An unshiny, steady, sticking-at-it kind of month, with the Friends getting into a regular pattern of activity on site.
Continue readingLeaping into February
February turned out to be the warmest on record, but also rather wet. To put it mildly. It also saw some snow, so it was not the most prospicious for making progress on site and yet the regular volunteers did their characteristic best in what turned out to be a short but busy month.
Continue readingJanuary – sticking to the plan(ning)
The Friends and regular volunteers returned to site in mid-January, the 13th to be exact. 2024 will be the tenth year of volunteer activities on site since the Friends first took it on. A cause for celebration indeed! It is also a time for reflection, for renewed focus on the challenges ahead.
After welcoming everyone back on site, the Friends used a cold day to gather indoors on the 13th to review their plans for the year, including the costs to be met for site insurance, and some outline suggestions of the priorities amongst the many ‘jobs to do’.
Thanks go to all present for staying awake during the planning meeting, although the warm fire and good humour definitely helped get through business.
Storm-tossed
Not the least difficulty to face is the force of nature itself; how recent storms have tested – and on several occasions found wanting – the roofing of Pump House Cottage.
In December some minor edging loss was noted to the flat roof work which was completed in 2021 with National Lottery Heritage Fund support.
However in January 2024 the even greater storms Henk, Isha and Jocelyn left their marks in the lifting and removal of several sections of flat roofing, as well as a return of water ingress into Pump House Cottage itself.
Repairs underway
On Saturday 27th January, after a further wet and windy weekend had postponed actvities on site, the Friends risked a return and did some urgent repairs to the Pump House Cottage roof.
Despite spot repairs, it is likely that 2024 will require us to raise funds to reassess the roof on Pump House Cottage.
Material world
Elsewhere on site, the regular volunteers continued brick reclamation, sorting and selecting the right bricks.
All these efforts go to help rebuild the parapet wall on top of the rear retaining wall.
How does our garden grow?
Also in the works is a Springtime renaissance in the garden of Pump House Cottage. Thanks to the efforts of regular volunteers the beauty and wonder of fresh planting will be ready for the coming of brighter days. Bulb planting, weeding and tender loving care make this a wonderful area on site whatever the weather.
The needs of our local wildlife were not forgotten either. The popularity of our wild bird feeding station behind Pump House Cottage continued to be a marvellous area to watch the comings and goings of a wide range of species. Roll on the longer days of February!
40 years on – 1984
2024 marks 40 years since the start of the 1984-5 Miners Strike, pitting many members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the National Coal Board (NCB) and, ultimately, the Conservative government of the day.
It was an event which still divides political opinion nationally, and which cast a long shadow over communities throughout South Yorkshire, forever tying the name of a local pit – Cortonwood Colliery – to the history of industrial strife in the UK. Along with it go the names of national leaders whose words came to epitomise the positions of the main trade union, (Arthur Scargill), the National Coal Board (Ian MacGregor) and the then government (Margaret Thatcher).
How it came to this point will no doubt be the subject of many retrospective programmes, exhibitions and historical reflections, but in this short post at the start of the 2024, we will start with just a little bit of contextual history.
The Yorkshire Coalfield in 1984
At the start of the strike the Yorkshire coalfield, consisting of 4 NCB Areas, looked like this:
It consisted of 53 NCB collieries spread across 4 NCB Areas, employing a total of 53,920 (59,193 in 1983):
- North Yorkshire Area (Area Director Michael Eaton) – 12 pits, employing 12,885 (14,161 in March 1983) with 4 fatal accidents.
- South Yorkshire Area (Area Director George Hayes) – 15 pits, employing 13,947 (15,392 in 1983) with no fatal accidents
- Doncaster Area (Area Director Albert Tuke) – 10 pits, employing 13,355 (14,674 in 1983) with 1 fatal accident.
- Barnsley Area (Area Director [acting] Frank Ramsden) – 16 pits, employing 13,733 (14,966 in 1983) with 2 fatal accidents.
Plan C – Diminishing returns?
A decade earlier, in 1974, the National Coal Board had developed a strategy for the nationalised coal industry entitled, surprisingly enough, ‘The Plan for Coal’. It was not in fact the first plan, that was 1950’s ‘Plan for Coal’, followed by ‘Investing in Coal’ in 1956, and the ‘Revised Plan for Coal’ in 1959; equally this plan would certainly not be the last.
Governments, the nationalised industry and unions had struggled to adapt an ageing network of formerly private collieries – half of the total production by 1974 came from pits which were over 70 years old – into an efficient and affordable system of supply as energy demands changed rapidly in the almost three decades since nationalisation in 1946.
Coal had struggled to compete with cheap imports of oil, although this rapidly changed due to conflict in the Middle East, as the Arab/Israeli Yom Kippur war triggered the first Oil Crisis in October 1973, when OPEC nations embargoed crude oil exports leading to skyrocketing and unstable energy prices globally.
This made coal – a nationalised energy resource with large reserves – suddenly appear to be a somewhat safer bet, as long as it could be developed and worked to advantage. Two national strikes (1972 & 1974) and a change of government later, there was cautious optimism under a Labour government despite severe inflationary pressures and ongoing industrial unrest as wages were squeezed:
The industry has ploughed steadily ahead, reshaping its path as experience, events and, not least, geology dictated, but holding fast to its overall objectives. It cannot be denied – and nobody in the industry attempts to do so – that the more recent results have been disappointing. But it is a situation that the unions and the Board have recognised and are making big efforts to tackle together…In the longer term I am convinced that the industry will have to fill a role which will be vital for the well-being of the country.
Tony Benn, Secretary of State for Energy, Coal for the Future, progress with Plan for Coal and prospects to the year 2000 (p.1 Foreword), HMSO, May 1977
Despite unprecedented public sector industrial action in 1978-79’s disastrous Winter of Discontent, this strategic optimism and large-scale investment in coal did filter down, albeit slowly, alongside generous redundancy packages for older miners which continued to be taken up in significant numbers. An NCB South Yorkshire area report from just a few years before the strike gives a sense of the changes:
A number of major projects under the “Plan for Coal” have already been completed, including the surface drift at Kiverton Park Colliery, major reconstructions at Dinnington and Thurcroft collieries and an extended coal preparation plant at Manton colliery.
During the financial year, the Area invested over £30 million of capital. This brings the total amount of capital invested in the South Yorkshire Area since the “Plan for Coal” was launched in 1974, to over £100 million.
Many of the schemes still in progress take many years to complete, especially those which involved large amounts of underground drivages. […] Other underground projects in progress include the development of a new area of reserves in the Silkstone seam at Cortonwood colliery (£2.5 million) and the north-east area at Thurcroft colliery (£4 million). These schemes will not be complete until after the end of the new financial year.”
George Hayes (Area Director), NCB South Yorkshire Area Annual Review 1979/80
Even on the eve of the 1984 strike, under a Conservative Government, the Secretary of State for Energy, Peter Walker (1932-2010) spoke to the future hopes for the success of the British coal industry in distinctly hopeful terms:
…there is a great future for a productive, profitable and well-paid mining industry. The “Plan for Coal” and its revision consisted of three parts. The first was good investment for the industry. That has been honoured. Since 1979, through the taxpayer, the Government have provided about £2 million per day investment in coal mining. The second part was increased productivity. Productivity was due to increase by about 4 per cent. per annum. That was 10 years ago and it has risen by only 4.7 per cent. over the whole period. The third part was the closure programme, which is also behind. If we concentrate on putting investment into the good pits and carry out the rest of the programme, there is a good future for the industry.
Peter Walker, Energy minister, Hansard House of Commons [8th March 1984, 55/983-88]
There had been 79 pit closures nation-wide in the decade leading up to the strike, 58 of them were agreed at the local level by NCB and union negotiation. 21 were referred for national review, and 10 of those determined by a national decision, leaving 11 cases referred back to the local NCB Area and closed with local agreement.
But at what cost?
At the end of 1983, a local Barnsley MP had commented:
Closures are easy to discuss, but the social consequences, which some people seem to think do not exist, are very severe indeed. I have witnessed 10 collieries close in my constituency and seen the effects of those closures in human terms. Families have had to move out, and as the closure programme has gone on, people have had to move further away. Apart from the social consequences locally, one must bear in mind the effects on the children of mining families, who are moved in the middle of their education.
Mr. Allen McKay, (Barnsley, West and Penistone), HoC Hansard Volume 50, Monday 12 December 1983
Two more collieries have recently closed in my area. Elsecar, where I spent most of my working life, finished this year after a successful run; one could not find a better pit in which to work. Rockingham colliery finished last year. Those two pits were closed due to exhaustion and there were no problems; the men who worked in them realised that those pits had come to the end of their useful life.
Strike actions – Branch, Area, Regional & National
What had ostensibly started from 31st October 1983 as an overtime ban from a NUM Special Conference on 21st October 1983, developed into local disputes and strike action when on 28th February 1984 the NUM South Yorkshire Area panel called for a strike of all pits in the Area from 5th March.
This call came just as the NCB South Yorkshire Area Director, George Hayes had on 1st March 1984 – perhaps misguidedly – presented plans for the next financial year from April which included Cortonwood Colliery’s proposed closure as part of regional and national plans to cut production by 4 million tonnes.
And this despite previous undertakings a few years earlier that men from the closed Elsecar Colliery had expected to see further years of work at Cortonwood.
Fateful cascade
After September 1983, under the newly appointed NCB Chair, Ian MacGregor (1912-1998), the tone of NCB-NUM relations was to change forever. Media briefings raised fears of a more drastic pit closure programme, and the local disputes and national industrial and political tensions collided. The 5th March 1984 proved to be a decisive date. Although only 8 out of 15 South Yorkshire Area colliery branches had voted to strike, a Special Council meeting of the Yorkshire region NUM decided a strike would be called across all Yorkshire pits from 9th March.
The dominoes began to fall in other mining areas. An NUM National Executive Council meeting met on 9th March 1984 in Sheffield where the Scottish and Yorkshire regions asked for national union backing for strike action under the now infamous Rule 41, of which we shall no doubt hear more in historical reassessments of the year.
The acrimonious dispute triggered was characterised by cross-regional picketing, resultant heavy policing, antagonism, previously unseen violence, and all manner of political and media interventions that would last for a long, tragic and bitter year of conflict.
The prospect of a negotiated settlement between the NUM and NCB came and went amidst what at times became a televisual media circus. In some area pits did not join the strikes as not all regions agreed with the case for action and particularly the process adopted by NUM leadership.
Nevertheless mining communities throughout Britain endured great hardships for a whole year finally the NUM held a Special Delegate Conference at Congress House in London on Sunday 3rd March 1985 at which it was decided to return to work from Tuesday 5th March 1985 without an agreement with the National Coal Board. The motions then put were were painful but passionately pressed, and indeed speak for themselves:
“I’m saying now, search your hearts, search your hearts, comrades, and make your minds up. The men are calling for leadership, and you have two alternatives. You either give them leadership and repay the loyalty they have given us, or you sit back with your blindfold on and you let the strike collapse around you. That is not leadership. I believe it is leadership if you are men enough to decide that the time is right when you have to make a strategic withdrawing, if you like. Many people might not like the words, but we have got to live in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be…”
Terry Thomas [1938-2016] (NUM Delegate for South Wales Area), Report of Special Delegate Conference held in Congress House, Great Russell St, London, Sunday 3rd March 1985, p.91
The verdict of the President of the NUM was equally forceful, and unrelenting:
“It is clear that the Board, backed by the Government, have taken the hardest line seen between any employer and Trade Union in the last 50 years, and for them to insist we sign an agreement which accepts the principle of pit closures on the grounds of economics is something that no Trade Union and no Trade Unionist can ever come to terms with. To accept this would be to give away your birthright, to prostitute your principles as a Union and a Movement, and this Union has already made clear that we will not concede to that impossible demand.”
Arthur Scargill (President NUM), Report of Special Delegate Conference held in Congress House, Great Russell St, London, Sunday 3rd March 1985, p.101
Much more on the strike’s origins, NCB management decisions and government influence and intervention will no doubt be explored during 2024, but for many people the strike marked the beginning of the end of the national coal industry. Nine years later it was privatised and continued to contract until Kellingley Colliery, the last deep-mined coal pit in the country, closed in December 2015, 30 years on from the strike.
December highs and lows
Continue readingDead Chillness reigns. And yet my heart would say –
Thomas Lister, ‘Winter Scene [In the wooded valley below Dearne Spring]’,
“Winter! I love thee well.” Though birds forlorn
Send no glad anthem from the snowy spray,
Yet gushing melodies are hither borne
From infant Dearne. Drear in the early morn
Ye seem, wild Alpine woods! – that guard this child
Of moorland springs, – ye summer-green, all torn;
Yet, Winter gives a garment undefiled
Of snowflakes light. Joy now the day-beam brings,
And sun-tipp’d gems light up the frozen wild…
from The Yorkshire Magazine, Vol.I, no.IV, January 1872, p.121
No-vember
November, the awkward month; no longer light, no proper time of day. The harbinger of winter gloom and colder comforts, but with festive frolics to follow. And yet, through it all, the volunteers’ job is never done. The Friends of Hemingfield Colliery are friends for all seasons!
Continue readingStormy weather and soggy weekends
October brought clouds and rain. It kept volunteer activity on site at bay, at times, but the hardy crew still managed to get some valuable maintenance work done, and even enjoyed an outing at the end of this most changeable of months.
An ex-Sept-ional month, 2023
It was a sunny, soaking and an especially busy September for the Friends of Hemingfield Colliery. This month always brings the exciting prospect of Heritage Open Days, when we open up our site for a longer period, with our dedicated volunteers providing tours and sharing their enthusiasm for the site, its history and the plans for future developments. It’s also still very much a working month, with the last un-wintry weekends keeping hands-on repair projects moving.
Wall work
A good example of this is the ongoing large-scale effort to repair and consolidate the rear retaining wall. John, Paul, Jamie, Paul, and Jeff have been combining efforts when on site to push this forward.
Having made significant progress in repairing the face and base of the masonry over the last 2 years, the main focus recently has been on tying the wall more firmly into the rear terrace and providing a more substantial footing at the top to enable us to rebuild the collapsed brick wall which once lined the top.
When completed this work will allow us to tidy up the rear of the site, improving security, safety for visitors, and opening up more of the lower terrace. Advancing this work also means further restoration activities (of which there are no shortage) can be planned, freeing volunteer efforts to be directed elsewhere.
Wedge issues
On 11th September 2023, a team from Barnsley Council kindly answered a concerned call to address a safety issue caused by a tree growing between a telegraph pole and the pit’s front wall. The problem tree has been doing significant damage to the pit’s boundary wall, and also lifting the surface of the public pavement outside. Years of growth were pushing our wall over, but also causing the telegraph post to lean ever-closer towards Pit Row with slack wires hanging ever-lower. Having checked the tree’s status, and in the interests of safety and protecting our heritage, this large tree was taken down.
Making short and smart work of the job, the tree was removed, the Friends allowing site access for the tree to fall, away from the road, thus avoiding a road closure.
The front wall, part of the scheduled monument, has suffered from the tree’s growth, wedged as it was between the telegraph post and wall. The wall itself has also been subject to years of vandalism, with graffiti and some rather more recent criminal damage, all of which creates challenges for the Friends as a volunteer organisation to try to fix.
Heritage Open Days
On to Heritage Open Days (HODs). The theme for 2023 was “Creativity Unwrapped” – the perfect opportunity to share our new exhibition in Pump House Cottage.
Celebrating the closure of our National Lottery Heritage Fund Project, Hemingfield’s Hidden History, the exhibition shows the results of the creative work artist Fabric Lenny undertook with local primary school children from Hemingfield Ellis.
Inspired by the heritage and biodiversity found all around our site, the colourful artworks were compiled into a large final piece which is now permanently mounted on the wall of Pump House Cottage.
Over two wonderful weekends the Friends welcomed over 100 visitors to the site for the Heritage Open Days.
Starting with a surprisingly hot Saturday, and a slightly darker Sunday, we were pleased to show lots of new visitors around the site, and to share some of the outcomes of our recent work in and around Pump House Cottage, and around the back.
With our new guidebook and a selection of new and secondhand books and postcards, we were also grateful to receive several contributions, and were blown away by the final weekend, which saw the highest number of visitors yet recorded.
A HUGE thank you to all visitors, but especially to our regular volunteers who pulled out all the stops.
Green to Grey
The rest of the month was a chance to wind down a little bit, and reflect on the HODs activities whilst continuing regular maintenance duties.
Grey skies dominated, but there was no shortage of colour at ground level; from the late flowers in Pump House Cottage garden, to the first orange-brown leaves swept up outside.
Who predicts a riot? Elsecar in 1893
130 years ago, in 1893, a serious national industrial dispute took place between colliery owners and working miners in union districts affiliated with the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. Lasting many weeks from June until November 1893, the dispute was, ostensibly, fought over the employers’ demand to reduce wages at a time of much lower coal prices.
Arthur Marshall Chambers, the Managing Director of Newton, Chambers Co Ltd, at Thorncliffe, in Chapeltown, was the President of the Federated Coalowners who refused to maintain the same rate of wages, and decided to lock out workers and reduce output at their pits. collieries summarised their position:
Unless high prices can be obtained, high wages cannot be paid; and maintenance of high wages in times of depressed trade simply means reduced sales, less money for the workmen, and increased cost to the owners. If the owners in the Midland districts have to continue to pay the full 40 per cent. on the 1888 prices, the result will inevitably be that their pits will only work one or two days per week, which means an enormous loss to the owners, and would eventually cause the permanent stoppage of a large number of collieries.
Arthur Marshall Chambers, President of the Coalowners Federation, quoted in the Journal of Gas Lighting, Vol.LXII, No.1586, 3rd Oct 1893, p.636
Voices of dissent
Miners representatives held to a simpler line: no reductions, and solidarity of the district associations with the Federation. Ben Pickard, M.P., President of the Miners Federation, and on the executive of the Yorkshire Miners Association spoke plainly at a meeting in Barnsley.
…the whole of this business has been managed by those who have not merely brains – lawyers – but plenty of money, and if it is a question of the longest purse against an empty stomach, such coalowners must take the whole responsibility as to whether the workmen will submit to such demands and reductions in wages as are presented to them at the current time.”
Pickard speaking on Thurs 21 Sept 1893, published in Sheffield Telegraph, 22nd Sept 1893, p.5
Desperation
Groups of miners had been locked out of work. Some, after months of hardship, many were desperate, having to appeal for support from their own communities:
FRIENDS: - It is with feelings of the deepest regret that we are at present compelled, for the support of ourselves and families, to offer these few but simple verses to your notice, trusting you will be pleased to purchase this paper, it being the only means left us at present to support the tender thread of our existence, and to keep us and our families from the utter starvation which at present surrounds us.
We have entered in the battlefield,
The battle for to fight
Which our masters have compelled us,
But we do not think it right.
The public when they hear both sides,
Their opinions they can give,
I think that they will boldly say
That miners cannot live.
In eighteen hundred and ninety-three
Ready for the action,
Our masters without sympathy
Asked for a reduction.
[...]
(William Roberts, Miner of Platts Common,'Eighteen Hundred and Ninety Three or the Field of Battle'(fundraising poem during the Miners Lock-out. Hoyland Silkstone Branch)
As the weeks rolled by men and boys out of work grew more and more desperate, and some sought to lash out at colliery owners through direct and sometimes violent action. It was met by a heavy Police and even military response, most infamously at Featherstone on 7th Sept 1893, when two young miners, James Gibbs and James Duggan, were shot and killed.
Riot at Simon Wood Colliery
A day earlier, on 6th Sept 1893, an attack had also taken place at Elsecar, at Earl Fitzwilliam’s Simon Wood Colliery.
A crowd of men, boys and women, some local, others travelling into the area, headed to Simon Wood pit intending to damage the colliery and preventing it for working. Initially a tiny group of 13 West Riding of Yorkshire Constabulary Policemen attempted to see off a crowd of around 200 people at 12:45pm, approaching the pit from the village side, opposite Reform Row, and attempting to get to the works via the footbridge over the canal.
…a severe hand-to-hand fight took place on the bridge which, being narrow, gave the police a great advantage over the mob who yelled and swore like demons, yet the police stuck to their duty and drove the mob off the premises to some yards distant and then wisely returned to the bridge. The mob came on again armed with stones and the police stood on the bridge. Stones came at them from the centre of the mob in showers. The mob made a second attack on the bridge but were again driven back by the Constables with batons. The mob then broke open the lamp room, carried out all the lamps (about 400) broke them against the building and threw them into the canal. They then turned on the oil taps and set fire to it when the police again charged the mob, used their batons freely, got possession of the lamp room and extinguished the fire.
Police Report on the Riot at Simon Wood Colliery, No. 7 Division Superintendent’s Office, Barnsley 3rd of October 1893
Following the riot, charges were brought against a small number of young men and several women:
On the 6th September, 1893 at Hoyland Nether, in the said West Riding of York, with divers other persons whose names are unknown, to the amount of 100 and upwards, then and there being riotously and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the public peace, feloniously did unlawfully, and with force, demolish a certain building, namely a lamp room, the property of the Right Hon. William Thomas Spencer, Earl Fitzwilliam, against the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen and contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided.”
Charge brought against local people at Barnsley Magistrates Court
National outrage
The Home Secretary, Herbert Asquith spoke out against the chaos in a debate in Parliament:
platinum print, circa 1891-1894
NPG Ax15687. © National Portrait Gallery, London (Creative Commons, limited non-commercial use (CC BY-NC-ND))
A very grave state of things existed in the West Riding of Yorkshire three weeks ago. I am not prepared, from the information I have received, to assent to the proposition that the riotous and marauding proceedings that went on, the wrecking of collieries, the burning down of buildings, the levying of toll on innocent passers by—that these actions met with any sympathy whatever from the general body of miners on strike. I believe these outrages were the work of a comparatively small number of rowdies and normally unoccupied men, and that, so far as the general opinion of the mining population was concerned, they would discountenance any such proceedings.
Herbert Asquith, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Hansard, House of Commons Debate 20th September 1893, vol 17 cc 1724-25
A Lord’s Lament
At Elsecar Earl Fitzwilliam advocated for direct negotiations with his workers, without union meddling:
Goodwill, peace, and prosperity prevailed at Stubbin and Elsecar. So far as I know, the workmen had no complaint against me. I certainly had none against them. Yet the men belonging to the Miners’ Federation were ordered out of the pits; those not belonging to the Federation dared not continue to work, or, in many cases, even to acknowledge they were not members of that Federation, and most reluctantly all were compelled to remain idle and see their families suffer. No commercial enterprise can prosper under such circumstances. If I opened my pits to-day, the men might be ordered out to-morrow, though both employers and employed wished to go on working peaceably and profitably. Grieved as I am to be obliged to say so, I fear I cannot reopen my pits until peace, security, and freedom of action are restored. Yours faithfully, Fitzwilliam.
Earl Fitzwilliam writing to William Marklew of Parkgate, 28th October 1893
Aftermath
The bitter struggle only drew to a conclusion when the Government stepped in and offered a Conciliation mechanism, and a return to work without pay cuts to satisfy the Miners Federation, for a short time at least. It was perhaps a phyrric victory, as Sheffield and Derbyshire Colliery proprietor Emerson Bainbridge put it in terms of pounds, shillings and pence:
“… it will be seen that the miners have deprived themselves, in the period of sixteen weeks during which they were on strike, of wages amounting to about £6,000,000 sterling, besides the loss of the Union funds which they had in hand. It will, therefore, be seen that, in order to resist what might have been a temporary reduction of wages of £2,000,000, the miners have themselves suffered a loss, up to date, of £6,000,000.”
Colliery proprietor and consulting engineer Emerson Bainbridge, writing on ‘The Coal Strike of 1893’, in Contemprary Review, Vol.LXV, January 1894, pp.1-15 (p.10)
Summer escapes (us), August 2023
Wet weather rained us off on 4th August, but the Friends picked up the pace during the month which was, traditionally, expected to be somewhat summery…
Continue readingUn-July damp
What a strange month. Changing climate or no, there was a distinct shortage of sunshine, and a more than moderate excess of the wet stuff. Summer struggled to poke through the weighty dark clouds, spreading only heavy downpours.
Continue reading
Spring ebbs and June’s Summer flows
June. A beautiful time of year. The first steps of summer, without the school holidays. When the sun’s heat brings plants, people, and other wild-life out into the longer light of day.
Friends of Hemingfield Colliery 