The Great Labour Unrest

Reviewed by: The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield by Lewis H. Mates Keith Laybourn Lewis H. Mates, The Great Labour Unrest: Rank-and-File Movements and Political Change in the Durham Coalfield ( Manchester: Manchester University Press 2016) At the beginning of World War I, the Durham Miners' Association (dma) had more than 100,000 members and was a major affiliate of the powerful Miners' Federation of Great Britain (mpgb). Dominated by John Wilson, founder member and Liberal member of Parliament, it was always seen as a bastion of Liberalism in the County Durham even after the mpgb affiliated to the Labour Party at the beginning of 1909, with Wilson remaining a staunch Liberal until his death in 1915. Yet by 1921 the dma was committed to the abolition of capitalism, some form of class consciousness having been formed by the eve of war with an awareness that the interests of miners and mine owners were different, thus allowing Labour to win ten of the eleven county parliamentary seats in Durham in the 1922 general election. To Mates, this transformation was caused by the Great Labour Unrest of 1910 to 1914 which saw the industrial demands of trade unionists interlinked with the political fortunes of the Independent Labour Party (ilp) and the Labour Party. In essence, this book is an immensely detailed account of these changes focusing upon activities of the ilp, the syndicalists, and other left-wing groups in the context of industrial relations of the Durham coalfield and how these interlinked to reduce the influence of Liberalism and encouraged the growth of socialist and ilp/ Labour Party support. Mates offers four main arguments. First, he argues that the Liberals were depleted by the attacks of the left, particularly between 1910 and 1914. Secondly, he establishes that industrial and political developments were intertwined, encouraging the move from Liberalism to Labour. Thirdly, and adding to this, he argues that the most active challenge to the Liberals came from the campaign for an individual minimum wage. The 1912 National Minimum Wage Strike and the clear dma support for it was a key watershed moment. Two thirds of the Durham miners voted in favour of an individual minimum wage in what was seen as a denial and a rejection of the Liberal tenet that wages should be linked to profits. [End Page 288] Mates compares this decision with the Hauliers' Strike of 1893, in which the dma refused to be involved. In other words, by 1912 there was clear evidence of a move from Liberal economic and social ideas to a more class-based situation in the Durham coalfield. And fourthly, he argues that ilp were partly influenced by syndicalist ideas but that it acted to undermine the development of syndicalism for much of the period between 1910 and 1914. Indeed, syndicalism was refracted through the prism of local politics and the ilp to produce a class consciousness favouring ilp and Labour politics rather than syndicalism itself. In an impressive historiography, Mates controversially suggests both that the major questions about the Great Unrest have been ignored in favour of methodological disputes and that mainstream politics has been ignored in favour of what Lenin referred to as left-wing communism. This is followed by a chapter on the economic, industrial, and political context of the mining community of Durham, and then by four detailed narrative chapters on the various movements and campaigns for industrial changes in the Durham coalfield, and by a reflective and perceptive conclusion. The main challenges to Liberalism, it would appear, came from three individuals and one organization. Jack Lawson, author of the autobiography A Man's Life and an iLPer who later became a member of Attlee's first Labour cabinet, George Harvey, the "Wardley Lenin" named after the pit village in which he worked, and Will Lawther, an iLPer who became one of the greatest of the trade union and political figures of the 20th century. They provided the radical and socialist leadership to challenge Wilson and his hold over the dma through their rank-and-file campaigns. All were influenced by being students at Ruskin College, Oxford, where

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