madsteve7

It's the 1973 strike that is being referred to. But if we are going to have the discussion. In 1990 we did a boat job. The coal was Australian. It was opencasted, loaded onto a truck and driven to the docks in the standard cargo containers, put on a a bulk cargo vessel, sent across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, up the Coast of Africa, into either Rotterdam, Holland or Antwerp, Belgium, screened into various sizes, (we took Coal Singles) loaded on to a Coastal Vessel or Sea going barge, sailed across the North Sea, and then discharged by crane grab at Gunness Wharves, near Scunthorpe, into awaiting wagon. It cost us (British Fuel) £30 per tonne. Everybody made a profit. That same year we stocked Coal Singles from Rossington Colliery, Doncaster, I had trucks waiting upto 3 hours for a load, and it cost £65.60 per tonne! Coal has only 2 purposes, energy source for a coal powered electricity generating station, and for heating. So would you pay double just to keep some lazy B@$t@rd in a job, then when they've took their £28,000 redundancy (which we all paid for through our taxes) they don't stop moaning about it? And another thing, the miners were first on the plane to Spain, they didn't worry about Franco and the Spanish Civil war, just Sunshine and a Cold Beer. Or the people doing holidays on the East Coast resorts. Also they went out and bought, Datsun Cherry's and Bluebird's from D.C. Cook's, not Austin Alllegro's, Maxi's or Morris Marina's, all made using Sheffield steel. No, Scargill was the equivalent of a Chicago Mob boss, sending flying pickets out to cause trouble and intimidation. And they all followed him like lemmings. But he made sure her got a big fat pension off their union contributions. So don't come all working class unity. We worked for a living, we didn't carry lazy b@$t@rds.

My Dad, Jack Morrell, was the Yard Foreman, at the Burnett & Hallamshire (later British Fuel Company (Sheffield) Ltd), Coal Depot, on the Nunnery Sidings just off Bernard Road. I went to work with him in 1987, starting off driving a Wheeled Loading Shovel, before going on to be the Weighman, and the Transport Supervisor. In 1989, the company split and the Bulk Haulage, E.A. Stevensons, became part of K&M Haulage Nottingham. The coal side, and 2 blower lorries merged with Cawoods (part of Redlands PLC) to form British Fuels Ltd. The site was compulsory Purchased so that the SuperTram depot could be built, we were moved off the site on 30 of June 1991. I went to the office on Smithywood Crescent, just off Archer Road. He went out on loan first to the pre packing plant at Boughton, then in Maw's Yard, and then out to Goole to work on an import project. The Sheffield office was closed in December of 1991, all the work was transferred to Nottingham and I went to a Portacabin in W.Maw's yard Rotherham. At the end it was just Dad, Me and two lorry drivers, we were all made redundant on the 31st of July 1992.

[someone did mentioned to me that it was transported up the Sheffield Canal on the Barge named the Ethel. But where did the coalite come from.} Coalite was produced by Coalite at the Bolsover, Chesterfield, and Grimesthorpe, Barnsley, plants. It was probably brought in by rail in the 1940's / 50's.

Burnett & Hallamshire was formed in 1953, through the merger of the Burnett Bros & Hallamshire Coal Company. In the mid 60's E.A Stevensons joined the group with their bulk tippers. By then, the Solid Fuel Distribution, part of the business was based at the Nunnery Sidings Depot, off Bernard Road. Their was a substantial plant, using conveyors and hoppers to load vehicles. Also their was a spur from the mainline for coal by rail, with their own Shunter, to move the empty wagons. Demurrage was always, a factor. With the expansion of Road Building in the 50's and 60's a lot of opencast coal pockets were struck, (in-fact most of Sheffield has Coal underneath it), so they set up "Northern Strip Mining" (NSM). When the Sheffield Parkway was being built they were paid to remove the Coal, as it's unsuitable for building on, and then they sold it to the CEGB. When Sheffield City Council passed the Clean Air Act, the senior management saw the writing on the wall. From 1968 on wards they were looking to sell the Coal Distribution Business. In 1970, it was sold to "Amalgamated Anthracite Holdings" (AAH Group) for half a million, (£11.3 Million in today's money) They traded as B&H for about 18 months until, the full merger with AAH's Coal Distribution Business to form, "British Fuel Company". In the early 1980's with the cost of the rates, increase in rail-freight costs, and the increase in the size of the load the trucks could carry, it was decided to pull down the plant. At the same time a deal was struck with the National Coal Boards, National Fuel Distributors, to transfer over the domestic & retail business and concentrate on Wholesale and Industrial. Then came the strike in which lots of money was made. The only exception on the coal that could be supplied to Sheffield City Council's school's was nothing from South Africa. In 1989/1990, the AAH Group, sold British Fuel to Redland PLC, the Irish Aggregates company. One of AAH's side products was making "Coal Tar Bandages", but this was more profitable and they became a major medical/pharmaceutical supplier. Redlands, coal business, was called Cawoods, and the combined merged group was called British Fuels Ltd. A management buyout of the Company then came about, and the Bulk Haulage business, E.A Stevenson's became a division of AAH Groups, K&M Hauliers of Nottingham. That lasted about 12 months, as the drivers wages were put up, so the running costs went up. With Stevenson's no-longer being apart of us our Bulk Work, from the pits or the Docks, we could put out to tender in the marketplace for haulage contractors. Stevenson's, price was often 50p a tonne more, than their competitors, Barnsley Pool (Furness's of High Green, Colin Vaines, Campbelljohn, E. Wright, Majestic, Mappin's of Chapeltown) M.J. Snow of Doncaster, Butterfield of Wakefield, C&D Gill's of Doncaster, and A.Hymas of Harrogate. 1991, the sidings were compulsory purchased for the SuperTram Depot, and we moved temporally into W.Maw's yard in Rotherham. The lorries remained in Sheffield at the Securi-Park off Chatham Street, I went to the office at Smithywood House, just off Archer Road, and my dad Jack Morrell, was sent out on loan, to the bagging plant at Boughton, then Maw's yard when they started giving priority to their work, and finally off to Goole, to work on an import project. Part of the Management buyout deal was that British Coal, would have to buy us within 3 years or pay a £45 Million penalty. In effect we were meant to become British Coals retail business. But the privatisation of the Energy companies changed all that. The need to fit Sulphur scrubbers to their Coal fired powerstations to burn deep mined British Coal (It causes Acid Rain), made them switch to Gas. (£70 Million for a gas plant that can react almost instantaneously to requirements or £500 Million on a Coal Plant, plus having to keep at least half a million tonnes of coal on stock, and a staff of 50 versus 500?) We were running out of money saw the Sheffield office closed, and work switched to Nottingham, and the council contact just could not be done, without a yard in or near Sheffield, and the final straw was the loss of the British Tissues contract at Oughtibridge, (by the Industrial manager who was just trying to get to his pension) the money ran out and were made redundant. It was a shock to my Dad, who had been with the company since leaving school at 15, in 1955. Dad was picked up by the company on the docks M&M Lewis for about another 12 months until that project was complete. I never saw any of them again except for, Edwin the Mechanic for Stevenson's, who died as result of a fall while on the drug Warfarin, and Jeff the M.O.T. tester who was at Vaux Tyres until he retired. What remained of the business was picked up by NFD, and is now called CPL (Coal Products Limited) based in Chesterfield, at the old Avenue Coking plant site, at Wingerworth. NSM went abroad for open casting operations in the late 80's, and they bought a swamp! Which was start of their problems. The ITN newsreader Sir Alastair Burnett was related to the family in someway.

My mum trained their 1958 to 1960.

Yeah I worked at Smithywood House for about 6 months, before that I was at the Bernard Road Depot, from 1987 until the depot closed in July 1991.