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PATRIOTISM ON TRIAL: THE STRIKE OF THE SOUTH WALES MINERS, JULY 1915 In July 1915, the miners of south Wales came out on strike, even though the country was at war. This provoked widespread criticism of their patriotism. Paradoxically, however, the miners were intensely and justifiably proud of their patriotism, and were frequently praised for their sacrifices on behalf of the war effort. Indeed, it is possible to argue that their strike, far from being unpatriotic, was due to an excess of patriotism which, in the emotion-charged atmosphere of wartime, needed official acknowledgement and reward. The miners went on strike to achieve the higher wages that would be a badge of patriotism, and which would advertise to the country at large the vital contribution which miners were making to the national cause. For almost half a century, south Wales alone had been providing the steam coal on which the Royal Navy depended. Experiments and debates in the 1860s and '70s had persuaded the naval authorities to rely totally on Welsh coal, which generated more steam power than other coals, left little clinker, and had the great tactical boon of being relatively smokeless. Any disruption of the coal supply by strike-action, therefore, could be stigmatized as unpatriotic; hence the strictures which the miners of south Wales habitually attracted from press and parliament whenever they had recourse to a strike. The first notable stoppage involving the entire south Wales coalfield occurred in 1875. However, it did not succeed, and the miners of the region subsequently splintered into twenty-four small and autonomous districts, each jealous of its peculiar independence and status. As a further consequence of the strike, earnings were henceforth regulated by a 'sliding scale', which raised or lowered wages in relation to the average selling price of coal. This controlled system of industrial relations was associated with the acknowledged leader of the south Wales miners, William Abraham, known as Mabon, who was rooted in the Welsh Nonconformist religious and cultural tradition, a Liberal in politics, and 1 M.H., 'Welsh Coal and the Navy', Welsh Outlook, March 1916, pp. 98-99; E. D. Lewis, The Rhondda Valleys: A Study in Industrial Development, 1800 to the Present Day (1959), p. 136; J. E. Vincent, John Nixon, Pioneer of the Steam Coal Trade in South Wales: A Memoir (1900), pp. 123ff, 143.