A lockout in 1910 by Cambrian Collieries in South Wales in a dispute about wage cuts led to a ten-month-long strike by 12,000 men. Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, sent troops to Tonypandy where they charged a group of striking miners with fixed bayonets on 21 November. The strikers returned to work defeated but a conference in 1911 called for a minimum wage. The demand led to the six-week-long National coal strike of 1912 in which more than one million miners participated.