Mick started work at age 14 at the Gateside Colliery, and continued to work as a miner for the next 25 years. He followed his father into the Communist Party and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), remaining a member of both the Communist Party, until its dissolution in 1990, and the NUM, all his life. He was an implacable defender of both and supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary, seeing the then Soviet Union as a beacon of hope for humanity.