Out of the Darkness, Light (the final 'Mining Review') (1983)

The opening suggests nothing less than a Twilight of the Gods. What follows is the last-ever 'Mining Review' (over 400 were made in total). Narrated by Francis Gysin (long-time head of the National Coal Board Film Unit), it's laced with melancholy, yet utterly free of self-pity.
Many virtues of Gysin's unit are aptly present and correct. Points are visually communicated with remarkable economy, sometimes by a single expertly-chosen shot. The enigmatic merry-go-round logic of the coal industry's fluctuations is delineated with a clarity few economists could muster. Attacks on rival industries and capricious governments are joltingly forthright. And the determinedly upbeat diagnosis of the future is loyal indeed, given the NCB's cost-cutting closure of its films department.
So 'Mining Review' exited with dignity. And dusk came anyway, anything but gently. The industry's Götterdämmerung descended the following year. (Patrick Russell)
All titles on the BFI Films channel are preserved in the vast collections of the BFI National Archive. To find out more about the Archive visit www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collect...

[@RobinCarmody]

An astonishing, lacerating experience, as emotionally powerful even as the last few British Transport Films (which itself is saying almost everything). It makes me feel more than ever that we were in fact sorting it out in 1978, just getting it right, just poised for a new era of *shared* prosperity ... and then it was all taken from us out of spite and sheer bad luck and bad timing. This coincided with 'Thriller'. And how I wish this, rather than worship of *him*, had been the future.

[@emjackson2289]

"The other great coal fields of the future" . . . . Ellington and Lynmouth now have wind turbines atop, Murton is a shopping park, Vane Tempest, a housing estate, Dawdon is a business park.

[@RebelVoDKa]

There's plenty of coal left in the ground. Whether it would be desirable to dig it up and use it for centuries is another matter.

[@rgwholt]

My sentiments exactly....how right you are

[@3NUNS]

there is something beautiful in a seam of coal or a block of coal with its cleat and the various bands high-reflective and not so high-reflective ; and, there is something beautiful in music of von Beetheven ...

[@BlackRose-vi2yg]

Crazy how things used to be. However, they are never coming back but great to look back 🤘🤘

[@andrewbriggs6083]

Saddened to see this reminder of when I was a young elec at the selby sites of Stillingfleet for Thyssen inside of the headend motor we were building in 82.

[@radioserrelind]

"Mining always has been, and always will be especially sensitive to the economic barometer." So the coal mine is the canary?

[@madmax200769]

Looks like Calverton and Rectory Juncton (Cotgrave) at 5m20

[@MrConan89]

I worked in mining 68 to 75 as a mining engineer - shift undermanager at the end. 300 pits working. I thought it was time to get out. Good thing I did. That looks like Donald Davies, former Area Director of Northumberland, right at the end examining a drilling core. Scargill closed more pits than any post war government.

[@stephensmith799]

+Howard McKay Scores of pits were closed with agreement throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Then came Thatcher... At Snowdown they told me 'There's forty years of of coal under our feet but it will take four-hundred years to dig it out!' They could see what was coming.

[@mrinman7407]

....and so we come to the specially British way of ballsing things up: a rotten, stagnant (and still prevalent) class system; lazy, incompetent management and adversarial unions, pitting themselves against each other. Well we know who's "winning" now, but that was usually the case.

[@nicholaskelly6375]

@@stephensmith799 My Dad worked at Chislet and when it was closed He said to me "This is bloody crazy as there are millions of tons of coal in Kent and this is a political closure and nothing else " Today little remains in Kent of the four NCB pits except at Snowdown in 2011 I was to have a look round whilst a Coal Authority inspection was being made. Frankly I was surprised to discover the all three shafts were still intact (albeit flooded) Having heard of pits that had been "Mothballed" I did wonder!

[@stephensmith799]

@@mrinman7407 when unions were stronger inequality was much less. Mrs Thatcher and Disraeli both had the ambition to drag Britain into the 19th century and both succeeded in doing so. She called it 'flexibility'.

[@stephensmith799]

@@nicholaskelly6375 Your dad was right.

[@eliotreader8220]

how did they supply the steam heritage market back in the 1980s

[@kludd28]

Riiiight, coal is a "supply of energy guaranteed for centuries ahead." Uh-huh.

[@essertpitay]

By the early 80s, was coal profitable/would have been a viable option ?

[@andy199121]

Our last deep pit Kellingley wasn’t profitable so I’d say no.

[@jackthelad612]

"Coal for centuries ahead" how wrong can you be?

[@emjackson2289]

Its C. Montgomery Burns levels of wrong. . . . .

[@christopherwaring8285]

IN BARNSLEY ITS PRONOUSED COYAL

[@rapman5363]

Pip Pip Cheerio Bob’s your Uncle