ITV Calendar Miners' Strike Anniversary Coverage

Good afternoon everyone,

I'm working on planning our 1984 40-year anniversary coverage and have looked through the messageboard at previous threads and sent some DMs (so please give them a check if you've posted about mining on here before).

We're looking to speak to a miner who was at Cortonwood in March 1984 who would be willing to be interviewed by us in the next couple of weeks.

Then more generally we're wanting to speak to miners from our pits around the anniversary and people from the Barnsley Women Against Pit Closures movement too.

If anyone has any contacts or thoughts on what they would like to see Calendar do over the next few months please send me a DM or you can call me on my work phone 07769 280054.

Cheers,
Peter

 

Hello again,

We have our Miners' Strike anniversary 30-min special on Calendar tonight that I've worked on and people on this forum have helped with for anyone interested

 

I did a piece last week for bbc radio york speaking about how closing the mines affected families of miners an opportunities for children of miners once the jobs had gone here in Selby.

Met them at the Selby Memorial that I was pleased to support last year and my children helped unveil.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-68446861.amp

 

Did Selby have much of a coal mining history prior to the “Super Pit” scheme? Genuine query.

And if not, why not? Was there some development of say dewatering systems in the mid-20th century that suddenly made the depths there more viable? Or did nobody ever bother to look previously (which I find hard to believe).

 

BBC News - Miners' strike 1984: The pitmen dubbed scabs for going on strike
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-68411970

 

Hi Peter

I posted this two days ago



and was promptly reprimanded by the thought police on here saying that there is already an existing thread on the subject. This is like banning all threads that relate to football because there are others already there.

The song was specially commisioned and beatifully sung by a prominet local singer to mark the 40th anniversary tomorrow. It is sung from the perspective of a miner's wife to commmorate the tremendous efforts that they did supporting their partners.

The miners strike was a huge turning point in our history and, coming from a mining family and living though it was heartbreaking.

I commend you in your endeavours and please use the song in any way you wish. I am not claiming copyright on it. I just want it to be heard by as many people as possible.

I would have PM'd you on this but i have not yet worked out how to do this. You can call on 0796 882 1191

Best regards

 

It's on the concealed coalfield. Technology hadn't developed enough to make sinking shafts that deep feasible or economical. The same reason Donny pits didn't develop until into the 20th century. Sinking some of the pits further east involved freezing the ground to stop water influx into the shafts.

 

Thanks for this explanation, thought it might have been something like that. I remember reading about the “cementation” process brought across from Belgium at a similar time for shaft sinking purposes in the Doncaster area and further afield.

 

At Thorne ,just outside Doncaster there are 7 foot seams of coal right out to the East Coast, why this was left in preference to nuclear energy is beyond me.
Clean up the fossil fuels replace with Nuclear energy where the waste is dumped.
Get rid of gas guzzling vehicles to replace with clean eco friendly vehicles, with huge generators to re charge them ! .
Politicians eh

 

There's millions of tonnes of waste from fossil fuels; probably only hundreds from nuclear.

 

Very interesting and thought-provoking.

Nothing but respect for those who worked in this toughest of industries and fought for their jobs. But it's difficult to escape the conclusion they they (or rather Scargill) could never win that battle. But if I respect the ordinary men, I'd save some respect for Danny Gillespie, who bravely said it's time to move on.

Striking end to the show, with a beautiful rendition of 'Gresford', which itself honours the most awful tale of tragedy and subsequent betrayal.

 

Heseltine showed the contempt they had and still do have for miners and the communities. Interesting that I ‘ve seen and heard comments about the miners could never have won, but I know there were times in that strike when Thatcher lost her nerve, and was persuaded at the last minute not to negotiate a return to work. All history now, but if anyone actually believes the miners and their communities were/ are ‘better off’ for the decimation of the coal industry especially in the way it was done, they’re very much mistaken

 

It seems to me that Thatcher was haunted by the memory of Heath's government being brought down by the miners and that she was determined not to suffer the same fate. If it is true that she had moments of weakness, I don't think that her cabinet would have allowed her to back off. While she is often portrayed as dominating that cabinet, mass resignations from it would have brought her down.

 

Well, they did gamble on the Notts miners scabbing, and the Deputies Union not backing the NUM. Either one or both of those happening could well have seen a different outcome

 

Mr Gillespie is correct that it is for the good of all to move on from the anger as it helps nobody and has cost people their health and their lives.

But his questioning of whether Thatcher was right in the show I sincerely doubt will be well received by many of his peers and colleagues of the time.

It was a good piece though it has to be said.

 

Not so sure that's what Bazza was aiming at. Clean coal is still in it's infancy.


Nuclear energy is also dangerous. We’re still living with the legacy of accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima which released huge amounts of radioactive material. Even without such accidents, nuclear power creates radioactive waste at every stage of production, including uranium mining and reprocessing of spent reactor fuel. Some of this waste will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, yet nobody knows of a way to safely store it so problems aren’t created for future generations.

The UK government’s hopes for a new generation of nuclear power stations is crashing against the economic realities. As the cost of truly clean energy plummets and the price of nuclear energy spirals out of control, nuclear power companies are shelving their plans to build plants in the UK.

Instead of backing nuclear power, our government needs to invest in renewable energy including wind and solar power. A thriving renewable energy industry will create jobs, provide cheaper electricity and help cut emissions much faster than nuclear power.

 

That was put over with much more intelligentence than I could have dreamed of.
Thankyou and 100% spot on.
There's been more scares at Sellafield that as been covered up.
Fish with 2 heads clusters of cancer cases.
Nuclear waste uncertainty of where its going to be dumped.
I can't beleive the ocean as not been improvised to create energy through tidal effect.

 

The infrastructure costs too much, so the energy it provides will be too expensive.