ABSTRACT
South Yorkshire Coalfield is unusually wide and therefore huge quantities of coal have been won from relatively shallow depths. The rapidity of change since the end of the 1984 strike has produced a series of interconnected social and economic problems. Unemployment is an obvious symptom. Underemployment and a limited range of employment opportunities is another less obvious symptom. A political aspect of these changes is the dominance of a Thatcher Government in London and its neglect of issues in a labour heartland such as South Yorkshire. The huge labour majorities in the parliamentary constituencies of the coalfield worked against the development of a national concern and sensitivity to its problems. Indeed, they may have invited the central government to cut them down to size. As the pits have closed, the area is left with a settlement pattern and infrastructure produced to mine coal.
