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Ken Loach called The Price of Coal - two Play for Todays (BBC, 1970-84) using
the same characters - "a way of describing a mining community with two separate
stories". Filmed around the disused Thorpe Hesley pit in South Yorkshire, the
project reunited the Kes (1969) team of Loach, Tony Garnett and writer Barry
Hines. The plays are drawn partly from experience: Hines briefly, like his
father and grandfather (killed in a roof fall), worked as a miner.
A Royal visit to a colliery produces much comedy in 'Meet the People',
including urgent cosmetic improvements, the Bomb Squad inspecting a jam sandwich
and the Prince of Wales' helicopter blowing off a character's toupee. But
serious issues are also raised by the neglect of repairs and in the
class-conscious miners' banter about Royal needs. Sid's criticism of inherited
wealth involves juxtapositions developed in Hines and Loach's The Gamekeeper
(ITV, tx. 16/12/1980), adapting Hines' 1975 novel. The second play, 'Back
to Reality', was added to balance the first's fun with a sense of mining's
dangers, and gives weight to the camaraderie and managerial negligence, as a
fatal underground accident displays the heroism of miners and rescue
workers.
Claustrophobic underground scenes are testament to Brian Tufano's photography
and the designers' construction of an underground tunnel in a slag heap (filming
in the mines was impossible). As he had before, Loach cast club comedians, and
was rewarded with naturalistic performances and dialogue. As Radio Times noted,
these comics were familiar with mining communities: Bobby Knutt (impressive in a
central role), Duggie Brown, Stan Richards and Jackie Shinn (experienced as a
pit deputy).
Although it's closer to Hines' own definition of 'entertaining propaganda'
than to the overt politics critics expected from Loach, The Price of Coal draws
attention to miners' political importance in the 1970s - both plays note that
miners brought down the Conservative Heath government. The undermining of such
working-class communities would be central to Loach's and Hines' subsequent
work, separately and together, as on Looks and Smiles (1981). In 'Back to
Reality', Kath Storey predicts that journalists will soon return to condemning
miners for "holding the country to ransom", predicting problems faced during the
1984-85 miners strike. The controversy provoked by Loach's own questioning of
news bias and privileging of miners' views in the likes of Which Side Are You
On? (Channel 4, tx. 9/1/1985) demonstrated just such a shift in television's
political climate.
Dave Rolinson
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1. Rehearsal (1:41)
