Hatfield Main Branch of the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers

The branch organised mineworkers at Hatfield Main Colliery at Stainforth, north east of Doncaster. Production started in 1923 with many of the men coming from Northumberland and Durham. After British Coal ceased production in 1993, the colliery went through various hands and eventually closed in 2015.

The banner is 175 cm wide and 212 cm high, painted using oil on silk and has benefited from conservation work. Maker and date of manufacture are both uncertain. It is stored at the NUM Offices in Barnsley along with the banner which replaced it in 1980.

Thanks to Chris Kitchen Jnr, Richard Riggs and Danny O’Connor for assistance and Dave Douglas and Eddie Downes for information.

Thanks to the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers for permission to photograph and reproduce this banner. Image copyright NUM.

If you have any information about this or any other banner, please tell NUM or Past Pixels.

National Justice for Mineworkers Campaign

Our objectives are to keep the issue of victimised miners to the forefront of the labour and trade union movement and to raise money to alleviate hardship among the families of the victimised men.

By the end of the strike in March 1985, 200 mineworkers served time in prison or custody, 20,000 people had been injured and 966 mineworkers had been sacked by the NCB.  Two miners were killed on picket lines; David Jones on the 15th March 1984 and Joe Green on the 15th June 1984.

The 966 men were originally sacked for no more than honouring picket lines, defending their jobs and pit communities, their class and the future of their children. Only a small number had been dismissed for offences against the person or damage to property. Many miners subsequently cleared by the courts were not re-instated and neither were many more who successfully won their cases for unfair dismissal at Industrial Tribunals. Many were even blacklisted from getting any work outside the coal industry.

NJMC is supported by the NUM, Labour Party, TUC conferences and many national & regional unions.

National Justice for Mineworkers Campaign
2 Hilden Street
Leigh
WN7 4LG
www.njfm.org.uk
01942 606 828

Produced to support NJMC

Photography by Martin Shakeshaft. Digital retouching by Adrian Hawes.

Photography, design and print by unionised labour.
www.martinshakeshaft.com   www.kavitagraphics.co.uk    www.rapspiderweb.co.uk

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