British Coal Mining Strikes, 1893-1940

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The data were originally gathered to form an empirical backdrop to theoretical work on wage bargaining and strike activity undertaken as doctoral research by Outram (Quentin Outram, <i>A Theory of Wage Bargaining</i>, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987). The wealth of the data encouraged Outram and Church to undertake a further project directly concerned to explain the causes of strike activity in the industry before the Second World War, the regional and inter-colliery differences in strike propensity, and the relation between strikes and social solidarity. The dataset was extended and partially re-coded for these purposes. The dataset is unique in that it allows the construction of strike histories for individual collieries over the 1921-1940 period and for individual 'places' for the entire 1893-1940 period. Nevertheless, the focus of the research was on cross-section rather than time series variation. The data have been exploited to provide a detailed description of the dimensions of strike activity and strike solidarity in the industry, to investigate the relationship between colliery strike activity and the characteristics of colliery localities, to examine the connections between colliery size, strike activity and miners' strike solidarity, and to investigate the impact of a number of other factors on strike histories, including technology, working conditions, patterns of mine ownership and management, union membership density, and the markets for coal and mine labour.Main Topics:The datasets list each strike officially recorded in the British coal mining industry by the Ministry of Labour and its predecessor bodies from 1893 to 1940, together with all the significant information about each strike gathered by the Ministry. The data available for each strike vary over time but the 'core' data include: location, date and duration, the number of firms involved, the numbers of mineworkers involved and their occupations, the 'cause' or 'object' of the strike, its result and the method of settlement. From 1921 onwards the datasets include the name of the company and/or colliery affected. These data provided a link to published annual data on individual firms and collieries which has been exploited to add contextual data to each strike record. These contextual data include the numbers employed at the struck colliery and at all the struck company's collieries. This allows the computation of a 'strike participation rate' for each strike, showing the proportion of the colliery or company mine workforce which was involved in the strike. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.