LogoCoal Shearer at CoalfaceSorn Mine CatrineSorn Mine EntranceHighhouse Colliery AuchinleckSorn Mine Catrine

Extract from
 “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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kilmarnock Address

When this pamphlet was originally published in 1824; Coal miners were emerging from over 200 years of slavery and bondage. In 1799, an act of Scottish parliament freed the miners but the introduction of the Combination Acts in 1799 and 1800 prevented them from combining to form unions. However this did not prevent the miners in Ayrshire from organising unions and they had a well organized and disciplined network of delegates throughout Ayrshire and Lanarkshire in the early parts of the 18th century.

Despite the laws being harshly applied and the threat of heavy penalties, the miners met and voted on wages and conditions. The meetings would be held in secret with only the miners knowing where they where going to be held. A system of code words were advised that could bring the entire coalfield out on strike within days and in the years up to the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1824, the union had a significant presence in the Ayrshire and Lanarkshire coalfields, even daring to hold some of their meetings in public.

There is very little known on these early pioneers as they changed officials and delegates at every meeting. There are no written records about who they were, where they came from and what they discussed at their gatherings as this could have been used as evidence in a prosecution with serious consequences for the accused. When the Combination Acts were repealed in 1824, the Ayrshire miners were already an established underground organisation with unwritten rules, regulations, principles, aspirations and ideals.

The Kilmarnock address reinforces this; it is not the work of an uneducated underclass but a sophisticated document, carefully thought out by intelligent men of sound discretion. This is evident in the articles which makes provision for miners widows and needing a two thirds majority to pass laws at miners meetings. There are also articles regarding the conduct of miners in disputes  with the masters and the rate of wages to be paid to 10 year olds. This was 8 years before the Tolpuddle Martyrs, 32 years before the birth of Keir Hardie and almost 70 years before the creation of the Labour Party in 1895. The Kilmarnock address is one of the most historic documents in the history of the miners; It marks the beginning of organised trade unions and socialism.

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, emphasizing 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.