browseEasington: A Mining Village
Bruce Rae (Photographer), Paul Rutishauser (Writer)
Test drawn from the Amber Catalogue, 1987:
The work in this exhibition was commissioned by Side early in 1984 and was shot during February of that year. It proved to be a remarkable visual document about a community on the verge of a head-on clash with the government of the day over the issue of pit closures.
The Miners’ Strike began the following month and lasted for the best part of a year. The strike was for many people in Easington one of the major landmarks in their lives. For the men who worked down the pit it was a titanic struggle for their livelihoods, for the women of the village it was to be a change to a new, politicised lifestyle that for many became irreversible.
It is the physical conditions of pit work that no doubt determined the traditional hobbies of the mining communities - pigeon racing and gardening - which contain the pleasures of light, air and space, so clearly absent from daily work in the colliery. The village is ringed by a haphazard shanty town of sheds, greenhouses, pigeon lofts and allotments. Even in the age of video machines and the products of the leisure industry, younger people are still attracted to these pastimes which their elders pursue with a mixture of affection, pride and earnest competitiveness.
Now that the pit closure programme is being carried out, Easington feels increasingly threatened as the collieries around are closed one by one. Talk now is that British Coal want to pull out of the North East altogether and leave the rich seams, estimated to have a working life of two hundred years, to some future private operator. Easington’s future as a community now hangs in the balance.
A PLACE LIKE EASINGTON: A Portrait of a Durham Mining Village
Full Original Exhibition Text by Paul Rutishauser
Introduction
The work in this exhibition was commissioned by the Side Gallery, Newcastle, as part of their continuing project of documenting the major industries that have been so important to life in the North-East of England. We spent a month in Easington in February of this year taking photographs, talking to people and taping interviews. Our aim has been to try and describe the extent to which a community has been determined by an industry and the vulnerability of its way of life to decisions taken elsewhere about that industry's future. The coverage of the present miners’ strike has concentrated relentlessly on the conduct of the dispute and the public figures involved. The impact of the policies being contested - on the mining communities and on the people who live in them remains largely ignored.
I
Easington Colliery lies on the Durham coast between Sunderland and Hartlepool. A typical mining community, it was brought into being by nothing more than the decision of the Easington Coal Company to pick the shallow valley as the site from which to extract coal from the rich seams that lie deep beneath the surface and run outwards under the North Sea. Work began on the mine in 1899 and after financial and geological problems coal production started in 1911.
Around this time the initial rows of huts that had housed the engineers employed in sinking the shafts were replaced by the familiar rows of small terraced houses grudgingly provided by the coal company as dormitories for the workforce of the completed mine. The houses are clustered around the single spinal road that leads down to the winding towers and colliery buildings. Originally addresses in Easington consisted merely of a letter indicating a block of terraces followed by a number that referred to a street. Older people still think of the village in this way although the streets were subsequently named. In this, however, the sense of regimentation remained with the streets in each block sharing the same initial letter.
The village has altered little in outward appearance since it was built and, as with villages in other coalfields, has a rural rather than industrial character remaining isolated with few services and no other industry. As in the past Easington remains totally dependent on the mine that created it and which has sustained it throughout its short history.
Four coal seams are worked regularly at Easington. The reserves have been extracted to the extent that all the coalfaces are now some distance out below the sea. The deepest area currently being worked is some 1,700 feet below the seabed; the furthest point so far reached is some seven miles from the coast. Most of the coal brought to the surface is destined for the power station market. By the standards of the Durham coal-field Easington is a relatively modern pit opened up some fifty years later than the now exhausted mines in the west of the county.
The coal is extracted by the ‘long wall’ method where a face up to 250 yards long is cut by the back and forth passage of a shearing machine which tears the coal from the face. Armoured chain conveyors carry the coal away from the face; it is brought to the shaft bottom by a further system of conveyors and then wound to the surface in 11-ton capacity skips. Investment in the mid-seventies introduced computer monitoring of coal leaving the face and this, along with a system of underground bunkers, prevents delays or bottle necks in the flow of coal to the surface.
Despite such investment the sheer distance that coal and materials have to travel underground raises the cost of production each year as the faces advance. At Easington there are some 95 miles of underground workings that have to be maintained and ventilated. The colliery’s out-put averages 5 to 6,000 tons of coal a day. Presently it employs 2,450 people whose productivity is measured at ‘2.4 tons per man shift’.
When going on shift each underground worker collects their hat lamp, which is recharged between shifts, and a self rescuer, a mask used in an emergency to protect the wearer from poisonous gases. Each underground worker also picks up a pair of metal discs bearing a personal number. The first disc, a brass one, is collected from them as they enter the cage to go down the shaft, the second, a steel one, when they return to the surface. In the event of an accident below ground a precise tally of who is missing is provided by the incomplete pairs of discs in the time cabin.
Easington is well aware of the human cost of the extraction of coal. In May 1951, a spark from a coal cutting machine ignited a pocket of gas in the mine's five-quarter seam. The blast lifted coal-dust, which fuelled the explosion creating a self-generating fireball that smashed and scorched its way through 16,000 yards of underground workings. Eighty one men were killed, the casualties increased by the timing of the explosion which occurred as shifts were changing over. Two volunteer rescue men were killed as they vainly searched for survivors. For a few days the village gained national prominence; the king sent a telegram of condolence; cabinet ministers joined the relatives waiting at the pit-head. But the attention was brief, the pressmen left and Easington dropped from the headlines. The colliery was back in production before the last body was brought to the surface and laid to rest in the communal grave in the village cemetery.
Mining remains a dangerous occupation in which official expectations are of 30 fatalities annually and 400 serious injuries due to accidents. The medical centre at the colliery receives in the region of 400 visits every month related to accidents of differing degrees of seriousness. Besides dangers from roof-falls and accidents with machinery there are other risks that make mining one of the unhealthiest of jobs. Pneumoconiosis is one of the debilitating lung diseases caused by coal-dust, which leaves sufferers gasping for breath at the slightest exertion. Modern coal-shearing machinery, whilst reducing the muscle power required to cut coal, has greatly increased problems of dust control. Miners have been shown to be up to fifteen times more likely to suffer from an occupational lung disease than people in other jobs. On Easington’s mainstreet, the incongruously named Seaside Lane, regularly spaced benches allow sufferers from such conditions to rest and catch their breath.
*II*
Pigeon racing is a sport rigorously controlled and monitored by the Up North Combine. This body not only organises the racing programme and the transport of birds to their release point but also surveys lofts to accurately measure the distance birds race. There are two schools of thought about the preparation of birds for races. The ‘modern’ school practices a method known as ‘widowhood’ where only the cock-birds are raced and deprived of contact with the hen which is kept in an enclosed nest-box. The only occasion the box is opened is at the end of the race making, so it is believed, the cock-bird more eager to reach the loft. Some pigeon racers reinforce this desire by showing the racing bird another male in the hen's box or by placing a mirror in the front of the box so that the cock-bird takes his own reflection to be an intruding rival. The ‘traditionalists’ race birds of both sexes and oppose such manipulation arguing that, in the long run, a contented bird will race just as well.
You shouldn’t have favourites. I should have killed him off last year. He’s twelve years old but I keep him out of sentiment. To be rigid you should do it: he’s eating corn you’re getting nothing out of.
It is the physical conditions of pit-work that no doubt determined the traditional hobbies of Durham mining communities - pigeon racing and gardening - which contain the pleasures of air, light and space so clearly absent from daily work in the colliery. The village is ringed by a haphazard shantytown of sheds, greenhouses, pigeon-lofts and allotments. Even in the age of video machines and the other products of the leisure industry younger people are still attracted to these pastimes, which their elders pursue with a mixture of affection, pride and earnest competitiveness. The pigeon racers and gardeners share an allegiance that extends beyond their hobby. During the Union Lodge elections there are always nominations identifiable as the pigeon mens’ or gardening mens’ candidates, who can count upon the votes of their fellow enthusiasts.
The Miners’ Welfare Hall is a particularly important social centre for the older members of the community. Like many of the facilities in the village The Welfare was built with funds raised by the community. The clubs in the area have their own brewery which means drinks are substantially cheaper than in pubs. The hall is a venue for weekly dances and for the meetings of the pigeon racers and gardeners. The local Union Lodge holds meetings and rallies in The Welfare and its banners are stored there.
The Durham Gala, ‘The Big Meeting’, is the annual gathering of the mining communities of the North East. It is primarily a social event where miners and their families parade with the lodge banners and bands. But the gala has also had the political undertone of a one-day invasion of the prosperous city by the people who created its wealth. The decline of the size of the gala reflects the contraction of the mining industry. At one time hundreds of banners were in evidence, each representing a working pit. In recent years few more than a dozen banners could be seen. In its heyday mining employed 227,000 people in the North East, by 1980 the number had dec1ined to 36,000, today that number is smaller still. Last year’s Centenary Gala however attracted a large turnout of miners from other areas and many local people not involved with the industry directly.
I love the Big Meeting. I don’t think I’ve missed one in fifty years. It used to be that you couldn’t hardly walk down the streets - there were that many people. There used to be three hundred thousand at the Big Meeting.
III
Easington’s future as a community hangs on the level of demand for coal and the National Coal Board’s policy as to how it intends to meet that demand. Recession and the accompanying stagnation of industry has led to a surplus of coal on the market and a fall in the price producers can ask for it. The Coal Board has responded to this by seeking to cut production by closing pits where production costs are high even though, they may contain workable reserves.
On March 6th 1984, the chairman of the Coal Board, Mr Ian MacGregor, announced that 21,000 jobs would disappear in the industry this year. It was the North East that was targeted for the biggest cuts in out-put with an intended reduction of 1.4 million tons. There are fears that the long term plans for the Durham area may be the eventual closure of all its pits.
We've seen what’s happened in the west of Durham where villages have been decimated. There’s been no alternative industry come in, shops have closed down and jobs lost. It would be a massive blow to the community to lose any pit. Basic services would suffer - refuse collection and hospitals - because the rate revenue’s lost. If this pit closed, 2,400 jobs would go. And other jobs in the community? I wouldn’t like to put a figure on it. It would affect local shop keepers, local businesses. It would be catastrophic. Mr MacGregor was put into the steel industry to reduce capacity - he took away 80,000 jobs. He’s decimated whole towns - like Consett, where male unemployment is 32%. Steel villages have been turned into ghost towns. His plans for the coal industry are exactly the same. Alan Cummings, Lodge Secretary
Easington has already been severely affected by the closure of other pits. Instead of taking on local school leavers the colliery at Easington now fills any vacancies with men made redundant elsewhere. Nearly a third of the workforce is bussed in from other villages where the pit has been closed. As a result no young person from Easington has been recruited by the National Coal Board in the last two years. Of the 1500 leaving school in the district annually only one out of five is expected to be in work by the end of that year.
The only chance of work for most young people is on a youth training scheme. The Age Concern Training Scheme at Easington has places for forty youngsters who specialise in either community care or construction and decorating work - both activities directed at helping old or disabled local people. With few prospects of finding work when the 12 month scheme comes to an end and the financial incentives little better than social security, the staff of the scheme admit that it is hard for the trainees to sustain their initial enthusiasm.
I had a lad in here yesterday who was on a scheme here three years ago. He’s twenty one years old and apart from that he’s never worked. Mike Alan, Age Concern YTS
Whilst it is the young who are hit first and hardest by recession - they are simply excluded as the number of jobs shrinks - unemployment is rising almost as dramatically amongst other age groups. Unemployment in the Easington area is currently running well above the national average at 18.3%. The beach at Easington is always busy. People come here to pick the fragments of coal washed in by the tide, bagging it into small sacks that are pushed up the hill on old bicycles. Some collect just enough for their own fires; others sell a few bags locally - the price they ask depending on the distance from the beach the sacks have to be carried. Further along the coast the younger and fitter work for lorry owners who transport the coal to sell in nearby Seaham. Unemployed and technically working illegally they receive £1 for retrieving coal that is worth £20 to the people employing them.
*IV*
Local Government in the Easington District was shaped after the war by the experience of poverty and unemployment endured by mining communities during the depression of the 1930s. A booklet by the council's surveyor CW Clarke, Farewell to Squalor, put forward the then visionary idea of creating a completely new town that would relieve the overcrowding of the old pit villages and attract new factory based industries into the area, reducing its dependency on coal-mining.
The town, Peterlee, became the priority of the council, often at the expense of the mining villages that were deprived of investment and services. But Peterlee has been beset with problems. Many of the industries attracted to the area are operations of huge multinational companies which have little loyalty to one geographical area. Jobs in Peterlee, as in other new towns in the North-East, are proving vulnerable to decisions by these companies to pack up and move elsewhere as the recession bites.
The town has also had design and architectural problems and requires considerable expenditure on revitalisation. Peterlee is proving costly to maintain, whilst in the unexpected economic circumstances of the 1980s it has failed to become the powerful dynamo of regeneration and prosperity that was hoped for. The government decision to wind-up the Peterlee Development Corporation and the simultaneous threat of the closure of local pits presents the council with a nightmare. The council will be unable to take over from the corporation the task of attracting and keeping new employers in the area. The Development Corporation at one time had a budget of several million pounds; the council can raise only £72,000 for each penny that it puts on the rates. Even if they were to attempt to raise some funds for this purpose through a rate increase they would then incur financial penalties from central government.
The closure of pits threatens the council with a further loss of rate revenue forcing them to cut spending and reduce services. Few cuts could be made without job loss. As the largest rural district in the country the council is itself a major employer in the area providing over 1,400 jobs.
We’re fighting on all fronts at once. The government’s turning the clocks back fifty years. We're being forced back into a depression. John Cummings, Leader of the Council
V
Save Easington Area Mines, SEAM, is the local campaign set up to fight pit closures. It has the support of almost every local organisation from the political parties and trade unions through to the local chamber of trade and the churches. A rally organised in March attracted 5,000 people. The crowd overflowed from the Welfare Hall and listened to the speeches relayed by loudspeakers in the street and other nearby halls.
Our main aim is to secure a future for our young people. We can only do this by changing the mind of the present government. Heather Wood, SEAM
An all too predictable sequence of events threatens Easington if the pit were to close. A spiral of decline and depopulation would set in that would leave only the old and poor inhabiting the shell of their former village. The determination of local people to resist this fate is understandable. But mining communities are arguing that their future is not just an issue of local concern or that pits should be maintained as an act of charity. They are saying that the preservation of the coal industry is an issue of national importance. Coal remains the only accessible fuel with a long term future. Oil reserves in this country are being fast depleted, those overseas remain vulnerable to increasingly unstable political events. Nuclear power has so far proved to be costly, inefficient with potentially disastrous economic consequences. Unless we are assuming permanent industrial stagnation and by implication, accepting permanent mass unemployment, then it is short-sighted to be tailoring energy policy and our ability to produce coal to the present low-level of demand.
A coalmine cannot be switched off and on like a tap. When a pit is closed it is ‘thrown away’ forever; the workings collapse and flood; the skills of its workforce dispersed. The coalfaces reached by decades of investment and human labour can never be reached again - except at astronomical cost. Coal is a finite resource created by an environmental and geological process that will never be repeated whilst there is human life on the planet. As reserves are used up the value of what remains increases.
As petroleum reserves are exhausted the value of coal will increase still further as it is turned to as a chemical feedstock from which plastics and other materials vital to manufacturing industry can be synthesised. The un-worked reserves left in pits because of temporary market prices will turn out to have been a national asset foolishly squandered, tantalisingly out of reach to future generations.
Acknowledgements: We would like to thank everybody in Easington who helped us with this exhibition. In particular: Mr Tommy Noble, Mr Bill Atkinson, Mr Bill Gleghorn, Mrs Ruth Gleghorn, Mr Colin Handy, Mr Dennis Raine; Mr Alan Cummings and members of the NUM Lodge Committee; Mr Farrage, NCB Colliery Manager; Mr John Cummings, Mrs Ada Naisbitt, Mr George Laidler of Easington District Council; Mrs Elliot and the Staff of Easington Infants School; Mr Gordon Chopping and the Staff of Easington Unemployment Centre; Mr Mike Alan and the Staff of Age Concern Youth Training Workshop; Staff of Easington Library; Staff of Easington Past and Present history project; Rev. Tony Hodgson and Mrs Anita Hodgson.
We would also like to thank the Side Gallery, Newcastle for their help and support.
Bruce Rae and Paul Rutishauser, July 1984.