Reader recalls a father's 37 years down the pit and the closures that followed

My Father was a miner for 37 years. He worked in the North East (where he was born) until the closures occurred in the early 1960's, at which point he was told to get another job or relocate.

He relocated under a Labour government. At the same time the ship yard closures in the North East virtually decimated employment in that area. It has only been in the last 10-15 years where there has been any resurgence of economy in that area, deservedly so, but I think that it would have happened sooner if it had been in the South East say.

An official miners strike occurred at the beginning of the 1970's, this left my Father without any discernible income for over two months, when I was less than one year old.

Mmmm, 1984 - Scargil's last stand. Arthur told the population that without intervention almost all of the collieries would close down within the next 10 years. He was proven to be right in the end, but he went about it in the wrong way. The 1984 miners strike was NEVER balloted and therefore was not an official strike. My Father chose to go back to work (a scab, he was incorrectly called - the term should only be used when an official union strike picket line is broken), and got bags of urine thrown at him from the mostly Yorkshire and Welsh pickets, both groups of whom were at least 200 miles from their respective mines.

The reason - basically - why the pits were closed down, was because Baroness Thatcher did not want to be held over a barrel by any union dictate, and at the time the majority of the UK's power did come from coal, so...

I do remember messieurs Kinock and Hatersley banging on about how they would do things differently and that they would save the mines, blah de blah de blah. Utter nonsense. The only man who actually tried to do anything constructive was the head of the UDM Nottinghamshire's Neil Greatrix. He put together reasonable plans for mines recovery programmes and even got interest from American parties. Unfortunately the Conservative government - at the time - was uninterested and unhelpful. Needless to say the American route quickly dried up when it was apparent that the UK government was not supportive.

My Father took early redundancy in 1987, the pit stopped operating in 1989. He went straight back into manual work and is still doing a job that would break an IT ponce's back like myself, even though he's 64. The work my Dad now does is seasonal MAR to OCT, is a minimum wage job, and when he's unemployed for those four months, this government says that he is not entitled to UB40, even though he has paid full tax on his earnings since the age of 15 - cheers!

The Conservatives wanted more gas and oil burning power generators (under the pretence of green issues), which was amazing if you consider that the coal mining industry was the LEAST subsidised of all of the energy producing corporations. They had the resources then to clean up the coal burning power stations, but chose instead to refit the existing stations to run on gas or oil. Amazing that was until the number of refit contracts linked to top Blue people came out, 'oops, forgot to disclose that one old chap!', oh and the number of top Blue people who subsequently had concerns with the privatised gas industry.

History lesson over, but what is the lesson? The lesson is simply this: in 1984 it was Thatcher vs Kinock over mines dispute. Now it's 2000 and it's Blair vs Hague over the IR35 dispute. Point is, can you trust any of the parties? No, I doubt it. The cause of the moment has always been the play point for the opposition. The £100,000 in question would have been too little 15 years ago, and now it's too much and wasteful (the wrong people will get the money, not the workers themselves). But I'll tell you this, how long will it be before the gas and oil runs out (I have no idea but I reckon that those contractors who actually work for a living - gas & oil - will have some idea)? And then where do we get it from, France, Germany, Russia, oh they'd love to have the UK over a barrel like that: 'I'll tell you what meester Prime Minister, you vote our way in the EU, and we won't turn off le taps, oui?'

And then there will be some bright government (oxymoron) spark of his time, who will recollect that the UK is sitting on a vast natural resource that we need to use - coal! A prudent estimation at the colliery at which my Father worked was that there were enough new seams of coal to last several more decades of mining. So the collieries may reopen/be rebuilt (doubtful), so I wonder who (in power) will get those tasty contracts.

The biggest irony of all is the fact that the reclaimed land of the colliery which employed 4,000 men, now has a new DSS and Employment Centre (offering job seekers courses) built on it, along with the proverbial supermarket. Now is it just me, or is that an absolute p**s taker?

I read - in the Oxford English dictionary - the definition of Government, it is as follows:

GOVERNMENT, synonymous with the phrase 'Backhand Alley!'

N.B. Please forgive any names spelt incorrectly.