Frank Grimshaw’s “Pitmen” – An exhibition in Toronto May 3 -June 22, 2025
Exhibition Review – Frank Grimshaw’s ‘Pitmen’, 6 May 2025
(At ‘Silvershack‘ – Bob Carnie’s Gallery Toronto the Grimshaw Exhibition )
This is a remarkable, albeit small photographic exhibition by Frank Grimshaw. These show pictures from the 1960s in the UK collieries or coal mines – during the heyday of the nationalised coal mines of the UK. There are two parts in this review.
First the photographs themselves are discussed.
But secondly since they represent a particular historical period, we try to situate them in the politics of the coal miners in the UK over three momentous events. These ranged from 1926 (The General Strike); to 1945 (the post-war Clement Atlee Labour Government and its nationalisation programme, which in 1945 curtailed the then growing influence of the Communist Party of Great Britain); and 1984 (The Great Miners Strike led by Arthur Scargill against the Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher). The ‘Pitmen’ exhibition is set right in the best period that the British miners had, with a reasonably prosperous and still cohesive community and working life.
In the period of the nationalised coal industry, it was run by the National Coal Board (NCB). Its leaders were appointed by the Government, hence they were not exactly rank-and-file miners! But it was responsive in some measure to the miners and their union. The working conditions were a far cry from the prior private mine owners. For a period that is. Until Mrs Thatcher’s government broke the mould and moved to crush the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
“Pitmen’ is shown at Carnie’s Gallery which is located at 1681 Dundas Street West (See map at end of article). It opened close to “Mayday”, and it will show until June 23rd 2025. The gallery announces the exhibition as follows:
“We are pleased to announce that Frank Grimshaw’s “Pitmen” will be on view in the Bob Carnie Gallery during the CONTACT Photography Festival. Thought to be taken in support of a recruitment campaign in the 1960s by the National Coal Board, these negatives were almost lost forever when their offices closed a decade later. The surviving negatives were kept safe in a wardrobe for years but only in recent years has the public been able to engage with these beautiful images. This collection is a beloved family heirloom and we are so fortunate to have Frank Grimshaw’s work on display in our gallery.”
As the title ‘Pitmen’ implies, it shows the lives of miners just before the dissolution of the National Coal Board (NCB). These photos were taken in the 1960s up to 1970s, up to the years of the Harold Wilson Labour government (two terms – 1964-1970). In a busy family’s hands the photos and negatives were stored until retirement, when the family could turn to them again.
Frank Grimshaw (1925-1989) was born in Newton-le-Willows Lancashire in the UK. This was in the center of one of the great coal mining areas. At the age of 17, he lied about his age allowing him he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1942. He was sent to New York to train as a fighter and bomber crew member. While there he acquired a ‘Kodak Brownie’ which unlocked his next career. He became a photographer after honing his hobby, when he was looking for work after the war.
He became a photographer first for the nationalised rail service that became ‘British Rail’, and then for the NCB. It was the height of the era of the Labour Party and its programme of nationalisation.
The Grimshaw family had safely kept an enormous photoarchive that Frank had kept safe. They then found the notable photoprinter in Toronto – Bob Carnie – to print some of the key works. Even more remain as yet unprinted except in small unpublished formats. We must await the emergence of a book from these. The potential is enormous as this small exhibit shows.
In the hands of a photographic master printer Bob Carnie, they take on a majesty. Carnie is an evidently accomplished printer, and has given generously at his websites, some inner ‘secrets’ of various processes (platinum prints here & here ; the Gum Bichromate process here )
But the moment belongs to Frank Grimshaw and his subjects.
Those subjects are honestly and movingly depicted. I think the center-piece are the riveting 15 photographs of “Miners Heads”. Printed in a very large format by Carnie – they appropriately dominate the show room. They were shot in the dark pit itself. The 15 main portraits of the miners in their work place are in a stark black and white. Begrimed and blackened in the work, they wear their 1960s equivalents of the ‘Davy Lamp’. Mostly the subjects look directly at the camera. Lighting in such underground conditions for the photos are not easy, other than the miners’ own lamps – a lightbox for direct lighting allowed the whitewashed sides of the mine tunnel walls to bounce light off the walls for indirect light. Lugging the heavy lightbox down was not easy.
I do not think it is overly-romantic to see the harsh realities of everyday life and the worries – in the eyes of the ‘Pitmen” who are to be found on the main wall of this exhibition.
Just how grimy their work was in terms of the dust that would settle into the crevices of their lung as well – the water in the colour image below of a miner washing the grime off after his shift – looks starkly black.
Several smaller pictures are from the National Union of Mineworks yearly Gala events. In addition some come from he Old Meadows Colliery in Bacup North East Lancashire. The Gala shots include Bessie Braddock at the podium. (1899-1970; Labour MP for Liverpool and one-time member of the Communist Party Great Britain (CPGB) See Braddock Wikipedia). Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson is also seen walking (1916-1995 Wilson Wikipedia) with trade union and community leaders.
Again these are perhaps taken in the best years of a short lull of almost 40 years (1945-1981) – before the mines closed.
As works of ‘art’ – these images stand in their own right in my view. That is perhaps why there are no ‘explanatory’ captions other than simple titles. Perhaps a 2025 viewer has no understanding of what lies behind these images. She could view them purely as wonderful art.
I was fortunate to visit the exhibition when the Grimshaw family was in attendance. They were able to explain the social environment at the time that Frank Grimshaw was shooting.
As a review of the exhibition itself, I feel my purpose is done. That is to simply alert a small number of people of the possibility of seeing this exhibition before it closes. Hopefully the web-browser or reader has got this far.
The casual reader can safely step off at this point. Instead the reader can go to the exhibition!
Or they can read on for a few moments to see an attempt to situate the Grimshaw exhibition. A short explanatory history follows – of what lay behind the picture, and what lay ahead of these pictures. What lies beneath these amazing pictures?
2. Situating the exhibition – Three nodal points for the miners of Britain 1926-1984
In my opinion they are best understood as vignettes of the most quiescent and prosperous phase in the class history of the miners in Britain. What happened to the miners in 1926, in 1945, and in 1984? What was the “moment” in history that Grimshaw recorded? Grimshaw‘s moments lay between two strikes of the British working class. In the middle was another great event – the nationalisation of the coal industry in the wake of the Second World War. Each event was a ‘nodal point’. I believe that the Grimshaw photographs reflect the gains made after the second nodal point.
Each of these nodal points, were driven by the interests of the ruling class of Great Britain. Itself being pushed by world economic events and various constraints on its own profts in an international competition. One in which the British state was failing against the new imperilist kid on the block – the USA. That is not to say that there was no agency in the working class. It was only because of their determination to fight for a living wage – they managed to secure one for a short window.
Nodal point one: The busting of the General Strike of 1926
Up to 1945, the memories of the failure of the 1926 General Strike in Great Britain still lingered. Robin Page Arnot noted that the outcome of the strike was foreshadowed by the needs of capitalism and had its roots in the economic changes moving to ‘trusts and monopolies”:
“The chain of events leading up to the General Strike .. had their root causes in economic changes affecting the whole of Great Britain… the growth of large-scale production, the formation of trusts and monopolies, the predominance assumed by banking and finance, … faced by the growth of trusts and employers’ associations the trade unions were compelled to resort to to ever wider mass formations… the State… was an effective aid to the railway companies and a blow to the workers.”
Robin Page Arnot; The General Strike May 1926: Its Origin and History”; Labour Research Department London 1926; pp. 3-4
Later historians with access to declassifed Government files would agree:
“The problems of the British coal industry are comparatively easy to analyse. . . On the supply side world capacity had increased during the war, and in the British industry, production had been the aim, irrespective of cost. On the demand side the end of the war saw a crucial deceleration in the rate of growth for the high cost British industry. The colliery companies (wanted). . . wages to be reduced.”
A. Mason; “The Government And The General Strike, 1926”; International Review of Social History, 1969, Vol. 14 (1), pp. 1-21.
And indeed the assaults on working class standards of wages and general work conditions had been tremendous. Hence the “Triple Alliance” was formed in 1914, which joined the working class of the three heavyweights of British industry and the working class that made those industries.
These were the Miners Federation of Great Britain, the National Union of Railwaymen and the National Transport Workers’ Federation. Hopes rose for a better future for British workers – at least in the three sectors covered by its leadership.
The main demands were only over wages. However the miners also raised the demand for “nationalisation without compensation and under workers’ control”.
(Roderick Martin, ‘Communism and the British Trade Unions 1924-1933”; Oxford 1969; p.73)
But the British ruling class were determined to fob off economic improvements let alone any meaningful change. It convened the Samuel Report which reported that mining industrial reorganisation was needed – but rejected nationalisation. And moreover it called to stop Government subsidy and cut miners’ wages.
In the meantime, the ruling class prepared exceedingly well. They now provoked the Alliance – to call a strike. Actually the ruling class had made long and intense preparations for a ‘civil war’.
The miners and railwaymen and transport workers had not. In fact the General Council of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) closed its eyes. It was led by men of the character of Labour party man J.H.Thomas who led the railway union, but was in awe of his peer MPs. Indeed several reports emerged of how leaders of the TUC General Council hob-nobbed at expensive dinners with government leaders and individual industrialists. Basically, the Council of the TUC acquiesced to the Government’s plans:
“The case against the General Council is that it refused to prepare against the O.M.S. (Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies in time of General Strike) strike-breaking weapon of the Government, and that it absolutely succumbed to the Coal Commission strike-breaking weapon of the Government.”
J. R. Campbell; “Were the Miners Let Down?” Labour Monthly, Vol. VIII, August 1926, No. 8; at https://www.marxists.org/archive/campbell-jr/1926/miners.htm
This enabled the ruling class to suppress the “General Strike” of 1926 which lasted all of nine days. The defeat is described by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) Trades Union leader J.T.Murphy:
“A powerful Conservative Government (with) the Labour Party forming the opposition. Still unable to emerge from the “trade depression” and finding that Labour made rapid strides and the political alignment of forces assumed more and more a class war sharpness, it set about the task of reducing opposition to a minimum. . . .
With Labour’s opposition reduced to exceeding faintness it proceeded to consolidate its political forces and rule as an open dictatorship, fighting on all fronts. . .
It planned as no government in Britain had ever planned for a smashing class war effort. . . it determined to knock the bottom out of the trade union opposition outside Parliament. It set about, through its party apparatus, the organisation of the O.M.S. It strengthened the police forces everywhere and merged the Fascisti either In the police forces or the O.M.S. It struck at the Communist Party and the Minority Movement, which were the only bodies to take its preparations seriously and to warn the workers of their significance and of how to prepare on their side. . . . It led the trade union leaders of the General Council “up the garden” and. . . it handled the General Strike, into which the General Council and the Trade Union Executives had plunged the workers with a minimum of preparation, as a full dress rehearsal for civil war. It marshalled the middle classes behind the Government and left the trade union leaders of the Labour Party murmuring that they were not fighting but only having a trade dispute. The end we know.
The ruling classes, led by the Tory Party, have come out triumphant.”
J. T. Murphy; “The Political Meaning of the Great Strike”; London, September 1926
The Communist Party of Great Britain
At https://www.marxists.org/archive/murphy-jt/1926/strike/02.htm
In summary, the most militant and well organised of the workers were completely crushed. Then came the Second World War, and after that another immense change.
Nodal point two: The 1945 era of nationalisation
By 1945 at the end of the Second World War, working class hopes rose anew. The example of the USSR in repelling world wide fascism in alliance with Britain and the USA had inspired many of the international working class. Workers world wide were impressed by the USSR – notwithstanding the long history of well orchestrated press slanders against it. In the Indian Royal Navy there had already been unprecedented strikes of the sepoys and cadets. There were even several well documented strikes in parts of the “non-native” RAF, as described by one Ron Palin an RAF man :
“The war now was over – but it wasn’t for us – that was August 1945 and January 1946 I was in the R.A.F. mutiny in South East Asia. We went on strike because we were still there. My demob group – they worked out your demob number based on your length of service – had been back in England and working for several months and we weren’t happy. The Government said they had no ships or planes available. We eventually found out when things were off the secret list that it was because they were concerned about countries around that area, like India, getting their independence and thinking there would be trouble. We were on strike for about three to four days.”
Ron Palin; “Clock maker to the RAF Mutiny”; at BBC Archive; “WW2 Peoples Archive”; at https://archive.ph/20130419192709/http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/69/a4134269.shtml#selection-399.209-403.47
It was evident to the ruling class themselves that the old ways could not just continue. So they instituted a comprehensive set of reforms to ensure that a restless working class would not take any ideas of revolution into their heads. Moreover, Imperial Preference was threatened, and the Lend-Lease debt payments to the USA were looming. This demanded changes to keep their profits.
Essentially the ruling class actually needed a comprehensive re-structuring of society, healthcare, education, housing, industry and finance. If that involved reforms such as the NHS, so be it. They at least would have a healthy work force, and army conscripts would not be in the parlous condition as before.
Hence the post-war Labour Party landslide electoral vote victory bought in the Atlee Government and with some major reforms. Some right wing views even now maintain that these reforms were controversial and enchroaced on Big Business. Nothing is farther from the truth. In fact:
“Most of the nationalization measures of the Attlee government were carried through in a matter-of-fact way with only limited controversy. They seemed the logical outcome of the planned economy introduced during the war. The state ownership of the Bank of England, . . . was especially uncontroversial. Even Churchill found it hard to defend its role in the 1930s, and the Conservatives did not oppose the measure. In some cases such as civil aviation or electricity there had long been much corporate involvement by the state, directed by Conservative-led governments in the 1930s or even the 1920s. . . Bipartisan inquiries such as the McGowan Report for electricity or the Heyworth Committee on gas in late 1945 had already urged the cause of public ownership on grounds of technical efficiency and an integrated service on the pattern of the national grid. In some cases, such as gas again, the principal of municipal ownership was already long established, and there was believed to be an overwhelming case for a centralized system on the grounds of ‘co-ordination’, one of the keywords of the post-1945 era.
Another factor that made the passage of early nationalization relatively painless was the remarkably generous terms adopted in compensating private stockholders, even in such controversial cases as the coal industry. This helped to defuse much argument and keep the temperature of debate low.”
Morgan, Kenneth O; “Britain Since 1945: The People’s Peace”: Oxford University Press USA 2001; p. 26-27
It was these reforms that opened a window that did indeed improve life for many working people. However it was not socialism – and as events in the 1980s made clear to all but the most stalwart Conservatives – it was not “managed on behalf of the people.”
From https://miningheritage.co.uk/on-behalf-of-the-people-nationalisation-75-years/
In this piece we will not dwell further on this. Let us loop back instead to to Grimshaw.
For we are now at the point where the Grimshaw “Pitmen” lives were playing out. A window of improvement. This can be seen in the B.B.C film – “When British Coal was King -which were put together by the new bosses – the National Coal Board (NCB). (see in four parts starting at When British Coal Was King – BBC Mining Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3: here; Part 4 here.
Memorable clips from this BBC film, include the opening sequence in Part 1 of burly miners in tutus dancing ‘Ophelia’; and in part 3 the visit of Paul Robeson singing at a miners canteen ‘The ballad of Joe Hill” (at 2’ 99” ); and also in Part 3 the following description of the blinded assessment of the famous brass band competitions at a gala (10’ 45”):
“The adjudicator Mr. Oliver Howard of Manchester is locked in a room and no one must have contact with him. When he hears the band playing he does not know which one it is “
He gets on a telephone in a room with an open window, so he can hear the music. But he faces the wall, not the open view. When ready he telephones: “Hello Mr. Moon, next band please”. . .
And a white flag is shown to the next waiting band which strikes up. . . .
“Every man had 6 pence deducted from his wages by the trade union, to pay for the brass band. There were 165,000 men. In the Great Northern coal field – 300 pits in the 1950s. . . children learnt an instrument and it was a source of great pride to have someone in the family playing in the brass band. . . it was a great educational thing that cemented the communites together.”
But this state of happy affairs was to come to an end in the late 1970s and 1980s.
As the British economy was tanking under the pressures of international competition it was starting its descent into so-called neo-liberalism. Or the Thatcher era. We have dealt with this elsewhere, but here we focus only on the move to break the miners trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
What was becoming clear to the ruling class, was that the miners were too visible an example of demanding economic and social rights. At the same time the huge growth of another fossil fuel industry, that of oil, made the capitalist class wish to change technology. This mandated a major restructuring. It should be recalled that the threat of climate change was not widely appreciated at this time, and played no role in the political changes.
Nodal point three: The 1984 Great Miners Strike
For the ruling class there was one main problem. That was that the miners were too insistent that their pits were not to be closed. Labour had failed to restrain the miners, tougher measures were now required by the ruling class.
Mrs. Margaret Thatcher ( 1925-2013 PM 1979-1990) – fresh from the imperialist war against Argentina, set up for a class war.
The ruling class prepared just as well if not more so – than they had done in 1926. Even as she took power in 1983, Thatcher had already determined that the internal enemy (“enemy within”) was the NUM and in especial its leader the popular, elected Arthur Scargill (1938- ; President NUM 1982-2002):
“In the wake of her 1983 general election victory, Thatcher appointed Peter Walker Energy Secretary with the words: ‘We are going to have a miners’ strike’. It would she told him, be a political assault orchestrated by (Arthur) Scargill and aimed at achieving his “Marxist objectives”.”
Seamus Milne, “The Enemy Within. The secret war against the miners”; London 1994; p. 16.
As opposed to 1926, the issue on the miners’ minds was not the question of pay. It was rather the devastating social issues of:
“Pit closures, unemployment, and the survival of mining communities under widely varying degrees of threat.” Milne Ibid; p. 17
This set up the battle plan. This time while the NUM did plan, and carefully tried to restrict the government and the bosses of the NCB attempts to stock-pile coal. But they were thwarted by the will of the State. Since the autumn the NUM had set an overtime ban and protests of against pit-closures. These overtime bans were spreading including at the Scottish colliery at Polmaise.
But again the ruling class prepared well and of course had the state resources to win. Firstly they had an explicit policy to develop not only oil imports, but nuclear power:
“the fact that the Thatcher government’s enthusoiastic support for a pressurized water reactor (PWR) programme was mainly aimed at under-cutting the NUM was first revelaed in leaked Cabinet minutes . . . Nigel Lawson Energy Secretary.. and later Chancellor, explained much later: ”The need for ‘diversification’ of energy sources. . . was code for freedom from NUM blackmail”. . . Money was therefore no object. Yet despite the billions of pounds of subsidy poured into the nuclear industry – the nuclear-featherbedding ‘fossil fuel levy’ was still running at over Pounds Sterling 1.2 billion a year in 1994 – nuclear power never proved enough by itself to knock ‘King Coal’.”
Ibid p. 11.
Secondly Thatcher appointed a proven and shrewd union busting industrialist Ian MacGregor, as head of the NCB. Originally an American, he had already busted the British steel industry. MacGregor astutely realised he had to move quickly and in March 1984 he moved:
“. . in his words (to) pre-empt the union. . . The Central Electricity Generating Board had privately told the government that .. the over-time ban was biting deep into the power-station coal stocks. If it was allowed to continue until the autumn, managers warned, a twelve-week strike would be enough to put the country’s lights out.”
Ibid p.16I
To pre-empt the miners, MacGregor announced without warning that the mine in Yorkshire at Cortonwood would be closed, and within a week he announced another 20 pit closures with 20,000 more redundancies. Actually – the NUM had little alternative but strike or cave then and there. It was then spring March 1984 – going into summer. Not a winter where heating and electricity demands were higher. But the NUM had no choice.
Quickly 80% of British miners stopped work and were on strike for nearly a year. In this instance despite the huge slanders on Scargill – he was an honest fighter for the miners. But once more, other unions did not raise the banner. Yet in fact the miners came very close to success.
Finally, the third factor giving the ruling class a victory was police terror. The Prime Minister sanctioned this explicitly. This was flagged by her labelling the NUM and the strikes as the “enemy within,” at a speech at the Tory Carlton Club.
In June 1984 the infamous Battle of Corgreave at the coking plant, saw 8,000 riot police charge ferociously. This was described by a civil-rights group Liberty as:
“There was a riot, But it was a police riot” (Guardian 20 June 1991).
In 1991 the South Yorkshire police paid half a million pounds damages to 39 miners arrested at Orgreave.
It is worth seeing the film and also the reconstruction of this battle compiled by the artist Jeremy Deller (The battle of Corgreave )
The NUM called off the strike on 3 March 1985. But the NUM continued to pose a threat after the end of the strike. But the NUM was pursued to the last. At the 1988 Tory Party conference, Cecil Parkinson Energy Secretary announced the selling off of Prime Minister Atlee’s 1945 Jewel of nationalisation – the publicly owned coal industry.
In 1991, a huge smear attack was launched on Scargill (“Stealing money, being funded by Russia. Being funded by Libya”). It was deftly coordinated through the Robert Maxwell gutter press working with Stella Rimington head of MI5. It was all lies – and has been fully exposed. Notably a prominent trade union leader ‘moderate’ – Joe Gormley – had been a source for the Special Branch of police. (Milne p. xiii; Ibid).
Conclusion
These nodal points are what I believe – lie underneath the amazing pictures that we started with. Namely the ‘Pitmen’ by Frank Grimshaw. Each nodal point was driven by the needs of the British ruling class. The miners struggled for their class every inch of the way. Go see this exhibition.
