Stop digging

KEN Rowley can't quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Britain is an island of coal floating in a sea of oil and gas, and successive governments are making us dependant on 70 per cent imported energy at the end of a pipeline," he says. "That makes us very vulnerable."

You would expect the NUM secretary at Wistow mine to be bitter. After all, when his pit closes at the end of next month he, like the hundreds of other miners still working there, will be out of a job.

He isn't the only one who worries about the collapse of the UK coal industry. Selby MP John Grogan is also concerned. "I share the fears that, if the trend continues, we will be reliant on imported gas from relatively unstable areas of the world," he says.

None of that will make any difference. The Selby coalfield, hailed as a "windfall for the nation" when then Environment Secretary Anthony Crosland granted the National Coal Board permission to work the new coal bonanza in April 1976, is to be closed for good by the end of summer.

Of the five mines in the £1.5 billion pit complex, Whitemoor and North Selby have already gone. Wistow closes at the end of next month, and Riccall and Stillingfleet will follow by the end of July. Gascoigne Wood, where coal from all the other mines comes to the surface to be washed before being transported by train to customers, is expected to close by the end of August.

When the announcement was made in July 2002, miners spoke of feeling betrayed. "They asked us to come to Selby and told us we would be looked after," says Wistow coalface worker Brian Wood, emerging into the dazzling sunshine from his pit, with the coal dust still thick on his face. "We've all been thrown on the scrap heap."

So how did a coalfield which just over 20 years ago was the new jewel in the National Coal Board's crown and the catalyst that was supposed to breathe new life into a declining and demoralised industry come to this?

It wasn't the 1984 Miner's Strike. That pretty much devastated the rest of the mining industry, but once the miners went back to work, the Selby coalfield flourished. By September 1995, the complex, by then owned by RJB Mining, set a new European weekly output record of more than 200,000 tonnes.

It wasn't to last. A complex which at the height of its success was digging out 12 million tonnes of coal a year and turning profits of more than £100 million was, by 2002, struggling to produce less than five million tonnes a year. And it was losing money hand over fist: £30 million a year since the year 2000, according to UK Coal spokesman Stuart Oliver.

UK Coal points to the coalfield's geology as the ultimate reason for its closure ten years earlier than expected. Major faults fragmented the coal seam, says Mr Oliver, making the coal much more difficult and costly to extract. "It's like having a dinner plate on a table in front of you, and then treading on it and having it break into 15 or 20 different pieces," he says. The slump in world coal prices in 1999 did not help. He admits there is plenty of coal left beneath the Vale of York but it is just not economic to get it.

The miners themselves don't necessarily accept that argument. Short-termism, Ken Rowley calls it - while Kevin Meloy, Riccall NUM delegate and chairman of the Yorkshire NUM, blames UK Coal for taking mining operations at Whitemoor and North Selby down to just a single coalface. That caused gaps in production, during which the company lost £1 million a week, he claims.

It's all water under the bridge, now. UK Coal isn't about to change its mind - and there is even a feeling of resignation among the miners themselves, says Kevin Meloy.

He can't keep the dejection out of his voice. "There is an inevitability about its closing," he says. "We've tried, we've campaigned, I've been down to meetings in Westminster. People do talk about the need for coal, but it is not going to be our coal, it is going to be imported coal."

John Grogan talks optimistically about the fact the Selby mines are to be capped, rather than filled in: which means, in theory, they could one day be opened again, if our need for coal dictated. UK Coal slams the door on that one.

Yes, the mine entrances will be sealed, says Stuart Oliver, but there is virtually no prospect that they will ever be opened up again.

The infrastructure and tunnels will begin to deteriorate the moment the mines close. "Yes, we would be able to open them up to gain access," he says, "but, realistically, I can foresee no circumstances under which we would want to."

If the UK ever did need to increase its coal production, he says, there are other so-far-untapped coal reserves elsewhere in the country that could be mined more economically - in Oxfordshire, for example, and on the Nottinghamshire/ Lincolnshire border.

So it really is the end for the Selby coalfield and The impact that will have on the district's economy is harder to assess. The pits employed something like 2,000 people.

The June 2002 Selby Coalfield Impact Study suggested that about another 2,000 jobs could be lost indirectly in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

"Closure will be a further critical blow to the regional industrial base and the Selby and Wakefield communities in particular," the report noted. That is why the Government injected something like £30 million into a regeneration package to help create new jobs and retrain redundant mineworkers.

Actually, however, the threat to the Selby economy will not be as crippling as pit closures were in other areas of the country, such as South Yorkshire or South Wales. Selby was a new coalfield, says Wilf Jackson, a retired Selby miner and veteran of the 1984 strike who lives in Brayton. "It wasn't a proper mining community here. Selby will recover."

It's a point also made by John Grogan. Selby has a strong industrial and employment base without coal. "So it will have an impact, but it won't be the same devastation as there was in the pit villages of South Yorkshire," he says.

The fact that unemployment in the town is at an historic low, and that only about a third of the Selby miners live in the district anyway, will help.

Coun Brian Percival, chairman of the district council's economy board, admits the council is concerned about the impact of the closure. But it is well prepared. He says the opening of the town's new £41 million bypass next month will pave the way for new employment opportunities - a business park south of Selby, and the Barlby Employment Zone to the north, a mainly industrial and warehousing development.

He clearly hopes to build on Selby's history as a freight hub. UK Coal's hopes to redevelop most of its pitheads as business parks is "utterly misplaced", he insists - but there are two exceptions. Whitemoor already has outline consent for use a business park - and Gascoigne Wood could be used as a railhead.

Then there is the River Ouse, which - uniquely in North Yorkshire - gives Selby access to the North Sea. The town already has barges which come from New Orleans carrying cargoes of rice, he points out. But with a new tidal lock, Selby could make a great deal more of its wharves.

Clearly, the district does have a thriving future beyond mining, if the commitment is there to see it through.

But what of the soon-to-be-redundant miners themselves?

Up to 250 of the Selby men may be able to transfer to nearby Kellingley colliery - if the NUM and UK Coal can reach agreement on flexible working there.

For the rest - and latest estimates suggest there are still something like 1,000 people working at the three remaining Selby pits - retraining packages should mean most of them will be able to find alternative employment, says Mr Grogan.

"At the moment, five out of six miners who are leaving are getting jobs immediately." They won't necessarily be jobs that pay as well as working down the pits - but they will have redundancy money of up to £30,000 to help them out.

The problem, says Alison Seabrooke of the Riccall Regen Centre - a community centre that has hosted careers fairs for miners - is that many miners have yet to make use of the retraining packages on offer. She says it is vital they do so.

"At Wistow there were 40 who went the other week," she says. "They got called in on the Monday and finished on the Friday. So there is a bit of a panic setting in."

Which makes the careers fair to be held at the Regen Centre on February 27 even more important.

For those miners who have yet to face up to the future, it could be the ideal starting point.

To find out more about the careers fair, call the Regen Centre on 01757 248849.

Year of war that buried the miners

MARCH 5 1984, a date indelibly engraved on my brain and the start of an unforgettable year that still haunts me today.

It was a year I will remember for its divisiveness, frustration, violence, intimidation and sheer hatred - nurtured by a bitter conflict that marked the beginning of the end of a once great and proud industry.

The miners' strike also marked a turning point in Britain's history. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who hated what she believed was the increasingly excessive power of trades unions, went head-to-head with miners' leader Arthur Scargill.

Trade union leaders, while not exactly neutered, lost much of their muscle and were never as influential again.

As part of a National Coal Board area management team at the time, it was clear almost from the start that the fight against pit closures, although an honourable cause in itself, was a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Just as clear was that there was only going to be one winner and that was Maggie. It was a strike going nowhere from day one. She had set her stall out well in advance, with huge stockpiles of coal to keep the home fires burning and the lights on.

All it needed was a spark to ignite the 'war' and it was duly provided by NCB bosses in South Yorkshire, who announced the closure of Cortonwood Colliery. It was then that miners' president Mr Scargill made his biggest mistake when he denied his NUM members a national ballot. Relying on tribal loyalty, he left individual coalfields to hold their own ballots but didn't get the mandate he wanted and so desperately needed.

Six coalfields voted against strike action while Nottinghamshire miners carried on working. It proved to be Scargill's achilles heel as miner confronted miner on the picket line.

Anyone who continued working - including management - were seen by the striking miners as 'scabs'. I remember turning up for work one morning and, along with colleagues, dodged stones and bricks hurtling over our heads before smashing office windows.

We saw bags of urine thrown over working miners and six-inch nail clusters thrown under the hooves of police horses. The police, especially from the Met, goaded miners by waving £5 notes at them, part of their massive overtime earnings, and bragging about how the strike had enabled them to have extensions built on their homes.

The police, banging their shields like Zulu warriors, were far from blameless, as were Scargill's storm-troopers. The NUM ran the strike like a military operation, with branch officials pulling the strings and handing out union money to miners for their bloody stints on the picket lines.

The two previous national miners' strikes, in 1972 and 1974, were nothing compared to 1984. Under the more moderate NUM president Joe Gormley, they were over pretty quickly, but with Scargill at the helm, both the Conservative Government and NCB chairman Ian McGregor knew they were in for the long haul.

Part of the NUM's downfall can also be attributed to a total misreading of the NCB's and the Government's determination not to give an inch under any circumstances. As the strike stretched into weeks then months, both sides became even more entrenched and, as far as Thatcher and Scargill were concerned, it got up close and personal. Even with men starting to go back to work, Scargill wasn't about to give in and neither was Maggie. The word compromise was foreign to both of them, victory was the only prize they cherished.

For so-called scabs, life wasn't that great either, especially when friends and even family were on strike. Friction and tension were palpable and I know of one striking miner who, to this day, still doesn't speak to his son, who returned to work.

There were many scary moments that set the adrenaline flowing - walls outside the homes of 'scabs' were pulled down and they were told they were not welcome any more in the miners' welfare clubs.

Tragically, the striking miners eventually became cannon fodder for the Government, whose retribution was swift and ruthless. In 1985, the year the strike ended, 24 pits closed, including seven in Yorkshire. During the following ten years a further 111 shut, throwing tens of thousands of miners on to the dole.

I know miners' families who lost their homes because of the strike and had run up so much debt it took them years to recover. That's why victory and triumph are the wrong words.

Tragic and sad are more fitting.

Updated: 11:19 Wednesday, February 18, 2004