Lights Out in Britain for the Coal Industry
By STEPHEN CASTLE

KELLINGLEY, England — Tens of thousands of British coal miners have lost their jobs in recent decades, during the steep decline of an industry that stoked the nation’s industrial rise, sustained it through two world wars and once employed more than one million people.

Chris Jamieson will be one of the very last.

In December, his job is set to disappear when Kellingley colliery, Britain’s last deep coal mine, is scheduled to close for good.

In the mine’s empty parking lot, Mr. Jamieson, 50, is already thinking about the moment in a few weeks’ time when the last group of miners is hauled to the surface. He expects to work the final shift at the colliery, which has been reduced to little more than a quarter of its peak work force and is succumbing to pressure from cheaper imported coal.

“I will be putting the lights out,” he said, adding that, after a quarter-century in the industry, he would particularly miss not just his paycheck but the unique camaraderie among colleagues who work together underground.

“We are the last of the dinosaurs,” he said.

Like the largest dinosaurs, the miners have left a giant footprint.

Though open cast mining will continue in Britain, Kellingley’s closing is the final chapter in the story of underground mining, an enterprise that spanned more than two centuries and helped make Britain an industrial power and a thriving exporter.

The miners have not gone quietly. In the 1980s, they mounted bitter strikes to resist closings, and even as their clout has steadily diminished through the subsequent decades, they have remained proud and defiant.

“Coal put ‘great’ into Great Britain — it’s as simple as that,” said Chris Kitchen, president of the once mighty National Union of Mineworkers, which in the 1970s sometimes brought the country to a halt with its demands.

“It fueled the Industrial Revolution, it kept the lights on, it kept people warm, it worked as a nationalized industry,” Mr. Kitchen said. He is a former Kellingley miner and spoke in the miners’ social club in Knottingley, a few miles from the colliery.

Here, the mood is understandably subdued because the colliery closing means not just the loss of a well-paid job (miners here can expect to earn around £20, or more than $30, an hour), but also of a way of life.

Partly because of the dangers underground, miners enjoyed a special status in the labor movement.

Even now, mining remains a risky job; on their way to work, Kellingley’s miners pass a memorial they built to 17 people who died here.

Inside a cluttered office, the union branch secretary, Keith Poulson, recalled having to pronounce one colleague dead underground and trying to resuscitate two others, who also died from injuries.

“Going out and telling a wife that her husband isn’t coming home,” Mr. Poulson said, is “the most difficult job I’ve ever had in my life.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Poulson, 55, said he remained as passionate about mining as he was when he started work in 1977, believing he had a job for life.

That notion was shattered 30 years ago, when plans to close collieries deemed uneconomical led to a confrontation between the miners and the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The result was a bitter, divisive and sometimes violent dispute, involving splits in communities and clashes with horse-mounted police — and eventual defeat for the striking miners.

Those events still reverberate around this region, where mining engendered a camaraderie and sense of identity with which few other occupations can compete.

So the closure of Kellingley, known as “Big K,” is a blow to Yorkshire, whose residents have a reputation for plain-speaking.

Paul Routledge, an author, journalist and Yorkshire native who has written extensively about the miners, describes this part of the country as “England’s Texas, but without the sun and the guns.”

Coal, he said, “was so integral to the life of this part of the world that it was part of the cultural fabric.” Villages were sometimes created around collieries, which supported clubs, bands and, in earlier decades, schools and hospitals.

“It was the linchpin of everything,” he said, one reason the area suffered so acutely when many mines closed after the strike.

The National Union of Mineworkers, he added, “was a power in the land, not just in industrial muscle but in political muscle,” and acted as the “Praetorian Guard of the union movement.”

But in confronting the Thatcher government, which was intent on curbing the influence of organized labor, the union overreached. Government officials had prepared for the strike, sat it out and then pushed through the closings. Looking back, Mr. Routledge calls it “an act of industrial policy by Margaret Thatcher invigorated by political vindictiveness.”

At the time, even some not naturally aligned to the unions expressed alarm, including Harold Macmillan, the former Conservative prime minister. He said that it broke his heart to see the fate of the miners, “the best men in the world, who beat the kaiser’s army and beat Hitler’s army and never give in.”

At its headquarters, the National Union of Mineworkers still displays the banners of its branches, but these are now industrial relics.

The reality lies at the converted Caphouse colliery, which is now a mining museum, attracting 120,000 visitors a year, including thousands of schoolchildren for whom coal extraction is history.

Darran Cowd, the museum’s collections officer, said it was hard to overestimate the role mining played in this part of Yorkshire until a few decades ago.

“If you stood on any high ground and couldn’t see pit head gear somewhere around you, that would be unusual,” he said.

But confronting a gradual switch to green energy, and facing cheaper coal imports from Russia, the United States and Colombia, Kellingley’s coal is now uncompetitive.

“When you look at the world economy, British coal, to a degree, has got too expensive to compete without government support,” Mr. Cowd said.

UK Coal, the company that operates Kellingley, would not discuss the closing. But last year, Kevin McCullough, then its chief executive, blamed a “historically low international coal price” and a strong British currency.

Although it feeds nearby coal-fired power stations, UK Coal buys and sells on the international market in dollars because most coal used in Britain is imported, the company said.

Mr. Poulson said he believed that there were ways to save Kellingley, which he said had enough reserves to remain open until the 2030s.

More than a fifth of Britain’s energy needs are still met by coal. When Kellingley closes, the Drax coal-fired power station, a few miles away, “will burn Russian coal for the next 10 to 15 years, because it’s needed so that the lights don’t go out,” Mr. Poulson said. He said he was angry that money from the mineworkers’ pension fund had not been used to help keep the colliery going, while other energy sectors, including nuclear, receive substantial state aid.

Mr. Kitchen, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, said, “It would have been nice if someone had tried to assist and take away the roadblocks, instead of just building barricades in front of us.”

But with the battle lost, the miners are closing in on their last working day at Kellingley.

“It will be an emotional time for the men that are losing their jobs,” Mr. Kitchen said, asking: “Is it something to celebrate?”

He would like a brass band to lead a march out of the pit, he said, but that decision rests with Kellingley’s miners.

“They should decide how they want to mark it,” he said. “If they want to just let it slip away quietly, that’s up to them.”

英國最後煤礦坑 下月熄燈

紐約時報報導，曾對英國工業革命有巨大貢獻的英國煤礦工人，經過數十年的抗爭和勞工運動，即將永久失業。不敵便宜的進口煤，英國最後一個煤礦坑將於12月關閉，雖然往後英國還會有露天開採的煤礦，地下煤礦坑將走入歷史。

英國最後一個地下煤礦坑凱靈利礦坑（Kellingley colliery）預定12月永久關閉。50歲的賈米森將是關閉當天最後一班礦工，他說：「我將會熄燈。」賈米森說，做了25年煤礦工人，他懷念的不只是豐厚的薪水，還有與他在地底下一起打拚的同事間特殊的革命情感。他說：「我們是最後絕種的恐龍。」就像大恐龍，礦工留下巨大的腳印。

煤礦業在英國有200多年歷史，有助於英國成為工業強國和繁榮的出口國。煤礦業經歷兩次世界大戰，全盛時期英國有100多萬煤礦工人，這幾十年逐漸走下坡，造成成千上萬煤礦工人失業。

曾經勢力龐大的英國全國礦工工會前主席基臣說：「煤礦使英國偉大，就這麼簡單。它為工業革命供應燃料，讓電燈能亮、讓人們能保持溫暖，曾為國有化產業。」

由於地下礦坑工作危險，煤礦工人的薪水很高，凱靈利礦坑的工人時薪約20英鎊（約台幣1000元），也因為工作危險，礦工在勞工運動享有特殊地位。

凱靈利礦坑工人上班時，會經過為17名殉職礦工建立的紀念碑。55歲的工會分會秘書長寶森說：「通知殉職礦工的妻子，她的丈夫已不在了，是我這輩子最艱困的工作。」

不過，他說，他對礦工工作仍充滿熱情。他1977年開始當礦工，當時認為自己可以做一輩子礦工。

但這種想法在30年前開始動搖，1980年代柴契爾夫人主政時期，鼓勵國營煤礦業關掉不符合經濟效益的煤礦坑，導致保守黨政府與煤礦工人爆發激烈衝突。礦工工會1984年3月發動煤礦工人大罷工，持續一整年。但有意削弱工會力量的柴契爾夫人早有準備，仍繼續關閉礦坑，罷工工人最後以失敗收場。

英國煤礦業1994年民營化後，逐漸被綠色能源取代，英國煤礦也面臨俄國、美國和哥倫比亞便宜進口煤的競爭。凱靈利礦坑已不具競爭力。擁有凱靈利礦坑的英國煤礦公司拒絕談論關閉礦坑一事，不過去年，當時的執行長麥克柯勞曾表示，國際煤價來到歷史低點和強勢的英鎊，都是關閉的原因。

英國目前仍有超過五分之一的能源靠燃煤發電，凱靈利礦坑關閉後，附近的電廠未來10年到15年靠進口俄國煤發電。

寶森憤憤不平地說，包括核能在內的其他能源產業都獲得政府補助，而煤礦工人的退休基金並未用於幫助礦坑繼續維持下去。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/europe/lights-out-in-britain-for-the-coal-industry.html

2015-11-02．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯田思怡