Reluctant boys from the black stuff: Fifty years ago, Bevin Boys were born. David Day looks back on dark days as a wartime pit conscript

IN DECEMBER 1943 the Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, put 10 pieces of paper in a hat, each bearing a single numeral from 0 to 9, and asked his secretary to make a draw. All the young men due to be conscripted into the forces whose registration numbers ended with the digit drawn out of the hat had to go into the coal-mines. Thus, in the middle of the Second World War, were the Bevin Boys born. It was an arbitrary scheme that ignored all niceties of background and education and it has been described as the biggest social shake-up in British history. The ballots went on until the war ended in 1945; altogether 20,900 boys were sent unwillingly below.

A few weeks before my 18th birthday, when I was due for call-up, I received a letter telling me I had to go down the mines instead. It was absurd. There was I, who had never done any manual work, being directed into the toughest industry in the country. A good miner, I imagined, was short and stocky; I was tall and thin. He would use his hands and his muscle; I was clumsy and could not hit a nail in straight let alone swing a shovel. Only by impartial ballot could such an unfortunate choice have been made.

After a month's training at a colliery near Nuneaton I was sent to work in the Cannock Chase area of Staffordshire, where I was to spend the next three years working at the coalface at Littleton colliery for pounds 3 10s a week. There were no privileges apart from an extra soap ration. Painfully, there was not even a badge to wear on our coats to show that we were doing our bit in a world where the man in uniform was king. When the war ended nothing was said about us and we began to fear we were stuck in the coal-mines for good. It was not until we had enlisted the support of one or two sympathetic MPs that we were told we would be released at the same time as if we had been in the forces.

Relations between the miners and the Bevin Boys can best be described as prickly. Many conscripts were determined that everyone underground should know they did not accept their enforced entry into the pits with good grace. The miners had a fair old chip on the shoulder themselves, feeling that they had been badly treated by a society represented by the well-spoken, well-educated Bevin Boys.

I dropped my guard badly once. It was at the time of the first general election after the war when Winston Churchill was leading the Conservatives. The pitmen did not have a good word to say for him. Eventually I could contain myself no longer and told them how much I admired the wartime leader. After a shocked silence one of the men cried: 'Why, you're nothing but a bloody Tory]' as if this were an impossibility down a coal-mine. Henceforth any reference to me was preceded by 'that Tory so-and-so'. As the weeks went by, it seemed increasingly obvious that the Tories were going to win and I consoled myself that, although in a minority of one at the pit, at least I would be on the winning side.

On the day the election results were announced, as I walked into the crowded pit canteen at the end of the shift, one of my adversaries leapt up and shouted: 'Now what have you got to say about it, mate? They've kicked your gaffer out.' This pronouncement was greeted with universal applause and I realised my position at the pit was likely to be uncomfortable for some time to come.

If Bevin's scheme was some kind of social experiment, it was not a success. I never went into a miner's home or made friends with a miner outside working hours, nor did any of the other Boys I knew. After work we retreated into the jumble of green-roofed Nissen huts that was our hostel. There seemed to be a barrier between us that melted only on neutral ground at the pub or club on a Saturday night, when Bevin Boys and miners imbibed mutual skinfuls of weak wartime beer.

Presumably an influx of 20,900 ballotees, not to mention a further 15,700 who had chosen mining in preference to the forces, must have boosted coal production - though the full effect must have been diminished by rampant absenteeism.

By introducing the scheme the government had acknowledged the importance of coal- mining at that stage of the war. To forgo one conscript out of every 10 available for armed service by directing him into civilian work was a recognition that the miner was as essential to the war effort as the soldier, sailor or airman. Looking back over 50 years one can see now that mining achieved its climax during the war and in the years immediately afterwards. Since then the decline has been inexorable. At the time of the Bevin scheme there were 1,570 collieries in Great Britain, employing 709,000 people. By the beginning of the Nineties there were 54 collieries and 50,000 men - and, of course, the figures have continued to fall.

It is a disorientating experience to return to Wimblebury, the mining village where I spent my time as a Bevin Boy. Our hostel has gone - it was never meant to last - but so has the village, which was razed and relocated; so, now, has Wimblebury colliery, which once dominated the valley. A place that was once as familiar to me as my native town no longer exists. Everything is changed.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Bevin Boys, my alma mater, Littleton colliery, which still survives, invited its graduates for a reunion. Only 11 of us, all in our late sixties, were able to attend: when we last saw each other we had been in our teens and early twenties, and we had not clapped eyes on the colliery in 45 years. It had changed out of recognition, undoubtedly bigger, better, more streamlined and more productive. Having failed to recognise anything from the past, I asked if I could take a look at the pithead baths, where I used to have a locker on the first floor. They told me they only used the ground floor now. The upper floor had been locked off ages ago, but they were prepared to open it for me. It was like stepping into a time warp: everything was just as I remembered; I was even able to find my old locker.

Given the pit closures, I suppose we were lucky to have our old colliery to go back to. Despite ourselves, I think we all felt secretly proud that it was still there, that we had once been part of it and that it would always be a part of us.

After leaving the pit the author became a newspaper reporter in the Cotswolds and is now retired. His book, The Bevin Boy, is to be published in paperback in the New Year by Ashford, Buchan and Enright.

(Photograph omitted)