South Wales Miners Research Articles

‘Revolution in the coalfields’: industrial relations in wartime south Wales, 1939-45

ABSTRACT Labour unrest in the United Kingdom during the Second World War was concentrated within the coal industry that accounted for around half of all strikes. This article proposes that institutional industrial relations within this regionally constituted industry should be analysed through a regional lens, as opposed to a national approach. It uses a case study of the south Wales coalfield to examine how the regional union and employers’ association interacted with each other and the state to govern industrial relations. It makes two arguments. One is that war transformed their relative power given the need to produce sufficient coal to fuel the war economy. The South Wales Miners Federation gained influence as it offered co-operation to boost production, but the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coalowners Association lost agency as it sought unsuccessfully to maintain pre-war approaches, while ongoing crises forced the government to accelerate interventions. The other is that these shifts enabled regional unions to outflank owners and co-opt the state to achieve their goals within industrial relations; the recreation of national bargaining machinery and obtaining higher wages. Although unions could not secure nationalization, the war ended with a consensus that the ownership status quo was untenable.

Coal dust in the wind: Interpreting the industrial past of South Wales

South Wales was once synonymous with coal, now among the most globally controversial natural resources due to its association with anthropogenic climate change. In the early twentieth century, Wales was the largest worldwide producer of coal, and mines employed more than ten percent of those living in the country. With rapid closure of coal mines between the 1960s and 1980s, Welsh communities lost the main source of their social and economic identity. Thirty years after the era of mass pit closures, industrial tourism attractions throughout the region relate the story of coal’s heritage. With calls for renewed mining gaining traction in many countries, consideration of how coal mining is remembered in South Wales is beneficial to those advocating for a move towards the use of sustainable resources and to scholars interested in the relationship between tourism, place, and memory. An analysis is given of the interpretive discourses presented at the five most prominent coal tourism attractions in Wales, Big Pit National Coal Museum, Rhondda Heritage Park, Cefn Coed Colliery Museum, South Wales Miners’ Museum, and the National Waterfront Museum, complemented with consideration of visitor perceptions at two of the sites. Among the interpretive themes highlighted are: the importance of coal, dangers of coal mining, union activity, the centrality of coal to communities, and the absence of descriptions of coal’s environmental impacts. Visitor engagement with these themes is discussed along with the potential for attractions to impart insight into the broader consequences of coal mining. The positive, often nostalgic, portrayal of coal and the calls for renewed mining within South Wales’ attractions are not complemented with a reckoning of the negative environmental legacy of the resource at the local or global scales.

'X-rays don't tell lies': the Medical Research Council and the measurement of respiratory disability, 1936-1945.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the mining industry in Britain was subject to recurrent disputes about the risk to miners' lungs from coal dust, moderated by governmental, industrial, medical and mining bodies. In this environment, precise measurements offered a way to present uncontested objective knowledge. By accessing primary source material from the National Archives, the South Wales Miners Library and the University of Bristol's Special Collections, I demonstrate the importance that the British Medical Research Council (MRC) attached to standardized instrumental measures as proof of objectivity, and explore the conflict between objective and subjective measures of health. Examination of the MRC's use of spirometry in their investigation of pneumoconiosis (miner's lung) from 1936 to 1945 will shed light on this conflict and illuminate the politics inherent in attempts to quantify disability and categorize standards of health.

Book Review: The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield by Lewis H. Mates

Lewis H. Mates The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016; 311 pp.: ISBN 9780719090684, 75[pounds sterling] (hbk) Lewis H. Mates has written, exactly as his title suggests, a detailed account of the politics of miners in the Durham coalfield in the years immediately preceding the First World War. The largely chronological chapters follow the emergence of labour (and Labour) politics in the coalfield during a short but significant historical period, as competing ideologies fought for the support of the miners and the power to shape their union, the Durham Miners' Association (DMA). In doing so, Mates seeks to integrate a descriptive historical case study with challenges to existing analyses and an attempt to assess the significance of the various ideological strands competing in the union's development. The first chapter explores the relevant existing literature with a particular focus on syndicalism, with Mates noting the re-emergence of interest in the subject in the 1970s. He also argues for the significance of agency and 'bottom-up' histories. Methodologically, he argues for the importance of the local press with its often very detailed accounts of controversies and the miners' Lodge (union branch) meetings, books and minutes. The early chapters root the miners of Durham and their nascent union organization within the locally entwined traditions of both Methodism and Liberalism. These are shown to be of critical importance in shaping a union pragmatism that links pay and coal prices to ideologies of partnership expressed institutionally through conciliation procedures. Chapter 2 seeks to situate the analysis in terms of the 'boom years' (1906-1909) for company profits alongside a DMA membership of 71% in 1900 with an estimated 100% organization (including some smaller unions) of all miners by 1913. In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that employers and miners were able to reach agreements although not necessarily without strikes and disputes. However, the next two chapters locate the Durham coalfield in national events as Parliamentary legislation begins to derail local agreements in relation to both hours of work and minimum wages. Mates sets out the complexity of the disputes that arose as different underground trades, surface workers and different collieries benefitted or otherwise from new shift arrangements or levels of pay. Mates highlights this in discussion of a national strike that only narrowly gains the two thirds majority it needed in Durham in the face of competing political positions. This is played out alongside developments within mining unionism itself as the national Federation assumes increasing importance and, politically, the syndicalism of the South Wales miners becomes influential. Mate's chronology takes us through the final chapters towards the foundation of the Labour Party and, again, the ideological tendencies that challenge each other for dominance among rank-and-file miners, their local pit Lodges and the DMA itself. In each of the chapters, Mates uses different leaders and activists to personify the political positions. Individuals such as George Harvey, William House, Jack Lawson and John Wilson populate the pages to personify different political positions and illustrate the campaigning activities that permeate Mate's case study. …

Ben Curtis. The South Wales Miners, 1964–1985. Studies in Welsh History series. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013. Pp. 320. $30.00 (paper).

Ben Curtis. The South Wales Miners, 1964–1985. Studies in Welsh History series. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013. Pp. 320. $30.00 (paper).

Unions ‘naked and unprotected at the altar of the common law’. Inducement of Breach of Contract of Employment: South Wales Miners' Federation and Others v. Glamorgan Coal Co. and Others [1905

Unions ‘naked and unprotected at the altar of the common law’. Inducement of Breach of Contract of Employment: <i>South Wales Miners' Federation and Others</i> v. <i>Glamorgan Coal Co. and Others</i> [1905

The Friendly and Welfare Provision of British Trade Unions: A Case Study of the South Wales Miners' Federation

This article examines the provision of friendly benefits and welfare services by British trade unions through a case study of the South Wales Miners' Federation. It engages with the historiography on these issues initiated by the Webbs in the 1890s (but only taken up fitfully by historians during the course of the twentieth century) that focused on the role that the provision of these benefits and services played in the approaches of British trade unions to industrial relations, and in particular whether or not they blunted the militancy of such trade unions and led to the reformism of the working class. A case study of the South Wales Miners' Federation moves the discussion away from the craft unions of the nineteenth century and offers a consideration of these important issues in the very different social, political, and industrial contexts of the twentieth century. It is found that trade unions were motivated by a range of different factors in the provision they made to members, their families, and the...

A Tradition of Radicalism: The Politics of the South Wales Miners, 1964–1985

This essay examines the political culture and history of the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the later twentieth century and particularly the 1984–1985 strike. The focus of investigation is on the constituent aspects of the miners' politics: the effect of the Area's structure, geographical considerations, the role played by political activists within the South Wales NUM, together with the interaction of all these factors. Several basic conclusions are drawn. First, the democratic structure of the South Wales NUM promoted policies and individuals who reflected the viewpoint of the broader membership. In this way, the historically created and culturally reinforced 'traditional radicalism' that emanated primarily from the central Valleys' lodges came to play the defining role within the political culture of the Area. On a party-political level, the miners' basic outlook was 'left Labourism'. Within this broad 'labourist' framework, Communist Party and Trotskyist activists contributed to the overall tone and direction of politics within the coalfield. Overall, it was the combined effect of these factors that produced the distinctive political radicalism of the south Wales miners.

The Politics of Identity and Civil Society in Britain and Germany: Miners in the Ruhr and South Wales 1890-1926

In this interesting study, Leighton S. James seeks to explore what conditions fostered effective collective agency among coal miners from the 1890s to the mid-1920s. He does so by means of a comparative study of the labour movements in the mining regions of south Wales and the Ruhr in response to his main question: why did the Welsh miners achieve higher levels of organizational unity and recognition from employers than the miners of the Ruhr during this period? The answer, according to James, has to do with the more synchronous lifeworld of Welsh miners, the greater fluidity of Welsh civil society and the more flexible or inclusive identities constructed in the discourses of Welsh labour organizations in comparison with their counterparts in the Ruhr. Despite similar work patterns in the two regions, miners in south Wales more often than not lived in small pit villages dominated by miners, were nearly all religiously non-conformist (Methodist), and after 1890 successfully incorporated the burgeoning numbers of new English-speaking migrants. These factors produced a local context of shared assumptions, porous identities and a fluid civil society, and thus the basis for the formation of a region-wide trade union, the South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF), which reported an impressive 153,813 members out of a total of 233,134 miners in the region by 1913, and was able to secure higher wages and employer recognition. According to James, the success of the SWMF was predicated on its decentralized structure and flexible ideological orientation, which initially combined an emphasis on collaboration between employees and employers, a vague Christian-social desire to improve the lot of miners, and a Welsh identity, although this gradually evolved into a more English-friendly, confrontational and class-based strategy after the strike of 1898. This transformation found its parallel in the sphere of party politics: the regionally dominant Liberal Party gradually accommodated the class-oriented languages of Labour leaders and helped to turn south Wales into a centre of prewar ‘Lib-Lab’ sympathies after 1900. This flexibility and the homogenization of identities in south Wales carried over into the First World War, when the SWMF refused to give up the right to strike and secured new wage gains, and on into the immediate postwar period, when the south Wales Labour movement embraced an overtly working-class identity, began pushing for nationalization of the mines and supported Labour, the newly hegemonic party in the region.

‘A Very Profitable Enterprise’: South Wales Miners’ Institute Cinemas in the 1930S

There is limited evidence about the cinema-going tastes of the working classes in Britain during the 1930s. A range of contemporary sources provides information on cinema-going tastes at a general and non-class specific level—Sidney Bernstein’s Questionnaires; film popularity lists; box-office successes—but evidence about working-class tastes is scant. We can, however, assess the cinema-going tastes of one particular group of working-class consumers—the miners (and their families) of South Wales—through the surviving records of the South Wales Miners’ Institutes. These records, part of the South Wales Coalfield Collection held at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, contain material relating to the day-to-day running of the Institutes’ cinemas. Among them are a number of cinema ledgers. To my knowledge, though, only one ledger from the 1930s remains extant. That ledger belongs to the Cwmllynfell Miners’ Welfare Hall cinema and runs from 29 March 1937 to 28 December 1939. The ledger lists first and second features, along with a number of other programmes, such as shorts and news-reels. There are a number of breaks in the ledger, so we need to cut our coat according to the cloth of the somewhat sporadic material available, but it is nevertheless a highly valuable resource when constructing a map of working-class taste in the period.

Durham and South Wales Miners and the Spanish Civil War

This article compares and contrasts the roles of the South Wales Miners' Federation and the Durham Miners' Association (DMA) regarding solidarity activities with the Spanish Republican government, 1936-39. It firstly establishes that there were far fewer Durham miners in the International Brigade than their South Wales counterparts, despite comparable socio-economic conditions. This is explained by the different political cultures of the two coalfields (although at times, both coalfields reacted in similar ways to analogous social and political circumstances). The fundamental difference was the strength of the Communist Party in South Wales and its weakness in the Durham coalfield. The nature of Communist influence in the Durham coalfield in that period is then explored. The final section studies the considerable and hitherto unappreciated institutional contribution of the DMA to the Spanish Republican cause. It also notes the paradoxical effects of the Communist-supported popular front policy.

Cinema as an attraction: representations of bridgend's cinema exhibition history in the Glamorgan Gazette, Wales, 1900–1939

Tom Gunning has claimed the term ‘cinema of attractions’ for the study of early, ‘primitive’ films.1 Whilst this terminology refers to a specific time period and type of film, it also calls attenti...

Hart of Glyncorrwg

Born in 1927, Julian Tudor Hart (Figure 1) grew up in a home that served, among other things, as a transit camp for anti-fascist refugees from Continental Europe. His mother, Dr Alison Macbeth, was a member of the Labour Party. His father, Dr Alexander Tudor Hart, belonged to the Communist Party and represented the South Wales Miners' Federation in a dispute over medical care; later he volunteered as a surgeon for the International Brigades fighting against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Despite the efforts of his parents to discourage him from entering medicine, Julian's ambition was to be a general practitioner in a coal mining community; but as a medical student in Cambridge and London he recognized the dismal reputation of general practice as the least satisfying and most frustrating field of medicine. If serious-minded students were to be turned to this kind of work, the intolerable features of general practice had to modified.1 New recruits to medicine, he argued, should cultivate disciplined anger against the attitudes and circumstances that impeded effective delivery of medical science to sick people.2 These and subsequent opinions were doubtless coloured by his Marxist convictions. Later in life he expanded on his critique of the medical profession, declaring that medical education was `training the wrong people, at the wrong time, in the wrong skills and in the wrong place'.3 Figure 1 Julian Tudor Hart, 1995 [Photograph by Nick Sinclair from the photograph collection of the National Portrait Gallery] Hart graduated in 1952 and after hospital posts and experience in urban general practice he became involved in epidemiological research, first with Richard Doll and later with Archie Cochrane. At that time, the late 1950s, there was a growing perception that each general practice should be regarded as a population at risk4 and that general practitioners needed to couple their traditional curative medicine with the methods and techniques of the epidemiologist and the medical officer of health (in conjunction with colleagues in allied health professions). At the same time, four large changes were underway in medicine. First, the bioethics movement was encouraging patients and their families to share the overall responsibility for healthcare. Secondly, the family practice movement was emphasizing the holistic dimensions of healthcare, including lifestyle factors. Thirdly, the preventive medicine movement was starting to develop guidelines for practice.5 And, fourthly, the advent of new diuretics and sympathetic blocking agents was making the treatment of hypertension easier and freer from side-effects.6 In 1961 he moved to Glyncorrwg, South Wales, and set up a research practice.7

&amp;quot;The Whole Tragedy of Leisure in Penury&amp;quot;: The South Wales Miners' Institute Libraries during the Great Depression

From the late 1860s, the mining communities of South Wales developed a distinctive form of general library linked to well over a hundred miners' institutes. These libraries were genuine working-class facilities, largely funded, run, and managed by the communities in which they were located. As the economic depression of the late 1920s exacerbated the slump in the British coal-mining industry, these miners' institute libraries experienced increasing financial difficulties and turned to external bodies, including public libraries, social service agencies, and government-funded schemes, for assistance. This prolonged their existence but undermined the very independence that made them so unique.

No Longer Dying for a Living: Collective Responses to Injury Risks in South Wales Mining Communities, 1900-47

This article draws on documents and oral history tapes and transcripts stored in the South Wales Miners Library, particularly the 176 interviews with individuals or groups conducted as part of the South Wales Coalfield History Project (completed in 1974). The focus of the article is on collective health behaviour and particularly on formal and informal collective attempts to reduce safety threats in the pits. These data are related to contemporary theoretical and policy interests by consideration of the light they shed on the possible role of `social capital' in health promotion.

The South Wales Miners Federation, Miners' Lung and the instrumental use of expertise, 1900-1950.

Oral history materials from the South Wales Miners' Library are used to examine the communal understandings of, collective responses to, the scourge of Miners' Lung (pneumoconiosis) in the 1920s and 1930s. Lay epidemiology in mining communities attributed an aetiological role to coaldust at a time when many experts believed miners' pulmonary disease to be bronchitic, or to be silica-induced. In their efforts to secure compensation claims for their members, union officials instrumentally used scientific expertise in a variety of forms: they contributed to epidemiological evidence; they lobbied for more government-funded research; they 'bought' experts; they duped expert witnesses; and they made sophisticated instrumental appeals to the supposed independence of favorable expert judgements. Eventually, miners' situated' 'local knowledge' became scientific orthodoxy, a success story which may be associated with the class-conscious miners' 'bump of irreverence' about expert knowledge, and with the divided character of the expert core-set, sections of which were receptive to miners' 'local knowledge' claims.

Power, culture and conflict in the coalfields: West Virginia and south Wales, 1900-1922

This text provides a comparative perspective on two major coalfields, in order to allow a historically constructed view of the patterns of experience and behaviour in mining communities. It shows how the contrasting cultural formations, social structures and power relationships within West Virginia and South Wales definitely shaped the content and form of industrial conflict, as well as broader political identities and languages. This led to huge labour civil wars in West Virginia, backed by appeals to an ambigous Americanism, while the South Wales miners embarked on less violent solidaristic strike activity, accompanied by a shift towards labourist and class politics. The book draws on a wide range of sources in both Britain and the US, and provides an insight into the complex world of the coal miner. It should be useful to those interested in US and British social and labour history, and the regional histories of Wales and Appalachia.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:The Sunday Times Thalidomide Case: Contempt of Court and the Freedom of The Press. By Murray Rosen.Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party. By H. M. Drucker.The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century. By Hywell Francis and David Smith.

Hywel Francis and David Smith. The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century. London: Lawrence and Wishart. 1980. Pp. 530. £12.95.

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David Lloyd George and the British Labour Movement: Peace and War

Part 1 Before the First World War: the Welsh radical Lloyd George, labour and social reform trade and industrial relations. Part 2 The introduction of the war-time system of industrial relations: Lloyd George organizes for victory Lloyd George's Charter for Labour - the treasury conference the munitions of war act the South Wales miners' strike, July 1915. Part 3 Munitions and manpower, 1915-16: Lloyd George and the trade union leaders in 1915 enforcing dilution on the Clyde conscription and manpower shortage, 1915-16. Part 4 War-time Prime Minister: mounting discontent in the labour movement the May engineering strikes the Stockholm conference the manpower crisis, 1917-18.