The Struggle for Dignity: Mining Communities and the 1926 Lock-Out

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Industrial Politics Prelims.qxp

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Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout

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Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout The Struggle for Dignity

Edited by John McIlroy, Alan Campbell and Keith Gildart

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS CARDIFF 2004

© The Contributors, 2004

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN ISBN 0–7083–1820–7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without clearance from the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP. Website: www.wales.ac.uk/press

The rights of the Contributors to be identified as authors of their contributions have been asserted by them in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Printed in Great Britain by Cambridge Printing, Cambridge


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Contents List of Maps List of Tables Acknowledgements List of Editors and Contributors List of Abbreviations Introduction: 1926 and All That JOHN MCILROY, ALAN CAMPBELL AND KEITH GILDART I

Protagonists

1 Prologue: What Kind of Crisis? What Kind of Ruling Class?

vii vii ix xi xiii 1

13 15

JOHN Foster 2 Chronology of the 1926 Mining Lockout

44

3 Fighting the Legions of Hell

49

JOHN MCILROY AND ALAN CAMPBELL 4 Class Warriors: The Coalowners

107

QUENTIN OUTRAM II Coalfields

137

5 South Wales

139

JOHN MCILROY 6 North Wales

157

KEITH GILDART 7 Scotland

173

ALAN CAMPBELL 8 Lancashire

STEPHEN CATTERALL

190

vi

Contents

9 Nottinghamshire

208

JOHN MCILROY III Issues

227

10 Women SUE BRULEY

229

11 Police STEPHEN CATTERALL

249

12 Revolutionaries

269

JOHN MCILROY Finale: A View from a New Century JOHN MCILROY

299

Select Bibliography Index

313 321


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Maps Map 1 The British coalfields

2

Map 2 The south Wales coalfield

140

Map 3 The north Wales coalfield

159

Map 4 The Scottish coalfields

176

Map 5 The Lancashire and Cheshire coalfield

191

Map 6 The Nottinghamshire coalfield

211

Tables 2.1

Trade union membership and strikes

51

2.2

MFGB officials, 1926

55

2.3

MFGB Executive members, 1926

58

2.4

MFGB-sponsored Members of Parliament, 1926

64

2.5

The British coalfields, output and employment, 1925–1926

66

2.6

MFGB calculation of impact of owners’ proposals on wages

68

2.7

Trade union funds and dispute benefit, 1926–1927

83

2.8

Government estimates of coal consumption, imports, domestic output and stocks, June–November 1926

88

MFGB reports of numbers returning to work, July–November 1926, as a percentage of numbers employed January 1926

90

2.9

2.10 Mines Inspectorate’s estimates of numbers returning to work, as a percentage of numbers employed, January 1926

91

viii

Maps and Tables

2.11 Industrial consequences of the dispute

97

3.1

The MAGB Central Committee, 1925–1926

112

3.2

The Mond Group

120


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Acknowledgements The editors and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted by the following to reprint extracts from: Gwyn Thomas, The Sky of Our Lives, reproduced by kind permission of the Felix de Wolfe Agency. Idris Davies, ‘I was born in Rhymney’ and Gwalia Deserta, poem 11, reproduced by kind permission of Gwyn and Ceinfryn Morris.



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Editors and Contributors Sue Bruley is Senior Lecturer in Historical Studies at the University of Portsmouth. She is the author of Women in Britain since 1900 and Leninism, Stalinism and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1920–1939. Alan Campbell is Senior Lecturer in the School of History, University of Liverpool. His books include The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of their Trade Unions, 1775–1874 and the two-volume The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939. He co-edited Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910–47 and Party People, Communist Lives: Explorations in Biography. He is a former editor of Labour History Review and a long-standing member of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Study of Labour History. Stephen Catterall recently completed a Ph.D. on the history of the Lancashire miners at the University of York. He now works as a student support worker at Huddersfield University. John Foster is Professor in the Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Paisley. His publications include Class Struggle in the Industrial Revolution and he is the co-author of The Politics of the UCS Work-In and Making Tracks: The Story of the Caterpillar Occupation. Keith Gildart is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Wolverhampton. A former miner, he is the author of North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945–1996 and has recently been a Research Fellow at the University of York. He co-edits The Dictionary of Labour Biography. John McIlroy is Reader in Sociology, University of Manchester. The author of numerous articles on industrial relations and labour

xii

Editors and Contributors

history, his books include Trade Unions in Britain Today and The Permanent Revolution: Conservative Law and the Trade Unions. He was an editor of British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1945–79 and Party People, Communist Lives: Explorations in Biography. He is a member of the editorial boards of Labour History Review, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, Historical Materialism and Revolutionary History. Quentin Outram is Senior Lecturer in the Leeds University Business School. He has written widely on aspects of labour and business history and is the co-author of Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889–1966.


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Abbreviations AEU AGM ASLEF BWL CA CTA CC CLC CMA COA Comintern CP EPA FBI FKCMA FRO GDP GMPMA HSBC ILP IMF ITF LCCOA LCMF LMU LRD MAGB MELMA MFGB

Amalgamated Engineering Union Annual General Meeting Amalgamated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen British Workers’ League Coal Association Coal Trade Association Central Committee Central Labour College Coal Masters’ Association Coal Owners’ Association or Colliery Owners’ Association Communist International Communist Party Emergency Powers Act Federation of British Industries Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan Mineworkers’ Association Flintshire Record Office Gross Domestic Product Greater Manchester Police Museum Archives Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation Independent Labour Party International Miners’ Federation International Transport Workers’ Federation Lancashire and Cheshire Coal Owners’ Association Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation Lanarkshire Mineworkers’ Union Labour Research Department Mining Association of Great Britain Mid- and East Lothian Miners’ Association Miners’ Federation of Great Britain

xiv

MM MMM MRU MS NA NAFTA NAS NCEO NCLC NLS NMA NMIU NUM NUR NUSMW NUWM NWCOA NWMA PB POAIU PRPG RGASPI RILU SLC SNTUA SW SWMF TGWU WCML WW YCL

Abbreviations

Minority Movement Miners’ Minority Movement Mineworkers’ Reform Union Morning Star National Archives, London National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association National Archives Scotland National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations National Council of Labour Colleges National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association Nottinghamshire and District Miners’ Industrial Union National Union of Mineworkers National Union of Railwaymen National Union of Scottish Mineworkers National Unemployed Workers’ Movement North Wales Coal Owners’ Association North Wales Miners’ Association Political Bureau Point of Ayr Industrial Union Police Review and Parade Gossip Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, Moscow Red International of Trade Unions Scottish Labour College Scottish National Trade Union Association Sunday Worker South Wales Miners’ Federation Transport and General Workers’ Union Working Class Movement Library, Salford Workers’ Weekly Young Communist League

Industrial Politics text 3rd proofs corrected file.qxp

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Introduction: 1926 and All That

JOHN MCILROY, ALAN CAMPBELL and KEITH GILDART

Its protagonists considered the miners’ lockout of 1926 as ‘probably the greatest industrial conflict known to history’.1 Relatively dispassionate contemporary chroniclers estimated that it ‘was by far the most disastrous industrial dispute which England [sic] ever experienced’.2 If these judgements are arguable, few would question the importance or grandeur of a seven-month struggle which, involving more than a million miners and their families and provoking the general strike, involved a significant section of the British working class. In the 1920s, as for most of the last century, coal was indispensable to British capitalism. Lloyd George was not exaggerating when he pronounced: ‘King Coal is the paramount lord of industry . . . We cannot do without it.’3 King Coal’s miners were pivotal to the twentieth-century labour movement and central to the psyche of its activists and supporters as well as their antagonists.4 In this context the impact of the lockout on the future of the industry, on mining trade unionism, miners’ politics and the fortunes of the broader labour movement was immense and enduring. Arthur Horner, the Welsh Communist who played a prominent rank-and-file role in 1926 and subsequently became general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1946, always emphasized the long-term consequences of the lockout: ‘If there had been no ’26 there would not have been such a tremendous feeling for nationalisation after the Second World War.’5 William Lawther, first president of the NUM in 1945, who spent the first two months of the dispute in prison and whose family was blacklisted after it, reflected: ‘The miners can’t forget the past. 1926

Page 1

Map 1 The British coalfields


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has always been in my mind – I used to judge everybody by what part they’d played.’6 Nonetheless, the lockout has been overshadowed by the general strike, which has stimulated a vast literature, rich in detail and analysis. In contrast, the miners’ struggle has attracted limited attention among historians; treatment of the lockout has typically been cursory, truncated and tangential to other concerns. More than fifty years ago, John Murray noted that this ‘magnificent epic’ deserved a volume to itself.7 However, there has been only one subsequent full-length study. Published in the 1970s, it takes a popular, journalistic approach, and while its testimony from survivors is immensely valuable, only the last half of the book concentrates on the stoppage itself.8 The literature falls into a number of categories. First, there are short accounts of the lockout in histories of the mining industry.9 Second, it is touched on in general surveys of the labour movement, trade unionism, industrial relations and politics.10 Third, it features in histories of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) and its constituent unions.11 Fourth, it is discussed as a coda in accounts of the general strike.12 Fifth, it is examined in biographies of politicians and union leaders.13 Sixth, there is a small literature addressing or touching on significant aspects of the dispute such as the operation of the Poor Law and policing.14 Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the lockout have been assessed in published and unpublished work which seeks to link its trajectory in different localities to factors such as social geography, political culture and the labour process.15 The majority of this literature is sparse, fragmentary and restricted in scope. The first more than cursory survey by J. R. Raynes, published in 1928, championed the coalowners. Largely forgotten, it contained valuable insights into the mentality as well as the policy of the employers. Perhaps the best-known and respected account of the lockout is the chapter in Robin Page Arnot’s The Miners: Years of Struggle. Illuminated by the author’s role as adviser to the MFGB, it was published in 1953 and its sources are restricted. Moreover, its focus is very much on the national terrain, national organization and national negotiations. Francis and Smith’s vibrant social history of the dispute in south Wales stands in strong contrast to Page’s institutional account. Like the latter it has stood the test of time while stimulating further research, amendments and new emphases. From the perspective of

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Introduction

industrial relations, Hugh Clegg’s valiant essay on the subject should not be overlooked; forming part of a synthetic survey of trade unionism in the 1920s, it inevitably remains sketchy. Perhaps the most fertile work of the last two decades is that of two historically minded social geographers, Peter Sunley and David Gilbert. If few today would take literally the heroic formula that the ‘miners were driven back to work by sheer starvation’, the value of their approach stems from a refusal to accept overgeneralized explanations of the miners’ failure in terms of broader economic and political coercion.16 Instead, these writers address distinctive factors in different areas – their focus is on the polar cases of Nottinghamshire and south Wales – which they judge made for divergent outcomes. Both assess differences in politics and in industrial relations. Sunley places greater stress on the work order in the mines and employers’ strategies. Gilbert emphasizes political and community culture and the powerful, rooted forms it took in south Wales, which provided resources for hope and endurance compared with Nottinghamshire, where these elements were relatively weak. Microcosmically rich, the central core of Gilbert’s study is restricted to ‘local society’, and specifically to one village in south Wales and one town in Nottinghamshire, both heterogeneous coalfields. While both Gilbert and Sunley conduct comparisons at the coalfield level, many of the factors operating in the east Midlands were also present in parts of Lancashire and south Yorkshire; yet these areas, with very different trade-union traditions, go unconsidered in their work. Sunley’s study of the butty system establishes effective connections between the work process and activism. But sometimes the relationships between factors such as urbanization and domestic economy on the one hand and patterns of militancy and moderation on the other are asserted rather than demonstrated. In relation to the lockout, these studies are in danger of downplaying immediate material factors and national cohesion through their emphasis on the evolution of local social structures and trends in the labour process. The smaller financial stake which the Midlands miners, who had not been locked out, had in the stoppage compared with their counterparts in south Wales, is a significant explanatory factor, both in terms of initial mobilization – it suggests the extent of national solidarity and its reality in Nottinghamshire – and in terms of demobil-


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ization – having been on strike for four months miners increasingly judged there were limits to privileging solidarity over self-interest. Nevertheless, this sophisticated research marks a significant move forward in mining historiography and one which requires further development.17 Our own interest in the lockout was intensified by the 1984–5 strike and the fascinating parallels between the two. Almost twenty years after ‘the great strike’ we mulled over the possibilities of taking a fresh look at the convulsion which marked the end of the post-war settlement in Britain, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism and the beginning of the demise of British mining. On reflection, it seemed too soon. The new sources necessary to reframe and revise a sometimes valuable but too often ‘instant’ literature have not yet become available from the government. There are difficulties with archival material from the NUM. For many who were engaged in and with the dispute the dust is only now beginning to settle over events which continue to inspire strong feelings. More time is needed to provide both the distance and the documentation which will stimulate new insights and new understanding. Instead we resolved to return to 1926 and the lockout, now approaching its eightieth anniversary. Historians delight in parallels, and analogies between 1926 and 1984 are numerous. Both these epic encounters – the 1984 strike outlasted the lockout by five months – occurred as a period of union militancy in which the miners were pivotal gave way to union retreat and industrial and political recomposition in the labour movement. Both saw widespread use of state coercion while the miners’ united front fractured in Nottinghamshire. In 1926 and 1984 mobilization of local communities was indispensable to maintenance of the stoppage, and women emerged as an inspiring force. Both struggles were unwelcome to the leaders of the TUC and Labour Party and there was negligible solidarity action from other trade unionists, while in each dispute hostile criticism was directed at charismatic Marxist leaders. The resemblances remain striking and relevant in terms of the insights into industrial struggles in capitalism which both provide, as well as the consequences of defeat and the ways in which they were handled. The similarities are uncanny. But scrutinized historically, there are, as the contributions to this book suggest, important differences between 1926 and 1984, in regard to contexts, actors, the demands of employers and miners, the strategies and methods

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Introduction

utilized to achieve them, the role of the state, unity and fragmentation, causes and consequences. Nonetheless, the two events were connected by the causal chain linking miners’ struggles across the twentieth century, by lives and experience, by what miners learned in 1926, by collective memory. For much of the next forty years these lessons seemed fixed. But the time between 1926 and 1984 wrought changes in coal capitalism and coalminers. The cautious trade unionism which developed after the lockout was superseded; the lessons many had learned from 1926 yielded to new generations and different understandings of past and present. The triumphalism of the successful strikes in 1972 and 1974 influenced 1984 more than 1926. If 1972 was viewed as compensation for 1926, in 1984 the Conservatives exacted retribution for 1972 in full measure. While the contributors to this volume briefly reflect on 1984 as well as 1926, given the complexities and the importance of the time between the two events, this is not a comparative study. The purpose of this collection is to bring together in one volume, assess and synthesize the insights of existing literature on the lockout as well as deploying material from the archives. It is far from comprehensive: for example, restrictions of space have precluded further regional studies as well as more detailed consideration of issues such as the administration of the Poor Law. In this context we hope it will encourage further research. Our view is that while the MFGB’s prospects for success were largely closed, to a limited degree they remained open. The odds were very heavily weighted against the miners after the defeat of the general strike, but the outcomes of continuing struggle were not predetermined. Although their optimal demands were unattainable, many miners believed they could improve upon the coalowners’ final offer. In the calculus of struggle it is sometimes rational to fight in the likelihood of losing, and the MFGB acted on this belief. Our approach here is traditional in the sense that we are concerned, among other things, with what the past of labour can tell us, tentatively, conditionally, critically, about its present and future. With its pioneers we believe that labour history can be an inspiration for contemporary activists so long as, in understanding and reconstructing the past, critical rigour and proper historical method control any tendencies to reductionism, essentialism, ahistoricality or hagiography. The lockout was ‘a magnificent epic’; Cook, Smith and many, many more miners were, whatever their flaws (and there were


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many), working-class heroes. These judgements are still, indeed they are best, sustained if the variations, divisions and internal conflicts between miners, the strengths and weaknesses of regional and local identities as well as the strengths and weaknesses of leaders and activists, are understood. But if distinctions between sections of collieries, collieries and districts, and differences of culture, generation, trade unionism and politics between activists and members, all of which made unity problematic, require attention, so too does the countervailing process of constructing a national identity in which such particularities became something more. If the debilities of diversity are significant, so is the extent to which fragmentation and sectionalism were overcome and differences of interest and outlook reconciled in united action. Class formation, exhausting, endless, has had its triumphs as well as its failures. Success has always depended on the constant, creative efforts of cadres, clusters of committed activists in the colleges of class-building. It was these often-forgotten miners who constructed from the pits upwards fragile, perennially challenged but perennially renewed conceptions of collectivity, district and national cohesion. They developed and redeveloped the sense of what it meant to be a member of the lodge, the district, the association and the national federation, the confraternity of miners and beyond that the working class. Hence we have tried to write about people and as far as possible our approach has been biographical. If the miners’ defeat in 1921 marked the arrest of the aggressive trade unionism and radical political mood of the early years of the twentieth century, intensified by the war and the Russian revolution of 1917, 1926 incarnated and symbolized its decisive reversal, although labour was far from irrevocably weakened. In discussing the roots of the crisis of 1926, John Foster emphasizes the role of elite actors in shaping what he sees as a mistaken strategic response to recreating Britain’s domination of the world market. There were choices. Pursuing a strategy based on return to the gold standard which relied on market forces to undermine organized labour and cut wages, the governing politicians recoiled in the face of resistance. The general strike and the lockout demonstrated the resilient power of working-class action and its potential for economic, political and social destabilization. Ruling-class strategists rather than coal capitalists were responsible for 1926; supple politicians disengaged, leaving the coalowners to take the blame. In Foster’s

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view an important difference between 1926 and 1984 lay in the fact that the lockout and its consequences had not been part of Baldwin’s strategy while Thatcher’s confrontation was planned with the purpose of using the state to restore market processes. John McIlroy and Alan Campbell provide an analytical narrative of the lockout, emphasizing the role of individuals in sustaining the struggle at every level. They discuss the strategy and tactics flowing from the different goals of the collective actors, their interplay and the impact of events on the antagonists. In the context of the miners’ weaknesses in April 1926 and the subsequent dissolution of the remarkable solidarity demonstrated in the mismanaged general strike, deterministic readings of the lockout as fated to defeat possess resonance. Acknowledging the imbalance of power, this account also acknowledges the limited possibility of denouements other than triumph or disaster. It stresses the miners’ resilience and appetite for resistance and brings out the degree to which unity, solidarity and loyalty to the Federation were maintained as well as the depth of the defeat. The existing literature concentrates on the miners: the coalowners are often dismissed as an undifferentiated reactionary mass. In contrast Quentin Outram contributes an essay in collective biography which substitutes real people for the phantoms which haunt much of the historiography. His comparison of the Mining Association leadership, their motivations, goals and strategies and their determination to reverse ‘nationalization’ and politicization of the industry, with the approach of progressive capitalists and aristocrats around Sir Alfred Mond, facilitates evaluation of competing employer choices. Outram concludes that the ruthless, competitive fraction of capitalists succeeded because on the terrain of 1926 single-minded emphasis on reducing labour costs proved compelling. Discussion of national developments is extended by snapshots of the lockout in the coalfields. They affirm that there was no simple, black and white polarity between weak and strong areas but quite widespread diversity between and within almost every area, with varying elements of fragmentation, sometimes overcome, sometimes sustained. On 20 May 1926 The Times headed an article ‘Obdurate south Wales’. John McIlroy’s survey of the largest coalfield demonstrates the broad truth of this verdict but also the difficulties and divisions within the area; by November the struggle had run its course, even in its strongholds. It was very different in


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the small north Wales coalfield, as Keith Gildart documents. Here activists struggled to unify a workforce scattered across two counties and fragmented by the economic position of different collieries. In contrast with Durham and Yorkshire, which remained relatively solid until the end of the dispute, Scotland’s four coalfields demonstrated significant internal conflict. Alan Campbell’s chapter records regional divisions of religion, generation, militancy and politics. As he notes, these differences provoked clashes between union leaders and militant activists but this should not obscure their common concern to construct solidarity or their successes in doing so. Lancashire was a coalfield in decline. Stephen Catterall analyses the tensions between a leadership committed to MFGB policy and sections of the rank and file anxious to retain jobs. As fissures opened between owners and within the union, there was an accelerating return to work, with employers defying their district association to offer favourable terms. The Durham leaders noted in late November, ‘. . . the men in our County with small exceptions stood as solid as ever . . . but even there the discerning men could see cracks . . . Is this not what we might expect after 30 weeks of heroic struggle?’18 Nottinghamshire, discussed here by McIlroy, was, unlike Durham, not fighting in the last ditch. Yet, in contrast to 1984, most of its miners struck work for more than four months. Moreover, as in south Wales, a significant bequest of defeat, ‘nonpolitical’ trade unionism, was subsequently vanquished. Three thematic chapters cover important aspects of the lockout. Sue Bruley considers the position of women through a case study of south Wales, pointing to the critical part many played in managing impoverished household economies and collectively organizing community kitchens but concluding that in so far as existing gender relations were disrupted during the lockout, this was ephemeral. The parallel with 1984, in which many women activists likewise fought to defend their communities, and in which transformations of the sexual division of labour were exaggerated, is a close one. The lockout was the first major mining dispute in which troops were not used. Moreover, paramilitary policing in 1926 was less sophisticated than in 1984. Nonetheless, as Catterall’s chapter demonstrates, there was a move to ‘strong state’ methods, new forms of police organization and new tactics. In 1926, as in 1984, the coercive powers of the state were used against the miners. Finally, McIlroy assesses the role of the Communist Party in 1926,

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examining both party policy and its provenance as well as providing portraits of a variety of activists. The volume concludes with a brief glance forward. The closing essay discusses the sequels to the drama of 1926 and connects the lockout with subsequent mining history, particularly three key moments in it: nationalization in 1947; the militancy of the early 1970s; and the nemesis of 1984.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

13

Bill Straker, Northumberland miners’ leader, quoted in B. Williamson, Class, Culture and Community: A Biographical Study of Social Change in Mining (London, 1982), p. 177. The Annual Register 1926 (London, 1927), p. 130. Quoted in J. R. Raynes, Coal and its Conflicts (London, 1928), p. 146. R. Harrison, ‘Introduction’, in R. Harrison (ed.), Independent Collier: The Coal Miner as Archetypal Proletarian Reconsidered (Hassocks, 1978), p. 1. A. Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London, 1960), p. 90. Quoted in M. Morris (ed.), The General Strike (Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 283. J. Murray, The General Strike of 1926 (London, 1951), p. 170. G. Noel, The Great Lock-out of 1926 (London, 1976). For example, Raynes, Coal and its Conflicts, pp. 247–82; M. W. Kirby, The British Coalmining Industry, 1870–1946 (London, 1977), pp. 92–107; B. Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 4: 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford, 1987), pp. 236–53. See also the valuable memoirs of the chair of the Mining Association of Great Britain, W. A. Lee, Thirty Years in Coal (London, 1954). For example, C. L. Mowat, Britain between the Wars, 1918–1940 (London, 1955), pp. 331–5; H. Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (fifth edn, Harmondsworth, 1992), p. 167; H. A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, vol. 2: 1911–1933 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 412–19; C. Wrigley, ‘The trade unions between the wars’, in C. Wrigley (ed.), A History of British Industrial Relations, vol. 2: 1914–1939 (Brighton, 1987), pp. 98–9; W. Hamish Fraser, A History of British Trade Unionism, 1770–1998 (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 168–9. For example, R. Page Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle (London, 1953), pp. 451–507; A. R. Griffin, The Miners of Nottinghamshire, 1914–1944 (London, 1962), pp. 162–202; H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners’ Federation in the Twentieth Century (London, 1980), pp. 52–73; W. R. Garside, The Durham Miners, 1919–1960 (London, 1971), pp. 162–226. For example, W. H. Crook, The General Strike (Chapel Hill, NC, 1931), pp. 465–7; Murray, General Strike, pp. 171–83; G. A. Phillips, The General Strike: The Politics of Industrial Conflict (London, 1976), pp. 250–9; P. Renshaw, The General Strike (London, 1975), pp. 229–39; K. Laybourn, The General Strike of 1926 (Manchester, 1993), pp. 95–7. For example, P. Davies, A. J. Cook (Manchester, 1987), pp. 102–33; K. Middlemas and J. Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London, 1969), pp. 418–43; M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5: 1922–1939 (London, 1976), pp. 175–221.


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15

16

17

18

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For example P. Ryan, ‘The Poor Law in 1926’, in Morris, General Strike, pp. 358–78; J. Morgan, Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales, 1900–1939 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 205–19; K. Ewing and C. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties (Oxford, 2000), pp. 184–213. P. Sunley, ‘Broken places: a geography of the 1926 coalmining dispute’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989); D. Gilbert, Class, Community and Collective Action: Social Change in Two British Coalfields, 1850–1926 (Oxford, 1992); D. Gilbert, ‘The landscape of Spencerism’, in A. Campbell, N. Fishman and D. Howell (eds), Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910–1947 (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 175–97. This is not to deny the relevance of economic deprivation but to acknowledge the need for evidenced, differentiated analysis of its impact and consequences. For example, some families able to rely on savings, credit or rent moratoriums were less deprived than others who could not, and some individuals, families and communities suffered more than others. Some considered future costs, including work prospects, victimization and the debt burden, more than others. Further, the impact of deprivation on industrial action requires its relation to a range of other factors, from the ideology and politics of the individual and community to estimations of the importance and viability of the struggle and its prospects of success at different points. For a stimulating discussion of the impact of the lockout on the health of mining families, see S. Thompson, ‘ “That beautiful summer of severe austerity”: health, diet and the working-class domestic economy in south Wales in 1926’, Welsh History Review, 21, 3 (2003), 534–71. See J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘Fighting the legions of hell’, ch. 2, and J. McIlroy, ‘Nottinghamshire’, ch. 8 in this volume. Quoted in Garside, Durham Miners, p. 220.

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I PROTAGONISTS

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1 Prologue: What Kind of Crisis? What Kind of Ruling Class?

JOHN FOSTER

Lord Birkenhead famously remarked that he had believed that the men who led the mineworkers were the stupidest in Britain – till he met the men who owned the mines.1 He made this comment after the general strike at a time of considerable apprehension within Britain’s political elite. Publicly, the general strike had ended in victory for the government. Privately, Cabinet members were acutely worried. The lockout and strike had been designed to teach the trade union leadership a lesson. While it had certainly done this, Britain’s rulers now realized just how close they had come to triggering a possibly irreversible process of political radicalization. Hawkish demands on miners’ wages and hours were quickly moderated. Plans for the reduction in wages of other workers were shelved – with highly detrimental consequences for the government’s wider economic strategy.2 So questions were being asked. How had this happened? Stanley Baldwin had come to power in December 1924 pledged to social peace and partnership with organized labour. Yet within eighteen months the government had taken on the miners and manoeuvred an unwilling TUC into Britain’s first general strike for a century. The economic benefits had been nil. The damage to social cohesion was uncertain but probably serious. Birkenhead and Winston Churchill had pushed hardest for a showdown. Now they had to find excuses. The unloved owners of Britain’s coal industry were plausible scapegoats. This chapter attempts to uncover the real explanations. It focuses on the strange political economy of post-1918 imperial Britain and is particularly concerned with three elements. First, Britain’s position internationally: the successive strategies by which

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governments sought to redevelop Britain’s pre-1914 economic dominance. Second, the political economy of social control: how governments endeavoured to resecure this dominance and reduce wages in face of the new phenomenon of electoral democracy. Third, how economic power was converted into political power and different groups of capitalists sought to create alliances and influence government. These issues will be analysed historically – as contradictions unfolded. We will look in turn at the strategic assessments developed towards the end of the war, at the radical reappraisal that led to the break-up of the Lloyd George coalition and, finally, at the period immediately preceding the mining lockout. We will then seek to answer the questions: What kind of crisis? What kind of ruling class? The argument will be that Britain’s post-war economic crisis was essentially of a new kind and was closely linked to the imperialist character of Britain’s ruling class. First, however, we will look at the magnitude of the damage done by the economic decisions taken by the British government in the years before the lockout.

A SELF-INFLICTED CRISIS Britain ended the war with serious economic problems. It owed £1.4 billion to the United States, equivalent to 60 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1919. Gold and foreign currency reserves had been severely depleted. Additionally, the pound had effectively gone off the gold standard and was by the end of 1918 worth less than half its 1914 value.3 However, it would be a mistake to overstate Britain’s difficulties. All other European countries were international debtors. All owed money to Britain and most to the US. France and Belgium had war-damaged industries. Across the world currencies had lost value. Inflation was far worse in central Europe, comparable in Italy, France and Japan and only slightly less marked in the United States. Britain retained 95 per cent of its overseas investments and enjoyed the economic advantages of the world’s biggest empire – amplified now by German Africa and the potentially lucrative oil-bearing territories of Mesopotamia. Its own industries were intact. The war had seen considerable reorganization and concentration of profits in the hands of some of the most strategic British companies, such as Nobel Industries, AngloPersian Oil and big commercial banks such as the Midland.


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Britain might therefore have seemed well positioned to move towards industrial modernization and accelerated economic growth. Yet, of all the leading countries, Britain emerged from the 1920s with a structurally damaged economy. Studies of twentiethcentury economic growth show that every major economy suffered serious setbacks at different points but that the trend of growth was eventually re-established – with two exceptions. One was Germany where the overall trend never fully compensated for the losses of 1914–18. The other was Britain.4 In Britain’s case the damage occurred after the war and was a consequence of economic policy: the imposition of severe monetary deflation which began late in 1919 and continued through the 1920s. That decade saw Britain’s competitors consolidating large, science-based firms that could exploit wartime innovations. In Britain, by and large, this did not happen. Britain’s lack of growth is reflected in figures for overall output and unemployment. GDP in 1929 was 111 (1913=100), far behind that of comparable economies. France’s was 134 per cent and Sweden’s 138 per cent of the 1913 figure. In the United States it was 163 per cent. Even in Germany it was 121 per cent.5 For half the decade Britain’s GDP remained below that in 1913.6 Britain had the lowest productivity increase of any European country: 0.3 per cent annual increase as against 0.8 in Germany, 1.4 in Sweden and 1.9 in France – and 2.4 in the USA.7 Britain’s visible exports in 1928 were 20 per cent below 1913; France’s increased by 48 per cent.8 Unemployment was correspondingly high. For much of the 1920s over 12 per cent of the industrial workforce was jobless, more than double the rate in the United States, where unemployment was around 4 per cent, far above France where it rarely exceeded 3 per cent, and somewhat above Germany.9 And, to repeat, this was not a matter of accident or external forces. It was the consequence of policy. Britain’s rulers were content to sacrifice this unused labour for other presumed benefits. The motivation for what now appear disastrous policies can only be understood in the context of the special character of Britain’s imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century and the nature of the world crisis after the war.

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CONFIDENT MORNING: FINANCE, BANKING AND GOVERNMENT ON THE EVE OF VICTORY If the coalowners were stupid, Sir Charles Addis would appear to be at the other end of the spectrum. He was a banker, financial diplomat, author, linguist and poet. A dedicated family man with thirteen children, he was the son of a Free Church minister and remained devoutly religious throughout his life. Yet he was also dangerous. As much as anyone, it was Addis who set the country on this course of radical de-industrialization.10 Addis was born into a well-connected but not particularly wealthy middle-class family in Edinburgh: many relatives worked in overseas trading companies. As a youngster he was a rebel. He left Edinburgh Academy at sixteen, refused to go to university and preferred the freedom of a trading apprenticeship. He joined the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) in 1880 and spent the next forty-five years in its service – the first twenty in China. The HSBC had been established in the 1860s. It worked in tandem with the British-appointed inspector general who administered customs revenues levied at the Treaty Ports on behalf of the Chinese government. The bank’s role was similar to that of the East India Company a century before. The customs revenues were used as collateral for loans. The HSBC organized these funds – enabling a financially captive Chinese administration to get the cash required for its survival and, as a condition, to build the railways and port facilities to open up the country for British trade. Addis, a tall man with a dominating physical presence, quickly established himself as a key figure. By the early 1900s he was the recognized authority on far eastern currencies. He worked with Keynes in devising means by which India, then China were placed on silver-based gold exchange schemes. In 1900 he advised the US government on introducing a currency system for the Philippines. Addis studied political economy at Edinburgh University and from the early 1900s developed close links with the economists Alfred Marshall, Lowes Dickinson and Keynes at Cambridge. In Dickinson’s symposium, Justice and Liberty, Addis was the model for the ‘man of business’, well informed, compassionate – but above all practical. He believed in free trade and the beneficial power of the market. He saw trade as liberating countries like China from tyranny and poverty. In China his overriding concern was to develop a coordinated approach with other imperial


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powers. He saw jointly negotiated economic development loans, involving Britain, Germany, the USA and France, as the best way of avoiding the break-up of China and ensuring the maintenance of a unified trading area – from which Britain had most to gain. Addis sought to involve the United States in north China to counterbalance the Japanese. He sought to reduce American influence in south China, particularly around the British enclave of Hong Kong. He was party to the massive loans Britain made to Japan prior to its 1898 war with China. These, it was thought, would leave Japan financially dependent on Britain while the external challenge from Japan would force conservative forces in China to give way to the modernizers. As the imperial government disintegrated in the 1900s, Addis advised the Foreign Office how to maintain a balance of power and prevent the USA in particular securing a grip over the Nationalists. Again, the distribution of loans to favoured warlords gave them the means both to exercise power and to defend Britain’s freedom to trade. In 1914 Addis, now head of the HSBC, was co-opted as a Treasury adviser. From 1916 he was chair of the Treasury committee responsible for gold and silver payments and centrally involved in debates on post-war policy. All participants shared two fears. One concerned the post-war strength of Germany. The other was the USA’s potential to supplant Britain as world banker. An influential trend of opinion, associated with Conservative leader Arthur Bonar Law and Lord Milner, floated an economic alliance with France and the development of empire trading with a measure of protection. Addis headed the free-trade camp. From 1916 he argued that post-war international structures must include America. His keynote articles in The Economist stressed Britain’s responsibility to ensure the post-war revival of trade, the need for coordinated action with America to provide the necessary credits and the dangers of provoking American antagonism. Aware of America’s banking ambitions, he sought to use his wartime contacts through the Anglo-US bank Morgan Grenfell and personally with Benjamin Strong, chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, to develop understandings about post-war financial cooperation. In January 1918 Addis became a member of the Cunliffe Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchange after the War. Again he argued for free trade and international cooperation to control currencies and restore gold standard parities at the earliest opportunity.

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Cunliffe was governor of the Bank of England, and his committee included representatives of the Treasury, major merchant banks and clearing houses, and A. C. Pigou, professor of economics at Cambridge. The report was produced in August 1918 and its main recommendations were to cut government borrowing immediately, deflate the economy, reduce price levels and prepare for a return to gold ‘without delay’.11 The committee gave little consideration to the Federation of British Industries’ emphasis on boosting manufactured exports first. Free trade and monetarist views dominated. Addis’s support was vital in endorsing their practicality. He spoke with the authority of someone running a major bank who also had credentials as a currency expert and who chaired the key Treasury currency committee. Most importantly, he was in daily contact with US bankers and could speak with the authority of someone who had for years ensured American compliance with British plans. This faith proved badly wrong. But at the time there was little reason to think otherwise. By late summer 1918 the mood in London was confident and expansionist. The war appeared to be bringing about a radical extension of Britain’s influence. Mosul and the oil areas of north Mesopotamia were in British hands. British forces occupied much of the Balkans. There seemed every reason to believe that British banking influence could be developed in Austria and the Danube basin – displacing Berlin as the banking hub of central Europe. There was some confidence that Soviet control in Russia could be toppled. As the British envoy Bruce Lockhart put it: ‘a successful intervention will give the Allies a predominant economic position in Russia. It will be more than paid for by economic concessions.’12 Add these gains to the White Dominions, to India, China, Africa and effective economic control in Argentina and Chile, and Britain would possess a grip over the world economy. The USA did not have a comparable external market. Nor did it have such a network of international investments. Even in 1918 Britain’s overseas holdings were worth double those of the US and remained so through the inter-war period.13 Yet the USA needed overseas markets to avoid recession. The offer of a joint project for world currency stabilization, on a free-trade basis, would seem to give Britain a powerful post-war bargaining position. Moreover, what was the alternative? The decision-makers of 1918 inevitably saw the world in terms of what had existed before –


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just four years before – in the peacetime economy. At that point Britain’s economic well-being appeared to be inseparably tied to international banking. Even Keynes, later a critic, believed this. In January 1917 he was working in the Treasury with Addis on currency control. His memoranda from this period never questioned a gold exchange for the pound at pre-war parity with the dollar. The link, argued Keynes, was essential for Britain’s ‘unique position financially as being banker of the world’.14 The figures seemed compelling. In 1913 well over a quarter of all Britain’s profit income derived from overseas investments and profits on banking operations.15 Overseas lending was in turn critical for manufactured exports. Purchasing power for British goods in the Americas, Africa and Asia depended on credits issued from London. The railways built with HSBC loans in China bought their rolling stock from Glasgow. Textiles still made up a third of the value of Britain’s exports. Most went to India – and India was able to buy textiles because of its trade with China. The biggest US bank, J. P. Morgan, developed dominance of the New York Stock Exchange partly because it monopolized the supply of credit from London. And investors put their money in London because the pound was on gold and safe against devaluation – which in turn contributed to the profitability of banking operations and the volume of trade centred on Britain. A dislocation of these relationships was not easily contemplated. Getting the pound back on gold would certainly require deflation and a rise in unemployment. But this was not particularly worrying. Many employers welcomed it. Wartime full employment had radically strengthened trade-union power. Post-war profitability was seen to depend on reversing this. That was the opinion of employers in the forefront of the war effort, in engineering, mining, chemicals, steel and shipbuilding, where employment pressures were greatest and who were disproportionately represented in Whitehall. Autumn 1918 therefore saw the emergence of a consensus in favour of Cunliffe’s recommendations. Already in the spring the Treasury had warned the minister for reconstruction not to plan increased spending at the end of the war.16 Formally, the pound remained on the gold standard and pegged to the dollar through the war – even though gold payments and gold exports were disallowed. The key requirement now was to have enough international banking cover to permit resumption of gold movements

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without a run on the pound. This was why the wartime relationship established with American bankers was so important. Addis who, with Montagu Norman at the Bank of England, handled these links, was confident that these understandings were sound. Both sides saw the importance of post-war financial stabilization. By October the Cabinet was giving thought to the shape of a new strategic international body that would cement the new relationship – a League of Nations to which President Wilson was known to be committed.17 Already a microcosm of such cooperation was in progress. In late summer 1918 British and American governments worked closely together to mobilize a vast army of 1.3 million men to restore order in Russia. By November over half of Russia was occupied. Addis himself set up the financial infrastructure for the new counter-revolutionary Russian state and made available HSBC facilities to safeguard Tsarist gold reserves.18 In Britain Lloyd George’s Liberal–Tory coalition appeared untouchable. Britain’s first formally democratic general election was held in December 1918. The left was defeated. Labour gained only 59 seats against 484 for the coalition and 26 for Asquith’s Liberals. The spectre of a socialist-inclined mass movement, which had caused acute concern during the war, appeared to have been laid to rest. There seemed no impediment to a swift return to gold.

1919: THE WORLD ABLAZE Almost immediately, however, the situation changed. Over Christmas 1918 soldiers refused to embark for Russia and demobilization mutinies broke out in the British armies. Within days the government had abandoned plans for a phased, partial demobilization. In doing so they created new problems as tens of thousands of soldiers streamed home searching for work. In Glasgow and Belfast regional general strikes demanded a shorter working week. On Clydeside the objective was explicitly to enable discharged servicemen to be absorbed into the workforce. As ex-soldiers and sailors joined the mass pickets and the loyalty of local troops came into question, panic ensued within the local high command and army units had to be sent up from the south.19 These strikes were centred in shipbuilding and engineering. An even graver challenge existed in mining. In the same month, January 1919, the miners voted six


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to one for a national strike to enforce nationalization of the mines, a 30 per cent wage increase and a six-hour day. Strategically for the government this was all the more worrying because of the alliance that existed between the miners, the rail unions and the transport workers – also pledged to nationalization of their industries. The miners composed one in ten of the male workforce and coal constituted the country’s only significant energy source. Cabinet meetings in January were taken up with the industrial crisis and issues of political rather than economic management. Elsewhere in Europe governments associated with the old order were being overthrown. While such a challenge was not imminent in Britain, it was clear that fairly fundamental political radicalization was in train. Tom Jones, who acted as Lloyd George’s private secretary, urged implementation of the government’s reconstruction programme. Susan Howson’s analysis of Cabinet minutes demonstrates overriding concern with unemployment: ‘Fear of unemployment dominated the Cabinet’s thoughts on economic matters if only because of the labour unrest it would surely bring.’20 The deflation confidently planned in autumn 1918 was no longer considered politically safe. The social imperialists in the Cabinet, Milner and to an extent Bonar Law, used the crisis to advance their own perspective. What they wanted was a protected empire trading block that could guarantee high levels of employment and social welfare and win a mass constituency for imperialism and the capitalist order.21 In February and March 1919 Cabinet conferences opened the debate on the post-war economic order. The alternatives were recorded with stark simplicity: ‘1. The orthodox financial (gold standard) policy. 2. The Federation of British Industry (back to 1914) trade policy. 3. The social (better Britain) policy. 4. The Imperial policy.’22 In discussion the alternatives compressed themselves. The first two strategies were ranged against the second two. The judgements were effectively those of political management. Could the government, and effectively the capitalist order, survive if it attempted the frontal assault on wages and conditions demanded by a return to gold? Or was it safer to cut losses, surrender any ambition to global economic dominance, and retain mass support through an extensive reconstruction and welfare programme based on trading within Britain’s formal and informal empire? There was no clear-cut outcome. Each strategy had diehard proponents, but most ministers, notably Lloyd George

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himself, took a pragmatic position. They sought to convince themselves that the two strategies could be combined. Full employment and social welfare policies could be pursued until the industrial crisis passed and mass support was consolidated. Then there could be a measure of deflation and slow, steady progress towards restoration of the gold standard. On 26 March 1919 sterling was unpegged from the dollar. On 31 March 1919 it left the gold standard – with a commitment to return at the end of December 1925. Meantime, wartime banking and financial structures remained in place. Unfortunately these were inherently inflationary. As in the rest of Europe, war expenditures had been mainly met by printing paper money. Over twothirds of British war expenditure was paid for in this way.23 Now the Bank of England continued to print money for what Lloyd George described as ‘insurance against Bolshevism’.24 At the same time the joint-stock banks used their right to request unlimited note supply from the Bank to cover their own lending. Over the following nine months the banks lent industry £500 million, equivalent to one quarter of the GDP. Most of this financed industrial takeovers and stock exchange flotations, stimulating an inflationary boom. In 1918 prices stood at 224 per cent of their 1913 level. By 1920 they were at 283 per cent.25 Worse still, the pound depreciated relatively against the dollar: from $4.76 to the pound in March 1919 to $3.60 by March 1920. These developments caused the monetary strategists acute distress. But although the Bank of England, as a private body, represented the key clearing banks and accepting houses, it certainly did not control them. The banks existed to make profits – and massive potential profits now existed in the industrial economy. The end of the war had released pent-up demand for domestic goods – now intensified by massive government spending on its housing programme. The profits to be made were all the greater given the wartime reorganization of most industries as cartels and monopolies. For the first time, the City of London became a major lender to industry. As this domestic inflationary crisis matured, Britain’s power overseas, so critical for its international bargaining position, was also coming under serious threat. In India the Indian National Congress had launched a campaign of civil disobedience. Army commanders exercised a firm hand, shooting 800 at Amritsar in April.26 In China nationalist agitation in May–June saw a week-


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long general strike in Shanghai, the base of British power and the country’s biggest industrial centre. The situation remained precarious through the summer.27 British personnel had to be evacuated from Budapest in March in the face of the new Hungarian Soviet Republic. In April and May British-backed armies suffered reverses in Russia. Closer to home, British rule was under challenge in Ireland where Sinn Fein developed a dual power challenge to British administration; in April–May armed conflict began. By June 1919 the Dublin docks were ‘jammed with tanks, armoured cars, guns, motor lorries and thousands of troops as if the port was a base of a formidable expeditionary force’.28 By then Addis was lamenting Britain’s failure to make peace with Germany early in 1918. Now it was too late: ‘The world is ablaze.’29

PUTTING GOLD BACK ON COURSE: ECONOMIC DEFLATION The United States was less troubled. There was never any serious internal challenge to the existing order. There had been unofficial strikes in coal, steel and shipbuilding at the end of the war but without support from the pro-war leaders of the major trade unions. This left strikers vulnerable to savage repression. The Wilson government used troops against the strikers and imprisoned or deported thousands of activists. Street meetings in major cities remained illegal – as did postal circulation of socialist literature. Unlike Britain, the government felt no need for post-war welfare spending.30 Unemployment rose and wages fell. Prices in 1919 were 202 against 203 in 1918 (on 100 in 1913). By 1920 they were down to 197.31 Internationally, the US had fewer hostages to fortune. President Wilson could appear the champion of national selfdetermination and, much to the annoyance of Addis, court the Nationalists in China. Peace negotiations commenced at Versailles in February 1919. The British, French and Americans had distinct positions. The British wanted Germany’s colonies, only limited financial reparations, an all-round cancellation of war debts and a programme of economic reconstruction in central Europe jointly financed with the US – which hopefully the British banks would control. The French wanted the Rhine valley, as much of Germany’s industrial capacity as possible, heavy financial reparations which would end

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Germany’s potential to act as banking hub for central Europe, and cancellation of war debts. The United States, by far the biggest creditor, did not support this: it wanted French and British debts to itself paid in full. On the other hand, it did not want heavy reparations. US plans involved an economic reconstruction of central Europe, including Germany, in which it – through the League of Nations – would play the major role. The more Germany had to pay in reparations, the more this programme would cost. The Americans did not want to lend money to Germany and find it going into French or British pockets.32 Initially, the British and Americans cooperated on limiting German reparations. This was in line with the wartime vision of the two powers together reviving the world economy on a freetrade basis with the Americans providing as much of the credit as possible. When the Americans made it clear that they wanted debts to themselves paid in full first, the British shifted position and supported French demands for unsustainable reparations on Germany. The Americans refused to budge. Cunliffe and Lord Sumner then gave Britain’s support to a settlement that set reparations at the impossible level demanded by the French. Keynes resigned in protest. The Americans made it clear they were only interested in full repayment of all debts. As far as the League of Nations was concerned, economic reconstruction in Europe was up to the British. The US would have no part. To use the quaint Foreign Office expression for powers that do not do what Britain wants, the US became ‘isolationist’. In London Sir Charles Addis retained his proconsular composure. Though dismayed at the political and economic reverses, he preserved his confidence in the long-run success of Britain’s objectives. He also sat at the centre of a formidable nexus of political influence. In the last phases of the war, Addis had worked with the new governor of the Bank of England, Cockayne, and his deputy, Montagu Norman, on plans for radical modernization. The Bank’s top leadership, its Committee of Treasury, was broadened beyond the immediate circle of merchant bankers to include representatives of large-scale industry. Over the next few years, Andrew Duncan was brought in to represent steel and Josiah Stamp from one of the biggest wartime monopolies, Nobel Industries (later ICI). The previously fraught relations with government and the Treasury had been tackled by the addition of the financial secretary to the Treasury, Stanley Baldwin, a director of


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one of the biggest steel companies. The Bank moved from dependence for financial expertise on gentlemen amateurs, shuffling in and out of the Bank from the London accepting houses, to the development of a cadre of experts with long-term horizons as central bankers and closer links to the Treasury. Foremost was Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank from 1920 to the Second World War. With Addis and Baldwin, he had been directly involved in handling wartime currency and credit relations with the New York bankers and the New York Federal Reserve.33 Norman and Addis, and their Treasury allies, now worked to retrieve control of the economy. The first stage was to persuade Austen Chamberlain, the chancellor, to reduce the deficit in his May 1919 budget. The second, strategically the most important, was an agreement between the Treasury and the Bank in August 1919 to limit money supply.34 Henceforth, any increase in note issue had to be matched by setting notes aside for the currency reserve – a technical move deemed unworthy of Cabinet discussion. The consequences were soon felt. By autumn the cost of borrowing was rising sharply. This in turn had serious implications for funding government programmes – and the only solution put to ministers was to restrain the economic boom by raising the Bank Rate. First Austen Chamberlain and then Lloyd George were persuaded and in November the Bank Rate was increased from 5 to 6 per cent. The question for Cabinet by January 1920 was how much higher the Bank Rate should go and for how long – a matter of politics as much as economic policy. Some Cabinet members, Bonar Law and Milner in particular, argued that the situation was still highly dangerous and required expansionist policies on a scale that would ultimately close off any option but empire protection. Key figures in the Cabinet secretariat felt otherwise. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, Sir Basil Thompson, head of Special Branch, and Tom Jones all felt the situation ‘less disquieting’ than in recent months.35 The defeat of the Liverpool police strike in summer 1919 had ended fears of police unionization. The miners had been adroitly sidetracked by the recommendations of the Sankey Commission appointed to defuse the crisis in their industry, and failed to strike. The rail workers had threatened industrial action and secured some concessions but in a fashion that had left their allies in the Triple Alliance, the miners and transport workers, feeling outmanoeuvred. In both railways and mining, the government had been reassured to find union leaders willing to work with

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them – and happy to ensure the defeat of extremists in their own ranks. In these circumstances a Cabinet majority felt that deflation was again feasible. At the Bank, Norman and Addis supported radical measures. In the Treasury so did the key officials, Otto Niemeyer and Ralph Hawtry, and, now from outside the Treasury, Keynes.36 At a time when most of the commercial banks feared the consequences of a further increase, Addis seems to have been particularly influential.37 Addis spoke both as an officer of the Bank and as a banker. Chamberlain raised the Bank Rate to 7 per cent in April, following through with a massively deflationary budget in May 1920. The result is described by Howson: ‘the UK economy experienced one of the most violent fluctuations in its history – a short-lived but extravagant boom followed by severe and prolonged slump.’38 Within six months unemployment had reached 18 per cent. The Bank Rate was kept at 7 per cent for almost a year and then only reduced to 6 per cent. The persistence with which the Treasury and the Bank pursued a ‘dear money’ policy was as much about control of the economy as price deflation, but by 1922 prices were down to 181 (1914=100) and the pound had risen against the dollar to $4.40.39 The bigger issue was changing the long-term balance within the economy so that return to gold could be permanent. Wages still had to come down in relation to prices for long-term profitability to be restored. Moreover, the commercial banks had to be tamed, and controlling them was probably the most critical issue for the monetary strategists in the Bank of England and the Treasury. The scale of the speculative boom in 1919 was largely attributed to the undisciplined greed of the commercial bankers and their willingness to underwrite an unsustainable expansion of capital in industry. The sharp increase in the Bank Rate now pushed sectors of industry into bankruptcy and left the commercial banks indebted and vulnerable. The consequence was to throw the balance of control back to the Bank of England. It alone had the resources to launch strategic rescues, always on the basis of major reductions in productive capacity. Throughout 1920 and 1921, the commercial bankers who composed the Court of the Bank of England were out of sympathy with the strategic direction imposed on them by the Bank’s executive, the Committee of Treasury. The commercial bankers wanted the Bank Rate to come down fast. But while collectively opposed to the strategy, each one was individually


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vulnerable. Norman as governor knew precisely by how much. Addis, whose bank did most of its business outside Britain, was critical in defending Norman’s authority throughout the 1920s.40 In implementing these policies, the Bank and the Treasury had important allies in industry without whom they were unlikely to have been successful. The leaders of the biggest pre-war firms had been brought into government to organize war production. These men now wanted excess capacity squeezed out. This was so for Lithgow (shipbuilding), Duncan (steel) and Stamp (Nobel Industries), who controlled the chemical industry and a significant part of electrical engineering and motor production.41 Firms which had expanded fast on bank credit in 1919 were viewed as meeting with their just deserts, as with the crash of the Beardmore empire spanning ships, steel, cars and aircraft. The removal of excess capacity was also critical to wages: 1921 and 1922 saw employers taking the offensive. In 1921 the government’s assault on the miners, and its breaking of the Triple Alliance, removed the threat of coordinated action by the trade union movement as a whole. By 1922 industrial militancy appeared all but wiped out and wages firmly on a downward path. The years 1920–1 also saw London once more taking the lead internationally. Addis succeeded in putting together a new consortium of banks, British, American, French and Japanese, to supply China with development loans and to fund compliant political leaders. In Europe the League of Nations had developed a powerful economic secretariat, mainly staffed by ex-Treasury officials and led by Walter Layton. Some progress had been made in establishing Vienna as a British banking base through the purchase of the Anglo-Austrian bank by Glyn Mills.42 In January 1922, Addis, in a talk the British-controlled press was instructed not to print, told a meeting of bank staff in Shanghai of current British plans. These were: to establish a new centre of European finance in place of Germany which was formerly the heart of the economic system of Europe. Upon Austria we propose to establish a new credit centre from which the springs of industry and finance may flow into the surrounding states and draw them back into a common economic system.43

By 1922, therefore, economic stabilization appeared well on course and Britain’s international position much less vulnerable.

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‘DEMOCRACY HAS ARRIVED AT A GALLOP. CAN WE EDUCATE THEM BEFORE THE CRASH COMES?’ The domestic political situation was less reassuring. The Labour Party was emerging as a major electoral force: based on the unions and still open to the use of industrial action for political purposes, it presented obvious dangers. Younger members of the governing elite in particular were convinced that a new political strategy was needed – based on educating and controlling this new movement rather than confronting it. The man who led this group was Stanley Baldwin. In his youth he had been a family friend of William Morris, the revolutionary socialist. Baldwin’s mother was sister-in-law to the painter Burne-Jones and the family, though owning the biggest steel firm in the Midlands, moved in Christian Socialist circles. Baldwin took over the family business interests in 1906, including a directorship of the Metropolitan Bank, and, in 1908, became a Conservative MP. He was on the liberal wing of the party with close links with Labour MPs, particularly Ramsay MacDonald and J. H. Thomas. It was Baldwin who described the new generation of MPs as ‘hard-faced men who looked as if they had done very well out of the war’. But Baldwin was not a democrat. He saw the concession of universal suffrage in 1918 as politically unavoidable but also as politically dangerous. He later defined his lifetime’s achievement as educating the Labour Party as a constitutional party of government.44 At the end of the war Baldwin formed a key part of the team steering the country back to the gold standard. He had been a member of the Runciman Committee on post-war trade in 1916 and financial secretary to the Treasury from 1917 and again in 1919. Using his extensive industrial and banking experience, he had handled the government side of gold and currency transactions with the US banks. Believing strongly in government responsibility to control the economy and direct investment if necessary, he also believed that the restoration of the pre-war balance was essential for stable resumption of trade and employment. He also held strong opinions on what was necessary for the long-term political stabilization of the country. It was Baldwin who organized and led the revolt that in 1922 broke the Lloyd George coalition and installed Bonar Law as Conservative prime minister. This manoeuvre, essential to the restoration of two-party government, was carried out with the clear intent that the second party of government would henceforth be Labour, not the Liberals.45


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Baldwin was backed by a majority of Conservative MPs, including the powerful Cecil family, Bonar Law and members of the Milner group such as Geoffrey Dawson, who edited The Times, as well as many younger Conservatives.46 As army officers, many had been involved in Britain’s post-war stabilization of eastern and central Europe. Some like J. C. C. Davidson had supervised the internal security services. Their prime worry was that the industrial victories of 1920–2 had been short-term and ultimately counterproductive. They had smashed the shop stewards’ movement. But the accompanying struggles had also created a mass base for the Labour Party. It was clear that Labour could go either to the right or to the left. In 1920 Labour’s Executive had endorsed the TUC call for a general strike to halt action against Soviet Russia. In the new environment of economic deflation – with universal suffrage a novelty and post-war reconstruction promises abandoned – it was vital that Labour was brought within the constitutional framework. The international situation also made this critical. Although the political balance had moved a little in Britain’s favour, the permanence of stabilization remained in doubt. New states had been created, stretching from Finland in the north to Yugoslavia in the south. All remained dependent on British military and financial backing. In Ireland a settlement secured the North for Britain. But even here the outcome remained uncertain. The biggest problem was Soviet Russia: by 1920 its existence had to be accepted. It was already building links with independence movements in China and India. Its growing influence within labour movements across Europe was clear – and Britain was particularly vulnerable given its proletarianized workforce. All of Britain’s considerable experience in stabilizing central Europe demonstrated the crucial importance of granting status and position to social democratic leaders. Nothing could be more dangerous than a monopoly of government by the parties of property. This was, as Davidson put it later, ‘the first step on the road to revolution’.47 This meant displacing Lloyd George, whose corrupt and opportunist leadership was blamed for many of the post-war reverses. In the 1922 general election Labour secured the biggest increase in seats and Baldwin worked to ensure that Labour entered government in 1924 with Liberal support and that a sizeable group of Liberals transferred into the Labour Party. The outcome appeared highly reassuring. In government the key Labour leaders, MacDonald,

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Snowden and Thomas, showed themselves fully committed to financial orthodoxy, free trade and the gold standard. They were also willing to discipline extremists and use the state’s emergency apparatus against strikers. However, by summer 1924 developments on the international financial front were less reassuring. Labour’s dealings with the Americans were seen to have lacked firmness. There were also doubts concerning MacDonald’s ability to handle the politics of the return to gold itself, which was now seen as urgent. In autumn 1924 the Conservatives and Liberals moved a motion of no confidence. Baldwin’s slogan in the resulting 1924 election was ‘social peace’. The Conservatives won 415 seats, Labour 152 and the Liberals 42.

THE DAWES PLAN: DOUBLE-CROSSED BY THE UNITED STATES The Americans became reinvolved in negotiations over European reconstruction during 1922–3. Much of the groundwork was done by Addis with Sir Walter Layton and his colleagues in the League of Nations economic secretariat. Hyperinflation in Germany and the French occupation of the Ruhr had again posed serious threats to stability, and the French were at last willing to consider modifying their reparation claims. In January 1923, Baldwin had concluded an agreement with the USA over repayment of British debts on terms highly favourable to America. America was itself facing domestic difficulties and a slump in exports as a result of the European economic crisis. Cumulatively, these developments finally opened the way for a joint approach to the key problem: the unsustainable level of German reparations. To this end a Committee of Experts was convened in January 1924 under the auspices of the Reparations Commission. The Americans were led by the bluff, good-natured banker and industrialist, General Dawes, while the British were headed by Lazards’s chairman, Lord Kindersley, and Sir Josiah Stamp.48 Stamp was another example of a man of humble origins who played a key role as representative of business. The son of a shopkeeper, he entered the Inland Revenue by examination to the executive grade. He studied part-time at London University and produced the definitive book on income distribution in Britain. By 1911 he was private secretary to the chief inspector of taxes and


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involved in drafting national insurance legislation. During the war his encyclopaedic knowledge of income and wealth statistics proved invaluable to the Treasury. Stamp’s drafting of the Excess Profits Tax was notably generous to companies, and Stamp himself, in charge of negotiating the tax liabilities of large companies, gained a pro-business reputation. In March 1919 he accepted an offer from Nobel Industries – a firm which secured particularly high wartime profits – to become company secretary. He continued on a retainer to the civil service. In 1920 he served on the Royal Commission on Income Tax and on the Select Committee on War Wealth where he opposed further taxes as economically unsound. In 1924 he sat on the Royal Commission on the National Debt. It was Stamp who authored the scheme determining miners’ wages from 1921, at the same time as being a prolific writer and lecturer on the merits of the gold standard and the need to reduce wages to 1914 levels. He was a close friend of Addis and Layton. In the Committee of Experts the British and Americans combined to convince the French to reduce repayments. The resulting recommendations, largely written by Stamp, gained intergovernmental endorsement in August 1924. At that point it might have seemed that Addis’s vision of long-term Anglo-American cooperation had been achieved. But this was not the case. The most important moves occurred elsewhere. The conference had been about reparations. What was not decided was how the German currency would be stabilized. Norman and Addis had anticipated a peg to sterling. The Americans thought otherwise. They negotiated directly with the Germans and agreed that the mark would be linked to gold and sustained by loans in dollars – a currency which had itself returned to gold in 1923. From summer 1924 US funds poured into Germany to support industrial and financial recovery.49 This produced consternation in London. The currencies of both Britain’s leading competitors were now back on gold before the pound. The plan to dominate Europe through a gold–sterling banking hub in Vienna seemed so much waste paper. And the dollar, in association with a gold mark, was now suddenly seen as the long-term world banking currency. Even Addis’s customers in China and the Far East were demanding dollar payments.50 By spring 1924 Norman and Addis were calling for an urgent government commitment to bring forward the restoration of the gold

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standard. In June the Treasury established the Bradbury Committee. This heard evidence, largely from bankers, that urged a virtually immediate return. From that point the Treasury and the Bank set themselves on course to ensure that the pound went back to gold in March 1925. The Bank Rate was raised again to 5 per cent at the beginning of March.51 Norman made it clear that the pound had to return to gold whether or not it had reached the 1914 parity with the dollar. And if it had not, then steps would have to be taken after the gold exchange was restored to secure an allround reduction in prices and wages. The return to gold could not wait. When Churchill announced the immediate return to gold in his March 1925 budget the pound was overvalued against the dollar (and mark) by upwards of 10 per cent. Its stability depended on exorbitantly priced US loans, a high UK interest rate and the expectation that wages would come down.52 It was this precipitate and desperate act that formed the background to the debacle over miners’ wages and the subsidy to the coalowners in May 1925. The ultimate outcome, after the turmoil of 1926, was that wages in general did not come down and that after another five years of high interest rates and drastic deflation, the pound finally went off gold. This, therefore, takes us to the fundamental question: why did Britain’s policy-makers commit such a gratuitous series of errors?

WHAT KIND OF CRISIS? WHAT KIND OF RULING CLASS? The world economy experienced two major inter-war crises – in 1919 and after 1929 – as well as the more specific and localized ‘long crisis’ in Britain between 1919 and 1929. Most economists would see the 1919 crisis as a credit-based boom that was followed by a collapse in purchasing power from both individuals and governments. It was a classic cyclical crisis fuelled by inflationary finance and unprecedented wartime expansion in productive capacity. When the financial stimulus terminated, there was a sharp fall in profits which ended the boom. Marxists would additionally stress the way in which inflationary finance during the war redistributed income in favour of the profits of large producers, but in an unsustainable way. Redistribution of income was mainly against rentiers and those on fixed incomes and could not be


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continued politically, especially in conditions where organized labour had strengthened its ability to defend wages. In consequence, profits no longer justified inflated capital values. The resulting crisis and unemployment enabled employers to secure a general depression of wages and hence, in varying degrees in different countries, a restoration of profits.53 The bigger world crisis from 1929 is seen in similar terms by non-Marxist economists. It is presented as a speculative boom that built up in the New York stock exchange through the 1920s and was channelled into Europe largely through US loans after 1924. By 1928–9 the European loans were not seen to be yielding viable profits, and from that point new loans to Europe ended and speculative credit remained trapped in the US. This produced a credit crisis in Europe and a final speculative boom in New York until 1931, resulting in an unprecedented level of bankruptcy and business failure. Keynes argued that this blow to confidence was so severe that only governmental intervention could revive employment and purchasing power. His solution was that governments should stimulate recovery through expenditure on public works financed by expanding the money supply. The use of a managed currency in this mildly inflationary way would penalize nonproductive capital to benefit productive capital.54 The Marxist analysis of 1929 is significantly different. Eugen Varga, and later Jürgen Kuyczynski and Maurice Dobb, presented it as a crisis of a new type: the first full crisis of the world economy at a monopoly stage.55 What made it new was the degree to which monopoly firms by the late 1920s were able to exert long-term control over prices. It was this that made the crisis so deep and protracted. Monopoly producers were able, by restricting output, to hold their prices near their previous levels. Non-monopoly producers saw prices collapse. There was, therefore, a systemic dislocation in the distribution of the capitalist surplus. The effect was to block ‘normal’ processes of crisis resolution by which capitalist equilibrium was restored by all-round price cuts, unemployment and reduced wage costs. Hence the need for innovative government intervention. It is difficult to fit Britain’s ‘long crisis’ into either of these categories. It was clearly not the limited, market-clearing crisis seen in the US or France in 1919–20. Nor was it characterized by the price disparities that marked the 1930s. Some have described it as ‘structural’ in the sense that it was caused by Britain’s overconcentration on outmoded industries principally geared to

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exports – coal, steel, shipbuilding and textiles.56 At best this is only half an answer. Britain’s export industries were indeed drastically reduced during the 1920s. But the US and most European countries had a similar concentration in heavy industry. Yet these countries also saw the development of new industrial sectors and it was largely the demand created by new industries that sustained the modernization of the old. Are we then reduced to subjective explanations: serial errors committed by incompetent policy-makers? This was largely the way things were explained at the time. It was the stupidity of the coalowners and the greed of the hard-faced men of 1919. Or Baldwin’s complacent overconfidence that he had sorted out Labour and secured social peace in 1924. Or perhaps more plausibly the monomania of Norman and Addis and the indolence of Kindersley during the Dawes Plan, leaving all the negotiations to the wretched Stamp, always over-impressed by the very wealthy and fatally gulled by the Americans. Recriminations were loud and unpleasant. However, to take this path is to evade the real question: why were such serious mistakes made by a previously highly competent governing elite? Of all countries Britain had developed probably the most sophisticated and effective structure of capitalist government. As an evolving system the British state was historically unique in being able to represent the interests of capitalist property in general – in terms of strategic direction – without being subordinated to any interest in particular. An elected legislature served to reflect changes in the balance of wealth between different propertied interests. The executive responded to these changes and a non-political, permanent civil service developed and implemented policy. At the centre was a cadre of governing politicians who, although sometimes coming from business backgrounds, had themselves to be independent and represent the interests of British capital as a whole. It would be difficult to claim that this structure had broken down by the 1920s. Parliament no longer represented capitalist property as such. The representation of business and banking was certainly taking new forms through organized pressure groups. Wartime interpenetration of government and business had also given certain groups more direct access to political influence. This may have added to the turbulence of policy in 1919. Yet it would also appear that a highly sophisticated governing elite remained intact and


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debated issues with strategic flexibility. Baldwin, Bonar Law, the Chamberlains and Milner were no different from their predecessors. They were aided by talented experts who moved freely between the Treasury, the universities, central banking and industry – the Stamps, Addises and Keynes. Why then should Britain’s rulers have made such serious strategic mistakes compared with America and France? One clue can be found in Keynes’s comment in April 1919: ‘the more prostrate a country is and the nearer to Bolshevism the more presumably it requires assistance. But the less likely private enterprise is to give it.’57 Keynes had identified a critically new phenomenon: politically induced market failure. Nothing quite like this had happened before and, precisely because it was new, the phenomenon was difficult to assess. It was also a phenomenon that impacted with particular severity on British strategy. British plans for continued dominance of world banking relied on the geographical extent of its economic control. It was this that gave it leverage over the US. As we have seen, the areas involved were immense. They comprised a vast colonial empire, established areas of informal empire in China and Latin America and new ones in Europe. But, for this control to be effective, the economies of these areas had to be restored on British terms. This was the problem. Banking funds would only flow into these regions if investment was secure and profitable. If investment was not forthcoming, Britain would carry the military and administrative costs without financial benefit and be left economically powerless in the face of US bankers.58 In addressing post-war economic stabilization, Britain’s rulers confronted a dual task of Herculean proportions. Wages had to come down both at home and abroad in areas of British interest. Only then would a profitable environment be created. The chairman of Barclays Bank, J. C. Goodenough, argued this in April 1920 in correspondence with the Foreign Office. Goodenough urged that the government assist plans to make the Anglo-Austrian Bank a central bank for Austria: ‘before we can hope to see any reduction in prices in this country it will be essential for those countries with a debased currency . . . to put it on a sound footing.’59 Austria, he argued, was particularly important because of its strategic position in central Europe. The problem for the British was that, in combination, the two tasks proved impossible – and that Britain’s erstwhile allies, the US and France, were only too ready to exploit resulting difficulties.

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Initially, in 1918, British policy-makers felt that market forces would reassert themselves automatically and that the end of the war would bring big territorial gains. There was radical reassessment in 1919–20. But by 1922–3 there was a belief that new strategies were working and that political stabilization was in large measure achieved, in both Britain and its areas of overseas influence. Again this confidence was proved false. As Dobb notes, one of the key features of the inter-war period was the degree to which ‘the mechanism of the industrial reserve army, on which capitalism traditionally relied to maintain discipline and cheapness in its labour force . . . virtually ceased to perform its age old function’.60 The dash for gold was undertaken with full knowledge of the desperate risks. It was clear that the biggest pressure would be on British wage costs and on British manufacturing in general. In April 1925 Churchill received a Treasury report on the changing structure of the British economy since the war. It argued that Britain’s future lay in financial services and quality exports. Churchill instructed the authors not to publish the contents and commented: These figures illustrate very clearly . . . that the distributive trades and, above all, banking and insurance, have greatly improved their position, while the basic industries have fallen back . . . It would provide powerful evidence that the policy of the Treasury and the Bank of England has consistently, during and after the war period, favoured finance at the expense of production.61

In the event the outcome of the general strike and the lockout was to demonstrate the long-term impossibility of the government’s objectives. By 9 June 1926 Churchill was writing to Baldwin: ‘The coal stoppage in now beginning to cut deep into our prosperity . . . I am bound to point out to you the terrible cost to the Nation . . . The Trade future is being compromised . . .’62 Two weeks before, Lord Salisbury, a senior member of the Cabinet, had expressed even more fundamental reservations. The issue for him was one of political stability. In terms reminiscent of the contemporary Third International assessment of a new type of ‘general crisis’ precipitated by the creation of a socialist state, he wrote: This determination to secure a change has since the war assumed a dangerous and therefore an urgent character. Up to that date the


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workers sought their ends in parliament . . . It is, however, now clear they are beginning to lose faith in that road to relief. The favourite method is now direct action, which is, in its logical development, revolution . . . Unless Government and Parliament bestir themselves the change of method may become stereotyped; revolution may become a conviction. The worst of it is that unconstitutional pressure and direct action have been proved to be effective and the present triumph of the forces of order is an exception . . . If we look at the attitude of the workers and their intentions . . . the situation is essentially unstable.63

So if we want to assess what type of crisis Britain experienced in the 1920s, we may conclude that it was indeed a crisis of a new and special type. It was a crisis whose origins were economic and political – in the sense that the new balance of class forces changed the functioning of the market – and was focused above all on Britain. This focus was not a matter of chance but arose because of the chosen policy of Britain’s victorious leaders: their calculation that their main strategic advantage over America lay in the sheer geographical extent of their global control. They therefore reaped the consequences. Correspondingly, we should understand the British ruling class in this full sense. Its imperialism was not simply a dispensable colonial adjunct. It was integral to its entire strategy and had been so over the preceding century. Its failure to comprehend that capitalist economics would no longer work in the old way was itself entirely predictable. At no point previously had the balance of class forces – combining socialist state power and working-class organization – significantly dislocated the functioning of the capitalist market. On that basis Addis and his colleagues had remained supremely confident in their belief that ultimately the capitalist market would still work for them. In the event it was a conviction that proved far more dangerous than the localized greed of the coalowners. Here a comparison with 1984–5 is illuminating. That strike was, by contrast, almost entirely political. It is no exaggeration to say that the Thatcher government’s determination to confront the miners stemmed largely from an economic analysis that attributed market failure to the political power of organized labour. The rationale of the economic doctrines of Milton Freedman and the Chicago School – and in Britain the Institute of Economic Affairs – was that the destruction of this power was the essential precondition for the restoration of the capitalist market. ‘Shock

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treatment’ was the first step. A full transition to ‘normal’ capitalism would require a series of interventions by government – in the labour market, the provision of welfare, the scale of the public sector, popular psychology and education and, not least, the wider balance of political forces at world level. The contrast with the 1920s could not be clearer. Then a general strike and lockout had been no part of the original strategy. Its occurrence was entirely incidental: a last-minute but much-deplored economic necessity after the reverses of 1925. This was not the case in 1984. The attack on the miners formed the core of the government’s strategy. It was planned years in advance – with much the same attention to detail as the return to gold from 1918.64 This is not to say that there were no class warriors in 1926 – or that there was no detailed planning. Preparations consumed much of the energy of government over the previous nine months and Churchill, at least initially, saw the strike as an opportunity to depoliticize the labour movement and to destroy Labour as a party of government. But this was not the wider position of the Conservative leadership – or of Churchill himself by June 1926. As indicated by Lord Salisbury, the lesson of the strike was to reinforce the conviction that organized labour had to be constitutionalized – even if this had serious economic costs. By contrast, the strategy of the Conservatives from 1979 represented the response of a ruling class in a fundamentally weaker position. It originated in the defeats of 1972 and 1974. It was predicated on a subservient relationship with the United States. Its concentration on class confrontation and social re-engineering – from populist privatization to urban planning and the poll tax – was in the end electorally disastrous and ultimately led to a repoliticization of the labour movement. As in the 1920s, capitalist strategy often has unintended consequences.

Notes 1 2

3

C. L. Mowat, Britain between the Wars, 1918–1940 (Cambridge, 1968), p. 300. H. A. Clegg, ‘Some consequences of the general strike’, Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society (1953–4), 1–29, was one of the first to highlight the failure to reduce wages across the board after 1926. (I owe this reference to Boyd Black.) R. Boyce, British Capitalism at the Crossroads, 1919–1932 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 30–8; C. Wrigley, ‘The war and the international economy’, in C. Wrigley


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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

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(ed.), The First World War and the International Economy (Cheltenham, 2000), pp. 14–29; S. Howson, Domestic Monetary Management in Britain (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 1–24. T. Mills, ‘Recent developments in modelling trends and cycles in economic time series and their relevance to quantitative economic history’, in Wrigley, First World War, pp. 34–51. A. Maddison, Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development (Oxford, 1991), p. 212; C. Feinstein, P. Temin and G. Toniolo, The European Economy between the Wars (Oxford, 1997), p. 60; US Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the US, Part 1 (Washington, 1975), p. 224. B. R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe 1975–1993 (fourth edn, London, 1998). Feinstein, European Economy, p. 77. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 132. R. Dayer, Finance and Empire: Sir Charles Addis, 1861–1945 (Basingstoke, 1988). Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchanges after the War: First Interim Report, August 1918 (Cmd 9182). K. Young, Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, vol. 1: 1915–1938 (London, 1973), pp. 49–51. Feinstein, European Economy, p. 89. E. Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XVI: 1914–1919 (London, 1971), p. 215. M. Barratt Brown, After Imperialism (London, 1963), p. 123. Howson, Domestic Monetary Management, p. 13. T. Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 1 (London, 1969), pp. 66–71. Dayer, Addis, p. 110. J. Foster, ‘Strike action and working-class politics on Clydeside, 1914–1919’, International Review of Social History, 35, 1 (1990), 33–70. Howson, Domestic Monetary Management, p. 11. Boyce, British Capitalism, pp. 32–3. S. Howson, ‘Slump and unemployment’, in R. Floud and D. McCloskey (eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 275. E. V. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, 1914–1925 (London, 1952), pp. 90–5. Jones, Whitehall Diary, p. 80. Wrigley, First World War, p. 18. B. Chatterji, Trade, Tariffs and Empire: Lancashire and British Policy in India 1919–1939 (Delhi, 1992), stresses Britain’s continuing determination to control India and its economic rationale. J. Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement (trans. H. M. Wright, Stanford, 1968), pp. 153–4. D. McCardle, The Irish Republic (Dublin, 1951), p. 299. Dayer, Addis, p. 104. D. Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labour: The Workplace, the State and American Labour Activism, 1865–1925 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 375–410; M. Dubofsky, Industrialization and the American Worker 1865–1920 (New York, 1975), pp. 123–5. Wrigley, First World War, p. 18. Boyce, British Capitalism, pp. 35–6.

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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 63

Protagonists E. Hennessey, ‘The governors, directors and management’, in R. Roberts and D. Kynaston (eds), The Bank of England: Money, Power and Influence (Oxford, 1995). Boyce, British Capitalism, p. 33. Jones, Whitehall Diary, p. 97. E. Johnson (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XVII: 1920–1922 (London, 1977), pp. 180–4. Dayer, Finance and Empire, p. 187. Howson, Domestic Monetary Management, p. 9. Morgan, Studies in British Financial Policy, p. 352. R. Roberts, ‘The Bank and the City’, in Roberts and Kynaston, Bank of England, pp. 162–3. A. McKinlay, ‘The depression, job control and the “workers’ foreman”: shipbuilding riveters, 1919–1935’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 9 (1989), 55–70; H. Jones, Josiah Stamp, Public Servant (London, 1964), pp. 165–70. A. Marrison, ‘Legacy – war, aftermath and the end of the nineteenth-century liberal trading order, 1914–1931’, in Wrigley, First World War, pp. 119–64; P. Cottrell, ‘The Bank in its international setting’, in Roberts and Kynaston, Bank of England, pp. 88–90. Dayer, Addis, p. 140. P. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 139, 152–3, 235–42. Williamson, Baldwin; R. Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson’s Memoirs (London, 1969), p. 165. B. Schwarz, ‘Conservatism and “Caesarism”, 1903–1922’, in M. Langan and B. Schwartz (eds), Crises in the British State (London, 1985), pp. 33–62. James, Davidson, p. 189. Jones, Josiah Stamp. Boyce, British Capitalism, pp. 56–8; Dayer, Addis, p. 164. Dayer, Addis, p. 166; Boyce, British Capitalism, pp. 59–62. Addis was backed by Kindersley from Lazards and Leaf of the Westminster Bank. Howson, Domestic Monetary Management, p. 34. D. E. Moggridge, The Return to Gold, 1925 (Cambridge, 1969). M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, 1947), pp. 320–87; J. Kuczynski, A Short History of Labour Conditions under Capitalism in the United States of America (London, 1973), pp. 124–32. J. K. Galbraith, The Great Crash (Harmondsworth, 1973). E. Varga, The Great Crisis and its Political Consequences (London, 1934). B. Alford, ‘New industries for old? British industry between the Wars’, in Floud and McCloskey, Economic History of Britain, vol. 2, pp. 308–32. Keynes, Collected Works, XVI, p. 434. Varga, The Great Crisis, p. 74, makes the point that the 1920s crisis in Britain was, exceptionally, in some respects similar to the general crisis in the 1930s. National Archives, London (NA), FO 371/3537, F. C. Goodenough to Sir L. Worthington-Evans, 13 April 1920. Dobb, Studies, p. 335. M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5: Companion (London, 1976), p. 685. Gilbert, Churchill, p. 729. NA, CAB 24/180, Cabinet paper 207, 18 May 1926. Similar papers, submitted by Amery, Robert Cecil and Percy are in CAB 24/179. Stalin’s assessment was made three weeks later on 8 June 1926:


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The attack of British capital on the British miners was an attempt to transform this temporary, insecure stabilization into a firm and permanent one. That attempt did not succeed and could not have succeeded. The British workers, who have replied to that attempt by a gigantic general strike, have shown the whole capitalist world that the firm stabilization of capitalism in the post-war world is impossible, that experiments like the British one are fraught with dangers for the foundations of capitalism. (J. V. Stalin, Collected Works, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1954), pp. 175–6.) C. Woolfson, J. Foster and M. Beck, Paying for the Piper: Capital and Labour in Britain’s Offshore Oil Industry (London, 1996), chapter 1, examines the role of oil as an alternative energy source to coal in the planning of the Conservative government after 1979 as well as its significance in the new alliance with the USA.

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2 Chronology of the 1926 Mining Lockout

1925 20 April 30 June 1 July

3 July 25 July 31 July

5 September

1926 10 March

As chancellor of exchequer, Churchill announces return to the Gold Standard. Coalowners give notice to end 1924 agreement on 31 July. MFGB refuses to consider eight-hour day. New proposals from coalowners for wage reductions, removal of guaranteed minimum and increase in ratio of profits to wages. MFGB conference rejects owners’ terms. TUC agrees to embargo all movement of coal in event of a lockout. ‘Red Friday’: government agrees nine-month subsidy to owners in return for withdrawal of notices and a Royal Commission on Coal Industry. Royal Commission on the Coal Industry appointed under Sir Herbert Samuel.

Report of Royal Commission (Samuel Report) recommends end to subsidy, reorganization of the industry, nationalization of royalties, cooperative selling agencies, wages reductions but no extension of hours. 1 April Negotiations make clear that coalowners require longer hours and district agreements in addition to wage reductions. 14–30 April Coalowners post notices of new terms with reductions of up to 28 per cent operative from 30 April. 29 April–1 May Conference of union executives supports general strike to back miners. Government proclaims state of emergency.


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Chronology of the 1926 Mining Lockout 3 May 12 May

14 May

19 May 20 May 21 May 26 May 31 May 2 June 8 June 10 June 11 June 15 June 21 June

23 June 2 July 2–3 July 5 July 7 July 8 July Mid-July

15 July

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General strike begins. General strike called off by TUC General Council on basis of memorandum by Samuel, without government authority, which accepts wage cuts. MFGB Executive refuses to return to work and rejects TUC acceptance of wage reductions. Baldwin offers terms less favourable than those of Samuel memorandum: continued subsidy; immediate reductions in minimum wages; arbitration on wages and hours agreement by National Wages Board; and legislation to extend hours if parties requested. Proposals rejected by both sides. Railway union leaders refuse to embargo coal. MFGB conference rejects Baldwin’s proposals. Coalowners also reject Baldwin’s proposals. Regulations restricting use of coal introduced. State of emergency again proclaimed. Cabinet approves Mines Department purchase and import of foreign coal. Negotiations between MFGB and coalowners deadlocked over longer hours and wage cuts. MFGB reaffirms position of status quo on wages, hours and national agreement. Baldwin protests to Soviet government over Russian aid to miners. MFGB appeals directly to TUC-affiliated unions for embargo and financial help. Baldwin introduces Coal Mines Bill to facilitate eighthour day, together with bill on reorganization of coal industry. MFGB and TUC agree to postpone post-mortem by Conference of Executives on general strike. TUC calls for financial aid for miners but not for levy or embargo. Private mediation by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree and Walter Layton involving Cook. Coalowners post district notices requiring eight-hour day and wage cuts. Government finances scheme to import coal. Coal Mines Act suspending seven-hour day becomes law. Cook is involved in negotiations with Sir Stephen Demetriadi, chairman of London Chamber of Commerce, based on the Samuel Report. MFGB requests TUC General Council to desist from

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involvement in negotiations but to embargo movement of coal and maximize financial help; TUC refuses embargo. MFGB Executive agrees to recommend the bishops’ proposals. These recommend renewal of subsidy for four months to facilitate national agreement and legislation on reorganization. If agreement was not reached, a joint board with an independent chairman would arbitrate. 19 July Baldwin rejects bishops’ memorandum. 30 July MFGB conference divided on proposals. 7 August Baldwin’s message to Americans stating no hardship in the mining areas published. 16 August Declaration of MFGB vote on bishops’ proposals shows narrow majority against. 17 August MFGB conference empowers Executive to reopen negotiations with government and coalowners. 19 August MFGB meeting with coalowners deadlocked over demands for wage cuts, longer hours and district agreements. Owners declare end of national negotiations. 26 August MFGB meeting with government unsuccessful. MFGB states willingness to negotiate over wages but not hours. 2 September Return to work involves only 5 per cent of miners but concentrated in Midlands. 3 September MFGB informs government it is prepared to negotiate national agreement ‘with a view to reducing labour costs’. 6 September With Baldwin on holiday, Churchill meets coalowners and urges national conference with MFGB to determine framework for resumption of work and district agreements which would be assembled into a national agreement. 6–11 September Trades Union Congress, Bournemouth. Attempts to move reference back of parts of General Council report dealing with general strike and mining situation, to amend resolution on financial aid for the miners and discuss embargo heavily defeated. 13 September In face of Churchill’s proposal to legislate for arbitration over wages and hours in the districts, owners affirm refusal to negotiate national framework or even meet MFGB. 14 September MFGB Executive expresses regret at coalowners’ attitude and ‘request[s] the miners in every area to resist the efforts of the coalowners to secure their defeat’. 17 September Baldwin reverses Churchill’s approach; insists miners must resume work on district agreements which can then


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be reviewed by National Arbitration Tribunal where more than seven-hour day. 24 September Cabinet rejects Churchill’s arbitration scheme. Baldwin rejects MFGB counter-proposal for resumption on terms of 1921 national agreement which would then be reviewed by a tribunal which would also consider implementation of Samuel Report. 29 September MFGB figures show 81,000 miners, 7 per cent of total, back at work. 7 October MFGB district vote rejects Baldwin’s proposals by 737,000 to 42,000. Conference decides to revert to 30 April status quo, bring out safety men, renew struggle for embargo and levy and strengthen MFGB direction of the dispute. 11–16 October Labour Party conference, Bournemouth. Attempts to refer back Executive resolution saluting the miners but proposing nationalization of the mines as the only solution in favour of support for embargo and levy defeated by 2,159,000 to 1,368,000 votes. 15 October MFGB conference decisions strongly affirmed by district vote. Majority of miners have now returned in Nottingham and Midlands. Stoppage still solid elsewhere, but coal imports increase from 600,000 tons a week in June to 5,000,000 tons a week in October. 24–5 October Meetings addressed by Cook and Smith banned by government. 2 November MFGB fails to persuade transport and rail unions to introduce embargo. 3 November Conference of union executives recommends levy of at least a penny a day on members working. 5 November Negotiations resume with Baldwin on principles of district agreements. 10 November MFGB figures show 230,666 miners working; Mines Department figures indicate 320,353. 12 November MFGB conference recommends what remain essentially Baldwin’s September terms for acceptance by districts. 19 November Districts reject the terms by 460,806 to 313,000 but MFGB conference recommends districts to commence negotiations on basis of memorandum of general principles. Mines Department figures show 366,000 miners, one-third of labour force, back at work. 22 November Breakaway Nottinghamshire Miners’ Industrial Union formed. 26 November MFGB conference instructs districts to make the best agreements they can.

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29 November– Work resumed in coalfields. 23 December 1927 21–2 January

Conference of union executives reviews lessons of general strike. TUC General Council report endorsing the TUC’s handling of the dispute and criticizing MFGB for not accepting Samuel Memorandum approved by 2,840,000 to 1,095,000.


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3 Fighting the Legions of Hell

JOHN MCILROY and ALAN CAMPBELL

When men have to endure the insult of being idle, degraded and useless for years on end, not only is it impossible to forget that, it becomes an act of faith to cherish the memory of it every moment one lives, because one’s duty as a human being from that time on is to fight against the possibility of that insult being levied against oneself or against others again. You’re young, Willie. You only caught a glimpse of the knife that went right through our bodies. Gwyn Thomas, The Sky of Our Lives

The 1926 and 1984 miners’ disputes stand out in the chronicles of twentieth-century industrial conflict because of their scale, their duration and the spirit of defiance they evoked. Both were sparked by strategic attempts to reinvigorate British capitalism. In each case the full resources of the state were employed to confront the miners. In each case resistance was orchestrated by determined socialist leaders. In each case the miners’ unity fragmented. In each case the miners received restricted support from the leaders of the labour movement, who emphasized concessions and future political reforms. Both conflicts ended in defeats which marked the end of periods of industrial militancy. Both ushered in years of trade-union retreat. For historians, such comparisons can be illuminating and fertile, so long as we acknowledge the uniqueness, integrity and complexity of specific events and carefully delineate what was particular to each as well as what they had in common. Pushing parallels too far may violate the autonomy of different episodes and conjunctures separated by time and its transformations. The

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dramas of 1926 and 1984 were played in different societies, different economies, different industries. Nor can the details of the disputes be simply assimilated. In 1984 the axis of mobilization was opposition to pit closures and questioning of economic conceptions which dictated increased unemployment. In 1926 the miners’ leaders sought to alleviate wage reductions by accepting closures and redundancies as an alternative. In 1984 national agreements and nationalization, long pursued but long elusive to the miners of 1926, were somewhat tarnished achievements. In 1984 the modern state was the driving force. The state, rather than as in 1926 the coalowners, initiated the offensive against the miners. In the struggle with the Thatcher government the miners were more confident, articulate and assertive than their more deprived, defensive predecessors of the 1920s. In 1984 flying pickets and arguments about secret ballots dominated controversy in a way they had not sixty years earlier. Yet despite greater assurance, fragmentation in 1984 set in earlier and more decisively than it did in 1926. Our purpose here is not to provide a detailed comparison between two events which, whatever their differences, demonstrate the resilience of mass industrial struggle in the face of the complex changes in capitalism across the twentieth century. Rather we want to sketch an up-to-date account of the progress of the 1926 dispute which may also be useful for future historical synthesis. This chapter examines the actors and their objectives in the context of the coal crisis which flared into conflict in 1926. It documents how their strategies unfolded during the course of the dispute, concluding with reflections on its significance.

THE MINERS The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) consisted of twenty autonomous district unions. Created in 1889 and completed by the adhesion of Durham and Northumberland by 1909, it represented in 1926 a recent accomplishment. Given significant differences in the size, product markets, traditions, industrial relations and bargaining power between its affiliates – themselves diverse federations, formal or informal – and mining trade unionism’s history of fragmentation, it was a remarkable achievement (see table 2.1). Its early role as a coordinator between


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Table 2.1 Trade union membership and strikes Coalfield

South Wales Yorkshire Durham

District MFGB union affiliation, membership, 1926 1925

Union density, %

129,155 164,196 155,773

129,150 150,000 120,000

61.2 87.1 101.8  76.7  61.0 75.1



Northumberland Scotland Lancashire and Cheshire Derbyshire South Derbyshire

43,482 77,000 72,902

37,836 80,000 75,000

43,000 6,227

35,000 6,000

73.3 129.7

Nottingham Leicester Warwickshire Cannock Chase North Staffs

34,767 7,428 11,500 8,102 10,679

25,000 7,000

62.1 64.4 57.5 31.6 30.2

South Staffs Pelsall (Walsall) Shropshire North Wales Cumberland Forest of Dean Somerset Bristol Kent

  1,031 5,508 2,000 

14,224 10,036 n/a n/a 1,635 1,505

  

60,000

10,000 8,500 5,000 4,500 1,900 1,600

15.9 n/a 57.1 80.8 88.8 n/a  n/a  109.0  83.6

No. of strikes per million employees, 1921–6

% of UK colliery strikes, 1921–6

194 44

39.0 7.0

47

9.0

237 55

28.0 5.0

21

2.0

63

5.0

21 255

0.0 3.0

61

1.0

588

1.0

Notes: The Scottish figure for union membership is an estimate based on the membership of county unions in the MFGB-affiliated National Union of Scottish Mineworkers and the membership of the independent Fife Mineworkers’ Reform Union. A number of unions in the Midlands affiliated to the MFGB through the Midlands Miners’ Federation. Density has been calculated using district union membership figures for 1925 as a percentage of wage-earners in January 1926 (see table 2.5). Since some wage-earners were members of smaller, non-MFGB affiliates, the density figures will tend to underestimate unionization. In a few cases the small numbers involved, the nature of recording membership and rates of unemployment lead to density figures being in excess of 100 per cent. Sources: Report of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for the Year 1926 (London, 1927), Part 4, section 2, pp. 17–19; A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 2: Trade Unions and Politics (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 189, 194; Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, Minutes of Proceedings, 1926; Report of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry (1925), vol. 3, p. 179; R. Church and Q. Outram, Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889–1966 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 82–3.

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coalfields, providing support for districts in trouble, boosted a drive forward to national identity and national organization. This focused on engagement with the state, political action, legislation, national minimum wages and ultimately nationalization of the industry. The platform which the MFGB established encouraged and was underpinned until 1921 by advances in bargaining at colliery level over piecework price lists, day wage earnings and greater control of the work process. Solidarity stemmed from the pits and the pit villages and was developed and sustained by complex interplay between the collieries, the districts and the national federation.1 Primed by affiliation to the Labour Party in 1909, consolidated in the national strike of 1912 and further stimulated by the increasing concentration of capital in the industry, the leaders of the MFGB began to forge a flawed but real national trade unionism based on increasing identification of district activists with national structures and national goals. With almost 700,000 members by 1914, the MFGB made further progress with the introduction of government control of the mines in 1917 and the Seven Hours Act of 1919. The Sankey Commission’s advocacy of nationalization the following year marked its high point. Government control of the industry saw national, flat-rate increases for different grades of miner such as the Sankey award of a universal 2s. per shift in March 1919 and a similar advance following the national strike of 1920. Before the war, each district negotiated wage rates with its owners’ association, taking into account the price of coal, and employing complex arithmetical formulae. Typically, wages were calculated as a percentage of the rates in a particular year which was adopted as the ‘standard’. If the standard wage for a haulier was 3s. per day plus percentage, the hauliers’ wages would be 4s. 6d. per day when the percentage was 50 per cent above standard. Faceworkers, the largest group, were paid piece rates calculated on the standard in a variety of ways. In south Wales, for example, elaborate price lists determined the rates for hewing in different seams and other underground tasks. If the cutting price for a seam was 1s. 6d. per ton and the percentage on standard 50 per cent, for his output of two tons the hewer would receive a total of 4s. 6d., consisting of 3s. plus 1s. 6d. (50 per cent). Such equations varied across coalfields but all shared the principle of wages being calculated as percentage additions to a standard basis.2



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What the miners termed ‘national agreements’ were therefore limited but nonetheless important. But the restoration of the coalowners in 1921 and the union’s defeat in that year’s lockout saw a swing back from the national to the district level. Opposed by the MFGB, it witnessed the reimposition of district settlements, albeit with a national guarantee of a minimum wage of not less than 20 per cent above the 1914 level. Percentages on the standard were to be regulated according to the proceeds accruing to labour and capital (in a ratio of 83:17) based on monthly ascertainment of the proceeds for each district, rather than on the outdated criterion of the price of coal. Thus the 1921 national agreement did not provide for national negotiations but only for a framework for district settlements. Opposed by the coalowners, national negotiations required the government’s involvement as a stimulus and intermediary. The percentages plummeted in Durham from 213 per cent (on the 1879 basis) in October 1921 to 91 per cent a year later; in south Wales from 79 per cent (on the 1915 basis) to 28 per cent; and in Scotland from 246 per cent (on the 1888 basis) to 110 per cent. Although steep reductions in miners’ cash wages of around 50 per cent between 1921 and 1922 were ameliorated to a degree by the falling cost of living, their real wages declined by a third over this period.3 The MFGB was engaged in a rearguard action marked by unemployment, membership loss and wage reductions. Table 2.1 suggests that by 1926 trade unionism as measured by density varied across the coalfields; overall it was weak. While pit militancy was far from eliminated, it was undermined, uneven and to some degree concentrated in south Wales and Scotland where it remained resilient. The MFGB’s structure reflected the progress which miners had made towards national unity and its limits. At its peak it enrolled almost a million mineworkers but its leading cadre remained based on the faceworkers. The craft unions represented skilled workers, and a variety of other bodies the deputies, enginemen, firemen and winders. The district unions sent representatives on the basis of affiliated membership to the MFGB Executive. This consisted of twenty members, with larger districts electing one or two representatives and smaller districts and affiliated associations clustered in five groups sending rotating representatives. This meant that the largest districts remained in a minority: taken together, Durham, Scotland, south Wales and Yorkshire embraced 62 per cent of MFGB members but held only eight of the twenty Executive seats.4

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The Executive was subordinate to the conference: around 200 delegates took decisions subject to district policy and mustered to deal with all significant eventualities. In this sense, decisionmaking was intensely democratic. Firm limits were set on leadership initiatives and policy was formally determined by district activists. Throughout the lockout there were regular district ‘ballots’ on conference decisions: typically they entailed voting by hand at district conferences and branch meetings. Nonetheless, the MFGB conference constituted an indispensable forum for identification and reconciliation of conflict. This was the purpose of at least the articulate delegates. They leap from the page in 1926 not as ‘ambassadors from their coalfields rather than participants in a collective enterprise’5 but very much as ‘participants in a collective enterprise’. The precarious nature of the MFGB must be acknowledged; so must the commitment to the enterprise exhibited not only in south Wales and Scotland but even in the Midlands and Nottinghamshire by the core of the district leadership. What is perhaps most striking is the limited degree of fragmentation stimulated by the events leading to the lockout and the ordeal itself.6 The differences which marked the MFGB had more to do with the dilemmas of resistance than political antagonisms. The problems they faced in the 1920s sustained a stubborn, defensive intransigence across the mining communities. It only rarely connected with political radicalism. The Communist Party (CP) and its industrial arm, the Miners’ Minority Movement (MMM), were a far from significant force although often prominent because of the quality of their representatives. They were often able to sharpen the edge of resistance, far more rarely to transform miners’ politics or MFGB policies. We should not exaggerate the extent of factionalism in 1926, at least in the latter-day sense of institutionalized competition between organized political groupings. The revolutionaries were organized but subordinate outside a few situations; the majority, dubbed ‘the right’ with difficulty, had less need to organize.7 The complexion of the top leadership can be seen from table 2.2. The bureaucracy of the MFGB was the bureaucracy of the districts, based on the backbone of agents and checkweighmen stretching down into the pits. Constrained by durable area particularities, they saw themselves nonetheless as stakeholders in the Federation. However, in comparison with later trade unionism the apparatus was rudimentary. The only full-time official of the

Family/ education/ religious background

First worked as miner

First active in union

First full-time union post

First MFGB office

District office, 1926

Politics

President: Herbert Smith (1862–1938)

63

mining/ elementary/ Methodist

1872

1879

1906

1917 (vicepresident)

president, Yorkshire Miners’ Association

moderate Labour

Secretary: Arthur Cook (1883–1931)

42

military, market 1901 gardening/ Central Labour College, 1911–12/ Baptist

1906

1920

1924 (secretary)

none

left Labour, ex-Communist

Vice President: Tom Richards (1859–1931)

66

mining/ 1871 elementary/ Congregationalist

1884

1888

1924 (vicepresident)

secretary, South Wales Miners’ Federation

moderate Labour; MP for West Monmouth, 1906–20

Treasurer: W. P. Richardson (1873–1930)

53

mining/ elementary/ Primitive Methodist

1891

1915

1921 (treasurer)

secretary, Durham Miners’ Association

moderate Labour

1885

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Sources: J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vols 1, 2, 3 (London and Basingstoke, 1972, 1974, 1976).

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Age at 1 May 1926


Table 2.2 MFGB officials, 1926

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MFGB was the secretary, Arthur Cook, although by 1926 Tom Richards and W. P. Richardson were identified with it and Herbert Smith personified it. Cook was the outsider. At forty-two the youngest of the four, he was not born into a mining community but was part of the West Country emigration into south Wales where he went into the pit at the advanced age of seventeen. Unlike his colleagues he was a political radical, part of the generation of the ‘great unrest’, 1917 and 1919. Unlike them, he was an indefatigable propagandist, a tendency strengthened by his time at the Central Labour College and in the CP, but stemming from the religious background he shared with his fellow officials.8 In 1926 Cook was the authentic voice of the miners. His speeches were replete with images of his life underground. He recalled being yoked with a ‘guss’ to haul tubs semi-naked along roads too narrow for the ponies – he removed his shirt to show the crowds the rope burns – falling asleep too exhausted to wash, carrying the body of his best friend out of the pit at Porth. He spoke not simply of wages and hours but of oppression. He called not only for economic resistance but also for a struggle for dignity and transformation of the miners’ mutilated lives. They were, he told them, echoing his religious past, fighting the legions of hell. Totally uninterested in the administrative tasks of the union official, he was, with the possible exception of the younger Tom Mann, the most inspired and popular tribune of the people British trade unionism has yet produced. Recent years have seen an important correction of received judgements of Cook as mob orator and intransigent militant. He could and would compromise. He observed in May 1926: ‘If I find that the situation has changed to such an extent that it requires a policy different to the present one to be put forward I shall do it. It is not weakness to tell the truth.’9 This was to be his practice in the lockout. It would be a mistake to go to the other extreme. Cook was far from a strategist and his political vision made him more than a pragmatic bargainer. His attempts at compromise in 1926 were volatile and in the episode with Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree ill-advised. However, his activities have to be related to his emotional identification with the miners, his pitiless schedule and his consequent exhaustion.10 Like Cook, Smith, with his blue scars and cloth cap, lived for the miners in a house next to the Yorkshire Association’s offices, his only relaxation supporting Barnsley Football Club. Epitomizing



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the colliers, his origins were also distinctive: an orphan born in the workhouse at Kippax, near Leeds, he found his family among the miners. Starting work at ten in 1872 and on the coalface at seventeen, Smith represented the generation which had founded modern mining trade unionism and which combined a deep attachment to district organization with implacable determination to organize nationally. He was steeled in conflict. In 1893, with three young children, he was locked out for thirteen weeks, and his tenacity, stamina and perhaps inflexibility as a negotiator were honed in stand-offs such as the fourteen-month Wheldale strike which ran from 1902 to 1904. Initially regarded by the Yorkshire leadership as an Independent Labour Party (ILP) radical, he mellowed politically after his arrival on the MFGB Executive in 1908. Less left-wing than Cook, he was, as the first historian of the general strike observed, ‘just as stubbornly class conscious’.11 If Cook’s revolutionary exuberance at times left him bemused, Smith’s endurance blended with Cook’s defiance to symbolize the lockout. Like Cook he was fighting to maintain the gains made before 1921 and to protect ‘the bottom dog’. Smith was ‘the living embodiment of the determination of the common people to battle for their rights’.12 But like Cook he was no strategic thinker.13 Tom Richards was of the same generation as Smith, although instinctively more moderate. His inclination stemmed from his early involvement in the old world of conciliation and the sliding scale which automatically adjusted wage rates in line with the selling price of coal, however low it sank. A Liberal MP, he moved across to Labour only on the MFGB’s affiliation to the party in 1909. Secretary to the South Wales Federation since 1898, his fundamental commitments were affirmed when in 1920 he resigned from Parliament to devote himself to union affairs. When Richards died in 1931, a Times obituary remembered him as: ‘Moderate, cautious and conciliatory in his counsel to the miners . . . often dissenting profoundly from the policy they were bent on pursuing’.14 A little younger than Smith and Richards, like them W. P. Richardson had served his apprenticeship as lodge official, agent and district executive member before becoming Durham secretary in 1924. Like them he was deeply involved in the Labour Party locally, an essentially moderate man driven beyond moderation by the miners’ predicament. His father died in a pit accident when he was twelve. A year later he started work in the same pit where, like Cook, his left leg was seriously injured in a roof fall. A dedicated

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Table 2.3 MFGB Executive members, 1926 District

Age, First Notes 1 May full-time 1926 union post

South Wales Midlands

42

1918

J. Berry2 Lancashire Seth Blackledge3 Lancashire Thomas Cape3 (1868–1947) Cumberland

1917 57

1907

Peter Chambers2 Scotland S. O. Davies1 (1883–1972) South Wales James Doonan3 (1868–1932) Scotland

42 58

1918 c.1888

Noah Ablett1 (1883–1935) John Baker2

Ebby Edwards3 (1884–1961) Northumberland 41 S. Edwards2 John Elks3 Tom Flatley3 Charles Gill2 John Gillians3 (1873–1935)

Midlands Kent Lancashire Group 5 (Bristol) Group 1 (Enginemen)

1919

agent; syndicalist; CLC; joint author, The Miners’ Next Step (1912) secretary of Midland Miners’ Association and advisory agent for the Cannock Chase Miners’ Association agent for Wigan agent and secretary, Cumberland Miners’ Association; Primitive Methodist; ILP; MP for Workington; JP agent, Mid and East Lothian Miners’ Association agent, SWMF; university graduate; Labour Party supporter of MMM agent, West Lothian Mineworkers and Executive member, National Union of Scottish Mineworkers; provost of Bathgate; JP; anti-Communist president of NUSMW, 1929–32 secretary, Northumberland Miners’ Association; Ruskin College; NCLC activist; MFGB president 1931, flexible, moderate MFGB secretary, 1931 secretary, Kent Miners’ Association agent agent

52

1924

Primitive Methodist, later agnostic; ILP; secretary, Northumberland Colliery Mechanics Association; Treasurer, National Federation of Colliery Mechanics

Age, First Notes 1 May full-time 1926 union post 59

1925

Frank Hall1 (1861–1927) W. S. Hall2

Derbyshire Group 1 (Enginemen) Midlands Group 4 (North Wales)

64

1906

agent, later president, Durham Miners’ Association; moderate Labour; Methodist laypreacher; JP general secretary, Derbyshire Miners’ Association; Labour Party moderate

47

1915

president, North Staffordshire Miners general secretary, North Wales Miners’ Association; Labour county councillor; JP

Joe Jones1 (1891–1948)

Yorkshire

34

1922

general secretary, Yorkshire Miners’ Association; Methodist; temperance worker; anti-Communist MFGB president from 1934; Labour Party ‘moderate’

W. Latham3 Peter Lee3 (1864–1935)

Midlands Durham

61

1919

financial secretary, Durham Miners’ Association; Primitive Methodist; county councillor; general secretary, DMA from 1930 Lanarkshire Mineworkers’ Union; Labour Party moderate

55

1917

agent; JP from 1908; former Labour county councillor; Labour MP for Wigan, 1918–41; Labour whip, 1924; Methodist, later Congregationalist

48

1919

compensation agent; Nonconformist; JP; ILP and Labour Party

F. J. Hancock3 Hugh Hughes2 (1878–1932)

Paul McKenna1 W. Mansfield2

Scotland Group 3 (Cleveland) J. A. Parkinson2 (1870–1941) Lancashire G. Peart2

Group 1 (Enginemen)

Alf Smith1 (1877–1969)

Yorkshire

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James Gilliland2 (1866–1952) Durham


District

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District

J. Smith3 Jack Smith3 W. K. Smith2

Age, First Notes 1 May full-time 1926 union post

Group 1 (Enginemen) Group 2 (Leicestershire) Group 4 (South Derbyshire)

agent; JP agent, Leicestershire Miners’ Association; MMM supporter

William Straker2 (1855–1941) Northumberland 70

1905

John E. Swan2 (1877–1956)

Durham

48

1923

C. Thompson3

Group 4 (Cokemen)

Tom Trotter3 (1871–1932)

Durham

54

1913

never a miner; Durham Miners’ Association treasurer from 1915; Nonconformist; Labour Party ‘moderate’

Frank Varley1 (1885–1929)

Nottinghamshire 40

1919

financial secretary, Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association; studied colliery management at Sheffield University; Labour MP for Mansfield, 1923–9

general secretary, Northumberland Miners’ Association; Lib-Lab, later Labour; Primitive Methodist agent; Labour MP, 1918–22; later general secretary, Durham Miners’ Association, 1935–45 Durham Cokemen’s Association

Sources: J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vols 1–9 (London and Basingstoke, 1972–87); R. Page Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle (London, 1953); I. MacDougall (ed.), Militant Miners (Edinburgh, 1981); W. R. Garside, The Durham Miners, 1919–1960 (London, 1971). Notes: 1 Member, 1925–6 and 1926–7; 2 Member, 1925–6; 3 Member, 1926–7



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anti-Communist, as MFGB treasurer he was grateful for the financial help from Russia and scathing about the lack of it from British trade unions.15 The Executive was cast in similar mould (see table 2.3). It was largely a body of middle-aged, full-time officials. The average age in May 1926 of those for whom we have information was fifty-one years, and at least twenty-six held full-time district office – the figure was probably higher – although most had been full-time for less than a decade. There was significant turnover – only six of those elected for 1925–6 remained in office during 1926–7. While some were or would become district leaders, for example, Ebby Edwards, Gilliland, Hughes, Jones, Lee, Swan and Varley – and Edwards and Jones subsequently became MFGB secretary and president – others were less influential beneficiaries of ‘Buggins’ turn’. They were cautious, defensive tacticians, miners who had started work in the late Victorian era and participated in the laborious etching of the modern movement and the MFGB as mature men. They had progressed from lodge officers and checkweighmen to establishment in district bureaucracies. They had much to lose if their unions were destroyed but the Federation was their achievement which they would likewise defend. The dominant ethos was religious Nonconformity and moderate labourism. Three, Cape, Parkinson and Varley, were Labour MPs, many were councillors and at least half a dozen were magistrates. Anchored in their communities, they represented the respectable, self-improving face of local labourism, aroused to action against their instincts by the coalowners and the state. Reflecting the balance in the MFGB, the left was a small minority: Noah Ablett and S. O. Davies from south Wales and ‘Bolshevik Jack’ Smith from Leicestershire. The MFGB had the biggest vote in the TUC and two representatives, Richards and the Scottish leader, Robert Smillie, on the General Council. It rarely used its weight at Congress while Richards infrequently attended General Council meetings. In the strained atmosphere after the general strike, relations were largely conducted directly between the TUC and the Miners’ Executive.16 The MFGB affiliated 800,000 members to the Labour Party and was a potentially powerful voice in its counsels. However, its leaders practised the division between industrial and political issues and accorded precedence over the latter to the parliamentary leadership.17 Unsurprisingly, MacDonald’s deep antipathy to industrial action and Cook strengthened his belief that problems

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could only be resolved by compromise and a future MacDonald government. His most effective interventions in the lockout were his criticisms of Baldwin and lubrication of the Churchill negotiations in the autumn. The forty MFGB-sponsored MPs (see table 2.4), a quarter of the parliamentary party, kept up a spirited resistance together with the ILP Members. Most were relative newcomers: only four had been MPs before 1918. Their background was similar to that of the MFGB Executive. With an average age of fifty-four, nineteen had been checkweighmen and twenty-six agents, while at least nineteen had served as councillors and fifteen as magistrates. They articulated solidarity throughout the lockout. When Baldwin incredulously inquired: ‘Are you, all of you, absolutely satisfied in your own hearts with the wisdom of the policy of the Miners’ Federation?’, Hansard recorded a unanimous: ‘Hon. Members: Yes.’18

CRISIS, CAPITAL AND THE STATE In 1925 Britain’s miners worked in around 2,000 collieries owned by 1,400 companies. Modernization was limited and uneven, half the pits had opened before 1875 and productivity was declining. South Wales, the largest coalfield, produced a fifth of British output in 1924, almost half of which was exported (see table 2.5). In the west, valuable anthracite was produced but the main output was steam coal for shipping and gas and coke for industry. Capitalist combination went hand in hand with conflictual industrial relations. Durham’s and Northumberland’s combined output exceeded that of Wales and 39 per cent of their coal was exported. Harmonious industrial relations were fissured by growing antagonisms. In Scotland, Fife, an exporting coalfield, displayed increased militancy while Lanarkshire, whose coal went to the domestic market, had a history of conflict. Lancashire, which served its industrial hinterland, was in decline and oscillated between collaboration and militancy. The future of British coal mining in 1926 lay with the rich reserves of Yorkshire and the Midlands. Industrially militant but politically moderate, the Yorkshire Miners’ Association believed that industrial harmony required powerful trade unionism and was a catalyst in the development of the MFGB. Producing for the home market, the Midlands was characterized by consensual industrial relations and expansion. Together with Yorkshire, it produced 38 per cent of UK



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output. It was in these areas as much as in south Wales or Durham that the outcome of the lockout would be decided. However, regional boundaries were fluid and each district characterized by internal differences in culture, industrial relations and politics.19 Given the importance of foreign markets, the international situation was crucial to the coal crisis. Fundamentally there was a decline in world demand, greater fuel efficiency and a turn to oil. British exporters were further handicapped by the treaty of Versailles and German coal reparations to France and Italy, as well as the emergence of Poland as a coal exporter. The slump of 1921 hit domestic demand. The crisis was ameliorated but unresolved by the brief upturn from 1923. The four-month strike of American miners followed by the French occupation of the Ruhr handicapped competitors and stimulated record British exports. Unemployment in mining dropped from 10 per cent to 4 per cent and the MFGB grasped its opportunity. Having become accustomed to progress before 1921, the upturn of 1923–4 sharpened an appetite for renewed advance. Conducted via the Labour government’s involvement and a court of inquiry, the 1924 negotiations affirmed the fragility of the MFGB’s hold on national bargaining: the agreement, still a formulaic framework and floor for wages, increased labour’s share of the net proceeds from 83 to 85 per cent and raised the minimum wage for adult men from 20 to 33.3 per cent above standard.20 But, glimpsing new possibilities, the miners in 1925–6 were determined they would not be snatched away. Prosperity proved evanescent. Under the Dawes Plan, German reparation shipments resumed and the position was exacerbated by recession in Britain. The problems of coal were deepened and structured by the government’s decision in April 1925 to return to the gold standard on the basis of the 1914 parity with the dollar. This dictated that the coalowners would have to reduce prices if they were to sell coal in foreign markets. Revisionist historians have attempted to minimize the impact of the return to gold upon the industry. Yet more recent research, using the yardstick of a basket of European currencies rather than the dollar – Britain’s coal exports went largely to Europe not America – estimates the overvaluation of sterling at up to 35 per cent. The impact of government economic policy on the industry was therefore profound.21 This was the background to the Mining Association of Great Britain’s (MAGB) decision on 30 June 1925 to replace the 1924

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Table 2.4 MFGB-sponsored Members of Parliament, 1926 District/MP

Constituency

First elected

Age, Biographical notes, pre–1926 1 May 1926

Scotland W. Adamson (1863–1936) D. Graham (1867–1942) J. Brown (1862–1939) J. Westwood (1884–1948) W. Watson (1874–1962)

West Fife Hamilton S. Ayrshire S. Midlothian Dunfermline

1910 1918 1918 1922 1922

43 59 63 42 51

agent, 1902; Fife sec. from 1908; secretary of state for Scotland, 1924 CW, 1892; agent, 1908; sec., Lanarkshire Miners, 1918–23 agent, 1904; sec., Ayrshire Miners from 1909; JP agent, 1916; political agent, Scottish Miners, 1918; JP Ruskin; political agent, Scottish Miners, 1908

Durham R. Richardson (1862–1943) W. Whiteley (1881–1955) J. Batey (1867–1949) J. Ritson (1874–1955) J. Lawson (1881–1965)

Houghton-le-Spring Blaydon Spennymoor Durham Chester-le-Street

1918 1922 1922 1922 1919

64 44 59* 51 44

CW, 1900–18; CC, 1901–25 union clerk; agent, 1912; financial sec., 1917 CW; agent; JP; South Shields town councillor CW, 1912; Sunderland Town Council, 1912 CW, 1904; Ruskin; CC, 1913; financial secretary to War Office, 1924

Northumberland R. Smillie (1857–1940) G. Warne (1881–1928)

Morpeth Wansbeck

1923 1922

69 44

CW, 1879; pres., Scottish Miners, 1894–1912; pres, MFGB, 1912–21 lodge sec.; Durham Executive, 1909; junior Treasury minister, 1924

Yorkshire F. Hall (1855–1933) J. Guest (1867–1931) G. Hirst (1868–1933) T. W. Grundy (1864–1942) W. Lunn (1872–1942) T. Williams (1888–1967) W. Paling (1883–1971) J. Potts (1861–1938)

Normanton Hemsworth Wentworth Rother Valley Rothwell Don Valley Doncaster Barnsley

1905 1918 1918 1918 1918 1922 1922 1922

71* 58 57 61 53 38 43 64

agent, 1904–18; CC; Labour whip, 1919; Treasury minister, 1924 vice-pres., Yorkshire Miners, 1906–18; CC; JP; devout Wesleyan CW, 1894; Yorkshire Miners’ Council delegate; chair, UDC; JP CW, 1895; JP, 1907; mayor of Rotherham, 1915 CW, 1900; UDC, 1903–18; parl. sec., Overseas Trade Dept, 1924 CW, 1915; UDC, 1919; PPS, minister of agriculture, 1924 Yorks Miners’ Council, 1913; CC, 1919; PPS, minister of labour,1924 CW, 1890–1915; agent, 1915; CC; Methodist lay preacher

1918 1906 1922 1923 1923

55 66 68 63 51*

CW, 1903; agent, 1917; MFGB Exec., 1913, 1925; UDC, 1908–1917 CW; agent, 1901; MFGB vice-pres., 1922–3; minister for war, 1924 agent, 1889; pres., Lancashire Miners, 1908–29; UDC, 1889–1907; JP CW, 1884; JP, 1905; agent, 1910–33; MP, E. Manchester 1910–18 agent, 1913; St Helens councillor, 1919; PPS to S. Walsh, 1924

South Wales G. Barker (1858–1936) V. Hartshorn (1872–1931) C. Edwards (1867–1954) D. Watts Morgan (1867–1933) W. John (1878–1955) E. Davies (1875–1960) D. R. Grenfell (1881–1968) T. I. Mardy Jones (1879–1970) G. H. Hall (1881–1965) W. Jenkins (1871–1944)

Abertillery Ogmore Bedwelty Rhondda E. Rhondda W. Ebbw Vale Gower Pontypridd Aberdare Neath

1920 1918 1918 1918 1920 1920 1922 1922 1922 1922

68 54 59 58 47 51* 44 47* 44 55*

agent, 1908; Plebs League; MFGB Exec., 1911–21; JP CW; agent, 1905; pres., SWMF, 1922–4; post-master general, 1924 agent; JP; CC agent, 1898–1920; lt.-col., DSO; JP; Freemason; CC, 1926–28 CW, 1909; 8 months’ gaol arising from Tonypandy riots; agent, 1912 agent; JP, 1916 agent, 1916; JP, 1922; under-secretary to Clement Attlee, 1924 Ruskin; parliamentary agent UDC, 1908; CW, 1911 UDC, 1904; CC, 1907; JP; PPS to V. Hartshorn, 1924

Derbyshire F. Lee (1967–1941)

NE Derby

1922

58

CW, 1896; agent, 1914; Wesleyan laypreacher

Nottinghamshire G. A. Spencer (1872–1957) F. B. Varley (1885–1929)

Broxtowe Mansfield

1918 1923

53 40

CW; pres., Nottinghamshire Miners, 1912–26 CW, 1917; pres., Nottinghamshire Miners, 1918; CC, 1913–19

Cumberland T. Cape (1868–1947)

Workington

1918

57

pres., Cumberland Miners, 1906; agent and sec., 1916; JP

Notes: CC: member of county council; CW: checkweighman; JP: Justice of the Peace; PPS: parliamentary private secretary; Ruskin: Ruskin College, Oxford; UDC: member of urban district council; * indicates that only the year but not date of birth is known.

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Sources: R. Page Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle (London, 1953), pp. 550–1; J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vols 1–10 (London and Basingstoke, 1972–2000); M. Stenton, Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, vol. 3: 1919–45 (Brighton, 1979), vol. 4: 1945– 1979 (Brighton, 1981); W. Knox (ed.), Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918–39 (Edinburgh, 1984).

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Wigan Ince Farnworth Clayton Leigh


Lancashire J. A. Parkinson (1870–1941) S. Walsh (1859–1929) T. Greenall (1857–1937) J. E. Sutton (1862–1945) J. Tinker (1875–1957)

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Protagonists Table 2.5 The British coalfields, output and employment, 1925–1926

Coalfield

% output exported, 1925

South Wales Yorkshire

211,200

19.2

8.0

43.5

188,600

17.2

64.0

153,000

13.9

84.0

56,700

5.2

80.0

126,300

11.5

59.0

97,100

8.8

58,700

5.3

4,800

0.4

56,000

5.1

11,900

1.1

20,000

1.8

25,600

2.3

39.0

Scotland

19.0

South Derbyshire Nottingham Leicester

  

  Cannock Chase 

37.0

Warwickshire

North Staffs 3.2

No. employed as % of UK mining employment

68.0

  Northumberland 

Derbyshire

No. employed, January 1926

47.0

Durham

Lancashire and Cheshire

% output produced at a loss, 1925

21.0 59.0

35,400

South Staffs

6,500

0.6

Shropshire

3,500

0.3

North Wales

17,600

1.6

Cumberland

11,300

1.0

Forest of Dean

7,100

0.6

Somerset

5,100

0.5

Bristol

1,500

0.1

Kent

1,800

0.2

Total

1,099,700

100.0

Source: Report of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry (1925), vol. 3, pp. 91, 217, 179.



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agreement. The mood in the coalfields was one of determination to fight. The unemployment rate among miners was 28.5 per cent in Wales, 35 per cent in Lancashire, over 20 per cent in the NorthEast and Scotland, 18.5 per cent in Yorkshire, though only 8.5 per cent in Nottingham and Leicester, while 500 collieries had closed.22 Taking 1909–13 as 100, the index of average weekly earnings of miners reached 299.1 in 1920; it fell to 166.2 in 1922 but, still bearing the marks of recovery, was 175.6 in early 1925. In south Wales average annual earnings dropped from £252 in 1920 to £138 in 1925. For Scotland the figures were £213 and £138, for Durham £211 and £122, for Yorkshire and the East Midlands, £214 to £136. If in real terms the figures for 1925 represented an increase on the nadir of 1922, they remained from 15 to 20 per cent below the value of 1920.23 The miners worked and lived in oppressive conditions. In 1924, more than 1,000 underground workers were killed in accidents, a rate of 1.11 per 1,000 miners. For every million tons of coal sent to market, four miners died. In 1924, 180,000 miners were injured, over 4,000 ‘seriously’. Almost 20 per cent of the workforce suffered an incapacitating injury.24 Many, particularly in Scotland and south Wales, lived in hovels unfit for human habitation. Even in the north-east where standards were higher, more than 20 per cent lived in officially determined ‘overcrowded’ conditions. Linked to overcrowding and insanitary conditions were high rates of infant mortality. In parts of the north-east more than one child in ten died before they were a year old.25 Homes fit for heroes: as far as the miners were concerned they would not be cheated further. Having witnessed the suppression of their post-war hopes for a better world, they were not prepared to accept an even worse one. In this situation the MAGB’s intention to replace the 1924 agreement with a guarantee that 13 per cent of the industry’s proceeds would go to profits regardless of wages, a proposal which would end the national minimum wage and reduce the percentage payable on basis rates was simply a step too far. The MFGB calculated the impact of the owners’ proposals on average wages as follows in table 2.6. These were averages for all employees. In south Wales, hewers on piecework were likely to lose 4s. 6d. per shift; in Durham the figure was 2s. 10d. In several districts, the minimum subsistence rates for the lowest-paid workers would also be reduced.26 As Herbert Smith put it, the miners’ backs were to the wall. He was concerned not only with wages but with social

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Protagonists Table 2.6 MFGB calculation of impact of owners’ proposals on wages

District

Scotland Northumberland Durham South Wales Yorks, E. Midlands Lancs, N. Staffs, N. Wales S. Staffs Cumberland Forest of Dean

Present average per day

Reduction per day

New average per day

s.

d.

s.

s.

10 9 10 10 10 10 9 8 10 8

4 4 0 9 10 0 2 5 7 11

2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1

d. 1 4 9 10 0 7 8 7 7 3

8 7 7 7 9 8 7 6 8 7

d. 3 0 3 11 10 5 6 10 0 8

justice, ‘the status of the mineworker’ and with the future of mining trade unionism. He defiantly told the coalowners: ‘If you are attempting to break up the Federation you are making one of the biggest mistakes you have made in your lives.’27 The miners’ objectives were simple and straightforward: the status quo on wages, hours and the national minimum. The story of the TUC’s support, Baldwin’s strategic retreat on ‘Red Friday’, 31 July 1925, the government’s nine-month subsidy to maintain the status quo until April 1926 and the establishment of a Royal Commission are well documented. However, it should be noted that the subsidy may have stiffened the miners’ resolve.28 They were certainly prepared to confront the economic and human consequences of their uncompromising policy. In the aftermath of the report of the commission, Smith was stating in terms of ‘trade unionism pure and simple’ rather than of a great proletarian crusade: If the Miners retained their position for no reduction of wages, they were going to put upwards of 200,000 men out of work. They realised all that . . . It was a big proposition, but as they told the Owners, they had to face it. They were determined that if the country wanted coal, it had to give the men who got it a respectable living.29

At the heart of the report of the commission chaired by Sir Herbert Samuel (1870–1963) was an insistence on the wage reductions which the MFGB refused to accept. While Samuel recommended reorganization, amalgamations, cooperative sales schemes



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for marketing and selling coal, and state purchase of mining royalties, these were long-term measures. Immediate wage reductions were indispensable, although an extension of hours which the commissioners saw as intensifying the coal glut was rejected and the necessity for national agreements affirmed. The failure of Samuel to resolve matters left the two sides confronting each other from entrenched positions.30 Muted for much of the lockout, the coalowners were a dominant influence on it. As both Foster and Outram note, their goals and methods, if ruthless, were far from irrational.31 In line with state policy, their objective was to restore the market and curb labour costs. This entailed breaking the power of the MFGB as a regulator of terms and conditions and as an agent of politicization by returning collective bargaining to its ‘natural’ district level. Reorganization was an intrusion which provided no solution to the central issue of ‘overpriced’ labour. Reintroduction of the eighthour day could limit wage cuts but wages must reflect company profits, not an artificial national formula. What characterized the coalowners’ role was, as Outram points out, the MAGB’s dominance over other fractions of coal capitalists and their deployment of a zero-sum bargaining strategy to mobilize both other sections of capital, represented by the National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations, and the capitalist state. The MAGB’s integrated goals were single-mindedly pursued. Samuel’s proposal for wage cuts was grasped as a platform to build on, its other recommendations rejected. In the negotiations before the general strike the MAGB had already convinced Baldwin of the need for substantial wage cuts and believed that they had an understanding on repeal of the Seven Hours Act. Baldwin’s Conservative government set out its objectives in the dispute as: ‘1. To secure a rapid and general return to work. 2. To secure a fair and economic settlement. 3. To maintain the prestige of the government.’32 In practice, the ‘fairness’ was subordinated to the ‘economic’. By August as mild a politician as MacDonald could reflect: ‘The Cabinet . . . has been a very efficient, a very faithful and a very loyal sub-committee of the Owners’ Association.’33 If this simplified, it caught the substance of things. Baldwin (1867–1947) was a coalowner who avowed membership of ‘the class once called masters . . . and now capitalists’.34 His belief in industrial peace and a square deal was subordinate to restoration of British capitalism and curtailment of state intervention: ‘What

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this Government will not do is attempt to control the industries of the country . . . by any change in the basis of our system we should fall into a pit of misery and poverty.’ 35 Whether he explicitly stated that ‘all the workers of this country have got to take reductions in wages to help put industry on its feet’,36 there can be little doubt that this was implicit in state policy in 1925–6. As early as June 1925 he was blaming the miners, not the coalowners, for intransigence in refusing to accept further wage cuts.37 Baldwin was a flexible politician, as the subsidy after ‘Red Friday’ demonstrated. But it divided his party and stiffened his future resolve. With an absolute majority leavened with coalowners, he was empowered but also constrained to stick to the path of rectitude which for his party led to the defeat of the miners.38 This was the position of the minister of labour, Arthur SteelMaitland (1876–1935), an awkward right-winger educated at Rugby and Oxford. The president of the Board of Trade, Philip Cunliffe-Lister (1884–1972), a graduate of Winchester and Oxford, also intimately involved in the dispute, recorded in September: ‘. . . while the Miners have been unreasonable all through, the owners have on the whole been reasonable up till the last few weeks.’39 The secretary for mines, Colonel Lane-Fox (1870–1947), trained at Eton and Oxford, had like Cunliffe-Lister and the prime minister, interests in mining and saw his predominant purpose as breaking the stoppage. He disapproved of the autumn activities of Winston Churchill (1874–1965), Baldwin’s chancellor who briefly demonstrated that class interest need not completely extinguish equity.40 In contrast, William Joynson-Hicks (1865–1930), the home secretary, and Lord Birkenhead (1872–1930), who advised Baldwin, were unrepentant hawks. The attitude of senior civil servants was personified by Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966), permanent undersecretary for mines and later the author of Plain Words, who could see no way out of coal’s problems other than by a reduction of wages or increase in hours.41 The Cabinet secretary, Tom Jones (1870–1955), a man of liberal inclinations who saw his role constrained by the laissez-faire parameters of Baldwin’s government, noted the natural class bias of its personnel: It is impossible not to feel the contrast between the reception which Ministers give to a body of owners and a body of miners. Ministers are at ease at once with the former. They are friends jointly exploring a



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situation. There was hardly any indication of opposition or censure. It was rather a joint discussion of whether it were better to precipitate a strike or the unemployment which would result from continuing the present terms.42

As his latest biographer notes, ‘ “impartiality” operated within the parameters of the economic and political assumptions of Baldwin and his Cabinet.’43 These parameters were structured by the necessity to restore industrial and economic order, which ensured that Baldwin’s objective throughout was to get the miners back to work on reduced wages. As MacDonald had demonstrated when invoking the Emergency Powers Act in 1924, acceptance of constitutionalism imposed duties on governments in industrial disputes, regardless of political complexion. The regulations made under the Act were renewed throughout the lockout. They provided the government with sweeping powers over the supply and distribution of food, water, gas and electricity, the use of land, railways and roads, deployment of the military and police, summary arrest, free speech and public meetings. They were used against the miners throughout the dispute. The police facilitated the return to work and the Cabinet discussed action against Cook, ‘law or no law’; it even considered prosecuting the respected moderate Richards for describing a recent trial of miners as ‘a travesty of British justice’.44 MacDonald’s verdict of a drift towards a police state possessed substance. The Coal Emergency Regulations 1926 gave the state power over the requisitioning, supply and distribution of coal, which was rationed to both industry and domestic consumers. The nature of the state was seen in the appointment of coalowners and coal factors but not miners to the Emergency Committees responsible for operating the system under the control of local authorities, a handful of which such as Poplar and Pontypridd briefly refused to cooperate on the grounds that the committees’ function was to diminish the impact of the miners’ action.45 This was certainly the purpose and outcome of the government’s management of the supply of coal. The Mines Department declared that to keep industry going, ‘the policy of the government is to encourage the importation of coal from abroad’.46 On 2 June the Cabinet approved plans for the direct purchase of coal. Subsequently £3 million laid aside for a possible subsidy to the industry were used to buy foreign coal totalling 2.8 million tons,

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supplementing the direct effects of private enterprise. Despite dedication to non-intervention, the Home Office, Board of Trade and Mines Department produced regular bulletins on all aspects of the dispute, permeated by the imperatives of keeping coal flowing and ending the stoppage. The state also acted decisively to restrict the cash flow to miners and their families. The majority had been locked out and were not on strike, but a collective application for unemployment benefit submitted by the MFGB was rejected. While there was room for interpretation and manoeuvre, the Merthyr Tydfil judgment of 1900 denied poor relief to able-bodied men refusing to work. Money in the form of loans was only available for wives and children and while married miners or those not living with their families could benefit from this, single men in lodgings faced particular problems. Order 703 issued by the Ministry of Health on 5 May 1926 took a stringent line and thereafter Whitehall maintained pressure on Boards of Guardians.47 In September 1926 Churchill wrote to Baldwin: ‘We can hardly take the purely class view that owners, however unreasonable, are sacrosanct and inviolable.’48 Nonetheless, throughout the lockout, with one small exception, the state declined to use even mild coercion against the coal capitalists. Rather, it enhanced their bargaining power and undermined the MFGB’s position. Baldwin’s attempts to stem the flow of funds from Russia and his letter to America declaring that there was no deprivation in the coalfields, similarly intended to restrict relief, affirmed the limits of his dedication to a fair deal.49 It confirmed again just whose side the state was on.

THE CONTEST The failure of the protracted negotiations between the MFGB, TUC and the government to reach a successful conclusion before the lockout became operative pushed the General Council into issuing notices for a general strike to commence on 3 May 1926. Baldwin in consequence broke off talks and the die was cast. The general strike presented the miners with their best prospect of success; its termination by the General Council on 12 May on the basis of the MFGB’s refusal to accept the Samuel memorandum left them isolated and vulnerable. The MFGB maintained that the TUC had committed itself to supporting the miners’ demands on



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wages, hours and a national agreement in a series of resolutions from February 1926. It had handed over the conduct of the dispute to the TUC on this precise basis, yet the Samuel memorandum did not meet these demands. The miners pointed out that the memorandum had no authority: its author had explicitly stated that he could not bind the government, still less the MAGB. The document guaranteed nothing. It stated that there should be no ‘revision’ of wages until after assurances of reorganization of the industry. In the interim the subsidy would continue for a vague ‘reasonable period’ and a tripartite wages board would draw up a wages agreement for the industry. More immediately, the general strike would end, the owners would withdraw the lockout notices and the miners would return to work. The MFGB leaders believed, with justification, that these proposals involved the wage reductions they were mandated to oppose. They saw the TUC’s position of a return to the mines and termination of the general strike on the basis of no assurances from the government or the coalowners regarding the withdrawal of the lockout notices, or indeed anything else, as dissipating their bargaining power and presaging disaster for themselves and other workers.50 The question of who would control the dispute, the role of the miners and the TUC in making decisions about it was ill-defined. As far as the General Council was concerned, the MFGB had placed the direction of the dispute in their hands. They felt that the memorandum provided an equitable basis for negotiations and less reasonably, in the absence of promises from the other parties, that the miners should go back and the general strike terminate to allow negotiations. In face of the unquestionable and growing strength of the national stoppage and the enthusiastic commitment of the strikers, they believed that however long the strike lasted the miners would never change their position. Moreover, Baldwin would never negotiate while the workers threatened the constitution by remaining on strike. This argument might have merited negotiations about an orderly, agreed return to work. It is difficult to see how it justified abandoning without consultation a thus far successful general strike, which the TUC thought necessary on 3 May, just nine days later, on the basis of no negotiations, no withdrawal of the lockout notices, no guarantees of non-victimization of other workers and no acceptance of the Samuel memorandum by the government or coalowners. It was a debacle. An unprepared General Council had

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used the general strike as a bluff, and Baldwin had called their bluff. Now the TUC left the miners to their own devices. The government had prepared for a strike, hoped to face down the labour movement but decided that a confrontation was necessary. The coalowners had viewed the general strike as inevitable. For both Baldwin and the MAGB its defeat was invaluable: the miners’ allies had deserted the field and a battle with more favourable prospects could now proceed. The miners curbed their initial bitterness: the working class had supported them, it was the leaders, not the rank and file, who were to blame. When the MFGB conference assembled on 14 May in the aftermath of the general strike’s collapse, the delegates remained firm. With negligible exceptions the miners’ stoppage was complete. Its basis was the policy reaffirmed at the MFGB’s 9 April conference and subsequently ratified by districts: no increase in hours, no reduction in wages and a national minimum. In districts where notices were posted the miners refused to accept the coalowners’ revised terms and conditions and were locked out. In the north Midlands and in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Kent, south Yorkshire and Somerset, however, where no notices of reductions were posted, the miners were on strike.51 Nonetheless, the MFGB treated the situation as a national lockout and did not proceed to ballot the affiliated membership on the specific issue of action. The only leader to tentatively question this was George Spencer, and he was not supported by the other Nottinghamshire leaders.52 Such was the depth of commitment that mobilization was completed by the instructions of the Executive supported by the conference. Throughout the dispute there were periodic demands for a national ballot on its continuation from coalowners, politicians and press. One coalowner declared in The Times: ‘If the ballot were secret, taken in a constitutional manner, the men would go back to work immediately. Neither Mr Smith nor Mr Cook dares face a secret ballot.’53 In the face of the miners’ solidarity, such calls had little resonance. In the early weeks, the miners stuck to the demand for the status quo. However, the leadership showed some flexibility in response to continued calls for wage reductions. They outlined a ‘business union’ approach which would surely have sparked controversy given its implications for thousands of miners had it been taken further. On 23 May Herbert Smith stated:



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Let me repeat where I stand. Close uneconomic pits; put your selling price of inland coal so that it will pay an economic wage; let the owners, the workers, the general public have a voice in fixing that selling price and then if there has to be a reduction in wages I will face that position.54

Given the cost to the state of unemployment benefit and the government’s and employers’ adamant refusal to look at wages after reorganization of the industry, there was little chance of Smith having to face that position. But the miners did have to face their debilitating isolation. The MFGB had always been acutely aware of its weakness in a struggle with capital and the state and the necessity to secure the active support of workers who transported coal if inherent inequalities in power were to be addressed. In 1926 the capitulation of the TUC and its dissolution of workers’ solidarity with the miners was a factor of incalculable significance. As in 1921, the miners were now left to fight alone in a battle beginning in spring, in terms of the demand for coal and their bargaining power the worst time of the year; but in 1921 the MFGB had lost the battle. And unlike in 1921 the transport workers had already suffered a decisive defeat while relations with the General Council were embittered. Solidarity with the miners had been delivered in the general strike; it had been squandered and its repetition was unlikely.55 A reappraisal might have been thought necessary. But the MFGB’s stance remained firm, and isolated voices like those of the Nottinghamshire Executive member, Frank Varley, and members of the Northumberland Executive who argued that grasping the nettle of wage cuts might protect the miners from further concessions, were repudiated – in Nottinghamshire by the Executive and in Northumberland by a members’ ballot. Rank-and-file resilience and traditions of fighting alone were mobilized: ‘Hunton stood solid. Steeled in the ways of struggle for a century and a half, the Hunton people knew how to resist the pangs of hunger and the wiles of the traducers.’56 Across the coalfields all the Huntons stood solid. The press insisted that that the miners were being misrepresented by their leaders; more detached observers recorded, ‘the firm support of the vast majority of members whose resolution not to accept the owners’ terms was totally unshaken by the defection of their comrades in the other unions’.57 Inflexibility in May was crucial and set the mould for the rest of the stoppage.

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On the question of the miners returning to work on the basis of the Samuel memorandum, there can be only one judgement: the MFGB was right and the TUC wrong. Samuel proffered only promises. However, it has been suggested that while remaining out the miners should have accepted the memorandum as a basis for negotiations. This would have caused problems for Baldwin who would not easily have been able to discount Samuel’s authority.58 Quite apart from the fact that Baldwin did precisely that, in refusing to accept the memorandum, the coalowners would not entertain it. Fundamentally for the MFGB, wage reductions were implicit in the memorandum. Knowledge of the final terms in November casts a rosy light on what was available in May. But in May the miners were simply unwilling to cede control over wage cuts to an arbitration body: they remained unprepared to make major concessions without a substantial struggle.59 Baldwin’s position was embodied in his offer of 14 May; it was worse than the Samuel memorandum. It did not provide for withdrawal of the lockout notices, the reorganization proposals were diluted while renewal of the subsidy was tied to acceptance of wage reductions of 10 per cent pending final district settlements to be supervised by a wages board. Leadership necessitates confronting unpalatable realities but at times resisting them. The MFGB Executive felt it was better to fight on, and the 20 May conference was adamant.60 The view that MFGB leaders should have offered their own programme of wage reductions in return for maintenance of the seven-hour day is abstract, divorced from the actors, their goals and psychology, and the context. It was neither in their nature nor their mandate. The miners were determined to resist wage cuts and viewed the issue of hours as providing an opening to the enemy. Even those like Vernon Hartshorn and Varley, who were cut from more strategic, proactive cloth, were bound by loyalty to majority decisions and the awareness that they were not confronting compromising antagonists. Strategy and politics in a long-term bargaining relationship involving employers and the state do not always stop with the calculation of immediate possibilities of success and failure. On such a cold, closed calculation they were in this case strongly weighted towards defeat. Beyond this, however, long-term strategy may dictate an unequal and in all probability losing battle which nevertheless may impose high costs on opponents and put down a marker for the future. Moreover, the most rigorous political



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strategist knows that all struggle contains an element of gamble; and that something may turn up. Matters were extremely unpropitious but they were not determined. Running down coal stocks was unlikely to realize the miners’ bargaining goals. It just might prompt the government into minimizing wage reductions and orchestrating a fig-leaf national agreement. If the country was to be deprived of coal, centralized, strategic conduct of the dispute was crucial. This was, as the contest would demonstrate, precisely what the Federation lacked. Moreover, history in the shape of the 1921 lockout helped to deprive the MFGB of a key weapon. In 1921 the MFGB, yielding to the Triple Alliance leaders, instructed the locked-out safety men, responsible for maintaining the pits, to return to work. This, as G. D. H. Cole observed, ‘eliminate[d] the chief factor which would have necessitated a speedy settlement of the dispute’.61 The panicstricken attitude of Lloyd George and the coalowners to this threat to the mines through flooding demonstrated its potentially devastating impact. Yet in 1926 the MFGB ruled it out. There were real constraints. In the light of the earlier experience there was some feeling that pulling out the pump men would alienate public opinion and divert attention from the miners’ central demands. Moreover, in 1921 many safety men were victimized and established local breakaways affiliated to the National Federation of Colliery Enginemen, Boilermen and Mechanics, a TUC union led by Robert Shirkie, formerly a member of the MFGB Executive. In April 1926 the MFGB agreed that Shirkie’s members would continue to work but would not involve themselves in any way in the production of coal. Safety men in the MFGB also remained at work. While there were probably insuperable difficulties in securing a general withdrawal, the MFGB’s hesitancy over campaigning for even the partial use of the tactic their adversaries feared most suggested their defensive mentality in 1926.62 Impeding the import and movement of coal was central to success and entailed winning the support of transport workers. On 19 May Cook wrote to the leaders of the railway unions requesting an embargo on movement of coal from docks and sidings. The joint reply of Charlie Cramp of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and John Bromley of the Amalgamated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) was unequivocal: they had discharged their responsibilities to the miners in the general strike and were now bent on securing re-employment of their own

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members. The response from Ernest Bevin of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) which represented lorry drivers and dockers was similarly negative but understandable. The experience of 1921, when the rail and transport unions had imposed a national embargo, was cited to justify inaction. Then the response had been far from complete, enabling the employers to raise the stakes by suspending workers, hiring blacklegs and provoking strikes. An embargo had not worked in 1921; its chances of success in 1926 were immeasurably slimmer.63 In the aftermath of the general strike the rail union leaders had signed agreements suspending the guaranteed week and accepting that thousands of their members could return to work only when traffic permitted. Their purpose was to placate, not further to antagonize the employers who were interpreting the agreements in exacting fashion, and like Bevin they had pledged themselves to oppose unofficial action by their members. They wanted the miners back at work. Jimmy Thomas, Cramp and Bromley in particular blamed the general-strike fiasco on the miners and could see no improvement in their members’ position until coal production restarted. There were strikes in the docks but they were over removal of volunteers introduced during the general strike, not over a boycott of coal. The latter, Bevin argued, would simply provoke further victimization and, if it was answered, another general strike which could not be sustained.64 Throughout the lockout coal was moved by railwaymen and transport workers. There were sporadic direct appeals by Cook and Smith, and on 15 June by the MFGB formally, to workers to boycott coal. They were likewise unsuccessful. Only occasional acts of solidarity are documented, such as the dismissal of a railway guard for refusing to help move coal from a colliery yard.65 The MFGB played no stimulating or coordinating role in picketing transport workers. This was left to the districts. There was negligible action by district officials or the miners themselves. Picketing was difficult to mount, given the geographical dispersion of miners, problems of transport and finance, access to colliery sidings and, not least, heavy policing. The strategic, mass flying picketing of the 1970s and 1980s to halt the movement of coal was conspicuous by its absence. As soon as work resumed on the railways, it was reported: ‘a large amount of coal has left South Wales under the Government control scheme for other parts of the country. The coal was raised and awaiting transport before the



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miners ceased work and no objection is therefore raised by other trade unionists to handling it.’66 Home Office fears of extended and successful picketing proved groundless. By the end of May coal was being moved by road and rail from sidings and depots in south Wales to the north-east, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire.67 There were incidents. In Yorkshire, folk memory has mobile pickets using an old charabanc. In Durham miners attempted to stop lorries by rolling a tree across the road, leading to eleven arrests. Near Barnsley 400 miners overturned a lorry. In the West Riding coal lorries were stoned and 100 men marched to Barugh Power station at 2 a.m. and threatened the workers. Such ‘processions’ were rarely well organized: government reports claimed that six police arrested the ringleaders and dispersed the rest. In the same fashion a crowd of miners attempting to stop coal being moved from Silkstone colliery were dispersed by a baton charge and several arrested and fined. Harsh, effective policing and tough sentences deterred pickets. In south Yorkshire police batoned and arrested fifteen pickets who had confronted a lorry driver armed with a gun. The pickets each received three months’ hard labour. By June the authorities were reporting minimal interference with the movement of coal. In Millfield, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, one miner remembered, ‘opposite where we lived was a steelworks. For the first three months of the strike coal had been poured into the smelting yard. Picketing had not succeeded in preventing this; there was a “special” for every yard of ground.’68 The transport workers reassured themselves that they were not handling coal newly produced by blacklegs. They applied similar reasoning to foreign coal. The boycott imposed by the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) ended with the general strike. ITF secretary Edo Fimmen stated on 21 May: ‘. . . dockers and other transport workers would be prepared to renew the embargo of coal for Great Britain while the miners’ conflict lasts provided that the British transport workers would refuse to handle coal during the dispute.’69 No such refusal was forthcoming. The MFGB had more purchase on the International Miners’ Federation (IMF) which in periodic declarations promised action. After its conference on 24 June, the IMF announced: ‘It regards the importation of foreign coal as one of the chief weapons in the attempt to defeat the miners. It resolves still further to intensify the efforts to prevent coal coming into Britain.’70 The fact

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that the speaker was Frank Hodges, the former MFGB secretary, who had no faith in the stoppage and did his best to undermine it, was less important than the reluctance of foreign miners to take action. The only encouragement the MFGB received was the oneday solidarity strike of French miners in August.71 Attempts to picket the ports appear to have been episodic and unsuccessful. There were reports in the Communist press in July that Bevin had visited Bristol to quash moves for an embargo. At Methil, Fife, pickets attempted to halt the discharge of Belgian coal. Although a minority of the dockers were unionized, they voted to stop work until, faced with the threat of no unemployment pay, they were instructed to return by union officials.72 Even if a more offensive strategy and more imaginative methods had been employed to picket transport workers, it was unlikely they would have overcome the fundamental difficulty: the weak position of transport workers after the general strike made solidarity action too expensive. In practice the miners’ leadership at district and local level thought in terms of an immobile war of position rather than a war of manoeuvre; they believed the miners would have to secure better terms through their own endurance. In many localities in the first months there was an atmosphere of ‘phoney war’. A study of a Yorkshire village reports: ‘. . . there was nothing to picket, no major railway or trunk roads; no one was likely to go underground . . . Consequently there was no call for meetings or action from the local leaders.’73 Most miners were prepared to leave matters in the hands of colliery activists and trusted the district and national leadership, although attitudes varied. In the same village where Cook was ‘canonized twice nightly’, some older miners grumbled about his lack of gravitas.74 The failure to stem the supply of coal in its initial phase was fatal to the success of the dispute. But industrial action possesses its own momentum and its own rationality divorced from the estimations of disengaged analysts. After weeks of standing firm, of a new routine, of significant mental and financial investment in the struggle, for many miners there could be no movement, no substantial concessions. But there was movement elsewhere. As the continued flow of coal limited the impact of the stoppage the coalowners made a crucial breakthrough. On 15 June Baldwin broke finally and decisively with the report of the Royal Commission. He unveiled a bill which would enable an eight-hour day to be worked. It was



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accompanied by proposals on reorganization but, as the authorities reported, the miners were clear as to the devastating thrust of the initiative: ‘the men are not deceived by talk of reorganization helping them . . . that is of no immediate use to them.’75 Sustained pressure by the MAGB had paid off: the Cabinet now agreed that the only way to avert starvation wages was by miners working longer. Nonetheless the government declined to tie the issue of wage reductions formally to that of hours. They believed that they had an understanding with the coalowners that in the light of the bill, current wage levels would continue for three months; that thereafter the districts would offer at least the 1921 level for eight hours; and that this would satisfy the MFGB’s demand for a national agreement. Having already determined that there would be no national agreement, the MAGB simply disregarded this ‘understanding’.76 Armed, as MacDonald put it, with knuckledusters by Baldwin, they had moved forward and added extra hours to the bargaining agenda. The miners now faced indeterminate but substantial wage cuts and a longer working day. The attitude of the coalowners was displayed in profitable west Yorkshire where they announced that an 85:15 division of future proceeds to wages and profits would replace the current ratio of 87:13. For once Baldwin acted, threatening to delay the bill, and for once the owners retreated.77 The MFGB responded by using Parliament more vigorously and by mending fences with a TUC General Council worried about extension of hours in other occupations and anti-union legislation. The MPs rose to the challenge. Deploying personal experience, they indicted the government with logic and emotion. Baldwin bore the brunt of the assault. Members recalled his promise that legislation on hours would require the agreement of both the MAGB and the MFGB. They emphasized his personal potential to benefit if extra hours increased profits. A telling case was made against the owners’ organization of work, conditions in the mines, the implications for health and safety of working an extra hour, and the government’s argument that miners, not their families, would bear the cost of a longer working day. Even MacDonald was shaken, declaring: ‘This is not peace – this is a sword’,78 although not to the extent of moving a vote of no confidence, which, despite the Conservatives’ majority, might have constituted useful propaganda. The thoughtful moderate Hartshorn articulated the feelings of rank-and-file miners, branding Baldwin: ‘the greatest

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enemy of the working classes that this last generation has produced’. He had thrown ‘the whole weight of the Government machine in this country behind and around the coalowners’.79 Contrary to government prophecy, the bill, which became law on 7 July, did not weaken the miners’ resolve – in some areas, particularly the north-east, it hardened it – but it did undermine their bargaining power. On 15 July, in the aftermath of the ITF’s reiteration that it could take no action while British workers were moving coal, the TUC declared in response to MFGB pressure that it possessed no powers to initiate an embargo and the railway unions stressed again that it was impossible. Deep distrust remained. The miners insisted that the General Council’s services in breaking the negotiating impasse were not required. But their deteriorating position was reflected in requests that the TUC mount a campaign for financial assistance.80 If money represents the sinews of war, the miners were continuing hostilities severely handicapped. Some districts had not recovered financially from the 1921 lockout and the drain of unemployment. In Lanarkshire, the union had 32,000 members but commenced the lockout with only £4,000.81 Table 2.7 indicates the limited resources available in the English and Welsh districts. These were supplemented by the MFGB’s central fund made up of donations from the British and international labour movements. Of its total of £1,813,680, 64 per cent, by far the largest portion, came from Russia, 10.5 per cent from British trade unions, 9 per cent from the TUC, 6 per cent from the Women’s Committee for Relief of Miners’ Wives and Children and 1.8 per cent from local Labour Parties and trades councils. The largest donations from British unions were from the Post Office Workers (£26,115), Distributive Workers (£14,123) and the Amalgamated Weavers (£5,000). Small unions such as the Nelson Weavers (£3,966) were more generous than the niggardly largest unions: the Transport Workers gave £3,690, the Engineers £3,395, the Railwaymen £3,159 and the General and Municipal Workers £999. Despite the size of the central fund, the amounts paid per member were paltry. Financial solidarity from the organized working class was extremely limited.82 Some leaders were, however, prepared to accept help from other quarters, particularly in light of the legislation on hours. As with a variety of similar initiatives, Cook’s negotiations with Walter Layton and Seebohm Rowntree were personal, secretive, abortive

Table 2.7 Trade union funds and dispute benefit, 1926–1927 Union

South Wales Yorkshire Durham Northumberland Lancashire Derbyshire Nottinghamshire North Wales Warwickshire North Staffs Cumberland Cannock Chase Leicestershire S. Derbyshire Pelsall (Walsall) Bristol Kent S. Staffordshire

Membership, 1925 129,155 164,196 155,773 43,482 72,902 43,000 34,767 14,224 11,500 10,679 10,036 8,102 7,428 6,227 5,508 1,635 1,505 1,031

1925 103,278 492,712 141,357 53,395 115,796 250,054 9,979 11,886 10,689 –39,861 5,890 2,974 24,029 11,612 3,461 941 –3,134 1,715

Union funds (£), 1926

1927

54,709 –120,490 114,767 15,058 9,785 43,461 14,485 1,431 6,295 –37,622 –1,770 1,847 3,687 –359 –244 671 –3,654 779

74,338 –6,219 91,587 26,029 35,092 53,211 14,095 4,733 5,498 –39,732 811 2,634 7,469 164 1,172 336 –2,845 1,081

MFGB disbursements (£), 1926 317,763 345,806 293,812 86,417 169,588 69,260 47,398 21,932 19,460 12,422 12,381 10,042 4,402 4,213

Dispute pay (£), 1926 346,949 1,057,158 352,364 126,826 316,646 279,767 60,190 32,395 29,399 34,521 30,420 19,343 36,774 24,791 15,335 15,660 n/a 4,569

Dispute pay per member (£), 1926 2.6 6.4 2.3 2.9 4.3 6.5 1.7 2.3 2.6 3.2 3.0 2.4 5.0 4.0 2.8 9.5 n/a 4.4

Notes: The MFGB disbursement to the Midland Miners’ Federation (which included Warwickshire, North and South Staffordshire and Walsall unions) was £116,745. The dispute pay per member has been calculated using the 1925 membership figures given the substantial losses of membership in some unions by the end of 1926. The MFGB also gave £186,608 to the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers. Sources: Reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for the years 1926–8; MFGB, General Statement of Receipts and Payments for the fourteen months ending 30 June 1927.

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and dubious. They reflected, against popular stereotypes, the leadership’s desire to settle and its willingness to compromise, within limits, as the dispute progressed. Instead, the MFGB turned to the churches: the Executive perceived the proposals brokered by the bishop of Lichfield as an opportunity.83 By July the bishops’ memorandum had strong attractions. The miners would return to work on the 30 April terms and conditions, the subsidy would be renewed and negotiations would proceed over a national agreement. The sting was in the tail: in the likely event of failure to agree, there would be arbitration over wages and apparently, although this was disputed, over hours. As their rejection by government and coalowners showed, the proposals never constituted a viable basis for a settlement. What was in contention was the value of their acceptance as a propaganda weapon in mobilizing public opinion. The episode suggested that the direction of the lockout by the MFGB depended on a relatively small number of activists; the intransigence of many of them; the difficulties which the MFGB leadership faced in shaping positive initiatives; and the constraints of miners’ democracy. The Executive’s endorsement of the memorandum came under criticism and the conference decided on a district vote.84 Rejection of the proposals by some 35,000 votes disclosed some confusion. Scotland’s 80,000 votes were not cast either way, while Yorkshire’s 150,000 votes were cast against on the basis of a branch vote of 1,488 to 1,465, a margin of 23 votes.85 The leaders, notably Cook and Smith, had done their utmost to move the membership. Their rejected efforts foundered on the opposition of the activists, the majority of whom perceived even propaganda concessions as a compromise too far. As the Mines Department put it: The recent votes on the Bishops’ proposals are the outcome of different expressions of opinion by local leaders. Those ‘for’ have voted with the intention of putting upon the Government the onus of blame if no attempt at compromise is made. Those ‘against’ are loath to admit arbitration on the wages question on the lines proposed.86

Perhaps a valuable opportunity to win wider support was lost but in the absence of opinion polls it is difficult to assess how ‘the general public’ thought about the dispute. The press, excluding the Daily Herald and the left-wing weeklies, generally supported a return to work. The miners and their supporters could take some



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comfort from parliamentary by-elections, particularly Labour’s success in winning North Hammersmith on 28 May in a contest fought over the general strike and mining lockout. Elsewhere results were mixed. At Chelmsford Labour doubled its vote but still came bottom of the poll. At Hull Commander Kenworthy, a defector to Labour from the Liberals, increased his vote but at Howden the Conservative support remained steady. Perhaps the most successful public projection of the miners’ case and indictment of the government came when, with the dispute safely over, MacDonald belatedly brought forward a vote of censure on 8 December.87 Central to the press offensive – despite clear evidence to the contrary over the bishops’ proposals – was the charge that the MFGB leadership was ignoring its members’ desire to forsake the field. But in the early part of the lockout there is little evidence that activist democracy failed to reflect the views of the ‘ordinary’ miner. Wilfrid Crook, a young American academic who travelled through the coalfields between June and September, described how decisions were taken in the districts, emphasizing rank-and-file acquiescence in left-wing influence at the lodges: In many cases the Checkweighman, often the local union secretary, would collect the ballots at the pithead, ‘in two hats’. If the vote were taken in the Lodges it was more often than not a vote by show of hands. The younger enthusiasts, often Minority Movement members, would run the meetings, and the rest of the men, always easy-going preferring peace, did not risk the effect of attending or of making protest. Hence the decisions would more frequently than not be of the ‘left’ variety.88

The small but vital layer of activists who had sustained the lodges through the 1920s now maintained the stoppage. Organizing, arguing, they carried the membership with them on the basis that where the TUC had failed they could succeed by relying on their own efforts. Historians have neglected these key, sometimes unknown, often forgotten, trade unionists such as Edward Dunn, the branch secretary remembered as ‘the man of the strike’ in Maltby, south Yorkshire, the branch president, Jack Kitchen and the council delegate, Hughie Ross. Or Eddie Collins, the delegate to the Yorkshire Council from the Denaby Main Branch; or Jimmy Mitford and Bill Avis who led the stoppage in Throckley, Northumberland.89 In company with hundreds like them who held things

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together in the localities, they deserve greater recognition of their role in making mining trade unionism. Even in the ‘honeymoon period’ they encountered problems such as outcropping for domestic coal passing over to commercial exploitation; on the whole these were manageable.90 However, as the contest moved through its fourth month, a challenge from below became apparent. Women had played an important role in the economy of the lockout, as they would later in picketing, but financial problems were intensifying. In districts such as Nottingham and south Wales, benefit was always dependent on subventions from the Federation fund. In Yorkshire the initial position was relatively favourable and for the first five weeks there was lockout pay of £1 for members, 10s. for pit lads and 2s. for children. But on 7 June these scales were halved and a week later benefit was halted.91 There were seventy-seven Poor Law unions in mining areas in England and Wales; forty-one provided some relief but to fewer than 60 per cent of miners’ families. The guardians seem to have been most supportive in Yorkshire and Durham, where 80 per cent of miners’ families received relief, but even here there was diversity. Even within one district, as in Nottinghamshire, relief varied, from parsimonious to generous, according to the financial state of a particular board, its members’ attitudes and the degree of government supervision. In parts of Yorkshire significant levels of relief were maintained into November; the national pattern was one of reductions in scale and termination of relief by the autumn.92 There were similar variations in the provision of school meals by local authorities. Here Durham led the field, followed by south Wales, although internal diversity within coalfields was again emphasized by the difference in meals served in Monmouthshire and Carmarthen compared with Glamorgan.93 As pressure mounted on the primitive welfare state, collective relief efforts also came under strain. The communal kitchens sustained stomachs and resistance, bound the relatively inactive rank and file together and maintained the stoppage. One observer noted: The menfolk set to ordering and buying of food, securing coal and firewood, boil water and scrub floors . . . The women come on in relays and wait and serve . . . self-reliance and cooperation is the keynote to the whole thing . . . [the kitchens] promote self-culture . . . many people have glimpsed a wider and fuller life.94


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The south Wales leader James Griffiths remembered: After the meal there would be meetings and every official was under an obligation to be present. Then there would be singing, carnival band competitions . . . a spirit developed which I don’t think I have seen or experienced on any other occasion except perhaps during the Blitz.95

But by the end of the summer, even in areas such as south Wales with strong union and community bonds, the resources of resistance were running low. Hardship did not directly impel thoughts of a return to work: it provided a seedbed for demoralization. So did the growing supply of imported coal, curbing the impact of the dispute on industry. In June Churchill had warned the Cabinet of ‘the serious financial position of the country which was likely to be aggravated by any continuance of the coal strike’.96 He emphasized ‘the terrible cost to the nation’ and the deleterious impact on trade and taxation. That month the Board of Trade reported ‘a general cessation’ in the heavy iron and steel trade; the wire trade was ‘practically at a standstill’; in electrical engineering there were warnings of closures within three weeks; in textiles, lack of orders rather than lack of coal was the main problem; in the Potteries factories were closing every week; railways had cut services ‘very considerably’ but had stocks for eight to ten weeks. Unemployment continued to affect industries such as iron and steel, pottery, textiles and shipbuilding throughout the remainder of the dispute.97 Table 2.8 suggests that until August the amount of homeproduced coal was negligible and the market was dependent on imports. Coal stocks, high in May, were halved between June and September, but in summer consumption was low: in some weeks in August imports exceeded consumption. The stoppage had an impact. But its impact was restricted by its timing and by imported coal. With the onset of autumn, market circumstances became more favourable but domestic production gradually increased and the level of imports was sustained so that coal stocks rose slowly in the final two months of the dispute. The import and distribution of coal by capital and the state was central in undermining the stoppage. Government efforts were ancillary, but as the lockout ended the Cabinet was informed that: ‘The steady arrival and distribution of Government cargoes has not only been of great value in meeting urgent needs but has also had an effect in steadying prices.’98 The coalowners had always been prepared to sit

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Table 2.8 Government estimates of coal consumption, imports, domestic output and stocks, June–November 1926 Week ended

Consumption

Imports

5 June 12 June 19 June 26 June 3 July 10 July 17 July 24 July 31 July 7 August 14 August 21 August 28 August 4 September 11 September 18 September 25 September 2 October 9 October 16 October 23 October 30 October 6 November 13 November 20 November 27 November

914,500 905,000 880,000 869,000 862,000 851,000 863,000 882,000 892,500 857,500 904,500 917,500 918,500 940,500 951,500 961,500 972,500 983,500 1,154,500 1,212,000 1,334,500 1,407,500 1,497,000 1,650,000 1,763,500 1,813,500

59,000 117,000 181,000 284,000 451,000 492,000 607,000 636,000 845,000 950,000 970,000 916,000 1,000,000 950,000 850,000 800,000 868,000 800,000 950,000 700,000 841,000 942,000 934,000 800,000 650,000 650,000

Projected output from mines 30,000 40,000 55,000 65,000 80,000 90,000 120.000 130,000 100,000 120,000 130,000 200,000 230,000 300,000 400,000 450,000 600,000 700,000 1,000,000 1,150,000 1,150,000 1,300,000 1,500,000 1,600,000 1,700,000

Stock 7,500,000 6,600,000 5,800,000 5,100,000 4,600,000 4,300,000 4,000,000 3,630,000 3,460,000 3,380,000 3,324,000 3,195,000 3,159,000 3,090,000 3,288,500 2,916,000 2,903,000 3,319,500 3,086,500 3,274,500 3,179,500 3,191,000 3,288,500 3,438,500 3,513,500 3,663,500

Note: The Mines Department weekly bulletin contained estimated data on weekly coal stocks and consumption as well as projections of supply and demand for the following weeks. The figure for the stock at the end of the week was calculated from the initial stock minus consumption plus imports and domestically produced coal. The projections for consumption and imports were revised in subsequent bulletins and some allowance was made for coal consumed by ‘industries for which we have no record of consumption and stocks’. Where available, these more accurate but only partial figures have been included here, with the result that the arithmetic relating to coal stocks becomes incorrect. The projections of output from coal mines appear to be very rough estimates. The data in this table should therefore be treated only as a general indicator of the levels of supply and demand. Source: PRO, CAB 27/333 and 334, Mines Department bulletins.



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it out. Lacking control over the inward movement of coal, the MFGB lacked the strategic power to inflict sufficient damage on industry and the economy and thus qualitatively to change the bargaining position of Baldwin’s government. The pressures on miners were greater and some of them broke first. Attrition took its toll: if talk of the stoppage’s impact on industry kept most miners’ hopes up, some could see growing deprivation but no progress, sense no way forward, discern no way out. Overall the numbers returning remained derisory (see tables 2.9 and 2.10). But in Cannock Chase and Warwickshire, where the first breaches were made, and then subsequently in Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire, growing advocacy of district settlements began to threaten the integrity of the district unions and the unity of the Federation. As soon as the first gap opened in the miners’ ranks, the police poured in. The Midland Federation delegate told the 16 August MFGB conference that thousands of men were working in Cannock and Warwickshire. Moreover: Every colliery is protected by the police. We cannot get to the colliery. We cannot speak to any one. We have no means of approaching them . . . they won’t come to the meetings. We have prosecutions going on galore, every week, every day nearly, even women and children who are walking alongside these people actually with a toy drum are taken before the magistrates and are convicted very readily.99

The MFGB figures probably deflate and the government figures inflate the numbers returning, but on either index by September there was cause for concern. The threat which most Midlands miners had faced in April was minimal. After four months the relatively good terms on offer were enticing. The smaller stake they had in the dispute compared with miners in the export districts combined with consensual traditions of industrial relations, articulate advocacy of retreat and the lack of perceptible success of what was now a marathon struggle to swing the balance against the MFGB.100 Once the return reached significant proportions, it became impossible to reverse it. As one Welsh activist put it: It is one thing to fight on with determination while all the men are idle but it is another when the work has started and you are idle. There is the prospect that your place will be filled, that you will be idle for months, and perhaps for ever, after the dispute is over. You wonder every day if some of the others are going to go back to work, and if you will be left out to be penalised in the end.101

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Table 2.9 MFGB reports of numbers returning to work, July–November 1926, as a percentage of numbers employed January 1926 30 July Bristol Cleveland Cokemen Cumberland Derbyshire Durham Enginemen Forest of Dean Kent Lancashire Leicester Midlands North Wales Northumberland Notts Scotland Somerset South Derby South Wales Yorkshire Total:

16 Aug.

2 Sept.

29 Sept.

10 Nov.

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

480 0.8 250 0.2 n/a 100 1.4 6 0.3 50 0.1 0

1,793 3.1 250 0.2 0 6,500*

3,400 5.8 250 0.2 n/a 625 8.8 6 0.3 1,500 1.5 480 4.0 17,300 19.0 754 4.3 1,420 2.5 8,000 14.3 2,000 1.6 0

10,600 18.0 250 0.2 1,400 2,200 31.0 250 13.9 1,600 1.6 2,400 20.2 34,000 37.4 2,000 11.4 2,000 3.5 16,000 28.6 3,260 2.6 0

400 8.3 250 0.1 400 0.2

900 18.8 720 0.3 3,598 1.9

0 n/a 0 150 1.3 40,000 68.1 2,397 1.7 n/a 4,000 56.3 900 50.0 15,500 16.0 6,700 56.3 58,000 63.7 5,500 31.3 6,000 10.6 44,000 78.6 5,450 4.3 1,400 27.5 4,500 93.8 6,000 2.8 30,169 16.0

36,785 3.3

81,178 7.4

230,666 21.0

6,000 6.6 40 0.2 450 0.8 500 0.9 120 0.1 0 100 2.1 100 0.0 0 8,196 0.7

8 0.4 250 0.3 50 0.4 11,000 12.1 92 0.5 900 1.6 1,700 3.0 755 0.6 25 0.5 150 3.1 100 0.0 300 0.2 14,521 1.3

Note: Some districts included safety men and outcroppers in their reports while others did not. MFGB estimates of the total numbers working therefore do always not match the sum of district returns. * The Forest of Dean figure for 16 August appears most likely to be a misprint. Source: MFGB, Minutes of Proceedings, 1926.

28 June

8 July

25 Aug.

4 Sept.

15 Oct.

28 Oct.

11 Nov.

25 Nov.

231 0.2

274 0.2

428 0.3

2,709 2.1

3,724 2.9

18,507 14.7

24,734 19.6

34,508 27.3

53,847 42.6

Division 2 471 Northern 0.2 (Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland)

914 0.4

1,114 0.5

2,775 1.3

2,925 1.3

5,318 2.4

15,456 7.0

18,418 8.3

27,620 12.5

Division 3 Yorkshire

591 0.3

910 0.5

525 0.3

2,982 1.6

3,705 2.0

19,684 10.4

27,521 14.6

36,410 19.3

53,177 28.2

1,119 0.9

1,460 1.1

820 0.6

13,214 10.1

22,166 16.9

83,232 63.3

86,322 65.7

99,471 75.7

108,961 82.9

Division 5 Lancs and N. Wales

n/a

535 0.5

228 0.2

2,253 2.0

3,420 3.0

32,352 28.2

28,244 24.6

38,372 33.5

70,336 61.3

Divisions 6 and 7 South Wales

18 0.0

101 0.0

127 0.1

10,949 5.2

10,906 5.2

16,813 8.0

18,954 9.0

22,187 10.5

36,291 17.2

6,428 6.0

6,485 6.1

29,055 27.3

31,412 29.5

60,986 57.3

61,151 57.4

70,987 66.7

78,256 73.5

11,321 1.0

9,727 0.9

63,937 5.8

78,258 7.1

236,892 21.5

262,382 23.9

320,353 29.1

428,488 39.0

Division 1 Scotland

Division 4 North Midland (Notts, Derbys, S. Derbys, Leics)

Division 8 2,408 Midlands/Southern 2.3` (N & S Staffs, Cannock Chase, Warwickshire, Kent, Bristol, Somerset, Forest of Dean Total

4,839 0.4

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Sources: NA, CAB27/333, 334, Supply and Transport Committee information bulletins, 1926; Colliery Guardian.

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Table 2.10 Mines Inspectorate’s estimates of numbers returning to work, as a percentage of numbers employed, January 1926

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Militant miners could simultaneously condemn in ritualistic class terms and understand in individual, human terms those broken by the struggle and their motivations: They vary in type. What they have in common is a shrinking away from any social responsibility, they can be expert at fawning on the boss, almost serf-like in appreciation of authority . . . One of my own firm friends, young, vital and naturally loving the bright lights went back . . . He was not a rat; the sheer boredom of non-preoccupation with the pit that at least gave him as a single man a reasonable social life were denied him, coupled with family pressure . . . all this finally caused him to make the break. It was a deep, sad blow to me. He was blacklisted from our home forever. Many more young people were attracted back by the apparent hopelessness.102

A further demobilizing factor was the implacability of the coalowners. The decision of the MFGB’s 17 August conference to enter unconditional negotiations was answered only by the owners’ full hand: steep wage reductions, an eight-hour day and district agreements. Even the Mines Department despaired of the strategic inertia of the MAGB and their command of their constituents: ‘. . . they appear to sit still and do nothing; that may be policy or tactics . . . the individual Coal Owners allow themselves to be dragged behind the larger Coal Owners.’103 The MFGB moved: for the first time they signalled a willingness to accept wage cuts on the basis of a national agreement. The ensuing negotiations presided over by Churchill, who was still worried about the effect on the economy, witnessed his attempt to break the deadlock by yet another revamp of the proposal of a national arbitration tribunal. It would supervise district agreements and possess powers to determine wages and hours, thus establishing a framework national agreement. He argued that this was based on the bargain with the coalowners which had produced the Eight Hour Act.104 The coalowners simply held the ground they had gained. They gambled on their invulnerability to state pressure and the prospect of a victory which would give them everything. They refused to bargain, declaring that the MAGB no longer had power to negotiate nationally and that district agreements represented a now inviolable norm. Churchill claimed that had the government understood that this was their position it would never have introduced the Eight Hours Act and threatened to legislate for a tribunal. But he could not carry the Cabinet, which largely accepted Cunliffe-



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Lister’s position: ‘We have lost that control of the conduct of affairs which we should have retained if we had insisted on the owners’ agreeing to our terms before we passed the Eight Hours Act.’105 The coalowners had outmanoeuvred the government and as Tom Jones noted: ‘The newspapers ask: Is it conceivable that a Conservative Government will coerce the owners . . . and the assumption is, No . . .’106 On Baldwin’s return from holiday, pressure from his party and the National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations, which rallied round the coalowners and offered its affiliates’ difficulties not as a rationale for concessions but as further justification for decisively defeating the miners, precipitated the demise of Churchill’s scheme. Baldwin’s diluted version was later rejected by the MFGB on a decisive district vote of 737,000 to 42,000.107 The miners held on. For the majority each initiative raised new hopes for peace with dignity. When they were dashed they were not prepared to accept what they regarded as unjust, humiliating, unmanly terms. Smith spoke for thousands when he said to Churchill on 26 August: ‘I am here to get an honourable settlement . . . We can carry this fight on a bit further yet . . . we are forced to fight on; you force us to do it, because we are not prepared to extend the hours.’108 The MFGB’s realistic acceptance that all that could be expected from the labour movement was an element of political and financial support and that this should not be endangered can be seen from the low-key decisions they took about the TUC and the Labour Party conferences. They were determined to keep the TUC away from the dispute and their suspicion was reciprocated. The General Council found the continuing struggle a reproach and an embarrassment: they wanted it ended so that the disastrous pages of 1925–6 in the annals of trade unionism could be finally turned.109 Nonetheless, it was the Federation which had taken the initiative in ‘the June Pact’, the calling off of the TUC’s postmortem conference on the general strike on the grounds that recriminations would not assist the struggle over the Eight Hours legislation. At the Congress it supported against left-wing opposition a pious resolution, moved by Smillie, urging only financial support. At the Labour Party conference it accepted a resolution which promised only future nationalization as the solution to the miners’ immediate predicament in the teeth of opposition from the left and from miners’ wives.110

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But now in desperation it was forced on to the offensive by rankand-file pressure, although Cook and Smith had strong doubts. The 7 October MFGB conference supported an MMM-inspired resolution from south Wales, demanding reversion to the demands for the April status quo, withdrawal of safety men, an embargo and a levy on all trade unionists, mobilization of MPs to tour the coalfields and the granting of greater control over the dispute to the leadership. This was affirmed in a district vote.111 Again the day was carried by the activists. The authorities deplored ‘the farce of “consulting” the men’, noting that only 80 out of 800 Cambuslang miners had voted on a show of hands. A government report on two Fife collieries recorded: ‘a meeting to vote on the withdrawal of the safety men was held. 68 people attended of whom 56 voted for withdrawal; the number of men who could and should have been present and voted is in the region of 1,500.’112 The October offensive collided with rank-and-file retreat. By 14 October the battle for the Midlands was lost: the majority of miners there were back at work. In Nottinghamshire George Spencer and a section of the district leadership were moving towards a breakaway union and a district agreement while the majority of the Leicestershire leadership, although cleaving to the Federation, was following a similar policy.113 The other districts were holding firm although the return was now a significant factor across the coalfields (see tables 2.9 and 2.10). The new initiative promised little and delivered less. The majority of the safety men were not in MFGB affiliates: most were in Shirkie’s union, while others were members of the General Federation of Firemen, Examiners and Colliery Deputies. Moreover, as the Mines Department noted about the proposed withdrawal: ‘Even if they were favourable, it is too late in the struggle to use it as a weapon of any consequence.’114 But they were far from favourable. Although Shirkie was disgruntled at the refusal of unemployment benefit to his members laid off by the dispute – a matter civil servants now reexamined – the leaders of both organizations were determined to keep their members at work. Despite discussions between the MFGB and Shirkie over what he termed ‘a gigantic piece of bluff’,115 nothing transpired. Throughout the dispute districts had pulled out their own members doing safety jobs in collieries where it was believed coal was being cut. This continued but there was no general withdrawal, although safety men were targets for harassment.116



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The renewed push for an embargo suffered a similar fate. On 2 November the MFGB made a final attempt to galvanize the labour movement. At a TUC-convened conference of transport workers, the miners’ leaders stressed the centrality of imported coal in undermining the stoppage and admitted the failure of international initiatives. They claimed that 800,000 miners were still out and ‘a decision in favour of an embargo would materially affect the position by giving them negotiating power’.117 Thomas repeated that an embargo was impossible: the railway unions would be unable to protect victimized members. Some lines were already carrying coal at 67 per cent of the pre-dispute level. Thousands of his members were still unemployed. TGWU representatives stated that they had 85,000 members on victimization benefit since the general strike and could see no practical way to help. The National Union of Seamen reported that they had balloted their members who had voted 10,060 to 908 against an embargo, while the issue of coal produced by British miners was raised.118 Although a TUC conference of union executives the following day recommended a levy of at least a penny a day on all members working, on the most optimistic reading the miners stood on the brink of final defeat.119 Digging deeper, leadership and activists mounted a determined rearguard action. Flotillas of orators poured into the Midlands, while the indefatigable Cook appeared all over the country, wherever there were cracks in the ranks. Half a century later miners were still able to close their eyes and see Cook at work, fighting to hold the miners together: A couple of members of the Durham Miners’ Executive opened the meeting with appeals for closed ranks and unity. Then Cook arose. He began in his usual slow, measured tones, stating the facts as he saw them, but as on the two previous occasions when I had seen him, gradually almost imperceptibly, he was subtly applying the art of persuasive propaganda . . . Appealing, pleading, cajoling, taunting and accusing, he worked from side to side of that limited platform, facing first one part of the audience and then the other . . . He peeled off his coat and rolled up his sleeves as he warmed to his task. It was a masterly performance as he carried his audience along with him in his mesmeric peroration. You could not help be carried away. He was cheered to the echo and for a while at any rate little more was heard of breakaways.120

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But in the crucible of the Midlands the effect soon wore off in the face of material pressures, the lure of return on excellent if temporary terms provided by the artificially high price of coal and the growing sense that defeat was inevitable. Autumn and early winter rather than spring was the time of mass picketing. The rank-and-file miners were on the move, some to return to work, some to picket them out. The result was the first serious scenes of disorder as the well-prepared forces of state coercion, spoiling for a fight, encouraged and protected blacklegs, arrested activists, harassed and intimidated mining communities and restricted the free speech of MFGB leaders. There were particular problems in Scotland, south Wales and Nottinghamshire, but the state contained them.121 Early November saw the stoppage weakening in Lancashire, Scotland and Yorkshire. With around a quarter of miners working, its collapse was a matter of time. The objective now was to salvage something. With the General Council appearing on cue to play its first active part since May by brokering terms of surrender with the government, a package emerged on 12 November. It involved district agreements over wages and hours with a recommendation of a ratio of proceeds between wages and profits varying from 85:15 to 87:13 and in some districts temporary payment of the district percentages of 30 April. Where hours were lengthened there would be a once-only appeal to an arbitration body. These terms conceded everything. But the MFGB saw no alternative and a conference recommended acceptance by a margin of 432 to 352.122 The district activists remained indominatable, rejecting capitulation by some 147,000 votes. It was only after the conference recommended districts to open negotiations on 19 November, under cover of guiding principles for agreement that all knew could not be met, that the seven months’ struggle moved to its quietus.123 From the MFGB’s side the conference of 26 November terminated the dispute. But it was 13 December before the majority of pits in Durham and many in Scotland were back to normal operation, while in south Wales it was as late as 23 December. The minutes of district negotiations, particularly those between SWMF leaders and the coalowners led by Evan Williams purvey the full flavour of crushing defeat.124 The terms of surrender varied considerably. The share of proceeds accruing to profits increased to 15 per cent in south Wales, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and the Midlands, although


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Yorkshire and the Midlands returned on a 7½-hour day, as did hewers in Northumberland and Durham. Percentages on the standard were reduced from 133 to 110 per cent in Scotland; from 110 to 89 per cent in Durham; from 42 to 28 in south Wales; and from 46.66 to 38 in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. While temporary rates provided some respite the minimum was everywhere reduced to the 1921 level except in the Midlands, and once ascertainments were made, wages inexorably fell. In south Wales and Durham, job controls were eroded. Most destructively for the Federation, these district agreements ran for varying periods – from one year in Durham to five years in Lancashire – epitomizing the coalowners’ determination to fragment national unity.125

REFLECTIONS Success had its costs. One analyst calculated, crudely and no doubt imperfectly, the consequences of the dispute for industry as in table 2.11.126 Table 2.11 Industrial consequences of the dispute (£) Loss of coal output 80,000,000 Purchase of foreign coal (imported) 12,000,000 Purchase of foreign coal (bunkers) 6,750,000 Losses of cotton trades 32,400,000 Losses of woollen trades 3,500,000 Losses of iron and steel trades 7,200,000 Losses of machinery trades 2,500,000 Losses of chemical trades 840,000 Losses of clothing trades 800,000 Losses of shipbuilding trades 4,300,000 Losses of railways 26,000,000 Shrinkage in home trades 50,000,000–100,000,000

For the miners the estimated loss of £40 million in wages could not begin to measure the scale of the disaster. They had gambled and lost, and the consequences were shattering. One academic fairly judged that they had suffered ‘the most abysmal defeat for a generation with a cost in the impact on families and districts impossible to reckon wholly in terms of lost wages, savings expended and debts incurred’.127 The employers talked of ‘a broken

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army with discredited leaders . . . it so impoverished the miners that never so long as they live will they recover from its effects. The happiness of a whole generation of miners was dimmed by it.’128 Among the costs were wage cuts, unemployment, victimization, speed-up, disruption of families, sickness and death.129 One miners’ leader remembered: ‘The sufferings of the aftermath of the strike were greater than the strike itself.’130 But fortitude and resilience in the face of defeat were hallmarks of the mining communities. If the unity between coalfields was broken, it was broken temporarily. If the MFGB, as a recent commentator similarly concludes with some exaggeration, began to fall apart, it did not do so.131 Continuing the struggle in very different ways from those of Cook and Smith, the coming generation of leaders and miners would bring forth from defeat a kind of victory. Could it have been different? Were there alternatives? Such questions are legitimate although discussion of them sometimes tends to pose more rose-strewn paths against the harsh trajectory history took. Yet the alternatives were not necessarily benign. If the miners had not struck in 1984 or had returned earlier the ultimate outcomes might not have been significantly different: the industry might have been dismantled anyway. In the abstract, the MFGB should have accepted the Samuel report before the general strike because, as Cook agreed, it gave them three-quarters of what they wanted. But it is far from clear, given the position of the coalowners and the state, that this would have produced a satisfactory solution. Historians should cultivate a keen sense of the contingent and the counterfactual. They also need a sharp sense of the possible and the social forces necessary to realize alternatives. We have to take context and agency as a given. Yet to make the alternatives touched on in this essay compelling, we would need to employ different actors in a different situation. It is difficult to discern in the NUM of 1984 or the MFGB of 1926 the social forces capable of delivering a different strategy. For all the personalization of Scargill, he was supported by the NUM Executive. In the improbable eventuality that the Varleys or Spencers had won the day in 1926, it seems unlikely that the MFGB’s activist democracy would have consented to further wage cuts without a struggle. The miners, at least the miners we know of, in 1926 were not cast in that mould. As the dispute unfolded, possibilities for acceptable compromise were negated not by the MFGB but by the MAGB and



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the government. In this context, for most miners a fight and a defeat were preferable. It is that defeat, and the question of why the stoppage faltered in some districts after sixteen weeks, collapsed after twenty and was terminated nationally after seven months, that have attracted the attention of recent historians.132 A more obvious question is why it lasted so long. In every district the lockout endured against all odds: these odds were greater in the Midlands than in Scotland, the north-east or south Wales. The miners were still suffering the consequences of defeat in 1921, reinforced by the attrition that followed. They entered the 1926 contest against the background of capitalist crisis which pushed the coalowners and the state to reduce labour costs, intensify exploitation and dismantle the MFGB. The latter contested the lockout with a woefully inadequate war chest. All their experience taught them the overoptimism of relying on the state to redress the imbalance and the futility of expecting solidarity action from other trade unionists. The brittleness of sympathy action had been demonstrated in the Triple Alliance’s desertion of the miners in 1921. Its absence after the collapse of the general strike was entirely understandable, with transport workers fighting for their jobs and their leaders fighting for the survival of their organizations. For similar reasons the miners fought with stubbornness and solidarity. Recognition of solidarity is not currently fashionable: recent accounts of the lockout emphasize its limits. It certainly had limits. But they were far more elastic than is sometimes conceived. Let us turn the question around and ask why the vast majority of miners in Nottinghamshire – they were not locked out, they had little to gain from the dispute compared with their counterparts in the export coalfields – joined the strike, against all odds, in sympathy with their brothers for four months, in some cases five or six months. If we do this we see a very different picture of these miners. Recent exploration of the differences in community and political culture between Nottingham and south Wales are valuable, although they require articulation with other districts and anchorage in the national context if they are to speak fully to us. But their behaviour in 1926 suggests that the Nottinghamshire miners largely, often, transcended tendencies in political culture, work organization and social geography in so far as these made for fragmentation. To dismiss explanations of the return rooted in material factors – these miners had fought with little to gain for months, they were

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experiencing deprivation, insecurity, fears of victimization and they were receiving job offers with minimal reductions – as ‘superficial’ is surely to miss an important part of the point.133 Robin Page Arnot has been fairly criticized for taking unity almost as given.134 Rather, it had to be painstakingly constructed through the forging of complex connections and interrelations between pit, district and national levels. Acknowledging the tenuous and conditional nature of miners’ solidarity, sensitive to the necessity for its continual renegotiation and renewal, aware of the persistent possibilities of reversal, we must also acknowledge its repeated achievement through the twentieth century. Any proper account has to register in the lockout the impressive attainment of unity in action and support for the Federation by weakened districts with different traditions and material interests as well as the fragmentation which occurred and which was strengthened by defeat. The miners were only metaphorically an army, unity was not organic, miners lacked superhuman powers of endurance. Rather than dwelling on these substantially self-evident truths our essay suggests that historians should move beyond appropriate concerns with fragility and fragmentation, and seek once more to explain why miners were able to construct such a degree of unity. It is surely time to return to the pit, the lodge, the sectional strike and the household, the sites where the generation of solidarity starts. If these sites are largely absent from the account of Page Arnot, his successors have inadequately penetrated them. Our survey also suggests the continued utility of class analysis – acknowledging internal differences, sectionalism, problems of class consciousness, problems of class action – in comprehending industrial conflict. For all their complications, the general strike and the lockout affirm the reality of class politics. As Robert Smillie told the House of Commons in August 1926: In this fight we have everything against us. The fight is absolutely unequal. It is not of our seeking. There will be no hunger in the homes of any colliery owners, their children will be fed and clothed, housed and educated, just as usual, no matter how long the stoppage continues. On our side there is privation, there is hunger and there is untimely death caused by this dispute. Therefore we are not on equal terms . . . there is another force against us besides the employers. The Government of the country is on the side of the mineowners and against the miners in this dispute . . . Then, we have the Press practically unanimous against us.135



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Smillie spoke for the majority of miners who appreciated and acted on the fundamental realities of class conflict in capitalist society, even if their conclusions did not meet with the full approval of purist theoreticians of class struggle. For the historian to accept the complexities of class analysis is not to deny its validity but rather to extend and enrich its utility. It is not to deny but to integrate an emphasis on human agency. Any account of the lockout must remember its people: the unnamed family of blacklegs trapped by pickets, cowering and desperate in a shed in south Wales, hundreds of miles from home; the Northumberland officials gaoled for stealing relief funds; Spencer breaking down and confessing to an old comrade that he had lost everything; Baldwin furtively financing Spencerism from Conservative Party funds; the shadowy figures who attempted to blow up a colliery in Cook’s birthplace, Radstock, Somerset; the desperate miners from Pengam, south Wales, sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour for setting fire to colliery offices; Herbert Smith, the former landlord of ‘The Woodman’, the man in the cap, dubbed by Cook ‘the miners’ Rock of Gibraltar’, treating charwomen like duchesses and duchesses like charwomen, removing and cleaning his false teeth before fixing Baldwin in the eye and bluntly replying, ‘Nowt doing’; Ellen Wilkinson demonstrating that in 1926 miners were still harnessed semi-naked like horses to the tubs as Cook had been years before; Annie Cook encouraging the men with memories of destitution and death in Porth; Cook collapsing exhausted on the platform, Cook assaulted and beaten on Chelmsford station, Cook coolly assuring the laughing crowds in the summer sunshine that Trotsky wired him with instructions every morning, and Cook, his voice rasping with conviction, assuring the miners, again and again, that they were fighting, and would vanquish the legions of hell.136

Notes Thanks to Dave Lyddon for his helpful advice. 1 This and succeeding paragraphs draw on Report of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry (1925), vol. 1 (Cmd 2600, 1926); R. Page Arnot, The Miners: A History of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, 1889–1910 (London, 1949); R. Page Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle (London, 1953); H. A. Clegg, A. Fox and A. F. Thompson, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, vol. 1: 1889–1910 (Oxford, 1964), pp. 98–111, 123–5; H. A. Clegg, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889, vol. 2: 1911–1933 (Oxford, 1985), passim.

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S. Jevons, The Coal Trade (London, 1915; 2nd edn, Newton Abbot, 1969), pp. 331–64; J. W. F. Rowe, Wages in the Coal Industry (London, 1923), pp. 39–70. Royal Commission, Report, pp. 132–3; Rowe, Wages, p. 168; B. Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 4: 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford, 1987), p. 443. For the rules of the MFGB, see Arnot, Struggle, pp. 87–9. D. Howell, MacDonald’s Party: Labour Identities and Crisis, 1922–1931 (Oxford, 2002), p. 105. See J. McIlroy, ‘Finale: a view from a new century’ in this volume. See J. McIlroy, ‘Revolutionaries’, ch. 11 in this volume. In his novel, The Gate of a Strange Field (London, 1929), Harold Heslop paints a vivid picture of factionalism. But this was written when the political situation had hardened and Heslop was influenced by the CP. See P. Davies, A. J. Cook (Manchester, 1987). The Times, 26 May 1926. See Davies, Cook, pp. 194–207. W. H. Cook, The General Strike (Chapel Hill, NC, 1931), p. 357. Miner, 2 July 1926. J. Lawson, The Man in the Cap (London, 1941); C. Baylies, The History of the Yorkshire Miners, 1881–1918 (London, 1993). The Times, 9 November 1931; Miner, 16 July 1926. Miner, 9 July 1926. Harvester Microfilm, TUC General Council Minutes, 1926. For background, see Howell, MacDonald’s Party, pp. 98–117, 142–6. Hansard, 1 July 1926, col. 1420. Royal Commission, Report, pp. 47, 118, 127–8; Royal Commission, vol. 2, Part A: Minutes of Evidence (London, 1926), pp. 89–96; Supple, History, pp. 127–8; W. R. Garside, The Durham Miners, 1919–1960 (London, 1971), pp. 67–8; A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 1: Industry, Work and Community (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 20–3; Baylies, Yorkshire Miners, pp. x-xi; R. Church, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 3: 1830–1914: Victorian Pre-eminence (Oxford, 1986), pp. 7–8. Royal Commission, Report, p. 133. D. H. Aldcroft, The Inter-War Economy: Britain, 1919–1939 (London, 1973), pp. 250–1; J. Redmond, ‘The sterling overvaluation in 1925: a multilateral approach’, Economic History Review, 37, 4 (1984), 520–32; G. C. Peden, Keynes, the Treasury and British Economic Policy (Basingstoke, 1988), pp. 19–20. See J. Foster, ‘What kind of crisis? What kind of ruling class?’, ch. 1 in this volume. Royal Commission, vol. 3: Appendices (London, 1926), p. 15; Colliery Guardian, 28 May 1926. Royal Commission, Appendices, pp. 38, 151–9; Supple, History, Table 10.1(b). Royal Commission, Appendices, p. 86. Royal Commission, Appendices, pp. 330–1; Supple, History, p. 472. Colliery Guardian, 30 April 1926. Lawson, Man in the Cap, p. 192. See, for example, G. A. Phillips, The General Strike: The Politics of Industrial Conflict (London, 1976); M. Morris (ed.), The General Strike (Harmondsworth, 1976); J. Skelley (ed.), The General Strike, 1926 (London, 1976); K. Laybourn, The General Strike of 1926 (Manchester 1993). Quoted in J. Lovell, ‘The TUC Special Industrial Committee, January–April



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1926’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History, 1918–1939 (London, 1977), p. 50. Royal Commission, Report, pp. 232–9. See Foster, ‘What kind of crisis?’ and Q. Outram, ‘The coalowners’, ch. 3 in this volume. National Archives, London (NA), LAB 27/1, P. Cunliffe-Lister, Memorandum, 14 September 1926. Hansard, 31 August 1926, col. 159. P. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1993), p. 103. For Baldwin’s mining interests, see Royal Commission, Appendices, p. 116. K. Middlemas and J. Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London, 1969), p. 380. Daily Herald, 31 July 1925. P. Renshaw, The General Strike (London, 1975), p. 122. The Conservatives had 415 seats to Labour’s 152 and the Liberals’ 42. Cunliffe-Lister, Memorandum. M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5: 1922–1939 (London, 1976), pp. 180–214. For Gowers, see Royal Commission, vol. 2: Minutes of Evidence, pp. 3–36. T. Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 2: 1926–39 (London, 1969), p. 19. Williamson, Baldwin, p. 200. NA, CAB23/53, 53 (26), 18 October 1926, 66 (26), 21 December 1926; Hansard, 26 October 1926, col. 745. On the regulations see K. D. Ewing and C. A. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties (Oxford, 2000), pp. 161–7, and S. Catterall, ‘Police’, ch. 10 in this volume. NA, LAB27/7, To all divisional coal officers, 3 June 1926. NA, LAB27/7, To all coal emergency officers, 22 May 1926. J. S. Stevens, ‘The coalmining lockout of 1926 with particular reference to the cooperative movement and the poor law’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Sheffield, 1984); P. Ryan, ‘The Poor Law in 1926’, in Morris, General Strike, pp. 358–78. Gilbert, Churchill, p. 202. The Annual Register 1926 (London, 1927), pp. 69–70, 94–5. For this and the next paragraph, see n. 28. The miners’ case is put in A. J. Cook, The Nine Days (London, 1926), the General Council’s side in Mining Dispute. National Strike. Report of the General Council to the Conference of Executives of Affiliated Unions, 25 June 1926 (London, 1927). MFGB, Conferences, 9 April, p. 24, 28 April 1926, pp. 11–13; J. E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London, 1962), p. 696; The Times, 26 May 1926; Hansard, 15 June 1926, col. 2225. MFGB, Conference, 1 May 1926, pp. 49–54. By convention the Federation required a two-thirds vote for a strike. See Clegg, History, vol. 2, pp. 45, 50. Williams, Derbyshire Miners, p. 710; The Times, 28 May, 5 June 1926; Hansard, 15 June 1926, cols 2227–8. As will be seen, district votes were taken on specific issues throughout the lockout. The only occasion on which controversy briefly emerged was over the bishops’ proposals: see A. Campbell, ‘Scotland’, ch. 6 in this volume. NA, LAB 27/1, Diary of events, 24 May 1926. British Library of Political Science (BLPES), Citrine papers, 1/7, Diary. Heslop, Gate of a Strange Field, p. 244; The Times, 28 May, 5 June 1926; New Leader, 29 May 1926; Annual Register 1926, pp. 57–8.

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Annual Register 1926, p. 57 and see at p. 58: ‘The vast body of miners had . . . made up their minds that nothing short of starvation would induce them to yield an iota on any of their three conditions for resuming work.’ Phillips, General Strike, pp. 251–2. See MFGB, Conferences, 14 May 1926, pp. 19–21, 20 May 1926, pp. 10–11. ‘. . . there could be little doubt that in refusing to make concessions [Cook and Smith] were interpreting correctly the general feeling of the miners at this time’: Annual Register 1926, p. 58. MFGB, Conference, 20 May 1926, pp. 20–3. Quoted in R. Darlington and D. Lyddon, Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain, 1972 (London, 2001), p. 214. G. D. H. Cole, Labour in the Coal-Mining Industry (Oxford, 1923), pp. 200–1; MFGB, Conference, 28 April–1 May 1926, pp. 55–7; Colliery Guardian, 30 April 1926; TUC, Report, 1926, pp. 148–9. The correspondence with the railway unions is in Page Arnot, Years of Struggle, p. 466. Cole, Coal-Mining Industry, pp. 222–3, 227–8. The Times, 15–22 May 1926. Like the railwaymen’s leaders, Bevin claimed, without providing any evidence, that during the general strike miners had taken his members’ jobs: see A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. 1: Trade Union Leader, 1881–1940 (London, 1960), p. 352. Miner, 2 July 1926. The Times, 21 May 1926. NA, HO144/6902, Situation reports, 20, 24 May 1926. NA, CAB27/333, Situation reports, 20 May, 17, 19 June 1926; Miner, 2 July 1926; Hansard, 2 June 1926, col. 854; B. Carr, ‘Memories of the general strike’, North-East Group for the Study of Labour History Bulletin, 10 (1976), 17–18. Daily Herald, 27 May 1926. The Times, 25 June 1926. Workers’ Weekly, 20 August 1926. Workers’ Weekly, 23 July, 16 August 1926; I. MacDougall (ed.), Militant Miners (Edinburgh, 1981), p. 288. K. J. Barron, ‘Locked out: a study of a mining community during the 1926 dispute’ (unpublished dissertation, Ruskin College, 1977), 48. B. Williamson, Class, Culture and Community: A Biographical Study of Social Change in Mining (London, 1982), pp. 179, 188–9. NA, CAB27/333, Mines Department Bulletin (MDB), 5 July 1926. NA, LAB27/4, Ernest Gowers, Correspondence, September 1926; LAB27/1, Cunliffe-Lister Memorandum, 14 September 1926; G. W. MacDonald, ‘British industry’, in Morris (ed.), General Strike, pp. 300–3. NA, CAB23/53, 45 (26), 7 July 1926. Hansard, 29 June 1926, col. 1067. Hansard, 1 July 1926, col. 1379. The role of the miners’ old bête noire Lloyd George in harrying Baldwin, perhaps more effectively than MacDonald did, throughout the dispute, should not be overlooked. TUC, General Council minutes, 14–15 July 1926. Scotsman, 1 June 1926. MFGB, General statement of receipts, 1927. Davies, Cook, pp. 114–19. See MFGB, Conferences, 30 July 1926, pp. 12–46, 16 August 1926, pp. 1–4. Baldwin scathingly compared the proposals to an attempt by the Federation of British Industries to unite the Baptists with the Anglo-Catholics and they were



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also attacked by a number of senior churchmen; see W. A. Lee, Thirty Years in Coal (London, 1954), pp. 86–8. 85 Barron. ‘Locked out’, 37. 86 MDB, 12 August 1926. 87 This is a general judgement: the Manchester Guardian, for example, was often critical of the government and the MAGB throughout the dispute. The MFGB was unhappy at times with the Herald, and furious when it carried advertisements supporting the coalowners. For this and Bevin’s defence, see TUC, Report, 1926, pp. 454–6; Annual Register, pp. 60–1, 130–1. 88 Crook, General Strike, pp. 334–5. 89 Barron, ‘Locked out’, 34; Williamson, Class, Culture and Community, p. 173; Carr, ‘Memories’, 14; J. Macfarlane, ‘Denaby Main: a south Yorkshire mining village’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 25 (1972), pp. 98–9. 90 For outcropping, see K. Gildart, ‘North Wales’, ch. 5, and J. McIlroy, ‘Nottinghamshire’, ch. 8, in this volume. 91 Barron, ‘Locked out’, 37. See S. Bruley, ‘Women’, ch. 9 in this volume. 92 NA, MH57/119, paper XII/3/1927. 93 Hansard, 24 March 1927, cols 583–6. 94 Quoted in P. J. Sunley, ‘Broken places: a geography of the 1926 coalmining dispute’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989), 41. See Bruley, ‘Women’. 95 Quoted in R. A. Leeson, Strike: A Live History, 1887–1971 (London, 1973), p. 102. 96 Gilbert, Churchill, pp. 176–7. 97 NA, CAB24/180, CP 227 (26), Effects of coal stoppage on industry; Ministry of Labour Gazette, January 1927. 98 NA, CAB23/53, 35 (26), 2 June 1926, 39 (26), 16 June 1926; CAB24/182, CP 416 (26), Government coal purchases. 99 MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, p. 7. 100 See McIlroy, ‘Nottinghamshire’. 101 B. Coombes, These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in Wales (London, 1939), p. 182. 102 Carr, ‘Memories’, 19. For a poetic evocation, see F. E. Boden’s somewhat affected ‘Surrender’ in his Pit-Head Poems (London, 1928): For hunger got me in his hold And led me to the busy mart And there men sat behind their gold And unto them I sold my heart. 103

MDB, 16 August 1926. For a detailed account, see Gilbert, Churchill, pp. 183–216. 105 Cunliffe-Lister, Memorandum. 106 Jones, Whitehall Diary, p. 80. 107 MFGB, Conference, 7 October 1926, p. 3. 108 Page Arnot, Miners, pp. 475–6. 109 The TUC attitude is apparent from the bitterness expressed in Citrine’s papers, BLPES. Fifty years on, old miners still recited: ‘Down with Latrine . . . Push him down the drain! Don’t forget . . . to pull the chain!’ 110 TUC, Report, 1926, pp. 420–9; Labour Party, Report of 26th Annual Conference, 1926, pp. 192–201. 104

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MFGB, Conference, 7 October 1926, pp. 14–46. MDB, 7, 18 October 1926. 113 See McIlroy, ‘Nottinghamshire’. 114 MDB, 6 September 1926; TUC, Report, 1926, pp. 148–9. 115 The Times, 9 October 1926; NA, LAB27/2, correspondence of J. B. Galbraith. 116 MDB, 11 October 1926; The Times, 5, 19 October 1926. 117 MFGB, Conference of transport unions and MFGB, Conference, 2 November 1926, p. 71. 118 Ibid. 119 TUC, Supplementary Report of the General Council to the Conference of Executives, 20 January 1927, pp. 38–9. 120 R. W. Morris, ‘The general strike’, North-East Group for the Study of Labour History Bulletin, 10 (1976), 12. 121 See Catterall, ‘Police’. 122 MFGB, Conference, 13 November 1926, p. 105. 123 MFGB, Conference, 19–20 November 1926, pp. 1, 37, 47. 124 Some of the minutes are reproduced in H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London, 1980), pp. 500–4. 125 Colliery Guardian, 17 December 1926; Supple, History, pp. 253–4. All districts apart from Northumberland and Durham returned on temporary rates at least equal to April 1926 and in Nottinghamshire and the Midlands they were higher. 126 Raynes, Coal and its Conflicts, p. 283. 127 Crook, General Strike, p. 467. 128 Raynes, Coal and its Conflicts, pp. 282–3. 129 See McIlroy, ‘Finale: a view from a new century’. 130 Horner, Incorrigible Rebel, p. 90. 131 Cf. W. Hamish Fraser, A History of British Trade Unionism, 1770–1998 (Basingstoke, 1999), p. 168, and McIlroy, ‘Finale’. 132 See, for example, D. Gilbert, Class, Community and Collective Action: Social Change in Two British Coalfields, 1850–1926 (Oxford, 1992); Sunley, ‘Broken places’. 133 D. Gilbert, ‘1900–1939’, in A. Charlesworth, D. Gilbert, A. Randall, H. Southall and C. Wrigley (eds), An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain, 1750–1990 (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 148. 134 See, for example, ‘Introduction’ to A. Campbell, N. Fishman and D. Howell (eds), Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910–1947 (Aldershot, 1996). 135 Hansard, 31 August 1926, col. 225. 136 J. Davison, Northumberland Miners, 1919–1939 (Newcastle, 1973), p. 77; Griffin, Nottinghamshire, p. 189; K. Middlemas, Politics in Industrial Society (London, 1979), p. 202; Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 63; Lawson, Man in the Cap, p. 203; The Times, 21 June, 30 October, 4 November 1926; Hansard, 29 June 1926, cols 1022–4; Miner, 2 June 1926. 112


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4 Class Warriors: The Coalowners

QUENTIN OUTRAM

Seventy-five years after the lockout, the coalowners remain shadowy figures. Despite MacDonald’s pioneering research and Supple’s magisterial overview of their organization and strategy in the official history of the coal industry, the owners themselves remain largely unknown.1 This chapter opens with a brief account of their organization, the Mining Association of Great Britain (MAGB), and then seeks to identify them and describe their lives and roles. It focuses on the Central Committee (CC) of the MAGB. This consisted of Evan Williams, the MAGB president, and the forty-three men who trooped behind him into meetings with miners’ leaders and with government ministers throughout 1925–6. They form the subject of the next section. The approach is that of collective biography.2 This allows us to see not only how these men looked from the outside but also how they appeared to their colleagues in the industry. The attitudes and actions of the MAGB leaders are illuminated by the contrasts presented by another group of owners who came together briefly during the general strike to formulate a way out of the crisis. They are examined in the section that follows. The final section analyses strikes at the collieries owned or managed by each group to illuminate the strategic choices these employers made at national level.

THE MINING ASSOCIATION OF GREAT BRITAIN By 1926 the MAGB leaders were battle-hardened veterans of the war over wages, hours and nationalization. The coal crisis of

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1919–20 had galvanized them into reorganizing themselves and the CC dates from then.3 In 1920 its status was regularized within the context of a wholesale restructuring of the organization. The MAGB abolished individual membership and limited affiliation to the district coalowners’ associations. The association was from then ruled by a council consisting of one representative from each district plus one more for each million tons of output, the secretaries of each of the district associations and any additional persons that the Annual General Meeting (AGM) might decide. The CC became a council standing committee; each association was allowed to nominate one representative to the CC plus one more for each ten million tons of output.4 These rules generated a council too big to exercise effective executive power; in 1925–6 it consisted of 301 people.5 The CC, a body of around forty, became the focus of power in the association and within it Evan Williams, first elected as president in 1919, became dominant. Williams was assisted by two vice-presidents; in 1925–6 these were C. B. Crawshaw and Sir Adam Nimmo. Crawshaw, MAGB president, 1918–19, was respected for his leadership of opposition to the 1908 Eight Hours Act, his lobbying over the 1911 Coal Mines Act and his role in the negotiations ending the 1912 strike. But by 1926 he was seventy-one and his days as an effective leader were over. Nimmo, at fifty, was in his prime. He had led the Lanarkshire Coal Masters’ Association since before 1912. He had been chair of the 1916–18 Board of Trade Committee on the Coal Trade after the War which had prefigured the events of 1921 and 1925–6 by its emphasis on recapturing export markets.6 He had been MAGB president, 1917–18, and a vice-president since 1918. Contemporary observers and historians have described him as ‘forceful’, ‘intransigent’ and ‘unrelenting’.7 Tom Jones, deputy secretary to the Cabinet, caricatured him: He is powerfully built and lays down the law in stern tones. His Company pays 10%, but the Coal Owners have always gone to the utmost limit of self-sacrifice, the question in debate (whatever it be) is always fundamental and always involves a vital principle on which the Owners cannot possibly carry compromise an inch further. He is one of the greatest stumbling-blocks on the path to peace.8

Williams had been chairman of the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coal Owners’ Association since 1913 and from 1918 its


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president. He transformed the MAGB presidency. Fully aware of the impending nationalization crisis, he responded to his nomination speech by remarking: ‘It may be that I shall be the last President.’9 In fact he stayed in office until 1944. At first his annual nominations to continue in office were proposed on the grounds that the association should not ‘change horses in midstream’ but by 1926 he had become indispensable. The coalowners found many qualities in him. His ‘cross-examination’ of witnesses before the Sankey Commission, on which he served, was regarded as ‘able’ and demonstrating great grasp of detail by Lord Gainford; ‘he always has his eyes open,’ said Sir Arthur Pease.10 He could bear what they regarded as ‘insolent’ remarks by miners’ representatives with ‘wonderful good temper’; most importantly, he was credited with rescuing the industry from nationalization in 1919.11 To them he was certainly not ‘the insignificant little man’ whom Tom Jones saw.12 Williams’s grasp of detail, his quick-wittedness and his ability to extemporize a lengthy speech on the problems of the industry were impressive and are evident from verbatim records of meetings with miners’ leaders and government ministers. These records also show a man who, while not incapable of humorous banter, expressed himself emphatically and sometimes intemperately. He could be direct to the point of rudeness to government ministers, including the prime minister, though he was never less than coldly polite to miners’ leaders.13 The intransigence Williams demonstrated in 1926 was not a personal trait but a calculated tactic. Lord Birkenhead’s remark in May 1926, that ‘it would be possible to say without exaggeration of the miners’ leaders that they were the stupidest men in England if we had not had frequent occasion to meet the owners’, was wide of the mark.14 In 1923–4, when the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) won a remarkably generous settlement, Williams had proved himself a shrewd assessor of the new political situation presented by the 1924 minority Labour government. He had moved with agility to find a compromise with the MFGB which preserved the unity of the MAGB and postponed a final showdown over wages, hours and government intervention to more propitious times.15 To all appearances Williams had no views on any economic or political question not directly affecting the industry. But on mining politics he was abundantly clear. State interference, traced back to the Eight Hours Act of 1908, had been wholly detrimental; any

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failings of the industry, its loss of markets and high labour costs, for example, were directly attributable to the mistaken policies pursued by successive governments: ‘Freedom from political interference in the economic sphere is a condition essential to the health of the industry.’16 In industrial relations, problems arose from the extremist policies of the MFGB, not from the mass of miners: ‘The unrest in the Mining Industry . . . has been the result of a deliberately planned attempt on the part of the miners’ leaders . . . to force upon the nation the political policy summed up in the phrase “The Mines for the Miners”.’17 Williams’s leadership was based on a single principle – unity: ‘The only condition I did make was that there should be unanimity in my re-election,’ he told the MAGB in 1920.18 His ability to achieve and maintain unity was central to his success. In 1926, Leslie Wright moved Williams’s re-election once again: I do not think we can at the present time do without him, because he is the one person we can trust. [Hear, hear.] Although some people think that as he comes from South Wales he is not to be trusted, yet I think those who have had experience of him in the past know that he can be trusted implicitly, and that he looks upon the work of the Association with perfect fairness.19

Wright’s remarks demonstrate both the depths of inter-district rivalry – the owners were, after all, in daily competition for markets – and Williams’s success in overcoming them. By 1926 he had achieved an unparalleled personal authority in the affairs of the association.20 Achieving a unifying position on ‘political interference’, state control and nationalization presented no difficulties; while owners varied in the degree of antagonism they felt on these matters, their opposition was all but unanimous. Cutting wages and lengthening hours was a policy every owner could perceive as advantageous, even if, for some, it cut across long-established domestic industrial relations practices based on paternalism or welfarism; and even if, to some, the balance between the costs of a lockout and the benefits it might bring looked questionable. The much-emphasized division between the inland districts and the export districts, where cuts in labour costs seemed most urgent, was not as great as it has seemed to some historians. The inland districts were well aware that any loss of export markets would mean intensified



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competition for domestic markets as exporters attempted to find an outlet within the UK.21 Williams sought to limit not only divisions within the MAGB but also those between the MAGB and other interest groups. In 1919 they had ‘joined hands with the royalty owners, and made common cause with them’, despite many coalowners’ dislike of paying royalties to the ‘unproductive’ landowners.22 At that time, argued Wallace Thorneycroft, ‘it behoved them . . . to oppose the nationalisation of anything’.23 During 1920 the MAGB held meetings with the National Association of Colliery Managers prompted, as Williams remarked, by the ‘necessity of unity’.24 The MAGB had not joined the Federation of British Industries (FBI) on its formation in 1917. But by 1925 the MAGB had not only joined the other major employers’ association of the time, the National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (NCEO), but Williams had become its president and other members of the MAGB CC sat on its council and General Purposes Committee.25 Unsurprisingly, the NCEO stood four-square behind the MAGB in 1926.26

THE MAGB CENTRAL COMMITTEE The unity of the coalowners might lead one to expect that members of the MAGB CC shared extensive commonalities of position, experience and outlook. Instead, investigation of their life histories shows a group united by their interest in the coal industry but distinguished by substantial differences. The 1925–6 membership is shown in table 3.1. Most of the CC were colliery company managers as well as coalowners: twenty-seven of them held managing directorships or other positions indicating an active management role. Only twelve held directorships without some management position, and it is known that some of these, including Evan Williams, took an active role in colliery company management.27 To call these men ‘coalowners’, or even the more accurate ‘colliery owners’, is therefore a shorthand designation, but one which we shall continue to employ. MAGB CC members typically held directorships in more than one company and the thirty-six members who held at least one colliery company directorship held ninety-nine such directorships in total.28 They often held directorships in companies outside the coal-mining industry. The great majority of these were in combined coal, iron

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Evan Williams, JP, DL (1871–1959), Monmouthshire and South Wales COA, president, MAGB Sir Adam Nimmo, KBE (1866–1939), Lanarkshire CMA, vice-president, MAGB C. B. Crawshaw, JP (1855–1929), West Yorkshire COA, vice-president, MAGB W. A. Lee, CBE (1886–1971) secretary, MAGB Lanarkshire CMA: Robert Forrester, JP (1864 or 1865–1940) M. F. Maclean, JP (1870 or 1871–1951) A. K. McCosh, Jnr (1880–1967) Minor Scottish Districts: Robert L. Angus (1882–1949), Ayrshire COA Charles Augustus Carlow (1878–1954), Fife and Clackmannan COA Adam Nimmo (1864–1927), Lothians COA Northumberland COA: Col. J. H. Nicholson (1863–?) Thomas Taylor (1849–1938) Ridley Warham, JP (1863 or 1864–1947 or 1948) Reginald Guthrie (1855–1940), secretary, Durham COA and secretary, Northumberland COA Durham COA: J. H. B. Forster (1870–1950) Rt. Hon. Lord Gainford, PC, JP, DL (1860–1943) Austin Kirkup (1872 or 1873–c.1961) Lancashire and Cheshire CA: Lieut.-Col. L. E. Pilkington, CMG, JP (1873–1952) Alderman Harry Speakman, JP (1865–1946) West Yorkshire COA: Walter Hargreaves (1863–1955) Arthur Woolley Hart or Woolley-Hart (1859–1941) (also representing Kent COA) Roslyn Holiday (1871 or 1872– c.1935) South Yorkshire CTA: G. H. Ashwin (1860–1938) John Brass (1879–1961) Walter Benton Jones (1880–1967) Midland Counties COA: W. B. M. Jackson (1864–1934) Albert Leslie Wright, JP (1862–1938) Monmouthshire and South Wales COA: Sir John Wyndham Beynon, CBE, JP, DL (1864–1944) Sir Clifford John Cory, JP, DL (1859–1941) Finlay A. Gibson (1875–1950), secretary, Monmouthshire and South Wales COA E. L. Hann (1881–1960)


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Table 3.1 continued Minor English and Welsh Districts: Maj. A. C. Scoular (1875–?), secretary, Cumberland COA H. E. Allen (1870 or 1871–?), legal adviser, MAGB; secretary, North Wales COA C. B. Gardner (later Charles Bruce-Gardner) (1887–1960), Flintshire COA J. A. Taylor (1865–c.1932), Notts and Erewash Valley COA E. E. Bramall (1865–1938), Leicestershire COA H. G. Nadin, JP (1864 or 1865–1935), South Derbyshire District COA John Gregory, MBE (1871– after 1933), North Staffordshire COA Lieut.-Col. W. E. Harrison, OBE, JP, DL (1875–1937), Cannock Chase COA W. F. Clark (1853 or 1854–1935), Cannock Chase COA and South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire CMA W. G. Phillips, JP (1849–1927), Warwickshire COA T. E. Freeston, JP (1863–?), Shropshire COA A. H. Bennett (possibly 1860 or 1861–?), Bristol COA Egbert Spear, JP (1860–1936), Somersetshire COA Notes and abbreviations: Decorations, etc. as in 1926. Where two possible birth years are shown these have been inferred either from the age at death or the age given in the 1901 Census. CA: Coal Association; CMA: Coal Masters’ Association; COA: Coal Owners’ Association or Colliery Owners’ Association; CTA: Coal Trade Association. Sources: membership: Mining Association of Great Britain, Report of the SeventySecond Annual Meeting, 1926, p. 152; titles, decorations, etc. and vital dates: various; see text, n. 2.

and steel companies or in companies in industries allied to coal, such as coal factoring and export companies, docks, harbour and shipping companies, manufacturers of by-products and gas and electricity companies. Few held directorships outside these sectors. Forster, Gainford, Hargreaves, Sir Adam Nimmo, Pilkington and Williams had directorships in banking and insurance companies and McCosh was a director of the London and North Eastern Railway but, on the whole, the business interests of the MAGB CC were remarkably concentrated in coal, iron and steel. The companies they represented varied considerably in status and size. Some members directed and/or managed ‘combines’, to use the contemporary radical parlance, that is, a typically large company which owned at least one subsidiary.29 The remaining twenty-eight (excluding the five officials) were split fairly evenly between twelve ‘big men’, directing and/or managing independent companies employing 5,000 men or more, and the rest.30 The ‘combine men’ ran very large enterprises. Hann’s Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co. produced 5,000,000 tons annually and directly employed over 14,000 men in 1926; the Rhymney Iron Co., which it had acquired in

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1920, employed another 1,000; the Taff Merthyr Steam Coal Co., formed jointly with Ocean Coal and Wilsons Ltd in 1922, employed another 600; there were sales agencies, an export and trading company and a patent fuel company besides.31 So, too, did the ‘big men’: Austin Kirkup’s Lambton, Hetton and Joicey Collieries Co. was the biggest in the industry, employing over 16,000 men in twenty-one collieries in 1926. Even the ‘little men’ ran not inconsequential enterprises; the ‘smallest’ of them, Nadin, ran a colliery company employing 465 men. In aggregate, the colliery companies owned or managed by the CC employed over 250,000 men.32 Allied to this power over people was, for some on the CC, great personal wealth. The value of their bequests has been ascertained for twenty-nine of the forty-four members. The mean value was £201,000 with a median of £112,000, just above the £100,000 that Rubinstein uses to distinguish the wealthy from the rest.33 By far the richest was Harrison, who left £1,392,037 in 1937; others leaving over £250,000 were Angus (£483,269 in 1949), Beynon (£317,827 in 1944), Cory (£445,108 in 1941), Forster (£396,339 in 1950), Bruce-Gardner (£419,335 in 1960), and Williams (£423,451 in 1959). The list contains surprises: Gainford, perhaps the most prominent industrialist on the CC, left only £26,878 (in 1943). Sir Adam Nimmo, chairman of the fabulously profitable Fife Coal Company, left only £74,938 in 1939. Nevertheless, Sir Adam was a man of substance compared with those at the bottom: Mr Adam Nimmo (Sir Adam’s cousin) left £18,790 in 1927; Nadin, £13,740 in 1935; and Roslyn Holiday, £6,009 in 1935. For comparison, A. J. Cook left £2,965 in 1932.34 The CC members had become coalowners by one of two routes: through inheritance or through the acquisition of engineering and managerial skills. Their fathers’ occupations have been ascertained in twenty-one cases; sixteen of these fathers were coalowners, iron and coal masters or colliery managers: Angus, Brass, Carlow, Cory, Forrester, Gainford, Hann, Hargreaves, Harrison, Benton Jones, McCosh, Mr Adam Nimmo, Sir Adam Nimmo, Thomas Taylor and Williams. Leslie Wright also belongs in this group although the son of a clergyman, for his grandfather was Francis Wright, the major proprietor of the Butterley Co. in the mid-nineteenth century. It has been said that by 1914 the British mining workforce had become a ‘hereditary closed shop’ with sons following fathers and grandfathers down the pit.35 By the 1920s this was as true of the industry’s owners and managers as it was of its workers.



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The other route, sometimes pursued in parallel with a career opened by inheritance, was through the acquisition of colliery engineering or management skills. Twelve of the CC were described by themselves or others as mining engineers: Ashwin, Bramall, Carlow, Clark, Forster, Gregory (a professional colliery surveyor), Hargreaves, Holiday, Kirkup, McCosh (who referred to himself as a mining engineer but also as an ironmaster), Nicholson and J. A. Taylor. Again, Leslie Wright is a special case; he served an engineering apprenticeship at Armstrong Whitworth before taking up managerial positions at the Butterley Co. In addition, another two were as well known in the mine engineering societies as they were in the coalowners’ associations: John Brass (president of the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, 1923–5, and a member of the council of the national Institution of Mining Engineers, 1922–8) and W. G. Phillips (a former president of the Chesterfield and Midland Institute of Mining Engineers). The education received by CC members varied substantially. Details are available for twenty-three of the forty-four members. Ten attended public school. These were usually ‘minor’ public schools like Fettes (Angus and McCosh) or Clifton (Beynon and Pilkington); only three went to one of the ‘major’ public schools: Harrison and Maclean to Eton and Wright to Marlborough. With one exception, the remainder attended a proprietary or grammar school. The exception was W. G. Phillips. The son of a working miner, he left elementary school aged nine and attended night classes. Eleven of the twenty-three went on to university, Oxford or Cambridge in every case except Carlow (Heriot Watt College), Sir Adam Nimmo (Edinburgh) and Lee (London). Almost all spent all their adult life in the coal industry. The exceptions were Clifford Cory, who had a career as an MP between 1906 and 1922; Gainford, who joined the family firm after leaving university but then embarked on a political career; Pilkington, who served as a soldier between 1896 and 1916; and J. A. Taylor, who briefly worked as an engineer for the Midland Railway. These biographies raise a significant question: were these people ‘gentlemen’ or ‘players’? Coleman’s discussion of the distinction focuses on codes of conduct, ideals and aspirations. The ‘gentleman’ was courteous, honourable, honest, kind and magnanimous. He recognized a duty to perform unpaid public service. He had had the benefit of a liberal education from one of the major English public schools and Oxbridge. He was neither a specialist nor an

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expert, only an ‘educated amateur’.36 A ‘player’, on the other hand, was a ‘practical man’, who exercised skills gained through either experience or technical training. Players were entrepreneurial, pursuing profit with a ruthlessness of which ‘gentlemen’ were incapable but their aspirations were to become country ‘gentlemen’. Whatever their own education, they wanted their sons to go to public school and to leave behind the grimy industry in which they earned their living. The ‘heroic’ entrepreneurs of the industrial revolution were, supposedly, ‘players’. By the 1920s, their sons and grandsons should have left industry long behind and devoted themselves to gentlemanly rural pursuits. But, as we have seen, many of the MAGB CC, though sons and grandsons, had not left mining but had followed in their fathers’ and sometimes grandfathers’ footsteps, and few of their fathers had seen fit to send these sons to public school or Oxbridge. Although the evidence is not always clear, the ‘gentlemen’ would seem to be in a small minority on the CC. Only six are known to have carried both of the two key markers of ‘gentlemanly’ status: public school and Oxbridge. These were Harrison (Eton and Oxford), Benton Jones (Repton and Cambridge), Maclean (Eton and Cambridge), McCosh (Fettes and Cambridge), Pilkington (Clifton and Cambridge) and Wright (Marlborough and Oxford).37 If the MAGB was dominated by ruthless ‘players’ rather than magnanimous ‘gentlemen’, it would certainly help to explain its strategy which, as the lockout wore on, became marked by determination to divide and destroy the MFGB. However, the ethos of the MAGB CC failed to conform fully to the ‘player’ stereotype. First, it is difficult to detect any of the disdain for technical education and qualifications that Coleman leads one to expect. Formal technical education was relatively rare – Ashwin was among the small number of students at the Royal School of Mines in London; Carlow attended both Cowdenbeath Mining School and Coatbridge Mining College; Gardner studied mechanical engineering at Battersea Technical College; J. A. Taylor went to the Crystal Palace School of Engineering – but the usual route taken to technical proficiency was indeed the ‘practical’ one of serving what they later called an ‘apprenticeship’ or a ‘training’ on the job. Ashwin, Clark, Hann, Harrison, Woolley Hart, Nicholson, Spear, J. A. Taylor and Leslie Wright all described their early career in such terms. All would have emphasized that the



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education of a mining engineer must include a strong practical component, but this was a sentiment shared with the university mining engineers of the day and is, in any case, not an unreasonable view.38 In none of the contemporary biographical sketches and obituaries consulted for this chapter is there any attempt to laud their subject as a ‘practical man’ or disparage the value of technical education. Some were proud of their engineering successes: Hann included among his achievements several ‘outstanding’ papers he had contributed to the South Wales Institute of Engineers.39 Faced with criticism for the apparent lack of research and development in the industry, members of the MAGB CC expressed disappointment that critics seemed unaware of the extent of research being conducted.40 They pointed out the financial support that the MAGB provided for it, or drew attention to the formation of the British Colliery Owners’ Research Association in 1925.41 What they did not do was question its necessity. Second, the aspirations of the ‘players’ suggest that while some may have had an interest in acquiring the manners of the country gentleman, there was a rather different aspiration on the part of others. This was ‘to raise the profession of mining engineers to a level at least equal to that of any other scientific and technical profession’.42 Moreover, some of the sons of CC members followed their fathers into mine engineering. John Brass’s son became a prominent mine engineer; Robert Forrester’s youngest son became not only a director of his father’s company but also an engineer; Leslie Wright’s son went into the Butterley Company’s ironworks. This does not suggest that the players’ aspirations were to become leisured rentiers; rather they sound like a group of men who had coal in their blood or iron in their bones and transmitted these characteristics to their children. The MAGB has often, rightly, been seen as a quintessentially capitalist organization. Yet the analyses above show that the class position of its CC was more varied than has usually been appreciated. Partly, this was a matter of differences in power, as indicated by the widely differing scales of their enterprises; partly a matter of distinctions in wealth; partly a matter of the source of their claims to status and power: property ownership or technical skill. This is not to say that the MAGB represented several ‘fractions’ of their class, for these differences did not form the basis of alternative actions or strategies. Instead, with one exception as we shall see, the MAGB CC showed unswerving loyalty to the strategy and

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tactics of their Association. To find another ‘fraction’ of the coal capitalists we need to look elsewhere.

THE MOND GROUP From early 1926 a small number of coalowners expressed doubts over MAGB strategy and proposed alternatives. Although they operated largely individually, they coalesced briefly under the leadership of Sir Alfred Mond during the general strike. Their interventions occurred in three phases: in January 1926, when Mond, Lord Londonderry and others made speeches pleading for a different approach; in the period of crisis from the publication of the Samuel report on 11 March 1926 to the end of the general strike; and in the ‘Churchill interregnum’ during Baldwin’s holiday in France from late August to mid-September 1926. ‘Londonderry’s kite’, as it was lampooned by David Low, was set aloft in a series of speeches in early 1926.43 Londonderry castigated state interference in the industry but also urged his listeners to remember the ‘human element’; he asserted the need for a cheap supply of coal but also that the industry should provide a ‘proper means of livelihood’ for those engaged in it. Finally, he declared ‘that owners did not believe that the prosperity of the industry depended on reducing wages or lengthening hours’, suggesting that America, with its combination of high wages and high productivity, showed the way forward. The response from the MFGB was initially warm, but Cook, alarmed by Londonderry’s remarks on ‘direct discussions’ in the districts, quickly cooled. He told Londonderry to refer his proposals to the MAGB – precisely the response Evan Williams would have desired. The MAGB dismissed Londonderry’s proposals as ‘nothing new’ and no more was heard of them. Londonderry’s kite had fallen to the ground.44 Meanwhile, Mond was formulating a complete blueprint for the reorganization of the industry along ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ lines. Costs were to be reduced by economies of scale achieved through amalgamations, the promotion of research and development and incentive schemes to raise productivity. Coal prices were to be raised and stabilized by the creation of an inland cartel and a monopoly export selling organization modelled on the Rhenish-Westphalian Syndicate. By these means, thought Mond, the necessity of cutting wages and lengthening hours could be avoided and industrial peace



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restored. Mond submitted his proposals to Baldwin on 21 January.45 Mond had not troubled to find supporters for his plans among his fellow coalowners and his blueprint was received with silence. Undeterred, Mond developed his plans and in April made some attempt to build an alliance to support his ideas. He hosted a dinner with ‘representative Coalowners’ and reported to Baldwin that they thought the MAGB’s attitude ‘quite unreasonable’. This seems to have been an optimistic gloss on the proceedings.46 Finally, on 7 May during the general strike, Mond hosted another meeting of coalowners which agreed to suggest to Baldwin that he appoint a committee consisting of representatives of the government, the MFGB, the MAGB, the FBI and the TUC, to pursue the recommendations of the Samuel Commission. The owners concerned were those listed in table 3.2.47 It was not a large group, nor was it representative, not least because there was only one Scot, Robert Hutchison, and he was a rubber planter, not a coalowner.48 The government showed no interest and Mond seems to have lost heart. A further meeting was postponed and may never have taken place. Mond continued to advocate ‘compulsory co-operative selling’ in letters to The Times and in speeches in Parliament into July but by then his schemes were dead in the water.49 Mond may have been distracted from the problems of coal by the negotiations that led to the creation of Imperial Chemical Industries, but his political failings are evident. Until early 1926 he had been a Liberal MP but then crossed the floor of the Commons to join the Conservatives. Although publicly condemning Lloyd George as ‘a jackanapes of politics’50 in April, his past close association with the former prime minister would not have inspired trust among the coalowners, a disproportionately Conservative group among whom Lloyd George’s reputation was little better than that of the devil.51 Mond’s language was forceful and aggressive and he lost few opportunities to castigate those who disagreed with him. He made no secret of his view that the coal industry was ‘floating about like a derelict wreck’ and concluded that ‘[i]f those at the helm could not guide it, others would have to take the wheel’.52 He had no patience with advocates of lower wages and longer hours and suggested that ‘[i]f any reduction in wages was being talked about, the directors, managers, and salaried officials should suffer an equal reduction, which they could better afford than the miner’.53 Such rhetoric was unlikely to endear him to the directors, managers and officials who sat on the MAGB CC.

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Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Mond, PC, MP (1868–1930), chair, Amalgamated Anthracite Collieries, south Wales Col. Frederick Joseph Byrne, CMG (1873–1929), director, Dorman, Long and Co., Middlesbrough, Co. Durham Lord Crawford (or Lord Crawford and Balcarres), PC, KT, FRS, LLD, PSA, DCL, FRIBA (1871–1940), chair, Wigan Coal and Iron Co., Wigan, Lancashire Lieut.-Col. David Davies, JP (1880–1944), chair, Ocean Coal and Wilson’s, south Wales William Hay, probably William Hay, mining engineer (c.1861–1942), director, Newton, Chambers and Co., Sheffield Maj.-Gen. Sir Robert Hutchison, KCMG, CB, DSO, MP (1873–1950), no coal company directorships traced for 1926; from 1939, director, The Fife Coal Co., Leven, Fife W. B. M. Jackson (1864–1934), MD, Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Co., Chesterfield, Derbyshire Sir Francis L’Estrange Joseph, CBE, JP (1870–1951), director, Settle, Speakman and Co., coal factors, and Stafford Coal and Iron Co., Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire Sir David Richard Llewellyn, JP (1879–1940), chair, D. R. Llewellyn and Sons, Aberdare, south Wales, director, Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, Smethwick, Staffordshire Lord Londonderry, KG, PC, PC Ire., MVO (1878–1949), chair, Londonderry Collieries, Seaham, Co. Durham Lieut.-Col. Hugh Morton Stobart, CBE, DSO (1883–1952), chair and MD, Wearmouth Coal Co., Co. Durham Fitzherbert Wright, probably Captain Henry Fitzherbert Wright, JP (1870–1947), director, The Butterley Co. Ltd, Derbyshire Notes and abbreviations: as table 3.1. Only selected company affiliations have been given. Sources: National Archives, London, LAB 27/6, ‘Report of a meeting of coal owners’, 7 May 1926, p. 88, and various; see text, n. 2.

It is therefore hardly surprising that when government ministers sought some way of moderating the coalowners’ stance they turned not to Mond but to Londonderry and another aristocratic coalowner, Lord Crawford. Crawford had held a succession of minor ministerial offices in Conservative administrations, finishing as minister of transport in 1922. He was chair of the Wigan Coal and Iron Co., one of the largest colliery companies in Britain, and had been president of the MAGB in 1914–16. In late March 1926, Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, the minister of labour, dined with him



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at the Carlton Club. To Crawford he seemed ‘thoroughly rattled’. Crawford wrote: ‘It occurred to me that he wanted to eliminate Evan Williams, Nimmo and Co., and get negotiations transferred to Londonderry, myself and other outsiders.’ His perceptions were not at fault. Crawford was called to a meeting on 10 May with Birkenhead, then secretary for India, and Steel-Maitland. Birkenhead ‘was in a fright, so was Steel-Maitland’. They told him they wanted himself, Londonderry, Fitzherbert Wright and others ‘to take over the conduct of affairs’. Crawford pointed out that he had no authority to supersede the elected members of the CC and recoiled from the disloyalty of the course he was being asked to pursue. Londonderry felt the same way.54 The plot was overtaken by events; two days later the general strike was called off and Birkenhead and Steel-Maitland recovered their courage. But the lockout dragged on. By late August, with an exhausted Baldwin holidaying in France, Churchill took over the task of finding some settlement. The problems seemed ever more intractable. On 3 September, an increasingly confident Williams, armed with the repeal of the Seven Hours Act and the beginnings of a return to work, refused a government request to resume negotiations. Cabinet opinion moved against the owners. Viscount Bridgeman, the first lord of the Admiralty who, as a former secretary of mines, had been involved in the crisis since 1925, thought that the MAGB’s ‘arguments against any form of national agreement were clearly disingenuous’ (and therefore, one might add, not the arguments of a ‘gentleman’).55 Sir Philip CunliffeLister, president of the Board of Trade, felt that the owners were now being ‘unreasonable’.56 On 6 September Churchill met the MAGB to persuade them to meet the miners nationally. The debate was acrimonious and Williams gave no ground. Churchill was driven to consider whether the owners could be coerced into a national settlement by legislation. A draft bill was considered by the Cabinet Coal Committee on 16 September but the difficulties seemed insuperable. Baldwin was by then back in Downing Street and Churchill’s interregnum was over.57 Throughout this period Churchill had been in contact with Londonderry. They were cousins and lifelong friends.58 Londonderry did what he could to assist Churchill but with increasing misgivings. He persuaded the Durham Coal Owners’ Association ‘with difficulty’ to accept that their district agreement at the end of the lockout ‘should be subject to acceptance or rejection of the

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Federation, but not if we could help it to variation by the Federation’. In this way, he hoped the MFGB could claim that it had preserved a national agreement and save face as it climbed down from an increasingly impossible position. Nevertheless, Londonderry was clearly in favour of district settlements and he urged Churchill to consider the MAGB’s views ‘sympathetically’.59 Londonderry made no attempt to hide his distaste for Williams: ‘I have great difficulty with Evan Williams and his colleagues. They are very jealous of me . . . I fear I have no opinion of him at all.’ But he also defended him: his ‘post I think is an impossible one’, and told Churchill it would have been wrong of him ‘to drive a wedge into the Association and it would only have heartened Cook’.60 When the lockout was nearing its end, it became clear that Londonderry’s loyalty to the MAGB was reinforced by his fear of socialism and communism: ‘However crudely and however stupidly, as you and the PM put it, the Owners may put their case, they are fighting Socialism and every time you attack them, you are helping Cook,’ wrote Londonderry. ‘The Federation is nothing but a Communist Central Office’ and ‘we want a victory over the strongest Communistic force in the country.’61 Churchill replied in forthright terms, telling Londonderry that the duty of the government was to remain impartial and ‘there could be no worse way of combating Bolshevism than to identify the Conservative Party and His Majesty’s Government with the employers, and particularly with a body of employers like those headed by Mr Evan Williams and Sir Adam Nimmo’.62 The ‘moderates’ assembled by Mond achieved nothing. Mond’s political incapacity and the loyalty of Crawford and Londonderry to the association, together with their hostility to left-wing ideas in general and Cook in particular, put paid to any hopes that they would intervene decisively to restore industrial peace. Their importance lies not in what they achieved but in what, through the contrasts they present, they tell us about the MAGB. The Mond group itself presents some remarkable internal contrasts. On the one hand was Crawford, premier earl of Scotland, with a title so ancient that he could only tell the readers of Who’s Who that it had been created ‘before 1143’; on the other was Alfred Mond, son of a German Jewish immigrant. Then there was Londonderry, educated at Eton and the Royal Military College Sandhurst; contrasted with him was Francis Joseph, who left school at twelve. Londonderry



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and Mond were immensely rich, each leaving over £1 million; Colonel Byrne, a professional soldier for much of his life, left £6,632 in 1929. Londonderry was a leader of what was left of the political wing of London ‘society’.63 Hay was a Sheffield mining engineer, unknown outside provincial mining circles. Underlying these contrasts was a division between two ‘fractions’, one representing the past of the industry, the other its future. Londonderry and Crawford represented the aristocratic families who had begun to exploit the coal under their estates in the eighteenth century. There were few such left by 1926; their withdrawal from colliery ownership and management was evident in the 1830s and they were almost extinct by 1914.64 Allied with the aristocrats were two members of the industrial ‘gentry’, Stobart and Fitzherbert Wright. Stobart came from a family prominent in the north-eastern coal industry since the late eighteenth century; his father, Frank, had been agent to the earl of Durham and a high sheriff of the county. Fitzherbert Wright, a cousin of Leslie Wright of the Butterley Co., had married a granddaughter of the earl of Romney, was prominent in Derbyshire politics, an MP between 1912 and 1918, and became high sheriff of Derbyshire in 1927. Stobart’s politics are unknown; Wright, Londonderry and Crawford were Conservatives. The other members of Mond’s group appear to be men picked for their sympathy with his blueprint of rationalization and cartelization, plans which would have taken the industry into the era of monopoly capitalism. They formed the second ‘fraction’. Joseph had joined the War Office in 1916 and ‘was an outstanding figure in the brilliant group of industrialists who were brought together after the First World War under the guidance of the late Mr Frank Dudley Docker, C.B’.65 Docker, prominent in the post-war merger movement, had views not dissimilar to Mond’s.66 Byrne, too, had joined the War Office ‘where he did wonderful work in connexion with the supply of machine guns’.67 Hay was a ‘rationalizer’ of a practical kind, most well known in mine engineering circles for his work on the physical amalgamation of his collieries in south Yorkshire. He was associated with Sir Arthur Duckham, author of one of the minority reports of the Sankey Commission. Davies had been an MP since 1906 and became parliamentary private secretary to Lloyd George in 1916. Llewellyn was one of the richest coalowners in south Wales but also a qualified mine engineer. He was a colliery modernizer, among the first in south Wales to use

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American electric coal cutters. Hutchison was a distinguished soldier; apart from joining Mond’s group in 1926, he made no known intervention in mining affairs. Joseph, Davies, Llewellyn and Hutchison were all Liberals. Despite the great differences between these two ‘fractions’, Mond’s group as a whole provides substantial contrasts to the MAGB CC. On the whole they were considerably richer. Their mean wealth at death was nearly £400,000; five of them left over £500,000 and two over £1 million.68 A higher proportion of them had had a ‘gentleman’s’ education: seven of the twelve went either to a public school or Oxbridge or both.69 Like the MAGB CC, many of them had connections with the coal industry which were either inherited (Crawford, Davies, Llewellyn, Londonderry, Stobart and Fitzherbert Wright) or acquired through a mining engineering route (Hay and Jackson). But both Mond and Joseph were recent entrants: Mond bought into the industry in 1923; Joseph married into it in 1917.70 This points to a significant contrast with the MAGB CC. Almost all the CC had spent their lives in the industry and had had no other career. This was by no means the case with Mond’s group, particularly its leading figures, Mond, Crawford and Londonderry. Each had had a political career; so, too, at a lower level, had Hutchison and Davies. Byrne and Hutchison had been professional soldiers. Fitzherbert Wright had had a less distinguished career as soldier and MP before turning to the family business. Mond and Joseph had entered the industry after business careers elsewhere. Only Hay, Jackson and Llewellyn had spent all their lives in coal. On the MAGB CC, the only figures with comparably diverse careers were Gainford and, at a lower level, Cory, twice a Liberal MP. The narrowness and provinciality of the public lives of the MAGB CC is thrown into sharp relief by the contrast with Mond and Crawford. Mond was a member of the Royal Institution in 1926; he had been the first chair of the Imperial War Museum Board of Management; he chaired the Board of Management of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and filled other similar positions. Crawford had been chancellor of Manchester University since 1923; he had chaired the 1925–6 Committee on Broadcasting; he was a trustee of both the National Gallery and the British Museum to name only the most prominent of such posts; a well-known bibliophile, he had published books on



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Italian sculpture. This was one interest he had in common with Mond: Mond had been brought up with his father’s collection of pictures, later donated to the National Gallery; his personal collection of classical sculptures was said to be as important.71 With the exception of Gainford, none of the MAGB CC played similar roles. Their views on the national issues of the day were neither sought nor offered.72 Nearly half of them were JPs and twelve are known to have served as county or urban district councillors; seven were deputy lieutenants of their county but their public activities were, with the exception of Gainford, confined to their county and their industry.73 A few were active in the management of local hospitals but few, if any, endowed libraries, galleries, universities, or dedicated parks or buildings to their locality.74 It was a record of public service far short of the standards set by many northern manufacturers. Remarkably, the MAGB CC contained not a single serving MP in 1925–6, at a time when the MFGB sponsored forty.75 Few of the MAGB CC had significant records of military service. Partly this was a matter of age: their median age in 1914 was 49, the youngest then being 27, the oldest 65. But Sir Adam Nimmo’s insistence that he had given ‘important public service’ during the war and Finlay Gibson’s assertion that he had rendered ‘conspicuous services’ by, it turns out, sitting on committees, appears to betray some embarrassment.76 It is doubtful whether Col. Byrne, or Sir Robert Hutchison (KCMG, DSO, CB, Croix de Guerre, Order of the Crown of Italy, mentioned in dispatches six times), or Lieut.-Col. Hugh Stobart (DSO 1918), or Londonderry (mentioned twice in dispatches), or Crawford, who had, quite quixotically and only by lying about his age and marital status, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a stretcher-bearer in 1915, would have regarded these services as ‘important’ or ‘conspicuous’.77 The members of the MAGB CC married, as far as we can ascertain, daughters of men similarly provincial in their lives and activities.78 They had little or no connection with the local aristocracy.79 Their provinciality is indicated in the most literal way by their addresses. Only Beynon, Cory, Gainford and Woolley Hart maintained a London residence.80 Among Mond’s group only Hay, Jackson, Stobart and Fitzherbert Wright did not. By no definition were the CC members of London ‘society’: their births, marriages and social activities were not reported in The Times.81 This absence was not simply because the CC were industrialists;

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‘society’ had found no difficulty in accommodating Guinesses or Courtaulds.82 It was partly a matter of money; the members of the CC were not, except for Harrison, millionaires; at best they possessed only the kind of wealth possessed by many middleranking manufacturers.83 The distinction between the metropolitan and the provincial is neglected in Coleman’s discussion of ‘gentleman’ and ‘players’. ‘Gentlemen’ were more likely to be able to forge connections with the metropolitan political elite; ‘players’ found it much more difficult. They had not been to the ‘right’ schools or universities; they had no ‘connections’ with that elite through kinship or marriage; they had not performed the kind of public services which would bring them to the notice of that elite. ‘Players’ were outsiders. Mond, Crawford and Londonderry were in many ways outsiders to the industry but insiders of metropolitan political life. This is one explanation of their moderation and the MAGB’s hard line. They lived and moved among the political elite; they were sensitive to the interests of the state. The members of the CC were, with perhaps only one exception, Gainford, none of these things. For the CC, coal, iron and steel represented the whole of their lives. Their power, wealth and status derived from their ownership and control of the industry. To them, the prosperity or the bankruptcy of the industry, its organization and management, its output and its dividends were matters that had emotional resonance. To Mond, a coal company was simply one asset in a portfolio of other assets, to be managed as ‘rationally’ as possible. His position in the world did not depend on owning coal. For Crawford and Londonderry the situation was different. Coal was for each of them their only business besides land ownership. If it failed, it meant a reduction in their wealth, and houses and artworks would have to be sold. But their status in society had other supports. Whatever happened, Crawford would still be the premier earl of Scotland and Londonderry would still be the seventh marquess. The fortunes of the industry did not affect their sense of self.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS STRATEGY AND PRACTICE The distinctions discussed above may also lie behind detectable differences in the industrial relations practices of Mond’s group



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and the CC. We drew attention to the apparent domination of the MAGB by supposedly ruthless ‘players’; the Mond group clearly contained many supposedly magnanimous ‘gentlemen’. It is clear that Mond’s men included many with a reputation for paternalism and moderation in industrial relations. Londonderry’s obituarist claimed that he ‘was a generous employer, and at one period, at the urgent request of the Miners’ Federation, he kept the Old Seaham Pit open for two years at a personal loss of £1,000 a week’.84 The total loss involved is hard to credit; nevertheless, it is not the kind of story that was told of Williams or Nimmo. Crawford was praised by the Colliery Guardian on his death in 1940 as ‘enlightened’; it claimed that ‘of all the posts which he held, probably none was nearer to his heart than the chairmanship of the central organisation for the relief of the victims of mining accidents’.85 His diaries reveal a paternalism towards his employees and to Wigan as a whole. It was said of Hay that ‘throughout his long life he was greatly interested in social work for the miner’ and of Jackson that he was ‘one of the pioneers of miners’ welfare schemes in Derbyshire’.86 David Davies was described by his friend Tom Jones, whose dislike of the general body of coalowners is well known, as ‘a young Welsh coalowner and philanthropist’.87 Jones also claimed that ‘there was very much better feeling’ at David Llewellyn’s pits than at Hann’s Powell Duffryn, which had been ‘screwing the men down mercilessly’.88 Such men were not entirely absent from the CC. Leslie Wright was described as ‘patriarchally dictatorial’ by the Butterley Company’s historians, a description amplified by Waller.89 The biographer of Benton Jones remarked that he ‘painstakingly cultivated shop-floor goodwill’, and that he was ‘a devotee of the ideas of wealth-as-stewardship and industrial co-operation’.90 The welfarist policies of Walter Hargreaves at Henry Briggs, Son and Co. and of Ridley Warham at the Ashington Coal Co. have been extensively documented.91 Nevertheless, these four men were a small minority on the CC. These perceptions find some support in Ministry of Labour strike statistics.92 These data show that between 1921 and 1926 the colliery companies directed and/or managed by members of the CC experienced an annual strike rate of 113 strikes per million workers employed, very close to the rate of 112 per million recorded for the industry as a whole, while the collieries run by the Mond group had a strike rate of only 78 per million. The strike

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experience of the MAGB was not untypical therefore. While the collieries run by some CC members – Sir Adam Nimmo, for example – had poor industrial relations, there were many on the CC who had not suffered a single non-national strike large enough to come to the notice of the Ministry of Labour during the six years prior to 1926. But in the Mond group only Mond himself ran collieries suffering from notably conflictual industrial relations. His collieries had been strike-prone when he bought them in 1923 and became more so afterwards. But in the rest of the Mond group, strike rates were, at worst, average. The aristocrats Crawford and Londonderry had not experienced a single stoppage during 1921–6, Stobart and Fitzherbert Wright only one. It is tempting to interpret these data to support the view that Mond’s group (with the exception of Mond himself) were less aggressive in their conduct of industrial relations than the CC and the industry as a whole. But we have to remember that the data are also consistent with the view that the Mond group’s workforces were less aggressive. However, other statistical evidence appears to favour the former rather than the latter interpretation. Classifying strikes into those precipitated by management decisions (defensive strikes) and those seeking to change existing arrangements (offensive strikes) and ‘others’ shows that CC members precipitated defensive strikes some 60 times during 1921–6, about once for every 4,200 men they employed; Mond group members did so only 15 times, about once for every 7,900 men employed.93 A consideration of strikes over particular issues is also interesting. Nonunionism was, surprisingly, more of an issue in the Mond group collieries than in the MAGB group; there were 23 strikes over nonunionism in the CC collieries in 1921–6, or 15 per million employees per year; there were 14 in the Mond group collieries or 20 per million per year. However, strikes against wage reductions were rare in the Mond group’s collieries, with only 4 being recorded (less than 1 per million employees per year); in the CC collieries they were much more frequent, with 32 being recorded (21 per million per year). It would seem that for many on the CC, as one would expect from their stance at national level in 1926, cutting wages was seen as a viable solution to business difficulties, while for the Mond group it was not. The CC companies won 40 per cent of their strikes and lost only 19 per cent (the remaining 41 per cent were compromised). Nationally, colliery companies won 34 per cent of domestic strikes



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in this period and lost 26 per cent. Mond group companies won only 25 per cent and lost 40 per cent. Again, it is possible that these variations reflect differences in the workforces rather than in their employers. In the context of the other evidence it seems more likely that Mond group employers were more willing to concede disputed issues than those on the CC. This evidence invites the following interpretation. The aristocratic and gentry paternalists came from a culture in which strikes were rare and open conflict avoided. The rationalizers in the Mond group, except Mond himself, had frequently discovered a blend of business modernism and old-style industrial relations paternalism which kept open conflict at relatively low levels, except where non-unionism became an issue. Many on the CC, on the other hand, came from cultures in which managements were aggressive and open conflict was frequent. These differences in domestic industrial relations strategy and practice indicate one of the major difficulties for the Mond group in moderating MAGB strategy: that of elaborating a viable alternative. Their own ability to evade open conflict was based on paternalist strategies that required a long-standing presence in the industry, consistent implementation and an involvement in the affairs of a particular company and its locality. They were incapable of application to the national arena. It would seem that this was the reason behind Londonderry’s view ‘that better results for the harmonious working of the industry might be obtained from direct discussions between owners and men in their own districts’.94 It was not so much that the economics of the industry required district agreements, or that national bargaining was bad because it precipitated state intervention, but that paternalist methods of achieving industrial peace required the ‘personal touch’ of the paternalist, applied directly in each locality and district. Such views led to no strategy capable of dealing with the national situation in 1926.

CONCLUSIONS We have identified three distinct ‘fractions’ of the colliery capitalists in 1926. One fraction represented the remnants of the landed aristocracy; another, in temporary alliance with the aristocrats, represented the emerging monopoly coal capitalists. But by far the

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biggest, most powerful fraction was that represented by the MAGB. They represented competitive capitalism. While many members of the MAGB CC had been actively involved in the increasing ‘concentration of capital’ seen in the industry, they were yet to make the transition in terms of attitudes and strategies to the ‘monopoly stage’ of coal capitalism represented by Mond’s ‘rationalizing’ schemes. They were men who had entered the industry in their youth through inheritance or acquisition of skills. They had typically spent their lives in the industry and had few outside interests. They were an alliance of middle-ranking members of the propertied and professional middle classes. Few of them conformed to the stereotypes of ‘gentleman’ or ‘player’ with any exactness but relatively few bore the educational markers of the ‘gentleman’. Partly for this reason and partly because their wealth was only middling, they had few contacts with metropolitan political life: they were a deeply provincial group. They were suspicious of the state and attributed their troubles to the meddling interference of successive governments and the agitation of alleged outsiders: syndicalists, socialists and communists. Their strategy was that appropriate to competitive capitalists faced by a unionized workforce: bearing down on costs by cutting wages and lengthening hours, destroying unionism if this seemed possible, and fighting to preserve their property. As capitalists whose business interests lay almost entirely in this one industry and the closely allied iron and steel sector, they viewed nationalization as a threat not only to their wealth but to their sense of their place in the world. As mine managers and mine engineers they were proud of their record of technical innovation and felt insulted by those who pointed to the industry’s deficiencies; they saw no scope for quickly reducing costs by any innovation they were not already exploring. They pursued their chosen strategy behind leaders chosen for the task who acted with an astute ruthlessness and in disregard of the interests of the state in maintaining order and industrial peace. The remnants of the old landed coal-mining aristocracy, Crawford and Londonderry, and their allies from the industrial ‘gentry’, Stobart and Fitzherbert Wright, desirous of peace but fearful of Bolshevism, had no viable alternative to put forward. Their long-perfected, local strategy of seigneurial paternalism was incapable of offering a guide to action in the national crisis. Nor did the representatives of the new ‘rationalizers’ have a remedy; their proposals were for the long term. Both groups were



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enmeshed in relationships with the metropolitan state and found themselves repeatedly urged to moderate the MAGB’s strategy. But with no effective alternative and tied by their still-strong loyalty to their competitive capitalist colleagues, they failed to act effectively and stood by while the fight was fought to a finish.

Notes Thanks to John Benson, John McIlroy and Alan Campbell for many helpful comments and suggestions; the usual disclaimer applies. 1 G. W. MacDonald, ‘The role of British industry in 1926’, in M. Morris (ed.), The General Strike (Harmondsworth, 1976), pp. 289–317; B. Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 4: 1913–1946, The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford, 1987), pp. 70–111. 2 A detailed account of biographical sources is given in an unpublished paper, Q. Outram, ‘The coalowners in 1926: a collective biography’. They include: Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry, census and vital registration records; The Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory 1926, pp. 771–810; biographical sketches in the Colliery Guardian, 1923–9; company histories; D. J. Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography (London, 1984); A. Slaven and S. Checkland (eds), Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography 1860–1960 (Aberdeen, 1986); obituaries; Who’s Who 1926 and Who Was Who. Only direct quotations from these sources are referenced below. 3 MAGB, Annual Report 1919, pp. 11–12. 4 MAGB, Annual Report 1920, pp. 52–5; revised constitution in MAGB, Annual Report 1921, pp. 140–50. 5 ‘Members of Council’, in MAGB, Annual Report 1925, pp. 124–33. 6 Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee Appointed by the Board of Trade to Consider the Position of the Coal Trade after the War (London, 1918, Cmd 9093). 7 Jeremy, Dictionary of Business Biography. 8 T. Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 2: 1926–30 (London, 1969), p. 12. Jones did not exaggerate the dividends paid by the Fife Coal Co. which Nimmo chaired; since 1911 it had never paid less than 10 per cent and during the war it had paid up to 35 per cent; The Mining Manual and Mining Year Book for 1926 (London, 1926). 9 MAGB, Annual Report 1919, p. 70. 10 Sir Arthur Francis Pease (1866–1927), first baronet, created 1920, chair of Pease and Partners Ltd in 1926, and the senior member of the Pease industrial dynasty; Gainford was his cousin: M. W. Kirby, Men of Business and Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Quaker Pease Dynasty of North East England, 1700–1943 (London, 1984). 11 MAGB, Annual Report 1919, p. 69; MAGB, Annual Report 1925, p. 15; MAGB, Annual Report 1926, p. 16. 12 Jones, Whitehall Diary, p. 12. 13 In July 1925, Williams demanded an open-ended subsidy if lockout notices were withdrawn. Williams made it clear to Baldwin that a verbal promise of a subsidy was insufficient: ‘There is a saying that you must not put your trust in

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princes. Our experience in the coal trade is that it is far more dangerous to put your faith in governments than it is in princes’: National Archives, London (NA), LAB 27/3 ‘Proceedings of the interviews between the prime minister and the coalowners, 31 July 1925’. Quoted by J. Campbell, F. E. Smith: First Earl of Birkenhead (London, 1983), p. 777. Q. Outram, ‘The stupidest men in England? The industrial relations strategy of the coalowners between the lockouts, 1923–24’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 4 (September 1997), 65–95. Royal Commission on the Coal Industry (1925), vol. 2, part B: Minutes of Evidence (London, 1926), pp. 929–65. Royal Commission, vol. 2, part B: p. 930. MAGB, Annual Report 1920, p. 65. MAGB, Annual Report 1926, p. 16. For Wright, see below. Jones, Whitehall Diary, pp. 65, 68. NA, LAB27/4, A. Steel-Maitland, ‘Memorandum of a conversation with Mr Hann’, 15 April 1926. MAGB, Annual Report 1920, p. 34. Ibid. Thorneycroft (1864–1954) was a prominent Scottish mine engineer and coalowner, serving on the 1919 MAGB CC and giving evidence to the Sankey Commission; by 1926 he had been largely eclipsed by Sir Adam Nimmo. MAGB, Annual Report 1920, p. 69. MAGB, Annual Report 1925, p. 24. W. A. Lee, Thirty Years in Coal 1917–1947: A Review of the Coal Mining Industry under Private Enterprise (London, 1954), appendices II and III. See also MacDonald, ‘The role of British industry in 1926’, pp. 312–3. The remaining five members of the CC were officials: Lee, the MAGB secretary, and Allen, Gibson, Guthrie and Scoular, who were secretaries of local coalowners’ associations. These five held neither directorships nor management positions. Three CC members held colliery company management positions but no directorships. Company directorships were ascertained from the 1926 editions of the Directory of Directors and The Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory. The former is known to be incomplete but does cover all industries; the latter covers only colliery companies but offers listings of boards of directors which do appear to be complete. See, for example, D. J. Williams, Capitalist Combination in the Coal Industry (London, 1924). The coal ‘combine men’ on the CC were Carlow (managing director, Fife Coal Co.), Gainford (vice-chair, Pease and Partners), Hann (general manager, Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co.), Jackson (MD, Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Co.), Sir Adam Nimmo (chair, Fife Coal Co.) and Williams (a director of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Co.); the coal, iron and steel combine men were Beynon (deputy chair, Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron and Coal Co.), Forrester (a director of Robert Forrester and Co.), Gardner (MD, Shelton Iron, Steel and Coal Co.) and Benton Jones (a director of the United Steel Cos.). The ‘big men’ were Angus (a director of William Baird and Co.), Forster (deputy chair and MD of the Weardale Steel, Coal and Coke Co.), Hargreaves (chair and MD, Henry Briggs, Son and Co.), Harrison (chair, Cannock and Rugeley Colliery Co.), Kirkup (head agent of the Lambton, Hetton and Joicey Collieries Co.), Maclean (chair, United Collieries), McCosh (a director of William Baird and Co.), Pilkington (chair, Richard Evans and Co.), Speakman (chair and MD,



31

32 33

34 35

36

37

38

39 40

41

42

43 44 45

46 47 48

49

50 51 52 53

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John Speakman and Sons), Thomas Taylor (chair, East Holywell Coal Co. and of the Ryhope Coal Co.), Ridley Warham (MD, Ashington Coal Co.) and Leslie Wright (MD, Butterley Co.). Williams, Capitalist Combination, p. 110; Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory 1926; Mines Department, List of Mines (London, 1926). Employment data computed from List of Mines, 1926. The difficulties presented by bequest data for assessing wealth during life and at death are well known. They are illustrated by the comment of D. R. Llewellyn that ‘his all, namely £4 millions, was locked up in the [coal] trade’: Jones, Whitehall Diary, p. 89. When Llewellyn died he left £714,000. W. D. Rubinstein, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1981), pp. 76–8. Colliery Guardian, 8 January 1932. P. E. H. Hair, ‘The social history of the British coal miners, 1800–45’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford, 1955), 268. D. C. Coleman, ‘Gentlemen and players’, Economic History Review, 26 (1973) 92–116. Gainford and Williams went to Cambridge but not to public school; Angus, Hann and Woolley Hart attended public schools but not Oxbridge; Beynon went to Clifton but finished his education ‘abroad’. K. Neville Moss, ‘A history of mining education in Great Britain’, Colliery Guardian, May 1935, 119–22. Moss was professor of mining at the University of Birmingham. ‘Men of note in the British coal industry’, Colliery Guardian, 7 August 1925. For example, E. E. Bramall, AGM, Midland Counties’ Institute of Engineers, 26 October 1927, Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers, LXXIV (1927–8), 90–1, and John Brass, Institution of Mining Engineers, 25 January 1933, Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers, LXXXIV (1932–3), 346. The MAGB’s pamphlet, What Mr Lloyd George Was Not Told: An Answer to Coal and Power (London, 1924), takes a similar line. Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, Minutes of Evidence, vol. 2, part A, p. 158; Royal Commission on the Coal Industry, Minutes of Evidence, vol. 2, part B, pp. 1014–15. John Brass, AGM, Institution of Mining Engineers, 30 January 1936, Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers, XCI (1935–6), 7–8. Star, 27 January 1926; The Times, 9, 11, 12, 23 January 1926. The Times, 27 January 1926. Sir Alfred Mond, ‘A draft report on the coal position’, cited by MacDonald, ‘The role of British industry in 1926’, pp. 312–13. Jones, Whitehall Diary, pp. 16–17. NA, LAB 27/6, Report of a meeting of coal owners, 7 May 1926, p. 88. He may have held shares in colliery companies but he held no directorship or management position in the coal industry in 1926. J. Vincent (ed.), The Crawford Papers: The Journals of David Lindsay, TwentySeventh Earl of Crawford and Tenth Earl of Balcarres 1871–1940 during the Years 1892 to 1940 (Manchester, 1984), p. 514; The Times, 1, 16 June, 3 July, 1926. The Times, 26 April 1926. Rubinstein, Men of Property, p. 77. The Times, 20 April 1926. Ibid.

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56 57

58

59

60

61

62 63

64

65 66 67 68

69

70

71

72

73

74

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Vincent, Crawford Papers, pp. 511–14. Bridgeman to Baldwin, 7 September 1926, in P. Williamson (ed.), The Modernisation of Conservative Politics: The Diaries and Letters of William Bridgeman 1904–1935 (London, 1988), pp. 200–1. NA, LAB 27/6, P. Cunliffe-Lister, Memorandum, 14 September 1926. M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Companion to Volume V, Part 1: Documents 1922–29 (London, 1979), pp. 772–867. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Londonderrys: A Family Portrait (London, 1979), pp. xvi–xvii; Jones, Whitehall Diary, p. 77. Londonderry to Churchill, 6 September 1926, in Gilbert, Companion, pp. 778–9. Londonderry to Churchill, 17 September 1926, in Gilbert, Companion, pp. 833–4. Londonderry to Churchill, 2 November 1926, in Gilbert, Companion, pp. 864–5. Churchill to Londonderry, 3 November 1926, in Gilbert, Companion, pp. 865–7. D. Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London, 1996), pp. 352–3. R. A. Church, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 3: 1830–1913, Victorian Pre-eminence (Oxford, 1986), pp. 122–4. The Times, 20 February 1951. Jeremy, Dictionary of Business Biography. The Times, 20 March 1929. The value of Fitzherbert Wright’s will could not be ascertained. The remaining eleven men died between 1929 and 1952 with a median year of death of 1941. The education of four of the twelve, Byrne, Hay, Hutchison and Jackson, is unknown; Joseph went to neither public school nor university; the Eton schoolboys were Crawford, Londonderry, Stobart and Wright. Joseph married Violet Settle, the daughter of Joel Settle, the chair of the Bignall Hill Colliery Co. Ltd and Mossfield Colliery Ltd, and Joseph joined the board of both companies. Byrne’s and Hutchison’s routes into the industry are unclear. F. A. Freeth, ‘The Right Honourable Lord Melchett, PC, DSc., LLD., FRS’, Journal of the Institute of Fuel, IV (February 1931), 153–4; The Times, 3 January 1910, 17, 18 May 1923. Gainford gave speeches reported in The Times in and out of the House of Lords on a wide variety of topics during 1925–6, from the slave trade to the ‘cinematograph’ industry. Guthrie had been a member of the 1919–20 Home Office Departmental Committee on Workmen’s Compensation. Except for Gainford, no other place on a government commission or committee, not dealing with the coal industry, has been traced for any other member of the MAGB CC. The number serving on councils is likely to be an underestimate; many of the source materials used in this study omit records of local government service. Beynon was county director of the Monmouthshire Auxiliary Hospital; Crawshaw had sat on the board of the Dewsbury and District Infectious Diseases Hospital; Jackson was vice-president and life governor of Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital; Leslie Wright endowed a wing of the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. R. Page Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle: A History of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain from 1910 Onwards (London, 1953), pp. 550–1.


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77 78

79

80 81 82

83 84

85

86

87 88 89

90 91

92

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Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory, pp. 783, 795. Internal evidence suggests that the biographical entries in the Year Book were authored by their subjects. Vincent, Crawford Papers, pp. 8, 349–50. Woolley Hart seems to be the only exception; his second marriage, in 1928, was to Marguerite Vivienne, Countess Bernstorff. Harrison is an exception; his memorial service was attended by the Earl and Countess of Lichfield, the Earl of Harrowby, the Hon. John Benson (representing Lord Charnwood) and Baroness Burton, all locally based aristocrats. Lee, as MAGB secretary, lived in London. Woolley Hart became an exception after his second marriage. S. Gunn and R. Bell, The Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl (London, 2000), pp. 92–3. Rubinstein, Men of Property, p. 185. The Times, 12 February 1949. See also H. Beynon and T. Austrin, Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation: The Durham Miners and the English Political Tradition (London, 1994), pp. 203–4. Colliery Guardian, 15 March 1940, referring to the Central Association of Miners’ Permanent Relief Societies. Londonderry’s brother, the Hon. Lionel Lindsay, was a director of the Colliery Guardian Co. Ltd, so it is not surprising that the paper’s editorial remarks were extremely kind, but the terms in which the paper chose to express its appreciation remain noteworthy. Obituaries, Colliery Guardian, 12 December 1941 (Hay) and 4 January 1935 (Jackson). T. Jones, A Diary with Letters 1931–1950 (London, 1954), p. xvii. Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 2, p. 14. R. H. Mottram and C. Coote, Through Five Generations: The History of the Butterley Company (London, 1954), pp. 101, 167; R. J. Waller, The Dukeries Transformed: The Social and Political Development of a Twentieth-Century Coalfield (Oxford, 1983). Jeremy, Dictionary of Business Biography. M. Dintenfass, Managing Industrial Decline (Columbus, OH, 1992), pp. 100–14, 121–9. The strengths and weaknesses of the strike data in the Ministry of Labour’s records at NA, LAB 34 are discussed in R. Church and Q. Outram, Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain 1889–1966 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 10–11, 13–14, 269–73. ‘Defensive strikes’ are those recorded as being: against a decrease of wages; against an increase in scale of deductions, etc.; for reinstatement of discharged or victimized workpeople; and against changes in existing working arrangements, rules, etc. ‘Offensive strikes’ are those recorded as being: for an increase in wage rates; for payments of additional wages or allowances in particular cases; over refusals to work with non-unionists; for recognition of a trade union or for trade union facilities, and for changes in existing working arrangements, rules, etc. The Times, 27 January 1926.

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5 South Wales

JOHN MCILROY

The greatest of our battles We lost in ’26 Through treachery and lying And Baldwin’s box of tricks. Idris Davies, ‘I was born in Rhymney’

Will Paynter, who led the south Wales miners and subsequently the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with distinction from 1951 to 1968, died in December 1984. He had lived through the intense militancy of the early 1920s in the mines, through calamitous defeat, through recovery and resurgence and finally impending catastrophe. He saw the beginning of the end although not the final fall. Born in Whitchurch, Cardiff, in 1903, Paynter always referred to 1926 as Year One. He dwelt on the failure of that year only for the lessons it held for the future and for building a society which would redeem the vision he saw so brutally crushed in 1926. His achievement, painfully assembled in the post-war period, was stopped in its tracks in 1985.1 There were important differences between the two conflicts. Only 20,000 south Wales miners took the field in 1984 compared with six times that number sixty years before. Mardy, the fortress of Paynter’s mentor, Arthur Horner, was now the last pit in the Rhondda. Muriel Williams, a miner’s widow from Ogmore Vale, who lived through the lockout remembered: ‘In 1926 we were all hungry. But we did not have to worry about mortgages, hire purchase or modern conveniences.’2 But some things remained the same. In 1984 as in 1926, the miners confronted not only their

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Map 2 The south Wales coalfield


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employers but the mobilized might of the state. In both struggles, the union mobilized the communities and endured to an end which it significantly influenced. In both 1926 and 1985 it demonstrated dignity and creativity in the face of crushing defeat. The difference was that in 1985, as we know now, defeat was the prelude to the final destruction of the mining communities, their culture and their union. In 1926 the coalfield faced savage devastation. But when Paynter began his new life at the Cymmer Colliery just before Christmas 1926, in a place where the coal was as hard as ‘the hobs of hell’, he could see beyond the blackness at least faint glimmers of hope.3 Paynter’s coalfield extended from Ammanford in the west to Pontypool in the east (see map 2). In 1926 it was technologically backward and threatened by the vicissitudes of the export trade and increased competition from the USA and Germany. Productivity was 8 per cent lower and production costs 15 per cent higher than the average for British coalfields, while 5.4 per cent of coal was machine-cut compared with 46 per cent in Scotland. South Wales was scored by internal fissures. With an established domestic market, the developing anthracite coalfield stood better economically than the steam coal areas. Its pits were smaller, with the occasional large mine such as Gwaun-cae-Gurwen. The bigger pits in the steam coalfield, particularly in the Rhondda such as Ferndale, Tylorstown and Llwynypia, housed aggressive but volatile trade unionism and the Communist Party (CP). There was growing concentration of ownership, burgeoning combines such as Powell Duffryn, Cambrian Collieries and Amalgamated Anthracite, and increasing integration with heavy industry and financial institutions.4 The South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF) was the strongest voice in the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). Its strength had been sapped by the blows of the early 1920s and by endemic unemployment. The coalfield employed 218,000 workers in 1926. Around 136,000 miners were on the SWMF books, giving a union density figure of 63 per cent, although only 129,000 were fully paid-up members. Non-unionism fluctuated: it was variable but resilient. The SWMF itself was a federation of twenty autonomous, often different districts, ranging from minnows such as Garw to giants such as Rhondda No. 1. In 1926 it was in poor shape for a fight: many miners had not redeemed the debts of the 1921 dispute, local struggles such as the anthracite strike of 1925

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had taken their toll, and SWMF funds were in no condition to take up the slack.5 But in comparison with other coalfields class antagonisms were sharp. Moreover, in a direct sense the SWMF was fighting the state: Baldwins Ltd owned eight collieries in south Wales. There were no illusions in the coalowners, ‘a rascally set of oppressors the like of which it would be difficult to equal in the tyrannical history of British capitalism’.6 In south Wales there was a mood of desperate determination in the face of demands for wage cuts of between 15 and 41 per cent, the reduction of the guaranteed minimum per shift from 8s. 0d. to 6s. 8d. which affected 40,000 workers, and the certainty that defeat would usher in the eight-hour day and increased unemployment. Embedded in the lives of the communities, the SWMF lodges were powerful instruments in generating and sustaining solidarity. The talk in pit, pub and home was not only of rugby, soccer and boxing but of lodge politics, of the miners’ battles and their generals, first and foremost Arthur J. Cook. He was revered and feared, according to inclination, across the coalfield for his struggles in south Wales from the early years of the century and for his endeavours nationally from 1924, when the area voted for him across political boundaries as secretary of the MFGB.7 Like Cook, the leaders of 1926 were for the most part considerably older than Paynter and largely full-time district agents who complemented each other in reflecting different tendencies among the miners. Tom Richards, a sick man probably suffering from Parkinson’s disease, had led the SWMF since its foundation twenty-eight years earlier. Richards (1859–1931) was a canny survivor. The sixty-seven year old former Lib–Lab MP for West Monmouthshire and a Privy Councillor had seen the days of Mabon and weathered the subsequent challenge of socialists and syndicalists. The veteran president, the agent for the Taff and Cynon miners, Enoch Morrell, and the treasurer, the ‘non-political’ Oliver Harris from Blackwood, constituted with Richards a moderate core among the leaders, middle-of-the-road men prepared to use militant means to achieve limited ends. Noah Ablett (1883–1935) and S. O. (Stephen Owen) Davies (1883–1972), the SWMF vice-president, both in their early forties, sat with Richards on the MFGB Executive and gave the Fed its left face. Ablett, the miners’ agent in Merthyr indelibly identified with The Miners’ Next Step and the Unofficial Reform Committee, had by now distanced himself from the CP-led Minority Movement (MM). By 1926 he was in decline and drinking. Davies, like Ablett


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a former preacher, but also a graduate of Cardiff University, was in contrast a coming force. The miners’ agent in Dowlais, he represented the new post-war radicalism associated with the MM and the CP with which he actively consorted, sharing its ends and methods but rejecting its underestimation of the Labour Party, which retained his loyalty.8 The CP itself was represented on the Executive Council by two of the younger generation from Mardy, the future SWMF president and NUM general secretary, Horner (1894–1968) and his lieutenant, Dai Lloyd Davies. An immigrant from rural Cardiganshire, born in 1889, Davies had worked at Mardy from 1905 and chaired the lodge since 1914. An early disciple of Ablett, he joined the CP in 1921. He was unemployed in 1926 and played, together with Horner, an intransigent role, visiting Russia with Cook and returning with the famous red and gold banner from Krasnaya Presna. Another of Ablett’s generation associated with The Miners’ Next Step was W. H. Mainwaring (1884–1971), who for twenty-five years would represent Rhondda East in parliament. Like Dai Lloyd Davies he had passed from syndicalism to the CP, only to quit the party in 1924 when it preferred Cook in the contest for MFGB general secretary. An agent in the Rhondda, Mainwaring had worked at the Central Labour College (CLC) which Ablett and his comrades, particularly his fellow Executive member, Noah Rees, had done so much to develop.9 By 1926 their achievement was the constitution of a corps of ‘scientifically trained’ union leaders. The Executive included CLC graduates such as George Daggar (1879–1950), an agent in the western Valleys and from 1929 MP for Abertillery; Arthur Jenkins (1882–1946), Attlee’s future parliamentary private secretary, in 1926 like Daggar a moderate and an agent in Pontypool where he later became MP; James Griffiths (1890–1975), agent in the anthracite and Harold Wilson’s future deputy prime minister; Sydney Jones from Tredegar, the tutor of the young meteor Aneurin Bevan, who later worked for the National Coal Board; Bryn Roberts (1897–1964), agent in the Rhymney Valley and future creator of the National Union of Public Employees; and Ted Williams (1890–1963), the agent in the Garw Valley, subsequently MP for Ogmore. The CLC had taught them an abstract, evolutionary Marxism, in conflict with CP doctrine; it was a Marxism which insisted that theory did not dictate one particular, still less ‘Leninist’, practice and which found

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no problem in according the Labour Party a socialist mission. By 1926, men like Daggar, Jones and Griffiths had no doubt that the future lay with gradualism and Labour. Mainwaring and Ted Williams were fast moving in that direction while Jenkins was already a member of the party’s National Executive.10 Others prominent in SWMF counsels in 1926, one with a grasp of strategy, one developing it, were Vernon Hartshorn (1872–1931) and Bevan. The fifty-four year old MP for Ogmore, a leader of the revolt against the SWMF old guard in 1910–11, who had resigned as president ten years later in face of the progress of Cook and the MM, remained a fighting moderate opposed to the left. Bevan, twenty-nine years of age and delegated to MFGB conferences by the Tredegar lodges, represented with the two Davieses and Horner the eloquent hard left. These were the personalities who dominated the lockout in south Wales, although at least two future SWMF general secretaries, W. J. Saddler and Evan Williams, were Executive members throughout the dispute. As the trajectories of Ablett, S. O. Davies, Jenkins and Mainwaring, all born between 1882 and 1884, suggest, generational analysis has only limited relevance to this group. They represented diverse, distinct traditions derived from varying conditions, work organization, managerial and union histories and styles – mediated by their own developing conceptions of industrial politics. There was plenty of room for differences which became apparent as the lockout wore on. They were important but typically transcended in what remained to the end a disciplined leadership.11 In the immediate aftermath of the general strike, the south Wales leadership pushed for maintenance of the miners’ defensive front. For Griffiths it was a matter of sticking things out, for Ablett a war of attrition. With no thought of concessions, they dug in on the terrain of 30 April and stood firm for a national agreement, no wage reductions and the seven-hour day. There seems to have been little attempt to impede the movement of already-cut coal from sidings. They appear to have left the issue of the embargo by transport workers to the MFGB; when its overtures were rejected, they did not, on the evidence, organize mass pickets to pressure local rail and transport workers to stop imported coal moving into and out of Barry, Port Talbot and Swansea. The picture is rather one of stress on internal solidarity, holding the miners together and waiting for Baldwin, rather than the coalowners, to break. The SWMF leadership resisted calls from the districts for a general


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withdrawal of the safety men, although there were tactical withdrawals when it was felt that they were being used to cut coal. Wariness on this issue bespoke the unhappy experience of 1921 and the fact that, as many were in other unions or no union at all, the call was likely to go unanswered. In this context of holding the line, early concern was expressed about statements from MFGB president Herbert Smith and Cook which suggested willingness to negotiate over reductions.12 Throughout the dispute, the influence of liberal coalowners such as Sir David Llewellyn of the Cambrian Combine and David Davies of Ocean Coal was negligible. But there were manoeuvres behind the scenes: the introduction of the eight-hour bill prompted Richards to deliberate secretly on terms with Lord Wimborne in late June, and details of their discussions were passed on to the government.13 Together with the former south Wales leader, Frank Hodges, as vilified as Jimmy Thomas in the coalfield, Hartshorn put out the initial feelers which led to Cook’s discussion of terms with Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree. But despite the suggestion of meetings with Richards by Llewellyn, the owners remained firmly behind their unyielding national spokesman, Evan Williams of Morlais Colliery, Carmarthenshire and Powell Duffryn, while Ocean Coal would back the breakaway union.14 Yet the south Wales Executive insisted that the bishops’ proposals be withdrawn pending an MFGB conference. The Executive pointed out that Cook and Smith were acting beyond their remit although it made no recommendation to a south Wales conference convened to discuss the issue on 7 August. The consequent vote for rejection, 165–78, suggested that some at least were in the mood for negotiation and the subsequent casting of the south Wales block vote of 129,000 against the proposals cloaked internal differences.15 Ablett, for example, justified his endorsement of the proposals by arguing that support for the union was weakening significantly in Merthyr and that there was now a necessity for compromise. He was criticized by S. O. Davies for ‘defeatism and demoralization’ while Bevan and Horner remained vocal advocates of the rejection of further negotiations. They deprecated the leadership’s preoccupation with ‘finding a way out’ at the expense of agitating for an embargo as well as stiffening morale in the Midlands and among faint hearts generally.16 Their critics noted in turn that ‘there are two different opinions in South Wales’. Even opponents of the churches’ initiative acknowledged that south

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Wales faced difficulties: the influx of coal imports; the action of local authorities in refusing relief; and the need to consider the impact of intransigence by the export districts on other areas where many men could return on something like the status quo. The consequences remained as yet negligible. Government reports disclosed few desertions. The Mines Department claimed in July that twenty-eight pits were operating across south Wales but listed only ninety-four miners as working. But the fact that by August Mynachdy, one of two pits in the stronghold of Ynysbwl, was producing coal suggests the difficulties of generalization and regional comparisons.17 A further blow, ‘a most treacherous business . . . a betrayal of the interest of every colliery worker in Great Britain’,18 came when D. B. Jones, leader of a small union of south Wales safety and engine men, reached agreement with the coalowners to work an eight-hour day. But when it came to changing course, south Wales stayed firm. At the 16 August MFGB conference it was part of the minority opposing negotiations. Nonetheless, by the end of the month Richards was still successfully resisting demands from the left for a Cardiff conference on the vexed issue of safety men. He claimed that ‘the conference would certainly carry a resolution to withdraw the safety men and this would cause a diversion from the greater problem’.19 Rather, he argued, ‘power should be given to him to advocate at the national Executive the reopening of negotiations by departing from the negative attitudes hitherto adopted.’20 As the talks led by Churchill developed in September, the SWMF leadership insisted that only 700 men were working, although Herbert Smith was increasingly incredulous and the Mines Department claimed that 12,000 miners were producing coal in south Wales. There had been small, specific problems almost from the start. Early in June the leader of the future breakaway union, William Gregory, had led a return at the Raglan pit, Bridgend, while Powell Duffryn, having secured SWMF blessing to prepare a new pit at Trelewis, to operate when hostilities ceased, gradually recruited strike breakers.21 Whatever the overall numbers returning, it became clear as early autumn chilled the air that the situation was deteriorating. Resistance relied on success in mobilizing communities around the lodges. From the start of the dispute, the miners were denied relief from the Boards of Guardians on the grounds that they were refusing to work. They were ineligible for unemployment benefit


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and denied SWMF lockout benefit as the funds were simply not there. The locked-out men themselves were thus dependent on district and lodge funds and subventions channelled through the MFGB from sympathetic trade unionists in Britain and abroad, notably Russia. The communal kitchens which most districts favoured worked better than the issue of food vouchers. Centred on the lodge, they were essential in an area where shopkeepers were no longer inclined to grant credit as they had in 1921 and even the cooperative societies’ arrangements were far from generous, as well as sustaining solidarity and bringing women into the dispute. Moratoriums on rent payments provided an important boost although payment of arrears promised a troubled future. Poor Law relief, on which miners’ families depended, was, under government Circular 703, parsimonious, providing a maximum of 12s. 0d. for wives and 4s. 0d. for children – the important Pontypridd Union paid less. Some local authorities, such as Rhondda, provided children’s meals in elementary schools throughout the conflict while outcropping provided a source of domestic coal, although its development into small-scale commerce caused problems.22 So did the rats. Parasitic on the pit ponies’ provender, they followed them to the surface and colonized colliery houses. But on the whole the miners remembered the summer with pleasure, poaching birds, butchering lambs and stealing chickens and ‘the strawberries, cherries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, raspberries, loganberries and gooseberries of the big houses’.23 The women remembered street dancing into the early hours, the men sleeping late. In that beautiful summer of severe austerity in 1926 we swam in the clear waters of the river Cynon, watched the numerous jazz and character bands as they practised and then strutted and marched in the carnival competitions . . . we went to the Go-as-you-Please competitions in the miners institutes and theatres where the local talent, Esmée Preston and Ida Jones’s dancing troupes entertained the locked out miners.24

Bert Coombes, who worked in the Vale of Neath, memorialized the experience of many ‘ordinary’ miners, waiting on events with loyalty, patience, sometimes stoicism, suppressing thoughts of growing destitution: All through that summer the stoppage was continued. We walked up the mountains because the grass was soft and because we could not

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endure the sight of those prosperous-looking cars flashing along. Weeks of waiting and hoping merged into more weeks when we just waited. This dispute had gone on so long that we began to get indifferent as to when we would start for it seemed that we must have another drop in wages and a return to longer hours. We had forgotten what it was to have spending-money and men tried all kinds of tricks to satisfy their craving for a smoke.25

Like many others, Coombes made use of his freedom: he learned to play the violin and trained as an ambulance man. In his novel, We Live, the turbulent Communist, former CLC student and checkweighman at the Cambrian pit, Lewis Jones, who served three months for sedition in 1926, left a compelling record of the arguments, dreams, dilemmas and conflicts within the mining communities. Despite its flaws, the novel reproduces the differentiation and divisions, the self-interest and self-sacrifice which endured under the party’s lifeless label of ‘the masses’, and the struggle to create a community which always remained contested, contingent and conditional.26 Perhaps the sharpest evocation is in the poetry of Idris Davies, bard of the ‘bravery of the simple, faithful folk’. His lines – ‘And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry’ – were on many lips in 1984. Davies, who worked at the Mardy pit at Pontlottyn, Rhymney, illuminated forever the hopes and the hatred: Here is Arthur J. Cook, a red rose in his lapel Astride on a wall, arousing his people Now with fist in the air, now a slap to the knee Almost burning his way to victory! . . . And cowardly scribblers will be busy tonight Besmirching a warrior with the mud of their spite.27

In his poems Davies expressed the recollected experience of his class; his personal passage suggests the complexities of the time. Like many others he embraced the ‘bitter sweet’ liberation of that summer; but for him its trials were softened for his father continued to be paid as a safety man at Pontlottyn. Davies doubted the commitment of some of the local leaders and may even have returned to work just before the end.28 The twenty-three-year-old Paynter, in contrast, began the lockout in the Rhondda as a spectator but became increasingly


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absorbed in it. He too was protected from the worst as his family were able to rely on their savings, suggesting again the unevenness of the experience. He remembered the centrality of the communal kitchen, the family of blacklegs in Trebanog and turning over the lorries of the outcroppers. It made him an activist: ‘Before the lockout ended I was attending every meeting, particularly those addressed by A. J. Cook.’29 In many memories, no doubt with elements of both truth and simplification, there were two disputes, with the recollected pleasure of the first months passing to pain: ‘Gone were the golden days of summer . . . the cold autumn rains of late October had now come.’30 Morale followed meteorology. As hopes faded with the leaves and hardship hit the families, oppressed minds turned towards defeat. History has left little account of those, driven by desperation, who broke ranks and blacklegged.31 By September, many communal kitchens, starved of funds, had stopped serving hot meals. An army marches on its stomach, and if this one was not starving it was deprived, and derived little satisfaction from bread and bully beef. Married men and single miners living with their families were gradually added to the Poor Law food budgets, sliced by the guardians in Pontypridd as early as June and generally by October to 10s. 0d. for women and 3s. 0d. for children not receiving school meals. Miners in lodgings were penniless and increasingly forced to live on their wits in foraging for food.32 As the screws tightened and there was no breakthrough, many left south Wales in search of work; others looked towards the silent pits. Destitution loomed and conflict intensified. Attempts forcibly to prevent blacklegging and the movement of coal increased, more police were drafted in from other areas, and the Emergency Powers Regulations were liberally used both for arrests and for the prohibition of meetings and marches.33 There had been conflict from the start. Hundreds of policemen stationed in Mardy behaved provocatively while Dai Lloyd Davies attempted to convince newsagents to boycott the capitalist press. In June an official of the Ebbw Vale Co. was murdered by a miner working an outcrop. The incidents at Cwm Carn in August, where hundreds of police escorted a handful of blacklegs to work to the fury of the community, culminated in an attack on a coal train and typified a new mood. Obstacles were rolled on to the tracks, hundreds of keys were knocked out of the rails, the police were stoned from the scene, ‘and to finish the job properly the van and a truck

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of coal were sent careering down 60 yards into the obstructions on the line’.34 Twenty-six workers, including twelve women, were charged with unlawful assembly and intimidation in disturbances at Ton Pentre, pickets were baton-charged by police in Pontypool, while in October there was widespread rioting in the Afan valley, fighting with police and burning of vehicles at Glyncymmer Colliery. There were 900 cases of riot and unlawful assembly alone in 1926 and the left-wing press was enthusiastic about the involvement of women: ‘. . . at Cwmcarn where women successfully stopped rail transport of coal; Glenhafod where they paraded a blackleg in a white sheet through the village; Abersychan where they harassed Labour Guardians until they declared for the old scale of relief – these are only a few instances of the awakening consciousness of the women.’35 The police offensive spread its net: there was no hesitation in arresting even moderating figures such as Arthur Jenkins and Ted Williams, while the Cabinet affirmed the nature of Baldwin’s government, even discussing the detention of Tom Richards himself. The miners perceived police evidence as mendacious while sentences such as the nine months’ gaol meted out to Jenkins for inciting a riot he was trying to control and the two months imposed on Elvira Bailey of Treorchy for casting the first stone at a policeman aroused profound anger.36 The equable Oliver Harris observed that the law, like the press and the government, was completely in the hands of the miners’ opponents. Others utilized humour to make the same point: JUDGE: Now

you know very well what will happen to you if you tell lies today. BOY: Yes, my Lord . . . when I grow up if I’m tall enough I’ll be able to join the police force.37

The SWMF leadership moved left. In August, Ablett was still advocating that complete power be granted to the MFGB Executive to reach a compromise. In September the old Noah was thundering: ‘I stand now for a fight to a finish. The safety men must be called out; and all means, however drastic, employed to defeat the coalowners . . . I am now convinced that the Government and the owners can only be brought to reason by intensifying the struggle.’38 Once again he lined up with S. O. Davies and Horner, who argued that ‘if we had spent as much time in intensifying the


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struggle as we have in trying to get out of it we would not be in the present situation’.39 It was Richards who was now on the defensive, advocating resumption of work on the basis of a provisional district settlement to be followed by the establishment of a National Arbitration Tribunal which could confirm or modify local agreements. At the SWMF Executive prior to the Cardiff conference on 5 October, Richards declared that rejection of the government’s terms would be ‘regrettable’. He was outflanked by the left which successfully moved that if the conference rejected the deal there should be a reversion to the status quo, support for withdrawal of the safety men, mass picketing and a renewed campaign for an embargo. This new platform was carried both at Cardiff and at the 7 October MFGB conference.40 Among activists there was surging support for the October offensive. The sober-sided Enoch Morrell reported: ‘In my experience of nearly 30 years I never saw a more stronger [conference] than the one in Cardiff . . . there was tremendous unanimity.’41 Hartshorn agreed: ‘I was amazed at the conference. I expected some difference of opinion in some collieries but when it came to a show of hands not a single lodge in the Welsh coalfield had authorised its delegates to vote for acceptance of the terms.’42 But at the base, beyond the lodge activists, the tide was beginning to flow the other way; it became a matter of keeping miners from going in rather than pulling the safety men out. On paper, the offensive strategy made sense. But implementing an embargo and flooding the pits six months into the dispute was a gamble at impossible odds. Little was achieved. The SWMF minutes demonstrate that although there were local withdrawals where coal was cut or loaded, any coordinated attempt to pull out the safety men was shelved pending MFGB discussions with J. R. Shirkie’s union, the National Federation of Colliery Enginemen and Boilermen, to which D. B. Jones’s south Wales union was affiliated. The energies of the SWMF leadership went instead into stopping the retreat: Mr Mainwaring reported upon the position at Treorchy, everything possible had been done to keep the men from resuming work . . . Mr Ted Williams reported that the situation in the Llanharan area was getting worse . . . 100 more men were working at the Brynna Colliery and 100 at Brynwith . . . Mr Bryn Roberts reported that 78 men had resumed work in the Rhymney Valley. Some men had also resumed working in the Afan Valley and Maesteg Districts . . . Mr Arthur Jenkins was very perturbed about the situation in the Eastern Valleys.43

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These were still relatively small, perhaps deflated, figures: even in November, the SWMF estimated that only 6,000 miners had returned. They imposed psychological and political costs: increasing numbers back at work opened divisions, undermined confidence, resistance and bargaining power. It was not only full-time officials but loyal activists who thought about the impact on the future of unity and organization.44 Horner stood where he had always stood but Bevan now parted company with him: he believed that the miners’ bargaining power had reached its meridian and that there was a compelling necessity to negotiate. Richards had no doubts about this. He told the MFGB that he had done his best with the offensive: . . . it has been a failure . . . from South Wales to Scotland men are going back . . . there is a crumbling going on . . . We have got to move . . . If I could see any hope of success by continuing the fight until Christmas – despite the suffering there would be – I would say it is worth fighting on . . . What is pressing upon me and pressing more and more as the days go by is the value of a negotiated settlement rather than a debacle.45

Yet the terms outlined by the government on 12 November proposing immediate resumption, district settlements and no guarantees against victimization, represented, as S. O. Davies tersely put it, ‘abject surrender’.46 Having accepted negotiations, many like Bevan could not accept their outcome. He concluded that while the fight was far from up, nothing further could be done at national level. Rather a new campaign should be mounted in the Valleys. Horner, speaking for the remorseless Mardys and Llwynypias, still urged no retreat. Clashing with Richards and Smith over his endeavours in the Sunday Worker to persuade the men not to return, Horner demanded that the MFGB reject any compromise. But as Mainwaring, also from the Rhondda, noted: ‘Mr Horner is speaking for a certain part of South Wales. I am speaking for another part not far away where we have to be awake before 6 o’clock in the morning to prevent men going to work.’47 From the citadel of the adamantine anthracite, newly radicalized miners could rejoice: ‘In Ammanford we are decorating our communal kitchen with holly and mistletoe for Christmas. No need for me to write again until January 1927. Ammanford solid.’48 But leadership meant estimating the position and spirit of the whole army, the implacable enemy and the treacherous ground


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between them. The majority felt that leadership entailed knowing when you were beaten. It still did not play well with the left and the lodge activists in south Wales. When the conference convened in Cardiff on 17 November to discuss the terms arrived at by the MFGB conference, the SWMF leadership refused to recommend them, and they were rejected by 2,403 votes to 823, a sizeable majority. It was only on 30 November, after a ballot had authorized the leadership to reach a settlement by 50,815 votes to 27,291 that the Executive accepted the coalowners’ charter and work gradually resumed from 1 December.49 It is difficult to make judgements. There is not much mileage now in saluting S. O. Davies and Horner and dismissing Ablett, Bevan and Mainwaring as ‘waving the white handkerchief’.50 On any contemporary estimation, south Wales could not win alone: the stoppage had crumbled in the Midlands but it was also beginning to crumble in south Wales. By November there was no way forward except armistice, looking to the future and learning the lessons of the years since 1918. Many accepted Hartshorn’s verdict: Every man who has taken part in this fight has been a hero. The fact of going back after standing for seven months is not evidence of cowardice. It is absolutely marvellous to have stood out as they have, but I don’t believe it is now possible to win through.51

The consequences were cruel. As the historians of the SWMF record, the union was significantly weakened, the lodge officials and activists were victimized and blacklisted, migration from the coalfield accelerated and a rival bosses’ union settled itself into south Wales which had so cherished the Fed.52 For the employers, Christmas came early in 1926. Their verdict emphasized the profundity of the defeat: ‘there was never any occasion for more satisfaction on the part of the coalowners than the present one.’53 The plight of Ablett, suspended from the SWMF for capitulating before the final ballot, signing an agreement at Hill’s Plymouth Colliery and authorizing a resumption of work, signified the end of an era.54 Some like Paynter joined the growing CP but until the mid-1930s its influence was slender: its membership in south Wales declined from a swollen 2,300 in 1927 to a derisory, if temporary, 264 by November 1930.55 The catastrophe did not affirm a new alternative society in south Wales: the resort to direct action, illegality, opposition to the state, has characterized many titanic struggles,

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surviving them in only atrophied form. Rather it stimulated a more effective response to coal capitalism, a restructured, more representative, more calculative trade unionism. It enhanced corporatist solidarity and, as the progress of the south Wales leaders of 1926 demonstrated, support for political action through the Labour Party rather than radical communitarianism and revolutionary insurgency, although revolutionaries and radicals would play a significant part.56 This was reflected in thousands of hearts and minds. As Paynter remembered, ‘I finally got back into the pit in December 1926 with an experience behind me that was to lead to a decisive change in my life.’57 Despondency enveloped the mining communities. Dejection was laced with dreams of vengeance and visions of justice. The bleak mood was again voiced by Idris Davies: Dark gods of all our days Have mercy upon us Dark gods take away The shadows from our towns The hopeless streets, the hovels Behind the colliery sidings Dark gods of grime and grief Soften the bitter day And give our children eyes To see somewhere a summer Dark gods we beg you Make us proud and angry That we shall rise from shame And imitate the torrent And scatter the high priests Who deal in blood and gold.58

Notes Thanks to Chris Williams for helpful comments. 1 W. Paynter, My Generation (London, 1972). 2 Morning Star, 4 October 1984. 3 Paynter, My Generation, pp. 17–36. 4 J. Davies, History of Wales (Harmondsworth, 1993), pp. 552–4; C. Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict: The South Wales Coalfield, 1898–1947 (Cardiff, 1998), pp. 29–36. 5 For background, see Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict, pp. 38–42; R. Page Arnot, South Wales Miners, Glowyr De Cymru: A History of the South


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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

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Wales Miners’ Federation, 1914–1926 (Cardiff, 1975); H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London, 1980); D. Gilbert, Class, Community and Collective Action: Social Change in Two British Coalfields, 1850–1926 (Oxford, 1992). E. Greening, ‘1926 in Aberdare’, Llafur, 2, 2 (1977), 31–8. Greening, ‘1926’, 32–3. See, for example, ‘Richards, Thomas’, in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 1 (London, 1972); D. Egan, ‘Noah Ablett, 1883–1935’, Llafur, 4, 3 (1986), 11–30; R. Griffiths, S. O. Davies: A Socialist Faith (Llandysul, 1983). A. Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London, 1960); P. Davies, A. J. Cook (Manchester, 1987), pp. 11–14, 65–6. R. Lewis, Leaders and Teachers: Adult Education and the Challenge of Labour in South Wales (Cardiff, 1993); D. Smith, Aneurin Bevan and the World of South Wales (Cardiff, 1993). Smith, Bevan, pp. 74, 189, 216–20. South Wales Miners’ Library, Swansea, SWMF, Executive Council (EC) minutes, 26 May, 7, 26 June 1926; MFGB, Proceedings, 1926, Conferences, 14, 21 May 1926; R. A. Leeson, Strike: A Live History (London, 1973), p. 101; National Archives, London (NA), CAB 27/3, Home Office situation reports, 9 July, 8 August 1926. T. Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. 2: 1926–1930 (Oxford, 1969), p. 62. Davies, Cook, pp. 111–14; Jones, Diary, p. 66. SWMF, EC, 17 July 1926, Conference, 7 August 1926; MFGB, Conferences, 30 July, 16–20, 27–9 July, 3 August 1926. MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, pp. 23–6, 36–8, 40–1. MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, pp. 42–7; NA, CAB 27/333, Mines Department Bulletin, 8 July 1926; Gilbert, Community, uses Ynysbwl to contrast south Wales with Nottinghamshire. SWMF, EC, 13 August 1926; MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, p. 17. SWMF, EC, 27 August 1926. Ibid. MFGB, Conference, 29 September 1926, p. 12; SWMF, EC, 23 October, 1 November 1926. P. Jeremy, ‘Life on Circular 703: the crisis of destitution in the south Wales coalfield during the lockout of 1926’, Llafur, 2, 2 (1977), 65–75. And see S. Bruley, ‘Women’, ch. 9 in this volume. Greening, ‘1926’, 35; The Times, 26 May 1926. Ibid. B. L. Coombes, These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales (London, 1939; 2nd edition, Cardiff 2002), p. 177. L. Jones, We Live (London, 1978; first published 1939). I. Davies, The Angry Summer: A Poem of 1926 (London, 1943; 2nd edition, Cardiff, 1993). D. Johnston, ‘Idris Davies’s life’, in D. Johnston (ed.), The Complete Poems of Idris Davies (Cardiff, 1994), pp. xviii, xxxi, n. 39, 40. Paynter, My Generation, p. 36. Greening, ‘1926’, 36. Although Alan Burge has provided us with an intriguing account of one individual: A. Burge, ‘In search of Harry Blount: scabbing between the wars in one south Wales community’, Llafur, 6, 3 (1994), 58–69.

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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

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Jeremy, ‘Circular 703’, 71–3; C. Williams, Democratic Rhondda: Politics and Society, 1885–1951 (Cardiff, 1996), pp. 143–7. Despite economic deprivation, it has been argued, using death and infant mortality statistics, that freedom from the pit and domestic work geared to its demands, increased exercise, self-help and a new, enforced nutritional regime may have improved standards of health in the mining community: see S. Thompson, ‘ “That beautiful summer of severe austerity”: health, diet and the working-class domestic economy in south Wales in 1926’, Welsh History Review, 21, 3 (2003), 552–71. Francis and Smith, The Fed, pp. 59–63; J. Morgan, Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales (Oxford, 1987), pp. 209–12. Workers’ Weekly (WW), 13 August 1926; The Times, 26 May, 26 June 1926. WW, 3 September 1926. NA, CAB 23/53, Cabinet 62 (26), 8 December 1926; Francis and Smith, The Fed, pp. 64–5. There was concern in government circles and even among the coalowners over the sentence on Jenkins: Jones, Diary, p. 95. WW, 13 August 1926. WW, 3 September, 20 August 1926. MFGB, Conference, 29 September 1926, p. 76. SWMF, EC, 4 October 1926, Conference, 5 October 1926; MFGB, Conference, 7 October 1926. MFGB, Conference, 7 October 1926, p. 14. MFGB, Conference, 7 October 1926, p. 40. SWMF, EC, 13, 16, 23 October 1926. MFGB, Conference, 10–13 November 1926, pp. 7–9, 19, 37. MFGB, Conference, 4 November 1926, pp. 19, 21, 27–8. MFGB, Conference, 10–13 November 1926, p. 38. MFGB, Conference, 10–13 November 1926, pp. 37, 85–6. WW, 5 November 1926. SWMF, EC, 15, 18, 22, 23, 30 November, 4, 13, 16 December 1926, Conferences, 17, 25 November 1926. Griffiths, Davies, p. 80. MFGB, Conference, 10–13 November 1926, pp. 48–9. Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 66. D. Smith, ‘Comment’ on discussion of the general strike, Llafur, 2, 2 (1977), 27. SWMF, EC, 22, 23 November, 16 December 1926. Richards was also involved in this incident. J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘The heresy of Arthur Horner’, Llafur, 8, 2 (2000), 107. Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict, pp. 4–5. Paynter, My Generation, p. 31. I. Davies, Gwalia Deserta (London, 1938), Poem 11.


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6 North Wales

KEITH GILDART

We invite our members to live up to their opportunities and be ready at all times to co-operate with their fellow unionists throughout the country in removing every commercial and other injustice that presses unfairly upon the labouring classes.1

In March 1983, Keith Hett, a former Communist docker and Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) shop steward from Liverpool, then a miner at Bersham Colliery, invoked this call for unity enshrined in the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) North Wales Area rulebook. He told the Liverpool Daily Post that the survival of the coal industry in north Wales would ultimately depend on trade union solidarity.2 Two years later, at the end of the twelve-month strike over pit closures, Hett was one of only fifteen miners who had remained loyal to the policy of the NUM throughout the dispute. Their fellow union members had returned to work three months earlier. At the other remaining colliery, Point of Ayr, only around 100 miners had stayed on strike until the bitter end. The lodge secretary, Les Kelly, had long left behind his radical past, but was nonetheless committed to the stoppage and campaigned hard for its success in a hostile environment in which the majority of his members had crossed picket lines. The commitment of Hett and Kelly was in vain as the strike led to a defeat from which the union and the industry never recovered. Throughout those twelve months in north Wales, it almost seemed as if the strike was happening elsewhere. Demonstrations were sparsely attended and the national media were more concerned with events in the larger coalfields. There was no violence and few

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arrests. At the end of the strike there were no scenes of defeated miners being led back to work by colliery bands. As in 1926 the north Wales coalfield had only sporadically supported the national union. And in similar fashion 1984–5 witnessed the emergence of a breakaway organization at Point of Ayr.3 Throughout the strike of 1984–5 trade unionists like Hett, Kelly and others had used memories of 1926 to sustain the struggle and warn against the perils of disunity. In an interview with Militant in August 1984, John Mannion, a striker from Point of Ayr, commented on the fact that most miners were crossing picket lines and he was not surprised by this development: ‘It was the last pit to leave the Spencer Union and has always been ready to settle for a anything the bosses offer.’4 In fact the breakaway in north Wales had nothing to do with Spencer or his organization in Nottinghamshire. It was an autonomous north Wales initiative financially backed by the Point of Ayr Colliery Company.5 To Mannion, as to many other activists in north Wales in the era of Thatcherism, what they had been told about 1926 was a source of sustenance; but the memories they mobilized owed much to myth. This is readily apparent when we turn back the pages of history and scrutinize this neglected district in the turbulent 1920s. The north Wales coalfield stretched across two counties, Denbighshire and Flintshire, close to the English border and the neighbouring Lancashire and Shropshire mining districts (see map 3). Remnants of the industry in Denbighshire can be seen today when travelling north from Shrewsbury to Wrexham. The Flintshire coalfield lies alongside the London–Holyhead railway. In contrast with south Wales, the north did not experience growth in the late nineteenth century, and in the early years of the twentieth century the number of collieries declined rapidly. The last significant development was Llay Main, situated between the towns of Mold and Wrexham, which went into full production in 1924. A year before the lockout, many collieries in Flintshire had closed, leaving only Bettisfield, near the village of Bagillt, and Point of Ayr, close to Prestatyn. Denbighshire now remained as the main coal-producing sector with large collieries such as Hafod, Gresford and Bersham situated close to Wrexham. There was another cluster of collieries south of the town, close to the English border at Chirk. The total number of employees in the coalfield in 1925 was given as 17,102 in the Colliery Year Book. North Wales was clearly in a state of transition, as small unproductive collieries closed and capital was concentrated in larger units.

Map 3 The north Wales coalfield

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Working-class culture and political identities in the coalfield differed between its two counties. Rhosllannerchrugog (Rhos) was perhaps the last reminder of a Welsh-speaking, Nonconformist, oneindustry settlement that fed Hafod Colliery south of Wrexham. Rhos contained chapels and a miners’ institute. The Welsh language remained prominent at pits like Hafod and Point of Ayr, but in modern collieries such as Llay and Gresford the number of Welshspeakers had diminished. Villages in the coalfield remained relatively closed. Miners would leave the district in times of depression, but often returned when the coal trade improved. The number of miners entering the district from other coalfields was negligible. Miners in Flintshire lived close to other workers and the booms and slumps of the coal industry proved less catastrophic than in other districts. There was uneven political development across the coalfield. The Liberals and Conservatives were the dominant competing parties in West Flintshire in the first half of the twentieth century. When the constituency was divided in 1950, Point of Ayr Colliery continued to be represented by a Conservative MP until 1992. In Denbighshire, the large number of miners were influential in building a Labour presence, but the dominant ethos until the 1920s was a pragmatic Lib-Labism that faced little competition from the Independent Labour Party or later the Communist Party. Robert Richards (1884–1954) was elected as a Labour MP in 1922.6 Yet the local labour movement could not completely consolidate its presence. Richards lost the seat in 1924, regained it in 1929, but lost it again in 1931. Coal capitalists in north Wales failed to act as a cohesive body. Most of the Denbighshire owners came together in the North Wales Coal Owners’ Association (NWCOA), but their counterparts in Flintshire preferred autonomy. Owners were reluctant to invest in development and were generally suspicious of the benefits of mechanization. Often in conflict over price lists and the share of the domestic market, they adopted diverse systems of industrial relations in their own collieries. William Craig and Sons, paternalist owners of Ifton and Brynkinallt collieries, had successfully advised their miners not to participate in the national stoppage of 1912. The owners of Point of Ayr worked to exclude union activists right up to the advent of public ownership in 1947. A more consensual industrialist was James Darlington of Black Park Colliery, a student of the Royal School of Mines, London, and a former mayor of Wigan. He became involved in the company in


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1877, and took an active interest in the affairs of his local community, serving on many government bodies. He worked hard to maintain cordial relations between capital and labour. Henry Dyke Dennis of Gresford Colliery was more ruthless, and miners were often fearful of approaching him to discuss grievances.7 The North Wales Miners’ Association (NWMA) had to operate in and sometimes against the differing industrial-relations cultures of Wrexham, Flintshire and Chirk. This created internal pressures towards fragmentation, which undermined cohesive strategies. Trade union organization followed the trade cycle and experienced booms and slumps throughout the nineteenth century. The NWMA had taken part in the national lockout of 1893 but with only sporadic support. Membership reached 2,212 by 1897. Miners in Flintshire were more reluctant to organize than their counterparts in Denbighshire.8 Under the leadership of Edward Hughes (1856–1925) the union slowly gained a significant bargaining position. Hughes was born in Trelogan, an agricultural village in Flintshire. He became steeped in the culture of the local chapel. Although he had little formal schooling, he showed promise as an effective speaker with an inquiring mind. He started work in a local lead mine, but at the age of twelve took up employment in the coal industry in the village of Mostyn. He was dismissed for leading a strike of boys in 1872. After working in Liverpool and Wrexham he moved to the Durham coalfield in 1875, following a migration route taken by other north Wales miners. He returned to north Wales in 1887 with the zeal of a trade-union missionary after activity in the Durham Miners’ Association. He became checkweighman at Point of Ayr but was subsequently victimized for his role in a number of strikes. He had also been working to spread union membership throughout local collieries as secretary of the Point of Ayr lodge. But Point of Ayr remained difficult to organize and, along with neighbouring Bettisfield, it continued to work through the national stoppage of 1893. Hughes was expelled from the union for three months for supporting the Point of Ayr position, but soon returned to work his way through the ranks of officialdom. He became general and financial secretary of the organization in 1897 and its permanent agent a year later. Local coalowners such as Darlington respected Hughes, and he expressed a deep-rooted pragmatism about industrial politics both in north Wales and on the Executive of the MFGB. He dominated the union until his death in 1925.9

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The leadership passed from Edward Hughes to his son, Hugh (1878–1932). Born in the Durham coalfield, he had then followed his father to Point of Ayr. He moved to Wrexham where he was elected checkweighman at Coed Talon Colliery. Hughes had been inducted into the culture of the district union from an early age and became its financial secretary in 1915. Father and son worked closely together in consolidating membership. But Hugh was a more radical figure than his father and initially active in the Wrexham Labour Party. He was elected to Denbighshire County Council in 1921, becoming alderman in 1925. As president of the North Wales Trades and Labour Council he was selected to stand for Wrexham in the 1918 general election when he was defeated by the Liberal Sir Robert J. Thomas.10 He was again selected to stand in 1922 but made way for Robert Richards. Like miners’ leaders in other districts he preferred a union career to becoming a Labour politician. Across the coalfield the labour movement retained a cautious Lib-Labism, even though Edward Hughes had become a firm advocate of Labour Party politics by 1912. The ILP was weak in Wrexham and non-existent elsewhere. Within the NWMA, Liberalism remained a vibrant force. The political identity of labour in the local community was still contested, especially in Flintshire, where union membership was weaker and Labour activists faced both Liberals and Conservatives in local and general elections. In 1925 the NWMA had been rocked by a dispute concerning an experiment in industrial cooperation established at Vauxhall Colliery and supported by the lodge vice-president, J. T. Edwards. An agreement was reached between the Vauxhall lodge and the company, which included a public guarantee fund in which miners would make contributions to the company to offset loss of profits. The experiment ended after three months in a climate of economic uncertainty as many mines were closed.11 In the same year, a twenty-week dispute at the coalfield’s biggest mine, Llay Main, led to further tensions between the district union and rank-and-file miners determined to avoid a negotiated settlement. Throughout both these episodes the north Wales miners were reluctant to submit to the district and to the national policies of the MFGB. The events at Llay Main led to a questioning of the ability of the district union to serve the interests of miners at individual collieries. The unity of the NWMA was thus already fragile before the lockout, while the problems of non-unionism continued to plague


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the organization. The divisions within and between Flintshire and Denbighshire ensured that solidarity in the dispute would be brittle. The coalfield initially followed the pattern set in other districts with union activists organizing demonstrations and constructing relief networks. The iron and steel works in Wrexham were closed, and the railway unions ensured that no coal was transported during the nine days of the general strike.12 The miners had a firm ally in Walter Monslow (1895–1966). Monslow was a Wrexham engine driver and organizer for ASLEF who later became a Bevanite MP for Barrow-in-Furness. He formed the nucleus of a group of vociferous supporters of the miners’ cause who went on to be elected to Parliament. Others included the two sons of Rhos miner James Jones, Thomas William Jones (1898–1984), MP for Merioneth, and James Idwal Jones (1900–82), MP for Wrexham. The Wrexham Labour Party played its part, organizing demonstrations and inviting prominent speakers to the district. Ellen Wilkinson, MP for Middlesbrough East, delivered a stirring speech at the May Day demonstration at Wrexham racecourse.13 The Wrexham Board of Guardians increased relief rates for wives and children after a demonstration by the NWMA. Cinemas in Wrexham allowed free admission to miners with proceeds from others going into the union’s central fund. Significant sections of the community in the Wrexham area showed a positive response to the locked-out miners.14 The Trades Council worked to minimize the suffering of victimized railway workers and others, with many being given subsistence payments from the Miners’ Distress Fund.15 Communal kitchens were established across the coalfield with 230 children of miners from Ifton Colliery being fed at Chirk Green. The largest canteen, however, was situated in Rhos, where hundreds of miners and their families gathered daily. By the first week of June, strike pay had stopped and the kitchens at Ifton and Brynkinallt collieries in Chirk could no longer feed the population. New terms of employment were posted at both these sites but were rejected. Edward Ellis, the Ifton lodge secretary, proclaimed that the membership would fight to the end.16 Nonetheless, there was already some demoralization and a small group of miners were keen to get back to work. They were prevented by an intensification of picketing, but some succeeded in getting into the colliery. The speech delivered by A. J. Cook on 8 July at Wrexham racecourse gave a new, if temporary, impetus to the struggle. Tom Jones (1908–90), a Rhos miner, recalled decades

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later that it was this speech that confirmed his belief in socialism. He remained committed to the struggle, going on to become an International Brigader in Spain and later a TGWU official.17 Cook also visited collieries in Flintshire, orating to large crowds at Holywell, Greenfield and Bagillt. Smaller mines that were not particularly well organized by the union were the first to try to break the impasse. Miners had already returned at mines close to Mold. At Wembley Colliery, pickets were initially successful. But backed by a strong police presence five miners successfully breached the picket line.18 Throughout July, the coalfield remained generally committed to the struggle. Miners survived by poaching game, while women organized household budgets on a minimal amount of relief. Companies such as Point of Ayr allowed miners to collect coal from colliery tips.19 Although a section of the workforce there was later to form a breakaway movement, at this stage they remained fully involved in the dispute. Nonetheless, the resources that miners could use to ease distress were much less developed in Flintshire than they were in Wrexham. The three mines, Point of Ayr, Englefield and Bettisfield, were some distance from their counterparts in Denbighshire and the success of the union depended on the mobilization of local pickets who attempted to secure support from the numerous villages that fed the collieries with labour. This was largely unsuccessful as many miners lived some distance away from their workplace. Moreover, the Flintshire coalfield had no central town like Wrexham where miners could organize mass demonstrations. When he addressed Flintshire miners, Cook had to organize separate meetings in Mold, Holywell and Prestatyn. Across the coalfield distress became increasingly desperate. Hafod and Bersham held firm, no doubt owing to the fact that the surrounding villages were dependent on coal for their economic survival. But the relief networks constructed throughout Denbighshire with active support from trades councils, Labour Party branches and Liberal associations were beginning to falter. Lloyd George sanctioned a £20 donation to miners’ wives and children at a Welsh Liberal Association meeting in Rhyl, no doubt aware that the Liberal Party still enjoyed support in and around colliery settlements.20 There were initial fuel shortages across north Wales but the miners’ cause was not helped by American coal arriving in Liverpool from July.21 At the end of the month, it was reported that fifty-seven


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miners were working at Brynmally Colliery, Denbighshire.22 At Englefield Colliery, Flintshire, around 100 men had signed a contract that guaranteed wages at April rates, but they were deterred from returning because of the efforts of lodge officials. The NWMA continued to plead for miners to stand firm. This message was strengthened by the fact that the NWCOA could not agree on a settlement that could be applied throughout the coalfield.23 With the publication of the bishops’ proposals, lodge officials in a number of districts began to agitate for a way out of the deadlock. The north Wales executive voted in favour of the proposals, believing that they offered some hope of progress, with even the most committed miners in Rhos calling for their acceptance.24 Outcropping continued throughout the summer, to the dismay of the union. In Rhos as many as fifty mines were driven into the Ponkey Banks.25 Local leaders were concerned that unsafe conditions could lead to deaths. Outcrops were also divisive, organized by miners who allocated work places and arranged sales. This led to accusations of profiteering as some miners earned money from outcropping while others had to struggle without the benefit of extra income. The union tried to halt the practice by refusing to give relief to outcroppers. But some colliery companies encouraged the activity. Point of Ayr granted permission for coal to be extracted from tips on three days a week but restricted each miner to a bagful.26 August was a crucial turning-point. There was now a dramatic increase in the numbers returning. Divergences in the strategies of NWMA lodge officials began to have an impact. Some argued for an intensification of picketing, others stressed the need to curtail outcropping. Hugh Hughes had been embroiled in controversy relating to this means of subsistence in the 1921 lockout. He had been attacked by union members for allowing outcrops on a farm that he owned with a family friend.27 Hughes was reminded of this at public meetings where he called on miners to cease working in these temporary mines. As one of the largest collieries, Llay Main became the arena in which the course of the dispute would be decided. The miners had not fully recovered from the strike of 1925 and the level of destitution was becoming unbearable. The owners offered a sevenhour day and no reduction in wages.28 At the end of the first week of August, 200 miners reported for work but they were met by a crowd of peaceful pickets who persuaded most to return home. At

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their next attempt, pickets responded by throwing stones. Hughes appealed for calm, stressing that ‘batons were harder than skulls’.29 He had spoken at an MFGB conference a week earlier highlighting the problems in north Wales: ‘Our trouble in North Wales is with the non-associated collieries. We have no trouble . . . with the Coal Owners’ Association pits.’30 The owners of Llay Main again offered new terms. The lodge committee rejected them but over half of the thousand-strong workforce had already returned to work protected by the police.31 H. E. Allen, secretary of the NWCOA and legal adviser to the MAGB, had written to Hughes, pleading with him to arrange a conference with the intention of ending the civil war in the coalfield. He made it clear that there would be no return to national negotiations in north Wales, emphasizing that local owners would not allow companies from other coalfields to negotiate on their behalf.32 The Englefield miners again came close to returning when new terms were offered. After a series of meetings they voted by the slim majority of twenty to reject them, but this was a shortlived victory as miners continued to trickle back.33 North Wales had embarked on the road to defeat, with Llay Main, Black Lane and Brymbo collieries now having the personnel to mine coal effectively.34 The attempt by owners to entice men back to work was accompanied by their more vigorous attempts to cut off the support systems that the miners had constructed. Brynmally Colliery Company and others prohibited outcropping in the Moss district of Denbighshire, which intensified levels of distress. In Flintshire, Point of Ayr was also retreating from its paternalist position of providing miners with coal. Throughout September the war of attrition continued. Llay Main was now heavily policed, making effective picketing difficult. Ifton and Brynkinallt collieries in Chirk were offering competitive wage rates and the seven-hour day for three months, leading to an increase in miners returning. Point of Ayr offered terms and was also beginning to select the men wanted.35 A list of names was attached to the proposals, leading to accusations of victimization that turned out to be prophetic. Miners now started to enter the colliery under police escort. The lodge delegate at neighbouring Englefield continued to argue for the rejection of any terms outside a national settlement. The situation in Flintshire was worse than that in Wrexham. The Holywell Board of Guardians had reduced the rate of relief to miners, forcing some to think about returning.


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A large meeting was held in Ffynnongroew, close to Point of Ayr, to protest against this action; Glyn Evans, Labour Party organizer for Flintshire, and Arthur Shepherd, MP for Darlington, pleaded with miners to support the union.36 By the end of September, most collieries in north Wales were open, though the stoppage remained solid in Rhos. The majority of miners had returned at Llay Main and others were working at Gresford, Ifton and Brynkinallt. The increase in the number of men returning to work was aided by the NWCOA formally posting terms, although the NWMA rejected them.37 At the MFGB conference on 29–30 September it was reported that 2,000 members were working across the north Wales coalfield.38 In Flintshire the lack of support networks had already weakened the resolve of local miners. In Ffynnongroew, funds for feeding children had been exhausted and the Holywell Board of Guardians remained hostile to all appeals for higher benefit levels.39 In the local press, especially the Prestatyn Weekly, there was no column given over to the views of labour as there was in the Wrexham Leader. At Point of Ayr, the fragility of union organization affected the outlook of the miners. But lodge officials intensified picketing and visited homes to persuade waverers to resist surrender. Picketing was largely peaceful and by the end of September the colliery was still unable to produce coal. Nevertheless, a hard core continued to cross the picket line. In an interview with the press, an NWCOA representative claimed that ‘the men of Point of Ayr were prepared to return to work, but were stopped through the persuasion of agitators from Wrexham’.40 Similarly, a spokesman for Bettisfield claimed that all miners would have returned if was not for the pickets: ‘The men work alright until those agitators go down there and persuade them to come out again.’41 Einion Evans remembered the impact that the dispute had on his family who lived close to Point of Ayr. My father like every other union member worth his salt was out of work. Some ups-a-daisy workers went to work under police escort, but they were lacking in numbers; they were also lacking in backbone . . . I remember many a quarrel finishing abruptly in the pit with the words, ‘I thank God above my head that I never had to come to work between two policemen.’42

The NWMA leadership circulated leaflets stressing the necessity of standing firm. The union established a central lockout committee

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and considered withdrawing all safety men. Nonetheless, around 50 per cent of miners in the district were now working.43 The lodges most averse to any settlement were Hafod, Bersham, Vauxhall and Point of Ayr. Plas Power, Gatewen and Vron collieries were still largely idle. But Morris Jones, a miner at Plas Power, recalled that the number of lorries carrying ‘scabs’ into work steadily increased. In a later account he maintained: ‘we were sold by J. H. Thomas and Frank Hodges.’44 Yet there were few signs of a potential breakaway organization, as all district and lodge officials remained committed to the goals of the MFGB. But as the dispute continued, animosity between pickets and working miners intensified. Three women and two men were prosecuted for intimidation at Ifton Colliery. Those who did return continued to face the hazards of mining without the protection of the union. There were a number of fatalities at both Llay Main and Llay Hall at the beginning of November.45 The majority of north Wales miners had returned by midOctober against the advice of Hughes and the district Executive. Hughes reported to the MFGB that many returning miners were not paid-up members of the union; only around 5,000 financial members had returned.46 At a mass meeting in New Broughton, Hughes and the local socialist solicitor, Cyril O. Jones (1880–1969) branded returning miners ‘traitors to their class’.47 Jones, although initially a Liberal, had been part of the nucleus of trade-union organization across north Wales since 1910 and was legal adviser to the NWMA. In a final attempt to maintain the struggle, an ‘All men out’ campaign was organized at the Wrexham Beast Market with many miners in attendance. At an MFGB conference the north Wales delegates voted to continue the struggle along with those from Durham, Derbyshire, Forest of Dean, Lancashire, Scotland, south Derbyshire and south Wales.48 Although picketing had been intensified following a lead from the MFGB, the NWMA knew that the members were walking away from the union. Hafod and Vauxhall collieries remained the most committed to the dispute. At a meeting at the Rhos Miners’ Institute, Cyril O. Jones paid tribute to their dedication: There has been one place that had stood like a rock under the beating of 28 weeks of storm – a storm beating on the homes and the bodies of the women and children of the coal miners . . . the miners of the Rhos stood like men, and they will have resolved to be proud of the loyalty to their principles and the Federation.49


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Yet even in Rhos there was no overt class war. Arrests were few and the relationship between miners and the forces of law and order remained cordial. Colin Gibbs recalled that Dan Hughes, the police sergeant, organized a charity cup for local football teams. The event was held at the Cae Dw ˆr field with money donated going to buy shoes for miners’ children.50 The MFGB was unable to respond adequately to the sizeable return to work in many districts and remained locked in a conflict with little scope for a negotiated settlement. In the last week of November, a north Wales delegate meeting decided that negotiations should be opened with the aim of a district settlement. Out of 14,000 miners, 10,000 had now returned.51 The MFGB turned towards district settlements and finally recommended their negotiation by local unions. On 4 December the NWMA declared the struggle at an end and ordered miners to resume work on the disparate conditions offered at individual collieries. The economic position of the north Wales coalfield declined rapidly after the 1926 dispute. In 1920 there were 29 collieries; by 1930 there were 10. The lockout established the role that the NWMA would play in its aftermath. Union membership fell dramatically. By the end of 1927 the district had only 7,298 members, and a rival organization had been set up in Flintshire. The Point of Ayr Industrial Union (POAIU) was established in March 1927. However, its roots can be found in September 1926 when the company posted lists of miners they required for future employment.52 Every member of the lodge was victimized, ensuring that the colliery would provide fertile ground for a company union. Will Griffiths, a prominent NWMA member, tried on many occasions to return to his post but was refused employment.53 By 1928 there was no official recognition of the NWMA at Point of Ayr. The POAIU had sole rights of representation and miners were pressurized to join. The organization was reliant on company funds, and the secretary, Thomas Jones, was a colliery official. It concentrated on welfare initiatives, organizing trips to the seaside and providing members with spending money and gifts at Christmas. The NWMA regrouped in secret. Activists such as Jack Garreg Lwyd, Jack Griffiths, and Moi Evans collected funds from miners’ houses under cover of darkness, meeting in a shed close to the colliery.54 As their membership grew they set up a table close to the colliery on the Flint to Prestatyn road. It was to take the threat of a district strike, and a court of inquiry, which sat in Chester in

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1942, to gain recognition for miners who wanted to return to the MFGB. However, this did not destroy the POAIU and it continued to function until 1944, the last breakaway organization in the British coalfields. The events of 1926 remained burned into the collective memory of the north Wales miners for the rest of the century, and reignited with dramatic consequences in the strike of 1984–5. In popular recollection, the nuances of the earlier experience have been lost. The lockout was influenced by local factors. They shaped the course of the dispute and the subsequent history of the district union. There were geographical, political and cultural reasons for the behaviour of miners in north Wales. The activity of the union was made difficult by having to organize across two coalfields, Denbighshire and Flintshire. Leaving aside Rhos, miners were by the 1920s living in more mixed occupational settlements. The industrial-relations culture and the nature of the labour process were also important in affecting relationships between miners and owners. The ‘butty system’ was still in existence across the coalfield up to the 1930s, although it had been eradicated in many other areas. But structural considerations should not be exaggerated when analysing industrial unrest among miners. Union activists were important in promoting working-class unity in north Wales. The pioneers such as Edward and Hugh Hughes and Cyril O. Jones, who had established trade unionism in the coalfield, had to maintain a delicate balancing act between the concerns of their members and the policy of the MFGB. The debate over the bishops’ proposals was another instance where miners’ officials had to take account of the feelings of the men in their own coalfields. Keith Hett, Les Kelly and others were to experience similar tensions in 1984–5. The lockout in north Wales can be read as an episode in the class war, with loyalists and traitors easily identified. Point of Ayr was later dubbed the ‘Point of Shame’ and the ‘Scab Pit’ because of its perceived role in 1926 and its actual role in 1984–5. Yet many miners at this colliery behaved no differently from others in the Wrexham coalfield during the lockout in terms of their commitment to the struggle. Similarly, by the end of the 1984–5 dispute, Point of Ayr had more miners on strike than the supposedly loyal Bersham Colliery in Wrexham. Yet its association with ‘Spencerism’ ensured that it retained its label as a pariah.


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The myth of 1926 remained powerful in 1984 as strikers attempted to understand why the behaviour of miners in some coalfields did not live up to the rhetoric of Scargill. Many of them had internalized a view of the lockout that was pervasive on the left and reinforced by popular memory. The lockout in north Wales can perhaps rather be conceived as a small, intricate drama in which competing groups within both capital and labour struggled to find different solutions to their economic problems. What is clear is that it was the miners and their families who ultimately suffered, as they would again in 1984–5, in fighting to defend their wage levels, work conditions and institutions in the face of a capitalist economy and a dominant political culture that was unconcerned about their future.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5

6

7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Preface to National Union of Mineworkers North Wales Area Rules. Liverpool Daily Post, 9 March 1983. For the 1984–5 strike in north Wales see K. Gildart, North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945–1996 (Cardiff, 2001), pp. 154–201. Militant, 1 August 1984. See K. Gildart, ‘Militancy, moderation, and the struggle against company unionism in the north Wales coalfield, 1926–1944’, Welsh History Review, 20, 3 (June 2001), 532–64. ‘Richards, Robert’, in K. Gildart and D. Howell (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 12 (Palgrave, 2004). G. G. Lerry, Collieries of Denbighshire: Past and Present (Wrexham, 1968), pp. 27–8; W. A. Williams, The Encyclopaedia of Wrexham (Wrexham, 2001), p. 109. K. Gildart, ‘Co-operation and conflict: episodes from the north Wales coalfield, 1925–35’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 12 (Autumn 2001), 32; Flintshire Record Office (FRO), D/NM/851, Edward Hughes, unpublished autobiography. See E. Griffiths, ‘Edward Hughes: the making of a miners’ agent’, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society, 49 (2000), 128–50. Entries on Edward and Hugh Hughes can be found in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vols 1 and 2 (London 1972, 1974); K. Gildart, ‘Men of coal: miners’ leaders in north-east Wales, 1890–1961’, Llafur, 8, 1, (2000), 111–29. Gildart, ‘Co-operation and conflict’, 34–42. Colliery Guardian, 20 May 1926. Wrexham Leader, 27 May 1926. Miner, 11 June 1926. Wrexham Trades Council, General Meeting, 1 June 1926. Wrexham Leader, 4 June 1926. ‘Jones, Tom’, in K. Gildart, D. Howell and N. Kirk (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 11 (Palgrave, 2003), pp. 159–66.

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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 51 52 53 54

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Mold, Deeside and Buckley Leader, 9 July 1926; Prestatyn Weekly, 10 July 1926; Colliery Guardian, 18 June 1926. Prestatyn Weekly, 4 September 1926. Wrexham Leader, 16 July 1926. Colliery Guardian, 2 July 1926. Wrexham Leader, 30 July 1926. Colliery Guardian, 30 July 1926. Rhos Herald, 14 August 1926. Colliery Guardian, 30 July 1926. Prestatyn Weekly, 12 June 1926. Rhos Herald, 25 June 1921. Wrexham Leader, 13 August 1926. Wrexham Leader, 20 August 1926. MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926. Wrexham Leader, 27 August 1926. Colliery Guardian, 20 August 1926. Colliery Guardian, 27 August 1926. Mold, Deeside and Buckley Leader, 20 August 1926. MFGB, Conference, 2 September 1926; Prestatyn Weekly, 18 September 1926. Prestatyn Weekly, 4 September 1926. Mold, Deeside and Buckley Leader, 24 September 1926. R. Page Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle (London, 1953), p. 492. Prestatyn Weekly, 30 October 1926. Prestatyn Weekly, 25 September 1926. Prestatyn Weekly, 30 October 1926. E. Evans, Nearly a Miner (Llandysul, 1994), p. 16. Colliery Guardian, 1 October 1926. FRO, NT 1074, M. Jones, ‘A day in a collier boy’s life’, unpublished MS. Wrexham Leader, 5 November 1926. MFGB, Conference, 11–13 November 1926. Wrexham Leader, 8 October 1926. Arnot, Miners, p. 496. Wrexham Leader, 26 November 1926. C. Gibbs, Clatter of Clogs (Wrexham, 1990), p. 37. Wrexham Leader, 26 November 1926. Colliery Guardian, 24 September 1926. Evans, Nearly a Miner, pp. 106–7. Ibid., pp. 69–71.


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7 Scotland

ALAN CAMPBELL

At a tense meeting of the Executive of the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers (NUSMW) on 28 August 1926, the Lanarkshire Communist Willie Allan proposed a motion condemning the delegates’ support for negotiations with the government at an MFGB conference. He failed to find a seconder.1 A week earlier he had attacked ‘the cowardly leaders of Lanarkshire’ in the Worker, newspaper of the Minority Movement (MM). Allan denounced their ‘shivering and shuddering’ fear of the Emergency Powers Regulations and predicted: ‘they can expect to get kicked out as soon as the miner gets the chance.’2 The veteran NUSMW president, Robert Smillie, easily secured the Executive’s support for the delegates’ action and demanded to know whether Allan would abide by this decision. Allan asserted his right to state his views elsewhere. Pressed by Smillie, he retorted that ‘he did and does doubt the sincerity of Mr Smillie on behalf of the Miners’.3 He refused to withdraw his remarks and the meeting adjourned in disorder until his conduct could be reported to the body he represented, the Lanarkshire Mineworkers’ Union (LMU). A packed MM gathering in Hamilton passed a motion of confidence in Allan with ‘the wholehearted support of the meeting’.4 Despite the NUSMW Executive’s threat to hold no further meetings until he apologized, Allan remained unrepentant. Smillie was forced to accept that the lockout was ‘of far more importance’ and Allan continued to attend Executive meetings. But the dispute was to fester.5 The clash symbolized the political and generational tensions within the NUSMW and its affiliated unions. In 1926, Smillie was

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sixty-nine years old. An elder statesman of mining trade unionism, he had struggled to organize the Scottish coalfields from the 1880s.6 A cautious, strategic leader, he assumed the MFGB presidency in 1912 following the first national miners’ strike. A founder member of the ILP, he opposed the First World War but secured the respect of opponents for his bargaining on the miners’ behalf. In June 1917 he chaired the Leeds Convention supporting the Russian Revolution and in the post-war ferment he preached an ambiguous discourse of ‘direct action’.7 His influence in persuading mineworkers to accept the Sankey Commission in 1919 was critical in defusing the post-war crisis. Despite his devastation of the coalowners’ arguments, the government’s refusal to accept Sankey’s recommendation of nationalization marked a turning-point in Smillie’s career. His health began to decline and he resigned as MFGB president just before the 1921 lockout, although he resumed the NUSMW presidency the following year. The defeat of 1921 marked the end of the mineworkers’ forward march. Smillie had been an able if circumspect general in the favourable conditions of economic expansion and wartime demand for coal under which that advance had been conducted. His talents, in the context of parliamentary demands following his election as MP for Morpeth in 1923, were ill attuned to the defensive battles of the 1920s. On the NUSMW Executive in 1926, Smillie (1857–1940) was surrounded by a generational cohort sharing similar views and careers, possessing similar limitations. They included William B. Small (1873–1944), LMU general secretary and son of Smillie’s mentor, the late William Small; Duncan Graham (1867–1942), MP for Hamilton and LMU political agent; Hugh Murnin (1861–1932) of the Stirlingshire county union, NUSMW vice-president and MP for Stirling and Falkirk; James Brown (1862–1939), secretary of the Ayrshire Miners’ Union since 1908 and MP for South Ayrshire from 1918; Andrew Clarke (1868–1940) of the Mid and East Lothian Miners’ Association (MELMA); and William Adamson (1863–1936), secretary of the Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan Mineworkers’ Association (FKCMA) since 1908 and MP for West Fife since 1910. The membership which these ageing leaders represented was youthful – 35 per cent of Scottish miners were under twenty-five in 1921 – and often rebellious.8 When Duncan Graham spoke in Motherwell in May 1926, ‘the younger element were clearly spoiling for a fight’. They barracked his defence of the


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TUC and when he raised the possibility of the miners returning to work there were loud cries of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Like slaves!’9 Smillie’s antagonist, Willie Allan, was twenty-six when they quarrelled. Of Lithuanian parentage, he began work in the mines of Blantyre, Lanarkshire, aged twelve, in the same year that Smillie became MFGB president. A workman’s inspector at nineteen, he attended the Scottish Labour College (SLC) in 1920–1. Allan developed as an energetic campaigner and effective orator. He joined the Communist Party (CP) in 1923, was elected to the NUSMW Executive in 1924, became secretary of the Miners’ Minority Movement (MMM) in Lanarkshire and district organizer of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) in 1925. That year he stood unsuccessfully against Small for the LMU secretaryship, securing an impressive 42 per cent of the vote.10 Allan’s result was a personal success but the influence of the MMM among Scotland’s 125,000 mineworkers before the lockout should not be exaggerated. Trade-union politics were a complex mosaic delineated by the structure of the industry, industrialrelations cultures, demography and generation, and political and religious traditions. They represented in microcosm the wider British spectrum. The largest coalfield was the West Central region, centred on Lanarkshire but extending into Dunbartonshire, West Lothian and Stirlingshire. In 1925 it employed 67,000 men in the large, mechanized collieries of Blantyre, Cambuslang and Hamilton in the central Clyde valley as well as in smaller mines on its rural periphery. Serving industrial and domestic markets, it was in marked decline by the 1920s (see map 4). Around 60 per cent of Ayrshire’s 15,000 miners were employed by the William Baird combine; they worked in small collieries in rural settings, and three-quarters lived in company-owned houses. Fife and Clackmannanshire’s 28,500 miners worked for four major firms in large, technically advanced mines producing coal for export; they lived in two concentrations in central and east Fife, and in scattered rural settlements in west Fife and Clackmannanshire. The relatively prosperous Lothian coalfield, south-east of Edinburgh, employed 15,000 producing for the domestic and export markets. Trade-union structure followed administrative boundaries rather than geological formations: there were seven county unions, covering Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, West Lothian, Stirlingshire, Dunbartonshire, Fife and Clackmannanshire, and Mid- and East Lothian. All were federated within the NUSMW which was affiliated to the

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Map 4 The Scottish coalfields


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MFGB. Union density varied from 31 per cent in West Lothian, 58 per cent in Mid- and East Lothian, 75 per cent in Lanarkshire to over 80 per cent in Ayrshire and Stirlingshire. The situation in Fife was complicated by divisions between the FKCMA and a radical breakaway, the Mineworkers’ Reform Union (MRU), formed in 1922 in protest against Adamson’s undemocratic regime and denied affiliation to the NUSMW. The MRU was the larger union, with membership concentrated in the large pits of central and east Fife. These fragmented organizations confronted well-organized coalowners’ associations based on the four coalfields. The MMM was strongest in Lanarkshire and Fife, but the combined votes for its candidates in the 1925 elections for LMU officers amounted to only 28 per cent of the ballot. Allan’s support in this contest was concentrated within a three-mile radius of his Blantyre base where a large Catholic population retained strong traditions of Irish republicanism and industrial militancy.11 Elsewhere in Lanarkshire, Orangeism had a mass following and remained a potentially divisive force. In 1926 Allan had never visited Larkhall, ten miles up the Clyde valley from Blantyre, where less than 10 per cent of the miners were Catholic. It had been one of the centres of a Protestant union, the Scottish National Trade Union Association (SNTUA), briefly established in 1921 to preach class collaboration.12 A. J. Cook recognized such fissures and he urged a meeting in Hamilton in 1926 not to ‘allow religious differences to divide them where their bread and cheese were concerned’.13 One commentator claimed that Orangemen comprised the ‘backbone’ of the miners’ union in some Lanarkshire districts such as Airdrie, Harthill and Bellshill: the threat was a real one.14 Class harmony was a recurring theme at huge Orange rallies in July 1926. Addressing 30,000 in Ayrshire, deputy grand master Frank Dobson Dorrian, a Bellshill mining contractor, argued that ‘the solution of the troubles by which we are now assailed lies in the promotion of goodwill between all sections and classes of the community’.15 In Lanarkshire district master William Knox, a former SNTUA leader, attacked Cook for his Communist associations: ‘A man like that has not the full force of the workers behind him.’16 Such views undermined solidarity and Cook’s apprehensions proved prescient. The small, outlying mines between Airdrie and Harthill were among the first to return to work, while Thankerton Colliery, Holytown, where the SNTUA had temporarily ousted the LMU in

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1921, was viewed by LMU officials ‘as the weak part of their chain of solidarity’ in 1926.17 If Orangeism was less potent in the eastern coalfields, political divisions between MRU activists and the ‘moderates’ of the FKCMA were corrosive. Although efforts by NUSMW officials led to fusion in 1927, relations remained strained during the lockout. In East Fife, branches of the ‘old union’, the FKCMA, established a separate Trades and Labour Council on the eve of the dispute.18 Fife’s chief constable reported that ‘the members of the old union will have nothing to do with the Councils of Action, and they are always willing to tell the police anything they know of the workings of the Council’.19 One informant recounted FKCMA rejection of an approach by the MRU to coordinate collections and communal feeding arrangements.20 In the face of such divisions, solidarity within the NUSMW was fragile. The union was permeated by a ‘Buggins’ turn’ ethos and its three representatives on the MFGB Executive – Doonan, Lanarkshire’s Paul McKenna and Peter Chambers, a MELMA agent – were lacklustre worthies. Only the first two were NUSMW Executive members, Doonan representing a mere 2,500 of West Lothian’s poorly organized miners. The Scottish union failed to play any leading role in MFGB deliberations during the lockout. For example, although it was in favour of the bishops’ proposals – Smillie felt they would ‘go a long way to consolidate public opinion behind the miners’ – its delegates abstained from voting for them at the MFGB conference on the grounds that they should have gone to a membership ballot. Had they been cast, Scotland’s 80,000 votes would have tilted Federation policy in favour of the proposals.21 Smillie was listened to with respect at MFGB conferences because of his record. However, when it was reported in September that Scottish miners were beginning to return to work, the president Herbert Smith’s blunt Yorkshire tones suggested impatience with the Scottish union: ‘They give this time 4,080 . . . last time it was 2,000. They pay for 80,000 to the Federation. They had 120,000 employed.’22 Nevertheless, solidarity remained remarkably intact in Scotland during the first four months of the lockout. Despite the debacle of the general strike, the mines’ inspector, who maintained close contact with colliery managers and the authorities, reported a ‘stiffening’ of the miners’ morale in June. He attributed this to public sympathy and the ‘outwardly undivided’ front adopted by


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the miners’ leaders while Cook’s rallying speeches were ‘not without their effect on the younger men’.23 He added that parish relief and feeding schoolchildren meant that families were not going hungry. In July David Proudfoot, a Fife militant, recorded: ‘First class weather and tanned miners receiving fairly decent rations’ and predicted they would ‘keep it up till Doomsday’.24 There was variation in support from parish councils, with those dominated by miners’ representatives more generous in their rates of relief. Those less sympathetic were increasingly the target of demonstrations by miners and their families. Faced with the threat of social unrest if destitution occurred, as well as ratepayers’ traditional antipathy to subsidizing miners’ families, the Scottish Board of Health developed a policy by which parishes were obliged to provide ‘needful sustentation’ to strikers’ dependants but overgenerosity could lead to a declaration that payments were illegal. Future miners’ leader Abe Moffat, then a young Fife Communist, was among members of Ballingry Parish Council who were each surcharged £172 for payments made to locked-out miners whom the council considered ‘destitute’ but whom the board ruled ‘able bodied persons out of employment’.25 The board evolved a fine calculus of the degree of deprivation which miners might tolerate without revolt and secured approval from Baldwin for loans to forty parishes to enable them to continue paying relief.26 The recommended scales of relief were cut by the board at the end of July and some councils, overdrawn and dependent on government loans, were forced to reduce their payments to miners’ families to half the original sum. Colliers were sometimes able to supplement the communal soup pots by nefarious means. In Fife, ‘hens, chickens, rabbits, hares would find their way into the kitchens’.27 John Bolton recalled the survival strategies of miners in rural Coalburn in south Lanarkshire, where he was out ‘practically every night . . . killing pheasants or catching a hare or a rabbit’ for the soup kitchen. In urban areas, the potential for such activities was limited. And the penalties could be high. Bolton was among five miners sentenced to three months’ hard labour in Barlinnie prison for the slaughter of a sheep. Their release was marked by a heroes’ reception in the Black Bull pub in the village.28 In the first week of August, only 1,679 men were at work in the Scottish mines, 1.3 per cent of the workforce. By the second half of August, Allan reported ‘a sudden increase in the number of scabs’

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during the previous fortnight because of ‘a great deal of Parish relief cutting’. In the parish of Cambusnethan, which contained the town of Wishaw and numerous mining villages, relief had ceased entirely for miners’ dependants: ‘there is thus the real danger that scabbing will grow’, Allan warned.29 By 25 September, after almost five months, the number had increased to 4,080 and, ominously, over three-quarters of those returned were in Lanarkshire. By mid-October the NUSMW reported a doubling of this figure to 8,353, including almost 6,000 in Lanarkshire.30 As the summer sunshine faded to autumn’s cold nights, employers offered large bonuses and the cancellation of rent debts as inducements to blackleg.31 The hardships created by diminishing relief rates took their toll. By 17 November there were 26,000 working, 14,000 of them in Lanarkshire. With a fifth of Scotland’s miners back, solidarity began to collapse. Five days later, the NUSMW admitted that 38,650, almost a third of the workforce, had returned; the authorities’ estimate was nearer 45,000. In Lanarkshire the figure was 23,000, almost half the county’s workforce.32 In the face of this, Scottish representatives to the MFGB sounded the retreat. In early November, Chambers warned that ‘unless we are going to do something next week, all my men will be working. What will be the conditions? No conditions at all.’ Smillie, recalling his ‘very long experience in the Mining movement’, concluded: ‘We have reached the most critical part in this magnificent struggle of ours . . . probably the turning point.’ He counselled tactical surrender: ‘. . . we have reached a stage when district agreements are inevitable and district agreements will be a great deal better than our men drifting back disorganised . . .’33 A week later he urged the Federation ‘to face the facts . . . that we are getting weaker from day to day’. The ageing general sought to salvage something of his lifetime’s endeavours: It is not absolute surrender . . . I think there will be no settlement nationally. I think the Executive will be driven to fighting on or accepting district negotiations . . . I think one very important thing would be gained even from district negotiations . . . we will be in a position to lay down . . . that there must be no victimisation of our people . . . They may go back absolutely defeated through starvation and not as an organised body and it may take many years to rebuild this great Federation of ours . . . The older men amongst us here will not see the last fight but this is not the last fight; the fight is still to come and we have at least to save the semblance of our organisation in order to


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rebuild the Federation . . . None of us desire district negotiations . . . if we could secure a national settlement. That time is passed. We don’t want to lose our army altogether.34

He launched a barb at critics such as Allan, acknowledging the employers’ ‘loyalty to their class which it appears some of us have not . . . men have declared in our Scottish conference, that whatever we decided they will claim the right to advocate whatever they think fit . . . that is one of the reasons for our position . . .’35 There was considerable variation in reactions to blacklegging. The chief constable of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, insisted in November: ‘there has not been a single case, here, arising out of the strike in which complaint has been made to the police of assault or intimidation. . .’ His counterpart in Ayr similarly claimed that ‘there has been no disturbance or intimidation . . . in connection with the strike at all’.36 They may have exaggerated their miners’ passivity: thirty-nine people, including twenty-nine women, had been found guilty of intimidating working miners at Ayr Sheriff Court in September.37 But company housing and employers’ social control in the Ayrshire villages does seem to have limited overt opposition to blacklegs. A similar situation prevailed in Mid- and East Lothian. In the company town of Newtongrange, ‘everything has been exceedingly quiet and orderly’, the behaviour of the community ‘beyond reproach’.38 At the town’s Newbattle Colliery, the largest in Scotland employing over 2,000 men, a small number returned before the end of October; by mid-November the colliery was fully manned. ‘Good feeling has for a long period prevailed between the management and employees at Newbattle’, observed the local newspaper. A week later Chambers admitted that only 1,000–2,000 men in the Lothians ‘were still standing loyal to the Federation’.39 In contrast, the West Central region and Fife witnessed violent confrontations with blacklegs. Heavy-handed policing led to many arrests. Almost 90 per cent of the 870 convictions for offences arising from the general strike and lockout in the Scottish coalfields were in these two areas.40 Women played a prominent role in harassing scabs and figured among those arrested. For example, after a group of strikers attacked two working miners in the Lanarkshire village of Bothwellhaugh, one of the injured men’s wives ran to fetch the police through a howling crowd of 300–400, ‘mostly women and children’.41 At Lochore, Fife, returning blacklegs were followed,

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booed and abused by women, and at Glencraig six women were fined for similar offences.42 It was indicative of women’s greater activism and of Adamson’s political ineptitude that when asked at a meeting in east Fife to define a scab, he replied: ‘Well, I wouldn’t call him a man, why not call him a woman.’ Proudfoot summarized the ensuing discussion as ‘Hell with the lid off’.43 Picketing could enhance solidarity between the sexes but differences over tactics exacerbated the political and generational tensions within the LMU. The Glasgow Herald announced in early September that ‘a critical point has been reached in the history of the Lanarkshire union . . . for notwithstanding the calls of the young and militant minority to “mass picket” the pits, the publicly uttered advice of the responsible officials . . . has been “gang warily” with actions’.44 Militants sought to develop a disciplined, collective response while protecting their followers against police attack. Nervous union leaders were anxious to avoid conflict. In August, Allan had vigorously advocated mass picketing: ‘Big official meetings at the pits, at the homes of the blacklegs, deputations to interview the scabs, ostracism even extending to their kiddies, etc. – all these and more should be tried to keep the men from really beginning to weaken.’45 When he led a 500-strong demonstration against blacklegs at Thankerton Colliery on 11 October, a riot developed and he was one of eleven arrested. In court a number of witnesses supported Allan’s testimony that ‘he had made every effort to get the ranks straightened out again and get the people into order’ and he was found not guilty.46 Later that month, mass demonstrations against blacklegs at other Lanarkshire collieries were dispersed by police baton charges. A meeting of 3,000 in Blantyre was organized into ranks four abreast by Allan’s comrade Jimmy McKendrick, secretary of the local CP branch, and instructed to observe good order as extra police had been drafted in. The demonstration marched to Auchinraith Colliery, swelling to 4,000–5,000. The manager’s defiant refusal to stop production angered the crowd, and hecklers demanded action from LMU secretary Small. He exclaimed: ‘For God’s sake don’t ask me what we are going to do in front of the police.’ According to a police officer’s report, Small managed ‘to cool them down by some suave talking and got them to leave the matter in the hands of the strike committee’.47 Tensions between Communists and union leaders were encapsulated at a meeting in Hamilton in November where Allan received a


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‘rousing reception’ when he declaimed that their solidarity after twenty-nine weeks ‘was a sure proof that if they had militant leaders and a militant movement they could crush the capitalists of this country’. His fellow Blantyre Communist, James Beecroft, proposed the appointment of leaders in every street where miners lived, ‘and under those leaders the men on strike would see to the disappearance of blacklegs’. During the meeting working miners were observed returning from the pit and a large number set off in pursuit, only the presence of the police and appeals from Joseph Sullivan MP (1866–1935), an LMU agent, preventing violence.48 As mass demonstrations proved increasingly ineffective, Proudfoot noted, ‘A spirit of “To Hell with this peaceful picketing” has now got hold of the handful of reliable men we have and a desire for terrorism has set in.’49 In early November he wrote, tongue in cheek: ‘The SLOGAN: “IT’S DAMN COLD WEATHER THESE DAYS TO HAVE NO WINDOWS”, has been carried into effect in a few cases’, and the chief constable of Lanarkshire reported that smashing the windows of blacklegs’ houses was ‘still rife’ in his county.50 Explosive detonators placed on a window sill was a common method of breaking the glass and terrifying the inhabitants. On occasion, working miners retaliated, as when a Fife communal kitchen used by strikers was blown up.51 The mines inspector predicted in mid-November that ‘now is the time when the extreme men who will not be re-employed will take their opportunity’, and there were a number of attempts to sabotage collieries and railway lines.52 For example, in Lanarkshire during the final month of the dispute the pithead of Kirkwood No. 1 pit was destroyed by fire, the boiler at Kirkwood No. 4 pit damaged by gelignite, the haulage wheel at Hartrigg Colliery blown up and an explosion at Shotts Ironworks sought to cut off the central water supply to eight pits.53 In Fife, an explosive device was thrown into the power station at the Jenny Gray pit on 21 November. The following day, large crowds marched to Glencraig Colliery where they overwhelmed the police and wrecked the pit shaft.54 That night the police ran amok, batoning men, women and youths and arresting forty-eight people. The next morning a cordon of police at the pit faced an angry crowd ‘armed with all kinds of improvised implements’ in a tense stand-off. According to one observer, Abe Moffat, a former infantryman in France, displayed level-headed courage in defusing the situation by a series of commands to the miners: ‘All right, lads, keep facing the way

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you are, but when I say “one!” you take one step backward; when I say “two!” you take another step.’55 Neither individual bravery nor desperate acts of sabotage could fend off unconditional surrender. On 27 November, an NUSMW special conference voted overwhelmingly, by 50 votes to 6, to resume work on the coalowners’ terms, Allan rejecting them to the last. At the NUSMW Executive on 11 December, he reiterated the doubts as to Smillie’s sincerity expressed in August. The latter expostulated ‘that it will be impossible to have any business conducted with Mr Wm. Allan in the future’. The matter was again referred to the LMU.56 But the leadership exercised by militants had extended their influence among rank-and-file activists, as the chief constable of Hamilton privately, if sourly, conceded in midNovember: ‘the extremists . . . have recently acquired a considerable following in this locality, mostly irresponsible youths with no inclination to work.’57 When, months later, the LMU Council finally adjudicated on Allan’s position on the NUSMW Executive, it supported his continued presence by 38 to 10, although the numbers voting suggested the atrophied nature of post-lockout organization in the county.58 By then, Allan and another MMM candidate had defeated Small and Smillie for the posts of LMU secretary and president. In the FKCMA, newly united with the MRU, Communist candidates made sweeping gains. In ballots for NUSMW officers, Allan and two other Communists gained sufficient votes to guarantee election as secretary, president and vice-president at the forthcoming annual conference. The old officials repeatedly refused to convene the conference. For two years, the Scottish coalfields were racked by chaotic factionalism and plummeting union membership, while the employers pressed home their victory through speed-up measures and wage reductions. A further sectarian twist was added by Russian pressure on the MM to form a breakaway union, the United Mineworkers of Scotland in 1929. Its first general secretary was Willie Allan.59 The lockout created genealogies of victimization and radicalism. Abe Moffat, whose forceful personality came to dominate trade unionism in the Scottish coalfields in the following decades, recalled its formative influence: ‘The 1926 strike was largely responsible for developing me as a public speaker . . .’60 Abe, his father and brothers were barred from returning to the pits. He did not work underground again until a few days’ employment in 1938


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qualified him for membership of the NUSMW. He became president of the union (later the NUM Scottish Area) in 1942, and was succeeded by his brother Alex in 1960.61 Jimmy Daly, another Fife Communist victimized and evicted from his company house, moved to the Lothians, returning to Fife in 1938. His son Lawrence started work at Glencraig Colliery at fourteen and joined the Young Communist League (YCL) soon after, though he left the CP in 1956 over the Khrushchev revelations.62 A gifted orator, he became NUM general secretary in 1968, playing a prominent role in the strikes of the 1970s. He recalled: . . . in ’72 and ’74 the public in general had a conscience about how the miners had been defeated in 1926 and how they got badly treated in the old private companies after that . . . the moderates said ‘No, we’ll get defeated as we did in 1926’. I said, ‘we’ve got the public on our side’.63

He retired a week before the 1984 dispute began, apprehensive of defeat, regretting the loss of public sympathy and the NUM leadership’s distance from the TUC, ‘because they thought the TUC would sell us out . . . as my father taught me that the TUC sold us out in 1926’.64 Paddy Watters, the son of Irish immigrants greatly influenced by James Connolly and John Maclean, played a prominent role in the lockout in Lanarkshire’s Shotts district. Blacklisted, he was unable to obtain work for twelve years. On leaving school, his youngest son, Frank, was refused employment because of his father’s record. Frank followed his brothers into the CP, serving as West Lothian organizer before working for the party in the Yorkshire coalfield and later Birmingham, where in 1972 he played an important role in organizing solidarity action between engineering workers and NUM pickets which famously closed Saltley Coke Depot.65 He returned to Yorkshire in the early 1980s and was active in the great strike of 1984.66 Jimmy McGahey, a foundation member of the CP, was also victimized in Shotts in 1926. He found work in the Kent and Stirlingshire coalfields until his old comrade, Jimmy McKendrick, by then LMU general secretary, secured him a job in Gateside Colliery, Cambuslang. His son Michael followed him down the mine at the age of fourteen in 1939, joining the YCL that same year. A protégé of Abe Moffat, Michael succeeded Alex Moffat as Scottish NUM president in 1967 and took a significant part in the

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miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1974, emphasizing that it was ‘picketforce’, not Lord Wilberforce’s report, which won the first national miners’ strike since 1926. He became NUM vice-president in 1982. In the aftermath of 1985, McGahey refused to make Scargill ‘a sacrificial lamb’. The miners had had no alternative, ‘they had to fight’, though he accepted that we lost a lot of support in the mass picketing . . . But we did the noble things in fighting back against the cuts and history will record that the fight put up by the miners in 1984/85 was a correct fight. Not conducted properly in every aspect but we’re not military men, we’re trade unionists fighting a battle on behalf of the membership.67

Among those victimized was his son, a miner at Bilston Glen Colliery, Midlothian. John Bolton’s brother Guy, who joined the CP in 1924, recalled victimizations in 1926: the managers ‘picked all the boys out – “Ye’re no’ gaun back, and you’re no’ gaun back”.’68 He later became a local leader of the NUWM before migrating to the Devon Colliery, Clackmannanshire, carrying a tradition of militancy into a previously pacific coalfield. The threat of the colliery’s closure in 1959 prompted a stay-down strike, in which his son George participated, and sympathy stoppages by 25,000 miners. George, a Communist when he was sixteen, became vice-president of the Scottish NUM in 1978. During the 1984–5 dispute he was confronted by one of the National Coal Board’s most ruthless regional directors, Albert Wheeler, whose policy of sacking any arrested striker, irrespective of the outcome of their trial, led to the dismissal of over 200 Scottish miners. At the age of seventy-seven, Guy was arrested along with a striker for an alleged breach of the peace outside a blackleg’s house. The case was dismissed and Guy recalled: ‘I wis quite happy, especially for the other boy ’cause I was retired but he wis workin’, he’d have lost his job.’69 After the strike, George was charged by McGahey with securing the reinstatement and welfare of the sacked miners. Elected Scottish NUM president in 1987, he became an outspoken critic of Scargill.70 The 1926 lockout framed the fate of these and many other men, their wives and daughters, sons and grandsons, and indelibly marked their lives. It cast an embittering shadow over trade unionism in the Scottish coalfields for the remainder of the twentieth century. Despite and because of the defeat of 1926, industrial


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relations were conducted with a militancy unequalled in other British coalfields for decades to come.71 This militant pit culture informed Lawrence Daly’s dictum which, whether he realized it or not, came from A. J. Cook: ‘we only get what we are strong enough to take.’72 The victories of 1972 and 1974, but also the tragedy of 1984–5, were to exemplify this all too starkly.

Notes Thanks to the Lipman-Miliband Trust for a grant to assist with research. 1 National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (NLS), Dep. 227/86, NUSMW, Executive, 28 August 1926. 2 Worker, 21 August 1926. 3 NLS, Dep. 227/86, NUSMW, Executive, 28 August 1926. 4 Hamilton Advertiser, 11 September 1926. 5 NLS, Dep. 227/42, LMU, Council, 1, 20 September, 6 October 1926; NLS, Dep. 227/87, NUSMW, Executive, 25 September, 2 October 1926. 6 A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 2: Trade Unions and Politics (Aldershot, 2000), ch. 1. 7 ‘Smillie, Robert’, in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 3 (London, 1976), pp. 165–73. 8 Calculated from Census of Scotland, 1921. 9 Motherwell Times, 21 May 1926. 10 See A. Campbell and J. McIlroy, ‘Miner heroes’, in J. McIlroy, A. Campbell and K. Morgan (eds), Party People, Communist Lives: Explorations in Biography (London, 2001), pp. 143–68, and A. Campbell and J. McIlroy, ‘Reflections on the Communist Party’s third period in Scotland: the case of Willie Allan’, Scottish Labour History, 35 (2000), 33–54. 11 Campbell, Scottish Miners, vol. 2, p. 203. 12 A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 1: Industry, Work and Community (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 321; Campbell, Scottish Miners, vol. 2, pp. 189–91; Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, 495/100/532, W. Allan to R. Page Arnot, 11 April 1928. 13 Motherwell Times, 19 February 1926. 14 Miner, 31 July 1926. 15 Belfast Weekly News, 15 July 1926. 16 Hamilton Advertiser, 17 July 1926. 17 Motherwell Times, 3 September 1926; Glasgow Herald, 27 July 1926. 18 Buckhaven and Methil Public Library, D. Proudfoot to A. Hutt, 9, 23 April 1926 [hereafter Proudfoot letters]. 19 National Archives Scotland (NAS), HH 56/26, Fife Constabulary, 11 June 1926. 20 Ibid. 21 NLS, Dep. 227/86, NUSMW, Conference, 6 August 1926; MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, p. 1. See J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘Fighting the legions of hell’, ch. 2 in this volume, p. 84. 22 MFGB, Conference, 29 September 1926, p. 9. 23 NAS, HH 55/26, Report, 15 June 1926. 24 Proudfoot letter, 23 July 1926.

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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 56 57 58 59 60 61

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I. Levitt, Poverty and Welfare in Scotland, 1890–1948 (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 104–32; A. Moffat, My Life with the Miners (London, 1965), pp. 33–4. Levitt, Poverty, p. 129. I. MacDougall (ed.), Militant Miners (Edinburgh, 1981), p. 100. Interview with John Bolton by Billy Kay, BBC Scotland, 1989 (hereafter Kay interviews). Worker, 21 August 1926. NAS, HH56/26, Mines at work, 6 August 1926; NLS, Dep. 227/86, NUSMW, Executive, 25 September 1926; NLS, Dep. 227/87, NUSMW, Executive, 13 October, 1926. For example, NAS, HH 56/27, J. W. Peck to W. Hogg, 15 September 1926; Motherwell Times, 24 September 1926. NLS, Dep. 227/87, NUSMW, Conference, 17 November 1926 and Executive, 22 November 1926; NAS, HH 56/28, J. W. Peck to P. J. Rose, 20 November 1926. MFGB, Conference, 4–5 November, 1926, pp. 27, 34, 36. MFGB, Conference, 10–13 November 1926, pp. 44–5. MFGB, Conference, 19 November 1926, pp. 11–12. NAS, HH 56/22, chief constable, Kilmarnock, to under-secretary for Scotland, 2 November 1926; chief constable, Ayr, to under-secretary for Scotland, 2 November 1926. Scotsman, 30 September 1926. Dalkeith Advertiser, 20 May 1926. Dalkeith Advertiser, 18, 25 November 1926. NAS, HH 56/31, Return of convictions. NAS, HH 56/28, Peck to Rose, 22 October 1926. NAS, HH56/27, Report, 23 September 1926. Proudfoot letter, 15 November 1926. Glasgow Herald, 4 September 1926. Worker, 21 August 1926. Motherwell Times, 15, 22 October 1926. Hamilton Advertiser, 23 October 1926; NAS, HH 56/28, chief constable to Peck, 21 October 1926. Glasgow Herald, 19 November 1926. MacDougall, Militant Miners, p. 299. Proudfoot letter, 6 November 1926; NAS, HH 56/22, Report, 13 November 1926. NAS, HH 56/22, chief constable, Fife, 18 November 1926. NAS, HH 56/28, Peck to Rose, 20 November 1926. NAS, HH 56/30, Report, 6 November 1926, HH 56/28, letters, 13 and 20 November 1926. NAS, HH 56/22, chief constable, Fife, 22 November 1926. MacDougall, Militant Miners, p. 110. NLS, Dep. 227/87, NUSMW, Executive, 11 December 1926. NAS, HH56/22, chief constable, Hamilton, 16 November 1926. NLS, Dep. 227/43, LMU, Council, 12 October 1927. See Campbell and McIlroy, ‘Miner heroes’. Moffat, My Life, p. 46. ‘Moffat, Abraham (1896–1975)’, in K. Gildart and D. Howell (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 12 (London, 2004). J. McCrindle and S. Rowbotham (eds), Dutiful Daughters (London, 1977), pp. 15–18; Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS 302/5/8, Lawrence Daly papers.


Scotland 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70

71

72

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Kay interview with Lawrence Daly. Ibid. F. Watters, Being Frank (Barnsley, 1992), pp. 2–7, 13, 61–5. Watters, Being Frank, pp. 129–67. Kay interview with Michael McGahey. I. MacDougall, Voices form the Hunger Marches, vol. II: Personal Recollections by Scottish Hunger Marchers of the 1920s and 1930s (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 330–1. Kay interview with Guy Bolton. Interview with George Bolton by Alan Campbell and John McIlroy, 8 March 2000. R. Church and Q. Outram, Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889–1966 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 85; J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘Beyond Betteshanger: Order 1305 in the Scottish coalfields during the Second World War, part 1: politics, prosecutions and protest’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 15 (Spring 2003), pp. 27–72; J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘Beyond Betteshanger: Order 1305 in the Scottish coalfields during the Second World War, part 2: the Cardowan Story’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 16 (Autumn 2003), pp. 39–80. Quoted in P. Routledge, Scargill: The Unauthorized Biography (London, 1993), p. 5.

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8 Lancashire

STEPHEN CATTERALL

The lockout in Lancashire ended at a meeting on 23 November 1926, at the Queens Hotel, Manchester, between the Executive Committee of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation (LCMF) and the Lancashire and Cheshire Coal Owners’ Association (LCCOA). Colonel Pilkington, LCCOA chairman, handed the surrender document to Thomas Greenall (1857–1937), president of the Lancashire miners, for his signature to end hostilities officially.1 The scene was replete with military images. Yet despite characterizations of the lockout as ‘trench warfare’ between capital and labour, in Lancashire both sides experienced divisions and both adopted more complex strategies. Union and owners were preoccupied with the future shape of the industry as well as with solutions to the crisis. Despite Lancashire’s militancy during the disputes of the 1920s, the imperatives of economic decline were towards dialogue rather than confrontation.2 The lockout only focused attention more intensely on how both sides envisaged their relationship developing. Until 1914 Lancashire was one of Britain’s premier coalfields, stretching from St Helens in the west, through Wigan, Leigh and Bolton to Burnley in the north-east and to Salford and Manchester and into Cheshire in its south-eastern corner (see map 5). Its communities departed from the stereotypical mono-industrial settlements found in areas such as south Wales or Durham. The majority of its miners lived in areas where colliery work accounted for less than 30 per cent of employment. If difficult conditions led to frequent disputes, the reaction of the miner was often to change workplace rather than strike: the coalfield’s record of industrial


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Map 5 The Lancashire and Cheshire coalfield

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disputes was limited compared with other major mining regions.3 Trade-union organization was difficult to maintain because of labour turnover and a weaker sense of ‘community’, as Greenall recognized in 1923: ‘In Northumberland and Durham the men live in . . . purely mining villages . . . In Lancashire a man may live miles away from where he works.’4 The LCMF sought to unify a dispersed workforce divided by religion and politics through developing allegiance to the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB).5 By 1926 the coalfield was in severe decline. Between 1919 and 1926, seventy collieries closed. Employment declined from 115,475 in 1920 to 66,264 twelve years later. Unemployment among mineworkers rose from 5.2 per cent in 1923 to 17.1 per cent before the lockout, and many experienced underemployment through temporary closure and short-time working. Decline was most severe in older parts of the coalfield, such as around Wigan. It was estimated that in the central districts of south Lancashire there were 7,500–10,000 unemployed mineworkers during the 1920s. Unemployment, together with ‘non-unionism’, saw LCMF membership collapse from 97,000 in 1921 to 65,000 in 1926. Decline led to increasing concentration of capital and the emergence of larger undertakings under corporate ownership in a coalfield hitherto dominated by small to medium-sized concerns. Commercial pressures were greatest on the latter group, especially in older, contracting areas while larger, highly capitalized undertakings gained a stronger position.6 During the early 1920s the industrial politics of the Lancashire miners provided a paradox. They endured the 1921 lockout, and the LCMF leadership, particularly Greenall, endorsed the militancy of the MFGB.7 In 1926, Lancashire could be relied upon to stand firm on MFGB demands. Yet there was recognition of the need to find common ground with Lancashire owners if the industry was to survive in the region. In inchoate fashion, LCMF officials came to articulate a language of industrial cooperation which some leading owners reciprocated. The lockout highlighted this paradox of confrontation and cooperation. While a few non-unionized collieries continued to work, Lancashire stopped solidly from May.8 By the late summer a small number of Cheshire collieries had returned to work under company settlements. A similar return at a handful of Lancashire mines had been prevented by the intervention of LCMF leaders.9 The first significant weakening of resolve came with the bishops’


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proposals in August. Disquiet was expressed when the LCMF leadership prevailed on delegates to reject them. There was some feeling that having been ‘out’ for as long as the sixteen weeks of 1921, mineworkers had now demonstrated their point: a settlement on the best terms obtainable was preferable to ignominious defeat.10 Ominously, criticism of LCMF leaders came from two important areas of the coalfield. In north-east Lancashire, which had a tradition of autonomy in the union, many were described as ‘fed up’ and accusing the leadership of neglecting the district’s needs.11 Familiar administrative and financial wrangles were exacerbated under the strain of the dispute. Moreover, north-east Lancashire had the highest degree of interdependence between coal and textiles, and pressure for a settlement was most intense from other sections of organized labour, particularly the weavers. One Burnley weavers’ leader argued: ‘If any “class warfare” exists it is amongst the workers themselves for, after all, whom does the mining dispute injure most? The answer is undoubtedly the workers themselves.’12 The other source of criticism was the Tyldesley branch, the largest, most influential in the LCMF, described as a ‘Federation within a Federation’.13 While Greenall and his executive successfully met these challenges, they created resentment which was never fully placated.14 Both these areas were to see some of the earliest and highest rates of return. The dispute in Lancashire turned on a crucial series of events initiated by the owners during the autumn. Two related developments were significant. First, LCCOA meetings revealed internal divisions on how to resolve the dispute. Second, many owners decided to lift the lockout in September. A secret LCCOA meeting on 31 August offered to meet the LCMF to discuss a settlement. This was rebuffed by the union on the grounds that they were awaiting instructions from the MFGB. However, the circumstances surrounding the LCCOA conference suggested divisions within the organization. Some members indicated that they were not aware of the conference or had boycotted it because its remit was to formulate a framework for negotiation, which they rejected. Others, including some of the largest producers, did not attend or did so only as observers because they wished to open negotiations with their employees at company or colliery level and to offer better terms than those being discussed either nationally or in Lancashire.15

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Following the August conference, many owners lifted the lockout from 13 September. But there was little unanimity on how to settle the dispute. Some offered a settlement based on the August meeting; others pursued variations on its proposals; still others, who had stayed away from the conference or were unconstrained by its outcome, sought to negotiate better terms. Some categorically refused to bargain until the miners returned.16 A confused picture developed in which company offers varied considerably. While some were intended to break the strikers’ resolve, particularly where a oneoff bonus, free coal or other inducements were included, a broad pattern emerged. A group of leading coalowners offered improved terms as a basis for resuming work. These typically conceded a little on hours: many contained a 7½-hour day. Crucially, they offered a lower reduction in pieceworkers’ wages than the terms accompanying national or district level negotiations. Positions adopted by owners were beginning to reflect implicit visions of the post-dispute landscape. While some of the largest, commercially successful producers were prepared to offer an olive branch, those under the most severe commercial pressure adopted entrenched positions.17 As these positions became clearer, there was an important intervention by Sir William Peter Rylands. Sir Peter, as he was known, was one of the north-west’s leading industrialists and a prominent advocate of industrial peace.18 He had become chairman of Pearson and Knowles Coal and Iron Company after the resignation of the incumbent in late September 1926.19 ‘P and K’ had been involved in a vertical integration with Rylands’s Warrington wiremanufacturing business and controlled extensive iron and coal interests in Lancashire.20 The company remained on the LCCOA Council but Sir Peter decided that it would no longer take an active part, and the director of the company’s coal operations was moved to another post. Sir Peter outlined a new era of industrial harmony; he criticized the ‘excessive individualism’ of coalowners and called for the ‘depoliticization’ of industrial relations. He demanded a return to local bargaining in which large producers, working together, would lead the way in improving wages, limiting hours and controlling output and prices. It is no coincidence that Sir Peter was a confidant of Sir Alfred Mond.21 He was later involved with Mond in approaches to the TUC which paved the way for the Conference on Industrial Organization in 1928, the ‘Mond–Turner’ talks. Sir Peter was a frequent visitor to Europe and believed that Germany provided the model for large-scale


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reorganization of the British coal industry on the basis of bipartisanship and modernization.22 He strongly endorsed moves by Lancashire’s major producers towards industrial cooperation which characterized the years following the lockout. The decision by individual owners to lift the lockout presented the LCMF with its most serious challenge as miners began to go back to work. Lancashire saw one of the greatest increases in the rate of ‘returnees’ from mid-September. The return became a torrent by early October. At the end of September the union estimated that only 1,600 mineworkers had returned. The owners claimed 8,000, and the union estimate was certainly low.23 Greenall contended that the union was not deliberately massaging the figures to maintain morale but that it was unable to keep pace with events. A fortnight later the union was forced to admit that nearly 17,000, 25 per cent of its members, were ‘knobsticking’ (strike breaking).24 Branches in north-east Lancashire were prominent in leading the return, as was Tyldesley, in the wake of their chagrin at the outcome of the bishops’ initiative. In the north-east, 35 per cent of the 5,000 mineworkers had broken ranks by the end of September. Hostility mounted on picket lines, and branches denounced each other.25 These groups were now joined by branches elsewhere which had agreed local settlements and by miners tempted back by company and colliery-level offers. Delegates who opposed the return were highly critical of branches that voted to go back. They were scathing about branches which had entered into local agreements as indicative of a ‘creeping Spencer’ contaminating the coalfield and undermining solidarity.26 Cries of ‘Go and stand with Spencer’ denounced the accused branches. A similar view prevailed amongst the leadership. Greenall fulminated at four delegates representing branches who had decided to ‘go it alone’, demanding: ‘Do you want to be turned out of the Conference like Spencer was?’ As these delegates retorted, the return had its own momentum and local officials were obliged to respond. No amount of cavilling from the LCMF’s Bolton headquarters would prevent miners accepting local offers or branch officials retreating under rank-and-file pressure. In Atherton, 3,500 miners had gone back on favourable terms under a company settlement with no union involvement.27 As resumption of work accelerated, a growing number of branches and miners reached agreement with companies without recourse to or sanction from the union. The Wigan Coal and Iron

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Company, employing 10,000 in twenty-four collieries, mainly in the northern and eastern sectors of the ‘Wigan coalfield’ but also in the Leigh and St Helens districts, agreed local deals at many pits. Bridgewater Collieries Ltd, with eight collieries and nearly 7,500 employees in the Manchester district, also agreed terms at a majority of its mines.28 These and other major producers saw a healthy resumption throughout October. Opposition to a return was led by a group of branches in the southern section of the ‘Wigan coalfield’, such as Bamfurlong, Bryn Hall, Garswood Hall, Park Lane and Pemberton. These mines were operated by small or medium-sized, locally owned companies working the older part of the coalfield. Technically backward, they suffered from unsafe conditions, undercapitalization and collapsing profitability. Their localities had the highest levels of unemployment and short-time working.29 Significantly, they were highly strike-prone during the 1920s. Together with some collieries around St Helens, they were the only pits where the Communist Party experienced growing support.30 The priority for owners in this area was commercial survival. If Lancashire owners were sketching two distinct futures, miners were doing likewise. Splits within the LCCOA and the LCMF were reinforced during the lockout’s closing weeks. Companies which struck deals based on improved offers were attacked by a majority of LCCOA members who remained committed to the August terms or who refused to negotiate. Consequently, more companies withdrew from the LCCOA.31 In the LCMF in early October, a debate on the Welsh resolution to support status quo demands on wages and conditions found many branches in defiant mood. The Park Lane delegate exhorted: ‘We ought not to show the white flag yet . . . We have to decide today whether we become slaves or rebels, and for my part I am prepared to become a rebel rather than a slave to the coal owners.’32 Divisions grew with mounting denunciations of branches sanctioning local agreements. Such attacks gave way to growing suspicion concerning the motives of some agents and Executive members. It was argued that they were insufficiently active against blacklegging and had failed to tackle branches settling locally. In this rancorous atmosphere, Executive members were accused of accepting the return to precipitate a retreat on demands.33 In October there were hints that leading officials were unhappy with the direction of the dispute. Henry Roughley, the influential agent responsible for Tyldesley, suggested that ‘trouble


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brewing for a long time’ in his locality had convinced him that they must face the inevitability of negotiating a settlement.34 By the latter part of October, the momentum behind the resumption of work meant that leading officials now contemplated the inevitable. Yet the dispute seemed briefly to be heading in an opposite direction as efforts to stem the retreat led to a slackening in its pace and even some reversal. A high-profile visit by Arthur Cook bolstered LCMF attempts to prevent collapse.35 However, any decisive shift against the return to work proved illusory. Local settlements continued unabated. At one of Cook’s rallies, John McGurk (1874–1944), LCMF vice-president, attacked officials and miners who had taken up company offers. McGurk derided an agreement with Astley and Tyldesley Colliery Company, where 1,800 miners had gone back en masse, as a sham containing the ‘tit-bit of the lot at the end . . . they say that an Oxo breakfast will be provided.’36 Such rhetoric offered a tonic to fading morale but it could not obscure crumbling solidarity. Cook witnessed the dispute’s different faces. After addressing 15,000 cheering miners who had marched from across the coalfield to pack Atherton football ground, he was next confronted by hostile workers returning from three collieries in Leigh operated by Wigan Coal and Iron, where pickets had been completely withdrawn.37 Greenall became afflicted by serious influenza. The final stages of the lockout came under the control of a cabal of Joe Tinker (1875–1957), MP for Leigh and miners’ agent for St Helens, Stephen Walsh (1859–1929), veteran miners’ leader and MP for Ince, and McGurk, all now implacably committed to a settlement.38 While there was as yet no coup, knives were being sharpened for the excision of Greenall and those considered to have wilfully prolonged the stoppage. Greenall’s three weeks’ absence in November created an opportunity for pro-settlement forces. Seth Blackledge and Tom Flatley were replaced as MFGB delegates by Guy Rowson, Wigan agent and Greenall’s successor as Labour MP for Farnworth, and Peter Pemberton (1875–1955), union financial secretary and general secretary in waiting. Blackledge and Flatley were attacked by pro-settlement delegates for being ‘errand boys’ for an MFGB Executive bent on victory at all costs which had neglected the interests of Lancashire miners.39 The central figure in this drama was Tinker. He delivered a speech to an LCMF conference which represented the stoppage’s death knell:

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If we do not depart from the position we have taken up, there is not the slightest chance of winning . . . anyone examining the situation cannot help feel that it cannot be much longer before there is a landslide in Lancashire . . . I know that some of you will say that Tinker is retreating but I do hope that our friends who are out-and-out fighters will see our case . . . I am telling you now that I do not think we can win.40

A few days later, a near-hysterical Tinker demanded that Lancashire’s MFGB delegates press for a settlement: ‘For God’s sake try to get a settlement and get it early! . . . if something can’t be done we will be unable to hold our men any longer.’41 Early November also brought significant returns in the Manchester district, when Pendlebury miners settled with a leading owner, Andrew Knowles and Company, and in St Helens where several companies negotiated settlements. Yet, despite 20,000 LCMF members having returned, over 40,000 remained on strike.42 Every vote, by delegates or the membership, failed to produce a majority in favour of resumption.43 And at many of the more militant collieries, chiefly in the south of the ‘Wigan coalfield’, any return during October was at best patchy and had been largely reversed by early November.44 The critical factor was the terms offered by leading companies. Tinker became embroiled in an attempted settlement in his district by Pilkington Brothers, the glass-manufacturing giant, which operated four collieries in the area. The manager of Pilkingtons’ coal operations attempted to contact Tinker on a number of occasions. Tinker acknowledged that he had been approached but indicated that he had refused to talk. Thereafter Pilkingtons negotiated with branches, offering the best terms in the coalfield, including a 7½-hour day, an immediate 4.5 per cent wage increase, holidays with pay and additional benefits. Despite Tinker’s exhortations to reject the deal, the branches concerned came under intense rank-and-file pressure to accept.45 The reverberations of the Pilkingtons’ initiative were felt beyond its collieries. Tinker and his colleagues realized that offers by Pilkingtons and other leading companies would fundamentally affect the outcome of the dispute. Across the coalfield, it was argued that such firms, through control of output, prices and wages in their districts – and in the case of Pilkingtons through direct control of consumption – would influence the future shape of the industry. Minds became


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focused not on a dispute that appeared all but lost, but on its aftermath. This was underscored as the national negotiations turned towards a settlement at coalfield rather than national level.46 Divisions among the owners became permanent when Pilkingtons withdrew from the LCCOA. While calls for a convention of leading producers in Lancashire were heard, a formal schism within the LCCOA never materialized.47 But the Pilkingtons’ initiative demonstrated that a de facto division would henceforth be a reality and that the major producers would emerge from 1926 to lead the way. Tinker and other LCMF officials foresaw a defeated union, its fragmentation, even destruction. Despite Walsh’s more sanguine assessments, McGurk emerged as the leading advocate of a settlement rather than prolonging a dispute which would ‘end the Federation’.48 He hoped the LCMF could reach a settlement and then instruct members to go back to work in a disciplined and united fashion. However, divisions had widened to such a degree that this proved difficult. With crucial talks due on 23 November, opposition to a settlement came from two groups within the LCMF. The first consisted of those delegates who had been calling for an agreement for months. They believed that McGurk, Tinker and Walsh were ‘presiding over a debacle’ in which they were moving towards backing a resumption of work without any effective agreement after the three had spent weeks attacking branch officials and miners for reaching sustainable deals at colliery and company level.49 From another direction, the triumvirate were denounced by a caucus of recalcitrant branches, led by pits in the south Wigan area, for urging support for a settlement. These branches issued a defiant ‘fight on’ declaration to which McGurk responded: ‘if it is a case of fighting on it is a kind of you fight on and we will hold your jackets.’50 There was confusion amongst miners concerning the credentials of the owners with whom they would agree any settlement, and questioning of the validity of any deal reached with the LCCOA. One delegate asked in all seriousness: ‘Who will we be negotiating with?’ as officials pondered that the LCCOA was a weakened body which had lost many of its most prominent members.51 Those opposing a settlement argued that officials were deluding themselves if they believed that they were about to enter into meaningful negotiations with the LCCOA or more precisely representatives who purported to speak for Lancashire colliery owners. The critics

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of these officials believed that the proponents of local negotiations were in reality proponents of surrender talks.52 A series of events added a final twist. Apart from the early return at Bridgewater collieries and further resumptions of work in early November, the strike had been relatively strong in the Manchester district. There was still some hope by opponents of a settlement that they could use this strength to support fighting on. But on 20 November, at a matinee performance at a Farnworth cinema, a message flashed across the screen from Bridgewater Collieries proclaiming the stoppage over and requesting that miners at Brackley and Wharton Hall collieries should immediately report for work. There was a stampede for the exits. Greenall, back from his sickbed, was at Wharton Hall attempting to stiffen resolve. He made a forlorn attempt to prevent the return as hundreds of miners pushed past him.53 This incident led to virulent factionalism, with Greenall attacked by pro- and anti-settlement groups. For those advocating settlement, including the McGurk–Tinker–Walsh clique, Greenall’s intervention in Manchester was vilified as a deliberate attempt to scupper moves towards settlement ahead of talks, risking what they hoped would be a united return.54 Opponents of a deal criticized Greenall because they believed he was surreptitiously orchestrating returns in Manchester and elsewhere. The beleaguered Greenall denied that his actions in Manchester were an attempt either to prolong or to terminate the dispute but admitted ‘an error of judgement’.55 The events confirmed that his career was all but over. The ‘Greenall affair’ allowed emergent factions to occupy explicitly political positions, with an ascendant right-wing majority ranged against a left-wing minority and an old guard of diminishing importance occupying the centre ground around Greenall. Tinker, Walsh and McGurk, representing the right, now emphasized that the Labour Party was a legitimate body to help conclude the dispute. Tinker and Walsh, like Greenall, were Labour MPs. Militant branches opposing return accused LCMF officials and the Labour Party of harrying delegates into a deal they did not want. Their attacks on Greenall questioned his Labour Party connections. They accused him of privately canvassing for a resumption of work, despite his public stance, in line with other coalfield MPs.56 In the inquest into defeat, recriminations flew. Two distinct views of what had gone wrong emerged. Leading officials attributed


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defeat to betrayal by the rank and file. After an unofficial delegation of miners had circumvented his authority and accepted a company agreement, Gordon McDonald, miners’ agent and later MP for Ince, launched an attack on his members: ‘I am sick and tired of men who sit behind a pint pot in a public house and criticise their leaders and never do anything themselves to help improve matters . . . Disloyalty brought about their defeat in 1921.’57 His colleague, Guy Rowson, screamed ‘Back biting treachery’ at returning miners in Wigan.58 An LCMF Executive member representing Wigan collieries which had resisted settlement summed up the bitterness of those who believed that the struggle had been undermined by the apostasy of the rank and file: ‘One striking feature about the whole business is, it is not the men at the top who have let us down, but the men at the bottom and I have always relied on the men at the bottom.’59 The notion that the union had been hamstrung by the rank and file was widespread amongst LCMF officials by the end of 1926. The rank and file believed that they had been let down by the leadership. Returning Leigh miners argued that ‘they had been badly led from the beginning’, and that apart from those who had returned there were still more who had suffered in silence, who only reluctantly remained loyal to the union.60 There was a belief that the leadership had been too close to Cook and should have allowed more flexibility, even if that meant accepting local and company deals without union agreement.61 The lockout was one of the few occasions in the history of the Lancashire miners when leadership militancy ran ahead of rank-and-file expectations. Outcomes in Lancashire were substantially determined by the position adopted by owners and the response of local union officials and rank-and-file miners, irrespective of what leading officials thought or did. Apart from an early and significant resumption in north-east Lancashire and the collapse in Tyldesley, the momentum created by company- and pit-level agreements meant that solidarity was unravelling from September. The stoppage was sustained only by leadership adherence to the MFGB policy of opposing a settlement, the support of a majority of Lancashire miners – albeit with progressively slimmer majorities – and agitation by a few militant collieries.62 Assessment of the lockout cannot ignore the importance of colliery and company agreements. Such agreements have been judged as indicating miners being bribed or deluded into returning

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to work or more dramatically being ‘starved back’. This was the prevailing view among some LCMF officials. They explained ‘sectional agreements’ in terms of a membership weary of the dispute and willing to accept anything put in front of them. Pemberton noted: ‘when a man has been playing [on strike] for 22 weeks he will do a lot for a pound.’63 But it is too simplistic to assume that miners were unable to formulate their own rational view of the dispute. Moreover, if miners accepted such deals from necessity, why were miners from some of the most economically precarious collieries and depressed areas, particularly south of Wigan, described by Tinker as the ‘the out and out fighters’?64 Such was the zeal with which these pits opposed a settlement that they showed every intention of ‘fighting on’ after a settlement was reached. They took up Cook’s call for ‘guerrilla warfare’ in December when they threatened strikes over the interference of the settlement with established working practices.65 Most of the collieries affected achieved full resumption only at the end of January 1927. Many at these pits never reconciled themselves to the ‘surrender’ and left the industry.66 While it was widely believed that local settlements often failed to offer anything more tangible than short-term inducements to break the action, the offers made by some of the leading coal producers represented a serious attempt to fashion a new coal industry in Lancashire in which an industrial-relations dialogue was an essential prerequisite. The owners were not acting out of altruism. They envisaged an industry which they would dominate by exerting control over prices, production and wages. This strategy meant that uneconomic, smaller operations would continue to go out of business, in many cases hastened by the lockout itself. This lay at the heart of tensions within the LCCOA. Concentration in this manner would allow the dominant producers to redevelop Lancashire coal, a process in which the cooperation of labour was essential, even if it required employers to grant concessions. While the lockout represented a turning-point in their growing dominance, their discourse and practice of industrial cooperation drew on and developed pre-existing traditions of accommodative labour relations. During the years following the lockout, this vision became a reality. The LCCOA was an irrelevance by the 1930s because decision-making was effectively in the hands of a few large producers. The union accepted this trend. The future would be


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about dialogue with the leading companies; cooperation rather than confrontation would become the norm. Greenall became the scapegoat for defeat. He commenced his withdrawal from public life in January 1927 by stepping down as MP for Farnworth. The official reason was ‘indifferent health and advancing years’.67 This was true but there was a putsch against his supporters in the lockout’s aftermath. In 1927 leadership of the LCMF passed to Pemberton, the new general secretary.68 Greenall remained president until 1929, his authority much reduced. With a new secretary came a new strategy as Pemberton embarked on a different style of leadership and industrial policy. The lockout was seminal in the union’s history because the LCMF remained in the tight grip of the right for the remainder of the twentieth century. Control was consolidated by development of a union–Labour Party nexus which exercised an unassailable hegemony throughout the coalfield. A small but vocal left-wing opposition continued to confront the right and its policy of cooperation. Its strength waxed and waned: a distraction during the late 1920s and 1930s, it enjoyed minority support during the war, aided by Russia’s temporary popularity as an ally. The lockout shaped these entrenched positions and added bitterness to the factionalism which characterized the subsequent history of the Lancashire miners. Right-wing dominance found its personification in Joe Gormley (1917–93). The son of a locked-out miner in Ashton-in-Makerfield, he was nine years old during the lockout. He recalled the free school meals where he displayed precocious cunning by deliberately sitting next to a lad who had no stomach for the pea soup with lumps of fat which the future miners’ leader was only too happy to finish for him.69 Gormley demonstrated similar talents in his ascent of the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) bureaucracy, epitomizing the right-wing labourism which characterized the coalfield’s leadership. Chairman of the local Labour Party and secretary of the Ashton Central Labour Club, he became a Labour councillor in 1951. His desire for upward mobility was evidenced by successful study for his deputy’s certificate but was subsequently channelled into union activities. He became delegate from the Bold branch to the Lancashire Area NUM in 1956 and an area representative on the National Executive the following year. A protégé of the right-wing faction, he was elected Lancashire Area secretary in 1960, only to resign amidst allegations of ballot-rigging and stand successfully

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once again, defeating his Communist Party challenger, Jim Hammond, by 10,585 votes to 7,351. Portraying himself as a realist on pit closures and a tough negotiator on wages, he opposed the 1966 national power loading agreement. He was NUM president, 1971–82, defeating the Communist, Mick McGahey for the post. He was a leading intriguer of the NUM right and an architect of the incentive wages schemes of the late 1970s which fragmented the union and caused so many problems in 1984. He was alleged to be an informant to the intelligence services against the left in the union. He delayed his retirement until McGahey’s age disqualified him from standing in the ensuing election, a ploy which had the unintended consequence of Arthur Scargill’s resounding presidential victory. In 1983 he was created Baron Gormley of Ashton-in-Makerfield.70 The tensions between the moderate majority and militant minority in Lancashire, evidenced in 1926 and later effectively exploited by Gormley, were re-enacted in 1984. Some Lancashire miners respected pickets from Yorkshire, others did not. When Lancashire balloted, only one branch – ironically Gormley’s initial launching pad, Bold – registered a pro-strike majority, although others recorded significant pro-strike minorities.71 As some struck and others worked on, Gormley’s heir, Sid Vincent, summarized the situation in the coalfield: ‘We are split down the middle. We are in a terrible mess.’72 Nonetheless, the new and complex volatility which characterized both the Lancashire Area and the NUM in 1984–5 was signalled by the transformation of Gormley’s protégé Vincent into an acolyte of Arthur Scargill. While a majority did strike, mobilized by an activist minority centred on Bold, the drift back to work meant that 3,000 strikers faced 2,400 working miners by November 1984. As in 1926 there was criticism of the area leadership, notably when Vincent was caricatured by the tabloid press as ‘El Sid’ for holidaying in Tenerife. While Bold miners, echoing their militant predecessors, proclaimed ‘Fight on’ once more, attrition enforced realism. Lancashire’s striking remnants agreed to an organized return which presaged the ensuing extinction of the Lancashire coalfield.73

Notes 1

LCMF, Conference Report, 3 December 1926. Pilkington was chairman of Richard Evans and Company, Haydock.


Lancashire 2

3

4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

19 20

21

22

23

24

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D. Howell, The Politics of the NUM: A Lancashire View (Manchester, 1989), p. 8. T. Griffiths, ‘Work, class and community: social identities and political change in the Lancashire coalfield, 1910–39’, in A. Campbell, N. Fishman and D. Howell (eds), Miners, Trade Unions and Politics, 1910–47 (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 199–202; R. Church and Q. Outram, Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889–1966 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 81–3. Quoted in Griffiths, ‘Work’, p. 207. T. Griffiths, The Lancashire Working Classes, c.1880–1930 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 87–90 Lancashire Record Office, NC.acc.7950 No 84, NCBNWD 1915–1939, List of mines abandoned during the years 1915–1939; An Industrial Survey of the Lancashire Area (Excluding Merseyside) (Manchester, 1932), p. 165; Colliery Guardian, 24 October 1924, 15, 22 May, 19 June 1925; LCMF, Executive, 10 January 1925; Ministry of Labour Gazette, 1919–27, Average number of days worked, Lancashire; Ministry of Labour Gazette, 1924–9, Unemployment at local exchanges, Wigan; LCMF, Monthly statement of accounts, January 1921, January 1926. Howell, Politics, p. 8. LCMF, Executive, 25 September 1926. Colliery Guardian, 4 June, 13 August 1926. LCMF, Conference, 5 August 1926. Burnley Express and Advertiser, 7 August 1926. Burnley Express and Advertiser, 25 August 1926. LCMF, Conferences, 5, 14 August 1926; T. Griffiths, ‘Work, class and community: the structure and value of working-class life in coal and cotton in Lancashire with particular reference to Bolton and Wigan, c.1880–1930’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1994), 129–32, 201. LCMF, Conferences, 5, 14 August, 7 September 1926. Colliery Guardian, 3 September 1926. Colliery Guardian, 10, 16 September, 1 October 1926. Manchester Evening News, 1 September 1926. D. J. Jeremy and C. Shaw (eds), Dictionary of Business Biography: A Biographical Dictionary of Business Leaders Active in Britain in the Period 1860–1950, vol. 4 (London, 1985), pp. 1004–7. Sir Peter was a son of John Rylands, a prominent nineteenth-century industrialist and ex-president of the Federation of British Industry: A. Paterson, The Weapon of the Strike (London, 1922), p. 7. He wrote a foreword to this work in which he called for industrial cooperation. Colliery Guardian, 8 October 1926. Rylands of Warrington 1805–1955: The Story of Rylands Brothers Ltd (London, 1956), pp. 71–4. Colliery Guardian, 8 October 1926; H. F. Gospel, ‘Employers’ labour policy: a study of the Mond-Turner talks 1927–1933’, Business History, 21, 1 (1979), 182–4, 187. Colliery Guardian, 8 October 1926; Jeremy and Shaw, Dictionary, p. 1007. The German model was based on the Rhine-Westphalian Syndicate. A. Charlesworth, D. Gilbert, A. Randall, H. Southall and C. Wrigley (eds), An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain, 1750–1990 (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 146; Manchester Evening News, 29 September 1926. Manchester Evening News, 29 September 1926; LCMF, Conference, 13 October 1926.

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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 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

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Burnley Express and Advertiser, 18 September, 9, 13, 20 October; LCMF, Conference, 15 November 1926. LCMF, Conference, 13 October 1926. Manchester Evening News, 29 September 1926. Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory (London, 1926); Wigan Observer, 12 October 1926; Colliery Guardian, 15 October 1926. LCMF, Executive, 1924–5. LCMF, Executive, 1918–25; LCMF, Monthly statement of accounts, 1918–25; R. Davies, ‘From St Helens’, in J. Skelley (ed.), The General Strike (London, 1976), p. 339; E. Frow, Pit and Factory Papers: Issued by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Salford, 1996), pp. 13, 17. Colliery Guardian, 8, 15 October 1926. LCMF, Conference, 13 October 1926. Ibid. Ibid. Manchester Evening News, 18, 25 October 1926; LCMF, Conference, 3 November 1926. Burnley Express and Advertiser, 20 October 1926. Leigh, Tyldesley and Atherton Journal, 22 October 1926. LCMF, Conference, 3 November 1926. Ibid. Ibid. LCMF, Conference, 8 November 1926. LCMF, Conferences, 3, 15 November 1926. LCMF, Conferences, 13 October, 3, 15 November 1926. Wigan Examiner, 14, 16 October, 13 November 1926. LCMF, Conferences, 3, 8, 15, 22 November 1926. LCMF, Conferences, 3, 8, 15, 22 November 1926. Colliery Guardian, 5 November 1926; LCMF, Conference, 22 November 1926. LCMF, Conferences, 15, 22 November 1926. LCMF, Conference, 15 November 1926. Ibid. LCMF, Conference, 22 November 1926. Ibid. Ibid. LCMF, Executive, 20 November 1926; LCMF, Conference, 22 November 1926. LCMF, Conference, 22 November 1926. Ibid. Leigh Chronicle, 1 October 1926. Leigh, Tyldesley and Atherton Journal, 1 October 1926. LCMF, Executive, 20 November 1926. Manchester Evening News, 20 November 1926. Ibid. LCMF, Conferences, 13 October, 3, 15 November 1926. Leigh, Tyldesley and Atherton Journal, 1 October 1926. LCMF, Conference, 3 November 1926. Colliery Guardian, 5 November 1926; LCMF, Conference, 13 December 1926. LCMF, Conference, 22 January 1927. Wigan Observer, 8 January 1927. LCMF, Conference, 8 January 1927. J. Gormley, Battered Cherub (London, 1982), p. 6.


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Ibid., pp. 38–9, 43, 48–51, 77, 148–52; The Times, 24 October 2002. Howell, Politics, pp. 112–13. Ibid., p. 122. Ibid., pp. 163, 165, 169–70.

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9 Nottinghamshire

JOHN MCILROY

I know the miners at home are men very much like me, and I am very much like them: ultimately we want the same thing. I know they are, in the life sense of the word, good. I know that there is ahead the mortal struggle for property . . . I know we are on the brink of a class war. D. H. Lawrence, ‘Return to Bestwood’ (1926)

The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) conference at Kingsway Hall, London, on 8 October 1926 witnessed a confrontation between Yorkshire’s Herbert Smith, the MFGB president, and George Spencer, general secretary of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA). The previous day Smith had read to the delegates a newspaper report which claimed that Spencer had intervened to facilitate a return to work at the Digby and New London pits. Always short in speech, Smith was blunt about what, to all appearances, constituted a fundamental breach of MFGB policy: ‘If Yorkshire wanted me to do like that I would say: Take your bally job . . . It is weakening the whole position.’1 Spencer was summoned from his sickbed to explain himself. When he addressed the conference he was defiant: I am guilty . . . if they had not gone to work it meant men who had been loyal to the Federation would have been victimised. There were men in that district who were nine and twelve months after 1921 before they got back to work. I do not regret it, and I do not plead extenuating circumstances. I believe I did the best day’s work in my life for these men and you can pass your sentence.2


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Smith was angry and incredulous at the strike-breaking of the NMA leader, a sponsored MP funded by the MFGB: I want to put it to him that once you have declared a line of policy and you take part in that line of policy, anybody who goes away from that line of policy until it is altered is a coward. If Mr Spencer does not regret it I am sorry for him. There are thousands of men in the coalfields, not only in Notts, who in 1921 were victimised . . . We have had men who have suffered as much as Notts and our men are as dear to me as Notts are to them. We are going to be true to the Federation because we are in a Federation . . . I would rather be shot in the morning than do what you have done. You are a paid servant of the Federation.3

At stake were two conflicting philosophies and two conflicting views of the state of the struggle and how to respond to it. The clash involved complicated issues inherent in trade unionism, unity and fragmentation, democracy, the role of leadership, when to retreat and when to accept defeat. But in large-scale industrial warfare there are, as Smith tersely reflected, ‘principles which will not stand playing with’.4 A general had broken ranks. Spencer’s behaviour, explicable in terms of the collapse of the dispute in Nottinghamshire, was indefensible in terms of his position and NMA and MFGB policy. He was expelled from the conference and his case referred to the NMA. But the incident and its protagonists reflected and, as time would tell, reinforced problems at the heart of the failure of the lockout. Both Smith (1862–1938) and Spencer (1873–1957) started life in the mines at the zenith of the Victorian era and both participated as ILP activists in the passage from Liberalism to Labourism. While Smith was the elder by a decade and had become Yorkshire’s president in 1906, six years before Spencer had attained leadership in the NMA, they had grappled together with the intractabilities of the early 1920s – Spencer as general secretary of the NMA and MP for Broxtowe, Smith as vice-president and president of the MFGB. By 1926 both were men of labour’s centre, although Smith’s pugnacious plain speaking contrasted with Spencer’s caution and careerism. Both reflected their districts and both Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire were in relatively favourable economic positions and far from radical.5 But despite his cloth cap, which Spencer scorned, Smith was a modernizer. He strove to transcend parochialism by steering a path

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between the demands of Yorkshire and incremental progress towards unity. Smith believed the stronger districts must use their power to help weaker districts. He was an MFGB loyalist: in the 1921 lockout he prosecuted policies which his district opposed. He resolved tensions between district and national policy honourably: in 1929, faced with differences between Yorkshire and the Federation, he reluctantly resigned his presidency. Where Smith looked to the future, to 1945, to a national union and a nationalized industry, Spencer looked backwards to the world he came from and to the particularities of Nottinghamshire. Spencer believed in a national federation but one which gave greater play to the self-interest of its constituents and greater toleration of differentials between profitable and non-profitable districts. He favoured arbitration and partnership with the coalowners. His ambitions for Cabinet office and his move from Methodism to Freemasonry deepened his conservatism. He opposed coordinated bargaining which might deflate wages in Nottinghamshire, while 1921 impressed on him the limitations of national industrial action. He was opposed to such action in 1926 and supported exploration of the Samuel report and concessions in opposition to MFGB policy. His use of Parliament as a platform increased tensions with the MFGB leadership, who believed he was undermining the stoppage. As the lockout developed, Spencer incarnated and amplified the tendencies to fragmentation and retreat. After the October incident he played a significant role in their triumph and consolidation in Nottinghamshire.6 In 1926 the coalfield ran from Harworth on the Yorkshire border to pits such as Digby and Gedling clustered around Nottingham in the south (see map 6). The earliest mines, such as the Langton Colliery, Pinxton, were sunk in the Erewash valley. More intensive development followed with larger pits opening at Hucknall, Bulwell, Annesley, Bestwood, Linby and Newstead in the Leen valley from the 1850s to the 1870s and the development of mines in the Mansfield area at Bolsover, Cresswell, Crown Farm and Rufford from the 1890s. The final phase of development from 1918 saw the opening up of the East Sherwood Forest field, with coal won at the new deep pits at Clipstone, Firbeck Main, Ollerton and Blidworth between 1920 and 1926. Nottinghamshire was an expanding, relatively profitable district despite economic difficulties in older, smaller pits. As much of its coal was sold on the home market, it was relatively protected in comparison with the export coalfields. In 1925 around 57,000 miners


Map 6 The Nottinghamshire coalfield

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produced 14,000,000 tons of coal, generally more efficiently and generally at higher wages than in most other districts. Trade unionism was weak. The NMA claimed 35,000 members in 1926, a density figure of 61 per cent, but many were not fully paid up and the association affiliated only 25,000 miners to the MFGB.7 Subcontracting and the butty system were resilient in Nottinghamshire. The antipathy of its supporters to solidaristic trade unionism and national agreements, the premium it placed on casualization, individualism and, blurring the boundaries between capital and labour, partnership with the coalowners, was distinctive in comparison with other coalfields. In certain areas it permeated the work process and the lodge, and debilitated independent trade unionism. Also relevant to the fortunes of the lockout was ‘the new feudalism’ of the Dukeries, the post-war Sherwood Forest pit villages constructed on the model of the modern company town. Here in areas dominated by rural estates coalowners pursued paternalist strategies of social control to the detriment of trade unionism.8 In emphasizing the role of regional societies in alternatively privileging and constraining mining trade unionism, David Gilbert’s work has stressed such factors as well as the industrial and social diversity of Nottinghamshire and the relative absence of strong mining communities in comparison with south Wales. The important point is that differentiation must be addressed between and within districts; economic hardship does not in itself stimulate militancy or a return to work, for to do either it requires mediating and mobilizing.9 The relevance of the model villages, urbanization and the high ratio of women in employment in Nottinghamshire must be acknowledged. But so too must the difficulties in evidencing and assigning causal connections between these factors and leadership, moderation, militancy and the ability to sustain mobilization and endure the rigours of extended industrial action. Model villages in the new south Yorkshire coalfield produced a different trade unionism. The butty system was important and certainly influenced industrial politics, although its extent and impact are debatable.10 Moreover, the county withstood a three-month lockout in 1921 just as staunchly as other coalfields. Significant problems did not develop in 1926 until the end of August, and then in the context of a marathon struggle from which many Nottinghamshire miners would derive little future advantage but faced immediate costs. Problems of urbanization and community were relative. The


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density of miners in certain areas was not qualitatively different from that in south Wales, while Nottinghamshire would bear further comparison with coalfields such as Lancashire. Moreover, it remains unclear why working wives should undermine a stoppage rather than increase ability and willingness to resist. Alan Griffin hazards an explanation that wives pressured miners to return and challenged their masculinity.11 But we also have to take account of differentiation and the role some wives played in sustaining the strike. Griffin’s assertion may also be at odds with arguments that employment and consequent contact with trade unionism radicalizes women and generates solidarity. The weakness of occupational community and the relative absence of powerful lodges with the ability to counteract growing difficulties, may help to explain the way the lockout collapsed. They do not explain its longevity in a situation where from the start explosive tensions existed between MFGB policy and the potential for a relatively satisfactory settlement in Nottinghamshire. If further research, multi-factor explanations based on the interplay of national and local issues, and intra-regional comparisons are essential, there can be little doubt that the tradition of moderate trade-union leadership and paternalistic industrial relations was relevant to the development of the dispute in Nottinghamshire. Nonetheless, examination of the union leadership demonstrates the importance of human agency, its relative diversity and the possibilities for individual choices left open by structural patterns. John George Hancock (1857–1940), a pioneer of mining unionism, had gone underground as long ago as 1870 and been a full-time officer since the 1890s. Resisting Labourism he had sat as Liberal MP for Mid-Derbyshire and subsequently Belper until 1923. During the war he had fanned the flames of patriotism and combined with Spencer to attempt to take the NMA out of the MFGB political fund. In the early 1920s he survived attempts to remove him from NMA office but was replaced by Spencer as secretary and downgraded to agent. An opponent of MFGB policy, he played a small role in the lockout.12 But his contemporary William Carter (1862– 1932) was prominent in sustaining the stoppage and maintaining the NMA’s links with the MFGB. Elected NMA president in 1909 and appointed to full-time office a year later, Carter was a moderate who served as Labour MP for Mansfield, 1918–22.13 It is instructive that with Carter, Frank Varley (1885–1929), the ablest, most eloquent of NMA leaders who had himself been a

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contractor, did not follow Spencer’s path. A younger man, he had studied colliery management at Sheffield University. He became checkweighman at Welbeck Colliery, Mansfield, in 1917, NMA president in 1918 and a full-time official in 1919. Varley was an efficient administrator and powerful speaker with extensive knowledge of the industry. From 1922 to 1926 he represented Nottinghamshire on the MFGB Executive and was a member of the Labour Party National Executive until his election as MP for Mansfield in 1923. Varley was a moderate; as 1926 wore on he could see no way of avoiding wage cuts. His verdict on the 1921 lockout would come back to haunt him: ‘I am as confident as I stand here having regard to the fact that the last stoppage so strained the loyalty of our men if we attempt to strain that loyalty again it will smash us.’14 Small groups to the left and right of the moderate mainstream possessed localized followings but struggled to influence wider events. The Miners’ Minority Movement (MMM) controlled the Mansfield Area Committee. The left’s influence stretched back to the Irishman, Jack Lavin of the Socialist Labour Party, whose following formed the first Communist Party (CP) branch in 1920. Lavin’s protégés Owen Ford and Alec Norris had succeeded Varley as checkweighmen at Welbeck. The CP also had members in Rufford who produced the Rufford Star. Rose Smith was an indefatigable organizer and stirring propagandist who convinced A. J. Cook to support a coalfield campaign for birth control. A broader left group around the ILP member Herbert Booth, a checkweighman at Annesley, had broken with the MMM over CP domination. Like the CP, the patriotic, anti-socialist British Workers’ League (BWL) was stronger in towns like Mansfield and Hucknall than in the coalfield generally. The BWL had achieved some respectability through the brief patronage of Hancock. It provided a platform for butties such as William Holland and Joe Birkin who crusaded against communism and militant MFGB districts and for ‘non-political’ trade unionism in the NMA, while cultivating conservative, collaborationist industrial relations in the pits of the Bolsover, Barber-Walker and Ilkeston colliery companies. The subcontractors were more successful than the left: they would provide a base and forcing house for Spencer’s breakaway.15 The paternalist coalowners prioritized insulating the miners from the MFGB and gaining a district agreement. Fundamental to understanding the dispute in Nottinghamshire is, first, the fact that


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many miners could have continued to work on broadly existing terms: the owners did not post notices of reductions. Nottinghamshire miners prosecuted a strike in solidarity with other coalfields. In doing this they demonstrated altruism and discipline: for four months the vast majority risked their livelihood to succour others. Second, they were in a worse economic position than miners in other districts. The NMA’s strike fund had been exhausted by the end of May. With MFGB rejection of Spencer’s plea that poorer districts should receive more from the Federation fund and the exhaustion of a loan from the Derbyshire Association, the Nottinghamshire miners were dependent on a trickle from the MFGB central fund, Poor Law relief and their own efforts. They received less dispute benefit per member than any other MFGB district.16 Third, from the very beginning there was an ambivalence within the NMA leadership which threatened solidarity. While Carter emphasized Nottinghamshire’s loyalty to national policy and while the entire leadership supported the stoppage, Spencer and Varley declared that wage cuts must be contemplated. They stood on the 30 April status quo; yet in effect they signalled to their members that it was unattainable. This strengthened tensions within the MFGB and was scarcely destined to stiffen the resolve of NMA members who knew that their leaders could negotiate relatively successfully for Nottinghamshire.17 Yet the dispute got off to a 100 per cent start. For some, the beginning of the stoppage would always be associated with the colourful May Day parades wending their way through the Nottinghamshire towns. But Bernard Taylor, a thirty-year-old branch secretary at Sherwood, recalled after fifty years: I have one particular memory that is still fresh: the bringing of the pit ponies to the surface. At Sherwood pit 250 were brought up. This was a big undertaking as there could be only one pony on each deck of the two-decked cage . . . when they were released they ran and gambolled like new-born lambs. The light and the sun and the green of the fields were things they had forgotten for many had not experienced them since 1921. Many of the pony drivers watched the proceedings and paid daily visits to the fields to see and have a word with the ponies they were responsible for when at work, and the ponies knew the link of friendship was still there.18

The initial strength of the strike was suggested by the NMA’s rejection of Varley’s suggestion of cuts, while his contradictory

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position was underlined by the assiduity with which he organized pickets and house-to-house propaganda at the first signs of problems in the Dukeries.19 The first landmark was the bishops’ memorandum. It represented an opportunity and a defeat for the Nottinghamshire leaders who enthusiastically championed Cook and Smith’s advocacy of the initiative against condemnation from Durham and south Wales. Varley successfully pressed for a district vote. Carter stressed against the left that ‘so far as the merits or demerits of arbitration are concerned they have no terrors to me as to some people’.20 Spencer put Nottinghamshire’s case powerfully. He argued that there would have to be wage reductions in any event and here they were part of a favourable package. Moreover, refusal to face district negotiations by invoking a national agreement ignored the fact that there had been no real national agreement since the war. Fulsome in praise of Cook who, he claimed, had attracted loyalty unsurpassed since the days of the Chartist leaders, he pushed to break the impasse. The rejection of the proposals strengthened the NMA leaders’ sense that they were trapped in a dispute whose outcome they could not determine. However powerful their arguments, their voice was drowned by the big battalions of south Wales and Yorkshire.21 Glorious sunshine was a sustaining diversion. One activist remembered: ‘The summer of 1926 I think was the best I have experienced: long sunny days for many weeks. We were poor financially but the kind of weather we had was some compensation – indeed a blessing and it helped us in our determination.’22 Another boost to morale was Arthur Cook. Exaggerated perhaps, memories affirm his unshakeable hold on the psyche of the miners: Neither before or since have I witnessed such a crowd, not even at a football match . . . The generally agreed estimate was 80,000 to 100,000. From all parts of the Nottinghamshire coalfield they came . . . Thousands did not hear a word for there were no loudspeakers. Despite this everybody agreed it was worth the journey. A meeting to be addressed by A. J. Cook was a magnet to the miners and their wives, for he had become their idol.23

But the blazing summer disclosed the embers of disaster. By midAugust there was increasing consciousness that without concessions, for which the MFGB majority showed little inclination, the dispute would run on and on; there was growing support for


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district agreements. In the first months there were reports of ‘a wonderful feeling of comradeship towards the miners . . . the voluntary workers at the various soup kitchens are finding few moments of leisure.’24 After 1921 credit was a problem but large grocers rallied around and government reports record substantial gifts and successful communal feeding in Nottingham, Arnold, Bulwell, Mansfield, Sutton-in-Ashfield and Worksop. The kitchens could play a collectivist, morale-raising role and involved women in the dispute: In Mansfield Woodhouse the local Labour Party (the majority of whose members were miners and their wives) was the instrument for most of those activities. There was a wonderful spirit among them: they prepared, cooked and served the meals to the children. It was to them a labour of love and they felt it was their part in the struggle of their husbands . . . it had to be seen to be believed.25

The kitchens were supported by donations, collections, sales of miners’ lamps and performances of musicians such as the First Revolutionary Band for Moscow. But by the end of August the Mansfield Woodhouse kitchen had run out of money and the pattern was repeated across Nottinghamshire. Poor Law relief had initially been generous but cuts were soon in train. In areas like Nottingham itself, the guardians maintained recommended scales of relief but in others such as Southwell rates were reduced, sometimes on the pretext that miners were returning to work.26 Hardship became pressing, and outcropping constituted a running sore. Into August the stoppage was solid. Carter told the 30 July MFGB conference that while outcropping was ‘menacing and growing and putting a severe test on the men’, only 500 miners were working at the two new collieries, Blidworth and Ollerton.27 On 16 August he reported that the position as to men working was unchanged but outcropping involved 1,700 miners.28 But the two collieries working since June constituted a debilitating focus.29 Change was in the air and the coalowners probed its possibilities. On 21 August, the NMA rejected proposals for district talks and reiterated adherence to MFGB policy. But Carter was emphatic: ‘We cannot close our eyes to the fact that there is a change in the mentality of the men and they are asking if something is not going to be done to bring the struggle to a satisfactory conclusion.’30 Some were prepared to answer that question: the

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butties, who had based themselves on outcropping and developed discontent, now organized it. They provided a simple answer to hardship based on inadequate union funds, the faltering of other financial support and lack of progress towards a settlement. Their representatives met with the Bolsover Coal Company to discuss a return to work.31 This increased pressure on the NMA who successfully pushed for negotiations with the government. Varley told the MFGB: ‘I have said we have got to compromise on wages. I have stood up for hours and a national agreement and I am in no apologetic mood and I have made my position clear to the men.’32 Spencer asserted that the decision to negotiate was sufficient to stave off immediate pressures for district talks. But once again the negotiators achieved nothing. More miners abandoned the strike: ‘. . . what wonder that the Nottinghamshire men were going back . . . seventeen hungry, wageless weeks, weeks of hopeless waiting outside the door of humanity, are enough for anyone.’33 By the end of August Varley was unsuccessfully requesting the MFGB Executive to permit him to enter exploratory talks with the Nottinghamshire coalowners.34 With the NMA’s room for manoeuvre circumscribed by the Federation, the coalowners achieved a breakthrough. By early September 7,000–8,000 miners were back at work. By the end of the month the figure had more than doubled.35 After early returns in the Dukeries, the front was breached at Bolsover Company pits such as Clifton, Clipstone, Crown Farm and Rufford where, by the end of September, 65 per cent of miners were working. Men at the Barber-Walker collieries around Eastwood were returning by the end of the month, followed by pits at Hucknall and Bestwood. Once significant numbers had returned desertion took on its own momentum as owners and butties exploited fears of victimization and emphasized that the NMA leadership could not win the dispute on its present demands. Moreover, the new terms were relatively favourable: a 7½-hour day; a minimum percentage on the basis rate of 46.6 per cent; reduction of the subsistence rate from 8s. 9d. to 8s. 3d.; and the ratio of wages to profits to be reduced from 87:13 to 85:15.36 As desertion developed, tensions heightened. At the end of August Cook spearheaded an NMA campaign, addressing twentyfive meetings in two days. In the Mansfield area there was mass picketing and mass policing. Cook commended the ‘magnificent women’ and suggested they be given honorary membership of the


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MFGB: ‘The police take the blacklegs to the pits but the women bring them home. The women shame the men out of scabbing.’37 The Colliery Guardian reported that Cook was inducing a state of ‘terrorism’: . . . miners and their wives picketed the streets throughout Sunday night and canvassed the houses of men who had signed on. Gangs of men walked about the streets armed with heavy sticks ready for mischief. There were several instances of intimidation and violence . . . The committee determined to continue with the same methods of house-tohouse canvassing, mass demonstrations by women, public meetings and systematic picketing of all entrances and exits of local collieries.38

Charlie Brown, popular Labour candidate for Rushcliffe, lamented saturation policing and its role: Six men were peacefully picketing . . . Along came a busload of policemen smelling of intoxicants. They rushed upon the men without provocation. The police verbally abused miners out walking and warned them of the coming evictions . . . these incidents are invariably accompanied by the admonition that the men should go to work.39

Rose Smith described a pregnant woman dragged through the streets by angry police: Her boot toes were worn through, her knees were badly bruised and bleeding . . . her face was smacked and she was punched in the chest . . . she was subjected to insults in a room containing somewhere about forty policemen, the epithets they applied to her being absolutely unprintable.40

D. H. Lawrence returned from Italy on his final visit to his birthplace in Eastwood in September 1926. He was disturbed: ‘It is another world. There are policemen everywhere, great big strong policemen with faces like a leg of mutton. Where they come from heaven only knows.’41 Lawrence recorded his solidarity with the Erewash valley miners living on bread, margarine and potatoes: ‘They are the only people who move me strongly, and with whom I feel myself connected in deeper destiny.’42 But transformations which others welcomed he saw as vulgarizing and disrupting the working-class order he had once known:

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But the women seem to have changed most in this, that they have no respect for anything. There was a scene in the market-place yesterday, a Mrs Hufton and a Mrs Rowley being taken off to court to be tried for insulting and obstructing the police. The police had been escorting the blacklegs from the mines and the women had made the usual row . . . In the past they would have died of shame, at having to go to court. But now, not at all. They had a little gang of women with them in the market-place waving red flags and laughing loudly and using bad language . . . Good luck, old girl! Let ’em have it! Give it the bluebottles in the neck! Tell ’em what for!43

Parts of Nottinghamshire were in upheaval as the return was bitterly contested. In the end the efforts of the women, the loyalist miners and Cook were to no avail. At times they halted or reversed the tide; within days it had resumed. As one observer noted: ‘Every kind of persecution, intimidation and persuasion is being used on those men who have not gone back to work and are still holding fast to the Federation policy.’44 At the 29 September MFGB conference, Spencer argued that the choice lay between accepting the government proposals for district agreements to be reviewed by a national tribunal or a continued struggle which was doomed to failure. He again raised the possibility of the NMA being forced to negotiate a district agreement to protect the swelling numbers at work and preserve trade unionism in the Nottinghamshire coalfield.45 By the first week in October more than 32,000 miners and 70 per cent of the NMA’s membership were working. The stoppage was broken, although the endgame held significance for the future. This was the context in which Spencer negotiated the return of the hitherto loyal miners on 5 October at Digby and subsequently at other pits. This intervention by the NMA’s best-known leader lent legitimacy to the return to work and extended it. It finally undermined the NMA. Spencer was suspended but subsequent attempts were made to repair the breach. However, he was embittered by his humiliating treatment at the Kingsway Hall. He saw little future in a badly beaten NMA, tied to an obstructive, extremist Federation. When Herbert Smith knocked on the door of his house in Langtry Grove, Nottingham, Spencer refused to open it.46 The NMA were fighting with a paper army. The October attempt to bring out the safety men and push for an embargo was irrelevant in the Midlands. The MFGB Executive was held in


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Nottingham and its members took meetings across the coalfield. A ballot showed 14,331 for continuing the stoppage and 2,875 against, with a clear majority opposed to a district agreement. While it suggested continuing resistance, the turnout was less than 50 per cent and largely excluded those back at work. Cook’s continuing efforts, aided by the MFGB ‘war council’, the CP, the Mansfield Area Committee and Varley, who stood beside him on the platform while the crowd howled ‘traitor’, were breathtaking. Cook spoke at twenty-three meetings in four days. Despite his unquenchable optimism, defeat was looming. NMA conferences now represented at most 20 per cent of those who had taken the field in May and its council was reduced from forty-six to eighteen representatives.47 Carter informed the Federation: It is not propaganda we want, it is food we want and it is starvation we are faced with . . . the breach is wider than when you came down to Notts . . . it makes you begin to think and think very furiously, what action you will take to save or preserve your Association whatever your loyalty is with regard to the Federation because you cannot have a Federation without you have an Association and if the Association is going out of existence . . . 48

At the 4 November MFGB conference Carter poured cold water on Cook’s enthusiasm. With 40,000 back, the stoppage was in its death throes. Moreover, as Varley reported, Spencer, other expelled members of the NMA and representatives of the butties were moving towards negotiating a district agreement.49 It was signed on 20 November. Two days later, as the MFGB staggered towards capitulation, a breakaway Nottinghamshire and District Miners’ Industrial Union (NMIU) was formed. It was based on a number of tendencies. It was what the butties had long desired but never dared realize until presented with the disintegration of the NMA and the mantle of Spencer. Members of the NMA Council, such as its vicepresident Ben Smith, were disillusioned with what they perceived as the impossibilism of the MFGB and could see no other way of restoring order. For some miners faced with defeat there was resentment at leaders who, they believed, had brought it on them; moreover, they welcomed any protection from anti-NMA employers. For others membership was imposed by coalowners or butties. For Spencer, who bore grudges and contemplated a ruined career, it was a fresh start and a vehicle for the industrial politics he

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had developed throughout the 1920s. That his was far from the only choice available is clear from the decisions of others. Varley calculated that, whatever his criticisms of it, the movement he knew represented the better future. Carter retained a dogged loyalty to reviving the NMA within the MFGB.50 Both soldiered on, pushing for negotiations and district agreements for the 4,000 loyalists who endured with them, some of whom, Carter admitted, would be at work if they could get it. Condemning Spencer, who, they reflected, ‘is doing everything he possibly can to undermine and wreck the Notts Miners’ Association’, they remained involved in the MFGB.51 The NMA supported rejection of the government terms at the 10–11 November MFGB conference on the grounds that they preferred district agreements rather than reference to a national tribunal, although this was overturned by a lodge vote. As the dispute terminated, Carter summed up: ‘We have no power or influence anywhere.’52 After seven months’ struggle, the NMA was not even permitted to surrender formally: Spencer sat in its place. On 22 November Carter and Varley requested members to return to work if this was possible. A week later they got round to expelling Spencer. In early 1927 he shared a platform with the coalowners. As he turned to consult J. P. Houfton of the Bolsover Company, a voice rang out from the back of the hall: ‘Kiss him, Judas!’53 The consequences of the lockout and the lives and the lineages it influenced run like twisting threads through twentieth-century mining history. Carter took over Spencer’s role in the NMA and strove to hold it together. He died in 1932. Varley, a faithful helpmate, died from heart problems, still in his forties, in 1929. Hancock showed the other side of trade unionism. Retired by the NMA at seventy, he threw in his lot with Spencer. Resigning his seat in 1929, after a spell on the Liberal benches, Spencer led the NMIU for a decade. If it was not a company union simpliciter, its reliance on employer finance and services compromised it as an independent body: it represented a reverse for socialist trade unionism and class creation. After the amalgamation of the NMA and NMIU in 1937, Spencer sat briefly on the MFGB Executive and lived to see the nationalization and the NUM which he had opposed. When he died in the very different world of 1957, he left an estate of £20,000.54 Others experienced less comfortable landings. Owen Ford, ‘a wonderful orator . . . the platform idol of the miners’, was


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dismissed as checkweighman at Welbeck and blacklisted.55 Bernard Taylor was victimized after the lockout but continued as a dues collector for the NMA, eventually getting back into the mines as a checkweigher before becoming MP for Mansfield. Both lived to see the miners’ victories of the 1970s.56 Dai Ley walked from south Wales to Nottingham when he was victimized after the 1921 lockout, only to find history repeating itself in 1926. Apart from a brief spell at Pleasley in the 1930s, he was out of the pits until 1943. A lifelong Communist, he won a personal triumph in 1945 when he filled Spencer’s post in the new Nottinghamshire Area NUM, of which he subsequently became president.57 Leonard Savage also walked from south Wales in 1921. He was one of the few who stopped work at Blidworth in the Dukeries in 1926; he paid the price by working intermittently through the 1930s. His son Bernard started work at Blidworth on his fourteenth birthday in 1935 as an NMIU member, his dues automatically deducted from his wages. He remembered fist fights between NMA and NMIU members: ‘. . . it were hatred, pure hatred . . . Spencer’s Union worked the butty system and the butty system held the Sword of Damocles over all the families.’58 From the 1950s he was prominent on the NUM Area Executive, as a Communist, then Labour activist. Despite his radicalism, he was an opponent of the 1966 Power Loading Agreement which cemented wage unity between the areas at a cost to Nottinghamshire. Yet until his death in 1996 he connected Roy Lynk and the Nottinghamshire breakaway of 1984–5 with Spencerism which he held was never eradicated.59 After 1926, as after 1921, the coalfield attracted victimized immigrants. Dismissed in West Lothian, Mick Kane, a CP member, worked in Yorkshire and Derbyshire before finding a job in 1936 at Harworth, an NMIU colliery, where he led the strike which dented Spencerism. After 1945 he was a full-time official in Derbyshire while his brother Jock played an important role in the 1972 strike in Yorkshire.60 ‘Bolshevik Jack’ Smith, a firebrand from Hucknall, was so irate at the policies of Spencer and Varley in the early 1920s that he smashed the windows of the NMA offices. In 1926 he became famous for urging his members, armed with sticks, to baton-charge the police. He laid the basis for his ousting as leader of the Leicestershire miners by his refusal to yield an inch throughout the lockout and his prolonged absences in Russia and travelling the coalfields with Cook.61 His nephew, Les Ellis, like his father, was

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refused reinstatement at the Hucknall No. 2 Colliery in November 1926 and blacklisted across the coalfield. He worked as a window cleaner until 1934, when he left the Labour Party for the CP, where he became a full-time organizer. His mother Annie had been the first of the family to join the CP, in 1929, followed by her younger son Frank in 1931. After twenty years, Les went back into the pits at Linby in 1947 when he was forty-five years old. In 1951 he became an area official and served on the NUM Executive until his death in 1965. Frank Ellis fought in the International Brigades in Spain and at Arnhem before joining Les at Linby, where he became a member of the Area Executive. Their most successful protégé was another immigrant, Joe Whelan, born in Dun Laoghaire in 1925. Whelan, whom they recruited to the CP, was area general secretary and a member of the NUM Executive in the big strikes of the 1970s. Frank Ellis, too, was active in 1972 and 1974. He believed that the resolution the Nottinghamshire miners demonstrated then finally exorcized the ghosts of Spencerism. But he lived to see 1984.62 As the miners’ last great battle commenced, one newspaper reported an old miner playing bowls at Ollerton who sniffed the breeze and pronounced: ‘I can smell Spencerism in the air.’63 Many made that comparison. But the attraction of patterns and parallels – and they were there – should not divert us from registering changes as well as continuities and the specifics of two different historical situations. In 1926, the Nottinghamshire miners stood firm for four months. In 1984 few went on strike. In 1984 there were no coalowners, butties or new Dukeries: the coalfield had experienced four decades of nationalization. For as exacting a student of militancy as Vic Allen, Nottinghamshire excelled over other coalfields in 1972 and 1974.64 The sinews of mobilization in 1984, the hesitations of the area leaders, the NUM refusal to hold a ballot, were questionable. But parochialism, moderation, cooperative attitudes to management, the sense of a protected position, endured. The 1970s strikes were about money not closures. In their aftermath Nottinghamshire fought for area incentive schemes. In 1984 powerful groups opposed the strike, ballot or no ballot. In a different, remoulded coalfield the dust of Spencerism which still flecked the air crystallized into the new Union of Democratic Mineworkers.


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Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6

7

8

9 10

11 12

13 14

15

16

17 18 19 20 21

MFGB, Conference, 7–8 October 1926, p. 8. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid. Ibid., p.52. This and the next paragraph draw on ‘Spencer, George Alfred’, in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 1 (London, 1972); ‘Smith, Herbert’, in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 2 (London, 1974); British Library of Political and Economic Science, Lord Citrine diary, 1/7, 10 July 1925; J. Lawson, The Man in the Cap: The Life of Herbert Smith (London, 1941). ‘Spencer’; A. R. Griffin, Mining in the East Midlands, 1550–1947 (London, 1971), pp. 312–15; A. R. and C. P. Griffin, ‘The non-political trade union movement’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History, 1918–1939 (London, 1977), pp. 133–62. Any account of Nottinghamshire must acknowledge indebtedness to the following texts on which this paragraph draws: A. R. Griffin, The Miners of Nottinghamshire, 1914–1944 (London, 1962); Griffin, Mining; D. Gilbert, Class, Community and Collective Action: Social Change in Two British Coalfields, 1850–1926 (Oxford, 1992); D. Gilbert, ‘The landscape of Spencerism: mining politics in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, 1910–1914’, in A. Campbell, N. Fishman and D. Howell (eds), Miners, Unions and Politics, 1910–47 (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 175–98. Griffin and Griffin, ‘The non-political trade union movement’; R. J. Waller, The Dukeries Transformed: The Social and Political Development of a TwentiethCentury Coalfield (Oxford, 1983). Gilbert, ‘Landscape’, pp. 179–80. P. Sunley, ‘Broken places: a geography of the 1926 coalmining dispute’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989), 128, quotes Frank Varley to the effect that in 1924 the system applied in a small minority of pits, which is surely questionable. Griffin, Mining, p. 249. ‘Hancock, John George’, in Bellamy and Saville, Dictionary, vol. 2; Griffin, Miners, passim. ‘Carter, William’, in Bellamy and Saville, Dictionary, vol. 1. MFGB, Conference, 21 March 1926, pp. 143–4; Griffin, Miners, passim; ‘Varley, Frank’, in Bellamy and Saville, Dictionary, vol. 2. Griffin, Miners, pp. 201–2; G. Chan Man Fong, ‘Shoulder to shoulder: Rose Smith’, in J. McIlroy, A. Campbell and K. Morgan (eds), Party People, Communist Lives: Explorations in Biography (London, 2001), pp. 106–12; Gilbert, Class, pp. 180–4. MFGB, Conference, 20 May 1926, p. 31; P. Sunley, ‘Broken places: towards a geography of the 1926 coal dispute’, in M. Heffernan and P. Gruffudd (eds), A Land Fit for Heroes: Essays in the Human Geography of Interwar Britain (Loughborough, 1988), p. 19. The Times, 28 May, 5 June 1926. B. Taylor, Uphill All the Way: A Miner’s Struggle (London, 1972), p. 34. National Archives, London (NA), HO144/6902, Situation report, 4 June 1926. MFGB, Conference, 30 July 1926, p. 25. Ibid., pp. 34–6.

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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 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

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Taylor, Uphill, p. 34. Ibid., p. 36. Nottinghamshire Guardian, 7 August 1926, quoted in Gilbert, Class, p. 190. NA, CAB27/333, Situation reports, 9, 20 June 1926, Board of Trade Bulletin, 21 June, 8 July 1926; Taylor, Uphill, p. 35. Sunley, ‘Broken places’, pp. 20–3. MFGB, Conference, 30 July 1926, p. 10. MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, p. 13. NA, CAB27/333, Mines Department report, 22 July 1926. MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, p. 44. Griffin and Griffin, ‘Non-political trade union movement’, p. 135. MFGB, Conference, 16 August 1926, pp. 60–1. F. C. Boden, Miner (London, 1934), p. 107. MFGB, Conference, 2 September 1926, p. 16; Griffin, Miners, p. 172. MFGB, Conference, 29 September 1926, p. 9. MFGB, Conferences, 2 September 1926, pp. 16–17, 29 September 1926, pp. 8–9. Miner, 28 August 1926. Colliery Guardian, 27 August 1926. Sunday Worker, 29 August 1916. Ibid. D. H. Lawrence, ‘Return to Bestwood’, in W. Roberts and H. Moore (eds), Phoenix II (London, 1968), p. 258. Lawrence, ‘Return’, p. 264. His father had been a butty at Brinseley Colliery. Ibid., p. 259. MFGB, Conference, 4 October 1926, p. 13. MFGB, Conference, 29 September 1926, pp. 46–8, 56. Griffin, Mining, pp. 245–6. Griffin, Miners, p. 191; Gilbert, Class, pp. 198–9. MFGB, Conference, 4 November 1926, p. 23. Ibid. For the NMIU, see Griffin and Griffin, ‘Non-political trade union movement’. MFGB, Conference, 4 November 1926, p. 23. MFGB, Conference, 19 November 1926, p. 28. Miner, 15 January 1927. See n. 5. Taylor, Uphill, p. 35. Ibid. F. Westacott, Shaking the Chains (Chesterfield, 2002), pp. 286–7. Bernard Savage, interviews with Richard Stevens, 9, 17 June 1992. Ibid. Labour History Archive, Manchester, CP/CENT/PERS/04/02, J. and M. Kane. Griffin and Griffin, ‘Non-political trade union movement’, pp. 136–7. Frank Ellis, interview with Richard Stevens, 5 August 1991, 13 October 1997. Quoted in C. P. Griffin, Nottinghamshire Miners between the Wars: The Spencer Union Revisited (Nottingham, 1984), p. 1. V. Allen, The Militancy of British Miners (Shipley, 1981), p. 186; J. Krieger, Undermining Capitalism (London, 1984).


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10 Women

SUE BRULEY

Traditionally, labour history has seen men as neutral agents, universal representatives of humanity, whilst women have been marginalized, only appearing on the sidelines and portrayed as either forlorn victims or heroines of the class struggle. By focusing on gender, this chapter not only provides a ‘compensatory’ history of women in the narrative of the lockout but also aims to historicize masculinity by analysing the effect of the stoppage on male identity and on relations between men and women at community level.1 The inherent, often unacknowledged bias of labour history towards men is a product of reliance on bureaucratic and institutional sources. The construction of narratives around the formal structures of the labour movement based upon the reports of conferences and other institutional records has often largely excluded women, whose networks and strategies were usually outside these structures. This is particularly so in mining history, where, with the exception of surface workers, women have been absent from the paid workforce since the mid-nineteenth century.2 The work of Hywel Francis and others in the 1970s was important in creating an archive of oral testimony for the south Wales coalfield and in preserving the libraries of the miners’ institutes which were rapidly disappearing.3 But although Francis and his colleagues interviewed women, their primary focus was on the South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF). Its politics and personalities dominate the archive, so that there is little information on who ran the communal kitchens, what it was like to have to ask for poor relief and what mothers did when the money ran out.

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Feminist historians have also paid little attention to the role of women in what has been perceived as a dispute primarily about men. Consequently, there is little documentation and no sustained analysis of the role of women during the lockout. But there are fragments of evidence from across the coalfields which suggest the active part they played. In Durham, Phyllis Short, chair of the Cooperative Women’s Guild in Chopwell and an advocate of birthcontrol clinics, recalled her picketing activities: I took part in the strike along with the other women in the village. When we heard that certain persons were blacklegging at the pit we used to go up to the pithead. We used to wait on them coming out and then we used to chase them home. One of them ran into his hen cree one day and we kept him there all day.4

Miners’ wives from Ashington and North Walbottle in Northumberland were prosecuted for similarly molesting blacklegs. When 500 miners returned to work in the Black Country, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) claimed that ‘the women spontaneously demonstrated against them’ and that fewer than one hundred remained at work. At Silkstone in Yorkshire, a lorry carrying outcropped coal was stopped by a number of women and relieved of its freight before police could intervene.5 Women from Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, were arrested for intimidating blacklegs: ‘They carried yellow flags, booed and shouted and threw tomatoes.’6 Women were involved in several incidents in the Scottish mining regions: at Balgonie, Fife, picketing ‘took the form of jeering, especially by the women’; in Midlothian, a large crowd, women and children to the fore, stoned working miners. The Scottish mines inspector lamented: ‘The bringing of women in to help in picketing has made the position very bitter indeed . . .’7 Women played a particularly significant role in harassing blacklegs and their families in their homes. In Nottingham and Scotland, when repressive policing rendered mass picketing of pits ineffectual, miners’ wives resorted to ‘home pressure’, which according to The Times was ‘much more difficult to touch’ by the police; in cases of ‘home intimidation . . . the women continue to be used for this work and every attempt is being made to render unpleasant the home life of the men who are working’.8 At Shotts,


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Lanarkshire, women were reported to the authorities for ‘jeering and using taunting expressions’ near the houses of working miners, while in Ayrshire four women were among nineteen pickets charged with besetting the homes of blacklegs. At one Lanarkshire colliery ten scabs ceased working because, according to one, ‘their wives got no peace at home’.9 Such scattered evidence indicates that mining women were a key element in forging community solidarity and providing a backbone of support for their striking menfolk. Clearly more work needs to be done. What follows is an attempt to examine women and gender relations in greater depth in one area, the south Wales coalfield. By the 1920s there were over 200,000 miners in south Wales spread over twenty valleys.10 Many were immigrants from rural Wales or England. There were eighteen mining towns in the Rhondda valleys alone, where the growth of housing stock failed to keep pace with population, leading to overcrowding and often insanitary conditions. With the growth in population came a thriving cultural life: choirs, music halls, jazz bands, sports teams, study groups and debating societies. The most important institution was the SWMF, and the influence of lodge officials reached well beyond the pit. Miners’ institutes took an increasing interest in matters of welfare and other aspects of community life. Mining families were keen adherents of the cooperative movement and could only maintain respectability if they were paid-up members of the union and co-op.11 The Nonconformist chapel was also an important force, although this was in visible decline by the 1920s. The isolation of the pit village, its overwhelmingly proletarian character and the dense proximity of small, terraced houses created strong, cohesive communities where neighbourliness was a key feature. While values of thrift, hard work, respectability, status, class solidarity and mutual support were at the heart of Valley life, these were by no means displayed uniformly throughout the coalfield where different towns and communities developed their own individual characteristics and political traditions. The mining communities of south Wales were characterized by deeply entrenched views of the sexual division of labour. There was a high degree of sexual segregation, and gender boundaries were rigidly enforced. Men, on the whole, sought the company of men. Women, when not weighed down by domestic duties, sought the company of women. Miners worked in groups in dangerous, physically demanding conditions and developed strong bonds of

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support and trust.12 His group of mates formed the basis of the miner’s social as well as working life. Those miners who were not regular chapel-goers often spent most of their leisure hours in the pub. Male bonding was developed in allotments, choirs and educational groups. The libraries of miners’ institutes were a male preserve.13 Physical strength and a capacity for hard work were highly valued, as the miner was expected to be the breadwinner for a large family. A key feature of the miner’s masculine identity was his social and economic power over his wife, represented by her full-time status in the home. The miner looked upon marriage as a labour contract: he was the provider and his wife’s identity was built around servicing his substantial needs. Manhood also came to be associated with union membership. As an extension of union activity, many miners also became committed socialists. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Communist Party (CP), as well as the Labour Party, were all strongly represented in the region. But socialism for men at this time was largely about work and organized labour; gender divisions were seen as ‘natural’ and the sexual division of labour was not challenged.14 Submerged beneath this dominant masculinity were other masculinities. There must have been miners who were attracted to other men, but in such a deeply entrenched heterosexual culture open homosexuality was impossible. Homosexual men had to stay in the shadows, for ever denying their sexuality. It was seen as morally wrong for miners to undertake domestic labour. There were, however, those who would help out, particularly if their wives were sick, providing they could do it without being seen by any of the neighbours or their workmates.15 Miners were at their physical peak from their early twenties to their early forties, after which they went into decline. Physical attrition and appalling rates of disablement through accidents or lung ailments meant that many lived out their last years as invalids, nursed by wives and other female kin, separated from the company of men.16 Those who managed to continue in the mines were removed from face work and had to accept lighter, less well-paid jobs, with consequent loss of status. The corollary of the popular image of the Welsh miner was the Welsh ‘mam’.17 Although a formidable figure, mam’s domain was essentially domestic. Her routines and very existence were bound up with servicing her husband. Miners worked three different shifts, after which they needed a substantial meal. Women who had


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both husband and older sons in the pit could find themselves preparing meals from early morning until late at night. Few pithead baths had been built by the 1920s, so pans of water had to be heated for bathing. Pit clothes had to be washed and patched, and lunch boxes prepared. Bread was usually baked at home in large batches.18 Coal dust permeated the house, so wives had a constant battle against dirt. From the late nineteenth century, when married women were largely excluded from paid work in mining areas, they compensated for this loss of economic status by adding ritual to housework (Monday washday, spring-cleaning) and thereby gradually transformed the notion of cleanliness into a moral principle.19 Despite poor, often overcrowded conditions, a woman was not considered respectable unless she kept a ‘tidy’ house. In large households, it was common for the oldest girl to be kept at home after leaving school to help mother out. In the absence of local job opportunities, her younger sisters were often sent away to domestic service. The lives of miners’ wives were made more arduous by large families. Miners were amongst the last of the occupational groups to limit family size; ten or twelve children were still common in south Wales at this time. Married women under forty were usually either pregnant or had a baby under one year. Rates of infant and maternal mortality were significantly above the national average: from 1881 to 1911, death rates of women aged twenty to forty-four in the Pontypridd Registration District were higher than those of their male counterparts, which were amongst the highest for men in Britain.20 Miners’ earnings fluctuated considerably, and it was the wife’s role to manage the household budget. Mam would often go without in order to provide food for the rest of the family. Life was made bearable by the close support of neighbours. This sense of neighbourliness was the women’s counterpart to the male solidarity of the miners.21 A woman’s first duty was to her husband and after that her family, but when these needs had been met she could be called upon to help after a confinement, nurse the sick or assist in a neighbour’s family crisis. It was women who forged the bonds of communal solidarity sometimes displayed in ritual behaviour. These displays were essential to the structuring of popular values at neighbourhood level: for example, humiliating parades or ‘rough music’ would be enacted against those who transgressed community norms.22 Alongside this spontaneous, informal behaviour, women participated in a limited range of more formal

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institutions. Many belonged to chapel sisterhoods. The women’s suffrage movement failed to make an impact in the south Wales coalfield before the First World War, but other women’s organizations flourished during the 1920s, when working-class women became involved in issues of housing, health and welfare. The most important was the Cooperative Women’s Guild, described by Mrs Davies in the film Women of the Rhondda as the ‘outstanding’ organization for women in the Valleys. Labour Party women’s sections grew at a phenomenal rate during the 1920s, and this was mirrored in south Wales, which from 1919 had its own women’s organizer, Elizabeth Andrews. The CP, in contrast, had few women activists.23 This, then, was an important part of the setting for the lockout. Financially ill equipped for the dispute, the SWMF provided little strike pay. A collective bid by the MFGB for unemployment benefit for locked-out miners failed, leaving no option but to press for school feeding under the Feeding of Necessitous Children Act and relief for wives and pre-school children from the local Poor Law guardians.24 The Rhondda Urban District Council resolved that provision would be made for school feeding for children who were deemed to be incapable of benefiting from education due to lack of nourishment.25 Local distress committees were established to coordinate the work of feeding children whose parents were destitute. The cost of the meals would be deducted from Poor Relief paid to the family. Applying for relief was a humiliating ordeal; all valuables had to be sold and the family had to prove it had no means of support. Financial aid was usually given only up to a maximum allowance of six children, so no attempt was made to meet the needs of large families. Infants under eighteen months were supplied with milk. All relief was in the form of a loan, which meant that many families soon found themselves in escalating debt. From early in the dispute, women figured prominently in protests against the meagre relief scales. In mid-July a deputation attended the Pontypridd Board of Guardians claiming to represent 30,000 miners. A mass meeting was held which demanded £2 5s. 0d. per week for a family and 18s. for single men.26 By mid-June, 16,500 children were being fed by the Rhondda Education Committee at a cost of £2,000 per week supplied by the guardians. Merthyr alone was reported to have over 5,000 children being fed communally. It was a similar picture in other areas. Usually breakfast and dinner were provided. Children such as


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Nancy Davies, who was born in 1921 and had seven sisters, had no meals at home. She attended a communal kitchen in Neath where she had to take her own plate and cup.27 Photos appeared in the local press of neatly arranged tables with children contentedly eating their school meals, often attended by male as well as female helpers.28 Elementary school teachers provided invaluable support in the children’s canteens. Throughout the dispute they arrived at 7 a.m. and helped with breakfast as well as dinner; they also voluntarily gave up their weekends, as school feeding was maintained for seven days a week.29 From mid-July, guardians increasingly tightened up on eligibility for school feeding, insisting on investigations being carried out to prove destitution and refusing to feed all the children in a family. The Rhondda Education Committee complained publicly that they were being expected by the guardians to meet the dietary needs of school children for seven days a week on a budget of 2s. per child, a near-impossible task.30 As poor relief was not provided for able-bodied men, local distress committees organized communal kitchens for miners. In Pontypridd 7,357 men had registered with the Central Distress Committee for communal feeding by the second week of June. The committee promised that ‘every man and boy in want without visible means of support would be provided for’.31 Unlike school feeding, the miners’ communal kitchens were entirely dependent on voluntary funding from local businesses, professionals, charitable donations and the labour movement. In addition, miners’ institutes had to dig into their reserve funds, which were rapidly eroded. Merfyn Payne, a miner from Pencoed born in 1883, recalled that ‘we spent every penny we had in maintaining the canteens’.32 Supplies were purchased though bulk orders from the co-op. In Abertillery the local police, colliery safety men and teachers were among those who contributed to the communal kitchen. In Bedlinog efforts were made to pool food tickets given by the guardians for wives and children into a common fund for feeding miners and their families together.33 Octavious Morgan, born in 1902, recollected that most of the meals in the communal kitchen in Mardy were a form of stew but they were occasionally served corned beef and chips, which was much appreciated.34 Mavis Llewellyn, a young woman about to embark on a teaching career in 1926, remembered the kitchen in Nantymoel with pride and affection:

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They prepared proper meals . . . they cooked the most excellent meals. I had some photographs of the tables being laid in the local canteen. It was summer time. There were flowers on the tables. There were table cloths. The waiters wouldn’t dare go in without a clean apron every day. And one of the local fellows that got married, they had the wedding breakfast there . . . they organised everything properly. At that time there was a Minister at every church here in Nantymoel and they had to take it in turns week by week to go to the canteen to say Grace.35

The communal kitchens fostered strong feelings of solidarity and were vital in holding the community together. They were usually set up in the miners’ institutes where men could play cards and billiards or enjoy other forms of recreation. Areas which opted to give out food vouchers to individual families rather than taking a collectivist approach suffered most from blacklegging.36 Will Arthur, a miner from a pit near Merthyr, later claimed that there had been no drift back to work in his village because ‘our canteens were always full you see’.37 In addition to holding the men together, there appears to have been a remarkable degree of fellowship between men and women in organizing and running the kitchens. Older men with experience of catering on a mass scale in the First World War were particularly valued as cooks.38 Will Paynter, a future SWMF leader, was a young miner in Trebanog. He recalled in his autobiography how both his father and mother helped out in the local kitchen.39 A photograph of the organizers of the kitchen at Neath in July 1926 shows thirty-one people, including five women.40 Volunteers came from all sections of the community. Lil Price, newly married and not yet tied down by family responsibilities, used to do a stint in the Bedwas kitchen. Mrs Rosser Jones remembered that her father, who worked in the co-op, used to carve the meat in the Mardy kitchen.41 Mr Williams recalled that an elderly ex-miner who had lost the power of speech and had been refused relief came to the kitchen in Glycorrwy and was seen trying to find food in the rubbish, ‘absolutely starving’. He was asked to take daily responsibility for looking after the kitchen fires for which he was given a dinner.42 The Rhondda Gazette proclaimed in early August that ‘it has been a noticeable feature during the last few months that very few people suffer from sickness’.43 It is striking how many interviewees who lived through the lockout refer to ‘happy days’ despite the obvious deprivations. This enhanced community spirit was at its height in the communal kitchens.


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Voluntary work extended into other areas. In the Ystrad valley Bedringalst church was cleaned and renovated. Barbers’ shops were set up. Men worked in teams to collect surface coal from the outcrops and slag heaps to distribute to the elderly and infirm.44 The biggest form of voluntary work undertaken was boot repairing. As the lockout wore on and boots could not be replaced or even repaired, it became a very pressing problem. Cases were reported of children being carried to school by their parents as they had no boots and needed to attend school to be fed. Gradually, a network of boot-repair shops, sometimes called boot hospitals, was established. Frequently this was organized by miners’ lodges, but good work was also performed by the Quaker Society of Friends who set up several workshops.45 A letter to the Rhondda Gazette praised the work of the Quakers’ Ferndale boot-repair workshop and wrote of its friendly atmosphere with ‘no talk of creeds or religions’.46 It was sometimes possible to repair children’s boots while they were at school. In Nantgarw woollen slippers were lent to the children whilst their boots were repaired in school hours.47 Sewing workshops were also set up for miners’ wives to repair clothes collectively and cut down large garments to make children’s clothing or underclothes. There was also plenty of time for recreation. The local press for the summer of 1926 resounds with accounts of the many sports competitions, carnivals and fund-raising concerts which were organized. The Pontypridd carnival in mid-July, which involved many competitions, jazz bands, comic entertainers and sports events, was proclaimed to be a ‘huge success’.48 Far from inducing gloom, the lockout, assisted by warm summer weather, appears to have produced something of a festival spirit. It was reported that ‘sports and pastimes of every conceivable nature are being indulged in by young and old’.49 The ancient game of ‘cattie and dog’ was revived with such enthusiasm that a competition in mid-June produced 954 entries. The event was watched by ‘thousands’ and the atmosphere described as ‘intense’.50 Such competitions were only open to ‘striking miners’. Undoubtedly these events helped to maintain morale and social cohesion. They also appear to have signified to the miners, the younger ones in particular, that they had been suspended from their usual male identity, based on hard physical work for a monetary wage. Released from their world of backbreaking toil in the dark and entitled to a daily meal in the communal canteen, they were in a celebratory mood. South Wales

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miners’ leader Arthur Horner recalled: ‘it’s a thought that probably did not occur to anyone outside the coal fields, that hundreds of thousands of miners spent their first summer in the sunshine.’51 The carefree atmosphere had its boundaries, for concerns about maintaining the food supply were always prominent. In an increasingly cashless local economy, emphasis was given to garden allotments, usually men’s responsibility, as a valuable source of food, particularly potatoes. Men and women foraged for coal and firewood in the surrounding countryside. Many mining families retained traditional rural skills, which enabled some women to make small amounts of money by making nettle beer. Young men engaged in sheep rustling and poaching. Horner recalled: ‘We took wood from fences without any sense of shame. We would steal timber from the pitheads. And if a sheep could be enticed from the hillside it would be killed and the meat divided among the people of the village.’52 There was a strong moral code in which stealing from wealthy outsiders was sanctioned, whereas stealing from members of the mining community would have meant that the whole family would be ostracized or even driven out. Blacklegs similarly transgressed community norms and were never again accepted in their villages. Some left the coalfield altogether. Edgar Evans described an incident in Bedlinog where the chapel congregation refused to sing hymns with four blacklegs and held a sit-down, silent protest.53 Younger miners were expected to play a role in picketing areas where the strike might falter. It was also a significant feature of the dispute that women were prominent in the picketing and public shaming of scabs. Women (usually older women) figured prominently in twelve major prosecutions following such incidents, which often involved stonethrowing and verbal abuse.54 In a case heard in Ystrad, the judge, Mr Lleufer Thomas, sentenced Mrs Elvira Bailey, an elderly woman from Treorchy, to two months in prison for throwing a stone. The sentence was intended as an example, for he felt that ‘women have been taking too prominent a part in these disturbances’.55 William Morley was twenty-one at the time of the lockout. Years later he remembered that there were two scabs working in Nantelwith. The two men, who had to have police protection, ‘weren’t prepared to come through the village because the women, particularly the women, would be waiting for them and there was always a few at the school there, some women would be there shouting and acting and so on’.56


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Women were particularly known for the tactic of ‘white shirting’, which was based on women’s traditional practice of public shaming. There were many variations, but it often involved grabbing a scab, pasting him with whitewash, forcing him to wear a white shirt and strapping him in a wheelbarrow. He was then paraded about accompanied by ‘rough music’ on a concertina or an accordion, his ordeal often ending with a ritual ducking in the river.57 Merfyn Payne was asked in 1975 to talk about a whiteshirting incident in Pencoed which involved about a dozen women. He gave only minimal details and seemed anxious not to go further, referring to it dismissively as ‘just a game with the women’, who were nevertheless prosecuted for the incident.58 An important part of this public shaming ritual, which terrified men, was that the masculinity of the scab (and often his moral and intellectual capacity) was brought into question. The white shirt (sometimes coloured ribbons were used instead) represented female dress and therefore a desexing or feminizing of the scab. In these communities, striking was associated with heroic manhood. To scab meant to let down your workmates. To break with the solidarity of the men was to lose the recognition of peers as a man. Will Paynter knew of a ‘family of blacklegs’ in Trebanog whom he described as ‘invariably inferior as workmen’ and suffering from ‘weakness of character’.59 Merfyn Payne said that the scab in the incident described above ‘wasn’t more than fifteen ounces upstairs’. Blacklegging incurred the wrath of those women who identified totally with the men. Rosemary Jones argues that, by the late nineteenth century, these protests, which had their roots in preindustrial women’s rituals (the ‘ceffyl pren’ tradition), were an expression of women’s relative lack of political power.60 Women in mining areas had been marginalized in the public domain by increasingly strict gender divisions and notions of domesticity which placed women outside the world of work and politics. The testimony of Payne suggests that miners viewed these women’s actions as not respectable as they were outside and therefore beyond the control of the formal structure of the miners’ lodge. These protests, in which women were assertive and dominating, display meanings beyond simple expressions of community solidarity and identification with the miners’ cause. As expressions of women’s political power, albeit weakly expressed, they represented not just a moral stance but were in effect contesting the male monopoly of political power in the coalfield.

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Women’s virtual exclusion from formal organizations of power was a consequence of the prevailing, deeply held views on gender segregation. The CP was perhaps the organization most committed to sexual equality following from its Marxist analysis of women’s oppression. Yet even here women’s issues were marginalized. Women formed only a small proportion of members and were barely represented in leadership positions. This was particularly so in mining areas. When Isabel Brown, the most prominent CP woman in the 1920s, came to speak at a meeting in Ystradgynlais, she was given tea before the meeting by the only woman in the local branch. She was astonished to find that this comrade would not be attending the meeting as ‘it would cause a scandal in the village’.61 The fact that the guest speaker was a woman apparently made no difference. According to Idris Cox, a prominent local member at the time, there were twenty to thirty women in the party in both Maesteg and in Mardy during the lockout. These women were mainly active in their own women’s sections and were not expected to participate to any great extent in branch meetings as ‘the main struggle was over wages and conditions, which they had no part in’.62 During the lockout, CP women pitched in wherever they could, protesting to Poor Law guardians and raising relief funds. A major activity for Communist women was showing solidarity with the men on picket lines and demonstrations against scabs. The party press reported one incident in early August where seven women, five of whom were CP members, succeeded in stopping blacklegs entering a pit, in what may have been a white-shirting incident.63 The piece, which was headed ‘Where the men failed’, proudly held up these women as heroes in the class war. Lil Price was an example of a grass-roots Communist woman activist during the lockout. Born in 1906 into a large Cardiff family, she came to Bedwas in the 1920s while unemployed to help during her sister’s confinement. She stayed and married a miner in 1926. After coming into contact with the CP through one of her brothers, she was one of many women who joined the party in south Wales that year. The local organizer’s report states that there were over 200 women in the party in south Wales by October 1926.64 Lil Price’s husband was not a party member. When asked if he minded her being in the CP she replied, ‘Not at all and besides it wouldn’t have mattered if he had.’65 She was active in the Young Communist League as well as the local party branch, and a regular attender at meetings which she recalled as ‘fabulous’. She had such


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faith in the CP that she used to put up her rent money to pay for the hall for meetings, which she had then to recoup from other members present. During the lockout this energetic young woman threw herself into activity, acting as treasurer of one of the committees, joining the co-operative movement and helping in the communal kitchen. She was also active in demonstrations against blacklegs. Very much an independent spirit, she described many of the party wives as ‘a bit scared’ of the CP but added that it ‘didn’t bloody worry me’. In the early 1930s Price, by then a mother, was jailed for riotous behaviour and assault in a demonstration during a dispute in Bedwas. She remained a party activist. Many years later she recalled: ‘I was up to my neck in it, I loved every minute.’ Labour women across the country saw their main role as preventing the miners from being starved into submission. Labour Woman made it clear that the first duty of Labour Party women was to raise funds for miners’ families. Early in the dispute, A. J. Cook, the MFGB leader, asked prominent Labour women for help. Within days a committee was formed, premises found for an office and work began in a serious way. The MFGB was so impressed by these efforts that it was very soon decided that the Women’s Committee for the Relief of Miners’ Wives and Children would be the only body officially sanctioned by the Federation to raise funds. Nationally, £313,874 was raised.66 Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour MP who chaired the committee, travelled thousands of miles, including a fund-raising tour of America, as part of the committee’s efforts to raise awareness of the miners’ plight. The committee decided that all funds would be distributed in kind by means of food vouchers rather than cash. Assisted by regular publicity in the Daily Herald, and working through the extensive network of Labour Party women’s sections and local trade-union branches, funds were collected from a wide variety of sources including collections in cinemas and music halls and by touring choirs. Clothing, blankets, boots, baby food and many other goods were distributed on a mass scale. Special funds were established for boots and nursing and expectant mothers. Before helping a family, local investigators would make a home visit and often reported that the family had no food in the house.67 A fostering scheme was established, particularly aimed at large families where not all children were eligible for Poor Relief. Over 800 children left the Welsh Valleys under this scheme, the great majority returning after the lockout.68

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Within the coalfield, Labour Party women were keen to demonstrate support for the men. Elizabeth Andrews spoke at mass rallies of women all over the mining areas. The Women’s Committee organized speaking tours of miners’ wives to help raise funds. Three miners’ wives, including Mrs Green from Abertillery and Mrs Herman of Treorchy, came to London in July to talk from personal experience about the desperate need for help for mining families. Two miners’ wives worked with touring male voice choirs. In November Annie Cook, wife of the MFGB leader, and a group of miners’ wives visited Russia.69 A noticeable feature of the dispute was the absence of the sectarian strife between Labour and Communist women often seen in the years before and after the lockout. One of the problems which the Women’s Committee had to cope with was misinformation, if not downright lies, by the authorities. Following an appeal to British Church leaders to endorse fundraising activities in America, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children published a report which purported to prove that there was no urgent need for relief amongst miners’ children.70 The prime minister himself intervened in August, on the eve of the arrival in the USA of a British delegation for the relief fund, arguing that miners’ families were not in need.71 It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that these interventions were politically motivated. This was certainly the opinion of the miners’ historian, Robin Page Arnot: The Ministry of Health, under the guidance of that superior person, Neville Chamberlain, has been notoriously active in bringing pressure to bear upon Boards of Guardians to reduce relief to starvation point – all for the purpose of destroying the morale of the workmen and bringing about their defeat.72

In September the school medical officer for the Rhondda published his annual report which stated that ‘the general health and physical state of the children generally was at least maintained if not appreciably improved’.73 This ‘striking improvement’ was attributed to the extensive school feeding programme. The report argued that the school canteens had saved children from the ‘ignorance’ and ‘fecklessness’ of poor mothering. Not surprisingly, the validity of evidence such as this has been called into question by medical historians. Charles Webster has noted the ‘egregious displays of loyalty’ to the government shown in these reports for the inter-war


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period which embarrassed even Ministry of Health officials by their incredible claims.74 By August the carefree, carnival atmosphere was giving way to increasing misery and a grim determination to hold out. Local authorities, increasingly insolvent as the cost of poor relief and school feeding mounted, were forced to take out huge loans and make large increases in rates to help meet rising expenditure. In Pontypool the guardians cut relief scales by a staggering 50 per cent amid stormy protests.75 In October the South Wales News described the scenes of destitution seen on the streets as ‘really heartbreaking’.76 Businesses were folding as the local economy collapsed. Tradesmen were no longer able to fund local distress committees. Many shopkeepers who had kept faith with their regular customers and extended credit all through the dispute were now impoverished. Inevitably it became harder and harder to keep the communal kitchens going. As the canteens closed, communities began to fragment. The period from August has been described as one of ‘guerrilla and even open warfare’ in the south Wales coalfield.77 The attitudes of both the police and the judiciary began to harden as the strike entered its last phase. As a trickle of miners began to return to work, often forced by real starvation in the household, communities turned in on themselves. By late November the trickle became a flood. In the final days miners scrambled to register for work, knowing that not all the locked-out miners would be taken back. They were defeated and demoralized, but determined to rebuild their shattered communities. Rents which could not be collected by colliery owners during the lockout were now deducted from wages. Miners were paying normal rent plus a half-rent to make up for arrears, leaving very little to pay off the mountain of debt which most families had accumulated. It has been estimated that debts to shopkeepers and guardians amounted to about a quarter of a million pounds in south Wales.78 Miners’ institutes, which had carefully built up their assets over the previous two decades, now stood crushed, depleted of all reserves. Bitterness about the dispute lingered for generations, so that even well into the post-war period a blackleg family would still be remembered and treated with coldness or even hostility. In conclusion, several points can be made. To develop a gender perspective on the lockout, we need to focus on communities and neighbourhoods. Since this has not so far been a priority for

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historians, valuable opportunities to gather oral testimony on dayto-day life during the dispute, particularly communal feeding, have been lost. It may still be possible to gather testimony from elderly people who were children at this time. This should be taken up as a matter of urgency. In the years leading up to 1926, something of a counter-culture, based on community and class cohesion, was established in the south Wales coalfield through the SWMF and socialist influences. Although not a ‘society within a society’ as depicted by Francis and Smith, there were traditions of morality and politics in areas of this coalfield which set it apart from mainstream society.79 Faced with the defence of their livelihoods against class aggression, the coalfield communities knitted together more closely. Nonetheless, men and women experienced the lockout in very different ways and within these basic gender categories further differentiation is necessary along lines of age. Men were released from waged work but reasserted their masculine status through continued association with their workmates, competitive sports and various forms of food gathering. In addition, particularly for the older men, they maintained their commitment to the community through working in the communal canteens and other voluntary labour. Women were relieved of the burden of servicing the working miner and all that that entailed; but they still had responsibility for managing the household and ensuring that its members were fed. Younger women with small children appear to have been the most disadvantaged. Lacking any form of communal provision or means of employment, they often had to exist on a 10s. food note from the guardians; many were in desperate need. The moving evidence gathered by Marion Philips reveals large numbers of ragged and hungry mothers, often going without so that they could feed their families. Women who were either before or after their child-rearing years were in a position to take on community responsibilities, and many participated in political activities or relief work which took them into the public arena. Here there does seem to be evidence of a harmonious fellowship between men and women which was not normally seen in mining areas. We should not take this too far. While Hall argues that, ‘with political consciousness running high’ after the lockout, there were mining women in Northumberland who challenged the dominance of men in local politics, there is little evidence that the role of women activists in south Wales was anything other than marginal.80


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Nor is there evidence of any more equitable relationship developing between men and women within households. As Mrs Davies put it in Women of the Rhondda, ‘my brothers ended up very, very sunburnt, whereas my mother was worn out’.81 As the men were no longer ‘breadwinners’, the direct, economic dependency between husband and wife was broken. In this situation women were in a position to challenge the power of men. They did not do so because at this time of brutal class confrontation, class consciousness was all and there was no public space for gender consciousness for miners’ wives. Solidarity with the cause was indissolubly bound up with male bonding, male dominance and traditional gender identities. In some areas there was a loosening of gender boundaries but there is no evidence that this was sustained after the lockout. The experience of gender relations in 1926 invites comparison with developments in 1984–5. In both cases women took responsibility for household management and had to develop strategies for survival, often involving serious hardship to themselves. In both periods women, in supporting their men, took a moral stance based on class and community identities. In 1984, the political awakening of activists in the Abertillery Women’s Support Group was reflected in the comment: ‘it hit us women, and like a ton of bricks, the greatest realisation that what we had entered was the class war.’82 The major difference between the two disputes is that, following the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, mining women in the 1980s were much more conscious of gender divisions and the collective power of women. In mobilizing to support their men, women in 1984–5 developed a feminist as well as class-based agenda. The movement Women Against Pit Closures not only supported the miners’ cause but also addressed issues of sexism in the movement and at home which would have been unthinkable in 1926.83 Yet despite the hopes of activists during the heady days of the strike – ‘I could never go back to my knitting and the kitchen sink now’, insisted one Abertillery miner’s wife – the long-term, direct impact of the dispute on gender relations was much more limited.84 In 1984–5, as in 1926, women played a critical role in sustaining the struggle: yet NUM members’ unease about transforming gender relations was reflected in their rejection of calls for miners’ wives to be made associate members of the union.85

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Notes Thanks to staff at the South Wales Miners’ Library and the Treorchy Public Library as well as John McIlroy and Alan Campbell for help with this chapter. 1 Key works are: J. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia, NY, 1988); M. Lake, ‘The politics of respectability: identifying the masculinist context’, Historical Studies, 22, 86 (1986); M. Roper and J. Tosh, Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800 (London, 1991); J. Mangen and J. Walvin, Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America (Manchester, 1987). 2 See, particularly, R. Page Arnot, South Wales Miners, Glowyr De Cymru: A History of the South Wales Miners’ Federation, 1914–1926 (Cardiff, 1975). For male bias in mining history see V. Hall, ‘Contrasting female identities: women in coal mining communities in Northumberland, England, 1900–1939’, Journal of Women’s History, 13, 2 (2001), 124. 3 H. Francis, ‘The origins of the South Wales Miners’ Library’, History Workshop Journal, 2 (1976); H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London, 1980). 4 H. Beynon and T. Austrin, Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organization (London, 1994), p. 248. 5 J. Davison, Northumberland Miners, 1919–1939 (Newcastle, 1973), p. 73; Miner, 2 July 1926; National Archives, London (NA), CAB 27/333, Situation report, 9 July 1926. 6 Mansfield Advertiser, 10 September 1926, quoted in P. Sunley, ‘Broken places: a geography of the 1926 coalmining dispute’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989), 46. 7 A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 1: Industry, Work and Community (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 247–8; NA, CAB 27/334. Mines Department Bulletin, 18 October 1926, 8 The Times, 26, 27 August 1926. 9 Campbell, Scottish Miners, pp. 247–8; NA, CAB 27/334, Mines Department Bulletin, 16 September 1926. 10 Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 28. 11 South Wales Miners’ Library, Swansea (SWML), Testimony of Mrs William Rosser-Jones. See also A. V. John, ‘A miner struggle? Women’s protests in Welsh mining history’, Llafur, 4, 1 (1984), 85. 12 F. Zweig, Men in the Pits (London, 1948), p. 13. 13 Interview with Mavis Llewellyn by author, 21 July 1977; John, ‘Miner struggle’, 76. 14 P. Graves, Labour Women (Cambridge, 1994), p. 61. 15 N. Dennis et al., Coal is Our Life (London, 1956; 2nd edn 1969), p. 182; John, ‘Miner struggle’, 74. 16 G. Carr, Pit Women: Coal Communities in Northern England in the Early Twentieth Century, (London, 2001), pp. 8, 14. 17 John, ‘Miner struggle’, 73. 18 Mrs Williams’s mother in Cwmgiedd baked three times weekly using 14 lb of flour each time: SWML, Interview with Mrs Williams, 11 June 1975. 19 R. Cook, ‘ “Tidy women”: women in the Rhondda between the wars’, Oral History Journal, 10, 2 (1982), 43. 20 D. Jones, ‘Counting the cost of coal: women’s lives in the Rhondda, 1881–1911’,


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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 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63

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in A. John (ed.), Our Mothers’ Land: Chapters in Welsh Women’s History, 1830–1939 (Cardiff, 1991), pp. 109–32. Carr, Pit Women, p. 26. R. Jones, ‘Women, community and collective action: the “Ceffyl Pren” tradition’, in John, Mothers’ Land, p. 18. Labour Woman (December 1919), 156; S. Bruley, Leninism, Stalinism and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1920–1939 (New York, 1986), p. 162. Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 57. Treorchy Public Library, Minutes, 5 May 1926, pp. 68–9. Rhondda Gazette, 17 July 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 19 June 1926; Western Mail, 10 June 1926; SWML, interview with Nancy Davies, 6 May 1974. For example, South Wales News, 22 September 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 18 January 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 19 June 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 12 June 1926. SWML, Interview with Merfyn Payne, 18 June 1975. Western Mail, 22 May 1926; Page Arnot, South Wales Miners, p. 313. SWML, Interview with Octavious Morgan, 17 May 1973. Mavis Llewellyn interview. Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 57. SWML, Interview with Will Arthur, 21 May 1973. Mavis Llewellyn interview; John, ‘Miner struggle’, 87. W. Paynter, My Generation (London, 1972), p. 34. South Wales News, 15 July 1926. Interview with Lil Price by author, 21 July 1977; SWML, Interview with Mrs Williams, 1 July 1973. SWML, Interview with Mr Williams, 21 April 1974. Rhondda Gazette, 7 August 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 22 May 1926; Will Arthur interview. M. Phillips, Women and the Miners’ Lock-Out (London, 1927), p. 80; B. Naylor, Quakers in the Rhondda 1926–1986 (Chepstow, 1986), p. 24. Rhondda Gazette, 30 October 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 22 September 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 17 July 1926. Rhondda Gazette, 19 June 1926. Ibid. A. Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London, 1960), p. 90. Ibid., p. 97. SWML, Interview with Edgar Evans, 14 July 1973. Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 62. South Wales News, 3 November 1926. SWML, Recording of NUM discussion class, 1970s. Jones, ‘Work’; John, ‘Miner struggle’, gives an example of white shirting in the 1920s. Merfyn Payne interview. Paynter, My Generation, p. 35. Jones, ‘Work’, p. 37. Interview with Isabel Brown by author, 5 January 1978. Interview with Idris Cox by author, 10 January 1980. Workers’ Weekly, 6 August 1926.

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248 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82

83

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Brief Summary of District Organisers’ Reports, CP Eighth Congress, 1926. Lil Price interview. All information in this paragraph is from this source. Phillips, Women, p. 23. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 85. Labour Woman, November 1926. Phillips, Women, pp. 60–1. See also Horner, Incorrigible Rebel, p. 94. Phillips, Women, p. 62. Page Arnot, South Wales Miners, p. 341. This report is in Treorchy Library. C. Webster, ‘Healthy or hungry thirties’, History Workshop, 13 (1982), 110–29. For a recent view that in some ways the health of mining communities may have improved in 1926, see S. Thompson, ‘ “That beautiful summer of severe austerity”: health, death and the working-class domestic economy in south Wales in 1926’, Welsh History Review, 21, 3 (2003), 552–71. South Wales News, 12 August 1926. South Wales News, 9 October 1926. Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 59. Ibid., p. 66. Cf. Francis and Smith, The Fed, pp. 59, 63, 66, and C. Williams, Capitalism, Community and Conflict (Cardiff, 1998), pp. 4–5, which criticizes conceptions of a radical alternative culture. Hall, ‘Female identities’, 119. This topic would benefit from further research. Eleventh Hour Films, no date, early 1970s. J. Miller, You Can’t Kill the Spirit: Women in a Welsh Mining Valley (London, 1986), p. 21. V. Seddon (ed.), The Cutting Edge: Women and the Pit Strike (London, 1986); J. Stead, Never the Same Again (London, 1987). Miller, Can’t Kill the Spirit, p. 40; D. Waddington, M. Wykes and C. Critcher, Split at the Seams? Community, Continuity and Change after the 1984–5 Coal Dispute (Milton Keynes, 1991), pp. 92–3. L. Segal, Is the Future Female? (London, 1987), pp. 231–3.


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11 Police

STEPHEN CATTERALL

The home secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, observed at the end of the lockout: In the House of Commons it has been said that the behaviour of England [sic] during the last six months bears great testimony to the good spirit and good feeling of the mining community . . . I agree, but I think it bears even greater testimony to the good feeling and the good spirit of the police community throughout the country.1

Studies of policing during the dispute have suggested that the lockout was relatively peaceful. This, it has been argued, owed much to its policing, to developments within the police service itself and to increasing acceptance of the legitimacy of the police. One view, from a representative of an older generation of police historians, T. A. Critchley, saw the events of 1926 as an important milestone in the development of the British police service. He believed that 1926 marked the end of a journey of evolution from anarchy to civilization in which the role of the police was successfully extended to the sphere of public order and was accepted by all classes.2 More recently Roger Geary has characterized the interwar period as one which witnessed a decline in violent disorder associated with industrial unrest.3 He argued that changes in police methods and organization were important influences in this. However, he made a distinction between the changing ‘strategic’ response of the police and continuity at the tactical or operational level. He noted: ‘At the strategic level there was centralisation of order maintenance and intelligence gathering . . . but at the tactical

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level . . . few changes occurred with the baton-charge remaining the stock response to disorder.’4 Two further studies, by Jane Morgan and Barbara Weinberger, discussed the events of 1926. Both pointed to the growing prominence of the public-order role of the police and noted the increasing centralization and coordination of the service and improvements in efficiency through better equipment, methods and tactics.5 Weinberger concluded: ‘The police gained immensely in prestige and authority from their role in the General Strike.’6 Despite these developments, she argued that police-inspired violence was part of a sustained, historical pattern of ‘strained police–miner relations’ and in extreme cases, such as the south Wales coalfield, it amounted to ‘unremitting class hatred on both sides’.7 Morgan echoed the theme that the strengthening of centralized command over the police and the emasculation of local-authority control during the early twentieth century ensured that in industrial crises the police became ‘a central arm of the emergency anti-strike apparatus’.8 This point is developed in greater depth in a recent monograph by the lawyers Keith Ewing and Conor Gearty. They suggest that evidence of the arbitrary exercise of police powers, the suspension of civil liberties, excessive and unaccountable policing, summary justice by magistrates and judicial bias in sentencing cumulatively sustain the contemporary view that there were moves towards a ‘strong state’ approach during the lockout. They conclude that the experience of the lockout demonstrated ‘the fragility of legality as a governing principle of the constitution’ and that ‘much that was done in the name of the constitution was little better than executive lawlessness’.9 This chapter will investigate developments within the police service and the activities of the police during the lockout. It will argue that the policing of the dispute should be considered in broader historical context. By the inter-war years, mining communities were more settled than in earlier periods. Yet, if the acceptance of the legitimate authority of trade-union and Labour leaders reduced social disorder, the continuance of community tensions associated with blacklegging created volatility. While the focus is primarily on operational policing, it is first necessary to consider some strategic issues. A marked feature of the lockout, unlike previous major coal disputes, was that it was conducted without significant military


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intervention, even though the army and navy were held in a state of readiness throughout 1926. During the 1921 lockout government anxieties were heightened by the perception that industrial action presaged revolution. In the Lancashire coalfield, for example, troops returning from the emergency in Ireland were deployed in and around collieries in the expectation of a major assault by workers, while in Fife marines had assisted police in quelling an armed riot.10 As early as June 1926, the Cabinet had instructed the home secretary to consider measures ‘to provide protection in the event of a drift of workers back to the mines’; in discussion there was ‘general agreement that the use of troops for this purpose was highly undesirable’ although deployment of the Civil Constabulary Reserve was not ruled out.11 The regulations made under the Emergency Powers Act 1920 (EPA) were at the core of state strategy. In justifying the continuation of the regulations after the general strike, the government anticipated their necessity when a return to work developed, when there was ‘almost certain to be fresh trouble, and persons with Communist or extremist views will do their utmost to make difficult the position of those men who are willing to work’.12 During the period the regulations were in force – from May to November – there were 3,304 prosecutions.13 They gave the government complete control of food distribution, transport, essential services and the movement of coal. The prohibition of acts likely ‘to cause sedition or disaffection among the civilian population’ (Regulation 21) was widely used against speakers at miners’ demonstrations. Notwithstanding that the regulation specifically permitted ‘peacefully persuading any other person to take part in a strike’, William Barfitt, a south Wales checkweigher, was sentenced to a month in prison for urging a meeting: ‘You must arrest these scabs before any more break away. We must organise somehow to stop the skunks. If you men cannot stop them then we will get the women to do so.’14 The provisions against acts likely to cause disaffection amongst the police force were used to arrest Scottish miners campaigning against police brutality.15 Regulation 22 permitted the prohibition of meetings likely to ‘conduce a breach of the peace and [which] will thereby cause undue demands to be made on the police, or will promote disaffection’. Its provisions were invoked by Joynson-Hicks to ban meetings by A. J. Cook in Staffordshire in October, as well as meetings involving miners’ leaders in Yorkshire, south Wales and

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Leicestershire. Although 15,000 people had assembled to hear Cook, the presence of almost 1,000 police ensured the meeting did not take place.16 In south Wales, the chief constable of Glamorgan reported in September that an area five miles in radius had been ‘ringed off’ as ‘a place where meetings were prohibited’.17 The EPA’s remit was so far-reaching that it could be used against any assembly of miners which threatened those returning to work. As resumption of work gathered pace during October 1926 the terms of the EPA were reinforced by a Home Office directive that any meeting within the vicinity of a colliery was deemed to come within the terms of the Act and was to be dispersed by the police. As both Morgan and Weinberger argue, the continued imposition of the EPA was a deliberate attempt by the government to break the strike.18 The extension of the provisions of the EPA in October was certainly perceived by union officials and miners as a further tightening of an already harsh piece of legislation at a critical point in the dispute.19 The EPA was regarded as draconian by a wide range of opinion. For example, following the mass arrests of pickets attempting to persuade miners against returning to work in north-east Lancashire in October 1926, even the Liberal-supporting press condemned the EPA. It was argued that the legislation was far too prescriptive and repressive and that the existing provisions of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 would have been sufficient to deal with such picketing. There was a great deal of sympathy for miners on the picket lines who were angered by the prompt manner in which the police intercepted them as soon there was any attempt to intercede with working miners. The most minor comments could fall foul of the law. When a sixty-year-old Derbyshire widow observed to two blacklegs, ‘You do look nice coming home in your pit clothes’, she was immediately arrested.20 The EPA was also used in all-encompassing fashion to gather intelligence on and to detain those who the authorities believed were union militants, particularly Communist activists. Plainclothes officers and the Special Branch were tireless in recording the content of speeches at miners’ meetings.21 Less scrupulous methods were also employed. A youth in Midlothian was brutally interrogated by six officers in the local police station until he supplied information used to convict seven miners.22 The pervasive threat of prosecution under the Emergency Regulations, reported the chief constable of Carmarthenshire, ‘had a wonderfully


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restraining influence on the leaders’.23 The less cautious were arrested. For example, Alex Moffat, a Communist miner in Fife, was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment under Regulation 21 for urging young Communists to continue the struggle ‘until they tore down the Union Jack and hoisted the red flag at Westminster under a Soviet government when there would be a time of retribution on the forces of the state’.24 The extensive remit of the EPA provoked hostility in mining communities irrespective of ideological persuasion. In Lancashire it was one of the few issues on which miners were united during the autumn of 1926. In the course of a speech attacking Communist Party (CP) activists for having undermined the successful conclusion of the dispute, a delegate of moderate views called for the full moral and financial resources of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation (LCMF) to be extended to aid Communists recently detained in the county. Detention without trial, with the wives and families of suspects having no knowledge of their whereabouts, was one aspect of the EPA which miners found particularly offensive. Many of those arrested were Communist sympathizers who had become politicized by the strike and had engaged in nothing more harmful than distributing literature at colliery gates.25 While it was used harshly against individual Communists, the EPA was largely redundant in breaking Communist activism in the coalfields since by the authorities’ own admission such activity was limited and the CP leaders had been imprisoned the previous year. During the general strike Communist activity was more pronounced in the larger urban centres and in industries other than coal, particularly transport.26 Similarly, the CP was itself keen to ensure that workers remained calm as a way of demonstrating ‘class’ discipline.27 In the coalfields its activities were mainly confined to south Wales and to specific localities in the English and Scottish coalfields.28 There were sporadic clashes between activists and the police but, by and large, most of the activity which did occur was hardly revolutionary in the sense that it took the form of speaking, distributing literature and peaceful demonstrations. Communist agitation in the coalfields did increase in tempo during the lockout as the appeal of the party struck a chord with miners embittered and frustrated by the dispute. When the CP mounted a campaign against any return to work in November, the home secretary contacted all chief constables, authorizing the banning of

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any meetings with Communist speakers. However, the extent of CP influence came nowhere near justifying this degree of official interest and intervention.29 In addition to the EPA, the Home Office creatively interpreted existing legislation. When an MFGB conference agreed to withdraw the safety men on 7 October, a Home Office circular to chief constables immediately suggested that the immunity normally attached to ‘peaceful persuasion’ by pickets by section 2 of the Trade Disputes Act did not apply when safety men were induced to break their contracts because this was contrary to section 5 of the 1875 Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875. This information, it was felt, would ‘strengthen the hands of the police when dealing with persons who seek by persuasion not amounting to intimidation to induce safety men to cease work in breach of their contracts’. As a consequence, chief constables in the West Riding of Yorkshire and Lancashire posted notices warning against picketing safety men as it would constitute a breach of the 1875 Act.30 While police powers were bolstered under the EPA, it was at the operational level that the police were able to achieve their greatest success during the lockout. Two critical developments were the large numbers of police deployed and the greater mobility of mass forces. Tactical superiority in tackling public disorder was greatly strengthened by chief constables in the coalfields being able to call upon significant reinforcements from other forces. Such reinforcement had been practised at a local and intra-regional level in previous disputes but not on the same scale. It was made possible on a national level by increasing centralization and coordination of the police service and was underpinned by the provisions of EPA Regulations 26 and 27 which empowered the home secretary to authorize transfers without the necessity of officers being sworn in at their new force. Every British coalfield saw inward movement of police from other forces in 1926. Some, such as south Wales, were heavily reinforced, prompting Francis to comment: ‘The coalfield resembled a battlefield with an army of occupation (in the form of imported police) attempting to break the spirit of a hostile and turbulent population.’31 Following the end of the general strike, the strategy was to move as many officers as possible from non-mining areas to forces in the coalfields. Thus policemen from several divisions across southwestern and southern England reinforced Carmarthenshire,


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Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. In parts of the Lancashire coalfield the task fell to the larger urban forces adjacent to the coalfield such as the Liverpool city police, while in the Durham and Northumberland coalfields the county forces were similarly reinforced from Newcastle and Gateshead.32 In October, the home secretary re-emphasized to chief constables that it was the distinct wish and intention of H. M. Government that the utmost protection should be given to every man who desires to work in the coal mines . . . ample police are available in other parts of the country and arrangements can be made for you to have such further reinforcements . . . as you may require.33

Soon after, 380 extra men were sent to Glamorgan and a smaller number to the West Riding of Yorkshire.34 In addition to movement of regular police forces, support came from reservists and the special constabulary. The government placed a great deal of faith in reinforcement from this source, believing that the concept of active citizenship with the people flocking to the national cause in the face of threats to the state was beneficial in maintaining unity in a time of crisis. In 1925 the government initiated a recruitment campaign for the special constabulary and police reserve, including those police forces covering the coalfields. Significantly, given the high hopes of a rush to don the uniform, the campaign was less successful in the coalfields. There was also less enthusiasm amongst senior officers because of concerns about the character of individuals who came forward for the special constabulary and about the question of discipline and quality of training for strike duty.35 Such concerns indicated that the police were conscious of the sensitivities associated in using specials and reservists for strike duty. Nevertheless, 350 reserves were deployed in Lancashire alone.36 The second important element in increasing police effectiveness was improved mobility. Previously, the police were handicapped in public-order situations through lack of mobility, which earlier necessitated the intervention of army cavalry units as the availability of mounted police was limited. The lockout was the first dispute in which the police were able to deploy motorized units in motor coaches in a highly effective way. The sight of a charabanc laden with baton-wielding officers became a familiar sight in the trouble spots of the coalfields. The operational flexibility this

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afforded the police proved a major advantage in tackling publicorder incidents. The chief constable of Glamorgan commented that, unlike in previous disputes, he was reassured that he was able to call up motorized units held in reserve to reach the remotest spots in the Valleys rapidly and surprise pickets if matters got out of hand.37 Similarly, in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire reinforcements from Manchester city police were deployed in motorized units from bases in Alfreton, Chesterfield and Mansfield.38 In clashes between police and pickets throughout the return-towork phase of the dispute, miners on picket duty were taken by surprise and completely overwhelmed by the rapidity of reinforcement and the ferocity of assaults from such units. Pickets who in previous disputes would have faced a small detachment of officers at collieries with little prospect of rapid reinforcement now feared the new phenomenon of the police ‘flying squad’.39 The ability of the police to intervene in this way prevented intensification of disorder and restricted its spread from collieries to the wider mining community. This had been the hallmark of previous disputes and had invariably required military intervention. The Scottish mines inspector observed in early October: ‘It must not be assumed because no “incidents” are reported that there are none. Nearly every day there is a little trouble somewhere but the police control in the whole mining area is so excellent that rarely does anything get beyond the “incident” stage.’40 Only limitations on the availability of motorized resources prevented the police from using this new weapon more successfully. One result of greater central control and coordination was that it placed more power in the hands of chief constables at the expense of local authorities. The lockout saw the culmination of a trend towards the rising prominence of a number of chief officers and increasing tension between them and local councils over the conduct of the police during the dispute. The Daily Herald complained that the chief constables had become the real rulers of the country, having been ‘invested by the Home Secretary with powers similar in kind if not in degree to those which Mussolini has delegated his agents in Italy to suppress his critics’.41 The three chief constables in the south Wales coalfield – William Picton Phillips of Carmarthenshire, Lionel Lindsay of Glamorgan and Victor Bosanquet of Monmouthshire – typified this trend. Both contemporary accounts and later academic treatment of clashes between these chief constables and their local authorities


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during the years following the First World War have focused on Labour-controlled authorities at loggerheads with chief officers who were perceived as anti-labour movement and certainly antiCommunist. For example, it has been suggested that Picton Phillips pursued an ‘anti-Communist crusade . . . in the Amman Valley’, while a contemporary correspondent ‘wondered how Lindsay ever got any sleep, so incessant were his endeavours against Bolshevik saboteurs in South Wales’.42 It was similarly said of Bosanquet that ‘he was at war with the red peril’ in the Valleys of Monmouthshire.43 However, one aspect of the rising prominence of chief constables is that while these officers were unquestionably ideologically opposed to the left, it was more than just ideology which motivated them to act in the way they did. Bosanquet provides a case in point. In one incident he was alleged to have led his officers in confronting and preventing a peaceful demonstration of miners marching on the offices of the Board of Guardians in Newport in which two miners’ leaders were arrested. He was feared and loathed not only by those sharing a left-wing perspective: ‘dictator’, ‘a man of obsolete ideas’ and ‘a man of overpowering ego’ were terms of abuse not confined to his critics on the left.44 It was accepted across a range of political opinion that Bosanquet’s presence worsened already strained police–miner relations in Monmouthshire. It was as much Bosanquet the person and not necessarily his politics which lay at the root of tensions in Monmouthshire. As Weinberger acknowledged, all three chief constables ‘felt they had something of a divine right to rule’.45 To this trio from south Wales can be added Thomas Pey, chief constable of the Wigan Borough Police, a Jesuit-educated martinet who had joined the force in preference to the Royal Irish Constabulary. Pey was a pugilist in both the figurative and physical sense who saw his ‘patch’ as something akin to his own personal fiefdom. He earned a fearsome reputation amongst miners throughout the lockout as he tackled them over interference with those who wished to return to work. There is no doubt that Pey was ideologically motivated as he stood on Wigan’s market square with his senior officers noting every speech made by a Communist speaker.46 Moreover, he criticized Arthur Cook on a visit to the town for prolonging an unnecessary dispute and later led a raid by detectives to arrest a prominent Communist suspect in Wigan. However, Pey’s manner throughout the dispute suggested that he

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saw the miners’ behaviour as an affront to his personal authority. To underline what he regarded as the temerity of striking miners he personally led his officers – with batons drawn – protecting those returning to work at the collieries of Wigan Coal and Iron Company in October 1926.47 Pey’s high profile extended to dealings with his Labour-dominated Watch Committee which he attempted to dominate and treated to regular accusations that the committee was not giving him the requisite support and resources to handle the dispute. During the second half of 1926 issues arising from the stoppage were regularly eclipsed by the utterances of Wigan’s distinctive chief constable.48 Although chief officers such as Bosanquet and Pey saw themselves primarily as public servants rather than political actors, they did assume what was seen by many as a highly political role in 1926. The attitudes of Labour-dominated local authorities towards these figures varied. In Monmouthshire Bosanquet was challenged by Labour members of the Joint Standing Committee who voted in favour of sacking him but were thwarted by the intervention of the home secretary. Similarly, in St Helens there was hostility between Chief Constable Ellerington and his Watch Committee over Ellerington’s alleged bellicosity. His decision to reinforce the borough police with Liverpool city officers twice elicited challenges from Labour councillors to the Home Office to no avail.49 By contrast in neighbouring Wigan, Pey operated a shrewd strategy of appealing to moderate mining trade unionists, the Labourdominated council and Allen Parkinson (1870–1941), the town’s Labour MP, successfully arguing that he was a defender of their rights.50 Moreover, in the unlikely event of his relationship with the Watch Committee developing into a ‘back me or sack me’ situation, he knew that in the embattled atmosphere of the lockout he would receive the unquestioning support of the home secretary. The government’s attitude to the activities of Labour magistrates contrasted sharply with their treatment of chief constables. John McGurk (1874–1944), a Lancashire miners’ agent and JP, was reprimanded following his declaration of support for MFGB policy to withdraw safety men and his denunciation of police posters stating that those interfering with safety men were liable to prosecution: ‘they could start with me, as a County magistrate, every man jack he would bring out tomorrow.’51 Aaron Jones, an Ashton miner, was removed from the bench after accusing the police of being ‘always on the side of the bosses’.52


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Given that aspects of policing inflamed tensions, how did mining communities react in 1926 and are there indications that they had become more peaceful? The veteran Lancashire leader Stephen Walsh (1859–1929) was asked by the press about violence associated with the lockout following an extension of the provisions of the EPA. He remained sanguine, commenting: The miner . . . largely lives in self-contained areas in small communities . . . the fact is it is a self-contained community and during long generations it has been become a self-respecting and quiet community . . . the influences of religious leaders in that community, the influence of miners’ leaders, I think I may say, is all for the maintenance of peace.53

Certainly some evidence from the police tends to support the notion of a tranquil mining population during the lockout. Officers from the Liverpool city force on strike duty in the Lancashire coalfield pointed to long periods in which dealing with boredom was their greatest challenge. However, these officers also contrast this peacefulness with a rapid escalation of hostility on the occasions when attempts were made to employ blackleg labour or when miners returned to work.54 An examination of how miners’ leaders responded to disorder demonstrates how they were able to become a focus for the maintenance of community cohesion. This can be illustrated by an example from Lancashire. In August, while Joe Tinker (1874– 1944), Labour MP for Leigh and miners’ agent for St Helens, was addressing an estimated 3,000 miners outside Sutton Manor colliery, pickets clashed with motorized police reinforcements attempting to bring blacklegs into the colliery. Subsequently there were similar incidents throughout collieries in the St Helens district.55 Moreover, there were sporadic disturbances in St Helens town centre between local youths and the police. Tinker, who witnessed the initial disturbance, accused blacklegs and police of provoking the disorder. The home secretary, Joynson-Hicks, acting on information received from Chief Constable Ellerington, disagreed and accused Tinker of incitement under the EPA.56 With tension running high, Tinker’s management of the situation is worth considering. He effectively placed himself at the head of those involved in the disturbances and took full responsibility in an act of commitment to the mining community

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he represented. Although Tinker was first and foremost a labour leader he was also a respected establishment figure as an MP, a former town councillor and a sitting borough magistrate.57 He successfully cast himself as the conduit of community anger by turning the affair into a highly personalized joust between himself and the home secretary, whom he portrayed as a bête noire. In a rare mood of levity, he managed to poke fun at ‘Jix’, as the home secretary was known, who, Tinker joked, ‘was out to get him’.58 That Joynson-Hicks had recently returned from holiday was grist to his mill as he conjured up an image of a Tory ‘bronzed god’ of untrammelled power walking roughshod over starving miners.59 Tinker risked reprimand or dismissal from the bench but his presentation of the affair in this way was well received by the miners. His intervention had the effect of drawing the community’s anger and diverting attention away from the immediate causes of its frustration. Despite public pronouncements, Tinker and other union officials were privately worried by outbreaks of violence because they undermined the integrity of the union in pursuing the dispute. Their objective was to assuage tension and manipulate sentiment in order to maintain morale. Tinker’s position in August should be seen in contrast to his assertions on public order during October and November. Then he castigated those members of the mining community involved in acts of violence, invoked the necessity of maintaining the discipline of the labour movement and argued that issues should be settled through the forum of the union or the Labour Party.60 Both these different processes of seeking legitimacy with the mining community were attempts to maintain its cohesion at different stages in the dispute in order to suit different circumstances. They were approaches to which the community largely responded – certainly in locations where both the Labour Party and the union were strong. Clearly, the presence of figures with legitimacy and authority from mining unions and the Labour Party in 1926, a factor not present to the same degree during earlier periods, tended to diminish public disorder. Evidence from across the coalfields suggests that despite a tradition of turbulence and violence associated with industrial disputes, mining communities remained relatively trouble-free until the contested resumption of work developed momentum. Violent incidents were mainly associated with picketing those deserting the stoppage. The timing of disturbances varied according to the


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strength of return in specific coalfields. Thus in the coalfields of the east Midlands, with its early large-scale resumption, there was trouble from late August, whereas for the majority of coalfields the most volatile months were September and, especially, October as some of the more militant areas saw a more extensive break in their ranks. Indeed October was the most violent month of the lockout. The situation was described as ‘ugly’ from late August in Nottinghamshire, particularly in the Mansfield area, a focus of intense police activity. By September there were ‘police at every point, on foot and motor’ around Mansfield’s pit villages.61 The coalfield was heavily reinforced from outside forces as they fought to control the anger of those miners opposing the return. September also saw the first major outbreaks of disorder in Durham and south Wales, but by October there were violent and widespread disturbances in other areas. In one incident in south Yorkshire at Yorkshire Main Colliery, Edlington, a clash at the colliery gates spread over a wide area as hostile crowds of miners and local people attacked the homes of returning miners and fought running battles with police. Here the importance of police mobility was recognized by the crowds who damaged and destroyed buses which had brought reinforcements from Doncaster and the West Riding.62 However, it was south Wales and Scotland which saw some of the most protracted, widespread and violent disorder during October and November. As Francis notes, there were ‘eighteen major clashes between striking miners and police . . . mainly during the last eight weeks of the lock-out’.63 Glyncymmer Colliery, near Port Talbot, saw one of the most vicious confrontations. Eye-witnesses described ‘Police and strikers lying side by side on straw stained with blood’ as local doctors struggled to cope with many serious injuries.64 Significantly, the police ascribed the seriousness of the clash to their inability to assist officers at the colliery with sufficient and rapid reinforcement, which had been the case at other incidents in south Wales.65 Scotland witnessed large crowds attacking blacklegs and a growing resort to sabotage.66 The character of these disturbances associated with the return to work and the police response left an impression on mining communities for generations. By October those who had held out for so long against a settlement realized that they were fighting for a lost cause. Accordingly, bitterness and frustration turned to anger and frequently violence towards those returning to work and the police who were protecting them. It was also a period when

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police resources were tested to the limit and patience often snapped. One such incident took place at the village of Pemberton near Wigan in the Lancashire coalfield in a district which had hitherto enjoyed a relatively trouble-free dispute. The stoppage had been impeccably observed at Pemberton Colliery and the pit was one of the more militant with a small but prominent group of Communist activists. Enraged by police protection afforded to a small number of returning miners, pickets had been involved in skirmishes with police during early October. The significance of these customary exchanges of volleys of missiles from miners and repeated baton charges from the police was that they daily grew in intensity involving more people from the vicinity.67 By 13 October rising tension brought an estimated 2,000 miners and local people including children, women and youths into confrontation with police now reinforced from neighbouring borough forces and the Lancashire Constabulary, including a contingent of the County Police Reserve. The crowds and police fought running battles around the colliery. However, events at Pemberton took a more sinister turn as the day wore on. In the streets up to a half a mile from the colliery police and local people were involved in a stand-off. At this point, it was reported: ‘The police manoeuvred the people in to a sort of cul-de-sac where they could move neither one way nor the other. The police gave them five minutes to clear but in less than a minute a baton charge was ordered.’68 In the ensuing baton charges the police allegedly went on the rampage, knocking over people in the crowd and pursuing others who fled in panic. It was claimed that the police then engaged in an orgy of violence, attacking people and entering and damaging properties some distance away from the seat of the initial disturbances. Amongst the scores injured in the police assault was a woman attacked on her own doorstep, a man of sixty and one rather unlucky railway worker inspecting nearby track.69 What become known as the the ‘Battle of Enfield Street’ was seen as a premeditated assault on a mining community. While exchanges between miners and police on the picket lines were accepted by the community as a regrettable but integral part of the dispute, what was seen as a police-inspired offensive on the village was not. The incidents at Pemberton were mired in controversy at the time and have been a source of contention ever since. Both the LCMF and Wigan MP, Allen Parkinson, demanded an inquiry. Pey


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was hauled before the Watch Committee. Parkinson spoke out in Parliament and was censured by the Speaker. The initial outcry over the ‘Battle of Enfield Street’ subsided after the home secretary blocked demands for an inquiry and the inspector of constabulary subsequently ‘expressed general satisfaction at the conduct of the police’.70 Pey has been demonized ever since. Although Pey was present at Pemberton and in the thick of the action, leading his officers in baton charges, there is no evidence that he ordered the subsequent assault on the village which formed the basis of the rancorous controversy. The most plausible explanation was that the assault resulted from a breakdown in control and discipline of the overstretched police contingent. Tired, running out of patience and unable to quell the disturbance despite reinforcements, some of the police lost control. Accusations at the time specifically pointed to officers from the police reserve. Irrespective of how blame is apportioned, the incident was for many in Wigan a deliberate and dreadful act of retribution, a police-inspired attack which came to epitomize the lockout. More than any other local event during the dispute, the ‘Battle of Enfield Street’ remained in folk memory for generations and led to strained police–community relations.71 The events at Wigan and similar incidents in other coalfields provoked widespread concern over police violence. During the early resumption of work in the Midlands, particularly in Cannock, the MFGB expressed concern over ‘police attacks on peaceful citizens’.72 Although Joynson-Hicks protested that ‘You cannot make a baton charge without people getting hurt’, such accusations were not lost on the police service.73 Allegations of police ‘excessiveness’ were being made from the summer as the police countered specific allegations made in the Scottish coalfields. Later, as these claims grew, the police acknowledged that they had ‘bad apples’ or ‘black sheep’ in their midst.74 More significantly, at the November conference of the Police Federation, the force received the customary congratulatory address from a grateful home secretary for a job well done in keeping the peace during the general strike and lockout. However, the police response was phlegmatic. In the background were issues specific to conditions of service such as discipline, pay and pensions.75 There were also concerns over the scale of police casualties during the lockout and the low morale of those on strike duty. The chief constable of Glamorgan later answered allegations of violence by reference to

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the 118 officers injured in the county during October’s disorders alone, many of whom had sustained such serious injuries that they would never return to duty.76 Nevertheless, the police voiced concerns over the role they were asked to perform in 1926. Many harboured reservations about having become politicized as they were accorded a more prominent national responsibility for maintaining civil order in a situation which the government perceived as a threat to the British state. Rank-and-file officers were stung by accusations that they were seen in many mining communities as ‘coal owners’ thugs’.77 There was a feeling within the service that while they had ensured that they would henceforth be charged with the key role in maintaining public order it would come at the price of losing a good deal of trust and respect from the communities they policed.78 In one sense this study concurs with previous writers that the policing of the lockout represented a watershed in the relationship between police and mining communities. On the one hand, developments in equipment, methods and tactics at both the strategic and operational levels led to improved effectiveness in handling civil disorder without the aid of the army. Intensive, repressive, frequently brutal policing prevented disturbances associated with the lockout from becoming more serious or widespread. On the other hand, the greater degree of coordination that this brought undermined local control and restraint on the police, which strengthened the authority of chief officers. The raised profile of certain chief constables, supported by the home secretary wielding authoritarian powers under the EPA, did much to create a sense of hostility and raised tensions in many mining areas. In another way, this chapter shows that while the outcome of the lockout can be viewed in the light of these changes, the events of 1926 should be seen in a broader historical context. It has been suggested that by 1926 pit communities were less volatile than during the Victorian and Edwardian years: labourism and trade unionism had fostered a new, more peaceable order. Only widening divisions over a resumption of work provided the spark to ignite disorder in the closing stages of the dispute. The participation of women and children in disturbances also demonstrated that these events were as much about exorcizing community tensions as they were about purely industrial matters, in the same way as they had been in earlier periods.79 Added to this volatility was maladroit operational policing brought about by low morale, indifferent


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control and discipline and lack of resources, all of which stimulated incidents of police-inspired violence. While these episodes undeniably left an acrimonious legacy and coloured the memory of the lockout within mining communities for years, they remained largely confined to the return-to-work phase in each coalfield and were relatively isolated in the general peacefulness of the dispute viewed over its seven months. If the memories of police excesses in 1926 survived, the lessons about mobility were learned by a new generation of miners in the national disputes of the 1970s. The tactical deployment of ‘flying’ mass pickets in cars and coaches hired by well-funded areas caught the police unawares. But chief constables and Tory ministers vowed that never again would the police form ranks and march away in the face of superior forces as they were forced to do at Saltley gates where thousands of engineering workers successfully picketed the coke depot in sympathy with the miners. The police adapted swiftly. Centralized coordination was established through the National Reporting Centre at Scotland Yard. New methods and tactics tested in major disputes in the late 1970s and early 1980s were successfully employed against the miners in 1984. By the second week of the strike, 20,000 police from forty-three forces were at the disposal of the National Reporting Centre. While convoys of police coaches became a familiar sight on Britain’s motorways, road blocks impeded the free movement of pickets. At Orgreave coke works, over 3,000 police almost matched the 4,000–5,000 pickets, and with superior organization and equipment bloodily routed them. During the dispute over 12,000 people were arrested and the courts upheld the legality of the police’s controversial new tactics.80 In the absence of solidarity action from other groups of workers, the miners were isolated, their mass pickets defeated by mass policing and a government bent on victory at any price. As in 1926, the government saw the role of the police not as neutral agents in an industrial dispute but as protagonists in breaking the miners.

Notes Thanks to John McIlroy and Alan Campbell for their help. 1 Police Review and Parade Gossip (PRPG), 19 November 1926. 2 C. D. Robinson, ‘Ideology as history: a look at the way some English police historians look at the police’, Police Studies, 2, 2 (1979), 35.

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R. Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes 1893 to 1985 (London, 1985), pp. 45–66. Ibid., p. 66. J. Morgan, Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales, 1900–1939 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 117–19, 132–7, 200–19, 276–81; B. Weinberger, Keeping the Peace? Policing Strikes in Britain, 1906–1926 (New York and Oxford, 1991), pp. 204–25; B. Weinberger, ‘Police perceptions of labour in the inter-war period: the case of the unemployed and of miners on strike’, in F. Snyder and D. Hay (eds), Labour, Law and Crime: An Historical Perspective (London, 1987), pp. 167–72. Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, p. 200. Weinberger, ‘Police perceptions’, pp. 151, 163; Morgan, Conflict, pp. 117–19. Morgan, Conflict, p. 277. K. D. Ewing and C. A. Gearty, The Struggle for Civil Liberties (Oxford, 2000), pp. 155–213, 210. Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, pp. 199–200; Morgan, Conflict, pp. 117–19; J. Foster, ‘British imperialism and the labour aristocracy’, in J. Skelley (ed.), The General Strike 1926 (London, 1976), pp. 46–7; Working Class Movement Library, Salford (WCML), R. Davies, ‘Seven revolutionary years, 1920–1927’, typescript; A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 1: Industry, Work and Community (Aldershot, 2000), p. 307. National Archives, London (NA), CAB23/53, Cabinet 42(26), 23 June 1926. NA, CAB24/180, CP 278 (26), Memorandum by Home Secretary, 20 July 1926. Ewing and Gearty, Civil Liberties, pp. 162–83; G. S. Morris, ‘The Emergency Powers Acts 1920’, Public Law (1979), 340–1. Colliery Guardian, 24 November 1926. A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874–1939, vol. 2: Trade Unions and Politics (Aldershot, 2000), p. 233. Colliery Guardian, 29 October 1926; Morgan, Conflict, p. 208. Colliery Guardian, 17 September 1926; Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, p. 205. Home Office Circular 313/95 to all chief constables. 19 October 1926; Morgan, Conflict, pp. 119–20; Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, p. 210. LCMF, Conference, 8 November 1926. Burnley Express and Advertiser, 3 November 1926; Hansard, 28 November 1926, col. 483. Greater Manchester Police Museum Archives (GMPMA), New Scotland Yard, ‘Aspects of the general strike’, May 1926; Morgan, Conflict, pp. 201–2. Ewing and Gearty, Civil Liberties, pp. 185–6. NA, CAB24/181, CP 364 (26), Strength of police forces in the coalfields. Campbell, Scottish Miners, vol. 2, p. 233. LCMF, Conference, 8 November 1926. ‘Aspects of the general strike’. WCML, Communist Party of Great Britain, Strike specials, no. 2, 6 May, no. 9, 12 May, no. 10, 14 May 1926. ‘Aspects of the General Strike’; H. Francis and D. Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (London, 1980), pp. 60–9. R. Davies, ‘Personal reminiscences: St Helens’, in Skelley, General Strike, p. 339; Ewing and Gearty, Civil Liberties, pp. 205–6; Foster, ‘British imperialism’, p. 50. See J. McIlroy, ‘Revolutionaries’, ch. 11 in this volume. Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, pp. 201–2; NA, HO144/6898, Report of DPS Lang, 17 October 1926. H. Francis, ‘South Wales’, in Skelley, General Strike, p. 250.


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PRPG, 10 December, 17 December 1926; M. Brogden, On the Mersey Beat: Policing Liverpool between the Wars (Oxford, 1991), pp. 156–8; Colliery Guardian, 10 September 1926. Those on strike duty in south Wales included police from Brighton, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Plymouth and Portsmouth. NA, CAB24/181, CP 364 (26), Strength of police forces in the coalfields. Ibid. Morgan, Conflict, p. 117; Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, p. 201; GMPMA, Watch Committee minutes, 8 June 1926. NA, CAB24/181, CP 364 (26), Strength of police forces in the coalfields. Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, p. 185. GMPMA, Manchester City Police general orders, 9 October–11 November 1926. Manchester Evening News, 25 August 1926; PRPG, 10 September 1926; Weinberger, Keeping the Peace?, p. 185. NA, CAB27/334, Mines Department Bulletin, 11 October 1926. Morgan, Conflict, pp. 132–6; Daily Herald, 17 November 1926, quoted in Morgan, Conflict, p. 208. Morgan, Conflict, p. 133; J. Morgan, ‘Police and labour in the age of Lindsay, 1910–1936’, Llafur, 5, 1 (1988), 20. Colliery Guardian, 23 July 1926. PRPG, 2 July 1926; Colliery Guardian, 23 July 1926. Weinberger, ‘Police perceptions’, p. 164. Wigan MBC Heritage Services, History Shop, J. Fairhurst, ‘Chief Constable Thomas Pey, OBE: a biography’, undated typescript; Wigan Observer, 4 September 1926. Wigan Examiner, 20 July, 10, 19 October 1926. Wigan Examiner, 10 October, 13 November 1926; Wigan Observer, 9 September 1926; GMPMA, Anon., ‘Tom Pey’, undated typescript. Pey was awarded the OBE in June 1927 ‘for his services to his country during the 1926 strike’. Colliery Guardian, 23 July 1926; PRPG, 17 December 1926; Morgan, Conflict, pp. 134–5. Anon., ‘Tom Pey’; Wigan Observer, 4, 9 September 1926; Wigan Examiner, 13 November 1926. NA, HO144/6896, Report of DPS Lang, 17 October 1926; Lord Cecil to McGurk, 9 November 1926. NA, HO144/6896, Report of DPS Littleproud, 19 August 1926; N. Warwick to A. Dixon, 4 October 1926. Wigan Observer, 9 September 1926. Brogden, Mersey Beat, pp.156–8. C. Forman, Industrial Town: Self-Portrait of St Helens in the 1920s (London, 1979), pp. 241–3. Hansard, Fifth Series, vol. 199, cols 47–9, 30 August 1926. Leigh, Tyldesley and Atherton Journal, 2 August 1957. Leigh, Tyldesley and Atherton Journal, 10 September 1926. Manchester Evening News, 16 September 1926. LCMF, Conference, 8 November 1926. Colliery Guardian, 27 August 1926; Miner, 18 September 1926. Colliery Guardian, 3, 10, 16, 24 September, 8 October 1926. Francis and Smith, The Fed, p. 60. Francis and Smith, The Fed, pp. 61–2; Manchester Evening News, 16 October 1926.

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Manchester Evening News, 16 October 1926. For the disorders in Scotland, see Campbell, Scottish Miners, vol. 2, pp. 224–38, 244–55. Wigan Examiner, 10, 14 October 1926. Wigan Examiner, 14 October, 13 November 1926. Ibid. Ewing and Gearty, Civil Liberties, p. 192; PRPG, 10 December 1926. Wigan Examiner, 13 November 1926; Wigan Observer, 11 October 1974, ‘The bloody day that Wigan never forgot’. LCMF, Conference, 7 September 1926. Hansard, 22 September 1926, col. 458. PRPG, 2 July, 29 October, 19 November 1926. PRPG, 19 November 1926. Colliery Guardian, 17 December 1926; PRPG, 24 December 1926. PRPG, 19, 26 November 1926. PRPG, 26 November 1926. See S. Bruley, ‘Women’, ch. 9 in this volume. J. McIlroy, ‘Police and pickets’, in H. Beynon (ed.), Digging Deeper: Issues in the Miners’ Strike (London, 1985), pp. 101–22; J. McIlroy, The Permanent Revolution?: Conservative Law and the Trade Unions (Nottingham, 1991), pp. 87–93; J. Coulter, S. Miller and M. Walker, A State of Siege (London, 1984).


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12 Revolutionaries

JOHN MCILROY

. . . you have been promised more butter than bread haven’t you? And you have been told that it is your turn to be masters . . . In fact you have been recruited into this famous International, this band of criminals whose dream is the destruction of society. Zola, Germinal

Almost sixty years after the lockout, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CP) evoked its lessons to inspire support for the great strike of 1984–5.1 Only a single miner fought as a leading Communist in 1926 and survived to support the struggle of 1984. Born in the first year of the twentieth century, Charlie Woods of Blaydon, County Durham, joined the CP in 1922. Together with his fellow party member, the historian of the miners, Robin Page Arnot, Woods played a significant part in the Newcastle Council of Action during the general strike and was prominent in the Minority Movement (MM) throughout the lockout. In the 1930s and 1940s he served as district secretary of the CP after studying at the Lenin School in Moscow. When he retired as a miner in 1965 he remained active in the party. Woods was expelled on the eve of the 1984 strike for criticizing the party leadership which, he claimed, had deserted revolutionary politics.2 His expulsion suggested the gulf between the CP of 1926 and the CP of 1984. Had the leadership in King Street in 1926 been permitted to travel across time to the party headquarters in St John Street in 1984, they would almost certainly have endorsed Woods’s arguments. Unlike the party of 1926, in which factionalism was anathema, the CP of 1984 was divided, only most obviously between the

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Eurocommunist leadership, backed by the monthly magazine Marxism Today, and the opposition which controlled the daily Morning Star. The party supported the strike but the leadership had growing reservations. It was critical of the National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) emphasis on mass picketing; it characterized NUM insistence that the strike was a political conflict and intransigence in negotiations as ‘dangerous sectarianism’.3 The CP of 1926 espoused all these things. The party leadership of 1984 yearned for a popular front, for broad alliances, with ‘new social movements’ and ‘progressive church people’. Believing ‘mobilization of public opinion’ could defeat the government, they snatched eagerly at doubts expressed by the bishop of Durham about state strategy.4 They would have loved the bishops’ proposals of 1926, contemptuously branded by their predecessors as ‘boss-bait’. The CP of 1926 in its turn would have welcomed the obduracy of Arthur Scargill, which their successors perceived as a problem. Paradoxically for a party in terminal decline, the CP of 1984 was better placed, on paper, to influence the dispute. In 1926, to have a member as the vice-president of the miners – as Michael McGahey was in 1984 – was beyond the party’s dreams. The CP of the Thatcher years possessed an influential presence on the NUM National Executive and was a force in south Wales, Scotland and Kent. Unlike 1926, it had two members on the TUC General Council. Yet the party wielded little control over its leading trade unionists and it was the one big coal strike where the CP lost members. In 1984 it was the left-wing, former CP member, Scargill, not, as in 1926, right-wing leaders such as George Spencer, who demanded to know why he was the object of criticism by the CP industrial organizer and who dismissed the party’s strategy document, pronouncing that it could have been written by the employers.5 Confronting defeat in 1985 and countenancing, as their predecessors would not, a return to work without an agreement or guarantees against victimization, some Communists misconstrued their party’s history. Against Scargill, on whose refusal to accommodate they increasingly blamed the disaster, they pitted Arthur Horner, recast as an exponent of creative compromise. If this bore some resemblance to the later Horner, it was a distortion of the man of 1926 which had more to do with what one Eurocommunist termed ‘the invention of tradition’ than historical recuperation.6 The irony is that as the mists of myth dissolved


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under the gaze of historians, it was the man Scargill modelled himself on, Arthur Cook, who could be discerned, to a greater degree, as an animator of compromise. Horner, in contrast, emerges, at least through the lenses of 1980s Eurocommunism, as an ultra-left sectarian, a miners’ leader every bit as intransigent and fundamentalist as Scargill.7 Charlie Woods knew this for he had lived through it. In keeping with the traditions of the Stalinism it now opposed, the party leadership removed him for remembering.

PARTY POLITICS The CP of 1926, the British section of the Communist International (Comintern) was tiny. Its membership increased from 5,000 in 1925 to 6,000 on the brink of the general strike; by the end of the lockout it had almost doubled to 11,500. Stimulated by optimism before May and desperation afterwards, the influx, largely of miners, proved transient. By early 1928 membership had fallen back to the 5,500 mark.8 Quality failed to compensate for quantity. A weakness of the party since its foundation in 1920 had been the cultivation of diplomatic relationships with key trade unionists as a substitute for their recruitment. In the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) itself, as his defection from the CP in 1921 suggested and the lockout would affirm, Cook worked with Communists when he found it convenient. Despite increasing rank-and-file support, Horner was the only cadre of influence. In Scotland Willie Allan was a coming force, while a sprinkling of influential non-members, notably S. O. Davies in Wales, Jack Williams in the Forest of Dean, Will Lawther in Durham and Henry Hicken in Derbyshire, were close collaborators. The CP had no support on the TUC General Council. It possessed little purchase on the governing bodies or among the full-time staff of unions indispensable to the success of the miners, such as the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. It boasted scant influence in organizations where it would later thrive, such as the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). In the important unions, there were only small caucuses of Communists. Their strongest base was in smaller bodies such as the National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association (NAFTA), whose general secretary, Alex Gossip, was a

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loyal supporter, and the tiny Union of Jewish Bakers, whose secretary was a party member. The CP could register an effective minority presence at union conferences: at the NUR’s 1926 gathering it mustered twenty of the eighty delegates. They harried its leadership which was hostile to the miners: they were unable to pin it down or influence its policy on the lockout.9 In a landscape of union retreat, growing conservatism and burgeoning bureaucratization, the party proved unable to turn the tide at rank-and-file level. The powerful shop-steward organizations of earlier and later years were absent or infirm and, against a background of mass unemployment and employer power, the Comintern’s strategy of rooting the CP in the workplace was unsuccessful. In early 1926 there were 161 CP factory and pit groups enrolling 955 members. In a stronghold such as Fife, there were only six members spread across four pit groups.10 The general strike brought new members but dislocated fragile workplace activity and emphasized a fundamental factor: the CP’s inability to mobilize outside and against official union structures. At Glasshoughton Colliery, Yorkshire, where there was ‘a good pit group’, dismissal of CP members in December 1925 produced no action. Resolution of the problem required the intervention of Herbert Smith at his old colliery.11 If employer intimidation was a problem, so was state repression. This involved not only imprisonment of twelve party leaders for most of 1926, surveillance of activists and the arrest of up to 1,200 during the general strike and lockout, but prohibition of meetings, sometimes on the grounds that they might influence negotiations, and legal action against the Workers’ Weekly, which at the height of the lockout was selling 80,000 copies.12 The party’s weakness was not compensated for by its industrial arm, the MM, a coalition of Communists and the militant left. By 1984 the CP had renounced such permanent, national opposition. Its substitute, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, provided a painful contrast with its predecessor’s vigour. Through the lockout the MM stressed key points in its programme, from factory committees representing all trade unionists at the bottom, to the election of the TUC General Council by the rank and file at the top. It succeeded in rallying impressive numbers, largely through the efforts of a small group of determined activists at pit and branch level. At its third annual conference in August 1926, 802 delegates represented 956,000 workers while 108


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delegates attended the Miners’ Minority Movement (MMM) meeting.13 But affiliated membership was only 200,000 and activists were rarely able to implement the policies adopted at conferences in their workplaces and unions. Through 1926 leading union officials moved from giving the MM a wide berth to actively opposing it. While Cook was identified with it, the General Council left-wingers such as Alf Purcell of NAFTA, George Hicks of the Building Workers and Alonzo Swales of the AEU, were not, in what might be thought a fair test of left credentials, prepared to endorse the MM. Gossip was the only national leader closely involved, along with well-known lay activists such as W. C. Loeber and Jim Figgins of the NUR, Jack Tanner and Bill Ward of the AEU, and Davies, Horner and Lawther. The MM was financed from Moscow and policy was controlled by the Red International of Trade Unions (RILU). It was supervised, down to close scrutiny of platform speeches and performance of the chairman, by the CP Political Bureau (PB). The PB insisted its decisions should not be varied by the party fraction in the MM; even non-party activists accepted the hegemony of the RILU. The real element of influence, all too often resolutionary, which the MM wielded was reflected in voting at MFGB conferences and ballots. The absence of active solidarity with the miners from other trade unionists suggested its limited reach. CP assertions that the MM possessed the leverage to move important sections of workers into action were, the lockout suggested, rhetoric.14 Similar points can be made about the CP-orchestrated Left Wing Movement in the Labour Party. It was capable of organizing constituency dissidents and stimulating opposition through the Russian-financed Sunday Worker. As the 1926 Labour Party conference demonstrated, it was unable to influence policy on the mining dispute.15 In 1926, unlike 1984, dreams of Soviet socialism and its extension were fresh and vivid. ‘Socialism in one country’ and subordination of revolution to Russian interests were still developing. But the CP already conformed to Russian imperatives. The Workers’ Weekly not only called on British workers to emulate the virtues of their Russian comrades in the miners’ struggle but published dispatches on the rectitude of the Stalin faction and ‘socialism in one country’, and the delinquencies of the opposition of Trotsky and Zinoviev. Reporting Stalin’s speech at the Fifteenth Conference of the Russian party, the Workers’ Weekly advised its

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audience: ‘Read the books that Stalin quoted. They bear on our own problems.’16 Nor was the CP chary of acknowledging the leadership of the Comintern in the lockout. It was, it told British workers, not some ‘distant and theorising body . . . but a real General Staff to be proud of’.17 The essentials of policy in 1926 were developed in Moscow. Its thrust, accepted with reluctance but accepted nevertheless, was to turn the CP to the left not, as some have argued, to the right. Stalin’s directives were bound up with the need to outflank Trotsky and Zinoviev.18 The Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee, established in 1925 to further defence of the USSR and supported by left leaders such as Purcell, Hicks and Swales, was undoubtedly a complicating factor. Subsequently the CP softened the unitedfront tactic and, in comparison with its earlier stance, flattered the lefts as class-struggle leaders, although it was well aware that, compared with militant prosecution of the industrial struggle in Britain, rhetorical advocacy of international solidarity came cheap.19 As the MM leader Nat Watkins remarked to the RILU boss Alexander Lozovsky in early 1926, ‘The Purcells and Swales . . . are quite one thing in Russia, but as you are well aware, are quite another thing when they come back here among friends of their own kidney.’20 But on the CP’s own retrospective account there was no analysis of the role the left would play in the general strike and no attempt to counteract the Daily Herald’s ‘Trust your leaders’ with ‘Watch your leaders’.21 In the aftermath of the debacle, the CP, acknowledging that it was in a far from revolutionary situation, criticized the lefts but reserved its major fire for the right. For Stalin, who believed in the ‘treachery’ of the TUC left, it was too little, too late. The CP argued the need to relate criticism to the practical necessity of pressurizing Purcell and Hicks to support the miners in Britain and continue advocacy for the committee internationally. It urged restraint on the Russians ‘if they were anxious . . . to continue their endeavours to maintain the Anglo-Russian Unity Committee in existence’.22 As late as November 1926, it was exhorting activists to curb criticism which could ‘militate against the possibilities of bringing the Miners’ strike to a successful conclusion or operate against the future welfare of Anglo-Russian unity’.23 What was at stake was differing perceptions of Russian interests as well as the assumed interests of British workers. As Hinton and Hyman argue, the Anglo-Russian Committee was a relevant factor


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in explaining the CP’s position but not the only one.24 The CP worried that fiercer denunciation could provoke hostility from its only possible powerful allies, the left union leaders. Would more muted criticism have produced support from Purcell and Hicks? It is arguable that the question evades what should have been the real drive of CP strategy in 1926, mobilization of the rank and file rather than cultivation of its leaders, although it would be mistaken to underestimate the problems, for, like their leaders, even ‘advanced’ workers were ‘left reformists’. Certainly it is improbable that more sotto voce criticism would have made much difference. What influenced Hicks and Purcell were the consequences of confronting the state, the declining membership and resources of their unions, the costs of militancy and the pressures of fellow General Council members – not the approval or odium of the CP or the Comintern. But the question was academic. The Russians were determined to have their way. From early 1926 they attempted to harden the CP line. In March the CP press reported Zinoviev’s statement that the miners would have to fight the union leaders, right and left. Comintern directives subsequently stressed the necessity for denunciation of the right and criticism of the left, while in early June the CP was instructed to unmask the left as primarily responsible for the defeat of the general strike. This, too, was the message of the manifesto of the Russian trade unions, a personal initiative of Stalin, published, only after Russian pressure, in the Workers’ Weekly.25 Woodhouse and Pearce are correct to locate all this in the politics of the Stalin faction. But it was a politics which attempted to outflank Trotsky and Zinoviev who were demanding Russian withdrawal from the committee. It did so not by posing against them the suppression of criticism to maintain the committee at all costs but by presenting a compromise formula: ‘Don’t withdraw. Criticise Purcell and Hicks. If they pull out so be it.’26 The CP came into line: pressure from Moscow, from its Comintern supervisor, Petrovsky, from Lozovsky’s emissaries, the American Earl Browder and the German Hans Sturm, and from its own bedrock belief that whoever led the Russian party was right, did the trick. Even objections to publishing Russian statements which demonstrated the reality of ‘orders from Moscow’ and well-judged alarm at the Comintern’s discovery of new, mythical rank-and-file lefts, were brushed aside.27 The CP ended up acknowledging its mistake over the Russian union manifesto.

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The MM ended up bending the knee over its conviction that restraining criticism of left leaders could help the miners.28 The party press, which had intermittently sniped at the left, corrected its errors. By July, primary responsibility was being assigned to the left. Even Cook came under fire for the postponement of the general strike post-mortem, advocating the bishops’ proposals and defending the General Council at the September TUC, although in his case assaults were more measured.29 The misplaced slogan, ‘All power to the General Council’, was maintained, increasingly qualified by the fanciful ‘with greater grit’, ‘with good leaders’ and the need to ‘change its method of election’. The wheel turned full circle. November 1926 saw the CP thundering: ‘Beware treachery: keep General Council away from Negotiations.’30 The militant leaders of 1925–6 were characterized as the ‘former left wing’ and the CP was announcing that the lockout involved a straightforward conflict between workers, mobilized behind the party, and the capitalists. The miners were informed: ‘Your leaders are the Communist Party.’31 By the end the MFGB leadership – excluding Cook – was written off in favour of the new, militant but numerically slim generation of Horner, Lawther, Allan ‘and others’.32 In 1926 the CP travelled from a flabby, accommodating version of the united front to a sharper, rank-and-fileist variant. Its vacillations were facilitated by the absence of any coherent theory of trade unionism which combined structural and political explanations. In 1926 the CP’s harder line was justified in terms of the consolidation of the union bureaucracy and the closing of the cleavage between left and right within it as workers radicalized and room for negotiation of conflict narrowed. The nature of the bureaucracy was typically unspecified; explanations were usually couched in terms of military virtues, or the lack of them, and corruption. There were sporadic assertions that ‘the trade union bureaucracy is becoming a self-centred caste living a life apart from the rest of the workers and concerned more with its rights and privileges than it is with working-class welfare’.33 Occasional statements that the interests of the bureaucracy differed from those of members went unelaborated while the conception that there were real problems in the commitment of rank-and-file activists to overthrowing capitalism was conspicuous by its absence. Strategy smacked of what CP leaders in 1984 branded ‘economism’. At its heart was extreme endorsement of the MFGB


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demand ‘not a second on the day, not a cent off the pay’, no negotiations, fight to a standstill. Negotiations confused matters. So did compromise: both the CP and the MM rejected the report of the Royal Commission. So did ‘stunts’ intended to avoid the fight for an embargo on the movement of coal, notably Purcell’s ‘preposterous’ suggestion of a miners’ march on London and the espousal by H. N. Brailsford and other ILPers of ‘a capitalist selling agency’ as a substitute for nationalization of the mines. Pipedreams of ‘armchair theorists’ got in the way of a straight fight.34 The bishops’ proposals were dismissed as they involved reduced wages, a puny four months’ respite, arbitration, probably by a capitalist judge, and reorganization plans which were utopian. The bishops, themselves royalty-owners, were, as assuredly as Baldwin, agents of the coalowners. Like Sir Herbert Samuel, they represented the velvet glove of capital: their function was to disorient, to divide, to provide excuses for deserting the miners’ fundamental demands. The ‘episcopal red herring’ was ‘confusing the minds of the heroic battlers’.35 In contrast with 1984, the CP had no time at all for people’s marches or the unity of ‘brickies’ and bishops. Encouraged by the miners’ rejection of the churchmen, the CP campaigned for its central demands: a coal embargo and a levy on trade unionists. It was aware that the leaders of the transport and railway workers, still more the seafarers under Havelock Wilson, were determined opponents of these initiatives. It knew that the ranks lacked resolution, based on realistic assessment of the consequences and the attitude of their leaders. Yet the CP kept up the assault, albeit in a fashion which smacked of desperation, proposing that if Ernest Bevin supported a boycott on coal the MFGB should pay the wages of victimized TGWU members.36 Arguing that if the miners went down the bosses would attack other workers who should fight now, the CP probed possibilities at the base. Despite ILP refusal of a joint campaign for the embargo, it sought to develop rank-and-file initiatives such as the London Miners’ Defence Committee and the conference convened by the London Trades Council of twenty-four trades councils and thirty district committees to pressurize the union machines. They produced sentiments of solidarity but little action. Minor successes such as the refusal of Bristol and Plymouth dockers to handle coal were brief or, as in the case of sixty locomen at Swansea docks, broken by victimization.37 The problem was illustrated by the

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oscillations over the TUC: at times the party demanded that it keep out of the struggle, at others that it organize support. The CP persisted, valiantly if unsuccessfully, in an approach which called for emergency TUC congresses and special committees to organize an embargo while asserting that they must include delegates from the rank and file and trades councils – as if the conservative TUC would immediately amend its constitution at King Street’s behest.38 In the absence of sympathetic action, the emphasis was on financial support. The money from Russia bought enormous good will and the party persistently emphasized what it saw as the disparity between the sacrifice of the Russian unions as well as smaller British unions, such as the Woodworkers and the Ladies’ Tailors’ Union, and the tokenism of the big battalions. The demand for a 5 per cent levy was never realized, apart from the voluntary arrangement agreed by the TUC on 13 November, ‘a semblance of a levy’, too late to make a difference.39 The CP took consolation in the belief that British capitalism was not escaping unscathed. The lockout, it claimed, was dislocating declining industries, pushing up unemployment, pulling down production and exercising a calamitous effect on Britain’s trade balance. The party press regularly informed the miners that the coalowners could not hold out much longer, asserting ‘there is no hope of serious relief for British capitalism from coal imports’.40 This defied the evidence of miners’ eyes: coal flooded into and around the country and there were only occasional glimpses of progress, such as the 24-hour sympathy strike of French miners in August.41 The party sought solace, as in 1984, in the exposure of the capitalist state and the alleged extension of class-consciousness. At the September Congress, the TUC General Council successfully avoided any commitment to action. Despite the valiant efforts of the MM caucus involving Horner, Tanner, Loeber, Elsbury of the Tailor and Garment Workers, Chandler of the Railway Clerks, Tomkins of NAFTA, Strain of the Woodworkers, McLauchlin of the Iron Fitters and Norah Bradshaw of the Weavers’ Amalgamation, the right and ‘former left wing’ carried the day. The MM resolution to refer back the General Council report was defeated by 2,000,000 votes.42 At the Margate conference of the Labour Party, an offensive led by Horner, Gossip and Harry Pollitt stimulated stormy applause but no practical results; indeed the MFGB delegates voted with Ramsay MacDonald in refusing to oppose the expulsion of Communists from the Labour Party.43


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The CP leaders received direction from Moscow throughout the lockout.44 They had discarded their instincts which favoured alliances – ‘There will be a reaction within our Party against working with left-wing leaders. We must fight down this natural feeling and get better contact with those leaders’45 – in accordance with Russian thinking. But they remained chary about political demands. Attempts to win support for the miners were only slowly framed within a sometimes confusing governmental slogan. As a delegate to the party’s October congress pointed out, the Comintern sometimes demanded a workers’ government, the CP a Labour government or a real Labour government. Confused by problems of language, it was an attempt to reduce to a phrase the desire for a government which acted in the interests of the working class, although those in Britain who used the formula ‘a workers’ government’ were admonished for calling for a revolutionary government, judged ultra-left in the prevailing circumstances.46 However, the CP again came under fire from Moscow for its emphasis on an embargo at the expense of the demand for a real Labour government: the drive for solidarity action with the MFGB was by itself inadequate, for the miners were fighting not only the coalowners but the state. In August, after intensive efforts by Petrovsky, the CP began to stress what the Comintern perceived as essential slogans, ‘bring down the boss government’, ‘dissolve the coalowners’ Parliament’ and ‘elect a real Labour government to nationalize the mines without compensation’. As before, the CP did what it was told, but belatedly.47 In the MFGB itself, the small group of Communists stiffened the struggle and amplified and justified the miners’ instinct to stand firm. They maintained morale and strengthened organization. Their impact on policy was largely neutral but they successfully stood guard against concessions. Only occasionally, as in October, did they succeed in gaining support for an offensive. Sustaining militancy was their achievement: they made class warriors but few revolutionaries. The lockout was at the centre of party life, with the CP press committed in an all-absorbing fashion. Every issue of the Workers’ Weekly was devoted to the dispute. The supplement, ‘Fight like hell’, written by miners, displayed a fierce class consciousness and unshakeable confidence, simultaneously beleaguered and optimistic about final victory. The paper was a sword in the hands of militants. The MMM attempted to provide ammunition and strike strategy but its influence was restricted even in its

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best areas such as south Wales, Lanarkshire and Yorkshire. Local groups were instructed to approach union branches and dockers, railwaymen and transport workers directly to boycott coal. They were counselled to argue for a levy and utilize union journals and the local press. MMM activists were exhorted to organize demonstrations to Boards of Guardians and exert pressure for communal feeding. Spontaneous, sometimes chaotic picketing, the MMM insisted, should be superseded by the appointment of the most efficient and trustworthy comrades to undertake picketing work. All picketing was to be organized systematically along the most ‘scientific principles’. Squads of miners’ pickets should be appointed to keep vigilance on all pitheads, import seaports and at all centres where stocks of coal were still available. It was urged that the strongest measures be taken to prevent its removal. As this proceeded, Workers’ Defence Squads would develop with properly trained, experienced comrades.48 The most significant successes came in August and October. The MMM mounted a powerful campaign over the bishops’ proposals, providing leaflets which, at least in south Wales and Durham, were circulated to every lodge. The resolution at the MFGB conference calling for intensification of the fight for the embargo and levy, withdrawal of the safety men and greater central direction, was drafted by the MMM, carried through the South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF) and powerfully presented at the conference. It represented a last, if unlikely, opportunity.49 Conceiving the miners as an army where differences between detachments could be overcome by appeals to an organic unity of interest, the party believed that the return to work could be constrained by oratory. So it was, but only temporarily, partly by Communists such as Pollitt and Watkins.50 The retreat, however, was simply a symptom and a reinforcement of the pressures afflicting all miners. Despite the despatch in October of CP leaders into the coalfields, the tide could not be turned by will-power. The party urged resistance to the last. It proclaimed that to accept what was on offer would be ‘rank madness’; the demand remained ‘Reject the slave terms . . . repudiate the defeatists.’51 The SWMF resolution had not been implemented by the MFGB leaders: if it was, it remained the basis for victory. The CP never considered concessions: to the end it maintained that those who did were stabbing the miners in the back. As December dawned, the central line was sustained: no surrender; bring down Baldwin.52

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