Guest blogger Arabella Diedrich has written this moving and powerful description of the impact of the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike on the Hem Heath Colliery and community. Introduction is from former Hem Heath miner Dave Cliff. Thanks to Steve Baguley of the Trade Union Badge Collectors Society and editor of Symbols of Solidarity for drawing this to our attention. The latest edition of Symbols of Solidarity is a Miners’ Union Special.

This article came about as a result of a contact on a miners Facebook site. Karen Diedrich asked if anyone who worked at Hem Heath Colliery would help her daughter with a college assessed essay on the miners’ strike, numerous people responded and Karen then had a follow up question, “how long were you on strike” the answers varied from six to 10 months. When I told Karen I stayed out for the duration. She asked if I could do a zoom meeting with her daughter who is based in Texas, I was more than happy to do so, we then set up a time and Arabella called me on zoom. She was the daughter of the Diedrich mentioned in the article who was also on strike for the full twelve months. We had a few problems with zoom but finally got to speak for about 30 minutes, it was a very short time to get everything across that I wanted to, and Arabella had many questions. She submitted the article for assessment and got an A plus. I am very pleased with what she wrote but there is so much more to say.

Dave Cliff

The sound of rumbling and metal creaking permeated the air as the mine shaft cage emerged from the pit. Occasionally, it would be accompanied with chattering voices, but often the sense of exhaustion from an arduous eight-hour shift overcame the urge to speak. Functioning like an elevator, the cage consisted of four decks and was responsible for lifting coal filled mine cars and people out of the different pit levels. With each of the narrow and shallow decks holding 25 miners at a time, a small portion of the 300 who were on shift underground, men were packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Traveling at 25 feet per second, it was not uncommon for the cage to come up too quickly and bounce around like a yo-yo. The sour scent of body odor radiated from the inside of the cage, clashing with the crispness of the cool air of the surface. Black dust and coal particles clung to their sweat, making each face indistinguishable from the next.

Dale Diedrich’s height and lanky build, along with his piercing jade green eyes, set him apart from the crowd. The 24-year old’s dirt covered face blended into his black hair, giving his already slim face the illusion of hollowness. Even when he showered before coming home, black dust remained around his eyes and sometimes in his ears. His now-wife, Karen Preston, said you could always tell who a miner was because they looked like they were wearing eyeliner.

Like the rest of the miners, Diedrich carried a water bottle and an empty snapping can, which was essentially a lunch box, on his belt along with his headlight battery pack. He also carried a white helmet, yellow if you were a trainee, an oil lamp and a self-rescuer kit which equipped him with a mask in case of poisonous mine gasses like carbon monoxide and black damp. To combat the 100 degree heat of the pit, a majority of the miners wore tank tops and shorts, which oddly contrasted with  their heavy steel-toe-cap boots.

As the men piled out of the cage, they returned a brass pendant with their check number to the manager’s office, indicating that they had safely returned from the pit. each man was given a number so they could be easily accounted for. Diedrich’s was 602.

After Diedrich was hired at Staffordshire’s Hem Heath Colliery in 1979 at just 19 years of age, he endured six months of training in a mock mine, learning mostly about safety and emergency procedures. Once instructed on how to use a self-rescuer respirator, he was shown the rescue team’s emergency kit, which included a hand-crank brace drill. With a U-shaped handle, one would put pressure on the head of the brace, rotate the handle and the auger bit would twist through whatever material was being drilled. In the case of coal mines, this tool was used for cranial drilling. If a miner was trapped in a pit collapse, the emergency team would use the brace drill to relieve pressure on the brain by creating small holes in the skull.

Coal miners rescue team at Porth, bringing an injured miner out of the pit, 1930s.

Getting caught in a collapse wasn’t the only safety concern for the miners. As mentioned, carbon monoxide was a common threat for them. The phrase “canary in the coal mine”, used when referring to early signs of danger, originated literally in the coal mines. While electronic toxic gas sensors were the main form of detection equipment used, the small yellow birds were the perfect candidates for indicating poisonous gases underground. Like many other birds, canaries have a higher need for oxygen than humans and their anatomy accounts for that. The avian respiratory system is made up of looped airways and air sacs that keep their lungs constantly filled with oxygen. If a canary was exposed to poisonous gas, it would kill them in a fraction of the time that it would take to kill a person.

Diedrich encountered poisonous gas once, and safely evacuated everyone, but he’d often heard about fellow miners losing fingers and extremities in equipment malfunctions or human error. There was no shortage of risk in the mines, no matter how invincible he claimed to feel. He was often tasked with driving roadways and crafting roof supports where machinery had carved out the pit tunnels. After assembling the frame for the supports, he and his crew were installing the archway when one of the beams gave out. As the ceiling began to cave in, a fellow miner grabbed Diedrich by the waist and pulled him out of the way.

Despite these physical dangers, the real danger that loomed was the threat of pit closures. For many of the miners, including Diedrich, employment opportunities were limited. He’d always dreamed of being a pilot. How did he end up in a diametrically opposite job, 40,000 feet beneath where he wanted to be?

Mining was often a generational job passed down from father to son. Although his stepfather had worked in a Scottish coal mine for over 40 years until a work-related back injury forced him out, he rarely talked about his pit history.

Diedrich’s family was working-class and aviation school, let alone college, was never an option, leaving him with little qualifications for anything but blue-collar work. In England, people graduated high school at 16 and were expected to support their families by immediately getting jobs. Mining was a good paying job, better than pretty much any other industry in the Staffordshire area. Including overtime, Diedrich worked a total of 48 hours a week earning 200 pounds before the strike, which is worth about £800 today. With little to no job options outside of mining for a majority of the workers, pit closures were the worst outcome, taking away their only dependable source of income. They needed the pit.

The same year that Diedrich started mining, Britain’s first female prime minister came into power. In order to combat unemployment and inflation that plagued the nation with economic recession, Thatcher wanted to privatize the nationalized coal mines, which were operated by the National Coal Board, and reduce the authority of trade unions, specifically the National Union of Mineworkers. While her political agenda was made clear from the beginning, many pit workers believed she had ulterior motives. They believed this was her revenge for the 1972 strikes, the first national ones since 1926, that brought down the Conservative government. Thatcher paused her plans for mass pit closures in 1981 following the threat of a strike, but that didn’t stop the NCB from putting over 40,000 mineworkers out of a job over a three-year period.

A mass picket at Saltley Gate coke plant near Birmingham during the 1972 miners’ strike.

Six months prior to the start of the strike and the union’s overtime ban, miners were encouraged to work as much as possible. Little did Diedrich realize that during all that overtime he was working to pay for his new house, Thatcher was stockpiling coal for the inevitable strike.

The government deemed the mining industry unprofitable, setting the stage for suspicion from the NUM that mass pit closure in 1984 was impending. Although there was no national ballot for the strike, meetings were held among the union and miners to decide if they were going to walkout. Diedrich felt as though a vote against a strike was a vote against another man’s job and life. A slogan emerged: “close a pit, kill a community.”

Apparently, about 140,000 other miners shared his sentiment and on March 12, as Diedrich sat eating his usual egg sandwich and drinking a cup of black tea, his tele announced that the NUM declared a national strike.

The following day, Diedrich and his Hem Heath comrades arrived for the morning picket line shift at 6 a.m. Fellow miner David Cliff, a 29 year old who happened to also serve on the union branch committee, was frequently late to the pit before the strike but not once was he late to the picket line. Whether it was a day, afternoon or night shift, he was there.

Outside the gates of mine, hundreds of strikers lined up on either side of the road. This time, their faces were distinguishable. With their expressions no longer hidden in black dust, one could easily make out the anger each man bore in his eyes.

For those who chose to return to work, they’d either take a bus or drive their own cars through the gates. As the bus passed by the picketers, the passengers avoided making eye contact. The air was thick with tension and disappointment. Despite their attempt to look away, the feeling of betrayal lingered. Men cursed at those they once considered brothers as they crossed the picket line, instantaneously becoming what the strikers called scabs.

With the expectation of violence, thousands of police officers were deployed to picket line scenes. Every so often, one of them would allow one or two picketers to approach a scab car or bus to try to persuade them not to break the strike. “Why would you cross the picket line? Just because your job is safe doesn’t mean everyone else’s is.”

While Diedrich’s interactions with returning workers were limited to these face-to-face persuasion attempts, Cliff, or Cliffy as he was referred to in the pit, had a more indirect approach to his scab protesting methods. Following a picketing shift at Littleton Colliery in August, Cliffy dropped a van of strikers off at a site where three empty scab buses were parked. The group got out and began torching the buses. Flames burst out of the side windows, climbing the metal frame of the bus as smoke and embers trickled up into the night sky.

Two of the men were caught and arrested as they crossed a nearby field. They soon admitted that they weren’t the only ones involved in the arson. Two days later, as he was heading off to London, Cliffy was also arrested. His headstrong character permitted him from giving the officers a statement and he demanded the presence of a solicitor. The NUM had always said, if you’re arrested, only give them your name, address, and your check number, which in Cliffy’s case was 1367. The next day, a solicitor arrived, but Cliffy had wanted an NUM one, not a general duty solicitor. He turned him away and later when the union solicitor finally arrived, he demanded to know what Cliffy had told the officers, if anything. Instead of telling him to give a statement, he told him only to say, “no comment on the instruction of my solicitor.”

When the trial finally got to court, there wasn’t much of a case. None of the other miners had given evidence against him and Cliffy was found not guilty, purely on the basis that he kept his mouth shut. Five of the lads involved were sent to prison for two years. Toward the end of their sentence, Cliffy took a bus full of miners to the prison. The entire drive they were banging on the side of the bus yelling “the miners united will never be defeated”, a slogan that rang true throughout the strike. Out of fear of a riot or prison storming, the guards moved the lads to the front of the exit queue. Once the group arrived back in Stoke-on-Trent, the town where Hem Heath was located, it was as if they’d never been apart. A feeling of unbreakable camaraderie flooded the room as they shared laughs and memories over drinks at the pit club.

This was just one of the many protest-related charges he would face over the course of the strike.

In addition to tensions between scabs and strikers, animosity arose between picketers and police. Sporting their bobbies, tall black coloured hats with large silver crown emblems and chin straps, a row of police stood parallel to the miners, each equipped with a truncheon. If it was a cold shift, the miners would light fires in steel drums in hopes of keeping warm. These usually didn’t burn long as it was not uncommon for a police sergeant to saunter up to the picketers and kick over the drums.

NUM leaflet – Coal not dole, 1985

On one occasion, a sergeant prevented Cliffy and his crew from bussing from a Mansfield rally to a picket line in Scotland. The confrontation got heated and the officer hit Cliffy on the head with his truncheon. So, in retaliation Cliffy smacked him in the mouth, breaking his nose. As officers hauled him off in a white police van, he was punched and kicked the whole drive to the station.

Not only did physical violence erupt with police, who the miners called “pigs”, but they verbally intimidated and teased them. Diedrich often heard them brag about expensive Spanish vacations, house remodels and new cars for their wives, which they could afford from all the overtime hours they were racking up by policing the picket lines. Those taunts struck a nerve for Diedrich. He went from earning 200 pounds a week to 2 pounds a day. His income, and whether or not he ate, was now dependent on donations. Once a week, he received food parcels that had been assembled by the community of supporters containing potatoes, vegetables and a bit of meat. The local nurses union was one of the miners’ most substantial allies, but they also received contributions from Russia, Poland and Libya. Still, it was not enough to keep the lights on. Diedrich’s mortgages had been frozen and he couldn’t afford heating. With temperatures that dropped as low as 30 degrees overnight, Diedrich had to rely on logs. He’d go outside, collect wood and burn them on a coal burning boiler, something that under normal circumstances should never be done. But he, like many other miners, was out of options. Returning to work was out of the question. If it meant freezing and starving, Diedrich was determined to fight the pit closures with whatever strength he could muster.

Poster for the International Women’s Day rally organised by the Women Against Pit Closures in Chesterfield during the miners’ strike.

Around Christmas time, more and more strikers began to break the picket line, returning to the pit. It had been a slow drift back to work before Ian MacGregor, who took over the National Coal Board under Thatcher, began offering 1,000 pounds to every man who would return. Having gone nine months without pay and thinking of their children waking up Christmas morning with no presents, many went back to work.

As months dragged on, the depression set in. Diedrich began to think they’d never win the strike, and a feeling of defeat once brought him close to considering, just for a second, that maybe he should cross the picket line. That feeling was quickly swept away by the overwhelming sense of brotherhood that was ever present among picketers. He felt proud for not crossing the picket line.

While the largest amount of support came from within the mining community, many strikers relied on financial and emotional fortification from their wives and girlfriends.

Preston, who was a 19-year-old model at the time of the strike, claimed she was no help financially, but what she lacked in money she made up for in support. When Diedrich was living off food parcels, her mother, already feeding ten people, would put together an extra plate for him. Regardless of how limited her understanding of the strike was and her boyfriend’s situation, she provided a shoulder to lean on and lent an ear to listen. She did her best not to put pressure on Diedrich, even when the pair had to brew their own beer because they couldn’t afford the pub. Sometimes the home-made beer was manageable and other times it filled the room with a pungent aroma of skunk. The toll of the strike on Diedrich’s mental health was just as pungent.

In a nearby household, Cliffy was financially relying on his wife who worked for the National Health Service. If it wasn’t for her, he said he would have starved. The 2 pounds a day and food parcels weren’t cutting it.

“Everybody was suffering.”

By February 1985, more than half of the miners were back at work. As the NUM’s funding and power dropped, the picket line began to thin out. The donations people had lived off of for nearly a year dwindled and so did morale for many. Of the thousands of Hem Heath miners that entered the yearlong resistance on March 6, around only 160 remained.

In a similar fashion to how he found out the strike was starting, Diedrich was eating lunch on a Sunday afternoon when the news came on his television set. Delegates at a union conference had voted to end the strike and on March 5, the striking miners returned to work.

“It was a sad day,” he said. “We’d lost the strike, and they (Thatcher’s government) could do basically what they wanted to. We had no power to stop them closing any of the coal mines.”

Their loss gave Thatcher exactly what she had wanted: the start of a privatized coal industry and the beginning of Great Britain’s deindustrialization.

Although he was making money again, working in the pit wasn’t the same as it had been one year ago. Tensions remained high between strikers and non-strikers, with managers dis-favouring strikers.

Diedrich, who had usually received the best jobs in the pit, was assigned to what he considered ridiculously prejudiced jobs. Along with fellow strikers, he was moved from the deepest level of the pit, which was 1,062 yards in depth, up to the 612 yard level. That Friday, he walked out of the coal mine in protest and on the following Monday, he was reprimanded.

When it was realized that workplace discrimination couldn’t be afforded amidst the rampant pit closures, Diedrich was promoted to chargehand, a role just beneath foreman. Regardless of his new work benefits, he could see the end coming for the mining industry. Like a canary, he sensed the imminence of disaster.

The miners faced redundancies. People were asked to leave shifts early or offered large sums of money to retire. Villages founded on coalfields turned into bleak ghost towns and just like the strike slogan stated, communities were killed. Areas that had once bustled with miners, saw lasting high rates of unemployment. Under Thatcher 115 coal mines would close, forcing thousands out of work and into poverty.

Cliffy said young lads used to go play football on Saturdays in the neighbouring Yorkshire pit village.

“Now there’s nothing there for them. Absolutely nothing.”

With towns crumbling around him, Diedrich felt his own mental health deteriorating. In the same pit where he’d once felt invincible, surrounded by brotherly laughs, a sense of claustrophobia now overwhelmed him. He was trapped in a doomed job that could be taken away from him at any minute. The anxiety and depression he developed during the strike left him feeling hopeless.

In 1989, after 10 long years of mining, his fears came true when he was removed from his chargehand role and put on a menial surface job. It became clear his time at the pit was coming to an end along with the industry, so instead of anxiously waiting for a notice of closure, he left.

For Cliffy, the first few years following the strike offered opportunity. In 1986, he received a guarantee from the coal board that they’d retain his job, allowing him to attend Ruskin College in Oxford for two years and University of Warwick ten months after that. One year after he earned his degree, he was doing a surface inspection for the colliery when he collapsed. He’d developed pleurisy, a condition where the tissue that lines the lungs becomes inflamed, causing chest pain. Under no circumstances could he go back underground. Doctor’s orders.

While Cliffy attributes this condition to the damp environment of the pit, his other lung diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema, most likely result from constant dust particle inhalation and exposure.

Because he could no longer work underground, he was offered a surface-level position. But Cliffy didn’t want it. He’d spent a year starving, in and out of court trials and jail cells, fighting for his and thousands of others’ mining jobs. So, like Diedrich, he left Hem Heath Colliery.

“I was a miner, or I was nothing.”

Forty years after the strike, the dust still hasn’t settled. Cliffy still hates Thatcher, working-class communities across the United Kingdom are still shattered and, according to Preston, Diedrich still hasn’t managed to wash all the dirt out of his ears.

Upon reflection, despite the emotional and physical trauma that resulted from the strike and years in the pit, neither miner regrets their pit work.

Cliffy walked away from his time as a miner not only missing his right pointer finger, which was essentially a rite of passage for a pit worker, but with the same appreciation he felt when he was hired in 1972.

“I just loved it, you know, I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. It was all the lads. The camaraderie, the closeness, the laughs, the jokes. We had some fantastic fun, hard work.”

Each day Diedrich is reminded of his strength and commitment during the strike. Sitting on the maple wooden shelves in his office are framed photos of him and fellow miners smiling, covered in black dust wearing their helmets and headlamps. On another shelf, his oil lamp that had once lit up tunnel walls stands next to his fading black and white “I never scabbed” button. But what really cues feelings of sentiment is his NUM plaque that reads “This is to Certify that Dale Diedrich proved himself to be a loyal and true member of the NUM over the twelve months of the Great Pit Strike from March 1984 to March 1985 showing determination, pride, and loyalty.”

Every so often, these mementos make their way to the dining room as he shares stories with his daughter of missing fingers, picket line protests and jokes that only other miners would find funny.

Diedrich, still coping with his anxiety and depression, recognizes that being a miner and picketing in the strike rewarded him in ways no other job could.

“Well for starters, it’s been one of  the best jobs I’ve ever had for the camaraderie and the friends, the friendships you developed with people who are always watching each other’s back to try and help and prevent injuries and accidents. So, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Although Hem Heath Colliery was abandoned and demolished in 1997, the miners united truly will never be defeated.

Guest blogger Kirsty Asher, a postgraduate student in Folklore Studies at the University of Hertfordshire writes about her studies after a visit to look at Tolpuddle holdings in the TUC Library

The Origins of a Movement – Symbolic Landscape and Ritualised Politics
When imagining the origins of the trade union movement, most people probably wouldn’t look to a small, picturesque Dorset village. Blake’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ seem far removed from the Piddle Valley. Yet with the brutal sentencing in 1834 of six agricultural workers to hard labour in Australia and Tasmania, the men who would be immortalised in history as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the national image of the village of Tolpuddle was fundamentally altered. George Loveless, James Loveless, James Brine, Thomas Standfield, John Standfield and James Hammett were all sentenced under the Mutiny Act of 1797 for swearing a purportedly illegal oath of solidarity and establishing a Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. Eventually obtaining a royal pardon and release, the six men became some of the most recognised figures in trade union history.

What happened to the Tolpuddle Martyrs is set down in historical fact, but their story has “entered the pages of trade union folklore”. (Empson 2018) This is exemplified by the popular tale of how the six, led by George Loveless, would gather to discuss their political plans under a sycamore tree on the village green. The tree has come to be known as the Martyrs’ Tree, and it still stands to this day. The tree’s significance to the foundation of the trade union movement has been frequently recounted as part of their story. Nevertheless, there is no documented account of the oath being sworn beneath the tree (Western Daily Press, 1969). Norman (2008) frames it as ‘tradition’ that the Martyrs would regularly meet to discuss their ideas under the tree, but since the court testimonies against the six by Edward Legg and John Lock in 1834 detail that the actual swearing of an oath took place at Thomas Standfield’s house, the tree’s involvement in the Martyrs’ story has become embedded as a popular legend.

The attribution of open space in the landscape, particularly trees, to rural political dissent has precedence in England. A prime example is Kett’s Rebellion, which took place in 1549 nearly three hundred years before the events in Tolpuddle. Robert Kett, a landowner in Norfolk, gathered some 16,000 rebels on Mousehold Heath north-east of Norwich beneath “an aged oak, with wide-spreading branches” (Russell 1859) which they named the Oak of Reformation to foment rebellion and tear down boundaries put up during enclosure. Like the Martyr’s Tree Kett’s Oak, as it has come to be known, still stands, and is listed alongside the Martyr’s Tree amongst the 50 Great British Trees. These trees now not only represent the historical heritage of the British landscape, but also the folklore of resistance that they symbolise.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs under the Martyrs’ Tree (courtesy of TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University)

The ritualised oath-swearing which took place in Tolpuddle, and indeed in the wider early trade union movement, has its roots of esotericism in the rituals of Freemasonry (Firth & Hopkinson, 1974). Trade unionists all over Britain would use a similar ritual to bind workers in solidarity, but also “to prevent a leakage of plans [and] to intimidate potential defaulters” (Oliver, 1966). The testimonies of Legg and Lock gave witness to the ceremony involved in the oath-swearing. Lock told how he and four other men including Legg went to Standfield’s house whereupon they were blindfolded, knelt down and were read Bible passages. They were asked to kiss a book while blindfolded. The blindfolds were taken off and they were shown paintings of Death and a skeleton, and James Loveless, the son of George, spoke the words ‘Remember your end’ as the painting of Death was shown, reminding all gathered of their mortality. (Morning Chronicle, 1834)

Secret society skeleton c.1820 currently held at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. Accessed at BBC: A History of the World
Though rooted in Christianity through use of the Bible, the ritual actions speak to a form of magic binding, a “mystic bond” (Oliver, 1966) as worded in a document sent from Yorkshire down to Dorset detailing the methods and reasoning for trade union oath ceremonies, which found its way into the possession of George Loveless. Loveless described himself as “from principle a Dissenter, and by some in Tolpuddle it is considered as the sin of witchcraft” (2005). The secrecy of Friendly Societies as well as the stigma attached to the risk of their establishment is certainly reminiscent of legends about Witches’ Sabbaths and occult procedure. The passing of ceremonial procedure amongst working class communities all over the country also speaks to a transmission of folk knowledge in the fringes of society.

Ritualised Remembrance and Commemorative Landscape
The centenary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ sentencing and deportation would see the most significant revisioning of the landscape of the village and its green in remembrance of the six men. But even in prior years, ritualistic remembrance began taking place that would build towards the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival now held in mid-July every year. By 1875 enough time had passed to view the era of the Martyrs as consigned to history. In March 1875 in nearby Briantspuddle the Dorset Branch of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union arranged the first organised commemoration of the Martyrs, and honoured the sole Martyr who had returned permanently to Tolpuddle – James Hammett. The Western Daily Press described it as “a remarkable celebration” (1875) where Hammett was gifted an engraved silver watch and he spoke publicly for the first time about his ordeal.

In 1912, two years after Hammett’s death, a memorial arch was unveiled on Whit-Monday outside the Methodist chapel built on the site of the barn where George Loveless had preached (Firth & Hopkinson, 1974). After his death Hammett was buried in the churchyard of St John the Evangelist, and a new headstone was commissioned in 1933 to be placed there during the centenary.

The official centenary event in 1934 took place over the August Bank Holiday weekend, and included the unveiling of six memorial cottages to house retired agricultural workers, and also serve as “a permanent symbol of tribute which the trade union movement was paying to the six brave men who lived in that village.” (Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 1934). The former Prime Minister David Lloyd George attended and gave a speech under the Martyrs Tree, re-energising its symbolic association with the Martyrs, and a thatched memorial shelter was erected on the green next to the tree.

Constructing the thatched shelter (Bournemouth Daily Echo, 1934) (courtesy of TUC Library Collections at London Metropolitan University)

David Lloyd George at the Martyrs’ Tree (Dorset Daily Echo, 1934) 

Perhaps the most fascinating example of ritual commemoration around the centenary came on 28th February 1935. TUC council member John Marchbank, having visited Canada to sprinkle soil from Hammett’s grave onto that of George Loveless, came to a ceremony in Tolpuddle to sprinkle soil from Loveless’s Canadian grave onto Hammett’s. William Kean, then President of TUC, stated of the occasion “This soil is sacred to trade unionists, as this is a sacred place.” (Daily Herald, 1935) showing how the mythos of the village there had led to a political sanctification of the men, and the material of their graves elevated to a form of relic status.

These actions demonstrate temporal augmentation of the landscape, where “the physical commemorative landscape of Tolpuddle is neither settled nor timeless…the otherwise ephemeral spectacle created by outsiders on one day a year is embedded in the locality” (Kean, 2011). The village’s once and future connection with nascent trade unionism means its geographical features are constantly being reviewed or renewed within its association as time passes.

Preservation, Pilgrimage and Onomastic Commemoration
Beyond the centenary, and with the ever-changing political landscape of the UK, sentiments towards Tolpuddle moved towards preservation later in the 20th century. This was felt especially with the Martyrs Tree as it continued to grow and was acquired by the National Trust in 1934 along with the rest of the green. It has been shown how the Martyrs’ Tree gained folkloric status and became involved in ritual remembrance of the Martyrs. It has held such historic significance and affection by the villagers that, emboldened by the legacy of their forebears, in 1969 they rose up in protest after the parish clerk agreed to the Trust felling the tree when its trunk began to split.

The campaign proved successful, and a band was administered to its trunk which still holds to the present day. In light of the tree’s uncertain future as it ages, the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival that took place on the 150th anniversary in 1984 was commemorated with a seedling from the Martyrs’ Tree being planted, so as to continue its legacy when the original eventually dies.

The village’s ongoing association with the Martyrs has also inspired the naming and renaming of local sites and businesses, including the local pub. Formerly the Crown Inn, General Secretary of the TUC Vic Feather hosted the official unveiling of the pub’s sign with its new name the Martyrs Inn, as suggested by Hall and Woodhouse Brewery in 1971. (Western Daily Press, 1971) The cottage where the Martyrs met to swear their oaths is now two houses numbered 55 and 57 Martyrs Cottage.

The village and its Martyr-associated sites have also become a place for pilgrimage, both during the annual Festival and throughout the year. James Hammett’s grave has an annual wreath-laying service during the Festival, and when I visited I was surprised to find visitation stones laid on his headstone as is traditional in the Jewish faith. This was an interesting example of a tradition expanding beyond its religious and cultural origin. While visiting the church I noted that their visitors’ book had several messages from the Martyrs’ descendants, as well as from tourists and political pilgrims.

Pilgrimages by political groups have also taken place historically and in the modern era. During the centenary celebrations, the commemorations began at Dorchester before the congregated trade unionists walked the seven mile journey to Tolpuddle for the unveiling of the memorial cottages and Hammett’s headstone (Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 1934). Seventy six years later, around 60 people marched from Dorchester Prison to the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in protest of a law banning prison officers from taking industrial action (BBC News, 2010), a powerful tribute to the men who paved the way for their right to do so.

The history of Tolpuddle and its Martyrs is rich with legend, ceremony and ritual. The narrative of their ordeal gained traction over time, and a symbiosis between the landscape of the village and its political memory is constantly evolving. Acts of commemoration and ritual have continuously emerged, even as the nation’s interest in trade unionism and labour politics has waxed and waned over time. With the bicentennial only a decade away it will be interesting to note what further memorialisation will be enacted on this small but significant site.

[Image: First page of the October 1907 issue of Woman Worker, TUC Library Collections]

Guest blogger Lena Wånggren shares some of her work on women’s early trade union periodicals, the majority of which are housed at the TUC Collections in London, and why these are important today – both as evidence of past struggles and as inspiration for the ongoing struggle for equality and decent work.

Last year, in between intense periods of industrial action, I wrote an exploratory article on literature and labour. In this essay, I situated my (imagined) research on early women’s trade unionism and their writings alongside my precarious working conditions in UK higher education. I sketched out the fantastic work done by early women trade union pioneers in Britain, and how the gendered and racialised structures of early trade unionism still find echoes in our contemporary movement. Since writing the article we have won our pensions back, and I have published a book on precarity in UK universities (it took us seven years to write!). While I still have four different jobs in the contemporary academic ‘gig economy’, I have been lucky to receive funds from The Willison Trust, enabling me to study the early women’s trade union movement and, importantly, the role of imaginative literature therein. The TUC Library collection is a wonderful resource for this work.

[Image: Photo of the Match workers’ strike committee, 1888, TUC Library Collections]

Why study early women’s trade unionism? And why, specifically, examine early women’s trade union periodicals? As Sarah Boston describes in Women Workers and the Trade Unions (2015), while women have always worked, and women workers have always been part of the industrial struggle, women – excepting in the mixed textile unions – have had to fight two battles simultaneously: against both exploitative employers and against sexism within the trade unions. Women’s trade unionism as such (again, excepting in the textile industry) was not properly organised into stable structures until 1874, when Emma Patterson set up the Women’s Trade Union League (originally named Women’s Protective and Provident League, changing its name and tactics in 1891). The League was instrumental in organising women into unions, including during the 1888 Match Girls strike; ‘the match that lit the explosion of “New Unionism”’ (Boston 2015) with its more accessible and often radical increased unionism in previously unorganised sectors. In 1906, during a period of mass unionism, Mary Macarthur (active in the League) set up the National Federation of Working Women, a trade union open to all, and which remained active until 1921 when it was incorporated into the mixed General Workers Federation and part of TUC.

Both the League and the Federation saw their periodicals as key to their movement, spreading the word and connecting women workers across Britain and the world. Patterson, who had worked in bookbinding, established a Women’s Printing Society and printing press through which she in 1876 started publishing the Women’s Union Journal, the official printed publication of the League. The Journal changed name and format in 1891, to the Women’s Trade Union Review, remaining in print until the League became the Women’s Section of the TUC, the origin of today’s Women’s Committee.

Patterson, and later editors of the Journal and Review, were pushing new ground with their periodicals. As Harold Goldman (1974) notes, the Journal was ‘a remarkable publication’: ‘It was remarkable that it existed at all. Trade unions at that time were about activity – protests, demonstrations and stoppages, as they often are indeed today … active unionists saw little need for the printed word other than leaflets, pamphlets and calls to meetings. They were not very good at regular publications to be taken home and read.’ Indeed, an 1880 letter from a male miner, published in the Journal, highlights this novelty:

‘I am struck forcibly with the idea that so far as being able to manage and support a trade journal the women are far ahead of the men … Many a time during the latter half of the nineteenth century have workmen essayed the issue of a trade journal, but I believe in every case they have failed miserably.’ (Women’s Union Journal,December 1880)

The Women’s Union Journal was the first lasting trade union periodical, making it a historical first.

[Image: An 1877 issue of the Journal notes the creation up of a new union, publishing ‘union poetry’ from its inaugural meeting for readers to share in other meetings, York University Library]

It is clear to me not only that periodicals play a crucial part in early women’s trade unions, but also that the imaginative writings published therein play a key part. All three major women’s trade union periodicals contain literature including drama, fiction, poetry, and book reviews. With the League having built a foundation for literary women’s trade unionism, Macarthur turned her periodical Woman Worker (1907-1920) – the official publication of the Federation – into a mass produced weekly periodical that published not only literary works by more established writers but also non-fiction and imaginative writing by women workers and readers themselves.

Just as one example, the October 1907 issue in ‘The Poet’s Corner’ publishes Ethel Carnie’s poem ‘A Twentieth Century Song.’ While Carnie later became a novelist, and a regular contributor to the periodical, in this issue she is described as ‘a textile worker, and is only 21 years old’: ‘We prophesy a future for her.’

[Image: ‘The Poet’s Corner’ in the October 1907 issue of Woman Worker, TUC Library Collections]

While in the 21^st century we do not often receive poems or short stories in the communications from our trade union reps and officials, as I have discovered, literature was a staple in early women’s trade union periodicals. Women’s Union Journal publishes poetry alongside reports on the setting up of new trade union branches, while the Women’s Trade Union Review mixes in short stories among quarterly reports and updates on factory legislation. The Woman Worker contains poetry, short stories, short plays, book reviews, and various forms of imaginative literature, alongside reports on legislation, trade union work, home improvement, and dress. Alongside writers such as Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and Constance Smith the periodical also contains readers’ works, especially in the section entitled ‘Our Prize page’, to which readers are encouraged to submit their own writing.

Macarthur notes the key role of the publication in organising women workers:

‘Those of us who were concerned to stir industrial women found our task very difficult. The living voice is mighty, but we were few. Though we went hither and thither, only a comparative number of women heard our message, and of these, when we departed, many forgot. / It seemed that a journal might be a medium of wider appeal, might touch some whom else we should never reach, might be a means of deepening the faith of those who already heard the call of Unionism and Comradeship. So, tremblingly, we started our paper. … [T]he little journal of September last is a great organ now.’ (‘The Last Word’, in Woman Worker June 1908)

As Macarthur writes here: ‘The living voice is mighty, but we were few’. She echoes here the words she penned in the February 1908 issue, when thanking readers from the many readers’ letters ‘from working girls between whom and the Woman Worker an enduring friendship has already been formed’, messages which convince her that ‘the Woman Worker is proving a useful auxiliary in the struggle for betterment, and, as Walter Crane puts it, “is representing the woman’s side in a way never done before”’ (‘Between Ourselves’, in Woman Worker February 1908). With the help of the periodical, the Federation was able to spread the message of unionism, and build solidarity, where they could not go physically. And literature, including the readers’ own writings, played a key part in spreading the message.

My hypothesis when I started thinking up this project, quite a few years ago, was that women’s trade union periodicals would be a vital source for understanding women’s place in both literary and labour history. Given the double marginalisation of women in (literary and trade union) history, and of periodicals in book history, I was hoping to find some key voices in these periodicals. I have so far only scratched the surface, in my survey of the three main periodicals of the early women’s trade union movement, but have already found a rich history, new narratives, and much inspiration. While sexed and racialized structures still structure both the labour market and trade unions today, we can learn from previous generations and fight on.

Big thanks to Jeff and colleagues at the TUC Library Collections for their assistance, and to the Willison Trust.

Want to know more? Here are some reading tips:

Sarah Boston, Women Workers and the Trade Unions (2015)

Barbara Drake, Women in Trade Unions (1921)

Cathy Hunt, The National Federation of Women Workers, 1906-1921 (2014)

Working Class Movement Library material on women’s trade unionism (https://wcml.org.uk/)

Dr Wånggren is a Teaching Fellow (Centre for Open Learning) and Tutor (Department of English Literature) at the University of Edinburgh, teaching courses on English and Scottish Literature, gender studies, and feminist writing. Her work is interdisciplinary, concerning gender, intersectionality and social justice in both nineteenth-century literature and the contemporary workplace.

Our guest blogger, Andrew Redpath, is researching the North East Coast Tug-boatmen’s Association. In this post he describes the history of the Association, its rivals and potential merger partners of the TGWU. (All photo’s provided by Andrew).

One of the drivers of my research was a building in North Shields with the markings ‘Tyne Steam Packet Provident Society Established 1853 Built 1897 Diamond Jubilee.’ The building, now residential, was the head office of a union that at one time represented steam tug boat men and steam trawler men from Aberdeen to the Humber but is now largely forgotten.

During World War Two the head office was used as an ARP post and as it did not have a cellar for storage, all paperwork was ordered removed from the office and never returned, either lost or destroyed. Finding information on the union was difficult as there were no deposits in the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums. North Tyneside Discovery held a small amount of materiel as did the National Archives and local newspapers while some information was available in TGWU deposits at the Modern Records Centre and TUC Library.

Formed in 1853 as a friendly society, with 488 members, the organisation was registered under the name the Tyne Steam Packet Provident Society and restricted membership to time served steam tug boat men, steam trawler men and apprentices.

River trades on the Tyne had a long history of self-help organisations and the Tyne tug boat men and fishermen lived in close communities on the Tyne and had generations of the same families employed in the tug boat and trawler trades.

The Society described itself as “a society of good fellowship for the purpose of raising funds by voluntary contributions for mutual relief and maintenance of all members in old age, sickness and infirmity and care of the widows and children of members”. The Society provided its members with a large range of benefits including sickness benefit, accident benefit, a weekly payment to all members over seventy years of age, disabled members received a weekly payment which would continue as a life pension. The Society also held annual members excursions and sports days and provided a loan scheme to allow members to buy their own boat or share of a boat.

In 1866 the Society petitioned the steam tug owners for an increase in overtime rates and threatened a strike, however the Society failed to carry out the threat. After having taken the first steps to act as a trade union the Society registered as a trade union in 1895 with the registration number 845T.

In June 1897 the Society opened a new purpose built head office in North Shields. The substantial building had an ante room and two meeting rooms on the ground floor and General Secretary’s office and residential flat on the first floor. As well as an administrative centre the office also acted as a hub for social activities. The meeting room was open from eight in the morning with a selection of newspapers available for members, who could also hold birthday and wedding parties there. The rooms were also hired out to other trade unions and groups.

As well as being able to fund the building of its s own head office, the union must have accumulated a substantial amount of funds as it was able to produce 14 gold and silver medals for presentation to the crew of the Grimsby tug Copernicus who rescued Society members from their sinking tug Clarence in 1894.

The Society also bought a banner from Tutils in 1898. The banner was silk with a scarlet background and blue margins. The front of the banners depicts North Shields Fish Quay, the paddle trawler Flying Arrow and the paddle tug Warrior. The reverse shows Newcastle High Level and Swing bridges with the trawler Victorian Prince and the liner Orcadia.

The Society also obtained some regalia for its officers, collarettes in dark blue and gold fabric with a gold Maltese cross surrounded by a heraldic strap with buckle inscribed ‘United to Assist’ all surrounded by a wreath.

By 1914 branches were operating at Aberdeen, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Hull as well as the membership on the Tyne and at Blyth.

In 1921 the Dock, Wharf Riverside and General Workers Union, without consulting or informing the Society raided the Society’s Middlesbrough branch.
In 1922 the Society amalgamated with the South Shields Steam Tug Boat Men’s Provident Society to form the North East Coast Tug Boatmen and Fishermen’s Association, which was soon joined by the Newcastle Steam Tug Society.

The newly established Transport and General Workers Union approached the Association with a view to amalgamation, however after the incident with the Dock Wharf Riverside and General Workers Union (now part of the TGWU) the Association’s Executive decided they would rather remain independent. The TGWU responded by poaching the Association’s membership at Blyth, although some them later reapplied to rejoin the Association.

The TGWU began organising amongst North Shields fishermen as most of them were unorganised as the Association only accepted crews of steam fishing vessels who had practiced their craft for at least three years.

The TGWU offered the Association generous terms for amalgamation in 1937 but the membership voted to reject it.

By 1950 the Association had lost all it’s members in the Tyne Improvement Commission to the TGWU and it’s Sunderland Branch to the National Union of General and Municipal Workers leaving the Association representing tug boat men and some fishermen on the Tyne only. As steam trawlers were phased out the Association’s trawler membership disappeared and in 1955 the Association became the North East Coast Tug Boatmen’s Association with all it’s members on the Tyne.

An important dispute took place in September 1954 when the first two diesel tugs were introduced on the Tyne, more than 140 tug boatmen, operating 28 tugs stopped work. The Association was not against the introduction of the diesel tugs but the fact that the owners wanted to reduce the crew on each tug by one man. The Association agreed to return to work and continue negotiations with the issue going to an Industrial Disputes Tribunal which ruled in favour of the Association.

The Association applied to the TUC for affiliation in 1969 but was turned down due to its small membership, 120, and advised to merge with one of the general unions. The Association rejected the TUC advice as with one hundred percent membership amongst Tyne tug crews, recognition from the employers and a healthy bank balance the Association chose to remain independent.

The Association had won paid holidays and pensions for tug boat crews and had loyal membership but with the reduction of the number of tugs on the Tyne membership continued to fall.

In 1996 the Tyne tug company was taken over by Corey Towing who already recognised the TGWU. Rather than merge with the TGWU the Association dissolved itself. It is probable that the Association chose to dissolve rather than merge as it had a large amount of money in the bank from its sale of the head office and under Rule 20 of the Associations rules all funds and property would be divided equally between its membership of around 68.

Our guest blogger, Joe Duffy, is researching for a PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin on the internationalism of the Irish labour movement during the revolutionary period, 1900-1923. In this post he describes his project and how the TUC Library has helped in his research.

The objective of this PhD project is to explore the intersection of nationalism, internationalism, and anti-imperialism within the Irish labour movement during the island’s revolutionary period. The archival materials held at the Trade Union Congress Library Collections will be of great benefit to this project, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have visited this excellent archive.  

The Irish revolution has, rightfully, begun to be considered as a global event. The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed radical transformation in Ireland. In two decades, the nationalist movement shifted from demanding self-governance within the British Empire through ‘Home Rule’, to a militant push for full independence. This culminated in the Irish War for Independence (1919-1921), which led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the island’s partition and the creation of Northern Ireland. The Irish revolutionary period was part of an intense era of global political upheaval that included WWI, the Bolshevik Revolution, an increase in anti-imperial nationalism and insurgency and a wave of labour militancy. In recent years, historians have begun to situate aspects of Ireland’s revolutionary period within this tumultuous global context and identify the interconnections between Britain’s closest colony and the rest of the world. 

From general strikes against British rule to James Connolly’s execution following the 1916 Easter Rising, the labour movement played a significant role during Ireland’s revolutionary period. Yet organised labour and the working class have been largely excluded from the increase in transnational and global histories of Ireland’s revolutionary period. This project seeks to fill this historiographical gap by exploring how members of the Irish trade union movement were considerably more enmeshed in global debates of working-class organisation, socialist internationalism, and anti-imperialism than has previously been acknowledged.

In the few instances that historians have explored the internationalism of the Irish labour movement, the focus has predominantly been on its most famous leader, James Connolly. This recognition of Connolly’s internationalism has not extended to other members of Irish labour. This project will examine in greater detail the global engagement of other labour leaders and will also include a consideration of whether union members shared their worldview. Building on this, this PhD intends to address the underexamined importance of women trade unionists during Ireland’s revolutionary period.

A final focus of this PhD is to examine how members of Ireland’s labour movement looked beyond Europe’s borders to draw connections between Ireland’s history of imperialism and that of other colonised nations. Historians have increasingly recognised that the Irish revolution was part of a global tumult alongside the Bolshevik uprising, Egyptian and Iraqi revolutions and growing anti-colonial consciousness across the globe. This project will explore how nationalist trade unionists were active participants in these global debates. A broader intention of this PhD is therefore to consider whether trade unions, in Ireland and around the world, should be included within accounts of burgeoning independence movements in the first decades of the twentieth century.

The vast array of illuminating documents at the Trade Union Congress Library are of great relevance for these research aims. Some selected highlights include a reprint of a lecture delivered in Belfast by prominent trade unionist William Walker, whose dispute with Dublin based James Connolly exposed fissures within the Irish labour movement along Catholic and Protestant lines. Reports of government commissions into labour disputes, notably the Dublin Lock Out of 1913-14, provide granular accounts of strikes from those who took part. Reports from the British Labour Party into ‘The Present Conditions in Ireland’ offer a window into understanding why the Irish labour movement splintered from their UK-based counterparts during the revolutionary period. British government reports into the conditions of working classes in Dublin demonstrate the widespread poverty that fuelled more militant labour organising during this period. Minutes from Irish trade union annual conferences are of great benefit to this project, as is the report of the Irish delegation to the International Labour and Socialist Conference in Switzerland in 1919.  A 1922 pamphlet on ‘The Influence of Women in Catholic Ireland’ issued by the Reverend J.S Sheeny provides an interesting example of the conventions and expectations that women trade unionists were breaking with during this period. The range of press clippings during this period, from the Daily News to labour papers such as The Irish Worker, will also be of great help to this project.

In summary, this PhD project intends to demonstrate that, during the febrile global context of Ireland’s revolutionary period, members of the Irish labour movement engaged with the world in a more extensive manner than has thus far been acknowledged. The excellent archives of the Trade Union Congress Library Collections will be crucial in telling this story.

Guest blogger, Dr Mary Edmondson, has been researching in the TUC Library, for an article on the 1975/76 junior doctors’ strike. Here she writes about the strike, her involvement as a junior doctor at the time, and relates it to the current disputes by health workers.

In August 1975 I started my first job as a qualified doctor. This was a period of economic and social crisis, and very high inflation which peaked at 25%in 1975.

 By October I was involved in the first industrial action ever taken by junior doctors. There had been statutory pay restraint in the 1970-74 Heath tory government and NHS staff pay at all levels had fallen behind workers in the private sector. Ancillary staff, nurses and ambulance workers had all flexed their industrial muscle and taken industrial action in the early 70’s. Junior doctors worked to a contract negotiated with the Secretary of State for Health, but pricing and pay was determined by the annual report of the Doctors and Dentists Pay Review body (DDRB) a supposedly independent body, but from the beginning, government constraints and interference were evident.

The April 1975 report of the DDRB was the first for three years not carried out under the constraint of a statutory policy and recommended a 30% uplift for doctors. The DDRB was unable to price the award as the Hospital Junior Staffs Group Council (HJSGC) was still in negotiations with the government over the contract although a basic agreement had been reached.

The HJSGC was a hybrid committee being a subcommittee of the BMA but recognised by the DoH as negotiating on behalf of all junior doctors, BMA members or not. There were in fact two other more militant organisations to which a minority of doctors belonged; the Junior Hospital Doctors Association, which was formed by junior doctors dissatisfied with the BMA, and the Medical Practitioners Union, which merged into the ASTMS union in 1970 and was affiliated to the TUC from the start.

So, the doctor’s dispute was about both the nature of the employment contract, and the rates of pay. Until 1970 junior doctor contracts were completely open- ended. Hours of work were at the behest of the consultant and usually meant 80-100+ hours on duty. After 1970, for hours over 102 per week an extra duty allowance (EDA) could be claimed. Subsequently, in 1974 EDA could be claimed after ‘only’ 80 hours. Claims had to be signed by the consultant and not all were happy to do it. Many were late or simply not claimed.

In January 1975 an agreement was announced between the HJSGC of the BMA, and the Department of Health, on a new contract for junior doctors although due to the complexities of the pay structure there were still areas of uncertainty. The important principle of the working week being 40 hrs was agreed and payment was to be made for additional hours, thus recognising the long working hours of junior doctors.

The then Health Secretary Barbara Castle, in a clever move, asked for a deferment of the start of the contract until October. In the interim, the voluntary pay restraint agreed with the TUC became a statutory pay policy limiting pay awards to no more than £6 per week thus trapping the pricing of the contract within this cap. In addition, government sent guidance to hospitals stating the basic salary hours were 44 not 40. The review body then priced the contract with the pay cap in mind. Using the figures available for doctors’ salaries plus EDA payments historically claimed, the result was that hours over 44 (not the previously agreed 40) would be paid at 1/3 of the basic hourly rate and hours on duty from home at 10%! In addition, some doctors would experience loss of pay.

The HJSGC accepted this ‘reluctantly’ but junior doctors across the country did not. Unofficial action began in October in a few hospitals such as Leicester. Portsmouth, Rochdale, and Northern Ireland, and spread. The action was short of full on strike action. In most hospitals doctors worked only 40hrs a week in shifts which affected the routine work especially routine surgery. After six weeks and a ballot in favour of industrial action the BMA finally moved to back the action which then continued until the end of December 1975. An independent audit of the money available for the pricing of the contract was agreed and action was called off meantime. Some further money was found for the pricing of the contract.

The dispute dragged on through 1976 over issues such as pay for covering absent colleagues and no detriment to any group of doctors. There were calls for further industrial action, but support was waning. The dispute finally came to an end in October 1976. The only obvious gain was that the government had been pressurised into finding a little more money for the pay settlement which was used to revert to the originally agreed 40 hr basic working week.

Was the dispute successful? Many junior doctors thought not as the rates of supplementary pay were not increased. However, in April 1976 David Ennals, then the Health Secretary reported to Parliament that the cost of the new contract which had been estimated using figures for previous supplementary pay, was more than double this amount as claims for the hours above 40 were claimed and administered within a more robust structure and contract. The £6 per week limit had been blown apart.

The dispute was complicated by the concurrent consultants’ dispute over their right to have pay beds in NHS hospitals. Many junior doctors supported the consultants fight with the government. As the consultants of the future, they expected to benefit from the ability to practice privately. But other juniors began to see themselves as part of the wider workforce and had learnt from the industrial action of other groups such as nurses and ambulance workers. There were other fault lines too. Much of the consultant body and some juniors were opposed in principle to doctors taking any action which might impinge on patient care, and this is a conflict still experienced by health workers today.  The BMA experienced the same ambivalence towards its dual role, both as professional organisation and as a negotiating organisation. The attitude of the public was mixed although I do not remember meeting any outright hostility from a public which is always inclined to be sympathetic to health workers.

In more recent disputes the BMA seems more comfortable with its Trade Union role than previously and has had the experience of several disputes since 1975. It remains however registered as an independent Trade Union, unaffiliated to the TUC.

The public has been reliably supportive of health workers in dispute as they see the action, like the health workers, as a fight for the survival of the NHS. Health workers and other public service workers have largely recognised that their fight for decent pay and working conditions is not in conflict with the fight for a better health service for everyone.

The junior doctors, at the moment, show no signs of discontinuing their action and have been joined by consultants.

Guest blogger Suzanne Jobling is a PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast studying women’s employment and equal pay in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain and the impact of the European legislation in this area. In this post she writes about her research in the TUC Library. Suzanne’s research trip was assisted with funding from the Women’s History Association of Ireland (WHAI).

The groundbreaking nature of the equal pay and sex discrimination legislation introduced in the UK in the 1970s has largely been forgotten about in recent decades. However, while society has become accustomed to the concept of equal pay, and discrimination in the workplace is largely frowned upon, and prohibited in law, inequalities remain. In 2000 the TUC provided a reminder of the continuing importance of equal pay, declaring that ‘the idea of “equal pay for work of equal value”’ was ‘one of the most revolutionary concepts to emerge in recent times’1. Widespread application of the equal pay concept took many years to achieve, from the first motion in favour of equal pay at a TUC conference in 1888 by Clementina Black, to its introduction in the civil service in the 1950s and finally the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in the 1970s.2

While the introduction of the Equal Pay Act 1970 was a positive development for women workers, the legislation had significant shortcomings. Since the act stipulated that equal pay was dependent on a woman performing work comparable with that of a man in order to be eligible for equal pay, many women remained within the ranks of the lowest-paid since they performed work that was not performed by men and was not, therefore, comparable – e.g. hairdressers and typists. The Equal Pay Act also omitted pensions from its provisions, a significant deficiency allowing employers a means of continuing to pay male workers greater amounts than women workers whilst still complying with the law. There were many additional ways in which the act could be evaded by employers, such as segregating the workforce so that men and women workers worked in entirely different jobs, thus ensuring that their work could not be compared and that women could continue to be paid less than male workers.

In addition to these shortcomings, the Equal Pay Act addressed issues of remuneration only, and did not consider equality of opportunity or access to employment – without which true equality could not be achieved. The introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 addressed this deficit, however, like the Employment Equality Act, it also had limitations, particularly in its exemption of small businesses employing less than five employees from its provisions. This effectively placed a large number of women workers, such as those working in pubs and newsagents for example, outside the act’s remit. Workers employed in private households and residences were also exempt from the act’s provisions, leaving women employed in agriculture or domestic service unprotected.3

Despite the introduction of these laws, many employers were unwilling to make the changes necessary to create a more equal workplace, leaving individual employees in a position where they had to fight for their rights under the Industrial Tribunal system. Making an official complaint was a considerable undertaking. Tribunals were not always impartial – their composition represented the diversity of viewpoints and discriminatory views existing within society itself and therefore could not be infallible. Additionally, making an official complaint created a difficult relationship with an employer, who, in many cases the employee had worked with for many years and depended on for their livelihood. The narrative and stories revealed in the detail of such cases have received little attention, but provide an incredibly rich insight into workplace norms and societal attitudes in the second half of the twentieth century. While details of both equal pay and sex discrimination cases from the 1970s and 1980s can be found in the National Archives at Kew, the TUC Library at London Metropolitan University contains a series of pamphlets produced by the EOC (Equal Opportunities Commission) publicising the details of significant sex discrimination cases from the 1980s.

One pamphlet describes a 1985 case concerning sex discrimination in relation to promotion. A PE teacher (the complainant) brought a sex discrimination case against a regional council in relation to her failed application for the role of Principal PE teacher at the academy in which she worked. She had worked there since 1970 – for three years as an Assistant Teacher after which she progressed to the role of Assistant Principal Teacher in the school. This teacher was ‘highly regarded’ in the academy. She held a Diploma of Physical Education, but had developed her skills, attending a number of courses and achieving qualifications in areas such as first aid and volleyball. She was a qualified volleyball referee and coach to the Scottish National under-16 and under-19 teams and was regarded as ‘a hockey player of repute’. The complainant was an impressive individual, she had been invited to join the Scottish Central Committee on Physical Education to work on curriculum development by the Secretary of State to Scotland – ‘an opportunity given to only a very small proportion of teachers’.

Previous to the promotion application upon which the case was based, the teacher had applied unsuccessfully for a number of roles as Principal PE teacher while working at the academy. When an opportunity arose within the academy, she approached the headteacher for an application form. She asked the other female PE teacher in the school to accompany her due to previous experiences. When enquiring about promotion applications in the past the headteacher had been ‘extremely patronising’ and had once asked her ‘“is that post not for a man?”’. On this occasion the other female teacher described how the headteacher said “surely if it is a man leaving the post it will need to be a man to replace him”’.

Despite such opposition the complainant applied for the post and was ‘very disappointed’ when she was not called for interview. She was ‘particularly disappointed’ because the male applicant from the academy who had been interviewed had less teaching experience than her and not worked as an Assistant Principal PE teacher. The headteacher advised her that the role was ‘the last bastion of male supremacy and they won’t give up that easily’. A widespread belief existed among women PE teachers in the wider division (which the academy was part of) that they had little chance of promotion since ‘highly qualified’ women who applied had not been successful – a fact that discouraged others from applying.
Before 1975 the division to which the academy belonged had operated a policy whereby if a Principal PE teacher was male then the Assistant Principal teacher should be female and vice versa. As a result, at the time of the complaint the vast majority of principal PE teachers were male and their assistant principal PE teachers were female. Male teachers had expressed ‘disquiet’ that they could not be promoted to Principal PE teacher if they did not work as an Assistant Principal PE teacher, but they had been ‘reassured’ that they could still progress from Assistant teacher to Principal PE teacher. Such reassurance demonstrated that the needs of male PE teachers were prioritised above those of women teachers whose career paths were completely disregarded. It had been expected that this rule would change after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act, however, this did not happen.

The council denied the allegations, asserting that the successful applicant was appointed on the basis of merit alone. The male candidate had been rated as ‘eminently suitable’ while the two women candidates were only rated as ‘suitable’. The complainant was judged to be unsuitable due to her ‘unassertive nature and relatively quiet style’ – a very typical and gendered criticism of female teaching styles. The Senior Education Officer for the division gave evidence that she had not been chosen for any of the Principle PE teacher posts that she had applied for ‘because in his opinion she was not the best of the candidates who applied’. The stark facts of this case and incontrovertible nature of the complainant’s qualifications ensured that the Industrial Tribunal upheld her claim, declaring that they ‘felt totally convinced that sexual bias was at work’ and that she would have been successful in her application ‘had it not been for the sex discrimination’. She was awarded two years earnings as compensation since it was unlikely that she would obtain a principle teacher role within the next two years.

The EOC concluded that a properly implemented equal opportunities policy would be particularly helpful in such cases and that ‘sensible monitoring’ of such a policy would serve to highlight similar situations.4 This case serves as a reminder of the behaviours and attitudes that went unquestioned in the working world before the introduction of employment equality legislation and to which there should be no return. A highly qualified and motivated candidate was required to expose the council’s discrimination. This was a significant achievement since making such a complaint was undoubtedly stressful and time-consuming. Cases such as this reveal the reality of women workers’ lives at the time, completely dispelling notions that women workers in the past had less agency than their male counterparts or were any less able or ambitious as comparable male workers.

1 TUC, ‘Campaigning to close the gap: Celebrating 30 years of The Equal Pay Act’ (2008), p.5.

2 ‘Women and Work in the 19th Century’ (https://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century)(Accessed 8 June 2023) & Hansard (Commons), dccxcv, 915 (9 Feb. 1970).

3 ‘Discrimination against applicants and employees’
(https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/65/section/6/enacted)(Accessed 7 February 2022).

4 London Metropolitan University, TUC Archive, HQ1201-1296, ‘Sex Discrimination Decisions, no. 15 – Teacher Promotion’, EOC.

The ‘Daily Herald’ instituted the Order of Industrial Heroism in 1923 to recognise the “deeds of valour” of those workers who had saved their fellow workers from danger or death and became known as the “Workers’ V.C.” The TUC Library holds records of all the awards and is filled with cases of acts of selflessness and sometimes sacrifice as workers attempted to rescue their comrades in peril.

It is also a record of employer and government failures to deal with the dangers that these workers have faced.

Many of the stories are about the coal industry, and there is a shocking detail in Case 22 “Miners ran tremendous risk every day. This was shown by the fact that one miner was killed every five hours.” The awards are filled with stories of collapsed mine-shafts, rooves caving in, falls down shafts when ladders broke, explosions from blastings, and cables bearing weights snapping. And the results – trapped, entombed, buried suffering terrible injuries, the pain, and the fear, with only basic facilities for relief and rescue.

Here to mark International Workers Memorial Day we look at just a few of the cases:

Case number 33 William Owen, Golborne, Lancashire, February 1926

A fall of roof, some 50 tons, which occurred in Seven Feet Mine of Golborne Colliery, buried a colliery dataller named Albert Bowles, aged 50. In jumping out of the way of the light Owen lost his light, but pluckily went to the rescue of his workmate. He groped his way over the fall in the darkness, and found Bowles under a stone that weighed about 10cwt (80 stone or 508kg). Bowles who was conscious pleaded “Get me out as soon as you can!” and Owen succeeded in moving the stone. Bowles, however died from his injuries.

Case 34. 35, 36, 37 Fred Fairbrother, Robert Davies, Ernest Bowkett and James Grimshaw, Radcliffe, Lancashire, March 1926

The four men, Messrs F Fairbrother, Robert Davies, Ernest Bowkett and James Grimshaw, went to the rescue of comrades buried by a fall of roof, and were themselves buried by a further fall. All four sustained injuries, Davies having a broken leg and Fairbrother a badly injured back. It is feared both these men will be permanently disabled. Davies is in hospital.

Case 42 William Lindon, miner Tyldesley, Lancashire, August 1927

…when a heavy fall occurred, Wright was pinned beneath a large stone. Both the men’s lamps were extinguished and although other falls were taking place and the darkness was complete, Linton, without a moment’s hesitation, worked desperately in trying to release his comrade. When he found this to be impossible he groped his way to other men who were at work and gave the alarm. When Wright was extricated he was dead.

Guest blogger Dr Paul Griffin from Northumbria University has written this post about Politicising unemployment – connecting workers and non-workers through the trade union movement (1978-)

Ours is a different army. The young unemployed now descending on London may not have starved. They have never tasted Army life. They have grown up against the background of the post-war consensus of economic policies which have had at their heart a commitment to full employment and the welfare state. Skinheads from Bolton, punks from Manchester, the mother and her unemployed son from Whaley Bridge, blacks from London and their older marching companions; what brings them together is the cry for work and dignity.

(People’s March Co-ordinators, Letter to the Editor, The Times, May 5^th 1981, p.13)

1980s Britain – responding to a crisis

On May 1^st 1981, over 250 unemployed people departed from Liverpool for London on the People’s March for Jobs. En route they were joined by parallel regional marchers from elsewhere across the UK and on their arrival into London a month later, became part of a crowd estimated to be over 100,000 people in Hyde Park for a rally. The over 200-mile march, and solidarity events across the country, reflected a community and trade union response to the challenges posed by unemployment. In Liverpool alone, redundancies and industrial closures caused 17.9% of the workforce to be unemployed in July 1981. Nationally the statistics were similarly increasing with 11.9% unemployed.

The march was a response from the trade union movement, with leadership from the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and wider political left organisers, to intervene in a crisis posed by industrial closures. Echoing some of the comments in the exert above, unemployed marcher Keith Mullin reflected on his experience of arriving in London in 1981:

Hundreds and hundreds of people who are just offering you support, putting money in the pockets because we all had collection buckets. We all had the green jackets, we all had the green tops, we were all kitted out with boots. All this stuff by the march which was all paid for by the trade union movement, the TUC, and donations of other people so, that particular day that was historical in my mind.

[Oral History with Keith Mullin, 2021]

Such campaigns sat alongside the opening of Unemployed Workers’ Centres (UWCs) in towns and cities across the UK. These centres were established by trades councils and viewed as a community response to the challenges of rising unemployment. Over the last few years, I have been working with UWC staff, volunteers and activists to uncover a history of struggle associated with unemployment. Their commitment, in some cases of over 40 years, reflects a little known history of organising and resistance in a time largely defined Thatcherism and neoliberalism. My work has looked to illuminate these actions to consider a further history of unemployed struggle, which might complement more familiar social struggles, such as the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement of the 1920s and 30s.

Unemployed Workers’ Centres

The first UWC officially launched in Newcastle in 1978, following a series of meetings and actions in 1977. The Newcastle Trades Council Centre for the Unemployed opened with the ambition to be a space where unemployed people could meet, access resources and support, as well as providing an organising resource for associated campaigns, connecting workers and non-workers. Reflecting on their second year, the centre’s annual report described their role as platforming a ‘voice for the unemployed’, blending together their campaigning efforts with the ‘mass of day to day issues and queries which crop up among working people, created by the variety of economic and social pressures arising under the present system’ and handling cases on behalf of ‘redundant workers or long term claimants; school leavers or young unemployed’. [i]

Unemployment was regularly discussed and debated at the annual conference of The Trades Union Congress (TUC) and this resulted in a consultative conference in November, 1980 to outline next steps in building a response to the crisis. The most significant outcome of this meeting was a clear instruction to trades councils for an expansion of UWCs based upon the experiences in Newcastle and to respond to the political challenges of the time. The TUC produced guidelines and resources, through regional trades councils, to help establish centres. The TUC President Lionel Murray pledged a commitment to the centres in a letter instructing all affiliated unions and trades councils:

–          [A]ffiliated unions should do all that they can to retain and recruit more of the unemployed, and to publicise union services available to unemployed members;

–          there should be an action programme for the development of unemployed workers’ centres throughout the country.[ii]

TUC support for the initiative was prominent within conferences yet wider calls for greater involvement, participation and membership of the unemployed within Congress remained a source of considerable tension. That said, the centres grew in number considerably and began to provide vital services across the country as well as providing organising spaces for the trade union movement. The potential here for collaboration between those in-work and those out-of-work was clear in the principles outlined by centres.

Activities varied between centres, with some prioritising welfare advice and others emphasising campaigning in their work, but successes were notable. Centres were notable for the large amounts of money returned to claimants through appeal processes. The very presence of centres within urban settings was also significant in itself. Centres offered a place of support, comfort and sociability for unemployed people to gather and share experiences. They could draw upon the expertise of welfare rights advisers and also lead as organisers of campaigns. In this regard, the centres should be considered as sites of care and campaigning. Such services were found at centres across the country, perhaps no more impressive than those found at the large (0.93 acres) Merseyside UWC at 24 Hardman Street in Liverpool. This centre had numerous resources, including a music venue (The Flying Picket) and recording studio, library, office space, and creche.

Image of mural in Newcastle Centre Against Unemployment (with permission from Derbyshire Unemployed Workers’ Centre)

Alongside smaller acts of listening and advice, the centres often held a strong political commitment to related campaigns. These active organising efforts can be broadly described across two perspectives, first campaign and organising work centred upon those issues faced most closely by the unemployed, and second those actions characteristic of a solidarity between workers and non-workers. Multiple actions were prominent throughout the 1980s across unemployed and employed struggles and there is not sufficient space to detail these in full here. Instead, two snapshots are introduced, in addition to earlier references to the People’s March for Jobs, to give an indication of the organising histories. During the 1984/85 miners’ strike, for example, UWC workers, volunteers and users were involved in substantial fund-raising efforts and picket line acts of solidarity. At the same time, centres were also prominent in organising against changes associated with social security, including a sustained campaign against ‘welfare snoopers’ and the surveillance of welfare claimants.

By 1982, the UWC Bulletin reported 150 centres had opened, increasing to 210 centres by 1985, before a significant number of closures in the latter period of the decade, primarily due to reductions in local authority funding and changes to the welfare system (including the closure of the Manpower Services Commission). Their history, though, is reflective of trade union efforts to connect employed and unemployed. This, of course, was not without its tensions and limits. The challenge of what Chesterfield centre co-ordinator Colin Hampton described as ‘organising the unorganisable’ was evident in many conversations through the research. Yet, the potential to extend the reach of trade union principles, beyond the workplace, was clear throughout interviews:

You can’t find out what the problems that people are facing who are out of work unless you offer advice. So you have to offer advice, but when they come in, we’re not just going to sit there in a bovine fashion and just say well, we can help with that, we can’t help with that, you can claim that, you can’t claim with that. If we saw that there was an injustice, then our job was to get people together to do something about that injustice.

(Oral History with Colin Hampton, 2021)

This sentiment is captured in the continued work of centres like those still active in Derbyshire and Tyne and Wear. At their best, Unemployed Workers’ Centres illustrate the transferability of trade union principles and practices. As spaces of care and support, listening and advice, as well as organising and expressing solidarity, Unemployed Workers’ Centres provide a lesser-known history of a sustained alternative vision during a period defined by economic crisis and widening inequality.

This project is funded by a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SRG1920\101292)

For more about the project, access to these publications or if you have a suggestion for the research:

Contact: Dr Paul Griffin – paul.griffin@northumbria.ac.uk

Follow publications from the project at: https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/persons/paul-griffin  

For article versions of this research, see:

Griffin, P. (2021) Expanding labour geographies: resourcefulness and organising amongst ‘unemployed workers’. Geoforum, 118, 159-168.

Griffin, P. (forthcoming) Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978-): spatial politics, ‘non-movement’ and the making of centres.  

---