I hope you liked this video, it’s different to my usual, more vernacular in nature. I was sort of astonished at the reduction of life we have endured since the end of the War. It is almost impossible for many to accept some of the realities presented here, but they did exist. Things have been better. Things can be better, but the Children of Winter do not create the Spring.
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The original Video is by the British Council, you can find it on YouTube titled “The Coal Miners of Britain 1941”
The Song at the end is called “Voices of Rhodesia” by the Rhodesian National Choir, I believe it’s based on Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Movement IV) Ode to Joy specifically around 4:50 onwards.
*Yes, the job was harder, I am providing commentary on the intersection of the material and the metaphysical, not just the material, for those who cannot listen.
source
This and the AA breakdown of slave life vs. the life of a modern wage worker, both make a compelling argument against the banal Stephen Pinker argument that we are "living in the height of history."
Hey kids, filter with a kitchen towel over a cheese cloth, over a bucket. Then add one tablespoon bleach per gallon of water.
So…even if you do get a salary that could keep a family, remember the second you poke your wee head above 49k, you will be hit with 40% tax. 40p on the pound, straight off your arse before you are even out the gate.
Everyone had A better life, even the ones with no shoes
Imagine getting milk bread and jam and a paper delivered every morning and it not costing £20 a day
Progress= the process of loss
Excellent analysis
Well said
Very important to show old film – this modern world lies about 'there's no choice, the Line MUST go up forever, that is our own meaning'. By showing the young we've lived differently, it helps them understand what they're up against.
coal not dole
These days, how many people even work at manual jobs where the key equipment is provided to them, and maintained dutifully by other conscientious workers? Or where a man could expect a certain piece of loaned kit to be "his for his entire working life"? These days, it's common for people to be required by employers to buy their own low-quality, essentially disposable uniforms, lights, tools, and safety equipment, at least to some degree. We've lost so much.
We owned a coal mine back then, it was quite profitable until the 1960s
Modern Britain is the result you get when you decide to bankrupt your empire over a provincial Baltic coast town and then proceed to spend the post-war period taking care of third-worlders.
Fantastic video, genuinely powerful stuff.
belfast 1955: mail delivery twice daily, plus saturday; public phone 2 minutes; within 5 minutes 2 confectionary and newspaper stores, 1 fish and chip shop, 1 co-op store, 1 hardware store, 1 wool and sewing store, 1 milk bar, 2 vegetable stores, 2 bakeries, 1 telephone box. WHERE IS THE PROGRESS? coal delivery every 2 weeks. Milk delivered daily, recycled bottles, ELECTRIC VAN; bread delivered every 2 days, ELECTRIC VAN. Old rag collection monthly, in return for a bottle of bleach. Post office within 10 minutes. Bus stop 5 minutes away. WHERE IS THE PROGRESS? Fresh vegetables from an allotment 5 minutes away. Rent man called bi- weekly. Gas money collected monthly. Betterware nan called monthly. Nearest bus stop 5 minutes distant. Father wirked, mother was at home, 5 kids. WHERE IS THE PROGRESS?
Front garden with a gate that the neighbours kids haven't busted off it's hinges. Chap read a daily newspaper and had a few books on the shelves behind him when he was eating his evening meal.
You'd hate being down there.
Plus they died 20 yrs younger.
I am 42, I make around $42K to £50K per year depending on bonuses, I have a paid-off house & substantial investments. I could easily support a family but I cannot find anyone willing to start one at this age. Women around 30 who are not yet married don't seem interested in older men & most women my age already have kids. So I just gave up & enjoy being well-off.
It is what it is.
My father started down the mine in 1935 age 14 pulling pit ponies.
I enjoyed the film and your commentry… But the film has strong government propaganda vibes about it and less rosy accounts of the material conditions of coal miners of this period come to us from Orwell's 'wigan pier'
The numbered lamps and tools were, I learned from orwell property of the mine owner and the miners were charged for using them and having them cleaned, sharpened etc by wage packet deduction… And using your own was not permitted.
Mentally and spiritually this guy could very likely be in a better place to modern british man though.
At least we’re not speaking German.
Enoch Powell on UK immigration: "It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre" , How prophetic
I implore you to read part 1 of George Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier" which is set in a similar time period and location (1934 – Written in 37). It describes how bad people's living and working conditions were back then in coal mines in Northern England. While it is a politically motivated book, I sooner trust it than literal wartime morale propaganda, which you have taken completely uncritically.
While you may live near the mine, you often didn't get paid until you were at the coalface. Meaning you would be unpaid for a back breaking commute to the face that would take hours each day. Deaths in the mine were very common and unions would often make up for the dismal compensation paid out by the companies. Unemployment was very high (more applicable to 30s) that often there would be huge gangs of jobless people roaming slag heaps just looking for scraps of coal to heat their homes. If you took the dole, there would be inspectors who would check round to make sure you are not working and keenly take you off it for the doing smallest chores like feeding your chickens.
Your end tirade about not being able to raise 4 children and have a non working wife completely mises that, their children (if they make it past mortality) don't go to school, don't have access to healthcare, the building they live in is likely a slum, they have no paid leave (not that they could afford to go on holiday anyway) and they'll most likely die either before or as they get their pension. The food too, Sunday roast was still a large thing, but large swathes of northerners would mostly just have bread and dripping for dinner, or fish and chips (it really was incredibly cheap back then) and have practically no diversity of meals or nutrition.
This isn't to say that, problems in modern Britain don't exist, the loneliness epidemic, meaning in work and rising inequality are all challenges that we face, but I'd rather take that than worry about the problems in the book. And the reality is, if you want to live like this, just learn a foreign language and move to an industrialising country, you have the luxury of choice now.
You've got to understand that when we watch videos from the past they're very often promotional type videos (as is this one) and you can't take them at face value. The makers are hardly impartial documentarians. Just leads to this dangerous anemoia.