HERE we go again, another round of shameless socialist hypocrisy blathering on about coal mines, again implying that every mine that closed only ever closed under a Conservative government.

Bill Bartle (HAS, Apr 15) adds his name to the inglorious list of biased writers who instinctively wish to blame the closure of any colliery on the Tories.

But the last deep mine in Wales, Tower Colliery, closed in January 2008; the last deep mine in Scotland, Longannet, March 2002, and the last deep mine in the North-East, Ellington, in January 2005. Using the same tactic as Mr Bartle and others, that of not wishing to peer into the facts behind each closure, I don’t recall the Labour government covering this period successfully campaigning to keep them open.

The trail of hypocritical leftist evidence of not lifting a banner or dusting off marching boots when the Labour Party was in power simply reveals the contempt it really has for the people it purports to represent.

Umpteen letter writers continue to deny the very existence of the closure programme of the 1960s under Harold Wilson and Lord Robens, ex-Labour MP for Blyth. In 1961, more than 600,000 were employed at 698 collieries. By 1971, those figures were down to 300,000 and 292 respectively – that was the period of Labour’s Lord Roben’s tenure as NCB Chairman.

The attempt to pin the blame on a single political party reveals more about the biased minds of the left wing commentators than balanced reporting.

Jim Tague, Bishop Auckland.