“Once Coal Gets in the Blood…”: An Ethnography of Labour and Community in the Forest of Dean Coalfield

Joe Morris

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Thesis submitted for the degree of MSc in Sociology

Comparative Organisation and Labour Studies

University of Amsterdam

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Kobe De Keere

Second Supervisor: Dr. Johan De Deken

July 2017 *Image on cover, the Free Miners Brass. The symbol for the ancient traditions of the people of the Dean Forest (Nicholls, 1966).

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the experience of labour in a deprived area of West Gloucestershire, England. I carried out a historical analysis of labour formation, conducted an ethnography of labour and used an interview with a Free Miner. This thesis explores how customs and rights particular to the Forest of Dean affect the perception of class identity and how these identities have changed over time. In doing so, I take a fresh look at miners class conscious, challenging the idea of the coal miner as archetypal proletariat (Fisher, 2016). The historical research suggests there exists a stratified working class identity among Miners in the Forest of Dean, that influence productive and reproductive strategies, and narratives of labour that reshape the spaces of the coal mine and the community. In chapter three, I reconstruct the history of coal mining in the Forest of Dean. It shows that customs and rights alongside the development of industrial capitalism fragmented the coal miners into artisans - skilled coal miners and proletarians – unskilled wage workers. In chapter four, I conduct an ethnography of the coal mine. Here, I analyse the labour process under Free Mining. It shows how consciousness is formed at the ‘point of production’ (Burawoy, 1979) and through the commitment to custom and right. Using a Bourdieusian ‘second break’ (2000), I reincorporate the subjective truth of the Free Miner to analyse how the historical fragmentation is reproduced through the social relations of production. Chapter five reveals how Free Miners maintain and legitimate their productive relations in the community. The aristocratic ethos produced and reproduced through productive relations are legitimised through cultural consecration in the social field, despite periodical, creative destruction (Schumpeter, 2003) that has reshaped and fragmented working class mining identities. This ethnographic work refines and extends the hypothesis of late capitalism; of the social fragmentation of the working class and the social stability of an aristocracy of labour. Combining an analysis of the labour process with Bourdieusian field theory, the thesis shows the relative stability of an aristocratic miner within the Forest of Dean coalfield, despite an almost complete eradication of the coal industry. The thesis concludes with a discussion of whether late capitalism entails the dissolution of the working class and the consolidation of an aristocracy of labour under symbolic and cultural capital. It shows that the historical fragmentation of collective working class identities among miners exists today. It reveals, to what extent, and how it is maintained through the Free Miners Association. This is achieved through an analysis of shared mnemonic dispositions, linguistic capital, symbolic capital and the labour process under Free Mining.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Kobe de Keere for his invaluable intellectual contribution. Special thanks to my Mum and Dad for their support and for the political conversations that we have had. I am indebted to a number of persons who contributed to the making of this research. A number of people in the Forest of Dean have actively helped me during my stay. Ian Wright gave me contacts to Free Miners and local historians and shared with me his vast knowledge of working class history. The Dean Heritage Centre gave me access to resources on Free Mining, while Dave Tuffley shared with me his invaluable work in recording and documenting Free Mining casualties. A special thanks go to the Free Miners themselves, without their support, encouragement and welcoming presence, my fieldwork would not have happened. To them, I express all my gratitude and respect. Finally, I would like to give thanks to the people of the Forest of Dean; “Salted with humour, mellowed in the balm of long sunny days yet wearily weighed and assessed in the light of their hard and bitter history, unpalatable they may be to some, they carry with them the full flavour of their practical Forest origin” (Beddington, 1977, p. 7).

Steve at Prosper Colliery: Free Miner and Chairman of the Free Miners Association (FMA).

Contents

Forward p. 1 Preface p. 3 Abbreviations p. 6 Glossary p. 7 List of Figures p. 9 List of Tables and Maps p. 11 ‘Arouse Ye Free Miners’ p. 12 ‘Poor Honest Neddy Rymer’ p. 13

Chapter 1: Introduction p. 14 1.1. First day on the job p. 18 1.2. The Place p. 19

Chapter 2: Methodology p. 23 2.1. Introduction p. 23 2.2. Negotiating Access p. 24 2.3. Methods in Practice p. 25 2.4. Historical Analysis p. 26 2.5. Participant Observation p. 26 2.6. In-depth Interview p. 28 2.7. Photographs p. 29 2.8. Ethics p. 29 2.9. Process of Analysis p. 31 2.10. Conclusion p. 32

Chapter 3: A Working Class History? [Production] p. 33 3.1 Introduction p. 33 3.2 Customs and Rights p. 35 3.3 Industrialisation of Forest Coal p. 38 3.4 The Butty System p. 40 3.5 Skill Sectarianism and the Formation of the FDMA p. 46 3.6 Conclusion p. 49 3.7 Economic Restructuring p. 51

Chapter 4: The Coalface [Reproduction] p. 53 4.1. Introduction p. 55 4.2. Prosper Colliery p. 57 4.3. Bixslade Free Mine p. 61 4.4. The Workforce p. 62 4.5. The Market p. 62 4.5.1. Primary p. 63 4.5.2. Secondary p. 64 4.6. Production Process and Machines p. 66 4.7. Distribution of Knowledge p. 72 4.8. The Value of Labour: “A Coal Mining Mentality” p. 75 4.9. Conclusion p. 77

Chapter 5: The Community [Legitimation] p. 79 5.1. Introduction p. 79 5.2. Class p. 81 5.3. Defining the Field; ‘Real Foresters’ p. 85 5.4. Linguistic capital p. 92 5.5. Murals and Statues p. 95 5.6. Didactic localism p. 99 5.7. Conclusion p. 104

Chapter 6: Conclusion p. 106

Addendum p. 109

Bibliography p. 110

Appendix 1. Profile of participants p. 118 2. Interview Guide p. 120 3. Interview Transcript p. 122 4. Codebook p. 144 5. Reflexivity p. 146 6. Future of Free Mining; Action Plan p. 150 7. A Counterfactual p. 151

Forward

To understand capitalism; its content and processes, one should not start with analysis through narrowly defined political and social history. We should avoid top-down cultural analysis (Fisher, 2016, Dumenil & Levy, 2011). In stressing a move away from a purely structuralist account of labour history, Hobsbawm (1978) recounts, we must move away from structuralist tendencies in economic, political and social trends. Rather, we must focus on the social experience of labour, techniques of discipline, stratification and consent. In re- embedding the lived experience can we begin to understand the components necessary for collective subjectivity.

Instead of viewing mining labour in the Forest of Dean as just one facet of defeat in the context of the labour movement as a whole. The restructuring of the economic sphere means the reconstitution of the working class as a class in itself. This does not mean a different mode of production in the orthodox Marxist sense, but a different kind of political economy and correspondingly, a different kind of working class experience. A transformation of the forces of production, including production techniques and instruments of production means that there is a transformation in workers relations and experience in capitalist production, and effectively, how labour is organised within the capitalist mode. However, the difference between Free Miners who unionised the Forest of Deans coal industry will be shown as retaining a strict similarity in production and therefore consciousness today. Craft style production in the large coal mines following the introduction of capital, to the craft style techniques still in use today in an era of flexible labour will be examined. This presents a view that capitalist development has not restructured work and entire communities. Rather, a new despotic capitalism has emerged based on flexible labour strategies, which remains congruent with small-scale subsistence mining, craft labour and informal market transactions.

To understand capitalist transition and development we need to relate it to the British national context, second by industry and thirdly on an individual workplace basis; putting the experience of workers at the heart of analysis (Myers, 2017). Andre Gorz’s, ‘Farewell to the Working Class’ (1997), takes a broad structuralist account of the defeat of skilled industrial workers, without reference to empirically observable working class experiences. Rather, we should seek to understand the working class experience to understand the formation and resilience of capitalism and the contradictions of labour.

One cannot understand capitalism outside its historical context (Myers, 2017). To historicize it means we must place the experience at the forefront of analysis. This applies to the current conjecture, the recomposition of the working class, consciousness, and subjectivity. In understanding the specificities of the Free Miners experience as a historical subject in the same manner and method, we understand the Free Miner today. As Hegel described, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk” (2008, p. 23). It is only at the end of a historical period that we come to a fuller understanding of it. By turning to an empirically

1 grounded knowledge of the lived experience of the Free Miner, can we begin to understand the nature of the modern system.

2

Preface

I follow the disused railway lines that connected the coal mines to the Rivers Severn and Wye. The two rivers form a natural enclosure around this traditional mining region. Not quite Wales, not quite England, the Forest of Dean lies between the two, the Bristol Channel to its south.

At Dark Hill Ironworks I stop to take a photograph. As I check the captured image, I hear a loud barbed voice from further down the old railway line. “You Local?” the man barked in that growling Forest tongue. At first, I was a little put off by the man’s abruptness, which, when mixed with Forest dialect has a loud an uncompromising tone. Had this chance meeting come at the end, or even after my first day working in the mine, I would have known that the low growl like sounds only exuded a sincere interest that came, not from a fear of ‘foreigners’1 from these fiercely autonomous people, but from a community that still holds values of support, inclusion and protection.

The man was poor; there was no doubting that. In his late sixties, bent double, walking stick in hand, his other clasped a chained lead. His Border Collie hung close around his legs, long hair matted around its neck. The man wore a dinner jacket, long past its best, in fact, so old and tatty was this jacket I began even to doubt whether this man had been around to see its more favourable days. He wore jogging bottoms with holes in both knees, its colour a blue-ish grey. Brown dinner shoes, the top of which had become unstuck from the sole, the tongue sagging to one side, almost dragging on the floor with each lurch forward.

I became acutely aware of myself. Camera in hand, notepad and pen in pocket. My clothes, although not of particular style, were clean and smart in comparison. At the beginning of the research, I had imagined coming back to the Forest of Dean to reconnect with my roots, its people, its culture, to research the region’s mining customs and traditions. Here was perhaps evidence the disjuncture between old and new, researcher and researched was larger than I had imagined.

It was not that the man had questioned my affinity to the area, it was that we operated in two different worlds; one divided by class and time. It was after this chance meeting that I decided that I was no longer an insider studying my peers, in its present form, but rather an outsider, looking in, researching and writing about my history, my culture, of which, I was now apart.2

“Yes”, I said quite annoyed by this realisation. “Live in Coalway”, I lied. “Always have done”. He looked me up and down, weighing me up, with a confident air. The blue scars on his nose indicating a lifetime spent underground.

1 Forest of Dean residents refer to those residing outside of the areas boundary as ‘foreigners’. 2 Desmond (2007) notes that the trick of the ethnographer is to be somewhere in the middle; between alien and native, stranger and friend.

3

“Interested in the iron works then”? He motioned towards Dark Hill. I explained my research in quite some detail, hoping to receive some recognition from this relic of the Forests mining past. It wasn’t coming.

“You know without this ‘ere none of that would ‘ave ‘appened in Sheffield”.3 He was proud. Proud of what the Forest had given.

“Yes I know, quite amazing isn’t it really, when you think about it”, I said.

For a while we stood looking out onto Dark Hill, occasionally offering each other bits of information about the Forests history. Trying to outdo each other, we fell silent.

“Better be…” I was cut short. The silence that had formed was not an unfounded one, the man continued to look straight ahead and spoke softer now, his Forest tongue unravelling in a slow, determined manner;

“I’ve lived in the Forest all my life, and my ancestors on both sides have been here maybe four hundred years I think. On the one side, they were all miners who worked in the pits. So I’ve had family that have died in the pits. The Forest is special because it was such an isolated area for many many hundreds of years, that governments and Kings and Queens of England just use it as a playground, and they left us alone. So when they did decide to come to the Forest, to extract the value of it from the trees, coal and minerals, they come up against a very independent minded people”.

We stood, again in silence, until he turned, smiled, and growled: “good luck then ol’ butty”. The loudness and sharpness had returned to his tongue. He trundled off down the railway line, his collie tight to his heel.

The man spoke with a frankness; a passionate honesty bestowed by years of hard graft below the surface. There it was, the old Forest and the new, stood side by side. The two seemingly inimical. Through my research, however, the ‘old’ is more relevant than ever. The contradiction between the ‘old and the ‘new’, the dissolving of a working class culture has by no means diminished. The ‘culture built on coal’ in the Forest of Dean is ever present.

The old saying goes that, “when coal gets in your blood you can’t wash it out” (Frank, 24/05/2017). It seems that the coal, so ingrained in the Forests social, political and productive institutions, is handed down from each generation. The Forests fortunes may have, according to Dennis Potter, “risen and fallen in line with the production of coal” (1996, p. 12), but its culture and identities are so ingrained that they span generation and

3 Darkhill Ironworks are associated with the development of iron and steel. Here, the Bessemer process was developed, however lapsing patents meant accreditation was never received by its initial contributors (Anstis, 1997).

4 its productive arrangements. My research will investigate how ‘old’ mining customs, traditions and rights, along with their supportive working class institutions, knowledge and skills remain at the heart of the mining process in the Forest of Dean today. Indeed, my research will examine the effect of de-industrialisation of the coal industry. It will show that this has not fostered a complete eradication of coal production in the area or the social dissolution of the working class. Rather, it has re-enacted ancient rights, social institutions and expanded networks of informal production, which ultimately, blurs the very distinction between capital and labour.

Portrait of two Forest of Dean miners (Father and Son)

1857. Nicholls (1966).

5

Abbreviations

FMA – Free Miners’ Association

FDMA – Forest of Dean Miners’ Association (1870-1940)

FOD – Forest of Dean

Hundred – Hundred of St Briavels

HOOF – Hands off our Forest

MFGB – Miners’ Federation of Great Britain

NCB – National Coal Board

SWMF – South Wales Miners’ Federation

6

Glossary

Many words quoted in this thesis are particular to coal mining in the Forest of Dean, although some are general mining terms. It should be noted that, although Forest dialects might be, “as varied as its coal seams” (Steve, 10/04/2017). For the purposes of this research, I have collected words while used working in Prosper Colliery and Bixslade Free Mine. To start to credit different words to villages within the Forest of Dean would be an unenviable task. These terms are still heard in the villages of the Forest of Dean today, although are ever-frequently administered from the mouths of the older mining generation.4

Adit: Access to the surface, mine entrance.

Bevin Boy: An inexperienced miner.

Black damp: A suffocating gas. A mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, produced by the oxidisation of coal and timber.

Breadtime: lunch at Work.

Boughten: A purchased cake, as opposed to homemade.

Butty System: Sub-contracting system used in the Forest of Dean. Butty men were employed by large industrialists from outside the Forest of Dean and employed several men working under them. Due to their knowledge and skill of mining the area, Free Miners were often used as Butty Men.

Butty Gang: A group of butties (usually worked in threes) who would preside over one stall.

Coalface: The exposed surface of coal

Dayman: Wage labourer, worked under the buttyman as a hewer.

Drift: A type of mine that digs almost horizontally into the earth. Often used where coal deposits can be found near the top of the delf. Free Miners only operate drift mines.

Dram: The half tonne tub that is filled with coal.

4 For a complete Forest of Dean Mining glossary see Tuffley, (2017a).

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Free Miner: The title given to coal miners in the Forest of Dean. To qualify one must be born within the Hundred of St Briavels and have worked a ‘year and a day’ in a mine. Once registered a Free Miner can take out a gale anywhere in the Forest of Dean. Royalty is paid to the crown for every tonne of coal raised.

Hewer: The miner who loosens rock around the coal, can often take years to train.

House Coal: Bituminous Coal. The most impure type of coal. Called house coal because of its domestic use. Its other main use is for making coke or smelting metal.

Fire damp: Methane Gas.

Jibber: The coal cutting machine, often known in the welsh mines as a ‘widowmaker’.

Outcrop: Exposed seam of coal on the surface.

Overman: The Overman was in charge of several Butty men, acting as the intermediary between managers and sub-contractors.

Pit-heap: Slagheap, waste from the mine.

Pig-squeal, Cy, Scrumpy: Names for Cider.

Putter: Usually young men employed to push the dram once filled with coal up and out of the mine shaft.

Seam: A seam of coal. A strip of coal.

Shaft: The vertical passage into the mine from the surface, used in the ‘big pits’ in the Forest of Dean.

Shipbadger: A commoner, with free grazing rights.

Ship: Sheep.

Thic: That.

Wik: Week.

Yut: Eat.

8

Figures

*All photographs are the authors own unless stated otherwise.

Chapter 1; Introduction 1. Forest of Dean Boundary Marker Stone p. 20 2. Free Mining Memorial, Cinderford Town Centre p. 22 3. Mining Mural, Cinderford p. 22 4. Miners Welfare Hall, Cinderford p. 22

Chapter 3; A working class history? 5. Tramway at Darkhill Ironworks p. 37 6. Gale Stone p. 37 7. Dean Forest Mines Act 1838 p. 38 8. Butty Gang p. 42 9. Road Ripping p. 42 10. Butty Man Wage slip p. 43 11. Thomas Hale Diary p. 43 12. Butty Men letter to the FDMA p. 48 13. FDMA response p. 48 14. Changing patterns of employment p. 52

Chapter 4; The Coalface 15. Steve p. 58 16. Prosper Colliery Adit p. 58 17. The Breadoven p. 59 18. Inside the Breadoven p. 59 19. Bixslade Free Mine p. 61 20. Bixslade Free Mine p. 61 21. Bixslade Free Mine adit p. 61 22. AB-15 coal cutter p. 67 23. Dram p. 68 24. Coalbreaker p. 68 25. ‘The Hilton’ Yorkley seam p. 69

Chapter 5; The Community 26. The Jovial Colliers p. 86 27. ‘Warren James’ mural p. 89

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28. Pan Todd statue p. 96 29. Free Mining statue p. 97 30. The Free Miners window, Abenhall Church p. 98 31. The Burning of Big Ben p. 104 32. Warren James day poster p. 104 33. Frank p. 123

10

Tables

1. Ownership of the Forest of Dean Collieries in 1787 p. 36 2. Ownership of Forest of Dean Collieries in 1927 p. 39 3. Colliery Closures in the Forest of Dean p. 51

Maps

1. Map 1. Forest of Dean p. 19 2. Map 2. Hundred of St Briavels p. 20 3. Map 3. Research Sites p. 54

11

Arouse ye, Free Miners

Arouse ye, free miners, who delve in old Dean, And all ye freeholders with rights o’er its green, ‘Tis time to be stirring for danger is nigh; And if ye bestir not, you’ll find by and by, That truth, and truth only, is this now I tell, They’ll suck out the egg if they once prick the shell!

Say will you surrender, or barter away, Your father’s old charter – Twelve months and a day, While yours, the bad bargain, to take what they please, In rents and in taxes, in fines and in fees. Remember, free miners, yea, ponder it well, They’ll suck out the egg if they once prick the shell!

Anon.

12

‘Poor Honest Neddy Rymer’

“He knows nobody cares of any political economy beyond what he can get out of it. No one ever attempts to regulate their business affairs on ‘economic laws’ but rush on planning and scheming whenever they can. All is chance, speculation and competition and get what you can, though you ‘beggar your neighbour’ and bring him to ruin. This the miner sees, and determines not to allow his blood and life to be bartered

away like dead metal, or as though he were a mere chattel.” Neddy Rymer (Miner and Workman’s advocate, cited in Fisher, 2016, p. 103).

*Image of Neddy Rymer, Miner and member of the Miners’ National Union (MNU) (Wright, 2014). Frequently described by Chris Fisher (2016) as ‘poor honest Neddy Rymer’.

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Chapter 1; Introduction

This thesis begins with an introduction to its theoretical foundations and an introduction to the Free Mining system. I will give a short overview of the thesis aims and objectives; namely as a refinement and extension of firstly; the sociology of the labour process, second, the contribution to the analysis of mining labour, and thirdly the contribution to analysis of the unique extractive conditions and culture in the Forest of Dean. I will briefly describe the linear narrative of this thesis. I express a commitment to the extended case study method and a relational ethnography, in which I respond to Bourdieu’s call for, “a unified social science, in which history would be a historical sociology of the past and sociology…a social history of the present” (cited in Gorksi, 2012, p. 67). I then proceed to describe the main town of Cinderford in the Forest of Dean. This is important as Cinderford’s relative decline, its look and character are emblematic of the wider productive rise and decline of the mining industry. The description gives indications for the relative prominence and continuation of Free Mining.

This research is an ethnographic study of economic organisations and contributes to the anthropological tradition that stresses the cultural specificity of labour processes (Mollona 2009; Parry, 1999; Nash, 1979). This research will also contribute to the tradition of ethnographic industrial sociology that developed from Marx’s study of the labour process (Beynon, 1973, Braverman, 1974, Burawoy, 1979). This tradition, to varying degrees, has developed Marx’s claim that the capitalist labour process relies on the existence of a class that owns the means of production and a class that have no other commodity to sell but their labour (1973). This thesis expands these contributions. I explore how customs and rights given to Free Miners shape the labour process. In doing so, I analyse whether this has consequences for the development of a homogenous class conscious. In essence, it will consider the claim by Marx that, “other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry” (2007, p. 5). At an industrial level, it will add to the analysis of coal mining as a craft (Beynon & Austrin, 1994, Harrison, 1978) while contributing to the analysis of the Forest of Dean coalfield (Fisher, 2016 & Wright, 2014).

The Forest of Dean, lying between the Welsh and English borders has a rich industrial history. During the first half of the 20th century, coal mining dominated its economic, social and cultural standing. The coal industry in the Forest of Dean had all but disappeared when the last large mine in the region shut in 1966 (Beard, 1971). However, Free Mines still littered the region. These Free Mines, often ran by a few dozen hands continued to extract coal (Hart, 1995). The small drift mines operated on the basis of ancient customary rights. The rights which Free Miners asserted centred on the right to dig coal and iron ore (Nicholls, 1966). Once reified by law, the 1838 Deans Forest Mine Act allowed anyone of birth and native to the Hundred of St Briavels to have the right to set up a mine anywhere within the region.5 Once granted a gale by the Deputy Gaveller (responsible for the collection of mining royalties and the administration of the Free Mining rights), the Free Miner

5 The only restraint being that Free Miners cannot work under churchyards, gardens and orchards (Fisher, 2016).

14 becomes the owner of that underground area and is free to dig minerals defined within it. Since the custom became law in 1838, the Free Miner can sell his rights to those not native to the Hundred, although they won’t be included in the Free Mining register. A share of Royalty is agreed by the Free Miner and becomes payable to the Crown for each tonne of coal raised. Today, the Free Miners Association (FMA) upholds the rules and regulations of these rights, working in correspondence with the Deputy Gaveller employed by the Crown. Today, there are around thirty Free Miners still actively engaged in mining (Tuffley, 2017b).

Analysis of the deconstruction of labour and class has often been analysed through mining labour and organisation because it, “Bridges feudal and capitalist society” (Beynon & Austrin, 1996, p. 363). Coal miners are often seen as leading the emergence of the industrial proletariat which mixed pre-capitalist forms of labour contract with new industrial forms. Previous analysis of the relationship between coal miners and their institutional impact on the development of the labour movement and trade unionism has emphasised political reformism (firstly liberalism and then labourism), through customary practice and patronage (Beynon & Austrin, 1996). Similarly, analysis of the coal miners in the Forest of Dean has focused on the degree of independence miners exerted during early forms of industrialisation (Harrison, 1978, Fisher, 2016, Wright 2014). No analysis covers the Free Miners labour process in its current guise; as a form of craftsmanship, as entrepreneurial and as self-employed artisans. Bringing this debate up to date, allows me to analyse the subjective consciousness of the Free Miner as well as their objective positioning in the labour process within the context of de-industrialisation and flexible labour strategies.6

My historical analysis will modify Braverman’s first principle of scientific management; he states, “The labour process is to be rendered independent of craft, tradition and the workers knowledge” (1974, p.78). First, in retracing the history of the transformation of the labour process in the coal industry in the Forest of Dean, I will show that an important section of the working class was never fully proletarianised.7 Rather, the capitalist labour process in the coal industry in the Forest of Dean relied on two kinds of labour. The historical analysis will show that the capitalist labour process did not develop in its pure form, but rather as a mixture of industrial capitalism and petty commodity production. In my ethnography, I show how the social relations of production reproduce the aristocratic ethos of the Free Miner. De-industrialisation has meant that the distinctions between proletarians and artisans no longer exist in the mine. Rather, the aristocratic ethos of the Free Miner produced and reproduced through the social relations of production are reified and legitimised within the social field of the Forest of Dean. This distinction is maintained and legitimised through collective memory, symbolic and linguistic capital. Due to the collapse of the coal industry in the area, there no longer

6 Piore & Sabel’s (1984) ‘Second Industrial Divide’ describes how the new era of ‘flexible specialisation’ relies on a core of skilled ‘craftsman’. This has been critiqued by Mollona (2009), who shows how flexible working patterns deskill and fragment the core industrial workforce. 7 The thesis takes the Thompsonian premise of an empirically grounded analysis of the lived experience of coal miners and therefore calls into question the development of a recognisably homogenous “insurgent working class” (1991, p.11) through subsequent deconstruction of firstly, industry and secondly, field.

15 exists a hierarchy of labour within the mine, but rather, the distinction between artisan and proletariat exists in the space outside the mine.

Chapter three is a historical reconstruction of the development of coal mining and the organisation of labour within the coal mine. Through an analysis of customs and rights particular to the Forest of Dean, I will show that within the same coal mines the coexistence of two complimentary and interdependent working classes. I suggest that the coal mines mixed the technology of mass production with the craftsmanship of the Free Miners; that is wage labour with self-employment, repetitive and deskilled tasks with autonomous and fulfilling roles, working-class notions of solidarity with the individualistic craft consciousness and hierarchic relations of production of the artisans. This process is reflected in the ‘Butty System’, and also the ‘collective’ response of labour to capital. As Welbourne points out, “[Mining] wage dependency was constructed in a world dominated by the institutions of aristocratic rule and of rural society, in no other industry was that ‘Great Arch’ of cultural continuity so manifestly important” (Cited in Beynon, 1994, p. 10).8

In Chapter four through an ethnography of the Free Miners labour process, I show that the content and processes involved in the act of labour shape the class consciousness of the Free Miner. As Burawoy explains, “Variations in the character and consciousness that workers bring with them to the workplace explain little about the variation in the activities that take place on the shopfloor” (Burawoy, 1979, p. 202). With Free Miners no longer employed by outside capitalists, they sell their production completely independently, in informal markets located in the community which relies on webs of friendship and kinship. This continued use of informal markets, the distribution of knowledge and the machinery in use shapes the social relations of production. Capital becomes valued through the act of labour itself. This blurring of capital and labour embeds the aristocratic ethos of the Free Miner into his habitual existence. This is passed down and taught from generation to generation of Free Miner. This turns the conflict between different labour consciousness’s as in chapter three to a conflict between the ‘right to work’ of the Free Miner and those that infringe upon these rights.9

In chapter five I bring into question Burawoy’s (1979) strict observance of productive techniques in shaping conscious. Through a relational view which emphasises interconnections between different aspects of social life, I analyse how the historical dialectic of the artisan and proletarian is re-enacted, not at the point of production, but through shared spaces of poverty. This chapter will perform a “Second reversal […] to break with the scholastic error of failing to include in the theory the subjective truth” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 202). Through an analysis of the Free Miners symbolic and linguistic capital in the Forest of Dean, I show how Free

8 Interestingly, E.P. Thompson has commented on the ‘Great Arch’ as a peculiarity of the development of English capitalism, and yet no detailed attention is paid to coal miners in, ‘The making of the English working class’ (1991a). 9 Previous analysis that have brought Burawoy’s main theoretical claim into question have shown how consent is mitigated through India’s caste system (Engelshoven, 1999), and ‘Chola’ culture in Bolivian tin mines (Nash, 1979).

16

Miners can maintain and legitimise this value in a ‘right to work’ through, training, educating and disciplining within the FMA, structured through an observance of group hierarchy. Secondly, in defining the social field and the symbolic struggles that take place when their field or placement of value comes under threat, the Free Miners are introduced to the common sense ways of seeing the world through the eyes of the FMA. The placement of value becomes legitimised by those within the community shown through a response to regeneration. This chapter explores the interactions and transactions of Free Miners in the social field in order to analyse how reproduction and legitimation of the Free mining system endures. In researching the Forest of Dean and the Free Miners the thesis takes the Bourdieusian assumption that “The truth of these small universes is in their relation to other universes, in the structure of relations between the universes” (Bourdieu, cited in Desmond, 2014, p. 575).

The general aim of the research is to show how industrial capitalism as it developed in the Forest of Dean remained intrinsically entrenched in pre-capitalist social formations and modes of production defined by rights and customs. This means small scale coal production, self-employment, semi-autonomous control over the labour process and Free Miners relations of status and hierarchy in the mine which was reflected in labour organisation and within the community. This cuts across traditional Marxist formulations of class. Thus, I re- embed the need to examine the miner’s class position through Bourdieu’s relational “second break” (2000, p. 202) and Burawoy’s emphasis on content and process (2012), to understand the lived experience of the Free Miner; and hence his reproduction of the social structure.10 The particular consciousness of the Free Miner is thus formed in part through the process and practices of his labour which is shaped by custom and right and legitimated by those sharing the same social field. This particular ‘craft consciousness’ reveals an enduring distinction in class consciousness between that of the craft miner and the proletariat. This exists today, partly in the labour process itself, but also through the symbolic power exercised by the Free Miner.

10 The combination of Burawoy and Bourdieu allows me to analyse the labour process through the lens of place; the temporal and spatial outcomes affecting labour’s value and processes of symbolic capital and legitimation.

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1.1. First day on the job

On my first day working in the mine I was interested in getting an overview from the Miners, the various customs, traditions and laws involved in Free Mining:

[Joe] So how many Free Miners are there these days?

[Steve] Well, there’s got to be hundreds upon hundreds…

At this I start grinning, I assume that Steve is joking, there can’t possibly be hundreds upon hundreds. I’ve grown up in the Forest of Dean, I’ve explored its woods and climbed its trees, hiked to the top of Ruardean Hill and played in the banks of the River Severn. I know it from top to bottom. There can’t be more than five or so working mines I thought to myself.

[Steve] This is serious mind. There’s hundreds, maybe thousands. You don’t stop being a Free Miner once you’ve died. This is serious mind.

There were only two situations when Steve and the other Miners were serious like this; when talking about Free Mining rights and when in the mine.

[Joe] So the custom is that…anyone born in the Hundred of St Briavels has the right to become a Free Miner?

[Steve] This is not a custom. This is law. This is sovereign. Whatever you take away from this, let this be it. This is not some right given to us and tolerated by officials, Free Mining is of legal sovereignty, no one can take that away from us, no one.

(4/04/2017).

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1.2 Place

Before describing my research and methodology, it is important to first introduce the region my research took place. Here I will present a short description of the Forest of Dean, its industrial heritage and its main town of Cinderford. The description will present an account familiar to those of post-industrial mining towns in the UK. Its rural isolation has contributed to the strengthening of a ‘mining culture’ based on isolation and harsh working conditions (Godoy, 1985).

The Forest of Dean is located in South-West Gloucestershire, nestled along the Welsh border. It is bordered by two rivers, the River Wye and the River Severn, shaped by its confluence. The central part of this region, largely wooded to this day, occupies a hilly plateau (Small & Stoerz, 2006). This plateau represents the statutory boundary of the Forest of Dean, with the town of Lydbrook lying to its northern border along the River Wye and Cinderford ‘The Heart of the Forest’ to the East11 (Map 1).

Map 1: The black outline shows the boundary of the

Forest of Dean District Council. The Yellow dotted line shows the Hundred of St Briavels. The Red line reveals the boundary of the Statutory Forest. (Foresters Forest, 2016).

11 The statutory Forest was used as a Royal Hunting reserve by the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman Conquest in 1066. Following this the Norman Kings were able to utilise an established hunting Forest which formed the basis of the ‘Royal Forest’, an area reserved for Royal Hunting and subject to separate Forest Laws (Hart, 1995).

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Settlement in this area consists of sprawling hamlets of scattered cottages and small holdings which have encroached into the edges of the wooded areas (Herbert, 1996). Within the core of the statutory Forest, there remains very little habitation. The statutory Forest is marked by 218 boundary stones (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Boundary Stone marking the Statutory Forest. No. 80, Milkwall.

The Hundred of St Briavels incorporates the Statutory Forest and extends beyond the central wooded area to include the Southern Forest Plateau and the towns of Coleford and St Briavels (Map 2).

Map 2: The Hundred of St Briavels with its main towns and villages. The rivers Severn 20 and Wye can be seen to its south and north respectively. (Hart, 1953). The Hundred of St Briavels, today represents the core of the Forest of Dean, the residents of Coleford and St Briavels pertaining to be as much a ‘Forester’ as those from Cinderford, and the villages and hamlets bound within the original Statutory Forest.12 The Hundred of St Briavels provided governmental structure in the Forest of Dean during the 11th and 12th centuries.13 The Free Mining custom and rights were later applied within this area (Nicholls, 1966).

The Forest of Dean is a very peculiar mixture of ancient, modern and post-modern layers of natural and human artefacts. The Scowles,14 alternate with derelict nineteenth-century iron works, tramways crossed with disused railway lines and slag heaps now overgrown with dense thickets of fern and gorse are dotted throughout the Forest. Amidst all this, the noise of Free Miners and their machinery are amplified by the vastness and emptiness of the woodland. Tourists follow nature trails unbeknownst that the Free Miners toil at the coal seam under their feet. The walking and cycling trails, now well landscaped, offer tourists the opportunity to meander through thick woodland and chances to spot the ruins of the Forests industrial past and the Free Mines of its present.15

The larger town of Cinderford was expanded in the 19th century to meet the housing needs of the growing industry in the area (Nicholls, 1966). A sprawling mass of terraced housing, similar to those found in the South Wales Valleys is a nod towards its coal mining past. “A tougher and less willingly idyllic kind of the Forest of Dean […] its houses glinting grey, fall away on either side of a very steep and impossibly narrow high street” (Potter, 1996, p. 52). Cinderford rests on a hill as the town climbs rapidly out of the woodland, “So formless in its plan […] never fails to please my eye with the splendour of its setting. Though a place of haphazardous and fortuitous growth, it is a hill town and something rare to the English landscape” (Waters, B. cited in Phelps, 2013, p, 12).

In Cinderford there is a small Independent Cinema; a large Free Mining memorial stands in the centre of the town (Figure 2), a supermarket, characteristically owned by the Co-op. A mining mural sits opposite above the locksmith and the empty residence of a disused bakery (Figure 3). Several charity shops frequent the narrow high street, as do the pubs ‘The Fern Ticket’ and the ‘White Hart’. Independent butchers, greengrocers and hairdressers are dotted between betting agencies and Indian and Chinese Takeaways. ‘The Forester’, the local newspaper operates its headquarters next to the main road. One of the largest buildings in the town, only overshadowed by the Co-op supermarket is the Miners’ Welfare Hall offering tribute acts, bingo nights and

12 Throughout this thesis, the Miners refer to the ‘Forest of Dean’ or the ‘Forest’ as the Hundred of St Briavels. 13 St Briavels; the ancient Hundred of Gloucestershire, comprised the extra-parochial area of the Forest of Dean. The Hundred was created at some point between 1086 and 1220 to provide structure of the administration of the Forest of Dean (Fisher, 1975). 14 Scowles are natural landscape features that gave ready access to the excavation of iron-ore through open cast mining, thought to be unique to the Forest of Dean (Small and Stoertz, 2006). Their irregular features of shallow depressions and steep mounds have been used as tourist attractions. 15 In 2016 the ‘Forest of Dean Hidden Heritage App’ was developed offering audio tours to locate former coal mines, quarries and railways.

21 charity fundraisers (Figure 4). The rugby pitch sits half-way up the hill on a flat escarpment, offering temporary relief from the hills sides. The tradition of rugby in the Forest of Dean still flourishes with Cinderford boasting a decent record in National League One and acting as a feeder club to Gloucester RFU in the Premier division. The town has noticeably been unable to blot out the grey of its former poverty, which has become part and parcel of the character of the town. The two largest coal mines in the Forest of Dean were located in the valley basin next to Cinderford closing in 1966. 16 In the 2015 English indices of deprivation,17 Cinderford ranks in the top 20% for most deprived area nationally, a less favourable position than in 2010 (GCC, 2015).

Figure 3: Mining mural, Cinderford.

Figure 2: Free Mining statue, of Dave Harvey (Free Miner), Cinderford town centre.

Figure 4: The Miners Welfare Hall, Cinderford.

16 85% of the adult male population of Cinderford were employed in the coal mines well into the 20th century (Baggs and Jurica, 1996). 17 The English indices of deprivation provides a set of relative measures for deprivation including: Income, employment, education, health, crime, barriers to housing and living environment deprivation. (Gloucestershire County Council Report, 2015).

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Chapter 2; Methodology

2.1. Introduction

In order to refine and extend the theoretical implications of Marx’s analysis of the labour process, I executed an extended case method. This employed; participant observation with Free Miners over a four-week period, an extended interview with one Free Miner lasting two hours and historical and photographic analysis in order to locate everyday life within its historical context. In valorizing context, I took the ethnographic approach first developed by the Manchester School of Social Anthropology (Gluckman, 1968) and integrated this within a reflexive approach to science (Bourdieu, 1992). This was necessary firstly, because of my social closeness to the Free Miners and secondly by objectifying my own relation to the Miners; that is recognising my own position within the social field allowed me to analyse the subtle interplays of symbolic domination and violence that occurred. The combination of ethnographic research, photographs and interview provided a tapestry of rich data. This holism, symptomatic of Bourdieu’s research (1962) has allowed for greater unearthing of the lived experience of the Free Miner.

Using an ethnography of labour to understand the process and practices of labour formation and consciousness necessitates an extended case study method (Burawoy, 2009). In situating a specific case in as much rich detail as possible the wider social fields that structure the process unfold within that case (Burawoy, 1998). An investigation into local phenomena can, therefore, be extended to a higher theoretical level. The UK industrial sociologists of the 1970s and 1980s found solace in this position. Beynon’s 1973 study ‘working for Ford’, stressed the highly differentiated working conditions and skills among workers on the shop floor, and how this had strict permutations in the engagement of collective struggle at both the industry level and national levels. In effect, the “sociological deconstruction of the labour of group-making” (2013, pp. 8), that Wacquant directs through a Bourdieusian lens forty years later was nothing new to labour analysis and industrial strategy. This section will explore the mechanics of this methodological intersection between a Bourdieusian “twofold truth of labour” (2000, p.202) on the one hand which recognised symbolic domination and misrecognition and Burawoy on the other who prioritises a Gramscian infused analysis through hegemony and consent (1979). A Bourdieusian method was used alongside Burawoy’s methods to analyse the labour process because the content and processes affecting consciousness, “depends on the workers dispositions” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 203). That is, dispositions shaped by the training, educating and disciplining within the FMA.

This chapter will offer the following; examine my justification for research within my own social field. Explain how consent to my research was negotiated and granted with the Free Miners. Provide an outline for the compatibility of the infusion of Bourdieusian relational analysis with Burawoy’s extended case study method. Examine the practicalities of undertaking such methods, in which I (re)enter the field following Bourdieu’s

23 maxim of an ‘insider ethnography’ through ‘participant objectivation’ (2003). This will be examined by contextualising this method, in reference to the UK’s sociology of industry and labour history, to illustrate the research merits for unearthing class and mining identities. This will be theorised through an examination of the labour process; that is the way miners respond to changes in the labour process (Burawoy, 1979) and the dynamics that emerge and occupy different positions in the social field of the Miner (Desmond, 2014). I will outline the ethical issues I faced during my fieldwork, and my efforts to alleviate such concerns. Throughout this section I will demonstrate an immersed reflexivity to explore, “unthought categories of thought which delimit the thinkable and predetermine thought” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 40).

2.2. Negotiating Access

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs constant struggle” (Orwell, 1968, p. 125).

Gaining access to the field was not easy while in Amsterdam. I used various methods to gain admittance to Free Miners, contacting them through social media, by phone and by email. With the gatekeepers identified and in regular contact with, the process started to snowball, and I was given names and numbers to contact. The group; often private, retain some hesitancy in allowing “Foreigners”18 entry. In some cases, they have guarded closely the intricate social customs and traditions and extractive labour processes involved in Free Mining. Despite this, the rapid de-industrialisation and the almost complete eradication of the productive capacity of Free Mining has brought upon a resurgence in popular interest in Free Mining rights in local and labour history groups. This is reflected in the Free Mining community itself, whose (some) members actively seek a rejuvenation of Free Mining practices and share a commitment to keep alive these potentially transient labour practices.19 In the past, the Free Miners have not gone out to recruit members because this diminishes the returns when a gale is sold. When a gale is sold, all members of the Free Miners Association receive payment. Given the recent decline in numbers, Free Miners are beginning to train new miners and are more open to the community:

“We haven’t really gone out to recruit because in the past it’s not been in anyone’s interest. But now it is in our interest because if we don’t have people that are Free Miners the rights cease to exist, or the rights are still there because it’s in an act of parliament, but there’s no one practising it. Unless we have people that are practising the skills, there’s no continuation of the knowledge and ability”.

(Frank, 24/04/2017)

18 The Free Miners refer to those born outside the Hundred of St Briavels as ‘Foreigners’. I was born outside the Hundred but grew up within it, therefore occupying an interesting position. It allowed me to remain objective in my analysis while my social closeness allowed me entry to the group. (See Appendix 5 on ‘Marginal Native’ (Armstrong, 1998). 19 The FMA have put together an action plan to secure the ‘future of freemining’ (See Appendix 6).

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Growing up in the Forest of Dean allowed me to align myself closer to the culture and customs of the Free Miners. This proved useful in accessing the social field. In a conversation with one of the Free Miners, in discussing visiting their Free Mine to carry out research, I was asked of my local knowledge of the region’s industry and history. I was specifically asked to locate ‘Wallsend Hunting’ and ‘Morse’s Level’ (two Free Mines). I was able to do so. The testing of local knowledge came before the offer to visit the Mine and the agreement upon carrying out interviews. My local knowledge of the area contributed to the approval for my research. It is not an exaggeration to claim that had I not delivered extensive knowledge of the area, gaining access would have proven more difficult.20

Through personal contact with Ian Wright, from Bristol Radical History, he provided me with links to several historical sources, including more information on the ‘Butty System’ and the organisation of labour in the lead up the national strike. He also passed on several key contacts including Daniel Howells (Deputy Gaveller) and Steve (Chairman of the Free Miners Association). Once in contact with Steve, he introduced me to a number of other Free Miners including Frank (Secretary of the Free Miners Association) and Owen (owner of Bixslade Free Mine). (For an overview of participants see Appendix 1).

2.3. Methods in practice

I used various methods of data collection to present a temporal economic and sociological depiction of the Forest of Deans coal industry. The methods included the following:

- One two hour unstructured interview with the Free Miner; Frank at his workplace; Lambsquay Caves. - Extended ethnographic observation at Bixslade Free Mine, Prosper Colliery and the pub, ‘The Jovial Colliers’ over a four week period. The first two weeks, ethnographic work took place at Prosper Colliery spending eight days working and observation, the second two weeks took place at Bixslade Free Mine, which took eight days of work and observation. One evening, two hours were spent at The Jovial Colliers, Lydbrook. - Historical analysis of Free Miner’s diaries, archival manuscripts, Crown Reports, Acts of parliament and wage slips (collected from the Dean Heritage Centre; Gage Library). - Use of photographs.

20 Here I was able to re-enter the field and establish trust and rapport quickly; my speech and style already attuned to the Forest of Dean and hence the Free Miners. For analysis of my own position in Bourdieu’s ‘axis of capital’ in relation to the Free Miners field, see Appendix 5.

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2.4. Historical analysis

The aim of using historical analysis is to link micro processes found in the social field which necessitate abstraction to societal structures. Much like in Burawoy’s (1972) study of the Zambian mining industry, the point of analysing the history of the Forest of Dean’s coal industry is to objectify the relations of production, how they developed, and what this meant for the subjective experience of the miner. These relations needed to be analysed before sequential analysis could be carried out firstly, on how these relations are reproduced by the Free Miners today and secondly, how they are legitimised in the wider social field of the Hundred. In using Bourdieu’s diachronic analysis, I break with the teleological assumptions inherent in Marx’s work to break with the trajectory of development from tradition to modernity. As Bourdieu claimed, “A social law is a historical law, which perpetuates itself so long as it is allowed to operate” (1993, p. 26). Therefore, historical analysis is employed through the use of miner’s diaries, acts of parliament and wage slips to create a historicist strategy to analyse developments in class and labour in a particular social field.

2.5. Participant Observation

Here I will outline my method of participatory observation and some of the problems encountered during the fieldwork phase. Participant observation was employed, in the first instance, to seek the subjective determinants in shaping consciousness. By putting myself in the arena of social forces, I was able to make sense of the everyday practices of the Free Miner. In the second instance, it was used to gain trust, which I hoped would lead to interviewing and photographing of the Free Miners. As one will see, this second instance worked partly in the establishment of trust, although in most cases did not lead to an interview stage.

Being from the Forest of Dean allowed me to establish rapport quickly. My interest in Free Mining and a willingness to get involved with the work foresaw the establishment of a mutual trust. The Forest of Dean accent which thickened during my time presented a sense that to some extent I belonged there. The Casual conversation often centred around particular folk tales, people and places of the Forest of Dean. Had I not grown up here, the quick establishment of trust would have proven difficult. Participant observation of the labour process in Free Mining allowed me to learn about the Free Miners in their natural setting. It was used as a process of gaining greater rapport to establish a true (as possible) reflection of their lives while maintaining some sense of objectivity.

Naturally, suspicions were raised throughout my study. The Free Miners did not commit to recording interviews (apart from Frank), neither did they wish to have their photograph taken (until the very last day). My ethnography came at an interesting point in the development of Free Mining. The Free Miners inclination

26 has always been to safeguard the knowledge and skills of coal mining. Introduction to Free Mining is passed down from father to son (See Appendix 1). The more Free Miners that exist the less money received from a gale when it is sold. Therefore, Free mining is safeguarded closely, representing a protected guild. Much like McKay’s (1985) study of carpenters of Halifax, Canada, the skilled craftsman through Union activity sought to safeguard their status as skilled workmen, which often came at the expense of McKay’s unbridled access to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC). Much like the Halifax carpenters response to social and economic change, the Free Miners (mostly aged over 50), are beginning to train others in its trade. The Free Miners need others to take on the rights of their gales when they become too old to work them. The lack of interest in mining has slightly stemmed this flow, and so some Free Miners are willing to publicise the training and general interest in its traditions and customs. However, many are still wary of the introduction of too much interest (something that I couldn’t see myself), and therefore remained hesitant in answering my questions and by my general presence. They were also suspicious of my more politically attuned questions. As I clumsily directed conversation towards trade unions, payment systems, ownership and the FMA’s affiliations with Labour Party, they were often quick to relay that they remained non-partisan, or to quip about local issues, that to them did not necessitate an abstraction into national politics.

I made several attempts during my research to record the Free Miners, all but one failed. Frank was the only Free Miner to allow me to record. The last time I tried and failed to record came during one lunch time with Peg and Steve. Recording would have been perhaps useless while working in the mine for the din we made on the drills, so the conversations over lunch were something I was keen to record. We were chatting about Brexit. As the conversation unfolded, I thought this would be a perfect moment to use the tape recorder to capture their true thoughts on various political issues. I quickly dug my recorder out of my rucksack, pushed ‘record’ and announced that “I’ll just record this”, before setting the recorder down next to the kettle. The reaction was immediate silence. What had, moments before been a loud debate on the failings of the EU, now etched into silence. Peg and Steve busied themselves with their lunchboxes and asked politely to pass the salt. I leant forward and turned the recorder off. I never again tried to use the recorder in daily interactions. I had interfered with the natural progression and rhythm of the conversation.21

With recording out of the question, greater emphasis was placed on my ability to take substantial and accurate field notes. Following the failings with the tape recorder, I carried my notepad and pen with me wherever I went. Latterly I did not take these into the mine. Firstly, it was difficult to take notes in the dark with only a head torch for lighting. Secondly, it seemed inappropriate to be making notes while the other miners were working and thirdly, the notepad would be ruined by the coal dust and damp conditions. Therefore, I made

21 This was the last time I tried to record Rich and Peg. Previous attempts had ended in a similar result. At the beginning of my research I made it clear to the Free Miners that I would like the opportunity to record some of the conversations. They responded with nervous laughter or side-eye glances to their workmates. I was very aware that they were doing me a favour by taking part in my research, having detailed discussions and allowing me in the mines. I chose not to persist with the recordings if it made them feel uncomfortable in any way.

27 notes of the labour process and discussions inside the mine immediately after. What’s more, the interesting discussions mostly took place during the breaks and at lunch, while above ground. I jotted notes down sometimes in front of the miners, but more often than not, I would do it just out of sight. I would dash into the shed, or take a walk around the mine. The miners did not seem to mind and latterly became very used to the idea. They never asked me what I was writing. Once the workday had ended, I would transfer these notes onto another notepad or on the computer. Thus, in most cases, I was able to record conversations word for word. As a rule, I decided not to present findings that I was unable to capture and note down at the time.

2.6. In-depth interview

At the beginning of my research, I had hoped to interview all the Free Miners that I worked with. Unfortunately, I was unable to do so. However, I did conduct and record one interview with Frank at his workplace (Lambsquay Caves). His comparative willingness to engage through discussion of class and politics mirrored his social and cultural capital. In comparison with the other Free Miners Frank, had gone to University. While I found all Free Miners to engage in my research, many shied away from an interview situation preferring to ‘show me the ropes’ through the act of labour itself.

For the interview, context was important. I did not seek to control context, it was not a “noise disguising reality” (Burawoy, 1998, p. 13) but reality itself. In this way, the interview became a “narrative” (Mishler, 1986). Proceeding through an unstructured dialogue to create a joint construction of meaning of the field. The interview was conducted on the 24/04/2017, lasted for two hours and took place in Lambsquay Caves.

The unstructured narrative was employed to minimise any power imbalances (Bryman, 2004). Power imbalances can often lead to an interactional barrier (Weiss, 2004). In this case, the only power differential came through the roles each actor played during the interview. In introducing the purpose of my study and a brief description of the topic, I then shifted the onus to the interviewee. In doing so, I adopted a “deliberate naivety” to access rich data (Weiss, 2004). This was important, given that the way the respondent often framed the everyday process of Free Mining revealed a lot about their emotional attachment to such rights and customs.

The volume of data generated from this one interview was great. I transcribed the interview the next day. Using in-depth interviews was challenging as I had to guide the conversation in the correct direction. Often Frank would engage in lengthy discussion of the Free Miners history (there use in World War Two), and I would direct the conversation back to perceptions of class. I had chosen to interview Frank in the first instance, because of his position in the Free Miners Association. His lofty position meant he often acted as spokesperson for the Free Miners, and although disagreement over customs and rights and the future of Free Mining existed within the Association, it was Frank who acted as an arbiter for the Free Mining cause and related Free Miners

28 position to the wider community and Deputy Gaveller. Similarly, Steve had been chosen because of his position as Chairman of the FMA and because his ‘partner’ Peg was relatively new to the association and whose parents hadn’t been involved in the mining industry. Comparatively, observation at Bixslade Free Mine with Owen, Dan and James was chosen, because they did have a rich family history in both mining and whose relatives had been prominent in the Butty system. Overall, it was my aim to evenly reflect Free Miners perspectives within the field.

2.7. Photographs

This thesis, where possible has translated the text into visual. To make the link between Miner’s contemporary consciousness and the historical analysis, I have documented the existing mining murals, statues, Free Mines, as well as Free Miners themselves. This will provide a visual analysis of the labour process itself. I have documented the physical architecture in static, to imply the changing nature of the cultural environment of mining in the Forest of Dean. The photographs record the statues and murals that evoke a sense of collective memory of Free Mining, thereby reifying the artisan’s consciousness. Becker illustrates a concern with the use of photography in framing certain situations,”…As you look through the viewfinder you wait until you see what you see ‘looks right’ until the moment makes sense, until you see something that corresponds to your conception of what is going on” (1971, p. 15). In taking photographs, I relay my interpretations of social situations and corroborate them to the reader, in effect I betray my own manifestation of value and judgement. I do not see this as a problem as long as one engages in stringent reflexivity to foster the collaborative nature of my research. The photos also convey a sense of the engrained social standing in the community that the Free Miners still enjoy. This symbolic capital is captured through visual analysis. Photographs were only taken with the Free Miners knowledge.

2.8. Ethics

I faced several ethical dilemmas during this research. I followed the ethical standards of the British Sociological Association statement for ethical practices (BSA, 2004). These concerned:

- Protecting participants and honouring trust - Anticipating harm through the dissemination of research - Negotiating informed consent and participants involvement - Maintaining professional integrity through accurate portrayal

At every stage of contact with the Free Miners, I made my research explicit. Being honest and open about my intentions. The specificity of my research has meant that I have decided to use pseudonyms for the Free

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Miners and the Free Mines. Had I not changed the names, anyone faintly associated with the Free Miners could identify who they were. This has meant that unlike Wight (1993) who safeguarded the anonymity of his Scottish village, I was unable to report on anything that was remotely untoward, because of the unique Free Mining practice. However, where Wight was able to present truths guarded by a veil of anonymity, his study is weakened by the monopolised account he delivers through his own voice and the omission of the participant’s voice. Therefore, I have kept the conversations the same, or as best as I could recall. I wanted the Miners descriptions and analysis left how they were. I felt that any sanitising and euphemising of stories and descriptions would erode the essence of what it was like to be a Free Miner. Moreover, in using the verbatim method of transcription and quotations, this presents the reader with accurate, empirical information. In a similar vein to Charlesworth (2000), I felt it was essential to present accurate diction of the Free Miners and to attempt to juxtapose this with academic prose to situate and explicate their overall alienation in today’s “Broken Britain” (Jones, 2011).

During my research, I engaged in ethnographic research at the pub, The Jovial Colliers. I was worried that intoxication may distort my ability to depict and recount conversations and actions accurately. However, I only carried out research during one instance at the pub and intoxication wasn’t an issue. My intention was to blend into the group of Free Miners as much as possible, and so I chose to consume alcohol, I believe to have chosen otherwise would have been detrimental to my overall standing within the group. As Peg, one of the Free Miners stated on my arrival at The Jovial Colliers, “So this is where mining really starts Joe, if thic cosn’t hold yer Cy [Cider] thee can’t be a real Free Miner mind” (13/04/2017).

I faced a contentious issue around female Free Mining. I chose to include this mainly on the part that for many Free Miners it simply wasn’t a contentious issue, rather it was non-negotiable by law. Further, I am sure the Free Miners would happily associate with their stance, given that many have written to the local newspapers condemning the allocation of female miners to the Free Mining register.

I was asked multiple times by the Free Miners, the Dean Heritage Centre and the people of the Forest of Dean to read a copy once I have finished my research. In writing for both an academic and participant audience, I was pushed to engage in accurate portrayal. The Miners themselves have pushed me to correctly identify mining colloquialisms and terms used in the extraction of coal. This works towards the academic integrity and authenticity of my research.

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2.9. Process of analysing the data

To analyse the data, I have used sequential coding. This involves the identification of problems, checking the frequency of phenomenon and integrating the findings into an overall model of the social system (Becker, 1971). The interview data was tested alongside participatory observation as well as photographs and historical analysis. This provided robust findings grounded in empirical analysis and triangulation. This method of data analysis allowed me to make predictions, find anomalies and to reconstruct theory in a continual process during and after the fieldwork. On leaving the field, I used the empirical data to refine and reconstruct social theory, rather than generate grounded theory free from the “shackles of existing theory and contemporary emphasis” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, p. 38). Using Burawoy’s (2009) reflexive model did not lead to a rejection of positivisms fundamentals, rather, my ethnography was conducted with preconceived assumptions and theory. Therefore, the research was deductive and added to Marxist theory of class and the labour process through theoretical extension and refinement. Hence, I have used a slightly unconventional theoretical narrative by introducing concepts through chapters three to five which is analysed, extended and refined alongside my empirical work, “to extract the general from the unique, and to move from the micro to the macro” (Burawoy, 1998, p. 5).

According to Desmond ethnography can, “never be fully inductive or fully deductive” (2007, p.295). Therefore, while I remained loyal to theoretical assertions and orientations, I nevertheless took note of unforeseen digressions in the social field. In this way, I was able to straddle the lines between induction and deduction in dialectical fashion. A dynamic process gave way where I was able to immerse myself in the social field following theoretically guided assertions and leave myself open to new enquiries that went beyond a stringent material analysis of labour processes. These unforeseen digressions are analysed through the social relations between Free Miners, the hierarchy within the FMA and how the new members are educated and disciplined to find value in work. These digressions from a traditional Marxist understanding of reproduction in the labour process challenged me to remain reflexive and explore new avenues.

I coded the data into the following subtypes; the market (primary and secondary), production process and machines, distribution of knowledge, labour as value, defining the field, dialect, murals and statues, local politics. These open codes were then subsumed under categorical codes represented by consciousness, class, custom and right, and symbolic capital. These codes were chosen following initial research into industrial work and life (Burawoy, 1979, Nash, 1979 and Parry, 1999), from my own experiences of the mining industry and from inductive reasoning once I had entered the social field. These codes were reformed and refined as the fieldwork process developed. No qualitative data analysis software was used in this research. Rather, data was coded by hand through sequential analysis, by revisiting transcripts in a continual process.

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2.10 Conclusion

This chapter has introduced and justified my use of methodological devices and ethical considerations. My ethnographic work required a degree of flexibility to collect and collate the data in the most accurate way. For example, I arrived on site with pre-constructed ideological blinkers. When it became clear that recording interviews was not appropriate, I entered a process of challenging myself to adopt a flexible approach to data collection. It was at this point that I acknowledged the importance of induction and slowly disassembled that which blurred my vision. The process that involved making predictions and finding anomalies, in theory, was not specifically done post-fieldwork. Rather, the reconstruction of theory took place during and after my fieldwork. This meant that questions generated for my interview were revised following my participant observation, as new avenues were found to explore. Accepting the artificiality of the interview did not mean that the problem of power differentials (between interviewer and interviewee) were eradicated; a reflexive sociology does not eradicate power differentials, but, it allows one to adopt a position to minimise its effects.

The broad range of methods used adds depth and greater understanding of the material and social aspects in Free Mining. Rich description informed analysis and visual representation provides the reader with a fair and accurate depiction of both the Free Miners and Free Mining. It provides a guide to show how these particular labour processes affect the subjective consciousness of the Miner, how these are maintained by the Free Mining community and how they translate to the wider social field.

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Chapter 3; A working class history? [Production]

3.1. Introduction

“Division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop” (Marx, 2007, p. 15).

In this chapter, I trace the history of coal production in the Forest of Dean. The social relations that developed in the coal industry as a result of the combination of medieval Free Mining rights and the introduction of capital. The intention is to contribute to the debate on the nature of early coal production as it has been framed by labour historians (Fisher, 2016 & Harrison, 1978), and to shed light on the continuity between early and late capitalism. At a general level (unspecific to coal), Chandler (1990) claimed that Britain’s ‘personal’ capitalism had failed to transform itself into a modern system of mass production. Here, Chandler places emphasis on the nature of capitalists to transform productive techniques and styles of labour management and organisation. This section agrees in the outcome while adjusting its process. While mining labour in the Forest of Dean can be conceived as ‘personal’ capitalism, it was nevertheless, the synergistic relationship between labour and capital that structured these relations. I will highlight the role of the Free Miners in producing relations of production. This is highlighted by the management technique the ‘Butty System’ which created and maintained a mining labour aristocracy.22

Fisher, argues that once the first half of the nineteenth century is over, Free Mining rights slip from view, “It is trade unionism, relations between employers and employees in the workplace and the movement for direct working class participation in politics which command our attention” (1975, p. 3). The creation of a monolithic working class conscious amongst the Forest of Dean coal miners wasn’t forthcoming, rather Free Mining rights remained an important organising principle with which capitalist innovation used to its own ends to exploit the mining labourer.23

The objective of this section is to challenge the deterministic assumptions regarding the ability of capital to structure work relations and industrial discipline in the mine. Braverman suggests there is a trend towards the deskilling of labourers through the increased mechanisation and scientific management of production; he states, “As craft declines, the worker sinks to the level of general and undifferentiated labour power, adaptable to a large range of simple tasks” (1974, p.83). Here, I agree with Braverman to a point, but the fragmentation of working class consciousness created by the imposition of Free Mining rights acts to create a

22 Although not unique to the Forest of Dean coalfield, (see Coombes, 2002 for an autobiographical account of coal mining in South Wales) the adoption of the Butty system was well placed to develop in the FOD because of the existing rights and customs of Free Miners. 23 Commonly referred to as the ‘day-man’, the wage labourer occupied the lower ranks in the mining labour aristocracy.

33 hierarchical distinction. Marx claims that, “what distinguishes the worst architects from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he creates it in reality” (1975, p. 451). The Free Miners retain technical knowledge and control over the process of production; they remain ‘architects’ while the day-men remain unskilled ‘bees’. This dynamic fragmentation in the Miners knowledge and objective position in the productive arrangements creates an oppositional effect in the mine that works to obscure the capitalist’s exploitative nature further.24

The section will begin with an overview of the customs and rights given to the Free Miner. Through the introduction of capital to the Forest of Dean, this section will explain how the ‘Butty System’ developed. It will highlight the creation of two labour formations within the mine. Based on skill, local knowledge, control of some aspects of the production process, control over payment and subcontracting and the relative stability of the one over the other during coal market fluctuations. The formation of these consciousness and subsequent conflicts are evidenced through the formation and workings of the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA).

This chapter reveals the historical emergence in capitalist coal production in the Forest of Dean of two working class formations: the ‘Free Miner’ and the ‘day-man’; or more generally, the ‘Artisan’ and the ‘proletariat’.25 In chapter four I provide ethnographic evidence of how the former retains its place in the Forest of Deans mining industry today, and how it structures community life and working class institutions. My claim is that pre- capitalist labour formations existed and were used by capital, to give its power of regeneration. The strength of these pre-capitalist modes of work and life extends beyond the grip of capital, however, in essence, the Forest of Dean continues to be structured by mining customs and rights, reflected in its local politics. Fisher states that “Custom and right had once been important in providing the framework of the life and work of the people [in the] Forest of Dean” (2016, p. 21), through successive capitalist developments from early to late capitalism, they continue to be so.

24This analysis does not yet necessitate theoretical engagement into the dynamics of domination i.e. whether exploitation takes place through misrecognition (Bourdieu) or through consent (Burawoy). Rather, Chapter three deals with the ‘first break’ in Boudieusian terms, that is, the objective truth of the process of exploitation. 25 This more nuanced approach to labour and subsequent class formation reflects a trend in the sociology of labour to place the workers themselves at the heart of analysis. Without the analysis of the workers themselves one cannot make meaningful judgements about future developments. In Russian factories this line of enquiry, ‘Tsekhovshchin’ emphasised a skill sectarianism between labour classes (Rosenberg, 1978).

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3.2. Customs and Rights

This section will make explicit the customary and legal categories that reshape and cut across traditional notions of class identity and have an important effect in shaping the nature of the Forest of Dean coal industry.26

Free Mining in the Forest of Dean has existed for, “time out of mind” (Hart, 1953). Mentioned in the manuscripts of 1610, in the ‘Book of Dennis’, one can date these mining privileges and regulations to at least A.D. 1300 (Ibid, 1953). Their “settled” and “methodical” character (Nicholls, 1966) bear fruition to an earlier period, however. Deemed as rights inherited from the Crown after Forest Miners were summoned to the sieges of Berwick in 1296, and given as a result of their services (Sandall, 2009). The customs were noted down in 1687. They stated, “Myners may myne in any place that they will as well without the bounds as within without the forebodment of any man” (Cited in Nicholls, 1966). It asserted that the Miners’ have the right to take coal from, “every soyle of the Kings earth” (Ibid). In return for these privileges, the miners had to pay Royalty collected by the Deputy Gaveller who was responsible for the enforcement of the custom (Fisher, 2016). Two important stipulations of the law asserted that; firstly the rights were reserved for those born within the Hundred;

“Alsoe no stranger of what degree so ever he be but only that been born and abiding within the Castle of St Briavels and the bounds of the forest as is aforesaid shall come within the mine to see and know ye privities of our sou'aigne Lord the King in his said mine” (Nicholls, 1966, p.105).

The second stipulated that all disputes were to be tried before the Mine Court Law, presided over by the Deputy Gaveller and the jury made up of Free Miners themselves (Ibid, 1966). The Court acted as a guild in the protection of and governing of the local coal industry. It limited entry to the coal industry in the Forest of Dean. Only the sons of Free Miners who had been born in the Hundred of St Briavels, and who had served a year and a day in a mine were permitted to become Free Miners. Moreover, the court limited the amount of coal in produce, stipulating that only Free Miners themselves could carry the coal to market and that no carrier should have more than four horses (Ibid, 1966). The Mine court also set the price of coal. The Court employed ‘bargainers’ who arranged the price with regional and industrial groups (Fisher, 2016).

Free Mining rights allowed miners in the Forest of Dean to work in a cooperative system of small, family run pits. (Langton, 2000). The Free Miners conducted their work in ‘companies’ and worked together in small partnerships. This system spread ownership among a large number of men (See Table 1).

26 Fisher (2016) notes that for a custom to be valid it must: have existed since pre 1189, be reasonable, continued without interruption and be applied to a particular locality.

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Table 1: Ownership of the Forest of Dean Collieries in 1787

No. of mines No. of Companies Total No. of Mines controlled by each company 1 47 47 2 12 24 3 5 15 4 - - 5 1 5 6 - - 7 1 7

Source: Fisher, C. 2016. Custom, Work and Market Capitalism: The Forest of Dean Collier, 1788-1888.

Ownership of the mines was not evenly distributed. We can see that in one such case a company owned seven mines. The majority still worked one mine. Comparatively, however, this system of ownership represented a common property system the likes of which were soon to be disbanded through the systematic reification of common property law.27 Drift mines were dug into the valley basin, meaning the pits were shallow. The Mine Court Law also prohibited the use of machinery. The Free Miners relied on networks of family and community to produce and transport the coal (Fisher, 2016). During this period tramroads were used for the transportation of coal which can still be seen today (figure 5). In accordance with the Deputy Gaveller, the Free Miner lay claim to land to be mined and marked this area with a Gale Stone (See figure 6), which marked the boundary of the land in which his right to mine was contained within.

27 It was around this time that the Mine Court Law documents ‘conveniently’ went missing. The subsequent disbanding of the Court allowed Free Miners to sell the rights of their mine to those outside of the Hundred. Many Free Miners remain suspicious of ‘officials’ who they believe stole the original documents to profit from the Forest of Dean coalfield (See Appendix 3; interview transcript).

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Figure 5: The old Tramway at Dark Hill Iron Figure 6: Gale Stone marking the boundary of a

works. Free Mine.

The Free Miners did not depend upon coal alone for their livelihoods. Many Free Miners at this time encroached upon Crown land, and small-scale cultivation of vegetables and the keeping of sheep and pigs were common (Wright, 2014). However, it should be stated that this did not make the Free Miners self- sufficient. The Free Miners were still vulnerable to fluctuations in the market that produced shortages of grain. Thompson (1991a), notes that the fixing of the price of grain and the enclosure of the commons led to a riotous period in England’s history over the setting of ‘fair prices’. “In the Forest of Dean the miners visiting mills and farmers' houses, [halting production] and exacting money from persons they meet in the road” (1991a, p. 229). The Forest of Dean, during this time, presented the Free Miners with fuel, orchards, pastures, timber and minerals. No large-scale employers existed, no taxes to pay (Wright, 2014).

In 1838, these customs to common, pannage and estover28became law, still in use today (See figure 7).

28 Pannage; keeping pasture for animals and estover; the collection of firewood and bark. For an overview of Forest Law see Linebaugh, 2009. These laws are still regulated in the Forest of Dean today by Verderers. Verderers’ are the Queens representatives of the statutory Forest, and positions are often filled by Free Miners.

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Figure 7: Dean Forest Mines Act, 1838.

Who shall be deemed Free Miners.

All male persons born or hereafter to be born and abiding within the said Hundred of Saint

Briavels, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, who shall have worked a year and a day

in a coal or iron mine within the said Hundred of Saint Briavels, shall be deemed and taken to be

Free Miners for the purposes of this Act.

Source: Dean Forest (Mines) Act 1838. XIV (Vic, c.43). London: HMSO.

However, the Mines Act of 1838 embodied a particular version of the previous customary rights. It still gave the right of the Free Miner to mine for coal; however, the Act gave the power of the Free Miners to buy and sell their coal mines (Fisher, 2016). The Free mining rights were no longer a right to work, but rather a right for coal to become a marketable commodity. As Thompson noted, “this is the century in which money “bereath all the stroke”, in which liberties become properties, and use-rights are reified” (1991a, p. 25). Moreover, the Free Miner was given the right to sell his mine to a non-Free Miner. According to Frank, this “broke-the-back” (24/04/2017) of the Free Mining system; outside industrialists were free to buy previously protected land from the Free Miner.

Although the labour process changed with the onset of industrialisation, customs and rights continued, not only to be adhered to under sufferance but continued to play a significant part in the organisation of labour. This created a unique extraction process in the mining industry. Conflict centred on the uncertain ownership of the means of production, and a division in working class consciousness between the entrepreneurial Free Miner and their wage labour colleagues many of who migrated to the Forest of Dean in search of work as the coal industry began to grow (Fisher, cited in Harrison, 1978). This line of reasoning runs parallel with Meiksins-Wood’s (1991) analysis of the failure of British capitalism to modernise during early industrial development. Rather than acting as a weakness in capitalist development, the incorporation of pre-capitalist relations within the capitalist mode, what Meiksins-Wood terms ‘imperfect capitalism’ gave it its power of regeneration. The next section will explore how this ‘imperfect capitalism’ developed in the coal industry in the Forest of Dean.

3.3. Industrialisation of Forest Coal

The Dean Forest Mines Act of 1838 allowed foreign industrialists to tap into the great coal reserves in the Forest of Dean which had previously only been extracted through subsistence mining and protected through the Mine Court Law. A larger workforce was needed to exploit these reserves. As a consequence of the Dean

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Forest Mines Act, the population of the Forest of Dean grew (Fisher, 2016). Increased capital, brought new machinery and a railway network, replacing the tramways. By 1885 over 4,000 men were employed in the coal mines, representing 50% of the male workforce (Ibid, 2016). In 1841, the Forest of Dean raised 145,000 tonnes of coal, by 1885 this had increased to 826,000 tonnes, (Ibid, 2016). Out of the largest, six coal mines in the area four were owned by outside industrialists.29 As Table 2 shows, by 1927 eight of the largest pits employed over 500 men, with thirteen pits employing under ten (Anstis, 1999).

Table 2: Ownership of Forest of Dean Collieries; 192730

No. Employed Total No. of Mines

Under 10 13

10-19 11

20-99 5

100-499 3

500-699 4

700-799 1

800-899 0

900-999 2

Over 1,000 1

Source: Anstis, R. 1999. Blood on Coal: The 1926 General Strike and Miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean. Lydney: Black Dwarf Publications.

The introduction of capital increased output and monopolised ownership of the coal mines. The Forest of Dean coal mines never achieved the degree of scientific organisation seen in the neighbouring South Valleys31 (Beynon & Austrin, 1994). In the Forest of Dean, the mass production of coal was achieved through the multiplying of labour and the introduction of capital alongside the customary right to Mine freely. While many Free Miners sold their mines to foreign industrialists, Free Miners continued to operate their own mines. Thus, the emerging coal conglomerates in the Forest of Dean, did so, side by side with the small scale Free Mines (Fisher, 2016). In 1927, there were still many Free Mines operating, whose annual output was less than 5,000

29 Trafalgar Colliery owned by Thomas and William Brain, the only Free Miners to compete on a largescale with outside capital (Anstis, 1999). 30 The information from this table was taken from the Colliery Owners Association. It is unlikely to include every colliery in the Forest of Dean, given that many Free Miners were unlikely to be registered in the Colliery Owners Association. Therefore, the number of mines employing under ten workers is likely to be a very conservative estimate. 31 The small seams in the Forest of Dean coalfield and the prevalence of water meant working conditions were dangerous. This meant where large machines were introduced to extract coal in South Wales, the geological structure of the Forest of Dean did not allow them to compete on such a scale (Bowen, 1991).

39 tonnes (Ibid, 2016). Almost half of the Forest of Deans mines were in that category. This supplied the local area with a trade in house coal. These Free Miners continued to sell their coal in local informal markets alongside the mass produced coal in the neighbouring larger pits who employed up to 1,000 men32 (Ibid, 2016). The next section will look specifically at the organisation of labour that developed in the larger coal mines. This developed from both the introduction of capital and the rights exerted by the Free Miner.

3.4. The Butty System

Where Free Miners did sell their gales, they were quickly employed by larger mines as Butty men (Wright, 2014). The Butty-men worked as Hewers in the mine working a stall and subcontracted labour to help them with the process (Ibid, 2014). Due to their knowledge of the Forest of Dean’s coal seams and skill in coal mining, they were well positioned to occupy a heightened position in the labour structure of the large coal mines. The influx of labour to the Forest of Dean following the capital investment to the mining industry brought large swathes of workers with little knowledge of the local and particular geological structure of the area. Moreover, they lacked the skills to operate as a Hewer in the characteristically thin coal seams in the Forest of Dean (Fisher, 2016). The census of England and Wales shows that 30% of colliers employed in the Forest of Dean in 1871 were now born outside the Forest. Many came from other parts of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Wales (Ibid, 2016).

Colliers in the large pits initially started out as unskilled helpers (Douglas, 1977). Hod boys were employed to load and push the drams, once loaded with coal to the surface. As they gained knowledge of the intricacies involved in coal mining, including; how and where to cut the coal, how to set coal and where to undercut a face. Once this knowledge had been gained, they could take on the management of a stall (Ibid, 1977). The experience needed to take out a stall was important. The colliers were paid by piece rate, and thus the management had no incentive to prioritise the collier’s own stall until he felt he was competent enough to produce. Therefore, the industrialists prioritised the hiring of Free Miners as hewers (Wright, 2014). The skill, experience and local knowledge of the Free Miners meant they were best suited to maximise coal output. Hired on piece rates the Free Miners were able to use this to their advantage, while the industrialist made economic gains through the advancement and productive output of the skilled hewers.

The Free Miners had always seen themselves as a skilled craftsman (Fisher, 2016). Piece-work reinforced the skill involved for the Free Miner. The Earnings depended on the miners’ ability to interpret the geological structure of the mine and to use a range of hand tools. Methods in mining changed considerably during the 19th century as large scale, highly capitalised companies moved into the Forest of Dean (Fisher, 2016). The Free

32 The larger pits mined steam coal, whereas Free Mines continued to extract house coal. Some larger pits also mined house coal. While the labour process differed slightly between the extraction of two types of coal, both still used the Butty system (Wright, 2014).

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Miners had previously dug out drift mines, and mined through ‘pillar and stall’. This system was continued in the Forest of Dean by industrialists (Ibid, 2016). However, in some areas drift mines were joined and replaced by shaft mining.33 As a result, less coal was wasted, but more careful attention had to be paid to the maintenance of roadways since the roof had to be supported by props, rather than pillars of coal (Douglas, 1977). These changes brought about sub-division of the labour force and an increasingly hierarchical management structure. However, all this increasing complexity in job allocation left the work of the Hewer unchanged. The Hewer still worked at the coal face (Dix, 1974).

The task of the Hewer was to ‘shear’ the coal by making two deep, vertical cuts at either end of his working face (Douglas, 1977). He then ‘bottomed’, cut out a deep cavity at the bottom of the face measuring two or three feet. This was the most skilled part of the job. The object was to cut out the coal in the largest form possible, without shattering the upper part of the face which would hang above the Hewer as he cut deeper. The Hewer would put ‘sprags’ small timber props to retain the hanging coal in position, but since he was paid piece rate for the amount of coal produced, this safety precaution represented lost time and money.34 The Hewer had to be aware of possible faults in the strata. The coal seam might disappear in a ‘break’ suddenly replaced by stone, which would have to be removed to get at the remaining layer of coal. An experienced Hewer could anticipate some of these problems, by knocking on the coal face. The job of a Hewer was, therefore, a difficult and often dangerous job.35 Free Miners were employed as Hewers. While they had complete control of the work in Free Mines, the continuation of working the seam at the coal face in the larger pits, allowed the Free Miner to exercise his skill, and to retain a valued position in the mine.

The Free Miner had been used to running his own mine. This played a part in the development of the ‘Butty System’. The Butty Men were employed as Hewers to dig out the coal from the seams. They were also put in charge by the industrialists to act as sub-contractors (Douglas, 1977). Each Butty man would have his own stall, employing men to work that stall. Each team was known as a ‘Butty Gang’ (figure 8).

33 Lightmoor Colliery, Northern United Colliery and Princess Royal all used shaft mining with a depth of 700ft (Bick, 1980). 34 Most accidents and deaths in the mine during this period in the Forest of Dean, were the result of inadequate roof support. The piece-rate system meant Hewers prioritised the extraction of coal at the expense of adequate roof support (Tuffley, 2017b). 35 For an overview of the labour process of the Hewer, see; The Durham Pitman (D. Douglas, 1977).

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Figure 8: A Butty Gang: Underground at Cannop Colliery. 1922. Employing nine hundred. Accessed: sungreen.co.uk

While the Butty Man remained at the coal face, he employed men to help with the pushing of the drams to the surface and with the cutting of the timber supports. The Butty Men were paid a negotiated fee for each tonne of coal sent to the surface and a fee for ripping each yard of new roadway (Wright, 2014) (figure 9).

Figure 9: Bert Bowdler ‘Road

Ripping’ with a pick, after powder shot had been fired at the 20 inch seam to loosen the coal. Accessed: sungreen.co.uk

This rate of pay was negotiated on behalf of the Union (Ibid, 2014). These Butty Men employed day-men on a day rate and were directly in charge of setting rates of payment (figure 10 and 11).

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Figure 10: Wage Slip for Drybrook Miner Charles Close, 26/10/1926. Close was a Free Miner (Tuffley, 2017b) and a Buttyman. He employed five men with which he had to share the amount at the bottom. Foxes Bridge coal mine located in Cinderford. You can see the negotiated rates were agreed not only for tonnage of coal produced, but, road ripping per yard and replacing timber. The tonnage rate was checked and signed by the ‘checkweighman’ (Wright, 2014)

Figure 11: Thomas Hale Diary, 1886. Thomas Hales diary records his life as a Free Miner in the Forest of Dean and his participation in the Butty system. At the end of each month he jots down his workings for the payment of his day-men. The following photo shows his payment workings to Davis and Williams; two day-men who he employs at Buckshaft Mine, Cinderford. Accessed: Gage Library.

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The industrialists favoured employing Free Miners as Butty Men, because of their skill, knowledge and experience in running their own mine (Wright, 2014). Butty Men had to provide the working capital (Pick and shovel) (Goffee, 1977). This was readily available to the Free Miner, given his previous and current operations in the Free Mines. The Butty Man was also in charge of the development of the mine. He was responsible for developing new stalls. The tunnelling to find new coal seams was often a risky and unrewarding venture (Wright, 2014). Thus, the Butty Man needed the knowledge of the local geology not to make it a speculative one. The interests of the industrialists, therefore strategically coincided with the interests of the Butty Man. On the one hand, there was a reduction in a homogenised class consciousness and on the other a carefully manufactured and objectively consenting Butty Man. The Butty Man represented an entrepreneur; and given an elevated position above the proletariat. The number of day-men employed by each Butty varied, but generally consisted of four to five men.

At this point, there are three distinct workers’ mining for coal in the Forest of Dean. Free Miners who still worked their Free Mines, Free Miners employed as Butty Men who had the task of cutting out the coal, digging new stalls and operating a sub-contract labour system. The third layer of workers represented the proletariat. Often from outside the Forest of Dean, who had come in search of labour. This class operated with little knowledge and skill of the productive arrangements of coal mining (Fisher, 2014). Rather, they were employed at the whims of the Butty Man and paid their days’ worth by the inclination of the Butty (Coombes, 2002). The Butty Man had the power of hiring and firing the day-man and dispersing payment at the end of each day. Payment would vary considerably. It was up to the discretion of the Butty. Wages would vary for these day- men depending largely on the character of their Butty (Coombes, 2002). Accounts vary, some have noted that once payment was dispersed, some Butty’s would be left with less than the average given out. In other cases, however, the Butty Men have been known to exploit their position:

“Three shifts – one man in charge of each place. All money earned was paid out in the Buttys name and then he shared it out – they were sub-contractors, taking on the job of getting coal out and hiring men. But it wasn’t the men doing the work getting the money, the Butty men had the biggest helping. The system wasn’t liked” (Roberts, cited in Phelps, 2008, p. 109).

The Butty system shows testament to active collaboration between worker and employer. The position conferred power and status within the community, often encouraging greed and deception (Wright, 2014). The negotiated wage of the Butty man didn’t have to be conferred to the day-man:

“The butty in the mine would have all the money off the management or whoever owned the mine and he shared it out with the workers, working under ‘im, and he gave them what he thought they earned, and of course he was always left with a nice fat purse you see after he paid everyone. Most of these butties had a row of ‘ouses about.” (Steve, 20/04/2017).

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Their heightened position in the labour aristocracy was reflected in the wider community and within the Union:

“Oh, aye. It were a bloody system. It were a system that wanted t'union to fight it off, but the union didn't because majority belonging bloody union were butties themselves. If I went to t'manager to complain about them he'd help them but he'd say to me, 'Sorry, I can't help you'. If a butty were off work he'd come and go to collect that tin and handle wages out to them that had been bloody working and he'd done nowt and no bugger knows what he'd got”. (Lowther, cited in Downing, 1983, p. 28).

Many men, however, accepted the system. This justification was based on the merit of the Butty himself. Although the system was often seen as a deceitful one, many miners accepted the system. “I had a good Butty, one of the best in the valleys” (Coombs, 2002, p. 112). The system of differential pay distributed by the Butty Men, produced a measure of acceptance. If the Butty Men took a larger share, it was down to their skill and experience;

“I have ‘erd of butties that ave gone ‘ome with less than their men, there was good and bad.”

(David, 20/04/2017).

Justification came partly through the dangers involved with the Hewers work. While the day-men worked by cutting and fitting ‘sprags’ and the distribution of coal, it was the Butty Men who had the task of extracting coal. The following described the inherent danger of working at the coal face:

Amos Baynham, a Butty man and Hewer at Wimberry Colliery, was injured and later died as a result of his injuries, sustained to his back on the 28/07/1903. While working the face, the ‘sprag’ had not been set properly, and without warning the coal above him collapsed, breaking his back. An extract from Ian Winstanely, a colleague and day-man working with Amos Baynham reads:

“He was in a stooping position, wedging bottom coal at the face, when about 2 hundredweight of top coal fell upon him. A sprag was set against the middle of the coal, but not having been set well, was thrust out by the coal that fell. The accident was apparently due to insufficient and careless spragging which the supervision of officials is intended to prevent” (Gloucester Journal, 1903).

At the inquiry, the witnesses, Brown, White and Jones, who subsequently inspected the mine found it safe and agreed that had the men sounded the place it would not have sounded hollow. The verdict came back as an accident resulting in the fracture of the spine, resulting in paralysis and death as a result of a fall in coal in the Coleford High Delph vein at Wimberry Colliery (Dean Forest Guardian, 1903).

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The Butty Men were also able to overcome fluctuations in the coal market. This was important given the seasonal nature of coal mining. During the Spring, the demand for coal would fall, leaving many of the day- men to look elsewhere for jobs. The day-men represented a casual labour force. Firstly, he was hired day-to- day by the Butty Man and subject to individual bargaining. Second, the fluctuations in the coal market and its natural seasonal variation meant labour was often only consistently available during the winter months. Fisher notes that “customarily, men left the pits and went into the countryside to look for work on the farms, returning to the coal when the weather cooled in the autumn” (2016, p.57). The Butty Men themselves continued to diversify their labour, “the Butty Man could work when he wanted and when there was no work, or when trade was slack, he might supplement his earnings by running sheep in the Forest or working in his Free Mine” (Wright, 2014, p. 6).

The coal industry in the Forest of Dean was never fully encompassing. While the day-men returned to agriculture during times of decreasing demand, the Butty Men (Free Miners) kept their allotments, pigs and sheep, which provided them with necessary food during seasonal downturn. The Free Miners thus had diversified incomes, their ownership of common land, vegetables and animals, as well as their participation in the dense productive exchanges and transaction in the community, meant that it was harder for the industrialists to enforce discipline within the mine. This evidence suggests that the proletarianisation of rural peasants due to their progressive alienation from the fields to the ever increasing dependence on industrial wages (Polanyi, 2001) is left wanting. Rather, the day-men operated in the coal mines in the Forest of Dean for seasons at a time. High rates of mobility among the day-men were needed to adjust to the fluctuations of the market. The Free Miners found themselves more adept at adjusting to these fluctuations given their continuing ownership rights of Free Mines. The next section will comment on the opposing sets of consciousness developed from the labour aristocracy in the mines. This is shown through the development and interaction between the Butty Men and day-men in the FDMA.36

3.5. Skill sectarianism and the development of the FDMA

During this period of coal production, two sets of workers faced each other in the mine. The skilled Butty Man (Free Miner), and the wage-labourer (day-man). The skilled Butty Man saw the mine as its own marketplace. There was a high degree of risk involved every time the Butty Man dug for a new stall. It was not always certain that the miner would find coal, or the seam be too small to occupy its labour time37. These Butty Men

36 The Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA) founded in 1870 ran up until 1940 when it amalgamated with the South Wales Miners Federation (SWMF). The FDMA was often characterised by syndicalist tendencies in opposition to the formation of a National Union. Syndicalist organisation, was seen as more compatible with Free Miners rights (Martin, 1969). 37 This degree of risk is reflected in the names of current Free Mines in the Forest of Dean, i.e. ‘Hopewell Colliery’, ‘Speculation Pit’ and ‘Arthur’s Folly’.

46 would have understood and equated ‘capital’ with the act of labour itself. The distinction between capital and labour, for them, was blurred. Capital for them incorporated their body; it was the act of labour itself. Labour for them, was not defined by set limits within the mine, but rather encompassed most parts of their everyday life. Marx, states that the act of alienated labour means, “he feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home” (1844, p 12). Therefore, the Butty Man and Free Miner represents a non-alienated act of labour given their freedom to shift between the coal mine and household and their relative freedom in the operation of the production process.

The day-men (unskilled workers) were forced into seasonal labour. In the mine, the Butty Man orchestrated and routinized their work. The lack of control they had over the means of production, meaning that they sold their capacity to labour rather than their production. In contrast to the Butty Man, who controlled the extraction of coal, and saw his produce sold to the capitalists.38 The day-men were deskilled, not by the increased mechanisation of the coal mine, but through the system of sub-contracted labour. It was in the Butty man’s interest not to pass the skills and knowledge onto the day-men. This protection of required skill was not new to the social formation created by capital investment and mass production, but rather the result of the ancient laws and privileges bestowed upon Free Miners previously protected by the Mine Court Law. With the Mine Court Law now disbanded, the reification of customary rights into law meant that new opportunities existed for outside industrialists to exploit coal deposits and the Miners in the Forest of Dean. Through the Butty system, the Free Miners sought to readjust this. Although there was no way to halt the introduction of capital and to limit the amount of coal extracted, the Butty system allowed the Free Miners to protect their skill and knowledge of mining. This gave them an albeit lesser amount of freedom in the productive process, it enabled them to remain in control of parts of the process and continue to sell coal informally.

Thus, during early industrialisation of the coal industry in the Forest of Dean, two technologies of production and two social formations coexisted in the same coal mines. The class consciousness of the two distinct sets of workers would have differed radically. The introduction of capital and the development of mass production of coal in the Forest of Dean had not created a homogenous class consciousness among the colliers. Rather, the customs and laws had been used by foreign industrialists in the organising and management of coal mining. The knowledge and skill of the Free Miner were used to exact a sub-contracting system within the mine, which relied on a class of unskilled wage-labourers and a class of skilled miners. The Butty system worked to distance the capitalists from this arrangement. Industrialisation did not create a homogenous working class, and moreover, it profited from this separation. The industrialists needed the skill and knowledge of the Free Miner to work the coal seams, and the social safety net created by informal markets and capital diversification allowed the industry to save on welfare costs of a fluctuating coal market.

38 While the Butty Man had comparative freedom in the selling of his produce, the payment was still directed by that of the fluctuation of coal in the market, and the agreement between Butty and industrialist on an established ratio of tonnage rate to coal price. This concept was later institutionalised through the ‘sliding scale’ (Wright, 2014).

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The creation of two distinct working consciousness’s was reflected in the organisation of the FDMA. With no standard rate set for the payment of day-men, this meant any increases in the price of coal was not passed on to them, or was so, only at the discretion of the Butty. When Neddy Rymer a Miner and Union member led a campaign for the introduction of a standard wage among the day-men in the Forest of Dean, he was met with contempt from the Butty men. A letter written by two Butty Men who worked at Lightmoor Colliery to Mr Rymer shows the Butty Men’s disapproval at the potential introduction of a standardised weekly pay for the day-men (Figure 12). Figure 13 shows the FDMA’s response.

Figure 12: Butty Men’s letter to Mr. Rymer. (Wright, 2014)

The FDMA responded:

Figure 13: FDMA response to Butty men. (Wright, 2014)

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These letters reveal the separation in working consciousness in the coal mines in the Forest of Dean. The Free Miners employed as Butty Men were happy to continue with the system of payment which allowed them control over negotiation and distribution. If industrialisation in the Forest of Dean did not foster a homogenous working class conscious, this only worked to allow the capitalist to profit from this fragmentation of labour. The industrialisation of coal proliferated on the disjunction between artisan and proletariat; Butty man and day-man; Free Miner and casual labour.

3.6. Conclusion

This evidence runs counter to Burawoy (1979) and Braverman (1974) who suggest that monopoly capitalism involves the intensification of production and the development of workers consciousness as a result. Moreover, Polanyis (2001) argument that modern capitalism disembeds the economy from society may not be the case in the Forest of Dean.39 I have shown that industrial capitalism did not destroy labour organisation and skill, but rather incorporated it, in it. The resilience of the Free Miner was due to their control over some important phases of the production process. This control was a result of the Dean Forest Mines Act, which allowed the Free Miner, extensive knowledge of earlier forms of coal extraction through previous ownership of the means of production and his status as a self-employed collier. Moreover, their variety of productive activities which was part and parcel of Free Miners work life complimented industrial production and allowed them to escape full proletarianisation.

The values of the Free Miner, although at odds with the introduction of mass production techniques found solace in their position in the labour aristocracy. Their heightened position allowed them to remain in control of their own stalls. Their experience and skill ingrained through the inherited right to Free Mine saw them highly sought after by the foreign industrialists, who wished to employ Free Miners as Hewers to work the thin seams in the Forest of Dean.40 Although a far cry from the network of freely associated cooperative Free Mines, this new position in the labour aristocracy found a balance in the Miners propensity for freedom and the systems need for ‘mass produced’ coal.

The hegemonic role of capital in economic development may have been over exaggerated. In the Forest of Dean’s coal industry mass production never fully established itself. Moreover, labour played a major role in counteracting and contributing to this capitalist development. The evidence suggests that the labour

39 This is not to say that the economy could be totally disembedded, as Polanyi states, “the self-adjusting market implies a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time” (2001, p. 3). The point is that the swing towards a disembedded economy occurred through the adoption of customary labour practices and organisation. 40 Thin coal seams were more dangerous and less manageable than thick seams. Campbell and Reid (1978) note that specialist Hewers in Scotland were often brought in to extract coal from seams 2-3 metres thick. The Forest coal seams tend to be narrow and steeply inclined, and therefore unsuitable for mechanised equipment.

49 organisation, skills and working practices of Free Miners were not destroyed through the reification of customary law and hence industrial capitalism. Rather, they were incorporated within it. This resilience of the Free Miners working practices was the result of the law protecting the Free Miners working practices. This gave them control over important phases of the process of production; their variety of productive activities; poaching, estovers and pannage; their ownership of the tools of production, and their ability to exercise their social capital in the community to provide cheap sub-contracted labour.

This was reflected in the organisation of the FDMA. The interests of the Free Miners (Butty Men) were at odds with those of the day-men. While the Free Miners supported the Butty system, given their elevated position, and a system rewarding the inherency of skill and knowledge, the day-men campaigned for the abolishment of the system, the introduction of an official sliding scale, a weekly wage, the establishment of a national union and the ending of company scrip.41 The Butty Men’s relation to production and capital directed their behaviour, and the behaviour of the Union. The Butty Men sought a fair price for coal, but had little desire for the setting of a standardised rate for one’s labour. As a mining entrepreneur, the Butty Man acknowledged the risk of working as a Hewer. The formalisation of a sliding scale distributed the price of coal equitably between the industrialist and the Butty Man. The day-man was, in the FDMA as in the mine, subordinate to the Butty. The FDMA made little attempt to end the day-mans condition of dependency (Wright, 2014). Therefore, while Braverman (1974) overemphasises the extent and universalizing nature of monopoly capitalism, Burawoy’s (1979) maxim that class consciousness is produced at the point of production can be seen as true in the identification of a hierarchy of labour and subsequent antagonistic relations in the FDMA. However, these working relations are shaped through external systems of custom and right.

Still today, the Free Miners continue to work in their Free Mines. Their skills, working practices and social relations create different consciousness’s to the Forest of Deans working class. The Free Miners do not draw a distinction between capital deriving from their coal output, and their labour. Therefore, the coal industry in the Forest of Dean did not progress in a linear model of the progressive disembedding of the economy from society, or from the transition from the local and customary world to the impersonal rules of mass production. Instead, it developed as a mixture of these two worlds. The incorporation of ancient Free Mining rights onto the modern capitalist coal mine means the conflict doesn’t centre around the opposition of labour to capital, but rather a conflict between labouring classes. These two classes were, no doubt, set by the introduction of capital and the development of the mass production of coal; but were then directed by ancient custom and right which formed particular working class consciousness’s, and were reflected in the make-up of the FDMA.

“The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future (Marx, 1975, p. 23). The teleological assumptions in Marx’s work have been brought into question during this

41 Company scrip is the payment of tokens that can only be used in the company stores owned by the employers. Company scrip was widely used in the South Valleys, however there is evidence of Butty Men using company scrip to pay their day-men. Butty men often owned pubs and food outlets (Wright, 2014). The system has been widely regarded as a form of modern slavery.

50 chapter. Much like Ferguson, who stated, “The modernisation narrative was always a myth, an illusion, often a lie” (1999, p. 253). I have called into question the linear progression of proletarianisation. Rather, the pre- capitalist labour formations defined by right and custom are mixed with the mass production and capital intensive coal mines. The resilience of Free Miners to continue to practice their work will be shown in the next chapter. While the large mines that mixed two forms of labour in early industrial development have long since disappeared, the Free Miner continues to exercise his right to mine. Chapter four will explore these unique productive relations and explain how these are maintained despite, periodical creative destruction (Schumpeter, 2003).

Before moving onto chapter four which recounts my ethnographic work with the Free Miners, I will offer a brief analysis of the decline of coal mining to bridge the gap between this early form of industrialisation in the Forest of Dean to its current conjecture.

3.7. Economic Restructuring

In 1958 the coal industry in the Forest of Dean employed upwards of 3,000 men, representing 25% of its available male workforce (Table 3).

Table 3: Colliery Closures in the Forest of Dean

Coal Output (000’s Major Collieries Year Number Employed tonnes) Closed

1958 472 3,100 -

Eastern United and 1959 405 1,800 Waterloo

1960 341 1,400 Cannop

1961 240 1,100 -

1962 211 900 Princess Royal

1963 226 800 -

1964 120 600 Norchard

1965 46 200 Northern United

Source: Beard, R. 1971. Changing patterns of employment in the Forest of Dean. Geographical Association. 56(1), pp. 44. 51

By 1965, the last major coal mine in the Forest of Dean; Northern United closed (Beard, 1971). By this time Northern United employed just two-hundred men representing just 2% of the workforce. The narrow seams and excessive water proved too difficult for the NCB to maintain (Ibid, 1971). The coal left in the Forest was deemed uneconomic and too dangerous to extract. In place of coal, the Forest of Dean developed its economy based on light manufacturing industries (figure 14).

Figure 14: Changing Patterns of Employment

Source: Beard, R. 1971. Changing patterns of employment in the Forest of Dean. Geographical Association. 56(1), pp. 44

Rank Xerox manufactured copiers and had a workforce of 2,000 by 1967 (Baggs, 1996). The manufacturing of the drink Ribena signified another post-war development, along with the Lydbrook’s cableworks. Between 1958 and 1967 unemployment decreased in the area (Beard, 1971). Of the major industries in the Forest of Dean which replaced coal as the main sources of employment only the Ribena factory owned by Suntory remains. The largest area of employment in the Forest of Dean is in wholesale and retail trade 15% while manufacturing industry represents 13% of the workforce. Mining and Quarrying represent just 0.2% (FOD District Council, employment keynote, 2015). There are around thirty Free Miners still actively engaged in mining; the next chapter explores my time working with six Free Miners in two Free Mines in the Forest of Dean.

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Chapter 4; The Coalface [Reproduction]

“If you are a Free Miner, you could try to profiteer, but we never have done, in that entire way that people might have done otherwise. It’s always been a right to work more than owning property” (Frank, 24/04/2017).

"[Miners are]...independent craftsmen who worked largely without supervision... [who] exercised broad discretion in the direction of their own work and that of their helpers" (Dix, 1974, p.163).

Prosper Colliery: Main informants: - Steve: Free Miner and Chairman of the Free Miners Association - Peg: Free Miner - David: Commoner and ‘Sheepbadger’

Bixslade Free Mine: - Owen: Free Miner - James: Free Miner - Dan: Free Miner

Interview analysis: - Frank: Free Miner and Secretary of the Free Miners Association

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Map 3: Research Sites

Google Maps. 2017. Forest of Dean (map). [Online]. [Accessed 16/07/2017].

Lambsquay Caves [Interview]

Bixslade Free Mine

Prosper Colliery

The Jovial Colliers

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4.1. Introduction

Chapter three has been a historical reconstruction of the development of coal mining and the organisation of labour in the Forest of Dean. Through an analysis of customs and rights particular to the Forest of Dean, I have shown that within the same coal mines the coexistence of two complimentary and interdependent working class’s. I suggest that the coal mines mixed the technology of mass production with the craftsmanship of the Free Miners; that is wage labour with self-employment, repetitive and deskilled tasks with autonomous and fulfilling roles, working class notions of solidarity with the individualistic craft consciousness and hierarchic relations of production of the artisans. This process was reflected in the Butty system, and also the ‘collective’ response of labour to capital.

In this chapter, I explore the nature of the Free Mining system as an economic institution in its current guise. I will analyse the formation of the Free Miners craft consciousness.42 This will be achieved through an analysis of the production process, distribution of knowledge and the use of informal markets. Thus, it takes as its starting point, the notion that consciousness is formed at the point of production (Burawoy, 1979). Consciousness will be reified through the temporal equivalence of value given to coal extraction from the Free Miners. The productive arrangements although partially modified to fit technological enhancement will be shown to reflect pre-industrial labour relations, therefore reflecting the labour-capital nexus in chapter three.

While the objective relations of production no longer rely on an aristocracy of labour within the mine as seen in chapter three. The continuation to the adherence of the 1838 customary right to Free Mine, means Free Miners shape their social relations through the ancient customs of a ‘right to work’ rather than through the act of selling one’s labour or ownership of the means of production. The chapter will show that the claim that the increasing alienating nature of modern coal production, portrays production as more ‘modern’ than it is. In fact, in the Forest of Dean, ‘early’ and ‘modern’ capitalist technologies are blended in the extraction of house coal. The Free Miners strategy of maximising their social networks lends credence to the claim that the strategies of the artisanal Butty Men of the past are re-enacted. The peculiarity of the Forest of Deans mining industry is that the two working class formations no longer share the same spaces of production, but rather the same spaces of poverty and politics outside the mine. In effect, as Marx (1975) would describe, labour was only formally subsumed by capital. Work organisation remains largely in the hands of the workers. The historical trend towards real subsumption has not occurred for Free Miners.43

Regarding the nature of modern economic institutions, I will explore two hypotheses. The first relates to Braverman’s hypothesis that modern production incorporates workers knowledge into its technological

42 This is represented in both a labourist outlook and industrial exclusivity. 43 Marx’s understanding of craft history is often summed up by the quote, “In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of the tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him” (1975, p54). However, he also notions towards the continuance of craft skills in factory work and the way machines can reduce the division of labour in performing multiple operations, that used to be completed repetitively by hand.

55 system. He states, “conception and execution must be rendered separate spheres of work” (1974, p.81); that is; the separation between the planning of a task controlled by the management apparatus and the execution which is left to the workers. This allows the capitalists to incorporate the worker’s actions into predetermined movements of the machines and creates a split between workers knowledge and their labour. For Braverman, as for Marx, this deskilling tendency through the Babbage principle is dehumanising, producing a “general atrophy of competence44 (1974, p. 194). In line with Elger (1979), I question the progressive homogenisation of labour. I show how degradation of work occurs without the de-skilling of labour. As Blum states, “for some work, the limits are virtually technologically determined – the very work process itself is not amenable to rationalisation under the present state of technical knowledge” (2000, p. 113). For Blum, Braverman fails to recognise the limited ability of capital to deskill and moreover, he equates work degradation with the deskilling of labour. The Free Miners labour process will be framed as more resilient than Braverman may give credit, the labour process involves an inherency of skill that remains impervious to the type of deskilling that Braverman found.45

The second hypothesis relates to Burawoy (1979) on the nature of modern production. Burawoy suggests class consciousness is framed at the point of production and is relatively independent of external systems of social relations, “variations in character and consciousness that workers bring with them to the workplace explain little about the variations in activity in the workplace” (1979, p. 202). Where I look at the production process and structure of the Free Mine, I show that the Free Miners internalise different notions of profitability and a different perception of time and spaces of production than a wage-labouring class. Therefore, I agree with Burawoy that consciousness is crafted at the point of production. It is the difference in productive relations that give way to a conflicting notion of profitability, labour and capital that distinguishes the Free Miners craft consciousness. Moreover, the Free Mining system is not characterised as a hegemonic or despotic regime. Therefore, custom and right can exert more influence on work behaviour than it could a modern factory regime.

My stress is that the formulation of customary rights exacted in the creation of a unique productive regime thereby modifying economic practices and social relations in the Free Mine is congruent with Burawoy (1979). It also provides an interesting variant to Polanyi (2001) concerning the socially disruptive effects of the disembeddedness of economic institutions from society. As shown in chapter three, the Free Miners in the Forest of Dean were never fully proletarianised; rather they complimented wage labour with diversifying their productive arrangements, informal networks and small scale production. Similarly, today Free Miners compliment industrial production with economic transactions embedded in the community. Therefore, the

44 While this means labour is subject to dependence of the market, the systems creation is self-limiting. Taylorism can provoke resistance, for analysis of how this works see Beynon’s, chapter, ‘Working the line’ in ‘Working for Ford’ (1984). 45 Although much of Braverman’s analysis comes from his experience of as a shipyard worker, his theories have been applied to the coal industry, see Margolis, 1998.

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Free Mines provide an interesting case of an economic institution which is embedded in society, and while it is less alienating than a wage labour system, it does not seem to be less exploitative.

I will begin with a description of the two Free Mines (Prosper Colliery and Bixslade Free Mine). I will move on to describe the production process, the primary and secondary markets and the distribution of knowledge. In doing so, I will comment on the way in which Free Miners conceptualise, understand and value their work. This chapter has a primary focus on the social relations of production and how this frames consciousness. It highlights how the Free Miners value in a right to work is produced through the social relations of production. In chapter five, following Bourdieu, the thesis will make an epistemological break to highlight the subjective and relational determinants that structure Free Miners consciousness and how this is practised, reproduced and legitimated both in the FMA and the wider social field of the Hundred of St Briavels.

4.2. Prosper Colliery

Prosper Colliery is a drift mine located between Coleford and Cinderford, where several derelict mine shafts reveal a history of expansion, nationalisation and closure, before reaching the state of desolation in which they are found today. The old mine shafts have either been filled in or cordoned off, but the old slag heaps which dominate the topography between these two towns provide evidence of what once was. Prosper Colliery, a Free Mine can be found amongst them.

Following the noise of the band saw, through the woods, I come across Prosper Colliery. The scattered figures of machines, old toilets and fridges tossed haphazardly into the car park, and the worn and rusted JCB made me think that I had arrived in some kind of scrapyard.

(4/04/2017)

Prosper Colliery opened in 1823 and has used four different ‘adits’ (drifts). It is now owned by Steve(Chairman of the Free Miners Association) (Figure 15) and his ‘partner’ Peg.

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Figure 15: ‘Steve’ during a break at Prosper Colliery

The colliery has one working adit where coal is mined. The second adit is used for tours (Figure 16).

Figure 16: Prosper Colliery Mine entrance, ‘Adit’

During school holidays, Steve uses the second adit as an attraction, offering tours to holiday makers and school groups. Outside the adit is a large café which is rented out. Sarah currently rents the café selling lunches and drinks. The two mine shafts are at opposite ends of the site. The production of coal on the one side was hidden amongst the trees, while the café and tourist mine took front and centre. There was a clear invisible line between the two productive arrangements. In-between the two lies the ‘Breadoven’ (Figure 17).

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Figure 17: Prosper Colliery, ‘Breadoven’

This cast iron and rusted shed functioned as the Free Miners ‘HQ’. This is where the Miners spend their lunch and afternoon breaks. Cowering over the coal fire to warm and dry themselves off. The Breadoven was covered in coal dust. So much so, that as you walked into the room, dust was felt with every intake of breath and dust would shoot from the chair as you collapsed onto it in exhaustion from the day’s work. The Breadoven is littered with old tools and machines. A telephone hangs next to the door (Figure 18).

Figure 18: Inside the Breadoven ‘HQ’

There is little room, just enough to seat four men, with the door unable to fully close. Next to the Breadoven is another shed. Here a bandsaw is set onto the table. Chunks of timber are stacked against the wall, and a thick layer of sawdust buries your feet as you enter.

The Café is modern and clean inside. A clear counter at the front with a range of cakes inside, tables and chairs neatly set out in rows, with old photos of former miners and Free Mines litters the wall. Sensuously perceived,

59 the technical system expands and dissolves its boundaries into the dirty and old coal mining side, and the warm, clean café. The Free Miners perceive and absorb the two areas differently according to their particular position in the production process. Steve and Peg have little to do with the everyday running of the museum and café. In fact, they were keen to distance themselves from the tourists. During the two week period spent working with them, Sarah, who was renting out the café and museum had little contact with the production side.

For the Free Miners, it was important to make this distinction between the coal side and the café side. However, it was impossible for them to disassociate themselves totally. The Phone which hung on the wall often pierced through this separation. Tourists would occasionally ring to make a booking or check opening times. The reluctance on the part of the Free Miner to associate with this side of the business was evident. They would often make jokes and use playful repartee to create a boundary between the dirty, physical, masculine mining side and the clean, effeminate tourist side:

[Phone rings]

[Peg answering phone] No, we open on Friday, good Friday, yes. [Puts on a posh accent and bends his hand in a camp manner].

[Steve, enters the ‘Breadoven’]

[Peg] I just ‘ad a tourist on the phone [Steve] Did ya?

[Peg] I told ‘im to fuck ‘imself, couldn’t think of nothing else to say.

[Steve] Well you’re customer care manager so….

(6/04/2017).

For the Free Miners, dealing with customers and tourists represented an emasculating work ethic. Taking these jokes seriously, they give meaning to the socialisation of Free Miners which firstly solidifies the hierarchy of the FMA, second, secures friendship and thirdly, disciplines the Miners to a set of agreed upon values.46 This disciplining of values will be explored in chapter five after analysis of the productive arrangements and labour process.

46 Jokes can reveal social relationships, and through which they gain meaning. For further analysis see, Douglas, 1968, ‘The social control of cognition’.

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4.3. Bixslade Free Mine

Bixslade Free Mine is located on the Western edge of the Forest of Dean. Located in an isolated pine forest at the bottom of Bixslade Valley (Figures 19 and 20).

Figures 19 and 20: Bixslade Free Mine in Bixslade Valley. The adit is set into the hillside at the rear.

Bixslade Valley is home to many now redundant Free Mines and quarries. The tramways can still be seen linking them. Bixslade Free Mine has been in operation since the 1980s. The Mine has one adit currently working the Yorkley seam with an average section of two to three feet (Figure 21).

Figure 21: The entrance ‘adit’ to Bixslade Free Mine. 61

Around four hundred to five hundred tonnes of coal are extracted a year. The Mine is far out of sight from the main road, hidden deep inside the Forest. A public footpath following the tramways runs along its outside, with the main adit hidden from view at the rear and cut into the hillside. Owen who owns the mine works with his partners, brothers Dan and James. They work the coal face three days a week.

4.4. The workforce

As shown in Appendix 1, the Free Miners have different occupational and economic backgrounds. The average age of the Free Miners is fifty-nine, their formal education and qualifications are low (although they have undergone years of training). They have a long family and personal history of Free Mining. The Free Miners are the descendants of Butty men. The older Free Miners attended the Cinderford Mining and Technical College which has since shut down. The Younger generation of Free Miners have learnt their trade from serving the ‘Year and a day’ in the Free Mines in accordance with the 1838 Dean Forest Mines Act. The newer recruits to the FMA do not have a mining background. The conflicting notions of ‘value’ of the Free Miners can partially be related to a difference in socio-economic backgrounds, therefore showing that economic processes outside the mine can influence relations within it. Although this should not be overstated, as we see in Chapter Five, the dominant form of value is mediated and legitimised through hierarchical social relations of the FMA.

4.5. The Market

This section will show and describe how Free Miners operate their primary informal coal market and the customers’ motivation for buying coal. It will then comment on the Free Miners need to compliment the primary market by negotiating a secondary informal market, where Miners take part in extra economic activity. The thesis argues that this process is both the result of a commitment to right and custom on the part of the Free Miner and the rescaling of the state through flexible labour strategies. While Mollona (2009) shows how the state fosters a new despotic regime based on coercion of the worker, this thesis revises this postulation, showing how the development of informal markets is both the product of state policies and the Free Miners commitment to exercise his rights and customs. This section will introduce my empirical work through observations of the labour process, recorded conversations with Free Miners, customers and the interview with a Free Miner (Frank).

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4.5.1 Primary

Prosper Colliery and Bixslade Free Mine sells its house coal in small orders to a number of customers. This market diversification allows it to survive in times of economic stagnation. Moreover, the diversification in coal product has allowed it to tap into a growing ecologically aware group of residents in the Forest of Dean. The Free Miners produce three different sizes of coal. Pea coal measures about 0.5 inches across, rubble around 2 inches and lump around 5 inches. Coal dust is now being used by some of the Free Miners as an ecological alternative. The coal dust is loaded into a compressor, which compacts the dust into small briquettes measuring three inches across. The coal produced in the area is ‘house coal’. The Free Miners do not take out local advertisements for their produce, rather rely on informal networks. Customers usually know the Miners well, often stopping for a chat, sometimes entering the ‘Breadoven’, for a cup of tea. For most of the customers, the act of collecting the coal and talking to the miners is as important as the collection of the coal itself. The price of the coal remains relatively low compared with other house coal. The price is the same at both Prosper Colliery and Bixslade Free Mine.47 Coal Price per 20kg: Lump: £14, Rubble: £12, Peas: £10.

A commemorative sentiment directs these informal networks. The customers are often former miners themselves or have had relatives and friends that worked in the larger pits. Sue visited Prosper Colliery twice to pick up coal while I was there. The second time she came into the Breadoven for a cup of tea. She explained that:

“My partner had a small mine in the north end of Coleford, called Newfound out, I worked on the surface and he worked underground pulling coal, and of course we used our own fuel. We sold all the lump as house coal off the bank. I worked on the top and bagged the coal and sold it. My partner worked underground by hand [with] pick and shovel pulling it out. I drove the haulage up and down. My partner had always been an independent spirit and worked for himself most of his working life, when I joined him it was fascinating, working in the middle of the woods, it was a wonderful working time, it was very good. We had two small boys who grew up playing the woods, and they enjoyed it. It was a nice free life. Being self-employed you could please yourself what you did. Overall it was an enjoyable time. That’s why I buy coal from here now. To support that way of life”.

(10/04/2017)

47 The price is not fixed by the FMA, rather, the FMA regulates how mining is carried out (in accordance with the Mines Act), however the fixing of the same prices may have been the result of an unofficial agreement in the FMA, to diminish competition. I would suggest that the Free Miners ‘coal mining mentality’ would align with a predisposition for the fixing of prices, as was previously conducted by the Mine Court Law. During the interview with Frank (Appendix three), he relays to me that a coal mining ‘cartel’ is frowned upon by ‘foreigners’, it is now, “up to the individuals” to set prices. He suggests that with active collaboration between Free Miners, they can work to avoid the creation of “dangerous conditions”. Moreover, Frank and the other Miners consistently talked of strategy to re-introduce the Mine Court Law, along with its regulatory powers.

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The commitment to buying house coal from the Free Miners came from a desire for the continuation of, ‘that way of life’. The continuing attachment to pay more for house coal from a Free Miner than from a wholesaler shows the continuation of dense social ties that continue to operate within a moral economy. This is not the re-embedding of cultural authenticity through market transaction that sociologists and economists of traditional and oriental craft would imagine (Nash, 1993), nor is it the expression of a medium of communication between people of distinct cultural traditions (Cook, 2004). Rather, it is, “grounded upon a consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the proper economic functions of several parties within the community” (Thompson, 1991b, p.79). Much like the Butty Man explored in chapter three, who complimented an industrial wage with the selling of coal in informal markets through the operation of his Free Mine; the Free Miner continues to sell his produce in an informal economy through rich and dense productive exchanges in the community.

4.5.2 Secondary

The relatively low price of the coal and the labour time needed to extract and package the coal means Prosper Colliery and Bixslade Free Mine do not produce a lot of capital. Apart from this primary market, the Free Miners sell or exchange their production in a variety of other markets to supplement their income. Peg works as a haulier; the two brothers, Dan and James keep pigs, Steve gives tours of Prosper Colliery and Owen is a keen gardener and produces vegetable boxes which he sells at the weekly car boot. Thus, from the point of market analysis, the Free Mines survival represents an economic oddity. The Free Miners are able to survive through their diversified networks and markets.

The Free Miners have survived the decline of the local coal industry through their informal economy. The Free Miners can exercise their dense web of local productive exchanges. De-industrialisation has reinvigorated ancient productive strategies of the Free Miners that I described in chapter three. Therefore, the post- industrial economy in the Forest of Dean relies on pre-industrial forms of labour organisation and informal market transactions. Swyngedouw (2002) demonstrates that mining sectors in Belgium and the UK have been converted into leisure and tourism industries through European structural funds, that bypass national and regional governments. The retreat of the state in regional development increased precarious labour. This re- scaling of the state has made informal markets in the Forest of Dean more viable. Burawoy (1979) has claimed that in enhancing hegemonic forms of labour organisation, monopoly capitalism dissolved the basis for class struggle. He notions towards the effects of flexible production in the creation of a despotic capitalism. My analysis shows that deindustrialisation has enforced a new form of despotic capitalism where the primary economic activity of coal production does not create enough capital and so, Free Miners compliment mining with informal economic activity. However, the development of an informal economy through a ‘despotic capitalism’ shouldn’t be overstated. The customs and rights of Free Miners have always allowed Miners to seek capital investment and diversify income outside of the mine. It was this commitment that allowed Free

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Miners to escape full proletarianisation during the early 20th century. It continues now, synergistically, through conditions created to suit flexible labour and a sustained commitment to custom and right.

Steve explains:

“I do have to do other jobs to survive, but I’ve always been involved with mining, even when I wasn't working in the mines, I also went and worked part time or on weekends. If there were days when I never had any work on, because I was self-employed, I would go back and work in the Forest”.

(06/04/2017).

Peg: “I work with Paul, ‘im was a haulier, moving food waste, things to go into digesters, you know. But he aint very well really, got to go for checkups on ‘is pace maker. So I ‘ave to go down and do ‘is early mornin’ pigs. Get a premium if they’re in there before six o’clock in the mornin’. I bloody ‘ate the job, don’t like livestock at all”.

(06/04/2017).

Here, both Steve and Peg exemplify the type of despotic regime characterised by their production, negotiated through coercion rather than consent. The two miners are not guaranteed a basic income, rather they both have to mine and diversify their incomes ‘to survive’. Here, flexible labour programmes have created a social and political space for the emergence of a new despotic regime, which remains congruent with the informal market process of the Free Miner and their practising of custom and right. These informal market processes are often negotiated in the ‘Breadoven’.

The ‘Breadoven’ at Prosper Colliery is used as a market. The visitors often exchange jobs and services with the Free Miners. The Free Miners are reluctant to use the Jobcentre because this contradicts their tightly held predisposition for being ‘Free men’. Rather, they find and negotiate informal labour through transactions conducted in the Breadoven with their friends.48 Flexible production of the Free Miners requires an interdependence on coal mining on the one hand and informal exchanges on the other. Today, the Forest economy relies on networks of Free Mines, informal economies and horizontal social ties. These pre-capitalist social formations have not re-emerged from the dissolution of the capital intensive coal mines; rather they are a continuation of the productive arrangements of the Butty Man. Although deindustrialisation and Labour deregulation create an environment beneficial to the development of an informal economy and no doubt

48 These friends are often ‘commoners’, those given the right to common sheep on public land. Some Free Miners are commoners themselves.

65 secure its continuation, the strict observance of the ‘right to work’ predominates the systems demand to increase these economic activities.

Mollona (2009), describes the development of an informal economy among steel workers in Sheffield as the consequence of “public policies and local social and economic regeneration” (p .272). While highlighting the state’s role in the formation of a labour aristocracy he ignores the ability of the workers to remodel the production process and to create informal markets through a theory of praxis. Moreover, in Sheffield, Mollona (2009) describes how the wage-labour and informal economy overlap. In the case of the Free Miner, the primary market for coal and secondary market also overlap, although they both remain outside the arena of real subsumption. Much like in Hart’s study of the informal economy in Accra, in the absence of wage labour, market transaction is, “Regulated by the trust generated by shared experience, mutual knowledge and the affection that comes from having entered a relationship freely, by choice rather than status or obligation” (1988, p. 185). In the Forest of Dean, the disappearance of the state has not solely “Reinvigorated welfare functions of the community [and][…] developed informal economic networks” (Mollona, 2009, p. 263). Rather, commitment to these practices is derived from both the reconstitution and re-enactment of ancient rights and privileges and the current shift towards flexible production.

Scholars of social and cultural capital would claim Free Mining, a successful case of extending social capital, and that it provides evidence that social cooperation can foster economic development, rather than the other way around. My evidence suggests, however, social and economic capital is strictly interwoven, but no social capital can develop in the absence of the Free Miners productive relations. The informal economy doesn’t rely on new social capital, but on the rights and traditions of the Free Miner, ‘at the point of production’ to use Burawoy’s phrase (1979). The social capital of the Free Miners in the form of relations with customers works to insulate them from the volatility of the coal market and increases their power in the community and political relations (as seen in chapter five).

4.6. The Production Process and machines

Average Day

9:00 – Arrive on site. 9:00-11:00 – Clear surface area, gather tools. 11:00-12:00 – Fix seams underground. 12:00-2:00 – Lunch, Friends arrive for chat and informal jobs are discussed and negotiated in the ‘Breadoven’. 2:00-5:00 – Working underground, extraction of coal.

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Having taken a broad look at the type of productive regime that characterises Free Mining, through the use of informal markets, this thesis will now look specifically at the production process and the use of machinery. It will start with a description of the extraction process before looking at the transmission of the social relations of production. It shows that the Free Miners mix modern technology with pre-industrial forms of coal mining. This means there is no separation between head and hand (Sennett, 2008). This craft consciousness is then reified through the value given to one’s labour.

Steve and Peg are currently working a ‘longwall face’ in Yorkley seam which has average heights of about 80cm. The electric cutter AB-15 (Figure 22) is used to undercut the coal, and the remaining coal is extracted using pneumatic drills.

Figure 22: The AB-15 in situ at the coalface.

Manual picks are also used to get out the more delicate pieces of coal, or coal banded next to the wooden props. Once the coal is undercut these wooden props are brought in to support the roof. The wooden props have been cut to size on the surface using a band saw. Shovels move the loose coal into the half tonne tubs (drams) (Figure 23).

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Figure 23: An empty dram being lowered down the main haulage road by the haulage engine .

These drams are connected to a winding gear outside the mine which slowly pulls the dram to the surface. Once on the surface, the drams are pushed to the bottom of the ‘coal breaker’ (Figure 24).

Figure 24: Shovelling the coal on to the ‘coal breaker’.

The coal is lifted by shovel onto the coal breaker. The coal breaker sorts the coal into various sizes, ‘lump’, ‘rubble’ and ‘peas’. The coal breaker also gets rid of coal dust. The coal dust is loaded into a compressor, which compacts the dust into small briquettes measuring three inches across. Bixslade Free mine works the Yorkley seam with an average section of two feet, using the same process.

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Today I started work proper. Entering Prosper Colliery, we descended fifty metres until we reached a crossroads. Here, the floor levelled out, and we pushed the dram in front of us further into the mine. The roof was uneven; sometimes I could stand straight, other times I had to bend to avoid a low-lying rock. Several times I knocked my head on the rocks above and was thankful for my helmet. The passage was four ft wide, with a stream of water flowing to my right. We reached the seam. It couldn’t have been much more than one and a half ft in depth. We climbed the bank into the small gap. The dram was positioned at the base of the seam, ready to collect the coal. Crawling down the seam I carried the pickaxe and shovel, while Steve and Peg in front of me carried pneumatic drills, only inches would separate the roof from your body. Here I was glad of my small frame. Peg, on the other hand, twice the width of me squeezed through the gap with consummate ease, which could only have come from a lifetime spent underground. Head flattened to the floor; we made our way on our bellies up the seam wriggling forward. “So this is the Hilton”, Peg panted from in front me. “Like coming on bloody holiday”!

[According to Peg, the other seam at Prosper Colliery was much thinner and hence more dangerous and difficult to work in. It was agreed that I would help out in the ‘Hilton’ due to safety concerns. Much to the amusement of Peg who would exaggerate the ‘wonderful’ comparative conditions of the working seam]. (See Figure 25).

(7/04/2017)

Figure 25: Yorkley seam, ‘The Hilton’. A depth of one

and a half ft. Fitted sprags line the sides and support the roof. The shovel and Pick axe can be seen.

Here the old tools of the pickaxes were used alongside the more modern electric coal cutters and drills. The Free Miners rely on their local knowledge of the geological strata. Much like Marx’s description of the ‘Ryder hammer’ as an anthropomorphic mechanical creature, the pneumatic drills rotating movements seem to be a

69 mechanical reproduction of the pickaxe (1975). Thus, the two different technologies and tools represented by the mechanical drills and the manual pickaxes, represent two historical stages in the production of coal, performed by two different historical subjects: the Butty Man of industrial capitalism and the Free Miner of pre-industrial capitalism and now late capitalism. While the different technologies in the past relied on different forms of physical power for their motion, they depend on the same distribution of knowledge. The pickaxe and the pneumatic drills rely on the same distribution of knowledge, knowledge that is inherent to the extraction process itself. The limited development of mechanisation in the Free Mines, thus, do not create a separation between head and hand as Braverman reflects as the, “most decisive single step in the division of labour” (1874, p. 126) rather local knowledge and skill remain intrinsic, if not the fundamental aspect of Free Mining; “There remains an intimate connection between head and hand” (Sennett, 2008, p. 9). The Free Miners thus, “remain equal to [their] counterparts of the past few generations in terms of technical competence […] [they] have learned to work with some new materials and processes. But [their] basic skills, tools and relative autonomy remain the same” (Blum, 2000, p. 111). 49

For Adler (2004), it is this reconstitution of the ‘fully developed individual’ (1975) to use Marx’s phrase, which anticipates a skill-upgrading in late capitalism. However, far from a process of upgrading, the skill of Free Mining is not reconstituted. Rather, the Free Miner, in the guise of the Butty Man during industrialisation and his modern form in late capitalism retains a temporal equivalency in the production process, despite the introduction of the pneumatic drill, electric coal cutters and the coal breaker.

Led down on our sides, Steve and Peg started to drill, undercutting the coal face. The small seams made this difficult. There seemed to be hardly any room for them to operate. The jackhammers, weighing 30kg made an awful noise, sending forth clouds of coal dust which made it impossible to see. I was positioned at the entrance to the seam with the shovel. As the coal was loosened from the face, I directed the coal with my shovel towards the dram.

(7/04/2017).

Mauss described that “When a generation transmits to the next the science of its gestures and of its manual acts, there is as much authority and social tradition as there is linguistic transmission” (cited in Mollona, 2009, p.104). The machines used by the Free Miners condense social meaning rooted in the past and transmitted to each Free Miner. The use of the drills and the coal cutters involve knowledge of the properties of the coal face; whether the coal is damp or dry, whether the seam contains sandstone or rock, the depth and gradient of the seam and shape of deposit.

49 This retention of skill in the production process can be likened to Sabel and Piore’s, (1984) flexible specialisation which is a requirement of craft work.

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Carrier uses Marx’s theory of alienation as a “separation of objects as well as other persons from the self” (1992, p. 539). In combining Marx’s theory of alienation with Mauss’s model of exchange, he is able to analyse the way people produce in industrial society. He claims that “the growing alienation in production is part of a broader differentiation of life into, “more ‘purely’ economic and more ‘purely’ social aspects” (ibid, p. 541). Modern forms of production increased the alienation of the workers from their production, destroying community relations. Workers are more likely to experience themselves as independent entities. This increase in alienation resulted from the increase in mechanisation. Following Braverman, modern production incorporated both tools and labour power into the machine and ”by breaking down production into more and simpler steps decreased workers control” (1974, p. 548). Therefore, The Free Miners work has not become de- skilled and de-personalised, rather the Miners work comes to reflect early forms of mining.

Stopping work at one o clock fort lunch was common. The miners were proud that they are ‘free men’, free of any work timetable. However, that didn’t stop them from working just as hard or as long. Several times when I had left, finished for the day around five pm, Peg and Steve went back down to, ‘finish the job’. Nothing needed finishing, the coal was dug out and ready to be sorted, the wooden supports had been cut and were ready to be put in place as roof supports. There isn’t a natural end to the shift for Free Mining, but rather the work is ongoing, Steve stated, “as long as there is coal in the seam, there is work to be done”. They seemed to prefer being underground than above ground.

(7/04/2017).

The Free Miners labour process closely reflects the early forms of coal mining. The Free Miners control the process of production. They organise their time by task, rather than working days.50 They control the transfer of knowledge of mining through an apprenticeship system and personal induction. Not only this, but it reflects the historical labour process of the Butty system. The technologies used in the Free Mine still rely on the same form of power for their motion, the weight of the drills and physical nature of Free Mining remains an inherent part of the extraction of coal. The Free Miners share the same history of capitalist development. As seen in chapter three, the coal industry in the Forest of Dean underwent a transformation from small-scale Free Mining, into the mass-production of coal. Today the Free Miners are recalibrated into small scale coal production using the same techniques of the past but with new machines. Although the upgrading of the drills and cutters have replaced to an extent the pickaxe, the knowledge and strength needed to use them remain the same.

50 According to Thompson (1967), this shows that Free Miners temporal organisation of labour remains congruent with pre-industrial forms of time and work-discipline.

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4.7. Distribution of knowledge

So far one has seen how the introduction of mechanised equipment in the Free Mines has not caused the separation between head and hand and the deskilling of labour. This section will analyse how knowledge is distributed in the Free Mine. It shows how knowledge remains inherent to the practice of labour itself and how this is mediated and learnt by the Free Miners.

Today, the pseudo-technological system of Free Mining reflects the past form of social organisation of knowledge. Knowledge of the machines, the geological structure, where and when to drill, the fixing of ‘sprags’ is all inherent to the extraction process itself. The Free Miners relied on each other to ‘spot’ cracks in seams that might prove dangerous. Free Mining relied on collective relations. Rather than knowledge being structured into isolated and self-enclosed tasks, knowledge was codified through open networks practical tasks that were enhanced by mutual understandings of the job and safety of each task.

“So if you don’t trust the bloke who’s next to you, to support the roof, you know, you’re not going to be very happy…so we have to trust each other to do their jobs properly. So it’s not a case of ‘oh he’ll do’ to do that job, you have to know how to do it properly”.

(Frank, 24/04/2017)

The knowledge of Free Mining is embedded in human hands and his tools. Like Sennett’s craftsman, the head and the hand remain intimately linked (2008). The knowledge remains non-hierarchical and distributed freely through the status of the elder Free Miners (Steve and Owen). To learn the work, I had to follow the actions of Steve and to recognise from the effects of these actions the same meaning he was giving to them. Therefore, my only way to assess my job was through Steve’s actions, vocabulary and his practical understanding of each task. Secondly, I had to learn about the history of Free Mining, how it had to adapt to different machines, or rather how it didn’t adapt. For example, the larger coal cutters were useless in the thin seams in the Forest of Dean. Therefore, Free Miner’s coal cutters (AB-15) used by Free Miners were chain cutting machines that undercut the coal like a band saw. This would create space of around one metre in depth to climb into. From this point, the Free Miner could begin to undercut the coal face with pneumatic drills and pickaxes. Steve would tell me about the history of the AB-15, how it was known as the ‘widow maker’ in South Wales and had been discontinued in the larger mines by about 1960. He would tell me the history of the machines and tools, always in reference to rights and customs and the aristocratic ethos animating from what he saw as the ‘golden age’ of mining in the Forest of Dean. This history was also engrained in the very movements of the machine; it was the same process which had been used one-hundred years ago.

Here Dan explained to me the introduction of the mechanical drills:

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“Explosives started to be used in these mines five-hundred years ago; they had to drill the holes in the rock with a hammer and chisel. It was the job of the youngsters to hold these drill bars on their shoulder and keep turning them while two men struck it with sledgehammers, just behind their ear. The continual hammering in the confined space of the mine used to make the men and youngsters a bit deaf. If the youngsters shouted stop, they wanted to put a longer bar in the men wouldn’t always hear them. So they developed a little signal, as they were turning away at the bar, they would flash their thumb across the end of the bar like this in between strikes. The miner would see the thumb flash across and would stop hammering. Of course, if the youngsters timing was out they would end up without a thumb. So if you see a Forester going round without a thumb, you know they haven’t got very good timing. [widowmakers] Pneumatic drills used in the mine, created a tremendous amount of dust, causing respiratory problems. Got the nickname widowmakers. So if your girlfriend buys you one for Christmas, I should find a new girlfriend”.

(19/04/2017)

The relationships formed when entering the mine, are conducted through a paternal friendship. The relationships developed in the mine were based on respect and strict adherence to activities mediated by Steve and Owen. This form of authority often took paternalistic tones, so that Steve would not only try and teach me the job but also protect me from the dangers at the coal face. Not only transmitting his working knowledge, but he would also morally educate me to find gratification from the work. Inherited from history, this form of relationship between young apprentice and elder skilled Free Miner regulated the daily interactions of the workers in the Mine. It reveals the teaching practices and dissemination of information that occurs during the ‘year and a day’.

The knowledge of the Free Miners was not only created and reinforced at the mine but was also a product of their ‘embodied history’. The act of labour was memorised and retrieved through physical movement and did not require thinking. It became ‘implicit’ and ‘automatic’ (Bourdieu, 1984). This became apparent one day, working at Bixslade Free Mine:

Before heading into the mine, equipment must be ready, helmets, torches on and the rope must be tied to the dram:

[Owen] Tie it up then Joe.

I tied the rope around the handle of the dram. Inside the dram were jackhammers, drills and pickaxes and wooden wedges. Owen turned on the machine that slowly unravels the rope to wind the dram down the shaft.

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[Dan] Hold on ol’ but.

Owen turns the machine off.

[Dan] we got a problem ‘ere, thic ropes gunna come undone any minute.

[James] Doesn’t know how to tie a dram knot mind!

Dan quickly undid my knot and retied it with ease. Nothing else was said at that point and we descended into the shaft for that afternoons work.

The next day I decided to bring it up.

[Joe] So, I didn’t know there was a specific knot for the dram?

[James] Course, it gotta be strong, for it to haul up the coal, can weigh a ton mind. I’ll show you if you like.

James patiently collected some old rope from nearby and taught me the knot.

[Joe] So who taught you?

[James] ahh…family, my dad, and my Uncles.

[Joe] Who taught you? I asked Owen as he was standing by, watching.

[Owen] Just always knew, you know. From way back. But probably stemmed from my dad. Just common sense it is.

(17/04/2017)

The Miners thought my questioning of the ‘dram knot’ was silly. To them it was common sense, something learnt in their childhood, passed on from father to son. It was how the Miners drew on their history, their mining ‘competence’. Something as simple as tying a knot was of dire importance to the act of mining. An enormous amount of working knowledge goes into the act of mining. I only caught a glimpse. To me, mining was repetitive, almost mundane. I was told where and when I could cut out the coal. It is the knowledge that goes into that preparation for knowing where, and when that could prove fatal. Beneath the knowledge of the

74 dram knot was a ‘disposition’ to ‘dive right in’ and get their hands dirty, a disposition conditioned by their rural working class ‘Forest’ upbringing.

4.8. Value of labour: “A coal mining mentality”

As I have explained, the Free Miners recognise the value of their job in the ability of Free Mining to remain a stable organisation and for its working practices to be passed down. The Free Miners remain quite poor. The wealth differential between Free Miners and the residents of the Forest of Dean would make us logically conclude that Free Miners should value the production of capital more. However, the continued adherence to a particular craft and way of life overrides the value of capital.

Free Miners are involved in several productive exchanges with individuals located in the community, that run parallel with their main production process. The Free Miners produce independently of the Free Mine. Thus, when the market depreciates during the summer months, the Free Miners can intensify production through their personal networks and counterbalance the decrease in profit from coal with the increase in capital from their informal production. For this reason, the profit received from being a Free Miner is embedded in a web of other monetary transactions. The Free Miners are therefore more concerned with diversifying their incomes by producing and exchanging in the wider community. From this point of view, the productive transactions that the Free Miners have with local residents are also ways of creating social connections on which other forms of income and their survival ultimately depend. Thus, the Free Miners lack of value placed on capital earned through coal extraction is based on the degree of embeddedness in the social and informal economic activity in the community. The Free Miners economic strategy is to maximise their returns by diversifying their production and exchanges outside the mine. Therefore, the value of their labour is placed on the act itself; the extension of a historical way of life, rather than its placement in capital.

However, different Free Miners perceived the value of their labour differently. For example, the older generation of Free Miners (Owen, Steve and Frank), placed value in the act of labour itself. For them, the value of their labour was ingrained in the continuation of Free mining as practice. The constant talk of the historical tradition of Free Mining lent credence to the supposition of their labour as privilege:

“Well its continued, well you know, over mining started back four and a half thousand years ago at least. So its continued right up to the present day over four-thousand years, and it’s always been done by the same type of operator – by a born and bred person. So that kind of privilege and continuity is something quite special and we would like to see it continued as a pretty strong thing into the future. But at the moment it’s sort of on the decline and it needs to be brought back up”.

(Frank, 27/04/2017)

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In contrast, the newer members of the Free Miners Association placed value in their contribution in the production process. This younger generation of Free Miners perceived capital as an equivalent to the value of their labour. For example, Peg once declared:

“The whole point of the rights, is that it’s a right to make a living”.

(7/04/2017).

During one discussion at lunch, Peg explained to me that he was ‘doing up his house’:

“Doin’ up the house now. Just doing it as we get the money. When we ‘ant got no money we don’t do nothing”.

(6/04/2017).

While in the Mine Peg would explicitly describe the amount of coal produced in relation to its monetary value. For example, he would boast of having dugout, forty pounds worth of ‘lump’, rather than describing it in terms of weight as Steve did.

The equivalency of labour to capital resembles traditional nodes of wage-labour attitudes. The newer Free Miners, rather than experiencing value as the production itself had internalised a wage-labour attitude rather than the craft experience of the older generation who placed value in the act of labour. This latter reference point has developed from the production process (Burawoy, 1979), which fosters an adherence and commitment towards the sustenance of the craft system of Free Mining. The older Free Miners had inhabited a ‘coal mining mentality’ as they called it which placed value, not in the extraction of coal for capital, but in its extraction more generally. Here Frank describes this mentality, comparing it to other mining companies:

“We have a different attitude to mining compared to most mining companies. What we are looking at it as is money in the bank, if we are short of it, we won’t work, once we got enough, we can stop working and go and do something else. So all the time…because you own the mine, you could just go down and get your money and come out”

(24/04/2017).

Here, Frank, places his value of labour in the amount of coal produced, although he also notes that Free Mining does not involve the accumulation of profit, but rather a system of subsistence. However, the craft

76 analogy only goes so far. Sennett (2008), places emphasis on the quality of the craftsman’s product that drives the craftsman’s motivation for work. His analysis of the ‘modern Hephaestus’ places value in the product itself. The Free Miner does not place value in labours consequence, in terms of capital or product, but in its process. The Free Miner derives his value from the means of labour; it becomes a right to make a living, rather than a right to property.

“There is a pride though in manual work. There is a pride in knowing you can do the job […] although we own it [Free Mine], it’s only of any value unless you use it. So you’ve gotta get down there and you gotta dig for mineral, and there is a great joy in doing that. And when you walk out of the pit and you see the sun shining and the trees, you hear the birdsong, you know, it’s such a wonderful environment to work in”.

(Frank, 24/07/2017)

The Free Miners do not work for pure self-gratification, neither for pure economic interest. In line with orthodox Marxist readings of the labour process that claims workers consciousness reflects the capitalist division of labour, I suggest that the labour process in the Free Mine reflects the Free Miners commitment to custom and right which consequently structures productive relations. This commitment is inscribed in work relations that transcend the specific form of labour organisation; that is, the rights to Free Mine not only structure relations, the production process and the distribution of knowledge in the mine but therefore, the consciousness of the miner. While the dominant form of value in the Free Mine; the act of labour, is legitimised by the hierarchical position of the older generation, this emphasis on value is not omniscient. Rather, it is transferred through the distribution of knowledge, the production process and the strengthening of market diversification in the community. Value is thus formed, from these three interconnected relations, reified in a disposition to a ‘right to work’.

4.9. Conclusion

The coal production of the Free Miner doesn’t necessarily involve the externalisation of knowledge into machines. Rather, production is internalised. Technology becomes a Maussian ‘technique of the body’ (2009). The physical nature of Free Mining and its mixing of old and new technology means that knowledge is inherent to the production process itself. Thus, skills are not imposed through technology, but through the knowledge intensive act of labour. The skills are constructed and ordered by the workers themselves, passed down from experienced Free Miner to apprentices. The personalised construction of knowledge and skill shapes the social relations in production. This chapter modifies Burawoy’s (1979) claim that workers attitudes towards labour are constructed at the point of production. Free Miners notion of ‘capital’ as valued through the act of labour itself rather than through its equating with stripped coal allows them to disconnect with their production and,

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“run to their own productive rhythms” (Mollona, 2009, p. 75). The customs and rights that shape the social relations of production, therefore shape consciousness. However, Free Miners also perceive and place their value in labour/capital in relation to their embodied history. The new member of the FMA (Peg) placed value in capital. This was a product of firstly, his relative socio-economic status, his lack of embeddedness in informal production and markets and a lack of family history of mining (See Appendix 1). Therefore, the new members of the FMA’s consciousness is only partially determined by the “coordinated set of activities” (Burawoy, 1979, p. 87), involved in Free mining. Chapter five will show how this value becomes legitimised and passed down from the older Free Miners to the new, to give the Free Mining system its power of regeneration.

The second conclusion is that the system of Free Mining is not disembedded from society. In fact, the economy of the Free Miner is embedded in a web of production and exchange rooted in the community. While the Free Miners have experienced the disappearance of the state and the increase in labour flexibility strategies to negate losses in opportunity from deindustrialisation, this has allowed the Free Miners to expand their informal markets and increase their web of social and economic transactions.

Through an analysis of the labour process, this chapter has sought to embed the material determinants for the development of a class consciousness that reflects the aristocratic ethos of the Butty man. As we have seen, deindustrialisation of the coal industry in the Forest of Dean and the continued commitment to custom and right has reformed the labour aristocracy. This contemporary despotic capitalism, much like the despotic capitalism during early industrialisation relies on skilled artisan miners. However, where in chapter three the Free Miners were coopted into production through a mixture of coercion and consent, today, the Free Miners remain outside the arena of real subsumption. Their productive capacity is maintained through their tightly held commitment to custom and right. Within the mine, the Free Miners no longer operate within a division of labour. Rather, the aristocratic ethos emanates from the Free Miners, who retain the right to work, and who through, informal markets, the production process and the distribution of knowledge re-enact ancient rights and privileges. In the next part of the thesis, I will show how the historical dialectic of ‘artisan’ and ‘proletarian’ is re-enacted, not at the point of production, but through the shared spaces of poverty. This aristocratic ethos is constructed through the relational formation of working class institutions and local politics. It will show how the Free Miners are socialised into their valuing of a right to work. It will be analysed in relation to the community in the Hundred of St Briavels.

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Chapter 5; The Community [Legitimation]

5.1. Introduction

As we have seen, the retreat of the coal industry from the Forest of Dean has re-enacted ancient customs and rights which shape the coal mining labour process. Through an analysis of the relations of production, we can position Free Miners as members of a system of craft. Their control over the production process, the coal market, the distribution of knowledge and the value they place on the act of labour itself. However, when focused on the act of labour, it is the particular functions involved, that required our attention. The point of this focus was to re-embed the notion of the content of work as inherent to the shaping of conscious (Burawoy, 1979). From this view, the Free Miners conscious is not shaped by the objective position in the labour process, but through the substance of process and practices.51 The Free Miner, no longer being formally subsumed by capital means these processes and practices are the result of the tightly held commitment to the 1838 Dean Forest Mines Act, which gives them the right to Mine freely.

Rapid deindustrialisation in the Forest of Dean did not rid itself of coal production; rather it re-enacted ancient rights and privileges. The continued commitment to these rights has shaped the labour process of the Free Miner. I have analysed how the customs and rights of the Free Miner shape the production process and therefore the specific consciousness of the Free Miner. This was framed around a ‘craft consciousness’, whereby the Free Miner places value in the act of labour, rather than its product or its monetary value (wage- labour). I now make an epistemological break. This value of labour is reflected in a specific habitus, acquired through the year and a day training. It is moulded and structured by the Free Miners Association. This value in the act of labour is learnt. While this commitment is learnt and reproduced in the Free Mine, it is also reflected in working class institutions and local politics that exist outside the mine. Value is not only embedded within the Free Miners field but embedded in a field of fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012). That is, within the wider confines of the Forest of Dean, defined by the Hundred of St Briavels. This chapter will show that class consciousness is relational (Wacquant, 2013). Produced by material determinants and legitimised through the social reproduction of the Free Miners. This third chapter will add a third relation; which is the specific field in which production and reproduction take place. It is here that Free Miners exercise their social and symbolic and linguistic capital leading to cultural consecration, legitimation and conflict.

51 Of course, this line of analysis can be overplayed. When the Nottinghamshire coal miners crossed the picket lines in 1984, it was the use of the piece rate system, their comparatively decent working conditions which propelled them to do so. Their different relations of production therefore would require an orthodox materialist analysis. The particular mining process and practices did little to shape a homogeneous consciousness among Miners and to act in solidarity with those from Yorkshire, Scotland, Wales and Kent. For further analysis of mining working conditions in the lead up to the 1984 Miners strike see Samuel et al, 1986.

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Conflict does not take place between labouring classes as seen in chapter three because the division of labour no longer exists within the mine. Rather, domination and struggle are reified through the value placed on the ‘right to work’ for the Free Miners. Therefore, conflict centres around the ability of Free Miners to continue to practice ancient rights and privileges. Given their heightened social and symbolic capital in the Forest of Dean, (which will be examined shortly) this commitment is legitimised and reproduced by the Forest of Dean’s population. Conflict is not contested over imagined pasts and futures in local regeneration (Beynon, 1999), but through a struggle over different visions of the local social world in the present. The struggle over discursive identity in the Forest of Dean becomes a reactionary, ‘radicalism of tradition’ (Calhoun, 1983). This radicalism is defined by the boundaries of the social field (Hundred); assimilation across class, industry and community does not necessitate an abstraction of solidarity for the Free Miners or residents of the Forest of Dean. As we saw in chapter three the move towards greater centralisation of production of coal was unable to form a unifying bond of working class solidarity, evidenced by the rupture in social relations in the FDMA. While the Free Miners continue to hang on to their productive arrangements, the lines of contestation will be fought over custom and right by those inside the Hundred and those outside. Thus, I move from the social relations in the Free Mine producing an ideology of mystification towards an internalised symbolic domination conducted through the Free Miners misrecognition. These two methods employed by Burawoy (1979) and Bourdieu (2000) respectively, can be conceptualised together because the social relations of production are both independent of the Free Miner and part of his deeply ingrained habitus.52

This chapter links the research process together. The aristocratic ethos and value placed in the act of labour as analysed through chapters three and four will become evident through several episodic events that seek to describe and interpret how the Free Miners understand, create and maintain their community. I will begin with an analysis of class. This will bridge the gap between the technical relations of production of the Free Miner and their social relations of production. It will re-examine the need for a dialogue between the content of work and the experience and dispositions of the worker (Atkinson, 2009). Class will be conceptualised through the Miners conception of the act of labour, (Burawoy, 1979) rather than their objective position (Wright, 1997). Custom and right configure the content and practices of industrial activity of the Free Miner within their field, and so, cannot be disassembled from their classed experience.

The chapter will then analyse how the Free Miners legitimise this notion of value through symbolic capital; the use of dialect and murals,53 and the impact this has on local politics and recent civil unrest in the Forest of Dean. Thus, it will first show how value is learnt and maintained in the FMA. It shows how the FMA serves as a haven for maintaining and reproducing rural mining dispositions. Next, it shows how Free Miners are educated

52 Although usually conceptualised as competing notions of domination, the use of an infusion of misrecognition and mystification allows for a development in Bourdieusian analysis for social transformation. 53 These do not represent the sole determinants for shaping and maintaining the legitimacy of the Free Miners placement of value. They have been chosen because they represent a temporally consistent aspect of the Free Mining tradition. The Dialect retains and transposes words from early to late capitalism, while statues and murals reify the symbolic capital of the Free Mining tradition in the Forest of Deans social field. In effect I wanted to create a consistent link with the past (chapter three), to maintain a temporal equivalency.

80 and disciplined in adopting a value in labour. Finally, it shows how Free Miners are introduced to the common sense of the FMA through its symbolic struggles in regeneration programmes, over the right to manage the Forest of Dean and through the title of being a ‘Real Forester’. By participating in these struggles, the Free Miners come to see the world through the eyes of the FMA. In essence, it will show how a working class conscious of the Free Miner continues to exist and how they maintain an aristocratic aura; not in the division of labour, but within the social field, defined by the industrial exclusivity produced through ancient rights and custom. The following discussions and events took place through my ethnographic work at Bixslade Free Mine, Prosper Colliery, the pub, The Jovial Colliers (Joves) and through my interview with Frank.

5.2. Class

“I think we are working class, but a privileged working class” (Frank, 24/04/2017).

In looking at the content and processes involved in the Free Mine, one has seen how it is difficult to move from class position to class subjectivity, that is; from the Free Miners ownership of the means and relations of production to their subjective positioning within the class system. Unlike Wright (1997) who analyses class from a class ‘in itself’ to a class ‘for itself’, this relationship depends on the experience of labour, and the type of productive regime (Burawoy, 1983). Only an analysis of the character of production can give us insight into the lived experience they generate. This section, following on from an analysis of the social relations of production of the Free Miner analyses their subjective position within the class system. One finds, as the above quote reveals, the Free Miners are quick to acknowledge the teleology of analysing class from a strict relational view as Wright (1997) does. Rather, the Free Miners are more attuned to reference the content and processes involved in Free Mining when defining their class position. Moreover, their familial heritage and the history of coal mining in the region engrains a classed lens which generates habitual predispositions to place themselves within the ranks of the working class. As Frank described:

“Once the coal gets in the blood, it’s ‘ard to wash out proper” (24/04/2017).

The Free Miners, retain a strong propensity to position themselves within the working class. The contradiction between objective relations of production and the reproduction of corresponding social relations was one that Frank, at least was very aware of. During the interview he noted:

“…And yet the Free Miners should be sympathetic to some conservatism because if you cut taxes and strengthen the way in which making money can benefit you that benefits the person who works for themselves […] I think we are a working class, but a privileged working class. They see themselves as in

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control of their own destiny in a way that most working class people wouldn’t. So there is a conflict really. They were classed as a yeoman54 type status amongst the medieval periods, so they were almost…well, they were free men, but at the same time, they were doing manual work that no-one else wanted to touch. So there’s a conflict. And there has always been that conflict.”

(24/04/2017).

Here Frank recognises the customs and rights obtained by the Free Miner, positions themselves within a certain occupational order. He acknowledges that their objective position to production would necessitate a conservative consciousness that identifies self-actualisation through the promotion of small business and low taxation. For Frank, what is more important in defining Free Miner’s position in the class system is the act of labour itself:

“There is a pride though in manual work. There is a pride in knowing you can do the job, and so, although a Free Miner with the rights to a gale, is a privileged person, but not entirely working class they like the fact that they…although they own it, it’s only of any value unless you use it. So you’ve gotta get down there, and you gotta dig for coal, and there is a great joy in doing that. And when you walk out of the pit, and you see the sun shining and the trees, you hear the birdsong, you know, it’s such a wonderful environment to work in, it’s not like you’re coming out of a factory into a dirty street.”

(24/04/2017)

The current trend to re-think the work-class nexus by moving away from work as a defining characteristic (Wright, 1997 & Goldthorpe, 1995), fails to acknowledge the content of labour. Wright (1997), drew a clear distinction between technical relations of production and the social relations of production. Wright (1997) considered class to be constituted solely through the latter, resulting in class research that focused on broad analytical categories in contrast to Burawoy’s (1979) focus on the process and practices of the worker. Similar to Burawoy, Bourdieu (2000) arrives at a similar approach, albeit using different analytical categories:

“Like the gift, labour can be understood in its objectively twofold truth only if one performs the second reversal needed in order to break with the scholastic error of failing to include in the theory the ‘subjective’ truth with which it was necessary to break, in a first para-doxal reversal, in order to construct the object of analysis. The objectification that was necessary to constitute wage labour in its objective truth has masked the fact which, as Marx himself indicates, only becomes the objective truth in certain exceptional labour situations: the investment in labour, and therefore miscognition of the objective truth of labor as exploitation, which leads people to find an extrinsic profit in labour,

54 A freeholder, a man who cultivates his own land.

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irreducible to simple monetary income, is part of the real conditions of the performance of labour, and of exploitation.” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 202).

Here Bourdieu argues that Marx breaks with the subjective, lived experience of the worker. The objective truth identified through extraction of surplus value. Bourdieu then makes the second ‘break’ by suggesting the need to reincorporate the ‘subjective truth’, the lived experience of workers, to show how exploitation/surplus value is extracted and then sustained by the workers themselves. For Bourdieu, it is sustained by the workers ‘investment in labour’ which is not ‘irreducible to simple monetary income’, meaning exploitation is legitimised because it is not experienced as such. Much like Burawoy’s argument in Manufacturing Consent (1979), he makes the case that surplus value is obscured and then secured, not through coercion as orthodox Marxism would attest, but through autonomy given to the workers on the shop floor. This would allow them to in Bourdieusian terms, ‘invest in labour’ (2000) through (in Burawoy’s terms) constitute work as a ‘game’ (1979). For both theorists, although dealing in different analytical categories arrive at a similar outcome; consciousness is shaped by the subjective conditions of the performance of labour.

Frank defines Free Miners in terms of working class and yet acknowledges their technical relations of production. For Frank, the defining characteristics are the process and practices of the Free Miner explored in chapter four. The Free Miners are aware that the content of labour structured their consciousness. Therefore, symbolic domination is not based upon ‘misrecognition’; that is, whereby, the Free Miners habitus unconsciously enacts social differentiation within the field and perpetuates it thusly (Bourdieu, 2000). Rather, Free Miners acknowledge the aristocratic ethos generated through custom and right, but also take into account the processes and practices of Free Mining.

When I arrived at Prosper Colliery, I had had the intention to interview the Miners. For the Free Miners, this would have been unsubstantial to get a full understanding of their work. This was made clear one day at Prosper Colliery as my field notes reveal:

[Peg] No good sitting up ‘ere with a pen and pencil.

[Steve] That’s right, the real work takes place underground, if you wanna really know about Free Mining, you have to go underground.

(5/04/2017)

At this point, I was reminded of Wacquant (2007). The Free Miners seemed to share a similar outlook. “That one cannot separate the body, social norms, customs, rights and traditions and relations of production separately. They have to be grasped and explained together, in their mutual implications” (Wacquant, 2001,

83 pp. 98). The Miners are aware of their practical knowledge of mining, which only becomes evident through the act of labour; that is by, “putting oneself in the arena of social forces that are being analysed” (Ibid, 2001, p. 99). Hancock notes that one, “must not only do a sociology of the body but also a sociology from the body” (2007, pp.112) to understand the commonplace practices of the subject.

To understand the subjective class position of the Free Miners, it was necessary to move beyond Wright’s (1997) occupational categories or an orthodox Marxist account of objective relations and to situate the experience of the Free Miners working practices within class analysis. Frank goes on to describe the distinction between white and blue collar work in terms of mental/manual and clean/dirty labour. Also acknowledging the past conflicts between capitalist and Miner concerning safety records in the Forest of Dean:

“I think it’s also, once you’ve done your training the [dangers] of work doesn’t hold the same fear that it would to people who work in an office, because that’s like another world isn’t it. That kind of environment, to the wonderful computer world, a long way from where the dust is found. You’ve got a muddy unsafe environment, but if you, you know, understand it, it is dangerous, but if you do understand it then it can be safe, you know. There are mistakes that are made, and if you can except that you can get it wrong, but it’s very rare. The Forest has a very good record of safety, and I think it’s because you work for yourself, you have had the right training, you know what you’re doing and you’re watching your back and other people’s backs. You don’t encourage people to do things that aren’t safe, whereas if you’re a mine owner you would try and get people to do things as cheap as possible. There’s well recorded cases of people [needing to replace] timber to support the roof and the mine owner refusing. You know, so they’re not working under properly supported rooves.

(24/04/2017)

Here Frank literally divides the world between manual blue collar work and the computerised world of white collar work. Frank aligns himself with a group of manual labourers. It would be a mistake, however, to align the non-manual worker to a crude reduction of a middle class. When Frank and the other Miners effeminize white collar work, service sector jobs or my choice to study at University, they criticise a specific way of life that differs from their own. This is not reducible to class alone, but infers a Weberian status group calculation which regulates certain ways of acting, speaking, and consuming, that also sets them apart from the working class outside the Hundred of St Briavels. Through a reproduction of a certain lifestyle, the Free Miners who value manual work, being self-employed, drinking cider and extracting coal, erect boundaries not only between classes but around their particular social field. They do not consider their work as old-fashioned or caught in a by-gone era; they do not gravitate towards becoming a Free Miner for the money, but rather for the esprit de corps because their ‘mind, body and soul’ conditioned through a rural working class upbringing aligns with the values of the FMA.

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To the Free Miners, the fact that they can earn money while remaining in control of their labour is important. This is why most of them pick up informal jobs, which allows them to continue to work as ‘Free Men’. The Free Miners fervently rejected any notion of indoor work and where possible always avoided wage-labour work. Here Peg recounts what drew him to Free Mining in the first place:

“That is an impossible thing to quantify; there's something in there. I mean I’ve gone off and worked on the motorways and done building and the rest of it Floor Laying and god knows what, but I always come back to this mining and I, I mean look where we’re stood now. You can't find a better place in the world let alone in the country to come and work, so there's that about it. When you're underground you got absolutely no bureaucracy to worry about. You don't have to fill in a hundred forms before you go down underground or anything. We fill in one at the beginning of the shift, and that's it. It's a nice place to be. We got no parking metres, no double yellow lines, no traffic, you know, it's great, and that's what it's about, getting out of the rat race”.

(07/04/2017).

The Free Miners, as self-described ‘Free Men’ rejected the notion of labour controlled by wage and symbolised by the dull, predictable sanitary desk of a white collar worker. Work outside the Free Mine represented a lack of freedom over input and output. It resembled an alienated form of labour. The nature of their ownership and control of the means of production reconfigures Free Miner’s view of class conflict. If class is defined by one’s disposition towards a propensity to configure their actions against capital (Luckacs, 1971), then this does not support the actions and formation of consciousness of the Free Miner. Rather, the Free Miners consciousness is formed in part, from the practices and processes within the mine and therefore, the antithesis and oppositional relationship with those that they deem antithetical to the rights and customs which allows the Free Miners to continue to work. Therefore, the Forest of Dean represents a freedom and a working class masculinity that defines and recreates working practices. The value they place on the ‘right to work’ therefore structures their configuration of class subjectivity. For the Free Miner class exists as a process, it exists in the consciousness of the Miner. For them, it is not reducible to ownership of means and mode of production; it does not exist in the “broad quantifiable fissures of exploitation, power and conflict” (Atkinson, 2009), but rather as a state of mind that translates into action within a particular field. Next, we will see how the distinction between those born within the Hundred and those outside represents a ‘fundamental principle of division’ (levi-Strauss, 1963).

5.3. Defining the field; “Real Foresters”

My ethnographic work took me to the pub, ‘The Jovial Colliers’ (Figure 26).

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Figure 26: The Jovial Colliers, Lydbrook.

I had heard the Free Miners talk of meeting there occasionally after work. After enquiring about the pub, they invited me down for a couple of ‘pig-squeals’ (Ciders). The Jovial Colliers is located in Lower Lydbrook, along the River Wye. It acted as an important gateway for the transportation of coal up until the development of the railway. Previously, the tram roads connected the Free Mines with the River Wye, and coal was transported by barge.

The Jovial Colliers is a typical Forest pub. Many of the pubs in the Forest of Dean share their name with the Forest’s, industrial past. These include The Miners Arms, The Miners Country Inn, The Farmer’s Boy and The Woodman. Pubs are also named after particular Forest sayings or colloquialisms, for example, the ‘Fern Ticket’ in Cinderford, refers to the act offering someone sex. This term is still widely used in the Forest of Dean today.

In applying Bourdieu’s theory of fields to the Free Miners and the Hundred of St Briavels, allows us to compare the field of the FMA with that of the wider community. In comparing fields, we can understand the relative positions the individuals hold within the FMA and the positions they fill in the community. The following extracts will explain and reveal the hierarchies that exist within the Free Miners field. It will show who exercised this power and how this purpose served the adoption of a value in a right to work. It will then show how the Free Miners placement of value is transposed onto the field of the Hundred of St Briavels and legitimised by the wider community. Bourdieu argues that within the field, hierarchies of relative capital exist, those with dominant forms of capital will shape the reproduction of that field, and the type of capital that is valued (Thomson, 2008). Thus, conflict and hierarchies function on the social fields boundaries where different forms of capital of the social agents either reinforce the value of the Free Miners field or bring it into question. The older generation of Free Miners (Frank, Owen and Steve), who hold positions in the FMA, on local

86 regeneration boards and in the administration of Forest law55 hold considerable power in each field, a field that is populated with ‘true believers’56 (Homan, 1974).

The following extracts come directly from my field notes of one evening spent at The Jovial Colliers; it reveals firstly, the importance of the Free Miners to define the limits of the social field; that is the Hundred of St Briavels, but also how the Free Miners legitimise the notions of custom and right. This is attained through a diachronic analysis of language. The next section will look at how the symbolic capital of the Free Miners is determined within the Hundred of St Briavels.

The final section will show how symbolic struggles against those outside the Hundred, over the right to practice custom and right, solidifies the communities identity with that of the Free Miner. This all works towards the creation of an ‘illusio of self-determinacy’;57 that is a collective belief in the value of a right to work, acting as a common sense belief transmitted by the FMA and legitimised by the community residing within the Hundred.

I arrived at ‘Joves’ purposely early, wanting to get a feel for the place, take photographs of the exterior and talk to the bar staff before the Miners arrived. In a conversation with George, the only bar staff working that evening, he told me how ‘Joves’ had only recently been ‘done up’:

[George] Used to be right shithole this.

I was surprised by Georges frankness, something that I thought I had become accustomed to while working in the Mine. Sensing my surprise, George felt slightly taken aback…

[George] I mean…it’s lost a lot of character at the same time, you know. But it was a rough old pub. I think the Miners preferred how it used to be.

[Joe] Why do you say that?

[George] They don’t like all the tourists we get now. But that’s how we’re gunna make any money. We fitted upstairs out with bunk beds and that, so tourists come up from canoeing (Motions down the road

55 Steve was elected to the position of ‘Verderer’ in 2017. Verderers’ administer ‘Forest Law’ within the Statutory Forest. 56 Those within a social group that reflect the hegemonic traits of the community, usually work in complimentary opposition with ‘skeptical conformers’ (Homan, 1974). 57 I have borrowed this term from Desmond, 2007; who used it to analyse the notion of ‘risk’ in Firefighters dispositions towards the control of wildfire in the US. Here I use it to show how Free Miners come to understand themselves as not only as protectors of their ancient customs and rights, but of the community residing within the Hundred.

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towards the River Wye). They’re suspicious of ‘em, don’t like them at all. ‘Aint how it used to be’ they’ll say.

[I order a drink]

After explaining for some time my research, talking about mutual acquaintances and discussing the string of poor results from Lydbrook Football Club, George offers me good luck. Before walking away to serve a couple of tourists who have just entered the pub, he says:

[George] I’d have thought Free Mining would die out years ago anyway. If they really wanted to cut out the coal, they’d have big machines; one modern machine could produce more than any of these miners could produce in a month. These [ Free Miners] will be the last of ‘em.

(13/04/2017)

George had managed to cut right to the core of the research. The post-industrial vision shared by many, including George, is one my research repudiates. The Free Miners, their knowledge and skills are inherent to the labour process today as they were in 1920. The process of deindustrialisation in the Forest of Dean has not fostered the disappearance of coal mining and the social dissolution of the working class. Rather, it has re- enacted ancient production rights and customs, expanded informal markets and continued to create bonds of trust and solidarity that rises above the mechanics of the Miners objective position.

Steve and Peg two Free Miners from Prosper Colliery arrive with Dave, one of the few remaining ‘Sheepbadgers’ (common name for a commoner, who lay claim to the right of grazing their sheep freely in the Forest of Dean).

After they pay for their drinks, we make our way to a small table next to the large windows, facing out onto the road. Mining memorabilia hangs on the wall above the windows. Strange that these pickaxes, used to commemorate the Forest’s industrial past are still widely used in the extraction of coal today. The memorial to Warren James covers the opposite wall (Figure 27). The Forest of Dean seems to be caught at a crossroads. The Free Miners occupying the intersection between its mining past and a future bent towards tourism. The two tourists who had entered a little while earlier are witness to this intersection, but are perhaps unaware that the men who sat and joked underneath the mounted pickaxes, would be using them the very next day, 50 ft below.

(13/04/2017)

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Figure 27: Warren James (Free Miner) memorial, The Jovial Colliers, Lydbrook.

Once again the issue of my place of birth is brought up. This seems to be of much amusement to both Peg and Dave, while Steve tends to take a back seat while joking about mining rights and only interrupts now and again to offer his serious musings on the matter. This dialogue shows how Free Miners define their symbolic field and how the hierarchy within the group works to solidify the rights and customs of Free Mining.

[Peg] Why thic had to go all the way to Bristol to be born I will never know.

[David] Well good job really, otherwise he’d ave us all outta a job, thinks he knows more about Forester’s rights than the real Foresters do.

[Steve] Yes shame really, Joe can still work down the pit though, anyone can enjoy the rights remember, he might want to buy you out.

[Peg] [laughing] Yeah maybe, after this week, you got the bug for it yet?

[Joe] Not yet, too much like hard work for me.

(13/04/2017)

This was at the end of my week working with the two Free Miners at Prosper Colliery. The assumption they had about me from going to study at university did not conform to their working class ‘mining habitus’. The fact that I was born outside of the Hundred further compounded this idea, as did my slight build, my non- colloquial mannerisms and my lack of knowledge of the actual process of coal mining. This was slightly offset by my willingness to get involved as much as I could. By this point, however, I had accepted that there

89 remained some barrier between us that was going to be impossible to bridge in the short space of time I had. I had accepted this, and in some instances, as is the case here, played up to their construction of me.

Godoy (1985), notes that mining communities often integrate surrounding regions into a single economic sphere. Here, the Free Miners definition of a ‘Real Forester’ corresponds to being born within the Hundred, which allows access to Free Mining rights; defined through the demarcation of physical space and industrial prestige. Throughout my research, they were quick to acknowledge that I wasn’t a ‘Real Forester’ because I had not been born in the Forest of Dean, even though I had grown up there. Here, Steve acknowledges that those born outside of the Hundred could work in the pits (although in someone else’s name), but those that did, could not become ‘Free Miners’ due to their place of birth. The field thus defined, stems from the rights to become a Free Miner, which is both geographically defined and symbolically through the act of one’s labour. In making the distinction between those born inside the Hundred and those outside, the Free Miners create a symbolic struggle which tacitly aligns the Free Miners to systems of value in the FMA. If they accept the FMA’s classifications of who can and can’t be a Free Miner, it’s because these symbolic binaries which pit ‘real Foresters’ and ‘foreigners’ against each other are learnt through a process of working as a Free Miner and cultivated by their rural working class upbringing.

The short dialogue also reveals the observance of hierarchy within the group. Here, Steve had drawn from his extensive knowledge of ‘Forest Law’ and statute to maintain the social hierarchy within the group. The tourists who sat at the other end of the pub would not have been aware of the strict hierarchies that existed among these men drinking opposite them. The Free Miners understood within the field; there was a strict hierarchy to be maintained and respected. Power was exercised symbolically to ensure the custom and law of the Free Miners was correctly passed on. Moreover, one day during a discussion at Bixslade Free Mine over the issue of Female Free Miners,58 Owen exercised a similar symbolic display of relative capital:

[Owen] That’s right, that’s where Elaine works now ain’t it.

[Dan] Yeah, don’t look like she gunna take out a gale now.

[Owen] For the best definitely, it’s not worth all that hassle again.

58 A contentious issue among Free Miners and the residents of the Forest of Dean. As it currently stands the Employment Act of 1989 holds no jurisdiction over the 1838 Dean Forest Mines Act. Therefore, there is no lawful reason not to refuse female rights of registration to the FMA. The Free Miners themselves have fervently rejected the applications of female Free Miners (including family members) on the basis of the 1838 Dean Forest Mines Act. After a sustained period of pressure from the Forestry Commission to extend the rights, the Deputy Gaveller has added one female Free Miner to its list. However, this was completed under much duress, and is complete with a proviso stating that the Deputy Gaveller had been forced to adopt this allowance. Free Miners do not acknowledge this allowance (See Interview transcript).

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[James] I got no problem with it, there’ve been some very good female miners, not many that do it mind you. But that’s because they’re built differently.

[Dan] Who would you want though?

[James] Ay?

[Dan] Who would you want behind you like? If thic roof do fall in, I’d want a nasty big bugger, with the strength of a man at my side.

[James] I spose, if things do go wrong, I’d pick a man, but if they can do the work I doesn’t mind it.

[Dan] Yeah but that’s the point, it’s not about being able to hold your own, it’s about working together if you know your mate is weaker than you, than you got less of a fighting chance.

[James] She [Elaine] has been mining all her life look, since she was a kid down at Lambsquay…

[Dan] Don’t matter one bit, I’d choose to have you (pointing at James and Owen) over her any day of the week.

[Owen] It don’t matter one way or t’other. It’s in the law, women cosn’t be Free Miners.

(19/04/2017)

Here Owen, much like Steve had done previously had exercised his symbolic power. In bringing up the 1838 Dean Forest Mines Act, he was able to the bring discussion to a close. The strict adherence to such law ensures the preservation of a version of community controlled by the older generation of Free Miners. The Free Miners field encourages belonging and a reproduction of custom and right. The older generation of Free Miners mediates this transfer of social and cultural capital through discussion of rights and custom to protect and encourage the newer members of the FMA to continue the mining rights. The FMA, far from being ‘free’ as the miners would describe it, is full of rules and regulations, not only in gaining access but in its continued maintenance. The Free Miners experience their work and community as being ‘free’ because their upbringing aligns closely to that of the workings of the FMA. Durkheim once described liberty as the “fruit of regulation” (2002, p, 54), the freedom of the miners is experienced as such because of an abundance of social and cultural rules that regulate their everyday conduct is similar to that of their working class and mining upbringing.

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5.4. Linguistic Capital

In a move away from the use of Bourdieu as a reproduction theorist, a diachronic understanding of language, allows us to trace a historicist development in dialect and language in the Forest of Dean. The particular dialect in use reflects the industrial heritage and distinct culture and isolation of the area. Many words are particular to the Forest of Dean and represent mining words and colloquialisms that are still in use today. The following passage from my field notes came from a discussion of Forest dialect at Prosper Colliery. It reveals how the Free Miners linguistic habitus is acquired through a gradual process of growing up in the social field and therefore reflects its social conditions (Bourdieu, 1991). The particular linguistic habitus of the Free Miners is translated into linguistic capital, within the field of the FMA. As Bourdieu observes they, (Free Miners), “reap symbolic benefits by speaking in a way that comes naturally to them” (1991, p. 21). The Free Miners thus spoke with an inherent distinction which often distinguished themselves from myself. Although I spoke with a relative conforming accent, it was not as near as strong as the Free Miners, and often particular colloquialisms were beyond my familiarity. Rather than as Bourdieu claims, the growth of a “standardised value independent of regional variations” (1991, p.6). In the Forest of Dean, the continuing use of dialect is based on its ability to convert, shape and maintain the industrial exclusivity of the Free Mining system. Through a specific analysis of the development of the term ‘Butty’ which was shown in chapter three to represent the Miner’s sub- contracting system, this section will begin to look at how value is mediated not only within the FMA but its relationship to the wider field of the Hundred of St Briavels:

[Steve] There isn’t just one Forest dialect mind! [The other two nod]. The dialects in the Forest are as varied as its coal seams’. Foreigners of course, can’t tell ‘em apart, just like they cosn’t tell Cannop from Northern59. But thic old miners and Foresters can tell exactly which part of the Forest you come from.

[Joe] So the dialect is all linked to mining then?

[Steve] Yes, so that’s why Foresters are so loud, you had to be, to be ‘erd over the drill. In that way, we got more in common with folk from the cotton mill than from the farm.

[David] I always think it is a miners language, cause you don’t hear it so much with the women, it’s certainly a man’s language.

[Steve] But it was different from pit to pit, cause of the isolation of the villages. People that worked in the pit, lived in the village nearby, never went far really, it was an insular life.

59 Two former mines.

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[Peg] But it was often just the odd word like, that differs. And you might greet someone with “ow bist o butty, ows the ‘acker cutting”. Of course Butty coming from the payment system used in the pits, and your ‘acker, was of course your axe used to cut the timber. If it was sharp and cuttin’ well then he was fine.

[Steve] It’s bit of a contradiction though really, cause Butty now means a friend. But he wasn’t always a friend underground. very unpopular. They have two different meanings look. The Butty in the mine would have all the money off the management or whoever owned the mine and he shared it out with the workers, working under ‘im, and he gave them what he thought they earned, and of course he was always left with a nice fat purse you see after he paid everyone. Most of these Butty’s had a row of ‘ouses about.

(13/04/2017)

The Forest dialect worked to build solidarity and friendship, and to foster an alliance between those in the same social field. To the Free Miners, the local dialect did not create division within them but rather worked to enhance a fraternal closeness. The dialect and language allow insiders to signify membership to the field (Gumperz, 1968). Forest dialect conveys belonging, and a means of passage into the ranks of the Free Miners. Much like Bourdieu’s experience of visceral intolerance in hearing his native Gascon, the Free Miner rejects the use of ‘Queens English’. The linguistic structures are internalised and become a natural entity of the Free Miners (Bourdieu, 1991). Linguistic structures that do not conform can thus challenge and strengthen these structures, but also result in disgust (Bourdieu, 1984).

This was something I wasn’t particularly aware of during my stay. Growing up in the Forest of Dean, I had acquired a thick ‘Forest’ accent and often used local colloquialisms. While out with a friend during my final week of research, he noted that “your Forest accent has come back then, got much stronger from when you first came back”. I hadn’t realised that I had lost my accent in the first place. In entering different fields, I had adjusted my accent accordingly to fit with linguistic power structures. Where at University I had attempted to downplay the Forest dialect, working with the Free Miners, I had unintentionally accentuated the accent to conform with these symbolic power structures. In the Forest of Dean where the natural linguistic tendency is subverted to present the Forest dialect as legitimate, I had undergone a process of symbolic violence. Steve and Frank spoke with the strongest accents and dialects. Two of the older generation of Free Miners, who held positions in the FMA. Thus, the linguistic interaction can be described as manifestations of the participant’s respective positions in the social field.

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For the Free Miners, the accent and dialect cannot be differentiated from the labour process.60 The Free Miners described the dialect as a mining dialect. One which had more in common with industrial workers of Sheffield than with agricultural dialects in the South-West of England. While the accent works to create a distinction between those in and outside the Forest of Dean, they are quick to acknowledge the similarity with dialects born out of the Sheffield steelworks and Leeds textile industries. Thus, sensuously perceived, the dialect works to create a spatial division between those inside and outside the Hundred, but also permeates the boundaries of the Forest of Dean and legitimates itself through a disposition to identify with other seemingly disparate working class dialects.

The Forest dialect serves as a good instance of the symbiosis at play in the formation of the Free Miners consciousness. Firstly, the dialect is a product of the practices and processes involved in mining. The greetings of ‘Butty’ reflect the past formation of labour found in the larger mines. Secondly, because the dialect is founded on practices and processes inherent to the particular labour processes found in the mining industry in the Forest of Dean, it contributes to patterns of inclusion of those residing within the Hundred, and exclusion of those outside. Thirdly, however, the Free Miners themselves quickly acknowledge the similarities in dialect of the working classes from disparate communities and across industry. Recognising that consciousness is formed at one part from the industrial heritage shaped by custom and right, and secondly from the practices and processes involved in the extraction of coal while recognising the permeability of the social field.

The use of the term ‘Butty’ has also evolved. The Miners recognised that the ‘Butty’ whose past affiliations to outside industrialists, their use of the sub-contracting system and their industrial exclusivity in Trade Union activity, were “very unpopular”, nevertheless, the use of ‘Butty’ today is used as a term of endearment for a friend. This semantic shift is not performative in itself but reveals the acquisition of the value of a ‘right to work’ of the Free Miner. As Bourdieu describes, “it reveals the social-historical conditions which have been established as dominant and legitimate” (1991, p. 5).61 The Free Miners, linguistically frame this value by establishing a semantic change to the valorisation of the term ‘Butty’. In shifting the term from having a negative connotation to a positive one, the Free Miner maintains and legitimises the value in work that the Butty used in the formation of an aristocracy of labour and now the Free Miner uses to continue to practice his customs and rights. Therefore, when the community in the Forest of Dean refer to one another as ‘Butty’s’ they are legitimising the Free Miners inherent industrial exclusivity defined by his rights and custom to work. Although how this linguistic transformation took place remains beyond the parameters of this thesis, it nevertheless reveals the Free Miners ability to readjust and frame identity and culture in the Forest of Dean to maintain their position in the social field. Along with dialect, murals and statues also work towards the legitimation of value and the Free Miners field position; the latter will now be analysed.

60 For an anlaysis of the use of dialect and language of the coal miners of Durham and Northumberland, see, ‘Pitmatic: The talk of the North East Coalfield’ (Griffiths, 2007). 61 By historicising language through processes of domination and legitimation, Bourdieu criticises the idelisation of ‘speech communities’, for what he determined as, “the illusion of linguistic communism” (1991, p. 43). That is; taking a particular language or dialect as the normative model of correct usage.

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5.5. Murals and Statues

The investigation into the socio-historical labour practices of the Free Mine necessitates a reconstruction of the social fields in which they occur. The section looks at the symbolic repositioning of the Free Miner. While the Free Miner no longer upholds his aristocratic ethos within a division of labour, it is implanted, structured and maintained within the group and outside it; within the Forest of Dean community. Such repositioning of symbolic power works to enact authority; for Bourdieu, it is an act of power. Bourdieu argues that symbols can be used as mechanisms for social integration, “As instruments of knowledge and communication, they make it possible for there to be a consensus on the meaning of the social world, a consensus which contributes fundamentally to the reproduction of the social order” (1991, p. 166). Symbols, murals and statues legitimate social order based on consensus. This section analyses how murals and statues in the Forest of Dean work both to define the field of the Hundred and reify the symbolic binary of past forms of division of labour, described in chapter three. This takes place through local regeneration schemes, of which the Free Miners are represented through key community stakeholder groups.

The symbolic repositioning rests on local regeneration efforts in the area to restructure formerly industrial areas into tourist destinations. Hudson (1994) describes how tourism was seen as the answer for the development of post-industrial towns and was used in regeneration strategies. Regeneration in post-industrial mining towns takes place within symbolic struggles (Benyon, 1999). The embeddedness of miners structures the different attempts to re-imagine the past through regeneration into the local culture. For example, an analysis of redevelopment in the Kent coalfields positioned Miners’ interests as politically underrepresented and socially isolated; therefore, visibility of mining culture became imperative. The local mining population wished for a more public symbolic display, to redress years of neglect, and conflict arose (Doring, 2009). In the Forest of Dean, coal mining, along with iron mining and light manufacturing meant mining was just one of a number of manual occupations. Miners were not socially isolated, rather, they were (and are) an important social element within the field.

Thus, regeneration takes place with Free Miner representatives; the FMA, working alongside local regeneration schemes.62 The positioning of memorials and statues to mining works to counteract the reduction of the coal industry from the symbolic and cultural memory. In putting memorials and statues in towns and villages, they become located on the symbolic, social and cultural map. They work to determine reaction against ‘foreigners’ and silences dissenting views within the community. Rather than to act as a reconstitution of the region as a ‘product’, that will attract tourism, redevelopment and investment, the memorials and statues work to instigate and re-conceptualise the boundaries of the social field; that of the Hundred. Rather than the industrial symbolism framing the economic restructuring of the Forest of Dean and

62 The FMA are currently working with the ‘Foresters Forest’; a Heritage Lottery Fund.

95 positioning murals and statues within a ‘de-classing’ of the region (Doring, 2009), the murals and statues, controlled by the current Free Miners exercise a re-classing effect. It distinguishes community belonging and reinstates the notion of us and them (those within the Hundred and those outside) which cannot be separated from class relations.

The mining murals and statues, do not solely re-imagine the past, but their present. Rather than working towards the re-imagining and rupture with past social relations, they work to reinstate the Free Miners as symbolic patrons of the Forest of Dean. The visibility of the murals and statues reify the industrial distinction between those inside and outside the Hundred. The Free Miners want the Forest of Deans industrial heritage to be protected because it continues to shape their identity. The reduction in the coal industry would mean the disappearance of the Forest of Deans distinct industrial identity; thus, the preservation and identification of the Forest of Dean as an industrial region re-embeds the symbolic properties which legitimises their social role in the Forest of Dean and hence, their social position within the field. The commemorative character does signal a return to a past. This past is not so much imagined (Gilbert, 1995), but rather, coherence to it stems from the continued upholding of rights and custom through the Free Miners working practices.

The statues and murals thus create a division between those inside and outside the Hundred. However, they also create division within the field of the Hundred. This hierarchy reflects the division of labour previously experienced in the coal mines. Two different forms of symbols are created which works towards the reproduction of the social order within the Hundred. This distinction in iconography reflects the Free Miners narratives and experiences to reposition and maintain their respective symbolic capital in the social field. Two types of statues and memorials can be distinguished. Firstly, murals and statues that evoke a remembering of the past, they commemorate miners who lost their lives (Figure 28).

Figure 28: Pan Todd Memorial, crouched figure of a Miner, Ruardean Hill. 96

These are often located in rural areas, on the fringe of towns and villages in the Forest of Dean. They are often positioned on the sites of former collieries. These statues and murals do not create an amended version of history. Heritage is not, “discriminating […] for the needs of the present, be they economic or social (Sharp & Pollock, 2007, p. 1063), rather they need to be understood in relation to murals and statues that are placed in the centre of the area’s towns and villages. These statues, do not commemorate the past but reify the industrial exclusivity and position of the Free Miner in his current form (Figure 29).

Figure 29: Free Mining statue, of Dave Harvey (Free Miner), Cinderford town centre.

The statue in Cinderford town centre of Dave Harvey (Free Miner), affirms the Free Miners civic identity. The commemorative nature of the statues and murals placed on sites of old collieries, connected by tourist trails, declass regeneration in the Forest of Dean; their respective audience being those from outside the Hundred. The Free Miner statues, pursued by techniques of visibility creates a distinction within the community between both the past and the present, the Butty and Day-man; the Free Miner and wage-labourer. As Bourdieu states, “symbolic properties […] can be used strategically according to material but also symbolic interests of their bearer” (1991, p. 221). Thus, the Free Miner pursues regeneration in terms of commemorative sentiment to traditional industry and to reaffirm the Free Miners dominance in the social field. The Free Miners pursue both types of murals and statues. For one to become legitimate, it needs to be understood by its relational struggle for monopolising legitimacy, only acquired through previous struggles. Their position in local regeneration schemes as key stakeholder groups gives them a voice to determine the

97 location and subject of such symbols. The FMA has also commissioned their own attempts of symbolic displays of power (Figure 30).

Figure 30: West Window, Abenhall Church, Mitcheldean. Commissioned by the FMA. The right side depicts Free Miners illuminated by their ‘nellies’ (candles formed with a clay base, held in their mouths), the left side Free Miners with lamps, depicting Free Miners of the 20th and 21st

century. Accessed: https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=abenhall%20church

This section using a Bourdieusian formulation of symbolic capital and field theory has analysed the process of the Free Miner’s maintenance in their position in the social field and the adoption of their value placed in work by the wider community. First, this value was established through the social relations of production involved in the Free Mining process. Second, this value was maintained within the FMA by the hierarchical nature of its organisation and the education and disciplining of its members. The older generation of Free Miners taught the ‘younger’ generation how and where to place value. Third, the value was then legitimised through Forest dialect, murals and statues. The use of dialect by the wider community and the murals and statues located

98 within the Hundred of St Briavels creates symbolic struggles for legitimacy both within the Hundred and with those outside it. Not only does this reconfigure the wider community to uphold the Free Miners placement of value, but it also works towards the maintenance of their position in the social field. The next section looks at the political views and actions of Free Miners when their social field is contested, and their right to work is threatened. By participating in these struggles, the Free Miners come to identify with the values of the FMA. This creates an ‘illusio’ of value in the right to work, which is fiercely protected by the community in the Hundred.

5.6. Didactic localism

In this section, I discuss how Free Miners inhabit a didactic localism and how this relates to local politics. Their politics is not institutional, that is; it does not take place within the context of a particular Party or Union. Moreover, it is not formal; it is not highly organised or ideological. As we have seen, when Free Miners have been involved in Trade Unions it has often been antithetical to the desires of the wage-labourer. Having said that, the act of labour itself lends itself to a predisposition for a solidarity of labour, although this is formulated through their value placed in a right to work and hence industrial exclusivity.

This section will show how Free Miners have come to accept and invest in the organisational common sense of the FMA. This is reflected in the way they approach conflict over the Forest of Deans public estate. The Free Miners inherit an illusio in the right to work which has been cultivated in the social relations of production and through symbolic struggles in the social field. This ‘self-evident truth’ (Bourdieu, 2000) shared by the Free Miners codifies the FMA’s relationship with regeneration programmes. The Free Miners construct a deep- seated belief in the protectorship of the Forest of Dean from industrial development. This is to protect their industrial interests to continue their right to work. Thus, there exists the continuation of the historical dialectic between artisan and proletarian which is now reified through the actions of the Free Miner. Once again the mining artisan mediates the relationship between industrialist and wage-labourer; not through the labour contract within the mine, but within the social field through development, regeneration and local politics. First, I will show the Free Miners response to national politics. Second, I will demonstrate how the illusio of the right to work structures their view of regeneration programs.

Here, after a day’s work at Prosper Colliery, we sat around the fire warming ourselves up, drinking tea. The conversation moved to Brexit:63

63 During this conversation I played devil’s advocate to try and draw out the Miners thoughts and reflections. Following initial concerns I had about relaying my own political assertions to the Miners, I latterly adopted a position to debate with them openly. For more information on why this was an important angle to adopt, see Appendix 5.

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[Peg] I voted out. Couldn’t understand why we were in there to begin with. All that money that floats off, we never see it coming back.

[Joe] What about the South Valleys roads [Wales],64 they were paid entirely by the EU. You can see it on the side of the road. Big signs. Says, ‘Paid for by the EU’. And yet the Welsh all voted for Brexit.

[Peg] Ah, but that don’t matter. I’m on about money being spent ‘ere. Right ‘ere. Don’t see no new roads in the Forest.

[Steve] That’s true. We are net spenders when it comes to the EU. It’s alright being Romanian. They’re a net gainer. I’d stay in the EU if I was from Romania. Makes financial sense. Don’t make no sense for us though.

[Peg] What I always have to ask meself before a big decision like that is, how is it going to affect Cannop?65 Well, it probably isn’t is it. So it don’t matter really, one way or t’other.

(07/4/2017)

Here Peg echoed a common retort among Free Miners. The Free Miners were, generally, unconcerned with national politics. For them, the Forest of Dean was all that mattered. The Forest gave them the right to work; it structured their labour, social relations, communities and identity. Conversation rarely mutated beyond the parameters of their social field. When conversation did necessitate considerable abstraction beyond the spatial dichotomy of the Hundred, (which I tried to encourage), the Free Miners would respond with an almost gravitational retrieval of conversation back to the Forest of Dean. Here Peg and Steve both direct the conversation of Brexit to how it will affect the Forest of Dean and even more precisely ‘Cannop’. This didactic localism is a reflection of the FMA’s approach to politics for the protection of their industrial heritage; it becomes an investment in the “feel of a game” (Bourdieu, 1984). This localism is intended to morally instruct the community into defending the Hundred from outside industry, which is the result of the protection of custom and right.

Here Frank describes the role of the FMA in relation to local politics:

It’s a traditional labour area; it always surprises me that we’ve got a conservative MP. And we’ve had conservative MP’s for many years. We’ve been actively involved with quite a few of them either labour

64 The A465 ‘Heads of the Valley Road’ in South Wales part of a trans-European network scheme said to cost the EU 450 million Euros, linking former coal fields including Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais (The Guardian, 2016). 65 Peg refers to Cannop Valley where Prosper Colliery is located. Formerly home to Cannop Colliery a deep coal mine which closed in 1965.

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or conservative because the Free Miner Association work with whoever the MP is. Whenever there is new legislation, we make sure the legislation reflects Free Mining interests. So we write to the MP and make sure that is raised.

(24/04/2017)

Although there is a willingness on the part of the FMA to work alongside disparate political groups and MP’s, Frank goes on to press the importance of local issues:

I’m aware that it’s important for people to vote that represent the area, and not people are representing national policy. So if people aren’t receptive to what we need, then they shouldn’t be voted in really. But unfortunately Mark Harper [Conservative MP] keeps being put back in, in spite of things,66 that’s the general feeling.

(24/07/2017)

The importance pressed upon localism reflects the industrial interests of the Free Miners. The inhabited illusio of the right to work is a condition for the operation of the field. It firstly structures the Free Miners “being in the world” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 135) which is shown by the Free Miners investment in labour, which has arisen from membership to the FMA. It means Free Miners are “taken in and by the game” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 116), therefore, it differentiates the Free Miners whose habitus embodies the particular relations of the field (Hundred) in comparison with those outside the field. It also becomes a principle of perception in that it appears self-evident and normal for the Free Miner while unusual for the outsider. The difference in perception is highlighted when Frank describes the conflict between Free Miners and those ‘officials’ they deem to seek a watering down of Custom and Right:

[The officials] they will always try and present a way that suits them and the crown, the Forestry Commission or the government, and so they try and manoeuvre Free Miners into certain ways of thinking, and it really undermines what Free Mining is. And they try and get you in the mindset whereby you think that what you have isn’t actually what you have. That you don’t have control of the…or the power that you have, and it’s quite wicked in some ways. I suppose it’s the way that authorities and privileged people have always acted, in their interest.

66 ‘In spite of things’ is a reflection of the current dispute between public and private ownership of land in the Forest of Dean. The Forest of Dean MP has voted in favour of selling public land. The ‘Forest of Dean constituency’ (Map 1), no longer covers the residents of the Hundred but includes those from outside the Hundred. This re-drawing of constituencies boundaries has angered many of the Free Miners whose interests are now affected by ‘foreigners’. Frank has described this ‘gerrymandering’ as the result of the constituency becoming a safe seat for the Conservative Party (See Appendix 3).

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(24/07/2017)

The Free Miners who engage in different socio-economic practices struggle for legitimacy – as outlined by Frank. Here, they are driven by illusio, although this isn’t recognised by the ‘officials’. This struggle over cultural legitimacy reproduces and structures the hierarchies found in the social field of the Forest of Dean. The struggle over the cultural legitimacy of the Free Miners rights and customs gives primacy of place to their working practices while occluding the cultural significance of the ‘officials’. In asking Frank about a local regeneration scheme, this conflict over legitimation can be observed:

They say it will benefit Cinderford. It has nothing to do with benefiting people from Cinderford. The benefit will go to the people involved in its development; there’s millions involved, they’ve already spent twenty Million on it …someone said that. So it’s going to benefit somebody, but it’s not the people of Cinderford, by any means, who are meant to be benefitting from it. So, you know, when they talk about benefits, I think they’re being pretty disingenuous, I doubt their interest is in the local people. I think that some of the councillors might naively think that’s what they do. That they are helping to gain benefits for the local people but in reality the people who will get most of that money will be, you know, outsiders, who are already pretty wealthy to start with. It’s not going to go to the poor in the area; it’s not going to help the wildlife, it’s not going to keep the Forest big, it’s going to build on it, concrete the woodlands, where’s the benefit? So…it’s a ludicrous idea. They’re not looking at when local people need things; need to have jobs, they’re looking at when is the right time to strike, you know, there umm, profits. Those profits won’t go to local people.

(24/07/2017)

Firstly, Frank structures his augmentation against the regeneration plans in terms of those who will benefit ‘outsiders’ and those who won’t ‘locals’. Here, he defines the social field, in classed terms. Those outside the Forest who will benefit from the redevelopment are seen as, ‘already pretty wealthy’ while those native to the Hundred are described as poor. The Free Miners commit to a power struggle. For them, redevelopment from outside the Hundred represents an opponent to the Free Miners and thus residents of the Forest of Dean. Seeing themselves as rightful overseers of land, they join this struggle and caricature redevelopment programmes as ‘ludicrous’ and for the benefit of those outside the Hundred.

Free Mining becomes much more about knowledge of mining working practices but involves learning how to communicate and think like a Free Miner. Free Miners must learn how to form opinions on policy and business. They join these various symbolic battles over legitimation and classification. Through these symbolic battles with ‘outside’ investment, they are introduced to the common sense of the Free Miner. The Free Miner understands their social world through categories and classifications while directing their criticism to outside organisations that compete over the boundaries of their social field. Through this

102 struggle, they come to identify with the FMA, although for most members their working class upbringing in the Forest of Dean has already structured their general habitus which, given the aristocratic ethos of the Free Miner retains its hierarchical position in the social field. Therefore, when residents of the Forest of Dean become Free Miners, they are more likely to trust and accept the common sense of the FMA because their general habitus is to some extent structured by the FMA in the first place. As a discussion with the Dan and James reveals:

[James] Coal, been around us for years, brought up on the stuff, our kitchen was ‘alf black from coal dust wasn’t it…

[Dan] nods.

[James] Our father told us stories about the old pits, and the mining disasters what happened. Getting stuck down there with no light, no food, just the ‘pitwater’ steadily rising.67 Was so dangerous in them days. Our dad didn’t want us down the mine, ‘go make a sensible living’ he’d say, kip away from thic mine’. Didn’t pay much attention though, what else were we gunna do?

(20/04/2017)

Here, Dan and James had developed a mining disposition long before they had become Free Miners. They brought to the FMA a general habitus that transformed into a specific habitus without friction. The fundamental structures, practices and beliefs of the Free Miners are concurrent with their early life dispositions. Therefore, the value of labour is at one point constructed through the Free Miners rural working class habitus and then maintained and developed in the FMA.

The Free Miners, as well as holding key positions in community stakeholder groups which negotiate local regeneration projects, also ran the ‘Hands off our Forest’ (HOOF) campaign against land privatisation.

“Free Miners are involved in a lot of things, I was on the steering comity for HOOF, and Steve was the chairman, so […] there’s key roles [in the community] involving Free Miners. We are more keen to take responsibility for preserving the Forest than most local people. But most local people value the Forest and are very happy to join the fight!”

(Frank, 24/04/2017).

67 Due to the particular geological structure of the Forest of Dean, Mines are prone to flooding. Most disasters are the result of excessive water.

103

In setting up a committee for the protection of the Forest of Deans public land, the Free Miners were not only protecting their industrial exclusivity through land ownership and acquisition but also reifying their value in a right to work through the wider community of the Hundred. The HOOF ‘movement’ culminated in a 5,000 strong march, led by the Free Miners and the burning of ‘Big Ben’ (Figure 31).

Figure 31: The burning of Big Ben, during the Figure 32: Warren James day poster. ‘Hands off our Forest’ campaign. 2009.

5.8. Conclusion

The inherent value of the Free Miner, as we have seen through chapter four is the value in the practice of Free Mining. This is recognised and legitimised within the FMA through a process of symbolic struggles. The residents of the Forest of Dean are engaged in the field and whose evaluations create symbolic value; a value that is created by the Free Miners. Cultural consecration takes place in the Forest of Dean through both symbolic struggles against the privatisation of public land and the celebration of past violent Free Mining uprisings. For example, the yearly ‘Warren James day’ is a local celebration of the ‘Forest Spirit’, residents come together to remember and celebrate Warren James (Free Miner) who led a local rebellion against the Crown and enclosure of public land in 1831 (Figure 32). Alongside this, the current ‘Hands off our Forest’ movement, spearheaded by the Free Miners resembles the structure and augmentation of this earlier period of rebellion. This firstly involves a high accumulation of symbolic capital, and secondly, implies a distinction between a select group of value ‘creators’ that are worthy of both celebration and approval.

104

Unlike orthodox forms of working class activism – such as strikes, trade union meetings and industrial action the Free Miners’ political actions are counter-hegemonic but do not have a particular political affiliation. The activism in protecting the Forest of Dean and hence the value they place in work, to keep the industrial tradition alive often blurs with middle class radicalism. For example, regeneration is opposed because it is not seen as producing new jobs and bringing in much needed capital investment and education facilities into the area while threatening the symbolism of public land on which they need to continue their practice. The local bourgeoisie and middle class activists oppose it on the grounds that it will be damaging to the environment and reduce the value in the Forest of Dean as a tourist attraction. In other instances, however, artisanal politics overlaps with radical activism over access to public land. This heterogeneous form of working class politics, which includes incorporating middle class environmentalism and rural activism with traditional labour activism seems to match the heterogeneity of the class relations under post-Fordism.

The Free Miners remain a marginal class. They were marginal during industrial development in the Forest of Dean and continued to operate unaffected by its decline in late capitalism. Located between the lines of work and home, market and community, they can resist the policies of de-industrialisation that have affected the working class. In focusing their struggle against ‘foreign’ developers, the Free Miners become more sympathetic towards capitalists (within the Hundred) who they consider to be marginal, much like themselves. Their symbolic and cultural capital within the Hundred, allows them to retain their aristocratic status and to shape popular movements within the Forest of Dean. As a social class, therefore, they remain marginal and can adjust and adapt to capitalist transformation. As a class with considerable symbolic and cultural sway, they legitimate their value guided by dialect and murals and consecrated through demonstrations and defining the boundary of the social field. This works to sustain the present social order within the Hundred.

105

Chapter 6; Conclusion

My research has focused on Marx’s theory of praxis. The relationship between the objective experience of labour and the subjective experience of labour. I have understood the labour of the Free Miners in its, ‘objectively twofold truth’ (Bourdieu, 2000). In tracing the ‘first break’ in chapter three and four, the thesis showed a temporal equivalency in the consciousness and hence organisation of Free Miners. At a general level, this was to reveal how pre-capitalist formulations of labour continue to materialise in the Forest of Dean today. At a specific level, it showed how the consciousness of the Free Miner was formed at the ‘point of production’ (Burawoy, 1979) which was structured by pre-capitalist labour arrangements.

In chapter three I explored the myth surrounding the coal industry. The introduction of capital to the Forest of Dean following the reification of the Free Miners customs did not create a homogenous working class. The proletariat emerged not from the deskilling effect of the introduction of machines but through the mass movement of labour from surrounding regions of the Forest of Dean and the customs and rights of the Free Miners. At the coal face, a labour aristocracy emerged from the deskilling of a segment of labour brought into the Forest of Dean. The intensification of production in this early period of industrialisation relied on the formation of two separate working class consciousnesses. Those of the Free Miner (Butty man) and the wage labourer (day-man). The craft work of the Free Miner with their bonded apprenticed labour survived industrialisation and became a complementary and symbiotic social formation to the industrial proletariat. Thus, in times of industrial decline, they were able to utilise their capital diversification to overcome full dependence on an industrial wage. In terms of labour organisation, the Free Miners dominated the ranks of the FDMA, choosing to pursue avenues for greater cooperation between mine owner and Butty Man in the negotiation and distribution of wages. The day-men pursued the introduction of a standardised weekly wage based upon the informal sliding scale.

In line with this, I have modified Marx’s claim of the progressive separation and objectification of the working class from its social and economic texture and shown the coexistence in the Forest of Dean of two forms of working class consciousness. The consciousness of the Free Miners – made of connections, social relations embedded in the community and a deep understanding and pseudo control over the labour process; and the consciousness of the proletariat – made of disconnections, objectified labour and a dependency on wage labour (although not always through mining).

The second part of the thesis; in chapter four analysed working class consciousness of the Free Miner at the point of production in light of flexible labour strategy. Flexible labour strategies have allowed the Free Miners rights to continue, where the coal industry in the Forest of Dean has been removed. The Free Miners continue to practice their rights to work and protect closely the knowledge and ‘guild secrets’ that structure the labour

106 relations in the Free Mines. The Free Miners have control in the production process and retain ownership of their mines, objectively reflecting petty entrepreneurs. At this point, I incorporated a Bourdieusian ‘second break’ (2000) to reincorporate the ‘subjective truth’ into an analysis of the Free Miners class position. The ethnography at the coalface allowed me to interpret the value placed in work by the Free Miners. Value was placed on the ‘right to work’ structured by pre-capitalist formulations of custom and right. This meant firstly; value and hence consciousness is structured at the point of production, and secondly, this value is maintained and mediated by the older generation of Free Miners who ‘taught’ myself and other members to place value in labours act, over the predisposition to place value in its abstraction into capital. What’s more, this mediation of value was structured through social relations and collective distribution of knowledge required to both keep the Miners safe at work and to build relations of solidarity within the FMA to suppress the need for competition.

Free Miners thus have different views of work, labour and capital than the traditional working class. However, this fragmentation in the Forest of Dean has always structured working class institutions, unions and local politics. The hierarchical and aristocratic ethos of the Free Miners has always existed. Where previously, this separation in class consciousness was important in the formation of Trade Unionism in the Forest of Dean, it now takes place in local politics and local regeneration projects.

This led to chapter five. Here, the thesis took a relational turn to demarcate the boundaries on which the historical dialectic between artisan and proletariat are reconfigured. Rather than a labour aristocracy existing at the coalface, the labour aristocracy; and the cultural and symbolic capital that comes with it, is reflected in community relations. In defining the social field through the physical boundary of the Hundred, the Free Miners retain their symbolic capital over the residents of the Forest of Dean. This is mediated through language, statues and murals and reflected in the positions given to Free Miners in the governing of the Forest estate. Moreover, cultural consecration is achieved through the leading of public demonstrations against privatisation and the celebration of the region’s industrial past.

If the value placed on the right to work structured consciousness, then consciousness can also be formulated in the antithetical relations between those wishing to privatise and develop land on which the Free Miners need to continue to practice custom and right. Thus, the battle over a legitimacy placed in value over the Forest of Deans public estate takes place between the Free Miners and private business and regeneration programmes. The adoption of Free Miners as leading voices in campaigns against privatisation and their control over regeneration schemes as key stakeholder groups is translated into the wider field of the Forest of Dean and becomes legitimated by residents. Thus, the dialectic between artisan and proletariat takes place through the symbolic structure of community relations rather than the division of labour within the mine.

Lash and Urry (1987) describe late capitalism as involving a shift from early capitalism. Firstly, they note the change in the technology of production, with a shift towards mechanisation. Second, they note the

107 disappearance of the working class which occurs because of this change, and third, bourgeoisification develops where the stability of an aristocracy of labour is maintained. I have shown that the Free Miner’s social relations of production mix the skills and knowledge of pre-industrial labour formation with today’s mechanised production. Secondly, the consolidation of the aristocratic Free Miner does not necessitate an abstraction into the middle class. Rather, in analysing the Free Miners subjective experience of labour supports an endurance of a fragmented working class. The Free Miners practices and processes necessitate the reconstitution of an aristocratic miner caught between the mechanics of an objective class position and his lived experience. The Free Miner can maintain and reify his position within the social field through the valorisation of dialect, statues and murals which signify his continuing endurance in shaping the cultural and social field of the Hundred of St Briavels.

The FMA reproduces informal authority in the mine. The value in the right to work is structured and negotiated through the educating and training of new members. In line with Burawoy (1979), this thesis has shown that flexible production involves the eradication of hegemonic capitalism in the Forest of Dean coalfield. Coercion of workers is reproduced at the coalface and in the community through the educating and disciplining in social relations.

This thesis has challenged the historical trajectory of the working class, by re-embedding the experiences of labour and capital through a specific field of enquiry; by industry and symbolic boundary. The fragmentation in class consciousness transposed through a pre-industrial formulation of value in the right to work shared a temporal equivalency in late capitalism. The fragmentation that exists between class as experienced and class as objective perhaps allows capitalism to overcome its inherent contradictions. Perhaps the real ‘enemy within’ lies in the production, reproduction and legitimation of labours reformulation of division onto symbolic power structures.

Chris Fisher once described custom and right in the Forest of Dean as, slipping from view as capital was introduced to the coalfield (1975). I have argued that far from slipping from view, custom and right shaped the division of labour in early industrialisation, and through periodical, creative destruction, (Schumpeter, 2003) it continues to shape relations in the Forest of Dean today. The thesis started with a quote from Neddy Rymer a miner and workman’s activist. Rymer’s campaign for greater cooperation between Butty-men and day-men in the FDMA failed to come to fruition during the early 1900’s. If one is to take the reasons for these failures seriously, we must continue to re-examine the lived experience of these workers, through industry and field. Only through empirical analysis of the ‘heart and soul’ of the Free Miner can we begin to understand the production, reproduction and legitimation of such dispositions.

108

Addendum

“Well good luck with the writing Joe. It’s just a shame really. We’d have you back down ‘ere, but you’ll never be a Free Miner ‘course”.

(Steve, 30/04/2017).

109

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Appendix 1.

Profile of Participants

Position in Positions Place of Current Fathers the Free held in Participant Age Education Occupation Birth Mine Occupation Miners community Association groups

Verderer. Chairman of Forest of HOOF. Forest Dilke Dean Prosper of Dean Steve 56 Hospital Mining and Free Miner Colliery and Miner Chairman. landscape (FOD) Technical Museum partnership school programme member. Forest of Forest of Dean Dilke Dean Lambsquay Free Miner landscape Frank 58 Hospital mining and Caves and Miner Secretary. (Iron ore) partnership (FOD) technical Museum programme school. member. Dilke None post Free Prosper Peg 45 Hospital Small Holder Member. N/A. 16. Miner/Haulier Colliery (FOD) Forest of Dilke Dean Bixslade Owen 62 Hospital mining and Free Miner Miner Member. N/A. Free Mine (FOD) technical school. Dilke None post Bixslade Dan 55 Hospital Free Miner Miner Member. N/A. 16. Free Mine (FOD) Dilke None post Bixslade James 55 Free Miner Miner Member. N/A. Hospital 16. Free Mine Dilke None post Commoner Commoners David 67 N/A. - N/A. Hospital 16. (Sheepbadger) Association.

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Forest of Camborne Deputy [Grandfather] Dean Dilke School of Gaveller Deputy Landscape Daniel 46 Hospital Mines N/A. N/A. (Forestry Gaveller partnership (FOD) (Exeter Commission) 1973-1994. programme University) member.

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Appendix 2.

Interview Guide

*FM - Free Mine(r)(ing) These following questions are guidelines for my interviews. They focus on topics that I want to discuss in order to answer the research question. The codes will be partially coded along similar avenues, although these will change as the interviews progress and new information and data is found. Mix of open and closed questions. Idea is to start with an autobiographical account to reflect a “narrative” with its origins in institutional case histories (Foucault, 1995).

Introduction · Purpose of research · All information confidential and anonymous · I will be the only person to hear the recording · What you tell me will be used for the thesis that I am writing for my M.A. at U.V.A. · Signing of confidentiality and consent forms (See Below)

Background · Name · Age · Occupation · Education · Place of Birth · Parents occupation

Free Mining · Can you give me an account of your experience working as a Free Miner. Probe: How did you become a FM? How long have you been working as a FM? Why did you stop? What do you do now instead? · Why did you want to become a FM? · What particular skills need to be learnt and developed to work in a Mine? Probe: How did you learn these skills? · What specific equipment is needed to work in the mine? Do you own this equipment yourself? · What Mines have you worked in/working in? Probe: Were you working alone or with others? · Were these colleagues FM’s or were they hired as labourers? Probe: Was this distinction important? Did an informal/formal hierarchy exist? Was this reflected in pay scale? · Would you consider yourself self-employed? · Who buys the coal? Local and informal coal markets?

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· Was the ‘Butty system’ still in use? Probe: How do you view this system? What was good, what was bad? · What is the future of FM? · Would you/Have you ever considered working in a commercial mine? Probe. Why/why not? What are the benefits/Disadvantages of doing so?

Custom and Tradition · What are the specific requirements for becoming a FM? Probe: What particular customs have to be satisfied? · Are these customs and traditions important in the FOD today? · Do you think these customs and traditions hindered or supported industrialisation and development in the FOD? · Have you thought about selling your Mining rights? Why/why not?

Class identity · On what basis would you say an individual or group belongs to a particular social class? E.g. occupation, socio-economic position or culture? · Do you think all FM’s belong to the same social class? Which class? · In your view, which social class do you belong and why? · Can you name other groups belonging to the same class as you? · What is your political voting intention? Has this changed over time? Why? · Are you/have you been a member of a Union? Probe: Why/Why not? What were the benefits? Sign off…

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Appendix 3

Interview Transcript

Interview: 24/04/2017 10:00 – 12:10 Interviewer: Joe Morris [JM] Interviewee: Frank [F] (Secretary of the Free Miners Association) Location: Lambsquay Caves Interview starts at the Lambsquay Caves Café and continues as Frank and myself walk through the mine. Footsteps can be heard as we descend and birdsong as we exit. Once completed we re-enter the café. At this point the Café becomes busy with customers and the Coffee machine can be heard which occasionally obscures parts of the interview. Frank is occasionally interrupted during this time as guests ask about tour times. Notes: - Frank continues to cough heavily throughout. - Frank becomes more animated when addressing law and the personal accounts of ‘Forest racism’ he has experienced and when rebuffing some of the myths surrounding Foresters as unwelcoming. - Early on I describe a couple of the books I have been reading (mentioning Wright and Anstis). These books Frank is aware of, and are of a particular political view – whether this may have affected what he said later (especially concerning his family links to Trade Unionism and the Communist Party). - Frank and I both refer to those residing in the Forest of Dean as ‘Foresters’ and those outside, or have moved in to the area as ‘Foreigners’.

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Figure 33: Frank sat in Lambsquay Caves Café, with Mining Helmet. The drawing of ‘O.B’ hangs above.

The transcription starts, following a formal introduction, a description of my research and the signing of the consent form….

JM - …And that’s where the [Free Miners] rights have come from? F – He was lord of the manor and had to muster the Miners when the King went off to battle. JM – And that was quite a common theme? F – Yes, so, particularly during the hundred years war, his family would have been in control of mining really, in that sense. He could instruct the miners to go off to Portsmouth, to go [into battle] with the king. JM – And so from that [as compensation] the rights were given to the Miners? F – No, no. The rights came way before then. So Free Mining…are you interested in where it stems from? JM – Yes. F – We don’t know exactly when it started. But the old men, and particularly Howard Powell, who was the oldest Free Miner that I knew at the time always drummed into me, he said [quoting] ‘Whenever anyone challenges the rights, tell them these are sovereign rights, they don’t belong to anybody except the Free Miners. Before there was any monarchy any law of the land, anything, these rights existed, and so they are

123 beyond any ownership from outside, it’s the Free Miners sovereign right’. I think it’s a very important point, because we [Free Miners] tend to get told by the authorities, that you know, we are very lucky and they are willing to oversee these rights. But these are rights that existed way before. JM – So what do these rights allow you to do? F – To Mine freely in the Forest. So the minerals belong to the local people that have qualified for the right. So as far as anyone could ever know the rights have always existed, and that’s why we have this phrase “Time out of mind”. And then at various stages monarchies have recognized the rights, and they continue to accept that the minerals belong to the Free Miners. We believe actually that…

[Interruption] One staff member asks if Frank can turn on the lights in the mine in preparation for the Lunch time tour. JW asks if I would like to walk around the mine while he carries this out. I oblige.

Continues 3:55 F – When the Romans came into the area…in about 1879 they actually found an established iron industry, so they took over umm and controlled where that was going. But they weren’t interested in the actual mining, because the Romans didn’t want to go underground and mine themselves. So it was convenient that if they could control the output then that was fine.

[Opens windows of Café]

F – So they let the Miners, mine on their own accord. But took control of what they were producing, and that’s been the way that its always been. Since that time they think, that they’ve been free of Roman imperial control, so that’s a theory.

[Walking down to Mine entrance] [Discussion of Todays bookings]

Continues at 6:05

F – This is the stuff they’re after. So what they’re after first of all is the ochre [Coughs]. If you get it wet [ochre] it looks like blood. And it was used in rituals, and this is what it probably looked like [Points at Ochre in display cabinet]. When they first started they were just digging ditches on the surface, and that’s where the scowles come from. JM – Yes. I know there are a lot of Scowles still around Noxon Park, just down there [Points south towards Bream]. F – Yes, Well they are partly collapsed caverns, but some of them are actually natural water features, where the water [Inaudible] grooves into the rock. But what it also did was mine the rock with iron. And that’s what they scraped off, the residue of the Ochre. That’s the brass [Pointing at the Free mining brass] [See Photo].

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JM – Yes that’s the one. F – These are original candle holders, that they had. This is the only candle holder that I’ve seen, that’s got a candle in it. [Pointing at display cabinet]. Because normally the candles gone.

[Walking into mine]

F – This is where I process the ochre. I would like to work it out a bit better, but it does the job for me. That’s my drying cabinet there look. JM – I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with the coal miners, and they’ve been talking a lot about the old butty system that was used. F – Oh yeah. JM – Was that used in iron mines as well? F – Umm, similar. The iron mines were family run. So umm, with coal mining its…the memory that people have of it is more recent memory because they know how the system worked in Victorian to modern times. Because its where mining ended up. When it finished in the big mines, it means most of the miners are coal miners. So they have a coal mining mentality, instead of the iron. And the iron mining’s been sidelined and forgotten, and yet its where the rights came from, and it still continues in a small way I suppose. And these are a couple of people who used to work in the mines, we’re very lucky to have an image of them. You’ve seen this in Nicholl’s Forest of Dean have you? [Points to image of two Free Miners, see photographs]. JM – Umm, I’ve seen it in umm, I’ve been reading Ian Wrights labour history of the Forest of Dean, and in a few other books, Anstis I think it’s in one of his books. F – Yes. They’re more modern books. This is from a book that was written at the time when the mines still worked. It was a photograph actually, but in the 1850s they couldn’t reproduce photographs, so they did a copper plate drawing of it and then reproduced the engraving, but the photographs now been lost. So we haven’t got the original picture. I’ve actually met their descendants. JM – Oh really, they still live in the Forest? F – Yes. They live at Elwood. They told me quite a lot of details about them and William there is 11 years old, he was born in 1847, and that’s his father David. They worked together in the mine. JM – So how many people were working in the mine? F – There wouldn’t have been that many, about ten/twelve, that sort of number. So not a great…this has been mined for thousands of years, and when you look through, you think, God, you know there must have been a lot of people working here, but it’s actually because they’ve mined it for thousands of years. So it didn’t take a great number. But they would have worked really hard, so what they’ve achieved is quite remarkable. In fact this statement here is probably very accurate. That’s from 1780. JM – So at this point was there a Free Miners Association, or is that more of a recent thing? JW – There was a court. JM – Is that the Verderers court?

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F – No, no, the Free Miners court. So they had their own administration of mining. And the court had been running, at least since the 15th century. Because we have documents from the 15th century that show that. The court ran up until 1777. The reason it ended is because the documents went missing, all the documents went. JM – And that was quite convenient, wasn’t it for the government at the time. F – It was very convenient for the government, because it brought the court to an end and the control of the court stopped anyone from outside coming into the Forest. [Coughs]. From that time it became a bit of a free for all, and there were lots of people, especially in south Wales, that were looking at the Forest and thinking… JM – Rubbing their hands… F - …We’ll have a bit of that. And they were aware that the Free Miners hadn’t actually gutted the Forest, and that they were…The Free Miners had a different attitude to mining compared to most mining companies. What they [Free Miners] were looking at it as is money in the bank, if they were short of it, they would work, once they got enough, they would stop working and they would go and do something else. So all the time…because you own the mine, so you could just go down and get your money and come out. And it was hard, but it was, you know, a reasonable living. You know, these people weren’t rich, but they weren’t starving. JM – But then I’ve heard that during that time, when people from south Wales could come in and buy the mines, that they would sometimes buy free mines off the Free Miners. So they were quite happy to sell, or maybe they had to sell to kind of live. F – If you were quite a hard working Free Miner [Coughs] and struggling, you know, to keep a large family going, and someone came along with a shopping bag full of ten pound notes and said, ‘give me your mine’ and it was thousands of pounds you would just take it. But the trouble was that they shouldn’t have sold it and the court would have stopped them selling it, but because the court had been dismantled they were able to have a bit of a free for all and some people cashed in what they owned. Whether that was legal or not. Because free mining didn’t normally give you ownership of the mines, it gave you the right to work it. So you had an area that you had the right to work and that was an exclusive right that no one else had. So it was as good as owning it but you didn’t own it. JM – So in fact the Free Miners who are working these mines, would you say they’re technically self-employed, because they don’t own the mine that they are working but they still have the rights to the mine. F – Yes. So they would be self-employed It would have been a free holder and that sort of feeling, but you didn’t actually have anything you could sell as such. And when you were finished with it [Mine] you handed it back to the crown, and then another free miner could take it out and could work it. But they couldn’t do that until you had finished with it. And you had it in perpetuity. JM – And is it each Free Miner pays one-fifth to the Crown? F – No umm. You…the royalties quite a tricky one. There is no claim by the crown of anything until you’ve got it to the surface. So once you’ve got it to the surface the crown have a right to the share of it. And that’s in lieu of the fifth man. So that’s why there’s that one-fifth idea. But it’s not actually one-fifth, because the crown would have had to pay that man to work, so it’s actually the money that would have been made had that man been put in, so it’s less than one-fifth.

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JM – And that’s collected by the Deputy Gaveller. F – Yes. I’m going to put the light on.

[F descends further into the mine, asking me to stay put, until the lights come on]

F – Have you spoken to the Deputy Gaveller? JM – No. I haven’t been down to see him. I bumped into him at Prosper Colliery, but hopefully I will go down and see some of the maps. F – He’s an important person to see in relation to Free mining. So these are natural caves, the water that made the caves left a crust of iron around it. [Coughs]. So it left a crust of iron that was up to two meters thick all the way over and that’s what they’ve taken off. You can see the pick axe marks all over. JM – So when you do it now, what kind of…are you using machines now? F – No, no. JM – Still the pick axe? F – Pretty Medieval huh? I don’t bring a great deal out. It’s just to supply those who want it. I don’t want to create too much of a demand because its only me down here. JM – So what would you say the main role of the Free Miners Association is? F – The Free Miners association is there to uphold the rules and regulations and to explain the different rights to people, because there is a lot of confusion about what the rights are. It’s to stop people abusing things. Because sometimes we get the Deputy Gaveller quite annoyed because some Free Miners have made road way in the Forest through a route that he hasn’t agreed and so on. So we would say, look, you have the right to make a road, but it has to be made with the agreement of the Deputy Gaveller. We can make sure that they comply really. Or they do something with or without planning permission and we can explain their rights to them. JM – What about the introduction of new people to Free Mining, because obviously, it seems…I don’t know what the situation is now, but getting people interested in free mining and to do it as a job might, from the outside, it looks to be quite difficult to get people involved especially if you have to be born within the Forest or within the Hundred of St Briavels [See map]. F – It depends on what we’re talking about really. If you want someone to get involved to become a free miner, that’s difficult now because there aren’t so many people born in the area. But there are a lot of home births, people might not be aware that if they have a home birth that they have the right to perhaps become a Free Miner, and that’s an amazing privilege really. JM – Yes, so it’s about getting that message out. F – Yes, and we’ll try and put that out. In the past the Free Miners have not actively gone out to recruit because there have been too many people around anyway and some of the Free Miners have been upset that it diminishes the amount of money that they’ll get from different gales being sold and so on, because they all get a share. Or if you’ve put a name down on a gale you get a share of the value of that gale when its sold. So if

127 you have 3,000 people down for a gale, that’s a bit different to one person. The gales haven’t been sold for a lot of money usually. This is what they used to carry on their backs. So this is similar to what the miner has in the church [See photograph]. JM – Yes I’ve seen picture of that. F – This is a Victorian one, made with iron instead of wood. [Coughs]. This is how much a 7 year old would have carried on their backs. [Pointing towards a lump of iron ore]. We had this one made by a local artist with a local boy from Clearwell. JM – Wow, that’s quite incredible really [Lifting the Iron ore]. F – If he had been born a hundred and seventy years ago he would have worked in the mine, because his family live here. His name was ‘Yarworth’. Yes, so the Free Miners haven’t really gone out to recruit, because in the past it’s not been in anyone’s interest. But now it is in our interest because if we don’t have people that are Free Miners the rights cease to exist, or the rights are still there because it’s in an act of parliament, but there’s no one practicing it. Unless we have people that are practicing the skills, there’s no continuation of the knowledge and ability. JM – Because I was reading…I don’t know, is it your sister who is now a Free Miner? F – Umm, yes she is. JM – Was it a bit of a contentious issue with some Free Miners? F – Very. What did Steve say about it [Steve, Chairman of the Free Miners Association]. JM – I didn’t ask him about it actually. F – He tries to avoid it. JM – Yes. He keeps his cards close to his chest. F – Yes. I think everyone tries to avoid it because its PC. JM – Yes. F – It put me in a very difficult position because as secretary to the association umm, they didn’t want me dealing with it. Because it puts me in a difficult position. My sister has put in for being a Free Miner and uhh…but my, my view is that the law hasn’t changed, it still says male [See Appendix]. They took it to the house of lords, to the solicitor general, who happened to be a female as well at the time. And she said I’m sorry you can’t change the law, and there’s nothing we can do, I can look at it further but I can’t think of how we can get around it, and it obviously pained her that she couldn’t do it. But the equal rights act doesn’t apply to that early legislation. So it’s not that you read male as female, you know, like you would these days in legislation, or you wouldn’t even go there would you. So the rules still apply. And yet she is registered as a Free Miner, so is she a Free Miner or isn’t she a Free Miner? Who knows? My feeling is the law hasn’t changed, and so she isn’t a Free Miner, in reality. I think the task would be, if she applied for a gale to work. That would really put the cat amongst the pigeons. It’s ok to be in the book you know that’s harmless. JM - …but actually practicing… F – If you actually apply to practice it. To take out a legal right to a property which a gale is, do you say that this person can legitimately do that? Because that can be challenged in law. So they’re not wanting to put

128 themselves in that position. I don’t think Elaine’s particularly interested in having a mine anyway so…perhaps it will never be contested. Her name is in the book. But it does say next to it, you should ask to see it really, it says next to it, ‘I was forced to put this in’ almost. He’s [Deputy Gaveller] written a little proviso that he was made to put it in by the Forestry Commission. They were just trying to be PC, and I think the people that instructed him, had to instruct him over three times to write it in over different periods. Because he refused to put it in the book, because he said it’s against the law. And they said we want you to put it in, so he obviously put it in under duress. Whether it has any meaning or not, I don’t know.

[Asks me to stay there, while he turn on the lights]

F – So that is a very contentious thing. Steve is someone who’s very aware of PC and inclusivity and all the various modern ways of thinking. So he sidesteps it, rather than actually confronting it. But the general feeling of Free Miners is that the law hasn’t changed and it’s not an acceptable thing to put a female in a mine, however a lot of them accept that women have worked in the mines and are in some ways just as legitimate as anyone else. And they are not particularly opposed to a female being a Free Miner in that respect. But they do feel if the law says that’s what it is then that’s what it is. They can’t change it. We’ve just finished experimenting with this, to give the idea of this as a workplace. It’s quite eerie really isn’t it… JM – Yes, it’s good to get a sense of how it was to work here. So going back a few years now, the Free Miners association, did it ever have links to the local labour party or any political party? F – Yes it was quite a suitable fit I suppose, for the movement for the protection of peoples incomes and rights. And so, because of the oppression that came in after the Free Mines were sold off and you get private companies coming from Wales, the oppression of the worker. They also brought in a lot of workers from outside, which was the first time that had happened, and it meant that they could push the wages down and control the wages a lot more. Because if Forest people wouldn’t put up with it they could bring in their own men. There was a lot of objection about people working in the mines that weren’t Free Miners. But again if you didn’t own the mine you had less say. So things began to change, and there were a lot of, more radical Free Miners that they [outside industrialists] refused to employ. So they were made unemployed, and it was quite a difficult time for them. And so those people began to actively work to protect the rights of people at work. Keir Hardie68 used to come down here on holiday and umm… JM – Give a few speeches… F – and of course he was MP for Merthyr. And so there was a connection there [To Welsh mining]. The Forest has always had a very strong Wales connection because a lot of Forest mining families worked in the mines in south Wales anyway. My Grandfather or Great Grandfather rather, actually worked in Wales quite a lot. And what he did, was he’d walk down to where he was working, which was near the Valleys. Work down there all week, and then come back for the weekends. JM – That’s quite a walk.

68 Trade Unionist, Merthyr Tydfil MP and member of the Independent labour party

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F – Yes, but that’s what they did. And ummm, quite a few of my family were Morgans, which is Welsh. So there’s always that fertilization between Wales and this area. And in fact the Forest is sometimes known as Little Wales. JM – [Laughs] Really? Because I think you can see that in the language. I always thought that Forest Dialect was closer to Welsh than maybe, Bristol or a West country dialect. F – Yes, well it’s a strange mixture really. When I was at school studying Chaucer69, as kids had to do in those days, our teacher explained that they were looking to make a recording of middle English, the nearest dialect they could find in Britain now, was Forest of Dean. So that’s the closest dialect to middle English. JM – Does the Free Miners Association…. F – That’s the Iron [pointing to the roof wall] and that’s the ochre that makes the paints. JM – So does the Free Miners Association have links to any local party’s now? F – Well, it’s a traditional labour area, it always surprises me that we’ve got a conservative MP. And we’ve had conservative MP’s for many years. We’ve been actively involved with quite a few of them either labour or conservative, because the Free Miners work with whoever the MP is. Whenever there is new legislation we make sure the legislation reflects Free Mining interests. So we write to the MP and make sure that is raised. JM – So do you endorse a particular party? F – No. But I’m aware that it’s important for people to vote that represent the area, and not people are representing national policy. So if people aren’t receptive to what we need, then they shouldn’t be voted in really. But unfortunately Mark Harper [Conservative MP] keeps being put back in, in spite of things, that’s the general feeling.

[34:00, explains why lights are being tuned on sequentially – health and safety]. [Asks me to stay while turning on the last of the lights].

F – We use this cavern for different functions. We have a Halloween party here every year. JM – Yes, I thought I recognized it, is the bar usually there? [point to one side] F – Yes. JM – Yes, I came to one a few years ago. F – We have bands. JM – Yes, it’s a good space for a party. F – We have a lot of different function here, we hold plays sometimes, hopefully we have a theatre company coming later in a couple of weeks to look at it. Do a performance. We have a Italian guitarist doing a piece, and things like that. It’s nice to do different things. I asked one of the old miners what he thought about what I was using it for, and he said, you know, if people get enjoyment out of the hard work that we’ve done, then that’s a good thing, that it’s not wasted. I thought that was a really nice thought.

[From 38:00 JW talks about the geology of the area, various archeological findings]

69 Monmouth Boys school?/ Grammer school?

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[Continues from 43:00]

JM – Would you say the Hands off our Forest movement is linked to Free Miners at all? Because it’s all about protecting and keeping land under public ownership. F – Umm, although the Free Miners are seen to be involved in quite a lot of things, I was on the steering comity for HOOF, and Steve was the chairman, so you know, there’s key roles involving Free Miners. But I think they are more keen to actually take responsibility for preserving the Forest than most local people seem to be. But most local people value the Forest and are very happy to join the… [Interrupted by one of the caves installations – a recording of Steve mining] F – This is Steve actually. Do you recognize the voice? And the other voice is Ray Ashley. I actually recorded them because I wanted the sound of the pneumatic drill. This is an interesting one [motions towards art installation] we had an artist in last month and she created this artwork as an installation for an exhibition which has now ended but we kept the work until the end of the month. But what it shows is the amount of wax that a miner used every year. So we got a candle weighed it and she worked out how many candles were used during the year, and it was 60 kg of wax every year they used, so that’s each miner, and if you think there were thousands of people underground that’s a lot of wax, I think being in the candle factory would have been quite a good job, or the candle business. And these are the wicks, she worked out that they used 450 metres of wick every year. JM – So did you go to a mining school or a technical college to learn? F – Yes I went to…I did the last mining course they did at Cinderford, I was very lucky really to be at a point that I could do that. I was only just old enough. There were a dozen of us that did a mine [something] course. So we did the training in Cinderford and took the examinations down in south Wales [JW knocks on door to let us out of the mine] JM – So now it’s based on other people training others, in the Forest, other Free Miners doing the training. F – It will be now yes.

[47:30 leave mine]

F – What I was hoping to do is get a training scheme set up. [inaudible as we leave the reception area] [Continues outside as we walk back to the café] F – But I think it’s of less interest to people these days than it was, because they don’t need it. Because it has a practical use its really valued by people. The only reason to mine is to make money from it. There’s no other reason to do it. JM – Is there still enough coal to make money from it? F – Yes, There’s a reasonable amount of coal. There are areas that are very productive.

[48:38 Enter café]

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F – The whole point of the rights, is that it’s a right to make a living. [Mentions local artwork using the mined ochre] [Continues 49:48]

F – This was OB. Jordan [See drawing above JW]. He was chairman of the Free Miners Association. [Coughs]. That’s a good friend of mine [motions to another drawing] unfortunately he died a few years ago, he worked in this mine. But I feel very privileged really that I knew a lot of the old miners. So we were saying about the beginnings of Free Mining, I’m saying that it’s possible that the term Free Miner could have even begun in Roman times, where you were free of the imperial state. But the mining continued with this privileged group of people, whatever they were called, through the Saxon period. But the Normans took over the area and really began to control everything as you know and they wanted everyone to contribute to the state, but strangely with the Free Mining area, it was simply left out. There’s no mention of the Forest in the Doomsday book70. There’s no mention of Free Mining, isn’t that weird. To say that they accounted for everything in the country but Forest of Dean has been left alone. Very strange, but anyway…by 1244 there are accounts that show Free Miners existed and so we know that Free Mining existed from that time for sure because its recorded. The reason that the rights continued to be confirmed is that the Miners were useful to the King. They were called off to go up to Scotland several times, to Berwick particularly – to undermine a wall and break in, which they did very successfully. It’s thought that this is when the rights were granted, properly and formally by the Crown. But they did pre-exist that anyway. And then all the way through the hundred years war miners went off to France, they were at Crecy, they were called up at that time. We think they may have been at Poitier and also, they were definitely at Agincourt. JM – Yes Steve mentioned that. So they were quite an important resource to call upon. F – Yes. Because their mining skills were valued by the King they were like the pioneers in the army, they have a specialist purpose. So the King took retinue that had different skills. So they begun as mining people. In those days archers were everybody because everyone had to learn to shoot. Every Sunday all males in England had to practice archery. So Miners, because of their physical life, were very strong archers because they could pull a really powerful bow. JM – And then that skill of the Free Miners, was that used by the industrialists when they came into the Forest. So the Free Miners were given like a management role over wage labourers. F – Yes, they were, there are quite a few people that were given the role of agent, that were Free Miners. An agent being someone who made sure the mine was functioning71. So they worked underground as well as in the mine. The mine owners didn’t particularly want to be involved in the underground work because that was dirty and they didn’t want to get their hands dirty, you know. So yes there was that role. That was only a few of them. Quite a few of the Free Miners couldn’t read or write, a lot of them didn’t want to learn, some of them went to night school and paid to go into school, so they assigned some of their meagre wages [interrupted by staff member]

70 Survey of England and Wales conducted by William the Conquerer 1086 71 As seen in ‘Germinal’ (Zola, 2004).

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JM – So I guess they were quite open to exploitation if they couldn’t read or write. F – Yes they were, and that’s part of the reason why you get things like the riots that Warren James was involved in. He presented the Miners with a case that they were keen to hear, how legitimate his claim was is open to argument, but there was a definite move to enclose as much as the Forest as they could, and of course that was of interest to the poorer people in the area because they would lose their free grazing. So they were very keen for that not to happen. And when Warren stood up and said they don’t have a right to do this they wouldn’t have looked in the books to see if that was legal or not, all they would have done is said ‘Yep that sounds right to me’ and gone with it. But Warren could read and write and he went down to the House of Lords and saw documents that convinced him that they couldn’t enclose the Forest. So he led to rise up to challenge the fencing. And that resulted in the conflict that came after. JM – There’s a huge amount of history in the Forest, that seems to be about, kind of rejection of state law and them [Government] trying to impose laws on the Forest. F – It’s always been a bit of a Wild-Westy sort of atmosphere, because it’s been left to its own devices and even the officials have colluded, because it’s been convenient and no one’s questioned it. So the officials would allow the timber to be stolen because they would take a share in it. They would allow a bit of poaching because they would want salmon or deer for their own. And that’s continued up to the present day, I know of poachers that have sold to judges in the Wye-valley. JM – I bet there’s a lot of boar poaching. F – They know where it’s come from, it’s convenient because someone’s turned up with a salmon. So its continued because there’s very little chance of getting caught. So there’s always been that unlawful attitude. And the Forest has always been seen as a rough edge to the Gloucestershire county. People from the Cotswold’s don’t like the people from the Forest because it’s got that rough sorta feeling and they’re very snobbish. JM – Yes, definitely. F – There’s a definite class thing there. When I went to work in Gloucester when I was still at school, people that I worked with I’d say to them, ‘why don’t you come out to the Forest, drive out and have a picnic or whatever’ because they would always go the other way. They would say, ooh we couldn’t go over Westminster bridge into the Forest, which is seen as a bit of a dividing line. Well I said, well what’s the problem? They said, well what if our car breaks down? Well I said, you go to the nearest house and phone somebody, because this is before mobile phones, and they said, phhhh no, it’s pretty terrifying out there. Because it’s quite wild. And they literally, well they used to say it as a joke that we [Foresters] used to swing from trees. In a way you could almost say it’s like a racist thing these days. We used to laugh at it really. They would be quite derogatory about Forest people. And yet, when I went to the interview for a job, they said, ‘you’re from the Forest of Dean’ they wanted Forest people cause they work hard, and they turned up on time. So the Forest has always had this representation of being willing to work, do the job, but perhaps that’s another reason why people were derogatory, because it made it harder for them to get a bit of slack. JM – You mentioned it might be a bit of a class thing, do you think the Free Miners see themselves as working class?

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F – I think they are a working class, but a privileged working class. They see themselves as in control of their own destiny in a way that most working class people wouldn’t. So there is a conflict really. They were classed as a yeoman72 type status amongst the medieval periods, so they were almost…well they were free men, but at the same time they were doing manual work that no-one else wanted to touch. So there’s a conflict. And there has always been that conflict. When you look at O.B [motions to picture above him] or even Dennis [motions to next painting], Dennis lived quite a classic Free mining life really. He worked in the mine from when he was 14 and really enjoyed the mining, really liked working in the pit, the comradery, the work in general. It was really hard, he had a few close scrapes. He got involved in a miss-fire with explosives, he was in the back. The person in the front had all his clothes blown off him. He said when he came out of that tunnel he was absolutely shell shocked, he had stones and grit impregnated into his skin. He was sent out to a hospital in Stroud to recuperate. He said he had nothing on him expect his pants and belt. Everything else had been shredded. He was at the tail end of that and was given a day off before he had to go down again. So that’s an example of how hard life was in those days. But Dennis, when he finished work in the iron mines went to work in the coal mines until they shut in 63. He worked at Princess Royal and then he joined the water board. And that’s where many people from the pits ended up in industry somewhere else. And that’s the sort of people that I would have known really. They were working in standard jobs but their lives were influenced by work in the pits. They ran sheep and pigs in the Forest, so running the sheep was also a way of Free Miners supplementing their income. Because [mining] didn’t provide a huge income so they needed to supplement it with vegetables from the garden, ducks and chickens sheep and pigs he [Dennis] made quite a nice comfortable living, but it was hard work. It wasn’t an easy life, you made Cider…yeah he lived the life really, he lived at Clearwell. I said to him, wouldn’t it be nice to have a painting of you painted with the Ochre that you’ve mined, he said I’ll tell you what I’ll come up and I’ll dress up how I would have dressed for the work. So that’s what he’s done. O.B. Jordan there [motions to picture above him] he fought in the First world war. In the first world war he rescued some people and won the French equivalent of the V.C. JM – So were Free Miners used in the second world war as they were in previous wars? F – Yes, they tended to go as pioneers

[1:05 Free Miners involvement in ww1/2 explained] [Birdsong, Seb Faulks]

[Continue 1:09] F – One of the most important things that we need to talk about is the Mine Law Court. Because that Mine Law court was finished in 1777 because the documents were stolen from Speech House. They turned up fifty years later in the hands of the Crown. So that’s a big coincidence, that they managed to find some of the documents, not all of them. JM – [Agreeing]. So what documents did they lose?

72 A freeholder, a man who cultivates his own land.

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F – All mention of the charter or mine approval. Because during the 17th century there was a hearing where one of the old Free Miners had said, ‘I’ve seen the document from John Duke of Bedford, that’s king Henry the 5ths brother. He actually came up to the Forest to present the Free Miners with the equivalent of a charter, to agree that they could continue using their rights because of the services they have given the King in the past, especially with Agincourt. So that letter which was written in French went missing, and it’s never been found. That letter undoubtedly existed and it gave a lot of power to the Free Miners cause. When the documents reappeared in the 1830s, it was under enquiry into what the privileges of the Free Miners were. And so any documentation would have been incredibly valuable, you know, to prove the case either way. So the fact they produced some documents meant that they obviously agreed that those could continue, but the other documents went missing, and it’s very sad really because those other documents must exist somewhere I’d have thought, unless they burnt them, or destroyed them, and I don’t know if they would have done that. And since then, because people said that the Free Miners rights only existed really during the 17th century, but since then we’ve found documents from the 15th century that showed that the court existed then so the court has always existed, the Miners have always sorted their own problems for themselves. But when the court finished, the Miners lost a lot of the control they had over the system. The government decided to replace the court with the modern legislation that we, that we’re bound by now, which is the 1838 act. Are you familiar with the acts of parliament? JM – No. F – So now the Free Mining laws are governed by an act of parliament which is the Dean Forest Mines act of 1838. And that basically incorporated all the rights that the Free Miners had in statute, so that’s in modern law. But what it does, was it made one big change, and this is one that was railed against by the old Miners. Because they allowed the Free Miner to sell his right to another non-Free Miner and that broke the back of the Free Mining system. And that was what the stopping of the court and the change in legislation aimed to do, was to get them so that various people could come from outside, and take control of the mines. But it works against them now because we have an act of parliament which defines the rights properly and we apply it. So the rights continue and will always continue as long as that act of parliament exists. But even if they eliminated the act of parliament, the customary rights would continue to exist, so they can’t just remove them. JM – Do you think there would be any attempt to remove them, any time soon? F – They haven’t done. But what it will be incumbent on whoever is left in Free Mining is to make sure the rules are applied properly. It’s because they became shambolic between 1777 and 1838 that the rules were bent left right and centre, and it allowed the commissioners in 1830s enquiries to adapt the rules to suit what they wanted and they said we already do this so surely we’ll just incorporate it into modern law, but of course that was very convenient to them, so if there isn’t an act of parliament to repudiate it then we would need to apply similar rules and make sure everyone complies with it, because if it becomes a free-for-all that’s the point where it just gets broken up. [Coughs]. So in effect we would have to reinstate the Mine law court. JM – [Agreeing]. Is that possible to do? F – Yes, we held a court actually, back in the 70s [Coughs], to actually find out how it would have worked. We held a court in St Briavels Castle and we had 48 Free Miners as jurymen which is what they would have done

135 and we had the Deputy Gaveller and the constable of the castle, all there and they agreed the proceedings. So the court still could be reinvoked. JM – So would the court do things like the price of coal, would that be fixed? Or is that up to each Free Miner? F – The court used to set a price for the iron and coal but that could be seen today as anti-competition, it’s sort of frowned upon, to create a cartel that controls pricing, so I think that’s what they would be looking to do. They obviously would want the best price, but that would be up to the individuals. But what they would want to regulate is how people work. The way in which mining is carried out, the disruption they cause to the area would have to be controlled, because you don’t want people making a real mess everywhere it’s got to be suitable to make things efficient but convenient custom to keep going really. It should be something that is just totally tolerated by outsiders. You have to make it work for everyone. I think it’s in everyone’s interest now, the Forest has a multifarious use with the public. So you need to make sure we don’t create dangerous conditions; poison the ground… JM – Yes, there’s all that trouble at Northern Quarter73 at the moment with them trying to build on it. I don’t really know much about it, and all the gases that are still in the ground could be quite dangerous. F – Yes, but those are naturally occurring. Why it’s inappropriate is because some are built on mines, on shafts that are…it’s not the place really to develop a big thing like Northern Quarter, and they say it will benefit Cinderford. It has nothing to do with benefiting people from Cinderford. The benefit will go to the people involved in its development, there’s millions involved, they’ve already spent 20 Million on it …someone said that. So it’s going to benefit somebody, but it’s not the people of Cinderford, by any means, who are meant to be benefitting from it. So, you know, when they talk about benefits, I think they’re being pretty disingenuous, I doubt their interest is in the local people. I think that some of the councillors might naively think that’s what they do. That they are helping to gain benefits for the local people but in reality the people who will get most of that money will be, you know, outsiders, who are already pretty wealthy to start with. It’s not going to go to the poor in the area, it’s not going to help the wildlife, it’s not going to keep the Forest big, it’s going to build on it, concrete the woodlands, where’s the benefit? So…it’s a ludicrous idea. Yet there’s places around Cinderford, like the industrial estate that could be developed, and isn’t being developed, they’re sitting on it. And again that’s a few rich people that own the property there, just waiting for when they can benefit. They’re not looking at when local people need things; need to have jobs, they’re looking at when is the right time to strike, you know, there umm, profits. Those profits won’t go to local people. F – Have you got any questions? What is your project titled? JM – I haven’t got a title worked out yet. I’m looking to study Free Miners in their current situation, looking at how they see themselves in terms of their class position and how that’s related to work. Because they are not part of a traditional working class because they have rights. F – There is a pride though in manual work. There is a pride in knowing you can do the job, and so, although a Free Miner with the rights to a gale, is a privileged person, but not entirely working class they like the fact that they…although they own it, it’s only of any value unless you use it. So you’ve gotta get down there and you

73 A regeneration project in Cinderford – Proposed building of a new College, Housing and Business units. The site is being built on top of old mining shafts from Northern United Colliery which closed in 1965.

136 gotta dig for mineral, and there is a great joy in doing that. And when you walk out of the pit and you see then sun shining and the trees, you hear the birdsong, you know, it’s such a wonderful environment to work in, it’s not like you’re coming out of a factory into a dirty street. JM – So they’re [Free Miners] are defined by the act of labour itself, rather than their position in the labour market, would you say? F – Yes. I would say that they don’t necessarily think about that position. Some Free Miners have actually gone on to become quite wealthy because their mines have been successful. So they end up as management and let the people do the mining, but even though a lot of the Free Miners will go down the mine, take their shirts off, and get in there to show someone how it’s done, you know, rather than just sending a telegram, ‘I want it done this way’. So there is a hands on aspect of Free Mining, I would say. [Inaudible] JM – I think that’s it really…because obviously Free Miners weren’t involved in a Trade Union at all? Because they had the…[FDMA]… F – Because they worked for themselves there isn’t a particular union to be part of, you just talk to yourself really. So…but the miners who worked for companies would have been very keen to be part of the Union and show solidarity. There is a solidarity that’s in the make-up of the Free Miners, they fought together, they talked and worked together, they had spent their lives relying on each other. So if you don’t trust the bloke who’s next to you, to support the roof, you know, you’re not going to be very happy…so they had to trust each other and do their jobs properly. So it wasn’t a case of ‘oh he’ll do’ to do that job, you had to know how to do it properly, and uhh…because of that, the closeness that they, the Trade Unions were very suited to that way of life. And so in fact the chapel, [motions to photograph on my left of Abenhall Church] that was a very convenient place to meet, outside the pit, to talk about mining issues and political aspects, and so it could be that the unions would have built up very strongly in the area because of already existing relations. So there were strong unions in the area. My Grandfather, he was a very strong union man, a representative, and he would go off to national conferences and he was [inaudible]…because he could see that everything was about exploiting the people that were just, that worked there. He wanted that privilege all the way around really, a more equal share of the wealth that you create when you work. And you can see why, if you’re doing the work and producing the coal, you should get the share. JM – [Agreeing] F – And yet the Mine owners were interested in taking as much as they could and paying you an absolute pittance, and so there had to be some sort of call back. If the price of coal fell, the mine owner didn’t lose money, he cut the wages of the worker. So the Mine owner would continue with the same income, but the worker had to receive less. They were already over [] and they were told they had to accept less. So you can see why Unionism was really strong. And every mining area had a very strong union as we know from, you know, the way the government reacting against it and shut all the pits down, to get rid of the objection to conservatism. And yet the Free Miners should be sympathetic to some conservatism because if you cut taxes and strengthen the way in which making money can benefit you that benefits the person who works for themselves. JM – Yes, so they occupy an interesting space.

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F – I would say that most Free Miners are radically labour, because of the fact they believe that people should share and most Free Miners don’t actually have any employees. What they have is partners that work together, so they share the proceeds. JM – So they almost work in small cooperatives together? F – Yes, but they never thought of it like that, but that’s what it is. [Coughs]. Yes, so my Uncle Dick, although he was very radical, well as I said, joined the Communist Party, when his pit shut [inaudible] … he then went to work for himself as a Free Miner and would have had a change of view of how things worked I would imagine. He always thought there should be a fair share for the work you did…sort of undermines profiteering, if you are a Free Miner you could try to profiteer, but they never have done, in that entire way that people might have done otherwise. It’s always been a right to work more than owning property. JM – And still today the Free Miners aren’t that way inclined aren’t they, to not make more than they need? F – Yes, it’s about making a living, you know, but in this age when there’s a lot of competition as to how you make a living, so mining doesn’t work the same way as the majority of the population. And what they keep saying is, if you are a Free Miner, is when the coal gets in your nasal you can’t wash it out. You know, and you want to go down, and you want to see what they’re doing down there, you want to go and see if you can help, you know. JM – It creates that sense of community. F – Yes, it does, and you want to be in there really. I think it’s also, once you’ve done your training the [dangers] of work doesn’t hold the same fear that it would to people who work in an office, because that’s like another world isn’t it. That kind of environment, to the wonderful computer world, a long way from where the dust is found. You’ve got a muddy unsafe environment, but if you, you know, understand it, it is dangerous, but if you do understand it then it can be safe, you know. There are mistakes that are made, and if you can except that you can get it wrong, but it’s very rare. The Forest has a very good record of safety, and I think it’s because you work for yourself, you have had the right training, you know what you’re doing and you’re watching your back and other peoples backs. You don’t encourage people to do things that aren’t safe, whereas if you’re a mine owner you would try and get people to do things as cheap as possible. There’s well recorded cases of people [needing to replace] timber to support the roof and the mine owner refusing. You know, so they’re not working under properly supported rooves. JM – I was looking at the records actually, and my great grandfather was a Free Miner and it said in the records that he broke his back in the mine and then two weeks later he died, so it just shows how dangerous these kind of things were. But I think he was working in a Free Mine at the time, so he wasn’t in one of the bigger commercial mines. F – There are a lot of mistakes that happen. Interestingly that kind of incident might not be put down as a mining death. He died outside of the pit. So although the accident would have been reported as a mining accident his death might not have been. Because there are very few deaths recorded. So it’s a very interesting one, and a very sad one. I know people who have done a similar thing where they’ve had a nasty accident, a lot have damaged their backs and under very unfortunate circumstances gone on to develop things that are directly related to [mining]. And also people who died of pneumoconiosis from the dust is not actually

138 recorded as dying in the mine, but it is a mining death. The mining directly caused that death. And they would have died perhaps 20/30 years later at home, so it’s not a mining death. So the records could be not as accurate as you think they should be. JM – Because it was David Tuffley who put that record together of mining fatalities, and it was in there. So there’s quite a few recorded, but don’t know how many more there could have been. F – Yes, Dave’s done a really good job of collating the list, it’s pretty dismal but it’s an important record. He’s also done work on recording mining words. Did he tell you about this? JM – No. F – He might not have done because he hasn’t ‘published it yet. JM – Is that part of the ‘Foresters Forest’74 is it linked to that? F – No, no. He’s been doing this for years, whether he’s got any money from that [Foresters Forest] I don’t know. He’s collated a few words from my own contribution. JM – Yes, it would be really interesting to look at, I’ll have to give him an email. JW – But that would be a good dictionary because he’s collected mining terms that are specific to the Forest, looking at what words were used to describe different things. [Coughs]. And so because of the Unionism in the Forest, the Forest was a prime area for the Labour party to start to band round, and it was part of that initial movement. JM – And then I guess when the big pits were gone the Labour Party started to decline over time? F – I think…I don’t know…because there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to…putting the current labour party aside, because I don’t know what people think now, but I do know there was a very strong favour or bias right up until, not that many years ago really, and what has depleted that really is there’s a lot more people who have ventured down [into the Forest]. So they have watered down that. They also changed the boundary to increase the area, and it goes quite a long way out of the Forest. So it’s no longer the Forest of Dean MP, it’s a West Gloucestershire MP. And now there’s talk of taking the boundary up to Tewkesbury and that would make it a safe seat [For Conservative]. It already is pretty safe, but, so it will be interesting in this election, I’m quite concerned that Theresa May will get back in and Mark Harper will continue as an MP. You know, which is unheard of for a [Conservative] MP to stay in the Forest for any amount of time. JM – Do you think if the boundaries were reduced to just the Forest or just the Hundred, you think Labour would get in? Or have a better shot? F – I don’t know about the Forest, because I think there is a lot of doubts about the Labour party in its present form. I don’t think it represents the interests of the Forest people, in the way that the traditional labour party would have done. I think that Corbyn is still a very traditional person, I think he’s got that air that traditional labour voting people weren’t sure about, so I’m not sure if they would still vote for him. I think also there’s a conflict between the people that voted for Brexit which in the Forest is most people. With what Theresa May has to do with the negotiations, so she has a lot of local people who vote conservative this time because they

74 A heritage lottery funded partnership programme to raise awareness and participation in the cultural heritage of the Forest of Dean.

139 wouldn’t want Jeremy Corbyn negotiating with Europe because he’s going to be a bit sorta wishy-washy and vote for things that are in the interest of the country [as opposed to the Forest]. JM – Do you think the Forest voting… F - …[inaudible] JM – Do you think the Forest voting for Brexit is in some way linked to the isolation of the place and a view of foreigners [outside the Forest] coming in, do you think its linked to that at all? F – I think the Forest has always been, its seen to be very isolated, it’s been seen to be not welcoming to foreigners…foreigners to mean anyone outside the area. JM – Yes, so from Gloucester or… F – But actually the Forest has always been welcoming to anybody. In fact people that are a bit radical or a bit alternative, they have been accepted, we had large numbers of gypsy’s in the Forest. But I think because they were genuine Gypsy’s they weren’t ripping people off. [Inaudible]. The Forest has always been accepting of others, as long as they accept the area, if you come into the area and say ‘this needs developing and oh I don’t like sheep’ then you come up against the Forest. It’s what local people do. But I’ve not heard of people being physically affected by it . It’s not like we go around smashing windows, you know, set fire to your house, but what they do do is they don’t include you. People say they feel very isolated and they’re [Foresters] not welcoming and things like that but to be honest it’s also, if they are not willing to engage with local people on their own terms. And the view is [of Foresters] why are you coming here telling me what to do when I’ve been here hundreds of years and it’s not for you to tell me where I can park my truck. So the Forest has always been quite welcoming really, as long as they don’t come in and make changes to what we do at the moment. And there are a lot less sheep these days, and that’s come about from people who just don’t like it, because they just don’t understand it [Referring to Commoners rights] from those coming usually from outside the Forest. But they are very vociferous. They become councillor’s. It’s very hard as Foresters to get on the council as such, a few have, but the majority are from outside who want to take an interest in the community and shape it to their favour. JM – And don’t understand the traditions and customs? F – You can’t let a sleeping dog lie, and just got with the flow of it. If you get someone in there, on the council particularly interested in Forest issues and represent us really well, you will find that they get shouted down, they’re side-lined. They get the jobs like uh…what type of toilet paper should be used. They stop going eventually, because they’re not being noticed. There are exceptions like, Andrew Garfield. He’s a councillor who’s represented Ruardean for years and years and he’s got some really good ideas about the Forest, but when he stands up to speak, they will side-line him and shout him down and speak over him not allow him, it’s terrible. He’s done it for a long time. JM – And is he an independent? F – Yes. That’s what they are usually, maybe because they don’t want to be told by Westminster, what they’re telling local people, they want to speak for the area. Right, so that works against them. It would be interesting to attend a [council] meeting. Have you ever attended? JM – No, I’ve never been to one.

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F – Well you should turn up to one, and just see who’s speaking. It’s very interesting because you have the different parties, and the independent who get up and talk.

[Interrupted – Customer asks JW if it is him leading the 12:00 tour]. [Interview ends 1:46]

[Continues 1:47] F – I feel very lucky that I grew up at a time when there are a lot of Free Mines still working. A lot of the coal miners who had worked in the iron mines were still around because it allowed me to find out a lot about what they did. Because it’s only the last couple of years…I’ve been at the tail end of it all. JM – So realistically do you think [Free Mining] will still survive the next generation? F – It has the potential to go back to being what it was because its only applied as an act of parliament that exists now so all they have to do is feed the dog and it can go back, its whether there is the interest. We’ve realised that the Free Miners association, that the Free Miners in general have always been recruited from inside from their families. But those are declining quite fast now and there isn’t that sort of fresh blood coming into it. There is some. So we do need interest from a few extra people. And that’s the purpose of what we’re doing with the training. [Inaudible] There’s no reason why it shouldn’t, there’s still coal here, they reckon about 11 billion tonnes. JM – Do you know how many Free Miners there are at the moment? F – No one knows. There’s a register that shows you who is a Free Miner [See Appendix]. But that register doesn’t have a tick or anything to tell you when someone’s gone. So it’s guesswork. What we do know is most of them are very elderly men…so…we estimate there could be up to around a hundred still alive, there are about 30 that we know that are fairly active and interested. They’ll be around for quite a few years. Some of the old men used to take great interest in the future, but unfortunately all those old men are died off now. So we’ve got some older miners in the Forest, but some of the really knowledgeable have already gone, and that’s the sad thing. You need the support of knowledgeable people to keep something going strongly.

[Interruption by staff member about tour] [Continues at 1:51]

F – [Pointing at staff member], She used to be chairman of the Forest of Dean Caving club. JM – Because caving has links with Free Mining. F – Yes because of the iron mines. People like Dave Tuffley [current chairman of caving club] did his training in the coal mine, but he’s a caver and was a key member of mining rescue. I was a member of the rescue. So we’ve got a connection. Not so much the coal miners because they don’t have the interest in the mines. JM – Are you involved in the Foresters Forest at all? Because I know they’re pumping quite a lot of money into it.

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F – Yes, I was. They had a grant that they were interested in giving me, it was quite substantial, if I was willing to train people to do what I do with Ochre. But I Couldn’t see if it was going to be worthwhile.

[Continues at 1:56]

F – [The officials] they will always try and present a way that suits them and the crown, the Forestry commission or the government, and so they try and manoeuvre Free Miners into certain ways of thinking and it really undermines what Free Mining is. A classic example was a few weeks ago the Deputy Gaveller said, ‘I think the Free Miners rights’…oh no…he was comparing Free Mining to commoning, and he said that, ‘these rights are under sufferance’ and that means that its existed for a long time, the Forestry commission tolerate it and it continues as long as they’re happy with it really. [But I said], why would you say it’s under sufferance? It’s a right. It’s protected by parliament. We own these things free hold, it’s not under sufferance, but he said ‘I didn’t expect you to pick me up on that one’. But you can see how he tries. And they try and get you in the mind-set whereby you think that what you have isn’t actually what you have. That you don’t have control of the, or the power that you have, and it’s quite wicked in some ways. I suppose it’s the way that authorities and privileged people have always acted, in their interest. JM – Because there must be a bit of a clash of interest between the Free Miners and the Deputy Gaveller? Because the Gaveller is working for the Crown? F – There is now. Previously the Deputy Gaveller was a commission, whereby you were pulled up to do the work. So the Crown represented the view of the Free Miners and the Gaveller acted as arbitrator. And if the Deputy Gaveller said, ‘oh you can’t do that’ they would be pretty sure that you couldn’t. Now you’ve gotta go and check because, you can interpret the law yourself. The point of the Deputy Gaveller is that you don’t have to go to lawyers. You’ve got your own there, who arbitrates for you. So the purpose of the Deputy Gaveller is to get you to your right. So if you want to work a bit of coal somewhere he has to provide you with a way to do that. Show you the place where you can dig, and find the best place for that purpose. So it’s not the land owners place to say, it’s your [as Free Miner] best place to dig. Where does the coal crop out easiest? Where is the best access for that coal? It’s not about what the landowner wants. So the deputy Gaveller has a really important role, but he is also the receiver of the royalties, so he has to make sure that the Free Miners are paying his fair dues. So he has to account for the produce of the mine. So the records are checked by him and the Free Miner and they have to agree. Which is why the Deputy Gaveller is usually a surveyor. Because he can go down and survey your workings and he can tell how much coal you’ve taken. JM – It’s different because I’m asking about coal now, but the kind of market and the people that they are selling too, that’s all done informally, and sold to local people for house coal? F – Most of it is yes. It’s sold more cheaply than general house coal, which I don’t really see the point of. But on the other hand people do come and get it, so I get if like, you get to pick your own strawberries, you would expect it to be a bit cheaper than those at the market. I think the picking of it and the experience of it lowers the price. With the market for coal, that’s diminishing because it’s not a very popular commodity these days, the government are very anti global warming. So coal has come up against it. That’s why briquettes have

142 become so popular, to give it a more eco-friendly face. Makes it a nice product. But a bit of coal being produced in the Forest isn’t going to create the effect of global warming so it’s not really fair. And the people do love it. They enjoy going to the mines, meeting the miners and picking up the coal. So if they can use briquettes which are very nice, very clean in the way that they’re packaged, people are going to be more sympathetic. So I am looking forward to this project in the way that it could come out really and the money that’s being made from generating these briquettes can go towards training younger people into Free Mining, it’s a great opportunity for local people to take an interest in their local privilege. JM – Yes well I hope it can continue, it would be a sad thing to lose. F – Well its continued, well you know, over mining started back four and a half thousand years ago at least. So its continued right up to the present day over four-thousand years, and it’s always been done by the same type of operator – by a born and bred person. So that kind of privilege and continuity is something quite special and we would like to see it continued as a pretty strong thing into the future. But at the moment it’s sort of on the decline and it needs to be brought back up. JM – I’m sure it will be. F – So where were you born? JM – Bristol, I’m afraid. It’s that thing, I was born in Bristol but then grew up in Coalway all my life. F – But that’s the other thing, that it does seem to work against people that aren’t born locally. My sister Claire, was born at Gloucester hospital because she had birthing problems. I was born at home in Cinderford. My sister doesn’t consider herself to be a Forester. Because she wasn’t born in the Forest. JM – Yes, it’s the same, my Dad was born in Lydney hospital and he says the same, that he’s not a Forester. F – No, he isn’t, in that sense. But if you buy a gale you buy the Free Miners rights to that gale, so you in effect become a Free Miner for that gale, so you are a Free Miner in everything except title and not having the certificate. The big difference is that you wouldn’t be allowed to take out a gale in your own name, but you would be allowed to buy it from other Free Miners. So there is a difference. It doesn’t stop you from mining, and it doesn’t stop you from enjoying Free Mining rights. [Finish 2:05]

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Appendix 4

Codebook

Production [Thompson, Braverman, Burawoy]

- Work timetabling (task oriented) - Informal Market - Formal Market - Mechanised equipment - Non-mechanised equipment

Reproduction [Burawoy, Blum, Carrier, Beynon]

- Skill - Distribution of knowledge - Socialisation of the machines - Historicisation of the machines - Value as labour - Value as capital

Legitimation [Burawoy, Bourdieu]

- Symbolic Capital o Murals and statues . Free Mining . Mining  Location (Re-class/De-class)

- Linguistic Capital o …as speech community [Gumperz] o …as group hierarchy [Bourdieu] . Disciplining (Distinction) . Education  Reinforcing Value: o …as labour (FMA) o …as capital (Objective position) - Group Hierarchy o Who? o Why? . Linguistic Habitus . Linguistic Market  Material interests  Symbolic interests

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- Symbolic Violence (its misrecognition and hence legitimation) o Disciplining o Educating . Reinforcing Value:  …as labour (FMA)  …as capital (Objective position)

- Informal mechanisms of socialization: o ‘Banter’ o Jokes o Storytelling

- Defining the field - Regeneration Response

Class

- Education - Previous and current occupation - Parents occupation - Occupations described as a similar class - Political affiliation - Consumption practices

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Appendix 5

Reflexivity

My interest in the political and cultural aspects of the labour process particular to the Forest of Dean derived from a long held fascination with the Forest of Dean and its residents. Since my childhood, I have been presented with tales of mining and, often jovial and other times sombre, nonetheless they all contributed to the idea of the Forest of Dean as a community established on solidarity, trust, commitment and belonging. The ‘Forest’, for me, was quickly established as a reference point to shape meaning and identity. To reside within the Hundred, was to be a proud ‘Forester’. This contingent collective identity, of course, drew coherence through its oppositional relationship with those outside the Forest of Dean, ‘foreigners’. This was exemplified when, playing for my local football club. A heightened sense of gravitas was confounded on match day, when we crossed the Severn Bridge into Bristol or crossed the Welsh border into Monmouthshire. We often faced an opposition who poked fun at the ‘Forest lads who swung from trees’, often coming from the parents mouths rather than the kids. The Forest teams, whether it be football or rugby were always known for their rough play. It was something we relished, something we played up too. To be ‘rough’ not just in play but in appearance and manner was part and parcel of what made a ‘Forester’ a real ‘Forester’.

The particular identity shaped by geography was not formed through where you lived, grew up or where you were born alone, rather it was shaped through a symbiotic relationship of residence and class. To be a ‘Forester’ is both to have access to Free Mining rights and to be working class; which stems from the access to industrial rights. To be a ‘Forester’, one must conform to a particular set of traits often defined through working class dispositions which values a rural masculinity. I am reminded at this juncture of a particular memory which further compounds this notion. Several years ago I was out with my friends drinking in the local pub in Cinderford. Jack Bloggs, a man born in the Forest and grew up in the Forest, who attended the local state schools walked in. He had since moved away to London and had likely come back for the weekend to visit his family. Jack was dressed smartly, brown suede shoes, a pink Ralph Lauren shirt neatly tucked into his trousers, held up by a thick leather belt, his hair quaffed to one side. His entrance caused a little stir from some of the locals, who were of a similar age, but they ignored him and went back to their drinking. Over the course of the night, Jack boasted of tales of his new life in London, his job, his new car, his flat. He was generous with his money, buying drinks for old friends, and flashing the twenty pound notes stashed in his wallet. He made short trips to the bathroom and would come back to flamboyantly and energetically recall more stories of his new life. Jack had lost his Forest accent, and [unwittingly] mocked the lives of his former school friends who had chosen to stay in the Forest. His bravado was cut short. His former school friends had had enough. They took him outside and beat him to a pulp. Jack was no longer a Forester. He had moved to London, yes, but

146 what was more, he had changed his outlook. Jack’s habitus no longer reflected a Forest habitus built on working class notions.75

My own class position, growing up in the Forest, if defined by my parent’s income, reflected a lower middle class. My mother a primary school teacher and my father a care worker. Orwell once described himself as ‘lower-upper-middle class’, I would position myself far below Orwell’s self-stratification and boarding school upbringing. But then again I am likely, because of my Forest Habitus to place myself lower down the class strata than my objective self may be in actuality. I attended the local state school. The school was situated in a catchment area of large council estates. At school, I played down any notion of membership to the middle classes. I graduated from school and subsequently left for University, one of seven from my year. I later found out that I was one of four from that year to receive a Bachelor’s degree.

At University, I was introduced to theories that could help explain the social and economic structure of the Forest of Dean. My fascination with the people and culture of the Forest of Dean quickly developed into more materialist analysis of their situation. My upbringing and predisposition towards a favouring of socialist politics led me to an involvement in the Socialist Workers Party. Here at University, my interest in class grew. Where I had tried to play down my social and cultural capital privileges in the Forest, I was now playing catch up with my peers. Now I emphasised my middle class upbringing. My disposition to favour rugby over football,76 pretending to know what an aga was, and attempting to pass off my hand-me-down clothing as retro and vintage. In effect, I was always playing catch up, caught between two worlds. In the Forest, I was seen as someone born with a silver spoon, and at University, as a little ‘rough-and-ready’.

Being caught between two worlds like this has allowed me to adopt a great position for the analysis of Free Miners. Much like Desmond in his analysis of Firefighters in the US, I was caught somewhere between native and alien (2007). Native in the sense of my upbringing and belonging to the Forest of Dean, and alien, in that my cultural capital created a natural barrier between myself and the Free Miners. Much like in Armstrong’s (1998) study of Sheffield United football hooliganism, his support for Sheffield United allowed him to integrate with the ‘firm’ because of a possession of the correct cultural capital. Such relationships for the researcher can be categorised as ‘marginal native’. In effect, I shared similar traits with the Free Miners in terms of my rural and classed upbringing and yet remained distant through aspects of cultural capital. Such a position proved vital with regard to accessing the field and the ability to interpret and understand subtle forms of behaviour that would remain invisible to the outsider (Agar, 1980). In relation to Bourdieu’s axis of capital, the Free

75 These violent occurrences are often symptomatic of members of a small community returning home to flaunt their new life and wealth. In ‘Cider with Rosie’, Laurie Lee recounts a similar occurrence resulting in murder and the ‘wall of silence’ faced by police investigators. Interestingly Slad is just 20 Miles from Cinderford. 76 Football is still commonly seen as the sport of the working classes in England. However, in many areas, including the Forest of Dean rugby retains its position as a working class and ‘state school’ sport (White, 2000).

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Miners placement of value weighed heavily upon cultural capital, whereas any notion of relative economic capital was dismissed as irrelevant or even vulgar.

My particular interest in Burawoy (which led to my deductive theorising through chapters three and four) developed from my own experience working in a distribution centre in the Forest of Dean. Although not paid on piece rate, consent was managed through a distancing of shop floor managers. This led to a shop floor culture of workers attempting to out-compete each other by beating each other’s ‘loading time’, that is; the time it took to ‘load up’ a particular delivery. Although seen as a subversive act by the workers, as we often broke health and safety regulations and protocol, it nevertheless worked towards the adherence of a workgroup productivity norm, and our objective identity correlated with the aims of the firm and management. However, the objective ‘insider’ identities were cultivated through the subjective notion of class dynamics, and the fear of reprisal should management seek to impose restrictions on our ‘game’.77 Therefore, I became interested in exploring the disjuncture between the objective and subjective through notions of symbolic domination and consent engineered through labour and work practices. Bourdieu quickly became a key ally for this embrace between the objective/subjective dualism and was further explored through inductive reasoning in chapter five.

Since I had fully committed to the idea of ‘being a sociologist’ while carrying out research, I was often asked to express my own opinion on political matters and various current events. I was asked about the current situation of the Labour Party, my thoughts on the EU, the civil war in Syria the ‘problem’ of North Korea and President Trump. At first, I was unsure whether to let my thoughts be known on these issues. I thought that expressing myself would lead to some sort of contamination of the social field or at least, influence and have sway on the Miners own arguments. Dodging these types of questions, or countering with a, ‘I’m not sure, what do you think?’ Quickly led down a dead end street. Instead, encouraged by my supervisor, I began to answer their questions openly. After that, the only time I dodged a question was when Dan and James asked me about the position of women as Free Miners. With John sitting in silence waiting for my response, I sensed a tension that could have broken the trust, which I had done well to create. I dodged it by muttering something about it not mattering at the moment since Elaine had not taken out a gale. The research, being over, I would gladly argue the case for equal opportunity in gaining Free Mining status. This acted to increase my ‘otherness’ in relation to the miners, but I believe it had a positive impact on drawing out their own honest opinions and developing a mutual respect and rapport.

By my last day, I felt quite at home with the Free Miners, and I thought them of me. I had worked underground with them, extracted coal, fitted sprags, cut timber and drank cider with them. On my last day Steve turned and said, “Well good luck with the writing Joe. It’s just a shame really. We’d have you back down ‘ere, but

77 Akerlof and Kranton (2005) explain that production is enhanced within a firm when an individual’s identity correlates with that of the firm. They argue that differential payment structures should be awarded based on the individuals identity; which gives them different levels of motivation for work.

148 you’ll never be a free miner ‘course. You should ‘ave a word with your parents; maybe they can do something about it” (30/04/2017). Here Steve joked about me not being born in the Forest of Dean, and therefore unable to become a Free Miner. I had started my ethnography worried that the distinction in class would be the single hardest thing to overcome, but it wasn’t. I had always considered myself a Forester, but in the eyes of the Free Miners, I wasn’t and could never be, no matter how hard I worked. For the Free Miners, the distinction in where you are born; inside or outside the Hundred is framed as more important than class. While class, of course, cuts across this distinction it remains that custom and law, access to the FMA frames the Free Miners outlook, of which class cannot be separated.

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Appendix 6

Future of Free Mining; Action Plan

Source: Forester’s Forest. 2016. Heritage Lottery Funded Landscape Partnership programme. [Accessed Online] on 06/05/2017. Available at: https://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/heritage-lottery-fund_landscape- partnership_forest-of-dean.pdf/$file/heritage-lottery-fund_landscape-partnership_forest-of-dean.pdf.

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Appendix 7

A Counterfactual

This thesis remains implicitly gendered. This is both the result of the FMA’s current stand against the adoption of female Free Miners and my own inability to have taken steps towards an ethnography of the community in the Forest of Dean. Limited by time, it was unrealistic to have conducted more ethnographic work in the Forest of Dean that went beyond the strict permutations of the coalface. As the thesis developed and I began to inductively adopt a relational view of labour practices, more emphasis was placed on the reproduction and legitimation of such practices in the community. The blurring of the boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘life’ for the Free Miners necessitates an understanding of the ‘life’ or ‘home’ which includes the domestic labour of the household. This is not to say that the wives and girlfriends of the Free Miners are bound by domesticity, but that the household may have been reduced to units of production and consumption. This has been hinted at through the use of informal markets. Giving voice to community members would have enhanced the thesis to achieve a more nuanced and complete picture of how residents of the Hundred construct value and meaning within the community.

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