Selby Project (British Coal Video)
British Coal at the cutting edge of mining technology.
The Selby project was a £1.4billion project that was projected to produce two million tons of coal per year from 1989, mined from the five newly constructed deep mines (or 'Super Pits') of the Selby coal field. Coal would be extracted from pits at Wistow, North Selby, Riccall, Stillingfleet and Whitemoor, which would then be transferred via tunnels to a drift mine at Gascoigne Wood. Using modern mechanised workflow methods, it was proposed that machinery would then fill one train of coal every 30 minutes, which, using the Merry-Go-Round system, could feed the nearby Drax Power Station with 50,000 tons of coal per day.
The new deep mine coalfields of Selby brought significant investment to the local area, with major road and river improvements and a rail diversion to open up the Barnsley Coal Seam. The Selby Project created a significant number of jobs too, with many miners redeployed from nearby collieries that had been closed. Good news for the area, good news for British Coal and good news for Britain...
The film's optimism is contagious, but sadly the project gave Britain's coal industry only a brief renaissance. With output peaking in 1993/94 at 12 million tonnes per year, the Super Pits were able to survive the demise of the National Coal Board and were privatised in 1997. Alas by the 21st century the coal was considered unprofitable and the mines closed in 2004, with another 25 years of the predicted 40 years of coal still lying in the seam.
A brief review of the history and progress of the 1.4 billion pound new
Selby mine complex.
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Coal: The History of a National Industry
Dig deep and you’ll reach buried treasure: forgotten riches of moving image history. Video captured the final chapters of our most iconic national industry.
Ever since Edwardian times, cameras and screens have had a vast yet intricate, complex and fascinating relationship with coal, coalmining, coalminers and coal communities. This is an inherently cinematic industry, with its elemental basis, its visual contrasts, its human dangers and dramas, and an iconic – if contested – place in our national story, rooted in the industrial revolution.
This story took on new dimensions as videotape production arose first to supplement then to supplant film’s generations-long fascination for the coal industry, itself entering its final decades - which were intense, troubled and tragic.
The nationalised industry itself – the National Coal Board (later British Coal) – had been actively using film since its 1947 inception. Now a separate video unit emerged, producing tapes in parallel with the more prestigious film unit's celluloid production up until the 1984 miners strike. After the strike, the film unit having closed, it solely inherited the task of using moving image to communicate company information to colliery staff. Meanwhile, national and regional TV took an ever growing interest – from many angles, not least that of growing industrial strife. Last but not least, video enabled coalmining communities to project their own voice.
All these media forms are represented in this richly engrossing collection.
13 videos in this collection
1
2
Visit to a Mine
3
The Way Ahead
4
Illegal Manriding
5
Contraband Kills
6
The Self Rescuer
7
Rossington - A Pit with a Future
8
Selby Project
9
Join the Drive
10
It's a Good Morning
11
Peace in the Pits?
12
The Miners' Strike - A Fight to the Finish
13