A royal commission, led by Sir John Sankey, was called to examine the future of the mining industry.

Leo Chiozza Money, Sidney Webb and R.H. Tawney were the three economists on the commission, all broadly favourable to the miners.

[1] No agreement was reached and, when the commission reported in June 1919, it offered four separate approaches ranging from full nationalisation to continued private ownership.

[2] The public impact of the report was such that, in Ben Travers' comic novel A Cuckoo in the Nest (1921), the Rev.

Cathcart Sloley-Jones, under the illusion that he was addressing a Member of Parliament, "lowered his voice into a rather sinister whisper: 'What is Lloyd George's real view of the miners' report?