UKC

Coal Miners

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 Steve John B 10 Apr 2013
Between 1960 and 1980, 372,000 British coal miners lost their jobs (18,600 a year).

During the 1980's, 173,000 British coal miners lost their jobs (17,300 a year).

(Source: National Coal Mining Museum)

I'm confused.
 The Lemming 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:

The maths works out for me. Am I missing something?
OP Steve John B 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B: For collieries, the figures are:

487 closures 1960-1980

146 closures 1980-1990


Now I'm even more confused...
 EeeByGum 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:

> Now I'm even more confused...

Why? The final nail was hammered in during the 80's causing the death of mining in this country. Whole communities were effectively shut down and still have not recovered over 20 years later. For those not involved, or who don't know what it is like to live in a "community" you probably will never understand.
 wbo 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B: I tihnk the point is the coffin had been opened for a long time tho'. Even in an 'ideal world' those mines were going to be shut pretty soon.

For a lot of pits coal mining only lingered into the 80's as the coal price was extensively subsidised by forcing the power companies to pay an elevated price, and they still managed to run at a considerable loss on top of that. I recall hearing, at the time, that an £8 ton of coal needed £100 of subsidy, but I'd imagine that's an extreme case

The counter argument sometimes made now re. power generation is that we don't need wind/solar/gas as we're sitting on top of xxx tons of coal. We are, but it was prohibitive then, and prohibitive now.
 Timmd 10 Apr 2013
In reply to wbo:

I heard something interesting about the cost benefit equation only taking into account the financial cost, where somebody who'd looked into it in a academic capacity in his local comunity in Wales, said that drug and alcohol dependency/abuse, marital break up, and suicide, all went up dramatically after the closure of the local pit(s).

I also find it interesting that a handfull of pits were reopened and run at a profit by the miners who'd been put out of work. In that they grouped together and possibly had financial backing untill they were up and running again.

With pits which later proved to be profitable being shut down for a time, this makes me wonder if there were more pits which could have been kept open and made a profit, and about how much a sense of principle or idealogy was behiend the closing of the pits, as opposed to just financial reasons, as it's no secret that Tatcher had a dislike for the trade unions, sometimes for quite valid reasons.

That profitable mines were closed suggests to me that not enough detailed thought was put into the widespread closure of the coal mines.

Just so it's clear, i'm a Greenie rather than a Labour voter, and not so sure about the continuing use of coal as an energy source. I don't think enough effort is being put into looking for alternatives, but that's another thread topic.
 Reach>Talent 10 Apr 2013
In reply to EeeByGum:
I think the OPs point is that shooting up a mortuary doesn't make you a murderer and that Mrs Ts role in killing the UK mining industry may have been overstated based on the numbers presented.
 wbo 10 Apr 2013
In reply to TimmD: which ones were reopened - genuine question?

I wonder if wages were changed (read reduced). One of Tony Benn's tricks to try and make some pits stay profitable was to knock out a national pay structure for miners and introduce different wages for different regions.
 elsewhere 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Reach>Talent:
The difference may be the Thatcherite glee and brutality of it but another difference is in the 60's & 70's miners could continue at another pit and those in the 80's couldn't.
 MJ 10 Apr 2013
In reply to elsewhere:

another difference is in the 60's & 70's miners could continue at another pit and those in the 80's couldn't.

So they didn't lose their jobs then?
 elsewhere 10 Apr 2013
In reply to MJ:
Based on the annual loss as a proportion of the remaining workforce, I guess in the earlier decades that those who wanted to stay in the industry transferred to other mines and most of the job losses occurred through retirement rather than compulsory redundancy.
cap'nChino 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B: Not quite the same but can you see the point of what some people are getting at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-22093818
 GrahamD 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:

Which rather suggests that the crying shame is that investment wasn't being made in the affected area through the 60's and 70s. Come the 80's the areas were already condemed as dead men walking.

Thatcher can only have accelerated the pit closures by a few years at most, but the investment in those affected areas needed to have started decades before so there was an alternative to mining in those areas.
 Postmanpat 10 Apr 2013
In reply to GrahamD:
> (In reply to Steve John B)
>
> Which rather suggests that the crying shame is that investment wasn't being made in the affected area through the 60's and 70s. Come the 80's the areas were already condemed as dead men walking.
>
>
Partly because there were alternative jobs in other industries at that stage so it wasn't so necessary.
 Postmanpat 10 Apr 2013
In reply to elsewhere:
> (In reply to mkean)
> The difference may be the Thatcherite glee and brutality of it but another difference is in the 60's & 70's miners could continue at another pit and those in the 80's couldn't.
>
The difference may be that in the 60s and 70s the unions accepted, albeit not always without a fight, that mines had to close so it could be done on an orderly basis. Scargill did not.



 Postmanpat 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:

Can anyone give a proper explanation of why, after the strike was over, and the designated mines were closed, the rest of the industry collapsed so quickly?
 Mark Morris 10 Apr 2013
In reply to wbo: Many pits re-opened after the NCB produced figures that they were un-workable do to geological problems. They stayed open and made large profits for the miners that bought out the workings with their redundancy money.

I'm proud to say I live near one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Colliery

The deep workings have only recently closed after exhausting the underground supplies - yes they dug out all they could.

The view from the kitchen window is spoilt at the moment by the company extracting even more by open cast techniques. There is a huge wind farm being built on the mountain above the opencast. I'd prefer either to a nuclear power plant, and I know the ground will return to something like
it's natural state, hopefully before I die.

The community here survived to some extent, and the miners who invested their own money, made it back several times over.
M0nkey 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Reach>Talent:
> (In reply to EeeByGum)
> I think the OPs point is that shooting up a mortuary doesn't make you a murderer and that Mrs Ts role in killing the UK mining industry may have been overstated based on the numbers presented.

That sir, is an excellent turn of phrase. Well played. I am going to steal it and pass it off as my own. Hope you don't mind.
 n-stacey 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B: All this talk of ex miners and Andy Cave has not been mentioned once!!!
 Mark Morris 10 Apr 2013
In reply to n-stacey: What's he ever done on grit!
OP Steve John B 10 Apr 2013
In reply to elsewhere:
> (In reply to MJ)
> Based on the annual loss as a proportion of the remaining workforce, I guess in the earlier decades that those who wanted to stay in the industry transferred to other mines and most of the job losses occurred through retirement rather than compulsory redundancy.

That would make sense if no new miners were joining the workforce - otherwise those retiring would be replaced by school leavers and the total numbers employed would stay the same.

Surely Andy Cave was not the only person to start work in "that filthy, dangerous hell" after the 1950s?
 elsewhere 10 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:
You'd have to look up the recruitment figures but it would be unusual to maintain full recruitment whilst your workforce is dropping.
OP Steve John B 11 Apr 2013
In reply to elsewhere:
> (In reply to Steve John B)
> You'd have to look up the recruitment figures but it would be unusual to maintain full recruitment whilst your workforce is dropping.

...by definition!

So, hundreds of thousands of young unemployed in mining towns due to pit closures and the workforce being cut by >50% in the 60s and 70s?
 Postmanpat 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:
> (In reply to elsewhere)
> [...]
>
> ...by definition!
>
> So, hundreds of thousands of young unemployed in mining towns due to pit closures and the workforce being cut by >50% in the 60s and 70s?

As I said above. They went to work in other industries.

 n-stacey 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B: No, there were more of us than just Andy.
 elsewhere 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:
> So, hundreds of thousands of young unemployed in mining towns due to pit closures and the workforce being cut by >50% in the 60s and 70s?

That may be your interpretation but it's not mine. I suggested some miners went to other pits and postmanpat mentions other industries.

OP Steve John B 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Postmanpat:
> (In reply to Steve John B)
> [...]
>
> As I said above. They went to work in other industries.

So the problem wasn't that the mines closed, rather that there weren't other industries for the people to work in? I was under the impression that almost everyone in a mining town would've worked in the pits - that's certainly the standard portrayal.
OP Steve John B 11 Apr 2013
In reply to elsewhere:
> (In reply to Steve John B)
> [...]
>
> That may be your interpretation but it's not mine. I suggested some miners went to other pits and postmanpat mentions other industries.

If the workforce was dropping they can't have been going to other pits - that would have no effect on the total workforce. No interpretation necessary.
 Postmanpat 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:
> (In reply to Postmanpat)
> [...]
>
> So the problem wasn't that the mines closed, rather that there weren't other industries for the people to work in? I was under the impression that almost everyone in a mining town would've worked in the pits - that's certainly the standard portrayal.

It was both. Unemployment had soared in the 70s compared to the 60s and manufacturing employment was in steep decline (steeper than in the 80s).
However, in areas like the north of England there were still factory jobs available.

There was quite a marked division between the areas where the geology meant that mining was clearly coming to an end (eg.East Durham) and the areas where investment was still being made (eg.West Durham).
The NCB acted acted a kind of broker, trying to move miners into the surviving areas and attract other jobs into the declining areas. So Durham saw jobs created in things like light engineering, textiles and clothing and of course the public sector.

Some attempts were made to do this post the 1984 strike but basically Thatcher, much to her discredit, wasn't interested. Even Tebbit has acknowledged this was a bad mistake.

Of course the final nail was not put into the coffin by Thatcher, but by Major/Heseltine in the 1990s. Heseltine was always a proponent of regional regeneration but I'm not sure what he did about it in this case.

 Reach>Talent 11 Apr 2013
In reply to M0nkey:
Thieve away sir!
 elsewhere 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:
> If the workforce was dropping they can't have been going to other pits - that would have no effect on the total workforce. No interpretation necessary.

I guess in the earlier decades that those who wanted to stay in the industry transferred to other mines and most of the job losses occurred through retirement rather than compulsory redundancy.

Postmanpat makes a good point, some of those leaving the NCB may have gone to other industries rather than retired.



OP Steve John B 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Postmanpat:
> (In reply to Steve John B)
> [...]
> So Durham saw jobs created in things like light engineering, textiles and clothing and of course the public sector.
>
> Some attempts were made to do this post the 1984 strike but basically Thatcher, much to her discredit, wasn't interested. Even Tebbit has acknowledged this was a bad mistake.

It's interesting that the only sensible criticism of Thatcher on this thread has come from someone who is regularly criticised on UKC for being right wing! 1,100 views and not a peep from the usual suspects.
OP Steve John B 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Mark Morris:
> (In reply to wbo) Many pits re-opened after the NCB produced figures that they were un-workable do to geological problems. They stayed open and made large profits for the miners that bought out the workings with their redundancy money.
>
> I'm proud to say I live near one:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Colliery

Hats off to them, not sure I would have been so wise/sensible/organised in their position. Why didn't the unions put more effort into promoting this kind of thing? (And if they did, why wasn't it more widespread?)
 Mark Morris 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B: Interesting thought Steve. It was pre devolution so there were no promises from a Welsh government to support them. I can only assume that it was the leadership shown by a few of them. They all knew there would be nothing else left for them and future generations unless they did something.

Not sure the NUM were involved, if they were it probably just through the organisational structure being left there at the pit.

Why others didn't follow is a big question, Welsh stubbornness, if we can't beat them join them?

Most have moved on to another pit and the opencast, with the colliery grounds being turned into walking/MTB trails, etc.

Read an article recently where several work in Bath during the week. The whole city is built on underground quarries for the Bath stone! There are very few people left with the expertise to carry out work in these conditions.

Interesting that I've heard of very few accidents at the pit since they "bought themselves out". No pressure from managers to take risks?
 Deviant 11 Apr 2013
In reply to Steve John B:

I just wonder who in their right mind would want to work down a pit today ?

I find it hard to imagine today's youth accepting such conditions; a generation that have benefited from easier access to higher education and subsequently have higher aspirations.

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