The 1960s were, for Mining Review, a particularly lively decade. The impressive but sometimes formulaic craftsmanship of the 1940s and '50s output was married to a more varied, adventurous range of styles and subjects. And the massive changes that the decade wrought upon mining imprinted themselves upon many of the films: the traumatic contraction of the industry; the previous decade's technological investment reaching fruition and being taken yet further; the coming of 1960s social and cultural change to mining communities as to communities everywhere. At the end of 1962, the DATA cooperative, which had made every issue since 1st Year No. 6 (1948), finally folded, and thereafter Mining Review was produced by the NCB Film Unit, in tandem with its many technical, safety and documentary projects. From this point until the end of the series, former Mining Review editor Robert Kruger was the producer. Much of the template remained in place: the mix of technical, cultural and social subjects, the alternation of stories based around events with others focusing on people, and the policy of covering all the major coalfields regularly. However, the style of the series now allowed for a greater diversity within and between issues, often making it more obvious than before that different directors and units had filmed different items. There was greater room for lyricism, as for instance in 17th Year No 7's lovely 'End of the Road' story. On the other hand, some stories indulged in a mildly experimental, even funky ambience: dig 'Marilyn', from 20th Year No. 9. This diversity was the more noticeable for the subtler use of music. For the first time, music was occasionally avoided altogether, giving some items a new sobriety. In contrast (building on earlier collaborations like the 1957 Songs of the Coalfields), balladry by Ewan MacColl and other folk musicians was sometimes used to make gorgeous musical-documentaries. This approach was especially applied - as in 16th Year No. 3 and No. 6, to bring out the pathos in issues dealing with migration between collieries, a strong feature of a period that saw the number of operating collieries nearly halved. Boosting the industry's profile as well as his own, Lord Robens, the dynamic chairman in post between 1961 and 1971, made far more appearances onscreen than any of his predecessors had. Technological innovations new to the 1960s were often featured, as when 16th Year No. 12 was given over to the premature experiment in Remotely Operated Longwall Faces. Industrial relations, usually confined to internal films, were sometimes alluded to as well. An issue (25th Year No. 8) released following the miners' victory over the NCB and the government in the 1972 strike makes remarkable viewing in a post-Thatcherite era. A number of regular story strands recurred every few issues. The 'Mining Portraits' and 'People Who Matter' sequences profiled individuals representing important job roles in the collieries. There were profiles, too, of each of the coalfields: ranging from Yorkshire ('North Star' in 20th Year No. 9) to Scotland ('Novia Scotia', 20th Year No. 10), even to the small Bristol and Somerset division ('The Somerset Coalfield', 17th Year No. 12). Many of these impersonal and yet somehow deeply felt geographical films were made by the married team of Budge Cooper and Donald Alexander, continuing to freelance as a Mining Review director after his 1963 retirement as head of the NCB Film Unit. The first colour Mining Review was 21st Year No. 1 but for a few years black-and-white and colour continued to be used for different issues, before monochrome was effectively phased out just in time for the series being overhauled and renamed as Review in 1972. No fewer than 34 issues in this 1960-72 period were single-story editions, far more than in the preceding period. This set the pattern for Review, whence multi-item issues stopped being produced altogether. The last Mining Review as such was 25th Year No. 12, the 300th of the series. Patrick Russell
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