桃色视频

Paul Darlow, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Paul Hardman, former NUM National Executive Officer

The disaster at the Oaks Colliery near Barnsley, which killed 361 people in explosions on 12-13 December 1866, remains the largest in English history. To mark the 150th anniversary of the disaster in 2016, community heritage group and registered charity, People and Mining, supported by a steering committee involving representatives of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), local volunteer organisations, local schools and the National Mining Museum, raised funds for a memorial to those who died in the disaster, whilst Heritage Lottery funding was used to develop educational resources to raise awareness of the disaster. This presentation discusses the disaster and its commemoration.

Paul Hardman, former NUM National Executive Officer, co-ordinated a range of activities to mark the 150th anniversary of the Oaks Colliery Disaster, supporting the 鈥楻emember the Oaks鈥� working party and research in the NUM鈥檚 archive. Paul Darlow, an ex-miner and teacher, worked as the Heritage Lottery Funded Oaks Colliery Disaster Project Officer, developing educational materials for local and national schools and writing the book The Oaks Disaster 1866 鈥� A living history.

Paul Hardman on the importance of examining the historical record to reveal the truth and on the origins of the project to commemorate the Oaks Colliery Disaster:

Paul Darlow on the background to the Oaks Colliery Disaster:

Professor Peter Ackers, Loughborough University (Emeritus)

Peter Ackers provides an outline of the historical development of the Colliery Deputies trade union. Areas covered include: (1) the development of a sectional occupational identity linked to changes in the labour process, with a growing emphasis on underground 'safety', prompted by legislation such as the 1911 Coal Mines Act; (2) an emphasis on industrial moderation and co-operation, with an aspiration to become neutral 'civil servants'; (3) opposition to independent Deputies organization from both private employers and the 'industrial unionist' Miners' Federation of Great Britain / National Union of Mineworkers; and (4) the controversial position of Deputies as 'Safety Men' in national strikes.

Peter Ackers is Emeritus Professor in the History of Industrial Relations, Loughborough University. His PhD was on the pre-war Colliery Deputies leader, WT Miller (see Dictionary of Labour Biography IX and International Review of Social History 39 1994). Books include: Ackers & Reid (eds.), Alternatives to State-Socialism in Britain, Palgrave, 2016; and Trade Unions & the British Industrial Relations Crisis: An Intellectual Biography of Hugh Clegg, Routledge 2024.

Sarah Castagnetti, The National Archives

Speculative research at The National Archives evolved into a community project reconnecting people in Wrexham with records of the 1934 Gresford Colliery disaster. Moving letters and petitions from bereaved families were uncovered, alongside inquiry records and evidence of falsified air quality data. Working with local partners, selected documents were brought from Kew and displayed in Wrexham alongside records from North East Wales Archives, to mark the 91st anniversary of the disaster. The event, prompted reflection, remembrance, and shared stories. The project shows how returning records to their communities can open new understanding and bring people together.

Sarah is a Visual Records Specialist at The National Archives, working with 19th鈥� and 20th鈥慶entury photographic, design, art and film collections. She creates public content, runs student workshops, and supports researchers. Her interests include uncovering under鈥憆epresented voices and showing the relevance of archives today. Her recent work on the Gresford Colliery disaster focuses on reconnecting communities with their records.

Professor Jim Phillips, University of Glasgow, presenting work done with Dr Ewan Gibbs, University of Glasgow

The Auchengeich disaster was the largest fatal mining accident in Scotland during the era of public ownership (1947-1994). 47 miners were killed. It is commemorated annually in a community event in Moodiesburn, Lanarkshire, originated on the 25th anniversary by striking miners in 1984. Veterans from the former Scottish coalfields attend, with union banners, often joined by comrades from Yorkshire. Labour-movement representatives and sometimes labour historians are invited to speak. We analyse the commemoration, which invites reflections on linkages between community and class in coalfield history, and how the dangers of mining changed across the nationalised era.

Jim Phillips, presenting, is author of Coalfield Justice: the 1984-85 Miners鈥� Strike in Scotland (2024) and Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century (2019). His evidence to the Scottish government and Scottish Parliament helped secure the Miners鈥� Strike (Scotland) (Pardons) Act of 2022.

Ewan Gibbs, co-researcher, is author of Coal Country: The Meaning and Memory of Deindustrialization in Post-war Scotland (University of London Press, 2021), and An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class (Verso, October 2026.)

Liv Robinson, Northumbria University

This paper examines the human cost of historical coal mining in North East England, foregrounding violence as a fundamental condition of miners' working lives - rather than a series of isolated events. Drawing on material from Northumberland Archives, it argues that violence was embedded within the labour process itself, shaping miners' bodies and life courses across multiple temporal scales. This violence is conceptualised as simultaneously exceptional and unexceptional: spectacular in moments of disaster, yet ordinary and culturally normalised through everyday exposure to risk, injury, and bodily degradation.

Liv is a third-year PhD researcher in Human Geography at Northumbria University. Her research examines the multiple forms of violence embedded within historical coal-mining in the Northumberland Coalfield, from major disasters to everyday injury, compensation, and solidarity. Drawing on archival material from Northumberland Archives, her work foregrounds the embodied and temporal dimensions of mining harm. Born and raised in County Durham, she has a deep interest in mining and its legacies.

Lucy Jameson, Durham University

The introduction of pithead baths to coal mines marked an important juncture in the transformation of miners鈥� occupational welfare. Nonetheless, pithead baths were also a critical technology for pitwomen, yet the sluggish provision of such sites, and the refusal of some miners to use the pit bath facilities, expose the tensions between the gendered divisions of labour. Pitwomen鈥檚 domestic labour and caregiving helped to facilitate the coal economy, but at a great cost to their physical wellbeing and welfare. Approaching the pit bath debate from the perspective of disability history, I reinforce the importance of recognising unpaid domestic labour as a legitimate and critical form of work.

Lucy Jameson is a third-year PhD candidate at Durham University. She researches the history of science, technology and medicine at the intersection of disability history. Her doctoral thesis explores the ways in which technologies designed by and/or for disabled people in the British Post Office can recover lived experiences of disability from 1918-1964. Lucy has also researched the connection between experiences of pneumoconiosis and socio-economic status in County Durham coalmining communities.

Robert Rayner, University of Birmingham

In February 1974, as Edward Heath asked the electorate 鈥榃ho Governs Britain?鈥�, a little-noticed pay inquiry was quietly considering a question of its own: what is the price of coal when measured not in pounds, but in terms of work hazard and compromised health? Behind the political confrontation of two national miners鈥� strikes and a general election lay an unrealised attempt to redefine 鈥榳age justice鈥� through occupational risk鈥攁 proposal that might have transformed incomes policy and industrial relations.

The grandson of a South Wales coal miner, Robert is a History PGR whose thesis is Coal: from Who Governs to What Governs? Reinterpreting the coal disputes of the Heath Government. He helped to organise a Birmingham Research in History & Cultures event Remembering Coal: Legacy, Memories, Heritage (UoB, June 2025).

John Pateman, University of Leicester

Sport and social provision as mining welfare was a common feature of many British coal mines. A unique and important aspect of this provision was the libraries that were set up within Mining Welfare Institutes. These libraries were wholly owned and operated by the miners themselves. As such they represented working class cultural democracy in action. Self-organisation and self-learning was a working class tradition and many workers could read long before compulsory public schooling was introduced. The miners' libraries represented 鈥榦ne of the greatest networks of cultural institutions created by working people anywhere in the world鈥�.

John Pateman comes from a Romany Gypsy background and worked in public libraries for over 40 years, at all levels from Library Assistant to Chief Librarian. He was Head of Libraries in Hackney, Merton, Lincolnshire and Thunder Bay, Canada. He pioneered the development of community-led and needs-based libraries in the UK and Canada. He received the UK Libraries Change Lives Award, the Canada 150 Award and the Cuban National Culture Award for services to public libraries.

Dr Marion Henry, Universit茅 Paris 1 Panth茅on-Sorbonne

From the late 1950s onwards, the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation's recreational programme had to adapt to the phased contraction of the British coalmining industry, which challenged the occupational homogeneity of mining communities. Drawing on underexplored sources from CISWO, this paper will explore the impact of deindustrialisation on the cultural policy led by the Board and trade unions in the coalfields. It will highlight the industry鈥檚 sustained support to cultural activities in the coalfields until the early 1980s.

Marion Henry, PhD, Institut d鈥橢tudes des Sciences Politiques de Paris and University of Strathclyde, 2021; in employment at Universit茅 Paris 1 Panth茅on-Sorbonne since 2023. Current post: Lecturer in 20th century Cultural History. Her PhD thesis focused on the history of brass bands in British coalfields between 1947 and 1984. Her current research focuses on the feminisation of recreative activities in British coalfields in the 20th century.

Judi Alston, One to One Development Trust

Kellingley marked the final chapter of deep coal mining in the UK. Its closure was not only economic, but a psychological and cultural rupture for communities shaped by generations of mining heritage.

What does it mean to be the last?

This presentation screens extracts from The Big K film, reflecting on its development through public engagement sessions. It explores 鈥渃o-producing as you go鈥� and how community discussion has shaped the evolving narrative and opened dialogue between lived experience and historical interpretation.

Judi Alston is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and XR Producer/Director. Her work spans broadcast, film and immersive media, focusing on working-class heritage, community memory and the effects of industrial change. She is the founder and CEO of arts and media charity One to One Development Trust and regularly presents her work at festivals and conferences in the UK and internationally.

Kathryn Stainburn, Castleford Civic Society

The story of how a group of community researchers in the former mining town of Castleford, West Yorkshire, re-discovered this once great trade union leader. From personal experience Herbert Smith knew the heavy death toll that mining extracted from a community. Herbert's father died in a pit accident before he was born. A miner was killed in the same pit, in the first week where 10 year old Herbert had just started working. Into his sixties, he was still actively involved in mine rescue operations. Herbert Smith is buried in Castleford鈥檚 Victorian Cemetery amongst the graves of local pit disasters and individual miners who perished at work.

Kathryn Stainburn, Heritage Lead at Castleford Civic Society. Castleford Civic Society was first established in 1972 and is enjoying a new lease of life. Our mission statement is 'Valuing our past and encouraging pride in our future'. We are proud of our heritage and we always welcome opportunities to celebrate the hard-working characters and communities who contributed to our former industrial town. The Society are also involved in various community groups who are making a difference to Castleford.

Dr Kat Simpson, The University of Huddersfield

This paper uses social haunting to trace how intergenerational legacies of coal continue to shape young lads鈥� experiences of life growing up in Barnsley鈥檚 former coalfields. In partnership with the Youth Work Unit: Yorkshire and The Humber, it draws on co-created research with young lads, and narrative interviews with former miners, to examine how the temporality of the industrial past endures as ghostly presences and material traces that shape present鈥揻uture experiences of community, education, and employment. This paper centres on community as a site of social haunting.

Kat Simpson is a working-class academic and Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Huddersfield. Her research explores how industrial legacies continue to shape the lives of young people in former coalfield communities, examining how the industrial past and the deindustrialised present intertwine to shape the lived experiences of the present-future.