Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Images
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Disaster
- 2 The Village
- 3 The Coalfield
- 4 The Industry
- 5 The Colliery
- 6 The Aftermath
- 7 Sir Stafford Cripps
- 8 The Working Mine
- 9 The Inquiry
- 10 The Management
- 11 The Firemen
- 12 The Inspectorate
- 13 The Miners
- 14 The Union
- 15 The Reports
- 16 The Last Rites
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Nationalisation
- Appendix B The Davy Lamp
- Appendix C Butties
- Appendix D Owners
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The Working Mine
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Images
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Disaster
- 2 The Village
- 3 The Coalfield
- 4 The Industry
- 5 The Colliery
- 6 The Aftermath
- 7 Sir Stafford Cripps
- 8 The Working Mine
- 9 The Inquiry
- 10 The Management
- 11 The Firemen
- 12 The Inspectorate
- 13 The Miners
- 14 The Union
- 15 The Reports
- 16 The Last Rites
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Nationalisation
- Appendix B The Davy Lamp
- Appendix C Butties
- Appendix D Owners
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The coal industry was front page news so often in the 1920s and 1930s, and especially in 1926, when the whole nation was drawn into its struggles, that even a man so wholly absorbed in his own professional commitments as Cripps could scarcely fail to acquire at least a nodding acquaintance with its problems, but there seems little reason to suppose that up to this time he had interested himself in them particularly. The explosives factory at Queensferry was on the very edge of the North Wales coalfield, a dozen or so miles from Gresford Colliery, and even nearer to some of the Flintshire pits, but his preoccupation with sulphur can have left him little time for studying coal or anything else. His uncle by marriage, Sydney Webb, was an authority on the subject, having been one of the miners’ chosen lay representatives on the Sankey Commission of 1919, and was presumably able to provide him with some background information. His own arrival in Parliament occurred too late for him to have heard the debates on the 1930 Coal Bill, and almost from the time he set foot in the House until the change of government 10 months later his energies were devoted to the complicated and demanding Land Tax Bill.
After the election of 1931 the circumstances changed. In the landslide that engulfed Labour only the most massive majorities ensured survival, and they were to be found almost by definition in areas of old-established major industry—South Wales, Lancashire, the West Riding, the North East, Glasgow. The extent of the catastrophe for Labour can be judged by the fact that even mining constituencies were not safe. In Barnsley, the headquarters of the Yorkshire Mine Workers’ Association, the sitting Labour member, a checkweighman and treasurer of the Association, was thrown out in favour of a Liberal National timber merchant. This was a somewhat unusual result, and the most notable feature of the new House was that of the 46 members of the Labour Party and six of the Independent Labour Party at least 21 were miners—agents, checkweighmen, union officials—or, like Aneurin Bevan, had left the industry because of ill health.
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- Information
- GresfordThe Anatomy of a Disaster, pp. 75 - 86Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999