Lives in Cricket No 49 - Enid Bakewell

9 Newstead not actually got a hide. And I’m told there are some orchids there though I’ve not managed to find them yet’ A single line was still open, but it was used now for freight traffic only; there were no more passenger trains to take people to Nottingham. There was more industry too. Just down the road, Hucknall Aerodrome was where Rolls-Royce aero engines, from the Merlin to the RB211 Turbofan, were developed and first flown. Enid’s husband Colin worked at Hucknall testing instruments. The aerodrome was even expanded in the 1950s to take bigger jets. But by 1971 this too was closed and the aerodrome handed over to a flying club. It finally closed in 2015. Newstead benefitted from the development of new mining techniques. In 1957, at the age of 84 years, the pit was first recorded as topping national productivity averages. Two years later the 1,280 Newstead men produced more than a million tons of coal in a year for the first time - an achievement repeated a further 15 times up to 1976. Far more traumatic for the community than the railway closures was the miners’ strike of 1984-5 and its aftermath. The strike was not supported in Nottinghamshire as it was in other areas, with the argument that the NUM should have held a ballot being advanced. It was also true that the Nottinghamshire pits were modern and efficient and so apparently at no risk of closure; Arthur Scargill’s warning that the entire industry was at risk was laughed off here as it was by the media. He was in this instance quite right. The formation of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers was the symbol of the internal strife in Nottinghamshire. Enid’s father was a strong union man, a member of NACODs (National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers). She says: ‘well I re member my dad talking about Arthur Scargill – he wouldn’t have a word said against him, though had he had a vote they might all have come out but I think there are still incidents (I’ve not heard of any recently) where people have been murdered or there were bricks through union members’ houses.’ Newstead Colliery was finally closed on March 19, 1987, following a ballot of UDM members. Only the ballot of the members of the Union of Democratic Miners was accepted by British Coal. The UDM had voted 137 to 111 to close the colliery. It was a small majority of 26 men that closed Newstead Colliery. The other unions, NACODS and NUM COSA voted by a small majority to keep the colliery open. Newstead branch of the NUM, in a secret ballot, voted 66 to six to keep Newstead open. If all ballots had been accepted by British Coal the Colliery would not have closed at that time. 3 Today the pits are completely gone, with only a wheel left at the site of Annesley. The site of Newstead is a country park. The Newstead Miners’ Welfare Institute club closed in 2010. The building 3 http://www.nottscoalminingmemories.org.uk