The ‘isolated mass’ revisited: strikes in British coal mining

The authors examine how far inter-colliery variations in local strike activity in Britain between the Wars can be explained by the characteristics of their immediate localities highlighted by Kerr and Siegel's ‘isolated mass’ theory. A regression analysis suggests that some of the variables indicated by Kerr and Siegel did affect strike activity but only weakly. A contingency table analysis confirms that some of the Kerr-Siegel variables serve to define groups of collieries which experienced significantly different levels of strike activity. Whilst supporting many of the criticisms levelled at the Kerr-Siegel hypothesis, the authors conclude that the empirically based rejection of the hypothesis has been too emphatic.