1926, 1984 . . . And All That!

Abstract

Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout: the Struggle for Dignity, ed. John McIlroy, Alan Campbell and Keith Gildart, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2004; 330 pp.; £45.00; ISBN 0-7083-1820-7 My interest in this book is personal and professional. The miners’ life is familiar to me from my own family. My grandfather Richard Booth was a miner at Featherstone, Yorkshire, as was mother's brother John. I remember sitting on John's kitchen floor when I was very young, watching with amazement as he stripped an onion to make a sandwich, which he then ate. I asked John about his strange behaviour and received my first instruction in the realities of life underground: he took onion – the stronger the better – sandwiches to work for his ‘snap’, because they got the coal-dust out of the eyes. The taste acquired underground had long been transported above ground! John's two brothers did not go down the pit: everyone knew it was an occupation to be avoided. My father's sister married a miner: Tommy Whitlam was a deputy at Woolley Edge colliery when the young Arthur Scargill started work there and became the National Union of Miners (NUM) delegate in the early 1960s.