Tag Archives: coalfield communities

Coal mines and constitutional reform

By Geoff Reid | Mon 8th September 2025 - 12:40 pm

On Sunday BBC Sounds repeated a 2022 abridged reading of Jeremy Paxman’s “Black Gold” on Radio 4 Extra. It is a social history of how coal “made Britain”. Like the slavery which also helped to make Britain, it is an element of history which many will ignore or dismiss as irrelevant in a future where we aim to put the extraction of fossil fuels and the enslavement of human beings behind us.

I worked in Barnsley between 1979 and 1986, as well as being the Liberal parliamentary candidate for Barnsley Central in1983. I also lived across the road from the Yorkshire HQ of the National Union of Mineworkers. This left me with some distinctive memories of the 1984-1985 coal strike. Perhaps one of the most dramatic was a rare joint meeting of Methodist ministers from Yorkshire, where miners were strongly in favour of the strike, and from Nottinghamshire, where the majority of miners were opposed. We invited Peter Walker, the Secretary of State for Energy. Unsurprisingly he turned up late, but at least he came. He announced himself as “Peter Walker, the wettest member of the Cabinet” and then went into a ten minute rant about Arthur Scargill. I jumped in as soon as he finished. “I’m sorry,” I said, “We’re not here to discuss Scargill. We’ve come to discuss the future of the mining communities in the aftermath of the strike”. Bizarrely his response was “Those are the most disgraceful words I have ever heard from a Methodist minister.” It struck me that he must have had a sheltered upbringing! Naturally I have worn his comment as a badge of honour ever since.

Since returning to Barnsley a couple of years ago (two years after completing my stint on Bradford Council), I have been struck by the way in which evidence of coal mining has been erased from the landscape. Pit head buildings and other structures have been totally removed and the flat land used for other purposes, often retail parks, such as that at Cortonwood, where the strike started. I had assumed that this was basically a bit of political theatre, drawing a line under the era of coal. However in his history Paxman refers to a more sinister tampering with evidence, namely the way in which the concrete poured down some mine shafts was covering up operational papers which could never become part of any history or inquiry.

Posted in Op-eds | 9 Comments

David Chadwick stands up for coalfield communities

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 10th February 2025 - 2:55 pm

Last Thursday, I was working from home with BBC Parliament going in the background. I was only half listening but was impressed by a speech by a Welsh MP who had real empathy for those communities and told how his great-grandfather died after hours of working waist deep in ice cold water. It was only later on that I realised that this speech was made by our own David Chadwick.

According to my husband who spent the first 20 years of his career working in various collieries around the country, David’s remarks had been going down exceptionally well with former miners on some online forums.

Here is the speech in full:

I am proud to represent several former coalmining communities. Abercraf, Cwmtwrch, Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Ystradgynlais, Pontardawe and Rhos are just a few of the proud former mining communities that I represent. I therefore thank the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this debate.

Across Wales, nearly 800,000 people—about a third of the population—live in former coalmining towns and villages, and I am very proud to come from a Welsh mining family. I will never forget my grandfather taking me to see his father’s grave in Maesteg cemetery. His father died aged 34 after working up to his waist in ice-cold water for several hours. The men and women of our coalfield communities made huge sacrifices to power this country, so it is right that we are discussing the future of their communities today.

To cut a long story short, Welsh mining communities have been left behind by successive Governments. Margaret Thatcher’s policies—the closure of our major industry in Wales and the failure to replace it with anything else—have left lasting scars. It is not hard to see why people in south Wales wonder whether their Governments are listening to them. This Parliament is an open goal for the Government to repair the damage done by Thatcherism. The Conservative party squandered many of its 13 years in power, carrying on with a London-centric banker-friendly form of growth that means younger generations have to leave for the cities, as my mum did 30 years ago. This Government must not repeat the mistake.

Across the former south Wales coalfields, the economic reality is dire. Wages are lower than the national average, job growth is sluggish and unemployment remains high. In fact, in the south Wales coalfields, there are just 46 jobs for every 100 working-age people. Nearly 800,000 people—a third of the entire population of Wales—live in those areas, which is why they are so important to the Welsh economy. Wales is £10,000 a head poorer than England, and fixing our former coalmining communities is key to fixing the Welsh economy. Coalfield communities deserve to be at the forefront of economic renewal. People in coalfield communities want the Government to show them that they matter. They are desperate for change.