UN ACERCAMIEMTO TEORICO A LA POLÍTICA EXTERIOR

42 Mining

Lillydown Colliery opened in 1896, working an area of coal after its expansion of roughly 12 square miles (Hill, 2001a). The colliery, which started as a private enterprise, was

nationalised in 1947 and was one of the largest pits in the area (Wain, 2014). Virtually all miners at the Colliery lived in Lillydown, or nearby. After nationalisation, a £7.5 million scheme saw Lillydown Colliery merged with a neighbouring pit to increase coal production outputs (Hill, 2001a). Business continued to grow as a new £5 million power station was built in 1958, a £28 million coal preparation plant, which was the most advanced plant in Europe at the time, was completed in 1961; in 1966 a Coalite plant was built (Hill, 2001a; Wain, 2014). In a bid to produce coal that burnt efficiently and cleanly, Lillydown Colliery was also chosen as the base for a research test facility. This internationally-funded facility was built in the early 1980s, costing around £20 million (Wain, 2014). In 1984, a £173 million scheme was completed to link the neighbouring pits underground so that all coal could be brought up to the surface at Lillydown and taken to the coal preparation plant (British Coal, 1991). Over time, the NCB spent approximately £350 million on the complex. It was one of the most productive and technologically advanced collieries in the country: in 1980-81, the colliery turned out a record breaking 1,225,486 metric tons. Even after the 1984-85 miners’ strike, Lillydown Colliery continued breaking records and in 1986 10.3 miles of coal was cut in one week (Wain, 2014). 1988 saw Lillydown’s colliery achieve another record, hitting the

production of 34,346 tonnes of coal in one week, and in 1989 the colliery produced in excess of 1 million tons for the first time since the miners’ strike (Tuffrey, 2013; Wain, 2014). Although the pit survived the 1980s pit closures, in October 1992 British Coal announced thirty-one immediate pit closures, including Lillydown. Despite having made a profit of “£700,000 in the year ending 31st

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sector and it closed in 1993 (Hill, 2001a, p.161). The research test facility closed in 1993 and was demolished the following year.

44 Post-Industrial Landscape

Since the 1984-5 miners’ strike, the United Kingdom has seen all its deep-coal mines closed. The effects of this have been well documented (see Bennett et al., 2000; Turner, 2000) and the post-industrial landscape is now blighted by poverty, unemployment, crime, drugs, and various other social ills. Lillydown is emblematic of a working-class, former mining

community (see Dennis et al., 1956; Turner, 2000). The economic landscape and way of life in mining communities has drastically changed since the 1980s, although, the socio-economic and political history of the mining industry is an inescapable part of Lillydown; it is

embedded within its historical context – it remains haunted by its ghosts (Gordon, 2008). Lillydown has, like many former mining villages, “reached a phase of enforced post- industrialism” (Turner, 2000, p.19).

Royce Turner’s Coal Was Our Life (2000) also explores life in a former coal mining community. Turner’s account is paradoxical to Coal is our Life where the unions were an icon of power and solidarity, the working men’s clubs were central to social life, and a sense of identity and pride was at the heart of mining communities. Turner describes how the village in his study has become riddled with unemployment, drugs and crime, and a loss of identity. Mining communities were always dominated by the pits; their communities “owed their existence to coal and the coalmining occupations” (Bennett et al., 2000, p.2). Turner suggests that the post-industrial phase the coalfields were, and arguably are still in, is

precarious (Turner, 2000). The pits had shut and there was, until regeneration projects in the late 1990s, little investment coming into these towns and villages (Turner, 2000). It is also crucial to note that the job losses the coalfields faced since the 1980s added to pre-existing unemployment (Beatty et al., 2007; Foden et al., 2014). But coalfields were not homogenous.

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Foden et al. (2014) argues that the more dependent villages were on coal, the more concentrated the socio-economic problems:

[A]s a general rule, it would be a reasonable assumption that the more acute historic dependence on mining in pit villages probably means they have a greater

concentration of the socio-economic problems that today characterise the coalfields as a whole (Foden et al., 2014, p.12).

Lillydown was a village largely built around, and dependent upon, the coal industry, which had been a “dominant source of employment for men, so the consequences for local labour markets were always going to be serious” (Beatty et al., 2007, p.1654). In total, alongside the colliery jobs and its surrounding coal based businesses, Lillydown suffered a loss of roughly 6,000 jobs (HoC, 2000). In 1991, the last recorded figures of employment at Lillydown Colliery show that nearly half of the jobs available in the early 1980s had been lost (see Table 1.3).

Table 1.3: Employment Figures Lillydown Colliery

Source: 1972, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1991 Guide to the Coalfields published by the Colliery Guardian (Courtesy of the National Coal Mining Museum’s Library Collection and Archives)

Employment Figures Lillydown Colliery

Year Underground Surface Total

1972 1,497 617 2,114

1980 1,541 658 2,199

1983 1,483 578 2,061

1986 1,351 288 1,639

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The Coalfield Community Campaigns (CCC) published a report on what happened to 164 miners since Lillydown pit stopped production in 1992 (Guy, 1994). The CCC reported that a year after the closure, 44 percent of men were out of work and 81 percent of these men had been out of work continuously since the pit’s closure. Roughly 40 percent were in paid employment, and six percent had set up their own business. For those who had set up their own business, Turner and Gregory (1995) argue that their decision may have been influenced by the Conservative government’s meritocratic rhetoric and ‘enterprise culture’ (Turner and Gregory, 1995). Murray et al. (2005) on the other hand argue that these miners may have previously been trained, or employed by the NCB, as electricians or tradesmen providing transferable skills suited to self-employment. However, for the majority, the skills they used in the pit where often highly specialised and non-transferable. An earlier study by the CCC found that many redundant miners had gone back into mining with private contractors (Witt, 1990). At Lillydown Colliery however, a minority of men – 27 percent – in employment had found work in the mining industry, mainly salvaging work with private firms (Guy, 1994). The remaining miners found employment in factories and warehouses, and in security. Jobs were also found in the service sector; however, a lot of these were part-time (Guy, 1994). Although figures show that overall most men were in employment, the report found that 85 percent were financially worse off. They were also now in jobs with less security and

workplace solidarity. Only two percent were in employment with better pay. 8.7 percent were in education or training at the time of the survey. Although it is difficult to calculate, the average estimate for a miner’s weekly earnings at Lillydown Colliery stood at £217 (Guy, 1994). Before the pit closed, nobody took home less than £100 (see Figure 1.3).

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Figure 1.3: Average Weekly Wages at Lillydown Colliery Source: Adapted data from Redundant Miners Survey (Guy 1994)

This had an immediate effect on the local economy with a loss of spending power (Guy, 1994). The report commented that Lillydown’s economy would continue to feel the effects of the closure of the pit for some time to come:

[T]he loss of spending power in so many mining families means financial hardship for more than those directly affected by redundancy. There will be ‘knock-on’ effects throughout the mining community, as local shops and services experience lower turnover… A downward spiral of local economic decline will set in unless there is a dramatic improvement in employment prospects in the area (Guy, 1994, p.15).

The CCC report found that 32 percent of men who were without work were claiming sickness benefits (Guy, 1994). Effectively, these men had left the labour market through long-term sickness. This creates a form of ‘hidden unemployment’ and differs from orthodox forms of

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 No . o f M en

Average weekly take-home pay