It was not until 1831 that coalminers and ironworkers in South Wales were recruited into the first organised trade unions. Before this, miners often belonged to local combinations and clubs such as Friendly Societies and sometimes illegal organisations such as the infamous Scotch Cattle which often used violence and the threat of violence to achieve better wages and working conditions. In 1831 branches of the Friendly Society of Coalmining were set up on the coalfield - this was a trade union attached to the National Association for the Protection of Labour, which was based in the north-west of England. Here is an extract from the ceremony that took place when someone joined:-

Despite this secrecy the Ironmasters by locking-out of work all those who joined the union were able to stamp it out in the autumn and winter of 1831. Repeated attempts were to re-establish unions in the 1830s.

However, it was not until the 1870s that trade unionism established itself widely across the developing South Wales coalfield. Then, the Lancashire-based, Amalgamated Association of Miners built up a membership of 42,000 miner in South Wales. In two long and bitter disputes in 1871 and 1875, however, the A.A.M. was defeated. The defeat was partly due to the continuing hostility of the Coal owners to trade unions-'blackleg' labour was imported into the coalfield to replace strikers. It also resulted from the weakness of the union itself., as this newspaper extract of June 1871 indicates:-

Following the collapse of the A.A.M. a number of separate District Unions were set up in South Wales and these represented the miners on the Sliding Scale Committee where together with the Coal owners they regulated wage levels. Many of these 'unions' were in fact little more than organisations set up and controlled by the Coal owners and they were totally opposed to strike action.

Up to the 1890s in all the coalfields of Britain miners were slow to join trade-unions, but thereafter unions did spread quickly with the formation of the Miners Federation of Great Britain. In South Wales, however, only 45,000 out of 120,000 miners belonged to unions in 1893. There seem to have been many reasons why South Wales was a backward area for trade unionism at this time. The hostile attitude of the Coal owners was certainly a factor as was the effect of the great waves of immigration into South Wales which took place at this time. Another reason seems to have been that colliers tried to dominate unions when they were set up, putting off other mine workers. In 1893, for example, hauliers took their own strike action to improve their working conditions. Source 149 shows drawings of some of the scenes from this strike'.

The year 1898 was the major turning-point in the history of trade-unionism among the South Wales Miners. In a six months lock-out William Abraham (Mabon) led the District Unions in fighting for a wage increase of 10% and the abolition of the Sliding Scale. Despite great demonstrations by the strikers sheer starvation drove the miners back to work defeated in September 1898.