The Bevin Boys was the name given to the 48,000 or so young men aged between 18 and 25 who were conscripted by the government to work down the mines during the period 1943-48.
The part they played in the war effort was not officially honoured until 2007 when the government announced that they would be awarded a Veterans Badge. But this week there was further recognition of their important role when the Countess of Wessex unveiled a memorial, designed by former Bevin Boy Harry Parkes, at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
“It’s been three-and-a-half years hard slog“, said an overjoyed Joan Taylor, chair of the memorial committee. “To get to today is a wonderful achievement – not for us but for Bevin Boys.”
The Bevin Boys scheme was the government’s solution to the serious labour shortage that was afflicting the coal industry during the war. In 1943 Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour and National Service, reported that there were only 700,000 men working in the mines. Around 80,000 mainly younger miners had enlisted in the armed services and 60,000 had left for other better-paid “cleaner” jobs.
It meant the coal industry was left with a reduced and ageing workforce at a time when the government needed the mines working at full capacity for the war effort.
Bevin at first tried to persuade people to volunteer for the job. A register was compiled of ex-miners, but of the 100,000 or so registered only a quarter were fi t and willing to return. From 1942 all young men called up for military service could opt to go down the mines instead but only 1,100 took up the offer.
In November 1943 Bevin even broadcast a radio appeal to sixth-formers in grammar schools and public schools urging pupils to volunteer but it largely fell on deaf ears. So the minister took the one option left: compulsion.
Bevin introduced a “no choice” lottery. As soon as young men became eligible for national service a ballot would pick a number from 0 to 9 and all whose registration number ended in that digit – 10 per cent of the total – would be sent to the mines.
Those who appealed (as around 40 per cent of those selected did) were given short shrift. Only 466 of the 8,619 appeals heard before the end of the war were successful.
To get to today is a wonderful achievement – not for us but for Bevin Boys
AND the ballot did not discriminate between social classes or their schools or career prospects. Bevin Boys were, as writer Angus Calder has stated: “Extraordinary symbols of the democratisation forced by total war”.
The parents of public schoolboy David Hewetson, for instance, were “flabbergasted” when he was ordered to the mines. They had expected him to be an army officer.
“I was very shocked when I heard the news on Christmas Day,” Hewetson recalled. “If someone had said six months sooner ‘you are going down the mines’, I should have thought they were joking”.
The new conscripts had six weeks training before they started their work. And they didn’t always receive a friendly welcome from the miners. “When you first arrived, it was just like it is in a country pub if you’re not a regular. They wouldn’t talk to you. This went on for at least six or seven weeks. And then like some strange supernatural cult they all agreed that we were OK and they started to talk to us,” Stephen Watson remembers.
Derek Agnew recalls the ribbing that Bevin Boys often received from the locals. “One lad who reported for work on the first morning dressed in his oldest sports coat and flannels was considerably embarrassed when a boy of about 14 remarked, ‘Is it Sunday?’”
The Bevin Boys were regarded by many in a negative light. “They were ill-treated, I think, by the public,” says Joan Taylor. “People didn’t realise they were conscripted.
They thought they were trying to get out of going to fight but of course they were fighting down below with the coal.”
Then there was the dangerous nature of the work itself to contend with. In each year from 1943-45 there was more than one serious accident for every four people working in the mines. “I was claustrophobic and frightened to death when I started,” said one. “You can’t imagine what it’s like if you have never been down a mine. You have never known a world of darkness like it and conditions were disgusting.”
“There were no privileges apart from an extra soap ration,” said David Day, author of The Bevin Boy. “Painfully there was not even a badge to wear on our coats to show we were doing our bit in a world where the man in uniform was king.”
But for many the experience, though tough, was life-enhancing.
“Because of the ever-present danger down the mine there was camaraderie,” said Stephen Watson.
Actor and charity campaigner Brian (now Lord) Rix, 89, later recalled: “I was a volunteer, there were quite a lot of us and I quite enjoyed the experience. It was a strange job but everything’s strange in a war.”
Britain’s coal shortage continued after the war and it was not until 1948 that Ernest Bevin’s scheme ended. It may not have been the most glamorous job but by helping to keep the coal mines working, the Bevin Boys did more than their in the country’s hour of need.