Having an interest in ethnomusicology, my favorite testimony of Britain's tumultuous dropping of coal is the song Coal Not Dole. It's originally a poem written by the wife of a laid-off coal miner. Dropping coal may be considered inevitable in retrospect - but it's interesting to see the perspective of people caught up in these changes, whose lives were disrupted and sometimes ruined in the process.
It stands so proud, the wheel so still
A ghost-like figure on the hill
It seems so strange, there is no sound
Now there are no men underground
What will become of this pit-yard
Where men once trampled, faces hard?
Tired and weary, their work done
Never having seen the sun
Will it become a sacred ground?
Foreign tourists gazing round
Asking if men once worked here
Way beneath this pit-head gear
Empty trucks once filled with coal
Lined up like men on the dole
Will they e're be used again
Or left for scrap just like the men?
There'll always be a happy hour
For those with money, jobs and power
They'll never realise the hurt
They cause to men they treat like dirt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2hGp6HCn8