Littleton Colliery: The coal mine that felt like a second home

The lives of other miners took a different turn.

In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron told the House of Commons: “I’ve taken a miner, put him in the cabinet and he’s running the railways.”

Lord Patrick McLoughlin, 66, the son and grandson of coal miners, worked at Littleton Colliery as a miner from 1979.

Around the same time he was elected as a councillor in Cannock Chase and served on Staffordshire County Council.

“There was good banter, I was a known Conservative, there was a lot of leg-pulling. It prepared me well for a life of politics in due course,” he said.

But things soured as a result of the industrial action of 1984-5. He was among a small number who initially crossed the picket line, although that number would grow as the strike action continued.

“I didn’t go on strike because we had a ballot at Littleton and the vote was to continue working,” he explained.

Work was pretty difficult after that.

“Those who’d been out on strike weren’t very forgiving of those who broke the picket line,” he said.