It is 60 years since the region’s coalmines were nationalised. Mark Andrews talks to a mining stalwart who recalls it signalling the end of some very harsh conditions.

They don’t call it the Black Country for nothing. The West Midlands was built on the back of its coalmining industry, and for many families in the region, mining still runs deep in the blood.

Some people like Brian Rollins have never known anything different.

“My father was a miner, my uncles were all miners, and my grandfather was a miner,” says Brian, who worked in the industry for around 40 years.

When he first started work at Cannock Wood Colliery in the late 1940s, he might as well have changed his name.

“My father was Albert, and everybody knew him, so I became known as Albert’s Lad,” he said.

“My father was a cricketer, and I would sometimes play in the colliery cricket team, so they all knew me when I started.”

Harsh

Young Brian was one of the first mineworkers who worked under the newly nationalised National Coal Board management, and remembers his generation was the first to have proper training in the industry. Some people might have found it a tough job, but it was nothing like as harsh as it had been in his father’s day.

“There used to be a system prior to the First World War called ‘Buildas’,” he says. “If they called ‘Buildas’ before half a shift had been completed, the men would be sent home, and they wouldn’t get paid. They used to use it as a way of getting the men to work for nothing.”

One vivid memory Brian has was of his father making knee pads at home for all the men who worked under him.

“After nationalisation, they were provided with the pads, but all the ones for his men were made by him in our house on a Sunday” he says.

“He used to beg old tyres from a garage, and cut them up, and all the men used to come to our house to collect them.”

Brian says the miners were usually employed on a casual basis, and this meant there were some very lean times during the summer months. “The demand was low during the summer, so they would very often only get two, three or maybe four shifts a fortnight,” he says.

“If you go a fortnight with only three days work, you are obviously going to suffer. They had to go and get other work, doing all sorts of things.”

The process of nationalisation began in 1938, when realising the likelihood of war, the Government announced it would be taking ownership of Britain’s coal reserves at a cost of around £680 million, and the deal was finally completed in 1942.

But the real change took place after the Second World War, when it was realised that coal production would need to increase significantly for post-war reconstruction.

The West Midlands Divisional Coal Board, which had its headquarters at Himley Hall, near Dudley, was charged with increasing production from its 150 mines from 16 million tons a year to 24 million.

The board’s labour director Mr GH Jones said at the time: “With the team spirit and determination on the part of all, I am confident we can give the country the coal it requires and the mineworkers the fuller life they deserve.”

One of the big changes that came was the recruitment of miners from Eastern Europe.

“When nationalisation came about there was an influx of people from places like Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, they came to work in the mines,” says Brian.

“The thing is, they were from different countries, but when you meet people underground who are from the same working culture, you see them as being the same sort of people.”

Qualified

There was a down side though. To meet the ambitious production targets, the National Coal Board invested heavily in modernising the mines, but it was a slow process.

“The Coal Board was in a desperate position to make as much as it could, in rundown pits, for the benefit of the country. It was very difficult.”

Brian started work at Cannock Wood in 1949 as a trainee mining surveyor, moving to Walsall Wood Colliery in 1955 when he had qualified, and remaining until it closed 10 years later. His job included overseeing operations at the smaller, privately-run mines, and says some of the old penny-pinching practices continued even as recently as the 1970s.

“There was this mine owner, a wealthy man, who wanted to do something that was not legal,” he says.

“I told him he could not do it, so he put a big roll of bank-notes on the table – and they weren’t £1 notes – and said ‘can you get off so-and-so’s back’. I told him I was not for sale, and he looked quite nonplussed by that.”

Brian continued to work in mining until his retirement in the late 1980s, at a time when the industry was showing signs of irreversible decline.

But he says the camaraderie that mineworkers develop during their days down the pits never desert them.

“I sometimes see old miners around, and ask them what they are doing,” he says.

“They say they are working in a factory, and when I ask how its going, they say ‘it’s not the same’.

“If you’ve worked down the mines, you know what that means.”