IRON
AND
COAL
AND
COAL
The Scotch Cattle Movement found many supporters in Gelligaer. This movement was strong in the Monmouthshire valleys and especially at Blackwood which became a storm centre of protest to which the Gelligaer miners contributed.
If a miner or anyone else connected with the industry incurred the displeasure of the workers, he was liable to be visited at midnight by a band of disguised men who would wreck his home and violently assault him. They left behind them the mark of the Scotch Cattle, a representation in red of the long horns and head of the Highland Cattle. Frontier conditions prevailed, and many walked in fear and dread of these bands until in Blackwood in 1834 a woman was murdered and a man was publicly hanged for his part in the affair. This seems to have quelled the movement and the men turned their minds to Chartism as a means of improving their lot.
In 1838 the Gelligaer miners joined a strong demonstration meeting at Blackwood and in November a number of them joined in the famous march to Newport and the attack on the Westgate Inn. This attack was repulsed but the desire of the men for improvement of their conditions remained strong.
It was not until 1831 that coalminers and ironworkers in South Wales were recruited into the first organised trade unions. Before this, miners often belonged to local combinations and clubs such as Friendly Societies and sometimes illegal organisations such as the infamous Scotch Cattle which often used violence and the threat of violence to achieve better wages and working conditions.
In 1831 branches of the Friendly Society of Coalmining were set up on the coalfield -was a trade union attached to the National Association for the Protection of Labour, which was based in the north-west of England.
Despite this secrecy the Ironmasters, by locking-out of work all those who joined the union, were able to stamp it out in the autumn and winter of 1831. Repeat attempts were to re-establish unions in the 1830s.
However, it was not until the 1870s that trade unionism established itself widely across the developing South Wales coalfield. Then, the Lancashire-based, Amalgamated Association of Miners built up a membership of 42,000 miners in South Wales. In two long and bitter disputes in 1871 and 1875, however, the A.A.M. was defeated. The defeat was partly due to the continuing hostility of Coal owners to trade unions-'blackleg' labour that was imported into the coalfield replace strikers. It also resulted from the weakness of the union itself, as the following newspaper extract indicates:-
Source:
The Western Mail, 12 June, 1871