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.
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.
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.
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.
Ancient History
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. This included Noxon Farm which occupied the land on the south-western side of the Noxon estate and 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).
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.
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
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.
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 so 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.
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.
1911 Census
Name
Role
Age
Stanley G Teague
Tenant Farmer
30
Florence Teague
Farmer’s Wife
29
Joseph Smith, whose brother Harry Smith farmed at Cherry Orchard, held the tenancy from 1924 to 1932 when he 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
During the period from 1960 to 2003, the following people were also employed at Noxon; 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 to is a railway locomotive engineering business.
Poor Law Relief and Miners’ Lockouts during the 1920s in the Forest of Dean
This article discusses the granting of Poor Law relief to destitute miners and their families in the Forest of Dean during a period which started with a severe depression in the coal trade at the end of 1920, followed by a sharp rise in unemployment and ended with 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. 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 allowed 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 1926 lockout 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 Tom Liddington, Charles Luker, Albert Brookes, Charlie Mason and Tim Booth argued for an interpretation of the Poor Law which could allow them to provide more financial aid to destitute members of their community. They pointed out that the Poor Law was interpreted differently in other districts where the Boards of Guardians were more sympathetic to the miners. 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 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.
Workhouse inmates could include the able-bodied, 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 had to 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 (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 women 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 rudimanatary 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, from West Dean Rural District Council and 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.
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, many of the Guardians were from the rural parishes surrounding the mining area which was concentrated around Cinderford and some of these Guardians had little sympathy for the mining community.
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)
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 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.
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’.[5] 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.[6]
In 1893, Perkins, who was now 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 elected again to the Westbury Board of Guardians in 1895. Rowlinson continued in his role as a Board member, becoming Vice-chair in 1917 and chair in 1920.
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.[7]
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 on 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 could also be 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 also elected to represent Coleford on the Monmouth Board of Guardians.[8]
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.[9] He was replaced by Herbert Booth, a young socialist miner from Nottinghamshire.
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.[10] 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.[11] 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.
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.[12] By 1921 Britain entered a period of severe economic depression and high unemployment. 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 were based suffered the most and so the steam coal regions which exported their coal were hit hard.[13] 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 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:[14]
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 1913, and even until 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.[15]
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 they held a majority, typically managed their duties toward the poor with sympathy and even generosity within the confines of the law but often 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, in particular 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 4d a week, the employer paid 4d and the State paid 2d. In return, the unemployed insured man could receive 15s 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 and 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. No sooner was unemployment insurance coverage extended, then 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%. [16]
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.[17] 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 not possible 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. It formed part of 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.[18]
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 the scale was £1 5s for a wife 5s for the first child and 4s 6d for the second, etc.[19]
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.
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?
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 and 2s 6d for each child to help them out until they were issued with traders’ coupons.[20]
The Westbury Board was much stricter and argued that no relief would given to families where the collier husband was out of work because of a strike. 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.[21] It was probable that Long had misunderstood (deliberately or not) the auditor’s instructions as this would have been illegal even under the terms of the Merthyr Judgement.
Unemployment
The lockout ended after 12 weeks when 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.[22] However, the government announced that men who were unemployed because of damage to their pits due to the lockout could not receive unemployment benefits. The FDMA agent Herbert Booth spent much of his time over the summer months supporting his members in their attempt to make benefit claims.[23]
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.
In December 1920 there were 700,000 unemployed insured workers in Britain. However, by June 1921 that figure had risen to 2,171,000.[24] Nationally unemployment in the coal industry rose to 20 per cent and 125,000 miners were no longer needed.[25] 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.[26]
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 as a result 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.[27]
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.[28]
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.[29] 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.[30]
Unemployment among insured workers in the Forest of Dean 1920 -1921.
The figures mainly refer to those who are 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.[34] 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.
According to the 1921 census, the population of East Dean (including Cinderford and surrounding settlements) was 20,494, West Dean (including Coleford and surrounding settlements) was 17,431, Lydney and surrounding settlements was 9,842 and Newnham, Westbury and Awre 4,029.[35] The overall population of the town of Cinderford was 7,224, many of whom were now unemployed.[36]
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 but some Board members were shocked at the state of destitution of some of the miners claiming relief. Mather-Jackson was the wife of Sir Henry Mather-Jackson, 3rd Baronet, who held extensive business interests in mining and railway infrastructure.[37] Most believed they should not let women and children starve. Although some, such as William Burdess, the undermanager 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.
The chair of the Westbury Board was Sir Russell Kerr, a local aristocrat and staunch Conservative. George Rowlinson, the ex-FDMA agent, sat as an independent and Frank Ashmead, an official of the FDMA, was a Labour Party representative. 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.[38]
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.
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.[44]
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.[45] 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.[46]
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.[47]
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.[48]
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.[49]
Hoare said maintenance should be a living wage and they said they would take any work provided it was paid at trade union rates.[50] The Board members responded by arguing that the 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.[51] 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.[52] 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.[53]
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.
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.
W. Nelms, a Dean Forest member, responded:
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.[55]
Mason and Brain
In 1922, Charles Mason and Tim Brain were elected to represent the Drybrook ward as Labour councillors on East Dean District Council which was chaired by George Rowlinson. In 1923 they were both elected to the Westbury Board of Guardians. Mason worked at Cannop colliery as a collier and was an active member of the FDMA representing Cannop on the FDMA Executive Committee. Brain also worked at Cannop but in a supervisory role as a deputy (which is a colliery official charged with the supervision of safety, the ventilation of the workings, the inspection of timber work, etc).
Mason and Brain immediately came into conflict with some of the older members of the Board. Masons was 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 effectively bankrupt. 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.[56] The Forest of Dean Boards provided only a minimum amount of relief, 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.[57]
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. Any child who had left school and had gone to work or sought work was not included. 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.[58] The Gloucestershire Federation of Labour Parties also arranged to make collections throughout the county for miners from the Forest Dean and Bristol.[59]
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.[60]
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.[61] 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.[62]
Westbury Union
In 1926, Labour Party members on the Westbury Board included Frank Ashmead, Abraham Booth, Tim Brain, Harry Morse and Charlie Mason and were all elected from East Dean District Council.[63] Long-standing Guardian William Ayland was also now a Labour Party member. Mason was now a locked-out miner and 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.
Most of the remaining members of the Westbury Board were senior members of the establishment. 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.
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 FDMA 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.
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, in particular 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 even be admitted to the workhouse. There had been disagreements between these two men in the past because Mason sometimes acted as an advocate for the inmates who made complaints about the conditions in the workhouse and the amount and quality of the food.[64]
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 even 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 en masse 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 Labour Party members on the Monmouth Board included 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.
J. 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]
W. 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 not proceeded with 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 or 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 Guardians on each of 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.
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 five other Labour Party members while Rowlinson, Ashmead and the others voted in favour of the loan arrangement.
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 eight votes in favour.[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. 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 the nearby 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:
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 here 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, Purcell and Williams. 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. Both men spoke at a similar meeting in Coleford the next day, chaired by Arthur Hicks.
At Cinderford, 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 Westaway 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 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]
The hostility of some members of the Board towards the miners was highlighted at the next meeting of the Westbury Board on Tuesday 14 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.
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. Tim Brain attempted to appeal to the Board’s sympathy. 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.[106]
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 represented about 10,000 miners with 3000 paupers claiming relief from a section of the Lancashire coalfield. At the same time, the Lichfield Poor Law Union was providing relief to 930 paupers from the section of the Cannock Chase coalfield.[107]
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.[108] 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.[109] In response to the letter, at a meeting on 23 July, they reconsidered their decision and offered relief at a rate of 2s 6d for each wife plus 1s per child.[110] However, at a meeting held on 3 September, they decided to end all outdoor relief to the dependents of striking miners.[111] 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.[112] 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.
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.
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.[113]
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.[114] 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.[115]
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 request by Purcell and Etheridge to speak to the Board to plead for the continuation of relief 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. 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. [116]
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. 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.[117]
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.[118]
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.
Masons continued 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.[119] This was the district where many miners were dependent on relief from the Lichfield Board of Guardians.
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 ended up giving outdoor relief to the families of locked-out miners.
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.[120] 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.[121]
Number of persons in receipt of domiciliary Poor Law relief May – November 1926.[122]
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
Clutton Poor Law Union covers the district occupied by the Somerset coalfield where conditons were similar to that of the Forest of Dean. Clutton Board of Guardian contined to provide out door relief to miners families until the end of the lockout in December.
Miners’ families in nearby South Gloucestershire were looked after by the Chipping Sodbury Board of Guardians which also 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.
However in early October 1926, the Ross and Chepstow Boards stopped giving relief to miners’ wives and children.[123] This had a significant impact on the decision of some men to return to work in 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.[124]
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.[125] 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.[126]
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.[127]
The amount of loans and overdrafts sanctioned in some mining poor law unions.[128]
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. On Friday 28 January, the Westbury Board submitted a claim to the Littledean magistrate’s court with a list of 20 names. It 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. There were over 1150 Westbury cases to be processed and charges would be added to the loan for legal expenses and court fees.[129] By the beginning of March 1927, only 80 families had repaid the loan in full.[130]
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.[131]
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.[132] In contrast, Barnsley Poor Law Union gave out £274,268 on loan but only recovered £45,208.[133]
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. [134]
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.[135]
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.
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, the vast majority 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 £976,420 by February 1927. 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.[137]
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.[138]
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 the majority of 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’.[140]
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.[141]
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 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.[142]
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, after leaving school. He married Alice Holroyd in 1894 and had two children. In 1901, he was working as an insurance agent for a Friendly Society and in 1911 he was living in Littledean. In 1919, he was elected as a member of East Dean Rural District Council. He was a committee member of the Cinderford Co-operative Society and a member of East Dean Parish Council, being appointed as its clerk in 1928. He was elected a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians in 1919 for East Dean and was a member during the 1926 lockout.
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 later at Cannop, where in 1916 he was promoted to the role of deputy. He married Edith Morgan in 1916 and had one son. He was elected as an East Dean District councillor in 1919 and was elected as a County Councillor for Drybrook in 1922, representing the Labour Party. He was a member of the Westbury Board of Guardians for East Dean during the 1926 lockout.
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.[143]
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.
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.
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.
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 Cinderford.
[7] 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.
[9] 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.
[12] Barry Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, 154.
[13] By December 1922 insured unemployment in ship building was 35.6% of the work-force 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 ship building, unemployment in Barrow-in-Furness was, 49% and in Jarrow 43% in August 1922 4.
[14] Sian Rhiannon Williams, ‘The Bedwellty Board of Guardians and the Default Act of 1927’, Llafur, 1979, 2.4. p 65
[24] C. L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918 – 1940 (Methuen, 1955) 126.
[25] Barry Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume 4, 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Coal (Oxford: Clarendon, 168.
[26] 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.
[34] 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 short time in October 1921 was 1500
[36] 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] 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 of 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.
[45]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.
[46]Western Morning News 9 September 1921 and Times 5 October 1921.
[50] 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 to be paid £1 weekly plus extra for dependents as for married men.
[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.
[122] 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.
[126] Reginald Morgan, Mad Morgan, Child of the Forest, Man of the Mines (Bradford: Pavan Press, 1995) 59 Thanks to Graham Morgan
[127] 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
[131] 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, 66.
John Williams was appointed as the full-time trade union official for the Forest of Dean Miners in 1922 and held this post until he retired in 1953. 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] In October 1961, Williams was interviewed by R PageArnot at the miners’ union offices. Also present were Birt Hinton and Bryn Williams. On 23 November Williams sent a statement of his experiences as the agent for the Forest of Dean miners from 1922 – 1953 to Arnot. In July 1963 Dai Francis and Arnot visited Williams and he told them that his main interest at the moment was combatting the danger represented by the Catholic Church. He also enjoyed conversing with Francis in Welsh, a language he had not used for forty years.[2]
Williams died on 15 March 1968 three years after the last deep mine in the Forest of Dean was closed. 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.
Death
John Williams died in March 1968. 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.
[2] John Williams Interview with Arnot 25 July 1963.
[3] The Court of Referees is charged with considering the rights of a petitioner to make a challenge against a Private Bill. Private Bills are usually promoted by organisations, like local authorities or private companies, to give themselves powers beyond, or in conflict with, the general law.
These letters and map are from the Gloucester archives. They are about a dispute that took place in the 1860s between the owners of Darkhill Endeavour and Darkhill Colleries over the boundaries of their gales. One of the signatories of the letter was Thomas Constant from Noxon Farm and the other was George Atkinson from Perrygrove Farm. The letter appears to have been drawn up at Perrygrove, which is just outside Coleford.
Here is an attempt to transcribe them.
Perrygrove
October 6 1868,
Dear Sir,
Mr W James of Bream has told me that you ignore the arrangement partially entered into between yourself and Mr James and Titanic Steel and Iron Co. to working the Darkhiill Endurance and Darkhill deep levels as to avoid any dispute arising out of a trespass committed by your former lessee and the consequent damage and injury done to the workings of the Darkhill deep level and that you have given him (Mr James) instructions to work the coal 65 yards to the side from your level road.
This I beg to say is at least about 20 yds further than the arrangement to referred to will give you. I wish therefore to know positively from your stance whether you intend to abide by the former boundary as set by me on your joint requests or intend to claim as you say 65 yds as I must in the latter case report this affair to the Titanic Steel Company that they may take their own course in the matter. I wished the affair settled amicably and thought that you had agreed to it previously (?) the Titanic Co to this effect.
Thomas Constant, George Atkinson and others.
The Constants were free miners who mined coal and iron ore in Noxon Park and elsewhere. They were also tenants of Noxon Farm near Bream which was owned by the Clearwell Estate before it was bought by the Crown in 1919. The Constants held the tenancy of Noxon farm from about 1650 until 1869. The tenancy of Noxon Farm was held by Israel Constant (1741-1790) and then by his son John Constant (1771-1851). After the death of John Constant his son, Thomas Constant (1820-1869), inherited the tenancy.
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.
When Israel’s son 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. There is no record of Thomas Constant registering as a free miner.
George Atkinson was a mining engineer and colliery owner from Wallsend near Newcastle upon Tyne.
Phoebe Hager was probably the last woman who lived in the Forest of Dean who had worked underground in a mine. Phoebe was born in Woolaston, the Forest of Dean in 1847, the daughter of John Hager and Mary Batty. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Cwmbran where John obtained work in the iron mines.
When Phoebe was nine years old, she started working in the iron mine with her father. Her job was to sort the lumps of ore from the earth as it was thrown back by her father from the face where he was extracting the ore often using explosives.
She worked in the mine for two years and then started to work making bricks in a brickyard. The bricks were handmade and she claimed she could work as fast as any man making up to 12 bricks a minute. While the blast furnaces at Tredegar were being built, she had the task of making the special lining bricks. As the last load was being taken from the yard, the other workmen lifted her onto the truck which carried her to Tredegar to see the results of her labour.
The only schooling Phoebe received was when she attended Sunday school. However, when she grew up, she educated herself and enjoyed reading, playing cards and going to the cinema.
Her first child, Joe, was born in 1870 in Cwmbran. Her partner was Charles Kent and they went on to have seven children. Charles was one of the workers involved in building the Severn Tunnel between 1873 and 1886. According to the census:
In 1881, she was living on Parkend Road in Bream with Charles and 4 children. Charles was working as a labourer in an iron works.
In 1891, she was living in Bream Eaves. Charles was working as a labourer in a coal mine.
In 1901, she was living in Bream Eaves. Charles was working as a labourer.
In 1911, she was living in Bream Eaves. Charles was working as a labourer in a coal mine.
Charles died in 1917
Phoebe and Charles had five sons Joe, Charles, John (Jack), William and Fred. Three of these men served in the military during World War One. Sadly, Joe died in a prisoner-of-war camp in December 1918. They had two daughters Julia and Elizabeth.
When Phoebe moved to Bream she gained a reputation for her cooking abilities. When Charles met with an accident in a local colliery, she earned some income by baking bread and cakes often using three sacks of flour a week. The cakes were in great demand and up to the age of 79 she supplied the cakes for the Non-Conformist Sunday School events in the village. She was especially noted for her toffee cakes and lardees. She also made little pads and iron holders to give away to visitors.
In the last period of her life, she became known as Granny Kent and she lived with her daughter Julia and son-in-law Sam Cox. She died in 1939 at the age of 92.
Further details of the life of Joe Kent can be found in Ian Hendy’s book ‘Retrieving Wenty’s Bird’, The Story of the Bream Cenotaph 1921 – 2001, (Lydney: Black Dwarf Publications, 2001) 60- 64.
Thomas Liddington (1875-1961) was born in Com, Aylburton. He was the son of a labourer who worked in agriculture, coal shipping and as a railway plate layer. Thomas married Mary Niblet in 1898 and they had one adopted son, Albert. The family moved to Parkend in about 1885.
Thomas’s first job was as a railway porter and then by 1901 he was working as a fireman operating a stationary engine probably at a pit head. In 1904 he was working on a gang for the Severn and Wye Railway repairing track near Trafalgar colliery when he was accidentally struck in the arm by another workman with his pick causing a serious wound.[1] He moved to Newland Street in Coleford sometime before 1911 where he worked as an assistant superintendent for the Cooperative Insurance Society.
Thomas joined the Independent Labour Party in about 1908 when a branch was formed in Coleford and started putting forward candidates in local elections. Thomas was elected to West Dean District Council from 1910 to 1925 where he campaigned for social housing and other working-class interests. He was also elected to the Coleford Urban District Council between 1913 and 1919 and was elected as a manager of the Coleford schools. In 1915 he joined the British Socialist Party.[2] In 1917 he was elected to represent Coleford on the Monmouth Board of Guardians and in 1918 he was elected as Secretary of the Forest of Dean Commoners Association. As a representative of Coleford on the Monmouth Board of Guardians Thomas argued in favour of destitute families during the 1921 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean where he helped persuade the other Guardians to grant temporary loans.
After the lockout, he became actively involved in the Coleford and West Dean Unemployed Committee whose main objectives were to support the unemployed in obtaining unemployment benefit 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.
He appears to have disappeared from public life after 1925.
[2] The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. In 1916, following a protracted period of factional struggle, the party’s anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war Right Wing. After the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia at the end of 1917 and the termination of World War I the following year, the BSP emerged as an explicitly revolutionary socialist organisation. It negotiated with other radical groups in an effort to establish a unified communist organisation, an effort which culminated in August 1920 with the establishment of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
William Ayland (1854 – 1934) was born in Westbury-on-Severn and lived in the parish all his life. He was the son of Job Ayland who was a carpenter and wheelwright. Westbury-on-Severn is a large parish, six miles across and the main industry is agriculture. As William grew up, he got to know all the roads and footpaths and became personally acquainted with most of the inhabitants of the parish.
William attended the Broad Oak Wesleyan Chapel where he became a teacher at its Sunday School. He married Elizabeth Grindon in 1878 and they went on to have five children. He was a long-serving member of the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows (Gloucester District) Friendly Society and eventually filled all the posts on its committee
On leaving school William started work at the Bullo Pill Wagon Works. Kelly’s directory for 1879 lists William as working as a farm bailiff for W Symes. The 1881 census lists him as working as an agricultural labourer. Later in the 1880s, he established a business transporting coal and other goods to Gloucester with a horse and van. However, in 1911, the census lists him as working as a general labourer.
All his life William sought to represent the interests of the poor in his parish and believed this could be achieved by ‘working men’ having representatives in local and national government. Consequently, as a young man, he became interested in politics and joined the Liberal Party.
However, up to 1894 in parish elections, councillors were elected by 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 (if he owned his farm, twelve). On the passing of the Local Government Act (1894) by the Liberal government, the multiple-vote system was abolished and the Parish of Westbury became an Urban District with a Council of twelve, elected every three years (one-third of the council was elected in April each year). To be eligible for election, a candidate was required to be on the electoral register and to have resided in the district for twelve months before the election. Women were permitted to be councillors.
These reforms meant that it was now more likely working-class people could be elected to roles in local government. At the election of the first Council in December 1894, William was at the top of the poll.[1] He was then able to use his position to challenge the interests of the wealthy landowners in the parish. In his obituary in December 1934 the Gloucester Journal reported:
On the Urban Council, one of his special cares was the footpath. It must be remembered that though the district was called urban it was a thinly populated agricultural area. The farmer could drive his horse and cart, but others had to walk and woe betide the farmer who put barbed wire across a path or stile that was difficult to climb.[2]
Also in 1894, he was elected onto the Boards of the Westbury Board of Guardians to administer the Poor Law. The Gloucester Journal obituary goes on to say:
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.[3]
In 1918, he became disillusioned with the Liberal Party and their capacity to represent working-class interests and so he joined the Labour Party. He also joined the Workers Union which was a general union. During the 1910s, it was the largest general union in the UK and successfully recruited agricultural and industrial workers. However, the Workers Union entered a rapid decline in the 1920s and eventually became part of the Transport and General Workers’ Union.
During the 1926 miners’ lockout, William combined with other Labour Guardians to try and challenge the majority on the Board who were hostile to the miners. In August 1926, despite opposition from Labour members, the Board decided to cut off all relief to the destitute wives and children of the locked-out men. This was only the second Board to cut off relief to the mining community and contrasted with most other districts where miners’ dependents continued to receive support.
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. William continued in his role as a local councillor until just before his death in 1934.
The Gloucester Journal ends William’s obituary with this:
In an agricultural district it was a kind of social impertinence for a “working man” to want to fill a public office. Against this particular ideal, William trailed his coat. He lived to a good old age and did his job.
This article first appeared in an editon of the New Regard, a publication of the Forest of Dean Local History Society in May 2024.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a small group of socialists from Coleford kickstarted a process that would transform the political landscape of the Forest of Dean. It began when the Liberal consensus in the Forest of Dean was challenged by establishing a branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in Coleford in 1908. Soon other branches were established in Lydney, Cinderford, Yorkley, Parkend and Bream.1
Established in 1893, the ILP was an attempt to create a working-class organisation politically independent of the Liberal Party and to campaign for working-class representation in the democratic process.2 Keir Hardie, a Scottish ex-miner, socialist, internationalist, Christian and pacifist, was one of its main leaders. ILP members came from ideologically diverse traditions. For some, their beliefs were based on Christian principles and for others their belief was based on a sort of secular religion combined with ethical socialism. The ILP provided an opportunity to campaign against social injustice or for a peaceful evolution towards social cooperation.
In 1900, the ILP was instrumental in founding the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) jointly with other affiliated organisations including some trade unions. Its main function was to support ‘Labour’ MPs in parliament and recommend candidates to stand in elections. In the 1906 general election, the LRC won 29 seats and afterwards, the MPs decided to adopt the name ‘The Labour Party’. In the Party’s early years, the ILP provided much of its activist base as the Party did not have individual membership until 1918 but operated as a conglomerate of affiliated bodies.
coleford ILP
The first secretary of Coleford ILP was Llewellyn Griffiths, an insurance agent and later a postman, who lived on Boxbush Road. The Coleford ILP membership included trade unionists such as James Sayes who had been sacked from his job at Wimberry Slade drift mine, which was owned by Cannop colliery, in October 1911 for organising a strike against non-unionism. Others included Arthur Sheldon who worked as a foreman stone mason in a local quarry, and William Smith who worked as a hewer at Cannop Colliery. During 1911, Smith was President of the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA), the trade union representing the Forest of Dean miners who made up the biggest proportion of the workforce in the Forest.
Not all members of the Forest ILP were industrial workers as shopkeepers and tradesmen also joined the party. Arthur Hicks, a bootmaker, was elected the secretary of the Coleford branch of the ILP in 1910.3 Also active was Tom Liddington an insurance worker who lived on Newland Street, and in the past had worked on the railways and in the mines, and William Morris (nicknamed the oldest socialist in the Forest) who ran an ironmonger’s shop on St John’s Street in Coleford.
Women’s Labour League
In 1911, some socialist women organised a Women’s Labour League branch in the Forest of Dean. The League had been founded in 1906 to promote the political representation of women in parliament and local bodies and was affiliated to the Labour Party. These included Ellen Hicks, Mary Liddington, Annie Tomlins, who was a schoolteacher, and Annie Pope, who trained as a nurse and had been a member of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), a small socialist and Marxist party founded in 1881. Annie Pope helped run the Waverley, a temperance hotel, with her husband Ben and Annie Tomlins was a resident at the hotel.
Forest of Dean Miners Association
The Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), which represented the local miners’ associations nationally, did not affiliate to the LRC until 1909. The conflict between liberalism and socialism manifested itself amongst Forest of Dean miners. During the years from 1886 to 1918, the full-time agent for the FDMA was George Rowlinson, a member of the Liberal party. He opposed attempts by Smith and other miners to affiliate the FDMA to the Labour Party. There was a split between those miners, mainly from the Cinderford area, who supported Rowlinson and the Liberals, and those miners, mainly from West Dean, who supported Smith and the ILP.
The MP for the Forest of Dean from 1892-1911 was Sir Charles Dilke, a popular Liberal MP and an independent thinker, ready to defy the party whip on labour issues especially in support of the Forest miners. After his death on 26 January 1911, an election was called for the following month.
The National Executive of the Labour Party decided that, given the large working-class population in the Forest, a Labour candidate should be selected.4 The Executive proposed that Robert Smillie, the Vice President of the MFGB, should stand in the next election. Smillie visited the Forest to discuss his nomination in early February and this was followed by a meeting of representatives of all the trade unions in the Forest of Dean. Rowlinson and some of his supporters on the FDMA Executive successfully argued against backing a Labour candidate, insisting on the continued support for the Liberals.5
The Liberals selected Sir Henry Webb from Hereford, a member of the gentry who was fond of fishing and shooting. He also held considerable financial interests in the coal industry, including a directorship of the Ocean Coal Company in South Wales. He was also a shareholder of the Norchard Colliery in Lydney. Webb won the election against the Conservative Party candidate. In response, Smith and the ILP started a campaign within the mining community to sponsor a Labour candidate to run in any future general election. However, Rowlinson told a meeting of miners in August 1911 that if they decided to run a Labour candidate, they would have to find the cash themselves as not a single penny of FDMA money would be made available to them.6
The Clarion
A popular newspaper among the Coleford socialists was the Clarion which was founded by Robert Blatchford as a weekly Socialist newspaper. Clarion Vans toured the country distributing socialist propaganda and made regular visits to Coleford first arriving in 1897. Clarion readers organised branches and various activities such as cycling clubs, music societies and rambling clubs. Arthur Hicks was secretary of the Clarion Cycling Club in Coleford. This excerpt from the Clarion in August 1911 reveals that Coleford was the centre of Socialist activity in the Forest at the time:
“Meetings throughout the Forest of Dean continue to be well attended. Collections and sales are, however, small, on account of the extreme poverty of the districts worked. Following the formation of a Branch at Ruardean, similar good results followed at Ruardean Hill, Drybrook, and Lydbrook. The work is being followed up by the men from Coleford and elsewhere, and the movement is now well afoot through the Forest constituency. At Cinderford I had a bad pitch and poorer crowds than I expected, but Lydbrook and Coleford did decidedly better. Smith, of the Miners’ Union, gave me a rest one night, and Morris, of Coleford, also spoke; while Arthur Hicks, has seldom been absent, and has been of immense help during the last few weeks.”7
In 1911, the railwaymen in the Forest of Dean supported a national strike. In March 1912, a successful coal strike in support of a demand for a minimum wage was supported by miners in Coleford, many of whom worked at Cannop Colliery. These strikes strengthened the link between local trade unionists and the ILP.
1912 Election
In early 1912, Webb was appointed as a Junior Whip. The rules at the time required that MPs appointed as Junior Whips were required to face the electorate again. This provided a new opportunity for Labour supporters in the Forest to stand a candidate against Webb.
A meeting to establish the Dean Forest Labour Party was held at Speech House at the end of April 1912 attended by over 600 people. Smith chaired the meeting and explained that the object of the meeting was to consider putting forward a candidate to contest the parliamentary election in May 1912. James Sayes put the following resolution to the meeting:
In the opinion of the meeting, it was necessary that the workmen of the Forest should be represented in Parliament by a member who was independent of the Liberal or Tory parties, and that they call on the Executive Committee of the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association to take immediate steps to open negotiations with the Miners’ Federation to recommend a Labour candidate to contest the pending election.8
The resolution was passed unanimously with supporting comments from Arthur Sheldon and William Morris and it was suggested that Smith should be the candidate. However, a letter from Rowlinson was read out to the meeting in which he argued that the gathering had no connection with the FDMA and so could not commit the union to support a Labour candidate. Rowlinson continued to campaign within the FDMA against the idea of a Labour Party candidate. After a bitter dispute with Rowlinson and his supporters, the Labour Party failed to obtain the support of the FDMA Executive Committee and could not raise the finances to contest the election. In May 1912, Webb was elected again, unopposed.
In June 1912, Coleford ILP arranged a well-attended public meeting in the Drill Hall with Keir Hardie now the Labour MP for Merthyr. The meeting was chaired by Smith and music was played by a band conducted by Ben Pope. Hardie gave a rousing speech in which he said:
The present conditions would only be changed when the people were determined that a change should take place. He did not grudge the rich for their learning, their leisure, and their wealth. All he grudged them was their monopoly of these things. He wanted to win for every man and woman the same opportunities and advantages as were today practically a monopoly in the hands of the rich. This was only to be won by breaking down the artificial class barriers which now existed For their own sake and for the sake of their wives and children he asked them not to accept the inevitable. If they could not win. they could at least be rebels and die fighting for the coming of better days.9
Local Elections
Meanwhile, socialist candidates were having some success in local elections. Liddington was elected to West Dean District Council from 1910 to 1915 where he campaigned for social housing. He was also elected to the Coleford Urban District Council between 1913 and 1919 and was elected as a manager of the Coleford schools. In 1917 he was elected to represent Coleford on the Monmouth Board of Guardians and in 1918 he was elected as Secretary of the Forest of Dean Commoners Association. Annie Pope stood for election to the Council in April 1913 but failed to get elected.10 However, in 1912 Ellen Hicks was elected as a Poor Law Guardian and in 1913 she was elected to Coleford Urban District Council. In 1920 she was appointed as a magistrate.
British Socialist Party
The Forest branches of the ILP were short-lived and by August 1914 all had disappeared after their failure to put forward a candidate in the parliamentary election. A small number of foresters were looking for something more radical and joined the British Socialist Party (BSP) a Marxist organisation established in 1911 and similar to the SDF. The BSP argued for a socialist and anti-capitalist programme as opposed to the more moderate Labourism of the ILP. Many were not ideologically rigid and tended to mix in both organisations and in the Forest of Dean both the ILP and BSP influential within the FDMA. By July 1914 the Forest of Dean BSP had about 30 members and held regular meetings and educational study groups mainly around Coleford.
A well-attended public meeting organised by the branch in July 1914 was presided over by Tom Liddington. The main speaker from London was Edwin Fairchild and he attacked the local Liberal MP, Harry Webb:
When the colliers of the Forest of Dean realised that Mr Harry Webb would no longer be their member in parliament – (hear, hear) – but they would have a man representing the working classes, who was prepared to stand on the floor of the House of Commons and say that until the workers of this country determined that they would be masters of the nation they must forever remain poor.12
War
The upsurge in working-class militancy, the campaign for women’s suffrage, the development of working-class self-education and a growing internationalism must have made some people from Coleford believe that the world could rid itself of injustice and poverty. However, in August 1914, any dream of a better world was shattered by war. Under the influence of pacifism and internationalism, most members of the ILP and the BSP opposed Britain’s decision to go to war. Many young men from Coleford, however, responded to the call of arms. In his book on Coleford, the renowned local historian, Cyril Hart, wrote that the First World War:
Colefordians in general, alike with most people elsewhere, endured the four years with anxiety, apprehension, and depredation… The tremendous casualty lists that resulted from the many Allied offensives to break through the enemy lines scarred the memories of a whole generation.13
Land Fit for Heroes
During the war, socialist ideas and the demand for a land fit for heroes gained traction. In 1918, Rowlinson was voted out of office over his support for the Liberal Party and the conscription of miners and replaced by Herbert Booth, a young socialist miner from Nottinghamshire. 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 chaired by Arthur Hicks and attended by over 70 delegates 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.
The small group of Coleford socialists were responsible for establishing a rich legacy of socialist thinking in the Forest which challenged existing ideas about labour, the role of women and internationalism. In this sense, their legacy was intellectual rather than organisational but it had a deep impact in the Forest of Dean and laid the foundations for the election of its first Labour MP.
1Howe, J. Liberals, Lib-Labs and Independent Labour in North Gloucestershire,1890-1914, Midland History, Vol. 11,
2The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave.
On 4 September 1902, the Union colliery near Bixlade, which employed about 100 men, was flooded by a sudden influx of water from abandoned workings raising the water level by 30 feet and drowning four men, Thomas and Amos James, Herbert Gwatkin and William Martin. Three others Thomas Cooper, James Gwilliam and James Hawkins were trapped after they had escaped into some old workings. It was not until 9 September that pumping had reduced the water level sufficiently to allow rescuers to enter the workings and rescue them.
Later in the day, another search party found the bodies of Thomas and Amos James in an upright position and hand in hand. They were also only 15 feet from a passage by which they could have reached the upper airway and safety but having lost their lamps they were unable to see it. Thomas was 27 and married with one child whilst Amos was only 20 and single. The body of 26-year-old Herbert Gwatkin was not found until the following Sunday.
However, this was not the end of the tragedy. Herbert Gwatkin’s brother, Albert was working in the mine with his brother at the time. The trauma meant that he was never the same again and suffered from anxiety and depression. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1923 and was away from work for about two months. He stopped work in May 1926 as a result of the lockout and did not return in October because he wanted to look after his mother who had become quite ill. After her death in November, he became depressed again. He could not sleep and his other brother had to spend the nights with him as he was up all night in an agitated state. He attempted to return to work on the surface at Cannop but could not cope. Albert Gwatkin committed suicide in May 1927 by cutting his own throat so severely that his head nearly became dislocated from his body.
After the Union pit tragedy, James Gwilliam moved to Cannop colliery and then later worked at Eastern colliery where, in 1937, he was severely injured and was unable to work again. James Gwilliam’s son, Essau Reuben Gwilliam, was killed in March 1925 while working at a colliery in Pencoid, South Wales when a two and two-and-a-half-ton rock fell on his head. He had a young family of eleven children.
Minnie Allen (née Ash) was born in 1885 in Bishops Cleeve, the daughter of an agricultural labourer. She married Hubert Allen, a railway fireman, in 1908 and had two children. In March 1925, she was elected as a Labour County Councillor for St Peters, a working-class ward in Cheltenham. Consequently, she became the first woman to be elected to Gloucestershire the County Council.[1]
A condition of Hubert’s job on the railways was that he could be required to move to other districts. As a result, the family moved to Lydney at the end of 1925. Minnie soon became active in the local Labour Party and community politics and worked hard to represent the interests of the poorer sections of her community. In November 1925, she attended a meeting of the Gloucestershire Labour Women’s Advisory Council where she backed a motion to introduce funding from the County Council for feeding children, “particularly in the Forest of Dean area where distress is great owing to unemployment”.[2]
On 1 May, within a few months of Minnie’s arrival in Lydney, the Trade Union Council called a national general strike in support of the miners who were locked out because they refused to accept a pay cut and an increase in hours. Tin plate workers and railway workers, including Hubert, joined the strike along with other Lydney workers in solidarity. On Thursday 6 May, at a packed meeting at Lydney Picture House, Minnie moved a resolution that assured the Trade Union Congress and the miners that they had the full support of workers in Lydney.[3]
In July 1926, Minnie was appointed as a Labour Representative on the Board of Governors of Lydney Secondary School.[4] In March 1928, she was appointed as an alderman on Gloucestershire County Council where she sat on committees dealing with health, child welfare, education and agriculture. She fought for hard better public services, often having to argue with men who had little understanding of the issues impacting women and children. In April 1928, she was elected as a joint Vice President of the Forest of Dean Labour Party.[5]
At some point before 1939, the family had to move again because Hubert’s job required him to move to Ross which was just over the county border in Herefordshire. However, Minnie remained as an alderman with Gloucestershire County Council for 33 years. At her farewell speech in March 1958, a year before she died, Minnie remembered how she had to travel around the Forest assessing the needs of young mothers for help with milk and other support.
On one occasion I was asked if I would go out to St Briavels and interview a mother there. I went out on a baker’s cart which started early in the morning. I found the mother and then came back on the baker’s car to Lydney where I was living at the time.[6]
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