More respect should have been shown to our coal miners they kept the lights on during 2world wars and had done ever since it's a tragedy we have lost our proud coal mining industry in the UK ⚒️🏴🏴🏴⚒️
This is one of the most realistic films I have ever seen. Having retired from the underground mines, I have experienced days like these countless number of times.
Spent many hours driving the face machine, i could smell the fresh cut coal. Seems like we should have kept the pits open now that we have an energy crisis. Thatcher and her cronies closed my pit in 87. We had reserves for another forty years. As our American friends say...................Go figure.
The footage of changing the picks made me shiver. When I was working underground there were several cases (not at my pit) where the machine motor had not been isolated and someone ran it, turning the men changing the picks into 'mincemeat'.
I was a surveyor, many times outbye of a shearer with the sprays not working! We could pass for the Black and White minstrel show, without makeup! Thanks goodness we did not go down every day!
I was a surveyor too, there was no sprays on the shearers in our pits then, after coming out the shower we would look like we had mascara on our eyes 😂
One of the lads at Florence sent Robens over the transfer point at top of manrider belt. They were supposed to hang on the wire to stop it in the middle of the platform, but grabbed the haulage signal instead ! Not laughed so much since Ma caught her tits in the mangle
As a foreign not-mining woman, I wonder why the Coal Board planned to buy in the Rondda Valley a mine for themselves: It was profible, no doubt about that. Then the N.U.M. was able to bought it! Though all the dirty tricks against them. So, why was it closed after that? Investing in huge machinery in huge mines in Australia or the USA, is easy and make coal cheaper. But the British coal wasn't out of competeting, or was it? And if you look now on youtube the depressing mining valleys, without work or future... I can't understand why it had to close, whith miners themselves as the owners. Who can explain it to me?
Your talking about Tower Colliery. It was barely profitable when a consortium of miners bought it by cashing in their pensions (not the NUM, Arthur Scargill was offered the industry by the Thatcher government, but as it was privatisation he refused to consider it, a nationalised industry was a political fundamental for the NUM at the time). They survived for a time using the ex NCB equipment working the legacy frames established by the NCB. But they could not generate sufficent income to invest in new frames and eventual equipment failure forced closure as they worked the last of the frames coal. The miners however managed to secure their pensions by selling the rights to British Coal (what the privatised NCB became) to use open cast mining to clear the coal that remained in the structure of the frames and shafts.
@@raymondturner1478 Not exactly the same, a lot of the mines closed in the 60s and early 70s were difficult and too small to really invest in. The Plan For Coal put massive investment into the mines, and Thatcher closed economic pits in an act of vengeance on the NUM and miners in general.
As a retired Australian miner I cannot believe the height that these English miners worked in. I have worked in seams 8 metres thick, never saw a pair of knee pads.
They worked seams as low as 10 inches in the UK, if you crawled to the face with your shovel the wrong way up , you had to crawl back out to turn it over
30" seam, 300 yards long, at gradient 1 in 0.9 and running with water..... life in the Diamond coal seam at Victoria Colliery Stoke 50 years ago - great lads to work with and I still miss it all, most of all, the fellas I worked with
Hey it hasnt changed much now except the gear is a bit bigger and it is always someone else's fault . The other shift the other shift . When some one claims the errors or poor set ups it will always happen .
Na vlastní kůži jsem poznal co táto práce obnaší! Tady jsou určité mechanické věci. Já jsem pracoval jěště v ručných stěnách ,kde jsme si vše dělali sami a ručně! Velká zodpovědnost. Nezaplacená dřina! Nikdy nevíš jesli vyfáraš spět na povrch a celý! Není co zavidět!
What he’s saying is fair enough, having witnessed the American business model of C.I. or die with its inevitable billionaires and enslavement id say Lord Robens was on the money there. All he needed too do is go down a few pits and get his hands muckey and he’d be laughing.The American business model however would just keep moving the goalposts…………..
Would barely be able to see their faces through the dust if the film wasn't staged. And the language: .... 'bloomin this and bloomin that'. Nothing like that in real life down there.
AB sixteen shearers in low seams were as dusty as hell, no dust masks , you had to pay for them yourself in the 1960s, no wonder miners had health problems
I worked for ABs but I started assembling AM 500s and onwords until it closed. But I did see a few AB16 machines come in for refurb to go to museums and the like.
Power stations all required slack coal - they were the main UK market back in the day. Contracts with power stations demanded coal at a maximum dirt %. When clean coal was being cut, some pits used to add crushed stone to the coal to bring it up to the max dirt allowable - selling rubbish to the power company. Also worked at one pit which made more money selling gas from methane drainage behind the face, to feed direct into the grid, than was earned from selling coal.
''What you fukin stopped the belt for'' - ''Not my fault cuntin haulage lads have smashed into the fukin belt ruuners again'' - ''Get that deputy up off his backside and find the fukin idle beltmen too''.......just wished I was still working down the Pit, especially the one I loved the most which was Shirebrook.
@@alunhughes2632 They are called shearer drivers these days, and modern mines are just coal factories now, producing several million tons of coal a year from one face.
Men formed Unions to fight for better conditions when they were forced by the owners to work for pennies to keep their families out of poverty. Don't blame the Unions.
@@alunhughes2632 I am pro union, and pro family, but Arthur Skargill (coal union boss) was getting orders and money from the Kremlin to strike continually, causing massive disruption. When unions become a weapon for the foreign policy of another country, they lose credibility. I lived through countless brown-outs from unions. Plus unions ruined many British industries, eg car makers, the workers just didn't give a shit about quality.
@@nampam3945 We came out on strike in1984 in answer to the NCBs threat to axe 20, 000 jobs in the coal mining industry. Scargill was the elected leader of our union, the NUM, and your, 'orders and money from the Kremlin' is utter nonsense, We may have received donations from Russia, just the same as we received donations from France, Germany and Spain to help us in our struggle. What is wrong with workers helping fellow workers ?. As for the car industry, look at the bad management of that industry, not the workers.
@@alunhughes2632 ok "donations" from the Kremlin then, not payment, and British cars had terrible finish because of management not the workers making them, right. Wow, Japanese managers must be the best quality ruling class then, not the conscientious workers making Toyota a huge success. Here I was thinking that the working man in Japan was responsible for the success. Sad about British cars, they should have been the best.
@@nampam3945 All you have done is condemn British workers. The management are supposed to be in control of the workplace. If a workman isn't doing a job as it should be done then he is instructed to do things otherwise, or is replaced, by the management. Or condemned us for going on strike to fight against huge job loses. Where in all this did you use your perfect skills, 'perfection' being your middle name.
More respect should have been shown to our coal miners they kept the lights on during 2world wars and had done ever since it's a tragedy we have lost our proud coal mining industry in the UK ⚒️🏴🏴🏴⚒️
In WW2 after a succession of strikes conscript Labour was used to man the pits, the Bevan boys to keep the lights on.
When we were on the day shift and the afternoon took us off we always used to say "We haven`t done a lot but we`ve left it so you can." Happy days.
This is one of the most realistic films I have ever seen. Having retired from the underground mines, I have experienced days like these countless number of times.
Exactly the same in a machine shop. Spend the day pacing the shopfloor trying to find tools rather than cutting metal
Me too I just had a trip down memory lane
Spent many hours driving the face machine, i could smell the fresh cut coal. Seems like we should have kept the pits open now that we have an energy crisis. Thatcher and her cronies closed my pit in 87. We had reserves for another forty years. As our American friends say...................Go figure.
Scargill closed the pits.
The footage of changing the picks made me shiver. When I was working underground there were several cases (not at my pit) where the machine motor had not been isolated and someone ran it, turning the men changing the picks into 'mincemeat'.
That happened at Blackwell awinning colliery ,1965 ,I've got the poor man's authorisation papers ,neville naylor was his name ,
@@geraldmottram6157Tragic may he rest in peace
Don't they give a warning signal before they start?
@@josephdonovab3496 Eventually they did. The water sprays have to run a set time before you can press the start button.
I was a surveyor, many times outbye of a shearer with the sprays not working! We could pass for the Black and White minstrel show, without makeup! Thanks goodness we did not go down every day!
I was a surveyor too, there was no sprays on the shearers in our pits then, after coming out the shower we would look like we had mascara on our eyes 😂
Surveyors, that would be why you only went down for an hour😊
@@karencarroll1324 an hour? Obviously you know nothing about pit survey.
I have worked for companies like this, day in, day out.
Maintainence needs to be done during shift change.
Pay them on a production basis.
Love to see lord robens doing a shift or two!!he talks the talk,he,d never walk the walk!
In Roben's day they got nowt and that was true until 1974.
One of the lads at Florence sent Robens over the transfer point at top of manrider belt. They were supposed to hang on the wire to stop it in the middle of the platform, but grabbed the haulage signal instead !
Not laughed so much since Ma caught her tits in the mangle
16 yrs Appalachian coal fields U.S 1996 out of high school.some mines were under 48 in..
As a foreign not-mining woman, I wonder why the Coal Board planned to buy in the Rondda Valley a mine for themselves: It was profible, no doubt about that. Then the N.U.M. was able to bought it! Though all the dirty tricks against them. So, why was it closed after that? Investing in huge machinery in huge mines in Australia or the USA, is easy and make coal cheaper. But the British coal wasn't out of competeting, or was it? And if you look now on youtube the depressing mining valleys, without work or future... I can't understand why it had to close, whith miners themselves as the owners. Who can explain it to me?
Your talking about Tower Colliery. It was barely profitable when a consortium of miners bought it by cashing in their pensions (not the NUM, Arthur Scargill was offered the industry by the Thatcher government, but as it was privatisation he refused to consider it, a nationalised industry was a political fundamental for the NUM at the time). They survived for a time using the ex NCB equipment working the legacy frames established by the NCB. But they could not generate sufficent income to invest in new frames and eventual equipment failure forced closure as they worked the last of the frames coal. The miners however managed to secure their pensions by selling the rights to British Coal (what the privatised NCB became) to use open cast mining to clear the coal that remained in the structure of the frames and shafts.
Governments closed the pits, not customers. One day we’ll reopen them.
customers close pits ?? bit odd i always thought it was margaret thatcher & the tories
160 mines were closed under Thatcher, 290 were closed by Wilson alone. Labour closed a total of 371 deep pits. Thatcher closed 115 deep pits.
Labour dint help the twats
@@mickvarley3139 I'm afraid Labour did close coal mines both Lab and con to blame .
@@raymondturner1478 Not exactly the same, a lot of the mines closed in the 60s and early 70s were difficult and too small to really invest in. The Plan For Coal put massive investment into the mines, and Thatcher closed economic pits in an act of vengeance on the NUM and miners in general.
Privatised electricity generation is what closed the coal mines chap.
that bloody machine man could have got that chock over and pulled the pans back
Take your eye off that loop for a second and it'll get fast, that's a cable gone, drag another through the face...
How to give the manager a blue fit - b*gger up 3 cables in one shift .... happy days
R.I.P Frank Arrowsmith, top bloke.
As a retired Australian miner I cannot believe the height that these English miners worked in. I have worked in seams 8 metres thick, never saw a pair of knee pads.
They worked seams as low as 10 inches in the UK, if you crawled to the face with your shovel the wrong way up , you had to crawl back out to turn it over
British coal was a better grade of coal. Higher BTU content
@@MrAndysoul That's insane.
30" seam, 300 yards long, at gradient 1 in 0.9 and running with water..... life in the Diamond coal seam at Victoria Colliery Stoke 50 years ago - great lads to work with and I still miss it all, most of all, the fellas I worked with
Seams in the Warwickshire thick were 32 ft.
Typical shift on the coalface always something
Hey it hasnt changed much now except the gear is a bit bigger and it is always someone else's fault . The other shift the other shift . When some one claims the errors or poor set ups it will always happen .
Rober Kennedy
We had a saying ...NSP.... next shift problem
A new chock was introduced called BONSER (anagram of robens). Corruption cost a fortune.
robens must have thought he had been given licence to print his own money
Na vlastní kůži jsem poznal co táto práce obnaší! Tady jsou určité mechanické věci. Já jsem pracoval jěště v ručných stěnách ,kde jsme si vše dělali sami a ručně! Velká zodpovědnost. Nezaplacená dřina! Nikdy nevíš jesli vyfáraš spět na povrch a celý! Není co zavidět!
Já to měl stejné.
just like i remember it :-)
What he’s saying is fair enough, having witnessed the American business model of C.I. or die with its inevitable billionaires and enslavement id say Lord Robens was on the money there. All he needed too do is go down a few pits and get his hands muckey and he’d be laughing.The American business model however would just keep moving the goalposts…………..
Would barely be able to see their faces through the dust if the film wasn't staged. And the language: .... 'bloomin this and bloomin that'. Nothing like that in real life down there.
AB sixteen shearers in low seams were as dusty as hell, no dust masks , you had to pay for them yourself in the 1960s, no wonder miners had health problems
I worked for ABs but I started assembling AM 500s and onwords until it closed. But I did see a few AB16 machines come in for refurb to go to museums and the like.
the coal cutters made an awful lot of slack? was there a good market for it or was it all dumped?
Power stations all required slack coal - they were the main UK market back in the day. Contracts with power stations demanded coal at a maximum dirt %. When clean coal was being cut, some pits used to add crushed stone to the coal to bring it up to the max dirt allowable - selling rubbish to the power company. Also worked at one pit which made more money selling gas from methane drainage behind the face, to feed direct into the grid, than was earned from selling coal.
Eeh Lad, if it's not one thing it's two !
Im from Seaham my Dad was a coal man.
5:47 Put t'watta on! Then the wet dust clogs everything.
Dust eer surree, turnt fookin watter on ya twat - the daily chorus ;
worked with gerald wyke at the prince and many others
missed out all the swearing
''What you fukin stopped the belt for'' - ''Not my fault cuntin haulage lads have smashed into the fukin belt ruuners again'' - ''Get that deputy up off his backside and find the fukin idle beltmen too''.......just wished I was still working down the Pit, especially the one I loved the most which was Shirebrook.
They were probably on best behaviour because they were being filmed 😂
Typical machine driver moaning instead of helping
since when did you work down pit sue? lol n not all m/c drivers moan.
Sue Hallam cutter men where allways pricks!lazy bastards!big mouths!
If she's a miners wife she's probably had the full shift report over dinner, lol.
"machine driver" called them cuttermen where I worked
@@alunhughes2632 They are called shearer drivers these days, and modern mines are just coal factories now, producing several million tons of coal a year from one face.
days- afternoons- nights and tother shift
What year is this ?
That was nearly the same in Germany!
The accents staffordshire sounding?
It's Robbie Ripper and then header when retreat mining came in 36 years loved it
Pip Pip Cheerio
Bob’s your Uncle
Frankly, black and white hd
Typical machine driver lol
All Gob !
Every shift the same stop start
Point attack picks
what mine was this?
9 11 spanners lol
What pit is this
one in Derbyshire without a doubt
Sounds like Yorkshire accents to me.
Definitely Derbyshire
Definitely North Derbyshire could be Markham or Ireland or somewhere else nearby.
Thin vein, not worth it, Thatcher was right. Mine a decent vein in a different country with no unions.
Men formed Unions to fight for better conditions when they were forced by the owners to work for pennies to keep their families out of poverty. Don't blame the Unions.
@@alunhughes2632 I am pro union, and pro family, but Arthur Skargill (coal union boss) was getting orders and money from the Kremlin to strike continually, causing massive disruption. When unions become a weapon for the foreign policy of another country, they lose credibility. I lived through countless brown-outs from unions. Plus unions ruined many British industries, eg car makers, the workers just didn't give a shit about quality.
@@nampam3945 We came out on strike in1984 in answer to the NCBs threat to axe 20, 000 jobs in the coal mining industry. Scargill was the elected leader of our union, the NUM, and your, 'orders and money from the Kremlin' is utter nonsense, We may have received donations from Russia, just the same as we received donations from France, Germany and Spain to help us in our struggle. What is wrong with workers helping fellow workers ?. As for the car industry, look at the bad management of that industry, not the workers.
@@alunhughes2632 ok "donations" from the Kremlin then, not payment, and British cars had terrible finish because of management not the workers making them, right. Wow, Japanese managers must be the best quality ruling class then, not the conscientious workers making Toyota a huge success. Here I was thinking that the working man in Japan was responsible for the success. Sad about British cars, they should have been the best.
@@nampam3945 All you have done is condemn British workers. The management are supposed to be in control of the workplace. If a workman isn't doing a job as it should be done then he is instructed to do things otherwise, or is replaced, by the management. Or condemned us for going on strike to fight against huge job loses. Where in all this did you use your perfect skills, 'perfection' being your middle name.