First published in 1953, The Miners: Years of Struggle is the official history of the British miners, which draws on original sources, moving into the stormy period when the economic bargaining of the million colliery employees with the mine owners became the concern of Parliament and people. The great strike of 1921; the stoppages of 1921 and 1926 (the latter opening with the General Strike); and how successive administrations met those crises – these form an historical matrix from which the present public ownership inevitably emerged. The conflict of ideas and personalities is shown as part of the struggles of these stormy times. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, economics and political science.

First published in 1975, South Wales Miners starts with the War of Empires, when nearly 50,000 Welsh miners, almost one-fifth of the total manpower of their coalfield, responded to the call and voluntarily enlisted in the British armed forces. The author uncovers how the coalowners in the meantime took advantage of the war emergency to deny the remaining miners a fair recompense for their toil and of the bitter strife that followed. The book tells the story of what led up to the General Strike and here the author uses hitherto hidden sources of information. The picture is revealed of what was a virtual conspiracy between the Baldwin-Churchill Government and the mineowners, not only to cut wages and lengthen hours, but to cripple British trade unionism. When the miners held out through a seven-month lockout the efforts of these highly placed conspirators recoiled on their own heads and on the whole economy of British Empire. This book will be of interest to students of history, labour studies, economics and political science.

First published in 1967, South Wales Miners: Glowyr de Cymru is a vivid portrayal of contending personalities in the generation before the first world war, often set forth in their own words. Outstanding amongst them are the founder of the Labour Party., Keir Hardie and the young Liberal politician Winston Churchill whose successive ministerial duties brought him into close relation with the miners of South Wales. Out of the almost insurrectionary situation of 1910 in Glamorgan there has come a widespread belief that Churchill was responsible for the shooting down of Welsh miners and that Tonypandy in the Rhondda was once a scene of massacre. In destroying this picturesque myth, Page Arnot uncovers an array of facts that are stranger than this long-lived fiction and also richer in their interplay of personalities. Here, soberly, recorded, are the facts that could make a chronicle play with dramatis personae ranging from Monarch and Minister to mineowners and working miners who daily lives create the tensions of the time. Their national characteristics and their exceptional conditions, at home or in chapel, underground or on the surface, form one side of the picture, of which the other is furnished by the entrenched position of the associated coal owners. This book will be of interest to students of history, economics and labour studies.

First published in 1961, The Miners in Crisis and War: A History of Miners' Federation of Great Britain from 1930 Onwards tells the story of two sharply contrasting periods, of world crisis and of world war. The story begins with the Minders' Federation fallen upon evil days, diminished in numbers, shorn of its former powers of national wage negotiation, divided in counsel and almost whelmed beneath the seismic waves of world economic crisis. Unemployment prevailed, greater than at any time before. The sudden collapse of the cabinet, the formation of the four-party coalition, and the rout of the Labour Party in 1931 shattered these hopes. The climb from the economic abyss of the early thirties is made against a sombre background of the spread of fascism and the approach of war. Then, during the war, the British coal industry and its workers encounter a series of rapid changes, both for better and for worse. The whole main purpose of their trade unions, to maintain and improve the standard of life, is conditioned by the six-year war to such an extent that all come to be merged in a single national union a few months before victory. Thus, in circumstances utterly unforeseen, the old Miners' Federation, now once more built up in its numbers and in its powers comes to an end after an existence of fifty-five years. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, economics and political science.

First published in 1955, A History of the Scottish Miners recounts the peculiar circumstances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the laws that placed the miners under conditions unique in Europe. Carrying onto the nineteenth century, the author deals with the first trade unions, the period of Alexander McDonald and Keir Hardie, ending in the great strike of 1894 and the formation of the Scottish Miners' Federation, embracing eight county associations. From 1894 onwards, Robert Smillie led the Scots in good times and bad, up to the ordeal of the First World War. The effect in Scotland of the great lockouts of 1921 and 1926, with Robert Smillie no longer chairman of the British miners but still the leader in Scotland, is set out in detail. Then after a time of troubles, the Scots miners developed their organisations during the war and, before its end, under new leaders, they achieved a single union for Scotland. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, economics and political science.