Nottinghamshire NUM Area History

Coal has been worked in Nottinghamshire in some way or another for hundreds of years, it was mined from outcrops to the weastern part of the county, where the shallow coal seams come to the surface. Men women and children as young as six years old were being exploited in terrible conditions to make vast wealth for the coal owners. There were no concessions for working a bad stint on a face, if you were unlucky to hit a break or fault in the seam, then you had to work harder for a lot less in wages, as men were paid by tonnage, or how many tubs they had filled in a shift of 10-17 hours a day, six days a week. These were hard. Politically gloomy times if you were at the wrong end of the wages ladder, and the coal owners were tyrannical in getting every last drop of sweat out of there workforce. In 1842 the government under pressure from the union, sanctioned and bought into practice the children’s commission findings, it abolished some of these crude and cruel practices, and legislation and the law was changed on who could work in a mine.Women and children under the age of 10 could no longer work underground although many women still worked on the surface,grading the coal and tippling the tubs .
Accidents were a common everyday occurance, with poor safety regulations, inadequate supports, and management who ruled with fear.

BRINSLEY COLLIERY & HOPKINS PIT owned by Barber & Co was included in the 1842 Children's Employment Commission. With reports from:-
James Sisson - Engine Man
Thomas Sisson - Staver
Samuel Davis - Aged 6
John Limb - Aged 12
Rowland Henshaw - Aged 10
William Wardle - Aged 10
Thomas Platts - Aged 12
Samuel Davis
He is six years old and has worked for half a year and drives between the coal face and pony road, and has 9d per day. He lives a mile and a half from the pit and has to leave home at four o'clock, and gets home about nine. Last week they worked three-quarter days and he left home at four, and it was after five by the time he got back. He breakfasts before he goes and has dry bread and tea but he never gets any dinner. He has bread and tea when he gets home and never has meat excepting a little on Sunday, either bacon or meat. He is quite knocked up when he gets home. He has two brothers and three sisters. His brothers are older than he and one is grown up, but they will not work. His mother seams. His father was killed by a falling rock last year. He goes to Brinsley Church Sunday School and he has been there for three years. He learns how to spell "God". he cannot say his A, B, C.
.............................................

It was not until the advent of the steam engine in the early 1800s that deeper, thicker seams of coal were easier to get at and work, One of the first quality coal seams that was reachable in this area is the Top hard seam. The first ventilation fan in Notts, was fitted at High park colliery near Moorgreen reservoir, this pit was sunk in 1854, and the fan replaced the furnace system, that drew the air around the workings.The furnace system of ventilation was recognised to be a major contributor of mine explosions,and disasters, nationwide the unions petitioned through there representatives, after the North east's, Hartley colliery disaster, where 209 men lost there lives , this brought about a change in ventilation practices, and having the necessity of an upcast shaft as a means of ventilation and escape.
During the 1840s 50s and 60s the first sods of earth were cut in the circle, that were to become the new colliery shafts, of the South Notts coalfield. The pits started to produce coal about 3-4 years after sinking started, and were to supply the expanding railways, steel works, and cotton mills, hospitals, factories, cities and households of the county. The industrial revolution had seen great advances and coal was at the heart of it. Collieries were generally sunk in rural open places, or a couple of miles on the outskirts of a village. The huge estates of Dukes, Lords, and the upper classes of that time also sank shafts, and the housing and infrastructure for people wanting to work the mines came secondary and dwellings were built densely, two up two down, often with no garden and only an ash pit toilet outside.
In Nottinghamshire the first records of a union being organised was in the early 1840s about the same time as the chartist movement was petitioning and demonstrating, for the right for workers to be allowed to vote, but the union was a much isolated attempt, and the coal owners, would not recognise the union at there collieries,and the establishment wouldn't give the chartists any quarter either, and many were imprisoned and deported to Australia. The burning embers of a union did however survive in the county, and gently smouldered with a small membership until 1863, when the Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Miners Association was formed, it was involved in various strikes and lockouts. Then in 1880 the Derbyshire Miners Association was formed, and the Nottingham section reorganised itself into the ‘’Nottinghamshire Miners Federation'' in 1881.
In December 1885 Nottinghamshire again reorganised and changed it’s name to the ‘’Nottinghamshire Miners Association’’ membership was only 500 members and 11 branches, the first agent for the NMA was a man by the name of Hopkin, after only a few months, funds were in such a state, that he could not be paid. In the autumn of 1886 he resigned and made way for a much respected charismatic councilor,and Methodist preacher, called William Bailey,who was both enthusiastic and had the drive to take the Association forward. He was full time agent and general secretary of the NMA, and membership levels rocketed from 500 to just over 19,000 from the years 1886 to 1895 under his guidance and leadership. This figure accounted for 84% of the miners in Notts being a Notts Miners Association member, out of a total workforce of 22,758 of which 4,707 were surface workers.


William Bailey died on 26 July 1896 at the age of 45 years old.




William Bailey

The National Union

The first attempt at forming a national organisation. called the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland, took place in 1842.
In 1844 the Association led a heroic five-month strike for better wages; however, pressure from the coal owners and the Government crushed it out of existence by 1848.

It was succeeded in 1863 by the Miners’ National Union, an organisation which concentrated its efforts on representing mineworkers in the courts and in Parliament rather than involving itself in industrial action, and confronting owners over pay and conditions.
Meanwhile, the economics of capitalism (slump and boom) meant that mining communities were at the mercy of ‘the market’; lifted for brief periods from literal starvation to simple hardship, only to be dropped back into starvation whenever ‘the marker’ collapsed into slump.

Whilst the District Unions did everything in their power, it was clear by the end of the 1880s that only a national union could effectively challenge the co-ordinated policies of Government and owners

NATIONAL COAL STRIKE 1912
"Are you in favour of giving notice to establish the principle of a minimum wage for every man and boy working underground in the mines of Great Britain?"

Ballot paper issued by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, January 1912.

The National Coal Strike of 1912 was a direct consequence of the complicated wage structure which had evolved in the mining industry by the end of the nineteenth century. The old system of paying miners on the basis of a `sliding scale', relating wages directly to the selling price of coal, was largely abandoned in the late 1890's and the collier's money calculated in terms of the local "price-list", negotiated district by district between the Federation "Lodge" and the owners, plus a percentage agreed by a Conciliation Board under an independent chairman. These price-lists took account of the "cutting price", or standard rate per ton "got" from the face, and "measured-up" for other work, such as repairing timber or clearing "dirt", which was not directly productive. In most pits there was an additional "consideration" paid, often unofficially, for work in "abnormal places", places where variations in the seam, soft roof, water, occurrence of stone, etc., etc., made it impossible for a collier, however skilled, to earn a fair day's wage. Where these allowances were not fixed in the price-list, he was responsible for his own claim. Frequently managements allowed only small fixed sums to cover all claims, decisions between man and man were purely arbitrary and the small number of men involved from pit to pit led to easy victimisation. In 1910-11, 30,000 Welsh colliers struck over the issue and the struggle developed into a fight for a minimum day wage for all colliers. The M.F.G.B., attempting to negotiate nationally for the first time, would at first only sponsor the proposed minimum for "abnormal places", but in October 1911 resolved in conference "to take immediate steps to secure an individual district minimum wage for all men and boys working in the mines . . . without any references to the places being abnormal". Individual districts prepared schedules of minimum rates for each of the various grades of labour, Nottinghamshire, with Yorkshire, asking the top rate of 8s. for hewers and the Federation officially conceding a demand of 7s. 6d. The owners rejected the proposals almost unanimously, although most were now prepared to guarantee "abnormal places". The New Year opened "in anxiety and gloom" and in a national ballot well over half the M.F.G.B. membership voted for a stoppage.

Despite government intervention, and to national dismay, the strike began at the end of February. The strike opened at Alfreton in Derbyshire, one of the best conducted pits in the country, and spread slowly as local notices expired. `At the great majority of the Nottinghamshire collieries', it was reported on the first day, `the notices expire tomorrow, and at a few of the pits on Wednesday.

`At the collieries of Messrs Barber, Walker & Co. of Eastwood, where 3,000 men are employed, the miners have agreed to remain at work on Thursday. They have also acceded to the request of the managers to leave their tools and stock in the pit in the event of a stoppage'. The miners generally left work in a holiday mood, a fact which was quickly noted and exploited by the predominantly right wing press. In some localities, including Nottinghamshire `next to Derbyshire, the wealthiest district in the country' (and perhaps because, `according to a prominent manager', `over production would have compelled a stoppage of many pits early in March in any case') masters and men remained on good terms throughout the strike.

There was less confidence nationally. A civilian volunteer force was formed, police in the colliery districts generally were reinforced, and, as nerves began to fray towards the end of March, the army moved in.

Strike pay for the colliers, ten shillings a week for full union members, began on Tuesday 5th March. By the 23rd the Notts Miners' Association had spent about £50,000 out of their total funds of £220,000 and it was estimated that the men `could last out at least another ten weeks.'

AJ Cook

A.J. Cook (1883-1931) worked first on a farm in Somerset and then moved to the South Wales coalfield. On his first day in the pit, the man next to him was killed and the 16 year old had to carry the body to the surface and then back to his family. He was a Baptist preacher, but transferred his skill at public speaking to the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and socialism.

Between 1906-1918, he held various elected positions in the Rhondda No 1 District Lodge of the South Wales Miners' Federation and was active in the Unofficial reform Committee of 1910-11. He attended the Central Labour College, but was unable to complete the course due to financial difficulties. He was an active anti-war propagandist and was imprisoned for sedition. He was a member of the Communist Party 1920-21 and played a leading role in the Miners' Minority Movement. He was General Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain from 1924 until his death.
He was a very prominant speaker in the Nottinghamshire coalfield before,during, and after the 1926 strike, many thousands would turn out to hear him speak, he sometimes spoke two or three times in different corners of a recreational field, so that as many people as possible got the chance to hear his message.

1926 Strike A paper by Barry Johnson

AJ Cook in Wales 1926

Following the betrayal of the miners by the TUC General Council in 1926, the miners fought on alone in dire poverty and deprivation surviving with the help of the Co-Operative society, donations, and organised soup kitchens in every town, they struggled on for another nine months, before the strike collapsed.
The collapse brought vicious victimisation, blacklisting of men and a purge on Trade Unionism. Four months into the strike, butties from Lodge pit at Giltbrook in Notts had approached George Spencer MP and Notts Miners Association official, to see if he would find common ground with the owners (Barber Walker Co) to get them there jobs back. Spencer did this, and was suspended from the Miners Federation Great Britain for strike breaking. The outcome of this was the begining of a yellow, blackleg, organisation that would destroy the unity and collectiveness of the miners in Notts for the next twelve years. The so called Spencer Union was hand in glove with the mine owners, and it was financed by thousands of pounds from the right wing seaman’s union leader J Havelock Wilson who was later expelled from the TUC for his actions.
1929 saw Wall Street crash and so did our economy.
During the 1930s there was mass unemployment in Britain, the price of coal had dropped, pits were closed or working with skeleton workforces until viable to mine again. Miners were going from pit to pit to find a couple of days work. Shipyards were closed and industry was badly struggling. The hunger March from Jarrow made people in other parts of the country aware of the plight of the workers in the North East of the country.
This era was known as the great depression, but perhaps the greatest pain was inflicted on the women who were to bring up large families of children on a few borrowed penny’s a week, shoes, clothes, and furniture, were pawned so that a family could have something to eat.
People were starving and in abject poverty.
Farmers would take milk to market to sell, only to return with it and throw it over the style wall for the pigs to have, so literally the pigs were being fed better than the farmer and his family, there are accounts of suicides in every town and village, to escape the daily mental torture they were enduring at this time.

Despite this and to encourage the survival of this Spencer organisation, the Notts Miners Association and the MFGB was virtually banned by the coal owners in the county of Nottinghamshire. In 1934 the Barber Walker company who owned Harworth colliery even imposed wage cuts on certain men, who were so frightened of loosing there jobs and stating there case they suffered silently.
Saturday February 2, 1935, M.F.G.B officials Ebby Edwards, Joseph Jones and Will Lawther were invited to Nottingham to attend a full delegate council of the Nottinghamshire Miners Association, in there report back to the M.F.GB they recalled a sad history, and told how the coal owners in Notts would only allow employment if men were willing to sign a form agreeing deductions being made to the Spencer organisation. This was still going on after a ballot had been organised in March 1928 by impartial bodies, the Nottingham miners voted 9 to 1 in favour of the Nottinghamshire Miners Association being the union to represent them in the area.
Nottinghamshire Miners Association 32,277 votes
The Spencer union 2,533 votes

The struggle between the two organisations was bitter and Harworth was destined to be the eye of the storm. The Harworth branch of the Notts Miners Association struck in support of a demand for union recognition. It was to be a bitterly fought campaign lasting 6 months, during which time the strikers faced the most severe police harassment, along with evictions and arrests.
It must be noted that not only did Barber Walker Co own half a dozen pits in Notts including Harworth but they owned the houses around the collieries in which miners lived, the Chairman of the company Major Barber was also Chairman of Nottinghamshire county council, and went on to scrutinise the heavy handed police actions at Harworth and determine the nature of the charges imposed at Harworth.
When the strike was over, the Union's branch president Mick Kane, was charged with riot and sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour. Of the seventeen charged with him, eleven miners and one women (who was a miners wife) were given sentences ranging from four to fifteen months jail with hard labour, the remaining five were bound over.
The strike served as a beacon of resistance in the Nottingham coalfield, which was already becoming aware that its moderation and non-unionism had made its wages even lower than the poverty level they were at elsewhere. However the struggle was not seen through, under political pressure from the Labour Party leadership the Miners Federation leaders sat down with the Spencer entity and opened up merger talks. The settlement terms allowed George Spencer to become president of the Nottingham Area of the MFGB. In 1937 the breakaway section re-merged with the Notts Miners Association, and despite successful joint nation-wide actions in 1972 & 74, history would repeat itself in 1984 with the help of archivists reserching the history of the Notts coalfield, for use by those with an axe to grind and a wedge to split, the Tory government used this knowledge to exploit the divisions once more in the Notts coalfield.

Lodge Colliery was at Giltbrook and was known by all as 'Billy Halls Pit'.
What a dreadful coalmine this was, none had a good name for it, but it was a job and people must have been glad to have one.

Newstead Colliery FC

Another good season for Newstead Colliery 1967/68 season.
Notts Combination K.O Cup winners
Recognise anyone?
The colliery is in the background.

Happy times. Season 1968/69 Notts Junior Cup winners. Notts Combination League winners.

1972 Strike

1974

1982

1984

Justice For Mineworkers campaign,

Hucknall No 2 Colliery

The Hucknall Colliery Company set up by Paget Ellis & Walker in 1861/2 sank Hucknall No1 and No2 collieries. The Sherwood Colliery Company then owned them from 1911 to 1947.

No 1 colliery which was situated on Watnall Road ceased winding coal in 1943 and mining was transferred to No2 colliery sited on Portland Road. Number 1 site, however, continued to be used for ventilation, manriding and materials.
Hucknall became publicly owned on 1st January 1947 and it was a major contributor to the NCB’s East Midlands Division. Its upper seams were however approaching exhaustion and a major reconstruction began in 1957.
During the reconstruction period from 1957 to 1969 production from the upper seams ceased and access was obtained to the lower seams with production from the Deep Soft to the east of the shafts beginning in 1964. Two drifts were also driven to the Blackshale seam in 1967/68. The reconstruction transformed the appearance of the colliery above and below ground and with its completion Hucknall entered its most productive phase.
The first Blackshale coalface commenced production in 1970 and the following year the Deep Soft seam production ceased, and the Blackshale seam accounted for the entire output. Annual outputs for 1972/3 and 1974/5 exceeded 1 million tons and for the first time in June 1972 an all time weekly record of 26,050 tons was recorded with output per man shift exceeding five tons; well above the national average. The underground main roadways had lighting installed, and there was a methane plant on the surface that generated heating for the offices and hot water for the pit head baths. Hucknall closed in October 1986 after it was labelled uneconomic, this was after new screens/ preperation plant had been completed on the surface the year before, costing around £12.2 million,There were also geological problems underground but the management knew of those before mining that area of the seam.The management had taken the decision to work the blackshale seam on the south side of the workings that thinned out and had sandstone intrusions, but there were decades of reserves on the north east & eastern side's of the seam that were plentiful, high, and easy to work.The Blackshale seam had reserves estimated at 15 million Tons this did not include parcels of coal in the Tupton seam being worked by the Babbington men. There was a seam below the blackshale seam called the Ashgate seam, it has remained unmined and untouched in this area.

Hucknall was closed in the first round of pit closures after the dispute, but it wasn't just Hucknall that was a casualty so was Babbington colliery and it's miners, this colliery was linked underground with Hucknall to extract it's remaining reserves. Newstead was next to go in 1987 then Linby a few months later, the Leen valley coalfield had only one remaining pit left working, this was Annesley it worked the Blackshale seam until closing in the year 2000, local men now had to travel to work further afield to North Nottinghamshire’s pits, in some cases enduring as much as a 70 mile round trip,to pits like Harworth that included a physically demanding shift underground. History was repeating itself. With the assistance of the Tory government, and a young barrister who would become Attorney General under a labour government. Management at the collieries were instructed to turn back the clock 50 years and not recognise the National Union Of Mineworkers at any colliery, where its members were in the minority. This was the case in all of the Notts pits after the strike, when the breakaway organisation came into being. To be a member of the new organisation you didn’t have to do anything adminastrative, but to become a member of the NUM you had to fill in forms at every verse end, going to see the admin man, instructing wage clerks, etc, this of course was meant to cause confusion and obstacles were put in the way of people re joining the NUM. Men who worked through the dispute were told by Arthur Scargill that there was a place for every miner in the NUM. So the NUM recruited with vigour at every mine in Notts, within three months there was a significant dent in the new organisations membership, At Hucknall colliery out of the 42 men on strike for the whole twelve months, they had recruited just under 300 men back into the NUM by the time the announcement was made to close the colliery in the summer of 1986, approximately a third of the workforce had signed over to the NUM, this was bolstered when Moorgreen and Pye Hill collieries closed, and the NUM gained more men that had become disillusioned and disgusted at promises made to them that there pit would be safe. The reality of the situation was now kicking in with those who had not supported the call to defend jobs, pits, and communities in 1984-5.

This time it was to be Ollerton & Bolsover Collieries at the forefront of this recognition struggle, fifty years on from the Harworth riots. In 1986 the Ollerton NUM branch, led by Jimmy Hood, Mick McGinty,Arthur Jackson and a core of staunch NUM loyals were only a handful of recruits short of being the second majority Notts NUM pit, but management immediately imported in members of the other organisation from other collieries to counter act the NUM gains. It was bitterly disappointing and another tactical defeat had been carried out, on instruction by high management.
Other collieries had also suffered the same fate, as soon as the membership of the NUM was getting close to a majority the pit was either shut or men from the other organisation were transferred into that colliery, under no circumstance were the management and the leaders of the other organisation going to allow majority NUM pits in Notts.

(Extract from The Guardian May 2005

Michael Clapham, MP for Barnsley West and the NUM's legal officer at the time, said yesterday: "I realised when I saw the dates of the documents in your paper that Lord Falconer's advice came just a few days before the union was informed that British Coal was ending the important industry conciliation scheme - effectively tearing up 40 years of agreements covering disputes.

"This was done so they could recognise the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers - even though at the time it did not officially exist - and negotiate an inferior deal." The papers show that Lord Falconer was a junior barrister advising the coal board on how it could open negotiations with the fledgling union whose working members in Nottinghamshire had broken away from the NUM. His advice was backed by Peter Walker, then energy secretary, who was keen to break up the NUM. )

More Pictures of Newstead Colliery

No2 Headstocks being demolished,this was the dowcast shaft, January 1988.
No1 headstocks being demolished, this was the upcast shaft, 7 February 1988.
Last production shift at Newstead colliery, 19 March 1987

To Date 2006

Annesley Colliery headstocks, this is a prime example of latticed iron work headstocks, it is probably the only surviving one, standing in Britain. There is currently a local campaign to save the headstocks as a lasting memorial to the workforce, over the pit's long history.

At one time there were five men working underground who were destined to go on to play for England - including the legendary "bodyline'' pace-bowling partners, Harold Larwood and Bill Voce.

Clipstone headstocks in the North Notts coalfield.
Clipstone closed through lack of investment to work out the remaining reserves, that would have given the pit another five years life, and employment for the miners who worked there.