History is in danger of repeating itself in Limburg, the Netherlands, where the sons of coal miners thrown out of work 40 years ago when the government closed uneconomic pits, now face redundancy themselves.

The 3,000 workers at Nedcar, the only large-scale car factory in the Netherlands, include many whose fathers worked at the plant at Born when it was opened in 1966. Ironically it was established with government subsidies to ease unemployment in a region scarred by the loss of 75,000 mining jobs.