The Miners’ Strike – Econlib

The Miner’s Strike is one of the most controversial events in modern British history. One version is that Margaret Thatcher sought out the conflict, pursued it ruthlessly and destroyed a viable industry to crush the powerful National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The truth is very different.

The British coal industry peaked jbefore World War I, when it employed 1 million men in 3,000 mines and produced 300 million tons of coal annually. But the country faced increasing competition from cheaper foreign coal producers and new, cheaper fuels. When the industry was nationalized in 1947, 700,000 people in 958 mines produced only 200 million tons annually.

In 1950 the Plan for coal pumped £520m into the industry to boost production to 240m tonnes a year. This goal was never achieved. In 1956, the post-war record year for coal production, 228 million tons were produced, too little to meet demand, and 17 million tons had to be imported.

In the 1960s, British Rail ditched coal and steam for oil and electricity. Improved technology also put pressure on employment; Between In 1955 and 1969, the share of coal charged electrically increased from 9.2% to 92.2%.

The sector’s decline accelerated. Between 1957 and 1963, 264 mines closed and 346,000 miners left the industry between 1963 and 1968. In 1967 alone, 12,900 redundancies took place. Under Harold Wilson’s Labor government, one well was closed every week.

1969 was the last year in which coal accounted for more than half of Britain’s energy consumption. By 1970, only 300 wells remained – a decline of two-thirds in 25 years. In 1974, coal accounted for less than a third of Britain’s energy consumption.

Wilson’s government published a new one Plan for coal promised to increase production from 110 million tons to 135 million tons per year by 1985. This objective was never achieved.

Thatcher’s Conservative government, elected in 1979, tried to limit industrial subsidies. The NUM threatened to strike, and Thatcher relented; £200 million was pumped into industry and £50 million went to industries switching from oil to British coal. Companies that had bought coal abroad were banned from importing it and 3 million tonnes of coal piled up in Rotterdam, costing British taxpayers £30 million a year. Thatcher saw a confrontation with the NUM as inevitable and began stockpiling supplies There is enough coal and coke in the whole of Britain to supply the country for at least six months.

The sector was now losing £1.2 million daily with annual interest payments of £467 million. The National Coal Board required a subsidy of £875 million and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission found that 75% of British mines were losing money. The reason was obvious. In 1984 it cost £44 to mine a tonne of British coal, while the United States, Australia and South Africa were selling it on the world market for £32 per tonne. Productivity increases were 20% below 1974 levels Plan for coal.

Taxpayers subsidized the mining industry to the tune of £1.3 billion a year, excluding the costs to taxpayer-funded industries such as the steel and electricity sectors, which were obliged to buy British coal. But when Arthur Scargill, president of the NUM, was asked by a parliamentary committee at what level of loss it was acceptable to close a well, he replied: “As far as I can see, the loss is without limits.”

On March 6, 1984, the government announced the closure of twenty mines and another seventy in the longer term. Peter Walker, eThe Energy Secretary proposed offering miners at mines about to close a choice between a job at another mine or a voluntary redundancy package that would see a further £800 million injected into the industry. He told Thatcher: ‘I think this addresses all the emotional problems the miners have. And it is expensive, but not as expensive as a coal strike.” Thatcher replied: “You know, I agree with you.”

Scargill declined the offer. While Thatcher saw a showdown as unwelcome but inevitable, Scargill – who once said so “I don’t believe that compromising with the capitalist system of society will achieve anything” – active was looking for one. After Thatcher’s landslide re-election in 1983, he said he would not “accept being part of this government for the next four years”. Knowing his membership would not support a strike, he instead did not call the required vote in which the NUM expresses its support for regional strikes. The miners were thus drawn into a bitter strike that would last a year and end in total defeat.

It was Scargill, not Thatcher, who sought the strike, but when it came she pursued it ruthlessly. But it didn’t destroy a viable industry. The tragic truth of the Miners’ Strike is that by the time it happened, the British mining industry had been dying for decades.