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| And now the game's over: Kellingley miners finish final shift | And now the game's over: Kellingley miners finish final shift |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The lobby of the Kellingley colliery is thick with cameras as the last shift at the country’s last deep coalmine comes to an end. A man in hi-vis orange walks through, his trousers cut down to shorts, a few inches of coal-dusted thigh showing over the thickest boots; goggled, gloved, protected and unprotected. The coal clogs the miners’ eyes like eyeliner, so that they look incongruously showbiz. | The lobby of the Kellingley colliery is thick with cameras as the last shift at the country’s last deep coalmine comes to an end. A man in hi-vis orange walks through, his trousers cut down to shorts, a few inches of coal-dusted thigh showing over the thickest boots; goggled, gloved, protected and unprotected. The coal clogs the miners’ eyes like eyeliner, so that they look incongruously showbiz. |
| Mining is an industry full of contradictions – it’s dangerous, arduous work but people love it. The heat and the humidity take an entire career to get used to, but what everyone talks about is their relationship with their colleagues. Most started straight from school. | Mining is an industry full of contradictions – it’s dangerous, arduous work but people love it. The heat and the humidity take an entire career to get used to, but what everyone talks about is their relationship with their colleagues. Most started straight from school. |
| “There’s quite a lot has never wanted to leave,” Donna Rees, 49, observes later on at the Knottingley miners’ welfare scheme social club. Nobody’s parents wanted them to go down a mine, yet that’s how so many spent their own lives. | “There’s quite a lot has never wanted to leave,” Donna Rees, 49, observes later on at the Knottingley miners’ welfare scheme social club. Nobody’s parents wanted them to go down a mine, yet that’s how so many spent their own lives. |
| “When they come out of the mine,” says Keith Poulson, the 55-year-old National Union of Mineworkers representative, “what they’ll be wanting to do is shake each other’s hands, because they might never see each other again.” | “When they come out of the mine,” says Keith Poulson, the 55-year-old National Union of Mineworkers representative, “what they’ll be wanting to do is shake each other’s hands, because they might never see each other again.” |
| While many of the 450 miners here live in Pontefract, there are men from as far as Durham and Wales. “They did what Norman Tebbit told them to do,” Poulson says. “They got on their bike. They followed the industry from closure of pit to closure of pit. And this industry has just thrown them on the scrap heap.” | While many of the 450 miners here live in Pontefract, there are men from as far as Durham and Wales. “They did what Norman Tebbit told them to do,” Poulson says. “They got on their bike. They followed the industry from closure of pit to closure of pit. And this industry has just thrown them on the scrap heap.” |
| Related: Kellingley closure: last coalminers to resurface as way of life disappears | Related: Kellingley closure: last coalminers to resurface as way of life disappears |
| In 2013, the decision was made to close Kellingley colliery; Yvette Cooper, who is MP for a neighbouring constituency, describes a series of attempts to save it, including finding investors, a workforce buy-out and applying for EU state aid. | |
| “It would have been very easy,” Cooper says, “for the miners to walk away two years ago and the government would have been left with the closure costs.” | |
| But they didn’t; instead, they worked to fund the closure and find themselves with a meaner redundancy package than they would have got under Margaret Thatcher. She boosted the statutory amount (12 weeks of average pay) with a £900 per working year deal that has been rescinded. The pension deal has been eroded, too, with those Kellingley miners having to retire early taking a proportional hit to their annuity income for the rest of their lives. It is bizarre to think of Margaret Thatcher’s as the more generous spirited government, but there it is. | |
| Chris Atkinson, 57, emerges and swipes himself out of the mine for the last time. He is in a rush to get to the hospital, “only small things wrong with me, but all work-related, yes.” | Chris Atkinson, 57, emerges and swipes himself out of the mine for the last time. He is in a rush to get to the hospital, “only small things wrong with me, but all work-related, yes.” |
| He had just left school when he started here and only meant to stay six months. “I enjoyed the money when I were a young lad, and I liked the camaraderie later. I just think we’ve been stung.” | |
| Mark Phelan, 46, says “it’s like losing part of your family, like grieving. You watch each other’s backs down pit and you wash each other’s backs when you come out.” He intends to open a sandwich bar, and shakes his head, smiling: “It’s going to be totally, unbelievably different.” | |
| Many people try to pin down the bond between people working in the colliery - whether it was working in close proximity, having each other’s backs, being in high risk work. Part of it is the opacity: nobody who isn’t in it could possibly know what it’s like. | Many people try to pin down the bond between people working in the colliery - whether it was working in close proximity, having each other’s backs, being in high risk work. Part of it is the opacity: nobody who isn’t in it could possibly know what it’s like. |
| The alternatives for those who want to remain in heavy industry are few. Two of the three local power stations are also slated to close. There’s a glassworks, which nobody hangs a huge amount of hope on, though 31-year-old electrician Jonathan Davis has an interview there straight after his last shift finishes. Otherwise, there’s a small amount of agriculture, a bit of distribution. | |
| Related: The Guardian view on the end of deep mining: adieu to the aristocracy of the working class | Editorial | Related: The Guardian view on the end of deep mining: adieu to the aristocracy of the working class | Editorial |
| At the social club, Chloe Nadin, 16, Brandon Merchant, 17, and Sydney Brooks, 16, are helping out at the Christmas party for retired miners. Nadin wants to be a midwife and work abroad; Merchant wants to go to Magaluf as a tour rep; Brooks wants to work on cruise liners. “When I came out of school,” Merchant says, “there were no jobs. It’s going to be harder for them that’s known nothing but the colliery.” | |
| Nadin agrees: “Most of them we were at school with are commuting to Leeds or Wakefield, but [of the miners] they’re too old to be travelling all that way for a job. There’s nothing round here for us. There’s nothing round here for anyone.” | Nadin agrees: “Most of them we were at school with are commuting to Leeds or Wakefield, but [of the miners] they’re too old to be travelling all that way for a job. There’s nothing round here for us. There’s nothing round here for anyone.” |
| Inside, the previous generation of miners watch a stand-up comedian. “The people that’s done this club up is members,” Rees says of the cavernous, tongue-and-grooved and lino hall that, if it were in London, with no alternation, would be a pop-up lindy-hop club. “I think the community will keep it together, they’ve got to.” | Inside, the previous generation of miners watch a stand-up comedian. “The people that’s done this club up is members,” Rees says of the cavernous, tongue-and-grooved and lino hall that, if it were in London, with no alternation, would be a pop-up lindy-hop club. “I think the community will keep it together, they’ve got to.” |
| There are a couple of voices of determined good cheer. Davis, with the glassworks interview, says: “New year, new start. I’m ready for a new challenge.” | There are a couple of voices of determined good cheer. Davis, with the glassworks interview, says: “New year, new start. I’m ready for a new challenge.” |
| “It doesn’t feel like we’re finishing,” says John Gray, 41. “It feels like we’re breaking up for Christmas. We’ve been coaling as usual. I suppose it will sink in once we don’t come back.” | “It doesn’t feel like we’re finishing,” says John Gray, 41. “It feels like we’re breaking up for Christmas. We’ve been coaling as usual. I suppose it will sink in once we don’t come back.” |
| But his colleague and friend, Andrew Webb, 50, says: “It’s the end of an era, and the beginning of an error.” Webb started mining in Kent, before moving to Stillingfleet, which closed in 2004, and ending up here. “I’m the last Kentish miner,” he says, wryly. “I go back down to Kent and look at the pit villages: when the mine was running, we had welfare clubs, sports teams, the pubs were booming. The villages were self-policing because of the hierarchy of the mine. Now a lot of those villages are overrun with drug culture. People are just looking to be numbed from everyday reality.” | But his colleague and friend, Andrew Webb, 50, says: “It’s the end of an era, and the beginning of an error.” Webb started mining in Kent, before moving to Stillingfleet, which closed in 2004, and ending up here. “I’m the last Kentish miner,” he says, wryly. “I go back down to Kent and look at the pit villages: when the mine was running, we had welfare clubs, sports teams, the pubs were booming. The villages were self-policing because of the hierarchy of the mine. Now a lot of those villages are overrun with drug culture. People are just looking to be numbed from everyday reality.” |
| Like all the exiting miners, he is carrying a great big bag of stuff, boots, bright orange, black-smeared clothes and a Davy lamp, which he pulls out to show me. It’s impossible to believe it serves a practical purpose, it looks like an exhibit from the V&A. “This?” he says indignantly. “It’s incredibly sensitive. The smallest flame it can read is 1.4% of methane. If oxygen falls below 17%, it’ll go out. I think the next time that’ll be lit will be at my funeral.” | |
| If you believe in keeping fossil fuels in the ground, you should be pleased, in theory; except that the power plant at Drax in nearby Selby will continue to burn coal – four million tons a year – which it has imported from America and Colombia. Its owners point out that it wasn’t their idea to close down the UK coal industry, blaming “European environmental legislation (the industrials emissions directive) which requires significant cuts in the emissions of things like sulphur and nitrogen oxide. The foreign-sourced coals have fewer of these impurities.” | |
| It’s an insight into the unintended consequences of these regulations, that obeying them while continuing to use coal means shipping it huge distances, which does nothing to cut emissions. | It’s an insight into the unintended consequences of these regulations, that obeying them while continuing to use coal means shipping it huge distances, which does nothing to cut emissions. |
| The NUM’s Poulson simply will not accept that more couldn’t have been done. “If we got the subsidies that nuclear power gets, we could afford to mine this field, give it away free and still make a profit. Is that a level playing field?” | |
| Not really, from any angle; and now the game’s over. | Not really, from any angle; and now the game’s over. |