'Act of vandalism' - ex miners on the 30th anniversary of Wearmouth Colliery closure - video Dailymotion

Sunderland Echo

As the thirtieth anniverary arrives of the closure of Wearside's last pit, reporter Chris Cordner speaks to ex miners about feelings of workers at the time - and the lasting effects on the region that are still being felt today

Transcript

00:00 Well Alan we're here to talk about the anniversary of the shooting of William H.

00:04 Stewart.

00:05 What sort of memories does that bring back for you?

00:09 Lots of very emotional memories.

00:12 Obviously the closure, we were warned, we knew from 1984 that we were under threat,

00:20 despite the government and the call about telling us otherwise that we were safe, that

00:25 we had a long, long life.

00:27 The only closure actually came, particularly the time of year as well, Christmas.

00:32 Christmas, 1993, it was a massive shock.

00:37 It was the end of coal mining, the end of date coal mining in County Durham.

00:42 One of the ageing coal fields in the Chiltern.

00:46 Once one of the biggest coal fields in the world, the date was chuffed.

00:50 It was chuffed in the world at one time of William H.

00:53 And then Alan went, the stroke of a pen that went, it was 600 men lost their jobs, 600

00:59 families left them out without work.

01:02 A few years earlier we lost our shipyards, our traditional industries had been wiped

01:06 out in Sunderland.

01:08 So it was devastating because we didn't know what we wanted to do afterwards.

01:14 Lots of us just didn't have a clue what we would do.

01:17 The skills we had were not naturally transferable outside the environment.

01:24 So there was a lot of retraining to be done and it took a long time for people to come

01:28 to terms with what had happened.

01:31 It was a devastation.

01:33 I worked there for about 18 years as a miner, from working on bank to face work to power

01:40 loading, till the end of the life of the body.

01:43 And looking back to those last days, what was that like for yourself as a man who worked

01:49 there?

01:52 I think if you look back retrospectively, not from when it happened, you're a wee end

01:58 millionaire, you had a wee dungancy, you had a sad occasion.

02:01 But retrospectively I think I find myself more fortunate, I was one of the young enough

02:08 at 33, 34, to have a change of career.

02:13 To get a career, to go to college, to progress in life and get a job.

02:19 I would say there was 50-60% of the miners that I know and the friendships that I know

02:24 of who never got that far, they might have been in their 50s or 60s or even early 40s

02:29 and they just couldn't get employment, they couldn't get work.

02:33 I work with young people now, care labourers, and I've done that for the last 20 years.

02:40 And there's a huge gap, I worked with the 18-25 year olds, second most important, doing

02:45 the social services bit, love the job.

02:49 I think there's a huge gap, and even young people today I work with, which you can take

02:54 back to when the pits closed, and the shipyards closed, and the run down of communities and

03:00 there's nothing, very little, if you're not academic, and you don't fit in the college

03:07 environment or university, and I've got young kids who are in prison, I've got a cohort

03:12 who are in university, a cohort of young people in my case who are those employed, working

03:18 and probably 40%, 50% that's not working, unemployed, clearly on the university premises.

03:24 There was always a job for those, when you look back, when there was industry, shipyards

03:30 and pits and everything, and it doesn't matter if you weren't academic, you would get a job.

03:35 You had a family member working at the pit or the shipyards, you got a job, you had that

03:39 self-respect, you had that something about you, you had money in your back pocket, but

03:44 now you look at all the areas in Durham, I mean, Warsaw, Aysington and everything, it's

03:50 just destitute. There's been no industry, there's been a few factories, government tick

03:57 boxes and they say we're putting £2 million in the area, which means nothing to build

04:01 a path along the cliffs and tops, rather than getting actual employment. There's nothing

04:06 for you, I'll take you to what there was, where you were when we started, I started

04:10 in '75, there wasn't a job for licence, there was not a single job for licence, but there

04:15 was employment there for you. And even if you weren't academic, there was a bush there,

04:20 you swept the job and you worked, you put this up and to go on down the mire and do

04:24 a job, and I think that's what society's losing today, there's just nothing for young people.

04:29 And it's so easy to sanction, you're on benefits, you're sanctioned, we'll send you on a maths

04:35 course, you might be academic, you will go to that course, I won't sanction your money,

04:39 do you know what I mean? I would hate to be a 16-year-old leaving school today.

04:43 If you look back at the community spirit, it was there wasn't it, in a place like the

04:49 pit, do you think it's gone? No. And why do you think that is, what's the reason behind?

04:56 There's no such thing as society, she said. I just said there was no society, no such

05:02 thing as society, just individuals, and she's right, there's individualism now, instead

05:06 of communism, there's individualism. Was that that last day, the last day that you saw a

05:11 lot of people that you'd worked with for a long time? Yes, for a long time. Just once

05:17 in a while. You don't realise until you've been up for fortnight, you think that's a

05:23 holiday period, you think, I'll never see them lads again. Sure enough, you hear about

05:29 them, you're sad to hear that they've disappeared. Yeah, like the donkeys and funerals.

05:35 Go on and tell the secretary, there was a funeral there. I just tried, and arranged it like

05:39 this. Well there was a lot of dismay, there was a lot of dismay around the closure, which

05:46 reality had hit, on the 10th of December 1993, reality hit. We knew it was happening, we

05:53 were told well in advance, and despite the massive efforts, we were all concerned, trying

05:59 to keep the pit open, we proved, my deal, we proved a case, an economic case, a social

06:05 case, to keep that colouring open. There was no reason for it to close, there was no, absolutely

06:11 no reason. So there was a lot of anger, there was a lot of dismay, there was a lot of worry,

06:19 because people didn't know what they were going to do following the closure, for lots

06:24 of the people who were made redundant on that final day, all they'd known is life in the

06:30 pit. Had it been the case that there was more life in the pit, or had fossil fuel run its

06:37 course? No I don't think it had, I mean the Tories are now trying to say that it was a

06:43 decision based on green energy and all the rest of it, that was totally untrue. They

06:48 were arguing at the time that if we closed our pits down, and we relied on foreign energy

06:57 sources, we'd end up with an energy crisis. We're in the middle of that now, and we're

07:02 failing twice that. I don't think the fossil fuels had come to an end, I think there was

07:09 a case for fossil fuels to be burnt cleanly, particularly coal. There was an abundance

07:14 of coal, there was loads of coal left at Weymouth, there was something like 170 million tonnes

07:19 of coal left underground, and at the extraction rates at the time, that would have given us

07:25 something like 90 years worth. So it was a totally false compromise, it was an act of

07:31 vandalism by a government that despised the National Union of Mine Workers, hated organised

07:37 labour, and didn't like the coal industry. It was to be ventured in 1972 and 1974, obviously.

07:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]

'Act of vandalism' - ex miners on the 30th anniversary of Wearmouth Colliery closure

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