In praise of miners all over the world

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Published: 21 October, 2010
ILLTYD HARRINGTON: 'AS I PLEASE'

CHILE, that faraway land where once again democracy flourishes after Thatcher’s friend the murderous general Augusto Pinochet defiled its reputation, has triumphantly recalled the world to that most profound value, human life however humble, and thought to be expendable.

At about four in the morning on Thursday I whooped with delight as the first of the 33 entombed miners came out of that constricting capsule into the harsh light of the Atacama Desert to see his family, friends and the President of Chile, who embraced him and everyone who followed.

My part of South Wales once had a mining population of a quarter of a million, working in the blackest scary places deep within the mountain. So coal is part of my DNA. Spontaneously, I picked up my grandfather's miner’s lamp – a proud memento and held it up to the TV in a gesture of solidarity and benediction. Primitive magic. When I was a young adolescent, most boys went down the pit. 

I, with other privileged ones, went on to higher education. My friend Emrys suffocated in a fall of stone. 

My grandfather, Sam,  was a sallow-faced, Irish Protestant. 

He came to South Wales in 1892 with my grandmother, a Roman Catholic, looking like so many Irishmen for work. She was 15, he was 16. The Welsh miners were suspicious of immigrants and thought they might be used for undercutting the wages. 

My father was a pit boy in the same pit, carrying the tin jug and box to prevent the rats eating his food. Grumpy old Bill Protherow – our next door neighbour – put on his knee pads at 9pm before going on a nightshift deep in the mountains. Like all the others, he came back to a tin bath every morning. Today, an outcrop of coal is being worked near my grandfather’s old pit – in the 1930s in a time of mass unemployment, miners were forced to go there deep in the night to dig coal from the unworked outcrops, often chased by the police.

Two thousands miners were killed annually and no compensation. 

Margaret Thatcher in 1984-5, was determined to cut the miners down for no other reason than to railroad and ambush the trade union movement. 

On the other hand, Harold Macmillan said the golden rule for governing England was not to offend the Catholic Church, or the Brigade of Guards, and never the miners. 

Miners in Attlee’s government were put in charge of major legislation. 

Bevan the NHS. Griffiths the National Insurance. 

The miners also spent a lot of time encouraging artistic and education programmes. Anyone who saw the pit painters at the National Theatre could not fail to admire their thirst for knowledge. Paul Robeson, in 1938, went and lived among them and the film the Proud Valley still manages to move audiences by its intensity. When he was illegally detained in the US, his passport had been withdrawn, he sang to a miners festival via the telephone.

The enthusiasm was tremendous. The miners produced strong left wing leaders – including Dai Francis. It took them well into the 1950s before Dust disease was recognised as an industrial disease. 

British miners have been among the first to volunteer for service in Spain. 

There is a parallel between the Chilean situation and mining in this country. 

Miners looking for work did as my grandfather did – and they did in the pits of South Wales. I cannot refrain from recalling their extraordinary loyalty in my life. 

In 1963, the four working pits in the Dover constituency voted unanimously with others to make me the Parliamentary candidate for that winnable seat. It brought the full force of the then McCarthyite Labour Party into play – to ban me. 

The miners stood solidly and renominated me. I had obtained an honour that was not for sale. If guilt by association is the charge, I was guilty. 

I still believe they are the Praetorian guard of the working class. And the flag of liberty and humanity is safe in their hands.