The British Coalmining Industry, 1870 – 1946: A Political and Economic History

286 Pages·1977·26.283 MB·English

by  M. W. Kirby (auth.)

The British Coalmining Industry, 1870-1946
The British Coalmining
Industry, 1870-1946
A Political and Economic History
M. W. KIRBY
Lecturer in Economic History, University of Stirling
M
© M. W. Kirby 1977
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission.
First published 1977 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Dublin
Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
ISBN 978-0-333-21369-8 ISBN 978-1-349-15813-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15813-3
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Contents
List of Tables vi
Acknowledgements vn
Introduction
The Era of Expansion, I870-I9I4 4
2 The First World War and its Consequences, I9I4-20 24
3 Decontrol 49
4 The Road to Crisis, I922-6 66
5 The General Strike, I926 92
6 Coal and Rationalisation, I 926-9 108
7 The Genesis of the Coal Mines Act of I930 I24
8 The Control of Competition, I93I -9 I38
9 The Failure of Compulsory Reorganisation I 53
IO The Second World War and the Nationalisation Issue I69
Appendix I A Plan to bring about large scale Amalgamations in the
Colliery Business and to Modernise and Rationalise the Industry:
Memorandum by the President of the Board of Trade, 24
February I929 20I
Appendix 2 Coal Mines Reorganisation Commission: Mem-
orandum on Colliery Amalgamation, July I93I 203
Appendix 3 Mines Department: 'The Case for Fostering Amal
gamation in the Coal Mining Industry', I6 October I936 205
Bibliography 209
Notes and References 2 I 5
Index 268
List of Tables
United Kingdom Coal Output and Exports, 1870-1913 4
2 Numbers Employed in the Coalmining Industry, 1870-1913 6
3 United Kingdom Coal Output, Employment, Exports, Output
per Person Employed and Profits, 1914-18 30
4 United Kingdom Coal Statistics, 1919-25 67
5 United Kingdom Coal Statistics, 1926-9 II5
6 United Kingdom Coal Statistics, 1930-8 139
7 Percentage Changes in Output, Number of Mines Producing
Coal, and Employment between Selected Years, 1920-38 151
8 United Kingdom Coal Statistics, 1939-45 172
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank my colleagues Professor R. H. Campbell and Dr N. L.
Tranter of the University of Stirling, and Dr Rodney Lowe of Heriot-Watt
University, for their invaluable advice and assistance in the writing of this book.
Needless to say, they bear no responsibility for the opinions expressed or for any
errors of fact or interpretation. My thanks are also due to Professor S. R.
Dennison of the University of Hull, ProfessorS. Pollard and Dr D. E. Bland of
the University of Sheffield, and Mr N. K. Buxton ofHeriot-Watt University for
their early encouragement of this work. The following were kind enough to
grant me permission to quote from their theses: Dr W. H. Janeway, Dr Adrian
Scheps, Dr M.G. Woodhouse, and Dr C.J. Wrigley. The following Institutions
and Depositories afforded generous assistance in enabling me to consult
unpublished material: the Public Record Office; the Scottish Record Office;
Northumberland County Record Office; Durham County Record Office; the
House ofLords Record Office; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Nuffield College,
Oxford; the Cambridge University Library; Churchill College, Cambridge; the
University of Newcastle upon Tyne Library; and the National Coal Board
Central Reference Archives, Denaby. I am grateful to Viscount Bridgeman for
permitting me to read the Bridgeman Diary and to the Editors of The Economic
History Review and Business History for consenting to the reproduction of material
from my articles 'The Control of Competition in the British Coal Mining
Industry in the Thirties', The Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXVI (1973);
'Government Intervention in Industrial Organization: Coal Mining in the
Nineteen Thirties', Business History, xv ( 1 973); and 'The Lancashire Cotton
Industry in the Inter-War Years: A Study in Organizational Change', Business
History, XVI ( 1974). Extracts from official documents at the Public Record Office
appear with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office,
and material from the National Coal Board Records at the Scottish Record
Office appears with the approval of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland. I am
also grateful to Miss Margaret Hendry, who soon came to terms with my
execrable handwriting and produced an excellent typescript. Finally, I wish to
acknowledge the considerable debt I owe to my wife, with whom I discussed
every problem that arose in the preparation of this book: without her help it
would not have been written.
M.W.K.
TO BARBARA
Introduction
A major theme ofBritish industrial history in the half-century before the
outbreak of the Second World War was the movement in favour of what
Keynes termed 'business collectivism' -the rise of the large-scale
company and of co-operative attempts by producers to stabilise their
markets. These trends represented differing reactions to difficult trading
conditions in an era of mounting foreign competition and cyclical
recession. Arrangements for market-sharing were designed to preserve
the existing structure of an industry, while the amalgamation move
ment sought to eliminate inefficient units of production in order to
reduce and ultimately remove surplus productive capacity. The
movement towards integration is traditionally and principally as
sociated with those industries which had provided the dynamics of
expansion for the nineteenth-century economy. The great staple
trades-coalmining, shipbuilding, textiles, iron and steel, and heavy
engineering-had already begun to exhibit the symptoms of secular
retardation in their growth rates well before 1914. The acceleration of
their decline in the inter-war years was to inaugurate a period of
increasing Government involvement in industrial affairs. Such involve
ment found expression in terms of both exhortation and legislation
designed to encourage and regulate the pace of integration.
The basic purpose of this book is to analyse the motives and rationale
of Government policy as applied to the coalmining industry from 1912
to 1946. As such, it constitutes a case study ofState intervention within
the framework of a free-enterprise economy. It discusses the economic
history of the industry since the late nineteenth century and dem
onstrates the essential interplay of political and economic forces in
policy formulation. As the late W. H. B. Court observed, coalmining is a
'political' industry and this aspect of its history is dealt with wherever it
serves to illuminate the role of the State.
A study of this particular industry provides a microcosm of the
problems confronting inter-war industrialists, trade unionists and
2 INTRODUCTION
governments in a period of exceptional economic turmoil. It was
heavily localised, labour intensive and historically dependent for its
prosperity upon a buoyant and expanding export trade. Like so much of
British industry its structure was relatively fragmented, a factor which
retarded effective readjustment to changed market conditions. The fact
of greater Government involvement in coalmining than elsewhere
makes an analysis of its record particularly valuable. It will not be
suggested that inter-war governments possessed any conception of an
'energy' policy as currently understood or long-term strategy in favour,
for example, of structural readjustment, but it will be argued that there
is a discernible continuity, if not coherence, in Government policy
towards the industry which calls for explanation. In this respect the
massively inconsistent Coal Mines Act of 1930, which instituted both
the control of markets by cartel arrangements and a policy of
compulsory colliery amalgamations, was unprecedented in its re
strictive philosophy. This Act alone raised a number of highly
contentious and politically charged issues which were never satisfac
torily resolved until the ownership of the industry was removed from
private hands in 1946. What, for example, were the 'sources or bases of
evidence from which public authority, though not technically expert,
[could] derive justification for pursuing and enforcing combination' in a
private industry, and what were the implications of an outright refusal
on the part of businessmen to co-operate in the implementation of that
policy? Such issues assumed a far greater degree of prominence in
coalmining than elsewhere. The relatively heavy representation of
mining interests on the side of labour and capital in Parliament affords
one possible explanation, but the disastrous state of industrial relations
in such a crucial industry was much more fundamental. This arose both
from the physical isolation of mining communities and the militancy
and strength of mining trade unionism and also from the existence of a
body of employers, distinguished by their tenacious belief in the virtues
of nineteenth-century individualism. No Government, irrespective of
its political complexion, could ignore such a situation.
My own view is that the events in the inter-war coalmining industry,
especially in the sphere of Government policy, can be understood only
by looking at the industry in its contemporary setting. If the principal
task of the historian is to explain, rather than to praise or condemn, a
full awareness of the manifold constraints imposed upon the actions of
politicians and others by the contemporary environment is vital. Thus it
is commonplace to condemn those who sought to impose wage