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Coal miners have been hard at work for centuries, but they became increasingly important during the Industrial revolution when coal was burnt on a large scale to fuel stationary and locomotive engines and heat buildings. Owing to coal's strategic role as a primary fuel, coal miners have figured strongly in labour and political movements since that time. After the late 19th century coal miners in many countries were a frequent presence in industrial disputes with both the management and government. Coal miners' politics, while complex, have occasionally been radical, with a frequent leaning towards far-left political views. A number of far-left political movements have had the support of both coal miners themselves and their trade unions, particularly in Great Britain. In France, on the other hand, coal miners have been much more conservative. ==Radicalism== From the mid-19th century onward, coal miners have often built strong connections with the organized labour movement, and sometimes as well with radical political movements. Coal miners were among the first groups of industrial workers to collectively organise in protection of both working and social conditions in their communities. Beginning in the 19th Century, and continuing through the 20th Coal Miners unions became powerful in many countries, the miners becoming leaders of Left or Socialist movements (as in Britain, Poland, Japan, Canada, Chile and (in the 1930s) in the U.S.)〔Geoff Eley, ''Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000'' (2002)〕〔 Frederic Meyers, ''European Coal Mining Unions: structure and function'' (1961) p. 86〕〔Kazuo Nimura, ''The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan'' (1997) p 48〕〔 Hajo Holborn, ''History of Modern Germany'' (1959) p. 521〕〔 David Frank, ''J. B. McLachlan: A Biography: The Story of a Legendary Labour Leader and the Cape Breton Coal Miners,'' (1999) p, 69〕〔 David Montgomery, ''The fall of the house of labor: the workplace, the state, and American labor activism, 1865-1925'' (1991) p 343.〕 Historians report that, "From the 1880's through the end of the twentieth century, coal miners across the world became one of the most militant segments of the working class in the industrialized world." The statistics show that from 1889 to 1921 British miners struck between 2 and 3 times more frequently than any other group of workers.〔K. G. J. C. Knowles, ''Strikes'' (Oxford UP, 1952)〕 Some isolated coal fields had long traditions of militancy and violence; those in Scotland were especially strike-prone. Coal miners formed the core of the political left wing of the Labour Party and the British Communist party. In Germany, the coal miners demonstrated their militancy by large-scale strikes in 1889, 1905 and 1912. However, in political terms the German miners were middle-of-the-road and not especially radical. One reason was the formation of different unions—Socialist, liberal, radical and Polish—that seldom cooperated. In British Columbia, Canada, the coal miners were "independent, tough, and proud" and became "among the most radical and militant labourers in an extremely polarized province." They were the core of the socialist movement; their strikes were frequent, long and bitter. In Chile in the 1930s and 1940s, the miners supported the Communist Party as part of a cross-class alliance that won the presidency in 1938, 1942 and 1946. The long run political gains were illusory, as a major strike in 1947 was repressed by the military on orders of the president the miners had elected. In East Europe the coal miners were most politicized element in society after 1945. They were the primary support group for the Communist governments, and were heavily subsidized. Poland's miners were also a critical supporter of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement of the 1980s. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of coal miners」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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