The early history of trade unionism in the North Wales coalfield follows, broadly speaking, the national pattern, with some features which were more strongly marked than elsewhere and were still in evidence at the time of the accident at Gresford.

Action to improve the lot of the miner began to be organised around 1830, in response to similar activity in Lancashire. Local strikes, and preparations for larger ones, led to an incident known as the Cinder Hill Riots, when the colliers of the Ruabon area, reinforced later by a massive contingent from Flint where the strike movement had started, secured improved wages from the coal owners, the closing of the British Iron Company's Tommy Shop, and the banishment of the Company's hated agent. But in spite of this and one or two similar shows of strength, interest in organisation seems to have petered out shortly afterwards, and the next concerted movement fared little better. The Miners’ Association of Great Britain, formed in the Yorkshire coalfield in 1841 and reputed to have at one time had 100,000 members, sent representatives variously described as ‘lecturers’ and ‘missionary organisers’ into all the coalfields of Britain. The response from North Wales was unenthusiastic, even though the depression in the iron trade had brought many collieries to a standstill. A delegate to the union's National Conference held in Wakefield in 1843 described the miners of North Wales as being worse used by their ‘slave drivers’ than human beings anywhere; some of them it was alleged had ‘never received a coin for their labours for the last two years’. After a year's work the lecturers had recruited less than 1,000 members, and the union in North Wales failed to survive the collapse which overtook the parent body following the severe slump in the coal trade towards the end of the 1840s.

For the next two or three decades attempts to revive unionism in the coalfield were weakened and obstructed by local versions of the jealousies and open conflicts which retarded progress at the national level, and above all by a malady which continued to plague North Wales right down to the time of Gresford—a reluctance to face the cost of good organisation and to recognise the indissoluble connection between militant action and financial resources.