National Coal Board Research Articles

Disposal of the Abandoned Mine Workings of Uranium Mines – Case Study of Rožná I Mine, Czech Republic

Having abandoned mine workings, the closure strategy of mine working openings is important in terms of maintaining long-term stability. The paper describes the process of closing the mine workings in the uranium deposit Rožná using unconsolidated backfill. Before backfilling, it is vital to carry out preparatory work underground for ecological, technological or economic reasons. The mine workings backfilling using unconsolidated backfill is preceded by calculations to determine the quantity of the backfill. The stability of the mine workings opening is achieved using a closing sinking platform made of reinforced concrete. The abandonment procedure is framed within the legislation of the Czech Republic, grounded in the handbook by the National Coal Board of Great Britain (NCB, 1982), and has been gradually amended according to the experience with disused mine workings. The Czech legislation dealing with mine abandonment is very advanced and may be applied to modify foreign legislation. The abandonment procedure based on Decree 52 (1997) proposed in this paper is complemented by safety features such as micropilots in the sinking platform or shaft lining check-up before the backfill. The proposed method is applicable in mines with analogous specific conditions, such as mines free of gas hazards and coal dust. The paper concludes with an analysis of risks likely to occur due to incorrect mine closures.

Discrimination through Bargaining Structures: Gender Bias in the National Coal Board and British Coal

In its analysis of the pay determination of British Coal canteen workers, this article introduces that by Kathy O’Donnell, who argues that, in all but name, canteen workers were part of a single bargaining structure that included male surface mineworkers. It is drawn from the evidence prepared for the National Union of Mineworkers in late 1990 in support of an equal pay claim for female canteen workers and cleaners employed by British Coal. The claim was successful. Two points clearly emerge. First, job segregation allowed women workers to be placed in a separate grading structure from men, and even if there was some overlap between the two at the bottom of the one and at the top of the other, the situation was one in which there was no effective difference from the operation of a single grading structure. But for this institutional segregation, there would have been a much more transparent instance of pay discrimination.

Injustice, deindustrialisation and the 1984–1985 Miners’ Strike in Scotland

ABSTRACT The transition out of coal production in Scotland was managed carefully in the 1960s and 1970s, prioritising workforce voice and communal security. Under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative governments in the 1980s, the position changed abruptly. Colliery closures and redundancies accelerated; miners and coal communities were subject to political attack. The criminalisation and victimisation of union officials and activists during the 1984–1985 strike against pit closures was disproportionately greater in Scotland than in England and Wales. The oral history testimony of strike veterans provides a powerful narrative of historical unfairness, imposed by a hostile anti-union government, National Coal Board officials, police officers and sheriffs. Their stories of injustice on picket lines and in communities nevertheless qualify a tendency in oral histories of deindustrialisation to pessimism and loss. Strike veterans spoke positively about the strike and its political meaning. Their memories constitute a usable past, present in subsequent campaigning. The Miners’ Strike (Pardons) Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2022, was an important outcome, making provision for the collective and posthumous pardon of people with strike-related convictions from 1984–1985.

Between the ‘Hand-Loom’ and the ‘Samson Stripper’: Fritz Schumacher's Struggle for Intermediate Technology

For twenty years, during which time he started to promote Intermediate Technology abroad and began writing Small is Beautiful (1973), E. F. Schumacher was an economist with the National Coal Board. As such, he led what he called a ‘double-life’. On the one hand, his work at the coal board involved colossal plant, pollution and brute human labour, the difficulty of which could be alleviated only by the adoption of heavy coal-extracting machinery. As time went on, Schumacher became deeply involved in managing and defending the declining coal sector, through the rationalisation and further mechanisation of its production activities. On the other hand, through his personal involvement in the Soil Association, his reading of the Gandhian literature and his exploration of Buddhism and other esoteric interests, he increasingly sought to promote a non-violent approach to economics, based on appropriate technology and gentle, labour-intensive methods, especially in the so-called developing countries. This paper tells the story of Schumacher's growing struggle to reconcile these contrasting spheres of his life, until such time as he could finally leave the coal board, give himself completely to Intermediate Technology and begin writing his influential book.

Strategic Injustice and the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike in Scotland

Abstract Justice was sorely experienced by Scottish miners in the strike against pit closures and redundancies in 1984–85. In Scotland strikers were arrested by police officers at twice the rate of those in England and Wales and were three times more likely to be dismissed from employment by the National Coal Board. Analysis uses Gramsci as guide: Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government was engaged in an anti-trade union war of position as well as a war of manoeuvre. In Scotland, despite the strike’s legality, police officers and NCB officials outmanoeuvred the strikers by criminalising and victimising their local leaders. Arrests and relatively innocuous public-order convictions were followed by punitive sackings which reinforced the government’s positional untruths about the strike. This targeted action was strategic: to defeat the strike; and weaken opposition to the closure of some collieries while intensifying production at others. The subsequent acceleration of deindustrialisation was a further injustice. In contributing to further political divergence within the UK, however, it provided a route to restorative justice for former strikers and their supporters in Scotland. In 2022 the Scottish Parliament provided a collective and posthumous pardon for more than 500 people with strike-related convictions in Scottish courts.

Science With Purpose: 50 Years of the Institute of Occupational Medicine.

The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) was founded in 1969 by the then UK National Coal Board to complete its nation-wide epidemiological study of lung disease in coal miners, the Pneumoconiosis Field Research. The results quantified risks in the industry and were influential across the world in setting preventive standards. The research, based on epidemiology, was multidisciplinary from the start, and the IOM's broad scientific expertise was applied across many other industries with an increasing focus on environmental measurement and ergonomics. In 1990, as the coal industry declined, IOM became a self-funding research charity with a strong commercial arm. It has expanded its research, often with European collaborators and funding from governments, and has achieved wide recognition. This has most recently been applied during the pandemic in areas of hospital ventilation, personal protection, and viral exposure research, illustrating IOM's ability to respond to new environmental or occupational challenges.

Managerial ideology and identity in the nationalised British coal industry, 1947–1994

This article examines managerial ideology and identity in the nationalised British coal industry. On nationalisation in 1947, the National Coal Board (NCB) – after 1987 the British Coal Corporation – became the largest socialised industry outside of the Communist bloc. Privatised in 1994, as part of liberal market reforms, the industry was a crucible for ideological clashes amongst managers. The article responds to interest in the impact of managerial ideologies and identities on organisations and in the search for illuminating historical case studies in different organisational settings. The authors position those ideological clashes, and distinctive managerial identities, within a moral economic framework.

James (Jim) R. Smith 1 October 1935–12 August 2021

Jim Smith, the former editor of Survey Review, started work as a surveyor with the National Coal Board Opencast Executive in 1958 before moving to Hertfordshire County Council’s Architects Departme...

Moving to a Green Economy? The Story of an 'Unjust' Transition in the UK

Moving to a Green Economy?The Story of an 'Unjust' Transition in the UK Huw Beynon (bio) and Ray Hudson (bio) Coal played a central part in the discussions at the COP26 conference on climate change held in Glasgow in 2021. Here it was established as the most deadly of the carbon fuels with the future of the planet depending upon its eradication. This was a cause some concern for the leaders of China and India and also for some of the smaller economies strongly linked to the coal expert trade, including Colombia and Australia. It was in this context that considerable thought was given to the need to carefully consider the transition from coal and the need for this to be done in a just manner. Prime Minister Johnson had contributed to this debate by asserting that the UK led the way in this regard. In his view Mrs Thatcher, in her defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers and the early closure of the industry that followed, had given Britain a head start in moving towards a green economy. This, however, was no recipe for others to follow. It was in fact the classic case of an unjust transition, which has had serious, and long-term deleterious effects upon the country's economy and society. It shows others what not to do and, though obtusely, this negative exemplar provides elements for a more positive framework of future policy. The Decline of Coal The famous Labour Party politician Aneurin Bevan once described Britain as the 'island built on coal'. In no other capitalist economy was coal mining so dominant or so vital to all aspects of economic and social life (Britain was virtually a single fuel economy until the middle of the 1950s). In 1920 the industry employed 1.92 million workers and the Miners Federation of Great Britain was by far the largest association of miners in the world. This was the high point of an industry that became known as 'King Coal'. Since then, it has been in decline, gradual at first–there were 700,000 miners when the industry was nationalised in 1947–but then rapidly in two extraordinary periods of contraction. We discuss these fully in our book The Shadow of the Mine. The nationalisation of coal was a long-term aspiration of the miners' union and state ownership consolidated the presence of the newly established National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) within the consultation and conciliation structures of the National Coal Board (NCB). From the beginning the union's deep commitment to the industry's success underpinned a highly cooperative relationship with management. However, this was put under strain when the availability of cheap oil from the Middle East saw governments pressing for a severe reduction in coal output. As a result, the numbers employed by the NCB reduced from 665.000 in 1959 to 290.000 in 1970. The fact that this took place in a period of economic boom and social change eased the many difficulties encountered by miners and their families. Many left, looking for opportunities in the new industries, some moved to the old coalfields by government directive. Redundancy payments were introduced by the new Labour government in 1964 which also eased the transition, as did support with the costs of moving, given to miners who wished to remain in the industry by working in another area. However, the overall policy framework was de rigeur, pushed forward by government at a faster pace than was wanted by the trade unions or the management of the industry. Undoubtedly its success owed much to the general macro-economic circumstances, and the positive sense of social change that encouraged many younger men to look for pastures new. Nevertheless, and in spite of all these positive aspects, these closures left their scars. It damaged belief in the progressive nature of nationalisation and paved the way for a new militancy within the NUM. It also affected the coalfield areas disrupting the post-war pattern of full employment, especially in Wales and the North of England where unemployment levels rose and never fully recovered. Generally, it left some feeling that they had been bullied and pushed too...

CO2 Interiors

Are there any ulterior narratives that could be mined through a close examination and interpretation of the coal mine interior spaces? CO2 Interiors is a visual essay that addresses this question. And to do so, it unpacks a meticulously curated group of archival images that expose the covert narratives of colonialism and slow violence embedded in coal mining’s (extra)ordinary interiors. This creative exercise entails integrating text into images that include a 19th Century etching of young children pushing coal-filled carriages through steep mine tunnels; and a still from an animated film produced in the 1950s by the National Coal Board Film Unit in Britain. There is an image of human tissue affected by Black Lung Disease; and a photograph of a former Australian Prime Minister enacting the mythology of the alpha male explorer, plunging into the unknown and forbidden depths of the planet. Collectively, these image/text hybrids posit an experimental narrative—an assemblage—that starkly contrasts with contemporary depictions by the mining industry, focused on the technical and quantitative aspects of the activity or greenwashing its multiscalar and devastating effects. This project engages multiple forms of visual representation (historical, spatial, political, and ideological) that have conjured a mythology of coal mining still present today. In doing so, certain refrains echo and multiply, persisting across time frames and political borders to produce a taxonomy of subterranean effects. Integrating text and images, our devices yield a performative reading that seeks to raise awareness and produce affect. As such, CO2 Interiors amplifies our understanding of coal mining beyond its economic and environmental repercussions and well into its social, political, and cultural implications—especially the spatial ones. While the 2019 Australian Federal Election results attest to the embedded mythology of coal mining that is still impossible to restrain, CO2 Interiors dismantles and reassembles it, recasting the false narrative of progress, equity, and solidarity that has been projected from within the coal mine interior space. This curated assemblage of coal stories accumulates as evidence to be critically analysed in order to truly achieve a sustainable post-carbon future.

Discussion of ‘A thermal maturity map based on vitrinite reflectance of British coals’ Journal of the Geological Society, London , 176, 2019, 1136–1142, https://doi.org/10.1144/jgs2019-055

We welcome this publication on vitrinite reflectance [VR] in British Carboniferous coals. There has been no unifying account for many years; the article demonstrates the value of inter-disciplinary and international collaboration. However, its brevity precludes a comprehensive review of available data and publications, and massed National Coal Board (NCB) data are excluded, which would greatly enhance understanding of maturity variations through the rock-volume, at different rates in very varied coalfields. Nor does the article include VR data from many modern boreholes drilled in un-mined areas - records available at the British Geological Survey (BGS).

‘That rather sinful city of London’: the coal miner, the city and the country in the British cultural imagination, c. 1969–2014

AbstractThe article proceeds from the observation that in the contemporary British cultural imagination, the figure of the coal miner tends to be presented as the embodiment of anti-urban and organicist qualities that in continental Europe are more commonly associated with the peasantry. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Raymond Williams, the article traces the genealogy of this ‘structure of feeling’ back to the time of the miners’ strike of 1984/85 and further back in the 1970s. It argues that the ‘ruralized’ miner was one imaginary in a complex power struggle over the ‘real’ identity of miners that was waged between the industry and the state, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Coal Board (NCB), and, crucially, inside the NUM itself. ‘Ruralization’ was most vigorously promoted by union militants who sought to displace an alternative vision, championed jointly by the Coal Board and union moderates, which had situated miners firmly at the heart of industrial modernity. It was only in the wake of the defeat of the miners in the 1984/85 strike, and during the subsequent cultural reworking of this strike, that this structure finally gained dominance.

Defending the Data

Abstract When sick miners sued Britain's National Coal Board in the 1990s, they did so on the basis of research that linked coal dust exposure to lung disease. But that research was soon under attack in court. Jonny Jacobsen reports on his father's role justifying decades of work on coal miners’ lung disease during landmark litigation

‘Run with the fox and hunt with the hounds’: Managerial Trade-Unionism and the British Association of Colliery Management, 1947–1994

This article examines the evolution of managerial trade-unionism in the British coal industry, focusing on the development of the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) from 1947 until 1994. It explores the organization’s identity from its formation as a conservative staff association to its emergence as a distinct trade union, analysing its policy towards industrial action and strike cover, affiliation to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), colliery closures, and the privatization of the coal industry. It examines BACM’s relationship with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS), the National Coal Board (NCB) and subsequently the British Coal Corporation (BCC). This is considered within the wider context of managerial identity in the coal industry and discussions over the growth of managerial (and white-collar) trade unions in post-war Britain.

Economic Direction and Generational Change in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Case of the Scottish Coalfields*

Changes in economic direction in Britain in the twentieth century were incremental, rarely permanent, and strongly contested, although trends to deindustrialisation, widened inequality and the ostracism of trade unions from policy-making were clear by the mid-1980s. This followed the defeat of the striking miners in 1984–5, a decisive movement in macro-economic direction. This case study of the Scottish coalfields uses generational analysis to illuminate the contested nature of these long-running economic changes. Three distinct trade union generations are identified, each of which was linked to successive ideal-types of economic unit. Each type represented an ever-larger economy of scale and qualitative changes in coalfield employment: ‘Village Pits’, ‘New Mines’, and ‘Cosmopolitan Collieries’. The evolving organisation of production, combined with other powerful experiences in early adulthood, gave rise to different political goals for each successive generation. The first, born in the 1890s, won the primary objective of nationalisation in 1947; the second, born in the 1920s, secured important changes to the manner in which the nationalised industry operated in the 1960s, gaining greater control for the workforce and enhanced economic security for the wider community; the third, born in the 1950s, attempted to defend the social democratic elements of the nationalised order in the 1980s against changing macro-economic strategy and micro-managerial operations which threatened pits, jobs and the voice of the worker in decision-making. Nationalisation, it is shown, was a success from the perspective of the workforce, but only because trade unions compelled the National Coal Board and the UK government to preserve economic security in the coalfields. These victories of the 1960s were overturned, however, by the Conservative government in the 1980s, at enormous cost to coalfield communities and workers.

Restoring the Elsecar Newcomen Engine—High Ideals, Deep Mysteries

Elsecar is an important industrial area, once the powerhouse of the Fitzwilliam dynasty of industrialists. Much of historic interest survives, including extensive remains of its famous ironworks, mid nineteenth century workshops and the unique Newcomen Beam Engine plus its mine-shaft. After decades of National Coal Board (NCB) ownership and an uncertain future, the site was taken over in 1988 by Barnsley Metropolitan Council, who started an ambitious programme of development at the Elsecar Heritage Centre. In 2009 focus turned to the conservation of the engine and funding was obtained from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and the Council to carry out the work, that culminated in an official opening in November 2014. Although much modified over its working life, this engine is the only atmospheric beam engine in the world that remains virtually complete on its original site and over its mine-shaft. It is therefore of international importance, recognized by its Scheduled Monument status. Conservation of the site required adoption of the highest standards. This paper describes the extensive preliminary surveys, including under-water investigation of the flooded mine-shaft, the ethical dilemmas of conservation, and the challenges of interpreting a unique historic site for visitors, especially the difficulty of providing access to a cramped three-storey industrial building. The engine house and environs were restored and reinterpreted in 2009–2014. On a project of international importance high ideals were adopted but some deep mysteries remain.

Aberfan. Lamenting Memory.

October 2016 marked fifty years since the unfolding of a disaster, the name of which has been burnished as a synonym for singular, unimaginable tragedy: Aberfan.On the morning of Friday 21 October 1966, in the small coal-mining village of Aberfan, Wales, a huge torrent of colliery waste amassed precariously in a vast, industrial tip, atop of a valley, gave way. Thousands of cubic meters of coal sludge liquefied and hurtled down the steep hill toward the village, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and a number of nearby houses. One hundred and forty-four died, 116 of them, children.In the ensuing recriminations and official enquiry into the catastrophe, the United Kingdom's National Coal Board was rebuked for extreme industrial negligence. Among the litany of geographical cataclysms, Aberfan was one foretold in village lore but willfully ignored by corporatist interests.As summits of memorial for the fiftieth anniversary reach their zenith, I pause here, in lament.

GIS-based evaluation of mining-induced subsidence susceptibility considering 3D multiple mine drifts and estimated mined panels

This paper presents a case study of subsidence hazard mapping in the vicinity of an abandoned coal mine within geographic information system (GIS) environment. A geospatial database was constructed using mine drift maps, topographic maps, land use maps, road maps, building maps, borehole data, and subsidence inventory maps showing occurrences of past subsidence events. Six raster-type factor layers (i.e., an influential area instability (IAI) layer calculated using multiple mine drifts and estimated mined panels, land use, distance from nearest railroad, distance from nearest road, and slope gradient) were generated and extracted from the database to identify relationships between past subsidence occurrences and the factors. Two IAI factors incorporate the complex effects of ground IAI and are calculated using the depths of each underground cavity and its angle of draw. A weight of evidence model was used to establish optimal correlations, expressed as contrast values (CVs) for subsidence inventory data, and inputs of all factors. Six CV layers (one for each factor) were linearly combined to generate a subsidence hazard map representing the relative vulnerability to subsidence in the study area. The area under the cumulative frequency diagram technique was then used to verify predicted subsidence hazards by comparing estimated susceptibility rankings over the entire range of grid cells with actual subsidence occurrences; the proposed GIS analysis model showed an accuracy of 91.09 % in the prediction of subsidence occurrences. Moreover, field surveys showed buildings with severe subsidence-related damage (damage level 4 or 5, according to the National Coal Board) in regions with very high subsidence hazard indices. Finally, a factor negatively correlated with subsidence prediction (slope angle) was determined from the sensitivity analysis.

The Closure of Michael Colliery in 1967 and the Politics of Deindustrialization in Scotland

Michael Colliery in east Fife was the largest National Coal Board (NCB) unit in Scotland when it closed in 1967, following a disastrous fire which killed nine miners. The NCB, operating within the constraints of the Labour government’s policy framework, decided not to invest in Michael’s recovery, although this would have secured profitable production within five years and access to thirty-plus years of coal reserves. This outcome, which had major local economic implications, demonstrates that deindustrialization is a willed and highly politicized process. The Labour government ignored workforce entreaties to override the NCB’s decision and invest to bring the pit back into production, but made significant localized adjustments to regional policy that within a year attracted a major employer to the area, the Distillers Company Limited. The article relates the closure to moral economy arguments about deindustrialization. It shows that coal closures in the 1960s, while actually more extensive than those of the 1980s, were managed very differently, with attention to the interests of the workers and communities affected, and an emphasis on cultivating alternative industrial employment.

Transgressing the Moral Economy: Wheelerism and Management of the Nationalised Coal Industry in Scotland

This article illuminates the links between managerial style and political economy in post-1945 Britain, and explores the origins of the 1984–1985 miners' strike, by examining in longer historical context the abrasive attitudes and policies of Albert Wheeler, Scottish Area Director of the National Coal Board (NCB). Wheeler built on an earlier emphasis on production and economic criteria, and his micro-management reflected pre-existing centralising tendencies in the industries. But he was innovative in one crucial aspect, transgressing the moral economy of the Scottish coalfield, which emphasised the value of economic security and changes by joint industrial agreement.