Sacrifice has led miners to fight
I would like to highlight the reasons we are fighting for improvements to miners' pensions.
I would like to highlight the reasons we are fighting for improvements to miners' pensions.
Miners have always been caring and benevolent towards their own community. Because our work underground was dangerous, we needed "eyes in the back of our heads", so our mates became that and watched our backs for us.
Due to this "closeness", a brotherhood was born, and when a shout went up that men were injured, or had tragically been killed, the miners responded with little or no regard to their own risk. As part of this unity, our forefathers formed a union, so that even the meekest of men had a voice, and a protection from a bullying employer who would seek to exploit this timidity.
Our elders were also far-sighted, always seeking improvements to our terms of employment, and also to the infrastructure in which we lived.
From their meagre wages they helped to pay for the building of schools for our children, and colleges for further education so that miners could study and perhaps go on to become colliery managers or union reps. Some of them became Members of Parliament, and carried our trust and our voice with them. They built hospitals to tend the sick, and convalescent homes to help in their recovery. They paid towards children's parties and seaside trips for the retired; they built playing fields and parks for exercise and recreation, so that all of our society could benefit from a miner's labour.
Many other structures still stand today because of a miner's generosity. All of this was paid for from a miner's pitiful wage. What other part of working-class history has given such a sacrifice? They also formed a pension fund that was designed to give them dignity and independence in old age, without becoming a burden on society, and it is this fund that now provides in part for us.
It is against this historical background of self-sacrifice that we, who are the beneficiaries of these gifts, must fight to secure a dignity for the very people who gave, and we must continue to press the Government to make the long-promised improvements to our pension fund so that our own elders may get a better deal from the fund - their fund.
Mick Westwood, Spokesman for Cannock Chase Retired Miners & Officials Association, Ironstone Road, Burntwood.
