POLISH VISIT

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 8th Year

Issue

Issue No.

4

Date Released

Dec 1954

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1POLISH VISIT
2. 2DOSCO
3. 3NEW LINE
4. 4MINK

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 4

Summary

BFI Summary - British trade union delegations visit Poland
NCB Commentary - Slater: Tom Doyle, miner and union official from Kent, reports on Eastern Europe.
Doyle: In June of this year a party of British Trade Unionists visited Poland. I was among them and remember well the greeting we got from Polish Trade Unionists at Warsaw Airport.
We weren’t all miners, some of us were metal workers, ship-builders, and foundry workers. For the first three days we looked around the rebuilding of the city of Warsaw. We noticed particularly how the war-shattered city has been rebuilt in the traditional architecture wherever possible. New areas are, of course, developed in modern style. With our fellow trade-unionists we made a pilgrimage to the memorial put up in memory of the heroes of the ghetto.
Talking to our guides we began to realise just what Warsaw must have been through. But as miners we were interested in seeing something of the Polish Coal Industry.
At Bytom Colliery, near Stalinograd, we went down one of the biggest Polish pits. Here they are working 24 feet of coal in three 8 ft. slices. 4 1/2 thousand workers produce 6,000 tons of coal a day here, with the help of a lot of machines, but the conditions underground wouldn’t always please a British mines inspector.
When we came up we were a bit shaken to find the colliery band playing in the colliery gardens: but it’s a regular event.
After cleaning up we had a look round the surface buildings and were impressed by the Medical Centre and the Solarium where miners get a regular does of artificial sunlight.
Then the whole bunch of us trouped off to meet a Polish miner and his family in their own home. Though there wasn’t much room by the time we had all crowded in, we got a fair idea of how he lived and a good sampling of Polish hospitality.
In Poland both colliery officials and men wear uniform but we caught our miner in an off-duty moment.
None of us miners had been to Poland before, but our short visit behind the iron curtain has whetted our interest in how other nations live and work, especially in the mining industry.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded 5 November 1954.

Keywords

Entertainment and leisure; Domestic life; Mining; Labour relations

Locations

Poland

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
Film User   Vol.9 No.109, November 1955, p570.
The National Archives COAL 32   /3 Scripts for Mining Review, 1949-1956

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Commentator

John Slater

Sponsor

National Coal Board