In December 2019, the British Labour Party suffered a cataclysmic defeat in a General Election that led to a Conservative Party majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons. A significant aspect of the election result was the defeat of candidates in former coal mining districts in places like Bolsover, Mansfield, Leigh, Blyth Valley and Wrexham, that had retuned Labour Members of Parliament for much of the previous hundred years. The immediate aftermath of the election led to much debate within the movement of the causes and consequences of the collapse of the Labour vote in what were widely perceived as “traditional working class” localities. Martyn Ives provides a reflective, analytical, and empirically grounded study of the tumultuous year of 1919, another significant period for the politics of the Miners Federation of Great Britain (mfgb), the wider labour movement, and future development of social democratic politics. This is a substantial and expansive work drawing on national mfgb records, the papers of district coal mining unions, and an extensive array of local newspapers and related sources. It has a sweeping focus that explores the high politics of government policy and trade unionism and the micro-politics of a range of British coal communities.
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