South Wales Miners' Federation
The South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF), nicknamed "The Fed", was a trade union for coal miners in South Wales. It survives as the South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers. Forerunners The Amalgamated Association of Miners (AAM) was influential in South Wales during the early 1870s, but it collapsed in 1875. Of the AAM's various districts, only the Cambrian Miners' Association survived the collapse, but it steadily grew in membership, and other local unions were founded. The local unions disagreed over whether to negotiate wages as part of a "sliding scale", where pay rose and fell in line with coal export prices. This began to change in 1892, when the unions formed a joint committee. Its initial members were William Abraham, David Beynon, Thomas Davies, Daronwy Isaac, J. Jones, David Morgan, Alfred Onions and Morgan Weeks from the sliding scale districts, and David Ajax, John Davies, J. Edwards, Joseph Phillips and M. Williams from the non-sliding scale ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aberdare, Merthyr And Dowlais Miners' Association
The Aberdare, Merthyr and Dowlais Miners' Association was a trade union representing coal miners in part of Glamorgan in South Wales. Origins There had been trade union activity in the area from the 1830s onwards and in 1857 a major dispute which became known as the Aberdare Strike occurred. However, there was little organization among the miners until the late 1860s when news of the formation of the Amalgamated Association of Miners (AAM) reached South Wales. Early history In 1870, the miners of the Aberdare Valley, like other parts of south Wales, started to organize and demand a wage increase. An Aberdare District of the AAM grew rapidly in the early 1870s. By April 1871 there were 3,000 members in and around Aberdare, 1,300 at nine lodges in Mountain Ash further down the valley and a further 1,000 in Merthyr. Two months later the combined membership in the Aberdare and neighbouring Rhondda valleys had reached 9,000. In February 1872 Thomas Halliday and Alexander Macdonal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cambrian Combine Dispute
The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established as "Cambrian series" by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for 'Cymru' (Wales), where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. Sedgwick identified the layer as part of his task, along with Roderick Murchison, to subdivide the large "Transition Series", although the two geologists disagreed for a while on the appropriate categorization. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Cambrian bio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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William Brace
William Brace (23 September 1865 – 12 October 1947) was a Welsh trade unionist and Liberal and Labour politician. Early life and career Born in Risca, in the coal-mining district of Monmouthshire, he was one of six children of Thomas and Anne Brace. Brace briefly attended school before starting work at the local colliery, aged 12. He later worked at Celynnen and Abercarn collieries He soon involved himself in trade union activities and politics and in 1890 was elected the local agent for the Monmouthshire Miners' Association. He was also elected to Monmouthshire County Council. Trade Union career Brace was an early advocate of a single union for all of Britain's colliers, an issue in which he clashed with William Abraham (Mabon). Following the Welsh coal strike of 1898 the Miners' Association became part of the new South Wales Miners' Federation, and Brace was elected its first vice-president. He was later to the union's president from 1912 to 1915. Parliamentary career D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Williams (Gower MP)
John Williams (17 February 1861 – 20 June 1922) was a Welsh Labour Party politician. Williams was born in Aberaman, and began working at a local coal mine at the age of twelve. Eight years later, he was elected as checkweighman, a post he held for twelve years. He then became a full-time miners' agent for the Western Miners' Association. In this role he was a close associate of William Abraham. A supporter of the Liberal-Labour movement, Williams served on Mountain Ash Urban District Council. In 1898 he was nominated as a candidate for Glamorgan County Council but declined to go to the poll. At the 1906 general election, Williams was first elected as Member of Parliament for the Welsh constituency of Gower in West Glamorgan. He stood as an Independent Liberal''British Parliamentary Election Results 1885–1918'', FWS Craig candidate and won election despite being opposed by an official Liberal candidate. Upon election he took the Liberal whip and was active in the Liber ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Abraham (trade Unionist)
William Abraham (14 June 1842 – 14 May 1922), universally known by his bardic name, Mabon, was a Welsh trade unionist and Liberal-Labour (UK), Liberal/Labour politician, and a member of parliament (MP) from 1885 to 1920. Although an MP for 35 years, it was as a trade unionist that Abraham is most well known. Initially a pioneer of trade unionism, who fought to enshrine the principle of workers' representation against the opposition of the coal-owners, he was regarded in later life as a moderate voice believing that disputes should be solved through conciliation rather than industrial action. This drew him into conflict with younger and more militant leaders from the 1890s onwards. Although the defeat of the miners in the Welsh coal strike of 1898 was a clear defeat for Mabon's strategy, his prestige was sufficient to ensure that he became the first president of the South Wales Miners' Federation which was established in the wake of the dispute. Abraham was noted for his powerfu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two Major party, major List of political parties in the United Kingdom, political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs (British political party), Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites and reformist Radicals (UK), Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century it had formed four governments under William Ewart Gladstone, William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule Movement, Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, 1906 general election. Under Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed Liberal welfare reforms, reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the Leader of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nigel Jenkins
Nigel Jenkins (20 July 1949 – 28 January 2014) was an Anglo-Welsh poet. He was an editor, journalist, psychogeographer, broadcaster and writer of creative non-fiction, as well as being a lecturer at Swansea University and director of the creative writing programme there. Early life Jenkins was born on 20 July 1949 in Gorseinon, Wales, and was brought up on a farm on the former Kilvrough estate on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea. He was educated at the University of Essex. Career Jenkins first came to prominence as one of the Welsh Arts Council's ''Three Young Anglo-Welsh Poets'' (the title of a 1974 collection featuring Jenkins, Tony Curtis and Duncan Bush – all winners of the Council's Young Poets Prize). In 1976, he was given an Eric Gregory Award by the Society of Authors. Jenkins would go on to publish several collections of poetry over the course of his life, including, in 2002, the first haiku collection from a Welsh publisher (''Blue: 101 Haiku, Senryu and Tanka ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Davies (historian)
John Davies (25 April 1938 – 16 February 2015) was a Welsh historian, and a television and radio broadcaster. He attended university at Cardiff and Cambridge and taught Welsh at Aberystwyth. He wrote a number of books on Welsh history. Education Davies was born in the Rhondda, Wales, and studied at both University College, Cardiff, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Life and work Davies was married with four children. In later life he acknowledged that he was bisexual. After teaching Welsh history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, he retired to Cardiff, and appeared frequently as a presenter and contributor to history programmes on television and radio. In the mid-1980s, Davies was commissioned to write a concise history of Wales by Penguin Books to add to its Pelican series of the histories of nations. The decision by Penguin to commission the volume ''in'' Welsh was "unexpected and highly commendable," wrote Davies.A History of Wales, Preface "I seized the opportuni ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Miners' Federation Of Great Britain
The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was established after a meeting of local mining trade unions in Newport, Wales in 1888. The federation was formed to represent and co-ordinate the affairs of local and regional miners' unions in England, Scotland and Wales whose associations remained largely autonomous. At its peak, the federation represented nearly one million workers. It was reorganised into the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945. Founding conference and membership In 1888 after colliery owners rejected a call for a pay rise from the Yorkshire Miners' Association, several conferences were organised to discuss the possibility of forming a national union. At the conference held in the Temperance Hall in Newport, South Wales in November 1889, the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was formed. Ben Pickard of the Yorkshire Miners' Association was elected president and Sam Woods of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation (LCMF) its vice-president. Enoc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Western Miners' Association
The Western Miners' Association was a trade union representing coal miners in parts of South Wales, centred on Neath. History The union originated in February 1872, when about 100 local coal miners met at the King's Head Inn and agreed to form a lodge of the Amalgamated Association of Miners (AAM). Membership grew rapidly, and by October, it claimed 1,223 members. The AAM began to struggle, and dissolved in 1875, but the Neath District survived on an independent basis.John Saville, "Halliday, Thomas (Tom) (1835-1919)", ''Dictionary of Labour Biography'', vol.III, pp.91-94 Isaac Evans became prominent in the union, and in 1876 took a leading role in the negotiations which founded the Sliding Scale Joint Committee, to determine coal miners' wages. Two years later, he was appointed as secretary and agent for what became known as the Neath District of Miners, resigning as secretary in 1881, but remaining as agent. During the 1880s, the union was known as the Neath and Swansea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |