Coalfield Communities

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I will be as brief as possible. First, the “State of the coalfields” report published in June highlights major issues in coal mining communities, not just the closure programmes, but problems that have been there for decade upon decade and particularly concern jobs and ill health. It is all to do with income. Although the Government were right to say that unemployment is decreasing in mining communities, pro rata it is not decreasing half as much as it has done in the healthier south-east of this economy. That issue must be addressed and is highlighted well in that report.

The first intervention made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) was about who closed the coal mines in the last century, but it is a nonsense argument to say that Labour closed more mines between 1964 and 1974. The real question concerns who closed the coal mines, and when they closed, how much coal was imported into this country to replace it? Never under the Wilson Government did we bring coal into this country to replace coal lost as a result of the closure programme, which is what we had to do under the Thatcher Government. I came to the House in 1983, and I remember the coal miners’ strike—I have Orgreave in my constituency. I had left the coal industry fewer than 12 months before to come to this place, and I remember what happened.

I want to say two things. One concerns policing, and there are a lot of lessons to be learned from that. A national reporting centre was set up during the miners’ strike. Pro formas were handed out for police to charge people using effectively the same language. My constituency backed on to Nottinghamshire. People were prevented from leaving Yorkshire to go to Nottinghamshire, miles away from where there may have been a breach of the law. That was always going to be challenged, and it should have been challenged because the policing of the strike was wrong. In May 1984 the Police Federation condemned the use of pro forma charge sheets against miners.

Do not get me wrong: I and others in this Chamber criticised the police and the stone throwers. On several occasions I called for a public inquiry into the policing of the miners’ strike and I still believe we should have one now, because this should never happen again in our communities.

I hope we have learned from what happened at that time, which was revenge for 1974. I was a striking miner at that time and remember it well. I joined the Labour party in the February of that year.

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) talked about regeneration and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, which is regenerating communities by giving grants to individual groups—a wonderful thing to do. The economic regeneration, like the advanced manufacturing plant that has been mentioned, began under the last Government through the regional development agency, which was abolished when this Government took office, and through objective 1 funding, because we were that poor that at the time we received European money. We should not forget that Europe did a lot to turn south Yorkshire round, although, as the report published in June this year showed, there is still a lot more to do on jobs and ill health in mining communities, which we have suffered for generations.