A J Cook: Miners’ Union leader

Somerset-born A J Cook led the coalminers’ union for 7 years until his untimely death in 1931, including the traumatic episode of the General Strike of May 1926.

Arthur James Cook was born in Wookey on 22 November 1883, and by the age of 12, worked for a farmer near Cheddar, whose radical views helped to develop his political awareness. In 1927 he described himself to a Yorkshire audience as a “Somersetshire son of the soil.”

In 1901 he moved to work in the South Wales coalfields, where he became active in the political and trade union spheres. He joined the Independent Labour Party and campaigned for Labour candidates in the 1906 general election, though his politics had developed further to the left.

His involvement in miners’ unionism brought him into conflict with the private mineowners, and his open opposition to the Great War – which he described in class terms: “the chloroforming pill of patriotism is failing in its power to drug the mind and consciousness of the worker” – had him put under police surveillance. Glamorgan Police described him as “by far the most dangerous … an agitator of the worst type.” In early 1918 he was convicted of sedition and served 2 months in jail.

By 1921 he was on the executive of the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). Cook was jailed the same year for 2 months’ hard labour for incitement and unlawful assembly. In April 1924 he was unexpectedly elected as general secretary of the MFGB, which put him at the apex of British unionism. His policy was “industrial unionism … with a regard to Marxian economics and philosophy. I will not rest satisfied until private enterprise in the mining industry is abolished.”

Under Cook’s compelling slogan, “Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day,” the miners, in alliance with other unions, resisted cuts to their terms and conditions in 1925. However, Cook knew that the solidarity of the wider union movement was unlikely to hold out against further efforts by the owners to impose cuts on the miners, and he tried unsuccessfully to resist the growing momentum for a TUC-led general strike.

During and after the ill-fated 9-day General Strike in May 1926, Cook sought to bolster his members’ resolve in their continuing dispute, despite his own ill-health. At a meeting in Radstock on 25^th May, he collapsed, falling off the platform and vomited violently on the ground. He supported a compromise deal to save his union from destruction, and told a union conference in August, “If you want a scapegoat – I am here to be that… I am willing to be sacrificed.”

In December, following the union’s defeat, Cook went to a union conference in the Soviet Union, which led to predictable criticism, and questions in Parliament. He began to embrace more traditional parliamentary politics, through the Labour Party. In the following years, he gave speeches in Taunton (one of which in December 1928 led to an angry verbal confrontation with local reporters) and Midsomer Norton among other places.

However, he was becoming marginalised in union and party affairs, and his deteriorating health was causing concern among his colleagues. In January 1931 he had a leg amputated, after failure to seek medical attention for problems aggravated by a kick from a demonstrator back in 1926.

He died of cancer at a North London hospital on 2 November, aged only 47. The Somerset media’s obituaries were generally sympathetic, reflecting the mellowing of his political views in his final years. The MFGB noted that his “one great desire … was to advance both the immediate and the ultimate welfare of the men he represented, and his sincerity and wholehearted devotion to their cause won the admiration of men in every walk of life.”