The everyday work of a security guard on the Nottinghamshire coalfields in the 1960s is part of a file at the National Archives at Kew in west London.
The file COAL 50/395 includes how the Nottinghamshire area of the National Coal Board would begin a new arrangement from April 1969. Besides full-time security officers at about a dozen colleries, a ‘mobile team’ of officers would range over several colleries and other departments such as workshops. A list suggests that the area had some 47 mining security officers. Heading those officers was SC Davy, who described the reorganisation of the security branch as ‘tailored to our own particular needs and should enable us to supply additional cover to those points where thefts are prevalent and give more adequate supervision of individual security officers.’
The file gives clues to the job. An officer might attend a three day basic training course. As an example of what thefts security was there to prevent, Davy sent a memo on December 30, 1967 that an unemployed labourer was caught on the far side of a colliery’s dirt tip, burning rubber from a quantity of cable, to extract the wire (presumably for its scrap value). Over time, someone had unwound 150 yards of new cable in the colliery compound. Someone had made a neat cut in the compound fence, to enable a man to get through; and had replaced the fence after leaving through the gap, so that it needed a close examination before the break could be detected. Davy asked colleries to check cable stocks and the security of compound fences.
At Kirkby, a colliery security officer in 1966 was usually working split shifts, and doing in all about five to seven hours a day, including Sundays, for about a 43-hour week. Typical was a Saturday from 7.30am to midday, then 5pm to 7pm; another Saturday, 8am to midday, then 5.30pm to 6.30pm. the officer besides filling in a time sheet wrote briefly about anything out of the ordinary, such as a man who had a pay packet stolen out of his pocket. Though the notes were brief, they show how the main security task was to keep an eye out for pilfering of works property; besides a case of petrol siphoned from a car in the car park; possible tampering with machinery (such as a dirt hopper in September 1965) or with trespassers making fires (in October 1965) or simply children playing on the premises – then the officer moved the boys on, and in one case informed their mother.
The officer was allowed some flexibility; in June 1966 he got a Sunday off, because his wife (who also worked) was home, and he had already worked his rota hours. Also in the summer of 1966, the night watch man found 500 foot of signal wire at Southwell Lane; ‘have checked with stores and was booked out to electricians. Visited Mr Morris who thinks it was stolen from elec shop but is checking with his men and stock sheets. This wire was covered by bagging and was new. My belief is that whoever stole this thought it was copper wire and then threw it down’.
One Friday a call came from the lamp room that two men had been seen trying to remove a car from the car park. In March 1966 a phone call came about youths breaking windows; and on a Tuesday evening an engineer called him out to place road lamps on a flooded footpath. In February 1966 he was with police detectives, about 10 hundredweight of coal, seen on a lorry. He worked some overtime in January 1966, because of an accident in the colliery yard; also that month an emergency alarm sounded at the police station from the pay office, but only because of an overload and a power cut. A police patrol car and van came to the colliery anyway. That same month, a safe key was stuck fast in the lock. Welders cut the safe open, obtained the keys and staff got the necessary cash out of the safe through the back. The year 1966 had begun with a bicycle stolen from the cycle shed; police were informed. In late 1965, some wagon axle boxes were left on the ground, that the officer noted would have been a ‘good haul’ of brass, for anyone interested. In November 1965, a ‘scruffy looking man age about 30’ was seen near the car park, in an old, two-tone (green and cream) Consul make car. Again; police were informed.
