The 450 colliery workers at Kellingley will make history Friday when they descend down the 800 meter-deep shaft for one last time as Britain’s last remaining deep-mine closes.
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Their last steps as miners, an industry in which many have worked for decades took them past a poster which read “the last pit: closed for business”.
He started at Woolley Colliery before moving to Kellingley 28 years ago.
Maurice Kent, an NUM official, added: “Some of the men seem to have recognised the fate that they’re going to be made redundant, they do understand that times are going to be very hard once they’ve finished”. Brian Ricketts, the secretary general of the European coal lobby group Eurocoal, said his industry had been unfairly vilified like modern-day slave traders by politicians at last week’s climate change talks in Paris.
Some of the mine’s employees, who will receive severance packages of 12 weeks of wages, began there at 15 and fear they may struggle to find other work. To be actually told, two years since, that Kellingley would be closing came like a bolt of lightning.
Known as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal has fallen out of favour as world governments look to limit emissions and switch to clean energy.
Mr Poulson said: “It’s an occasion where the miners will say goodbye, probably for the last time”.
He said: “It’s pretty surreal but the lads have just got on with it as they always have”. The miners want to work…
She said: “The coal industry has been at the heart of this area for generations”.
He said: “I feel disappointed, I feel angry and, more importantly, I’ve seen my colleagues come off the last shift and you can see the anger and frustration that’s in their faces. I feel completely let down and deflated”. The coal they cut through generations powered the industrial revolution, stoked the trains, lit the furnaces, and kept the home fires burning.
Prospect, the union representing managers at Kellingley, accused the government of failing to provide enough support to help staff retrain or seek alternative employment.
“Coal mining is a community in itself with its own hierarchy and its own way of treating people”. Everyone at Kellingley should be congratulated as they have met the managed closure plan safely. The closure follows that of Thoresby in Nottinghamshire.
Surface buildings are planned to be demolished, the site levelled and ownership transferred to a real estate company for future redevelopment.
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Britain’s mining industry employed more than 1 million people at its peak in the 1920s.
