2:32pm Friday 29th January 2010
By Mark Summers
THE pit village of Chopwell is still referred to by people as Little Moscow because in its heyday the miners there were said to be ardent supporters of communism.
Even today the community, which is now within the boundaries of Gateshead rather than County Durham, has its Marx Terrace and Lenin Terrace.
Newspaper reports talked of the “reddest village in England’’ where there was a communist Sunday school.
Even the village football team tried to get in on the act by calling itself Chopwell Soviets only to be refused registration by Durham FA.
But according to a Durhamborn academic, the tag was probably only justified in the figurative sense rather than indicating a village where hewers and putters finished a shift and went home to grapple with dialectics.
Dr Hester Barron, who attended Durham Johnston School and is now a history lecturer at Sussex University, carried out an in-depth study of life in the Durham Coalfield during the 1926 Lockout that sparked the General Strike of that year.
Her doctoral thesis, which has been published as The 1926 Miners’ Lockout: Meanings of Community in the Durham Coalfield by Oxford Historical Monographs, shows that the pit villages of the day were home to important differences of opinion and attitudes that ultimately came second to a feeling of solidarity to the local community and the union and the shared struggle for a decent way of life.
Dr Barron quotes one old miner saying that the title Little Moscow “was never justified.
We never knew anybody that was Reds in the village, nobody preaching communism or anything like that.
“It was really because Chopwell lodge (of the Durham Miners’ Association) was a lodge which fought for every privilege they could get in the pits.’’ The lockout began at the end of April 1926 with a demand that miners throughout the country accept a cut in wages and a longer working day, the owners’ response to a downturn in export trade following Britain’s return to the Gold Standard.
In Durham, the longer working day would have an impact on the hewers, the elite colliery workers, who enjoyed shifts of six-and-a-half hours.
The strike garnered neartotal support in Durham, perhaps because many of its communities were so dominated by mining to a greater extent than many places in other parts of the country.
The Labour Party had become the dominant political party but miners, even resolute union men, might not automatically support it as might be supposed.
Some held Conservative views – two of the county’s 11 seats were held by Tories – and local Conservative clubs “demonstrated their active support of the miners and enthusiastically involved themselves in workers’ sports and activities, often in aid of strikers’ funds”.
Barnard Castle Tory MP Cuthbert Headlam was “nonplussed”
when he addressed a meeting at Cornsay, near Consett, that “closed with the singing of the Red Flag and an appeal to me to give a subscription to the Cornsay Colliery FC.
What strange people they are”.
There were instances of miners applying to be special constables during the strike and coal owners often gave aid during the dispute, such as food for striking miners’ children and strikers were able to take coal to heat their homes.
But solidarity did not prevent some miners from stealing from their own when things got bad.
Dr Barron said: “As well as solidarity, there is also falseness and victimisation and people stealing from one another.
“That makes it more of an achievement that people maintained solidarity and maintained decent values.’’ Miners’ wives played a crucial role in supporting their families and their men during the dispute, and Dr Barron says they were more than the stereotype image of a wife nagging her husband to go back to work or the pillar of the community.
“The truth is there are all sorts of women and these two stereotypes and all sorts in between.
Generally, women tended to support the strike and its aims.’’ She said that the wives of men who did break the strike – few in the Durham coalfield sought the mantle of hated blackleg – faced ostracism just as their spouses did.
Dr Barron, who admits that the area is “close to her heart’’, said that hers was one of the few studies done of the Durham coalfield.
“It makes sense to look at somewhere like Durham where the coalfield was the most important in Britain at the time and three out of ten men were involved in mining.
“It is an ideal area to explore class and local identity and community because of the importance of the coalfield.’’ She added that she wanted to present a more rounded picture of the community, that went beyond romanticised images often associated with pit communities.
The 1926 Miners’ Lockout: Meanings of Community in the Durham Coalfield is published by Oxford University Press and costs £65. For details, visit http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199575046.do.
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