This is both a social history of Britain and deals with Pollution and Global Warming 25/4/23
In was only in 1966 that miners began being paid by shift rather than the amount of coal that they cut. Finally Britain had decided that her coal days were over and cleaner energy should be used.
There is evidence that in the 14Century coal was dug in Wales.
1615 by this time coal was being sent on boats down the Tyne and loaded onto about 400 Freighters mostly to London but soon French, German and Dutch ship were buying coal, later British warships were set up to protect these from foreign navies. Coal loading never stooped day or night but the Keelmen (flat bottomed river boats depended on the tides.
1637 Charles 1 with the Privy council banned breweries from working near his palace because of their pollution.
1666 The Great Fire of London burned down the wooden old city with over 80 churches but it also brough the end of bubonic plague. Sir Christopher Wren was given the job of rebuilding St Pauls.
1667 Samuels Pepys wrote about the cold winter and how necessary coal was despite its high price.
1670 An act of Parlament imposed a tax on coal and money from this went to complete the building of St Pauls.
1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the steam pump to lift water out of flooded mines that previously had closed
1742 John Wesley said he had never encounted and swearing as came from mines and they were suitable for his Methodist religion.
1771 The Hostmen Company basically a cartel unscrupulous types would meet to keep up the price of Newcastle coal.
1761 The Duke of Bridgewater opened up mines and canals at Wolseley that supplied Manchester. By this time coal had become essential in making of bricks glass, metals making, sugar and dyes , brewing beer and distilling gin as well as for blacksmiths. By this time over a thousand ships were taking coal to almost every port in Europe. In the coal mines there was no shortage of labour and people were leaving the land looking for work wherever coal was mined workers would arrive leaving their landlords farms.
1771 James Watt was given and Newcomen engine to repair and realized that it wasted a lot of energy by heating, cooling and reheating he invented the concept of a condenser. By 1800 Watt and Boulton virtually had a monopoly of producing steam engines.
1803 the idea of making gas from coal was developed in Birmingham The Gas Light and Coke Company was established in 1810 by William Murdock and by 1815 thirty miles of piping had been laid lighting up the Palace of Westminster and area. The first visit of Queen Victoria to the Victoria and Albert Museum was at 9.30 pm so that she could see the exhibits lit up by gaslight. This was the first museum in the world to have it. The railways also set up gasworks as the coke left produced a high value fuel without smoke. This coke was also used in steel mills to remove impurities from iron.
1821 Lord Londonderry bought an estate in county Durham on the coast and developed a coal harbour within 20 years he was the richest man in Britain. These mine were a hotbed of miner strife,1831 There was a bond that tied miners to a pit for a year Thomas Hepburn a Methodist preacher led this. Londonderry now became a anti unionis paternalist as he provided doctors for his miners, pensioners for the disabled and schooling for their children but he demanded loyalty of his workers. The Seaham Colliery had an explosion in 1880 136 workers and 180 pit ponies were blown to bits. Children of miners went into the job as these were all isolated communities and had no alternatives.
As a rule for every 83 meters you descend into the mine the temp rise by 1C. You had an enormous rat population in many mines. 1815 the Davy safety lamp was invented and he turned down the patents rights on its manufacture.
1833 Children were now prevented from working in factory for more than 10 hours a day.
1834 Miners who tried organizing a union were transported to Australia
1838 In South Yorkshire a flood put out the boiler that pulled up the lift and then flooded the airshaft leaving workers trapped and dead most were children. So by 1840 research was done on the extent to which children were working in mines. At the time it was quite normal for whole families to work together as on farm everyone had to work to bring in the wheat harvest in summer. When Victorians heard that men and women both worked in the mines and women wore men's clothing and went naked in the hot places they were shocked.
1842 there was a total prohibition of women and girls working in mines and boys under the age of 10. During WW1 women returned to mine work but mostly sorting coal on the top as there was a shortage of labour.
The best role in coal was just owning the land under which coal was and getting the royalty from it. The Bute Family owned most Welsh land and they turned the Cardiff port into the largest coal port in the world. Ther was also a coal exchange there.
Birmingham had become a centre of engineering and sciece invention and you had the Lunar Society and nothing was off limits many of the great invention come from here. Steam had made it possible to manufacture everything , but made people slaves to machines. George Elliot wrote about this in Mill on the Floss.
1867 More coal was being delivered to London by train than by sea. Hard Times by Charles Dickens documented the Capitalist exploitation.
1871 warships clad in iron plate took over. Without masts guns could be mounted on the deck and swivel 280%. Steam ships burned 150 ton of coal a day so the British had to set up coaling stations across the world and coal became the first requisite of Empire. Every British colony had large stores of coal at the ports including Simonstown ,Cape. Warships produced thick black smoke so could be traced from far and signalling between ships became impossible. Welsh coal or anthracite but it had the highest quality and carried more energy and was the most expensive.
1883 South Island, New Zealand coal was declared high enough quality for the navy. Coal filled warships the coal acted as a protective rocks against the hull.
1890 they started producing electricity from turbines.
1893 the large Gateshead dock developed from the Tyne with trains coal could now be brought from faraway mines to anywhere.
1897 for the Spanish American war the American fleet in Manilla was forced to buy coal from Australia for their fleet in Manilla. While the trip of Teddy Roosevelts Great White Fleet depended on British collier ships.
1901 by the time Queen Victoria died steam ships had totally eclipsed sail power.
1904 / 5 during the Russo Japanese War Britain denied the Russian fleet permission to use the Suez Canal yet allowed their Japanese allies access to their coaling stations.
1906 Over a thousand miners were killed in an explosion at a mine at Courrieres , France. This made it very clear how dangerous coal mines could be and in Britain , Churchill sponsored the 1911 Coal Mines Act , this expected daily checks by mine owners to see how much dust was accumulating and it must be dampened and ventilation fans that could switch direction so as to keep flames away from trapped miners.
1908 The Admiralty started buying oil from Persia.
By 1910 the biggest Trade Union in the country was the miners.
1912 The first national miners strike, demanding a minimum wage, with over a million striking and this resulted in railwaymen , foundries, factories and shipyards ceasing to function.
1913 At this time there were over a million people working in mines and that year producing 292 million tons of coal and a third of that was esported.This was the year that DH Lawrence published Sons and Lovers portraying life in a mining village.
1917 miners were recruited to undermine the German lines at Messines where a massive series of mines killed an estimation of 10,000 troops. Before WW1 2 thirds of the worlds coal came from Britain, but afte the war the demand for coal plummeted making the situation ripe for a revolution.
1929 The Labout Party won the election and by 1932 40% of the population of S.Wales was unemployed.
Between the wars over a thousand exhausted mines closed and the number of men working in 1920 was 1,277000 to 782000 in 1938.
1936 by then Britain was reported to have the highest rate of pneumoconiosis in Europe and by in 1970 it was reported that 85% of all receiving benefits for lung related diseases were miners. This was an occupation that always attracted migrant workers like those fleeing the Irish potato famine.
1938 Coal Act basically nationalised the coal industry and this came into effect in July 1942 when Rommel launched his attack on El Alamein.
1943 because many miners had been the first to volunteer for the war, Ernest Bevin the labour minister conscripted 2 birthdays a month for youngest to go into the mines instead of to war. These were the Bevin boys and it was only 2013 taht Gordon Brown recognised and awarded merits to those alive and a memorial was build for them. This was a very wasteful system of talent and there were many desertions and they were kept in this work till 1947. This was very unpopular and since they wore no uniformes were treated as cowards or skivers. They were billited with families whose sons came home in uniforms.
1946 Under the post war Labour government of Clement Attlee. When coal was fully nationalized and mine owners were paid out a total of 81million pounds for coal that was theoretically in the ground but in any case they had no way of getting it out the mine owner though this was Christmas.
1952The coal board made nutty slack a cheap dirty coal available without rationing. There was a cold weather inversion trapping fog over England especially London it was so heavy that busses could not see to drive and the population suffered from respiratory diseases. This resulted in the National Smoke Abatement society of and the bringing out of the magazine Smokeless Air in 1953. It was reported that the pollution was costing the nation 250million pounds a year besides the extra medical costs. This was followed by the Clean Air Act of 1956.
1956 the Queen opened the first commercial nuclear power station and a second one in 1966 at Caithness and one later in the Severn estuary and 1976 in Somerset.
British rail announced that winth in 12 years they would change from steam to diesel power.
1968 another Clean Air Act put priority onto issues of health and the 60 saw a plunge in the number of collieries. By 1963 labour leader Harold Wilson talked about white heat and a technological revolution. The Coal Board was managing the decline and closing of the pits faster than was necessary. Here the Coal Board had been kind to the miners and the government absorbed millions of pounds of debt in subsidies while banning the import of cheaper imported coal.
1969 the possibility of oil of the coast of Aberdeen was discovered and a year later started being pumped
1973 OPEC hiked the price of oil and in 1979 it rose even further when the Shah of Iran was deposed.
With Author Scargill as head of the Coal miners Union he started a system of flying pickets bringing strikes from other areas. this was new and illegal. It was at the Battle of Saltley Gate that Scargill became known on TV, challenging the Prime Minister Ted Heath.
1979 Margaret Thatcher defeated Labours James Callahan as PM initially had to relent to the Union demand but she decided to prepare for the next winter and made sure that there was a stockpile of coal ready.
By 1983 when the Conservatives had the biggest majority Margaret Thatcher was ready. A law was passed that to strike you needed a vote of majority of the strikers. The strike started in March 1984 completely the wrong time of the year for such a strike with the slogan Coal or Dole. It was not supported by the Union of Democratic miners. The strike failed.
1992 the coalfields passed the point of no return and the state was divesting of all it companies from airlines to electricity and trains and the Coal Board which still had 50 pits employing 54,000 workers. The electrical companies were private and could import cheaper coal than it cost locally. Gas power stations was now becoming more profitable.
The NBC in 1980 made great profits by selling mining equipment to China. From 1979 to 2011 China's GDP increased annually and by then was consuming more coal than the rest of the world combined and polluting heavily.
2017 Only 3 million tons of coal was being produced and this came from open-cast mine using buldozers.Thus in 100 times more coal was produced.1917
2020 North Sea gas could supply less than half the countries needs and the rest was imported from Russia.
Conclusion
In 1889 a Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had predicted that humans burning of fossil fuel would raise the earths temperature. In 1938 by checking climate records a British engineer Guy Callander discovered a connection between human activity and global warming. It took till the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro for governments to agree on global warming at the Convention of Climate Change. The masses of CO2 is the main cause.
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