Mr. Wadsworth, M.P., At Denaby – Is Yorkshire The Dumping Ground?

March 1910

Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Saturday 26 March 1910

Is Yorkshire The Dumping Ground?

Mr. Wadsworth, M.P., At Denaby

The officials of tie Yorkshire Miners’ Association took advantage of the occasion yesterday to hold an organising meeting of the miners of Denaby and Cadeby Main in the Crofts Field, Dcnaby.

Mr. T. Winfield, of Wath Main, presided, and the following resolution was proposed by Mr. J. Walton, of Manvers Main:

“That this meeting of the miners of Denaby and Cadeby in determining to use every legal endeavour to get the whole the men at these collieries to pay to the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, seeing we have 111,404 working below ground in Yorkshire, and only 80,000 names our books, with the object further bettering the conditions and wages of our men.”

Mr. Walton, in a lengthy speech, pointed out the advantages of trade unionism generally. He said he regretted that the 5,000 men employed the Denaby and Cadeby Collieries were non-unionist. He might be wrong, but had begun think that Yorkshire was becoming the dumping ground for non-union men from all the counties in England. Wherever a man came from he had right to live, but Yorkshiremen should see that the conditions they had worked under in the past, and which had done them so much good, should be maintained (Applause.) There ought, he concluded, be a day of reckoning with regard to the butty system. (Hear, hear.)

Mr. Levi Jones seconded the motion.

Mr. John Wadsworth, M P. for the Hallamahire Division, and general and corresponding secretary to the Yorkshire Miners’ who supported the resolution, said he wished Yorkshire were the only place where they had non-union men. If that were so they would soon have all their men into line, but unfortunately the same thing existed other parts of the country. In the United Kingdom they had 818,581 working underground, and of those only 600,000 were on books of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, so that Yorkshire was not by any means the only weak spot.

In 1881, when the different miners’ associations in Yorkshire decided to unite, them were only 6,000 members, while they had debt of £5.000 on their Barnsley offices, and hundreds of pounds were going to tradesmen up and down the country. Today they had 80,000 names on the books of the Yorkshire Miner Association, with a bank balance of £320,000. (Applause.) They had progressed during these years, and when the opportunity would allow they would go further and ask coal owners to raise their minimum from 57 per cent. 40 or 50 per cent (Hear, hear.) They had a very serious state of things in the South Wales coalfield just now, and it was not for him prophesy what the result of next Tuesday’s momentous conference London would be. But they were determined to support their South Wales friends as far as possible, just as they supported Scotland last year and. Even if it were true that the cost of coal production had gone up, the miners were determined that, the extra cost was not going to taken out of the bone and sinew of the Welsh miners, but rather out, of the consumer who could afford to pay for it. (Hear, hear.)

Concluding, Mr. Wadsworth appealed to those present to use their influence in inducing their fellow-workers to join the Association.

The resolution was carried