Wigan Album

Very atmospheric portraits of man in a hard working life.
We visited Newtongrange Mining Museum in Scotland a few years ago & were taken down to the passageway men would have walked along to get to the coalface...some of these men would have walked a mile or more from home to the colliery, then would have to walk another mile or so underground before they started work...the same again at the end of the day, a hard life in the 1800's or the 1980's.

The miners were a victim of their own greed. For years they thought they were untouchable. If they were so heroic and brave, how come they vanished from the face of the earth? I knew lots of miners who told tales of skiving and inefficiency underground. They thought they could hold the country to ransom, but were stabbed in the back by their own kind. Photographs like these mean nothing: they are ghosts from an industry that never grasped the mantle. Thin smiles hide the hypocrisy and deciet. They have been binned to the dustbins of industry. Forever in the dark: there's irony there.

Harsh words Jacko....

Not harsh at all. Just facts about a body of working class men that thought they were special. Not one bit! They were well paid for their job; and let no one say that they were'nt. They never moved on. That was their ultimate downfall.

How can you comment about how hard miners worked when in your own words you were told what went on down the pit, obviously youv'e never been down the pit.
All the miners wanted was a decent wage for working in horrible conditions, thatcher was going to bring the working class down starting with the miners, and we are now paying the price.

The miners were own worst enemy. They stabbed each other in the back. Game over. The industry was run by idiots for years; they never embraced new technology. The men had a decent wage; I NEVER knew a poor miner. But there were millions of other workers on low money in other industries. I am an engineer. We went on strike many times for better conditions, but we held firm; we NEVER stabbed each other in the back. Thatcher didn't hang the miners. They hanged themselves.

In the very early fifties, the pay was adequate, if you were engaged in the hard, hazardous jobs, but nothing like what you should have been paid. I worked in the tunnels, tunnelling, to open new coal faces. When the fireman fired the delayed action shots,there was that much dust, you didn't know whether it was a foggy night, or a white Christmas. Air came into the tunnel via airbags. Then three of you either had to move thirty ton of rock, erect 14 by 10 girders, or re commence drilling for further blating. Harduous, dangerous, and extremely unhealthy. It was such a nice well paid cushy number, I left the industry, having been paid £2-00, per day, and joined the R. A. F., receiving £1-16s, per week. I never regreted it.

Well said Jarvo. I wonder how much extra money you got from striking and holding firm? The miners were sold down the river by that idiot in Yorkshire who decided that he could bear Mrs Thatcher. Twelve months on strike for nothing except debts and hardship. He came out of it with a 2 million pound bungalow. One lad that I knew lost his life's savings of £4000. Cheap coal from abroad for the power stations and the "dash for gas" finished mining in this country. The miners did accept new working practices and really produced the goods. Albert talks about the tunnel conditions, I was shifting 17 tons everyday with a spade on a 30" high face for £16 per week in the fifties. My great granddad was killed in the Blundell's explosion. Both of my grandfathers were invalided out of the pit with nystagmus and my dad had to leave with silicosis. Don't denigrate men that you know nothing about!!

Albert: £2 per day? That's £10 per week, not including overtime. Nearly twenty years later in 1974, I came out my time as a Fitter/Turner earning £20 per week...God knows what the pitmen were earning at that time! Work it out...They blew it. Big style.

Jarvo. No overtime in tunnel work. It was the usual piece work rate. If geological conditions, or breakdown of equipment, were acting against you, you were paid, depending on the yardage the tunnel had progressed.

Thatcher was responsible for the demise of the mining industry,not the miners and their leaders who were only striking to retain their jobs and their dignity!

jarvo, what was the new technology that the miners would'nt embrace?

Tuddy: Unity...So simple...But...The rest is history...Sad.

Several years ago, I believe I read it in the "Past-Forward magazine," a very poignant poem, written by a Durham miner, named Bob Richardson. If anyone can locate it, it is well worth the perusal.

Scargill was right all along. But you fell out amongst yourselves. Back stabbing cost you dearly.

Further to my above comment, the poem is entitled, " The Miner"

they were fighting for their jobs.The men who didnt support the strike still lost their jobs as Thatchers aim was to break the miners and ultimately the Trade Unions.Thousands of other jobs were also lost that relied on the pits.By the way Fred Scargills bungalow was £200,000 not 2 million.

I am pictured bottom left does anyone the other two

Jarvo,

Your disgusting comments are an absolute insult to all those who toiled, bravely, for centuries, down the mines for a pittance considering the conditions, and risks.

Not only are your remarks grossly insulting, they are, historically, incorrect.

They should be removed.

Sorry, should have included Jacko in my e-mail.

Don't think unity is a form of technology.

What about the young kids and women who slaved in the cotton mills? Are they to be ignored? The pitmen had more money than the aversage worker; and a lot of them didnt work at the face. It's a myth about miners. And I have a right to say anything I want about them. In fact, thousands of them made false claims for bad health years later receiving massive pay outs! Don't talk to me about miners. My Father worked 24/7 in the sixties in the building trade constructing some of the biggest roads and motorways in Britain; and, in terrible weather conditions.

The miners were a myth. And an untrue one at that.

Oh dear, how sad that such harsh words should be said about an honourable hard working group of men. Yes, of course there is waist and inefficiency in any large industry irrespective of whether it is a private or public run operation and things can always be improved upon; however before anyone else lays into the miners let's not forget which group is largely held responsible for the current doldrums we are in at the moment - oh goodness me its the private Tory banking system! Large industry/organisation is the same the World over.

Yes Jarvo is quite right, other groups of workers also toiled in hard poorly paid jobs, but few of them did so in the bowels of the earth risking life and limb on a daily basis from explosion, roof fall and gas. If you consult the record and history books and weigh up how many men have died over the centuries win the “black gold” it literally runs into the tens and tens of thousands. Small wars have been fought and successfully won with a lower body count than in this! If it all goes “pear shaped” doing a job on the surface you have still a good chance of surviving, however if it goes “belly up” underground invariably it’s “the ducks guts” and you’ve had it!

Yes I agree, King Arthur wasn’t always the brightest coal in the scuttle, and his fiery, often antagonistic and uncompromising rhetoric probably often turned those sitting on the middle ground against the miner’s cause, but he was absolutely right in what was being planned in No.10 by the wicked witch from Grantham. The Tories had never forgiven the miners for being largely instrumental in fetching Ted Heaths government down in 1973; they were to be the “sacrifical lamb” to destroy the power of the unions.

Even if you leave politics out of it all, just consider the logic of this. There are still hundreds and hundreds of year’s supplies of coal waiting to be extracted from under this land. Sufficient to have adequate time to look around for sensible and practical options to fossil fuels, not build stupid silly windmills that provide very little power – and that assumes of course that the wind is sufficiently strong to turn them anyway. The Tories closed the mines down because they said it was inefficient and cheaper to import it. Yet as soon as you remove competition from the market place the remaining supplier has you over a barrel or in this case a gas pipeline, and you are obliged to pay whatever price they decide to impose on you! Chapter and verse out of the Tory Central Office handbook. Now we are all held to ransom by the “new robber barons of this age” who sell us gas and electricity and we are forced to pay whatever they demand. When Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty sought to introduce oil fired warships as an alternative to coal fired ones in 1915, the first he did was to ensure a reliable source of fuel to supplement the coal already available – NOT destroy the indigenous home industry!

I’ll tell you something, the current crop of goons who purport to run our country are not even fit to untie the boots of a miner or similar hard working men and women of generations ago.

Jacko. My mother worked in the late twenties, the thirties, right into the mid seventies, very hard in the cotton mills as a weaver, for quite poor remuneration, in relation to what she was doing. Many other workers' in numerous occupations were treated abominably by their taskmasters', so it really is being grossly unfair to castigate another section of workers'. I agree, you have every right to express your views, but let us now put this animosity to bed.

John Taylor: A New Labour man, I take it? Leaving the poor miners out of it for a moment, Tony Blair must be held responsible for the dire state of Britain today. He, single handly, has wrecked our nation with his political correctness. Ask any teacher. Or Doctor. Or Engineer. Or Builder. Or Railwayman. Or Hospital worker...I can't include Miner...They're like the dinasaurs...Extinct !But he would have "robbed" them as well, if they hadn't had robbed themselves. Sad. Labour in Wigan? It's no wonder the town has become a ghost town.

Thankfully not Jarvo, however I do number amongst one of the industries that you mention in your diatribe, and as it happens, wouldn't disagree with your comments about Blair at all. My father and his father before him (yours too perhaps?)fought in two world wars so that everyone might have the right to their own opinion of whatever ilk that might be, and you are of course entitled to yours. Unfortunately for you, you seem to be in a minority of one on this Jarvo, judging by the other comments posted. Therefore the "Ayes" have it and you'll have to stand in the corner with the pointy hat on old fruit.

The "ayes" are all from Wigan, unfortunetly. But, my opinion is valid. I have worked as hard as any miner in my job, and had a lot more responsibilty in doing so. The men who went down the pit are no martyrs: far from it...Their sense of unity during the strike of 1984, and other disputes, was always found wanting. "Humble Pie" comes to mind...Another old Wiggin monkey that just won't get off the town's back...Figures, though.

John Taylor, if I ever meet you I would like to buy you a pint, you are a clever man. Not like some of us numpties.

Jarvo I wonder if you watched Reel History Of Britain this afternoon ? It gave a true insight into the arduous and dangerous occupation of coal mining particulary the many miners who lost their lives. I dont remember many fatalities in the engineering machine shops !

'Therefore the "Ayes" have it and you'll have to stand in the corner with the pointy hat on old fruit.'

LOL! Quite right, too, John, but he probably wouldn't stand stil. :-)

Found the poem I was referring to in an earlier comment.
The Miner, by Bob Richardson, a Durham miner.

They have no workers' playtime, no music while you work. Theirs is but long hard labour, that all but heroes shirk. Yes a miner is a hero,and should any doubt my word,let me mention just one danger,though of many you have heard. Have you ever lain in a confined space with a constant water flow, a broken roof above you,a sodden floor below. Heard the voice of tortured strata,as the earth gives threatening growls, to the puny helpless humans hacking at her bowels?

Have you ever sat in the gleam of a lamp, and heard the timber creak,like the hinges on the gates of Hell, and you dare not move or speak. Have you watched a comrade dying as stones have crushed his frame, praying for the sunlight he'll never see again. Yes, it is easy to die with the sun on your face,while the gifts of God surround you, than to die in slime, and dust, with no family beside you.

So when you speak of heroes,and speak of them with pride. Give some thought to the miner, and how many of them died. They have no place in history,no glory to their deeds, but Britain gained her national pride because of men like these.

I think the people who have left the negative comments regarding the miners are a disgrace, and the remarks are an insult to the thousands of men who lost their lives working in a dangerous and hazardous industry. I doubt the people who make these comments have ever even got in the cage never mind gone down the mine. Before you judge them walk a mile in their shoes then you will have the right to your comments. My family are 5 generations of miners, some who lost their lives in terrible accidents, others left with injuries that affected the rest of their lives. Yes there are other industries which have been hard and dangerous but none with a casualty list like the coal mines.

No proper records before 1850 in the Mining Industry.
Total number of recorded accidents and deaths since 1850, are around 161,000.
How “mad” or “desperate” had you to be to accept that level of risk for whatever “reward” in any job?
This is not even to mention the very many early deaths brought on by the industrial conditions endured by the miners.
I lived in Wigan largely in the 1940’s and 1950’s and this may be my imagination but I seem to recall weekly reports, usually tucked away in a corner of the local newspaper, recording yet another death or serious incident “down the pit”.
It’s only in later life that I can try to fully appreciate the nature of this incredibly dangerous job and although I’ll never really understand it fully since I’ve never been down a pit, let alone work there, I cannot see how you cannot but admire the people who risked everything (their health, their lives and their retirement) for the sake of a weekly wage - it simply defies our imagination.
Go to http://www.cmhrc.co.uk/site/home/ for the coalmining history rescource centre.

I'm a modern Miner, worked at Agecroft; Maltby ann Hatfield, how dare any one dish those great men, most people would poo their pants just going down in the cage,Jarvo anytime you fancy a a tommy topper time of yer job versus mine i'm here, 40 DEGREES C EXPLOSIVE ATMOSPHERE, DUST SO YOU CAN'T SEE, SPONTANIOUS COMBUSTION, 2 HOURS ON FOOT JUST TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SHAFT YOU MAKE ME LAUGH MON!hAVE A GO

Jarvo, I’ve really no idea if all the “ayes” come from Wigan or not, I don’t and I would imagine some of the others who have a different opinion to yours don’t do either! The fact remains that you appear to be in a minority of one on this subject – why not just accept it and live with it!! What a jaundiced and unforgiving view you seem to have of folk – did someone from Wigan or a collier “wrong you in another life”, or something perhaps?

Thanks Barrie for your kind words, but in truth no you are wrong I am an ordinary working “numpty” man just like you, and of that fact alone and of my roots, I am proud.

Isn’t the real truth of all this debate summed up so well in the poem that Albert has put on from the Durham coal miner. Read the second paragraph and in particular the last line of that paragraph and marvel at the astounding courage of the men who helped build an empire the like of which the World has never seen before or since. It’s often overlooked that all of the incredible machines that the Victorian engineers and entrepreneurs devised and built as part of the industrial revolution all required one thing to make ‘em work –COAL.
No coal - no working machines, no industrial revolution (yes I know - with all its social hardships), no empire, no wealth.

Having been underground many, many times over the years albeit under rock and not earth and coal strata, I can vouch for the fact that it is an alien and unforgiving environment. Once, when much younger and underground in a slate quarry and taking rest, my father instructed me to turn off my cap lamp. Our normal perception of darkness or night is coloured considerably by what we see outside our homes, with so much background illumination from people’s homes, streetlights, industrial premises and so on. Along with others in the party I did as he asked and it is only then that you begin to understand what true darkness is really like – a total and absolute absence of any shred of light at all.

If I might just quote one example of the dangers faced by the men, AND boys remember, as they worked down the pit. (Link attached at bottom)
There is an account of an explosion in the King pit at Blundell’s colliery at Pemberton in 1877, where two young boys, Matthew Preston and George Beedall both aged 14, were blown out of the heading they were in by the force of the explosion and straight down the shaft, a distance of 340 yards, a little over a thousand feet, to their deaths in the shaft bottom. These are just boys of fourteen remember not even fully grown men, and the sheer terror that they must have experienced that day as they fell to their deaths is beyond my ability to comprehend. Remember that it isn’t the fall that kills you it’s the sudden stop at the end, in other words you will be conscious all the way down!
I have a youngest son at home who is thirteen and half the time he hasn’t a clue whether it is “pancake Tuesday or Christmas Wednesday” and it doesn’t even bear thinking about!

Yes, in my opinion the miners were giants amongst men, and to suggest otherwise in general terms is a travesty.

http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/mining7.html

Jarvo's quick to speak up but even faster at hiding - the silence is deafening.

The mining industry is dead and buried in this country. Buried by the miners themselves. Fact. Their lack of unity was a terrible embarrassment to the entire Trade Union movement. Humble pie, indeed...

Come off it Gerald. When have Union movements of any kind ever been 100% united. Fact - the Tory Government were determined to expunge the mining industry and succeeded partly by exploiting weakness in the Union but more so by following their own political dogma. They had one aim and followed it through ruthlessly, at huge economic and social cost to the country.

Walter: Social cost? How do you come to that conclusion? It was that Control Freak Tony Blair who made folks lives unbearable, under his guise of New Labour. New Labour? Same old underhanded tricks. He alone single handedly wrecked this once proud land

When the miners' strike began, there were over 181,000 miners in 170 deep mine pits. By 2002 there were just 8,000 miners in 17 pits. Many villages have lost their source of employment. Entire regions once built on the industry - Durham, South Wales - have undergone a profound transformation.

The Tories set out to destroy the coal industry because, in their political dogma, it was an 'out moded" part of British industry. Their core strategy was a highly organised attack on the unions, which they saw as responsible for the long-term profit-problems of British industry.

Out of government in the mid-70s, the Tory party had undergone a change of leadership and political direction. Under Margaret Thatcher, the Tories embraced neo-liberalism, monetarism and authoritarianism. The new thinking was reflected in a plan written by Nicholas Ridley in 1977.

In the Ridley Plan, the union the Tories most wanted to beat down was the National Union of Mineworkers. The miners had made fools of Ted Heath's Tory government of 1970-74. They had won a massive pay rise in a strike in 1972 and helped to wreck anti-union legislation. In 1974, during another miners' strike, Heath went to the polls on the slogan 'Who rules, us or the unions'? Ted Heath lost the election.

The Tories knew they had to prepare the ground to beat the miners: build up coal stocks, make plans to use lorries to transport coal, and re-organise the police so that it would be more effective when used against strikers.

After their election the Tories picked off groups of workers one by one: the steel workers, train drivers over flexible rostering, health service workers, the print workers in dispute at the Warrington Messenger.

In that dispute the newspaper's owner, Eddie Shah made the first successful use of the new laws against trade-union solidarity which the Tories were introducing piecemeal.

In each of those disputes the TUC failed to stand up to the government, as if they could not see how serious Thatcher was about attacking the unions. Yet the Tories' broad political intentions were not a secret.

The Tories were careful not to take on the miners too soon. In February 1981 they announced a number of pit closures, but withdrew their plans when strikes hit the coalfields. Still, between 1981 and March 1984 some 40 pits were closed or merged and 41,000 jobs were lost.

In July 1982 the National Coal Board admitted they were undertaking a 'searching financial review' of 30 or so pits; by November leaked reports suggested that 75 pits and 50,000 jobs were under threat; bigger cuts were announced later. The NCB had a strategy of concentrating everything on high-tech super-pits - like Selby in North Yorkshire - and scrapping the so-called 'uneconomic' pits. The meaning of the term 'uneconomic' would be fiercely debated during the months of the dispute. But the surest consequence of the NCB's definition of 'uneconomic' was that communities in Wales, Scotland and Kent could go rot!

By now the miners were well aware of the bleak future the Tories had planned for them. They knew they were fighting for the future of the entire industry. Yet when NUM's leader Arthur Scargill repeated the claim of a secret "hit list' of 70 or more closures, he was told he was 'scaremongering'.

Inevitably the closures and sackings after 1981 had caused demoralisation in the industry. Would the miners be ready to fight when the Tories started to step up their campaign by announcing further closure plans in March 1984?

It did not look as if the miners were in fighting mood. In January 1982, miners had rejected a leadership proposal to strike over pay by 55%. In October 1982 61% of miners voted not to strike over pay and pit closures.

In September 1983 the government had appointed a new boss for the National Coal Board. Ian MacGregor was an American who had a record of cuts at British Leyland (when he was a Labour-appointed boss at that nationalised car company), and later at the British Steel Corporation.

At the end of September the NCB rejected a pay claim of 5.2% outright. They would make no agreement until "over-production of high cost capacity" had been eliminated and the 'uneconomic pits' had been closed.

On 21 October 1983 a NUM Special Delegate Conference agreed to fight pit closures "other than on grounds of exhaustion" and job losses. They agreed an overtime ban which was to stand even in those pits that were working during the strike.

On 1 March local management announced that Cortonwood Colliery near Rotherham in south Yorkshire was to be closed. Miners in south Yorkshire immediately went on unofficial strike. That strike was later made official. Other areas began to come out. The great strike had begun.

In the drama four themes shaped the course of events. First, and most important the fortitude of the miners and their families.

A majority of miners stayed solidly behind the strike for an entire year. The courage that required people to face up to the poverty, injustice and violence that was done to them was quite stunning.

Second was the division between miners and mining areas. Some areas were reluctant, slow, or opposed to coming out because they saw their jobs as safe - an assumption that proved to be false.

Miners in areas that had more productive coal seams, areas like Notts, had done well out of a long-standing incentive scheme.

Even so it was a minority in the country who scabbed and even in Notts, at the peak of the strike, close to half of the miners were on strike.

Of course the Tory press, the police and the government did everything in their power to exploit the divisions. Some leaders in the labour movement increased those divisions by making noise about the fact that the miners union had not held a ballot over strike action.

The press blamed 'barmy' Arthur Scargill, but in fact rank and file miners voted not to have a ballot. Whatever the tactical rights and wrongs or how you see it in restrospect, the people who made a fuss at the time, were either scared of the militancy of the dispute or actively wanted to sabotage the strike.

The third theme was how the British labour movement failed to make effective solidarity with miners.

Notwithstanding the efforts of many rank and file workers, when union leaders, like those of the railworkers and dockers, faced national battles of their own they failed to open up a decisive 'second front' against the Tories.

When the funds of the NUM were frozen by a High Court judge - a quite audacious ruling class attack on the trade union movement - the TUC and other trade unions failed to come to the NUM's aid.

The left was not guiltless in this respect. In Liverpool a Militant-dominated Labour council (Militant was the forerunner of the Socialist Party), had promised to confront the government over cuts.

Coming to power in May 1983, they started a very impressive campaign among council workers and the local community. But at the peak of the miners' strike that campaign was left to dissipate, while the Militant leaders of the council did a deal with the Tories. They got a little extra money to see them through to the next year.

The fourth theme was the appalling, but highly instructive, extent of ruling class brutality during the strike. The Tories' brazen determination to see the rule of the market over the lives of working class people defended and extended was encapsulated in the image of a policeman's truncheon beating down on the head of a woman trying to call for an ambulance.

For the Tories, the miners were scum... the 'enemy within'. For hundreds of thousands of people, many active in politics for the first time, the miners' strike was a call to solidarity that could not be ignored.

The political aftermath of the miners' defeat has been immense. Despite a truly heroic battle by the striking miners and immense sympathy from other groups of workers, the Tories won. They were able to go on to make a far-ranging programme of privatisation and enforce anti-union laws which outlawed effective trade unionism - the right to strike and take solidarity action - in this country. The defeat of the miners has been a heavy burden on the labour movement, one which some craven trade union leaders have exploited to the maximum.

New Labour arose out of the defeat of the miners strike. Tony Blair's clique remains bedazzled by the success of Thatcher. Labour's leader at the time of the strike, Neil Kinnock organised witch-hunts and 'reforms' which prepared the ground for Blair. Kinnock failed on every single count to do his elementary duty to our people, those who were fighting to preserve the soul of the labour movement.

Jo-Jo: You wrote in a mini thesis basically everything I have said about the miners and the dreadful Labour and New Labour movements. No unity; no political support. Cheaper coal from Poland? How ironic that the hard-working Poles find our country so appealing...Nuff said.

Jacko, I am in no way putting the miners down they fought a truly heroic battle. They are giants among men and I have immense respect for all who have tolled in the bowels of this land, but the politicians of the day won, which was the Tories. It's really is sad because our children and grandchildren are suffering today because of what Thatcher and the so called New Labour have done to this once great country. Today there is no difference in the political parties, I myself have been Labour through and through most of my life but today find it very difficult to even use the vote that women lost their lives to get.