A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



Hepburn's union found a successor about 1841 in the Miners' Associa- 

 tion of Great Britain and Ireland, and after 1842 the grievances of the 

 miners as to defective steelyards and falling wages caused it to expand with 

 great rapidity. Miners' leaders were now seldom attacked in the law courts 

 as the union had no unlawful oaths, but the law of ' master and servant ' then 

 in force caused individual workmen to be liable to imprisonment for quite 

 technical offences. Martin Jude was the great leader of this revival, and the 

 men found an able legal defender in W. T. Roberts, a chartist lawyer, who 

 had far more ability than the employers' advocates, and even fewer scruples. 

 In 1844 the Miners' Association appointed Roberts to be their standing legal 

 adviser at a salary of a 1,000 a year. The ' miners' attorney-general,' as 

 he was called, earned his money, even to the satisfaction of his critical clients. 



In April 1844 the men once more refused to renew the yearly bond 

 save on their own terms, as to more convenient payment of wages, better 

 inspection of mines, and a juster system of weighing. Many of the com- 

 plaints are highly technical, but were not less real on that account. Henry 

 Clay, the famous American politician, is stated to have maintained that the 

 only true solution of the labour problem was for the capitalist to own the 

 labourer, whether white or black. The leading spirit among the Durham 

 mine owners was Lord Londonderry, who was also lord-lieutenant of the 

 county. Probably he and his friends would have denied that their insistence 

 on the bond and their objections to trade-unions were at all akin to Clay's 

 doctrine, but in every part of England the capitalists and employers looked 

 with suspicion upon any attempt of their workmen to assert their indepen- 

 dence. The town of Seaham was practically the creation of Lord London- 

 derry, and there is an account of a curious proclamation by him printed in 

 the Northern Star of July 6 and 27, 1844, in which he threatens severe dis- 

 pleasure to all the shopkeepers of Seaham, who by giving credit to his late 

 pitmen assist in prolonging a hopeless and injurious strike. 



Soon the miners' sufferings were increased by eviction from many of the 

 colliery houses, and in some cases the workhouse was closed against the 

 women and children of the strikers. Many of the owners imported out- 

 side workmen, and at last the strike collapsed. Not all the revolted work- 

 men could obtain work even on humiliating terms, and it is not surprising 

 that the imported workmen received such hard treatment that in the end 

 most of them left the county. The leaders of the late strike, however, 

 were as usual marked men, and the union all but disappeared for a time. 



Although the strike had failed Martin Jude found a useful Parlia- 

 mentary ally in Slingsby Duncombe, M.P. for Finsbury. On 30 June, 

 1847, the latter brought in his bill for the better regulation of mines and 

 collieries, and although this bill was withdrawn the subject was never allowed 

 to drop. To carry the bill a fresh organization of the Miners' Union took 

 place, but its progress was delayed for a time by the ravages of cholera and 

 by the fact that for a miner to belong to a union was to court dismissal from 

 his work. In 1850 the Mines Regulation Act was passed, but the report 

 of the first inspector sent into the northern counties was bitterly attacked by 

 Jude, who maintained, probably not altogether incorrectly, that the inspector 

 had obtained his information solely from the colliery agents, and that it was 

 therefore one-sided. 



248 



