Artist reaches back to mining origins to create banner

Created by artist Andrew Turner, the banner took two years to make.

Turner went to Leeds College of Art in the 1960s and was president of the students’ union there before moving on to the Royal Academy in London.

He returned to Leeds in the 1970s and was a designer with Leeds University Students’ Union while pursuing his work as a professional artist.

He lived with his wife and two daughters in Chapeltown, and later in Guiseley and Rawdon, before moving to his present home in Todmorden near the Yorkshire-Lancashire border.

He was born into a mining family in West Lothian in Scotland in June, 1939, and for a time was a trawlerman.

Before coming to Leeds, he attended art college in Edinburgh.

His lifetime’s work has included the creation of two dozen trades union banners, hailed as some of the most striking in the rich history of British trades union banners.

Women Against Pit Closures was formed after a rally of 5,000 women in Barnsley in 1984 at the height of the year-long anti-closures strike.

The organisation continues to operate although the UK’s coal mining industry has been reduced to just five deep mines, compared with about 180 which existed before the strike against pit closures.

With offices at the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers in Barnsley, WAPC maintains international links with pit communities in countries which include Australia, the United States of America and Cuba.