“A History of the Scottish Miners from the earliest times"
R Page Arnot 1955
Chapter 2
Child Labour and Chartism
The colliers, emancipated from legal bondage in 1799 found that as free men they were, together with other workers, subject to new suppressive laws… The combination acts passed in 1799-1800 forbade the workers to combine together to better their conditions of life. The 25 years of the combination laws made strike and trade unions a crime to be met by heavy penalty’s. Nevertheless there were strikes and even in 1817 an underground colliers union… It was said to have existed all over Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, conducted openly and contended with the employers by strikes... The first union amongst Scottish miners after the repeal of the combination laws in 1824 was founded by operative colliers from twenty seven pits around Kilmarnock meeting on October 25th 1824. That same year 1400 Ayrshire miners were on strike for over two months. Though the union disappears after the strike, we can be sure from this time onwards, from the evidence of other coal fields that there were many strikes and these led to many short lived unions. Throughout the island local unions were spreading and combinations of these were springing up... Thus began the long struggle for democracy.
Jim Phillips
Senior Lecturer, Economic and Social History, University of Glasgow
The 1824 Address to the Colliers of Ayrshire, outlining the formation of a trade union of mineworkers, the Colliers’ Association, is a highly significant document. It illuminates the determination of Ayrshire miners to place limits on the powers and privileges of the coal masters in early industrial Scotland. The Address built upon the hard-won repeal of the class-vindictive Combination Acts, which had outlawed trade union organisation. The Ayrshire miners now asserted their right to control entry to employment in the industry, and in so doing stabilise wage levels and earnings, which the masters would otherwise drive down by recruiting more compliant labour. The Colliers’ Association would further restrain the power of the masters by providing strike pay to members engaged in disputes with their employers. This would strengthen the capacity of miners to resist wage cutting and other forms of aggressive employer behaviour. The Association in these ways was radical and ambitious, applying apparent brakes to the application of free market principles in the industry. But it was also in sympathy with early trade unionism’s conciliatory approach, emphasising the reasonable and moderate nature of worker demands. The Association articulates in this document too a determined collective form of worker self-reliance, noting the dangers and casualties of the trade, and the need for miners themselves to provide for the dependants of those injured or killed. This indicates the presence in Ayrshire coal mining of a further important general feature of early trade unionism, the self-conscious independence – from employer control – of skilled working men. So the document shows that the divergent strands of twentieth century coal industry trade unionism, militant ambition and cautious self-restraint, which were evident as recently as the great strike of 1984-5, had deep historical roots.
