Before 1900 Although some deep mining took place as early as the 1500s (in
North East England, and along the
Firth of Forth coast) deep shaft mining in the UK began to develop extensively in the late 18th century, with rapid expansion throughout the 19th century and early 20th century when the industry peaked. The location of the
coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire, of
Yorkshire, and of
South Wales. The Yorkshire pits which supplied
Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep.
Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first deep pits. In much of Britain coal was worked from
drift mines, or scraped off when it outcropped on the surface. Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and primitive equipment. Scottish miners had been bonded to their "maisters" by a 1606 Act "Anent Coalyers and Salters". A
Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775, recognised this to be "a state of slavery and bondage" and formally abolished it; this was made effective by a further law in 1799. Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in place because extraction was still primitive. As a result, in the deep
Tyneside pits (300 to 1,000 ft deep), only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted. The use of wooden pit props to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800. The critical factor was circulation of air and control of dangerous explosive gases. At first fires were burned at the bottom of the "upcast" shaft to create air currents and circulate air, but were replaced by fans driven by steam engines. Protection for miners came with the invention of the
Davy lamp and
Geordie lamp, where any
firedamp (or
methane) burnt harmlessly within the lamp. It was achieved by preventing the combustion spreading from the light chamber to the outside air with either metal gauze or fine tubes, but the illumination from such lamps was very poor. Great efforts were made to develop better safe lamps, such as the
Mueseler produced in the Belgian pits near
Liège. Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to meet the rapidly rising demand. In 1700 the annual output of coal was just under 3 million tons. Between 1770 and 1780 the annual output of coal was some 6¼ million
long tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the 20th century). After 1790 output soared, reaching 16 million long tons by 1815 at the height of the
Napoleonic War. By 1830 this had risen to over 30 million tons The miners, less affected by imported labour or machines than were the
cotton mill workers, had begun to form
trade unions and fight their grim battle for wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees. Use of women and children (at a fraction of the cost of men) was common until abolished in an Act of August 1842. In South Wales, the miners showed a high degree of solidarity. They lived in isolated villages where the miners comprised the great majority of workers. There was a high degree of equality in life style; combined with an evangelical religious style based on Methodism, leading to an ideology of egalitarianism. They forged a "community of solidarity" – under the leadership of the
Miners Federation. The union supported first the Liberal Party, then after 1918 Labour, with some Communist Party activism at the fringes.
Since 1900 The need to maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both
world wars. As well as energy supply, coal became a very political issue, due to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by colliery owners. Much of the 'old
Left' of British politics can trace its origins to coal-mining areas, with the main labour union being the
Miners' Federation of Great Britain, founded in 1888. The MFGB claimed 600,000 members in 1908. (The MFGB later became the more centralised
National Union of Mineworkers). Although other factors were involved, one cause of the
UK General Strike of 1926 was concerns colliers had over very dangerous working conditions, reduced pay and longer shifts. Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th centuries helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of the collieries in which they worked. In the late 20th century, improved integration of coal extraction with bulk industries (such as electrical generation) helped coal maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energy supplies such as oil, natural gas and, from the late 1950s,
nuclear power. More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy sources and bio-fuels. Most of the coal mines in Britain were purchased by the government in 1947 and put under the control of the
National Coal Board, with only the smaller mines left in private ownership. The NUM had campaigned for nationalisation for decades and, once it was achieved, sought to work with the NCB in managing the industry and discouraging strikes. Under the chairmanship of
Alf Robens, pit closures became widespread as coal's place in energy generation declined. The NUM leadership continued to resist calls for strike action, but an
unofficial strike began in 1969 after a conference pledge on the hours of surface-workers was not acted upon. This was a watershed moment that led to increased spending on the coal industry and a much slower rate of pit closures, as well as the election of more militant officials to the NUM leadership. Under the government of Edward Heath, an
official strike in 1972 won increased wages after the Wilberforce Commission. Less than two years later, Heath called a general election over another official strike, called after an overtime ban had led to a
Three-Day Week in Britain, and lost the election to the Labour Party. The wage demands were then met and spending on the industry continued to increase, including the establishment of the new
Selby Coalfield. By the early 1980s, many pits were almost 100 years old and were considered uneconomic to work at current wage rates compared to cheap
North Sea oil and gas, and in comparison to subsidy levels in
Europe.
The miners' strike of 1984 failed to stop the
Conservative government's plans under
Margaret Thatcher to shrink the industry, and a break-away
Union of Democratic Mineworkers was founded by miners, mostly in the Midlands, who felt that the NUM had broken its own democratic rules in calling the strike. The
National Coal Board (by then
British Coal), was privatised by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns through the mid-1990s. Because of exhausted seams, high prices and cheap imports, the mining industry disappeared almost completely, despite the militant protests of some miners. In January 2008, the
South Wales Valleys last deep pit mine,
Tower Colliery in Hirwaun,
Rhondda Cynon Taff closed with the loss of 120 jobs. The coal was exhausted. Until 2015 coal was still mined at
Hatfield,
Kellingley and
Thoresby Collieries, and is extracted at several very large opencast pits in South Wales, Scotland and elsewhere. Kellingley Colliery was the last deep coal mine in operation in the UK and its last coaling shift was on 18 December 2015 when coaling operations ceased with the loss of 450 jobs bringing deep coal mining in the UK to an end in its entirety, a skeleton team of men will remain to service the colliery until it is finally dismantled. Coal mining was never a major industry in Ireland, apart from a spell in the mid-19th century when east Tyrone collieries were at their peak.
Deerpark Mines was the largest opencast site. In 1919, it got rail connections and reached peak production in the 1950s. ==United States==