Rank-and-file movements and political change before the Great War: the Durham miners' ‘Forward Movement’

Abstract

This article examines political change in the Durham Miners' Association (D.M.A.), one of the best-established, largest and most influential Edwardian trade unions. It argues that the hitherto ignored rank-and-file movements (especially the Durham Forward Movement from May 1912) deserve a central explanatory role in offering new perspectives on the nature and strength of the Independent Labour Party's (I.L.P.) challenge to the Liberal hegemony within the D.M.A. The agency of a new, younger generation of emerging I.L.P. activists, framing an appeal to miners' material interests harnessed to a radical reforming agenda and support for Labour, meant that Labour's prospects in the Durham coalfield by August 1914 were rather more positive than has been recognized.