The Arrival of the Militant Miners in Kent
The Kent coalfield opened in the 1920s, with the Betteshanger pit coaling in 1928. "They was trampin, trampin, down here from Durham, Scotland, every mining village you could mention in Britain." (Mr McEwan in Harkell, 1978)
They were drawn to the area because of the expansion of the coalfield. The company Pearson, Dorman and Long (PDL), the owners of Betteshanger, had combined in 1921 with the intention of creating a great coal, iron and steel industry in Kent. (Goffee Thesis, 1978)
The original incentive to come to Kent was undoubtedly the prospect of full-time work in a new coalfield with higher than average wages. Unemployment in the traditional mining areas was as high as 50 per cent, sometimes even higher, so a constant stream of miners and their families left the dole queues of the north of England and South Wales to come to the 'Garden of England'. The Kent Coalfield was the last to be developed in Britain. Between 1925 and 1935 output in the four pits of Snowdon, Tilmanstone, Chislet and Betteshanger rose sharply, running counter to the general trend in the industry. The Kent pits were closer to the markets of southeast England and because they undercut their competitors, the demand for coal in Kent was constant. The labour force increased from a total of 2,044 in 1925 to 7,409 in 1935; over 5,000 more miners, with and without families.
Gina Harkell, an oral Historian interviewed 35 miners and their families in 1973. Her interviewee Mr McEwan sets the scene:
"Before the miners arrived, roving teams of sinkers, like the navvies before them, who had built the railways, sank the pits.
There had been unemployment in the mining areas all through the 1920's and not only young miners, but also family men were seeking work. They had homes of their own but no work, and were looking for places to which they could bring their wives and children. Then came the 1926 General Strike, followed by a long lockout of miners, and at the same time the colliery was getting into full production and men were needed. Hearing of the openings in Kent, men made their way – some by bicycle or on foot if they had not cash for the fare. They were shabby and ill equipped after months without wages and they took what rooms they could get and worked hard, very hard, saving for a home if one could be had. North Deal people, themselves not too well off in work or pay, were willing to let rooms but critical of their tenants – their poor clothing, their overcrowding and different ways of speech." (Mr McEwan in Harkell, 1973)
But not all the sinkers were from outside the area. In 2006 we interviewed a certain Charles Grant, a Deal man. Born in Deal, he was a Marine until 1926. He bought a small shop there but sadly the business went bankrupt. He then applied for a job with PDL as sinker at Betteshanger. It was to take two and a half years to sink the pit.
"They started sinking the 2,300 feet shaft, 22 feet in diameter. They almost had to abandon the colliery because of the green sand (which let water in). A German firm came over and put a freezing agent to keep the water back and that's still there today. When we went down on top of the cage you could feel water hit you like pinpricks where the freezing agent had rotted away." (Charles Grant, 2006)
At the pithead the workers lived in twelve "sinkers' huts". Provided by PDL these huts were a simple wooden or tin affair.
"There was no electricity, no facilities. But we had a choir, football team, a band and played pitch and toss with coins. Then they built the houses in the circle at Betteshanger – the ones in the middle circle were bigger, they were for officials." (Charles Grant, 2006)
A local man, who delivered paraffin at the pit in the 1920s, remembers:
"At Betteshanger, in 1926 they had sunk the shaft and there were two to three sheds there – no pit had baths. The miners would come out all in their black and that was a terrifying sight to a 16 year old."
Miners came down to Deal from the North, from Yorkshire, from every mining part of Britain.
"Miners in Kent had accents from every part of the country." (Janet Dunn, 2006)
Deal people gave the miners some aggravation.
"At the time I started at the pit I suppose there was as many sinkers as there were colliers. Now the sinker was a drifter, he was a rough hand, and I remember the first Saturday night I was in Deal I saw two of them stripped off to the waist fighting bare fist in the churchyard in the High Street. Now just imagine the impression, it would make on a seaside town in Kent, that kind of episode, and so that all miners were of the same category - the sinker type." (Billy Marshall in Harkell, 1978)
With their father already in Deal, Dennis Bent came down from Nottingham on the back of a lorry with his mother, brothers and sisters.
"We had no furniture, nothing." (Dennis Bent, 2006)
"A lot of miners walked to Kent; some of them even washed in the sea on their way." (Cynthia White, miner's daughter, 2006)
"We came when I was 13, from Rotherham; I used to pick coal on the tip up there, so mum could bake bread. Then Dad came on his bike to Betteshanger and queued up to get a job; he hadn't had anything to eat and drink." (Sheila Shooter, 2006)
Goffee points out that the men came to Kent pits from every coalfield in Britain and that miners coming to Kent after the 1926 strike and lockout were likely to be extremely poor.
Albert Welford, interviewed in 2006, came to Betteshanger in 1926. A deputy, Mr Sylvester, from the Leeds area, had come up and signed him on. He left Yorkshire because although they were technically on a six-day week they would get laid off after they had wound a certain tonnage. They might work for three days and be three days on the dole. This was something that didn't happen at Betteshanger.
"We all got on together. Miners all get on with each other. It took a little while to get used to the different ways of working, about 6 months or so. We had miners from all over, we even had a black man; we had Bevan boys. Miners worked terribly hard, they'd have heart attacks and have to go back to work and they'd have hernias so big you could see them." (Albert Welford, 2006 )
When Albert Welford started, the manager was Kiers, with his son as under manager. After them came a man called Mottershead.
Jack Dunn, former worker at Betteshanger, later Branch Chairman then Kent area Secretary of the NUM, described the hardships in a video interview with Hywell Francis. He met thousands of miners, particularly from South Wales, who were malnourished after the strikes in the 1920s who were walking to Kent. They were not fit to work and would collapse before they had even done a day's work.
"We had Scots, Durham, Lancs., Staffs, Derbyshire miners. It was like a cocktail, they all had a different dialect, and all gave a different name to the same tool. They had different habits and cultures, so it was difficult to get a quick coalescence." (Jack Dunn in video interview with Hywell Francis, South Wales Miners' Library)
Others recorded these early days. Albert Newton, later a local businessman, kept records of his experiences at the pit. As transcribed by his daughter Josephine Dempster, he began by selling cigarettes at the pithead. Later, in 1932 , he had a lease from Lord Northbourne for two sheds outside the colliery gates with a rent of £25.00 per annum. Charles Grant remembered Mr Newton's shed and the Jones' shop.
"Mr Newton, he built a shed, you paid 6d a week for him to keep an eye on bikes. Jone's shop was open morning, noon and night. You'd ask Mr Jones for a cup of tea and a fag. 'One and one'" (Charles Grant, 2006)
Mr Newton's notes of his observations and conversations with miners in the late 20s and early 30s tell the story of one man who walked all the way from Wales.
"One chap walked all the way from Merthyr Tydfil: Gerry Quick. It took him a month to walk. In 1926 feeling the pinch when the strike ended, he had heard of the Kent coalfield and decided to try his luck. He walked to Gloucester; it took him a week. He got a ride on an old banger, walked and got lifts. He swept streets in Newbury for a while. He then got on a goods train to Croydon, going north rather than south and east by mistake, he rode in an empty wagon. He did fieldwork and he would knock on doors and say 'I am not a beggar, I am an out of work miner' He cut out a cardboard box and made inner soles for his shoes from it. He had not washed for a month by the time he arrived; he was hungry after 4 months of (1926) strike and one month of vagrancy. He hobbled up to the pit yard:
'Are you a miner?' they asked
They called another Welshman 'Taffy' to give him a hand.
'Look at the poor buggar's feet!'
'Take him to Mrs Jones and get him something to eat'.
Taffy and his mates acted like gentlemen towards Gerry Everybody wanted to take him home to stay at their house! He was kept for 2 weeks and did not pay 1d such was the hospitality. After 4 days rest he then showed up got a lamp and started work". (Albert Newton in Dempster, transcribed in 2006)
So people walked or cycled like Arnold Moyle and his father, making their way to Betteshanger and the other Kent pits.
A local historian explains where they were housed:
"Messrs Pearson, Dorman and Long had already built at Betteshanger itself, housing for their necessary safety men and deputies, without whom the pit could not function – so they were settled in Circular Road and Broad Lane near where they were needed. During the worst of the housing shortage, there had been plenty of demonstration of the needs, including that of Councillor Bill Marshall, who paraded the streets in a woman's dress and pushing a pram, with a placard, 'Miner's wife and baby but no house' He was the first miner to be elected to Deal Borough Council. Deal people were unwilling to take miners as tenants for their houses (there were still some to let in those days) and discriminating advertisements 'No miners need apply' were too common." (Barbara Rutherford, 1976)
Billy Marshall confirmed this in the 1970s:
"There was no pithead baths and we used to come into Deal and spread over the town to our various lodgings in our pit clothes and our pit dirt. I don't know if I told you the story of the two old ladies who had a holiday down in Deal and then they got back they were asked how they'd enjoyed themselves, what did they think of Deal, and they said they'd enjoyed themselves immensely, quite enjoyable, but they said 'Do you know, we've never seen so many chimney sweeps in our life!" (Billy Marshall in Harkell, 1978)
"They seemed to regard miners as some kind of weirdoes - a man who can go and grovel in the earth, he must be lacking. He doesn't deserve any sympathy and they despised us ." (Mr Sumner in Harkell , 1973)
Mrs Grant, a miners' daughter, enthused, " My family are thoroughbred miners, I am proud to be a miner's daughter." She went on to say:
"We all lived in Northbourne. We were all treated terrible; no one would speak to us. In the shops there were bacon pieces 'fit for miners'. We came from another mining area; from a house with a flush toilet to a toilet we had to empty. We couldn't a get colliery house. We asked Lord Northbourne for a house and he asked what kind of house do you want? We said with a flush toilet and bath. He said why do working people want that? We said for the same reasons as you would!" (Mrs Grant, 2006)
When the miners began seriously house hunting, real animosity was aroused.
"Deal was late and slow with its Council house building – Alderman Dobson had had difficulty in persuading the Council to recognise the need, and the few just built, Allenby Avenue, and Mill Road Terrace, were not enough for Deal's own needs and miners were not likely to come high on the housing lists. At the same time, remembering the 'sinkers' and their no doubt often unacceptable habits." (Barbara Rutherford, 1976 )
....
Billy Marshall described the impact of miner's migration on the town of Deal, where many Betteshanger miners and families lived.
"As the big houses on the seafront were giving up the ghost as the results of the depression in bed and breakfast, they were being occupied by miners who let out rooms and there was perhaps three or four families to one of these big houses on the seafront. We were treated as something apart. We were alien, completely alien to them. I remember coming out of a Council meeting having failed one day to get anything out of them about- the housing there, and I was almost in tears and the' padre, the chaplain for the Council, I went to him and I said, 'What's wrong, why can't we make any progress here?' 'Well', he said. "You know Councillor Marshall, I can understand it to some extent' he says, 'they've now moved into Swans Road and that used to be one of our best roads." (Marshal in Harkell, 1978)
But later houses were more plentiful and an attraction to some miners' families moving from elsewhere.
"We went in two rooms at Mongeham at first, until they built the houses up here; there was no roads at first, but you could have your pick of houses." (Sheila Shooter, miners' daughter, 2006)
"My husband (who had been blacklisted in Fife coalfield) said, "What about going to Kent. Oh, you are guaranteed a house" So that was bliss, hot water and an indoor bathroom, we had never had that before." (Mary Fowler, miner's widow, 2006)
People were happier when they got to Mill Hill.
"It was all miners very close and friendly. Grandmother got a house straight away because there were three men working" (Mrs White, miner's daughter, 2006)
"The miners wives looked after each other; the lady next door was from Yorkshire and she knocked on the door when I arrived and said, "I've left sticks and coal and set a fire and there is bread and milk" (Mary Fowler, miner's widow, 2006)
Why was Betteshanger militant?
Miners came to Betteshanger only after the General Strike, whereas many had begun to come to the other Kent pits before the strike. Many of the miners arriving in Kent after 1926 had been black listed in their old areas for militancy.
"In the 20's and 30's the bosses had a whip hand and they came down heavily on the wages and conditions of miners." (Henriques and Slaughter in 'Coal is our Life', 1956)
In this book miners in Yorkshire explain that after the 1926 defeat, coal production did not decrease, men were sacked and conditions worsened. This bequeathed 'a legacy of bitterness among the men, who for so long had to work in conditions where their comfort was the last consideration'.
These were the kinds of men who came to Kent.
Goffee's informants, working at Snowdown reported 'being pushed around' in the area they came from.
"They took down this file, the black book – they'd say. 'No work for you here'. All around Bolton area and there was no checking up in Kent." (Goffee, 1978)
Many miners we interviewed gave the same account, of not having work after the 1926 strike or being too militant, like Sheila Shooter's father.
"He couldn't get a job in the Fife coalfield because he had been blacklisted for refusing to work when he was owed 12/6d for a shift." (Mary Fowler, 2006)
"The story goes that after working an extra shift he was not paid the going rate. An argument ensued, resulting in dad being blacklisted form the entire Fife coalfield." (Mary Fowler's daughter Sylvia Watson, 2006)
"I opened my mouth too often." (so was black listed) (Albert Welford, 2006)
Albert Newton gives the same account.
"Within this crowd of new men at Betteshanger were not only good miners who had lost their jobs, but also the no-good mischief makers, chronic absenteers Union action stirrers and Communists ready to disrupt the normal working life of the pit." (Albert Newton in Dempster, 2006)
According to Jack Dunn the explanation for the pits' militancy lay in many factors.
"In Kent a number of factors came together. In Betteshanger, (the pit I loved) we followed the best Welsh Tradition; we had a library in the miner's club and 15/16 people used it regularly every day, they'd come in and read Hansard, follow the debates on the industry. There were some who had come to Kent under assumed names as they had been blacklisted in their area. (and a few who's come with changed names leaving their wives behind!)" (Jack Dunn, video, South Wales Miners' Library, Swansea)
One of the other explanations of the greater militancy of the pit was its long wall working which favoured solidarity. This is where men worked in fairly large teams along a long coalface.
The system of working varied between collieries. Miners at Tilmanstone and Snowdown worked in smaller groups in ' Room and Pillar ' or ' Pillar and Stall ' mining, where men worked coaling in pairs or threes in a small area, the size of a small room or stall where you might keep a horse. This is while Betteshanger colliers worked as a larger team.
"In Betteshanger you used to work as a team along the wall – twenty men. In Betteshanger, if one man was falling behind they'd send another to help him out, and I seemed to like that teamwork better than this cut throat businesses." (Mr Sumner in Harkell, 1978)
All this created a working mix. There were existing militants, a system of team working and a strong union branch. As part of the later tradition of political education, there was a library, something promoted strongly by Jack Dunn together with tutors Professor D'Eye and John Thirkell.
From the traditional mining heartlands in Scotland, the north and Wales, people looking for work desperately marched south. Many of them, leaving their home coalfields after the 1926 strike and lock out, were particularly militant and unable to get work in their own areas. They arrived to find a place where men stood up for better conditions than they left and workers' education was valued. In the testimonies of eye-witnesses and scholars alike, Betteshanger started to emerge as a vibrant, diverse, albeit hard, new life for miners and their families.
The start of the union
Jack Dunn remembered how hard it was when he started in 1930 at Snowdown with only 300 members of the Mine Workers Federation (MWF). Others describe the difficulties:
"When I left Tilmanstone and came to Betteshanger, Betteshanger was the weakest pit I'd ever known. We had a manager there named Mottershead, and to my way of thinking he was nothing more or less than a Fascist. He used to come strutting across that pit yard, and there was always men queued up for jobs, and he used to wave them away – he seemed to enjoy it. He was thoroughly detested. He used to walk about the pit and didn't half show his authority. You got the sack for the least thing because he knew that there was always people waiting to take your job and of course you needed a lot of guts to stand up to him and of course this had a bearing on the weakness of the Union." (Mr Sumner in Harkell, 1978)
At Betteshanger a Union Box was put up next to Mr Newton's shed in 1928.
"It was agreed in July that 4 men would stand at the colliery gates to persuade fellow workmen to join the Betteshanger branch of the Kent Mineworkers Association." (KMA minutes, 1928)
"George Marsh Branch Secretary had another hut next to Mr Newton collecting for Union subs. George Marsh: 'thoroughly antagonised management.'" (Mr Newton in Dempster, transcribed in 2006 )
The Union box was then also used as a Doctor's Surgery, thereby paid for by the Union. A telephone was put in and shared between medical and Trade Union business. There was also a Doctor's Committee and a Doctor's Scheme run by the Union.
In the early days the KMA Betteshanger Branch Committee discussed issues such as the Recreation Ground, the Bowling Green, the lighting of roads 'from the Union Office to Pritchard Piggaries'. They also campaigned for pithead baths and that these should not be paid for by Union funds. By 1931 the Pit Head baths were in place.
Reading the Branch Minutes (now housed at Magness House in Mill Hill Deal) gives a clear impression of the militancy of the day.
From its early days the Branch held the view that it was a class struggle. The Branch Committee complained about disparaging remarks made about miners at the Council Housing Committee and condemned the attitude of a past General Secretary of Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) for criticising another official.
Reading the Branch Minutes, now housed at Magness House in Mill Hill Deal, gives a clear impression of the militancy of the day.
"To an audience of Capitalists. It is his duty to criticise inside the movement, but not to be used as an instrument by our opponents. He needs to set an example to his humbler comrades." (Branch Minutes, late 1920s)
In late 1928, the Branch objected to the 'employment underground' of men who had no previous experience of coal mining, counter to the coal miners' recruitment act. There were objections too about 'the officiousness' of the deputy, Mr Sylvester. Later there was a delegation to protest about the way he treated his workmen. This issue later came to a head in strikes in the 1930s, described in the next chapter.
The branch conducted a ballot on the Butty System. This was the system where one man took on and paid miners, almost as sub contractors. He would then keep much of the money on the docket (pay slip) for himself.
All union members pledged to get their comrades in the Union. At the beginning of 1931 they held a pit gate meeting to discuss putting forward a 14-day notice to abolish non-Unionism, something the Snowdown pit had already got an agreement on.
At the beginning of 1932, it was agreed to put 'notes on the lamps of non-Unionists'. The identified non-Unionists who were dismissed were then not allowed to join the Kent Mineworkers Association (KMWA).
By February 1933 Trade Union Membership was a condition of employment. At Betteshanger, 1,781 were employed underground at that time.
In August 1932 they were discussing with the National General Secretary the manager Mr Kyle's 'attitude to the committee' which was described as disparaging.
Other complaints cited that colliery officials were instructing men to work through their snap time (their meal time). It was recommended 'that we deal in stern measures with this question'.
They protested again about class collaboration.
"That this Branch, having considered the Delegate's Report on the MFGB Conference repudiates the class Collaboration Policy of the Federation and recognising the inevitability of struggle calls upon the KMWA to immediately prepare the necessary machinery to carry out a successful struggle at the end of 12 months and in the meantime an intense campaign be wage to prepare the minds of the men for that Instruction to the Executive – moved by W Marshall." (General Meeting, Betteshanger Social Club, 5 th June 1932)
Conclusion
Men came to Betteshanger after the deprivation of the General Strike. Many of them were already militants, or at least determined to shake off the worst practices of their past coalfields. They bonded together as a working class community within a hostile area, developing workers' leadership, education and information. The union was a strong vehicle for getting pit head baths, abolishing the butty system, obtaining decent housing and resisting bullying by management. A tradition of militancy was formed by the early 1930s and carried forward in later disputes, strengthening that tradition as it went.