British miners’ unions demanded nationalization and workers’ control as inseparable

Evidence

Union leaders Smillie, Hodges, and Straker (the secretary of the Northumberland Miners), as well as Cole, who was asked to give a deposition, argued for a binding relation between workers’ control and nationalization (in the form of abolition of royalties and state ownership of coal seams): “Just as national ownership is inadequate without workers’ control, so workers’ control is inadequate without national ownership” (Cole, in Arnot 1919, 33). Indeed, nationalization in itself did not secure the abolition of the wage system, under which “the worker sells his labour to an employer in return for a wage, and by this sale is supposed to forgo all right over the manner in which his labour is used” (ibid.). Th e bold demand was for economic democracy: joint control, shared between miners and the state. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 402

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later collapse of this vision under Geddes axe austerity, and to the modern separation of state ownership from workplace democracy. — connects to: Postwar strikes were political demands for workers’ self-government, not mere wage disputes; Wartime union power positioned workers to demand social rights after armistice. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 217; Trade unions can be co-opted to contain working-class opposition (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Factory councils aimed to merge economics and politics through workers’ control #corroborates (0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 581
• Postwar strikes were political demands for workers’ self-government, not mere wage disputes #corroborates (0.85)
• Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185
• British labour lacked a hegemonic challenge to state power #contradicts (0.82)
• Trade unions can be co-opted to contain working-class opposition #complicates (0.80)
• Wartime union power positioned workers to demand social rights after armistice. #expands (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 217