[Mother] Jones had been declared The Most Dangerous Woman in America. ibid.
Union organisers were blacklisted and beaten. ibid.
The West Virginian mine wars were part of a broader conflict between the forces of labour and the forces of capital. A struggle that claimed the lives of thousands of American workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; thousands more were beaten, maimed, imprisoned, tortured and sent to early graves due to poor working conditions and dismal safety standards. ibid.
Day of Blood at Lattimer! Lower End Mine Strike Takes a Terrible Turn … They fire on Marching Strikers with Terrible Effect … Deputies Use Rifles! … 16 killed 70 wounded. Plutocracy II: Solidarity Forever, 2016, Mother Jones, newspaper report
It were 1920 in the south-west field and things was tough. The miners were trying to bring the union to West Virginia, and the coal operators and their gun thugs were set on keeping ’em out. Matewan ***** 1987 starring Chris Cooper & James Earl Jones & Mary McDonnell & Will Oldham & David Strathairn & Ken Jenkins & Gordon Clapp & Bob Gunton & John Mostel & Kevin Tighe & John Sayles et al, director John Sayles
We did it, Mamma. We’re going to have the union. ibid. miner
You don’t want to go there, mister. Ain’t nuttin’ but crazy people. ibid. train guard
These picks and shovels are to be considered a loan from the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Their cost will be deducted from the first month’s pay. ibid. company man
I was with the Wobblies. ibid. Convenor
If you stand alone, you’re just so much shit to those people. ibid.
You work, they don’t: that’s all you got to know about the enemy. ibid.
The union didn’t have too much it could give to the people back then. All we got in common is our misery. ibid. commentary
A new day coming: sometimes I could just about see it. But it were a dangerous living for a union man and you didn’t dare turn you back. It was hard time. It was hungry times too. The union relief was spread thin, and hope of a new day could feed your soul but leave your belly rumbling. ibid.
A key piece of The Road to Wigan Pier is Orwell’s trip down a mine. George Orwell: A Life in Pictures, BBC 2003
In the summer of 1917, World War I was raging and the Queen of the Copper camps, Bisbee, Arizona, was crucial to the war effort. Copper was essential for munitions, and the mining companies were making record profits.
The miners, many of them immigrants, grew tired of the unsafe working conditions, imbalance of power and the discrimination they faced in the camp.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) seized upon this opportunity and came to Bisbee, to radicalize the workers and help cripple the war effort.
The IWW called a strike and the townspeople were forced to choose between the strikers and the mining companies.
Then on July 12 1917 a posse of two thousand men, led by Sheriff Harry Wheeler, rounded up the strikers at gunpoint, threw them onto cattle cars and shipped them to the barren desert of New Mexico, leaving them to die.
This event came to be known as the Bisbee Deportation. Bisbee ’17, captions, 2018
Thank you for riding the deportation express. ibid. coach tour
The Bisbee deportations seemed to disappear from the town’s history. The story was rarely told or mentioned. ibid.
Arizona’s Superstition mountains have been a magnet for generations of adventurers and treasure hunters. Many who come to the mountains seeking riches never return. In 1860 a miner called the Dutchman staggered out of the mountains more dead than alive. Something kept him going when others would have given up. He had been tortured by Indians and seen his partner murdered. For days he had travelled alone under the blazing sun. What was the secret that gave him the strength to survive? It was treasure. Great nuggets of gold. The Dutchman said he’d found a mine full of it. In Search of … s2e1: The Lost Dutchman Mine, History 1977
Mrs Thatcher came to power on a promise to middle England. But she saw one big obstacle in the way … How she dismantled it: the cunning, the ruthlessness as she weaponised the police. And the killer instinct … Thatcher vs the Miners. Mrs Thatcher vs The Miners: The Battle for Britain, Channel 5 2021
Thatcher watched on as Ted Heath made a fatal mistake. Heath called an election on the question, Who runs Britain – the Tory government or the Miners? Heath lost. ibid.
‘Scargill and Thatcher deserved each other; absolutely no-one else deserved either of them.’ ibid. Neil Kinnock
Spurred on by his first brush with Thatcher, Scargill demanded a pay rise for his miners towards the end of 1983. The government refused. So the miners stopped working overtime. But Scargill had miscalculated Thatcher’s determination to stand firm. And on March 6th 1984 when news leaked out that Cortonwood colliery in Yorkshire would be shut down, and the men would all lose their jobs, Scargill was taken by complete surprise. The men walked out on strike immediately. A few days later, it was announced that another twenty pits would close with 20,000 job losses. Caught off guard, Scargill went for the kill and called for a national strike. ibid.
When the men walked out of the collieries, Scargill didn’t call a national vote. This was his next big mistake. ibid.
On March 12 1984 Scargill’s call for action resulted in almost 165,000 men downing tools and walking out on strike. Over 35,000 others remained at work. ibid.
Those on strike had nothing; they weren’t entitled to benefits. Families were really struggling. ibid.
One thing Thatcher did underestimate was their resilience. ibid.
The Christmas bonus really worked, and it became clear that the strike was nearing its end game. ibid.
In most cultures where there are coal miners, middle-class people and above think they’re animals. Literally. And treat them that way. The Mine Wars, PBS 2016
Strangers rarely found their way into the coal camps of West Virginia. So when a matronly older woman walked into a camp one Fall morning in 1901 the local store keeper was curious … She was the notorious Mother Jones there to convince the coal miners in the region to join her union – United Mine Workers of America. ibid.
Miners in southern West-Virginia had been beaten down by the mine owners. ibid.
The largest armed insurrection since the civil war … A blood-soaked war zone. ibid.
Nearly three quarters of a million men across the country spent ten or twelve hours a day in coal mines. ibid.
There were no elected officials, no independent police forces. ibid.
They forced mining families to shop exclusively at the company store. ibid.
Thousands of West Virginia miners decided to stand with the strikers in Pennsylvania and to fight for their own rights. ibid.
[Justus] Collins like all the West Virginia coal operators saw himself as a man under siege. ibid.
Now suppose a corporation engages in illegal activity while operating a coal mine. And that illegal activity leads to the death of 29 of its workers.
Here’s another sure bet – that corporation will not be convicted of a crime. And it will not be punished.
The reality is that we live in a two-tier criminal justice system in America, with one level for corporations and one for living, breathing humans.
It’s a system that undermines deterrence and allows corporate criminals to inflict their damage – pollution, corruption, fraud, worker and consumer injury and death – unchecked.
The coal mine corporation is a real one, Massey Energy. In April 2010, a huge explosion at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia killed 29 workers. Reuters online article Russell Mokhiber 30th April 2013
Illegal gold-mining is actually one of the main drivers of deforestation in Colombia. Colombia with Simon Reeve, BBC 2017
In north-east India they are mining coal so fast that fires are burning out of control underground. 70% of India’s electricity comes from coal. Environmentalists including many in India say the country cannot develop on coal the way the West did. What the Green Movement Got Wrong, Channel 4 2010
Cobalt: it was an essential component in all new digital machines … and its price around the world was soaring … All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace III: The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine, BBC 2011
For almost eighty years the Congo had been ruled by Belgium. But in 1960 it became independent. Its first prime minister was Patrice Lamumba. He held out a heroic vision of a new independent Africa. But the country was completely unprepared for self-government. Within weeks it collapsed into chaos. The Congo was central to the modern world, because hidden in its forests were an extraordinary range of minerals … The old colonial towns now became battlegrounds where rebels and soldiers loyal to Lamumba fought for control of the mines. ibid.