National Union of Mineworkers (UK)
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| Founded | January 1945 |
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| Predecessor | Miners' Federation of Great Britain |
| Members | 100 (2015) |
| Affiliation | TUC, Labour,NSSN |
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| Office location | 2 Huddersfield Road, Barnsley |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Website | www |
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is a trade union for coal miners in Great Britain, formed in 1945 from the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). The NUM took part in three national miners' strikes, in 1972, 1974 and 1984–85. After the 1984–85 strike and the subsequent closure of most of Britain's coal mines, it became a much smaller union. It had around 170,000 members when Arthur Scargill first led the union, a figure which had fallen in 2015 to an active membership of around 100.
The Miners' Federation of Great Britain was established in Newport, Monmouthshire in 1888 but did not function as a unified, centralised trade union for all miners. Instead the federation represented and co-ordinated the affairs of the existing local and regional miners' unions whose associations remained largely autonomous. The South Wales Miners' Federation, founded in 1898, joined the MFGB in 1899, while the Northumberland Miners' Association and the Durham Miners' Association joined in 1907 and 1908, respectively.
In January 1945 the MFGB was superseded by the National Union of Mineworkers. Within the organisation, each coalfield continued to exercise a degree of autonomy, having its own district association, president, general secretary, and headquarters. Originally, a national strike required a two-thirds majority in a ballot of members but proved near impossible to achieve and the majority was reduced to 55% in 1970 and to 50% in 1984. Regions of the union could call their own strikes. Different areas varied as to how militant they were and it was not uncommon for animosity to exist between areas.
The NUM was strongly supportive of the Labour Party. During the two governments of Harold Wilson, hundreds of pits closed and thousands of miners left the coal industry but the NUM leadership put up little resistance to the programme.Unofficial strikes were common in the coal industry. Following an unofficial strike in 1969 about the pay of surface workers, it was decided that the threshold for the ballot should be lowered.
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