Hugh Sykes. He covered the miners' strike for Today....
...tomorrow it will be 25 years since the strike started. And Hugh reports for us this evening, going back to one South Wales mining commuinity - to find some of the people he met there in 1984. He sends these words and pictures:
"Bleak billboard, 2009"
How clean is our valley. A park and a picnic area where the colliery used to be.
John Richings, retired Six Bells miner. There are new homes now where some of the colliery buildings used to be.
Jim Watkins, former Six Bells National Union of Mineworkers chairman.
He says miners came to him 'crying' that they had to go back to work - to feed their children.
Edgar Oldland, son of a Six Bells miner who promised his son he would never have to work down the pit. Edgar worked 20 years in the armed forces - including service in north Africa during the second world war - and then twenty years as a teacher. Edgar's crisp verdict on the 1984 strike: "Stupid Scargill".
Paul Mehat, Six Bells greengrocer - outside his local. In 1984, Indian-born Paul thought his shop would have to close if the strike went on for several months, but it and he survived. And so did the pub, despite the landlord's fears. They serve the local ale, Allbrights.
The colliery memorialised in the pedestrian tunnel under the disused railway.
Bleak memorial. 45 Six Bells miners died in the 1960 disaster - there was an explosion underground."
If you'd like to see what to Six Bells looked like 25 years ago, and to watch the colliery being demolished in 1989, click here.
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