Shocked at miner’s slavery in Scotland. White Supremacy?

I started working on my family tree at the end of last year. I do get rather tearful at times when I discover the poverty of the working classes. e.g. my grandmother, her 5 siblings, mother, father and her grandmother, so nine people living in a single end (a one room flat). This was in 1911 so really not so long ago.
I think we tend to feel that this level of poverty and slavery belonged to the dim distant past. Even today there are many people (women esp.) who are working in our society in a form of slavery. Not just enforced prostitution but in restaurants, nail salons, beauty salons etc.

Very well-said, Doodledog.

I think you have it spot on.

'Enslaved people' foregrounds the humanity of those who were owned by others. 'Slaves' puts them into a separate category.

I think that 'white supremacy' is appropriate in this context. I think that Avalon is proposing that not all 'whites' were supreme. I take 'supreme' in this context to mean that their interests, power and way of life takes precedence over everyone else's. Which, for a certain section of the white population, it clearly did.

The idea that not all white people were 'supreme' is often confused with the term 'white privilege', which people then object to because, as we know, white people have been systematically oppressed in the past, and still are. I am a member of a lot of local history groups, and nearly every day someone will post a photo of ragged children, with the caption 'so much for white privilege' and there follows a stream of rants about how black slaves often had black overseers, or were sold into slavery by treacherous Africans, or how bad the conditions in mines, mills and factories were in the past. It is as though the fact that white people often have hard lives negates the notion of racism, when they can, and do, both exist at once.

White supremacy and white privilege are not the same. White supremacists are those who believe that white people have a fundamental right to rule over non-whites because they are intrinsically superior. They are likely to support apartheid, colour bars and so on.

White privilege is the idea that white people, whether they are in a position of financial privilege or not, start most interactions from a position of relative ease. They don't get routinely stopped by the police. They don't have to explain where they 'come from' as though they are foreigners in their own country. They take for granted that they, and people like them, will be represented in drama, adverts on TV etc, without there being a storm of protest. They aren't accused of 'playing the race card' if they speak out against injustice. Etc.

The privilege is not having to wade through that lot before you even start, and there being very little chance that the person you are applying to work for will take against you because of your skin colour, or that someone will not want you as a neighbour, or any of the day-to-day micro-aggressions that many POC come across all the time.

Obviously I can't be sure what Avalon meant in her OP, but using the example of Scottish mine owners being oppressors (and of Scottish miners being exploited and ill-treated) as a way to question white supremacy doesn't seem logical to me.

ElderlyPerson

I tend to wince when people refer to slaves and some say that they are descended from slaves or from former slaves.

I say globally edit "slave" with "victim of enslavement" and globally edit "slaves" with "victims of enslavement".

More characters are needed, but that is what it takes to express the meaning, so more characters yes.

Sorry, what is wrong with 'slaves'? We know that they were victims; do we have to spell it out every time?

It seems to me like three words where one will do absolutely fine.

I tend to wince when people refer to slaves and some say that they are descended from slaves or from former slaves.

I say globally edit "slave" with "victim of enslavement" and globally edit "slaves" with "victims of enslavement".

More characters are needed, but that is what it takes to express the meaning, so more characters yes.

The Butes made Cardiff. (On the backs of the workers; it was how society was then)

www.cardiffcastle.com/history/butes/
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08y60r0

Have you ever wondered why black enslaved people weren’t brought to Britain to be forced to work down mines etc? It was because the powers that be were fearful that the poor white population would rebel- “ taking our jobs” etc. Whereas in the West Indues and the Americas there weren’t enough white population to worry about. The white population certainly were supreme there , even the poor ones. I remember learning all about horrific conditions in mines, factories etc in school history.

Yes, and live in the owners houses, paying them rent.

Miners were odften paid in tokens too, which they had to spend in the mineowner's shop to buy food etc.

trisher

For those interested in child labour in the mines a picture and an excerpt from a report John Hawkins, eight years of age:
“Has worked in Sissons Pit a year and a half; lives a mile from the pit; and goes down from five to nine; that is, the child, eight years old, is employed in the pit at work from five o’clock in the morning to nine at night, a period of sixteen hours.”
Mr Leifchild’s report of the Collieries of South Wales, Children in Mines and Collieries, 1839, p55
Horrific!

I remember having that illustration in a book at primary school. Also a similar one of children in cotton mills.

The miners weren’t strictly slaves because they received wages and the children only ‘belonged’ to the mine owners if the parents accepted a birth/baptismal gift from the owner. Whether they had much choice in the matter is debatable, of course. I also remember reading about the Marquess of Bute and his exploitation of people via mining interests in Wales when we visited Bute. It was just Brutal.

Let's remember as well that lowest down on any social scale were women.Even affluent women could be treated badly by their husbands and in fact once they married they had no money of their own everything became their husband's until the MarriedWomen's Property act of 1882. Even their children belonged to the husband.
"Wedlock" by Wendy Moore tells the story of Mary Eleanor Bowes a Georgian heiress and her marriage to Andrew Stoney (his name is said to be the origin of the term "Stoney broke",) and his mistreatment of her.

X post

I've been down Big Pit in S Wales three times now, trisher and the thought of small children down there for 16 hours a day is indeed horrific. I think that picture shows the child who opens the door, the trapper.
The trapper was often the youngest member of the family working underground. Their job was simple: to open and close the wooden doors (trap doors) that allowed fresh air to flow through the mine. They would usually sit in total darkness for up to twelve hours at a time, waiting to let the coal tub through the door.
Slightly older children, aged 7 or 8+, would have a strap round their waist, hauling the truck from the front.

trisher

For those interested in child labour in the mines a picture and an excerpt from a report John Hawkins, eight years of age:
“Has worked in Sissons Pit a year and a half; lives a mile from the pit; and goes down from five to nine; that is, the child, eight years old, is employed in the pit at work from five o’clock in the morning to nine at night, a period of sixteen hours.”
Mr Leifchild’s report of the Collieries of South Wales, Children in Mines and Collieries, 1839, p55
Horrific!

'Trappers' could be as young as six.

I kept thinking about my then 6yo GS when I was reading that

FWIW, we were taught about children in the mines for 'O'Level. In connection with the Factory acts, of course.

I have a most harrowing non fiction history of the use of child labour during the 19th C.

Of course, the 'elite' in society really did believe that those below them in the hierarchy were practically a different, inferior, race from them. And this was accepted by all. I was always puzzled by the incident in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth Bennet is practically hysterical with shame when the awful Mr Collins addressed Mr Darcy without having been introduced to him and Darcy hadn't initiated the conversation. It was a seriously presumptuous thing to have done, to address your 'betters' uninvited. But that is how your 'betters' regarded you; as inferiors...

There was also the 18th C titled lady who couldn't have anything to do with Methodism because it proposed that all men were equal. Not just equal before God, but equal in every way.

For those interested in child labour in the mines a picture and an excerpt from a report John Hawkins, eight years of age:
“Has worked in Sissons Pit a year and a half; lives a mile from the pit; and goes down from five to nine; that is, the child, eight years old, is employed in the pit at work from five o’clock in the morning to nine at night, a period of sixteen hours.”
Mr Leifchild’s report of the Collieries of South Wales, Children in Mines and Collieries, 1839, p55
Horrific!

I ask as white supremacy doesn't make sense in the context of this thread, not to be pedantic.

I think that 'white supremacy' is appropriate in this context. I think that Avalon is proposing that not all 'whites' were supreme. I take 'supreme' in this context to mean that their interests, power and way of life takes precedence over everyone else's. Which, for a certain section of the white population, it clearly did.

OTOH, if you're reading 'white supremacy' as racial supremacy there is a different view to be had.

But where do you fit in the 'white' people enslaved by other races? There was, for example, a long tradition of white enslavement by the 'Barbary Pirates' of North Africa; much of it happening at around the same time that Avalon's miners were being enslaved..

Avalon, it is all indeed class war. It still is class war. Black inferiorty, and the Atlantic slave trade are aspects of class war.

Class was is when the powerful, usually men, historically usually white men, cling to their power and wealth by fair means or foul.

All empires were founded upon class war; commercial empires today are founded upon class war.

I shall read this book while remembering it is 'A work of Historical Fiction' Ken Follet not being a historian.
I shall look into it myself . I am 39%scotland in my dna

VR that is not what I meant. We know how badly black slaves were treated on the plantations - lots of books on it and well recorded in History. Additionally I studied US history and was horrified by what I read. It was a shock to discover Scottish miners were enslaved from birth and wore neck bracelets proclaiming who their master was. This is not to diminish what happened to black slaves but to bring in the open what happened to white miners in Scotland. Yes little children were sent down the mines in Somerset and worked with the guss and crook (find out more at radstockmuseum.co.uk) but they were not actually owned and lucky ones could find other employment. The miners in Scotland had no choice and were slaves for life.

Interesting Esspee that you were taught this in history.

Wow, 25Avalon, I never knew that. We learnt about the use of young children in factories but not in mines and certainly not the conditions you mention. I’m off to learn more.

We are taught this in history class. At least I was. I wrote an essay on the subject and often bring the subject up when discussing slavery.
Man’s inhumanity to man.

Why question white supremacy though OP? Yes The exploitation and treatment of the poor of whatever colour is abhorrent and still goes on - child labour and human trafficking. The enslavement of Africans was one particular historical example whereby slavery was legitimised and carried out on an industrial scale. We still have many examples of its legacy in discrimination and racism. Your OP tries to minimise that.

I remember reading a book about small children who were sent down the mines in Somerset. They had straps attached to them and hauled the trucks of coal, crawling on their hands and knees from the working to the coal face.
They got permanent scars from where the straps left weals on their bodies.
This happened in other areas too.

Having been down a Welsh coal mine I can only imagine how horrendous their lives must have been.

Trisher they have made a film called “The Underground Railroad” showing on Amazon Prime.

VR the wealthy class got wealthy and stayed wealthy on the backs of poor whites and blacks. I just never realised Scottish miners were enslaved.