ABSTRACT
In the first days of the new year of 1995, as this is being written, remarkable events are taking place at Tower Colliery near the foot of the Rhigos mountain on the northern outcrop of the South Wales coalfield. On 2 January, led by brass bands and union banners, 239 miners and their families marched in the early morning to take ownership of the only mine to pass into the possession of an employee/management buy-out in the privatisation of the coal industry. In April 1994 its previous owners, British Coal, closed the colliery which it believed to be producing uneconomically mined coal despite the £28 million profit made in the previous three years. This was more than another colliery closure, however. This was the last deep mine in the once mighty South Wales coalfield and it appeared thereby that over 150 years of history, when the valleys of South Wales had become almost synonymous with coal mining, was coming to an end.
