First published in 1961, The Miners in Crisis and War: A History of Miners’ Federation of Great Britain from 1930 Onwards tells the story of two sharply contrasting periods, of world crisis and of world war. The story begins with the Miners’ Federation fallen upon evil days, diminished in numbers, shorn of its former powers of national wage negotiation, divided in counsel and almost whelmed beneath the seismic waves of world economic crisis. Unemployment prevailed, greater than at any time before. The sudden collapse of the cabinet, the formation of the four-party coalition, and the rout of the Labour Party in 1931 shattered these hopes. The climb from the economic abyss of the early thirties is made against a sombre background of the spread of fascism and the approach of war. Then, during the war, the British coal industry and its workers encounter a series of rapid changes, both for better and for worse. The whole main purpose of their trade unions, to maintain and improve the standard of life, is conditioned by the six-year war to such an extent that all come to be merged in a single national union a few months before victory. Thus, in circumstances utterly unforeseen, the old Miners’ Federation, now once more built up in its numbers and in its powers comes to an end after an existence of fifty-five years. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, economics and political science.

No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday – and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday, the heroics and betrayals of the Miners’ Strike, and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher’s shutdowns. Their defeat doomed a way of life. The lingering sense of abandonment in former mining communities would be difficult to overstate. Yet recent electoral politics has revolved around the coalfield constituencies in Labour’s Red Wall. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson draw on decades of research to chronicle these momentous changes through the words of the people who lived through them. This edition includes a new postscript on why Thatcher’s war on the miners wasn’t good for green politics. ‘Excellent’ NEW STATESMAN ‘Brilliant’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ‘Enlightening’ GUARDIAN