21.09.2011

Four victims of industrial demise

David Douglass looks at the background to last week's tragic events at Gleision pit in south Wales

Nowhere is the legacy that Thatcher left the coalfield areas more tragically illustrated that the woeful Gleision pit inundation. Here we have proud men, four of whom lost their lives, who were desperate to earn their living and support their families in the only way we know how, opening up what is basically an abandoned mine. Working totally conventional methods, using hand-held boring machines, shot blasting and hand-filling, they sought the surviving pillars of coal (see photos at www.minersadvice.co.uk: ‘The collieries of Wales’).

While a shaft height of 75cm is not anything new to many of us from the older coalfields, the lack of any sort of investment other than sweat, graft and wooden timbers, and a knife’s edge of profit and loss make for a volatile mix. The temptation to work pillars of coal left in to support roofs and hold back water is something which visited us in the worst days of private mining in the early 1840s. These pillars hold back hundreds, sometimes thousands, of millions of gallons of water from worked-out mines in the whole region - the thinner the pillar gets, the more certain an inundation.

This much is speculation - the disaster enquiry will confirm or disprove it - but I think it is odds on to have been the cause. Early reports that heavy rain had caused the inundation never rang true: even the basic pump system used at this mine could cope with any amount of rainwater. Although we pitmen do not know for certain, we feel it has got to be mine water that broke through probably weakened dams.

While none of us wanted to admit it, we more or less knew there was no hope for these men - the silence told us that. Underground pipework runs for hundreds of miles at all levels down the pit, and the international mining distress signal is made by banging on the pipes - the noise and vibrations run throughout the workings, alerting everyone that there are survivors. In this case there was no banging.

The pit was mining anthracite, the world’s most sought-after coal seam, for its super-calorific value and low ash content. It can fetch double or more the price of normal coal, and the men at this pit were clearly supplying a strong local market, which earned them a good living. Something like 20 of these little drifts and ‘day holes’ exist round the country, often worked by families of miners or their friends. They are run on a shoestring and are often non-union - periodic visits from the mines inspectorate can never replace a strong miners’ union.

However, the main culpability lies not with non-unionism, but with the lack of a modern coal industry - or any industry in which to work. Safety is expensive - any complaint might drive the pit to closure, so many keep shtum, when they know damn well the clock is ticking. What contracts the men were working under is unclear: they may well have been ‘self-employed’ or operating some ‘share scheme’ based solely on output. That a disaster fund has been set up for the victims’ families suggests there was no other source of income provided for at the mine.

We are proud that Wayne Thomas, National Union of Mineworkers general secretary in Wales, was at the pithead from the beginning. It is believed we had one member at the mine, a mate of Wayne’s and a veteran of the old Tower colliery.

Tower was a workers’ buyout, run by the union at the pit, and worked decades without a single accident or death. It had been a political victory, with a guaranteed market for its specialist coal won through nationwide labour-movement lobbying and community opinion. The security of Tower’s market (and, of course, the miners’ hard work and skill) ensured there was scope for investment - and safety. At Gleision seven or eight men, one of whom was the owner, struggled in appalling conditions to win 200-300 tonnes a week, all off the shovel, for local dealers.

Of course, coal mining is a dangerous job. Under the old National Coal Board, a strong union, with the support of a powerful labour movement, forced legislative protection and a high safety standard. Safety got steadily stronger over its entire life (which did not mean accidents and tragedies never happened). Even with privatisation in 1993 and the repeal of many mine safety laws, there was still a strongly policed safety culture enforced by the NUM, and independent rights of safety and inspection.

However, as the private companies have abandoned more and more mines, further reducing the dwindling number of miners, so the pool of mines and available work has decreased and miners have become more and more desperate. The recent announcement of a couple of hundred jobs at the re-opened Hatfield colliery saw thousands and thousands of applications from unemployed miners across the country; the same thing happened with the opening of Adventure mine in south Wales.

Even the offer of work in dangerous day holes and small drifts like Gleision is a temptation. It is pit work - work we have been bred to do; it is security, odd though that seems now; and it is a decent living. Mining has never been just a job though, and that element cannot be ignored. Mining is a challenge, a hard, physical test of sinew and mental strength - and there is the comradeship, which is rather habit-forming, although I do not expect non-miners to understand that. Our hearts go out to the families of these poor working men, too proud to sit on the dole, too skilful to give up.

The answer, of course, is not to walk away from the six or seven large commercial mines we have left - even private ownership is not actually characterised by this method of work and the likelihood of accidents. Instead we need the reopening of a modern British coal industry, secure in investments and markets. That probably can only be done in concert with the nationalisation of the energy industry, with the maximum achievable standards of worker, consumer and community control.

Rising gas prices, fuel poverty, the threat posed by nuclear expansion, and the destruction of land and seascapes by wind turbines may soon pose the question of clean coal again. We have to insist that the NUM and the working class drive this agenda and set the conditions in which it will operate.