Miners go on march to mark end of coal in Yorkshire village

The piece of coal took thousands of years to form underground, and on Saturday it sat briefly in bright sunshine before being buried once again in the village cemetery as part of a poignant ceremony to mark the closure of the pit.

Coal has been part of life in Maltby, near Rotherham, since the colliery opened in 1908, and until earlier this year, nobody really believed that its owners would abandon the millions of tonnes miners say remain beneath the surface.

But as the village’s brass band led hundreds of people from the pit gates to the cemetery through the centre of a community which owes its very existence to mining, the expressions of the faces of onlookers showed a piece of history was being made.

Memories of marches staged during the miners’ strike were stirred, but this time people filmed the event on mobile phones and iPads undreamt of in the 1980s, and instead of a sense of defiance there was a sense of defeat.

Nick Harris, a 41-year-old miner who has worked underground since he was teenager, organised the march after he and the remaining few members of the Maltby branch of the NUM felt the closure should not go unmarked.

He said: “This is not a celebration. It’s like a death. There is nothing to celebrate. We have lost our livelihoods. There is no need for this pit to close. It would have cost £15m to keep it open. What’s that when you are talking about 550 jobs?

“With investment this pit could have gone on until 2025, but who is prepared to make that investment? I am now on a rolling contract week-to-week pulling out the machinery and cables which will be sold by the company.

“There’s a market for this machinery, because it’s all going abroad. We are the only country in the world not interested in coal production. When we are done in six to eight weeks that’s it – we are on the dole.”

But Mr Harris, a father-of-four from Hucknall in Nottinghamshire, is one of many of Maltby’s last miners not from the village, and it was suggested that less than 50 locals worked at the pit when the closure decision was made.

Dick Hawley, 90, started at Maltby Colliery as a haulage lad at the age of 14 in 1937 and retired as a pit deputy in 1983 when he was 60. He was born in the village and has lived in his former colliery house since he was a small child.

“I don’t think it will make a lot of difference to the village now, because it’s not like it used to be when I started down the pit. Everybody who lived here worked there, and now not many men who live in Maltby work at the pit,” he said.

“I live in a street where there are 28 houses. Every house used to be a pit house, but now only three are lived in by people who worked at the pit and it is the same up and down the village. It is just not the same as it used to be.”

Today, Maltby has a population of around 17,000 people and is one of the most deprived areas in Rotherham and South Yorkshire. It lies in the Rother Valley constituency and its MP Kevin Barron, worked at Maltby himself.

At Saturday’s march Mr Barron was heckled by some of the miners, who accused him of doing little to help them save the colliery. He said he had done all he could but the decision by owners Hargreaves Services had to be accepted.

He added: “When I was first elected as the MP for this constituency I had six coal mines and a big mining workshop. This is the last colliery to close so this is a big day. I worked here myself for 18 years.

“I remember a similar march taking place here in 1992, and at that time everybody said this colliery was finished, and it is still here. We now need to stage talks about what is going to happen here on this site.

“I have been involved in this issue for many years, and done all I could, but in the end this is a decision that the workforce has had to come to terms with.”