Andy Boag Photographer

Emley Moor Colliery - Closed 1985

I was on strike for twelve months and it was a strange feeling. At the time I’d bought my first house and we had our first child. Luckily my wife was working so we were able to pay the mortgage. There were lads at the pit whose wives didn’t work and it was a struggle. As the strike went on you’d see lads who worked with you going back to work, and the falling out was hard. I stuck it out and it wasn’t for the money, it was to keep the job going. Marriages were falling apart, people were losing their homes, and you can imagine the despair that men felt. What could they do?

We weren’t fighting for money; we were fighting for our jobs. It was about jobs and communities. History has proved the pits have closed, communities were wrecked and families destroyed. They closed the pits saying it was cheaper to import coal, but how that can be viable I just don’t know, I’ve never been able to get my head round that. With the price of fuel now, if they’d have kept the pits open, or even just maintained them, we could be mining cheap coal. They capped off the pits and let them cave in and you can’t go back now.