ONE hundred years ago this week the miners of the south Wales coalfield went on strike in the middle of the imperialist WWI. Welsh steam coal fuelled Britain’s powerful navy, so their action produced the most furious reaction in the press and Parliament.

Yet the centenary of this momentous episode has gone almost unmarked. Why might that be?

At the outset of the war in August 1914, the south Wales coalfield was the biggest in Britain, with 233,000 miners and the deepest mines. As the Admiralty demanded more of its near-smokeless high-quality coal and other shipping fleets followed suit, total annual production reached 57 million tons.

Much of the steam coal was dug in the 53 collieries which peppered the Rhondda valleys.

Monopolisation meant that half a dozen companies had come to dominate the coalfield, including Powell Duffryn (PD — widely known as “Poverty and Death”) and the Cambrian Combine.

Most of the coalowners and their top managers were hard, driving men. Together with the dangerous conditions in their deep mines, they helped shape a new generation of militants in the South Wales Miners’ Federation (the Fed).

The Lib-Lab old guard had begun to lose ground to them in the first decade of the 20th century as their doctrine of conciliation rather than confrontation lost both money and lives.

In August 1910 Cambrian miners were locked out for not accepting the withdrawal of extra money for working in “abnormal places.” A strike had then broken out in PD collieries before all 12,000 Cambrian miners came out officially in November. As other strikes and ferocious street battles broke out across south Wales in the great summer unrest of 1911, the region in effect came under military occupation.

In this climate the Unofficial Reform Committee sprang up and formulated its famous manifesto for workers’ control of industry, The Miners’ Next Step.

The Rhondda miners who drafted it had received a Marxist education at Ruskin or the Central Labour College and through the Plebs’ League. While some were members of the Independent Labour Party or the British Socialist Party, many were also heavily influenced by syndicalism — the doctrine of revolutionary trade unionism.

In his memoirs, General Sir Nevil Macready, the unofficial military governor of south Wales during the Cambrian dispute, painted a vivid portrait of them and their ilk: “The strike committee consisted of half a dozen fanatical socialists, strongly impregnated with the ideas of Karl Marx. On several occasions they came to see me. Sparing of words as a rule, rigid teetotallers, unable to see beyond the narrow tenets of their creed, they undoubtedly exercised a strong hold over the strikers.”

However, their hostility to Macready thawed a little over tea and ginger beer, and he also noted that “except for occasional outbursts of wild talk about the terrible things that would happen if their demands were not met, the committees were reasonable men to deal with, and adhered strictly to any engagements they entered into.”

Although they were defeated in the Cambrian battle after 11 months, not least by the machinations of their leaders at British level, these were the Marxists and syndicalists who then agitated successfully for the Britain-wide strike which won a statutory minimum wage throughout the industry in 1912.

As for the Cambrian and PD owners and their managers, Macready found them to be arrogant, autocratic and downright dishonest.

Despite battle-weariness, a shortage of funds and the illusion of victory, industrial and political confidence remained high enough for the Fed’s executive council to reject a request from the Admiralty to work two days’ holidays in view of the international situation.

Instead, the Fed leadership urged the British government to stay neutral and work for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Austria and Serbia, while the International Miners’ Organisation should convene a peace conference of its constituent unions.

But within three days, on August 4, Britain had declared war against Austria’s ally, Germany, and all the fine statements of international working-class solidarity were blown away.

The people of south Wales, including the miners, danced to the war drums as much as anyone else. Almost immediately, the Fed executive acceded to an Admiralty request that miners producing coal for the navy work extra hours, even on Sundays.

Responding to press reports of sweeping triumphs and atrocities on the part of the barbaric “Hun,” many Fed leaders urged their members to volunteer for the armed forces. One in six south Wales miners rushed to the colours, as high a rate as at any coalfield in Britain. A Welsh Army Corps was formed despite initial objections from secretary of state for war Lord Kitchener, who told Prime Minister Herbert Asquith that “no purely Welsh regiment is to be trusted; they are always wild and insubordinate and ought to be stiffened by a strong infusion of English or Scotch.”

Only a minority in the labour movement remained true to socialist and anti-imperialist principles. One such person was Will Hay, a co-author of The Miners’ Next Step, whose pamphlet War! and the Welsh Miner railed against “European capitalism,” the “profit-mongers,” the “prostitute press” and militarism for their roles in turning the “working cattle” of rival countries against each other.

He proposed that the miners of navy coal take advantage of their position to fight for higher wages and so undermine the imperialist war effort. Hay also warned against the dangers of a future European union of capitalist states.

By spring 1915, other workers were beginning to shed their illusions about the war. Engineers and shipbuilders walked out for a much-needed pay rise on Clydeside.

But when the Fed asked Welsh coal owners for talks about a new wages settlement, they met with refusal. In response, the miners gave notice that the current agreement would expire on June 30. They also called upon Britain’s miners to strike in pursuit of a 20 per cent war bonus.

Although most of the bonus was soon conceded coalfield by coalfield, including in south Wales, the Welsh coal monopolies announced that they would not discuss the old, complex district agreement — which capped wage rates at 60 per cent above 1879 levels — for the duration of the war.

Meanwhile, they had doubled the prices charged to the Admiralty since the outbreak of hostilities. 

As the wartime coalition government took steps to outlaw industrial action while failing in frantic efforts to broker a south Wales settlement, the miners’ patience expired.

On July 12, by almost two to one, 303 delegates representing 156,000 Welsh miners gave notice at a special conference that they would strike if no settlement was reached within three days.

The South Wales Miners’ Federation had decided to stop work in the middle of a world war, on Thursday July 15 1915.

The press exploded in fury. The Times, Manchester Guardian and others accused German agents and home-grown Marxist agitators of betraying the country, even offering financial rewards for their names. The Daily Express described the strikers as “the Kaiser’s Black Guards” who had “captured England’s coal.”

They demanded harsher retribution than a Royal Proclamation and fines of £5 a day (more than double a miner’s weekly wage).

Nevertheless, the strike remained solid across the coalfield as talks between the Fed and the government proved barren.

Then, out of the blue, munitions minister Lloyd George, Labour leader Arthur Henderson and Board of Trade president Walter Runciman took the train to Cardiff and, in talks on Tuesday July 20, conceded almost all the miners’ demands for a new, more generous and simplified wages agreement. The coal owners had no option but to swallow it whole.

Following a reconvened special conference, the south Wales miners returned to work on the Thursday and the pit-head wheels turned once more.

The strike demonstrated what can be achieved by unity and determination, especially when based upon strong workplace organisation and real democratic control and accountability.

It contributed to a revival of militancy and Marxist influence in the coalfield and the Miners’ Federation, which led Lenin to propose that communists consider publishing a daily or weekly paper for the Welsh miners.

But it also confirmed the ruling class need for a more powerful and systematic state approach to monitoring and combating industrial and political “subversion.”

• Rob Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party.