King Coal

Commissioned by the National Coal Board, this colourful and inventive animated propaganda film shows King Coal roused from his underground kingdom by the sound of Britain’s industries, railways and homes calling out for more coal.

Taken from the Mitchell & Kenyon collection, this is one of the earliest films of British miners, shown here at the end of a shift. One of the miners is Black, a reminder that Britain was home to people of colour long before mass immigration.

One of the first authentic documentaries (as opposed to simple actuality records), now with a new score, A Day in the Life of a Coal Miner shows the different stages of a miner’s daily shift, from locking the lamps prior to descent to sorting the freshly-won coal.

Score courtesy of Vector Lovers

Long regarded as a classic of British documentary, chiefly for its remarkably inventive soundtrack (words by W.H. Auden, music by Benjamin Britten), but also for its vivid depiction of mining conditions a dozen years before nationalisation.

Courtesy of Royal Mail Group Ltd.

The Sandgate Nursing Song
1964 | 2 mins

Composed by the blind singer Robert Nunn in the early 1800s, this Newcastle ballad is performed by Ewan MacColl and Isla Cameron, who portrays a mother singing to her baby son about his likely future as a miner.

The Best Little Doorboy
1964 | 2 mins

Ewan MacColl performs a 19th century ballad from the Welsh valleys, celebrating by name the various support workers at the Rhondda pits, especially the boys who used to work the ventilation doors as the first stage in a mining career.

The Blantyre Explosion
1964 | 3 mins

This mournful Scottish ballad commemorates the disaster at Dixon’s Colliery at High Blantyre in 1877, and laments the miners who perished. The ballad has the added poignancy of being told from the viewpoint of one of their girlfriends.

Miners and their families take a well-earned break with visits to Blackpool and Butlins at Filey, in this edition of the National Coal Board’s long running newsreel Mining Review (1947-83).

This portrait of the Durham Miners’ Gala was filmed in July 1962 for the BFI’s Experimental Film Fund. The historic annual event bursts into life as thousands descend on the city for a lively meeting of politics and play.

Very much of its time, this NCB-produced recruitment ad aims, not always convincingly, to present a career in mining as making an essential contribution to helping the ’60s swing.

One of several films performed by real mineworkers and used in NCB management training courses. These films betray a rather sour early-70s view of things, in this case Big Job in reverse: a new recruit isn’t happy working down the mine…

This film was made to celebrate the achievements of nationalisation, its commentary confidently (if tragically erroneously) predicting coal’s central role in the British economy,”not only for the next 40 years but for the next 400″.

Artist Jeremy Deller conceived this re-enactment of one of the most violent clashes of the 1984 Miners’ Strike, when picketers fought with police in the streets and fields of Orgreave, South Yorkshire.

Courtesy of Channel 4

One of the campaign videotapes made to help present the striking miners’ cause in the face of an overwhelming government propaganda blitz. This complete edition is particularly poignant, as it looks at the impact of the strike on miners’ wives and families.

Courtesy of Platform Films

Miners from the West Riding Colliery give a performance of Delibes’ ‘Coppélia’ for charity at Normanton Central Town Club, with firm support from the newsreel commentator: “If Robert Helpmann’s a bit better, so what? It’s all in a good cause!”