At first glance, the miner’s lamp might seem a surprisingly drab and utilitarian nomination as the most important object in Welsh history. Appearances can be deceptive, though: there are few objects which so completely represent an industry that played such a central role in the creation and shaping of modern South Wales. The lamp also symbolises everything that was distinctive about South Wales coalfield society. In order to understand why all this is important, though, we need to get a better sense of the immense historical significance of the coal industry.
The coal industry and the creation of modern South Wales
South Wales is built on coal, both geologically and historically. It is not an exaggeration to say that the coal industry was the main reason behind the creation of much of modern South Wales. Apart from Merthyr Tydfil and the other “iron towns” of the Heads of the Valleys, most of the towns and villages of the South Wales coalfield owe their existence to the explosive growth of the coal industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This development was made possible by an astonishing rate of inward migration. The Rhondda valleys, which by the 1870s had become the coalfield’s main coal-producing district, exemplify this phenomenon dramatically. In 1851 there were only 951 Rhondda residents; this figure had climbed to 55,000 by 1881 and peaked at 167,000 in 1924. By this time there were more people living in the Rhondda than in Cardiganshire, Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire combined. Additionally, Cardiff, Barry, Newport and (to a lesser extent) Swansea owe much of their modern-day size and status to the wealth that they accrued from the coal trade.
The early 20th century saw the zenith of the coalfield’s economic power, with its peak production figure of 57 million tons being reached in 1913. By this time, there were over 234,000 miners and hundreds of pits in South Wales. It was Britain’s largest coalfield, supplying 19.7% of total coal output and almost a third of total global coal exports. In 1913, Barry and Cardiff were the two biggest coal-exporting ports in the world.
Equally significant – and not unrelated to this – was the growth of bitter industrial conflict, marked by major strikes and the spread of radical left-wing ideas among the South Wales miners. Together, these factors made the South Wales coalfield a key potential flashpoint for British domestic politics at the time.
Coal continued to play an important role in South Wales for most of the 20th century.
Following the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1947, the National Coal Board (NCB) remained the region’s biggest employer for much of the post-war period.
There were 88,000 mineworkers on its books in South Wales in 1962, 14% of the total labour force.
As late as 1984, there were still around 20,000 miners in South Wales.
The modern history and identity of the Valleys is still strongly influenced by its mining past, despite the disappearance of most of the collieries.
This is partly due to continued external perceptions of South Wales as being synonymous with coal, a factor which is consciously reinforced by such tourist attractions as the Rhondda Heritage Park and the Big Pit Mining Museum.
In a more subtle and pervasive way, too, coal mining – specifically, coal mining trade unionism – has been a formative influence on the “Labourist”’ mental outlook of the Valleys, characterised by close-knit, working-class communities and – generally – voting for the Labour Party.
The miner’s lamp in the workplace
The lamp was an important feature of the miners’ working environment, from the perspective of both illumination and safety. Underground work is impossible without lighting; however, one of the biggest dangers in coal mining is the accidental ignition of methane and other flammable gases – known collectively as ‘firedamp’ – that tend to accumulate in subterranean mine workings. In the early days of the industry, miners’ use of candles to light their workplaces meant this happened all too frequently. In 1815, Sir Humphry Davy invented what was to become the iconic miner’s lamp: the Davy lamp. The Davy lamp is a wick lamp made of metal, with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen. The mesh enables sufficient air to pass through to support combustion (thus keeping the lamp lit) but the holes are too fine to allow a flame to propagate out and ignite any firedamp outside the mesh. However, the lamp’s design was not perfect: the bare gauze was easily damaged and once just a single wire broke or rusted away, the lamp became unsafe. Even when new and clean, illumination from the safety lamps was very poor – about one quarter that of an ordinary candle. Despite various improvements, the problem was not fully resolved until electric lamps became available in the early 20th century. In February 1914, a SWMF (South Wales Miners’ Federation) conference resolved “that we press for the general use of electric lamps in mines, provided that a gas testing lamp is available for use in every working place”. This was not a rapid process; in 1928 the SWMF annual conference was still demanding “every effort be made to compel the employers to install the best type of electric lamps for the use of workmen, with the provision of one safety lamp for every six working places”. By the 1930s, almost all flame safety lamps had been replaced by electric lamps. Nevertheless, safety lamps still continued to be used for detecting and measuring gas long after their use for lighting was obsolete. A modern version of the Davy lamp is still used for firedamp testing in UK coal mines.
Miner’s lamps and banners for workers
The miner’s lamp was a central symbol of the SWMF and the South Wales Area NUM, featuring on the union’s coat of arms, alongside a leek and a colliery winding tower. Miners’ lamps were often given as souvenir gifts by the union: for example, the Welsh contingent of the victorious British Lions rugby team were awarded souvenir miners’ lamps at the 1971 Miners’ Eisteddfod. In addition to this, the lamp was a recurrent motif on the miners’ lodge banners, both as a symbol of enlightenment and an emblematic representation of the tools of the miners’ trade. These images are a key part of the iconography of the South Wales miners and speak volumes about the outlook and aspirations of the union and its members. The Abercrave NUM lodge banner, for example, depicts a white miner and a black miner holding a miner’s lamp between them, against a backdrop of a globe. The slogans on the banner are “Workers of the World Unite for Peace and Socialism” and “Mewn Undeb Mae Nerth A Heddwch” (literally, “In union there is strength and peace”). Similarly, the Cambrian NUM lodge banner features a yellow circle encompassing a miner’s lamp, a leek and a colliery winding tower (the area’s emblems), together with the slogans “Onward to Socialism and the Liberation of Mankind” and “Educate, Organise, Agitate”. Developing the theme of education and illumination, the Penrhiwceiber NUM lodge banner depicts a miner wearing a helmet and head-lamp, holding a stack of books in one hand and a globe in the other, with the slogan “Knowledge is Power”. Many of these banners have survived and a lot of them are kept in the South Wales Miners’ Library at Swansea University.
The miners’ union in South Wales coalfield society
The coal miners were central to the shaping of the economics, politics and society of modern South Wales. In addition, the South Wales miners were one of the most important groups of workers in Britain in the 20th century. In the early years of the century, when the coal industry was at its height, South Wales was the largest and most important coalfield in Britain. At this time, the South Wales miners and their union, the SWMF (or “the Fed”), acquired a reputation as socialist radicals. In 1917 the Fed’s constitution was re-written to include the abolition of capitalism among its objectives!
The SWMF was much more than a union, in many respects. In addition to representing its members, it played a broader role within coalfield society. Its workmen’s institutes spread throughout the Valleys, ran leisure and cultural events, established medical schemes and built libraries for their members. Although coal’s importance diminished as the 20th century progressed, the South Wales miners and their industry remained an important part of the society and economy of Wales through until the 1980s. In the epic industrial disputes of that decade, no other group of workers contested Thatcherism more obviously than the South Wales miners. Their struggle against the policies of the Heath and Thatcher governments reflected a recurrent theme in the miners’ history: their ready involvement in the life of Valleys communities and their willingness to fight for social justice.
In 1945, the SWMF became the South Wales Area of the newly-formed National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The NUM South Wales Area retained the Fed’s substantial socio-political presence and took an active interest in its members’ well-being. It maintained the recreational, cultural and educational traditions of the Valleys miners’ institutes, which reached its zenith in the 1950s. The Tredegar workmen’s institute, with its silver band, operatic and choral societies, cinema and impressive library, was by no means untypical. The decline of the coal industry in the 1960s dealt a severe blow to many Valleys communities. In addition to the economic impact, a colliery closure meant the loss of the community leadership, cohesion and local institutions provided by its NUM lodge. Nevertheless, the lodges at the pits which remained continued to play an important role within the lives of their members.
The historical contribution of the South Wales miners to their communities was immense, both in terms of physical infrastructure (welfare halls, libraries, sporting facilities) and traditions of culture and self-education. This participation in community life remained a feature of the miners until the late 20th century. This could take various forms: for instance, organising annual pantomime outings for miners’ children, delivering Christmas hampers to retired members, paying regular contributions to local charities and organisations, or organising brass bands and rugby and football teams in the community, among other social activities. This affinity of lodge and community meant that the lodge regularly took a central role in campaigns on local issues not directly connected to the coal industry: for example, supporting Merthyr Borough Council’s opposition to school milk cuts in the 1970s.
The strength of the bond between miners and local communities in South Wales coalfield could also be seen in times of disaster and crisis. On October 21 1966, a hillside waste tip slid and engulfed part of the village of Aberfan, killing 111 children and 33 adults. Around 1,000 miners from nearby Merthyr Vale colliery arrived to lead the rescue effort. They were joined by the emergency services and miners from across the region, in a massive rescue operation which lasted several days. Thousands of miners subsequently attended the funeral service for the victims of the disaster.
Teaching all mine workers their rights
As a symbol of illumination, the miner’s lamp also represents the strong tradition of self-education of the South Wales miners. This manifested itself in several ways. One of the most apparent was the miners’ institute libraries, which provided opportunities for learning and reading which would otherwise not have existed in the mining communities of South Wales. These libraries typically featured a well-stocked collection of left-wing political theory and social sciences literature. Will Paynter, the famous miners’ leader who went on to become NUM national general secretary between 1959 and 1968, is just one example of the countless numbers of South Wales miners whose political ideas were sharpened and whose intellectual horizons were broadened through self-directed study in the miners’ libraries.
The year 1973 saw the opening of the South Wales Miners’ Library. Established as a part of University College Swansea and continuing to operate to the present day, the library’s role was to promote adult education and also to provide an archive for a wealth of lodge records and books from institute libraries which would otherwise have been lost when their collieries closed. As the NUM’s newspaper The Miner reported: “The library is intended to help forge closer links between the University and the South Wales community as well as being a testimony to a generation of miners fervently committed to improving the standards of working class education.”
The SWMF and the South Wales NUM were passionate advocates of independent working-class education. In the early 20th century, the SWMF was a principal supporter of the Central Labour College (CLC) in London, an institution which catered specifically for trade unionists. A large proportion of the South Wales miners who attended the CLC went on to become prominent figures in the union and the British labour movement. Several became MPs and even attained ministerial office: men such as Ness Edwards, James Griffiths and – perhaps most famously – Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the National Health Service.
In 1956, the South Wales NUM established an ambitious education scheme of its own. Taught by the area’s education officer, Dr Ronald Frankenberg, the syllabus covered political economy, social history, the history of the miners’ union and union organisation. The take-up rate was very good and the course was exceptionally well-received.
As a result, hundreds of workers previously without experience of adult education found it through their union. For many of them it was a real educational awakening. As one miner commented: “The value of this particular course, believe me, is out of all proportion to the time spent. Enlightenment of the highest order.” In 1973, the area’s education courses were re-established to coincide with the opening of the South Wales Miners’ Library and were conducted on an extra-mural basis under the tutelage of Hywel Francis at University College Swansea. Participants later recalled that the course provided useful information on industrial relations, economics, mining law, safety issues and the area’s history, as well as enabling miners to become more effective union representatives. One indicator of the scheme’s success was that the vast majority of those who attended went on to become leading figures in either the area or their own lodges.
The miner’s lamp is a defining image of an industry which was the principal force behind the creation of modern South Wales. It was an indispensable piece of equipment for mineworkers, providing light and helping to ensure safety in a hazardous working environment.
The miner’s lamp was also one of the emblems of the SWMF and the South Wales NUM, which itself played such a central role in shaping the culture and outlook of South Wales coalfield society.
Finally, as a metaphor for illumination and enlightenment, it is an apt symbol of the distinctive culture of self-education fostered by the miners’ union.
It is for these reasons that the miner’s lamp is one of the most important objects in Welsh history.