Yes, I remember listening to the BBC radio ballads with interviews with men who'd worked in mining and heavy industry. These were genuine communities; pretty everyone you socialised with would be people you worked with. And there was a lot of culture - people talked about learning about poetry and being introduced jazz music from older colleagues in a ship yard.

But the thing that really stood out to me was this: men who had worked in the mines were happy with their lot and had lots of positive things to say about their working lives, but when they were asked if they would want their children to work in mines their answer was a definite no.

Look at the Bevin Boys: from 1943-1947 once a week the minister would pull out a digit from 0-9, and all men liable to report that week whose registration numbers last digit matched the minister's pull were sent off to be coal miners. While soldiers viewed this as a way to escape the dangers of the front, the men themselves faced the dangers of coal mining without a guaranteed job to come back to (unlike with soldiers, who could not lose their job due to government service).

But that was the only way that a Britain at war could get enough coal miners. Conscripting them