At 14:02 01/03/04 EST, you wrote:
>flat cap were still being worn in some number at Wharnclffe Woodmoor (New
>Carlton) Colliery up to at least 1967/68, very probably illegally but
hardly secretly
I'm moved to enter this discussion thread, not by personal experience by
what Ivor Brown has just told me on the telephone. For those of you who
don't know Ivor, he entered the British coal industry in the early 1950s
and rose from the ranks, leaving the industry to become, I think, minerals
officer for Yorkshire, West Riding, County Council and subsequently engage
in consultancy to the international coal industry. He was for many years
the chairman of NAMHO, the UK/Irish mining history association.
Anyway, he's of the opinion that the wearing of head protection was never
enshrined in law. It had to be provided by management as stipulated in the
1974 Act. But wearing it was enforced by management in co-operation with
the union. Before the Act miners would frequently leave their hard hats at
the work-face along with their tools, all personal property, paid for by
the miners themselves (a hard hat cost 6d - that's 6 pence old money, when
there were 240 to the pound sterling - in the 1960s). Miners would cut a
hole in their hat and leave it chained to the tools ready for the next
shift, wearing their cloth caps as they returned to surface.
On leaving the pit a miner would ceremoniously kick his hard hat over the
boundary fence as a parting gesture.
Peter
______________________________________________
Dr Peter Claughton,
Blaenpant Morfil, nr. Rosebush, Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 07831 427599
University of Exeter - School of Historical, Political and Sociological
Studies
(Centre for South Western Historical Studies)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
_____________________________________________
|