Tag Index: Forest of Dean

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The 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean and the Somerset coalfield

Women, Rough Music, and Direct Action during the 1926 lockout in the Forest of Dean Ian Wright will discuss the use of rough music and skimmington-style protest by miners' wives against blacklegs and the police during the 1926 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean. The talk will then explore the subsequent occupation of Westbury Workhouse by around 300 women and children in response to the withdrawal of Poor Law relief for miners’ families. Resistance and resilience: the 1926 General Strike and […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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The 1926 General Strike

To mark the centenary of the 1926 General Strike and miners’ lockout, BRHG members are involved in a project to commemorate the strike in Bristol and the surrounding area. The outcome of this will either be a number of pamphlets on general strike themes or a book containing a number of essays. The aim is for the publications to be launched in April or early May 2026 and that the launch will coincide with a commemorative event. The centenary of the start of the strike will be on May 4th 2026. The […]
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Charles Fletcher: Gypsy, Orphan, Forest of Dean Miner and Socialist

By Ian Wright
In this article, the short life of Charles Fletcher is used as a lens to explore aspects of the labour movement in Chepstow and the Forest of Dean in the early twentieth century. It starts with Fletcher’s experiences as an orphan in Bristol and ends with his early death following his role as a witness in one of the most sensational murder trials of the 1920s.  
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