By the end of the war Gresford Lodge was, in terms of membership, the second largest in North Wales, but the coalfield of which the colliery was one of the major hopes was not in good shape. During the war the government had set up the ‘Pool’, an arrangement under which the proceeds of the more profitable coalfields were used to support earnings in the less profitable—as the agent of the North Wales miners later reminded his members, ‘to make it impossible for one miner in Nottingham to receive a minimum of 16s.3d. per shift while the miner in North Wales can only get 8s.8¼d.’ But the Pool failed to remove all the anomalies, as another message from the same agent to his disgruntled members in 1917 makes plain.

There were thus many on the trade union side of the industry who had benefited in one way or another from government control and were hoping to see it continue indefinitely.