26th June 1996 : Column 267 Unemployment carries further costs in stress, increased sickness, marriage break-up, crime and drug-taking and it is no good denying that there is a connection between crime and unemployment.

Everybody should have an opportunity to work, everybody should have a right to work and everybody should have a right to the dignity of earning a living. We could deliver that and save at least
£5 billion a year.

The Bill states that the state should become the employer of last resort and should offer work to anybody who has no other work.

That idea is not new. It was first introduced in the House in 1911 by Keir Hardie, who by that time was not top of the pops in the Labour party. A rehash of the Keir Hardie Bill was introduced again by a Member of Parliament named Enoch Edwards in 1912.

A commemorative brass Miners’ association badge/check issued by the North Staffordshire Miners’ Federation c.1912 This brass check or badge is exceptional in its design. Most circular Miners’ Association checks are normally in the order of 32 mm in diameter and 1 mm thick. The piece illustrated is comparatively much larger at 38 mm diameter and 2.5 mm thick. It also has an embossed circular border on its reverse that is relatively uncharacteristic for such issues, apart from the two usual holes at the check’s edge, which were used for sewing it onto the owner’s jacket lapel or cap.

The Minimum Wage

After many meetings and joint meetings (which some coal owners refused to attend) Ministers had also been making heavy weather with the coal owners not only the three day Joint Meetings, but also the separate discussions with employers, had failed to bring a settlement. Accordingly when the miner’s conference reassembled on 15th March it heard of the complete breakdown of the negotiations. “We have had a lengthy day at the Foreign Office” reported Enoch Edwards, “and it has not been a joint meeting between the owners and us, it has simply been your committee with representatives from the Government. They have abandoned any hope of ever coming to an agreement with the employers. We have worked hard and deserve better success but it is the lot of people sometimes to fall short of their deserts. Mr. Asquith has told us that they shall bring in a Bill to compel the owners to pay a “minimum wage.”

On 21st March the Bill went through the various stages and on the 26th March was defeated. It then went to the House of Lords where minor amendments were made and accepted by the Commons and the Bill became law on 29th March . The miner’s conference recognised their mandate had been exhausted and passed a resolution of thanks to the Labour Party “for the great help they have rendered” and decided that a ballot vote of the men be taken with the upmost speed on whether or not to go on with the strike.

The miners generally believed that they had been tricked. The new law gave no more; they felt than had already been conceded in the English coal field. This was also the opinion voiced by some socialist leaders.

Politically there was revulsion of feeling against the Liberals, for whom a majority of the workers had voted fifteen months earlier. Abroad, the leaders of the continental unions were perplexed at the issue. From Paris Lenin commented; The Government pretended to be neutral, intervened in the negotiations between the workers and capitalists, pretended to yield to the workers, secured the recognition in Parliament of the principle of the minimum wage, but, as a matter of fact, took the side of Capital and did not do anything to secure this minimum wage.

During the whole of the negotiations for the minimum wage (5s a day for adults 2s a day for boys) and during the strike, Enoch Edwards, though far from well had remained at his post. But the strain and the overwork had broken him: and after an illness of some weeks he died on 28th June 1912.

The delegates to the Twenty-third Conference of the International Miners’ Federation on 15th July paid tribute to his memory. Robert Smillie said; To Mr. Edwards more than anyone else living today, or anyone connected to or has been connected with the Federation, is due the fact that the miners have been for some time now, absolutely solidly organised together in one body. To him is due the fact that what at one time were warring branches, who had the same interest at stake, were drawn together.

Persons holding extreme views, in all probability, however honest and anxious they might be to establish a great ideal, might through their very extreme views prevent them getting very far in that direction; but Mr. Edwards had a desire to see the whole mining movement of Great Britain carried forward together under one banner, and he had that peculiar temperament which could overlook to a great degree the extreme views of others, and could work for the purpose of unity. It was due to a great extent to him that we became united North, South, East, and West under one common banner in the Federation of all miners of the country.

At the Conciliation Board on 15th July, the employers’ Chairman said of Enoch Edwards that “there has never been an unpleasant word uttered by him at any of the meetings. He has taken up his own side and advocated it, I need not say with great ability, but he has never put matters in such a way that anyone could go away from the meeting and feel he had acted harshly or unkindly in any way. He has been conspicuous by his ability and by his moderation, and by his trying to look at both sides of the question.”

Ashton, who had worked with him over a third of a century, wrote in his record that: Mr. Edwards had no enemies. He was respected by all men and women who knew him.

He was a leader that the men he represented might trust as being honest, straightforward and reliable in debate and advocacy of their cause. He was a true and faithful comrade and trustworthy colleague.