Coal Mining

I am more than fed up with the sentimentality which surrounds any media reference to mining. The sort of report that refers to .. lost industry… community spirit… salt of the earth.. Pah!

It is obvious to me that this refers at best to a few mining villages and has little to do with reality. I’m a miners son married to a miner’s daughter and the reality of mining life was very different to that depicted by those who I suspect have never been near a pit in their lives. Mining, particularly underground, was brutally hard, destroying health and self respect. People looked down on miners.

My father went down the pit as a young man as soon as he was old enough. In the community where we lived there were only two choices for an unqualified labourer. They were agricultural worker or miner. Mining was well paid by comparison and for a young fit man it had that advantage. The dangers were something which happened elsewhere and there was no looking to the future. There was the occasional industrial trouble although threatened riots in 1921 were bluster seen off by firmness. The strike of 1926 showed that while miners were the trades union shock troops the loyalty only flowed one way. The general strike soon ended and the miners were left to struggle on their own.

The result was a decline in miner’s fortunes followed by the exertions of WW11. Mining, although a conscription free job, couldn’t hold enough labour and afterwards with National Service a proportion of conscripts were directed to the mines ( these were called the Bevin Boys ).

By this time my father was getting towards late middle age and his health was cracking up. After a long period off work he was given a lighter job on permanent afternoon shift. The mines worked three shifts; days 6am-2pm, afternoons, 2pm-10pm, nights 10pm-6am.( coal was only produced on days and nights, afternoons were devoted to repair and maintenance ) Although it was a necessary move my father resented it and would refer bitterly to afternoons as “the old men and cripples shift”. He felt his health and life had been ruined by mining and although he carried on into his early sixties he retired when his pit ( Pooley or North Warwickshire) closed.

By contrast my father-in-law had an easier time. He always worked on the surface ( on the bank as he would say ) firstly on screening and washing finishing up as colliery winder. My abiding memory of him at work was at Amington pit which was the relief shaft for Pooley. There would only be a dozen or so winds per shift so he was mostly just having to wait patiently for the bell to call him. He had no way of foreseeing when this would be so he had to be always alert. In an emergency he might have been called upon to make many lifts. He would be the only worker around ( everything else had closed ) so he didn’t even have company.

The only career advice I ever  got from my father was “don’t go down the pit”. As part of the end of school activities in my final year we went down the training face at Birch Coppice. I’m very glad I went down then for the experience but never again.

At that time, some sixty years ago, there were lots of pits in the Midlands which are now all closed. In fact I believe there is no deep mining in the UK. Open cast is cheaper but still not competitive with imports which supply our dwindling needs.

There were no canteens down the pit. My father would take a few sandwiches and a bottle of water for his shift. This was called his snap and the sandwiches were packed in his snap tin stored  in turn in a big pocket in his jacket. Incidentally I was always wryly amused that jam was called colliers ham.

After his shift and riding home he was always thirsty. That first welcome drink of tea would be cooled by tipping into a dish- he would too thirsty to wait.

He would be cycling home at night. Just after the war he was still using acetylene lamps. These needed charging with carbide and water every day. The ready availability of batteries came as a real boon from the late forties on. Because his route was across a large area of waste ground by the colliery slag heap he kept a bicycle specially for work. His “best” bicycle was kept for other occasions.

As I’ve alluded to earlier miners were looked down upon- I suppose like eg. dustmen. Mining was easy to enter in the post war labour shortage but difficult to leave as few employers wanted ex-miners.There was little pride in mining. My father even refused to join a miners club in retirement when we lived close to one.