ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns to comment on the variety of ways in which changes are taking place in the British coal industry, focusing upon the increasing significance given to opencast production nationally. In parts of Scotland, South Wales, the northeast and southwest Yorkshire and Nottingham increases in productivity have to be counterposed with accounts of heightening levels of unemployment and deprivation. Men who, as children, slid down colliery waste heaps may reminisce about their past with some fondness but this is not what they look to as a source of entertainment for their children and grandchildren. In the northeast it has been interesting to note how the deepest sarcasm of the barristers employed by the opencast sector has been reserved for the person who has presented evidence for the Miners' Support Groups. The growing salience of environmental issues provided space into which gender relations within Teesside could be reappraised, as 'jobs for the boys' became seen as 'pollution for the girls'.
