7 - The Strikes of 1744 and 1750

Summary

It has already been shown how the coal owners’ difficulties tended to result in hardships being imposed on the keelmen. Competition between the coal owners became extremely fierce in the early 1740s as Matthew Ridley, who had succeeded his father as one of the principal coal owners in the area, remained outside the Grand Alliance, and rivalry between the various parties resulted in losses for all. ‘But in truth this has been the worst year I ever saw’, Ridley declared of the 1744 season, ‘the coal trade having met with many repeated obstructions, & the ugly differences among the persons concern'd here has occasioned lowering of prices or advance of measure, which has been great drawbacks from the profits’. Towards the end of July ‘advance of measure’ provoked a strike by the keelmen who had been obliged to carry up to ten chaldrons of coal instead of the usual eight, an increase of over five tons, without additional pay. The men grew turbulent, the magistrates ordered the proclamation against riots to be read, and four companies of soldiers were sent to keep order in Sandgate. To settle the dispute, a new wages scale was drawn up and signed by the magistrates and twenty-four fitters. The critical clause was that ‘no keel shall be obliged to take more than the king's measure’ – i.e. eight Newcastle chaldrons each of 53 hundredweights according to statute, on which customs duties were assessed. Ridley, who in January 1744/5 had declared that everyone was ‘sick by this time of throwing away their money’, eventually joined in a regulation of the vend in 1747. According to William Brown, an eminent colliery engineer, the agreement was ‘inviolably observed’ for three years, mainly on account of the respective parties’ self-interest, ‘for by this Regulation there is as much profit arises at the vending 10,000 chalders as 30,[000] when a fighting trade, when one undersells another so that some sells cheaper than they work and then the ship master makes a fine time’.