The year 1910 was significant for a marked increase in industrial disturbances. The causes were not just demands for increased wages and improved working conditions, but were also due to a failure of the trade union leaders to control their members, especially, according to Askwith, younger members who were no longer blindly following their leaders. The first major dispute of the year, in Northumberland, was due to the operation of the Eight Hours Act, with the miners disputing the arrangements for introducing a three-hour shift in place of the two-hour shift that had been agreed with the coal owners by their own executives. Thirty thousand men struck, and by the end of January eleven thousand were still on strike. In vain the miners' executives, backed up by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, called on their members to resume work. Eventually Askwith invited representatives of the Miners' Federation and representatives of the districts still on strike to meet him at the Board of Trade. After a long debate, with Robert Smillie strongly supporting adherence to the agreement and a resumption of work, it was agreed that Haig Mitchell and a small committee of miners' representatives should go around the collieries explaining the terms, and then take a ballot on ending the strike.