大象传媒

It is now 60 years since I received my direction to report for work in the mining industry. I have thought many times about writing something of those years as a Bevin Boy at Bedford Colliery, Leigh, Lancashire.

As an 18 year old in February 1944, I had a medical prior to being called up for the armed forces. Or so I thought. Instead I was told to report to the nearest Labour Exchange and directed to work in the coal mining industry. Not volunteers or conscientious objectors, we were selected by ballot and had no recourse to appeal.

The first month was spent at a training colliery; this being Wheatsheaf Pit at Pendlebury near Manchester. It could have been on the moon as far as I was concerned. We had classroom instruction, surface and underground training and PT, with army instructors. At the end of the month we were sent to our designated pits.

My first job was on the surface, working on the waste tip of the mine; the miners called these "dirt rucks". Waste was carried in railway wagons on lines run along the top edge of the "ruck". Our job was to empty these wagons. We shovelled rocks out and down the side of the heap through a side door of the wagon, so extending the tip. After a while the line was moved nearer the edge, thus widening the surface area. As the railway lines were not on permanent beds, they were moved by a team of men using long crowbars. If the lines needed bending, a piece of equipment called a "crow" was used; this was an elongated u-shaped item. The ends of the "u" arms hooked onto the rail. Across the arms ran another bar with a threaded bolt in it, which went onto the rail. The other end of the bolt had a square boss and so by turning this with a long lever, the rail was bent to the correct curve.

Fortunately during my time on the waste tip the weather wasn't bad and I quite enjoyed it. We were regarded as a different species to the miners. We spoke quite differently to them and this was a cause of much amusement and misunderstanding. As I had worked at the Post Office the blokes wanted to know if I spent all my time licking stamps!

My next job was underground, at the rear of the shaft bottom known as "back o'pit". Here there was an area of steel plates on the floor. As the cage came down loaded with empty tubs, the chap at the front side of the shaft (who was in charge of loading the full tubs which were on an incline towards the shaft) would take out the "scotches". These were lengths of round steel bar about 18 inches long and one and a quarter inches thick, with a loop about two thirds along its length that stopped the operator getting his fingers chopped off between the scotch and the bottom of the tub. As these scotches were literally thrown into the wheels as the tubs went by, it wasn't easy at first. The main idea was to stop them short of the cage, which was a bit hazardous. As the cages stopped at the pit bottom, the chap in charge of loading would take out the scotches (I think he also had a foot operated lever that hooked up under the axle of the front tub as they came into position) and let three full tubs down the incline and into the cage, thus forcing three empties out the other side with considerable force. Here another chap and myself would grab thm, spin them round on the steel plates and onto the rails at the side of the shaft and so back into the pit to be refilled.

The cages at Bedford Colliery were triple deckers, that held 42 men at a time, 14 to a deck or three tubs per deck. With two cages, we at the "back o'pit" did not have time to hang about during winding. The bottom of the shaft wasn't a small dark hole as you may imagine, but rather like a tube station with two sets of rails to accommodate outgoing full tubs and one set for the empties going back into the tip. Lit by electric light it was quite bright, so no need for a cap lamp. Being several yards high and wide, and some 50 or 60 yards long, it was all bricked up like a railway tunnel. It was always wet with water dripping down on the steel plates, making them very slippery. In winter the water would freeze, forming huge icicles.

(PK)

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