CHAPTER 8.

THE STRIKE OF 1836.

By 1836 the price of lead had briefly recovered to £24 per ton but there was no corresponding increase in bargain rates at Leadhills. In January Gibson wrote of bargains that "Borron and Weir cannot settle", and expressed the hope that an expected visit by "Mr Musson" would "change the face of affairs".

But Musson was not to be the champion. Instead the men took matters into their own hands and, on the first of April, 1836, the overseer recorded how he attended the rendezvous at 6.0 am but

not a single man appeared they having informed

Mr Borron Esq. by letter that they were determined

to strike work. Which resolution they seem to have

acted upon.

It was a turning point in the history of the Leadhills miners for the men working for the Scots Mines Company had combined to form a "Union or Society" and were on strike.

None of the miners were at work on the 1st of April, but two weeks later three bargains were recorded, one for ore washing and two underground. Whether these were in fact worked during the strike is not certain, but in July William Borron claimed that some miners were being "prevented from working by threats of violence". He had sworn-in men loyal to him as special constables, but he wrote to Charles Ford, the Company's secretary, that the support for the strike was such that there would be a "riot" if anyone tried to return to work. He wanted troops sent to the village and had appealed to the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Archibald Alison, to give the necessary instructions.

The time was one of great labour unrest in Scotland and the authorities believed this posed a national threat. Combinations might escalate into worker's organisations and lead to revolution. It was said that the country was like a "powder keg", and in 1835 Alison himself had led soldiers against striking colliers in Airdrie. Alison's attitude towards labour grievances seems ambiguous for, although he saw trade unions as a "moral pestilence", he appears to have had some sympathy with working class aspirations.

Certainly Alison was reluctant to take drastic action in relation to Leadhills, indeed he seems to have thought the situation was being exaggerated, for Borron claimed Alison had told him the procedure was "never to employ the military until civil force had been proved insufficient". But the remoteness of Leadhills meant there would be a delay in any response to trouble in the village, and Borron complained to Ford that a riot would have to occur, and the company's property could be damaged, before Alison would agree to act.

Ford accordingly wrote to the Lord Lieutenant, Sir William Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, urging his support. Belhaven too was reluctant to order troops, and he in turn wrote to the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell, Duke of Bedford and promoter of the Reform Bill, seeking his advice. Industry and authority then came together in what Borron later applauded as "decisive action", and on the 18th July, an officer, an NCO, and "twenty men of the 96th", (the King's Lancashire Regiment) under the command of the Sheriff Depute, Daniel Vere, marched out of Glasgow for Leadhills, fifty miles away.

Had the strikers chosen to oppose the soldiers en masse the whole affair could have become one of those bloody confrontations which have found their way into the history books. In the event Vere seems to have realised the troops could create the sort of trouble they were intended to prevent, for he got to Leadhills in advance of his soldiers and found a deputation of the strikers waiting in "their library".

That the men were in the library not only points to this being a meeting place over which their employer had no control, but also it meant the men faced Vere in surroundings which must have appeared orderly and which pointed to their good intentions.

Vere later wrote how he informed the men "as to what they were, and were not, entitled to do", and the deputation replied "respectfully"; affirming "their right to make a stand for the terms they thought fit." In reality the strikers had no ground that would support any stand, and were no doubt acutely aware of the hollowness of their ideals in the face of armed force.

By the afternoon of the 20th of July the strike was over. The attempt to combine had collapsed and Borron took the opportunity to get the men to sign a declaration to the effect that they would "belong to no Union". Although an Act of 1825 meant trade unions were no longer illegal, such declarations were common practice. In spite of the threat of armed troops, ten of the men refused to sign. Their names were not recorded but their refusal put them alongside those Covenanters who, a century and a half earlier, were prepared to sacrifice everything for their beliefs.

By the 25th Vere reported that all the men were back at work "except for those prevented by particular reasons applying to them individually". An examination of the bargain records before and after the strike shows there are about 45 names missing from the latter, and that others had been taken on instead. Some degree of turnover could be expected, but it seems probably that Borron took the opportunity to weed-out not just the ten who refused to sign, but others whose attitudes were considered as suspect.

In his letter to Lord Belhaven, Daniel Vere had stated that he had seen "no appearance of riot and no idea of riot". Both he and Alison seem to have had little sympathy for Borron's fears, and there is no record that the Earl of Hopetoun supported the request for troops. Vere wrote that his visit to Leadhills was a "great inconvenience", but he and the soldiers spent about two weeks in the village. He seems to have achieved a happy relationship with his involuntary hosts for he later presented books to the library and the committee made him an honorary member. It is not known how the soldiers fared, but when troops were sent to Talargoch during a strike there in 1856, it was said their relations with the miners were "quite friendly".

The term "union or society" was used in the letter from Ford to Lord Belhaven. How the men saw themselves is not recorded but the fact that they gave written notice of their intention to strike shows their combination was no sudden notion but arose from considered action.

Only three years before, John Muir had been told that the Lead-hills miners were "afraid to speak out". So there had been a change in social consciousness and the men were no longer "cruppen doon" with any sense of servility inherited from earlier days.

* * *

Unfortunately there are no letters among the Gibson MSS for the period of the strike, and he makes no reference to any memory of it. Before the strike he had written of "tyranny and wretchedness"; but his extant letters make no mention of any talk of combination, nor is there any record of a trigger for the dispute.

The strikers did send a letter to the editor of the Dumfries and Galloway Courier, and which was seen as sufficiently interesting for the piece to be copied by the Glasgow papers. The editor regarded the men's views as "one sided" and did not publish the letter verbatim or refer to the signatories. He did note the miners had written that they had "resolved to absent themselves from their duty", complaining that their wages had fallen to £18 per year. The men wrote how, in the past, low wages had been accepted on the understanding that, when better times came, circumstances would improve. This had not happened and they now looked for £26, but had had no response from their employer and had gone on strike. It may be noted the Poor Law Commission found the miners at Alston were only getting £18 at about the same time. And when those at Allenheads went on strike in 1849, they too put their case "eloquently" in the local papers.

In the evidence Thomas Weir gave for the Children's Commission in 1841, he referred to the strike being "about wages". It was certainly about bargains, for the way they were managed at the time must also have been contentious. William Gibson had implied there had been disagreements over rates; the re-opening of old works had led to unforeseen problems which Borron was unwilling to acknowledge, and the practice of setting verbal bargains was being abused. But strikes seldom have a single cause, and the implied criticism of the "administration" in the Report to the Commission, the disparagement of the "management" in Gibson's letters, and the criticisms made by the Baillie and others to John Muir, all point to the dispute as having much to do with the whole package of tighter controls and new methods which had been introduced by the Borrons.

The whole situation was undoubtedly a complex one but was the Leadhills strike influenced by the earlier events at Wanlockhead? Was it part of a conspiracy which, Muir seems to have believed, involved bourgeoisie and miners in both villages? In his evidence to the Commission, Thomas Weir had hinted that a factor which contributed to the unrest was the "dismissal of a manager in 1835". This was presumably a reference to James Stewart, and Stewart was seen as having a role in the supposed conspiracy. He had been living in Leadhills and may have been secured the respect of some of the miners for he had disagreed with J.A.Borron over a plan to reduce their bargain rates, arguing "better fed men than hungry". However, Stewart's subsequent reign at Wanlockhead was not a lenient one and was to alienate a part of the workforce there.

Had the Leadhills strike occurred in 1834 some connection with plots and conspiracies might be tenable, but nearly three years had elapsed since the earlier troubles. Then, J.A.Borron's management had created a climate for action by the men at Wanlockhead; now it seemed likely that it was his son's "tyranny" which provoked support for combination at Leadhills.

A strike needed organisation, so who were the militants ? After the breaking of the Friendly Society at Wanlockhead, Muir wrote that the men there had been led by a few who, he claimed, sought to "make mischief". The Report by the investigator for the Children's Commission also referred to the "bad example" of some who were "demanding" change.

Leadhills was not without its minorities for, like any group of working people, the miners were not a homogeneous body. Some were in comfortable circumstances, some wretched. Some were "company men"; among them no doubt the reluctant strikers who wanted to get back to work. Some accepted the Earl's patronage of the Church; others were among those dissidents who clung to the rebellious doctrines of the reformers. John Knox was as much a social revolutionary as a religious reformer, and members of the congregations in the church he founded combined to manage its affairs via sessions and assemblies.

In 1824 the clerk to the Reading Society minuted it had "bought Ebinezer Erskine". Erskine was a turbulent divine who, Professor Smout remarks, preached that he "found no warrant from the Word of God which conferred privileges upon the Rich". So, if wealth gave no privilege, might not Borron's power also be questioned ?

It is perhaps significant that the Cameronian minister, the Rev. Peter Carmichael, was allowed the use of the library to "preach two or three sermons" in October 1836. The Cameronians, were among those extremists who, Scott remarks in Old Mortality, were "vehement in their politics".

Old Mortality can be criticised for what now seems arcane religious attitudes but, at a time when there were few banners where radicals might muster, the Covenanters were perceived as fighting for a political as much as a religious cause. When radicals demonstrated in Glasgow in 1838, those from Strathaven "proudly bore" a Covenanters' flag; at a meeting in Sanquhar in 1860 it was claimed that the Covenanters were the "first to plant the tree of Liberty", and in his poem, "Cameron's Grave", Robert Reid wrote of the "Freedom purchased here".

However, the religious radicals in the community at Leadhills are also nameless men and, although they were not necessarily among the militants in 1836, their rejection of despotic authority could have been an important influence. On the other hand, the argument which bedevilled the various Presbyterian factions cannot have encouraged effective combination.

Another factor must have been the voices of protest and the rising militancy in the neighbouring towns. The Chartist agitations came after the Leadhills strike, but the movement was a consequence of a climate of complaint. In the 1790s, the minister of the Sanquhar kirk was complaining that the "collision of political interests was an enemy to peace", and in 1832 the weavers and colliers there staged a "demonstration" to celebrate the passing of the Reform Act,. The Sanquhar weavers in particular were later described as "radicals of the radicals" who supported Chartist meetings. In Clydesdale, the colliers at Rigside combined to form a Union in 1837, and in 1841 the surgeon in Lanark remarked on local Chartists who "declaimed against the Government".

Muir had reported that the Wanlockhead miners were ignorant of events in the "manufacturing districts". There seems to have been a widely held view that miners were not as literate as the "reading and thinking" workforce in the factories, but twenty years later a visitor to Leadhills claimed the men there were "well acquainted with the current of affairs". It seems unlikely that the miners in both villages were unaware of the voices "down the road", and it could be those who met Muir were merely reluctant to admit to radical sympathies.

The editor of the 'Courier described the Leadhills' strikers as "intelligent" and Vere, who had experience of disputes elsewhere, wrote the miners were a "sober (minded)" workforce who were "better informed than other workmen". This latter obser-vation is significant for it shows that the men who met Vere in the library not only argued their case but argued it well. In this they were not unique for the Hammonds note how, in 1831, striking colliers on the Tyne "sought to maintain their rights by argument rather than by tumult and disorder".

But the militants, whoever they were, were a minority. Their intelligence may have been cknowledged, but Vere would also have believed they had a potential for disruption. The majority had to be protected from critical voices and radical ideas, and discouraged from any notion of combining again.

* * *

The men went back to work at the existing bargain rates, but in April the following year the levels of earnings were ostensibly raised to £26 pa for the younger miners and £22 for those over 58. However, these rates were not to be a ceiling. The industrious could be rewarded for miners who were "disposed to exercise greater industry" would have the "opportunity of benefiting from their superior exertions".

The message of the strike may not have gone unheeded but there were reactions to its audacity; some prompted by Borron, others by the men. That Vere was elected an honorary member of the Reading Society suggests some of its members distanced themselves from the dispute. After the strike, two, perhaps significant, books appeared on the shelves. One was The Effects of Combination on the Welfare of the Working Classes, by J.Taylor and published in 1838. The other a pamphlet containing the speech by the Lord Advocate on the punishment of the Glasgow Cotton spinners. Their strike in 1837 brought five of the committee to the High Court on charges of illegal picketing, intimidation, and attempted murder, and was seen by many as an example of the dreadful consequences of trade unionism.

There is no record that the two books were presented to the library by Borron or by others with an anti-union stance, but they must have reflected the post strike attitudes among some at least of the Reading Society's members. One of the few contemporary references to the strike is in a MSS left by the Rev Hastings. He claimed it was an episode which "many regretted".

Borron's immediate reaction had been to sack all those regarded as troublemakers, and he then set about tightening the management of the mines. The overseers were told they must visit more frequently to ensure that the bargain takers were at work. A laconic "visited the workplaces at various times" would no longer do. Places and times had to be specified, supervision had to be constant, and visits were to be at night as well as during the day. By 1837 the overseers were dutifully making such entries as "attended the (shift) change" at such and such a minehead, "gone underground at 7.00 pm last night", and "found the men regular at their work". Regularity was now the aim and the expression turns up time and time again in the ensuing years.

The bargain rates became harder, and the "opportunity to benefit by superior exertions" proved less than real. The terms of a bargain made in November, 1839, declared "if the ground produces more than the quantity specified the men shall not have any claim". And other partnerships found their bargains had a clause to the effect "if they make above 15/- per week, then £1 per ton shall be deduced from the price".

* * *

As already mentioned, the village bourgeoisie were ready to complain about Borron's activities, and the overseer, Thomas Weir, was not above making entries in his Journal which implied criticism of his superior. In April, 1837 Borron countered by demanding Weir confined himself to recording what was being done and not indulging in comments "foreign to the purpose of the book". This led to a confrontation, for Weir resigned and took a post with the Shotts Iron Company. However, relations seem to have been later restored and he returned to Leadhills in 1838. The circumstances were not explained but may reflect the difficulty in recruiting skilled staff.

In spite of all that had happened there were still "misunderstandings between Mr Borron and his workmen", and an atmosphere of defiance and disorder. In August 1836 a miner "demanded" the balance of his earnings as his lead had been smelted. Although the pay was made annually, the Stirlings had been empowered to make intervening payments "as they saw fit". Now, the request was refused and the man was "ordered out of the office". In December the overseer recorded that the smelters had "refused to assist the level men when instructed to do so". However "they went the following day"; no doubt under some unspecified pressure to comply.

In January, 1839, there was a different sort of disorder when one of the washers, John Stewart, conspired with some miners to mix ore rated at £2 per ton of lead into a heap rated at £10. This was discovered and the men were charged at the Sheriff Court with "Breach of trust, Fraud, and Wilful Imposition .. crimes of a heinous nature".

John Stewart had been brought before the Court by a Leadhills shopkeeper the previous September in a case for debt, and as a result had his household goods poinded - distrained. Now he was sentenced to be "imprisoned for three months within the gaol at Lanark", and three miners found guilty with him got two months each. It was said to be the first instance of such a case at Leadhills.

It might be supposed that John Stewart also lost his job and his home, but in August 1840 a bargain entry recorded how he was being employed to "wash part of the Company's ore".

Bargains were now bargains only in name. "It was never worse here at present" James Gibson wrote to his brother in 1839, "Those who do not sign their bargain gets no meal or mart money it is shameful here and many is leaving". Lead mines at Woodhead, Carsphairn, had opened in 1838 and offered work for skilled men, and others went to iron mining which was said to offer better wages.

Borron's handling of his men seemed to have lacked that degree of decisiveness that was essential if change was to be pushed through. Only a month after the strike, he allowed the price for a bargain to be increased because two of the partners were "young men unskilled in mining". and in the instance where William Gibson's partnership not only disputed the rate for a bargain but took their tools out of the mine, Gibson wrote how "he (Borron) gave us on Wednesday what we had asked on Monday when he saw he could make no better of it".

Borron not only showed a lack of resolution, but also seems to have responded to individual needs and requests for "favours", while opposing the aspirations of the mass of his miners. One wonders if John Stewart begged a favour to get his job back. In Stirling's day any mischief of this kind would have resulted in the loss of work and home, but if Borron's management now appears weak, then this view was not held by the Company for in 1840 the directors gave him a testimonial" of 300 guineas in recognition of his "firmness".

* * *

In the evidence Weir gave to the Children's Commission, he remarked that the labour troubles had led to a "coldness between a part of the men and their employers". This discontent was a potential for further unrest, and in 1838 a number of miners from Strontian in Argyleshire were taken on at Leadhills. They not only replaced those who had been sacked or had left, but also were perhaps hired to improve the temper of the others. Although not brought in as strike breakers, for the strike was long over, they nevertheless seem to have been seen as intruders. Men had come from the Highlands before, but the newcomers were referred to as "the Highland men", an appellation which suggests they were set apart.

The lead mines at Strontian on Loch Sunart had been worked with varying success since the 1720s, and a brief flurry of activity had ended in 1836. J.A.Borron had an interest in mining prospects in the Highlands at the time, and it may be he had a hand in recruiting men who were desperate for work. The newcomers, Camerons, McPhersons, McCalls and Lowries, brought the labour force at Leadhills to about 190. This can be compared with 217 in 1835.

If young Borron's intention was to seek docile workers then he was to be disappointed, for two of the Lowries, Alexander and John, took him to the Lanark Sheriff Court in September, 1839, claiming their partnership had not been paid for a bargain, and were owed £50 plus £5 for expenses. The substance of the case was that the two Lowries, with their partners Angus Cameron and Archibald McPherson, were given a bargain to continue with work they had been engaged on for some time. But were then told to go instead to a deep level called "the Stoup" where, the Lowries said, they had been before and the air was so bad "they could not bear it". They refused to go and in consequence were deemed to have "deserted their work". Borron claimed they were therefore no longer employed by him and the money they had earned was forfeit.

The Lowries averred they were not informed as to the rule that refusing a bargain meant losing both their work and its earnings. Borron claimed all the rules were advertised, and denied he had told the men that they "might starve for all he cared".

The case continued until February, 1843, and generated what is now a valuable source of record. It also generated claims and counter claims. The overseers, Weir and Russell, stated the partners had been told they were not obliged to go to the Stoup. And Alexander Lowrie denied he had told them that he "did not care whether or not he worked at Leadhills".

The bargain had been set verbally and was never written up. To add to the confusion, all the men spoke Gaelic, and in the case of Cameron and McPherson it was agreed that their English was "imperfect". The Sheriff remarked, as no doubt he had remarked in many other instances, "some of the evidence (was) liable to a considerable suspicion".

Time was on Borron's side and after nearly four years of argument the Lowries eventually settled of £25-17-4, out of which £10 went to pay their lawyer.

The circumstances may have been less than clear, but the remarkable aspect of the case was that Highlanders, Gaelic speakers and no doubt seen as simple and uncouth, were willing and able to challenge the administration. Not by desperate mischief, as at Wanlockhead in 1833, nor by combination and strike, but by action in the Courts. And they not only made a challenge. A measure of impertinence can be detected in the tone of some the Lowrie's answers in Court. Would a native Leadhills miner have replied "not only did he not know the date of the payday but he doubted if the management knew?" Perhaps the Highlanders lacked that degree of "respect" established at Leadhills by James Stirling. And if so, perhaps a precedent was created.

The Highlanders did not bring their families, so needed to send money north. This raised particular problems in relation to the infrequent pays, and in November 1839 the new men presented a petition, signed by 26 of them, asking to be paid quarterly. Borron agreed, and wrote that a "departure shall be made to the custom of the establishment". He also promised that, if the partners did not make £1 per week, the rate per fathom would be increased. The incomers seem always to have worked per fathom, with extra payments for any ore they raised.

In a memorandum in the Bargain Book, Borron wrote that the arrangement was to be "an encouragement to other Highlanders". In Court he made no reference to the strike. If men had left this was only because there had been a "general reduction in numbers" employed at the mines, and he denied he had made any special effort to recruit the Highlanders.

But no more came down to Leadhills. The Lowries' partner, Archibald McPherson became ill and was given money "as a favour" for his return home. The Lowries and others of the Highlanders went to work at Carsphairn. Two married and stayed in Leadhills, and the rest returned to Strontian where the mining had picked up again by 1846. Far from easing Borron's problems the Lowries at least had added to them; and, as John Muir might have remarked, the affair had "recoiled" upon him.