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 ⚒️🏴🏴🏴⚒️
@grahamariss21113 ай бұрын
In WW2 after a succession of strikes conscript Labour was used to man the pits, the Bevan boys to keep the lights on.
@Rusty12203 жыл бұрын
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.
@andrewmillyard31623 жыл бұрын
Exactly the same in a machine shop. Spend the day pacing the shopfloor trying to find tools rather than cutting metal
@andrewjenklns22902 жыл бұрын
Me too I just had a trip down memory lane
@fredbeach20854 жыл бұрын
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.
@humbleguy4726 Жыл бұрын
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.
@MrConan89 Жыл бұрын
Scargill closed the pits.
@ianmcgill5654 Жыл бұрын
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!
@imfifer Жыл бұрын
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 😂
@MrConan89 Жыл бұрын
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'.
@geraldmottram61578 ай бұрын
That happened at Blackwell awinning colliery ,1965 ,I've got the poor man's authorisation papers ,neville naylor was his name ,
@user-gm6lc7py5x4 ай бұрын
@@geraldmottram6157Tragic may he rest in peace
@josephdonovab34969 күн бұрын
Don't they give a warning signal before they start?
@MarkJones-gd3nt6 жыл бұрын
Love to see lord robens doing a shift or two!!he talks the talk,he,d never walk the walk!
@thesedreamsarefree5 жыл бұрын
In Roben's day they got nowt and that was true until 1974.
@bigoldgrizzly3 жыл бұрын
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
@petersattler3454 Жыл бұрын
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.
@MrAndysoul Жыл бұрын
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
@jamesswindle5253 Жыл бұрын
British coal was a better grade of coal. Higher BTU content
@charliemcgee9803 Жыл бұрын
@@MrAndysoul That's insane.
@bigoldgrizzly Жыл бұрын
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
@tonygrant46073 ай бұрын
Seams in the Warwickshire thick were 32 ft.
@pvtimberfaller Жыл бұрын
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.
@terrycocliff23412 жыл бұрын
Take your eye off that loop for a second and it'll get fast, that's a cable gone, drag another through the face...
@bigoldgrizzly2 ай бұрын
How to give the manager a blue fit - b*gger up 3 cables in one shift .... happy days
@gooderspitman80522 ай бұрын
R.I.P Frank Arrowsmith, top bloke.
@stewthorne2 жыл бұрын
that bloody machine man could have got that chock over and pulled the pans back
@bteuben-faber82152 жыл бұрын
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?
@grahamariss21113 ай бұрын
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.
@MrFirstdonoharm4 жыл бұрын
A new chock was introduced called BONSER (anagram of robens). Corruption cost a fortune.
@clivedrury83044 жыл бұрын
robens must have thought he had been given licence to print his own money
@vincentelliott74452 жыл бұрын
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.
@3foria4205 жыл бұрын
customers close pits ?? bit odd i always thought it was margaret thatcher & the tories
@raymondturner14784 жыл бұрын
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.
@mickvarley31394 жыл бұрын
Labour dint help the twats
@andrewturner87553 жыл бұрын
@@mickvarley3139 I'm afraid Labour did close coal mines both Lab and con to blame .
@COIcultist2 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@markrainford12192 жыл бұрын
Privatised electricity generation is what closed the coal mines chap.
@apunkman4 ай бұрын
Governments closed the pits, not customers. One day we’ll reopen them.
@daviddrummerrichards27244 жыл бұрын
Typical shift on the coalface always something
@welshwizard8227 жыл бұрын
just like i remember it :-)
@seaham3d6952 жыл бұрын
Im from Seaham my Dad was a coal man.
@dimy492811 ай бұрын
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
@grahamnimmo46564 ай бұрын
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.
@stemartin66712 жыл бұрын
"Eating bait." Proper bloke.
@bigoldgrizzly3 жыл бұрын
Eeh Lad, if it's not one thing it's two !
@janmaras95693 жыл бұрын
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!
@ladislavrolenc3412 Жыл бұрын
Já to měl stejné.
@rosewhite---3 жыл бұрын
5:47 Put t'watta on! Then the wet dust clogs everything.
@bigoldgrizzly3 жыл бұрын
Dust eer surree, turnt fookin watter on ya twat - the daily chorus ;
@Briebabcock80526 жыл бұрын
Frankly, black and white hd
@acecabron1298 Жыл бұрын
That was nearly the same in Germany!
@DavidStones434 жыл бұрын
days- afternoons- nights and tother shift
@markbeale7390Ай бұрын
The accents staffordshire sounding?
@robertkennedy10876 жыл бұрын
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 .
@junepartridge14305 жыл бұрын
Rober Kennedy
@grahamnimmo46564 ай бұрын
We had a saying ...NSP.... next shift problem
@ykdickybill2 жыл бұрын
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…………..
@rosewhite---3 жыл бұрын
the coal cutters made an awful lot of slack? was there a good market for it or was it all dumped?
@bigoldgrizzly Жыл бұрын
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.
@suehallam70276 жыл бұрын
It's Robbie Ripper and then header when retreat mining came in 36 years loved it
@raymonddakin495 жыл бұрын
worked with gerald wyke at the prince and many others
@brianknowles17276 жыл бұрын
Point attack picks
@lodersracing Жыл бұрын
What year is this ?
@caitlinspencer5487 Жыл бұрын
Every shift the same stop start
@rogerforeman98375 жыл бұрын
missed out all the swearing
@IanLanc4 жыл бұрын
''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.
@joannaknowles87892 жыл бұрын
They were probably on best behaviour because they were being filmed 😂
@rosewhite---3 жыл бұрын
what mine was this?
@suehallam70276 жыл бұрын
Typical machine driver moaning instead of helping
@micktisdall41606 жыл бұрын
since when did you work down pit sue? lol n not all m/c drivers moan.
@MarkJones-gd3nt6 жыл бұрын
Sue Hallam cutter men where allways pricks!lazy bastards!big mouths!
@thesedreamsarefree5 жыл бұрын
If she's a miners wife she's probably had the full shift report over dinner, lol.
@alunhughes26325 жыл бұрын
"machine driver" called them cuttermen where I worked
@yauwohn4 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@rapman5363 Жыл бұрын
Pip Pip Cheerio Bob’s your Uncle
@zerofox73475 жыл бұрын
Typical machine driver lol
@bigoldgrizzly2 ай бұрын
All Gob !
@samensor82185 жыл бұрын
What pit is this
@geraldmottram61573 жыл бұрын
one in Derbyshire without a doubt
@jonb12321 Жыл бұрын
Sounds like Yorkshire accents to me.
@geraldmottram61578 ай бұрын
Definitely Derbyshire
@darren1835Күн бұрын
Definitely North Derbyshire could be Markham or Ireland or somewhere else nearby.
@nampam39453 жыл бұрын
Thin vein, not worth it, Thatcher was right. Mine a decent vein in a different country with no unions.
@alunhughes26322 жыл бұрын
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.
@nampam39452 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@alunhughes26322 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@nampam39452 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@alunhughes26322 жыл бұрын
@@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.