Tag Index: Forest of Dean Miners' Association

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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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