Black Diamonds (35 page)

Pony driving was important work. The ponies’ job was to pull the lines of corves, the tubs that carried the coal to and from the coalface. Rippers, the men who worked alongside the hewers, filled the empty tubs; the ponies then hauled them back to the cage to be sent up out of the pit. Hewers and rippers were paid by contract at so much per ton. Their wages were dependent on the pony drivers – the speed with which they could get the corves up to and back from the coalface. If a boy was slow, he was often physically beaten. At most pits the roads through the tunnels were poor. The journey up to the face was often a mile or more, debris from the roof and the sides of the tunnel littering the rails on which the corves ran. In temperatures that could reach upwards of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, as one pony driver described, ‘
The pony was always
in extremis, and the tubs were often derailed.’

Traipsing the tunnels alone, the boys depended on the ponies for companionship; if their lamps went out, as they frequently did, a pony could guide them home. ‘The ponies knew their way around their own district of the pit and could always find their way back to the pit bottom. They did this by travelling against the air which was being fed down by the shaft,’ Jim remembered. ‘If you got caught in the dark, you grasped your pony’s tail and tried to get your head just below the level of his back while he walked slowly – never offering to kick you – straight back to the pit bottom.’ Jim was given a pony called Tim. ‘I could write about Tim for pages. He used to chew tobacco like a man; he would go mad for mints, he would pull his lips back and grin at me. If I were not going fast enough when we were on our way to the pit bottom, he would shove me in the back. He would drink out of my bottle and take crusts from my bread when I was eating my snap. When I was down that pit for hours and hours alone with my pony I had no one but him to talk to, so I used to chat to him. He would shake his head up and down as I asked him all sorts of questions; he seemed to listen as I carried on long conversations about football and all sorts of subjects.’

The pony drivers’ dependency on their ponies sparked fierce rivalry between the boys. Wherever they congregated, at street corners or down the mine, as Fred Smith from Kiveton colliery recalled, they would argue over the abilities of their respective charges: ‘“I know that Dan can take three empties up 6c gate.” “Why, he couldn’t pull an old hen off the nest,” another would counter. “Tha wants to see Linnet take four fullens on 83’s cross gate,” and so on it would go. “I’ll bet thee he can’t” and “I’ll bet thee he can”.’

The number of tubs a pony could haul determined a boy’s standing in the pit, both among his contemporaries and in the eyes of the older men. The boys also knew that they depended on the animals not just for company, but for their lives. To an inexperienced or inattentive pony driver, the roads, with their steep inclines and sharp descents, could be fatal. The ponies often pulled as many as five loaded tubs, weighing up to 600 cwt each. ‘
The worst accidents
,’ Jim remembered, ‘would happen when the full tubs were coming down the gradient and the driver missed his lockers. These were bits of wood or steel which the driver put into each wheel to make the wheel slide like a brake. If you missed a locker, the tubs started going faster. If you missed one, you could easily miss the lot. The tubs would then run and run, until finally they ran over the pony and invariably broke his back.’

In 1925, seventy-three boys under the age of sixteen were killed in Britain’s coalmines and a further 15,241 injured. When the tubs ran, all too often the pony driver, as he tried to correct his error, would fall under the wheels. Made of sharp steel, they scythed through limbs and necks. There were other instances where a wrong move could have disastrous consequences: hooking the tubs up behind the pony, Jim explained, was one: ‘You would hang them on the pony’s chain and when you told him to stand up a bit, he would stand up about two or three inches. Then the driver put his hand in between one tub and the next, to link the two tubs together. If the pony set off without being told while the driver was doing this, he would probably have his fingers cut off.’

Cruelty to the ponies was a dismissable offence. At Jim’s pit, one boy was sacked for pulling out a pony’s tongue with a switch. ‘Fortunately,’ as he recalled, ‘lunacy of this kind was exceptional.’ But from time to time, there was a stubborn pony that had to be thrashed. ‘The older lads would get the tail chain, pass it into the link on the bridle, very tight, so that the pony had something pulling on its left-or right-hand side, tightening all the time, so that he would start spinning. This was done when the road was about 12 feet wide in the passby, the pony spinning and spinning until finally it became dizzy and dropped on the floor. While one of the big lads sat straight on its head the other would just knock hell out of it with a pit prop or pick shaft. They let it stand up and put it back in the tubs to see if it behaved any differently. If it did not, they would do the same thing again.’

The ponies were often killed, or so seriously injured they had to be put down. ‘
I remember
one occasion when a pony was “britching”,’ recalled Frank Johnson, a pony driver at a mine near Doncaster. ‘The rails were fishplated together and it must have got its back foot fast and its hoof was ripped off. I had to report it. The horse-keeper came from the pit-bottom and put a cap on the horse’s head.’ The cap, called a ‘peggy’, had a hole in it, positioned between the horse’s ears. Two or three miners would sit on the pony to hold it down, while the horseman dazzled it with his lamp as he placed the ‘peg’ in the hole. It was the most humane way of killing the pony in the cramped conditions underground; as Frank Johnson described, ‘The peg was hit with a hammer directly into the animal’s brain. It killed them instantly. We used to have to fetch dead ponies on trams, which were like tubs with no sides. The pony drivers cried like babies when their ponies were killed.’

The pony drivers at Billy Fitzwilliam’s pits remembered the strike of 1926 for the rest of their lives. ‘I should not be living now were it not for that strike,’ said Arthur Clayton, a ninety-nine-year-old miner who worked at Elsecar. ‘It lengthened men’s lives. There were no holidays with pay. We were like young ponies let out to grass.’

For the duration of the strike, Wentworth House became the focus of the neighbourhood. Joyce Smith, then aged seventeen, was home from boarding school for the Easter holidays. ‘Lord Fitzwilliam’s idea was to entertain his men. He turned the Park into a pleasure ground. There were games and competitions with prizes and all sorts of things to help the miners. I think they were all very sorry for each other. He did a lot to try and help them.’

Handicap races were run for the pit ponies and rosettes awarded for the best turned-out; Maud Fitzwilliam gave £5 to every boy who had a pony with no scars. Football matches and tug-o’-war contests were organized between the two collieries and a fête was held in the gardens at the house. ‘
There used to be
great heaps of coal, tubs of it, and if you guessed the weight it were yours,’ a miner from Elsecar recalled. ‘Then there was this greasy pole with a ham on top of it. And you’d go skimming up it and if you got this ham it were yours.’

The start of the General Strike coincided with the opening of the cricket season. Cricket was a consuming passion in the pit villages. ‘We’d play cricket on the dirt road between the terraces. We’d play the street down below us. Everyone would come out and watch. It were a great event,’ remembered Ernest Whitworth, who grew up at Rawmarsh where many of the miners at New Stubbin pit lived. ‘The men were stood along the side of the road and the women used to sit out on the chairs. We’d have a post as a wicket, a bit of board. There were no stumps. We couldn’t afford them, or a proper cricket ball. Someone would stitch it out of something, an old piece of horse hide out of the knacker’s yard was often used.’

At Wentworth House, the cricket pitch was in the middle of the front lawn. On 1 May, the day after the collieries closed, Billy opened the pitch to the Elsecar and New Stubbin colliery teams. To the delight of the players, as one remembered, he issued a challenge: ‘He said if anybody hit a cricket ball from the middle of that lawn while they were batting and broke a window at the house there were £25 for them! It were more than four months’ wages! And there were all them windows to go at! It took some doing though. The distance from the crease to the house was a good few hundred yards.’

No windows were broken at Wentworth House that spring – either playing cricket, or in anger. Nor was there much trouble anywhere else. The Government had misjudged the country’s mood.

24

Five days into the General Strike, on 9 May at 15.00 hours, the War Office issued its fourteenth Situation Report. The word ‘Secret’ was stamped in red ink across it. It was for the eyes of the Cabinet – and the top civil and military commanders – only. Britain was under a State of Emergency, her armed forces mobilized, but as the report reveals – some of the detail unworthy even of a line in a local newspaper – with the exception of Northern Division, the commanders in the field had precious little to communicate.

SECRET
SITUATION REPORT NO 14 Issued at 1500 hours on 9.5.26
General Situation – Quiet throughout the country.

Northern Division. Quiet but decidedly troublesome. Twenty-five telegraphs were cut near Blaydon – some bus services were withdrawn as a result of interference. In the Northwest area strong pickets have stopped private cars and refused them passage without permit. Much false news is being spread by strikers’ Councils of Action. In the Blaydon district the Chairman of the Council is a Communist. More trouble with food supplies is anticipated next week and more Special Constables would be welcomed.

North Eastern Division. Quiet generally. Buses and trams started at Hull but have been stoned by mob. Police raided printing works at Shipley and found much seditious literature. About 48 buses running in Bradford.

North Western Division. Quiet generally. At Liverpool Docks unloading with Volunteer labour proceeding satisfactorily. Engineers reported on good authority to be returning to Messrs Patins and Beyer Peacock’s works on Monday.

Eastern Division. Quiet generally. No further trouble at Ipswich, but Specials have to be worked in large parties. Buses all day without interference.

South Western Division. Quiet generally. Some trouble in Plymouth consequent on trams restarting, manned by Volunteers. Railway men are dribbling back all over the district.

South Midland Division. Quiet generally. Trams running all day in Reading and Huntley and Palmer’s tin box workers have all returned.

Midland Division. Quiet generally. It is expected a considerable number of railway men will dribble back on Monday

North Midland Division. Quiet generally. Grimsby tramwaymen have returned to work.

Western Command Report. Situation throughout the command remains unchanged. Railway traffic shows a marked increase. No organized disturbances have occurred.

Eastern Command Report. Situation generally quiet. Attempts to interfere with road transport show more signs of organization. Attempts to stop petrol lorries from the Thameshaven Area were made on May 8th by digging up the roadway. The Corningham Oil Depot is now guarded by troops. There were organized interferences with buses on the Harrow Road on the afternoon of 8th May. A violent assault on a soldier, when off his guard, was made at Woolwich yesterday afternoon by an individual armed with a knuckle-duster.

London District Report. Area quiet generally. During the passage of the food convoy yesterday from the Docks many thousands lined the streets from Canning Town to Stepney: – the general behaviour of the crowds was most good natured, and there was quite a lot of cheering. From remarks overheard, comments were made to the effect that ‘The sooner we chuck it the better’. In Camden Town, the women appear prominent in arousing resentment against Police, and more particularly against Special Constables.

‘Quiet generally’. The 14th Situation Report echoed those that had preceded it.

In Mayfair and Belgravia, members of the aristocracy, among the most fearful at the start of the General Strike, began to relax, delighting in their temporary civic responsibilities. ‘
Most people
enjoyed it I think!’ wrote Lady Bentinck to Lady Halifax in India. ‘All our friends were “Specials” or working at the Docks and stations. The Oxford boys were driving very skilfully with delicious notices chalked on the front, such as “Flappers are Welcome” – “The Tortoise” and “On the Streets Again, but Don’t Tell Mother” and so on! Sonny T. has charge of the Westminster Tube station, with Sir Victor Warrender as ticket collector.’ Lady Sybil Middleton, also writing to Lady Halifax, gave a further tally of mutual friends who had momentarily traded places. ‘
Lord Portarlington
was head porter at Paddington, Sir Rennell Rodd in order to set a good example went as Dustman but he dropped a big dustbin on his foot and was thereby put out of action for the remainder of the strike. [Lord] Edmund Grey went to the Docks and hauled at a rope as he said it was the only thing he could do – so you see the old and distinguished had a variety of jobs!’

By the end of the first week of the strike, it was the activities of the ‘racing hogs’, the aristocratic owners of the ‘fastest cars in England’, that were causing the most alarm among Lady Halifax’s correspondents. ‘The Horse Guards Parade is a great car-park where Rex Benson, Lord Curzon and one Reggie Seymour send out racing hogs to distribute the
British Gazette
all over England,’ wrote Mabel, Countess Grey. The
British Gazette
, a news-sheet edited by Winston Churchill, was a propaganda vehicle for the Government. Distributed countrywide by the ‘racing hogs’, even they, according to Lady Sybil Middleton, were unnerved by the speeds they reached: ‘Rex is a pretty dashing driver himself but I believe some of the times that the fast cars did in the middle of the night fairly made his hair stand on end. I know one going to Liverpool and back averaged 60!’