ABSTRACT
Of all the continuing miners’ associations that covered twenty coalfields in Great Britain the latest was the South Wales Miners’ Federation which within two years came to be the largest. Wages in South Wales were settled not by individual or collective bargaining but by the price of coal. The sliding scale arrangements of South Wales could never be completely insulated. In other coalfields a forward movement in wages had such repeated success that it led to the formation at Newport on November 26, 1889, of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. The haulier lads were many of them enrolled in the militia, for the sake of a summer holiday; and so had learned how to march in order. After the Hauliers’ Strike had been crushed, William Brace began to draw conclusions, which were confirmed when the new Hauliers’ and Wagemen of South Wales and Monmouth Association came to an end before a couple of years were out.
