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Nigel Farage has announced plans – or rather, vague hopes – to reopen shuttered coal mines in Wales. It is an unusual stance from a millionaire supporter of Margaret Thatcher.
In a speech today, the Reform UK leader will propose reopening coal mines in Wales to revive British steel-making at Port Talbot, where the coal-powered blast furnace shut in October 2024.
The move from Tata Steel brought an end to the highly intensive and polluting method of steelmaking in south Wales. It was part of a restructure leading to the loss of around 2,800 jobs.
Now in a bid to boost support ahead of Wales’ Senedd elections next May, Farage is proposing reviving coal mining and reopening the blast furnace – a proposal likely to cost billions if it is even possible. Reform is currently polling second to Welsh independence backers Plaid Cymru, followed by Labour which has governed in Wales since devolution began at the turn of the millennium.
The plan would involve mining coking coal from nearby pits in south Wales to power old blast furnaces, ostensibly as a “cheaper” alternative to electric furnaces. But former blast furnaces are extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to restart.
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Port Talbot previously imported its coal from as far as Australia before closing. Reform sources told the Mail it was as a “long-term” plan, acknowledging it “won’t be quick nor easy”.
But The Times reports the proposals are to present Reform as “a credible party of Government” and an attempt to win over working-class voters from Labour.
Only last month a note from Britain’s largest miners’ gathering, the Durham Miners’ Gala, included a quote from Farage saying: “I supported Margaret Thatcher. She was right.. [Pit closures] may have caused a little pain for some, but it had to happen.”
The General Secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) “launched a scathing attack on Reform UK, saying that the party will “never” be invited to the historic event, and that he would boycott the event if they were asked to attend,” LBC reported.
It is not clear who the real audience is for Reform’s coal nostalgia.
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Speaking to Byline Times, Shav Taj, General Secretary of the Welsh Trades Union Congress (TUC Cymru) said: “Reopening coal mines isn’t a serious plan—it’s a political stunt. Wales TUC has long supported an energy policy based on diversity and flexibility, including clean technologies like carbon capture and storage, but not a return to deep or opencast coal. What communities need now is a just transition—not empty promises.
“This proposal comes from someone who admired Margaret Thatcher—the very Prime Minister who closed the pits—and who counts Donald Trump among his closest allies. Communities in Wales remember the devastation caused by those policies. They deserve better than recycled rhetoric from people who supported the dismantling of our industrial heartlands.”
She called for “long-term investment in skills, infrastructure, and fair work—not false hope and instability from those offering headlines instead of solutions.”
Anthony Slaughter, leader of the Welsh Green Party, told me the idea was “opportunistic nonsense” from Farage.
“It can’t happen, it won’t happen and it shouldn’t happen…He’s right to highlight how badly Port Talbot was dealt with. But the transition to green steel production should have happened a decade ago. Even the unions acknowledge need for change. We’ll hear a lot more of these promises from this gang of snake oil salesmen.”
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Where is the local appetite for reviving collieries that have been shuttered for decades? A local Byline Times reader near Wales’ former Big Pit in Torfaen put it this way: “I live in a former coal mining area. He’s living in cloud cuckoo land. Who does he think will go down the mines?
“The young men around here won’t do it. Many mines were filled in, or are flooded. Clydach Vale [Cambrian Colliery, Rhondda Valley] has council offices built on it.
“Penallta [colliery, closed 1991] has housing on it. The power hall [itself] is housing.
The Six Bells site in Gwent, home to a lethal explosion killing 45 of 48 miners in 1960, is currently being redeveloped, for housing and a school.
She argued that Reform wants to “plunder Wales for its riches, and Wales won’t benefit.”
“Wales has moved on…Nature has returned. The Valleys still live with the legacy of dangerous coal tips. Housing, schools and offices have replaced areas where mines were.
“How many people come out of [Big Pit’s museum] and think it’s a job they’d like to do?”
Several other Welsh voters noted that closed mines tend to flood and collapse, making reopening practically impossible.
Coal extraction also becomes increasingly expensive as seams go deeper underground, with extraction of what’s left likely to come at enormous cost. The infrastructure above and below ground is lost when mines close and would cost huge sums to rebuild. As one Welsh reader put it: “They don’t reopen.”
Responding to the proposal on Threads, others responded similarly. “One of my brothers in laws was at Bates Pit in Blyth [Northumberland] when the miners strike began, it was a modern pit with all the best equipment underground, when they walked out they knew they weren’t coming back because the maintenance backup was never provided. One year later there literally were no tunnels underground,” wrote one.
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Other Welsh residents argued young people in former mining areas have no interest in returning to pit work. Others questioned who would actually volunteer to work in dangerous underground conditions, rather than green jobs – or anything else available.
Most former miners in the UK are now retired, suffering from mining-related health issues, or no longer alive.
Readers accused the party of stereotyping Welsh working-class communities – and linked the proposal to Reform’s fossil fuel industry backing.
Coal mines were already closing rapidly before the 1980s miners’ strike, meaning most have been derelict for at least 40 years.
Reader Helen Rowlands wrote: “I’d have asked a friend what he thought about reintroducing mines, but he died of mining-related lung disease.” Lydon Rosser added: “Nobody in south Wales wants coal mining back.”
“‘Vote for us we will send you back down the coal mines” is literally f**king insane,’ another noted. Others parodied the plans: “Come on people of Wales. Vote to send your kids and grandkids down the mines.”
“In the North they’re offering a free flat cap and a whippet.”
Clifford in Wales wrote: “The last deep mine, Tower Colliery, closed in 2008. This really is just nostalgia.”
“Where does Farage think the fit, healthy & willing miners are? Coal Miners [get] pneumoconiosis… COPD, asbestosis, cancer, silicosis mining diseases. Higher mortality rates [are] the result,” another reader said on Bluesky.
In his speech on Monday, Farage will accuse Labour of “betraying Wales’s great heritage” by allowing the closure of the last blast furnace at Port Talbot steelworks, the Mail reported (the site remains at work processing, but not producing, steel).
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Tata plans to introduce electric-arc furnaces for greener production of virgin (primary) steel by the end of 2027, but high energy costs are likely to prove a hurdle. Reopening former coal mines would likely cost far more than the current energy mix, however.
While Wales once had 620 mines employing 232,000 people; the last deep mine closed in 2008.
Few expect Nigel Farage to add coal-mining to his list of second jobs. But who else would volunteer?
As one Reform opponent put it: “Potential coal miners today might prefer to install solar panels, heat pumps and house insulation rather than dying from black lung.”
Farage is willing to make big, outlandish promises to get elected. Media outlets appear happy to spur him on without much probing. Whether Welsh voters will buy it, is another question altogether. Given that Reform UK don’t have a leader in Wales, or even it seems a named spokesperson, the question is whether voters in Wales trust a privately-educated former banker to revive their economy.
Because the risk for Reform is that voters see through their latest plans as this: a patronising idea of what working-class people actually want to do in 2025.
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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
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