Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation
| Full name | Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1881 |
| Date dissolved | 1945 |
| Merged into | National Union of Mineworkers |
| Members | 70,000 (1907) |
| Affiliation | Miners' Federation of Great Britain |
| Country | England |
The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation (LCMF) was a trade union that operated on the Lancashire Coalfield in North West England from 1881 until it became the Lancashire area of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945.
Colliery owners fended off unions until well into the 19th century and trade unionism was slow to take a hold on the Lancashire Coalfield. Wages were poor and employers arbitrarily fined men for minor reasons, disallowed wages on false pretexts and victimised perceived radicals. Bonds, a system of hiring that legally tied miners to their job for a year, were used to enforce discipline. Miners protested about poor wages in 1757 when bread prices rose and some marched from Kersal towards Manchester in protest, but were turned back. When trouble flared, the Home Secretary ordered troops to be ready to quell unrest. Long strikes were unsustainable as the miners had no organisation or finances to back them. The first miners' association was the Brotherly Union Society formed in Pemberton, Wigan in 1794. It was described as a friendly society to avoid prosecution under the Combination Acts and in the early-19th century there were 21 such societies in central Lancashire.
Strikes in the first quarter of the 19th century generally failed to improve pay and conditions. In 1830 miners formed the Friendly Society of Coal Mining with headquarters in Bolton. The organisation was based on local branches with delegates attending quarterly meetings. The coal owners were not sympathetic and when the men went on strike to assert their right to organise, William Hulton issued a pamphlet condemning his workforce who he considered had: "wantonly injured me to the fll limits of your ability, in my purse, and you have much farther wounded my feelings".
The Miners' Association of Great Britain and Ireland was established at a meeting in Wakefield in 1842 and lasted for seven years. It supported the commission headed by Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury and the passing of the Coal Mines Act 1842 which prohibited all females and boys under ten from working underground. The association had 100,000 members and was involved in lobbying parliament to prevent persecution by tyrannical employers. The association, initially strongest in Yorkshire and the North-East, held a public meeting at Kersal in 1843 that was attended by 150 miners. Its general-secretary, David Swallow, considered the Lancashire miners to be among the worst paid in the country and attempted to address miners in Westhoughton, but the mineowners, including William Hulton, prevented him from holding a meeting. Lord Francis Egerton employed 1,300 workers, paying them little more than if they were in the workhouse. Opposition from the coal owners did not prevent the association recruiting members and 98 lodges were formed in Lancashire and Cheshire by October 1843. Lancashire miners were poorly paid compared with other coalfields and antagonisms arose between the workers and the union.
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