By Ian Isaac
Remembering Morfa is a collaboration between Allen Blethyn and Lynne Rees, vividly describing the brutal history of a colliery sunk in 1849 near the Morfa Mawr sands, Port Talbot, South Wales.
The coal was to fuel the Tiabach Copper works, also owned by Messrs Vivian and Sons, to supplement the supply of coal from Brombil Colliery further inland.
The book has the sub-title Coal, Catastrophe and Courage, three words which encapsulate and describe the history of a coal mine, the events that gave created its terrible reputation and the stoic disposition of the people who worked it along with their families. It could just as well have had other sub-titles, like The many disasters at one pit and how they happened, or How miners and their families coped with death and disaster or How the community of Tiabach endured death and disaster frequently over 60 years.
Disproportionate number of accidents
Morfa and the community of Tiabach had a disproportionate number of tragic mining accidents, compared to many communities in South Wales. Between 1880 and 1900, of the 2,328 British miners killed in accidents involving more than 25 victims, 48% occurred in South Wales.
The History of Morfa Colliery has also been referred to as “The Steady drip of death”. Between 1849 and 1913, over 200 miners were killed, either by individual tragic accidents or by one of the many disasters caused by explosion or falling rock such as befell Morfa Colliery.
Remembering Morfa tells of the toleration of unsafe working practices by the coal-owners and their agents and a precarious underground mining environment. These practices were reinforced by the profit-driven acquisitions of the coal owners, principally Messrs Vivian and Sons. These practices were of course not confined to the Vivian’s but occurred across the whole of the South Wales and Monmouth coal industry and across the UK.
Death and disaster
As well as coping with their own experiences of death and disaster, the small community that worked the Morfa Colliery also came to the help others who came ashore on the Morfa Beach from ships run a ground by severe storms. One part of the book eloquently describes how the fate of the Earlscourt, a ship run aground in a severe storm in December 1886. The twenty-one crew members rescued were given food and shelter by the people living nearby at Morfa Mawr Farm and the Morfa colliers Cottages.
Yet these men were not meek and mild in their relations with the colliery owners. They knew the causes of the tragic events and challenged the owners and the Inspectorate of Mines, introduced by the Coal Mines Act of 1860.
You can read in the book an eloquent account by a young collier, given in the Western Mail in February 1870, of the real causes of an explosion that year (one of many) that killed twenty-seven men.
Fascinating read
The book is a fascinating read, full of actual accounts and details of the circumstances that faced people who were looking for work and settled in Tiabach and who ended up working in Morfa Colliery, having travelled from Somerset, Cornwall, rural parts of Wales and local communities.
Ian Isaac, NCB St John’s Colliery, NUM Lodge Secretary 1978 to 1986, Llynfi Valley NUM Joint Lodges Secretary and Swales NUM Executive Council member 1981 to 1987
To order a copy of the book from EBay, Price £10 click on link below:
You can also email Lynne Rees Co Author on:lynne@lynnerees.com
September 8, 2020
