In 1923, a young miner named William Davison was killed crossing Dawdon Colliery pit yard when falling timber fractured his skull. Because his widow had never been to Newcastle before, a union official met her at the bus stop to take her to the solicitors. In the end, the union won the case but not without low blows from the owners’ side over the paternity of the Davisons’ youngest child, Willa, named for her father but born after his death. And so, case number 1702, at the behest of the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA), Willa Davison entered the world as a pensioner of the Durham Coal Owners’ Mutual Provident Association. When you get smacked on the side of the head by a swinging beam, somebody must pay and the DMA was big enough to make the world’s most powerful energy combine do so.

This story comes directly from the archives of the DMA and tells of a time when trade unions comprised about half the labour force and operated deep in the heart of working-class communities. Strikes were rare. The 1926 General Strike lasted only nine days, although the miners sat it out for another seven months. Most union business was every­day and ordinary: soup kitchens and detailed bargaining during disputes; rates for the job, pace and quality, custom and practice, accident and sickness support, legal and welfare, clubs, convalescence, children’s parties, bands and bus trips the rest of the time. The colliery lodge (branch) chairman was usually the most important man in the village. In difficult circumstances, traditions were sustained, societies were held together and a politics grew to fit. This was an achievement, not a pattern of history. 

For all of the 19th century and into the 20th, the Durham miners were led by Methodists, who became Liberals. By the time Willa’s mother caught her bus, the union was Labour, although, as Geoff Andrews points out, this was more an ‘ethos’ than a politics – a broadly based,