Against the Grain by Paul Ormerod

Author:Paul Ormerod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
Published: 2018-04-20T13:11:14+00:00

Whatever happened to all those miners? Shocks and economic resilience

The early 1980s in Britain saw a major dispute between Mrs Thatcher’s government and the coal miners’ union. This culminated in a bitter strike in 1984–85, which was rapidly followed by the closure of most of what remained of the UK’s mines. Even today, there are regular demands for a public enquiry into the clashes which took place between the miners and the police.

This piece was prompted by publicity given to one such call. It looks at the employment experience in the subsequent decades of the local areas in Britain which were dominated by coal mining (Ormerod 2010). This has differed widely. Some have prospered, and registered strong employment growth. Others remain pretty stagnant. But the more militant an area was during the strike, the less well it has done. Changes should be embraced rather than resented.

Where have all the miners gone? To judge by the rhetoric of the BBC and other Leftist media outlets, whole swathes of Britain lie devastated, plagued by rickets, unemployment and endemic poverty – nearly thirty years after the pit closures under Lady Thatcher!

The reality is different. There is indeed a small number of local authority areas where employment has never really recovered from the closures in the 1980s. But, equally, there are former mining areas which have prospered.

Thirty years ago, in 1983, there were 29 local authority areas in the UK, out of a total of over 450, in which mining accounted for more than 10 per cent of total employment. A mere handful of areas still remain scarred by the closures. Wansbeck, on the bleak Northumbrian coast, had 21 per cent of its jobs filled by mining in 1983. Now, employment remains 25 per cent lower than it was then. Elsewhere, reality is not as bad as the image.

The old mining areas at the heads of the South Wales valleys are meant to symbolise industrial decay. But in ­Merthyr Tydfil, there are 8 per cent more jobs than there were in 1983. Admittedly, in Blaenau Gwent, based on Ebbw Vale, employment is 12 per cent lower. This is hardly permanent devastation. In Easington on the Durham coast, miners made up no less than 41 per cent of all local employment. But even after this devastating blow, losing almost half the area’s jobs, employment now is only 9 per cent lower than it was in 1983.

In contrast, there are real success stories. North West Leicestershire and South Staffordshire used to have lots of miners. But employment in both areas is now some 40 per cent – forty! – higher than it was in 1983.

The experience of the individual mining areas differs dramatically in terms of their resilience, their ability to recover economically. Three years ago, I published a short article in Applied Economics Letters on the changes in employment in all the mining areas between 1983 and 2002. Total UK employment grew by 23 per cent, and in the ex-mining areas as a whole by just 9 per cent.

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