Gerry Smith - UK - October 2009

 
When we here the word ‘doctor’ anywhere in the world, we immediately have an image of that character, through their professional common identity. When we hear the word ‘miner’ similar processes follow but with a different, often negative image. We may also see them, as ‘workers’ rather than ‘professionals’ and we often reduce our perception of their status, based on a number of other factors, both real and media generated.

Their dirty appearance their blunt use of language and many other factors have given the general public many, negative images of miners. During the UK Miners strike in the 1980s’ greed was also added to those descriptors. Of course there were many who understood and support the miners during the strike, but even so stereotypes prevailed.
There have also been those who have dug deeper into’ what makes a miner’ Lee Halls’ writing with Billy Elliot and the Pitmen Painters being an excellent example. But here I wish to explore to essence of mining communities, miners and their families.

In reality, miners have, and had to be, highly skilled professionals not just ‘workers, with a great strength of communal and personal conviction and high level skills. They often share a common belief, that we need to look wider and longer, at the way we organise our societies, and plan for future generations. Mining is centered around communities, and the work was often inter- generational. Values are passed from parent to child, and the inheritance wasn’t just the money but the work and its associated values.

 

A brief history of mining in the UK, shows that from the sinking of the coal shafts in the 19th century, to over 1million workers employed in the mines, in the 1920s’ mining became central to the economics, employment and energy in the UK. As the mines changed from private ownership to nationalisation in 1947, power reverted to the state, which was then an attempt to provide stable energy supplies and better conditions for the miners.

It is ironic, that in the end, it was that very state system which destroyed mining in the UK. Coal mining had played a central role in the politics and power struggles for over 100 years.  The closure of the mines resulted in a national rejection of the miners, mining communities, and key contributors to the economy and national debate about the future and society.

In the UK 1926 General Strike, the true strength of the combined voice of the miners became apparent. By 1979 when the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, took over leadership of the country, there would be a major shift in the relationship between government and miners. The new global economies, enabled entry to new energy markets for the buyers and sellers. This result of this new approach by governments, enabling them to operate in world markets, would be to reduce the reliance on home grown energy supplies. This also required a reduction of voiced opposition, from those who may question the new economic strategies. Conflict with the unions was therefore necessary, to allow new emerging markets to grow, and to give an excuse to trade without hindrance, or to have too many questions asked by the general public. Although Thatcher led the way for conflict in the UK, she was in no way unique. Similar policies and attacks on miners were replicated across Western Europe.

Many now question the tactics and strategy, of the miners leaders during the strike. In reality Thatcher and other political leaders had it easy. The miners’ common values of pride and truth, would always be their weakness. Almost as a precursor to current terrorism threats, and subsequent laws, the miners became the enemy within. The government changed the conflict, from one of controlling wage settlements, to one of controlling  ‘ union power ’ The more the miners reacted to what was happening, the worse their image became to the general public.

The strike also enabled the new powers of the state, to control opposition in all its forms. The main governments concern was not the picket lines, or the confrontations, but a real debate on the future of energy supplies. Its only now when we have seen Russia cut of the gas supplies to the Ukraine, that the question of continuity of supply is raised at a national level.

Britain is now one of the most closely watched nations on C.C.T.V. in the world, marches and protests are banned near parliament, wars can be started without, question or rational, and the media may be punished, if they question events, such as the lead up to the Iraq war. Perhaps the miners strike, was the first real state intervention on a large scale in the UK.  An interesting fact is that the growth of this state control was equally endorsed from all elements of the political spectrum. The old Labour Party and union inter-reliance  diminished.  

As for the 1984 strike, the question still remains, was the government really that worried about collective bargaining, or was it about alternative economics?   The miner’s voices raised some fundamental questions about energy supply and global capitalism.

We always need to look at longer term political and economic strategies to develop a suitable society for future generations. The politicians are interested about the here and now. The debate about power struggles between government and unions during the strike was therefore a good mask to stop discussion on the wider issues society needed to address.

We should not forget the word Unions are about collective voices as well as action. At the time of the strike, destroying the unions was seen as destroying unfair power by many in our society, and often relating to wage settlements (greed). But how may people now realise, that it was the collective voices of truth and prediction that was silenced.

As the miners say in the North England Coalfields. We are ‘blunt north countrymen’ we speak our minds. This common trait of truth is the same for miners across the world.  

Perhaps their intellectual thinking outside the political box or paradigm was the real threat and not their collective physical actions.  If we look at the evidence above, the union voices came from shared experiences and the way miners observed their mining world and also the outside world from their perspective. Perhaps the ones closest to the energy materials had a better understanding of the future energy issues now affecting the world.

Perhaps the politicians and economists and investors should have listed and not destroyed the mining voice, and we would not now be having emergency international summits on energy supplies and global warming.

So, what are there unique traits that are common to miners across the world ?

To examine common identity, we need to separate the myth from the reality in ‘what makes a miner or a mining community.

 

 

The miners strike and the media : then and now.

From The Guardian March 2009

The 1984-5 strike, was called in an attempt to halt pit closures and the rundown of the industry at a time, when there were more than 180,000 miners working in 170 collieries. It was the most important industrial dispute in Britain since the General Strike of 1926. The dispute centered around often violent picket line confrontations between police and miners. It was called off in March 1985 without a settlement and by 1994, only 8,000 miners were left at 16 collieries.


Quote from Arthur Scargill in the Guardian.

"This battle is certainly about more than the miners' union. It is for the right to work. It is for the right to preserve our pits. It is for the right to preserve this industry ... We can all make
speeches, but at the end of the day we have got to stand up and be counted ... We have got to come
out and say not only what we feel should be done, but do it because if we don't do that, then we fail."

A quick search by Google on the ‘Miners Strike ‘ gives us about 3000000 hits. This shows the vast volume of work that has been produced to analyse the miners strike. These explain the closures and the subsequent impact on mining communities, many books have been written, and many press articles and TV documentaries produced.


On this, the 25th anniversary of the strike, again many articles are published about strike. Yet it is amazing, with all this volume of writing, the same themes are often repeated, with little investigation into the wider historical context of:  

• Who are the miners?
• What is their ethos?
• What was and is their contribution to society?
• What is it that makes a miner or a mining community?
• What were they really saying twenty-five years ago?
• More specifically, were they 25 years ahead of their time in understanding our current problems.

As we approach a new era in the 21st century, new themes are developing,
Capitalism: what went wrong?  

Certainly after the collapse of the banking system in 2009, even the ‘political state’ is questioning the regulatory and moral framework of our economic institutions. Even MPs expenses are making national headlines.

How appalled we all were, when the miners asked for a few extra coins in their wages, just to have a basic standard of living. I even remember miners being prosecuted for burning waste coal on their fires, during the strike. If only they had been cleverer, and just become politicians, they could have also bought the fireplace and the house around it, legally and probably purchased a duck pond from their lunch money.


So the politicians blame the bankers, the bankers blame the politicians; the media blames everyone but themselves. In a society of comment and blame, have we lost the ability to look at ourselves?

Its is with regret that Tony Benn, a great supporter of the miners cause was not listened to more carefully 25 years ago, rather than suffering year of press abuse.  He was often the lone voice in stating the wider economic and political context of the strike.

 

 

The Death of mining, manufacturing  industries and the new economic epoch.

When the old skills died, we started to rely on new age skills where  - making money from money was the new key national skill-base, to grow our economy.

New service skills were also developed to ensure that money was circulated down the line in smaller quantities. Basically a country of finance professionals and sandwich makers.  Sometimes we threw a bit of tourism in to show we were having a good time.

There is no doubt that skill acquisition, in communities and countries, have to change with the times, but perhaps the manual de-skilling of the workforce, over the last 25 years is one of the major causes of our current problems for other reasons. Governments still believe you can separate education, training and skills. Of course their motive is that they require people to work and not think.

Government’s policy (both left and right) is always tweaking training and college and school curriculum, to show they want to improve our national skills base. But there is still no understanding, that what is required, is to motivate people to learn. There is also no commitment to the levels of training and industrial input to training that existed prior to the 1980s. This emphasis on poor quality skills training indicates an agenda that wants not only to de- skill people, but also loose the fundamentals of worker education, through more general educational development.

The big myth of the last twenty-five years is that it’s only our skill base, which is important, and it is the fault of the population for not acquiring those skills. In reality miners had not only a high skill base, but also a high level of intellect. The formal school system may not have been the best education for miner’s families, but listen to any debate with miners and you will see that education and intellect comes from many sources.

Skills and intellectual development go hand in hand.  It’s about pride in your skills, and pride in yourself, for making a valid contribution to the industry and community. The skills in mining industries range from geology, engineering and tunneling for miles underground. This is was also coupled with the contradictory elements of developing great human physical strength, in an industry that would eventually cause major long term health problems to the miners.  

Skills are not finite pieces of knowledge. It is also about a process, solving problems in the workplace and out of it.  Many years ago, many miners would repair their own cars, or fix their own houses. Now high levels of technology make this more difficult, but we have also reduced the motivation in our children to understand how things work and how to fix them. Perhaps one of the great losses of the identity of new mining generations is the desire to learn new skills and adapt them for wider usage in our lives. Or perhaps I am wrong and those communities still have the core desire to learn and fix.

Those from the old Thatcher camp may see skills reduction as a benefit to the politicians.
Skills equal power, and we can’t have that.  

So let us now look at the great industry of mining, not from a battle perspective, but from the lessons we can learn from economic strategies, to core human values with a case study.

Easington Colliery, was one of the many mining communities in the North East of England, which suffered closure and subsequent high levels of unemployment, poor school education and health.  Now it has one of the highest index levels of deprivation in the UK .

You could say the after effect of the closures were devastating.  However, as I visit Easington Colliery today, I am met with the marketing logos  ‘Pride in Easington’ on local Authority literature. The Local Authority (council) and its people focus clearly on the common identity of ‘Pride’.

When I explore this a little more, I see that nothing much has changed in 25 years, despite the major changes of the closure of the mines. What makes a miner and ex- miners sons and daughters is  ‘pride.’  

As I recall my childhood growing up in Easington, I remember how every Sunday, we would see miners wearing a white shirt and tie, at the working men’s club, or in the street. You would see many dressed in their best clothes, as if going to a wedding, or for the most important job interview in their life. So where does this pride come from?   
What gives the people in these mining communities across Europe their common values?

If we look back to the start of the industrial revolution, the energy and the power to transform society came from coal. It was this coal that powered the electricity, powered the steam trains, heated the houses and even was a base for aspirin, which cured our headaches.
 
Coal exists even deeper in our cultural psyche. Coming from the crushed forests, and taking millions of years to make, the early miners saw the extraction of these minerals as almost a religious experience. Mining was not only about the extraction, but about a deep human understanding of what the earth was providing. This respect for coal and its source in the earth, I believe has never left the heart of miners and mining communities.

As we look at the problems facing the 21 century. We can see what is present in the deep essence of miners, is now coming to the forefront of our general psyche.  Our new and renewed respect for the earth and environment comes out of panic, necessity and survival, but for others this respect has always been there.

So back to the issue of pride and identity amongst miners. As they walked down the streets in their Sunday best clothes, they were proud or many things.

Proud of the wider role they played in the heart of economic and industrial growth, proud of their skills base in being able to extract the coal, often at great personal risk, proud of the way they could support their families by doing a worthwhile job, proud of their contribution to the nation.

Lets also look at the mining women and their identity. There have been some interesting books and articles written on the role of the wives in the Miners Strike to personally, grow, educate themselves and organize.
In many cases, they also provided the main income, through low paid work during the year long strike. It is true many women also flourished after the strike, and decided to continue their education and employment opportunities.

We may also view this in a slightly wider perspective.  As a ten year old in Easington , the sight of large dirty faced men coming out of the mine could  resemble looking at an army of the hardest people you could imagine. However if my grandfather left his ‘dirty ‘ boots on, to come into the house, you could soon see who was the most frightening character in the household, the man or the woman. The women in mining communities were always strong, and are still are a backbone to the culture. They may go through different phases and roles in history, but their pride and strength is still there.

In the second world war, the miner wives worked in the factories and still brought up their children. After the war their roles changed again. So there was nothing new when the strikes started in 1926 and 1984, that women would maximise their own power.  

Identity may therefore be a shared ethos between men women and children and between generations, which is intrinsic to all in a mining community, or mining communities across the word.

When the mines closed, all those years ago, I remember the deep discussions,  ‘The heart has been ripped out of our community  ‘No work means no ‘pride’  no mine  means no identity’  as a person or a community.
The shared identity, also produced a shared loss when the mines were closed.

As I examine community’ identity, I see as I travel across Europe and meet miners and their families from different regions, I am struck by the similar essence of their characters, despite major, language, cultural and national differences. The ex- mining and existing mining regions have close links. Sometimes these links come through hundreds of years of integration and skill transference, sometimes they link through common objectives, such as regeneration or unions. Sometimes it is about common shared values.  

We often talk about diversity and equality and many other new descriptive terms, but in reality these are only language tools to help us understand society. So in mining communities can we clearly identify what is diverse and what are shared values? Should we also celebrate, what is common as well as what is diverse ?

Heritage and History

In ex-mining communities around the world, I have seen many similar heritage projects to keep alive the memories and historical artifacts, and to preserve the mining knowledge and experience for present and future generations. This work is often completed by a volunteer workforce, and on a scale that would make many university research departments envious. In some regions of course, the universities work with the volunteer work force, as they now recognise the significant role they play in preserving history.

We have to ask though, what are we keeping alive in these mining museums, is it memories, history or culture?
The large buildings, the heavy machinery leave a powerful impression, but also a single dark image of a mining community. The simulated black holes make us wonder how people worked in such conditions, but we don’t really understand the teamwork and humour that existed underground.

I can never remember my late grandfather talking about the bad conditions underground, but I have many memories of his music in the brass band and how his underground horse always gave him trouble.

We have to ask What heritage are we preserving ?

To take a wider historical and cultural view, we often compare mining to the previous epochs such as agriculture. But as we grew up as children in a mining community, we were not aware of the impact of the Roman roads or pagan festivals, which impacted on our lives but they still formed part of our existence and experiences. Our histories are sometimes visible, but sometimes, they are part of our invisible surroundings and inner being.  History is interlaced on not always exiting in a straight line.

The side by side industries of farming and mining, was a key factor in many mining regions, with the two epochs of agriculture and mining living side by side. Many miners had and have gardens (allotments) with a great knowledge of  growing.

So the identity of the dirty industrial miner may also be challenged in other ways.

They were also close to nature and animals, and as many will testify, their amateur knowledge of genetics, to breed and race dogs and pigeons were often as detailed as the so called professionals.   

Pit Heaps and Buildings

 

In a reference to the current physical identity of mining towns, we see in some countries, ex mining communities have no physical artifacts left, and no signs that mining ever existed in that region. The buildings and even the ‘pit heaps’ have gone or at least turned into ski slopes. In other regions we have seen major conversions of buildings, with the mine shaft as central to the re –build, to remind the locals of their past.

The question is ‘How much does the physical infra-structure plays in forging future identities in old communities. My guess is like the roman roads, they will form part of the future generations psyche, with or without, physical manifestations.

With  a museum, we need to be reminded of the past to understand our future. We also need to be made aware that we are not always as clever as we think we are in the present.

 

 

Where are we now?

 

As a society we are the sum of our present and our past. Twenty five years after the Miners Strike of 1984, we are still discussing the tactics of the war and not the cause, and who was right, and who was wrong.

What we need to understand is, that we need to re-define miners identity.
Perhaps we need to find new methods of self reflection on our own culture and history.

In the past few months I have seen a few articles in the UK press which a hint of guilt, in the way miners were represented in 1984.  Perhaps the miners did have an insight into our current problems and we should have listened more carefully. The question is, do the miners need to be told by the press that they were right, if they need to feel validated in their own opinions.

There are those that will continue the fight. There are those who will continue to debate the strike. There are those that will use the history for their own ends.

There will also be those who see beyond that, and continue speak with pride and truth.
They will always be there, but is there is even less people with listening skills than there were in 1984.

To be part of a mining community past or present is to share with others, all that goes with holding your head up as you walk down the street with your family on a Sunday. How many in the current banking world and political world are able to do that?

Gerry Smith
gerry@eyemoon.co.uk