Legacy and Conclusion

On 9 September 2017 a service of remembrance was held in East Wemyss for the nine miners killed in the disastrous fire at Michael, exactly 50 years previously. The service was organised by the Fife Mining Heritage Preservation Society (FMHPS), and held at the village memorial, a miniature replica of Michael’s No. 3 pit head-frame. The service was attended by a multi-generational assembly of about 450. It was introduced by Duncan Gilfillan and Elizabeth McGuire, Chair and Secretary of the FMHPS, and led by the Reverend Wilma Cairns of Buckhaven and East Wemyss Parish Church. The Reverend Cairns spoke warmly about the nine miners who were still mourned by the families who lost them: Hugh Gallacher, aged 61, Alexander Henderson, 41, James Mackay, 59, Henry Morrison, 36, Johnston Smith, 60, James Tait, 41, Andrew Taylor, 43, Andrew Thomson, 55, and Philip Thomson, 64. She remembered these men as skilled workers, loving husbands, fathers and sons, helpful colleagues, friendly drinking buddies and pals who went to the football. Family flowers were joined on the village memorial by tributes from the Scottish Mines Rescue Training Centre in Crossgates, Fife, which had assumed a leading role in the difficult recovery operation in 1967, and representatives of Fife Trades Union Council, present with their banner, along with Peter Grant, MP for Glenrothes, and David Torrance, MSP for Kirkcaldy....