Download or read book The Scottish Miners 1874 1939 written by Alan Campbell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Scottish miners experienced enormous changes during these sixty-five years. Enjoying a high degree of autonomy underground throughout the nineteenth century, their work situation was transformed in the twentieth as Scotland became the most intensively mechanised of the British coalfields. Grievances generated by this change led to strike rates in Scotland being up to ten and fifteen times higher than in the major English coalfields. Such militancy displayed considerable geographical variation however, and the translation of grievances into industrial conflict was mediated by variables rooted in the community as well as the pit. A central theme of this volume is to explore the differences between the four principal mining regions in Scotland through the detailed study of ten localities within them. This innovative, two-tiered comparison is used to analyse the competing loyalties of class, gender and ethnicity, to map the uneven terrain of popular protest and social disorder, and to challenge traditional stereotypes of ’a peaceable kingdom’. This historical sociology of the Scottish coalfields frames the analysis of trade unionism and politics which is developed in the companion volume to this book.

Download or read book Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors written by Brian Elliott and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A meticulous mixture of social and family history . . . Whether or not you have mining connections, this is an interesting socio-economic read.” —Your Family Tree In the 1920s there were over a million coalminers working in over 3000 collieries across Great Britain, and the industry was one of the most important and powerful in British history. It dominated the lives of generations of individuals, their families, and communities, and its legacy is still with us today—many of us have a coalmining ancestor. Yet family historians often have problems in researching their mining forebears. Locating the relevant records, finding the sites of the pits, and understanding the work involved and its historical background can be perplexing. That is why Brian Elliott’s concise, authoritative and practical handbook will be so useful, for it guides researchers through these obstacles and opens up the broad range of sources they can go to in order to get a vivid insight into the lives and experiences of coalminers in the past. His overview of the coalmining history—and the case studies and research tips he provides—will make his book rewarding reading for anyone looking for a general introduction to this major aspect of Britain’s industrial heritage. His directory of regional and national sources and his commentary on them will make this guide an essential tool for family historians searching for an ancestor who worked in coalmining underground, on the pit top or just lived in a mining community. As featured in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine and the Barnsley Chronicle.

Download or read book History of Everyday Life in Scotland 1800 to 1900 written by Graeme Morton and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the experience of everyday life in Scotland over two centuries characterised by political, religious and intellectual change and ferment. It shows how the extraordinary impinged on the ordinary and reveals people's anxieties, joys, comforts, passions, hopes and fears. It also aims to provide a measure of how the impact of change varied from place to place.The authors draw on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including the material survivals of daily life in town and country, and on the history of government, religion, ideas, painting, literature, and architecture. As B. S. Gregory has put it, everyday history is 'an endeavour that seeks to identify and integrate everything - all relevant material, social, political, and cultural data - that permits the fullest possible reconstruction of ordinary life experiences in all their varied complexity, as they are formed and transformed.'

Download or read book Collieries communities and the miners strike in Scotland 1984 85 written by Jim Phillips and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the 1984-5 miners’ strike by focusing on its vital Scottish dimensions, especially the role of workplace politics and community mobilisation. The year-long strike began in Scotland, with workers defending the moral economy of the coalfields, and resisting pit closures and management attacks on trade unionism. The book relates the strike to an analysis of changing coalfield community and industrial structures from the 1960s to the 1980s. It challenges the stereotyped view that the strike began in March 1984 as a confrontation between Arthur Scargill, the miners’ leader, and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Before this point, in fact, 50 per cent of Scottish miners were already on strike or engaged in a significant pit-level dispute with their managers, who were far more confrontational than their counterparts in England and Wales. The book explores the key features of the strike that followed in Scotland: the unusual industrial politics; the strong initial pattern of general solidarity; and then the emergence of varieties of pit-level commitment. These were shaped by differential access to community-level moral and material resources, including the economic and cultural role of women, and pre-strike pit-level economic performance. Against the trend elsewhere, notably in the English Midlands, relatively good performance prior to 1984 was a positive factor in building strike endurance in Scotland. The book shows that the outcome of the strike was also distinctive in Scotland, with an unusually high level of victimisation of activists, and the acceleration of deindustrialisation consolidating support for devolution, contributing to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Download or read book Digging the Seam written by Ian W. Macdonald and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1984–5 Miners’ Strike was one of the most important political events in British history. It was a bitter dispute that polarised public opinion, divided nation and families alike, and the results in terms of the destruction of centuries of industrial and cultural tradition are still keenly felt. The social and political consequences of this dispute, which have resonated for the past quarter century, have been subject to detailed analysis and reflection. The consequences for the arts and popular culture are less clearly mapped. This book attempts to begin to redress this imbalance and signal the importance of popular cultural activity both during and after the strike. The essays that appear in this book represent diverse and multidisciplinary responses to the questions raised by the strike and its relationships to a broad range of cultural forms which include literature, film, photography, music, theatre, television drama and documentary, painting, public art and heritage interventions. These responses are organised around four themes that map the interrelatedness between cultural representation, cultural intervention and historical memory. The first deals with the idea of mining culture and pre-strike representations in popular sentiment, film and literature. The second examines the role cultural forms played directly in the context of the strike, as a means of political commentary, activism and fund raising. The third looks at subsequent cultural renderings or reconstructions of the strike and the final section looks at the current process of memorialisation and commemoration. The book draws together a range of voices from academia, heritage, cultural and mining backgrounds, and offers both a historical perspective on the range of cultural activities in the course of the dispute and subsequent readings and re-readings. It aims both to provide a record of cultural intervention and stimulate new dialogues and perspectives.

Download or read book Coal in Victorian Britain Part II Volume 6 written by John Benson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coal is a topic that has been, remains, and will continue to be of significant interest to those concerned with the causes, course and consequences of industrialization and de-industrialization. This six-volume, reset collection provides scholars with a wide variety of sources relating to the Victorian coal industry.

Download or read book The Local Irish in the West of Scotland 1851 1921 written by G. Vaughan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vaughan renews perspectives on the changes brought about by Irish migrant communities in terms of identity, politics and religion. The book examines on the experience of generations of Irish migrants in the West of Scotland from the aftermath of the Great Famine until the creation of the Republic of Ireland.

Download or read book Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century written by Phillips Jim Phillips and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining working class welfare in the age of deindustrialisation through the experiences of the Scottish coal minerThroughout the twentieth century Scottish miners resisted deindustrialisation through collective action and by leading the campaign for Home Rule. This book argues that coal miners occupy a central position in Scotland's economic, social and political history, and highlights the role of miners in formulating labour movement demands for political-constitutional reforms that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The book also uses the struggle of the mineworkers to explore working class wellbeing more broadly during the prolonged and politicised period of deindustrialisation that saw jobs, workplaces and communities devastated. Key featuresExamines deindustrialisation as long-running, phased and politicised processUses generational analysis to explain economic and political changeRelates Scottish Home Rule to long-running debates about economic security and working class welfareAnalyses the longer history of Scottish coal miners in terms of changing industrial ownership, production techniques and workplace safetyRelates this economic and industrial history to changes in mining communities and gender relations

Download or read book Regulating Health and Safety in the British Mining Industries 1800 1914 written by Catherine Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the emergence and growth of state responsibility for safer and healthier working practices in British mining and the responses of labour and industry to expanding regulation and control. It begins with an assessment of working practice in the coal and metalliferous mining industries at the dawn of the nineteenth century and the hazards involved for the miners, before charting the rise of reforming interest in these industries. The 1850 Act for the Inspection of Coal Mines in Great Britain brought tighter legislation in coal mining, yet the metalliferous miners continued to work without government-regulated safety and health controls until the early 1870s. The author explores the reasons for this, taking into account socio-economic, environmental, medical, technical, and cultural factors that determined the chronology and nature of early reform. The comparative approach between the coal and metalliferous mining sectors provides a useful model for exploring the significance of organized labour in gaining health and safety concessions, particularly as the miners in the metalliferous sector, in contrast to the colliers who unionised early, placed a high value on independence and self-sufficiency in the workplace. As an investigation into the formation of health and safety legislation in a major industry, this work will be valuable to all those with an interest in medical history, occupational health, legal history, and the social history of work in the nineteenth century.

Download or read book The 1926 Miners Lockout written by Hester Barron and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The miners' lockout of 1926 was a pivotal moment in British twentieth-century history. Investigating issues of collective identity and action, Hester Barron explores the way that the lockout was experienced by Durham's miners and their families, illuminating wider debates about solidarity and fragmentation within working-class communities.

Download or read book Miners Lung written by Arthur McIvor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston explore the experience of coal miners' lung diseases and the attempts at voluntary and legal control of dusty conditions in British mining from the late nineteenth century to the present. In this way, the book addresses the important issues of occupational health and safety within the mining industry; issues that have been severely neglected in studies of health and safety in general. The authors examine the prevalent diseases, notably pneumoconiosis, emphysema and bronchitis, and evaluate the roles of key players such as the doctors, management and employers, the state and the trade unions. Throughout the book, the integration of oral testimony helps to elucidate the attitudes of workers and victims of disease, their 'machismo' work culture and socialisation to very high levels of risk on the job, as well as how and why ideas and health mentalities changed over time. This research, taken together with extensive archive material, provides a unique perspective on the nature of work, industrial relations, the meaning of masculinity in the workplace and the wider social impact of industrial disease, disability and death. The effects of contracting dust disease are shown to result invariably in seriously prescribed lifestyles and encroaching isolation. The book will appeal to those working on the history of medicine, industrial relations, social history and business history as well as labour history.

Download or read book Disability in industrial Britain written by Kirsti Bohata and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. An electronic version of this book is also available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) license, thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust. Coalmining was a notoriously dangerous industry and many of its workers experienced injury and disease. However, the experiences of the many disabled people within Britain’s most dangerous industry have gone largely unrecognised by historians. This book looks at British coal through the lens of disability, using an interdisciplinary approach to examine the lives of disabled miners and their families. A diverse range of sources are used to examine the economic, social, political and cultural impact of disability in the coal industry, looking beyond formal coal company and union records to include autobiographies, novels and existing oral testimony. It argues that, far from being excluded entirely from British industry, disability and disabled people were central to its development. The book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability history, disability studies, social and cultural history and representations of disability in literature.

Download or read book The great Labour unrest written by Lewis Mates and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Labour Unrest examines the struggle between liberals, socialists and revolutionary syndicalists for control of Britain's best established district miners' union. Drawing widely on a vast and rich body of primary sources, this study reveals the debates that grassroots activists had during the fascinating and turbulent 'Great Labour Unrest' period. It charts the contexts in which the socialists challenged the union's Liberal leaders from the late 1890s and considers the complex strikes in 1910 against the implementation of the Liberal government's miners' eight-hour day. It analyses the emergence and development of a mass rank-and-file movement in the coalfield based around demands for a miners' minimum wage and, when this principle was won in March 1912, for an improved minimum wage. This book is of interest to academics, advanced students and lay people interested in political, social and economic history, political thought, economics, and industrial relations.

Download or read book Historical Directory of Trade Unions written by Arthur Ivor Marsh and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 1980 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the final volume in the Historical Directory of Trade Unions series. It provides a comprehensive list of all British unions that operated within the building, construction, chemical, dock, maritime, engineering, government, mining, quarry, and shipbuilding industries.

Download or read book Gender and Political Identities in Scotland 1919 1939 written by Annmarie Hughes and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work offers a unique contribution to gender and Scottish history breaking new ground on several fronts: there is no history of inter-war women in Scotland, very little labour or popular political history and virtually nothing published on women, the home and family. This book is a history of women in the period which integrates class and gender history as well as linking the public and private spheres. Using a gendered approach to history it transforms and shifts our knowledge of the Scottish past, unearthing the previously unexplored role which women played in inter-war socialist politics, the General Strike and popular political protest. It re-evaluates these areas and demonstrates the ways in which gender shaped the experience of class and class struggle. Importantly, the book also explores the links between the public and private spheres and addresses the concept of masculinity as well as femininity and pays particular reference to domestic violence. The strength of the book is the ways in which it illuminates the complex interconnections of culture and economic and social structure. Although the research is based on Scottish evidence, it also uses material to address key debates in gender history and labour history which have wider relevance and will appeal to gender historians, labour historians and social and cultural historians as well as social scientists.

Download or read book Women and the Miners Strike 1984 1985 written by Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just days into the miners' strike of 1984-1985, a few women in coalfield communities around Britain began to meet to consider how they could support the strike, a clash with the Thatcher government over the future of the coal industry. Women ultimately formed a national network of groups that some observers saw as an 'alternative welfare state', helping to keep the strike going for just under a year. This book is the first study of this national movement, illuminating its achievements, but also telling the less well-known story of arguments and divisions with men in the National Union of Mineworkers and feminists in the women's liberation movement. Many women in the movement, despite their activism, resolutely denied that they were 'political' at all, defining themselves as 'ordinary' women, housewives, mothers, and workers; and, despite some claims that women activists had been transformed for ever by their experiences, most of those involved felt they had been changed only in more subtle ways. Women and the Miners' Strike is also the first to look beyond the activists to study the experiences of the majority of women in mining families who did not get involved in activism. Some of these women supported the strike by going out to work themselves to keep their families going; others supported their menfolk with practical and emotional support in the home. A large number were ambivalent about the dispute, even though the experiences of women whose husbands or fathers worked through the strike, or returned to work early, have generally been almost entirely obscured within popular memory. This book therefore also demonstrates how some women whose husbands broke the strike refashioned concepts like democracy and community to justify their actions, and how some even formed their own support groups to aid other women in their communities who found themselves under fire for opposing the strike. Through examining the stories of more than 100 women and their varied experiences during the strike, the book sheds new light on working-class women's relationship to the 'political' and the 'ordinary', and demonstrates the ways in which gender roles, working-class lifestyles, and coalfield communities changed in Britain over the post-war period.

Download or read book Triumph of the South written by Peter Scott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a scholarly but accessible account of British regional development during the twentieth century, focusing on the emergence and development of theNorth-South divide. Beginning with regional imbalance in the Victorian and Edwardian economies, the book goes on to discuss the effects on the First World War and its aftermath, which created a discernible split between the depressed North and West, and the relatively prosperous South. Attention is also paid to the impact of government policy on regional development during the interwar years and beyond, and factors affecting industrial location in this period.