Rip Mining Industry?

[doctordb]

If you put to the side how it was achieved, aren't we better off without a mining industry?
Imagine the protests if coal had only just been discovered and big buisness was fighting for the contracts today.

Greenpeace campaigning against the digging of huge scars into areas of outstanding natural beauty, the threat to wildlife and the destruction of our landscape.

The NHS campaigning against the impending increase in patients with soot-filled lungs and a whole work force with lower mortality rates.

H&S and (dare i say it) the UNIONS campaigning about subjecting people to archaic and appalling working conditions.

would you send your child down the pit?

[tonyav]

would you send your child down the pit?

doctorb, I doubt if that's happened since the reign of Queen Victoria.

[VHG]

Do people know in the 1960s and 1970s there were 331 coal mines closed under a LABOUR government.

Everybody goes on about Thatcher and the tories closing mines but it had already started under Labour.

[Old_Geezer]

One is rarely better off having lost an industry. It provides employment which is good for the economy and you get some end result as well. You just need to know that the end product is of use and not totally uneconomical to have achieved. I'm unsure imported coal would produce fewer soot/lung issues anyway. Besides are you happy someone else elsewhere on the globe works in a pit for you instead ? I'd have thought we would be in a better position to invest in machinery to do the dirty work than a poorer country that can only rely on manual labour and will ignore the effect on the individual.

[tonyav]

VHG
Do people know in the 1960s and 1970s there were 331 coal mines closed under a LABOUR government.


Maybe VHG, but I suspect the the reason for there closures were most probably a different reason than Thatchers reason.

[doctordb]

Tonyav - 'poetic licence', besides had the mining industry changed much since the reign of queen victoria?

I was hoping the thread would stay away from politics and concentrate more on the impact of the industry.

[tonyav]

Yes doctorb I would say that there had been massive changes IE machinery and technology.

[Kromovaracun]

"
Maybe VHG, but I suspect the the reason for there closures were most probably a different reason than Thatchers reason"

I'd guess not, actually.

Mining all over the Western world has been shrinking as an economic sector for some time now - even in those countries (such as Germany) which have continued subsidising it. It doesn't matter where you look - demand for coal from Western countries has been decreasing for a long time, and there's plenty of reasons.

As another ABer said in News, the writing was on the wall for those communities built around the mines and had been long before Thatcher, who is a convenient scapegoat.

[paddywak]

By the very nature of mining, from the minute you take the first ton of coal out of a pit you start closing it. Many of the pits closed in the 60s and 70s mostly in the NE were worked out with no workable reserves and virtually everybody knew it. Not only that but the majority of mine workers were, if they wanted relocated in other areas with generous grants to help them move and new housing provided, which is why a large number of my friends are "Geordies" either by birth or descent. It was a different kettle of fish in the 90s when many of the pits closed had years of reserves, in the case of the last pit I worked at a minimum of 30 years proven reserves in the Top Hard seam and God alone knows how much in the Witham Seam with the technology and work force to get it out of the ground and thats just one mine. As regards to working conditions though not very nice they'd never been better and safer. The first coal face I went on was under 3 feet high supported by prop and bar and the coal was "hand filled" literally thrown on the convey by men with shovels working by the light of their cap lamps, and serious and fatal accidents were everyday events some where in the industry. The last face I worked was about 15ft high with full shield supports coal was cut and loaded by a 200hp BJD shearer and the face was fully lit and while accidents still occurred they were nowhere as common and fatalities had decreased to virtually zero.

[Kromovaracun]

"It was a different kettle of fish in the 90s when many of the pits closed had years of reserves, in the case of the last pit I worked at a minimum of 30 years proven reserves in the Top Hard seam and God alone knows how much in the Witham Seam with the technology and work force to get it out of the ground and thats just one mine."

Perhaps. But how can you dig up 30 years worth of coal if nobody wants to buy it?

[marje]

Aren't we now having to import coal? Someone must be buying it then albeit probably not in the quantities used in the past.

[Booldawg]

I guess the demand for coal to power steam trains and household fireplaces wouldnt be great. How many power stations are coal powered? I wonder what the average UK demand is?

[Old_Geezer]

As long as it isn't expected to be sold on the international market, the cost of digging coal out should be offset by the economic benefits of having employment and consequential spending rather than welfare claimants. There is still a break point when it is no longer reasonable but most of this was done because of ideology and a desire to overcome union power. But even so governments still struggle to be in control in the face of the international industries they have allowed to flourish by removing barriers to trade and workforce. Now-a-days the workforce is just a human resource, much as it once was, not people to be looked after and sharing in a country's wealth. If you don't want to accept the conditions offered they are now able to simply bring foreign labour in to do the job, or often, depending on the industry, simply move the work there and easily import the goods/services instead.

[tonyav]

If I remember rightly, Thatcher closed most of our coal mines and then began importing coal from Poland.

[New Judge]

To answer doctordb's question directly, if coal had not been discovered and it was suddenly found there is no way on earth that it would be exploited today:

- It is (so we are told) one of the dirtiest fuels known to man. Many perfectly serviceable coal fired power stations are being closed and very few people use it domestically.

- It has a huge environmental impact in both its production and use.

- There is no easy way to get to it.

- Despite paddy’s eulogies, coal mining must rate as one of the most unpleasant jobs going and to think you would persuade people to do it when many of the currently unemployed will not even get out of bed to pick cabbages is laughable.

To stray a little into the political aspects, it is unlikely that Mrs Thatcher’s government would have taken on the miners had they not previously held the country to ransom at least twice. Misled by Joe Gormley and latterly Arthur Scargill they brought down the Heath government in 1974. Having almost brought the nation to its knees by striking for seven weeks in 1972 they were awarded a 16% pay increase. In 1973 they rejected a 13% pay increase and embarked on an overtime ban. Not content (and no doubt still unhappy that there was a Tory government) they launched another all out strike in 1974 (in pursuance of a 21% pay claim) causing Prime Minister Edward Heath to call a General Election which he lost.

When a repeat performance was staged in 1984 the government was well prepared. Coal had been stockpiled at power stations and the miners’ strategy of picketing mines and power stations was considerably weakened by this and proper co-ordination of police resources. I have no doubt that the experiences from the 1970s were indelibly etched on Mrs Thatcher’s mind and she was determined not to see her government brought down as was Heath’s.

[mikey4444]

VHG. Your point about mines being closed under Labour only tells half of the story. Coal mines have always been closed for geological reasons. In areas of Britain like South Wales, the geology is difficult. While the best kind of coal, ie anthracite lies a plenty under the ground, getting it out is frequently difficult and sometimes uneconomic and maybe too dangerous to continue.

The Government of which Thatcher was leader. closed down coal mines for ideological reasons, not geological. You will notice that I used the phrase "Government" as we being urged not to be nasty to Thatcher. She didn't do everything....she had plenty of ministers to do her work for her.

Nye Bevan, the Labour politician who brought in the NHS, once said that

" This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time "

Approximately 28% of our electricity is still produced from coal, most of which is now imported. As we are an island, it would seem to be madness itself to import anything that we already have in abundance.

The same goes for gas. In 2010 46% of electricity was produced from gas, a commodity that we are fast running out of and consequently we need to import vast quantities in order to keep our lights on. ( remember the Dash for Gas ? )

Vast civil engineering works had to be undergone in South Wales and the Marches in recent years order to lay a huge pipeline to bring gas from Milford Haven into the rest of the UK. That pipeline was laid over massive deposits of coal.

Now I am really, really trying not to be horrid to Thatcher but does that make any sense to anybody ?

[mikey4444]

Coal mining in general. Every industrialised country has exploited coal to get to where it is today. How exactly was the Industrial Revolution supposed to have happened without coal ? Millions of windmills perhaps ?