MIGRATION ISSUE

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 16th Year

Issue

Issue No.

3

Date Released

Nov 1962

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1MIGRATION ISSUE

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

BFI synopsis: the migration of miners from Durham to work in the coal fields of the East Midlands. At Bilsthorpe in Nottinghamshire, a typical mining village, John Slater interviews local personalities to find out their reactions to these "incomers" and then asks people who have made the move how they find the change in people and place.
NCB Commentary - In 1957 - for the first time in twenty years - Britain suddenly found it was producing too much coal.
Output had to be cut down by a seventh to around two-hundred million tons a year.
One way to cut it down - and other industries have taken this way often enough - would have been to fire a seventh of the miners - one hundred thousand men.
Sir James Bowman, then Chairman of the Coal Board, knew that a nationalized industry must not behave so irresponsibly.
Recruitment of new entrants was stopped; the natural wastage of men leaving the industry was not replaced; the total number of miners dropped rapidly.
But not rapidly enough - and, as deliverate policy, the surplus of coal that kept coming was stocked on the ground - till at one time there was forty million tons of it.
And as a result, Sir James Bowman and the Board were being publicly accused of downright inefficiency.
As production adjusted itself to the new lower output, and the number of miners was steadied by restarting recruitment. the coal stocks were lifted from the ground, the new Chairman, Lord Robens, began to balance this humane policy with a new drive [illegible].
Production must be concentrated in the newer pits and in the best power-loaded faces. Machinery, instead of only working one shift a day, must work on two shifts, or even all round the clock. And the older and more inefficient pits must be closed.
As pits closed, men were offered work in other pits. But the problem was that the new coal industry must geographically be vastly different from the old.
Some coalfields - such as Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire - must be allowed to decline. The new centres of mining must be in the newer coalfields - in Yorkshire, the Midlands and in parts of South Wales.
Instead of transferring to a pit in the next village, men must be persuaded to move hundreds of miles - whole civilizations - away. The transfer has gone on - and must still go on.
But even with help from cash allowances, it raises problems to which there are no easy answers.
I took a trip to a typical Midlands Colliery - not outstandingly modern or large - but completely mechanized, and a unit of an area which claims to be first to have achieved power-loading in all the faces of all its collieries. Eleven hundred men underground, three hundred on the surface; production - half a million tons of coal a year.
The village grew up when the pit was sunk in 1928. It’s a town really with a population of three and a half thousand. It’s eight miles from Mansfield and twelve from Nottingham. No cinema. People must make their won amusements.
I called on Mr. Payton, the N.U.M. Branch Secretary.
So I went to see some of these happy incomers.
But to a family newly arrived from Durham it seemed a different story.
The lady felt the same.
So I looked for Mr. Hooley, who until recently was Manager of the pit.
This is Bilsthorpe Youth Club. They had just finished redecorating when I went to talk to Glyn Edwards. I asked him how a Welshman came to be running a youth club in the East Midlands.
In a first-aid class teaching first-aid, I found Jack Hallam, who they told me had produced shows in the village hall. I asked him what sort of shows they were.
In the Welfare there is a complete small theatre. One-hundred thousand pounds the building cost, and it’s never yet been used in the full way that was intended. Maybe this is where these new arrivals could put their word in - and really make things hum.
Of course, there are the usual activities - a quiet drink ... and Bingo.
But other things do happen.
It isn’t easy - making your own world. And it’s harder still when you come to it from a place that is quite different - a hundred miles away. But, it’s been done before - and it’ll be done again.

Researcher Comments

Commentary recorded at Kays West End Studios on 8th October 1962.

Keywords

Domestic life; Mining

Locations

England; Nottinghamshire; Bilsthorpe

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
Film User   Vol.17 No.197 March 1963, p133.

Credits:

Production Co.

Documentary Technicians Alliance

Sponsor

National Coal Board