Did it grate a tad? – I know it did.
This inverted snobbery fuelled, ‘jobs for the boys’ mentality, was simply unsustainable in a strife ridden economy that had not long since seen spiralling unemployment, high inflation and fallen into recession. Even ignoring the reports of cheap European coal imports and the Select Committee report that pits were uneconomic, I couldn’t avoid the feeling that keeping the pits open ‘just because’, was a recipe for disaster.
By the early 1980’s I was very much aware of what was going on. I was a fully paid up married member of the mining community and had strategically placed myself in a terrace house between the family and the in laws so as not to cause friction. For the most part, I’d kept my opinions under my hat and devoted myself to becoming an Accountant and fighting the good fight for coal miner’s daughters who didn’t want to be cleaners. My husband worked 12 hour shifts and weekends and viewed spending some of them sleeping on a transformer as ‘all part of the game’. There were rest days and sick days for him to fill as well as the annual holiday allowance, and whole communities boarded coaches once a year and relocated en masse to the Derbyshire Miners holiday complex in Skegness.