Nostalgia: Striking a blow in the Mining world

Published on Saturday 21 February 2009 09:29

IT was their first national strike for almost 50 years. Three months of talks hit a deadlock in January 1972 and 280,000 miners walked out of work. They had been demanding a pay increase of up to £9 a week.

By January 28, when pickets were trying to prevent lorries entering or leaving Haymarket coal depot, the miners had been out for almost three weeks and emotions were beginning to fray.

At Bathgate, a sit-in of about 100 miners in the offices of the then Department of Health and Social Security led to police being called and 13 men being charged. Three more men were arrested at the Haymarket depot protest.

Having finally wrung extra concessions on pay from the Government, the miners returned to work on February 25.

The closure of a mine could mean the complete collapse of a community, so tightly were the two generally entwined, and because of that the industry holds a special place in the heritage of the Lothians.

Now, however, even the museum which tells the story of the mines is under threat. The Scottish Mining Museum is appealing for funds as it faces a 2.5 million bill

to carry out urgent structural repairs to the A-listed buildings at Lady Victoria Colliery, in Newtongrange.

The last mine in the country, Longannet in Clackmannanshire, closed in 2001 but the pit closures began long before then. Between 1957 and 1963, the number of miners fell by nearly 30 per cent and Scotland lost 39 per cent of its pits. Protests were held in Edinburgh, including in 1959 and 1962.

In February 1974, another strike began and led to the then Prime Minister Edward Heath declaring an emergency and a three-day week. He called a snap election and lost. In November, the miners were back at work and voting on a new productivity scheme.

The disputes didn't end there, and culminated in the 1984 strike. The industry never recovered. At the beginning of the last century about one in ten people was employed in mining in Scotland – by the turn of the present, that was reduced to a mere handful. It remains to be seen if the museum faces the same fate.