MINING MEN

This is the story of the last generation of British miners fathers and sons brothers and comrades big hitters and broken men strikers and scabs Men for whom the masculine world of pit was all they had ever known who reluctantly emerged into the daylight for the final time and others who were happier to consign the dust and darkness to the past It explores how these men felt when the pits were closed and what happened next including former miners who became factory workers detectives driving instructors counsellors the local mayor and one who even ended up working on Fleet Street Featuring accounts from Ayrshire to the South Wales Valleys from the People s Republic of South Yorkshire to the Sunshine Corner Coalfields of Kent each chapter offers a different perspective of the industry Britain s last deep coalmine closed in 2015 yet just fifty years ago the mining industry was a juggernaut employing over 250 000 workers Combining new personal interviews with extensive archival research Emily P Webber illuminates the extraordinary history of the industry once considered the backbone of Britain By situating the miners strike of 1984 85 in a longer history of the coalfields we can understand why miners and their families fought so hard against p