If he was lucky enough to avoid an accident: Emphysema, Pneumoconiosis, deafness and Vibration White Finger were all common side effects of being a miner and large amounts of money were paid out in compensation in the years after the strike. The one side effect that was, to my knowledge, never documented and certainly never compensated, was that retiring miners often didn’t live long enough to enjoy it. It was not uncommon for newly retired miners to fade away once the impetus of working down the pit was no longer a part of their lives, which could have been as long as fifty years. My enduring evidence of this is the related account of miner who, a few days after retiring, got up as he would for his day shift and was found dead at the kitchen table with no obvious cause of death.
The 1984 Miners Strike
