At the time of the strike the disparity of miners ranged widely, whilst some earned very good money, that was down to the bonus system. Different pits in the same area and different faces at the same pit could be earning double their workmates if they were coaling well. Facemen and headers got their own specific bonus whilst haulage workers and switch operaters received a sliding scale of the pit average. It was only really the faceworkers on productive faces that got decent money as well as some of the heading teams.
Scargill used the strike for his own agenda as much as anything else, there were plenty of collieries that were ending their natural life and even more that were seriously unprofitable due to geological conditions. There was plenty of activity before the strike proving new coal seams that was intended to sink new pits or expand existing ones where practicable. Such exploration stopped after the strike. Scargill’s biggest mistake was to allow each NUM region to have their own ballot, had he called a national ballot the regions that didn’t vote for a strike in the regional ballot would have striked as a result of the national vote and the result may well have been totally different, though I suspect the miners still wouldn’t have won. I remember that power stations were invisible behind vast stocks of coal reserves, Thatcher knew what was coming and was well prepared.
The pits that have closed down may well be unserviceable but only from the existing sites, new mines can be sunk, indeed there is a programme of work at the moment to re-open some fields, a shaft sinking acquaintance is very busy at the moment preparing for some of that work. The vulnerablity of our energy reserves is well known, it seems the present government is gearing up for a return to coal, albeit to a limited degree initially. We’ll see.
