Alex Mills - The Early Years

The Funniest thing

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Ah mine oh two men that run together this yin got invited to a wedding: They shall be nameless. And the other one says "You're no gawn tae the wedding without me ur ye?" "Oh am gawn, I've been invited" But the two oh them were oan the backshift, they were et the back brushing doon in the south et Quinten Shaws. And they decided they would be a ploy oan the Friday. And the ploy become, this man brought a bottle doon and he put it in the enginehoose, the motorhoose. And it had a false bottom oan it yin of they false bottomed ones and he broke it and put breid in it. There was a lot of mice doon the pit. So he put the bottle down, in he goes and waited about a couple of hour's oan the Friday afternoon. He says "Am gawn tae get that bottle Alex phone the gaffer" Ah says whit fir Jimmy. He says "A've got a sair finger". So he brought the bottle oot, took a moose oot it, bit the heid aff it, turned it outside-in and put it oan his finger. The gaffer came in and he says "Oh my God! Oh what a mess! And he said tae me "Alex, take that man up the pit" and I took him up the pit. and he went tae the wedding along wae the ither yin. That was a Friday afternoon. That was the funniest thing ever I seen happening doon the pit.
I lived in Church Hill what they term the Kirk brae, in Auchinleck. I had four brothers and every one of them became miners. My 1st occupation was at Highhouse Colliery, a hard, hard pit to work in. You'd all the coal to separate from the dirt. The dirt went intae wagons and the train came up and took them away. Then you would get hutches coming up the colliery and they were checkweighmen at that particular time. I'm talking about 1947, that's when I started, just after nationalization. If there was too much weight in the hutch they couped it and the man who worked at the coalface never got paid for it; Because there was too much dirt in it. But the coal still went through he lost his coal in other words. He lost wages after filling that hutch wae coal and he would need to fill the dirt because of the fact that there was nowhere to put it. They were all narrow drivage roads, they were narrow roads underground. There was no coalface.

The Barony

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I left that pit and went tae the Barony. That was just before I went underground when I was about 15 ½, that would be 1948 nearly 1949. I thought that it would be better going to the Barony to the big pit where all my pals worked. I wisnae long in the Barony till I was whisked doon number 2 pit; the deepest pit in Scotland. My Uncle worked doon there, he was a rock splicer, my uncle Alex, the man I was called after. My other uncles worked in number 1 pit. There were two pits at the Barony. The Barony was longwall faces and conveyors. It was all hard, hard work and dangerous work. Because after the colliers were bye stripping the face, you had a team of men that came on the backshift and they had to do the preparatory work. That meant drawing off the waste and what that constituted was - men moving chocks forward approximately four and a half feet at a time and wooden straps and wooden props. When that waste came down, you would have thought the world was caving in. But the men were that used with that they weren't afraid of it. They became so used to it and ah would say that in earlier times the wee boys and the men would be the same. They just got used to that type of work. Then you had a further arrangement after the men on the backshift was bye. You had the machinemen coming in tae cut the coal that was 6 ft high and the men that were cutting that run had to watch every move that they made. Because when that machine was cutting that coal it could have came over, because when it did come over, it came over with a bang and it could have killed them. You had the Main Coal, the Maid Coal, the Forty Fathom, the Bonanza and in the other pit, which I never worked in. You had the Ell Coal which was a tremendous fuel. Everybody wanted to buy it. All the people who came in with their lorries wanted to buy Ell coal. It could be used for anything, bye products. It was about 3 ft. high. It was feet and inches, all the agreements were in feet and inches.

Number 19

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Ah remember up in number 19, up in number 2 pit where I worked. I was at the clipping, 1stly I was at the clipping at the foot of the South mine and there were 700 full ones come out oh that South mine. Jimmy McGee's section and Quinten Shaws. There were two sets oh strippers in two different runs. Quinten Shaws was up in 19, Jimmy McGee's was away doon in this ither area. Jimmy McGees area was a horrendous area to work. You could hardly see, you could see nothing for stoor and they poor men had to work in that. Stripping eighteen ton of coal per shift. That 18 ton of coal had to be hewed, pick and shovel then put onto a conveyor that was about 14 to 16 inches off the floor. It had to be lifted up by shovel. It was all pick and shovel work in the Main Coal and there was a mid-stone in the Maid coal up in Quintens. It was a 4 ½ foot jib and all. Then as the years went oan, the jib became a longer jib, they wanted increased production. It was bored with hole borers, the auld rickety was still oan the go at that time. It was two men from Catrine who bored number 19 and the rest of the runs in Quinten Shaws area; Auld Johnny McAtee and Freddy McCluskie, they were the two men. Freddy was a boxer, if he hadn't been full of dust, he'd been a great boxer. Auld Johnny, we called him the auld grinder. When you spoke to auld Johnny all you would get was a "Ummm" He grunted at you. Aye he wis that type oh man. But he was a great auld man, never had much conversation. But he was an old church man, he was an old Christian, a good old soul. The you had the woodboys, you had the brushers that brushed the road and they had that to put below the bed. They called that you had to put in a pack. Miners were craftsmen. See men who were putting in building packs and men who were building packs in the middle of the run. They were craftsmen, that was a craft, that was a craft. That was to maintain the roof. You know, quality. So if the crush came on, what they men did saved that roadway fae giving way. They were brilliant miners.

The North Mine

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As the years went by, I moved fae Quinten Shaws tae Jimmy McGee's tae the clipping at the foot of the North Mine. This was the North Side of the pit I went to. I got sent to the clipping there and it was a 1 in 3 haulage and there was a lot of runaways. The full ones used to runaway and I would dive intae a motorhoose. This is correct. You'd had to be quick. You had to be quick or you could have been killed. We had many narrow escapes, I can assure you. But we got there! That was dayshift and backshift. That 1 in 3 mine that was driven they drove it up to what they termed as the Musselband Coal. Oh! It was a stoorie coal, it was horrendous so it was. Halfway up that mine they drove a mine away tae the right of it and they hit another seam of coal there and they called it the 40 fathom. It was in depth and thickness about 3 feet. The Musselband would be about 4 ½ feet. I clipped there for a wee while then I landed up at the mid bench and I was there for about a year. Were talking there about 1951-52 and we were backshift dayshift. Because they were producing coal ho! ro! I landed in the 40 fathom – a woodboy. Bill Hendry, Jock Lyle and me. So we had to lay our own rails and it was girders, wooden straps and three feet trees. Which was eventually changed to solid steel 3ft legs, the men had to knock them up wae mashes and it was steel straps. They were 7 feet long an aw. They were heavy. It was all heavy stuff. That faceline was 700ft long, 700ft long. Colliers in that particular section had 33ft to strip. Jimmy New, Paddy I called him, was very seriously injured with a fall of stone from the roof in that section. I remember this miner getting his leg nearly severed off. I helped to carry that man out so I did. The section was stopped, it was Quinten Shaws section. I helped to carry him out to the bottom to get him up the pit and away to hospital. His name was Duncan Taylor, he lost ½ a leg that soul.

Many serious injuries

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I always looked after my head and I looked after other men's heads that weren't too clever at looking after their own heads. A lot of boys who were working in the pits, at the coalface, were there for money to keep their families and their were quite a few boys that you had to watch and advise and say "You better get a set of wood up there or you better put a temporary prop up there". But overall the majority of the boys were very competent. There were many serious injuries, many serious injuries. I never remember anybody being killed in number 3 pit. There were men got killed in number 1 pit and there were men died after they come up the pit. Auld Papa Morton died after he came out the baths; he went out to sit in the bus and he passed away. We had to take his body and put it back in the baths, back into the ambulance room. To prove that he died inside the pit gates or his widow wouldn't have got the pension. His widow wouldn't have got his pension. Mrs Morton. He stayed two doors down from me at the Kirk Brae in Auchinleck. That auld man, Papa Morton was his name. Many other men, too numerous to mention were injured. Men were losing fingers and it became very dangerous. That's were I really, really learned the coalmining and that's what made me become involved in the trade union.

A trade union man

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I went to a meeting at Barony Colliery and at that particular meeting I attended The Scottish area of the national union had sent out a circular inviting the branch to nominate a youth delegate. That was my 1st introduction to being a trade union man. From there I followed it through right up to 1959 as the Barony Colliery youth delegate. Well we were invited to all executive meetings of the Scottish area, we went to the mining schools which were held over a two year period at Dunoon, at Rothesey, at Perth. Maybe 60 -120 miners youth delegates both from SCEBTA and the National Union of Mineworkers. I become involved with a fellow called George Montgomery who married my uncle Franks cousin. He was the person who mainly made SCEBTA a union to be feared. George Montgomery later became the Scottish area safety and technical officer whose services were called upon by the national union were disasters occurred. He was a good man for the people who were killed. He gave truthful statements to the judges when required throughout the country. Safety was paramount as far as the Scottish area were concerned and that was relayed back to the collieries with all the youth delegates. And from there we grew up to be men and I became directly involved in committees at Barony Colliery. I would say that the miners union was the most determined organization in Great Britain at that particular time. Abe Moffat, Mick McGahey was a youth delegate too. Wullie McLean and auld John McArthur, the auld miners agent, Johnny Stewart. Real trade union officials, who cared about the people who worked in the pits, their families and their mining communities.