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Lawrence Daly
Lawrence Daly (20 October 1924 – 23 May 2009) was a coal miner, trade unionist and political activist. Born in Fife as one of nine children, Daly's father Jimmy was a miner and a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), who suffered blacklisting due to his activities during the 1926 general strike. Jimmy was of Irish Catholic extraction whilst Lawrence's mother Janet was a Presbyterian. Lawrence was educated at local Catholic schools: he later said that his education had left him with both a considerable knowledge of Scottish poetry and "a need for a strongly authoritative dogma". He subsequently pursued adult education through correspondence courses organised by the National Council of Labour Colleges. At 15, Lawrence Daly began work as a miner at Glencraig Colliery. At this time he also joined the Young Communist League. Daly was soon active in the Scottish Mineworkers' Union. His initial involvement was in the labour movement's youth wing; amongst ot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coal Miner
Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a 'pit', and the above-ground structures are a 'pit head'. In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine. Coal mining has had many developments in recent years, from the early days of men tunneling, digging and manually extracting the coal on carts to large Open-pit mining, open-cut and Longwall mining, longwall mines. Mining at this scale requires the use of Dragline excavator, draglines, trucks, conveyors, hydraulic jacks and shearers. The coal mining industry has a long history of significant negative Health and environmental im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Left Review
The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960. History Background As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on matters of Marxist theory. One of these was ''The Reasoner,'' a magazine established by historians E. P. Thompson and John Saville in July 1956. A total of three quarterly issues was produced. This publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 to 1959 as ''The New Reasoner,'' with an additional ten issues being produced. Another radical journal of the period was ''Universities and Left Review'', a publication established in 1957 with less of a sense of allegiance to the British communist tradition. This publication was more youth-oriented and pacifist in orientation, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the Cold War, voicing strong opposition to the 1956 Suez War, and support for the emerging Campaign for Nuclea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UK Miners' Strike (1974)
The Three-Day Week was one of several measures introduced in the United Kingdom in 1973–1974 by Edward Heath's Conservative government to conserve electricity, the generation of which was severely restricted owing to industrial action by coal miners and railway workers. From 1 January 1974, commercial users of electricity were limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. Services deemed essential (e.g. hospitals, supermarkets and newspaper printing presses) were exempt. Television companies were required to cease broadcasting at 22:30 to conserve electricity, although this restriction was dropped after a general election was called. The Three-Day Week restrictions were lifted on 7 March 1974. Background Throughout the 1970s the British economy was troubled by high rates of inflation. To tackle this, the government capped public sector pay rises and publicly promoted a clear capped level to the priva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UK Miners' Strike (1972)
The 1972 UK miners' strike was a major dispute over pay between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Conservative Edward Heath government of the United Kingdom. Miners' wages had not kept pace with those of other industrial workers since 1960. The strike began on 9 January 1972 and ended on 28 February 1972, when the miners returned to work. The strike was called by the National Executive Committee of the NUM and ended when the miners accepted an improved pay offer in a ballot. It was the first time since 1926 that British miners had been on official strike, but there had been a widespread unofficial strike in 1969. Background Competition from cheap oil imports arrived in the late 1950s and the coal industry began to suffer from increasing losses. In 1960 Alf Robens became the chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB), and he introduced a policy concentrating on the most productive pits. During his ten-year tenure, productivity increased by 70%, but with far fewer pit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euston Road
Euston Road is a road in Central London that runs from Marylebone Road to King's Cross. The route is part of the London Inner Ring Road and forms part of the London congestion charge zone boundary. It is named after Euston Hall, the family seat of the Dukes of Grafton, who had become major property owners in the area during the mid-19th century. The road was originally the central section of New Road from Paddington to Islington which opened in 1756 as London's first bypass. It provided a route along which to drive cattle to Smithfield Market avoiding central London. Traffic increased when major railway stations, including Euston, opened in the mid-19th century and led to the road's renaming in 1857. Euston Road was widened in the 1960s to cater for the increasing demands of motor traffic, and the Euston Tower was built around that time. The road contains several significant buildings including the Wellcome Library, the British Library and the St Pancras Renaissance L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joe Gormley (trade Unionist)
Joseph Gormley, Baron Gormley, OBE (5 July 1917 – 27 May 1993) was President of the National Union of Mineworkers from 1971 to 1982, and a Labour peer. Early life Joe Gormley was born in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire in 1917, one of seven children, and became a miner at the age of fourteen. He was an active trade union official and became a committee member of the St Helens area branch of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1957. He served as general secretary of the North West region (comprising Lancashire and Cumberland) from April 1961 and joined the national executive in 1963. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 New Year's Honours. He was a fan of Wigan rugby league football club. 1970s In 1971, he was elected as leader of the NUM and presided over the national strike that began on 9 January 1972. The strike lasted for seven weeks. After much negotiation the strike was resolved on 25 February 1972 with a 21% increase in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Ford
Sir Sidney Ford, MBE (29 August 1909–13 August 1983) was a British trade union leader. Sidney William George Ford was born in Edmonton, London. Ford began working for the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) in 1925. He received his knighthood for his work on Lord Devlin's Docks Inquiry and other T.U.C. (trade union congress). He never worked as a miner, but became Secretary of the Colliery Officials and Staffs Area of the union. He was known for his loyalty to the Labour Party and his opposition to the union's left-wing.Andrew Taylor, ''The NUM and British Politics: 1969–1995'', p.25 The MFGB was refounded as the National Union of Mineworkers. Its president-elect, Alwyn Machen, died suddenly in March 1960, the same month he was elected. A new presidential election was held, and Ford stood against Alex Moffat, a Scottish communist. He retired in 1971. For a number of years prior to his death he suffered from Parkinson's disease, and died as a result of this o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piecework
Piece work (or piecework) is any type of employment in which a worker is paid a fixed piece rate for each unit produced or action performed, regardless of time. Context When paying a worker, employers can use various methods and combinations of methods. Some of the most prevalent methods are: paid a wage by the hour (known as "time work"); paid an annual salary; salary plus commission (common in sales jobs); base salary or hourly wages plus gratuities (common in service industries); salary plus a possible bonus (used for some managerial or executive positions); salary plus stock options (used for some executives and in start-ups and some high tech firms); salary pool systems; gainsharing (also known as "profit sharing"); paid by the piece – the number of things they make, or tasks they complete (known as ‘output work’); or paid in other ways (known as ‘unmeasured work’). Some industries where piece rate pay jobs are common are agricultural work, cable installation, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was United States in the Vietnam War, supported by the United States and other anti-communism, anti-communist Free World Military Forces, allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975. After the French 1954 Geneva Conference, military withdrawal from Indochina in 1954 – following their defeat in the First Indochina War – the Viet Minh to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russell Tribunal
The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell–Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private People's Tribunal organised in 1966 by Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, along with Lelio Basso, Simone de Beauvoir, Vladimir Dedijer, Ralph Schoenman, Isaac Deutscher and several others. The tribunal investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam. Bertrand Russell justified the establishment of this body as follows: The tribunal was constituted in November 1966, and was conducted in two sessions in 1967, in Stockholm, Sweden and Roskilde, Denmark. Bertrand Russell's book on the armed confrontations underway in Vietnam, ''War Crimes in Vietnam'', was published in January 1967. His postscript called for establishing this investigative body. The findings of the tribunal were largely ignored in the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. The party holds the annual Labour Party Conference, at which party policy is formulated. The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940–1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1959 United Kingdom General Election
The 1959 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 8 October 1959. It marked a third consecutive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, now led by Harold Macmillan. For the second time in a row, the Conservatives increased their overall majority in Parliament, this time to a landslide majority of 100 seats, having gained 20 seats for a return of 365. The Labour Party, led by Hugh Gaitskell, lost 19 seats and returned 258. The Liberal Party, led by Jo Grimond, again returned only six MPs to the House of Commons, but managed to increase its overall share of the vote to 5.9%, compared to just 2.7% four years earlier. The Conservatives won the largest number of votes in Scotland, but narrowly failed to win the most seats in that country. They have not made either achievement ever since. Both Jeremy Thorpe, a future Liberal leader, and Margaret Thatcher, a future Conservative leader and eventually Prime Minister, first entered the House of Commons after this electio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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