As requested in the letter to the Review last week by R.S. Walker I would like to be among those who show their support for Elaine Morman who aims to become the first woman freeminer. Her first letter was wonderful to read both for her commitment to become a free miner and her breadth of knowledge about the mining community here in the Forest of Dean.
To my mind, her ability to argue her case so passionately should elevate her to the Pantheon of ground-breaking heroines along with Elizabeth I, Joan of Arc, and the Pankhursts – not forgetting all those unknown heroines who worked "on the bank" in countless mines up and down the country and who toiled in the 19th century towing trucks up inclines deep underground in the pits of the Industrial Revolution..
That a woman should want to add such passion and dignity to the role of miner is incredible to me. My dad was a collier in the North Warwickshire coalfield. He went down the pit in 1924 at the tender age of 14. His dad (my grandad ) a collier also, was a man who didn't like this son and he would sometimes set off for work ( my dad told me) with the words "I hope the bloody roof falls on your head!") That's flesh and blood – not always nice people!
By 1940 my dad was already exhausted by work on the coal face, but he still went into the Pioneer Corps for the duration of the war. He was on the ack-ack guns along the channel, dug out blitz survivors in London and went to Normandy in 1944. Afterwards he went back down the pit for a few years in the 1950s but before the end of the decade he was sorting coal and working on the top of the spoil heap. The fate of old miners was to end up "On the Bank" on low pay.
I avoided going down the pit and by the time I left home in 1964 he was ill, out of the pit and working as a street cleaner in his last
years before retirement. Mining, although nationalised, was still one of those industries where the longer you stay in the industry the poorer you get as your health and ability declines. That was the experience of our family of seven.
I was raised in a National Coal Board semi, in fact a converted Dutch barn, out in the countryside – corrugated iron roof, no hot water, outside lavatory, open range and fire and a load of coal each month if my dad had worked regularly that month.
I got out into factory work as the coalfield died. Later, in my 30s, I got a polytechnic degree and then into teaching.
Elaine Mormon's aim to become a woman miner brings pride and honour to a job that has often been treated with contempt and neglect in this country.
If she succeeds it would make me hold up my head a little higher about my own origins and add to my joy at being able to spend my retirement amongst Forest folk who remind me so much of those forgotten people of the mining communities who were spread amongst the villages and towns of this country until their final dissipation in the 1980s.
I must express a personal interest in Elaine's aim although I do not know her personally. In the late 1970s, in my first job as a further education teacher in inner London, I taught physical geography at GCE A-level and would bring students out the field study centre at Trellech, Caer Llan, and at the big ILEA Geography field centre at Ty Morwydd, the old Convent, in Abergavenny.
A visit to the Iron Ore Mines at Clearwell Caves was always first on our itinerary so I could give a little lecture on the geology of the Forest of Dean before pressing on with teaching the geology of industrial South Wales and the geomorphology of the uplands of the Black Mountains.
Lean and lanky Ray, who, in 1979, showed us around the cave, was a secret heart-throb to my fellow (female) Geography teacher! Alas, I am no longer in touch with her to tell her that I have just now settled for retirement in this wonderful area so redolent with, for other areas, the past strengths and good-natured communities of industrial Britain. – Joe Orton, Prosper Lane, Coalway.