Miners' Federation of Great Britain
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was established after a meeting of local mining trade unions in Newport, Wales in 1888. The federation was formed to represent and co-ordinate the affairs of local and regional miners' unions in England, Scotland and Wales whose associations remained largely autonomous. At its peak, the federation represented nearly one million workers. It was reorganised into the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945.
Founding conference and membership
In 1888 after colliery owners rejected a call for a pay rise from the Yorkshire Miners' Association, several conferences were organised to discuss the possibility of forming a national union. At the conference held in the Temperance Hall in Newport, South Wales in November 1889, the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was formed. Benjamin Pickard of the Yorkshire Miners' Association was elected president and Sam Woods of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation (LCMF) its vice-president. Enoch Edwards from the Midland Counties Miners' Federation was its first treasurer and Thomas Ashton, also from the LCMF, its first secretary. Keir Hardie was one of the Scottish delegates at the conference. At the inaugural meeting it was agreed to raise funds to carry on the federation's business, to protect miners by taking an interest in trade and wages, secure legislation and call conferences to discuss matters.
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This entry incorporates text from “Miners' Federation of Great Britain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.