2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the Miners' Strike. Sunderland Echo reporter Chris Cordner speaks to some of the Wearside folk who were involved about the events and their legacy.
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00:00 I think we all realised this wouldn't be like the other strikes where it was one or two days,
00:06 it was going to be a long term.
00:07 I think the government of the day had given the Met Police, police from outside the area,
00:14 free rein to do whatever they wanted.
00:16 Thatcher and our policies had done more damage to industrial Britain
00:20 than Hitler or the Luftwaffe did in five years of war.
00:24 This was wayside 40 years ago. A dispute which would last for a year was just beginning.
00:31 The miners strike.
00:33 Thousands of workers from the Durham coal fields walked out.
00:37 They were fighting to protect their pits, their jobs, their communities,
00:42 amid fears that collieries were facing closure.
00:46 The weeks that followed saw bitter days.
00:50 Families feared for their survival amid fuel and money shortages.
00:55 But what was it like to be at the heart of it?
00:59 It wasn't an easy, it's never an easy time to take or an easy decision to make to take strike action.
01:05 We were put in a position, we didn't instigate the strike, we didn't want the strike.
01:11 We wanted a livelihood, we wanted to protect our communities, our jobs, our families.
01:16 Those wishes were just taken away from us or would have been taken away from us.
01:20 And we had to fight.
01:21 I was the financial secretary at that time,
01:24 so I was like an understudy to the Lodge Treasurer, it was one of the three Lodge officials.
01:29 What we knew was coming, we knew that because it appeared that the government was building up to
01:38 the miners, we had a lot of steel workers and various other smaller unions, and we knew it was
01:45 going to come for us. We didn't think it would last for 11 months.
01:50 The feeling at that time was one of fear, one of dread. Will our pit be affected?
01:58 We'd been assured that ours wasn't. We were one of the super pits at Wearmouth,
02:03 that we're going to be safe. We were going to be safe for the next 100 years.
02:08 And we were told that by the government, we were told that by the National Coal Board.
02:14 But it was also that feeling that we needed to support our brothers and fellow miners in other
02:25 pits, the pits that were under threat, because some of them pits were making a profit.
02:30 So there was a mixture of feelings leading up to the strike.
02:36 We knew it was coming. We knew she had a plan, we knew that Thatcher and the government had a plan.
02:42 They'd had that plan, started that plan since 1974, the end of the '74 strike.
02:49 Lord Ridley chaired a commission or chaired a committee to negate the risk of electricity
03:01 disruption by miners, steel workers, railway workers. And the Ridley plan started in '74,
03:08 and the end product of that was '84, '85. At the end of the day, what they wanted to do was crush
03:14 the trade union movement and the National Union of Mine Workers in particular.
03:20 In '81, they backed down. There was four pits in Durham were threatened. There was other pits in
03:26 the various areas were threatened. And there was a series of spontaneous strikes took place. Pits
03:32 came, just walked out. They just walked out. And we were on the verge of a national strike at that
03:40 point. And Thatcher backed down. They backed down and said, "We'll invest more money. We'll
03:46 withdraw the closure plans." And despite the warnings from some trade union leaders,
03:52 Scargill, Magatty, Heathfield, we said, "Listen, this is a ruse. It's a ruse. They're going to
03:57 come back. They're not strong enough at the minute. The plans haven't been finalised.
04:01 They'll come back." Some of the more moderate miners' leaders thought that they saw it as a
04:08 victory. And the lads continued working as normal. And the final trigger was when they
04:17 announced the closure of Cork and Wood. They knew the Yorkshire area had a mandate
04:24 for strike action in the event of any closure being announced that hadn't been agreed previously
04:29 with the union. And they announced another list of pit closures, and that was the trigger.
04:34 And the strike started in March '84. And it was with a heavy heart. It really is. Anybody who
04:42 embarks on strike action, you're losing money. You've still got bills to pay. You've got rent
04:47 on mortgages. You've got food to buy. And your kids still need school uniforms and all the rest
04:52 of it. And it's never an easy decision. Never, never is, despite what the national press portray,
05:00 that we'll just strike up the union. Nobody wants that. You're left, we were left with no alternative.
05:06 Were you confident of success when you started? In the early days, yes, because we'd been successful
05:12 in '74 and '78. And I think that's the reason why the government was so vindictive. The fight was
05:19 as basic as to protect jobs. We weren't looking for a wage rise. We simply looked to protect jobs
05:26 and defend our communities. And the way that this particular community was pretty much dependent
05:32 on coal mining, a thousand men, and between £150 a week. And that money was coming into the
05:42 community each week. We lost that very, very quickly. We came out right at the beginning at Everton.
05:50 And we started picketing some of the open cast sites at the time that was going around in Durham
06:01 up with Tavallaw and around Bishop Auckland. And while I was away picketing, my wife,
06:09 Julie Arnaud, was at home with the kids. And I mean, I had a young family. These were young
06:14 girls with young families. But to stay loyal, I think the thing with the support group and the
06:21 women that were in it, because we were all in the same boat, the friendship, and you know,
06:27 you could, they could come and talk to us freely and vice versa. What's troubling is, oh, I'm getting
06:34 the electric bill in, I'm getting this in. But we were there to help. And we had, I mean, the miners
06:39 used to, I've got to say, the women that, and the Durham mechanics, they helped a lot of families
06:46 that was really struggling. We had a young family coming, and it was a case of trying to keep
06:51 that going. But also getting
06:58 coal for the fire. Because we soon ran out of coal. And everybody had a coal fire in those days.
07:07 And it was no different. So after picketing, I would be up on the pit hype, riddling
07:14 the waste on the pit hype to get the coal out of it. And I'd bring that back home and that would
07:21 be the fire for the next few days. The support we got from the wider community was absolutely
07:27 amazing. As an example, at that time, we still had shipyards in Sunderland. And the Austin and
07:35 Pickers guilds and British shipbuilders had gate collections and donated that money. And all that
07:42 money went to the miners' wives support group to buy food and stuff. Didn't finance the picketing
07:48 or anything like that. And Rolls-Royce did the same. There was lots and lots of people,
07:56 pensioners coming in here once a week when they cashed their pension to give us a couple of quid
08:01 towards the strike fund. When it was the first meeting we had, it was Florence Anderson and me
08:07 went to see him. It was to see if he's in the area of mines. And it was to meet them to see
08:14 how they were starting their kitchens up. And we went there, we got a lot of information.
08:19 And so what we did, we had initial meeting down at the old welfare and we got volunteers to help us
08:28 start the kitchen. But Florence was a Tyne and Wear councillor. And she says, right,
08:34 we're going to have a support group, but I want it run properly. So what she said, we have to
08:40 have a chair, vice chair, treasurer. So we had that from the start. I don't think many support
08:47 groups did, but with her expertise, we always run it like as an official support group. But when we,
08:56 Florence, I and Heather went to welfare, the union meeting was on, we were told to wait outside.
09:01 And we sat on the stairs till they were finished talking. And then NUM official came out and says,
09:07 right, we want, I didn't, it was them, Florence. We want to do a kitchen and other things. And we
09:14 want the backing of the NUM. Initially, I think they were a bit wary about it. Well, what does
09:20 women want to get involved for? I think we all realised this wouldn't be like the other strikes
09:27 where it was one or two days, it was going to be a long term. Without the women, we couldn't have
09:32 endured 12 months. We couldn't have lasted 12 months. They did an absolutely fantastic job.
09:37 And these buying lines were women who never supported public meetings. They never stood
09:42 in front of a crowd talking to people before. There were the wives, girlfriends, mothers,
09:48 sisters, aunts of miners, and in some cases of other people. And they banded together and they
09:56 showed their organisational skills. And by God, they were a formidable bunch.
10:01 There were grandmas, I mean, we're grandmas now, but these were miners, you know, grandmas.
10:08 They did the cooking. It was mince and dumplings. It was broth. It was
10:11 everyday food that you would get at home. And this was, was it every day of the week?
10:16 Every day. And how many were you cooking for?
10:18 Well, sometimes there were two and three sittings. So it could be the hundreds. And this was
10:26 happening all the time. Well, what happened as well is the children were getting free meals at
10:32 school. Then anyway, it ended up some children weren't having the free school meals, they were
10:37 coming to welfare at dinnertime. And we were feeding them as well, but their families coming
10:42 down. But my role was, we found out that the single miners did not receive anything. And some
10:51 of these single miners were the main wage earners in that house. So there was me and Jean Lamb,
11:01 we were volunteered to do food parcels. So we used to, we got the welfare to give us
11:08 permission to go to the cash and carries. We would do food parcels every week, every week of the
11:15 strike to single miners and hardship parcels as well, when we found out. So that was our role.
11:24 I wasn't involved in the kitchen, but we were up and down all, we were downstairs in a little
11:30 back room doing the parcels. And they were doing the meals upstairs. But once, right, we did basics,
11:39 eggs, potatoes, beans, probably a tin meats. And these were, we used to try and vary them.
11:47 But there were basics that you knew that you could use every day. If the lads didn't come
11:55 and pick them up, we would actually, you know, get them to them.
12:02 You were there most of the time doing the picking. What do you remember about that part of it, you
12:10 know, sort of being outside the pits and making your point and presumably as it went on, perhaps
12:19 a bit more bitter? It became, it became very bitter. There was a point where the local police,
12:30 Northumbria police, were pretty much replaced by Met police. They were particularly violent
12:36 and nasty, really nasty. And at that point, it was, you know, it got quite serious.
12:48 Why do you think that was?
12:49 I think the government of the day had given the Met police, police from outside the area,
12:59 free rein to do whatever they wanted. I remember the picking lines in some cases being very,
13:05 very violent. I remember them being, at first, at the very beginning, it was
13:10 joyful enough. It was the local copper, they would be standing there watching you and you'd
13:17 be on your picking line. There wasn't anything going on really. And it was quite cordial.
13:22 And then as time went on, that mood changed and you saw police being drafted in from places like
13:28 Leicester, from the Met and things like that. And it changed. It became a lot more sinister,
13:33 a lot more violent, a lot more authoritarian. It was a police state, there's no doubt about that.
13:40 And the forces of the British state came out to the maximum to defeat the miners.
13:47 An example of that is Orgreave. Orgreave was, when we arrived there, it was set up like
13:55 Napoleonic battlefield. I'm convinced it was a trap. We were held back in Sheffield
14:01 for two hours before they allowed us to go to Orgreave. This is coaches and men. And then we
14:06 got there, it was just set up for a place on horseback and dogs and thousands of police.
14:12 The video evidence was all there. And the big men who were in jeans and t-shirts.
14:20 It's a big loss to the shops locally and the other businesses that comes along with that,
14:29 with families. And it was all the debt that you had as well, because people bought cars,
14:36 televisions, videos at the time, all on HP. So quite often they would be landed with a
14:44 bailiff or somebody knocking at the door wanting money. We personally did,
14:51 we wrote to everybody how we owed money and told them there was no more money until I started work.
14:58 And I've got to say, none of them ever bothered us during the strike. Some of them had bad
15:04 reputations now. The Provy just stopped it and then restarted it when we went back to work after
15:11 12 months. It didn't add anything on and neither did Obank, the NatWest at the time. And it was
15:21 like a big, I don't know, it was like a big thank you for them at the end of the strike, because
15:29 a lot of lads had their televisions and videos confiscated. We got donations from all over. I've
15:35 got donations, all the unions would drop things in. What got me is one day we had this man come
15:43 knocking in and it was from the power stations and he popped a check in. And that used to happen
15:50 all the time. And people would just pop in, £10, £20 and these were other people, people living in
15:58 Hatton. But a lot of the unions sent them to the support group. They didn't go to the unions,
16:05 they came directly to the support. We had checks for £100, checks for £20 and it's surprising how
16:12 many. And I was just, I've been having a look at some of my things and it's surprising how it
16:18 mounted up. Our butchers, sadly the butchers no longer, would get the meat a bit cheaper.
16:25 And on a Friday when it was fish and chips or whatever it was, assuming it was chips,
16:30 the local fish shop did the chips for us and the trays were carried across to the welfare.
16:37 - Do you think it was a community that realised this was going to be an important issue that
16:42 defined that area? - I really did because every other person worked at the pit around here. It
16:49 was the main employee apart from Pearsons, the builders. But everybody, I didn't, all along
16:58 these streets where I live now, I would say every other house, the lad who lived next door to me was
17:03 single and you know that was his income. Another one round in the corner, he was very shy, wouldn't
17:13 come down to welfare at all. And Bob persuaded him to come down and he came every day after that.
17:22 It was just, he kept himself to himself, he went to work, he went home. So you know,
17:29 I think because we're a community and we've always been a community, you know everybody.
17:34 - Someone they didn't know personally, who helped out, was none other than Bruce Springsteen.
17:41 - I was at Durham in the mechanics office and I answered it, I've got to say she was absolutely
17:49 phenomenal and she says, look, she says, Bruce Springsteen has been in touch with the support,
17:54 Durham area support groups and he wants to invite some women down to his concert at St.
18:01 James's Park. And when we went there, we got seats were great right near there, you know,
18:05 you could see him and everything. And I've got to admit, I wasn't a, you know, I wasn't,
18:10 I knew about Bruce Springsteen but I didn't actually, you know, knew his music. But then
18:19 we, they were asked to meet him backstage and he handed the cheque and we couldn't, ten thousand
18:27 dollars. And it was, he did one for us and one for Northumberland. And you don't think somebody
18:36 who's living in America or a very good career would do something like that. But it's surprising
18:43 how many celebrities actually did support the miners. I've become very good friends with Mike
18:52 Elliott locally, Paul Weller, he's another one, Alan Hull as well. I mean, one day I was sitting
18:59 at Durham Mechanics Office, it was Ann Siddiq, me, Mike Elliott, you know, Linda's Bob's sitting
19:10 there, you know, he's there and I'm sitting there looking around, I thought, 'E, what am I doing?'
19:15 And it was a really difficult time for everybody. It wasn't just the pickets.
19:23 Oh, I had a lovely time. I can tell you, it wasn't a lovely time. It was quite horrendous at times and
19:31 very emotional, I'll put it that way.
19:36 How long would you be picking the ball per session?
19:40 The open cast were open for eight hours and we would land there probably before they started.
19:47 And we would be there for most of the day, trying to talk the wagon drivers not to go in.
19:53 But you had a feeling for, between successors and some of the operators, that they would tell us,
20:06 'If you come there, our wagons will turn away. If you're not there, our wagons will go in.'
20:11 So at those places, we always made sure there was at least a half a dozen lads there.
20:17 And our wagons invariably would do that. And it was mainly in the west of Durham where we got that
20:27 sort of support from the quarry owners.
20:30 It got more challenging as time went on. It becomes part of the norm. There was still a
20:36 hell of a lot of support from rank and file people, from the ordinary people in the street.
20:43 There was still support. I think lots of them realised the implications of these pits closing.
20:50 The downside of that was, and the negative side was, that some people would jilt into
20:57 believing the likes of where your mouth was safe. So we'd say, 'It can't work. You've got plenty of
21:02 time to work.' We knew that was untrue. We knew that was untrue. They didn't want the Durham
21:07 Coalfield. They didn't want the Scotland Coalfield. They didn't want the South Wales Coalfield or the
21:12 Kent Coalfield. They wanted to concentrate production in the soaper pits in the Midlands
21:16 and parts of Yorkshire. And that was going to be the end of it.
21:20 It was a lot worse at the end of the day than we envisaged. We thought we'd have some pits left.
21:26 We haven't got any left now.
21:27 There's lots of families who were driven to absolute desperation. In the end,
21:32 some lads went back to work a week or two before the end of the strike.
21:38 It wasn't because they disagreed with the strike. It was desperation.
21:42 Feed the families. The homes were at risk. I think their actions should be understood.
21:51 I don't think you realise the full extent at the time when you live and throw it.
21:56 It's when you've got time to reflect on it. We knew it was important because we knew we were
22:00 fighting for our lives. We were fighting for our lives. We were fighting for our jobs,
22:04 for our communities, for our families, for a whole way of life. We knew that. I knew that
22:09 very, very well. I knew they intended to destroy it. But the argument that I heard it time and time
22:20 again, it was in the press, it was on the television, on the radio. So, you know, they're
22:23 just hell-bent on bringing the government down. That was never the intention. If that had been a
22:28 consequence of us winning, which I suspect it may well have been, I would have welcomed that.
22:35 But that wasn't the reason we were on strike. It wasn't about money. It wasn't about pain
22:40 conditions. It was about the future of a whole industry. And I think as times went on,
22:47 our opposition was being vindicated. I fully supported the strike and everything that went
22:56 on there. I support that. I support striking mines. I was one of them. I was on the picking
23:02 lines with them, went to jail with them, got arrested with them. So we did all that.
23:07 And it was a bitter pill to swallow when we walked back. I just felt dejected that we hadn't
23:16 went back on our terms. We'd went back, well, we did. We went back on our terms. But it wasn't
23:22 a victory. It wasn't a victory. I suppose we can claim a moral victory now. We can claim,
23:28 you know, the moral high ground because we were proven to be right. Everything was said.
23:33 Everything the union said was proven to be correct. We've said, you know, from the day
23:39 we went back to work, it was, that wasn't a happy bunny. It was over with. Didn't feel
23:48 that we'd achieved our aims and objectives that we started off with 12 months previously.
23:54 But there was a great camaraderie.
23:59 As I got towards the end, I mean, it was really hard. Winter was coming, you know, in again.
24:09 I think we realised probably the week before they went back, things was going to happen.
24:17 And sadly, we knew one lad who went back the day before the strike was called off.
24:25 It's hard because he would be classed as the same as any other returning miner, you know.
24:33 It was hard. But we also, the first miner that crossed the picker line up at Everton,
24:39 actually didn't come from Hettin. He came from Brandon. He was one of the travelling miners.
24:44 And there was quite a few went back, but not the majority went back.
24:49 In my own mind, I knew the fight wasn't over. It was just, we were going to be back at work.
24:54 And it would be a struggle because we knew, we knew the plans were to close all the pits
25:03 down. Once that would clear, a victory over the miners, we knew it was the beginning of the end
25:10 for the, certainly in some of the areas, that it was the beginning of the end for the coal industry.
25:16 And they started straight away. Those pits, you know, Harington went straight away and those
25:21 lakes of Satterston and then they'll just bump, bump, bump, pit after pit after pit after pit,
25:25 being closed. The Porricollery Review procedure in place, where it would appeal the decision.
25:33 The pits that went through that, even if they got a successful outcome, they still closed the pits.
25:40 It was an exercise, it was a sham, an absolute sham. Within, you know, within 30 years,
25:46 there wasn't a pit left. It was mixed emotions, but the thing is, we weren't just,
25:51 yes, we fight to save the pit and we carried on fighting because Epling was one of the ones that
25:56 was, you know, due for closure. We were fighting for a community. We weren't just fighting for
26:02 the pit. We were fighting for a community because at the time where the strike was finishing,
26:10 there was rumours going round, there was another, Pearsons the builders,
26:16 they went out, they closed. Pearsons went into liquidation and they closed. So there was two
26:22 major employees of Hettin, went just like that, but nothing put in its place.
26:28 It was eight years, eight and a half years, and Weymouth was gone. We're getting a profit,
26:35 170 odd million tonnes sterilised under the North Sea and already marketed for the coal. It was good
26:41 coal, good quality coal that they incidentally used to use at the send down to Selby to sweeten
26:47 their coal to make their, give their coal a higher calorific value. Wasn't any reason on earth to
26:54 close it. None at all. It was just pure vindictiveness. Last coal field in, last coal mining
27:01 in the Durham coal field. And it was, that was an absolute tragedy and they didn't waste much
27:09 time in blowing the towers down. You know, we're not going to have any, we're not going to have any
27:16 reminders of our industrial past. They did the same when they closed the shipyards,
27:20 dynamite, they blew it all up. Didn't want any trace of that. And I still maintain that
27:29 the closure of Weymouth and then the closure of the, you know, we'd had the closure of the
27:35 shipyards about four years before that on the way up. Thatcher and our policies had done more damage
27:42 to industrial Britain than Hitler or the Luftwaffe did in five years of war. They absolutely
27:48 devastated these communities. It almost, now when I look back at it, it feels like we were profits.
27:55 We knew what was going to happen, but we felt it stopped happening. It's a little bit like saying
27:59 it's going to rain tomorrow. You're nearly right, we're going to stop the rain. And so we were right
28:06 in everything we predicted would happen. And the government of the day, Thatcher, was lying,
28:14 lying to the British public. She was saying, no, no, there's nothing we can do, we must close the
28:18 pit. And we threw 150,000 men out of work in a decade. My point of view is that the place started
28:29 to decline. There was no work, so a lot of the young people moved out. There was labour and empty
28:35 houses, colliery houses, a lot of colliery houses here in Hatton. We moved into one because we
28:42 couldn't afford the council rent with the debt that we'd built up over the, through the strike.
28:47 And we moved into a colliery house because the rent was seven and six in the old days.
28:57 That was the rent for the week. And there wasn't any central heating in the house, but there was a
29:03 big fire and a triplex oven. So it was one of these things where people moved out, people that were
29:14 coming in, were coming in from the landlords or from outsiders. Many of them had social problems,
29:24 put it that way. And gradually it all downloaded and then drugs came onto the scene
29:33 and house break-ins and everything else that was happening. We went,
29:41 I went to Europe, to the European Parliament. It was a meeting of Calfield areas when I was a
29:48 councillor in the, it would be the late 90s, to say what we could do around Europe about the
29:56 coal mining communities because of the implosion of the coal-powered fire stations all closing
30:04 down right across the world. And we heard from Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, Belgium,
30:16 I think it was Belgium, I was in Belgium or Holland, had collieries. And all of them
30:23 had the same story. We thought we were unique here, where all these colliery villages were
30:30 just dying on their feet. It was across the whole of Europe. And I was like,
30:37 I was like taken back by it all. There was people committing suicide, there was people,
30:44 there was all kinds of hardship. There was unimaginable hardship in some cases.
30:49 And that was hard. That was hard because you still saw people paying debts off years and years later.
30:57 Looking back, do you think you were right in the actions that you took?
31:00 I don't think we could have done anything else. I really don't. And if we hadn't,
31:06 it would have happened over a shorter period of time.
31:09 Because of course, I think Harry Dunne and others were on the short list.
31:13 Yeah, Evelyn lasted a year after the strike. Yeah, it was gone.
31:16 And it's worth mentioning, before the strike, most pits lost about a third of the workforce
31:25 long before the strikes. Typically, a pit would have 1500 men. That went down to,
31:31 Evelyn went down to 1000 men. So the figures, even 150,000 men lost their jobs. If you include them,
31:40 those jobs that were lost while they were running the pits, then...
31:42 Have the communities like Evelton really recovered since then, 14 years on?
31:50 No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think if you look at the town centre,
32:00 the shops we've lost, the clubs we've lost, the pubs we've lost, the banks we've lost.
32:09 And giving you an indication of the health of the local economy, we don't have a bank,
32:14 we have two bench shops, which is usually an indication of a failing economy. When you don't
32:20 have a bank, we have bench shops. Personally, I think, regardless of whether you believe in
32:28 the strike or not, I always think it's a massive waste of people's lives. One of the characteristics
32:39 most miners have is their ability to overcome nature and difficulties.
32:45 Those skills would have been directly transferable into major
32:55 projects, road building, rail building, infrastructure projects, and the government
33:03 chose just to throw people in the scrap heap. No help whatsoever. Just everything ended.
33:10 Miners will always accept pit closures. Always. I mean, you just don't have a cope.
33:20 We have 300 million years worth of coal to shoot here. It would have been different pits
33:28 than we could have gone on. The government chose to go for the dash for gas, which
33:35 will hopefully be failing and causing problems now. We had energy security, and now we don't.
33:42 You never pay the price for it. I think the whole world is realising, the whole country's realising
33:48 now we've gone backwards. We've really gone backwards. When I left school, I got what we
33:55 were told was a job for life. When people needed a house or a home, you put your name down for
34:02 either a covey house or a council house, and within weeks you would get that. And they were
34:07 decent quality homes. Today, a young person leaving school, get a job at COSTA,
34:14 can't afford a mortgage, can't afford to go to university. It's not a better place.
34:20 Not a better place. Our young people have lost hope. There's no hope.
34:26 That's a shame of it all. Once the coal re-went, we knew that there would be a problem with
34:33 employment. There is its own social impact on everybody in the area, whether you're working
34:40 or not. There's a social impact for them to appear, because we all live here in the same community.
34:46 The impact of closing everywhere down was crazy. All I had to do was to get some other sort of
34:59 investment jobs into those villages, or near the villages, where they could travel now,
35:06 in order to keep the community afloat. It never happened. I mean,
35:12 we closed our colliery, moved the workforce to Merton, we closed Merton and moved that
35:20 workforce to Vientampus. And that was going on all the time. There was nothing coming in to replace
35:28 all those jobs. There was a thousand jobs lost at the colliery. There must have been 500 lost
35:35 when Pearsons the builders in Hetten closed. That was 1500 jobs gone out of our area.
35:41 What's the cost of that? What's the cost of that? The social cost is even bigger.
35:49 [Music]