Given the immense contribution made by coal to the British economy throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, it is not surprising that the industry has attracted a considerable amount of attention from British historians. This is particularly true of Wales, where coal was the nation's most important economic commodity and the industry one of its largest employers for more than a century. As a result, modern Welsh history is complimented by extensive studies of coal mining communities, of the powerful role played by coal mining unions such as the South Wales Miners Federation, and of the relationships among coal miners, unions, and the Labour party.

However, most of that literature has focused on the history of the coal industry in south Wales. While this is not surprising, given the significantly larger scale of the industry in the south compared with its counterpart in the north, there is a tendency to assume that the themes, issues, and patterns of development in the industry in the north were identical to those in the south. Simply in terms of extending our understanding of the “other half” of the Welsh coal industry, this is therefore a valuable study. However, the study offers much more than this, and there is something in here for most students of post-1945 Welsh (and British) social, political, and economic history.

Emanating from the author's PhD thesis, the study is based on a wealth of primary and secondary source materials, “local knowledge,” and personal experience (Keith Gildart was a coal miner for five years after 1985). The study is also enhanced by the evidence gathered in some sixty interviews conducted for the project with local coal miners and their families—helping to shed new and important light on more recent events and providing a valuable view of the structural changes made to the coal industry after 1945 from the coal-face. However, despite the author's closeness to the subject matter (as well as some of the key events) there is a genuine (if often difficult) attempt to frame analysis and argument that remains impartial and objective.

Structured chronologically and thematically, readers are transported through the various trials and tribulations of the coal industry after the Second World War via five chapters. The first three chapters emphasize the problems, opportunities, and challenges facing the coal industry in the four decades after the Second World War. While the focus is predominantly on union relations and the politics of the north Wales coal field, the study provides a valuable insight into the roller-coaster ride of a coal miner's life as the hope and optimism that precipitated and immediately followed nationalization in 1947 was followed by a period of uncertainty, anguish, and ultimately despair. However, it is likely that many readers will find the last two chapters of the study most stimulating and enlightening. Covering the period from the origins of the infamous miners strike of 1984–85 onward, Gildart provides an important local snapshot of the social, economic, and political impact of the strike on coal mining communities. This is made even more interesting by the fact that one pit (Bersham) supported the strike while another (Point of Ayr) continued working. As a result, the study shows how the strike exacerbated already tense relations within the north Wales coal industry. It also provides a thorough analysis of the motives and actions of the key players involved in the strike at both local and national levels and shows how communities dealt with the devastating economic effects of the strike. In so doing, the study helps shed new light on an event that is already the subject of much urban mythology.

As Gildart readily admits, the book draws on various strands of labor historiography “to emphasize the importance of both structure and agency in shaping the politics of the north Wales miners” (3). The “unashamedly traditional” focus on trade unions and the Labor party “as an expression and vehicle of working class consciousness” is evident throughout. So, too, is the emphasis on methodology, “which owes much to the Marxist tradition,” and which “stresses the place of economic and class relations in shaping the tensions between capital and labor” (4). However, there is also an attempt to balance this approach by engaging with “the shifting parameters of working class history,” which pay significant attention to issues of ethnicity, identity, and gender. As a result, the study covers some unexpected ground. For example, Gildart provides a perceptive and interesting analysis of the effects of in-migration on the culture, politics, and language of the local coal mining communities. While in-migrant miners had a minimal effect on the politics of the union, “in terms of the culture of political villages, the impact was more marked” (251). Moreover, the focus on the lives of women in local coal field communities is also illuminating (and not just in considering the impact of poverty and uncertainty on the lives of women in working-class communities). For example, of in-migrant miners families we are told that “women from Greater Manchester found themselves virtually prisoners in local villages” (106). In addressing these issues the author attempts to distance himself from the sentimentality that surrounds many studies of working-class communities. Women, we are told, found great difficulty breaking from the shackles of a male-dominated working environment. Gildart argues that “under the veneer of community cohesion, alcohol abuse, the neglect of children and domestic violence were constant features of working class life” (106). By combining the traditional focus on miners, unions, and the politics of the coalfield with newer historical themes and issues, the study provides a more nuanced, local account of the long death of the British coal industry.