BLACK MINERS MUSEUM

My cousin, Briscol Asfold, worked at Firbeck Colliery, Nottinghamshire. I later moved on to Firbeck Colliery then to Gedling Colliery, Nottinghamshire from 1965 to 1973. I remember my check number [miner’s ID token] was 401.

I remember one bloke, a Jamaican man from St Anns, Nottingham who was working in the stable hole and he was packing stones for the roof and the roof came in on him. He was badly hurt and off work for quite a while. We had to spend a lot of time to dig him out. He was lucky not to have any fractures to the head but had a lot of broken bones. He was alright though and came back to work after a couple of years.

Most of the workers at Gedling pit were Jamaicans as well as Polish and other nationalities. For one shift, there were about 300 or 400 men or more working across different seams. There was well over a thousand men at Gedling. With my generation, we were just labourers and the younger men were fitters, electricians and all sorts of skilled workers. I never liked the pit work. It was dusty and dangerous and really hot down in the mine. It wasn’t my plan to stop in mining – it was a job. As soon as I could leave mining, I moved on.”

The danger, dust, rock falls was bad and the travelling was difficult. The pay, compared to some places, was good. Frederick Darling got hit by a Panzer train. How he is still alive, I don’t know. That’s was why I didn’t want to work on the coal face. Coal face workers, worked through drawings and common sense.”

And I wasn’t very good, you know, foreman and bosses were very aggressive towards blacks in them days, you know, we used to get the bad jobs, you know. So, I stopped there [ Gedling Colliery] for about two months working with the props and equipment and then I went on and got a job on the Corporation, as a bus conductor.”

I couldn’t believe it. The Chargehand was there who should have prevented this but he just looked on. Greeny was not fighting back but he managed to bear it. I jumped over the stage load to stop this. That was one thing you were not supposed to do down in the pit as you could be sacked immediately.

Miners’ Strike of 1972:
The 1972 strike, I was on the picket line. They cooked a big pot of food. People brought food along the Gedling Road to throw into the pot to boil.
‘Come on Big Albert, we want you at the front!’ they said. I thought, when the police see me, a big black man, they will beat me so ‘you go at the front’, I said. I am more sensible than that. You have to be smart when working with them. So I went to the back. It was a case of surviving because you don’t get the same privileges as them. The police drank their soup with the white strikers. I thought this strike is not for us black men. After the 1972 strike, I said I was not going on no picket line again.

The Future
Coal mining would have been a help for young people but this isn’t possible now.”

Memories of humour:
We used to play ‘hide and seek’ in the coal mine because we finished our work quickly. But one day I nearly died. We were waiting for the loco [train] to come to take us back and I decided to hide in a manhole. I started to feel heavy and sleepy. I couldn’t move my hands and legs and realised it was gas. All I could do was to bow my head forward out of the manhole. Luckily, I felt a gust of air, which brought me back to my senses. It took two days to recover and get better. I never played hide and seek again! I thanked Jesus.”

I couldn’t believe it. The Chargehand was there who should have prevented this but he just looked on. Greeny was not fighting back but he managed to bear it. I jumped over the stage load to stop this. That was one thing you were not supposed to do down in the pit as you could be sacked immediately.

Miners’ Strike of 1972:
The 1972 strike, I was on the picket line. They cooked a big pot of food. People brought food along the Gedling Road to throw into the pot to boil.
‘Come on Big Albert, we want you at the front!’ they said. I thought, when the police see me, a big black man, they will beat me so ‘you go at the front’, I said. I am more sensible than that. You have to be smart when working with them. So I went to the back. It was a case of surviving because you don’t get the same privileges as them. The police drank their soup with the white strikers. I thought this strike is not for us black men. After the 1972 strike, I said I was not going on no picket line again.

The Future
Coal mining would have been a help for young people but this isn’t possible now.”

 It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s who you do it with. The one brotherhood, just men alone, you know what I mean, you work underground, you come up and shower together in the same shower, all men in the shower, all men running around naked in the shower, all the jokes, you get changed you go out and you come back and do the same thing over and over. It’s the working class surviving, you see, I never thought of it that way until I went down the pit. I suppose if I’d have gone the other way I would have advanced, I wouldn’t have seen that side of life.

Memories of miners’ social life:
I used to go to the Gedling’s Miners’ Welfare. It was ok. It’s a friendly atmosphere to go and meet other folks and just talk and mix with your friends and go for, at first you can go out for a drink with them, find out what they’re like, what we call it, your above ground, up top, you go and have a drink with them and see what they’re like. So, it was like meeting somebody underground and they’re all friendly but when you actually see them in their own space, you want to know are they still this friendly or are they really racist. Like you’ll get many funny racist jokes with their friends, you know what I mean. I used to get a lot of that, they’d take the piss out of a black fella, oh ‘Dave’s alright, he’s one of us’. I don’t understand that.”

I was straight down the pit in 1974. I had training at Moorgreen for six weeks, then you start from the beginning as supplier in your first year, then I became a belt fitter. I stayed at Gedling Colliery until it closed in 1991.”

I was a coal face worker and used a pick and shovel. The shot fire put dynamite into the rock to blow it down. My first wages was £7 and 10 shillings. And each year we had a pay rise.
You had a clean locker in the morning and then you go down to your dirty locker and put your pit clothes on. You show your number to the onsetter and he puts the check number on the board. This made them know you were down the pit and if anything happen to you down the pit they would know something is wrong because you didn’t come out. When I first started at Gedling, my number there was number 2. At Babbington Colliery, my number there was 465. Everybody who goes down the pit has a number to identify you.

Memories of camaraderie:
Everybody helped each other out – it didn’t matter about colour. We got on well together. Quite a few black miners worked on my shift. We got on well together. There were two chaps from St Kitts and were working there a long time before I started. They have both died. One died from coal dust on his chest.”

We used to run jokes with my colliery mates. Most miners are dead and gone now – like Charlie Davies. There are not many of use left now.

Memories of the strike:
The 1974 strike…we go through it. It didn’t last long, unlike the last one in 1984/85. The 1984/85 strike Scargill was speaking the truth but went about it the wrong way. He should have put the vote to the members. We would have not lost that strike if he had out it to the unions. Scargill went about it alone. I got no certificate or thank you letter when I left the pit in 1986. I never worked again after I left mining. I never kept anything [documents/ objects] from my time as a miner. I finished and that was it.”

So, yes, Thoresby was the last Nottinghamshire coal mine. You’d get government ministers come in and promising this and we’re looking into this to see what we can do for you, oh yes, I remember lots of talk.

Well, you had to have meeting upon meeting and over the last three or four years, you had meetings and the targets got stronger and they wanted more coal. We kept trying to make things work. But, it was never going to happen so we all knew it were coming and then eventually you had a meeting, a canteen meeting, saying ‘sorry boys but we’ve tried, we’ve tried but it’s not sustainable, we can’t get any money from the government, we’ve tried to go to Europe for loans and this, that and the other and it weren’t working’ so they just said no, ‘the pit’s going to have to shut’. So, we had a gradual phase-out and development finished one year and then we kept coaling until we called it the last face team then that finished and we went in the shaft team. My team closed the pit basically, we capped it, put the seal across both shafts. At that time, I was the chargeman [supervisor], so we were the last ones out, we were the last ones to finish.”

I got a false information back in the West Indies that you could come to England, ‘walking in the street paved with gold’ and especially if you go into the mining industry for five years, you will earn what you need, and you can go back to the West Indies. And so, my time in England was only supposed to be for five years. But I’m here now what 57 years.

I had some problems when I first started at Wollaton Colliery in 196. I was the first one and then another black chap and then we didn’t get the same amount of money that the white folks were getting. They were talking about money, then we all just started talking. About £6 10 shillings per week, that’s what my wages was. And of course, the white man, the white maintenance workers were getting more than I, they were getting about £7 for the same job. My overman was very, very kind, kind-hearted and he realised I was doing the same work and he decide to up my payment to £7. Lot of the chaps that we worked with they were very upset because the black man was getting the same price.

Eventually, it worked out because those days the union wasn’t as forceful as it is today you see, I’m going back many years now. We didn’t fight as individuals because eventually things ironed itself out so we all just like become like brothers, working in the mine. Once we get into the mine, we are miners, colour had nothing to do with it because we relied on each other for our survival. Once you got into the mine we’re brothers, when we get back out of the mine we’re different. The people there were nice but the thing about it is that, as a black man in the arena, with the whites, you were not on the same pay as them. They were getting more money than you was.”

So, the first thing she did, I think probably a week later after I arrived, probably a couple of days, actually. She went to Fords shop in Nottingham, which used to be in Slab Square, I think. Fords, like, they sell all sorts of stuff, clothing and all sorts. And she bought me two pairs of long johns and three vest, were like T-shirts. Thick blue ones, never forgot them. And these long johns were like the cowboys wear in the western movies, the crotch hanging down. They were horrible. So, I used to wear them. Even through that summer, I had to wear them.”

“Coal mining has given me so much experience, not only in human behaviour. We need to be remembered. There’s no depiction. There’s nothing about, because we say, all miners are black. We are, till we get showered down there, when we come out of the pit, and then you can see, oh shit, yeah. I couldn’t believe I’ve done 18 years down there at Sutton Colliery. I remember driving down the pit lane on the Friday, looking at all those terraced houses where the ex-miners live, and think, Jesus Christ, 18 years I’ve walked up here and I’ve driven up and down this road.”

You can’t explain to a person outside of mining about mining, unless you’ve worked down the pit, so it doesn’t matter where you come from, I suppose, in the world, all miners can actually relate to each other, so that’s a good thing.

It was me dad who introduced me to the pit ‘cos he was well-known then and he got me a job then. I never encountered racism at first because I think my dad paved the way for me. He was a well-known guy down the pit. His name was Herbert Nembhard and they used to call me ‘young Herbie’ when I came down the pit after that. ‘Oh, it’s young Herbie, look, young Herbie’ and the miners then used to talk about him with great passion. ‘Your dad is an amazing guy, hard worker and always chipped in’ and it’s a great thing to hear and you know, you trying to walk in your dad’s shoes.

The good thing about Gedling pit was it was a multinational pit. I think that mentality, the village mentality, kind of overlapped occasionally but you dealt with it. It wasn’t a place for people who were wilting, you know, frail-minded type. You had to be a strong character to survive down there. If you didn’t, people would pick up on it straight away and have you for lunch, really. It helped a lot of black miners working down there and Asian miners, I think that kinda softened it a bit because people were used to that. I think if you’re looking at racism, I suppose, the real point of racism really came when I left Gedling to go to Rufford, being a predominantly white pit, Mansfield.”

because obviously the hatred of lots of miners, he said everyday he was just praying that they wouldn’t paint stripper his car or something like that because apparently it was very common. In fact, in some cases, he said the animosity over the strike when he went to Yorkshire was far like, they were more concerned that he was a Nott’s miner than he was black, that was far more of an issue so. He did strike, yeah, he did strike, in the end he did strike, he said, he told me in the winter of 1984 that it was just too much, and he went back.”

After that, you go back to the pit where you’re going to work. We had a chap go to another pit, you know, but I went to Gedling Colliery. They showed you even how to shovel and how even, because we, in those days, we had pony down the pit. We had two stables down at Gedling pit, you know. And they show you how to harness a pony and how to get the coal. Sometimes I did what you call a double shift, if I was on a Friday day shift I could stop till Saturday morning go home Saturday morning, to go back at six, is what you call a double shift.”

Memories of pit clothing:
“When we were there, you used to have to buy your own clothes but after a while, they give overall and thing, and even get it washed you see. They would, well they would give you like a number, you got dirty and clean part, that’s how it works in the mine, you know. When you go to work you have to strip off and go in the dirty part, you know, and you come out and you shower then you go in the clean part. It was two deck, bottom deck and top deck showers and each part got clean and dirty part.”

Did you like that job?
“Yeah, I liked the mines. They were good job. And then after the money goes up, if you on top rate it’d be a hundred per cent. And when I were working, my time was on quarter to six till quarter past two, I used to make overtime and weekend.”

For some reason, he didn’t like it there so he left by passed through Cardiff. He met my mother who was from Mountain Ash, [a town in the Cynon Valley Rhondda] in Wales. They had six children. My mum’s mother was Anglo-Indian. I think my dad originated from East Africa.

Coal mining wasn’t something I set out to do. It was more about circumstances than looking to work underground. I was told I had to get a job. So I walked across to the Deep Duffryn Colliery and there was a guy that used to work with my grandfather. He called me and my older brother that also worked there by our grandfather’s nick name. He asked us what we wanted and I said ‘a job’. He told me to come back in three weeks and that he was taking on the first six and that he hadn’t told anybody else. So I was the second person there after three weeks and that’s how I got the job. I worked as a miner from 1977 until 1987.

Were you the first in your family to become a miner?
No. My two uncles on my mother’s side and my older brother went down [the mines]. My grandfather as well. So on my mother’s side it was like a family of miners. Quite a few of them worked in the pit. I had cousins working there, my mum’s brother in laws as well. I was 16 when I started working in the mine.

So what were the condition like underground?
Well…it’s a hole in the ground in it! ( laughter). In some places, it was like working underneath a table and in other places you needed a ladder. If you were at the [coal] face that had a plough, you were on your hands and knees. The hardest part, in the beginning was that they would not let me do nothing. It was more look and learn, rather than get straight in. Once you know what to dos, they would let you have a go because it was all about safety.”

I do ripping on the face, back ripping, front ripping and everything, you know.”

Memories of team work:
“I worked with some miners who were really good, you know, and I worked with them and enjoyed to work with them, some of them, you know. I had some odd racial word and everything you know, and you just take it and make the best”.

Thoughts on the legacy of miners:
“It’s that the miners have done a lot for this country and people should realise that the miners were the backbone of this country and we should be treated better in some ways but more than just look and say they’re just a miner. We done a lot for this country as miners, especially the black people that go down the mine and work down the mine because we have to work in the mine and work in the mine against all odds. It was a dangerous place to work and likewise, you have some of the people who think oh, just because he is a miner, he’s just a miner. It’s alright to say he is just a miner but send them to do the work that the miners do – they couldn’t do it.They couldn’t do it because it’s something that you have to have guts and likewise, save your friend’s life as well as saving your own life. So, there is a lot of that experience, you know. You don’t say well, you’re looking after only yourself, you are looking after your friends because every man should be friends, I don’t matter about the stones thrown at me because I give them it back, I give them it back, you know.”

Memories work satisfaction:
“I enjoyed working down the pit, even when it’s hard work but I like to work hard. I mean, I like to work hard because it helped me along very well and showed me the way. Likewise, mining showed me how to live with people, that’s my experience. It doesn’t matter how hard it is, you work around it and live with them and that’s the way it go.”

After that, I did further underground training, went underground for a few weeks and was offered a post in the Ventilation Department at the Colliery in 1961. In 1961, I worked as an Assistant Ventilation Officer and I was encouraged to take further education and then I went to Durham Technical College, got qualified to be a Colliery Ventilation Officer. In 1968, I was appointed the Collier Ventilation for the colliery. In the meantime, I was studying Business Studies at Sunderland Polytechnic and Durham College for Mining. In 1971, I left the Coal Board simply because there were lots of small pits closing, Durham was one of the biggest collieries on the coast; Gordon, Easington, Weymouth, and the colliery managers were being given the specialist jobs, which I wanted. I wanted to be a safety engineer or a ventilation engineer, so I left.”

Some people like being a miner because some of them work like a community, you know, they have their mates, their friends that they see every day, you know and things like that. Like a family underground.”

I became a miner in 1979, aged 24.I found out about coal mining through my wife’s dad worked at the mine at Moorgreen Colliery. So I thought I would try that. I went for one day at Moorgreen but then started my training at Gedling Colliery. I think I got six months training. the training was useful as you learnt what to do. You learnt to do the rails, the loco, the slippers and stuff like that. My first were that it wasn’t what I was expecting. We clocked in for 6 o’clock but you have to get the man rider underground. My shift was about 7 and a half hours long. I used to catch the pit bus to work from Bulwell. I used to get up at 4.15am and I used to walk it done to Main Street and the bus used to pick us up there. There would be about fifteen of us on the bus. I think I was the only one [black man] on the bus.”

Then he got a few hours kip [sleep]. One day, he was coming home on a bus, he dropped his wage packet and had a stroke. He lived for thirty years after the stroke and passed away in 2010 aged 84. He never went back to Jamaica once. He meet my mum in Cardiff, Wales. My dad worked at Nantgarw, mid Glamorgan, Wales, which closed in 1986 and Big Windsor Colliery. He worked as miner for around 25 years from 1955 until 1980.”

I: So how many hours a day did you work?
OT: Maybe eight, maybe eight.
I: And where were you living at the time when you at Gedling Colliery, yes where did you live?
OT: Just to, in Radford.
I: How did you get to work?
OT: The bus.
I: Ok, was it a Skills bus or something else?
OT: Skills bus.
I: Ok. And can you remember any other miners, any Afro Caribbean miners when you were there?
OT: It was fun.
I: It was fun?
OT: Yeah.
I: How many do you think were there at that time, when you were there?
OT: Maybe 500, yeah 500.

When the engine go out in the morning and came back in the evening, you gots to wash out the boiler and get the engine ready to go out in the next morning. Get steam and power before it can go out in the morning. I got to go up and down, go in there and clean it out, you know, come out, after you finish that you wash it out, get the water in back, get it hot, put the coal in the boiler and build the steam up. I let found work at Mansfield Colliery [Nottinghamshire] and Shirebrook Colliery in Derbyshire. I was living in Lenton Nottingham at that time.

You haves a boy take you around underground and show you what the work is like and what’s going off. After you’d finished twenty-one days, you’d go back to Shirebrook and start work there. When you went back there, you started work on the conveyor belt and everything, carry material to the coalface and all that, you know? I wanted face training … You get more money, you see. So, I came back to Gedling [Colliery] and got the job. I start work on the conveyers, like what I was doing first at Shirebrook, for not even, a couple of months, then I start me [coal] face training. You work with somebody to teach you what’s it like, the two of you work together. You shovel coal, at that time it was all pick and shovel. You gots to go there in the morning, you go down the mine, take the train, take it to the coal face and then you start to work what you was supposed to be doing.”

so I was in woodwork shop ‘til I turned eighteen, ‘cos I couldn’t work nights then, you couldn’t work nights ‘til you were eighteen. I started in th’ woodwork shop and I used to go down th’ pit to put brattice cloths up, cloths up the middle and stuff like that. When I were eighteen, I did me training at Armthorpe, which was Markham Main and then from there, I went back to Bentley pit and then I got married and moved to Edlington and I were at Edlington ‘til it closed. I started off in th’ carpentry shop at Bentley pit, making air doors and things like that for down th’ pit and then after I did me training, I was a haulage man for so long. Then I did me face training and then went onto th’ face after that. Main gate rip, barrier rip, chock man, machine man, I did all kind of things on there.

Can you remember your very first day underground?
Keith: Yeah, I can, bloody frightening, it was very frightening. We were going down th’ pit actually on the face itself. Going down th’ pit before, you know, going to other places, it wasn’t too bad but actually going onto a coal face, yeah, it were a different experience. Very different experience – noisy, dusty, weight coming in all th’ time, it was the weight coming on that I had to get used to, it went ‘bump’ and everything shook.

Do you remember any other black miners at Yorkshire Main Colliery?
There was one that we used to call ‘Black Sam’, he were an African gentleman. His last name were Williams and he used to tell us tales when he first come to the’ UK, he worked up in Wales. Well, in Wales, Williams is a very popular name. He got on like a house on fire, you know what I mean? Then he moved from Wales, I think he lived at Balby, just outside Doncaster and he used to work at Yorkshire Main but I don’t … he’s probably dead now, Sammy, it were a long, long time ago. Then, oh let me see, there were a few other but we were all on different shifts so, I knew whereabouts they lived in th’ village but we were never on th’ same shift, we were always on different shifts. Altogether there were about five.”

So we have to come over and help out and all them houses in London, and build them up again and thing like that stuff.

You have to get up some time in the morning. And some time when I wake up in the morning, like at three o’clock, I can’t lay down there. I have to get up. Because, if you do, you fall asleep, you can’t get to work. Yeah. Sometimes they’ve had two buses that used to take men to work at pit. The bus drop men off at the pit. Yeah,Yeah. And then the canteen, full of men and, it were nice. It were nice. I enjoy myself.”

You can’t go down the mine and say somebody call you certain name, and you go fighting. You’re like, no, not down there, fighting or anything, down the mine. Nothing like that. Yeah, you got the rules. Yeah.”

And when the Teddy Boys, like the MODs and the Rockers and the Skinhead they come to us, and make sure we stick together because if you didn’t know what to says, take the words and are scared and you run off, that they separate you, like to see a lion who separates those. We used it as protection because even if you don’t know what to say, plenty of we get beat up and you go to the police station. At the time, the police, them have themselves they don’t like you black people and they will says, you know them. I says no and they will says to you, ‘see get to know them and they are dressed and come back to them’. At the time, you get a good hiding, see what I mean? It was like hell. And when we tell our children what we go through, that if you see a room over there to let out or whatever it is, you know, the most people them who do know what to say is more regards and respect is the Indians. But most of the whites, they think we are dogs.”

The best place that we used to go and get enjoyment is the Palais (nightclub). We used to go to the Union pub. And the places you go on and can sit down and have a drink is the Wine Aces in town, the Aces pub in town. I’ve been to the Calypso Club [Nottingham] , that was mostly for the blacks then and all that, you know, yes.”

My dad, my old man, found me the job. He came to me one day, knocked on my bedroom door and said’ I’ve got a job for you. Get up and get ready’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’. He said, ‘get up and get ready!’ So obviously, you didn’t really back chat your parents, so I went. I turned up at Gedling Colliery. I remember the man’s name called Mr Hopkinson. Me and my dad went in. I remember Mr Hopkinson talking to me, asking for my name. But I was acting a bit cocky because I really didn’t want the job so I was doing everything not to get the job. The next minute, Mr Hopkinson passed me this coin with the number 125 on it. All I remember next is from Mr Hopkinson is, ‘You start on Monday’. I remember saying to myself, what a weird interview this was! It was really weird because I didn’t want the job but got the job. I trained at Moorgreen Colliery first. I worked at Gedling on top [surface] first, in haulage, packing items for the workers down in the bottom [on the coal face].”

I came to Derby, England with my brother, Lindon Case, who also became a miner at Welbeck Colliery. I worked extremely hard in a factory in Derby and the wages was small and I found it very difficult to support my family in Jamaica and myself. So I decided to work in the mines instead as this was the best wage at the time. I went to a mine in Doncaster and wanted to work on the coal face to get a better wage, to be able to send money home to my mother as my father had already died. They said I had to get on a waiting list to work on the face. I felt that this was not good enough so I talked to some of my friends in Derby who told me that Welbeck Colliery in Nottinghamshire needed workers. This was in 1957 and so I moved to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, which was near to Welbeck Colliery. Everything was good at Welbeck Colliery and it was hard work. I had a serious accident underground in 1978. I didn’t enjoy the work but had a family so had to make ends meet. Other black miners at Welbeck Colliery were David Fraser and Linton Thompson from Clarendon, Jamaica. They were no problems working with the other men. Black or white, I just looked at it as us, as one.”