Published: Friday, 21st September, 2007 15:00
Bank Pit tragedy
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This article first appeared in the Cumnock Chronicle Friday October 11 2002
THE bond between tragedy and coal-mining runs deeper than the black seams buried beneath the land.
Sifting through Chronicles of years gone by barely, a month ends without an incident of some kind, making it impossible to ignore the peril of earning an honest living in these parts.
New Cumnock man Dick Armour was only a slip of a boy when he experienced first-hand the dangers of working underground.
He is the last remaining survivor of a horrific accident 69 years ago which killed five local men and seriously injured so many more.
He tells an important story not least because it is all so familiar to too many men.
THE rows scattered across New Cumnock empty of menfolk as they sleepily make their way to work.
Dawn is close as the slow shifting of feet and the distinctive coughs break the silence. Among them is Dick Armour - James on a Sunday - only 17-years-old walking towards Bank No 6 mine from Craigbank like he had done for the past three years.
It is Wednesday September 20 1938, just another day as the hutches take the men below, leaving behind one darkness for another.
Taking up his post at the incline, Dick spends his shift putting one empty hutch after another on the incline, performing a fine balancing act with gravity.
Thoughts to break the boredom turn to the next free-for-all footie match on the public parks after tea-time or the big dance coming up this Saturday.
Piecetime comes and goes as the miners manage to outwit the rats to get to their food first.
Tired and hungry, Dick finishes off for the day at around 2.45pm and meets the men from the coalface as they wait for the journey back to daylight.
Four bodies crouch in to the one hutch for the ascent, Dick joins pals William Saunderson and Thomas Hunter as the rake prepares for take off.
Eight hutches linked by a wire rope would be pulled up the gradient to safety, with the last one used for carrying tools, just like it did day after day after day. But then...
“The rope broke and in a split second we were on our way back down. It travelled a long way down, gathering speed all the time,” Dick recalled.
“I remember regaining consciousness, lying in the main mine. I must have been thrown from the hutch and it must have been like being ejected from the seat of a fighter plane.
“People might wonder what goes through your mind in this situation. I can only speak for myself, it happens so unexpectedly and suddenly your mind goes blank and certainly you don’t think you may have only seconds to live.”
Word starts to travel like fire in a forest, into the pit next door, down through the winding roads leading to the rows right the way down to the shops in the Castle.
In an unfortunate tradition, everyone who can makes their way to the mine hoping to be of some help.
FIVE men died that day - Robert Murray, John Mackie, Joseph Walls, Robert Milligan and James Grozier. Another 20 were injured, some of whom never worked again, a blow their families could not afford.
Dick Armour continued: “I was lucky - I came away with a back injury and stitches round my eyes. I was in bed for two or three weeks, my next door neighbours, aunts and uncles all helped to look after me.
“I never looked forward to going down the pits. I was apprehensive after that but you just had to get on with it.
“The conditions then were completely different, it definitely got better after nationalisation. For private companies it was about making money, safety wasn’t their number one priority.”
He went on: “It remains a mystery why the rope should break because they said there was no wear and tear. The only safety feature at that time was a jock steel bar fixed to the axle of the last hutch. In theory this was supposed to dig in and halt the rake. However this had no effect perhaps due to the fact that the rake ran between two very tight brick wall and at some points the hutches actually were rubbing the walls.”
This accident and many more like it were the hard facts of working down the pits, every miner knew that any day could be their last.
But it was this very danger that created the community spirit. Men watched each other’s back down there, because the consequences were too great.
Dick became a miner because that was all there was. He said: “Men were paid a pittance, but it was that or work on the farms. Ninety per cent of the people down there didn’t want to work in the mines. Of course, at 14, it was a bit of a novelty but that soon went.
“My dad worked in Bank no 1 pit next door and I remember he couldn’t walk more than ten step without struggling to breath.”
And so Dick worked until the age of 61, graduating to the coalfaces where his father worked then eventually winding up at Killoch.
It was there he was made redundant in 1982 when the troubles began.
Bank no 6 mine carried on into the 1940s until no more coal could be mined but it remained as a ventilation shaft for the Bank no 1 pit.
Indeed, it was the scene of the historic rescue mission in 1950 during the Knockshinnoch disaster.
Now it lies flooded with water, consigned to history just like the rest of deep mining.
Danger was part of the job
A former wood boy in the coal face, Donald McIver is now a local historian with an abiding interest in the mining industry which shaped his village.
A keen collector of the old relics of another age, he can show visitors newspaper cuttings, a piece box, and the old Tallow lamp.
He went on: “People were all too often cutdown in the prime of their life with broken backs and dreadful diseases. But there was no state care in those days, it was a harsh life.”
The first miners in the 17th and 18th century were regarded as sub-human, with the workforce made up of serfs often woman and children.
Down through the years a solidarity emerged, a them against us, and the industry was a breeding ground for socialism and the Labour Party.
Community was everything as Donald remembered: “It was a good job, the atmosphere was something else, everyone was friendly and knew everything about anything.
“We accepted the danger as part of the job, folk would be afraid but that was the way it was.
“Sadly we live in a different world now because back then it was all about community spirit. That went with the mines.”
Some folk estimate that the tiny village of New Cumnock lost 200 of its men to the work down below.
But nowadays it is losing thousands more to unemployment.
Back in pre-Thatcher days when the whole point of industry was to employ as many people as possible - as radical as that may seem - everyone had a job, even if it was a dangerous one.
The truth of the matter is that many who live in this area can forgive the cruel labyrinth of pits lying down below for taking their husbands, brothers and sons.
That was the harsh reality of life, but taking away their basic human right to go to work in the morning was much worse than death.
