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Digging up the Pitmen
This is a family saga, over five generations, set against the social history of the South Yorkshire pit communities in the twentieth disasters, strikes and galas. It is the story of the North their relationships, births, deaths, family break-ups and get-togethers. Nigel North, at fifty-five, leads a secluded life in Newcastle after his wife’s death. He has every expectation that it will stay that way until, in 1992, he receives a copy of the Last Will and Testament of his Uncle Albert, a South Yorkshire pitman who he has never met. He has been left a large sum of money. His ten cousins, of whom he has never heard, have each been left a much smaller sum. Nigel cannot conceive how his uncle knows of his existence, why he should bequeath him so much money and why his father severed himself from his family. The answers lie back in the pitmen’s strike and, then, the inter-war years.
318 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 21, 2016
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August 16, 2018
Swain, John. Digging Up the Pitmen
Swain’s declared ‘novel’ is as much a historical account of conflict between the Yorkshire mining community and the mine owners as a personal memoir of his search for lost relatives. It is in fact an interesting melange of history and disguised autobiography, some original names being retained. It is something of a political rant directed towards the unfair treatment of mine-workers over several generations. There are various targets, seen as enemies of the people, such as virtually all Conservative members of parliament and many of the Labour elect who stood by and did nothing by way of protest at the almost total wipe-out of the mining industry and the corresponding isolation of the mining community, who found themselves bickering among themselves over responsibility for the loss of something we are encouraged to call ‘the soul of life.’
The book begins, conventionally enough, with the arrival of a bequest in a certain Uncle Albert’s will to his unknown nephew, Nigel, the narrator and composer of the tract. Nigel at first an outsider who knows nothing of his distant family, the Norths, whose name he bears but to whom he only vaguely belongs is lured into taking sides with the miners - and how! He becomes a True North-er long before the end, attending the annual celebrations of mining victories and the larger laments over its disasters. Memory is a way of celebrating the spirit of a lost age. Much of the book is engaged in raking up the dead and celebrating their heroic achievements.
The real hero of the book, however, is Uncle Albert, ‘who had died such a terrible death in 1912.’ Albert not only assisted the poor and those injured in mining disasters, but dedicated his life to writing the otherwise untold stories of those who in one way or another gave their lives to the mining community. It occupied, so we are told, 50 volumes.
Early on Nigel is taken to task over his father’s leaving the community, while he is the only one who receives more than a token from Albert’s will. Why such favouritism? Because he was outside the family disputes, his father exonerated by Albert, his mother too proud to belong. But the suffocatingly closed family ranks will countenance no quitters or disputers.
Much of the action takes place in the 1980s when Arhur Scargill attempted to break Mrs Thatcher’s grip on the country by the unions. For over a year the mining community held out , but economics eventually triumphed over sentiment. Swain naturally sides with the miners, but I recall hearing that coal from Australia and Poland was imported at a much cheaper rate than the scarce and inferior native product. It is not fashionable to recall that today. If you like Salman Rushdie for Thatcher read Torture. It’s sad, though when good writers betray their cause by going political.
Other than that the book is insightful in its exploration of a lost age, although awkward in its sequencing and overcrowded with names from different generations, although Swain does usefully provide a family tree.
Swain’s declared ‘novel’ is as much a historical account of conflict between the Yorkshire mining community and the mine owners as a personal memoir of his search for lost relatives. It is in fact an interesting melange of history and disguised autobiography, some original names being retained. It is something of a political rant directed towards the unfair treatment of mine-workers over several generations. There are various targets, seen as enemies of the people, such as virtually all Conservative members of parliament and many of the Labour elect who stood by and did nothing by way of protest at the almost total wipe-out of the mining industry and the corresponding isolation of the mining community, who found themselves bickering among themselves over responsibility for the loss of something we are encouraged to call ‘the soul of life.’
The book begins, conventionally enough, with the arrival of a bequest in a certain Uncle Albert’s will to his unknown nephew, Nigel, the narrator and composer of the tract. Nigel at first an outsider who knows nothing of his distant family, the Norths, whose name he bears but to whom he only vaguely belongs is lured into taking sides with the miners - and how! He becomes a True North-er long before the end, attending the annual celebrations of mining victories and the larger laments over its disasters. Memory is a way of celebrating the spirit of a lost age. Much of the book is engaged in raking up the dead and celebrating their heroic achievements.
The real hero of the book, however, is Uncle Albert, ‘who had died such a terrible death in 1912.’ Albert not only assisted the poor and those injured in mining disasters, but dedicated his life to writing the otherwise untold stories of those who in one way or another gave their lives to the mining community. It occupied, so we are told, 50 volumes.
Early on Nigel is taken to task over his father’s leaving the community, while he is the only one who receives more than a token from Albert’s will. Why such favouritism? Because he was outside the family disputes, his father exonerated by Albert, his mother too proud to belong. But the suffocatingly closed family ranks will countenance no quitters or disputers.
Much of the action takes place in the 1980s when Arhur Scargill attempted to break Mrs Thatcher’s grip on the country by the unions. For over a year the mining community held out , but economics eventually triumphed over sentiment. Swain naturally sides with the miners, but I recall hearing that coal from Australia and Poland was imported at a much cheaper rate than the scarce and inferior native product. It is not fashionable to recall that today. If you like Salman Rushdie for Thatcher read Torture. It’s sad, though when good writers betray their cause by going political.
Other than that the book is insightful in its exploration of a lost age, although awkward in its sequencing and overcrowded with names from different generations, although Swain does usefully provide a family tree.
Displaying 1 of 1 review