If you could meet one person from labour history, who would it be? We asked labour historians to tell us who they would invite for a cup of tea, a pint at the pub or even Christmas Dinner. In the first of a new series, Joe Stanley encounters miners’ union activist John Auty

I first encountered John Auty when he was named ‘Paymaster General’ of the ‘Friendly Society of Coal Miners’ of Wakefield. This trade union was set up in 1833 and was responsible for coordinating a particularly violent strike of colliers to resist a wage reduction in Alverthorpe in the same year. Auty’s name appeared on the membership cards with other union officials. The card stated:

‘This is to certify, that Brother T____ H____ is an initiated brother of this Friendly Society of Coal Miners; and as such recommend him to all whom it may concern[.] Dated the 11th day of March, 1833. – Matthew Wormald, G.M. – Jos. Killingbeck, Secretary . – No. 1st Lodge, No. 1 District.’[1]

As the strike dragged on into the summer of 1833 John Auty’s commitment to the dispute was brought into focus. At the end of July, a working miner called Robert Roberts brought a charge against John Auty and Matthew Halfyard. Auty and Halfyard had stopped Roberts on his way home from work and called out ‘”Oh, you black sheep, are you not gone out of the country yet,”‘ along with several ‘threatening expressions’. Roberts ran away but was chased and caught by Auty and Halfyard who ‘struck him and [his] boy several times’. Halfyard admitted that he was ‘”very fresh”‘ [drunk] and that was only acting in self-defence as Roberts struck him first. Auty, on the other hand, denied that he was ‘”beerified”‘ and denied that he had assaulted Roberts. Halfyard and Auty were fined 10s. and 5s. respectively and 28s. costs ‘both of which were paid by the latter’.[2] It is probable that Auty was able to pay such large costs because he was the union’s paymaster.

Auty disappears from the historical record at the end of 1833. He, or someone with his name, reappeared in the local press in 1840. Auty, along with James Westmoreland, and John Jowitt prevented a Wesleyan Connexion preacher, Mr. Mackie, from entering a school room at Kirkham Gate in Wakefield. The three maintained that the building was ‘a Sunday School only’ and that they could not ‘give sanction to it being used for any other purpose’. Westmoreland added that they ‘were afraid of the school being given up all together, which they wished to prevent’. The magistrates sided with Mackie so Auty, Westmoreland and Jowitt were required to enter recognizances for £20 each and to ‘keep the peace twelve months’.[3]

John Auty reappeared in 1842 amid the ‘General Strike’. He was nominated, along with a Samuel Mann of Halifax, to ‘occupy the chair’ at a meeting of coalmasters, stewards, and colliers at the Wood Street Music Saloon in Wakefield in August. A ‘show of hands’ was ‘taken several times’ where it was decided, unfortunately for Auty, that Mann would take the chair.[4] (James Dean, who has charted the course and events of the 1842 strike in Yorkshire, found that Auty was stated to be a ‘Republican of the old school’ by the Leeds Mercury.[5])

The next reference we find to Auty is September of the following year. Auty, now an ‘agent of the Coal Miners’ Association’, visited Bacup, Small Bridge, Wringley, Bradford (Manchester), and Bredbury, where ‘at all of which places his labours have been well received, and have been highly successful’.[6] Later in the month he addressed the miners of Burnley[7] and it seems he remained in the North West for the rest of the month as it was resolved by a meeting of colliers in October that ‘John Auty lecture in the Bury district until the next delegate meeting’.[8] He is subsequently recorded as the principle speaker at a number of colliers meetings across in the winter of 1843-44.[9] Indeed, it was the Manchester Courier that emphasised Auty’s roots when it stated that a ‘Yorkshire delegate, named John Auty’ spoke at a meeting of 500 colliers at Bury.[10] In the spring and early summer of 1844 Auty was still regularly speaking to large numbers of colliers across the North West.[11] Unfortunately these reports give little indication of what Auty actually said to the colliers; however, when he spoke at Workington we know he advocated for a ‘general union’.[12] By December 1844, after the defeat of the miners’ strike, Auty had moved on to Staffordshire where he was named as ‘John Auty, miner’.[13] I have found no further reference to John Auty the miner, trade unionist, republican, and probable Chartist after this date. A Wakefield man named John Auty was charged with ‘obstructing the footpath’ in 1848, but we cannot be certain if this was our John Auty. That said, he was ‘very abusive’ to the police constable who tried to get the men to move on, so if his earlier behaviour was anything to go by, this could well be our man.[14] He remains an interesting figure, and one I’m sure could tell some interesting tales about the 1830s and 1840s over Christmas Dinner. Hopefully he would stay away from the mulled wine – we wouldn’t want him ‘beerified’ – would we.

Joe Stanley, University of Leeds

References

[1] Wakefield and Halifax Journal, 24 May 1833.
[2] Wakefield and Halifax Journal, 26 July 1833.
[3] Leeds Mercury, 21 March 1840.
[4] Bradford Observer, 18 August 1842.
[5] J. Dean, ‘Ten Days of Tumult: The Mass Strike of 1842 in the West Riding of Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 90:1 (2018), p. 152.
[6] Northern Star, 09 Sept 1843.
[7] Northern Star, 30 Sept. 1843.
[8] Northern Star, 28 October 1843.
[9] Northern Star, 04 Nov. 1843; Northern Star, 02 Dec. 1843; Northern Star, 27 Jan. 1844; Northern Star, 17 Feb. 1844; Northern Star, 24 Feb. 1844.
[10] Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 11 Nov. 1843.
[11] Northern Star, 30 March 1844; Northern Star, 06 April 1844; Northern Star, 20 April 1844; Northern Star, 23 May 1844; Northern Star, 01 June 1844.
[12] Northern Star, 11 May 1844.
[13] Northern Star, 14 Dec. 1844. For the best assessment of the 1844 miners strike in Yorkshire see J. Baxter, We’ll Be Masters Now: The Story of the 1844 Miners’ Strike and its Impact on the Working Class Movement in Sheffield and the South Yorkshire Region (Sheffield, 1986)
[14] Bradford Observer, 07 Dec. 1848; Leeds Mercury, 09 Dec. 1848.

You can read all the Class Encounters in this series here.