The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is a trade union for coal workers in Great Britain, formed in 1945 out of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). The NUM took part in three national miners' strikes, in 1972, 1974 and 1984–85. Following the 1984–85 strike, and the subsequent closure of most of Britain's coal mines, it became a much smaller union. It had around 170,000 members when Arthur Scargill became leader in 1981, a figure which had fallen in 2023 to an active membership of 196.

Origins

The Miners' Federation of Great Britain was established in Newport, Monmouthshire in 1888 but did not function as a unified, centralised trade union for all miners. Instead the federation represented and co-ordinated the affairs of the existing local and regional miners' unions whose associations remained largely autonomous. The South Wales Miners' Federation, founded in 1898, joined the MFGB in 1899, while the Northumberland Miners' Association and the Durham Miners' Association joined in 1907 and 1908, respectively.

Post-1945

In January 1945, the MFGB was superseded by the National Union of Mineworkers. Within the organisation, each coalfield continued to exercise a degree of autonomy, having its own district association, president, general secretary, and headquarters. Originally, a national strike required a two-thirds majority in a ballot of members, however, this proved near impossible to achieve, and the majority was reduced to 55% in 1970, and to 50% in 1984. Regions of the union could call their own strikes. Different areas varied as to how militant they were, and it was not uncommon for animosity to exist between areas.

On formation, the NUM had the following areas:

{| class="wikitable sortable col2right col3right"

|-

! Area

! Membership (1944)

! Membership (1979)

|-

| Bristol || 400 || N/A

|-

| Cokemen || 3,000 || 5,138

|-

| Colliery Officials || N/A || 18,980

|-

| Craftsmen Group No.1 || 15,200 || 9,471

|-

| Craftsmen Group No.2 || 12,200 || 4,638

|-

| Cumberland || 7,500 || 914

|-

| Derbyshire || 25,000 || 11,617

|-

| Durham || 106,472 || 16,258

|-

| Kent || 5,100 || 2,759

|-

| Lancashire and Cheshire || 40,000 || 8,798

|-

| Leicester || 4,000 || 3,241

|-

| Midlands || 30,000 || 13,973

|-

| Northumberland || 28,561 || 7,767

|-

| North Wales || 7,526 || 1,052

|-

| Nottingham || 30,000 || 34,275

|-

| Power || 13,561 || 4,982

|-

| Power Group No.2 || N/A || 1,230

|-

| Scotland || 51,000 || 16,373

|-

| Somerset || 2,600 || N/A

|-

| South Derbyshire || 5,743 || 3,269

|-

| South Wales || 100,000 || 26,092

|-

| Yorkshire || 115,000 || 64,060

|}

The NUM was strongly supportive of the Labour Party. During the first government of Harold Wilson, hundreds of pits closed and thousands of miners left the coal industry but the NUM leadership put up little resistance to the programme. Unofficial strikes were common in the coal industry. Following an unofficial strike in 1969 about the pay of surface workers, it was decided that the threshold for the ballot should be lowered.

The Miners' Strike, 1984–85

In the 1980s, because many coal mines were overwhelmingly unprofitable, the Conservative government headed by Margaret Thatcher sought to close them and privatise the rest. In some areas, the NUM was militant Support for the strike was not universal; in some areas such as North Wales support was small, but great in others such as South Wales. Also, Yorkshire was more enthusiastic about the strike than Nottinghamshire where many miners refused to strike.

Margaret Thatcher described Scargill as the "enemy within", but Scargill was equally confrontational. Picket lines were stationed outside the pits and other industrial sites requiring coal and violent clashes with police were common. Strikers had no source of income and some were forced by circumstances to cross the picket lines as reluctant "scabs". The strike ended on 3 March 1985 and the miners returned to work without agreement with the NCB. The strike was unsuccessful and its failure was an era-defining moment in British politics. Following the strike large numbers of collieries were closed. and at the Labour Party's 1985 policy conference, the NUM's unanimous block voting support contributed to the successful passage of Composite 26, a resolution which formally committed the party to an LGBT rights platform.

Decline

Long based in London, Scargill commissioned a new headquarters building in Sheffield, which was completed in 1988. However, with membership declining, the union relocated again in 1992, to share the Yorkshire Area offices in Barnsley.

Although weakened by the strike, the NUM was still a significant force into the early 1990s. A major scheme of closures of deep mines was announced by the government in 1992. The NUM ran a national ballot on possible strike action, and this was passed by members. It worked with the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers to challenge the closures in the High Court; the court imposed an emergency injunction against the closures and the strike action was called off. However, from mid-1993, the mines started closing; the number of working miners and therefore also the membership of the union continued to fall.

In 2011 the union had 1,855 members. In 2012 the union's general secretary, Chris Kitchen, admitted it was in decline after the investigative website Exaro revealed that in 2011 the Derbyshire branch had just one member who was not a paid official. Filings with the Trades Union Certification Officer showed that the NUM's Derbyshire branch had just four members, three of whom were paid officials.

In 2012, it emerged in court cases between the NUM and its former president Arthur Scargill that a substantial proportion of union members' subscriptions was being spent on expenses for Scargill, including unauthorised rent payments for a flat in London's Barbican Estate.

A further 540 miners' job losses were announced in January 2013.

Areas

As of 2025, the following area unions are affiliated to the NUM:

  • Colliery Officials and Staffs
  • South Wales

Landmark events

  • 1947: nationalisation of 958 coal mines under state control; 400 small mines were left in private hands.
  • 1969: a widespread unofficial strike over the pay of surface workers leads to a change in the rules on authorising a national strike: the threshold in a ballot is reduced from two-thirds to 55%.
  • 1972: Official national strike. This ended in success after the Battle of Saltley Gate, where the miners' pickets were supported by solidarity strikes by engineering workers in the Birmingham area.
  • 1973–74: Three-Day Week results from an overtime ban from December 1973. A vote by the NUM to strike at the end of January led Prime Minister Edward Heath to call a general election, in which he was defeated. The new government of Harold Wilson accepted the pay demand.
  • 1984–85: National strike, which divided the union after the strike motion was rejected in several local ballots and the executive refused to hold a national ballot. After almost a year, the NUM returned to work having won almost no concessions. End of the closed shop with the establishment of the UDM.
  • 1994: privatisation of the fifteen state-owned coal mines still in operation, with ownership transferred to the company RJB Mining.

Officers

Presidents

  • 1945: Will Lawther
  • 1954: Ernest Jones
  • 1960: Alwyn Machen
  • 1960: Sidney Ford
  • 1971: Joe Gormley
  • 1982: Arthur Scargill (Honorary President from 2002)
  • 2002: Ian Lavery
  • 2010: Nicky Wilson

Vice Presidents

  • 1945: Jim Bowman
  • 1950: Ernest Jones
  • 1954: Ted Jones
  • 1960: Fred Collindridge
  • 1962: Sidney Schofield
  • 1972: Mick McGahey
  • 1987: Sammy Thompson
  • 1989: Vacant
  • 1992: Frank Cave
  • 2002: Keith Stanley
  • 2010: Nicky Wilson
  • 2010: Wayne Thomas

General Secretaries

  • 1945: Ebby Edwards
  • 1946: Arthur Horner
  • 1959: Will Paynter
  • 1968: Lawrence Daly
  • 1984: Peter Heathfield
  • 1992: Arthur Scargill
  • 2002: Steve Kemp
  • 2007: Chris Kitchen

Notable people

  • Dave Feickert, Industrial Relations Officer, then Head of Research 1983 to 1993, later Mines Safety Advisor NZ and China.

See also

  • History of coal mining in Britain
  • British MPs sponsored by mining unions
  • Trades Union Congress

References

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Arnot, Robert Page. The Miners: a History of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, 1889-1910. London: Allen and Unwin, 1949.
  • Arnot, Robert Page. South Wales Miners, Glowyr de Cymru: a History of the South Wales Miners' Federation (1914–1926). Cardiff : Cymric Federation Press, 1975.
  • Arnot, Robert Page. The Miners; One Union, One Industry: a History of the National Union of Mineworkers, 1939–46. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979.
  • Ashworth, William, and Mark Pegg. History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 5: 1946–1982: The Nationalized Industry (1986)
  • Baylies, Carolyn. The History of the Yorkshire Miners, 1881–1918 Routledge (1993).
  • Beckett, Francis and David Hencke, Marching to the fault line: The Miners' Strike and the battle for industrial Britain (2009) on 1980s
  • Benson, John. "Coalmining" in Chris Wrigley, ed. A History of British industrial relations, 1875–1914 (Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1982), pp 187–208.
  • Benson, John. British Coal-Miners in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History Holmes & Meier, (1980) online
  • Rowe, J. W. F. Wages In the coal industry (1923).
  • Supple, Barry. The History of the British Coal Industry: Volume 4: 1913–1946: The Political Economy of Decline (1988) excerpt and text search
  • Towers, Brian. "Running the gauntlet: British trade unions under Thatcher, 1979–1988." Industrial & Labor Relations Review 42#2 (1989): 163–188.
  • Waller, Robert. The Dukeries Transformed: A history of the development of the Dukeries coal field after 1920 (Oxford U.P., 1983) on the Dukeries
  • Williams, Chris. Capitalism, community and conflict: The south Wales coalfield, 1898–1947 (U of Wales Press, 1998).
  • BBC: Miners strike 1984
  • Spartacus Educational
  • Catalogue of NUM archives held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick