End of deep coal mining in Britain

By their nature though, coal mines are not permanent and will close when the deposits are exhausted/no longer economic to recover. Perhaps rather than 'how many' we could be looking at the nature of the mines that were shut

 

Not really.

 

Er so why the closure of the Somerset Coalfield by 1973, and the Bristol area pits well before that?

 

Coal mining is an extractive industry and they will eventually reach a point where they are exhausted and have to close. However, there is also a law of supply and demand. If supply is running significantly higher than demand then some mines have to close. This is what happened in 1967 and, again in 1985 and 1992. They are very expensive things to mothball and this rarely happens. They are also virtually impossible to re-open; once a mine is actually closed, as distinct from being mothballed, it is closed for good and the coal therein is lost.

 

Practically the only way to reopen a Pit is to make it just that, an Open Cast 'Hole in the Ground' - 'Untopping'. These days machinery is so much more powerful than in the past so much bigger holes can be dug much more quickly and it is practical to work deposits that would previously have been deemed 'Deep'. It's not that popular with a lot of people however.

Gleision Colliery, 15 September 2011, demonstrated one reason why it is difficult to open an old Pit.

 

Is that what they are planning at the old tank factory Barnbow/ Later vickers near Leeds. Wonder what quality that coal is and who they hope to sell it too?

 

I think with Thatcher it was more a question of beating the Unions and their constant strikes with the NUM being the ringleader union. She planned ahead and stockpiled coal and got supplies from other countries and waited until she was ready. Then once the miners strike was won and the NUM crushed, it effectively meant unions in other industries also backed down and the era of strikes largely ended.

To my mind it was at least partly, crush the NUM and unions by crushing their industry. No coal industry, no NUM. Of course since power generation is now being switched from coal to other technologies there is now less and less demand for coal. The green lobby have also helped its decline.

 

and that's all for the better

Colin

 

Some people do seem to have a rose tinted view of the coal mining industry they seem to forget that it was an incredibly dangerous industry with major health implications for the workforce.
my mothers side of the family are from the Durham area and many worked in mines I remember my grandfather telling me stories about how in WW2 he left the mines and signed on as a trawler man and despite being attacked by the luftwaffe several times he felt safer on a fishing boat than he ever did down the pit.

Colin

 

The problem is though that for the areas like the South Wales valleys, where whole towns and villages were created around the mines, those people have now been left with nothing. A dangerous dirty job is not ideal, but it is better than being unemployed. Those areas are now just decayed, with many leaving and those left behind in poverty.
Plus other things get affected like railway lines, ports, Engineering, shops etc which also decline.

You can watch this 30 minute program, really excellent shows how things have changed in the coal fields and Swindon works.

 

Is it? It doesn't appeal to me, but then I am a millennial I suppose...

Plenty of former heavy industrial cities have regenerated, but it does seem to take an awfully long time from when the original industry declines to the area becoming nice again.

Perhaps if the government weren't focused on Brexit it could be improving the economy so we had some money to speed up the regeneration process and make the country a more pleasant place. Simple minded I know, but it's much nicer thinking like this!

 

My view isn't rose tinted but I'd go back to my job in mining tomorrow. Well, I would if I wasn't a bit too old. It was a way of life, 24 hours/day, seven days/week. You never stopped mining coal, even when you were in the pub. Still do on a Monday.

 

That was the plan. I'm fairly certain it has now been shelved as there is no market for the coal. Just going to leave it in the ground and build houses on it, now.

 

Industries have always come and gone. Resources run out, tastes change, technology impacts. We, both as communities and as individuals, have always needed to be flexible and able to adapt to change.
What seems to be forgotten is that when these towns and villages were created people came for the work from many parts of Britain, particularly the more rural areas which were suffering from a depression and consequent high unemployment. These people moved to where there was work, three/four generations later some of their descendants seem to have been unwilling to make the same decision to move on. There is a saying in these areas : "Those with 'get up and go' have got up and gone".
There is no easy answer and no magic bullet, although it does seem to me that more could have been done to actively encourage training in the trades and sciences. Most of the old industries are past their "use-by" date but the new industries taking their place need skilled personnel, who are simply not available in sufficient numbers within the country so have to be recruited from overseas. Rather than talking about subsidising the re-opening of old industries we should be looking at how to get the best benefits out of the new ones.

 

Its also worth pointing out that after WW2 successive governments prevented the opening of factories in mining areas that would have competed with the pits for workers which meant that when the mines were closed the impact was far greater than it might otherwise have been.

 

When the pits were originally sunk, a lot of people moved from rural areas to work in the mines. My grandmother was a maid to the local vicar, and moved with him from the North York moors to work in a south Yorkshire mining village, - a much less pleasant environment. It says a lot about rural poverty at the time.

 

And the local vicar by the sounds of it....

 

Lovely. Subsidence Galore.

 

Why will you get subsidence if you leave the coal in the ground, untouched?