“We will eat the grass off the field rather than submit to 8 hours” declared William Hoare at a mass meeting of Forest of Dean miners on July 3, 1926. This is the story of those miners during the dramatic events surrounding that year’s general strike and the nine-month miners’ lockout.
In 1922, John Williams, who began working in a South Wales pit at age just thirteen, became the full-time trade union official for the Forest’s miners. Inspired by syndicalism, he believed that determined struggle could pave the way for a classless society free from exploitation.
In this detailed account, Ian Wright follows John Williams and the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association through the turbulent period of the 1920s.
Timothy James Brain (1886-1974) was born in Ruardean Woodside and started work at the age of 12 on the surface at Slad colliery. He then worked at Foxes Bridge and Trafalgar. In 1913, while working at Lightmoor, he passed an examination which qualified him to work as a deputy and in 1916 he obtained work as a deputy at Cannop. He married Edith Morgan in 1916 and had one son. He was elected as an East Dean District Labour councillor in 1919. At the same time, he was elected as a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians and was a member during the 1926 lockout. He was elected as a County Councillor for Drybrook in 1922 when he was described by the Dean Forest Mercury as belonging to “the extreme section of the Labour Party”. [1]
“The world would be better in many ways if there were more people like Charlie Mason.”
(John Williams, agent for the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association, 1945.)
Charlie Mason was a Forest of Dean miner, a much-loved husband, father and son and a popular and respected member of his community. He was known for speaking up on behalf of his fellow workers and actively participating in public bodies within the Forest of Dean.
However, as Ralph Anstis observed, Charlie was “curiously shy” and uncomfortable with public speaking.[1] As a result, he seldom appeared on public platforms alongside the more prominent leaders of the Forest of Dean labour movement, whose names frequently featured in local newspapers between the 1920s and 1940s.
Despite occasional reports in local newspapers, the lives of people like Charlie Mason often remain hidden from history. However, it is important to recognise the role of miners like Charlie whose daily conflicts over health and safety, piecework rates, victimisation, and unseen bullying in the depths of the colliery provided the backbone to the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association (FDMA), the main trade union representing Forest of Dean miners.
In the case of Charlie, this changed long after his death with the publication of the books A Child in the Forest in 1974 (reprinted as Full Hearts and Empty Bellies in 2009) and No Pipe Dreams for Father in 1977 by his daughter, Winifred Foley.[2] These were followed by her books Great Aunt Lizzie in 2002 and In and Out of the Forest in 2009.[3]
This article will draw on Winifred’s work to provide some background to Charlie’s life. In addition, it will utilise local newspaper reports to highlight his interventions on behalf of his fellow miners during the 1926 lockout. It will focus mainly on his role at the meetings of the Westbury Board of Guardians whose job was to provide Poor Law relief to the destitute families of miners. The article then traces his life in the years that followed the lockout and finally his tragic death in a pit accident in 1945.
Thanks to Charlie’s grandson Clive Mason and granddaughter Margo Woodhill for sending information, memories and photos. Thanks for the support from Winifred’s daughter, Jenny Townsend. Thanks to Paul Mason, a distant relative whose family lived very close to Charlie, for information and stories. Also thanks to Nicola Wynn and Jason Griffiths from the Dean Heritage Centre for help and advice.
Early Years
Charlie Mason was born on 9 August 1889 in Brierley, a small village in the north of the Forest of Dean. He descended from a long line of Masons who lived in Brierley and worked in the local mines and quarries. The houses on Brierley Banks, where Charlie lived, were small and in poor condition, and lacked indoor toilets. While most have since been demolished, the house Charlie’s family lived in, Roslyn House, still stands.
Charlie attended the Slad school in Ruardean Woodside and started work in the mines at the age of eleven. He initially worked as a hod boy for his stepfather, Robert Penn. In her book, In and Out of the Forest, Winifred Foley said:
Less than a century ago little boys of ten or less followed their fathers down the pits as hod-boys, as my own father did at the age of eleven. A chain around his waist and between his legs was attached to a cart, so he dragged the coal that his stepfather had pickaxed out to the bottom of the shaft. It was rare indeed that they worked in a place high enough to stand in.[4]
Winifred added that Charlie’s Great Aunty, Lizzie Mason, told her:
Charlie, your Dad, was only 11 years old when he had to go to work in the pit as hod boy to his stepfather….”Being hod boy was a terrible job for a boy his age but he never grumbled. His stepfather was a miserable sort but not a bad man. I can only remember him acting wrong once. Them days the men was paid 3d a ton for all the coal they could send to the face. It was hard luck if they got on a bad seam with stone in it. One time they was on an awful seam, nearly all stone and they got nothing for that. At the end of the week, your Grancher had only got 4 shillings and 3 pence wages to come.[5]
When Charlie was about twenty, he became unemployed and so walked to South Wales to work in its coalfield where he met his future wife, Margaret Daniels. The couple married in 1909 in South Wales and soon after they moved back to the forest to live with Charlie‘s Great Aunt Lizzie “who had always loved him like a son”. Their first daughter, Bess, was born in 1910 but sadly Charlie and Margaret lost their next two children soon after they were born.[6] Work was hard to come by so Charlie had to return to work in South Wales. Winifred, who was born in July 1914, recalled:
Dad walked to Wales and got a job in the “Six Bells” colliery near Abertillery. This time he lodged with Mam’s oldest sister Polly, who had married a man much older than herself and was childless. She only took a pittance off Dad for his keep, but even so, he could not afford to come home when Mam gave birth to me.[7]
Charlie and Margaret with Bess and Winifred (Credit: Margo Woodhill)
World War One
Soon after, the war broke out in August 1914, Six Bells temporarily closed due to a lack of manpower. Charlie returned to the Forest and the family moved into a family cottage in Brierley with Charlie’s great Aunt Lizzie. Charlie got a job at a nearby pit, probably Trafalgar colliery. The couple went on to have four more children, Dick, Sidney, Gwen and Marie. Sadly, Sidney died when he was just 16 months old. The children and parents were devoted to each other:
To us children our Dad was the fount of wisdom, kindliness and honour. Whenever we wanted his attention he became a child among us — slow, dreamy and always understanding.[8]
At the start of the war, some miners volunteered for the military but the more experienced miners like Charlie, now aged 25, were encouraged to stay in the pits where their skills were in great demand to supply coal for the war effort. Winifred remembered her dad saying:
Plenty o’ work in the factories making armaments an’ uniforms for men to die in. Seems there’s nothin’ like a few years o’ ’uman slaughter to get the economy going.’ [9]
The work was hard and miners were expected to work long hours flat out, with no holidays, to maintain coal supplies for the war effort. Charlie did not approve of the militarism and jingoism that was widespread at the time and told Winifred:
The German men be the same as we men. Like us they ‘ave swallowed all the propaganda put into their ‘eads by the big powers that do rule us all. ‘Tis to keep the power and wealth that is in this world for themselves that countries do fight each other, and the people do swallow it all, put on uniforms and go murderin’ each other by the thousands. The hate is whipped up by such tales as you two ‘ave listened to. No doubt German women is swallowin’ the same tales ’bout we Englishmen! [10]
Cannop
When the war came to an end, the pressure on the miners to increase productivity continued because of a shortage of labour. At some stage around this time, Charlie became very ill with pneumonia but recovered. Winfred believed:
That illness, we always believed, came from the conditions in which he worked when he was forced to go to a pit three miles from home. He was sacked from the pit near the village after the owner heard of his radical views and told the manager to get rid of him. The walk to the new pit wasn’t too bad — it was downhill most of the way — but it was a hard grind home for an exhausted man at the end of a long shift.[11]
This was probably Cannop colliery because, in 1919, Charlie was working at the pit which was about a one-hour walk from his cottage in Brierley. Charlie was soon elected as one of the Cannop delegates on the Executive of the FDMA. He joined the campaign for the nationalisation of the mines, a pay rise and reduced hours for miners. There were strikes but, after a few months, the miners accepted a seven-hour working day and a pay rise which kept up with the rising cost of living. However, the government refused to accept a recommendation from a Coal Commission to nationalise the mines. Charlie was now becoming more involved in politics and became a committed and active member of the FDMA. Winifred wrote:
If they were not at the pit, Dad and a couple of cronies would be arguing nineteen to the dozen about religion, politics, science, economics, or the fourth dimension. There they sat on their threadbare behinds putting the world in order. [12]
If he had a fault, it was the spending of sixpence on a book while his ragged shirt tails were hanging through the ragged patches of his moleskin trousers. He loved to discuss his reading with his cronies. The fireside talk we overheard between them was full of H. G. Wells, Einstein, God, Darwin, Shaw and Lenin.[13]
1921 Lockout
In 1921, the government and the owners responded to a depression in the coal trade by a proposal to radically reduce labour costs, which, in the Forest of Dean, translated into wage cuts of up to 50 per cent. The miners refused to go to work under these new terms and downed tools. As a result, on 31 March 1921, one million British miners were locked out of their pits including many war veterans and over 6,000 miners from the Forest of Dean.[14]
Charlie joined Frank Matthews and William Hoare as representatives of the Cannop miners on the FDMA Strike Committee. Charlie probably supported the decision of the FDMA and the Cannop miners to refuse to allow safety men to enter the pit to operate the pumps to prevent flooding. They hoped this would put extra pressure on the colliery owners to settle the dispute.
Cannop normally employed 36 men pumping two to three thousand gallons a minute to keep the level of the water down in the pit. After the withdrawal of the safety men, the colliery was completely flooded and the management warned the pit may not re-open due to permanent damage.[15] Winifred was only seven during the strike but remembers miners confronting blacklegs at Waterloo colliery near Lydbrook:
I do remember once playing with older children watching for blacklegs going to work at Waterloo. We hid in the bracken, and when we saw them, we slipped away and told the men on strike in the village. They hurried off to meet the blacklegs and shout abuse at them.[16]
The lockout ended after 12 weeks when the MFGB advised the men to return to work and accept the reduction in pay. The concerns about the flooding at Cannop causing permanent damage proved unfounded and, once the miners got the electrical equipment re-installed and the pumps running again, Charlie and his mates were back at work.[17]
Religion
One of the consequences of the lockout was that Charlie became more radical in his views: Winifred wrote:
Over the years the ways in which the miners were treated turned him into what people call a socialist or some say, communist. It can’t be a bad thing, for if you read the Bible, the Lord himself was against the rich and the greedy and they hounded him to the cross for it.[18]
After 1921, many miners felt abandoned by the church and established society and this turned many away from religion. Winifred remembers:
I’d heard him and his butties argue and come to the conclusion that there couldn’t be a God, or at any rate not one who worried about us as individuals.[19]
He never went to chapel, and indeed held the opinion that in general organised religion was the opium dealt out to the masses by the cynical few, to obtain for themselves their own heaven on this earth.[20]
East Dean District Council
Charlie became an active member of the Labour Party and in 1922, he was elected to represent the Drybrook ward on East Dean District Council which was chaired by George Rowlinson.[21]
In this role, Charlie worked closely with one of the other Labour councillors, Tim Brian, who worked as a deputy at Cannop. Brain had been elected onto the council in 1919 and at the same time, he was elected as a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians. In 1922, Brain was elected as a County Councillor for Drybrook and was described by the Dean Forest Mercury as belonging to “the extreme section of the Labour Party”.
These two men became good close friends and political allies. Their focus was on fighting for the rights of the poorer people in their community. In April 1923, the Dean Forest Mercury reported that:
A motion was brought forward that the Council consider the question of wages unskilled labourers are paid by the Council, the mover being Mr. C. E. Mason with Mr. T. J. Brain seconding. An amendment referring the matter to the Finance Committee was, however, passed. It was stated that the present wage was 36s per week.[22]
Charlie (Credit: Margo Woodhill)
Westbury Board of Guardians
The Boards of Guardians, who administered the Poor Law, were made up of elected representatives. The Guardians had the statutory responsibility to provide relief to the destitute in the form of accommodation in a workhouse or outdoor relief in cash, vouchers or a loan. However, this only applied to the physically fit men if no work was available. The local parish authorities collected the money required to fund the Boards of Guardians from the rates (a tax on property).
In 1923, Charlie (age 35) was elected as a Poor Law Guardian on the Westbury Board of Guardians which was responsible for providing relief to the destitute in the East Dean area. The destitute living in the West Dean area were required to apply for relief from the Monmouth Board of Guardians, those living in Ruardean had to apply to the Ross Boards of Guardians and those living in the Lydney area had to apply to the Chepstow Board of Guardians.
There were approximately 35 Guardians on the Westbury Board, although not all of them could attend every meeting. This was a particular problem for Charlie as he worked shifts and so was not able to attend all the meetings. Charlie immediately came into conflict with some of the older members of the Board who represented the interests of the establishment. In particular, he often clashed with the chair, George Rowlinson.
George Rowlinson (Credit: Dean Heritage Centre)
Rowlinson was the FDMA agent from 1888 to 1918 and had been a member of the Liberal Party but now sat as an independent. In the period before the war, Rowlinson had opposed attempts by the FDMA to affiliate with the Labour Party. He was finally voted out of office in 1918 over his support for the conscription of miners, failure to support his members during industrial disputes and his opposition to the Labour Party. As a result, he was hostile to the existing leaders of the FDMA who were instrumental in getting him voted out of office.[23]
However, Rowlinson had the support of most of the members of the Board, who were mainly senior members of the establishment. In contrast, Charlie could only rely on the support of the four other Labour members. In March 1923, the Western Mail reported the following confrontation when Charlie was rudely interrupted by Rowlinson and other Board members:
Mason remarked he had no more sympathy with a man in the higher walks of life because of his position than he felt for one of the ” submerged tenth.” He went on: “If the Duke of York…”
The Chairman: “No, no. The Duke of York has nothing to do with it. He is not before us.” A chorus of members joined the chairman’s protest against Mr. Mason’s remark.[24]
Charlie was keen to represent the interests of the workhouse residents but often got a hostile response from Rowlinson. In November 1924 the Gloucestershire Echo reported:
Mr. C. E. Mason, at a meeting Tuesday of the Westbury-on-Severn Guardians, reported that some of the old men had confided in him that for more than a month both meat and bread were deficient as to quantity and quality, whilst vegetables – potatoes chiefly – had been scarce. Mr Mason suggested the complaint deserves an inquiry. Three old men—one on crutches—came before the board, and bore out Mr Mason’s statement. The Chairman (Mr G. H. Rowlinson) and several guardians said that such a serious complaint could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and at the Chairman’s suggestion the house committee was instructed to hold an inquiry. The Chairman said that he had himself dined off the ordinary menu, which ought to satisfy anyone.[25]
In the end, an enquiry concluded that the food was adequate.
1926 Lockout
In early 1926, the British colliery owners announced they wanted to end the existing national agreement, cut wages and increase hours. On 1 May 1926, having refused to accept an increase in hours and a reduction in pay, one million miners across Britain, including nearly 6500 miners from the Forest of Dean, were locked out again.
Opening with the heady days of the general strike, the miners’ lockout of 1926 was a pivotal moment in British twentieth-century history and it continued for seven months. In the Forest of Dean, where coal mining was the main industry, its impact was profound and poverty and destitution became widespread.
Merthyr Tydfil Judgment
As a result of a legal ruling made in 1900, called the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment, striking miners were not considered by the authorities to be destitute because they were deemed to have refused work. However, their dependents such as wives, children under fourteen and widowed mothers could be helped with an allowance if they were in severe need.[26] At the start of the General Strike, the FDMA suggested miners should go to the Boards of Guardians to claim Poor Law relief and argue they were not on strike but locked out and destitute.
The Ministry of Health issued a circular recommending that Boards should abide by the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment. The circular added that any money coming into the house from other sources such as donations, working children, pensions or savings could be deducted from the weekly allowance. The families of miners who owned or were buying their property with a mortgage were also disqualified from relief.[27]
The use of the Poor Law powers during the 1926 lockout varied considerably from region to region and the most significant factor influencing a particular Board’s policy was its political stance. In some districts, the Labour members were in the majority on the Boards and argued that the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment ruling was ambiguous because it ignored the statutory duty to provide for all those who were destitute. In addition, there was a question mark over whether the judgement applied to the 1926 dispute because some argued that the colliery owners had broken the terms of a national agreement and so the miners were not on strike and refusing employment but were locked out.
In Durham, Yorkshire and South Wales, some Boards applied for loans to cover extra costs and were able to provide relief to some single miners during the lockout and were relatively generous with the amount they paid out to the wives and children of miners. However, in the Forest, where Labour members were in a minority, most of the guardians insisted on a strict interpretation of the rules and the recommendations in the Ministry of Health circular. They argued that work was available and there was no difference between a locked-out miner and one on strike.
Consequently, in the Forest of Dean, no outdoor relief was available to able-bodied single men or married men. The ruling proved to be particularly harsh on single men who were left with no income. If single men lived in lodgings or with family members, they became dependent on the families with whom they lived, adding an extra burden to those households.
The Labour members on the Boards in the Forest of Dean did their best to challenge the legality and morality of the decisions made by most of the Board members, most of whom were from upper or middle-class backgrounds. Some Board members like Rowlinson, were well-versed in using legalistic arguments and bureaucratic manoeuvres to undermine those Labour members who were less knowledgeable or experienced.
In some respects, the battles fought by the Labour members on the Boards of Guardians were as important as those fought on the picket lines. Without a regular income from the Guardians, it was unlikely the miners could resist the temptation to return to work.
The lengthy debates at the Board of Guardians were often recorded word for word in the local papers, including the many disputes over the attempts by Board members to reduce the allowance and whether the award was issued as a voucher, in cash, or as a loan. Consequently, it is possible to summarise the debates and reproduce some of the exact words spoken by Charlie during his fight to defend the interests of the Forest of Dean miners in 1926.
Westbury Union
In 1926, Labour Party members on the Westbury Board included Frank Ashmead, William Ayland, Abraham Booth, Tim Brain, Harry Morse and Charlie Mason. Ayland was a general labourer from Westbury-on-Severn. Morse was a collier from Blakeney who worked at New Fancy colliery. Booth worked as an insurance agent for a Friendly Society and Ashmead worked as a clerk at Cinderford cooperative bakery. Mason and Morse were now locked-out miners. Brain, who was a colliery deputy, continued to work at Cannop to prevent flooding and help maintain the pit.
Most of the remaining 30 members of the Westbury Board were senior members of the establishment. Most owned their businesses as shopkeepers, tradesmen or farmers and nearly all were employers. Two were members of the aristocracy. They were vehemently opposed to the action of the miners in refusing to accept a reduction in wages and an increase in hours.
The chairman, George Rowlinson, who had fallen out with the FDMA and was hostile to the miners, sat as an Independent. Ashmead was an ex-miner who had worked closely with Rowlinson when he was the agent for the FDMA and, out of loyalty, he often backed Rowlinson up in the meetings.
John Williams
John Williams (Dean Forest Mercury 12 May 1922)
On Friday 7 May, there was a long queue of miners outside the office of the Westbury relieving officer for the Cinderford area, who was registering applications for relief. Consequently, by mid-May, the Westbury Board had received over 700 applications from the families of miners. On 11 May, an emergency meeting of the Westbury Board met to discuss how to deal with the requests for relief.
In response, John Williams, the full-time agent for the FDMA from 1922 to 1953. worked with Charlie to organise a demonstration to pressurise the Westbury Board to provide adequate relief. As a result, a large contingent of East Dean miners and their families walked or cycled to Westbury-on-Severn to lobby the Board meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, the Board agreed that they would receive a deputation from the demonstration to hear their case when they had finished their discussions.
During the discussions, Rowlinson said it might take a week to deal with all the applications and each case would be considered on its merit. After a long discussion, it was agreed that relief could only be offered to women and children and a weekly allowance of 10s for a miner’s wife, 4s for a first child and 2s 6d for other children up to a limit of 25s was decided upon. The relief would not be a loan and they would receive the allowance of 25 per cent in cash and 75 per cent in vouchers to be exchanged in local stores. The relief would be granted for only two weeks after which the cases would be reviewed. This amount of relief was less than recommended by the Ministry of Health and less than provided by some other districts.[28] Mason volunteered to join eight other Guardians on a relief committee to meet in Cinderford to consider further applications for relief and to grant relief according to the above scales.[29]
Throughout the meeting, there was some tension between Rowlinson and Charlie, who did his best to argue in the interests of destitute families and single men. At one point, Charlie correctly challenged Rowlinson’s claim that the law said that destitute single miners could not even be admitted to the workhouse.
The attitude of some of the Guardians appeared to be that the money belonged to them as ratepayers and they were donating it to the mining families out of charity. During the discussion, Charlie made the point that the miners were part of the community too and paid rates and so were entitled to benefits as of right in time of need. Daniel Walkley, who ran a transport business in Cinderford, and J. S. Bate, an estate agent from Blaisdon, claimed that their duty was to the ratepayers and that the young single miners could not be destitute because work was available to them. The Dean Forest Mercury reported Charlie’s reply:
Where? …As the youngest member of the Board, he understood his duty quite well and was not going to Mr Walkey to learn it. He was representing the public, and a most essential part of the public. The miners were in the public area. He took it that young men also put money into the fund for administering the Poor Law.[30]
Charlie went on to argue that the Board’s duty was to consider the destitution of members of the community when assessing if relief should be provided without prejudice. He added that the Ministry of Health had stated that the Guardians should not take sides in industrial conflicts which it appeared as if they were doing.
Williams and Thomas Etheridge, the full-time financial secretary of the FDMA, were then invited into the meeting as representatives of the delegation. They presented a case for relief for all miners, particularly the single men, arguing that it would be humiliating for them to enter the workhouse. He added that another vulnerable group was made up of those who owned their houses or were paying a mortgage as they were in danger of losing their property if they could not keep up payments. He asked for relief to be paid wholly in cash to prevent exploitation by tradesmen.[31]
When addressing the crowd of miners and their families outside after the meeting, Williams reported that the Board had decided that the cases of able-bodied single men would not be entertained but, if completely destitute, they may be allowed a bed in the workhouse. He reported the cases of house owners would be considered on merit and any money received from the MFGB or elsewhere would be deducted from the allowance. The relief would be paid out at Wesley Hall in Cinderford on Saturday mornings. Williams added:
I want to acknowledge we owe the Board of Guardians something for the courtesy they have shown us this morning.[32]
Loan
At a meeting of the Westbury Board held Tuesday 25 May, the Guardians were informed by the finance committee that by the end of next week the Board will be about £6000 overdrawn so it would be necessary to arrange an overdraft with the bank. They added the precepts from the local authority due to them as their share of the money collected from the rates was due 1 June but it was unclear if they would receive them. The use of overdrafts and government loans to Boards of Guardians, during this period, was widespread and some other Boards were far more heavily in debt.
As a result, the Finance Committee presented a motion that stated that from now on the grant should be in the form of a loan and reviewed every week. In response, Charlie argued that:
He could see no reason why the grant should be in the future in the form of a loan. He thought the subject was carefully considered last week and he did not know what the prospects were of return even if they did grant it on loan. It seemed to him more or less a farce because the people were destitute and knowing the district very well, he could not see what chance of their paying the money back.
Charlie argued that East Dean was more disadvantaged than other districts because the house coal pits in East Dean often only worked part-time. However, when it came to a vote, Charlie only got the backing of four other Labour Party members while Rowlinson, Ashmead and the others voted in favour of the finance committee motion. It was also agreed that the Board should meet every Tuesday while the present emergency lasted.
Charlie vs Rowlinson
On Tuesday 1 June, the Westbury Union met again and the Guardians were informed that a meeting of the Finance Committee had produced a report which recommended that relief for the first child should be reduced from 4s to 2s 6d. Rowlinson then informed the meeting that a resolution had been passed at the Finance Committee that the allowances would be fully awarded in the form of vouchers. Booth complained about this decision but was overruled by Rowlinson who claimed the conditions had changed.
Charlie argued that the resolution about the vouchers had not been agreed upon at a full meeting of the Board and challenged Rowlinson over the undemocratic way the decision had been made. He then moved a motion, seconded by Booth, that the decision be rescinded. Rowlinson replied that he needed seven days’ notice to accept a motion to rescind a resolution. Charlie attempted to respond but was told by Rowlinson that he had spoken more than once and he should “not strain the feelings of the Board”.
After more discussion, Charlie moved an amendment that the allowance for the first child remains at 4s. However, the motion was defeated with twenty-two against and only Labour Party members (Charlie, Abraham Booth, Harry Morse, William Ayland and Tim Brain) voting in favour. At that point, the atmosphere became quite tense when it appeared that Charlie accused Rowlinson of lacking courage. Rowlinson replied, “I don’t allow you or anyone to tackle me on my courage.”[33]
Finally, Brain presented a resolution, seconded by Booth, that the families of miners whose property is mortgaged should also get relief but this was defeated with 11 votes in favour and 13 against.[34]
Cinderford
On Tuesday afternoon 8 June a meeting was held at Cinderford Town Hall with Enos Taylor in the chair. Taylor was a locked-out miner who worked at Foxes Bridge colliery. He said the main purpose of the meeting was to protest against the decision of the relieving officers to deduct money from the loans to those on relief, on the assumption that they had received money from the MFGB donated by the Russian miners.
Williams said he also wanted to protest against the decision of the Westbury Board to reduce the allowance for the first child and provide relief solely in the form of vouchers. He pointed out that the vouchers were provided only for food and did not cover other necessities like medicines. In addition, he argued that the families of miners who owned their own houses needed help too. The Dean Forest Mercury reported that Williams:
Thought it was only fitting that he should read the names of the five persons who had displayed with courage and remained so loyal to them in the discussions at the Guardians as reported in the “Mercury” – Mr Morse of Blakeney; Charlie Mason – who was putting up a very vigorous fight indeed (applause) – Tim Brain, Abraham Booth, and William Ayland (applause). These were five persons who had been standing up in the interests of everybody.[35]
Williams argued that they needed to make a protest or the Guardians would continue to reduce the allowances. He argued that there may have to be an increase in the rates to cover the cost and felt that most people in the community were prepared to make this sacrifice. A resolution of protest against the action of the Westbury Board in reducing the allowances was proposed by Joseph Holder and seconded by Jack Harris, both locked-out miners, and passed without dissent.[36]
Bureaucratic Manoeuvres
On Tuesday 8 June, the Westbury Board met again and Rowlinson continued to use bureaucratic manoeuvres to undermine attempts by the Labour Party members to challenge his authority. He reported that some traders had complained they had lost custom because most of the people receiving the vouchers were exchanging them at the Co-operative Store. As a result, Charlie put forward a motion that 25 per cent of the allowance be in cash to give those receiving relief more choices. However, this motion was disallowed by Rowlinson.
Booth then presented a motion that applicants could receive an extra allowance to cover rent and mortgage interest repayments and that families owning their own houses should be eligible for relief. Rowlinson refused to accept the motion, arguing it needed to be tabulated in the correct form and given to the clerk to be presented at the next meeting. Charlie asked if families needed to travel to Cinderford to make a new application every week. Rowlinson argued it was not possible to make any changes because the Board had already passed a motion to grant relief one week at a time.[37]
Co-operative Society Membership
Most miners living in Cinderford were members of the Cinderford Co-operative Society, which was very much part of the labour movement in the Forest. Cinderford Co-operative Society, just like other Co-operative Societies in the Forest of Dean, was run and managed by its members in the interests of its members, mainly to provide relatively cheap food. In Cinderford where eighty per cent of the population were miners, the management committee included some miners.[38]
The hostility of some members of the Board towards the miners was highlighted at the next meeting of the Westbury Board on Tuesday 15 June. Rowlinson had discovered that members of the Co-operative Society in Cinderford needed to hold a maximum of three pounds in their account to maintain their membership. If the amount dropped below this then they would lose the benefits of membership. Rowlinson claimed that Co-operative Society members could not be classed as destitute as they had £3 in savings and therefore were not entitled to relief. Charlie responded by presenting a motion, seconded by Ayland, that the Board consider such cases as destitute. However, Charlie was forced to withdraw the resolution on being told by Rowlinson that the Board was legally obliged to strictly follow its rules on savings.[39] In contrast, most other Boards of Guardians in mining areas were far less rigid in their interpretation of the law.
Following this, one of the Labour Party members, Harry Morse, explained that under the existing system, any money coming into the house was deducted from the allowance which had a maximum of 25s. He proposed that in future in a house with four, five or six children then if 12s were going into the house in income from other sources this should now be ignored. Likewise, 9s should be ignored if there are three children and 7s if there is a wife and child. He presented a resolution to this effect which was seconded by Booth and Charlie.
Charlie spoke in favour of the motion adding that it was wrong that war pensions were being deducted from the allowance. However, Rowlinson told Charlie he could not speak again. When the motion was put to the vote it lost with only the four Labour Party members present voting in favour.[40]
The Labour Party members continued to make a stand. On 22 June, Booth put forward a motion, seconded by Mason that the decision to pay allowances in kind made on 25 May should be rescinded, but was lost with only the five Labour Party members voting in favour. Similarly, a motion presented by Booth and seconded by Mason that “an allowance be given to cover rent” was also defeated.[41]
No More Relief
By mid-August, about 750 women and children were receiving relief, in the form of loans, from the Westbury Board of Guardians. On 3 August, the Board decided by a small majority to cut off all relief to miners’ wives and children arguing that since some pits were open work was available to them. The motion was presented by Mr Blanton and seconded by Mr Boughton and stated that:
Relief orders shall continue for this week and then cease. [42]
The motion was passed with ten in favour and five against. Charlie and the other Labour members pointed out that as far as they knew Westbury was the only Board in the country to cut all relief to the families of miners. However, Rowlinson and his supporters on the Board refused to listen.[43] Tim Brain was shocked and:
appealed to the Christian men: Did they want the country built upon slavery? It was not Christian If men wished to force them to that. They talked about relieving the miners, but it was their wives and children they appealed for. But if they were, they were not dealing with cowards, but with men who had stood all these weeks on empty stomachs for what they thought right.[44]
The decision of the Westbury Board of Guardians was highly controversial and possibly illegal because Guardians had a statutory duty to provide relief to the destitute, provided they were not an unemployed man for whom work was available. The only other Board of Guardians to take such extreme action in the summer of 1926 were Bolton at the end of July and Lichfield on 3 September. This had a significant impact on the course of the lockout in the Forest and achieved its aim of driving some miners back to work.
Purcell
Alf Purcell
As a result of the decision of the Westbury Board of Guardians to discontinue relief to miners’ families, Alf Purcell, M.P. for the Forest of Dean, wrote a letter to Chamberlain, the Minister of Health in which he said:
I draw your attention to the matter of the Westbury-on-Severn Board Guardians in connection with their refusal of outdoor relief to miners within the Westbury Union. As far I can gather, the Board has, in effect, stopped outdoor relief to all except those who have applied for work at the pits and been refused. (inreference to men applying for work at pits where some men have resumed employment).
Further, if my information is correct, it would appear clear that the Westbury-on-Severn Board are not carrying out their duty set forth in the circular referred to by Sir Kingsley Wood, in the House of Commons on Thursday, July 22, and set out on page 1,560, Parliamentary Debates, follows:
The function of the Guardians is to relieve destitution within the limits prescribed by law, and they are in no way concerned with the merits of an individual dispute, even though it results in applications for relief. They cannot, therefore, give any weight to their views in dealing with the applications made.” Again, on page 1,674, Sir Kingsley Wood stated: “But where on the one hand we have case like West Ham, or the other hand case like Lichfield, both at opposite ends as it were the matter which we are discussing, then it is properly—as I think the House will agree—the duty of the Ministry of Health to see that the law is complied with.”
I need scarcely assure you that the position is a rather serious one calling for urgent attention, and I shall feel ever so much obliged if you will give your immediate attention to the whole matter.[45]
In response, on 11 August, the FDMA organised a mass meeting of miners and their families in Cinderford, where Williams argued that the guardians could be breaking the law and suggested that the miners’ wives should apply on mass for admission into the workhouse.[46] Williams, Charlie and a group of miners’ wives decided to implement a plan that women should seek admission to the workhouse by obtaining the necessary orders from the relieving officer. Consequently, by 14 August the relieving officer in Cinderford had received over 100 applications for admission to the workhouse.[47]
On the 13th of August, the local press published the latest figures of men returning to work in the Forest pits. Apart from the safety men, the figures were: Eastern United 260, Lightmoor 272, Norchard 75, Waterloo 28, New Regulator 14, Slope 13, New Fancy 15, and Oldcroft Colliery 43 giving a total of 720 out of about 6,000. Most of these men were from East Dean, the district covered by the Westbury Board. Only a handful of men had returned to the pits in West Dean covered by the Monmouth Board who were still providing relief to the families of locked-out miners.
Protest
In addition to the plan that women should seek admission to the workhouse on 20 August, Williams and Charlie worked with a group of miners’ wives to organise a protest outside the Westbury workhouse and arranged transport from Cinderford. On Tuesday 17 August several hundred men, women and children met in Cinderford. Some were transported by coach but most had to walk the eight miles from the Cinderford area to Westbury.
The demonstration was held outside a meeting of the Board and was met by a large contingent of mounted and foot police. The demonstrators were rowdy but peaceful and were led by the women who sang songs including the Red Flag.
A motion presented by Booth and seconded by Mason that Purcell could be allowed to speak to the Board was refused by a majority vote of 13 to 10. An attempt by one of the members of the Board to present a motion to offer relief for one more week was ruled out of order by Rowlinson but the Board agreed to consider each of the 600 applications from the families of miners on merit. However, on 17 July 1926, 3,677 people were receiving Poor Law relief at the Westbury Union but by 14 August this number had been reduced to 388, which confirmed that the majority of families had had their relief cancelled.
A deputation of two men and two women asked for immediate relief for the hungry crowd and as a result, they were provided with bread and cheese by workhouse employees before returning home where they were greeted as heroines.[48] Meanwhile, the local women’s committee of the Labour Party raised a sum sufficient to pay 4s. per head to the miners affected by the Westbury Board’s decision.[49]
Occupation of Workhouse
On Friday 20 August the FDMA arranged transport from Cinderford to Westbury for about 300 women, children and babies, who had received orders from the relieving officer which entitled them admission into the workhouse. Some women brought as many as 6 or 7 children and, as there was no spare space on the coaches, some men and women set off on foot.
On arrival at the workhouse Williams and Charlie met Mr and Mrs Striven, the master and matron, and told them that they had no choice but to admit the women who possessed the necessary orders from the relieving officer. After receiving tea, bread and margarine some walked back to Cinderford while about 100 women and 200 children entered the institution. The accommodation was poor and crowded with only 100 beds, so most of the women stayed up all night and were later accused by the Strivens of shouting and singing all night, tearing pillowslips for the babies and refusing to make their beds or doing any domestic work. However, having made their protest, it was clear the institution could not cope, so they all decided to return to Cinderford the following evening.[50]
In 1987, Ellen Jones, at the age of 89 wrote an article in the Forest and Wye Valley Review, called When Charlie Mason led the Miners, describing her experiences of the occupation.
The miners’ leader was Charlie Mason of Brierley whose daughter is Winifred Foley, the author of A Child in the Forest. I don’t remember if he encouraged us or if we group of women and children of our own free will went to the Poor Law Institution at Westbury to try and get help for our men.
Some of us went very bravely – I with my two little girls and Jim, a baby in arms. While there we tried to make the best of it. One jolly woman would say. “Never mind girls – cheer up – I can smell bacon and eggs cooking for breakfast.” But no such luck! Just porridge!
The staff did their best for us down there but we couldn’t cope for long, so we all decided to return home. On the weary walk to Cinderford, we met our husbands coming down to bring us a bit of tea and sugar. The miners’ leader met me and asked if I would take my children into Cinderford Town Hall on the back way and when I did so I was met by a roomful of people cheering and clapping, I felt quite a heroine![51]
Report from the Master
On Tuesday 24 August, the Westbury Board of Guardians heard the following report from Mr Scrivens, the Master of the workhouse:
On Friday evening August 20th about 7-30 o’clock 86 women and 184 children were admitted to this Institution and on Saturday afternoon 7 women and 19 children were admitted, making a total of 93 women and 203 children. The applicants remained for 4 hours on the highway before coming in.
All of them had orders of admission from the Relieving Officer with the exception of one woman with five children who stated she had lost the order and 7 other women from Brierley who said they had been to the Relieving Officer that Friday evening but that he was out when they called. In the circumstances I admitted them.
The party were accompanied by Mr Mason (Guardian) and Mr Williams (Miners Agent). The usual Dietary for supper consisting of tea, bread and margarine, was served, but a considerable quantity was left on the plates, the women stating they could not eat margarine.
The young children, pregnant women and nursing mothers were given milk, and hot milk was supplied to babies three times during the night. Milk was served on admission when Mr. Mason was present and, he assisted in this.
Everyone had a bed with the exception of small children who slept two in a bed and plenty of bed clothing was provided. This was rather awkward to arrange at first as parties would not divide for some time and in some cases, they pushed the beds together, this accounts for the statements that 4 or 5 slept in a bed.
They kept singing and shouting up to midnight. The Matron appealed to them at midnight to be reasonable as they were upsetting the old people and those in the sick wards which was unreasonable by their singing and noise, they were not quiet all night.
The new blankets that had been purchased were trampled on. They burst the locks of cupboards open and tore the pillow slips to use for their babies and after use threw them down the lavatories. They refused to empty slops and upon being spoken to about this took up a threatening attitude towards the staff.
The women complained to Mr Mason on his arrival at Midday that they couldn’t obtain soap and water to wash their children with. This was not so as they were shown the bathroom where there were baths, bowls, hot and cold water and an unlimited supply of soap, towels and bath sheets. They were very noisy all night and none of the staff could go to bed until long past midnight.
Mr. Williams called on Saturday morning at 8 o’clock and asked if he could go through and speak to the women, but I told him I thought it was not advisable for me to allow him to do that, and he used rather insulting remarks towards me, one remark was that the meal supplied was pigwash. Not a single complaint was received about the dinner consisting of bread meat and potatoes and the children also received rice pudding. With regard to the bedding provided, all our spare beds were used and 20 straw mattresses were made up in the emergency – straw mattresses are used in many Institutions for this purpose.
There is ample accommodation in the Institution for the number we admitted and for more. It is within my knowledge that some of the women handed two shillings and half crowns to the Officials to buy biscuits for them and quite a lot of money was spent in this way in the village.
I should on behalf of the Matron and myself like to commend to the Board the untiring efforts of all the Indoor Officials, all of whom remained up all night as it was impossible to retire to bed on account of the noise and the fact that although we had settled them down comfortably for the night they would not do so.
I should also like to say that a number of the women on taking their discharge on Saturday afternoon expressed their appreciation of what had been done on their behalf and said they couldn’t possibly expect anything better in the circumstances.
Mr Mason came to the House on Friday the 20th of August and was shown by the Matron the accommodation in the women’s Block and the children’s Block which had been prepared for them, he expressed his approval of the arrangements and signed the Visiting Committee Book, he also inspected the Dietary Sheet.
On Saturday Mr Mason came to the House and was given an opportunity of inspecting the quarters and the condition they had been left by the persons admitted on Friday, but he declined.
Mr. Mason addressed the Women in the House and said he would see what could be done about the Dietary on Tuesday if they would remain in the House. In the presence of the women, he was told that the Dietary could not be altered.
B.H.Scriven (Master).
The Board passed a motion commending the Master and indoor staff on how they had discharged their duties. This was followed by a motion presented by Booth and seconded by Brain that the Board continue to provide outdoor relief but this failed. However, the Board did agree to hear a statement from a deputation representing the families of locked-out miners, but their appeals to continue to provide relief were ignored.
Consequently, the Labour members became very angry with the attitude of the majority of Board members who were unprepared to listen to the arguments presented by the delegation. Arguments broke out and, in the end, the meeting had to be abandoned.[52]
Destitution
With the support of Williams and Charlie, the miners’ wives continued their campaign and organised two marches headed by brass bands, one from Cinderford and the other from Drybrook, which converged at the Co-operative Society’s field in Cinderford. In his speech, Williams argued that the Westbury Board’s decision might be illegal if it led to destitution.
The Ministry of Health warned the Westbury Board that it was their statutory duty to provide relief to anyone in their community who was destitute. However, in the end, no action was taken against the Board because it argued that its duty to prevent destitution was covered by law if the workhouse was offered as an alternative.
Some Forest mining families were running out of food and this had a significant impact on the decision of some men in the Forest of Dean to return to work. This situation contrasted with other areas where the miners and their families continued to receive relief. For John Williams:
This was the beginning of the end of the strike in the Forest of Dean. Nearly every day now I was called to most of the collieries to deal with men returning to work. The workmen had been out of work for over four months. They had not received a penny strike pay from our funds. We had no funds. The only payment received by the workmen of this district was one payment out of what was described as ‘Russian Money’.[53]
Evacuation
Consequently, it was decided to organise an evacuation scheme for children to stay with sympathetic families who could afford to look after them. It was agreed that for families with more than three or more children, the fourth child should be evacuated to London. One of those chosen was Winifred Foley, the daughter of Charlie. Winifred recollects her expereince on arriving in London:
One by one the children were led out as people decided which of them to take into their homes. As the numbers thinned we huddled in the middle. Soon only two were left: Florence and me. ‘O God, don’t let me be last!’ I prayed. After a pause, Florence was taken out. But it seemed that the stomach of charity was not strong enough to take me. I hung my head in shame. I was not only unwanted, I was a nuisance. To make it worse I couldn’t hold back my tears. I wiped them away quickly with the sleeve of my cardigan. As I stood there alone, a thin young man with a very kind face and manner hurried up to me. ‘Come on, kiddie,’ he said, ‘I know where we’ve got a nice home for you. Are you hungry?’[54]
Defeat
Charlie continued to press the Board to support the destitute in his community. At a Board meeting on 7 September 1926, he protested over a decision to refuse relief to a widow who was the mother of a locked-out miner. However, Rowlinson argued that the case was the same as all the others in that work was available to the son and it was his duty to maintain his mother.[55]
Meanwhile, pressure on the families in West Dean increased when, on 9 October, the Monmouth Guardians announced they would cut off all relief to the dependents of locked-out miners. The Labour members on the Board protested but to no avail. At about the same time, a similar decision was made by the Guardians on the Ross and Chepstow Boards.
However the drift back to work was now beginning in other districts and by the end of November, the MFGB Executive had no choice but to accept defeat and contacted the government and informed them they would accept a reduction in wages provided they were framed by a new national agreement. After consulting with the owners, the government came up with new proposals for a return to work but insisted on district agreements on wages and hours. On Friday 18 November, the Gloucester Citizen announced:
Mr David Organ, President of the Dean Forest Miners’ Association, presided on Wednesday night over a meeting of the Executive Council, when the business was to receive reports brought in from the lodges to the view of the rank and file on the Government memorandum. The result was somewhat of a surprise, for the report presented at the close of the examination of the returns showed that there was practically unanimous expression of acceptance of the Government terms. Mr Jack Williams, the Miners’ Agent, therefore received a mandate to say that the voice of the Forest of Dean miners was favourable to a settlement. The advice was given that men who had not already done so should sign on at once. The dispute in the Forest of Dean coalfield is therefore at an end.[56]
Charlie and his colleagues fought hard and did the best they could against the combined forces of the colliery owners, the government and their supporters within the established elites in the Forest of Dean. The seven-month national mining lockout of 1926 was one of the most important industrial disputes of the twentieth century. It came to symbolise the defeat of the labour movement in the interwar years, casting a long shadow over industrial relations in the mining industry, and epitomizing the predicament of British miners in the early decades of the century.
Blacklisted
Most of the experienced FDMA members were blacklisted. Gilbert Roberts remembers Charlie was also blacklisted:
After the strike was over, he wasn’t allowed back to his pit. It was seven years before he worked in a pit again, this time at Northern United.[57]
Winfred Foley, remembers the support her family got from other members of the community and during her dad’s “seven-year victimisation from the pits these men did not forget us”.[58] She added:
The injustice of this made Dad into a Socialist, his outspoken condemnation of local pit-owners leading to victimisation and barring him from work in the Forest mines for seven years, which made our lot worse than most. With a couple of other erudite miners, he found an outlet for his thoughts and feelings in discussions and arguments round the fireside.[59]
Three of Charlie’s close friends were the brothers Tim, Micah and Albert Brain. Tim and Albert worked at Cannop as deputies and Micah worked at Waterloo as a colliery watchman. A deputy is a colliery official charged with the supervision of safety, the ventilation of the workings, the inspection of timber work, etc. Deputies carried on working through the lockout with agreement of the FDMA to keep the pits safe, free from flooding, etc.
When Marion, who was Albert’s daughter, asked Mrs Hale, her teacher at Slad School in the 1920s what made Charlie different? Mrs Hale said, Charlie was a communist. He was about what Communism really means – fair shares for everyone – and added that was why he couldn’t get a job and why they were so poor.[59b]
The 1930s were tough but even more so for those miners, like Charlie, who were blacklisted. He obtained some work where he could but it was hardly enough for his family to live on. Consequently, Bess and Winifred had to leave home and get work as servants working for the wealthy and send money home. Winifred said Charlie was a skilled craftsman and engineer and kept busy at:
His little wooden workshop hut where he mended our boots, patched up pit-lamps, and put broken worn-out furniture together again for us and his neighbours, all for goodwill and because he had the skill to do it. [60]
He repaired an old lathe someone gave him and taught himself how to use it so well that he became the honorary village carpenter and bodger (traditional woodturner), producing turned chair legs and other wooden objects. With a large old metal container and a pipe bellows, he made a miniature smithy to mend pit-lamps and tools, and do other small metal repairs. He was a keen herbalist and a bee-keeper, so we always had honey. He built a little glass hive in the living-room window for us children to observe what went on in a beehive.[61]
Marie, Charlie and Gwen (Credit: Margo Woodhill)
Winifred says her Dad loved nature and was a keen herbalist and used his homemade medicines to cure:
us with his home-made potions. He gathered elderflower, yarrow, camomile, and other wild herbs, dried them and stored them in brown paper bags for his bitter brews. Constipation, coughs, colic, sickness, diarrhoea, sores, fever, delirium — whatever we had, out came the dreaded brown jug, and onto the hob it went with its infusion of herbs.[62]
Charlie also enjoyed developing and printing photographs and making wireless sets:
Wireless was in its infancy, especially where we lived, and Dad was fascinated by the phenomenon of sound waves. He bought a book about it and reckoned if he could afford the parts he could build a set.[63]
Northern United
Northern United Colliery
However, things improved with the opening of a new deep pit, Northern United, by Henry Crawshay and Company in 1934. The manager, Joseph Morrison, constructed a house for himself nearby and hired Charlie to build the garden. The pit was situated near Brierley and, as Morrison was seeking skilled miners, Charlie obtained a job there as a maintenance man. Within a few years, he was promoted to the role of colliery deputy (examiner) whose job was to examine a designated area of the mine before a shift started to ensure that all the statutory rules were complied with and the area was safe for the men to work in.
Mining is by its very nature dangerous and accidents often happen. On 25 May 1936, John Roberts (age 50) was killed by the falling of 3 cwt of dirt from the roof of the face. His death was due to internal haemorrhage and fracturing of nearly all his ribs. During the inquest, it was reported that:
Charlie Enoch Mason, colliery examiner, of Brierley, said he went to fetch the stretcher, but found that it had been removed from its usual place at the bottom of the pit. He phoned to the pit head for it, and it was brought quickly, without any delay. Mr. Morrison explained that the stretcher had been taken up to be cleaned. [64]
About this time, Charlie started to suffer from deafness and so he was downgraded from his role as examiner and was sent back to work as an miner. He remained a member of the FDMA and continued to attend their meetings and took on responsible roles.
World War Two
Charlie, just like his colleagues at Northern, was committed to supporting the government in its war against fascism. As a result, the Forest miners worked flat out during the war including working extra shifts and initially working through all their holidays. Charlie was a member of the production committee at Northern whose task was to consider all possible ways to increase productivity, reduce absenteeism and avoid unnecessary industrial disputes.
The government and media applied a huge amount of pressure on the miners to increase productivity because of the shortage of coal for the munitions industry. However, the labour force was getting older and some miners were disabled and suffering from lung disease and unable to work the long hours expected of them resulting in sickness and absenteeism. An additional problem impacting productivity was a huge shortage of skilled labour as many miners had volunteered for the military or moved to better paid work with safer and healthier conditions. As a result in the Spring of 1941, the government introduced an Essential Work Order (EWO) which placed a statutory requirement on all skilled workers to register and tied workers to jobs considered essential for the war effort such as munitions, agriculture and mining.
The EWO empowered the Ministry of Labour to prevent workers from leaving the industry without permission and to direct skilled workers to wherever they were most needed. The EWO made persistent absentees the subject of the discipline of the national service officer. Charlie now had no choice but to remain working long hours with few breaks. However, he was part of an ageing workforce often suffering from lung disease and a shortage of food. Exhaustion soon crept in and so in the summer of 1941, after a strike at Princess Royal colliery, the Forest miners voted to take their one week’s holiday which was their right.
Death
The constant pressure to increase production coupled with exhaustion and long hours inevitably impacted safety. Charlie was now in his late fifties and was still required to carry out heavy physical work. Fifteen men were killed while working in Forest pits during World War Two.[65]
After the war in Europe ended in September 1945, there was still a shortage of coal and pressure on the miners to raise productivity and the EWO remained in place. On 13 December 1945, Charlie Mason became one more person among the thousands killed in the coalfields of Britain.
Dean Forest Mercury 14 December 1945
The Dean Forest Mercury on 21 December 1945 reported:
A well-known and highly esteemed Brierley inhabitant, Mr Charlie E. Mason (59) was accidentally killed at Northern United Colliery, on Thursday, Dec 13th, as reported in last week’s Mercury. He was a member of the Northern United Lodge and the Production Committee and a prominent Trade Unionist, and highly regarded by the officials and his fellow workmen. He was keenly interested in the social life of the district. He leaves a wife, one son and four daughters to whom the greatest sympathy is extended.
Charlie’s watch recovered from his body after he was killed (Credit: Clive Mason)
Charlie was working with his long-term friend Tim Brain. The accident happened while they were using a ‘Sylvester’ to pull a ring from a roadway using a timber setting, which was used to support the roof, as an anchor.[66] Tragically instead of pulling the ring, the timber setting moved and this caused the roof to collapse crushing both men.
The alarm was sounded. Within a short time rescuers were attacking the mound of debris which had engulfed the two friends. Brain, severely crushed and suffering with a broken leg, was quickly located. ” Never mind me—find Charlie,” he pleaded as he pointed out the spot in which he last saw his comrade alive. And still trapped, he watched the rescue party turn to dig for Mason and later he saw them extricate him. But Mason had worked his last shift —he was dead.[67]
On Saturday 15 December a meeting of the Forest of Dean Trades Council, which is made up of delegates from nearly all the trade union branches in the Forest, passed a resolution moved by the secretary, G D H Jenkins, to send a letter of sympathy to Charlie’s family.
Jenkins paid a warm tribute to the work Mr Mason had done for the betterment of the working man.[68]
The chair, William Ellway, added that:
Mr Mason was sincere in his convictions and full of enthusiasm for the cause of workers. He is another of our comrades who had died with his boots on. That is often said of soldiers: it can be said of miners.[69]
The day of Charlie’s funeral was 17 Dec 1945. It was a cold, windy day with sleet and snow. Despite Charlie’s agnosticism, a preacher led a small service outside his cottage in Brierley which was attended by a large crowd of mourners. Charlie’s work comrades then carried his coffin through the woods to the Holy Trinity Church in Drybrook where the internment took place.
They carried him in relays, nearly two miles to the church, and everyone was glad to take the burden.[70]
A huge crowd attended his funeral including many relatives, friends, and work colleagues. Representing the FDMA were William Ellway, chairman, John Williams, agent, Harry Morgan, finance officer, Wallace Jones, safety officer and Harry Barton, the Forest of Dean representative on the South Wales Miners’ Federation Executive. Among the flowers there was a “Tribute from “A Friend.”
In him we have lost a great champion in the cause of humanity. All who knew him remember his struggles for a better system of society, his work with the council: his connection with the Miners’ Executive, and pit Production Committees earned him great respect. Some will remember his leading a band of women to Westbury Institution in order to strengthen the case of the miners on strike, He was an inspiration to the young; he comforted the old with a reasoning which they understood was unselfish to a fine degree. [71]
On 4 January the Dean Forest Mercury published the following letter:
You have been very generous to the space allotted on the death of my dear father, Charles Mason. But from a heart broken in grief at his passing, I feel the public should know how just and kind and a dear parent he was. And in his memory, I would urge fathers to practice tolerance, love and understanding towards their children. Thank you, Dad from one of his children.
John Williams paid tribute to Charlie as follows:
Charlie was held in respect, a reflection of his own estimable life. He was not without his faults, but the few he had were eclipsed by his many virtues and outstanding merits. The highest testimony to his integrity is that his innumerable friends thought, felt and said the same about him when he was alive as they are thinking, feeling and saying now. Charlie Mason had known and experienced prolonged and intense poverty, and during his life had endured severe privations and hardships because of his convictions, yet he bore no malice towards those who brought these privations and hardships upon him. Charlie Mason was a thinker and it was always a delight to listen to him. He was sometimes away from the point at issue, but by some means or other, he was more charming and graceful on those occasions than when he addressed himself to the point. The world would be better in many ways if there were more people like Charlie Mason.[72]
The inquest was conducted by the Forest of Dean Divisional Coroner, (M. F. Carter). The local Inspector of Mines, W. E. Thomas, who was present at the inquest, strongly condemned the anchoring of the Sylvester to a wooden prop. However, Lewis Witt, the undermanager at Northern United Colliery argued that considering the peculiar circumstances involved – the nature of the soft roof – there was some justification for the method the two men had used.
Clearly, there was pressure to get the job done quickly. Normally it was customary for the men to take the rest of the shift off out of respect. However, at this time, the demand for coal was so great there was no time for respect and the men were told to carry on working for the rest of the day.
Ralph Anstis said that whenever his name was mentioned in the Forest a smile came over people’s faces. ‘Oh, yes, I remember Charlie Mason’ they would say with affection’. [73]
[1] Ralph Anstis on Forest of Dean Community Radio 2002-2003 sent to me by Clive Mason and Paul Mason.
[2] Winifred Foley, A Child in the Forest (London: BBC, 1974), Winifred Foley, Full Hearts and Empty Bellies, (London: Abacus, 2009) and Winifred Foley, No Pipe Dreams for Father (Coleford: Douglas Mclean, 1977).
[3] Winifred Foley, Great Aunt Lizzie (Oxford: Isis, 2002) and Winifred Foley, In and Out of the Forest (London: Century Publishing, 2009)
[23] Ian Wright, Coal on One Hand, Men on the Other, The Forest of Dean Miners’ Association and the First World War 1910-1922 (Bristol: BRHG, Chapter Four.
[25]Gloucestershire Echo 12 November 1924 and Westbury Board Minutes 11 November 1924..
[26] During the 1898 miners’ strike in South Wales the Merthyr Board of Guardians decided to support destitute strikers, even though they had voluntarily withdrawn their labour. As a result, coal companies took the Merthyr Board of Guardians to court because they did not want striking workers to gain any financial support. In the subsequent famous High Court ruling in 1900, the Master of the Rolls (the equivalent of today’s Supreme Court), ruled the policy of relieving the strikers had been unlawful. Consequently, the Guardians were now only allowed to help dependents of strikers if they were destitute while single men had no access to poor relief whatsoever. The high court verdict became known as The Merthyr Tydfil Judgment of 1900.
[27] In the Forest of Dean, there was a higher proportion of owner-occupiers than in most other mining areas. This was because, after the 1831 riots, squatters who had encroached on statutory Forest land were allowed to remain in their properties and many were given freehold status.
[28] The recommended figures by the Ministry of Health were: 12s for a miner’s wife and 4s for a child (up to age 14) in the form of a loan up to a maximum of 32s per week.
[38] An excellent history of the Co-operative Society in the Forest of Dean can be found in Alistair Graham’s book The Forest Pioneers, The Story of the Co-operative Movement in the Forest of Dean published by the Co-operative Society in 2002.
This is an account of my trips to South Yorkshire Coalfield in the Autumn of 1984 during the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike. It includes a description of my visit to Shireoaks Colliery in Worksop where I was a guest of friends, George and Christina Bell. I describe my experience of being attacked and beaten by the police while on the picket line at Maltby Colliery when I visited the pit with George in September 1984. Also included are accounts from the other members of the mining community and details of some of the events that took place at Maltby and Shireoaks during the strike.
At the time, I was living in London in a short-life Housing Association house in Shepherds Bush which I shared with two others. I was a member of Hammersmith and Fulham Miners Support Group, which was twinned with Sutton Manor Colliery in Lancashire. During the strike, miners from Sutton Manor, Shireoaks and Manton collieries (Worksop) stayed with us while they were in London for meetings or fundraising.
Ian Wright
We stood up to the establishment. Alright, we might not have won it, but we stood up for what we’ve believed in, we stood up for what we thought was right, and it’s worth remembering that people can still do this.[1] Christina Bell
Towards the end of September 1984, the national papers were full of articles about running battles between heavily out-numbered police and 5000 violent miners’ pickets at Maltby Colliery, South Yorkshire. The trouble started when police reinforcements were brought in from other areas to clear the way for some subcontractors to enter the pit to carry out development work.
News articles and TV commentators reported that on Friday 21 September, there was a sustained attack lasting for about four hours by pickets using bricks, bottles and catapults firing rolled-up pieces of lead, ball bearings and marbles. The police claimed that dog handlers and their dogs in nearby woods were attacked with air guns and road signs. They added that walls near the pit entrance were torn down and used as missiles and to build barricades.
This is how the BBC and the Daily Mirror reported the Maltby picket of Friday 21 September.
According to the newspapers, on the following Monday morning violence erupted again outside Maltby Colliery with pickets again using air guns and catapults against the police. The papers claimed this resulted in about ten arrests and about 14 policemen injured (although the numbers reported varied considerably). The Daily Express claimed that :
pickets opened fire with deadly new weapons…500 brave policemen faced 5,000 raging pickets.[2]
The reports added that the local Labour MP, Kevin Barron, suffered bruising to his arms after being attacked by the police while walking back to his car. Barron said:
The police were bludgeoning people to the ground. When I went back later there was still a pool of blood on the pavement. I have never seen anything so brutal in my life.[3]
In response, the Tory MP Eldon Griffiths who is the Police Federation’s parliamentary adviser, called for the use of plastic bullets. The next day the South Yorkshire Police Committee met with the Home Secretary, Leon Britain who offered to review the government’s contribution to South Yorkshire’s policing costs. Except for the case of Kevin Barron, there was no mention of injuries to the pickets in the media. Here is a typical report on the events of Monday at Maltby.
Lincolnshire Echo – Monday 24 September 1984
Most of the reporting in the media amounted to a gross distortion of the truth and even outright lies. However, it was clear that in some cases the miners were fighting back but, in these cases, the reports failed to mention that the miners were responding to endless provocations. Emotions were running high and the tension between the police and the miners had deepened. The police increasingly behaved like a military occupying force taking over collieries and pit villages and communities felt they were under a state of siege. It was becoming clear that there was a danger the strike could be lost, collieries closed and jobs and communities destroyed. It was understandable that the miners were determined to fight back and defend themselves from an occupying hostile outside force which appeared to represent their enemies in Thatcher’s Tory Party and the NCB. There was violence on both sides. However, the media reports consistently underplayed the offensive violence from the police and exaggerated the defensive violence from the pickets.
The Build-up to the Conflict
On 1 March the National Coal Board (NCB) announced Cortonwood Colliery in South Yorkshire would close in five weeks having recently told its miners that the pit would stay open for another five years. The proposed closure of Cortonwood became the final straw in a series of closures which triggered the long-running UK miners’ strike of 1984–1985. On 5 March 1984, Cortonwood miners walked out on strike following a ballot and called on the Yorkshire Area NUM Council to call a strike of all its members. The Council agreed to do this and by the end of the week, the whole Yorkshire coalfield was on strike.
Neither Maltby Colliery nor Shireoaks Colliery in Worksop were threatened with closure. However, by 12 March, 1,350 miners at Maltby and 920 miners at Shireoaks had joined the strike out in solidarity. Most other mining communities followed suit and soon, with the backing of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) national Executive, a large majority of miners across the UK were on strike. However, some miners in the Midlands and Nottinghamshire remained at work. In response, pickets from Maltby and Shireoaks joined thousands of other Yorkshire miners descending on Nottinghamshire to persuade them to join the strike.
Tension between the Maltby community and the police erupted almost mediately when 30-year-old Frank Slater, a member of the Maltby (NUM) Lodge, who lived in nearby Worksop, was arrested on his way to the Nottinghamshire picket lines on Wednesday 21 March. The arrest occurred after his car ran out of petrol at a roundabout and the police asked him to identify himself. However, feeling threatened, he would not wind his window down, so the police smashed his windscreen.[4]
Slater was then dragged out of the car and charged with obstructing the highway and failing to stop when requested to do so. Also arrested and charged with obstructing the police was Stephen Kent (22). John Wallace (27). Kevin Wright (23). Darren Steele (19) and Ronald Marson, all from Maltby. Antony Wilson (33) from Maltby was charged with obstructing the highway and obstructing the police.[5]
June Disturbances in Maltby
The tension between the police and miners in Maltby continued but attitudes to picketing and how to respond to police violence varied. Disturbances broke out in the town over the weekend of 10-12 June leading to confrontations between the police and youths. The next weekend on Friday 17 June, two hundred young people gathered outside Maltby police station and attacked it with bricks and bottles for more than an hour and 16 arrests were made of which eleven were miners.
The next day many miners from Maltby headed off to Orgreave and joined one of the most violent events in British industrial history where many miners became victims of brutal attacks by the police. On their return to Maltby on Saturday night more trouble occurred and a riot broke out. The papers reported 29 arrests and 16 shop windows broken. Mr Ron Buck, 52-year-old magistrate and the Maltby NUM lodge secretary condemned the smashing up of property:
I am making a plea to all mineworkers to cool it. There have been problems with policing here and on picket lines but it is my opinion we would be better off showing patience and going through the proper channels rather than people on street corners having a go themselves.[6]
However, others saw it differently, Jimmy Gavin, a member of the NUM Strike Committee at Maltby said:
They can’t get us on the picket line so they are coming into the village to get us. We know it’s a planned military-style operation. [7]
Later in June Keith Boyes, a member of NUM Maltby Lodge Committee, was interviewed by the Guardian and said:
I won’t be going back until I can see security for this industry. We never entered this dispute thinking it would last three weeks. We knew it could be six months because we have to erode 10 years of overproduction before we have any effect. Our branch members knew it would be a long strike. People kept on saying that the modern miner would never strike. But the way I look at my TV and video is that if they got burnt I would not lose a moment’s sleep. I regard materialistic things as a hobby. It’s when your backs are against the wall and how you react to those matters. And the Yorkshire miners have reacted in the same way we did in 1973, 1969, and 1926. Yorkshire miners’ families have learnt to adapt during the strike.[8]
In August 1984 tension between the police and young people in Maltby increased further because the police had begun to behave like an occupying military force. The Guardian reported that Buck warned there could be more trouble and that the young miners are “are not choir boys”.[9] He added that they were determined to stay solid and “aim to maintain the community, not just the pit”. Others from the Maltby community told the Guardian:
If you are born into a mining community it is all around you – this great thing holds you together and makes you stand up and fight.
It’s not so bad when you are sitting down next to someone in the same boat. (More than 300 midday meals are served in church with dawn pickets eating first, then the men and their children).
There is nothing financial in it for us. it is all for our kids to have lobs. (Elizabeth Buck)
If I told my husband to go back, he’d throw me through the window. (Maltby Miner’s wife). [10]
September Disturbances in Maltby
The immediate trigger of the disturbances in September in Maltby was the action of the NCB. At this time, no miners had returned to work at Maltby but the NCB had arranged with Cementone Ltd, an outside construction contractor, to enter Maltby Colliery to carry out development work on the sinking of a new shaft. After meeting Maltby NUM, most of the fifty-odd Cementone workers had agreed to join NUM for the duration of the colliery contract and to refuse to cross the picket line or go to work until the strike was over.
However, the NCB found seven Cementone workers willing to cross the picket line and arranged with the police to provide protection and accompany them to work on Thursday, 20 September. This was a clear provocation because the seven workers would not be able to do much work but if the police could get them into the colliery, it would provide a symbolic victory to the NCB. In response, Maltby NUM arranged to picket their colliery and asked for help from other districts. However, on Thursday morning, the police outnumbered the pickets and managed to get the scabs into the pit. The Maltby NUM officials appealed for more support.
Police units walk past pickets to occupy Maltby colliery. Credit: Newsline
On Friday 21 September, about 2000 pickets were confronted by police horses and dogs from the South and West Yorkshire constabularies. Maltby NUM officials stated they witnessed 180 minivans full of police going into the Maltby pit yard with more following in coaches. Another attempt was made by the pickets to prevent the subcontractors from getting into the pit but the police pushed them back up the road and were able to get a van containing the strike-breakers into the colliery yard by driving at speed thoughthe pickets. Tension in the village increased over the weekend and led to a confrontation between Maltby miners and the police at a local Chinese takeaway.
On Monday the confrontation between the police and pickets continued but after the police had pushed the pickets back and allowed the van full of scabs to enter the pit, they brutally attacked the picket line from behind resulting in serious injuries to several miners and their supporters.
The Daily Mirror’s and BBC’s coverage of these events listed at the start of this article was repeated in the mainstream media which continued to be hostile to the miners throughout the strike. The media stories were almost certainly sensationalist and exaggerated and did not tell the whole story. Statements from the miners who were there, pictures taken by John Sturrock and Newsline photographers and reports in trade union and socialist newspapers tell a different story. However, despite efforts, not a single report or image of police violence was reproduced on television or in the national press. In contrast, here are some alternative accounts of events of Monday 24 September.
Shireoaks
On Sunday 23 September 1984, Ian Wright and Ray Collingham from Hammersmith and Fulham Miners’ Support Group arrived in Worksop to stay with George and Christina Bell to learn about the strike at a grassroots level. Ian had made friends with George while working on a work brigade in Cuba in 1983 and George had stayed in London with Ian while organising hunger March from Worksop to London in July. One local newspaper reported on the March as it went through Hinckley:
Eighteen miners marched through Hinckley on Thursday as part of a sponsored walk to London in a bid to raise money for striking miners’ children The men are walking from Worksop to London on a route that will cover 202 miles. They live and work in Worksop and Shireoaks where the schools have now shut for the holidays and the children can no longer eat free school meals So the men say they are hoping to raise money to buy food for their children “We can manage without” said one of the men “But our children can’t”.[11]
Eighteen Worksop Miners on Hunger March from Worksop to London at the end of July. Credit: The Hinckley Times 27 July 1984.
There were two pits in Worksop; Manton colliery and Shireoaks Colliery, where George was chair of the NUM lodge. At this time all the miners at both pits were solidly behind the strike. On the evening of Sunday 23 September George received a phone call that there was to be a picket outside Maltby Colliery at 5 am the next day.
George Bell Taking a Rest After Early Morning Picket Duty
On Monday 24 September, Ian and Ray rose early and drove north with George and other miners from Worksop about nine miles to join the picket line outside Maltby Colliery. However, before the morning was over several pickets had been taken in an ambulance to Rotherham District Hospital because of the serious injuries they had suffered from truncheon blows, dog bites and beatings by the police. Here are the legal statements about the Monday picket issued by Ian Wright and Ray Collingham several weeks later followed by statements by other pickets and journalists.
Statement from ian wright
I attended the picket of Maltby Colliery on Monday 24 September as an observer from Hammersmith Miners Support Committee. I was with Ray Collingham, also from London, and George Bell, chairman of Shireoaks NUM. Ray and myself were staying with George and his family in Worksop. I know George well. He had stayed with me earlier in the summer while organising a hunger march from Worksop to London. He had invited Ray and myself up to Worksop to observe all aspects of the miners’ strike.
We arrived on Sunday 23 September. Monday was the first day we had gone out to observe a picket. George told us not to get involved with any picketing ourselves and to keep to the back. We arrived at Maltby at approximately 5.00 am. When we arrived, there were groups of men standing around chatting in the village and further down the road towards the pit. There were less than 1000 pickets. Further down the road, there were lines of police across the road with riot shields. They were shining search lamps up the road. There was no attempt by the pickets to break through the police lines. There was a small group of young men opposite the police lines occasionally throwing stones at the police lines However, most of the men were standing around in groups along the road towards the village chatting.
The police had successfully blocked the road towards the pit and now and again ran forward pushing the young men back up the road. I was standing further up the road towards Maltby with George and Ray, talking to people. As the road to the pit was blocked by the police people were gradually leaving throughout the morning.
At about 6.30 am the police managed to force the pickets back and drove a van at speed containing the seven scabs into the pit. Consequently, people started to leave and only about 200 people remained.
Not long after this, a group of police dressed in boiler suits with no numbers ran out of the wood opposite me, about 100 yards from the police lines, shouting obscenities. They had raised truncheons and full riot equipment. I tried to run, but one policeman hit me hard on the head with a truncheon. I collapsed to the ground. I tried to get up but was hit on the head again by a truncheon blow. I collapsed to the ground. I was then kicked while I was on the ground. All I could think was that I would die. I then crawled away into the bushes by the road and lay there. I felt the blood on my head and face. I felt someone pulling me from the bushes. Then people were bandaging my head. There was a lot of shouting. People were trying to console me. I am not sure if I lost consciousness or not. I thought I was dying.
These pictures were taken just after the police attacked me.
Credit: John Sturrock.Credit: NewslineFirst Aid Miner Kevin Clegg with bandages. Credit: John Sturrock.Credit: NewslineCredit: Newsline
I was put into an ambulance and taken to Rotherham Hospital. A man in the same ambulance was also seriously injured. He collapsed in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Later I discovered he had kidney damage. Several eyewitnesses later claimed they saw me being kicked and truncheoned by four policemen. I was also told that those miners who had first reached me and attempted to give me first aid were also attacked by the police and had to retreat. It took some time before the ambulance staff could reach me. When I got to the hospital, I noticed other pickets had been brought in and treated for injuries, a few with dog bites.
Ian Wright‘s headwound
I received initial treatment from the nurses in the form of stitches to the wound on my head. The nurses were very sympathetic and told me they had only treated one policeman who had a twisted ankle. However, I did not receive a medical assessment of my injuries from a doctor or an X-ray of my head because the police had entered the hospital with dogs and were roaming around the hospital and arresting anyone with injuries. The nurses had no alternative but to usher me and others out of the back of the hospital where NUM drivers were waiting and I was driven back to Worksop.
When I got back to Worksop I was still suffering from concussion and sickness with a severe headache and could not walk. The next day George decided I still needed medical treatment and arranged for an appointment with a local GP. George helped into the back of a van but on the way to the GP surgery, we encountered a police roadblock. The police dragged me and George out of the van, abused us with obscenities and threatened George. I eventually got to a GP who examined and dressed my injuries, gave me some paracetamol, and wrote a report of my injuries.
I later found out that some of those arrested at the hospital were charged with a range of public order offences including riot. Both Andrew Platt and Mick Wheatley pictured below were arrested by the police while waiting for treatment at Rotherham hospital. They were then confined under curfew in their houses from 9 pm to 8 am to prevent them from joining early morning pickets.
Andrew Platt from Shireoaks NUM had his teeth kicked out by five policemen while attending the Maltby picket on Monday 23 September.Mick Wheatley also from Shireoaks NUM had his head split open with a truncheon blow while attending the Maltby picket on Monday 23 September. Credit: Yorkshire Miner, Strike Issue no. 5, October 1984.
London
When I was well enough, I returned home to London where I spotted this graffiti on a wall in Kilburn.
Graffiti in Kilburn, London October 1894 Credit: Ian Wright
On 25 September Malcolm Pithers’s coverage of the events on the Monday at Maltby in the Guardian was similar to the other papers and the BBC. He ignored violence by the police and emphasised violence from the pickets. He claimed that fourteen policemen and only three pickets were injured. However, he reported extensively on Kevin Barron’s bruised arm and also mentioned that Colin Baker an ITN journalist was struck on the head. It is hard to know if this is just lazy reporting and poor journalism but we do now know there was a huge amount of political pressure on the media to back the government and the NCB.[15]
When I was well enough, I was determined to try and contact sympathetic journalists to counter the propaganda offensive by the government and its supporters in the press. I headed to Fleet Street with photographs and personal statement of the events at Maltby. Not surprisingly the right-wing press was hostile but I did not expect the same reaction from the Guardian who told me that were not interested and asked me to leave the building. In December they published the photograph of myself taken by John Sturrock on the centre page of the magazine of their sister paper the Sunday Observer to highlight so-called picket line violence without any context or explanation of what happened.
Statement by Ray Collingham
The media claimed 5000 pickets had attacked the police with catapults and airguns. They reported 3 pickets and 14 police injured. We saw no airguns and just one young kid with a catapult. There were less than 1000 pickets around when the police attacked them. At least 20 pickets were injured. One policeman suffered a twisted ankle.
I travelled in the ambulance with Ian and an injured miner to Rotherham District Hospital. The injured miner had a broken hand from being hit with a truncheon. During the journey he collapsed; subsequently, I learnt that he had sustained kidney damage from the beating he received.
While waiting in the hospital I saw and spoke to other casualties who were brought in from Maltby, they included:
A 50-year-old miner who had been beaten around the head.
The local M.P., Kevin Barron, who suffered bruising to his arms.
A young miner who had a bad dog bite on his right calf. He was arrested at the hospital; the police demanded £1.60 to pay for a prescription for his anti-biotics before being taken away.
Another young miner, who was also arrested, had 4 stitches put in a head wound before being taken away.
A Belgian Steelworker who had come over to visit the miners had been bitten on the arm and thigh and beaten around the head.
Later that day I met another young miner who had been set upon by 5 police and a dog. He lost two front teeth and sustained a black eye and extensive bruising on his body.
There was one police officer who had been brought in with a twisted ankle. I saw the lunchtime news that day. Part of the film showed him tripping over during a police charge.
One of the arrested pickets. Credit: Newsline
Statement by photographer John Sturrock in The Tribune 5 October 1984
John Sturrock estimated that between 800 and 1,000 pickets were standing along the road when the police made their first charge:
There was some sporadic stone, nothing dramatic certainly no air guns, when the police snatch squad charged from behind the floodlights a few times. The photograph of the man lying in the road shows a lad who fell over running away during the second charge. The policeman leaning over him had a truncheon and hit him several times, on the body I think. When the police retreated back, they left the injured man lying on the ground, his face cut where he had been kicked and his body bruised. [16]
Picket being attacked by police during an early charge. Credit: John Sturrock
Shortly afterwards Sturrock witnessed the third attack on pickets, but this time the police employed different tactics, charging from behind:
A squad of policemen, their faces obscured by helmets and their blue boilersuits without any means to identify them, emerged from woods at the side of the road near the rear of the pickets. Although there had been some stone-throwing, these pickets were not involved. Many were older retired miners, some were from miners’ support groups and among them was Labour MP Kevin Barron. The police charged regardless into the crowd, which scattered in front of them, with many trying to escape by climbing a wall and diving into a hedge-row on the other side of the road. When the road cleared, Barron was left nursing a badly bruised arm and three or four bodies lay motionless on the ground having either fallen or been knocked down by truncheon-wielding police. [17]
Statements from Maltby NUM Branch Officers
Frank Slater, who was arrested earlier on in the strike in March, said there were:
Lads with broken arms, head wounds needing stitches and hospitalisation. Some were arrested in hospital. One lad was truncheoned by one copper and then kicked by others. He was on the floor and could have easily been arrested without violence. But he wasn’t arrested. It’s quite obvious these police support units are out of the control of their superiors. The police were determined that they were not interested in arresting people. They were just determined to give the lads as much hammer as they could. They injured several of our members, some of them seriously while making no attempt to arrest anyone. Lads were getting hammered on the road and then left on the road. The tension was unbelievable from the beginning, with shield-beating etc. I’ve said from the start of this dispute that the police can only justify being present by creating a violent situation.[18]
Injured picket. Credit: John Sturrock
Ron Buck: Maltby NUM branch secretary
Buck said “There was blood all over the place” and condemned police exaggeration of the number of pickets as a ploy:
to justify the police using whatever numbers they wanted. If there were 6,000 pickets (the official police estimate), we’d have been stood six miles away. The maximum possible on that day would have been 2,500. After the strike-breakers went into work a squad of police burst out of the wood and went at random beating people with truncheons. It was a sadistic pleasure these people were getting out of this. One lad was left bleeding profusely from wounds on his face, after he was beaten about the face with truncheons, by a squad of police. The pit ambulancemen who were bent down giving him first aid were then clobbered. All the relationship established before the strike has been shattered. Management have put their loyalties behind a few men who aren’t even their employees, as against men who have given their loyalty to the pit, and the community who have been behind it. The branch feels that we have been betrayed to promote strike-breaking by men other than coal board employees. [19]
But Ron was at pains to point out that about 50 Cementation workers at Maltby were supporting the strike, in contrast to the half-dozen crossing picket lines At a packed branch general meeting, which unanimously supported the union’s case and resolved not to return to work with the strike-breakers, the group of Cementation workers supporting the strike announced they would go back only with the rest of the branch:
This has united our branch. They are more resolute now than ever. I’ve never been so proud in my life to represent those lads at Maltby. I’ve dealt with hundreds of cases where families have nothing, but there’s not one of them said they intend breaking the strike. The branch feared that the behaviour of the police would lead to a repeat of clashes in the community experienced earlier in the strike. There’s a housing estate next to the pit with children and old people and we’re concerned that they should be able to live in peace and quiet. But if any troubles come about, the blame should be laid squarely on the coal board. [20]
Ted Millward: Treasurer of Maltby NUM.
There was a massive police presence and we couldn’t get near the pit gate. They shoved us right away to the perimeter of the village. There were some stones thrown, but very little. Police waited until around 250 pickets remained before boiler-suited officers with no identification marks emerged from woods, to launch a savage attack from behind. I was involved at Orgreave, but I’ve never seen anything like this. And a lot of the public, who were on their way to work, saw it all. They saw them smash pickets with no attempt to make arrests. They let their dogs bite us. A journalist was bitten three or four times. One of our first aiders who was bandaging a lad bleeding on the floor was hammered. The police have adopted the tactic of terrifying or injuring our lads.[21]
Bob Mounsey: A 50-year-old Maltby miner and former NUM Branch delegate.
I’d just walked back to the Maltby bus stop to let my wife know I was okay. She’d seen the aggro earlier. As I walked back past the Lumbley Arms, about 35 to 40 police came out behind me. `I dodged two, one who struck at my head with his yardstick and another who tried to knee me between the legs. Then I was hit on the hip. It paralysed my leg. As I stumbled another hit me on the leg and head. `A group of them kicked me on the floor. I’ve got bruises across my kidneys, down my left leg from the hip to the knee, on both shoulders, and there’s a lump on the back of my head. I wasn’t knocked out. I just lay there dazed. An old chap came across to see if I was okay. I tried to get up but he told me to stay down because the police were still hanging about. The police had no intention of arresting anyone. It was just a commando raid to dish out some hammer.[22]
Ronald Jeffery: A Maltby supervisor and NACODS member (Newsline report)
Police wielding batons at Maltby in Yorkshire yesterday behaved like animals. I arrived at the Lumley Arms at the rear of the picket line at 6.15 in the morning. Everything was quiet and the pickets were dispersing. I sat on the wall and watched the men start running up the road and I wondered why. This was the very first time I’ve ever approached a picket line in the strike. Then I was amazed to see figures appear out of the woods carrying batons and shields. Not knowing how many more were going to pour out of the woods, or what was going on, I was very frightened — and I mean frightened. So I ran with the crowd.
I returned to the scene shortly afterwards and witnessed batons being wielded in an animal fashion. The police were not satisfied with flashing their truncheons — they had one guy on the ground with his head already open and were laying the boot into him. An ambulance was held behind the police cordon and the police wouldn’t let it through. It eventually was able to treat him, and I was amazed to see another ambulance arrive from the other direction within the next three minutes.
There were no stones or bottles being thrown prior to the police coming out of the woods. I doubt very much if they were police. They came out like animals — either drugged or crazed through some other fashion. Before the animals appeared the pickets were simply standing and talking and were ready to disperse.[23]
Coverage in Newsline Tuesday 25 September 1984
Excerpts from Life on the Front Line: Bruce Wilson’s diary of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
Thursday 20 September 1984.
Bruce Wilson from Silverwood Colliery, South Yorkshire
At Maltby we parked in the Lumley Arms pub car park and walked down the road to the pit. At either side of the road, it was heavily wooded and every now and then there was a length of low stone wall. When we got to the pit entrance, the entire road was blocked by a wall of pickets. It was quiet, no trouble.
The scabs went in from the Tickhill end of the road. Ten minutes later the police lines moved forward pushing us back up the road, and woe betide anyone falling behind. Made our way to the Baggin’ for some snap and a nice cup of tea. I found it hard to believe all these horror stories about Maltby after this morning. It wasn’t too bad.
The picket line at Maltby on Thursday 20 September with police in the background with their white vans, pushing miners back up the road away from the colliery entrance after the scabs have gone in. Credit: Briam Wilson
Friday 21 September 1984 fromLife on the Front Line
On the front line at Maltby, our last port of call this morning, me, Daz and Bob were in the woods passing out wood, trees, anything we could move and passing it out to other pickets who were constructing a barricade in the road. The police commanding officer who was stood behind his men on the front line gave instructions to shine a bloody great searchlight on the pickets. It blinded us all, he’s been doing this for a while now. They could run out and batter you, and you would not even see them coming.
But I’ve got an idea. The police would not come nowhere near the barricade, it was pitch black, woods on either side of us. They weren’t daft. We kept the police at bay for a couple of hours. Then they decided enough was enough. They’ve got a new toy, a Transit van with ‘wings’ a large wire mesh guard extending from the van’s front doors. The van drives slowly in the road towards us and behind the ‘wings’ police hide with truncheons drawn, usually with no identification numbers on their boiler suits. Their job is to clear the road and disperse the pickets.
I’m getting rather fed up with all this running about, chased all over risking life and limb, or if you’re lucky just a bit of truncheon and arrest for a pound a day! I’m not complaining though, we are making the police get up early as well. On the picket lines after the scabs have gone in they just want to go back to their nice warm beds and we won’t let them, they hate it when we hang about and they do everything possible to get rid of us. Good day today, we gave them something to do.
A quiet morning. We all got back to the Baggin’ safe. To enjoy what was on offer on the new menu. Over the weekend two C.I.D policemen went in the Chinese takeaway in Maltby, it was full of Maltby lads who beat them up. They got in their car and drove off and came back with a couple of reinforcements. They all got another good hiding.
Monday 24 September 1984 fromLife on the Front Line
We made our way back to the car and headed for Maltby. I parked in the Lumley Arms pub car park. Full crew again today. We set off walking to the pit entrance. It was still early morning and pitch black, not very well lit here either, both sides of the road are heavily wooded, the closer we got to the pit entrance, the darker it got, no street lights.
I had in my possession some polished aluminium plate, about 3 inches square and polished to a mirror finish. I dished some out to the lads and saved a few for myself. We had not been on the picket line long, there were a few hundred pickets here now and as expected the commanding police officer ordered his men to put that bloody searchlight on us. It’s terrible, it blinds you. Anyway, he’s had a good run, our turn now. I told the lads what I was going to do. We all pointed our polished plates at the searchlight and it worked! He switched the searchlight off! He turned it on us again, we showed our mirror, and he got the reflection back. After a few more goes with his spot lamp he gave it up as a bad job. Ha Ha, those few hours in the shed making them paid off.
It was still pitch black and quiet on the front line, row-upon-row of police in front of us. We turned round and there were hundreds of miners behind us. About ten foot away from me, Razzer [Silverwood lad] shouted,”WERE HAVING A PUSH, SO ALL BADGE COLLECTORS GET TO THE BACK,” there was roars of laughter.
Then a reply came back, “WHAT THA’ FUCKING ON ABOUT’ I’M HERE AREN’T I?” When the laughter died away someone shouted ‘Zulu’ that was it, all the front line pickets ran at the police lines (the distance between the police and miners’ was only ever a few feet, just enough distance to stop them reaching out and snatching you). Pushing and shoving against the police lines, a couple of lads next to me went down on the floor. This went on for about five minutes and the police don’t like it at all!
Several lads on the front line were ‘snatched’ and arrested, they disappeared into the dark behind police lines. Things heated up then, from the back of the picket line a few stones and missiles went over into the police lines, It went quiet again, then some more missiles were thrown into the police ranks. That was it, they charged, the first one of the day. I ran back up the road, but I could not get past the mass of pickets in front of me, so I jumped over a small wall, right into the laps of two riot police knelt down hiding, batons drawn, wearing boiler suits with no numbers on. They looked as surprised to see me as I was them. They did not get me, but nearly.
I met up with Shaun back on the road, it went quiet again, we were about 30ft from the police lines. We decided to have a look around and try and sneak round the police. We went into the woods across from the pit entrance. We had only gone a few yards when Shaun shouted to me ‘look at them rabbits’ we could see pairs of eyes looking at us in the dark. They were all over. The thing was, the eyes were about 3ft off the ground. We just saw the dog handlers in time. Retreating in the dark, I said to Shaun, “big bloody rabbits them mate!”
Shaun Bisby. Credit: Bruce Wilson
We made our way to the front line again. We stopped for a while, but then and I don’t know why, decided to go back to the ‘Battle Bus’ for drink out of my flask. We usually stay until the last. All the crew decided to go back with me. We were sat in the Lumley Arms car park supping tea when all hell broke loose, miners came running back up the road towards the village. We got out of the car and set off walking back to the pit entrance. We could see within spitting distance the police had done a dirty trick. The boiler suited ‘snatch squads’ had gone into the woods on either side of the road, sneaking around the pickets in a pincer movement. Then they came out of the woods, back onto the road, trapping about thirty pickets. They were cut off and surrounded by riot police and nowhere to go! Dogs and their handlers were still in the woods. The poor bastards, the police went wild and truncheoned anything that moved.
Big bastards they were, not one under 6ft 4in. Yellow jackets on, no identification numbers. Police? More like the Coldstream Guards on manoeuvres. We came across one lad unconscious with a fractured skull, blood all over the place, a copper was stood on him while three others laced into him. A man went to help him, a copper grabbed him and threw him to one side, the copper told the man to leave him and “fuck off”.
Riot police running about all over the place with no numbers on. Same old story of pickets treated like criminals. Walking back to the car we passed Kevin Barron the Rother Valley MP. He was making his exit as well, he looked rough, looked like he had some boot and a bit of truncheon for good measure. The police grossly exaggerated what went on today. Their purpose is to slag the pickets down so they can get their ‘rubber bullets’.
Map by Bruce Wilson
November Fire and Fury
Tensions in Maltby escalated further and resulted in serious rioting in November. The papers reported “A night of Fire and Fury” across the South Yorkshire coalfield on Monday 12 November. They reported that ‘mobs’ had attacked police stations, looted shops and set buildings on fire and coalfield violence reached new peaks of savagery. The papers claimed petrol bombs, spears, metal staves and six-inch bolts were hurled at police, as the violence spread from pit gates to mining villages. They quoted a police spokesman who said: “It has been the worst night of violence we have had since the strike began. It has been coordinated throughout the county and not concentrated at one pit, which has previously been the pattern.” The Liverpool Echo said:
Pickets began gathering in the county shortly after midnight. It was seven hours before calm was restored. The first trouble came at Maltby at 2.45 a.m. when the police station came under siege. Several windows were smashed as missiles rained down on the building. On the A631 between Maltby and the colliery, a workman’s cabin was dragged into the middle of the road and set on fire. Pickets uprooted lamp standards to obstruct police vehicles. Wires were strung across the road at head height. A garage was broken into at Maltby and looted. Oil and glass covered the road near the colliery gates.[24]
Sensationalist reporting from the Daily Mirror Tuesday 13 November 1984
The Times reported that at Maltby street lamps were pulled down to form barricades and by the end of the morning, trouble had occurred at over half of South Yorkshire’s collieries leading to 45 arrests, 33 police injuries and 9 pickets injured.[25] However, given the distortion in reporting the events at Maltby in September, the accuracy of these reports must be viewed with caution.
Hammersmith and Fulham Miners Support Group
I kept in close contact with George and Christina during the last six months of the strike and returned on several occasions, once to appear as a witness in the court cases which followed the Maltby picket. I also continued to work with colleagues in the Hammersmith and Fulham Miners Support Group organising events and fundraising.
Leaflet produced by Hammersmith and Fulham Miners Support Group
HFMSG was twinned with Sutton Manor Colliery in Lancashire (which closed in 1991) and regularly organised events and street collections. It was infiltrated by a Sun journalist. The group was informed by print workers at the Sun about his infiltration. Consequently, he was deposited on the motorway for his safety while on a trip with members of the HMFSG to Lancashire to visit Sutton Manor. He then wrote an article which was published in the Sun which was full of lies and distortions about the miners of Sutton Manor and the work of HFMSG.
In October 1984 some HFMSG members and charged with selling copies of the Yorkshire Miner without a street licence. These included Peter Turner, Vincent McCullough, Ian Wright, Dennis Earles, Steven Cowan, Iain Coleman Colin Aherne and Ian Harrison (both Labour Councillors). They were all found guilty and either fined or bound over.
Fulham Chronicle – Friday 12 July 1985
Thousands of miners and their supporters were arrested during the strike including George Bell and either imprisoned, fined or bound over to keep the peace. This was an effective way for the authorities to prevent picketing and fundraising and so undermine the strike.
Return to Work at Shireoaks
At Shireoaks, where 920 were on strike, several men returned to work in early October. Picketing and maintaining solidarity was tough during the winter months and by mid-November the papers reported that 43 miners had returned to work at the pit.[26] However, in contrast to the rest of Nottinghamshire, Shireoaks and Manton NUM had persuaded NACODS members not to cross their picket lines which meant no workers could go underground because of statutory safety rules.
At the end of December, the papers were reporting that 600 miners had returned to work at Shireoaks amounting to 74 per cent of the workforce but that NACODS members persisted in refusing to cross the picket line so the 600 men who had returned to work could still not go underground but had to be paid by the NCB.
Christmas on the Shireoals Picket Line. Credit: George Bell
However, at Manton Colliery coal production started for the first time nine months on 1 January 1985.[27] The next day, on 2 January 1985, some deputies crossed NUM picket lines for the first time at Shireoaks. At this time 906 men were at work at Manton and Shireoaks.[28] By the beginning of February, 76 per cent of the workforce was back at work at Manton and 80 per cent of the workforce was at back at work at Shireoaks Colliery. [29]
On 12 February a High Court judge banned mass picketing at the following Yorkshire pits; Rossington, Maltby Riverton Park, Allerton, Bywater, Frickley, Yorkshire Main Wath-on-Dearne, Manton, Manvers and Shireoaks The orders were made against the Yorkshire area alone and injunctions forbid the Yorkshire area organising more than six pickets at the gates of 11 pits at any one time.[30] This ruling meant that there was little hope that striking miners could do anything to prevent miners from returning to work in areas where support for the strike had weakened.
The Heart and Soul of It
Picketing was important but the solidarity required to keep the strike going was also sustained by the action of those in the pit villages and communities, often women, who organised soup kitchens, looked after children and kept households functioning. Some miner’s wives were involved in fundraising, joining pickets, meetings and demonstrations. However, some also worked providing an essential income for the household as well as performing domestic duties which limited the time they could spend on strike activities.
The following extract is from: The Heart and Soul of It, A documentation of how the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike affected the people in the pit village of Worsbrough and surrounding districts, and of their survival. It was published by the Worsbrough Community Group and Bannerworks in May 1985. The section on Shireoaks printed below describes the last months of the strike in Worksop and Rhodesia, a nearby small pit village for Shireoaks miners and the visit there by some women from Worsbrough.
Worsbrough Community Group visited Shireoaks Pit and the Rhodesia Women’s Support Group on 15 February 1985. We found some of the striking miners in the miners’ welfare which is across the road from Shireoaks pit. We spoke to George Bell who is the branch president for the pit. He told us:
This particular colliery is called Shireoaks/Steetly colliery. It’s called that because recently Steetly Pit was merged with Shireoaks. Some may say that the local pit (Steetly) was closed, but officially it was classed as a merger. There used to be 500 workforce at Steetly and just less than 800 at Shireoaks; the combined workforce is now 920, and of that 920 there’s about 820 NUM members. Geographically we’re in Nottinghamshire, but we’re in the South Yorkshire area, the pressure has been on both our pit and Manton pit ever since the strike started.
The original two scabs went in to work on the 3rd of October, they were complemented by some more on the 15 November, and then there was a flood when the local village went in shortly after, that’s Rhodesia village. It’s been a steady trickle since then until it reached a peak just before Christmas. The NCB class people who are on sick as working, so they say the actual number of working miners is 660. This leaves us in the region of 140-50 on strike. We live in and around the area of Work-sop and socially there tends to be a lot of tension, particularly when you go out for a drink or when you go down the main streets. We’re not so bad, the people who have it really bad are the people who live in Rhodesia village where 97% of the workforce are working.
NACODS went in to work on one shift after the New Year, because we didn’t have very much of a picket on, since then we’ve managed to counteract that by having a decent picket on and also by asking NACODS to adhere to 1974 guidelines, which they have. The men who are working can’t go down the pit without NACODS so they just mess around on the pit top. We’ve been told unofficially that it’s costing the coal board an estimated 1/4 million pounds every eight to ten days since the 15th of November, in workforce and materials, yet no coal is coming out. This was supposed to be a very economic pit, but it’s actually an uneconomic pit now. In the last two years before they closed Steetly, they spent 36 million pounds on Shireoaks, building a new drift etc and putting the idea over that it is a safe pit, if there is such a thing.
The scabs have now got a bit of confidence and have started coming to our meetings. We think their tactics are that they want us back up at the pit as a union. As things are now they’ve got no negotiating power, management can do what they like with them. They want us back up there so they can get some negotiations going over agreements. They may try and put pressure on us through general meetings. All the branch officials are on strike, but we had three treacherous committee men who broke the strike in the early stages. In fact one of them didn’t even have the guts to resign, he’s only just handed in his resignation now, in case we threw it at him at the general meeting.
Two Songs, sung to us by George Bell of Shireoaks:
When me father was a lad
Unemployment was so bad
He spent best part of his life
Down at the dole.
Straight from school to the labour queue
Ragged clothes and holey shoes
Combing pit heaps for a mankey bag of coal.
CHORUS
And I’m standing at the door
That same old bloody door
Waiting for the payout like me
Father did before.
Nowadays they’ve got this craze
For all these clever monetarist ways
And computers measure economic growth
We’ve got experts milling round
Writing theories about the pound
But no one tells me just how I can buy a loaf.
CHORUS
Harold Wilson, he took charge
Half a million got their cards
And he said it was because his party had got soul
Then along came Grocer Heath
With his concertina teeth
And he put another million on the dole.
CHORUS
Then Thatcher came along
Oh the Falklands made her strong
She was determined that she’d bring us to our knees.
So we had to be content and accept unemployment
And no one ever seemed to listen to our pleas.
CHORUS
One day don’t be surprised
When the miners get organised
Politicians will start to tremble at the knees.
For we’ll march on Downing Street
As we rally with our feet
And for once they’ll have to listen to our pleas.
For we’ll be kicking down that door
Oh that same old bloody door
We’ve waited for our payout a million times before.
Kicking down that door, that same old bloody door
We’ve waited for our payout a million times before.
George Bell singing pit songs at the Miners’ Welfare at Shireoaks
The pit that I used to work at up North like, is called the Rising Sun, but it closed down in 1969. This song is called ‘The Fall of the Monty’, which is the Montague pit and a lot of the Montague pit lads came to the Rising Sun to work, and when that closed they adapted the words to suit.
For many long years now
They’ve tried so they say
To cut out the losses
And make the pit pay.
When all of the rumours
That closing was due
Have all been put down
For alas it was true.
We met our officials
And reporters galore
For the pit it was dying
And we wanted war.
But all of our arguing
Still nothing was done
We had to admit it
They’re closing the Sun.
I’ve worked in the G pit
In the Brockle seam
I’ve worked in the Beaumont
Since I was Fifteen
I’ve worked in the Busty
And in the Main Coal
No more to you Rising Sun
You dirty black hole.
Rhodesia Women’s Action Group (Pit village for Shireoaks near Worksop)
In this village, striking miners are very much in a minority. We spoke to six women who have been involved in the women’s action group from the start of the strike. We began by asking them how they are regarded by the majority of people in the village who are against the strike. They told us:
There are only 14 families left on strike in this village. We had 13 women in the action group to start with, now we are down to 8. Being on strike here is like being sent to Coventry. We can be stood at the bus stop for instance and people walk past laughing and joking and giving us dirty looks. Even the women who used to be in the action group don’t talk to us now. There are people in the village that I’ve known all my life, who walk straight past me, because I’m involved with the action group.
People have never been really solid in this village although a lot did stay out until November. While ever people needed help and they were on the receiving end they were all quite happy with what we were doing in the action group but as soon as they all went back to work they thought we should join forces with them and get off back to work as well. They didn’t think we would carry on, they were dead mad when we did continue.
When we used to go round to the houses collecting in the beginning people used to say to us ‘Thank you very much, you lasses are doing a good job, keep up the good work’. Now the same people ignore us. When we go in the club we are the last to get served at the bar and nobody will sit near us. Some of the men went on the walk from Worksop to London.
While the men were away we used to go down to the working men’s club and whatever turn was on we used to ask them to sing ‘Walk On’. We would all stand up and sing along and the ones who were against the strike used to walk out.
When all the scabs went in virtually every one of us was in tears, it bloody hurts, it’s very depressing but you pick yourself up and carry on. I can understand that after nine or ten months on strike some people are going to be desperate, but what they don’t seem to understand is, that by going back they are prolonging it for everybody else. If you’re not going to follow your union and abide by union rules and national decisions, then you should not be part of the union in the first place.
The community is not split, there is still a community, it’s just that we’re not part of it anymore. We are treated like foreigners. The kids haven’t been bad with each other, there hasn’t been any fighting between them, not like some places.” We asked what kind of activities the action group have been involved with and what kind of support they have had. “We haven’t done much lately because there aren’t enough of us left. We used to do dinners for the pickets and we did food parcels, which we still do. We did the kids’ school dinners every day during the summer holidays.
We’ve been all over collecting, we’ve had raffles, jumble sales, meetings, everything, you name it, we’ve done it. We’ve been all over the place, places we’d never have dreamt of going like London and Greenham Common. We can’t collect in the village anymore but we’ve got contacts, people who we’ve met up with, they keep sending us cheques.
The Greenham women sent us £195 plus one or two little cheques. We’ve had a lot of support from the East End of London, the people down there haven’t got much themselves and yet they’ll give us all they have, in fact sometimes you feel guilty taking it, because they look as if they need help. We went to London last week, and one old woman who was 86 years old, said her dearest wish was to shake hands with Arthur Scargill. We wanted to write to `Jimill Fix It’ but were told it was too political. We had a word with George, our branch president, he’s going to take a letter to Arthur for us. She probably hasn’t got many years left. Her and her family have been behind the strike all the way, she can remember 1926 you see. “We’ve been on the picket lines, the first one I went on my legs were shaking. It was a women’s picket but the police brought in the meat wagon. They were just grabbing women by the neck and throwing them in the van.
Once we went on a women’s picket to Kiveton Park pit, we wondered where everyone had gone, then someone told us they were all on holiday for two weeks, it was hilarious, picketing an empty pit.” One of the women who had been arrested on a picket line told us what happened. “Look at the size of me and I’m charged with assaulting a police officer. We were all walking up to the pit, the bobbies told us we couldn’t go up but we said we were going to peacefully picket and kept walking. They arrested the first 17, the ones that were in front, then let the rest go up to the pit. My husband was one of the ones arrested so I went running over to him and the police said to me ‘Come on you’re going as well’. It was 10 a.m. when I was arrested, they brought me two slices of bread and jam to eat and a drink about 6 p.m. I was in a cell on my own, the men were all in together. When they released me at 8 p.m. I had to walk past the cell where the men were, they had all thrown their bread and jam onto the ceiling.
I’ve been to court five times since June and it’s still going on. They’ve even changed the name of the arresting officer. The bobby who arrested me had no number on his uniform, he must have been army. “It’s like a battlefield sometimes, they lash out with their truncheons, they don’t care. I always think ‘That’s some mother’s lad’, it’s awful. I’ve been brought up to respect the police but I hate them now. “The police used to watch our houses, you could spot them a mile off They weren’t very inconspicuous. “The police taunt us with how much money they’ve earned ‘£90 we’ve earned today, thankyou’. If Thatcher hadn’t brought the police in there wouldn’t have been any trouble. This strike hasn’t just happened it’s been planned from 1974, give the woman credit, she’s planned it bloody well.
We asked the women how the men reacted to their involvement:
They think it’s great, they’ve been behind us all the way. They have said that they couldn’t have stuck it out without us backing them.
One of the women’s husbands told us:
The women have fought during this struggle not just for our futures but for their own. They’ve realised the point is not just ‘will I have a job tomorrow’, it’s will we have a wage coming into the house. The women have been strongly behind the men. They’ve been bloody marvellous.
We asked the women what they will do when it’s all over:
We hope to carry on with something, I’m not going back to being a bored housewife. There are people that have helped us through this strike who we will be able to help in return. There are the Greenham Common women or the teachers who have a strike coming up soon or there is the South London Women’s hospital that is in occupation. We will have a bit more money when the strike is over so we can go to different places and offer our support.
Retun To Work
–
George struggled with the loss of camaraderie after the end of the strike so, after 3 years, he decided to take voluntary redundancy. Shireoaks Colliery finally closed in May 1990 and Manton Colliery closed in February 1994. In the conclusion of the book printed in 1991 (A Mine, Memories and a Marina, a Short History of Shireoaks Colliery, The People that Worked there, and its Transition after Closure) George said:
I started working at Shireoaks on 5th March 1973. At that time the area and the colliery appeared to have an assured future. So much so, that I was offered ‘ a job for life’. In the late 1970s, cash started pouring into the colliery. At Shireoaks/Steetley, somewhere in the region of £38 million was invested in new coal-getting measures, such as the Surface Drift and Coal Preparation Plant. The local Member of Parliament, Joe Ashton, visited the colliery in August 1982. He described it as ‘….a good example of co-operation between the NCB and NUM’. He went on to say that he had been told that the mine had a ‘magnificent future with a minimum of 25 years.
Norman Siddall, then Chairman of the National Coal Board, came to visit the colliery in 1983. At a reception party held for the workforce and management he spoke at length about the ‘bright future ahead’. Moreover, in the same year, George Hayes, NCB South Yorkshire Area Director, described Shireoaks/Steetley Colliery as ‘the jewel in the crown of the coalfield’. However, things were soon to change. The catalyst being the 1984/1985 strike. Rumours were rife from 1986 onwards as to imminent closure. Each set of rumours seemed to weaken morale a little more each time. Finally, closure was announced in 1989.
In my opinion, it was a callous, calculated political act, which took no recognition of the effects on the area. As one resident said at the time ‘the heart has been ripped out of Worksop’. Without doubt, there have been dramatic changes to the lives of the ex-workforce of Shireoaks/Steetley Colliery since its demise. This has had a traumatic effect on some individuals. Moreover, the closure has had economic and social consequences for Worksop and the communities surrounding the colliery. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s collieries were closed with great haste. There seemed to be a political desire to make sure that any sight of any coal mines that were closed was quickly taken away from view.
After leaving the pit George studied for an HND in public administration and then an urban studies degree at Hallam University. His thesis was called Coal, Community and Camaraderie which examined the social and economic effects of pit closures. He discovered that out of the 71 former Shireoaks workers interviewed, only 62 per cent were in employment in November 1992 and 80 per cent said they were worse in terms of income. Many of them had fewer friends and missed the comradeship of the mine. His dissertation ended with the words:
What is certain is that the events of the late 1980s have seen the end of an era. For coal, camaraderie and community things will never quite be the same again.
George obtained a job as a homelessness officer with Bassetlaw District Council and soon became the UNISON branch secretary. In 1997 he was seconded to work in Harworth Derbyshire where he had been arrested in 1984 while picketing. He said, “I was shocked at the illiteracy rate; people couldn’t fill out their housing benefit forms and so were being evicted.” George is now retired and spends his spare time helping to renovate the local canals.
The miners at Maltby Colliery were the last to return to work when the strike ended. In 1994, the pit was sold to RJB Mining (later known as UK Coal), and in 1997 to Hargreaves Services. Maltby Colliery closed in March 2013, with a march held by former miners and residents of the town to mark the occasion. The Miners’ Welfare Institute closed in 2018.
In April 2013, hundreds of miners marched through Maltby to mark the closure of its pit.
Late 1983: National Coal Board announces its pit closure programme. It later announced an accelerated closure programme – a process which would take just 5 weeks to implement for some pits.
5 Mar 1984: Cortonwood miners walk out on strike following a ballot.
12 Mar 1984: The various local strikes were declared.
19 Apr 1984: Following a Special Delegate Conference at Sheffield the NUM calls on all of its members to come out on strike.
18 Jun 1984: Major battle between striking miners and the police at Orgreave Coking Plant, near Rotherham.
19 Jul 1984: Margaret Thatcher refers to the ‘rule of the mob’ and the ‘enemy within’ (the ‘enemy without’ had been Argentina who had invaded the British Falkland Islands two years before).
20 and 23 September: Pickets and police violence at Maltby.
19 Nov 1984: 97.3% of Yorkshire miners on strike.
14 Feb 1985: 90% of Yorkshire miners on strike.
1 Mar 1985: 83% of Yorkshire miners on strike.
3 Mar 1985: NUM calls off the strike.
5 Mar 1985: Miners return to work.
[1] Quoted by Natalie Thomlinson author of Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Natalie Thomlinson
Women and the Miners’ Strike, 1984-1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)
[3]Sheffield Morning Telegraph 25 September 1984. Kevin Barron was the Labour MP for Rother Valley from 1983 until 2019. On leaving school in 1962, Barron became an electrician at the Maltby Colliery.
1 came across an article in this month’s London Review of Books (Vol 46 no 16) by Tom Johnson. It is about visitations, whereby church authorities attempt to discern the state of religious life in the parishes. Here are some sections which mention the Forest of Dean:
On 13 May 1397, the visitors came to Ruardean in Gloucestershire. They learned that Nicholas Cuthler was causing a scandal among his neighbours. He had not come to terms with his father’s death and was making strange claims: he went about in public saying that his father’s spirit still walked the village at night. One evening he even kept vigil beside the tomb from dusk till dawn, waiting for the ghost to come. Nothing else is known about Cuthler, who was born six and a half centuries ago. His case happened to be written down by a scribe – and meanwhile he went on with his days, or so we must suppose. As is usually the case with medieval legal records, lives flash before our eyes and then vanish. The flashes are what make the archives so tantalising. You can wait a long time before you get one.
Cuthler’s scandalous grief was recorded in a booklet of about fifty pages, among more than a thousand other parish reports from the diocese of Hereford in 1397. These were the results of an inquiry called a visitation, whereby church authorities attempted to discern the state of religious life in the parishes. Local worthies sent reports to the bishop, John Trefnant, who processed through the diocese with a cadre of officials to investigate, judge and correct any troublesome behaviour.
In 1397 the visitors would have approached Cuthler’s parish of Ruardean with some trepidation, ghosts or not. It lay in the Forest of Dean, a district marginal even by the standards of the Welsh borders. Shallow seams of iron ore were excavated by shovel and pick in open-face mines; industrial quantities of charcoal were produced for the countless forges of a forest that must have seemed as though it was perpetually aflame. Living within the royal forest and its distinct legal regime, the men of Dean claimed special privileges that they were willing to defend by force. In the 1430s, after a dispute over tolls, they launched a series of attacks on grain barges heading down the Severn for Bristol. An indictment described them as ‘a wild people close and adjacent to Wales’, alleging that ‘the whole community of the Forest …cares nothing for the law, its officers or its procedures.’
At Ruardean the omens were not good. The chaplain failed to appear, the church’s chancel was found in a ruinous state and its revenues – supposed to be used for maintaining a priest – had been sold off without permission. But the parishioners, or at least the clutch of prominent men who supplied the visitors with information, were more accommodating. For some, visitation was an opportunity to speak truth to power; to tell a sombre ecclesiastical official in his expensive robes what needed fixing. The vast majority of reports concerned sex out of wedlock, which disrupted the household, the basic unit of patriarchal authority. The offence was often called ‘incontinence’ in the records: a failure of restraint. Its victims were usually the women and children left out in the cold. In Ruardean, apart from Cuthler and his father’s ghost, all anyone had been talking about was Margaret Hobys, a married woman who had been having an affair with a single man called Nicholas Boweton. Summoned before the judges, the shamed couple could not bring themselves to deny it. They swore an oath of atonement. They were assigned penance: they would be beaten around the parish church six times, and another six times through the market-place. At Staunton, the parishioners complained to the visitors that Thomas Smyth had ejected his wife from their house, ‘denying her food and clothing and other conjugal rights’.
If visitation seemed to some a chance to complain, for others it represented an intrusion. Who wanted to be told their church vestments needed replacing, or to traipse off to the nearest town to be solemnly scolded? At Mitcheldean, another forest village, the report gave a simple omnia bene, but a later note claimed that the official sent there ‘dare not cite the parishioners’.
“Machine with the strength of a hundred men Can’t feed and clothe my children.”
Lisa O’ Neill from her song Rock the Machine from her album Heard a Long Gone Song
“The level always has the command of the mine, waterworks (whether engine or otherwise we call waterworks) we do not think anything of, but the level is what commands the mine. A level is the mother of a mine.”
Free Miner, Thomas Davies (1832)
On 26 March 1774, some person or persons used gunpowder to blow up the Fire Engine colliery at Nailbridge near Cinderford in the Forest of Dean. One of the owners of the colliery was John Robinson who, at the time, worked as a representative of the Crown in the Forest of Dean. The following report appeared on the Gloucester Journal on 13 June 1774.
Sometime in the night of Sunday the 26th, a large quantity of gunpowder was, by some malicious or evil-disposed person or persons, conveyed under the fireplace belonging to the Fire Engine at Nailbridge, in the said Forest, with intent totally to destroy the same, and by which means such fireplace, part of the teasing house and pavement were blown up, the stack round the boiler, the iron bars, and arches of the engine house forced, and other considerable damage done.
This is to give notice, that if any person or persons will give Information upon oath against such offenders, or any of them, so as they are convicted thereof, such person or persons giving such information shall receive a reward from the proprietors of the said Engine of One Hundred Guineas, by the payment of Mr. John Robinson, of Littledean; and if any person or persons will give Information, which may lead to the discovery of such offender or offenders, a reward of Five Guineas will be given, and the utmost secrecy observed.
An Accomplice making such a discovery will be entitled to the Reward and insured a Pardon.
B. By Statute 9, George 111, it is enacted, that if any person or persons shall wilfully or maliciously set fire to, burn, demolish, pull down, or otherwise destroy or damage any Fire Engine, or other engine fur draining water from coal mines, or for drawing coal out of the same, or any bridge, waggon way, or trunk for conveying coals, or staith for depositing the same, every such person, being lawfully convicted of any or either of the said several offences, or of causing or procuring the same to be done, shall be judged guilty of felony, and subject to the like pains and penalties as in cases of felony.
No record of anyone claiming the award or being prosecuted for the offences exists.
BACKGROUND
Most of what follows will draw on the research of Chris Fisher (see Custom, Work and Market Capitalism, The Forest of Dean Colliers, 1788-1888, London: Breviary, 2016 and The Forest of Dean Miners’ Riot of 1831, Bristol: BRHG, 2020) and the research of Cyril Hart (see The Free Miners of the Royal Forest of Dean and Hundred of St Briavels, Lydney: Lightmoor, 2002). Fisher or Hart do not mention the blowing up of the Fire Engine Pit in 1775 but their texts provide an insight into the motives behind the attack on the mine. The use of the word ‘foreigner’ in this text generally refers to capitalists from outside the Forest of Dean.
Statutory Forest of Dean (much smaller than the Hundred of St Briavels below)
The statutory Forest of Dean and the minerals below it were and still are owned by the Crown. At the time of the explosion, Foresters claimed that free mining rights had been held ‘tyme out of mynde’. These allowed any son of a Free Miner who had worked a year and day in a mine and was born within the Hundred of St Briavels to open a pit anywhere in the statutory Forest of Dean by registering the right to mine a gale with the Deputy Gaveller. A gale was a grant to a small section of a specific seam of coal or deposit of iron ore or stone in a defined location. The Deputy Gavellers worked for the Crown and were responsible for registering the mines, seeing that the customary modes of working were enforced and collecting royalties.
The Hundred of St Briavels named from c. 1154
Book of Dennis
The first formal statements of these rights can be found in 1687 in “Laws and Customs of the Miners in the Forrest of Dean“, which was the result of an Inquisition by forty-eight Free Miners at some time before 1610 when they wrote down all that was remembered about their customary rights. This was what the miners called their “Book of Dennis”.[1]
In return for their rights and privileges, the miners had to pay a royalty on the tonnage raised to the Crown through the Deputy Gaveller. The Book of Dennis also prescribed the distances between mines, the size of containers to carry the coal, and the procedures to be followed when workings met underground. In addition, miners were allowed to build roads for the carriage of coal from the mine to the nearest Crown’s highway and to take timber from the Forest for use in the mines, without cost. Clause 24 in the Book of Dennis states that:
Alsoe every miner in his last dayes and at all tymes may bequeath and give his dole (share) of the mine to whom hee will as his own chatel, And if hee doe not the dole shall descend to his heirs.[2]
This clause is ambiguous and was later interpreted by some Free Miners to mean that they could sell a coal holding to a foreigner. However, Clause 30 of the Book of Dennis seems to exclude foreigners from the mines:
Alsoe no stranger of what degree soever hee bee but only that beene borne and abideing within the Castle of St Brievills and the bounds of the fforest, is as is aforesaid, shall come within the Mine to see and knowe ye privities of our Sou’aigne Lord the King in his said Mine.[3]
Again, there was some ambiguity in this. Certainly, foreigners were excluded by Clause 30 from entering the mines and, therefore from working in them and becoming Free Miners. It does not, however, specifically prohibit foreigners from participating in the industry as non-working partners.
Mine Law Court
In most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the customary right to mine was regulated by the Mine Law Court which operated in the manner set out by the Book of Dennis. The Court dealt with disputes, enabled a democratic and fair system of self-regulation, limited the accumulation of wealth by a single individual, and set out to ban outsiders from entering the industry.
All disputes among the miners were tried before the Mine Law Court, presided over by the Constable, usually a local nobleman based at St Briavels Castle, the Castle Clerk, and the Deputy Gavellers.[4] Matters were judged, with no foreigners present, by juries of twelve, twenty-four or forty-eight Free Miners whose decisions were final and binding. In addition, the Court could make further laws and regulations for the regulation of the industry. Miners were encouraged to hold to the Court and to enforce its decisions by a regulation which awarded to the plaintiffs half of any fine imposed on any other miner they successfully sued for breach of custom.
The Court established the size of the measures to be used in selling and carrying the coal and set the prices to be charged to different customers in different places. To ensure that the miners set their prices in accordance with this scale, the Court sometimes appointed panels of ‘Bargainers’ whose job was to arrange prices with regional or industrial groups of customers. Only Free Miners were allowed to transport coal (usually to the River Severn or Wye) and they were required to sell at the price fixed by the Bargainers. To defend its regulations and jurisdiction, the Court from time to time collected levies on all miners and coal carriers to provide funds for legal expenses.
The Court’s primary function was to limit entry to the industry. Only the sons of Free Miners who had been born in the Hundred of St Briavels and who had served an apprenticeship of a year and a day with their fathers or other Free Miners were permitted to become Free Miners. The sons of fathers not born free had to serve an apprenticeship of seven years if they wished to gain their freedom. Court further guarded against the intrusion of outsiders and the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few men, by stipulating that only Free Miners should carry the coal to market and that no carrier should have more than four horses for his business.[5]
The only exception allowed to these rules was that the Court might create honorary Free Miners who were entitled to the usual franchises and privileges. This occurred at times when the miners felt they needed the support of influential people. However, this was a breach of the Clauses in the Book of Dennis and, as we shall see, sowed seeds of discord at the end of the eighteenth century.
The Governor and Company of Copper Mines in England
There was no ambiguity about the Mine Law Court’s intention to closely limit the industry to native miners. In, the early 1750s, The Governor and Company of Copper Mines in England had enclosed land for their own mining and had attempted to exclude local miners from it. They had obtained the gale from free miners who had either sold it or given it to them.[6] In 1832, during the proceedings of a Commission appointed by the government to investigate mining in the Forest, William Collins, aged 77, deposed:
The miners tried to stop the company and could only do it by cutting under and letting the company’s work fall in.[7]
In other words, the mine was destroyed by miners tunnelling underneath it and causing its collapse. In 1752, the Company sued a party of miners for damages in the Court of the King’s Bench but their action failed when the jury found in favour of the miners who pleaded the customary right to mine wherever they wished. So, at this time, any large-scale, systematic attempt by foreigners to open mines in the Forest was vulnerable to undermining, against which they appeared to have no remedy at law.
Coal Mining
The miners worked in ‘companies’ where each ‘vern’ or partner had an agreed ‘dole’ or share of the profit. One of them acted as the leader of the company:
the strict custom required that the mines should be worked by companies of four persons, called verns or partners, the King considered as a fifth … all the verns were required to be free miners and to proceed in driving and working the level, or sinking and working the water pit, by their own labour, or assisted by their sons, or by apprentices.[8]
Under this system, the ownership of the mines was spread among a fairly large number of men and was not concentrated in the hands of a few.
The industry that worked within this customary framework was made up of relatively shallow pits and levels that worked the outcrop of the seams in the Forest coal basin, and these were limited in extent by the difficulty of dealing with water in the coal. Where they could the miners took advantage of the slope of the seams to help with drainage. However, Rev H.G. Nicholls wrote in that:
If the vein of coal proposed to be worked did not admit of being reached by a level, then a pit was sunk to it, although rarely to a greater depth than 25 yards, the water being raised in buckets, or by a water wheel engine, or else by a drain having its outlet in some distant but lower spot … the chief difficulty being found in keeping the workings free from water, which in wet seasons not infrequently gained the mastery and drowned the men out.[9]
A Water Wheel (Credit: Coalville Heritage)
However, up to the end of the eighteenth century, most of the Free Miners were hostile to the use of deep pits with water wheels to pump water because of the cost. The culture was one of small-scale cooperative working of levels to access the coal and this was reflected in the detailed regulations of the Mine Law Court.
Deep pits could also interfere with the workings of nearby levels which were driven at a near horizontal level into the ground. The discharge of large quantities of water on the surface by water wheels could impact the workings or flood nearby levels.
On the other hand, the pumping of water to the surface could benefit nearby mines which were in danger of flooding by lowering the water levels in their workings. However, in 1832, during the proceedings of the 1831 Commission, Free Miner, Thomas Davies argued that:
The level always has the command of the mine, waterworks (whether engine or otherwise we call waterworks) we do not think anything of, but the level is what commands the mine. A level is the mother of a mine.
As a result of this long-standing custom, the Mine Law Court made certain regulations around the use of water wheel engines. In 1754, after the introduction of a water wheel engine at the Oiling Green colliery the Court ordained that:
No free miner or miners shall or may sink any water pit and get coal out of it Above and Beneath the Wood within the limits or bounds of one thousand yards of any freeminer’s level to prejudice that level; if they do they shall forfeit the penalty of the Order which is £5, one half, etc.[10]
This was because levels could be several hundred yards long before they met a seam of coal. In the case of pits, the Mine Law Court regulations stated that they only had a protection of 12 yards from the centre of the pit. This had the effect of restricting the use of pits. In 1832, during proceedings of the Commission, Thomas Davies said that:
`the bound is 1,000 yards. If the gaveller gives a gale within 800 yards, the galee has a right to cut off any water pit, if he has a level that will raise the coal.[11]
Animation of a schematic Newcomen engine. Steam is shown pink and water is blue. Valves move from open (green) to closed (red). Credit: Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newcomen
In making the 1,000 yard regulation in 1754, a reference in the Mine Court Law documents is made to the Water Wheel Ingine at the Oiling Green near Broadmoor. This was the first time a Water Wheel Engine was established in the Forest.[12] The document reveals that its owners had been influential enough to successfully get the pit categorised as a level to circumvent the regulations.
Fire Engines
Steam engines (often called Fire Engines) could help to overcome the problem of pumping water from mines more effectively than water wheels. These engines were usually based on an invention by Thomas Newcomen in 1708 of a self-acting atmospheric engine. They were expensive to buy and required a lot of coal to run. They became quite popular in the coal industry and by the end of the eighteenth century mainly to pump water out of pits. However, up to the end of the eighteenth century in the Forest of Dean, most mines were levels or shallow pits of the type described by Rudder in 1799:
were not deep – because when the miners find themselves much incommoded with water, they sink a new one, rather than erect a fire engine, which might well answer the expense very well.[13]
Gloucester Journal 30 March 1772
Most Free Miners did not have the capital necessary for their installation, and the custom generally excluded foreigners who could supply the capital. However, it appears that by 1775, John Robinson and his son Thomas Robinson (Snr) in conjunction with a group of foreigners had bought a mine from free miners and established the first steam engine or “fire engine” to pump water in a mine in the Forest. The mine was The Fire Engine (originally The Oiling Gin or Water Wheel at the Orling Green near Broadmoor).
The company of gentlemen included John Robinson of Little Dean; Robert Pyrke of Newnham; Selwyn Jones of Chepstow; Thomas Weaver of Gloucester; Joseph Lloyd of Gun’s Mills; Thomas Crawley Boevey, of Flaxley, Esq. The company also included a free miner called William Howell of Littledean in whose name the gale was now registered. Howell retained sixteenth of the shares in the company.
John Robinson (1712-1784) was Deputy Gaveller from at least 1775 to 1777 and his son Philip Robinson (1744-1809) also later held the position. Robert Pyrke was a shipping entrepreneur and merchant who built a new quay at Newnham in 1755 with cranes and warehouses. Thomas Weaver was a pin manufacturer from Gloucester. Joseph Lloyd was a businessman who converted Gunns Mill into a paper mill. Thomas Crawley was an aristocrat who inherited Flaxley Abbey in 1726. It is unlikely any of these men had ever worked in a mine but they had the wealth and capital to fund a fire engine and probably employed others to do the work for them on piece rates or wages.
Some free miners would not have been happy with the intrusion of foreigners into their industry even if they were honorary free miners or Crown officials. Also, a fire engine would have been far more efficient at pumping water than a water wheel and so there may have been conflict over the discharge of large quantities of water impacting nearby levels.
Last Meeting of the Court
A meeting of the Mine Law Court held in August 1775 made it clear that the sale of mines to foreigners was prohibited or at least not acceptable to the Court.
Clause 8: Every miner or collier may give his mine or coal works to any person that he will, but if he does give it by will, that person, if required, shall bring the testament, and show it to the Court, but if it is a verbal will, he shall bring two witnesses to testify the will of the miner.
Clause 16: Foreigners having any mine or coal work carried in the Hundred of St Briavels, shall sell it to some free miner by private contract if they can, or otherwise expose it to sale by auction, by the Mine Law Court.
Clause 17: If a free miner dies and leaves his mine or coal works by will or testament to a foreigner, or it comes to him by heirship or marriage, he shall sell it as aforesaid, or hire Free Miners to work for him.
Clause 18: If any free miner sells any mine or coal work to a foreigner, he shall be liable to a penalty of £20, to be recovered in the Mine Law Court.[14]
The need for this restatement indicates that there was tension between miners and foreigners. The foreigners, including certain Crown officers, Deputy Constables, and Deputy Gavellers, had at one point been granted honorary Free Miner status, likely in recognition of services rendered to the miners. Some of these honorary Free Miners had gone on two acquire other mines as well as the Fire Engine. These were the Brown’s Green and Gentlemen Colliers. In each case, they had taken foreigners into partnership. This arrangement appears to have been a key factor behind the resolutions of 1775 listed above.
In 1772, in the period of John Robinson’s tenure as deputy gaveller, the rent for Brown’s Green colliery was paid for by Partridge, Platt and Co. who were foreigners even though the names in the gale book for the gale were different.[15] In 1792, the name on the gale book was George Morse who probably was a Free Miner.[16] Thirty years later the name of the mine had changed to the Lidbrook Water Engine and the names on the gale book were Harford, Partridge and Co. This company owned forges and traded in iron and its products in Bristol and Monmouth.
In 1766, the Gentlemen Colliers was owned, at this time, by a company of ‘gentlemen’ from Coleford, all or some of whom were been honorary free miners from Coleford and Newland.[17] In 1766, the gale was held in the names of the following: Mr Richard Sladen, Mr Dew, Richard Wilcox, Mr Dutton, John Hawkins, John Sladen, Henry Wilcox and Henry Yarworth. Richard Sladen owned the Inn, The Plume of Feathers in Coleford, and some of the others were local tradesmen and/or property owners.
Theft
The court’s records, usually kept at the Speech House, were targeted after the court’s session in August 1775 when someone broke into the chest where these documents were stored and removed them. This was the last time the court sat and this left the supervision of mining customs solely in the hands of the Deputy Gaveller, John Robinson. Fifty-three years later, Thomas Davis, a free miner aged eighty, said in evidence before the Dean Forest Commissioners, who were inquiring into the miners’ rights, that:
The Mine Law Court was given up, because of a dispute between Free Miners and foreigners, whom we did not consider fit to carry on the works. I believe the Court was given up because somebody took all the papers away from the speech house, and they were considered to be stolen. The Gaveller, one John Robinson, was a partner in the Fire Engine and was supposed on that account to have taken them away.[18]
A memorial presented to the Commissioners by Mr Clarke on behalf of the Free Miners echoed a similar sentiment, though it did not explicitly name Robinson. Foreigners, unable to bypass the barriers imposed by the Mine Law Courts—particularly the 1775 orders that prohibited them from working in the mines—recognised that their only chance for success lay in ridding the Forest of the Mine Law Court altogether.
Two of the partners in the Fire Engine were John and Phillip Robinson Snr, father and son, and both Deputy Gavellers. One of them was also a Clerk to the Mine Law Court and had possession of the records. The inference which all this suggests is that John Robinson had stolen the records and then, in his capacity as Deputy Gaveller, had refused to hold the Court again because there were no records. The records reappeared in 1832 in the hands of Phillip Robinson Jnr (1784- 1857) son of Phillip Robinson Snr, and assistant to the Deputy Gaveller. In 1832, Philip Robinson Jnr recalled:
I have heard my father often converse with Free Miners, and tell them it was their own fault the Mine Law Court dropped, and arose from their own supineness.[19]
Conclusion
The role of the Robinsons in the theft of the Mine Law court records is subject to doubt as the evidence is only circumstantial. However, the cessation of the Court had no important immediate consequences. The three mines, Fire Engine, the Brown’s Green and Gentlemen Colliers in which foreigners had a share were a small minority of the total number of mines. In 1776, it appears as the Fire Engine passed back into the hands of four Free Miners (Thomas Hale, James Tingle, Anthony Mountjoy and Thomas Hobbs) for the sum of £2200.
The cases of these three mines, all of which involved Crown officers, were the only substantial intrusion by foreigners into the Forest of Dean coalfield before about 1800. The destruction of the Fire Engine appeared to have curtailed any attempt to challenge long-established customary rights of Foresters to mine coal in the Forest of Dean. This was not an act of vandalism but a serious and successful attempt to defend a community from powerful social and economic forces which challenged their way of life.
This did not last. The Free Miners petitioned for the revival of the Mine Law Court but were ignored. This failure created an environment in which the strict rules governing ownership of the mines began to break down. Some free miners took advanage of this, in particular the Teague brothers, George, James and Thomas.
By 1788, free miners George Teague and George Martin (who was also a farmer), had insalled a fire engine at their pit, the Nofold Fire Engine Colliery near Cinderford.[20] In 1795, a free miner, James Teague, who had formed partnerships with foreigners, installed a fire engine and sunk a pit on his Potlid Gale about a mile north of Broadwell.[21]
As time went on, more Free Miners broke ranks and sold their pits or went into partnership with outside industrialists. This was a major factor in allowing capitalists to move into the Forest in the early nineteenth century and to start opening bigger and deeper coal mines.
As a result, the early nineteenth century saw the penetration and transformation of the old free-mining coal industry by capitalists from beyond the borders of the Forest. In the years between 1790 and 1830 the mining industry in the Forest of Dean passed, in the main, from the hands of a relatively large group of working proprietors of small-scale co-operative pits into those of a small group of men, mostly outside capitalists, who brought with them the steam engine, deep mining, tram roads and iron furnaces.
The owners of the tram roads charged high toll fees which were often unaffordable for some of the smaller Free Miners who were no longer able to claim the sole right to transport coal. [22]In addition, from about 1810, the Crown decided to enclose large areas of the Forest for timber production for the Royal Navy. Not only did this prevent miners from accessing Forest land to mine its minerals but it also limited their customary right to run animals in the woods.
By 1830 Edward Protheroe, from Bristol, had become the most powerful capitalist in the Forest. He had invested the money he made from the slave trade and from his West Indies plantations into thirty coal pits as well as iron mines and iron works. He employed about 500 men and owned substantial shares in the new tram roads. In 1831, Protheroes told the Commissioners:
The depth of my principal pits at Parkend and Bilson varies from about 150 to 200 yards; that of my new gales for which I have engine-licences, is estimated at from 250 to 300 yards. I have 12 steam-engines, varying from 12 to 140hp, nine or ten of which are at work, the whole amounting to 500hp; and I have licences for four more engines, two of which must be of very great power.[23]
The ability of approximately one thousand Free Miners, operating small levels to access the outcrop of coal, to compete with men like Protheroe was curtailed and, as a result, most of the inhabitants of the Forest were now dependent on the wages they earned working in the new deep pits owned by the capitalists. Many were reduced to poverty and some to unemployment. In 1831 the people of the Forest of Dean rioted, tore down the enclosure fences and attacked the property of Protheroe’s agent. But that is another story.[24]
[1] A copy of The Laws and Customs of the Miners in the Forest of Dean is held in the Gloucestershire Archives. Cyril Hart has reprinted in its entirety in his TheFree Miners. Clause numbers given here correspond to Hart’s paragraph numbers.
[4] The Constable was the King’s man, responsible for mediating between him and his subjects in the Forest on all matters other than those concerning the timber. Through the Gavellers and Deputy Gavellers and the Mine Law Court, he supervised the mining industry and saw that the King had his share of profit from it. He also conducted a court which adjudicated claims of debt among the foresters and maintained a debtor’s prison at the St Briavels Castle. The Marquis of Worcester, the Duke of Beaufort and the Earl of Berkeley acted as Constables from time to time during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
[20] Ralph Anstis, The Industrial Teagues of the Forest of Dean (Gloucester: Alan Sutton) Chapter Four.
[21] Anstis, The Industrial Teagues of the Forest of Dean 23-24.
[22] Tram roads were made using iron rails fitted to stone blocks to allow horse-drawn wagons to transport the coal.
[23] Cyril Hart, The industrial History of Dean (Newton Abbott: David Charles, 1972) 269.
[24] Ralph Anstis, Warren James and Dean Forest Riots (London: Breviary, 2011); Chris Fisher Custom, Work and Market Capitalism, The Forest of Dean Colliers, 1788-1888 (London: Breviary, 2016) and Chris Fisher The Forest of Dean Miners’ Riot of 1831 (Bristol: BRHG, 2020).
I started work in the Forest just over 50 years ago. I hadn’t been in the council offices for more than a few weeks before noticing lorries, laden with blackcurrants, going up the hill past the office window. I was already active in my workplace union and within the local trade union council where I had met many committed shop stewards from well organised workplaces, but I can’t remember meeting anyone from the unions at Beechams until they walked off the job in the late summer of 1977. Working with pickets on their marvellous picket line, I spent the next few weeks working my socks off to spread the word about the strike, organising solidarity meetings and collections around the forest and much further afield. When workers at the factory, now owned by Suntory, came out on strike earlier this year, I wrote an an anecdotal sketch to tell the story of the 1977 strike which I circulated and discussed on their picket line. The discussions were fascinating but the dispute was quickly resolved. I believe the Beechams strike of 1977 should go down as an important piece of local working class history. Here’s my memory…I hope you enjoy reading it.
Phil Jones
In the late summer of 1977, 450 low-paid workers at the Coleford soft drinks factory came out on strike after Beechams, the giant drinks, drugs and toiletries manufacturer, had driven a coach and horses through the government’s 10per cent dividend limit to give shareholders a 200 per cent rise.
Two years earlier the Labour government and the TUC had made an agreement, the Social Contract, which ‘voluntarily’ limited wage rises in exchange for a promise to improve rights at work and the provision of social welfare. The trades union leaders had held back on wage demands for almost three years but there was rumbling in the ranks as inflation took hold and the cost of living hit wage workers hard, particularly the low-paid. The Transport and General Workers union conference had voted to end wage controls at its conference, a few weeks earlier, but the leadership of the union was not willing to lead a campaign against the Labour government.
The workers at Beechams had other ideas. The workforce, two-thirds of whom were women, was a mix of seasonal, part-time and full-time workers, working a variety of shifts. Most were union members, but few had been on strike before. The convenor proudly wore a CTU tie. He was a Conservative Trades Unionist. He was pressed to call a mass meeting to discuss the annual pay offer and was taken completely by surprise by the result. The workers voted to strike.
Faced with reticent and even hostile trade union leaders the rank-and-file workers stepped up to the task. They elected a strike committee with mainly women in the forefront and organised round the clock picketing at the factory entrance, establishing an atmosphere of determination and good humour. Most workers took picket duty seriously, but it was often a fun place to be. Workers from local factories and offices were welcomed at the picket, which at times resembled a campsite. Women, who made up two-thirds of the workforce, took many of the leading roles but they didn’t need titles or badges as they were leaders who had the respect of their workmates. This was possibly the first strike against the social contract, and they were taking on a multi-national company, the Labour government, and the leadership of their union, who refused to make the strike official.
Margaret Merry, a twilight shift worker, told a national newspaper:
We can’t afford to go back to work and carry on living on these wages. Our union policy is against wage controls, yet the union won’t back us. It doesn’t make sense.
Margaret Merry, speaking out against those who argued that seasonal and twilight workers were ‘just working for pin money’ said:
I work five hours a night for five or six shifts a week. I go to work when the kids are back from school and my husband has come home from work to look after them. We work because we need the money. You can’t live on one person’s income these days. I’d like to know what these MPs and union leaders would say if their husband came home and put £30 on the table to keep a family for a week. In thirty years, there’s never been a strike here. The management have got richer while we’ve got poorer. They offer £3 a week. It’s nothing.
Margaret Merry, Carmen Gomery and Jackie Leach were just three of the women who took a lead during the six weeks they were on strike. All three women, and many more besides, were not only trusted and willing to give a lead to the Beechams workers; they were willing to stand up and draw in support and solidarity from workers in the Forest of Dean and further afield. They organised a lobby of the TUC conference and a solidarity meeting of 60 trades convenors and shop stewards from factories and other workplaces around the forest and Monmouth. Money started coming into the strike fund from collections and donations, but the Transport Union refused to make the strike official.
When it was suggested that they travel to the Beechams factory in Brentford one of the male stewards said it was a waste of time “because most of the workers there were foreign or coloured.” The following Sunday a car, carrying a black family, pulled into the picket line and the driver stepped out of the car saying:
I’m the convenor of the Brentford factory. We made a collection. I’ve come down with my family to offer support. Who can I give the money to?
He handed a bag of money over to the pickets, probably unaware that his family’s presence and solidarity had isolated and perhaps caused the evaporation of any latent racism amongst the small minority of strikers who had held such views.
The Transport union officials in Gloucester and Bristol distanced themselves from the strike. On several occasions, Brian Weston, the District Secretary had addressed mass meetings sometimes offering verbal support but on one occasion suggesting that they had been out for two weeks and made their point and perhaps ought to return to work. At the meeting, a steward read out a report in that week’s Socialist Worker and the convenor called for a vote on the return to work. The meeting, almost unanimously, voted to stay out and spread the action. “The foresters are a militant lot,” said Brian Weston, as he left the meeting… “No thanks to you,” one of the pickets fired back.
The strike lasted six weeks. During that time, many of the women strikers had spoken at meetings and events in different parts of the country, but even though money was coming in from various workplace and trade union collections, their union refused to make the strike official and refused to give the Beechams workers strike pay.
The strike was terminated by their union after someone in Coleford, who had no connection with Beechams, had organised a poll of the passing public outside the post office. The question on the poll said something like…”Do you think the Beechams workers should go back to work. Yes or No?” There was a slight majority for Yes amongst the few members of the public who had participated but it was enough for the assistant district secretary of the union, John Power, to call the strike off saying, “You’ve lost the support of the public.” The strikers went back to work.
They might not have won their wage demand, but they had demonstrated their dignity and determination. I have mentioned three women and with a better memory, I could have mentioned more. Men were involved in the strike and some took a lead role, but it was the role of the women who dispelled any myths that they were just there to support the men. They were angry fighters and they need to be recorded in history as women who were willing to stand up and fight against injustice; to stand against the rich and powerful and to challenge the union leaders who thought it more important to protect the Labour government than to support its own members.
This is how the strike was reported in the newspaper Socialist Worker
Socialist Worker 13 August 1977
Socialist Worker 20 August 1977
Socialist Worker 27 August 1977
Socialist Worker 3 September 1977Socialist Worker 10 September 1977Socialist Worker 17 September 1977Socialist Worker 24 September 1977
Noxon Farm was a 180-acre dairy farm owned by the Crown. In the years 1961 to 1984, the farm was tenanted to Ken Wright who lived at the farmhouse with his wife, Olive, and where they brought up their children, David, Ian and Susan.
Ken and Olive
After the retirement of Ken in 1984, David took on the tenancy and moved into the farmhouse with his wife Caroline where they brought up their daughters Hannah and Abi.
Dave and Caroline
In 1963 Ray Ruck started to work at Noxon and moved into one of the Crown cottages with his wife Shirley where they brought up their three children Stephen, Terry and Andrew. Ken died in 1986 but Ray continued working at the farm until 1996. David gave up the tenancy in 2004 following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease and the slaughter of the dairy herd.
Ray
The farm was part of the much larger Clearwell Estate which, from 1919, was owned by the Crown. In the nineteenth century, the nearby Noxon Park and Oakwood Valley were bustling with industrial activity with coal and iron ore mines, limestone and sandstone quarries, foundries, blast furnaces, tram roads and railways. The area is now managed by the Crown for timber production although some areas of the woodland have been left to grow wild.
Noxon Farm in 1964Noxon Farm showing fields north and south the avenue
Ancient History
Examples of flints found by Ian Wright in the fields surrounding the farm.
In ancient times hunter-gatherer tribes roamed the highland surrounding the area now occupied by Noxon Farm. Many flints used by Mesolithic and Neolithic people have been found scattered on the surface after the ground has been ploughed. In a field walking expedition in the large field south of the avenue in the above map, the Dean Archaeology Group found a massive 555 flints including cores, scrapers, and arrowheads. The presence of Neolithic and Mesolithic flints amongst the assemblages may suggest that these areas were occupied periodically or continuously over a considerable period. The presence of burnt flints characterised by small cracks indicates that the area may have been used for short-stay campsites and domestic purposes such as cooking and heating water. Romano-British sherds of pottery were also found.
Noxon Estate
The first record of a place called Noxon is in a reference to Sir John de Wysham who, on 3 June 1317 was granted the ‘King’s Fish Pool’ and 200 acres of ‘forest waste’ at Noxon in the Forest of Dean (increased to 280 acres which were cleared by 1321) on account of his good service to King Edward II. The rent was 70s 6d a year. This is probably the area covered by part of the existing Noxon Park and the existing ground area north of the avenue and up to the Park.
Wysham was an English knight who served as Constable of St Briavels Castle from 1310 to 1318 when he lived in the Forest of Dean. The Constable was the keeper or warden (custodes) of the Forest under the Crown. After he died in 1332, his son John de Wysham inherited the Noxon Estate. The fishpool at Noxon in 1317 was probably on Oakwood Brook. The large pond that adjoins the farmhouse now appears to have been made later, but before 1840, by damning the top of Oakwood Valley.
Clearwell Court: a detail from the Kip engraving of c.1710, showing the Tudor house that existed then.
By the end of the 14th century Noxon Estate had passed to William Wyesham, who leased it to Isabel, widow of John Joce, and in 1403 conveyed it in perpetuity to her and her second husband John Greyndour (1356-1416) owner of an estate of about 2000 acres around nearby Newland and Clearwell. It was then passed to John’s son Robert (1388-1443) who was the first owner of the estate to be styled as ‘of Clearwell’ or ‘of Clowerwell’ rather than ‘of Newland’, the large village in whose parish the estate lay. In the mid-15th century, Robert Greyndour started building the first house on the site, comprising a hall, a chapel and 12 chambers. Nothing now remains of this house.
Clearwell Castle: the 18th-century house is first recorded in this engraving of 1775.
After Robert died in 1443 the Clearwell estate passed by marriage to the Baynham family in 1484, and it remained in their possession until 1611, when it again passed by marriage to the Throckmortons. In the mid-17th century, Sir Baynham Throckmorton was a leading figure among the county gentry and one of the senior officials in the Forest of Dean. He had to pay a large fine to recover his estate from sequestration in the Civil War and subsequently forfeited it again and had to buy it back in 1653, crippling the family finances. In 1698 his son’s heirs sold the house to Francis Wyndham of Uffords Manor (Norfolk) and then to his son Thomas who built the existing Clearwell Castle. The estate passes down from Thomas Wyndham to his son, Thomas of Dunraven, and then on to Dunraven’s daughter, Caroline. Clearwell Court, as it was then known, passed hands numerous times before being purchased by Colonel Charles Vereker.
Clearwell Court with Noxon Farm in the Distance
Noxon Farm
There is evidence of medieval cultivation as the remains of a ridge and furrow system can be seen on the bank on the far side of the existing pond. There were farm buildings at Noxon in 1443, but in the 16th and early 17th centuries most of the land was used as a park and in 1611 it had two lodges, a new one and an old one. There is documentary evidence for hunting or game keeper’s lodges at Noxon Park.
A 1608 map shows the area to the north of the avenue as wooded with large open fields to the south of the avenue. Noxon Farm may occupy the site of one of the lodges mentioned above, though the surviving house dates from the late 17th century. Its main range was probably built in two stages at that period, with the west end the earlier. During the 19th century, the house was much altered and additions were made to its south side in three or more stages.
1608 Map
A 1782 map of the Forest of Dean shows the area now occupied by the farmland between the avenue and the woods as open parkland and the Lord of the Clearwell manor may have used this for hunting. The small building marked on the map may have been a hunting lodge. However, an 1840 map shows the existing farmhouse, farm buildings and a field system.
So at some stage, in the eighteenth century most of the land on the Clearwell Estate was enclosed and hedges planted, some of which remain today. The estate was divided up into plots of land of about 150 acres and let to tenant farmers.
One of these plots of land was Noxon Farm which occupied the land on the south-western side of the Noxon estate including Bradfields, while the north-east side, chiefly comprising Noxon Park wood, was maintained as woodland and mined for iron ore and coal.
The Constants
The family who were tenants and lived at Noxon from about 1650 to 1869 were called Constant and they were both farmers and free miners who mined coal and iron ore in Noxon Park and elsewhere. The tenancy was held by Israel Constant (1741-1790) and then by his son John Constant (1771-1851).
1782 Map
In the 1770/80s Israel Constant and Joseph Constant worked a pit called New Work in Noxon Park. In the 1790s, Israel Constant mined coal with others in Noxon Park at levels called Dog Kennel and Merry Way and paid royalties to the owners of Clearwell Estate.
Bryants Map of Gloucestershire (1824)
Note in the above map the border of the Statutory Forest marked by the dotted line is north of the small area of woodland which is part of Noxon Park. When John Constant registered as a free miner in 1838, he was mining coal at Nags Head and Stoning Stile Level. In 1841, he was mining Endeavour Level at Dark Hill and Drybrook Folly level.
1841 Census
Name
Role
Age
John Constant
Farmer
70
Sarah Constant nee Mudway
Farmer’s Wife
58
Thomas Constant
Farmer’s Son
25
Harriot Constant
Daughter
16
Henrietta Constant
Daughter
14
Israel Constant
Farmer and John’s Brother
67
Elizabeth Mudway
Sarah’s Mother
84
Thomas Mudway
Sarah’ Brother
35
Maria Ward
15
Angelina Goode
5
1840 Tythe Map
John Constant’s wife was Sarah Mudway who was the daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Mudway who held the tenancy of Cauldwell Farm until he died in 1824. Elizabeth and her son Thomas held the Caudwell tenancy until 1840 when they sold up and moved to Noxon. Elizabeth died in 1842 and then Thomas took up the tenancy of Stowe Green Farm.
After the death of John Constant his son Thomas Constant (1820-1869) inherited the tenancy and concentrated on farming. Thomas’s only son Thomas Benjamin Constant (1864 -1945) was too young to inherit the tenancy but later emigrated to America.
Atkinson’s Map of the Forest of Dean (1847)
1851 Census
Name
Role
Age
Sarah Constant
Widow and retired
65
Thomas Constant
Son and Tenant Farmer
30
Harriot Constant
Daughter
26
Henrietta Constant
Daughter
24
Mary A Holbrook
Servant
32
William Hopkins
Farm Labourer
23
John Davies
Farm Labourer
16
1861 Census
Name
Role
Age
Thomas Constant
Tenant Farmer
40
Kate Constant
Farmer’s Wife
22
Henrietta Constant
Daughter
3 months
Alfred Smith
Cousin and Farmer’s son
32
Mary Anne Holbrook
Servant
41
Ellen Goslen
Dairy Maid
21
William Price
Servant
15
New Tenants
In 1871 the tenancy was held by Captain John Henry Dighton who lived at Tan House and then Oak House in Newland and employed Richard Harris to live at Noxon to manage the farm.
1871 Census
Name
Role
Age
Richard Harris
Farm Labourer
53
Mary Taylor
Servant
63
William Oliver
Farm Labourer
63
Edwin Harris
Farm Labourer
82
In February 1883, Noxon was let on a lease of five years at £240 per year to Rees Thomas from Maesycrochan, Farm near Cardiff who then sublet it to David Thomas (no relative) from Wales on a lease of one year from February 1883. However, Rees Thomas broke the terms of the lease by abandoning the farm after one year and emigrating to America leaving the farm in a poor state.
1881 Census
Name
Role
Age
David Thomas
Tenant Farmer
41
Elizabeth Thomas
Farmers Wife
36
Elizabeth Mary Thomas
Farmer’s Daughter
14
Ida Catherine Thomas
Daughter
11
Frederick William Thomas
Son
9
Blanch Jane Thomas
Daughter
5
Ellen Gwendoline Thomas
Daughter
3
Charles Sam Philips
Brother and Retired Farmer
33
Ann Philips
Charles’s Wife
35
Mary Harris
Servant
19
Barbara Miles
Servant
15
In 1885, the tenancy was held by James Miles at a rent of £200 per year. James had previously held the tenancy of Court, Platwell and Longley Farms. In March 1880, James’s son, 27-year-old Thomas Miles who farmed at nearby Stowe Green farm, committed suicide after a period of depression by hanging himself from an apple tree at his farm.
On Tuesday 17 May 1887, Julia Anna, the 29-year-old daughter of James Miles went missing and the following week notices were posted in local papers offering a £5 reward for information leading to her whereabouts. The family were very concerned that she may have committed suicide, as her brother had done a few years before, and because when she had left home, she was suffering from a form of ‘religious mania’. Sadly, her body was found in the River Severn on Tuesday 24 May near Woolaston. The coroner’s jury found that she had “committed suicide whilst in a fit of temporary insanity”. James also rented a farm at Pencoyd, in Herefordshire and moved there after the death of Julia perhaps out of grief and so his son William took over the running of Noxon.
1891 Census
Name
Role
Age
William Miles
Farmer’s Son
31
Mary Miles
Sister
26
Annette Dawe
Border
51
William Mildew
Servant
17
On Monday 5 December 1892. William Miles, 32-year-old the son of James, fell off his horse when returning from Coleford fair and died because of a broken neck. William had left the Angel in Coleford at about 9 pm when there was snow on the ground. William had a reputation for being reckless and the landlord of the Angel stated that he rode off down Newland Street at a pace. At 10 pm he called in at the Wyndham Arms leaving at about 10 pm. About an hour later his body was found on the ground at Shophouse. This was tragic news for the family having already lost two children to suicide. James Miles was ill in bed and his wife was away in Herefordshire at another farm her husband rented. In January 1905, James Miles sold up.
Chepstow Weekly Advertiser 28 January 1905
In 1911 the tenancy was held by Stanley Teague, the son of James Teague from Trowgreen Farm. Stanley gave up his Noxon tenancy in January 1924.
Stanley Teague (Credit Ancestry)1919 Map
1911 Census
Name
Role
Age
Stanley G Teague
Tenant Farmer
30
Florence Teague
Farmer’s Wife
29
1921 Census
Name
Role
Age
Stanley Teague
Farmer
40
Florence Teague
Farmer’s Wife
39
Ursula Robinson
Niece and Help
14
Jeffrey Prosser
Horseman
20
Albert Nash
Cow Boy
18
Ursula Teague
Daughter
1
Joseph Smith, whose brother Harry Smith farmed at Cherry Orchard, held the tenancy from 1924 to 1932. After Joseph died, Walter Robinson then took on the tenancy until February 1935.
The Williams Brothers
Harold George Williams and Alfred Horris Williams held the tenancy and lived at Noxon with their housekeeper Julia Sully and their mother Mary (until she died) from 1935 until 1960. Harold and Alfred had been brought up on Abbey Farm Chapel Hill Near Chepstow and then had worked at Tan House Farm in Newland.
The Avenue (1950s)
During this period brothers Trevor & Basil Vaughan worked on the farm. They both lived in one of the cottages next to the church in Bream until they married. The cottages were demolished in about 1961. Basil married Margaret who was a land girl from London, and they lived in one of the two crown cottages on the avenue at Trow Green which were designated for farm workers from Noxon or Trow Green. Basil worked at Noxon as soon as he left school and then right through the war years until he left to work in the car factories in Oxford in the 1970s. Trevor married Eileen from Viney Hill and at first lived on Brockhollands Rd and then moved to their own house at The Tufts in Bream.
Basil on Combine (Thanks to Megan Hastelow)Harold and Alfred Williams with Basil and Trevor (Thanks to Megan Hastelow)Basil and Trevor with on of the Williams brothers (Thanks to Megan Hastelow)
In 1960 the Williams brothers retired and the new tenancy was awarded to Ken Wright who previously held the tenancy of Blacklands Farm near Old Basing in Hampshire with his brother-in-law. In 1960, Ken, Olive, David, Ian and Susan Wright moved to the farm and Ken set about building up a herd of dairy cows as well as keeping pigs and chickens and growing potatoes. Not long after this, Trevor left Noxon and went to work at the Rubber factory in Lydney.
Ken Wright in the garden at Noxon with his sons David and IanKen Wright and Ray Ruck rolling silage with a Nuffield TractorKen Wright and daughter Susan and son IanKen Wright, ian and Susan in the Cow Yard on a Massy Ferguson 35Dave and Kevin Tyeian Feeding the Cows in WinterKen Wright and his nephew George GuestRay and Ian with Martin Davies and Michael Hoare and Flash the dog
As a farmer’s wife Olive had a busy domestic schedule. She also kept chickens, took in lodgers and bed and breakfast. In this she received the help of Nellie Preest who lived in Bream with her husband. Their son John also worked on the farm for a while.
Olive selling EggsDave and NellieKen WrightDavid, Ken and Ray making Silage
Ken died in 1986 and his eldest son David then took on the tenancy. Dave’s sister Susan and her husband David Morris lived and worked on the farm between 1983 and 1987.
Sue and DaveSue with baby goats
Ray cutting silageDave, Ray and Steve Ruck (Ray’s son) in summer 1993Sheep ShearingOlive, Dave and Ray sheep shearingRay milkingDave feeding the sheep
During the period from 1961 to 2003, the following people were also employed at Noxon; Trevor Vaughan, Ray Ruck, Mike Watts, Barry Isles, Gerald Haynes, Norman Sterry, Melvin Ruck, John Preest, Donald Johns, David James, Basil Beard, Gerald Gunter, Gordon Jones, Kevin Tye, Bill Grayson, Steve Ruck, Claire, Monty Gaulding.
The last days of the working farm after foot and mouth
Oakwood Valley and Noxon Park
The history of Noxon is about iron ore, coal, limestone, charcoal and timber as well as about agriculture. Oakwood Valley which descends on the northeast boundary of the farm was rich in natural resources and at times in the past was a hive of industrial activity with people working in its mines and quarries, horses and carts, tram roads and steam engines. The remains of a small limestone quarry lie at the top of Oakwood Valley at the back of the farm.
Noxon Park shares a boundary with the modern Statutory Forest and was created out of the land which was assarted under licence in 1317 by Sir John de Wysham as described above. This may have encroached into land which was originally part of the Royal Demesne which later became the Statutory Forest.
Iron Ore
Noxon Park was rich in iron ore and evidence of its extraction in the form of extensive surface workings in the form of Scowles can be found in the woods at the back of the farm in Noxon Park which is now owned by the Forestry Commission. The Noxon scowles contain some of the most spectacular and best-preserved examples in the Forest of Dean. These consist of hollows, channels, rock faces and pillars, as well as underground workings. Recent studies have indicated that scowles are largely natural features, representing ancient cave systems in the Crease Limestone into which the deposition of iron minerals occurred. Nevertheless, there is evidence of significant modification during mining activity over many hundreds of years by the presence of pick marks, drill holes, and spoil heaps, as well as the volume of material which must have been extracted. Although direct evidence is scanty, some of the workings may date back to Iron Age or Roman times.
The mining of iron ore continued into the mediaeval age. Evidence of the bloomers used to smelt the ore can be seen by the remains of slag found in the soil in and around the farm. Royalties from mining were being paid to the Crown in the 13th century, and there were six small pits in the mid-1700s. The remains of coppices to produce timber for charcoal are also evident.
Mining of ore continued into the nineteenth century with free miners working the outcrop and digging small pits with such names as Scarr Pit, Ashe Pit, Wyche Wylder’s Pit, Lady’s Pit, Brown’s Pit, Little Pit, Knock Pit, Lord’s Pit, Nock Pit, Dog Kennell. Merry Way, Quab, Sackfield, New Work Pit and many more without names. The remains of these pits can still be seen in Noxon Park often as just holes in the ground or caves sometimes leading to more extensive workings. Once the near-surface ore was worked out, mining was extended underground.
The Oakwood Levels
In the early nineteenth century, David Mushet opened the Oakwood Mill Land Level and the Oakwood Mill Deep Level which tunnelled deeper into the ore reserves under under Noxon Park. Mushet was granted the Oakwood Mill Land Level as lessee of a free miner, John Hawkins. An adit was driven 1650 ft to the crease limestone at 375 ft above sea level. Then a level was driven 1000 ft to the southeast and 3500 ft to the northwest. Mushet built a tram road to take the ore to Parkend and the remains of this can still be seen.
This led to a dispute between David Mushet and Lord Dunraven, the owner of Noxon Park, over who held the rights to the minerals under Noxon Park and to whom royalties should be paid. The dispute arose when Dunraven refused to allow Mushet to sink an air shaft in one of the fields on his land. Mushet claimed free mining rights as a free miner and took Dunraven to court. The dispute reumbled on with no resolution. However, Dunraven took at least one miners to court for theft for claiming free mining rights in Noxon Park.
Gloucester Journal 17 August 1850
China Engine
The largest mine iron ore mine in the valley was China Engine with extensive underground workings and was in existence in 1835. In 1841 the Dean Forest Mining Commissioners awarded China Engine gale to William Montague of Gloucester and John James of Lydney as lessees of George Stephens, a free miner. The shaft was 189 feet deep and reached creased limestone at 235 feet above sea level. Levels were driven 1700 feet to the northwest and 2900 feet to the southwest. Another level, 375 feet above sea level was driven from Oakwood Mill Land Level and was about 4,300 feet long. There were extensive workings between the two levels and the mine used a steam engine to lift iron ore to the surface and pump out water from the mine.
The Oakwood Tramroad, a branch of the Severn & Wye Railway, was extended to China Engine Mine under a licence of 1855, giving direct rail access to Parkend Ironworks. In 1880 the mine was operated by the Forest Haematite Iron Ore Co. It is estimated that at least 300,000 tons of ore were raised from the mine before it closed in about 1885. The site of the shaft has now been filled in and the ground cleared and levelled, and is now just a grassy area in woodland.
Nearby there was another large iron ore mine called the Princess Louise. The brick-lined shaft is still open and the remains of some building foundations and walls can also be seen nearby. In 1835 the mine started at a level called (New China) here by 1835 and then the Princess Louise shaft, 600 ft deep, was sunk to drain the ground to the dip of the ‘235 ft’ level in China Engine Mine. The Crease Limestone, the main host of the iron ore, was not reached., the mine closed in about 1885.
Credit: Ian Standing
Noxon Park Mine was said to have been 120 ft deep and was operated by the Great Western Iron Co. in 1880 when 7,028 tons of ore were produced. The total output from China Engine, New China Level and Oakwood Mill Land Level between 1841 and 1892 has been estimated by Sibly to be more than 300,000 tons. However, this does not include the amount of ore mined by working the outcrop and before 1841.
Deatils of some of the old mines in Oakwood Valley:
Iron mining was dangerous work. On 20 February 1868 iron miner James Emanuel was working the night shift at China Engine with another man driving the heading and having charged a hole as usual and set fire to the fuse, the powder exploded but failed to bring away the piece of rock intended. James again charged the hole with powder and whilst in the act of withdrawing the wire (or pricker), the powder exploded and killed him. On 21 May 1892, 56-year-old George Kear was crushed by a stone at China Engine and died on his way to Gloucester Hospital.
The remains of a foundry dating from 1852 can still be seen. The foundry made nails and finally closed in 1916. At the bottom of Mill Hill, there is a large house which was once the Oakwood Inn, known locally as ‘The Mill’ and near the site of the Oakwood Mill, a corn mill established in 1820.
Further down the valley are the ruins of the Bromley Furnace. The Ebbw Vale Company, who had mines in the Oakwood Valley, including Princess Louise, started operating this furnace in 1856 and it ceased working ten to fifteen years later.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the mining of coal using small levels by free miners took place in the valley and the remains of their mines still exist today.
At the end of the valley, there is the extensive site of the Flour Mill Colliery, which was by far the largest industrial site in the Bream area. The chemical works, which produced chemicals and charcoal by heating wood in the absence of air, was built on the site just ahead around 1850 by George Skipp who manufactured various products including wood-pitch and wood-tar but closed in 1900. Further down the valley, there were chemical works. Nearby, are some of the buildings of the large Flour Mill colliery.
Flour Mill was first galed in 1843. Shaft sinking was in progress in 1866, and coal was being produced by 1874. In 1891 the Princess Royal Colliery Co. Ltd was formed to work both Princess Royal (Park Gutter) and Flour Mill. The combined output (with Princess Royal) was 600 tons of coal per day in 1906. An underground connection was made to Park Gutter in 1916, and coal ceased to be wound at Flour Mill in 1928. The mine closed in 1960, but the Flour Mill buildings still exist and are now used by a railway locomotive engineering business.
Details of the Bream Heritage walk which includes parts of Oakwood Valley: https://bhwalk.uk/
Charlie Mason (Credit: Margo Woodhill, Charlie’s Granddaughter)
In 1987, Ellen Jones, at the age of 89, wrote an article in the Forest of Dean Review called When Charlie Mason led the Miners, describing her experiences of the occupation of Westbury Workhouse during the 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean. The occupation was in response to the cutting of relief to the families of locked-out miners in August 1926, leaving them with no means of support. Ellen wrote:
The miners’ leader was Charlie Mason of Brierley whose daughter is Winifred Foley, the author of A Child in the Forest. I don’t remember if he encouraged us or if we group of women and children of our own free will went to the Poor Law Institution at Westbury to try and get help for our men.
Some of us went very bravely – I with my two little girls and Jim, a baby in arms. While there we tried to make the best of it. One jolly woman would say. “Never mind girls – cheer up – I can smell bacon and eggs cooking for breakfast.” But no such luck! Just porridge!
The staff did their best for us down there but we couldn’t cope for long, so we all decided to return home. On the weary walk to Cinderford, we met our husbands coming down to bring us a bit of tea and sugar. The miners’ leader met me and asked if I would take my children into Cinderford Town Hall on the back way and when a roomful of people cheering and clapping, I felt quite a heroine!
This article explores the occupations, protests, and delegations linked to the provision of Poor Law relief for destitute miners and their families in the Forest of Dean. It examines the period beginning with the severe coal trade depression in late 1920, which led to a sharp rise in unemployment, and culminated in the 1926 miners’ lockout.
The Boards of Guardians, who administered each Poor Law Union, held the statutory responsibility to provide relief to the destitute in the form of accommodation in a workhouse or outdoor relief in cash, vouchers or a loan. In the nineteenth century, the destitute could include strikers and their dependents but after 1900, the law forbade the giving of relief to strikers or locked-out workers but continued to allow the award of relief to their dependents.
The post-World War One economic depression and industrial strife which followed created significant financial strain on the Poor Law system, leading some Poor Law Unions to face bankruptcy due to the overwhelming demand for relief. This article highlights the challenges faced by the Poor Law system during this period of economic hardship and social unrest, as well as the evolving legal restrictions on who could receive public assistance.
The matter of relief became highly controversial during the 1921 and 1926 miners’ lockouts because widespread destitution in the coalfields threatened solidarity. During the protracted struggle of 1926, the determination of miners to resist the temptation to return to work inevitably depended upon their success in feeding themselves and their families. Consequently, the granting or withholding of relief to the families of locked-out men could alter the balance of power between the contending parties in the dispute.
This sometimes led to conflict between members of the Boards of Guardians within each Poor Law union because some were sympathetic to the labour movement and others were hostile. Boards of Guardians, where the majority were keen to support destitute miners and their families, often ran into conflict with the ratepayers who financed the relief and the government who were keen to end the lockouts.
In some areas, there were allegations that public funds were being used to finance strikes while in others it was alleged that relief was being deliberately withdrawn to force the men back to work. The administration of poor law relief, therefore, increasingly became a political question as boards of guardians granted or withheld relief based on their views on the merits of the disputes and whether financial help should be provided for the miners and their families.
In the Forest of Dean, this conflict reflected the class dynamics among the main participants. Working-class Guardians like Ellen Hicks, Tom Liddington, Charles Luker, Albert Brookes, Charlie Mason, William Ayland, Harry Morse, Tim Brain and Abraham Booth argued for an interpretation of the Poor Law which could allow them to provide more financial aid to destitute members of their community. On the other hand, Guardians like Lady Mather Jackson and George Rowlinson argued for an interpretation of the Poor Law which reflected their hostility to the mining community.
The decision of the Westbury Board of Guardians in the Forest of Dean to be one of the first Boards in the country to refuse relief to destitute miners’ wives and children in the summer of 1926 during the lockout was highly controversial and was even possibly against the Ministry of Health guidelines. In response, miners’ wives and children occupied the workhouse in protest. The only other Boards of Guardians to take such extreme action in the summer of 1926 were Bolton and Lichfield.
In contrast, the dependents of miners from the majority of Poor Law Unions were provided with relief until the lockout was over in December 1926. The actions of the Westbury Board led to accusations that some of its Guardians were victimising the miners and supporting the colliery owners. This had a significant impact on the course of the lockout in the Forest where it achieved its aim of driving many miners back to work.
To place the debates in their historical context it is necessary to provide some background information on the Poor Law itself, the role of the Guardians, the significance of the legal rulings, the changing ways in which the Poor Law was administered and the crisis facing Guardians with rising unemployment and strikes in the 1920s.
The Poor Law Act of 1834
Although Poor Law Unions in one form or another had existed since the late seventeenth century, a new form of Poor Law Union was set up under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 which radically overhauled the system of providing support to the poor.
The Poor Law Act of 1834 was based upon the assumption that relief to the poor should be such that no person receiving relief be in a more favourable position than the very lowest-paid worker. The principle was that of ‘deterrence’, and strict distinction was made between the so-called ‘undeserving poor’ usually the able-bodied who were able to work and the ‘deserving poor’ usually sick, disabled or elderly.
The authorities considered that work was generally available to all those willing to seek it and the failure to find work represented a moral failure on the part of the individual rather than a structural problem with the economy or high unemployment. The principle behind the Act was that relief be only offered to ‘the genuinely destitute’ while ‘unemployed malingerers’ would be forced back into the labour market.
Poor Law Unions
Under the Poor Law Act, a national Poor Law Commission was established to oversee the grouping of local parishes into Poor Law Unions, which were financed by local rates. Each Union was centred on a town where a workhouse was situated or planned to be built, and usually covered about a ten-mile radius. There could be 30-40 parishes in each Union, and these sometimes extended across the county boundaries. The new Poor Law was meant to ensure that the poor were housed in workhouses where they were clothed and fed and by the 1860s all Unions had workhouses. Able-bodied single men would usually be denied outdoor relief but if the Guardians considered them ‘genuinely destitute’ they could be offered the option of entering the workhouse.
Therefore, workhouse inmates sometimes could include the able-bodied as well as the disabled, the mentally ill, the old, the sick and children who would receive some schooling. However, the conditions in workhouses were designed to deter any but the truly destitute from applying for relief. All workhouse paupers had to carry out work which involved boring, repetitive tasks such as cleaning, picking oakum, breaking stones, cutting timber, etc.[1] Consequently, the working classes hated and feared the workhouse and the stigma associated with pauperism.
As the nineteenth century progressed, the limited space available in workhouses meant that outdoor relief sometimes continued to be a cheaper alternative. Despite efforts to ban outdoor relief, the Guardians continued to offer it as a more cost-effective method of dealing with pauperism.
Board of Guardians
In 1919, central supervision of the Poor Law system was given to the Ministry of Health. However day-to-day administration at the local level remained the responsibility of elected Boards of Guardians, with the financial burden of relief being shouldered not by the Exchequer but by local ratepayers.
Each Poor Law Union was run by a Board of Guardians which included ex-officio members and those elected by ratepayers from their constituent parishes. The Guardians were expected to finance their administration from public funds and local rates. Each civil parish in the Union was represented by at least one Guardian, with those with larger populations or special circumstances having two or more. In the period up to 1894, Guardians were subject to annual elections and could only be male property owners. The main duties of the Board of Guardians were overseeing relief to the poor, assessing applications for relief and setting up and maintaining a workhouse.
The Board of Guardians appointed permanent officers which included the master and/or matron who were responsible for running the workhouse on a day-to-day basis and the relieving officer who was responsible for evaluating the cases of people applying for relief and allocating funds or authorising entry to the workhouse. There could also be a medical officer, a clerk to the Guardians, a treasurer, a chaplain, and various other officers as deemed necessary.
Over the years, under various Acts, the Board of Guardians became responsible for other duties such as civil registration, sanitation, vaccination, school attendance, and the maintenance of infants separated from their parents.
In 1886, in response to the problem of unemployment, a circular to the Boards of Guardians from the government minister, Joseph Chamberlain, stated that there was a moral responsibility on Boards to provide work for the able-bodied unemployed during times of severe industrial depression. This led to the practice of opening Stone Yards or providing other tedious work. This system was hated by the poor because it usually meant the unemployed working long hours at back-breaking work for a mere pittance.
The Local Government Act 1894
Up to 1894, local parish councillors were elected by ratepayers in a system of weighted voting, with those owning more property having multiple votes. For instance, a cottager had just one vote while a farmer might have six or if he owned his farm, twelve. On the passing of the Local Government Act (1894), the multiple-vote system was abolished and a system of urban and rural districts with elected councils was created.
To be eligible for election or to vote, a person must be on the electoral register and have resided in the district for twelve months before the election. Women, non-ratepayers and those in receipt of Poor Law relief were permitted to vote and to be nominated as councillors. Separate Poor Law elections were limited to urban district councils while councillors from the newly established rural district councils elected Guardians from among themselves. The term of office of a Guardian was increased to three years. The Boards were permitted to co-opt a chairman, vice-chairman and up to two additional members from outside their own body. The Local Government Act of 1894 provided opportunities for the working class and female candidates to be elected onto the Boards of Guardians and elections were closely fought and increasingly politicised.
Forest of Dean Poor Law Unions
In the years leading up to the early nineteenth century, large parts of the extra-parochial Crown land in the Forest of Dean had been encroached upon by families building rudimentary cabins. However, after the 1831 riots, any long-established squatters who had encroached on Crown land were allowed to remain in their properties and many were given freehold status. As a result, in 1842, the extra-parochial area of the Forest was divided for Poor Law Act purposes into two townships East Dean and West Dean in Gloucestershire.
Following the Local Government Act 1894, the township of West Dean became a civil parish in the West Dean Rural District which also included the civil parishes of English Bicknor, Newland, and Staunton. The paupers in the West Dean Rural District were cared for by the Monmouth Board of Guardians and housed in the Monmouth Workhouse. The Monmouth Guardians were elected from about 30 Parishes in Monmouthshire, West Dean Rural District Council and the Coleford Urban District.
Likewise, in 1894, East Dean became a civil parish in the East Dean Rural District which included the 10 other Gloucestershire civil parishes and were grouped into the Westbury-on-Severn Poor Law Union.[[2] The paupers in the East Dean Rural District were cared for by the Westbury Board of Guardians and housed in the Westbury Workhouse. The Board of Guardians were elected from East Dean Rural District Council and the residents of the Urban Districts of Awre, Newnham, and Westbury (despite being classified as urban these districts were mainly rural).
In the case of the Westbury Board, all the Guardians were elected from parishes in Gloucestershire but some of these were from communities surrounding the mining areas whose primary industry was agriculture. There were approximately 35 Guardians on the Westbury Board, although not all of them could attend every meeting.
In addition to the two main Poor Law Unions impacting the Forest of Dean, there were the Chepstow and Ross Unions. The Chepstow Board of Guardians were responsible for the workhouse in Chepstow which was in Monmouthshire but covered several parishes in the West of the Forest of Dean including Hewesfield, St Briavels, Aylburton, Woolaston and Lydney Rural District as well as the 35 parishes in and around Chepstow. Similarly, the Ross Board of Guardians were responsible for the workhouse in Ross which was in Herefordshire but covered the Ruardean parish in the north of the Forest of Dean as well as the 28 parishes in and around Ross.
The various local authority bodies were responsible for collecting the rates and passing on a percentage to their Poor Law Unions. However, the wealth of each Poor Law Union differed considerably depending on the rateable value of the properties. The largest town in the Westbury Poor Law Union was Cinderford where 80 per cent of the male adult population worked in the mines and where the housing stock was poor with low rateable value. Cinderford was part of East Dean Rural District. The highest proportion of the rates were paid by the colliery companies that owned the many mines surrounding the town. The amount of rates the colliery owners paid was based on their annual production and so, during periods of low production or strikes, the rateable value would fall even further.
The significant conclusion that can be drawn from the organisation of Poor Law Relief in the Forest of Dean is that for Monmouth, Ross and Chepstow Poor Law Unions, most of the Guardians were elected from parishes outside of the Forest of Dean mining areas. Consequently, these four Boards were dominated by members who were elected from rural areas and usually chaired by Tory members of the establishment, sometimes from aristocratic backgrounds. Most of these Guardians would have little understanding of or sympathy with the concerns of the Forest of Dean mining community.
In the case of Westbury, most of the Guardians were made up of farmers, employers, shopkeepers and business people and some of them were from the rural parishes surrounding the mining area which was concentrated around the town of Cinderford.
Liberals and the Guardians
In 1892, Charles Dilke was returned to parliament as a Liberal member for the Forest of Dean. Dilke became a popular MP and an independent thinker, ready to defy the party whip on labour issues in support of the Forest miners. He soon built up a close relationship with members of the mining community and their organisations. This helped to consolidate the Liberal consensus within the mining community in the Forest to Dean. Dominant Liberals within the mining community at this time included:
Sidney Elsom, President of the Forest of Dean Free Miners Association.
George Rowlinson, the agent for the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA)
Martin Perkins, a miner, and the President of the FDMA.[3]
Richard Baker, a miner, and a long-term activist within the FDMA.
All these men were supporters of the more radical wing of the Liberal Party. They worked closely with Dilke and other Liberals to challenge the influence of the Tory Party and their aristocratic representatives on local authority bodies including the Boards of Guardians and sought to represent the interests of the working classes. Rowlinson was initially elected to the Westbury Board in 1887.
In April 1893, Sidney Elsom was elected to the Monmouth Board of Guardians representing West Dean, polling the highest vote (767 votes) and beating local colliery owner Thomas Deakin (597 votes).[4] He went on to be elected chairman of the Board in 1902, a position he held until just before he died in 1919. Elsom was fond of attacking the aristocracy:
There might have been some who labelled the miners, and men like them, as the residuum, the dregs, the scum but the most striking distinction between ourselves and our ‘noble’ alumniators is this – we have to toil day after day, year after year, work hard, live hard, and still remain poor, while they, as a rule, spend a life of idleness.[5]
Elsom’s election represented a shift in the political landscape in the Forest and provided an opportunity for ‘working men’ to have a voice. William Ayland who was a haulier and general labourer was elected in 1893, representing Westbury Urban District Council on the Westbury Board along with several other ‘working men’.[6] The Gloucester Journal obituary of Ayland in 1934 argues:
He was a guardian of the poor and not of the Poor Law. His intimate knowledge of the entire population of poor folk would influence this. Nobody got any relief unless they applied, but doubtless many applications were due to William’s prompting.[7]
The photo is from the The Forest of Dean in Old Photographs, second edition, by Humphrey Phelps. The credit for the photo in Phelps’s book is A Ayland.
In 1893, Perkins, an East Dean Rural District councillor, was elected to the Westbury Board of Guardians, remaining in that role until 1895. Other working-class members who were successful in being elected to the Westbury Board in 1893 were Richard Baker, John Watkins, John Beddis and Fred MacAvoy. In 1895 George Rowlinson was elected as a councillor to East Dean Rural District Council and then to the Westbury Board of Guardians. Rowlinson continued in his role as a Board member, becoming Vice-chair in 1917 and chair in 1920.
These men were very much in the minority on the Board and would encounter deep vested interests when attempting to make any changes or challenge the authority of the ruling elites. The clerk, who worked for the Westbury Board, was Maurice Carter. Roger Deeks has pointed out that:
Carter was the son of a solicitor and nephew of Richard Carter, Mayor of Gloucester. His family had a long involvement in the execution of the Poor Law. He came to Newnham on Severn to practise law when he was 22 years of age, in 1848. Two years later he was appointed Clerk to the Westbury on Severn Board of Guardians responsible for the Poor Law and managing the Westbury workhouse, a post he held until 1903. In parallel he was appointed Clerk to the Newnham Justices in 1863, a post he held for 42 years, and in 1868, the post of Coroner he held for 39 years. Carter had a hugely influential position over life and death in the Forest of Dean particularly for the old, sick, disabled and unemployed.[8]
Merthyr Tydfil Judgment
As a result of a legal ruling made in 1900, called the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment, Guardians were not allowed to grant relief to destitute able-bodied men (strikers, locked-out workers or the unemployed) if work was available to them.[9]
The ruling followed a protest by one of the largest ratepayers in Merthyr, the Powell-Dyffryn Company, complaining that during the South Wales Miners’ strike of 1898, the Merthyr Guardians granted relief to strikers. The judgement of the Court of Appeal in Attorney-General v. Merthyr Tydfil Guardians (1900) set the precedent:
Where the applicant for relief is able-bodied and physically capable of work, the grant of relief to him is unlawful if work is available for him, or he is thrown on the Guardians through his own act or consent, and penalties are provided by law in case of failure to support dependents, though the Guardians may lawfully relieve such dependents if they are in fact destitute.
As a result of the ruling, striking or locked-out miners were now considered by the authorities not to be destitute because they were deemed to have refused work. However, the ruling stated Guardians were required to relieve the wives, children and widowed mothers of the striking men if they were destitute, but not the men themselves.
The allocation of relief to the wives and children of men involved in an industrial dispute meant the relief would also be shared with the man. Since the Boards offered different amounts of relief, the degree to which the families of locked-out miners were supported varied from district to district. However, the ruling severely impacted the well-being of single unemployed men.
The ruling over whether strikers, locked-out workers or the unemployed were refusing work available was interpreted differently by different Boards. The ruling allowed the relief of a man involved in an industrial dispute if they became so reduced by want and destitution that they were incapable of work in which case they could be admitted to the workhouse. If this was the case a doctor may be asked to provide a medical certificate. However, incapacity to work was interpreted differently by different Boards and doctors.
The Labour Party
From about 1908, branches of socialist organisations such as the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the British Socialist Party were formed in the Forest of Dean and started to challenge the influence of the Liberal Party, arguing for Labour candidates in local and national elections.
In 1912, Ellen Hicks, a member of the ILP, was elected as a Monmouth Poor Law Guardian for the Coleford Urban District Council. In 1917, Tom Liddington, also a member of the ILP, was elected to represent Coleford on the Monmouth Board of Guardians.[10]
During the First World War, a small number of younger men had gained positions on the FDMA Executive. They argued against the policies of moderation and conciliation pursued by Rowlinson, who, in the period before the war, opposed attempts by the FDMA to affiliate with the Labour Party. Rowlinson was finally voted out of office by the Forest of Dean miners in early 1918 over his hostility to the Labour Party, his support for the conscription of miners and his failure to support his members during industrial disputes.[11] He was replaced by Herbert Booth, a young socialist miner from Nottinghamshire. Rowlinson was hostile to the newly formed Labour Party and the new Executive of the FDMA which was made up of younger men.
At the end of May 1918, James Wignall, an official of the Dockers Union from Swansea, was adopted as the Forest of Dean Labour candidate at a meeting attended by over 70 delegates and with the full support of the FDMA. In November 1918, Wignall, defeated the Liberal candidate, Sir Harry Webb and became the first Forest of Dean Labour MP.
In about 1920, Charles Luker was elected as a Labour member on West Dean Rural District Council and then onto the Monmouth Board of Guardians. Luker worked at Princess Royal colliery and was on the FDMA Executive.[12] This meant that by 1921 there were three socialists on the Monmouth Board from the Forest of Dean; Luker, Hicks and Liddington.
In 1919, Frank Ashmead, an ex-miner with a history of long-term activism within the FDMA and now working for the cooperative bakery, was elected to the Westbury Board.[13] In 1920, Rowlinson was elected chair of the Westbury Board but sat as a Liberal and later as an independent, still refusing to join the Labour Party and becoming increasingly alienated from the mining community.
Frank Ashmead (Credit: Dean Forest Mercury)1920s
World War One exacerbated the divergence of class interests in British society and eroded the prevailing pre-war liberal notions of a classless society and a commonality of interest among those who sought to represent the interests of the working class. In 1919 and 1920 an upsurge in working-class militancy spread across the nation.
However, at the end of 1920, there were clear signs of a crisis ahead as the average price of export coal fell from £4 to about £2 a ton and unemployment in the coal industry rose to 20 per cent.[14] The crisis spread to other industries and in 1921 Britain entered a period of severe economic depression. The unemployment rate among all workers climbed to 23.4% by May 1921 reaching a figure of 2,171,000 by June 1921.[15] From there, it never fully recovered, remaining over 10% in almost every month of the 1920s.
The collapse of the post-war boom reflected Britain’s decline as the ‘Workshop of the World’. The industries on which Britain’s export trade was based suffered the most and so the steam coal regions which exported their coal were hit hard.[16] This created an uneven distribution of mass unemployment and had two consequences. One was the sharp geographical polarisation of employment patterns. The other significant feature was the very high level of long-term (i.e. more than six months) unemployment.
As a result, in the 1920s, the Poor Law Unions entered a state of crisis as the demands on the Guardians increased with a corresponding increase in the pressure on the rating system to finance its obligations and this led to conflict between the interests of the poor and those of the wealthier ratepayers. The problem arose because of the unprecedented rise in the numbers of those receiving Poor Relief due to unemployment, poverty and industrial unrest, particularly in the coal mining districts. Between 1914 and 1922, the number relieved in England and Wales was as follows:[17]
Date
Number Relieved
August 1914
619,000
November 1918
450,000
July 1921:
1,363,121
March 1922
1,490,996
September 1922
2,500,000
In addition, up to 1920, relief was rarely given to able-bodied men, but after 1920 the traditional safeguards against providing unconditional relief to the unemployed by insisting on a place in the workhouse and/or to be engaged in a menial work collapsed. The flood of applications received by the Guardians in the 1920s were not from traditional paupers, the sick or disabled but from able-bodied unemployed men with families to support.
The stigma attached to pauperism began to collapse and increasing numbers of destitute unemployed men and women sought relief from the Guardians. As the number claiming relief rose it became apparent that all of these could not all be housed in the workhouses. In addition, for some, it was also no longer politically acceptable to refuse outdoor relief to the unemployed, particularly as many were World War One veterans. Consequently, it became much more common to support families with outdoor relief. In 1920, there were never less than a million recipients of outdoor relief, and of these, one in four were able-bodied.
At the same time, the 1920s saw significant changes in the composition of local Boards in numerous industrial towns and cities. Traditionally dominated by representatives of the property-owning classes, some Boards experienced a shift in their composition as the influence of the labour movement grew. In many cases, representatives of the property-owning classes lost, or nearly lost, their predominance.
Labour movement-dominated Boards had a majority of Labour Party members some of whom were also trade union members or officials and often sympathetic to workers on strike. Boards of Guardians, where Labour members held a majority, typically managed their duties toward the poor with sympathy and even generosity within the confines of the law but sometimes overlooked the interests of local ratepayers.
However, the Guardians were still expected to operate within guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Health but how each Board responded to the crisis varied considerably from district to district. Some boards, particularly those with a labour movement majority, abandoned any attempt to set in place menial work for the able-bodied unemployed and argued that the burden of unemployment should be borne nationally and not thrust upon poor districts with high levels of unemployment and lower income from rates.
The Insurance Act of 1920
To understand the dilemma of the Poor Law Unions in the 1920s, it is necessary to look at the degree to which the system of insurance for the unemployed had developed by this time, and how this had changed social attitudes towards the able-bodied poor.
From November 1920, the new Unemployment Insurance Act covered 12 million workers and provided unemployment benefits to some of those without work. Under the Act an employee paid 4 pennies (d) a week, the employer paid 4d and the State paid 2d. In return, the unemployed insured man could receive 15 shillings (s) a week (2s 6d a day) and the unemployed insured woman 12s a week for fifteen weeks a year. However, there were stringent conditions:
The claimant was only entitled to one week of payment for every six weeks of contributions. This meant that claimants could run out of benefit entitlement.
The claimant was required to be out of work for more than three days but this was later increased to six days. This meant it was difficult for part-time or temporary workers to meet the qualifying period.
If these conditions were not met, the unemployed could ask the Guardians for means-tested relief and given the high level of unemployment among both insured and uninsured workers this became increasingly common.
The role of unemployment benefits was originally intended to supplement the resources of workers during brief spells out of work. They were not designed to support the chronically unemployed. Soon after unemployment insurance coverage was extended, mass unemployment set in. When the 1920 Unemployment Insurance Act came into effect the unemployment rate was 3.7% in the insured industries, barely six months later in June 1921 it was 22.4%.[18]
The Depression of 1921 set the tone for the inter-war years when the average rate of unemployment was 14 per cent of the insured workforce.[19] The persistence of high levels of chronic unemployment undermined the basic principle behind the 1920 Act which assumed that claimants received unemployment benefits as a right but for a limited period having previously paid contributions towards their benefits.
The Poplar Rates Rebellion
The inequalities of the rating system of local government finance became starkly apparent in the 1920s with the rise of mass unemployment, particularly in mining areas. Those councils with the highest unemployment usually had the lowest rateable values, Consequently, they were under pressure to raise the rates in response to increasing social distress. This was a key issue underlying the struggles of some Labour councils, which brought them into legal conflict with the government in this period, most famously in the London borough of Poplar in 1921.
The Poplar Rates rebellion in East London in 1921 was a product of the increasing economic pressure on local authorities and Boards of Guardians in poor communities with high unemployment, leading to high local rates to fund services and the Poor Law. In early 1921, the Labour-controlled council and the Guardians in Poplar agreed to avoid cutting services or increasing rates by refusing to collect and pay the ‘precept rate’ that it was required to give to the London County Council and other cross-London bodies. The councillors knew this was illegal but believed that defying an unfair funding system was better than cutting much-needed services, including relief for the unemployed, or increasing rates to unaffordable levels.
On 29 July 1921, five thousand people marched from Poplar to support their rebel councillors at the High Court on the Strand. The judge told the councillors that they must pay the precepts or go to prison indefinitely for contempt of court. The councillors refused to collect the precepts, and at the start of September 1921, the sheriff arrested thirty of them, taking five women councillors to Holloway Prison and twenty-five men to Brixton Prison.
The councillors continued their campaign and even held official council meetings in prison. Supporters held daily demonstrations while Stepney and Bethnal Green councils also voted to refuse to pay the precepts. In mid-October, the government conceded, arranged for the councillors’ release, and quickly passed a law reforming London’s local government funding, making rich boroughs contribute more, and sharing the cost of maintaining the poor.
The Poplar rebellion had very clearly demonstrated that there were no effective legal remedies to force local councils to obey the law. It was difficult for the government to simply take over the running of such councils, and the only recourse was to surcharge the councillors individually to try and force them to back down, and failing that, to send them to prison. In Poplar, this only made martyrs of the councillors and amplified the significance of their protest, to the discomfort of both the government and the national leadership of the Labour Party.
In some Poor Law Unions where Guardians from the labour movement were in the majority, the granting of unconditional and relatively generous relief to the unemployed during this period was motivated by more than a natural desire to defend the living standards of working-class families. There emerged a general strategy aimed at forcing central government to accept responsibility for the relief of the unemployed. Militant and ideologically motivated defiance of central government policy in matters of Poor Law administration spread to neighbouring East End Unions and then into the mining districts where labour movement members often dominated the Boards of Guardians.
The Poplar Rates Protest gave rise to what became known as ‘Poplarism’ – a polemical epithet used by Conservatives to refer to high-spending, left-wing Poor Law Guardians in the 1920s. Poplarism represented a small but significant change in the balance of institutional power at the local level which would have a significant impact on whole communities during the 1921 and 1926 miners’ lockouts.
1921 Lockout
In 1921, the response from the government and the owners to the depression in the coal trade was to allow ruthless competition to take its toll. They argued they had no alternative but to resolve the economic crisis in the coal industry by radically reducing labour costs, which, in the Forest of Dean, translated into wage cuts of up to 50 per cent. The miners refused to go to work under these new terms and downed tools. As a result, on 31 March 1921, one million British miners were locked out of their pits including many war veterans and over 6,000 miners from the Forest of Dean.[20]
Most mining families had little savings, particularly as many had only been working part-time for several months due to the depression, and so within a week, some families had run out of money and food. In many mining districts, local mining associations advised their members to claim outdoor relief and consequently in most districts relief was awarded to miners’ families (wives, children and mothers) with the sanction of the Ministry of Health.
The relief was usually offered in the form of a loan to the dependents of locked-out miners and typical amounts were 15s for a wife and 3s for each child. Issuing relief as a loan rather than a grant was one way the Guardians could reduce their expenditure. Some of the Boards, in particular those which had a majority of Guardians who were members of the labour movement, paid out more. This was the case for South Shields Guardians where the scale was £1 5s for a wife 5s for the first child and 4s 6d for the second, etc.[21]
However, in the Forest of Dean, the FDMA was at a disadvantage because it felt there was little hope that the local Boards of Guardians, which were dominated by Tory members, would be sympathetic to hundreds of miners and their families claiming outdoor relief. Consequently, the FDMA arranged for food vouchers to be issued as loans from the local Cooperative Societies and traders. But, before the vouchers could be issued some families turned to the Guardians and asked for relief.
Monmouth and Westbury
At the monthly meeting of the Monmouth Board of Guardians, some colliers, including some who were ex-soldiers, and their families presented themselves for relief, arguing they were on the point of starvation. One of the Guardians T.W. King, said:
If this is a land fit for heroes to live in, are we going to put men in the workhouse after they went out and fought for us?[22]
Fortunately for the applicants with families Charles Luker, a locked-out miner, and Tom Liddington argued for a temporary loan. As a result, several families were lent 15s per wife and 2s 6d for each child to help them out until they were issued with traders’ coupons.[23]
Charles Luker in 1927 (Credit Sungreen)
Up to 1921, the chair of the Westbury Board was Sir Russell Kerr, a local aristocrat and staunch Conservative. In March 1921, Kerr resigned and was replaced by George Rowlinson, the ex-FDMA agent, who sat as an independent. William Ayland and Frank Ashmead were now Labour members. Other Labour members were Tim Brain and Abraham Booth.
Brain was employed as a deputy at Cannop Colliery (which is a colliery official charged with the supervision of safety, the ventilation of the workings, the inspection of timber work, etc). He was elected as a Labour councillor on East Dean District Council in 1919 and, at the same time, he was elected as a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians. In 1922, he was elected as a County Councillor for Drybrook when he was described by the Dean Forest Mercury as belonging to “the extreme section of the Labour Party”.[24] .
Booth worked as an insurance agent for a Friendly Society and was the son of a coal miner from Yorkshire. His daughter was married to a coal miner from Cinderford. In 1919, he was elected as a Labour member of East Dean Rural District Council and then onto the Westbury Board of Guardians. The remaining 30 odd members were mainly from middle or upper-class backgrounds.
There is no record of the Westbury, Chepstow or Ross Boards issuing relief to the families of locked-out miners during the 1921 lockout.
Unemployment
The lockout ended after 12 weeks when, on Monday 27 June, the MFGB advised the men to return to work and accept the reduction in pay. Some had to wait several weeks before they could return, while repairs were carried out to pits damaged by flooding and rock falls. On Monday 4 July, at one Labour Exchange alone, Lydbrook in the Forest of Dean, over 300 men registered as unemployed with more registering the following day.[25] However, the government announced that men who were unemployed because of damage to their pits due to the lockout could not receive unemployment benefits.
At a meeting of the Westbury Board of Guardians on 28 June 1921, Mr Long, the Relieving Officer, reported that he had recently been before the Auditor, who had impressed upon him that no relief could legally be given to families where the collier husband was out of work because of the lockout.[26]
The FDMA agent Herbert Booth spent much of his time over the summer months supporting his members in their attempt to make benefit claims.[27] In the summer of 1921, there were 50,000 unemployed miners in South Wales out of a total of 250,000. Many Forest of Dean miners who were working in South Wales returned home, swelling the ranks of the unemployed in the Forest. Despite this, the population of the Forest of Dean fell after 1921 as people moved away to get work in other areas.[28]
The Forest of Dean miners also had to face another consequence of the lockout which had left the FDMA massively in debt, owing over £27,000 in credit coupons to local retailers. This was exacerbated by a loss of membership from about 7000 to 1500.
Outdoor Relief
An additional burden on the unemployed resulted from the government’s decision to extend the qualifying time before providing unemployment benefits from three to six days. The only alternative for people who were not entitled to unemployment benefits was means-tested outdoor relief, under the Poor Law. Claiming Poor Law relief would have been very humiliating for unemployed miners, some of whom were World War One veterans. In any case, relief could still be refused by the relieving officer, who could claim the rules stated they could not offer relief to those who were unemployed because of the damage to their pits because of the lockout. In one case at Westbury, Booth pleaded with the Guardians to provide boots for children so they could attend school, but this was also refused. However, the Monmouth Board of Guardians agreed to offer relief to those in extreme distress as a loan.[29]
As the depression deepened, some miners were permanently laid off, and others were offered only two or three days of work a week. Harry Toomer described the system:
You had to listen for the hooter every night and every pit had its hooter and everybody knew their own pit’s sound of hooter. And if there was no work the next day, they would give loud blasts on the hooter for minutes on end – no work tomorrow … that was called a play day.[30]
If they were out of work for more than six days, they were able to claim benefits. However, a miner who worked, for instance, only six days in six weeks may not have been entitled to a single penny of benefit, simply because he could not show the necessary waiting period of six days of unemployment.[31]
Others who were unemployed had exhausted their benefit under the rules of the Act. Other unemployed applicants were refused benefits because they were not considered to be genuinely seeking work, not formerly insurable or otherwise not able to comply with the conditions for receiving benefits. Some presented themselves at Westbury and Monmouth Boards of Guardians asking for relief but, as a rule, the most the Guardians could offer was a one-off temporary loan.[32]
Unemployment among insured workers in the Forest of Dean 1920 -1921 and total population in 1921
The figures mainly refer to those in receipt of unemployment benefits and therefore are insured workers who have met the qualifying conditions. Some of these may have been working part-time but still were able to claim benefits.[37] The figures do not include most women (uninsured), children, the elderly, the disabled, striking miners, miners unemployed because of an industrial dispute and unemployed uninsured workers. Unemployment among miners was comparatively low in August and September because, when the miners returned to work after the lockout, coal was needed to replenish stocks. However, the demand for coal was only temporary and, as the depression deepened, unemployment grew until 1924 when there was a temporary rise in demand for coal.
The Guardians struggled to cope with the demand for relief. The chair of the Monmouth Board, aristocrat Lady Mather Jackson, had little idea of the distress existing in the Forest of Dean. Mather-Jackson was the wife of Sir Henry Mather-Jackson, 3rd Baronet, who held extensive business interests in mining and railway infrastructure.[38]
However, some Board members were shocked at the state of destitution of some of the miners claiming relief. Most believed they should not let women and children starve. Although some, such as William Burdess, the under manager at Princess Royal colliery, were less sympathetic and relief was sometimes refused to miners who had been involved in the lockout. Among the twenty-five Guardians on the Monmouth Board were Forest of Dean Labour Party representatives Charles Luker, Tom Liddington and Ellen Hicks, who spoke up on behalf of the miners by arguing for a system of loans.
Photo of William Burdess (Credit Dean Heritage Centre)
At Westbury, Rowlinson argued that the Board received no money from the central government and all the money available had to be raised from the local rates. However, other Guardians in other districts had successfully applied for loans from the Ministry of Health or arranged overdrafts with their bank. At Westbury, the Board agreed to only offer relief for two weeks at a time for those in extreme distress. Otherwise, applicants could be offered a loan or a place in the workhouse.
In November 1921, a Guardian on the Westbury Board argued that it would be unfair to offer relief to the unemployed while many local miners were working two or three days of work a week and earning only 25s a week. In response, a miner who had just returned from South Wales (see the table below) responded:
There are thousands who are living in a state of privation, although they are at work, and if they would give me only two or three shifts a week at the colliery, I shall have to share their fate. As it is, I am absolutely destitute, without the assistance I have had, I am not going to see my wife and children starve. They can put me behind bars before that shall happen, and that is a terrible thing for a man to say who has always led a straight life and who has references from South Wales of many years standing.[39] He went on to explain that he was planning to walk back to South Wales to pursue his claim for unemployment benefits.
Some cases heard before the Monmouth and Westbury Board in September 1921.
Unemployed miner from South Wales with family living in the Forest.
Wife and two children.
Claim for unemployment benefit rejected.
A loan of 25s a week.
Milkwall Charity Committee in 1914 with the chairman, Tom Liddngton, in the front at the centre with the hat. (Credit Sungreen).
The Coleford and West Dean Unemployed Committee
In September 1921, a committee of the unemployed was formed in West Dean to provide solidarity and support for those forced into poverty. The Coleford and West Dean Unemployed Committee’s main objectives were to support the unemployed in obtaining unemployment benefits or relief at the Board of Guardians and to lobby the authorities for work schemes for the unemployed with rates of pay based on trade Union conditions of work.
Two of the main organisers of the committee were Tom Liddington and William Hoare, a miner from Bream. Hoare was among the most vocal in the campaigns against poverty and unemployment, as the broader community rallied around to provide support.[45]
Similar unemployed committees had sprung up throughout the country, and many were affiliated to the National Unemployed Workers Movement which was set up by the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). On Tuesday 13 September 1921, a demonstration of 3000 men, women and children marched with banners from the Market Square to the workhouse in Gloucester, demanding work or maintenance. As a result, Gloucester Council, with the aid of a grant from central government, provided relief work, such as stone breaking and road works, for about 400 men. They were offered a basic maintenance allowance of 15s for a single adult, 30s for married couples, 5s for each of the first four children and 2s. 6d. for each remaining child.[46]
In September, the police baton-charged marches of the unemployed in Bristol and other major cities and this was repeated at Trafalgar Square in October, resulting in the death of one of the demonstrators.[47]
On Saturday 1 October, a public meeting was organised by the Coleford and West Dean Unemployed Committee in Coleford. The main speakers were Tom Liddington, Reverend John Putterill and Charles Drake. Putterill was ordained as a deacon and now worked as a curate at Coleford. He had worked in the East End of London and unusually for an Anglican curate he was a supporter of the communist cause. His speech mixed religious metaphors with communist idealism:
The capitalist system depended on unemployment and those who owned made slaves of those that did not. The position of the workers of this country was that of the Israelites in Egypt – they were absolute slaves – and if they wanted their freedom, they would fight for it.
Charles Drake, a long-standing Liberal councillor on Coleford Urban Council, put forward the following resolution which was passed unanimously:
This meeting of the unemployed men in Coleford and West Dean calls upon the local authority to bring pressure to bear on the government to introduce schemes of a socially useful character to meet the needs of the situation, the costs to be defrayed by grants from the National Exchequer and not to fall upon local rates.[48]
The following Thursday, 6 October, a delegation of unemployed miners and quarry workers lobbied the West Dean Rural District Council to introduce work schemes for the unemployed. William Hoare, the chairman of the deputation, said the unemployed of the district would prefer relief in the form of work and wages rather than depend on unemployment benefit of 15s a week or relief from the Guardians, which could lead them into semi-starvation. The council responded positively and committed themselves to endeavouring to do everything in their power to gain government funding for work schemes.
On Friday 14 October, Hoare led another deputation of unemployed miners from West Dean to place demands in front of the Monmouth Board of Guardians, which was chaired by Lady Mather Jackson. The deputation had to walk from Coleford and, as a result, was late. At first, the Board were reluctant to see them but the Labour Party members of the Board, Liddington, Luker and Hicks, argued that it would be a wasted journey for hungry men if they were refused an opportunity to present their case. Hicks who lived in Coleford informed the meeting that she had:
Seen men walking about hungry. There are men in the district who do have not enough to eat.[49]
Liddington said the men could not wait for another month for the next meeting and in the end, the Board agreed to hear the deputation’s representatives. Hoare spoke on behalf of the men, arguing they needed adequate maintenance until the government could implement its work schemes and said:
Are you aware that while the grass is growing the horse is starving? … they had been forced to come there to seek maintenance till such time as schemes were put into operation. They were unemployed through no fault of their own – they considered the present situation was due to the utter breakdown of the capitalist system.[50]
Hoare said maintenance should be a living wage and they said they would take any work provided it was paid at trade union rates.[51] The Board members responded by arguing that the wage rates would be set nationally and would be considerably below trade union rates. Some of the miners said they would rather starve than ask for relief. In the end, the Board passed a motion urging the government to fund a scheme repairing roads and developing waterworks in the West Dean area. They added that relief would be awarded at the usual rate and according to merit. A member of the deputation ended the discussion by saying, “We want work, we don’t want doles”.
On 15 November, Wignall joined a deputation from East and West Dean District Councils and Coleford Urban Council in a visit to London to lobby the relevant government departments to establish work schemes.[52] On 9 December 1921, the Dean Forest Mercury reported that Sir Percival Marling had complained about the sight of unemployed ex-servicemen hanging around the towns and villages of Gloucestershire. He suggested that the government should introduce work schemes for the unemployed to get them off the street.[53] Discussions on a variety of schemes for the unemployed in the Forest of Dean took place over the next two years, but none were implemented at this time.
The Government Responds
During 1921 and 1922, it became apparent that many men had not achieved the necessary entitlement to claim unemployment benefit, causing more destitution. Relief money was raised through the rates and the lockout meant that the collecting of rates was hampered by the level of poverty in the community. Consequently, as the demand for relief grew, more Boards of Guardians had to apply to banks for loans. In November 1921, the Ministry of Health set up a committee to consider applications for loans from those Boards of Guardian that were so overwhelmed by applications for relief that they were unable to perform their statutory duties.
In addition, successive governments in the 1920s were obliged to introduce Extended or Transitional Benefits to allow insured workers who had exhausted their right to unemployment benefit to continue drawing benefits. The political imperative was that insured workers (often male, skilled and unionised) could not be reduced to pauperism without incurring the threat of political unrest. There were over twenty amendments to the insurance scheme to this effect in the 1920s such that at any time after 1921 over half those drawing benefits were not qualified under the 1920 Act.
For instance, in April 1922 the government introduced an Act to allow for the payment of uncovenanted benefits for an extra period of up to five weeks at a time for those who did not qualify. The Act also introduced the concept of a gap which meant that the unemployed would be without benefits for a gap of five weeks before being provided with benefits for another five weeks. However, this still meant that many of the unemployed were required to apply to the Guardians for relief every five weeks. The gap policy was in operation until July 1923.
John Williams
In March 1922 Herbert Booth handed in his notice as the agent for the FDMA and was replaced by John Williams, a 34-year-old miner from the Garw Valley in South Wales. Williams’s first task was to set about rebuilding the FDMA after the defeat of 1921. In 1924, the depression in the coal trade slackened and by 1925 Williams had rebuilt the FDMA from about 1300 members to nearly one hundred per cent membership of 6500 by 1925.
John Williams in 1927 (Credit Richard Burton Archives)
In December 1922, Williams organised a reception for about 30 miners who were part of a contingent of unemployed miners returning from London. They had walked from South Wales to London on a hunger March which was organised by the National Unemployed Workers Committee. Williams helped to arrange for them to stay at the Westbury workhouse overnight where they were given supper and breakfast before proceeding homeward the following day.[54]
Despite the depression in the coal trade easing in 1924, there were still many miners out of work and some were forced to appeal to the Guardians for help. During a discussion at the meeting of the Monmouth Board of Guardians, in early December 1925, Mr C. Lipsoomb argued that the unemployed should be forced to move to districts where there was work. Mather-Jackson said:
they should encourage young men who wanted to go abroad to work, but she did not think any of them would like to compel men to go abroad.[55]
A Forest of Dean Guardain, Mr Nelms, reponded:
I am on the dole myself. It is not nice to be accused that you are not willing to work. There were, he added, some men among all classes who would not work. He urged the development of the land in the Forest of Dean.[56]
Mason and Brain
In 1922, Charles Mason joined Tim Brain on East Dean District Council when he was also elected to represent Drybrook as Labour councillor.[57] Mason worked at Cannop colliery as a collier and was an active member of the FDMA representing Cannop on the FDMA Executive Committee. Brain still worked at Cannop in a supervisory role as a deputy.
East Dean District Council was chaired by George Rowlinson and Mason and Brain became good close friends and political allies. Their focus was on fighting for the rights of the poorer people in their community. In April 1923, the Dean Forest Mercury reported that:
A motion was brought forward that the Council consider the question of wages unskilled labourers are paid by the Council, the mover being Mr. C. E. Mason with Mr. T. J. Brain seconding. An amendment referring the matter to the Finance Committee was, however, passed. It was stated that the present wage was 36s per week.
In 1923 they were both elected to the Westbury Board of Guardians. Mason and Brain immediately came into conflict with some of the older members of the Board. They were keen to represent the interests of the residents but often got a hostile response from the chairman, Gorge Rowlinson. On 12 November 1924, the Gloucestershire Echo reported:
Mr. C. E. Mason, at a meeting Tuesday of the Westbury-on-Severn Guardians, reported that some of the old man had confided in him that for more than a month both meat and bread were deficient as to quantity and quality, whilst vegetables – potatoes chiefly – had been scarce. Mr Mason suggested the complaint deserves an inquiry. Three old men—one on crutches—came before the board, and bore out Mr, Mason’s statement. The Chairman (Mr G. H. Rowlinson) and several guardians said that such a serious complaint could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and at the Chairman’s suggestion the house committee was instructed to hold an inquiry The Chairman said that he had himself dined off the ordinary menu, which ought to satisfy anyone.
By the beginning of 1926, the depression in the coal trade had deepened again and unemployment increased. Many Boards of Guardians in mining districts were in debt to the government because of loans from the Ministry of Health, causing some Unions to become close to bankruptcy. However, some Boards of Guardians in working-class areas continued to earn the Ministry of Health’s disapproval by granting unconditional outdoor relief to the unemployed and adopting what was regarded as over-generous scales of relief.
However, the number of labour movement-dominated Boards during the 1920s never exceeded 50 out of 620. [58] The Forest of Dean Boards provided only a minimum amount of relief and were reluctant to get into debt and did not apply for loans. Consequently, the action of the more militant Board members in mining districts in the North East and South Wales would inspire some Labour Party members on the Forest of Dean Boards to argue for a similar stand during the 1926 lockout.
The 1926 Lockout
On 1 May 1926, having refused to accept an increase in hours and a reduction in pay, one million miners across Britain were locked out again. This included nearly 6500 miners from the Forest of Dean and it was not long before their families became destitute. Nationally, the increase in Outdoor Relief rose between September 1925 and September 1926 from 123 per 10,000 of the population to 452 per 10,000 which was equivalent to 1,757,124 people.[59]
On 5 May the Ministry of Health sent out a circular (703) which confirmed that under the Merthyr ruling, no relief was available to able-bodied single men unless they were destitute and physically incapable of work, in which case they could only be offered a bed in the workhouse. The Merthyr ruling stated that the dependents of striking miners such as wives, children under fourteen and widowed mothers could be helped if they were in severe need. Circular 703 also added that the Guardians should not be concerned with the merits of the dispute.
The ruling was particularly problematic for single men who often lived in lodgings or with family members, and so became dependent on the families with whom they lived, adding an extra burden to those households. Single men who were solitary migrants from other parts of the country and lived on their own were particularly vulnerable. This meant that many single miners who had emigrated to South Wales returned to the Forest to be supported by their families.
The government was aware that any relief for wives and children could be shared with their locked-out men so they were determined to limit the amount of relief available. Circular 703 made recommendations as to the maximum amount of relief that the Boards of Guardians should give. Legally, the government had no power to do more than recommend. The suggestion was that relief should not exceed 12s for a wife and 4s for each child.
“Children” is generally taken to mean children under fourteen and any child who had left school and had gone to work or sought work was not allowed relief. However, the MFGB argued that since 14 to 18-year-olds were denied the opportunity to have full union membership and the attendant right to a voice in industrial policy they did not participate in the decision to go on strike and so should be eligible for relief. The Ministry of Health refused to accept this argument and so pit boys were denied relief.
The Ministry of Health argued that any money coming into the house from other sources, such as an older son or daughter or a pension, could be deducted from the weekly allowance and relief was denied to those who had savings. It was recommended that families of miners who owned or were buying their property with a mortgage should also be disqualified from relief on the basis that they could sell or re-mortgage their properties. No additional allowance was recommended to cover rent.
Each Board and each Board member responded to this advice differently. In general, those Boards where the labour movement was not in control followed the guidelines. Where the labour movement was in control an endeavour was made to give more adequate relief. However, to do this it was often necessary to ask the Ministry of Health for a loan or permission to borrow from a bank. The problem for the Boards was that they could only borrow with the Minister’s sanction and on the conditions which the Minister laid down. Since those that had to borrow were those with the largest mining population, the Minister was able to require reductions in their relief scales as a condition for loans.
During May, hundreds of families from the Forest applied for relief and some was paid out to wives and children of miners in food vouchers or cash and initially only for two weeks. The Labour Party members on the Boards were in a minority but over the next few months did their best to challenge the legality and morality of the decisions made by the majority of the Guardians, who were mainly from upper or middle-class backgrounds. Most of these Guardians had spent many years sitting on committees and were well-versed in using legalistic arguments and bureaucratic manoeuvres to undermine those Labour Party members who were less knowledgeable or experienced.
Feeding the Children
The Forest mining community set about the task of feeding the families. Some children were sent away to friends and relatives, while some miners’ wives and daughters left the Forest to earn money as servants in the big cities. Soup kitchens were organised in every village and there were local distress funds that accepted contributions from those at work. The women in the community were at the forefront and kept busy every day preparing and cooking food.
The Central Relief Committee in Cinderford operated from the town hall. The delegates on the committee were made up of representatives from across the community and liaised closely with representatives of the local religious organisations. Money was collected from the churches and chapels and the wider community and it was agreed to avoid soliciting donations from the shopkeepers who also were under financial stress.[60] The Gloucestershire Federation of Labour Parties also arranged to make collections throughout the county for miners from the Forest Dean and Bristol.[61]
Legislation introduced in 1921 conferred discretionary powers on local education authorities to provide school meals to children who, through lack of food, were unable to take full advantage of the education provided. Charles Luker and Jim Jones, who were both Labour Party members of the County Council Education Committee, were instrumental in persuading the Committee to contribute 5d a child towards financing a daily school dinner for the children of miners.[62]
The committee of the Forest of Dean School Managers took on the task of liaising with the headmasters of the schools. School Managers Committee member, Jim Jones, said they should endeavour to provide two meals a day. However, George Rowlinson, who was the chairman, said one good meal at midday would suffice.[63] In contrast, many education committees in other mining districts provided funding for breakfast and dinner. By the end of the lockout, the County Council had provided £484,163 of funding at a rate of 2.3d a day for the children of miners in the Forest of Dean and Kingswood. Some other County Councils provided more funding than this.[64]
Westbury Union
In 1926, Labour Party members on the Westbury Board included Frank Ashmead, Abraham Booth, Tim Brain, Harry Morse and Charlie Mason, all elected from East Dean District Council. Mason was now a locked-out miner. Brain was still employed as a deputy at Cannop Colliery where he continued to work during the lockout to prevent flooding and to maintain the pit. Morse, also a locked-out miner worked at New Fancy colliery. He lived in Blakeney and was elected as a Labour Councillor on East Dean District Council in 1925 and then onto the Westbury Board.
Most of the remaining members of the Westbury Board were senior members of the establishment. Most owned their businesses as shopkeepers, tradesmen or farmers and nearly all were employers. Two were members of the aristocracy. They were vehemently opposed to the action of the miners in refusing to accept a reduction in wages and an increase in hours.
The chairman, George Rowlinson, had fallen out with the FDMA and the mining community and sat as an Independent; he was sometimes hostile to the miners. Ashmead was an ex-miner who had worked closely with Rowlinson when he was the agent for the FDMA and, out of loyalty, he often backed Rowlinson up in the meetings. Rowlinson also had the backing of fellow district councillor Richard Westaway, a grocer from Cinderford.
George Rowlinson (Credit Dean Heritage Centre)
On Friday 7 May, there was a long queue of miners outside the office of the Westbury relieving officer for the Cinderford area, who was registering applications for relief. Consequently, by mid-May, the Westbury Board had received over 700 applications from the families of miners. On 11 May, an emergency meeting of the Westbury Board met to discuss how to deal with the requests for relief.
In response, John Williams and the FDMA organised a demonstration to argue the case for relief. As a result, a large contingent of East Dean miners and their families walked or cycled to Westbury-on-Severn to lobby the Westbury Board meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, the Board agreed that they would receive a deputation from the demonstration to hear their case when they had finished their discussions.
During the discussions, Rowlinson said it might take a week to deal with all the applications and each case would be considered on its merit. After a long discussion, it was agreed that relief could only be offered to women and children and a weekly allowance of 10s for a miner’s wife, 4s for a first child and 2s 6d for other children up to a limit of 25s was decided upon. The relief would not be a loan and they would receive the allowance of 25 per cent in cash and 75 per cent in vouchers to be exchanged in local stores. The relief would be granted for only two weeks after which the cases would be reviewed. Mason volunteered to join eight other Guardians on a relief committee to meet in Cinderford to consider further applications for relief and to grant relief according to the above scales.
These allowances were below the rates suggested by the Ministry of Health. In contrast, some Boards of Guardians awarded rates above the recommended levels. These Boards included Chester-Le-Street, Gateshead, Lanchester and Sedgefield in the North East, Rotherham and Hemsworth in Yorkshire and Bedwellty, Llanelli and Pontypridd in South Wales.
Throughout the meeting, there was some tension between some of the Board members, particularly between Rowlinson and Mason who did his best to argue in the interests of destitute families and single men. At one point, Mason challenged Rowlinson’s claim that the law said that destitute single miners could not be admitted to the workhouse. There had been disagreements between these two men in the past such as the time Maon made complaints about the amount and quality of the food.
Charlie Mason (Credit: Margo Woodhill)
The attitude of some of the Guardians appeared to be that the money belonged to them as ratepayers and they were donating it to the mining families out of charity. During the discussion, Mason made the point that the miners were part of the community too and paid rates and so were entitled to benefits as of right in time of need. Daniel Walkley, who ran a transport business in Cinderford, and J. S. Bate, an estate agent from Blaisdon, claimed that their duty was to the ratepayers and that the young single miners could not be destitute because work was available to them. The Dean Forest Mercury reported Mason’s reply:
Where? …As the youngest member of the Board, he understood his duty quite well and was not going to Mr Walkey to learn it. He was representing the public, and a most essential part of the public. The miners were in the public area. He took it that young men also put money into the fund for administering the Poor Law.[65]
Mason went on to argue that the Board’s duty was to consider the destitution of members of the community in assessing if relief should be provided. He added that the Ministry of Health had stated that the Guardians should not take sides in industrial conflicts which it appeared as if they were doing.
Williams and Thomas Etheridge, the full-time financial secretary of the FDMA, were then invited into the meeting as representatives of the delegation.[66] They presented a case for relief for all miners, particularly the single men, arguing that it would be humiliating for them to enter the workhouse. He added that another vulnerable group was made up of those who owned their houses or were paying a mortgage as they were in danger of losing their property if they could not keep up payments. He asked for relief to be paid wholly in cash to prevent exploitation by tradesmen.[67]
When addressing the crowd of miners and their families outside after the meeting, Williams reported that the Board had decided that the cases of able-bodied single men would not be entertained but, if completely destitute, they may be allowed a bed in the workhouse. He reported the cases of house owners would be considered on merit and any money received from the MFGB or elsewhere would be deducted from the allowance. As a result, the FDMA decided to avoid giving any funds from the MFGB to those families on Poor Law relief. The relief would be paid out at Wesley Hall in Cinderford on Saturday mornings. Williams added:
I want to acknowledge we owe the Board of Guardians something for the courtesy they have shown us this morning.[68]
In the evening a large meeting was held at Cinderford Town Hall and chaired by Jim Jones, who started the evening by singing a song. Williams reported on the events at Westbury in the morning. He added that if many destitute single men could not get any relief, then they should turn up on mass at the workhouse and demand to be admitted. He thought it would be unlikely that the workhouse would have enough beds to deal with a large number of applicants. He reported that the FDMA was going to ask Jones and Luker if they could make a case to the County Council for two meals a day for children rather than one.[69]
A further source of help emerged when, at a meeting on 23 May, Williams announced that £260,000 had been sent by Russian miners towards an MFGB distress fund, of which £1,500 had been allocated to the FDMA.
Monmouth Union
In 1926, the following guardians on the Monmouth Board were Labour Party members or sympathetic to Labour: Luker, Hicks, E. Alice Taylor, E. Beard, E. Pritchard, A. Brown, H. J. Smith, E. J. Flewelling, Albert Brookes (locked-out miner) and J Willetts (locked-out miner).
An emergency meeting of the Monmouth Board was held on Wednesday 12 May. The Board was chaired by Lady Mather-Jackson who confirmed a similar rate to Westbury; a weekly allowance of 10s for a miner’s wife and 3s for a child, but in the form of a loan up to a maximum of 25s per week.
Ada Frances Lady Mather-Jackson (Credit National Portrait Gallery)
Wilkes, the relieving officer for the Monmouth Board, said that he had already dealt with 200 cases at an average cost of one pound per case, paid out in vouchers at the above rate. He added that on Tuesday 4 May the applicants came to Yorkley and he told them he could not relieve the able-bodied men. After collecting more food vouchers from Monmouth on Friday he complained that:
When I got home at 5 o’clock I was besieged … On Saturday night I could not do anything with them. The police came down and since then I have been under police protection.[70]
Neems, who was among the fifteen members from the Forest of Dean, argued that:
It was not the spirit of the men that made trouble for the relieving officer, it was necessity. There are people starving who are too proud to come here. You cannot drive poverty into the ground. If we do something it will prevent a more serious outbreak.
A motion that the 5d a day for the school meal provided by the County Council should be deducted from the 3s allowance per child was defeated. One of the members of the Board who voted for the motion was William Burdess, who was the underground manager at Princess Royal Colliery.
Circular 703 recommended that a deduction of the cost of the meal should be made from the allowance granted to each child and the savings passed on to the County Council, although this was difficult to enforce and many Boards of Guardians failed to do this.
Luker tried to present a case for the families of miners who owned their own houses particularly those with a mortgage arguing if they had to sell them in the present situation, they would not get a fair price. He pointed out that work was not available to the miners because:
The miners had been locked out. It was not a question of a strike. We can go back to work for nothing and we are not prepared to do that.[71]
Luker then moved a motion at the meeting that the government should provide £20,000 to cover the extra costs of providing relief. However, the motion was ruled out of order by Mather and the question of funding was referred to the finance committee who would report back at the next meeting.[72]
Many other Poor Law Unions had already borrowed over £20,000 from the Ministry of Health or had arranged bank loans sanctioned by the Ministry. Monmouth and Westbury took out bank loans of about £10, 000 and £15,000 respectively during the lockout which was a modest amount compared to other Poor Law Unions. However neither the Ross nor Chepstow Boards of Guardians applied for a loan or an overdraft during the lockout, which limited the financial support they could provide to those in distress.[73]
Ross Union
On Thursday 6 May, over 100 applicants from Ruardean presented themselves to a meeting of the Ross Board of Guardians, seeking relief on account of destitution. Mr Pilkington, the chairman of the Board agreed to allow a deputation of six men to speak to the Guardians. The men’s spokesman Sidney Thomas Mills, who was a member of the strike committee for the district, appealed to the Guardians to grant relief to those in distress from his community. Mills was a World War One veteran and secretary of the Forest of Dean British Legion. He said:
For the past twelve months, they had lived a hand-to-mouth existence as the men had rarely done more than three and a half turns a week.[74]
One of the Guardians asked Mills whether the men would be prepared to go back to work. Miles responded:
They would go back tomorrow on the old terms if they were allowed to.[75]
After consideration, the Board decided to make an allowance in vouchers of 10s a week for a wife, 4s for the first child and 2s 6d for each subsequent child. They said arrangements would be made for a deputation from the Board to proceed to Ruardean the next day and to review the expected 160 cases. Mills thanked the Board and said he hoped the miners would have the same consideration from the colliery owners.[76]
Financial Pressure on the Guardians
The FDMA strategy was to encourage miners’ families to claim outdoor relief in the hope that in time the shortage of coal would begin to bite and they could win concessions from the government and the colliery owners. The role of the Labour Party members on the Boards was fundamental to this strategy. However, the FDMA became concerned when they heard that after two weeks the the Boards had decided to review how much relief should be provided and how it should be paid out.[77]
On Thursday 20 May, the Ross Board decided to reduce the amount paid to the first child from 4s to 2s 6d a week if the child was of school age and receiving a free meal from the County Education Authority. The Ross Guardians decided that the maximum amount of relief per family would be 25s per week.[78]
On Friday 21 May, at a meeting of the Monmouth Board, the Guardians heard that on the previous Wednesday, the Board had 783 new applications from miners’ families, of which 584 were granted relief, including 544 women and 1747 children. The miners’ cases were now costing the Board about £750 per week at an average cost of one pound per case and so arrangements were made to apply for an overdraft of £8000 at the bank.[79]
Edwin Sims, a school teacher and magistrate from Lydney, asked the Monmouth Board to make it clear to those on relief that they were treating the allowances as loans. The relieving officer, A J Wilkes said that after the experience of the 1921 lockout he was concerned they would never recover the loans.[80] Luker added that if the miners went back with a reduction in wages, they would not be able to keep their homes, let alone repay loans.
Loan in Kind
At a meeting of the Westbury Board held Tuesday 25 May, the Guardians were informed by the finance committee that by the end of next week the Board will be about £6000 overdrawn so it would be necessary to arrange an overdraft with the bank. They added the precepts from the local authority due to them as their share of the money collected as rates was due 1 June but it was unclear if they would receive them. As a result, the finance committee presented a motion that stated that from now on the grant should be in the form of a loan and reviewed every week. In response, Mason argued that:
He could see no reason why the grant should be in the future in the form of a loan. He thought the subject was carefully considered last week and he did not know what the prospects were of return even if they did grant it on loan. It seemed to him more or less a farce because the people were destitute and knowing the district very well, he could not see what chance of their paying the money back.
Mason argued that East Dean was more disadvantaged than other districts because the house coal pits in East Dean often only worked part-time. However, when it came to a vote, Mason only got the backing of four other Labour Party members while Rowlinson, Ashmead and the others voted in favour of the finance committee motion. It was also agreed that the Board should meet every Tuesday while the present emergency lasted.
Mason vs Rowlinson
On Tuesday 1 June, the Westbury Union met again and the Guardians were informed that a meeting of the Finance Committee had produced a report which recommended that relief for the first child should be reduced from 4s to 2s 6d. Rowlinson then informed the meeting that a resolution had been passed at the finance committee that the allowances would be fully awarded in the form of vouchers. Booth complained about this decision but was overruled by Rowlinson who claimed the conditions had changed.
Mason argued that the resolution about the vouchers had not been agreed upon at a full meeting of the Board and challenged Rowlinson over the undemocratic way the decision had been made. He then moved a motion, seconded by Booth, that the decision be rescinded. Rowlinson replied that he needed seven days’ notice to accept a motion to rescind a resolution. Mason attempted to respond but was told by Rowlinson that he had spoken more than once and he should “not strain the feelings of the Board”.
After more discussion, Mason moved an amendment that the allowance for the first child remains at 4s. However, the motion was defeated with twenty-two against and only Labour Party members (Mason, Booth, Brookes, Ayland and Brain) voting in favour. At that point, the atmosphere became quite tense when it appeared that Mason accused Rowlinson of lacking courage. Rowlinson replied, “I don’t allow you or anyone to tackle me on my courage”.[81]
Finally, Brain presented a resolution that the families of miners who owned their own houses should also get relief but this was defeated with only eleven votes in favour and thirteen against.[82]
First West Dean Deputation
On Wednesday 2 June, Lady Mather-Jackson informed a meeting of the Monmouth Board that for the week ending 29 May, there were 798 cases, representing 2521 persons, costing £634 a week. She reported that a meeting of the Special Relief Committee had received a deputation consisting of four representatives of the miners from West Dean, including William Hoare and Charles Fletcher who requested that:
Assistance should be given to the man.
An allowance should be allowed for rent.
The income to the home, such as from sons and daughters, should not be taken into account.
A person owning their own house should be relieved less a fair reduction for rent.
War pensions should not be taken into account as income.
Relief should be given to single men (particularly as they often live in lodgings with people who are also receiving assistance).[83]
In response, Mather-Jackson quoted the regulations to justify that no relief could be paid to single men, to property owners or to cover rent. Brookes and Hicks reported cases of families they knew who owned their own houses and were now close to starving because they were not entitled to relief. However, Mather-Jackson’s main concern appeared to be that the Russian money was being given to those claiming relief. This was denied by the Labour Party members who said the FDMA was prioritising donating the money to single men and property owners.
Second West Dean Deputation
On Friday 4 June, for the second time in three days, about ninety people, mainly single miners, walked ten miles from Bream to the Guardian’s offices at Monmouth to put their case for relief. Many of them were weak from a lack of food.
While the people waited outside, the Board considered how to respond. Mather-Jackson argued that the regulations forbade them from giving relief to able-bodied single men. The Labour Party members challenged the legality of this claim. Brookes pointed out that the Guardians in Bedwellty had given relief to single men and added that:
There is now more destitution. They are being refused anything and they are absolutely starving. The situation is serious.[84]
Brookes was correct. A Ministry of Health briefing revealed that more than eight hundred ineligible Bedwellty locked-out miners were relieved during a single week of May 1926, while some Relieving Officers circumvented rules applying to strikers by giving extra relief to their mothers. However, Bedwellty was not alone since the nearby Crickhowell Union refused to follow the Government’s directions and paid out money to single miners.
Boards of Guardians in other mining districts gave relief to single locked-out men, particularly if they were in lodgings. This continued until the summer but in most cases came to an end after the Ministry of Health warned the relevant Guardians that they could be breaking the law.
After a discussion over the legality of the situation, a deputation of four miners was invited to the meeting. William Hoare, who was their main spokesman, argued for the same demands made by the deputation to the Special Relief Committee but added that an extra allowance was needed to cover rent for housing. He asked: “At what point does a man become destitute?” Mather-Jackson said: “It was when he was physically unfit”. Hoare responded: “Physical unfitness and destitution are two distinct things”. He added that:
The married men and single men were receiving nothing and therefore must be destitute and that was why they had come there that morning to either claim relief from outside or admission into the institution which they contended the law entitled them to.[85]
Men could lawfully be relieved if through destitution they became physically incapable of work. The fact of destitution or ‘ incapacity ‘ could only be determined by the guardians in the exercise of their fairly wide powers of discretion and this allowed some Boards to relieve single men, particularly if they could obtain a medical certificate from a doctor.
Mather-Jackson said that in some cases the relieving officer could pay rent in kind. However, she repeated her claim that the regulations forbade Guardians from relieving single men and only the wives and children of married men. Hoare replied if that was the case how come Gateshead Union were providing relief to single men with the sanction of the Ministry of Health? He added that he knew of cases of families being so far behind with their rent they faced eviction.
Hoare was not correct as the Ministry of Health would not sanction relief to single men in these circumstances. However, during the lockout the Guardians at Chester-Le- Street Poor Law Union in Durham awarded single men outdoor relief until August 1926 when the Ministry of Health took over the running of the Poor Law Union.
Mather-Jackson then claimed that before the lockout a miner with three sons could be earning £10 a week and therefore must have undeclared savings. Charles Fletcher, who was another member of the delegation, responded to Mather-Jackson’s accusation:
The wages of a colliery labourer in the Forest of Dean would not average more than 25s to 27s a week. Five days was the most the colliers work in the Forest. The wages during the past four or five years had been very low and the conditions had also been bad … He could not conceive of £8 or £9 going into any house of any man working in the Forest collieries at this time neither could he conceive, after having done no work for five weeks, they could have any money.[86]
Luker argued that many of the men earned considerably less than the hewers and some of these were single men living in lodgings and or with their parents. They had no savings and could no longer pay their rent, board and lodgings. He argued that the Board should do everything in its power:
according to the law and to the means at their disposal … and deal with the applications sympathetically and justly.[87]
Mather-Jackson responded that unless a man was physically unfit, they could not relieve him. G. F. Park, a farmer from Monmouth, said that many of the men drawing relief in the Forest of Dean were doing very well and ran flocks of sheep. Brookes ignored that comment and responded that the Board should:
use common sense rather than an official attitude in regard to these men who were genuinely unemployed.[88]
Luker proposed the following motion which was seconded by E. Alice Taylor and Ellen Hicks:
This Board of Guardians recognising the need for more generous dealing with able-bodied men in the case of industrial disputes asks the Minister of Health to confer greater powers on Boards as to enable them to give immediate relief so that needless suffering can be avoided.[89]
Park then made some remark about how long they were going to be on strike and Brookes responded: “Mr Park’s suggestion is that they be starved back to work.” When it went to a vote, nine members voted for the motion and nine against it with some abstentions, but after a long discussion, a second vote produced a majority in favour of the resolution.
The deputation was then asked to return to the Board room and Mather-Jackson informed them that if anyone could obtain a certificate from a doctor confirming they were physically unfit to work then they could get relief on a day-to-day basis. Mather-Jackson also said the men who had made the journey this morning could be offered a meal of bread and cheese provided they committed they would leave the premises and not return.
After Hoare consulted with men outside, he informed Mather-Jackson that unless they got a more favourable response they intended to stay. He added:
You know as well as we do that the Minister of Health is trying to override the Poor Law and is cutting it down. He is the willing tool of the coal owners trying to starve us into submission. … Therefore, to us, there is nothing in that decision requesting the Ministry of Health to allow you. You already have got the power. You are within the law despite the Ministry of Health.[90]
Mather-Jackson said; “We haven’t got the power”. Hoare alleged that in other districts single locked-out miners had been awarded relief and argued:
The Ministry has sanctioned a rate relief at Gateshead equivalent to unemployment pay. In any case, your decision to get a sanction from the Ministry of Health to extend relief does not mean anything to us. We consider that you have the power, and it is for you to decide now. Anyway, that is what I am instructed to inform the Board, that unless you do something for us, to remain here.[91]
Hoare was partially correct because in May 1925 the Gateshead Board introduced a new and more generous scale of outdoor relief. An unemployed man and his wife were given 27s a week, plus 3s. per head for their first three children, 2s. per head for others, rent up to 7s 6d, and for elderly persons living with them they could claim 10s. to 15s. per week. During a strike in local pits in the summer of 1925. a striker’s wife’s allowance was increased to 27s. per week, equivalent to a man and wife’s joint allowance.Gateshead had been paying allowances equivalent to unemployment pay but to get an extension of their overdraft in June 1926 they had to agree to comply with conditions imposed by the Ministry, including ‘substantial economies’ which meant paying allowances at the rates recommended in circular 703.[92]
Fennel asked if Luker was their representative and asked him to intervene. Hoare was not willing to allow this and replied:
No, he is not the representative of the body of men. He is simply elected to this Board by the ratepayers.[93]
The Dean Forest Mercury reported Fletcher’s statement:
He did not know if they could stop the men from coming to Monmouth at some future occasion but they would see what they could do to only send a deputation down. He expected they would be coming there and demanding admittance. The men had five weeks’ practical experience of the conditions. They will not go under lightly, and they are prepared to starve on top, and they will gladly let you bury them. They have had enough burying underground.[94]
Hoare added that several men who were present on Wednesday could not make it because they “are too stiff, sore and weak”. Mather-Jackson told Hoare that he should tell the men what the Board had agreed and that they should leave quietly. He responded:
Very well we will give the men your position, and of course, it rests with them. Before we go, even if the men outside decide to leave, I want to register a protest here. We consider that you already have the power to do more than you are doing.[95]
When Hoare reported back to the men, one of them said: “If we have to die, let us die here.” After eating their bread and cheese they walked home. Some of these men had fought in World War One and it is hard to imagine what they thought of their country now and their treatment by these members of their ruling class.
Deductions
By 19 June 1926 one in seven of the population served by the Westbury Union and one in eight of the population served by the Monmouth Union had received relief.[96] The FDMA was aware of how important the awarding of relief was to the balance of forces during the lockout. It was clear that both Brookes and Hoare were fully aware of the developments at Bedwellty and Gateshead and this was why they argued that their local Guardians should make a similar moral stand in defence of their community.
On Saturday 5 June, a mass meeting was held at Cinderford Town Hall chaired by Jim Jones with the main speakers George Lansbury, Williams and Alf Purcell, the local Labour MP. Lansbury was one of the Poplar councillors involved in the rates rebellion who went to prison in 1921 and now was Labour MP for Bow and Bromley.
At the meeting, Williams spoke first and was furious because he had found out that relieving officers for the Westbury Board had been incorrectly making deductions from the grants given to those on relief. He cited one case of a married man who had to walk six miles to Cinderford and was only given 2s 6d for his wife, three children and teenager (who was earning 6s a week), on the assumption they were receiving Russian money from the MFGB. He cited another case in which deductions were made, leaving a family with more than ten children without any funds for food.
Williams said it appeared that this was being carried out under the instruction of a small committee or by the relieving officer himself without the authority of a full Board meeting. In response, Williams suggested they needed to make a protest and go to the relieving officer’s house and ask him directly to justify his actions. In addition, they needed to approach Rowlinson and ask for an explanation.[97]
Cinderford
On Tuesday afternoon 8 June a meeting was held at Cinderford Town Hall with Enos Taylor in the chair. Taylor was a locked-out miner who normally worked at Foxes Bridge colliery.[98] He said the main purpose of the meeting was to protest against the decision of the relieving officers to deduct money from the loans to those on relief, on the assumption that they had received money from the MFGB donated by the Russian miners.
This decision was against the recommendation in circular 703 that stated only a proportion of MFGB money could be deducted from the allowances because the strike pay was awarded to the man to be shared with the wife and children who received Poor Law relief.
Williams said he also wanted to protest against the decision of the Westbury Board to reduce the allowance for the first child and provide relief solely in the form of vouchers. He pointed out that the vouchers were provided only for food and did not cover other necessities like medicines. In addition, he argued that the families of miners who owned their own houses needed help too. The Dean Forest Mercury reported that Williams:
Thought it was only fitting that he should read the names of the five persons who had displayed with courage and remained so loyal to them in the discussions at the Guardians as reported in the “Mercury” – Mr Morse of Blakeney; Charlie Mason – who was putting up a very vigorous fight indeed (applause) – Tim Brain, Abraham Booth, and William Ayland (applause). These were five persons who had been standing up in the interests of everybody.[99]
Williams argued that they needed to make a protest or the Guardians would continue to reduce the allowances. He argued that there may have to be an increase in the rates to cover the cost and felt that most people in the community were prepared to make this sacrifice. A resolution of protest against the action of the Westbury Board in reducing the allowances was proposed by Joseph Holder and seconded by Jack Harris, both locked-out miners, and passed without dissent.[100]
Bureaucratic Manoeuvres
On Tuesday 8 June, the Westbury Board met again and Rowlinson continued to use bureaucratic manoeuvres to undermine attempts by the Labour Party members to challenge his authority. He reported that some traders had complained they had lost custom because most of the people receiving the vouchers were exchanging them at the Co-operative Store. As a result, Mason put forward a motion that 25 per cent of the allowance be in cash to give those receiving relief more choices. However, this motion was disallowed by Rowlinson.
Booth then presented a motion that applicants could receive an extra allowance to cover rent and mortgage interest repayments and that families owning their own houses should be eligible for relief. Rowlinson refused to accept the motion, arguing it needed to be tabulated in the correct form and given to the clerk to be presented at the next meeting. Mason asked if families needed to travel to Cinderford to make a new application every week. Rowlinson argued it was not possible to make any changes because the Board had already passed a motion to grant relief one week at a time.[101]
The Board operated a policy that those caught earning cash from digging small amounts of coal from the outcrop, where the coal seam reaches the surface, were denied relief. However, after a question from Miss Lefroy, Rowlinson did accept that the families of miners who could prove they had given up outcropping could now apply for relief.
Co-operative Society Membership
Most miners living in Cinderford were members of the Cinderford Co-operative Society, which was very much part of the labour movement in the Forest. Cinderford Co-operative Society, just like other Co-operative Societies in the Forest of Dean, was run and managed by its members in the interests of its members, mainly to provide relatively cheap food. In Cinderford where eighty per cent of the population were miners, the management committee included some miners, such as Martin Perkins (President for 37 years, but retired in 1925) and Enos Taylor.[102]
Cinderford Co-operative and Industrial Society (Credit Alistair Graham, The Forest Pioneers, The Story of the Co-operative Movement in the Forest of Dean published by the Co-operative Society in 2002.
The hostility of some members of the Board towards the miners was highlighted at the next meeting of the Westbury Board on Tuesday 15 June. Rowlinson had discovered that members of the Co-operative Society in Cinderford needed to hold a maximum of three pounds in their account to maintain their membership. If the amount dropped below this then they would lose the benefits of membership. Rowlinson claimed that Co-operative Society members could not be classed as destitute as they had £3 in savings and therefore were not entitled to relief. Mason responded by presenting a motion, seconded by William Ayland, that the Board consider such cases as destitute. However, Mason was forced to withdraw the resolution on being told by Rowlinson that the Board was legally obliged to strictly follow its rules on savings.[103] Most other Boards of Guardians in mining areas were far less rigid in their interpretation of the law.
Following this, one of the Labour Party members, Harry Morse from Blakeney, explained that under the existing system, any money coming into the house was deducted from the allowance which had a maximum of 25s. He proposed that in future in a house with four, five or six children then if 12s were going into the house in income from other sources this should now be ignored. Likewise, 9s should be ignored if there are three children and 7s if there is a wife and child. He presented a resolution to this effect which was seconded by Booth and Mason.
Mason spoke in favour of the motion adding that it was wrong that war pensions were being deducted from the allowance. However, Rowlinson told Mason he could not speak again. When the motion was put to the vote it lost with only the four Labour Party members present voting in favour.[104]
The atmosphere was more cordial at a meeting of the Ross Board on Thursday 9 June where the Guardians decided to apply to the government for a loan and complimented the families in Ruardean on their civil behaviour. However, a motion was passed that in the future relief should only be given as a loan.
The Labour Party members continued to make a stand. Booth put forward a motion, seconded by Mason that the decision to pay allowances in kind made on the 25 May should be rescinded. but was lost with only the five Labour Party members voting in favour. Similarly, a motion presented by Booth and seconded by Mason that “an allowance be given to cover rent was also defeated.
Ratepayers
As time went on the ratepayers, particularly those from outside the Forest mining area, started to complain. For instance, at a Monmouth Board meeting in early August, some Guardians complained that “ratepayers were hard hit”. Mather said the Board would review the question of the relief allowed to the dependents of miners at the next meeting. In response, J. Willetts, a Dean Forest member, retorted:
I am a miner and I have been hit hardest. I have been locked out for fourteen weeks, and all the money I have received is from the Russian fund. You talk about the hard hit. I wish some of you were in my place.[105]
However, at a national level and under pressure from wealthy ratepayers, Neville Chamberlain, the Minister of Health, began to tighten central control on recalcitrant Boards of Guardians, largely via the 1926 Board of Guardians (Default) Act which was passed on 15 July 1926. The Act allowed the Minister of Health to reconstitute a Board of Guardians, replacing it with government officials, if he considered that the Board was not properly performing its functions. It was this Act which later brought rebellious Boards of Guardians, notably in West Ham, Chester-Le-Street and Bedwellty, under central government control and ended local democratic control of Poor Law Relief in those Unions.
No More Relief
By mid-August, about 750 women and children were receiving relief, in the form of loans, from the Westbury Board of Guardians. On 3 August, the Board decided by a small majority to cut off all relief to miners’ wives and children arguing that since some pits were open work was available to them. The motion was presented by Mr Blanton and seconded by Mr Boughton and stated:
Relief orders shall continue for this week and then cease. [106]
The motion was passed with ten in favour and five against. Mason and the other Labour members pointed out that as far as they knew Westbury was the only Board in the country to do so. However, Rowlinson and his supporters on the Board refused to listen. Tim Brain was shocked and:
appealed to the Christian men: Did they want the country built upon slavery? It was not Christian if men wished to force them to that. They talked about relieving the miners, but it was their wives and children they appealed for. But if they were, they were not dealing with cowards, but with men who had stood all these weeks on empty stomachs for what they thought right.[107]
The decision of the Westbury Board of Guardians was highly controversial and possibly illegal because Guardians had a statutory duty to provide relief to the destitute provided they were not an unemployed man for whom work was available. The only other Board of Guardians to take such extreme action in the summer of 1926 were Bolton at the end of July and Lichfield on 3 September. This had a significant impact on the course of the lockout in the Forest and achieved its aim of driving many miners back to work.
In mid-July the Bolton Poor Law District, which represented about 10,000 miners with 3000 paupers, provided relief to a section of the Lancashire coalfield. At the same time, the Lichfield Poor Law Union provided relief to 930 paupers from the section of the Cannock Chase coalfield.[108]
In mid-July both Bolton and Lichfield Boards of Guardians announced that they were ending all outdoor relief to the dependents of miners on strike.[109] This was despite concerted opposition from a minority of the Guardians. Bolton Guardians said they would still offer relief in the workhouse.
Following their decision the Litchfield Guardians received a letter from the Ministry of Health asking them to reconsider their decision pointing out it was their responsibility to relieve destitution.[110] In response to the letter, at a meeting on 23 July, they changed their minds and decided to offer relief at a rate of 2s 6d for each wife plus 1s per child.[111] However, at a meeting held on 3 September, they decided to end all outdoor relief to the dependents of striking miners.[112] One of the arguments they used was that there had been a significant return to work in Cannock Chase and that as the collieries were open, work was available to the locked-out miners.
Meanwhile, in the Bolton area, At the end of August, the Daily Herald reported that some sections of the community were experiencing extreme distress as a result of the local Guardian’s decision to cut off relief.[113] Significantly a small number of non-Union collieries in the district had continued to work from the start of the lockout but by October about 25 per cent of the men in the Lancashire coalfield had returned to work.
Alf Purcell
As a result of the decision of the Westbury Board of Guardians to discontinue relief to miners’ families, Alf Purcell, M.P. for the Forest of Dean, wrote a letter to Chamberlain, the Minister of Health in which he said:
I draw your attention to the matter of the Westbury-on-Severn Board Guardians in connection with their refusal of outdoor relief to miners within the Westbury Union. As far I can gather, the Board has, in effect, stopped outdoor relief to all except those who have applied for work at the pits and been refused. (This letter has a reference to men applying for work at pits where some men have resumed employment).
Further, if my information is correct, it would appear clear that the Westbury-on-Severn Board are not carrying out their duty set forth in the circular referred to by Sir Kingsley Wood, in the House of Commons on Thursday, July 22, and set out on page 1,560, Parliamentary Debates, follows:
The function of the Guardians is to relieve destitution within the limits prescribed by law, and they are in no way concerned with the merits of an individual dispute, even though it results in applications for relief. They cannot, therefore, give any weight to their views in dealing with the applications made.” Again, on page 1,674, Sir Kingsley Wood stated: “But where on the one hand we have case like West Hem, or the other hand case like Lichfield, both at opposite ends as it were the matter which we are discussing, then it is properly—as I think the House will agree—the duty of the Ministry of Health to see that the law is complied with.
I need scarcely assure you that the position is a rather serious one calling for urgent attention, and I shall feel ever so much obliged if you will give your immediate attention to the whole matter.[114]
In response, on 11 August, the FDMA organised a mass meeting of miners and their families in Cinderford, where Wiliams argued that the guardians could be breaking the law and suggested that the miners’ wives should apply on mass for admission into the workhouse.[115] Williams, Mason and a group of miners’ wives decided to implement a plan that women should seek admission to the workhouse by obtaining the necessary orders from the relieving officer. Consequently, by 14 August the relieving officer in Cinderford had received over 100 applications for admission to the workhouse.[116]
On the 13th of August, the local press published the latest figures of men returning to work in the Forest pits. Apart from the safety men, the figures were: Eastern United 260, Lightmoor 272, Norchard 75, Waterloo 28, New Regulator 14, Slope 13, New Fancy 15, and Oldcroft Colliery 43 giving a total of 720 out of about 6,000. Most of these men were from East Dean, the district is covered by the Westbury Board. Only a handful of men had returned to the pits in West Dean covered by the Monmouth Board.
Protest
In addition to the plan that women should seek admission to the workhouse on 20 August, Williams and Mason worked with a group of miners’ wives to organise a protest outside the Westbury workhouse and arranged transport from Cinderford. On Tuesday 17 August several hundred men, women and children met in Cinderford. Some were transported by coach but most had to walk the eight miles from the Cinderford area to Westbury.
The demonstration was held outside a meeting of the Board and was met by a large contingent of mounted and foot police. The demonstrators were rowdy but peaceful and were led by the women who sang songs including the Red Flag.
A motion presented by Booth and seconded by Mason that Purcell could be allowed to speak to the Board was refused by a majority vote of 13 to 10. An attempt by one of the members of the Board to present a motion to offer relief for one more week was ruled out of order by Rowlinson but the Board agreed to consider each of the 600 applications from the families of miners on merit. However, on 17 July 1926, 3,677 people were receiving Poor Law relief at the Westbury Union but by 14 August this number had been reduced to 388 which was down to the level before the lockout.
A deputation of two men and two women asked for immediate relief for the hungry crowd and as a result, they were provided with bread and cheese by workhouse employees before returning home where they were greeted as heroines. [117] Meanwhile, the local women’s committee of the Labour Party raised a sum sufficient to pay 4s. per head to the miners affected by the Westbury Board’s decision.[118]
Occupation of Workhouse
On Friday 20 August the FDMA arranged transport from Cinderford to Westbury for about 300 women, children and babies, who had received orders from the relieving officer which entitled them admission into the workhouse. Some women brought as many as 6 or 7 children and, as there was no spare space on the coaches, some men and women set off on foot.
On arrival at the workhouse Williams and Mason met Mr and Mrs Striven, the master and matron, and told them that they had no choice but to admit the women who possessed the necessary orders from the relieving officer. After receiving tea, bread and margarine some walked back to Cinderford while about 100 women and 200 children entered the institution. The accommodation was poor and crowded with only 100 beds, so most of the women stayed up all night and were later accused by the Strivens of shouting and singing all night, tearing pillowslips for the babies and refusing to make their beds or doing any domestic work. However, having made their protest, it was clear the institution could not cope, so they all decided to return to Cinderford the following evening.[119]
Report from the Master
On Tuesday 24 August, the Westbury Board of Guardians heard the following report from Mr Scrivens, the Master of the workhouse:
On Friday evening August 20th about 7-30 o’clock 86 women and 184 children were admitted to this Institution and on Saturday afternoon 7 women and 19 children were admitted, making a total of 93 women and 203 children. The applicants remained for 4 hours on the highway before coming in.
All of them had orders of admission from the Relieving Officer except for one woman with five children who stated she had lost the order and 7 other women from Brierley who said they had been to the Relieving Officer that Friday evening but that he was out when they called. In the circumstances I admitted them.
The party were accompanied by Mr Mason (Guardian) and Mr Williams (Miners Agent). The usual Dietary for supper consisting of tea, bread and margarine, was served, but a considerable quantity was left on the plates, the women stating they could not eat margarine.
The young children, pregnant women and nursing mothers were given milk, and hot milk was supplied to babies three times during the night. Milk was served on admission when Mr. Mason was present and, he assisted in this.
Everyone had a bed except for small children who slept two in a bed and plenty of bed clothing was provided. This was rather awkward to arrange at first as parties would not divide for some time and in some cases, they pushed the beds together, this accounts for the statements that 4 or 5 slept in a bed.
They kept singing and shouting up to midnight. The Matron appealed to them at midnight to be reasonable as they were upsetting the old people and those in the sick wards which was unreasonable by their singing and noise, they were not quiet all night.
The new blankets that had been purchased were trampled on. They burst the locks of cupboards open and tore the pillow slips to use for their babies and after use threw them clown the lavatories. They refused to empty slops and upon being spoken to about this took up a threatening attitude towards the staff.
The women complained to Mr Mason on his arrival at Midday that they couldn’t obtain soap and water to wash their children with. This was not so as they were shown the bathroom where there were baths, bowls, hot and cold water and an unlimited supply of soap, towels and bath sheets. They were very noisy all night and none of the staff could go to bed until long past midnight.
Mr. Williams called on Saturday morning at 8 o’clock and asked if he could go through and speak to the women, but I told him I thought it was not advisable for me to allow him to do that, and he used rather insulting remarks towards me, one remark was that the meal supplied was pigwash. Not a single complaint was received about the dinner consisting of bread meat and potatoes and the children also received rice pudding. With regard to the bedding provided, all our spare beds were used and 20 straw mattresses were made up in the emergency – straw mattresses are used in many Institutions for this purpose.
There is ample accommodation in the Institution for the number we admitted and for more. It is within my knowledge that some of the women handed two shillings and half crowns to the Officials to buy biscuits for them and quite a lot of money was spent in this way in the village.
I should on behalf of the Matron and myself like to commend, to the Board the untiring efforts of all the Indoor Officials, all of whom remained up all night as it was impossible to retire to bed on account of the noise and the fact that although we had settled them down comfortably for the night they would not do so.
I should also like to say that a number of the women on taking their discharge on Saturday afternoon expressed their appreciation of what had been done on their behalf and said they couldn’t possibly expect anything better in the circumstances.
Mr Mason came to the House on Friday the 20th of August and was shown by the Matron the accommodation in the women’s Block and the children’s Block which had been prepared for them, he expressed his approval of the arrangements and signed the Visiting Committee Book, he also inspected the Dietary Sheet.
On Saturday Mr Mason came to the House and was given an opportunity of inspecting the quarters and the condition they had been left by the persons admitted on Friday, but he declined.
Mr. Mason addressed the Women in the House and said he would see what could be done about the Dietary on Tuesday if they would remain in the House. In the presence of the women, he was told that the Dietary could not be altered.
B.H.Scriven, Master.
The board passed a motion commending the Master and indoor staff for the manner in which they had discharged their duties. This was followed by a motion presented by Booth and seconded by Brain that the Board continue to provide outdoor relief but this failed. However, the Board did agree to hear a statement from a deputation representing the families of locked-out miners, but their appeals to continue to provide relief were ignored.
Consequently, some of the labour members became very angry with the attitude of the majority of Board members who had little sympathy for the mining community and were unprepared to listen to the arguments presented by the delegation. In the end, the meeting had to be abandoned.
East Dean
With the support of Williams and Mason, the miners’ wives continued their campaign and organised two marches headed by brass bands, one from Cinderford and the other from Drybrook, which converged at the Co-operative Society’s field in Cinderford. In his speech, Williams argued that the Westbury Board’s decision might be illegal if it led to destitution.
Masonscontinued to press the Westbury Board to support the destitute in his community. At a Board meeting on 7 September 1926 Charles protested over a decision to refuse relief to a widow who was the mother of a locked-out miner. However, the chair and the clerk argued that the case was the same as all the others in that work was available to the son and it was his duty to maintain his mother.
The Ministry of Health warned the Westbury Board that it was their statutory duty to provide relief to anyone in their community who was destitute. However, in the end, no action was taken against the Board because it was able to argue that its duty to prevent destitution was covered by law if the workhouse was offered as an alternative. This meant that some Forest mining families were running out of food and this had a significant impact on the decision of some men in the Forest of Dean to return to work. This situation contrasted with other areas where the miners and their families continued to receive relief.
However, the Forest of Dean was not the only place where the strike was under threat; for instance, in Cannock Chase in the Midlands, where 25,000 miners normally worked, over 5,000 men had returned to work by mid-August.[120] This was the district where many miners were dependent on relief from the Lichfield Board of Guardians.
West Dean
On 10 September the Monmouth Board discussed a resolution that relief for the dependents of miners be reduced by 25 per cent. However, Sims moved an amendment that the matter be deferred and Brooks seconded but the resolution was carried by nineteen votes to fourteen.[121] However, on 9 October 1926, the Western Mail reported:
Alderman A. T. Blake, at the monthly meeting of the Monmouth Board of Guardians on Friday, moved that the special relief to the dependents of miners be stopped in two weeks from that day. He said the Board was practically in a state of bankruptcy. It was pointed out that the special relief to the dependents of miners to October 4 totalled £11,256 in the Dean Forest area of the Monmouth Union. The resolution was carried by a large majority in the face of opposition which came from several Dean Forest Labour Party members.[122]
Number of persons in receipt of domiciliary Poor Law relief May – November 1926.[123]
Date (1926)
15 May
19 June
17 July
14 August
18 Sept
16 Oct
6 Nov
Westbury
339
3,794
3,677
388
802
387
370
Monmouth
2,660
4,228
4,068
3,986
3,058
1,656
868
Bolton
5,190
10,421
9,910
5,268
5,930
5,601
5,810
Lichfield
560
6,257
5,817
5,341
931
683
608
Clutton
1,140
2,405
2,848
3,836
4,395
4,574
4,574
Gateshead
38,111
41,291
40,834
41,343
42,147
42,481
42,494
Bedwelty
31,119
58,000
59,565
58,799
57,555
57,104
56,528
On 29 September, the Western Daily Press reported that Chamberlain had announced that across the country there were only six Boards of Guardians which had given outdoor relief to the families of locked-out miners.
Miners’ families in nearby South Gloucestershire were looked after by the Chipping Sodbury Board of Guardians which continued to provide outdoor relief until the end of the lockout in December. On 18 October 1926, one of the Chipping Sodbury guardians, Captain J. L. Brown said that:
they were relieving the wives and children of miners because they were destitute. There is no point going into the political question.[124]
The Beginning of the End
However, in early September, the Ross Board of Guardians announced they were stopping d giving relief to miners’ wives and children leaving 276 dependents of miners in the Ruardean area without any financial support.[125] This was followed by a similar decision by the Chepstow Board of Guardians several weeks later.[126] This had a significant impact on the decision of some men to return to work in the Ruardean area and West Dean. In his 1961 statement, Williams acknowledged:
This was the beginning of the end of the strike in the Forest of Dean. Nearly every day now I was called to most of the collieries to deal with men returning to work. The workmen had been out of work for over four months. They had not received a penny strike pay from our funds. We had no funds. The only payment received by the workmen of this district was one payment out of what was described as ‘Russian Money’.
By the end of five months, all the workmen in two collieries had gone back to work and a considerable number at the other collieries as well. Some of the workmen had no food to take to work and were without any until payday. I managed to keep two large collieries idle to the end of the strike. The situation was a nightmare for me, and when it was all over, I had to start from the beginning again to organise the district.[127]
In October other Unions in the Midland and Nottingham coalfields, where some miners had returned to work, also cut off relief to family members. These included Cannock and Tamworth in Staffordshire; Nuneaton and Atherstone in Warwickshire; Basford and Mansfield in Nottinghamshire; Belper in Derbyshire and Bosworth in Leicestershire. In contrast, the dependents of miners from most Poor Law unions in South Wales, Yorkshire and the North East were provided with relief until the lockout was over in December 1926.
At the beginning of November, the number of miners working in the Forest, not including safetymen, was 3833 compared with 6,520 miners employed on 1 May at the beginning of the lockout.[128] In other districts, the drift back to work was growing with nearly a quarter of the national workforce now back at work. At the end of December, the miners in the Forest of Dean and the rest of the country returned to work defeated and had to accept they had to work longer hours with reduced pay. Most of the FDMA activists were blacklisted and some never returned to work in the mines. Most of the remaining Forest men returned to work defeated, exhausted and demoralised. For fifteen-year-old Reg Morgan:
“Accept our terms as they stand”, the owners demanded. They were adamant and would not bend. The miners reluctantly accepted their terms. There was nothing to be achieved from further conflict. Eight hard gruelling months. For what? It was the principle of the thing that miners fought for. A decent wage for an honest day’s work. We weren’t asking for the moon. Dad and I went back to Lightmoor Colliery but many miners did not return to the Forest mines. The year was nearly over but not forgotten. Miners were bitter and their memories long. The lessons learned from this conflict were embedded deeply in their minds for future confrontations which would surely come.[129]
Many FDMA activists were blacklisted including Mason. Brookes, Hoare and Fletcher. In 1984, Hylton Miles described his recollections of the 1926 Lockout and the treatment of his father Jesse, in the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review:
My father along with the late Mr Albert Brookes and Mr Sonner Hoare opposed the underground manager at that time, regarding the cooked lunches for the children during the 1926 coal strike. At the end of the strike, they walked down to the Park Gutter (Princess Royal) to know when they had to resume work and were promptly told: “There is no work here, for you three Buggers”.[130]
Gilbert Roberts remembers Charlie Mason was also blacklisted:
After the strike was over, he wasn’t allowed back to his pit. It was seven years before he worked in a pit again, this time at Northern United.[131]
Mason’s daughter, Winfred Foley, remembers the support her family got from other members of the community and during her dad’s “seven-year victimisation from the pits these men did not forget us”.[132] However, others packed up and left:
Men and their families began to leave the Forest, some went to the Yorkshire mines, others went to Coventry or other manufacturing areas. Houses and possessions were sold to raise money for moving.[133]
Repayment of Loans
The total cost of out-relief in England and Wales in 1926-27 was £23,578,230 as compared with £15,326,742 for the year 1925-26, £12,978,268 in 1924- 25, and £14,664,802 in 1923- 24.[134]
The amount of loans and overdrafts sanctioned in some mining poor law unions.[135]
Union
March 1925
March 1926
December 1926
Westbury
Nil
15,149
Monmouth
Nil
11,000
Lichfield
Nil
8,000
Clutton
Nil
12,000
Gateshead
50,000
120,000
270,000
Bedwellty
364,000
549,000
934,000
One of the main tasks for the Guardians in 1927 was collecting the money paid as a loan to the miners’ dependents. There were over 1150 Westbury cases to be processed. It was agreed by the Westbury Board that charges would be added to the loan for legal expenses and court fees.[136]
On Friday 28 January, the Westbury Board submitted a claim to the Littledean magistrate’s court with a list of 20 names This was followed by a similar claim on 1 February 1927 from about 100 working miners.
Excerpts from the Westbury Board of Guardians Minute Book for 1 February 1927.
As a result, the Board obtained court orders for the recovery of amounts varying from £11 to £3. Arrangements were made with some of the collieries to make the necessary deductions from the wages of between 5s and 10s a week depending on wage levels.
By the beginning of March 1927, only 80 families had repaid the loan in full.[137] On 1 March 1927, the Board minutes listed the names and addresses of 848 men and women.
Excerpts from the Westbury Board of Guardian Minute Book for 1 March 1927
The problem was that some miners were unemployed and many others were only working part-time and simply did not have the money to repay the loan. Reports from all coalfield areas in 1926 indicate that throughout the eight months or so of the stoppage, a very large majority of miners were unable to pay any rent at all and were therefore heavily in debt when they eventually returned to work.[138]
As a result, Williams wrote a letter to the local press accusing the Guardians of a lack of sympathy and callousness in their role of pursuing the debts from miners suffering hardship. In response, at its meeting on 26 April, the Westbury Board agreed to instruct the relieving officer to apply to the justices to suspend the orders in cases of hardship until there was an improvement.
Unemployment among insured workers in the Forest of Dean June 1927.
Date
Cinderford Area
Coleford Area
Lydney Area
Newnham Area
Total
June 1927
1438
474
781
286
2979
However, there was no improvement and over the next two years the economic situation became much worse, with increasing unemployment and deprivation. This meant that at the Westbury Union, out of an original loan of £6113 to families of miners during the lockout £4681 had been repaid. However, only 152 had paid in full leaving 996 still owing some money.[139] In contrast, Barnsley Poor Law Union gave out £274,268 on loan but only recovered £45,208.[140]
Conclusion
During the lockout, the Boards of Guardians covering the Forest of Dean district initially followed Ministry of Health recommendations closely and strictly applied the law. However, this was not the case for Guardians from some other districts who took a strong moral stance in defence of the mining community and were far more generous in the amount of relief they awarded. This meant that they ran into direct conflict with ratepayers in their district and the Ministry of Health but were willing to fight back in the interests of their community.
In light of this, the decision of the Westbury Board, closely followed by Monmouth, Ross and Chepstow, to cut off relief completely to destitute women and children was a radical move which had a questionable legal base. The decision reflected an extremely hostile attitude toward the Forest mining community among some of the Guardians and seriously impacted the FDMA campaign to prevent a return to work in the Forest. To understand the approaches taken by different Boards it is fruitful to consider in a little more detail the stand taken by the Bedwellty and Gateshead Guardians set out in the appendix below.
The Labour stand had effectively been ended by now. There can be little doubt that the action of the Boards of Guardians in withdrawing relief was an influential factor in the collapse of the strike in the Forest of Dean during the late summer and autumn of 1926. While Boards with a labour movement majority in other mining areas continued to support impoverished families, those in the Forest were abandoned. Even in small mining districts like Somerset where the demographic was similar to the Forest and where Labour Party members on the Boards were in a minority, the Guardians continued to support the dependents of striking miners until the end of the lockout in December.
In Bedwellty the Guardians succeeded in paying outdoor relief to striking miners, circumvented the rules to provide extra relief to miners’ dependents and successfully appealed against paying the surcharge. The Gateshead case further demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the surcharge as a punitive measure, highlighting its lengthy enforcement process and the fact that it was only partially enforced. This outcome gave a symbolic victory to the Labour Guardians, which angered their political opponents.
The debates which took place on Boards of Guardians, among miners, ratepayers, the ruling classes and the government reflected a conflict between strongly held moral imperatives and the law. For many Guardians from mining communities, the desire to help destitute miners and their families eclipsed the dictates of the law, which many believed only represented the interests of the ruling classes. As a result, some of the Guardians from mining districts sought out interpretations of the law which represented the interests of their community. The examples of Bedwellty and Gateshead proved that this was possible and they provided an example to men like Liddington, Hoare, Mason, Brookes and Fletcher to challenge the authority of the ruling elites that dominated their Boards of Guardians.
In the Forest, people like this were in a minority on Boards of Guardians and the majority of Guardians imposed a rigid interpretation of the law down to the finest detail. This was highlighted when Rowlinson argued that cooperative society membership money should be viewed as savings. His decision to force through the complete withdrawal of relief in August 1926 personified his vindictiveness and complete betrayal of the mining community he once sought to represent.
Ministry of Health officials later admitted that, despite determined efforts throughout the mining dispute, they never fully succeeded in preventing some Boards from providing relief to single miners. They stated:
Even at the end of the dispute certain Boards of Guardians were known to be acting not entirely in accordance with the requirements of the law in this matter.[141]
The evidence from daily reports and other Ministry of Health files indicates that the practice of relieving single miners was more prevalent and persistent in parts of Durham and Yorkshire compared to other coalfield areas. Nevertheless, it should not be assumed that life for the majority of single miners in these regions was anything but desperately hard during the stoppage. Despite the generosity of some of the Boards of Guardians in these districts, only about one in six single miners in Durham and Yorkshire received any Poor Law relief, and in many cases, this relief was likely temporary or sporadic.[142]
The success and failure of working-class communities to defend their interests within the context of an emerging social democracy at a local level reflected the contradictions inherent in attempting to use the local state institutions to help win an industrial dispute or create social and economic change. At a local level, many Labour Party Guardians were willing to stand up to local elites and even risk imprisonment and being surcharged. As a result, the lives of many miners and their families were made more tolerable during the dramatic events of 1926 which meant that some mining communities were able to resist a return to work while others succumbed. However, with the full force of the state attacking them, the miners were eventually defeated.
Fletcher’s health deteriorated after the lockout and he died in November 1929. The Dean Forest Mercury reported:
The death occurred on November 13th at a cottage in Marsh Lane, near Coleford, of Charles Fletcher who had resided in the Forest for many years and had become well known throughout the locality by reason of his advanced views and interest in politics … Over five hundred people attended his funeral and there were over forty wreaths which facts spoke eloquently of the esteem in which he was held by his fellow workers and the district generally for his loyalty to the workers’ cause and the staunch manner in which he held his principles.[143]
Charlie Mason was killed while working at Northern United in December 1945. John Williams paid tribute to Charlie as follows:
Charlie was held in respect, a reflection of his own estimable life. He was not without his faults, but the few he had were eclipsed by his many virtues and outstanding merits. The highest testimony to his integrity is that his innumerable friends thought, felt and said the same about him when he was alive as they are thinking, feeling and saying now. Charlie Mason had known and experienced prolonged and intense poverty, and during his life had endured severe privations and hardships because of his convictions, yet he bore no malice towards those who brought these privations and hardships upon him. Charlie Mason was a thinker and it was always a delight to listen to him. He was sometimes away from the point at issue, but by some means or other, he was more charming and graceful on those occasions than when he addressed himself to the point. The world would be better in many ways if there were more people like Charlie Mason.[144]
Postscript
Boards of Guardians were abolished in 1930 by the Local Government Act 1929, when their powers and responsibilities passed to local and national government bodies, including public assistance committees. Despite the official abolition of the workhouse, many institutions remained largely unchanged into the 1930s. Resistance from Boards of Guardians and local councils slowed the pace of reform. The 1929 Act fell short of abolishing the Poor Law, only modifying its administration and renaming institutions. Poor Law Institutions were rebranded as Public Assistance Institutions and overseen by committees of ‘Guardians’. While there were modest improvements in physical conditions, most inmates continued to be the elderly, people with learning difficulties, the mentally ill, unmarried mothers, and vagrants. The working class continued to dread the workhouse.
Following the economic depression in the coal trade which began in 1920, the unemployment rate multiplied and, as the demands on the Guardians increased, most of the relief was provided outdoors. In addition, the local Council had great difficulty collecting rates and was consequently in debt to the Board of Guardians throughout the 1920s. Because of the falling value of the rates, more of the Guardians’ finances came from government loans which they had no hope of repaying.
The period from 1920 to 1926 was characterised by innumerable deputations, protests and sit-ins by the unemployed, and continuous appeals for money to the government on the part of the Bedwellty Guardians. The leader of the campaign for more just treatment of the unemployed in Bedwellty Union was Aneurin Bevan, later M.P. for Ebbw Vale and Minister of Health, who was an unemployed miner himself from 1921-24 and for a time afterwards.
There was a socialist majority on the Board. Thirty of the fifty-four members were Labour Party members and most of these were miners. Consequently, the Board was very sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed and did everything in its power to provide enough resources to keep them from starvation. The Board usually received every deputation and often provided a meal for their representatives at the workhouse. While the Board attempted to remain within the law and refuse to grant relief directly to unemployed single men, it did not always comply.
As in most other unions, the Bedwellty Guardians mainly granted relief as a loan. However, many miners had debts to the Guardians dating from the 1921 lock-out. Efforts to collect amounts in arrears met with little success since wages were not regular enough to enable repayment. This meant the Bedwellty Union debt grew from 1921 onwards.
But it was the practice of granting allowances over the scale which made Bedwellty notorious for its overspending. The basic scale of 35s a week for a family was not overgenerous but a family could also be receiving payments for coal, rent, blankets, clothes or medical allowances. Consequently, payments over the scale were common and were higher than elsewhere.
The 1926 Lockout threw the Bedwellty Guardians into a state of crisis as they desperately sought to help families in distress. Twenty-four of the Guardians were locked-out miners and were in the same dire situation as many of those applying for relief. By June 1926 one in three of the population had received relief. More than eight hundred ineligible strikers were relieved during a single week of May 1926, while some relieving officers, who were recruited locally and often sympathetic to the miners, circumvented rules applying to strikers by giving extra relief to their mothers. However, Bedwellty was not alone since the nearby Crickhowell Union refused to follow the Government’s directions and paid out money to single miners.
At Bedwellty, matters came to a head following disclosures at a Board meeting in November 1926, of ‘grave discrepancies’ in the administration in Blaina, which was one of the poorest towns served by the Bedwellty Union, where 6269 cases out of 7600 received a weekly payment over the scale in some form or another. A report from a relieving officer’s supervisor cited examples where medical certificates had been granted without medical advice and examples of overstating the number of children in a family to obtain more relief for them.
Following the revelation of the Blaina scandal, a deputation of ‘prominent ratepayers’ visited the Ministry of Health in December 1926 with several complaints against the Guardians. The deputation alleged that during the strike, Relieving Officers and Guardians had signed ‘food notes’ issued by the local Council of Action (an independent body formed to alleviate distress during the strike). This meant that the cost of food purchased with the food notes was charged to the Board of Guardians. This led to the appointment of an inspector to investigate all aspects of the Bedwellty Board administration.
On 5 February 1927, Chamberlain enforced the Board of Guardians Default Act which meant that two Government inspectors and later three paid Commissioners replaced the elected Guardians. Drastic reductions were made in all areas of relief, which led to fierce protests and much bitterness. The total amount in arrears on 31 March 1926 was £634,898 and had increased to £976,520 by February 1927. [146] The Government’s letter of the above date stated:
Unfortunately, after a careful review of the administration of the Board, he (the Minister of Health) has been forced to the conclusion that the practice of the Guardians of interpreting their regulations so as to bring the largest number of persons within their scope, and generally to grant relief on the most liberal scale, has led to a rate of expenditure which is both unnecessary and extravagant.[147]
The amount of outdoor relief was drastically reduced, all allowances over the scale stopped and any relief to single unemployed men refused. However, even the Tory Minister of Health, Neville Chamberlain had to make the following admission about the conditions in Blaina:
Such conditions of devastation are without parallel in the memory of living persons. The devastation of the coalfield can only be compared with the war of devastation in France.[148]
The Gateshead Board were responsible for several urban districts which included mining villages. Guardians elected from these districts were either miners or very sympathetic to the plight of the miners. In 1925, the Labour Party held a majority on the Gateshead Board. In May 1925, the Board introduced a new and more generous scale of outdoor relief. An unemployed man and his wife were now entitled to 27s a week, plus 3s. per head for their first three children, 2s. per head for others, rent up to 7s 6d, and elderly persons living with the family 10s. to 15s. per week.
Also included in the new scales of outdoor relief was a proposal that in the case of an industrial dispute, a striker’s wife’s allowance should be increased to 27s. per week, equivalent to a man and wife’s joint allowance. The Guardians were warned by their clerk that this attempt to circumvent the regulations was illegal, but he was overruled.
On 20 June 1925, miners working at the pits owned by the Consett Iron Co. at Chopwell were locked out after refusing to accept a pay cut and remained out until the end of 1926 involving bitter conflict and economic hardship. Initially, the Guardians succeeded in paying 27s to the wives of striking miners.
One of the consequences was an increase in the rates and a large overdraft. This resulted in large ratepayers, including directors of many of the largest companies in the area, taking legal action. A writ was issued in the High Court in August 1925 which argued that it was illegal to make these payments to the families of striking miners and asked for an injunction to restrain such payments. In October 1925 most members of the Gateshead Board of Guardians received notice from the Minister of Health’s auditor:
to appear before him if they desired and give a reason why they should not be surcharged in respect of money paid by the Guardians, including out-relief given ‘to persons not entitled to it legally and in defiance of the law’.[150]
However, Gateshead was not alone as the nearby Chester-Le-Street and Lanchester Board of Guardians were by now also involved in legal disputes over high relief payments and ‘illegal’ payments to strikers.
Gateshead Guardians refused to raise the local rates to the levels further and instead ran up unauthorised deficits. They reiterated the argument that the inequalities of the rating system were the root cause of the problem, passing a motion:
that the heavy financial burden now imposed on the respective industrial areas in the Union through abnormal unemployment, and consequent distress, is most unjust and should be transferred to and accepted by the Government as a national responsibility. They asked that the Government consider the matter, and take steps to promote legislation to spread the cost equally over the whole of the country.[151]
Nevertheless, the legal pressure forced them to suspend the 27s payments to the wives of strikers, and in the meantime, they played for time over their surcharge, complaining that the information contained in the notices did not provide sufficient information to enable the individual members to prepare their answers. This won them a delay until December 1925 when the audit of their accounts from April 1 to July 31 1925 took place. In the meantime, they carried on operating with an overdraft sanctioned by the Ministry of Health, although further action by ratepayers to restrain the expenditure of the Board was possible.
The onset of the 1926 strike then brought even greater pressure from the Ministry of Health on the Guardians over their ‘extravagant’ payments. In June 1926, the Guardians applied for an extension of their overdraft. The Ministry of Health accepted their request provided they complied with certain strict conditions, including ‘substantial economies’. The Guardians were forced to reduce their outdoor relief scales to that recognised by the labour exchanges, and reductions were also made where children were fed by the education authorities.
Eventually, twenty-six of the Guardians were surcharged a total of £165. 6s. 6d., although they immediately appealed against the decision and the legal case was not resolved until 1928 when the surcharge was waived.
In nearby Chester-Le-Street, 42,722 out of approximately 86,000 residents were receiving relief in early July 1926. The Board of Guardians had fifty-nine members out of which forty-seven were affiliated with the Labour Party and thirty-nine were either miners, miners’ officials, or miners’ wives. In early August the Ministry of Health issued a warning to the Board regarding their decision to provide relief to unmarried miners. Later that month, the Ministry of Health took over the administration of the Poor Law Union. By October, the Guardians faced a surcharge of about £480 for payments made to single miners. In April 1927 they appealed against the surcharge, but this failed. However, the Durham Miners Association intervened, covering the cost with Union funds and preventing the Guardians from facing imprisonment.[152]
Main Characters
Frank Ashmead (1856-1940) was born in Upton St Leonards, the son of a farmworker who died because of an accident at work at an early age. Frank Ashmead was brought up by his mother and started work as a farm labourer at the age of eleven. He then migrated to the Forest of Dean, first working as a farm labourer, then for the Colliery company and then as a hodder at Crump Meadow. He worked his way up to be a hewer and became an active member of the FDMA. He married Mary Baker in 1878 and went on to have seven children. In 1904 he obtained work in the Cinderford Co-operative Society as a baker’s clerk but continued to be involved with the FDMA as one of its auditors. He was also a member of the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees. He held many public positions including being secretary of the Cinderford Medical Aid Association, Chair of East Dean Parish Council from 1910, a member of East Dean District Council from 1922 and Chair of the housing committee from 1924. He was appointed as a magistrate in 1926. He was a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians during the 1926 lockout.
Abraham Booth (1870 – 1938) was born in Yorkshire, the son of a grocer, and started his working life as a labourer in a colliery. He married Alice Holroyd in 1894 and had two children. By 1901 he was working as an insurance agent for a Friendly Society. In 1911 he was living in Littledean and was still working as an Insurance Agent. In 1919, he was elected as a Labour member of East Dean Rural District Council and elected a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians and was a member during the 1926 lockout. He was a President of the Cinderford Co-operative Society and a member of East Dean Parish Council, being appointed as its clerk in 1928.
Timothy James Brain (1886-1974) was born in Ruardean Woodside and started work at the age of 12 on the surface at Slad colliery. He then worked at Foxes Bridge and Trafalgar. In 1913, while working at Lightmoor, he passed an examination which qualified him to work as a deputy and in 1916 he obtained work as a deputy at Cannop. He married Edith Morgan in 1916 and had one son. He was elected as an East Dean District Labour councillor in 1919. At the same time, he was elected as a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians and was a member during the 1926 lockout. He was elected as a County Councillor for Drybrook in 1922 when he was described by the Dean Forest Mercury as belonging to “the extreme section of the Labour Party”.[153]
Albert Brookes (1898-1976) was born in Bream, the son of a miner. From July 1917 to February 1919 Brookes served in the Royal Navy in submarines, and on his return gained work at Princess Royal colliery as a hewer. He then joined the Labour Party and became active within the FDMA. In September 1921 he married Dorothy Phipps and went on to have two children. He was a member of the Monmouth Board of Guardians during the 1926 lockout. He was blacklisted after the lockout and never worked in a pit again, and gained employment as an insurance agent. In 1926 he was elected as a councillor on West Dean District Council.
Thomas Etheridge (1896-1969) was born in Cinderford, the son of a miner. On leaving school, he started to work as an office boy in the FDMA office under George Rowlinson. He continued in a paid role as a clerk and then was appointed to the full-time role of FDMA Financial Secretary in 1920. He married Ethel Holder in 1925.
Charles Fletcher (1892-1929) was born in Stroud. His father died in 1895 and he was brought up in Muller Orphanage in Bristol. As a teenager, he was sent to work on farms in the Forest including Longley and Trow Green, where in 1911 he is recorded as living with the Teague family and working as a cowman. He joined the BSP in 1915. During the war, he moved to Chepstow and obtained work in the shipyards and latterly as a self-employed chimney sweep. In the early 1920s, he joined the CPGB and then moved back to the Forest. In 1926, he left the CPGB and joined the Labour Party. He wrote articles on mining and industrial problems, was popular within the labour movement in the Forest and became a close friend of Williams. He died aged 37 in 1929.
Ellen Hicks (1864-1948) was born in Ross and moved to Bristol. She married Arthur Hicks in Bristol in about 1893. Arthur Hicks was also from Ross but living in lodgings in Bristol and working as a bootmaker. The couple moved to Coleford where Arthur established a boot repairer business. In 1909 they were instrumental in establishing an ILP branch in Coleford. In 1911, Ellen was among some socialist women who organised a branch of the Women’s Labour League in the Forest of Dean. The League had been founded in 1906 to promote the political representation of women in parliament and onto local bodies and was affiliated with the Labour Party. Around this time, she was involved in establishing the Dean Forest Socialist Party which was based in Coleford and whose main activists included William Morris, Tom and Mary Liddington, Arthur and Ellen Hicks and Benjamin and Annie Pope from the ILP. In 1912 Ellen Hicks was elected to the Board of the Monmouth Poor Law Guardians. Dean Forest Socialist Party was affiliated with the British Socialist Party in 1915. Ellen Hicks was appointed as a magistrate in August 1920.
William Hoare (1883-1959) was born in Bream, the son of Thomas Hoare, a stone cutter, and Sarah Pace. They had eight children including William. Sarah Pace had two other children, born in the Monmouth workhouse before marrying Thomas Hoare in 1873. Two of William’s siblings died as children. Thomas Hoare died in 1888. In 1890 Sarah married Joseph James, a hewer and moved to Drybrook. The family went on to have three more children and moved back to Bream.
In 1901 William Hoare, at the age of 17, was living with his family in Bream and working as a hewer. He then moved to work in the South Wales coalfield, and in October 1907, he married Ann Jones from Pontypool. In April 1908, Ann died, possibly in childbirth. Hoare then moved back to live with his mother’s family in Bream and worked as a hewer at Princess Royal colliery. In July 1918, he married Beatrice Morgan and had seven children. At this time, he was working at Norchard colliery but was sacked after a dispute with the management and then gained work at Cannop Colliery. In 1919, he was sponsored by the FDMA to attend a two-year course at the Central Labour College in London.
After the 1921 Lockout, he was unemployed and helped set up the Coleford and West Dean Unemployed Committee with Tom Liddington. He then returned to work at Norchard and/or Princess Royal Collieries and was elected to the FDMA Executive. After the 1926 lockout, he was blacklisted and then possibly moved to work in the Kent coalfield and then back to Bream to work as a road sweeper.[154]
Charles Luker (1885-1970) was born in Chepstow where his father worked as a fish dealer. By 1901, the family had moved to Whitecroft where his father sold fish from the back of his cart. As a boy, Luker started work as a trammer in the mines and by 1911 he had started working as a hewer at the Crown Colliery. He married Esther Phipps in 1912 and had two children. In 1919, he was elected as Secretary of the FDMA and as an FDMA representative on the Gloucester Employment Committee. The following year, the post of Secretary and Treasurer of the FDMA were combined to form the role of Financial Secretary and Thomas Etheridge took over the role as a paid employee. In 1921, Luker was working as a hewer at Princess Royal Colliery and was elected to the political committee of FDMA Executive, whose job was to liaise with the Labour Party. In October 1922, he was appointed as election agent and secretary of the Forest of Dean Labour Party, which were paid posts and he continued in the roles until the 1950s. In the 1920s, Luker also worked part-time as an insurance agent and became active within local government. In 1922, he was elected to the Board of the Forest of Dean School managers. In March 1922 he was elected as a County Councillor, in which role he continued up to the 1950s. In 1923 he was elected as a West Dean Rural District councillor and by 1926, he was Chairman of West Dean Rural District Council, a role he held up to the 1950s.
Charles Mason (1889-1945) was born in Brierley and started work in the mines soon after leaving school. He married Margaret Daniels in 1909 and had seven children, including the celebrated Forest author Winifred Foley. In 1922 he was elected to East Dean District Council and in 1923 he was elected as a Poor Law Guardian on the Westbury Board of Guardians. He was elected to the FDMA Executive Committee in 1919. He was killed in an accident at Northern United colliery in 1945.
Henry (Harry) Morse (1883-1965) was born in Pigeon Green Blakeney and worked in the mines from a young age. For most of his adult life, he worked as a coal hewer at New Fancy colliery. He married Kate Potter in 1908 and they had two children. In 1925, he was elected to represent Blakeney as a labour councillor on East Dean District Council. In 1924, he was elected treasurer of the local branch of the Ancient Order of Foresters. He was elected as a Guardian on the Westbury Board in 1925. Kate died in 1939 and in 1940, he married Eliza Vines.
George Rowlinson (1852-1937) was the agent for the FDMA from 1886 to 1918. A detailed biography and an account of his role as the agent for the FDMA can be found in Ian Wright, Coal on One Hand, Men on the Other, The Forest of Dean Miners and the First World War 1910 – 1922 published by Bristol Radical History Group.
Westbury Board of Guardians in 1926
EDRDC: East Dean Rural District Council
Name
Home
Local Authority
Occupation
Role
George Rowlinson
Cinderford
EDRDC
Retired Miners’ Agent
Retired
Giles Ayland
Lea
EDRDC
Farmer
Employer
W A Bennett JP
Lydbrook
EDRDC
Grocer and Baker
Employer
Frank Ashmead
Cinderford
EDRDC
Bakers’ Clerk
Employee
William Ayland
Westbury
Westbury
Labourer
Employee
J S Bate
Blaisdon
EDRDC
Estate Agent
Employer
Frederick Blanton
Newnham
Newnham
Painter and Decorator
Employer
W A Bradley
Longhope
EDRDC
Shopkeeper
Employer
Abraham Booth
Cinderford
EDRDC
Insurance Agent
Employee
Joseph Boughton
Plump Hill
EDRDC
Farmer
Employer
Claude Bullett
Westbury
Westbury
Farmer
Employer
Timothy Brain
Drybrook
EDRDC
Colliery deputy
Employee
Cecil Dorothea Colchester-Weymes
Westbury
Westbury
Aristocrat
Employer
John Grindon
Westbury
Westbury
Miller
Employer
Stephen Hadingham
Newnham
Newnham
Bank Manager
Employer
W H Harding
Littledean
EDRDC
Assurance Agent
Ernest E Higgs
Awre
Awre
Farmer
Employer
George Kear
Cinderford
EDRDC
Baker
Employer
Mrs M Kerr
Newnham
Newnham
Aristocrat
Employer
Bessie Lefroy JP
Mitcheldean
EDRDC
Abenhall Lodge
Employer
T W Little
Ruardean
EDRDC
Gas Manufacture
Employer
William Littleton
Minsterworth
EDRDC
Farmer
Employer
Charles Mason
Brierley
EDRDC
Collier
Employee
Mac Namara AET
W D Meredith
Cinderford
EDRDC
Colliery Manager
Employer
W Morgan
Harry Morse
Blakeney Hill
EDRDC
Collier
Employee
T Parker
EDRDC
Professor Major John Penberthy
Littledean
EDRDC
Dean Hall
Employer
William Penwarden
Longhope
EDRDC
Shop Keeper and Farmer
Employer
Evelyn Stephens
Westbury
Westbury
House Wife
Daniel Walkey
Cinderford
EDRDC
Haulier
Employer
Eldred Voyce
Mitcheldean
EDRDC
Bootmaker
Employer
G E Warlow
Awre
Awre
vicar
R E Westaway
Cinderford
EDRDC
Grocer
Employer
References
Anstis, Ralph Blood on Coal, The 1926 General Strike and the Miners’ Lockout in the Forest of Dean, Lydney: Black Dwarf, 1999.
Croll, Andy, Strikers and the Right to Poor Relief in Late Victorian Britain: The Making of the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment of 1900, The North American Conference on British Studies, 2013.
Davies, Sam, Gateshead Politics between the Wars, North East History, Volume 41, 2010.
Glynn S. and J. Oxborrow, Interwar Britain (Allen and Unwin, 1976).
Ryan, Patricia, The Poor Law in 1926 in Margaret Morris, The General Strike (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976) 358-378.
Stevens, James, The coalmining lock-out of 1926, with particular reference to the co-operative movement and the poor law. A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D., University of Sheffield, Department of Economic and Social History, February 1984.
Williams, Sian Rhiannon, ‘The Bedwellty Board of Guardians and the Default Act of 1927’, Llafur,1979, 2.4.
Tomaney, John Mrs Ann Errington of Sacriston: the political biography of a Durham miner’s wife between the wars, Women’s History Review, DOI:10.
Wright, Ian, Coal on One Hand, Men on the Other, The Forest of Dean Miners’ Association and the First World War 1910-1922 (Bristol: BRHG, 2014)
Wright, Ian, God’s Beautiful Sunshine, The 1921 Lockout in the Forest of Dean (Bristol: BRHG, 2020).
[1]Oakum is a rope made of flax fibres drenched in pine tar and was often used to seal joints or fill gaps in timber.
[2] The ten parishes were Abinghall, Blaisdon, Bulley, Churcham, Flaxley, Huntley, Littledean, Longhope, Minsterworth and Mitcheldean. The large East Dean Parish (township) was divided up into several wards which included the large mining town of Cinderford.
[8] Roger Deeks in his article The Man with no Shirt, The New Regard, Journal Forest of Dean History Society, No 40, 2024.
[9] Andy Croll, Strikers and the Right to Poor Relief in Late Victorian Britain: The Making of the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment of 1900, The North American Conference on British Studies, 2013.
[11] Ian Wright, Coal on One Hand, Men on the Other, The Forest of Dean Miners’ Association and the First World War 1910-1922 (Bristol: BRHG, 2014) Chapter Four.
[14] Barry Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume 4, 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Coal (Oxford: Clarendon, 154 – 168.
[15] C. L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918 – 1940 (Methuen, 1955) 126.
[16] By December 1922 insured unemployment in shipbuilding was 35.6% of the workforce and in engineering was 20.6%, while the average for all industries was 12.2°/03. As these heavy industries were often concentrated in particular locations there were regions and towns where unemployment was far higher than the national average. In Scotland and Northern Ireland unemployment was over 20% and, in the Midlands, and North-East of England over 18%. Heavily dependent on shipbuilding, unemployment in Barrow-in-Furness was, 49% and in Jarrow 43%.
[17] Sian Rhiannon Williams, ‘The Bedwellty Board of Guardians and the Default Act of 1927’, Llafur, 1979, 2.4. p 65.
[18] S. Glynn and J. Oxborrow, Interwar Britain (Allen and Unwin, 1976) 33-34.
[19] Glynn and Oxborrow, Interwar Britain, 144-5 Table 5.1.
[20] Ian Wright, God’s Beautiful Sunshine, The 1921 Lockout in the Forest of Dean (Bristol: BRHG, 2020).
[21]Chester-Le-Street Chronicle and District Advertiser 28 April 1922.
[28] Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5, Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, the Forest of Dean, Forest of Dean Settlement, 300-325.
[36] The 1921 Census. Gloucester Journal 27 August 1921. The overall population of the town of Cinderford was 7,224, many of whom were now unemployed. See Victoria County History of Gloucestershire, A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5, Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, the Forest of Dean, Forest of Dean Settlement, 300-325.
[37] Some of the people who were still unemployed had exhausted their benefits and were now not registered. As a result, they were advised to retain their names on the register and some continued to do this. Other unemployed applications who were refused benefits did not continue to register. The number of miners claiming benefits who were also working part time in October 1921 was 1500.
[38] Lady Mather-Jackson was married to Sir Henry Mather-Jackson who was chairman of the Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railway, chairman of the Marianao and Havana Railway Co., deputy-chairman of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, of the United Railway of Havana, Cuban Central, and Western Railways of Havana, of John Lancaster’s Steam Coal Co., and the Powell’s Tillery Colliery Company, and also director of the Ebbw Vale Steel Iron and Coal Co. and the Rhymney Railway Co. He was an alderman and chairman of the Monmouthshire County Council, chairman of the Monmouthshire Quarter Sessions, Monmouthshire Standing Joint Committee, of the governors of the Monmouth Grammar School, and the Monmouth Agricultural Institute, etc. During World War One he was chairman of the Military Appeal Tribunal. He lived at Llantilio Court, Abergavenny, and 56 Montagu Square, London, W.1.
[46]Gloucester Journal 17 September 1921 and Gloucestershire Chronicle 24 December 1921. The adults had to work alternate weeks and in December the allowances were reduced.
[47]Western Morning News 9 September 1921 and The Times 5 October 1921.
[51] The unemployed committee presented a case that a living wage should be 15s a week for a married man plus 15s a week for a wife plus 7s 6d per child and house rent up to 10s weekly. Single men and single women were paid £1 weekly plus extra for dependents as for married men.
[58] S and B Webb, English Local Government, English Poor Law History: Part II, The Last Hundred Years, 1929, pp 851 – 2 quoted by Stevens in The Coalmining Lockout of 1926.
[59] James Stevens, The coalmining lock-out of 1926, with particular reference to the co-operative movement and the poor law. Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D., University of Sheffield, Department of Economic and Social History, February 1984, 100.
[102] An excellent history of the Co-operative Society in the Forest of Dean can be found in Alistair Graham’s book The Forest Pioneers, The Story of the Co-operative Movement in the Forest of Dean published by the Co-operative Society in 2002.
[123] Number of persons in receipt of domiciliary Poor Law relief (excluding casuals and persons in receipt of medical relief only) on the Saturday nearest to the sixteenth day in some of the Poor Law Unions in England and Wales. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 1926, vol. 200, cols. 23-6.
[132] Winfred Foley, No Pipe Dreams for Father, (Coleford: Douglas Mclean Publishing, 1977), 36.
[133] Harry Roberts quoted in Phelps Forest Voices, 102
[134] According to returns furnished by the Clerks to local boards of guardians in the Eighth Annual Report of the Ministry of Health, 1926- 1927, p.136.
[144] Maurice Bent, The Last Deep Mine of Dean (Forest of Dean: Self-Published, 1988) 128-129
[145] Most of the material in this section is gleaned from an article by Williams, The Bedwellty Board of Guardians, and the Default Act of 1927.
[146] Williams, The Bedwellty Board of Guardians, and the Default Act of 1927, p 65.
[147] Letter from the Ministry of Health, 5 February 1927. Bedwellty Guardians Correspondence, 1926-7, Gwent Record Office, Croesyceiliog, Gwent quoted by Williams, The Bedwellty Board of Guardians, and the Default Act of 1927, p 65.
[148] Quoted by Wal Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 163.
[149] Most of the material in this section is gleaned from an article by Davies, Gateshead Politics between the Wars.
[152] John Tomaney, Mrs Ann Errington of Sacriston: the political biography of a Durham miner’s wife between the wars, Women’s History Review, DOI:10, pp 9-10.
Williams on the left with Noah Ablett in the centre and Frank Hodges on the right at the Miners Federation of Great Britain conference in 1927. Credit: Richard Burton Archives
John Williams was appointed as the full-time agent for the Forest of Dean Miners Association in 1922 and held this post until he retired in 1953. The article on this website, Class Struggle in the Garw Valley, covers his early life from 1888 -1922. The book We Will Eat Grass, soon to be published and available from this website, covers the period of his life in the Forest of Dean from 1922 to 1928.
Williams was much more than a politician and trade union activist. He was a family man and a lover of the arts and music. He also had a fondness for horse racing. His brother, Emlyn, was a gifted violinist and his daughter, Nest, studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He loved the cinema, and he used to take Nest with him whenever he could.
The text below gives an account of his retirement in 1953. This is followed by transcriptions of two interviews given by Williams to R. Page Arnot in 1961 and 1963; a personal statement of his experiences as the agent for the Forest of Dean miners from 1922 to 1953 sent to Arnot in 1961 and, finally, an account of his death and funeral in 1968
Retirement
On Friday 6 November 1953 the Dean Forest Mercury carried this announcement:
It is with regret that most of our readers will learn that with the retirement of Mr John Williams, the post of Miners’ Agent for the Forest of Dean will lapse. Forest miners have been lucky in that during nearly 70 years there have been but three holders of this key post in what is still our major industry Mr G H. Rowlinson, Mr Herbert Booth and Mr Williams. Mr Booth’s tenure of the office was comparatively short and Mr Rowlinson and Mr Williams each served for 31 years.
Both these gentlemen had a very hard struggle in their first, few years. When Mr Rowlinson was appointed in 1886, out of 5000 miners in the Forest only 50 belonged to the Union; when Mr Williams started in 1922 the position was better, but still, only one-third were in membership. In other respects, Mr Williams had an even rougher passage than his famous predecessor, for his period of office covered the black days of mining between the wars, including the lockout and general strike of 1926 and the depression of the early 1930s. He leaves his ship, however, in calmer waters, though with a much-depleted crew, now that the mines are nationalised and there is a ready sale for every ton of coal produced.
The retiring Miners’ Agent is a man of strong convictions and on that account has not always found it too easy to work with his Executive, particularly in the first few years after his appointment. No one, however, has ever doubted his sincerity or his desire to be of the utmost service to the men whom he represents and miners and the general public alike will join in wishing him health and happiness in his well-earned retirement.
On November 17, when he becomes 65 years of age, Mr John Williams of Cinderford, Miners Agent for the Forest of Dean since 1922, will retire. He leaves behind him a series of experiences gained in a very hard school that tell the story of working-class progress from penury to comparative plenty. His career has been, that of a missionary and it has had all the elements of struggle and frustration and achievement and adventure that make the story complete.
Since Mr Williams has been Miners’ Agent, he has seen the manpower of Forest of Dean coalfield fall from 7000 when he came to the present 3000. Because of those diminishing figures, no fresh appointment of a Miners’ agent will be made. Mrs W. J. Jewell, Mr Williams’s assistant will continue as Finance Officer and Compensation Secretary for this district and she will be closely associated with the secretaryship of the Forest of Executive of the National Union of Mineworkers.
The Forest of Dean was now a shrinking part of the South Wales district of the NUM, and so there was no replacement agent. However, Birt Hinton who worked at Cannop colliery now helped to take on responsibility for local matters as chair of the Forest of Dean branch of the NUM.
In the same edition, John Williams told the Dean Forest Mercury his thoughts on the future of the coal industry in the Forest of Dean:
that if rearmament ceased there would be a glut of coal for commercial purposes as was the case between 1921 and 1939. While we need coal, the nationalised industry is made to stand up to the losses which this district is suffering, but with a glut of coal and the high local costs of production, I doubt if the industry would be expected to stand it. But I believe that there is a prospect of the coalfield carrying on longer than is generally thought. The National Coal Board are making plans at Cannop colliery and Princess Royal in particular for more extensive operations and a more up-to-date system of mining than exists at present.
Retirement Dinner
On Saturday evening 7 November, Williams was Guest of Honour at a dinner at the Unlawater Hotel Newnham arranged by Mrs Jewell on behalf of the Forest of Dean Miners to celebrate his career and retirement. Guests included a large number of his fellow union members and also representatives from most sections of the industry who offered praise “for his wisdom, his ideology and his ability”. The Dean Forest Mercury reported:
Since he came to the Forest in the early twenties Mr Williams, the son of a miner in the Garw Valley of South Wales and himself a miner, has endured storms and struggles that rocked the industry in those distant days, and among the large gathering at the dinner were many who have been with him through it all and they rose to acknowledge a respected leader and to wish him a long and happy retirement.
Father Morrison offered grace and the proceedings were presided over by the chairman of the Forest Miners Executive, Mr B. B. Hinton, who said that it had been a pleasure to work with Mr Williams for the past 13 years, during seven of which he had been chairman and he was able to appreciate the ability with which the agent had worked for the Forest miners. He had done much to raise the conditions of the men from those which existed when he came 30 years ago. “He has been the Father of the Forest Executive”, said Mr Hinton “and if we carry on in the way he has already led us, I don’t think the Dean miners will suffer”.
Proposing a toast to Mr Williams, Mr Will Paynter, president of the South Wales Miners’ Federation said that Mr Williams had been an outstanding character in the miners’ movement for many years. In days of the most acute depression which affected the Forest of Dean as much as South Wales, he secured a job as secretary agent in the Forest coalfield. From that time forward he had been a leading personality not only in the affairs of the miners but generally in the social life of the Forest.
With Mr Williams’s retirement, Mr Paynter went on, he was satisfied that the work he had done and the work he could continue to do would leave its mark for all time on the Forest mining community.
Mr Paynter referred to the happy relations which had existed between the miners in South Wales and the Forest and said it was not their intention to replace Mr Williams with another Miners’ Agent because they had to face the fact that the Forest was a contracting coalfield; manpower was not what it had been when Mr Williams became Agent and they had now made arrangements, in conjunction with the Forest Executive, to maintain the closest contact and leadership between South Wales and the Forest miners’ organisation. They hoped that this new arrangement would function without decreasing the services which Mr Williams had given the coalfield or lowering the high standards he had set.
Paynter said Mr Williams was a leader who was capable of relating the small things which happened in working class life to the larger events – of being able to explain a wages dispute in relation to the general problems of our society, and of being able to give an answer to the wages dispute and the general problems that faced society.
“We have too few in the leadership of the Labour and Trade Union movement off this country”, Mr Paynter said. “who are capable of giving that perspective to events. I am glad to be able to demonstrate in this way tonight our affection for Mr Williams and to express the hope that he will have a long and happy retirement during which he will continue his association with this movement, for I believe he will recognise that this association will be essential to happiness in his retirement.”
Mr Williams replied with an early reference to the help his late wife had given him. “Forest miners will never know how much they owe to her,” he said. “She was counsel for the defence of miners’ rights while she lived and few knew of her work though many benefited from it”. Mr Williams went on to refer to the valuable reforms that had occurred in the movement in his recollection and the two most important, he considered, excluding nationalisation, were the establishment of the eight-hour day and the Minimum Wages Act of 1912. He spoke from personal experience of the long hours that miners often worked to make a living, but that situation ended with the operation of the eight-hour day.
The Minimum Wage Act had far-reaching ameliorating effects, he continued, before its operation colliers working in abnormal conditions received only what was stated on the price list. One of his oldest friends, Mr W. E Parsons, could tell of working at Crump Meadow as a stoker at 2s 6d a shift.
Mr Williams then turned to members of parliament and candidates for parliament he had known in the Forest of Dean, the first of them Mr James Wignall – the most loved of them all. But of all the members and candidates who had come to the Forest in the past 30 years, none could approach their present member, Mr Philips Price, as an intellectual and a scholar.
This present generation is different from his, added Mr Williams, if only because it contained a high percentage of very clever people; his generation produced a small number of great men, and he listed some of them. His generation was concerned largely with ideals and ideas, the present generation was concerned largely with facts. Facts were subordinated to ideas because ideas embraced facts and gave birth to them. There was an ideological struggle prevailing today, but he thought that many of the differences were artificial. If the differences which divided the world today were purely ideological things would not be so bad.
Mr D Evans vice-president of the South Wales Miners Federation added his tribute to Mr Williams, who, he said was born at a time when the movement turned out great men, but he doubted whether we had advanced very much since those days for the forward march of the movement had to be measured not by the steps it had taken but by the steps it could have taken. Today the movement was inclined to turn out men as sausages come out of a machine. Mr Williams’s generation faced realities as they saw them and expressed their conclusions fearlessly – and they were not thought less of doing so. Mr Williams had served the coalfield well during the past thirty years and now they wished him a happy retirement.
Mrs Jewell read messages from several personal friends and colleagues who were unable to attend and each sent a message of admiration and best wishes. These included Sir William Lawther (General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers), Mr Harold Forest, MP for Bedwelty, Mr W H Crews (Secretary of the South Wales area of the NUM), Mr S L Dorrington (Secretary of the Forest Overmen’s, Deputies and Shotfirers’ Association) and Dr W H Tandy of Coleford.
Mrs Jewell then made the “staff presentation” to Mr Williams of “her own gift of an extending lamp “for being such a wonderful boss for the past 13 years”. Expressing his thanks, Mr Williams said the Forest miners were fortunate that Mrs Jewell had been in their service and would continue to be in their service and was grateful to the South Wales Executive for making their excellent arrangement.
On behalf of the Forest Executive Mr Hinton presented Mr Williams with a cheque for £51 with the wish that he would buy himself a bed. Mr Williams thanked the Executive for their gracious kindness.
Tributes to Mr Williams then came from all parts of the room – The first from Mr M Price Philips MP who said he remembered Mr Williams as Miners’ Agent since his first official connection with the parliamentary constituency. He remembered how much Mr Williams had done to build the Trade Union Movement among the Forest miners.
He recalled that an old Mr Miles of Berry Hill had once told him of the first beginnings of the miners’ movement in the Forest in 1870, and Mr Williams had since consummated what he and his colleagues fought for while those on the political side of the movement had helped in their sphere. It was vital that the political side and the industrial side of the movement should work together.
Mr Williams had seen tragic times – the lockout of 1926 at a time when coal was a drug on the market and conditions were anything but favourable for miners to get what was their due. Today coal was as precious as gold and Mr Williams must now feel gratified and thankful for the progress that had been made.
Mr D. N. Lang, who has known Mr Williams in his capacity as a colliery manager and lately Area General Manager for the National Coal Board from which he recently retired, spoke of his admiration of the Miners’ Agent from the days when coal was lying about the collieries and could not be sold at 5s a ton and small coal at 9d a ton. They had always “agreed to differ” and now, on behalf of the colliery managers and the Group Manager (Mr J. R Tallis), Mr Lang presented Mr Williams with a cheque with the suggestion that he should use it to buy a pillow for the bed. Mr William expressed his gratitude.
A tribute to Mr Williams’s leadership in difficult times and as a strategist of unusual ability was paid by W D Jenkins formerly of the Executive and now Labour Officer of the NCB in the Forest. Similarly, and now as chairman of West Dean Rural District, Mr Albert Brookes spoke appreciatively of Mr Williams’s good work in the Forest and his ability to reason clearly which had enabled the Forest miners to benefit from his leadership.
A tribute to Mr Williams’s honesty of purpose to his work for the sick and maimed of the industry and for the Cinderford Miners’ ‘Welfare Hall as president was paid by Mr W. T. B. Nelmes, chairman of Cinderford Parish Council, who was for many years the secretary of the Hall Committee. Finally, Mr W E Oakey (manager of Eastern United colliery) spoke for the colliery managers in warm terms of a well-esteemed Miners’ Agent.
After the. speeches the room was cleared for dancing to Mr Arthur Pope’s orchestra with Mr and Mr L C Upton as MCs.
Williams continued to involve himself in the political, social and cultural life of the Forest of Dean. He remained chairman of Cinderford Miners’ Welfare Hall and was a regular visitor to the union offices on Belle Vue Road which remained open until the end of 1961.[1]
On 10 October 1961, Williams was interviewed by R Page Arnot at the miners’ union offices in Cinderford. Also present were Birt Hinton and Bryn Williams. (Credit Richard Burton Archives)
Jack Williams I visited at around noon and met not in his house at Cinderford, but at the offices soon to be closed, down in the same Belle Vue Road. He retired some eight years ago but was still a regular visitor to the Union office. He lives alone.
Jack Williams was torn in 1888 at Kenfig Hill, near the Garw Valley. His father was a miner; his grandfather had been a mechanic in the mines. He himself entered the mines on his birthday in November in either his 12th or 13th year and the is at which he began was the International.
His earliest recollection as a small child was of the hauliers strike of 1893. He saw the riot, was in a sense actually in the riot together with his father. The manager at Blaengarw whose name was Salathiel, had brought up the militia to protect two blacklegs. The Salathiel family was very widespread and were always to be found holding post offices. He had been with his father as one of the spectators until his father joined up and he remembered his father pushing away at one of the blacklegs.
After he entered the International, he had the experience of being in an explosion. He also worked in the Ocean Colliery and in the Garw Colliery. The occasion of the explosion was this. His father had been boring a hole with a rammer, for shot firing. It was “a flat shot”, that is, the fuse misfired. Now under the regulations, it was necessary to wait 24 hours, but as often happened, the rule was broken and the approach was made to the place when an explosion occurred and burned him severely. J.W. was for six weeks in a bath of linseed oil. He was aged 14 at the time. That was in the days when black powder was used for shot firing. He had begun in the pits at a wage of ls.6d, a day, working with Will Champion.
He remembered Tonypandy, of course, very well and had worked at various other pits in the Garw area so they used to hear about what was happening. The first conference at which he was present of M.F.G.B. was in 1915, Nottingham, when Vernon Hartshorn and James Winstone were Prominent. Big Wallhead, was also prominent. He had been Chairman of the Garw District. lt was there that Frank Hodges became Agent. A peculiar step was taken of asking Hodges and another candidate to address a public meeting. Hodges’ eloquence swept all before him, and though he was less competent than Tad Gill, he was given the agency. As far as J.W. there was some religious background. He thought that Hodges had been a Baptist.
He also remembered others of those days before and during the World War. Outstanding was Noah Ablett. The simplicity and wisdom of his arguments were very attractive. He was rather like Nye Bevan, without Bevan’s speed, but a deeper thinker. He had wisdom as well as swiftness.
Ablett was one of the most sincere men he had ever met. S.O. Davies he also remembered very well, but he, like Mainwaring, was a conciliator rather than parliamentary timber, who had been well used In some big research work. Arthur Horner, always “attractively vain”, J.W.. had worked with, but the man for whom he had the highest respect of all was Harty Pollitt.
J.W.. became a checkweigher in 1914. Here Bryn Williams, who accompanied me, said that he (BW) had become a checkweigher at the age of 17. The Lodge in which J.W. became checkweigher was Cilely (Rhondda). It was the first Lodge to have a 92 per cent membership after the 1926 Lockout.
It was in 1922 in May that J.W. first came to the Forest of Dean as Agent. From the 1874 Amalgamated Association of Miners’ conference record, I was then able to produce the name of Timothy Mountjoy. He agreed that Mountjoy was the earliest Agent in the Forest of Dean, followed by Rymer, followed by Rowlinson. Rowlinson: was succeeded by Booth, who was there only a short time because he could not face up to the problem. That problem was the existence of an enormous debt which had to be cleared off as well as every other sort of difficulty. The debt was £24,000. When J.W. came there were some 30 Lodges, with 8,000 manpower (there are now 2 Lodges).
The Executive Committee of the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association were corrupt, the owners were right inside every branch. Even after he had been an Agent for some time, he found that a pit committee had gone.to London at the behest of the managing director of a colliery and at the expense of the coal owners, to oppose part of the Mines Act. In 1922 there were six candidates, all from outside. No candidate from the Forest of Dean was allowed.
He remembered Herbert Smith very well dour man who had sometimes the capacity to make better speakers look, second rate. Tor Richards was in his opinion, “the ablest debater in the whole of the movement, a man wise and intelligent. Straker, he had a very high opinion of but not so high of Enoch Morrell.
He then recalled the days of the National Minority Movement, when he used to be very much together with Nat Watkins, Arthur Horner, Cook and Harry Pollitt. In Cook, he never did have any great confidence. Once he (J.W.) said to Harry Pollitt about Cook; sooner or later he will sell you out. This proved to be true. In 1926 in the middle of the struggle the negotiations with Rowntree and their group were really a betrayal of the minters’ interests. On the other hand, Cook could show courage. He faced up to the fascists, but he was not always completely scrupulous and this did not accord with the views of J.W.: “I was rather puritanical perhaps”. There is no question that Cook loved the notoriety which he had in the press and elsewhere. For the rest, he could recollect that the first resolution for one single union for the miners was moved by himself, or at any rate, from the Forest of Dean.
B Hinton„ who became secretary in 1953, was also present as well as Bryn Williams, at this interview.
On 23 November 1961, Williams sent a statement of his experiences as the agent for the Forest of Dean miners from 1922 – 1953 to Arnot. (Credit Richard Burton Archives)
A statement of conditions in the twenties and after drawn up by Jack Williams, miners’ agent in the coalfield from 12 May 1922 onwards for over thirty years and sent to me on 23 November 1961 from 52 Belle Vue Road, Cinderford Glos.
Dean Forest Mercury May 1922
I commenced my duties as Miners’ Agent in the Forest of Dean on 12 May 1922. I doubt if I would have taken the job on if I had known what the conditions which existed here at that time. Mr Frank Hodges warned in a mild way that the affairs of the Union in this district were not good. I soon found out how bad things were here.
The coalfield employed about eight thousand miners. There were about one thousand three hundred miners in the union. One colliery employing close on about one thousand miners had only thirteen members in the union.
The Executive of the union had contracted a debt of twenty-four thousand pounds arising out of the 1921 strike. The miners were demoralised. They had no faith in many of the local leaders, and this was to a certain extent understandable as I shall show later on.
I found myself in a strange world. I came from a coalfield where the miners were active and militant. Here the coal owners exercised tremendous influence in the union. I could not understand this state of affairs, and as the months went by I became very depressed. The conditions under which the miners worked was truly appalling. The wages in this coalfield were the lowest in the country. I found men working at the pit-top for four shillings a day at one colliery.
At another colliery, I found that the 1912 Minimum Wage Act had been suspended by arrangement between the union pit committee and the management. The minimum wage under the 1912 Act of Parliament in this district at the time was 7s 71/2d a shift of colliers. Under the agreement mentioned above the owners were able to pay skilled colliers less than 7s 71/2d a shift.
Some years before the Union had contracted pit of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, and had agreed upon a scheme which was decidedly in favour of the Coal Owners. I had been here about nine months before I made a breakthrough, and this happened by accident. A workman came to see me about his compensation. During my talk with him, he let slip something else. He told me that the workmen at his colliery had not received a payment which was due to them. I said to him that we could compel the colliery company to pay this money, but he was not prepared to let me take this on.
I reported the matter at the next meeting of my Executive, and I asked to be allowed to make a claim on behalf of all the workmen at this colliery and to recover the amount due to the workmen. TO my astonishment I was told that I was not to make the claim, on the grounds that the Executive had agreed with the Colliery Company that the workmen had no case. I knew that this was wrong; because the National agreement specifically provided for this payment.
I could stand this state of affairs no longer, and decided to defy the Executive. I went to the Colliery and advised a meeting of the workmen to take action. They were gals to see me, and they authorised me to make a claim. This I did, but the answer of the Colliery Company was “No” to my demand. I went to the colliery again to meet the workmen, and I persuaded them to stop work until they were paid. There was no work the next day, and on the same day the colliery manager sent for me and I met him. He did his best to get me to compromise, but I stuck to my guns. H had to pay each workman over twelve months’ back pay. This settlement reflected very badly on my Executive. Most of them were pilloried by the members over their decision to support me. However, when I reported my success at the next meeting of my Executive, they passed a resolution condemning me for defying them. There was considerable dissatisfaction among ordinary members over this resolution.
I now set myself the task of getting rid of the scheme under which workmen were paid compensation for injuries sustained during their employment. My first difficulty was to convince the Executive that the workmen would be much better off under the Compensation Act. I got a bare majority to get on with the job. We met the owners to discuss the subject. The air was tense and bitter. The owners knew that nearly half the Executive were against going under the Act. One of my worst handicaps throughout was that the Owners always knew our next move. After stormy negotiations, the owners caved in. The injured workers were overjoyed with the increases in the rates of compensation which followed this settlement.
Similar action was taken to restore the working of the 1912 Minimum Wage Act at the Collieries where it had been suspended. By now the membership was increasing gradually. This area is traditionally a non-unionist area. Add to this the fact the Union was never popular then it will be seen what an uphill struggle it was here.
It was around about 1924 that I went through a dramatic experience. The Miners’ Federation negotiated a National Wage Settlement. This settlement covered every district in the country, but true to form the coal owners in this district refused to conform to the terms of the National Agreement. I realised I had the stiffest fight on.
I reported the position to the Miners’ Federation. It took our case up with the National Owners’ Association but got nowhere. In the end, my Executive was invited to London to meet a joint meeting of the National Coal Owners and the MFGB. The local coal owners had been invited as well. The National Coal Owners declared it was a matter for the local owners, and the local Union to settle among themselves. Mr Arthur Cook met us in an adjoining room and gave us the decision. This looked like the end of our campaign. The Wembley Exhibition was on at the time. After the decision was made known to us, the Local Owner invited my executive to go with them to the Exhibition and then to have dinner with them. Most of them wanted to accept the invitation, but rightly or wrongly I advised against it.
At the next meeting that this course involved I proposed that we should take strike action. I knew this course involved a tremendous risk. Even now about half the workmen were out of the union. Only two of us on the Executive were in favour of taking this action, but the issue was taken to the lodges, and a majority of them decided to support the strike action. Notices were handed to the owners. On the day the strike started the workmen at three of the largest coalfields refused to strike. We organised a demonstration to one of the collieries. The workmen at this colliery were ashamed to go to work the next day. The next morning, we organised another demonstration headed by the town band to another colliery. This took place between five and six in the morning. After two days all the collieries were idle. On the second day of the strike, I was sent for by the Managing Director of the most up to date colliery in the district. No negotiations took place at our meeting. He simply announced that he was going to pay the workmen at his colliery in accordance with the terms of the National Agreement.
I convened a mass meeting of the workmen, and when I stated that I had made a settlement the crowd cheered madly. Nothing has happened like it in the history of the district. I made similar settlements at every other colliery in the district inside a week. I was asked to make these settlements myself by the mass meeting. The Executive was excluded from the negotiations. As a result of this strike the workmen got fifty thousand pounds in back pay; and they continued to enjoy the financial benefits of the National Agreement until the 1926 national strike.
In the meanwhile, I had another job to do but this time it was a job which involved the workmen as well as the Coal Owners. One of the largest collieries in the district know as Eastern United Colliery worked a system know as the Butty System. It was a vicious and wholly corrupt affair. Under it one man could exploit several of his mates. It was a paradise for back scratchers, but a wicked hardship for most colliers. The system was simple but very successful for the Coal Owners. One collier would be put in charge of several others. The Butymen would be paid on a price list while the colliers working for him would only get the District Minimum. Not more than a dozen workmen were in the Union at this colliery. No workman dared mention the union at this colliery. Most of the Buttymen were undercover agents for the management, and the managing director was as tough as they make them. However, there was a revival of goodwill among those colliers who were being exploited by the Buttymen.
We arranged to call a meeting of the workmen to consider the problem of the Butty System. To my surprise, the workmen flooded to the meeting. A resolution was passed to ballot the workmen on the system, and Mr Wallace Jones was appointed the executive member to represent the colliery on the Executive.
We held the ballot, and we had an overwhelming vote in favour of abolishing the system. As a result of his activities in organising opposition to the Butty System, he was sacked. I got him work at another colliery belonging to the same company, and in the meantime, he was appointed Check weigher at his own colliery, and throughout he gave signal service to the union of this district. The credit for this success belongs mainly to Mr Wallace Jones.
The colliery was like a prison before. Things changed drastically, after this, and the membership increased rapidly, and I was able to improve the conditions under which the men worked. For example, the workmen had to work in bad air. There was hardly enough air to burn a candle. One candle would last a whole shift. This state of affairs shortened the lives of miners tremendously. I was glad to get the chance to put this right. I brought the terms of the Mines Act to bear on the situation, and as soon we got the foul air removed from all the coal face.
The year 1926 arrived and by now the district was well organised. The personnel of the Executive had changed. Younger men had been appointed to it, and I was greatly helped by them. The strike started well for us. The workmen responded splendidly to their obligations. A host of dramatic events took place during that prolonged and agonising strike.
I shall cite one or two, or two, special experiences which represented more or less whatever was taking place during the strike. After about four months the miners were getting angry/. A few men at most of the collieries were going back to work. It happened that I had been instructed to invite Arthur Horner to the district to address a few meetings. In the meantime, the Executive was asked to hold a mass meeting of all the miners in the district and to form a demonstration to go to Cannop Colliery to meet the blacklegs coming out of the pit. Arthur Horner was at hand and he addressed the meeting with me. However, I suggested that I did not wish him to take part in this demonstration because I knew from previous experiences that it would be difficult to control the crowd, and I realised that he was not long out of prison himself.
The meeting was held at a centre called the Speech House. The colliery to which the demonstration was going was about one mile away. The crowd was very agitated, and I did everything I could to sober things up. I resigned myself to the idea that I would be arrested. The higher-ups in the police had been trying to get me for some time, and I was convinced that this was it.
We reached the colliery which was in the middle of the woods. There were several approaches to it. I looked for some members of the Executive so as to post them at the various approaches to the colliery, but some of them had disappeared.
The demonstration should have stopped outside the colliery premises, but instead, the crowd flocked onto the pit top and surrounded it. I went with them. I would like to say something that was noble and romantic about that demonstration. The last thing they wanted was to get me into trouble. Scores begged me not to go with them. They wanted to do the job themselves. The demonstration had arrived at the pit top about twenty minutes before the Blacklegs came up the pit. I was about to address the crowd when a police inspector approached me and said to me.
“This is an unlawful assembly, Mr Williams.” I said, “Yes it is.” I did not attempt to argue the point with him, I knew he was right. All I said was that I would do my best to keep the situation under control. While the Inspector was talking to me there was a prolonged hush. I then stepped onto a piece of timber and addressed the workmen. I told them that we had already broken the law, and I was personally responsible for what had happened. I asked them if they would agree to an idea I had put before them. I asked them if they would agree to let me, myself approach each blackleg as he came towards the main road leading from the colliery. They agreed to this idea but were disappointed as many wanted to set about the blacklegs.
As the first blackleg came forward I approached him and remonstrated with him. The same procedure was followed with each of them. There was a frightening silence, prevailing throughout.
After the last Blackleg had passed by, I announced the answers I had received from each of the Blacklegs. Most of the answers I received were favourable, and these were cheered loudly, and prolonged, but the unfavourable answers were booed much more loudly and bitterly.
I know expected to hear from the police about this unlawful assembly which had taken place. I gathered there had been a conference of the police on the affair, and though there could be no doubt that unlawful assembly could easily be proved, no action was taken.
However, this was the beginning of the end of the strike in the Forest of Dean. Nearly every day now I was called to most of the collieries to deal with men returning to work. The workmen had been out of work for over four months. They had not received a penny strike pay out of our funds. We had no funds. The only payment received by the workmen of this district was one payment out of what was described as “Russian Money”.
By the end of five months all the workmen in two collieries had gone back to work and a considerable number at the other collieries as well. Some of the workmen had no food to take to work, and were without any until pay-day. I managed to keep two large collieries idle to the end of the strike. The situation was a nightmare for me, and when it was all over, I had to start from the beginning again to organise the district.
In the thirties I moved a resolution at a National Conference asking the Executive to make an application for an increase in wages. Mr Joe Jones, the President told the Conference that it was not a suitable time to make the application. I pressed this demand home at subsequent conferences, and in the end, Joe Jones gave an undertaking that the Executive would look into the matter. An application was made and we got nine pence a day flat rate. It was the first increase in wages the miners had received since 1924.
The second world war came, and nothing very eventful took place in the Mining Industry until the war ended. Soon afterwards the mines were nationalised.
I would like to state that I was a member of the Miners Minority Movement throughout, and I received considerable help from Harry Pollitt, Nat Watkins and Arthur Horner.
I moved the first resolution at our National Conference to convert the old Miners’ Federation of Great Britain into one Union. This was done by the Minority Movement through my district which was associated with the Minority Movement/ I had no seconder for the motion. I moved the same resolution the following year. In the end the National Executive took over and formed the NUM.
I hope I am not too modest in mentioning something I did in 1923 or early 1924. The National Conference was discussing wages at Blackpool. I moved a resolution suggesting that we should ask the government for a subsidy to enable the industry to give the miners a badly needed increase in wages.
The officials scoffed at me, and the delegates ridiculed me, but one member of the National Executive was in favour of my idea, the revered Mr. Straker. The National Executive was under pressure from the districts on the question of increasing wages. After the conference the Executive was stuck.
A strike was risky, and so for Mr Straker told the Executive Committee that he thought there was something to be said for the idea. Roughly nine months from the date of the National Conference at Blackpool the industry received a subsidy of twenty million pounds.
I am sure that I fought the first case in which a claim was made to get compensation for Silicosis. The South Wales Miners Federation was the pioneer in getting Silicosis schedules under the Compensation Act. They spent thousands of pounds on the task. I put in a claim for compensation for a workman, on the day the schedule came into force.
Interview with John (Jack) Williams on 25 July 1963 by R. Page Arnot and Dai Francis. (Credit Richard Burton Archives)
On Friday the 19 July, I was driven by Dai Francis, via Newport (where we had a traffic hold up of half an hour) by Chepstow and up the bank of the Severn to the Forest of Dean. There we found Jack Williams, now aged 75. He was rather flustered at not having immediately recognised Dai Francis. But Dai raised him from his dolour by speaking in Welsh. Jack had not used the language for over forty years but he responded slowly but correctly. His face gradually lit up.
Re-calling the past, he said there had been an SDF in the Gawr Valley and, of course, in the Rhondda. Moth Jones who died in 1961 aged 84 had been a pioneer. There was also Watkin Wynn. The first conference he attended was held long ago in Nottingham. He was a delegate along with Frank Hodges, then the agent for the Gawr. There was an incident of Hodges with a girl in the hotel. It was the first time he had ever imagined such a thing could take place.
He knew Ramsey Macdonald personally, had walked with him at the time of the TUC at Bournemouth. A majority of the Labour MPs were willing to go with Macdonald in 1931, Such people particularly as Shinwell was “a lickspittle.” He remembered Ernest Bevin after Shinwell had made a speech getting up and shouting out thrice “Dirty Shinwell”. I t was Arthur Henderson and the General Council who pulled the Labour members back from following Macdonald. “When afterwards you heard Shinwell and others attacking Macdonald, and you know this, it made you think much less of them.”
His main interest at the moment was to think out ways of combating the danger represented by the Catholic Church.
I had explained at the beginning that in writing to Dai Francis I had suggested that if we had to be in the Forest of Dean we should call on an old friend. He said he was greatly honoured. He also told how when on the Executive he had conceived a high regard for the honesty of outlook and expression of Dai Francis
Death
Williams died on 15 March 1968 three years after the last deep mine in the Forest of Dean was closed. His obituary in the Lydney Observer reveals a man whose contribution to society was extensive:
We have received some further details of the life of Mr John Williams who rendered distinguished service to the miners of the Forest of Dean during the 30 years he was their agent, and who died at the Dilke Memorial Hospital on Wednesday of last week. Mr Williams had been present at the foundation of this hospital and had rendered years of service to it and the Gloucester Royal Infirmary. Many years later, as a patient in both hospitals, he was grateful for the excellent nursing given to him.
During his life, he was responsible for many reforms. Before the existing National Health Service, he organised a pilot scheme in South Wales, which anticipated to some extent the benefits enjoyed today. It is believed that he was solely responsible for establishing the means by which miners could convalesce by the sea, a unique experience for many of them. His work at the Gloucester Court of Referees was particularly successful owing to his innate ability to put the points at issue, difficult though they often were, in clear, simple language.[3] For this reason, he will be remembered with gratitude by many ex-miners.
In many spheres, he was ahead of his time. He knew both Sylvia Pankhurst and Annie Besant and was an active supporter in the agitation to get women the vote. On one occasion he was struck by a baton during a Trafalgar Square demonstration. He was a lifelong freethinker and was not afraid to offend the religious susceptibilities of his contemporaries. His activities in the political and trade union movements brought him into contact with many colourful personalities including the young Jeanie Lee and Aneurin Bevan, Sir Stafford Cripps, Sir Richard Ackland, James Griffiths, Hewlett Johnson the “Red” Dean of Canterbury and Professor J. B S Haldane.
Although a left-winger in the Labour movement, he admired and liked Ernest Bevin and considered Ramsey Macdonald to be head and shoulders above other labour leaders in intellectual attainment and defended him under attack. An admirer of Churchill’s speeches, he shared with him his love for Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. As a young boy, he would travel from South Wales to London to see the first performance of a play by Bernard Shaw and until his last illness kept his love of the arts.
Through all his vicissitudes he was loyally supported by his wife Margaret, who was of invaluable help to this remarkable man. Cremation took place at Cheltenham on Saturday morning. Mourners were Mr Dennis Williams (son), Mrs Margaret Nest Sinnott (daughter), Mr Emyln Williams (brother), Mr David Jones of Pillowell and close associates. The service was conducted by a member of the Cheltenham Humanist Society.
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