Looking back at Tower’s history

Jan 19 2008 by Robin Turner, Western Mail

Deep mining for coal in Wales ends on Friday when Tower Colliery closes. Robin Turner tells the inspirational story of the 239 miners who defied pit closure plans and became mine owners

WITH rain clouds gathering over the Rhigos Mountains, 239 proud miners marched up Treherbert Road towards Tower Colliery to make mining history.

The date was January 2, 1995, and the Welsh mining industry was in its death throes.

Nine months earlier British Coal had ordered the closure of the Cynon Valley’s Tower Colliery, claiming it was unviable, even though miners knew its gleaming black seams were thick with high quality anthracite.

Not even a 27-hour sit-in by local MP Ann Clwyd and the raising of the red flag on Hirwaun Common could change things.

The then Conservative government wanted Tower closed.

And it seemed the pit, which dated back to the 1800s, would be consigned to history.

But in stepped Tyrone O’Sullivan, a pit electrician at Tower and NUM lodge secretary of 20 years’ standing.

A month after the closure was announced he called a meeting of the workers facing the dole queue and asked them for £2,000 apiece to help him buy back the pit .... and their jobs.

The stunning request met with a deafening silence, then an almighty row, but only one man voted against.

Eventually, it took redundancy payouts of £8,000 each from 239 miner workers to fight off rival bids for the pit.

The mission to buy back the colliery was driven by a deep sense of history.

A flag of revolt, white, but dipped in sheep’s blood, had been raised by miners and ironworkers in the nearby Merthyr Rising of 1831.

But this was different. The miners would become pit owners.

Tower’s first encounter with the “city types” came after they appointed Price Waterhouse as advisers.

The same accountants, which later became PricewaterhouseCoopers had sequestrated the union’s funds in 1984, but the miners were convinced the firm were “friends with the Tories” and could be useful to them.

O’Sullivan said, “There were a few accountants in long black coats who never drank a pint”.

But his abiding memory of the “money crowd” is of a forceful young accountant, remembered only as “Fiona”, who did the work and remains cherished.

In their blood-stirring march on that January morning in 1995, they went back as owners, every one of them a shareholder in a new company.

Tyrone O’Sullivan said, “Early that morning my wife Elaine and I had gone to the pit and helped blow up 239 balloons, one for each of the miners.”

He said of the historic David versus Goliath battle to achieve the buy-out, “Who would have believed at any time in the last 200, 150 or even 50 years, that when it came to the last coal mine in Wales that it would be owned by the miners themselves?”

As the only wholly employee-owned mine in the world, pit owners from Cuba to Azerbaijan flocked to Wales see how it worked.

The draw of the Tower story, about workers who took control of their own destiny, became irresistible. It has been turned into an opera, by Alun Hoddinott, and a cult French film, Jean-Michel Carré’s Charbons Ardents (“Mad About Coalmining”), in the past few years.

A movie script was penned by Chariots of Fire writer Colin Welland, though it has not made the screen ... yet.

The new Tower owners introduced for themselves pension rights for the first time, an extra week’s holiday a year, sickness and accident pay and better salaries. Management earned “a bit more”, but rises were at a flat rate to keep things in line with the miners.

O’Sullivan, who was decorated with an OBE (that’s “old broken-down electrician” according to his men) now travels to the pit from his home in Mumbles, Swansea.

He had a caravan in the seaside village for many years as a weekend retreat from the coal face and has now moved there permanently.

As the colliers marched back into Tower in 1995, they followed their NUM lodge banner bearing the words Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom.

Ann Clwyd, who had fought so hard to fight the initial closure plan, cut a red ribbon that officially re-opened the pit.

And as they entered the mine another banner was held up proclaiming Tower to be “Back in the hands of the workforce.”

Tower quickly became Wales’ last major coal mine.

But on Friday, deep mining in Wales will finally come to an end when Tower’s reserves are at last exhausted.

Men will still man the mine, a three-month salvage operation will be needed to “put the mine to bed,” involving bringing equipment to the surface, ensuring methane gas cannot not escape and that waterways are not polluted.

But afterwards the pit will fall silent.

There are plans for a sell-off of the site which could have a future as a sports complex, a business centre, a housing complex or even a major industrial plant.

The Tower Colliery board and the Welsh Assembly Government are working on plans to ensure the site continues to bring jobs and prosperity to the Cynon Valley.

The mine employs 260 workers, of which 190 are miners.

Around 70 will transfer to the nearby Aberpergwm drift mine, which is run by AIM-listed company Energybuild.

Tyrone O’Sullivan said, “The first transfer could be followed by a second and third round.”

But, while the pit may finally disappear, Tower will always have a place in history.

O’Sullivan said, “People would say to me at the beginning, ‘You’ll be lucky to get three years out of that pit Ty’, but here we are 13 years later.

“It only goes to show that people can take control of their own job instead of standing in the corner, moaning and groaning.”

The Tower story is also aimed at being inspirational.

Tower director Ken Davies said, “We wanted to give profits back to workers and in the first few years we paid a dividend to the shareholders too.

“Even now average pay is better than most in the area.

“In a place of high unemployment, to have solid jobs has been a boost to the community generally.”

The company has also tried to share its wealth around, helping in a small way to regenerate another crisis-threatened community in West Wales.

When a clothing factory closed in Fishguard in 2003, they bought a coal merchants in the town to offer alternative jobs – and help Tower’s export drive into Ireland.

“We saw it as something positive to do, for Tower as well as for Fishguard, “ said Mr Davies.

Also, since the colliery was taken over, around £250,000 has been donated to local causes. Youth football and rugby teams, Aberdare’s annual carnival, a riding club for the disabled and a hospice have been among the beneficiaries.