British Politics Still Lives in the Shadow of the Coal Mines
Coal mining regions were central to Britain’s labor movement, and the industry’s decline has left a gaping hole. This social crisis and political vacuum made Boris Johnson’s election victory possible — but the Tories haven’t conquered the coalfields yet.
Two miners at Betteshanger Colliery in Kent, 1986. (John Downing / Getty Images)
In May 2021, the Conservative Party won a high-profile by-election in the former shipbuilding town of Hartlepool for the first time since the constituency was formed in 1974. Meanwhile, an even more fundamental change was taking place across what used to be the adjacent Durham coalfield, as Labour lost council seats in droves across former mining settlements.
These shifts followed on from the Brexit referendum result in 2016, as well as the Conservative breakthrough in towns and villages across the North of England and Midlands at the 2019 general election. Although the Euro-skeptic middle class of England’s southeast provided the core of the Leave vote, traditionally Labour-voting, deindustrialized areas pushed it over the line.
It was the former colliery city of Sunderland in northeast England that declared the first results and indicated the likelihood of a vote for Brexit. Wales, the only nation in the UK currently governed by the Labour Party, also voted for Brexit. The Leave vote was especially pronounced in the densely populated Valleys, at the heart of a coalfield that had employed a quarter of a million miners around a century before.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.