Hello and thank you for downloading witness with me Lisa Louis from the BBC World Service.

And today we go back to the winter of 1948 when hundreds of thousands of miners across France

went on strike against worsening working conditions. The strike came at a time of fear about

the spread of communism across Europe and the miners lost their fight. We had become the pariahs of the republic.

We had become the pariah of the republic.

We had become the pariahs of the republic. They were regarding us as terrorists,

although the government was actually terrorizing us.

Nobergilmes was one of the strikers at the pit in Bouli-Limine in northern France.

Now 95 and still living locally, he remembers how, until the strike, coal miners were considered

heroes helping France struggle back onto its feet after the

devastation of the Second World War. These miners are giving their all. In

19 it took five years to make up for the losses after the war.

In 1945 it only takes two years.

All the industry Francis

A qua made this point

90% of French industry was running on coal. The miner was the country's most popular worker.

He was celebrated and seen as a patriot. Those of us who were working down the mines were badly equipped. We just had cloth

shoes with holes in them and pickaxes to dig with, but we were enthusiastic about our job. We

rolled up our sleeves and got to work to give the country back its coal.

But the miners enthusiasm soon soured. In 1948, the government started to strip away what they considered to be well-earned rights.

Their minimum wage was abolished, slashing their pay by up to 80 percent.

A second controversial measure concerned occupational diseases.

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