There is a folk lore image of the down-trodden miner, coal grimed face, singing ‘Men of Harlech’ as he is forced down thousands of feet underground with hundreds of his fellow men for the exclusive benefit of a fat uncaring controller – the unacceptable face of capitalism writ large.

It is much promoted by those who would win the votes of South Wales. As much a part, and rightly so, of the national psyche as the freedom fighters of the Irish border lands. It is an image, a snapshot of the past. A truthful image – at that time.

However, the modern coal mining industry is somewhat changed. I have been looking into the sad events at the Gleision Mine in South Wales last month. Whilst the families concerned have my sympathy, as does everyone else who grieves for lost loves, no matter how they died, it is important to see the known facts of the Gleision events clearly.

Mining itself, is no longer a nationalised industry, however the ‘State’ still owns the coal – so in order to extract it, you require a licence – and must comply with Health and Safety legislation, and also pay a nominal amount per tonne extracted to the privately company Mines Rescue Service Limited.

Some of the larger mines, such as those owned by the British Coal Corporation produce millions of tonnes a year and their 18p a tonne contribution towards the Mines Rescue Service (MRSL) provides a million plus towards the cost of the specialist rescue services.

Even so, the total of all mining contributions towards MRSL is only 14% of MRS’s revenue – they have been admirably adept at diversification and are now one of the largest suppliers of Health and Safety training courses in the county. They are a Not For Profit company, so this allows them to subsidise their contractual duty to provide specialist trained staff to assist in mine rescue.

So, armed with the background knowledge, we are set to march off to the Gleision mine – come on, you can manage a verse or two from ‘Men of Harlech’!

Round to the back of the tiny village of Cilybebyll to a fork in the road, along a narrow lane up the hill until far above the River Tawe we find – just a hole in the ground. A drift mine is just that, one reached by foot, no ‘cage’, no looming ‘pit wheel’, no ‘office’, no ‘time machine’, no owner reaching over his vast corporation to check the time on his gold watch – just a hole in the ground.

Unseen by the rest of the village, every day, whenever the coal price was supportive of such activities, a bare half dozen or so men would walk into that hole, and descend to the inner workings, where they must kneel to extract the coal.

They have not been overly successful recently, their returns to the authorities show that they were extracting barely 1000 tonnes a year, virtual pocket money. Back in 2001 they were recording 200 tonnes a week. Their contribution to the Mine Rescue Service last year amounted to £1,800 pounds. In some recent quarters, contributions, based on their self-filed records of extraction, amounted to just £86.

A 15 tonne lorry was employed to haul their coal back to civilisation. Applications were refused to employ a larger lorry, a surprising application, given the level of extraction. Refused just the same on the grounds of the poor access road.

There are only three such mines operating to day in South Wales. By coincidence, one of them, Blaentillery No 2. is owned and operated by the two sons of Dr Malcolm Blandford, a consultant geologist who acted as agent for ‘Coal Direct Ltd’ when they applied for an extension in 2009 to extend the old Gleision seam.

By the time the application was successful in 2010, ‘Coal Direct’ had gone bust with debts of £240,000 and the mine was now owned by ‘MNS’ another local private company.  Local people, local well informed members of the mining community, had opposed the extension because the flooding problems were well known in the area. Dr Blandford handled the application well; MNS was given permission to continue, on condition that they installed complex and robust water management systems including dykes, drainage and pumps.

What we are talking about here is not a large scale mining venture with modern equipment, and capital to employ modern day health and safety backups, but a legal licence by which half a dozen men can extract a resource from the ground and sell it on locally. The amount which they extract is monitored, another inspection was due shortly – the last one was last year…..in between times they fill in forms, declare their revenue, and continue to operate on a shoe string.

Whether the ‘complex and robust’ water management system had ever been installed we shall not find out until the investigation is complete. There has not been another inspection since that condition was imposed.

Gleision required copious amounts of diesel to keep going, the shafts flooded frequently, and thirsty pumps were employed whenever the men were below ground. Now we are getting to the nitty-gritty. When the mine flooded with such devastating results, there simply wasn’t enough diesel left at the surface to allow the many trained men who flooded into the area to help out their colleagues to work with any level of safety. Nor to pump out the deluge which had entered the mine.

Much has been made, by Peter Hain MP in particular, of an alleged ‘squabble’ as to who was going to pay for the extra diesel required.

The Finance Director of Mine Rescue Services Limited, David Lumley, who I spoke to earlier today and who has provided much useful background information for this post, tells me that ‘there were never any discussions as far as we were concerned’ – not just no ‘squabbles’ but no ‘discussions’.

Mr Lumley supervised the finances of a well rehearsed pre-planned operation. The nearby much larger mines of Aberpergwm and Unity provided volunteer mining specialists, for whom they paid the wages, and also the huge quantities of diesel and extra pumps required for the rescue efforts. This is as was to be expected. The Mine Rescue Service is a joint effort, between all mines, and subsidised by the Health and Safety courses.

No surprise to anybody –except Mr Hain, who has not merely been a local MP, but a Minister of State in the then ruling Government for 13 long years.

Hopefully, during the investigation, it will be found that MNS, the current mine owners do actually hold a public liability insurance, as required by law, which will recompense the local mine owners for their investment in diesel – perhaps not ‘within a month’, ‘no idea if they will be paid or not’ as Mr Hain would have you believe, but, if not, eventually from within the joint budget of the Mine Rescue Services.

Yesterday, the mine manager at Gleision Colliery, Malcolm Fyfield, who was himself injured that day, was arrested in connection with the deaths of the four miners. The law requires managers to employ a surveyor whose job it is to provide maps of nearby workings so miners can work a safe distance from them. Regulations state mining should not be carried out within 45 metres in any direction, of a layer of rock containing water, or any disused workings that are not linked to mines. Nor are miners supposed to work in tunnels within 37 metres of any disused mine workings.

Now Mr Hain is calling for a system whereby half a dozen men, operating a laudable local bit of free enterprise, which does admittedly carry horrendous specialised dangers, should be able to call on the tax payer at large to provide, over and above the normal emergency services to which we all contribute, sufficient funds to cover any eventuality, and trained personnel on standby ‘just in case’. He demands that the Mines Rescue Service ‘be properly resourced and provided with access to the Treasury reserve so that its rescue and investigation duties can be properly and professionally discharged without the chaos and dependence upon local goodwill evident at Gleision’.

“Otherwise, should there be another tragedy, both the rescue and investigation could be badly compromised,” Hain said in his report. “Only goodwill prevented that happening at Gleision.”

Cobblers!

No doubt there are many within the mining industry who would prefer not to pay the 18p a tonne levy, would much rather it was shared amongst taxpayers – it would make their own operation much more profitable – remember the million pound contribution from the Notts area to this fund?

Would Hain extend that demand to all elements of free enterprise? What about the risk of coronary disease, suicide and hypertension amongst self employed stock brokers in these days of banking crisis? Does he think the taxpayer should be setting aside money to support them over and above the regular services?

Or does his largesse with our money only extend to his own specialist subject of ‘emotive pleas in support of my electorate’? Why did he do nothing about this problem in those long years of Labour governance?

John October 20, 2011 at 22:54

Sadly this author needs a lesson in maths,her figures need dividing by
100
Blaentillery No2 owned by the Blandfords,has nt worked for the best
part of 12mths
And this local talk of ,Well known to flooding,When did this
mine previously flood?it has to be pumped because it is a Drift mine ,and in a
Wet seam.
There are no unchartered workings,they are all on the colliery
plans,the 37m cautionary barrier was there for the reason of the water in the
flooded workings from the 80s to 2000s.
The Water management you mention
would come into play,when driving a roadway through a cautionary barrier,and
only after First consulting HMI for permission.

boulay October 20, 2011 at 09:08

he was on sky news the other day about this – i am glad someone has
demolished his idiocy. he turned this sad event into an attack on the tories
for not dishing out money to anyone who wants it and for eating babies.

he was suggesting that if people want to set up a dangerous enterprise then
the nation should pay when it goes wrong but not benefit when it goes well –
strangely what the bankers who mr hain despises so much have been doing….

hain is that nastiest of left wing politicians where everything is purely
about gaining the upper hand with the electorate on the short term rather than
being realistic and guarding the interests of the nation.

Barney October 19, 2011 at 20:45

Mr Hain is a proven expert at digging – just mark out a rugby field on top
of the area and there will be no need for any other resources.

Alternatively Mr Warburton will endeavour to break the back of the job.

Engineer October 19, 2011 at 16:41

This could end up as quite a complicated situation.

It is indeed a requirement of mine managers to inform themselves of the
proximity of old workings, but in some instances this can be fraught. The
large distances quoted are (in part) to try to take account of inaccuracies
that may have crept into old survey information, but they can’t take account
of ‘accidental on purpose’ omissions – mines that ‘pinched’ a bit outside of
their licensed limits. One suspects that in some of the more marginal mining
areas, quite a lot of that went on during less regulated times. It’s not
impossible that some very old workings are not recorded at all.

What actually happened may be very difficult to pin down. Surveying a
flooded mine is not an easy task…

The suspicion that Hain is trying to make political capital out of the
tragedy should surprise nobody. The man is one of the slimiest lowlifes in
politics.

Evil Denier (In the
pay of Big Oil) October 19, 2011 at
18:01

Not ‘one of’. The slimiest.
In a large, hotly contested
field.

Dioclese October
19, 2011 at 16:05

Careful you don’t upset the Welsh or you’ll never hear the end of it – see
the comments I got on http://dioclese.blogspot.com/2010/07/welsh-is-dead-language.html

Anna
Raccoon October 19, 2011 at 16:16

An old problem Dioclese – I well remember sitting exams in a Welsh
University when the rubric and admonishment to ‘start now’ was read out at
length in Welsh – and then in English, despite the fact that there were
invariably only three or four Welsh speakers sitting the same exam – and
they miraculously all appeared to have ‘special educational needs’ which
required them to sit in another more private room complete with taxpayer
funded lap top and type their replies, if you please, ‘dyslexia if you don’t
mind’, a dreadful affliction – before the English speakers got a look in. I
learned to recognise sufficient Welsh to give myself a two/three minute head
start on those who waited for the English version!

Wigner’s
Friend October 19, 2011 at 16:25

The English wife of a Welsh speaking friend of mine applied for a job
with Cardiff CC. She stated on the multi lingual application form that she
did not speak Welsh and lo and behold, 3 weeks later, received a letter,
in Welsh only, informing her that she had been unsuccessful. We
immediately sent a several page letter of complaint in arabic (I have
talented friends) which, of course, they had to get translated. Probably
cost the Council Tax Payer but made us feel much better!

Single Acts of
Tyranny October 19, 2011 at 22:52

See this is why I left.

Single Acts of
Tyranny October 19, 2011 at 23:02

I am afraid I have to agree with you. If you put the signs up in Mandarin
and taught the language, guess where all the Chinese foreign investment
would go when they are ready. But oh no, it’s all inward-looking, begging
bowl rattling ‘rape of the fair country’ wallowing in poverty and blaming
England.

Hopeless.