Morley miners' riot at Victoria Colliery, 1893

During the 1893 coal lockout a crowd of striking miners, swollen to seven or eight thousand by men from Wakefield, Rothwell and Batley, marched on Victoria Colliery at Bruntcliffe, Morley, where they believed coal was being moved. They wrecked the manager's house and the colliery office and beat non-unionists found nearby.

The mining history in this record

In 1893 the coal owners, faced with prices 35 per cent below those of 1890, demanded a 25 per cent cut in wages, and by the end of July most of the 80,000 miners in the West Riding's 253 pits were locked out. At Morley there had been trouble since the summer at Morley Main, where men in the Beeston Bed had refused a cut of twopence a ton, and in early August miners were before the courts for obstruction and assaulting the police.

By September riots were a daily occurrence wherever coal was being shifted. After a meeting at Cross Flatts Park in Leeds a crowd marched to Ravels Pit and then on to Victoria Colliery at Bruntcliffe, gathering numbers on the way. The manager told the miners' representatives that the only men at work were keeping the pit safe and that no coal was moving, but the crowd broke every window of his house and of the colliery office, smashed two cottages belonging to men who had been working there, and dragged non-unionists from their homes and beat them with cudgels. Extra police and a detachment of the South Staffordshire Regiment were brought into Morley, and the Morley Main miners passed a resolution condemning the mob and blaming men from other districts.

People

Walter Sykes, check-weighman at Morley Main, who chaired the miners' meeting that condemned the riot. John Haigh, who sank Victoria Colliery.

Legacy today

The riot is one of the episodes of the 1893 lockout, which ended in November with the first government intervention in an industrial dispute and a return to work at the old rates.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• During the 1893 lockout a crowd that had grown to between 7,000 and 8,000 miners marched on Victoria Colliery at Bruntcliffe, Morley, where coal was believed to be moving. (contemporary account) ¹
• The crowd broke every window of the manager's house and of the colliery office, smashed two cottages of men who had been working at the pit and beat non-unionists with cudgels. (contemporary account) ¹
• The march on Victoria Colliery followed a mass meeting on Sunday 3 September 1893. (contemporary account, disputed) ¹
• There were disturbances at Bruntcliffe, among other collieries, on 6 and 7 September 1893. (documented fact, disputed) ²
• Victoria Colliery at Bruntcliffe was sunk by John Haigh in 1848 and stayed with the Haigh family until it closed shortly before the Second World War. (documented fact) ³

Mines

• Victoria Colliery, Bruntcliffe — West Yorkshire
  In September 1893 a crowd of locked-out miners marched on this colliery, believing coal was being moved, and wrecked the manager's house and the colliery office.

Sources

1. (secondary) The Morley Miners' Riot of 1893 — On: Yorkshire Magazine
2. (primary) The Yorkshire Miners and the 1893 Lockout: The Featherstone 'Massacre' — Robert G. Neville, International Review of Social History (Cambridge University Press)
3. (secondary) Coal Mining in Morley, by Jim Thorp (British Mining No. 87, look-inside extract) — Northern Mine Research Society

Record created: 3 October 2026 · Last researched: 4 October 2026