In 2004 the BBC reported on ‘Watching the pits disappear ‘ :
One year later, on the day the year-long miners’ strike was called off, the NUM’s ever defiant president, Arthur Scargill, found a tiny glimmer of hope to offer his battered and broken union members.
“We regard the last 12 months as a tremendous achievement,” he told weary NUM delegates. “Five pits have been saved… at least on a temporary basis.”
I can’t say that at the time I felt inspired to change my opinions.
The same 2004 BBC report also detailed the closure of the pits by those left to dismantle them.
In the 1980s and 90s, mining engineers who had spent all their working lives keeping pits running safely were given the task of now closing them down with a dreadful finality.