THE West Fife area retired miners branch held a reunion 20 years after the group formed.

In March of 2002, the last pit in Scotland closed, marking the death of deep mining in the country.

As a result of this, Councillor Bobby Clelland set up the branch along with Duncan Porterfield.

Now, 20 years on, Cllr Clelland, who is secretary of the branch, set up the reunion on April 2 to celebrate their anniversary.

He told the Press: “We meet three or four times a year and with this being the 20th anniversary, we decided to hold a miners reunion.

“There’s various branches throughout Scotland so we invited them and all miners throughout Scotland to participate in the event and Valleyfield Club kindly let us use the premises. They also put on a buffet, which the branch paid for. We paid for the hire of the hall and a free drink for everyone to attend as well.

“We fundraised through the various community councils. Saline & Steelend, Blairhall, Oakley and Comrie all donated; and High Valleyfield were very generous, they put in a really large donation to help finance the event.”

Due to restrictions, the branch has been unable to hold events such as the reunion. Cllr Clelland continued: “The last one was about three or maybe four years ago and that was successful but due to the COVID we couldn’t do one. So it was sort of an amalgamation of our 20th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the last pit in Scotland closing as well.”

As well as celebrating, they also raised a glass to Jimmy Whitton, who passed away earlier this year. Money was collected for the branch at Jimmy’s funeral and used to buy everyone in attendance a free drinks ticket, which they used to toast Jimmy and all former miners who had passed away since the closing of the last colliery.

Cllr Clelland said that the night was “absolutely tremendous”.

Rab McKenzie, chair of the Valleyfield Heritage Trust, went to the reunion, and said: “It was good to see the elderly miners talking and reminiscing, it was really good to see them.

“A lot of the older guys really enjoyed it.”

He laughed: “We kept saying, you couldn’t see the place for coal stoor!”