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From International Socialism, No.73, December 1974, p.30.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Death Pit
Eric Forster
Frank Graham, 62½p.
THE EXPLOSION of the Burns Pit at West Stanley, Co Durham on 16 February 1909 and the events which surrounded it would probably have gone unrecorded had this book not been published. There were of course the reports of the Coroner and HM Chief Inspector of Mines but at the turn of the century, pit explosions in the North East, indeed in the whole Northern coalfield were common.
In 1908 Maypole Colliery, Lancashire blew up; in 1910 the Whitehaven Wellington Colliery took 136 miners with it, in 1911 the Hulton Pit, Lancashire blew up and in 1913 came the all-embracing holocaust at Sengenydd, South Wales which claimed 400 men and boys.
The story of the Burns Pit has survived in a brilliant piece of investigative journalism by Eric Forster. The horror of that day in the life of West Stanley is there – the ‘big bang’ that killed 168 men and boys in a couple of minutes. So too is the emotion – about 200,000 people packed West Stanley to pay their last respects when the victims were buried.
But there is also the story behind the explosion – the cover-up. For the Burns Pit did not blow up by accident, it blew up because of negligence and appalling mining practice on the part of the coal-owners.
The man who discovered the cause, J.B. Atkinson, HM Inspector of Mines for the Newcastle District, deserves a whole book devoted to his battles with the coal-owners of the North East and the Mines Department. For once Atkinson had found the cause, he was blocked at every turn in his efforts to make it public and get the inquiry into the West Stanley explosion re-opened. The local MP refused to raise it in the House of Commons on advice from the Home Office; Jack Lawson, miners MP for Chester-le-Street also refused; so too did George Lansbury, Jimmy Maxton and Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb).
The wall of silence which met Atkinson led him to one conclusion: concerted effort was being made to stop him raising the matter. He saw the hand of the Mines Department and the Chief Inspector, R.A. Redmayne, behind it. Atkinson had embarrassed them in the past and now he was being made to pay
He did finally get his question raised in Parliament by the Tory member for Newcastle, but the inquiry was not re-opened.
A review can only hint at the things that are there in a book. This one is fascinating and deserves a wider audience among workers. The system still tries to cover up its own brutality. West Stanley is but one example of the unrecorded murders that still continue in capitalist industry.
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