There must be no human price for pits rebirth

Mar 18 2008 by Susan Taylor, The Journal

THE first recruitment drive for experienced coal miners in almost a quarter of a century is being launched.

The UK’s largest colliery, Daw Mill, already employs 600 staff and needs skilled workers to expand production. Bosses at Arley, near Coventry in the West Midlands, are hunting former colliers to increase domestic production to vie with imported coal, which has more than doubled in price. This will come as a surprise to many people who thought mining was well and truly dead. I remember the warmth, the courage, humour and stoicism of the mining community into which I moved in the 1960s, where each day at work could spell danger, even death in the pit. In the busy accident hospital where I worked as a teenager, the door swung open every five minutes to admit a miner, minus a finger or a limb but still smiling and begging me to ignore the no-smoking notices and light them a fag.

They worked below ground and were truly the salt of the earth, but the price of coal in human terms was a heavy one. That hospital did not treat men with lungs ruined by pneumoconiosis or other lung diseases but I met them when I lived among them. They say the new mining will be very different and I hope that’s true.

Most of the six pits still in operation in the UK send apprentices to learn the trade in college, instead of sending them shivering “down the hole” the day after they leave school. Pay will range from £75 to £85 a shift, but UK Coal says overtime and bonuses could double daily earnings.

Imports still make up 60% of coal used for power generation, which means we are too dependent on others, but a regeneration of the mining industry must not again be at the expense of the men who work in it. That is too high a price to pay for coal.