"It's 1954 and the people of Yorkshire's West Riding are about to see a very special show." "NEWSREEL:" "And here come the boys!" "I beg your pardon, gi..." "I mean boys." "Believe it or not, these ballerinas are actually miners." "It's hard to imagine any other group of working-class men having the confidence to put on a tutu and dance like this in front of their family and friends." "But the people we see watching, captured here on film, were not the only audience." "Incredibly, footage like this was seen in cinemas all over Britain, alongside the feature films of the day." "There's something about being a miner, being in the dark all day that when you come out and you see the world, you look at it with fresh eyes and they express themselves in a lot of different ways." "Here are miners creating art that wowed the London arts scene." "And here's a miner who writes plays." "NEWSREEL:" "It was Clarrie Stafford, who works at Steetley Colliery and he was typing a play he'd written about mining folk." "We know about these extraordinary men because the daily lives of miners were chronicled by the National Coal Board's Film Unit." "It began filming them shortly after nationalisation in 1947 and ended just before the miners' strike in 1984." "Around 1,000 films record what amounts to the final chapter in Britain's long tradition of coal-mining." "Coal runs through human history." "It's always been both a creative force and a destructive force." "From coal came some of Britain's finest achievements and also some of her mightiest struggles." "The unit made every type of film imaginable." "There were dramas..." "SHE SCREAMS" "..documentaries... ..animations and even quirky training films." "What's incredible about the archive is they recorded every possible technical, physical advance in mining." "Then all the social changes that happened." "Everything from how they used their spare time to where they go on holidays and the things they do in their home." "Rarely seen in the last 30 years, these historic films now offer us a unique window into the lost world of coal-mining and its remarkable people." "Britain was still recovering from the war when the Labour government began its nationalisation programme." "On 1st January, 1947, signs were fixed to all collieries, declaring "This mine is managed on behalf" ""of the National Coal Board" ""on behalf of the people."" "There was a sense of a need for social renewal after the wartime struggles of so many." "Within months, the National Coal Board set up its Film Unit." "NEWSREEL:" "Blairhall Colliery, Scotland." "Among these men is Tom Syme, miner." "Tom was picked for the British Ice Hockey Team at this year's" "Olympic Games." "This is Dunfermline Ice Rink, where Tom trained for 2½ years." "Who wouldn't - in this company?" "And this was Tom's last practice game with the Dunfermline Senior Team." "Watch for number 12." "That's Tom." "Strenuous work after a day in the pit." "The Mining Review was a monthly newsreel, or cine magazine, if you like, which was about ten minutes long, a single reel of film which went out to cinemas every month particularly in all the coalfields across the UK," "but also elsewhere." "We know it was certainly shown in London, in the West End." "You would see Mining Review before you went to see your feature film every month." "At its peak, in the 1950s," "Mining Review was shown in over 800 cinemas and watched by millions of people." "The point of Mining Review was, on the one hand, to reach the general public an update them on the industry they were now paying for, because it was a nationalised industry paid for partly through taxpayer money." "But also to show them mining communities at work and at play." "Each Mining Review generally followed a format, beginning with technical information highlighting the latest developments in the industry." "NEWSREEL:" "Williamthorpe Colliery in Chesterfield has been trying out a new kind of pit prop." "Instead of being rigid, like the usual timber or steel supports, this hydraulic prop is adjustable to different conditions." "This was followed by some light arts or music featuring miners themselves and their leisure activities." "# We sing a song as we trudge along" "# There's nothing finer than a song... #" "And finally, promoting the various benefits the Coal Board were keen to show they were providing." "NEWSREEL:" "Dust prevention underground is removing the danger of dust disease." "But thousands of miners already have dust disease." "The new act this July will give fairer compensation and the Coal Board and the union have been discussing other benefits." "I first came across the archive when we were making the stage show of Billy Elliot." "We got in touch with the BFI and they sent us some films." "The amazing thing about the Mining Review films is the massive variety of subject matter." "NEWSREEL:" "One wet day, the pass to the loft was pretty muddy, so Jack laid down a lot of coal slack." "His pigeons started eating it." "And they've done it ever since." "The fame of Jack's coal-fired pigeons spread afield." ""Dear Mr Bramley," one letter went," ""I am not a pigeon fancier" ""but I rather want to try the use of this on myself," ""to see if it will help my indigestion."" "Another asked, "I wonder if you would send me about five pounds" ""of this coal." ""It may be different to our local supplies." ""I enclose 20/-."" "So these films shown miners and their families involved in a wide range of leisure activities." "There's all the things you'd expect, like brass bands, male voice choirs, gala days, but a lot of stuff you wouldn't expect." "Not just sporting events but also hobbies." "There's quite a lot of eccentric stuff going on in Mining Review at times." "NEWSREEL:" "These are the miners and sailors of Workington." "They're known as the Uppies and Downies, originally the miners came from the upper part of the town and the sailors down by the docks." "BELL CHIMES" "There are no rules, no referees and no limit to the numbers who take part." "The Uppies try to get the ball home into the grounds of Workington Hall up in the town, while the Downies have as their goal a capstan on the dockside." "And these goals are two miles apart." "For nearly 200 years the game has been played like this at Easter yet nobody's perfectly sure how it originally started." "And when it's all over, those on the winning side who aren't in hospital have the right to parade the town with the man who scored the goal, collecting free drinks in the pubs." "And they certainly deserve it." "I think as films there are some really great documentaries, some of the early black-and-white ones are beautifully shot, just as works of art, and also capturing an era that's gone." "People streaming out of the pit, that Eisentstein/Lowry world that no longer exists." "I started watching them as a bit of a joke, you think," ""That's going to be incredibly tedious," and actually they weren't." "There was some nobility and grandeur in it, those great sweeps of the countryside and the dignity of labour." "Then there was one called The Shovel which I particularly like." "In a way it's the most boring film on earth, and yet it's so portentous." "They talk about the "laying down of the coal seams" ""and the carbonous material when the great mammoth walked the earth," ""and man invented the shovel to dig the coals with"." "And you learn how to shovel coal really well." "NEWSREEL:" "The first is the way to stand." "Keep your shoulders in line with the movement of the shovel and get your whole weight in the swing." "Stand comfortably." "You'll have seen a stance like this before, that is, if you're interested in cricket." "It's the way a good batsman stands at the crease." "His shoulder is well forward to the line of the ball and he puts his weight behind the stroke." "You don't have to be a Len Hutton to shovel well but it's the same idea." "Which you start out in a way laughing at but also there's something quite touching about them they definitely capture an era that has now gone, it's a civilisation that has gone with the wind." "At this time still common for boys as young as 15 to go down the pit." "NEWSREEL:" "These lads are going to be miners." "But how are they going to learn the job?" "Should they be sent straight down the pit where they'll be in everybody's way or should they go to college where they won't learn anything of the practical side?" "# The workmen in the Rhondda" "# Are wonderful boys" "# They get to their work without any noise" "# They say through the Rhondda you never will see... #" "I started in the pit when I was 16, as my two brothers and my father done before me." "I went straight into the training centre, you could just walk into the job in them days." "I didn't feel that I was a miner while I was on the surface, to be honest with you." "Finally, when I went underground, I wished I was back on top." "# They say through the Rhondda you never will see" "# A merrier lot than in Tipperary" "# Too-re-loo" "# Too-re-lay" "# The best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray... #" "The first time I went underground, and I don't mind admitting" "I was a little apprehensive." "My father had worked the coal mines, he didn't want me to go down." "Uncles had told me the same thing, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect." "It was fairly comfortable once I got down there." "Whitewashed roadways," "I could see everything that was going on and I thought, "This is not so bad." ""I'll just continue on like this."" "Later, when I was at the coalface, that was a different world altogether." "Instead of walking in heights of eight or nine feet along roadways, you were down to 3'6"." "And it was ordinary wooden props, setting steel bars and the moving forward, having filled off a stretch of coal anywhere between three and six yards of coal." "# Oh, talk about hauling It's nothing but fun" "# To do it on the level as well as on the rung" "# To hook her and sprag her and holler, "Gee, way"" "# I'm the best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray. #" "When I left school, it was the Thursday before Good Friday." "It was in the days when school leaving had just been put up to 15." "So when I got home on Thursday before Good Friday," "My mother says, "Michael, your tea's on the table." ""By the way, you're starting the pit on Tuesday."" "They may have been barely more than children, but they were expected to work as hard as any adult." "My most embarrassing moments down the pit, and I only had about a yard of coal to fill off, which is nothing, really, so I'm filling away and all of a sudden I sees this figure" "filling away with my coals." ""Who the hell are you, what are you doing?"" "and it was my father." "My father was a deputy on that face and he said, "I've just come to give you a hand."" "After that I got all the flack from the fellas " ""He's got to get his bloody father to come and help out!" ""Wahey, Kirky, man, you're hopeless."" "So I told them, "Never again." ""It doesn't matter if I'm struggling, just stay away."" "# I'm the best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray" "# Too-re-loo" "# Too-re-lay" "# The best little doughboy that's under Jim Gray. #" "For the Film Unit's crew, who weren't used to working underground, filming in mines was a challenge." "The real difficulty about filming underground was that fireproof regulations were so strict and we were limited - first of all, the camera couldn't be electric so we used a clockwork Newman Sinclair camera which you wound up like this, laboriously." "The lights were not made for filming and they were very heavy." "It was very different from filming on the surface." "The room you had to move around in was very much more limited, but you became used to this." "The newly nationalised coal industry was hugely confident and the Mining Review films trumpeted its expansion and modernisation." "NEWSREEL:" "Within 100 yards, is a coal mine that's been there for years." "Now, a five-year reconstruction plan is to win more coal from under Manchester, much of which will be for the city itself." "Coal carried many of the hopes of post-war Britain." "There was a pride in these nationalised industries, particularly coal mining, this can be seen very much in the animated film King Coal, made shortly after nationalisation." "King Coal is stirred from his slumbers underground by the cries from homes and factories for more coal." "And he comes to the surface and is seen bestride the nation and there's a wonderful sense of movement and colour and vitality from this Technicolor film." "# Old King Coal was a merry old soul... #" "It serves both as a recruitment film and a piece of general propaganda for the coal industry in Britain." "King Coal allowed the National Coal Board to speak directly to the public, reminding them of the key role played by coal in the life of Britain." "In fact, the NCB was so buoyant about the future that it was happy for miners to user its Film Unit to air work-related issues such as the argument for a five-day week." "Can we afford it?" "Well, Al, I'm all in favour of the five-day week." "We shall benefit physically from having a long weekend rest." "We may lose in production but eventually will recover it." "We're all for it, Arthur, but I definitely know this, to ensure five full coal production days, we still need an extra day, and we shall need volunteers to do this." "Get the double pay for the extra day, same as they get it on Sundays now." "I don't think so, Harold." "Production is bound to drop." "Granted, the five-day week must come to the pits because they already have got it in other industries." "As was typical in the Mining Review series, the film ends on a singsong." "# Hellfire, son of a gun" "# Stand by, don't push" "# Plenty of room for you and me" "# Here's not an arm just like a leg" "# A lady's leg... #" "Along with the debate about the five-day week, the early Mining Reviews highlighted improvements in the health and welfare of miners and their families, from the creation of new homes..." "NEWSREEL:" "This is a great day for the Wilkes family." "They're moving in." "Instead of one room for all purposes, they have a sitting room, dining room, kitchen and three bedrooms." "..to the development of health centres..." "NEWSREEL:" "Every day of the week, the health centre is full." "The doctor's wife, herself a radiographer, has the job of X-raying each miner every six months." "..and improved access to higher education." "NEWSREEL:" "This year dozens of young miners from all over the country went back to school." "They had won university scholarships given by the National Coal Board for training new mining engineers and administrators." "In May, 1949, the Film Unit was sent to record the visit of the big American singing star Paul Robeson to a mine in Scotland." "Paul Robeson was intending to go to an Edinburgh colliery and to sing to the miners in the canteen." "And we turned up and filmed him, I think that afternoon, talking to the miners, walking about, erm, and then we filmed the singing in the evening." "and he sang I Thought I Saw Joe Hill Last Night which is an American song." "Joe Hill was a legendary American trade union activist before the First World War." "# "I never died," says he" "# "I never died," says he" "# "In Salt Lake City, Joe, " says I" "Him standing by my bed" "# They framed you on a... #" "Paul Robeson was very popular at this time amongst mining communities in particular, partly as a result of the feature film in which he starred," "The Proud Valley, from 1940, in which he played an heroic and self-sacrificing miner in South Wales." "He had strong sympathies for the underdog and this earned him great respect amongst working-class communities." "To the miners, it must have been quite something, in their everyday canteen to be visited by someone who was a huge celebrity then and for him to sing there such a song, it must have been both moving and thrilling." "# Went on to organise" "# I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night" "# Alive as you and me" "# Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead" "# "I never died," says he" "# "I never died," says he" "# "I never died"" "# Says he. #" "Into the 1950s, increased mechanisation lead to greater productivity." "NEWSREEL:" "Here, 31 men have been averaging over 230 tonnes a shift with a bigger output possible if they can get it away quickly enough." "That's pretty good going, and the coal's not all small stuff, either." "Things were looking rosy for both the industry and the miners and their families - there's a real glow to the Mining Review films of this period." "Most of what miner's did in their spare time focused around the local welfare or social centre, which offered a range of sports, leisure and educational activities, funded by the miners themselves." "NEWSREEL:" "The centre cost some £120,000 to build." "It was provided by the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation and the miners and their families from Bilston Glen and other surrounding collieries make full use of it." "And at the time, every miner paid a one penny levy to the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation and they organise most of the welfare things that were going on." "First of all, they supported outdoor facilities as well as indoor facilities." "NEWSREEL:" "Young Abe is a busy man." "Not only has he this swimming bath plant to look after, but he also has to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the tea-making apparatus for that's what keeps the ladies happy while the men enjoy themselves." "And within them Welfare Institutes, you had libraries, and in them libraries, there was books of all sorts, where people educated themselves." "What a beautiful room this is." "It's bought and paid for by the people of this community here." "Paid it out of their wages." "This cooperative spirit was frequently captured in Mining Review." "THEY SING A HYMN" "All the films articulate that sense that you don't live your life alone." "You live it with other people and for other people." "Lee Hall is fascinated by the social dynamics of the old mining communities." "He's come to the British Film Institute to explore documents relating to the Coal Board's Film Unit, which, like the films themselves, have been archived here for 30 years." "The Rolling Miner." "I have no idea what this could be." "13th year." "It was only after writing Billy Elliot, with its story of a miner's son who wants to be a ballet dancer, that Lee came across evidence mining and ballet had mixed before." "This is brilliant." "Obviously," "I'd written Billy Elliot as a kind of fantasy, and then when I was working with the Archive here, they showed me this amazing film of these stocky miners, there's all these shots of them down the mine" "and there's Jim Turner, the fireman." "NEWSREEL:" "Fireman Jim Turner, underground worker, Jack Fish," "Colin Plant, clerk, and storekeeper, Israel Downton." "They're all working underground and then they come up and they did this mad sort of ballet dance." "NEWSREEL:" "And here come the boys." "I beg your pardon, gi..." "I mean boys." "They danced Coppelia for the delectation of the village and it's just absolutely hilarious and charming." "Typically in mining villages, entertainment was a communal activity, something participated in with neighbours and friends." "The biggest communal event in the miners' calendar was the gala day, or miners' picnic, and music was always central to these events." "BRASS BAND PLAYS" "The Miners' Picnic in Northumberland was a huge family celebration." "Families came from all over the Northumberland coalfield to get together for a big party day." "Every pit would have its own brass band or they would have borrowed one if they didn't have their own, for the day, so there would be a wonderful atmosphere." "Competition was important at these gatherings." "The local colliery bands would all compete for the title of Best Brass Band." "NEWSREEL:" "The adjudicator, Mr Oliver Howarth, of Manchester, is locked in a room and no-one must have contact with him." "When he hears the band playing, he doesn't know which one it is, he can't see it." "Next band, please." "Right, Mr Howarth." "The adjudicator is now ready." "Every miner had sixpence deducted from his wages by the Miners' Union to pay for the brass band." "And there were 165,000 men in the Northern Coalfield in 300 pits in the 1950s." "If you think about 165,000 sixpences every week, you can see why it supported 150 bands." "TRUMPETS DRONE" "It gave children a great opportunity to learn music, and it was a source of pride in every family that they had somebody playing in a brass band." "It was a great educational thing as well as being something that cemented the community together and gave them a sense of pride in having a band that was able to win competitions or simply just appear at the gala." "BRASS BAND PLAYS" "NEWSREEL:" "After the contest, in the afternoon, all of the bands march down to the picnic field." "Brass bands themselves are kind of seen as a sentimental thing, largely because of the Hovis advert." "But there's something quite powerful and Wagnerian about the swell of this big load of brass coming up, and the way a Yorkshire brass band plays, and I know this because we've been looking into brass sounds " "completely different from a New Orleans trumpet will flare and blare, whereas a Yorkshire one does this Wagnerian swell." "There's something majestic about it, it's not just whimsy and nostalgia, there's something quite powerful about it." "What seems most significant is it was a band, it wasn't about individual virtuosity." "It was about coming together and each playing your part and you create this glorious sound." "Before the end of the day, the judges had another winner to appoint." "Who was the prettiest girl?" "The mining industry encouraged its pretty young ladies to come forward and represent the collieries and the coalfield communities and we developed Coal Queens." "Over the years, it became more than just a little local event, it actually became a national competition." "And I had the privilege in 1982 of representing Northumberland and that was huge fun." "Some of the prizes were more than a week's wage, so it was a big deal to win these things." "But one musical tradition was on the wane, the mining folk ballads." "# I wish your daddy may be weel" "# He's langly comin' frae the keel" "# Though his black face be like the De'il" "# I like a kiss frae Johnny... #" "In the mid-'50s," "Mining Review became part of an initiative to revive and record this dying folk tradition." "We often tend to think of folk song in terms of" "Merrie England, dancing round the maypole, a rural version of folk tradition." "But there was just as much a tradition of industrial folk song which is deeply embedded in the coalfields around Britain." "Now, AL Lloyd a folklorist who published a book in the 1950s called" "Come All Ye Miners:" "Songs  Ballads of the Coalfields, and he actually used Mining Review as one of his research tools." "In Mining Review Fourth Year, Number 9, there's a very interesting story called Miners' Songs in which Lloyd appears on camera, appealing to miners and mining communities to dig out songs from their local folk tradition" "that he could use in his research." "We want to collect them before they disappear so we're having a competition with prizes." "If you know any of these songs of the coalfields, please send them to me." "My name is AL Lloyd and you'll find full particulars in the May issue of Coal Magazine." "The 80 or so folk songs collected by AL Lloyd in his book" "Come All Ye Bold Miners form an important historical record of the ballads of the British coalfields." "There's a famous song called The Blackleg Miners." "This is the version in the AL Lloyd book." ""Oh, early in the evening" ""Just after dark" ""The blackleg miners creep out and go to work" ""With their moleskin trousers and dirty old shirt..."" "# Oh, it's in the evening after dark" "# That the blackleg miner goes to work" "# With his moleskin pants and his dirty shirt" "# There goes the blackleg miner... #" "It is a sort of comic song about strike breakers, but I think that's typical of the salty, ironic way that these writers use that experience." "# It's in the evening after dark" "# The blackleg miner goes to work" "# With his moleskin pants and his dirty shirt" "# There goes the blackleg miner... #" "Now, several years after Lloyd had published his book of mining songs, there was a spin-off back into Mining Review, because in 1957," "Mining Review ran five stories as part of the regular issues called The Songs Of The Coalfields." "These were all taken from Lloyd's research, using Isla Cameron, she's singing the Sandgate Nursing Song, and using particularly Ewan MacColl singing a number of songs from north-east England, Scotland and Wales." "# One morning when I went to work" "# The sight was most exciting" "# I heard a noise and looked aroond" "# And who do you think was fightin'?" "# I stood amazed and at 'em gazed... #" "That in turn led to an association between Mining Review and Ewan MacColl in particular and Peggy Seeger and they supplied some songs for use on some Mining Review stories later." "# It's because it's my intention" "# To let me see whether you or me" "# Is the best invention... #" "A lot of what the songs are about are the problems of property, the industrial conflicts there were going on in the coalfields." "The corpus of songs in the north-east it's a sort of 200-year-old litany of this, of the hardships and the political and social struggle that these communities had to face." "# One old kid sent his notice in" "# Just to mix the maisters... #" "It's just a song that a friend of mine asked and it's called" "The Working Man." "It's about a miner starting work at 16 and then finishing at 65." "It's just..." "# It's a working man I am" "# And I've been down underground" "# And I swear to God if I ever see the sun" "# Or for any length of time" "# I can hold it in my mind" "# Then I never again will go down underground. #" "That's the gist of it." "Actually, my husband loves it, it's his favourite song." "# Pray tell me the cause of your trouble and pain" "# And sobbing and sighing, these words she did answer... #" "Fatal disasters had been part of life for coal communities ever since mining began." "Some of the most powerful songs collected by AL Lloyd are about such incidents." "This one commemorates a disaster in Scotland," "The Blantyre Explosion." "# The explosion was heard All the women and children" "# With pale, anxious faces They haste to the mine" "# When the truth was made known" "# The hills rang with their moaning" "# 310 young miners were slain... #" "Despite improvements in mining safety in the '50s, fatalities continued to occur." "I've been where there's three people in my life down the pit been killed from me to you." "Next to me." "With fall of stone, and different things happening, and that was a frightening thing." "Never slept for at least a fortnight, thinking about him being killed right beside you." "And could these accidents have been avoided?" "Yes." "I was in a rescue team and we had to go to a private mine in Tonyrefail, and there was a fatality there." "This fella had got buried at about three o'clock on the Monday afternoon." "And we didn't get him out of there until about one o'clock the following day." "When we carried that guy out of that pit that day, it was a beautiful, bright, sunshiny day." "His wife was wailing." "That really grabbed you by the throat, that did, mind." "That was not pleasant." "But, like somebody said, "That's mining, innit?"" "Mining communities have a special way of burying their dead." "Any tragedy, the funeral was something to see, you know, they felt it." "And they'd walk a certain length behind the hearse and they got in the cars when they were out of sight, towards the cemetery." "It was respect." "They had respect for each other." "The women, including myself, there's a funeral, you stood there and you just watched." "All the men in their suits and ties and all that, they all followed the hearse." "It was a sight to see and you'd be crying even if you didn't know who it was, because it was so moving." "Watch out, prop!" "One of the things about the way miners work is that they have to trust one another, they have to be responsible." "You're expected to consider your fellow man." "Individualism, in a way, is outlawed by the very nature of the task." "So when you do come up, there's a great sense of release and things are enhanced in a strange way." "When you came out the pit, especially in the summer, it was a brilliant thing to come up into the sun, because you sort of knew what you had missed - that nice feeling of being in the sun." "This quickened sense of life and the chance to be an individual again when above ground led to a flowering of artistic expression." "A group of miners who painted were filmed by the Mining Review in 1959." "NEWSREEL:" "These are the eyes of Oliver Kilbourn, a salvage drawer at Ellington pit in Northumberland." "He's worked there since he was 13." "In his spare time, he paints." "I think there was a general belief that the arts were for everybody, and that you couldn't live a properly fulfilled life without having some cultural and artistic expression." "Oliver Kilbourn is a member of a group started in 1934 to foster artistic appreciation." "It wasn't long before the members decided to do some painting themselves." "Back in the early 1930s, the Ashington Group came together as a result of a workers' education initiative." "They'd studied all kinds of different subjects beforehand - history and politics and all kinds of things - and although they couldn't find a lecturer that they wanted for their particular subject, this year, they had the option of doing art appreciation." "So, not being one to shirk a challenge, they decided to give it a go." "Working from a YMCA hall in Ashington, they pursued their interest in art by employing Robert Lyon, an arts academic from Newcastle University." "When Robert Lyon arrived in Ashington, it must have been a complete culture shock for him." "He thought, "This will be a doddle because I've done it" ""a thousand times before" ""and we'll give them this, this and this" ""and we're home and dry, they'll be happy."" "Well, they weren't." "They were probably more knowledgeable about the history of art than he anticipated they would be and therefore in an endeavour to try and move it on, he tried to look at more practical aspects of art and then realised that they were not susceptible" "to being formally trained as artists." "NEWSREEL:" "The group believes that the amateur shouldn't try to copy the professionals." "While expert techniques may be beyond their range, they can still express what they see and feel as directly and simply as possible." "Jim Floyd, left, has been 47 years in the pits." "He's working alongside Len Robinson and he's putting the finishing touches to his Easter Wedding." "But the men themselves would have been all dressed up in their Sunday best, but painting with whatever came to hand." "There wasn't money to spare frivolously on buying paints and canvas, so they would paint with wall paint, they would use bits of hardboard that they had, bits of wood, whatever came to hand." "And usually whatever colours came to hand as well." "I do believe that some of the colours that are on the wall perhaps started off with a culinary origin." "SHE LAUGHS" "For these miners, painting the classics had no relevance." "For they, like Fred Laidler, here on the left, wanted to paint what was important to them such as their tool box." "Fred Laidler was my father." "He was always interested in drawing and in art." "The Open Drawer is the one picture I can remember being painted." "My father was a joiner." "He loved being a joiner." "He loved the tools, they were just an extension of himself." "But, again, typical of them, he knew the history of tools, he'd read about tools, he knew where they came from, what they were used for and he cherished them." "As was characteristic of miners, they set up a structure, with rules, which outlined how the group would work in detail." "It's the Ashington Art Group, they made this rule book." "It's incredibly bureaucratic." "I think it speaks a lot about the importance they put in any activity that they did." "Number five - new members to be informed when starting of the following conditions." "A probation period which shall constitute six consecutive meetings." "Two - that the group shall decide at the seventh meeting by unanimous vote whether or not the candidate shall be accepted, et cetera, et cetera." "It seems kind of probably unnecessary in order to make art." "One of my favourite paintings in the collection is one of Len Robinson's and the lady is standing on the table in the kitchen whitewashing the ceiling." "The man is just tending to a piece of stuff on the wall." "I imagine that's fairly typical, certainly was typical in my house where my mother would have done the stronger bits of work and my father, if he'd been allowed to do anything at all, it would have been something menial or" "he would have been chased out of the house altogether." "Wives and mothers are often conspicuously absent as subjects in the Mining Review films." "This goes against what we know about how pivotal women were in making pit life work." "Men were doing the work, they were going down the mine, but at home we had to be very strong." "Because they worked such long hours, that the wives had to see to most things." "My husband didn't know what shopping was until he retired." "He didn't know how much a pair of shoes were." "So the women had to be strong and do a lot." "Everything in those days." "They didn't know which drawer their socks were in, did they?" "No." "We nearly sugared their teas for them." "We did, that's right." "When husbands and sons arrived back from work, the women were expected to have hot food on the table and hot water to wash in." "This was further complicated if the men in the house worked different shifts." "If you had a family, perhaps a husband and two sons, and they were working in different shifts, you had men going out, men coming in, they all had to be fed at different times," "they all had to get their sleep at different times, they all had to get bathed at different times when there wasn't pit baths so water had to be heated." "And, of course, in the early days, they didn't have what they called the pit baths, which was where they got bathed and they had to come home dirty and you had all these dirty clothes they'd been wearing," "you had to clean all that lot, and get ready for them for the next day which wasn't very easy as you can imagine." "My first two children didn't know they had a father." "He was in what we call "four shift"" "and he used to go out at 12 o'clock at night and by the time he came in, the kids were away to school." "In spite of these long and exhausting shifts, some miners still found time to write." "NEWSREEL:" "Miners returning home in the dark hours often heard the click-clack-click of a typewriter coming from a house in Whitwell in the Midlands." "It was Clarrie Stafford and he was typing a play that he'd written about mining folk." "It was accepted by the Chesterfield Civic Theatre." "Some men would make a fuss o'er owt." "Maybe so but I bet you never had your carbuncle poked with a stick." "SHE GROANS" "It was called Dear Strikers and was about the day the ladies went on strike." "Well, this is a comedy." "But ever since I saw a man hacking away at the coalface," "I wanted to write about the miners." "That was in 1929 when I was 14." "And a miner's life lends itself to humour, drama and sometimes tragedy." "And, so, 12 months ago," "I decided to write this play about the only people I really knew." "It's a moment of tension, even for the old-stagers, as curtain-up approaches." "But Chesterfield soon made up its mind." "They liked the show and they made their appreciation felt." "One miner whose writings came to national prominence during this period was Sid Chaplin from the north-east." "His stories often focused on the rural nature of the pit village." ""From boyhood, I've loved the long, winding valley" ""with the Pennines, hazy and half-seen in the distance." ""It was then that the countryside grew upon me." ""The micro-cosmos of the village, the fields and farm," ""the river and the woods provided new wonders every day." ""When the sun shone there was open country to run wild in."" "Ah... this is Sid Chaplin." "He wrote these incredibly beautiful stories about working as a young man in the mines, but also about the world of the pit village, kind of what it meant in this period of huge change." "Even he's talking about how the big modernised, streamlined industry was taking over, this small industry..." "The idea of the pit village, they were very often very small communities and what people don't perhaps understand is that they were very often close to the countryside." "I was born in-between Weardale and Teesdale and the pits." "There was this splendid moorland landscape just the doorstep." "Just at the end of the street, always you had the pulley wheels." "And I graduated from that kind of landscape, 600-feet underground, into an entirely different landscape, a man-made landscape and that fired me as well." "I think this is very much Sid, when he writes, "My work and background is more important," ""the place and the people where I grew up."" "I think what he manages to do rather brilliantly is to use his own life to tell this bigger story." "NEWSREEL:" "What's important is this." "You have a nice high tea," "Heinz soup, half a pound of cooked pork, with a little of the crackling for body." "You languorously climb the stairs and have a nice, hot bath, water up to your chin." "For this is Friday night and you want to sweat clean, if you have to sweat, and it's ten to a penny you will before the weekend's over." "Then you shave yourself with real precision, brush your teeth, cupping a hand over your mouth, blowing your breath up just to make sure that the old womanising breathing is sweet." "Then you pull on a clean shirt and feel your skin tingle, pingle, tingle." "That's the way it should be and has been for a thousand nights or more." "The 1950s had been a good decade for the mining industry, with coal production peaking." "But the 1960s would see a prolonged period of contraction." "In 1963, Mining Review produced a short piece about the closure of a pit in Wales." "It began with a song by Ewan MacColl." "# Come all you gallant colliers" "# And listen to me tale" "# How they closed the Aberaman pit" "# In Aberdare, South Wales" "# It was in 1842" "# That coal there first was won" "# She's yielded 40 million tonnes" "# But now her days are done. #" "Coal was starting to be seen as a dirty fuel and an industry that belonged in the past." "Many people associate the '80s with a real period of decline of the mining industry, which it certainly was, but it wasn't the first time that mass closure of pits had happened." "The '60s was a period when many thousands of miners lost their jobs and communities were either destroyed or uprooted." "The National Coal Board had to adopt a different approach to attracting new recruits." "Teenagers were no longer so keen to go down the pit... so its recruitment films, now made in colour, like this one from 1965, Big Job, had to work much harder to make the industry seem appealing." "NEWSREEL:" "And to get the most out of the machines, we need more men, young men who want to learn the thousand skills a miner must master." "Behind the bravado of Big Job, it's clear that this is an industry in decline and that true confidence is beginning to diminish." "This is seen in the tone and style of films made from the late 1960s onwards." "CHEERING AND WHISTLES" "Health and safety animations, like this one, still had a practical purpose." "The tone, though, is plainly more trivial." "SLEAZY MUSIC AND CHEERS" "The problems threatening coal-mining were about to become fatally divisive." "But the films just weren't able to reflect this." "At one point they got really cheeky and asked for a budget for some dolly birds and made a sort of Carry On Down The Pit kind of thing or Confessions Of A Pit Man kind of thing, getting a little bit saucy." "One of the interesting things about these films is that the trajectory of the NCB's film-making history kind of reflects the trajectory of the coal industry in general." "And as we know, of course, in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, this was an industry headed towards a crisis." "And the films take on a slightly desperate kind of triumphalist tone in an attempt to try and convince the viewer that the mining industry has hundreds of years of glorious future ahead of it." "NEWSREEL:" "And it is upon them, they who implement the tools and the decisions, as well as upon the mining engineers who will continue to devise and execute their dreams of the future that we shall all continue to win our essential" "energy from under the earth, not only for the next 40 years but for the next 400." "I think it's very telling that in a film made in 1978, they make a point of ending on the conclusion, the resounding conclusion, that there are 400-years' worth of coal underground." "And that was true and to make that point at that time is quite significant and perhaps they knew there were forces at play that meant they were under threat and they might not be around for that long." "The NCB Film Unit, which had been launched in 1947 with pride and much fanfare, making films that were seen by millions in Britain every month, now quietly stopped production as the coal industry began to be broken up." "The very final Mining Review, 36th Year, Number 5, which was released in April 1983, so just before the miners' strike began." "To me, this is one of the most moving films ever made." "NEWSREEL:" "Only coal, exemplified by the impending birth of the new" "Selby coalfield and its vast reserves, can guarantee us a supply of energy for centuries ahead." "Selby is a forerunner, a blueprint for the other great coalfields of the future." "There must, and will be, a light at the end of the energy tunnel and, born of coal, it will dazzle us." "The very year the Film Unit closed, the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike for the last time." "The strike ended in defeat for the miners and led to an extensive closure programme and the eventual privatisation of the industry." "There are now less than a handful of deep coal mines in Britain, employing just a few thousand people." "In most of the former mining communities, the remnants of the coal industry have been erased from the landscape." "If you look around Ashington now, or if you are a stranger coming into Ashington for the first time, there's very little evidence that it was ever a thriving coal-producing town." "It was inevitable, I suppose, but nevertheless, it changed the whole nature of the town, it changed the people, it changed their attitudes." "My granddaughter, she's 16 now." "When she was about ten, I took her to where was I was working and there was a boiler house full of coal." "When she saw the coal, she said, "What's all them stones?"" "She thought it was stones." "She was about eight to ten years of age." "She's 16 now, so she didn't even know what coal was!" "So there we go." "That's how far a distance we are from it now." "# It stands so proud" "# The wheel so still" "# A ghostlike figure on the hill" "# It seems so strange" "# There is no sound" "# Now there are no men underground. #"