Welsh Journals

THE COALOWNERS OF SOUTH WALES, 1873-80: PROBLEMS OF UNITY ALTHOUGH there is still much to be done, work in recent years has gone far to fill out the story of the development of miners' unions in south Wales.1 However, we still know comparatively little about their counter-part, the Owners' Association. The history of the efforts of the owners to act in concert necessarily carries with it less appeal and less dramatic impact than does the story of the attempts to obtain concerted action amongst the colliers. There is, for example, no equivalent of the basic nature of the sacrifice and sufferings borne, not only by a few outstanding leaders, but by a large number of union lodge officials and by the countless anonymous members of the rank-and-file and their families. Nonetheless, it is a mistake to assume that the formation of an owners' association was painless and that its continuance was a matter of smooth inevitability. It is, however, easy to see how such a view has developed. An initial overall glance at the history of the Coal Owners' Association immediately suggests both permanence and a persistent development. The Association enjoyed an unbroken and active existence from its formation-which would certainly date from the founding of the Monmouthshire and South Wales Collieries Association on 19 December 1873, and might very reasonably be dated from the setting up of the Aberdare Steam Collieries Association on 14 March 1864 -until and beyond the nationalisation of the industry in 1947. Such stability suggests a strong common purpose amongst coalowners which provokes the assumption that the creation of an association was a straight-forward affair. Similarly, the rise from the Aberdare association of 1864, whose members controlled about 15 per cent of total output of the coalfield, to the situation in which, by the time of nationalisation, virtually all the output of the coalfield came from the members of the owners' association, naturally suggests a steady progression and encourages the assumption that its growth was continuous and assured. The present article is an attempt to temper these assumptions by singling out two particular aspects-the relatively slow evolution of an association of owners, and the highly 1 See, e.g., Page Arnot, The South Wales Miners (1967), and E. W. Evans, The Miners of South Wales (Cardiff, 1961). In addition, the formation of the Society for the Study of Labour History (and the publication of its journal, Llafur) has naturally given impetus to work in this field. What we now urgently require is a scholarly account of the development of industrial relations in the south Wales coalfield from an explicitly right-wing stand-point.