STRUCTURAL REFORM IN THE BRITISH MINERS' UNION.

The article discusses the origin, progress and outcome of the "reorganization movement" which began to gather momentum in the early 1930's. On January 1, 1945, the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain, which had been the dominant trade union in the British coal industry ever since its organization in 1888, was renamed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The development of a "National Union" from a "Mineworkers' Federation" had little or nothing to do with the nationalization of the industry itself. The "nationalization" of the industry and of the union in the mid-1940's was coincidence, not cause and effect. The modernization of the union's structure has greatly facilitated the union's adjustment to nationalization. The NUM has developed a new set of structural problems since and largely because of, the nationalization of the industry. The British mineworkers, unlike their American brothers, were organized into trade unions largely through movements with local origins. The aim of these movements was the establishment of effective district organizations in particular coalfields.