- 2 months ago
Category
ðº
TVTranscript
00:00It's 1954 and the people of Yorkshire's West Riding are about to see a very special show.
00:27And here come the boys. I beg your pardon. I mean boys.
00:37Believe it or not, these ballerinas are actually minors.
00:41It's hard to imagine any other group of working class men having the confidence to put on a tutu and dance like this in front of their family and friends.
00:50But the people we see watching, captured here on film, were not the only audience. Incredibly, footage like this was seen in cinemas all over Britain alongside the feature films of the day.
01:06There's something about being a miner, being in the dark all day, that when you come out and you see the world, you know, you're looking at it with fresh eyes and I think they express themselves in a lot of different ways.
01:18Here are miners creating art that wowed the London art scene.
01:25And here's a miner who writes plays.
01:27It was Clary Stafford who works at Steakley Colliery and he was typing a play that he'd written about mining folk.
01:33We know about these extraordinary men because the daily lives of miners were chronicled by the National Coal Board's film unit.
01:42It began filming them shortly after nationalisation in 1947 and ended just before the miners' strike in 1984.
01:51Around 1,000 films record what amounts to the final chapter in Britain's long tradition of coal mining.
01:58Coal runs through human history and it's always been both a creative force and a destructive force.
02:07From coal came some of Britain's finest achievements and also some of her mighty struggles.
02:14The unit made every type of film imaginable.
02:18There were dramas, documentaries, animations and even quirky training films.
02:28What's incredible about the archive is they recorded every possible technical, physical advance in mining.
02:39Then all the social changes that have happened.
02:42Everything from how they use their spare time to where they go on holidays and the things they do in their homes.
02:47Rarely seen in the last 30 years, these historic films now offer us a unique window into the lost world of coal mining and its remarkable people.
02:58Britain was still recovering from the war when the Labour government began its nationalisation programme.
03:16On the 1st of January 1947 signs were affixed to all collieries declaring this mine is managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people.
03:35There was a sense of a need for social renewal after the wartime struggles of so many.
03:43Within months, the National Coal Board set up its film unit.
03:47Blair Hall Collieries, Scotland. Among these men is Tom Syme, minor.
03:55Tom was picked for the British ice hockey team at this year's Olympic Games.
03:59This is Dunfermline ice rink, where Tom trained for two and a half years.
04:04Who wouldn't in this company?
04:07And this was Tom's last practice game with the Dunfermline senior team.
04:10Watch for number 12. That's Tom. Strenuous work after a day in the pits.
04:17The Mining Review was a monthly newsreel or cinemagazine, if you like, which was about ten minutes long, a single reel of film,
04:25which went out to cinemas every month, particularly in all of the coalfields across the UK, but also elsewhere.
04:31We know, for example, that it was certainly shown in London, in the West End, you would see Mining Review before you went to see your feature film every month.
04:37At its peak in the 1950s, Mining Review was shown in over 800 cinemas and watched by millions of people.
04:46Now, the point of Mining Review was, on the one hand, to reach the general public and to update them on the industry that they were now paying for,
04:55because it was a nationalised industry which was paid for partly through taxpayer money, but also to show them mining communities at work and at play.
05:02Each Mining Review generally followed a format, beginning with technical information highlighting the latest developments in the industry.
05:16William Thorpe Colliery in Chesterfield has been trying out a new kind of pit prop.
05:21Instead of being rigid, like the usual timber or steel supports, this hydraulic prop is adjustable to different conditions.
05:30This was followed by some light arts or music featuring miners themselves and their leisure activities.
05:36And finally, a story promoting the various benefits the coal board were keen to show they were providing.
05:51Dust prevention underground is removing the danger of dust disease, but thousands of miners already have dust disease.
05:57The new act this July will give fairer compensation and the coal board and the union have been discussing other benefits.
06:05I first came across the archive when we were making the stage show of Billy Elliot.
06:12We got in touch with the BFI and they sent us some films.
06:16The amazing thing about the Mining Review films is the just massive variety of subject matter.
06:22One wet day, the path to the loft was pretty muddy, so Jack laid down a lot of coal slack.
06:33His pigeons started eating it.
06:36And they've done it ever since.
06:39The fame of Jack's coal-fired pigeons spread far afield.
06:42Dear Mr Bramley, one letter went, I am not a pigeon fancier, but I rather want to try the use of this on myself, to see if it will help my indigestion.
06:54Another asked, I wonder if you would send me about five pounds of this coal.
06:59It may be different to our local supplies. I enclose 20 shillings.
07:03So these films show miners and their families involved in a wide range of leisure activities.
07:10There's all the things you'd expect, like brass bands, male voice choirs, gala days, but a lot of stuff you wouldn't expect.
07:17Not just sporting events, but also hobbies. There's quite a lot of eccentric stuff going on in Mining Review at times.
07:22These are the miners and sailors of Workington. They're known as the Uppies and Downies, for originally the miners came from the upper part of the town, and the sailors down by the docks.
07:39There are no rules, no referees, and no limit to the numbers who take part.
07:43The Uppies try to get the ball home into the grounds of Workington Hall up in the town, while the Downies have as their goal a capstone on the dock side.
07:50And these girls are two miles apart.
07:54For nearly 200 years the game has been played like this at Easter, yet nobody's perfectly sure how it originally started.
08:01And when it's all over, those of the winning side, who aren't in hospital, have the right to parade the town with the man who scored the goal, collecting free drinks in the pubs.
08:10And they certainly deserve it.
08:11I think as films, there are some really great documentaries. Some of the early black and white ones, they're beautifully shot. I mean, just as works of art. And also capturing the era that's gone.
08:25People streaming out of the pit, that Eisenstein-Lowry world that no longer exists.
08:31I started watching them as a bit of a joke. You think, oh, that's going to be incredibly tedious.
08:36And actually they weren't. There was some nobility and grandeur in it. There was great sort of sweeps of the countryside and the dignity of labour.
08:43And then there was one called The Shovel, which I particularly like, because in a way it's the most boring film on earth.
08:52And yet it's so portentous to talk about the laying down of the coal seams and the carbonific era when the great mammoth walked the earth and man invented the shovel to dig the coal with.
09:01And you learn how to shovel coal really well.
09:03The first is the way to stand. Keep your shoulders in line with the movement of the shovel and get your whole weight behind the swing.
09:12Stand comfortably. You'll have seen a stance like this before. That is, if you're interested in cricket.
09:19It's the way a good batsman stands at the crease. His shoulder is well forward to the line of the ball and he puts his weight behind the stroke.
09:27You don't have to be a Len Hutton to shovel well, but it's the same idea.
09:34Which you start out in a way laughing at, but also there's something quite touching about them.
09:40And they're definitely capturing an era that has now gone. It's a civilisation that's gone with the wind.
09:48At this time, it was still common for boys as young as 15 to go down the pit.
09:52These lads are going to be miners, but how are they going to learn the job?
09:59Should they be sent straight down the pit where they'll be in everybody's way?
10:03Or should they go to college where they won't learn anything of the practical side?
10:07The workmen in the Rhonda are wonderful boys
10:12They get to the work without any noise
10:17They say through the Rhonda you never will see
10:20When I started in the pit when I was 16
10:24I was my two brothers and my father before me
10:27I just went straight into the training centre
10:29You could just walk into a job in them days
10:32I didn't feel it. I was a miner while I was on the surface, to be honest with you
10:36Finally, when I went in the ground then I wished I was back on top
10:38They say through the Rhonda you never will see
10:42A merry, a lot, daddy, tip-a-daddy
10:46Toodle-oo, toodle-lay
10:50The best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray
10:54The first time I went on the ground
10:57And I don't mind admitting I was a little apprehensive
11:00My father had worked in the coal mines, he didn't want me to go down
11:04Uncles had told me the same thing
11:06So I wasn't quite sure what to expect
11:09It was fairly comfortable once I got down there
11:14Whitewashed roadways, I could see everything that was going on
11:17And I thought, well, this is not so bad
11:20I'll just continue on like this
11:22Later, when I was at the coal face
11:27That was a different world altogether
11:30Instead of walking in heights of eight, nine feet along roadways
11:33You were down to three feet six
11:36And it was ordinary wooden props
11:39Setting steel bars and moving them forward
11:42Having filled off a stretch of coal
11:45Anywhere between three and six yards of coal
11:48Oh, talk about hauling
11:51It's nothing but fun
11:53To do an under level
11:55As well as on the run
11:57To hook her and spragger
11:59And haul her G-way
12:00And the best little dough
12:03More than Sunday
12:05When I left school, it was the Thursday before Good Friday
12:07It was in the days when school leaving was
12:10It was just being put up to 15 then
12:13So when I got home on the Thursday before Good Friday
12:16My mother says, Michael, your tea's on the table
12:19By the way, you're starting the pit on the Tuesday
12:21They may have been barely more than children
12:24But they were expected to work as hard as any adult
12:27My most embarrassing moments down the pit
12:28And I only had about a yard of coal to fill off
12:31Which was nothing really
12:33So I'm filling away
12:34And all of a sudden I see this figure
12:36Filling away with my coals
12:38What the hell are you eating?
12:40And it was my father
12:42My father was a deputy on that face
12:44And he said, I'll just come to give you a hand
12:46Yeah
12:47And then after that I got all the flack from the fellas
12:50Hey, he's got to get his pretty father to come and help
12:52Moot
12:54Hey, Cokie
12:56That way, man, you're hopeless
12:58So I told him, never again
13:00Doesn't matter if I'm struggling, just stay away
13:01And the best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray
13:05To-da-loo
13:07To-da-lay
13:09The best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray
13:13For the film unit's crew, who weren't used to working underground, filming in mines was a challenge
13:28The real difficulty about filming underground was that the fireproof regulations were so strict
13:34And we were limited, first of all, the camera couldn't be electric
13:37So we used a clockwork Newman-Sinclair camera, which you wound up like this laboriously
13:44The lights were not made for filming, and they were very heavy
13:49It was very different from filming on the surface
13:52The room you had to move around in was very much more limited
13:57But you became used to this
14:02The newly nationalised coal industry was hugely confident and secure
14:07And the mining review films trumpeted its expansion and modernisation
14:12Within a hundred yards is a coal mine that's been there for years
14:15Now, a five-year reconstruction plan is to win more coal from under Manchester
14:20Much of which will be for the city itself
14:27Coal carried many of the hopes of post-war Britain
14:33There was a pride in these nationalised industries, particularly coal mining
14:38And this can be seen very much in the animated film King Coal
14:43Made shortly after nationalisation
14:45King Coal is stirred from his slumbers underground by the cries from homes and factories for more coal
14:56And he comes to the surface and is seen bestride the nation
15:02And there's a wonderful sense of movement and colour and vitality from this Technicolor film
15:13And it serves both as a recruitment film and a piece of general propaganda for the coal industry in Britain
15:29King Coal allowed the National Coal Board to speak directly to the public
15:40Reminding them of the key role played by coal in the life of Britain
15:45In fact, the NCB was so buoyant about the future that it was happy for miners to use its film unit to air work-related issues such as the argument for a five-day week
15:47Can we afford it?
15:48Well, hold on, I'm all in favour of the five-day week
15:50We shall benefit through it physically, we're having a long weekend rest, we may lose in production, but eventually we shall recover it
15:54Well, I'm for it Arthur, but I definitely know this
15:57To ensure five full production days, we still need an extra day, and we shall need volunteers to do this
16:04Get the double pay for the extra day, same as they get it on Sundays now
16:07I don't think so, Harold, production is bound to drop
16:10Granted, the five-day week must come to the pits
16:14Because they have already got the new production of the production
16:15And the production will be provided with the production
16:16And we shall need volunteers to do this
16:18And we shall need volunteers to get the double pay for the extra day, same as they get it on Sundays now
16:23I don't think so, Harold, production day is bound to drop
16:29Granted, the five-day week must come to the pits
16:33day week must come to the pits because they have already got it in other industries the only way
16:39as was typical in the mining review series the film ends on a sing-song
16:57along with the debate about the five-day week the early mining reviews highlighted improvements in
17:03the health and welfare of miners and their families from the creation of new homes this is a great day
17:09for the wilkes family they're moving in instead of one room for all purposes they have a sitting room
17:16dining room kitchen and three bedrooms to the development of health sensors every day of the
17:23week the health center is full the doctor's wife herself a radiographer has the job of x-raying
17:29each minor every six months and improved access to higher education this year dozens of young
17:36miners from all over the country went back to school they had won university scholarships given
17:41by the national co board for training new mining engineers and administrators
17:49in may 1949 the film unit was sent to record the visit of the big american singing star paul robeson
17:56to a mine in scotland paul robeson was intending to go to an edinburgh colliery and to sing to the
18:04miners in the cantoon and we um turned up we filmed him i think that afternoon uh talking to the miles
18:13walking about um and then we filmed the the singing in the evening and he's saying i thought i saw joe
18:22hill last night which is an american song joe hill was a legendary american trade union activist
18:30before the first world war is dead i never died says he i never died
18:44in salt lake city joe says i am standing by my bed they frame paul robeson was very popular at this time
18:55amongst mining communities in particular partly as a result of his the feature film in which he
19:01starred a proud valley from 1940 in which she played a heroic and self-sacrificing miner in south wales
19:11he had strong sympathies for the underdog and this earned him great respect amongst working class
19:17communities to the miners it must have been quite something in their everyday canteen to be
19:23visited by someone who was a huge celebrity then and for him to sing there such such a song it must
19:32have been both moving and thrilling
19:39went on to organize
19:44i dreamed i saw joey last night alive as you and me
19:51he says i but joe you're ten years dead i never died says he i never died says he
20:06i never died
20:20in the 1950s increased mechanization led to greater productivity here at clean 31 men have been
20:37averaging over 230 tons a shift with a bigger output possible if they could get it away quickly
20:44that's pretty good going and the code's not all small stuff either
20:51things were looking rosy for both the industry and the miners and their families there's a real glow
20:57to the mining review films of this period
21:11most of what miners did in their spare time focused around the local welfare or social center which
21:17offered a range of sports leisure and educational activities funded by the miners themselves
21:23the center cost some 120 000 pounds to build it was provided by the coal industry social welfare
21:31organization and the miners and their families from bilston glen and other surrounding collieries
21:36make full use of it and at the time every miner paid a one penny levy to the coal industry social
21:46welfare organization and they organized most of the welfare things that were going on first of all
21:52they supported outdoor facilities as well as indoor facilities
21:59young abe is a busy man not only has he this swimming bath plant to look after
22:04but he also has to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the tea making apparatus
22:09for that's what keeps the ladies happy while the men enjoy themselves
22:15and within them welfare institutes you had libraries and in them libraries
22:19there was books of all sorts where you people educated themselves
22:35what a beautiful room this is right it's bought and paid for by the people of this community here
22:42paid it out of the wages this cooperative spirit was frequently captured in mining review
22:53all of the films articulate that sense that you don't live your life alone
22:57and you live it with other people and for other people
23:15lee hall is fascinated by the social dynamics of the old mining communities he's come to the british film
23:22institute to explore documents relating to the coal boards film unit which like the films themselves
23:28have been archived here for 30 years so the rolling miner i have no idea what this could be 13th year
23:37it was only after writing billy elliott with its story of a miner's son who wants to be a ballet dancer
23:43that lee came across evidence mining and ballet had mixed before this is brilliant obviously i'd written
23:49billy elliott as a kind of fantasy and then when i was working with the archive here they showed me
23:56um this amazing film of these stocky miners who call themselves the blenetta mains there's all these
24:03shots and of them down the mine and there's jim turner the fireman fireman jim turner underground
24:10worker jack fish colin plant clark and storekeeper israel downton
24:17and they're all working on the ground and then they come up and they they did this mad uh sort of
24:23sort of uh ballet dance and here come the boys i beg your pardon i mean boys
24:30they dance capilla for the uh delectation of the village and it's just absolutely hilarious and charming
24:46typically in mining villages entertainment was a communal activity something participated in with
24:59neighbors and friends the biggest communal event in the miners calendar was the gala day
25:05or miners picnic and music was always central to these events
25:17the miners picnic in northumberland was a huge family celebration families came from all over the
25:22northumberland coal field to get together um for a big party day every pit would have its own brass band
25:31or they would have borrowed one if they didn't have their own for the day so there would be a wonderful atmosphere
25:43competition was important at these gatherings the local colliery bands would all compete for the title of best brass band
25:50the adjudicator mr oliver howarth of manchester is locked in a room and no one must have contact with him when he has the band playing he
26:00doesn't know which one it is he can't see it hello mr mood next band plays right mr howarth
26:09the adjudicator is now ready
26:21every miner had sixpence deducted from his his wages by the miners union to pay for the brass band
26:31and there were 165 000 men in the great northern coal field in 300 pits in the 1950s and if you think of
26:40165 000 sixpence as every week you can see why it supported 150 bands
26:50it gave children a great opportunity to learn music and it was a source of pride in every family that
27:03they had somebody playing in a brass band it was a great educational thing as well as being something
27:09that cemented the community together and gave them a sense of pride in having a band that was
27:14able to win competitions or simply just appear at the gala
27:24after the contest in the afternoon all of the bands march down to the picnic field
27:34brass bands themselves are kind of seen as a sentimental thing i think largely because of the
27:38the hovis advert but there's something quite powerful and wagnerian about the swell of this
27:43big load of brass coming up and and the way a yorkshire brass band plays and i know this because
27:48we've been looking into kind of brass sounds completely different when new orleans trumpet will
27:55flare and blare whether it whereas a yorkshire one kind of does this wagnerian swell so there's
28:00something majestic about it it's not just whimsy and nostalgia there's something quite powerful about it
28:08what seems most significant but it was a band it wasn't about individual virtuosity it was um about
28:24coming together and each playing your part and you create this um glorious sound
28:38the
28:42before the end of the day the judges had another winner to appoint who was the prettiest girl
28:48the mining industry encouraged its pretty young ladies to come forward
28:52and represent the collieries and the coal field communities and we developed coal queens
28:58and over the years it became more than just a little local event it actually became a national
29:04competition and i had the privilege in 1982 representing northumberland and that was huge fun
29:13some of the prizes were more than a week's wage so it was it was a big deal to win these things
29:20but one musical tradition was on the way the mining folk ballads
29:33in the mid-50s mining review became part of an initiative to revive
29:54and record this dying folk tradition we often tend to think of folk song in terms of merry england dancing
30:02around the mayor pole a rural version of of folk tradition but there was just as much a tradition of
30:08industrial folk song which was deeply embedded in the coalfields around britain now a l lloyd
30:15uh was a folklorist who published a book in the 1950s called come all ye miners songs and ballads of the coal fields
30:23and he actually used mining review as one of his research tools so in mining review fourth year number
30:29nine there's a very interesting story called miners songs in which lloyd appears on camera appealing to
30:36miners and mining communities to dig out songs from their local folk tradition that he could use in his research
30:43we want to collect them before they disappear so we're having a competition with prizes
30:49if you know any of these songs of the coal fields please send them to me
30:53my name is a l lloyd and you'll find full particulars in the may issue of coal magazine
31:00the 80 or so folk songs collected by a lloyd in his book come all ye bold miners form an important
31:07historical record of the ballads of the british coal fields
31:12there's a famous song called the black-legged miners this is the version in uh in the a lloyd book
31:18um oh early in the evening just after dark the black-legged miners creep out and go to work
31:23with their moleskin trousers and dirty old shirt well it's in the evening after dark
31:31that the black-legged miner goes to work with his moleskin pants and his dirty shirt
31:39is this is a sort of a comic song about strike breakers but that's i think that's typical of the
31:52sort of the salty ironic way that uh these writers use the experience
31:59like the black-legged miner it's in the evening after dark the black-legged miner goes to work with
32:07his moleskin pants and his dirty shirt there goes the black-legged miner
32:12the black-legged miner now several years after lloyd had published his uh book of mining songs
32:18there was a spin-off back into mining review because in 1957 mining review ran five um stories as part
32:25of the regular issues called the songs of the coalfields these were all taken from lloyd's research
32:31using isla cameron she's singing the sandgate nursing song and using particularly ewan mccall
32:37singing a number of songs from northeast england scotland and wales one morning when i went to work
32:46the site was most exciting i heard the noise and looked around and who do you think was fighting
32:52i stood amazed and adam gazed to see and that in turn led to an association between mining review and
32:58ewan mccall in particular and peggy seager and they supplied some songs for use on some mining review
33:04stories later a lot of what the songs are about are the problems of poverty you know the industrial
33:20conflicts that were going on in the coalfields the corpus of songs in the northeast is a sort of 200
33:28year old um litany of this of the hardships and and the political and social struggle that these
33:37communities had to face it's just a song that a friend of mine asked and it's called the working
33:54man it's about as i say a minor starting work at 16 and then finishing at 65 and it's just it's a
34:04working man i am and i've been down underground and i swear to god if i ever see the sun
34:15or for any length of time i can hold it in my mind then i never again will go down underground that's the
34:26gist of it um actually my husband loves it it's his favorite song pray tell me the cause of your trouble
34:37and pain and sobbing and sighing these words she did answer fatal disasters had been part of life
34:50for coal communities ever since mining began some of the most powerful songs collected by a l lloyd
34:57are about such incidents this one commemorates a disaster in scotland the blantyre explosion
35:13with pale anxious faces they haste to the mind
35:18despite improvements in mining safety in the 50s fatalities continued to occur
35:49that blantyre explosion they'll never have i've been where there's three people
35:56in my life doing the pit being killed from me to you next to me with fall of stone and different
36:06things happening and that was a frightening thing never slept for at least a fortnight thinking about
36:17him being killed right inside you and could these accidents have been avoided yes
36:23now he's in the rescue team and we had to go to a private mine in tonne revel
36:31and um there was a fatality there this fella had got buried in the after about three o'clock on the monday
36:41afternoon and we didn't get him out of there until about one o'clock the following day
36:49i know when we carried that guy out to that pit that day it was a beautiful bright sun shiny day
36:58his wife was wailing that i really grabbed you by the throat that i did mind that was not pleasant
37:05but like somebody said you know that's mining in it mining communities have a special way of burying
37:14and they're dead any tragedy the funeral it it was something to see you know they felt it
37:27and they'd walk a certain length behind the earth and they'd gone in the cars when they were out of
37:35sight towards the cemetery it was respect they had respect for each other
37:44the women included myself there's a funeral you stood there and you just watched
37:51and all the men in their suits and their ties and all that they all followed the earth and
37:58it's just a sight to see and you'd be crying even if you didn't know who it was because it was so moving
38:21it was so moving on and it was so moving on and it was so moving on and it was so moving on and
38:29one of the things about the way miners work is that they have to trust one another they have to be
38:37responsible you're expected to consider your fellow man individualism in a way is outlawed by the very
38:45nature of the task so when you do come up there's a great sense of release and things are enhanced
38:54in a strange way when you came up the pit especially in the summer it was a brilliant
39:01thing to come up into the sun because you sort of knew what you would missed that nice feeling of
39:08being in the sun this quickened sense of life and the chance to be an individual again when above
39:15ground led to a flowering of artistic expression a group of miners who painted were filmed by the
39:22mining review in 1959 these are the eyes of oliver kilburn a salvage drawer at ellington pit in north
39:32umberland he's worked there since he was 13 in his spare time he paints i think there was a general
39:39belief that the arts were for everybody and that you couldn't live a properly fulfilled life without
39:46having some cultural and artistic expression oliver kilburn is a member of a group started in 1934
39:52to foster artistic appreciation it wasn't long before the members decided to do some painting themselves
39:59to learn back in the early 1930s the ashington group came together as a result of a workers education
40:06initiative um they'd studied all kinds of different subjects beforehand history and politics and all
40:12kinds of things and although they couldn't find a lecturer that they wanted for their particular
40:17subject this year they had the option of doing art appreciation so not being one to shirk
40:22um a challenge they decided they would give it a goal working from a ymca hut in ashington they
40:31pursued their interest in art by employing robert lyon an arts academic from newcastle university
40:37when robert lyons arrived in ashington it must have been a complete culture shock for him he thought
40:43this is going to be a doddle because i've done it a thousand times before and we'd give them this this
40:49and this and we're hoping to rather be happy well they weren't they were quite they were probably
40:56more knowledgeable about history of art than he anticipated they would be and therefore in an
41:01endeavor to try and move it on he tried a little bit more practical aspects of art and then realized
41:08that they were not susceptible uh to being formally trained as artists
41:17the group believes that the amateur shouldn't try to copy the professional while expert techniques may
41:23be beyond their range they can still express what they see and feel as directly and simply as possible
41:31jim floyd left has been 47 years in the pits he's working alongside len robinson and he's putting the
41:39finishing touches to his easter wedding but the men themselves would have been all dressed up in their
41:45sunday best but painting with whatever came to hand there wasn't money to spare frivolously on on buying
41:52paints and canvas so they would paint with wall paint they would use bits of hardboard that they had
41:59bits of wood whatever came to hand and usually whatever colors they came to hand as well and
42:06i have i do believe that some of the colors that are on the wall perhaps started off with the colliery origin
42:12for these miners painting the classics had no relevance for they like fred laidler here on the left
42:22wanted to paint what was important to them such as their toolbox fred laidler was my father he
42:31was always interested in drawing and in art the open drawer is the one picture i remember being painted
42:41my father was a joiner he loved being a joiner he loved the tools they were just an extension of himself
42:50but again typical of them he knew the history of tools he'd read about tools he knew where they came
42:59from what they were used for uh and he cherished them as was characteristic of miners they set up a
43:07structure with rules which outlined how the group would work in detail it's the um ashington um
43:16art group they made this rule book it's incredibly bureaucratic i think it sort of speaks a lot about the
43:22sort of the importance that they put on um on any activity they did but um number five new
43:29members to be informed when starting of the following conditions a a probation period which shall
43:35constitute six consecutive meetings two that the group shall decide at the seventh meeting by unanimous
43:42vote whether or not the candidate shall be accepted um except for except it seems kind of probably
43:49unnecessary um in order to make art one of my favorite paintings in the collection is one of len robinson's
44:02and the lady is standing on the table in the kitchen whitewashing the ceiling the man is just
44:08tending to a piece of stuff on the wall i imagine that's fairly typical certainly was typical in my house
44:14where my mother would have done the the stronger bits of work and my husband my father if he'd been
44:20allowed any to do anything at all would have been something menial or he'd have been chased out of the
44:24house altogether wives and mothers are often conspicuously absent as subjects in the mining review
44:32films this goes against what we know about how pivotal women were in making pit life work the men were
44:39doing the work they were going down the mine but at home we had to be very strong because um worked
44:46such long hours that the wives had to see to most things i mean my husband didn't know what shopping was
44:52until he retired uh you know he didn't know how much a pair of shoes were so the women had to be
44:58strong and do a lot everything in those days i mean they didn't know which drawer their socks were in
45:03did they no let's be honest we nearly shook out their teeth yes we did that's right when husbands
45:10and sons arrived back from work the women were expected to have hot food on the table and hot
45:16water to wash in this was further complicated if the men in the house worked different shifts
45:21if you had a family perhaps a husband and two sons and they were working in different shifts
45:32you had men going out men coming in they all had to be fed at different times you all had to get
45:39their sleep at different times you know they all had to get bathed at different times when there
45:45wasn't pit baths so there was water had to be heated and of course in the early days they didn't
45:51have what they called the pit baths which is where they got bathed and they had to come home dirty and
45:57you had all this dirty clothes that they've been wearing you had to clean all that lot and ready for
46:03them for the next day which um wasn't very easy as you can imagine my first two children didn't know
46:10they had a father he was in what we call four shift and he used to go out at 12 o'clock at night
46:19and of course by the time he came in the kids were away to school
46:28in spite of these long and exhausting shifts some miners still found time to write
46:34miners returning home in the dark hours often heard the click clack click of a typewriter coming
46:39from a house in whitwell in the midlands it was clary stafford and he was typing a play that he'd
46:45written about mining folk it was accepted by the chesterfield civic theater or some men
46:52make a fuss all out maybe so but i bet you never had your carbuncle poke with a stick oh
46:58it was called dear strikers and was about the day the ladies went on strike
47:03well this is a comedy but ever since i saw man hacking away at the cold face i wanted to write
47:11about the miners that was in 1929 when i was 14. and you know miners life lends itself to humor drama
47:23and sometimes tragedy and so 12 months ago i decided to write this play about the only people i really knew
47:34it's a moment of tension even for the old stagers as curtain up approaches but chesterfield soon
47:40made up its mind they liked the show and they made their appreciation felt
47:46one miner whose writings came to national prominence during this period was sid
47:51chaplin from the northeast his stories often focused on the rural nature of the pit village
47:57from boyhood i've loved the long winding valley with the pennines hazy and half seen in the distance
48:05it was then that the countryside grew upon me the microcosmos of the village the fields and farm
48:11the river and the woods provided new wonders every day when the sun shone there was open country to run wild in
48:21ah this is um uh sid chaplin he wrote these incredibly beautiful stories about about working as a young
48:30man um in the mines um in the mines but also about the world of the pit village kind of what it meant
48:36in in this uh period of um huge change and even here he's talking about um how the big modernized
48:45streamlined industry was taking over this small industry that had um that the idea of the pit village
48:53that that they were very very often very small communities and what people don't perhaps understand
48:59um is that they were very very often close to the countryside i was born in between weardale and
49:09teasdale and the pits and there was this splendid moorland landscape just on the doorstep
49:16just at the end of the street all was you and the pulley wheels and i graduated from that kind of
49:24landscape 600 feet underground into an entirely different landscape a man-made landscape and that
49:34fired me as well and i think this is very much said when he writes um my working background is more
49:41important the place and the people where i grew up um and i think that's what he manages to do
49:47rather brilliantly is to use his own life to tell this bigger story what's important is this
49:55you have a nice high tea pine soup half a pound of coop pork with a little of the cracklin for body
50:02you languorously climb the stairs and have a nice hot bath water up to your chin but this is friday
50:09night and you want to sweat clean if you have to sweat and a pin to a penny you will before the weekend's
50:14over then you shave yourself real precision brush your teeth cupping a hand over your mouth and
50:22blowing your breath up just to make sure that the old woman eyes and breathing is sweet
50:26then you pull on a clean white shirt and feel your skin tingle pingle tingle that's the way it should
50:34be and has been for a thousand nights and more
50:35the 1950s had been a good decade for the mining industry with coal production peaking
50:51but the 1960s would see a prolonged period of contraction
51:01in 1963 mining review produced a short piece about the closure of a pit in wales it began with
51:08a song by ewan mccall come all you gallant colliers and listen to me tale how they closed the aberammon pit
51:20in abadair south wales it was in 1842 that coal there first was one she's yielded 40 million tons but now
51:33her days are done coal was starting to be seen as a dirty fuel and an industry that belonged in the past
51:44many people associate the 80s with a real period of decline of the mining industry which it certainly
51:51was it wasn't the first time that mass closure of pits had happened the 60s was a period when many
52:00thousands of miners lost their jobs and communities were either destroyed or uprooted
52:12the national coal board had to adopt a different approach to attracting new recruits
52:19teenagers were no longer so keen to go down the pit
52:22so its recruitment films now made in color like this one from 1965 big job had to work much harder
52:32to make the industry seem appealing
52:36and to get the most out of the machines we need more men young men who want to learn the thousand
52:42skills a miner must master
52:43behind the bravado of big job it's clear that this is an industry in decline and that true confidence
52:55is beginning to diminish this is seen in the tone and style of films made from the late 1960s onwards
53:03the
53:11health and safety animations like this one still had a practical purpose the tone though is plainly more
53:18trivial
53:23the problems threatening coal mining were about to become fatally divisive but the films just
53:38weren't able to reflect this and then at one point they got really cheeky and asked for a budget for
53:43some dolly birds and made a sort of carry on down the pit kind of thing or confessions of a pitman kind
53:49of thing getting a little bit saucy
54:00one of the interesting things about these films is is that the trajectory of the ncb's filmmaking
54:05history kind of reflects the trajectory of the coal industry in general and as we know of course
54:12in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s this was an industry headed towards a crisis
54:18and the films take on a kind of slightly desperate triumphalist tone in an attempt to try to convince
54:25the viewer that the mining industry has hundreds of years of of a glorious future ahead of it
54:34and it is upon them they who implement the tools and the decisions as well as upon the mining engineers
54:41who will continue to devise and to execute their dreams of the future that we shall all continue
54:48to win our essential energy from under the earth not only for the next 40 years but for the next 400
54:56i mean i think it's very telling that in a film you know made in 1978 they make a point of ending
55:08on the conclusion the resounding conclusion that there are 400 years worth of coal underground and that
55:15was true and to make that point at that time is quite significant and perhaps they knew that the
55:21there were forces at play that meant they were under threat and they might not be around for that long
55:34the ncb film unit which had been launched in 1947 with pride and much fanfare making films that
55:41were seen by millions in britain every month now quietly stopped production as the coal industry began to be
55:47broken up the very final mining review review 36th year number five which was released in april 1983
55:59so just a year before the miners strike began to me this is one of the most moving films ever made
56:08only coal exemplified by the impending birth of the new selby coalfield and its vast reserves
56:14can guarantee us a supply of energy for centuries ahead
56:23selby is a forerther a blueprint for the other great coalfields of the future
56:29there must and will be a light at the end of the energy tunnel and born of coal it will dazzle us
56:37the very year the film unit closed the national union of miners went on strike for the last time
56:51the strike ended in defeat for the miners and led to an extensive closure program and the eventual
57:11privatization of the industry
57:12there are now less than a handful of deep coal mines in britain employing just a few thousand people
57:23in most of the former mining communities the remnants of the coal industry have been erased from the
57:28landscape if you look around ashik now or if you were a stranger coming into ashik for the first time
57:35there's very little evidence that it was ever a thriving coal producing town
57:44it was inevitable i suppose but nevertheless it was it changed the whole nature
57:51of the town it changed the people it changed their attitudes
57:55i mean my granddaughter she's 16 now when she was about 10 i took her to where i was working and it
58:03was a boiler house full of coal when she saw the coal she said what's all them stones
58:09she thought it was stones she was about eight to ten years of age she's 16 now so she didn't
58:16she didn't even know what coal was so there we go that's how far distance we are from it now
58:21it stands so proud the wheel so still
58:31a ghost-like figure on the hill it seems so strange there is no sound now there are no men
58:49a ghost-like figure on the ground
58:58so
58:59you
Comments