Ten years after the closure of the local colliery Ian Sutherland finds that time has not been kind to the village where miners once thrived

ON JULY 15, 1987, British Coal announced the closure of Polmaise colliery, at the village of Fallin, near Stirling. Two days later, the pit gates closed for good and 112 workers joined the dole queue - in an area which already had 36% unemployment and where 64% of families claimed housing benefit. Ten years after the bad news came, most of them are still out of work in a community which owed its very existence to King Coal.

In a 1989 book on Fallin's role in the 1984-85 miners' strike, Polmaise colliery NUM delegate John McCormack wrote: ''The fortunes of the village were always tied up with the fortunes of the pit.'' John McCormack went down Polmaise colliery as a school leaver in 1947. He was sacked with 11 other miners in the wake of the pit's return to work on March 12, 1985. A decade after closure, he says wryly that the only physical reminder of his 40 years underground are the steel-toecapped wellies he now wears for gardening.

Polmaise colliery played a key part in the beginning of the 1984-85 miners' strike. And despite more than a decade of hardship, unemployment - and frankly admitted despair - John McCormack and his comrades remain proud of what they did then. ''We were out three weeks before everyone else and we went back a week later than everyone else. Fallin was so solid that we never needed to mount pickets at the mine.''

The miners of Fallin were out for 56 weeks - a record for the industry. It wasn't the first time they'd entered the history books in that manner. In 1938, Polmaise miners mounted the then longest strike in Scotland's mining history - surviving via soup kitchens and sheer determination. When they were at work, they broke records, too. On one slightly surreal occasion, union leaders asked the men of Polmaise to cool down their zeal at the coalface. The rest of the industry was apparently embarrassed by the scale of bonuses regularly clocked up in Fallin. Veterans claim they weren't consciously aspiring to be Stakhanovites - it was just the way things were always done there.

In the years since the end of the strike and the closure of Polmaise, John McCormack has had to become an unpaid welfare rights adviser, and what he calls ''a poor man's lawyer''. During the strike, he had to intervene with finance companies trying to repossess villagers' cars. Some of them are still repaying the debts, on vehicles which have probably long since gone for scrap.

John's early ventures into detailed representation of cases nearly landed him on a contempt of court charge, too.

That was learning the hard way. ''Now I've become an expert on rules and regulations.''

While the 1987 closure still rankles powerfully in Fallin, there have been changes in the village. ''As far as I know, I'm the only ex-miner left in this street,'' says John. He also says he lost two stones in weight between 1984 and 1987 and has never managed to put it back on. The former miners still meet to discuss problems and opportunities. Former NUM branch secretary James Armitage has no doubt there are still major issues to be tackled. ''Since closure, the majority of men were effectively finished with work. Some of the younger men have had temporary jobs. The over-50s just didn't get jobs again. Some went to Longannet in Fife - and now that's in jeopardy.''

Fallin's ex-miners are explicit about the effects of closure on village life. ''There's a lot of drink and drugs among young laddies that would otherwise have gone straight into the pit,'' says James Armitage. John McCormack is even more pointed about the situation. ''The number one problem is work.''

Some new jobs have come to Fallin. But, says former Stirling district councillor Eddie Carrick: ''The local economy has been battered since closure. The jobs on industrial estates created since closure tend to be low-paid and unskilled, often low-paid work orientated towards women. Fallin was savaged by Government and just left. Mining is gone and the quality of life is nil. Government deserted the miners.''

Eddie Carrick warmly welcomes new moves to offer substantial training to young unemployed people through ''welfare into work'' programmes. But he wants such initiatives developed to cater for older people, too. ''The next step has to be to extend such training programmes up the age scale.'' In his view, if that means more windfall taxes, so be it.

In any event, say the Fallin campaigners, welfare into work programmes can't appear soon enough. ''The young men are sleeping all day and running about at night,'' says John McCormack. He is disgusted by the used syringes found in hidden spots around the village - debris which tells its own depressing story.

Fallin's ex-miners say they will never accept officialdom's rationale for closing Polmaise colliery. Rightly or wrongly, they believe they were punished for their solidarity and militancy. They still argue that huge reserves of top-quality coal are there for the taking, extending north under the Forth to the foothills of the Ochils five miles away.

''There's more coal still down there than was ever taken out during the 81 years life of the pit,'' says James Armitage. He firmly believes that, one day, the coal will be mined again. ''Probably not in my lifetime, and probably not by conventional mining. But oil will run out sometime, and five tons of coal can be made into one ton of oil.''

Right now, villagers face more immediate problems. John McCormack is figuring out how to help a 88-year-old ex-miner who has an occupational pension amounting to #1.26 a week. Unless that tiny amount can be ''lost'' from the equation, the old man stands to lose #49 in income support. They know all about Catch 22 in Fallin.

The issue of sacked miners is back on Fallin's agenda, too. In 1989 John McCormack wrote: ''If ever a Labour Government gets to power again, their cases have to be looked at. They cannot be forgotten.'' Very soon, Mr Tony Blair will be hearing from Fallin on that account. Polmaise colliery might be dead and gone. Its soul is marching on.