“TRADE unions can change lives. We did it at Tower,” National Union of Mineworkers official Wayne Thomas told the Merthyr Rising trade union rally yesterday.

Tower colliery miners refused to accept management assertions that the pit was exhausted and 239 contributed £8,000 from their redundancy pay to buy it in 1995.

Tower produced six million tons of coal over the next 13 years, benefiting 400 miners and many community projects in the Cynon Valley.