I’VE developed an interest in Tunningley family history, sparked by the discovery that my recorded family line dates back to 1687, the birth year of my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Francis Tunningley. He was a coalminer in Yorkshire.

This occupation never became a family tradition, although in 1966 the option of a coalmining career was suggested by the school careers officer. I chose instead to learn shorthand and typing at the local tech.

For some of my school chums, however, the relatively high wages offered by the National Coal Board proved too hard to resist and they disappeared under-ground like rabbits.

I thought about them last week when the news was full of reflections on the Thatcher legacy. Not surprisingly, the ex-miners’ leader Arthur Scargill figured prominently in the coverage. Although the failed ‘84 miners’ strike he led sealed the fate of uneconomic pits, it wasn’t until the early ‘90s that the mine closures were accelerated, leading to marches, rallies and a host of pithead protest camps.

Understandably, miners and their families believed the policy was unnecessarily destructive to their close-knit communities. But there was no more talk of striking; instead the colliers left it to their wives and girlfriends in the form of Women Against Pit Closures to fight a brave but ultimately fruitless battle to save their jobs.

Meanwhile, Mrs Thatcher’s new economic strategy boosted a replacement industry - money mining! Unlike the coal version, this form of economic excavation focused on the rich seams of the City of London - with workers wearing Savile Row suits instead of boiler suits and going up towards the heavens in elevators instead down towards hell in cages.

What I find ironic is that political leaders of the ‘80s and ‘90s didn’t have the will to save our community-centred, coal-rich mines - yet two decades later, when financial panic set in, billions were found to save the greedy, ethics-poor bankers.