The South Wales Miners' Federation and the perception and representation of risk and danger in the coal industry, 1898-1947.

In February 1914, the South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF, also known simply as ‘the Fed’) held a conference to discuss industrial injury and workplace safety in the coal mines. In his speech to the delegates, William Brace, the Fed’s president, said that ‘while machinery and other measures adopted in the production of coal had enormously increased the output, it was appalling to think that neither the application of science nor anything else appeared to have been able to cope with the terrible disasters in the Coalfield and the serious accidents to workmen taking place in the mines’.2 Taking Brace’s concerns as a starting point, this paper examines the perception and representation of risk and danger in the coal industry, from the perspective of the SWMF and its members, covering the period from the formation of the SWMF in 1898 through to the nationalisation of the British coal industry in 1947.