1
Economic History Conference, University of Nottingham, 28-30 March 2008
The ‘Black Jock’ Manager?
Mine management professionals in the Scottish coal industry,
1911-1967
Andrew Perchard, UHI Centre for History, andrew.perchard@uhi.ac.uk
In their 1975 review of ‘labour in the coalfields’ for the Bulletin of the Society for the
Study of Labour History, R. G. Neville and John Benson noted that: ‘the absence of
any interpretation of the ‘management revolution’ in the context of the British coal
industry as a whole during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries remains a glaring
gap in the existing state of our knowledge.’1 Since Neville and Benson’s article, there
has been scant attention paid to managerial employees in the historiography of the
British coal industry. In most cases, managers in the industry have been assumed to
be either adjuncts to their employers or local autocrats. There have only been a
handful of studies examining managers in the industry. Of these the view that has
tended to dominate the literature where managers are concerned was that advanced by
Brian McCormick in 1960. Within the last two decades this has been qualified by
more detailed studies of managers, such as that of Ina Zweiniger- Bargielowska.2
McCormick judged managers to be individualistic and pro-employer because of their
isolation, the legacy of their reliance on their employers prior to nationalisation and
the private colliery companies’ opposition to organised representation for staff. This
was not a wholly erroneous view. It has, therefore, tended to perpetuate a picture of
colliery managers simply as vassals to their employers. In short in McCormick’s
account managers are both devoid of social agency and consciousness. ZweinigerBargielowska’s brief (but significant) examination of colliery managers in the south
Wales coalfield challenged some of these assumptions directly, and proffered a more
balanced view of colliery managers dispelling the stereotype of the tyrant wedded to
his employer and opposed to nationalisation.
R. G. Neville and J. Benson, ‘Labour in the coalfields (II). A select bibliography’, Bulletin of the
Society for the Study of Labour History, 31, (1975), p.49.
2
B. McCormick, ‘Managerial unionism in the coal industry’, British Journal of Sociology, Volume II,
(1960), p.357; I. M. Zweiniger- Bargielowska, ‘Industrial Relationships and Nationalisation in the
South Wales Coalmining Industry’, Unpublished Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1990, p.341; I.
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Colliery Managers and Nationalisation: The Experience in South Wales’,
Business History, 34:4, (1992), pp.59-78.
1
2
Since then a few historical accounts have recognised the roles played by junior
officials and managers in the industry, notably highlighting their isolation and coal
companies’ opposition to collective bargaining by staff employees. 3
Quentin
Outram’s work on colliery owners has also made a valuable contribution to our
understanding of employer politics and strategies in the industry. 4
Using evidence from the Scottish coalfields this paper presents a picture of a far more
heterogeneous social grouping with distinctive voices within the narrative of the
industry.5 There were both common and variable features discernible in the context
(or processes) shaping the actions and consciousness of managers and other mining
professionals – the mine management professions – in the Scottish coal industry both
before and after nationalisation.
The paper illustrates that prior to the nationalisation of the industry most operational
level managerial employees had little significant control over developments at their
collieries. In spite of this, colliery managers, in particular, bore the statutory
responsibility for safety in their pits, as stipulated by the Coal Mines Act 1911.
Before 1947 most were drawn from the ranks of miners, had scant general education
and were offered little in the way of structured professional development and
technical education. This lack of opportunities limited their labour market mobility
and often tied them to their employers for perpetuity. Beyond these generalities, prior
to nationalisation a range of factors shaped the context in which managers operated.
These included: company size, structure and culture; sales, production (including
investment in research and development) and labour management strategies; status
and professional development; geographical location and geological conditions; as
well as social and cultural points of reference. Despite their peripheral influence,
many mining professionals became vocal critics of the way the industry was being run
prior to nationalisation, and of their victimisation by their employers. Some others –
the ‘Black Jock’ managers of the title – ardently pursued employer prerogatives of
their own volition, displaying both consciousness and agency.
The nationalisation of coal mining improved the opportunities for managerial
employees exponentially, offering them for the first time: formal recognition in the
industry’s negotiating mechanisms and structured professional development
pathways; security of tenure; and vastly augmented pay and pensions. In addition,
Labour Ministers played an influential role in establishing a trade union to represent
managerial employees, the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM).
The national politics of the BACM provide an insight into changes and schisms
J. Melling, ‘Safety, Supervision and the politics of productivity in the British coalmining industry,
1900- 1960’ in J. Melling and A. McKinlay (eds.) Management, labour and industrial politics in
Modern Europe: the quest for productivity (Cheltenham, 1998), pp.145-173; P. Ackers, ‘Colliery
Deputies in the British Coal Industry Before Nationalization’, International Review of Social History,
39: 3, (December 1994), pp.383- 414.
4
Q. Outram, ‘Class Warriors: The Coalowners’ in J. McIlroy, A. Campbell and K. Gildart (eds.)
Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout. The Struggle for Dignity (Cardiff, 2004), pp.107-136.
5
A. Perchard, The Mine Management Professions in the Twentieth-Century Scottish Coal Mining
Industry (Lampeter, 2007); A. Perchard, ‘A limited knowledge of deadly dust: Employers, scientists
and mining education in Scotland, c.1911-1946’, Paper to the Working with Dust: Health, Dust and
Diseases in the History of Occupational Health conference, University of Exeter, 10-12 April 2006; A.
Perchard, ‘The Mine Management Professions and the Dust Problem in the Scottish coal mining
industry, c.1930-1966’, Scottish Labour History, Volume 40, (2005), pp.87- 109.
3
3
within the mine management professions. Discussions within the BACM and the
other technical associations indicate the breadth of opinion in mine management
circles. Whether it be in the political fight for the soul and apparatus of the union, or
in the contusions between local colliery managers (and their alliances with miners and
officials) in coalfields ranged against managers and their staff in Area or Divisional
offices, the complexity of managers consciousness was evident in their agency and
diverging allegiances. It illustrates how managers at colliery (operational) and Area
and Division (tactical and strategic) levels responded to the gradual administrative
centralisation of the industry, and with the impact of the extension of management
information systems (MIS) across the industry and the introduction of the formal
machinery of industrial relations. In some cases the setting of productivity targets
based on centrally devised figures created an unsustainable production culture placing
strictures on local management, which could compromise health and safety and
prompt confrontation between miners, officials and managers. The move to
Divisional, and then national, wage bargaining, as well as formal machinery for
conciliation and arbitration was also met with suspicion and resistance from some
quarters of operational level management and local trade union branches keen to
retain a degree of autonomy. Though professional development programmes, central
administration, MIS and other policy prerogatives undoubtedly mitigated against
colliery managers’ sustaining their role as ‘captains of their ship’ and did instil a
certain esprit de corps, it did not create a uniform ‘organisation man’.6
The empirical evidence drawn from managerial opinion at national, Scottish, and
particularly colliery levels is used to explore the dominant theoretical approaches to
managers in British industry adopted in the literature. It remains a paradox that while
rank and file movements of workers have received considerable attention and
employers and senior executives some, by contrast analysis of operational managers
remains glaringly absent by and large. Business historians have equally all too
frequently relied on the comforting generalisations of organisational models. This
paper exposes the limitations of those organisational explanations – notably those
deploying the Chandlerian model of the ‘Visible Hand’ – that assume professionally
managed firms staffed by organisation men.7 Most recently Andrew Thomson and
John Wilson have bemoaned the reliance on theoretical affirmations devoid of
empirical studies of ‘management in practice’. The application of Chandlerian models
of the firm – and their extension, notably by Harold Perkins, to support a
professionalisation hypothesis – have also drawn criticism from sociologists of class
in contemporary Britain for overemphasizing the emergence of a professional class of
managers.8 However, in focusing their critique on Chandler’s Visible Hand, Savage
et al. neglect the former’s important reflections in Scale and Scope on the variable
G. W. Saunders, ‘ Management in a Specialist’s World’, NACM, Vol. LXI, (1964), p. 275; W. H.
Whyte, The Organization Man (New York, 1956); M. Roper, Masculinity and the British Organization
Man since 1945, this edition (Oxford, 2003).
7
For example: J. Quail, ‘Visible hands and visible handles: understanding the managerial revolution in
the UK’, Journal of Industrial History, Vol. 5, No. 2, (2002), pp. 1-20.
8
H. Perkins, The Rise of Professional Society. England since 1880 (London, 1990); M. Savage, J.
Barlow, P. Dickens and T. Fielding, Property, bureaucracy and culture. Middle-Class Formation in
Contemporary Britain (London, 1992), pp.49-51.
6
4
dynamics of British capitalism.9 Moreover Savage et al. are given to overstating
managers’ lack of agency – something that this study seeks to challenge for coal
mining at least. The need for more empirical studies is all the more pressing given the
association drawn between managers and ‘declinism’.10 It acknowledges the
contributions that more recent discourse (notably that centring around Foucauldian
notions of ‘governmentality’) has made in progressing an understanding of managers
by examining this in connection with mining professionals’ education and employers’
surveillance of them.11
The evidence deployed in this paper also provides a useful historical vantage point
from which to examine the impact of pluralist-institutional models of industrial
relations, and the contusions within British industrial relations at this time. The
stereotypes of managerial employees in the coal industry have not been confined to
coal mining but have been applied to management employees across British
industry.12 As one study of managerial trade unionism in the energy and power
industries noted in 1975: ‘Industrial relations literature frequently considers managers
to be simply agents of the employer and therefore to be subsumed under the general
category of “management”.’13 Despite the growing body of work by sociologists and
industrial relations practitioners especially from the 1940s onwards about managers,
few social historians of the workplace have made any attempt to investigate
managerial agency.14 The paper uses Erik Olin Wright’s explanation of the competing
motivations underlying class formation. To Wright social actors’ consciousness and
9
A. D. Chandler Jnr, The Visible Hand. The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge
MA, 1977); A. D. Chandler Jnr, Scale and Scope. The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge
MA, 1990), pp.239-392.
10
J. F. Wilson and A. Thomson, The Making of Modern Management. British Management in
Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2006), p.5.
11
C. Carter, A. McKinlay and M. Rowlinson, ‘Introduction: Foucault, Management and History’,
Organization, 9: 4, (2002) pp.515-526; A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds.) Foucault, Management and
Organization Theory (London, 1998).
12
For the origins of this see: A. Fox, Industrial Sociology and Industrial Relations, Royal Commission
on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations Research Papers 3 (London, 1966); AAA. Fox, Man
Mismanagement (London, 1974); and for a recent example: J. Phillips, ‘Industrial relations, historical
contingencies and political economy: Britain in the 1960s and 1970s’, Labour History Review, 72:3,
(December 2007), pp.215-233.
13
A. J. Arthurs, ‘Managerial unionism in the coal, steel and electricity supply industries’, Unpublished
MA dissertation, University of Warwick, (1975), p.1.
14
For example: Acton Society Trust, Management under Nationalisation (London, 1953); R. V.
Clements, Managers: A Study of their Careers in Industry (London, 1958); D. G. Clark, The Industrial
Manager: His background and career pattern (London, 1966); J. M. and R. E. Pahl, Managers and
Their Wives. A study of career and family relationships in the middle class (London, 1971); M. P.
Fogarty, ‘The place of managers in industrial democracy’, British Journal of Industrial Relations
(BJIR), XIV, 2, (July 1976), pp. 119-127; D. Weir, ‘Radical managerialism: middle managers’
perceptions of collective bargaining’, BJIR, Volume XIV, No. 3, (November 1976), pp. 324, 326 and
336; W. R. Garside and H. F. Gospel, ‘Employers and Managers: Their Organizational Structure and
Changing Industrial Strategies’ in C. J. Wrigley, A History of British Industrial Relations 1875- 1914
(Brighton, 1982), pp. 99-115; I. A. Glover and M. P. Kelly, Engineers in Britain. A Sociological Study
of the Engineering Dimension, (London, 1987); I. Glover, ‘British Management and British History:
Assessing the Responsibility of Individuals for Economic Difficulties’, Contemporary British History,
Vol. 13, No. 3, (Autumn 1999), pp. 121-147; C. Wrigley, ‘From ASSET to ASTMS: An Example of
White-Collar Union Growth in the 1960s’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (HSIR), No. 7,
(Spring 1999), pp. 57-74; J. Melling, ‘Managing the White-Collar Union: Salaried Staff, Trade Union
Leadership, and the Politics of Organized Labour in Postwar Britain, c.1950-1968’, International
Review of Social History (IRSH), Vol. 48, (2003), pp. 245-271.
5
behaviours are subject to ‘contradictory locations’ and ‘multiple exploitations’
(capturing the contradictions present in the individual’s role, status and experience,
and their residence in a number of different groupings); and ‘mediated class’ and
‘temporal’ ‘locations’ (shared interests, kinship and family networks, as well as
generational change).15
Part I: The mine management professions in the Scottish coal mining industry,
1911-1947
The popular contemporary image of the Scottish colliery manager, in particular, was
one of a tyrannical ruler – the ‘Black Jock’ manager – and, in some cases, not without
good reason.16 Retrospective accounts of ‘old-style’ managers presented by fellow
mining professionals sometimes even tended to sustain this impression of the
‘uncrowned kings of the village’ or the ‘Black Jock’ manager, not least to
demonstrate how much colliery management had changed.17
The infamy of one of these ‘Black Jock’ managers, Mungo Mackay of the Lothian
Coal Company, has been immortalised in the recollections of former miners from
Newtongrange in Midlothian.18 One retired wages clerk at Mackay’s Lady Victoria
Colliery described the infamous manager thus: ‘He really ruled like a king in this
village. He was the lord o’ the manor and we were the serfs. He ruled over the
village with an iron rod.’19
Not all MacDougall’s correspondents were so unflattering but generally history has
not afforded Mungo Mackay a good press. Mackay oversaw every aspect of life in
Newtongrange, employing spies and the colliery constabulary to keep him informed
and enforce discipline outside the workplace. Miners and their families who fell foul
of him could find themselves unemployed and homeless for as minor a misdemeanour
as leaving their garden unkempt.20 Mackay’s hegemony was also sustained by his
patronage of the local Kirk, school board and the Masonic lodge (the latter of which
he established), respectively as Elder, Chairman and Grand Master.21
However Mackay can neither be applied as a general rule nor was his background and
education typical of the majority of his fellow managers. The stereotype of the
E. O. Wright, ‘Rethinking, Once Again, the Concept of Class Structure’ in J. Hall (ed.) Reworking
Class (Ithaca, 1997), pp.41-72.
16
‘The Manager in the Mining Community’ (1949), Lectures of Professor George Hibberd, Records of
the Department of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, University of Strathclyde, OF 34/1/9/1.
17
Idem; Sir Andrew Bryan, ‘The Manager of Yesterday and Tomorrow’, abstract of an address to the
National Coal Board (NCB) Summer School, 10 September 1957, Colliery Guardian, (19 September
1957), p.346; David C. Gemmell, ‘Presidential address: mining memories’, p.37.
18
I. MacDougall, Mungo Mackay and the Green Table. Newtongrange Miners Remember
(East Linton, 1985); Montagu Wright, Manager at Ollerton Colliery, East Nottinghamshire, provides a
similar example in an English coalfield, see: R. J. Waller, The Dukeries Transformed. The Social and
Political Development of a Twentieth-Century Coalfield (Oxford, 1983), various references.
19
Recollections of James Reid in MacDougall, Mungo Mackay, p.51.
20
Ibid; Scottish Mining Museum Bulletin, No.13, (May 1984), p.3; Scottish Mining Museum Bulletin,
No.17, May- June 1985, p.3; ‘When coal was king and the large coal companies ruled supreme’,
Coalface, The Bulletin of the Scottish Mining Museum, No.20, (January 1986), pp.3-4.
21
Scottish Mining Museum Bulletin, No.13, (May 1984), p.3; Scottish Mining Museum Bulletin, No.17,
(May- June 1985), p.3; MacDougall, Mungo Mackay.
15
6
‘Black Jock’ manager is one that has prevailed in the popular history of the British
coal industry. The general perception of mine management professionals, received
by the public at the time of nationalisation and subsequently reinforced in many
histories of the British coal industry, was one of Fifth Columnists, fundamentally
opposed to nationalisation and therefore willing to undermine it.22 The value of the
sustained use of the ‘Black Jock’ caricature lies in its illustration of the potency of the
‘myth’ as stereotype – although like most ‘myths’ one that enjoys a kernel of truth –
and in challenging the complacent oversight of managerial agency (as exemplified by
McCormick).23
In attempting to understand the structure and processes that contributed to shaping
managerial outlooks and behaviours, it is worth reflecting on the structure of the
Scottish industry and trade, and on local conditions in the various coalfields.
Thereafter part I of the paper will examine mine management professionals status
before exploring managerial agency and consciousness through selected functions and
behaviours.
In spite of a move towards greater concentration within the industry, many British
colliery concerns in the twentieth-century remained relatively small in size, with most
of the larger combines acting as little more than holding companies in practice. 24 The
size of both colliery companies and individual coalmines in the Scottish coalfields
was even smaller than the national average. However it included two of the largest
combines in the British coalfields: Bairds and Dalmellington; and the Fife Coal
Company Ltd (FCC). These two firms continued to dominate the Scottish coalfields
until nationalisation. By 1930 twenty firms controlled 75 per cent of output in the
Scottish coalfield. The disparity of control is illustrated by a breakdown of market
shares in selected parts of the Scottish coalfield. The same year, the FCC controlled
75 per cent of output in the Fife coalfield; In contrast twenty companies vied for the
same proportion in Ayrshire. In Lanarkshire (Scotland’s largest and oldest coalfield)
four companies controlled one-third of output.25 The combined effects of market
conditions and the measures in the Coal Mines Act 1930 (and to a lesser extent, the
Coal Mining Industry Act 1926) did lead to further concentration and contraction in
the Scottish trade. Between 1930 and 1936 five of the largest Scottish colliery
See following correspondence to Labour’s first Minister of Fuel and Power, Rt. Hon. Emmanuel
Shinwell MP: Letter from Edwinstowe and District Labour Party, 6 June 1946 POWE 37/4, TNA;
Letter from Lady Windsor Branch, National Union of Mineworkers, South Wales Area, 4 October
1947 POWE 37/4, TNA; Northern Echo, 5 October 1946, POWE 37/47, TNA; For historical
reiterations in the Scottish coalfields see: R. Page Arnot, A history of the Scottish Miners. From the
earliest times, (London, 1953), pp. 278- 291; L. Cooney and A. Maxwell (eds.), No more bings in
Benarty. An account of coal mining in the Benarty Area of Fife, and its influence on the people who
lived there, (Benarty Mining Heritage Group, Glenrothes: 1992), p.84.
23
On ‘myth’, collective memories and history, see: M. Connelly, We Can Take It! Britain and the
Memory of the Second World War (London, 2004).
24
R. Church with the assistance of A. Hall and J. Kanefsky, The history of the British coal industry,
Volume 3. 1830- 1913: Victorian Pre-eminence (Oxford, 1986); B. Supple, The history of the British
coal industry, Volume 4. 1913- 1946: The Political Economy of Decline (Oxford, 1987), pp. 362-366
[hereafter Church and Supple referred to respectively as Official histories vols 3 & 4]; H. Gospel,
Markets, firms and the management of labour in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1992), p.45; B. Elbaum
and W. Lazonick (eds.), The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford, 1986), pp. 2 and 45.
25
Official history, vol.3, pp.434-464; Official history, vol.4, pp.303-609; A. Slaven, The development of
the West of Scotland, 1750-1960 (London, 1975); P. B. Long, ‘The Economic and Social History of the
Scottish Coal Industry, 1925-1939’, Unpublished University of Strathclyde Ph.D. Thesis (1978), p.82.
22
7
concerns closed forty-six collieries. By 1939 the four biggest companies accounted
for 35 per cent of Scottish production, with Bairds and Dalmellington alone producing
12 per cent.26
If there were discernible differences in the structure of the industry between the ‘new’
coalfields of Fife and the Lothians and the ‘old’ of Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, then the
market conditions experienced by the two was even more marked. This was most
pointedly illustrated by the comparison between Fife and Lanarkshire. The latter was
badly affected by a fall in coal exports from the Scottish coalfields of 31.6% between
1925-38, exacerbated by some of most bitter competition (and under-cutting of prices)
for markets. The former continued to benefit from a lucrative export trade with
Scandinavian countries.27 As if to make matters worse for companies in Lanarkshire
the geological conditions experienced there were palpably worse, with coal reserves
being harder to win and reserves more depleted. In 1944 the Scottish Home
Department’s Scottish Coalfields Committee reported that the gradual demise of the
Lanarkshire coalfield was inevitable.28 This naturally affected companies’ willingness
to invest capital in their fixed, plant and human assets.
Of equal significance to the experience of managers and their outlook were the
organisation, culture and strategies of the firm. In his examination of the colliery
owners in the context of the 1926 miners lockout, Outram has drawn distinctions
between the ‘Mond’ group and the Central Committee of the Mining Association of
Great Britain (MAGB CC), identifying the former with a more progressive-reformist
agenda (such as concentration of production and amalgamations, and a more
pragmatic approach to industrial relations), and the latter as being obdurate and
reactionary. Outram’s identification of a growing disenchantment amongst mining
engineers and more ‘progressive’ colliery concerns with the dominant and more
reactionary members of the Central Committee of the MAGB is a useful starting point
from which to examine relations between managers and their employers. 29
Most of
the medium and larger colliery companies in the Scottish coalfield operated a holding
company structure with interlocking directorships: for example, the Coltness Iron
Company Ltd. The main exceptions to this rule were the Fife Coal Company Ltd. and
Bairds and Dalmellington who operated as broadly recognisable U-form structures.30
Roy Church notes that from the late nineteenth century onwards the boards of the
26
Ibid; Slaven, The development of the West of Scotland, p.197.
Colliery Guardian (CG), 5 January 1934, pp.45-6; CG, 19 January 1934, pp.123-145; B. Fine,
‘Economies of scale and a featherbedding cartel? : a reconsideration of the interwar British coal
industry’, Economic History Review (EHR), 2nd Series, XLIII, 3, (1990), pp.438-449; T. Boyns,
‘Strategic responses to foreign competition: the British coal industry and the 1930 Coal Mines Act’,
Business History (BH), 32:3, (1990), pp.133-145; Political and Economic Planning, Report on the Coal
Industry (London, 1936).
28
Scottish Home Department, Scottish Coalfields: Report of the Scottish Coalfields Committee, (1944),
Cmd.6575; Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, chapter 3.
29
Outram, ‘Class Warriors’, pp.107-135.
30
Coltness Iron Co. Ltd., Printed balance sheets, 1906-1946, UGD 109/3/1/1, GUA; J. L. Carvel, The
Coltness Iron Company Ltd. A study in private enterprise (Edinburgh, 1948), pp.193-5; A. Muir, The
Fife Coal Company Ltd. (Leven, n.d.), p.118; T. Boyns and J. Wale, ‘The Development of
Management Information Systems in the British Coal Industry, c.1880-1947’, BH, 38:2, (1995), pp.6668; Official history, vol.4, pp.404-5.
27
8
FCC and Bairds were increasingly dominated by professional engineers and cites
them as examples of ‘the evolution of professional company management’.31
Within smaller concerns, particularly prevalent in much of the Scottish coalfield,
colliery managers were essentially disenfranchised. Typically they did not hold shares
in the company, and were, in spite of their statutory responsibility for operations in
their colliery, ‘essentially technical or under-managers’.32 Even in the exceptional
firms with a more visible professional management hierarchy, colliery managers and
other mining professionals were not free from interference; and certainly few had any
power over major development schemes at their collieries.33 Within most colliery
companies in Scotland real power was exercised by colliery agents or by the board of
directors. Gospel’s view that British firms, ‘were slower to develop strong internal
management hierarchies’, and, ‘paid less attention to recruiting and training a
professional management hierarchy and to developing organisational structures’, was
certainly evident in a good many Scottish colliery concerns.34 In the majority of cases,
the mine management professions were a diligent (if dissatisfied) salariat whose
employers were rarely given to acts of generosity. There were some notable
exceptions to the employee-manager as the example of Mungo Mackay illustrates.
Most however would seem to conform to Tony Slaven and D. Kim’s more general
picture of managers within the extractive industries in Scotland between 1860 and
1960. Of their sample in this sector only 26% became business leaders.35 The
Slaven-Kim survey also revealed that it was rare for those who did rise to these
positions to profit significantly from the firm.36
An estimated 90% of managerial employees, particularly colliery managers, in the
Scottish coalfield were drawn from the ranks of miners.37 These ‘colliers with a collar
on’, as one President of the Mining Institute of Scotland referred to them, generally
gained most of their technical knowledge on the job, supplemented by evening
classes.38 The colliery companies rarely funded or supported individual employees’
education and training, although there were a few exceptions like the Fife Coal
31
Official history, vol.3, p.443.
Official history, Vol.3, p.463.
33
Ibid, p.443; Official history, Vol.4, pp. 403-5; A. Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, pp.
23-95; I. M. Bargielowska-Bargielowska, ‘Industrial Relationships and Nationalisation’, p.341.
34
H. F. Gospel, ‘The Management of Labour: Great Britain, the US, and Japan’, Business History, 30,
1, (1988), p.105; W. R. Garside and H. F. Gospel, ‘Employers and Managers: Their Organizational
Structure and Changing Industrial Strategies’ in C. J. Wrigley, A History of British Industrial Relations
1875- 1914 (Brighton, 1982), pp. 99-115.
35
A. Slaven with the assistance of D. W. Kim, ‘The Origins and Economic and Social Roles of
Scottish Business Leaders, 1860- 1960’, in T. M. Devine (ed.), Scottish Elites. Proceedings of the
Scottish Historical Studies Seminar University of Strathclyde 1991- 1992 (Edinburgh, 1994), Table 1.
36
Ibid, pp. 165-168.
37
A. M. Bryan, ‘The recruitment and training of a mining engineer, with special reference to colliery
management’, Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers [hereafter IME], Vol. LX, (19411942), p.24; D. C. Gemmell, ‘Presidential address: mining memories’, p.36; G. Hibberd, ‘The Manager
in the Mining Community’; R. L. Carvel, One hundred years in coal. The history of the Alloa Coal
Company (Edinburgh, 1944), pp .130 and 160; Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, pp.3744; Perchard, ‘A limited knowledge of deadly dust’; For British examples: S. Tailby, ‘Labour
utilization and labour management’, p.298; I. M. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Industrial Relationships
and Nationalisation’, p.345; S. Williamson, Gresford. The Anatomy of a Disaster (Liverpool, 1999),
pp. 100-101; J. Bullock, Them and US, (London, 1972), pp. 9-93.
38
D. C. Gemmell, ‘Presidential address: mining memories’, p.36; Perchard, The Mine Management
Professions, pp. 37-44.
32
9
Company Ltd. who operated various scholarships and supported learning schemes for
their employees.39 However mining companies exerted considerable direction over
the content of the curriculum in and the appointment of staff to university departments
and colleges of mining education, through the endowment of chairs of mining and
through other grant-in-aid funding. Indeed their control far exceeded that of the
government departments with statutory responsibility for oversight of both
educational provision and mines safety within these establishments.40
This state of affairs drew public criticisms from the Mines Inspectorate and from
prominent members of the mining professions.41 One lecturer at Scotland’s largest
mining school lamented the lack of transparency and paucity of standards in a paper
in 1916, noting that: ‘It is possible, the writer believes, to have passed under such a
system certificated men who would be a positive danger if they were entrusted with
the charge of a colliery.’42 Little improved throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The
Mines Inspectorate and the 1938 Royal Commission on Safety in Coal Mines noted
that this gap in technical and academic knowledge was having a deleterious effect on
developments and safety in the modern industry.43 The British picture in general
contrasted sharply with the formalised vocational education and training undertaken
by aspirant managers in the German and French coalfields but mirrored the skills
profile of mine superintendents in the US bituminous coal industry.44 Thus colliery
employers were able to set the parameters of mining education, and police its
delivery.
The limited skill-set of most managerial employees – and consequently their labour
market immobility – suited many coal owners and boards of directors because it made
managers a cheaper commodity, as well as more malleable and dependent on their
employers.45 More progressive companies did not always pursue the bottom line,
although even in these the company could avoid the cost of retaining or training
engineers by outsourcing to consulting engineers.46
Mine management professionals vulnerability was also well illustrated by their
attempts to organise effectively to press for collective agreements on salary,
39
Proceedings of the Mining Institute of Scotland, Vol. LXII, (1946-1947), p.48; For England see the
example of the Ashington Coal Company Ltd.: NACM, Vol. XXXVII, (1940), p.29.
40
Perchard, ‘A limited knowledge of deadly dust’.
41
A. M. Bryan, ‘The recruitment and training of a mining engineer’, p.24; Mines Department, Reports
of H. M. Inspectorate of Mines, Scotland Division, [hereafter HMIM, SD], 1938, p.82; Report of the
Committee appointed by the University Grants Committee on the Miners’ Welfare Fund, (HMSO,
London: 1923), pp. 14-15; Royal Commission on Safety in Coal Mines [hereafter RC], Report, (1938),
(Cmd. 5890), pp. 160-190; The Mining Electrical Engineer (journal of the Association of Mining
Electrical Engineers (AMEE), Vol. XVI, No. 182, (November 1935), p.149.
42
J. Gibson, ‘Some notes on the education of the colliery manager’, Transactions- The Mining Institute
of Scotland, Vol. XXXIX, (1916- 1917), pp. 165- 171.
43
RC, Report, (1938), pp. 160-190; HMIM, SD, 1938, p.82.
44
‘The qualifications of colliery officials- II’, CG, (12 September 1930), p.959; S. Tailby, ‘Labour
utilization and labour management in the British Coalmining Industry, 1900- 1940’, Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Warwick, (1990), p.297; P. V. Fishback, Soft Coal, Hard Choices. The Economic
Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890- 1930, (New York, 1992), p.49
45
R. Loveridge, ‘Occupational change and the development of interest groups among white-collar
workers in the U.K.: A long-term model’, BJIR, XIV, 2, (July 1967), p.353.
46
A. Jones, ‘The role of the consulting engineer in the electrification of the South Wales coal industry
up to about 1926’, JIH, Vol. 6, No. 1, (2003), pp. 49-70.
10
superannuation or conditions of employment.47 This was especially true where
employers were fundamentally opposed to the combination of mine management
professionals.
Scottish colliery managers’ below inflation rises in salaries were due in no small part
to the repeated defeat of NACM collective claims for its membership throughout the
1920s and 1930s, and the assertion and success of employer preference for company
bargaining. Colliery employers in the west of Scotland remained fundamentally
opposed to collective bargaining, steeling the Glasgow and West of Scotland
Chamber of Commerce to resist any moves to entertain sector wide bargaining.48
In the face of NACM popularity in 1920, Scottish owners had agreed to meet with the
NACM to discuss colliery managers’ salaries and pensions, despite stiff opposition
from Lanarkshire owners in particular.49 Despite the commitment of the Coal Owners
of Scotland to meet and the Mining Association of Great Britain’s (MAGB)
development of a policy for representation of and superannuation for colliery
managers – to buy NACM allegiance as part of their strategy to shore up support in
anticipation of a confrontation with the miners – west of Scotland coal owners
continued to resolutely oppose these moves.50 Unsurprisingly negotiations with the
newly formed Scottish Under-Managers’ Association (SUMA) were conducted in a
similar fashion. In 1922, with the defeat of the miners in the lockout, the owners
were able to force through wage reductions for managers and under-managers.
Through the late summer months of 1931, the LCA imposed further wage reductions
on under-managers and oversmen, refusing to meet with their representatives.51 They
also called a meeting with other coal owner members of the conciliation board to
insist that, ‘coal owners should be left free to deal with their own officials.’52
Minutes of discussions within the meetings of the Coal Owners of Scotland, between
1934 and 1938, do suggest an east-west divide on collective agreements, with west of
Scotland coal owners apparently far more belligerent over wages and labour issues
than their east coast counterparts.53 This may be attributable to a number of factors:
age of collieries; the paucity of new reserves in the west; increased competition
(because of the proliferation of small firms); and their reliance on exacting savings
from labour and staff costs. However coal owner attachment to localised bargaining,
and exploitation of attendant weaknesses in colliery officials’ isolated bargaining
McCormick, ‘Managerial Unionism in the Coal Industry’, p. 357; Melling, ‘Safety, Supervision and
the politics of productivity’, p. 59; I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Colliery Managers and
Nationalisation’, pp. 60-62; I. M. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Industrial Relationships and
Nationalisation’, pp. 351-352.
48
LCA, minute book, No. 17, 22 September 1931, UGD 159/1/17, GUA.
49
Melling, ‘Safety, Supervision and the politics of productivity’, p. 159.
50
As Outram has noted the LCA were the dominant political force amongst Scottish coal owners and
included on their committee some of the most reactionary voices with the MAGB CC: Outram, ‘Class
Warriors’, p.111.
51
LCA, minute book, No. 17, 24 August and 22 September 1931, UGD 159/1/17.
52
Idem
53
Coal Owners of Scotland, minutes, 1934-1938, CB 7/1/7, National Archives of Scotland (NAS);
Outram, ‘Class Warriors’, table 3.1.
47
11
position, was not confined to the west of Scotland, as Zweiniger-Bargielowska’s
studies of south Wales show.54
Between 1913 and 1942, colliery managers’ wages in the west of Scotland rose by an
estimated 49 per cent, against price increases and average salary rises of 56 and 71 per
cent respectively.55 Details of colliery managers’ salaries are fairly scant, and where
they do exist patchy. However some picture of managers’ salaries in the Scottish
coalfields can be established. In July 1942, the LCA recommended that members
increase colliery managers salaries by 15% with a ceiling of £595 5s. 56 The pre-tax
salaries for colliery managers at one of Scotland’s largest colliery combines, Bairds
and Dalmellington Ltd., in 1943 ranged from £415 per annum for small collieries to
£800 p.a. for managers of groups of collieries.57 The manager of one of their Ayrshire
collieries employing a workforce of 569 saw his salary rise from £675 in 1940 to
£775 in 1945.58 By comparison Zweiniger-Bargielowska cited a salary range for
colliery managers in south Wales in 1944 of between £480 p.a. for small collieries
and £600 for those collieries employing more than 100 men.59
In contrast the Assistant Works Manager of a North of England engineering factory
earned £950 in 1943 before tax deductions.60 Salaries for departmental and shop
managers at William Beardmore’s Glasgow Parkhead Works in 1937 ranged from
£850-£1000 p.a., with the General Manager receiving an annual salary of £2000.61
Scottish owners also rejected any form of collective agreement on colliery managers’
superannuation claims, although a request in January 1937 from the NACM Scottish
Branch for a meeting with coal owners to discuss superannuation of colliery managers
was felt by at least one member of the LCA executive committee to merit favourable
consideration.62 In February 1939 the LCA snubbed the MAGB’s invitation to
nominate a representative to sit on a joint advisory committee to discuss with a
pension plan for managers with the NACM, and sought support from other Scottish
coal owners to oppose the MAGB’s proposals.63 Eventually attempts to develop a
national pension scheme for managers collapsed and the matter was referred to the
54
In one south Wales colliery, employing 150 men, the colliery manager was being paid less than the
fireman: Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Colliery Managers and Nationalisation’, pp. 60-62; ZweinigerBargielowska, ‘Industrial Relationships and Nationalisation’, pp. 351- 352.
55
This estimate has been arrived at using Roy Church’s average 1913 figure of £400 per annum for
colliery managers against the LCA’s recommended absolute maximum increase of colliery managers
salaries to £595 5s. Guy Routh’s examination of managers’ earnings in coal, metals and engineering
suggested that the highest paid individuals in this sector from his data sets were earning £1195 in 19245. Figures for price increases and average salary increases for all wage earners are provided by Harold
Perkins: LCA, minute book, No. 19, 13 July 1942, UGD 159/1/19; R. Church, Official history, Vol.3, p.
463; G. Routh, Occupation and pay in Great Britain 1906-1979 (London, 1980), Appendix E; H.
Perkins, The rise of professional society, pp. 270-271.
56
LCA, Minute book, 19, 13 July 1942, UGD 159/1/19, GUA.
57
Bairds and Dalmellington Ltd., Private ledger, 2, 31.12.40-31.12.45, UGD 164/3/1/2, GUA.
58
Ibid.
59
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Colliery Managers and Nationalisation’, p.63.
60
R. Lewis and R. Stewart, The Boss. The Life and Times of the British Businessman (London, 1958),
pp.244-5.
61
William Beardmore and Co. Ltd., Monthly salaries, 1.1.31-31.12.37, UGD 100/1/9/5, GUA.
62
LCA, minute book, No. 18, 25 January 1937, UGD 159/1/18.
63
LCA, minute book, No. 19, 27 February 1939, UGD 159/1/19.
12
individual colliery companies.64 In contrast to Scotland, 70% of south Wales colliery
companies operated superannuation schemes by 1941 although a meeting a year later
revealed that some of the largest combines did not.65 In many south Wales colliery
companies, officials were apparently also reliant – in the event of an occupational
injury or disease – on ex- gratia payments from their employers.66
Despite the fact that the NACM was prevented by its Royal Charter from being a
trade union, its’ role in these negotiations undoubtedly affected its standing with
employers – and so the willingness of some members to be seen to be a member of
the NACM – in the Scottish, south Wales, and Durham coalfields. By the early
1930s, the NACM was haemorrhaging members. Between 1931 and 1934, it lost 482
members (around 36% of the national membership) from the export areas of Scotland,
Durham and south Wales alone, with nearly 41% of these losses being in Scotland.67
Inevitably, some of these losses arose because of the joint effects of market
contraction and concentration in these areas.
However, these losses cannot solely be attributed to those exiting the industry. Firstly,
the number of mines, registered under Home Office regulations, still considerably
exceeded the number of qualified colliery managers and under-managers. Secondly,
the numbers of candidates presenting themselves for examination for the statutory
qualifications necessary to fill these posts had declined dramatically since the 1920s.68
Another possible explanation is that members could not afford the subscription fees in
a difficult financial climate. However, concurrently, membership of both the Mining
Institute of Scotland and the Association of Mining Electrical Engineers (AMEE) rose
during this period.69
A more compelling explanation is that both colliery managers and under-managers
relinquished membership of these specific professional bodies rather than face the risk
of being victimised by their employers. Further supporting evidence for this is found
in the in the suggestion, by an NACM Scottish Branch member in 1940, that the
Branch target potential recruits at the mining colleges away from the watchful eyes of
the colliery companies.70 The closeness at the top of the Scottish coal industry
through the system of interlocking directorships meant that mine management
professions, as much as miners, would have been only too well aware of the dangers
of black listing.71
During the fifteen years preceding nationalisation, Scottish mining professionals
became increasingly vocal in their criticisms about both the interference of senior
managers, and the funding and planning constraints placed on them by a good many
64
LCA, minute book, No. 19, 28 August 1939, UGD 159/1/19.
I. M. Bargielowska-Bargielowska, ‘Industrial Relationships and Nationalisation’, p. 353.
66
I. Bargielowska-Bargielowska, ‘Colliery Managers and Nationalisation’, p. 63.
67
NACM, XXXI, (1934), p. 30; NACM, XXXVII, (1940), p.344.
68
NACM, Vol. XXXI, (1934), pp. 19- 32; IME, Vol. LX, (1941- 1942), p. 21.
69
Transactions of the Mining Institute of Scotland (hereafter Mining Institute of Scotland), Vol. IV,
(1934- 1935), p. 2; Mining Institute of Scotland, Vol. LVII, (1936- 1937), pp. B- 28; RC, Minutes of
Evidence, Vol. II, Major E. Ivor David (AMEE), Q. 18,916-7.
70
NACM, Vol. XXXVII, (1940), p. 344.
71
A. Campbell, The Scottish Miners, 1874-1939. Volume One: Industry, Work and Community
(Aldershot, 2000), figures 1.1 and 1.3, and table 1.9.
65
13
private colliery companies.72 What in the long term aided the mine management
professions in the eyes of policy makers was their identification with the forces of
‘progress’ within the industry. This was most evident in the public criticisms of
colliery companies’ under-investment in the industry representatives of the mine
management professions’ technical and professional bodies in the 1930s. John
George, President of the National Association of Colliery Managers (NACM) Scottish
Branch and a Mining Agent for the Alloa Coal Company, declared in 1933: ‘The
unenviable position of the coal trade to-day was not the fault of the productive side of
the industry but… to the cut-throat methods of competition which had been practised
and were being practised by the coal owners of the country.’ 73 One year later Albert
Reis of the FCC, and the NACM President for 1934, painted an equally dismal picture
for the industry and noted with disdain that: ‘there was a limit to which costs could be
cut without sacrificing efficiency. There was an absolute minimum cost for each
colliery at which it might work in a state of permanent efficiency.’74 Later still (in
1936) Andrew Bryan lamented the constraints placed on mining engineers to be able
to develop underground production with an eye to the long-term of the future.75
Bryan’s criticisms were likewise recognisable in the observations of the following
comment from a Durham colliery manager: ‘My point is, that from the point of view
of the colliery manager – and the nation, too, if it comes to that – the natural period of
planning in the natural term of life of the pit. The owner’s natural period is much
shorter.’76
However the appearance of accord between different levels of managers and
progressive owners within the industry at Scottish and national levels (as far as the
long-term needs of the industry were concerned) could belie a very different picture
on the ground between operational level managers (colliery and under-managers), on
the one hand, and tactical (agents, group and general managers) and strategic
(directors) levels of management.
In his presidential address to the 1939 annual conference of the National Association
of Colliery Managers (set up by Royal Charter to represent the professional standards
of managers within the industry), National President Major Stanley Walton-Brown
opined that he hoped that the ongoing statutory plans for amalgamations of colliery
companies would not, ‘disturb the happy relations between individual owners, agents
and managers.’77 His favourable view of relations between management employees
and their employers was reflected in the reply to his speech offered by the Managing
Director of the Ashington Colliery Company, Ridley Warham, who declared that,
‘coal owners and colliery managers were so united in their interests that they were
part and parcel of each other.’78 This was a view which was apparently also shared
by Andrew Reis (an FCC agent and Walton-Brown’s predecessor as President of the
NACM) who responded to the suggestion (put to him by one of the Royal
72
Transactions of the National Association of Colliery Managers [hereafter NACM], XXX, (1933),
pp.415-7; NACM, XXXI, (1934), pp.455-461; Mining Institute of Scotland, LVI, (1935-6), p.125;
Interview with G. Gillespie, Netwongrange, Midlothian, 14 August 1999; B. Supple, history, pp.403-4.
73
NACM, XXX, (1933), pp.415-7.
74
NACM, XXXI, (1934), p.455.
75
Mining Institute of Scotland, LVI, (1935-6), p.125.
76
M. Benney, Charity Main. A Coalfield Chronicle (Wakefield, 1978), p.67.
77
NACM, Vol. XXXVII, (1940), p. 36.
78
Ibid, p. 37.
14
Commissioners on Safety in Coal Mines [the Rockley Commission] in 1936) that
colliery managers were coerced and in some cases victimised by their employers, that
he knew of no such cases.79
Yet only a few years before Reis’ extolling of the ‘fellowship and camaraderie that
existed between managers and agents’ in an address to the Scottish Branch of the
NACM prompted the following stinging response from one Lanarkshire colliery
manager (Andrew Lawson):
… It was nonsense to talk of the spirit of comradeship between managers and
agents. In some areas, there was good feeling, but in others managers dreaded
when agents appeared on the scene. Many a manager never knew what spoke was
likely to be applied by an agent to the wheel of any useful work that might be
going on at the colliery. Where an agent had authority and control over three or
four managers the latter had not the status of colliery managers. Their status was
only a little higher than that of under-managers… He was glad to notice the
criticism of mine agents to which Mr. Reis had specially alluded. It had opened
up in a most interesting way the real position of colliery managers at many
Scottish collieries.80
Andrew Lawson’s comments were apparently borne out by evidence of more
widespread victimisation of managers at the hands of their employers throughout the
British coalfields referred to by a number of the Rockley Commissioners, and by
illustrations provided to the commission by Arthur Roberts, the representative of the
Colliery Under Managers of Great Britain.81 And one chronicler of the Durham
coalfield reporting during WW2 painted a similar picture to Lawson:
… Large companies, with several pits, were appointing ‘agents,’ either to superintend
various technical aspects of their business, or to co-ordinate the day-to-day working
of sub-groups of collieries. Under this system the manager of the mine, while
retaining his responsibilities under law, was tending in fact to lose real power and
status.82
One retired colliery manager George Gillespie referring to his own experiences of
interference by company agents at his own pit in Ayrshire in 1944:
“ I remember changing a system on the surface and getting belted. The bosses
assistant [the colliery Agent] came out [to the colliery] and said, “what’s all this?”
Because I’d stopped the pit and ordered a change in sequence.
He [the Agent] said, “Get it back.”
I said, “Mr. P? But it’s stupid.”
[Agent] “ The bosses say get it back. You go away and do your work and I’ll get it
back.”
RC, Minutes of Evidence, Volume II: 19-34, (His Majesty’s Stationary Office, London: 1936), Qs.
23,483- 23,503; 23,689- 23,691; 23,851; 23,945- 23,973; and 24,118- 24,120.
80
Andrew Lawson was at the time the manager of Wm. Baird’s Bedlay Colliery in North Lanarkshire,
NACM, Vol. XXX, (1933), pp. 414-415.
81
RC, Minutes of Evidence, Vol. II, Qs. 18,995- 18,998; 19,176- 19,186; 23,762- 23,774; 23,85523,856; 23,945- 23,973.
82
Benney, Charity Main, p.66.
79
15
It was very feudalistic but if you did your work, your job was secure.”83
Concerns about the constraints placed on managers by owners and Boards of
Directors were oft repeated.84 Despite this, the NACM’s deposition and subsequent
evidence to the Rockley Commission gave no inkling of the victimisation of
managerial employees. However, with one exception (Andrew M Bryan), all the other
NACM reporters to the Rockley Commission were company agents, albeit some like
Reis worked for more progressive concerns like the FCC.85 Nevertheless the Rockley
Commissioners were evidently not deflected from their own conclusions about the
constraints on managers, declaring in their final report that:
The Act [Coal Mines Act, 1911] does not resolve the dilemma of how a manager
subject to the orders of a superior can have “control, management and direction” of
the mine in the full sense of the words; and, except that there may be more than one
agent within this definition, the Act ignores the existence of a hierarchy of officials in
a mine-owning company superior to the manager.86
The Commission’s point is amply reinforced by a brief review of the anatomy of
accidents, and the response of the Mines Inspectorate. Frequently the Mines
Inspectorate were willing to interpret the law too literally and blame those closest to
the accidents, usually the colliery managers, junior officials and miners rather than
looking at the root causes of the problem such as under-investment in mine
development and materials, or production prerogatives which prioritised output over
safety – matters invariably decided by Agents or in most cases Directors. An example
of the inequity of this is illustrated by the example of support rules for ceilings in
roadways and on coalfaces. Falls of ground were responsible for the highest number
of fatalities and serious injuries in Scottish coal mines throughout this period. Under
the Coal Mines Act, this was left to the discretion of the colliery manager.87 As the
District Inspector for Mines in Scotland noted in his report of 1930, the main obstacle
to widespread uptake of steel straps and supports was due to a reluctance to invest in
these as a result of the downturn in trade – this not long after west of Scotland colliery
owners had undermined their own sales cartel, and the Lanarkshire Coal Owners
Association (the most powerful of the Scottish coal owners associations both by force
of numbers and because of the influence of key members of their number) were
lobbying to dilute the measures aimed at introducing a statutory sales scheme into the
83
Interview with George Gillespie, Newtongrange, Midlothian, 14 August 1999.
NACM, Vol. XXX, (1933), pp.414-415; NACM, Vol. XXXI, (1934), pp. 457-461; NACM, Vol.
XXXVII, (1940), pp. 34-37; M. Benney, Charity Main, p. 74; B. L. Coombes, These poor hands. The
autobiography of a miner working in South Wales, this edition, (Cardiff, 2002), p. 86; S. Williamson,
Gresford , pp. 114-117; I. Bargielowska-Bargielowska, ‘Colliery Managers and Nationalisation’, p. 62;
A. C. Perchard, ‘The Mine Management Professions in the Scottish Coal Industry’, chapters 2 and 3.
85
Andrew Bryan was a former Inspector of Mines for Scotland and by that time Professor of Mining at
the Royal Technical College, Glasgow. He would go onto become a General Manager of the Shotts
Iron Company, Chief Inspector of Mines, and subsequently a member of the National Coal Board: RC,
Minutes of Evidence, Volume II: 19-34, Reis, Qs. 23,483-23,503; 23,689-23,691; 23,851; 23,94523,973; and 24,118-24,120; and Shaw, Q. 25,253; and p.893-4.
86
The Coal Mines Act 1911 stipulated that each mine (excluding very small operations) should be
managed by a qualified manager. Colliery managers were required to hold a First Class, and undermanagers a Second Class, Certificate of Competency issued by the Home Office. RC, Report, p.148.
87
RC, Report, p.257.
84
16
industry.88 The District Inspector continued in the years following to make the same
plea for the use of the straps. Concurrently the Mining Institute for Scotland took up
the call for the use of steel straps noting that fatalities were three times less likely to
occur on longwall faces using them.89
The inconsistencies between the legal
requirements on the manager and the realities of health and safety praxis at collieries
were illustrated repeatedly by specific accidents at Scottish collieries.90 Though
unwilling to be drawn on allegations of the victimisation of managers by senior
colliery company officials, in its evidence to the Rockley Commission the NACM did
call for anyone superior to colliery manager who was informing the technical
management of a pit to both hold a first-class certificate of competency and be held
jointly accountable under the Coal Mines Act.91 Frustrations with under investment
and interference were directly linked to production and health and safety.
As many within the mine management professions attributed fiscal constraints to what
they saw as the futile undercutting of coal prices, it was this which gave them
common cause with ‘progressive’ coal owners. By 1936 even the normally loyal
Colliery Guardian was declaring: ‘The Government may be strongly tempted to take
matters out of the coal owners’ hands… for there is a general belief, not entirely
unwarranted by the events of the last few years, that the owners are incapable of
carrying out measures for their own redemption unless they are goaded at every
yard.’92
Thus to rebut one of Supple’s claims and reinforce another, the industry
was not so much held back by, ‘conservatism amongst managers’, as much as by,
‘short-term attitudes amongst employers.’93
Joint wartime control, from 1942, brought with it some welcome relief for mine
management professionals, as well as changed social relations of production, as the
following comment from a Durham colliery manager makes clear:
The war has changed things a bit for us- in some ways better, in some ways worse.
But remember first of all that this generation of managers has been trained in a
pinch-and-scrape, cost-cutting atmosphere in which we all got a lot of practice in
‘making do’ and no practice at all in being efficient… The easy part is, that we’ve
now got a chance to tidy our pits up a bit.94
Reflecting on recent developments in the practice of mine management in 1941,
Andrew Bryan noted that, it was, ‘becoming increasingly difficult for one man to
undertake efficiently all the responsibilities of Coal-mine management as now
commonly practised.’95 He might have added, as he indicated in a paper to the
Mining Institute of Scotland in 1936, that rarely did managers have a free hand to run
88
HM Inspectorate of Mines (HMIM), Scottish Division (SD), (1930), p.27; Lanarkshire Coal Masters
Association (LCA), Minutes 1929-33, UGD 159/1/17-18, Glasgow University Archives (GUA);
Outram, ‘Class Warriors’, table 3.1.
89
HMIM, SD, (1933), pp.17-28; HMIM, SD, (1935), pp.19-22; HMIM, SD, (1935), pp.18-24: Mining
Institute of Scotland, XXXIII, (1932-3), p.45.
90
Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, pp.95-119.
91
RC, Evidence, pp.892 and 895.
92
CG, 8 May 1936, p.882.
93
B. Supple, history, p.32.
94
Benney, Charity Main, p. 73.
95
IME, LX, (1941- 1942), pp.23- 24.
17
their pits or, at times, fulfil their statutory obligations.96 The ‘contradictory locations’
and ‘multiple exploitations’, as well as the ‘mediated class’, of the mine management
professions were evident in the alliances, differing experiences of class and status, and
their backgrounds and links to locales.
‘Captains of their ship’?: Managers under the Nationalisation.97
The advent of nationalisation signalled vastly improved conditions for mine
management professionals and gave them opportunities that they had not generally
been offered by the private colliery companies. Leading figures within the
Parliamentary Labour Party, the Fabian Society and Attlee’s administrations – most
notably Sir Stafford Cripps, Herbert Morrison and Austen Albu – were keen to
promote a key role for management in the newly nationalised industries.98 As the new
Minister of Fuel and Power in Attlee’s first cabinet, it fell to Emmanuel Shinwell to
(reluctantly) reinforce the important role to be played by managers in the nationalised
industry.99 Aside from political reforms, as Andrew Bryan noted in 1941, the
modernisation of the coal mining was already leading to the increasing specialisation
of the industry which was both responsible for the growth of the mine management
professions, and, in part, for the gradual dilution of colliery managers’ powers. The
latter provides some explanation for the contusions that arose in the BACM. For
their part most Scottish mine management professionals were generally poorly
educated and ill-equipped for spearheading progress in the modern coal industry. Of
all the tasks facing the NCB, the first Assistant Secretary to the Board P. M. D.
Roberts stated that, ‘the main task of the Board was then, and is now, to rebuild the
industry and to improve technical and general management continually.’100
The ultimate goals for the National Coal Board, and central government, were to
centralise control, concentrate production at larger and more efficient collieries and
maximise productivity. These were to be underpinned by the roll-out of management
and accounting information systems to inform centrally devised targets which were to
set operational and senior levels of management on a collision course. This was
further exacerbated by: slack initial planning; at times inconsistent and ill-conceived
political intervention; and reliance on inexperienced and unsuitable appointees at
tactical and strategic levels of management. Moreover the NCB’s industrial relations
strategies – intended to introduce a spirit of greater cooperation into the industry,
while tackling the problems of wage-drift, high absenteeism and localised strikes –
96
Mining Institute of Scotland, LVI, (1935-6), p.125.
G. W. Saunders, ‘ Management in a Specialist’s World’, NACM, Vol. LXI, (1964), p. 275.
98
Austen Albu and Linicus’ comments cited in N. Tiratsoo and J. Tomlinson, Industrial efficiency and
state intervention: Labour 1939-51 (London, 1993), pp.48-9; H. Morrison, Socialisation and
Transport. The organization of socialised industries with particular reference to the London
Passenger Transport Bill (London, 1933); G. D. H. Cole, The National Coal Board. Its tasks,
organisation and its prospects (London, 1948), p.16.
99
For public pronouncement see Shinwell’s speech to the NACM: NACM, XLIV, (1946-47), p.17; And
privately: Letter from Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Shinwell MP to Edwinstowe and District Labour Party, 25
June 1946, POWE 37/4, TNA – for more details of this specific case, see: R. J. Waller, The Dukeries
Transformed. pp. 217-223.
100
P. M. D. Roberts, ‘Getting to Grips’ in Sir G. Nott-Bower and R. H. Walkerdine (eds.), National
Coal Board: The First Ten Years. A Review of the first Decade of the Nationalised Coal Mining
Industry in Great Britain (London, 1957), p.8.
97
18
inflamed relations between strategic, tactical and operational levels of management
within the Scottish coalfield.
If Scotland was anything to go by, there was never a mass exodus of managers from
the industry after nationalisation claimed in the main accounts.101 Most of the
members of the newly established Scottish Divisional Board and Area staffs were
former managerial employees of the large coal enterprises like Bairds and
Dalmellington, the Shotts Iron Company, and particularly the FCC. 102 This also meant
that the industry did retain some more reactionary elements amongst the professions
who were hostile to the forthcoming changes.
The more conservative residue from the private industry was best represented by the
views of the first National Executive of the BACM. Yet the mine management
professions changed visibly over the period, although debates within the BACM
illustrated the defining schisms between different groupings, with progressive voices
amongst their ranks attempting to drive reform through.
The National Coal Board (NCB) not only introduced formal employment conditions
for its employees, including managerial grades, and regimented conciliation and
arbitration structures but also clearly defined professional development pathways,
which afforded those aspiring to become mining professionals a supported means by
which to join the professions. This commitment to training and education was also
turned on improving scientific and technical knowledge and competency amongst
mine management professionals, and their managerial skills. The latter, in particular,
provoked a dismissive response from some quarters of the mine management
professions who viewed management education and industrial relations theory with
mocking derision. Others who had long advocated greater professionalisation of mine
management, most notably Andrew (later Sir Andrew) Bryan, represented a more
progressive wing who were keen to see a modernised and well-qualified management
cadre.103 Furthermore, the development of managerial skills and education were
promoted and strongly supported by a number of Ministers, particularly in the Attlee
administrations.104
101
W. Ashworth, The history of the British coal industry, Vol.5. 1946- 1982: The nationalized industry
(Oxford, 1986), pp.32-33; R. S. Halliday, The disappearing Scottish colliery. A personal view of some
aspects of Scotland’s Coal Industry since Nationalisation (Edinburgh, 1990), p.173; This view was
initially promulgated by the NCB’s Advisory Committee on Organisation [the Fleck Committee], see:
NCB, Report of the Advisory Committee on Organisation (London, 1955), paragraph 109, p.23.
102
Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, pp.167-8.
103
Sir A. Bryan, ‘Sixty Years of Colliery Management’, NACM, XLIX, (1952-3), p.81; Sir A. Bryan,
‘The Renaissance of Management’, in Sir G. Nott-Bower and R. H. Walkerdine (eds.), National Coal
Board: The First Ten Years (London, 1957), pp.23- 27; Sir. A. Bryan, ‘The Manager of Yesterday and
Tomorrow’, CG, 19 September 1957, pp.346- 349.
104
Conservative support for management education and professionalisation was far less evident:
Anthony Carew, Labour under the Marshall Plan. The politics of productivity and the marketing of
management science (Manchester, 1987); Anthony Carew, ‘The Anglo-American Council on
Productivity (1948- 1952): The Ideological Roots of the Post-War Debate on Productivity in Britain’,
Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 26, (1991), pp.49- 65; David Edgerton, ‘The ‘White Heat’
Revisited: The British Government and Technology in the 1960s’, Twentieth Century British History,
Vol. 7, No.1, (1996), pp.53-82; Nick Tiratsoo and Jim Tomlinson, Industrial efficiency and state
intervention: Labour 1939-51 (London, 1993); Nick Tiratsoo and Jim Tomlinson, The Conservatives
and industrial efficiency, 1951-64. Thirteen wasted years? (London, 1998); Jim Tomlinson, ‘Liberty
with Order’: Conservative Economic Policy, 1951-1964’, in Martin Francis and Ina Swingier
Bargielowska (eds.), The Conservatives and British Society 1880- 1990 (Cardiff, 1996), pp.274-288.
19
Nationalisation also introduced greater investment into the industry, although the
competing post-war demands of addressing the balance-of-trade deficit,
reconstruction, and the Korean War re-armament, meant that, in practice, the industry
was under a great deal of strain and struggled to get the raw materials it needed.105
Most colliery managers, under-managers and engineers at an operational level still
had little control over how that money was invested.106
One of the failings of the infant NCB (and its architects) was to ensure that the
management structures and role of the National Board were clearly defined, as the
NCB’s 1955 advisory committee on organisation pointed out in their report [the Fleck
Report]. This report also criticised the calibre of those managers at Area level (i.e.,
tactical management) – a point that had been made earlier by the NCB and the Acton
Society Trust.107 At a disaggregated level, the chaos caused by in-experienced staff at
a Divisional and Area level could be seen in some of the disastrous decisions made in
the Scottish Division over new colliery developments, in particular Seafield and
Rothes Collieries.108 These white elephants added to the Scottish Division’s growing
deficit, and could have been avoided had local managers and miners (who warned of
the inadvisability of sinking the pits at these locations) been listened to.109
The contusions within the mine management professions between reformers, and
conservatives and the different branches of the professions were well illustrated by
informal caucuses in BACM. They well represent the changing outlook and
characteristics of the mine management professions, and their professionalisation. The
first National Executive – in particular, the President and Secretary, Major Stanley
Walton-Brown and Major Robert Anderson – was largely staffed by men who typified
the minority of stakeholder- managers under private ownership (those with a sizeable
share-holding in the private companies and who had, by and large, not come up from
the ranks) and were generally hostile to nationalisation. They were replaced by the
late 1950s with a very different breed of mining professional. The newly elected
President and Secretary, Jim Bullock and George Tyler, were the sons of miners and
had worked as miners. Furthermore, they both supported nationalisation and were
Labour Party members.110 Under Bullock and Tyler, the BACM developed a
stridently independent stance as a managerial trade union. In contrast, their
predecessors had struggled to understand the status of managers within the NCB,
vacillating between private deference and public petulance. Bullock and Tyler’s
105
W. Ashworth, The history of the British coal industry, volume 5. 1946- 1982: The nationalised
industry (Oxford, 1986); M. Chick, Industrial policy in Britain 1945-1951. Economic planning,
nationalisation and the Labour governments (Cambridge, 1998), pp.25, 42-43; N. Tiratsoo, and J.
Tomlinson, Industrial efficiency and state intervention: Labour 1939-51 (London, 1993).
106
Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, pp.207-262.
107
Fleck Report, paragraphs 109, 226-228 and 242, pp.23, 43 and 45; NCB, Annual report and
accounts, 1948, p.109; Acton Society Trust, Management under Nationalisation (London, 1953),
pp.17-18.
108
R. S. Halliday, The Disappearing Scottish Colliery, pp.49-107; Per chard, The Mine Management
Professions, pp.250-264.
109
Ibid
110
J. Bullock, Them and US, (Souvenir, London: 1972); BACM, The National News Letter, 1, II, 46,
March 1959, p.10; For similar managers, see: ‘Obituary: Phillip Weekes: Humane National Coal Bard
area manager who clashed with Ian MacGregor over the handling of the miners’ strike in Wales’, The
Times, 3 July 2003, p.29; T. Ellis, After The Dust Has Settled. The autobiography of Tom Ellis,
(Bridge Books, Wrexham: 2004).
20
leadership saw a palpable change in strategy. Abandoning its previously sectional
agenda the National Executive started to issue statements criticising the inconsistency
of government fuel policy and what they saw as the failure of successive governments
to alleviate the impact of closures in the industry. Even more significantly they
entered into tactical alliances with the other mining unions – the NUM and NACODS
– to lobby against contraction in the older coalfields.111 Most controversial though
was Bullock and Tyler’s campaign for TUC affiliation. This move – alongside reform
of policy-making bodies within the union to give greater representation to surveyors,
and mining electrical and mechanical engineers – exposed the divisions within the
union. In both cases, Bullock and Tyler faced a substantive and vocal opposition,
particularly from colliery managers and mining engineers, who dominated the
Union’s National Executive and National Joint Council.112
The chief battleground between centripetal and centrifugal forces in the industry was
to be over the NCB’s production and industrial relations policies.
During the first eight years of nationalisation, operational management were to exert
considerable influence over the conduct of industrial relations and, to a lesser degree,
production at their collieries. In the case of the former the inherent problems were
immediately evident to Area, Divisional and Board management and policy makers,
illustrated both by general trends and specific incidents. National and Scottish
Divisional directors continued to be troubled by unofficial strikes and wage drift. In
addition, a number of individual cases of disturbances at collieries gave them cause
for concern about the precarious state of industrial relations in the coalfield and the
suitability of some managers for the changed circumstances. In February 1950, the
manager of Thinacres Mine had a miner charged with a breach of the peace because
he had disobeyed an order.113 A year later, the Scottish Divisional Board were given
further cause for concern when the manager at Pirnhall Colliery physically assaulted a
miner for being off work for some time.114
Leading members of the mine management professions also expressed concerns, with
the NACM’s President declaring at their 1951 annual conference:
With the best intentions in the world, we have not yet touched the fringe of
consultation… Consultation, as I see it, is not something in which one side gives the
information and the other receives it… The idea that consultation should start in
London and finish with the Colliery Consultative Committees is not altogether right.
It should begin at the coalface and on the “roads”, in the shops and offices, and no
111
British Association of Colliery Management (BACM), National Executive (NE), Minutes, 23
September 1959 and 30 January 1962; BACM, The National News Letter, III:70, (March 1965), p.2;
BACM, The National News Letter, III:71, (June 1965), p.3; BACM, The National News Letter, III:75,
(June 1966), p.4.
112
BACM, News, (May 1956), p.6; BACM, News, (March 1964), p.3; BACM, News, (September
1964), p.17; BACM, News, (December 1965), p.13; BACM, News, (March 1966), pp.1-3, and 6;
Interview with Alistair Moore, Bo’ness, West Lothian, 12 March 2004; A. J. Arthurs, ‘Managerial
Unionism in the coal, steel and electricity supply industries’, p.8; A. J. Arthurs, ‘Managerial Trade
Unionism’, Journal of Industrial Relations, 25, (1983), p.146; Perchard, The Mine Management
Professions, chapter 8.
113
National Coal Board (NCB), Scottish Division (SD), Executive Committee (EC), minutes, 28
February 1950, CB 42/2, National Archives of Scotland (NAS).
114
NCB, SD, EC, minutes, 13 February 1951, CB 42/3, NAS.
21
project, however small, in which orders are going to be given to men and duties
allotted to them, should be started without first of all arranging as much consultation
as possible between the men on the spot who are actually doing the job.115
The President’s speech was met with considerable animosity from delegates, with the
Scottish Division’s Labour Director James Barbour (who was present) declaring that
progress was being ‘retarded’ by ‘suspicion and fears’.116
Concurrently local managers were themselves under considerable pressure in the face
of colliery closures (during the first phase of closures between 1947 and 1950. It is
also worth noting that as many of colliery managers of this vintage were drawn from
the localities where they worked, and therefore had links with the local communities,
they were having to adjust to seeing the industry and communities in which they had
worked and been raised being transformed.117
Yet the confrontation between centralising forces, and local management and trade
unions was to build and come to a head after 1955 (with greater pressure from
Government and the NCB for productivity gains), although conflicts of interest were
evident during the early 1950s (especially over attempts at introducing a greater
degree of integrated mechanisation).118 In Scotland, the combined effects of the
introduction of the divisional power loading agreement (the SPLA) after 1955,
centrally-devised targets enforced with vigour from the late 1950s onwards, and the
coinciding height of the closure programme (1958-63) led to soured relations not only
between miners and the Board but also between colliery managers and their
counterparts and superiors at Area and Divisional levels.119
The application of productivity targets based on ‘coal-face potential’ (optimum output
based on uniform calculations often with little recognition of the specific geological
conditions) bred considerable resentment. In some parts of the coalfield, this was
exacerbated by its forceful application by Area officials, who failed to use their
initiative to interpret the policy more flexibly, bringing them into direct conflict with
colliery managements. For example, in December 1957 the Area General Manager for
East Fife replaced most of the management team at Michael Colliery (at the time the
largest colliery in the Division) for failing to meet targets. 120 At some collieries the
115
NACM, XLIX, (1953), p.7.
Ibid, p.20.
117
Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, chapters 5 and 7; H. Heughan, Pit closures at Shotts
and the migration of miners (Edinburgh, 1953).
118
The key change in the direction of NCB policy was signalled in a minute from Sir Hubert
Houldsworth (NCB chair 1951-6) of January 1953 but it was under the Chairmanships of Sir James
Bowman (1957-1960) and Alf (later Lord) Robens (1961-1971) that productivity drives were to be
pursued zealously: NCB, SD, Executive Committee (EC), Memo from Sir Hubert Houldsworth to all
Divisional Production Directors – ‘Production efficiency and work study’, 6 January 1953, CB41/7,
NAS; Sir J. Bowman, ‘Management and Administration in the N.C.B.’, CG, (12 September 1957),
pp.331-2; NCB, SD, EC, Letter from Sir James Bowman to Scottish Divisional Board (SDB), 22
December 1958, CB44/32, NAS; NCB, SD, EC, Letter from Alf Robens to SDB, 17 April 1962,
CB44/37, NAS; NCB, SD, EC, Note of meeting between E. F. Schumacher, H. E. Collins and the
Divisional Advisory Committee on Production and Area Production Managers, 6 July 1965, CB41/68;
Perchard, The Mine Management Professions, pp.207-244.
119
Ibid, chapters 5-7.
120
NCB, SD, EC, policy papers, 24 August 1957 and 17 December 1957, CB44/28, NAS.
116
22
NCB’s production and closure policies had the effect of uniting management and
miners against Area management.121 It also had a calamitous impact on health and
safety, particularly when it coincided with the period of intensification of productivity
drives and the height of the closure programme in the Scottish coalfields, 19581963.122
By and large colliery managers’ locus was rarely unencumbered, and increasingly
Board prerogatives over production and mechanisation put pressure on local industrial
politics. Both industrial relations and health and safety became a colliery lottery.
Managers at collieries with a secure future – and typically easier geological conditions
which made them better suited to power loading applications – were usually better
able to enjoy stable or civil relations with the rest of the colliery employees.
Conversely managers at those collieries – because of their age or physical conditions
– who struggled to meet production targets and/or were under threat of closure often
experienced more fractious relations with miners. Furthermore colliery managers and
under-managers were often unfairly prosecuted – because of their statutory safety
responsibilities – for mistakes made by staff at Area and Sub-Area level, although to a
certain degree this was partially rectified with the introduction of the Mines and
Quarries Act of 1954.123
The mine management professions emerged as an important voice within the
nationalised industry, as the NCB’s artificers had intended. They profited from
greatly improved terms and conditions of employment, and from a comprehensive
programme of professional development.124 Nevertheless creeping centralisation and
the extension of MIS diluted the powers of operational management and concurrently
the strengthening of centralised control through management information systems.
This diminution in colliery managers’ status; the quality of some staff and decisionmaking at Area levels; and the approach of some tactical managers in the pursuit of
strategic managerial prerogatives bred resentment and prompted confrontations
between colliery management and Area and Divisional Management (as well as
between managers and miners). The production drives and closure programmes of
the period 1958-1963 highlighted differences between local and area management,
and could also compromise health and safety and undermine industrial relations at a
local level.
121
NCB, SD, Central Area, Woodend Colliery Consultative Committee (CCC), 11 December 1962-26
May 1966, CB55/30, NAS.
122
Between 1955 and 1964, manpower in the Scottish coalfields had been reduced by 36.7% (a loss of
31,000 jobs) as opposed to the estimates of a 7% reduction as set out in the NCB’s Plan for Coal
published in 1950. By February 1965, there were 1,593 miners in Fife being paid under the NCB
Redundancy Compensation Agreement alone: NCB, SD, Area Industrial Relations Officers’
Committee, 7 March 1962-1 August 1962, CB53/22, NAS; J. P. Savage, ‘Redundancy – its Problems
and its Treatment’, The Mining Engineer, (June 1965), pp.504-510; NCB, Plan for Coal (London,
1950), p.12; NCB, Annual report and accounts, Vol. I: Report, (1955), p.5; NCB, Annual report and
accounts for 30th December 1962-28th March 1964, Vol. I: Report, p.31; Perchard, ‘The Mine
Management Professions And The Dust Problem’, pp.100 and 103; Perchard, The Mine Management
Professions, chapters 6 and 7.
123
Idem.
124
Interviews with: Jim Bowden, Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, 9 August 2003; Jim Dickson,
Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire, 14 August 2003; Frank Gibb, Cowdenbeath, Fife, 24 August 2003;
Bill Marshall, Kirkcaldy, Fife, 21 April 2004; and Alistair Moore, Bo’ness, West Lothian, 12 March
2004.
23
Conclusion
In charting the emergence and development of this important and distinct grouping of
actors within the history of the British coal industry, this paper has highlighted the
importance of investigating managerial agency and the processes that affect it.
Managerial employees in the Scottish industry prior to nationalisation were afforded a
lowly status, and were subject to the structure and processes, as well as regular
surveillance, imposed by their employers. Yet they showed themselves to be
conscious social actors who increasingly vocalised their objections. Nationalisation
demonstrably improved the conditions and status of the mine management professions
within the industry. However the priorities of NCB production and industrial
relations policies caused friction between operational, and tactical and strategic levels
of management.
Managers’ agency was exhibited through a variety of ‘contradictory locations’.
Moreover their ‘mediated class’, and even ‘temporal’ locations, could also affect
their outlook and behaviours. These were seen through their nominal role and
statutory responsibilities, as opposed to their real status but also their public criticisms
of their employers prior to nationalisation. It was evident in alliances with other
social groupings in the industry (both before and after nationalisation). It was
highlighted by the divisions within the BACM between the former stakeholdermanagers (Walton-Brown and Anderson) and the new guard (Bullock and Tyler), and
between Area and colliery managers. Ultimately this study represents an illustration
of the value of detailed disaggregated studies of managers within industries in their
historical context as integral to understanding both the functioning of the firm and the
social relations of production.