I tried watching The Price Of Coal after finding it in Youtube, it was in two parts but the second part cut off just after the explosion, never found out how ended.
I have watched it on Youtube & both full parts were up there. Two totally contrasting films, one funny as & one highly tragic, but that's Ken Loach for ya,
I’lo have to revisit it then, I was quite enjoying it and would like to see how it ended. No spoilers please
Grandad on mother’s side was the winch man at Barnburgh. Top bloke always ad a pocket bottemer to spare.
RIP those lads that lost their lives that terrible day . Events like these were devastating for their own communities and the wider mining communities that knew but for the grace of god . Also there were individual miners killed or seriously injured on almost a daily basis in the industry as a whole . No one mourned the demise of the coal industry on a humanitarian basis but the neglect of the miners their families and communities after was a disgrace . The Mining Museum is more poignant as the actual people that worked in the industry and the conversing of life in the mines are fewer each year .
My Dad's foreman fitter was killed when his head was crushed between his shoulder blades into his chest cavity. One of his other friends was decapitated riding the coal conveyor. You weren't supposed to do it but lots hitched a ride on it. I wanted to take an underground induction for a technicians job at Kellingley Colliery in 2001 and my Dad talked me out of it. Glad I did because a wheelchair bound friend of mine told me that's why he's wheelchair bound. A load of corrugated sheeting fell on him and more or less crushed him. I know a few who lived to tell the tale.
Good on yer dad for talking you out of it , even what was considered safe places down pit could evolve to life threatening in split seconds . I had a hell of a time arguing with my parents whether to work in pit or not , most of my mates an family were there and the money for new starters at least was almost double anywhere else including apprenticeships although they would be more fruitful years later. But I was told by the recruiting personnel that I had a secure job for life even though by other industry’s equivalents it was unskilled . Over years I have seen good friends killed ,seriously maimed or struck down by one of the many diseases attributed to the industry . I’m glad that by the time my Children (lads anyway) that they were almost zero chance of joining the industry . No where was safe and tragedy can come at anytime anywhere underground . We had tragedies in my parents Immediate families which didn’t go down wel with me joining the industry . I made some absolute rocks of mates and colleagues and had some real good laughs as well as real hard work where we had to have salt tablets and monitoring by medical staff at pit . Gallows humour was a way of blocking the possibility of what could happen and what did happen to yourself or others . As I mentioned to upthecolliers about being fully buried by a fall which I was able to dig myself out of because it was coal rather than rock which would almost definitely would have killed me . As I say I don’t miss the hell holes but I miss the camaraderie these conditions threw up but the industry should have been phased out with quality jobs for the community rather than what the uncaring Tory’s actually did .
A bit strange in a way that I come from a mining family, yet , my dad, my 2 brothers and I didn’t start our working lives as miners. As you say the wages for unskilled workers compared quite favourably to elsewhere and that’s how we all finished up working there. Dad wasn’t happy, especially when I went coal- face training and he was my mentor. Got to hear him swear for the first time, albeit comparatively mildly and not very I often.
My dad, who worked at Woolley pit as a shotfirer and deputy, always said to me when I was at school "Mek sure tha passes thi exams cos tha not gooin darn t'pit when tha leaves schooil." I did and I didn't (work in mining industry) Thanks Dad.
