Coal and the Co Durham Coast

Last Autumn I contacted a friend, who owns a boat, to see if it were possible to arrange a trip up to the Farne Islands. Its one of the major Seal colonies and in the autumn is when the seals come ashore to give birth. Mainly because of cost that trip didn't happen.

However, on Thursday I went to see this friend again on his boat. While he is selling it, another victim of the credit crunch, I went to help him clean the boat ready for the sale. As he currently uses it for fishing trips, often his passengers do not leave the boat that clean. So I ended up doing more housework in one day that I normally do in a month. Should that be boat work?

While he was not able to help me, he put me in contact with others who may be able to, if I can afford the costs. At this stage I doubt that I will be able to.

However, that was not what was interesting. As we worked we talked, as he himself will admit the environment was never that much of an issue for him. However, when he started to see the problems for himself and especially the ones that effected him he realised just how important protecting the environment is. It has even led him to buy a hybrid car. That was something I never thought I would see him do as he always used to drive a thirsty 4x4.

Anyway while talking, I mentioned that next spring I would also like to take a trip along the Co Durham coast to see the breeding colonies of sea birds. He then told me of his experiences of that coast when he was younger, his now over sixty, so we are talking forty years ago. When that coast line was seriously damaged and degrade by the spoil heaps from the coal mines. The waste was just tipped on the beaches. Not just one but all of them.

Then back in the 1980s, as the mines closed the rubbish was removed and the coast line restored. But what he said was really surprising, as he had grown to realise just how damaging the mines had been. Not just environmentally, but economically.

For years this is something I have said, but in the North East that still is an unpopular view. The problem is that while mines or other forms of heavy industry does create wealth and jobs, eventually these industries will fail. This all damages the local communities who become reliant upon the jobs and the money. As he was a miner himself when he first left school it was interesting to hear him saying this. Additionally, when he himself worked down the pit, there was no one who actually wanted to be their. They all hated the job, but preferred that to having nothing. It was in fact this lack of choice that allowed heavy industry to survive.

He had also worked in the shipyards, and while he had preferred that work, he also said that the working conditions were really bad and that people accepted them only because they knew no better.

While he found it difficult to articulate what he had grown to realise, the influence of all these major employers upon the region had created a culture where it no one helps provides for themselves but are always looking for another big employer to come along.

But it was what he said about the pollution that these industries create that was most profound. The bill for the clean up of the Co Durham coast was met by the tax payers. Not the people who created the mess. Had it been that the mining industry had been forced to work in a cleaner way, or not been allowed to walk away from the costs of the pollution they created, would the mining have become the mass employer that it did. It is here that his and my opinions differ as I think it would have still done. However, we both agree that the regeneration costs would have been lower.

However it is the social impacts that have been the greatest. When so many people see industry and commerce despoiling the environment, they fail to see it as wrong to drop litter or paint graffiti or the many other ways we pollute. This lack of respect for the environment can be seen all over the country. The other aspect is the way that industries have impacted upon the social psyche, is the way that as long as it makes money then anything goes. He cited one example, that of many of the fishing boats that operate in the area, dumping waste into the sea. This is all illegal but it goes on. The problem is the attitude has become ingrained that if it will generate an income, what's the harm?

While our discussions were rather serious most of the time, we also did have many fun moments too. Like me standing over him holding a golfing umbrella so that he could retouch the varnish, it would have generated a picture worthy of any caption competition. Fortunately no one was there to take that picture.