5 - Combinations and Strikes 1710–38

Summary

While disputes over the charity were embittering relations between the keelmen and their masters in the early eighteenth century, the men were suffering from a number of serious grievances in connexion with their employment, most of which arose from the unsatisfactory state of the coal trade. Over-production and a saturated market led to cut-throat competition among the Tyneside coal owners, while increasing shipments from Sunderland as well as from a few minor ports in Northumberland, none of which was hampered by imposts such as the Richmond shilling on each chaldron of coal exported from the Tyne, posed a further threat to that trade. Coal owners, fitters, shipmasters and dealers, especially the London lightermen, pursued their own and often conflicting agendas by resorting to illegal and clandestine practices which impacted on the keelmen and other workers in the coal trade. The keelmen responded by enforcing strikes, two of which during this period were particularly determined and prolonged, and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to form an organization to protect their interests.

In 1708 several principal coal owners on the river combined to regulate their own vend, and by restriction of wayleaves to the river and other methods sought to reduce the quantity marketed by their competitors. This obviously affected the entire workforce, but it hit the keelmen especially hard. The reduction of their employment was aggravated in May 1710 when, in order to raise the price at London, a combination of shipmasters detained the fleet of about seven hundred sail at Harwich, thus completely stopping coal shipments from the Tyne. When at last the colliers arrived in the Tyne some of the keelmen complained that they were ‘wrong'd in their turnes in ye worke’. Moreover, for certain tasks the fitters refused to pay them the same rates as formerly. All these grievances added to those concerning the charity led to a strike in June 1710. In a petition to the magistrates, the keelmen pointed out the divergence of interest between the coal owners and those whom they directly or indirectly employed.