Miners Strike at the Mining Museum
There are many themes relevant to Stories of Extraction in this news that former coal workers, now staff at the National Coal Mining Museum, are on strike.
The Miners Strikes in the 1970s and early 1980s, resisting the closure of mines and the resulting injustice and poverty, were a significant story in the UK’s shift from onshore coal to offshore gas & oil, the privatisation of the energy industries, and the global outsourcing of energy & manufacturing. Cheap supplies of gas had just been found in the North Sea, which still heats most of our homes, and generates a third of electricity. The Thatcher government aimed to break the power of unions, and brought the full force of the police and courts to suppress their protest. (This has echoes of the current Public Order Bill going through, which will make dissent much more difficult. The new Home secretary Suella Braverman said: “So whether you’re Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain or Extinction Rebellion — you cross a line when you break the law. That’s why we will keep putting you behind bars.”)
There was a little redeployment in the heritage industry of the coal, steel and shipbuilding era, as well as in more efficient or ‘clean’ mines. But there was a lot of unemployment and struggle for mostly northern communities, with the end of these industries. These industries had epitomised extractive colonialism, ‘British Sea Power’, and pollution for profit, but bringing them to an end should include giving their workers the means to thrive.
The current ‘Levelling Up’ agenda and vision for the Northern Powerhouse is a decades-late response to this inequality, with an extractive and high-tech ‘Jobs & Growth’ approach. Alternative groups call for a more sustainable ‘Just Transition’, which is being pursued somewhat more by Welsh and Scottish governments. For example, Wales has announced a publicly owned renewable energy developer. It seemed to be emerging in part in England with greater investment in renewable energy projects. But maybe lip service was just being paid to the notion of a Just Transition in signing up to the Paris Agreement and EU Directives on climate and environment, now in tatters.
It’s now clear that the UK is nowhere near targets to meet its commitments to reduce CO2 by 2030, and the Truss-Sunak government(s) are allowing over 100 new oil & gas licences. The petroculture that we thought should be put in museums is being revived for real, but in gross folly.
The UK already had more structural inequality than many other European and developed countries, in part due to enabling the City, or the finance industry to dominate, with wealth accumulating in London. Then working class and older people (everyone, actually) were promised that Brexit would ease inequality, using racism as a manipulative tactic. In reality, Brexit has worsened regional inequalities. So, Brexit plus the UK’s background inequality is adding to factors also affecting other European countries — Climate, COVID-19 and the squeeze on energy supplies due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So, now we have an Energy crisis, which is being treated as distinct from the wider Earth crisis, even though it is highlighting wider issues and could hasten a shift from fossil fuels.
Energy prices in the UK are the highest in Europe, partly because we don’t have storage capacity and rely on pipelines from Europe. The privatisation of energy means there are multiple different companies distributing energy to us, and the regulator is not protecting the public from exploitative practices. Energy companies worldwide are benefitting from a $2 trillion windfall in profits, with UK companies still not being properly taxed because new PM Sunak’s new windfall tax falls heaviest on renewables companies and least on fossil fuels. The UK started burning coal for power again last year as oil and gas prices went up.
When PM Liz Truss announced in the ‘mini-budget’ that that they would let the rich pay less tax (including those rich from the energy and climate crises), the pound tanked, shockingly dipping below the dollar (when it has generally been twice the dollar). Mortgage rates, food prices and rents are all shooting up. But wages are declining at record rates, against a long stagnation since 2007 before the financial crash.
Now, take museum and heritage salaries. It’s hard for specialists in early career to earn more than £25k. Front of House, retail and manual workers in the sector earn even less, often on zero hours contracts. How is it possible for these workers to survive as the costs of shelter, food and transport are rising so quickly? How can staff also have freedoms to resist the Government agenda that is ‘anti-woke’ and against environmental justice, when funding is squeezed so they have to take more corporate funding and toe the line?
Austerity is now rearing its head again and museums will have to start scraping away at the bone now all the flesh is gone. The sector, reliant on public visits, struggled in the pandemic, and now many are facing huge challenges with sky-rocketing energy bills. The Mining Museum strikers are showing workers in other sectors what needs to happen. They are prefiguring a culture of resistance. Also museums of the fossil fuel era are important to capture what needs to stay in the past, for fuels that need to stay in the ground.
This can’t be seen in binaries. For example, whether museums and art are more valuable than the planet, as the Just Stop Oil protests targeting famous artworks are asking. Or, whether environmental action should be more of a priority than social justice, as the extractivist lobbies are trying to sow doubt amongst socially-concerned people. All life is valuable. All life is threatened by climate breakdown. There is no place in the world that will escape the impacts in terms of health, loss of infrastructure and loss of life, in what Alex Steffen calls the ‘Transapocalypse’. Our dependence on fossil fuels, other extracted commodities, and a debt-based consumerist economy, is the background to the social inequalities that are hitting home.
Some things that can be done:
Sign up to Culture Declares Emergency to form & join local supportive Hubs, and to take action on the Earth crisis and seek justice for sector workers and communities impacted by the crisis. See also the Museums Association Climate Justice campaign and resources.
Support and promote the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global initiative to phase out fossil fuels and support a just transition. Proliferation can be ended by stopping new exploration and extraction projects. The treaty includes measures for supporting indigenous land defenders and the transition of workers in extractive industries.
Join and support unions in the cultural sector, such as the PCS Culture Group. If you’re a manager in the sector, acknowledge their concerns.
If you are an activist for environmental and/or social justice, respect the value of heritage, arts and culture. Support the striking cultural workers. Support the work to tell the stories of fossil fuel industries as part of a Just Transition. Rethink the attacks on art and museums to raise awareness of the issues.
