e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@deadline.demon.co.uk
It is twelve years since Mostyn Moses last worked down a mine. But he still coughs up coal, sometimes in lumps. His lungs are so bad he cannot walk to the garden gate without resting. He spends most nights propped up on the sofa because he can neither negotiate the stairs nor sleep lying down. Mostyn, 64, has chronic bronchitis and emphysema, traditional miners' diseases but ones which British Coal denies any responsibility for. Now at last he and thousands of other miners may get some compensation following a historic court case in January. In the High Court Mr Justice Turner found that coal dust does cause chronic bronchitis and emphysema. And he held that the National Coal Board, which took charge of the nationalised coal industry in 1947 and later became British Coal, was negligent and "seriously at fault" in failing to control the deadly dust. Dust which killed Mostyn's father, five of his uncles and, slowly, is killing him.
The case against British Coal was brought not by the National Union of Mineworkers, to which most miners belonged, but by the much smaller National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies, and Shotfirers - Nacods. And the driving force behind it was Blethyn Hancock, General Secretary of Nacods in Wales.
"I started this fight when a number of my members put in claims to the Department of Social Security for benefit because they had pneumoconiosis. Time after time they were rejected even though they had emphysema, bronchitis and other diseases. So I decided to sue British Coal for compensation. But we were a small union, we only had 800 members then; now after the pit closures I’ve got 45. So finding the money was a struggle."
As the case proceeded the struggle got harder. For ten years British Coal used every argument its lawyers could think of to challenge the claim and delay the case. At one stage it even suggested that bronchitis was not a disease but a natural reaction of the body to dust just as sweating was a reaction to heat. Blethyn Hancock asked retired members to help with the cost. Many gave £800 or more knowing they would not live to see the result. Eventually he had to call on members of the National Union of Mineworkers, whose own union would not contribute directly to the cost, to join the action and claim legal aid to help pay the mounting legal fees. Eventually, eight men were selected as test cases out of around 6000 whose claims were registered. Finally, after a year in court and the consideration of more than a million pages of documents, six miners won compensation from British Coal.
The judge rejected every argument which British Coal put forward. Mr Justice Turner found that coal dust does cause emphysema and chronic bronchitis. He found that British Coal had taken a "leisurely approach" to measuring the extent of dust in its coal mines. He found that suitable respirators which miners could have worn for at least part of their shift could have been provided from the mid-1960s but were not. He concluded that "British coal failed to take all reasonable steps to minimise the creation and dispersion of respirable dust by the introduction of known and available dust suppression techniques from about 1949 to 1970 and to a lesser extent thereafter." In other words British Coal could have reduced the dust and saved lives. But it chose not to. It was a damning judgement on nearly fifty years of nationalised coal mining.
Now that the test cases have been won, the way is open for hundreds of thousands of miners who were exposed to dust working for British Coal to seek compensation too. For complex legal reasons compensation can only be paid for the damage done from 1954. Any periods before that, when conditions were often far worse, have to be discounted. Anything which the miner himself did to make his condition worse, especially smoking, will also reduce the damages paid. But anyone who worked in the mines, was exposed to the dust, and now has chronic bronchitis or emphysema can sue for compensation.
This money is quite separate from the very limited schemes already set up through the Department of Social Security to pay industrial injuries disablement benefit for people with these diseases or pneumoconiosis. Most miners - as many as six out of seven of those who apply - cannot get these benefits. But people who have been refused benefit from the Department of Social Security can still claim compensation for negligence following the court ruling.
Of course, it is too late for many miners. The dust has already killed them. But their widows can still claim. Malcolm Evans is a solicitor with the firm Hugh James which acted for five of the miners who won in January.
"If someone lost a husband or a father because of respiratory illness you can still bring a claim on behalf of the estate. It is a little more difficult to get evidence of the ailment and the degree of disability without a person in front of you so we have to build up a picture from medical records and recollections. But they can still claim."
The amount of compensation each individual will get will depend on the damage that has been done and how much they have lost in wages through early retirement or reduced pensions. Amounts will range from a few thousand pounds to a lot more in some cases. It is possible that the Government will set up a simple straightforward scheme for assessing the damages and paying the money. Meanwhile, anyone who thinks they have a claim - for themselves or someone else - should see a solicitor with experience in personal injury claims (see What to do Now below)
If everyone claims who is entitled to do so, the total bill could be anywhere between £1 billion and £2 billion. The Government got nearly £1 billion from selling off the coal mines and will get a further £1.1 billion over the next ten years under a deal whereby it takes half the surplus from the miners' pension fund in exchange for guaranteeing their index linked pensions for life. So even if they all claim, they will just get back the money the Government has made by closing down their industry.
The wealth of Britain over the last hundred and fifty years has depended on coal. It powered our factories, drove our trains, and heated our homes. Now the men who dug it up for us since the war are dying because the nationalised industry - which we all owned - failed to take basic steps to protect their health. Blethyn Hancock puts it this way
"There is a debt to be paid to miners and their families. And we are coming to collect."
"My father died of the dust, pneumoconiosis, when he was 53. I had to keep my mother and my brother. He was in school, my mother was a widow, I had no choice, I had to look for work. I was bringing home £12 a week, working hard, Sunday and Saturday for that."
Although coal had been nationalised for more than two years when he began, conditions were terrible.
"There were no glasses, masks, anything like that. I was working with a collier, I was the boy like. He'd dig the coal out and I was shovelling all day, filling the dram [rail truck] with the coal, and then they'd bring another one. You couldn’t see your hand in front of you. It was terrible, working like that all day. That's the conditions you worked in. The ventilation, the air, was very poor. I used to get home and my mother was in tears at the state of me. She told me not to go underground any more but I was young then. I didn’t know what was in store for me."
Mostyn spent half his working life in traditional, pick and shovel mining, often breathing in the fumes of the explosives as well as the fine dust produced when anthracite is blasted. He has all three miner's lung diseases - pneumoconiosis, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis. He gets industrial injuries disablement benefit of more than £100 a week from the Department of Social Security as well as his retirement pension and his pension from British Coal. But it is small compensation for the disability he suffers.
"I have been spitting up dust like black lead from my lungs, like black slurry. Then I started seeing blood and now they tell me I’ve got tuberculosis as well. I can’t go out. I’ve got a motability car and my daughter comes over and drives me in that once a week. I can go as far as the garden gate but I’m gasping with my breath. Most nights I sleep here, propped up. I can’t breathe lying down. If I lie flat I’m gasping for air."
And it is not just Mostyn who suffers. His wife Rita is his constant support.
"There's no quality of life for him. He loved his garden and to go for a walk or a drink. Now he can hardly do anything. We've got a holiday caravan but he can’t go there now. It was our wedding anniversary two years ago, we planned a nice affair, forty years married. But he couldn’t fly, he had a cavity in his lung and if he went on an aeroplane it might collapse."
She puts her arm around his shoulders, smiles and gives him a squeeze. "We've got three sons and two daughters. My Mostyn was a fit and healthy man then."
Mostyn is not sure if he will claim the compensation. Rita explains.
"He doesn’t want the money. He wants his health, doesn’t he. But that’s gone."
"It was very dusty. You couldn’t see your hand in front of you. In them days when the coal come up in the drams you weren't allowed to use water to dampen it, it would drop through into a sieve and a shaker where it was sorted into sizes. Well if you used water to damp the dust all the little holes where the small coal used to drop through would clog up. You'd have got sacked if you'd used water. They had tubes there for taking the dust out of the coal. And these tubes were connected to a leather bag and a fan drew the dust off and then fed into the small coal - they didn’t waste it, it was sold with the coal - and in the washery you had to clean these tubes out with a long handled scraper two or three times a day and you couldn’t see a thing."
And did he know the dust was bad for him then?
"Well I knew it wasn’t doing me any good. Everybody knew that but you just had to put up with it that was all."
After spending five war years in the navy, Tennyson went back down the pit as a fitter, just as the National Coal Board took over. But conditions were not much better.
"It was dusty down there. They used a curling box, it had three sides with an open end like a big shovel and you had to fill it with your hands, scoop up the coal, and drag it back to the nearest tram and lift it in. Sort all your coal out and put your rubbish to one side."
Working in these conditions has left its mark. Tennyson is a big man, tall and broad, and he insists that his breathing is "not too bad at all. I have difficulty getting up from here to the main road. But once I’m on the flat I’m not too bad."
Despite his ill-health he gets no extra benefit for his disability. He failed to meet the strict conditions which the Department of Social Security rules demand. He could now claim compensation from British Coal following the judgement in January. But he is not sure he will apply.
"I don't see much point in it. If I had to go to Cardiff for a Board I can’t be bothered, I can’t travel. It's only bloody money isn't it" Pausing only to cough, he adds "I don't think my lungs are too bad. Well I have difficulty getting to the road but that’s more or less old age."
Emphysema - causes the enlargement of the air sacs deep in the lungs where oxygen is taken into the blood and carbon dioxide is expelled from it. The result is that the body is starved of oxygen, the sufferer is breathless and wheezes. It is caused by very small particles of dust or smoke being inhaled over long periods of time.
These two diseases are quite separate from pneumoconiosis which is a scarring of the lung tissue caused by larger particles of dust. The symptoms can be similar to those of bronchitis and emphysema.
Normally you will not have to pay to bring the case - British Coal should pay the costs.
March 1998
e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@deadline.demon.co.uk