The Little Buttymen in the Forest of Dean, 1870–86

Abstract

On a superficial inspection, miners' unionism in the Forest of Dean between 1871 and 1886 does not appear to have been atypical of miners' unionism in general in Britain in that period: neither in the fluctuations in its strength nor in its policies. Like the unions in most other coal districts, that in Dean flourished in the economic boom of the early 1870's, fell into weakness after 1875 and then revived in the early 1880's. In each of those phases the policies of the Dean miners were much like those of other miners. They demanded increases in wages, resisted reductions in wages, insisted upon the installation of weighing machines at pit bank, and sought to have winding hours reduced. Demands for the introduction of a sliding scale, to govern the movement of hewing rates in relation to coal prices, and for the establishment of conciliation and arbitration machinery, were common to many miners' unions at both local and national level. With those demands went the common rhetoric of the identity of interests of capital and labour. All this is the familiar content of that moderate, cautious, market-conscious approach to dealings with the masters which dominated miners' organisations for most of the second half of the century.