THE night shift had just returned to the surface as MPs, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) officials and the media gathered at Kellingley colliery in Yorkshire on Saturday to launch a campaign to save Britain’s last three deep coalmines.

The pit could be profitable if it could win government support to see new faces developed — but the omens are not good.

The Tory-led government has shown no sympathy towards one of Britain’s most historic and once-mighty industries.

And it was the Tories who plotted its destruction — along with that of the NUM — by provoking the year-long miners’ strike against pit closures of 1984-5.

When the Tories were elected in 1979 and Margaret Thatcher became prime minister there were 235,000 miners in Britain, working at 232 deep coalmines.

By the time of the 1984-5 strike against closures there were 182,000 miners and 175 pits.

Now there are three pits and fewer than 1,000 miners.

Not that Britain has stopped burning coal to make electricity — 40 per cent of Britain’s electricity is created at coal-fired power stations.

But it’s not coal mined in Britain. It is imported from countries such as Russia and Colombia.

In effect, the Tories organised the abandonment of at least 200 years of coal reserves and the country’s most reliable indigenous source of fuel, just to destroy the NUM.

Mining communities not only lost their economic base — they lost the reason for their existence.

The suffering in former mining communities continues today, with rampant unemployment and drug abuse among young people, whereas previous generations had experienced the discipline essential to coalmining — and the union was the guiding hand.

Kellingley colliery has been an example of that. It is one of Britain’s newest coalmines, having started production in 1965.

It absorbed many miners from Scotland where old pits were closing.

The first NUM branch secretary at Kellingley was Jimmy Miller, a communist from Scotland.

The pit under public ownership was highly profitable, the first in Britain to produce 1 million tons of coal a year. It became known as the “Big K.”

Miller insisted that any man who asked for a job should be given one, and Kellingley eventually employed 3,000 miners.

Under Miller’s leadership, miners donated a sum from their wages each week to build the Big K social club, with a library, concert room, recreational facilities and bars.

It had a restaurant where miners and their families could enjoy steak and a decent bottle of wine — unheard of for working-class people in the early 1970s.

Miller’s approach was “nothing’s too good for the workers.”

Also under his leadership, the union branch established a co-operative with its own warehouse in the colliery yard. Bulk purchasing meant that miners could buy TVs, washing machines and even car tyres for far lower prices than were available in the commercial market.

After privatisation of the industry in 1994, management at Kellingley shut down the warehouse as an act of revenge when the pit’s miners refused to undertake coal production at weekends — a time usually reserved for repairs and maintenance.

Jimmy Miller retired in the early 1980s. His son Davey was elected in his place from a panel of five candidates. He too was a communist.

Now long-retired, Davey recently moved back to Knottingley — a community neighbouring the pit — with his wife Jean.

Davey had decided to rejoin his old friends from the industry.

Today Kellingley employs 500 miners capable of producing two million tons of coal a year, given the chance.

Kellingley coal goes to local power stations just a few miles’ distance from the pit — meaning little environmental damage through transport.

One of them is the mighty Drax power station, Europe’s largest coal burner.

Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being poured into Drax to develop clean coal technology through carbon capture and storage.

But if the tragic closures of Britain’s last three deep coalmines go ahead, Drax will be burning imported coal cleanly, not British-mined coal.

Today Britain imports more than 40 million tons of coal a year — the equivalent of around 20 pits and at least 10,000 jobs.

Britain’s oil and gas reserves are limited and will run out in the foreseeable future, leaving Britain dependent on nuclear power which costs billions in subsidies, plus green energy from sources such as wind and solar power, and imported fuel.

Imports of gas and oil come from, or travel across, some of the world’s most unstable regions.

A tiny fraction of the subsidies given to Britain’s nuclear power industry would enable the deep coalmining industry to thrive and expand.

The economic insanity of abandoning Britain’s coalmining industry is clear for all to see.