TEAMWORK

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 18th Year

Issue

Issue No.

10

Date Released

Jun 1965

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1LONGANNET
2. 2CLUBMEN
3. 3THE WATCHED POT
4. 4TEAMWORK

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: Eight Leicestershire miners who have created a European record in coal production at Rawdon Colliery.
NCB Commentary - Eight Leicestershire men are new champions - world beaters, in fact, at winning coal.
They work in two teams of four men; with two deputies and an overman.
Here is one team:
Alan Wilkinson - chock-man.
Harold Atkins - works on timbering.
Charlie Sidwell - another chock-man.
Arthur Worthington - machine operator.
The deputy working with this team is Charlie Winfieldale.
Off-shift they can relax away from the fast tempo of modern mining. For each of these men has produced 150 tons of coal on a shift - a European record.
Maurice Foulkes is a member of the other team and cutting the grass outside his 400-year old cottage is light work compared with handling this ranging-drum Shearer on one of Rawdon Colliery’s 7-foot faces.
Tom Boulter, a deputy, takes the sting out of a days work at the coal face by relaxing in the garden with his bees.
This is the way 600-tons a shift has been cut on one face - and here are the rest of the other team:
Ken Brown - chock-man.
Stanley Toon - conveyor man.
Alan Clydesdale - overman.
Bill Holland - machine operator.
Each of these men has cut enough coal to fill 12 trucks this size in one working day.
Here then are men who, like many others, are day-by-day increasing the productivity of the nation’s coal mines.
Well done, Rawdon, one of Britain’s safest mines, by the way. And more power to the mechanised elbows of Britain’s new champions.

Keywords

Mining

Locations

England; Leicestershire

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit