Authors: Richard Benson
Next he needs a job suitable for an ambitious husband. In March 1975, to the jeers of his dad who says mining is a dead-end, he applies for a job at Houghton Main, where Kenny works. Besides the good wages and new, lucrative bonus schemes, the Coal Board offers training and education and the chance for a grafter to work his way up to a good job.
At Houghton Main’s personnel office Gary does not tell the officer in charge about his tuberculosis, and he is signed up with no questions. After six weeks’ surface training at Barnsley Main, he does thirty days in the underground galleries at Grimethorpe colliery. The training officer then pins up a typed list of the newcomers’ names and the jobs they have been assigned at their own pits. Gary is to be an air measurer in the Houghton safety team.
When he arrives for his first full day at work, he is directed to the team’s brick cabin in the yard. Inside are half a dozen men, some handling air pressure gauges and anemometers on a workbench, others warming themselves on a fat steam pipe on the opposite wall. The cabin smells of oil, cement and tobacco. As he enters, the men look up. He recognises Kenny sitting on the pipe. He and Kenny are the youngest by about ten years.
‘Who are thar?’ The speaker, a man in his forties, looks at Gary as if he is an inept burglar who has just broken into the cabin by mistake.
‘Me?’
‘No, him next to thee.’ There is no one next to him. ‘What’s tha want?’
The other men look at him and grin expectantly. It is the miners’ hello: the first speaker insults the other and the spoken-to replies with something that must be neither too vicious nor dull. If you are a newcomer, extra care is needed. The easy option of self-deprecation is a bad idea, conveying an untrustworthy need to be liked – unless you are fat, in which case it indicates a sense of humour. The worst thing is to be polite: ‘How do?’ and a shake of the hand means either that someone will only ever tell you what he thinks you want to hear, or that he privately considers himself superior. You can be bluff and witty, but not a smart-arse.
‘I’m working here.’
‘Why, does tha need some brass to buy some scissors?’ This is a reference to Gary’s collar-length hair. The older men, most of whom have served in the armed forces, hate it. In some pit yards there are safety signs saying ‘Long Hair? TAKE CARE!’ because long-haired young men keep getting their hair caught in machinery. Some of the older men say it serves them right.
Gary says, ‘No. They’ve got up-to-date haircuts in Thurnscoe’ – which is a good answer because it moves the subject from himself to the village, and the other Thurnscoe men at the pit.
‘They’ve got lasses’ haircuts wi’t’ look of your two.’ He shoots a glance at Kenny. ‘Tha wants to watch thysen down there in t’ dark .
.
. What job’ve they given thee anyroad?’
When the men have established who Gary does and does not know, and where his family is from, the safety engineer instructs Kenny to look after him for his three weeks of close personal supervision. ‘He’ll show thee where to go,’ he says. ‘Now bugger off, tha long-haired Thurnscoe bastard.’
The team enforces the colliery’s safety measures, and monitors the dust, gas and air in the pit. Pits are ventilated using large fans at the top of air shafts and a series of air doors in the tunnels. The doors stop and direct the air flow so the air is pushed down all the workings and prevented from blowing the quickest route down the main roadways and back to the surface up the upcast shaft. The air measurers check the flow, pressure and composition of the air to ensure that the pit is safe; their jobs carry a lot of responsibility because a single mistake can lead directly to an explosion.
For the first few weeks the long-haired Thurnscoe bastard works as a guffer – a
go for
in the Barnsley twang, meaning a lad who fetches and carries. Kenny teaches him how to take the measurements and how to enter them in the legal records in the safety team offices, and roadway by roadway, seam by seam, Gary learns to navigate the pit. He uses the computers in the offices to find out averages and make projections, and he develops the tact and banter needed to answer back when men complain about safety checks. Checks and enforcement are difficult. The manager, himself under pressure from the area bosses, sets ambitious targets. There is risk-taking out of recklessness, out of wanting to get a job finished, and out of men pushing themselves to ensure enough coal is dug, and the men who intervene are derided. Gary soon realises that if you follow regulations precisely you will not only be disrespected, you will also be measuring your output in spoonfuls. He learns to handle difficult situations by watching and listening to the older members on the team – men who had fought in the Second World War at Alamein, Monte Cassino and Arnhem. They had authority and somehow knew how to order people about, and when to protect them from themselves and their managers.
*
Gary calls Roy from a telephone box in the village once a week, but tries to avoid talking about work because his dad ridicules him.
‘You still at t’ bloody pit then?’
‘Aye, I’m doing alright – ’
‘Bloody crap job. I don’t know where your ambition’s gone.’
‘I brought nearly £50 home last week.’
‘Fifty pound! When I was your age I was driving tanks in t’ Army.’
Gary tries to explain that it’s different to when Roy was younger, and that the pit pays better than most other jobs. It looks after you: your wages are paid straight into the bank, tax deducted, and the NCB provides you with a house if you need one. When you’re on the sick you just put your sick note in and it’s all taken care of. Why can’t his dad see that?
But Roy can see nothing. He keeps on criticising and by the end of the conversation Gary feels ashamed, and has to walk around the village until the feeling goes off.
His grandad is a little more understanding, but he worries. (‘What’s tha want to go down t’ pit for, lad?’ ‘Money, Grandad.’ ‘Well mind tha takes care of it then, and thysen and all!’) It is Winnie who most shares his feeling of achievement. Inside, Gary is proud of his job: miners helped to build the nation from iron and coal, and it is still the fuel that powers the country and keeps people warm. Even if the men are cantankerous and cynical about management, he can tell many of them feel the same satisfaction that he does. Some make a point of going home in their pit muck and helmets, as a sort of uniform and statement of pride. Winnie listens to him telling her this with unsentimental approval.
‘You say right, Gary,’ she says. ‘You be proud of yourself, love. You be proud.’
Houghton Main Colliery and Bolton-upon-Dearne, 1975
In the early evening of 12 June 1975, Margaret, Gary and David are watching television at home when the floor, furniture and light fitting tremble faintly for a few seconds. The tremor is not enough to chink the tea mugs on the coffee table, but it does make them look at each other in puzzlement. Three hours later the
News at Ten
has a report from Houghton Main about an explosion 350 yards down in the Melton Field seam. Men are missing underground, feared dead. Margaret and David ask Gary if this was what the tremor was. Maybe not, he says, it might just have been something in Hickleton’s workings. None of them wants to think the explosion is what they felt. Some of Houghton’s workings are below Thurnscoe village, so the missing men could be 350 yards below their feet.
When Gary arrives at work the next morning the pit yard is in muddy chaos: police cars, television vans and yellow mine-rescue trucks are parked up and ambulances wait near the wooden steps that lead down from the shaft side. Miners stand around in hushed groups. Coming off duty, tired rescue teams in knee pads and breathing apparatus pass fresh ones going underground to take their place. Outside the baths are gathered the families of the trapped and missing, waiting for news; a Salvation Army van serves them drinks and sandwiches. Above everyone’s heads the spoked iron winding wheels are still.
Gary goes to the safety team’s cabin. All twelve men are quietly waiting to find out if they can help. He hears a scuffle outside and looks out from the open doorway as Arthur Scargill and the government ministers Tony Benn and Eric Varley cross the pit yard to the manager’s office. They have been underground; Scargill is wearing an old 1950s metal mining helmet, a type still worn by some men like badges of individuality and long service. Reporters and television cameramen crowd around them, asking questions about the explosion and the casualties.
‘Them pillocks want chucking down t’ shaft,’ says one of the dust control men, meaning the reporters. ‘They’ve been sniffing round t’ families like bloody vultures, pretending to be all sad and sorry. They’re not so sad and sorry when we’re putting a pay claim in.’
Five men have been killed, and one badly injured. The emergency teams are still trying to recover the dead bodies in the dust and the wreckage. Kenny’s dad, one of the rescuers, is among them. ‘They keep finding pages from a Bible floating about in t’ dust,’ Kenny says. ‘One of t’ lads that’s been killed always took it down wi’ him. Didn’t do him much good, did it?’
Gary knows three of the dead men. He feels numbed by the accident and unsure of how to act among the older miners. To him the day feels so abnormal as to be unreal, but in their grim faces he can see the past lives that make it familiar. There are Ukranians and Poles working at Houghton Main, men who have concentration camp tattoos on their wrists and saw family and friends die around them in the war. When these men speak about the accident and the deaths and the families waiting for news, there is disgust in their voices, and also a sort of weariness.
The source of the explosion, everyone knows, will have been ignited gas. An inquiry will conclude that methane was most likely ignited by sparks from one of the fans used to draw air through the mine. With the pit closed and only the senior managers and rescue teams allowed in, the men are sent home, and Gary is not needed for three days. On the fourth day the ventilation officer sends him, Kenny and a deputy down to some disused workings in the Silkstone seam to take measurements and test the system of pipes that drain methane from the air. Houghton Main works nine seams, and the Silkstone, 940 yards down, is the deepest. As they wait at the shaft side for the cage, Gary is unsettled and fidgety.
‘What’s up wi’ you?’ the deputy asks disdainfully.
‘What’s up wi’ me? There’s been five men killed down there, and I knew three of ’em. I think it feels a bit macabre.’
The winding wheels above their heads begin to revolve slowly, and the cables tighten as the cage rises up the shaft.
‘Does it buggery. They’ll not hurt you now, will they?’
Gary looks away. The deputy’s scorn is mostly bravado. Pits are superstitious places and according to the men who work there, Houghton has been haunted by miners’ ghosts since it was sunk in the 1870s.
‘Maybe not, but it’s not very pleasant.’
‘Get away wi’ you. You talk like women.’
The cage comes up in front of them. When its bottom is level with the tub rails, it rattles to a halt, and the banksman yanks back its gates. The men toss their pit checks into a wooden box and step in, bowing to fit their heads under the low roof. When the banksman has secured the gates he presses a button and the cage slides down into the darkness. They drop past the lights of the Melton Field inset, and then the other seams below that: Beamshaw, Barnsley Bed, Dunsil, Fenton, Parkgate, Thorncliffe. At Thorncliffe they get out and take the manriding conveyor down into the Silkstone.
Near the pit bottom the roadway is as large as an underground railway station and illuminated by electric lights. Further along, the roofs are lower and the floors more uneven, and there are no lights, so the three men have to rely on their cap lamps. They concentrate on finding level footing and do not talk, but Gary can sense a tension in the atmosphere of the whole pit. When they pass other miners in the roadway they hardly acknowledge each other. It is as if everyone is calculating how long it will be until they finish their shift and get back to the surface.
In the disused workings, Gary can see the strain in the others’ eyes when he catches their faces in his lampbeam. The air is dank and stale-smelling, the only noises muffled and distant. Gary and Kenny take their tools from their bags as the deputy watches, and collect air samples without speaking.
They have been working for half an hour when the pit’s Tannoy communication speakers beep and an operator in the control room up on the surface makes an urgent announcement: ‘
All men make their way to the pit bottom in orderly fashion. I repeat
–’
They do not wait for a second warning. Gary and Kenny stuff their equipment into the bags and, with the deputy, make their way back towards the main roadway. They break into a jogging run, stepping over stray rocks and girders as nimbly as they can in pit boots. The operator makes more announcements over the Tannoy: ‘
All men urgently make their way
.
.
.’
As they draw closer to the drift tunnel that will take them back to the cage, there are men coming into the roadway from other gates and faces: haulage men, button men, face men, deputies, all running, keeping as tight and fast as they can without colliding. The warnings mean that someone has found high gas levels somewhere, possibly in their seam. Another announcement: the pace quickens and the deep, panicky grind of the boots grows louder.