Workers Organisations & Strikes Archives - Bristol Radical History Group

John Williams: The Making of a Miners’ Agent

John Williams was born in 1888 in Kenfig Hill and started work at the International Colliery in the Garw Valley at the age of thirteen. In 1922, Williams was selected for the paid post of agent for the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA), which was the trade union representing Forest of Dean miners. Williams remained committed to representing the Forest miners until his retirement in 1953 and lived in the Forest from 1922 until he died in 1968. The social, political and industrial movements […]

Exhibition: Coal Not Dole

Bristol Miners' Support Campaign Archive

Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) are putting an exhibition dedicated to the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike on display at Bristol Central Library this December. The exhibition celebrates the work of the Bristol Miners’ Support Campaign during the year long dispute. Over the last eighteen months BRHG has sponsored a project to collect and preserve documents and other materials from the campaign, one of many around the country that aimed to support the communities that were at the forefront of the […]

Mass meeting on the Downs – 16 May 1926

By Richard Musgrove

On 16 May 1926, in the wake of the calling off of the General Strike four days earlier, a mass meeting was held in the evening on Durdham Down. A demonstration had been formed on Old Market which then marched the two and a half miles to the Downs for a rally with speeches in support of the still locked-out miners. Though details of the meeting are scarce, it must have been of considerable size, with the Western Daily Press reporting on the 17 May that there were 15 speakers spread across three […]

General Strike 100

By Rob Whitfield

May 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the nine day 'General Strike'. This solidarity action was an attempt by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to prevent wage reductions and increasingly bad working conditions for 1.2 million coal miners who had already been locked-out by their employers. Around 1.7 million workers, mainly in transport and heavy industry, responded and the country was confronted with explicit class war. Bristol Radical History Group are delighted to be a part of the General […]

1926 General Strike In Bristol

In 1973 the Bristol Trades Union Council got the go-ahead to make a programme on its centenary as part of a BBC's Community Programmes initiative. Engineering worker and Trades Union Council delegate Ron Whiteford contributed his account of the 1926 General Strike in Bristol

Coal Not Dole

Bristol Miners' Support Campaign Archive group

In 1984, the Tory government was determined to close the coal-producing industry and replace it with imports and with gas from the North Sea, whatever the costs. This was no green revolution. The National Union of Mineworkers was equally determined to resist. If a local pit went, there was nothing else except the dole. A bitter 12-month strike ensued. Coal Not Dole, written by those involved in the Bristol Miners’ Support Campaign, tells the story of the solidarity and support shown by the […]

Dic Penderyn Society – Annual History Day – Merthyr Tydfil

Bristol Radical History Group are very pleased to be invited to this year's Dic Penderyn Society, Annual History Day at the Merthyr Labour Club, 1 Court Street, Merthyr Tydfil, CF47 8DU. Roger Ball (11:15am) and Colin Thomas (13:15), both BRHG members, will be speaking at the event. BRHG will also be running a bookstall. The programme for the day: 9.45-10.00am REVOLUTIONARY SONGS BY THE COR COCHION CAERDYDD 10.15-11.00am HUW WILLIAMS: “ART REPRESENTING REALITY” IMAGES OF MERTHYR TUDFUL […]

We Will Eat Grass

John Williams and the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association, 1922–1928

By Ian Wright

“We will eat the grass off the field rather than submit to 8 hours” declared William Hoare at a mass meeting of Forest of Dean miners on July 3, 1926. This is the story of those miners during the dramatic events surrounding that year’s general strike and the nine-month miners’ lockout. In 1922, John Williams, who began working in a South Wales pit at age just thirteen, became the full-time trade union official for the Forest’s miners. Inspired by syndicalism, he believed that determined struggle […]

Bristol Miners Support Campaign – 1984-85

The 1984/85 miners strike was arguably the most significant labour dispute in British history. Before the strike began, Arthur Scargill (President of the 200,000 strong National Union of Mineworkers) told his members and anybody else who would listen, that the future of the coal industry, and the people and communities whose futures depended on it were at stake. This was perfectly summarised in the strike slogan COAL NOT DOLE. The Tory Government used a combination of starvation, police […]

‘Stopping business as usual’

The Dunnes anti-apartheid strike within a wider political environment

The three-year strike which followed the July 1984 refusal of eleven workers at Dunnes' Stores Henry Street branch in Dublin to handle South African goods is perhaps the most celebrated episode of anti-apartheid activism outside Southern Africa, yielding memoirs, academic scholarship, radio and television documentaries and even a play. While still recounting the essential narrative of the strike for those unfamiliar with it, Padraig Durnin's talk will explore what made it exceptional in […]