The four villages in which this study was conducted were, and still are, small and relatively isolated villages surrounded by hills and woods. But they were part of a national and world economy and their trade unions and political parties were part of national movements.

Coal-mining, that ‘highly contentious and most political industry' is an industry marked by regional variations in problems of extraction and marketing. Durham, for example, exported most of its coal, much of it to the Baltic, whereas Yorkshire produced for a home market. Thus each coalfield, whilst geographically adjacent to the other, was nonetheless operating in a different market situation. Within a coalfield, too, there are local variations, based not only on geology but on the relation of a specific product to a specific market. Thus, when the D.C. reports closure in times of prosperity and the opening of a new seam in a slump it is because of the specific need for a particular coal. The opening or closing of a blast furnace, or the rise and fall of a Midland iron company explain these local (and usually minor) anomalies. Parts of Durham produced gas and coking coal of high quality and supplied the northern iron and steel industry and the London and south-eastern gas companies.