En guerre et en grève: Enquête dans les cités minières britanniques , 1939–1945 , by Ariane Mak

Just as British historians enjoy myth-busting in respect of the French Resistance, pointing out that it was not as heroic, widespread or even French as is generally asserted, so Ariane Mak, a lecturer at Paris City University, reveals that Britain was not as heroic, united and patriotic during the so-called ‘People’s War’ as many historians claim. There were nearly 7,500 strikes in the UK during the Second World War, accounting for nine million days’ work lost, and half of these were in the coalmining industry. Miners were widely denounced for putting their class interests above those of a country at war. Strikes, of course, were not supposed to happen. Mak begins with Order 1305 of 18 July 1940 which prohibited strikes and lockouts during the period of emergency. She then uses a case-study of the strike at the Betteshanger pit in the Kent coalfield in January 1942 to explore how—in spite of the miners’ union working with the government—the solidarity of rank-and-file miners in defence of three strike leaders sent to prison and many others fined rendered Order 1305 unworkable. There was another wave of strikes in the spring of 1942 when miners, who could not leave their jobs under the Emergency Work Order, protested that their wages were falling behind those of arms workers, and extracted a national minimum wage with the Greene Report of June 1942.