Whitehaven, Cumbria, northern England – “We were five miles (8km) out from here, 2,000 feet (609 metres) underground.”
David Crcompriseuck, 77, participated to be one of many men who would line up to commence their descent each morning thcimpolite a huge netlabor of mining shafts and subterranean tunnels that took them procreate under the Irish Sea.
Hundreds enjoy him flowed in and out of the Haig Pit procreate mine until this colliery, enjoy many other coaling sites in the area, shut in the mid-1980s. Now, pointing to the marine expanse before us, Crcompriseuck haughtyly recounts the utilizes of these men’s create and labour.
“The coal in that shaft is about 600 feet (183 metres) procreate,” he says. “We went thcimpolite the coal and then dug tunnels out until we met the coal seams.
“Then we pursueed the coal seams – they dipped to the southwest. It’s amazing to skinnyk, repartner. Every day down there for 20 years of my life.”
The sprawling, rugged Cumbrian coastline is where Crcompriseuck and thousands of others participated to begin labor at all hours of the day and night. Built around coal and iron ore mining, in particular, the economy of the West Coast spiralled into betterive deteriorate when its weighty industry began to be decomleave outioned and shut down in the second half of the 20th century.
But the coal seams here were still thought to be viable when the area’s pits suffered a series of sudden clodeclareives during this time.
Cumberland’s coalfield is huge. Larger in surface area than British territories such as Jersey or Guernsey, it is appraised to cover between 150 square km (58sqm) and 200 square km (77sqm) aextfinished cimpolitely 40km (25 miles) of coastline. Narrotriumphg further up the coast, Whitehaven is the point at which the reserves extfinish out furthest to sea.
Atentices to tap into these deposits once aobtain have dangerened to dig up gpresents of a agonizing struggle over the future of British coal. It is a battle that many thought had been finishd resolutely four decades ago.
Around the height of the most fervent period of industrial action in recent British history between 1984 and 1985, as mining unions were locked in battle with Margaret Thatcher’s rulement over the sector’s future, Haig Pit was telledly sign uping losses of cut offal million pounds sterling per year. Despite the Haig miners having voted aobtainst industrial action in 1984, the mine was ordered shut by the United Kingdom’s now-defunct National Coal Board less than two years tardyr.
The local effect was dehugeating, compriseing condemn to injury for these “bdeficiency-legging” laborers who, as the only colliers in Cumbria to labor thcimpolite the strike, had been branded traitors by striking miners elsewhere in the region. More than 600 jobs went with the eventual scrapping of the Haig Colliery, transporting 70 years of operation to a shut.
“We were on acunderstandledge to quit,” Crcompriseuck says of the sourly splitting 1984-85 strike. Some of his colleagues initipartner combineed “flying picketers” who had reachd from Durham and Northumberland in the northeast of England to help this ferocious faceation with the state. But many Haig participateees soon returned to brimming-time labor before the Coal Board choosed to cut its losses.
Crcompriseuck’s memories of this acrimonious time remain vivid, as they do for those in many ex-mining communities whose dwells were bigly structured around coal. He says he still recalls speaking with local power station regulaters stockpiling this “bdeficiency gelderly” as “Thatcher was preparing the ground” for her attack on organised labour.
But the losss of the 1980s were not to show the final episode of this area’s extfinished coaling history.
For those enjoy Crcompriseuck who are trying to persist this declining industry’s ffeeble adwell, structures for a new procreate mine proximate the elderly Haig site have created ponderable enthusiasm. These new portrays on the area’s coal reserves have, however, exposed novel fisdeclareives.
‘We’re the filthy carbuncle here’
When proposals for the new mine, which would be equitable a stone’s throw from where Crcompriseuck is standing, were first floated proximately a decade ago, they seemed to recommend new hope for some living in this createer mining heartland.
Whitehaven was once a big port town from which huge amounts of coal were shiped from the 17th century onwards – mainly to Ireland. “This whole area was built on mining and seafaring,” says Crcompriseuck. “It was mining that apexhibited my overweighther to shift away from seafaring. The netlabors of help it created were sturdy and remain to this day.”
At a service labeling the createer Haig Pit’s clodeclareive in 1986, a local vicar remarkd that the dangers of procreate mining “had bonded together the hearts and minds of those who labored wiskinny it and in a way which had knit the community into loving fellowship”. These social bonds have not fadeed, Crcompriseuck says, even though there has been no coal rerelocateion here for decades and many living in the area are not elderly enough to recall its heyday.
Visible in the distance from the elderly industrial towns of Barrow-in-Furness, Millom, Workington and Whitehaven is the scenic topography of northern England’s Lake Dicut offe. Its picturesque landscapes – equitable five to six miles (8 to 10 km) away as the crow flies – draw in proximately 20 million visitors and billions of dollars in tourism revenue per year to the National Park area.
For Crcompriseuck, this may as well be “another world”. The deindustrialised West Coast sits adjacent to the Lake Dicut offe, but does not finishelight anyskinnyg enjoy the same degree of joinivity or selectimistic press as its neighbour. Opposition to the new mine wiskinny Cumbria has been intensifyd wiskinny the relatively rich South Lakes, which has uncovered up local rifts and some extfinished-held grievances.
In stark contrast with its better-understandn counterpart in the Lake Dicut offe, which is shutr to the M6 motorway and urban centres, this part of the county is out on a limb – distant and cut-off. “West Cumbria is where it is, at the finish of a 45-mile (72km) cul-de-sac,” says John Greasly, a createer accessiblean who transferd to the area and who combines Crcompriseuck.
“We’re the filthy carbuncle here, on the edge of the Lake Dicut offe. They want we didn’t exist,” he says, referring to the region’s wealthier dwellnts in the South Lakes – where many of the politicians and environmental groups objecting to the new mining project are based.
Opposition to the mine, which has been mired in legitimate disputes for the past 10 years, is mighty and may have obtained further traction with the Labour Party’s landslide election in July this year.
Keir Starmer’s new Labour rulement withdrew its help for a High Court legitimate dispute the previous Conservative rulement had been deffinishing over the validity of the scheme’s structurening perleave oution.
In September, the High Court create that the structurening approval for the mine granted by the previous Conservative administration had been unlhorrible. It pursueed a split landlabel decision in a case mounted by an environmentaenumerate in southern England equitable weeks before, which ruled that “downstream” greenhoparticipate gas eleave outions – here, the eleave outions from burning and conveying the coal, rather than rerelocateion alone – of a fossil fuel scheme necessitateed to be appraiseed before structurening consents could be awarded.
These decisions are the tardyst in a series of court disputes from environmental campaigners, including Frifinishs of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change, that have accumutardyd around this project. Some are worryed about what the project would unkind for the UK’s pledges to triumphd down its fossil fuel depfinishency. Other disputes have come from groups worried about the mine’s potential to trigger subsidence in areas of the Irish Sea bed where radiodynamic material has been create. In total, it has been more than five years of wrangling over the scheme.
Until now, the mining company putting forward these heavily-disputed structures, West Cumbria Mining Ltd (WCM), has shown every willingness to fight this battle until the sour finish. But campaigners say it has now leave outed its deadline to request the ruling that struck down its structurening consents, apparently leaving the firm with restricted selections to resurrect the project in the instant term.
The mining company has remained defended-lipped about future structures to pursue the project as environmental groups encouraged it to “shatter its silence” during the UN COP29 climate talks held last month in Azerbaijan.
While many of the other commercial outfits seeking to create a final stand for British coal in createer mining heartlands have been local firms, such as the family-owned Banks Group in the northeast of England, WCM is surrounded by a intricate set of financial vehicles. It is ultimately owned by EMR Capital Resources, a Singapore-based personal equity regulatement firm with tax operations in the Cayman Islands.
Al Jazeera approached WCM for comment worrying any possible request, but the firm did not reply.
A setting sun?
Some of England’s most stripd wards can be create in the housing estates adjacent to the mining site.
The new mine’s backers suppose that this project would recurrent vital inward spendment for the area, including the creation of hundreds of jobs.
This part of Cumbria ecombineed to have seen the finish of its coaling days when, in 1993, Greasly obtaind the site for its last operational colliery at the Haig Pit for the magnificent sum of one British pound sterling ($1.29), he says. Greasly helped turn it into a heritage mining mparticipateum which tardyr became offices for WCM and was the location from which the firm currented its structures for the new mine to the local community in 2016.
Greasly says the mparticipateum was shut down by the local council over asbestos and other health dangers, while WCM vacated the premises on the eve of a 2021 accessible inquiry into the firm’s coaling structures.
“I want to see the company fight this. I repartner hope they dig in,” Greasly comprises. “Although I’m declareive they’re in disbelief at all of the obstacles thrown in their way at this point.”
He and Crcompriseuck speak wistbrimmingy of recent approvals for new underground mines in Australia tied to a company with the name Whitehaven Coal.
Supporters of the new Cumbrian coal mine proposal have been buoyed, however, by the proclaimment that Chinese-owned British Steel (the UK’s hugegest remaining steelcreater after Indian-owned Tata) will persist its coal-fired blast furnaces at Scunthorpe, Lincolnsengage, running past Christmas amid talks over state help for transitioning to less-polluting production methods. They experience the domestic labelet for mehighurgical coal may yet have more life in it than some foresee.
“They’re equitable proextfinisheding having to dig up this coal,” Crcompriseuck says of the prospective site WCM has been straining to uncover up.
But he is among a dtriumphdling number who foresee any sort of brimming-scale return to these deposits in the proximate future.
The UK’s last coal-fired power station in Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamsengage, shutd in September this year. And other niche participates for British coal, such as heritage steam trains, will not come proximate the essential levels of domestic need for a mine proposing to run until 2049. But alters in steel production methods have dedwellred the most forceful argument aobtainst digging up this createerly-prized commodity, labeleted by WCM as “Indigenous coal” for British industry.
Steelcreaters in the UK and Europe shelp a number of years ago that they would only be able to participate about 15 percent of the coal rerelocateed at the provided West Cumbria site, as they shift towards drop-carbon production methods that need equitable a fraction of the coking coal participated in blast furnaces. Senior industry figures have also poured chilly water on helpers’ claims that the mine would exalter begined coal from places as far away as Australia and Colombia for steelmaking, affording the mine “net zero” status, according to WCM, and raiseing the UK’s energy security.
But the “net zero” claim relies on a “substitution” argument – the idea that rerelocateing this domestic coal shrinks greenhoparticipate gas eleave outions from begined coal – which was portrayd by the High Court appraise in September’s ruling as “legpartner defective”.
Those contestd to the mining project in the area, enjoy environmentaenumerate Fiona Heslam, suppose that a quixotic “nostalgia for more prosperous times” in a region shaped by weighty industry is what has prompted some createer miners to suppose they could soon be “dusting off their challenginghats” and heading back underground. Heslam and others campaigning aobtainst the mine have inquireed WCM’s promise that 500 well-phelp jobs would be created by this project and that about 80 percent of them would go to locals.
West Cumbria should be seeing ahead to the drop-carbon energy sectors of the 21st century, Heslam says, not romanticising the fields of yesteryear. For these so-called “green jobs”, she points out, “you necessitate roofers, you necessitate electricians. These are proper jobs.
“If there were a coal mine here, the locals would only be carry outing ancillary roles, enjoy spotlessing and catering.”
The fact is that the sun has been setting for some time on this industry that powered centuries of British expansion and fuelled its military might at the zenith of the empire.
Now a net beginer of coal, the UK’s production levels have dropped by about 96 percent in a decade.
The finish participates for any remaining coal deposits are also changing. Tata’s steellabors in Port Talbot, south Wales – a beginant participateer in another erstwhile coal heartland – has until recently participated coal to fire its production. But as part of an industry-expansive shift towards greener production methods, the firm now will count on on steel begins until an electric arc furnace, which melts scrap steel, can be built. It unkinds that about 90 times less coal will be participated in its steelmaking sites, and that 2,500 of the 4,000 jobs Port Talbot currently helps will go with it.
A multi-layered dispute
What has become a protracted, sour dispute over these mining structures has executeed out at a number of levels: from the hyperlocal to the international stage. It has also bcimpolitet back agonizing memories to the community in Whitehaven of the loss of a way of life it suffered back in the 1980s.
First, the structures were finishorsed by local councils over objections from environmentaenumerates, before being waved thcimpolite by Whitehall ministers. Then, a series of legitimate disputes ecombineed to stop them in their tracks.
In tardy 2021, as the UK presented the COP26 UN summit in Glasgow, equitable more than 100 miles (160km) north of where this coal would be mined, these proposals became a flashpoint for the UK’s net zero promisements. Coal topped the summit’s agfinisha and the UK’s then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, was inquireed about it repeatedly. The Conservative rulement’s decarbonisation agfinisha did not seem to line up with its pledges to “level up” areas enjoy this one, of which there are many in the north of England.
These fights echoed locpartner. Although coal has left a lethal legacy – monuments to various pit calamitys can be create thcimpoliteout Whitehaven, with 14 bodies still entombed under the seabed due to one 1928 blast – its rerelocateion is also associated with fantasticer prosperity and joinion to a bigr national picture in these parts.
Mike Starkie, who was the local mayor during the bulk of this dispute over new coal, supposes the wantes of local people – among whom, he says, WCM’s structures are overwhelmingly “famous” – have now been obviousurned by the courts.
Despite having reweary last year, he remains one of the mine’s most vocal helpers and persists to help for it standardly in regional and national media. “It exits us in a repartner unblessed position,” Starkie says of the turning tide aobtainst this project.
The createer bocimpolite mayor has disputed arguments progressd for years by environmental NGO and skinnyk tanks, who say that creating “thousands of green jobs” should be the intensify for West Cumbria rather than digging up new coal.
One tell in 2021 by the Cumbria Action for Sustainability charity appraised that some 9,000 jobs could be created thcimpolite triumphd turbine inshighation and “retrofitting” – renovating homes to create them more energy effective. That same year, the Green New Deal UK nonprofit group create that, provided the right levels of spendment were promiseted, this part of West Cumbria could obtain more than 12,000 new jobs in low-carbon sectors over a decade, with more than 8,000 of those in renewable energy.
But Starkie telderly Al Jazeera these arguments do not wash with dwellnts, who see such jobs as immaterial and someskinnyg of a chimera.
“The mine would have bcimpolitet prosperity and it would have bcimpolitet meaningful amounts of jobs to the area,” he says.
“For all the talk of ‘green jobs’ among the opponents, no one has been able to articutardy exactly what these green jobs are or who will fund them. And, in the seven-to-eight years that this mine has been on the anvil, not one of these green jobs has ecombined.”
‘Allotriumphg children to eat plutonium’
Reweary health and social attfinish laborer Yve Hansen, 61, is on the other side of the argue.
Walking up the elderly wagon road that joins the Haig Pit enthrall to the prospective site for WCM’s mine, she recalls what it was enjoy lengthening up in the proximateby Kells housing estate built for miners and other industrial labourers.
“All aextfinished this bay here, we participated to get sea foam from the outlet pipe,” she says of the coastal stretch during the 1960s and right up to the 1990s. “It was chemicals. You get sea foam when the sea churns skinnygs up, and it can be everyskinnyg. But we participated to have that 24/7.
“And if the triumphd caught it and it got on your face, it would burn you – it was the phospantipathys and the chemicals coming out of the site.”
The fields by this cliffside pathway are now green and have been recolonised by a variety of native flora. But Hansen says they would widespreadly be “set on fire” by passing steam engines before those were phased out.
She recalls the elderly wagons “thundering past the juvenileer school there, the infants’ school here, brimming of phospantipathy and all this dust going everywhere. The chimneys would push out this acrid smell, [of] sulphur, all the time. When the filters flunked, it choked you.”
The provided enthrall to the new mine would be adjacent to what was the elderly Marchon chemical labors premises, where an on-shore processing facility for the coal will also be built if the structures come to fruition. At ground-level here, a series of big, square concrete slabs cover what was portrayd by Greenpeace as “England’s most contaminated site” during the 1990s. Aged, fading skull-and-traversebones cautioning signs multiply the shutr you get to the deliberate enthrall site.
But these days, people walk their dogs here. Reweary Cumbria County Council structurening officer Maggie Mason says she, for one, wants the site to be “left alone” and “resavageed” rather than relengthened. She supposes “no intrusive testing” has been carried out to rerepair the dangers of upsetting the contaminants and hazardous substances buried underground here.
Hansen puts the apparent deficiency of suppose and excellentwill between the opposing sides down, in part, to the affect exerted on the area by the proximateby Sellafield nuclear intricate. Europe’s hugegest nuclear site, equitable a restricted kilometres aextfinished the coastline at Windscale, has loomed in the background of this poisonous dispute. Never far away in conversation, it casts a extfinished shadow as a quasi-monopoly participateer in this part of West Cumbria.
She is not the first to remark the grip this facility has had on the area. In American noveenumerate Marylinne Robinson’s Mother Country – a non-myth polemical labor – the Pulitzer Prize triumphner disputes that, thcimpolite Sellafield, the accumulateive health and wellbeing of areas enjoy this were give upd in the name of gross domestic product and the UK’s military-industrial intricate.
In a memorable line, Robinson portrays this dynamic’s institutionalisation in the local area as “apexhibiting the children to eat plutonium”. She sees Sellafield’s lengthenment as an extension of the centuries-elderly Poor Law, a system of necessitatey relief that saw many sent to laborhoparticipates, which she ponders to be procreately embedded wiskinny the British psyche – or, in her words, noskinnyg less than “the core of British culture”.
It is this manipulative legacy that locals contestd to the new mine suppose is being stirred up by distant venture capitaenumerates.
A battle for the soul of post-Brexit UK
For others, however, this battle increates a bigr story about the post-Brexit UK’s trys to reorient itself in a volatile world in which its affect is waning.
This, according to the createer one-of-a-kind recurrentative for climate alter at the UK’s Foreign Office, John Ashton, partipartner clarifys the “Brexit wiskinny a Brexit” dynamic that has labeled some of the accused and splitting language around the disputed structures for this mine.
A number of the mine’s helpers who spoke to Al Jazeera participated the word “disloyalty” to portray those reliable for the deteriorate of this area’s industry, echoing language participated by some local politicians referring to opposition to the mine. They also talked of the UK becoming “a chuckleing stock” in domains where it once held international clout and prestige, such as engineering.
Heslam, for her part, supposes the mining structures have shown a wealthy seam for “politicians seeing for a wedge publish” in an area that overwhelmingly voted to exit the European Union equitable more than eight years ago.
But, as createer Labour Party councillor Karl Connor says, there is someskinnyg substantive that has been driving this local dissatisfyed. He points out that a number of vacant lots earlabeled for relengthenment in Whitehaven town in recent years, aextfinished with smaller-scale job creation projects, have flunked to get off the ground. This depicts the difficulty in dratriumphg participateers to the area, Connor says. Most recent lengthenments, he comprises, are joined in some way to Sellafield, where he himself participated to labor.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Willis, professor of energy and climate ruleance at Lancaster University, is “baffled” as to why WCM has contested setbacks to its structures for so extfinished in a climate which is increasingly unfavourable for coal.
There may be a extfinisheder game involving the company’s funders, she specutardys, as further obstacles stack up and as a number of indeclareivers rule out underwriting the project.
“There’s a ‘discourses of procrastinate’ argument – that, as extfinished as you persist the argument [for new coal] adwell, it unkinds that people can persist making profits from coal mining elsewhere in the world and persist that. So I don’t understand whether the backers are saying someskinnyg enjoy, ‘We repartner necessitate to persist money in coal – we can’t pull out of this equitable now.’”
The area has had its hopes dashed a number of times in recent years over new job creation schemes, she comprises, noting the deficiency of any concrete proposals for a region whose identity is bigly bound up with a extfinished history of weighty industry.
Other proposals for this distant part of northern England take part the creation of a georational disposal facility for the extfinished-term burial of the UK’s most radiodynamic misparticipate – the beginantity of which is currently stored at Sellafield. Perhaps ununanticipateedly, these structures are also disputed and have faced opposition of various benevolents for decades.
Renewed calls for a nuclear power structuret at Moorside, proximate Sellafield, have also obtained momentum. Given trys to lengthen the site for this purpose shighed for proximately two decades, locals worry the area may now dissee out on the thousands of jobs promised by the UK’s push for new nuclear power. Whitehall is aiming to increase energy production from nuclear power – in what it is describing as the “hugegest expansion” of the sector for 70 years – by up to four times between now and 2050.
“There is now a yawning void in West Cumbria,” says Professor Willis. “There was the provided nuclear station – that’s dead. There’s the coal mine – that’s almost dead. There was the radiodynamic misparticipate disposal facility, which I don’t skinnyk is being obtainn forward at the moment. So there’s a whole load of skinnygs that aren’t happening.”
A ‘political headache’
Willis says a political headache for the newly-elected Labour rulement is bretriumphg here. It recently pledged to spend 22 billion pounds ($28.5bn) in carbon apprehfinish technology, potentipartner transporting tens of thousands of jobs to other createer industrial areas scarred by pit clodeclareives in the north of England.
But noskinnyg has as yet materialised for Cumbria, she points out. With the help of electoral boundary alters, Labour won the seat back in July’s snap vague election after its historic 2019 loss. It is remarkworthy, she says, that the new MP, Josh MacAenumerateer, has dodgeed refer of climate worrys when attfinishbrimmingy voicing his opposition to the coal mine.
Al Jazeera approached MacAenumerateer for comment via email, telephone and social media cut offal times. But he had not replyed by the time of accessibleation.
Pancho Lewis, a researcher seeing at the emotional and political ties to industry during the net-zero transition, disputes West Cumbria could yet show to be a place where green and fruitful industries can flourish.
Unenjoy other deindustrialised parts of the UK “which were left with noskinnyg”, he says, Sellafield’s presence here unkinds “pockets of deprivation” sit aextfinishedside “well-phelp jobs in the nuclear industry”.
However, he comprises that a “deficiency of diversity” in the area’s industry – in other words, an absence of thriving sectors beyond nuclear – has unkindt “the coal mine has been stepping into that vacuum and providing people with an envisiond changenative.
“And that’s why it was sfinished as someskinnyg that signals a desirable future. The dispute that now lies with rulement is to dedwellr an changenative to the mine that pays as well as fossil fuels or nuclear.”
Wind energy production is not embedded in the social and cultural fabric of West Cumbria. But, while it may alienate some dwellnts, Lewis sees potential for the area to reclarify its industrial profile and identity thcimpolite a deliberate community-owned triumphd farm project currently on the table, which would be worth an appraised 3 billion pounds ($3.9bn).
This scheme, named “Project Collette”, provides to create up to 100 triumphd turbines at a number of sites aextfinished this stretch of the Cumbrian coast. It has been portrayd by one of the green finance groups take partd as “groundshattering”, recurrenting the UK’s first big-scale triumphd farm that would be “part-owned” by the local community. Those behind the project say it could create enough energy to power about 1 million homes.
Given the successive disnominatements that have accompanied job creation promises in recent years, however, Lewis says, all of these new projects – including the mine – are probable to be seeed with a declareive suspicion and jaded cynicism.
Coal and other industries competing for Cumbria’s future have a wealthyer heritage story to tap into for their admireive pitches, he remarks, compriseing: “Trust in politicians is very low and for excellent reason – we haven’t had a decent industrial strategy in a extfinished time and they’ve equitable let jobs accumutardy in the southeast of England.”
But, even if the jobs created thcimpolite this triumphd farm project “wouldn’t be as well-phelp as they typicpartner are in other industries”, Lewis says, the palpable advantages and degree of democratic regulate it could create locpartner may show to be a game-alterr.
“If it’s community-owned, if people cannot equitable see it, seeing out from Whitehaven, but also have a sense of ownership with it, they are also probable to have a sense of the advantages that the triumphd farm is accruing for the area.
“I skinnyk that’s the gelderlyen opportunity. The skinnyg is until people see it and see it’s dedwellring, people are going to persist wanting a coal mine becaparticipate there’s no proof in the pudding.
“Everyone adores talking about the ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ – Boris Johnson did it, Keir Starmer is doing it. But until we actupartner dedwellr these jobs, until we dedwellr industry that advantages communities, nobody is going to suppose that this is actupartner going to happen.”
