1967

Abstract

Abstract This chapter charts perceptions about miners and the coal industry in the later 1960s. It falls into three sections. The first section looks at the debate surrounding the publication of the Labour government’s White Paper on fuel policy in November 1967. Whereas policymakers regarded the industry as a liability inherited from a dark past, the National Coal Board (NCB) sought to project a contrasting image of a forward-looking, future-oriented industry. The second section focuses on the miners’ official voice, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). It details the union’s position on the future of the industry and demonstrates the impact of generational change on perspectives about the past among mining trade unionists. The third section shifts attention from the industry to the people working in it. Miners were praised as ‘model workers’ across the political spectrum—as hard-working, adaptable, and productive. Social scientists and artists, by contrast, developed a rather different image of coal miners, depicting them as ‘proletarian traditionalists’ who embodied the very antithesis of the modern ‘affluent worker’. Testimony from ordinary miners, meanwhile, suggests that the people working in the industry were keenly aware of the predicament facing it, and were eager to resolve the crisis in a way that would do least harm to themselves and their families.