The miners from Longannet called for a public inquiry into the flooding and subsequent closure of the mine, and questioned where millions of pounds given by the government to the company have gone. The response of Wilson and Martin O’Neill, the local member of parliament, was to repeatedly try to shout down miners who were asking the questions.

On March 23, 17 million gallons of water flooded into Longannet mine, which is a drift mine that goes out under the Firth of Forth. It is also the last deep mine in Scotland. The flood blocked ventilation and shut down power to the mine on a Saturday night when no one was working. Had it happened 24 hours earlier, the consequences for work crews underground would have been devastating.

No water has been pumped from the mine and no investigation carried out as to why the flood happened. Instead, the response of Scottish Coal, the mine’s operator, was to close the operation, put the Deep Mining part of the company into liquidation, and throw 500-plus miners out of work.

The Scottish Coal (Deep Mine) Company Limited is a part of the Mining (Scotland) group, which also operates open-cast mines and other coal-related companies. The bosses have even halted concessionary coal, where miners receive coal for heating their homes, according to one former worker. Many retired miners rely on this coal to stay warm in the cold months.

The call for a public inquiry, which has twice been ruled out by Wilson, has come from former Longannet workers; the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS); local politicians; and George Bolton, former president of the Scottish National Union of Mineworkers. They point out that the most likely cause of the flood was the failure of a dam wall that sealed off Longannet from the abandoned workings of another mine. NACODS spokespeople say that their members had reported that the dam had been leaking in the weeks leading up to the March flood. They claim that the dam wall was only five meters deep but had originally been planned to be 15 meters.

Dams of similar construction are used in other mines in Britain and throughout Europe, so the failure to investigate what happened is potentially putting other miners at risk. "You would have thought they would want to know if the wall was inferior," former miner Brian Millar told the Militant. The mine owners’ reply was that, since the workings are under water, it’s not possible to know what gave way.  
 
Where did the money go?
Miners also want Scottish Mining to explain where £41 million of government money given to the company has gone (£1=US $1.40). "Longannet had been flooding for six months and although the mine owners could have installed machinery to fix the problem they had not," one miner said at the meeting, according to a local press summary. Another worker pointed out that "incompetence by the government and the mine’s owners endangered workers’ lives."

Brian Millar had worked for Scottish Coal at Longannet since May last year. He was one of many miners sacked (fired) during the 1984–85 miners strike, having been imprisoned twice that year. Millar fought to get his job back and was finally taken on by a contractor with the mine in 2000, and by Scottish Coal a year later.

Millar told the Militant that the closure of the mine came on the heels of company attacks on working conditions, along with some resistance to the bosses’ assault. In July last year the company announced that it wanted to change the hours of work to four 10-hour shifts per week and three 12-hour shifts over the weekend. Some workers would remain on five 8-hour shifts per week. The company claimed it needed this schedule to allow 24-hour coaling for four days a week, followed by three days of maintenance. In reality the scheme allowed the company to mine coal 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The company also started calculating bonus payments on a monthly, rather than weekly, basis. Bonus payments have historically made up a substantial part of a miner’s wage. With the change, miners would receive a bonus only if they produced 160,000 tonnes in a month.

"What this meant was that we could get to 150,000 tonnes in three weeks and then the company would stop production for maintenance and we would get nothing," explained Millar. Despite company threats that there would be no change in their proposals, workers responded by refusing for five weeks to sign up for overtime. Although the new working hours were introduced, the company was forced to revert to weekly bonus payments.  
170 workers sacked
Last November Scottish Coal made 170 workers redundant (unemployed). Showing its deep contempt for its employees, as well as a desire to avoid any chance of a collective response, the company sent workers home one day and told them not to return to the mine until they had received a letter telling them whether or not they still had a job.

Workers received a score sheet through the post, on which they were marked by the bosses on such subjects as "flexibility," "performance," "experience and capability," and "attendance." Workers who "scored" below 53 points were sacked. Those sacked, Millar among them, were instructed not to come anywhere near the mine.

The clash with Energy Minister Brian Wilson occurred when some of the miners who had been left without work after the flood were inadvertently invited to the meeting by Gordon Brown, Westminster’s chancellor of the exchequer and the member of parliament for the Longannet area.

The meeting of 350 retired miners and widows had been called by the Suchie Retired Miners to demand the government speed up payment on compensation claims of miners who are suffering work-related illnesses. The group also pressed the government to reduce the "surplus" run by the miners pension fund from 50 percent to 25 percent. Of the 1,000 miners in this area who have submitted claims, only 176 have been paid out in full.

Some retirees suggested that government lawyers are stalling payments until they die. Wilson said that when the money is released it would be paid to the miner’s widow, or to his estate if she is also dead.

"I have heard enough of the excuses and delays," one miner told the meeting. "It is very frustrating. All I am asking is to get the money paid out and paid out now in full." John Gillon, secretary of the Sauchie Retired Miners, reported that in the week following the meeting three more workers from his branch had received their final payments.  
 
 
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