Czech Support for Victims of the William Pit Mining Disaster – 1947

On August the 15th 1947, 104 miners lost their lives in a pit explosion at the William Pit coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria. On the 27th of September, Evžen Erban, Secretary General of the Czechoslovakian Central Council of Trade Unions, announced a proposal for a Czechoslovak supported miners’ recreation home in Britain in commemoration of the victims. The scheme was reminiscent of the Lidice Shall Live campaign.

A British Lidice – The Silent Village by Humphrey Jennings 1943

In August 1942, having received consent from the President of the Mineworkers’ Federation of Great Britain, Will Lawther, at their Conference in July, the British Crown Film Unit began scanning the country’s coalfields looking for a location to create a propaganda film based on the Lidice atrocity.