ABSTRACT
Thus Hugh Dalton characterised the Miners' Federation's style in the summer of 1942.' As President of the Board of Trade he had just experienced a bruising battle over the reorganisation of the coal industry. A Labour minister within the Churchill coalition he had faced pressure from Conservative backbenchers, many of whom saw the issue as symbolic, a test of encroaching 'socialist' influence. In contrast, miners' leaders and many Labour Members believed that the proper response by a Labour minister had to be state ownership. For the protagonists the case of coal summoned up images of past battles; it was a test of political identity. The resulting compromise involved a cumbersome apparatus of dual control which strengthened government powers over production, but maintained private ownership. A scheme for coal rationing was effectively abandoned. The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) endorsed the deal as the best available and most of its sponsored MPs supported the arrangement.2 In this context Dalton's suggestion of inflexibility requires clarification. This product of Eton and Kings sat for a County Durham seat and enjoyed a close relationship with the local miners' leadership. Here was the image of miners as a reliable support for the party leadership, a loyalist ballast. Yet there were other images of miners' as sectional and inflexible. If Labour leaders could idealise the Durham miners as 'the salt of the earth',3 they could also cast A.J. Cook and later radicals as destructive militants who threatened any conception of orderly progress. The diverse images raise important issues about the complex relationship between the MFGB and the Labour Party.
