Tyrone O’Sullivan, who has died aged 77, was the miners’ leader who became a Welsh national hero when he saved the Tower colliery in Hirwaun, where he worked, from closure by engineering a buyout and keeping it going for another 13 years as the last deep mined pit in Wales. It was a dramatic entrepreneurial twist in the career of a committed socialist, and caught the imagination of the Welsh people, raising spirits and even inspiring an opera. Mark Drakeford, the country’s first minister, described O’Sullivan as “a great figure in the history of Wales in our time”. The man himself insisted: “We were [just] ordinary men; we wanted jobs and bought a pit.”
For all the simplicity of his words, O’Sullivan’s achievement was huge – and unique. Miners had struggled to pick up their lives after the defeat of the 1984-85 strike. Pit after pit voted to take redundancy terms and union leaders despaired at the resulting closures. The Tower mineworkers had voted to do the same, when in 1994 they were the last deep mine in Wales. But after signing the deal and then drowning their disappointment in a local pub, O’Sullivan and his allies found themselves still convinced that there was plenty of good coal left down below, and so came up with the idea of a buyout.
Persuading their comrades to commit £8,000 each from their redundancy money as a basis for a £1m downpayment, they produced a business plan with the help of Price Waterhouse, lined up contracts for the sale of their coal, and secured a British Coal loan with promises of funding from Lloyds Bank. The success of their bid was announced at the Conservative party conference by Michael Heseltine, who had pressed for pit closures, as a shining example of entrepreneurship and brought a wry response from O’Sullivan. “It is true. We have embraced capitalism – but only on our terms,” he said.
It had taken a lot of negotiation and persuasion, not least with his leftwing comrades, to get the deal off the ground. O’Sullivan remembered arguing with his old friend the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Arthur Scargill, who opposed the idea as capitalist, but approved it as a cooperative, under the name of Goitre Tower Anthracite. Once up and running in 1995, and in contrast to the mixed success of workers’ cooperatives, the colliery made £11m profit in three years and the miners, with the best pay and conditions in the coalfield, were able to pay themselves bonuses.
Appointment as OBE followed for O’Sullivan in 1996. He was invited on to the board of the Welsh Development Agency, the Manic Street preachers dedicated an album to the colliery, and the Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott wrote an opera, Tower, about the miners’ achievement.
When the coal finally ran out at the pit in 2008, forcing its closure, O’Sullivan declared it a day for celebration, not mourning. Today it is a location for a popular zip-wire leisure attraction and there are plans for development of the rest of the site.
O’Sullivan was born into a mining family in the village of Abercwmboi and his family knew tragedy. His great-grandfather had died in a pit explosion at Mardy in 1885 and his father, David, was killed in a rock fall at Tower when Tyrone was 17.
Entering the pit as an apprentice electrician, O’Sullivan became an enthusiastic union member in what was one of the most militant pits in the coalfield. He attended day-release courses organised by the South Wales NUM with Swansea University, and spent 22 years as underground NUM branch secretary, during which time he never lost a vote for industrial action.
The colliery was known as a first port of call for strikers in other industries looking for support. Its miners picketed Barry docks in support of striking seamen, occupied part of Aberdare hospital when it was threatened with closure, and when chicken-factory workers struck, Tower miners joined the picket line and demanded that poultry be taken off the menu at a neighbouring Coal Board research centre. They were also flying pickets in the miners’ strikes of the 1970s.
During the 1984-85 strike O’Sullivan played a leading role in bringing a reluctant South Wales coalfield out on strike. Initially the majority of pits had voted against striking in support of Yorkshire miners, although Tower had voted to do so. O’Sullivan refused to accept the result, and with a nod from the area president, Emlyn Williams, who told him to “do what you can, but don’t tell me”, he helped to organise picketing that closed every Welsh pit. Once the strike was under way, he led pickets across the south of England, to the Essex ports and to Orgreave in South Yorkshire. Meanwhile his wife, Elaine, was active on the picket line and in women’s support groups.
In the aftermath of the failed strike, O’Sullivan insisted that “we had to fight the fight” and spoke bitterly of the damage the pit closures had brought. “Poverty and despair destroyed many families,” he said. “There was an increase in homelessness and alcohol abuse, and drug problems started to become a real issue for the young. The older age groups reported higher levels of despondency and depression.”
A powerful public speaker and an approachable man with a sense of humour and a passionate enthusiasm for Welsh rugby, he was widely hailed as a hero of the trade union and Labour movement following the success of the buyout. He remained active in the Labour party, although he was always highly critical of Neil Kinnock’s lack of support for the strike. Later he was an enthusiastic supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.
O’Sullivan continued as chair of Goitre Tower Anthracite until his death, later moving to the Mumbles coast, where he had long maintained a chalet.
He is survived by Elaine, two daughters and five grandchildren.
• Tyrone O’Sullivan, miner, trade unionist and entrepreneur, born 24 October 1945; died 27 May 2023
