Improving Safety

The Scottish miners’ central goal was economic security. An important generational element was involved in its pursuit. The Village Pit generation saw nationalisation as deliverance from the evils of private ownership. The New Mine generation was simultaneously more critical of nationalisation and willing to engage with its joint consultative features. Nationalisation was dynamic and the New Mine generation shaped it to fit the security needs of miners and their communities. Generational differences were highlighted during the Second World War. The Scottish coalfield politics of the Home Front were complex, involving Communism and the strategic interests of the Soviet Union. Whereas the Village Pit generation opposed unofficial strikes, these involved and were led by the New Mine generation, who saw them as evidence of powerful workplace and community anger that could be mobilised in pursuit of collective security. In the 1950s New Mine generation miners were more assertive in their defence of the coalfield moral economy. Their actions at workplace level placed significant limits on the managerial sovereignty of NCB officials.