Addressing the skills shortage: memories of Geoff Cox and MIMCU

The posting of 25th August highlighted the skills shortage in the mining industry, and a comment from the UK Mining Education Forum (UKMEF) said that "what we can all agree on though is we need to see some significant changes in how we 'market' the industry to attract future generations into the sector". I replied asking if there were any views on what these "significant changes" might be, but still await response. The UKMEF is a collaboration of mine operators, mining supply chain, health & safety executives and academia and it would be good to know what they are actively doing to recruit young people into the industry. 

Geoff Cox

In the late 1970s I was involved with a similar organisation, the Minerals Industry Manpower and Careers Unit (MIMCU), which was founded and run almost single handedly by the late and great Geoff Cox, asssisted by the admirable Eileen Barrett.

Geoff Cox inspired people with his enthusiasm and he and Eileen visited Camborne School of Mines a number of times, to arrange weekend courses at CSM for not only 6th form students, but also their teachers. It was a great success, and it inspired me to travel around the country talking to school students and staff about the virtues of mineral processing.

At New Mills school, Derbyshire in 1980

The University of Birmingham was also very much involved with MIMCU and it was on a weekend course  to the Ecton Hill copper-lead mine in Staffordshire where I first met the very enthusiastic Terry Veasey, a senior lecturer at Birmingham. Geoff Cox had been especially pro-active in developing a mineral processing option within the Nuffield A-level chemistry curriculum, enabling several thousand students and their teachers to visit the study centre and mine at Ecton Hill.

One of the Ecton Hill courses with Geoff Cox, kneeeling centre

The use of an abandoned copper mine in the Peak District as an educational resource was a realisation of Geoff's vision. On a visit to the Peak District in the early 1960s he saw the "Folly" a building with a green copper spire,  and decided there and then that he had to buy it. This he did, in 1963. Nobody was more astonished than he was to find the entrance to an ancient copper mine in his back garden. Geoff travelled the world on mining business, but I am sure that it was his educational work at Ecton where he found most fulfilment.

In 1970 Geoff was asked to establish,and became the Director of, MIMCU, based at the Royal School of Mines. He established a successful programme to train science teachers through a series of 7-day courses,  The idea was that these courses would establish links between schools, the mining industry, and university departments. Between 1971 and 1978 the programme enabled several hundred teachers to bring groups of sixth-form students to weekend courses introducing them to modern industrial methods that were relevant to school syllabuses. In the 1980s he developed a series of study tours to mining operations in Canada, Scandinavia and elsewhere for teachers and students. These visits showed participants by personal experience the nature, scale, and technological capabilities of the industry, and the prospects for a career in mining.

Geoff had endless enthusiasm for taking parties of school and university students underground and explaining the practicalities of mining. It was his concept that a visit to Ecton Hill should provide not just an insight into historical technologies and activities, but should also stimulate the visitor to consider current and future problems in science, technology, economics, and resource ecology. The techniques established by the people who worked with MIMCU proved to be a cost-effective means of education.

MIMCU itself was funded, at times up to £150,000/year, by large multinational mining corporations including Rio Tinto, Anglo American, and Consolidated Goldfields. However, towards the end of the 1980s with consolidation and reorganisation of the minerals industry, the funding steadily diminished and by 1990 had dried up to the extent that MIMCU was forced to close.  

After the closure of MIMCU Geoff supported the costs of maintenance of the centre out of his own pocket.   Sadly in 1997 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and needed steadily more support from his wife Elizabeth and his niece Lisa Morrow, but his mind remained sharp and his enthusiasm for mining education undimmed until his death in 2003. However, the problems and costs of running courses in a disused mine were increasing, especially the problems faced by all educational fieldwork today - safety and insurance matters. An Adventure Activities Licence for underground trips partially addressed these problems, but the foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001 forced a complete suspension of the courses.

I feel fortunate to have known and worked with Geoff Cox and Eileen Barrett. Geoff devoted nearly half his life to giving inspiration to teachers and students alike and I just wish there were more visionaries such as him around today. But of course, no matter how many youngsters are inspired by mining, if there are no university departments to take them, then all is to no avail. In the 1980s undergraduate mining degrees in the UK were offered by the Universities of Nottingham, Leeds, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Cardiff, North Staffs Polytechnic, Camborne School of Mines and Royal School of Mines. Now only CSM remains, reinstating its mining engineering degree course from 2025.