[2] The AAM began to struggle, and dissolved in 1875, but the Neath District survived on an independent basis.
[3] Isaac Evans became prominent in the union, and in 1876 took a leading role in the negotiations which founded the Sliding Scale Joint Committee, to determine coal miners' wages.
[5] Evans and the union remained strongly supportive of the sliding scale, a position shared with some other local miners' unions, but not with the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB); it therefore did not join the MFGB.
Evans died in 1897, and was replaced by John Williams, and in 1898 the union became part of the new South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF).
The union became the Western District of the SWMF, and retained a high level of autonomy.