THE PRICE OF COAL

[Stanley]

I have been re-reading my mining histories and this triggered me to repost this old article.

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN…

On March 30th 1981 I was sat in an apartment on the Lower East Side in New York and had turned the TV on to pass away an idle hour. There was, what I thought was a play on, which depicted the assassination of the President. I called to my flat mate and congratulated her on the licence allowed to American film makers, this would never have been allowed in England. She came in, took a look at the screen and said ”Oh my God! This isn’t a play, it’s the news, live from Washington.” I had watched President Ronald Reagan and three other men being shot by John Hinckley Jnr.

On September 11 2001 I was in Northfield, Minnesota and turned on the TV just in time to see the second hijacked airliner fly into the World Trade Towers.

In both these cases, I know exactly where I was and I think that the trigger which imprinted the events on my brain was that I saw them in real time on the TV screen. Ask me where I was when Jack Kennedy was shot or Princess Diane lost her life in Paris and I haven’t the faintest idea. The events were so remote and had such slight impact on me.

On the 13th March 1996 I was sat having a cup of tea in the workshop at Rochdale Electric Welding when a friend came in and I saw immediately that he was very distressed. He had just heard on the news about the shooting at Dunblane where 16 children and a teacher had died. I sat and talked with him about it and when he asked me why I wasn’t as upset as him I said that there were perhaps two reasons. The first was that I was reared during WW2 and had perhaps been exposed to too much death and danger at an early age. The second reason was that he had children the same age as those who had been killed and this made the event so much more immediate for him.

One of the reasons why Barlick is such a good town to live in is that it’s a backwater. If anyone finds themselves in Barlick without intending to be here they have either been diverted because of a road closure or they’re lost! We have never hit the national headlines because we have been host to a disaster and all I can say is thank God. The nearest we get to collective remembrance is on November 11th each year when we remember the war dead. However, like everyone else, every now and again there is a catastrophe so horrific and compelling that it burns itself into our memories. We all have these, some personal but others because they strike a particular chord with us.

At this time of year, apart from Remembrance Day, two anniversaries always hit me. The first happened before I was born; on the 22nd of September, 1934, the Dennis Deep seam at Gresford Colliery exploded shortly after two o’clock in the morning. 266 miners were killed, 200 women were widowed and 800 children lost their father. Only eleven bodies were recovered, the Dennis Seam was sealed and from then until the pit finally closed in 1973 the miners went down with the knowledge that 255 of their mates were buried close by.

The second event is closest to my heart and I know exactly where I was when I heard the news. On 21st October 1966, after a period of heavy rain, a colliery waste tip on the hillside above the village of Aberfan slid down the hill and engulfed the local school. 115 children and 5 teachers were smothered by the black slime. Even though the subsequent enquiry laid the blame on the National Coal Board citing bad management of the waste tips, the NCB and the government refused to accept full financial responsibility for making the tips safe. In the end, the Aberfan Disaster Fund was forced to pay out £150,000 from the £1,750,000 donated to relieve distress. It is a little known fact that immediately after coming to power in 1997, the new Labour Government repaid this money to the fund.

When I heard about Aberfan we had three young children at Church School on York Street and I couldn’t help seeing that wall of mud crushing them and smothering the life out of them. The disaster might have happened in Wales but as far as I was concerned it was terribly relevant. I could empathise directly with all those poor people who had lost children. I was driving a milk tanker for West Marton at the time and I just pulled into the side of the road and burst into tears.

I suppose that my message this week is to spare a thought for the parents and survivors of Aberfan next Monday. Give some thought to those miners still entombed below Gresford. Don’t treat Remembrance Day as simply a minor event that hasn’t any relevance to your life.

Perhaps most important of all, give some though to what might happen in the near future in Iraq. In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, referred to the Sudetenland as “… a far away country ….. of whom we know nothing.”, it turned out to be one of the key factors which caused the Second World War. It might just be of relevance to us here in our backwater.

SCG/01 October 2002

[Stanley]

It's that time of year when my thoughts go back to WW1 and 2, Gresford and Aberfan. Four days to the anniversary of Aberfan. We should not forget....

[Tizer]

Thanks for raising the article again Stanley, it helps us keep in mind all those miners worldwide who risk their lives every day, even more so now in places like China. Having recently watched one of those WW2 farming programmes it also brings to mind the Bevin Boys who were sent down the mines, many of them being killed underground and how they were not released from the toil until several years after the end of the war. Whenever I go to Cornwall I'm reminded of the tin and copper miners, their short lives spent in the dark and dust.

[Stanley]

Dead right Tiz and it's never out of my minds. All my life I have been associated with jobs which involved danger, bad conditions and unsocial hours and I was always struck by how essentially good the men and women were who kept the country going. I've recently re-read the Cornish mines and they were in some ways worse than the coal mines. The amazing thing is that such a high percentage of the population have no idea what is involved to keep them going....

[Tizer]

When we did the tour around the Geevor mine in Cornwall there were a couple of ex-coal miners with us and they showed a lot of respect for the conditions under which the Cornish men worked.

[Stanley]

We often forget that in essence, the Cornish miners invented deep hard rock mining and their methods are still used today all over the world.

[Stanley]

It struck me this morning that the current investigation into police activity at Orgreave is part of the price of coal as well.

[Nolic]

I was staying with a friend in Cornwall about 30 years ago and went out for a pint with him and a mate of his who was a mining engineer. We got talking about coal mining as he was aware that at the time Burnley - where I was living then - was a declining coal area. He mentioned that Cornish mine owners had in the past shipped down coal miners to work the deep mines but many refused to work, turned round and came home. The reason for this is that the coal miners were unhappy in mines with no props and shuttering and could not appreciate that the hard Cornish rock did not need supports in the way the softer Northern rock did. Nolic

[Stanley]

Hard rock mining is a completely different beast. That's why many Cornish Miners and engineers were found all over the world passing on their skill in deep mines and also, very importantly, in hard rock tunnelling.

[Stanley]

Bumped.

[Tizer]

Thanks for bumping this Stanley. Back in 2012 (9 years ago!) I missed seeing Nolic's reply to my post about the coal miners and Cornish mines. I didn't know that. Thanks Nolic, sorry it took me so long to respond!

[Stanley]

And he's been thinking for 12 years that you were ignoring him......

[Stanley]

This article is twenty years old but well worth retreading I think.