Here's a fascinating documentary about the decline of the Cornish Tin Mining Industry - Nation on Film - Drill & Blast - BBC 2003. I copied this from a tape loaned to me about 10 years ago so sorry about the missing last couple of minutes of the programme.
Nation on Film - Drill & Blast - Tin Mines.
The tin that was mined in Cornwall helped to fuel the hi-tech consumer
revolution that changed all our lives.
But the close-knit communities that worked in the mines paid a heavy price.
Until the post-war era, under investment in the mines made them hazardous
places to work.
Through archive film footage and testimony from miners and their families,
Nation On Film examines the backbreaking toil that went on hundreds of feet
below the Cornish landscape. The daughter of a miner describes how she would
try and stop her father from going to work because of the dust disease that
killed many miners.
Early black and white film shows surface workers attempting to protect
themselves from arsenic, which is also found in tin mines, by tying
handkerchiefs around their faces.
The mines began to close when the system for supporting the international
price of tin collapsed. The Cornish miners took their case to Westminster
but were refused long-term assistance. As the mines closed, a sense of
betrayal was felt in the mining communities and the Cornish countryside
still bears the scars of the disused mines."