Are we ashamed of our heritage?

Feb 28 2010 by Mike Kelly, Sunday Sun

WHEN MP and former miner Dave Anderson and student Rachel Horne turned up at the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey to talk of an idea to record former pits for posterity, a familiar sight greeted them.

"For the first time in its 200-year history there was a strike there," Dave laughed. "My reputation obviously went before me."

Before entering parliament for Blaydon in 2005, he had worked at Eppleton Colliery near Hetton-le-Hole for 20 years.

He took part in the year-long miners strike and will mark the 25th anniversary of its ending on Wednesday. Dave, along with two miner colleagues, actually went back the day after the official return to work on March 5.

He explained: "There were police at the pit. They were low key but they were never there when we worked before so I refused to go in."

His mining roots encouraged him to become patron of Rachel’s Pin the Pits campaign, which aims to have all of the closed pits marked on Ordnance Survey maps so they would not be forgotten. Dave tabled an Early Day Motion for the campaign to be debated in parliament and it quickly got widespread support.

But the idea was shelved as bosses at the Ordnance Survey said it did not make business sense.

Dave said: "It was a commercial decision. Rachel was realistic about it and didn’t get worked up. They offered for her to come back and discuss other ways of getting the idea started."

While the Pin the Pits campaign hasn’t come to fruition, it got Dave thinking about how little we seem to acknowledge our industrial past.

"Somebody rang me about Pin The Pits and asked why should we just be remembering the pits. What about the steel industry? I said ‘you’re right’. We treat our industrial history badly. We should recognise it for what it was. At the time of the Industrial Revolution we were at the cutting edge when the rest of Europe was in the dark ages."

There are some good examples of our heritage being celebrated, like at Beamish Museum in County Durham, Woodhorn Colliery in Northumberland and the Durham Miners Gala. At Sunderland AFC’s Stadium of Light, built on the site of the old Monkwearmouth Colliery, there is a large Davy Lamp monument. But these are the exceptions.

"It’s as if we’re ashamed of our industrial past," said Dave.

Thankfully, that notion appears to be changing.