the need to specify an amount for a ‘fair day’s wage’. Nor did they allow that such a wage should be tied to the pit and therefore be variable from one to another, but rather adhered to the principle of a district minimum. The owners’ new proposals conceded that workers’ representatives should be appointed by the YMA without further restriction, so that on this point there was now agreement. They also granted that discussion regarding the old and inefficient should not be directed specifically to their continuation in employment, but stipulated that anyone absent 20 per cent of the time for reasons other than illness or accident should not be entitled to a ‘fair day’s wage’. But they remained adamant that a ‘fair day’s work’ should be tied to the pit and based on the amount each colliery paid those called to work for the company in a special job, so long as this did not exceed the average wage for the pit’s colliers.32 More adjustments were suggested and considered at a further meeting a few days later, though with the two sides still at a considerable distance from one another. On 20 November a fourth session considered yet more amendments made by the owners, who now ventured to name an overall figure, while still couching it within a formula relating the fair day’s wage to the average of a given pit. The link was, however, slightly relaxed. Where a pit’s day wage was below 4s 6d, the owners allowed that it could be raised to this figure, which should also apply where no day wage was specified in the price list. If a concession, the figure named was less than that originally called for by the YMA, though the comparison must take into account that one included percentages while the other did not.33 The YMA withdrew to study the amended proposals and then returned with their own amendments. At this point they seemed willing to accept a ‘variable’


minimum, but they objected to the constraints placed on its upper limit by the owners. They suggested that where the day wage in a given pit was over 4s 6d plus percentages, the prevailing figure should be retained as a minimum. They also asked for deletion of the phrase specifying that the ‘fair day’s wage’ should not exceed the average earned in any given pit. In rejecting this last proposal, the owners in turn offered a slight modification, suggesting as an alternative that the fair day’s wage should not exceed ‘the average wage earned by that collier in the pit’. In reporting the YMA’s inability to countenance this any more than the original phrase, Wadsworth asked the basis of the owners’ preoccupation with this point of pit-based averages. The chairman’s reply underlined the essential stumbling-block within the negotiations. Owners’ representatives considered conditions within the district as a whole too diverse to allow any district-wide minimum. As F.J.Jones explained on their behalf: The reasons are that in both districts the deletion of those words would be a very serious matter, and particularly so in West Yorkshire. There is a certain section of that district which needs more consideration than any other portion, and more consideration than South Yorkshire. The deletion of those words would be disastrous to that particular section, and very harmful to a portion of South Yorkshire.34 The following day, 21 November, a meeting of the joint committee and the Executive of the YMA concluded that miners were unable to accept the owners’ version of the disputed phrase. The miners required a district-wide figure, not one specific to each individual pit. But given the apparent impasse, they appear to have been prepared to entertain at least sub-district minima, for they resolved that should the opportunity arise, they would try to meet the West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire owners’ associations separately. There followed a meeting between miners’ officials and representatives from the South Yorkshire owners’ association, F.J.Jones and F.Parker Rhodes, prior to which the miners seem to have conceded the owners’ position on the first clause of the agreement, relating to the fair day’s wage being tied to pit averages. They were now more concerned about the final clause which excluded those working less than 80 per cent of the time pits were open. In the event, this meeting, too, proved unproductive.35 National campaign for a minimum wage The year ended, then, with stalemate. The owners sustained their resistance to a district-wide minimum and continued, moreover, to restrict discussion to rates applying to abnormal places. The miners, in contrast, had moved considerably


from this initial issue to support for a minimum for all underground workers in all places in all collieries. The annual conference of the Miners’ Federation for 1911, held in Southport, had resolved that the principle of the minimum wage to the individual should be secured for every person employed underground. It had been further agreed that the miners throughout the Federation should act in concert. It was recognised that separate negotiations might be required in the five different Conciliation Board areas, but as Smillie explained, ‘our aim has been to endeavour to secure a state of matters by which we can negotiate nationally, the representatives of the whole of the miners meeting the representatives of the whole of the coal owners of the country in order that national action might be secured’.36 Should a negotiated settlement not be forthcoming, there would then be need to resort to industrial action. The YMA affirmed its support for this position when in accord with Miners’ Federation directives, its yearly council resolved to issue a circular and arrange meetings in various sections of the county to explain the minimum wage issue and subsequently, in the first two weeks of January, to ballot members in respect of it.37 While negotiations continued during the first weeks of 1912, the position of the miners was therefore also assessed. The vote in Yorkshire revealed 63,736 in favour of a stoppage of work in support of the minimum wage claim and 10,447 against. It was reported at a special conference of the MFGB in mid-January that the overall total on the ballot had been 445,801 in favour and 115,921 against.38 Special conferences of the MFGB followed in rapid succession. As well as one on 18 and 19 January, there was another on 1 and 2 February, where, after intense discussion, a set of area rates was drawn up. Through this the miners demonstrated full cognisance of the differing conditions among the districts and the impossibility of establishing any overall minimum. No district official wished to concede a rate they regarded as too low and likely to draw complaint from their members, but variability was inevitable in these rates which would henceforth stand as claims for a minimum wage in each district. The highest among them, at 7s 6d, were for Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.39 Determined to carry on with negotiations, Federation representatives placed claims for the minimum wage before each of the five Conciliation Boards. Only the English board offered general agreement to the principle, though with a curious proposal for a ‘dual’ minimum, taking separate account of the abnormal places issue and the broader minimum wage question. On 19 February the English board produced an offer of a basic wage, regardless of any special considerations, of 6s 1.5d, and a higher figure, of 7s 1.5d, where special difficulties at the workplace prevented a collier from obtaining wages at ‘contract rates’. These were to apply in all cases where there were no alternative arrangements, agreements or customs specifying an equivalent for work in abnormal places.40 The more general response from owners, affirming that a fair day’s wage should be received for a fair day’s work but stubbornly insisting that


the amount of work performed could be the only measure of what was ‘fair’, applied in the industry as a whole.41 Even in the English board area there was dissent about the minimum. Owners in West Yorkshire were deeply unhappy about the tenor of discussion within the board and began to murmur about the advisability of their withdrawing from meetings in the federated area.42 Given the general opposition of owners and the commitment expressed in the Southport resolution that miners act in one accord, the national action continued, regardless of partial agreement in the English area.43 Notices had been dispatched from Barnsley on 7 February and on 26 February the YMA Council confirmed that noticing should in no case be postponed unless owners conceded claims put forward for a minimum wage. There was one last attempt to forestall the strike when the government intervened, calling both sides to conferences with the Prime Minister. Each made submissions and on 28 February the government also put forward a set of proposals. These were of a general nature promising the government’s availability to confer with the parties, but essentially suggesting a deferral of the stoppage and the embarking upon a series of district conferences empowered to set a wage ‘suitable to the special circumstances of each district’.44 The offer, however, was rejected by the MFGB and the owners of South Wales and Scotland.45 The miners repeated that no settlement was possible unless the principle of an individual minimum for all men and boys employed underground were conceded. All alternatives exhausted, the miners laid down their tools and came out on strike. In Yorkshire almost all left work on 1 March.46 Just in the mining industry alone the strike involved 850,000 directly and about 150,000 indirectly. Many more in related industries were affected as it proceeded.47 The enormity of the dispute and of its implications for the economy prompted swift government action. Intervention to stave off the strike was followed by attempts to bring the parties together after its initiation. On 8 March, the government proposed a joint conference of miners and owners; though when held on 13 and 14 March, it yielded little. This was immediately followed by separate meetings between the Prime Minister and each of the two parties. With a settlement no closer the Prime Minister announced the government’s intention of asking Parliament for legislation specifying that a ‘reasonable minimum wage’ should be a statutory term of the contract of underground workers, albeit also ensuring ‘adequate safeguards for employers’ protection.48 The Minimum Wage Act A bill was then introduced and carried on its second reading on 22 March with a vote in favour of 348 and opposed, 225. The strike was now into its third week and the pressure of its impact on government considerable, accounting for the


relative speed with which the legislative process was enacted. The miners would have greatly preferred a voluntary settlement with owners. But, as Smillie later told members of the International Committee of the International Miners’ Federation, with the circumstances such as they were there was little choice ‘but to try to make the best of the situation created by the introduction of the Government’s Bill’.49 On 27 March, when the bill was due to be passed, the miners were meeting in a special conference in London and voted 110 to 12 to advise the Labour Party to vote against the bill. They were unhappy that it did not name figures for the minimum or more broadly incorporate the whole of the schedule of rates for the various districts agreed by the Federation as the basis of its claim. But there was a sense of resignation that the bill would become law, as indeed the vote that evening ensured, and there was therefore an attempt to make the best of the situation, pointing to the gains achieved. As Wadsworth told the conference, ‘whatever the Act is, it is there, although it is not as satisfactory as I should have liked, yet we have secured the principle of a minimum wage’.50 Recognising that passage of the bill required reconsideration of the wisdom of continuing the strike, the conference agreed to ballot members on the question of their resuming work ‘pending settlement of the minimum rates of wages in the various grades by the District Boards to be appointed under the Mines Minimum Wage Act’.51 There followed a period of some agitation within both the Federation as a whole and various of the districts, as members in some quarters chided their leaders, scoffing at their advice, and as a mixture of advice was itself given, muddying waters, creating a certain bitterness and threatening disunity. The Act, which became law on gaining Royal Assent on 29 March 1912, established that a minimum would be set in each of a list of specified districts. The list itself gave cause for complaint within the YMA by including West and South Yorkshire as separate districts, much to the displeasure of the union which had always supported the county being treated as a single unit. There were other ways as well in which the bill represented a backward step from the position negotiated between owners and miners in Yorkshire prior to the strike. Among the most important was that the minimum need not be universally applied even within a given district, given provision for excluding those who failed ‘to comply with the conditions with respect to the regularity or efficiency of work to be performed’.52 The formulation of a set of rules in each district to set the terms of what was considered efficient and regular work and their application to specific cases was to become the major focus of contention and dispute once the machinery required by the bill was in place. The principle of exclusion was also to be applied to the old and the infirm. And, finally, exclusion was permitted ‘certain mines’ within a district. Joint district boards were empowered to settle special minima, either higher or lower than the general district rate, or to establish


special district rules, either more or less stringent than the general district rules, for a group or class of mines where special circumstances so warranted it.53 Indeed a joint district board could sub-divide a district into two or more parts, with agreement of board members, establishing different minimum rates and different rules in each. The district minimum itself was specifically to have regard to the existing average daily rate of wages. This was a point sorely regretted by many of the owners who felt their own interests thereby prejudiced, since they would have wished the minimum to reflect the lower edge of existing wage rates rather than the average.54 But if the owners felt disadvantaged thereby, the miners would contest their loss being substantial. The district minima ultimately set were all below those claimed by the miners. The YMA, for example, gained just 6s 9d for South Yorkshire and 5s 6d for West Yorkshire as against the MFGB’s claim for 7s 6d throughout the county.55 As well as setting a minimum rate of wages, the joint district boards were also given power to change them. Alteration of rates or district rules was allowed at any time with agreement of members of the board, or, after they had been in place for a year, upon application by either side, with three months’ notice, so long as the board was satisfied that the application represented a considerable body of opinion among either workers or owners.56 Representatives on the board were to be nominated and approved by the Board of Trade within a fortnight of the passing of the Act, a provision bringing considerable pressure to bear on both sides, and perhaps particularly on the miners who were still in the midst of their strike. YMA headquarters sent a notice to local officials on 3 April informing them that both the South and West Yorkshire owners’ associations had already appointed representatives and asking that branches hold special meetings to consult members as to the position the union should take. On 5 April the YMA held a special council meeting where it was resolved to appoint representatives to the boards on the union’s behalf. It was agreed that these should be the current members of the joint committee along with the six officials. A proposal that a further five members from South Yorkshire and four from West Yorkshire be appointed was defeated by a vote of 813 to 627, partly because of continuing resistance to the splitting of the county into two districts for purposes of the Act.57 The last stages of the strike Throughout this period, of course, a vote on the ongoing strike was being taken as directed by the MFGB, with ballots distributed on 29 March to be returned by 2 April. The MFGB conference of 27–29 March had decided after much debate not to state an official preference nor to advise members how they should vote,


but rather to leave the decision entirely to the striking miners.58 Nevertheless, many officials in the various districts had strong opinions on the relative merits of remaining out or returning and in some cases advice was explicitly given at this level. In Lancashire, for example, Thomas Ashton, long-time secretary of the MFGB as well as a local official, strongly advised an end to the strike. In a statement prepared for publication, he referred to reports of miners’ leaders elsewhere calling for continuing the stoppage until such time as all boards had been set up and rates fixed. He cautioned against this course, fearing that it would lead to fragmentation and disarray of what had been to that point a solid and effective campaign for just wages.59 In fact there were already signs that the strike would imminently break in certain areas and later some district leaders were to be bitterly accused of persuading their members to return before being directed by the Federation to do so. But miners in the northwest were loath to take heed of Ashton’s words and to relinquish their stand so quickly, particularly if primarily for reasons of pragmatism. At a meeting of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation, Ashton was called to task not just for his advice, but also for the public manner of its delivery.60 In Yorkshire, district officials generally advised a return to work. Herbert Smith declared at a meeting at Featherstone that they ‘had everything to gain and nothing to lose by accepting the Act’.61 But as in the northwest, the membership in Yorkshire strenuously resisted this line and was critical of their leadership for having pressed it. When the vote was counted the degree of their disapproval was evident. Only 13,267 were in favour of a return while 43,914 were against.62 The YMA, moreover, bound its representatives to the MFGB to this result, regardless of what might emerge from debate at the special conference where the ballot results were to be considered. When the special conference met on 6 April it was evident that if not with the majority registered in Yorkshire, the preference overall was for a continuation of the strike. A total of 201,013 had voted to resume work, but 244,011 were opposed.63 The debate reflected a high level of frustration with events. Fred Hall for Yorkshire spoke of members’ anger over the premature return of some areas. The advice given by their leaders, he said, had caused much dissension in Yorkshire.64 Others in the hall referred to the betrayal of the Federation by certain leaders. More broadly delegates blamed the present situation on the failure of the previous conference to agree on advice to membership in respect of the second ballot. According to Smith of the Scottish miners, many had refrained from voting at all, being ‘disgusted at the way this question has been bungled by their leaders’.65 It was thus on a sour note and with a niggling sense of failure that the conference had to recommend a way forward. Delegates faced a dilemma, for


while the majority was in favour of staying out, the overall number of votes cast was low and the size of the majority small. Events, moreover, were already overtaking them, with breaks in their unity all too evident. Most of those out in Warwickshire, South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire had returned to work several days previously, on 1 April.66 But there was also a question about their rules. A two-thirds majority was required for coming out on strike but it was unclear what sort of majority was required for remaining out. The committee of the Federation advised that the same two-thirds should apply on the ballot for continuing the strike. In moving a resolution to this effect and thereby advising a resumption of work, Smillie focused on the achievements reflected in the strike effort and the need to preserve and consolidate unity rather than risk it being further strained. While many may have had doubts as to whether the rank and file would show enthusiasm and solidarity sufficient for a national strike, events showed there had been little cause for worry. Never in the history of the world, he said, had there been so solid a movement of miners as at present. He acknowledged that they had not gained all they sought. ‘We have not got the figures. We have not secured them by joint negotiations, or under the Act of Parliament.’ But it could hardly be said they had gained no benefit. In the interests of unity he called for acceptance of the resolution. The conference concurred and with the exception of Lancashire and the Yorkshire delegation, which had a mandate they were obliged to honour, all others voted in favour.67 The majority of miners returned to work shortly after the special conference of 6 April, though some remained out until 15 April,68 and at a few pits complications regarding terms of the return led to several more weeks’ delay. In Yorkshire a special council met on 8 April to consider the MFGB decision. Continuing murmurs of dissent are evident in the vote of 328 for remaining out. But the clear majority represented by 1,284 agreed, whether reluctantly or not, to advise members to resume work. But if accepting the inevitable, a degree of bitterness persisted in Yorkshire, some of which was directed at district leadership. Later in the month it was expressed in calls for officials to resign in view of their ‘attitude on the Minimum Wage Question’. A motion to this effect was defeated by the council meeting on 30 April, but even so there had been 342 votes in favour out of a total 1,569 cast.70 In the end, most strikers were out for just over five weeks, but the numbers involved meant a heavy cost. YMA records do not separate out benefits paid during the minimum wage strike alone, but they necessarily constituted the greater part of total dispute expenditure for the year which at £275,272 was substantially higher than at any time since 1893.71


The work of the Joint Boards The task of establishing joint boards and their meeting to establish rates and rules began shortly after the return to work. Proceedings began first in South Yorkshire and, after several sessions, agreement was reached on 22 May. Much to the annoyance of owners in West Yorkshire, the board operating there was not able to have its first meeting until 15 May. It was, in fact, the last of the boards to be recognised by the Board of Trade and therefore the last to hold a district meeting under a chairman appointed by the Board.72 Part of the delay had been logistical, given the same set of miners’ representatives on both boards. But part also was in consequence of the miners’ preference for having the same chairman in both South and West Yorkshire. The owners would have none of it and ultimately the Board of Trade intervened by stipulating that there should be separate holders of the chairs in the two boards.73 Edward Clarke was appointed for the South Yorkshire joint board and Judge Amphlett for that in West Yorkshire. The joint boards were charged with establishing minimum rates, designating the boundaries of any sub-districts within which variable rates would apply, determining rules governing their application and setting out the process of appeal, should grievances subsequently arise. It had always been the position of the YMA that a single rate should apply throughout the county. Highly displeased with the division of the district under two separate boards, they were necessarily resistant to any further sub-division. In South Yorkshire a single minimum was established, at 6s 9d, considerably below the MFGB claim for Yorkshire of 7s 6d. The rate agreed for all other workers, apart from trammers and fillers, leading byeworkmen and qualified getters, was 5s, the minimum stipulated by the MFGB. Boys in South Yorkshire were granted 2s per day from 14 years, with the scale rising to a level of 4s 10d by age 21. In West Yorkshire, however, there was a strenuous battle over the owners’ wish for two minima, to apply to different sections of the coalfield. As the two sides were unable to agree, Judge Amphlett, as independent chairman, subdivided the district into two parts, east and west. A third special area was created for the ganister mine of the Hepworth Iron Company. Qualified getters in the eastern sub-division were to receive a minimum of 6s 8d, only slightly less than in South Yorkshire, and those in the western subdivision, 6s 2d. The rate set for the ganister mine was just 5s 6d. Rates for ‘all other workmen’ were 5s as in South Yorkshire in the eastern sub-division, but only 4s 10d in the western section. This was a figure lower than that which the Federation wished to have incorporated into the legislation, but higher than the West Yorkshire owners’ offer the previous year of 4s 6d. The figure for the ganister mine was just 4s 6d. Rates for boys in the eastern sub-division started at 2s and rose to 4s 9d, slightly


lower than the maximum allowed in South Yorkshire, from 2s, rising to 4s 4d in the western sub-division and from 2s to 4s in the ganister mine.74 The rates were a fundamental source of contention, but only marginally less so were the rules governing their application, which essentially set out exclusionary principles. As during county negotiations prior to the strike, these principles related to age, infirmity and regularity of attendance. With respect to the first of these, the rules established by the South Yorkshire board stipulated that all workers over 65 should be excluded as well as those over 60 where it was considered that age prevented their doing a ‘fair day’s work’.75 During deliberations of West Yorkshire’s board, however, the owners initially proposed 50 as the age allowing exclusion for hewers and 55 as that for all other classes of worker. The miners for their part suggested 70 as a definition for the aged worker, so long as their age was judged by the sub-committee of the board to bar them from accomplishing a fair day’s work.76 In this and other issues owners’ representatives in West Yorkshire were annoyed that the relevant rule had already been fixed in South Yorkshire, but strove to emphasise that the separation of the district surely implied that circumstances were different in the two sections of the county and there was therefore no requirement for uniformity as to rules. In fact, quite the contrary. But they had difficulty in persuading Judge Amphlett to accept this argument, who rather declared, ‘I do not know whether a man on one side is different to a man on the other.’77 In the end it was agreed that aged workers were those over 65 or over 60 where it was judged that they were unable by virtue of their age to do a fair day’s work.78 It was also agreed in each district that workers unable to do a fair day’s work by virtue of infirmity from illness, accident or disease should be excluded from coverage. Workers also were deemed to have forfeited the minimum if they failed through ‘default’ to do a fair day’s work or to work their place ‘to best advantage’ or who refused or neglected to heed reasonable orders of deputies or other officials. Failure to attend work during 80 per cent of possible shifts, Saturday afternoons and Sundays being excepted, also led to forfeiture, unless workers were prevented from this by a justifiable cause of which proper notice had been given. The rules as set out were open to interpretation, judgement and discretionary application, and given the inevitability of disputes emerging with their implementation, provision was also included for dealing with such grievances as might emerge. An attempt at settlement in the first instance was to proceed through discussion between the worker concerned and officials of the mine in question. If agreement proved elusive, the matter would be submitted to the manager and a person working in or about the mine appointed by the aggrieved worker. If this too failed, the case would be referred to a committee appointed by the two secretaries from either side of the district board or the board as a whole. When all else failed, the chairman of the board was empowered to be the final adjudicator.


The YMA cautioned members to scrutinise carefully employers’ application of the negotiated rules. For the most part all went smoothly, but there was still some trouble in the county both in 1912 and 1913 when certain employers attempted quite blatantly to get around the bill by bullying or otherwise attempting to persuade their employees to sign away their rights. One such case was at Topcliffe, where initial difficulties arose over the terms of ending the strike and returning to work. Miners interpreted a directive from owners that they give an assurance to ‘work continuously’ as ‘practically asking our men to agree to a Minimum Rate of Wages before such Minimum has been determined by the Joint District Board set up by the Minimum Wages Act’.79 They rejected the condition set, feeling that any other course of action might prejudice the YMA’s position at other pits in this section of West Yorkshire and therefore remained out for many weeks after most others in the county had returned, though it would appear that by the end of July most had returned. But problems persisted and there was some support during the summer for local balloting over application of the new legislation. Council initially refused the request, but it was renewed in December with a call for the reinstatement of thirteen workers who had been stopped because they had refused to sign certificates of forfeiture under the minimum wage bill. The company, it seemed, was both improperly asking for signatures of forfeiture and failing to comply with procedures specified under the rules of the West Yorkshire District Board for dealing with grievances, by preventing representatives of the aggrieved to investigate as required.80 Another attempt to induce miners to sign certificates of forfeiture occurred at Hartshead. The branch secretary, Oddy, informed the council in October 1912 that several members had received fourteen days’ notice from the Low Moor Company on refusing to sign a form saying they would not claim the minimum. At the same time the management was hiring new workers and persuading them to accept the old rates. ‘Our men are very uneasy about the position’, Oddy wrote. ‘They are ready for throwing down tools if this thing is to continue.’81 Apart from such localised problems there were also grievances of a general nature brought by the miners to the South Yorkshire Joint District Board in the summer of 1912. The first concerned the deduction for explosives or tool sharpening or other incidental expenses from the minimum and the second the division of money in reference to colliers, fillers and trammers. A meeting was also arranged with Judge Amphlett of West Yorkshire to try to settle important points of interpretation in respect of the Act. Edward Clarke gave his decision for South Yorkshire on 30 September 1912. His judgment on the matter of deductions was in favour of the miners, as he held it would be counter to the intentions of the Act to permit deductions. However, while sympathising with trammers who were in some cases highly experienced and had been allotted as much as 7 or 8 shillings a day by colliers for or with


whom they worked, he held that the original rule should stand, whereby deductions from colliers’ wages in respect of their trammers’ pay should be no more than one shilling above the minimum laid down for trammers. Unhappy with this decision, the YMA pressed for revision of both minimum rates and the rules at the ‘earliest possible moment the Minimum Act allows’.82 Over the months following the minimum wage strike, during which the Act was working its way into implementation, the YMA was involved in a number of other, often related, issues. The period was one of a certain militancy in Yorkshire, with elements of both offensive and defensive action, borne of a need to bolster strength upon which members’ interests might be more effectively represented. Of particular importance were the YMA’s stance on alterations of terms of procedure of the Conciliation Board, a campaign against non-unionism and active support for extension of the principle of the minimum wage to surface workers. Wage campaigns 1912 and 1913; debate over the future of the conciliation board Not long after the settlement of the minimum wage dispute, the YMA Council forwarded to the MFGB a resolution calling for a 5 per cent advance. Under general pressure for an advance, proposals tying the 5 per cent to terms for extension of the Conciliation Board, which would otherwise be wound up at the turn of the year, were agreed by the board and submitted for the approval of both owners and workers in September 1912. It was proposed that if owners offered a minimum of 45 per cent above the 1888 standard and a maximum of 65 per cent, along with an advance of 5 per cent to all underground workers and those on the surface working directly with the coal, the board’s life would be extended from January 1913 to January 1916, after which its continued existence would be subject to three months’ notice by either side. These terms were accepted by many of the owners in Yorkshire,83 but the YMA Council rejected them by a vote of 1,200 to 623.84 The miners’ position was that the 5 per cent should be awarded without conditions. But they objected in any case to the specific conditions put. At the annual meeting of the MFGB in 1911 it had been resolved that the extension of the life of any Conciliation Board under the Federation should not be to a point later than the latest existing termination of any of the other boards. But the Yorkshire position was even stronger. The YMA wanted a ‘radical alteration’ of the board before they agreed to its renewal. They wished to have a 50 per cent minimum and no maximum whatsoever, though if the latter were necessary to obtain an agreement, then they would accept a maximum of 70 per cent.85 The YMA contingent to a special MFGB conference of the English and North Wales Conciliation Board delegates on 9 and 10 October were clearly under


pressure from their membership. ‘There are a good many things’, said Wadsworth, ‘that Yorkshire requires.’ Still, Hall assured the special conference, there was not a single representative of the YMA Council who wished to see the board ‘broken’ or who would not be prepared to negotiate a replacement for the present board.86 In fact other districts had also objected to the proposals and the special conference ultimately resolved that they should be rejected and that the 5 per cent be pressed for unconditionally. A new set of terms was then proposed which provided that the board should be continued only until 31 March 1915, coincident with the end of the South Wales board, with a minimum at 50 per cent but the maximum remaining at 65 per cent. An advance of 5 per cent stood as a second proposal. Most districts were happy with this as a settlement and while in some sense so were Yorkshire officials, Hall said he was bound to throw a discordant note into the proceedings. He was less than pleased with some elements of the proposal, in particular the setting of a maximum, which, he declared, ‘I shall never be a party to agree to.’87 But in any case, as Hall explained to the conference, the YMA was at that time engaged in carrying out a registered vote of its membership, as directed by its council, as to whether the board should continue to exist at all. In the event, the new proposals were carried with the exception of Yorkshire. But the YMA membership, or at least a good part of it, stubbornly maintained its opposition, a special council voting 911 to 851 not to recommend acceptance of the conditions for renewal of the English Conciliation Board, but to continue to press for the 5 per cent advance for all workers in or about the mines.88 The vote of branches on the abolition of the board showed 828 in favour and 300 against. And a further vote on the second set of proposals yielded a repetition of the pattern, with 575 in favour and 777 against.89 With Yorkshire in a minority position on the matter, however, the proposals stood and were soon ratified.90 Having gained one increase, Yorkshire miners were keen to apply for another as quickly as possible.91 A further advance was subsequently applied for by the MFGB and granted in the early part of 1913. As the industry continued on an upward swing, another 5 per cent was claimed and received in May 1913, bringing wages quickly to 65 per cent above the standard of 1888 where the terms agreed the previous year dictated that it should remain, or at least rise no higher than, until 31 March 1915. It was precisely this which the YMA delegates had warned of at the October special conference of the MFGB in 1912. Campaign against non-unionism As at least partial success was realised through the minimum wage strike and additional increases were gained, membership of the YMA rose. At the end of 1912 it had reached 99,900, more than 7,000 over the previous year. In part this was a reflection of the growth of the industry in Yorkshire and the opening out


of new pits. But though the air of prosperity and evidence of union solidarity encouraged recruiting, the inevitable formation of new branches and swelling of the ranks of existing ones was never taken for granted. Quite the contrary, there was concern that the workforce of some of the new pits might disdain the need for a union or might be actively discouraged from joining by their employers. The increase in numbers was therefore also a result, at least in part, of a concerted campaign against non-unionism. This involved the authorising of a ‘collector’ to stand at the pit gate of some collieries or for a collecting box to be set up. In a few cases arrangements were made by officials for organising meetings, or particular individuals were assigned to carry out organising activities.92 Towards the end of 1912, Wheldale and Glasshoughton branches raised the question of county action being taken over the question of non-unionism. But while the yearly council meeting resolved that ‘every effort be made to get the whole of the men and boys into the Yorkshire Miners’ Association’, it was agreed that the question of striking should be held over.93 The following year the campaign against non-unionism became an even more central preoccupation, and the proposal to take industrial action in respect of the matter gained increasing currency. Interestingly the pressure came less from new pits in the Doncaster area, than from old, established pits, predominantly in West Yorkshire, and often specifically from those that had experienced long, drawn and intensely bitter disputes during the first decade of the century, including Hemsworth, Cadeby and Frickley. In February, Lofthouse and Thornhill requested authorisation to ballot locally on the non-unionism question, and Ackton Hall renewed a similar request which had been postponed by virtue of the minimum wage dispute. In forwarding the request, the branch secretary of Ackton Hall wrote that there were 500 non-union men working at his pit, who were ‘getting the top side of us’.94 In reference to this letter which appeared in the YMA minutes, the secretary of Cadeby Main branch wrote that his members were in an even worse position, having been blankly refused permission by management to go onto the bridge to be able to ‘get at’ non-union men. He asked for district action rather than a local, pit-by-pit, attack: ‘We say that if there is any fighting, then let us fight collectively.’95 After similar letters came from Hemsworth and Frickley,96 it was agreed that the council should take the matter on board, and at its April meeting by a vote of 1,689 to 92, an individual county ballot on the non-union question was authorised. The result was 44,432 in favour of giving in notice, 16,827 against, 13,555 neutral and 6,342 ballots not returned, a clear majority in favour, but also an indication of a considerable lack of decisiveness. In view of the majority, the council decided that notices should be tendered beginning on 9 June,97 and a special council was called for a week earlier.


The special council of 2 June, however, decided to adjourn the action, largely because in the intervening time, and presumably in response to the strike threat, an important concession had been wrung from South Yorkshire owners, who were perhaps the more easily persuaded that the cost of the stoppage would be an unnecessary burden, since the problem was less acute in their section of the county. They agreed to allow the YMA to organise non-union workers without interference at South Yorkshire pits. If local officials supplied management with lists of non-union men and boys, the owners would provide reasonable facilities for organising efforts to be carried out.98 West Yorkshire owners, typically slow to concede on this as on other points, were as typically annoyed by the pressure placed on them by the agreement reached in South Yorkshire. But they were also by this point prepared to accept the inevitable and various members of the WYCOA were even moved to argue that further organising activities of the YMA were to the ultimate advantage of the industry as a whole. It was therefore agreed, even more specifically than had been the case in South Yorkshire, that the union should be allowed to use all ‘fair and proper means’ to persuade those outside to join it, and that where no union box already existed, owners should provide proper facilities ‘in the shape of a Box which two or four of the Workmen employed at that Colliery will be permitted to collect Contributions’. As in South Yorkshire the YMA was to supply management with a list of all those who were not members of the union.99 These agreements reached, the urgency of the non-union question waned, and if not all wished for was gained, there remained little basis for an all-out, countywide, strike. Not all were happy. Some branches felt distinctly left in the lurch and a few isolated battles continued. But the union itself stood in a state of considerable strength, its legitimacy, its power and indeed its utility acknowledged by the owners. Extension of the minimum to surface workers A matter which became curiously tied in with the non-union question and which was also a consequence and extension of the minimum wage dispute involved a campaign to agree a minimum for surface workers. The YMA had had a chequered relationship with surface workers and their organisations, on earlier occasions having acknowledged the need for attentiveness to their grievances, since any industrial action they initiated would have repercussions for underground labour, but at the same time disdaining direct involvement in the organising of such workers, maintaining, if not the exclusivity, then the rough correspondence of the YMA to colliers and related underground workers. In consequence other unions had moved in to organise surface workers. But the gradual realisation of the degree of intertwining of interests of the two groups led


to more direct involvement by the YMA in initiatives to improve the wages and working conditions of surface labour. Throughout 1912, as the national struggle for a minimum wage for underground workers proceeded into 1913, and surface workers in Yorkshire also pressed for a minimum figure, approaching coal owners’ associations in both sections of the county toward this end. In March 1912 West Yorkshire owners reported having received a letter written by Bailey, secretary of the National Amalgamated Union of Labour, and counter-signed by Wadsworth, asking to discuss the question. As it was their usual wont to reject all such appeals unless other alternatives appeared too costly, the WYCOA declined.100 In July the YMA independently requested a meeting to discuss the minimum for surface workers and met with the reply that the owners’ organisation had never discussed surfacemen’s wages with the YMA, nor recognised any of the surfacemen’s unions, and saw no reason to change now.101 A further approach was made in September, but by now the YMA was armed with an agreement reached shortly before in South Yorkshire. Once more the South Yorkshire owners were the first to concede the case, though this time their counterparts in the western section resolved to hold out as long as possible. The agreement concluded on 22 August 1912 between the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and the National Federation of Colliery Surface Workers included among its signatories Herbert Smith of the YMA. Others were J.Green of the Yorkshire County Enginemen, W.H. Proudler of the National Union of Enginemen, Charles H.Blackburn of the Gasworkers and General Labourers, J.W.Allpress of the Cokemen and Labourers’ Union and A.J.Bailey of the National Amalgamated Union of Labour. Among its provisions was a minimum for all able-bodied men over 22 of 3s 7d, plus 17.5 per cent, which in the case of banksmen, screenmen and manipulators of coal was to rise and fall in accord and at the same rate as changes in miners’ wages, and for all other surface workers, by 3 per cent for every 5 per cent change in miners’ wages. Boys were to receive 1s 2d at 13 years, rising to 3s 7d plus 17.5 per cent by the age of 22. The agreement also regulated length of shifts and was in general an achievement of some importance.102 With the matter of surface workers in South Yorkshire taken care of, attention then focused on West Yorkshire owners. Early in January 1913 the National Federation of Colliery Surfacemen submitted a claim to the WYCOA for an eight-hour day and for the right to set minimum rates for all categories of surface workers. Negotiations were ultimately entered into, though not without delay caused by the insistence of West Yorkshire owners that certain classes of labour should be excluded from the general discussion. In particular they adamantly persisted in dealing with enginemen and firemen separately from other categories and in rejecting discussions with cokemen altogether.103 It was also proposed that all surface workers be accorded each of the two 5 per cent


advances recently awarded to miners as a ploy to reduce the general air of dissatisfaction and thereby cut the ground from under the feet of the newly organised surface workers’ federation. Such niceties and delaying tactics, however, proved ineffective in slackening surface workers’ demands. At a meeting held in Castleford in March, 1913 of delegates from various unions representing Yorkshire’s colliery workers, it was resolved to ballot all pit workers in the West Yorkshire district over striking to enforce collective recognition of the unions and obtain a settlement on the question of hours and wages.104 The YMA Council for its part affirmed willingness to recommend a ballot of its members on the issue, thus presaging the innovative step of engaging in industrial action on behalf of another category of worker.105 Meanwhile West Yorkshire’s owners continued to stall.106 Then in May a joint conference of the various unions with mine worker membership held at YMA headquarters in Barnsley agreed to ballot the whole of the county’s mine workers, totalling 130,000, on the surface workers’ claims.107 This raised the possibility of collective action on a scale never previously achieved nor even contemplated in the county, especially given that the noticing would involve South Yorkshire as well as those in the western section who were specifically aggrieved. Within the YMA the vote on the surface workers proceeded simultaneously with one on the non-union question.108 There may have been some slight hesitancy within the YMA over offering such enthusiastic assistance to surface workers, in that the council meeting on 19 May voted only with the narrow margin of 918 to 826 to proceed with the taking of an individual ballot. But the result revealed an overwhelming majority of 90,038 in favour of tendering notices, 6,375 against and 4,225 neutral.109 It was sufficient to prompt the opening of negotiations on both the non-union and the surface workers’ question in West Yorkshire, particularly given that an initial settlement on non-unionism had just been gained in South Yorkshire.110 Hopeful of a settlement, the workers postponed the tendering of notices for a week.111 West Yorkshire’s owners dallied some days more but finally agreed to talks with representatives of surfacemen’s unions with the exception of those associated with enginemen, firemen and cokemen. Negotiations still proceeded slowly, with proposals and counter proposals being considered.112 But finally in the autumn a settlement was reached. The limit on double-shift hours was set at nine and on single-shift hours at ten, work in excess to be paid as overtime. The basic minimum for manipulators of coal was set at 3s 7d, as in South Yorkshire, plus 30 per cent in the eastern section and 25 per cent in the western section. For all other surface workers the minimum of 3s 7d was to have 24 per cent added in the eastern section and 19 per cent in the western section. Increases for banksmen, screenmen and manipulators were to follow along with those of miners. For all others there


would be a 3 per cent increase for every 5 per cent increase awarded to miners. The rate for boys of 13 was to be 1s with the addition of 15 per cent in the eastern and 10 per cent in the western sections.113 A YMA Special Council of 1 December 1913 voted solidly for acceptance of the settlement, thus capping the union’s involvement in this important collective achievement114 Strike of 1914—test-case of minimum wage machinery While having made strides with respect to non-unionism and surface workers’ hours and minimum rates, problems continued to nag at the YMA over implementation of the minimum wage legislation. In particular a serious dispute began to take form over the relation between the series of three 5 per cent increases and the minimum rate. The miners had always understood that these implied increases on the minimum, while in some cases owners saw them as contributing toward the minimum of those workers earning less and therefore making a claim for the minimum. The matter came to a head over interpretation of an award of Sir Edward Clarke, chairman of the South Yorkshire Joint Board, dated 30 January 1914, which gave qualified coal-getters a minimum of 7s 3d per day, 6d above the rate set at the end of the minimum wage strike in 1912. At the same time, the rate for trammers and fillers was raised to 6s 3d, of leading byeworkmen to 6s 6d and all other workmen over 21 to 5s 6d. The starting minimum for boys aged 14 became 2s 2d per day. It was the YMA view that the award entailed an increase of 6d on the minimum on top of which the 15 per cent gained since the spring of 1912 should be added. The view of the owners in South Yorkshire, however, was very different. According to a communication from Parker Rhodes, secretary to the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, where a qualified getter working at contract rates earned 7s 3d, no further addition would be made. Where less than 7s 3d was earned, the difference up to this figure would be made up. And where a getter earned less than 6s 9d at contract rates and the addition of the 15 per cent took this over 7s 3d, the excess would be paid, but only to the amount of 7s 4.5d, equivalent to the old minimum of 6s 9d plus the 15 per cent gained under the Conciliation Board since it was originally set in 1912.115 According to the Colliery Guardian, which took the part of the owners in the dispute, ‘to the plain man the position seems to be quite simple’: the award of a new minimum of 7s 3d by Sir Edward Clarke should be understood to include the new conditions arising since his initial award of 1912. The journal accused the miners of wanting it both ways. ‘Having secured a higher minimum, embodying the three advances in wages made since May 1912, they now want these advances to be added again.’116 The issue was potentially an extremely complex one. The Colliery Guardian suggested that it involved a confusion of the terms ‘minimum wage’ and


‘standard rate’. Percentages on the standard rate were granted under the Conciliation Board in accord with the movement of prices. A minimum wage simply set the base rate, the lowest possible, which colliers could earn. A new minimum, according to the Colliery Guardian and the owners, could in no way imply an increase in wages, which was rather the province of the Conciliation Board. But the miners disagreed and considered that owners were wheedling out of their responsibilities as entailed by Sir Edward Clarke’s award and the three 5 per cent increases. In practice the new minimum appeared to have allowed a decrease in earnings at such collieries as Roundwood and Silverwood.117 The YMA decided that there was a need for industrial action not just at these pits but throughout South Yorkshire, and moves were made to initiate an immediate ballot of members.118 There was in fact some delay when abortive hopes were raised of a negotiated settlement, but in mid-March a further special council decided on a vote of 2,205 to 10 to tender notices.119 With the sense of some urgency a series of meetings of the joint committee of the Conciliation Board was held, leading to proposals for a temporary peace while an enquiry was launched into cases where an actual decrease had occurred. But the miners rejected the package and the strike went ahead. On 30 March 35,000 stopped work, with the total increasing to 170,000 three days later.120 The strike was an important test case under the minimum wage legislation and was supported by the MFGB, though it was judged unwise to widen it to the national level.121 Within a few days of its initiation a set of four proposals was hammered out by a meeting of the joint committee of the Conciliation Board. Among them was the important concession from owners that ‘the Resolutions of the Conciliation Board shall apply to whatever Minimum is fixed’.122 This came, however, with a price. The YMA was obliged to agree to different minima for different classes of mines within South Yorkshire, to be subsequently decided by the joint district board.123 In practice this meant a rejection of a general 6d increase in the minimum as awarded by Clarke in January. Thus while initially avoiding further sub-division of the South Yorkshire district in the spring of 1912, this more complicated arrangement was now to be imposed, and the YMA’s desire for uniformity across the county further whittled away. An individual ballot in Yorkshire resulted in 27,259 to 11,393 agreeing to a return to work on the basis of the suggested terms.124 It was subsequently agreed by the Conciliation Board joint committee that work should resume as soon after 20 April as possible.125 All told, the strike lasted a little over three weeks. The underlying factor in South Yorkshire which precipitated the strike was differential costs of production in different sections of the district and differential ability, or inclination, on the part of employers to pay increases.126 Doncaster area pits which worked a very thick Barnsley seam were most able to pay higher


wages. Those in the Barnsley area which worked thin seams were least able. In an intermediate position were other Barnsley seam pits, in particular those around Sheffield and Rotherham. Such divisions were not lost on colliers, since they were generally reflected in varying piece rates among pits. Those in the higher paying pits were inclined toward a certain impatience with their colleagues elsewhere. There were indications just prior to the beginning of the strike that Doncaster area miners, whose attachment to the YMA was in any case of more recent duration than others in the county, were considering the forming of an association of their own.127 When in progress the strike was reported to be ‘by no means palatable to the thousands of miners in the Doncaster [area].’128 But the prospect of a breakaway union diminished and in the event miners in this part of the coalfield were arguably the greatest beneficiaries of the new arrangements following the strike. The settlement involved a division of South Yorkshire into three separate sections, each with a separate minimum. Only one, including pits around Doncaster and a number in the wider Barnsley area such as Manvers 1 and 2, Wombwell, Corton Wood and South Hiendley, retained the minimum of 7s 3d awarded by Sir Edward Clarke in January. A second group, including pits in the Rotherham area as well as some further north such as Barnsley Main, Ryhill and Wath, were granted a minimum of 7s. Finally, the old rate of 6s 9d was to stand for a large number of generally smaller pits in the Barnsley area, including those working the Silkstone seam. With the last three 5 per cent advances added, this would leave the figures at 7s 11d, 7s 8d and 7s 5d respectively, clearly higher all around than owners would have wished.129 The question of the sub-divisions and new rates was referred to branches and accepted by a majority, though with a higher proportion voting against in South than in West Yorkshire, suggesting some residue of discontent among those affected. The settlement represented not victory to the miners, but compromise. The Colliery Guardian overstated the case by arguing that ‘the final terms of settlement practically provide for the surrender of the advance of 6d per day given by Sir Edward Clarke at those pits where the conditions of economic production are unfavourable’.130 But there was some truth in the contention that some miners were worse off than the YMA argued they had right to be by virtue of Clarke’s January award. And the Colliery Guardian’s correspondent correctly noted that the strike had ‘brought into full force economic conditions which are more powerful even than legislation.’131 The minimum was of course never a general figure and the legislation permitted such parcelling up of areas to as fine a level as the relative power of employers or workers permitted. But the result was increasingly at variance from the target pursued by the miners. West Yorkshire’s turn for minimum wage difficulties came in the summer of 1914 following an award made by Judge Amphlett on 21 July. Raising the


minimum to 7s in the eastern sub-division and 6s 6d in the western sub-division, it was judged by owners similarly as in South Yorkshire to be far too generous. The award also raised the starting wage for boys aged 14 to 2s 1d in the eastern sub-division and to 2s in the western. Owners’ representatives responded to the award with a set of points largely paralleling those made in South Yorkshire much earlier in the year. They declared it impractical to pay the last three 5 per cent increases on top of the new minima. Instead, owners were prepared to pay increased minima exclusive of the last three advances, except where the original minimum plus the 15 per cent exceeded the new award, in which case the higher amount would continue to be paid.132 Not surprisingly the miners rejected the proposal. They were little inclined to any more modifications of awards.133 While resolving to stand firm, however, the YMA was somewhat reluctant to initiate strike action, as the stoppage in South Yorkshire had been costly. At the same time, and to bolster negotiating muscle, the YMA appealed to the MFGB to call a special conference on the West Yorkshire question.134 The Executive of the MFGB appointed a committee to ascertain what course the Board of Trade intended taking to enforce the Act and to interview West Yorkshire owners in order to seek a settlement.135 But signs of brooding war among the nations of Europe were already evident and the disruption which it would bring to industry and to the country was already beginning to make itself felt. The YMA argued that particularly at a time when calls for patriotism and loyalty were being made, an attempt by the owners to sidestep the law was to be highly deplored.136 But in fact the preparations for war came increasingly to preoccupy minds and inevitably intruded to obscure the justice of the miners’ case. Delays repeatedly occurred in the holding of meetings between the two sides as potential participants were called up to active duty.137 In the meantime the employers drew up a formula similar to that in South Yorkshire with further sub-divisions and therefore further minima.138 It was suggested that eastern and western sections should each be further divided into three parts and, in accord with the settlement in South Yorkshire, the full rates under Amphlett’s award should apply in one of these, a middle rate plus percentages in the second, and rates under the original minimum plus percentages in the third.139 The miners, however, remained adamantly opposed to any modification of the award. They made appeals for the MFGB to intervene and proposed that the matter be referred to the Conciliation Board.140 As little movement occurred, and in a clear mood of militancy, the YMA yearly council meeting of 19 December directed Wadsworth to seek postponement of the Conciliation Board’s consideration of terms for its own extension until satisfactory resolution of the West Yorkshire case had been achieved. It also recommended that Yorkshire’s delegates to the upcoming Federation conference on 7 January 1915 ask whether that body was prepared to endorse a national strike should no settlement be


reached and, if not, whether financial assistance would be forthcoming should the YMA call out West Yorkshire collieries.141 The Federation was fully supportive of Yorkshire’s position. Concurring with the YMA proposal to ballot miners at West Yorkshire pits over striking, it resolved that if a two-thirds majority was in favour, notices should be given in. In the event the ballot resulted in a large majority in favour of industrial action, more than sufficient to persuade the owners of the seriousness of the miners’ intentions.142 A mass strike, and one, moreover, which would have been effectively conducted by the Federation, was averted when a settlement was reached and signed by representatives of the WYCOA and the MFGB on 9 February 1915. Giving due weight to the need to avoid ‘the disastrous consequence of a Coal Strike in a National Crisis’, it concluded that the new minima awarded by Judge Amphlett should stand, at least throughout the duration of the war.143 But the miners’ victory was not total since the additional 15 per cent was not on these but on figures not less than two-thirds of the original minima. Still the YMA was satisfied with the agreement, which left the minima plus percentages at 7s 8d in the eastern sub-division and 7s 1.39d in the western sub-division, and directed notices to be withdrawn from pits whose owners were affiliated with the WYCOA.144 But not all owners accepted the settlement and notices remained at some thirty collieries, mostly in the Leeds area in the northwest corner of the coalfield where seams were thin. In some cases workers went out and were supported with strike pay. The impact of minimum wage legislation The minimum wage struggle of 1912 was a significant event for the level of national solidarity it implied, which in turn was instrumental in achieving certain gains. The miners, and particularly underground workers, continued to work under somewhat archaic piece-rate systems, highly complicated in their operation. To an extent the miners found these useful in allowing highly productive workers to make extra gains. But they operated to the detriment of other workers in the industry. Overall what the miners had been intent on for many years was the securing of a ‘decent’ wage for all workers, a baseline beneath which the vagaries of the market could never cause wages to fall. Attempts had been made to achieve this via minima established within Conciliation Board machinery. But this was never deemed a satisfactory solution, since it did not protect the individual worker. Hence the call came for a minimum wage as had been won in other industries. Within the MFGB this evolved out of claims for protection of workers in abnormal conditions, where the nature of a specific place prevented their gaining a level of wages which their productivity


otherwise assured them. A minimum for all workers was a broader concern, unifying both those operating a piece-rate system and a day wage. The miners would have preferred to have achieved this through negotiation and would have wished a single figure to have applied as generally as possible throughout a given coalfield. The outcome of their struggle was state intervention. As with the eight-hour day, this legitimated their claim as an inherently just one and backed new machinery by the force of law. But it brought its own difficulties. And in the case of the minimum wage, the legislation itself allowed a progressive pattern of whittling down the scope of application of any particular minimum figure, with sub-districts and sub-divisions being created, each with different minima. The owners would argue that the varying economic circumstances of pits and regions made this imperative. This had been the essence of their objection before passage of the legislation. But if less than sought, the gains were not pyrrhic. They left the miners, their individual unions and the Federation in a much stronger position than before.

396

14 THE YMA DURING THE WAR

As the year 1914 progressed, the threat of imminent war began doggedly to insert itself into the affairs of industry and organised labour. In common with many other elements of the labour movement, the YMA initially viewed the war with a mixture of caution and cynicism. The YMA Council passed a motion in early August expressing its sincere trust ‘that the area of war will be restricted to present combatants’ and demanding that the British government use all means possible to restore peace and not ‘embroil the people of this country in an international quarrel which can lead only to the advantage of the ruling classes of the countries concerned, and can bring nothing but ruin and privation to the workers’.1 But events moved quickly, the war becoming an all-too-present reality and immediate preoccupation, touching almost all aspects of union activity, and having a significant impact on the coal industry and on mining communities. Doubts about the motivation for war or fears concerning its impact implied no lack of loyalty or patriotism among the YMA membership, and as soon as the call for recruits was raised, many flocked to sign up with the same selflessness apparent in their readiness to assist in rescue efforts following an explosion in the pit. When Admiral Charles Beresford came from London on a recruitment exercise in September to address meetings at Wombwell, Darfield, Ardsley, Hoyland and Barnsley, he declared himself to have seen no place that needed less ‘waking up’.2 The YMA responded with sympathy to its members’ inclinations, regardless of broader reservations, and agreed that all those called up to military service would be exempt from paying contributions from 29 August, though death benefits would continue to be paid.3 Through call-ups and enlistment, large numbers left the industrial labour force, and it was estimated that as many as 15,000 of Yorkshire’s colliery workers had enlisted by the end of the year.4 A year later an estimated 27,000 had joined the forces, representing about a quarter of YMA membership.5 New labour was brought into the mines, much of it unskilled and a small proportion female, but overall there was a sharp drop in employment, registering some 14 per cent by the spring of 1916.6 In 1918 the number of mine workers nationally was still about 15,000 less than in 1913. This dislocation of the workforce


combined with the disturbance, and in some cases the removal, of export markets was starkly reflected in output figures and consequent disruption to the industry. From a high point in 1913 when output of coal in the UK as a whole stood at 287, 411,869 tons, there was a decline to just 227,714,579 tons in 1918.7 In Yorkshire there was a drop of just over 8 million tons, from 43,671,243 in 1913 to 35,645, 103 in 1918.8 The difficulties prompted an accelerated introduction of new, and frequently labour-saving, technology, partially correcting a long-term sluggishness toward innovation within the industry. More mechanical devices began to be used in underground haulage, in coal-cutting at the face and in some cases for conveying workers underground.9 But these efforts were frequently offset by other problems. Costs increased all around, not just for labour, but for local rates and materials as well. It was estimated that the latter had gone up between 100 and 300 per cent by the end of the war.10 Deeper and thinner seams increasingly needed to be tapped, again at additional expense.11 The industry’s problems were reflected in a declining rate of productivity, begun some years earlier but exacerbated by the war. During the period 1906 to 1913 there had been a fall of some 11 per cent, to a figure of 259 tons per worker, compared with 681 tons per worker in the US. The figure for Germany in 1913 was only slightly higher than that of the UK at 273 tons, but the direction of movement both there and in the US was upward. During the first two years of the war, there was a slight improvement in Britain, but then renewed decline so that by 1918, output per worker (both above and below ground) was just 226 tons.12 Fluctuating policy in the recruitment of miners to the forces Facing conflicting imperatives of both securing sufficient recruits for the front and ensuring output of coal as required for the war effort, directives issued by the government often had contradictory effects upon the coal industry, at some points workers being combed out and at others being prevented from joining the forces. Miners were in consequence considerably buffeted by the war, subject to the country’s changing fortunes and varying judgement as to how these should be confronted. Early on in the war, recruits were encouraged from all sections of the community, and miners responded with generosity of spirit. Subsequently, as more troops were required, specific recruiting drives were initiated. One example affecting Yorkshire’s miners involved a request to the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association to raise a battalion from among its members’ employees in the autumn of 1914. The War Office imposed upon the association the obligation

LABOUR AND POLITICAL STRUGGLES, 1900–18 399

of not just raising and equipping a battalion but also of housing, feeding and training an army, entailing an expense estimated at about £22,000.13 Ironically, when turning to the task of recruitment, the owners found themselves stuck for sufficient numbers, partly because so many had already enlisted, but also because many of the remainder failed to qualify in terms of the standard of height which had been raised from 5′2" to 5′6", a testimony of sorts to a perpetuation of problems diagnosed early in the century when so many potential recruits fell short of standards set and doubts prevailed about the sufficiency of the nation’s health for purposes of defence of the realm. Given difficulties encountered in raising a battalion and having considered donating £10,000 to the War Office as a substitute project, a committee of owners approached the War Office which, still keen on their contribution as originally proposed, relaxed its previous requirements. The authorities agreed to waive the recent regulations increasing the standard of height and undertook to make up numbers falling short on the understanding that the coal owners would accept the men thus drafted and would treat them on similar terms to recruited miners. The War Office further agreed to provide all arms, ammunition and equipment to a limit of £7 5s 0d per man, 2s a day for food and all pay. To make the entire enterprise more attractive to those involved, it was also agreed to change the name of the unit from the ‘Pontefract Battalion’ to the ‘Miners’ Battalion.’14 By late December it was reported that a battalion at Farnley Camp was in full strength and the recruits clothed and equipped.15 The government’s enthusiasm for recruiting miners into the forces, reflected in the raising of a ‘Miners’ Battalion,’ was maintained for almost two years. Then in 1916 an increasingly critical shortfall in coal persuaded the government to alter its policy and issue miners with certificates of exemption. As a means for dealing with exemptions and any enlistments as might still be required, colliery recruiting courts were established throughout the coalfield. Four were allocated to the York and North Midland Division. Early in the year a ‘new order’ under the recently passed Military Service Act formally specified a set of ‘barred’ categories of worker in and about the mines to which exemption should apply. Included on the list were persons employed underground and those on the surface in positions of winding enginemen, weighmen (including checkweighmen), electricians, fitters and mechanics, certified managers, under-managers and surveyors. To facilitate the order, forms were distributed to colliery owners, to be returned to the Inspector of Mines by 2 March. This was the first of a number of exercises over subsequent months when details were collected on the age, date of employment and specific task or position of colliery workers. In this instance all unmarried workers of ‘military age’ were to be categorised in respect of whether or not they qualified for exemption under the order. The colliery recruiting courts then proceeded to issue exemption certificates as appropriate.16


But if general recruitment subsided, there were still some calls for men with particular specialisations. The YMA notified its members in the spring of 1916 of a War Office request for 10,000 tunnellers, of which Yorkshire’s share was initially 1,483, although this was later reduced to just 150. This was not a compulsory order, but a signal to those so specialised wishing to volunteer. The YMA advised anyone interested to consult their local officials, since it was preferred that the loss of workers be distributed proportionately in accord with previous losses to the services.17 A new military act was passed around mid-year and additional returns to the colliery recruiting courts were requested, in respect of some married men and all those boys who had come of military age (18) since the last return. But with demand for coal still pressing, the government directed on 20 June that further recruitment from colliery labour should cease and exemptions were issued to all who had been employed prior to 24 June. Some minor exceptions to this blanket exemption were made later in the year, first in respect of boys of 18 who had entered the mines to escape military service and those men who had entered without the consent of local tribunals, and later those judged guilty of persistent absenteeism.18 The mining industry was never covered by the Munitions Act and so there was no legislative compulsion on miners to remain at work, but pressure was exerted toward this end. Not only were miners exempted, they were also dissuaded from joining up. Moreover, the government obtained 11,000 exminers who were serving in home-units to return to the pits as worker-soldiers. The emphasis on miners remaining in place continued for some months and then the fortunes of war and a lesser need for coal by the munitions works appeared to dictate a further shift of policy.19 Early in 1917, instructions were issued that 20,000 recruits from among colliery workers were required, of which Yorkshire’s share was 6,700.20 New returns were requested from mine owners on specified categories of workers, including all those of military age who were employed on the surface or, if working underground, had either entered the industry after 15 August 1915 or had lost an average of two or more shifts a week from avoidable causes during the last six months of 1916. The MFGB objected to the specification of the last category. While deploring any slackness on the part of the workforce, concern was expressed lest the provision be used by employers against miners who had taken a prominent part in defending their rights. Subsequently any retrospective application of an absentee provision was removed.21 But there was also considerable opposition to the insidious intrusion of industrial conscription or indeed any introduction of compulsory military service. In September 1915 the YMA Council had passed a resolution registering strong protest against both, especially where they entailed workers being ‘subjected to forced labour controlled by Military Law in Establishments run for


private profit at wages and conditions in the management and settlement of which neither they nor their Trades Unions will be allowed any share’.22 The following year these views were expressed even more strongly. On a vote of 1,265 to 684, a YMA special council instructed delegates to a Federation conference to declare opposition to a proposed bill covering military service.23 Upon its passage the council instructed delegates to a further conference of the Federation in early February to press for a deputation to the Prime Minister to request its immediate repeal.24 While not agreeing to so militant a stance, the conference did express opposition to the ‘spirit of Conscription’ and determine to exercise a ‘vigilant scrutiny’ of any proposal to extend the Military Service Act. Later in the year the YMA formally concurred with the opinion of the TUC that the government should introduce a bill for the conscription of riches as a corollary to the conscription of individuals.25 Given such strong feelings on the matter, therefore, the YMA’s response to the call for miners to be drafted into the service was wary, since though an attempt was made to reach the quota through volunteers, there was a clear compulsory element involved. In the event, after about 109 collieries had been visited in the York and North Midland Division alone and 1,300 exemption certificates cancelled, the scheme was suspended and a fully voluntary recruiting campaign substituted, at least for a period of two months.26 But voluntarism did not secure the needed numbers and in the meantime the evaluation of military need broadened. On 12 May 1917 a new order was issued setting the new quota for the whole of the mining industry at 40,000 recruits. The YMA subscribed to the view that any combing out should take first those who had come in last,27 and to a significant extent this principle was incorporated in the new order through a provision that exemptions should be withdrawn from those of military age who had entered the industry since the outbreak of war. As previously, certain categories of indispensable workers were exempted even from this provision.28 As this new order again failed to provide the required numbers, it was decided to find the balance among unmarried workers between the ages of 18 and 25, no matter when their date of entry into the industry. Both unions and owners’ associations were drawn into the task of implementing this order. Quotas were to be allocated to districts or counties and owners’ associations and unions were to ensure their equitable distribution, having regard to disproportionate depletion of the workforce of particular collieries in consequence of previous recruitment. Colliery committees would then consider which men on lists as drawn up should be taken and would investigate any objections to the inclusion of particular names. Of those remaining on the list, the quota should be drawn by lot, and the final list forwarded to the recruiting officer.29 Considering these provisions, YMA officials suggested that branch committees should act as colliery committees


along with employers’ representatives and that names should be put into a hat or bag, properly shaken up and drawn out by two of the people affected.30 When the general scheme was agreed and signed by Thomas Radcliffe-Ellis for the owners and Thomas Ashton of the MFGB, there still remained to be found 21,000 of the 40,000 required. The process began, but difficulties ensued, for the miners believed that there were many who had entered the industry since the beginning of the war who had not yet been combed out, and it was felt that these should go before any others. The scheme was suspended for a time, but subsequently the union was obliged to assume an even higher level of involvement, sending out forms to be filled in at branch level providing details on all who had entered the mines since 4 August 1914, in order to ‘prove’ to the authorities that the comb-out of such individuals had not been satisfactorily accomplished. Conscious, however, of the element of compromise implied by the terms of the exercise, the YMA called a special council meeting for 24 August to assess whether the membership favoured the union having anything at all to do with recruiting and whether they approved of the scheme and the exempted classes as specified.31 At the special and ordinary council meeting of 24 August, the YMA concurred that the union should take part in recruiting and that all those who had entered the mines since the beginning of the war should be combed out. But strong views were also expressed about the exceptions made of certain types of workers. It was unanimously agreed that certificated managers and under-managers, underofficials and deputies should be taken out of exempted status, and a majority favoured most other exceptions being removed, save that for winding enginemen. Preference was also stated, though by a narrow majority, for the scheme being amended to extend the age range from 25 to 41 for those subject to recruitment. The overall position was a reflection not so much of the spirit of selfpreservation on the part of union activists who had necessarily been in the mine since before the war, as a protest over the flooding of the industry with new and largely unskilled labour. If any should be required to leave, it should be those new to the industry, regardless of the task they performed. Indicating some capitulation to the views of the union, a further order was issued on 22 November under which the Home Secretary withdrew all certificates of exemption of those who had entered the industry since the outbreak of the war, were of military age at that date and engaged as winding enginemen, pumpmen, electricians, fitters and mechanics (including blacksmiths), joiners and wagonand tub-makers and repairers.32 The government’s noose around the miners as potential soldiers tightened during 1918. There were indications early in the year that 50,000 more recruits were wanted,33 but it was only in March that a new order was issued, this time withdrawing all exemption certicates from unmarried men and widowers (without dependants) between the ages of 18 years 8 months and 25 years.34


Exemption on grounds of indispensability was still allowed for winding enginemen, electricians, stokers, fitters and mechanics, but all others, regardless of how long they had been within the industry, were to be drawn out on the basis of a quota proportionate to the number employed at each pit. Districts within the Federation were immediately balloted on whether the MFGB should agree to the scheme and if so, whether Federation machinery should be used for the purpose of finding the number specified.35 The results on the first question in Yorkshire at 35,558 in favour and 39,847 opposed, were similar to those in the Federation as a whole. The majority resisted the government’s proposal, but not to a level of the two-thirds required for taking the matter further.36 On the other hand, a majority also voted in favour of the second question. If further recruitment were to be imposed, miners favoured their union’s involvement in the selection process. This was felt even more strongly in Yorkshire, where the majority was almost two to one, than in the Federation as a whole. The YMA accepted the recommendation of the Federation not to resist the taking of a further 50,000 men from the mines, but also agreed to a resolution stating that the time had arrived for the government ‘who are calling on the industrial manhood of the nation to sacrifice their lives in a war for the freedom of Democracy’ to show regard to the cause of democracy by adopting the ‘War Aims laid down by the Allied Labour Movement’.37 Branches were asked to assist with the combing-out exercise which then proceeded. But on 16 April yet another order was issued, expanding further the pool of potential recruits. Exemption certificates were now to be withdrawn from married men or widowers (with dependants) between the ages of 18 years 8 months and 32 years, unmarried men between the ages of 25 and 32 years and boys who were not yet 18 years 8 months on 1 January 1918, but would be by 1 May 1918.38 There was yet one further order to be issued, on 25 May, when the total required was raised to 75,000 for colliery workers. By this time the scope of compulsory conscription had extended considerably, with the requirements of war eating further and further into the ranks of labour. Government intervention in the coal industry As well as extracting colliery workers for direct military needs, or, on occasion, preventing their recruitment into the armed forces, the government also exerted considerable control over the mining industry in other respects. To a large extent it was the very loss of labour to the front which required intervention to push productivity as high as circumstances permitted and otherwise attempt to ensure a level of output sufficient to needs. The first formal initiative was the establishment of a Coal Mining Organisation Committee, appointed by the Home Secretary in February 1915 to enquire into the conditions in the industry in order to promote that form of


organisation of work and co-operation between workers and employers most appropriate for securing adequate production of coal. Headed by Sir Richard Redmayne, it had three representatives each from the owners and workers in the industry. It routinely issued statistics documenting the industry’s performance and compiled several reports, one of which recommended restriction of exports and led to the setting up of another body, the Coal Exports Committee.39 In 1916, the Central Coal and Coke Distribution Committee was set up, this time by the Board of Trade, to advise on matters of distribution throughout the country and supervise the operations of district committees in the various coalfields. The latter were composed of colliery owners and charged with assisting such public utilities or munitions works as might encounter difficulty in securing coal. The most significant development for the industry, however, was the appointment of a Controller of Coal Mines on 22 February 1917, who had power under the Defence of the Realm Act to give directions on the management and use of coal mines. His office gradually took over the functions of all those committees and departments formerly connected with the industry, as well as assuming the brief of the Home Office to oversee its organisation during war time and to make arrangements for recruiting miners.40 The appointment of the Controller of Coal Mines represented a level of centralised co-ordination of the industry far beyond that ever previously existing. If by no means unique during this period of national emergency, it was still testimony to the strategic importance of coal. But even before the initiation of this institutional arrangement, the government gave close attention to the industry in a manner often implying the suspension of rights gained through trade union action in earlier years. Main areas of pressure involved the eighthour day, restriction of female labour as well as that of boys, and the right to strike. In all cases the government sought co-operation of the unions through their concurrence that the dictates of war implied both sacrifice and a certain loosening of standards. A particularly high level of co-operation was sought in respect of an area ultimately concentrated upon—the elimination as far as possible of absenteeism. The question of suspending the eight hours Act first arose in 1915. Early in the year the YMA strongly protested against this eventuality, ‘as many Pits in the Country are working short time, and some Pits having been closed for want of Trade, and we cannot give way for the sake of obliging Colliery owners and Gas Companies, and other large monopolies, to make extra profits out of the war’.41 On a national level the government assured the Federation that both it and the owners would be consulted before any interference with the Act occurred.42 When owners of ganister mines and those producing clay specifically appealed for a relaxation of the legislation, the YMA Council initially voted 99 to 45 against any suspension of the Act, but shortly thereafter softened its position, allowing this exception if its necessity was proved.43


Suggestions also began to be raised in 1915 about the miners’ curtailing their holidays. In the spring, Sir Richard Redmayne, as head of the Coal Mining Organisation Committee, wrote to the MFGB, relaying a personal appeal from Lord Kitchener. While understanding that they were working very hard and required a rest, Kitchener wished to impress upon the miners the urgent need for holidays to be curtailed to the least possible limit and hoped that Easter holidays would not extend beyond one or two days.44 A similar request was made at Christmas.45 Concern over holidays continued into the following year when, as earlier, it was received with equanimity. This was regarded as a legitimate sacrifice and where any quibbling occurred it was over arrangement for payment for such work. If anything the workers were more generous in their willingness to forgo holidays than union officials.46 Preoccupation with means of increasing output broached other areas as well in 1916. In April, Redmayne wrote to T.Ashton, secretary of the MFGB, outlining proposals to modify legislation and alter some aspects of prevailing practice. Among his specific suggestions were to increase the number of women employed on the surface, reduce the age limit for boys working underground and extend the hours they were permitted to work on the surface, further utilise the one hour per day for sixty days per year as allowed under the eight hours Act, suspend the eight hours Act altogether and curb absenteeism. Most of these were rejected with a greater or lesser amount of vehemence by the YMA. Concern over the employment of women on the surface had already been registered, the council in January 1916 asserting its belief that the employment of female labour in the lamp-house at Nunnery represented the ‘thin end of the wedge’. The company was implored to withdraw them at once, ‘otherwise we shall have to support the men in any action which may be taken in accordance with our Rules to stop it’.47 Although the number of women involved was minute, the YMA’s opposition remained adamant. They also flatly rejected any lowering of the age limit for boys or suspension of the eight hours Act. But Yorkshire’s officials urged members to consider the provision relating to boys’ hours on the surface being amended, the fuller utilisation of the ‘one hour per day for sixty days per year’ provision and the question of absenteeism.48 The campaign over absenteeism The question of absenteeism was treated with some sympathy by both the MFGB nationally and the YMA in Yorkshire. There was some debate as to how extensive a problem this was, but the union agreed that wherever it did occur, it should be eliminated. Perhaps because perceived as an area where something concrete could be accomplished without undue contention, it became a matter of curious preoccupation, with elaborate structures being erected to provide for joint owner-worker monitoring. It is arguable that the time consumed by this


exercise withdrew more labour than that lost through absenteeism, not least because efforts seemed increasingly to have little concrete impact. But initially there was consent, if not enthusiasm, for a concerted anti-absenteeism campaign. Redmayne acknowledged that the proportion of miners habitually idle for two or more days per week was ‘probably not a large one’.49 But it had been estimated by the Coal Mining Organisation Committee that an increase of between 13 and 14 million tons could still result from the elimination of avoidable absenteeism. He suggested that this be accomplished through the establishment of committees at the various pits to investigate questionable individual cases. In May 1916 the YMA Council agreed to accept Redmayne’s recommendation and set up both local committees and a central committee to investigate the matter and inflict penalties where warranted.50 They proposed that local committees should have the power to impose fines of between 2s 6d and 20s, but should be overseen at district level by a central committee, consisting of six representatives each from owners and workers. Provision should also be made for appeal when argument arose.51 These suggestions were largely agreed to by the South Yorkshire Owners’ Association,52 but there were difficulties in reaching a similar arrangement in West Yorkshire, where owners objected to their managers being brought before a local tribunal composed of workers and colliery officials to ‘answer any charge made against them for preventing men from working’.53 The YMA was concerned to eliminate any cause of apparent absenteeism for which miners were not responsible and to this end had included in their agreement with the South Yorkshire owners the provision that when unable to work in their own places, workers should be given work in other parts of the mine, so long as these afforded wages above the minimum. It was presumably this part of the agreement with which West Yorkshire owners found themselves uncomfortable. A number of local committees were set up in South Yorkshire in the summer of 1916, but almost immediately ran into difficulties over payment of their members. It was the view of the miners that the owners should pay all or at least half of the expenses of local tribunals,54 but in the end it was left to the YMA to foot this bill. Then at a meeting of the South Yorkshire Central Committee in October, the chairman, Richardson, openly criticised the miners, questioning their commitment to the scheme. The owners, he said, were very disappointed with the arrangements formulated by the union and had concluded that its members had not ‘quite acted in the spirit in which the agreement was drawn up’. He suggested that either colliery committees had the wrong instructions or were wrongly interpreting the agreement. ‘It might stagger you to know’, he went on, that between the last meeting and the present there is an increase of five per cent of loss of attendance compared with what it was then.’55 The YMA


acknowledged teething difficulties, but complained that owners were not supplying necessary details of shifts worked or of the number which might have been potentially worked, nor of the extent of absenteeism due to excusable causes. But Richardson persisted in his suggestion that the fault lay largely with the miners. At ‘quite a large number’ of collieries, he alleged, miners had refused to have committees altogether, making the matter ‘more or less a farce’. Where committees existed they did not routinely meet. Some had not done so for the past two months.56 YMA representatives professed themselves quite willing to co-operate. Hall offered to publish the names of delinquents if a list could be provided. But it was also stressed that the owners’ side was far from blameless. Shortly thereafter a meeting with delegates from both owners and workers, designated the Great National Conference, was addressed by the Prime Minister, who professed his government’s concern over declining output in the coal industry. Pointing out that the rate of absenteeism was standing at 9.9 per cent, he suggested that were it reduced to 5 per cent, 15 million more tons could be produced. Smillie gave assurance on behalf of the MFGB that the miners would co-operate as far as possible to reduce avoidable absence, reaffirming their preference for a self-policing strategy rather than for any legislative imperative.57 The YMA in turn renewed its own pledge to set up local absentee committees and ensure their proper operation. But branches were also instructed to notify Barnsley of cases where managements were not allowing miners to work under fair conditions, underlining their view that if monitoring was their own responsibility, the ‘problem’ should be laid at the door of owners as well as workers. Still, there was machinery for dealing with absenteeism only in South Yorkshire, not in West Yorkshire. The South Yorkshire Central Commmittee met in November, but its agenda of just ten cases gave little evidence of grave difficulties. In several instances where conscientiousness was clearly lacking—one worker for example having missed forty-nine shifts in twenty weeks, twenty-three of them apparently avoidable—the men in question were allowed just one last chance to explain their behaviour before their exemption certificates were withdrawn. In several others, three of them from Frickley, where miners had obtained doctors’ notes by false pretences to cover time missed, the committee rejected withdrawal of certificates, as recommended by the local committee, but rather imposed a stiff fine of £1 for three months, to be returned upon the men’s working steadily for this period.58 The YMA continued to press West Yorkshire owners for some sort of agreement for dealing with absenteeism and finally towards the end of the year this was achieved.59 But monitoring machinery never really worked effectively there, nor was all smooth running in South Yorkshire. In January 1917 a dispute over the manager of Rotherham 1 having sent two men home when they arrived


at the colliery late because trams had been delayed by fog, led miners throughout South Yorkshire to boycott the local absenteeism committees. They argued that the manager had acted contrary to agreed rules and should be subject to a fine of 2s 6d for each day lost by the two men. But the owners’ side clung fast to the technicality that the rules referred only to trains running late and not trams.60 The deadlock persisted throughout ensuing months and in October the YMA Council effectively turned their backs on the matter, maintaining that the question of absentee committees in South Yorkshire should not be re-opened.61 In West Yorkshire a similar complaint against a manager arose almost as soon as the committees began to meet. But here the owners gave in.62 Although meetings of the West Yorkshire Central Committee continued, it would appear that the coverage at the local level remained spotty. Some branches failed to set up any committee at all and the owners complained in the autumn of 1917 that where they existed, some had failed to operate in accord with the rules.63 Given the continuing boycott of the committees in South Yorkshire it was evident by the end of 1917 that the scheme, whose utility was always doubtful, had all but broken down. Irrespective of the fortunes of any local exercise in the control of absenteeism, the most influential factor in this area was to come in the form of a quasicoercive directive issued by the government in the middle of 1918. As a condition of an increase in the form of an augmented war wage being granted, miners were required to establish or re-establish joint pit committees, charged with the task of decreasing voluntary absenteeism and increasing output.64 The MFGB agreed terms with the Controller of Coal Mines on 27 June 1918, later ratified by the membership,65 on the establishment of committees at all pits, comprised of representatives of both management and workers. With functions increased over the former absentee committees, they were to consider both records of attendance and of output per worker, as supplied by management. Cases of persistent, voluntary absenteeism were to be dealt with, not necessarily through removal of exemption certificates, but through ‘personal influence’. Falls in productivity were to be investigated to determine whether any fault lay either with workers or with management.66 The government’s intervention at this point, so close to the end of the war, was a function of the severity and immediacy of the need for coal Only weeks earlier there had been plans for a further comb-out of miners, but now the need for coal had become a more compelling imperative. As MFGB officers explained to their membership, the fact that the Germans had recently made a number of French mines unworkable and that the entry of the US into the war entailed an increase in railway traffic, and thereby increased demand for coal, placed an extra burden on the British coal industry, already pressed by the government’s need to supply neutral countries with coal in return for necessary foodstuffs and raw materials and the continued access to their shipping. With cause well


demonstrated, the Federation urged members to assist as far as possible in ensuring a sustained and even an increased level of output.67 Endorsement of a no-strike policy In accord with its broad commitment to the need for sustained production, and perhaps with greater effect than through the campaign against absenteeism, the MFGB also undertook early on to discourage strike activity as far as possible, so long as hostilities continued. The policy was never perfectly adhered to, nor perhaps would the miners have accepted either a voluntary or compulsory relinquishing of so basic a weapon. But it does indicate the level of collective restraint which they were willing as far as possible to uphold. In the middle of 1915 the YMA Council endorsed the MFGB’s recommendation to establish machinery at district level to assist in the settling of disputes during the war.68 Agreements were subsequently signed with the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association in January 1916 and with West Yorkshire owners in May 1916 intended to avoid strikes for the duration of the war. It was also accepted by the owners’ side that as far as practically possible there should be no alterations to existing conditions of work which might provoke grievances. Where disputes did arise they should be dealt with by tribunals so as to avoid stoppages. More specifically it was agreed that owners and workers should not give notice at any colliery and that no general strike or cessation of work should occur during the war. Any dispute under its authority should be dealt with by the Conciliation Board and any not so covered should be dealt with by a meeting of representatives of owners and workers not more than fourteen days after having been reported. Failing settlement, an independent judge should be the final arbiter.69 Following these agreements, the business of the joint committees in both sections of the county was largely devoted to their implementation. There were, in fact, relatively few stoppages in 1916, and though the YMA granted lock-out pay on several occasions, it was generally where miners were affected by the stoppages of those outside the union. However, strikes did occur at Houghton Main and at Woodend Coal and Ganister Mine, Loxley Valley and balloting on local grievances was allowed by the YMA at twenty-four branches during the year. Authorisation to hand in notices was given, moreover, on eight occasions.70 The following year saw a sharp rise in grievances. Local balloting was permitted on thirty-six occasions and branches were authorised to hand in notices on seventeen, suggesting a loosening of resolve to avoid stoppages. But in the event there again were relatively few, with the YMA granting strike pay in only four cases, at Howden Clough in June, Central Silkstone, Hound Hill Colliery in July, Barugh, Mount and Sons in July and Wrenthorpe in September, none of them of major importance.71 Similarly in 1918, there were numerous grievances


reported to the district and ballots allowed in at least twenty-eight cases through September, but strike pay was only authorised on four occasions.72 Matters of safety The level of grievances was partly a reflection of frustrations following from war-time conditions in industry. While the market was hankering for scarce coal and owners complained about rising costs, miners suffered directly the effects of depleted numbers, particularly of experienced labour, and of attempts by owners to make savings on materials. In late 1914, for example, a particular problem emerged in respect of owners’ intentions to substitute steel for wooden props, given a shortage of timber resulting from its heavy usage in war-related activities. This was initially the subject of discussion at a joint board meeting held in December 1914 in Sheffield and a joint committee meeting held in Leeds in January 1915, but was to persist as a point of contention throughout much of the year. The owners had experimented with steel props prior to the war but resorted to their use on a more general basis when timber suitable for use in mines became virtually unobtainable. Miners were cautious of the change from the very beginning, primarily for safety reasons. As Herbert Smith said in December 1914 in Sheffield, ‘Steel or Iron does not talk to me in the same way as a Wood Prop when the Roof is working.’73 Smith assured the owners that he would willingly try new methods, but he wished to be sure that any innovation was the best possible and this required experimentation, not least because any given method was undoubtedly better suited to some conditions than to others.74 Following the broaching of the topic in South Yorkshire a committee was set up with representatives from each side to look into the safety of steel props, additional work entailed, whether any profit ensued for owners in using props, whether owners would consult the union when introducing props and the question of any payment or penalty falling to workers from their use or misuse. The committee visited a number of pits where steel props were in use, but its two sides were unable to agree to a joint report. Miners’ representatives believed that the various classes of steel and other metals being used were ‘neither as safe nor suitable as timber’, and were persuaded that the owners wished to use the present emergency situation to establish ‘their right to insist upon the use of steel props and other substitutes, without limitation or restriction of any kind, without regard to extra work, or payment for the same, without any agreement for withdrawal when war is over and normal supply of timber is available’.75 In the meantime in West Yorkshire, concern focused on the case of Altofts, where miners had voted on going out on strike to force the removal of steel props. When the case came before the West Yorkshire joint committee it was agreed to set up a sub-committee with a similar brief to that in South


Yorkshire.76 Ultimately a settlement was reached whereby miners agreed to temporary use of steel props during the war, under specified conditions. By November, when the miners met owners in another joint board meeting in South Yorkshire, the scarcity of good timber was even more acute than previously. But Herbert Smith had by now also softened his position, having been persuaded that there was a ‘certain utility’ for steel props, though only in main gate roads. He stressed, however, that miners should be accorded some ‘redress’ for extra work entailed in their placing.77 The owners offered a set of proposals which accepted steel props being used at the outset on a temporary basis, but did not allow miners any extra compensation in association with their use. Miners’ representatives took the proposals away for further consideration, but seem to have been satisfied that they were the best that could be hoped for in the circumstances. Worries over safety also followed from the increasing recruitment into the industry of those who had not ‘grown up’ within it and thus lacked sustained experience and training. On the one hand there was a certain resentment that miners should be actively called up into the army only to have someone else ‘dropped in their place’.78 But such disquiet was all the greater when new entrants were not just also of military age, but unskilled and in at least one case recruited from abroad. In the summer of 1915 the YMA first endorsed a resolution passed by the MFGB that Belgian workers should not be employed underground for safety reasons, and then rescinded it following an agreement by the Federation that Belgians could be employed on the surface and even underground, so long as in the latter case they could speak English, were practical working miners and would not be employed on terms other than those applying to British miners— that is that they should not undercut MFGB or local wage agreements.79 In a related and more general vein, the YMA Council recorded its grave concern in November 1915 that under pressure from the departure of so many miners to the army, owners were ‘filling up their places with unskilled labour’.80 That the concern about safety was indeed valid is indicated by an increase in the rate of accidents over the whole of the York and North Midlands division to 1.16 per thousand in 1915 as against 0.84 the previous year. Deaths resulting from falls of side or roof had increased by 40 per cent. Pressure of the war led not just to the entry of new labour, but also to speed-ups and a general intensification of the work process as well as a redistribution of ‘old’ labour to positions in which they had not previously worked. ‘How far such changes have affected the death rate’, said the inspector, was ‘impossible to say, but it seems not unreasonable to conclude that the busier a person becomes in turning out mineral the less time there is in which to look after his own personal safety and the safety of others depending on him.’81


As the war continued, so too did complaints about the use of unskilled labour in the mines. In March 1917, a special council endorsed a demand by Grimethorpe branch that clergymen employed as pit workers be immediately withdrawn.82 A similar protest against the use of ministers in the pits was made in July 1917 when the YMA branch at Leeds Fireclay Company seriously considered handing in notices over the issue.83 Later in the summer Herbert Smith wrote to the Coal Controller of his members’ resentment over ‘large numbers’ of Irishmen of military age being brought into the pits in Yorkshire. The Coal Controller promised to make enquiries.84 Economic hardship: pressure for increased wages While enduring sacrifice and hardship down the pit, miners also suffered in pocket during the war. Between just the beginning of the war and 1916, there was an estimated 45 per cent reduction in purchasing power of foodstuffs which went unmatched by wage increases. In 1914 and 1915 Yorkshire was involved in disputes relating to the implementation of local awards associated with minimum wage legislation. But during 1915 the union was also involved in negotiations relating to wage increases under the Conciliation Board and the terms of the board’s continuation. The YMA was concerned that any changes be consistent with the ultimate goal of establishing a national conciliation board, but more immediately that new standards for the various areas be agreed, to date from the same time and to be based on existing minimum percentages.85 The YMA also pressed for an immediate wage increase to cover ‘extra high prices of living’ resulting from the war.86 A set of concrete proposals for renewal of the Conciliation Board for the federated area, recommended to owners and miners, included provision for a new basis which, rather than relating to prices in 1888, as had the old standard, was tied to the price or rate paid in 1911. This meant a raising of the standard to a level 50 per cent above the old basis of 1888. The new minimum, moreover, was to be 10 per cent above the new basis, equivalent to 65 per cent above the old, and the new maximum, 23.5 per cent. Advances to the minimum wage gained in October 1912, January 1913 and April 1913 were to remain unaltered and should apply to the new minimum wage rates. Under these terms the Conciliation Board would continue until 30 April 1918.87 On acceptance of the proposals by Yorkshire and other districts, they were incorporated into an agreement signed on 28 April 1915. Local branches were asked to meet managements and ask for revised price lists.88 The transfer of the basis from 1888 to 1911 was understood to imply no increase; the prevailing rate of 65 per cent on the 1888 basis would simply be understood as 10 per cent on the 1911 basis, though it now represented a


minimum and not a maximum in respect of future changes under the Conciliation Board. But there were also moves afoot to effect a wage advance. It had been hoped that an advance of 5 per cent on the new basis could be applied from 8 May 1915, equal to 7.5 per cent on the old basis, and 5 per cent more on 22 May.89 Events, however, overtook negotiations under the English Conciliation Board, when the Federation resolved to support a national wage settlement. The YMA had some reservations about this, but was out-voted by the Federation as a whole in conference.90 On 5 May 1915, the Prime Minister, H.H.Asquith, sent a telegram to the MFGB, confirming that a prima-facie case had been made out for an immediate advance of wages to coal miners in view of war-time conditions. This was to be considered as a ‘War Bonus’. But the settlement was not quite the national one which the Federation preferred. Asquith held that the variety in local conditions required that the precise amount be settled by the various Conciliation Boards and Sliding Scale Committees and specified that advances should ‘merge in any rise of wages that may hereafter be accorded in the district owing to a rise in the price of coal’, thereby implicitly tying wages to prices.91 In the English Conciliation Board area new proposals were put forward by both owners and workers, with a decision between them left up to the independent chairman, Lord Coleridge. He opted for a compromise, recommending that in view of the rise in the cost of living owing to the war, miners should receive an advance of 15.5 per cent as from 5 May 1915.92 This was considerably more favourable than what had been proposed previous to the government’s intervention and indeed immediately took the prevailing level of wages above the maximum so recently set at 23.5 per cent on the basis of 1911, to 25.5 per cent. It did not, even so, match the rate of inflation, but Coleridge argued that miners must bear some sacrifice in common with the community at large.93 Agreement based on these recommendations was reached at a meeting of the English Conciliation Board held on 21 May, which included as additional clauses that no further application for an advance should be made until the owners had recouped the 15.5 per cent and that the advance could be partly or wholly withdrawn as circumstances altered. Any such qualifications concerning new claims, however, were to little effect as the cost of living continued to soar over subsequent months. Periodically new claims were made and advances allowed, with increases of 5 per cent in December 1915 and March 1916 and 3.3 per cent in June 1916.94 But inflation continued to outstrip any increases granted and by the end of 1916 the miners were exerting pressure for yet further changes.95 In September 1916 agitation in Yorkshire had been directed toward the possibility of an advance in the War Bonus, with the YMA Council resolving that ‘demonstrations be organised against the exploitation of the Capitalists’.96 In October a resolution from Featherstone Main, accepted by the council, instructed


officials to forward an application for a 20 per cent War Bonus, ‘owing to the continued increase in the cost of living’.97 Ultimately, in January of the following year, a formal application for an advance was made by miners in the federated area. Citing figures for inflation and wage increases since the onset of the war, it was declared that there was a gap of some 18.5 per cent, indicating the amount by which real wages had fallen.98 Miners’ concerns about rising costs were exacerbated by the levying of a quarterly tax on workers’ wages. YMA minutes of August 1916 make understated reference to the tax as an innovation which would ‘somewhat irritate our men’.99 The officials resisted proposals that collection of the tax be facilitated through deduction from wages as somewhat degrading. ‘We contend that the miner is equally as honest as any other class of income tax payers, and we are anxious to prove this’, they wrote.100 Subsequently there was grumbling not just about the mode of collection but also about the very justice of the tax, or at least of the level applied to miners. The secretary of Kiveton Park branch, for example, asked the council to consider a lower rate as ‘we are paying heavy taxes indirectly, and the very heavy work of miners should have some consideration’.101 The council accordingly resolved to press that workers be relieved of the payment of income tax. Couching the motion in the language of class conflict, they protested that: this is a Tax on the extra cost of living, and that the Upper Classes are not paying a fair share of the burden brought by the War. The Worker is not only finding the largest percentage of his fellow-men to fight the battles on the Plains of France and elsewhere, but is also paying a larger portion than those in better circumstances in life.102 The income tax was not removed and remained a cause of grievance. A year later, North Staveley branch requested that a county vote be conducted over giving fourteen days’ notice to abolish the income tax.103 In the event the executive committee declined because, though sympathetic to the question, it was judged against YMA rules to ballot on ‘domestic questions’. But pressure continued to be exerted by the union throughout and some minor concessions were gained in the form of permitted rebates.104 But the remaining burden of the tax served to underline the miners’ appeal for an advance in early 1917. The application led to an increase in the War Bonus to a level of 15 per cent, to be paid from 19 February.105 But it was gained with the caveat that there should be no general application for any further increase, either of the bonus or in any other form, until the end of August 1917. It was little time, however, before branches were agitating for more, and though both the executive committee and council initially deferred the question, it was resolved by the


council in early July that in view of the abnormal rise in the cost of living, the MFGB should be urged to press for a 25 per cent rise.106 A demand for this amount was put by the MFGB twice, the second time in mid-September, whereupon the Coal Controller put a counter-proposal that a flatrate increase should serve as a temporary ‘war wage’, adding to an already complicated structure of wages involving a minimum, a rate with percentages added fixed under the Conciliation Board and a percentage representing a War Bonus. It was estimated that the cost of living had increased some 80 per cent over pre-war prices,107 so there was just cause for the miners’ discontent. But the amount and mode of an increase remained the subject of negotiation. The Coal Controller initially indicated that he was empowered to offer an advance of 1s per day for all miners over 18 and of 6d for those younger, accompanied by an undertaking to reduce the cost of food by about 10 per cent. After various other proposals and counter-proposals had been put forward, a compromise on figures of 1s 6d and 9d formed the basis of a settlement.108 A substantial minority of the YMA still preferred a 25 per cent increase, but the majority in both Yorkshire and the Federation as a whole voted for acceptance of the flat-rate terms. Subject to some slight adjustments and modifications, the war wage applied from 17 September 1917.109 By now the level of centralised control over the industry, or of government intervention into the structure of its costs, was substantial. Agreement on the war wage was made between the MFGB and the Controller of Coal Mines. The owners, who played no part in discussions regarding it, would have their own negotiations regarding the level of prices.110 In 1918, with miners’ wages still a matter of complaint, there were further calls for increases. In mid-year the Controller of Coal Mines directed that the war wage should rise to 3s for those over 16 and to 1s 6d for those younger.111 But as both the cost of living and the price of coal continued their apparently inexorable rise, the MFGB resolved in November to give serious consideration to pressing for a further increase.112 Thus while the war itself drew toward an end, the miners’ own sense of hardship remained acute. General political stance of the YMA during the war Dissatisfaction over falling real wages, even if a constant theme during the war years, was handled reasonably effectively and harmoniously. Nor were Yorkshire’s miners moved to strike action, except in relatively isolated instances where numbers involved were relatively small. There were many grievances raised and bitter disagreements at various pits in the county, but little widespread disruption. This contrasted with the situation in other industries where difficulties were sufficient to prompt a Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Unrest. YMA officials were invited to attend the hearings of the commission and give evidence, but declined because they were unhappy with members of the


commission who were from the ‘owners’ side’.113 And perhaps for this reason as well as because their grievances were dispatched in a more orderly fashion, miners figured relatively little in the report of the commissioners for the Yorkshire and East Midlands areas.114 But some of its documentation of the general condition of the working class in the area applied to them as well. The commissioners found privation resulting from the high price of food, the numerous and conflicting departmental regulations associated with war legislation, the dilution of skilled labour and the compulsion to work at high pressure under difficult conditions and long hours to be among the factors contributing to a general sense of frustration. They argued in sympathy with the workers that: upon all these disturbing causes of disquiet has grown proof upon proof that their sacrifices were greater than those selfishly controlling the supply of food, that the Government made promises that were not kept, that pledges were broken, that Constitutional Trade Unionism was no longer of any avail, and that the authorities in command were ignoring their grievances and troubles and threatening them instead with Military Service by withdrawing their protecting badges and trade cards, after they had been repeatedly assured that their skill and labour were more needed in the shops than in the Army.115 If miners were subject to contradictory directives, some pulling them out of the mines and others preventing their removal, so it was also with other skilled workers. As the war escalated in 1917, exemptions were removed and more recruits called up. While this process was dealt with in the mining industry in a manner which directly involved the participation of the MFGB, elsewhere wartime pressures served to break unions apart. This was particularly true of the engineering and electrical trades, but also extended to railway workers, carpenters and joiners, enginemen and boiler-makers, iron founders, general workers and colliery surface workers, among whom an attitude prevailed toward the government not just of distrust, but of indifference to any promises the authorities might make.116 The seriousness of the situation prompted the commissioners to suggest that the government take steps to alleviate the extreme privation, stem distrust by assuring the working class that its international concerns were not imperialist, bring about greater democracy and assure labour that war legislation would be removed with the coming of peace and the dilution of skilled labour reversed.117 Political militancy was not as characteristic of miners in Yorkshire as of other elements of the workforce. The mining industry was treated somewhat as a special case. It was never subject to the level of compulsion of those under the Munitions Act and its national organisation remained sufficiently strong to


command the attention of the government. MFGB leadership had been drawn into governmental committees early on in the war, and whether viewed as cooptation or participation, their involvement had persuaded miners that they continued to exert some control over their situation. They were engaged in joint committees and forms of self-regulation throughout the war, albeit with varying levels of enthusiasm and effectiveness. Yet if for these reasons less disheartened and less militant than other groups of workers, they were highly politically aware and the language of class conflict periodically pervaded their internal discussions throughout the war. Initially suspicious of the war and the divergent effects it might have on capital and labour, the union subsequently endorsed the TUC recommendation for a conscription of wealth. Consciousness of the class implications of war legislation were also expressed in respect of income tax when the YMA Council noted that not only were workers suffering disproportionately on the battlefield, but were also obliged to pay a disproportionate part of their income in the form of tax. When the Russian revolution occurred the YMA expressed its ‘great satisfaction with the Russian people in the overthrow of a most tyrannical Autocracy’, as well as hope that the revolution will signify the ‘beginning of the ultimate triumph of Democracy the world over’.118 The YMA had for some time fostered a strong commitment to the Labour Party and just prior to the war, addressing the question of financial difficulties faced by the newspaper, the Daily Citizen, district officials reaffirmed the ‘immense value of a Labour Newspaper in the Country in placing before the Public our views, opinions, and aspirations, both in the Industrial and Political Fields’.119 Throughout much of the war, moreover, attention continued to be given to the task of increasing the number of Labour MPs. In 1914 seven potential parliamentary candidates, S.Roebuck, W.Lunn, I.Burns, E.Hough, J.Guest, T.W.Grundy and J.Potts, had been selected, as was a set of seven constituencies. The YMA had for some time sponsored miner-MPs in Normanton and Hallamshire, but now intended to choose two others from among the seven to contest at the next general election. In June, the council decided on Holmfirth and Doncaster.120 Lunn was subsequently proposed for Holmfirth and Roebuck for Doncaster, and selection procedures were in train for a replacement in Hallamshire for Wadsworth, whose ill-health prevented his renomination. With the outbreak of hostilities, however, there came a pause, the YMA executive committee resolving that all political activity in the constituencies where it was proposed to run candidates should cease until the war was over.121 A year later, however, the YMA officially rescinded its moratorium on political activities and it was decided to replace Doncaster as a targeted constituency with Pontefract,122 Roebuck in the mean time having indicated he no longer wished to be considered as a potential candidate. Then in 1917 there was further rethinking


as a committee was constituted to consider new parliamentary divisions in the Yorkshire mining area and to recommend those promising to yield the most favourable results if contested. The committee recommended six constituencies— Normanton, Wentworth, Hemsworth, Rothwell, Rother Valley and Don Valley— and renewed activity was directed toward organising meetings within them with a view to ultimately contesting all six with miner-candidates. At the end of the year each division was directed to select a candidate from the list of official candidates.123 And over subsequent months this was gradually accomplished.124 While the war thus meant a postponement of any electoral exercise, the YMA nevertheless maintained its conviction in the legitimacy of parliamentary politics and in the necessity of promoting Labour candidates from among its own membership. The union also sustained active lobbying efforts. Throughout the war, for example, the YMA repeatedly pressed government to review the amount going to ex-soldiers and dependants of those killed in action, initially insisting on a figure of not less than £1 per week for wives of those on active service, for dependants of those killed, and for ex-servicemen left incapacitated.125 In the summer of 1917, the executive committee forcefully restated the view that it was a matter of national honour to prevent distress or hardship among those who had suffered in service to the country as well as among their dependants.126 But concern was also expressed about men being discharged from military or naval service with minimal pensions or none at all when they became incapacitated through illness or disease. Denial of a war pension on these grounds when men had been fit, working steadily and earning good wages up until their enlistment was viewed as ‘inhuman treatment’, and the Government was urged to direct immediate attention toward this matter.127 On this and other matters the union continued to exert such political influence as it could command in the interests both of its members and the broader working class. Impact of the war on the union itself The impact of the war told heavily on the mining industry, its workers and the communities in which they lived. But it also affected the union itself. Most profound was the loss of its members to the war, not just temporarily but permanently as numbers killed in action steadily escalated. By the end of 1915, 580 YMA members had been killed and by the end of 1917, 3,364.128 The final toll was 4,740.129 Throughout the long months of the war, lists of those killed were published in the minutes and condolences extended. Having early on agreed to continue to pay funeral benefits, while exempting members enlisting or recruited into the army from union subscriptions, the mounting number of dead meant an increasing financial burden which could not easily be made good. In both 1915 and 1917, in consequence, there was extended discussion about the need to


increase contributions. This would assist in alleviating any potential problem in meeting financial obligations, but perhaps as important, would allow an increase in benefits. With the cost of living having risen so dramatically, former benefit levels were increasingly unrealistic and a potential obstacle to members taking industrial action even when justified. Yet when the council approved an increase in contributions in the middle of 1915 and the matter went to a membership vote, the majority was opposed.130 The case for increases in contributions and benefits was raised again in 1917, when it was pointed out that while wages had increased by 118.3 per cent since the beginning of the war,131 contributions had remained stationary at 6d per week. Deficits which might have otherwise been expected had been offset by an increase in membership. But costs were escalating. And again, there was a crying need for an increase in the level of benefits. While having favoured an increase in both contributions and benefits for some time, district officers had never given the case ‘full and hearty support’. But they did so now, emphasising in particular the need for more realistic benefits, which were now so low within the context of an elevated cost of living as to render members ‘impotent’ against any employers’ encroachment.132 Their vigorous lobbying paid off, as delegates to the yearly council voted for an increase in contributions to 1s, sufficient to allow an increase in benefits to 20s for full members, 10s for half-members and 2s for children.133 In a financial sense, then, a significant degree of organisational integrity was maintained. Overall the YMA weathered the war while maintaining considerable internal cohesiveness. Large numbers were lost to the war effort and heavy sacrifice borne by those remaining in the pits, contributing to a certain cynicism about proportionate contributions made to national efforts by those in differing positions within the class structure. But, even so, the miners consistently cooperated with the government and assisted with the war effort. If authorities harped on absenteeism, there was in fact relatively little, nor much additional cause for complaint. While there were disputes and disagreements, they were dealt with for the most part without undue disruption. With its members demonstrating loyalty and commitment, the war period indeed saw a certain strengthening of organisation within the district. And on a national level, Yorkshire moved toward renewed prominence within the MFGB, with Herbert Smith being elected its vice-president in 1917.134 Always a strong force within the Federation, there was now promise of even further influence, as during the era when Pickard had led that body. With the end of the war, the miners encountered a highly disrupted industry. Government intervention had laid the basis for broader planning and some degree of continued co-ordination, all the more urgent because of the fall in output and productivity engendered by the loss of labour to the military. Though the war had compelled the introduction of some new, labour saving, technology,


its greater impact had been to disadvantage and in a relative sense freeze the industry while others, such as the American, had forged ahead. The question of reconstruction was therefore a highly significant one which would entail much discussion over subsequent months and years. But the YMA, at least, faced this prospect from a position of considerable strength.

15 TOWARDS AN INDUSTRIAL UNION

Initiated as a union for skilled, underground workers, the YMA always maintained an ambivalent stance toward other categories of the colliery workforce. Gradually the scope of the union broadened as it incorporated and claimed representation first of boys and then of all workers underground, save for deputies and other supervisory personnel. But surface workers remained largely outside. Following the minimum wage dispute in 1912, the YMA was instrumental in securing broadened recognition of surface workers’ unions by employers and subsequently in settlements in both South and West Yorkshire governing conditions of service and wages and in particular instituting a minimum wage for surface workers. But it was only during the war that the YMA evolved a policy of encouraging membership of surface workers and indeed of presenting itself as their legitimate representative. If partly the culmination of previous tendencies, this also marked an important redefinition of the YMA as an industrial union, open to and eager to incorporate all workers in and about collieries. It was not wholly accidental that this policy should have emerged during the war. For the crisis of those years, involving on the one hand depletion of the mining workforce and on the other the entry of new hands unapprenticed and unfamiliar with pit work, led to considerable involvement with a new version of the old problem of non-unionism. A campaign to incorporate all pit workers within a single organisation emerged as the logical extension of district officials’ earlier goal of bringing all underground workers into the union. The YMA’s claim on all workers in and about the pit Concern with the implications of new unskilled and non-unionised labour for safety and for amicable relations down the pit was voiced at a meeting of the South Yorkshire Joint Committee in November 1915. Making a general point about the replacement of skilled men who had joined the forces with unskilled men of military age, Herbert Smith declared, ‘If a man is a practical man, that is quite clear, we have no objection to him working. If he is not a practical man,


then we have an objection to him working and taking our man’s place.’1 This sentiment was intermixed with ill-feeling towards those newcomers who had not joined the union. There had been several cases during the year of branches wanting to ballot over the issue of non-unionism, but specific reference was made on this occasion to difficulties at Grimethorpe and Frickley. Mr Gill, as representative of the owners at Grimethorpe, reported that YMA members had set down the pit because of the presence there of non-unionists. They had asked management for assistance in compelling those in question to join up, and Gill said he had advised in favour of this course of action to prevent any further dispute. Smith emphasised that the YMA did not want its members ‘stopping at a minute’s notice’ and said the union had not granted strike pay to those who had stopped Grimethorpe. Still, he said, the workers ‘must be in the Yorkshire Miners’ Association’. The owners, as indicated by Gill’s account, were generally amenable to this and reaffirmed the agreement reached on an earlier occasion, that wherever workers refused to join the YMA, the union’s representatives at the pit should approach the management with a list of those so refusing and ask its assistance.2 In accord with the YMA’s overall campaign, organisers or collectors were authorised to stand at a number of pits throughout 1915 to persuade newly hired or recalcitrant hands to join the union. This was repeated the following year when a strategy to expand the union to incorporate surface workers was crystallised. In March the council instructed branches to ‘take earnest and strenuous steps to bring all men and boys within the YMA’.3 But it was in the late summer, during the course of a South Yorkshire Joint Committee, that the question of surface workers emerged explicitly. The chairman of the meeting, R.Richardson, commented on the considerable progress made in getting workers into the union, but queried a request for assistance with workers clearly not employed underground. ‘Are you at the present moment trying to get blacksmiths, engineers, boiler firemen and that kind of thing into your Association?’ he asked, to which Smith replied that ‘it is our intention to get them all in’.4 But the chairman balked at this as a new turn and in his view an invalid one. ‘If a man is a member of a particular Union, whether yours or not, that is all that would be required’, he suggested. It was ‘absolutely wrong’ to declare that they should belong to the YMA in such circumstances, and more so to enlist the owners’ assistance in this project. The discussion progressed to a review of past settlements involving surface workers and to Richardson’s claim that the YMA had been an ally to surface workers’ unions and a signatory ‘as a part of the whole’, to an agreement reached in May 1915. But Smith claimed that this was a very different situation in that the YMA had been compelled to assist surface workers’ unions on threat of a strike ensuing had no agreement been reached. ‘We had a strike’, said Smith. ‘These people represented a few men, and they said,


“unless we can get recognised we are going to keep your men out”.’ ‘We felt very aggrieved at the whole business’, he confessed.5 Smith acknowledged an even earlier intervention by the YMA on behalf of surface workers’ unions in 1912, in order to ensure that the latter’s appeals for recognition would be treated seriously. But the miners’ union had now forgone the role of patron as no longer appropriate; the necessity for industrial-wide action was increasingly evident. ‘The next time we will start an agitation in our own County to get them with us, and not part with us and part belonging to another Association which took in all kinds of workmen’, said Smith. He then made the YMA’s intentions abundantly clear by declaring that ‘We are agitating now with a view to getting every man who works about a pit into our Association and we shall continue until we have got them all.’6 Smith elaborated the unsatisfactory nature of the present situation, suggesting that the owners ‘ought to look at this thing like we do’. Should a particular group such as the cokemen go out on strike, he said, ‘we should have no control of them at all, and by setting down we should have thousands of men out’. It did no good to have separate, and certainly not competing unions, especially when their boundaries extended beyond the industry. ‘We say these people have to come near to us, we cannot allow them to be mixed up by men who do not belong to the pit’, said Smith. ‘We are the pit people and we must represent inside that pit yard.’ Bluntly and emphatically he declared that ‘we claim the lot’.7 Interestingly the owners seemed to concur. ‘We have not the slightest objection to you having them’, said Richardson. ‘The gentlemen on this side would sooner that you have them than anybody else.’ But he cautioned that the time was not right to stir up trouble.8 Later in the year, the YMA formalised its new stance when the yearly council meeting resolved that ‘all Surfacemen, as well as men working underground, apart from officials, i.e. those connected with the Management, must be Members of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association’.9 New boundaries to the union were now explicitly drawn. In 1917 the issues of non-unionism and the incorporation of surface workers into the YMA again intertwined and some of the points previously made were again rehearsed. When the South Yorkshire Central Committee on Absenteeism touched on the question of non-unionism at its meeting on 18 January in Sheffield, albeit acknowledging that it was outside the province of the body, the chairman suggested that branch secretaries of the YMA should apply to the under-manager of their respective pits for lists of men being set on. Herbert Smith, accepting this suggestion, emphasised that such lists should include all those employed in and about the mines. Though the YMA had no intention of bringing out its members on strike over the issue, organising would continue, to bring in all colliery workers.10 Non-unionism was reported to the district as a grievance by seventeen branches during 1917. Seven of them—Altofts, Ossett Roundwood, Crigglestone,


Lofthouse, West Sharlston, Featherstone and Woodlesford —applied for and were granted permission to ballot on the issue. Noticing was authorised for three, though in the event no stoppages ensued. Although specifics in these cases varied, several involved groups of surface workers. West Sharlston branch, for example, was concerned about the refusal of some nineteen surface workers to join the union. When the case came before the West Yorkshire joint committee, the chairman, Hargreaves, declared that ‘we have never discussed the question of surfacemen being in your Association before’. Both the owners’ protests and the YMA’s replies in this instance bore close similarity to the exchange between the miners and South Yorkshire owners the previous year. When Smith explained that YMA rules provided for surface workers joining the association and had done so since 1872, the chairman interjected that ‘I may be absolutely wrong, but I never yet knew that you included surfacemen, and never remember an application before’.11 At Crigglestone, a strike over non-unionism was narrowly averted when a settlement was reached which specified that ‘all men and boys working in and about these Collieries must be members of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association at once’ and provided that the respective checkweighmen should have the right and privilege to organise from time to time at the colliery.12 The firmness of this statement was further underlined in the autumn of 1917 when the YMA suggested at the West Yorkshire joint committee that conditions of employment of all men and boys starting at collieries must include their membership in the YMA.13 No such arrangement was agreed, but the YMA had clearly and emphatically declared its intentions. The proposal that it should be a condition of employment that all who worked underground join the union was similarly raised with the South Yorkshire joint committee, where it was rejected by the owners in deference to the rights of other unions. There were certain workers, such as enginemen, said the chairman of the meeting, who were in other unions and ‘You cannot expect us to say, come out of that Union and go into the other. I don’t think we could if we agreed to it. The legal position would not let us.’14 Its drive to become transformed into an industrial union inevitably brought the YMA into conflict with other, sometimes specialised, societies which claimed to represent sections of the colliery workforce. A case in point was the Winding and General Engineers’ Society, whose dispute with the YMA related to underground labour and specifically the right to organise men driving compressed-air engines underground. During the previous summer there had been a querrulous correspondence between the YMA and the Winding and General Engineers’ Society over boundaries between the two. Thomas Casey had written to the YMA branch secretary of Aldwarke Main 1 on behalf of the engineers detailing complaints received of attempts to compel some of his union’s members to join the YMA.


Casey pointed out that some of the men in question had been associated with his society for a number of years. It was ‘scarcely right’, he said, for a class of ‘men who have a union of their own to sever their connection and join the miners’. If the problem was not resolved, he wrote, his society was prepared to ‘take such steps as we consider necessary for the protection of our members, and it will then be found that we are as strong as the Miners’ Union’.15 The reply came directly from Herbert Smith at district headquarters who expressed surprise at the tone of Casey’s letter, ‘after all the work we did for engine men and engine winders’, and then alleged that the membership of the engineers’ society was confined not just to this category of worker, but had edged out to include miners, rippers, stonemen and lads. The YMA’s position was then outlined to Casey as firmly as to the owners. All who worked in and about the mines were legitimate recruits to the YMA and it should in turn be recognised as their legitimate representative. ‘We intend compelling them to join, whatever may be the results, if they work in or about a mine.’16 Casey then sent a second letter, declaring that little good could be accomplished by trade union officials showing a vindictive spirit, and indicating his willingness to meet and discuss such complaints as had arisen between his society and the YMA. He commented that Smith had drawn considerably on his imagination in asserting that the engineers’ society catered for miners, rippers and stonemasons, but agreed that it did represent men employed on air compressors, had always done so and intended to continue.17 Jurisdictional friction between the societies continued into the following year, erupting periodically at one pit or another and dogging the progress which the YMA wished to make in its bid to represent all mining labour. Wages campaign for surface workers As part of its commitment to categories of workers to whom it had not historically given priority, however, the YMA became particularly involved in an attempt to improve wages and reduce hours of surface workers and artisans employed in pit shops. The question of surface workers’ wages cropped up in respect of grievances at several pits early in 1916 and in June officials informed branches that the union intended to make a general application for a wage increase for all classes of workers within the association, with particular attention being given to those employed on the surface.18 To this end district headquarters solicited information on procedures for supplying home coal to surface workers, prevailing hours and overtime arrangements and current wage rates.19 After mulling over returns, a set of proposed rates for surface workers, including lads employed on the top, was drawn up. The intended claim was to be a flat rate plus the current 23.3 per cent and the 18 per cent War Bonus, as well as the war wage, and was to be based on an eight-hour day, except for Saturday


when hours were shorter. It was also proposed that surface workers should get home coal at the same price as underground workers.20 The district voted with virtual unanimity (1,464 to 7) that the YMA make a general application along these lines, which was then officially laid before the owners on 26 October 1917.21 As prevailing machinery required any negotiated agreement between union and employers to be sanctioned by the Coal Controller, however, the owners simply forwarded the claim to his office. In November the YMA was notified that while the Coal Controller had carefully reviewed the YMA claim, he was of the opinion that the recently granted war wage of 1s 6d and 9d was sufficient to meet all demands for increased remuneration. Other components of the claim, such as overtime rates, working hours and minimum rates for certain grades of surface workers, were, he suggested, matters affecting the permanent conditions of the industry and outside of his brief as a temporary war-time functionary. Nor, it was suggested, were they appropriate matters for negotiation during the wartime crisis.22 YMA officials were incensed by this response and the council meeting on 19 November recommended branches to consider conducting an individual ballot on taking county action on the matter, ‘seeing the Owners have taken up the attitude they have along with the Coal Controller on this question’.23 The following day Herbert Smith wrote back to the Coal Controller, noting that he had persistently raised the question of whether war-wage awards would be permitted in any way to interfere with trade union activity aimed at improving members’ wages and conditions and had been repeatedly assured that they would not. But now it seemed otherwise. The YMA had negotiated prices and conditions at individual collieries similar to what it was now asking for generally, said Smith, and the question had in any case been in dispute ‘months before the war wage question came along’. ‘If the County takes my advice’, he declared, ‘they will deal with it as a County.’24 In a mood of militancy, the membership in Yorkshire voted by 1,932 to 0 in favour of ‘taking County Action to enforce the Owners to meet and discuss and agree to Increase of Wages, Reduction of Hours, Payment for Overtime, and supplying Home Coal to them at the same rate as Underground Workmen’.25 When the Coal Controller confirmed his initial opinion and said that should the YMA wish to press their application, it would have to be referred to the Committee on Production or some similar tribunal,26 Smith replied that they had no intention of going before any such committee. ‘We have our own arrangements for settling disputes and dealing with them in Yorkshire, and so far as I am concerned that must be the medium through which we must go.’27 The YMA continued its pressure, with the yearly council of 20 December agreeing to a county ballot to effect the action already sanctioned. But there was soon an indication that this course might not after all be necessary, since an


invitation had been extended and duly accepted to meet Sir Richard Redmayne, the Coal Controller on the surface workers’ question.28 With the ballot set to be carried out between 14 and 17 January,29 a meeting was hosted by the Coal Controller on 11 January 1918, attended by representatives of both the South and West Yorkshire Owners’ Associations and of the YMA. The miners’ pressure paid off with at least partial concessions in that it was recommended that South Yorkshire consider adopting ‘Doncaster rates’ for unskilled surface workers, and that the question of rates for skilled workers go to arbitration along with that of rates for all West Yorkshire surface workers, both skilled and unskilled.30 The ballot in Yorkshire, coming after this conference, showed slightly less enthusiasm for striking than had previous surveys of opinion on the matter. But by a large majority of 1,367 to 564, the YMA voted to give in notice.31 A subsequent, individual, ballot revealed 76,331 in favour of giving in notices and 8,522 against. A total of 7,119 had abstained or otherwise not returned ballots.32 In the event, a county-wide stoppage was avoided. But negotiations were complicated, with some questions still outstanding and subject to the submission and resubmission of competing claims over many months. Difficulties were partly a function of the disruption to the negotiating process entailed by the intervention of various government bodies alongside the parties in dispute. But they were also a consequence of the jurisdictional competition among unions vying for representation of surface workers. For all the YMA’s claims that it was the legitimate representative of all workers in and about the mines, other associations were in the field and had been so for some years, having filled the gap left by the YMA’s former reluctance to organise and respond to the concerns of surface workers. The YMA’s wage and conditions proposals now sat alongside others, inhibiting the ease of achieving any general settlement. The National Federation of Colliery Surface-Workers was in fact pursuing a wage claim at about this same time and, while the YMA and owners’ representatives were mulling over recommendations emerging from their meeting with the Coal Controller, was preparing for its case to be heard by the Committee on Production in the latter part of January. An initial settlement, when it came, was divided along several lines. In South Yorkshire a set of rates was agreed between the owners’ association and the YMA for surface workers, both lads and adults, other than shopmen.33 While covering the largest pits, it did not, however, apply to all. Nor, while alluding to the eight-hour day and arrangements for overtime thereafter, did it deal with home coal.34 Shopmen’s wages for the same set of South Yorkshire pits, moreover, had been awarded by the Committee on Production, at a level rather lower than claimed by the YMA. In West Yorkshire all rates, whether for skilled or unskilled surface workers, lads or adults, had been agreed between the National Federation of Colliery Surface-Workers and endorsed by the Committee on Production, and there were


separate schedules for the eastern and western sections. The YMA was adamant in its disavowal of these terms, emphasising that it was not party to the agreement.35 Having submitted a uniform claim for all of Yorkshire, its unhappiness with the award was manifest in its calculation of the disparity between what had been granted in the two sub-sections of West Yorkshire against that agreed for South Yorkshire pits. YMA officials were also concerned about the section of the settlement relating to hours in West Yorkshire, which specified a 54-hour week, applicable to both single- and double-shift pits without distinction.36 However partial the settlement may have been, on the other hand, the YMA was reasonably happy with the situation in South Yorkshire. Rates for unskilled surface workers had been negotiated with the owners’ association, which also agreed to re-submit the question of shopmen’s wages, fixed by the Committee on Production, to open arbitration, subject to the sanction of the Coal Controller. But even here the settlement only applied to the listed pits and so the prospect of a partial stoppage at recalcitrant collieries still loomed as it did throughout West Yorkshire, given the refusal of the owners there to consider any terms other than those agreed with the National Federation of Colliery Surface-Workers.37 The YMA had a long meeting with West Yorkshire owners on 30 January just after the award was announced. Herbert Smith in particular was furious at what he regarded as the underhandedness of the owners in meeting with the surface workers’ federation when they had given so little satisfaction to the YMA’s requests for negotiation. The owners tried to persuade miners’ representatives that there was little in the difference between the terms they had agreed with the surface workers’ federation and the YMA’s claim. But at the same time they were unwilling to move even this little distance and the miners withdrew, intent on continuing preparations to give in notice.38 After further negotiation with the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, however, some improvement was reached on 12 February 1918 on terms for unskilled surface workers, applicable, as in South Yorkshire, to a specified list of pits, including the most significant in the district. The basic rates were to be the same as in South Yorkshire, but with a differentiation of 1.66 per cent (less) for the eastern sub-division and of 5 per cent for the western sub-division. Working hours for single-shift pits was fixed at nine hours per day after which overtime would be paid. For double shift pits the time for drawing coal was fixed at eight hours.39 The YMA felt somewhat more comfortable with these terms, though they were ratified by a special council only after long discussion. The minutes express a continuing worry and wariness over the presence of other unions in the field with the comment that the special council had been ‘glad to learn that material improvements had been made to the Award which had been attempted to be


foisted on this Association by the National Surface Workers’ Union and the West Yorkshire Coal owners’.40 Improved terms in hand, the YMA directed notices to be withdrawn from pits throughout the county listed as in compliance with them by the owners’ associations. Branches elsewhere were advised to approach managements to seek similar agreement.41 But though the threat of a county strike over surface workers’ wages and conditions receded, the question of hours continued to claim attention. For in fact only the hours of coal manipulators at the surface had been agreed by the YMA. Similarly outstanding were the questions of rates, overtime and home coal for shopmen.42 The question of surface workers’ hours Claims relating to skilled surface workers or shopmen, such as electricians, sawyers, joiners, saddlers, pumpmen and the like, were subsequently subject to arbitration by Judge Benson, who made his award in June 1918 for both South and West Yorkshire. But the YMA gained little joy from this as the rates were essentially the same as those approved much earlier in the year by the Committee on Production in sanctioning the agreement between owners’ associations in the county and the surface workers’ federation.43 A working week of 54 hours was similarly reaffirmed by the award, while the question of home coal was sidestepped as inopportune during the special conditions of war time. The miners were clearly disappointed, but their particular concern over the question of hours was subsequently aroused over the specification of mealtimes as inclusive to or exclusive of total hours awarded. Essentially the YMA interpreted the award to be 54 hours inclusive of meals, while the owners believed it to be 54 hours of work. When Judge Benson intervened to confirm that he had intended the latter,44 H.Smith objected strongly that the arbitrator had no authority for offering a further definition of his award without having received a request to this effect from the YMA. He informed the judge that he now intended to advise the council to ‘take its own course, and to enforce the carrying out of the 54 hours which must include meal times, and if a Strike takes place, of course, you must take some responsibility for interfering without being asked from both sides’.45 From this point, shopmen who were members of the YMA adhered to leaving times consistent with meals being inclusive in the 54hour week and were subsequently fined by owners for time lost.46 Little more than a week later, council delegates were called to vote on the immediate handing-in of notices.47 And once again, and in spite of a general orientation to forestall industrial action during war time, the YMA geared itself for the possibility of a county-wide strike.48 In an attempt to abort the action, the Coal Controller asked the YMA to resubmit the question to another arbitrator. The union declined, but did indicate a


willingness to discuss the possibility of some agreed modification to the award allowing the inclusion of mealtimes in the 54 hours, noting that this had already been allowed by some owners in the county. In the meantime, as any settlement was still outstanding, all work was directed to cease from 22 August 1918.49 Further correspondence was, however, exchanged and a meeting held between the Coal Controller and YMA representatives on the day that notices were set to expire, leading ultimately to compromise through a temporary settlement whereby a week’s work was set at 51 hours, with specific mealtimes being arranged locally to suit those at the various pits. All deductions suffered where miners had left work in accord with the YMA’s interpretation of the Benson award were to be returned. These arrangements were to apply until such time as an independent arbiter, appointed by the Coal Controller, should have an opportunity to review the question not just on hours but on wages, payment for overtime and home coal as well.50 There was some difficulty in getting owners to pay back arrears as indicated, and the new arbitration was thereby held up. At about this same time the YMA campaign suffered the complication of a somewhat conflicting claim being pursued relating to surface workers’ hours on a national basis under the auspices of the MFGB.51 This partial pre-empting of their initiative put the YMA in a slightly uncomfortable position. They were applying for 46 hours as part of a larger package for shopmen and had accepted a temporary settlement of 51 hours. The MFGB claim, however, would entail a 49 hour week. But YMA officials worried that if they actively joined in the MFGB campaign, the owners could with some justification abandon the other parts of the package, refusing to submit it to arbitration.52 They considered, therefore, that they could neither vote for, nor against, the MFGB resolution. In a curiously similar way colliery owners in Yorkshire appealed to the impending arbitration as reason for their not taking a stand. They declined the Coal Controller’s suggestion that they give sympathetic consideration to a reduction of hours after the war because their own arbitration case was imminent.53 Regardless of the YMA’s position, the matter was soon taken out of its hands. Negotiations involving the Coal Controller and representatives of the owners and the MFGB resulted in an offer of a 49-hour week, exclusive of mealtimes, to be arranged as from January 1919.54 Individual collieries were left to arrange mealtimes, the division of hours into days and times of beginning and ending of work. Wishing to be loyal to the MFGB, but disappointed with this outcome, the YMA Council instructed union officials to meet owners ‘to see what can be done with regard to Working Hours and Food Time’.55 Quibbling on these points was to continue for some time. While still so engaged, the YMA took the opportunity at the end of the year to reaffirm commitment to surface workers’ wages and conditions as a whole, pledging to fix a time for arbitration on outstanding claims on increased rates, overtime and home coal.56


Strengthening commitment to a broad-based miners’ union The amount of time and energy devoted to surface workers during 1918 was extensive. Alongside the issue of recruitment of miners into the military in the final stages of the war, the campaign over surface workers’ wages and conditions stood as one of the union’s primary preoccupations during this period and was testimony to the extent of the union’s commitment to this section of the mining workforce. At the same time, difficulties encountered underlined to YMA officials the necessity for an even greater commitment and the need for a more truly industrial union in mining. The YMA’s relations with competing unions in the field were far from exemplary and it could perhaps justifiably be accused of poaching. But the extent to which owners could play upon division among ranks of unionised labour, as easily as between organised and non-organised labour, was thoroughly brought home to the YMA by the events of the year. The overcoming of one such line of division, involving winding engineers, was accomplished not through poaching or the absorption of individuals into the YMA, but rather through the affiliation of their society, the Yorkshire Winding Enginemen’s Association, with the MFGB, whereby they were both incorporated and permitted to retain their separate identities.57 With respect to other workers, it remained the intention of the YMA, as Herbert Smith said, ‘to have them all’ through individual or collective defection from any alternative organisations they might be affiliated to. The process still had some distance to go in 1918. In discussion with YMA representatives early in the year, the owners’ side said they had been given to understand that as many as 50 per cent of surface workers were represented by Bailey’s federation. Hoskin countered that the situation was highly fluid and the representation by the different unions constantly altering, with individuals coming across to the YMA every day. ‘They are coming from every Union, and if you opened my letters every morning you would find them there.’58 The YMA did not yet ‘have them all’. But the events of 1918 convinced officials, if they had not been before, of the necessity of a new kind of union. By this time they were consciously pursuing the transformation of a former association of skilled underground colliers into a truly industrial union. If not yet achieved, momentum based on policy was carrying the YMA firmly in this direction.

432

APPENDIX I Employment, output and productivity in the Yorkshire coalfield 1874–1900

Note: Various government sources such as Reports of Inspectors of Mines or Abstracts of Labour Statistics give slightly varying figures relating to numbers employed, partly in consequence of varying definitions of the area covered or the range of minerals or type of worker included. Rather than utilising figures from any of these across the entire range of years, all data has been taken from F.A.Gibson, itself based on government sources. Source: Findlay A.Gibson, A Compilation of Statistics of the Coal Mining Industry of the United Kingdom, the Various Coalfields Thereof, and the Principal Foreign Countries of the World: table on Yorkshire.

434

APPENDIX II Membership and accounts of the YMA; number of pits in the county 1881–1900

Source: Membership figures up to 1890 from Spaven, Table 6, p. 129; rest of union data from Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions for the years 1891 until 1900. Data on number of collieries from Inspector of Mines Reports for the relevant years.

436

APPENDIX III Exports of coal from Humber ports 1880–1900

Sources: Coal Cinders, etc. An Account of the Quantities of Coals, Cinders and Patent Fuel Shipped Coastways from the Ports of England, Scotland, and Ireland severally… 191, PP 1881; Coal Cinders, etc. 164, PP 1891; Return given for the Year 1900 the Export of Coal from each Port in the United Kingdom to each Country Abroad…119, PP 1901.

438

NOTES

1 OPENING OUT OF THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD 1 The Yorkshire region is part of a larger field, variously referred to as the East Pennine coalfield, the East Midland or simply the Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfield. The coal measures of Yorkshire are divided from the Derbyshire coalfield by an anticline, whose axis follows the line of the railway from Sheffield to Worksop, giving some basis for regarding Yorkshire as a distinct region. On the west the Yorkshire field is bounded by outcrops and by moorlands covering the millstone grit; on the north the boundary is formed by a set of faults ranging east and west to the north of Leeds. As the measures dip to the east, the coal bearing strata become increasingly deep and their workability dependent on technological developments. For many centuries it was believed that the eastern boundary lay along a north-south line several miles to the west of Doncaster. Later this line came merely to be understood as the division between what is referred to as the exposed coalfield on the west and the concealed field on the east, where the coal measures are covered by strata of the Permian and Triassic systems (Midland Institute 1927:5, 10, 11; A.M.Neuman 1934:513; Hopkinson 1957:1). 2 Hopkinson, op. cit.: 11, 12. 3 Hunt (1854:49), Mineral Statistics (1854:44). 4 Ibid. See also Jones: (c. 1948:54) and Jevons (1915:65, 6). 5 Hunt (1865) Mineral Statistics (1865). 6 Singleton (n.d.: 44). 7 Ibid.: 22. 8 Hunt, Mineral Statistics (1855). 9 Wilkinson (n.d.: 20). 10 Goodchild (1970). 11 Hunt (1855), op. cit. 12 Jones, op. cit.: 97. 13 Kirby (1977). 14 Inspector’s Report for 1880. 15 See J.Goodchild (1978) for further details concerning the Charlesworths. 16 Both western and southern sections are part of the same coal measure deposition, but in the neighbourhood of an east-west line roughly between Woolley and Askern

440 NOTES

17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

there are particularly notable lateral variations in the condition and thickness of the seams, with the splitting of seams by bands of rock and shale and the dying out of some seams altogether. A set of seams— the Halifax, Beeston, Silkstone, Parkgate, Haigh Moor and Barnsley—have widespread stability throughout Yorkshire and can be traced over the coalfield as a whole, though the Silkstone seam in the south becomes the thin and less viable Blocking or Barcelona Coal in the north. In some cases a single seam carries a different name in the two districts; Barnsley seam, for example, is referred to as Warren House in West Yorkshire and Swallow Wood as Haigh Moor. However, in general the principal seams of South Yorkshire are charactistically thinner and often unworkable in West Yorkshire, and those most valuable in West Yorkshire are of little viability in South Yorkshire. In West Yorkshire the valuable seams have been the Black Bed, Beeston, Middleton Main, Haigh Moor, Warren House and Stanley Main. Those most important in the Barnsley district have been the Whinmoor, Silkstone, Thorncliffe, Parkgate, Fenton, Swallow Wood, Barnsley, Woodmoor and Shafton; while in the region of Sheffield and Rotherham the Silkstone, Parkgate, Swallow Wood, Barnsley and High Hazels have been primarily exploited (Midland Institute 1927:6, 7; Jones 1966:xiii). See Jones op. cit.: 102. Committee of the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, Sections of Strata of the Coal Measures of Yorkshire, University of Sheffield, 1927. Output figures from Reports of the Inspector of Mines for years indicated. Ibid, for the years 1884 and 1885. First Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Subject of Mining Royalties, Appendix B, Submission by the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, C-6195, PP 1890. Figures are for years ending 30 June. Williams (1962:52). Buxton (1978:89). List of the Plans of Abandoned Mines, deposited in the Home Office, corrected to 31 December 1911, 1912. Spaven (1978 thesis: 250–2). Rossington (n.d.), Treeton Colliery. Williams, op. cit. Return to an Order of the Honourable The House of Commons, dated 18 February 1901 for the Export of Coal, 119, PP 1901. Williams, op. cit.: 193. Abstract of Labour Statistics, Cd 1124, PP 1902; Return to an Order of the Honourable The House of Commons…for the Export of Coal, op. cit. South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, Report for the Eleventh Annual Meeting, 15 January 1895:1, 2; Inspector of Mines Reports for 1894 and 1895. MFGB Annual Conference, 1897. Gibson (1922:22). Figures from Inspector of Mines Reports. Abstract of Labour Statistics, op. cit. List of Mines 1880 and 1900. List of Mines 1900.

NOTES 441

38 First Report of the Royal Commission…Mining Royalties, op. cit.: 61. The Inspector’s Report for 1889 and Gibson put total Yorkshire output for the year at approximately 22,000,000 tons, but this does not invalidate the general point. 39 List of Mines 1900; List of Mines 1880. 40 First Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Subject of Mining Royalties, op. cit., West Yorkshire prices for years ending 30 June; Return to an Order of the Honourable The House of Commons…for the Export of Coal, op. cit.

2 COMMUNITY AND COMBINATION Recruitment; family; variety of community types 1 Lewis 1971. 2 Report of Commission on Children’s Employment, Main Report: 54. 3 Symons, no. 33; Scriven: 63. Report of Commission on Children’s Employment (Mines) 4 Goodchild (1978:70, 71). 5 Bullock, Bowers Row; Recollections of a Mining Village, 1976:42. 6 Goodchild, ‘Pope and Pearson and Silkstone Buildings’, (1977). 7 Goodchild, ‘Coalmining in Sharlstone; an Historical Essay’, (1972). 8 MacFarlane, n.d.: 6; 1861 Census returns. 9 Ibid.: 13. 10 Jones, op.cit., figure 47. 11 Ibid. 12 1901 Census. Figures for the population of registration districts in 1901 are based on boundaries pertaining in 1891 for purposes of comparison. 13 1901 Census, op. cit. 14 Rossington (1976:18). 15 List of Mines 1900; Public Record Office, Powe 6/81. 16 1901 Census, op. cit. 17 MacFarlane, n.d.: 25. 18 1901 Census, op. cit., see Appendix I. 19 Calculated from census figures for 1891. 20 1891 Census. 21 William Parrott, one of the district officials of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, declared his support for the attempt by the MFGB to prevent women working on the surface and in colliery yards and was met by the strong approval of his audience at the YMA Annual Demonstration in 1897. ‘We have not succeeded yet’, he said, ‘but we intend to keep pegging away until we succeed’ (YMA, Annual Demonstration, 1897). 22 1911 Census. 23 Ibid.: 1891 Census, op. cit. 24 J.Wilkinson, ‘Mining in Barnsley’. 25 1901 Census, op. cit.

442 NOTES

26 Symons says that the most prevalent diseases among colliers in 1841 in Flockton were asthma and rheumatism (Symons, op. cit.: 195). 27 Collins and Llewellyn, Report on Miners ‘Beat Knee’, ‘Beat Hand’ and ‘Beat Elbow’, 1929. 28 Evison (1963) Appendix 4, p. 39. 29 W.Taylor, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. 30 W.Taylor, op. cit.: vol. I, Report and Appendix. 31 Ibid.: Main Report, 45. 32 Evison, op. cit.: 380, Table 19B. The average for England and Wales for the period 1891 until 1900 was probably about 153. 33 Spaven, (1978 thesis: 411, Table 19). 34 Inspector’s Report for 1888, vol. xxiv, C-5779, PP 1889. 35 Eagleston (1925) ‘Apropos of Housing “Two Room”’: 101. Community institutions—working-class initiatives 1 Tremenheere, (1845:34). 2 In consequence of his support for the miners, he found himself in trouble, burdened with a substantial lawsuit, for the payment of which he asked and received the assistance of the Yorkshire mine workers’ union (YMA Minute Books). 3 Excerpt from Primitive Methodist Magazine, 1873, in Wearmouth, Methodism and the Struggle of the Working Classes 1850–1900, Edgar Backus, Leicester, 1954: 175. 4 Ibid.: 195. 5 Excerpt from the Primitive Methodist Magazine, 1893, in ibid.: 179. 6 Ibid.: 180. 7 Excerpt from the Connexional Magazine, in ibid.: 176. 8 The Coronation History of the Barnsley British Co-operative Society Ltd, 1862– 1902, Manchester, Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Printing Works, 1903. 9 Cole, A Century of Co-operation, Co-operative Union Ltd, Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester, 1944. 10 George Jacob Holyoake, The Jubilee History of the Leeds Industrial Co-operative Society, from 1847–1897, Leeds Central Co-operative Offices, 1897. 11 William Smith, The History and Antiquities of Morley, London, Longmans, Green & Company, 1876. 12 Hand-Book to Dewsbury and the Neighbourhood, for visitors to the 56th meeting of the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics Institutes, 1893:14, 15. 13 Gordon M.Wilson, Alexander MacDonald, Leader of the Miners, Aberdeen University Press, 1982:98. 14 Coronation History of the Barnsley British Co-operative Society, op. cit.: 22. 15 Cole, op. cit., appended maps; for Mexborough, Mexborough and Swinton Times, 22 January 1897. 16 Coronation History, op. cit.: 14. 17 Jubilee History, op. cit. 18 Coronation History, op. cit. 19 Ibid. 20 Mexborough and Swinton Times, op. cit.

NOTES 443

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Cole, op. cit.: 213. Coronation History, op. cit. Ibid. YMA Minute Books (as compiled by author in ‘officials file’); Mexborough and Swinton Times, 10 February 1897. YMA Minute Books (‘officials file’); Wearmouth, op. cit.: 195. Coronation History, op. cit. Cole, op. cit.: 183. Jubilee History, op. cit.: 134. Hand-Book to Dewsbury, op. cit.: 14, 15. Coronation History, op. cit. Cole, op. cit.: 219. Bullock, Bowers Row: 76. S.Pollard, ‘The Liberal Period 1872–88’ and ‘The New Unionism and the Formation of the Labour Party 1889–1914’, in Sheffield Trades and Labour Council 1858–1958, J.Mendelson, W.Owen, S.Pollard and V.M.Thomas, eds, (1958). Mexborough and Swinton Times, 15 January 1897. Only Annables’s name went through as a nominee, in this case for the Bench at Rotherham, Mexborough and Swinton Times, 29 January 1897. J.Bellamy and J.Saville, Dictionary of Labour Biography. Ibid.: 292–3. Lawson (1941). Mexborough and Swinton Times, 17 February 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 29 January 1897. Early tradition of trade unionism

1 Rimmer (1955). 2 Articles, Rules, Orders and Regulations Made to and to be Observed by Between and Amongst the Friendly Associated Coal-Miners, within the Township and Parish of Wakefield in the County of York and in Other Townships and Places in the Neighbourhood Thereof, Yorkshire NUM files, DTA/1981/82/001. 3 Machin: (1958:31). 4 Ibid.: 31–4. 5 Tremenheere, Report of the Commissioner (S.Tremenheere) appointed to Inquire into the State of the Population of the Mining Districts, 1845, London, 1845: Evidence on the Employment of Children, No. 197. 6 Sixth Report of the Commissioners, appointed to Inquire into the Organisation and Rules of Trades Unions and Other Associations, Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, London, 1868: Q. 13,098, Toft. 7 Machin, op. cit.: 46. 8 Sixth Report…, op. cit.: Q. 12,935, J.Pyrah. 9 Tremenheere, op. cit.: 24. It is not clear what precise period Tremenheere was referring to. He used the term ‘last summer’, which presumably means the summer of 1844, and suggested that delegates came only just prior to the strike with their message.

444 NOTES

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Machin, op. cit.: 52, 53. Ibid.: 54. Ibid.: 56, 57. Sixth Report…, op. cit.: Q. 12,489, Briggs; Machin, op. cit.: 69–72. Sixth Report…, ibid.: Q. 12,495, Briggs. Ibid. J.Holmes, ‘Facts and Inferences Relating to the West Yorkshire Coal Strike, from February to December 1858’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of the Social Sciences, 640–54; 1859:642. Machin, op. cit.: 94, 95. Sixth Report…, op. cit.: Q. 16,364, Brown. Ibid.: Q. 12,841, Pyrah. Ibid.: Q. 12,840, Pyrah. Machin, op. cit.: 99. Ibid.: 98. Sixth Report…, op. cit.: Q. 12,838, Pyrah. Ibid.: Q. 16,115, Normansell. This was the case, for example, at Ardsley Main in 1845 and at Day and Twibell’s Colliery, Barnsley in 1855 (Machin, op. cit.: 307). As Machin quoted one miner, ‘a collier will be an ass of a man indeed who will neglect to fill his corves properly knowing, as he does, that when such gets to the bank he will not be paid for it’ (ibid.: 305). Sixth Report…, op. cit.: Q. 16,167, Normansell. Ibid.: Q. 16,165, Normansell; Machin, op. cit.: 314–16. Machin, ibid.: 116. Briggs claimed that the demand was for 10 per cent (Sixth Report…, ibid.: Q. 12,524, Briggs). Ibid.: Q. 13,114, Toft. Ibid.: Q. 12,535, Briggs. Ibid.: Q. 12,537, Briggs. Machin, op. cit.: 120. Sixth Report…, op. cit. Machin, op. cit.: 116 and 120. Sixth Report…, op. cit.: Q. 12,539, Briggs. Ibid.: Q. 12,537, Briggs. Machin, op. cit.: 137 and 156. Ibid.: 383–5. Gordon M.Wilson, Alexander MacDonald, Leader of the Miners, Aberdeen University Press, 1982:98 and 103, 104. Machin, op. cit.: 325. Wilson, op. cit.: 127. Report of the Inspector of Mines for 1874, C-1216, PP 1875. This last 15 per cent was on gross earnings (Machin, op. cit.: 385, 386). Report of the Select Committee, op. cit.: 7367, Normansell. Ibid. Machin, op. cit.: 392. Report of the Select Committee, op. cit.: 4946, Dixon. Ibid.: 4968, Dixon; Machin, op. cit.: 161 and 174. Ibid.: Machin, op. cit.: 175, 176.

NOTES 445

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Ibid.: 184 (Machin quoting J.Holmes from an article in the Beehive, 2 May 1874). Report of the Select Committee, op. cit.: 4965, Dixon. Ibid.: 7384, Normansell. Ibid.: 7382, Normansell. Machin, op. cit.: 414–23. Ibid.: 217–32. J.Holmes, ‘A Plea for Arbitration, a Letter to the West Yorkshire Mines’, published by Alice Mann, Leeds, 1874:4. Ibid.: 7, 8. Machin, op. cit.: 399–402. Ibid.: 440–1. Reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for the Year Ending 31 December 1878, Part 1(A), PP 1878–9:375.

3 THE YORKSHIRE MINERS’ ASSOCIATION DURING THE 1880s Formation of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association; leadership 1 West Yorkshire Miners’ Association minutes book; minutes of the Joint Council of the South and West Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Barnsley, 11 April 1881, Barnsley, 25 April 1881 and Barnsley, 23 May 1881; the last previous Joint Council meeting had been on 3 May 1878. 2 Machin (1958:487). 3 Ibid.: 488. 4 Rules of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Wakefield, J.McInnes, printer, 1881; Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions, fourth report, years 1889–90; PP 1891; Mexborough and Swinton Times, 19 August 1881. 5 Statistical Tables, op. cit. 6 YMA, Miners’ Offices, Barnsley, 10 Decenber 1900. 7 Microfilm from Sheffield Reference Library Deputation Books, Wombwell Main, deputation 8 May 1913. 8 Rule 29, Rules of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, 1881. 9 Sheffield Telegraph, 21 March 1889. 10 YMA, MFGB’s memorial to the late Mr Benjamin Pickard, MP, unveiling of bust at Miners’ Hall, Barnsley, and endowment of bed at the Beckett Hospital, Tuesday 8 May 1918, pp. 11, 12. 11 Dictionary of Labour Biography, op. cit.: 269. 12 Rhymer (1976:20). 13 Dictionary of Labour Biography, op. cit.: 268. 14 YMA, MFGB’s memorial to Pickard, p. 4. 15 Ibid.: 20. 16 According to the Dictionary of Labour Biography, he was an extremely skilled negotiator. 17 YMA, MFGB memorial, p. 13. 18 H.Smith, YMA, MFGB memorial, p. 4; Rhymer’s account (op. cit.) also says Pickard was appointed at a time when Dixon the agent wanted assistance given the

446 NOTES

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

growth of numbers and finances of the union. According to the Dictionary of Labour Biography, however, Pickard was elected to the post (p. 268). Dictionary of Labour Biography, ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee Meeting, March 1884. YMA, MFGB Memorial to Pickard, p. 11. Barnsley Chronicle, 16 February 1889. Rhymer, op. cit.: 18. YMA, MFGB’s memorial to Pickard, p. 4. Pickard memorial, p. 21. Black Diamonds. Gleanings of Fifty Years in the Yorkshire Coalfields, Wakefield, about 1938, p. 44. Dictionary of Labour Biography, pp. 8, 6, 7. Ibid: pp. 292–3. Barnsley Chronicle, 16 February 1869. Dictionary of Labour Biography, p. 293. ‘In the olden days’ Barnsley Independent, Newspaper history, 12 May, segment. Struggles of the 1880s

1 Though production had gone up by some 4 million tons since 1874, wages had then been 70 per cent higher (YMA minutes, Report of Yorkshire Miners’ Conference, Rotherham, 25 September 1882). 2 Ibid. 3 YMA minutes, interview with South Yorkshire owners, 9 October 1882. 4 YMA Council, 18 December 1882. 5 YMA minutes, interview with South Yorkshire owners, 9 October 1882. 6 Proceedings of the National Conference of Miners, Manchester, 29 August and four following days, 1882. 7 Newspaper history, 26 May. 8 Conference of Miners, Manchester, 13 October 1882, YMA minutes. 9 YMA minutes notice, 22 November 1882. 10 Western Mail, 3 November 1882. 11 The Independent, 3 November 1882. 12 Ibid. 13 The Independent, 14 November 1882. 14 Leeds Mercury, 23 November 1882. 15 Text of notice distributed to men at Don Pedro, Haigh Moor and Silkstone pits, Wakefield Express, 2 December 1882. 16 Leeds Mercury, 21 December 1882. 17 Leeds Mercury, 22 December 1882. 18 YMA minutes, 1883. 19 The Barnsley Chronicle, 3 February 1883; Yorkshire Post, 6 February 1883. 20 National Miners’ Conference, Manchester, 27, 28 February and 1, 2 March 1883. 21 The Independent, 9 April 1883. 22 Barnsley Chronicle, 5 May 1883. 23 Leeds Mercury, 31 May 1883. 24 8–10 July, General Miners’ Conference, Manchester 1885.

NOTES 447

25 YMA Ordinary Council Meeting, Barnsley, 17 September 1883. 26 Yorkshire Miners’ Wage Question, Conference of Miners at Rotherham, Circular from Pickard circulated 18 September 1883. 27 Sheffield Telegraph, 25 September 1883. 28 Sheffield Telegraph, 22 September 1883. 29 YMA Conference of Miners, October 8, 1883. 30 Miners’ Wages in Yorkshire, undated, Conference of Employers and Workmen. 31 Sheffield Telegraph, 6 October 1883. 32 Yearly Report, 1883, YMA. 33 YMA Ordinary Executive Committee Meeting, 21 January 1884, Barnsley. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Adjourned Conference of Miners held in Colmore Chambers, New Hall Street, Birmingham, 28, 29, 30 January 1884. 37 YMA Special Executive Committee Meeting, July 1884 38 Manchester Conference, minutes of adjourned conference, held 24 and 25 July. 39 YMA Ordinary Council, August 1884. 40 YMA, Executive Council Meeting, 16 September 1884. 41 YMA Ordinary Council, 11 February 1884. 42 YMA Ordinary Council Meeting, 24 March 1884. 43 YMA Yearly Council Meeting, 5 January 1885. 44 YMA Ordinary Council Meeting, 2 March 1885. 45 South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Assurance Society, F.Parker Rhodes, secretary, 1889; Rotherham, 13 January 1890; Sheffield Library MD 2699/3. 46 Yorkshire Miners’ Conference, Rotherham, 9 March 1885. 47 Report on Pickard’s speech at the Rotherham Conference, Free Press, 14 March 1885. 48 Ibid. 49 Adjourned Conference of the Miners of Yorkshire on the Wage Question, Rotherham, 23 March 1885. 50 YMA Special Council Meeting, 27 March 1885. 51 Adjourned Conference of Miners held in Rotherham on the Wage Question, 30 March 1885; Adjourned Conference of Miners held at Barnsley, 13 April 1885. 52 YMA Special Council Meeting, 27 April 1885. 53 YMA Special Council Meeting, 27 April 1885, YMA Council Meeting 18 May 1885; Yorkshire Miners’ Conference, Barnsley, 18 May 1885. 54 YMA Special Council Meeting, 21 May 1885. 55 YMA Special Council Meeting, 28 May 1885. 56 YMA Executive Meeting, 6 June 1885. 57 YMA Ordinary Council, 22 June 1885. 58 General Miners’ Conference Manchester, 8, 9, 10 July 1885. 59 YMA Ordinary Executive Committee Meeting, 14 September 1885. 60 Conference of Miners on the Wage Question, Barnsley, 2 November 1885. 61 YMA Special Meeting on the Wage Question, Barnsley, 25 November 1885. 62 YMA to our members, November 1885. 63 YMA announcement of meeting to be held on the wage question, December 1885. 64 YMA Special Council, 7 December 1885.

448 NOTES

65 Initially the YMA had pushed for the minimum being that which applied prior to the 1885 10 per cent reduction. 66 YMA scheme to deal with General and Local wages as agreed to by Council, 25 January 1886. 67 Correspondence from Parker Rhodes in YMA, Ordinary Council, 7 June 1886. 68 Ordinary Council, 19 July 1886. 69 Ordinary Executive, 9 August 1886. 70 YMA Ordinary Executive, 9 August 1886. 71 YMA Ordinary Council, 11 October 1886. 72 YMA Yearly Council Meeting, 3 January 1887. 73 Newspaper history, ibid. 74 Newspaper history, 7 July. 75 Sheffield Telegraph, 2 October 1888. 76 Ibid; Newspaper history, July 7. 77 Yorkshire Post, 23 October 1888. 78 Newspaper history, 7 July. 79 Yorkshire Post, 23 October 1888. 80 Leeds Mercury, 23 October 1888. 81 Ibid. 82 Sheffield Telegraph, 5 January 1889. 83 Barnsley Chronicle, 16 February 1889. 84 Sheffield Telegraph, 27 April 1889. 85 For example, the General Miners’ Conference held in Manchester from 8–10 July 1885, as well as that in March of the same year, appears to have been primarily devoted to legislative issues and general policy). On the agenda for the Miners’ National Union conference to be held 18 January 1886, however, was the making of arrangements so that all sliding scales should terminate at the same time. (In minutes of YMA Yearly Council Meeting, 4 January 1886). 86 YMA Ordinary Council Meeting, 14 February 1887; MNU Minutes of Central Board Meeting London, 9 February 1887. 87 MNU, ibid. 88 Miners’ National Union Federation, London, 11 February 1887. 89 Webb and Webb (1920) The History of Trade Unionism. 90 See S. and B.Webb, The History of Trade Unionism and Clegg, Fox and Thomas (1964), A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889. Clegg et al. survey various factors regarded as distinguishing new unionism: membership of unskilled, lowpaid labourers; a militant outlook; a readiness to employ coercion against nonunionists and blacklegs; low contributions allowing for the payment only of ‘fighting’ benefits; an acceptance of socialism; and a tendency to look to parliamentary and municipal action to solve Labour’s problems. They find some of these inadequate or inaccurate as elements of a satisfactory definition (pp. 92–6) and ultimately settle on just three common characteristics: newness, general organisation and militancy (p. 96). But these, they say, are not sufficient to explain the ‘fierce battle which raged between the “new” and the “old” unionism in and after 1889’. To do this they regard it as necessary to take into consideration the role of the socialists who helped to build up an image of an ‘old union’ which was elitist in its exclusion of ordinary labourers, used its funds primarily to pay friendly benefits and was permeated by ‘middle-class philosophy and the ideals of

NOTES 449

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

Gladstonian Liberalism’ (p. 96). While through this caricature they helped to create a myth of the opposition of old and new unionism, their image cannot be dismissed as entirely inaccurate. Arnot (1949:101). Arnot, op. cit.: 109. In Barnsley Independent, Newspaper history, 21 July 1917. Arnot, ibid: 113. Williams (1924:298). For example, in WYCOA Meeting, 14 March 1890. WYCOA, General Meeting. SY Coal Owners’ Assurance Society, 1889. The Independent, 13 March 1890. The Independent, 14 March 1890. Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 17 March 1890. Arnot, op. cit.: 155; Strike and Lockout Report for 1890. WYCOA, general meeting, 25 March 1890. YMA Yearly Report, 1883. YMA Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 April 1883. YMA, To our Local Secretaries and Committees, 1883. YMA Ordinary Executive Committee Meeting, 21 January 1883. MacFarlane, ‘The Denaby Main Lock-Out of 1885’, in S.Pollard and C.Holmes, Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire, Yorkshire County Council, 1976:75. Ibid.: 76. Ibid. Ibid.: 79. Ibid. Ibid.: 81. Ibid.: 83. YMA Yearly Review for 1885. Figures from Spaven, (Thesis, 1978) p. 129, Table 6 give percentage proportions of Yorkshire miners represented by YMA membership as follows: 1881:10.3; 1882: 22.4; 1883:20.0; 1884:15.4; 1885:15.5; 1886:15.0; 1887:14.6; 1888:18.1;’ 1889:60. 8; 1890:78.5.

4 TESTING—1893 1 2 3 4 5 6

Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (1962:191). Third Annual Report, Abstract of Labour Statistics, 1895–6, C-8230, PP 1896. Inspector of Mines, Report for 1892. Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions, C-6990, 1893. MFGB, Annual Conference, 12–16 January 1892, Chairman’s Address. MFGB, Annual Conference, 12–14 January 1893, Birmingham, Chairman’s Address, speech read by Mr Woods, given Pickard’s absence due to illness. 7 Report on Strikes and Lockouts of 1893, C-7566, PP 1894. 8 MFGB, Annual Conference, 1892, op. cit.

450 NOTES

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37

Arnot, The Miners, 1949:303. Report on Strikes and Lockouts of 1893, op. cit. Williams, op. cit.: 314. MFGB, Special Adjourned Conference, 16–18 March 1892, London. Ibid. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 20 April 1892. MFGB, Executive Committee, Midland Hotel, Birmingham, 12 March 1892. MFGB, Special Conference, 2–4 August 1892, Birmingham; YMA, Ordinary Council, 1 August 1892. Williams, op. cit.: 319. Report on Strikes and Lockouts of 1892, op. cit. YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 October 1892. While originally intended to compensate for wage losses from stoppages due to such factors as repairs, breaking of machinery, inundations of water, falls of roof, explosions or fires, it would appear that bankruptcies and the general slackness of trade were also regarded as legitimate bases for making claims. Though in all cases it was stipulated that members should be out for 6 consecutive days before qualifying (YMA, Rules of Contingent Fund, Circular, May 1893). YMA, Special Executive Committee, 15 May 1893. YMA, Ordinary Council, 20–22 June 1893. MFGB, National Conference, 28 February and 1 March 1893, Birmingham. YMA, Ordinary Council, 13 February 1893. According to a circular distributed by the YMA dated 27 February 1893, 157 had voted for one month’s holiday; 516 for two weeks; 2 for three weeks; 367 for four weeks and 25 for no holiday. MFGB, National Conference, 28 February and 1 March 1893. MFGB, Executive Committee, 16 March 1893, London. MFGB, Executive Committee, 4 April 1893, Stoke. WYCOA, Adjourned Meeting with Non-associated Members, 24 April 1893, adjourned for lack of influential owners. YMA, Ordinary Council, 20–22 June 1893. YMA, Special Council, 17 July 1893. Adjourned Conference between representatives of coal owners and of the Federation, 21 July 1893. Report on Strikes and Lockouts of 1893. op. cit. Ibid.: 15. Ibid. YMA minutes for the Ordinary Council of 31 July 1893 indicate that a resolution was passed on that date that unless there were large numbers of collieries not under notice in the various districts connected with the Federation, those working normally should tender notice to terminate contracts from the first making-up day and that, with slight variations, this was passed at the Birmingham meeting. The Strikes and Lockouts Report of 1893 merely says that ‘it was decided [presumably in Birmingham] that a large number of men in the Federation districts who had not received notice of a reduction should give notice to leave their employment’, but that there had been considerable opposition on this issue, particularly from the Midlands and that it was only carried 149 to 101 (ibid.: 14 and 15). Ibid.: 15.

NOTES 451

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 12 August 1893. Williams, op. cit.: 324. Sheffield Telegraph, 1 August 1893. The Independent, 2 August 1893. Ibid. Sheffield Telegraph, 17 August 1893. Ibid. The Independent, 19 August 1893. The Independent, 24 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 6 September 1893; 7 September 1893; The Independent, 7 September 1893. Ibid.: The Independent. Sheffield Telegraph, 8 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 1 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 10 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 8 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 15 August 1893. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 12 August 1893. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 10 and 11 July 1893. YMA minutes (Ordinary Council, 31 July 1893) refer to one week without pay. News reports refer to two weeks (e. g. The Independent, 2 August 1893). The Report on Strikes and Lockouts for 1893 says that ‘in order to make the available funds go as far as possible no strike pay was paid for the first week, and in some places the miners decided not to draw strike pay until the third week’ (op. cit.: 15). The Independent, 2 August 1893; ibid. The precise figure is £2 19s 6d (Report of Strikes and Lockouts of 1893, op. cit.: 15). Ibid. YMA, Special Council, 19 August 1893. MFGB, Conference, 22 August 1893, London. YMA, ‘Notice to Members’, 4 September 1893. Sheffield Independent, 5 September 1893. Barnsley, 26 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 29 August 1893; 30 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 31 August 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 1 September 1893. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The Independent, 1 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 2 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 5 September 1893, providing accounts of problems at Leen Valley, Derbyshire and around Houghton and Darfield Main in Yorkshire. Sheffield Telegraph, 4 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 5 September 1893. Ibid. Sheffield Independent, 5 September 1893.

452 NOTES

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Sheffield Telegraph, 6 September 1893. Ibid. The Independent, 6 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 6 September 1893. Because of the tragic culmination of the Featherstone episode, records relating to it are much fuller than those of incidents occurring elsewhere during the same week. In addition to press accounts, the story of Featherstone can be gleaned from the testimony and other supporting evidence taken by a Commission of Enquiry appointed to investigate the circumstances leading to the deaths there of two miners. A wide range of witnesses was called before the commission, including a number of miners. Their testimony provides an element rare among source materials from which an event such as this can be reconstructed—the voices of ordinary workers and community members. If an account based primarily on press reports of the day gives a rather fractured, partial and contradictory picture of what ‘actually occurred’, this is, in some ways, all the more so for an event such as Featherstone, in spite or perhaps because of the more varied source materials. What is of interest in the Featherstone case is the stark difference in interpretation of events between ‘ordinary community members’ on the one hand and the ‘authorities’ including police and military officers, members of the fire brigade and colliery officials on the other. Experience of an event is necessarily coloured by the position from which one stands, both physically and in respect of their social location, a point needing to be borne in mind in the reconstruction of any episode. Bowen Commission: 2. Ibid. Ibid. The Independent, 6 September 1893. Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 2. Ibid. Ibid. Terratt, ‘The Featherston Massacre’. Ibid. Ashton and Lewis. Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 2. Ibid.: Terratt, op. cit. Bowen Commission, ibid. Testimony of Sergeant Sparrow, written 27 September 1893 (Wakefield Record Office). Bowen Commission, op. cit. Ibid.: 3. Testimony of Sergeant Sparrow, op. cit. Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 3.

NOTES 453

107 Featherstone Riots, packet 4, copy of letters produced by Mr Gill, deputy chief constable, West Riding, Wakefield Record Office. 108 Featherstone Riots, boxes 1 and 2, bundle 3, Wakefield Record Office. 109 Featherstone Riots, packet 4, copy of letters produced by Mr Gill, op. cit.: item 5. 110 Ibid.: item 2. The Bowen Commission report says that 259 constables were ultimately sent to Doncaster (Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 1). 111 Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 2. 112 Captain Russell was himself away on holiday in Scotland, only returning on the evening of 6 September (ibid.) 113 Featherstone Riots, op. cit.: letters from colliery owners, boxes 1 and 2, item 1. 114 Ibid.: item 3. 115 Ibid.: item 5. 116 Bowen Commission, op. cit.: Q. 1222, 3. 117 Terratt, op. cit. 118 Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 3, 4, and Q. 1225. 119 Ibid.: Q. 1226, 1227 and 1229. 120 ‘The Coal Trades Crisis’, The Times, 8 September 1893. 121 Testimomy of Sergeant Sparrow, op. cit. 122 Or between 6 and 7 pm. Sparrow says around 7 pm (ibid.). 123 Bowen Commission, op. cit. 124 Terratt, op. cit.; testimony of Sergeant Sparrow, op. cit.: item no. 39, deputation by Sparrow PS 770. 125 Testimony, ibid. 126 Bowen Commission, op. cit.: 5; Ashton and Lewis, op. cit. 127 Bowen Commission, ibid.: Q. 3240 and 3249. 128 Ashton and Lewis, op. cit. 129 Other witnesses to this group and its activities included Elias Allen, a miner at Ackton Hall, who said that there had been a great mob of people who had come towards the station, most of them armed with sticks or cudgels and had marched in files of three or four deep as near as they could down Green Lane. ‘They had not been there long before I heard windows breaking and saw boys running about the yard with torchlights, and it was not long before there was a larger flame’ (Bowen Commission, op. cit.: Q. 3888). During the forty minutes or so that they were on the premises he had seen a swarm of people coming out (ibid.: Q. 3890). They were shabbily dressed, all strangers, and led by a man with a bell who seemed to have distinctions in his ringing, thereby giving a set of signals (ibid.: Q. 3892–4). William Henry Haigh said he saw a gang of men going up the lane leading towards the colliery between 6.30 and 7 pm. They were carrying sticks but committed no violence until they got on the colliery premises. He did not see a man with a bell leading them, however (ibid.: Q. 3732–8). 130 Testimony of Sergeant Sparrow, op. cit. 131 Bowen Commission, op. cit.: Q. 1231–3. 132 Ibid.: Q. 1238–40; 1248–9. 133 Ibid.: Q. 1252–3. 134 Terratt, op. cit., in reference to the observations of Walter Smithers, a reporter on the Pontefract and Castleford Express. 135 Bowen Commission, Q. 1267. 136 Ibid.: 6.

454 NOTES

137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

Ibid.: Q. 5157. Ibid.: Q. 1268–76. Ibid.: Q. 1278–9. Ibid.: Q. 1293. Ibid.: Q. 1303–4. Ibid.: Q. 1281. Ibid.: Q. 3683–5. Ibid.: Q. 3708. Ibid.: 6. Ibid.: 7, 8. Ibid. Ibid.: 9. Ibid. Q. 1325; 1331–2. Ibid.: Q. 1334. Ibid.: Q. 2958–3088. Ibid.: Q. 3473–81. Ibid.: Q. 3400–8; 3454–60; 3483–98. Ibid.: Q. 3409–23; 3445. Ibid.: Q. 3508; 3512–9; 3541; 3552. Ibid.: Q. 3531; 3542–4. Ibid.: Q. 4382–95. Ibid.: Q. 4426. Ibid.: Q. 1352–3. Ibid.: Q. 3109. Ibid.: Q. 3175–9. Sheffield Telegraph, 8 September 1893. The Independent, 9 September 1893. Ibid. Ibid. Sheffield Telegraph, 11 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, ibid.; 13 September 1893. Record of inquest, Wakefield Record Office. Ibid. Sheffield Telegraph, 13 September 1893. Record of inquest, op. cit.: specifically the testimony of J.Flynn. Sheffield Telegraph, 13 September 1893. The Independent, 14 September 1893. Ibid. Letter from W.Dyer, Curate in Charge to H.H.S.Cunninghame Esq., 14 October 1893, Wakefield Record Office. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 13 September 1893. Ibid.: Sheffield Telegraph, 13 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 8 September 1893; The Independent, 8 September 1893. MFGB, Special Adjourned Conference, 14–15 September 1893, Nottingham. Sheffield Telegraph, 12 September 1893. Rotherham Independent, 12 September 1893. A meeting which was to have been attended by miners from Barrow, Carlton, Church Lane, Monk Bretton, New and Old Oaks, Rylands, Swaithe Main and others was banned by the decision of magistrates

NOTES 455

182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195

196 197 198 199 200 201 202

an hour before it was scheduled to begin. A crowd of between 8,000 and 10,000 was already present when informed that the meeting could not be held. It had been intended to put resolutions condemning the importing of military into the town and reaffirming resistance to the imposed wage reduction. But proposed resolutions would also have included one calling on miners to be law-abiding and prevent any recurrence of disorder (Sheffield Telegraph, 14 September 1893). On Thursday 7 September, a force of twenty-five soldiers arrived and were quartered at Aldwarke Main (The Independent, 8 September 1893). A fresh detachment of troops arrived in Leeds on 14 September from Bradford to replace a squad from the Liverpool regiment which had been summoned to Sheffield (The Independent, 15 September 1893). At least for several days after the shootings at Featherstone, military and police patrols continued in the village. A few soldiers were spotted by reporters on the high buildings ‘on the look out’ (Sheffield Telegraph, 13 September 1893). YMA, unsigned memo, 4 September 1893; Sheffield Telegraph, 5 September 1893. YMA, Ordinary Council, 13 September 1893. The Independent, 11 September 1893. YMA, Special Council, 29 September 1893. MFGB, Chesterfield Conference, 29 September 1893. MFGB, 12 and 13 October 1893, Birmingham; MFGB, Executive Committee, 30 October 1893, Derby. Report on Strikes and Lockouts of 1893, op. cit.: 17. YMA, Special Executive Committee, 21 September 1893. Sheffield Telegraph, 15 September 1893. The Independent, 2 October 1893; The Independent, 14 September 1893. The Independent, 14 October 1893. Report on Strikes and Lockouts for 1893, op. cit.: 22. Ibid.: 23. Figures taken from Statistical Tables and Report on Trade Unions, Labour Statistics, e.g. 6th Report (for 1892), C-7436, PP 1894; 7th Report (for 1893), C-7808, PP 1895; 8th Report (for 1894 and 1895), C-8232, PP 1896. Ibid. Strike and Lockout Report for 1893, op. cit.: 20; MFGB, Special Conference, 3 and 4 November 1893, London. Strike and Lockout Report, ibid.: 23. Ibid. YMA, Special Council, 9 July 1894. Ibid. YMA, Annual Report for 1896.

5 FEDERATION ACTIVITIES AND OPERATION OF THE CONCILIATION BOARD, 1894–1906 1 YMA, Annual Report, 1896–7. 2 YMA, Special Council, 26 May 1894. 3 Arnot, op. cit.: 262.

456 NOTES

4 Ibid. 5 Initially 6d was required from each full member and 3d from each half-member. After the second week this amount was doubled. In addition, the YMA made an initial grant of £1,250 to the Federation to be paid to support the strike (YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 June 1894). 6 Ibid. 7 YMA, circular dated 4 July 1894, in minutes, YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 June 1894. 8 Arnot, ibid. 9 YMA, circular dated 4 July 1894, op. cit. 10 Arnot, ibid. 11 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 8 July 1895. 12 MFGB, Annual Conference, 5–8 January 1897, Leicester. 13 YMA, circular to members, issued 7 November 1894. 14 Ibid. 15 MFGB, op. cit. 16 Yorkshire at this time appears to have had 50 out of a total of 159 votes in the Federation, voting strength being based on the number of financial members rather than numbers employed per district. The second largest area in terms of votes was Lancashire and Cheshire with 26 (ibid.). 17 Ibid. 18 MFGB, Annual Conference, 7 October and following days, 1902, Southport. 19 WYCOA, Special Council, 9 February 1904. 20 Williams, op.cit: 351. 21 MFGB, Annual Conference, 14 January and following days, 1896, Birmingham, President’s Address. 22 Williams, ibid. 23 Dated 31 July 1896 and inserted into YMA, Annual Report for 1895–6. 24 Yorkshire Miners’ Demonstration, ‘Great Gathering at Rotherham’, 1896. 25 YMA, Annual Report for 1895–6, issued 31 July 1896. 26 YMA, Special Council, 4 July 1896. 27 YMA, Annual Report for 1896–7, signed November 1897. 28 MFGB, Annual Conference, January 1897. 29 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 29 May 1897. 30 YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 October 1897. 31 YMA, Adjourned Council, 11 October 1897. 32 YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 October 1897. 33 MFGB, Annual Conference, 4–7 January 1898, Bristol. 34 Letter dated 19 May 1899, from Thomas Radcliffe Ellis, Wigan, included in minutes of MFGB, Special Conference on the Wages Question, 27 and 29 May 1898, Manchester. 35 MFGB, ibid. 36 WYCOA, Special Council 10 May 1898. 37 WYCOA, Special Council, 14 June 1898. 38 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 25 July 1898. 39 YMA, Ordinary Council, 5 September 1898. 40 YMA, Circular, 17 September 1898. 41 YMA, Annual Report 1896–7, op.cit.

NOTES 457

42 YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 November 1898. 43 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 30 January 1899. 44 YMA, Ordinary Council, 13 February 1899; WYCOA, Special Council, 14 February 1899. 45 WYCOA, ibid. 46 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 16 October 1899. 47 WYCOA, Special Council, 19 December 1899. 48 YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 December 1899; WYCOA, ibid. 49 YMA, Annual Council, 27 December 1899. 50 WYCOA, Special Council, 7 August 1900. 51 YMA, Circular, to our Members and Secretaries, issued London, 2 May 1902. 52 YMA, Special Council, 13 May 1902. 53 YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 June 1902. 54 YMA, Annual Report, 1901–2. 55 YMA, Ordinary Council, 3 November 1902. 56 WYCOA, Special Council, 4 November 1902. 57 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 4 May 1903; Ordinary Council, 14 May 1903. 58 Arnot, op. cit.: 319; Strike and Lockout Report for 1903. 59 Conciliation Board, informal meeting, 20 November 1903, London, in YMA Minute Book for 1903. 60 Ibid. 61 YMA, circular, for private use in branch meeting-room only, from YMA offices, 25 November 1903. 62 MFGB, Special Conference, 10–11 December 1903, report of Wadsworth to conference. 63 Ibid.; YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 November 1903. 64 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 14 December 1903. 65 MFGB, Special Conference, 10–11 December 1903. 66 MFGB, from resumed meeting 11 December 1903. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. One of the owners’ representatives informed the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association that one of the chief representatives of the miners had intimated at the informal meeting on 11 December that if the owners would agree to prolongation of the board on the old terms for three months, he would try to induce the men to agree to it. The owners had concluded that this course was wise and so the agreement was made (WYCOA, Adjourned Special Council 15 December 1903). 69 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 11 January 1904. 70 Arnot, op. cit.: 321. 71 Board of Conciliation, Informal Meeting, Conference between representatives of the coal owners’ federation and the MFGB, 27 January 1904, London. 72 Board of Conciliation, Meeting, 26 February 1904, London. 73 Board of Conciliation, Informal Meeting, 27 January 1904. 74 Ibid. 75 Arnot, op. cit.: 324. 76 YMA, Special Council, 18 July 1904; Strike and Lockout Report for 1904:106. 77 Strike and Lockout Report, ibid.

458 NOTES

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 December 1904. WYCOA, 5 October 1905. Strike and Lockout Report for 1905, ibid. YMA, Ordinary Council, 26 February 1906. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 30 July 1906. MFGB, Special Conference, 10 and 12 October 1906, Manchester; Board of Conciliation, 29 October 1906. YMA, Ordinary and Yearly Council, 17 December 1906. MFGB, Special Conference of the English Conciliation Board Area, 3 and 4 December 1906, London. The YMA voted 978 in favour and 135 against (YMA, Ordinary and Yearly Council, 17 December 1906, op.cit.). Board of Conciliation, 29 October 1906, op. cit.: 12, 13.

6 WORKER SOLIDARITY—AND THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY 1 The YMA’s forays into broader worker solidarity coincided with a period of British trade union history particularly rich in such initiatives. This was the time, at the end of the 1880s and the early 1890s, when ‘new unionism’ emerged on the scene. The distinguishing features of new unionism and the question of how far it represented a departure from previous traditions have been the subject of considerable debate. But participants at the time were at least aware of being enmeshed in a conflict of perspectives. The government’s Labour Correspondent identified the Trades Union Congress of 1889 as the beginning of a ‘struggle between the principle of the older and earlier trade unionists, and those of the socialists and younger unionists who had accepted the new views of social reform put forward by Marx and others’ (Strike and Lockout Report for 1891:39). 2 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism. 3 Strike and Lockout Report for 1891, ibid. 4 Arnot, The Miners (1949):123. 5 Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 20 December 1882. 6 Leeds Mercury, 21 December 1882. 7 Barnsley Independent, newspaper history, op.cit. 8 Arnot, op. cit.: 127. 9 Strike and Lockout Report for 1890. 10 Arnot, op. cit.: 134, 135. 11 Ibid.: 107. 12 The Strike and Lockout Report for 1889 refers to Hardie as having attended the Marxist Congress in Paris and comments on this and other matters being discussed there. 13 Strike and Lockout Report for 1889. 14 Ibid.: 458, 459. 15 More generally on this occasion, socialists were under concerted attack from the Parliamentary Committee and many of the stalwarts of the TUC They were described as the new enemies of trade unionism, a theme later picked up and fully elaborated within the Miners’ Federation in 1897 (Arnot, ibid.).

NOTES 459

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46

Ibid.: 131; Strike and Lockout Report for 1890, op. cit. Arnot, op. cit.: 134–7. Ibid.: 142, 143. WYCOA, Special Council Meeting, 3 February 1891. Arnot, op. cit.: 143. Ibid.: 156. Strike and Lockout Report for 1890, op. cit. Arnot, op. cit.: 158 and 160. Ibid.: 146, 147. Strike and Lockout Report for 1891, op. cit.: 39, 40; Strike and Lockout Report for 1890, op. cit. Strike and Lockout Report for 1890, op. cit. Ibid. Strike and Lockout Report for 1891, op. cit.: 84, 85. Comment of Messr Defnet, Belgian delegate. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.: 78. Ibid. Ibid.: 39 and 79. Though even on this basis it would appear that they should have lost the contest in that they claimed to represent 302,000 miners against the combined continental strength of 347,000 and this with no numbers given for the French Miners’ Federation (ibid.: 92, 93). Ibid.: 87. Arnot, op. cit.: 163. Strike and Lockout Report for 1890, op. cit. Strike and Lockout Report for 1891, op. cit.: 89. Ibid.: 88–90. Arnot, op. cit.: 176; see especially the footnote on this page. ILP Year Book for 1909. Arnot, however, says that the vote was 272 to 160 (ibid.: 181). Ibid.: 183; MFGB, Minute Book, 1892, Report of the Twenty-fifth Annual Trades Union Congress, Candleriggs, Glasgow, 5–10 September 1892. Fenwick had succeeded Henry Broadhurst as Secretary of the TUC (and of the TUC’s Parliamentary Committee) in 1890 and remained Secretary of the latter until 1894. Arnot, ibid.: 184; Strike and Lockout Report for 1891, op. cit. MFGB, Minute Book, 1893, National Conference of Miners, Birmingham, 9–12 January 1893. Ibid. Mines (Hours of Labour), Return to an Address of the Honourable The House of Commons, dated 7 May 1890, PP 1890. Figures do not distinguish between hours for men and boys, but are rather categorised in respect of task: men and boys engaged in getting minerals, men and boys engaged in conveying minerals from the face to pit bottom, all other underground workers not included above, and persons employed on the surface. The figure for Yorkshire is 8.8 for those engaged in getting minerals and 8.9 for those involved in conveying minerals. The figures for Northumberland are respectively 7.08 and 10.13.

460 NOTES

47 ILP, op. cit.; according to Arnot (op. cit.: 200) the majority was 79. 48 ILP, ibid. 49 According to Clegg et al., the bill was withdrawn in 1894 (Clegg et al., op. cit.: 242). 50 YMA, Annual Report, 31 July 1896. 51 ILP, op. cit.; according to the YMA Annual Report for 1896–7, the bill lost by 47. 52 ILP, ibid. 53 MFGB, Annual Conference, 1 October and following days, 1901, Birmingham. 54 ILP, ibid. 55 MFGB, Annual Conference, 1 October and following days, 1901, Birmingham. 56 Ibid. 57 ILP, ibid. 58 MFGB, Special Conference on the 8 Hours Question, 3–4 July 1902, Southport. 59 Arnot, op. cit.: 332; YMA, Ordinary Council, 1 December 1902. 60 ILP, op. cit. 61 Ibid. 62 YMA, Yearly Summary for 1907; according to the ILP (ibid.), there was no division at the second reading stage in 1907. 63 The proposal was submitted to the districts by the Federation and in Yorkshire special branch meetings were called for its consideration. Yorkshire’s miners indicated their sound disapproval. On a delegate count only 132 were in favour and 1,211 against (YMA, Ordinary Council, 3 July 1908). 64 Copy of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1908–8 Hours, in YMA Minute Book for 1909. 65 WYCOA, Special Council, 12 January 1909. 66 MFGB, Special National Conference, 4–6 May 1909. 67 Joint Committee Meeting, Sheffield, 14 May 1909; YMA, Special Council, 20 May 1909. 68 Joint Committee, 21 May 1909. 69 Ibid. 70 YMA, Ordinary Council, 5 July 1909. 71 WYCOA, Special Council, 21 June 1909.

7 THE UNION AT BRANCH AND DISTRICT LEVELS; GRIEVANCES AND INDUSTRIAL ACTION Patterns of strike activity and local variations in militancy 1 2 3 4 5 6

See earlier chapter on the structure of the YMA. SYCOA, Secretary’s Report for 1890, Sheffield Library, Archives, M. 2699/1–46. SYCOA, Secretary’s Report for 1891–2. WYCOA, Council Meeting, 2 June 1891. WYCOA, Second Annual General Meeting, 22 March 1892. MFGB, Miners’ Wages, Minutes of Proceedings taken at the Conference between Representatives of the Committee of the Coal Owners in the Districts embraced by

NOTES 461

7

8 9

10

11

the Miners’ Federation and the Executive Committee of the MFGB, 3 and 4 November 1893. It is difficult to obtain an accurate measure of the number and severity of strikes and lock-outs, because of limitations of the records themselves. Minutes of the YMA refer to disputes which came before the district, particularly where authorisation to give in notice or to receive strike or lock-out pay was granted. But these are not always systematically recorded. Nor are the numbers involved and the length of the dispute always indicated. Moreover, only those stoppages which involve members of the union and which are official are referred to on a routine basis. Minutes of owners’ associations also contain reference to disputes, but in a similarly unsystematic fashion and only in respect of collieries whose owners were members of their area’s association. Perhaps the most useful source of information on industrial disputes is the government’s Annual Report on Strikes and Lockouts, since an attempt was made in its compilation to apply uniform criteria. However, this record is only as accurate as was the information available to its compilers and as their level of competence allowed. Specification of such details of a stoppage as its cause and its outcome, moreover, was subject to difference of opinion and therefore to potential bias on the part of the final compiler of the data. The very definition of what should be regarded as a stoppage for purposes of the annual reports was also subject to change from time to time. The reports were only initiated in 1888 and early on tended to include even very small disputes. But from 1897 only those involving ten or more people or more than a day’s stoppage were listed. From 1901 details for the various stoppages were only given for what were regarded as principal disputes, the definition of which varied by industry. In coal mining a principal dispute was one involving more than 750 people except where the aggregate duration of a dispute was more than 37,500 working days (Strikes and Lockouts Report for 1901, xiii; Quentin Outram, April 1978, The Strike Data, Problems of Definition and Classification, the Coding System). But if a flawed representation, the data from the annual reports still give a reasonable approximation of the situation in the Yorkshire coalfield. YMA, Annual Demonstration, 1897, Barnsley. Tables summarising data in reports on strikes and lock-outs contain a space in which ‘cause’ is given. Specific causes have been grouped together in the construction of Table 7.3. It must be acknowledged, however, that there is inevitably some difficulty in isolating the cause of any given dispute, not least because more than one grievance is often involved, or because a given grievance often has implications for other aspects of the work situation. A complaint concerning a change in the mode of working the coal or over the introduction of riddles, for example, may arise because it adds inconvenience or makes the work process more arduous. But it often emerges as a serious complaint precisely because it ultimately affects wages. Disputes over working conditions thus frequently merge with disputes concerning price lists or level of wages. In 1890, for example, the coal mining industry accounted for about 8 per cent of all strikes in the nation. In 1891 the figure was 15 per cent, in 1892, 14 per cent, and in 1893, 20 per cent (Reports of Strikes and Lockouts, for relevant years). This figure is drawn from those branches active at least over the period, 1894 to 1913. At two of the twenty-nine, Elsecar and Darton Hall, there were stoppages

462 NOTES

12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19

20

related to the campaign for improvement of surface workers’ wages and hours, but as these were essentially related to a county action, they have not been counted. Material on grievances across the period is based on data in YMA minutes and government Reports on Strikes and Lockouts. This material was used to construct profiles of the various branches within the YMA. Ibid. This refers to strikes beginning in one calendar year and extending into the next. Branch profile based on data drawn from YMA minutes and Strike and Lockout Reports. Ibid. Ibid. Evaluation of whether pits were characterised by ‘high’ or ‘low’ wages is based on data contained in YMA minutes. There were three occasions, in 1893/4, 1900 and 1905, when returns on wages were made to the union headquarters in Barnsley by YMA branches. There is considerable missing data, where returns were not made by a given branch, but it is still possible to build up a comparative picture of branches within the county. The data for each of these periods has been analysed, broken down into categories labelled as low, low-average, average, average-high and high, and branches have been accordingly classified. In some cases branches moved across the range from average to high, average-high to low-average, etc., over the time period. In others there was relative consistency. Overall classification of branches by wage level involved averaging across the three returns. Two criteria were used when designating pits as ‘troubled’: the length of strikes endured at a given branch and the number of local strikes experienced. Necessarily the measure is a relative one. Evaluation of the relative militancy of pits was based on analysis of eight district ballots held over the period 1885 to 1904. These were: 1) May 1885, continuation of strike; 2) June 1885, proposed reduction; 3) 22 September 1893, question of pits resuming work at old rate where owners so offered as opposed to all staying out until all owners conceded old rate; 16,029 in favour of a selective return and 23,639 opposed; 4) July 1894, owners’ offer of 10% reduction, 632 in favour and 597 opposed; 5) August 1897, upholding executive committee’s decision on the South Kirkby stoppage, 641 in favour and 316 opposed; 6) 6 July 1898, accepting owners’ offer (or alternatively striking for a 10% advance), 637 in favour and 274 opposed; 7) December 1904, whether Carlton Main’s resolution calling for the union to join the Labour Representative Committee should not be accepted, 715 in favour and 382 opposed; and 8) December 1904, whether the union should join the General Federation of Trades, 587 in favour and 547 opposed. A ‘militant’ stance is taken as: in favour on the first and the eighth and against on all of the others. The selection of cases is somewhat arbitrary. Detailed results of relatively few district-wide ballots are included in YMA minutes, nor are those which are in the minutes in any sense distributed evenly over the time period. The eight cases selected for analysis were chosen because they were relatively controversial and could therefore serve as a basis for differentiating branch orientations. Where branches voted against the advice of district officials or where their vote clearly represented an unwillingness to concede in an industrial dispute or sympathy with

NOTES 463

Labour politics or broader solidarity within the Labour movement, such votes have been considered expressions of relative militance. Interpretation of the data is problematic, not least because it is incomplete. For purposes of analysis, those branches not active throughout the entire period, or whose vote was not listed in at least two of the eight ballots, were generally excluded. In respect of overall voting patterns, branches were classified as least militant’ when their vote could be regarded as expressing militancy on no more than one of six, seven or eight ballots. They were classified as militant when five out of six, or six out of seven or eight votes could be regarded as expressing militance. Voting records falling between these extremes were regarded as reflecting a more moderate stance. B. Price list issues 1 Poole, ‘Historical Survey of Methods of Working’, Historical Review of Coal Mining, Mining Association of Great Britain, Fleetway Press (1923). 2 Galloway (1971:242–5). 3 P.Jeffcott (24 April 1862) See also C.Hodgson, ‘On Long Wall and its Modifications’, paper presented to the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 2 November 1870 and P.Cooper, ‘On Different Modes of Working Coal and the Reasons of their being Adopted under Different Conditions’, paper presented to the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, Barnsley, 2 November 1869. 4 Mammatt, ‘Various Methods of Working Coal in Yorkshire’, paper presented to the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 3 August 1869. 5 There was considerable debate regarding the merits of various systems over the years within the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers. See in particular Miller, ‘On Results of Different Methods of Getting Coal’, paper presented to the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, ibid.: W.Rowley, ‘Some Observations on Coal and Coal Mining and the Economical Working of our Coal Fields’, paper presented to the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, 28 September 1870; P.Cooper, ‘On the Comparative Safety of Different Methods of Working Coal’, paper presented to the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 5 October 1870, vol. II:81– 111; and W.E.Garforth, ‘The Application of Coal-Cutting Machines to Deep Mining’, Transactions of the Midland Institute of Mining, Civil and Mechanical Engineers, vol. XVI, 1900–3, 1904:229. 6 Correspondence dated 7 November 1900, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 November 1900. 7 YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 March 1896. 8 Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1897. 9 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, April 1897. 10 SYCOA, 1897 Annual Report, dated 10 February 1898 and signed by F.Parker Rhodes, M-2699/9, Sheffield Library. 11 Correspondence from branch, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 10 April 1899. 12 Strike and Lockout Report for 1898. 13 SYCOA, Annual Report for 1899. 14 Ibid.

464 NOTES

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Council, 10 April 1899. YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 July 1899. Ibid. Correspondence from branch, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 5 March 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 23 January 1900. YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 March 1900; Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 April 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 19 December 1899. WYCOA, Special Council, 27 February 1900; Ordinary Council, 19 March 1900. Correspondence dated 12 March 1900, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 March 1900. YMA Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 April 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 24 April 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 29 April 1902. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 August 1902. For 1900 Wheldale’s wages were classified as high-average. By 1905 they had fallen into the category low-average (based on analysis of wage returns to YMA headquarters for various years). YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 September 1902. Reference to joint committee Meeting of 14 October 1902, in WYCOA minutes. Report of a deputation held 20 October 1903. Ibid. Joint Committee Meeting, Leeds, 15 September 1903. Ibid. Joint Committee Meeting, Leeds, 19 January 1904. Correspondence from branch in YMA, Ordinary Council, 18–19 February 1901. Correspondence in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 4 March 1901. WYCOA, Special Council, 26 March 1901. YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 March 1901. According to the Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1901 there were 546 directly involved in the action. Joint Committee, 26 March 1901. Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1898. WYCOA, Special Council, 14 January 1898; Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1898, ibid. Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1898, ibid.

Technological change—the balance between safety and increased efficiency 1 2 3 4 5

J.Wilkinson, ‘Mining in Barnsley’: 16. Ibid.: 4. Ibid. Ibid.: 1, 2. New schemes of working and ventilation were brought forward for consideration in the aftermath of the tragedy. R.Carter of Long Carr, Barnsley, for example, advocated a system where ventilation was always direct, with currents of air

NOTES 465

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

sweeping through the mine and being discharged by a shaft placed so that it was always in advance and on the elevated side of the working places (R.Carter ‘On Colliery Ventilation’, paper presented at a meeting of the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, Leeds, 16 July 1857). J. Brackenridge of Sandal Hall, Wakefield elaborated upon a very similar system, whereby an upcast shaft with a furnace at its base would be sunk on the boundary of the estate at the top of the incline of the strata to be worked. The downcast shaft would, in accord with existing convention, be at the lower part of the incline. The level or main road would be driven out on either side of the downcast shaft and from it board gates would be driven 120 yards apart entirely through the coal so as to allow communication with the upcast shaft. The coal would then be worked backward from the boundary (J.Brakenridge, ‘Observations on the Best Mode of Working and Ventilating Coal Mines’, paper presented at a meeting of the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, Huddersfield, 5 November 1857). Other owners or mining engineers in the county advanced other views (See, for example, J.Jebson, ‘On the Ventilation of Mines’, paper presented at a meeting of the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, Leeds, 28 January 1858). Wilkinson, op. cit.: 3. Yorkshire NUM, Colliery Explosions and Mining Disasters in Yorkshire since 1672. Ibid.: 6. Wilkinson, op. cit.: 6. Duckham, Baron, F., ‘The Oaks Disaster, 1866’, in J.Benson and R.Neville, Studies in the Yorkshire Coal Industry, Manchester University Press, 1976:85. Ibid.: 69. Yorkshire NUM, ‘The Terrible Explosion at the Oaks Colliery; the Rescue of a Survivor; the Country’s Sympathy’, believed to be from the Barnsley Independent of 1917, mimeo. Duckham, op. cit.: 80. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1893, section by Mr Wardell, C-7339, PP 1894. The investigators in this case were A.Young, a barrister who attended the inquest on behalf of the Home Office, and F.N.Wardell and H.Hall of the mining inspectorate. Ibid. Ibid. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1896, C-8450, PP 1897. Ibid. J.C.Ball, ‘An Account of the Peckfield Colliery Disaster of 1896—a Letter by a Last Survivor’, letter from J.C.Ball, Woodlesford to Mrs Braithwaite, Leeds Central Reference Library. Account of the Micklefield Pit Disaster of 1896, Leeds Central Reference Library. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1897. Formal Investigation into the Explosion at Cadeby Main, testimony of Witty. Report by Redmayne, ibid.: 8. Ibid.: 28. Reports of Inspectors of Mines, various years. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1882, C-3621, PP 1883. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1883, C-4078, PP 1884. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1880, C-1903, PP 1881.

466 NOTES

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

58 59 60 61 62

Ibid. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1889, C-6015, PP 1890:20. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1885, C-4760, PP 1886:166. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1905, Cd 2910, PP 1906:32. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1891, C-6625, PP 1892. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1892, C-6986, PP 1893. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1880, op. cit. Report of Inspectors of Mines, 1902, Cd 1590, PP 1903. D.Hay, ‘The Development of Mechanical and Electrical Power in Collieries Since 1850’, Historical Review of Coal Mining; 199. Minutes of Evidence taken before the Departmental Committee on the Use of Electricity in Mines, cd. 1917, PP 1904:220. Buxton (1978:99). ‘The Application of Coal-cutting Machines to Deep Mining’, Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 14 June 1902. Buxton, ibid.; Sayers (1967:87). Sayers, ibid. Buxton, ibid. Rossington (n.d.: 24). Goodchild (1978:147). See, for example, R.W.Dron, ‘Lighting of Mines’, Historical Review of Coal Mining: 165; R.Neville Moss, ‘Mine Gases and Explosions’, Historical Review of Coal Mining; and Reports from Commissioners, Children’s Employment (Mine) Session 3 February–12 August 1842, vol. XVI, Command Papers 381, witness 96, Mr Thornley, one of Her Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County of York. See W.E.Garforth, ‘On the Firedamp Detector, with Recent Improvements in the Mines’ Safety Lamp…’, Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, 1884: 395– 403 on the ideal attributes of a safety lamp. See also Buxton, op. cit.: 73–6 on safety lamps generally. Garforth, ibid. Report of Inspectors of Mines, various years. Garforth, op. cit.: 397. Ibid.: 396. Buxton, op. cit.: 104. Garforth, ibid. Ibid.: 397. Final Report of HM Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into Accidents in Mines and the Possible Means of Preventing the Occurrence of Limiting their Disastrous Consequences Together with Evidence and Appendices, C-4699, PP 1886. Buxton, op. cit.: 105. YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 February 1897; WYCOA, Special Council, 16 February 1897. Both sides had agreed that the matter could go to the joint committee. WYCOA, Special Council, 23 February 1897. Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1897. Numbers drawn from ibid. WYCOA, Special Council, 9 July 1897. YMA, Annual Report for 1898.

NOTES 467

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77

78

79 80 81 82 83 84

85

86 87

88 89

WYCOA, Special Council, 31 August 1897. YMA, December 1897. WYCOA, Special Council, 17 May 1898. WYCOA, Special Council, 13 September 1898; 13 December 1898. YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 November 1899. WYCOA, Special Council 13 December 1898. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 January 1899. YMA, Annual Report for 1898. Official Enquiry into Explosion at Wharncliffe Silkstone. Adjourned Inquest on Explosion at Wharncliffe Silkstone. H.M.Crankshaw, ‘The History of Machine Mining’, Historical Review of Coal Mining, Mining Association of Great Britain, 1923:72. ‘Down Amongst the Coals’, Halifax Guardian, 1877. Goodchild, (1972). W.E.Garforth, ‘The Application of Coal-cutting Machines to Deep Mining’, Transactions of the Midland Institute of Mining, Civil and Mechanical Engineers, vol. XVI, 1900–3, General Meeting and Discussion Following, 8 March 1902, Barnsley: 234. Garforth claimed that the men eventually accepted a price of 1s per ton instead of 2s as originally demanded, but even at this reduced price were able to obtain a ‘much higher wage’ than when previously working by hand-pick. He did not, however, indicate whether the same number of men were employed subsequent to the machine’s introduction as before (ibid.: 236–7). Public Records Office, Power 6/21; Minutes of Evidence taken before the Departmental Committee on the Use of Electricity in Mines, Cd 1917, PP 1904: 223, YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19–20 August 1895. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 30 March 1896. Ibid. Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1896. Ibid. In this case, machines were installed for apparently financial reasons on the occasion of a strike, but they had the additional consequence of breaking the workers’ bargaining position and indeed of partially replacing recalcitrant workers through mechanisation. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 November 1896; YMA, Ordinary Council, 8 February 1897; Joint Committee Meeting, held at the Great Northern Station Hotel, Leeds, 23 February 1897, contained in YMA, Annual Trustees’ Meeting, 13 February 1897. Report by Wadsworth and Murray, dated 29 July 1897, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 August 1897. The strike of Haigh Moor workers was later followed by the sympathy walk-out of workers in the Silkstone and Stanley seams. Authorisation of strike pay is recorded in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 13 September 1897. Authorisation for Silkstone and Stanley seam workers to give notice is recorded in YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 October 1897. WYCOA, Special Council, 31 August 1897. WYCOA, Special Council, 14 February 1899.

468 NOTES

90 YMA, Ordinary Council, 8 May 1899. 91 WYCOA, Special Council, 13 June 1899; YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 16 June 1899. 92 Ibid. 93 WYCOA, Special Council, 13 June 1899. 94 Report of Strikes and Lockouts for 1898. According to this source the strike lasted from 7 April 1898 until 6 May 1899. 95 YMA, Ordinary Council, 22 January 1900. 96 In April 1900, North Gawber branch reported that members had voted in favour of giving notice on this and a number of other matters, because they considered it ‘time we got the riddles out of our pit’. Their correspondence also noted that as the owner of their pit was not a member of the owners’ association, any agreement reached through joint committee negotiations might not apply in their case (YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19 April 1900). In October, Monk Bretton brought the riddles’ question to the district as well (YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 October 1900). Other branches confined their grievances to the local level, holding deputations to request that riddles be removed. 97 WYCOA, Special Council, 4 December 1900. 98 Ibid. 99 Joint Committee Meeting, held at the Victoria Station Hotel, Sheffield, 19 December 1900. On receiving the report of this meeting, the WYCOA resolved that the matter should ultimately be left to the individual collieries but affirmed that, for the present, no member should make any arrangements (WYCOA, Special Council, 1 January 1901). 100 Joint Committee Meeting, 19 December 1900. 101 YMA, Ordinary Council, 18–19 February 1901. 102 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 April 1901.

8 SCOPE OF UNION MEMBERSHIP Agitation against non-unionism 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

YMA, Annual Demonstration, 18 June 1894. Remarks of Pickard, ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 22–24 January 1894. YMA, Adjourned Council Meeting, 16 July 1894. Ibid. YMA, Annual Report, 1896–7. YMA, Annual Demonstration, 1897, Barnsley. YMA, Annual Report for 1898, covering 1897–8. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 March 1898; YMA, Ordinary Council, 15 August 1898. 10 Report on Strikes and Lockouts for 1900, Cd 689, PP 1901; Reports on Strikes and Lockouts for 1900–2; 1905, 1906 and 1907.

NOTES 469

11 There is no information as to whether this was an official strike and missing YMA records make further clarification difficult. A strike lasting from 10–20 October is recorded in Report on Strikes and Lockouts for 1890, C-6476, PP 1891. 12 YMA, compiled from YMA minutes for these years. 13 WYCOA, Special Council, 5 February 1901; YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 January 1901; Ordinary Council, 21 January 1901. 14 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 January 1901; YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 September 1901; Ordinary Executive Committee, 21 October 1901; Ordinary Council, 4 November 1901. 15 YMA, Annual Report for 1893–4. 16 YMA, Annual Demonstration, 1897, Barnsley. 17 YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 April 1900, 9 July 1900, 29 September 1900, 30 October 1900 and 26 November 1900; Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 July 1900; WYCOA, Special Council, 7 August 1900. 18 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 10 December 1900; Yearly Council Meeting, 21 December 1900; WYCOA, Special Council, 4 December 1900. 19 Report of Lincoln and Smith in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 January 1901. 20 From ‘officials file’, based on information in YMA minutes. 21 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 November 1900. 22 YMA, Ordinary Council, 26 November 1900. 23 Report of Lincoln and Smith, Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 January 1901. 24 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 7 January 1901. 25 Ibid. 26 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 April 1901. 27 WYCOA, Special Council 13 March 1901. 28 WYCOA, Special Council, 26 March 1901. 29 Mirfield Collieries Arbitration, Thomas Marshall, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 7 October 1901. 30 Correspondence in YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 November 1901. 31 Correspondence, dated 10 October 1901, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 November 1901. 32 Letter from Pickard, 16 October 1901, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 November 1901. 33 WYCOA, Special Council, 29 October 1901. 34 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 16 December 1901. 35 YMA, Special Council, 17 December 1901. 36 Joint Committee Meeting, Leeds, 22 April 1902. 37 WYCOA, Special Council, 4 March 1902. 38 WYCOA, Special Council, 22 April 1902; 3 June 1902; 4 November 1902. 39 WYCOA, Annual General Meeting, 31 March 1903. 40 Ibid. 41 Correspondence dated 27 January 1903, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 February 1903. 42 Correspondence dated 28 January 1903, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 February 1903. 43 Correspondence dated 30 January 1903, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 February 1903. It is not clear what happened to the other eighteen.

470 NOTES

44 Correspondence dated 31 January 1903, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 February 1903. 45 Ibid. 46 Correspondence dated 6 February 1903, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 February 1903. 47 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 4 May 1903. 48 YMA, Yearly Council Meeting, 29 December 1903. 49 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 March 1897. 50 YMA, Ordinary Council, 27 January 1902. 51 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 29 June 1903. 52 YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 October 1904. 53 YMA, Ordinary Council, 1 October 1904; YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 4 February 1905. 54 YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 February 1905. 55 YMA, Yearly Council Meeting, 1912. 56 YMA, minute book for 1913. Orientation toward lads and surface workers 1 The YMA advised its members to meet with owners and managers in order to ensure that a ‘good understanding’ was reached with regard to boys, top and bottom hands and any who had not received the full 40 per cent advance (YMA, Circular, 31 July 1894, Wages Question). 2 Strike and Lockout Report for 1894, Appendix I. 3 YMA, Annual Report, 1893–4. 4 YMA, Special Executive Committee, 25 August 1894. 5 YMA, Annual Report, 1893–4, op. cit. 6 YMA, Ordinary Council, 23 November 1896. 7 YMA, Ordinary Council, 8 February 1897; Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 April 1897. 8 YMA, in minutes of Ordinary Council, 19 July 1897. 9 Joint Committee, 22 July 1898, Sheffield. 10 WYCOA, 25 October 1898; Strike and Lockout Report for 1898. 11 WYCOA, Council, 1 November 1898. 12 WYCOA, Special Council, 8 November 1898. 13 YMA, Annual Report for 1898. 14 YMA minutes for 1899. 15 This was true, for example, at South Kirkby in 1900 where lads struck unsuccessfully for wage improvements (Strike and Lockout Report for 1900). 16 This point was made by Justice Mathew in the case of Denaby and Cadeby Main Collieries Ltd v. the YMA, George Cragg and Ten Others, who when discounting the plaintiffs’ claim that the Denaby-Cadeby strike was part of a concerted effort on the part of the YMA to undermine and oppose the award of Lord James of Hereford, remarked that the lads’ stoppages were quite a separate matter from the strike at Denaby-Cadeby. Pickard argued on much the same lines, saying that the strikes were in large part the consequence of the owners’ failure to ‘attend to the question of Age and Merit Rises which were due to lads when they went back to

NOTES 471

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38

work, and so long as they remained at the same colliery, and when they had completed every half year of service’, (YMA, Annual Report for 1901–2). WYCOA, Special Council, 15 July 1902. West Yorkshire Joint Council, 22 July 1902. WYCOA, Special Council, 29 July 1902. WYCOA, Special Council, 2 September 1902. YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 September 1902. Strike and Lockout Report for 1902. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 November 1902. WYCOA, Special Council, 11 June 1907. YMA, Minutes, 13 November 1882. Strike and Lockout Report for 1890. YMA Annual Report for 1893–4. YMA, Notes in Ordinary Executive Committee, 3 October 1898. YMA, Ordinary Council, 17 October 1898. YMA, Ordinary Council, 13 and 14 March 1899. YMA, 11 April 1899. Text of Agreement issued by Miners’ Offices, Barnsley, 19 January 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 14 December 1899; Special Council, 23 January 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 21 August 1900. WYCOA, Special Council, 22 December 1903; Special Council, 12 January 1904; Special Council, 16 August 1904. Joint Committee, South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and the YMA, Sheffield, 11 October 1904. WYCOA, Special Council, 16 December 1904. By 1906 there was a National Federation of Colliery Surface Workers. In this year they applied to the WYCOA for a 5 per cent advance. The response of the West Yorkshire owners was to pursue an existing policy of evading the request for a meeting when making alterations in surface workers’ wages and to make no immediate move unless a further application was received (WYCOA, Special Council, 21 December 1906). YMA, Ordinary Council, 23 April 1906.

9 POLITICS AND THE YMA—THE BARNSLEY BY-ELECTION OF 1897 1 Rubenstein (1978), ‘The Independent Labour Party and the Yorkshire Miners’, D.Howell (1983) British Workers and The Independent Labour Party, 1888–1906. 2 This is dealt with in YMA, Annual Report for 1896–7. In 1894 Pickard also complained of obstructionist activities engaged in by German and French delegates. 3 Their denunciation of socialism occurred at the same conference of the MFGB that noted the inability of Scottish miners to raise their wages to a level equivalent to that in the rest of the Federation (MFGB Annual Conference 1897). By implication the weakness of their trade union organisation was an obstacle to wage improvement in the Federation as a whole. 4 Rubenstein, op. cit.: 107. 5 MFGB, Annual Conference, January 1897.

472 NOTES

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 19 and 26 February 1897. Labour Leader, 5 and 12 October 1895. Labour Leader, 19 October 1895. Labour Leader, 9 November 1895. According to the Dictionary of Labour Biography, Lunn helped to form the Rothwell branch of the ILP during the 1893 coal strike and was a branch officer from the outset and for many years (J.Bellamy and J.Saville, Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 2:253). Rubenstein, op. cit.: 105; YMA minutes; Bellamy and Saville, ibid. Arnot (1953:302). Card on Burns with data derived from YMA minutes. Rubenstein, ibid. Labour Leader, 5 October 1895. Rubenstein, ibid. YMA, vote recorded in minutes, December 1895. Hardie’s seat was originally won at West Ham in 1892 without Liberal opposition (Rubenstein, op. cit.: 102). Ibid. The ILP contested four by-elections between May 1896 and October 1897. 15 September 1897. Rubenstein, op. cit.: 117; Leeds Mercury, 21 September 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 2 October 1897. Leeds Mercury, 20 September 1897. Leeds Mercury, 23 September 1897; Rubenstein, op. cit.: 118. J.Keir Hardie (1909), The ILP and All About It. Barnsley Chronicle, 25 September 1897. Leeds Mercury, 21 September 1897. Rubenstein, ibid. Yorkshire Post, 27 September 1897. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Speech delivered 24 September 1897 in Barnsley. Printed in the Labour Leader, 2 October 1897, reprinted in Bellamy and Saville, op. cit., vol. 4:67, entry written by Barbara Nield. Ibid. Barnsley Chronicle, 2 October 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 25 September 1897; Barnsley Chronicle, 2 October 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 9 October 1897. Rubenstein, op. cit.: 113. Hardie, for example, commented to a member of the Labour Leader staff that it was ‘the worst thing we have done’ (Bellamy and Saville, op. cit., entry on Curran). Yorkshire Post, 27 September 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 9 October 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 2 October 1897.

NOTES 473

46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Barnsley Chronicle, 25 September 1897. Yorkshire Post, 27 September 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 2 October 1897. Ibid. The extract from the Clarion was specifically that support for Curran had arisen ‘not because the men are Socialist, but because they are so incensed with Mr Pickard for various reasons, that they would oppose anyone he chose to support’ (Clarion, 30 October 1897, quoted in Howell, op. cit.: 20). YMA, Special Council, 15 September 1896. Yorkshire Factory Times, 29 October 1897. Barnsley Chronicle, 12 March 1897. He was nominated for the latter by Park Hills and Wakefield Manor branch (from officials file based on data compiled from YMA minutes). Yorkshire Factory Times, 28 October 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 1, 22 and 29 January 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 17 February 1897, Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 January 1897. Ibid. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 22 January 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 5 February 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 19 February 1897. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 March 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 12 March 1897. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 26 February 1897. Cunningham’s letter had been highly critical of branch officials at Hickleton and confirmed that the butty system did indeed exist at the pit. He referred to the situation being winked at by ‘the man who goes trotting off to the Council meetings at Barnsley’, and who then returned to say that the council had congratulated him upon the satisfactory state of affairs at Hickleton. He thanked the Mexborough and Swinton Times for publishing the protracted correspondence and thereby allowing exposure of the ‘type of men leading the branch’, and recalled an incident two months previously when he was prevented from completing a report on the checkweighmen’s books which he had prepared with another man with the retort that because he was not a butty he was not a proper person to do the work. Included in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 April 1897. YMA, Adjourned Council, 10 May 1897. YMA, Yorkshire Miners’ Demonstration, Barnsley, 1897. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 August 1897. Ibid. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 13 September 1897. Yorkshire Factory Times, 17 September 1897. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 13 September 1897. Yorkshire Factory Times, 10 September 1897. Strike and Lockout Report for 1897. YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 July 1897. YMA, Ordinary Council, 23 and 24 August 1897.

474 NOTES

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

112 113 114

115

YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 13 September 1897. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 October 1897. Ibid. Included in the minutes of YMA, Ordinary Council, 23 and 24 August 1897. Strike and Lockout Report for 1897, op. cit. Yorkshire Post, 27 September 1897. Ibid. Ibid. Barnsley Chronicle, report of meeting held 16 October 1897, A.Wilkinson, ‘The story of J.Walsh’, typescript account. Yorkshire Factory Times, 29 October 1897. Yorkshire Factory Times, 22 October 1897. Yorkshire Factory Times, 10 December 1897. Wilkinson, op. cit.: 2. Ibid.: 3. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 28 May 1898. Wilkinson, op. cit.: 4. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 3 October 1898. Wilkinson, op. cit.: 5. Ibid. Ibid.: 8. It may have been that Walsh was known personally to ‘Sweeper Up’ from the former’s employment at Park Hills and that it was for this reason that the story was picked up. Yorkshire Factory Times, 24 June 1898. Yorkshire Factory Times, 14 October 1898. YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 July 1898. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 25 July 1898. Yorkshire Factory Times, 30 September 1898. Yorkshire Factory Times, 16 December 1898. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 28 November 1898. YMA, Ordinary and Yearly Council, 19 December 1898. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 28 November 1898. YMA, Annual Report, 1898; YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 28 November 1898. Precisely who supplied information on YMA affairs to the Labour Leader is unclear, though as Howell reports, Lunn was sending Keir Hardie reports throughout this period and in the spring of 1898 he along with other miners in the ILP was trying to provide Hardie with evidence that Pickard milked union funds (Howell, op. cit.: 21). YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 January and 13 February 1899. Wilkinson, op. cit. Ibid.: 11. It is of interest that just prior to his release, the local branch committee at South Kirkby had asked the pit manager to dismiss Gustard and Newton, two of Walsh’s primary protagonists, because they had been expelled from the union. It is perhaps a measure of Walsh’s influence or management’s fear of renewed unrest that the request was granted (ibid.). YMA minute books, 1902.

NOTES 475

116 YMA, Ordinary Council, July 1907. 117 MFGB, Annual Conference 2 October 1900 and following days; MFGB, Annual Conference, 1 October 1901. 118 Bealey F. and Pelling H., Labour and Politics 1900–1906, a history of the Labour Representative Committee, 1958. 119 MFGB, Annual Conference, 1 October 1901, op.cit. 120 Figures compiled from YMA minute books. 121 Based on analysis of voting figures contained in YMA minute books for 1903. 122 Based on analysis of voting figures contained in YMA minute books for 1901, 123 Ibid.: minute books for 1904. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid. 126 YMA, Ordinary Council, 15 May 1905. 127 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 29 May 1905. 128 YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 June 1905. 129 YMA, Ordinary Council, 29 June 1906. 130 See Chapter 12. 131 The reply to Potts’s letter was printed in the Sheffield Independent, 24 January 1906. Statements issued by the YMA were included respectively in Ordinary Council, 29 January 1906 and Ordinary Executive Committee, 10 February 1906. 132 YMA, Special Council, 15 October 1906. 133 MFGB, Annual Conference, 2 October 1906, Swansea. 134 YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 September 1907; Yearly Council Meeting, 23 and 24 December 1907. 135 YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 September 1907. 136 Ibid. 137 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 May 1907. 138 MFGB, Annual Conference, 8 October 1907 and following days. 139 YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 September 1907; MFGB, Annual Conference, 8 October 1907 and following days, Southport. 140 MFGB, Annual Conference, ibid. 141 From YMA minutes. 142 Sheffield Independent, 7 July 1908; Yorkshire Post, 5 July 1908. 143 Record of demonstration speeches contained in YMA minute books for 1908.

10 THE YORKSHIRE COALFIELD AFTER 1900— OPENING UP OF THE DONCASTER AREA 1 Sayers (1967:87, 88); Williams (1962:172); Kirby (1977:6, 7); Taylor (1962: 51– 3); and F.A.Gibson, A Compilation of Statistics of the Coal Mining Industry of the United Kingdom, the Various Coalfields Thereof, and the Principal Foreign Countries of the World, 1922, Cardiff. 2 Compiled from Gibson, ibid. 3 Taylor, op. cit. 4 Cd 495, PP 1901 for data for 1900; 14th Abstract of Labour Statistics of the UK, Cd 5458, PP 1911 for data for 1901.

476 NOTES

5 Taylor, op. cit.: 53. 6 Data on coal raised per person, both underground and for all employed above and below ground, is drawn from Inspector of Mines annual reports. 7 14th Abstract, op. cit.; 17th Abstract of Labour Statistics of the UK, Cd 7733, PP 1915. 8 17th Abstract, op. cit.; Mines and Quarries: General Report, with Statistics, Statistics for 1917 Cd 3, PP 1918; for 1918, Cd 339, PP 1919. According to Williams there was a tendency for both profits per ton and real wages to increase up until 1904 and thereafter (at least through 1914) for both to fall (Williams, op. cit.: 172). 9 14th Abstract, op. cit.; 17th Abstract, op. cit. 10 Calculated from Gibson, op. cit. 11 Colliery Guardian, 20 October 1911:785. The lecturer was Professor Percy F. Kendall. 12 Inspector of Mines Report for 1909, Cd 5177–iv, PP 1910. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Colliery Guardian, 6 January 1911:19. 16 Colliery Guardian, 2 January 1914:7. 17 Colliery Guardian, 7 January 1916:19. 18 Colliery Guardian, 2 January 1914:18. 19 Inspector of Mines Reports for the years specified. 20 18th Abstract of Labour Statistics of the UK, Cd 2740, PP 1926; Mines and Quarries: General Report, with Statistics for 1989, part III, Output. 21 Geological Map of the Yorkshire Coalfield issued by the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 1950, in Sections of Strata of the Yorkshire Coalfield, 1950. 22 Ibid. 23 At Shireoaks, for example, High Hazels Coal was found at about 433 yards. At Frystone, Stanley Main Coal was found at a depth of about 100 yards (Sections of Strata, op. cit). 24 Bryan E.Coates, ‘The Geography of the Industrialization and Urbanization of South Yorkshire, 18th Century to 20th Century’, in S.Pollard and C.Holmes (eds), Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire, South Yorkshire County Council, 1976. 25 Patrick Abercrombie and T.H.Johnson, The Doncaster Regional Planning Scheme, report prepared for the joint committee, the University Press of Liverpool, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1922. 26 Fox, (1935). 27 Colliery Guardian, 1911:138, 141. 28 Colliery Guardian, 1911:138. 29 Bryan E.Coates and G.Malcolm Lewis, The Doncaster Area, British Landscapes through Maps, The Geological Association, Sheffield, 1966. 30 Ibid.: 34. 31 Abercrombie and Johnson, op. cit. 32 Ibid. 33 Colliery Guardian, 21 July 1911:121. 34 Bulman, Coal Mining and the Coal Miner, Methuen & Co. Ltd, London, 1920:282. 35 Colliery Guardian, ibid.

NOTES 477

36 Bulman, op, cit: 283. 37 Ibid.: Christine Heap, Mines and Miners of Doncaster, Doncaster Museum Series, 51, February 1977. 38 Bulman, ibid. 39 Abercrombie and Johnson, op. cit.: 76. 40 Bulman, op. cit.: 274. 41 Heap, op. cit.; Abercrombie and Johnson, op. cit.: 81.1. 42 Bulman, ibid. 43 Ibid.: 277, 278. 44 Ibid.: 277. 45 Abercrombie and Johnson, ibid. 46 Ibid.: 79. 47 Bulman, op. cit.: 278, 279. 48 Coates and Lewis, op. cit.: 35. 49 Frank Cleary, Dinnington 1901–1981, unpublished manuscript. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Colliery Guardian, 28 June 1911:1309. 56 Colliery Guardian, 17 February 1911:336. 57 Colliery Guardian, 21 July 1911:121. 58 Colliery Guardian, 21 June 1912:1241. 59 Sections of Strata, op. cit. 60 Colliery Guardian, 20 March 1914:641. 61 Sections of Strata, op. cit. 62 Ibid. 63 Colliery Guardian, 2 January 1914:18. 64 Colliery Guardian, 5 January 1912:16–19. 65 Maltby Main Colliery, 1911–1961, publication for the pit’s golden jubilee. 66 Yorkshire Main Colliery, 19 November 1953. 67 Colliery Guardian, 24 May 1912:1036. 68 Report on Trade Unions in 1908–1910, Cd 6109, PP 1912. 69 Figures from List of Mines in the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Districts, 1910, PRC, POWE 6/8, 1910. 70 YMA, Figures for financial members in branches, 1910. 71 Remarks of H.Smith, MFGB Annual Conference, 8 October 1907 and following days, Southport: 63. According to Smith, the YMA felt it important to see that they got fair conditions in the particular coalfield of which Frickley was a part ‘seeing there were three or four different pits tapping coal in that particular range’. 72 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 March 1907. 73 YMA, Ordinary Council, 13 August 1906. 74 YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 February 1907. 75 Joint Committee for South Yorkshire, 22 March 1907. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 YMA, Ordinary Council, 8 April 1907.

478 NOTES

79 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 22 April 1907; Ordinary Council, 6 May 1907. 80 PRO LAB/34/7. 81 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 14 June 1907. 82 PRO, op. cit. 83 Figures taken from YMA minutes. 84 YMA, Special Council, 17 August 1907. 85 YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 September 1907. 86 Ibid. 87 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 28 January 1907. 88 MFGB, Annual Conference, 8 October 1907 and following days, Southport: 64. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid.: 66. 91 Ibid.: 65. 92 YMA, Ordinary Council, 12 October 1907. 93 YMA, Ordinary Council, 17 February 1908. 84 YMA, Yearly Council Meeting, 23, 24 and 30 December 1907. 95 YMA, Ordinary Council, 17 February 1908. 96 Ibid. 97 Letter from Addy, dated 18 March 1908, included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 May 1908. 98 Request from Wadsworth, April 1908, for a deputation which would include on the union’s side two of those still out at Frickley. 99 Letter from Addy, dated 23 April 1908, included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 May 1908. 100 Letter from Wadsworth, dated 25 April 1908, included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 May 1908. 101 YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 May 1908. 102 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 25 May 1908. 103 YMA, Ordinary Council, 28 September 1908. 104 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19 July 1909. 105 YMA, Special Council, 18 September 1909. 106 YMA, Ordinary Council, 27 September 1909. 107 YMA, Circular dated 7 January 1910. 108 YMA, Circular dated 6 June 1910. 109 YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 January 1910. 110 Ibid. 111 YMA, 1910 Annual Demonstration, 25 June 1910, Doncaster. 112 YMA, Ordinary Council, 2 August 1910. 113 YMA, Ordinary Council, 29 August 1910; 2 August 1910. 114 Joint Committee, Sheffield, 3 August 1910; 14 September 1910. 115 SYCOA, Annual Report for 1909. 116 This assessment is based on an analysis of data in YMA minutes. 117 This is suggested by remarks made by Wadsworth at the Annual Demonstration for 1911. Specifically, he said that ‘the butty system of this County has been brought from other Counties, and the most unfortunate thing about it is we have had to fight it all along the line’. 118 WYCOA, Special Council, 16 November 1909.

NOTES 479

119 Reply dated 4 September 1909, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 14 September 1909. 120 Communication from Wadsworth dated 6 September 1909, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 14 September 1909. 121 Reply dated 11 September 1909, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 14 September 1909. 122 Letter from Whitwood Mere, dated 4 September 1909, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 14 September 1909. 123 WYCOA, Special Council, 15 February 1909. 124 YMA, Yearly Council, 20 December 1909; WYCOA, Special Council, 15 February 1909. 125 Joint Committee, 3 August 1910.

11 DENABY-CADEBY STRIKE OF 1902 AND ENSUING LEGAL ACTION 1 Per capita figures are available only up to 1900. 2 Board of Trade Labour Statistics, Statistical Tables, Reports on Trade Unions, various years, C-9443, PP 1899; Cd 6109, PP 1912. 3 YMA, Annual Report for 1901–2. 4 YMA, Ordinary Council, 15 April 1901. 5 Ibid. 6 YMA, Annual Report for 1901–2. 7 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 22 July 1901; 23 September 1901; 21 October 1901. 8 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 21 October 1901. 9 YMA, Yearly Council, 30 December 1901. 10 At least in 1900 this was the case (Board of Trade Labour Statistics, Statistical Tables, Reports on Trade Unions, Cd 773, PP 1901). 11 The tax was ultimately removed on 1 November 1906 (Arnot 1949:339). 12 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 20 and 21 November 1901; dated 17 October 1901. Included in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 21 October 1901. 13 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 September 1901; Ordinary Council, 7 October 1901. 14 Strike and Lockout Report for 1901. 15 Strike and Lockout Report for 1901. 16 YMA Ordinary Council, 18 June 1902. 17 YMA, Special Council, 13 May 1902; Ordinary Council, 18 June 1902. 18 See previous chapter. 19 YMA records, membership lists, June 1900. 20 J.MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main Colliery’, Colliery Guardian. March 1976. 21 Ibid.: J.MacFarlane, ‘Coalminers, Glass Workers and Potters, a Profile of the Denaby Area from 1801–1871’, Doncaster Library; J.MacFarlane’, Denaby Main: a South Yorkshire Mining Village’, in R.Neville and J.Benson (eds), Studies in the Yorkshire Coalfield, Manchester University Press, 1976. 22 MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main Colliery’, op. cit., quoting Colliery Guardian article of September 1867.

480 NOTES

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

See Chapter 1. MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main Colliery’, op. cit. MacFarlane, ‘Coalminers, Glassworkers and Potters’, op. cit.: 27. MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main Colliery’, op. cit. MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main’, op. cit.: 115. Ibid.: 113. Ibid.: 112, 113. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 7 November 1902. MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main’, op. cit.: 115. See Chapter 13. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 August 1902. MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main’, op. cit.: 113; interview with Robert Henry Shephard. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 August 1902. Ibid. Ibid. MacFarlane, ibid. Interestingly when Cadeby pit was first opened, 11d per yard was paid for the task of ‘cutting tops in gates (including bag dirt)’ for several weeks, but was stopped when it came to the attention of Chambers (Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 August 1902). Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. YMA, Yearly Council, 21 December 1900. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. Taken from returns of Inspector of Mines Reports. YMA, Ordinary Council, 18–19 February 1901. Lord Justice Mathew in YMA, Denaby and Cadeby Main Case, in the Supreme Court of Judicature, Court of Appeal, Royal Courts of Justice, Friday, 19 May 1905, before the Master of the Rolls; Lord Justice Mathew; and Lord Justice Cozens Hardy. Denaby and Cadeby Main Collieries, Limited v. The Yorkshire Miners’ Association; George Craft and Ten Others. Strike and Lockout Report for 1902. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 2 July 1902. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. According to F.Parker Rhodes in the annual report of the South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association for 1902, the union had initially asked either to be granted more money for removing bag dirt or to have the task taken off their hands. When the company agreed to the latter the arbitrators appointed by the joint committee were instructed to determine how much the miners were paid for the work. Agreeing that it was ½d per yard, the company then proceeded to apply the policy of contracting others to do the work and deducting the ½d per yard from the pay of face workers affected (SYCOA, 19th Annual Report, 1902). YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 September 1901. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. Ibid. Star, 1 July 1902. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 June 1902. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. Ibid. Later in this article the figure is given as £8 15s 6d.

NOTES 481

56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69

Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 30 June 1902. Lord Justice Mathew, op. cit. Star, 1 July 1902. Mexborough and Swinton Times, 4 July 1902. The bag dirt question was the first of those matters listed but others included: ‘the discontinuance of the imposition of fines on miners for what are described as petty matters; a full adherence to the arrangement entered into on July 22 1898, as to the pit lads’ wages; the company to make up the earnings of men employed in difficult places to a fair day’s wage, as is done at other collieries; [and] the fixing of a price list for contractors to work to’. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Star, 4 July 1902. YMA v. W.H.Howden, Resolutions of the men employed by the Denaby and Cadeby Main Collieries, Ltd, extracted from the Denaby/Cadeby Minute Book, record of a meeting held on 7 July 1902 in the Reresby Arms Croft at 6 pm, attended by Messrs Hall and Annables. The meeting heard the report of Hall and Annables and then resolved that the joint secretaries of the branches should write to the council asking for strike pay. H.A.Clegg, Alan Fox and A.F.Thomas, op. cit., A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889:307. Ibid.: 309–13. Ibid.: 313, 314. That workers were well aware of this general climate and the sequence of decisions which brought it about is evident from a number of speeches. J. Walsh addressing a meeting in Sheffield called by several YMA branches to confirm support for the Denaby and Cadeby workers just before the strike ended gave the following account of recent legal history: In 1896 it was decided that it was unlawful to peacefully picket, although it had been lawful for 20 years, and in June 1900, it was declared lawful to make union funds attachable, although it had been unlawful for 30 years. In May 1902, Parliament had declined to give consideration to the position in which the trades unions were placed by those judgments. (Mexborough and Swinton Times, 6 February 1903)

These points had been essentially drawn from the fourteenth quarterly report of the General Federation of Trade Unions, issued by Mr Isaac Mitchell, its secretary, on 24 January. In addition to the three cases referred to by Walsh (in direct quotation from the report) he added two more: 4. In December 1902, the forces closed in still further. Justice Wills, in his summing up in the second Taff Vale trial, made it clear that the union was

482 NOTES

responsible for the acts of minor officials and gave further evidence on the class bias of the judges. 5. Already this year we have Justice Grantham giving a decision in the Denaby miners’ case, which, in our judgment, breaks the Trade Union Act of 1871. (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1903) 70 MFGB Annual Conference, 1 October and the following days, 1901. 71 Clegg et al., op. cit.: 315. 72 In December 1902 the case was decided in the company’s favour and the union was required to pay £23,000 in damages and costs (ibid.). 73 Star, 4 July 1902. 74 YMA, Denaby and Cadeby Main Case, op. cit., Opinion of the Master of the Rolls. 75 YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 July 1902. 76 Opinion of the Master of the Rolls, op. cit.; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1902. 77 YMA v. W.H.Howden, op. cit. 78 Ibid. 79 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1902. 80 Opinion of the Master of the Rolls, op. cit. 81 Lord Justice Mathew, op. cit. 82 YMA, Ordinary Council, 24 July 1902. 83 Ibid. 84 Lord Justice Mathew, op. cit. 85 Ibid. 86 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 25 July 1902. 87 According to a report in the Mexborough and Swinton Times, ‘the 1890 list is as obscure as any of the dreams of Pharoah and the 1885 agreement is the interpretation thereof. One would think that in order to remove a possible cause of unpleasantness in the future, the colliery management would be willing to accept such revision of the 1890 list as it stands, as it would bring it more into conformity with the 1885 agreement.’ (Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 August 1902). 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 September 1902. It is perhaps of interest that the 1901 pricelist proposals included the following item related to bag dirt: ‘cutting bags, including dropping bag dirt up to 6 in. in thickness…11d (every inch over and above six inches to be paid for at the rate of one penny per yard per inch)’, while in the proposals of August 1902 the item read: ‘cutting bags in gates, per yard 6d’ (Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 August 1902; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 September 1902). 91 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 31 October 1902. 92 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 7 November 1902. 93 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 31 October 1902. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 7 November 1902.

NOTES 483

97 Ibid. 98 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 21 November 1902. 99 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 8 August 1902; Mexborough and Swinton Times, 3 October 1902. 100 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 21 November 1902. 101 Ibid. 102 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 1 December 1902. 103 Star, 19 December 1902. 104 Ibid.: Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 23 December 1902. 105 YMA v. W.H.Howden, op. cit. 106 Comment of Nolan at a meeting of the miners on 4 December 1902, as reported in the Mexborough and Swinton Times, 5 December 1902. 107 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 16 January 1903. 108 SYCOA, 19th Annual Report, 1902. 109 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 12 December 1902. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 Star, 18 December 1902. 113 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 19 December 1902. 114 Ibid. 115 Taken from notes made in the margins of cuttings book, Yorkshire NUM, Barnsley, referring to demonstrations or meetings on 14 and 16 August 1902. 116 Star, 16 December 1902. 117 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 19 December 1902; Star, 16 December 1902. 118 Star, 16 December 1902. 119 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 19 December 1902. 120 Star, 16 December 1902. 121 J.Wilson, The Story of the Great Struggle, 1902–03, Christian Commonwealth Co. Ltd, London, 1904, Sheffield Reference Library. 122 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 2 January 1903. 123 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1903. 124 Mexborough and Swinton Times, 2 January 1903. 125 Ibid.; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 7 January 1903. 126 Ibid.: Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 127 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1903. 128 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 7 January 1903. 129 D.Laing and V.Wilmer unpublished manuscript, ‘There was Only the Pit’, manuscript loaned by Eddie Landford, Denaby, to be published by Quartet Books. 130 J.MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main’, op. cit.: 115. 131 Wilson, op. cit.: 23. 132 Ibid.: 24 and 28; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1903. 133 Ibid.: Wilson: 32. 134 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1903. 135 Ibid. 136 Wilson, ibid. 137 Wilson, op. cit.: 27. 138 Ibid.: 28. 139 Ibid.: 57.

484 NOTES

140 J.MacFarlane, ‘Denaby Main’, op. cit.: 116. 141 YMA v. W.H.Howden, op. cit. 142 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 22 January 1903; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 28 January 1903. 143 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 30 January 1903. 144 YMA, Special Circular, 30 January 1903. 145 Ibid. 146 YMA, Special Council, 2 February 1903. 147 The Independent, 12 February 1903; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12 February 1903. 148 The Independent, 12 February 1903. 149 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12 February 1903. 150 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 February 1903; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 February 1903. 151 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 February 1903. 152 YMA, Ordinary Council, 24 February 1903. 153 Dated 25 February 1903 and included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 24 February 1903. 154 Notes included in minutes of YMA, Ordinary Council, 24 February 1903. 155 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19 September 1903. 156 Report on Strikes and Lockouts for 1902. 157 Wilson, op. cit.: 84. 158 Final judgment was given by the Lords on 14 April 1905. 159 The case heard by Justice Lawrence came before the High Court of Justice, King’s Bench Division. Judgment was given on 5 April 1904. 160 YMA, Denaby and Cadeby Main Case, op. cit. 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 YMA, Ordinary Council, 21 May 1906. 165 YMA, Ordinary Council, 25 January 1904. 166 MFGB, Special National Miners’ Conference, London, 10, 11 March 1904. 167 MFGB, Annual Conference 1903. 168 Ibid. 169 SYCOA, Annual Report for 1902

12 EVOLVING UNION POLICIES AND POLITICS— HEMSWORTH DISPUTE, 1906 1 YMA, Annual Report for 1901–2, October 1902. 2 Ibid. 3 This is the date of sinking specified in the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers’ publication Sections of Strata of the Yorkshire Coalfield, compiled by W.H.Wilcockson, third edition, 1950. 4 Ibid. 5 Sections of Strata of the Yorkshire Coalfield, op. cit. 6 Ibid.

NOTES 485

7 Reports of the Inspectors of Mines for the Year 1880, Cd 2903, PP 1881, giving a list of mines in Mr Wardell’s District for 1879. 8 Census enumerator’s reports for these years. 9 List of Mines, 1903, District no. 5, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, Mr W.H. Pickering, Wakefield Record Office. 10 WYCOA, Special Council, 27 January 1891. 11 WYCOA, Special Council, 17 February 1890. 12 WYCOA, Special Council, 15 November 1892. 13 Ibid. 14 WYCOA, Special Council, 20 December 1892. 15 WYCOA, 9 January 1894. 16 WYCOA, Special Council, 20 March 1894. 17 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 29 June 1896 reports that this strike was in progress. It is, however, not mentioned in the Strike and Lockout Report for the year. 18 YMA, Ordinary Council, 12 October 1896. 19 YMA minutes, letter from branch, dated 2 November 1896. 20 YMA, Adjourned Council, 10 May 1897. 21 YMA, Ordinary Council, October 1899. 22 WYCOA, 26 September 1899. 23 WYCOA, ibid.: and 19 September 1899. 24 According to YMA minutes this occurred in 1899. 25 This data is contained in a letter written by Potts and included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 February 1900. All figures were to have the district percentage, 45 per cent above the standard, applied to them (WYCOA, Special Council, 6 March 1900). 26 WYCOA, Special Council, 26 September 1899. 27 Letter from Potts included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 March 1900. 28 WYCOA, Special Council, 12 June 1900. 29 YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 August 1900; Ordinary Executive Committee, 23 July 1900. 30 WYCOA, 7 August 1900. 31 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 18 August 1900. 32 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 18 August 1900. 33 Strike and Lockout Report for 1900. This report classifies the strike as successful for the workers and as having lasted from 26 July to 1 September with the existing arrangement maintained, thereby upholding payment of the special rate pending agreement on a price list. 34 WYCOA, Special Council, 18 September 1900. 35 YMA, Ordinary Council, 26 November 1900; Ordinary Executive Committee, 10 December 1900. 36 YMA, Yearly Council, 21 December 1900. 37 YMA, Ordinary Council, 21 January 1901; Strike and Lockout Report for 1901. 38 YMA, Ordinary Council, 21 January 1901. 39 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 4 February 1901. 40 YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 and 19 February 1901. 41 WYCOA, Special Council, 13 March 1901. 42 WYCOA, Special Council, 26 March 1901.

486 NOTES

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

WYCOA, Special Council, 17 August 1901. A.Lewis (1976). WYCOA, Special Council, 10 September 1901. YMA, 18 June 1902, authorising lock-out pay; WYCOA indemnity received. A.Lewis, op. cit. WYCOA, Special Council, 17 March 1903. Joint Committee of West Yorkshire, 10 November 1903. According to the account of C.Thompson, Barnsley seam workers first came out on strike on 10 August 1904 (interview: August 1983). WYCOA, Special Council, 1 August 1905. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19 September 1904. YMA minutes, branches with members who are receiving strike, lock-out, and victim pay, week ending 15 April 1905. Hemsworth at this time had fifty-one victims. Rotherham 1, with the next highest total, had twenty-seven. According to the account of C.Thompson of Fitzwilliam, the Shafton seam was shut down on 19 April 1905. He suggests that this was partly to force Shafton seam workers to replace those out from the Barnsley seam. On their refusal, they were legitimately regarded as locked out (interview, op. cit.). YMA, Ordinary Executive Council, 1 May 1905. YMA, Ordinary Council, 15 May 1905. YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 June 1905. YMA, branches with members who are receiving strike, lock-out and victim pay, week ending 10 June 1905. Factory Times, 7 July 1905. YMA, Ordinary Council, 10 July 1905. WYCOA, Special Council, 25 July 1905. YMA, Ordinary Council, 2 August 1905; Yorkshire Post, 3 August 1905. WYCOA, Special Council, 1 August 1905. WYCOA, ibid., and Special Council, 26 September 1905. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Council, 2 August 1905. Yorkshire Post, 3 August 1905. Yorkshire Post, 4 August 1905. PRO/LAB/34/5 gives the strike as having started on 2 August, lasting until the end of October and having involved 36, 701 aggregate days lost. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19 August 1905. YMA, branches with members who are receiving strike, lock-out and victim pay, week ending 26 August 1905. WYCOA, Special Council, 23 August 1905. Joint Committee Meeting of the WYCOA and the YMA, 23 August 1905. Ibid. WYCOA, Special Council, 5 October 1905. Joint Committee, 24 October 1905. Joint Committee, 31 October 1905. Yorkshire Post, 24 July 1905. Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, August 1905; Leeds Mercury, weekly supplement, 26 August 1905. Yorkshire Post, 24 August 1905.

NOTES 487

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

Ibid. C.Thompson, Fitzwilliam, interview, op. cit. Joint Committee, 23 August 1905. Joint Committee, 24 October 1905. Factory Times, 12 May 1905. Leeds Mercury, op. cit.; Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury, 22 August 1905. Factory Times, 27 October 1905. Factory Times, 10 November 1905. ‘Sweeper Up’, Factory Times, 18 May 1906. Factory Times, 29 September 1905. Factory Times, 13 October 1905. Leeds Mercury, weekly supplement, 9 September 1905. A.Lewis, op. cit. Factory Times, 13 October 1905. Factory Times, 27 October 1905. Copy of Order and Circular Letter to Boards of Guardians explaining it contained in A.Lewis, op. cit. Yorkshire Post, 3 August 1905. Yorkshire Post, 25 August 1905. Yorkshire Post, 8 September 1905. Ibid. Factory Times, 29 September 1905. Letter included in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 4 February 1901. Joint Committee Meeting of the WYCOA and the YMA, 25 July 1905. The minutes of this meeting are in fact ambiguous. It is not clear whether it was the company’s owners or the WYCOA which was not informed. Ibid. Factory Times, 20 October 1905. ILP Report of the Thirteenth Annual Conference, Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 24 and 25 April 1905, with directory of branches. In 1905 there were ILP branches listed at Attercliff, Barnsley, Batley, Carlton, Castleford, Cleckheaton, East Ardsley, Featherstone, Mexborough, Normanton, Parkgate, Royston, Treeton, Wath and Wombwell. Bellamy and Saville, op. cit. Yorkshire Post, 28 August 1905. Yorkshire Post, 18 September 1905. Ibid.: 22 September 1905; see also A.Lewis, op. cit. Factory Times, 1 June 1906. Leeds Mercury, 9 October 1905; Factory Times, 13 October 1905. Factory Times, ibid. Ibid. Labour Leader, 13 October 1905, quoted in Howell, op. cit. Bellamy J. and Saville J., Dictionary of Labour Biography. The occasion was in 1912. He was a branch nominee from Hemsworth. ILP, Report of Annual Conference, 16 and 17 April 1906, Borough Hall, Stockton; Report of Annual Conference, 1907. ‘Sweeper Up’, Factory Times, 27 October 1905, writing on the demonstration on 21 October 1905.

488 NOTES

119 YMA, December 1904, first vote on the General Federation of Trades and on Carlton Main’s resolution relating to the LRC; 14 June 1905, re-vote on affiliation with a General Federation of Trades. Ibid. 120 Howell, op. cit.: 23. 121 ILP, Annual Conferences for these years. 122 YMA, Yearly Council, 27 December 1905. 123 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 16 January 1906. A copy appeared in the minutes of YMA, Ordinary Council 29 January 1906. 124 Both letters as well as the 11-page comment on the ILP and Potts are included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 29 January 1906. It was specified by this council meeting that Potts’s conduct in issuing a ‘manifesto in Hallamshire Division’ should be submitted to the county and delegates should come to the next council prepared to deal with it. The shorter, 4½-page denunciation, was included in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 February 1906. 125 YMA, Ordinary Council, 29 January 1906. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 128 Official membership figures are 60, 504 for 1903, 56, 690 for 1904 and 55, 211 for 1905. However, after this, membership recovered and the total for 1906 was 62, 182, higher than at any point previously (Report on Trades Unions in 1908–1910, Cd 6190, PP 1912). 129 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 February 1906. 130 Ibid. 131 YMA, detailed minutes, Ordinary Council, 9 October 1906; Ordinary Council, 26 February 1906. 132 Document included in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 February 1906. 133 Scott, Eley, Parkin and Hargreaves represented the owners and H.Smith, Hoskin, Hirst and Jacks represented the YMA (Factory Times, 10 November 1905). 134 Factory Times, 25 May 1906. 135 This figure was reported during a demonstration at Featherstone in support of Hemsworth miners in late May 1906 (Factory Times, 1 June 1906). 136 The figure was 33.3 per cent of all victims in January and 46.5 per cent in December, for weeks ending 13 January and 29 December 1906 (tables in YMA minutes). 137 YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 June 1906. 138 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 July 1906. 139 Inspector’s Report for 1906:6. Shaw was somewhat sceptical of the previous owners’ intentions in 1904, suspecting them of attempting to close down seams in order to institute new price lists. The Factory Times, in noting the ownership change, commented that Major Shaw was said to be popular with his workers at both South Kirkby and Featherstone (Factory Times, 6 July 1906). 140 YMA, detailed minutes, Ordinary Council, 9 October 1906. 141 Letter dated 30 July 1906, in ibid. 142 Letters from Wadsworth to Potts, 24 July 1906 and 31 July 1906, in ibid. 143 Letter from Potts to Steadman, 29 August 1906, in ibid. 144 Letters from Potts to Wadsworth, 4 September 1906 and from Wadsworth to Potts, 5 September 1906, in ibid.

NOTES 489

145 In fact only three of the five members of the committee could be located for purposes of this consultation. YMA officials queried both this point and also whether the General Purposes Committee was the correct body through which to bring an appeal. Potts explained that the congress was nearing an end with no apparent attempt having been made by the Yorkshire delegation to bring their case, though in fact Hall later claimed that on receipt of the letters, he and Wadsworth had approached Steadman with a request, unfortunately not granted, that the cases of both Thrybergh Hall and Hemsworth be brought before congress. No more meetings of the parliamentary committee were scheduled and it was for this reason and in some desperation that Potts and Bull felt it in order, and indeed their last resort, to contact the General Purposes Committee. 146 YMA, Ordinary Council, 10 September 1906. 147 From account of H.Smith in YMA, detailed minutes, Ordinary Council, 9 October 1906. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Factory Times, 21 December 1906. 153 YMA, Ordinary and Yearly Council, 17 December 1906. 154 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 27 October 1906. 155 YMA, Ordinary Council, 8 April 1907; 6 May 1907. 156 YMA, figures for fortnightly periods throughout the year. 157 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 11 November 1907. 158 YMA, Minute Books for 1909, figures for the week ending 2 January 1909. 159 Those still out at Hemsworth were finally declared off funds by 16 July 1910 (YMA, Minute Books for 1910, figures for the week ending 1 January 1910). 160 Yorkshire Evening News, 21 January 1908. 161 Ibid., and YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 January 1908. 162 YMA, Ordinary Council, 13 April 1908. 163 YMA, Ordinary Council, 11 May 1908. 164 YMA, Note ‘To Our Local Officials’ issued 7 August 1908. 165 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 August 1908. 166 YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 August 1908. 167 Sheffield Independent, 7 July 1908. 168 Ibid. 169 Yorkshire Post, 7 July 1908. 170 YMA, Annual Demonstration, 6 July 1908, included in minutes. 171 YMA, Annual Demonstration, 1909, Sheffield. 172 YMA, Yearly Council, 20 December 1909.

13 THE MINIMUM WAGE STRIKE—OPERATION OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ACT 1 YMA, Ordinary Council, 14 January 1907. 2 Report on Strikes and Lockouts, 1907:107.

490 NOTES

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 May 1907. YMA, Ordinary Council, 3 June 1907. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 September 1907. YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 September 1907. Report on Strikes and Lockouts, 1907, op. cit. WYCOA, Special Council, 17 December 1907. T.Ashton, Report to the International Miners’ Federation, August 1907:5. WYCOA, Special Council, 8 September 1908. Report on Strikes and Lockouts, 1908, Cd 4680, PP 1909:131. WYCOA, Special Council, 8 September 1908. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 15 September 1908. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 12 October 1908. Report on Strikes and Lockouts, 1909, Cd 5325, PP 1910. MFGB, minutes for 1910; Williams, The Derbyshire Miners: 396. MFGB, 6 October 1910, quoted in Williams, ibid. Colliery Guardian, 27 January 1911:182; Colliery Guardian, 10 February 1911; Williams, ibid.: 399. Williams, ibid.: 400–402. According to Wadsworth, Yorkshire was the only area unable to report on a meeting with owners at the special conference. Joint meeting with owners, 26 June 1911. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Williams, op. cit.: 403. Joint meeting with owners, 10 July 1911. Ibid. Resolutions reproduced in YMA circular, ‘To Our Local Officials’ and included in Ordinary Council, 2 August 1911. MFGB, Annual Conference, 1911. Joint meeting with owners, 1 November 1911. Joint meeting with owners, 6 November 1911. South and West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Associations’ Amended Proposals Submitted to the Representatives of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association at a General Meeting, Sheffield, 20 November 1911. Ibid. Joint Committee; YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 December 1911. Remarks of Smillie to the International Committee Meeting of the International Miners’ Federation, held 21 and 22 February 1912. YMA, Yearly Council Meeting, 28 December 1911. MFGB, Special Conference, Birmingham, 18 and 19 January 1912. MFGB, Special Conference, London, 1 and 2 February 1912. English Conciliation Board Area, 19 February 1912. Remarks of Smillie to the International Committee Meeting of the International Miners’ Federation, op. cit. WYCOA, Special Councils, 1 February and 15 February 1912.

NOTES 491

43 Remarks of Smillie to the International Committee Meeting of the International Miners’ Federation, op. cit. 44 Colliery Guardian, 1 March 1912:440–1. 45 Ibid. 46 Strike and Lockout Report for 1912. Cd 7089, PP 1913. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Smillie’s report to the International Committee Meeting of the International Miners’ Federation, Brussels, 3 and 4 May 1912; Strike and Lockout Report for 1912, op. cit. 50 MFGB, Special Conference, 25–27 March 1912, London. 51 Ibid. 52 Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act, 1912, in YMA minute books. 53 Ibid. 54 A commentary on this point in the Colliery Guardian, subtitled ‘The Great Betrayal’ made reference to a letter from M.Gorell Barnes to The Times which portrayed negotiations on the Bill as ‘surrounded by trickery and chicanery on the part of the Government or their representatives’. According to M.Gorell Barnes, Sir T.Radcliffe-Ellis, representing the mining association, had extracted a promise from government to substitute for an amendment referring to average daily wage rates one which stated that account should rather be taken of the prevailing wage rate when settling the minimum. In the event, he claimed, the government ‘broke’ its promise and the substitute amendment was not moved (Colliery Guardian, 4 April 1912:688–9). 55 Colliery Guardian, 31 May 1912:1095. 56 Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act, 1912. 57 YMA, Special Council, 5 April 1912. 58 MFGB, Special Conference, 27–29 March 1912, London. 59 Colliery Guardian, 4 April 1912:690–1. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. The total of just over 57,000 in Yorkshire suggests a higher level of abstention than in the original strike vote when over 74,000 papers were returned. A straight comparison between the two is difficult since the first ballot included both union and non-union members (a fact received with some surprise by other members of the Federation when reported there) and the second only financial members. But as total YMA membership in 1912 was 99, 632, there is an indication of a considerable shortfall on the second count (MFGB, Special Council, 6 April 1912). 63 Strike and Lockout Report for 1912, op. cit. 64 MFGB, Special Council, 6 April 1912. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Strike and Lockout Report for 1912, op. cit. 69 YMA, Special Council, 8 April 1912. 70 YMA, Ordinary Council, 30 April 1912. 71 YMA minute books.

492 NOTES

72 Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act, 1912, op. cit.; Joint District Board for the District of West Yorkshire, Hotel Metropole, 15 May 1912, Leeds. 73 WYCOA, Special Council, 16 April 1912. 74 YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 11 June 1912. 75 Ibid. 76 Joint District Board for the District of West Yorkshire, Minutes of Proceedings: 27 and 29. 77 Ibid.: 31. 78 Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act, 1912, Rates and Rules for Mines Situated in the West Yorkshire District in ibid. 79 YMA, ‘Note to Local Officials’, 2 May 1912. 80 Letter from B.Fieldhouse, secretary of Topcliffe Branch, dated 4 December 1912 and included in minutes of Yearly Council Meeting, 21 December 1912. 81 Letter from Oddy, dated 24 October 1912, in minutes of Ordinary Council, 28 October 1912. 82 YMA, Ordinary Council, 28 October 1912. 83 This was true at least in West Yorkshire (WYCOA, Special Council, 24 September 1912). 84 YMA, Ordinary Council, 26 September 1912. 85 MFGB, Special Conference, 9 and 10 October 1912, London. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 YMA, Special Council, 14 October 1912. 89 YMA, notice of voting results, issued 19 October 1912. 90 MFGB, Board of Conciliation, London, 21 October 1912. 91 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee Meeting, 11 November 1912. 92 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 11 May 1912, 13 July 1912, 12 August 1912; Ordinary Council, 1 July 1912, 26 August 1912, 9 December 1912; Yearly Council, 21 December 1912. 93 YMA, Yearly Council, 21 December 1912. 94 Resolution passed 13 January 1913; letter dated 19 February 1913 in YMA Ordinary Council, 24 February 1913. 95 Letter dated 17 March 1913, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 March 1913. 96 YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 March 1913. 97 YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 May 1913. 98 YMA, Circular ‘To Our Local Officials’, 27 May 1913. 99 WYCOA, Special Council, 11 June 1913; YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 19 June 1913. 100 WYCOA, Special Council, 6 March 1912. 101 WYCOA, Special Council, 9 July 1912. 102 Copy of Agreement between the National Federation of Colliery Surface Workers and the SYCOA, concluded on 22 August 1912 and signed on 29 August 1912. 103 WYCOA, Special Council, 21 January 1913. 104 Colliery Guardian, 20 March 1913:604. 105 YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 March 1913. 106 WYCOA, 22 April 1913. 107 Colliery Guardian, 9 May 1913:968; 16 May 1913:1020.

NOTES 493

108 YMA, circular dated 26 May 1913 from the YMA and the Federation of Surfaceworkers. 109 WYCOA, Special Council, 11 June 1913; Colliery Guardian, 13 June 1913. 110 It should be recalled that South Yorkshire owners gave their initial undertaking on the non-union question on 26 May and West Yorkshire owners theirs on 11 June. 111 Colliery Guardian, 13 June 1913. 112 YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 October 1913; Special Council, 27 October 1913. 113 Copy of Agreement in YMA minutes, Report of the joint committee of the National Federation of Colliery Surfaceworkers and the WYCOA, Surfacemen’s Wages and Hours, 28 October 1913. 114 YMA, Special Council, 1 December 1913. 115 Communication from Parker Rhodes, 9 February 1913. 116 Colliery Guardian, 20 March 1914:634. 117 YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 February 1914. 118 YMA, Special Council, 26 February 1914. 119 YMA, Special Council, 13 March 1914. 120 Colliery Guardian, 3 April 1914:748. 121 Ibid. 122 In YMA minutes, Special Council, 11 April 1914. 123 YMA, Special Council, 11 April 1914. 124 Colliery Guardian, 17 April 1914:852. 125 Conciliation Board joint committee, 16 April 1914. 126 Remarks of J.Hewitt, president of the Barnsley and District Coal Owners’ Association, in the Colliery Guardian, 17 April 1914:851, 852. 127 Colliery Guardian, 27 March 1914:682. 128 Colliery Guardian, 3 April 1914:748. 129 YMA minutes, copy of agreement, 14 May 1914; circular ‘To Our Local Officials’, 15 May 1914. 130 Colliery Guardian, 24 April 1914:903. 131 Ibid. 132 WYCOA, Special Council, 30 July 1914. 133 YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 August 1914. 134 YMA, Special Council, 8 August 1914. 135 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 August 1914. 136 YMA, Special Council, 8 August 1914. 137 WYCOA, Special Council, 17 August 1914. 138 WYCOA, Special Council, 9 November 1914. 139 Ibid. 140 WYCOA, Special Council, 22 December 1914. 141 YMA, Yearly Council, 18 December 1914. 142 YMA, Special Council, 27 January 1915. 143 Meeting of YMA Officials, Representatives of the Minimum Wage Board and Representatives of the MFGB, 9 February 1915, Leeds. 144 YMA, Special Council, 11 February 1915.


494 NOTES

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 August 1914. Barnsley Chronicle, 1 October 1982. YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 August 1914. Colliery Guardian, citing Inspector’s Report for 1914, 7 January 1916:19. YMA, Annual Council, 20 December 1915. Report on the Coal Trade After the War, Cd 9093, 1918:6. F.Gibson, A Compilation of Statistics of the Coal Mining Industry of the United Kingdom, 1922, Cardiff: 22; Colliery Guardian, 7 January 1916:19. Ibid. Ibid.; Inspector’s Report for 1916, Mines and Quarries: General Report, with Statistics, part I, Divisional Statistics and Reports, T.H.Mottram, York and North Midland, Cd 8732, PP 1917. Coal Conservation Committee, Final Report, 1918:61. Ibid.: 61, 62; Report on the Coal Trade after the War, 1918. F.Gibson, op. cit. WYCOA, Special Council, 3 September 1914; Special Council, 15 September 1914. WYCOA, Special Council, 18 September 1914. WYCOA, Special Council, 22 December 1914. This was the last mention of the unit in the minutes of the owners’ association, but it stands as a revealing example of the government’s reliance on capital in preparations for war. Inspector’s Report for 1916, op. cit. YMA, Note to Local Officials, Ordinary Council, 27 May 1916. Ibid. Letter from the Home Office to the MFGB, dated 1 February 1917. Ibid.: Inspector’s Report for 1917, Cd 9120, PP 1918. Letter from the Home Office to the MFGB, dated 1 February 1917. YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 September 1915. YMA, Special Council, 11 January 1916. YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 January 1914. YMA, Ordinary Council, 3 July 1916. Inspector’s Report for 1917, op. cit. YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 April 1917. Inspector’s Report for 1917, op. cit. Home Office, Whitehall, 2 August 1917. YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 August 1917. YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 13 August 1917. YMA, Yearly Council, 20 December 1917. YMA, Special Council, 15 January 1918. Inspector’s Report for 1918; Mines and Quarries: General Report, with Statistics, Part I, Divisional Statistics and Reports, Cd 339, PP 1919. YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 March 1918. Ibid.: YMA, Adjourned Council, 25 March 1918; Ordinary Executive Committee, 8 April 1918. YMA, Adjourned Council, 25 March 1918. Inspector’s Report for 1918, op. cit. Coal Conservation Committee, op. cit. Ibid.

NOTES 495

41 YMA, Special Council, 11 February 1915. 42 YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, in Ordinary Executive Committee, 15 November 1915. 43 YMA, Yearly Council, 20 December 1915. 44 MFGB Circular, in YMA, 22 March 1915. 45 YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 13 December 1915; Annual Council Meeting for 1915. 46 A Special YMA Council meeting in early June 1916 overturned a previous council recommendation that no more than two days be taken as holidays at Whitsuntide. On a second vote it became clear that the largest number, 1,106, preferred that there be no holiday whatsoever, while 875 were in favour of a single day off (YMA, Ordinary Council, 27 May 1916; Special Council, 5 June 1916). 47 YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 January 1916. 48 YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 29 April 1916. 49 Letter from Redmayne to Ashton, 11 April 1916. 50 YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 29 April 1916; Ordinary Council, 27 May 1916. 51 YMA, Special Council, 5 June 1916. 52 Agreement between the SYCOA and the YMA, dated 12 June 1916. 53 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 19 June 1916. 54 YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 July 1916. 55 Meeting of the South Yorkshire Central Committee, Sheffield, 13 October 1916. 56 Ibid. 57 Meeting, Central Hall, Westminster, London, 25 October 1916. 58 South Yorkshire Central Committee, 15 November 1916. 59 YMA, Yearly Council, 22 December 1916. 60 South Yorkshire Central Committee, Sheffield, 18 January 1917; YMA, Ordinary Council, 29 January 1917; letter from Smith to the SYCOA, dated 30 January 1917; letter from Parker Rhodes and Company, dated 2 February 1917; YMA, Ordinary Council, 21 February 1917. 61 YMA, Ordinary Council, 22 October 1917. 62 West Yorkshire Central Committee, 23 March 1917, Leeds. 63 West Yorkshire joint committee, 14 September 1917, Leeds. 64 W.A.Lee, writing on behalf of the Controller of Coal Mines, Board of Trade, 1 July 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 July 1918. 65 MFGB, Annual Conference, 12 July 1918, Southport in YMA, Ordinary Council, 27 July 1918. 66 MFGB, Joint Pit Committees, Conference between the Executive Committee of the MFGB and the Controller of Coal Mines, held in London, 29 June 1918. 67 MFGB, Manchester, 12 August 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 9 September 1918. 68 YMA, Ordinary Council, 12 July 1915. 69 Agreement between SYCOA and YMA, 18 January 1916; YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 July 1917. 70 YMA, minute book of 1916. 71 YMA, minute book of 1917. 72 There were also some cases of lock-out pay being authorised during 1918 (YMA minute book for 1918). 73 Joint Board Meeting, Sheffield, 22 December 1914.

496 NOTES

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

Ibid. In YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 8 March 1915. Joint Committee Meeting, Leeds, 12 January 1915. Joint Board Meeting, 19 November 1915. H.Smith, South Yorkshire Joint Committee Meeting, 2 November 1915. YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 August 1915; Ordinary Council, 29 September 1915. YMA, Adjourned Council, 1 November 1915. Inspector’s Report for 1915. The York and North Midlands Division included Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire as well as Yorkshire, but the latter accounted for some 60 per cent of the output and workforce. YMA, Special Council, 31 March 1917. YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 July 1917. YMA, Special and Ordinary Council, 24 August 1917. YMA, Special Council, 11 February 1915. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 8 March 1915. MFGB, Conciliation Board, Federated Area, 12 March 1915, signed by T. Ashton, miners’ secretary; YMA, Ordinary Council, 22 March 1915. YMA, Special Council, 26 May 1915. YMA, Note to Local Officials, 6 May 1915. YMA, Note to Local Officials on the General Wages Question, 6 May 1915. Telegram from Asquith to the MFGB, 5 May 1915. Coleridge’s recommendation issued 18 May 1915, included in YMA minutes. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 11 December 1915; Conciliation Board Agreement dated 19 May 1916. To ease calculation of wages, there was some rejigging of various figures, with the War Bonus being re-specified at 14.8 per cent, so that by the middle of 1916 it was calculated that wages had advanced by some 27.5 per cent since the beginning of the war. YMA, Yearly Council, 22 December 1916. YMA, Ordinary Council, 12 September 1916. YMA, Ordinary Council, October 1916. Text of Application, undated, in YMA minute book for 1916. YMA, Note, Ordinary Executive Committee, 26 August 1916. YMA, Ordinary Council, 12 September 1916. YMA, letter from Kiveton Park Branch, dated 28 September 1916; letter from Bullcroft Branch, dated 26 September 1916. YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 October 1916. Letter from North Staveley branch, 4 October 1917. YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 October 1916; Letter to H.Smith from the Tax Office, 21 August 1917. MFGB, 28 February 1917. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 26 May 1917; Ordinary Council, 11 June 1917; Ordinary Council, 9 July 1917. YMA, Adjourned Council, 1 October 1917. Ibid.: letter from Coal Controller dated 3 October 1917; Ordinary Executive Committee, 6 October 1917; Ministry of Munitions of War, 25 October 1917.

NOTES 497

109 Meeting between Coal Controller, the MFGB and the Ministry of Munitions, 17 October 1917; further circular from Coal Controller issued 23 October 1917, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 5 November 1917. 110 Letter from Coal Controller to owners, 3 October 1917, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 6 October 1917. 111 Notice from Board of Trade, dated 1 July 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 July 1918. 112 Resolutions passed at Federation Conference, 7 and 8 November 1918, in YMA, Adjourned Council, 11 November 1918. 113 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 25 June 1917. 114 Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Unrest, no. 3 Division, Report of the Commissioners for the Yorkshire and East Midlands Area, Cd 8664, PP 1917. 115 Ibid. 116 The Commissioners noted that ‘some referred to “Russia” and openly declared the one course open for Labour was a general “down tools” revolutionary policy to secure reforms that constitutional action was failing to effect’ (ibid.). 117 Ibid. 118 YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 April 1917. 119 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 25 May 1914. 120 YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 February 1914; Ordinary Executive Committee, 25 May 1914; Ordinary Council, 8 June 1914. 121 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 August 1914. 122 YMA, Ordinary Council, 20 November 1916; Yearly Council, 22 December 1916. 123 YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 July 1914; Ordinary Council, 19 November 1914; Yearly Council, 20 December 1914. 124 YMA, Ordinary Council, 18 November 1918. 125 YMA, ‘To Our Local Officials’, 23 October 1914. 126 YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 17 July 1916; Ordinary Council, 16 October 1916. 127 Ibid.: YMA, Ordinary Council, 31 July 1916. 128 YMA, Yearly Council, 20 December 1917. 129 YMA, Yearly Council, 30 December 1918. 130 YMA, ballot results dated 17 November 1915 in YMA, Ordinary Council, 24 November 1915. 131 YMA, letter from Hoskin to the president, secretary and other colleagues. 132 YMA, ‘To Our Members’, Ordinary Executive Committee, 5 November 1917. 133 YMA, Yearly Council, 20 December 1917. 134 YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 August 1917.

15 TOWARDS AN INDUSTRIAL UNION 1 2 3 4 5

South Yorkshire Joint Committee, 2 November 1915. Ibid. YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 March 1916. South Yorkshire Joint Committee, summer 1916. Ibid.

498 NOTES

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. YMA, Yearly Council, 22 December 1916. South Yorkshire Central Committee on Absentism, 18 January 1917. West Yorkshire Joint Committee, July 1917. YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 26 March 1917. West Yorkshire Joint Committee, Leeds, 4 September 1917. South Yorkshire Joint Committee, 6 November 1917. Letter from Thomas W.Casey to the branch secretary, Aldwarke Main 1, dated 27 July 1916, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 July 1916. Letter from H.Smith to T.Casey, dated 31 July 1916, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 July 1917. Letter from T.Casey to H.Smith, 1 August 1916, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 6 July 1917. YMA, circular from Miners’ Offices, Barnsley, 16 June 1917. YMA, circular to branches, included with minutes of Ordinary Council, 6 July 1917. Suggested prices and accompanying note included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 24 September 1917 and Adjourned Council, 1 October 1917. YMA, Miners’ Offices, Barnsley, 22 October 1917; Ordinary Council, 22 October 1917. Letter from Coal Controller to YMA, dated 19 November 1917. YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 November 1917. Letter from H.Smith to the Coal Controller, included in YMA, Ordinary Council, 19 November 1917. YMA, Miners’ Offices, Barnsley, 30 November 1917, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 December 1917. Letter from the Office of the Coal Controller to the YMA, dated 29 November 1917, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 1 December 1917. Ibid. YMA, Yearly Council Meeting, 20 December 1917. YMA, Circular ‘To Our Local Officials’, dated 3 January 1918. WYCOA, Special Council, 14 January 1918. YMA, Special Council, 15 January 1918. YMA, Ordinary Council, 28 January 1918. Surfaceworkers’ Wages Question, dated February 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 4 February 1918. Ibid. Joint Committee Meeting of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, 30 January 1918. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Agreement respecting the Wages of Colliery Surfacemen who are Members of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, signed by Walter Hargreaves of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and Herbert Smith of the YMA, 12 February 1918, in YMA, Special Council, 19 February 1918.

NOTES 499

40 YMA, Special Council, 19 February 1918. 41 Ibid. 42 In a letter to the Coal Controller, Guy Cathrop, Smith put the case bluntly if more broadly: ‘We are asking for an increase in wages. Eight hours’ working day. Payment for overtime during the week from Monday 6 o’clock, to Saturday 12 o’clock, time and a quarter. From Saturday 12 o’clock, to Monday morning, time and a half. Home Coal to be supplied to the whole of the Surface Workers at the same price as the Miners at the various collieries’ (Letter from H.Smith to G.Cathrop, 23 March 1918, in YMA, Adjourned Council, 25 March 1918). 43 West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, arbitration before his honour Judge Benson, Sheffield, 30 April 1918; awards of Judge Benson re Surfacemen’s Wages Question in South and West Yorkshire, 8 June 1918; both in YMA minute book for 1918. 44 Letter from W.D.Benson to H.Smith, 14 July 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 July 1918. 45 Letter from H.Smith to Judge Benson, 15 July 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 16 July 1918. 46 WYCOA, Special Council, 23 July 1918. 47 YMA, Adjourned Council, 27 July 1918. 48 YMA, Adjourned Council, 5 August 1918. 49 YMA, Special Council, 17 August 1918. 50 YMA, Special Council, 26 August 1918. 51 YMA, Adjourned Council, 11 November 1918. 52 Ibid. 53 WYCOA, Special Council, 20 October 1918. 54 WYCOA, Special Council, 26 November 1918; Surfaceworkers’ Hours, notice of Council meeting to discuss, in YMA, Ordinary Executive Committee, 2 December 1918. 55 YMA, Ordinary Council, 9 December 1918. 56 Ibid.: YMA, Council Meeting, 30 December 1918. 57 YMA, Agreement between the Yorkshire Miners’ Association and the Yorkshire Winding Enginemen’s Association, 21 September 1918, in YMA, Ordinary Council, 23 September 1918. 58 Joint Committee Meeting of the West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association and the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, 30 January 1918.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 515

South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Assurance Society, Report for General Annual Meetings, 1887–9, Sheffield Reference Library. South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, Secretary’s Report, 1890–1923, 1925–6, Sheffield Reference Library. South Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Minute Books, May 1865–July 1866, NUM Yorkshire, Barnsley. Wakefield Record Office, Materials on Featherstone, 1893, including record of inquests, list of owners in West Yorkshire District who did not give notice of a wage reduction, return of persons convicted for being engaged in Colliery Riots in August, September and October 1893, colliery employment figures, claims for compensation under the Riot (Damages) Act, correspondence of police authorities, etc. West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association, Minute Books, 1890–1918, MS148, Special Collection, University of Leeds Library. Wombwell Main, deputation books, from 1912, Sheffield Reference Library. Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Annual Reports for 1882; for 1883; for 1885; for 1895–6, issued 31 July 1896. Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Colliery Explosions and Mining Disasters in Yorkshire since 1672, NUM Yorkshire, Barnsley. Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Minute Books for the Executive Committee and Council of the YMA, 1882–5, 1886–7 incomplete, 1892–1918 (bound volumes from 1886 to 1891 are missing), NUM Yorkshire, Barnsley. The Minute Books also include circulars, results of voting, occasional correspondence from branches, reports of individuals deputed by the district to investigate the situation at various branches, annual reports, reports of annual demonstrations, joint committee minutes and some minutes or other documents of miners’ national conferences, the Miners’ National Union and the Miner’s Federation of Great Britain. Yorkshire Miners’ Association, Rules, 1881, 1902 (alteration), 1906, NUM Yorkshire, Barnsley. Yorkshire Miners’ Political Association, minutes of meetings and circulars, included in YMA minute books.

Legal documents Birks v. Bailes, Checkweigh Case Belonging to Corton Wood Colliery. Appeal case from decision of the Rotherham Magistrates, heard before Mr Justice Denman and Mr Justice Hawkins, 8 May 1883, in YMA minute books. Cadeby Main Colliery Explosion, Adjourned Inquest Denaby, 23 and 24 July, 1912 before Mr Frank Allen, Coroner for the Doncaster County District of the West Riding of Yorkshire and a Jury, with representatives from the YMA and the owners and three inspectors or acting inspectors of mines. Denaby and Cadeby Main Collieries Ltd. v. The Yorkshire Miners’ Association, George Craft and Ten Others. Mirfield Collieries Arbitration, Thomas Marshall, in YMA Minute Book for 1901. Formal Investigation into the Causes and Circumstances attending the Explosion which Occurred at Cadeby Main Colliery, near Doncaster, on 9 July, 1912, before R.A.S.Redmayne, HM Chief Inspector of Mines, Home Office, and H.K.Beale, sitting as Legal Assessor, with representatives from the YMA and the owners.

516 BIBLIOGRAPHY

YMA v. W.H.Howden. YMA, Denaby and Cadeby Main Case, in the Supreme Court of Judicature, Court of Appeal, Royal Courts of Justice Friday 19 May 1905, before the Master of the Rolls.

INDEX

Abercrombie, P. 277 abnormal places 364, 367, 374, 394 Abraham 288 absenteeism 404, 422 accidents: explosions 190; falling down the shaft 197; haulage 197; roof and wall falls 196; surface workers 198; wartime 411 Ackton Hall 9, 114, 117, 119, 183, 229, 337, 349, 385 Ackton Hall Colliery 111, 122, 197 Adcroft, George 33 Addy, Mr 286, 293 Aldwarke 3, 140 Aldwarke Main 7, 104, 424 Allen, Elias 116 Allen, Vic x Allerton 34 Allerton Bywater 114, 274 Allpress, J.W. 387 Altofts 15, 34, 46, 76, 125, 199, 207, 276, 303, 410, 423 Alverthorpe 43 Amalgamated Association of Miners 69 Amalgamated Society of Engineers 356 Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants 309, 315 Amphlett, Judge 380, 383, 392 Annables, W. 40, 110, 306, 308 Annual Reports on Strikes and Lock-outs 171 Anti-Combination Acts 42

arbitration 131, 184, 218, 220, 329, 337, 368, 409, 429 Archer, Mr 356 Ardsley 33, 108, 395 Argyle 162 Armstrong, John 44 Ashton, Thomas 66, 70, 89, 288, 351, 365, 368, 378, 401, 404 Ashton-under-Lyme 33 Aspinall 138 Asquith, H.H. 412 Atkinson award 337, 341 Attercliffe 259 Attercliffe Common 241 Austria 158 bag dirt 299, 304 Bailey, A.J. 159, 233, 387, 430 Baines, Edward Jr 303 Baines MP, Edward 303 Ball, J.C. 194 Ballance, J. 264 banksmen 226 Barbar Walker & Co 275 Barker, Captain 114, 121 Barnborough 283 Barnsley viii, 4, 16, 19, 23, 32, 63, 102, 113, 124, 222, 226, 319, 351, 370, 395; by-election 241, 245, 348; Huddersfield Road 61 Barnsley British Co-operative Society Ltd 33 Barnsley Chronicle 245 Barnsley Corn, Flour and Provision Company 34

517

518 INDEX

Barnsley and District Trades and Labour Council 243 Barnsley Flour Society 34 Barnsley Furnace 190 Barnsley Labour Club 242 Barnsley Main 391 Barnsley School Board 72 Barnsley seam 191, 195, 274, 280, 303, 304, 328, 331, 333, 342, 390 Barnsley Town Council 40, 72 Barnsley Union 28 Barrett, J. 350 Barrow 7, 140, 197 Barrow Haematite Steel Company 7, 63, 81 Barugh, Mount and Sons 409 Batley 18, 20, 23 Batley Carr Equitable Pioneers’ Industrial Society 33 Beeston 34, 178, 241 Belfast 124 Belgium 153, 155, 158, 160 Bell, Richard 309 Benson, Judge 428 Bentley 275, 289, 291, 293 Benyon & Co 33 Beresford, Charles (Admiral) 395 Berry 312 Betts 344 Bierley company 18 Birdwell 34 Birley 228 Birmingham 76, 79, 88, 161 Black Bed seam 220 Blackburn, Charles H. 387 Blackburn, Joan x blacklegs 17, 45, 321, 332, see also strike-breakers Blake, Superintendent 319 Blantyre 132 bloc voting 262 Blyth, James 242, 245 Board of Guardians 40, 345, 349 Boer War 8, 271, 328 Bolsover Colliery 107 Bolton 349 Bolton-on-Dearn 34 Bond, Harry 241

Bowbroom 109 Bowen Commission of Enquiry 118, 121, 124 Bowers, Locke and Warrington 50 Bowers Row 15, 37, 276 Bowling company 18, 140, 267 Bradford 4, 5, 14, 18, 20, 24, 30, 43, 45, 216, 241, 242, 319 Bradford Trades Council 344 Briggs 50, 76, 204, 232, 336, 339, 347 Briggs, Son and Company 207, 229, 292 Briggs and Sons, Messrs H. 91 Brightside 34, 75 Briscoe, Owen x Bristol 98, 102, 138, 158 Broadhurst, Henry 152 Brodsworth 276, 278, 293 Brodsworth Main Colliery Co Ltd 278 Brooks and Pickup 18 Broom Pit, Hunslet 108 Brown, John 7 Brown, Susannah 338 Bruntcliffe 91, 197 Bucknill, Mr Justice 316 Bull, J. 329, 356, 359 Bull, W.O. 346, 350, 357 Bullcroft 276 Bullock, J. 15 Burns, Isaac 241, 259, 344, 346, 348, 350, 417 Burt, Thomas 93, 155, 157, 161 butty system 283, 292, 332 Cadeby 223, 274, 276, 299, 385; Denaby-Cadeby strike 310, 316 Cadeby Main 7, 145, 195, 252, 284; 1902 strike 305 Calder, River 3 Calder New pit 220 Cambrian Collieries Ltd 368 Cammel Laird 7 Cannel seam 184 Carbrook 34 Carhouse 7 Carlton 17, 21, 34, 289 Carlton Main 137, 169, 216, 263, 276 Carlton Main Colliery Co 285

INDEX 519

Carlton Main Lodge 109 Carr, H. 114 Casey, Phillip 62 Casey, Thomas 424 Castleford 19, 24, 115, 357, 388 Castleford Board of Guardians 351 Castleford Trades Council 40 Catholic Church 280 cavilling 371 Cawthorne 33 Central Coal and Coke Distribution Committee 403 Central Silkstone 409 Chambers, A.M. 76, 98, 113, 305, 310, 313, 316, 323 Chambers and Co 7 Chapeltown 34 Chappell, William 55, 61, 72, 92, 304 Charlesworth, J. & J. 5, 230 checkweighmen 48, 256 Cheshire 96, 125, 239, 267 Chesterfield 125 Children’s Employment Commission 3 children: in disputes 105; working 14, 44, 403 choirs 343 church, role of 31 Church Lane 8, 85 Churchill, Winston 276 Churwell 34 Clanny, Dr Reid 202 Clarion 247 Clarke, Sir Edward 380, 383, 389 Clarke family 5 Clegg, W.J. 84 Cleveland 126, 239 co-operative collieries 53 co-operative movement 32 coal: exports 273, 283, 435; prices 7, 271, see also price lists Coal Exports Committee 403 Coal Mine Regulation Act (1887) 154 coal mines: conditions 12; new pits 9, 274, 280, 331;

number in Yorkshire 433; ownership 4 Coal Mines Act (1911) 206 Coal Mines Regulation Act (1908): interpretation and implementation 165; sixty hours clause 165 coal mining communities 276, 303; model village 277; unplanned 277 coal mining families 12, 22, 25 coal mining industry: 1870s 52; after 1900 271; boom years 94; effect of enlistment 397; late 19th century 7; middle 19th century 3, see also output Coal Mining Organisation Committee 403 coal owners see owners; South Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association; West Yorkshire Coal Owners’ Association Coal Tax 163, 301 coal working methods: advance-face 191; long-wall 180; pillar 180 coal-cutting machines 199, 206, 221, 272, 332 Coates, B.E. 277 Cokemen and Labourers’ Union 387 Coleridge, Lord 413 Colliery Guardian 273, 390, 392 Colliery Institute 280 Combs Colliery 192 Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Unrest 415 Commission on Royalties 9 Committee on Production 426 company liquidation 342 company-owned houses 14, 17, 303, see also coal mining communities Compton, Earl 241 Conciliation Board 164, 225, 256, 302, 374; (1894–1906) 129, 134;

520 INDEX

chair 127, 131, 136; minimum wage 390, 393; reform 360, 364, 384; and surface workers 231; terms of extension 383, 411; wartime 408, 413 conciliation machinery 79 Conisborough 19, 303, 307, 318, 323; Clarkson’s field 320 Conservatives see Tories Controller of Coal Mines 403, 407, 414, 425, 429 conveyors 272 Conyers 188 Cornwall 92 Corton Wood 252, 391 Cowell, Thomas 241 Cowey, Edward vii, viii, 31, 124, 220, 252, 331, 352; death of 145, 324; Denaby-Cadeby strike 314, 316, 322; eight hour day 156, 158, 163; formation of YMA 61, 64, 70, 75, 76; last years 261; MFGB 88, 95, 129, 133, 138; party politics 239, 242, 247, 250 Cozens-Hardy, Lord Justice 325 Crigglestone 228, 423 Crosby, Emma 338 cross-union ballot 388 Crossley, Charles 33 Crossley, Joseph 303 Crossley, Sir Francis 303 Cumberland 84, 95, 98 Cunningham, Owen 249 Curran, Pete 243, 245, 251, 254, 348 Daily Citizen 417 Dalton Main 285 Darfield 34, 36, 197, 395 Darfield Main 110, 211, 249, 253 Darfoulds 76 Dark Lane pit 218 Darley Main 190 Darton 34 Davy, Sir Humphrey 203 Day, Ben 220

Deacon, M. 283 Dearn canal 109 Deepcar 289 Defence of the Realm Act 403 Defnet, Monsieur 157 Denaby 15, 18, 21, 28, 186, 223, 274, 276 Denaby-Cadeby strike 310, 316 Denaby and Cadeby Colliery Company 316 Denaby Main 4, 15, 19, 35, 39, 137, 145, 252, 279; strike 31, 92, 299, 302 Denaby Main Co-operative Society 36, 41 Denaby Main Colliery Company 303 Denaby Main Industrial Co-operative Society 303 deputies 100, 103, 110 Derbyshire 17, 45, 50, 52, 54, 75, 82, 95, 102, 106, 109, 121, 125, 144, 229, 241, 266, 275, 279, 302 Derbyshire Miners’ Association 136 Deveney, Joseph 119, 121 Devonshire Regiment 102 Dewsbury 4, 16, 18, 20, 23, 33, 226, 241 Dewsbury Moor 188, 300 Dewsbury Pioneers’ Industrial Society 36 Diamond cutting machine 207 Diamond seam 209 Dickinson 192 diet 27 Dinnington 280, 283, 357, 359 Dinnington Main 275 disputes: (1882) 73; (1883–4) 77; (1885) 80; community involvement 103; early 1860s 49; Featherstone 111, 121; Frinckley 285; indicators of 175; and market conditions 55; negotiation 235; South Kirkby 250, see also Cadeby; Denaby; Hemsworth; strikes

INDEX 521

Dixon, John 35, 40, 69, 72, 262, 264, 330, 352, 354 Dobson, Charles 120 Dodworth 34 Don, River 3, 109 Don Pedro 76 Don Valley 417 Doncaster viii, 16, 20, 114, 124, 319, 391, 417 Doncaster area 274 Doncaster Mutual and Industrial Cooperative Society 34 Doncaster West Riding Police Court 312, 315 Donesthorpe, Firth and Radley 207 9th Dragoons 102 58th Dublin Fusiliers 121 Duggan, James Arthur 119, 122 Dumfries 162 Dundee 154 Durham 44, 46, 79, 89, 97, 99, 126, 153, 161, 241, 349 Durham Miners’ Association 62, 267 Dyson, L. 264 Eaglestone 29 East Ardsley 175 East Gawber 49 Eastern Counties Railway 4 Ebbw Vale 102 Ecclesall Bierlow 16 Edlington 278 Edmunds Main 35, 191 education 31, 36, 280 Edwards, Enoch 93, 146, 149, 267, 288 eight hour day 157, 403; bill 154, 301; by legislative means 154, 156, 160; early calls for 151; use of strike weapon discussed 153, 163, 166 Elland Road 18 Ellis, J.D. 74, 78 Elsecar 5, 34, 36, 76, 175, 191 Employers and Workmen’s Act 312 employment 397, 431 engineering industry 5

enginemen 225, 230, 232, 234, 338, 423 engines, steam, compressed air and electrical 199 Erewash Valley 102 evictions 31, 299, 303, 314, 318, 329, 342, 349 explosions 190 exports 273, 283, 435 Factory Times 343 Farnley 34, 398 Farnworth 101 Featherstone 21, 24, 356, 361, 378, 423; strike 111, 121 Featherstone Main 147, 349, 413 Featherstone Manor Colliery 112 Federation Labour Scheme 265 Federation Owners 89 Federation of Trades 177, 263, 350 Fence colliery 17 Fenton family 14 Fenwick, Charles 155, 161 Fernday, E. 346 Fife 162 Fincken, C.W. 101 First World War 213, 273, 395; conscription: compulsory 400, 402; industrial 400; of wealth 400, 416; economic hardship 411; miners recruitment 395; surface workers wage awards 425; wage setting 412 Firth machines 207 Fisher, F. 222 Fisher, Mr 36 Fitzwilliam, Earl 5, 52, 76, 81 Fitzwilliam Main 331 Flockton 34 Foley, John 254 Forest of Dean 79, 98 Fosdick, J.R. 331, 334, 336, 338, 343, 347, 358 Fox, Samuel 7 Fox Holes 217 France 153, 158, 408;

522 INDEX

Possibilists 150 Franco-Prussian war 4 free labour policy 302 Frickley 275, 283, 293, 385, 407, 421 friendly societies 42 Frith, John 61, 72, 124, 145, 242, 316, 325 Fryston 177, 178, 186, 204, 217, 228, 274, 355, 360 Garbeutt, J. 346 Garforth, William E. 34, 199, 208 Garforth pits 5 Gascoigne family 5 Gasworkers and General Labourers 387 Gawber 34 General Federation of Trade Unions 260 General Federation of Trades 352 General Labourers’ Union 231, 233 General Miners’ Conference 77, 82, 93 Germany 150, 153, 159, 200, 273, 408 Gibbons, James 248 Gibbs, George 119 Gibbs, James 119, 122 Gibson, F.A. 272, 284 Gichard, W.M. 313, 317 Gill, Mr 114, 421 Gillot and Colpley machine 208 Gladstone, W.E. 238 Glasshoughton 40, 176, 188, 198, 217, 229, 252, 274, 355, 360, 385 Glasshoughton Parish Council 351 Goddard, Alfred 344, 346, 348, 350 Goddard, Henry 348, 350 Goldthorpe 284, 320 Good Hope Colliery 72, 76, 266 Gorden, Inspector 116, 122 government: intervention 375, 407, 416, 419; local 40, 345 Graham, Cunninghame 123, 154, 156 Grange Moor 178 Granny Lane 18 Grantham, Lord Justice 322 Great National Conference 406 Great Northern Railway 4 Greaves, Percy 71, 186, 356 Green, J.J. 344, 346, 348, 350, 387

Green, William 197 grievance procedures 168, 382; see also Joint Boards; joint committees Grimethorpe 224, 285, 289, 411, 421 Grimsby 315 Grundy, T.W. 417 Guest, J. 417 Gustard, Goerge 254 Haigh, G. and J. 188 Haigh Moor seam 207, 209, 328, 331, 333, 347, 360 Halifax 4, 18, 20, 33, 44, 241, 360 Halifax, Lord 276 Hall, Fred 262, 267, 306, 308, 316, 330, 351, 354, 356, 362, 379, 384 Hallamshire 264, 351, 417 Hallroyd Colliery 7 Halstead, William 116 Halton 241 Handsworth 102 Handsworth Woodhouse 75 Hardie, Keir 154, 159, 238, 242, 245, 263, 267, 349, 352, 363 Harehills 18 Hargreaves, Thomas 338, 423 Harper 347 Hartley, Mr 117 Hartley Bank 7 Hartshead 252, 382 Harvey, W.E. 125, 266, 368 Harworth 282 Haslam, J. 267 Hatfield Main 282 haulage workers 233 Haydock 101 Hayswood 54 health 26 Heckmondwike 121 Hemingfield 34, 245 Hemsworth viii, 9, 16, 21, 241, 243, 252, 256, 258, 264, 285, 300, 341, 386, 417; dispute 176, 182, 228, 328, 331, 355, 385 Hemsworth Board of Guardians 345, 349 Hemsworth Collieries Ltd 356

INDEX 523

Hemsworth Miners’ Childrens Relief Fund 343 Hemsworth Parish Council 348 Hemsworth Union 28 Hepworth Iron Company 380 hewers 152, 162 Hewlett 146 Hickleton 249, 283 Hickleton Main 34, 228, 248, 259, 275 High Green 34 High Hazel 208 High Town Liversedge 208 Higham 34 Higson, Mr 331, 340 Hillsborough 102 Hirst, G.H. 312 Hodges 292 Holbeck 33, 241 Holbeck Anti-Corn Association 33 Holderness, Margaret x Hollbrook Colliery 107 Holliday, Mr 112, 119, 122, 183 Holmes, James 309 Holmes, John 51 Holmfirth 417 Holyland Common 34 Homer, Ken x Horsley, J. 257 Hoskin, John 262, 264, 330, 352, 354, 430 Hough, E. 417 Houghton Main 91, 110, 137, 216, 247, 252, 409 Hound Hill Colliery 409 housing, company ownership 14, 17, 303 Housing and Town Planning Act (1909) 276 housing and town planning conference 276 Howden, William Henry 315, 322, 324 Howden Clough 409 Howell, D. 238 Hoyland 395 Hoyland Silkstone Colliery 75, 101, 111, 140, 216, 228 Huddersfield 4, 16, 18, 20, 33 Hull 102 Hunset 108 Hunt, R. 9

Ilkestone 50 income tax 413, 416 Independent Labour Party (ILP) viii, 32, 37, 164, 238, 241, 245, 253, 259, 264, 267, 348, 363, 376, 417 inflation 411, 413 inquests 122 international conferences 150 International Federation of Miners 248 International Miners’ Conference 218 International Miners’ Congress (IMC) 151 International Miners’ Federation 167, 238, 241, 376 International Miners’ Organisation 70, 157 International Working Men’s Congress 153 Ireland 17, 31, 411 iron industry 6 Jacks, Samuel 31, 36, 218, 263, 289, 340, 361 Jacques 112 James of Hereford, Lord 142, 145, 301, 307, 366 John Brown and Company 78, 301 Johnson, T.H. 277 Joint Boards 377, 389; grievance procedure 382; work of 380 joint committees 84, 169, 176, 187, 209, 211, 214, 218, 248, 293, 306, 308, 329, 336, 339, 342, 369, 390, 416, 420 Jolimont 155, 159 Jones 288 Jones, F.J. 211, 369, 373 Jones, J. 262 Jude, Martin 44, 151 Jump 34, 245 Kay and Stewart, Messrs 344 Kaye, George 185 Kaye, James 33 Kerry, Mr 39 Kielty, Kate 338 Kilnhurst 5 Kinross 162 Kinsley 338;

524 INDEX

camp 344, 348, 352 Kippax 67 Kitchener, Lord 404 Kiveton Park 196, 413 labour: aged 381; boys age limit 403; child 14, 44; female 14, 403; male choices 23; migration 15, 279, 303; recruitment 15, 21; scab 287; unskilled 410 Labour Leader 241 labour movement 150 Labour Representation Committee (LRC) 177, 263, 265, 350 lads 152, 166, 170, 179, 332, 335; strikes 225, 228, 302; uniform wage scale 226, 233; wages 302, 394, 425 lamp money 204 Lancashire 17, 75, 79, 82, 85, 95, 101, 125, 134, 137, 144, 229, 238, 241, 265, 267, 302, 311, 353, 379 Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation 378 Langley, Amedia 338 Larkhall 132 Lawrence, Mr Justice 324 Layton, William 248 Leake 161 Leeds 4, 5, 18, 20, 24, 31, 43, 47, 52, 62, 76, 90, 151, 241, 319, 349 Leeds Central 137 Leeds Co-operative 36 Leeds Fireclay Company 411 Leeds Mercury 303 legal framework 102 legislation 62, 69, 201, see also eight hour day Leicester 76 Leicestershire 82, 95, 144 Leigh 101 leisure 37

Lever, Ellis 204 Lewis, G.M. 277 Liberal government 162, 164 Liberal Party 235, 239, 348 Liberals 241, 260, 263, 266 Lidgett 197, 208 Lincoln, William 218 Lincolnshire 17 Lister family 5 Liverpool 357 Liversedge 18 Liversedge, Mr 39 living conditions 29, 53;, see also housing; tents local government 40 Local Government Board 345, 349 lock-out pay 291, 300, 338, 347, 360 lock-outs 48, 170, 176, 311, 328, 335 Lodge MP 123 Lofthouse 34, 385, 423 London 4, 89, 150, 157, 311, 376 Lord Rest Day Association 67 Loscoe 125 Low Laithes 217 Low Moor 28 Low Moor Company 18, 382 Low Moor Iron Company 14 Low Stubbin 5 Lower Altofts 15, 28 Lower Shibden 5 Loxley Valley 409 Lundhill 49, 191 Lunn, Joshua 241 Lunn, William 241, 251, 417 Lush, Montague 316 Lyons v. Wilkins 309 MacDonald, Alexander 51, 69

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