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How miners took a left turn in Derbyshire
Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album
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The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer
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Changing Derbyshire NUM
by Malcolm Ball
(Leen Editions, £N/A)
IN 1944, British miners took the huge step of moving from being part of the federal structure of the Miners Federation of Great Britain. They became part of a national union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and this meant that the Derbyshire Miners Association became the Derbyshire Area of the NUM.
Derbyshire had always been seen as a moderate area, likely to side with the other right-wing regions which made up a clear majority on the union’s ruling body. But by the general election of 1970, alongside areas such as Scotland, Wales and Kent, it had clearly moved to the left and Malcolm Ball's book discusses the national and regional circumstances which brought this political change about.
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