First published in 1984, The Politics of the Yorkshire Miners examines all aspects of political activity of the Yorkshire Area of the NUM. The book was written using original research from the archives of the Yorkshire Area combined with the author’s personal experience. It explores developments from 1945 onwards, and looks at internal politics within the Area, discussing the nature of policies on both industrial bargaining and wider political aims. It considers the role of sponsored MPs and their relationship to the Area, as well as the NUM’s ‘special relationship’ with the Labour Party. The structure of the Area and its role within the NUM nationally are also discussed, and detailed analysis is given to the strikes of 1972 and 1974.

First published in 1993, The History of the Yorkshire Miners 1881-1918 is concerned with the workers in the Yorkshire coal industry, their union, and the broader mining communities in which they lived from the formation of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association in 1881 through to the end of the First World War. The period covered is of considerable importance for the consolidation of the Yorkshire Miners Union, and indeed for the building of a national miners’ federation and an international miners’ organisation, in both of which the role of Yorkshire’s leadership was central. The decades straddling the turn of the century were characterised by volatility in the mining industry, which was reflected in a number of strikes. Carolyn Baylies traces these general processes and focuses, in detail, upon a number of episodes during which union struggles and community involvement coalesced. She explores the dynamic between district and local levels of the union, and the tensions that accompanied a progressive rationalization of bargaining machinery. This book will be of interest to students of history and sociology.

The near destruction of the coal industry and the NUM offers a timely vantage point from which to appraise their history. This book presents a collection of specially commissioned essays by leading authorities on miners' history, which challenge the stereotypical imagery of miners' solidarity and loyalty to the Labour Party. This book examines the politics of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, the unique influences of syndicalism and communism within some of its constituent areas, and the uneven pace of the Labour Party's 'forward march' within the coalfields. Such national developments are then studied within their diverse regional contexts through a series of case studies which permits comparison between the major British coalfields. Finally, the book considers the attempts to overcome these regional diversities with the formation of the National Union of Mineworkers and the nationalisation of the mining industry.

The British coal industry no longer exists and yet the figure of the coal miner lives on in the British cultural imagination. In feature films and documentaries, miners are typically portrayed as proletarian traditionalists working in a dying industry. Taking this perspective, the 1984/85 miners' strike seems a desperate last stand against forces much bigger than the miners themselves -- not just the Thatcher government but the tide of historical change itself. In this ground-breaking study, Jörg Arnold challenges a declinist reading of the people working in one of Britain's most important energy industries. The study makes extensive use of previously inaccessible records to offer a new account of the British miner in the age of de-industrialisation. The book situates the miners in broader structures of feeling, and reconstructs the miners' sense of the past and the future. Arnold argues that Britain's miners went through a cyclical movement -- from loser to winner and back again -- as Britain underwent a de-industrial revolution in the final decades of the twentieth century. The book reinserts the industry's 'new dawn' of the 1970s into the story of coal and shows that the miners wielded real power. The industry's reversal of fortunes, inscribed in Plan for Coal (1974), proved short-lived. It was significant all the same. Its significance, the book argues, did not lie in affecting the long-term trajectory of the coal industry. Rather, the 'new dawn' was important in raising the political and cultural stakes. The miners found themselves at the centre of sharply conflicting visions of the future at a critical juncture in Britain's history. The figure of the coal miner became invested with sharply contrasting characteristics: hero and villain, underdog and enemy, proletarian traditionalist and standard bearer of Socialist advance. The miners were no mere spectators in this process. They were agents, thought to be uniquely powerful by their numerous opponents, and half believing in this power themselves. The miners' special nature, however, jarred with the aspiration to lead an ordinary life, producing tensions that were most cruelly exposed in the year-long strike of 1984/1985.

Literary Politics identifies and debates competing definitions of 'English Studies' as an academic subject, celebrates the diversity of contemporary literary studies, and demonstrates the ways in which a range of literary texts can be understood as politically engaged, sometimes in unexpected ways.

A History of the Independent Labour Party

Dr Tanner utilises extensive data from the respective party records to examine the nature of the Liberal and Labour parties prior to 1914.

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most controversial figures of modern times. Her governments inspired hatred and veneration in equal measure and her legacy remains fiercely contested. Yet assessments of the Thatcher era are often divorced from any larger historical perspective. This book draws together leading historians to locate Thatcher and Thatcherism within the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Britain. It explores the social and economic crises of the 1970s; Britain's relationships with Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States; and the different experiences of Thatcherism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The book assesses the impact of the Thatcher era on class and gender and situates Thatcherism within the Cold War, the end of Empire and the rise of an Anglo-American 'New Right'. Drawing on the latest available sources, it opens a wide-ranging debate about the Thatcher era and its place in modern British history.

Coal is a topic that has been, remains, and will continue to be of significant interest to those concerned with the causes, course and consequences of industrialization and de-industrialization. This six-volume, reset collection provides scholars with a wide variety of sources relating to the Victorian coal industry.

In Reform, Revolution and Direct Action amongst British Miners, Martyn Ives offers a new perspective on one of the most volatile periods in labour history. His research into the astonishing coalfield militancy of 1919 reveals it was a watershed year on a par with 1926. Indeed the General Strike was in many ways merely its dim echo. Whilst historians have skated over the labour unrest of 1919, Martyn Ives uncovers a remarkable incidence of unofficial mass strikes in the coalfields, waged against mine-owners, government and trade union leaders alike. Led by revolutionaries, and infused with political radicalism, this mass movement offered a glimpse of an alternative road to socialism, based upon the organised industrial power of the working class.