Those of you who have been paying attention will recollect I wrote a piece a short while ago entitled “It Was a Very Good Year” about my experiences during the Covid lockdowns.  I explained I’d read that for Spike Milligan the Second World War was the best time of his life.  He recognised the horror and pain which afflicted so many others but was honest enough to admit that, for him, it was the best of times. Likewise, for me too, so was Covid.

Perhaps less shocking, probably because first hand memories of this will only reside within the purview of the over-50’s, is my experience of the Miners’ Strike of 1984.

For many this year-long conflict was the most socially, economically and politically seismic event of the 1980’s.  On the one side were 250,000 miners (less those from the likes of Nottinghamshire who refused to strike) striking against the closure of uneconomic pits – that’s right, pits that mined coal at a loss; with, on the other, the mobilised forces of the state, its government and police forces.

The conflict was personified on the Right by the vindictive Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her Coal Board Chairman axeman, Ian MacGregor and, on the Left by the tactically inept and gullible Arthur Scargill.  Another episode of lions and donkeys.  Every night TV news would show violent picket line confrontations between striking miners and police, the most iconic of these being at Orgreave Coking Works near Sheffield.

I was a jumped-up junior manager at the time, not in the NUM but in the British Association of Colliery Managers.  Managers were seconded with the NUM’s approval to pits on safety duties – keeping the mines from flooding and gassing.  I was sent to North Gawber mine near Barnsley to work in the Control Room, monitoring electronically the efficiency of water pumps and ventilation fans and the movements by radio and telephone of engineers underground doing physical examinations.

We worked a 4-on, 4-off, 8 hour, 3 shift pattern for which we received a £42 per diem on top of our normal salary.  I had never been so time- and cash-rich in my life before.

Night shifts were the best when me and my mate were left in sole charge of the mine.  That’s when we had security duties patrolling the pit top every couple of hours, ostensibly to prevent thieving.  In reality if we saw any tell-tale torchlight we’d patrol the other way.  Getting your head stoved in wasn’t worth 42 quid.  The rest of the night was spent ploughing through dirty mags.

In winter a brazier was lit at the downcast shaftside so the warmth might be sucked into the mine to help prevent the icing up of the cage mechanisms and ropes.  A ripping wheeze was to piss on the brazier as the off-going shift of engineers was being hauled up.  It created immense clouds of evil smelling steam which the cage had to pass through.  You made sure you weren’t around when they got to the pit top.

Talking of winter braziers, on one dayshift a bobby from the Lancashire Constabulary stuck his head round the Control Room door to tell us he’d lit the pickets’ brazier for them.

“You what?” we asked.

“I’ve lit the brazier for them” he said.  “They said it was my job”.

We fell about laughing.

The enduring legacy of my stint at North Gawber though was budgicide.

It was the job of each shift to feed and water the pit canaries.  (No, they weren’t used for gas detection anymore; they were just pets).  To cut a long and embarrassing story short, I forgot.  When I next showed up for my 4-on I found the birds all hanging by their necks in the aviary with a huge sign from Frank Fynn, the Manager,  “WHO’S KILLED THESE FUCKING BIRDS?”.

I worked over 20 years in the mining industry and would have liked to have been remembered by any other of my minor achievements, of which there are admittedly precious few.  But when old timers like myself meet to chew the fat they always greet me with “Aren’t you the silly twat that killed the birds?”.

Excellent times.