Miners, families march after last British coal mine closes

It marks an historic moment in coal mining history as Kellingley Colliery is the final deep coal mine in Britain, and will cease coal production for the country at large.

He started at Woolley Colliery before moving to Kellingley 28 years ago. So today is devastating for the whole community.

He said: “It’s pretty surreal but the lads have just got on with it as they always have”.

As well as losing support from governments around the world, the coal industry has been broadsided by the rise of cheap shale gas that has decimated prices.

Revd Harrell has said an annual service to remember the 17 people who’ve died in the pit’s operations will continue at the National Coal Mining Museum in Barnsley.

“Ferrybridge is set to close in a few months’ time, again years before it needs to, so we will lose more skilled jobs”. A message chalked on a board at Kellingley Colliery in Knottingley, northern England as the final shift works underground, Friday Dec. 18, 2015.

Many shared hugs and handshakes as they walked away and said they were “very sad” at the closure of the pit, known locally as the Big K.

Richard Dobrowolski, 59, wore a T-shirt with the slogan Big K RIP and had a tattoo of the colliery on his calf.

“I feel gutted, like everybody else”, another miner, Tony Carter, 52, said in the day before the closure.

“I came here from school and it’s been my life ever since”.

Mr Dobrowolski, 59, said: “I worked in this pit for 35 years and it has a special place in my heart. Everybody knew what was going to happen but nobody was really looking forward to it”. “Every pit that has shut over the last 50 years, the community has suffered”.

“Margaret Thatcher did a great job”.

Some shook hands with their fellow their colleagues in what the men described as “the final handshake”.

He said: “There was a bit of joviality. Other people, I don’t think some of them have actually grasped what the future holds for them”.

Union GMB has organised a march in Knottingley tomorrow.

“I never thought I would see this day in my working career”.

42 million – tonnes of coal imported into the United Kingdom in 2014.

The UK coal industry will now consist of a handful of opencast mines that will produce about 8 million tons of the fuel a year.

Surely the demise of coal mining became inevitable with global warming? .

DENNIS SKINNER branded David Cameron “bad Santa” yesterday in a scathing attack on the Tories’ refusal to give Kellingley miners a penny more than the legal minimum in redundancy pay. As a Yorkshire ex-miner I feel an huge sense of pride and responsibility for ensuring this heritage is not lost.

North Yorkshire’s Drax coal-fired power station is reportedly scheduled to stay open into 2016. The coal they cut through generations powered the industrial revolution, stoked the trains, lit the furnaces, and kept the home fires burning.

“We played hard and worked hard”. Everyone at Kellingley should be congratulated as they have met the managed closure plan safely.

“A manager made redundant from the steel industry can get up to £40,000 for retraining from their Local Enterprise Partnership. Coal workers only have access to £1,000”.