YOUR letter from Warwick Taylor, vice-president and chairman of the Bevin Boys Association (HAS, May 7), sums up why some ex-miners feel a little niggle about the badges awarded to them last year.
To suggest that miners had a “choice” and were not “forced into coal mining” shows a lack of understanding. For 90 per cent of the boys in Twenties and Thirties in the coalfields of Britain the choice was the pit or starve. In a sense, they, too, were forced into mining.
The only way out – which many took – was to volunteer for the Armed Forces during the Second World War, hence the shortage of miners.
Bill Bartle, Barnard Castle, Co Durham.
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