The Fife and Kinross Miners' Association was a
coal miner
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extrac ...
s'
trade union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
based in
Fife
Fife ( , ; ; ) is a council areas of Scotland, council area and lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area in Scotland. A peninsula, it is bordered by the Firth of Tay to the north, the North Sea to the east, the Firth of Forth to the s ...
and
Kinross-shire
The County of Kinross or Kinross-shire is a historic county and registration county in eastern Scotland, administered as part of Perth and Kinross since 1975. Surrounding its largest settlement and county town of Kinross, the county borders Per ...
in
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
.
History
The union was founded in 1869 or 1870, and proved immediately successful by achieving the
eight-hour day
The eight-hour day movement (also known as the 40-hour week movement or the short-time movement) was a social movement to regulate the length of a working day, preventing excesses and abuses of working time.
The modern movement originated i ...
for miners in the counties, and was the first union to be recognised by Scottish mine owners. In 1877, employers organised a
lockout, targeting the union, but alone out of Scottish coal miners' unions, it survived. The union was a strong supporter of the
1892 UK miners' strike, even publishing a list of
strikebreaker
A strikebreaker (sometimes pejoratively called a scab, blackleg, bootlicker, blackguard or knobstick) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers may be current employees ( union members or not), or new hires to keep the orga ...
s in the county.
In 1894, the association became a founding member of the
Scottish Miners Federation
The National Union of Scottish Mineworkers (NUSW) is a trade union in Scotland, founded in 1894 as the Scottish Miners Federation. It joined the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, and in 1914 changed its name to National Union of Scottish Mine ...
, which in turn affiliated to the
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, Newport, Wales in 1888. The federation was formed to represent and co-ordinate the affairs of local and regional miners' ...
(MFGB). By 1907, it had 15,500 members.
In 1922, the FKMA merged with the Clackmannan Miners' Association, forming the ''Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan Miners' Association'' (FKCMA).
[Arthur Ivor Marsh and Victoria Ryan, ''Historical Directory of Trade Unions'', vol.6, p.492]
The new union suffered several splits. The
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party (UK), Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse work ...
-aligned Miners' Reform Union of Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan left almost immediately, led by Philip Hodge.
[Adamson, William [Willie]
", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography">illie">Adamson, William [Willie
", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' This union survived through the 1926 United Kingdom general strike">1926 UK general strike
The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a general strike that lasted nine days, from 4 to 12 May 1926. It was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government ...
was persuaded that it should be permitted to merge back into the FKCMA. However, Hodge was elected General Secretary in 1928, and Adamson left to found the right-wing ''Fife, Clackmannan, and Kinross Miners' Union'', which subsequently was recognised as the official union by the
, and those in favour of a non-political union forming the "Fife, Kinross and District Industrial Trade Union".
The United Mineworkers was the more successful, with its membership peaking at roughly half of the FCKMU.
, and the FKCMA became its Fife Area, with less independence than before. It was later merged with the Stirlingshire Area to become the "Fife, Clackmannan and Stirlingshire Area".