The final remaining mine on the south Wales coalfield is to close within three years.

Tower was bought out by its workers in 1995


bbc.co.uk
Last Updated: Friday, 27 January 2006, 12:55 GMT

Miner-owned pit is facing closure


The final remaining mine on the south Wales coalfield is to close within three years.

Tower Colliery, near Hirwaun, closed in 1994 but was bought and re-opened by its own miners in 1995.

It remained profitable, but it has been announced that coal seams being worked by Tower's 375-strong workforce will be exhausted in two to three years.

Tower chairman Tyrone O'Sullivan said it was possible that mining in south Wales could continue elsewhere.

'Last remnants'

Tower Colliery was closed in April 1994 after continued production was judged to be uneconomic.

Its own miners, however, were not convinced.

A group of 239 of them raised £2m by each contributing £8,000 of their redundancy money to buy the ownership of the colliery, which reopened in January 1995.

[The Tower story will go on for many years
Tyrone O'Sullivan, Tower Colliery]

The mine has been run successfully by the company formed by the workers, but on Friday chairman Tyrone O'Sullivan, told BBC Wales that the colliery was now coming to the end of its life span.

He said: "Probably we'll be the only pit in the world to work its last remnants of coal.

"We've seen the early closures of other pits (but) we, in many ways, are celebrating.

"At least we've been allowed, through getting our own pit, to work these last remnants of coal from Tower.

"Many of us have been here all our working lives - my father was killed here in 1963, so it will always have a huge place in my heart."

Tower is the final colliery in south Wales' once-huge mining industry.

At its peak in the early 20th Century, dozens of pits lined the valleys of south Wales, with the coal being exported through the booming ports of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport.

The industry went into decline in the second half of the last century with about 20 remaining south Wales mines closing in the years following the 1984-5 miners' strike.











Tyrone O'Sullivan said the Tower story could continue

But Mr O'Sullivan said Tower's impending closure may not represent the final chapter in the story of mining in south Wales.

"We are hoping to go down to Aberpergwm (near Glynneath). There's a small mine there," he said.

"Perhaps we can develop that into a mine which will continue mining in south Wales.

"I don't think this is going to be the end of mining."

The Tower chairman added that the company formed by the Tower miners was likely to go on to redevelop the colliery site.

"We own 480 acres of land, we want to fetch that back into the use of the people of the valley," he said.

"I think housing, factories, lakes, streams - the Tower story will go on for many years."


+ Related

bbc.co.uk
Last Updated: Wednesday, 22 December, 2004, 12:28 GMT

Miners' pit celebrates 10 years
Miners at Tower Colliery

Workers clubbed together to take over the mine
They said it would not work but, 10 years on, the miners who bought their own pit are still celebrating.

A decade ago, Tower Colliery at Hirwaun in south Wales was bought by 240 workers, whose members each put in £8,000 in redundancy money.

It was - and still is - the only miners' buy-out in Britain.

On Wednesday, a celebration is being held to mark Tower's 10 years in private ownership and look forward to another five years of production.

But the outlook for the mine, which survived the downturn of the industry after the miners' 1980s strike, was not always so good.

Pit closure followed pit closure across the south Wales coalfield, which once employed 35,000.


What stands out is the unbelievable commitment of the workforce
Brian Morgan

When the death knell was sounded for Tower, local MP Ann Clwyd took a stand and protested for 27 hours underground.

"A few weeks before, we'd been told that the pit was productive, and a lot of money had been spent on it," said the Cynon Valley MP.

"Then they were trying to tell us there was a geological fault.

"The men knew that was not true."

The mine did close, but the workers refused to give in and 240 of them paid in thousands to reopen it. The men marched proudly back to work under the pit's banner and Tower was back in profit within 10 months.

It has turned in a profit every year since, despite setbacks including an earthquake which caused a leak of methane gas.

Ann Clwyd after emerging from an underground protest at Tower
Ann Clwyd MP went underground to back the miners' cause

The pit has secured major contracts for its coal at home and abroad, and extra workers have been employed alongside the men who bought their own pit.

At the helm throughout has been the miners' ebullient leader Tyrone O'Sullivan.

"We were the ideal people to take on Tower Colliery," said Mr O'Sullivan.

"We've been out there and we've competed with the world. It's not that we've been lucky.

"It's about a company that went out there and took on the world and have done a good job"

The last three months have been among the most difficult.

Problems at the face mean many shifts have been unable to produce coal.

Tyrone O'Sullivan
Tyrone O'Sullivan: 'It's not that we've been lucky'

Some men will even work over the Christmas period to help out.

But Tower is still on target to produce 600,000 tonnes of coal this year, with a turnover of £25m.

Cardiff Business School's Brian Morgan, a non executive director at Tower, said the pit had done well despite there being no obvious market for its production.

"You could have perhaps the best production in the world, but if you couldn't sell it, these men were going to have lost their redundancy payments," he said.

"What stands out is the unbelievable commitment of the workforce.

"You can't believe they would have put in the effort if they had been owned by somebody else."

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