Notts NUM Area History Part 5
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.
On October 5th, at Digby and New London pit’s near Eastwood, at a meeting at Hill top, men decided on a return to work. The significant thing about this meeting was that G A Spencer was present. George Spencer was MP for Broxtowe and Notts Miners Association official; he met with the owners at the men’s request to get them their jobs back. Spencer did this. He also met with other colliery owners to see if they were prepared to take the men back. The next day this was reported back and the matter raised at a special conference of the MFGB, he was suspended from the Miners Federation of Great Britain for strike breaking. The outcome of this was the beginning 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. It was partly 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.
The Digby delegate Cyril Pugh a communist party member from Kimberley, was also expelled from the MFGB at a special conference on 7th of October 1926 for his part in the return to work, (including himself) Realising his big mistake he then tried persuading men back out on strike to hardly no avail. He was eventually reinstated back into the Notts miners Association and in 1928 Pugh was elected to Kimberley parish council, he was most certainly victimised as he became a collector for the Notts Miners Association and he also became an executive committee member of the NMA. In the mid 1930s he became a tutor operating in Bulwell, Hucknall, and Mansfield Woodhouse, and was still a CP member during the 1960s.
It is also worth mentioning that in the county council elections of March 6th 1928 his brother James Holland Pugh a butty at Digby, defeated R A Hanson of (Hardy & Hansons brewery, director) in Newthorpe ward, Mr Hanson had held the seat for twenty years. His other brother William (Billy) Pugh was a Labour Party activist.
Also on 6th of March 1928 Tom Nally a Notts Miners Association committee member and Gedling miner defeated his employer, Colonel Sir Dennis Readett-Bayley, Chairman of Digby Colliery co for a county council seat at Kimberley -Eastwood, Nally had been sacked two weeks prior to the polling date, presumably on the closing date for withdrawal of his nomination, which he didn’t do. He returned to Lancashire in 1930 and eventually became deputy leader of the labour group on Manchester city council. The local papers headlines were that of ”CLEAR CLASS ISSUES” where the red candidates romped home and where Mondism and Spencerism were openly fought. Nally said it was a victory for A J Cook and a defeat for all his enemies whether inside the Labour movement or outside of it.
I928 Nottinghamshire County Council Election Results:
Mansfield South C Pritchard LAB 1,655. F Hardy Citizens League 1,225
Mansfield Woodhouse A Wilcox LAB 1,702. C J Palmer 1,540
Huthwaite J Davies LAB 637. C H Coupe LIB 465.
Kimberley T Nally LAB 1,181, Sir H Dennis Bayley, Coal owner 815.
Kirkby East & Annesley W Bayliss LAB 1,691
J W Blackburn 957
Kirkby South & West R Smith LAB 1,208. J W Colledge 746
Hucknall East G A Goodall LAB 1,055. E H Story IND 492
Hucknall West G Johnson LAB 1,528. R Taylor LIB 943
Eastwood W E Hopkin LAB 1,366. J Birkin IND 648
A good number of the Labour candidate gains were officials or members of the the Nottinghamshire Miners Association (NMA)and two weeks after the elections on a Saturday afternoon A J Cook spoke to a big crowd of miners and supporters on Hucknall Market place, thanking the candidates for all their hard work in gaining victory and a majority at County hall, he also made reference to ” the three mutineers Hodges, Spencer, and Wilson” .
Also in 1927-8 a reorganisation of the NMA took place as they were no longer recognised by the coal owners, and had been hit hard financially by the 1926 strike and men were being victimised and frightened into joining the spencer union.
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.
PHOTO Nottinghamshire NUM Area History-005 PHOTO
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 researching 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.
PHOTO Nottinghamshire NUM Area History-006 PHOTO
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.