It was a relief to get out today to listen to a talk on mining art by a native of the Great Northern Coalfield in which terrain the speaker was born and bred. (Bishop Aukland was mentioned Jillian.)

I had feared Constructivism, square jowls, bulging muscles, raw sweaty working men hefting manly tools and looking Cubist without really trying. Unlovely, and quickly wearying, Communist art. There was a bit of that, but there was much more; touching, beautiful, humorous, and breathtaking. I wish I had copies of all the slides but I only have this book of Tom McGuinness’ art put together by the speaker who has collected mining art since his earliest years.

The first art-work from the pits to come to public view was that used in the mid nineteenth century to make the case for legislation that banned women and boys under 7 (!) going down to drag coal sledges or, if they were very small, swing the air conditioning doors for ten hours a shift.

Here again was a pocket I thought we might get trapped in - the mistreated children, ponies, maimed young men, the disasters. I grew up with stories of Welsh pit disasters because my grandfather and three of his sons worked in the mines in the Taff Valley. Not my father, his heart was left damaged by rheumatic fever, and that, I think, is the reason part of his family moved south-east to find work he could do in the effete Home Counties. I had childhood nightmares from these stories, the cages rose to view full of dead men caught by gas; men suffocated slowly underground after a cave-in, men lost their limbs, then, just as I grew out of those nightmares, there was Aberfan.

Inevitably there were records of the agonies of loss, but there were also animated scenes in the bars, of young men and old walking the miles to start their shifts, backs bent, legs bowed or bold and straight and brash. The welcome bath at home with the mother or wife pouring buckets of water over the grimy figure bending into a bowl. No showers, or even baths.

Such is the magnitude of the human spirit it can find form, passion, mythology, inspiration, beauty, wherever it lives. They can even relish the suphurous places. There were men who had to leave the collieries to go to war and afterwards could have stayed away for ever but chose to return because, for reasons almost inexplicable to anyone but themselves, loved the life.

Tom McGuiness was encouraged to attend Darlington School of art, but many of the artists were self-taught. Again, I wish I had the slides because theirs were probably the most striking works of all.

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Note: This word processing system calls me on cliche - it wants me to find a substitute of ‘born and bred’. It didn’t like ‘manly’ because it is ‘gender-specific’ and suggests I replace it with ‘courageous’ ‘strong’ or ‘honorable’.It has no sense of irony.