MINERS were described as the shock troops of the working class. Bleddyn Hancock, who devotes his life to helping pit workers, thinks the military metaphor can be taken a little further.

"The deaths and in-juries that the miners faced were as great as those inflicted in battle," says the general secretary of NACODS, the overmen, deputies and shotfirers' union.

In fact, the man who for the best part of 30 years engaged the authorities in a long campaign aimed at securing the rights of ill or injured ex-miners is an avid student of military history.

"I call it wargaming and collecting model military figures. Other people call it playing with toy soldiers," he says, laughing.

NACODS might only have a handful of working members - at Tower Colliery (Wales' only other pit near Ammanford closed two years ago) - but Bleddyn Hancock represents the interests of thousands of ex-miners, many now in their 80s.

"Many of my members were soldiers in the last war. I remember one very en-lightening interview which took place in the 1980s at the Maes Manor near Blackwood where I was hearing deafness claims.

"Somebody had told the miners that if they'd been in the war they would be unable to claim.

"I asked them for a resume of their careers - in almost every instance there was a gap between 1939 and 1945.

"Unsurprisingly, when I asked them where they had been during those years there was a lot of shuffling and coughing and vague remarks about 'having been out of the coal industry' or 'away working'.

"What they had heard was all wrong. Some of them undoubtedly had been exposed to great noise during the war but it did not invalidate their claim.

"I stressed this point to one old man who replied 'Thank goodness for that. I served in a gun turret on HMS Warspite during the war and places don't come any noisier than that'.

"Another time the Hafod-rynys Hotel near Crumlin had lent us an upstairs room to hear claims. As the men opened up I began to hear about what they did in the war.

"You often find that the men who have seen the most terrible things didn't care to talk about it all that much. It humbled me when I heard them. It made me all the more determined to see that they got the help that was rightfully theirs."

Bleddyn Hancock was born at Merthyr Vale 52 years ago, and actually worked at Merthyr Vale colliery at the same time as his father, Cyril, who was later to lose a leg in a pit accident.

He remembers the anxiety in pit villages following the Aberfan disaster.

"There was a real sense of anger that little was being done to make these places safe. I approved when some colliers got into the office of George Thomas, then the Secretary of State for Wales and tipped coal slurry all over his floor."

At the the age of 15, no more impressed by the industrial record of a Labour government than its main rivals, he joined Plaid Cymru and is a member to this day.

From as long as he can remember Bleddyn Hancock has had an interest in history, particularly military history. "I used to read the boys' comic The Victor and in one of the stories they mentioned V-E Day. I didn't know what it was so I asked my gran who was the fount of all knowledge and she said it was something to do with Mafeking Night.

"Our teacher was very switched on and used to ask history questions based on the comics and when he asked if anyone knew what V-E Day was my hand shot up and I shouted out 'Please, Sir. It's Mafeking Night!'.

"Since Mafeking Night was during the Boer War the teacher collapsed with laughter. My interest in military matters goes back to my earliest days."

For one who had shown such promise at the local grammar school Bleddyn Hancock's decision to go down his father's pit was surprising, almost to the point of being contrary.

"But I learned as much history as ever I would have at university. In those days men who had fought on the Normandy beaches were still in their 40s and there was at least one First World War veteran in the village."

In 1973 he went to Merthyr Technical College, acquiring knowledge about the coal industry that would be invaluable when he later became a union official.

Although NACODS is the merest shadow of its former self, its work in winning pensions and compensation for ex-members will go on for at least another 20 years.

And Mr Hancock says: "I just hope I have been able to give a little back."