Terrible to hear that guy say his brother took a week to die. My grandfather took much longer. Bloody awful to see your loved ones suffering so much. GOD BLESS THE MINERS!
My Mum was born in Blaenavon. My grandfather and his family were miners to the bone. One of my great aunts’ husband was killed in the mines and because she had something like 13 children she was forced to go down the mines herself to keep food on the table.
When they took the pits away some people say best thing that ever happened oh yes we got lovely green fields and no tips we also have a load of empty shop's pubs shut no one socialises anymore they also took our steel industry railways I can go on this country is gone
@Joe Owens That's something that hasn't crossed my mind but now you mentioned it that's not a bad idea Joe I don't think they would be able to open any of the old pits and our steel industry in Ebbw Vale has been completely reformed I'll maybe give your subject some thought. Anyway good luck with that all the best
Agree I was a kid in the 80s and you didn't have to leave the village to get what you want , the pits closed and the pubs, shops and community spirit have all gone and the communitys of South Wales are finished, the only bitter point of coal that it wiped out all the children in Aberfan
From 5:10 - "what made me get out was watching my brother die. it took him a week to die. four bottles of oxygen a day and they couldn't take off his mask to give him a tablet for the pain even. So I decided to get out of the mines then, while I could" Reporter: "Sounds terrible. So was it JUST the money that made you want to leave the mines then...?" "Errrr..."
I thought that when i heard it. Sounds like a political agenda by the reporter to avoid talking about the health and safety breaches and make it all about recruitment for hoover
Coal Board: "How can we keep miners?" Miner 1: "Pay us more. Job is tough and requires skill." Coal Board: "So many are leaving... why they go?" Miner 2: "I like the work. Just pay us more." Coal Board: "We need to study this and figure out a solution." Miner 3: "Just pay us more like the essential workers we are." Coal Board: "So complicated...policy and such." Miner 4: "Change policy. Increase our pay. Easy. "
How simple you make it sound. They started on what equates today to £22k/year. Perfectly reasonable wage for a blue collar worker. Plus all manner of social benefits. A lot of that was gutted in order to find headroom in the budget for their ridiculous demands. No different to the rail workers of today. Always wanting more for the same productivity. Not how the world of commerce works.
Yes, it was 1973. Alwyn Lloyd was a good snooker player, and the film was shot at Abertysswg Working Men's Club where he lived. In fact where I grew up. Most of those people would be 80 + years of age now. I left South Wales in 1984, most of my friends worked in the pits throughout the valley's.
I never got to meet Alwyn but have always been told how great of a snooker player he was and in fact I have the privilege of playing for the same clubs that he played for which are the Abertysswg Working Men's for Rhymney league and Merthyr Labour club for the Merthyr league. Even though I haven't been around long enough to know all about the life of working in the pits, it has always fascinated me to learn this kind of history.
@@lukejames5467 Hi Luke. We used to go to Merthyr Labour club lunchtime when I was in Merthyr Tech. Howard Winston would frequently be there. A very high standard of snooker in Abertysswg and all the valleys back then. Wayne Jones was probably the best known player from Abertysswg, Doug Mountjoy practiced there regularly. There was a documentary filmed in Aber club with Terry Griffiths, I was there that night, early eighties.🏴🇺🇸
What a tragedy about the mining industry. One thing that is noticeable about this film is how smartly dressed and slim most of the working class looked in those days
At least you were making washing machines in the U.K. we don't make anything in Australia, we closed the car plants down the other year. All we do mine and farm. Everything is bought in cheap from bloody China. I suppose it's happening In Britain too.
Same I'm trying to trace the mine my descendents worked down in Merthyr Tydfil, I was hoping for more historical footage from when the first coal mine/s opened, original owners etc, I need to research more.
finnmacool I joined the mines the year this documentary was filmed!no!we,r not allright!I haven't had a proper job since Thatcher put me out of work!but thanks for asking bless you!I spent 18yrs down there!
@@MarkJones-gd3nt Wow...interesting. So how does it make you feel to see this? Here the mines want workers, but the workers don't want to work there. 1980s Thatcher years, they want the workers to leave, shut down the colliery, and the workers want to work. I work in an ex-coal town in Japan. The mines all closed in the 60s and 70s. Then Japan bought coal from Australia..cheaper. But it is a mixed feeling we all have..a melancholy feeling. The town struggles on.Would it be better the mines were still operating? Or are we all better off without it? Were you attracted to the feeling that you were working in a dying industry? or did you think about the future much? These people must have known that coal loses money in developed countries and cheaper coal is to be bought overseas. They don't reflect this. Did you read those ads for man power?
Of course they did. Taking away the individual choices they made, the markets and quality of life got better year on year. Mining was a horrible thing. Thatcher only mistake was making the battle personal.
@@Weazelmania the markets got better..For everyone? The market for continuing to build a life in a community and for a community building a town - that synergy or whatever you call it, loop, that was broken and won't come back. I am Australian, and mining has made Australians so rich, I can't afford to move back and live out my life there.
@@mebeasensei mining was no life here. What Thatcher did was brilliant for ending the unions but it stopped short. If the private sector had the mines without the union bullying, it could have been a modernised industry. But coal is not the future. That's where both Laboir and the Tories were right to close the mines. Thatcher just shouldn't have made it personal. Ironically what's killing these towns now is yet more statism and Labour voting. With fringe Conservativism. Wales needs less government and better education opportunities to continue thriving.
I was 9 in 1977 , & i can still remember all the power cuts , & we had a black & white television we had 2 put 2pence in the back , 2 work it ?? Happy Days though , im not cut out for 2022 😕
I grew up in the Kent coalfield where many of the miners ended up from South Wales, Scotland and Durham (some Yorkshire and Staffordshire) after being blacklisted for union activities in the 26 strike. They all kept their accents and traditions, maybe held on to them more in the isolation, social and geograhic, of the Kent mining areas. I remember being young and assuming that all mens lungs packed in when they got old. My dad went the same way, it was awful to see him gradually suffocate.
I'm not from a mining community but remember the strikes. Most of the UK hadn't the right, truthful information to understand (or care about) what was happening and the ideology behind the closure of the coal mines. There was no investment in the communities who were left without jobs, food, security and the rest, they had little chance to retrain or use existing skills, they were just left to fend for themselves. Thatcher hated the unions, as, well as the workers, and her government of the day wasn't prepared to invest in a transition for the communities once the mines and steelworks had been destroyed. The Tories also stockpiled masses quantities of imported coal to beat the miners' strikes and keep power stations running.
My Great Grandfather, my Grandfather, and my Father were Miners, my Father was killed in a mining explosion in 1963 in Tower Colliery. All those Miners are legends, made of granite those people salt of the earth.
Flippin eck ! one of the highest paid and he was only on £36 per week. That is only £276 per week in 2023 prices. Its no wonder they always seemed to be on strike. I am sure the car workers, steel workers, and most other manual labour jobs were paid more than that .
The plight of miners in some locations across the UK in the 70s was terrible. My utmost respect to those coal face workers of 30+ years, wow. My dad was a self employed union piece rate porter at the fish market in London Billingsgate in the early 1970s and probably earnt the same in one day what some of these Welsh miners earnt in five. Unfair.
Looking at the film, it is just prior to the miner's strike of 1973. You would have to understand the 50s and 60s running down of the mining industry was all turned around with the oil crisis of the early 80s. There was not a crisis as such, but OPEC countries upped the price of oil and politically punished countries in the West for supporting Israel. The country finally realised it needed its own strategic energy source. Barely 10 years later, the massive investment in collieries was forgotten, and Margaret Thatcher killed the industry in an act of vengeance. North Sea Gas was raped to produce electricity in the "Dash For Gas." We have now burned off vast amounts of the gas and now import gas rather than marshalling the resource.
@@COIcultist. Thatcher was just doing to coal what Mcgregor did to Steel; slim it down to sell it off to Tory voters, members, and donors. In any case, the UK still got most of its electricity from coal until less than a decade ago, we just imported it from states with open cask mines, like Australia and Poland (especially during the miner's strike of 1984). The rationale for strategic reserves was outdated oil prices fell in the 1980s, and the global market saw new members in the form of ex-communist states. In any case the UK already has a strategic reserve we have been developing in the past decade: wind power.
Sorry I wrote *" You would have to understand the 50s and 60s running down of the mining industry was all turned around with the oil crisis of the early 80s"* That is patently in error, the oil crisis came on the heels of the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The Plan For Coal was proposed in 1974 *"The 1974 Plan of Coal produced in the aftermath of the 1972 miners' strike envisaged that the coal industry would replace 40 million tons of obsolete capacity and ageing pits while maintaining its output.[12] By 1983, the NCB would invest £3,000 million on developing new collieries"* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coal_Board#:~:text=The%201974%20Plan%20of%20Coal%20produced%20in%20the,would%20invest%20%C2%A33%2C000%20million%20on%20developing%20new%20collieries.
@@williamfrancis5367 I like to provide links to pieces supporting what I say, alas RU-vid has now adopted a policy of removing your comments if you have more than 2 or 3 links, so I will split this reply up into sections. *"Thatcher was just doing to coal what Mcgregor did to Steel; slim it down to sell it off to Tory voters, members, and donors."* The NCB/British Coal Got MacGregor 2.0 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_MacGregor MacGregor was out by 1986, but British Coal wasn't fit to be sold on. Only 15 deep mines remained when RJB Mining bought the rump of the industry in 1994. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Budge That might be 19 mines and what happened to the two other packages of mines I'm not sure, I'd left the industry by that point. We bought coal from Australia, Poland and America but initially post 85 or 86 the Blessed Margaret Hilda forced local authorities to buy coal from the cheapest source available and some of that coal was mined in Columbia where child miners were employed. Some said it was ethical or even decent, but Margaret didn't give a chuff, just as we only play lip service to slavery now with products made in sweat shops or by literal slaves in China. RJB's last throw of the dice came in 1996 when he tried to cajole the new Labour government into ensuring long term fixed price coal contracts for power station coal. However, by that time we were deep into "The Dash For Gas!"
'They will have to sink those pits again' said an old teaching assistant that I used to work with. I just got back from Russia, Gas is 3 gbp a month, electricity is around 15 gbp a month. Coal, oil is abundant and China is drinking it up like no tomorrow. Their monopolised rail is mainly dealing in 80 carriage crawls of coal oil and gas on the rail, some rock and building materials. These trains run at least 20 times day and night. We in the UK are dependent now for our energy. You know I think he is actually right, they will have to sink those pits again but actually if we do it this year we may be able to save valuable equipment. Knowing our country we will do it too late, we will get the govt. involved and then it will all be ruined. We need private entrepreneurs who own land to organise and start mines. Why am i paying 8.99 gbp for a 10kg bag of coal at my local Indians, this coal probably came from Poland? Can you imagine in this film people complained at paying 20gbp for a tonne of coal? Are we the experts at ripping ourselves and each-other off? Coal mining is a deeply British tradition and will never die. Now is its nadir, but it will arise.. It is harsh, un-human, extremely dangerous to work in a pit but as they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Are we ready? PS the Americans have resorted to shallow cast mining but at least they have private firms. They still need 70% of their electricity to be coal generated, of course they won't tell you this. I think that sensible investors and entrepreneurs have an ideal time to open new pits. Come to Nottingham, we have 47 old pits that need work. Clipstone in Mansfield looks like a good bet.
labour are not that perfect mate, dont get me wrong with the strike in 84, things should of been done differently, personally i think some of the pits should be re-opened, and btw i'm a tory. and i do like the rhondda etc.