ABSTRACT
The ballot votes of the beginning of February had been decisive: the structure of the South Wales Miners’ Federation was not to be changed. All mining whether it be for gold or silver or uranium is arduous and dangerous. From the very beginning of mining trade unionism the question of safety played a very big part in their concerns. On June 7, 1906 there was appointed a Royal Commission on Mines particularly to deal with the health and safety of miners. The Coal Mines Act, after the Royal Commission on Mines of 1906 to 1909, had been debated throughout the year 1911 and passed into law in the early winter of that year. The men who met their death underground at Senghenydd had died blasted by the force of the explosion, or burnt alive by the fire in the workings, or stifled by its fumes, or choked by the deadly afterdamp.
