The decline of the old industries and the rise of the consumer market
Coal industry case study: Part 4
Coal miners suffered from the loss of Britain’s now traditional markets for coal, the result of newly developing coal industries elsewhere and the competition from new sources of energy.
They also suffered from the slow but real improvement in productivity that came with investment and the closure of some mines. By the period 1928-36, a quarter or more of all miners were continuously out of work. When things did improve in the later 1930s, this was largely dependent on earlier closures and departures from the mines. The mining areas were among the areas that suffered most from high and long-term unemployment.
Here the historian C.L. Mowat, drawing on a detailed study of the southwest Durham coalfield, describes the conditions:
Consider the Bishop Auckland area of southwest Durham. It had 33 coal pits employing 28,000 miners. By 1935 17 pits were abandoned, three more closed and unlikely to reopen, and the remaining 13, where work dragged on with small and irregular shifts, employed 6500 men, though often not on full time. Despite the fact that many families, and particularly the younger men had moved away, unemployment was very high: 80 percent or more of the workers in Tow Law were unemployed, almost 2100 percent of those in Sheldon; at West Auckland only one hundred men out of a thousand had had work in the last seven years. In a street of sixty cottages in one of the mining villages you would hardly find one where the man was at work.’
When the Pilgrim Trust reported on the state of unemployment in 1938, it highlighted the long-term unemployment found in the coal fields and in other areas of old industry. Thus in Crook, County Durham, 71 percent of the unemployed had been out of work for over five years, while in the Rhondda (South Wales) 45 percent of the 11,000 unemployed had been unemployed for over five years. Pause and think for a moment of the impact of such large-scale and long-term impact on the community and the individual.
This and other reports documented the impact of such unemployment on the population of these areas. You should first think about those who were most likely to be affected by long-term unemployment. Unemployment was very uneven, both geographically and in its impact within the community.
ACTIVITY
What sorts of people were most likely to be affected by long-term unemployment in these areas where old industries were in decline? Young, middle-aged or elderly people? Educated people or people with no qualifications? People nearer or further from employment opportunities? Answer: Those who found it easiest to find one of the few jobs or move elsewhere in hope of new employment tended to be those without ties, the young and educated, or those who were lucky to live where there were areas of growth within easy distance. In the depressed coalfields, others were likely to suffer long-term unemployment. Of course this all represents generalisations. But it is important to remember how varied was the impact and duration of unemployment. If you wanted to move to the south-east you would likely to be going without a job, just the hope of one, and without accommodation. Was this a risk you would be able to take?
The impact of long-term unemployment in the coal fields
Once out of work it would be very difficult to find another job. It was the young and unattached who found it easiest to move to where the jobs were. This was a feature highlighted by some of the contemporary reports into the conditions of the mining areas. The Pilgrim Trust report, for example, underlined the difficulties of family men who were found in disproportionate numbers in the coalfields where those who were able to leave did so.
The following extract from the report, covering the Durham coalfield, emphasises the quality of the wasted labour and the desire to get back to work. As befits the assumptions of the time, stress is placed on unemployment of men, who it was assumed would be the breadwinners. But what is also clear from this report and many other accounts is that the heroic struggle to maintain the family was just as much the work of the women.
Open question
Read the following extract from the Pilgrim Trust report. ‘None of these men had permanent steady work within the last six years. All of them anxious for work’. Why does the author think that the men deserve to get work? What difficulties did they face in moving to where the jobs were?
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Extract from Men without work: A report made to the Pilgrim Trust
This means two things. It means first that the weight of unemployment in the Special Areas [areas of high unemployment necessary restructuring highlighted for special relief under the Special Areas Act of 1934] is in the upper age groups, where it is more intractable. Many observers both in Wales and in Durham told us that the essence of the Special Areas problem now was the problem of these older men living on in a community from which the vitality of youth had to a large extent been removed. Thus with the reduction in size of the Special Areas problem it has become to some extent more difficult, and the ordinary orthodox methods are not likely to solve it.
It means in the second place that there is a group of men left, neither young nor old- the family men which is (in Crook especially) disproportionately large, and consists of excellent material. Here are some of the recorded comments:
Miner, motor driver (age 36). He has kept his hands in condition by joinery, wireless repairing and manufacture, etc. Adaptable. Should make a very good semi-skilled workman with very little training. He worked 70 hours a week for 35s. in his last job (motor driver) just for the sake of working.
Miner (age 35). Cannot stand the heat of the pit, but is willing and able to take any other job. He is desperate and would take anything with both hands. There is no question here of the equality between wage and allowance having diminished willingness to work.
Joiner- but not a ‘tradesman’ (age 28). Home exceptionally clean, an excellent man, very strong, the only bar the fact he is not a qualified craftsmen. Very anxious to get a job, and his wife is evidently very anxious also.
Miner (age 34). Very good home. Almost everything, clothes, etc., made by hand. Wife is determined to save enough to give son a good education, whatever happens. Difficult to imagine anyone more employable than applicant, who was apprenticed to a trade, but broke apprenticeship, when father went to the War, to get better money coal-mining to ‘help his mother’.
None of these men had had permanent steady work within the last six years. All of them anxious for work. One, the last, is now employed in Banbury [Oxfordshire]. His wife told one of us how she was saving up to make it possible for him to go there and look for work. ‘Every week that there’s an extra shilling I’ve bought a little extra cocoa or sugar or something to help me over the time he goes. My mother, who’s got a little bit of her own, will come here while he’s away and that will help me on. But he’s in a sweat about going, for he’s heard that the people are not friendly. He likes to be able to talk to anyone he meets in the street.’
Source: J. Stevenson, Social Conditions - Britain between the war, Penguin, quoting Men without work: A report made to the Pilgrim Trust (Cambridge 1938).
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Miners on strike, Harworth Colliery, Nottinghamshire, 1937.
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Britain between the wars
Coal industry case study: Part 4
Consider the Bishop Auckland area of southwest Durham. It had 33 coal pits employing 28,000 miners. By 1935 17 pits were abandoned, three more closed and unlikely to reopen, and the remaining 13, where work dragged on with small and irregular shifts, employed 6500 men, though often not on full time. Despite the fact that many families, and particularly the younger men had moved away, unemployment was very high: 80 percent or more of the workers in Tow Law were unemployed, almost 2100 percent of those in Sheldon; at West Auckland only one hundred men out of a thousand had had work in the last seven years. In a street of sixty cottages in one of the mining villages you would hardly find one where the man was at work.’
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