Kellingley Colliery five years on: The deep impact of mining's demise

Five years ago the last pit workers left Yorkshire's Kellingley Colliery for the final time, bringing to an end hundreds of years of deep coal mining in the UK. David Hirst looks back on the demise of the industry and the impact of the closure of the 'Big K' on the communities it once sustained.

It’s hard to believe that it’s five years since the closure of Kellingley Colliery.

A symbolic end to  centuries of deep coal mining in the UK – and a reminder of just how much has been lost with the demise of a once-great industry.

In its heyday, Kellingley employed more than 2,000 people.

The pit was at the heart of a kind of ecosystem in those communities, in which a network of sporting activities, brass bands and even St John Ambulance Brigade competitions were interconnected and co-dependent.

Many of the miners who worked there lived in and spent their hard-earned wages in Knottingley, two miles down the road.

But it wasn’t to last and, after the year-long miners' strike in the mid-1980s, pit jobs began to disappear rapidly as collieries were closed. 

The legacy of those closures continues today for the roughly two million people in our region who live in former coalfield areas. 

The Coalfield Regeneration Trust, a charity which is working to improve the lives of people in former mining areas, says there are huge questions about the wellbeing of the people who once depended on the industry.

Before Kellingley closed down, some miners were earning up to £40,000 a year. Today, in the Dearne Valley for example, there are more jobs than there were when the pits were still open, but many of those are part-time or zero hours contracts.

A report by the regeneration trust last year revealed that a third of all former coalfield workers now rely instead on such work.

More than half are in manual jobs. The number of residents educated to degree level is well below the national average.

The last available figures showed that 276,000 people in coalfield communities were out of work on incapacity benefits. Half of coalfield neighbourhoods are in the most deprived 30 per cent in the UK.

The decline didn’t start with the closure of Kellingley – the problems had begun several decades before. Villages built around the sinking of a pit shaft and where the workforce often accounted for much of the population suddenly found that spending power diminished when  its colliery closed down.

What’s the answer?

The Coalfields Regeneration Trust argues that another 80,000 jobs would be needed to bring former coal areas up to the national average of employment. And billions of pounds would be needed to make that happen. It is possible, but it could take many years to get to a point where young people have a real future to look forward to.

Many former miners believe that the coal industry was killed off too soon. And for some, what really hurts is that Drax power station – less than 10 miles from the site of what was Kellingley Colliery – is still burning coal five years on.

Drax will go fully green from next March. But for now, at least, coal is continuing to help keep our lights on.