Miner S Kill

Examining working class welfare in the age of deindustrialisation through the experiences of the Scottish coal minerThroughout the twentieth century Scottish miners resisted deindustrialisation through collective action and by leading the campaign for Home Rule. This book argues that coal miners occupy a central position in Scotland's economic, social and political history, and highlights the role of miners in formulating labour movement demands for political-constitutional reforms that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The book also uses the struggle of the mineworkers to explore working class wellbeing more broadly during the prolonged and politicised period of deindustrialisation that saw jobs, workplaces and communities devastated. Key featuresExamines deindustrialisation as long-running, phased and politicised processUses generational analysis to explain economic and political changeRelates Scottish Home Rule to long-running debates about economic security and working class welfareAnalyses the longer history of Scottish coal miners in terms of changing industrial ownership, production techniques and workplace safetyRelates this economic and industrial history to changes in mining communities and gender relations

Jack LeClere is a cop dodging bullets in what could best be described as friendly fire. He took out the serial killer who murdered his parents, and half of New Rhodes paid the price. Not to mention the rioting that gripped the city over the Julia Mae Jefferson murder, his last big case. So in the spirit of the aftermath, his superiors have called into question every sliver of his conduct. Jack is wealthy; he doesn’t need to be a detective, and the top brass are implying that maybe if he followed procedure like his livelihood depended on it, he wouldn’t want to be a cop. Leonard Beloit is a pillar of the community and a very wealthy man also, which does him no good when Jack gets called to the Grand Royal Theater to find him on the floor, his chest pierced with a gem pickaxe. Jack’s search for the person who killed Beloit starts with the search for the person who was Beloit. As he speaks with Beloit’s wife and daughter and digs even further, Jack finds a lustful, vagrant degenerate that would be unrecognizable in the society pages. Gangs, petty crimes, and not-so-petty crimes seem to be Beloit’s off-hours pastime. None of this would call for Beloit’s death, but Jack will keep digging, and soon realize he is peeling into the rot of the onion of New Rhodes high society, of which he is a reluctant member. The deeper he gets investigating what his peers are doing in the shadows, the more they investigate him, asking, in their own way, whether he’ll stop playing cop and do something with the vast inheritance he rarely uses, and claims to never want. Beloit’s exploits take a very dangerous turn in the form of a conspiracy to transport toxic chemicals through the Adirondacks; it may be that the smoking gun is wrapped up in a smokestack. The case to find, and hold accountable, Beloit’s killer will pit him against not only the killer, but a version of himself that it seems everyone around him sees, that perhaps he can’t remain blind to anymore.

The California Gold Rush is thought to exemplify the Wild West, yet miners were expert organizers. Driven by property interests, they enacted mining codes, held criminal trials, and decided claim disputes. But democracy and law did not extend to “foreigners” and Indians, and miners were hesitant to yield power to the state that formed around them.

On September 18, 1992, nine men died in the labyrinthine drifts of Yellowknife's Giant gold mine, after four months of a painful labor dispute. Six of the dead were Giant employees; three were "replacement workers". All were husbands, fathers, sons, lovers, friends, firefighters, draegermen. Their deaths brought squadrons of police, investigators and the eye of the national media to Yellowknife. Roger Warren, a longtime Giant employee, was convicted on nine counts of second-degree murder. A multi-million dollar civil suit is ongoing. Those were the headlines reported in the nightly news, but as Yellowknife journalists Lee Selleck and Francis Thompson note, the real story of the Giant Mine tragedy was, up until now, untold. In a meticulously researched expose that unfolds like a compelling murder mystery, the two journalists peet back the complex layers of the events leading up to the unraveling of a close-knit community. They reveal a large and fascinating cast of players: Peggy Witte, the mine owner, whose belligerent strikebreaking tactics were unprecedented in the Canadian mining industry; an inexperienced and stubborn union whose members sometimes resorted to criminal acts; a paramilitary corporate security force; police who often seemed to act as agents of Giant Mine management; and an absentee federal government with close ties to the mining industry. They take you into the lives of miners and their families struggling to come to grips with issues that pitted relatives and friends against each other and saw homes, businesses, dignity and eventually, lives, tumble into the black abyss. And, in a mesmerizing recreation of the mine blast and subsequent trial of Roger Warren, theyraise serious and far-reaching doubts about the guilt of the man convicted of killing his co-workers. Utterly compelling and controversial, Dying for Gold is a masterful work of investigative journalism.