The end of deep coal mining in Britain: ‘They’ve knocked us down’

After surviving Margaret Thatcher and myriad strikes, the closure of the Kellingley colliery heralds the end of the British coal mining industry. Taking with it decades of camaraderie and history, this local tragedy is shrouding Yorkshire in sadness

“It could be me and 10 others, or we could be 300, it’s always hard to know with a march,” says Chris Kitchen, secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). But Keith Poulson, the union’s branch secretary at Kellingley colliery in north Yorkshire – whose closure later this month is the reason for the demonstration planned for 19 December – is thinking bigger. He believes that as many as 2,000 people could attend, “because it’s the last deep coal mine”. He expects a media scrum along with miners and their families, and says: “You won’t be able to move for TV crews on the verge out there. If we’d only had as much attention when we were trying to keep the place open, then it might have been a different tale we’re telling now.”

There is so much bitterness here that the Kellingley miners rejected an offer by management to lay on a buffet and a brass band to mark their last day at work. Then, at a 40th birthday party a few weeks ago, two women whose partners are among the 451 men still working at Kellingley decided they would arrange something. They fixed on a march modelled on one held in January, when the local Labour and Conservative MPs Yvette Cooper and Nigel Adams joined calls for the mine – which is in Adams’ constituency but so close to Cooper’s that she, too, is heavily involved – to be saved.