Miners and Mining Communities

Debate between Allan Dorans and Grahame Morris

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

May I congratulate the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on securing this important debate? I am proud to have been born and brought up in Dailly, which is a coalmining village in South Ayrshire, alongside the former mining towns and villages of Cumnock, New Cumnock, Dalmellington and Patna that are also in my constituency.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, my late father Peter Dorans DCM was employed as a coalminer at one of the three mines surrounding the village. He worked at the coalface. As a coalminer, my father suffered, as many did, from common industrial diseases including vibration white finger and carpal tunnel syndrome from the frequent use of heavy drilling equipment, and partial deafness. Up to the day of his death, every time he coughed, he brought up coal dust from his lungs.

Many thousands of coalminers suffered other medical conditions including emphysema and breathing-related illnesses. Many lost limbs and suffered from other life-limiting conditions and injuries and early death as a result of the working conditions in the mines at those times. Many miners also lost their lives in mining disasters. I will highlight just two from my constituency.

In September 1950, the Knockshinnoch mining disaster occurred near New Cumnock when a glaciated lake filled with liquid peat and moss flooded the pit, trapping more than 100 miners underground for a number of days. Thirteen men died. In November 1962, at the Barony colliery near Cumnock, a mine shaft collapsed trapping two contract workers, Thomas Fyvie and George Wade, together with two colliery employees, Henry Green and John McNeil. Despite valiant and sustained efforts to rescue them, they remain entombed deep underground to this day. I pay tribute to those men and all who have lost their lives and suffered appalling life-shortening health conditions and injuries as a result of working in the coalmines.

The debt owed by this country to the men who risked their lives to power the country and economy for generations is immense. Not only did coalminers and their families make that possible; they paid a terrible price over the centuries in loss of life and limb, and in shortened lives caused by the brutal working conditions and inadequate housing and health services, just to enable others to become wealthy—some obscenely so.

Without doubt, in the last two centuries, robust, hard- working, proud men worked in incredibly difficult circumstances for what was a paltry wage—they often relied on meeting unattainable, backbreaking daily or weekly targets to earn a barely liveable wage. Despite those difficulties, the miners and their families created and sustained strong, supportive communities in the face of adversity and came together to look after each other in difficult times. [Interruption.] Excuse me.

Large-scale coal production ended in my constituency when the two largest coalmines in the area—the Killoch and the Barony—ceased production in 1987 and 1989 respectively, with the loss of thousands of mining jobs and the knock-on effect of the loss of countless jobs in the supply chain and the local economy.

[Grahame Morris]

The hon. Gentleman is making really important points about the loss of life in mining disasters, a number of which occurred in my constituency too. However, there is the ongoing legacy of industrial disease. Yesterday, I spoke to some miners from the midlands, who were lobbying Parliament and pointed out the injustice of the current schemes. One of them was suffering from chest disease—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To qualify for compensation, the requirement was 20 years of underground work, but he had worked only 19 years, so he was excluded. There are a number of other examples like that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. If the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) finds that he is having difficulty speaking and wants to take some time, I could move to the next speaker and come back to him.