Organized Labour and the Home Office

By the early nineteenth century, colliers were demonstrating an increasing propensity to combine and collectively bargain. The widespread public support of Lord Ashley’s campaign to prohibit underground female and child labour had inspired confidence and a sense of justice in their grievances, and local preoccupations turned towards thoughts of national conditions.1 This largely culminated in the formal establishment of the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland in November 1842 at Wakefield, under the leadership of Martin Jude, a former collier blacklisted for militancy.