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David Selway, The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield. By Lewis H. Mates, Twentieth Century British History, Volume 28, Issue 4, December 2017, Pages 618–620, https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hww056
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Lewis Mates’ impressive study of political activism amongst the Durham miners sits at the intersection of two of the great debates within labour history—the ‘Great Labour Unrest’, and the ‘rise of Labour’. Yet despite the fact that both historiographies focus on similar periods of time, there has been remarkably little crossover between the two. Mates’ work, however, convincingly demonstrates the links between the two debates, and shows how political and industrial struggles were clearly intertwined.
The core of the book is an exhaustively detailed account of the activities of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the syndicalists and other left-wing groups in the Durham coalfield before the First World War. Through this detailed case study, it makes a significant contribution to the debates concerning the ‘rise of Labour’. In this historiography, the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) and its leader, John Wilson, have often been characterized as a formidable bulwark of Liberal politics. Mates shows, however, that Liberalism in the coalfield was challenged—and challenged effectively—from the left before 1914. By the outbreak of war, thanks to the efforts of the ILP and syndicalist activists, the old Liberal ideology of ‘shared interests’ had been eclipsed by a form of class consciousness. This new consciousness, he argues, explicitly recognized the conflict of interest between miners and coal owners and embraced a far more militant attitude towards industrial relations. In this account, the 1912 National Minimum Wage Strike and the clear DMA vote in favour of strike action is a key watershed moment. The two-thirds majority is interpreted as a rejection by the rank-and-file of the idea that wages should be linked to profits—a central tenet of Liberal economics. Mates contrasts this with the Hauliers’ Strike of 1893—in which the DMA had declined to participate—to underline the rapidity of the change from Liberalism to class-based Labour politics. What is particularly impressive is the nuance in his depiction of ‘the left’ that is sustained throughout the book. Terms such as ‘rank-and-file’ and discussions of the nature of militancy are presented in all their complexity, whilst ‘the left’ is shown to be a heterogeneous movement, with a considerable overlap in ideas, rhetoric and activists, rather than a series of distinct and coherent groups.
