Our treasurer, Mo Duery, was from a mining family. They lived almost in the pit yard at Kilmersdon Colliery, where his father was senior overman, and all three of his brothers worked for the National Coal Board.
Mo’s father started work at Kilmersdon Colliery aged just 13, as a carting boy, and remained there through his working life. He was awarded the British Empire Medal for his 47 years of service in the Somerset Coal industry.
I left school in 1960, aged 15 and started work at Edgell’s Timber Products at Westfield. A year later, when the works were short, I managed to get an apprenticeship with the National Coal Board as an electrician.
After I did my training at Old Mills, I was sent to Kilmersdon Colliery. I didn’t really settle to the work and left two years later to become a labourer in the building trade. Then, when I was 18, I went back to Kilmersdon Colliery as a miner because I could earn more money.
I worked most aspects of the mining industry: general labourer, back ripper and driving roads behind the face, i.e. main and tailgate; branching, driving the road from Kilmersdon pit bottom across to the nearest point to the face, so an electric tram could get the men to the coalface without them needing to walk nearly a mile underground before starting work.
After two years, I was selected for the Mines rescue Team. I remained a member of the team until I left in 1973, just before the closure of the last of the Somerset mines, and returned to the building trade…