Coal strike left townsfolk queuing out in the cold
WHILE textiles has always dominated Rochdale industry, in the early 20th Century coal mining also played an important part in the town’s economy.
And the years before the First World War were marked by outbreaks of intense industrial unrest, which had a major impact on the lives of Rochdalians.
On March 2, 1912, the Rochdale Observer reported on a demand from the Miners’ Federation for a national minimum wage describing it as ‘The most far-reaching industrial trouble in our national history’.
When coal owners refused to meet for negotiations strike notices were issued and by the beginning of March more than a million miners had stopped work.
“Rochdale’s two main collieries, Butterworth Hall, employing about 200 men, and Jubilee Colliery, also with about 200 on the payroll, were soon idle.
Only Waterloo pit in Buckley Lane and Knowl Colliery at Greenbooth, both of which employed non-union labour, remained in operation.
The Observer reported how the strike brought hardship to the local community as ‘the difficulties of poor folk in securing fuel grow more acute daily’.
At the gasworks in Dane Street coke was still being supplied cheaply to the public, but in such small quantities that up 3,000 people were queuing daily.
When the Miners’ Fed- eration returned to work on April 6, still without a satisfactory definition of their ‘minimum wage’, there was said to be widespread relief.
In Rochdale the mills, engineering works, ironworks, gasworks and daily life returned to normal.