Thomas Hepburn - Conflict

Conflict

Hepburn then quickly had to involve his union in further industrial action in 1832 to ensure that unionised workers were given employment as pit owners threatened to cease employment of them. This strike was more bitter than the previous one, and despite Hepburn's best efforts to ensure that all action was peaceful, violence broke out on a number of occasions, such as at Friar's Goose, where unionised lead miners attacked non-unionised miners from Cumberland who had been brought in to replace them. In another action a South Shields magistrate, Nicholas Fairless was beaten so badly by a striking miner that he died from his wounds, and elsewhere a miner was shot by a police constable dring a disorder.

This strike withered and the union crumbled as the miners realised the necessity of employment and a wage to live was greater than the principle of trade union solidarity. The strike leaders were scapegoated by the authorities, and Thomas Hepburn became unable to secure employment as a miner thereafter, being banned from the coalfield.

Thereafter he attempted to sell tea at the mines to make a living, but in this venture he was largely unsuccessful.

Destitute, he was eventually re-employed at a colliery, at Felling, on the grounds that he did not get involved in trade union activity. He did not re-engage in any union activity but remained active in radical political circles. During 1838-39 he worked on behalf of the Chartists. He continued to work at Felling until retiring due to ill health in 1859.