South Crofty in Cornwall is the last tin mine in Britain. It has been under sentrence of closure for three months, and a decision is imminent about a campaign to rescue it. While the miners await their fate, the newsmen are preparing their scripts for good news or bad.

Like the men with the hard hats, the men with the clipboards must tread carefully. One false step and they could be cast as the villains of a piece of history in the breaking. For this is the first clear-cut mine closure under the New Labour. Twenty years of gleefully savaging the Tories for failing to prop-up coal mines and then...