COLLIERY OWNERS AND TRADE UNIONISM: THE CASE OF SOUTH DERBYSHIRE IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

There is a large and rapidly growing literature on the history of labour relations in the British coalmining industry written from the standpoint of the development of mining trade unionism, and yet an extremely small and limited literature from the viewpoint of the emergence of employers' associations. As the authors of a recent select critical bibliography of labour in the coalfields point out, this failure to consider the employers' side is really rather surprising given the generally ample source material provided directly by the employers' associations in the form of minutes of meetings and similar material. A further feature of this one-sidedness is that even where source materials contain evidence from both sides of the industry, such as the well-known Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Other Associations of 1867–8, historians have generally preferred to use them to consider the organisation, policies and attitudes of trade unions rather than those of employers' organisations. The present contribution is, therefore, an attempt to redress this imbalance somewhat by presenting an analysis of the attitudes and activities of colliery owners in relation to trade union development in the South Derbyshire coalfield at a time when the miners were making one of their periodic early attempts at national organisation.