John Flanagan, "Workplace protest and popular politics on the Durham coalfield, 1844-1869."

Nationally, this period is seen as part of the 'age of equipoise', when labour relations were free from major controversy and antagonism. Regionally too this view holds sway [R. Fynes: The Miners of Northumberland and Durham (1873); R. Colls: The Pitmen of the Northern Coalfield (1987); H. Beynon & T. Austrin: Masters and Servants(1994)]. My undergraduate dissertation suggested, however, that the Durham miners continued to be active: strikes, union activity, and militancy were frequent and played an important part in the coal communities' political and social life.

The events in Fynes' history are infuriatingly oblique and at times selective. However, by focussing on the impressions of the coal owners, a picture emerges of strikes and widespread unrest from 1853-1864. The reality for the miners was that strike action brought the consequences of legal action - backed by the police if required - and further, the miners were liable to face eviction and loss of livelihood. The patterns of oppression were set in 1831, and carried through to 1854, but the miners were able to use the events as a practical template. Praxis separates the violent and unrestrained miners of 1844 from later manifestations such as Willington.

If the period from the end of the long strike to the formation of the Durham Miners' Association was not the highest of times for the union movement in Durham, then it was also one in which the employers sought to deal with the realities of an increasingly liberalised market. Worse for the employers in their intermittent struggle with the miners; by the mid 1850's all their best shots had been fired, moreover with such regularity that the miners knew of the importance of a good lawyer in the event of stopping work.