Jim McMahon says green energy is key to future prosperity

Now, as deputy leader of East Ayrshire Council’s SNP minority administration, Councillor McMahon believes there is no doubt that the decline in the number of people living in communities across the Cumnock and Doon Valley area is a direct result of the death of the UK coal industry, set in train by the Conservative governments of the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher.

He was a miner in Logan when the NUM called a national strike in early 1984, and was arrested when miners picketed North Ayrshire's Hunterston ore terminal in May of that year to stop "scab coal" being brought in from overseas

However the former miner believes that green energy can provide the same job opportunities for prosperity that the old fossil fuels once did.

Speaking exclusively to the Chronicle, Cllr McMahon said: "The challenge is to prevent people leaving the area and encourage more to locate here.

"There is an increasing trend generally for people to move towards the east and the central belt because of growing employment opportunities.

"However, I am confident that is a trend that we can reverse."

Cllr McMahon, who represents Cumnock and New Cumnock, says he believes the local authority is doing all it can to bring job opportunities to the area and stem the population decline.

He pointed to the Ayrshire Growth Deal, which has allocated £300 million to the East, North and South Ayrshire Council areas with a view to creating 7,000 jobs.

He believes this will provide employment opportunities in the Cumnock, Doon Valley and Ballochmyle areas in the long term.

Looking back on the strike, and his involvement in it, Cllr McMahon told the Chronicle in January that he “knew the devastation that was going to follow”.

Councillor Jim McMahon says green energy holds the key to a better future for former coalfield communities. (Image: EAC)

He said: “They took away the jobs and ripped the heart out of communities.

“We lost the fight. There was no help. They closed the pits and they left us as an industrial graveyard."

The area’s last two deep mines, Barony and Killoch, shut in 1987 and 1989 respectively.

Opencast mining enjoyed a brief revival – albeit employing far fewer people than the underground pits had done – but that industry, too, is long gone.

Emotional memories of the strike were shared by Cllr McMahon, and his local colleagues William Crawford (Labour, Cumnock and New Cumnock) and William Lennox (SNP, Ballochmyle), both also former miners, during a council meeting earlier this year

In terms of energy generation, the Cumnock and Doon Valley area today is very much a hotbed of wind farms, with large numbers of turbines built or proposed across the area, many of them at former opencast sites.

Nine community councils in former mining areas – Auchinleck, Cumnock, Netherthird, New Cumnock, Dalmellington and Patna, plus Cronberry, Logan and Lugar (CLL), Ochiltree and Skares, and Drongan, Rankinston and Stair (DRS) – have joined forces to oversee and distribute the ‘community benefit’ funding generated by five separate wind farm developments across the area.

The 9CC Group was officially launched in November 2023.

Cllr McMahon says that should mean there will be millions of pounds coming into the area over the next 30 or 40 years.

“The potential for growth is fantastic,” he said, “as well as opportunities to create social enterprises to keep people in work."

Mr McMahon also says improving the area’s road links is vital – particularly at ‘Ayrshire’s crossroads’, otherwise known as the Bellfield Interchange in Kilmarnock, where traffic heading to and from East, South and North Ayrshire as well as Glasgow and beyond meets.

The council has had two applications recently for Levelling Up money for upgrade works at Bellfield project rejected by the UK Government.

He said: "We need an upgrade at the Bellfield Interchange as the hold-ups at peak times are are absolutely horrendous.

The effect of the miners' strike 40 years ago, and the death of the coal mining industry that came in the decade or so after it, is still felt in the area today. (Image: Newsquest)

"The road infrastracture is really important for us to grow and keep the local population here."

Mr McMahon believes that an upgrade of the Bellfield Interchange will also benefit tourism and attract more visitors to the area

“We use Burns as much as we can,” he said.

"Dumfries House is proving a big attraction and generating a lot of footfall.

"People want to get here to visit but they are being held up at the interchange."

Cllr McMahon says the council are further looking at exploiting the area's natural beauty by creating trails and walks through the most scenic areas.

He points to budget accommodation being created by the New Cumnock Development Trust at the former Castle Hotel, as well as glamping pods in Dalmellington, and three shepherds’ cottages which have been converted into Airbnb holiday lets in his local village.

The politician believes the area's proximity to the A71 Edinburgh-Kilmarnock route can encourage people to use it as a base when visiting the capital, particularly during the Festival.

He added: "Cumnock is one of the cheapest places to live in the UK. The houses are selling when they are built.

"It is an attractive area with great potential for the future."

He also points to the £60 million Barony Campus in Cumnock, which opened in 2021, as proof of the council's commitment to the areas regeneration and future prosperity – and says he believes there will be job opportunities for local people from the planned new Ayrshire Innovation Park in Kilmarnock, another Ayrshire Growth Deal project.

“We certainly do have our challenges,”

Wind turbines are springing up across the southern part of East Ayrshire, with more to come in the next few years - along with the 'community benefit' funding they bring with them. (Image: Newsquest)

"Forty years ago we had coal and we must take advantage of the new opportunities that the wind farms provide. Particularly through cheaper electricity.

"I have no doubt there will be benefits from this in the long term and we can reverse the population decline."

In his interview with the Chronicle earlier this year Cllr McMahon revealed how he was arrested when miners picketed the Hunterston terminal in May 1984 to stop 'scab' coal being imported from elsewhere to keep the country's power stations running. 

He was later fined £150 at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court - a much more significant sum then than it would be now.

Mining communities from the Cumnock area, and across Ayrshire, were left devastated by the dispute, which ran for almost a year.