“Never before”, declared a delegate to the recent A.E.U.1 annual conference “has a man had to work a week to buy a pair of boots”.

This apt comment of an engineering worker, crystallises in one sentence the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the population. Never before have price increases continued so relentlessly as during the past twelve months. Never before has so much talk been wasted on the subject of price controls – and so little done. There is no need to mention the innumerable items which have increased in price. It is sufficient to say that it now takes a week’s work to buy a blanket and eight years’ wages to buy a house – if you can live on air in the meanwhile.

Since the beginning of this year, official estimates admit that the cost of living has gone up by some nine per cent, or eleven shillings a week to the average worker. Still there is no sign of respite. Wholesale prices have, in the last six months, gone up by 30 per cent. This means that, by the end of the year, the average £6 a week worker will be 30s a week worse off. To offset this, the government would have us believe that we are, on average, receiving seven shillings a week more in the pay packet. This increase, of course, exists mainly on paper. The chief beneficiaries are such people as the higher-paid civil servants, who received, not long ago, pay increases of up to £15 a week. In view of the present size of the Civil Service, this represents a not inconsiderable factor – and a great strain – on what is now termed “the national economy”.

Smash and Grab

In answer to this fantastic situation, what, it may be asked, has the trade union movement done. Mr E.F. Fryer, Chairman of the T&GWU conference held at Whitley Bay a few weeks ago, gave the answer. He urged that a policy of wage restraint was still necessary and that union members – who include 95s a week railwaymen – should not adopt a policy of “smash and grab”. The only hope he could hold out was that they would not see union members suffer "in the general wages movement which is now taking place" The conference then went on to discuss workers who were abusing sickness benefit schemes and robbing the boss.

The record of the Labour Government, in this respect, is no better. Week in and week out, senior ministers appeal to the industrial workers, "not to use the present favourable employment situation as a lever to raise their wages." With the same monotonous regularity, the President of the Board of Trade meets the barons of industry to discuss general price increases.

We know, from our own experience, that talk of price controls is useless. Despite the fact that industrial production is nearly half as much again as before the war, and exports last month reached a record figure for all time, our standard of living is deteriorating. The armament economy of the entire world is absorbing the world's wealth. This, of course, quite apart from the fact that, whenever the workers' organisations fail, as they are doing at present, to conduct at active struggle for higher wages at the expense of profits, organised capital reaps even greater dividends at the expense of wages. A glance at any issue of the "Financial Times" will show that profits have never been better than at the present time,

Fighting Machines

The only successful struggles that have been waged during recent years have been unofficial. The trade unions, integrating themselves with the state machine, and bent on getting governmental positions for their leaders, have no time or use for the dangerous road of really fighting for wage increases. The unofficial movements and committees, operating very much on syndicalist lines, have replaced the trade unions as the fighting organisations of the industrial working class.

We believe that these movements should not regard themselves as temporary "pep groups" within the trade unions, but as the workers' organisations of the future. Not only as the fighting machines for the day-to-day struggles for improved wages and conditions, but as the means of ending the profit system and the rule by one class over another. Nobody who has vested interests, as the trade union leaders have, in maintaining the triangle of employers, government officials and trade union bureaucrats can accomplish that. Only the industrial workers, in whose interests it is to end the system, will do it.

• 1 Amalgamated Engineering Union

One way of writing history is to take a social group, in one place and at one time, leaving the broad drama of great events, and treating the subject as a microcosm, letting the minutiae of humble lives interpret the greater story. In thus taking one corner of the Durham Coalfield as my subject I might as well be writing of the coalminers of Scotland, South Wales, Yorkshire or almost anywhere.

When the General Strike of 1926 ended, I lost my job in Coventry. Four weeks after the Strike I decided to go North, but at Coventry station I was told: “We can issue a ticket to Derby only. The railways are so disorganised we cannot guarantee any travel beyond that distance.” So, with three tickets and four trains, I reached Newcastle (about 185 miles) in 18 hours. The Government had boasted of their skeleton blackleg service and this was the result, even four weeks later.

From Newcastle I went to live in the small mining town of Birtley, part of the urban district of Chester-le-Street in Durham, and found and made a home in Elizabethville (though not in the Congo). Here in 1914 about 600 temporary houses, a school, church and hospital had been built for Belgian refugees, hence the title. In 1919 the refugees went home and the government locked the empty buildings and – the village was surrounded by high spiked iron railings – the heavy iron gates and refused to allow homeless people to occupy the huts. Then, in the course of three days the place was taken over, mostly by ex-soldiers and the gates removed and dropped in a brook. The police were ordered to expel the squatters who promptly formed a defence force and posted round the clock sentries. After a few months, authority decided it was better to accept the fait accompli and charge their unwelcome tenants rent – 7s. 9d. a week.

When, on May 21 1926, the national lock-out of coal miners took place, Durham had already been out for two weeks on a county issue. That and a long series of single pit strikes had left the strike fund broken (at that time each mining county in England had a separate union, linked in the Miners Federation Of Great Britain). But Durham went, with the rest, solidly into the battle.

How, then, did the miners’ families live? There was a national miners relief fund which was big, though not nearly as big as the distress it was to relieve. Durham received its share but there were 120,000 men plus wives and children to feed, clothe and shelter and most of that had to be found at home. The Guardians gave relief to the strikers but soon that was drastically curtailed. The Boards were under the control of the Minister of Health who ordered all relief to single or married able-bodied men to cease. Relief, and not very much at that, was to be given only to the wives and children.

The County Council, with a majority of miners, gave free breakfast to schoolchildren over five years of age. The same body had formed clinics for children under three. Here a fortnightly medical check of the babies was made and a weekly allowance of one pound of full-cream dried milk and a bottle of codliver oil given for each baby. Children’s clothes were sold at cost price. The garments were almost half the price the mothers would have paid in the shops and the goods were certainly superior. Most of the work of these clinics was organised locally and done by volunteers.

Then someone discovered that an Education Act allowed the Council to institute primary schools for children between three and five but without supplying the money for such a venture. So it was put to the Council that they could pass a resolution to establish primary schools for the under fives without fixing a date, then give school meals to the primary scholars. This legal hocus-pocus was carried out and the kids got their free meal quite legally.

The local co-operative, with some backing from the CWS, [Co-operative Wholesale Society] was able to give some credit to the miners’ lodges – as always. And, always, such credit was repaid weekly, from the second week of the return to work, until the whole of the debt was paid. There is a strong traditional streak of puritanism in Durham and the repayment of such debts of honour was considered not only just, but sound business – there is always a next time.

The local co-op was small, nothing like the city giants, but like many small co-ops was efficient. It owned the only large store in town and the only cinema. It had meeting rooms and a hall, a barber’s shop, a billiards saloon, allotments, a farm producing fresh meat, milk and eggs, with cottages for its labourers.

Rent did not trouble the majority as long as the strike lasted. Many lived in coal companies’ houses and a rent strike was automatic. Any attempt at eviction would have been met by a thousand-strong picket. Coal was got by searching the waste heaps which, like young mountains, adorn the coalfield scene.

There was recreation, too. There were village fiestas, without the feasting. A procession led by at least one excellent brass band, a meeting, a sports day with athletic events for children and adults (first prize, a bar of chocolate) and, in the evening, an open-air dance or a concert. There were ladies’ football matches and comic football matches between teams of boisterous clowns and comic boxing shows – at times everything comic. But frequent meetings were important too, for they served the part of a Press.

Rival to the silver bands, some well known, were the bazooka bands, the “bazooka” [kazoo] being a sixpenny instrument one hummed into. About 40 of these, with drums made quite a noise. All the bands – there must have been a few hundred of them in the country, including children’s bands – were in costume, a condition being that the costume should not cost a great deal. Sometimes 20 bands would take part in a local carnival, tramping miles to the site. I recall one fat man who, dressed as a sultan in the remains of a bedspread, marched at the head of his “harem” of 40 women, a very proud sultan he looked, and the “Tramps”, each wearing a battered bowler and spats, who played their tune, then sang, “We’re on the road to anywhere” like a choir. There were bands of Zulu warriors, Red Indians, knights in tincan armour, battalions of Fred Karno’s Army, bands of mermaids (the most difficult of the lot) and of pirates (the easiest).

But as that long, warm summer began to fade into autumn, the struggle became grimmer. The first serious blow was made, against the Chester-le-Street Board of Guardians, who had refused to obey the Government’s order to cease relief to single men. The Tory Government deposed the elected Guardians, whose work was unpaid, and put in their place three highly-paid commissioners. The new regime stopped all relief to men, single or married, who might be able to work. The only relief was to wives, 8s. [shillings] a week, and children, 1s. a week. Thus a family of six received 12s. a week in the form of a food voucher, no money, compared to the dole of 29s. a week. This measure of economic terrorism was applied not only to strikers but to all unemployed “on relief”, miners and other workers, and was continued after the strike for a few years. Following the strike, these people without money were dunned for rent. The only ways to get money were to sell part of their meagre rations, or pick coal from the waste heaps and try to sell it. 4-5s. for a week’s hard work, less to the unlucky.

The police acted against the strikers picking coal from the heaps; the men went in larger groups, the police were reinforced. The miners begun prospecting for coal in the fields like gold diggers but this meant spreading out. Pressure increased with the coming of cold weather. A nearby wood of commercial fir, belonging to Lord Lambton, was completely felled and sawn up. A coalowner magistrate, whose large house on the North Road had three tall gateposts of 18in. square oak, found, one morning, that they had been sawn off six inches from the ground.

Then the Notts. Miners’ Association, led by Labour MP G. A. Spencer, broke away from the Federation and returned to work. Heavy police reinforcements appeared in Durham, the biggest, heaviest constables from distant counties; and attempts were made to re-open strikebound pits. Scarcely a miner, with the exception of a few in South Shields, could be found. The blackleg gangs were token forces of bankrupt shopkeepers and of professional layabouts from the town.

The pits were usually closed after three days. Sometimes after the first day, and the owners resorted to surprise but there was always a strong picket awaiting the scabs at the end of their morning shift. Scouts took to following on bicycles the truckloads of police: this in turn led to the police making dummy concentrations to lure the men to the wrong pits but there were always enough pickets to go round.

News travels fast in a mining area and even the sound of running feet and a shout would bring out men, boys and women in a mass picket – yes, women pickets, and punching ones, too! It was hard, bitter fighting: usually, before the scabs could be reached, the charge of six-foot-plus, 15-stone policemen swinging batons in arm-breaking, skull-cracking blows had to be met and broken.

The pattern was for the picket to gather early, to prevent a surprise getaway. The police would try to disperse them, but would soon gather about the pit yard. The scabs would wait at the pithead for 2, 3 or 4 hours, then the police would make their big charge and the main battle was on. A prisoner always went to jail for 6-12 months. The wounded were, if possible, carried off by their comrades.

I recall one such episode on the old North Road near Gateshead; where a colliery had “reopened”. The Birtley men gathered there. Two tramcars came to pick up the scabs, the police were pushed back, the trolleys pulled off, all windows broken, starting and steering handles removed; one tram derailed and the tramwaymen sent home, all in a few minutes. We hung about for three hours, then half a dozen scabs dashed from the back of the yard, down the hilly fields, towards the new North Road.

From the hedges sprang small, slim, youthful figures, who ran like hares after them and did nothing but trip them up, then pounding behind came heavier figures and in two minutes the scabs were unfit for work for a week or two. On the main road the fighting broke out again. At night some of the scabs who lived in Gateshead were visited in their homes; they did not return to the pit, which, in any case, closed after three days.

At another pit, which lasted only one day, a sergeant lifted his baton high to give the signal for a charge and was at once felled by a stone. At another a sergeant (the supers, like the Duke of Plaza Toro,1 led their armies from the rear) appeared to give an order to charge and rushed into the crowd, while his men stood still. I never found out where he went to.

One surprise nearly succeeded, but a few young fellows, very early in the morning, went to the “reopened” pit, to be charged by treble the number of police and sought refuge on the waste heap. These heaps of loose stone are tricky and one runs up them zigzag fashion. The police tried to run straight up and every man started his own avalanche. The men on top helped these, too, and pelted the constables, but they were marooned in a sea of blue serge. Then, after several hungry hours, they saw columns marching from every village for miles around. Lucknow was relieved.2

All this time hunger was growing. Over a nearby hill a miner’s wife was picking late blackberries. She was hungry, ate some without washing them and died of poisoning a few days later. Said the coroner: “There is no doubt that the poor woman was very hungry.”

In December, a national ballot of the miners favoured a return to work, except in Durham, which voted by a big majority to stay out. In the face of a national return, however, the E.C.[Executive Committee] had to disregard the vote. Out from mid-April to December, the miners went back, the strike was over, but not the fight. Their union was intact, their spirit unbroken.

Yet, apart from the social war, it was a peaceful community, more peaceful and ethical than London W.1, though the police were regarded as an occupying army. A woman or a child could walk alone in the dark, doors were left unlocked. A sociologist, speaking of this and the following period in Durham, said that the absence of crime was the most remarkable feature of the depression and attributed this to “steady living and the steadying influence of the Union.” ([Charles] Muir, Justice in a Depressed Area, p. 32-33 [1936]). Later, the Pilgrim Report said that there was here little self-pity, but a determination to fight the effects of poverty and unemployment. Yet, it said, 71 per cent had been out of work for 5 years or more, compared to Liverpool’s 23 per cent and Deptford’s 3 per cent. (Men Without Work, 1938).

It was a consciously working-class community, self-reliant and ready for spontaneous action, best when its leaders were in London. There was, of course, a deal of petty gossip and such in a “Coronation Street”3 way, but in struggle they were loyal to one another and in some local pit disasters – even unto death.

Thanks to 1, The Tyneside Anarchist Archive which posted the issue of Direct Action containing this article https://tynesideanarchistarchive.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/tom-brown-in-birtley/ and 2, the Tom Brown who put the typed or scanned text online.

From: Direct Action vol.4 no.7 (25) July 1963, page 6-7.

Footnotes by Kate Sharpley Library.

• 1From Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers.
• 2An ironic nod to the Siege of Lucknow, during the Indian revolt of 1857.
• 3Famous British soap opera, which started in 1960.

At 5am, Saturday, 24th August, 100 policemen and ten bailiffs brutally evicted Mr and Mrs, Cobb, and their children, from their crumbling basement flat. at 40, St Stephens Gardens, Paddington.

Mrs. Cobb has been a tenant in the basement flat since August 1957 (Just after the RENT ACT). As a tenant in a furnished flat she therefore had no security of tenure.

This building is owned by Glen Powis properties, one of over 40 companies specialising in slum houses which Mr Kaye and Mr Phillips control.

Why the eviction? It is claimed by Kaye that the Cobb family were in arrears with rent. Wereas in fact they were up to date apart from a disputed sum of £2.19.9d. which has been outstanding for some time.

The palatial mansion of 40 St. Stephens Gardens is occupied as follows, top floor flat occupied by a Miss Harker who has a twenty year old gentleman named Joseph Keana living with her. They pay £10 per week rent including water rate and rates. While the eviction of Mrs. Cobb was in progress she was in touch with Kaye by phone.

The next two floors down are empty, Kaye is asking anything from £150 to £300 for fittings (key money) depending no doubt, on what he can get. Ground floor previously occupied by Mr and Mrs. Ahtuam and five children. Mr. Ahtuam had a mortgage on the house; he became mentally ill and was taken into a mental home. The. property passed into the hands of the Official Receiver from whom Kaye obtained the mortgage. Mrs Ahtuam at this time was seriously ill in hospital in childbirth. Kaye evicted her while she was in hospital. She is now at Newington Lodge1 and her five children are in different homes. She is contacting her MP for assistance to retrie.re her furniture which is still at number 40. The ground floor is now occupied by a gentleman who has paid £150 (key money) for fittings, and pays £5.10s a week rent. He does his own decorating.

The basement is indisputably in a disgusting, condition occupied until the eviction by Mr and Mrs Cobb and children. Mrs Cobb had previously been the tenant of Mr Ahtuam. I understand from Mr Cobb that paid his rent religiously. The only outstanding rent was £2.19.9d. which Kaye refused to take.

It seems obvious that the Cobbs were an inconvenience to Kaye. In 1962 they had complained to the Health Department regarding the appalling condition of their flat, thus forcing Kaye to undertake repairs which according, to him were carried out.

To be perfectly frank Kaye is in business. for “Profit" NOT TO PROVIDE PEOPLE WITH HOME, and obviously he could get more rent for the flat therefore the Cobbs were in the way, and had to go.

Housing accommodation in the 'Never had it so good' society is a racket, Building Societies, estate agents, land and property owners are 'PONCING' on the homeless, the only action one can take is 'Direct Action' the law is on the side of the racketeers, one or two of the administrators of the law are sympathetic to the homeless, but in the final analysis they are bound by the LAW. Strong Tenants Associations are the only protection.

• 1A former workhousein South London that became a facility for homeless people. It was demolished in 1969 and the Aylesbury Estate was built on the site.

It is now 14 months since Rachman1 died. Thanks to Mandy Rice-Davies and the Ward trial2 , the press found they were on a good thing. There were a few months of seven-Sunday weeks, when everybody came to know of Rachman and his activities. News of the World reporters took rooms in St. Stephen's Gardens and reported "I Lived in a Slum"; Panorama moved into Westbourne Park Road. Then other stories took over the front pages and the small storm of public indignation died down.

The Milner Holland Committee has been appointed and the government has been forced to introduce its Housing Bill. But despite these supposed cure-alls, Rachman's ghost still looms over Paddington and North Kensington. Admittedly, when the story first broke there was something like panic among the closely-knit group of Paddington slum-landlords. Raymond Nash, of Venus Properties, sold all his Paddington houses by September (he has since re-acquired them) and the others hurriedly began repairing leaking pipes, renewing lightbulbs and bannisters and issuing rent books.

But that was six months ago and now that "Housing" is last year's news they feel safe to come into the open again; as this little incident shows. Capital and Suburban Properties Ltd. is registered at 84 Queensway, W.2, just round the corner from the old Peter Rachman Ltd. hang-out at 91 Westbourne Grove. It is only one of the many companies run by friends and associates of Rachman and using methods made famous by him, which specialise in West London slum property. Its managing director is Peter Alfonso Davis, one of Rachman's most successful managers and, possibly, the "experienced coloured man" referred to in the Commons debate.

Recently, Capital and Suburban bought 125 Gloucester Terrace, Bayswater, in the name of Davis' girlfriend, Hilda Ludlam from Hamburg. There were a number of controlled tenants in this house and Davis made it known that he wanted to get rid of them. Knowing his reputation, most accepted a cash statement. One tenant—a Miss Linscombe—however, refused to leave. She came home one night and found that her room had been entered and ransacked. All the furniture, including the bed, had been overturned and sheets, clothes and personal belongings scattered over the floor. This happened several times and, although nothing, not even her transistor radio, was ever taken, Miss Linscombe found it impossible to carry on living in that house.

So things have not changed much. Despite newspaper sensations and "official action," Paddington in February, 1964, is much the same as it was in February, 1962. With one notable exception, the old gang, Nash and Shabaini, Cyril Kaye and Peter Davis, is still in control. Now that no paper will touch the story the old conditions have returned. Peter Rachman with his Heavy Glove Gang was no isolated figure, but just one [????] in a huge network that is not only slum-landlordism but the whole of the property business.

And where do the authorities stand in all this? Paddington Borough Council seemed to be taken aback by the Rachman "disclosures." Although the people of Paddington had known about the housing situation since 1957, the majority of their elected representatives had to rely on the national press for their information. Paddington, with its millionaire mayor and some of the worst slums in London became an even dirtier word than it had been before.

A face-saving operation was needed and a house-to-house survey of the St. Stephens Gardens area was attempted. This was impossible to complete, because of the difficulty of tracing owners of particular properties (one house in St. Stephens Gardens itself changed hands six times between the 23rd and 30th of September). The result of this was that Closing Orders have been haphazardly placed on various houses in the western end of the Gardens and in adjoining parts of Ledbury, Shrewsbury and Westbourne Park Roads, as well as in some areas of Bayswater and North Paddington. The landlords have found it cheaper to evict tenants and do without the rent than to make the necessary repairs, so that the houses could be declared " fit for human habitation." For the tenants it has meant that a leaking roof is exchanged for no roof at all. "Ah well," said one of the council officers, " you have to be cruel to be kind to these people."

Neither is the LCC record too good. Although, theoretically, they have nothing to do with it, they must take at least some of the blame for the situation in Paddington. They have consistently refused, on density grounds, consent for housing development in the working-class districts. Last December, though, they granted it for the "high quality " development of St. George's Churchyard site (facing Hyde Park and two minutes from Marble Arch).

In October the LCC made a compulsory purchase of four large houses in Leinster Square and over a hundred tenants, including a number of old age pensioners, had to move. These houses are still empty and there is no sign of any work being carried out on them. Closing Orders have even had to be placed on one LCC property in Paddington (243 Gloucester Terrace). These authorities claim that their hands are tied. The Town Clerk of Fulham spoke for all Metropolitan Borough Councils when he said that a Council cannot probe too deeply into housing questions or it will "find itself footing substantial bills at the ratepayers' expense."

Yet Paddington, the most deeply involved of all the councils, finds nothing strange in spending £500 a week of the ratepayers' money on, of all things, time and motion study! And who are these ratepayers who must not be offended, anyhow? Of course—the landlords! So everything fits into place. The councils need the landlords and make no distinction between bad and "good" landlords. They are all bound up together, all part of a system. They won't go until the system does. And only then will Rachman's ghost be finally exorcised.

• 1Peter Rachman was a notorious slum landlord in Notting Hill, West London
• 2Chistine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies had both been associated with Rachman prior to their involvement in the Profumo scandal.