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that public funds were being used to finance strikes while in others it was alleged that relief was being deliberately withdrawn to force the men back to work.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 cabins. However, after the 1831 riots, 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)
- Martin Perkins, the President of the FDMA.[3]
- Richard Baker, a miner and a long-term activist within the FDMA.
All these men were supporters of the more radical wing of the Liberal Party. They worked closely with Dilke and other Liberals to challenge the influence of the Tory Party and their aristocratic representatives on local authority bodies including the Boards of Guardians and sought to represent the interests of the working classes. Rowlinson was initially elected to the Westbury Board in 1887. In April 1893 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.
| Date | Cinderford Area | Coleford Area | Lydney Area | Newnham Area | Total |
| September 1920[31] | Total for Cinderford, Coleford and Lydney | 29 | |||
| January 1921[32] | 107 | 66 | 264 | 26 | 463 |
| November 1921[33] | 2233 | 473 | 999 | 142 | 3847 |
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.
| Board of Guardians | Applicant | Dependents | Unemployment Benefit | Decision |
| Monmouth.[39] | Unemployed miner. | Wife and six children. | Claim for unemployment benefit rejected. | A loan of 25s a week. |
| Monmouth.[40] | Miner earning 30s a week part-time. | Wife and six children. | Claim for unemployment benefit rejected. | A loan of 6s a week. |
| Westbury.[41] | Unemployed miner. | Wife and six children. | In receipt of 15s a week unemployment benefit. | A loan of 20s a week. |
| Westbury.[42] | Destitute single man who worked at Lightmoor before the lockout. | None. | Claim for unemployment benefit rejected. | Offered a place in the workhouse. |
| Westbury.[43] | 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]
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, a locked-out miner, was elected to the Board in 1923. Brain was 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.
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.
Appendix
Bedwellty Guardians[136]
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]
Gateshead[139]
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 appointed as a Guardian at Westbury Workhouse and in 1923 he was elected to East Dean District Council. He was elected to the FDMA Executive Committee in 1919. He was killed in an accident at Cannop 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
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.
[3] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/martin-perkins/
[4] Monmouthshire Beacon 15 April 1893.
[5] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/william-ayland-who-trailed-his-coat/
[6] Gloucester Journal 22 December 1934.
[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.
[8] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/tom-liddington/
[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.
[10] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/charles-luker/
[11] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/a-life-of-toil/
[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
[16] S. Glynn and J. Oxborrow, Interwar Britain (Allen and Unwin, 1976) 33-34.
[17] S. Glynn and J. Oxborrow, Interwar Britain (Allen and Unwin, 1976) 144-5 Table 5.1.
[18] Ian Wright, God’s Beautiful Sunshine, The 1921 Lockout in the Forest of Dean (Bristol: BRHG, 2020).
[19] Chester-le-Street Chronicle and District Advertiser 28 April 1922.
[20] Dean Forest Mercury 6 May 1921.
[21] Gloucester Journal 2 July 1921.
[22] Dean Forest Mercury 8 July 1921.
[23] Wright, God’s Beautiful Sunshine,
[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.
[27] Dean Forest Mercury 8 July 1921.
[28] Harry Toomer, Gage Library.
[29] Gloucester Citizen 19 October 1921. in Cinderford, 680 in Lydney and 470 in Coleford.
[30] Dean Forest Mercury 23 September 1921.
[31] Gloucester Journal 18 September 1920.
[32] Gloucester Citizen 18 January 1921.
[33] Gloucester Citizen 24 November 1921.
[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
[35] Gloucester Journal 27 August 1921.
[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.
[38] Dean Forest Mercury 18 November 1921.
[39] Dean Forest Mercury 23 September 1921.
[40] Dean Forest Mercury 23 September 1921.
[41] Gloucester Journal 24 September 1921.
[42] Dean Forest Mercury 21 October 1921.
[43] Dean Forest Mercury 18 November 1921.
[44] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/william-hoare/
[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.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Dean Forest Mercury 14 October 1921.
[49] Dean Forest Mercury14 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.
[51] Dean Forest Mercury 8 October 1921.
[52] Dean Forest Mercury 9 December 1921.
[54] Gloucester Journal 16 December 1922.
[55] Western Mail 5 December 1925.
[58] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926.
[59] Dean Forest Mercury 29 May 1926.
[60] Gloucester Citizen 11 May 1926. https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/james-leonard-jones/
[61] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926.
[62] Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 1927, vol. 204, cols. 583-6.
[63] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/charles-mason/
[64] Gloucester Citizen 12 November 1924.
[65] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926.
[66] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/thomas-etheridge/
[67] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926 and Gloucester Citizen 19 May 1926.
[68] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Gloucester Citizen 19 May 1926.
[73] The Labour Year Book, 1927, pp. 269- 70.
[74] Dean Forest Mercury 14 May 1926.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Ibid.
[77] Gloucestershire Chronicle 21 May 1926
[78] Dean Forest Mercury 28 May 1926.
[79] Gloucester Citizen 22 May 1926.
[80] Dean Forest Mercury 28 May 1926.
[81] Dean Forest Mercury 4 June 1926 and Gloucestershire Chronicle 4 June 1926.
[82] Gloucestershire Chronicle 21 May 1926 and Gloucestershire Chronicle 4 June 1926.
[83] Dean Forest Mercury 4 June 1926.
[84] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926.
[85] Ibid.
[86] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926. https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/charles-fletcher-gypsy-orphan-forest-of-dean-miner-and-socialist/
[87] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926
[88] Ibid.
[89] Ibid.
[90] Ibid.
[91] Ibid.
[92] Sam Davies, Gateshead Politics between the Wars, North East History, Volume 41, 2010.
[93] Ibid.
[94] Ibid.
[95] Ibid.
[96] Eighth Annual Report of the Ministry of Health, 1926-1927.
[97] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926.
[98] https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/enos-cooper-taylor/
[99] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926.
[100] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926. https://forestofdeansocialhistory.co.uk/amos-james-jack-harris/
[101] Dean Forest Mercury 11 June 1926.
[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.
[103] Dean Forest Mercury 18 June 1926.
[104] Dean Forest Mercury 18 June 1926.
[105] Western Mail 6 August 1926.
[106] Gloucester Citizen 4 August 1926.
[107] Lichfield Mercury 16 July 1926
[108] Lichfield Mercury 16 July 1926 and Western Mail 16 July 1926.
[109] Lichfield Mercury 16 July 1926
[110] Lichfield Mercury 30 July 1926.
[111] Lichfield Mercury 10 September 1926.
[112] Daily Herald 23 August 1926.
[113] Daily Herald 19 August 1926.
[114] Gloucester Citizen 12 August 1926.
[115] Gloucester Journal 21 August 1926.
[116] Gloucester Journal 21 August 1926.
[117] Daily Herald 19 August 1926.
[118] Gloucester Citizen 21 August 1926 and 25 August 1926.
[119] Dean Forest Mercury 13 August 1926
[120] Western Mail 11 September 1926.
[121] Western Mail 9 October 1926.
[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.
[123] Ibid, 81.
[124] A personal statement by John Williams collected by R. P. Arnot on 23 November 1961. Richard Burton Archives, SWCC/MNB/PP/16.
[125] Dean Forest Mercury 22 October 1926.
[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
[128] The Labour Year Book, 1927, pp 269- 70.
[129] Gloucester Journal 29 January 1927.
[130] Gloucester Citizen 2 March 1927.
[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.
[132] Gloucester Citizen 30 January 1929.
[133] P. R. O. MH 57/11 9. See Stevens, The coalmining lock-out of 1926, with reference to the co-operative movement and the poor law.
[134] P. R.O. MH57/ 94 quoted by Stevens, The coalmining lock-out of 1926, 88.
[135] Stevens, The coalmining lock-out of 1926, 89.
[136] Most of the material in this section is gleaned from an article by Williams, The Bedwellty Board of Guardians, and the Default Act of 1927.
[138] Quoted by Wal Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 163
[139] Most of the material in this section is gleaned from an article by Davies, Gateshead Politics between the Wars.
[140] The Times, 20 October 1925.
[141] The Times, 17 November 1925.
[143] Thanks to Andrew Davies-Hoare, William Hoare’s grandson, for providing additional information.