September 2024. Franck and Simon travel the roads of the United Kingdom to meet the men and women who once gave life to emblematic places in now obsolete industrial regions. From Kent to Yorkshire, passing through Wales, the photographer and the pen talk with personalities who tell their story and bear witness to a past full of meaning.
In this excerpt from Memories of Coal, Franck and Simon land in Aylesham in Kent, where Allan paints a portrait of his life as a miner and activist.
🇫🇷 Lire cet article en Français.
—
🖋 The text was written by Simon.
📸 The photographs were captured on film by Franck ↗︎.
🔗 Support the campaign of Franck and Simon by contributing to the crowdfunding campaign ↗ from the complete reporting called Memories of Coal.
Memories of coal
This post is an excerpt from a long investigative work that gives rise, in 2025, to the publication of a written and photographed report: Memories of Coal.
Franck and Simon launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the printing costs of this 188-page report, written in French and English.
Support them by participating in the campaign ↗︎.
—
The sky is drearily overcast and the air unmistakably damp. After the morning bustle of school transportation, the streets seem deserted, as if abandoned. We decided to use this day to better understand the development of this rather unique village.
Camera slung over his shoulder, Franck glances at every street corner. The new residential buildings of Aylesham blend in with the rooftops of the first inhabitants. Red ricks span the ages like the memory of the Snowdown mine, which once was the city’s main employer.
Our walk takes us to the forecourt of Saint Peter’s Church, a building dating from the 1920s with a barn-like architecture reminiscent of the farmhouses in the area. Amid a setting that the dark morning bathes in solitude, open doors hint at the color of a divine light. Inside, we are met with the warm communal spirit so typical of the United Kingdom. Women, their children in their arms, engage in conversation. Further along, refugees take language classes while children play with plastic toys. On a buffet, small cakes, flasks of hot water, tea and coffee await curious appetites.
Eva welcomes us, surprised to see two newcomers so early in the day. In her innocent gaze awakens a cheerful kindliness radiating from her. She introduces herself as the vicar’s wife and explains that this morning at the church is dedicated to strengthening bonds between families and friends. In Aylesham, perhaps more than elsewhere the community draws strength and meaning from the unique ties linking each of its residents. The harsh history of the mine, the despair of the working class in the face of the welfare state’s decline, all of it has taught men, women, and children to support one another, whatever the motivations or topic may be.
We introduce ourselves in turn, explaining our interest in the miners of the village. That’s when Eva continues the conversation :
— ”Have you met Alan?” the vicar’s wife asks with energetic gentleness.
— ”No,” we answer in unison, nodding briefly.
— ”Stay here, I’ll call him. He’s a former miner, he worked at Snowdown, took part in the strikes and wrote speeches. Alan always has stories to tell, you’ll enjoy meeting him.”
We take seats in the nave. Everything is made of wood, even the movable partition drawn across the room, separating us from the rest of the world. On the side walls, tall windows let in a soft white light. In our hands, the steam from our cups of instant coffee rises like angels setting off for the sky.
When Alan enters the room, a wide smile lights up his face. “I’m a bit deaf, you’ll have to speak up,” he warns us. We knew that pulmonary illnesses were common among miners. But beneath the roar of the machines that grind the earth, what happens to one’s hearing?
Alan wears a sailor’s sweater and a pair of jeans. On his jacket is pinned a badge bearing the emblem of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which I’ll translate here as the “Miner’s Union”.
His black boots are reminiscent of protective footwear worn by underground workers. However, the laces have been replaced. They form a rainbow hinting, despite him, at a certain eccentricity in our interlocutor.
After a firm handshake, the former miner sits beneath the natural light pouring in through one of the tall windows. He leans forward gently, like a speaker eager to be understood. Very quickly, the introductions fade away, and with a serious look, Alan turns to the strike that shook the country in 1984 and 1985.
In 1984, the NCB, National Coal Board, the state authority in charge since 1947 of managing the UK’s nationalized coal pits, announced the closure of around twenty mines, cutting 20,000 jobs. A wave of anger swept the working class, which couldn’t understand the brutality of such a measure. Mines still rich in coal were being shut down. According to estimates, some of these mines marked for closure still had forty years of work ahead of them. Moreover, the country still relied on this “black gold” to power electric stations supplying nearly three out of four homes.
“The struggle became psychological,” Alan says. In his eyes burns a certain anger, one directed at a government that had grown increasingly contemptuous of the working class. To illustrate his point, the former miner recounts wage freezes, unjustified transfers of workers to distant pits, and forced early retirements : “The government worked to make our conditions as dismal as possible so that we’d choose ourselves to stop working. That way, they wouldn’t have to wear the villain’s mask.”
He then moves on to his first clashes with the police. As early as March 1984, Alan went to the front lines to defend his job, his brother’s, and the values they all shared. The strikes spread across the entire United Kingdom, and the NUM organized picketing operations at the entrances of pits deemed strategic, mainly located in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.
“We were driving to the Nottingham area. The miners there didn’t want to strike. Some of their pits weren’t included in the closure plan, so they kept producing. Some even broke extraction records in 1984 or 1985, I can’t remember exactly. Unbelievable. But we had to form a united front to win the fight against Thatcher. Everything had to stop. We couldn’t let them keep digging coal.”
To get to Nottingham from Aylesham, it’s best to avoid traffic through London’s inner suburbs and instead take the Dartford Crossing, which spans the Thames Estuary to the east of the capital. In 1984, the crossing consisted of only two tunnels, and at the toll barriers, police forces filtered the vans carrying striking workers.
“Of course, we are easy to spot. The police pulled us over. ‘You’re not allowed to be here, turn around’, they ordered.”
Between each word, Alan takes a thoughtful breath, as if to ensure he doesn’t leave out any important detail from the memory of that confrontation.
“If I can’t drive there, I’ll walk!” I told the cops. So I got out of the car and started walking along the tunnel. It was chaos. Cars speeding through that dark corridor, and me walking beside them. The other passengers in my car, terrified, begged me to get back in. They were right. I got back in, and in the end, we went to Nottingham by way of London. It took us three extra hours, but we got there. It was a fine way to piss off the police.
At the time, Alan laments that the police were trained to recognize miners and no longer bothered to hide their use of racial or class-based profiling. On the roadsides, along avenues or in the streets, frequent checks were carried out with the aim of paralysing an innocent population. Coal workers were criminalized and wrongly regarded, as Thatcher herself sadly emphasized, as “the enemy within”. Fear became one of the most effective weapons used to monitor and repress the working class.
Alan continues his story. A few weeks after that first incident, the strikers went to the London docks to thwart the government’s decision to import coal to compensate for the decline in domestic production. The setting changes, but Alan’s voice remains the same, disillusioned and resilient at once, saddened to have fought against his own government, yet proud to have defended the values of a working-class community.
Alan continues his story; a few weeks after that first incident, the strikers went to the London docks to thwart the government’s decision to import coal to compensate for the decline in domestic production. The setting changes, but Alan’s voice remains the same, disillusioned and resilient at once, saddened to have fought against his own government, yet proud to have defended the values of a working-class community.
“In front of us stood massive lines of cops. As always, the imbalance was outrageous. They were there by the hundreds, armed to the teeth, we were maybe a few dozen, with nothing but our words and our gaze. My mission that day was to board a ship and tell the captain he couldn’t unload that coal, that he was just a guy like us, and he needed to stand with us in this fight. To do that, I found a gap in the security barrier. I slipped past the line, but the cops caught me. The bastards came rushing like a pounding rainstorm. They threw me to the ground, barking like rabid dogs that I wasn’t allowed to be there. One of them dragged me by the collar along the ground. I was choking on dust, eyes burning with hate. They would’ve let me rot. I ended up in the back of their van, managing to keep my cool. I started them down, they threatened me with beatings and worse. ‘I’m not afraid of you’, I shouted at them. Then, they made good on their threats. They started twisting my fingers, all directions, like a kid playing with a doll. I’ve never felt pain like that. Have you ever had your fingers bent backwards?”
I’m speechless. Next to me, Franck wears the same stunned expression, a mix of disbelief and fury.
Alan is recounting a level of violence I find hard to accept, not because I think he’s exaggerating, but because I’m not a miner, not a striker, and I wasn’t born into a working-class world. Far removed from these social struggles, I am discovering, almost naively, the brutal reality suffered by those who are oppressed, whose violated rights turn life into a constant battle for survival, or even for mere existence.
Alan concludes, his voice calmer, as if he had exorcised a wound that perhaps will never heal : “I ended up in a cell at the police station in London. Nearly five hours in custody, just waiting, wondering what makes those guys act like beasts stripped of any humanity.”
Then he pauses once more, fixing us with his gaze, as if expecting us to answer a question that weighs heavy : “What gives them the right to treat me like this ?”
We have little left to say in response to these stories. The church is now silent. Eva, like the others we met earlier, has gone. Franck adjusts his camera to capture the image of the former miner on film. In my mind, everything feels jumbled. Alan’s stories date back nearly forty years, and yet I feel like I’ve read similar accounts in the news recently. The Yellow Vests Movement, in France, maybe ?
Class struggle fuels an unrelenting fight, a road with no end, overseen by a government deaf to reason and quick to unleash a violent police force to repress dissent. In truth, I’m struck by the terrifying feeling that life is nothing more than an endless repetition.
The Cornwallis Fish Bar, one of the few food establishments still open in Aylesham. Photo: Franck Le Quellec. 
In the middle of the processions, banners constitute a real identity for the miners and their district. Photo: Franck Le Quellec. 
For every region, every pit, every decade, and every struggle, the pins tell the story of the miner’s activism. Photo: Franck Le Quellec. 
Beneath the soft light filtered through the stained glass windows of St. Peter’s Church, Alan recounts the many stories from his past as a militant miner. Photo: Franck Le Quellec.
—
Memories of Coal
This post is an excerpt from a long investigative work that gives rise, in 2025, to the publication of a written and photographed report: Memories of Coal.
Franck and Simon launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the printing costs of this 188-page report, written in French and English.
Support them by participating in the campaign ↗︎.
