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Maggie Thatcher is generally despised in the North East mainly because of what she did to the mining industry. So exactly what effect did she have on the coal mining industry in Northumberland? When I started work in the mines in the late 1950's there were 63 collieries in Northumberland as can be seen from the attached list that is taken from a National Coal Board plan drawn up in 1957. A few of these may already have been closed at the time the plan was drawn up but we can be sure that there were in excess of 50 operating mines in 1957. When Maggie's party won the elections in 1979, the only collieries still working were Whittle Drift, Lynemouth, Ellington, Woodhorn, Ashington, Bates and Brenkley Drift. When she left office in 1990, Ellington and Whittle were the only two collieries still operating. So, according to my calculations, during the 11 years that Maggie was PM only 5 collieries were closed. It was her predecessors that were mainly resposible for the destruction of the industry, not Maggie, and almost all of the mines around Bedlington were closed under the Labour government of Harold Wilson. The coal mining industry in Northumberland had to come to an end sometime and what hapened was inevitable. The tragedy is that not one government, Labour or Conservative, in the last 55 years made any real effort to establish new industries to replace the jobs lost by the closure of the collieries in Northumberland. NORTHUMBERLAND COLLIERIES 1957.doc