Consciousness, Fatalism and Inaction
Allen cites four explanations as to why the mineworkersâ response to the industryâs decline was muted. The first reason was the constant pressure for consensus in the industry which was intended to neutralise the NUM. From 1940, Government ministers, politicians from all parties, members of the NCB and NUM officials âwere eager to convince miners why they should not use their apparently enormous collective strength, why they should not push their achievements to the limits the market could bear, why they should not make up for all the ruthless damage which had been done to them in the inter-war years.â The second factor is the absence of any counter-propaganda from the NUM which did not even publish a national journal until 1968. Thus, âMiners were confronted with a continuous flow of information and argument, justifying, rationalizing and legitimizing the decisions of the NCB. When there was resistance, seniorofficials of the NCB and the NUM made forages into the coalfields.â Thirdly, one of the main justifications for nationalisation was that it would end the anarchy of the free market and permit the planned modernisation of the whole industry. Mineworkers accepted modernisation and rationalisation but, at the same time, this clashed with their personal experiences in a contracting, but still vital, industry. Reconciling these two levels of experience in a context where the mineworkers were constantly told âthere was no alternativeâ and that âthey had to accept the economic facts of lifeâ, produced acquiescence. This leads directly to Allenâs fourth factor, fatalism. The inevitability of the industryâs decline in the face of a changing energy market was so self-evidently obvious to all but the most purblind that nothing could be done other than to mitigate the effects of decline. Nationalisation had enmeshed the NUM in a pattern of industrial and political relationships and procedures which were designed to canalise and neutralise the industryâs legendary propensity for industrial action and thereby place the miners and their industry at the service of the national interest as defined by government.1 Up to 1957 when the demand for coal began to decline, the national interest required cheap, plentiful supplies of coal to fuel the post-war economic recovery but after 1957 the national interest required the creation of an âeconomicâ coal industry, both depended on quiescence in the pits. The concept of ânational serviceâ was endorsed by the majority of the NUMâs leadership and was expressed by nationalisation in 1947 which had been portrayed as heralding a new era of cooperation. Securing these objectives were eased by the 1944 Rulebook which increased the NECâs ability to manage the NUMâs internal politics.
Allenâs analysis is based on two assumptions. The first is that mineworkers were a relatively undifferentiated segment of the working class and that there existed a latent class consciousness amongst mineworkers which could have been mobilised by effective leadership from the NUM. It cannot be argued that mineworkers were unfamiliar with industrial action. Mineworkers had the highest propensity to strike of any group of workers but the wider impact of this industrial action was restricted by the nature of that conflict and the consciousness it represented. The weakness of this conflict consciousness was that it was economistic and largely, but not exclusively, confined to highly localised disputes over wages and allowances, it was geographically concentrated (particularly in Scotland, South Wales, and Yorkshire) and highly episodic. The âminiaturizationâ of industrial conflict in mining was highly divisive, reflecting the differentiation of the workforce and so exacerbating the ever present tendency to fragmentation. One miner commented, ââThere used tobe a lot of disunity. Youâd get the rippers all coming out one day, but the colliers would carry on working. The next day the colliers might come out, but the rippers would remain at work.ââ2 The characteristic features of mineworker consciousness were sectionalism and fragmentation, not solidarity.
Differing regional industrial traditions and political cultures were expressed in the structure and ethos of the 1944 Rulebook which had been consciously designed to reflect, contain and manage diversity. This was fundamental to the NUMâs politics. Solidarity was not automatic. It was true that âmany factors lent mining communities a remarkable capacity to act with initiative and resilience. On the other hand, the strong links that developed between mine and community underpinned a certain insularity which ensured that individual communities acquired their own particular traditions and culture.â3 This insularity and identification with a locality underpinned a powerful reluctance to move even short distances to a new workplace which testifies to the uneasy coexistence of solidarity and sectionalism. In moderate coalfields, such as Durham or Nottinghamshire, pools of militancy existed and in militant coalfields, for example, South Wales and Scotland, moderate pits and localities coexisted. So not even single coalfields could be guaranteed to behave in a predictable way. This âdiverse-insularityâ underlay the mineworkersâ reaction to the rationalisation programme, a programme which embraced both contraction and mechanisation. The most obvious regional manifestation was the distinction between âcoreâ and peripheryâ coalfields, with the former, with their thicker seams, being the easiest to mechanise. These attracted higher levels of capital investment than the âperipheryâ coalfields which, the Area NUMs were convinced, was a deliberate NCB ploy to force coalfields which did not conform to their vision of the industryâs future into a spiral of decline. In 1961, for example, the Scottish Area protested to the NEC about the proposed closure of 17 pits, including Glenrothes in which millions had been invested, claiming that the NCB was deliberately seeking to concentrate production on the Midlands coalfields. The Scottish and South Wales NUMs were convinced that closures were disproportionately concentrated on militant pits.4 In terms of the percentage increase in productivity the Scottish Area actually performed best, with Yorkshire third and the East Midlands sixth, but in terms of increased share of NCB total tonnage mined the East Midlands and Yorkshire emerge top of the eight NCB Areas with South Wales at the bottom of the national productivity league, a position which reflected its difficult geology. The room for dramatic productivity increases in Yorkshire andthe East Midlands were limited as these were already the most productive coalfields and the increase in the amount of coal mined was the consequence of power loading.
The regional impact of restructuring militated against a unified workforce response even if the NUMâs leadership had been capable or willing to sponsor such a response. Closures simultaneously reinforced diversity and localism and âexacerbated divisions at an intra-area level, between those communities whose local pits closed and those who survived.â5 In his evidence to the 1972 Wilberforce Inquiry, Lawrence Daly, the NUMâs General Secretary, described this effect,
Those who remained in areas of fairly secure employment were naturally uncertain about the future of the industry and consequently inhibited in their approach on matters relating to pay and conditions. Therefore, approaches to the [NCB] on pay questions were coloured by the anxiety of the Union and its members about future prospects and the need to preserve the maximum number of jobs in the industry.6
Both âclose knitâ pits (those which retained a powerful local identity) and âcosmopolitanâ pits (where the workforce was drawn from a wide geographical area) posed major problems in the promotion of solidarity as âThe former retained [their] insular qualityâŠwhich underpinned a strongly local type of solidarity. With the latter, any benefit derived from the erosion of insularity was circumscribed by the problems of solidarity and co-ordination associated with an increasingly fragmented workforce.â7 The problems of decline cut across the ideological currents in the NUM so in âleft-wing Scotland and South Wales; right-wing Durham and Lancashire; the seemingly inexorable logic of profitability transcended political differences.â8 This did not create a common consciousness or solidarity and the key to understanding the impact, or non-impact, of pit closures in this period is their regionalism. Between 1957 and 1973 closures were concentrated in the periphery coalfields: Scotland lost 39 per cent of its pits, South Wales, Durham and Northumberland 30 per cent, whereas Yorkshire lost only 6 per cent.
Between 1956 and 1964 output fell in all NCB areas but some were affected more than others, so to what extent did the relative position of coalfields change? Of the eight NCB areas six suffered a relative deterioration of their share of national output. The largest fall was in Scotland, the smallest in Kent, but Northumberland and Durham and the North Western Area experienced a greater decline than the South Western Area which contained the South Wales coalfield. This reflects theconcentration of output on the most productive coalfields and the most easily mechanised mines with their easier geological conditions. Only two areas, Yorkshire and the East Midlands, increased their relative position. In 1956 they produced 42.9 per cent of national output and in 1964 this had increased to 49.8 per cent; in contrast, the combined share of the Scottish and South Western Areas fell from 21.4 per cent to 18.9 per cent. All NCB Areas shed jobs but Yorkshire and the East Midlands lost fewest. In 1956 their combined share of the national workforce was 34.2 per cent and by 1964 this had increased to 39 per cent.
These regional changes in employment created a powerful symbol for the mineworkers; that of the...