The Miners of Nottinghamshire, by Griffin

[p045] Miners of Nottinghamshire 1914-1944. By Alan R. Griffin. George Allen & Unwin, 324 pp., 36s. Faced with the task of streamlining the British economy in preparation for severe competition from European and American rivals, the employers, as part of their campaign, are at- tempting to keep wage costs down by moving their capital to low cost areas (such as Scotland and _ the Merseyside). Because of the open co-operation from trade union officials in such areas they are able to negotiate wage rates considerabiy lower than those existing in other parts of the country. More specifically in the case of the coal industry, the NCB is forcing through a policy which in the next year or two could mean the closure of the Scottish and Lancashire fields, with production heavily concentrated in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. In May 1962 it was announced that the price of Lanca- shire coal was to rise by 10/- and Scottish coal by 6/- a ton. This will only speed up the closure of these areas and lead to the decentralisation of the industry—for so long bitterly opposed by miners. These tactics of the employers are not new, as Mr. Griffin’s book soon reveals. It was after the General Strike that George Spencer MP, one of the leading full-time officials of the Nottingham Miners, induced his men to return to work before the end of the lock-out. He did this by nego- tiating separate district rates with the coal-owners in the area—a move which did so much to weaken the unity and strength of the miners. As a result he was expelled from the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain and with the assistance of Havelock Wilson, the seamen’s leader, and Frank Hodges, he attempted to establish a non-political Trades Union movement. It was in Nottinghamshire that ‘Spencerism’ met with the greatest success, only to be beaten first by the great Harworth strike (1937) and

[p046] BOOK REVIEWS finally when the National Union of Mineworkers was formed in 1944. Spencerism aimed at a rigid separa- tion betwen politics and industrial matters and a mild and reformist attitude towards the employers. But it is wrong to think that Spencer enjoyed a majority following in Nottinghamshire—even in 1928 only about 2,500 supported him whereas over 32,000 voted for the Notting- hamshire Miners’ Association (p. 224) and at the beginning of 1927 the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association had well over twice as many members as the so-called Industrial Union (p. 210). But numbers were not everything: apart from the difficulty of mobilising the rank and file in the aftermath of the 1926 betrayal, Spencer enjoyed open support from the coal owners. Only Spencer’s Industrial Union was recognised and open Federation men faced continual threats of victimisa- tion, unemployment, physical danger and even imprisonment. But it was only through the loyal actions of such men that the tradition of free trade unionism was kept alive and the defeat of the blackleg Spencer made possible. The employers supported Spencer for obvious reasons: it paid them to do so. Mr. Joseph Jones pointed out at a conference of the MFGB in 1937 that ‘whilst the average selling price of coal in Nottinghamshire and Derby . . . was slightly higher than in Yorkshire .. . the wages cost was 34d. per ton less, and profits were 34d. per ton more’. (p. 265). Spencerism lined the coal-owner’s pockets. Allied to Spencerism was the movement which grew up after the General Strike, often called ‘Mon- dism’—after Sir Alfred Mond, head of ICI. In his Presidential Address to the 1927 TUC, George Hicks suggested that the two sides of industry should come together to see ‘how far and upon what terms co-operation is possible in a common endeavour to improve the efficiency of industry and raise the workers’ standard of life’. (p. 230). How very like our present Labour ‘leaders’ enthusiastically involved in NEDC! On the whole, Griffin adopts in this book a reformist standpoint— under the cloak of objectivity. He tends to support the ‘reasonable’ men of the unions who were trying to live with capitalism. The main troublemakers were the militants in the MFGB—and especially those from South Wales: if the attempted amal- gamation of the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Miners’ Association had been successful in 1928, argues Griffin, much of the subsequent unrest might have been avoided. But, although the author adopts an anti-Communist Party line, because he is a reformist he is unable to analyse correctly the role of Stalinism in this period. That Spencerism was able to retain its grip in Nottingham- shire for most of the °30s is partly explained in terms of the violent swings in Communist Party policy during these years. During the so- called ‘third period’ from 1929 British Stalinists denounced the mass Trades Unions as ‘finished’ and launched ‘red’ trade unions which were com- pletely cut off from the main strata of the movement. But apart from a brief reference to the breakaway movement led by the Communist Party amongst Scottish miners, Griffin makes little reference to these vital mai‘ers and their relation to events inside Nottinghamshire. _So one should read this book with care—for its facts rather than its analysis. If it is studied in this way it can provide valuable lessons of the role of the George Spencers of the movement—George Spencers who are still active in 1963, ready and willing to carry out the needs of the employing class. PJ. London’s revolution