The Miner’s Strike is likely one of the most controversial occasions in fashionable British historical past. One model is that Margaret Thatcher sought the battle, prosecuted it ruthlessly, and destroyed a viable business to crush the highly effective Nationwide Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The reality could be very totally different.
The British coal business peaked just earlier than World Battle One, when it employed 1 million males in 3,000 pits producing 300 million tonnes of coal yearly. Nevertheless it confronted rising competitors from cheaper overseas coal producers and new, cheaper fuels. When the business was nationalized in 1947, 700,000 males in 958 pits have been producing simply 200 million tonnes yearly.
In 1950, the Plan for Coal pumped £520 million into the business to spice up manufacturing to 240 million tonnes a 12 months. This goal was by no means met. In 1956, the report post-war 12 months for coal manufacturing, 228 million tonnes have been produced, too little to fulfill demand, and 17 million tonnes needed to be imported.
The Sixties noticed British Rail ditch coal and steam for oil and electrical energy. Improved know-how additionally squeezed employment; Between 1955 and 1969, the share of coal which was energy loaded rose from 9.2% to 92.2%.
The business’s decline accelerated. Between 1957 and 1963, 264 pits closed and between 1963 and 1968, 346,000 miners left the business. In 1967 alone there have been 12,900 pressured redundancies. Underneath Harold Wilson’s Labour authorities, one pit closed each week.
Nineteen sixty-nine was the final 12 months when coal accounted for greater than half of Britain’s power consumption. By 1970 there have been simply 300 pits left – a fall of two thirds in 25 years. By 1974 coal accounted for lower than one third of British power consumption.
Wilson’s authorities revealed a brand new Plan for Coal promising to extend manufacturing from 110 million tonnes to 135 million tonnes yearly by 1985. This goal was by no means met.
Elected in 1979, Thatcher’s Conservative authorities tried to restrict industrial subsidies. The NUM threatened to strike, and Thatcher gave in; £200 million was pumped into the business and £50 million went to industries which switched from oil to British coal. Firms which had purchased coal overseas have been banned from importing it and three million tonnes of coal piled up at Rotterdam, costing the British taxpayer £30 million yearly. Seeing a showdown with the NUM as inevitable, Thatcher started stockpiling sufficient coal and coke round Britain to maintain the nation equipped for no less than six months.
The business was now shedding £1.2 million day by day with annual curiosity funds of £467 million. The Nationwide Coal Board wanted a grant of £875 million and the Monopolies and Mergers Fee discovered that 75% of British pits have been shedding cash. The rationale was apparent. By 1984 it value £44 to mine a metric ton of British coal when the US, Australia, and South Africa have been promoting it on the world marketplace for £32 a metric ton. Productiveness will increase have been 20% under the extent set within the 1974 Plan for Coal.
Taxpayers have been subsidizing the mining business to the tune of £1.3 billion yearly, not together with the price to taxpayer-funded industries comparable to metal and electrical energy which have been obliged to purchase British coal. However when Arthur Scargill, president of the NUM, was requested by a Parliamentary committee at what degree of loss it was acceptable to shut a pit he answered, “So far as I can see, the loss is with out limits.”
On 6 March 1984, the federal government introduced the closure of 20 mines and one other 70 in the long term. Peter Walker, energy minister, recommended providing miners at pits slated for closure the selection of a job at one other pit or a voluntary redundancy bundle with one other £800 million ploughed into the business. He informed Thatcher “I feel this meets each emotional subject the miners have. And it’s costly, however not as costly as a coal strike”. Thatcher replied, “, I agree with you”.
Scargill rejected the supply. Whereas Thatcher considered a showdown as unwelcome however unavoidable, Scargill – who as soon as stated “I don’t consider compromise with the capitalist system of society will obtain something” – actively sought one. After Thatcher’s landslide reelection in 1983, he stated he wouldn’t “settle for that we’re landed for the subsequent 4 years with this authorities”. Figuring out his membership wouldn’t assist a strike, he didn’t name the required poll, as a substitute declaring the NUM’s assist for regional strikes. Thus have been the miners dragged right into a bitter strike which might final a 12 months and finish of their whole defeat.
It was Scargill, not Thatcher, who sought the Strike, although when it got here she prosecuted it ruthlessly. Nevertheless it didn’t destroy a viable business. The tragic fact of the Miner’s Strike is that by the point it got here the British mining business had been dying for many years.
John Phelan is an Economist at Middle of the American Experiment.
