SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FIFTH SERIES VOLUME 12 Mid and East Lothian Miners’Association A miner, name and date unknown, at Arniston, Midlothian. (Courtesy of National Museums of Scotland, Scottish Life Archive.) Mid and East Lothian Miners’ Association Minutes 1894-1918 edited by Ian MacDougaU EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by LOTHIAN PRINT, EDINBURGH 2003 © Scottish History Society 2003 The date of 1999 on the spine refers to the nominal year in the Society’s annual series of publications. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-906245-21-4 Printed in Great Britain \ 2004 „ CONTENTS Illustrations vi Preface vii Abbreviations viii INTRODUCTION 1 MINERS’ MINUTES 1. Minutes, 1894-1901 34 2. Minutes, 1910-1911 120 3. Minutes, 1912-1913 191 4. Minutes, 1914-1915 269 5. Minutes, 1916-1918 327 6. Notes to minutes, 1894-1918 414 APPENDICES A. Rules of the Mid and East Lothian Miners’Association, 1889 425 B. Coal Mines Checkweighers Bill, 1897 429 INDEX 430 vi ILLUSTRATIONS l.A miner, name and date unknown, at Arniston, Midlothian. Frontispiece 2. Robert Brown (1848-1917), secretary, 1891-1917, Mid and East Lothian Miners’Association. Page 12 3. MAP: COLLIERIES MENTIONED IN THE MINUTES Page 33 4. Miners at Tranent, n.d. Page 52 5. Underground at Lady Victoria colliery, Newtongrange, c. 1900. Page 100 6. Emily Bank, Arniston pithead, n.d. Page 125 7. Prestonlinks miners’ outing, 1912. Page 212 8. Miners being paid at Lady Victoria coUiery, Newtongrange, n.d. Page 216 9.Three miners at the coal face at Roslin coUiery, n.d. Page 312 Vll PREFACE Thanks are due to the National Union of Mineworkers (Scottish Area) for per- mission to publish these minutes. The Scottish Working People’s History Trust has been privileged to co-operate with the Scottish History Society in achiev- ing their publication, and the Trust hopes that as a contribution toward making more available and accessible the history of working men and women in Scot- land further similar volumes will result from such co-operation also in future. The Trust is glad to acknowledge the generous financial support it has received from the National Union of Mineworkers (Scotland Area), East Lothian Council, Midlothian Council, Coal Industry Social Welfare Organi- sation, Musselburgh Miners’ Charitable Society, Mayfield and Easthouses Re- tired Miners, Danderhall and Newton Village Community Association and Social Club,Thompsons (Solicitors), and UNISON, Midlothian Branch. Particular thanks are also due to Dr Julian Goodare, Honorary Publication Secretary of the Scottish History Society, for his patience, expertise and practical support at all stages of the preparation of the volume. Among librarians, archi- vists, curators, and others to whom thanks are due are Iain Maciver, Keeper of Manuscripts, and his colleagues in the National Library of Scotland, Fiona Myles, Ian Nelson, and their colleagues in the Scottish, Edinburgh, and Reference de- partments of Edinburgh City Libraries, Alan Reid, Chief Librarian, and Marion Richardson, Ruth Calvert and Neil Macvicar of Midlothian Libraries,Veronica Wallace and Chris Roberts, East Lothian Libraries, Kirsty Lingstadt, former cu- rator, George Archibald, and their colleagues at the Scottish Mining Museum, Newtongrange, David Smith, Dalkeith,Tommy Kerr, Gorebridge, and Professor W Hamish Fraser, Dr John McKay and Dr Tom Johnston of the Scottish Work- ing People’s History Trust. Doris Williamson skilfully typed the edited manu- script and George Mudie no less skilfully transformed my crude sketches into the printed map. My wife Sandra bore as patiently as ever the turmoil of the work in progress. Whatever sins of omission or commission may remain in the pages below are to be blamed on me alone. I. MacD. Edinburgh September 2003 Vlll ABBREVIATIONS AP Annual Proceedings. Arnot MS R. Page Arnot, MS of his A History of The Scottish Miners (London, 1955), in NLS MSS Acc. 10812/1. EC Executive Committee. MELMA Mid and East Lothian Miners’ Association. MFGB Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. NAS National Archives of Scotland. NLS National Library of Scotland. NUSMW National Union of Scottish Mine Workers. SMF Scottish Miners’ Federation. STUC Scottish Trades Union Congress. TUC Trades Union Congress. INTRODUCTION The minutes presented in this volume are beUeved to be the first of any trade union in Scotland to be published in full. They are among the earliest known surviving minutes of any Scots miners’ union and are the earhest surviving of any such county union. Deposited in the National Library of Scodand more than thirty years ago by the National Union ofMineworkers (Scottish Area), when the Union was clos- ing its district offices in the Lothians, Fife, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, the minutes of the Board of the Mid and East Lothian Miners’Association survive for half a century from 1894, except for one gap.Those in the pages below run from May 1894 to August 1901 and then from May 1910 to November 1918.The minutes for the intervening period between September 1901 and April 1910 had been missing, presumed lost or destroyed, long before deposit of the others in the National Library in 1967. Also missing by then were the minutes for the five years between 1889, when the Association was founded, and May 1894.1 The first minutes below are therefore of meetings held on the eve of the first great national strike by Scots miners from June to October 1894; the last are of an adjourned meeting held the day after the Great War of 1914-18 ended. The minutes covering the years between these two historic events contain references to many other contemporary aspects of economic, social, industrial, political and labour history. The manuscript minutes presented in edited form below are contained in 1 The other minutes of the Board of the Association in the National Library ofScotland (henceforth NLS), Acc.4312.9-.24, run without further gaps from Dec. 1918 to Dec. 1943, after which the Mid and East Lothian Association, along with the then other five Scots miners’ county unions, was merged into a single union for Scotland—the National Union of Scottish Mine Workers (NUSMW).The latter in turn merged in 1945 into the National Union ofMineworkers and became its Scottish Area. NLS also has the minutes ofWest Lothian miners’ union, 1899-1914 and 1920-46 (Acc. 4312.2-.5), Fife and Kinross Miners’Association, 1901-13 (Dep. 304.1-.3), Lanarkshire Miners’ County Union, 1902-45 (Dep.227.25-.80), Ayrshire miners’union, 1926-45 (Dep. 258.1-.4),as well as those of the Scottish Miners’Federation from 27 Dec. 1894 to 8 Aug. 1907 (Acc.4312.9-.21),and, 1915-44,ofits successor as a federation, the National Union of Scottish Mine Workers (Dep. 227.84-.97). In addi- tion, NLS has the minutes and other records of the United Engine Keepers’ Mutual Protection Asso- ciation ofScotland (retitled from 1912 the Scottish Colliery Enginemen and Boilermen’sAssociation and from 1934 the Scottish Colliery Enginemen, Boilermen and Tradesmen’s Association) and of several of its branches, from June 1877 to Mar. 1955 (Acc. 4570.1-.46).The oldest known surviving minutes of any Scots coal-hewers’ union are those from Apr. 1890 to Dec. 1894 of Larkhall Miners’ Association, preserved in NLS,MSS.8023-5,but from which the minutes between 22 June 1891 and 24 Oct. 1893 are missing. 2 MID AND EAST LOTHIAN MINERS’ASSOCIATION three bound volumes. The first of these runs from 17 May 1894 to 19 August 1901, the second from 14 May 1910 to 27 December 1913, and the third from 8 January 1914 to 12 November 1918. The minutes were legibly written by Robert Brown, secretary of the Association, and, after Brown s death in office at the end of 1917, by Joseph Young, his successor as secretary. The minutes of 20 November 1916 are printed and are pinned into the minute book, Brown pre- sumably having had no time to write them in. It had been agreed on the sugges- tion ofWallyford branch in April 1911 that a printed abstract of the proceedings at Board meetings should be issued to branches, and the minutes of 20 Novem- ber 1916 are No. 69 in that series. A few other such printed abstracts survive in the Association’s archive in the National Library of Scodand for three of the years covered by these minutes below.2 Reports or briefings given to the press by Robert Brown (and probably in 1918 by his successor Joseph Young) after many of the Association’s meetings in the period of these minutes were often published in two local weekly newspa- pers, the Dalkeith Advertiser and the Haddingtonshire Courier. These press reports sometimes provide information additional to that in the minutes themselves— such as the number of hours meetings lasted, and fists of those branches of the Association represented by their delegates at its Board meetings. A shortcoming of the minutes is the often summary character of their content.Thus they often exemplify the conflict of interest between the brevity aimed at by the minute secretary and the more detailed discussion and explanation sought by the histo- rian and the general reader. No other records of the Mid and East Lothian Miners’Association are known to survive, except for two editions of its rules—one dated 1889, the other 1931— and minutes, 1940-5, of one of its branches.3 It is not the rules dated 1889 that confirm the foundation of the Association in that year (for the rules say nothing about its foundation), but reports in the local press. What was intended, according to the Dalkeith Advertiser, to be a mass meeting of Mid and East Lothian miners on Thursday afternoon, 18 July 1889, at the Foresters’ Hall, Dalkeith, in fact began with only 200 present.