Picking Coal in Post-War Scotland

By

John A.K. Lowe

“Coal is a black rock used as fuel: a hard black or dark brown sedimentary rock formed by the decomposition of plant material, widely used as a fuel”.  Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] 2007.  That is a scientific definition   However, for our family, coal was the only source of heat as we crowded around the fireplace on cold damp winter nights in Scotland.  In addition, coal was needed to heat the water that we used for washing and bathing. 

A previous article discussed the impact of the geopolitics on my growing up in a coal-mining town in post-war Scotland.  That was the big picture of world events.  In contrast, this article explains about picking coal, or black diamonds.  Coal was a critical element in the minutia of our daily lives.  In the town of Loanhead in Midlothian, picking coal was a family event.  As the oldest son, I helped my Mother pick coal on the slopes of a bing and carry it home in burlap sacks.  Later, my sister and brothers took their own turns on the bing to help Mother pick coal, as they grew older. 

Most coal in Scotland is mined in deep underground mines:  collieries or pits as we call them.  At the pithead, the good coal was separated from the waste slag on large sorting tables and the waste rock was transported on great conveyer belts to a bing.  A bing is a coal spoil tip, or slagheap, although bings also exist for other wastes, such as spent shale, ironstone, and limestone wastes.  Over the past twenty years, most bings have been reclaimed and they no longer deface the Scottish landscape as they once did in their hundreds. 

To pick coal, we trekked from home to a bing a few miles away.  For a few hours, we scoured the slopes for pieces of coal that the pithead sorting process had missed.  In this quest, we were joined by many other poor families, mainly women and children and the occasional old man, also picking coal.  Mother and I, bundled up against the cold, damp, ever-present wind slithered around on dangerous steep slippery slopes to scavenge our pieces of coal. 

With a good eye, a piece of coal can be distinguished from the slag by its slightly different color, and coal is noticeably lighter than the surrounding rock when picked up.  First, you spotted a likely prospect, lifted the piece up to feel its weight, and then dropped the coal in a sack.  The process was repeated until all our bags were filled.  Then we hoisted the bags of coal on our shoulders and carried them off the slope to old baby carriages, and to my bike.  

One Christmas, my folks had bought me a new bike.  Actually, it was a reconditioned bicycle but, no matter, it was a major purchase for them and I appreciated it.  Mainly, I used the bike on my paper route, and later to get to high school, about 2 ½ miles away.  As a bonus, I was free to explore my region, cycling into Edinburgh city, or up into the hills, or visiting beaches over 20 miles away.  More importantly to the family, a bike was very useful to transport bags of coal home from the bing.  I wheeled my bike home with bags of coal draped all over it - in the V above the pedal crank, over the horizontal crossbar, and over the handlebars.  

Periodically, the police rousted all of us off the bing after receiving instructions from the pit management on the excuse of concerns for our safety.  Luckily, the policemen were locals from the coal-mining region.  They were sympathetic to our plight and only went through the motions of clearing us off the bing.  No one was arrested.  Sometimes, we all just withdrew off into the woods, out sight and out of the rain, and returned to our scavenging when the police moved on.  

Our hatred of the pit management was irrational but instinctive.  Coal mining had existed in Scotland since the 12th century, and was a relic of feudalism.  Although the coal mines were now owned by The National Coal Board, set up in 1946, we had listened to many sad tales about hunger strikes, safety abuses, and unnecessary deaths.  We heard about evictions from pit-tied housing, and about shameful slavery even earlier in Scotland’s history.  Our minds were filled with the injustices committed by the mine owners.  

At home, the one coal fire that burned in the living room was open but it had a small boiler set in the rear to heat water for washing.  There were other fireplaces in some of the bedrooms but we were too poor to afford the coal to light them, and we blocked them off.  Thus, we needed the fire for our warmth in the cold winter, and had to keep it burning year-round to heat the water for washing clothes, dishes, pots, pans, and for washing ourselves. 

We must have stunk back then.  Keeping clean was a challenge.  Back in those times, we washed our hands and face regularly, whether or not there was hot water.  A dirty neck was seen as a sign of uncleanliness, and was to be attacked aggressively.  For some strange reason, my Mother and Granny took sadistic delight in scrubbing my neck with a hard scrubbing brush at any excuse.  We took baths very infrequently.  Showers at home were unheard of, although some working men used shower at the end of the shift down in the pits and in some dirty factories.  As very young kids, we bathed together, or at least shared the bath water to take full advantage of the heated water.  Later, I was able to negotiate the right to the first bath on a Saturday night before going out on the town as a young teenager.  Nowadays, when traveling in Eastern Europe, I would sometimes have a brief recollection of old Scotland, caused the smell of unwashed bodies and old sweat.

Contraband coal was a serious affair.  Under the trade union agreement, coalminers received a personal allotment of coal to heat their homes.  Nevertheless, that did not help us.  Although we lived in a coal-mining town, my Dad was not a coalminer.  He had started off as a Master Painter after serving his apprenticeship under his father, old Sandy Lowe.  However, the Scottish weather made house painting an unreliable trade and Dad became an Animal Technician instead, gained promotions, and later gained a management position at a medical research institute.  On the other hand, Mother’s older brother, Uncle Bob was a coalminer.  In desperate times, Uncle Bob would give his younger sister a contraband bag of coal but this was a dangerous gesture for him.  A miner could lose his personal coal allotment if it was found out that he had sold or given away any of it.  By prearrangement, Uncle Bob would leave a bag of coal outside his coal bin so that I could sneak down the street in the dark of night after everyone had gone to sleep, and collect it quietly without being seen. 

We occasionally bought coal from the regular coal merchant but we were broke most of the time and frequently ran out of cash before the coal delivery.  We were constantly running short of coal.  Sometimes, when we had enough money, or more likely, when we had borrowed the money from my Auntie Jean, I would be dispatched on my trusty bike to the coal merchant’s yard to fetch a bag of coal to keep the fire burning. 

I never know my grandfather, John Aitken King.  He had worked down the pits as a general foreman, and Granny was a miner’s widow.  After he died, Granny was not granted her widow’s coal allotment due to some bureaucratic problem.  Buying coal to keep warm from her small widow’s pension was a major financial hardship for her, and she continued to press her appeal for years after his death until finally her tale reached the infamous Moffat brothers.  In the Post-War years, the Scottish Union of Mineworkers was led by Abe and Alex Moffat, staunch old-style communists.  Fortunately, they took up my Granny’s case and forced the National Coal Board to grant her the widow’s coal allotment.  From then on, Granny idolized the Moffat brothers.  She would not allow any of us to speak ill of them, not even when they flew off to Moscow for strategy consultations.  They had won her coal for her.           

In today’s climate-controlled homes, it is hard to comprehend the significance of coal to us back then.  In that era, we needed coal all the time.  We were totally reliant on coal for our warmth and cleanliness.  Coal was a constant concern and struggle.